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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great
+Teachers, by Elbert Hubbard
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers
+
+Author: Elbert Hubbard
+
+Release Date: July 29, 2006 [EBook #18936]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE JOURNEYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Janet Blenkinship and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  Little
+  Journeys
+  To the Homes of Great Teachers
+
+
+  Elbert Hubbard
+
+
+  Memorial Edition
+
+
+
+
+  Printed and made into a Book by
+  The Roycrofters, who are in East
+  Huron, Erie County, New York
+
+  Wm. H. Wise & Co.
+  New York
+
+  Copyright, 1916,
+  By The Roycrofters
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+
+  MOSES                                                                9
+
+  CONFUCIUS                                                           41
+
+  PYTHAGORAS                                                          69
+
+  PLATO                                                               97
+
+  KING ALFRED                                                        123
+
+  ERASMUS                                                            149
+
+  BOOKER T. WASHINGTON                                               183
+
+  THOMAS ARNOLD                                                      217
+
+  FRIEDRICH FROEBEL                                                  245
+
+  HYPATIA                                                            269
+
+  SAINT BENEDICT                                                     293
+
+  MARY BAKER EDDY                                                    327
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: MOSES]
+
+MOSES
+
+
+    And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt
+    thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
+    And God said, moreover, unto Moses: Thus shalt thou say unto the
+    children of Israel, The Lord God of your Fathers, the God of
+    Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto
+    you: this is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all
+    generations.
+
+    --_Exodus iii: 14, 15_
+
+
+MOSES
+
+Moses was the world's first great teacher. He is still one of the
+world's great teachers. Seven million people yet look to his laws for
+special daily guidance, and more than two hundred millions read his
+books and regard them as Holy Writ. And these people as a class are of
+the best and most enlightened who live now or who have ever lived.
+
+Moses did not teach of a life after this--he gives no hint of
+immortality--all of his rewards and punishments refer to the present. If
+there is a heaven for the good and a hell for the bad, he did not know
+of them.
+
+The laws of Moses were designed for the Now and the Here. Many of them
+ring true and correct even today, after all this interval of more than
+three thousand years. Moses had a good knowledge of physiology, hygiene,
+sanitation. He knew the advantages of cleanliness, order, harmony,
+industry and good habits. He also knew psychology, or the science of the
+mind: he knew the things that influence humanity, the limits of the
+average intellect, the plans and methods of government that will work
+and those which will not.
+
+He was practical. He did what was expedient. He considered the material
+with which he had to deal, and he did what he could and taught that
+which his people would and could believe. The Book of Genesis was
+plainly written for the child-mind.
+
+The problem that confronted Moses was one of practical politics, not a
+question of philosophy or of absolute or final truth. The laws he put
+forth were for the guidance of the people to whom he gave them, and his
+precepts were such as they could assimilate.
+
+It were easy to take the writings of Moses as they have come down to us,
+translated, re-translated, colored and tinted with the innocence,
+ignorance and superstition of the nations who have kept them alive for
+thirty-three centuries, and then compile a list of the mistakes of the
+original writer. The writer of these records of dreams and hopes and
+guesses, all cemented with stern commonsense, has our profound reverence
+and regard. The "mistakes" lie in the minds of the people who, in the
+face of the accumulated knowledge of the centuries, have persisted that
+things once written were eternally sufficient.
+
+In point of time there is no teacher within many hundred years following
+him who can be compared with him in originality and insight.
+
+Moses lived fourteen hundred years before Christ.
+
+The next man after him to devise a complete code of conduct was Solon,
+who lived seven hundred years after. A little later came Zoroaster, then
+Confucius, Buddha, Lao-tsze, Pericles, Socrates, Plato,
+Aristotle--contemporaries, or closely following each other, their
+philosophy woven and interwoven by all and each and each by all.
+
+Moses, however, stands out alone. That he did not know natural history
+as did Aristotle, who lived a thousand years later, is not to his
+discredit, and to emphasize the fact were irrelevant.
+
+Back of it all lies the undisputed fact that Moses led a barbaric people
+out of captivity and so impressed his ideals and personality upon them
+that they endure as a distinct and peculiar people, even unto this day.
+He founded a nation. And chronologically he is the civilized world's
+first author.
+
+Moses was a soldier, a diplomat, an executive, a writer, a teacher, a
+leader, a prophet, a stonecutter. Beside all these he was a farmer--a
+workingman, one who when forty years of age tended flocks and herds for
+a livelihood. Every phase of the outdoor life of the range was familiar
+to him. And the greatness of the man is revealed in the fact that his
+plans and aspirations were so far beyond his achievements that at last
+he thought he had failed. Exultant success seems to go with that which
+is cheap and transient. All great teachers have, in their own minds,
+been failures--they saw so much further than they were able to travel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All ancient chronology falls easily into three general divisions: the
+fabulous, the legendary, and the probable or natural.
+
+In the understanding of history, psychology is quite as necessary as
+philology.
+
+To reject anything that has a flaw in it is quite as bad as to have that
+excess of credulity which swallows everything presented.
+
+It is not necessary to throw away the fabulous nor deny the legendary.
+But it is certainly not wise to construe the fabulous as the actual and
+maintain the legendary as literally true. Things may be true
+allegorically and false literally, and to be able to distinguish the one
+from the other, and prize each in its proper place, is the mark of
+wisdom.
+
+If, however, we were asked to describe the man Moses to a jury of sane,
+sensible, intelligent and unprejudiced men and women, and show why he is
+worthy of the remembrance of mankind, we would have to eliminate the
+fabulous, carefully weigh the traditional, and rest our argument upon
+records that are fair, sensible and reasonably free from dispute.
+
+The conclusions of professional retainers, committed before they begin
+their so-called investigations to a literal belief in the fabulous,
+should be accepted with great caution. For them to come to conclusions
+outside of that which they have been taught, is not only to forfeit
+their social position, but to lose their actual means of livelihood.
+Perhaps the truth in the final summing up can best be gotten from those
+who have made no vows that they will not change their opinions, and have
+nothing to lose if they fail occasionally to gibe with the popular.
+
+On a certain occasion after Colonel Ingersoll had delivered his famous
+lecture entitled, "Some Mistakes of Moses," he was entertained by a
+local club. At the meeting, which was of the usual informal kind known
+as "A Dutch Feed," a young lawyer made bold to address the great orator
+thus: "Colonel Ingersoll, you are a lover of freedom--with you the word
+liberty looms large. All great men love liberty, and no man lives in
+history, respected and revered, save as he has sought to make men free.
+Moses was a lover of liberty. Now, wouldn't it be gracious and generous
+in you to give Moses, who in some ways was in the same business as
+yourself, due credit as a liberator and law-giver and not emphasize his
+mistakes to the total exclusion of his virtues?"
+
+Colonel Ingersoll listened--he was impressed by the fairness of the
+question. He listened, paused and replied: "Young man, you have asked a
+reasonable question, and all you suggest about the greatness of Moses,
+in spite of his mistakes, is well taken. The trouble in your logic lies
+in the fact that you do not understand my status in this case. You seem
+to forget that I am not the attorney for Moses. He has more than two
+million men looking after his interests. I am retained on the other
+side!"
+
+Like unto Colonel Ingersoll, I am not an attorney for Moses. I desire,
+however, to give a fair, clear and judicial account of the man. I will
+attempt to present a brief for the people, and neither prosecute nor
+defend. I will simply try to picture the man as he once existed, nothing
+extenuating, nor setting down aught in malice. As the original office of
+the State's Attorney was rather to protect the person at the bar than to
+indict him, so will I try to bring out the best in Moses, rather than
+hold up his mistakes and raise a laugh by revealing his ignorance.
+Modesty, which is often egotism turned wrong side out, might here say,
+"Oh, Moses requires no defense at this late day!" But Moses, like all
+great men, has suffered at the hands of his friends. To this man has
+been attributed powers which no human being ever possessed.
+
+Moses lived thirty-three hundred years ago. In one sense thirty-three
+centuries is a very long time. All is comparative--children regard a man
+of fifty as "awful old." I have seen several persons who have lived a
+hundred years, and they didn't consider a century long, "and thirty-five
+isn't anything," said one of them to me.
+
+Geologically, thirty-three centuries is only an hour ago. It does not
+nearly take us back to the time when men of the Stone Age hunted the
+hairy mammoth in what is now Nebraska, nor does thirty-three centuries
+give us any glimpse of the time when tropical animals, plants and
+probably men lived and flourished at the North Pole.
+
+Egyptian civilization, at the time of Moses, was more than three
+thousand years old. Egypt was then in the first stage of senility,
+entering upon her decline, for her best people had settled in the
+cities, and this completes the cycle and spells deterioration. She had
+passed through the savage, barbaric, nomadic and agricultural stages and
+was living on her unearned increment, a part of which was Israelitish
+labor. Moses looked at the Pyramids, which were built more than a
+thousand years before his birth, and asked in wonder about who built
+them, very much as we do today. He listened for the Sphinx to answer,
+but she was silent, then as now. The date of the exodus has been fixed
+as having probably occurred during the reign of the Great Pharaoh,
+Mineptah, or the nineteenth Egyptian Dynasty. The date is, say, fourteen
+hundred years before Christ. An inscription has recently been found
+which seems to show that Joseph settled in Egypt during the reign of
+Mineptah, but the best scholars now have gone back to the conclusions I
+have stated.
+
+At the time of the Pharaohs, Egypt was the highest civilized country on
+earth. It had a vast system of canals, an organized army, a goodly
+degree of art, and there were engineers and builders of much ability.
+Philosophy, poetry and ethics were recognized, prized and discussed.
+
+The storage of grain by the government to bank against famine had been
+practised for several hundred years. There were also treasure-cities
+built to guard against fire, thieves or destruction by the elements. It
+will thus be seen that foresight, thrift, caution, wisdom, played their
+parts. The Egyptians were not savages.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About five hundred years before the birth of Moses there lived in Arabia
+a powerful Sheik or Chief, known as Abraham. This man had a familiar
+spirit, or guide, or guardian-angel known as Yaveh or Jehovah. All of
+the desert tribes had such tutelary gods; and all of these gods were
+once men of power who lived on earth. The belief in special gods has
+often been held by very great men: Socrates looked to his "demon" for
+guidance; Themistocles consulted his oracle; a President of the United
+States visited a clairvoyant, who consented to act as a medium and
+interpret the supernatural. This idea, which is a variant of ancestor
+worship, still survives, and very many good people do not take journeys
+or make investments until they believe they are being dictated to by
+Shakespeare, Emerson, Beecher or Phillips Brooks. These people also
+believe that there are bad spirits to which we must not harken.
+
+Abraham was led by Jehovah; what Jehovah told him to do he did; when
+Jehovah told him to desist or change his plans, he obeyed. Jehovah
+promised him many things, and some of these promises were fulfilled.
+
+Whether these tutelary gods or controlling spirits had any actual
+existence outside of the imagination of the people who believed in
+them--whether they were merely pictures thrown upon the screen by a
+subconscious spiritual stereopticon--is not the question now under
+discussion. Something must be left for a later time: the fact remains
+that special providences are yet relied upon by sincere and intelligent
+people.
+
+Abraham had a son named Isaac. And Isaac was the father of Jacob, or
+Israel, "the Soldier of God," so called on account of his successful
+wrestling with the angel. And Jacob was the father of twelve sons. All
+of these people believed in Jehovah, the god of their tribe; and while
+they did not disbelieve in the gods of the neighboring tribes, they yet
+doubted their power and had grave misgivings as to their honesty.
+Therefore, they had nothing to do with them, praying to their own god
+only and looking to him for support. They were the chosen people of
+Jehovah, just as the Babylonians were the chosen people of Baal; the
+Canaanites the chosen people of Ishitar; the Moabites the chosen people
+of Chemos; the Ammonites the chosen people of Rimmon.
+
+Now Joseph was the favorite son of Jacob, and his brethren were
+naturally jealous of him. So one day out on the range they sold him into
+slavery to a passing caravan, and went home and told their father the
+boy was dead, having been killed by a wild beast. To make the matter
+plausible they took the coat of Joseph and smeared it with the blood of
+a goat which they had killed. Nowadays, the coat would have been sent to
+a chemist's laboratory and the blood-spots tested to see whether it was
+the blood of beast or human. But Jacob believed the story and mourned
+his son as dead.
+
+Now Joseph was taken to Egypt and there arose to a position of influence
+and power through his intelligence and diligence. How eventually his
+brethren, starving, came to him for food, there being a famine in their
+own land, is one of the most natural and beautiful stories in all
+literature. It is a folklore legend, free from the fabulous, and has all
+the corroborating marks of the actual.
+
+For us it is history undisputed, unrefuted, because it is so natural. It
+could all easily happen in various parts of the world even now. It shows
+the identical traits of human nature that are alive and pulsing today.
+
+Joseph having made himself known to his brethren induced some of them
+and their neighbors to come down into Egypt, where the pasturage was
+better and the water more sure, and settle there. The Bible tells us
+that there were seventy of these settlers and gives us their names.
+
+These emigrants, called Israelites, or Children of Israel, account for
+the presence of the enslaved people whom Moses led out of captivity
+three hundred years later.
+
+One thing seems quite sure, and that is that they were a peculiar people
+then, with the pride of the desert in their veins, for they stood
+socially aloof and did not mix with the Egyptians. They still had their
+own god and clung to their own ways and customs.
+
+That very naive account in the first chapter of Exodus of how they had
+two midwives, "and the name of one was Shiphrah and the other Puah," is
+as fine in its elusive exactitude as an Uncle Remus story. Children
+always want to know the names of people. These two Hebrew midwives were
+bribed by the King of Egypt--ruler over twenty million people--in
+person, to kill all the Hebrew boy babies. Then the account states that
+Jehovah was pleased with these Hebrew women who proved false to their
+master, and Jehovah rewarded them by giving them houses.
+
+This order to kill the Hebrew children must have gone into execution, if
+at all, about the time of the birth of Moses, because Aaron, the brother
+of Moses, and three years older, certainly was not killed.
+
+Whether Moses was the son of Pharaoh's daughter, his father an
+Israelite, or both of his parents were Israelites, is problematic. Royal
+families are not apt to adopt an unknown waif into the royal household
+and bring him up as their royal own, especially if this waif belongs to
+what is regarded as an inferior race. The tie of motherhood is the only
+one that could over-rule caste and override prejudice. If the daughter
+of Pharaoh, or more properly "the Pharaoh," were the mother of Moses,
+she had a better reason for hiding him in the bulrushes than did the
+daughter of a Levite, for the order to kill these profitable workers is
+extremely doubtful. The strength, skill and ability of the Israelites
+formed a valuable acquisition to the Egyptians, and what they wanted was
+more Israelites, not fewer.
+
+Judging from the statement that there were only two midwives, there were
+only a few hundred Israelites--perhaps between one and two thousand, at
+most.
+
+So leaving the legend of the childhood of Moses with just enough mystery
+mixed in it to give it a perpetual piquancy, we learn that he was
+brought up an Egyptian, as the son of Pharaoh's daughter, and that it
+was she who gave him his name.
+
+Philo and Josephus give various sidelights on the life and character of
+Moses. The Midrash or Commentaries on the History of the Jews, composed,
+added to or modified by many men, extending over a period of twenty
+centuries, also add their weight, even though the value of these
+Commentaries is conjectural.
+
+Egyptian accounts of Moses and the Israelites come to us through
+Hellenic sources, and very naturally are not complimentary. These
+picture Moses, or Osarsiph, as they call him, as an agitator, an
+undesirable citizen, who sought to overturn the government, and failing
+in this, fled to the desert with a few hundred outlaws. They managed to
+hold out against the forces sent to capture them, were gradually added
+to by other refugees, and through the organizing genius of Moses were
+rounded into a strong tribe.
+
+That Moses was their supreme ruler, and that to better hold his people
+in check he devised a religious ritual for them, and impressed his god,
+Jehovah, upon them, almost to the exclusion of all other gods, and thus
+formed them into a religious whole, is beyond question. No matter what
+the cause of the uprising, or who was to blame for it, the fact is
+undisputed that Moses led a revolt in Egypt, and the people he carried
+with him in this exodus formed the nucleus of the Hebrew Nation. And
+further, the fact is beyond dispute that the personality of Moses was
+the prime cementing factor in the making of the nation. The power,
+poise, patience and unwavering self-reliance of the man, through his
+faith in the god Jehovah, are all beyond dispute. Things happen because
+the man makes them happen.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The position of the Israelites in Egypt was one of voluntary vassalage.
+The government was a feudal monarchy. The Israelites had come into Egypt
+of their own accord, but had never been admitted into the full rights of
+citizenship. This exclusion by the Egyptians had no doubt tended to fix
+the Children of Israel in their religious beliefs, and on the other
+hand, their proud and exclusive nature had tended to keep them from a
+full fellowship with the actual owners of the land.
+
+The Egyptians never attempted to traffic in them as they did in slaves
+of war, being quite content to use them as clerks, laborers and
+servants, paying them a certain wage, and also demanding an excess of
+labor in lieu of taxation. In other words, they worked out their
+"road-tax," which no doubt was excessive. Many years later, Athens and
+also Rome had similar "slaves," some of whom were men of great intellect
+and worth. If one reads the works of modern economic prophets, it will
+be seen that wage-workers in America are often referred to as "slaves"
+or "bondmen," terms which will probably give rise to confusion among
+historians to come.
+
+Moses was brought up in the court of the king, and became versed in all
+the lore of the Egyptians. We are led to suppose that he also looked
+like an Egyptian, as we are told that people seeing him for the first
+time, he being a stranger to them, went away and referred to him as
+"that Egyptian." He was handsome, commanding, silent by habit and slow
+of speech, strong as a counselor, a safe man. That he was a most
+valuable man in the conduct of Egyptian official affairs, there is no
+doubt. And although he was nominally an Egyptian, living with the
+Egyptians, adopting their manners and customs, yet his heart was with
+"his brethren," the Israelites, who he saw were sore oppressed through
+governmental exploitation.
+
+Moses knew that a government which does not exist for the purpose of
+adding to human happiness has no excuse for being. And once when he was
+down among his own people he saw an Egyptian taskmaster or foreman
+striking an Israelitish workman, and in wrath he arose and killed the
+oppressor. The only persons who were witnesses to this affair were two
+Hebrews. The second day after the fight, when Moses was attempting to
+separate two Hebrews who had gotten into an altercation with each other,
+they taunted him by saying, "Who gavest thee to be a ruler over
+us?--wilt thou also kill us as thou didst the Egyptian?"
+
+This gives us a little light upon the quality and character of the
+people with whom Moses had to deal. It also shows that the ways of the
+reformer and peacemaker are not flower-strewn. The worst enemies of a
+reformer are not the Egyptians--he has also to deal with the Israelites.
+
+I once heard Terence V. Powderly, who organized the Knights of
+Labor--the most successful labor organization ever formed--say, "Any man
+who devotes his life to helping laboring men will be destroyed by them."
+And then he added, "But this should not deter us from the effort to
+benefit."
+
+As the Hebrew account plainly states that the killing of all the male
+Hebrew children was carried out with the connivance of Hebrew women who
+pretended to be ministering to the Hebrew mothers, so was the flight of
+Moses from Egypt caused by the Hebrews, who turned informants and
+brought him into disgrace with Pharaoh, who sought his life.
+
+Very naturally, the Egyptians deny and have always denied that the order
+to kill children was ever issued by a Pharaoh. They also point to the
+fact that the Israelites were a source of profit--a valuable asset to
+the Egyptians. And moreover, the proposition that the Egyptians killed
+the children to avoid trouble is preposterous, since no possible act
+that man can commit would so arouse sudden rebellion and fan into flame
+the embers of hate as the murder of the young. If the Egyptians had
+attempted to carry out any such savage cruelty, they would not only have
+had to fight the Israelitish men, but the outraged mothers as well. The
+Egyptians were far too wise to invite the fury of frenzied motherhood.
+To have done this would have destroyed the efficiency of the entire
+Hebrew population. An outraged and heartbroken people do not work.
+
+When one person becomes angry with another, his mental processes work
+overtime making up a list of the other's faults and failings.
+
+When a people arise in revolt they straightway prepare an indictment
+against the government against which they revolted, giving a schedule of
+outrages, insults, plunderings and oppressions. This is what is politely
+called partisan history. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was a literary indictment
+of the South by featuring its supposed brutalities. And the attitude of
+the South is mirrored in a pretty parable concerning a Southern girl who
+came North on a visit, and seeing in print the words "damned Yankee,"
+innocently remarked that she always thought they were one word. A
+description of the enemy, made by a person or a people, must be taken
+cum grano Syracuse.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Moses fled, after killing the Egyptian, he went northward and east
+into the land of the Midianites, who were also descendants of Abraham.
+At this time he was forty years of age, and still unmarried, his work in
+the Egyptian Court having evidently fully absorbed his time.
+
+It is a pretty little romance, all too brief in its details, of how the
+tired man stopped at a well, and the seven daughters of Jethro came to
+draw water for their flocks. Certain shepherds came also and drove the
+girls away, when Moses, true to his nature, took the part of the young
+ladies, to the chagrin and embarrassment of the male rustics who had
+left their manners at home. The story forms a melodramatic stage-setting
+which the mummers have not been slow to use, representing the seven
+daughters as a ballet, the shepherds as a male chorus, and Moses as
+basso-profundo and hero. We are told that the girls went home and told
+their father of the chivalrous stranger they had met, and he, with all
+the deference of the desert, sent for him "that he might eat bread."
+
+Very naturally Moses married one of the girls.
+
+And Moses tended the flocks of Jethro, his father-in-law, taking the
+herds a long distance, living with them and sleeping out under the
+stars.
+
+Now Jethro was the chief of his tribe. Moses calls him a "priest," but
+he was a priest only incidentally, as all the Arab chiefs were.
+
+The clergy originated in Egypt. Before the Israelites were in Goshen,
+the "sacra," or sacred utensils, belonged to the family; and the head of
+the tribe performed the religious rites, propitiating the family deity,
+or else delegated some one else to do so. This head of the tribe, or
+chief, was called a "Cohen"; and the man who assisted him, or whom he
+delegated, was called a "Levi." The plan of making a business of being a
+"Levi" was borrowed from the Egyptians, who had men set apart,
+exclusively, to deal in the mysterious. Moses calls himself a Levi, or
+Levite.
+
+After the busy life he had led, Moses could not settle down to the
+monotonous existence of a shepherd. It is probable that then he wrote
+the Book of Job, the world's first drama and the oldest book of the
+Bible. Moses was full of plans. Very naturally he prayed to the
+Israelitish god, and the god harkened unto his prayer and talked to him.
+
+The silence, the loneliness, the majesty of the mountains, the great
+stretches of shining sand, the long peaceful nights, all tend to
+hallucinations. Sheepmen are in constant danger of mental aberration.
+Society is needed quite as much as solitude.
+
+From talking with God, Moses desired to see Him. One day, from the
+burning red of an acacia-tree, the Lord called to him, "Moses, Moses!"
+
+And Moses answered, "Here am I!"
+
+Moses was a man born to rule--he was a leader of men--and here at
+middle life the habits of twenty-five years were suddenly snapped and
+his occupation gone. He yearned for his people, and knowing their
+unhappy lot, his desire was to lead them out of captivity. He knew the
+wrongs the Egyptian government was visiting upon the Israelites. Rameses
+the Second was a ruler with the builder's eczema: always and forever he
+made gardens, dug canals, paved roadways, constructed model tenements,
+planned palaces, erected colossi. He was a worker, and he made everybody
+else work. It was in this management of infinite detail that Moses had
+been engaged; and while he entered into it with zest, he knew that the
+hustling habit can be overdone and its votaries may become its
+victims--not only that, but this strenuous life may turn freemen into
+serfs, and serfs into slaves.
+
+And now Rameses was dead, and the proud, vain, fretful and selfish
+Mineptah ruled in his place. It was worse with the Israelites than ever!
+
+The more Moses thought of it the more he was convinced that it was his
+duty to go back to Egypt and lead his people out of bondage. He himself,
+having been driven out, made the matter a burning one with him: he had
+lost his place in the Egyptian Court, but he would get it back and hold
+it under better conditions than ever before!
+
+He heard the "Voice"! All strong people hear the Voice calling them. And
+harkening to the Inner Voice is simply doing what you want to do.
+
+"Moses, Moses!"
+
+And Moses answered, "Lord, here am I."
+
+The laws of Moses still influence the world, but not even the orthodox
+Jews follow them literally. We bring our reason to bear upon the
+precepts of Moses, and those which are not for us we gently pass over.
+In fact, the civil laws of most countries prohibit many of the things
+which Moses commanded. For instance, the eighteenth verse of the
+twenty-second chapter of Exodus says, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to
+live." Certainly no Jewish lawyer nor Rabbi, in any part of the world,
+advocates the killing of persons supposed to be witches. We explain that
+in this instance the inspired writer lapsed and merely mirrored the
+ignorance of his time. Or else we fall back upon the undoubted fact that
+various writers and translators have tampered with the original
+text--this must be so, since the book written by Moses makes record of
+his death.
+
+But when we find passages in Moses requiring us to benefit our enemies,
+we say with truth that this was the first literature to express for us
+the brotherhood of man.
+
+"Thou shalt take no gift: for the gift blindeth the wise and perverteth
+the words of the righteous." Here we get Twentieth-Century Wisdom. And
+very many passages as fine and true can be found, which prove for us
+beyond cavil that Moses was right a part of the time, and to say this
+of any man, living or dead, is a very great compliment.
+
+In times of doubt the Jewish people turn to the Torah, or Book of the
+Law. This book has been interpreted by the Rabbis, or the learned men,
+and to meet the exigencies of living under many conditions, it has been
+changed, enlarged and augmented. In these changes the people were not
+consulted. Very naturally it was done secretly, for inspired men must be
+well dead before the many accept their edict. To be alive is always more
+or less of an offense, especially if you be a person and not a
+personage.
+
+The murmurings against Moses during his lifetime often broke into a
+rumble and a roar. The mob accused him of taking them out into the
+wilderness to perish. To get away from the constant bickering and
+criticisms of the little minds, Moses used to go up into the mountains
+alone to find rest, and there he communicated with his god. It was
+surely a great step in advance when all the Elohims were combined into
+one Supreme Elohim that was everywhere present and ruled the world.
+Instead of dozens of little gods, jealous, jangling, fearful, fretful,
+fussy, boastful, changing walking-sticks to serpents, or doing other
+things quite as useless, it was a great advance to have one Supreme
+Being, dispassionate, a God of Love and Justice, "with whom can be no
+variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning." This gradual
+ennobling of the conception of Divinity reveals the extent to which man
+is ennobling his own nature.
+
+Up to within a very few years God had a rival in the Devil, but now the
+Devil lives only as a pleasantry. Until the time of Moses, the God of
+Sinai was only the God of the Hebrew people, and this accounts for His
+violence, wrath, jealousy, and all of those qualities which went to make
+up a barbaric chief, including the tendency of His sons and servants to
+make love to the daughters of earth.
+
+It is probable that the idea of God--in opposition to a god, one of many
+gods--was a thought that grew up very gradually in the mind of Moses.
+The ideal grew, and Moses grew with the ideal.
+
+Then from God being a Spirit, to being Spirit, is a natural, easy and
+beautiful evolution.
+
+The thought of angels, devils, heavenly messengers, like Gabriel and the
+Holy Ghost, constantly surrounding the Throne, is a suggestion that
+comes from the court of the absolute monarch. The Trinity is the
+oligarchy refined, and the one son who gives himself as a sacrifice for
+all the people who have offended the monarch is the retreating vision of
+that night of ignorance when all nations sought to appease the wrath of
+their god by the death of human beings.
+
+God to us is Spirit, realized everywhere in unfolding Nature. We are a
+part of Nature--we, too, are Spirit. When Moses commands his people that
+they must return the stray animal of their enemy to its rightful owner,
+we behold a great man struggling to benefit humanity by making them
+recognize the laws of Spirit. We are all one family--we can not afford
+to wrong or harm even an enemy.
+
+Instead of thousands of warring, jarring families or tribes, we have now
+a few strong federations of States, or countries, which, if they would
+make war on one another, would today quickly face a larger foe. Already
+the idea of one government for all the world is taking form--there must
+be one Supreme Arbiter, and all this monstrous expense of money and
+flesh and blood and throbbing hearts for purposes of war, must go, just
+as we have sent to limbo the jangling, jarring, jealous gods. Also, the
+better sentiment of the world will send the czars, emperors, kings,
+grand dukes, and the greedy grafters of so-called democracy, into the
+dust-heap of oblivion, with all the priestly phantoms that have obscured
+the sun and blackened the sky. The gods have gone, but MAN IS HERE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The plagues that befell the Egyptians were the natural ones to which
+Egypt was liable: drought, flood, flies, lice, frogs, disease. The
+Israelites very naturally declared that these things were sent as a
+punishment by the Israelitish god. I remember a farmer, in my childhood
+days, who was accounted by his neighbors as an infidel. He was struck by
+lightning and instantly killed, while standing in his doorway. The
+Sunday before, this man had worked in the fields, and just before he was
+killed he had said, "dammit," or something quite as bad. Our preacher
+explained at length that this man's death was a "judgment." Afterward,
+when our church was struck by lightning, it was regarded as an accident.
+
+Ignorant and superstitious people always attribute special things to
+special causes. When the grasshoppers overran Kansas in Eighteen Hundred
+Eighty-five, I heard a good man from the South say it was a punishment
+on the Kansans for encouraging Old John Brown. The next year the
+boll-weevil ruined the cotton crop, and certain preachers in the North,
+who thought they knew, declared it was the lingering wrath of God on
+account of slavery.
+
+Three nations unite to form our present civilization. These are the
+Greek, the Roman and the Judaic. The lives of Perseus, Romulus and Moses
+all teem with the miraculous, but if we accept the supernatural in one
+we must in all. Which of these three great nations has contributed most
+to our well-being is a question largely decided by temperament; but
+just now the star of Greece seems to be in the ascendant. We look to art
+for solace. Greece stands for art; Rome for conquest; Judea for
+religion.
+
+And yet Moses was a lover of beauty, and the hold he had upon his people
+was quite as much through training them to work as through his moral
+teaching. Indeed, his morality was expediency--which is reason enough
+according to modern science. When he wants them to work, he says, "Thus
+saith the Lord," just the same as when he wishes to impress upon them a
+thought.
+
+No one can read the twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth
+chapters of Exodus without being impressed with the fact that the man
+who wrote them had in him the spirit of the Master Workman--a King's
+Craftsman. His carving the ten commandments on tablets of stone also
+shows his skill with mallet and chisel, a talent he had acquired in
+Egypt, where Rameses the Second had thousands of men engaged in
+sculpture and in making inscriptions in stone.
+
+Several chapters in Exodus might have been penned by Albrecht Durer or
+William Morris. The commandment, "Thou shalt not make unto thyself any
+graven image," was unmistakably made merely to correct a local evil: the
+tendency to worship the image instead of the thing it symbolized. People
+who do not contribute to the creation of an object fall easy victims to
+this error. With all the stern good sense that Moses revealed, it is
+but fair to assume that he did not mean the command to be perpetual. It
+was only through so much moving about that the Jews seemed to lose their
+art spirit.
+
+And certainly the flame of art in the Jewish heart has never died out,
+even though at times it has smoldered, for wherever there has been peace
+and security for the Jews, they have not been slow to evolve the talent
+which creates. History teems with the names of Jews who, in music,
+painting, poetry and sculpture, have devoted their days to beauty. And
+the germ of genius is seen in many of the Jewish children who attend the
+manual-training and art schools of America.
+
+Art has its rise in the sense of sublimity. It seems at times to be a
+fulfilment of the religious impulse. The religion which balks at work,
+stopping at prayer and contemplation, is a form of arrested development.
+
+The number of people in the exodus was probably two or three thousand.
+Renan says that one century only elapsed between the advent of Joseph
+into Egypt and the revolt. Very certain it was not a great number that
+went forth into the desert. A half-million women could not have borrowed
+jewelry of their neighbors--the secret could not have been kept. And in
+the negotiations between Moses and the King, it will be remembered that
+Moses asked only for the privilege of going three days' journey into the
+wilderness to make sacrifices. It was a kind of picnic or religious
+campmeeting. A vast multitude could not have taken part in any such
+exercise. We also hear of their singing their gratitude on account of
+reaching Elim, where there were "twelve springs and seventy palm-trees."
+Had there been several million people, as we have been told, the
+insignificant shade of seventy trees would have meant nothing to them.
+
+The distance from Goshen in Egypt to Canaan in Palestine was about one
+hundred seventy-five miles. But by the circuitous route they traveled it
+was nearly a thousand miles. It took forty years to make the passage,
+for the way had to be fought through the country of foes who very
+naturally sought to block the way. Quick transportation was out of the
+question. The rate of speed was about twenty-five miles a year.
+
+Here was a people without homes, or fixed habitation, beset on every
+side with the natural dangers of the desert, and compelled to face the
+fury of the inhabitants whose lands they overran, fearful,
+superstitious, haunted by hunger, danger and doubt. By night a man sent
+ahead with a lantern on a pole led the way; by day a cavalcade that
+raised a cloud of dust. One was later sung by the poets as a pillar of
+fire, and the other a cloud. Chance flocks of quail blown by a storm
+into their midst were regarded as a miracle; the white exuding wax of
+the manna-plant was told of as "bread"--or more literally food.
+
+Those who had taken part in the original exodus were nearly all
+dead--their children and grandchildren survived, desert born and savage
+bred. Canaan was not the land flowing with milk and honey that had been
+described. Milk and honey are the results of labor applied to land.
+Moses knew this and tried to teach this great truth. He was true to his
+divine trust. Through doubt, hardship, poverty, misunderstanding, he
+held high the ideal--they were going to a better place.
+
+At last, worn by his constant struggle, aged one hundred twenty, "his
+eye not dim nor his natural force abated"--for only those live long who
+live well--Moses went up into the mountain to find solace in solitude as
+was his custom. His people waited for him in vain--he did not return.
+Alone there with his God he slept and forgot to awaken. His pilgrimage
+was done. "And no man knoweth his grave even unto this day."
+
+History is very seldom recorded on the spot--certainly it was not then.
+Centuries followed before fact, tradition, song, legend and folklore
+were fused into the form we call Scripture. But out of the fog and mist
+of that far-off past there looms in heroic outline the form and features
+of a man--a man of will, untiring activity, great hope, deep love, a
+faith which at times faltered, but which never died. Moses was the first
+man in history who fought for human rights and sought to make men free,
+even from their own limitations. "And there arose not a prophet since
+Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face."
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: CONFUCIUS]
+
+CONFUCIUS
+
+
+     The highest study of all is that which teaches us to develop those
+     principles of purity and perfect virtue which Heaven bestowed upon
+     us at our birth, in order that we may acquire the power of
+     influencing for good those amongst whom we are placed, by our
+     precepts and example; a study without an end--for our labors cease
+     only when we have become perfect--an unattainable goal, but one
+     that we must not the less set before us from the very first. It is
+     true that we shall not be able to reach it, but in our struggle
+     toward it we shall strengthen our characters and give stability to
+     our ideas, so that, whilst ever advancing calmly in the same
+     direction, we shall be rendered capable of applying the faculties
+     with which we have been gifted to the best possible account.
+
+     --_"The Annals" of Confucius_
+
+
+CONFUCIUS
+
+The Chinese comprise one-fourth of the inhabitants of the earth. There
+are four hundred millions of them.
+
+They can do many things which we can not do, and we can do a few things
+which they have not yet been able to do; but they are learning from us,
+and possibly we would do well to learn from them. In China there are now
+trolley-cars, telephone-lines, typewriters, cash-registers and American
+plumbing. China is a giant awaking from sleep. He who thinks that China
+is a country crumbling into ruins has failed to leave a call at the
+office and has overslept.
+
+The West can not longer afford to ignore China. And not being able to
+waive her, perhaps the next best thing is to try to understand her.
+
+The one name that looms large above any other name in China is
+Confucius. He of all men has influenced China most. One-third of the
+human race love and cherish his memory, and repeat his words as sacred
+writ.
+
+Confucius was born at a time when one of those tidal waves of reason
+swept the world--when the nations were full of unrest, and the mountains
+of thought were shaken with discontent.
+
+It was just previous to the blossoming of Greece.
+
+Pericles was seventeen years old when Confucius died. Themistocles was
+preparing the way for Pericles; for then was being collected the
+treasure of Delos, which made Phidias and the Parthenon possible. During
+the life of Confucius lived Leonidas, Miltiades, Cyrus the Great,
+Cambyses, Darius, Xerxes. And then quite naturally occurred the battles
+of Marathon, Salamis and Thermopylæ. Then lived Buddha-Gautama,
+Lao-tsze, Ezekiel, Daniel, Haggai, Zechariah, Pythagoras, Pindar,
+Æschylus and Anacreon.
+
+The Chinese are linked to the past by ties of language and custom beyond
+all other nations. They are a peculiar people, a chosen people, a people
+set apart. Just when they withdrew from the rest of mankind and
+abandoned their nomadic habits, making themselves secure against
+invasion by building a wall one hundred feet high, and settled down to
+lay the foundations of a vast empire, we do not know. Some historians
+have fixed the date about ten thousand years before Christ--let it go at
+that. There is a reasonably well-authenticated history of China that
+runs back twenty-five hundred years before Christ, while our history
+merges into mist seven hundred fifty years before the Christian era.
+
+The Israelites wandered; the Chinese remained at home. Walls have this
+disadvantage: they keep people in as well as shut the barbarians out.
+But now there are vast breaches in the wall, through which the
+inhabitants ooze, causing men from thousands of miles away to cry in
+alarm, "the Yellow Peril!" And also through these breaches, Israelites,
+Englishmen and Yankees enter fearlessly, settle down in heathen China,
+and do business.
+
+It surely is an epoch, and what the end will be few there are who dare
+forecast.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This then is from the pen of Edward Carpenter, the Church of England
+curate who was so great a friend and admirer of our own Walt Whitman
+that he made a trip across the sea to join hands with him in preaching
+the doctrine of democracy and the religion of humanity.
+
+     In the interior of China, along low-lying plains and great
+     river-valleys, and by lake-sides, and far away up into hilly and
+     even mountainous regions,
+
+     Behold! an immense population, rooted in the land, rooted in the
+     clan and the family,
+
+     The most productive and stable on the whole Earth. A garden one
+     might say--a land of rich and recherche crops, of rice and tea and
+     silk and sugar and cotton and oranges;
+
+     Do you see it?--stretching away endlessly over river-lines and
+     lakes, and the gentle undulations of the low-lands, and up the
+     escarpments of the higher hills;
+
+     The innumerable patchwork of civilization--the poignant verdure of
+     the young rice; the somber green of orange-groves; the lines of
+     tea-shrubs, well hoed, and showing the bare earth beneath; the
+     pollard mulberries; the plots of cotton and maize and wheat and yam
+     and clover; the little brown and green tiled cottages with
+     spreading recurbed eaves, the clumps of feathery bamboo, or of
+     sugar-canes;
+
+     The endless silver threads of irrigation canals and ditches,
+     skirting the hills for scores and hundreds of miles, tier above
+     tier, and serpentining down to the lower slopes and plains--
+
+     The accumulated result, these, of centuries upon centuries of
+     ingenious industry, and innumerable public and private
+     benefactions, continued from age to age;
+
+     The grand canal of the Delta plain extending, a thronged waterway,
+     for seven hundred miles, with sails of junks and bankside villages
+     innumerable;
+
+     The chain-pumps, worked by buffaloes or men, for throwing the water
+     up slopes and hillsides, from tier to tier, from channel to
+     channel;
+
+     The endless rills and cascades flowing down again into pockets and
+     hollows of verdure, and on fields of steep and plain;
+
+     The bits of rock and wildwood left here and there, with the angles
+     of Buddhist or Jain temples projecting from among the trees;
+
+     The azalea and rhododendron bushes, and the wild deer and pheasants
+     unharmed;
+
+     The sounds of music and the gong--the Sin-fa sung at eventide--and
+     the air of contentment and peace pervading;
+
+     A garden you might call the land, for its wealth of crops and
+     flowers,
+
+     A town almost for its population.
+
+     A population denser, on a large scale, than anywhere else on
+     earth--
+
+     Five or six acre holdings, elbowing each other, with lesser and
+     larger, continuously over immense tracts, and running to plentiful
+     market centers;
+
+     A country of few roads, but of innumerable footpaths and waterways.
+
+     Here, rooted in the land, and rooted in the family, each family
+     clinging to its portion of ancestral earth, each offshoot of the
+     family desiring nothing so much as to secure its own patrimonial
+     field,
+
+     Each member of the family answerable primarily to the family
+     assembly for his misdeeds or defalcations,
+
+     All bound together in the common worship of ancestors, and in
+     reverence for the past and its sanctioned beliefs and accumulated
+     prejudices and superstitions;
+
+     With many ancient, wise, simple customs and ordinances, coming down
+     from remote centuries, and the time of Confucius,
+
+     This vast population abides--the most stable and the most
+     productive in the world.
+
+            *       *       *       *       *
+
+     And Government touches it but lightly--can touch it but lightly.
+
+     With its few officials (only some twenty-five thousand for the
+     whole of its four hundred millions), and its scanty taxation (about
+     one dollar per head), and with the extensive administration of
+     justice and affairs by the clan and the family--little scope is
+     left for government.
+
+     The great equalized mass population pursues its even and accustomed
+     way, nor pays attention to edicts and foreign treaties, unless
+     these commend themselves independently;
+
+     Pays readier respect, in such matters, to the edicts and utterances
+     of its literary men, and the deliberations of the Academy.
+
+            *       *       *       *       *
+
+     And religious theorizing touches it but lightly--can touch it but
+     lightly.
+
+     Established on the bedrock of actual life, and on the living unity
+     and community of present, past and future generations.
+
+     Each man stands bound already, and by the most powerful ties, to
+     the social body--nor needs the dreams and promises of Heaven to
+     reassure him.
+
+     And all are bound to the Earth.
+
+     Rendering back to it as a sacred duty every atom that the Earth
+     supplies to them (not insensately sending it in sewers to the sea),
+
+     By the way of abject commonsense they have sought the gates of
+     Paradise--and to found on human soil their City Celestial!
+
+
+The first general knowledge of Confucius came to the Western world in
+the latter part of the Sixteenth Century from Jesuit missionaries.
+Indeed, it was they who gave him the Latinized name of "Confucius," the
+Chinese name being Kung-Fu-tsze.
+
+So impressed were these missionaries by the greatness of Confucius that
+they urged upon the Vatican the expediency of placing his name upon the
+calendar of Saints. They began by combating his teachings, but this they
+soon ceased to do, and the modicum of success which they obtained was
+through beginning each Christian service by the hymn which may properly
+be called the National Anthem of China. Its opening stanza is as
+follows:
+
+  Confucius! Confucius!
+  Great was our Confucius!
+  Before him there was no Confucius,
+  Since him there was no other.
+  Confucius! Confucius!
+  Great was our Confucius!
+
+The praise given by these early Jesuits to Confucius was at first
+regarded at Rome as apology for the meager success of their
+ministrations. But later scientific study of Chinese literature
+corroborated all that the Jesuit Fathers proclaimed for Confucius, and
+he stands today in a class with Socrates and the scant half-dozen whom
+we call the saviors of the world.
+
+Yet Confucius claimed no "divine revelation," nor did he seek to found a
+religion. He was simply a teacher, and what he taught was the science of
+living--living in the present, with the plain and simple men and women
+who make up the world, and bettering our condition by bettering theirs.
+Of a future life he said he knew nothing, and concerning the
+supernatural he was silent, even rebuking his disciples for trying to
+pry into the secrets of Heaven. The word "God" he does not use, but his
+recognition of a Supreme Intelligence is limited to the use of a word
+which can best be translated "Heaven," since it tokens a place more than
+it does a person. Constantly he speaks of "doing the will of Heaven."
+And then he goes on to say that "Heaven is speaking through you," "Duty
+lies in mirroring Heaven in our acts," and many other such New-Thought
+aphorisms or epigrams.
+
+That the man was a consummate literary stylist is beyond doubt. He spoke
+in parables and maxims, short, brief and musical. He wrote for his ear,
+and always his desire, it seems, was to convey the greatest truth in the
+fewest words. The Chinese, even the lowly and uneducated, know hundreds
+of Confucian epigrams, and still repeat them in their daily conversation
+or in writing, just as educated Englishmen use the Bible and Shakespeare
+for symbol.
+
+Minister Wu, in a lecture delivered in various American cities, compared
+Confucius with Emerson, showing how in many ways these two great
+prophets paralleled each other. Emerson, of all Americans, seems the
+only man worthy of being so compared.
+
+The writer who lives is the man who supplies the world with portable
+wisdom--short, sharp, pithy maxims which it can remember, or, better
+still, which it can not forget.
+
+Confucius said, "Every truth has four corners: as a teacher I give you
+one corner, and it is for you to find the other three."
+
+The true artist in words or things is always more or less
+impressionistic--he talks in parables, and it is for the hearer to
+discover the meaning for himself.
+
+An epigram is truth in a capsule. The disadvantage of the epigram is the
+temptation it affords to good people to explain it to the others who are
+assumed to be too obtuse to comprehend it alone. And since explanations
+seldom explain, the result is a mixture or compound that has to be
+spewed utterly or taken on faith. Confucius is simple enough until he is
+explained. Then we evolve sects, denominations and men who make it their
+profession to render moral calculi opaque. China, being peopled by human
+beings, has suffered from this tendency to make truth concrete, just as
+all the rest of the world has suffered. Truth is fluid and should be
+allowed to flow. Ankylosis of a fact is superstition. Confucius was a
+free-trader.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+China has always been essentially feudal in her form of government.
+China is made up of a large number of States, each presided over by a
+prince or governor, and these States are held together by a rather loose
+federal government, the Emperor being the supreme ruler. State rights
+prevail. State may fight with State, or States may secede--it isn't of
+much moment. They are glad enough, after a few years, to get back, like
+boys who run away from home, or farmhands who quit work in a tantrum.
+The Chinese are very patient--they know that time cures all things, a
+truth the West has not yet learned. States that rebel, like individuals
+who place themselves beyond the protection of all, assume grave
+responsibilities.
+
+The local prince usually realizes the bearing of the Social
+Contract--that he holds his office only during good behavior, and that
+his welfare and the welfare of his people are one.
+
+Heih, the father of Confucius, was governor of one of these little
+States, and had impoverished himself in an effort to help his people.
+Heih was a man of seventy, wedded to a girl of seventeen, when their
+gifted son was born. When the boy was three years old the father died,
+and the lad's care and education depended entirely on the mother. This
+mother seems to have been a woman of rare mental and spiritual worth.
+She deliberately chose a life of poverty and honest toil for herself
+and child, rather than allow herself to be cared for by rich kinsmen.
+The boy was brought up in a village, and he was not allowed to think
+himself any better than the other village children, save as he proved
+himself so. He worked in the garden, tended the cattle and goats, mended
+the pathways, brought wood and water, and waited on his elders. Every
+evening his mother used to tell him of the feats of strength of his
+father, of his heroic qualities in friendship, of deeds of valor, of
+fidelity to trusts, of his absolute truthfulness, and his desire for
+knowledge in order that he might better serve his people.
+
+The coarse, plain fare, the long walks across the fields, the climbing
+of trees, the stooping to pull the weeds in the garden, the daily bath
+in the brook, all combined to develop the boy's body to a splendid
+degree. He went to bed at sundown, and at the first flush of dawn was up
+that he might see the sunrise. There were devotional rites performed by
+the mother and son, morning and evening, which consisted in the playing
+upon a lute and singing or chanting the beauty and beneficence of
+creation.
+
+Confucius, at fifteen, was regarded as a phenomenal musician, and the
+neighbors used to gather to hear him perform. At nineteen he was larger,
+stronger, comelier, more skilled, than any other youth of his age in all
+the country round.
+
+The simple quality of his duties as a prince can be guessed when we are
+told that his work as keeper of the herds required him to ride long
+distances on horseback to settle difficulties between rival herders. The
+range belonged to the State, and the owners of goats, sheep and cattle
+were in continual controversies. Montana and Colorado will understand
+this matter. Confucius summoned the disputants and talked to them long
+about the absurdity of quarreling and the necessity of getting together
+in complete understanding. Then it was that he first put forth his
+best-known maxim: "You should not do to others that which you would not
+have others do to you."
+
+This negative statement of the Golden Rule is found expressed in various
+ways in the writings of Confucius. A literal interpretation of the
+Chinese language is quite impossible, as the Chinese have single signs
+or symbols that express a complete idea. To state the same matter, we
+often use a whole page.
+
+Confucius had a single word which expressed the Golden Rule in such a
+poetic way that it is almost useless to try to convey it to people of
+the West. This word, which has been written into English as "Shu,"
+means: My heart responds to yours, or my heart's desire is to meet your
+heart's desire, or I wish to do to you even as I would be done by. This
+sign, symbol or word Confucius used to carve in the bark of trees by the
+roadside. The French were filled with a like impulse when they cut the
+words Liberty, Fraternity, Equality, over the entrances to all public
+buildings.
+
+Confucius had his symbol of love and friendship painted on a board,
+which he stuck into the ground before the tent where he lodged; and
+finally it was worked upon a flag by some friends and presented to him,
+and became his flag of peace.
+
+His success in keeping down strife among the herders, and making peace
+among his people, soon gave him a fame beyond the borders of his own
+State. As a judge he had the power to show both parties where they were
+wrong, and arranged for them a common meeting-ground.
+
+His qualifications as an arbiter were not, however, limited to his
+powers of persuasion--he could shoot an arrow farther and hurl a spear
+with more accuracy than any man he ever met. Very naturally there are a
+great number of folklore stories concerning his prowess, some of which
+make him out a sort of combination Saint George and William Tell, with
+the added kingly graces of Alfred the Great. Omitting the incredible, we
+are willing to believe that this man had a giant's strength, but was
+great enough not to use it like a giant.
+
+We are willing to believe that when attacked by robbers, he engaged them
+in conversation and that, seated on the grass, he convinced them they
+were in a bad business. Also, he did not later hang them, as did our old
+friend Julius Cæsar under like conditions.
+
+When twenty-seven he ceased going abroad to hold court and settle
+quarrels, but sending for the disputants, they came, and he gave them a
+course of lectures in ethics. In a week, by a daily lesson of an hour's
+length, they were usually convinced that to quarrel is very foolish,
+since it reduces bodily vigor, scatters the mind, and disturbs the
+secretions, so the man is the loser in many ways.
+
+This seems to us like a very queer way to hold court, but Confucius
+maintained that men should learn to govern their tempers, do equity, and
+thus be able to settle their own disputes, and this without violence.
+"To fight decides who is the stronger, the younger and the more skilful
+in the use of arms, but it does not decide who is right. That is to be
+settled by the Heaven in your own heart."
+
+To let the Heaven into your heart, to cultivate a conscience so
+sensitive that it can conceive the rights of the other man, is to know
+wisdom.
+
+To decide specific cases for others he thought was to cause them to lose
+the power of deciding for themselves. When asked what a just man should
+do when he was dealing with one absolutely unjust, he said, "He who
+wrongs himself sows in his own heart nettles."
+
+And when some of his disciples, after the Socratic method, asked him how
+this helped the injured man, he replied, "To be robbed or wronged is
+nothing unless you continue to remember it." When pushed still further,
+he said, "A man should fight, only when he does so to protect himself
+or his family from bodily harm."
+
+Here a questioner asked, "If we are to protect our persons, must we not
+learn to fight?"
+
+And the answer comes, "The just man, he who partakes moderately of all
+good things, is the only man to fear in a quarrel, for he is without
+fear."
+
+Over and over is the injunction in varying phrase, "Abolish
+fear--abolish fear!" When pressed to give in one word the secret of a
+happy life, he gives a word which we translate, "Equanimity."
+
+
+The mother of Confucius died during his early manhood. For her he ever
+retained the most devout memories.
+
+Before going on a journey he always visited her grave, and on returning,
+before he spoke to any one, he did the same. On each anniversary of her
+death he ate no food and was not to be seen by his pupils. This filial
+piety, which is sometimes crudely and coarsely called "ancestor
+worship," is something which for the Western world is rather difficult
+to appreciate. But in it there is a subtle, spiritual significance,
+suggesting that it is only through our parents that we are able to
+realize consciousness or personal contact with Heaven. These parents
+loved us into being, cared for us with infinite patience in infancy,
+taught us in youth, watched with high hope our budding manhood; and as
+reward and recognition for the service rendered us, the least we can do
+is to remember them in all our prayers and devotions. The will of Heaven
+used these parents for us, therefore parenthood is divine.
+
+That this ancestor worship is beautiful and beneficial is quite
+apparent, and rightly understood no one could think of it as
+"heathendom." Confucius used to chant the praises of his mother, who
+brought him up in poverty, thus giving a close and intimate knowledge of
+a thousand things from which princes, used to ease and luxury, are
+barred.
+
+So close was he to nature and the plain people that he ordered that all
+skilful charioteers in his employ should belong to the nobility. This
+giving a title or degree to men of skill--men who can do things--we
+regard as essentially a modern idea.
+
+China, I believe, is the first country in the world to use the threads
+of a moth or worm for fabrics. The patience and care and inventive skill
+required in first making silk were very great. But it gives us an index
+to invention when we hear that Confucius regarded the making of linen,
+using the fiber of a plant, as a greater feat than utilizing the strands
+made by the silkworm. Confucius had a sort of tender sentiment toward
+the moth, similar to the sentiments which our vegetarian friends have
+toward killing animals for food. Confucius wore linen in preference to
+silk, for sentimental reasons. The silkworm dies at his task of making
+himself a cocoon, so to evolve in a winged joy, but falls a victim of
+man's cupidity. Likewise, Confucius would not drink milk from a cow
+until her calf was weaned, because to do so were taking an unfair
+advantage of the maternal instincts of the cow. It will thus be seen
+that Confucius had a very fair hold on the modern idea which we call
+"Monism," or "The One." He, too, said, "All is one." In his attitude
+toward all living things he was ever gentle and considerate.
+
+No other prophet so much resembles Confucius in doctrine as Socrates.
+But Confucius does not suffer from the comparison. He had a beauty,
+dignity and grace of person which the great Athenian did not possess.
+Socrates was more or less of a buffoon, and to many in Athens he was a
+huge joke--a town fool. Confucius combined the learning and graces of
+Plato with the sturdy, practical commonsense of Socrates. No one ever
+affronted or insulted him; many did not understand him, but he met
+prince or pauper on terms of equality.
+
+In his travels Confucius used often to meet recluses or monks--men who
+had fled the world in order to become saints. For these men Confucius
+had more pity than respect. "The world's work is difficult, and to live
+in a world of living, striving and dying men and women requires great
+courage and great love. Now we can not all run away, and for some to
+flee from humanity and to find solace in solitude is only another name
+for weakness."
+
+This sounds singularly like our Ralph Waldo who says, "It is easy in the
+world to live after the world's opinions; it is easy in solitude to live
+after our own; but the Great Man is he who in the midst of the crowd
+keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
+
+Confucius is the first man in point of time to proclaim the divinity of
+service, the brotherhood of man, and the truth that in useful work there
+is no high nor low degree. In talking to a group of young men he says:
+
+"When I was keeper of the herds I always saw to it that all of my cattle
+were strong, healthy and growing, that there was water in abundance and
+plenty of feed. When I had charge of the public granaries I never slept
+until I knew that all was secure and cared for against the weather, and
+my accounts as true and correct as if I were going on my long journey to
+return no more. My advice is to slight nothing, forget nothing, never
+leave things to chance, nor say, 'Nobody will know--this is good
+enough.'"
+
+In all of his injunctions Confucius never has anything in mind beyond
+the present life. Of a future existence he knows nothing, and he seems
+to regard it as a waste of energy and a sign of weakness to live in two
+worlds at a time. "Heaven provides us means of knowing all about what is
+best here, and supplies us in abundance every material thing for present
+happiness, and it is our business to realize, to know, to enjoy."
+
+He taught rhetoric, mathematics, economics, the science of government
+and natural history. And always and forever running through the fabric
+of his teaching was the silken thread of ethics--man's duty to man,
+man's duty to Heaven. Music was to him a necessity, since "it brings the
+mind in right accord with the will of Heaven." Before he began to speak
+he played softly on a stringed instrument which perhaps would compare
+best with our guitar, but it was much smaller, and this instrument he
+always carried with him, suspended from his shoulder by a silken sash.
+Yet with all of his passion for music, he cautioned his disciples
+against using it as an end. It was merely valuable as an introduction to
+be used in attuning the mind and heart to an understanding of great
+truth.
+
+Confucius was seventy-two years old at his death. During his life his
+popularity was not great. When he passed away his followers numbered
+only about three thousand persons, and his "disciples," or the teachers
+who taught his philosophy, were seventy in number.
+
+There is no reason to suppose that Confucius assumed that a vast number
+of people would ever ponder his words or regard him as a prophet.
+
+At the time that Confucius lived, also lived Lao-tsze. As a youth
+Confucius visited Lao-tsze, who was then an old man. Confucius often
+quotes his great contemporary and calls himself a follower of Lao-tsze.
+The difference, however, between the men is marked. Lao-tsze's teachings
+are full of metaphysics and strange and mystical curiosities, while
+Confucius is always simple, lucid and practical.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Confucius has been revered for twenty centuries, revered simply as a
+man, not as a god or as a divinely appointed savior. He offered no
+reward of heaven, nor did he threaten non-believers with hell. He
+claimed no special influence nor relationship to the Unseen. In all his
+teachings he was singularly open, frank and free from all mystery or
+concealment. In reference to the supernatural he was an agnostic. He
+often said, "I do not know." He was always an inquirer, always a
+student, always open to conviction. History affords no instance of
+another individual who has been so well and so long loved, who still
+holds his place, and who, so far as his reasoning went, is unassailed
+and unassailable. Even the two other great religions in China that rival
+Confucianism--Buddhism and Taoism (the religion of Lao-tsze)--do not
+renounce Confucius: they merely seek to amend and augment him.
+
+During his lifetime Confucius made many enemies by his habit of frankly
+pointing out the foibles of society and the wrongs visited upon the
+people by officials who pretended to serve them. Of hypocrisy,
+selfishness, vanity, pretense, he was severe in his denunciation.
+
+Politicians at that time had the very modern habit of securing the
+office and then leaving all the details of the work to menials, they
+themselves pocketing the perquisites. As Minister of State, Confucius
+made himself both feared and detested on account of his habit of
+summoning the head of the office before him and questioning him
+concerning his duties. In fact, this insistence that those paid by the
+State should work for the State caused a combination to be formed
+against him, which finally brought about his deposition and exile, two
+things which troubled him but little, since one gave him leisure and the
+other opportunity for travel.
+
+The personal followers of Confucius did not belong to the best society;
+but immediately after his death, many who during his life had scorned
+the man made haste to profess his philosophy and decorate their houses
+with his maxims. Humanity is about the same, whether white or yellow,
+the round world over, and time modifies it but little. It will be
+recalled how John P. Altgeld was feared and hated by both press and
+pulpit, especially in the State and city he served. But rigor mortis had
+scarcely seized upon that slight and tired body before the newspapers
+that had disparaged the man worst were vying with one another in glowing
+eulogies and warm testimonials to his honesty, sincerity, purity of
+motive and deep insight. A personality which can neither be bribed,
+bought, coerced, flattered nor cajoled is always regarded by the
+many--especially by the party in power--as "dangerous." Vice, masked as
+virtue, breathes easier when the honest man is safely under the sod.
+
+The plain and simple style of Confucius' teaching can be gathered by the
+following sayings, selected at random from the canonical books of
+Confucianism, consisting of the teachings of the great master which were
+gathered together and grouped by his disciples and followers after his
+death:
+
+     The men of old spoke little. It would be well to imitate them, for
+     those who talk much are sure to say something it would be better to
+     have left unsaid.
+
+     Let a man's labor be proportioned to his needs. For he who works
+     beyond his strength does but add to his cares and disappointments.
+     A man should be moderate even in his efforts.
+
+     Be not over-anxious to obtain relaxation or repose. For he who is
+     so, will get neither.
+
+     Beware of ever doing that which you are likely, sooner or later, to
+     repent of having done.
+
+     Do not neglect to rectify an evil because it may seem small, for,
+     though small at first, it may continue to grow until it overwhelms
+     you.
+
+     As riches adorn a house, so does an expanded mind adorn and
+     tranquillize the body. Hence it is that the superior man will seek
+     to establish his motives on correct principles.
+
+     The cultivator of the soil may have his fill of good things, but
+     the cultivator of the mind will enjoy a continual feast.
+
+     It is because men are prone to be partial toward those they love,
+     unjust toward those they hate, servile toward those above them,
+     arrogant to those below them, and either harsh or over-indulgent to
+     those in poverty and distress, that it is so difficult to find any
+     one capable of exercising a sound judgment with respect to the
+     qualities of others.
+
+     He who is incapable of regulating his own family can not be capable
+     of ruling a nation. The superior man will find within the limits of
+     his own home, a sufficient sphere for the exercise of all those
+     principles upon which good government depends. How, indeed, can it
+     be otherwise, when filial piety is that which should regulate the
+     conduct of a people toward their prince; fraternal affection, that
+     which should regulate the relations which should exist between
+     equals, and the conduct of inferiors toward those above them; and
+     paternal kindness, that which should regulate the bearing of those
+     in authority toward those over whom they are placed?
+
+     Be slow in speech, but prompt in action.
+
+     He whose principles are thoroughly established will not be easily
+     led from the right path.
+
+     The cautious are generally to be found on the right side.
+
+     By speaking when we ought to keep silence, we waste our words.
+
+     If you would escape vexation, reprove yourself liberally and others
+     sparingly.
+
+     There is no use attempting to help those who can not help
+     themselves.
+
+     Make friends with the upright, intelligent and wise; avoid the
+     licentious, talkative and vain.
+
+     Disputation often breeds hatred.
+
+     Nourish good principles with the same care that a mother would
+     bestow on her newborn babe. You may not be able to bring them to
+     maturity, but you will nevertheless be not far from doing so.
+
+     The decrees of Heaven are not immutable, for though a throne may be
+     gained by virtue, it may be lost by vice.
+
+     There are five good principles of action to be adopted: To benefit
+     others without being lavish; to encourage labor without being
+     harsh; to add to your resources without being covetous; to be
+     dignified without being supercilious; and to inspire awe without
+     being austere. Also, we should not search for love or demand it,
+     but so live that it will flow to us.
+
+     Personal character can only be established on fixed principles, for
+     if the mind be allowed to be agitated by violent emotions, to be
+     excited by fear, or unduly moved by the love of pleasure, it will
+     be impossible for it to be made perfect. A man must reason calmly,
+     for without reason he would look and not see, listen and not hear.
+
+     When a man has been helped around one corner of a square, and can
+     not manage by himself to get around the other three, he is unworthy
+     of further assistance.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: PYTHAGORAS]
+
+PYTHAGORAS
+
+
+     Consult and deliberate before you act, that thou mayest not commit
+     foolish actions. For 't is the part of a miserable man to speak and
+     to act without reflection. But do that which will not afflict thee
+     afterwards, nor oblige thee to repentance.
+
+     --_Pythagoras_
+
+
+PYTHAGORAS
+
+With no desire to deprive Mr. Bok of his bread, I wish to call attention
+to Pythagoras, who lived a little more than five hundred years before
+Christ.
+
+Even at that time the world was old. Memphis, which was built four
+thousand years ago, had begun to crumble into ruins. Troy was buried
+deep in the dust which an American citizen of German birth was to
+remove. Nineveh and Babylon were dying the death that success always
+brings, and the star of empire was preparing to westward wend its way.
+
+Pythagoras ushered in the Golden Age of Greece. All the great writers
+whom he immediately preceded, quote him and refer to him. Some admire
+him; others are loftily critical; most of them are a little jealous; and
+a few use him as a horrible example, calling him a poseur, a pedant, a
+learned sleight-of-hand man, a bag of books.
+
+Trial by newspaper was not invented in the time of Pythagoras; but
+personal vilification has been popular since Balaam talked gossip with
+his vis-a-vis.
+
+Anaxagoras, who gave up his wealth to the State that he might be free,
+and who was the teacher of Pericles, was a pupil of Pythagoras, and used
+often to mention him.
+
+In this way Pericles was impressed by the Pythagorean philosophy, and
+very often quotes it in his speeches. Socrates gave Pythagoras as an
+authority on the simple life, and stated that he was willing to follow
+him in anything save his injunction to keep silence. Socrates wanted
+silence optional; whereas Pythagoras required each of his pupils to live
+for a year without once asking a question or making an explanation. In
+aggravated cases he made the limit five years.
+
+In many ways Pythagoras reminds us of our friend Muldoon, both being
+beneficent autocrats, and both proving their sincerity by taking their
+own medicine. Pythagoras said, "I will never ask another to do what I
+have not done, and am not willing to do myself."
+
+To this end he was once challenged by his three hundred pupils to remain
+silent for a year. He accepted the defi, not once defending himself from
+the criticisms and accusations that were rained upon him, not once
+complaining, nor issuing an order. Tradition has it, however, that he
+made averages good later on, when the year of expiation was ended.
+
+There are two reasonably complete lives of Pythagoras, one by Diogenes
+Laertius, and another by Iamblichus. Personally, I prefer the latter, as
+Iamblichus, as might be inferred from his name, makes Pythagoras a
+descendant of Æneas, who was a son of Neptune. This is surely better
+than the abrupt and somewhat sensational statement to the effect that
+his father was Apollo.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The birthplace of Pythagoras was Samos, an isle of Greece. He was born
+of wealthy but honest parents, who were much in love with each other--a
+requisite, says Pythagoras, for parentage on its highest plane. It is
+probable that Pythagoras was absolutely correct in his hypothesis.
+
+That he was a very noble specimen of manhood--physically and
+mentally--there is no doubt. He was tall, lithe, dignified, commanding
+and silent by nature, realizing fully that a handsome man can never talk
+as well as he looks.
+
+He was quite aware of his physical graces, and in following up the facts
+of his early life, he makes the statement that his father was a
+sea-captain and trader. He then incidentally adds that the best results
+are obtained for posterity where a man is absent from his family eleven
+months in the year. This is an axiom agreed upon by many modern
+philosophers, few of whom, however, live up to their ideals.
+Aristophanes, who was on friendly terms with some of the disciples of
+Pythagoras, suggested in one of his plays that the Pythagorean domestic
+time-limit should be increased at least a month for the good of all
+concerned.
+
+Plato, Xenophon and Aristotle make frequent references to Pythagoras. In
+order to impress men like these, the man must have taught a very exalted
+philosophy. In truth, Pythagoras was a teacher of teachers. And like all
+men who make a business of wisdom he sometimes came tardy off, and
+indulged in a welter of words that wrecked the original idea--if there
+were one.
+
+There are these three: Knowledge, Learning, Wisdom. And the world has
+until very recent times assumed that they were practically one and the
+same thing.
+
+Knowledge consists of the things we know, not the things we believe or
+the things we assume. Knowledge is a personal matter of intuition,
+confirmed by experience. Learning consists largely of the things we
+memorize and are told by persons or books. Tomlinson of Berkeley Square
+was a learned man. When we think of a learned man, we picture him as one
+seated in a library surrounded by tomes that top the shelves.
+
+Wisdom is the distilled essence of what we have learned from experience.
+It is that which helps us to live, work, love and make life worth living
+for all we meet. Men may be very learned, and still be far from wise.
+
+Pythagoras was one of those strange beings who are born with a desire to
+know, and who finally comprehending the secret of the Sphinx, that there
+is really nothing to say, insist on saying it. That is, vast learning is
+augmented by a structure of words, and on this is built a theogony.
+Practically he was a priest.
+
+Worked into all priestly philosophies are nuggets of wisdom that shine
+like stars in the darkness and lead men on and on.
+
+All great religions have these periods of sanity, otherwise they would
+have no followers at all. The followers, understanding little bits of
+this and that, hope finally to understand it all. Inwardly the initiates
+at the shrine of their own conscience know that they know nothing. When
+they teach others they are obliged to pretend that they, themselves,
+fully comprehend the import of what they are saying. The novitiate
+attributes his lack of perception to his own stupidity, and many great
+teachers encourage this view.
+
+"Be patient, and you shall some day know," they say, and smile frigidly.
+
+And when credulity threatens to balk and go no further, magic comes to
+the rescue and the domain of Hermann and Kellar is poached upon.
+
+Mystery and miracle were born in Egypt. It was there that a system was
+evolved, backed up by the ruler, of religious fraud so colossal that
+modern deception looks like the bungling efforts of an amateur. The
+government, the army, the taxing power of the State, were sworn to
+protect gigantic safes in which was hoarded--nothing. That is to say,
+nothing but the pretense upon which cupidity and self-hypnotized
+credulity battened and fattened.
+
+All institutions which through mummery, strange acts, dress and ritual,
+affect to know and impart the inmost secrets of creation and ultimate
+destiny, had their rise in Egypt. In Egypt now are only graves, tombs,
+necropolises and silence. The priests there need no soldiery to keep
+their secrets safe. Ammon-Ra, who once ruled the universe, being finally
+exorcised by Yaveh, is now as dead as the mummies who once were men and
+upheld his undisputed sway.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Egyptians guarded their mysteries with jealous dread.
+
+We know their secret now. It is this--there are no mysteries.
+
+That is the only secret upon which any secret society holds a caveat.
+Wisdom can not be corraled with gibberish and fettered in jargon.
+Knowledge is one thing--palaver another. The Greek-letter societies of
+our callow days still survive in bird's-eye, and next to these come the
+Elks, who take theirs with seltzer and a smile, as a rare good joke,
+save that brotherhood and good-fellowship are actually a saving salt
+which excuses much that would otherwise be simply silly.
+
+All this mystery and mysticism was once official, and later, on being
+discarded by the authorities, was continued by the students as a kind of
+prank.
+
+Greek-letter societies are the rudimentary survivals of what was once an
+integral part of every college. Making dead languages optional was the
+last convulsive kick of the cadaver.
+
+And now a good many colleges are placing the seal of their disapproval
+on secret societies among the students; and the day is near when the
+secret society will not be tolerated, either directly or indirectly, as
+a part of the education of youth. All this because the sophomoric mind
+is prone to take its Greek-letter mysteries seriously, and regard the
+college curriculum as a joke of the faculty.
+
+If knowledge were to be gained by riding a goat, any petty crossroads,
+with its lodge-room over the grocery, would contain a Herbert Spencer;
+and the agrarian mossbacks would have wisdom by the scruff and detain
+knowledge with a tail-hold.
+
+There can be no secrets in life and morals, because Nature has so
+provided that every beautiful thought you know and every precious
+sentiment you feel, shall shine out of your face so that all who are
+great enough may see, know, understand, appreciate and appropriate. You
+can keep things only by giving them away.
+
+When Pythagoras was only four or five years old, his mother taught him
+to take his morning bath in the cold stream, and dry his baby skin by
+running in the wind. As he ran, she ran with him, and together they sang
+a hymn to the rising sun, that for them represented the god Apollo.
+
+This mother taught him to be indifferent to cold, heat, hunger, to exult
+in endurance, and to take a joy in the glow of the body.
+
+So the boy grew strong and handsome, and proud; and perhaps it was in
+those early years, from the mother herself, that he gathered the idea,
+afterward developed, that Apollo had appeared to his mother, and so
+great was the beauty of the god that the woman was actually overcome, it
+being the first god at which she had ever had a good look.
+
+The ambition of a great mother centers on her son. Pythagoras was filled
+with the thought that he was different, peculiar, set apart to teach the
+human race.
+
+Having compassed all there was to learn in his native place, and, as he
+thought, being ill appreciated, he started for Egypt, the land of
+learning. The fallacy that knowledge was a secret to be gained by word
+of mouth and to be gotten from books existed then as now. The mother of
+Pythagoras wanted her son to comprehend the innermost secrets of the
+Egyptian mysteries. He would then know all. To this end she sold her
+jewels, in order that her son might have the advantages of an Egyptian
+education.
+
+Women were not allowed to know the divine secrets--only just a few
+little ones. This woman wanted to know, and she said her son would
+learn, and tell her.
+
+The family had become fairly rich by this time, and influential. Letters
+were gotten from the great ones of Samos to the Secretary of State in
+Egypt. And so Pythagoras, aged twenty, "the youth with the beautiful
+hair," went on his journey to Egypt and knocked boldly at the doors of
+the temples at Memphis, where knowledge was supposed to be in stock.
+Religion then monopolized all schools and continued to do so for quite
+some time after Pythagoras was dead.
+
+He was turned away with the explanation that no foreigner could enter
+the sacred portals--that the initiates must be those born in the shadows
+of the temples and nurtured in the faith from infancy by holy virgins.
+
+Pythagoras still insisted, and it was probably then that he found a
+sponsor who made for him the claim that he was a son of Apollo. And the
+holy men peeped out of their peep-holes in holy admiration for any one
+who could concoct as big a lie as they themselves had ever invented.
+
+The boy surely looked the part. Perhaps, at last, here was one who was
+what they pretended to be! Frauds believe in frauds, and rogues are more
+easily captured by roguery than are honest men.
+
+His admittance to the university became a matter of international
+diplomacy. At last, being too hard-pressed, the wise ones who ran the
+mystery monopoly gave in, and Pythagoras was informed that at midnight
+of a certain night, he should present himself, naked, at the door of a
+certain temple and he would be admitted.
+
+On the stroke of the hour, at the appointed time, Pythagoras, the youth
+with the beautiful hair, was there, clothed only in his beautiful hair.
+He knocked on the great, bronze doors, but the only answer was a faint,
+hollow echo.
+
+Then he got a stone and pounded, but still no answer.
+
+The wind sprang up fresh and cold. The young man was chilled to the
+bone, but still he pounded and then called aloud demanding admittance.
+His answer now was the growling and barking of dogs, within. Still he
+pounded! After an interval a hoarse voice called out through a little
+slide, ordering him to be gone or the dogs would be turned loose upon
+him.
+
+He demanded admittance.
+
+"Fool, do you not know that the law says these doors shall admit no one
+except at sunrise?"
+
+"I only know that I was told to be here at midnight and I would be
+admitted."
+
+"All that may be true, but you were not told when you would be
+admitted--wait, it is the will of the gods." So Pythagoras waited,
+numbed and nearly dead.
+
+The dogs which he had heard had, in some way, gotten out, and came
+tearing around the corner of the great stone building. He fought them
+with desperate strength. The effort seemed to warm his blood, and
+whereas before he was about to retreat to his lodgings he now remained.
+
+The day broke in the east, and gangs of slaves went by to work. They
+jeered at him and pelted him with pebbles.
+
+Suddenly across the desert sands he saw the faint pink rim of the rising
+sun. On the instant the big bronze doors against which he was leaning
+swung suddenly in. He fell with them, and coarse, rough hands seized his
+hair and pulled him into the hall.
+
+The doors swung to and closed with a clang. Pythagoras was in dense
+darkness, lying on the stone floor.
+
+A voice, seemingly coming from afar, demanded, "Do you still wish to go
+on?"
+
+And his answer was, "I desire to go on."
+
+A black-robed figure, wearing a mask, then appeared with a flickering
+light, and Pythagoras was led into a stone cell.
+
+His head was shaved, and he was given a coarse robe and then left alone.
+Toward the end of the day he was given a piece of black bread and a bowl
+of water. This he was told was to fortify him for the ordeal to come.
+
+What that ordeal was we can only guess, save that it consisted partially
+in running over hot sands where he sank to his waist. At a point where
+he seemed about to perish a voice called loudly, "Do you yet desire to
+go on?"
+
+And his answer was, "I desire to go on."
+
+Returning to the inmost temple he was told to enter a certain door and
+wait therein. He was then blindfolded and when he opened the door to
+enter, he walked off into space and fell into a pool of ice-cold water.
+
+While floundering there the voice again called, "Do you yet desire to go
+on?"
+
+And his answer was, "I desire to go on."
+
+At another time he was tied upon the back of a donkey and the donkey was
+led along a rocky precipice, where lights danced and flickered a
+thousand feet below.
+
+"Do you yet want to go on?" called the voice.
+
+And Pythagoras answered, "I desire to go on."
+
+The priests here pushed the donkey off the precipice, which proved to be
+only about two feet high, the gulf below being an illusion arranged with
+the aid of lights that shone through apertures in the wall.
+
+These pleasing little diversions Pythagoras afterward introduced into
+the college which he founded, so to teach the merry freshmen that
+nothing, at the last, was as bad as it seemed, and that most dangers are
+simply illusions.
+
+The Egyptians grew to have such regard for Pythagoras that he was given
+every opportunity to know the inmost secrets of the mysteries. He said
+he encompassed them all, save those alone which were incomprehensible.
+
+This was probably true.
+
+The years spent in Egypt were not wasted--he learned astronomy,
+mathematics, and psychology, a thing then not named, but pretty well
+understood--the management of men.
+
+It was twenty years before Pythagoras returned to Samos. His mother was
+dead, so she passed away in ignorance of the secrets of the gods--which
+perhaps was just as well.
+
+Samos now treated Pythagoras with great honor.
+
+Crowds flocked to his lectures, presents were given him, royalty paid
+him profound obeisance.
+
+But Samos soon tired of Pythagoras. He was too austere, too severe; and
+when he began to rebuke the officials for their sloth and indifference,
+he was invited to go elsewhere and teach his science of life. And so he
+journeyed into Southern Italy, and at Crotona built his Temple to the
+Muses and founded the Pythagorean School. He was the wisest as well as
+the most learned man of his time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some unkind person has said that Pythagoras was the original charter
+member of the Jesuits Society. The maxim that the end justifies the
+means was the cornerstone of Egyptian theology. When Pythagoras left
+Egypt he took with him this cornerstone as a souvenir. That the priests
+could hold their power over the masses only through magic and miracle
+was fully believed, and as a good police system the value of organized
+religion was highly appreciated. In fact, no ruler could hold his place,
+unsupported by the priest. Both were divine propositions. One searches
+in vain for simple truth among the sages, solons, philosophers, poets
+and prophets that existed down to the time of Socrates. Truth for
+truth's sake was absolutely unimagined; freethought was unguessed.
+
+Expediency was always placed before truth.
+
+Truth was furnished with frills--the people otherwise would not be
+impressed. Chants, robes, ritual, processions, banging of bells, burning
+of incense, strange sounds, sights and smells: these were considered
+necessary factors in teaching divine truth.
+
+To worship with a noise seems to us a little like making love with a
+brass band.
+
+Pythagoras was a very great man, but for him to eliminate theological
+chaff entirely was impossible. So we find that when he was about to
+speak, red fire filled the building as soon as he arose. It was all a
+little like the alleged plan of the late Reverend T. DeWitt Talmage,
+who used to have an Irishman let loose a white pigeon from the
+organ-loft at an opportune time.
+
+When Pythagoras burned the red fire, of course the audience thought a
+miracle was taking place, unable to understand a simple stage-trick
+which all the boys in the gallery who delight in "Faust" now understand.
+
+However, the Pythagorean School had much virtue on its side, and made a
+sincere and earnest effort to solve certain problems that yet are vexing
+us.
+
+The Temple of the Muses, built by Pythagoras at Crotona, is described by
+Iamblichus as a stone structure with walls twenty feet thick, the light
+being admitted only from the top. It was evidently constructed after the
+Egyptian pattern, and the intent was to teach there the esoteric
+doctrine. But Pythagoras improved upon the Egyptian methods and opened
+his temple on certain days to all and any who desired to come. Then at
+times he gave lectures to women only, and then to men only, and also to
+children, thus showing that modern revival methods are not wholly
+modern.
+
+These lectures contain the very essence of Pythagorean philosophy, and
+include so much practical commonsense that they are still quoted. These
+are some of the sayings that impressed Socrates, Pericles, Aristotle and
+Pliny. What the Egyptians actually taught we really do not know--it was
+too gaseous to last. Only the good endures. Says Pythagoras:
+
+     Cut not into the grape. Exaltation coming from wine is not good.
+     You hope too much in this condition, so are afterwards depressed.
+     Wise men are neither cast down in defeat nor exalted by success.
+     Eat moderately, bathe plentifully, exercise much in the open air,
+     walk far, and climb the hills alone.
+
+     Above all things, learn to keep silence--hear all and speak little.
+     If you are defamed, answer not back. Talk convinces no one. Your
+     life and character proclaim you more than any argument you can put
+     forth. Lies return to plague those who repeat them.
+
+     The secret of power is to keep an even temper, and remember that no
+     one thing that can happen is of much moment. The course of justice,
+     industry, courage, moderation, silence, means that you shall
+     receive your due of every good thing. The gods may be slow, but
+     they never forget.
+
+     It is not for us to punish men nor avenge ourselves for slights,
+     wrongs and insults--wait, and you will see that Nemesis unhorses
+     the man intent on calumny.
+
+     A woman's ornaments should be modesty, simplicity, truth,
+     obedience. If a woman would hold a man captive she can only do it
+     by obeying him. Violent women are even more displeasing to the gods
+     than violent men--both are destroying themselves. Strife is always
+     defeat.
+
+     Debauchery, riot, splendor, luxury, are attempts to get a pleasure
+     out of life that is not our due, and so Nemesis provides her
+     penalty for the idle and gluttonous.
+
+     Fear and honor the gods. They guide our ways and watch over us in
+     our sleep. After the gods, a man's first thought should be of his
+     father and mother. Next to these his wife, then his children.
+
+So great was this power of Pythagoras over the people that many of the
+women who came, hearing his discourse on the folly of pride and
+splendor, threw off their cloaks, and left them with their rings,
+anklets and necklaces on the altar.
+
+With these and other offerings Pythagoras built another temple, this
+time to Apollo, and the Temple to the Muses was left open all the time
+for the people.
+
+His power over the multitude alarmed the magistrates, so they sent for
+him to examine him as to his influence and intents. He explained to them
+that as the Muses were never at variance among themselves, always living
+in subjection to Apollo, so should magistrates agree among themselves
+and think only of being loyal to the king. All royal edicts and laws are
+reflections of divine law, and therefore must be obeyed without
+question. And as the Muses never interrupt the harmony of Heaven, but in
+fact add to it, so should men ever keep harmony among themselves.
+
+All officers of the government should consider themselves as runners in
+the Olympian games, and never seek to trip, jostle, harass or annoy a
+rival, but run the race squarely and fairly, satisfied to be beaten if
+the other is the stronger and better man. An unfair victory gains only
+the anger of the gods.
+
+All disorders in the State come from ill education of the young.
+Children not brought up to be patient, to endure, to work, to be
+considerate of their elders and respectful to all, grow diseased minds
+that find relief at last in anarchy and rebellion. So to take great care
+of children in their infancy, and then leave them at puberty to follow
+their own inclinations, is to sow disorder. Children well loved and kept
+close to their parents grow up into men and women who are an ornament to
+the State and a joy to the gods. Lawless, complaining, restless, idle
+children grieve the gods and bring trouble upon their parents and
+society.
+
+The magistrates were here so pleased, and satisfied in their own minds
+that Pythagoras meant the State no harm, that they issued an order that
+all citizens should attend upon his lectures at least once a week, and
+take their wives and children with them.
+
+They also offered to pay Pythagoras--that is, put him on the payroll as
+a public teacher--but he declined to accept money for his services. In
+this, Iamblichus says, he was very wise, since by declining a fixed fee,
+ten times as much was laid upon the altar of the Temple of the Muses,
+and not knowing to whom to return it, Pythagoras was obliged to keep it
+for himself and the poor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Churchmen of the Middle Ages worked the memory of Pythagoras great
+injustice by quoting him literally in order to prove how much they were
+beyond him. Symbols and epigrams require a sympathetic hearer, otherwise
+they are as naught.
+
+For instance, Pythagoras remarks, "Sit thou not down upon a bushel
+measure." What he probably meant was, get busy and fill the measure with
+grain rather than use it for a seat.
+
+"Eat not the heart"--do not act so as to harrow the feelings of your
+friends, and do not be morbid.
+
+"Never stir the fire with a sword"--do not inflame people who are
+wrathful.
+
+"Wear not the image of God upon your jewelry"--do not make religion a
+proud or boastful thing.
+
+"Help men to a burden, but never unburden them." This saying was used by
+Saint Francis to prove that the pagan philosophers had no tenderness,
+and that the humanities came at a later date. We can now easily
+understand that to relieve men of responsibilities is no help; rather do
+we grow strong by carrying burdens.
+
+"Leave not the mark of the pot upon the ashes"--wipe out the past,
+forget it, look to the future.
+
+"Feed no animal that has crooked claws"--do not encourage rogues by
+supplying them a living.
+
+"Eat no fish whose fins are black"--have nothing to do with men whose
+deeds are dark.
+
+"Always have salt upon your table"--this seems the original of "cum
+grano salis" of the Romans.
+
+"Leave the vinegar at a distance"--keep sweet.
+
+"Speak not in the face of the sun"--even Erasmus thought this referred
+to magic. To us it is quite reasonable to suppose that it meant, "do not
+talk too much in public places."
+
+"Pick not up what falls from the table"--Plutarch calls this
+superstition, but we can just as easily suppose it was out of
+consideration for cats, dogs or hungry men. The Bible has a command
+against gleaning too closely, and leaving nothing for the traveler.
+
+"When making sacrifice, never pare your nails"--that is to say, do one
+thing at a time: wind not the clock at an inopportune time.
+
+"Eat not in the chariot"--when you travel, travel.
+
+"Feed not yourself with your left hand"--get your living openly and
+avoid all left-handed dealings.
+
+And so there are hundreds of these Pythagorean sayings that have vexed
+our classic friends for over two thousand years. All Greek scholars who
+really pride themselves on their scholarship have taken a hand at them,
+and agitated the ether just as the members of the Kokomo Woman's Club
+discuss obscure passages in Bliss Carman or Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Learned
+people are apt to comprehend anything but the obvious.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The School of Pythagoras grew until it became the chief attraction of
+Crotona. The size of the town was doubled through the pilgrims who came
+to study music, mathematics, medicine, ethics and the science of
+government.
+
+The Pythagorean plan of treating the sick by music was long considered
+as mere incantation, but there is a suspicion now that it was actual
+science. Once there was a man who rode a hobby all his life; and long
+after he was dead, folks discovered it was a real live horse and had
+carried the man long miles.
+
+Pythagoras reduced the musical scale to a mathematical science. In
+astronomy he anticipated Copernicus, and indeed, it was cited as the
+chief offense of Copernicus that he had borrowed from a pagan.
+Copernicus, it seems, set the merry churchmen digging into Greek
+literature to find out just how bad Pythagoras was. This did the
+churchmen good, but did not help the cause of Copernicus.
+
+Pythagoras for a time sought to popularize his work, but he soon found
+to his dismay that he was attracting cheap and unworthy people, who came
+not so much out of a love of learning as to satisfy a morbid curiosity
+and gain a short cut to wisdom. They wanted secrets, and knowing that
+Pythagoras had spent twenty years in Egypt, they came to him, hoping to
+get them.
+
+Said Pythagoras, "He who digs, always finds." At another time, he put
+the same idea reversely, thus, "He who digs not, never finds."
+
+Pythagoras was well past forty when he married a daughter of one of the
+chief citizens of Crotona. It seems that, inspired by his wife, who was
+first one of his pupils and then a disciple, he conceived a new mode of
+life, which he thought would soon overthrow the old manner of living.
+
+Pythagoras himself wrote nothing, but all his pupils kept tablets, and
+Athens in the century following Pythagoras was full of these Pythagorean
+notebooks, and these supply us the scattered data from which his life
+was written.
+
+Pythagoras, like so many other great men, had his dream of Utopia: it
+was a college or, literally, "a collection of people," where all were on
+an equality. Everybody worked, everybody studied, everybody helped
+everybody, and all refrained from disturbing or distressing any one. It
+was the Oneida Community taken over by Brook Farm and fused into a
+religious and scientific New Harmony by the Shakers.
+
+One smiles to see the minute rules that were made for the guidance of
+the members. They look like a transcript from a sermon by John Alexander
+Dowie, revised by the shade of Robert Owen.
+
+This Pythagorean Community was organized out of a necessity in order to
+escape the blow-ins who sailed across from Greece intent on some new
+thing, but principally to get knowledge and a living without work.
+
+And so Pythagoras and his wife formed a close corporation. For each
+member there was an initiation, strict and severe, the intent of which
+was absolutely to bar the transient triflers. Each member was to turn
+over to the Common Treasury all the money and goods he had of every kind
+and quality. They started naked, just as did Pythagoras when he stood at
+the door of the temple in Egypt.
+
+Simplicity, truth, honesty and mutual service were to govern. It was an
+outcrop of the monastic impulse, save that women were admitted, also.
+Unlike the Egyptians, Pythagoras believed now in the equality of the
+sexes, and his wife daily led the women's chorus, and she also gave
+lectures. The children were especially cared for by women set apart as
+nurses and teachers. By rearing perfect children, it was hoped and
+expected to produce in turn a perfect race.
+
+The whole idea was a phase of totemism and tabu.
+
+That it flourished for about thirty years is very certain. Two sons and
+a daughter of Pythagoras grew to maturity in the college, and this
+daughter was tried by the Order on the criminal charge of selling the
+secret doctrines of her father to outsiders.
+
+One of the sons it seems made trouble, also, in an attempt to usurp his
+father's place and take charge of affairs, as "next friend." One
+generation is about the limit of a Utopian Community. When those who
+have organized the community weaken and one by one pass away, and the
+young assume authority, the old ideas of austerity are forgotten and
+dissipation and disintegration enter. So do we move in circles.
+
+The final blow to the Pythagorean College came through jealousy and
+misunderstanding of the citizens outside. It was the old question of
+Town versus Gown. The Pythagoreans numbered nearly three hundred people.
+They held themselves aloof, and no doubt had an exasperating pride. No
+strangers were ever allowed inside the walls--they were a law unto
+themselves.
+
+Internal strife and tales told by dissenters excited the curiosity, and
+then the prejudice, of the townspeople.
+
+Then the report got abroad that the Pythagoreans were collecting arms
+and were about to overthrow the local government and enslave the
+officials.
+
+On a certain night, led by a band of drunken soldiers, a mob made an
+assault upon the college. The buildings were fired, and the members were
+either destroyed in the flames or killed as they rushed forth to escape.
+Tradition has it that Pythagoras was later seen by a shepherd on the
+mountains, but the probabilities are that he perished with his people.
+But you can not dispose of a great man by killing him. Here we are
+reading, writing and talking yet of Pythagoras.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: PLATO]
+
+PLATO
+
+
+     How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the
+     question, "How does love suit with age, Sophocles--are you still
+     the man you were?"
+
+     "Peace," he replied; "most gladly have I escaped that, and I feel
+     as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master."
+
+     That saying of his has often come into my mind since, and seems to
+     me still as good as at the time when I heard him. For certainly old
+     age has a great sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax
+     their hold, then, as Sophocles says, you have escaped from the
+     control not of one master only, but of many. And of these regrets,
+     as well as of the complaint about relations, Socrates, the cause is
+     to be sought, not in men's ages, but in their characters and
+     tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel
+     the pressure of age, but he who is of an opposite disposition will
+     find youth and age equally a burden.
+
+     --_The Republic_
+
+
+PLATO
+
+A thinking man is one of the most recent productions evolved from
+Nature's laboratory. The first man of brains to express himself about
+the world in an honest, simple and natural way, just as if nothing had
+been said about it before, was Socrates.
+
+Twenty-four centuries have passed since Socrates was put to death on the
+charge of speaking disrespectfully of the gods and polluting the minds
+of the youths of Athens. During ten of these centuries that have passed
+since then, the race lost the capacity to think, through the successful
+combination of the priest and the soldier. These men blocked human
+evolution. The penalty for making slaves is that you become one.
+
+To suppress humanity is to suppress yourself.
+
+The race is one. So the priests and the soldiers who in the Third
+Century had a modicum of worth themselves, sank and were submerged in
+the general slough of superstition and ignorance. It was a panic that
+continued for a thousand years, all through the endeavor of faulty men
+to make people good by force. At all times, up to within our own decade,
+frank expression on religious, economic and social topics has been
+fraught with great peril. Even yet any man who hopes for popularity as
+a writer, orator, merchant or politician, would do well to conceal
+studiously his inmost beliefs. On such simple themes as the taxation of
+real estate, regardless of the business of the owner, and a payment
+of a like wage for a like service without consideration of sex, the
+statesman who has the temerity to speak out will be quickly relegated
+to private life. Successful merchants depending on a local constituency
+find it expedient to cater to popular superstitions by heading
+subscription-lists for the support of things in which they do not
+believe. No avowed independent thinker would be tolerated as chief ruler
+of any of the so-called civilized countries.
+
+The fact, however, that the penalty for frank expression is limited now
+to social and commercial ostracism is very hopeful--a few years ago it
+meant the scaffold.
+
+We have been heirs to a leaden legacy of fear that has well-nigh
+banished joy and made of life a long nightmare.
+
+In very truth, the race has been insane.
+
+Hallucinations, fallacies, fears, have gnawed at our hearts, and men
+have fought men with deadly frenzy. The people who interfered, trying to
+save us, we have killed. Truly did we say, "There is no health in us,"
+which repetition did not tend to mend the malady.
+
+We are now getting convalescent. We are hobbling out into the sunshine
+on crutches. We have discharged most of our old advisers, heaved the
+dulling and deadly bottles out of the windows, and are intent on
+studying and understanding our own case. Our motto is twenty-four
+centuries old--it is simply this: KNOW THYSELF.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Socrates was a street preacher, with a beautiful indifference as to
+whether people liked him or not. To most Athenians he was the town fool.
+Athens was a little city (only about one hundred fifty thousand), and
+everybody knew Socrates. The popular plays caricatured him; the topical
+songs misquoted him; the funny artists on the street-corners who modeled
+things in clay, while you waited, made figures of him.
+
+Everybody knew Socrates--I guess so!
+
+Plato, the handsome youth of nineteen, wearing a purple robe, which
+marked him as one of the nobility, paused to listen to this uncouth man
+who gave everything and wanted nothing.
+
+Ye gods! But it is no wonder they caricatured him--he was a temptation
+too great to resist.
+
+Plato smiled--he never laughed, being too well-bred for that. Then he
+sighed, and moved a little nearer in.
+
+"Individuals are nothing. The State is all. To offend the State is to
+die. The State is an organization and we are members of it. The State is
+only as rich as its poorest citizen. We are all given a little sample of
+divinity to study, model and marvel at. To understand the State you must
+KNOW THYSELF."
+
+Plato lingered until the little crowd had dispersed, and when the old
+man with the goggle-eyes and full-moon face went shuffling slowly down
+the street, he approached and asked him a question.
+
+This man Socrates was no fool--the populace was wrong--he was a man so
+natural and free from cant that he appeared to the triflers and
+pretenders like a pretender, and they asked, "Is he sincere?"
+
+What Plato was by birth, breeding and inheritance, Socrates was by
+nature--a noble man.
+
+Up to this time the ambition of Plato had been for place and power--to
+make the right impression on the people in order to gain political
+preferment. He had been educated in the school of the Sophists, and his
+principal studies were poetry, rhetoric and deportment.
+
+And now straightway he destroyed the manuscript of his poems, for in
+their writing he had suddenly discovered that he had not written what he
+inwardly believed was true, but simply that which he thought was proper
+and nice to say. In other words, his literature had been a form of
+pretense.
+
+Daily thereafter, where went Socrates there went Plato. Side by side
+they sat on the curb--Socrates talking, questioning the bystanders,
+accosting the passers-by; Plato talking little, but listening much.
+
+Socrates was short, stout and miles around. Plato was tall, athletic and
+broad-shouldered. In fact, the word, "plato," or "platon," means broad,
+and it was given him as a nickname by his comrades. His correct name was
+Aristocles, but "Plato" suited him better, since it symbols that he was
+not only broad of shoulder, but likewise in mind. He was not only noble
+by birth, but noble in appearance.
+
+Emerson calls him the universal man. He absorbed all the science, all
+the art, all the philosophy of his day. He was handsome, kindly,
+graceful, gracious, generous, and lived and died a bachelor. He never
+collided with either poverty or matrimony.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Plato was twenty-eight years old when Socrates died. For eight years
+they had been together daily. After the death of Socrates, Plato lived
+for forty-six years, just to keep alive the name and fame of the great
+philosopher.
+
+Socrates comes to us through Plato. Various other contemporaries mention
+Socrates and quote him, some to his disadvantage, but it was left for
+Plato to give us the heart of his philosophy, and limn his character for
+all time in unforgetable outline.
+
+Plato is called the "Pride of Greece." His contribution to the wealth of
+the world consists in the fact that he taught the joys of the
+intellect--the supreme satisfaction that comes through thinking. This is
+the pure Platonic philosophy: to find our gratifications in exalted
+thought and not in bodily indulgence. Plato's theory that five years
+should be given in early manhood to abstract thought, abstaining from
+all practical affairs, so as to acquire a love for learning, has been
+grafted upon a theological stalk and comes down to our present time. It
+has, however, now been discarded by the world's best thinkers as a
+fallacy. The unit of man's life is the day, not the month or year, much
+less a period of five years. Each day we must exercise the mind, just as
+each day we must exercise the body. We can not store up health and draw
+upon it at will over long-deferred periods. The account must be kept
+active. To keep physical energy we must expend physical energy every
+day. The opinion of Herbert Spencer that thought is a physical
+function--a vibration set up in a certain area of brain-cells--is an
+idea never preached by Plato. The brain, being an organ, must be used,
+not merely in one part for five years to the exclusion of all other
+parts, but all parts should be used daily. To this end the practical
+things of life should daily engage our attention, no less than the
+contemplation of beauty as manifest in music, poetry, art or dialectics.
+The thought that every day we should look upon a beautiful picture, read
+a beautiful poem, or listen for a little while to beautiful music, is
+highly scientific, for this contemplation and appreciation of harmony is
+a physical exercise as well as a spiritual one, and through it we grow,
+develop, evolve.
+
+That we could not devote five years of our time to purely esthetic
+exercises, to the exclusion of practical things, without very great
+risk, is now well known. And when I refer to practical affairs, I mean
+the effort which Nature demands we should put forth to get a living.
+Every man should live like a poor man, regardless of the fact that he
+may have money. Nature knows nothing of bank-balances. In order to have
+an appetite for dinner, you must first earn your dinner. If you would
+sleep at night, you must first pay for sweet sleep by physical labor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Plato was born on the Island of Ægina, where his father owned an estate.
+His mother was a direct descendant of Solon, and his father, not to be
+outdone, traced to Codrus.
+
+The father of Socrates was a stonecutter and his mother a midwife, so
+very naturally the son had a beautiful contempt for pedigree. Socrates
+once said to Plato, "Anybody can trace to Codrus--by paying enough to
+the man who makes the family-tree." This seems to show that genealogy
+was a matter of business then as now, and that nothing is new under the
+sun. Yet with all his contempt for heredity, we find Socrates often
+expressing pride in the fact that he was a "native son," whereas Plato,
+Aspasia, the mother of Themistocles, and various other fairly good
+people, were Athenian importations.
+
+Socrates belonged to the leisure class and had plenty of time for
+extended conversazione, so just how much seriousness we should mix in
+his dialogues is still a problem. Each palate has to season to suit.
+Also, we can never know how much is Socrates and how much essence of
+Plato. Socrates wrote nothing, and Plato ascribes all of his wisdom to
+his master. Whether this was simple prudence or magnanimity is still a
+question.
+
+The death of Socrates must have been a severe blow to Plato. He at once
+left Athens. It was his first intention never to return. He traveled
+through the cities of Greece, Southern Italy and down to Egypt, and
+everywhere was treated with royal courtesies.
+
+After many solicitations from Dionysius, Tyrant of Syracuse, he went to
+visit that worthy, who had a case of philosophic and literary scabies.
+Dionysius prided himself on being a Beneficent Autocrat, with a literary
+and artistic attachment. He ruled his people, educated them, cared for
+them, disciplined them.
+
+Some people call this slavery; others term it applied socialism.
+Dionysius wanted Syracuse to be the philosophic center of the world, and
+to this end Plato was importuned to make Syracuse his home and dispense
+his specialty--truth.
+
+This he consented to do.
+
+It was all very much like the arrangement between Mæcenas and Horace, or
+Voltaire and Frederick the Great. The patron is a man who patronizes--he
+wants something, and the particular thing that Dionysius wanted was to
+have Plato hold a colored light upon the performances of His Altruistic,
+Beneficent, Royal Jackanapes. But Plato was a simple, honest and direct
+man: he had caught the habit from Socrates.
+
+Charles Ferguson says that the simple life does not consist in living in
+the woods and wearing overalls and sandals, but in getting the cant out
+of one's cosmos and eliminating the hypocrisy from one's soul.
+
+Plato lived the simple life. When he spoke he stated what he thought. He
+discussed exploitation, war, taxation, and the Divine Right of Kings.
+Kings are very unfortunate--they are shut off and shielded from truth
+on every side. They get their facts at second hand and are lied to all
+day long. Consequently they become in time incapable of digesting truth.
+A court, being an artificial fabric, requires constant bracing. Next to
+capital, nothing is so timid as a king. Heine says that kings have to
+draw their nightcaps on over their crowns when they go to bed, in order
+to keep them from being stolen, and that they are subject to insomnia.
+
+Walt Whitman, with nothing to lose--not even a reputation or a hat--was
+much more kingly walking bareheaded past the White House than Nicholas
+of Russia or Alfonso of Spain can ever possibly be.
+
+Dionysius thought that he wanted a philosophic court, but all he wanted
+was to make folks think he had a philosophic court. Plato supplied him
+the genuine article, and very naturally Plato was soon invited to
+vacate.
+
+After he had gone, Dionysius, fearful that Plato would give him a bad
+reputation in Athens--somewhat after the manner and habit of the
+"escaped nun"--sent a fast-rowing galley after him. Plato was arrested
+and sold into slavery on his own isle of Ægina.
+
+This all sounds very tragic, but the real fact is it was a sort of
+comedy of errors--as a king's doings are when viewed from a safe and
+convenient distance. De Wolf Hopper's kings are the real thing.
+Dionysius claimed that Plato owed him money, and so he got out a
+body-attachment, and sold the philosopher to the highest bidder.
+
+This was a perfectly legal proceeding, being simply peonage, a thing
+which exists in some parts of the United States today. I state the fact
+without prejudice, merely to show how hard custom dies.
+
+Plato was too big a man conveniently either to secrete or kill. Certain
+people in Athens plagiarized Doctor Johnson who, on hearing that
+Goldsmith had debts of several thousand pounds, in admiration exclaimed,
+"Was ever poet so trusted before!" Other good friends ascertained the
+amount of the claim and paid it, just as Colonel H. H. Rogers graciously
+cleared up the liabilities of Mark Twain, after the author of
+"Huckleberry Finn" had landed his business craft on a sandbar.
+
+And so Plato went free, arriving back in Athens, aged forty, a wiser and
+a better man than when he left.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nothing absolves a reputation like silence and absence, or what the
+village editors call "the grim reaper." To live is always more or less
+of an offense, especially if you have thoughts and express them. Athens
+exists, in degree, because she killed Socrates, just as Jerusalem is
+unforgetable for a similar reason. The South did not realize that
+Lincoln was her best friend until the assassin's bullet had found his
+brain. Many good men in Chicago did not cease to revile their chiefest
+citizen, until the ears of Altgeld were stopped and his hands stiffened
+by death. The lips of the dead are eloquent.
+
+Plato's ten years of absence had given him prestige. He was honored
+because he had been the near and dear friend of Socrates, a great and
+good man who was killed through mistake.
+
+Most murders and killings of men, judicial and otherwise, are matters of
+misunderstandings.
+
+Plato had been driven out of Syracuse for the very reasons that Socrates
+had been killed at Athens. And now behold, when Dionysius saw how Athens
+was honoring Plato, he discovered that it was all a mistake of his
+bookkeeper, so he wrote to Plato to come back and all would be
+forgiven.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Those who set out to live the Ideal Life have a hard trail to travel.
+The road to Jericho is a rocky one--especially if we are a little in
+doubt as to whether it really is the road to Jericho or not. Perhaps if
+we ever find the man who lives the Ideal Life he will be quite unaware
+of it, so occupied will he be in his work--so forgetful of self.
+
+Time had taught Plato diplomacy. He now saw that to teach people who did
+not want to be taught was an error in judgment for which one might
+forfeit his head.
+
+Socrates was the first Democrat: he stood for the demos--the people.
+Plato would have done the same, but he saw that the business was extra
+hazardous, to use the phrase of our insurance friends. He who works for
+the people will be destroyed by the people. Hemlock is such a rare and
+precious commodity that few can afford it; the cross is a privilege so
+costly that few care to pay the price.
+
+The genius is a man who first states truths; and all truths are
+unpleasant on their first presentation. That which is uncommon is
+offensive. "Who ever heard anything like that before?" ask the literary
+and philosophic hill tribes in fierce indignation. Says James Russell
+Lowell, "I blab unpleasant truths, you see, that none may need to state
+them after me."
+
+Plato was a teacher by nature: this was his business, his pastime, and
+the only thing in life that gave him joy. But he dropped back to the
+good old ways of making truth esoteric as did the priests of Egypt,
+instead of exoteric as did Socrates. He founded his college in the grove
+of his old friend Academus, a mile out of Athens on the road to Eleusis.
+In honor of Academus the school was called "The Academy." It was
+secluded, safe, beautiful for situation. In time Plato bought a tract of
+land adjoining that of Academus, and this was set apart as the permanent
+school. All the teaching was done out of doors, master and pupils seated
+on the marble benches, by the fountain-side, or strolling through the
+grounds, rich with shrubs and flowers and enlivened by the song of
+birds. The climate of Athens was about like that of Southern California,
+where the sun shines three hundred days in the year.
+
+Plato emphasized the value of the spoken word over the written, a thing
+he could well afford to do, since he was a remarkably good writer. This
+for the same reason that the only man who can afford to go ragged is the
+man with a goodly bank-balance. The shibboleth of the modern schools of
+oratory is, "We grow through expression." And Plato was the man who
+first said it. Plato's teaching was all in the form of the "quiz,"
+because he believed that truth was not a thing to be acquired from
+another--it is self-discovery.
+
+Indeed, we can imagine it was very delightful--this walking, strolling,
+lying on the grass, or seated in semicircles, indulging in endless talk,
+easy banter, with now and then a formal essay read to start the
+vibrations.
+
+Here it was that Aristotle came from his wild home in the mountains of
+Macedonia, to remain for twenty years and to evolve into a rival of the
+master.
+
+We can well imagine how Aristotle, the mountain-climber and horseman, at
+times grew heartily tired of the faultily faultless garden with its high
+wall and graveled walks and delicate shrubbery, and shouted aloud in
+protest, "The whole world of mountain, valley and plain should be our
+Academy, not this pent-up Utica that contracts our powers."
+
+Then followed an argument as to the relative value of talking about
+things or doing them, or Poetry versus Science.
+
+Poetry, philosophy and religion are very old themes, and they were old
+even in Plato's day; but natural science came in with Aristotle. And
+science is only the classification of the common knowledge of the common
+people. It was Aristotle who named things, not Adam. He contended that
+the classification and naming of plants, rocks and animals was quite as
+important as to classify ideas about human happiness and make guesses at
+the state of the soul after death.
+
+Of course he got himself beautifully misunderstood, because he was
+advocating something which had never been advocated before. In this lay
+his virtue, that he outran human sympathy, even the sympathy of the
+great Plato.
+
+Yet for a while the unfolding genius of this young barbarian was a
+great joy to Plato, as the earnest, eager intellect of an ambitious
+pupil always is to his teacher. Plato was great in speculation;
+Aristotle was great in observation. Well has it been said that it was
+Aristotle who discovered the world. And Aristotle in his old age said,
+"My attempts to classify the objects of Nature all came through Plato's
+teaching me first how to classify ideas." And forty years before this
+Plato had said, "It was Socrates who taught me this game of the
+correlation and classification of thoughts."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The writings of Plato consist of thirty-five dialogues, and one essay
+which is not cast in the dramatic form--"The Apology." These dialogues
+vary in length from twenty pages, of, say, four hundred words each, to
+three hundred pages. In addition to these books are many quotations from
+Plato and references to him by contemporary writers. Plato's work is as
+impersonal as that of Shakespeare. All human ideas, shades of belief,
+emotions and desires pass through the colander of his mind. He allows
+everybody to have his say.
+
+What Plato himself thought can only be inferred, and this each reader
+does for himself. We construct our man Plato in our own image. A
+critic's highest conception of Plato's philosophy is the highest
+conception of the critic's own. We, however, are reasonably safe in
+assuming that Plato's own ideas were put into the mouth of Socrates, for
+the one intent of Plato's life was to redeem Socrates from the charges
+that had been made against him. The characters Shakespeare loved are the
+ones that represent the master, not the hated and handmade rogues.
+
+Plato's position in life was that of a spectator rather than that of an
+actor. He stood and saw the procession pass by, and as it passed,
+commented on it. He charged his pupils no tuition and accepted no fees,
+claiming that to sell one's influence or ideas was immoral.
+
+It will be remembered that Byron held a similar position at the
+beginning of his literary career, and declared i' faith, he "would not
+prostitute his genius for hire." He gave his poems to the world. Later,
+when his income was pinched, he began to make bargains with Barabbas and
+became an artist in per centum, collecting close, refusing to rhyme
+without collateral.
+
+Byron's humanity is not seriously disputed. Plato also was human. He had
+a fixed income and so knew the worthlessness of riches. He issued no
+tariff, but the goodly honorarium left mysteriously on a marble bench by
+a rich pupil he accepted, and for it gave thanks to the gods. He said
+many great things, but he never said this: "I would have every man poor
+that he might know the value of money."
+
+"The Republic" is the best known and best read of any of Plato's
+dialogues. It outlines an ideal form of government where everybody would
+be healthy, happy and prosperous. It has served as inspiration to Sir
+Thomas More, Erasmus, Jean Jacques Rousseau, William Morris, Edward
+Bellamy, Brigham Young, John Humphrey Noyes and Eugene Debs. The
+sub-division of labor, by setting apart certain persons to do certain
+things--for instance, to care for the children--has made its appeal to
+Upton Sinclair, who jumped from his Utopian woodshed into a rubber-plant
+and bounced off into oblivion.
+
+Plato's plan was intended to relieve marriage from the danger of
+becoming a form of slavery. The rulers, teachers and artists especially
+were to be free, and the State was to assume all responsibilities. The
+reason is plain: he wanted them to reproduce themselves. But whether
+genius is an acquirement or a natural endowment he touches on but
+lightly. Also, he seemingly did not realize "that no hovel is safe from
+it."
+
+If all marriage-laws were done away with, Plato thought that the men and
+women who were mated would still be true to each other, and that the
+less the police interfered in love-relations, the better.
+
+In one respect at least, Plato was certainly right: he advocated the
+equality of the sexes, and declared that no woman should be owned by a
+man nor forced into a mode of life, either by economic exigency or
+marriage, that was repulsive to her. Also, that her right to bear
+children or not should be strictly her own affair, and to dictate to a
+mother as to who should father her children tended to the production of
+a slavish race.
+
+The eugenics of "The Republic" were tried for thirty years by the Oneida
+Community with really good results, but one generation of communal
+marriages was proved to be the limit, a thing Plato now knows from his
+heights in Elysium, but which he in his bachelor dreams on earth did not
+realize.
+
+In his division of labor each was to do the thing he was best fitted to
+do, and which he liked to do. It was assumed that each person had a
+gift, and that to use this gift all that was necessary was to give him
+an opportunity. That very modern cry of "equality of opportunity" harks
+back to Plato.
+
+The monastic impulse was a very old thing, even in the time of Plato.
+The monastic impulse is simply cutting for sanctuary when the pressure
+of society gets intense--a getting rid of the world by running away from
+it. This usually occurs when the novitiate has exhausted his capacity
+for sin, and so tries saintship in the hope of getting a new thrill.
+
+Plato had been much impressed by the experiments of Pythagoras, who had
+actually done the thing of which Plato only talked. Plato now picked the
+weak points in the Pythagorean philosophy and sought, in imagination, to
+construct a fabric that would stand the test of time.
+
+However, all Utopias, like all monasteries and penitentiaries, are made
+up of picked people. The Oneida Community was not composed of average
+individuals, but of people who were selected with great care, and only
+admitted after severe tests. And great as was Plato, he could not
+outline an ideal plan of life except for an ideal people.
+
+To remain in the world of work and share the burdens of all--to ask for
+nothing which other people can not have on like terms--not to consider
+yourself peculiar, unique and therefore immune and exempt--is now the
+ideal of the best minds. We have small faith in monasticism or
+monotheism, but we do have great faith in monism. We believe in the
+Solidarity of the Race. We must all progress together. Whether
+Pythagoras, John Humphrey Noyes and Brigham Young were ahead of the
+world or behind it is really not to the point--the many would not
+tolerate them. So their idealism was diluted with danger until it became
+as somber, sober and slaty-gray as the average existence, and fades as
+well as shrinks in the wash.
+
+A private good is no more possible for a community than it is for an
+individual. We help ourselves only as we advance the race--we are happy
+only as we minister to the whole. The race is one, and this is monism.
+
+And here Socrates and Plato seemingly separate, for Socrates in his life
+wanted nothing, not even joy, and Plato's desire was for peace and
+happiness. Yet the ideal of justice in Plato's philosophy is very
+exalted.
+
+No writer in that flowering time of beauty and reason which we call "The
+Age of Pericles" exerted so profound an influence as Plato. All the
+philosophers that follow him were largely inspired by him. Those who
+berated him most were, very naturally, the ones he had most benefited.
+Teach a boy to write, and the probabilities are that his first essay,
+when he has cut loose from his teacher's apron-strings and starts a
+brownie bibliomag, will be in denunciation of the man who taught him to
+push the pen and wield the Faber.
+
+Xenophon was more indebted, intellectually, to Plato than to any other
+living man, yet he speaks scathingly of his master. Plutarch, Cicero,
+Iamblichus, Pliny, Horace and all the other Roman writers read Plato
+religiously. The Christian Fathers kept his work alive, and passed it on
+to Dante, Petrarch and the early writers of the Renaissance, so all of
+their thought is well flavored with essence of Plato. Well does Addison
+put into the mouth of Cato those well-known words:
+
+  It must be so--Plato, thou reasonest well!--
+  Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
+  This longing after immortality?
+  Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror,
+  Of falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul
+  Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
+  'T is the divinity that stirs within us;
+  'T is heaven itself, that points out an hereafter,
+  And intimates eternity to man.
+
+All of that English group of writers in Addison's day knew their Plato,
+exactly as did Cato and the other great Romans of near two thousand
+years before. From Plato you can prove that there is a life after this
+for each individual soul, as Francis of Assisi proved, or you can take
+your Plato, as did Hume, and show that man lives only in his influence,
+his individual life returning to the mass and becoming a part of all the
+great pulsing existence that ebbs and flows through plant and tree and
+flower and flying bird. And today we turn to Plato and find the
+corroboration of our thought that to live now and here, up to our
+highest and best, is the acme of wisdom. We prepare to live by living.
+If there is another world we better be getting ready for it. If heaven
+is an Ideal Republic it is founded on unselfishness, truth, reciprocity,
+equanimity and co-operation, and only those will be at home there who
+have practised these virtues here. Man was made for mutual service. This
+way lies Elysium.
+
+Plato was a teacher of teachers, and like every other great teacher who
+has ever lived, his soul goes marching on, for to teach is to influence,
+and influence never dies. Hail, Plato!
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: KING ALFRED]
+
+KING ALFRED
+
+
+     A saint without superstition, a scholar without ostentation, a
+     warrior who fought only in defense of his country, a conqueror
+     whose laurels were never stained with cruelty, a prince never cast
+     down by adversity, nor lifted up to insolence in the hour of
+     triumph--there is no other name in English history to compare with
+     his.
+
+     --_Freeman_
+
+
+KING ALFRED
+
+Julius Cæsar, the greatest man of initiative the world has ever seen,
+had a nephew known as Cæsar Augustus.
+
+The grandeur that was Rome occurred in the reign of Augustus. It was
+Augustus who said, "I found your city mud and I left it marble!" The
+impetus given to the times by Julius Cæsar was conserved by Augustus. He
+continued the work his uncle had planned, but before he had completed
+it, he grew very weary, and the weariness he expressed was also the old
+age of the nation. There was lime in the bones of the boss.
+
+When Cæsar Augustus said, "Rome is great enough--here we rest," he
+merely meant that he had reached his limit, and had had enough of
+road-building. At the boundaries of the Empire and the end of each Roman
+road he set up a statue of the god Terminus. This god gave his blessing
+to those going beyond, and a welcome to those returning, just as the
+Stars and Stripes welcome the traveler coming to America from across the
+sea. This god Terminus also supplied the world, especially the railroad
+world, a word.
+
+Julius Cæsar reached his terminus and died, aged fifty-six, from
+compulsory vaccination. Augustus, aged seventy-seven, died peacefully
+in bed.
+
+The reign of Augustus marks the crest of the power of Rome, and a crest
+is a place where no man nor nation stays--when you reach it, you go over
+and down on the other side.
+
+When Augustus set up his Termini, announcing to all mankind that this
+was the limit, the enemies of Rome took courage and became active. The
+Goths and Vandals, hanging on the skirts of Rome, had learned many
+things, and one of the things was that, for getting rich quick, conquest
+is better than production. The barbarians, some of whom evidently had a
+sense of humor, had a way of picking up the Termini and carrying them
+inward, and finally they smashed them entirely, somewhat as country
+boys, out hunting, shoot railroad-signs full of holes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the Middle Ages the soldier was supreme, and in the name of
+protecting the people he robbed the people, a tradition much respected,
+but not in the breach.
+
+To escape the scourge of war, certain families and tribes moved
+northward. It was fight and turmoil in Southern Europe that settled
+Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and produced the Norsemen. And in making for
+themselves a home in the wilderness, battling with the climate and
+unkind conditions, there was evolved a very strong and sturdy type of
+man.
+
+On the north shore of the Baltic dwelt the Norsemen. Along the southern
+shore were scattered several small tribes or families who were not
+strong enough in numbers to fight the Goths, and so sought peace with
+them, and were taxed--or pillaged--often to the point of starvation.
+They were so poor and insignificant that the Romans really never heard
+of them, and they never heard of the Romans, save in myth and legend.
+They lived in caves and rude stone huts. They fished, hunted, raised
+goats and farmed, and finally, about the year Three Hundred, they
+secured horses, which they bought from the Goths, who stole them from
+the Romans.
+
+Their Government was the Folkmoot, the germ of the New England Town
+Meeting. All the laws were passed by all the people, and in the making
+of these laws, the women had an equal voice with the men.
+
+When important steps were to be taken where the interests of the whole
+tribe were at stake, great deference was paid to the opinions of the
+mothers. For the mother spoke not only for herself, but for her
+children. The mother was the home-maker. The word "wife" means weaver;
+and this deference to the one member of the family who invented,
+created, preparing both the food and the clothing, is a marked Teutonic
+instinct. Its survival is seen yet in the sturdy German of the middle
+class, who takes his wife and children with him when he goes to the
+concert or to the beer-garden. So has he always taken his family with
+him on his migrations; whereas the Greeks and the Romans left their
+women behind.
+
+South America was colonized by Spanish men. And the Indians and the
+Negroes absorbed the haughty grandee, yet preserved the faults and
+failings of both.
+
+The German who moves to America comes to stay--his family is a part of
+himself. The Italian comes alone, and his intent is to make what he can
+and return. This is a modified form of conquest.
+
+The Romans who came to Brittany in Cæsar's time were men. Those who
+remained "took to themselves wives among the daughters of Philistia," as
+strong men ever are wont to do when they seek to govern savage tribes.
+And note this--instead of raising the savages or barbarians to their
+level, they sink to theirs. The child takes the status of the mother.
+The white man who marries an Indian woman becomes an Indian and their
+children are Indians. With the Negro race the same law holds.
+
+The Teutonic races have conquered the world because they took their
+women with them on their migrations, mental and physical. And the moral
+seems to be this, that the men who progress financially, morally and
+spiritually are those who do not leave their women-folk behind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When we think of the English, we usually have in mind the British Isles.
+But the original England was situated along the southern shore of the
+Baltic Sea. This was the true Eng-Land, the land of the Engles or
+Angles. To one side lay Jute-Land, the home of the Jutes. On the other
+was Saxony, where dwelt the Saxons.
+
+Jute-Land still lives in Jutland; the land of the Saxons is yet so
+indicated on the map; but Eng-Land was transported bodily a thousand
+miles, and her original territory became an abandoned farm where
+barbarians battled.
+
+And now behold how England has diffused herself all over the world, with
+the British Isles as a base of supplies, or a radiating center. Behind
+this twenty miles of water that separates Calais and Dover she found
+safety and security, and there her brain and brawn evolved and expanded.
+So there are now Anglo-Americans, Anglo-Africans, Anglo-Indians,
+Anglo-Australians, and Anglo-New-Zealanders. As the native Indians of
+America and the Maoris of New Zealand have given way before the onward
+push and persistence of the English, so likewise did the ancient Britons
+give way and were absorbed by the Anglo-Saxons; and then the Saxons,
+being a little too fine for the stern competitor, allowed the Engles to
+take charge. And as Dutch, Germans, Slavs and Swedes are transformed
+with the second generation into English-Americans when they come to
+America, so did the people from Eng-Land fuse Saxons, Norsemen, Jutes,
+Celts and Britons into one people and fix upon them the indelible stamp
+of Eng-Land.
+
+Yet it is obvious that the characters of the people of England have been
+strengthened, modified and refined by contact with the various races she
+has met, mixed with and absorbed. To influence others is to grow. Had
+England been satisfied to people and hold the British Isles, she would
+ere this have been outrun and absorbed by Spain or France. To stand
+still is to retreat. It is the same with men as it is with races.
+England's Colonies have been her strength. They have given her poise,
+reserve, ballast--and enough trouble to prevent either revolution,
+stagnation or introspection.
+
+Nations have their periods of youth, manhood and old age. Whether
+England is now passing into decline, living her life in her children,
+the Colonies, might be indelicate to ask. Perhaps as Briton, Celt, Jute
+and Saxon were fused to make that hardy, courageous, restless and sinewy
+man known as the Englishman, so are the English, the Dutch, the Swede,
+the German, the Slav, transplanted into America, being fused into a
+composite man who shall surpass any type that the world has ever seen.
+In the British Isles, just as in the great cities, mankind gets
+pot-bound. In the newer lands, the roots strike deep into the soil, and
+find the sustenance the human plant requires.
+
+Walls keep folks in as well as shut other folks out. The British Isles,
+rock-faced and sea-girted, shut out the enemies of England without
+shutting the English in. A country surrounded by the sea produces
+sailors, and England's position bred a type of man that made her
+mistress of the seas. As her drum-taps, greeting the rising sun, girdle
+the world, so do her lighthouses flash protection to the mariner
+wherever the hungry sea lies in wait along rocky coasts, the round world
+over. England has sounded the shallows, marked the rocks and reefs, and
+mapped the coasts.
+
+The first settlement of Saxons in Britain occurred in the year Four
+Hundred Forty-nine. They did not come as invaders, as did the Romans
+five hundred years before; their numbers were too few, and their arms
+too crude to mean menace to the swarthy, black-haired Britons. These
+fair stranger-folk were welcomed as curiosities and were allowed to
+settle and make themselves homes. Word was sent back to Saxony and
+Jute-Land and more settlers came. In a few years came a shipload of
+Engles, with their women and children, red-haired, freckled, tawny. They
+tilled the soil with a faith and an intelligence such as the Britons
+never brought to bear: very much as the German settlers follow the
+pioneers and grow rich where the Mudsock fails. Naturally the
+fair-haired girls found favor in the sight of the swarthy Britons.
+Marriages occurred, and a new type of man-child appeared as the months
+went by. More Engles came. A century passed, and the coast, from Kent
+to the Firth of Forth, was dotted with the farms and homes of the people
+from the Baltic. There were now occasional protests from the original
+holders, and fights followed, when the Britons retreated before the
+strangers, or else were very glad to make terms. Victory is a matter of
+staying-power. The Engles had come to stay.
+
+But a new enemy had appeared--the Norsemen or Danes. These were
+sea-nomads who acknowledged no man as master. Rough, bold, laughing at
+disaster, with no patience to build or dig or plow, they landed but to
+ravish, steal and lay waste, and then boarded their craft, sailing away,
+joying in the ruin they had wrought.
+
+The next year they came back. The industry and the thrift of the Engles
+made Britain a land of promise, a storehouse where the good things of
+life could be secured much more easily than by creating or producing
+them. And so now, before this common foe, the Britons, Jutes, Celts,
+Saxons and Engles united to punish and expel the invaders.
+
+The calamity was a blessing--as most calamities are. From being a dozen
+little kingdoms, Britain now became one. A "Cyng," or captain, was
+chosen--an Engle, strong of arm, clear of brain, blue of eye, with long
+yellow hair. He was a man who commanded respect by his person and by his
+deeds. His name was Egbert.
+
+King Alfred, or Elfred, was born at Wantage, Berkshire, in the year
+Eight Hundred Forty-nine. He was the grandson of Egbert, a great man,
+and the son of Ethelwulf, a man of mediocre qualities. Alfred was shrewd
+enough to inherit the courage and persistence of his grandfather. Our D.
+A. R. friends are right and Mark Twain is wrong--it is really more
+necessary to have a grandfather than a father.
+
+English civilization begins with Alfred. If you will refer to the
+dictionary you will find that the word "civilization" simply means to be
+civil. That is, if you are civilized you are gentle instead of
+violent--gaining your ends by kindly and persuasive means, instead of
+through coercion, intimidation and force.
+
+Alfred was the first English gentleman, and let no joker add "and the
+last." Yet it is needless and quite irrelevant to say that civilized
+people are not always civil; nor are gentlemen always gentle--so little
+do words count. Many gentlemen are only gents.
+
+Alfred was civil and gentle. He had been sent to Rome in his boyhood,
+and this transplantation had done him a world of good. Superior men are
+always transplanted men: people who do not travel have no perspective.
+To stay at home means getting pot-bound. You neither search down in the
+soil for color and perfume nor reach out strong toward the sunshine.
+
+It was only a few years before the time of Alfred that a Christian monk
+appeared at Edin-Borough, and told the astonished Engles and Saxons of
+the gentle Jesus, who had been sent to earth by the All-Father to tell
+men they should love their enemies and be gentle and civil and not
+violent, and should do unto others as they would be done by. The natural
+religion of the Great Spirit which the ancient Teutonic people held had
+much in it that was good, but now they were prepared for something
+better--they had the hope of a heaven of rest and happiness after death.
+
+Christianity flourishes best among a downtrodden, poor, subdued and
+persecuted people. Renan says it is a religion of sorrow. And primitive
+Christianity--the religion of conduct--is a beautiful and pure doctrine
+that no sane person ever flouted or scoffed.
+
+The parents of Alfred, filled with holy zeal, allowed one of the
+missionary monks to take the boy to Rome. The idea was that he should
+become a bishop in the Church.
+
+Ethelred, the elder brother of Alfred, had succeeded Ethelwulf, his
+father, as King. The Danes had overrun and ravished the country. For
+many years these marauding usurpers had fed their armies on the products
+of the land. And now they had more than two-thirds of the country under
+their control, and the fear that they would absolutely subjugate the
+Anglo-Saxons was imminent. Ethelwulf gave up the struggle in despair and
+died. Ethelred fell in battle. And as the Greeks of old in their terror
+cast around for the strongest man they could find to repel the Persian
+invaders, and picked on the boy Alexander, so did the Anglo-Saxons turn
+to Alfred, the gentle and silent. He was only twenty-three years old. In
+build he was slight and slender, but he had given token of his courage
+for four years, fighting with his brother. He had qualities that were
+closely akin to those of both Alexander and Cæsar. He had a cool, clear
+and vivid intellect and he had invincible courage. But he surpassed both
+of the men just named in that he had a tender, sympathetic heart.
+
+The Danes were overconfident, and had allowed their discipline to relax.
+Alfred had at first evidently encouraged them in their idea that they
+had won, for he struck feebly and then withdrew his army to the marshes,
+where the Danish horsemen could not follow.
+
+The Danes went into winter quarters, fat and feasting. Alfred made a
+definite plan for a campaign, drilled his men, prayed with them, and
+filled their hearts with the one idea that they were going forth to
+certain victory. And to victory they went. They fell upon the Danes with
+an impetuosity as unexpected as it was invincible, and before they could
+get into their armor, or secure their horses, they were in a rout. Every
+timid Engle and Saxon now took heart--it was the Lord's victory--they
+were fighting for home--the Danes gave way. This was not all
+accomplished quite as easily as I am writing it, but difficulties,
+deprivations and disaster only brought out new resources in Alfred. He
+was as serenely hopeful as was Washington at Valley Forge, and his
+soldiers were just as ragged. He, too, like Thomas Paine, cried, "These
+are the times that try men's souls--be grateful for this crisis, for it
+will give us opportunity to show that we are men." He had aroused his
+people to a pitch where the Danes would have had to kill them all, or
+else give way. As they could not kill them they gave way. Napoleon at
+twenty-six was master of France and had Italy under his heel, and so was
+Alfred at the same age supreme in Southern Britain--including Wessex and
+Mercia. He rounded up the enemy, took away their weapons, and then held
+a revival-meeting, asking everybody to come forward to the
+mourners'-bench. There is no proof that he coerced them into
+Christianity. They were glad to accept it. Alfred seemed to have the
+persuasive power of the Reverend Doctor Torrey. Guthrum, the Danish
+King, who had come over to take a personal hand in the looting, was
+captured, baptized, and then Alfred stood sponsor for him and gave him
+the name of Ethelstan. He was made a bishop.
+
+This acceptance of Christianity by the leaders of the Danes broke their
+fierce spirit, and peace followed. Alfred told the soldiers to use their
+horses to plow the fields. The two armies that had fought each other now
+worked together at road-making and draining the marshes. Some of the
+Danes fled in their ships, but very many remained and became citizens of
+the country. The Danish names are still recognizable. Names beginning
+with the aspirate, say Herbert, Hulett, Hubbard, Hubbs, Harold, Hancock,
+are Danish, and are the cause of that beautiful muddling of the "H" that
+still perplexes the British tongue, the rule governing which is to put
+it on where it is not needed and leave it off where it is. The Danes
+called the Engles, "Hengles," and the Engles called a man by the name of
+Henry, "Enry."
+
+In saving Wessex, Alfred saved England for the English people; for it
+was from Wessex, as a center, that his successors began the task of
+reconquering England from the Danes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the rule of Alfred begins the England that we know. As we call
+Herodotus the father of history, so could we, with equal propriety, call
+Asser, who wrote in the time of Alfred, the father of English history.
+The oldest English book is the "Life of Alfred" by Asser the monk.
+
+That Asser was a dependent on his subject and very much in love with
+him, doubtless gave a very strong bias to the book. That it is right in
+the main, although occasionally wrong as to details, is proved by
+various corroborating records.
+
+The king's word in Alfred's time was law, and Alfred proved his modesty
+by publicly proclaiming that a king was not divine, but only a man, and
+therefore a king's edicts should be endorsed by the people in Folkmoot.
+Here we get the genesis of popular government, and about the only
+instance that I can recall where a very strong man acting as chief ruler
+renounced a part of his power to the people, of his own accord. Kings
+usually have to be trimmed, and it is revolution that does the shearing.
+It is the rule that men do not relinquish power of their own
+accord--they have to be disannexed from it.
+
+Alfred, however, knew the popular heart--he was very close to the common
+people. He had slept on the ground with his soldiers, fared at table
+with the swineherd's family, tilled the soil with the farmer folk. His
+heart went out to humanity. He did not overrate the average mind, nor
+did he underrate it. He had faith in mankind, and knew that at the last
+power was with the people. He did not say, "Vox populi, vox Dei," but he
+thought it. Therefore he set himself to educating the plain people. He
+prophesied a day when all grown men would be able to read and write, and
+when all would have an intelligent, personal interest in the government.
+
+There have been periods in English history when Britain lagged woefully
+behind, for England has had kings who forgot the rights of mankind, and
+instead of seeking to serve their people, have battened and fattened
+upon them. They governed. George the Third thought that Alfred was a
+barbarian, and spoke of him with patronizing pity.
+
+Alfred introduced the system of trial by jury, although the fact has
+been pointed out that he did not originate it. It goes back to the hardy
+Norseman who acknowledged no man as master, harking back to a time when
+there was no law, and to a people whose collective desire was supreme.
+In fact, it has its origin in "Lynch Law," or the rule of the
+Vigilantes. From a village turning loose on an offender and pulling him
+limb from limb, a degree of deliberation comes in and a committee of
+twelve are selected to investigate the deed and report their verdict.
+
+The jury system began with pirates and robbers, but it is no less
+excellent on that account, and we might add that freedom also began with
+pirates and robbers, for they were the people who cried, "We
+acknowledge no man as master."
+
+The early Greeks had trials by jury--Socrates was tried by a jury of
+five hundred citizens.
+
+But let the fact stand that Alfred was the man who first introduced the
+jury system into England. He had absolute power. He was the sole judge
+and ruler, but on various occasions he abdicated the throne and said: "I
+do not feel able to try this man, for as I look into my heart I see that
+I am prejudiced. Neither will I name men to try him, for in their
+selection I might also be prejudiced. Therefore let one hundred men be
+called, and from these let twelve be selected by lot, and they shall
+listen to the charges and weigh the defense, and their verdict shall be
+mine."
+
+We sometimes say that English Common Law is built on the Roman Law, but
+I can not find that Alfred ever studied the Roman Law, or ever heard of
+the Justinian Code, or thought it worth while to establish a system of
+jurisprudence. His government was of the simplest sort. He respected the
+habits, ways and customs of the common people, and these were the Common
+Law. If the people had a footpath that was used by their children and
+their parents and their grandparents, then this path belonged to the
+people, and Alfred said that even the King could not take it from them.
+
+This deference to the innocent ways, habits and natural rights of the
+people mark Alfred as supremely great, because a great man is one great
+in his sympathies. Alfred had the imagination to put himself in the
+place of the lowly and obscure.
+
+The English love of law, system and order dates from Alfred. The
+patience, kindliness, good-cheer and desire for fair play were his,
+plus. He had poise, equanimity, unfaltering faith and a courage that
+never grew faint. He was as religious as Cromwell, as firm as
+Washington, as stubborn as Gladstone. In him were combined the virtues
+of the scholar and patriot, the efficiency of the man of affairs with
+the wisdom of the philosopher. His character, both public and private,
+is stainless, and his whole life was one of enlightened and magnanimous
+service to his country.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the age of Augustus there was one study that was regarded as more
+important than all others, and this was rhetoric, or the art of the
+rhetor. The rhetor was a man whose business it was to persuade or
+convince.
+
+The public forum has its use in the very natural town-meeting, or the
+powwow of savages. But in Rome it had developed and been refined to a
+point where the public had no voice, although the boasted forum still
+existed. The forum was monopolized by the professional orators hired by
+this political clique or that.
+
+It was about like the political "forum" in America today.
+
+The greatest man in Rome was the man who could put up the greatest talk.
+So all Roman mammas and matrons had their boys study rhetoric. The
+father of Seneca had a school of oratory where rich Roman youths were
+taught to mouth in orotund and gesticulate in curves. He must have been
+a pretty good teacher, for he had two extraordinary sons, one of whom is
+mentioned in the Bible, and a most exemplary daughter.
+
+Oratory as an end we now regard as an unworthy art. The first requisite
+is to feel deeply--to have a message--and then if you are a person of
+fair intelligence and in good health, you'll impress your hearers. But
+to hire out to impress people with another's theme is to be a
+pettifogger, and the genus pettifogger has nearly had his day.
+
+History moves in circles. The Chicago Common Council, weary of rhetoric,
+has recently declined to listen to paid attorneys; but any citizen who
+speaks for himself and his neighbors can come before the Council and
+state his case.
+
+Chief Justice Fuller has given it as his opinion that there will come a
+day in America when damage-cases will be taken care of by an automatic
+tribunal, without the help of lawyers. And as a man fills out a request
+for a money-order at the Post-Office, so will he file his claim for
+damages, and it will have attention. The contingent fee will yet be a
+misdemeanor. Also, it will be possible for plain citizens to be able to
+go before a Court of Equity and be heard without regard to law and
+precedent and attorney's quillets and quibbles, which so often hamper
+justice. Justice should be cheap and easy, instead of costly and
+complex.
+
+Evidently the Chief Justice had in mind the usages in the time of King
+Alfred, when the barrister was an employee of the court, and his
+business was to get the facts and then explain them to the King in the
+fewest possible words.
+
+Alfred considered a paid advocate, or even a counselor, as without the
+pale, and such men were never allowed at court. If the barrister
+accepted a fee from a man suing for justice, he was disbarred.
+
+Finally, however, the practise of feeing in order to renew the zeal of a
+barrister grew so that it had to be tolerated, because things we can't
+suppress we license, and a pocket was placed on each barrister's back
+between his shoulders where he could not reach it without taking off his
+gown, and into this pocket clients were allowed slyly to slip such
+gratuities as they could afford.
+
+But the general practise of the client paying the barrister, instead of
+the court, was not adopted for several hundred years later, and then it
+was regarded as an expeditious move to keep down litigation and punish
+the client for being fool enough not to settle his own troubles.
+
+In England the rudimentary pocket still survives, like the buttons on
+the back of a coat, which were once used to support the sword-belt.
+
+In America we have done away with wigs and gowns for attorneys, but
+attorneys are still regarded as attaches of the court, even though
+one-half of them, according to Judge DeCourcy of Boston, are engaged
+most of the time in attempts to bamboozle and befog the judge and jury
+and defeat the ends of justice. Likewise, we still use the word "Court,"
+signifying the place where lives royalty, even for the dingy office of a
+country J. P., where sawdust spittoons are the bric-a-brac and
+patent-office reports loom large, and justice is dispensed with. We now
+also commonly call the man "the Court."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alfred was filled with a desire to educate, and to this end organized a
+school at the Ox Ford, where his friend Asser taught. This school was
+the germ of the University of Oxford. Attached to this school was a
+farm, where the boys were taught how to sow and plant and reap to the
+best advantage. Here they also bred and raised horses and cattle, and
+the care of livestock was a part of the curriculum. It was the first
+College of Agriculture.
+
+It comes to us as somewhat of a surprise to see how we are now going
+back to simplicity, and the agricultural college is being given the due
+and thoughtful consideration which it deserves. Twenty years ago our
+agricultural college was considered more or less of a joke, but now that
+which adds greatly to the wealth of the nation, and the happiness and
+well-being of the people, is looked upon as worthy of our support and
+highest respect.
+
+Up to the time of Alfred, England had no navy. For the government to own
+ships seemed quite preposterous, since the people had come to England to
+stay, and were not marauders intent on exploitation and conquest, like
+the Norsemen.
+
+But after Alfred had vanquished the Danes and they had settled down as
+citizens, he took their ships, refitted them, built more and said: "No
+more marauders shall land on these shores. If we are threatened we will
+meet the enemy on the sea."
+
+In a few years along came a fleet of marauding Norse. The English ships
+on the lookout gave the alarm, and England's navy put out to meet them.
+The enemy were taken by surprise, and the fate that five hundred years
+later was to overtake the Spanish Armada, was theirs.
+
+From that time to this, England has had a navy that has gradually grown
+in power.
+
+Let no one imagine that peace and rest came to Alfred. His life was a
+battle, for not only did he have to fight the Danes, but he had to
+struggle with ignorance, stupidity and superstition at home. To lead men
+out of captivity is a thankless task. They always ask when you take away
+their superstition, "What are you going to give us in return?" They do
+not realize that superstition is a disease, and that to give another
+disease in return is not nice, necessary or polite.
+
+
+Alfred died, at the age of fifty-two, worn out with his ceaseless labors
+of teaching, building, planning, inventing and devising methods and
+means for the betterment and benefit of his people.
+
+After his death, the Danes were successful, and Canute became King of
+England. But he was proud to be called an Englishman, and declared he
+was no longer a Dane.
+
+And so England captured him.
+
+Then came the Norman William, claiming the throne by right of
+succession, and successfully battling for it; but the English people
+reckoned the Conqueror as of their own blood--their kith and kin--and so
+he was. He issued an edict forbidding any one to call him or his
+followers "Norman," "Norse" or "Norsemen," and declared there was a
+United England. And so he lived and died an Englishman; and after him no
+ruler, these nine hundred years, has ever sat on the throne of the
+Engles by right of conquest.
+
+Both Canute and William recognized and prized the worth of Alfred's
+rule. The virtues of Alfred are the virtues that have made it possible
+for the Teutonic tribes to girdle the globe. It was Alfred who taught
+the nobility of industry, service, education, patience, loyalty,
+persistence, and the faith and hope that abide. By pen, tongue, and best
+of all by his life, Alfred taught the truths which we yet hold dear. And
+by this sign shall ye conquer!
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: ERASMUS]
+
+ERASMUS
+
+
+     We see not a few mortals who, striving to emulate this divine
+     virtue with more zeal than success, fall into a feeble and
+     disjointed loquacity, obscuring the subject and burdening the
+     wretched ears of their hearers with a vacant mass of words and
+     sentences crowded together beyond all possibility of enjoyment. And
+     writers who have tried to lay down the principles of this art have
+     gained no other result than to display their own poverty while
+     expounding abundance.
+
+     --_Erasmus on "Preaching"_
+
+
+ERASMUS
+
+Erasmus was born in Fourteen Hundred Sixty-six, and died in Fifteen
+Hundred Thirty-six. No thinker of his time influenced the world more. He
+stood at a pivotal point, and some say he himself was the intellectual
+pivot of the Renaissance.
+
+The critics of the times were unanimous in denouncing him--which fact
+recommends him to us.
+
+Several Churchmen, high in power, live in letters for no other reason
+than because they coupled their names with that of Erasmus by reviling
+him. Let the critics take courage--they may outwit oblivion yet, even
+though they do nothing but carp. Only let them be wise, and carp, croak,
+cough, cat-call and sneeze at some one who is hitching his wagon to a
+star. This way immortality lies. Erasmus was a monk who flocked by
+himself, and found diversion in ridiculing monkery. Also, he was the
+wisest man of his day. Wisdom is the distilled essence of intuition,
+corroborated by experience. Learning is something else. Usually, the
+learned man is he who has delved deep and soared high. But few there be
+who dive, that fish the murex up. Among those who soar, the ones who
+come back and tell us of what they have seen, are few. Like Lazarus,
+they say nothing.
+
+Erasmus had a sense of humor. Humor is a life-preserver and saves you
+from drowning when you jump off into a sea of sermons. A theologian who
+can not laugh is apt to explode--he is very dangerous. Erasmus, Luther,
+Beecher, Theodore Parker, Roger Williams, Joseph Parker--all could
+laugh. Calvin, Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards never gurgled in glee,
+nor chortled softly at their own witticisms--or those of others.
+
+Erasmus smiled. He has been called the Voltaire of his day. What
+Rousseau was to Voltaire, Luther was to Erasmus. Well did Diderot say
+that Erasmus laid the egg which Luther hatched. Erasmus wrote for the
+educated, the refined, the learned--Luther made his appeal to the plain
+and common mind.
+
+Luther split the power of the Pope. Erasmus thought it a calamity to do
+so, because he believed that strife of sects tended to make men lose
+sight of the one essential in religion--harmony--and cause them simply
+to struggle for victory. Erasmus wanted to trim the wings of the papal
+office and file its claws--Luther would have destroyed it. Erasmus
+considered the Church a very useful and needful organization--for social
+reasons. It tended to regulate life and conduct and made men
+"decentable." It should be a school of ethics, and take a leading part
+in every human betterment. Man being a gregarious animal, the
+congregation is in the line of natural desire. The excuse for gathering
+together is religion--let them gather. The Catholic Church is not two
+thousand years old--it is ten thousand years old and goes back to Egypt.
+The birth of Jesus formed merely a psychosis in the Church's existence.
+
+Here he parted company with Luther, who was a dogmatist and wanted to
+debate his ninety-five theses. Erasmus laughed at all religious
+disputations and called them mazes that led to cloudland. Very
+naturally, people said he was not sincere, since the mediocre mind never
+knows that only the paradox is true. Hence Erasmus was hated by
+Catholics and denounced by Protestants.
+
+The marvel is that the men with fetters and fagots did not follow him
+with a purpose. Fifty years later he would have been snuffed out. But at
+that time Rome was so astonished to think that any one should criticize
+her that she lost breath. Besides, it was an age of laughter, of revolt,
+of contests of wit, of love-bouts and love-scrapes, and the monks who
+lapsed were too many to discipline. Everybody was busy with his own
+affairs. Happy time!
+
+Erasmus was part and parcel of the Italian Renaissance. Over his head
+blazes, in letters that burn, the unforgetable date, Fourteen Hundred
+Ninety-two. He was a part of the great unrest, and he helped cause the
+great unrest. Every great awakening, every renaissance, is an age of
+doubt. An age of conservatism is an age of moss, of lichen, of rest,
+rust and ruin. We grow only as we question. As long as we are sure that
+the present order is perfect, we button our collars behind, a thing
+which Columbus, Luther, Melanchthon, Erasmus, Michelangelo, Leonardo and
+Gutenberg, who all lived at this one time, never did. The year of
+Fourteen Hundred Ninety-two, like the year Seventeen Hundred
+Seventy-six, was essentially "infidelic," just as the present age is
+constructively iconoclastic. We are tearing down our barns to build
+greater. The railroadman who said, "I throw an engine on the scrap-heap
+every morning before breakfast," expressed a great truth. We are
+discarding bad things for good ones, and good things for better ones.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rotterdam has the honor of being the birthplace of Erasmus. A storm of
+calumny was directed at him during his life concerning the irregularity
+of his birth. "He had no business to be born at all," said a proud
+prelate, as he gathered his robes close around his prebendal form. But
+souls knock at the gates of life for admittance, and the fact that a man
+exists is proof of his right to live. The word "illegitimate" is not in
+the vocabulary of God. If you do not know that, you have not read His
+instructive and amusing works.
+
+The critics variously declared the mother of Erasmus was a royal lady, a
+physician's only daughter, a kitchen-wench, a Mother Superior--all
+according to the prejudices preconceived. In one sense she was surely a
+Mother Superior--let the lies neutralize one another.
+
+The fact is, we do not know who the mother of Erasmus was. All we know
+is that she was the mother of Erasmus. Here history halts. Her son once
+told Sir Thomas More that she was married to a luckless nobody a few
+months after the birth of her first baby, and amid the cares of raising
+a goodly brood of nobodies on a scant allowance of love and rye-bread,
+she was glad to forget her early indiscretions. Not so the father. The
+debated question of whether a man really has any parental love is
+answered here.
+
+The father of Erasmus was Gerhard von Praet, and the child was called
+Gerhard Gerhards--or the son of Gerhard. The father was a man of
+property and held office under the State. At the time of the birth of
+the illustrious baby, Gerhard von Praet was not married, and it is
+reasonable to suppose that the reason he did not wed the mother of his
+child was because she belonged to a different social station. In any
+event the baby was given the father's name, and every care and attention
+was paid the tiny voyager. This father was as foolish as most fond
+mothers, for he dreamed out a great career for the motherless one, and
+made sundry prophecies.
+
+At six years of age the child was studying Latin, when he should have
+been digging in a sand-pile. At eight he spoke Dutch and French, and
+argued with his nurse in Greek as to the value of buttermilk.
+
+In the meantime the father had married and settled down in honorable
+obscurity as a respectable squire. Another account has it that he became
+a priest. Anyway, the little maverick was now making head alone in a
+private school.
+
+When the lad was thirteen the father died, leaving a will in which he
+provided well for the child. The amount of property which by this will
+would have belonged to our hero when he became of age would have
+approximated forty thousand dollars.
+
+Happily, the trustees of the fund were law-wolves. They managed to break
+the will, and then they showed the court that the child was a waif, and
+absolutely devoid of legal rights of any and every kind. He was then
+committed to an orphan asylum to be given "a right religious education."
+It's a queer old world, Terese, and what would have become of Gerhard
+Gerhards had he fallen heir to his father's titles and estate, no man
+can say. He might have accumulated girth and become an honored
+burgomaster. As it was he became powder-monkey to a monk, and scrubbed
+stone floors and rushed the growler for cowled and pious prelates.
+
+Then he did copying for the Abbe, and proved himself a boy from Missouri
+Valley.
+
+He was small, blue-eyed, fair-haired, slender, slight, with a long nose
+and sharp features. "With this nose," said Albrecht Durer, many years
+later, "he successfully hunted down everything but heresy."
+
+At eighteen he became a monk and proudly had his flaxen poll tonsured.
+His superior was fond of him, and prophesied that he would become a
+bishop or something.
+
+Children do not suffer much, nor long. God is good to them. They slide
+into an environment and accept it. This child learned to dodge the big
+bare feet of the monks--got his lessons, played a little, worked his wit
+against their stupidity, and actually won their admiration--or as much
+of it as men who are alternately ascetics and libertines can give.
+
+It was about this time that the lad was taunted with having no name.
+"Then I'll make one for myself," was his proud answer.
+
+Having entered now upon his novitiate, he was allowed to take a new
+name, and being dead to the world, the old one was forgotten.
+
+They called him Brother Desiderius, or the Desired One. He then amended
+this Latin name with its Greek equivalent, Erasmus, which means
+literally the Well-Beloved. As to his pedigree, or lack of it, he was
+needlessly proud. It set him apart as different. He had half-brothers
+and half-sisters, and these he looked upon as strangers. When they came
+to see him, he said, "There is no relationship between souls save that
+of the spirit."
+
+His sense of wit came in when he writes to a friend: "Two parents are
+the rule; no parents the exception; a mother but no father is not
+uncommon; but I had a father and never had a mother. I was nursed by a
+man, and educated by monks, all of which shows that women are more or
+less of a superfluity in creation. God Himself is a man. He had one son,
+but no daughters. The cherubim are boys. All of the angels are
+masculine, and so far as Holy Writ informs us, there are no women in
+heaven."
+
+That it was a woman, however, to whom Erasmus wrote this, lets him out
+on the severity of the argument. He was a joker. And while women did not
+absorb much of his time, we find that on his travels he often turned
+aside to visit with intellectual women--no other kind interested him, at
+all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To belong to a religious order is to be owned by it. You trade freedom
+for protection. The soul of Erasmus revolted at life in a monastery. He
+hated the typical monks--their food, their ways of life, their
+sophistry, their stupidity. To turn glutton and welcome folly as a
+relief from religion, he said, was the most natural thing in the world,
+when men had once started in to lead an unnatural life. Good food,
+daintily served, only goes with a co-ed mental regimen. Men eat with
+their hands, out of a pot, unless women are present to enforce the
+decencies. Women alone are a little more to be pitied than men alone, if
+'t were possible.
+
+Through emulation does the race grow. Sex puts men and women on their
+good behavior.
+
+Man's desire for power has caused him to enslave himself. Writes
+Erasmus, "In a monastery, no one is on his good behavior, except when
+there are visitors, but I am told that this is so in families."
+
+The greasy, coarse cooking brought on a nice case of dyspepsia for poor
+Erasmus--a complaint from which he was never free as long as he lived.
+His system was too fine for any monastic general trough, but he found a
+compensation in having his say at odd times and sundry. At one time we
+hear of his printing on a card this legend, "If I owned hell and a
+monastery, I would sell the monastery and reside in hell." Thereby did
+Erasmus supply General Tecumseh Sherman the germ of a famous orphic.
+Sherman was a professor in a college at Baton Rouge before the War, and
+evidently had moused in the Latin classics to a purpose.
+
+Connected with the monastery where Erasmus lived was a printing-outfit.
+Our versatile young monk learned the case, worked the ink-balls,
+manipulated the lever, and evidently dispelled, in degree, the monotony
+of the place by his ready pen and eloquent tongue. When he wrote, he
+wrote for his ear. All was tested by reading the matter aloud. At that
+time great authors were not so wise or so clever as printers, and it
+fell to the lot of Erasmus to improve upon the text of much of the copy
+that was presented.
+
+Erasmus learned to write by writing; and among modern prose-writers he
+is the very first who had a distinct literary style. His language is
+easy, fluid, suggestive. His paragraphs throw a shadow, and are pregnant
+with meaning beyond what the lexicon supplies. This is genius--to be
+bigger than your words.
+
+If Erasmus had been possessed of a bit more patience and a jigger of
+diplomacy, he would have been in line for a bishopric. That thing which
+he praised so lavishly, Folly, was his cause of failure and also his
+friend.
+
+At twenty-six he was the best teacher and the most clever scholar in the
+place. Also, he was regarded as a thorn in the side of the monkery,
+since he refused to take it seriously. He protested that no man ever
+became a monk of his own accord--he was either thrust into a religious
+order by unkind kinsmen or kicked into it by Fate.
+
+And then comes the Bishop of Cambray, with an attack of literary
+scabies, looking for a young religieux who could correct his manuscript.
+The Bishop was going to Paris after important historical facts, and must
+have a competent secretary. Only a proficient Latin and Greek scholar
+would do. The head of the monastery recommended Erasmus, very much as
+Artemus Ward volunteered all of his wife's relatives for purposes of
+war.
+
+Andrew Carnegie once, when about to start for Europe, said to his
+ironmaster, Bill Jones, "I am never so happy or care-free, Bill, as when
+on board ship, headed for Europe, and the shores of Sandy Hook fade from
+sight."
+
+And Bill solemnly replied, "Mr. Carnegie, I can truthfully say for
+myself and fellow-workers, that we are never so happy and care-free as
+when you are on board ship, headed for Europe."
+
+Very properly Mr. Carnegie at once raised Bill's salary five thousand a
+year.
+
+The Carthusian Brothers parted with Erasmus in pretended tears, but the
+fact was they were more relieved than bereaved.
+
+And then began the travels of Erasmus.
+
+The Bishop was of middle age, with a dash of the cavalier in his blood,
+which made him prefer a saddle to the cushions of a carriage. And so
+they started away on horseback, the Bishop ahead, followed at a
+discreet distance by Erasmus, his secretary; and ten paces behind with
+well-loaded panniers, rode a servant as rearguard.
+
+To be free and face the world and on a horse! Erasmus lifted up his
+heart in a prayer of gratitude. He said that it was the first feeling of
+thankfulness he had ever experienced, and it was the first thing which
+had ever come to him worth gratitude.
+
+And so they started for Paris.
+
+Erasmus looked back and saw the monastery, where he had spent ten
+arduous years, fade from view.
+
+It was the happiest moment he had ever known. The world lay beyond.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Bishop of Cambray introduced Erasmus to a mode of life for which he
+was eminently fitted. It consisted in traveling, receiving honors,
+hospitality and all good things in a material way, and giving his
+gracious society in return. Doors flew open on the approach of the good
+Bishop. Everywhere he went a greeting was assured. He was a
+Churchman--that was enough. Erasmus shared in the welcomes, for he was
+handsome in face and figure, had a ready tongue, and could hold his own
+with the best.
+
+Europe was then dotted with monasteries, nunneries and other church
+institutions. Their remains are seen there yet--one is really never out
+of sight of a steeple. But the exclusive power of the Church is gone,
+and in many places there are only ruins where once were cloisters,
+corridors, chapels, halls and gardens teeming with life and industry.
+
+The "missions" of California were founded on the general plan of the
+monasteries of Europe. They afforded a lodging for the night--a
+resting-place for travelers--and were a radiatory center of
+education--at least all of the education that then existed.
+
+In California these "missions" were forty miles apart--one day's
+journey. In France, Italy and Germany they were, say, ten miles apart.
+Between them, trudged or rode on horseback or in carriages, a
+picturesque array of pilgrims, young and old, male and female. To go
+anywhere and be at home everywhere, this was the happy lot of a church
+dignitary.
+
+The parts in church institutions were interchangeable; and by a system
+of migration, life was made agreeable, and reasonable honesty was
+assured. I have noticed that certain Continental banking institutions,
+with branches in various cities, keep their cashiers rotating. The idea
+was gotten from Rome. Rome was very wise--her policies were the
+crystallizations of the world-wisdom of centuries. The church-militant
+battle-cry, "The world for Christ," simply means man's lust for
+ownership, with Christ as an excuse. If ever there was a man-made
+institution, it is the Church. To control mankind has been her desire,
+and the miracle is that, with a promise of heaven, a threat of hell, and
+a firm grip on temporal power--social and military--she was ever induced
+partially to loosen her grip. To such men as Savonarola, Luther and
+Erasmus, do we owe our freedom. These men cared more for truth than for
+power, and their influence was to disintegrate the ankylosis of custom
+and make men think. And a thought is mental dynamite. No wonder the
+Church has always feared and hated a thinker!
+
+The Bishop of Cambray was not a thinker. Fenelon, who was later to
+occupy his office, was to make the bishopric of Cambray immortal.
+Conformists die, but heretics live on forever. They are men who have
+redeemed the cross and rendered the gallows glorious.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And so the Bishop of Cambray and his little light-haired secretary fared
+forth to fame and fortune--the Bishop to be remembered because he had a
+secretary, and the secretary to be remembered because he grew into a
+great teacher.
+
+At each stopping-place the Bishop said mass--the workers, students and
+novitiates quitting their tasks to hear the words of encouragement from
+the lips of the great man. Occasionally Erasmus was pushed forward to
+say a few words, by the Bishop, who had to look after his own personal
+devotions. The assembled friends liked the young man--he was so bright
+and witty and free from cant. They even laughed out loud, and so, often
+two smiles were made to grow where there were no smiles before.
+
+Leisurely they rode--stopping at times for several days at places where
+the food and drink were at their best, and the society sulphide. At
+nunneries and monasteries were always guest-chambers for the great, and
+they were usually occupied.
+
+Thus it was that every church-house was a sort of university, depending
+of course on the soul-size of the Superior or Abbe. These constant
+journeyings and pilgrimages served in lieu of the daily paper, the
+Western Union Telegraph, and the telephone. Things have slipped back, I
+fear me, for now Mercury merely calls up his party on the long-distance,
+instead of making a personal visit--the Angel Gabriel as well. We save
+time, but we miss the personal contact.
+
+The monastic impulse was founded on a human need. Like most good things,
+it has been sadly perverted; but the idea of a sanctuary for stricken
+souls--a place of refuge, where simplicity, service and useful endeavor
+rule--will never die from out the human heart. The hospice stands for
+hospitality, but we have now only a hotel and a hospital.
+
+The latter stands for iodoform, carbolic acid and formaldehyde; the
+former often means gold, glitter, gluttony and concrete selfishness,
+with gout on one end, paresis at the other and Bright's Disease between.
+
+The hospice was a part of the monastery. It was a home for the homeless.
+There met men of learning--men of wit--men of brains and brawn. You
+entered and were at home. There was no charge--you merely left something
+for the poor.
+
+Any man who has the courage, and sufficient faith in humanity to install
+the hospice system in America will reap a rich reward. If he has the
+same faith in his guests that Judge Lindsey has in his bad boys, he will
+succeed; but if he hesitates, defers, doubts, and begins to plot and
+plan, the Referee in Bankruptcy will beckon.
+
+The early universities grew out of the monastic impulse. Students came
+and went, and the teachers were a part of a great itinerancy. Man is a
+migratory animal. His evolution has come about through change of
+environment. Transplantation changes weeds into roses, and the
+forebears of all the products of our greenhouses and gardens once grew
+in hedgerows or open fields, choked by unkind competition or trampled
+beneath the feet of the heedless.
+
+The advantage of university life is in the transplantation. Get the boy
+out of his home environment; sever the cord that holds him to his
+"folks"; let him meet new faces, see new sights, hear new sermons, meet
+new teachers, and his efforts at adjustment will work for growth.
+Alexander Humboldt was right--one year at college is safer than four.
+One year inspires you--four may get you pot-bound with pedant prejudice.
+
+The university of the future will be industrial--all may come and go.
+All men will be university men, and thus the pride in an imaginary
+proficiency will be diluted to a healthful attenuation. To work and to
+be useful--not merely to memorize and recite--will be the only
+initiation.
+
+The professors will be interchangeable, and the rotation of intellectual
+crops will work for health, harmony and effectiveness.
+
+The group, or college, will be the unit, not the family. The college was
+once a collection of men and women grouped for a mutual intellectual,
+religious or economic good.
+
+To this group or college idea will we return.
+
+Man is a gregarious animal, and the Christ-thought of giving all, and
+receiving all, some day in the near future will be found practical. The
+desire for exclusive ownership must be sloughed.
+
+Universities devoted to useful work--art in its highest sense: head,
+hand and heart--will yet dot the civilized world. The hospice will
+return higher up the scale, and the present use of the word
+"hospitality" will be drowned in its pink tea, choked with
+cheese-wafers, rescued from the nervous clutch of the managing mama, and
+the machinations of the chaperone. A society built on the sands of
+silliness must give way to the universal university, and the strong,
+healthful, helpful, honest companionship and comradeship of men and
+women prevail.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The objective point of the Bishop was the University of Paris.
+
+Here in due time, after their lingering ride from Holland, the Bishop
+and his secretary arrived. They settled down to literary work; and in
+odd hours the beauty and wonder of Paris became familiar to Erasmus. The
+immediate task completed, the Bishop proposed going home, and thought,
+of course, his secretary was a fixture and would go with him. But
+Erasmus had evolved ideas concerning his own worth. He had already
+collected quite a little circle of pupils about him, and these he held
+by his glowing personality. At this time the vow of poverty was looked
+upon lightly. And anyway, poverty is a comparative term. There were
+monks who always trudged afoot with staff and bag, but not so our
+Erasmus. He was Bishop of the Exterior.
+
+The Bishop of Cambray, on parting with Erasmus, thought so much of him
+that he presented him with the horse he rode.
+
+Erasmus used to take short excursions about Paris, taking with him a
+student and often two, as servants or attendants. Teaching then was
+mostly on an independent basis, each pupil picking his tutors and paying
+them direct.
+
+Among other pupils whom Erasmus had at Paris was a young Englishman by
+the name of Lord Mountjoy. A great affection arose between these two,
+and when Lord Mountjoy returned to England he was accompanied by
+Erasmus.
+
+At London, Erasmus met on absolute equality many of the learned men of
+England. We hear of his dining at the house of the Lord Mayor of London,
+and there meeting Sir Thomas More and crossing swords with that worthy
+in wordy debate.
+
+Erasmus seems to have carried the "New Humanism" into England. It has
+been said that the world was discovered in Fourteen Hundred Ninety-two,
+but Man was not discovered until Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six. This is
+hardly literal truth, since in Fourteen Hundred Ninety-two, there was a
+theologico-scientific party of young men in all of the European
+Universities who were reviving the Greek culture, and with it arose the
+idea of the dignity and worth of Man. To this movement Erasmus brought
+the enthusiasm of his nature. Perhaps he did as much as any other to fan
+the embers which grew into a flame called "The Reformation."
+
+He constantly ridiculed the austerities, pedantry, priggishness and
+sciolism of the old-time Churchmen, and when a new question came up, he
+asked, "What good is there in it?"
+
+Everything was tested by him in the light of commonsense. What end does
+it serve and how is humanity to be served or benefited by it?
+
+Thus the good of humanity, not the glory of God, was the shibboleth of
+this rising party.
+
+Erasmus gave lectures and taught at Cambridge, Oxford and London.
+
+Italy had been the objective point of his travels, but England had, for
+a time, turned him aside. In the year Fifteen Hundred, Erasmus landed at
+Calais, saddled his horse, and started southward, visiting, writing,
+teaching, lecturing, as he went. The stimulus of meeting new people and
+seeing new scenes, all tended toward intellectual growth.
+
+The genius monk made mendicancy a fine art, and Erasmus was heir to most
+of the instincts of the order. His associations with the laity were
+mostly with the nobility or those with money. He was not slow in asking
+for what he wanted, whether it was a fur-lined cloak, a saddle, top
+riding-boots, a horse, or a prayer-book. He made no apologies--but took
+as his divine right all that he needed. And he justified himself in
+taking what he needed by the thought that he gave all he had. He
+supplied Sir Thomas More the germ of "Utopia," for Erasmus pictured
+again and again an ideal society where all would have enough, and none
+suffer from either want or surfeit--a society in which all would be at
+home wherever they went.
+
+Had Erasmus seen fit to make England his home, his head, too, would have
+paid the forfeit, as did the head that wrote "Utopia." What an absurd
+use to make of a head--to separate it from the man's body!
+
+Italy received Erasmus with the same royal welcome that England had
+supplied. Scholars who knew the Greek and Roman classics were none too
+common. Most monks stopped with the writings of the saints, as South
+Americans balk at long division.
+
+Erasmus could illumine an initial, bind a book, give advice to printers,
+lecture to teachers, give lessons on rhetoric and oratory, or entertain
+the ladies with recitations from the Iliad and the Odyssey.
+
+So he went riding back and forth, stopping at cities and towns,
+nunneries and monasteries, until his name became a familiar one to every
+scholar of England, Germany and Italy. Scholarly, always a learner,
+always a teacher, gracious, direct, witty, men began to divide on an
+Erasmus basis. There were two parties: those for Erasmus and those
+against him.
+
+In Fifteen Hundred Seventeen, came Luther with his bombshells of
+defiance. This fighting attitude was far from Erasmus--his weapons were
+words. Between bouts with prelates, Luther sent a few thunderbolts at
+Erasmus, accusing him of vacillation and cowardice. Erasmus replied with
+dignity, and entered into a lengthy dispute with Melanchthon, Luther's
+friend, on the New Humanism which was finding form in revolution.
+
+Erasmus prophesied that by an easy process of evolution, through
+education, the monasteries would all become schools and workshops. He
+would not destroy them, but convert them into something different. He
+fell into disfavor with the Catholics, and was invited by Henry the
+Eighth to come to England and join the new religious regime. But this
+English Catholicism was not to the liking of Erasmus. What he desired
+was to reform the Church, not to destroy it or divide it.
+
+His affairs were becoming critical: monasteries where he had once been
+welcomed now feared to have him come near, lest they should be
+contaminated and entangled. It was rumored that warrants of arrest were
+out. He was invited to go to Rome and explain his position.
+
+Erasmus knew better than to acknowledge receipt of the letter. He headed
+his horse for Switzerland, the land of liberty. At Basel he stopped at
+the house of Froben, the great printer and publisher. He put his horse
+in the barn, unsaddled him, and said, "Froben, I've come to stay."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was mousing around the other day in a book that is somewhat disjointed
+and disconnected, and yet interesting--"The Standard Dictionary"--when I
+came across the word "scamp." It is a handy word to fling, and I am not
+sure but that it has been gently tossed once or twice in my direction.
+Condemnation is usually a sort of subtle flattery, so I'm not sad. To
+scamp means to cut short, to be superficial, slipshod, careless,
+indifferent--to say, "Let 'er go, who cares--this is good enough!" If
+anybody ever was a stickler for honest work, I am that bucolic party. I
+often make things so fine that only one man out of ten thousand can buy
+them, and I have to keep 'em myself.
+
+You know that, when you get an idea in your head, how everything you
+read contains allusions to the same thing. Knowledge is mucilaginous.
+Well, next day after I was looking up that pleasant word "scamp," I was
+reading in the Amusing Works of Erasmus, when I ran across the word
+again, but spelled in Dutch, thus, "schamp." Now Erasmus was a
+successful author, and he was also the best authority on paper, inks,
+bindings, and general bookmaking in Italy, Holland or Germany. Being a
+lover of learning, and listening to the lure of words, he never wallowed
+in wealth. But in his hunt for ideas he had a lot of fun. Kipling says,
+"There is no hunt equal to a man hunt." But Kip is wrong--to chase a
+thought is twice the sport. Erasmus chased ideas, and very naturally
+the preachers chased Erasmus--out of England, through France, down to
+Italy and then he found refuge at Basel with Froben, the great Printer
+and Publisher.
+
+Up in Frankfort was a writer-printer, who, not being able to answer the
+arguments of Erasmus, called him bad names. But this gentle pen-pusher
+in Frankfort, who passed his vocabulary at Froben's proofreader, Erasmus
+in time calls a "schamp," because he used cheap paper, cheap ink and
+close margins. Soon after, the word was carried to England and spelled
+"scamp"--a man who cheats in quality, weight, size and count. But the
+first use merely meant a printer who scamps his margins and so cheats on
+paper. I am sorry to see that Erasmus imitated his enemies and at
+times was ambidextrous in the use of the literary stinkpot. His
+vocabulary was equal to that of Muldoon. Erasmus refers to one of
+his critics as a "scenophylax-stikken," and another he calls a "schnide
+enchologion-schistosomus." And perhaps they may have been--I really do
+not know.
+
+But as an authority on books Erasmus can still be read. He it was who
+fixed the classic page margin--twice as wide at the top as on the
+inside; twice as wide at the outside as the top; twice as wide at the
+bottom as at the side. And any printer who varies from this displays his
+ignorance of proportion. Erasmus says, "To use poor paper marks the
+decline of taste, both in printer and in patron." After the death of
+Erasmus, Froben's firm failed because they got to making things cheap.
+"Compete in quality, not in price," was the working motto of Erasmus.
+
+All of the great bookmaking centers languished when they began to scamp.
+That worthy wordissimus at Frankfort who called Erasmus names gave up
+business and then the ghost, and Erasmus wrote his epitaph, and thus
+supplied Benjamin Franklin an idea--"Here lies an old book, its cover
+gone, its leaves torn, the worms at work on its vitals."
+
+The wisdom of doing good work still applies, just as it did in the days
+of Erasmus.
+
+Erasmus proved a very valuable acquisition to Froben. He became general
+editor and literary adviser of this great publishing-house, which was
+then the most important in the world.
+
+Besides his work as editor, Erasmus also stood sponsor for numerous
+volumes which we now know were written by literary nobodies, his name
+being placed on the title-page for commercial reasons.
+
+At that time and for two hundred years later, the matter of attributing
+a book to this man or that was considered a trivial affair. Piracies
+were prevalent. All printers revised the work of classic authors if they
+saw fit, and often they were specially rewarded for it by the Church. It
+was about this time that some one slipped that paragraph into the works
+of Josephus about Jesus. The "Annals" of Tacitus were similarly
+doctored, if in fact they were not written entire, during the Sixteenth
+Century. It will be remembered that the only two references in
+contemporary literature to Jesus are those in Josephus and Tacitus, and
+these the Church proudly points to yet.
+
+During the last few years of his life Erasmus accumulated considerable
+property. By his will he devised that this money should go to educate
+certain young men and women, grandchildren and nephews and nieces of his
+old friend, Johann Froben. He left no money for masses, after the usual
+custom of Churchmen, and during his last illness was not attended by a
+priest. For several years before his death he made no confessions and
+very seldom attended church service. He said, "I am much more proud of
+being a printer than a priest."
+
+A statue of Erasmus in bronze adorns one of the public squares in
+Rotterdam, and Basel and Freiburg have honored themselves, and him also,
+in like manner.
+
+As a sample of the subtle and keen literary style of Erasmus, I append
+the following from "In Praise of Folly:"
+
+     The happiest times of life are youth and old age, and this for no
+     reason but that they are the times most completely under the rule
+     of folly, and least controlled by wisdom. It is the child's freedom
+     from wisdom that makes it so charming to us; we hate a precocious
+     child. So women owe their charm, and hence their power, to their
+     "folley," that is, to their obedience to the impulse. But if,
+     perchance, a woman wants to be thought wise, she only succeeds in
+     being doubly a fool, as if one should train a cow for the
+     prize-ring, a thing wholly against Nature. A woman will be a woman,
+     no matter what mask she wear, and she ought to be proud of her
+     folly and make the most of it.
+
+     Is not Cupid, that first father of all religion, is not he stark
+     blind, that he can not himself distinguish of colors, so he would
+     make us as mope-eyed in judging falsely of all love concerns, and
+     wheedle us into a thinking that we are always in the right? Thus
+     every Jack sticks to his own Jill; every tinker esteems his own
+     trull; and the hobnailed suitor prefers Joan the milkmaid before
+     any of milady's daughters. These things are true, and are
+     ordinarily laughed at, and yet, however ridiculous they seem, it is
+     hence only that all societies receive their cement and
+     consolidation.
+
+     Fortune we still find favoring the blunt, and flushing the forward;
+     strokes smooth up fools, crowning all their undertakings with
+     success; but wisdom makes her followers bashful, sneaking and
+     timorous, and therefore you commonly see that they are reduced to
+     hard shifts; must grapple with poverty, cold and hunger; must lie
+     recluse, despised, and unregarded; while fools roll in money, are
+     advanced to dignities and offices, and in a word have the whole
+     world at command. If any one thinks it happy to be a favorite at
+     court, and to manage the disposal of places and preferments, alas,
+     this happiness is so far from being attainable by wisdom, that the
+     very suspicion of it would put a stop to advancement. Has any man a
+     mind to raise himself a good estate? Alas, what dealer in the world
+     would ever get a farthing, if he be so wise as to scruple at
+     perjury, blush at a lie, or stick at a fraud and overreaching?
+
+     It is the public charter of all divines, to mold and bend the
+     sacred oracles till they comply with their own fancy, spreading
+     them (as Heaven by its Creator) like a curtain, closing together,
+     or drawing them back, as they please. Thus, indeed, Saint Paul
+     himself minces and mangles some citations he makes use of, and
+     seems to wrest them to a different sense from what they were first
+     intended for, as is confessed by the great linguist, Saint Hieron.
+     Thus when that apostle saw at Athens the inscription of the altar,
+     he draws from it an argument for the proof of the Christian
+     religion; but leaving out great parts of the sentence, which
+     perhaps if fully recited might have prejudiced his cause, he
+     mentions only the last two words, namely, "To the Unknown God"; and
+     this, too, not without alteration, for the whole inscription runs
+     thus: "To the Gods of Asia, Europe, and Africa, to all Foreign and
+     Unknown Gods."
+
+     'T is an imitation of the same pattern, I will warrant you, that
+     our young divines, by leaving out four or five words in a place and
+     putting a false construction on the rest, can make any passage
+     serviceable to their own purpose; though from the coherence of what
+     went before, or follows after, the genuine meaning appears to be
+     either wide enough, or perhaps quite contradictory to what they
+     would thrust and impose upon it. In which knack the divines are
+     grown now so expert that the lawyers themselves begin to be jealous
+     of an encroachment on what was formerly their sole privilege and
+     practise. And indeed what can they despair of proving, since the
+     forementioned commentator did upon a text of Saint Luke put an
+     interpretation no more agreeable to the meaning or the place than
+     one contrary quality is to another.
+
+     But because it seemed expedient that man, who was born for the
+     transaction of business, should have so much wisdom as should fit
+     and capacitate him for the discharge of his duty herein, and yet
+     lest such a measure as is requisite for this purpose might prove
+     too dangerous and fatal, I was advised with for an antidote, and
+     prescribed this infallible receipt of taking a wife, a creature so
+     harmless and silly, and yet so useful and convenient, as might
+     mollify and make pliable the stiffness and morose humor of man. Now
+     that which made Plato doubt under what genus to rank woman, whether
+     among brutes or rational creatures, was only meant to denote the
+     extreme stupidness and Folly of that sex, a sex so unalterably
+     simple that for any one of them to thrust forward and reach at the
+     name of wise, is but to make themselves the more remarkable fools,
+     such an endeavor being but a swimming against the stream, nay, the
+     turning the course of Nature, the bare attempting whereof is as
+     extravagant as the effecting of it is impossible: for as it is a
+     trite proverb, that an ape will be an ape, though clad in purple,
+     so a woman will be a woman, that is, a fool, whatever disguise she
+     takes up. And yet there is no reason women should take it amiss to
+     be thus charged, for if they do but rightly consider, they will
+     find to Folly they are beholden for those endowments wherein they
+     so far surpass and excel Man; as first for their unparalleled
+     beauty, by the charm whereof they tyrannize over the greatest of
+     tyrants; for what is it but too great a smatch of wisdom that makes
+     men so tawny and thick-skinned, so rough and prickly-bearded, like
+     an emblem of winter or old age, while women have such dainty,
+     smooth cheeks, such a low, gentle voice, and so pure a complexion,
+     as if Nature had drawn them for a standing pattern of all symmetry
+     and comeliness? Besides, what greater or juster aim and ambition
+     have they than to please their husbands? In order whereunto they
+     garnish themselves with paint, washes, curls, perfumes, and all
+     other mysteries of ornament; yet, after all, they become acceptable
+     to them only for their Folly. Wives are always allowed their humor,
+     yet it is only in exchange for titillation and pleasure, which
+     indeed are but other names for Folly; as none can deny, who
+     consider how a man must dandle, and kittle, and play a hundred
+     little tricks for his helpmate.
+
+     But now some blood-chilled old men, that are more for wine than
+     wenching, will pretend that in their opinion the greatest happiness
+     consists in feasting and drinking. Grant it be so; yet certainly in
+     the most luxurious entertainments it is Folly must give the sauce
+     and relish to the daintiest delicacies; so that if there be no one
+     of the guests naturally fool enough to be played upon by the rest,
+     they must procure some comical buffoon, that by his jokes and
+     flouts and blunders shall make the whole company split themselves
+     with laughing; for to what purpose were it to be stuffed and
+     crammed with so many dainty bits, savory dishes, and toothsome
+     rarities, if after all this epicurism, the eyes, the ears, and the
+     whole mind of man, were not so well foisted and relieved with
+     laughing, jesting, and such like divertisements, which, like second
+     courses, serve for the promoting of digestion? And as to all those
+     shoeing-horns of drunkenness, the keeping every one his man, the
+     throwing high jinks, the filling of bumpers, the drinking two in a
+     hand, the beginning of mistresses' healths; and then the roaring
+     out of drunken catches, the calling in a fiddler, the leading out
+     every one his lady to dance, and such like riotous pastimes--these
+     were not taught or dictated by any of the wise men of Greece, but
+     of Gotham rather, being my invention, and by me prescribed as the
+     best preservative of health: each of which, the more ridiculous it
+     is, the more welcome it finds. And indeed, to jog sleepingly
+     through the world, in a dumpish, melancholy posture, can not
+     properly be said to live.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: BOOKER T. WASHINGTON]
+
+BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
+
+
+     There is something in human nature which always makes people reward
+     merit, no matter under what color of skin merit is found. I have
+     found, too, that it is the visible, the tangible, that goes a long
+     way in softening prejudices. The actual sight of a good house that
+     a Negro has built is ten times more potent than pages of discussion
+     about a house that he ought to build, or perhaps could build. The
+     individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in
+     the end, make his way regardless of his race.
+
+     --_Booker T. Washington_
+
+
+BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
+
+This is a story about a Negro. The story has the peculiarity of being
+true. The man was born a slave in Virginia. His mother was a slave, and
+was thrice sold in the market-place. This man is Booker T. Washington.
+
+The name Booker was a fanciful one given to the lad by playmates on
+account of his love for a certain chance dog-eared spelling-book. Before
+this he was only Mammy's Pet. The T. stood for nothing, but later a
+happy thought made it Taliaferro.
+
+Most Negroes, fresh from slavery, stood sponsor to themselves, and chose
+the name Washington; if not this, then Lincoln, Clay or Webster.
+
+This lad when but a child, being suddenly asked for his name, exclaimed,
+"Washington," and stuck to it.
+
+The father of this boy was a white man; but children always take the
+status of the mother, so Booker T. Washington is a Negro, and proud of
+it, as he should be, for he is standard by performance, even if not by
+pedigree.
+
+This Negro's father is represented by the sign _x_. By remaining in
+obscurity the fond father threw away his one chance for immortality. We
+do not even know his name, his social position, or his previous
+condition of turpitude. We assume he was happily married and
+respectable. Concerning him legend is silent and fable dumb. As for the
+child, we are not certain whether he was born in Eighteen Hundred
+Fifty-eight or Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine, and we know not the day or
+the month. There were no signs in the East.
+
+The mother lived in a log cabin of one room, say ten by twelve. This
+room was also a kitchen, for the mother was cook to the farmhands of her
+owner. There were no windows and no floor in the cabin save the
+hard-trodden clay. There were a table, a bench and a big fireplace.
+There were no beds, and the children at night simply huddled and cuddled
+in a pile of straw and rags in the corner. Doubtless they had enough
+food, for they ate the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table--who,
+by the way, wasn't so very rich.
+
+One of the earliest recollections of Black Baby Booker was of being
+awakened in the middle of the night by his mother to eat fried chicken.
+Imagine the picture--it is past midnight. No light in the room save the
+long, flickering streaks that dance on the rafters. Outside the wind
+makes mournful, sighing melody. In the corner huddled the children,
+creeping close together with intertwining arms to get the warmth of each
+little half-naked body.
+
+The dusky mother moves swiftly, deftly, half-frightened at her task.
+
+She has come in from the night with a chicken! Where did she get it?
+Hush! Where do you suppose oppressed colored people get chickens?
+
+She picks the bird--prepares it for the skillet--fries it over the
+coals. And then when it is done just right, Maryland style, this mother
+full of mother-love, an ingredient which God never omits, shakes each
+little piccaninny into wakefulness, and gives him the forbidden
+dainty--drumstick, wishbone, gizzard, white meat, or the part that went
+through the fence last--anything but the neck.
+
+Feathers, bones, waste are thrown into the fireplace, and what the
+village editor calls the "devouring element" hides all trace of the
+crime. Then all lie down to sleep, until the faint flush of pink comes
+into the East, and jocund day stands tiptoe on the mountain-tops.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This ex-slave remembers a strange and trying time, when all of the
+colored folk on the plantation were notified to assemble at the "big
+house." They arrived and stood around in groups, waiting and wondering,
+talking in whispers. The master came out, and standing on the veranda
+read from a paper in a tremulous voice. Then he told them that they were
+all free, and shook hands with each. Everybody cried. However, they were
+very happy in spite of the tears, for freedom to them meant heaven--a
+heaven of rest. Yet they bore only love towards their former owners.
+
+Most of them began to wander--they thought they had to leave their old
+quarters. In a few days the wisest came back and went to work just as
+usual. Booker T.'s mother quit work for just half a day.
+
+But in a little while her husband arrived--a colored man to whom she had
+been married years before, and who had been sold and sent away. Now he
+came and took her and the little monochrome brood, and they all started
+away for West Virginia, where they heard that colored men were hired to
+work in coalmines and were paid wages in real money.
+
+It took months and months to make the journey. They carried all their
+belongings in bundles. They had no horses--no cows--no wagon--they
+walked. If the weather was pleasant they slept out of doors; if it
+rained they sought a tobacco-shed, a barn, or the friendly side of a
+straw-stack. For food they depended on a little cornmeal they carried,
+with which the mother made pone-cakes in the ashes of a campfire. Kind
+colored people on the way replenished the meal-bag, for colored people
+are always generous to the hungry and needy if they have anything to be
+generous with. Then Providence sent stray, ownerless chickens their way,
+at times, just as the Children of Israel were fed on quails in the
+wilderness. Once they caught a 'possum--and there was a genuine banquet,
+where the children ate until they were as tight as drums.
+
+Finally they reached the promised land of West Virginia, and at the
+little village of Maiden, near Charleston, they stopped, for here were
+the coal mine and the salt-works where colored men were hired and paid
+in real money.
+
+Booker's stepfather found a job, and he also found a job for little
+Booker. They had nothing to live on until pay-day, so the kind man who
+owned the mine allowed them to get things at the store on credit. This
+was a brand-new experience--and no doubt they bought a few things they
+did not need, for prices and values were absolutely out of their realm.
+Besides, they did not know how much wages they were to get, neither
+could they figure the prices of the things they bought. At any rate,
+when pay-day came they were still in debt, so they saw no real
+money--certainly little Booker at this time of his life never did.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+General Lewis Ruffner owned the salt-works and the coalmine where little
+Booker worked. He was stern, severe, strict. But he believed Negroes
+were human beings, and there were those then who disputed the
+proposition.
+
+Ruffner organized a night-school for his helpers, and let a couple of
+his bookkeepers teach it. At this time there was not a colored person in
+the neighborhood who could spell cat, much less write his name. A few
+could count five. Booker must have been about ten years old when one day
+he boasted a bit of his skill in mathematics. The foreman told him to
+count the loads of coal as they came out of the mine. The boy started in
+bravely, "One--two--three--four--dere goes one, dere goes anoder,
+anoder, anoder, anoder, anoder!"
+
+The foreman laughed.
+
+The boy was abashed, then chagrined. "Send me to the night-school and in
+a month I'll show you how to count!"
+
+The foreman wrote the lad an order which admitted him to the
+night-school.
+
+But now there was another difficulty--the boy worked until nine o'clock
+at night, the last hour's work being to sweep out the office. The
+night-school began at nine o'clock and it was two miles away.
+
+The lad scratched his head and thought and thought. A great idea came to
+him--he would turn the office clock ahead half an hour. He could then
+leave at nine o'clock, and by running part of the way could get to
+school at exactly nine o'clock.
+
+The scheme worked for two days, when one of the clerks in the office
+said that a spook was monkeying with the clock. They tried the plan of
+locking the case, and all was well.
+
+Booker must have been about twelve years old, goin' on thirteen, when
+one day as he lay on his back in the coalmine, pushing out the broken
+coal with his feet, he overheard two men telling of a very wonderful
+school where colored people were taught to read, write and cipher--also,
+how to speak in public. The scholars were allowed to work part of the
+time to pay for their board.
+
+The lad crawled close in the darkness and listened to the conversation.
+He caught the names "Hampton" and "Armstrong." Whether Armstrong was the
+place and Hampton was the name of the man, he could not make out, but he
+clung to the names.
+
+Here was a school for colored people--he would go there! That night he
+told his mother about it. She laughed, patted his kinky head, and
+indulged him in his dream.
+
+She was only a poor black woman; she could not spell ab, nor count to
+ten, but she had a plan for her boy--he would some day be a preacher.
+
+This was the very height of her imagination--a preacher! Beyond this
+there was nothing in human achievement. The night-school came after a
+day of fourteen hours' work. Little Booker sat on a bench, his feet
+dangling about a foot from the floor. As he sat there one night trying
+hard to drink in knowledge, he went to sleep. He nodded, braced up,
+nodded again, and then pitched over in a heap on the floor, to the great
+amusement of the class, and his own eternal shame.
+
+The next day, however, as he was feeling very sorrowful over his sad
+experience, he heard that Mrs. Ruffner wanted a boy for general work at
+the big house.
+
+Here was a chance. Mrs. Ruffner was a Vermont Yankee, which meant that
+she had a great nose for dirt, and would not stand for a "sassy nigger."
+Her reputation had gone abroad, and of how she pinched the ears of her
+"help," and got them up at exactly a certain hour, and made them use
+soap and water at least once a day, and even compelled them to use a
+toothbrush; all this was history, well defined.
+
+Booker said he could please her, even if she was a Yankee. He applied
+for the job and got it, with wages fixed at a dollar a week, with a
+promise of twenty-five cents extra every week, if he did his work
+without talking back and breaking a tray of dishes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Genius! No hovel is safe from it!" says Whistler.
+
+Genius consists in doing the right thing without being told more than
+three times.
+
+Booker silently studied the awful Yankee woman to see what she really
+wanted. He finally decided that she desired her servants to have clean
+skins, fairly neat clothing, do things promptly, finish the job and keep
+still when they had nothing to say.
+
+He set himself to please her--and he did.
+
+She loaned him books, gave him a lead-pencil, and showed him how to
+write with a pen without smearing his hands and face with ink.
+
+He told her of his dream and asked about Armstrong and Hampton. She told
+him that Armstrong was the man and Hampton the place.
+
+At last he got her consent to leave and go to Hampton.
+
+When he started she gave him a comb, a toothbrush, two handkerchiefs and
+a pair of shoes. He had been working for her for a year, and she
+thought, of course, he saved his wages. He never told her that his money
+had gone to keep the family, because his stepfather had been on a strike
+and therefore out of work.
+
+So the boy started away for Hampton. It was five hundred miles away. He
+didn't know how far five hundred miles is--nobody does unless he has
+walked it.
+
+He had three dollars, so he gaily paid for a seat in the stage. At the
+end of the first day he was forty miles from home and out of money. He
+slept in a barn, and a colored woman handed him a ham-bone and a chunk
+of bread out of the kitchen-window, and looked the other way.
+
+He trudged on east--always and forever east--towards the rising sun.
+
+He walked weeks--months--years, he thought. He kept no track of the
+days. He carried his shoes as a matter of economy.
+
+Finally he sold the shoes for four dollars to a man who paid him ten
+cents cash down, and promised to pay the rest when they should meet at
+Hampton. Nearly forty years have passed and they have never met.
+
+On he walked--on and on--east, and always forever east.
+
+He reached the city of Richmond, the first big city he had ever seen.
+The wide streets--the sidewalks--the street-lamps entranced him. It was
+just like heaven. But he was hungry and penniless, and when he looked
+wistfully at a pile of cold fried chicken on a street-stand and asked
+the price of a drumstick, at the same time telling he had no money, he
+discovered he was not in heaven at all. He was called a lazy nigger and
+told to move on.
+
+Later he made the discovery that a "nigger" is a colored person who has
+no money.
+
+He pulled the piece of rope that served him for a belt a little tighter,
+and when no one was looking, crawled under a sidewalk and went to
+sleep, disturbed only by the trampling overhead.
+
+When he awoke he saw he was near the dock, where a big ship pushed its
+bowsprit out over the street. Men were unloading bags and boxes from the
+boat. He ran down and asked the mate if he could help. "Yes!" was the
+gruff answer.
+
+He got in line and went staggering under the heavy loads.
+
+He was little, but strong, and best of all, willing, yet he reeled at
+the work.
+
+"Have you had any breakfast? Yes, you liver-colored boy--you, I say,
+have you had your breakfast?"
+
+"No, sir," said the boy; "and no supper last night nor dinner
+yesterday!"
+
+"Well, I reckoned as much. Now you take this quarter and go over to that
+stand and buy you a drumstick, a cup of coffee and two fried cakes!"
+
+The lad didn't need urging. He took the money in his palm, went over to
+the man who the night before had called him a lazy nigger, and showing
+the silver, picked out his piece of chicken.
+
+The man hastened to wait on him, and said it was a fine day and hoped he
+was well.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Arriving at Hampton, this colored boy, who had tramped the long, weary
+miles, stood abashed before the big brick building which he knew was
+Hampton Institute.
+
+He was so little--the place was so big--by what right could he ask to be
+admitted?
+
+Finally he boldly entered, and in a voice meant to be firm, but which
+was very shaky, said, "I am here!" and pointed to the bosom of his
+hickory shirt.
+
+The Yankee woman motioned him to a chair. Negroes coming there were
+plentiful. Usually they wanted to live the Ideal Life. They had a call
+to preach--and the girls wanted to be music-teachers.
+
+The test was simple and severe: would they and could they do one useful
+piece of work well?
+
+Booker sat and waited, not knowing that his patience was being put to
+the test.
+
+Then Miss Priscilla, in a hard, Neill Burgess voice, "guessed" that the
+adjoining recitation-room needed sweeping and dusting. She handed Booker
+a broom and dust-cloth, motioned to the room, and went away.
+
+Oho! Little did she know her lad. The colored boy smiled to
+himself--sweeping and dusting were his specialties--he had learned the
+trade from a Yankee woman from Vermont! He smiled.
+
+Then he swept that room--moved every chair, the table, the desk. He
+dusted each piece of furniture four times. He polished each rung and
+followed around the baseboard on hands and knees.
+
+Miss Priscilla came back--pushed the table around and saw at once that
+the dirt had not been concealed beneath it. She took out her
+handkerchief and wiped the table top, then the desk.
+
+She turned, looked at the boy, and her smile met his half-suppressed
+triumphant grin.
+
+"You'll do," she said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+General Samuel C. Armstrong, the founder of Hampton Institute, and the
+grandfather of Tuskegee, was a white man who fought the South valiantly
+and well.
+
+He seems about the only man in the North who, at the close of the war,
+clearly realized that the war had just begun--that the real enemies were
+not subdued, and that these enemies were ignorance, superstition and
+incompetence.
+
+The pitiable condition of four million human beings, flung from slavery
+into freedom, thrown upon their own resources, with no thought of
+responsibility, and with no preparation for the change, meant for them
+only another kind of slavery.
+
+General Armstrong's heart went out to them--he desired to show them how
+to be useful, helpful, self-reliant, healthy. For the whites of the
+South he had only high regard and friendship. He, of all men, knew how
+they had suffered from the war--and he realized also that they had
+fought for what they believed was right. In his heart there was no hate.
+He resolved to give himself--his life--his fortune--his intellect--his
+love--his all, for the upbuilding of the South. He saw with the vision
+of a prophet that indolence and pride were the actual enemies of white
+and black alike. The blacks must be taught to work--to know the dignity
+of human labor--to serve society--to help themselves by helping others.
+He realized that there are no menial tasks--that all which serves is
+sacred.
+
+And this is the man who sowed the seeds of truth in the heart of the
+nameless black boy--Booker Washington. Armstrong's shibboleth, too, was,
+"With malice toward none, but with charity for all, let us finish the
+work God has given us to do."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I do not know very much about this subject of education, yet I believe I
+know as much about what others know about it as most people. I have
+visited the principal colleges of America and Europe, and the methods of
+Preparatory and High Schools are to me familiar. I know the
+night-schools of the cities, the "Ungraded Rooms," the Schools for
+Defectives, the educational schemes in prisons, the Manual-Training
+Schools, the New Education (first suggested by Socrates) as carried out
+by G. Stanley Hall, John Dewey, and dozens of other good men and women
+in America. I am familiar with the School for the Deaf at Malone, New
+York, and the School for the Blind at Batavia, where even the sorely
+stricken are taught to be self-sufficient, self-supporting and happy. I
+have tumbled down the circular fire-escape at Lapeer with the inmates of
+the Home of Epileptics, and heard the shouts of laughter from lips that
+never laughed before. I have seen the Jewish Manual Training School of
+Chicago transform Russian refugees into useful citizens--capable,
+earnest and excellent. I know a little about Swarthmore, Wellesley,
+Vassar, Radcliffe, and have put my head into West Point and Annapolis,
+and had nobody cry, "Genius!"
+
+Of Harvard, Yale and Princeton I know something, having done time in
+each. I have also given jobs to graduates of Oxford, Cambridge and
+Heidelberg, to my sorrow and their chagrin. This does not prove that
+graduates of the great universities are, as a rule, out of work, or that
+they are incompetent. It simply means that it is possible for a man to
+graduate at these institutions and secure his diploma and yet be a man
+who has nothing the world really wants, either in way of ideas or
+services.
+
+The reason that my "cum laude" friends did not like me, and the cause of
+my having to part with them--getting them a little free transportation
+from your Uncle George--was not because they lacked intelligence, but
+because they wanted to secure a position, while I simply offered them a
+job.
+
+They were like Cave-of-the-Winds of Oshkosh, who is an ice-cutter in
+August, and in winter is an out-of-door horticulturist--a hired man is
+something else.
+
+As a general proposition, I believe this will not now be disputed: the
+object of education is that a man may benefit himself by serving
+society.
+
+To benefit others, you must be reasonably happy: there must be animation
+through useful activity, good-cheer, kindness and health--health of mind
+and health of body. And to benefit society you must also have patience,
+persistency, and a firm determination to do the right thing, and to mind
+your own business so that others, too, may mind theirs. Then all should
+be tinctured with a dash of discontent with past achievements, so you
+will constantly put forth an effort to do more and better work.
+
+When what you have done in the past looks large to you, you haven't done
+much today.
+
+So there you get the formula of Education: health and happiness through
+useful activity--animation, kindness, good-cheer, patience, persistency,
+willingness to give and take, seasoned with enough discontent to prevent
+smugness, which is the scum that grows over every stagnant pond.
+
+Of course no college can fill this prescription--no institution can
+supply the ingredients--all that the college can do is to supply the
+conditions so that these things can spring into being. Plants need the
+sunlight--mushrooms are different.
+
+The question is, then, what teaching concern in America supplies the
+best quality of actinic ray?
+
+And I answer, Tuskegee is the place, and Booker Washington is the man.
+
+"What!" you exclaim. "The Ideal School a school for Negroes, instituted
+by a Negro, where only Negroes teach, and only Negroes are allowed to
+enter as students?"
+
+And the answer is, "Exactly so."
+
+At Tuskegee there are nearly two thousand students, and over one hundred
+fifty teachers. There are two classes of students--"day-school" and
+"night-school" students. The night-school students work all day at any
+kind of task they are called upon to do. They receive their board,
+clothing and a home--they pay no tuition, but are paid for their labor,
+the amount being placed to their credit, so when fifty dollars is
+accumulated they can enter as "day students."
+
+The "day students" make up the bulk of the scholars. Each pays fifty
+dollars a year. These all work every other day at manual labor or some
+useful trade.
+
+Tuskegee has fully twice as many applicants as it can accommodate; but
+there is one kind of applicant who never receives any favor. This is the
+man who says he has the money to pay his way, and wishes to take the
+academic course only. The answer always is: "Please go elsewhere--there
+are plenty of schools that want your money. The fact that you have money
+will not exempt you here from useful labor."
+
+This is exactly what every college in the world should say.
+
+The Tuskegee farm consists of about three thousand acres. There are four
+hundred head of cattle, about five hundred hogs, two hundred horses,
+great flocks of chickens, geese, ducks and turkeys, and many swarms of
+bees. It is the intention to raise all the food that is consumed on the
+place, and to manufacture all supplies. There are wagon-shops, a
+sawmill, a harness-shop, a shoe-shop, a tailor-shop, a printing-plant, a
+model laundry, a canning establishment. Finer fruit and vegetables I
+have never seen, and the thousands of peach, plum and apple trees, and
+the vast acreage of berries that have been planted, will surely some day
+be a goodly source of revenue.
+
+The place is religious, but not dogmatically so--the religion being
+merely the natural safety-valve for emotion. At Tuskegee there is no
+lacrimose appeal to confess your sins--they do better--they forget them.
+
+I never heard more inspiring congregational singing, and the use of the
+piano, organ, orchestra and brass band are important factors in the
+curriculum. In the chapel I spoke to an audience so attentive, so alert,
+so receptive, so filled with animation, that the whole place looked like
+a vast advertisement for Sozodont.
+
+No prohibitive signs are seen at Tuskegee. All is affirmative, yet it is
+understood that some things are tabu--tobacco, for instance, and strong
+drink, of course.
+
+We have all heard of Harvard Beer and Yale Mixture, but be it said in
+sober justice, Harvard runs no brewery, and Yale has no official brand
+of tobacco. Yet Harvard men consume much beer, and many men at Yale
+smoke. And if you want to see the cigarette-fiend on his native heath,
+you'll find him like the locust on the campus at Cambridge and New
+Haven. But if you want to see the acme of all cigarette-bazaars, just
+ride out of Boylston Street, Boston, any day at noon, and watch the boys
+coming out of the Institute of Technology.
+
+I once asked a Tech Professor if cigarette-smoking was compulsory in his
+institution. "Yes," he replied; "but the rule is not strictly enforced,
+as I know three students who do not smoke."
+
+Tuskegee stands for order, system, cleanliness, industry, courtesy and
+usefulness. There are no sink-holes around the place, no "back yards."
+Everything is beautiful, wholesome and sanitary. All trades are
+represented. The day is crammed so full of work from sunrise to sunset
+that there is no time for complaining, misery or faultfinding--three
+things that are usually born of idleness. At Tuskegee there are
+no servants. All of the work is done by the students and
+teachers--everybody works--everybody is a student, and all are teachers.
+
+We are all teachers, whether we will it or not--we teach by example, and
+all students who do good work are good teachers.
+
+When the Negro is able to do skilled work, he ceases to be a problem--he
+is a man. The fact that Alexandre Dumas was a Negro does not count
+against him in the world's assize.
+
+The old-time academic college, that cultivated the cerebrum and gave a
+man his exercise in an indoor gymnasium, or not at all, has ruined its
+tens of thousands. To have top--head and no lungs--is not wholly
+desirable. The student was made exempt from every useful thing, just as
+the freshly freed slave hoped and expected to be, and after four years
+it was often impossible for him to take up the practical lessons of
+life. He had gotten used to the idea of one set of men doing all the
+work and another set of men having the culture. To a large degree he
+came to regard culture as the aim of life. And when a man begins to
+pride himself upon his culture, he hasn't any to speak of. Culture must
+be merely incidental, and to clutch it is like capturing a butterfly:
+you do not secure the butterfly at all--you get only a grub.
+
+Let us say right here that there is only one way in which a Negro, or a
+white man, can ever make himself respected. Statute law will not do it;
+rights voted him by the State are of small avail; making demands will
+not secure the desired sesame. If we ever gain the paradise of freedom
+it will be because we have earned it--because we deserve it. A
+make-believe education may suffice for a white man--especially if he has
+a rich father, but a Negro who has to carve out his own destiny must be
+taught order, system, and quiet, persistent, useful effort.
+
+A college that has its students devote one-half their time to actual,
+useful work is so in line with commonsense that we are amazed that the
+idea had to be put into execution by the ex-slave as a life-saver for
+his disenfranchised race. Our great discoveries are always accidents: we
+work for one thing and get another. I expect that the day will come, and
+erelong, when the great universities of the world will have to put the
+Tuskegee Idea into execution in order to save themselves from being
+distanced by the Colored Race.
+
+If life were one thing and education another, it might be all right to
+separate them. Culture of the head over a desk, and indoor gymnastics
+for the body, are not the ideal, and that many succeed in spite of the
+handicap is no proof of the excellence of the plan. Ships that go around
+the world accumulate many barnacles, but barnacles as a help to the
+navigator are an iridescent dream.
+
+A little regular manual labor, rightly mixed with the mental, eliminates
+draw-poker, highballs, brawls, broils, Harvard Beer, Yale Mixture,
+Princeton Pinochle, Chippee dances, hazing, roistering, rowdyism and the
+bulldog propensity. The Heidelberg article of cocked hat and insolent
+ways is not produced at Tuskegee. At Tuskegee there is no place for
+those who lie in wait for insults and regard scrapping as a fine art. As
+for college athletics at the Orthodox Universities, only one man out of
+ten ever does anything at it anyway--the college man who needs the
+gymnasium most is practically debarred from everything in it and serves
+as a laughing-stock whenever he strips. Coffee, cocaine, bromide,
+tobacco and strong drink often serve in lieu of exercise and ozone, and
+Princeton winks her woozy eye in innocency.
+
+Freedom can not be bestowed--it must be achieved. Education can not be
+given--it must be earned. Lincoln did not free the slaves--he only freed
+himself. The Negroes did not know they were slaves, and so they had no
+idea of what freedom meant. Until a man wants to be free, each kind of
+freedom is only another form of slavery. Booker Washington is showing
+the colored man how to secure a genuine freedom through useful
+activity. To get freedom you must shoulder responsibility.
+
+If college education were made compulsory by the State, and one-half of
+the curriculum consisted of actual, useful manual labor, most of our
+social ills would be solved, and we would be well out on the highway
+towards the Ideal City.
+
+Without animation, man is naught--nothing is accomplished, nothing done.
+People who inspire other people have animation plus.
+
+And animation plus is ecstasy. In ecstasy the spirit rushes out, runs
+over and saturates all. Oratory is an ecstasy that inundates the hearer
+and makes him ride upon the crest of another's ideas.
+
+Art is born of ecstasy--art is ecstasy in the concrete. Beautiful music
+is ecstasy expressed in sound, regulated into rhythm, cadence and form.
+"Statuary is frozen music," said Heine.
+
+A man who is not moved into ecstasy by ecstasy is hopeless. A people
+that has not the surging, uplifting, onward power that ecstasy gives, is
+decadent--dead.
+
+The Negro is easily moved to ecstasy. Very little musical training makes
+him a power in song. At Tuskegee the congregational singing is a feature
+that, once heard, is never to be forgotten. Fifteen hundred people
+lifting up their hearts in an outburst of emotion--song! Fifteen hundred
+people of one mind, doing anything in unison--do you know what it means?
+Ecstasy is essentially a matter of sex. In art and religion sex can not
+be left out of the equation. The simple fact that in forty years the
+Negro race in America has increased from four million to ten million
+tells of their ecstasy as a people. "Only happy beings reproduce
+themselves," says Darwin. Depress your animal and it ceases to breed; so
+there are a whole round of animals that do not reproduce in captivity.
+But in slavery or freedom the Negro sings, and reproduces--he is not
+doomed nor depressed--his soul arises superior to circumstance.
+
+Without animation, education is impossible. And the problem of the
+educator is to direct this singing, flowing, moving spirit of the hive
+into useful channels.
+
+Education is simply the encouragement of right habits--the fixing of
+good habits until they become a part of one's nature, and are exercised
+automatically.
+
+The man who is industrious by habit is the only man who wins. The man
+who is not industrious except when driven to it, or when it occurs to
+him, accomplishes little.
+
+Man gets his happiness by doing: and work to a slave is always
+distasteful. The power of mimicry and imitation is omitted--the owner
+does not work--the strong man does not work. Ergo--to grow strong means
+to cease work. To be strong means to be free--to be free means no work!
+
+It has been a frightfully bad education that the Negro has had--work
+distasteful, and work disgraceful! And the slave-owner suffered most of
+all, for he came to regard work as debasing.
+
+And now a Negro is teaching the Negro that work is beautiful--that work
+is a privilege--that only through willing service can he ever win his
+freedom. Architecture is fixed ecstasy, inspired always by a strong man
+who gives a feeling of security. Athens was an ecstasy in marble.
+
+Tuskegee is an ecstasy in brick and mortar.
+
+Don't talk about the education of the Negro! The experiment has really
+never been tried, except spasmodically, of educating either the whites
+or the blacks in the South--or elsewhere.
+
+A Negro is laying hold upon the natural ecstasy of the Negro, and
+directing it into channels of usefulness and excellence. Can you
+foretell where this will end--this formation of habits of industry,
+sobriety and continued, persistent effort towards the right?
+
+Booker Washington, child of a despised race, has done and is doing what
+the combined pedagogic and priestly wisdom of ages has failed to do. He
+is the Moses who by his example is leading the children of his former
+oppressors out into the light of social, mental, moral and economic
+freedom.
+
+I am familiar in detail with every criticism brought against Tuskegee.
+On examination these criticisms all reduce themselves down to three:
+
+1. A vast sum of money has been collected by Booker Washington for his
+own aggrandizement and benefit.
+
+2. Tuskegee is a show-place where all the really good work is done by
+picked men from the North.
+
+3. Booker Washington is a tyrant, a dictator and an egotist.
+
+If I were counsel for Tuskegee--as I am not--I would follow the example
+of the worthy accusers, and submit the matter without argument. Booker
+Washington can afford to plead guilty to every charge; and he has never
+belittled himself by answering his accusers.
+
+But let the facts be known, that this man has collected upward of six
+million dollars, mostly from the people of the North, and has built up
+the nearest perfect educational institution in the world.
+
+It is probably true that many of his teachers and best workers are
+picked people--but they are Negroes, and were selected by a Negro. The
+great general reveals his greatness in the selection of his generals: it
+was the marshals whom Napoleon appointed who won for him his victories;
+but his spirit animated theirs, and he chose them for this one
+reason--he could dominate them. He infused into their souls a goodly
+dash of his own enthusiasm.
+
+Booker Washington is a greater general than Napoleon. For the Tuskegee
+idea no Waterloo awaits. And as near as I can judge, Booker Washington's
+most noisy critics are merely camp-followers.
+
+That the man is a tyrant and a dictator there is no doubt. He is a
+beneficent tyrant, but a tyrant still, for he always, invariably, has
+his own way in weighty matters--in trivialities others can have theirs.
+And as for dictatorship, the man who advances on chaos and transforms it
+into cosmos is perforce a dictator and an egotist.
+
+Booker Washington believes he is in the right, and he makes no effort to
+conceal the fact that he is on earth. In him there is no disposition to
+run and peep about, and find himself a dishonorable grave. All live men
+are egotists, and they are egotists just in proportion as they have
+life. Dead men are not egotists. Booker Washington has life in
+abundance, and through him I truly believe runs the spirit of Divinity,
+if ever a living man had it. A man like this is the instrument of Deity.
+
+Tuskegee Institute has applications ahead all the time, from all over
+America, for competent colored men and women who can take charge of
+important work and do it. Dressmakers, housekeepers, cooks, farmers,
+stockmen, builders, gardeners, are in demand. The world has never yet
+had enough people to bear its burdens.
+
+Recently we have heard much of the unemployed, but a very little search
+will show that the people out of work are those of bad habits, which
+make them unreliable and untrustworthy. The South, especially, needs the
+willing worker and the practical man. And best of all the South knows
+it, and stands ready to pay for the service.
+
+A few years ago there was a fine storm of protest from Northern Negroes
+to the effect that Booker Washington was endeavoring to limit the Negro
+to menial service--that is, thrust him back into servility. The first
+ambition of the Negro was to get an education so that he might become a
+Baptist preacher. To him, education meant freedom from toil, and of
+course we do not have to look far to see where he got the idea. Then
+when Tuskegee came forward and wanted to make blacksmiths, carpenters
+and brick-masons out of black men, there was a cry, "If this means
+education, we will none of it--treason, treason!" It was assumed that
+the Negro who set other Negroes to work was not their friend. This phase
+of the matter requires neither denial nor apology. We smile and pass on.
+
+In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-seven, the Negro was practically
+disenfranchised throughout the South, by being excluded from the
+primaries. He had no recognized ticket in the field. For both the blacks
+and the whites this has been well. To most of the blacks freedom meant
+simply exemption from work. So there quickly grew up a roistering,
+turbulent, idle and dangerous class of black men who were used by the
+most ambitious of their kind for political ends. To preserve the peace
+of the community, the whites were forced to adopt heroic measures, with
+the result that we now have the disenfranchised Negro.
+
+Early in the Eighties, Booker Washington realized that, politically,
+there was no hope for his race. He saw, however, that commerce
+recognized no color line. We would buy, sell and trade with the black
+man on absolute equality. Life-insurance companies would insure him,
+banks would receive his deposits, and if honest and competent, would
+loan him money. If he could shoe a horse, we waived his complexion; and
+in every sort and kind of craftsmanship he stood on absolute equality
+with the whites. The only question ever asked was, "Can you do the
+work?"
+
+And Booker Washington set out to help the Negro win success for himself
+by serving society through becoming skilled in doing useful things. And
+so it became Head, Hand and Heart. The manual was played off against the
+intellectual.
+
+But over and beyond the great achievement of Booker Washington in
+founding and carrying to a successful issue the most complete
+educational scheme of this age, or any other, stands the man himself. He
+is one without hate, heat or prejudice. No one can write on the lintels
+of his doorpost the word, "Whim." He is half-white, but calls himself a
+Negro. He sides with the disgraced and outcast black woman who gave him
+birth, rather than with the respectable white man who was his sire.
+
+He rides in the Jim Crow cars, and on long trips, if it is deemed
+expedient to use a sleeping-car, he hires the stateroom, so that he may
+not trespass or presume upon those who would be troubled by the presence
+of a colored man. Often in traveling he goes for food and shelter to the
+humble home of one of his own people. At hotels he receives and
+accepts, without protest or resentment, the occasional contumely of the
+inferior whites--whites too ignorant to appreciate that one of God's
+noblemen stands before them. For the whites of the South he has only
+words of kindness and respect; the worst he says about them is that they
+do not understand. His modesty, his patience, his forbearance, are
+sublime. He is a true Fabian--he does what he can, like the royal
+Roycroft opportunist that he is. Every petty annoyance is passed over;
+the gibes and jeers and the ingratitude of his own race are forgotten.
+"They do not understand," he calmly says. He does his work. He is
+respected by the best people of North and South. He has the confidence
+of the men of affairs--he is a safe man.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THOMAS ARNOLD]
+
+THOMAS ARNOLD
+
+
+     Let me mind my own personal work; keep myself pure and zealous and
+     believing; laboring to do God's will in this fruitful vineyard of
+     young lives committed to my charge, as my allotted field, until my
+     work be done.
+
+     --_Thomas Arnold_
+
+
+THOMAS ARNOLD
+
+Thomas Arnold was born in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-five, and died in
+Eighteen Hundred Forty-two. His life was short, as men count time, but
+he lived long enough to make for himself a name and a fame that are both
+lasting and luminous. Though he was neither a great writer nor a great
+preacher, yet there were times when he thought he was both. He was only
+a schoolteacher. However, he was an artist in schoolteaching, and art is
+not a thing--it is a way. It is the beautiful way--the effective way.
+
+Schoolteachers have no means of proving their prowess by conspicuous
+waste, and no time to convince the world of their excellence through
+conspicuous leisure; consequently, for histrionic purposes, a
+schoolteacher's cosmos is a plain, slaty gray. Schoolteachers do not
+wallow in wealth nor feed fat at the public trough. No one ever accuses
+them of belonging to the class known as the predatory rich, nor of being
+millionaire malefactors. They have to do their work every day at certain
+hours and dedicate its results to time.
+
+For many years Thomas Arnold has been known as the father of his son.
+Several great men have been thus overshadowed. The father of Disraeli,
+for instance, was favored by fame and fortune, until his gifted son
+moved into the limelight, and after that Pater shone mostly in a
+reflected glory. Jacopo Bellini was the greatest painter in Venice until
+his two sons, Gian and Gentile, surpassed him, and history writes him
+down as the father of the Bellinis. Lyman Beecher was regarded as
+America's greatest preacher until Henry Ward moved the mark up a few
+notches. The elder Pitt was looked upon as a genuine statesman until his
+son graduated into the Cabinet, and then "the terrible cornet of horse"
+became known as the father of Pitt. Now that both are dust, and we are
+getting the proper perspective, we see that "the great commoner" was
+indeed a great man, and so they move down the corridors of time
+together, arm in arm, this father and son. That excellent person who
+carried the gripsacks of greatness so long that he thought the luggage
+was his own, Major James B. Pond, launched at least one good thing. It
+was this: "Matthew Arnold gave fifty lectures in America, and nobody
+ever heard one of them; those in his audience who could no longer endure
+the silence slipped quietly out."
+
+Matthew Arnold was a critic and writer who, having secured a tuppence
+worth of success through being the son of his father, and thus securing
+the speaker's eye, finally got an oratorical bee in his bonnet and went
+a-barnstorming. He cultivated reserve and indifference, both of which he
+was told were necessary factors of success in a public speaker.
+
+And this is true. But they will not make an orator, any more than long
+hair, a peculiar necktie, and a queer hat will float a poet on the tide
+of time safely into the Hall of Fame.
+
+Matthew Arnold cultivated repose, but instead of convincing the audience
+that he had power, he only made them think he was sleepy. Major Pond,
+having lived much with orators, and thinking the trick easy, tried
+oratory on his own account, and succeeded as well as did Matthew Arnold.
+No one ever heard Major Pond: his voice fell over the footlights, dead,
+into the orchestra; only those with opera-glasses knew he was talking.
+
+But to be unintelligible is not a special recommendation. Men may be
+moderate for two reasons--through excess of feeling and because they are
+actually dull.
+
+Matthew Arnold has slipped back into his true position--that of a man of
+letters. The genius is a man of affairs. Humanity is the theme, not
+books. Books are usually written about the thoughts of men who wrote
+books. Books die and disintegrate, but humanity is an endless
+procession, and the souls that go marching on are those who fought for
+freedom, not those who speculate on abstrusities.
+
+The credential of Thomas Arnold to immortality is not that he was the
+father of Matthew and eight other little Arnolds, but it lies in the
+fact that he fought for a wider horizon in life through education. He
+lifted his voice for liberty. He believed in the divinity of the child,
+not in its depravity. Arnold of Rugby was a teacher of teachers, as
+every great teacher is. The pedagogic world is now going back to his
+philosophy, just as in statesmanship we are reverting to Thomas
+Jefferson. These men who spoke classic truth, not transient--truth that
+fits in spite of fashion, time and place--are the true prophets of
+mankind. Such was Thomas Arnold!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If Thomas Arnold had been just a little bigger, the world probably would
+never have heard of him, for an interdict would have been placed upon
+his work. The miracle is that, as it was, the Church and the State did
+not snuff him out.
+
+He stood for sweet reasonableness, but unintentionally created much
+opposition. His life was a warfare. Yet he managed to make himself
+acceptable to a few; so for fourteen years this head master of a
+preparatory school for boys lived his life and did his work. He sent out
+his radiating gleams, and grew straight in the strength of his spirit,
+and lived out his life in the light.
+
+His sudden death sanctified and sealed his work before he was subdued
+and ironed out by the conventions.
+
+Happy Arnold! If he had lived, he might have met the fate of Arnold of
+Brescia, who was also a great teacher. Arnold of Brescia was a pupil of
+Abelard, and was condemned by the Church as a disturber of the peace for
+speaking in eulogy of his master. Later, he attacked the profligacy of
+the idle prelates, as did Luther, Savonarola and all the other great
+church-reformers. When ordered into exile and silence, he still
+protested his right to speak. He was strangled on order of the Pope, his
+body burned, and the ashes thrown into the Tiber. The Baptists, I
+believe, claim Arnold of Brescia as the forerunner of their sect, and
+certain it is that he was of the true Roger Williams type.
+
+Thomas Arnold, too, was filled with a passion for righteousness. His
+zeal for the upright, manly life constituted his strength. Of course he
+would not have been executed, as was Arnold of Brescia--the times had
+changed--he would simply have been shelved, pooh-poohed, deprived of his
+living and socially Crapseyized. Death saved him--aged forty-seven--and
+his soul goes marching on!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The parents of Thomas Arnold belonged to the great Middle Class--that
+class which Disraeli said never did any thinking on its own account, but
+to the best of its ability deferred to and imitated the idle rich in
+matters of religion, education and politics.
+
+Doctor Johnson maintained that if members of the Middle Class worked
+hard and economized, it was in the hope that they might leave money and
+name for their children and make them exempt from all useful effort.
+
+"To indict a class," said Burke, "is neither reasonable nor right." But
+certain it is that a vast number of fairly intelligent people in England
+and elsewhere regard the life of the "aristocracy" as very desirable and
+beautiful.
+
+To this end they want their boys to become clergymen, lawyers, doctors
+or army officers.
+
+"Only two avenues of honor are open to aspiring youth in England," said
+Gladstone--"the Army and the Church."
+
+The father of Thomas Arnold was Collector of Customs at Cowes, Isle of
+Wight. Holding this petty office under the Government, with a half-dozen
+men at his command, we can easily guess his caliber, habits, belief and
+mode of life. He was respectable; and to be respectable, a Collector of
+Customs must be punctilious in Church matters, in order to be acceptable
+to Church people, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. The parents of
+Thomas Arnold very naturally centered their ambitions for him on the
+Church, as he was not very strong.
+
+When the child was only six years old, the father died from "spasm of
+the heart." At this time the boy had begun to take Latin, and his
+education was being looked after by a worthy governess, who daily
+drilled his mental processes and took him walking, leading him by the
+hand. On Sundays he wore a wide, white collar, shiny boots and a stiff
+hat. The governess cautioned him not to soil his collar, nor to get mud
+on his boots.
+
+In later years he told how he looked covetously at the boys who wore
+neither hats nor boots, and who did not have a governess.
+
+His mother had a fair income, and so this prim, precise, exact and
+crystallized mode of education was continued. Out of her great love for
+her child, the mother sent him away from home when he was eight years
+old. Of course there were tears on both sides; but now a male man must
+educate him, and women were to be dropped out of the equation--this that
+the evil in the child should be curbed, his spirit chastened, and his
+mind disciplined.
+
+The fact that a child rather liked to be fondled by his mother, or that
+his mother cared to fondle him, was proof of total depravity on the part
+of both.
+
+The Reverend Doctor Griffiths, who took charge of the boy for two years,
+was certainly not cruel, but at the same time he was not exactly human.
+In Nature we never hear of a she-lion sending her cubs away to be looked
+after by a denatured lion. It is really doubtful whether you could ever
+raise a lion to lionhood by this method. Some goat would come along and
+butt the life out of him, even after he had evolved whiskers and a mane.
+
+After two years with Doctor Griffiths, young Arnold was sent to
+Manchester, where he remained in a boys' boarding-house from his tenth
+to his fourteenth year. To the teachers here--all men--he often paid
+tribute, but uttered a few heretical doubts as to whether discipline as
+a substitute for mother-love was not an error of pious but overzealous
+educators.
+
+At sixteen years of age he was transferred to Corpus Christi College at
+Oxford. In Eighteen Hundred Fifteen, being then twenty years of age, he
+was elected a Fellow of Oriel College, and there he resided until he was
+twenty-four.
+
+He was a prizeman in Latin, Greek and English, and was considered a star
+scholar--both by himself and by others. Ten years afterwards he took a
+backward glance, and said: "At twenty-two I was proud, precise, stiff,
+formal, uncomfortable, unhappy, and unintentionally made everybody else
+unhappy with whom I came in contact. The only people I really mixed with
+were those whose lives were dedicated to the ablative."
+
+When twenty-four he was made a deacon and used to read prayers at
+neighboring chapels, for which service he was paid five shillings. Being
+now thrown on his own resources, he did the thing a prizeman always
+does: he showed others how. As a tutor he was a success: more scholars
+came to him than he could really take care of. But he did not like the
+work, since all the pupil desired, and all the parents desired, was that
+he should help the backward one get his marks, and glide through the eye
+of a needle into pedagogic paradise.
+
+At twenty-six he was preaching, teaching and writing learned essays
+about things he did not understand.
+
+From this brief sketch it will be seen that the early education of
+Thomas Arnold was of the kind and type that any fond parent of the
+well-to-do Middle Class would most desire. He had been shielded from all
+temptations of the world; he could do no useful thing with his hands;
+his knowledge of economics--ways and means--was that of a child; of the
+living present he knew little, but of the dead past he assumed and
+believed he knew much.
+
+It was purely priestly, institutional education. It was the kind of
+education that every well-to-do Briton would like to have his sons
+receive. It was, in short, England's Ideal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rugby Grammar School was endowed in Sixteen Hundred Fifty-three by one
+Laurence Sherif, a worthy grocer. The original gift was comparatively
+small, but the investment being in London real estate, has increased in
+value until it yields now an income of about thirty-five thousand
+dollars a year.
+
+In the time of Arnold there were about three hundred pupils. It is not a
+large school now; there are high schools in a hundred cities of America
+that surpass it in many ways.
+
+Rugby's claim to special notice lies in its traditions--the great men
+who were once Rugby boys, and the great men who were Rugby teachers.
+Also, in the fact that Thomas Hughes wrote a famous story called, "Tom
+Brown at Rugby."
+
+Rugby Grammar School was one hundred twenty-five years old when Sir
+Joshua Reynolds commissioned Lord Cornwallis to go to America and fetch
+George Washington to England, that Sir Joshua might paint his portrait.
+
+For a hundred years prior to the time of Arnold, there had not been a
+perceptible change in the methods of teaching. The boys were herded
+together. They fought, quarreled, divided into cliques; the big boys
+bullied the little ones. Fagging was the law; so the upper forms
+enslaved the lower ones. There was no home life, and the studies were
+made irksome and severe, purposely, as it was thought that pleasant
+things were sinful.
+
+If any better plan could have been devised to make study absolutely
+repulsive, so the student would shun it as soon as he was out of school,
+we can not guess it.
+
+The system was probably born of inertia on the part of the teachers. The
+pastor who pushes through his prescribed services, with mind on other
+things, and thus absolves his conscience for letting his congregation go
+drifting straight to Gehenna, was duplicated in the teacher. He did his
+duty--and nothing more.
+
+Selfishness, heartlessness and brutality manipulated the birch. Head was
+all; heart and hand nothing. This was schoolteaching. As a punishment
+for failure to memorize lessons, there were various plans to disgrace
+and discourage the luckless ones. Standing in the corner with face to
+the wall, and the dunce-cap, had given place to a system of fines,
+whereby "ten lines of Vergil for failure to attend prayers," and ten
+more for failure to get the first, often placed the boy in hopeless
+bankruptcy. If he was a fag, or slave of a higher-form boy, cleaning the
+other's boots, scrubbing stairs, running on foolish and needless
+errands, getting cuffs and kicks by way of encouragement, he saw his
+fines piling up and no way ever to clear them off and gain freedom by
+promotion.
+
+Viewed from our standpoint, the thing has a ludicrous bouffe air that
+makes us smile. But to the boy caught in the toils it was tragic. To
+work and evolve in an environment of such brutality was impossible to
+certain temperaments. Success lay in becoming calloused and indifferent.
+If the boy of gentle habits and slight physical force did not sink into
+mental nothingness, he was in danger of being bowled over by disease and
+death.
+
+Indeed, the physical condition of the pupils was very bad: smallpox,
+fevers, consumption, and breaking out with sores and boils, were common.
+
+Thomas Arnold was thirty-three years old when he was called as head
+master to Rugby. He was married, and babies were coming along with
+astonishing regularity. He had taken priestly orders and was passing
+rich on one hundred pounds a year. Poverty and responsibility had given
+him ballast, and love for his own little brood had softened his heart
+and vitalized his soul.
+
+As a writer and speaker he had made his presence felt at various college
+commencements and clergymen's meetings. He had challenged the brutal,
+indifferent, lazy and so-called disciplinary methods of teaching.
+
+And so far as we know, he is the first man in England to declare that
+the teacher should be the foster-parent of the child, and that all
+successful teaching must be born of love.
+
+The well-upholstered conservatives twiddled their thumbs, coughed, and
+asked: "How about the doctrine of total depravity? Do you mean to say
+that the child should not be disciplined? What does Solomon say about
+the use of the rod? Does the Bible say that the child is good by
+nature?"
+
+But Thomas Arnold could not explain all he knew. Moreover, he did not
+wish to fight the Church--he believed in the Church--to him it was a
+divine institution. But there were methods and practises in the Church
+that he would have liked to forget.
+
+"My sympathies go out to inferiority," he said. The weakling often
+needed encouragement, not discipline. The bad boy must be won, not
+suppressed.
+
+In one of these conferences of clergymen, Arnold said:
+
+"I once chided a pupil, a little, pale, stupid boy--undersized and
+seemingly half-sick--for not being able to recite his very simple
+lesson. He looked up at me and said with a touch of spirit: 'Sir, why do
+you get angry with me? Do you not know I am doing the best I can?'"
+
+One of the clergymen present asked Arnold how he punished the boy for
+his impudence.
+
+And Arnold replied: "I did not punish him--he had properly punished me.
+I begged his pardon."
+
+The idea of a teacher begging the pardon of a pupil was a brand-new
+thing.
+
+Several clergymen present laughed--one scowled--two sneezed. But a
+Bishop, shortly after this, urged the name of Thomas Arnold as master of
+Rugby, and added to his recommendation this line: "If elected to the
+office he will change the methods of schoolteaching in every public
+school in England."
+
+The ayes had it, and Arnold was called to Rugby. The salary was so-so,
+the pupils between two and three hundred in number--many were home on
+sick-leave--the Sixth Form was in charge.
+
+
+The genius of Arnold was made manifest, almost as soon as he went to
+Rugby, by the way in which he managed the boys who bullied the whole
+school, and what is worse, did it legally.
+
+Fagging was official.
+
+The Sixth Form was composed of thirty boys who stood at the top, and
+these boys ran the school. They were boys who, by reason of their size,
+strength, aggressiveness and mental ability, got the markings that gave
+them this autocratic power. They were now immune from authority--they
+were free. In a year they would gravitate to the University.
+
+We can hardly understand now how a bully could get markings through his
+bullying propensities; but a rudimentary survival of the idea may yet be
+seen in big football-players, who are given good marks, and very gentle
+mental massage in class. If the same scholars were small and skinny,
+they would certainly be plucked.
+
+The faculty found freedom in shifting responsibility for discipline to
+the Sixth Form.
+
+Read the diary of Arnold, and you will be amazed on seeing how he fought
+against taking from the Sixth Form the right to bodily chastise any
+scholar in the school that the king of the Sixth Form declared deserved
+it.
+
+If a teacher thought a pupil needed punishment, he turned the luckless
+one over to the Sixth Form. Can we now conceive of a system where the
+duty of certain scholars was to whip other scholars? Not only to whip
+them, but to beat them into insensibility if they fought back?
+
+Such was schoolteaching in the public schools of England in Eighteen
+Hundred Thirty.
+
+Against this brutality there was now a growing sentiment--a piping voice
+bidding the tide to stay!
+
+But now that Arnold was in charge of Rugby, he got the ill-will of his
+directors by declaring that he did not intend to curtail the powers of
+the Sixth Form--he proposed to civilize it. To try out the new master,
+the Sixth Form, proud in their prowess, sent him word that if he
+interfered with them in any way, they would first "bust up the school,"
+and then resign in a body. Moreover, they gave it out that if any pupil
+complained to the master concerning the Sixth Form, the one so
+complaining would be taken out by night and drowned in the classic Avon.
+
+There were legends among the younger boys of strange disappearances, and
+these were attributed to the swift vengeance of "The Bloody Sixth."
+
+Above the Sixth Form there was no law.
+
+Every scholar took off his hat to a "Sixth." A Sixth uncovered to
+nobody, and touched his cap only to a teacher.
+
+And custom had become so rooted that the Sixth Form was regarded as a
+sort of police necessity--a caste which served the school just as the
+Army served the Church. To reach the Sixth Form were paradise--it meant
+liberty and power--liberty to do as you pleased, and power to punish all
+who questioned your authority.
+
+To uproot the power of the Sixth Form was the intent of a few reformers
+in pedagogics.
+
+There were two ways to deal with the boys of the Sixth--fight them or
+educate them.
+
+Arnold called the Rugby Sixth together and assured them that he could
+not do without their help. He needed them: he wanted to make Rugby a
+model school, a school that would influence all England--would they help
+him?
+
+The dogged faces before him showed signs of interest. He continued,
+without waiting for their reply, to set before them his ideal of an
+English Gentleman. He persuaded them, melted them by his glowing
+personality, shook hands with each, and sent them away.
+
+The next day he again met them in the same intimate way, and one of the
+boys made bold to assure him that if he wanted anybody licked--pupils or
+teachers--they stood ready to do his bidding.
+
+He thanked the boy, but assured him that he was of the opinion that it
+would not be necessary to do violence to any one; he was going to unfold
+to them another way--a new way, which was very old, but which as yet
+England had not tried.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The great teacher is not the one who imparts the most facts--he is the
+one who inspires by supplying a nobler ideal.
+
+Men are superior or inferior just in the ratio that they possess certain
+qualities. Truth, honor, frankness, health, system, industry,
+kindliness, good-cheer and a spirit of helpfulness are so far beyond any
+mental acquisition that comparisons are not only odious, but absurd.
+
+Arnold inspired qualities, and in this respect his work at Rugby forms a
+white milestone on the path of progress in pedagogy.
+
+To an applicant for a position as teacher, Arnold wrote:
+
+     What I want is a man who is a Christian and a gentleman, an active
+     man, and one who has commonsense, and understands boys. I do not so
+     much care about scholarship, as he will have immediately under him
+     the lowest forms in the school, but yet, on second thought, I do
+     care about it very much, because his pupils may be in the highest
+     forms; and besides, I think that even the elements are best taught
+     by a man who has a thorough knowledge of the matter. However, if
+     one must give way, I prefer activity of mind and an interest in his
+     work to high scholarship; for the one may be acquired far more
+     easily than the other. I should wish it also to be understood that
+     the new master may be called upon to take boarders in his house, it
+     being my intention for the future to require this of all masters as
+     I see occasion, that so in time the school-barracks may die a
+     natural death. With this to offer, I think I have a right to look
+     rather high for the man whom I fix upon, and it is my great object
+     to get here a society of intelligent, gentlemanly and active men,
+     who may permanently keep up the character of the school, and if I
+     were to break my neck tomorrow, carry it on.
+
+Ideas are in the air, and great inventions are worked out in different
+parts of the world at the same time. Rousseau had written his "Emile,"
+but we are not aware that Arnold ever read it.
+
+And if he had, he probably would have been shocked, not inspired, by its
+almost brutal frankness. The French might read it--the English could
+not.
+
+Pestalozzi was working out his ideas in Switzerland, and Froebel, an
+awkward farmer lad in Germany, was dreaming dreams that were to come
+true. But Thomas Arnold caught up the threads of feeling in England and
+expressed them in the fabric of his life.
+
+His plans were scientific, but his reasons, unlike those of Pestalozzi,
+will not always stand the test of close analysis. Arnold was true to the
+Church, but he found it convenient to forget much for which the Church
+stood. He went back to a source nearer the fountainhead. All reforms in
+organized religion lie in returning to the primitive type. The religion
+of Jesus was very simple; that of a modern church dignitary is very
+complex. One can be understood; the other has to be explained and
+expounded, and usually several languages are required.
+
+Arnold would have his boys evolve into Christian gentlemen. And his
+type of English gentleman he did not get out of books on theology--it
+was his own composite idea. But having once evolved it, he cast around
+to justify it by passages of Scripture. This was beautiful, too, but
+from our standpoint it wasn't necessary.
+
+From his it was.
+
+A gentleman to him was a man who looked for the best in other people,
+and not for their faults; who overlooked slights; who forgot the good he
+had done; who was courteous, kind, cheerful, industrious and clean
+inside and out; who was slow to wrath, fervent in spirit, serving the
+Lord. And the "Lord" to Arnold was embodied in Church and State.
+
+Arnold used to say that schoolteaching should not be based upon
+religion, but it should be religion. And to him religion and conduct
+were one.
+
+That he reformed Rugby through the Sixth Form is a fact. He infused into
+the big boys the thought that they must help the little ones; that for a
+first offense a lad must never be punished; that he should have the
+matter fully explained to him, and be shown that he should do right
+because it is right, and not for fear of punishment.
+
+The Sixth Form was taught to unbend its dignity and enter into
+fellowship with its so-called inferiors. To this end Arnold set the
+example of playing cricket with the "scrubs."
+
+He never laughed at a poor player nor at a poor scholar. He took dull
+pupils into his own house, and insisted that his helpers, the other
+teachers, should do the same. He showed the Sixth Form how much better
+it was to take the part of the weak, and stop bullying the lower forms,
+than to set the example of it in the highest. Before Arnold had been at
+Rugby a year, the Sixth Form had resolved itself into a Reception
+Committee that greeted all newcomers, got them located, introduced them
+to the other boys, showed them the sights, and looked after their wants
+like big brothers or foster-fathers.
+
+Christianity to Arnold was human service. In his zeal to serve, to
+benefit, to bless, to inspire, he never tired.
+
+Such a disposition as this is contagious. In every big business or
+school, there is one man's mental attitude that animates the whole
+institution. Everybody partakes of it. When the leader gets melancholia,
+the shop has it--the whole place becomes tinted with ultra-marine. The
+best helpers begin to get out, and the honeycombing process of
+dissolution is on.
+
+A school must have a soul, just as surely as a shop, a bank, a hotel, a
+store, a home, or a church has to have. When an institution grows so
+great that it has no soul--simply a financial head and a board of
+directors--dry-rot sets in and disintegration in a loose wrapper is at
+the door.
+
+This explains why the small colleges are the best, when they are: there
+is a personality about them, an animating spirit that is pervasive and
+preservative.
+
+Thomas Arnold was not a man of vast learning, nor could one truthfully
+say he had a surplus of intellect; but he had soul, plus. He never
+sought to save himself. He gave himself to the boys of Rugby. His heart
+went out to them, he believed in them--and he believed them even when
+they lied, and he knew they lied. He knew that humanity was sound at
+heart; he believed in the divinity of mankind, and tried hard to forget
+the foolish theology that taught otherwise.
+
+Like Thomas Jefferson, who installed the honor system in the University
+of Virginia, he trusted young men. He made his appeal to that germ of
+goodness which is in every human soul. In some ways he anticipated Ben
+Lindsey in his love for the boy, and might have conjured forth from his
+teeming brain the Juvenile Court, and thus stopped the creation of
+criminals, had his life not been consumed in a struggle with stupidity
+and pedantry gone to seed that cried to him, "Oh, who ever heard of such
+a thing as that!"
+
+The Kindergarten utilizes the propensity to play; and Arnold utilizes
+the thirst for authority. Altruism is flavored with a desire for
+approbation.
+
+The plan of self-government by means of utilizing the Sixth Form was
+quite on the order of our own "George Junior Republic." "A school," he
+said, "should be self-governing and cleanse itself from that which is
+harmful." And again he says: "If a pupil can gratify his natural desire
+for approbation by doing that which is right, proper and best, he will
+work to this end instead of being a hero by playing the rowdy. It is for
+the scholars to set the seal of their approval on character, and they
+will do so if we as teachers speak the word. If I find a room in a
+tumult, I blame myself, not the scholars. It is I who have failed, not
+they. Were I what I should be, every one of my pupils would reflect my
+worth. I key the situation, I set the pace, and if my soul is in
+disorder, the school will be in confusion."
+
+Nothing is done without enthusiasm. It is heart that wins, not head, the
+round world over. And yet head must systematize the promptings of the
+heart. Arnold had a way of putting soul into a hand-clasp. His pupils
+never forgot him. Wherever they went, no matter how long they lived,
+they proclaimed the praises of Arnold of Rugby. How much this earnest,
+enthusiastic, loving and sincere teacher has influenced civilization, no
+man can say. But this we know, that since his day there has come about a
+new science of teaching. The birch has gone with the dunce-cap. The
+particular cat-o'-nine-tails that was burned in the house of Thomas
+Arnold as a solemn ceremony, when the declaration was made, "Henceforth
+I know my children will do right!" has found its example in every home
+of Christendom.
+
+We no longer whip children. Schools are no longer places of dread, pain
+and suffering, and we as teachers are repeating with Friedrich Froebel
+the words of the Nazarene, "Suffer little children to come unto me, and
+forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."
+
+Also, we say with Thomas Arnold: "The boy is father to the man. A race
+of gentlemen can only be produced by fostering in the boy the qualities
+that make for health, strength and a manly desire to bless, benefit and
+serve the race."
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: FRIEDRICH FROEBEL]
+
+FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
+
+
+     The purpose of the Kindergarten is to provide the necessary and
+     natural help which poor mothers require who have to be about their
+     work all day, and must leave their children to themselves. The
+     occupations pursued in the Kindergarten are the following: free
+     play of a child by itself; free play of several children by
+     themselves; associated play under the guidance of a teacher;
+     gymnastic exercises; several sorts of handiwork suited to little
+     children; going for walks; learning music, both instrumental and
+     vocal; learning the repetition of poetry; story-telling; looking at
+     really good pictures; aiding in domestic occupations; gardening.
+
+     --_Froebel_
+
+
+FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
+
+Friedrich Froebel was born in a Thuringian village, April Twenty-first,
+Seventeen Hundred Eighty-two. His father was pastor of the Lutheran
+Church. When scarcely a year old his mother died. Erelong a stepmother
+came to fill her place--but didn't. This stepmother was the kind we read
+about in the "Six Best Sellers."
+
+Her severity, lack of love, and needlessly religious zeal served the
+future Kindergartner a dark background on which to paint a joyous
+picture. Froebel was educated by antithesis. His home was the type
+etched so unforgetably by Colonel Ed. Howe in his "Story of a Country
+Town," which isn't bad enough to be one of the Six Best Sellers.
+
+At the age of ten, out of pure pity, young Friedrich was rescued from
+the cuckoo's nest by an uncle who had a big family of his own and love
+without limit. There was a goodly brood left, so little Friedrich, slim,
+slender, yellow, pensive and sad, was really never missed.
+
+The uncle brought the boy up to work, but treated him like a human
+being, answering his questions, even allowing him to have stick horses
+and little log houses and a garden of his own.
+
+At fifteen his nature had begun to awaken, and the uncle, harkening to
+the boy's wish, apprenticed him for two years to a forester. The young
+man's first work was to make a list of the trees in a certain tract and
+approximate their respective ages. The night before his work began he
+lay awake thinking of the fun he was going to have at the job. In
+after-years he told of this incident in showing that it was absurd to
+try to divorce work from play.
+
+The two years as forester's apprentice, from fifteen to seventeen, were
+really better for him than any university could have been. His
+stepmother's instructions had mostly been in the line of prohibition.
+From earliest babyhood he had been warned to "look out." When he went on
+the street it was with a prophecy that he would get run over by a cart,
+or stolen by the gypsies, or fall off the bridge and be drowned. The
+idea of danger had been dinged into his ears so that fear had become a
+part of the fabric of his nature. Even at fifteen, he took pains to get
+out of the woods before sundown to avoid the bears. At the same time his
+intellect told him there were no bears there. But the shudder habit was
+upon him.
+
+Yet by degrees the work in the woods built up his body and he grew to be
+at home in the forest, both day and night. His duties taught him to
+observe, to describe, to draw, to investigate, to decide. Then it was
+transplantation, and perhaps the best of college life consists in taking
+the youth out of the home environment and supplying him new
+surroundings.
+
+Forestry in America is a brand-new science. To clear the ground has been
+our desire, and so to strip, burn and destroy, saving only such logs as
+appealed to us for "lumber," was the desideratum. But now we are
+seriously considering the matter of tree-planting and tree-preservation,
+and perhaps it would be well to ask ourselves if two years at forestry,
+right out of doors, in contact with Nature, wrestling with the world of
+wood, rock, plant and living things, wouldn't be better for the boy than
+double the time in stuffy dormitories and still more stuffy
+recitation-rooms--listening to stuffy lectures about things that are
+foreign to life.
+
+I would say that a boy is a savage, but I do not care to give offense to
+fond mammas. To educate him in the line of his likes, as the race has
+been educated, seems sensible and right. How would Yellowstone Park
+answer for a National University, with Captain Jack Crawford, William
+Muldoon, John Burroughs, John Dewey, Stanley Hall and a mixture of men
+of these types, for a faculty?
+
+Froebel thought his two years in the forest saved him from consumption,
+and perhaps from insanity, for it taught him to look out, not in, and to
+lend a hand. At times he was a little too sentimental, as it was, and a
+trifle more of morbidity and sensitiveness would have ruined his life,
+absolutely.
+
+The woods and God's great out-of-doors gave him balance and ballast,
+good digestion and sweet sleep o' nights.
+
+The two years past, he went to Jena, where he had an elder brother. This
+brother was a star scholar, and Friedrich looked up to him as a pleiad
+of pedagogy. He became a professor in a Jena preparatory school and then
+practised medicine; but he never had the misfortune to affront public
+opinion, and so oblivion lured and won him, and took him as her own.
+
+At Jena poor Froebel did not make head. His preparatory work hadn't
+prepared him. He floundered in studies too deep for one of his age, then
+followed some foolish advice and hired a tutor to help him along. Then
+he fell down, was plucked, got into debt, and also into the "carcer,"
+where he boarded for nine weeks at the expense of the State.
+
+In the carcer he didn't catch up with his studies, quite naturally, and
+the imprisonment almost broke his health. Had he been in the carcer for
+dueling, he would have emerged a hero. But debt meant that he had
+neither money nor friends. When he was given his release, as an economic
+move, he slipped away between two days and made his way to the Forestry
+Office, where he applied for a job as laborer. He got it. In a few days
+he was promoted to chief of apprentices.
+
+Forestry meant a certain knowledge of surveying, and this Froebel soon
+acquired. Then came map-making, and that was only fun. From map-making
+to architecture is but a step, and Froebel quit the woods to work as
+assistant to an architect at ten pounds a year and found, it was
+confining work, and a trifle more exacting than he had expected--it
+required a deal of mathematics, and mathematics was Froebel's short
+suit. Froebel was disappointed and so was his employer--when something
+happened. It usually does in books, and in life, always.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Genius has its prototype. Before Froebel comes Pestalozzi, the Swiss,
+who studied theology and law, and then abandoned them both as futile to
+human evolution, and turned his attention to teaching. Pestalozzi was
+inspired by Jean Jacques Rousseau, and read his "Emile" religiously. To
+teach by natural methods and mix work and study, and make both play, was
+his theme. Pestalozzi believed in teaching out of doors, because
+children are both barbaric and nomadic--they want to go somewhere. His
+was the Aristotle method, as opposed to those of the closet and the
+cloister. But he made the mistake of saying that teaching should be
+taken out of the hands and homes of the clergy, and then the clergy said
+a few things about him.
+
+Pestalozzi at first met with very meager encouragement. Only poor and
+ignorant people entrusted their children to his care, and some of the
+parents were actually paid in money for the services of the children.
+The thought that the children were getting an education and being useful
+at the same time was quite beyond their comprehension.
+
+Pestalozzi educated by stealth. At first he took several boys and girls
+of eight, ten or twelve years of age, and had them work with him in his
+garden. They cared for fowls, looked after the sheep, milked the cows.
+The master worked with them, and as they worked they talked. Going to
+and from their duties, Pestalozzi would call their attention to the
+wild birds, and to the flowers, plants and weeds. They would draw
+pictures of things, make collections of leaves and flowers, and keep a
+record of their observations and discoveries. Through keeping these
+records they learned to read and write and acquired the use of simple
+mathematics. Things they did not understand they would read about in the
+books found in the teacher's library. But books were secondary and quite
+incidental in the scheme of study. When work seemed to become irksome
+they would all stop and play games. At other times they would sit and
+just talk about what their work happened to suggest. If the weather was
+unpleasant, there was a shop where they made hoes and rakes and other
+tools they needed. They also built bird-houses, and made simple pieces
+of furniture, so all the pupils, girls and boys, became more or less
+familiar with carpenter's and blacksmith's tools. They patched their
+shoes, mended their clothing, and at times prepared their own food.
+
+Pestalozzi found that the number of pupils he could look after in this
+way was not more than ten. But to his own satisfaction, at least, he
+proved that children taught by his method surpassed those who were given
+the regular set courses of instruction. His chief difficulties lay in
+the fact that the home did not co-operate with the school, and that
+there was always a tendency to "return to the blanket."
+
+Pestalozzi wrote accounts of his experiments and emphasized his belief
+that we should educate through the child's natural activities; also that
+all growth should be pleasurable. His shibboleth was, "From within,
+out." He thought education was a development and not an acquirement.
+
+One of Pestalozzi's little pamphlets fell into the hands of Friedrich
+Froebel, architect's assistant, at Frankfort.
+
+Froebel was twenty-two years old, and Fate had tossed him around from
+one thing to another since babyhood. All of his experiences had been of
+a kind that prepared his mind for the theories that Pestalozzi
+expressed.
+
+Besides that, architecture had begun to pall upon him. "Those who can,
+do; those who can't, teach." This was said in derision, but it holds a
+grain of truth.
+
+Froebel had a great desire to teach. Now, in Frankfort there was a Model
+School or a school for teachers, of which one Herr Gruner was master.
+This school was actually carrying out some of the practical methods
+suggested by Pestalozzi. Quite by accident Gruner and Froebel met.
+Gruner wanted a teacher who could teach by the Pestalozzi methods.
+Froebel straightway applied to Herr Gruner for the position. He was
+accepted as a combination janitor and instructor and worked for his
+board and ten marks, or two and a half dollars a week.
+
+The good-cheer and enthusiasm of Froebel won Gruner's heart. Together
+they discussed Pestalozzi and his works, read all that he had written,
+and opened up a correspondence with the great man. This led to an
+invitation that Froebel should visit him at his farm-school, near
+Yverdon, in Switzerland.
+
+Gruner supplied Froebel the necessary money to replace his very seedy
+clothes for something better, and the young man started away. It was a
+walk of more than two hundred miles, but youth and enthusiasm count such
+a tramp as an enjoyable trifle. Froebel wore his seedy clothes and
+carried his good ones, and so he appeared before the master spick and
+span.
+
+Pestalozzi was sixty years old at this time, and his hopes for the "new
+method" were still high. He had met opposition, ridicule and
+indifference, and had spent most of his little fortune in the fight, but
+he was still at it and resolved to die in the harness.
+
+Froebel was not disappointed in Pestalozzi, and certainly Pestalozzi was
+delighted and a bit amused at the earnestness of the young man.
+Pestalozzi was working in a very economical way, but all the place
+lacked Froebel, in his exuberant imagination, made good.
+
+Froebel found much, for he had brought much with him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Froebel returned to Frankfort from his visit to Pestalozzi, full of
+enthusiasm, and that is the commodity without which no teacher succeeds.
+Gruner allowed him to gravitate. And soon Froebel's room was the central
+point of interest for the whole school. But trouble was ahead for
+Froebel.
+
+He had no college degrees. His pedagogic pedigree was very short. He
+hoped to live down his university record, but it followed him. Gruner's
+school was under government inspection, and the gentlemen with double
+chins, who came from time to time to look the place over, asked who this
+enthusiastic young person was, and why had the worthy janitor and
+ex-forester been so honored by promotion.
+
+In truth, during his life, Froebel never quite escaped the taunt that he
+was not an educated man. That is to say, no college had ever supplied
+him an alphabetic appendage. He had been a forester, a farmer, an
+architect, a guardian for boys and a teacher of women, but no
+institution had ever said officially he was fit to teach men.
+
+Gruner tried to explain that there are two kinds of teachers: people who
+are teachers by nature, and those who have acquired the methods by long
+study. The first, having little to learn, and a love for the child, with
+a spontaneous quality of giving their all, succeed best.
+
+But poor Gruner's explanation did not explain.
+
+Then the matter was gently explained to Froebel, and he saw that in
+order to hold a place as teacher he must acquire a past. "Time will
+adjust it," he said, and started away on a second visit to Pestalozzi.
+His plan was to remain with the master long enough so he could secure a
+certificate of proficiency.
+
+Again Pestalozzi welcomed the young man, and he slipped easily into the
+household and became both pupil and teacher. His willingness to work--to
+do the task that lay nearest him--his good-nature, his gratitude, won
+all hearts.
+
+At this time the plan of sending boys to college with a tutor who was
+both a companion and a teacher, was in vogue with those who could afford
+it. It will be remembered that William and Alexander von Humboldt
+received their early education in this way--going with their tutor from
+university to university, teacher and pupils entering as special
+students, getting into the atmosphere of the place, soaking themselves
+full of it, and then going on.
+
+And now behold, through Gruner or Pestalozzi or both, a woman of wealth
+with three boys to educate applied to Froebel to come over into
+Macedonia and help her.
+
+It was in Eighteen Hundred Seven that Froebel became tutor in the Von
+Holzhausen family. He was twenty-five years old, and this was his first
+interview with wealth and leisure. That he was hungry enough to
+appreciate it need not be emphasized.
+
+He got goodly glimpses of Gottingen, Berlin, and was long enough at
+Jena to rub the blot off the 'scutcheon. A stay at Weimar, in the Goethe
+country, completed the four years' course.
+
+The boys had grown to men, and proved their worth in after-years; but
+whether they had gotten as much from the migrations as their teacher is
+very doubtful. He was ripe for opportunity--they had had a surfeit of
+it.
+
+Then came war. The order to arms and the rush of students to obey their
+country's call caught Froebel in the patriotic vortex, and he enlisted
+with his pupils.
+
+His service was honorable, even if not brilliant, and it had this
+advantage: the making of two friends, companions in arms, who caught the
+Pestalozzian fever, and lived out their lives preaching and teaching
+"the new method."
+
+These men were William Middendorf and Henry Langenthal. This trinity of
+brothers evolved a bond as beautiful as it is rare in the realm of
+friendship. Forty years after their first meeting, Middendorf gave an
+oration over the dead body of Froebel that lives as a classic, breathing
+the love and faith that endure.
+
+And then Middendorf turned to his work, and dared prison and disgrace by
+upholding the Kindergarten System and the life and example of his dear,
+dead friend. The Kindergarten Idea would probably have been buried in
+the grave with Froebel--interred with his bones--were it not for
+Middendorf and Langenthal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first Kindergarten was established in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-six,
+at Blankenburg, a little village near Keilhau. Froebel was then
+fifty-four years old, happily married to a worthy woman who certainly
+did not hamper his work, even if she did not inspire it. He was
+childless, that all children might call him father.
+
+The years had gone in struggles to found Normal Schools in Germany after
+the Pestalozzian and Gruner methods. But disappointment,
+misunderstanding and stupidity had followed Froebel. The set methods of
+the clergy, accusations of revolution and heresy, tilts with pious
+pedants as to the value of dead languages, all combined with his own
+lack of business shrewdness, had wrecked his various ventures.
+
+Froebel's argument that women were better natural teachers than men on
+account of the mother-instinct, brought forth a retort from a learned
+monk to the effect that it was indelicate if not sinful for an unmarried
+female, who was not a nun, to study the natures of children.
+
+Parents with children old enough to go to school would not entrust their
+darlings with the teaching experimenter--this on the advice of their
+pastors.
+
+Middendorf and Langenthal were still with him, partners in the disgrace
+or failure, for none was willing to give up the fight for education by
+the natural methods.
+
+A great thought and a great word came to them, all at once--out on the
+mountain-side!
+
+Begin with the children before the school age, and call it the
+Kindergarten!
+
+Hurrah! They shouted for joy, and ran down the hill to tell Frau
+Froebel.
+
+The schools they had started before had been called, "The Institution
+for Teaching According to the Pestalozzi Method and the Natural
+Activities of the Child," "Institution for the Encouragement and
+Development of the Spontaneous Activities of the Pupil," and "Friedrich
+Froebel's School for the Growth of the Creative Instinct Which Makes for
+a Useful Character."
+
+A school with such names, of course, failed. No one could remember it
+long enough to send his child there--it meant nothing to the mind not
+prepared for it.
+
+What's in a name? Everything. Books sell or become dead stock on the
+name. Commodities the same. Railroads must have a name people are not
+afraid to pronounce.
+
+The officers of the law came and asked to see Froebel's license for
+manufacturing. Others asked as to the nature of his wares, and one
+dignitary called and asked, "Is Herr Pestalozzi in?"
+
+The Kindergarten! The new name took. The children remembered it.
+Overworked mothers liked the word and were glad to let the little
+other-mothers take the children to the Kindergarten, certainly.
+
+Froebel had grown used to disappointments--he was an optimist by nature.
+He saw the good side of everything, including failure.
+
+He made the best of necessity. And now it was very clear to him that
+education must begin "a hundred years before the child is born." He
+would reach the home and the mother through the children. "It will take
+three generations to prove the truth of the Kindergarten Idea," he said.
+
+And so the songs, the gifts, the games--all had to be invented,
+defended, tried and tried again. Pestalozzi had a plan for teaching the
+youth; now a plan had to be devised for teaching the child. Love was the
+keystone, and joy, unselfishness and unswerving faith in the Natural or
+Divine impulses of humanity crowned the structure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Froebel invented the schoolma'am. That is, he discovered the raw product
+and adapted it. He even coined the word, and it struck the world as
+being so very funny that we forthwith adopted it as a term of provincial
+pleasantry and quasi-reproach. The original term used was "school
+mother," but when it reached these friendly shores we translated it
+"schoolmarm." Then we tittered, also sneezed.
+
+Froebel died in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-two. His first Kindergarten was
+not a success until he was nearly sixty years old, but the idea had been
+perfecting itself in his mind more or less unconsciously for over thirty
+years.
+
+He had been thinking, writing, working, experimenting all these years on
+the subject of education, and he had become well-nigh discouraged. He
+had observed that six was the "school age." That is, no child could go
+to school until he was six years old--then his education began.
+
+But Froebel had been teaching in a country school and boarding 'round,
+and he had discovered that long before this the child had been learning
+by observing and playing, and that these were formative influences,
+quite as potent as actual school.
+
+In the big families where Froebel boarded, he noticed that the older
+girls took charge of the younger ones. So, often a girl of ten, with
+dresses to her knees, carried one baby in her arms and two toddled
+behind her, and this child of ten was really the other-mother. The true
+mother worked in the fields or toiled at her housework, and the little
+other-mother took the children out to play and thus amused them while
+the mother worked.
+
+The desire of Froebel was to educate the race, but what are a few hours
+a day in a schoolroom with a totally unsympathetic home environment!
+
+To reach and interest the mother in the problem of education was
+well-nigh impossible. Toil, deprivation, poverty, had killed all the
+romance and enthusiasm in her heart. She was the victim of arrested
+development; but the little other-mother was a child, impressionable,
+immature, and she could be taught. The home must co-operate with the
+school, otherwise all the school can teach will be forgotten in the
+home. Froebel saw, too, that often the little other-mother was so
+overworked in the care of her charges that she was taken from school.
+Besides, the idea was abroad that education was mostly for boys, anyway.
+
+And here Froebel stepped in and proved himself a law-breaker, just as
+Ben Lindsey was when he inaugurated the juvenile court and waived the
+entire established legal procedure, even to the omission of swearing his
+witnesses, and believed in the little truant even though he lied.
+Froebel told the little other-mothers to come to school anyway and bring
+the babies with them.
+
+And then he set to work showing these girls how to amuse, divert and
+teach the babies. And he used to say the babies taught him.
+
+Some of these half-grown girls showed a rare adaptability as teachers.
+They combined mother-love and the teaching instinct.
+
+Froebel utilized their services in teaching others in order that he
+might teach them.
+
+He saw that the teacher is the one who gets the most out of the lessons,
+and that the true teacher is a learner. These girl teachers he called
+school-mothers, and thus was evolved the word and the person.
+
+Froebel founded the first normal and model school for the education of
+women as teachers, and this was less than a hundred years ago.
+
+The years went by and the little mothers had children of their own, and
+these children were the ones that formed the first actual, genuine
+kindergarten.
+
+Also, these were the mothers who formed the first mothers' clubs.
+
+And it was the success of these clubs that attracted the attention of
+the authorities, who could not imagine any other purpose for a club than
+to hatch a plot against the government.
+
+Anyway, a system which taught that women were just as wise, just as good
+and just as capable as men--just as well fitted by nature to
+teach--would upset the clergy. If women can break into the school, they
+will also break into the church. Moreover, the encouragement of play was
+atrocious. Mein Gott, or words to that effect, play in a schoolroom!
+Why, even a fool would know that that is the one thing that stood in
+the way of education, the one fly in the pedagogic ointment. If Mynheer
+Froebel would please invent a way to do away with play in schoolrooms,
+he would be given a pension.
+
+The idea that children were good by nature was rank heresy. Where does
+the doctrine of regeneration come in, and how about being born again!
+The natural man is at enmity toward God. We are conceived in sin and
+born in iniquity. The Bible says it again and again.
+
+And here comes a man who thinks he knows more than all the priests and
+scholars who have ever lived, and fills the heads of fool women with the
+idea that they are born to teach instead of to work in the fields and
+keep house and wait on men.
+
+Mein Gott in Himmel, the women know too much, already! If this thing
+keeps on, men will have to get off the earth, and women and children
+will run the world, and do it by means of play. Aha! What does Solomon
+say? Spare the rod and spoil the child. Aber nicht, say these girls.
+
+This thing has got to stop before Germany becomes the joke of
+mankind--the cat-o'-nine-tails for anybody who uses the word
+kindergarten!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of
+such is the Kingdom of Heaven." Had the man who uttered these words been
+given a little encouragement, he probably would have inaugurated a
+child-garden and provided a place and environment where little souls
+could have bloomed and blossomed. He was by nature a teacher, and his
+best pupils were women and children. Male men are apt to think they
+already know and so are immune from ideas.
+
+Jerusalem, nineteen hundred years ago, was about where Berlin was in
+Eighteen Hundred Fifty. In both instances the proud priest and the
+aristocrat-soldier were supreme. And both were quite satisfied with
+their own mental attainments and educational methods. They were sincere.
+It was a very similar combination that crucified Jesus to that which
+placed an interdict on Friedrich Froebel, making the Kindergarten a
+crime, and causing the speedy death of one of the gentlest, noblest,
+purest men who have ever blessed this earth.
+
+Froebel was just seventy when he passed out. "His eye was not dimmed nor
+his natural force abated"--he was filled with enthusiasm and hope as
+never before. His ideas were spreading--success, at last, was at the
+door, he had interested the women and proved the fitness of women to
+teach--his mothers' clubs were numerous--love was the watchword. And in
+the midst of this flowering time, the official order came, without
+warning, apology or explanation, and from which there was no appeal. The
+same savagery, chilled with fear, that sent Richard Wagner into exile,
+crushed the life and broke the heart of Friedrich Froebel. But these
+names now are the pride and glory of the land that once scorned them.
+Men who govern should be those with a reasonable doubt concerning their
+own infallibility, and an earnest faith in men, women and children. To
+teach is better than to rule. We are all children in the Kindergarten of
+God.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: HYPATIA]
+
+HYPATIA
+
+
+     Neo-Platonism is a progressive philosophy, and does not expect to
+     state final conditions to men whose minds are finite. Life is an
+     unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can
+     comprehend. To understand the things that are at our door is the
+     best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond.
+
+     --_Hypatia_
+
+
+HYPATIA
+
+The father of Hypatia was Theon, a noted mathematician and astronomer of
+Alexandria. He would have been regarded as a very great man had he not
+been cast into the shadow by his daughter. Let male parents beware.
+
+At that time, astronomy and astrology were one. Mathematics was useful,
+not for purposes of civil engineering, but principally in figuring out
+where a certain soul, born under a given planet, would be at a certain
+time in the future.
+
+No information comes to us about the mother of Hypatia--she was so busy
+with housework that her existence is a matter of assumption or a priori
+reasoning; thus, given a daughter, we assume the existence of a mother.
+
+Hypatia was certainly the daughter of her father. He was her tutor,
+teacher, playmate. All he knew he taught to her, and before she was
+twenty she had been informed by him of a fact which she had previously
+guessed--that considerable of his so-called knowledge was conjecture.
+
+Theon taught his daughter that all systems of religion that pretend to
+teach the whole truth were to a great degree false and fraudulent. He
+explained to her that his own profession of astronomy and astrology was
+only for other people. By instructing her in all religions she grew to
+know them comparatively, and so none took possession of her to the
+exclusion of new truth. To have a religion thrust upon you, and be
+compelled to believe in it or suffer social ostracism, is to be cheated
+of the right to make your own. In degree it is letting another live your
+life. A child does not need a religion until he is old enough to evolve
+it, and then he must not be robbed of the right of independent thinking
+by having a fully-prepared plan of salvation handed out to him. The
+brain needs exercise as much as the body, and vicarious thinking is as
+erroneous as vicarious exercise. Strength comes from personal effort. To
+think is natural, and if not intimidated or coerced the man will evolve
+a philosophy of life that is useful and beneficent.
+
+Religious mania is a result of dwelling on a borrowed religion. If let
+alone no man would become insane on religious topics, for the religion
+he would evolve would be one of joy, laughter and love, not one of
+misery or horror. The religion that contemplates misery and woe is one
+devised by priestcraft for a purpose, and that purpose is to rule and
+rob. From the blunt ways of the road we get a polite system of
+intimidation which makes the man pay. It is robbery reduced to a system,
+and finally piously believed in by the robbers, who are hypnotized into
+the belief that they are doing God's service.
+
+"All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted
+by self-respecting persons as final," said Theon to Hypatia. "Reserve
+your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to
+think at all."
+
+Theon gave lectures, and had private classes in esoterics, wherein the
+innermost secrets of divinity were imparted. Also, he had a plan for the
+transmutation of metals and a recipe for perpetual youth. When he had
+nothing else to do, he played games with his daughter.
+
+At twenty-one Hypatia had mastered the so-called art of Rhetoric, or the
+art of expression by vocal speech.
+
+It will be remembered that the Romans considered rhetoric, or the art of
+the rhetor, or orator, as first in importance. To impress people by your
+personal presence they regarded as the gift of gifts.
+
+This idea seems to have been held by the polite world up to the Italian
+Renaissance, when the art of printing was invented and the written word
+came to be regarded as more important than the spoken. One lives, and
+the other dies on the air, existing only in memory, growing attenuated
+and diluted as it is transferred. The revival of sculpture and painting
+also helped oratory to take its proper place as one of the polite arts,
+and not a thing to be centered upon to the exclusion of all else.
+
+Theon set out to produce a perfect human being; and whether his charts,
+theorems and formulas made up a complete law of eugenics, or whether it
+was dumb luck, this we know: he nearly succeeded. Hypatia was five feet
+nine, and weighed one hundred thirty-five pounds. This when she was
+twenty. She could walk ten miles without fatigue; swim, row, ride
+horseback and climb mountains. Through a series of gentle calisthenics
+invented by her father, combined with breathing exercises, she had
+developed a body of rarest grace. Her head had corners, as once
+Professor O. S. Fowler told us that a woman's head must have, if she is
+to think and act with purpose and precision.
+
+So having evolved this rare beauty of face, feature and bodily grace,
+combined with superior strength and vitality, Hypatia took up her
+father's work and gave lectures on astronomy, mathematics, astrology and
+rhetoric, while he completed his scheme for the transmutation of metals.
+Hypatia's voice was flute-like, and used always well within its compass,
+so as never to rasp or tire the organs. Theon knew the proper care of
+nose and throat, a knowledge which with us moderns is all too rare.
+Hypatia told of and practised the vocal ellipse, the pause, the glide,
+the slide and the gentle, deliberate tones that please and impress. That
+the law of suggestion was known to her was very evident, and certain it
+is that she practised hypnotism in her classes, and seemed to know as
+much about the origin of the mysterious agent as we do now, even though
+she never tagged or labeled it.
+
+One very vital thought she worked out was, that the young mind is
+plastic, impressionable and accepts without question all that it is
+told. The young receive their ideas from their elders, and ideas once
+impressed upon this plastic plate of the mind can not be removed.
+
+Said Hypatia: "Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and
+miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most
+terrible thing. The child-mind accepts and believes them, and only
+through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after-years relieved
+of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as
+for a living truth--often more so, since a superstition is so intangible
+you can not get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so
+is changeable."
+
+Gradually, over the mind of the beautiful and gifted Hypatia, there came
+stealing a doubt concerning the value of her own acquirements, since
+these were "acquirements," and not evolutions or convictions gathered
+from experience, but things implanted upon her plastic mind by her
+father.
+
+In this train of thought Hypatia had taken a step in advance of her
+father, for he seems to have had a dogmatic belief in a few things
+incapable of demonstration; but these things he taught to the plastic
+mind, just the same as the things he knew. Theon was a dogmatic liberal.
+Possibly the difference between an illiberal Unitarian and a liberal
+Catholic is microscopic.
+
+Hypatia clearly saw that knowledge is the distilled essence of our
+intuitions, corroborated by experience. But belief is the impress made
+upon our minds when we are under the spell of or in subjection to
+another.
+
+These things caused the poor girl many unhappy hours, which fact, in
+itself, is proof of her greatness. Only superior people have a capacity
+for doubting.
+
+Probably not one person in a million ever gets away far enough from his
+mind to take a look at it, and see the wheels go round. Opinions become
+ossified and the man goes through life hypnotizing others, never
+realizing for an instant that in youth he was hypnotized and that he has
+never been able to cast off the hypnosis.
+
+This is what our pious friends mean when they say, "Give me the child
+until he is ten years old and you may have him afterward." That is, they
+can take the child in his plastic age and make impressions on his mind
+that are indelible. Reared in an orthodox Jewish family a child will
+grow up a dogmatic Jew, and argue you on the Talmud six nights and days
+together.
+
+Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist, the same. I once knew an Arapahoe
+Indian who was taken to Massachusetts when four years old. He grew up
+not only with New England prejudices, but with a New England accent, and
+saved his pennies to give to missionaries that they might "convert" the
+Red Men.
+
+When the suspicion seized upon the soul of Hypatia that her mind was but
+a wax impression taken from her father's, she began to make plans to get
+away from him. Her efforts at explanations were futile, but when placed
+upon the general ground that she wished to travel, see the world and
+meet people of learning and worth, her father acquiesced and she started
+away on her journeyings. He wanted to go, too, but this was the one
+thing she did not desire, and he never knew nor could know why.
+
+She spent several months at Athens, where her youth, beauty and learning
+won her entry into the houses of the most eminent. It was the same at
+Rome and in various other cities of Italy. Money may give you access to
+good society, but talent is always an open sesame. She traveled like a
+princess and was received as one, yet she had no title nor claim to
+nobility nor station. Beauty of itself is not a credential--rather it is
+an object of suspicion, unless it goes with intellect.
+
+Hypatia gave lectures on mathematics; and there was a fallacy abroad
+then as there is now that the feminine mind is not mathematical. That
+the great men whom Hypatia met in each city were first amazed and then
+abashed by her proficiency in mathematics is quite probable. Some few
+male professors being in that peculiar baldheaded hypnotic state when
+feminine charms dazzle and lure, listened in rapture as Hypatia
+dissolved logarithms and melted calculi, and not understanding a word
+she said, declared that she was the goddess Minerva, reincarnated. Her
+coldness on near approach confirmed their suspicions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Just how long a time Hypatia spent upon her pilgrimage, visiting all of
+the great living philosophers, we do not know. Some accounts have it one
+year, others ten.
+
+Probably the pilgrimages were extended over a good many years, and were
+not continuous. Several philosophers proved their humanity by offering
+to marry her, and a prince or two did likewise, we are credibly
+informed. To these persistent suitors, however, Hypatia gently broke the
+news that she was wedded to truth, which is certainly a pretty speech,
+even if it is poor logic. The fact was, however, that Hypatia never met
+a man whose mind matched her own, otherwise logic would have bolstered
+love, instead of discarding it.
+
+Travel, public speaking and meeting people of note form a strong trinity
+of good things. The active mind is the young mind, and it is more than
+the dream of a poet which declares that Hypatia was always young and
+always beautiful, and that even Father Time was so in love with her that
+he refused to take toll from her, as he passed with his hourglass and
+scythe.
+
+In degree she had followed the example of her great prototype, Plotinus,
+and had made herself master of all religions. She knew too much of all
+philosophies to believe implicitly in any. Alexandria was then the
+intellectual center of the world. People who resided there called it the
+hub of the universe. It was the meeting-place of the East and the West.
+
+And Hypatia, with her Thursday lectures, was the chief intellectual
+factor of Alexandria.
+
+Her philosophy she called Neo-Platonism. It was Plato distilled through
+the psychic alembic of Hypatia. Just why the human mind harks back and
+likes to confirm itself by building on another, it would be interesting
+to inquire. To explain Moses; to supply a key to the Scriptures; to
+found a new School of Philosophy on the assumption that Plato was right,
+but was not understood until the Then and There, is alluring.
+
+And now the pilgrims came from Athens, and Rome, and the Islands of the
+Sea to sit at the feet of Hypatia.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hypatia was born in the year Three Hundred Seventy, and died in Four
+Hundred Thirty. She exerted an influence in Alexandria not unlike that
+which Mrs. Eddy exerted in Boston. She was a person who divided society
+into two parts: those who regarded her as an oracle of light, and those
+who looked upon her as an emissary of darkness.
+
+Strong men paid her the compliment of using immoderate language
+concerning her teaching. But whether they spoke ill or well of her
+matters little now. The point is this: they screeched, sneezed, or
+smiled on those who refused to acknowledge the power of Hypatia. Some
+professors of learning tried to waive her; priests gently pooh-poohed
+her; and some elevated an eyebrow and asked how the name was spelled.
+Others, still, inquired, "Is she sincere?"
+
+She was the Ralph Waldo Emerson of her day. Her philosophy was
+Transcendentalism. In fact, she might be spoken of as the original
+charter member of the Concord School of Philosophy. Her theme was the
+New Thought, for New Thought is the oldest form of thought of which we
+know. Its distinguishing feature is its antiquity. Socrates was really
+the first to express the New Thought, and he got his cue from
+Pythagoras.
+
+The ambition of Hypatia was to revive the flowering-time of Greece, when
+Socrates and Plato walked arm in arm through the streets of Athens,
+followed by the greatest group of intellectuals the world has ever
+seen.
+
+It was charged against Hypatia that Aspasia was her ideal, and that her
+ambition was to follow in the footsteps of the woman who was beloved by
+Pericles. If so, it was an ambition worthy of a very great soul.
+Hypatia, however, did not have her Pericles, and never married. That she
+should have had love experiences was quite natural, and that various
+imaginary romances should have been credited to her was also to be
+expected.
+
+Hypatia was nearly a thousand years removed from the time of Pericles
+and Aspasia, but to bridge the gulf of time with imagination was easy.
+Yet Hypatia thought that the New Platonism should surpass the old, for
+the world had had the Age of Augustus to build upon.
+
+Hypatia's immediate prototype was Plotinus, who was born two hundred
+four years after Christ, and lived to be seventy. Plotinus was the first
+person to use the phrase "Neo-Platonism," and so the philosophy of
+Hypatia might be called "The New Neo-Platonism."
+
+To know but one religion is not to know that one.
+
+In fact, superstition consists in this one thing--faith in one religion,
+to the exclusion of all others.
+
+To know one philosophy is to know none. They are all comparative, and
+each serves as a small arc of the circle. A man living in a certain
+environment, with a certain outlook, describes the things he sees; and
+out of these, plus what he imagines, is shaped his philosophy of life.
+If he is repressed, suppressed, frightened, he will not see very much,
+and what he does see will be out of focus. Spiritual strabismus and
+mental myopia are the results of vicarious peeps at the universe. All
+formal religions have taught that to look for yourself was bad. The
+peephole through the roof of his garret cost Copernicus his liberty, but
+it was worth the price.
+
+Plotinus made a study of all philosophies--all religions. He traveled
+through Egypt, Greece, Assyria, India. He became an "adept", and
+discovered how easily the priest drifts into priestcraft, and fraud
+steps in with legerdemain and miracle to amend the truth. As if to love
+humanity were not enough to recommend the man, they have him turn water
+into wine and walk on the water.
+
+Out of the labyrinth of history and speculation Plotinus returned to
+Plato as a basis or starting-point for all of the truth which man can
+comprehend. Plotinus believed in all religions, but had absolute faith
+in none. It will be remembered that Aristotle and Plato parted as to the
+relative value of poetry and science--science being the systematized
+facts of Nature. Plotinus comes in and says that both were right, and
+each was like every good man who exaggerates the importance of his own
+calling. In his ability to see the good in all things, Hypatia placed
+Plotinus ahead of Plato, but even then she says: "Had there been no
+Plato, there would have been no Plotinus; although Plotinus surpassed
+Plato, yet it is plain that Plato, the inspirer of Plotinus and so many
+more, is the one man whom philosophy can not spare. Hail, Plato!!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The writings of Hypatia have all disappeared, save as her words come to
+us, quoted by her contemporaries. If the Essays of Emerson should all be
+swept away, the man would still live in the quotations from his pen,
+given to us by every writer of worth who has put pencil to paper during
+the last fifty years. So lives Sappho, and thus did Charles Kingsley
+secure the composite of the great woman who lives and throbs through his
+book. Legend pictures her as rarely beautiful, with grace, poise and
+power, plus.
+
+She was sixty when she died. History kindly records it forty-five--and
+all picture her as a beautiful and attractive woman to the last. The
+psychic effects of a gracefully-gowned first reader, with sonorous
+voice, using gesture with economy, and packing the pauses with feeling,
+have never been fully formulated, analyzed and explained. Throngs came
+to hear Hypatia lecture--came from long distances, and listened
+hungrily, and probably all they took away was what they brought, except
+a great feeling of exhilaration and enthusiasm. To send the hearer away
+stepping light, and his heart beating fast--this is oratory--which isn't
+so much to bestow facts, as it is to impart a feeling. This Hypatia
+surely did. Her theme was Neo-Platonism. "Neo" means new, and all New
+Thought harks back to Plato, who was the mouthpiece of Socrates. "Say
+what you will, you'll find it all in Plato." Neo-Platonism is our New
+Thought, and New Thought is Neo-Platonism.
+
+There are two kinds of thought: New Thought and Secondhand Thought. New
+Thought is made up of thoughts you, yourself, think. The other kind is
+supplied to you by jobbers. The distinguishing feature of New Thought is
+its antiquity. Of necessity it is older than Secondhand Thought. All
+genuine New Thought is true for the person who thinks it. It only turns
+sour and becomes error when not used, and when the owner forces another
+to accept it. It then becomes a secondhand revelation. All New Thought
+is revelation, and secondhand revelations are errors half-soled with
+stupidity and heeled with greed.
+
+Very often we are inspired to think by others, but in our hearts we have
+the New Thought; and the person, the book, the incident, merely remind
+us that it is already ours. New Thought is always simple; Secondhand
+Thought is abstruse, complex, patched, peculiar, costly, and is passed
+out to be accepted, not understood. That no one comprehends it is often
+regarded as a recommendation.
+
+For instance, "Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image," is
+Secondhand Thought. The first man who said it may have known what it
+meant, but surely it is nothing to us. However, that does not keep us
+from piously repeating it, and having our children memorize it.
+
+We model in clay or wax, and carve if we can, and give honors to those
+who do, and this is well. This commandment is founded on the fallacy
+that graven images are gods, whatever that is. The command adds nothing
+to our happiness, nor does it shape our conduct, nor influence our
+habits. Everybody knows and admits its futility, yet we are unable to
+eliminate it from our theological system. It is strictly
+secondhand--worse, it is junk.
+
+Conversely, the admonition, "Be gentle and keep your voice low," is New
+Thought, since all but savages know its truth, comprehend its import,
+and appreciate its excellence.
+
+Dealers in Secondhand Thought always declare that theirs is the only
+genuine, and that all other is spurious and dangerous.
+
+Dealers in New Thought say, "Take this only as it appeals to you as your
+own--accept it all, or in part, or reject it all--and in any event, do
+not believe it merely because I say so."
+
+New Thought is founded on the laws of your own nature, and its
+shibboleth is, "Know Thyself."
+
+Secondhand Thought is founded on authority, and its war-cry is, "Pay and
+Obey."
+
+New Thought offers you no promise of paradise or eternal bliss if you
+accept it; nor does it threaten you with everlasting hell, if you don't.
+All it offers is unending work, constant effort, new difficulties;
+beyond each success is a new trial. Its only satisfactions are that you
+are allowing your life to unfold itself according to the laws of its
+nature. And these laws are divine, therefore you yourself are divine,
+just as you allow the divine to possess your being. New Thought allows
+the currents of divinity to flow through you unobstructed.
+
+Secondhand Thought affords no plan of elimination; it tends to
+congestion, inflammation, disease and disintegration.
+
+New Thought holds all things lightly, gently, easily--even thought. It
+works for a healthy circulation, and tends to health, happiness and
+well-being now and hereafter. It does not believe in violence, force,
+coercion or resentment, because all these things react on the doer. It
+has faith that all men, if not interfered with by other men, will
+eventually evolve New Thought, and do for themselves what is best and
+right, beautiful and true.
+
+Secondhand Thought has always had first in its mind the welfare of the
+dealer. The rights of the consumer, beyond keeping him in subjection,
+were not considered. Indeed, its chief recommendation has been that "it
+is a good police system."
+
+New Thought considers only the user. To "Know Thyself" is all there is
+of it.
+
+When a creator of New Thought goes into the business of retailing his
+product, he often forgets to live it, and soon is transformed into a
+dealer in Secondhand Thought.
+
+That is the way all purveyors in secondhand revelation begin. In their
+anxiety to succeed, they call in the police. The blessing that is
+compulsory is not wholly good, and any system of morals which has to be
+forced on us is immoral. New Thought is free thought. Its penalty is
+responsibility. You either have to live it, or else lose it. Its reward
+is Freedom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was only a little more than a hundred years before the time of
+Hypatia that the Roman Empire became Christian. When Constantine
+embraced Christianity, all of his loyal subjects were from that moment
+Christians--Christians by edict, but Pagans by character, for the
+natures of men can not be changed by the passing of a resolution. From
+that time every Pagan temple became a Christian church, and every Pagan
+priest a Christian preacher.
+
+Alexandria was under the rule of a Roman Prefect, or Governor. It had
+been the policy of Rome to exercise great tolerance in religious
+matters. There was a State Religion, to be sure, but it was for the
+nobility or those who helped make the State possible. To look after the
+thinking of the plain people was quite superfluous--they were allowed
+their vagaries.
+
+The Empire had been bold, brazen, cruel, coercive in its lust for power,
+but people who paid were reasonably safe. And now the Church was coming
+into competition with the State and endeavoring to reduce spoliation to
+a system.
+
+To keep the people down and under by mental suppression--by the engine
+of superstition--were cheaper and more effective than to employ force or
+resort to the old-time methods of shows, spectacles, pensions and costly
+diversions. When the Church took on the functions of the State, and
+sought to substitute the gentle Christ for Cæsar, she had to recast the
+teachings of Christ. Then for the first time coercion and love dwelt
+side by side. "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared
+for the devil and his angels," and like passages were slipped into the
+Scriptures as matters of wise expediency. This was continued for many
+hundred years, and was considered quite proper and legitimate. It was
+slavery under a more subtle form.
+
+The Bishop of Alexandria clashed with Orestes the Prefect. To hold the
+people under by psychologic methods was better than the old plans of
+alternate bribery and force--so argued the Bishop.
+
+Orestes had come under the spell of Hypatia, and the Republic of Plato
+was saturating his mind.
+
+"To rule by fettering the mind through fear of punishment in another
+world is just as base as to use force," said Hypatia in one of her
+lectures. Orestes sat in the audience and as she spoke the words he
+clapped his hands. The news was carried to the Bishop, who gently
+declared that he would excommunicate him.
+
+Orestes sent word back that the Emperor should be informed of how this
+Bishop was misusing his office by making threats of where he could land
+people he did not like, in another world. Neither the Bishop nor the
+Prefect could unseat each other--both derived their power from the
+Emperor. For Orestes to grow interested in the teachings of Hypatia,
+instead of siding with the Bishop, was looked upon by the loyalists as
+little short of treason.
+
+Orestes tried to defend himself by declaring that the policy of the
+Cæsars had always been one of great leniency toward all schools of
+philosophy. Then he quoted Hypatia to the effect that a fixed, formal
+and dogmatic religion would paralyze the minds of men and make the race,
+in time, incapable of thought.
+
+Therefore, the Bishop should keep his place, and not try to usurp the
+functions of the police. In fact, it was better to think wrongly than
+not to think at all. We learn to think by thinking, and if the threats
+of the Bishop were believed at all, it would mean the death of science
+and philosophy.
+
+The Bishop made answer by declaring that Hypatia was endeavoring to
+found a Church of her own, with Pagan Greece as a basis. He intimated,
+too, that the relationship of Orestes with Hypatia was very much the
+same as that which once existed between Cleopatra and Mark Antony. He
+called her "that daughter of Ptolemy," and by hints and suggestions made
+it appear that she would, if she could, set up an Egyptian Empire in
+this same city of Alexandria where Cleopatra once so proudly reigned.
+
+The excitement increased. The followers of Hypatia were necessarily few
+in numbers. They were thinkers--and to think is a task. To believe is
+easy. The Bishop promised his followers a paradise of ease and rest. He
+also threatened disbelievers with the pains of hell. A promise on this
+side--a threat on that! Is it not a wonder that a man ever lived who
+put his honest thought against such teaching when launched by men
+clothed in almost absolute authority!
+
+Hypatia might have lived yesterday, and her death at the hands of a mob
+was an accident that might have occurred in Boston, where a respectable
+company once threw a rope around the neck of a good man and ran him
+through streets supposed to be sacred to liberty and free speech.
+
+A mob is made up of cotton waste, saturated with oil, and a focused idea
+causes spontaneous combustion. Let a fire occur in almost any New York
+State village, and the town turns wrecker, and loot looms large in the
+limited brain of the villager. Civilization is a veneer.
+
+When one sees emotionalism run riot at an evangelistic revival, and five
+thousand people are trooping through an undesirable district at
+midnight, how long, think you, would a strong voice of opposition be
+tolerated?
+
+Hypatia was set upon by a religious mob as she was going in her carriage
+from her lecture-hall to her home. She was dragged to a near-by church
+with the intent of making her publicly recant, but the embers became a
+blaze, and the blaze became a conflagration, and the leaders lost
+control. The woman's clothes were torn from her back, her hair torn from
+her head, her body beaten to a pulp, dismembered, and then to hide all
+traces of the crime and distribute the guilt so no one person could be
+blamed, a funeral-pyre quickly consumed the remains of what but an hour
+before had been a human being. Daylight came, and the sun's rays could
+not locate the guilty ones.
+
+Orestes made a report of the affair, resigned his office, asked the
+Government at Rome to investigate, and fled from the city. Had Orestes
+endeavored to use his soldiery against the Bishop, the men in the ranks
+would have revolted. The investigation was postponed from time to time
+for lack of witnesses, and finally it was given out by the Bishop that
+Hypatia had gone to Athens, and there had been no mob and no tragedy.
+
+The Bishop nominated a successor to Orestes, and the new official was
+confirmed.
+
+Dogmatism as a police system was supreme.
+
+It continued until the time of Dante, or the Italian Renaissance. The
+reign of Religious Dogmatism was supreme for well-nigh a thousand
+years--we call it the Dark Ages.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: SAINT BENEDICT]
+
+SAINT BENEDICT
+
+
+     If any pilgrim monk come from distant parts, if with wish as a
+     guest to dwell in the monastery, and will be content with the
+     customs which he finds in the place, and do not perchance by his
+     lavishness disturb the monastery, but is simply content with what
+     he finds: he shall be received, for as long a time as he desires.
+     If, indeed, he find fault with anything, or expose it, reasonably,
+     and with the humility of charity, the Abbot shall discuss it
+     prudently, lest perchance God had sent for this very thing. But, if
+     he have been found gossipy and contumacious in the time of his
+     sojourn as guest, not only ought he not to be joined to the body of
+     the monastery, but also it shall be said to him, honestly, that he
+     must depart. If he does not go, let two stout monks, in the name of
+     God, explain the matter to him.
+
+     --_St. Benedict_
+
+
+SAINT BENEDICT
+
+As the traveler journeys through Southern Italy, Sicily and certain
+parts of what was Ancient Greece, he will see broken arches, parts of
+viaducts, and now and again a single, beautiful column pointing to the
+sky. All about is the desert or solitary pastures, and only this white
+milestone, marking the path of the centuries and telling in its own
+silent, solemn and impressive way of a day that is dead.
+
+In the Fifth Century a monk called Simeon the Syrian, and known to us as
+Simeon Stylites, having taken the vow of chastity, poverty and
+obedience, began to fear greatly lest he might not be true to his
+pledge. And that he might live absolutely beyond reproach, always in
+public view, free from temptation, and free from the tongue of scandal,
+he decided to live in the world, and still not be of it. To this end he
+climbed to the top of a marble column, sixty feet high, and there on the
+capstone he lived a life beyond reproach.
+
+Simeon was then twenty-four years old.
+
+The environment was circumscribed, but there was outlook, sunshine,
+ventilation--three good things. But beyond these the place had certain
+disadvantages. The capstone was a little less than three feet square,
+so Simeon could not lie down. He slept sitting, with his head bowed
+between his knees, and indeed, in this posture he passed most of his
+time. Any recklessness in movement, and he would have slipped from his
+perilous position and been dashed to death upon the stones beneath.
+
+As the sun arose he stood up, just for a few moments, and held his arms
+out in greeting, blessing and prayer. Three times during the day did he
+thus stretch his cramped limbs, and pray with his face to the East. At
+such times those who stood near shared in his prayers, and went away
+blessed and refreshed.
+
+How did Simeon get to the top of the column?
+
+Well, his companions at the monastery, a mile away, said he was carried
+there in the night by a miraculous power; that he went to sleep in his
+stone cell and awoke on the pillar. Other monks said that Simeon had
+gone to pay his respects to a fair lady, and in wrath God had caught him
+and placed him on high. The probabilities are, however, Terese, as
+viewed by an unbeliever, that he shot a line over the column with a bow
+and arrow and then drew up a rope ladder and ascended with ease.
+
+However, in the morning the simple people of the scattered village saw
+the man on the column. All day he stayed there. The next day he was
+still there.
+
+The days passed, with the scorching heat of the midday sun, and the cool
+winds of the night.
+
+Still Simeon kept his place.
+
+The rainy season came on. When the nights were cold and dark, Simeon sat
+there with bowed head, and drew the folds of his single garment, a black
+robe, over his face.
+
+Another season passed; the sun again grew warm, then hot, and the
+sand-storms raged and blew, when the people below almost lost sight of
+the man on the column. Some prophesied he would be blown off, but the
+morning light revealed his form, naked from the waist up, standing with
+hands outstretched to greet the rising sun.
+
+Once each day, as darkness gathered, a monk came with a basket
+containing a bottle of goat's milk and a little loaf of black bread, and
+Simeon dropped down a rope and drew up the basket.
+
+Simeon never spoke, for words are folly, and to the calls of saint or
+sinner he made no reply. He lived in a perpetual attitude of adoration.
+
+Did he suffer? During those first weeks he must have suffered terribly
+and horribly. There was no respite nor rest from the hard surface of the
+rock, and aching muscles could find no change from the cramped and
+perilous position. If he fell, it was damnation for his soul--all were
+agreed as to this.
+
+But man's body and mind accommodate themselves to almost any condition.
+One thing at least, Simeon was free from economic responsibilities, free
+from social cares and intrusion. Bores with sad stories of unappreciated
+lives and fond hopes unrealized, never broke in upon his peace. He was
+not pressed for time. No frivolous dame of tarnished fame sought to
+share with him his perilous perch. The people on a slow schedule, ten
+minutes late, never irritated his temper. His correspondence never got
+in a heap.
+
+Simeon kept no track of the days, having no engagements to meet, or
+offices to perform, beyond the prayers at morn, midday and night.
+
+Memory died in him, the hurts became calluses, the world-pain died out
+of his heart, to cling became a habit. Language was lost in disuse. The
+food he ate was minimum in quantity; sensation ceased, and the dry, hot
+winds reduced bodily tissue to a dessicated something called a
+saint--loved, feared and reverenced for his fortitude.
+
+This pillar, which had once graced the portal of a pagan temple, again
+became a place of pious pilgrimage, and people flocked to Simeon's rock,
+so that they might be near when he stretched out his black, bony hands
+to the East, and the spirit of Almighty God, for a space, hovered close
+around.
+
+So much attention did the abnegation of Simeon attract that various
+other pillars, marking the ruins of art and greatness gone, in that
+vicinity, were crowned by pious monks. Their thought was to show how
+Christianity had triumphed over heathenism. Imitators were numerous.
+About that time the Bishops in assembly asked, "Is Simeon sincere?" To
+test the matter of Simeon's pride, he was ordered to come down from his
+retreat.
+
+As to his chastity, there was little doubt, and his poverty was beyond
+question; but how about obedience to his superiors?
+
+The order was shouted up to him in a Bishop's voice--he must let down
+his rope, draw up a ladder, and descend.
+
+Straightway Simeon made preparation to obey. And then the Bishops
+relented and cried, "We have changed our minds, and now order you to
+remain!"
+
+Simeon lifted his hands in adoration and thankfulness and renewed his
+lease.
+
+And so he lived on and on and on--he lived on the top of that pillar,
+never once descending, for thirty years.
+
+All of his former companions grew a-weary; one by one they died, and the
+monastery-bells tolled their requiem as they were laid to rest. Did
+Simeon hear the bells and say, "Soon it will be my turn"?
+
+Probably not. His senses had flown, for what good were they! The young
+monk who now at eventide brought the basket with the bottle of goat's
+milk and the loaf of dry bread was born since Simeon had taken his place
+on the pillar. "He has always been there," the people said, and crossed
+themselves hurriedly.
+
+But one evening when the young monk came with his basket, no line was
+dropped from above. He waited and then called aloud, but all in vain.
+
+When sunrise came, there sat the monk, his face between his knees, the
+folds of his black robe drawn over his head. But he did not rise and
+lift his hands in prayer.
+
+All day he sat there, motionless.
+
+The people watched in whispered silence. Would he arise at sundown and
+pray, and with outstretched hands bless the assembled pilgrims?
+
+But as they watched a vulture came sailing slowly through the blue
+ether, and circled nearer and nearer; and off on the horizon was
+another--and still another, circling nearer and nearer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In humanity's march of progress there are a vanguard and a rearguard.
+The rearguard dwindles away into a mob of camp-followers, who follow for
+diversion and to escape starvation. Both the vanguard and the rearguard
+are out of step with the main body, and therefore both are despised by
+the many who make up the rank and file.
+
+And yet, out of pity, the main body supplies ambulances and
+"slum-workers," who aim to do "good"--but this good is always for the
+rearguard and the camp-followers, never for those who lead the line of
+march, and take the risk of ambush and massacre.
+
+But this scorn of the vanguard has its recompense--often delayed, no
+doubt--but those who compose it are the only ones whom history honors
+and Clio crowns. If they get recognition in life, it is wrung tardily
+from an ungrateful and ungracious world. And this is the most natural
+thing in the world, and it would be a miracle if it were otherwise, for
+the very virtue of the vanguard consists in that their acts outrun human
+sympathy.
+
+Benedict was a scout of civilization. In his day he led the vanguard. He
+found the prosperous part of the world given over to greed and gluttony.
+The so-called religious element was in partnership with fraud,
+superstition, ignorance, incompetence, and an asceticism like that of
+Simeon Stylites, leading to nothing.
+
+Men know the good and grow through experience. To realize the
+worthlessness of place and position and of riches, you must have been at
+some time in possession of these. Benedict was born into a rich Roman
+family, in the year Four Hundred Eighty. His parents wished to educate
+him for the law, so he would occupy a position of honor in the State.
+
+But at sixteen years of age, at that critical time when nerves are
+vibrating between manhood and youth, Benedict cut the umbilical domestic
+cord, and leaving his robes of purple and silken finery, suddenly
+disappeared, leaving behind a note which was doubtless meant to be
+reassuring and which was quite the reverse, for it failed to tell where
+his mail should be forwarded. He had gone to live with a hermit in the
+fastnesses of the mountains. He had desired to do something peculiar,
+strange, unusual, unique and individual, and now he had done it.
+
+Back of it all was the Cosmic Urge, with a fair slip of a girl, and
+meetings by stealth in the moonlight; and then those orders from his
+father to give up the girl, which he obeyed with a vengeance.
+
+Monasticism is a reversal or a misdirection of the Cosmic Urge. The will
+brought to bear in fighting temptation might be a power for good, if
+used in co-operation with Nature. But Nature to the priestly mind has
+always been bad. The worldly mind was one that led to ruin. To be good
+by doing good was an idea the monkish mind had not grasped. His way of
+being good was to be nothing, do nothing--just resist. Successfully to
+fight temptation, the Oriental Monk regarded as an achievement.
+
+One day, out on that perilous and slippery rock on the mountain-side,
+Benedict ceased saluting the Holy Virgin long enough to conceive a
+thought. It was this: To be acceptable to God, we must do something in
+the way of positive good for man. To pray, to adore, to wander, to
+suffer, is not enough. We must lighten the burdens of the toilers and
+bring a little joy into their lives. Suffering has its place, but too
+much suffering would destroy the race.
+
+Only one other man had Benedict ever heard of, who put forth this
+argument, and that was Saint Jerome; and many good men in the Church
+regarded Saint Jerome as little better than an infidel. Saint Jerome was
+a student of the literature of Greece and Rome--"Pagan Books," they were
+called, "rivals of the Bible." Saint Anthony had renounced and denounced
+these books and all of the learning of Paganism. Saint Anthony, the
+father of Christian Monasticism, dwelt on the terrible evils of
+intellectual pride, and had declared that the joys of the mind were of a
+more subtle and devilish character than those of the flesh.
+
+Anthony, assisted by inertia, had won the ear of the Church; and dirt,
+rags and idleness had come to be regarded as sacred things.
+
+Benedict took issue with Anthony.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Monastic Impulse is a protest against the Cosmic Urge, or
+reproductive desire.
+
+Necessarily, the Cosmic Urge is older than the Monastic Impulse; and
+beyond a doubt it will live to dance on the grave of its rival.
+
+The Cosmic Urge is the creative instinct. It includes all planning,
+purpose, desire, hope, unrest, lust and ambition. In its general sense,
+it is Unfulfilled Desire. It is the voice constantly crying in the ears
+of success, "Arise and get thee hence, for this is not thy rest." It is
+the dissatisfaction with all things done--it is our Noble Discontent. In
+its first manifestation it is sex. In its last refinement it means the
+love of man and woman, with the love of children, the home-making sense,
+and an appreciation of art, music and science--which is love with seeing
+eyes--as natural results.
+
+Deity creates through its creatures, of which man is the highest type.
+But man, evolving a small spark of intellect, sits in judgment on his
+Creator, and finds the work bad. Of all the animals, man is the only one
+so far known that criticizes his environment, instead of accepting it.
+And we do this because, in degree, we have abandoned intuition before we
+have gotten control of intellect.
+
+The Monastic Instinct is the disposition ever to look outside of
+ourselves for help. We expect the Strong Man to come and give us
+deliverance from our woes. All nations have legends of saviors and
+heroes who came and set the captives free, and who will come again in
+greater glory and mightier power and even release the dead from their
+graves.
+
+The Monastic Impulse is based on world-weariness, with disappointed
+love, or sex surfeit, which is a phase of the same thing, as a basis.
+Its simplest phase is a desire for solitude.
+
+"Mon" means one, and monasticism is simply living alone, apart from the
+world. Gradually it came to mean living alone with others of a like mind
+or disposition.
+
+The clan is an extension of the family, and so is originally a monastic
+impulse. The Group Idea is a variant of monasticism, but if it includes
+men and women, it always disintegrates with the second generation, if
+not before, because the Cosmic Urge catches the members, and they mate,
+marry and swing the circle.
+
+Ernst Haeckel has recently intimated his belief that monogamy, with its
+exclusive life, is a diluted form of monasticism. And his opinion seems
+to be that, in order to produce the noblest race possible, we must have
+a free society, with a State that reverences and respects maternity and
+pensions any mother who personally cares for her child.
+
+Monasticism and enforced monogamy often carry a disrespect, if not a
+positive contempt, for motherhood, especially free motherhood. We breed
+from the worst, under the worst conditions, and as punishment God has
+made us a race of scrubs. If we had deliberately set about to produce
+the worst, we could not do better.
+
+It will at once be seen that a penalized free motherhood is exactly like
+the Monastic Impulse--a protest and a revolt from the Cosmic Urge. Hence
+Ernst Haeckel, harking back to Schopenhauer, declares that we must place
+a premium upon parenthood, and the State must subsidize all mothers,
+visiting them with tenderness, gentleness, sanctity and respect, before
+we shall be able to produce a race of demigods.
+
+The Church has aureoled and sainted the men and women who have
+successfully fought the Cosmic Urge. Emerson says, "We are strong as we
+ally ourselves with Nature, and weak as we fight against her or
+disregard her." Thus does Emerson place himself squarely in opposition
+to the Church, for the Church has ever looked upon Nature as a lure and
+a menace to holy living.
+
+Now, is it not possible that the prevalency of the Monastic Impulse is
+proof that it is in itself a movement in the direction of Nature?
+Possibly its error lies in swinging out beyond the norm. A few great
+Churchmen have thought so. And the greatest and best of them, so far as
+I know, was Benedict. Through his efforts, monasticism was made a power
+for good, and for a time, at least, it served society and helped
+humanity on its way.
+
+That the flagellants, anchorites, or monks with iron collars, and Simeon
+Stylites living his life perched on a pillar, benefited the human
+race--no one would now argue. Simeon was simply trying to please God--to
+secure salvation for his soul. His assumption was that the world was
+base and bad. To be pure in heart you must live apart from it. His
+persistence was the only commendable thing about him, and this was the
+persistence of a diseased mind. It was beautiful just as the persistence
+of cancer is beautiful.
+
+Benedict, while agreeing that the world was bad, yet said that our
+business was to make it better, and that everything we did which was
+done merely to save our own souls, was selfish and unworthy. He
+advocated that, in order to save our own souls, we should make it our
+business to save others. Also, to think too much about your own soul was
+to have a soul not worth saving. If this life is a preparation for
+another, as Simeon thought, he was not preparing himself for a world
+where we would care to go. The only heaven in which any sane man or
+woman, be he saint or sinner, would care to live, would be one whose
+inhabitants would be at liberty to obey the Cosmic Urge just as freely
+as the Monastic Impulse, and where one would be regarded as holy as the
+other. So thought Saint Benedict.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a natural law, well recognized and defined by men who think,
+called the Law of Diminishing Returns, sometimes referred to as the Law
+of Pivotal Points.
+
+A man starts in to take systematic exercise, and he finds that his
+strength increases. He takes more exercise and keeps on until he gets
+"stale"--that is, he becomes sore and lame. He has passed the Pivotal
+Point and is getting a Diminishing Return.
+
+In running a railroad-engine a certain amount of coal is required to
+pull a train of given weight a mile, say at the rate of fifty miles an
+hour. You double the amount of your coal, and simple folks might say you
+double your speed, but railroad men know better. The double amount of
+coal will give you only about sixty miles instead of fifty. Increase
+your coal and from this on you get a Diminishing Return. If you insist
+on eighty miles an hour, you get your speed at a terrific cost and a
+terrible risk.
+
+Another case: Your body requires a certain amount of food--the body is
+an engine; food is fuel; life is combustion. Better the quality and
+quantity of your food, and up to a certain point you increase your
+strength. Go on increasing your food and you get death. Loan money at
+five per cent and your investment is reasonably secure and safe. Loan
+money at ten per cent and you do not double the returns; on the
+contrary, you have taken on so much risk. Loan money at twenty per cent
+and you will probably lose it; for the man who borrows at twenty per
+cent does not intend to pay if he can help it.
+
+The Law of Diminishing Returns was what Oliver Wendell Holmes had in
+mind when he said, "Because I like a pinch of salt in my soup is no
+reason I wish to be immersed in brine."
+
+Churches, preachers and religious denominations are good things in their
+time and place, and up to a certain point. Whether for you the church
+has passed the Pivotal Point is for you yourself to decide. But remember
+this, because a thing is good up to a certain point, or has been good,
+is no reason why it should be perpetuated. The Law of Diminishing
+Returns is the natural refutation of the popular fallacy that because a
+thing is good you can not get too much of it.
+
+It is this law that Abraham Lincoln had in mind when he said, "I object
+to that logic which seeks to imply that because I wish to make the negro
+free, I desire a black woman for a wife."
+
+Benedict had spent five years in resistance before it dawned upon him
+that Monasticism carried to a certain point was excellent and fraught
+with good results, but beyond that it rapidly degenerated.
+
+To carry the plan of simplicity and asceticism to its summit and not go
+beyond was now his desire.
+
+To withdraw from society he felt was a necessity, for the petty and
+selfish ambitions of Rome were revolting. But the religious life did
+not for him preclude the joys of the intellect. In his unshaven and
+unshorn condition, wearing a single garment of goatskin, he dared not go
+back to his home. So he proceeded to make himself acceptable to decent
+people. He made a white robe, bathed, shaved off his beard, had his hair
+cut, and putting on his garments, went back to his family. The life in
+the wilderness had improved his health. He had grown in size and
+strength and he now, in his own person, proved that a religious recluse
+was not necessarily unkempt and repulsive.
+
+His people greeted him as one raised from the dead. Crowds followed him
+wherever he went. He began to preach to them and to explain his
+position.
+
+Some of his old school associates came to him.
+
+As he explained his position, it began more and more to justify itself
+in his mind. Things grow plain as we analyze them to others--by
+explaining to another the matter becomes luminous to ourselves.
+
+To purify the monasteries and carry to them all that was good and
+beautiful in the classics, was the desire of Benedict. His wish was to
+reconcile the learning of the past with Christianity, which up to that
+time had been simply ascetic. It had consisted largely of repression,
+suppression and a killing-out of all spontaneous, happy, natural
+impulses.
+
+Very naturally, he was harshly criticized, and when he went back to the
+cave where he had dwelt and tried to teach some of his old companions
+how to read and write, they flew first at him, and then from him. They
+declared that he was the devil in the guise of a monk; that he wished to
+live both as a monk and as a man of the world--that he wanted to eat his
+cake and still keep it. By a sort of divine right he took control of
+affairs, and insisted that his companions should go to work with him,
+and plant a garden and raise vegetables and fruits, instead of depending
+upon charity or going without.
+
+The man who insists that all folks shall work, be they holy or secular,
+learned or illiterate, always has a hard road to travel. Benedict's
+companions declared that he was trying to enslave them, and one of them
+brewed a poison and substituted it for the simple herb tea that Benedict
+drank. Being discovered, the man and his conspirators escaped, although
+Benedict offered to forgive and forget if they would go to work.
+
+Benedict adhered to his new inspiration with a persistency that never
+relaxed--the voice of God had called to him that he must clear the soil
+of the brambles and plant gardens.
+
+The thorn-bush through which he had once rolled his naked body, he now
+cut down and burned. He relaxed the vigils and limited the prayers and
+adorations to a few short exercises just before eating, sleeping and
+going to work. He divided the day into three parts--eight hours for
+work, eight hours for study, eight hours for sleep. Then he took
+one-half hour from each of these divisions for silent prayer and
+adoration. He argued that good work was a prayer, and that one could
+pray with his heart and lips, even as his hands swung the ax, the sickle
+or the grub-hoe. All that Benedict required of others, he did himself,
+and through the daily work he evolved a very strong and sturdy physique.
+From the accounts that have come to us he was rather small in stature,
+but in strength he surpassed any man in his vicinity.
+
+Miraculous accounts of his physical strength were related, and in the
+minds of his simple followers he was regarded as more than a man, which
+shows us that the ideals of what a man should be, or might be, were not
+high. We are told that near Benedict's first monastery there was a very
+deep lake, made in the time of Nero by damming up a mountain stream.
+Along this lake the brambles and vines had grown in great confusion.
+Benedict set to work to clear the ground from this lake to his
+monastery, half a mile up the hillside. One day a workman dropped an ax
+into the lake. Benedict smiled, his lips moved in prayer and the ax came
+to the surface. The story does not say that Benedict dived to the bottom
+and brought up the ax, which he probably did. The next day the owner of
+the ax fell into the water, and the story goes that Benedict walked out
+on the water and brought the man in on his shoulders. We who do not
+believe that the age of miracles has passed, can well understand how
+Benedict was an active, agile and strong swimmer, and that through the
+natural powers which he evolved by living a sane and simple life, he was
+able to perform many feats which peasants round about considered
+miraculous. Benedict had what has been called the Builder's Itch. He
+found great joy in planning, creating and constructing. He had an eye
+for architecture and landscape-gardening. He utilized the materials of
+old Roman temples to construct Christian churches, and from the same
+quarry he took stone and built a monastery. A Roman ruin had a lure for
+him. It meant building possibilities. He stocked the lake with fish, and
+then made catches that rivaled the parable of the loaves and fishes.
+Only the loaves of Benedict were made from the wheat he himself raised,
+and the people he fed were the crowds who came to hear him preach the
+gospel he himself practised--the gospel of work, moderation and the
+commonsense exercise of head, hand and heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To Benedict came twelve disciples. But further applications becoming
+numerous, to meet the pressure Benedict kept organizing them into groups
+of twelve, appointing a superior over each group. In order to prove his
+sense of equality, he had but eleven besides himself in the monastery.
+He recognized that leadership was a necessity; but the clothes he wore
+were no better than, and the food he ate no different from, what the
+others had. Yet to enforce discipline, rules were made and instant
+obedience was exacted. Benedict took his turn at waiting on the table
+and doing the coarsest tasks.
+
+Were it not for the commonsense methods of life, and the element of
+human service, the Christian monastery and probably Christianity itself
+would not have survived. The dogma of religion was made acceptable by
+blending it with a service for humanity. And even to this day the
+popular plan of proving the miracles of the Old Testament to have been
+actual occurrences is to point to the schools, hospitals and orphan
+asylums that Christian people have provided.
+
+In the efforts of Benedict to combine the life of unselfish service with
+intellectual appreciation of classic literature, he naturally was
+misunderstood. Several times he came near having serious collisions with
+the authorities of the Church at Rome.
+
+His preaching attracted the jealous attention of certain churchmen, but
+as he was not a priest, the Pope refused to take notice of his supposed
+heresies.
+
+An effort was made to compel him to become a priest, but Benedict
+refused on the plea that he was not worthy. The fact was, however, that
+he did not wish to be bound by the rules of the Church.
+
+In one sense, his was a religion inside a religion, and a slight
+accident might have precipitated an opposition denomination, just as the
+Protestant issue of Luther was an accident, and the Methodism of the
+Wesleys, another.
+
+Several times the opposition, in the belief that Benedict was an enemy
+of the Church, went so far as to try to kill him. And once a few pious
+persons in Rome induced a company of wanton women to go out to
+Benedict's monastery and disport themselves through his beautiful
+grounds. This was done with two purposes in view; one was to work the
+direct downfall of the Benedictines, with the aid of the trulls, and the
+other was to create a scandal among the visitors, who would carry the
+unsavory news back to Rome and supply the gossips raw stock.
+
+Benedict was so deeply grieved by the despicable trick that he retired
+to his former home, the cave in the hillside, and there remained without
+food for a month.
+
+But during this time of solitude his mind was busy with new plans. He
+now founded Monte Cassino. The site is halfway between Rome and Naples,
+and the white, classic lines of the buildings can be seen from the
+railroad. There on the crags, from out of a mass of green, has been
+played out for more than a thousand years the drama of religious life.
+Death by fire and sword has been the fate of many of the occupants. But
+the years went by, new men came, the ruins were repaired, and again the
+cloisters were trodden by pious feet of holy men. Goths, Lombards,
+Saracens, Normans, Spaniards, Teutons, and finally came Napoleon
+Bonaparte, who confiscated the property, making the place his home for a
+brief space. Later he relented and took it from the favorite upon whom
+he had bestowed it and gave it back to the Church. It then remained a
+Benedictine monastery until the edict of Eighteen Hundred Sixty-six,
+which, with the help of Massini and Garibaldi, made the monastery in
+Italy a thing of the past. The place is now a school--a school with a
+co-ed proviso. Thus passes away the glory of the world, in order that a
+greater glory shall appear.
+
+Six hundred years before Benedict's day, on the site of the cloister of
+Monte Cassino stood a temple to Apollo, and just below was a grove
+sacred to Venus.
+
+Two hundred years before Benedict's time the Goths had done their work
+so well that even the walls of the temple to Apollo were razed, and the
+sacred grove became the home of wild beasts.
+
+To this deserted place came Benedict and eleven men, filled with a holy
+zeal to erect on this very spot an edifice worthy of the living God.
+Here the practical builder and the religious dreamer combined. If you
+are going to build a building, why not build upon the walls already laid
+and with blocks ready hewn and fashioned!
+
+The Monte Cassino monastery of Benedict rivaled in artistic beauty the
+temple that it replaced.
+
+Man is a building animal, and the same Creative Energy that impelled the
+Greeks and later the Romans to plan, devise, toil and build, now played
+through the good monk Benedict. His desire to create was a form of the
+great Cosmic Urge, that lives eternally and is building in America a
+finer, better and nobler religion than the world has ever seen--a
+Religion of Humanity--a religion of which at times Benedict caught vivid
+passing glimpses, as one sees at night the landscape brilliantly
+illumined by the lightning's flash.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The motto of Benedict was "Ecce Labora." These words were carved on the
+entrance to every Benedictine Monastery.
+
+The monastic idea originated in the Orient, where Nature placed no
+special penalty on idleness. Indeed, labor may have been a curse in
+Asia. Morality is crystallized expediency, and both, as we are told, are
+matters of geography, as well as time.
+
+And truth it is, that north of the Mediterranean idleness is the curse,
+not labor.
+
+The rule of Benedict was not unlike that of the Shakers, for near every
+monastery was a nunnery. The association of men and women, although
+quite limited, was better for both than their absolute separation, as
+with the Trappists, who regard it as a sin even to look upon the face of
+a woman.
+
+The thrift and industry of the Benedictines was worthy of Ann Lee and
+our friends at Lebanon. A man who works eight hours, with fair
+intelligence, and does not set out to make consumption and waste the
+business of his life, grows rich. Thoreau was right--an hour a day will
+support you. But Thoreau was wrong in supposing men work only to get
+food, clothing and shelter. To work only an hour a day is to evolve into
+a loafer. We work not to acquire, but to become.
+
+The group idea, cemented by able leadership and a religious concept, is
+always successful. The Mormons, Quakers, Harmonyites, Economites, and
+the Oneida Community, all grew very rich, and surpassed their neighbors
+not only in point of money, but in health, happiness, intelligence and
+general mental grasp.
+
+Brook Farm failed for lack of a leader with business instinct; but as it
+was, it divided up among its members a rich legacy of spiritual and
+mental assets. In family life, or what is called "Society," there is a
+constant danger through rivalry, not in well-doing or in human service,
+but in conspicuous waste and conspicuous leisure. The religious rite of
+feet-washing is absolutely lost, both as a rite and as an idea. In
+truth, "good society" is essentially predatory in its instincts. In
+communal life, or the life of a group, service and not waste is the
+watchword. This must be so, since every group, at its beginning, is held
+together through the thought of service. To meet and unite on a basis of
+jealous rivalry and sharp practise is unthinkable, for these are the
+things that disintegrate the group.
+
+It is an economic law that a group founded upon and practising the idea
+of each member giving all, wins all. Benedict's idea of "Ecce labora"
+made every Benedictine monastery a center of wealth. Work stops
+bickering, strife and undue waste. It makes for health and strength. The
+reward of work is not immunity from toil, but more work--an increased
+capacity for effort.
+
+De Tocqueville gave this recipe for success: Subdue yourself--Devote
+yourself.
+
+That is to say, subdue the ego to a point where it gets its
+gratification in concentrating on unselfish service. He who does this
+always succeeds, for not only is he engaged upon a plan of life in which
+there is little competition, but he is working in line with a divine
+law, the law of mutuality, which provides that all the good you do to
+others, you do for yourself.
+
+Benedictine monasticism leads straight to wealth and great power. The
+Abbot of the group became a Baron. "I took the vow of poverty, and it
+led to an income of twenty thousand pounds a year. I took the vow of
+obedience and find myself ruler of fifty towns and villages." These are
+the words which Sir Walter Scott puts into the mouth of an Abbot, who
+became a Baron through the simple law of which I have hinted. And in his
+novel of "The Abbot," Sir Walter gives a tragic picture of how power and
+wealth can be lost as well as won. Feudalism began with the rule of the
+monastery.
+
+Benedict was one of the world's great Captains of Industry. And like all
+great entrepreneurs, he won through utilizing the efforts of others. In
+picking his Abbots, or the men to be "father" of each particular group,
+he showed rare skill. These men learned from him and he learned from
+them. One of his best men was Cassiodorus, the man who evolved the
+scheme of the scriptorium. "To study eight hours a day was not enough,"
+said Cassiodorus. "We should copy the great works of literature so that
+every monastery shall have a library as good as that which we have at
+Monte Cassino." He himself was an expert penman, and he set himself the
+task of teaching the monks how to write as well as how to read. "To
+write beautifully is a great joy to our God," he said.
+
+Benedict liked the idea, and at once put it into execution. Cassiodorus
+is the patron saint of every maker of books who loves his craft.
+
+The systematic work of the scriptorium originated in the brain of
+Cassiodorus, and he was appointed by Benedict to go from one monastery
+to another and inform the Abbot that a voice had come from God to
+Benedict saying that these precious books must be copied, and presented
+to those who would prize them.
+
+Cassiodorus had been a secretary of state under the Emperor Theodoric,
+and he had also been a soldier. He was seventy years of age when he came
+under the influence of Benedict, through a chance visit to Monte
+Cassino. Benedict at first ordered him to take an ax and work with the
+servants at grubbing out underbrush and preparing a field for planting.
+Cassiodorus obeyed, and soon discovered that there was a joy in
+obedience he had before never guessed. His name was Brebantus Varus, but
+on his declaring he was going to remain and work with Benedict, he was
+complimented by being given the name of Cassiodorus, suggested by the
+word Cassinum or Cassino. Cassiodorus lived to be ninety-two, and was
+one of the chief factors, after Benedict himself, in introducing the
+love of art and beauty among the Benedictines.
+
+Near Monte Cassino was a nunnery presided over by Scholastica, the twin
+sister of Benedict.
+
+Renan says that the kinship of Scholastica and Benedict was a spiritual
+tie, not one of blood. If so, we respect it none the less. Saint Gregory
+tells of the death of Benedict thus:
+
+     Benedict was at the end of his career. His interview with Totila
+     took place in Five Hundred Forty-two, in the year which preceded
+     his death; and from his earliest days of the following year, God
+     prepared him for his last struggle, by requiring from him the
+     sacrifice of the most tender affection he had retained on earth.
+     The beautiful and touching incident of the last meeting of Benedict
+     and his twin sister, Scholastica, is a picture long to remember. At
+     the window of his cell, three days after her death, Benedict had a
+     vision of his dear sister's soul entering heaven in the form of a
+     snowy dove. He immediately sent for the body and placed it in a
+     sepulcher which he had already prepared for himself, that death
+     might not separate those whose souls had always been united in God.
+
+     The death of his sister was the signal of departure for himself. He
+     survived her forty days. He announced his death to several of his
+     monks, then far from Monte Cassino. A violent fever having seized
+     him, he caused himself on the sixth day of his sickness to be
+     carried to the chapel of Saint John the Baptist; he had before
+     ordered the tomb in which his sister already slept to be opened.
+
+     There, supported in the arms of his disciples, he received the holy
+     Viaticum, then placing himself at the side of the open grave, but
+     at the foot of the altar, and with his arms extended towards
+     heaven, he died, standing, muttering a last prayer. Such a
+     victorious death became that great soldier of God. He was buried by
+     the side of his beloved Scholastica, in a sepulcher made on the
+     spot where stood the altar of Apollo, which had been replaced by
+     another to our beloved Savior.
+
+
+In the very year, and at the same time, that Justinian and Theodora were
+preparing the Justinian Code, Benedict was busy devising "The Monastic
+Rules." Benedict did not put his rules forth as final, but explained
+that they were merely expedient for their time and place. In this he was
+singularly modest. If one can divest himself of the thought that there
+was anything "holy" or "sacred" about these communal groups called
+"monasteries," and then read these rules, he will see that they were
+founded on a good knowledge of economics and a very stern commonsense.
+
+Humanity was the same a thousand years ago that it is now. Benedict had
+to fight inertia, selfishness and incipient paranoia, just as does the
+man who tries to introduce practical socialism today. A few extracts
+from this very remarkable Book of Rules will show the shrewd Connecticut
+wisdom of Benedict. To hold the dowdy, indifferent, slipshod and
+underdone in their proper places, so they could not disturb or destroy
+the peace, policy and prosperity of the efficient, was the task of
+Benedict.
+
+Benedict says: "Written and formal rules are necessary only because we
+are all faulty men, with a tendency towards selfishness and disorder.
+When men become wise, and also unselfish, there will be no need of rules
+and laws."
+
+The Book of Rules by Benedict is a volume of more than twenty thousand
+words. Its scope reveals an insight that will appeal to all who have had
+to do with socialistic experiments, not to mention the management of
+labor-unions. Benedict was one of the industrial leaders of the world.
+His life was an epoch, and his influence still abides.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: MARY BAKER EDDY]
+
+MARY BAKER EDDY
+
+
+     The chief stones in the temple of Christian Science are to be found
+     in the following postulates: that Life is God, good and not evil;
+     that Soul is sinless, not to be found in the body; that Spirit is
+     not and can not be materialized; that Life is not subject to death;
+     that the spiritual real man has no consciousness of material life
+     or death.
+
+     --_Mary Baker Eddy_
+
+
+MARY BAKER EDDY
+
+Let the fact be here stated that Mary Baker Eddy was the founder of
+Christian Science. This woman lived long and well.
+
+She was alert, earnest, highly intelligent, receptive. She was ever
+discovering. We know this because she put out a new message every little
+while, or modified an old one, having come in the meantime into a
+position to get a nearer and clearer view of the fact. The last edition
+of "Science and Health" is a different book from the first one.
+
+Christian Science is not a fixed, formed, fossilized, ossified
+structure. Possibly it may become so. But the probabilities are it will
+grow, expand, advance. Life and growth consist in eliminating dead
+matter and evolving new tissue. The institution, commercial, artistic,
+social, political, religious, that has ceased to grow has begun to
+disintegrate.
+
+Christian Scientists do not flee the world, renouncing and denouncing
+it. As a people they are well, happy, hopeful, enthusiastic and
+successful. I am fairly well informed on the history of all great
+religions. In degree I know the character of intellect possessed by the
+folks who make or made up their membership. And my opinion is, that no
+religion that has ever existed contained so large a percentage of
+intelligent people, competent, safe and sane, as does Christian Science.
+There is an adage to the effect that a prophet is not without honor save
+in his own country.
+
+In the case of Mary Baker Eddy, the adage just quoted goes awry. Mrs.
+Eddy as long as she lived, retained the good-will of Concord, Boston and
+Brookline, where she chose to make her home. Very many of the leading
+men and women of each of these cities are Christian Scientists.
+
+The Christian Science Church at Concord cost upwards of two hundred
+thousand dollars, and was the gift of Mrs. Eddy. Over the entrance, cut
+deep in granite, are the words, "Presented by Mary Baker Eddy,
+Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science." As to the argument that
+the truths of Christian Science have always been known and practised by
+a few, Mrs. Eddy issued her direct challenge. In all of her literature
+she set out the unqualified statement that she was "The Discoverer and
+the Founder." She was never apologetic; she assumed no modesty she did
+not feel; she spoke as one having authority, as did Moses of old, "Thus
+saith the Lord!"
+
+She entered into no joint debates; she did not answer back. This intense
+conviction which admits of no parley was one of the secrets of her
+power. For many years the Billingsgate Calendar was directed at her upon
+every possible occasion.
+
+But Mrs. Eddy won out, and legislation and courts were compelled to
+whistle in their hounds. Your right to keep well in your own way is now
+fully recognized. Doctors are not liable when they give innocent
+sweetened water and call it medicine, nor do we place Christian
+Scientists on trial if their patients die, any more than we do the M.
+D.'s.
+
+In fact, Mrs. Eddy influenced both of the so-called sciences of medicine
+and theology. Even those who are perfectly willing to deny her, and
+noisily discard her tenets, are debtors to her.
+
+Homeopathy modified the dose of all the Allopaths; and Christian Science
+has attenuated the Hahnemannian theory of attenuations, it having been
+found that the blank tablet often cures quite as effectively as the one
+that is medicated. Christian Science does not shout, rant, defy nor
+preach. It is poised, silent, sure, and the flagellants, like the
+dervishes, are noticeable by their absence.
+
+The Reverend Billy Sunday is not a Christian Scientist. The Christian
+Scientist does not cut into the grape; specialize on the elevated
+spheroid; devote his energies to bridge whist; cultivate the scandal
+microbe; join the anvil chorus, nor shake the red rag of wordy warfare.
+He is diligent in business, fervent in spirit, and accepts what comes
+without protest, finding it good.
+
+Mary Baker Eddy lived a human life. Through her manifold experiences she
+gathered gear--she was a very great and wise woman. She was so great
+that she kept her own counsel, received no visitors, made no calls, had
+no Thursday, wrote no letters, and even never went to the church that
+she presented to her native town. Mrs. Eddy's step was ever light, her
+form erect--a slender, handsome, queenly woman. When she passed on, in
+December, Nineteen Hundred Ten, in her ninetieth year, she looked scarce
+more than sixty. Her face showed experience, but not extreme age. The
+day I saw her, a few years before her death, she was dressed all in
+white satin and looked like a girl going to a ball.
+
+Her eyes were not dimmed nor her face wrinkled.
+
+Her hat was a milliner's dream; her gloves came to the elbow and were
+becomingly wrinkled; her form was the form of Bernhardt. Her secretary
+stood by the carriage-door, his head bared. He did not offer his hand to
+the lady nor seek to assist her into the carriage. He knew his
+business--a sober, silent, muscular, bronzed, farmer-like man, who
+evidently saw everything and nothing.
+
+He closed the carriage-door and took his seat by the side of the driver,
+who wore no livery. The men looked like brothers. The big, brown horses
+started slowly away; they wore no blinders nor check-reins--they, too,
+had banished fear. The coachman drove with a loose rein. The next day I
+waited in Concord to see Mrs. Eddy again. At exactly two-fifteen the
+big, brown, slow-going horses turned into Main Street. Drays pulled in
+to the curb, automobiles stopped, people stood on the street corners,
+and some--the pilgrims--uncovered.
+
+Mrs. Eddy sat back in the carriage, holding in her white-gloved hands a
+big spray of apple-blossoms, the same half-smile of satisfaction on her
+face--the smile of Pope Leo the Thirteenth. The woman was a veritable
+queen, and some of her devotees, not without reason, called her the
+Queen of the World.
+
+Some doubtless prayed to her--and may yet, for that matter. Mrs. Eddy
+was married three times. First, to Colonel George W. Glover, an
+excellent and worthy man, who was the father of her only child, a son.
+On the death of Glover, the child was taken by Glover's mother and
+secreted so effectually that his mother did not see him until he was
+thirty-four years old, and the father of a family.
+
+Her second husband was Daniel Patterson, who was not only a rogue but
+also a fool--a flashy one, who turned the head of a lone, lorn young
+widow, who certainly was not infallible in judgment. In two years the
+wife got a divorce from him, on the grounds of cruelty and desertion, at
+Salem, Massachusetts. Her third marital venture was Doctor Asa G. Eddy,
+a practising physician--a man of much intelligence and worth. From him
+Mrs. Eddy learned that the Science of Medicine was not much of a science
+after all. Mrs. Eddy used to say that her husband was her first convert;
+certain it is that Dr. Eddy gave up his practise to assist his wife in
+putting before the world the unreality of disease. That he did not fully
+grasp the idea is shown by the fact that he died of pneumonia. This,
+however, did not shake the faith of Mrs. Eddy in the doctrine that
+sickness was an error of mortal mind. For a good many years Mrs. Eddy
+drove the memory of her two good husbands tandem, hitched by a hyphen,
+thus: Mary Baker Glover-Eddy. Many a woman has joined her own name to
+that of her husband, but what woman ever before so honored the two men
+she had loved by coupling their names! Getting married is a bad habit,
+Mrs. Eddy would probably have said, but you have to get married to find
+it out.
+
+In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-nine, Mrs. Eddy organized the First Church
+of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, and became its pastor. In Eighteen
+Hundred Eighty-one, being then sixty years of age, she founded the
+Massachusetts Metaphysical College, in Boston. For fifteen years she had
+been speaking in public, affirming that health was our normal condition
+and that as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. From her forty-fifth
+to her sixtieth year she was glad to speak for what was offered,
+although I believe that even then she had discarded the good old
+priestly plan of taking up a collection. The Metaphysical College was
+started to prepare students for teaching Mrs. Eddy's doctrines.
+
+The business ability of the woman was shown in thus organizing and
+allowing no one to teach who was not duly prepared. These students were
+obliged to pay a good stiff tuition, which fact made them appreciative.
+In turn they went out and taught; all students paid the tidy sum of one
+hundred dollars for the lessons, which fee was later cut to fifty.
+Salvation may be free, but Christian Science costs money. The
+theological genus piker, with his long, wrinkled, black coat, his collar
+buttoned behind, and his high hat, has been eliminated.
+
+Mrs. Eddy was manager of the best-methodized institution in the world,
+save only the Roman Catholic Church and the Standard Oil Company. How
+many million copies of "Science and Health" have been sold, no man can
+say. What percentage of the money from the lessons went to Mrs. Eddy,
+only an Armstrong Committee could ascertain, and really it was nobody's
+business but hers.
+
+That Mrs. Eddy had some very skilful helpers goes without saying. But
+here is the point--she selected them, and reigned supreme. That the
+student who paid fifty dollars got his money's worth, I have no doubt.
+Not that he understood the lessons, but he received a feeling of courage
+and a oneness with the whole which caused health to flow through his
+veins and his heart to beat with joy. The lesson might have been to him
+a jumble of words, but he lived in hopes that he would soon grow to a
+point where the lines were luminous.
+
+In the meantime, all he knew was that whereas he was once lame he could
+now walk. Even the most bigoted and prejudiced now agree that the cures
+of Christian Science are genuine. People who think they have trouble
+have it, and it is the same with pain. Imagination is the only
+sure-enough thing in the world. Mrs. Eddy's doctrines abolish pain and
+therefore abolish poverty, for poverty, in America at least, is a
+disease. Mrs. Eddy's chief characteristics were:
+
+First, Love of Beauty as manifest in bodily form, dress and
+surroundings.
+
+Second, A zeal for system, order and concentrated effort on the
+particular business she undertakes.
+
+Third, A dignity, courage, self-sufficiency and self-respect that comes
+from a belief in her own divinity.
+
+Fourth, An economy of time, money, materials, energy and emotion that
+wastes nothing, but which continually conserves and accumulates.
+
+Fifth, A liberality, when advisable, which is only possible to those who
+also economize.
+
+Sixth, Yankee shrewdness, great commonsense, all flavored with a dash of
+mysticism and indifference to physical scientific accuracy.
+
+In other words, Christian Science is a woman's science--she knows! And
+it is good because it is good--this is a science sound enough for
+anybody--I guess so! Christian Science is scientific, but not for the
+reasons that its promoters maintain. Male Christian Scientists do not
+growl and kick the cat.
+
+Women Christian Scientists do not nag. Christian Scientists do not have
+either the grouch or the meddler's itch. Among them there are no
+dolorosos, grumperinos or beggars. They respect all other denominations,
+having a serene faith that all will yet see the light--that is to say,
+adopt their doctrines. The most radical among old-school doctors could
+not deny that Mrs. Eddy's own life was conducted on absolutely
+scientific lines. She never answered the telephone, never fussed nor
+fumed.
+
+She hired big, safe people and paid them a big wage. She gave her
+coachman fifty dollars a week, and her cook in proportion, and thus
+secured people who gave her peace. She went to bed with the birds and
+awoke with the dawn. At seven o'clock she was at her desk, dictating
+answers to the very few letters her secretary deemed it advisable she
+should see. She had breakfast at nine o'clock--ate anything she liked,
+taking her time and fletcherizing. After breakfast she worked upon her
+manuscripts until it was time for the daily ride.
+
+At four o'clock she dined--two meals a day being the rule. If, however,
+she cared to dissipate a little and eat three meals a day, she was not
+afraid to do so.
+
+She knew her horses and cows and sheep by name, and gave requests as to
+their care, holding that the laws of mind obtain as to dumb animals the
+same as man. Dogs she did not care for, and if she ever had an aversion
+it would have been cats. Her servants she called "My helpers."
+Christian Scientists very naturally believe in the equality of the
+sexes. When girl babies are born to them they bless God, just the same
+as when boy babies are born. In truth they bless God for everything, for
+to them all is beautiful and all is good. Paid preachers they do not
+have; they do not believe in priests or certain men who are nearer to
+God than others. All have access to Eternal Truth, and thus is the
+ecclesiastic excluded. To eliminate the theological middleman is well,
+and as for the Church itself, surely Mrs. Eddy eliminated it also; for
+she never entered a church, or at least not more than once a year, and
+then it was only in deference to the architect. A Church! Is it
+necessary? For herself Mrs. Eddy said, No.
+
+But as for others, she said, Yes, a church is good for those who need
+it. Mrs. Eddy was the most successful author in the world, or, indeed,
+that the world has ever seen. No other writer ever made so much money as
+she, none is more devoutly read.
+
+Shakespeare, with his fortune of a quarter of a million dollars, fades
+into comparative failure; and Arthur Brisbane, with his salary of
+seventy-five thousand a year, is an office-boy compared with this regal
+woman, who gave fifty thousand dollars a year for good roads.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The valuable truths and distinguishing features of Christian Science are
+not to be found in Mrs. Eddy's books, but in Mrs. Eddy's life. She was a
+much bigger woman than she was a writer. Emerson says that every great
+institution is the lengthened shadow of a single man. Every great
+business enterprise has a soul--one man's spirit animates, pervades and
+tints the whole. You can go into any hotel or store, and behold! the
+nature or character of the owner or manager is everywhere proclaimed.
+
+You do not have to see the man, and the bigger the institution the less
+need is there for the man to show himself. His work proclaims him, just
+as a farmer's livestock all moo, whinny and squeal his virtues--or lack
+of them. As a boy of ten I learned to know all of our neighbors by their
+horses. The horses of a drunkard, blanketless, hungry, shivering,
+outside of the village tavern, do they not proclaim the poor, despised
+owner within?
+
+You can walk through the passenger-coaches of a train made up at a
+terminal and read the character unmistakably of the general
+passenger-agent. The soul of John Wesley ran through Methodism and made
+it what it was. The Lutheranism of Luther yet lives; Calvinism the same;
+and the soul of John Knox still goes marching on, carrying the
+Presbyterian banner.
+
+Every religion partakes of the nature of its founder, until this
+religion is mixed with that of another and its character lost, as
+happened to the religion of Christ when it was launched by Paul and was
+finally fused with Paganism by the Roman Emperor, Constantine.
+
+Christian Science is as yet the lengthened shadow of Mary Baker Eddy.
+Her own immediate, personal pupils are still teaching, and her life and
+characteristics impressed upon them are given out to each and all. Every
+phase of life is solved by answering the question, "What would Mrs. Eddy
+do?" Mrs. Eddy's ideas about dress, housekeeping, business, food,
+health, the management of servants, the care of children--all are
+blended into a composite, and this composite is the Christian Scientist
+as we see and know him.
+
+The fact that Mrs. Eddy was methodical, industrious, economical,
+persevering, courageous, hopeful, helpful, neat in her attire and
+smiling, makes all Christian Scientists exactly so. She did not play
+cards and indulge in the manifold silliness of so-called good society,
+and neither do they. Indeed, that one thing which has been referred to
+as "the plaster-of-Paris smile," the one feature in Christian Science to
+which many good people object, is the direct legacy of Mrs. Eddy to her
+pupils. "Science and Health" says nothing about it; no edict has been
+put forth recommending it; but all good Christian Scientists take it
+on--the smile that refuses to vacate the premises. And to some it is
+certainly very becoming. Mrs. Eddy's self-reliant, silent, smiling
+personality has given the key to conduct for the hundreds of thousands
+of people who love her and revere her memory.
+
+Mrs. Eddy was a rare good listener. She did not argue. Once upon a time,
+indeed, she was guilty of waving the red flag of wordy warfare; but the
+passing of the years brought her wisdom, and then her only answer to
+impatience was the quiet smile. As for eating, her table always had
+enough, but it stopped short of surfeit; the service was dainty, and all
+these things are now seen in the homes of Christian Scientists. Always
+in the home of a good Christian Scientist the bathroom is as complete as
+the library, and both are models of good housekeeping, seemingly always
+in order for the inspection committee.
+
+Mrs. Eddy did not say much about hot water, soap and clean towels; but
+the idea, regardless of the non-existence of matter, is fixed in the
+consciousness of every Christian Scientist that absolute bodily
+cleanliness, fresh linen and fresh air are not only next to godliness,
+but elements of it. All of which you could never work out of "Science
+and Health with Key to the Scriptures" in a lifetime of study, any more
+than you could mine and smelt the Westminster Catechism out of the
+Bible.
+
+The vital truths of right living come to us as a precious heritage from
+the character of this great woman. She, herself, perhaps may not have
+known this; but before she wrote her book and formulated her religion,
+she lived her life. Her book was an endeavor to explain her life, and
+as her life grew better, stronger and more refined, she changed her
+book. Her book reacted on her life, and the person who got the most good
+out of "Science and Health" was Mary Baker Eddy herself.
+
+"Science and Health" is mystical and beautifully human. The author's oar
+often fails to catch the water. For instance, she tries to show that
+animal magnetism, spiritualism, mental science, theosophy, agnosticism,
+pantheism and infidelity are all bad things and opposed to the science
+of "true being."
+
+This statement presupposes that animal magnetism, infidelity, theosophy
+and agnosticism are specific entities or things, whereas they are only
+labels that are clapped quite indiscriminately on empty casks or full
+ones; and the contents of the casks may be sea-water or wine, and are
+really unknown to both mortal and divine mind, whatever these things
+are. Theosophists like Annie Besant, Spiritualists like Alfred Russel
+Wallace, Agnostics like Huxley and Ingersoll, are very noble and
+beautiful people. They are good neighbors and useful citizens.
+
+"Science and Health" is an attempt to catch and hold in words the
+secrets of an active, honest, healthful, seeking, restless, earnest
+life, and as such is more or less of a failure.
+
+Our actions are right, but our reasons seldom are.
+
+Christian Science as a plan of life, embodying the great yet simple
+virtues, is beautiful. "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures"
+does not explain the Scriptures. The book, as an attempt to explain and
+crystallize truth, is a failure. It ranks with that great mass of
+literature, written and copied at such vast pains and expense, bearing
+the high-sounding title, "Writings of the Saints."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All publishers are familiar with inspired manuscripts. Such work always
+has one thing in common--unintelligibility. Good literature is lucid to
+the average mind. In fact, that is its distinguishing feature. We
+understand what the man means. No able writer uses the same word over
+and over with varying sense. Alfred Henry Lewis and William Marion Reedy
+use the mortal mind, and their work is understandable. You can sit in
+judgment on their conclusions and weigh, sift and decide for yourself.
+They make an appeal to your intellect.
+
+But you can not sit in judgment on "Science and Health," because its
+language is not the language we use in our common, every-day intercourse
+with one another. It speaks of Christ as a person, a principle, a
+spirit, a motive; as "Truth"; as one who was born of one parent or no
+parents; who lived, died, or never lived, never was born, and can not
+die.
+
+Metaphysics is an attempt to explain a thing and thereby evade the
+trouble of understanding it. You throw the burden of proof on the other
+fellow--and make him believe he does not comprehend because he is too
+stupid. This is not fair!
+
+Language is simply an agreement between people that certain vocal
+sounds, or written symbols, shall stand for certain ideas, thoughts or
+things. Inspired writers string intelligent words together in an
+unintelligent manner, and thereby give the reader an opportunity to
+read anything into them that his preconceived thoughts may dictate.
+Metaphysical gibberish is a rudimentary survival of the practise of
+reading to the people in a dead language. The doctors continue the plan
+by writing prescriptions in Latin.
+
+I once worked in a studio where the boys scraped their palette-knives on
+a convenient board. One day we took the board out and had it framed
+under glass, with a double, deep-shadow box. We gave it the best place
+in the studio and labeled it, "A Sunset at Sea--an Impression in
+Monochrome."
+
+The picture attracted much attention and great admiration from certain
+symbolists. It also created so much controversy that we were obliged to
+take it down in the interests of amity.
+
+To assume that God inspired the Scriptures, and did the work so ill
+that, after more than two thousand years, it was necessary to inspire
+another person to make a "Key" to them, is hardly worthy of our serious
+attention. If God, being all-wise, all-powerful and all-loving, turns
+author, why does He produce work so muddy that it requires a "Key"?
+
+Individuals may use a code that requires a "Key," because they wish to
+keep their matter secret from others. There may be for them a penalty on
+truth, but why Deity should write in a secret language, and then wait
+two thousand years before making the matter plain, and then to one
+single woman in Boston, is incomprehensible. What the world wants now
+is a Key to "Science and Health." In reading a book, the question that
+interests us is not, "Is it inspired?" but, "Is it true?"
+
+Mrs. Eddy's ranks are recruited almost entirely from Orthodox
+Christianity. On page six hundred eight of "Science and Health," pocket
+edition of Nineteen Hundred Six, a lawyer gives testimony to the good he
+has gotten from Christian Science, and explains that he has long been a
+member of the Episcopal Church. He is delighted to know that he has not
+had to relinquish any of his old faith, but has simply kept the old and
+added to it the new.
+
+This explains, in great degree, the popularity of Christian Science.
+People cling to the religious superstitions into which they were born.
+Mrs. Eddy's recruits were not from theosophy, spiritualism, agnosticism,
+unitarianism, universalism or infidelity. You can't give a freethinker a
+book with a statement of what he must find in it.
+
+He has acquired the habit of thinking for himself.
+
+Mrs. Eddy had no faith in Darwin, Spencer or Haeckel. She quoted Moses,
+Jesus and Paul to disprove the evolutionists, sat back and smiled
+content, innocently unaware that citations from Scriptures are in no
+sense proof to free minds. All of the Bible she wished to waive, she
+did. The cruelty and bestiality of Jehovah were nothing to her. Her
+"Key" does not unlock the secrets of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, nor
+does it shed light on the doctrines of eternal punishment, the vicarious
+atonement, or the efficacy of baptism as a saving ordinance.
+
+Explanations about mortal mind, divine mind and human mind, citing
+specific errors of the human mind, with a calm codicil to the effect
+that the human mind has no existence, are not what you might call
+illuminating literature. The stuff is simply "inspired." Mrs. Eddy was
+very wise in not allowing her "readers" or followers to sermonize or
+explain her writings. These writings are simply to be read. And so the
+hearers sit steeped in mist and wrapped in placidity, returning to their
+work rested and refreshed, without being influenced in any way, save by
+the soothing calm of forceful fog and mental vacuity.
+
+The rest and relief from all thought is good. The related experiences of
+Christian Scientists are the things that convince and carry weight, not
+"Science and Health." "Science and Health" was made to sell. It was not
+given to you to be understood: it was to be bought and believed. If you
+doubt any portion of it, at once you are told that this is the work of
+your mortal mind, which is filled with error. Good Christian Scientists
+do not try to understand "Science and Health"--they just accept and
+believe it. "It is inspired," they say, "so it must be true--you will
+know when you are worthy to know."
+
+And so we see our old friend Intellectual Tyranny come back in another
+form, not with cowl and cape, but tricked out with feminine finery and
+jewelry and gems that lure and dazzle. There is one thing quite as
+valuable as health, and that is intellectual integrity. To say, "Oh,
+'Science and Health' is certainly inspired--just see how old Mrs.
+Johnson was cured of the rheumatism!" is not reasoning.
+
+And it has given the scoffers excuse for calling it woman's logic. Such
+reasoning is on the plane of, "Why, Jesus must have been the only
+begotten son of God, born of a virgin, for if you don't believe it, just
+see the hospitals, orphan asylums and homes for the aged that
+Christianity has built!" Mrs. Johnson was surely cured of the rheumatism
+all right, but that does not prove that Mrs. Eddy is correct in her
+claim that Eve was made from Adam's rib; that agamogenesis is a fact in
+Nature; that to till the soil will not always be necessary; that human
+life in these bodies will have no end; and that an absent person can
+poison your health and happiness through malicious animal magnetism; or
+that a good person can give you absent treatment and cure your
+indigestion.
+
+I agree with Mrs. Eddy as to the necessity of eliminating a medical
+fetish, but I disagree with her about religiously preserving a
+theological one. I have read "Science and Health with Key to the
+Scriptures" for twenty years, and I have also read the Scriptures for a
+much longer period. Also, I have lived in the same house for many
+months with very intelligent Christian Scientists.
+
+And after mature consideration I regard both the Scriptures and "Science
+and Health" as largely made up of the errors of mortal mind. My
+intuitions are just as valuable to me as Mrs. Eddy's were to her.
+
+My conscience is quite as sacred to me as hers was to her. And in being
+an agnostic I object to being classed as blind, stubborn, wilful,
+malicious and degenerate.
+
+We should honor our Creator by cleaving to the things that seem to us to
+be true, and not abandon the rudder of our minds to any man or any
+woman, be they living or dead. Let us not be dishonest with ourselves,
+even to rid us of our physical diseases. As for health, I have all of it
+that Christian Science ever gave or can give. I have no "testimony" of
+healing to relate, for I have never been sick an hour. And I think I
+know how I have kept well. I make no secret of it. It is all very
+simple--nothing miraculous.
+
+My knowledge of how to keep well is not inspired knowledge, save as all
+men are inspired who study and know the Laws of Nature. Health, after
+all, is largely a matter of habit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Back of the reading-desks, in the "Mother Church," at Boston, are
+quotations from Paul and Mrs. Eddy, side by side. But the quotation from
+Paul, which is behind the desk of the woman reader, is not this: "Let
+women keep silence in the churches."
+
+Mrs. Eddy believed the Scriptures are all true, word for word. Yet when
+she quoted Paul she picked the thing she wanted and avoided all that did
+not apply to her case. Personally, I like the plan. I do it myself. But
+I do not believe the Scriptures are inspired by an all-wise Deity. So
+far as I know, all books were written by men, and very often by faulty,
+human men at that. Mrs. Eddy's "Key" does not unlock anything; and she
+did not try to unlock any passages except the passages that seemingly
+had a bearing on her belief. That is, Mrs. Eddy believed things first,
+and then skirmished for proof. This is a very old plan. Says
+Shakespeare: "In religion what damned error but some somber brow will
+bless it and approve it with a text, hiding the grossness thereof with
+fair ornament." Let no one read "Science and Health" in the hope of
+finding in it simple and sensible statements concerning life and its
+duties. They are not there.
+
+I append a few quotations, and in mentioning the page I refer to the
+pocket or "Oxford" edition of Nineteen Hundred Six. On page one hundred
+eighty-three of "Science and Health" I find, "The Scriptures inform us
+that sin, or error, first caused the condemnation of man to till the
+ground, and indicate that obedience to God will remove this necessity."
+
+Mrs. Eddy evidently believed that work is a punishment, and that the day
+will come when God will remove the necessity of farming and making
+garden. Can a sane person reply to such lack of logic?
+
+On page five hundred forty-seven is this: "If one of the statements in
+this book is true, every one must be true, for not one departs from its
+system and rule. You can prove for yourself, dear reader, the Science of
+healing, and so ascertain if the author has given you the correct
+interpretation of Scripture."
+
+This is evidently inspired by Paul's quibble, "If the dead rise not from
+the grave, then is our religion vain." Lincoln once referred to this
+kind of reasoning by saying, "I object to the assumption that my
+ambition is to have my son marry a negress, simply because I am
+struggling for emancipation." Mrs. Eddy may heal you, but that does not
+prove that her interpretation of Scripture is true. Because this
+happens, that does not necessarily follow. Neither, because a thing
+precedes a thing or goes with a thing, is the thing the cause of the
+thing. On page five hundred fifty-three is this: "Adam was created
+before Eve. Herein it is seen that the maternal egg never brought forth
+Adam. Eve was formed from Adam's rib, not from a fetal ovum."
+
+In reading things like this in "Science and Health," let us not be too
+severe on Mrs. Eddy, but just bear in mind that such silly superstitions
+and barbaric folklore are yet officially believed by all orthodox
+clergymen and members of orthodox churches. You can accept a belief in
+Adam's fall and the vicarious atonement and still make money and have
+good health.
+
+Page one hundred two: "The mild forms of animal magnetism are
+disappearing, and its aggressive features are coming to the front. The
+looms of crime, hidden in the dark recesses of mortal thought, are every
+hour weaving webs more complicated and subtle. So secret are its present
+methods that they ensnare the age into indolence, and produce the very
+apathy on this subject which the criminal desires."
+
+This passage reveals the one actually dangerous thing in Christian
+Science--the fallacy that one mind can weave a web that will work the
+undoing of another. This is the basis of a belief in witchcraft, and
+justifies the hangings at Salem. On page one hundred three I find this:
+"As used in Christian Science, animal magnetism or hypnotism is the
+specific term for error, or mortal mind."
+
+"It is the false belief that mind is in matter, and both evil and good;
+that evil is as real as goodness, and more powerful. This belief has not
+one quality of truth or good. It is either ignorant or malicious. The
+malicious form of animal magnetism ultimates in moral idiocy. The
+truths of immortal mind sustain man; and they annihilate the fables and
+mortal mind, whose flimsy and gaudy pretensions, like silly moths, singe
+their own wings and fall into dust. In reality there is no mortal mind,
+and consequently no transference of mortal thought and will-power." Page
+five hundred two: "Spiritually followed, the book of Genesis is the
+history of the untrue image of God, named a sinful mortal. This
+deflection of being, rightly viewed, serves the spiritual actuality of
+man, as given in the first chapter of Genesis. When the crude forms of
+human thought take on higher symbols and significations, the
+scientifically Christian views of the universe will appear, illuminating
+time with the glory of eternity."
+
+I append these two passages simply as samples of "inspired literature."
+
+Any one who tries to understand such printed matter is headed for
+Bloomingdale. You must leave it alone absolutely or else accept it and
+read it with your mental eyes closed, mumbling it with your lips, and
+let your mind roam like a priest reading his breviary in the
+smoking-apartment of a Pullman car. The question then arises, "Was Mrs.
+Eddy sincere in putting forth such writings?"
+
+And the answer is, she was most certainly sincere, and she was certainly
+sane. She was an honest woman. But she was not a clear or logical
+thinker, except on matters of finance and business, and consequently she
+did not give forth a clear expression when she essayed philosophy. In
+order to write lucidly you must think lucidly. Mrs. Eddy had no sense of
+literary values. She was absolutely devoid of humor, and humor is only
+the ability to detect a little thing from a big one--to perceive a wrong
+adjustment from a right one.
+
+Style in literature is taste. But the lack of style, taste and humor is
+general in mankind. The world has produced only a few great thinkers,
+and one of them was Darwin, a name which Mrs. Eddy mentioned in "Science
+and Health" with reproach. Great writers are even more rare than great
+thinkers, because to write one must have the ability not only to think
+clearly, but the knack or technical skill to use the right word, the
+luminous word, and so arrange, paragraph and punctuate them that your
+meaning will be clear to average minds. To say that Mrs. Eddy was not a
+thinker nor a writer, is not an indictment of the woman, although it may
+be a reflection on the mental processes of the people who think she was.
+
+To say that there are two million people reading Mrs. Eddy, also proves
+nothing, since numbers are no vindication. Over a hundred million people
+have kissed the big toe of Saint Peter in Rome.
+
+And surely the Roman Catholic Church contains a vast number of highly
+educated people. The things you do not know, you do not know. And Mrs.
+Eddy, knowing nothing of literary style, knew nothing of literary art.
+Her prose and her poetry are worse than ordinary. All inspirational
+poetry I ever read is rot, and all inspired paintings I ever saw are
+daubs. Mrs. Eddy should not be blamed for her limitations.
+
+Many people who are great in certain lines labor under the hallucination
+that they are also great in others. Matthew Arnold was a great writer,
+and he also thought he was a great orator.
+
+But when he spoke, his words simply fell over the footlights into the
+orchestra and died there. He could not reach the front row. Most
+comedians want to play Hamlet, and all of us have heard girls attempt to
+sing who thought they could sing, and who were encouraged in the
+hallucination by their immediate kinsfolk.
+
+Mrs. Eddy thought she could write, and unfortunately she was
+corroborated in her error by the applause of people who, not being able
+to read her book, kindly attributed the inability to their own
+limitations and not to hers, being prompted in this by the suggestion
+oft repeated by Mrs. Eddy, herself. The resemblance of Mrs. Eddy's
+thought to that of Jesus was never noticed until Mrs. Eddy first
+explained the matter. Mrs. Eddy was by no means insane. Swedenborg was a
+civil engineer and a mathematician. He wrote forty books that are nearly
+as opaque as "Science and Health." If you write stupidly enough, some
+one will surely throw up his cap and cry "Great!" And others will follow
+the example and take up the shout, because it is much easier, as Doctor
+Johnson affirmed, to praise a book than to read and understand it. The
+custom of reading to a congregation in a dead or foreign language, which
+the listeners do not understand, has never caused any general protest
+from the listeners. The scoffers are the only ones who have ever noticed
+the incongruity, and they do not count, since they probably would not
+attend, anyway.
+
+Next to reading from a book written in the dead language, is to read
+from a book that is unintelligible. To listen to such makes no tax upon
+the intellect, and with the right accessories is soporific, restful,
+pleasing and to be commended. If it does not supply an idea, it at least
+imparts a feeling. Mrs. Eddy's success in literature arose from the
+extreme muddiness of her thinking and her opacity in expression.
+
+If she had written fairly well, her mediocrity would have been apparent
+to every one; but writing absolutely without rhyme or reason, we bow
+before her supreme assurance. The strongest element in men is
+inertia--we agree rather than fight about it. We want health--and health
+is what Mrs. Eddy gives to us--therefore, "Science and Health with Key
+to the Scriptures" is the greatest book in the whole world. Sancta
+simplicitas! Why not, indeed!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+People turn to Mrs. Eddy's book for relief just exactly as they formerly
+went to the doctor for the same reason.
+
+In addition to bodily health, Mrs. Eddy gives joy, hope, worldly
+success; and even superior minds, seeing these practical results of
+Christian Science, move in the line of least resistance and are quite
+willing to accept the book, not troubled at all about its medieval
+reasoning. In Ungania is a very great merchant who, not content with
+having the biggest store in the Kingdom, aspires to the biggest
+University. The fact that the higher criticism is to him only a trivial
+matter, and really unworthy of the serious attention of a busy man,
+simply reveals human limitation.
+
+The specialist is created at a terrific cost, and that a person will be
+practical, shrewd, diplomatic and wise in managing the buying public and
+an army of employees, and yet know and love Walt Whitman, is too much to
+expect. This keen and successful merchant, an absolute tyrant in certain
+ways, has his soft side and many pleasant qualities. Why any one should
+ever question the literal truth of the Bible is beyond his
+comprehension.
+
+He is convinced that "Leaves of Grass" is an obscene book, never having
+read it; yet he knows nothing about the third, eleventh and thirteenth
+chapters of Second Samuel, having read the Book all his life. He has a
+pitying, patronizing smile for any one who suggests that David was a
+very faulty man, and that possibly Solomon was not the wisest person
+that ever lived. "What difference does it make, anyway?" he testily
+asks. If you work for him you have to agree with him, or else be very
+silent as to what you actually believe. We often find an avowed and
+reiterated love for Jesus, the non-resistant, going hand in hand with a
+passion for war, a miser's greed, a lust for power and a thirst for
+revenge.
+
+There may be a prating about righteousness while the hand of the man is
+feeling for his sword-hilt, and his eye is locating your jugular. The
+Ten Commandments are all rescinded in war time. The New York "Evening
+Post" noted the peculiar fact that nine out of ten of the delegates at
+The Hague International Peace Conference were theological heretics. As a
+rule, Orthodox Christians stand for war, and also for capital
+punishment. How do we explain these inconsistencies?
+
+We do not try to: they are simply facts in the partial development of
+the race. Why millionaires should patronize the memory of Jesus is
+something no one can understand, save that things work by antithesis.
+Mrs. Eddy was of the same shrewd, practical type as the merchant prince
+just mentioned. She was the greatest woman-general of her day and
+generation. She possessed all the qualities that go to make successful
+leadership.
+
+She was self-reliant, proud, arrogant, implacable in temper, rapid in
+decision, unbending, shrewd, diplomatic--and a good hater.
+
+At times she dismissed her critics with simply a look. No man could
+dictate to her, and few dared make suggestions in her presence. To move
+her, the matter had to be brought to her attention in a way that led her
+to believe that she had discovered it herself. And of course all the
+credit went to her. In all Christian Science churches are various
+selections from her writings, and beneath every one is her name. "Thou
+shalt have no other gods before me!" is the one controlling edict
+breathed forth by her life and words. One of her orders was that
+whenever one of her hymns was announced, always and forever it must be
+stated that it was written by Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy. Always and forever,
+the "student" giving testimony refers, in terms of lavish praise and
+fulsome adulation, to "Our Blessed Teacher, Guide and Exemplar, Mary
+Baker Eddy." God Almighty and Jesus occupy secondary positions in all
+Christian Science meetings.
+
+Mrs. Eddy is mentioned five times to where they are once. And I would
+not criticize this if Mrs. Eddy had but regarded Jesus as simply a great
+man in history and "God" as an abstract term referring to the Supreme
+Intelligence in Nature. But to her, God and Jesus were persons who
+dictated books, and very frequently she was careful to explain that her
+method of healing was exactly the same as that practised by Jesus. Side
+by side with His words are hers. Passages from the Bible are read
+alternately with passages from "Science and Health." If both were
+regarded as mere literature, this would be pardonable, but when we are
+told that both are "sacred" writ, and "damned be he who dares deny or
+doubt," we are simply lost in admiration for the supreme egotism of the
+lady. To get mad about it were vain--let us all smile. Surely the
+imagination that can trace points of resemblance between Mrs. Mary Baker
+Eddy and Jesus, the lowly peasant of Nazareth, is admirable. Jesus was a
+communist in principle, having nothing, giving everything. He carried
+neither scrip nor purse. He wrote nothing. His indifference to place,
+pelf and power is His distinguishing characteristic. Mrs. Eddy's love of
+power was the leading motive of her life; her ability to bargain was
+beautiful; her resorts to law and the subtleties of legal aid were all
+strictly modern; and the way she tied up the title to her writings by
+lead-pipe-cinched copyrights reveals the true instincts of Connecticut.
+
+This jealousy of her rights and the safeguarding of her interests were
+among the emphatic features of her life, and set her apart as the
+antithesis of Jesus.
+
+There is one character in history, however, to whom Mrs. Eddy bore a
+close resemblance--and that is Julius Cæsar, who was educated for the
+priesthood, became a priest, and was Pope of Rome before he ventured
+into fighting and politics as a business. Mrs. Eddy's faith in herself,
+her ability to decide, her quick intuitions, the method and simplicity
+of her life, her passion for power, her pleasure in authorship--all
+these were the traits which exalted the name and fame of Cæsar.
+
+The inventor of the calendar ordered that it should be known as the
+"Julian Calendar," and it is so called, even unto this day. Once Carlyle
+sat smoking with Milburn, the blind preacher. They had been discussing
+the historicity of Jesus. Then they sat smoking in silence. Finally,
+Tammas the Techy knocked the ashes out of his long clay t. d. and
+muttered, half to himself and half to Milburn, "Ah, a great mon, a great
+mon--but he had his limitations!" The same remark can truthfully be
+applied to Mrs. Eddy. And about the only point that Jesus and Mrs. Eddy
+have in common is this matter mentioned by Carlyle.
+
+The superior shrewdness and the keen business instinct of Mrs. Eddy are
+seen in the use of the words "Christian" and "Science." The sub-title,
+"With Key to the Scriptures," is particularly alluring. And the use of
+the Oxford binding was the crowning stroke of commercial insight. Surely
+Mrs. Eddy must command our profound respect. She was undoubtedly a very
+great business genius, to say the very least.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When John Henry Newman became a Catholic, he gave as a reason for his
+decision that he had found no place in literature or art to rest his
+head. His reward for not finding a place in literature or art for his
+head was the red hat.
+
+Let the followers of Mrs. Eddy take comfort in that their great teacher
+had plenty of high precedent for believing that Adam was created by
+fiat, and Eve was made from his rib, all the fiat being used; that
+Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and it obeyed, even when the
+order should have been given to the earth; that Lazarus was raised from
+the dead after his body had become putrid; that witchcraft is a fact in
+Nature; and that children can be born with the aid of one parent a
+little better than in the old-fashioned way--parthenogenesis, I think
+they call it.
+
+These inconsistencies of absolute absurdity, existing side by side with
+great competence and sanity, are to be found everywhere in history.
+
+Mrs. Eddy excited the envy of the medical world in her demonstration
+that good health and happiness are the sure results of getting rid of
+the doctor habit; but they got even with her when she said that virgin
+motherhood would yet become the rule, and tilling of the soil would
+cease to be a necessity.
+
+Saint Augustine thought, as did most of the early Churchmen, that to do
+evil that good might follow was not only justifiable, but highly
+meritorious. So they preached hagiology to scare people into the narrow
+path of rectitude.
+
+Chapman, Alexander, Torrey, Billy Sunday and most other professional
+evangelists believe in and practise the same doctrine.
+
+The literary conscience was a thing known in Greece, but only recently,
+say within two hundred years, has it been again manifest, and as yet it
+is rare. It consists in the scorn and absolute refusal to write a line
+except that which stands for truth.
+
+The artistic conscience that refuses to paint for hire or model on order
+is the same. Wagner, Millet, Rembrandt, William Morris and Ruskin are
+examples of men who were incapable of anything but their highest and
+best creative work, and refused to truckle to the mercenary horde. Such
+men may be without conscience in a business way. And a person may be
+absolutely moral in all his acts of life, except in writing and talking,
+and here he may be slipshod and uncertain.
+
+Mrs. Eddy was beautifully lacking in the literary conscience, just as
+much so as was Gladstone when he attempted to reply to Ingersoll in "The
+North American Review," and resorted to sophistry and evasion in
+lieu of logic. Absolute truth to Gladstone was a matter of
+indifference--expediency was his shibboleth. Truth to Mrs. Eddy was also
+a secondary matter; the only things that really mattered were Health and
+Success. Health and Success are undoubtedly great things and well
+worthy of possession, but I wish to secure them only through the
+expression of truth. If you gag my tongue, chain my pen and cry,
+"Believe and you will have Health," I would say, "Give me liberty or
+give me death!" Christian Scientists ask you to buy Mrs. Eddy's book,
+"Science and Health."
+
+When the volume is handed you, you are promised health and success if
+you believe its every word; and if you don't, you are threatened with
+"moral idiocy."
+
+It is the old promise of Paradise and the threat of Hell in a new guise.
+As for me, I decline the book.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Stephen Girard was a great merchant who had a great love of truth; but
+if he had been in a retail business, his zeal for truth might have been
+slightly modified.
+
+As a rule, the world of humanity can be divided into two parts: the
+practical men and the searchers for truth. Usually the latter have
+nothing to lose but their head. Spinoza, Galileo, Bruno, Thomas Paine,
+Walt Whitman, Henry Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, are the pure type. Then
+come Theodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson, crowded out of their
+pulpits, scorned by their Alma Mater, pitied by the public--yet holding
+true to their course.
+
+And lo! they grew rich; whereas, if they had stuck close to the shore
+and safety, they would have been drowned in the shallows of oblivion.
+
+On the other hand, we find in, say, the directorate of the Standard Oil
+Company, many men who are zealous members of the orthodox churches,
+giving large sums in support of the "gospel," and taking an active
+interest in its promulgation. All of them say, with the late Mr. Morgan,
+"My mother's religion is good enough for me." So here we get practical
+shrewdness combined with minds that, so far as abstract truth is
+concerned, are simply prairie-dog towns.
+
+These men belong to a type that will cling to error as long as it is
+soft, easy and popular. Most certainly these men are not fools--they are
+highly competent and useful in their way. But as for superstition, they
+find it soothing; it saves the trouble of thinking, and all their
+energies are needed in business.
+
+Religion, to them, is a social diversion, with a chance of salvation on
+the side. Inertia does not grip them when it comes to commerce--but in
+religion it does. Lincoln once said that there was just one thing, and
+only one thing, that God Almighty could not understand: and that was the
+workings of the mind of an intelligent American juror.
+
+Herbert Spencer says that Sir Isaac Newton was one of the six best
+educated men the world has seen. He was the first man to resolve light
+into its constituent elements. Voltaire says that when Newton discovered
+the Law of Gravitation he excited the envy of the scientific world.
+
+"But," adds Voltaire, "when he wrote a book on the Bible prophecies, the
+men of science got even with him." Sir Isaac Newton defended the literal
+inspiration of the Scriptures and was a consistent member of the Church
+of England. Doctor Johnson was unhappy all day if he didn't touch every
+tenth picket of the fence with his cane as he walked downtown.
+
+Blackstone, the great legal commentator, believed in witchcraft, and
+bolstered his belief by citing the Scriptural text, "Thou shalt not
+suffer a witch to live"--thus proving Moses a party to the superstition.
+Sir Matthew Hale, Chief Justice of England, did the same.
+
+Gladstone was a great statesman, and yet he believed in the Mosaic
+account of Creation, just as did Mary Baker Eddy.
+
+John Adams was a rebel from political slavery, but lived and died a
+worthy Churchman, subsisting on canned theology--and canned in England,
+at that.
+
+Franklin and Jefferson were rebels from both political and theological
+despotism, but looked leniently on leeches and apothecaries. Herbert
+Spencer had a free mind as regards religion, politics, economics and
+sociology; yet he was a bachelor, lived in the city, belonged to a club,
+played billiards and smoked cigars. Physical health was out of his
+reach, and with all his vast knowledge, he never knew why. All through
+history we find violence and gentleness, ignorance and wisdom, folly and
+shrewdness side by side in the same person.
+
+The one common thing in humanity is inconsistency. To account for it
+were vain. We know only that it is.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The very boldness of Mrs. Eddy's claims created an impetus that carried
+conviction.
+
+The woman certainly believed in herself, and she also believed in the
+Power, of which she was a necessary part, that works for righteousness.
+She repudiated the supernatural, not by denying "miracles," but by
+holding that the so-called miracles of the Bible really occurred and
+were perfectly natural--all according to Natural Law, which is the
+Divine Law.
+
+And the explanation of this Divine Law was her particular business. Thus
+did she win to her side those who were too timid in constitution to
+forsake forms and ceremonies and stand alone on the broad ground of
+Rationalism.
+
+Christian Science is not a religion of fight, stress and struggle. Isn't
+it better to relax and rest and allow Divinity to flow through us, than
+to sit on a sharp rail and call the passer-by names in falsetto? May
+Irwin's motto, "Don't Argufy," isn't so bad as a working maxim, after
+all.
+
+All Christian denominations are very much alike. Their differences are
+microscopic, and recognized only by those who are immersed in them.
+Martin Luther only softened the expression of the Roman Catholic
+Church--he did not change its essence.
+
+Benjamin Franklin declared that he could not tell the difference between
+a Catholic and an Episcopalian. But Christian Science is a complete
+departure from all other denominations, and while professing to be
+Christian, is really something else, or if it is Christian, then
+orthodoxy is not.
+
+Christian Science strikes right at the root of orthodoxy, since it
+divides the power of Jesus with Mary Baker Eddy and affirms that Jesus
+was not "The Savior," but A Savior.
+
+This is the position of Thomas Paine, and all other good radicals.
+Christian Science places Mrs. Eddy's work right alongside of the Bible.
+No denomination has ever put out a volume stating that the book was
+required in order to make the Bible intelligible. No denomination has
+ever put forth a person as the equal of Jesus. This has only been done
+by unbelievers, atheists and free-thinkers.
+
+Christianity is at last attacked in its own house and by its own
+household. It is thoroughly understood and admitted everywhere that
+there are two kinds of Christianity. One is the kind taught by the
+Nazarene; and the other is the institutional variety, made up of
+denominations which hold millions upon millions of dollars' worth of
+property without taxation, and parade their ritual with rich and costly
+millinery.
+
+The one was lived by a Man who had not where to lay His head; and the
+other is an acquirement taken over from pagan Rome, and continued
+largely in its pagan form even unto this day. Christian Science is
+neither one nor the other, and the obvious pleasantry that it is
+neither Christian nor scientific is a jest in earnest. Christian Science
+is a modern adaptation of all that is best in the simplicity and
+asceticism of Jesus, the commonsense philosophy of Benjamin Franklin,
+the mysticism of Swedenborg, and the bold pronunciamento of Robert
+Ingersoll. It is a religion of affirmation with a denial-of-matter
+attachment.
+
+It is a religion of this world. Jesus was a Man of Sorrows but Mary
+Baker Eddy was a Daughter of Joy.
+
+And as the universal good sense of mankind holds that the best
+preparation for a life to come, if there is one, is to make the best of
+this, Christian Science is meeting with a fast-growing popular
+acceptance.
+
+The decline of the old orthodoxy is owing to its clinging to the fallacy
+that the world's work is base, and Nature is a trickster luring us to
+our doom. Mrs. Eddy reconciled the old idea with the new and made it
+mentally palatable. And this is the reason why Christian Science is
+going to sweep the earth and in twenty years will have but one
+competitor, the Roman Catholic faith.
+
+Orthodoxy, blind, blundering, stubborn, senile, is tottering--the
+undertaker is at the door. Indeed, the old idea of our orthodox friends
+that they were preparing to die, was literally true.
+
+The undertaker's name and business address attached to the front of many
+a city church is a sign too subtle to overlook. Not only was the
+undertaker a partner of the priest, but he is now foreclosing his claim.
+Christian Science is not final. After it has lived its day, another
+religion will follow, and that is the Religion of Commonsense, the
+esoteric religion which Mrs. Eddy herself lived and practised.
+
+As for her believers, she gave them the religion of a Book--two Books,
+the Bible and "Science and Health." They want form and ritual and
+temples.
+
+She gave them these things, just as doctors give sweetened water to
+people who still demand medicine; and as if to supply the zealous
+converts, just out of orthodoxy, their fill of ecclesiastic husks, she
+built fine churches--churches rivaling the far-famed San Salute of
+Venice. Let them have their wish! Paganism is in their blood--they are
+even trying to worship her!
+
+Let them go on and eventually they will pray not in temples nor on this
+or that mountain, but in spirit and in truth, just as did Mrs. Eddy, one
+of the world's most successful women.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Christian Science is orthodox Christianity, minus medical fetish and the
+fear that a belief in sin, sickness, death and eternal punishment
+naturally lends, plus the joy of a natural, healthy, human life. The
+so-called rational Christian sects preserve their Devil in the form of a
+Doctor, and Hell in the shape of a Hospital.
+
+My hope and expectation is that Christian Science will become a Rational
+Religion instead of a one-man institution, or a religion of authority,
+such as it now is. Its superstitious features have doubtless been strong
+factors in its rapid growth--serving as stays or stocks to aid in the
+launching.
+
+But now, the sooner the ship floats free the better. Christian
+Scientists, being men and women, can not continue to grow if fettered
+with an Index Expurgatorius and mandatory edicts and encyclicals. That
+which binds and manacles must go--the good will remain.
+
+Christian Science brings good news, and good news is always curative.
+Mrs. Eddy animated her patients with a new thought--the thought of
+harmony, the denial of disease, and the affirmation that God is good and
+life is beautiful. The animation thus produced is in itself the most
+powerful healing principle known to science. Life is born of love. Joy
+is a prophylactic. Christian Science comes to the "student" as a great
+flood of light. His circulation becomes normal, his muscles relax, the
+nerves rest, digestion acts, elimination takes place--and the person is
+well.
+
+Fear has congested the organs--love, hope and faith place them in an
+attitude so Nature plays through them. The patient is healed. In it
+there is neither mystery nor miracle. It is all very simple.
+
+Let us rid ourselves of a belief in the strange and occult! The
+Christian Science organization is an expediency. It is an intellectual
+crutch. The book is a necessity. It is a scaffolding. Yet he who
+mistakes the scaffolding for the edifice is a specialist in scaffolding.
+
+Truth can never be caught and crystallized in a formula. Also this:
+truth can never be monopolized by an "ite" or an "ist." Eventually the
+label will be eliminated with the scaffolding, and the lumber of ritual
+and rite will have to go.
+
+We will live truth instead of talking about it. Among Christian
+Scientists there are no drunkards, paupers or gamblers. Also, there are
+no sick people. To them sickness is a disgrace.
+
+Orthodox Christians get sick and gratify their sense of approbation by
+receiving pastoral calls and visits from the doctor and neighbors. The
+biblical injunction to visit the sick was never followed by Mrs.
+Eddy--she always decided for herself just what injunctions should be
+waived and what followed.
+
+Those which she did not like she interpreted spiritually or else glided
+over. The biblical statement that man's days are few and full of
+trouble, and also the assertion that man is prone to wickedness as the
+sparks fly upwards, are both very conveniently glossed.
+
+Christian Scientists know the rules of health, just as most people do;
+but what is more, they follow them, thus avoiding the disgrace of being
+pointed out. They have made sickness not only tabu, but invalidism
+ridiculous.
+
+When things become absurd and preposterous, we abandon them.
+Unpopularity can do what logic is helpless to bring about. The reasoning
+of Christian Scientists is bad, but their intuitions are right.
+
+While denying the existence of matter, no people on earth are as canny,
+save possibly the Quakers. A bank-balance to a Christian Scientist is no
+barren ideality. It is like falsehood to a Jesuit--a very present help
+in time of trouble. Sin, to them, consists in making too much fuss about
+life and talking about death. Do what you want and forget it. Quit
+talking about the weather, night air, miasma.
+
+Knowingly or unknowingly Christian Scientists cultivate resiliency. They
+are proof against drafts and microbes. Eat what you like, but not too
+much of it. Be moderate. Christian Scientists get their joy out of their
+work. This is essentially hygienic. They breathe deeply, eat moderately,
+bathe plentifully, work industriously--and smile. This is all sternly
+scientific. It can never be argued down.
+
+No school of medicine has ever offered a prophylactic equal to work and
+good-cheer, and no system of religion has ever offered a working formula
+for health, happiness and success equal to that launched by Mrs. Eddy.
+The science of medicine is a science of palliation.
+
+Christian Scientists avoid the cause of sickness, and thus keep well.
+
+There is no vitality in drugs. Nature cures--obey her. In this matter of
+bodily health just a few plain rules suffice. And these rules, fairly
+followed, soon grow into a pleasurable habit. Fortunately, we do not
+have to oversee our digestion, our circulation, the work of the millions
+of pores that form the skin, or the action of the nerves. Folks who get
+fussy about their digestion and assume personal charge of their nerves
+have "nerves" and are apt to have no digestion.
+
+"I have a pain in my side," said the woman who had no money to the busy
+doctor. "Forget it," was the curt advice. Get the Health Habit, and
+forget it.
+
+This is the quintessence of Christian Science. Your mental attitude
+controls your body. Happiness is your health. There is no devil but
+fear. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SO HERE ENDETH "LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF GREAT TEACHERS," BEING
+VOLUME TEN OF THE SERIES, AS WRITTEN BY ELBERT HUBBARD; EDITED AND
+ARRANGED BY FRED BANN; BORDERS AND INITIALS BY ROYCROFT ARTISTS, AND
+PRODUCED BY THE ROYCROFTERS, AT THEIR SHOPS, WHICH ARE IN EAST AURORA,
+ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK, MCMXXII
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great
+Teachers, by Elbert Hubbard
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Journeys to the Homes of the Great.
+      by Elbert Hubbard.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great
+Teachers, by Elbert Hubbard
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers
+
+Author: Elbert Hubbard
+
+Release Date: July 29, 2006 [EBook #18936]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE JOURNEYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Janet Blenkinship and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+
+
+  <h1>Little<br />
+  Journeys</h1>
+<p><br /></p>
+
+  <h2>To the Homes of Great Teachers</h2>
+<p><br /></p>
+
+  <h2>Elbert Hubbard</h2>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+  <h3>Memorial Edition</h3>
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+<p class='center'>Printed and made into a Book by<br />
+  The Roycrofters, who are in East<br />
+  Huron, Erie County, New York<br /><br />
+
+  Wm. H. Wise &amp; Co.<br />
+  New York<br /><br />
+
+
+
+  Copyright, 1916,<br />
+  By The Roycrofters</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" width="40%" cellspacing="0" summary="CONTENTS">
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#MOSES">MOSES</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CONFUCIUS">CONFUCIUS</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#PYTHAGORAS">PYTHAGORAS</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#PLATO">PLATO</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#KING_ALFRED">KING ALFRED</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#ERASMUS">ERASMUS</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#BOOKER_T_WASHINGTON">BOOKER T. WASHINGTON</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#THOMAS_ARNOLD">THOMAS ARNOLD</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#FRIEDRICH_FROEBEL">FRIEDRICH FROEBEL</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#HYPATIA">HYPATIA</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#SAINT_BENEDICT">SAINT BENEDICT</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#MARY_BAKER_EDDY">MARY BAKER EDDY</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p>
+
+
+  <h1>Little Journeys</h1>
+  <h2>To the Homes<br />
+  of<br />
+  Great Teachers</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="MOSES" id="MOSES"></a>MOSES</h2>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img040.jpg" alt="MOSES" title="MOSES" /></div>
+
+<blockquote><p>And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou
+say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. And God
+said, moreover, unto Moses: Thus shalt thou say unto the children of
+Israel, The Lord God of your Fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of
+Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name
+forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p><p>&mdash;<i>Exodus iii: 14, 15</i></p></blockquote>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>MOSES</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgm.jpg" alt="M" title="M" /></div><p>oses was the world's first great teacher. He is still one of the
+world's great teachers. Seven million people yet look to his laws for
+special daily guidance, and more than two hundred millions read his
+books and regard them as Holy Writ. And these people as a class are of
+the best and most enlightened who live now or who have ever lived.</p>
+
+<p>Moses did not teach of a life after this&mdash;he gives no hint of
+immortality&mdash;all of his rewards and punishments refer to the present. If
+there is a heaven for the good and a hell for the bad, he did not know
+of them.</p>
+
+<p>The laws of Moses were designed for the Now and the Here. Many of them
+ring true and correct even today, after all this interval of more than
+three thousand years. Moses had a good knowledge of physiology, hygiene,
+sanitation. He knew the advantages of cleanliness, order, harmony,
+industry and good habits. He also knew psychology, or the science of the
+mind: he knew the things that influence humanity, the limits of the
+average intellect, the plans and methods of government that will work
+and those which will not.</p>
+
+<p>He was practical. He did what was expedient. He considered the material
+with which he had to deal, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> he did what he could and taught that
+which his people would and could believe. The Book of Genesis was
+plainly written for the child-mind.</p>
+
+<p>The problem that confronted Moses was one of practical politics, not a
+question of philosophy or of absolute or final truth. The laws he put
+forth were for the guidance of the people to whom he gave them, and his
+precepts were such as they could assimilate.</p>
+
+<p>It were easy to take the writings of Moses as they have come down to us,
+translated, re-translated, colored and tinted with the innocence,
+ignorance and superstition of the nations who have kept them alive for
+thirty-three centuries, and then compile a list of the mistakes of the
+original writer. The writer of these records of dreams and hopes and
+guesses, all cemented with stern commonsense, has our profound reverence
+and regard. The "mistakes" lie in the minds of the people who, in the
+face of the accumulated knowledge of the centuries, have persisted that
+things once written were eternally sufficient.</p>
+
+<p>In point of time there is no teacher within many hundred years following
+him who can be compared with him in originality and insight.</p>
+
+<p>Moses lived fourteen hundred years before Christ.</p>
+
+<p>The next man after him to devise a complete code of conduct was Solon,
+who lived seven hundred years after. A little later came Zoroaster, then
+Confucius, Buddha, Lao-tsze, Pericles, Socrates, Plato,
+Aristotle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>&mdash;contemporaries, or closely following each other, their
+philosophy woven and interwoven by all and each and each by all.</p>
+
+<p>Moses, however, stands out alone. That he did not know natural history
+as did Aristotle, who lived a thousand years later, is not to his
+discredit, and to emphasize the fact were irrelevant.</p>
+
+<p>Back of it all lies the undisputed fact that Moses led a barbaric people
+out of captivity and so impressed his ideals and personality upon them
+that they endure as a distinct and peculiar people, even unto this day.
+He founded a nation. And chronologically he is the civilized world's
+first author.</p>
+
+<p>Moses was a soldier, a diplomat, an executive, a writer, a teacher, a
+leader, a prophet, a stonecutter. Beside all these he was a farmer&mdash;a
+workingman, one who when forty years of age tended flocks and herds for
+a livelihood. Every phase of the outdoor life of the range was familiar
+to him. And the greatness of the man is revealed in the fact that his
+plans and aspirations were so far beyond his achievements that at last
+he thought he had failed. Exultant success seems to go with that which
+is cheap and transient. All great teachers have, in their own minds,
+been failures&mdash;they saw so much further than they were able to travel.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imga.jpg" alt="A" title="A" /></div><p>ll ancient chronology falls easily into three general divisions: the
+fabulous, the legendary, and the probable or natural.</p>
+
+<p>In the understanding of history, psychology is quite as necessary as
+philology.</p>
+
+<p>To reject anything that has a flaw in it is quite as bad as to have that
+excess of credulity which swallows everything presented.</p>
+
+<p>It is not necessary to throw away the fabulous nor deny the legendary.
+But it is certainly not wise to construe the fabulous as the actual and
+maintain the legendary as literally true. Things may be true
+allegorically and false literally, and to be able to distinguish the one
+from the other, and prize each in its proper place, is the mark of
+wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>If, however, we were asked to describe the man Moses to a jury of sane,
+sensible, intelligent and unprejudiced men and women, and show why he is
+worthy of the remembrance of mankind, we would have to eliminate the
+fabulous, carefully weigh the traditional, and rest our argument upon
+records that are fair, sensible and reasonably free from dispute.</p>
+
+<p>The conclusions of professional retainers, committed before they begin
+their so-called investigations to a literal belief in the fabulous,
+should be accepted with great caution. For them to come to conclusions
+outside of that which they have been taught, is not only to forfeit
+their social position, but to lose their actual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> means of livelihood.
+Perhaps the truth in the final summing up can best be gotten from those
+who have made no vows that they will not change their opinions, and have
+nothing to lose if they fail occasionally to gibe with the popular.</p>
+
+<p>On a certain occasion after Colonel Ingersoll had delivered his famous
+lecture entitled, "Some Mistakes of Moses," he was entertained by a
+local club. At the meeting, which was of the usual informal kind known
+as "A Dutch Feed," a young lawyer made bold to address the great orator
+thus: "Colonel Ingersoll, you are a lover of freedom&mdash;with you the word
+liberty looms large. All great men love liberty, and no man lives in
+history, respected and revered, save as he has sought to make men free.
+Moses was a lover of liberty. Now, wouldn't it be gracious and generous
+in you to give Moses, who in some ways was in the same business as
+yourself, due credit as a liberator and law-giver and not emphasize his
+mistakes to the total exclusion of his virtues?"</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Ingersoll listened&mdash;he was impressed by the fairness of the
+question. He listened, paused and replied: "Young man, you have asked a
+reasonable question, and all you suggest about the greatness of Moses,
+in spite of his mistakes, is well taken. The trouble in your logic lies
+in the fact that you do not understand my status in this case. You seem
+to forget that I am not the attorney for Moses. He has more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> than two
+million men looking after his interests. I am retained on the other
+side!"</p>
+
+<p>Like unto Colonel Ingersoll, I am not an attorney for Moses. I desire,
+however, to give a fair, clear and judicial account of the man. I will
+attempt to present a brief for the people, and neither prosecute nor
+defend. I will simply try to picture the man as he once existed, nothing
+extenuating, nor setting down aught in malice. As the original office of
+the State's Attorney was rather to protect the person at the bar than to
+indict him, so will I try to bring out the best in Moses, rather than
+hold up his mistakes and raise a laugh by revealing his ignorance.
+Modesty, which is often egotism turned wrong side out, might here say,
+"Oh, Moses requires no defense at this late day!" But Moses, like all
+great men, has suffered at the hands of his friends. To this man has
+been attributed powers which no human being ever possessed.</p>
+
+<p>Moses lived thirty-three hundred years ago. In one sense thirty-three
+centuries is a very long time. All is comparative&mdash;children regard a man
+of fifty as "awful old." I have seen several persons who have lived a
+hundred years, and they didn't consider a century long, "and thirty-five
+isn't anything," said one of them to me.</p>
+
+<p>Geologically, thirty-three centuries is only an hour ago. It does not
+nearly take us back to the time when men of the Stone Age hunted the
+hairy mammoth in what is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> now Nebraska, nor does thirty-three centuries
+give us any glimpse of the time when tropical animals, plants and
+probably men lived and flourished at the North Pole.</p>
+
+<p>Egyptian civilization, at the time of Moses, was more than three
+thousand years old. Egypt was then in the first stage of senility,
+entering upon her decline, for her best people had settled in the
+cities, and this completes the cycle and spells deterioration. She had
+passed through the savage, barbaric, nomadic and agricultural stages and
+was living on her unearned increment, a part of which was Israelitish
+labor. Moses looked at the Pyramids, which were built more than a
+thousand years before his birth, and asked in wonder about who built
+them, very much as we do today. He listened for the Sphinx to answer,
+but she was silent, then as now. The date of the exodus has been fixed
+as having probably occurred during the reign of the Great Pharaoh,
+Mineptah, or the nineteenth Egyptian Dynasty. The date is, say, fourteen
+hundred years before Christ. An inscription has recently been found
+which seems to show that Joseph settled in Egypt during the reign of
+Mineptah, but the best scholars now have gone back to the conclusions I
+have stated.</p>
+
+<p>At the time of the Pharaohs, Egypt was the highest civilized country on
+earth. It had a vast system of canals, an organized army, a goodly
+degree of art, and there were engineers and builders of much ability.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+Philosophy, poetry and ethics were recognized, prized and discussed.</p>
+
+<p>The storage of grain by the government to bank against famine had been
+practised for several hundred years. There were also treasure-cities
+built to guard against fire, thieves or destruction by the elements. It
+will thus be seen that foresight, thrift, caution, wisdom, played their
+parts. The Egyptians were not savages.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imga.jpg" alt="A" title="A" /></div><p>bout five hundred years before the birth of Moses there lived in Arabia
+a powerful Sheik or Chief, known as Abraham. This man had a familiar
+spirit, or guide, or guardian-angel known as Yaveh or Jehovah. All of
+the desert tribes had such tutelary gods; and all of these gods were
+once men of power who lived on earth. The belief in special gods has
+often been held by very great men: Socrates looked to his "demon" for
+guidance; Themistocles consulted his oracle; a President of the United
+States visited a clairvoyant, who consented to act as a medium and
+interpret the supernatural. This idea, which is a variant of ancestor
+worship, still survives, and very many good people do not take journeys
+or make investments until they believe they are being dictated to by
+Shakespeare, Emerson, Beecher or Phillips Brooks. These people also
+believe that there are bad spirits to which we must not harken.</p>
+
+<p>Abraham was led by Jehovah; what Jehovah told him to do he did; when
+Jehovah told him to desist or change his plans, he obeyed. Jehovah
+promised him many things, and some of these promises were fulfilled.</p>
+
+<p>Whether these tutelary gods or controlling spirits had any actual
+existence outside of the imagination of the people who believed in
+them&mdash;whether they were merely pictures thrown upon the screen by a
+subconscious spiritual stereopticon&mdash;is not the question now under
+discussion. Something must be left for a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> later time: the fact remains
+that special providences are yet relied upon by sincere and intelligent
+people.</p>
+
+<p>Abraham had a son named Isaac. And Isaac was the father of Jacob, or
+Israel, "the Soldier of God," so called on account of his successful
+wrestling with the angel. And Jacob was the father of twelve sons. All
+of these people believed in Jehovah, the god of their tribe; and while
+they did not disbelieve in the gods of the neighboring tribes, they yet
+doubted their power and had grave misgivings as to their honesty.
+Therefore, they had nothing to do with them, praying to their own god
+only and looking to him for support. They were the chosen people of
+Jehovah, just as the Babylonians were the chosen people of Baal; the
+Canaanites the chosen people of Ishitar; the Moabites the chosen people
+of Chemos; the Ammonites the chosen people of Rimmon.</p>
+
+<p>Now Joseph was the favorite son of Jacob, and his brethren were
+naturally jealous of him. So one day out on the range they sold him into
+slavery to a passing caravan, and went home and told their father the
+boy was dead, having been killed by a wild beast. To make the matter
+plausible they took the coat of Joseph and smeared it with the blood of
+a goat which they had killed. Nowadays, the coat would have been sent to
+a chemist's laboratory and the blood-spots tested to see whether it was
+the blood of beast or human. But Jacob believed the story and mourned
+his son as dead.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now Joseph was taken to Egypt and there arose to a position of influence
+and power through his intelligence and diligence. How eventually his
+brethren, starving, came to him for food, there being a famine in their
+own land, is one of the most natural and beautiful stories in all
+literature. It is a folklore legend, free from the fabulous, and has all
+the corroborating marks of the actual.</p>
+
+<p>For us it is history undisputed, unrefuted, because it is so natural. It
+could all easily happen in various parts of the world even now. It shows
+the identical traits of human nature that are alive and pulsing today.</p>
+
+<p>Joseph having made himself known to his brethren induced some of them
+and their neighbors to come down into Egypt, where the pasturage was
+better and the water more sure, and settle there. The Bible tells us
+that there were seventy of these settlers and gives us their names.</p>
+
+<p>These emigrants, called Israelites, or Children of Israel, account for
+the presence of the enslaved people whom Moses led out of captivity
+three hundred years later.</p>
+
+<p>One thing seems quite sure, and that is that they were a peculiar people
+then, with the pride of the desert in their veins, for they stood
+socially aloof and did not mix with the Egyptians. They still had their
+own god and clung to their own ways and customs.</p>
+
+<p>That very naive account in the first chapter of Exodus of how they had
+two midwives, "and the name of one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> was Shiphrah and the other Puah," is
+as fine in its elusive exactitude as an Uncle Remus story. Children
+always want to know the names of people. These two Hebrew midwives were
+bribed by the King of Egypt&mdash;ruler over twenty million people&mdash;in
+person, to kill all the Hebrew boy babies. Then the account states that
+Jehovah was pleased with these Hebrew women who proved false to their
+master, and Jehovah rewarded them by giving them houses.</p>
+
+<p>This order to kill the Hebrew children must have gone into execution, if
+at all, about the time of the birth of Moses, because Aaron, the brother
+of Moses, and three years older, certainly was not killed.</p>
+
+<p>Whether Moses was the son of Pharaoh's daughter, his father an
+Israelite, or both of his parents were Israelites, is problematic. Royal
+families are not apt to adopt an unknown waif into the royal household
+and bring him up as their royal own, especially if this waif belongs to
+what is regarded as an inferior race. The tie of motherhood is the only
+one that could over-rule caste and override prejudice. If the daughter
+of Pharaoh, or more properly "the Pharaoh," were the mother of Moses,
+she had a better reason for hiding him in the bulrushes than did the
+daughter of a Levite, for the order to kill these profitable workers is
+extremely doubtful. The strength, skill and ability of the Israelites
+formed a valuable acquisition to the Egyptians, and what they wanted was
+more Israelites, not fewer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Judging from the statement that there were only two midwives, there were
+only a few hundred Israelites&mdash;perhaps between one and two thousand, at
+most.</p>
+
+<p>So leaving the legend of the childhood of Moses with just enough mystery
+mixed in it to give it a perpetual piquancy, we learn that he was
+brought up an Egyptian, as the son of Pharaoh's daughter, and that it
+was she who gave him his name.</p>
+
+<p>Philo and Josephus give various sidelights on the life and character of
+Moses. The Midrash or Commentaries on the History of the Jews, composed,
+added to or modified by many men, extending over a period of twenty
+centuries, also add their weight, even though the value of these
+Commentaries is conjectural.</p>
+
+<p>Egyptian accounts of Moses and the Israelites come to us through
+Hellenic sources, and very naturally are not complimentary. These
+picture Moses, or Osarsiph, as they call him, as an agitator, an
+undesirable citizen, who sought to overturn the government, and failing
+in this, fled to the desert with a few hundred outlaws. They managed to
+hold out against the forces sent to capture them, were gradually added
+to by other refugees, and through the organizing genius of Moses were
+rounded into a strong tribe.</p>
+
+<p>That Moses was their supreme ruler, and that to better hold his people
+in check he devised a religious ritual for them, and impressed his god,
+Jehovah, upon them, almost to the exclusion of all other gods, and thus
+formed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> them into a religious whole, is beyond question. No matter what
+the cause of the uprising, or who was to blame for it, the fact is
+undisputed that Moses led a revolt in Egypt, and the people he carried
+with him in this exodus formed the nucleus of the Hebrew Nation. And
+further, the fact is beyond dispute that the personality of Moses was
+the prime cementing factor in the making of the nation. The power,
+poise, patience and unwavering self-reliance of the man, through his
+faith in the god Jehovah, are all beyond dispute. Things happen because
+the man makes them happen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>he position of the Israelites in Egypt was one of voluntary vassalage.
+The government was a feudal monarchy. The Israelites had come into Egypt
+of their own accord, but had never been admitted into the full rights of
+citizenship. This exclusion by the Egyptians had no doubt tended to fix
+the Children of Israel in their religious beliefs, and on the other
+hand, their proud and exclusive nature had tended to keep them from a
+full fellowship with the actual owners of the land.</p>
+
+<p>The Egyptians never attempted to traffic in them as they did in slaves
+of war, being quite content to use them as clerks, laborers and
+servants, paying them a certain wage, and also demanding an excess of
+labor in lieu of taxation. In other words, they worked out their
+"road-tax," which no doubt was excessive. Many years later, Athens and
+also Rome had similar "slaves," some of whom were men of great intellect
+and worth. If one reads the works of modern economic prophets, it will
+be seen that wage-workers in America are often referred to as "slaves"
+or "bondmen," terms which will probably give rise to confusion among
+historians to come.</p>
+
+<p>Moses was brought up in the court of the king, and became versed in all
+the lore of the Egyptians. We are led to suppose that he also looked
+like an Egyptian, as we are told that people seeing him for the first
+time, he being a stranger to them, went away and referred<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> to him as
+"that Egyptian." He was handsome, commanding, silent by habit and slow
+of speech, strong as a counselor, a safe man. That he was a most
+valuable man in the conduct of Egyptian official affairs, there is no
+doubt. And although he was nominally an Egyptian, living with the
+Egyptians, adopting their manners and customs, yet his heart was with
+"his brethren," the Israelites, who he saw were sore oppressed through
+governmental exploitation.</p>
+
+<p>Moses knew that a government which does not exist for the purpose of
+adding to human happiness has no excuse for being. And once when he was
+down among his own people he saw an Egyptian taskmaster or foreman
+striking an Israelitish workman, and in wrath he arose and killed the
+oppressor. The only persons who were witnesses to this affair were two
+Hebrews. The second day after the fight, when Moses was attempting to
+separate two Hebrews who had gotten into an altercation with each other,
+they taunted him by saying, "Who gavest thee to be a ruler over
+us?&mdash;wilt thou also kill us as thou didst the Egyptian?"</p>
+
+<p>This gives us a little light upon the quality and character of the
+people with whom Moses had to deal. It also shows that the ways of the
+reformer and peacemaker are not flower-strewn. The worst enemies of a
+reformer are not the Egyptians&mdash;he has also to deal with the Israelites.</p>
+
+<p>I once heard Terence V. Powderly, who organized the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> Knights of
+Labor&mdash;the most successful labor organization ever formed&mdash;say, "Any man
+who devotes his life to helping laboring men will be destroyed by them."
+And then he added, "But this should not deter us from the effort to
+benefit."</p>
+
+<p>As the Hebrew account plainly states that the killing of all the male
+Hebrew children was carried out with the connivance of Hebrew women who
+pretended to be ministering to the Hebrew mothers, so was the flight of
+Moses from Egypt caused by the Hebrews, who turned informants and
+brought him into disgrace with Pharaoh, who sought his life.</p>
+
+<p>Very naturally, the Egyptians deny and have always denied that the order
+to kill children was ever issued by a Pharaoh. They also point to the
+fact that the Israelites were a source of profit&mdash;a valuable asset to
+the Egyptians. And moreover, the proposition that the Egyptians killed
+the children to avoid trouble is preposterous, since no possible act
+that man can commit would so arouse sudden rebellion and fan into flame
+the embers of hate as the murder of the young. If the Egyptians had
+attempted to carry out any such savage cruelty, they would not only have
+had to fight the Israelitish men, but the outraged mothers as well. The
+Egyptians were far too wise to invite the fury of frenzied motherhood.
+To have done this would have destroyed the efficiency of the entire
+Hebrew population. An outraged and heartbroken people do not work.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When one person becomes angry with another, his mental processes work
+overtime making up a list of the other's faults and failings.</p>
+
+<p>When a people arise in revolt they straightway prepare an indictment
+against the government against which they revolted, giving a schedule of
+outrages, insults, plunderings and oppressions. This is what is politely
+called partisan history. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was a literary indictment
+of the South by featuring its supposed brutalities. And the attitude of
+the South is mirrored in a pretty parable concerning a Southern girl who
+came North on a visit, and seeing in print the words "damned Yankee,"
+innocently remarked that she always thought they were one word. A
+description of the enemy, made by a person or a people, must be taken
+cum grano Syracuse.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgw.jpg" alt="W" title="W" /></div><p>hen Moses fled, after killing the Egyptian, he went northward and east
+into the land of the Midianites, who were also descendants of Abraham.
+At this time he was forty years of age, and still unmarried, his work in
+the Egyptian Court having evidently fully absorbed his time.</p>
+
+<p>It is a pretty little romance, all too brief in its details, of how the
+tired man stopped at a well, and the seven daughters of Jethro came to
+draw water for their flocks. Certain shepherds came also and drove the
+girls away, when Moses, true to his nature, took the part of the young
+ladies, to the chagrin and embarrassment of the male rustics who had
+left their manners at home. The story forms a melodramatic stage-setting
+which the mummers have not been slow to use, representing the seven
+daughters as a ballet, the shepherds as a male chorus, and Moses as
+basso-profundo and hero. We are told that the girls went home and told
+their father of the chivalrous stranger they had met, and he, with all
+the deference of the desert, sent for him "that he might eat bread."</p>
+
+<p>Very naturally Moses married one of the girls.</p>
+
+<p>And Moses tended the flocks of Jethro, his father-in-law, taking the
+herds a long distance, living with them and sleeping out under the
+stars.</p>
+
+<p>Now Jethro was the chief of his tribe. Moses calls him a "priest," but
+he was a priest only incidentally, as all the Arab chiefs were.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The clergy originated in Egypt. Before the Israelites were in Goshen,
+the "sacra," or sacred utensils, belonged to the family; and the head of
+the tribe performed the religious rites, propitiating the family deity,
+or else delegated some one else to do so. This head of the tribe, or
+chief, was called a "Cohen"; and the man who assisted him, or whom he
+delegated, was called a "Levi." The plan of making a business of being a
+"Levi" was borrowed from the Egyptians, who had men set apart,
+exclusively, to deal in the mysterious. Moses calls himself a Levi, or
+Levite.</p>
+
+<p>After the busy life he had led, Moses could not settle down to the
+monotonous existence of a shepherd. It is probable that then he wrote
+the Book of Job, the world's first drama and the oldest book of the
+Bible. Moses was full of plans. Very naturally he prayed to the
+Israelitish god, and the god harkened unto his prayer and talked to him.</p>
+
+<p>The silence, the loneliness, the majesty of the mountains, the great
+stretches of shining sand, the long peaceful nights, all tend to
+hallucinations. Sheepmen are in constant danger of mental aberration.
+Society is needed quite as much as solitude.</p>
+
+<p>From talking with God, Moses desired to see Him. One day, from the
+burning red of an acacia-tree, the Lord called to him, "Moses, Moses!"</p>
+
+<p>And Moses answered, "Here am I!"</p>
+
+<p>Moses was a man born to rule&mdash;he was a leader of men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>&mdash;and here at
+middle life the habits of twenty-five years were suddenly snapped and
+his occupation gone. He yearned for his people, and knowing their
+unhappy lot, his desire was to lead them out of captivity. He knew the
+wrongs the Egyptian government was visiting upon the Israelites. Rameses
+the Second was a ruler with the builder's eczema: always and forever he
+made gardens, dug canals, paved roadways, constructed model tenements,
+planned palaces, erected colossi. He was a worker, and he made everybody
+else work. It was in this management of infinite detail that Moses had
+been engaged; and while he entered into it with zest, he knew that the
+hustling habit can be overdone and its votaries may become its
+victims&mdash;not only that, but this strenuous life may turn freemen into
+serfs, and serfs into slaves.</p>
+
+<p>And now Rameses was dead, and the proud, vain, fretful and selfish
+Mineptah ruled in his place. It was worse with the Israelites than ever!</p>
+
+<p>The more Moses thought of it the more he was convinced that it was his
+duty to go back to Egypt and lead his people out of bondage. He himself,
+having been driven out, made the matter a burning one with him: he had
+lost his place in the Egyptian Court, but he would get it back and hold
+it under better conditions than ever before!</p>
+
+<p>He heard the "Voice"! All strong people hear the Voice calling them. And
+harkening to the Inner Voice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> is simply doing what you want to do.</p>
+
+<p>"Moses, Moses!"</p>
+
+<p>And Moses answered, "Lord, here am I."</p>
+
+<p>The laws of Moses still influence the world, but not even the orthodox
+Jews follow them literally. We bring our reason to bear upon the
+precepts of Moses, and those which are not for us we gently pass over.
+In fact, the civil laws of most countries prohibit many of the things
+which Moses commanded. For instance, the eighteenth verse of the
+twenty-second chapter of Exodus says, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to
+live." Certainly no Jewish lawyer nor Rabbi, in any part of the world,
+advocates the killing of persons supposed to be witches. We explain that
+in this instance the inspired writer lapsed and merely mirrored the
+ignorance of his time. Or else we fall back upon the undoubted fact that
+various writers and translators have tampered with the original
+text&mdash;this must be so, since the book written by Moses makes record of
+his death.</p>
+
+<p>But when we find passages in Moses requiring us to benefit our enemies,
+we say with truth that this was the first literature to express for us
+the brotherhood of man.</p>
+
+<p>"Thou shalt take no gift: for the gift blindeth the wise and perverteth
+the words of the righteous." Here we get Twentieth-Century Wisdom. And
+very many passages as fine and true can be found, which prove for us
+beyond cavil that Moses was right a part of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> time, and to say this
+of any man, living or dead, is a very great compliment.</p>
+
+<p>In times of doubt the Jewish people turn to the Torah, or Book of the
+Law. This book has been interpreted by the Rabbis, or the learned men,
+and to meet the exigencies of living under many conditions, it has been
+changed, enlarged and augmented. In these changes the people were not
+consulted. Very naturally it was done secretly, for inspired men must be
+well dead before the many accept their edict. To be alive is always more
+or less of an offense, especially if you be a person and not a
+personage.</p>
+
+<p>The murmurings against Moses during his lifetime often broke into a
+rumble and a roar. The mob accused him of taking them out into the
+wilderness to perish. To get away from the constant bickering and
+criticisms of the little minds, Moses used to go up into the mountains
+alone to find rest, and there he communicated with his god. It was
+surely a great step in advance when all the Elohims were combined into
+one Supreme Elohim that was everywhere present and ruled the world.
+Instead of dozens of little gods, jealous, jangling, fearful, fretful,
+fussy, boastful, changing walking-sticks to serpents, or doing other
+things quite as useless, it was a great advance to have one Supreme
+Being, dispassionate, a God of Love and Justice, "with whom can be no
+variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning." This gradual
+ennobling of the conception of Divinity reveals<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> the extent to which man
+is ennobling his own nature.</p>
+
+<p>Up to within a very few years God had a rival in the Devil, but now the
+Devil lives only as a pleasantry. Until the time of Moses, the God of
+Sinai was only the God of the Hebrew people, and this accounts for His
+violence, wrath, jealousy, and all of those qualities which went to make
+up a barbaric chief, including the tendency of His sons and servants to
+make love to the daughters of earth.</p>
+
+<p>It is probable that the idea of God&mdash;in opposition to a god, one of many
+gods&mdash;was a thought that grew up very gradually in the mind of Moses.
+The ideal grew, and Moses grew with the ideal.</p>
+
+<p>Then from God being a Spirit, to being Spirit, is a natural, easy and
+beautiful evolution.</p>
+
+<p>The thought of angels, devils, heavenly messengers, like Gabriel and the
+Holy Ghost, constantly surrounding the Throne, is a suggestion that
+comes from the court of the absolute monarch. The Trinity is the
+oligarchy refined, and the one son who gives himself as a sacrifice for
+all the people who have offended the monarch is the retreating vision of
+that night of ignorance when all nations sought to appease the wrath of
+their god by the death of human beings.</p>
+
+<p>God to us is Spirit, realized everywhere in unfolding Nature. We are a
+part of Nature&mdash;we, too, are Spirit. When Moses commands his people that
+they must return the stray animal of their enemy to its rightful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> owner,
+we behold a great man struggling to benefit humanity by making them
+recognize the laws of Spirit. We are all one family&mdash;we can not afford
+to wrong or harm even an enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of thousands of warring, jarring families or tribes, we have now
+a few strong federations of States, or countries, which, if they would
+make war on one another, would today quickly face a larger foe. Already
+the idea of one government for all the world is taking form&mdash;there must
+be one Supreme Arbiter, and all this monstrous expense of money and
+flesh and blood and throbbing hearts for purposes of war, must go, just
+as we have sent to limbo the jangling, jarring, jealous gods. Also, the
+better sentiment of the world will send the czars, emperors, kings,
+grand dukes, and the greedy grafters of so-called democracy, into the
+dust-heap of oblivion, with all the priestly phantoms that have obscured
+the sun and blackened the sky. The gods have gone, but MAN IS HERE.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>he plagues that befell the Egyptians were the natural ones to which
+Egypt was liable: drought, flood, flies, lice, frogs, disease. The
+Israelites very naturally declared that these things were sent as a
+punishment by the Israelitish god. I remember a farmer, in my childhood
+days, who was accounted by his neighbors as an infidel. He was struck by
+lightning and instantly killed, while standing in his doorway. The
+Sunday before, this man had worked in the fields, and just before he was
+killed he had said, "dammit," or something quite as bad. Our preacher
+explained at length that this man's death was a "judgment." Afterward,
+when our church was struck by lightning, it was regarded as an accident.</p>
+
+<p>Ignorant and superstitious people always attribute special things to
+special causes. When the grasshoppers overran Kansas in Eighteen Hundred
+Eighty-five, I heard a good man from the South say it was a punishment
+on the Kansans for encouraging Old John Brown. The next year the
+boll-weevil ruined the cotton crop, and certain preachers in the North,
+who thought they knew, declared it was the lingering wrath of God on
+account of slavery.</p>
+
+<p>Three nations unite to form our present civilization. These are the
+Greek, the Roman and the Judaic. The lives of Perseus, Romulus and Moses
+all teem with the miraculous, but if we accept the supernatural in one
+we must in all. Which of these three great nations has contributed most
+to our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> well-being is a question largely decided by temperament; but
+just now the star of Greece seems to be in the ascendant. We look to art
+for solace. Greece stands for art; Rome for conquest; Judea for
+religion.</p>
+
+<p>And yet Moses was a lover of beauty, and the hold he had upon his people
+was quite as much through training them to work as through his moral
+teaching. Indeed, his morality was expediency&mdash;which is reason enough
+according to modern science. When he wants them to work, he says, "Thus
+saith the Lord," just the same as when he wishes to impress upon them a
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>No one can read the twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth
+chapters of Exodus without being impressed with the fact that the man
+who wrote them had in him the spirit of the Master Workman&mdash;a King's
+Craftsman. His carving the ten commandments on tablets of stone also
+shows his skill with mallet and chisel, a talent he had acquired in
+Egypt, where Rameses the Second had thousands of men engaged in
+sculpture and in making inscriptions in stone.</p>
+
+<p>Several chapters in Exodus might have been penned by Albrecht Durer or
+William Morris. The commandment, "Thou shalt not make unto thyself any
+graven image," was unmistakably made merely to correct a local evil: the
+tendency to worship the image instead of the thing it symbolized. People
+who do not contribute to the creation of an object fall easy victims to
+this error. With all the stern good sense that Moses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> revealed, it is
+but fair to assume that he did not mean the command to be perpetual. It
+was only through so much moving about that the Jews seemed to lose their
+art spirit.</p>
+
+<p>And certainly the flame of art in the Jewish heart has never died out,
+even though at times it has smoldered, for wherever there has been peace
+and security for the Jews, they have not been slow to evolve the talent
+which creates. History teems with the names of Jews who, in music,
+painting, poetry and sculpture, have devoted their days to beauty. And
+the germ of genius is seen in many of the Jewish children who attend the
+manual-training and art schools of America.</p>
+
+<p>Art has its rise in the sense of sublimity. It seems at times to be a
+fulfilment of the religious impulse. The religion which balks at work,
+stopping at prayer and contemplation, is a form of arrested development.</p>
+
+<p>The number of people in the exodus was probably two or three thousand.
+Renan says that one century only elapsed between the advent of Joseph
+into Egypt and the revolt. Very certain it was not a great number that
+went forth into the desert. A half-million women could not have borrowed
+jewelry of their neighbors&mdash;the secret could not have been kept. And in
+the negotiations between Moses and the King, it will be remembered that
+Moses asked only for the privilege of going three days' journey into the
+wilderness to make sacrifices. It was a kind of picnic or religious
+campmeeting. A vast multitude<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> could not have taken part in any such
+exercise. We also hear of their singing their gratitude on account of
+reaching Elim, where there were "twelve springs and seventy palm-trees."
+Had there been several million people, as we have been told, the
+insignificant shade of seventy trees would have meant nothing to them.</p>
+
+<p>The distance from Goshen in Egypt to Canaan in Palestine was about one
+hundred seventy-five miles. But by the circuitous route they traveled it
+was nearly a thousand miles. It took forty years to make the passage,
+for the way had to be fought through the country of foes who very
+naturally sought to block the way. Quick transportation was out of the
+question. The rate of speed was about twenty-five miles a year.</p>
+
+<p>Here was a people without homes, or fixed habitation, beset on every
+side with the natural dangers of the desert, and compelled to face the
+fury of the inhabitants whose lands they overran, fearful,
+superstitious, haunted by hunger, danger and doubt. By night a man sent
+ahead with a lantern on a pole led the way; by day a cavalcade that
+raised a cloud of dust. One was later sung by the poets as a pillar of
+fire, and the other a cloud. Chance flocks of quail blown by a storm
+into their midst were regarded as a miracle; the white exuding wax of
+the manna-plant was told of as "bread"&mdash;or more literally food.</p>
+
+<p>Those who had taken part in the original exodus were nearly all
+dead&mdash;their children and grandchildren<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> survived, desert born and savage
+bred. Canaan was not the land flowing with milk and honey that had been
+described. Milk and honey are the results of labor applied to land.
+Moses knew this and tried to teach this great truth. He was true to his
+divine trust. Through doubt, hardship, poverty, misunderstanding, he
+held high the ideal&mdash;they were going to a better place.</p>
+
+<p>At last, worn by his constant struggle, aged one hundred twenty, "his
+eye not dim nor his natural force abated"&mdash;for only those live long who
+live well&mdash;Moses went up into the mountain to find solace in solitude as
+was his custom. His people waited for him in vain&mdash;he did not return.
+Alone there with his God he slept and forgot to awaken. His pilgrimage
+was done. "And no man knoweth his grave even unto this day."</p>
+
+<p>History is very seldom recorded on the spot&mdash;certainly it was not then.
+Centuries followed before fact, tradition, song, legend and folklore
+were fused into the form we call Scripture. But out of the fog and mist
+of that far-off past there looms in heroic outline the form and features
+of a man&mdash;a man of will, untiring activity, great hope, deep love, a
+faith which at times faltered, but which never died. Moses was the first
+man in history who fought for human rights and sought to make men free,
+even from their own limitations. "And there arose not a prophet since
+Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p>
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+<h2><a name="CONFUCIUS" id="CONFUCIUS"></a>CONFUCIUS</h2>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img0406.jpg" alt="CONFUCIUS" title="CONFUCIUS" /></div>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The highest study of all is that which teaches us to develop those
+principles of purity and perfect virtue which Heaven bestowed upon
+us at our birth, in order that we may acquire the power of
+influencing for good those amongst whom we are placed, by our
+precepts and example; a study without an end&mdash;for our labors cease
+only when we have become perfect&mdash;an unattainable goal, but one
+that we must not the less set before us from the very first. It is
+true that we shall not be able to reach it, but in our struggle
+toward it we shall strengthen our characters and give stability to
+our ideas, so that, whilst ever advancing calmly in the same
+direction, we shall be rendered capable of applying the faculties
+with which we have been gifted to the best possible account.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;<i>"The Annals" of Confucius</i></p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONFUCIUS</h2>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>he Chinese comprise one-fourth of the inhabitants of the earth. There
+are four hundred millions of them.</p>
+
+<p>They can do many things which we can not do, and we can do a few things
+which they have not yet been able to do; but they are learning from us,
+and possibly we would do well to learn from them. In China there are now
+trolley-cars, telephone-lines, typewriters, cash-registers and American
+plumbing. China is a giant awaking from sleep. He who thinks that China
+is a country crumbling into ruins has failed to leave a call at the
+office and has overslept.</p>
+
+<p>The West can not longer afford to ignore China. And not being able to
+waive her, perhaps the next best thing is to try to understand her.</p>
+
+<p>The one name that looms large above any other name in China is
+Confucius. He of all men has influenced China most. One-third of the
+human race love and cherish his memory, and repeat his words as sacred
+writ.</p>
+
+<p>Confucius was born at a time when one of those tidal waves of reason
+swept the world&mdash;when the nations were full of unrest, and the mountains
+of thought were shaken with discontent.</p>
+
+<p>It was just previous to the blossoming of Greece.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Pericles was seventeen years old when Confucius died. Themistocles was
+preparing the way for Pericles; for then was being collected the
+treasure of Delos, which made Phidias and the Parthenon possible. During
+the life of Confucius lived Leonidas, Miltiades, Cyrus the Great,
+Cambyses, Darius, Xerxes. And then quite naturally occurred the battles
+of Marathon, Salamis and Thermopyl&aelig;. Then lived Buddha-Gautama,
+Lao-tsze, Ezekiel, Daniel, Haggai, Zechariah, Pythagoras, Pindar,
+&AElig;schylus and Anacreon.</p>
+
+<p>The Chinese are linked to the past by ties of language and custom beyond
+all other nations. They are a peculiar people, a chosen people, a people
+set apart. Just when they withdrew from the rest of mankind and
+abandoned their nomadic habits, making themselves secure against
+invasion by building a wall one hundred feet high, and settled down to
+lay the foundations of a vast empire, we do not know. Some historians
+have fixed the date about ten thousand years before Christ&mdash;let it go at
+that. There is a reasonably well-authenticated history of China that
+runs back twenty-five hundred years before Christ, while our history
+merges into mist seven hundred fifty years before the Christian era.</p>
+
+<p>The Israelites wandered; the Chinese remained at home. Walls have this
+disadvantage: they keep people in as well as shut the barbarians out.
+But now there are vast breaches in the wall, through which the
+inhabitants<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> ooze, causing men from thousands of miles away to cry in
+alarm, "the Yellow Peril!" And also through these breaches, Israelites,
+Englishmen and Yankees enter fearlessly, settle down in heathen China,
+and do business.</p>
+
+<p>It surely is an epoch, and what the end will be few there are who dare
+forecast.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>his then is from the pen of Edward Carpenter, the Church of England
+curate who was so great a friend and admirer of our own Walt Whitman
+that he made a trip across the sea to join hands with him in preaching
+the doctrine of democracy and the religion of humanity.<br /><br /></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>In the interior of China, along low-lying plains and great
+river-valleys, and by lake-sides, and far away up into hilly and
+even mountainous regions,</p>
+
+<p>Behold! an immense population, rooted in the land, rooted in the
+clan and the family,</p>
+
+<p>The most productive and stable on the whole Earth. A garden one
+might say&mdash;a land of rich and recherche crops, of rice and tea and
+silk and sugar and cotton and oranges;</p>
+
+<p>Do you see it?&mdash;stretching away endlessly over river-lines and
+lakes, and the gentle undulations of the low-lands, and up the
+escarpments of the higher hills;</p>
+
+<p>The innumerable patchwork of civilization&mdash;the poignant verdure of
+the young rice; the somber green of orange-groves; the lines of
+tea-shrubs, well hoed, and showing the bare earth beneath; the
+pollard mulberries; the plots of cotton and maize and wheat and yam
+and clover; the little brown and green tiled cottages with
+spreading recurbed eaves, the clumps of feathery bamboo, or of
+sugar-canes;</p>
+
+<p>The endless silver threads of irrigation canals and ditches,
+skirting the hills for scores and hundreds of miles, tier above
+tier, and serpentining down to the lower slopes and plains<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The accumulated result, these, of centuries upon centuries of
+ingenious industry, and innumerable public and private
+benefactions, continued from age to age;</p>
+
+<p>The grand canal of the Delta plain extending, a thronged waterway,
+for seven hundred miles, with sails of junks and bankside villages
+innumerable;</p>
+
+<p>The chain-pumps, worked by buffaloes or men, for throwing the water
+up slopes and hillsides, from tier to tier, from channel to
+channel;</p>
+
+<p>The endless rills and cascades flowing down again into pockets and
+hollows of verdure, and on fields of steep and plain;</p>
+
+<p>The bits of rock and wildwood left here and there, with the angles
+of Buddhist or Jain temples projecting from among the trees;</p>
+
+<p>The azalea and rhododendron bushes, and the wild deer and pheasants
+unharmed;</p>
+
+<p>The sounds of music and the gong&mdash;the Sin-fa sung at eventide&mdash;and
+the air of contentment and peace pervading;</p>
+
+<p>A garden you might call the land, for its wealth of crops and
+flowers,</p>
+
+<p>A town almost for its population.</p>
+
+<p>A population denser, on a large scale, than anywhere else on
+earth&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Five or six acre holdings, elbowing each other, with lesser and
+larger, continuously over immense tracts, and running to plentiful
+market centers;</p>
+
+<p>A country of few roads, but of innumerable footpaths and waterways.</p>
+
+<p>Here, rooted in the land, and rooted in the family, each family
+clinging to its portion of ancestral earth, each<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> offshoot of the
+family desiring nothing so much as to secure its own patrimonial
+field,</p>
+
+<p>Each member of the family answerable primarily to the family
+assembly for his misdeeds or defalcations,</p>
+
+<p>All bound together in the common worship of ancestors, and in
+reverence for the past and its sanctioned beliefs and accumulated
+prejudices and superstitions;</p>
+
+<p>With many ancient, wise, simple customs and ordinances, coming down
+from remote centuries, and the time of Confucius,</p>
+
+<p>This vast population abides&mdash;the most stable and the most
+productive in the world.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>And Government touches it but lightly&mdash;can touch it but lightly.</p>
+
+<p>With its few officials (only some twenty-five thousand for the
+whole of its four hundred millions), and its scanty taxation (about
+one dollar per head), and with the extensive administration of
+justice and affairs by the clan and the family&mdash;little scope is
+left for government.</p>
+
+<p>The great equalized mass population pursues its even and accustomed
+way, nor pays attention to edicts and foreign treaties, unless
+these commend themselves independently;</p>
+
+<p>Pays readier respect, in such matters, to the edicts and utterances
+of its literary men, and the deliberations of the Academy.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>And religious theorizing touches it but lightly&mdash;can touch it but
+lightly.</p>
+
+<p>Established on the bedrock of actual life, and on the living unity
+and community of present, past and future<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> generations.</p>
+
+<p>Each man stands bound already, and by the most powerful ties, to
+the social body&mdash;nor needs the dreams and promises of Heaven to
+reassure him.</p>
+
+<p>And all are bound to the Earth.</p>
+
+<p>Rendering back to it as a sacred duty every atom that the Earth
+supplies to them (not insensately sending it in sewers to the sea),</p>
+
+<p>By the way of abject commonsense they have sought the gates of
+Paradise&mdash;and to found on human soil their City Celestial!</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>The first general knowledge of Confucius came to the Western world in
+the latter part of the Sixteenth Century from Jesuit missionaries.
+Indeed, it was they who gave him the Latinized name of "Confucius," the
+Chinese name being Kung-Fu-tsze.</p>
+
+<p>So impressed were these missionaries by the greatness of Confucius that
+they urged upon the Vatican the expediency of placing his name upon the
+calendar of Saints. They began by combating his teachings, but this they
+soon ceased to do, and the modicum of success which they obtained was
+through beginning each Christian service by the hymn which may properly
+be called the National Anthem of China. Its opening stanza is as
+follows:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Confucius! Confucius!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Great was our Confucius!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Before him there was no Confucius,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Since him there was no other.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Confucius! Confucius!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Great was our Confucius!</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The praise given by these early Jesuits to Confucius was at first
+regarded at Rome as apology for the meager success of their
+ministrations. But later scientific study of Chinese literature
+corroborated all that the Jesuit Fathers proclaimed for Confucius, and
+he stands today in a class with Socrates and the scant half-dozen whom
+we call the saviors of the world.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Yet Confucius claimed no "divine revelation," nor did he seek to found a
+religion. He was simply a teacher, and what he taught was the science of
+living&mdash;living in the present, with the plain and simple men and women
+who make up the world, and bettering our condition by bettering theirs.
+Of a future life he said he knew nothing, and concerning the
+supernatural he was silent, even rebuking his disciples for trying to
+pry into the secrets of Heaven. The word "God" he does not use, but his
+recognition of a Supreme Intelligence is limited to the use of a word
+which can best be translated "Heaven," since it tokens a place more than
+it does a person. Constantly he speaks of "doing the will of Heaven."
+And then he goes on to say that "Heaven is speaking through you," "Duty
+lies in mirroring Heaven in our acts," and many other such New-Thought
+aphorisms or epigrams.</p>
+
+<p>That the man was a consummate literary stylist is beyond doubt. He spoke
+in parables and maxims, short, brief and musical. He wrote for his ear,
+and always his desire, it seems, was to convey the greatest truth in the
+fewest words. The Chinese, even the lowly and uneducated, know hundreds
+of Confucian epigrams, and still repeat them in their daily conversation
+or in writing, just as educated Englishmen use the Bible and Shakespeare
+for symbol.</p>
+
+<p>Minister Wu, in a lecture delivered in various American cities, compared
+Confucius with Emerson, showing how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> in many ways these two great
+prophets paralleled each other. Emerson, of all Americans, seems the
+only man worthy of being so compared.</p>
+
+<p>The writer who lives is the man who supplies the world with portable
+wisdom&mdash;short, sharp, pithy maxims which it can remember, or, better
+still, which it can not forget.</p>
+
+<p>Confucius said, "Every truth has four corners: as a teacher I give you
+one corner, and it is for you to find the other three."</p>
+
+<p>The true artist in words or things is always more or less
+impressionistic&mdash;he talks in parables, and it is for the hearer to
+discover the meaning for himself.</p>
+
+<p>An epigram is truth in a capsule. The disadvantage of the epigram is the
+temptation it affords to good people to explain it to the others who are
+assumed to be too obtuse to comprehend it alone. And since explanations
+seldom explain, the result is a mixture or compound that has to be
+spewed utterly or taken on faith. Confucius is simple enough until he is
+explained. Then we evolve sects, denominations and men who make it their
+profession to render moral calculi opaque. China, being peopled by human
+beings, has suffered from this tendency to make truth concrete, just as
+all the rest of the world has suffered. Truth is fluid and should be
+allowed to flow. Ankylosis of a fact is superstition. Confucius was a
+free-trader.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgc.jpg" alt="C" title="C" /></div><p>hina has always been essentially feudal in her form of government.
+China is made up of a large number of States, each presided over by a
+prince or governor, and these States are held together by a rather loose
+federal government, the Emperor being the supreme ruler. State rights
+prevail. State may fight with State, or States may secede&mdash;it isn't of
+much moment. They are glad enough, after a few years, to get back, like
+boys who run away from home, or farmhands who quit work in a tantrum.
+The Chinese are very patient&mdash;they know that time cures all things, a
+truth the West has not yet learned. States that rebel, like individuals
+who place themselves beyond the protection of all, assume grave
+responsibilities.</p>
+
+<p>The local prince usually realizes the bearing of the Social
+Contract&mdash;that he holds his office only during good behavior, and that
+his welfare and the welfare of his people are one.</p>
+
+<p>Heih, the father of Confucius, was governor of one of these little
+States, and had impoverished himself in an effort to help his people.
+Heih was a man of seventy, wedded to a girl of seventeen, when their
+gifted son was born. When the boy was three years old the father died,
+and the lad's care and education depended entirely on the mother. This
+mother seems to have been a woman of rare mental and spiritual worth.
+She deliberately chose a life of poverty and honest toil<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> for herself
+and child, rather than allow herself to be cared for by rich kinsmen.
+The boy was brought up in a village, and he was not allowed to think
+himself any better than the other village children, save as he proved
+himself so. He worked in the garden, tended the cattle and goats, mended
+the pathways, brought wood and water, and waited on his elders. Every
+evening his mother used to tell him of the feats of strength of his
+father, of his heroic qualities in friendship, of deeds of valor, of
+fidelity to trusts, of his absolute truthfulness, and his desire for
+knowledge in order that he might better serve his people.</p>
+
+<p>The coarse, plain fare, the long walks across the fields, the climbing
+of trees, the stooping to pull the weeds in the garden, the daily bath
+in the brook, all combined to develop the boy's body to a splendid
+degree. He went to bed at sundown, and at the first flush of dawn was up
+that he might see the sunrise. There were devotional rites performed by
+the mother and son, morning and evening, which consisted in the playing
+upon a lute and singing or chanting the beauty and beneficence of
+creation.</p>
+
+<p>Confucius, at fifteen, was regarded as a phenomenal musician, and the
+neighbors used to gather to hear him perform. At nineteen he was larger,
+stronger, comelier, more skilled, than any other youth of his age in all
+the country round.</p>
+
+<p>The simple quality of his duties as a prince can be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> guessed when we are
+told that his work as keeper of the herds required him to ride long
+distances on horseback to settle difficulties between rival herders. The
+range belonged to the State, and the owners of goats, sheep and cattle
+were in continual controversies. Montana and Colorado will understand
+this matter. Confucius summoned the disputants and talked to them long
+about the absurdity of quarreling and the necessity of getting together
+in complete understanding. Then it was that he first put forth his
+best-known maxim: "You should not do to others that which you would not
+have others do to you."</p>
+
+<p>This negative statement of the Golden Rule is found expressed in various
+ways in the writings of Confucius. A literal interpretation of the
+Chinese language is quite impossible, as the Chinese have single signs
+or symbols that express a complete idea. To state the same matter, we
+often use a whole page.</p>
+
+<p>Confucius had a single word which expressed the Golden Rule in such a
+poetic way that it is almost useless to try to convey it to people of
+the West. This word, which has been written into English as "Shu,"
+means: My heart responds to yours, or my heart's desire is to meet your
+heart's desire, or I wish to do to you even as I would be done by. This
+sign, symbol or word Confucius used to carve in the bark of trees by the
+roadside. The French were filled with a like impulse when they cut the
+words Liberty, Fraternity,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> Equality, over the entrances to all public
+buildings.</p>
+
+<p>Confucius had his symbol of love and friendship painted on a board,
+which he stuck into the ground before the tent where he lodged; and
+finally it was worked upon a flag by some friends and presented to him,
+and became his flag of peace.</p>
+
+<p>His success in keeping down strife among the herders, and making peace
+among his people, soon gave him a fame beyond the borders of his own
+State. As a judge he had the power to show both parties where they were
+wrong, and arranged for them a common meeting-ground.</p>
+
+<p>His qualifications as an arbiter were not, however, limited to his
+powers of persuasion&mdash;he could shoot an arrow farther and hurl a spear
+with more accuracy than any man he ever met. Very naturally there are a
+great number of folklore stories concerning his prowess, some of which
+make him out a sort of combination Saint George and William Tell, with
+the added kingly graces of Alfred the Great. Omitting the incredible, we
+are willing to believe that this man had a giant's strength, but was
+great enough not to use it like a giant.</p>
+
+<p>We are willing to believe that when attacked by robbers, he engaged them
+in conversation and that, seated on the grass, he convinced them they
+were in a bad business. Also, he did not later hang them, as did our old
+friend Julius C&aelig;sar under like conditions.</p>
+
+<p>When twenty-seven he ceased going abroad to hold<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> court and settle
+quarrels, but sending for the disputants, they came, and he gave them a
+course of lectures in ethics. In a week, by a daily lesson of an hour's
+length, they were usually convinced that to quarrel is very foolish,
+since it reduces bodily vigor, scatters the mind, and disturbs the
+secretions, so the man is the loser in many ways.</p>
+
+<p>This seems to us like a very queer way to hold court, but Confucius
+maintained that men should learn to govern their tempers, do equity, and
+thus be able to settle their own disputes, and this without violence.
+"To fight decides who is the stronger, the younger and the more skilful
+in the use of arms, but it does not decide who is right. That is to be
+settled by the Heaven in your own heart."</p>
+
+<p>To let the Heaven into your heart, to cultivate a conscience so
+sensitive that it can conceive the rights of the other man, is to know
+wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>To decide specific cases for others he thought was to cause them to lose
+the power of deciding for themselves. When asked what a just man should
+do when he was dealing with one absolutely unjust, he said, "He who
+wrongs himself sows in his own heart nettles."</p>
+
+<p>And when some of his disciples, after the Socratic method, asked him how
+this helped the injured man, he replied, "To be robbed or wronged is
+nothing unless you continue to remember it." When pushed still further,
+he said, "A man should fight, only when he does<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> so to protect himself
+or his family from bodily harm."</p>
+
+<p>Here a questioner asked, "If we are to protect our persons, must we not
+learn to fight?"</p>
+
+<p>And the answer comes, "The just man, he who partakes moderately of all
+good things, is the only man to fear in a quarrel, for he is without
+fear."</p>
+
+<p>Over and over is the injunction in varying phrase, "Abolish
+fear&mdash;abolish fear!" When pressed to give in one word the secret of a
+happy life, he gives a word which we translate, "Equanimity."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>The mother of Confucius died during his early manhood. For her he ever
+retained the most devout memories.</p>
+
+<p>Before going on a journey he always visited her grave, and on returning,
+before he spoke to any one, he did the same. On each anniversary of her
+death he ate no food and was not to be seen by his pupils. This filial
+piety, which is sometimes crudely and coarsely called "ancestor
+worship," is something which for the Western world is rather difficult
+to appreciate. But in it there is a subtle, spiritual significance,
+suggesting that it is only through our parents that we are able to
+realize consciousness or personal contact with Heaven. These parents
+loved us into being, cared for us with infinite patience in infancy,
+taught us in youth, watched with high hope our budding manhood; and as
+reward and recognition for the service rendered us, the least we can do
+is to remember them in all our prayers and devotions. The will of Heaven
+used these parents for us, therefore parenthood is divine.</p>
+
+<p>That this ancestor worship is beautiful and beneficial is quite
+apparent, and rightly understood no one could think of it as
+"heathendom." Confucius used to chant the praises of his mother, who
+brought him up in poverty, thus giving a close and intimate knowledge of
+a thousand things from which princes, used to ease and luxury, are
+barred.</p>
+
+<p>So close was he to nature and the plain people that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> he ordered that all
+skilful charioteers in his employ should belong to the nobility. This
+giving a title or degree to men of skill&mdash;men who can do things&mdash;we
+regard as essentially a modern idea.</p>
+
+<p>China, I believe, is the first country in the world to use the threads
+of a moth or worm for fabrics. The patience and care and inventive skill
+required in first making silk were very great. But it gives us an index
+to invention when we hear that Confucius regarded the making of linen,
+using the fiber of a plant, as a greater feat than utilizing the strands
+made by the silkworm. Confucius had a sort of tender sentiment toward
+the moth, similar to the sentiments which our vegetarian friends have
+toward killing animals for food. Confucius wore linen in preference to
+silk, for sentimental reasons. The silkworm dies at his task of making
+himself a cocoon, so to evolve in a winged joy, but falls a victim of
+man's cupidity. Likewise, Confucius would not drink milk from a cow
+until her calf was weaned, because to do so were taking an unfair
+advantage of the maternal instincts of the cow. It will thus be seen
+that Confucius had a very fair hold on the modern idea which we call
+"Monism," or "The One." He, too, said, "All is one." In his attitude
+toward all living things he was ever gentle and considerate.</p>
+
+<p>No other prophet so much resembles Confucius in doctrine as Socrates.
+But Confucius does not suffer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> from the comparison. He had a beauty,
+dignity and grace of person which the great Athenian did not possess.
+Socrates was more or less of a buffoon, and to many in Athens he was a
+huge joke&mdash;a town fool. Confucius combined the learning and graces of
+Plato with the sturdy, practical commonsense of Socrates. No one ever
+affronted or insulted him; many did not understand him, but he met
+prince or pauper on terms of equality.</p>
+
+<p>In his travels Confucius used often to meet recluses or monks&mdash;men who
+had fled the world in order to become saints. For these men Confucius
+had more pity than respect. "The world's work is difficult, and to live
+in a world of living, striving and dying men and women requires great
+courage and great love. Now we can not all run away, and for some to
+flee from humanity and to find solace in solitude is only another name
+for weakness."</p>
+
+<p>This sounds singularly like our Ralph Waldo who says, "It is easy in the
+world to live after the world's opinions; it is easy in solitude to live
+after our own; but the Great Man is he who in the midst of the crowd
+keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."</p>
+
+<p>Confucius is the first man in point of time to proclaim the divinity of
+service, the brotherhood of man, and the truth that in useful work there
+is no high nor low degree. In talking to a group of young men he says:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"When I was keeper of the herds I always saw to it that all of my cattle
+were strong, healthy and growing, that there was water in abundance and
+plenty of feed. When I had charge of the public granaries I never slept
+until I knew that all was secure and cared for against the weather, and
+my accounts as true and correct as if I were going on my long journey to
+return no more. My advice is to slight nothing, forget nothing, never
+leave things to chance, nor say, 'Nobody will know&mdash;this is good
+enough.'"</p>
+
+<p>In all of his injunctions Confucius never has anything in mind beyond
+the present life. Of a future existence he knows nothing, and he seems
+to regard it as a waste of energy and a sign of weakness to live in two
+worlds at a time. "Heaven provides us means of knowing all about what is
+best here, and supplies us in abundance every material thing for present
+happiness, and it is our business to realize, to know, to enjoy."</p>
+
+<p>He taught rhetoric, mathematics, economics, the science of government
+and natural history. And always and forever running through the fabric
+of his teaching was the silken thread of ethics&mdash;man's duty to man,
+man's duty to Heaven. Music was to him a necessity, since "it brings the
+mind in right accord with the will of Heaven." Before he began to speak
+he played softly on a stringed instrument which perhaps would compare
+best with our guitar, but it was much smaller, and this instrument he
+always carried with him, suspended from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> his shoulder by a silken sash.
+Yet with all of his passion for music, he cautioned his disciples
+against using it as an end. It was merely valuable as an introduction to
+be used in attuning the mind and heart to an understanding of great
+truth.</p>
+
+<p>Confucius was seventy-two years old at his death. During his life his
+popularity was not great. When he passed away his followers numbered
+only about three thousand persons, and his "disciples," or the teachers
+who taught his philosophy, were seventy in number.</p>
+
+<p>There is no reason to suppose that Confucius assumed that a vast number
+of people would ever ponder his words or regard him as a prophet.</p>
+
+<p>At the time that Confucius lived, also lived Lao-tsze. As a youth
+Confucius visited Lao-tsze, who was then an old man. Confucius often
+quotes his great contemporary and calls himself a follower of Lao-tsze.
+The difference, however, between the men is marked. Lao-tsze's teachings
+are full of metaphysics and strange and mystical curiosities, while
+Confucius is always simple, lucid and practical.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgc.jpg" alt="C" title="C" /></div><p>onfucius has been revered for twenty centuries, revered simply as a
+man, not as a god or as a divinely appointed savior. He offered no
+reward of heaven, nor did he threaten non-believers with hell. He
+claimed no special influence nor relationship to the Unseen. In all his
+teachings he was singularly open, frank and free from all mystery or
+concealment. In reference to the supernatural he was an agnostic. He
+often said, "I do not know." He was always an inquirer, always a
+student, always open to conviction. History affords no instance of
+another individual who has been so well and so long loved, who still
+holds his place, and who, so far as his reasoning went, is unassailed
+and unassailable. Even the two other great religions in China that rival
+Confucianism&mdash;Buddhism and Taoism (the religion of Lao-tsze)&mdash;do not
+renounce Confucius: they merely seek to amend and augment him.</p>
+
+<p>During his lifetime Confucius made many enemies by his habit of frankly
+pointing out the foibles of society and the wrongs visited upon the
+people by officials who pretended to serve them. Of hypocrisy,
+selfishness, vanity, pretense, he was severe in his denunciation.</p>
+
+<p>Politicians at that time had the very modern habit of securing the
+office and then leaving all the details of the work to menials, they
+themselves pocketing the perquisites. As Minister of State, Confucius
+made himself both feared and detested on account of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> his habit of
+summoning the head of the office before him and questioning him
+concerning his duties. In fact, this insistence that those paid by the
+State should work for the State caused a combination to be formed
+against him, which finally brought about his deposition and exile, two
+things which troubled him but little, since one gave him leisure and the
+other opportunity for travel.</p>
+
+<p>The personal followers of Confucius did not belong to the best society;
+but immediately after his death, many who during his life had scorned
+the man made haste to profess his philosophy and decorate their houses
+with his maxims. Humanity is about the same, whether white or yellow,
+the round world over, and time modifies it but little. It will be
+recalled how John P. Altgeld was feared and hated by both press and
+pulpit, especially in the State and city he served. But rigor mortis had
+scarcely seized upon that slight and tired body before the newspapers
+that had disparaged the man worst were vying with one another in glowing
+eulogies and warm testimonials to his honesty, sincerity, purity of
+motive and deep insight. A personality which can neither be bribed,
+bought, coerced, flattered nor cajoled is always regarded by the
+many&mdash;especially by the party in power&mdash;as "dangerous." Vice, masked as
+virtue, breathes easier when the honest man is safely under the sod.</p>
+
+<p>The plain and simple style of Confucius' teaching can be gathered by the
+following sayings, selected at random<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> from the canonical books of
+Confucianism, consisting of the teachings of the great master which were
+gathered together and grouped by his disciples and followers after his
+death:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The men of old spoke little. It would be well to imitate them, for
+those who talk much are sure to say something it would be better to
+have left unsaid.</p>
+
+<p>Let a man's labor be proportioned to his needs. For he who works
+beyond his strength does but add to his cares and disappointments.
+A man should be moderate even in his efforts.</p>
+
+<p>Be not over-anxious to obtain relaxation or repose. For he who is
+so, will get neither.</p>
+
+<p>Beware of ever doing that which you are likely, sooner or later, to
+repent of having done.</p>
+
+<p>Do not neglect to rectify an evil because it may seem small, for,
+though small at first, it may continue to grow until it overwhelms
+you.</p>
+
+<p>As riches adorn a house, so does an expanded mind adorn and
+tranquillize the body. Hence it is that the superior man will seek
+to establish his motives on correct principles.</p>
+
+<p>The cultivator of the soil may have his fill of good things, but
+the cultivator of the mind will enjoy a continual feast.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is because men are prone to be partial toward those they love,
+unjust toward those they hate, servile toward those above them,
+arrogant to those below them, and either harsh or over-indulgent to
+those in poverty and distress, that it is so difficult to find any
+one capable of exercising a sound judgment with respect to the
+qualities of others.</p>
+
+<p>He who is incapable of regulating his own family can not be capable
+of ruling a nation. The superior man will find within the limits of
+his own home, a sufficient sphere for the exercise of all those
+principles upon which good government depends. How, indeed, can it
+be otherwise, when filial piety is that which should regulate the
+conduct of a people toward their prince; fraternal affection, that
+which should regulate the relations which should exist between
+equals, and the conduct of inferiors toward those above them; and
+paternal kindness, that which should regulate the bearing of those
+in authority toward those over whom they are placed?</p>
+
+<p>Be slow in speech, but prompt in action.</p>
+
+<p>He whose principles are thoroughly established will not be easily
+led from the right path.</p>
+
+<p>The cautious are generally to be found on the right side.</p>
+
+<p>By speaking when we ought to keep silence, we waste our words.</p>
+
+<p>If you would escape vexation, reprove yourself liberally and others
+sparingly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is no use attempting to help those who can not help
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Make friends with the upright, intelligent and wise; avoid the
+licentious, talkative and vain.</p>
+
+<p>Disputation often breeds hatred.</p>
+
+<p>Nourish good principles with the same care that a mother would
+bestow on her newborn babe. You may not be able to bring them to
+maturity, but you will nevertheless be not far from doing so.</p>
+
+<p>The decrees of Heaven are not immutable, for though a throne may be
+gained by virtue, it may be lost by vice.</p>
+
+<p>There are five good principles of action to be adopted: To benefit
+others without being lavish; to encourage labor without being
+harsh; to add to your resources without being covetous; to be
+dignified without being supercilious; and to inspire awe without
+being austere. Also, we should not search for love or demand it,
+but so live that it will flow to us.</p>
+
+<p>Personal character can only be established on fixed principles, for
+if the mind be allowed to be agitated by violent emotions, to be
+excited by fear, or unduly moved by the love of pleasure, it will
+be impossible for it to be made perfect. A man must reason calmly,
+for without reason he would look and not see, listen and not hear.</p>
+
+<p>When a man has been helped around one corner of a square, and can
+not manage by himself to get around the other three, he is unworthy
+of further assistance.</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h2><a name="PYTHAGORAS" id="PYTHAGORAS"></a>PYTHAGORAS</h2>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img0408.jpg" alt="PYTHAGORAS" title="PYTHAGORAS" /></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Consult and deliberate before you act, that thou mayest not commit
+foolish actions. For 't is the part of a miserable man to speak and
+to act without reflection. But do that which will not afflict thee
+afterwards, nor oblige thee to repentance.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;<i>Pythagoras</i></p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PYTHAGORAS</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgw.jpg" alt="W" title="W" /></div><p>ith no desire to deprive Mr. Bok of his bread, I wish to call attention
+to Pythagoras, who lived a little more than five hundred years before
+Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Even at that time the world was old. Memphis, which was built four
+thousand years ago, had begun to crumble into ruins. Troy was buried
+deep in the dust which an American citizen of German birth was to
+remove. Nineveh and Babylon were dying the death that success always
+brings, and the star of empire was preparing to westward wend its way.</p>
+
+<p>Pythagoras ushered in the Golden Age of Greece. All the great writers
+whom he immediately preceded, quote him and refer to him. Some admire
+him; others are loftily critical; most of them are a little jealous; and
+a few use him as a horrible example, calling him a poseur, a pedant, a
+learned sleight-of-hand man, a bag of books.</p>
+
+<p>Trial by newspaper was not invented in the time of Pythagoras; but
+personal vilification has been popular since Balaam talked gossip with
+his vis-a-vis.</p>
+
+<p>Anaxagoras, who gave up his wealth to the State that he might be free,
+and who was the teacher of Pericles, was a pupil of Pythagoras, and used
+often to mention<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> him.</p>
+
+<p>In this way Pericles was impressed by the Pythagorean philosophy, and
+very often quotes it in his speeches. Socrates gave Pythagoras as an
+authority on the simple life, and stated that he was willing to follow
+him in anything save his injunction to keep silence. Socrates wanted
+silence optional; whereas Pythagoras required each of his pupils to live
+for a year without once asking a question or making an explanation. In
+aggravated cases he made the limit five years.</p>
+
+<p>In many ways Pythagoras reminds us of our friend Muldoon, both being
+beneficent autocrats, and both proving their sincerity by taking their
+own medicine. Pythagoras said, "I will never ask another to do what I
+have not done, and am not willing to do myself."</p>
+
+<p>To this end he was once challenged by his three hundred pupils to remain
+silent for a year. He accepted the defi, not once defending himself from
+the criticisms and accusations that were rained upon him, not once
+complaining, nor issuing an order. Tradition has it, however, that he
+made averages good later on, when the year of expiation was ended.</p>
+
+<p>There are two reasonably complete lives of Pythagoras, one by Diogenes
+Laertius, and another by Iamblichus. Personally, I prefer the latter, as
+Iamblichus, as might be inferred from his name, makes Pythagoras a
+descendant of &AElig;neas, who was a son of Neptune. This is surely better
+than the abrupt and somewhat sensational statement to the effect that
+his father was Apollo.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>he birthplace of Pythagoras was Samos, an isle of Greece. He was born
+of wealthy but honest parents, who were much in love with each other&mdash;a
+requisite, says Pythagoras, for parentage on its highest plane. It is
+probable that Pythagoras was absolutely correct in his hypothesis.</p>
+
+<p>That he was a very noble specimen of manhood&mdash;physically and
+mentally&mdash;there is no doubt. He was tall, lithe, dignified, commanding
+and silent by nature, realizing fully that a handsome man can never talk
+as well as he looks.</p>
+
+<p>He was quite aware of his physical graces, and in following up the facts
+of his early life, he makes the statement that his father was a
+sea-captain and trader. He then incidentally adds that the best results
+are obtained for posterity where a man is absent from his family eleven
+months in the year. This is an axiom agreed upon by many modern
+philosophers, few of whom, however, live up to their ideals.
+Aristophanes, who was on friendly terms with some of the disciples of
+Pythagoras, suggested in one of his plays that the Pythagorean domestic
+time-limit should be increased at least a month for the good of all
+concerned.</p>
+
+<p>Plato, Xenophon and Aristotle make frequent references to Pythagoras. In
+order to impress men like these, the man must have taught a very exalted
+philosophy. In truth, Pythagoras was a teacher of teachers. And like all
+men who make a business of wisdom he sometimes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> came tardy off, and
+indulged in a welter of words that wrecked the original idea&mdash;if there
+were one.</p>
+
+<p>There are these three: Knowledge, Learning, Wisdom. And the world has
+until very recent times assumed that they were practically one and the
+same thing.</p>
+
+<p>Knowledge consists of the things we know, not the things we believe or
+the things we assume. Knowledge is a personal matter of intuition,
+confirmed by experience. Learning consists largely of the things we
+memorize and are told by persons or books. Tomlinson of Berkeley Square
+was a learned man. When we think of a learned man, we picture him as one
+seated in a library surrounded by tomes that top the shelves.</p>
+
+<p>Wisdom is the distilled essence of what we have learned from experience.
+It is that which helps us to live, work, love and make life worth living
+for all we meet. Men may be very learned, and still be far from wise.</p>
+
+<p>Pythagoras was one of those strange beings who are born with a desire to
+know, and who finally comprehending the secret of the Sphinx, that there
+is really nothing to say, insist on saying it. That is, vast learning is
+augmented by a structure of words, and on this is built a theogony.
+Practically he was a priest.</p>
+
+<p>Worked into all priestly philosophies are nuggets of wisdom that shine
+like stars in the darkness and lead men on and on.</p>
+
+<p>All great religions have these periods of sanity, otherwise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> they would
+have no followers at all. The followers, understanding little bits of
+this and that, hope finally to understand it all. Inwardly the initiates
+at the shrine of their own conscience know that they know nothing. When
+they teach others they are obliged to pretend that they, themselves,
+fully comprehend the import of what they are saying. The novitiate
+attributes his lack of perception to his own stupidity, and many great
+teachers encourage this view.</p>
+
+<p>"Be patient, and you shall some day know," they say, and smile frigidly.</p>
+
+<p>And when credulity threatens to balk and go no further, magic comes to
+the rescue and the domain of Hermann and Kellar is poached upon.</p>
+
+<p>Mystery and miracle were born in Egypt. It was there that a system was
+evolved, backed up by the ruler, of religious fraud so colossal that
+modern deception looks like the bungling efforts of an amateur. The
+government, the army, the taxing power of the State, were sworn to
+protect gigantic safes in which was hoarded&mdash;nothing. That is to say,
+nothing but the pretense upon which cupidity and self-hypnotized
+credulity battened and fattened.</p>
+
+<p>All institutions which through mummery, strange acts, dress and ritual,
+affect to know and impart the inmost secrets of creation and ultimate
+destiny, had their rise in Egypt. In Egypt now are only graves, tombs,
+necropolises and silence. The priests there need no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> soldiery to keep
+their secrets safe. Ammon-Ra, who once ruled the universe, being finally
+exorcised by Yaveh, is now as dead as the mummies who once were men and
+upheld his undisputed sway.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>The Egyptians guarded their mysteries with jealous dread.</p>
+
+<p>We know their secret now. It is this&mdash;there are no mysteries.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>hat is the only secret upon which any secret society holds a caveat.
+Wisdom can not be corraled with gibberish and fettered in jargon.
+Knowledge is one thing&mdash;palaver another. The Greek-letter societies of
+our callow days still survive in bird's-eye, and next to these come the
+Elks, who take theirs with seltzer and a smile, as a rare good joke,
+save that brotherhood and good-fellowship are actually a saving salt
+which excuses much that would otherwise be simply silly.</p>
+
+<p>All this mystery and mysticism was once official, and later, on being
+discarded by the authorities, was continued by the students as a kind of
+prank.</p>
+
+<p>Greek-letter societies are the rudimentary survivals of what was once an
+integral part of every college. Making dead languages optional was the
+last convulsive kick of the cadaver.</p>
+
+<p>And now a good many colleges are placing the seal of their disapproval
+on secret societies among the students; and the day is near when the
+secret society will not be tolerated, either directly or indirectly, as
+a part of the education of youth. All this because the sophomoric mind
+is prone to take its Greek-letter mysteries seriously, and regard the
+college curriculum as a joke of the faculty.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>If knowledge were to be gained by riding a goat, any petty crossroads,
+with its lodge-room over the grocery, would contain a Herbert Spencer;
+and the agrarian mossbacks would have wisdom by the scruff and detain
+knowledge with a tail-hold.</p>
+
+<p>There can be no secrets in life and morals, because Nature has so
+provided that every beautiful thought you know and every precious
+sentiment you feel, shall shine out of your face so that all who are
+great enough may see, know, understand, appreciate and appropriate. You
+can keep things only by giving them away.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When Pythagoras was only four or five years old, his mother taught him
+to take his morning bath in the cold stream, and dry his baby skin by
+running in the wind. As he ran, she ran with him, and together they sang
+a hymn to the rising sun, that for them represented the god Apollo.</p>
+
+<p>This mother taught him to be indifferent to cold, heat, hunger, to exult
+in endurance, and to take a joy in the glow of the body.</p>
+
+<p>So the boy grew strong and handsome, and proud; and perhaps it was in
+those early years, from the mother herself, that he gathered the idea,
+afterward developed, that Apollo had appeared to his mother, and so
+great was the beauty of the god that the woman was actually overcome, it
+being the first god at which she had ever had a good look.</p>
+
+<p>The ambition of a great mother centers on her son. Pythagoras was filled
+with the thought that he was different, peculiar, set apart to teach the
+human race.</p>
+
+<p>Having compassed all there was to learn in his native place, and, as he
+thought, being ill appreciated, he started for Egypt, the land of
+learning. The fallacy that knowledge was a secret to be gained by word
+of mouth and to be gotten from books existed then as now. The mother of
+Pythagoras wanted her son to comprehend the innermost secrets of the
+Egyptian mysteries. He would then know all. To this end she sold her
+jewels, in order that her son might have the advantages of an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> Egyptian
+education.</p>
+
+<p>Women were not allowed to know the divine secrets&mdash;only just a few
+little ones. This woman wanted to know, and she said her son would
+learn, and tell her.</p>
+
+<p>The family had become fairly rich by this time, and influential. Letters
+were gotten from the great ones of Samos to the Secretary of State in
+Egypt. And so Pythagoras, aged twenty, "the youth with the beautiful
+hair," went on his journey to Egypt and knocked boldly at the doors of
+the temples at Memphis, where knowledge was supposed to be in stock.
+Religion then monopolized all schools and continued to do so for quite
+some time after Pythagoras was dead.</p>
+
+<p>He was turned away with the explanation that no foreigner could enter
+the sacred portals&mdash;that the initiates must be those born in the shadows
+of the temples and nurtured in the faith from infancy by holy virgins.</p>
+
+<p>Pythagoras still insisted, and it was probably then that he found a
+sponsor who made for him the claim that he was a son of Apollo. And the
+holy men peeped out of their peep-holes in holy admiration for any one
+who could concoct as big a lie as they themselves had ever invented.</p>
+
+<p>The boy surely looked the part. Perhaps, at last, here was one who was
+what they pretended to be! Frauds believe in frauds, and rogues are more
+easily captured by roguery than are honest men.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His admittance to the university became a matter of international
+diplomacy. At last, being too hard-pressed, the wise ones who ran the
+mystery monopoly gave in, and Pythagoras was informed that at midnight
+of a certain night, he should present himself, naked, at the door of a
+certain temple and he would be admitted.</p>
+
+<p>On the stroke of the hour, at the appointed time, Pythagoras, the youth
+with the beautiful hair, was there, clothed only in his beautiful hair.
+He knocked on the great, bronze doors, but the only answer was a faint,
+hollow echo.</p>
+
+<p>Then he got a stone and pounded, but still no answer.</p>
+
+<p>The wind sprang up fresh and cold. The young man was chilled to the
+bone, but still he pounded and then called aloud demanding admittance.
+His answer now was the growling and barking of dogs, within. Still he
+pounded! After an interval a hoarse voice called out through a little
+slide, ordering him to be gone or the dogs would be turned loose upon
+him.</p>
+
+<p>He demanded admittance.</p>
+
+<p>"Fool, do you not know that the law says these doors shall admit no one
+except at sunrise?"</p>
+
+<p>"I only know that I was told to be here at midnight and I would be
+admitted."</p>
+
+<p>"All that may be true, but you were not told when you would be
+admitted&mdash;wait, it is the will of the gods." So Pythagoras waited,
+numbed and nearly dead.</p>
+
+<p>The dogs which he had heard had, in some way,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> gotten out, and came
+tearing around the corner of the great stone building. He fought them
+with desperate strength. The effort seemed to warm his blood, and
+whereas before he was about to retreat to his lodgings he now remained.</p>
+
+<p>The day broke in the east, and gangs of slaves went by to work. They
+jeered at him and pelted him with pebbles.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly across the desert sands he saw the faint pink rim of the rising
+sun. On the instant the big bronze doors against which he was leaning
+swung suddenly in. He fell with them, and coarse, rough hands seized his
+hair and pulled him into the hall.</p>
+
+<p>The doors swung to and closed with a clang. Pythagoras was in dense
+darkness, lying on the stone floor.</p>
+
+<p>A voice, seemingly coming from afar, demanded, "Do you still wish to go
+on?"</p>
+
+<p>And his answer was, "I desire to go on."</p>
+
+<p>A black-robed figure, wearing a mask, then appeared with a flickering
+light, and Pythagoras was led into a stone cell.</p>
+
+<p>His head was shaved, and he was given a coarse robe and then left alone.
+Toward the end of the day he was given a piece of black bread and a bowl
+of water. This he was told was to fortify him for the ordeal to come.</p>
+
+<p>What that ordeal was we can only guess, save that it consisted partially
+in running over hot sands where he sank to his waist. At a point where
+he seemed about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> to perish a voice called loudly, "Do you yet desire to
+go on?"</p>
+
+<p>And his answer was, "I desire to go on."</p>
+
+<p>Returning to the inmost temple he was told to enter a certain door and
+wait therein. He was then blindfolded and when he opened the door to
+enter, he walked off into space and fell into a pool of ice-cold water.</p>
+
+<p>While floundering there the voice again called, "Do you yet desire to go
+on?"</p>
+
+<p>And his answer was, "I desire to go on."</p>
+
+<p>At another time he was tied upon the back of a donkey and the donkey was
+led along a rocky precipice, where lights danced and flickered a
+thousand feet below.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you yet want to go on?" called the voice.</p>
+
+<p>And Pythagoras answered, "I desire to go on."</p>
+
+<p>The priests here pushed the donkey off the precipice, which proved to be
+only about two feet high, the gulf below being an illusion arranged with
+the aid of lights that shone through apertures in the wall.</p>
+
+<p>These pleasing little diversions Pythagoras afterward introduced into
+the college which he founded, so to teach the merry freshmen that
+nothing, at the last, was as bad as it seemed, and that most dangers are
+simply illusions.</p>
+
+<p>The Egyptians grew to have such regard for Pythagoras that he was given
+every opportunity to know the inmost secrets of the mysteries. He said
+he encompassed them all, save those alone which were incomprehensible.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This was probably true.</p>
+
+<p>The years spent in Egypt were not wasted&mdash;he learned astronomy,
+mathematics, and psychology, a thing then not named, but pretty well
+understood&mdash;the management of men.</p>
+
+<p>It was twenty years before Pythagoras returned to Samos. His mother was
+dead, so she passed away in ignorance of the secrets of the gods&mdash;which
+perhaps was just as well.</p>
+
+<p>Samos now treated Pythagoras with great honor.</p>
+
+<p>Crowds flocked to his lectures, presents were given him, royalty paid
+him profound obeisance.</p>
+
+<p>But Samos soon tired of Pythagoras. He was too austere, too severe; and
+when he began to rebuke the officials for their sloth and indifference,
+he was invited to go elsewhere and teach his science of life. And so he
+journeyed into Southern Italy, and at Crotona built his Temple to the
+Muses and founded the Pythagorean School. He was the wisest as well as
+the most learned man of his time.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgs.jpg" alt="S" title="S" /></div><p>ome unkind person has said that Pythagoras was the original charter
+member of the Jesuits Society. The maxim that the end justifies the
+means was the cornerstone of Egyptian theology. When Pythagoras left
+Egypt he took with him this cornerstone as a souvenir. That the priests
+could hold their power over the masses only through magic and miracle
+was fully believed, and as a good police system the value of organized
+religion was highly appreciated. In fact, no ruler could hold his place,
+unsupported by the priest. Both were divine propositions. One searches
+in vain for simple truth among the sages, solons, philosophers, poets
+and prophets that existed down to the time of Socrates. Truth for
+truth's sake was absolutely unimagined; freethought was unguessed.</p>
+
+<p>Expediency was always placed before truth.</p>
+
+<p>Truth was furnished with frills&mdash;the people otherwise would not be
+impressed. Chants, robes, ritual, processions, banging of bells, burning
+of incense, strange sounds, sights and smells: these were considered
+necessary factors in teaching divine truth.</p>
+
+<p>To worship with a noise seems to us a little like making love with a
+brass band.</p>
+
+<p>Pythagoras was a very great man, but for him to eliminate theological
+chaff entirely was impossible. So we find that when he was about to
+speak, red fire filled the building as soon as he arose. It was all a
+little like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> the alleged plan of the late Reverend T. DeWitt Talmage,
+who used to have an Irishman let loose a white pigeon from the
+organ-loft at an opportune time.</p>
+
+<p>When Pythagoras burned the red fire, of course the audience thought a
+miracle was taking place, unable to understand a simple stage-trick
+which all the boys in the gallery who delight in "Faust" now understand.</p>
+
+<p>However, the Pythagorean School had much virtue on its side, and made a
+sincere and earnest effort to solve certain problems that yet are vexing
+us.</p>
+
+<p>The Temple of the Muses, built by Pythagoras at Crotona, is described by
+Iamblichus as a stone structure with walls twenty feet thick, the light
+being admitted only from the top. It was evidently constructed after the
+Egyptian pattern, and the intent was to teach there the esoteric
+doctrine. But Pythagoras improved upon the Egyptian methods and opened
+his temple on certain days to all and any who desired to come. Then at
+times he gave lectures to women only, and then to men only, and also to
+children, thus showing that modern revival methods are not wholly
+modern.</p>
+
+<p>These lectures contain the very essence of Pythagorean philosophy, and
+include so much practical commonsense that they are still quoted. These
+are some of the sayings that impressed Socrates, Pericles, Aristotle and
+Pliny. What the Egyptians actually taught we really do not know&mdash;it was
+too gaseous to last. Only the good endures. Says Pythagoras:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Cut not into the grape. Exaltation coming from wine is not good.
+You hope too much in this condition, so are afterwards depressed.
+Wise men are neither cast down in defeat nor exalted by success.
+Eat moderately, bathe plentifully, exercise much in the open air,
+walk far, and climb the hills alone.</p>
+
+<p>Above all things, learn to keep silence&mdash;hear all and speak little.
+If you are defamed, answer not back. Talk convinces no one. Your
+life and character proclaim you more than any argument you can put
+forth. Lies return to plague those who repeat them.</p>
+
+<p>The secret of power is to keep an even temper, and remember that no
+one thing that can happen is of much moment. The course of justice,
+industry, courage, moderation, silence, means that you shall
+receive your due of every good thing. The gods may be slow, but
+they never forget.</p>
+
+<p>It is not for us to punish men nor avenge ourselves for slights,
+wrongs and insults&mdash;wait, and you will see that Nemesis unhorses
+the man intent on calumny.</p>
+
+<p>A woman's ornaments should be modesty, simplicity, truth,
+obedience. If a woman would hold a man captive she can only do it
+by obeying him. Violent women are even more displeasing to the gods
+than violent men&mdash;both are destroying themselves. Strife is always
+defeat.</p>
+
+<p>Debauchery, riot, splendor, luxury, are attempts to get a pleasure
+out of life that is not our due, and so Nemesis provides her
+penalty for the idle and gluttonous.</p>
+
+<p>Fear and honor the gods. They guide our ways and watch over us in
+our sleep. After the gods, a man's first thought should be of his
+father and mother. Next to these his wife, then his children.</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So great was this power of Pythagoras over the people that many of the
+women who came, hearing his discourse on the folly of pride and
+splendor, threw off their cloaks, and left them with their rings,
+anklets and necklaces on the altar.</p>
+
+<p>With these and other offerings Pythagoras built another temple, this
+time to Apollo, and the Temple to the Muses was left open all the time
+for the people.</p>
+
+<p>His power over the multitude alarmed the magistrates, so they sent for
+him to examine him as to his influence and intents. He explained to them
+that as the Muses were never at variance among themselves, always living
+in subjection to Apollo, so should magistrates agree among themselves
+and think only of being loyal to the king. All royal edicts and laws are
+reflections of divine law, and therefore must be obeyed without
+question. And as the Muses never interrupt the harmony of Heaven, but in
+fact add to it, so should men ever keep harmony among themselves.</p>
+
+<p>All officers of the government should consider themselves as runners in
+the Olympian games, and never seek to trip, jostle, harass or annoy a
+rival, but run the race squarely and fairly, satisfied to be beaten if
+the other is the stronger and better man. An unfair victory gains only
+the anger of the gods.</p>
+
+<p>All disorders in the State come from ill education of the young.
+Children not brought up to be patient, to endure, to work, to be
+considerate of their elders and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> respectful to all, grow diseased minds
+that find relief at last in anarchy and rebellion. So to take great care
+of children in their infancy, and then leave them at puberty to follow
+their own inclinations, is to sow disorder. Children well loved and kept
+close to their parents grow up into men and women who are an ornament to
+the State and a joy to the gods. Lawless, complaining, restless, idle
+children grieve the gods and bring trouble upon their parents and
+society.</p>
+
+<p>The magistrates were here so pleased, and satisfied in their own minds
+that Pythagoras meant the State no harm, that they issued an order that
+all citizens should attend upon his lectures at least once a week, and
+take their wives and children with them.</p>
+
+<p>They also offered to pay Pythagoras&mdash;that is, put him on the payroll as
+a public teacher&mdash;but he declined to accept money for his services. In
+this, Iamblichus says, he was very wise, since by declining a fixed fee,
+ten times as much was laid upon the altar of the Temple of the Muses,
+and not knowing to whom to return it, Pythagoras was obliged to keep it
+for himself and the poor.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgc.jpg" alt="C" title="C" /></div><p>hurchmen of the Middle Ages worked the memory of Pythagoras great
+injustice by quoting him literally in order to prove how much they were
+beyond him. Symbols and epigrams require a sympathetic hearer, otherwise
+they are as naught.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, Pythagoras remarks, "Sit thou not down upon a bushel
+measure." What he probably meant was, get busy and fill the measure with
+grain rather than use it for a seat.</p>
+
+<p>"Eat not the heart"&mdash;do not act so as to harrow the feelings of your
+friends, and do not be morbid.</p>
+
+<p>"Never stir the fire with a sword"&mdash;do not inflame people who are
+wrathful.</p>
+
+<p>"Wear not the image of God upon your jewelry"&mdash;do not make religion a
+proud or boastful thing.</p>
+
+<p>"Help men to a burden, but never unburden them." This saying was used by
+Saint Francis to prove that the pagan philosophers had no tenderness,
+and that the humanities came at a later date. We can now easily
+understand that to relieve men of responsibilities is no help; rather do
+we grow strong by carrying burdens.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave not the mark of the pot upon the ashes"&mdash;wipe out the past,
+forget it, look to the future.</p>
+
+<p>"Feed no animal that has crooked claws"&mdash;do not encourage rogues by
+supplying them a living.</p>
+
+<p>"Eat no fish whose fins are black"&mdash;have nothing to do with men whose
+deeds are dark.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Always have salt upon your table"&mdash;this seems the original of "cum
+grano salis" of the Romans.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave the vinegar at a distance"&mdash;keep sweet.</p>
+
+<p>"Speak not in the face of the sun"&mdash;even Erasmus thought this referred
+to magic. To us it is quite reasonable to suppose that it meant, "do not
+talk too much in public places."</p>
+
+<p>"Pick not up what falls from the table"&mdash;Plutarch calls this
+superstition, but we can just as easily suppose it was out of
+consideration for cats, dogs or hungry men. The Bible has a command
+against gleaning too closely, and leaving nothing for the traveler.</p>
+
+<p>"When making sacrifice, never pare your nails"&mdash;that is to say, do one
+thing at a time: wind not the clock at an inopportune time.</p>
+
+<p>"Eat not in the chariot"&mdash;when you travel, travel.</p>
+
+<p>"Feed not yourself with your left hand"&mdash;get your living openly and
+avoid all left-handed dealings.</p>
+
+<p>And so there are hundreds of these Pythagorean sayings that have vexed
+our classic friends for over two thousand years. All Greek scholars who
+really pride themselves on their scholarship have taken a hand at them,
+and agitated the ether just as the members of the Kokomo Woman's Club
+discuss obscure passages in Bliss Carman or Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Learned
+people are apt to comprehend anything but the obvious.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>he School of Pythagoras grew until it became the chief attraction of
+Crotona. The size of the town was doubled through the pilgrims who came
+to study music, mathematics, medicine, ethics and the science of
+government.</p>
+
+<p>The Pythagorean plan of treating the sick by music was long considered
+as mere incantation, but there is a suspicion now that it was actual
+science. Once there was a man who rode a hobby all his life; and long
+after he was dead, folks discovered it was a real live horse and had
+carried the man long miles.</p>
+
+<p>Pythagoras reduced the musical scale to a mathematical science. In
+astronomy he anticipated Copernicus, and indeed, it was cited as the
+chief offense of Copernicus that he had borrowed from a pagan.
+Copernicus, it seems, set the merry churchmen digging into Greek
+literature to find out just how bad Pythagoras was. This did the
+churchmen good, but did not help the cause of Copernicus.</p>
+
+<p>Pythagoras for a time sought to popularize his work, but he soon found
+to his dismay that he was attracting cheap and unworthy people, who came
+not so much out of a love of learning as to satisfy a morbid curiosity
+and gain a short cut to wisdom. They wanted secrets, and knowing that
+Pythagoras had spent twenty years in Egypt, they came to him, hoping to
+get them.</p>
+
+<p>Said Pythagoras, "He who digs, always finds." At another time, he put
+the same idea reversely, thus,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> "He who digs not, never finds."</p>
+
+<p>Pythagoras was well past forty when he married a daughter of one of the
+chief citizens of Crotona. It seems that, inspired by his wife, who was
+first one of his pupils and then a disciple, he conceived a new mode of
+life, which he thought would soon overthrow the old manner of living.</p>
+
+<p>Pythagoras himself wrote nothing, but all his pupils kept tablets, and
+Athens in the century following Pythagoras was full of these Pythagorean
+notebooks, and these supply us the scattered data from which his life
+was written.</p>
+
+<p>Pythagoras, like so many other great men, had his dream of Utopia: it
+was a college or, literally, "a collection of people," where all were on
+an equality. Everybody worked, everybody studied, everybody helped
+everybody, and all refrained from disturbing or distressing any one. It
+was the Oneida Community taken over by Brook Farm and fused into a
+religious and scientific New Harmony by the Shakers.</p>
+
+<p>One smiles to see the minute rules that were made for the guidance of
+the members. They look like a transcript from a sermon by John Alexander
+Dowie, revised by the shade of Robert Owen.</p>
+
+<p>This Pythagorean Community was organized out of a necessity in order to
+escape the blow-ins who sailed across from Greece intent on some new
+thing, but principally to get knowledge and a living without work.</p>
+
+<p>And so Pythagoras and his wife formed a close<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> corporation. For each
+member there was an initiation, strict and severe, the intent of which
+was absolutely to bar the transient triflers. Each member was to turn
+over to the Common Treasury all the money and goods he had of every kind
+and quality. They started naked, just as did Pythagoras when he stood at
+the door of the temple in Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>Simplicity, truth, honesty and mutual service were to govern. It was an
+outcrop of the monastic impulse, save that women were admitted, also.
+Unlike the Egyptians, Pythagoras believed now in the equality of the
+sexes, and his wife daily led the women's chorus, and she also gave
+lectures. The children were especially cared for by women set apart as
+nurses and teachers. By rearing perfect children, it was hoped and
+expected to produce in turn a perfect race.</p>
+
+<p>The whole idea was a phase of totemism and tabu.</p>
+
+<p>That it flourished for about thirty years is very certain. Two sons and
+a daughter of Pythagoras grew to maturity in the college, and this
+daughter was tried by the Order on the criminal charge of selling the
+secret doctrines of her father to outsiders.</p>
+
+<p>One of the sons it seems made trouble, also, in an attempt to usurp his
+father's place and take charge of affairs, as "next friend." One
+generation is about the limit of a Utopian Community. When those who
+have organized the community weaken and one by one pass away, and the
+young assume authority, the old ideas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> of austerity are forgotten and
+dissipation and disintegration enter. So do we move in circles.</p>
+
+<p>The final blow to the Pythagorean College came through jealousy and
+misunderstanding of the citizens outside. It was the old question of
+Town versus Gown. The Pythagoreans numbered nearly three hundred people.
+They held themselves aloof, and no doubt had an exasperating pride. No
+strangers were ever allowed inside the walls&mdash;they were a law unto
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Internal strife and tales told by dissenters excited the curiosity, and
+then the prejudice, of the townspeople.</p>
+
+<p>Then the report got abroad that the Pythagoreans were collecting arms
+and were about to overthrow the local government and enslave the
+officials.</p>
+
+<p>On a certain night, led by a band of drunken soldiers, a mob made an
+assault upon the college. The buildings were fired, and the members were
+either destroyed in the flames or killed as they rushed forth to escape.
+Tradition has it that Pythagoras was later seen by a shepherd on the
+mountains, but the probabilities are that he perished with his people.
+But you can not dispose of a great man by killing him. Here we are
+reading, writing and talking yet of Pythagoras.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h2><a name="PLATO" id="PLATO"></a>PLATO</h2>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img0410.jpg" alt="PLATO" title="PLATO" /></div>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the
+question, "How does love suit with age, Sophocles&mdash;are you still
+the man you were?"</p>
+
+<p>"Peace," he replied; "most gladly have I escaped that, and I feel
+as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master."</p>
+
+<p>That saying of his has often come into my mind since, and seems to
+me still as good as at the time when I heard him. For certainly old
+age has a great sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax
+their hold, then, as Sophocles says, you have escaped from the
+control not of one master only, but of many. And of these regrets,
+as well as of the complaint about relations, Socrates, the cause is
+to be sought, not in men's ages, but in their characters and
+tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel
+the pressure of age, but he who is of an opposite disposition will
+find youth and age equally a burden.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;<i>The Republic</i></p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PLATO</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imga.jpg" alt="A" title="A" /></div><p> thinking man is one of the most recent productions evolved from
+Nature's laboratory. The first man of brains to express himself about
+the world in an honest, simple and natural way, just as if nothing had
+been said about it before, was Socrates.</p>
+
+<p>Twenty-four centuries have passed since Socrates was put to death on the
+charge of speaking disrespectfully of the gods and polluting the minds
+of the youths of Athens. During ten of these centuries that have passed
+since then, the race lost the capacity to think, through the successful
+combination of the priest and the soldier. These men blocked human
+evolution. The penalty for making slaves is that you become one.</p>
+
+<p>To suppress humanity is to suppress yourself.</p>
+
+<p>The race is one. So the priests and the soldiers who in the Third
+Century had a modicum of worth themselves, sank and were submerged in
+the general slough of superstition and ignorance. It was a panic that
+continued for a thousand years, all through the endeavor of faulty men
+to make people good by force. At all times, up to within our own decade,
+frank expression on religious, economic and social topics has been
+fraught with great peril. Even yet any man who hopes for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> popularity as
+a writer, orator, merchant or politician, would do well to conceal
+studiously his inmost beliefs. On such simple themes as the taxation of
+real estate, regardless of the business of the owner, and a payment
+of a like wage for a like service without consideration of sex, the
+statesman who has the temerity to speak out will be quickly relegated
+to private life. Successful merchants depending on a local constituency
+find it expedient to cater to popular superstitions by heading
+subscription-lists for the support of things in which they do not
+believe. No avowed independent thinker would be tolerated as chief ruler
+of any of the so-called civilized countries.</p>
+
+<p>The fact, however, that the penalty for frank expression is limited now
+to social and commercial ostracism is very hopeful&mdash;a few years ago it
+meant the scaffold.</p>
+
+<p>We have been heirs to a leaden legacy of fear that has well-nigh
+banished joy and made of life a long nightmare.</p>
+
+<p>In very truth, the race has been insane.</p>
+
+<p>Hallucinations, fallacies, fears, have gnawed at our hearts, and men
+have fought men with deadly frenzy. The people who interfered, trying to
+save us, we have killed. Truly did we say, "There is no health in us,"
+which repetition did not tend to mend the malady.</p>
+
+<p>We are now getting convalescent. We are hobbling out into the sunshine
+on crutches. We have discharged most of our old advisers, heaved the
+dulling and deadly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> bottles out of the windows, and are intent on
+studying and understanding our own case. Our motto is twenty-four
+centuries old&mdash;it is simply this: KNOW THYSELF.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgs.jpg" alt="S" title="S" /></div><p>ocrates was a street preacher, with a beautiful indifference as to
+whether people liked him or not. To most Athenians he was the town fool.
+Athens was a little city (only about one hundred fifty thousand), and
+everybody knew Socrates. The popular plays caricatured him; the topical
+songs misquoted him; the funny artists on the street-corners who modeled
+things in clay, while you waited, made figures of him.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody knew Socrates&mdash;I guess so!</p>
+
+<p>Plato, the handsome youth of nineteen, wearing a purple robe, which
+marked him as one of the nobility, paused to listen to this uncouth man
+who gave everything and wanted nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Ye gods! But it is no wonder they caricatured him&mdash;he was a temptation
+too great to resist.</p>
+
+<p>Plato smiled&mdash;he never laughed, being too well-bred for that. Then he
+sighed, and moved a little nearer in.</p>
+
+<p>"Individuals are nothing. The State is all. To offend the State is to
+die. The State is an organization and we are members of it. The State is
+only as rich as its poorest citizen. We are all given a little sample of
+divinity to study, model and marvel at. To understand the State you must
+KNOW THYSELF."</p>
+
+<p>Plato lingered until the little crowd had dispersed, and when the old
+man with the goggle-eyes and full-moon face went shuffling slowly down
+the street, he approached and asked him a question.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This man Socrates was no fool&mdash;the populace was wrong&mdash;he was a man so
+natural and free from cant that he appeared to the triflers and
+pretenders like a pretender, and they asked, "Is he sincere?"</p>
+
+<p>What Plato was by birth, breeding and inheritance, Socrates was by
+nature&mdash;a noble man.</p>
+
+<p>Up to this time the ambition of Plato had been for place and power&mdash;to
+make the right impression on the people in order to gain political
+preferment. He had been educated in the school of the Sophists, and his
+principal studies were poetry, rhetoric and deportment.</p>
+
+<p>And now straightway he destroyed the manuscript of his poems, for in
+their writing he had suddenly discovered that he had not written what he
+inwardly believed was true, but simply that which he thought was proper
+and nice to say. In other words, his literature had been a form of
+pretense.</p>
+
+<p>Daily thereafter, where went Socrates there went Plato. Side by side
+they sat on the curb&mdash;Socrates talking, questioning the bystanders,
+accosting the passers-by; Plato talking little, but listening much.</p>
+
+<p>Socrates was short, stout and miles around. Plato was tall, athletic and
+broad-shouldered. In fact, the word, "plato," or "platon," means broad,
+and it was given him as a nickname by his comrades. His correct name was
+Aristocles, but "Plato" suited him better, since it symbols that he was
+not only broad of shoulder, but likewise in mind. He was not only noble
+by birth,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> but noble in appearance.</p>
+
+<p>Emerson calls him the universal man. He absorbed all the science, all
+the art, all the philosophy of his day. He was handsome, kindly,
+graceful, gracious, generous, and lived and died a bachelor. He never
+collided with either poverty or matrimony.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgp.jpg" alt="P" title="P" /></div><p>lato was twenty-eight years old when Socrates died. For eight years
+they had been together daily. After the death of Socrates, Plato lived
+for forty-six years, just to keep alive the name and fame of the great
+philosopher.</p>
+
+<p>Socrates comes to us through Plato. Various other contemporaries mention
+Socrates and quote him, some to his disadvantage, but it was left for
+Plato to give us the heart of his philosophy, and limn his character for
+all time in unforgetable outline.</p>
+
+<p>Plato is called the "Pride of Greece." His contribution to the wealth of
+the world consists in the fact that he taught the joys of the
+intellect&mdash;the supreme satisfaction that comes through thinking. This is
+the pure Platonic philosophy: to find our gratifications in exalted
+thought and not in bodily indulgence. Plato's theory that five years
+should be given in early manhood to abstract thought, abstaining from
+all practical affairs, so as to acquire a love for learning, has been
+grafted upon a theological stalk and comes down to our present time. It
+has, however, now been discarded by the world's best thinkers as a
+fallacy. The unit of man's life is the day, not the month or year, much
+less a period of five years. Each day we must exercise the mind, just as
+each day we must exercise the body. We can not store up health and draw
+upon it at will over long-deferred periods. The account must be kept
+active. To keep physical energy we must expend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> physical energy every
+day. The opinion of Herbert Spencer that thought is a physical
+function&mdash;a vibration set up in a certain area of brain-cells&mdash;is an
+idea never preached by Plato. The brain, being an organ, must be used,
+not merely in one part for five years to the exclusion of all other
+parts, but all parts should be used daily. To this end the practical
+things of life should daily engage our attention, no less than the
+contemplation of beauty as manifest in music, poetry, art or dialectics.
+The thought that every day we should look upon a beautiful picture, read
+a beautiful poem, or listen for a little while to beautiful music, is
+highly scientific, for this contemplation and appreciation of harmony is
+a physical exercise as well as a spiritual one, and through it we grow,
+develop, evolve.</p>
+
+<p>That we could not devote five years of our time to purely esthetic
+exercises, to the exclusion of practical things, without very great
+risk, is now well known. And when I refer to practical affairs, I mean
+the effort which Nature demands we should put forth to get a living.
+Every man should live like a poor man, regardless of the fact that he
+may have money. Nature knows nothing of bank-balances. In order to have
+an appetite for dinner, you must first earn your dinner. If you would
+sleep at night, you must first pay for sweet sleep by physical labor.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgp.jpg" alt="P" title="P" /></div><p>lato was born on the Island of &AElig;gina, where his father owned an estate.
+His mother was a direct descendant of Solon, and his father, not to be
+outdone, traced to Codrus.</p>
+
+<p>The father of Socrates was a stonecutter and his mother a midwife, so
+very naturally the son had a beautiful contempt for pedigree. Socrates
+once said to Plato, "Anybody can trace to Codrus&mdash;by paying enough to
+the man who makes the family-tree." This seems to show that genealogy
+was a matter of business then as now, and that nothing is new under the
+sun. Yet with all his contempt for heredity, we find Socrates often
+expressing pride in the fact that he was a "native son," whereas Plato,
+Aspasia, the mother of Themistocles, and various other fairly good
+people, were Athenian importations.</p>
+
+<p>Socrates belonged to the leisure class and had plenty of time for
+extended conversazione, so just how much seriousness we should mix in
+his dialogues is still a problem. Each palate has to season to suit.
+Also, we can never know how much is Socrates and how much essence of
+Plato. Socrates wrote nothing, and Plato ascribes all of his wisdom to
+his master. Whether this was simple prudence or magnanimity is still a
+question.</p>
+
+<p>The death of Socrates must have been a severe blow to Plato. He at once
+left Athens. It was his first intention never to return. He traveled
+through the cities of Greece, Southern Italy and down to Egypt, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+everywhere was treated with royal courtesies.</p>
+
+<p>After many solicitations from Dionysius, Tyrant of Syracuse, he went to
+visit that worthy, who had a case of philosophic and literary scabies.
+Dionysius prided himself on being a Beneficent Autocrat, with a literary
+and artistic attachment. He ruled his people, educated them, cared for
+them, disciplined them.</p>
+
+<p>Some people call this slavery; others term it applied socialism.
+Dionysius wanted Syracuse to be the philosophic center of the world, and
+to this end Plato was importuned to make Syracuse his home and dispense
+his specialty&mdash;truth.</p>
+
+<p>This he consented to do.</p>
+
+<p>It was all very much like the arrangement between M&aelig;cenas and Horace, or
+Voltaire and Frederick the Great. The patron is a man who patronizes&mdash;he
+wants something, and the particular thing that Dionysius wanted was to
+have Plato hold a colored light upon the performances of His Altruistic,
+Beneficent, Royal Jackanapes. But Plato was a simple, honest and direct
+man: he had caught the habit from Socrates.</p>
+
+<p>Charles Ferguson says that the simple life does not consist in living in
+the woods and wearing overalls and sandals, but in getting the cant out
+of one's cosmos and eliminating the hypocrisy from one's soul.</p>
+
+<p>Plato lived the simple life. When he spoke he stated what he thought. He
+discussed exploitation, war, taxation, and the Divine Right of Kings.
+Kings are very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> unfortunate&mdash;they are shut off and shielded from truth
+on every side. They get their facts at second hand and are lied to all
+day long. Consequently they become in time incapable of digesting truth.
+A court, being an artificial fabric, requires constant bracing. Next to
+capital, nothing is so timid as a king. Heine says that kings have to
+draw their nightcaps on over their crowns when they go to bed, in order
+to keep them from being stolen, and that they are subject to insomnia.</p>
+
+<p>Walt Whitman, with nothing to lose&mdash;not even a reputation or a hat&mdash;was
+much more kingly walking bareheaded past the White House than Nicholas
+of Russia or Alfonso of Spain can ever possibly be.</p>
+
+<p>Dionysius thought that he wanted a philosophic court, but all he wanted
+was to make folks think he had a philosophic court. Plato supplied him
+the genuine article, and very naturally Plato was soon invited to
+vacate.</p>
+
+<p>After he had gone, Dionysius, fearful that Plato would give him a bad
+reputation in Athens&mdash;somewhat after the manner and habit of the
+"escaped nun"&mdash;sent a fast-rowing galley after him. Plato was arrested
+and sold into slavery on his own isle of &AElig;gina.</p>
+
+<p>This all sounds very tragic, but the real fact is it was a sort of
+comedy of errors&mdash;as a king's doings are when viewed from a safe and
+convenient distance. De Wolf Hopper's kings are the real thing.
+Dionysius claimed that Plato owed him money, and so he got out a
+body-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>attachment, and sold the philosopher to the highest bidder.</p>
+
+<p>This was a perfectly legal proceeding, being simply peonage, a thing
+which exists in some parts of the United States today. I state the fact
+without prejudice, merely to show how hard custom dies.</p>
+
+<p>Plato was too big a man conveniently either to secrete or kill. Certain
+people in Athens plagiarized Doctor Johnson who, on hearing that
+Goldsmith had debts of several thousand pounds, in admiration exclaimed,
+"Was ever poet so trusted before!" Other good friends ascertained the
+amount of the claim and paid it, just as Colonel H. H. Rogers graciously
+cleared up the liabilities of Mark Twain, after the author of
+"Huckleberry Finn" had landed his business craft on a sandbar.</p>
+
+<p>And so Plato went free, arriving back in Athens, aged forty, a wiser and
+a better man than when he left.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgn.jpg" alt="N" title="N" /></div><p>othing absolves a reputation like silence and absence, or what the
+village editors call "the grim reaper." To live is always more or less
+of an offense, especially if you have thoughts and express them. Athens
+exists, in degree, because she killed Socrates, just as Jerusalem is
+unforgetable for a similar reason. The South did not realize that
+Lincoln was her best friend until the assassin's bullet had found his
+brain. Many good men in Chicago did not cease to revile their chiefest
+citizen, until the ears of Altgeld were stopped and his hands stiffened
+by death. The lips of the dead are eloquent.</p>
+
+<p>Plato's ten years of absence had given him prestige. He was honored
+because he had been the near and dear friend of Socrates, a great and
+good man who was killed through mistake.</p>
+
+<p>Most murders and killings of men, judicial and otherwise, are matters of
+misunderstandings.</p>
+
+<p>Plato had been driven out of Syracuse for the very reasons that Socrates
+had been killed at Athens. And now behold, when Dionysius saw how Athens
+was honoring Plato, he discovered that it was all a mistake of his
+bookkeeper, so he wrote to Plato to come back and all would be
+forgiven.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>hose who set out to live the Ideal Life have a hard trail to travel.
+The road to Jericho is a rocky one&mdash;especially if we are a little in
+doubt as to whether it really is the road to Jericho or not. Perhaps if
+we ever find the man who lives the Ideal Life he will be quite unaware
+of it, so occupied will he be in his work&mdash;so forgetful of self.</p>
+
+<p>Time had taught Plato diplomacy. He now saw that to teach people who did
+not want to be taught was an error in judgment for which one might
+forfeit his head.</p>
+
+<p>Socrates was the first Democrat: he stood for the demos&mdash;the people.
+Plato would have done the same, but he saw that the business was extra
+hazardous, to use the phrase of our insurance friends. He who works for
+the people will be destroyed by the people. Hemlock is such a rare and
+precious commodity that few can afford it; the cross is a privilege so
+costly that few care to pay the price.</p>
+
+<p>The genius is a man who first states truths; and all truths are
+unpleasant on their first presentation. That which is uncommon is
+offensive. "Who ever heard anything like that before?" ask the literary
+and philosophic hill tribes in fierce indignation. Says James Russell
+Lowell, "I blab unpleasant truths, you see, that none may need to state
+them after me."</p>
+
+<p>Plato was a teacher by nature: this was his business, his pastime, and
+the only thing in life that gave him joy. But he dropped back to the
+good old ways of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> making truth esoteric as did the priests of Egypt,
+instead of exoteric as did Socrates. He founded his college in the grove
+of his old friend Academus, a mile out of Athens on the road to Eleusis.
+In honor of Academus the school was called "The Academy." It was
+secluded, safe, beautiful for situation. In time Plato bought a tract of
+land adjoining that of Academus, and this was set apart as the permanent
+school. All the teaching was done out of doors, master and pupils seated
+on the marble benches, by the fountain-side, or strolling through the
+grounds, rich with shrubs and flowers and enlivened by the song of
+birds. The climate of Athens was about like that of Southern California,
+where the sun shines three hundred days in the year.</p>
+
+<p>Plato emphasized the value of the spoken word over the written, a thing
+he could well afford to do, since he was a remarkably good writer. This
+for the same reason that the only man who can afford to go ragged is the
+man with a goodly bank-balance. The shibboleth of the modern schools of
+oratory is, "We grow through expression." And Plato was the man who
+first said it. Plato's teaching was all in the form of the "quiz,"
+because he believed that truth was not a thing to be acquired from
+another&mdash;it is self-discovery.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, we can imagine it was very delightful&mdash;this walking, strolling,
+lying on the grass, or seated in semicircles, indulging in endless talk,
+easy banter, with now and then a formal essay read to start the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+vibrations.</p>
+
+<p>Here it was that Aristotle came from his wild home in the mountains of
+Macedonia, to remain for twenty years and to evolve into a rival of the
+master.</p>
+
+<p>We can well imagine how Aristotle, the mountain-climber and horseman, at
+times grew heartily tired of the faultily faultless garden with its high
+wall and graveled walks and delicate shrubbery, and shouted aloud in
+protest, "The whole world of mountain, valley and plain should be our
+Academy, not this pent-up Utica that contracts our powers."</p>
+
+<p>Then followed an argument as to the relative value of talking about
+things or doing them, or Poetry versus Science.</p>
+
+<p>Poetry, philosophy and religion are very old themes, and they were old
+even in Plato's day; but natural science came in with Aristotle. And
+science is only the classification of the common knowledge of the common
+people. It was Aristotle who named things, not Adam. He contended that
+the classification and naming of plants, rocks and animals was quite as
+important as to classify ideas about human happiness and make guesses at
+the state of the soul after death.</p>
+
+<p>Of course he got himself beautifully misunderstood, because he was
+advocating something which had never been advocated before. In this lay
+his virtue, that he outran human sympathy, even the sympathy of the
+great Plato.</p>
+
+<p>Yet for a while the unfolding genius of this young<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> barbarian was a
+great joy to Plato, as the earnest, eager intellect of an ambitious
+pupil always is to his teacher. Plato was great in speculation;
+Aristotle was great in observation. Well has it been said that it was
+Aristotle who discovered the world. And Aristotle in his old age said,
+"My attempts to classify the objects of Nature all came through Plato's
+teaching me first how to classify ideas." And forty years before this
+Plato had said, "It was Socrates who taught me this game of the
+correlation and classification of thoughts."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>he writings of Plato consist of thirty-five dialogues, and one essay
+which is not cast in the dramatic form&mdash;"The Apology." These dialogues
+vary in length from twenty pages, of, say, four hundred words each, to
+three hundred pages. In addition to these books are many quotations from
+Plato and references to him by contemporary writers. Plato's work is as
+impersonal as that of Shakespeare. All human ideas, shades of belief,
+emotions and desires pass through the colander of his mind. He allows
+everybody to have his say.</p>
+
+<p>What Plato himself thought can only be inferred, and this each reader
+does for himself. We construct our man Plato in our own image. A
+critic's highest conception of Plato's philosophy is the highest
+conception of the critic's own. We, however, are reasonably safe in
+assuming that Plato's own ideas were put into the mouth of Socrates, for
+the one intent of Plato's life was to redeem Socrates from the charges
+that had been made against him. The characters Shakespeare loved are the
+ones that represent the master, not the hated and handmade rogues.</p>
+
+<p>Plato's position in life was that of a spectator rather than that of an
+actor. He stood and saw the procession pass by, and as it passed,
+commented on it. He charged his pupils no tuition and accepted no fees,
+claiming that to sell one's influence or ideas was immoral.</p>
+
+<p>It will be remembered that Byron held a similar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> position at the
+beginning of his literary career, and declared i' faith, he "would not
+prostitute his genius for hire." He gave his poems to the world. Later,
+when his income was pinched, he began to make bargains with Barabbas and
+became an artist in per centum, collecting close, refusing to rhyme
+without collateral.</p>
+
+<p>Byron's humanity is not seriously disputed. Plato also was human. He had
+a fixed income and so knew the worthlessness of riches. He issued no
+tariff, but the goodly honorarium left mysteriously on a marble bench by
+a rich pupil he accepted, and for it gave thanks to the gods. He said
+many great things, but he never said this: "I would have every man poor
+that he might know the value of money."</p>
+
+<p>"The Republic" is the best known and best read of any of Plato's
+dialogues. It outlines an ideal form of government where everybody would
+be healthy, happy and prosperous. It has served as inspiration to Sir
+Thomas More, Erasmus, Jean Jacques Rousseau, William Morris, Edward
+Bellamy, Brigham Young, John Humphrey Noyes and Eugene Debs. The
+sub-division of labor, by setting apart certain persons to do certain
+things&mdash;for instance, to care for the children&mdash;has made its appeal to
+Upton Sinclair, who jumped from his Utopian woodshed into a rubber-plant
+and bounced off into oblivion.</p>
+
+<p>Plato's plan was intended to relieve marriage from the danger of
+becoming a form of slavery. The rulers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> teachers and artists especially
+were to be free, and the State was to assume all responsibilities. The
+reason is plain: he wanted them to reproduce themselves. But whether
+genius is an acquirement or a natural endowment he touches on but
+lightly. Also, he seemingly did not realize "that no hovel is safe from
+it."</p>
+
+<p>If all marriage-laws were done away with, Plato thought that the men and
+women who were mated would still be true to each other, and that the
+less the police interfered in love-relations, the better.</p>
+
+<p>In one respect at least, Plato was certainly right: he advocated the
+equality of the sexes, and declared that no woman should be owned by a
+man nor forced into a mode of life, either by economic exigency or
+marriage, that was repulsive to her. Also, that her right to bear
+children or not should be strictly her own affair, and to dictate to a
+mother as to who should father her children tended to the production of
+a slavish race.</p>
+
+<p>The eugenics of "The Republic" were tried for thirty years by the Oneida
+Community with really good results, but one generation of communal
+marriages was proved to be the limit, a thing Plato now knows from his
+heights in Elysium, but which he in his bachelor dreams on earth did not
+realize.</p>
+
+<p>In his division of labor each was to do the thing he was best fitted to
+do, and which he liked to do. It was assumed that each person had a
+gift, and that to use this gift all that was necessary was to give him
+an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> opportunity. That very modern cry of "equality of opportunity" harks
+back to Plato.</p>
+
+<p>The monastic impulse was a very old thing, even in the time of Plato.
+The monastic impulse is simply cutting for sanctuary when the pressure
+of society gets intense&mdash;a getting rid of the world by running away from
+it. This usually occurs when the novitiate has exhausted his capacity
+for sin, and so tries saintship in the hope of getting a new thrill.</p>
+
+<p>Plato had been much impressed by the experiments of Pythagoras, who had
+actually done the thing of which Plato only talked. Plato now picked the
+weak points in the Pythagorean philosophy and sought, in imagination, to
+construct a fabric that would stand the test of time.</p>
+
+<p>However, all Utopias, like all monasteries and penitentiaries, are made
+up of picked people. The Oneida Community was not composed of average
+individuals, but of people who were selected with great care, and only
+admitted after severe tests. And great as was Plato, he could not
+outline an ideal plan of life except for an ideal people.</p>
+
+<p>To remain in the world of work and share the burdens of all&mdash;to ask for
+nothing which other people can not have on like terms&mdash;not to consider
+yourself peculiar, unique and therefore immune and exempt&mdash;is now the
+ideal of the best minds. We have small faith in monasticism or
+monotheism, but we do have great faith<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> in monism. We believe in the
+Solidarity of the Race. We must all progress together. Whether
+Pythagoras, John Humphrey Noyes and Brigham Young were ahead of the
+world or behind it is really not to the point&mdash;the many would not
+tolerate them. So their idealism was diluted with danger until it became
+as somber, sober and slaty-gray as the average existence, and fades as
+well as shrinks in the wash.</p>
+
+<p>A private good is no more possible for a community than it is for an
+individual. We help ourselves only as we advance the race&mdash;we are happy
+only as we minister to the whole. The race is one, and this is monism.</p>
+
+<p>And here Socrates and Plato seemingly separate, for Socrates in his life
+wanted nothing, not even joy, and Plato's desire was for peace and
+happiness. Yet the ideal of justice in Plato's philosophy is very
+exalted.</p>
+
+<p>No writer in that flowering time of beauty and reason which we call "The
+Age of Pericles" exerted so profound an influence as Plato. All the
+philosophers that follow him were largely inspired by him. Those who
+berated him most were, very naturally, the ones he had most benefited.
+Teach a boy to write, and the probabilities are that his first essay,
+when he has cut loose from his teacher's apron-strings and starts a
+brownie bibliomag, will be in denunciation of the man who taught him to
+push the pen and wield the Faber.</p>
+
+<p>Xenophon was more indebted, intellectually, to Plato than to any other
+living man, yet he speaks scathingly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> of his master. Plutarch, Cicero,
+Iamblichus, Pliny, Horace and all the other Roman writers read Plato
+religiously. The Christian Fathers kept his work alive, and passed it on
+to Dante, Petrarch and the early writers of the Renaissance, so all of
+their thought is well flavored with essence of Plato. Well does Addison
+put into the mouth of Cato those well-known words:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">It must be so&mdash;Plato, thou reasonest well!&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This longing after immortality?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Back on herself, and startles at destruction?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'T is the divinity that stirs within us;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'T is heaven itself, that points out an hereafter,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And intimates eternity to man.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>All of that English group of writers in Addison's day knew their Plato,
+exactly as did Cato and the other great Romans of near two thousand
+years before. From Plato you can prove that there is a life after this
+for each individual soul, as Francis of Assisi proved, or you can take
+your Plato, as did Hume, and show that man lives only in his influence,
+his individual life returning to the mass and becoming a part of all the
+great pulsing existence that ebbs and flows through plant and tree and
+flower and flying bird. And today we turn to Plato and find the
+corroboration of our thought that to live now and here, up to our
+highest and best,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> is the acme of wisdom. We prepare to live by living.
+If there is another world we better be getting ready for it. If heaven
+is an Ideal Republic it is founded on unselfishness, truth, reciprocity,
+equanimity and co-operation, and only those will be at home there who
+have practised these virtues here. Man was made for mutual service. This
+way lies Elysium.</p>
+
+<p>Plato was a teacher of teachers, and like every other great teacher who
+has ever lived, his soul goes marching on, for to teach is to influence,
+and influence never dies. Hail, Plato!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h2><a name="KING_ALFRED" id="KING_ALFRED"></a>KING ALFRED</h2>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img0412.jpg" alt="KING ALFRED" title="KING ALFRED" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>A saint without superstition, a scholar without ostentation, a
+warrior who fought only in defense of his country, a conqueror
+whose laurels were never stained with cruelty, a prince never cast
+down by adversity, nor lifted up to insolence in the hour of
+triumph&mdash;there is no other name in English history to compare with
+his.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;<i>Freeman</i></p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>KING ALFRED</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgj.jpg" alt="J" title="J" /></div><p>ulius C&aelig;sar, the greatest man of initiative the world has ever seen,
+had a nephew known as C&aelig;sar Augustus.</p>
+
+<p>The grandeur that was Rome occurred in the reign of Augustus. It was
+Augustus who said, "I found your city mud and I left it marble!" The
+impetus given to the times by Julius C&aelig;sar was conserved by Augustus. He
+continued the work his uncle had planned, but before he had completed
+it, he grew very weary, and the weariness he expressed was also the old
+age of the nation. There was lime in the bones of the boss.</p>
+
+<p>When C&aelig;sar Augustus said, "Rome is great enough&mdash;here we rest," he
+merely meant that he had reached his limit, and had had enough of
+road-building. At the boundaries of the Empire and the end of each Roman
+road he set up a statue of the god Terminus. This god gave his blessing
+to those going beyond, and a welcome to those returning, just as the
+Stars and Stripes welcome the traveler coming to America from across the
+sea. This god Terminus also supplied the world, especially the railroad
+world, a word.</p>
+
+<p>Julius C&aelig;sar reached his terminus and died, aged fifty-six, from
+compulsory vaccination.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> Augustus, aged seventy-seven, died peacefully
+in bed.</p>
+
+<p>The reign of Augustus marks the crest of the power of Rome, and a crest
+is a place where no man nor nation stays&mdash;when you reach it, you go over
+and down on the other side.</p>
+
+<p>When Augustus set up his Termini, announcing to all mankind that this
+was the limit, the enemies of Rome took courage and became active. The
+Goths and Vandals, hanging on the skirts of Rome, had learned many
+things, and one of the things was that, for getting rich quick, conquest
+is better than production. The barbarians, some of whom evidently had a
+sense of humor, had a way of picking up the Termini and carrying them
+inward, and finally they smashed them entirely, somewhat as country
+boys, out hunting, shoot railroad-signs full of holes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgi.jpg" alt="I" title="I" /></div><p>n the Middle Ages the soldier was supreme, and in the name of
+protecting the people he robbed the people, a tradition much respected,
+but not in the breach.</p>
+
+<p>To escape the scourge of war, certain families and tribes moved
+northward. It was fight and turmoil in Southern Europe that settled
+Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and produced the Norsemen. And in making for
+themselves a home in the wilderness, battling with the climate and
+unkind conditions, there was evolved a very strong and sturdy type of
+man.</p>
+
+<p>On the north shore of the Baltic dwelt the Norsemen. Along the southern
+shore were scattered several small tribes or families who were not
+strong enough in numbers to fight the Goths, and so sought peace with
+them, and were taxed&mdash;or pillaged&mdash;often to the point of starvation.
+They were so poor and insignificant that the Romans really never heard
+of them, and they never heard of the Romans, save in myth and legend.
+They lived in caves and rude stone huts. They fished, hunted, raised
+goats and farmed, and finally, about the year Three Hundred, they
+secured horses, which they bought from the Goths, who stole them from
+the Romans.</p>
+
+<p>Their Government was the Folkmoot, the germ of the New England Town
+Meeting. All the laws were passed by all the people, and in the making
+of these laws, the women had an equal voice with the men.</p>
+
+<p>When important steps were to be taken where the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> interests of the whole
+tribe were at stake, great deference was paid to the opinions of the
+mothers. For the mother spoke not only for herself, but for her
+children. The mother was the home-maker. The word "wife" means weaver;
+and this deference to the one member of the family who invented,
+created, preparing both the food and the clothing, is a marked Teutonic
+instinct. Its survival is seen yet in the sturdy German of the middle
+class, who takes his wife and children with him when he goes to the
+concert or to the beer-garden. So has he always taken his family with
+him on his migrations; whereas the Greeks and the Romans left their
+women behind.</p>
+
+<p>South America was colonized by Spanish men. And the Indians and the
+Negroes absorbed the haughty grandee, yet preserved the faults and
+failings of both.</p>
+
+<p>The German who moves to America comes to stay&mdash;his family is a part of
+himself. The Italian comes alone, and his intent is to make what he can
+and return. This is a modified form of conquest.</p>
+
+<p>The Romans who came to Brittany in C&aelig;sar's time were men. Those who
+remained "took to themselves wives among the daughters of Philistia," as
+strong men ever are wont to do when they seek to govern savage tribes.
+And note this&mdash;instead of raising the savages or barbarians to their
+level, they sink to theirs. The child takes the status of the mother.
+The white man who marries an Indian woman becomes an Indian and their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
+children are Indians. With the Negro race the same law holds.</p>
+
+<p>The Teutonic races have conquered the world because they took their
+women with them on their migrations, mental and physical. And the moral
+seems to be this, that the men who progress financially, morally and
+spiritually are those who do not leave their women-folk behind.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgw.jpg" alt="W" title="W" /></div><p>hen we think of the English, we usually have in mind the British Isles.
+But the original England was situated along the southern shore of the
+Baltic Sea. This was the true Eng-Land, the land of the Engles or
+Angles. To one side lay Jute-Land, the home of the Jutes. On the other
+was Saxony, where dwelt the Saxons.</p>
+
+<p>Jute-Land still lives in Jutland; the land of the Saxons is yet so
+indicated on the map; but Eng-Land was transported bodily a thousand
+miles, and her original territory became an abandoned farm where
+barbarians battled.</p>
+
+<p>And now behold how England has diffused herself all over the world, with
+the British Isles as a base of supplies, or a radiating center. Behind
+this twenty miles of water that separates Calais and Dover she found
+safety and security, and there her brain and brawn evolved and expanded.
+So there are now Anglo-Americans, Anglo-Africans, Anglo-Indians,
+Anglo-Australians, and Anglo-New-Zealanders. As the native Indians of
+America and the Maoris of New Zealand have given way before the onward
+push and persistence of the English, so likewise did the ancient Britons
+give way and were absorbed by the Anglo-Saxons; and then the Saxons,
+being a little too fine for the stern competitor, allowed the Engles to
+take charge. And as Dutch, Germans, Slavs and Swedes are transformed
+with the second generation into English-Americans when they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> come to
+America, so did the people from Eng-Land fuse Saxons, Norsemen, Jutes,
+Celts and Britons into one people and fix upon them the indelible stamp
+of Eng-Land.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it is obvious that the characters of the people of England have been
+strengthened, modified and refined by contact with the various races she
+has met, mixed with and absorbed. To influence others is to grow. Had
+England been satisfied to people and hold the British Isles, she would
+ere this have been outrun and absorbed by Spain or France. To stand
+still is to retreat. It is the same with men as it is with races.
+England's Colonies have been her strength. They have given her poise,
+reserve, ballast&mdash;and enough trouble to prevent either revolution,
+stagnation or introspection.</p>
+
+<p>Nations have their periods of youth, manhood and old age. Whether
+England is now passing into decline, living her life in her children,
+the Colonies, might be indelicate to ask. Perhaps as Briton, Celt, Jute
+and Saxon were fused to make that hardy, courageous, restless and sinewy
+man known as the Englishman, so are the English, the Dutch, the Swede,
+the German, the Slav, transplanted into America, being fused into a
+composite man who shall surpass any type that the world has ever seen.
+In the British Isles, just as in the great cities, mankind gets
+pot-bound. In the newer lands, the roots strike deep into the soil, and
+find the sustenance the human plant requires.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Walls keep folks in as well as shut other folks out. The British Isles,
+rock-faced and sea-girted, shut out the enemies of England without
+shutting the English in. A country surrounded by the sea produces
+sailors, and England's position bred a type of man that made her
+mistress of the seas. As her drum-taps, greeting the rising sun, girdle
+the world, so do her lighthouses flash protection to the mariner
+wherever the hungry sea lies in wait along rocky coasts, the round world
+over. England has sounded the shallows, marked the rocks and reefs, and
+mapped the coasts.</p>
+
+<p>The first settlement of Saxons in Britain occurred in the year Four
+Hundred Forty-nine. They did not come as invaders, as did the Romans
+five hundred years before; their numbers were too few, and their arms
+too crude to mean menace to the swarthy, black-haired Britons. These
+fair stranger-folk were welcomed as curiosities and were allowed to
+settle and make themselves homes. Word was sent back to Saxony and
+Jute-Land and more settlers came. In a few years came a shipload of
+Engles, with their women and children, red-haired, freckled, tawny. They
+tilled the soil with a faith and an intelligence such as the Britons
+never brought to bear: very much as the German settlers follow the
+pioneers and grow rich where the Mudsock fails. Naturally the
+fair-haired girls found favor in the sight of the swarthy Britons.
+Marriages occurred, and a new type of man-child appeared as the months
+went by.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> More Engles came. A century passed, and the coast, from Kent
+to the Firth of Forth, was dotted with the farms and homes of the people
+from the Baltic. There were now occasional protests from the original
+holders, and fights followed, when the Britons retreated before the
+strangers, or else were very glad to make terms. Victory is a matter of
+staying-power. The Engles had come to stay.</p>
+
+<p>But a new enemy had appeared&mdash;the Norsemen or Danes. These were
+sea-nomads who acknowledged no man as master. Rough, bold, laughing at
+disaster, with no patience to build or dig or plow, they landed but to
+ravish, steal and lay waste, and then boarded their craft, sailing away,
+joying in the ruin they had wrought.</p>
+
+<p>The next year they came back. The industry and the thrift of the Engles
+made Britain a land of promise, a storehouse where the good things of
+life could be secured much more easily than by creating or producing
+them. And so now, before this common foe, the Britons, Jutes, Celts,
+Saxons and Engles united to punish and expel the invaders.</p>
+
+<p>The calamity was a blessing&mdash;as most calamities are. From being a dozen
+little kingdoms, Britain now became one. A "Cyng," or captain, was
+chosen&mdash;an Engle, strong of arm, clear of brain, blue of eye, with long
+yellow hair. He was a man who commanded respect by his person and by his
+deeds. His name was Egbert.</p>
+
+<p>King Alfred, or Elfred, was born at Wantage, Berk<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>shire, in the year
+Eight Hundred Forty-nine. He was the grandson of Egbert, a great man,
+and the son of Ethelwulf, a man of mediocre qualities. Alfred was shrewd
+enough to inherit the courage and persistence of his grandfather. Our D.
+A. R. friends are right and Mark Twain is wrong&mdash;it is really more
+necessary to have a grandfather than a father.</p>
+
+<p>English civilization begins with Alfred. If you will refer to the
+dictionary you will find that the word "civilization" simply means to be
+civil. That is, if you are civilized you are gentle instead of
+violent&mdash;gaining your ends by kindly and persuasive means, instead of
+through coercion, intimidation and force.</p>
+
+<p>Alfred was the first English gentleman, and let no joker add "and the
+last." Yet it is needless and quite irrelevant to say that civilized
+people are not always civil; nor are gentlemen always gentle&mdash;so little
+do words count. Many gentlemen are only gents.</p>
+
+<p>Alfred was civil and gentle. He had been sent to Rome in his boyhood,
+and this transplantation had done him a world of good. Superior men are
+always transplanted men: people who do not travel have no perspective.
+To stay at home means getting pot-bound. You neither search down in the
+soil for color and perfume nor reach out strong toward the sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>It was only a few years before the time of Alfred that a Christian monk
+appeared at Edin-Borough, and told the astonished Engles and Saxons of
+the gentle Jesus,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> who had been sent to earth by the All-Father to tell
+men they should love their enemies and be gentle and civil and not
+violent, and should do unto others as they would be done by. The natural
+religion of the Great Spirit which the ancient Teutonic people held had
+much in it that was good, but now they were prepared for something
+better&mdash;they had the hope of a heaven of rest and happiness after death.</p>
+
+<p>Christianity flourishes best among a downtrodden, poor, subdued and
+persecuted people. Renan says it is a religion of sorrow. And primitive
+Christianity&mdash;the religion of conduct&mdash;is a beautiful and pure doctrine
+that no sane person ever flouted or scoffed.</p>
+
+<p>The parents of Alfred, filled with holy zeal, allowed one of the
+missionary monks to take the boy to Rome. The idea was that he should
+become a bishop in the Church.</p>
+
+<p>Ethelred, the elder brother of Alfred, had succeeded Ethelwulf, his
+father, as King. The Danes had overrun and ravished the country. For
+many years these marauding usurpers had fed their armies on the products
+of the land. And now they had more than two-thirds of the country under
+their control, and the fear that they would absolutely subjugate the
+Anglo-Saxons was imminent. Ethelwulf gave up the struggle in despair and
+died. Ethelred fell in battle. And as the Greeks of old in their terror
+cast around for the strongest man they could find to repel the Persian
+invaders, and picked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> on the boy Alexander, so did the Anglo-Saxons turn
+to Alfred, the gentle and silent. He was only twenty-three years old. In
+build he was slight and slender, but he had given token of his courage
+for four years, fighting with his brother. He had qualities that were
+closely akin to those of both Alexander and C&aelig;sar. He had a cool, clear
+and vivid intellect and he had invincible courage. But he surpassed both
+of the men just named in that he had a tender, sympathetic heart.</p>
+
+<p>The Danes were overconfident, and had allowed their discipline to relax.
+Alfred had at first evidently encouraged them in their idea that they
+had won, for he struck feebly and then withdrew his army to the marshes,
+where the Danish horsemen could not follow.</p>
+
+<p>The Danes went into winter quarters, fat and feasting. Alfred made a
+definite plan for a campaign, drilled his men, prayed with them, and
+filled their hearts with the one idea that they were going forth to
+certain victory. And to victory they went. They fell upon the Danes with
+an impetuosity as unexpected as it was invincible, and before they could
+get into their armor, or secure their horses, they were in a rout. Every
+timid Engle and Saxon now took heart&mdash;it was the Lord's victory&mdash;they
+were fighting for home&mdash;the Danes gave way. This was not all
+accomplished quite as easily as I am writing it, but difficulties,
+deprivations and disaster only brought out new resources in Alfred. He
+was as serenely hopeful as was Washington at Valley Forge,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> and his
+soldiers were just as ragged. He, too, like Thomas Paine, cried, "These
+are the times that try men's souls&mdash;be grateful for this crisis, for it
+will give us opportunity to show that we are men." He had aroused his
+people to a pitch where the Danes would have had to kill them all, or
+else give way. As they could not kill them they gave way. Napoleon at
+twenty-six was master of France and had Italy under his heel, and so was
+Alfred at the same age supreme in Southern Britain&mdash;including Wessex and
+Mercia. He rounded up the enemy, took away their weapons, and then held
+a revival-meeting, asking everybody to come forward to the
+mourners'-bench. There is no proof that he coerced them into
+Christianity. They were glad to accept it. Alfred seemed to have the
+persuasive power of the Reverend Doctor Torrey. Guthrum, the Danish
+King, who had come over to take a personal hand in the looting, was
+captured, baptized, and then Alfred stood sponsor for him and gave him
+the name of Ethelstan. He was made a bishop.</p>
+
+<p>This acceptance of Christianity by the leaders of the Danes broke their
+fierce spirit, and peace followed. Alfred told the soldiers to use their
+horses to plow the fields. The two armies that had fought each other now
+worked together at road-making and draining the marshes. Some of the
+Danes fled in their ships, but very many remained and became citizens of
+the country. The Danish names are still recognizable. Names beginning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+with the aspirate, say Herbert, Hulett, Hubbard, Hubbs, Harold, Hancock,
+are Danish, and are the cause of that beautiful muddling of the "H" that
+still perplexes the British tongue, the rule governing which is to put
+it on where it is not needed and leave it off where it is. The Danes
+called the Engles, "Hengles," and the Engles called a man by the name of
+Henry, "Enry."</p>
+
+<p>In saving Wessex, Alfred saved England for the English people; for it
+was from Wessex, as a center, that his successors began the task of
+reconquering England from the Danes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgw.jpg" alt="W" title="W" /></div><p>ith the rule of Alfred begins the England that we know. As we call
+Herodotus the father of history, so could we, with equal propriety, call
+Asser, who wrote in the time of Alfred, the father of English history.
+The oldest English book is the "Life of Alfred" by Asser the monk.</p>
+
+<p>That Asser was a dependent on his subject and very much in love with
+him, doubtless gave a very strong bias to the book. That it is right in
+the main, although occasionally wrong as to details, is proved by
+various corroborating records.</p>
+
+<p>The king's word in Alfred's time was law, and Alfred proved his modesty
+by publicly proclaiming that a king was not divine, but only a man, and
+therefore a king's edicts should be endorsed by the people in Folkmoot.
+Here we get the genesis of popular government, and about the only
+instance that I can recall where a very strong man acting as chief ruler
+renounced a part of his power to the people, of his own accord. Kings
+usually have to be trimmed, and it is revolution that does the shearing.
+It is the rule that men do not relinquish power of their own
+accord&mdash;they have to be disannexed from it.</p>
+
+<p>Alfred, however, knew the popular heart&mdash;he was very close to the common
+people. He had slept on the ground with his soldiers, fared at table
+with the swineherd's family, tilled the soil with the farmer folk. His
+heart went out to humanity. He did not overrate the average<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> mind, nor
+did he underrate it. He had faith in mankind, and knew that at the last
+power was with the people. He did not say, "Vox populi, vox Dei," but he
+thought it. Therefore he set himself to educating the plain people. He
+prophesied a day when all grown men would be able to read and write, and
+when all would have an intelligent, personal interest in the government.</p>
+
+<p>There have been periods in English history when Britain lagged woefully
+behind, for England has had kings who forgot the rights of mankind, and
+instead of seeking to serve their people, have battened and fattened
+upon them. They governed. George the Third thought that Alfred was a
+barbarian, and spoke of him with patronizing pity.</p>
+
+<p>Alfred introduced the system of trial by jury, although the fact has
+been pointed out that he did not originate it. It goes back to the hardy
+Norseman who acknowledged no man as master, harking back to a time when
+there was no law, and to a people whose collective desire was supreme.
+In fact, it has its origin in "Lynch Law," or the rule of the
+Vigilantes. From a village turning loose on an offender and pulling him
+limb from limb, a degree of deliberation comes in and a committee of
+twelve are selected to investigate the deed and report their verdict.</p>
+
+<p>The jury system began with pirates and robbers, but it is no less
+excellent on that account, and we might add that freedom also began with
+pirates and robbers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> for they were the people who cried, "We
+acknowledge no man as master."</p>
+
+<p>The early Greeks had trials by jury&mdash;Socrates was tried by a jury of
+five hundred citizens.</p>
+
+<p>But let the fact stand that Alfred was the man who first introduced the
+jury system into England. He had absolute power. He was the sole judge
+and ruler, but on various occasions he abdicated the throne and said: "I
+do not feel able to try this man, for as I look into my heart I see that
+I am prejudiced. Neither will I name men to try him, for in their
+selection I might also be prejudiced. Therefore let one hundred men be
+called, and from these let twelve be selected by lot, and they shall
+listen to the charges and weigh the defense, and their verdict shall be
+mine."</p>
+
+<p>We sometimes say that English Common Law is built on the Roman Law, but
+I can not find that Alfred ever studied the Roman Law, or ever heard of
+the Justinian Code, or thought it worth while to establish a system of
+jurisprudence. His government was of the simplest sort. He respected the
+habits, ways and customs of the common people, and these were the Common
+Law. If the people had a footpath that was used by their children and
+their parents and their grandparents, then this path belonged to the
+people, and Alfred said that even the King could not take it from them.</p>
+
+<p>This deference to the innocent ways, habits and natural rights of the
+people mark Alfred as supremely great,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> because a great man is one great
+in his sympathies. Alfred had the imagination to put himself in the
+place of the lowly and obscure.</p>
+
+<p>The English love of law, system and order dates from Alfred. The
+patience, kindliness, good-cheer and desire for fair play were his,
+plus. He had poise, equanimity, unfaltering faith and a courage that
+never grew faint. He was as religious as Cromwell, as firm as
+Washington, as stubborn as Gladstone. In him were combined the virtues
+of the scholar and patriot, the efficiency of the man of affairs with
+the wisdom of the philosopher. His character, both public and private,
+is stainless, and his whole life was one of enlightened and magnanimous
+service to his country.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgi.jpg" alt="I" title="I" /></div><p>n the age of Augustus there was one study that was regarded as more
+important than all others, and this was rhetoric, or the art of the
+rhetor. The rhetor was a man whose business it was to persuade or
+convince.</p>
+
+<p>The public forum has its use in the very natural town-meeting, or the
+powwow of savages. But in Rome it had developed and been refined to a
+point where the public had no voice, although the boasted forum still
+existed. The forum was monopolized by the professional orators hired by
+this political clique or that.</p>
+
+<p>It was about like the political "forum" in America today.</p>
+
+<p>The greatest man in Rome was the man who could put up the greatest talk.
+So all Roman mammas and matrons had their boys study rhetoric. The
+father of Seneca had a school of oratory where rich Roman youths were
+taught to mouth in orotund and gesticulate in curves. He must have been
+a pretty good teacher, for he had two extraordinary sons, one of whom is
+mentioned in the Bible, and a most exemplary daughter.</p>
+
+<p>Oratory as an end we now regard as an unworthy art. The first requisite
+is to feel deeply&mdash;to have a message&mdash;and then if you are a person of
+fair intelligence and in good health, you'll impress your hearers. But
+to hire out to impress people with another's theme is to be a
+pettifogger, and the genus pettifogger has nearly had his day.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>History moves in circles. The Chicago Common Council, weary of rhetoric,
+has recently declined to listen to paid attorneys; but any citizen who
+speaks for himself and his neighbors can come before the Council and
+state his case.</p>
+
+<p>Chief Justice Fuller has given it as his opinion that there will come a
+day in America when damage-cases will be taken care of by an automatic
+tribunal, without the help of lawyers. And as a man fills out a request
+for a money-order at the Post-Office, so will he file his claim for
+damages, and it will have attention. The contingent fee will yet be a
+misdemeanor. Also, it will be possible for plain citizens to be able to
+go before a Court of Equity and be heard without regard to law and
+precedent and attorney's quillets and quibbles, which so often hamper
+justice. Justice should be cheap and easy, instead of costly and
+complex.</p>
+
+<p>Evidently the Chief Justice had in mind the usages in the time of King
+Alfred, when the barrister was an employee of the court, and his
+business was to get the facts and then explain them to the King in the
+fewest possible words.</p>
+
+<p>Alfred considered a paid advocate, or even a counselor, as without the
+pale, and such men were never allowed at court. If the barrister
+accepted a fee from a man suing for justice, he was disbarred.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, however, the practise of feeing in order to renew the zeal of a
+barrister grew so that it had to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> tolerated, because things we can't
+suppress we license, and a pocket was placed on each barrister's back
+between his shoulders where he could not reach it without taking off his
+gown, and into this pocket clients were allowed slyly to slip such
+gratuities as they could afford.</p>
+
+<p>But the general practise of the client paying the barrister, instead of
+the court, was not adopted for several hundred years later, and then it
+was regarded as an expeditious move to keep down litigation and punish
+the client for being fool enough not to settle his own troubles.</p>
+
+<p>In England the rudimentary pocket still survives, like the buttons on
+the back of a coat, which were once used to support the sword-belt.</p>
+
+<p>In America we have done away with wigs and gowns for attorneys, but
+attorneys are still regarded as attaches of the court, even though
+one-half of them, according to Judge DeCourcy of Boston, are engaged
+most of the time in attempts to bamboozle and befog the judge and jury
+and defeat the ends of justice. Likewise, we still use the word "Court,"
+signifying the place where lives royalty, even for the dingy office of a
+country J. P., where sawdust spittoons are the bric-a-brac and
+patent-office reports loom large, and justice is dispensed with. We now
+also commonly call the man "the Court."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imga.jpg" alt="A" title="A" /></div><p>lfred was filled with a desire to educate, and to this end organized a
+school at the Ox Ford, where his friend Asser taught. This school was
+the germ of the University of Oxford. Attached to this school was a
+farm, where the boys were taught how to sow and plant and reap to the
+best advantage. Here they also bred and raised horses and cattle, and
+the care of livestock was a part of the curriculum. It was the first
+College of Agriculture.</p>
+
+<p>It comes to us as somewhat of a surprise to see how we are now going
+back to simplicity, and the agricultural college is being given the due
+and thoughtful consideration which it deserves. Twenty years ago our
+agricultural college was considered more or less of a joke, but now that
+which adds greatly to the wealth of the nation, and the happiness and
+well-being of the people, is looked upon as worthy of our support and
+highest respect.</p>
+
+<p>Up to the time of Alfred, England had no navy. For the government to own
+ships seemed quite preposterous, since the people had come to England to
+stay, and were not marauders intent on exploitation and conquest, like
+the Norsemen.</p>
+
+<p>But after Alfred had vanquished the Danes and they had settled down as
+citizens, he took their ships, refitted them, built more and said: "No
+more marauders shall land on these shores. If we are threatened we will
+meet the enemy on the sea."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In a few years along came a fleet of marauding Norse. The English ships
+on the lookout gave the alarm, and England's navy put out to meet them.
+The enemy were taken by surprise, and the fate that five hundred years
+later was to overtake the Spanish Armada, was theirs.</p>
+
+<p>From that time to this, England has had a navy that has gradually grown
+in power.</p>
+
+<p>Let no one imagine that peace and rest came to Alfred. His life was a
+battle, for not only did he have to fight the Danes, but he had to
+struggle with ignorance, stupidity and superstition at home. To lead men
+out of captivity is a thankless task. They always ask when you take away
+their superstition, "What are you going to give us in return?" They do
+not realize that superstition is a disease, and that to give another
+disease in return is not nice, necessary or polite.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>Alfred died, at the age of fifty-two, worn out with his ceaseless labors
+of teaching, building, planning, inventing and devising methods and
+means for the betterment and benefit of his people.</p>
+
+<p>After his death, the Danes were successful, and Canute became King of
+England. But he was proud to be called an Englishman, and declared he
+was no longer a Dane.</p>
+
+<p>And so England captured him.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the Norman William, claiming the throne by right of
+succession, and successfully battling for it; but the English people
+reckoned the Conqueror as of their own blood&mdash;their kith and kin&mdash;and so
+he was. He issued an edict forbidding any one to call him or his
+followers "Norman," "Norse" or "Norsemen," and declared there was a
+United England. And so he lived and died an Englishman; and after him no
+ruler, these nine hundred years, has ever sat on the throne of the
+Engles by right of conquest.</p>
+
+<p>Both Canute and William recognized and prized the worth of Alfred's
+rule. The virtues of Alfred are the virtues that have made it possible
+for the Teutonic tribes to girdle the globe. It was Alfred who taught
+the nobility of industry, service, education, patience, loyalty,
+persistence, and the faith and hope that abide. By pen, tongue, and best
+of all by his life, Alfred taught the truths which we yet hold dear. And
+by this sign shall ye conquer!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h2><a name="ERASMUS" id="ERASMUS"></a>ERASMUS</h2>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img0414.jpg" alt="ERASMUS" title="ERASMUS" /></div>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>We see not a few mortals who, striving to emulate this divine
+virtue with more zeal than success, fall into a feeble and
+disjointed loquacity, obscuring the subject and burdening the
+wretched ears of their hearers with a vacant mass of words and
+sentences crowded together beyond all possibility of enjoyment. And
+writers who have tried to lay down the principles of this art have
+gained no other result than to display their own poverty while
+expounding abundance.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;<i>Erasmus on "Preaching"</i></p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>ERASMUS</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imge.jpg" alt="E" title="E" /></div><p>rasmus was born in Fourteen Hundred Sixty-six, and died in Fifteen
+Hundred Thirty-six. No thinker of his time influenced the world more. He
+stood at a pivotal point, and some say he himself was the intellectual
+pivot of the Renaissance.</p>
+
+<p>The critics of the times were unanimous in denouncing him&mdash;which fact
+recommends him to us.</p>
+
+<p>Several Churchmen, high in power, live in letters for no other reason
+than because they coupled their names with that of Erasmus by reviling
+him. Let the critics take courage&mdash;they may outwit oblivion yet, even
+though they do nothing but carp. Only let them be wise, and carp, croak,
+cough, cat-call and sneeze at some one who is hitching his wagon to a
+star. This way immortality lies. Erasmus was a monk who flocked by
+himself, and found diversion in ridiculing monkery. Also, he was the
+wisest man of his day. Wisdom is the distilled essence of intuition,
+corroborated by experience. Learning is something else. Usually, the
+learned man is he who has delved deep and soared high. But few there be
+who dive, that fish the murex up. Among those who soar, the ones who
+come back and tell us of what they have seen, are few. Like Lazarus,
+they say nothing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Erasmus had a sense of humor. Humor is a life-preserver and saves you
+from drowning when you jump off into a sea of sermons. A theologian who
+can not laugh is apt to explode&mdash;he is very dangerous. Erasmus, Luther,
+Beecher, Theodore Parker, Roger Williams, Joseph Parker&mdash;all could
+laugh. Calvin, Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards never gurgled in glee,
+nor chortled softly at their own witticisms&mdash;or those of others.</p>
+
+<p>Erasmus smiled. He has been called the Voltaire of his day. What
+Rousseau was to Voltaire, Luther was to Erasmus. Well did Diderot say
+that Erasmus laid the egg which Luther hatched. Erasmus wrote for the
+educated, the refined, the learned&mdash;Luther made his appeal to the plain
+and common mind.</p>
+
+<p>Luther split the power of the Pope. Erasmus thought it a calamity to do
+so, because he believed that strife of sects tended to make men lose
+sight of the one essential in religion&mdash;harmony&mdash;and cause them simply
+to struggle for victory. Erasmus wanted to trim the wings of the papal
+office and file its claws&mdash;Luther would have destroyed it. Erasmus
+considered the Church a very useful and needful organization&mdash;for social
+reasons. It tended to regulate life and conduct and made men
+"decentable." It should be a school of ethics, and take a leading part
+in every human betterment. Man being a gregarious animal, the
+congregation is in the line of natural desire. The excuse for gathering
+together is religion&mdash;let them gather. The Catholic Church is not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> two
+thousand years old&mdash;it is ten thousand years old and goes back to Egypt.
+The birth of Jesus formed merely a psychosis in the Church's existence.</p>
+
+<p>Here he parted company with Luther, who was a dogmatist and wanted to
+debate his ninety-five theses. Erasmus laughed at all religious
+disputations and called them mazes that led to cloudland. Very
+naturally, people said he was not sincere, since the mediocre mind never
+knows that only the paradox is true. Hence Erasmus was hated by
+Catholics and denounced by Protestants.</p>
+
+<p>The marvel is that the men with fetters and fagots did not follow him
+with a purpose. Fifty years later he would have been snuffed out. But at
+that time Rome was so astonished to think that any one should criticize
+her that she lost breath. Besides, it was an age of laughter, of revolt,
+of contests of wit, of love-bouts and love-scrapes, and the monks who
+lapsed were too many to discipline. Everybody was busy with his own
+affairs. Happy time!</p>
+
+<p>Erasmus was part and parcel of the Italian Renaissance. Over his head
+blazes, in letters that burn, the unforgetable date, Fourteen Hundred
+Ninety-two. He was a part of the great unrest, and he helped cause the
+great unrest. Every great awakening, every renaissance, is an age of
+doubt. An age of conservatism is an age of moss, of lichen, of rest,
+rust and ruin. We grow only as we question. As long as we are sure that
+the present order<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> is perfect, we button our collars behind, a thing
+which Columbus, Luther, Melanchthon, Erasmus, Michelangelo, Leonardo and
+Gutenberg, who all lived at this one time, never did. The year of
+Fourteen Hundred Ninety-two, like the year Seventeen Hundred
+Seventy-six, was essentially "infidelic," just as the present age is
+constructively iconoclastic. We are tearing down our barns to build
+greater. The railroadman who said, "I throw an engine on the scrap-heap
+every morning before breakfast," expressed a great truth. We are
+discarding bad things for good ones, and good things for better ones.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgr.jpg" alt="R" title="R" /></div><p>otterdam has the honor of being the birthplace of Erasmus. A storm of
+calumny was directed at him during his life concerning the irregularity
+of his birth. "He had no business to be born at all," said a proud
+prelate, as he gathered his robes close around his prebendal form. But
+souls knock at the gates of life for admittance, and the fact that a man
+exists is proof of his right to live. The word "illegitimate" is not in
+the vocabulary of God. If you do not know that, you have not read His
+instructive and amusing works.</p>
+
+<p>The critics variously declared the mother of Erasmus was a royal lady, a
+physician's only daughter, a kitchen-wench, a Mother Superior&mdash;all
+according to the prejudices preconceived. In one sense she was surely a
+Mother Superior&mdash;let the lies neutralize one another.</p>
+
+<p>The fact is, we do not know who the mother of Erasmus was. All we know
+is that she was the mother of Erasmus. Here history halts. Her son once
+told Sir Thomas More that she was married to a luckless nobody a few
+months after the birth of her first baby, and amid the cares of raising
+a goodly brood of nobodies on a scant allowance of love and rye-bread,
+she was glad to forget her early indiscretions. Not so the father. The
+debated question of whether a man really has any parental love is
+answered here.</p>
+
+<p>The father of Erasmus was Gerhard von Praet, and the child was called
+Gerhard Gerhards&mdash;or the son of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> Gerhard. The father was a man of
+property and held office under the State. At the time of the birth of
+the illustrious baby, Gerhard von Praet was not married, and it is
+reasonable to suppose that the reason he did not wed the mother of his
+child was because she belonged to a different social station. In any
+event the baby was given the father's name, and every care and attention
+was paid the tiny voyager. This father was as foolish as most fond
+mothers, for he dreamed out a great career for the motherless one, and
+made sundry prophecies.</p>
+
+<p>At six years of age the child was studying Latin, when he should have
+been digging in a sand-pile. At eight he spoke Dutch and French, and
+argued with his nurse in Greek as to the value of buttermilk.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime the father had married and settled down in honorable
+obscurity as a respectable squire. Another account has it that he became
+a priest. Anyway, the little maverick was now making head alone in a
+private school.</p>
+
+<p>When the lad was thirteen the father died, leaving a will in which he
+provided well for the child. The amount of property which by this will
+would have belonged to our hero when he became of age would have
+approximated forty thousand dollars.</p>
+
+<p>Happily, the trustees of the fund were law-wolves. They managed to break
+the will, and then they showed the court that the child was a waif, and
+absolutely devoid of legal rights of any and every kind. He was then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
+committed to an orphan asylum to be given "a right religious education."
+It's a queer old world, Terese, and what would have become of Gerhard
+Gerhards had he fallen heir to his father's titles and estate, no man
+can say. He might have accumulated girth and become an honored
+burgomaster. As it was he became powder-monkey to a monk, and scrubbed
+stone floors and rushed the growler for cowled and pious prelates.</p>
+
+<p>Then he did copying for the Abbe, and proved himself a boy from Missouri
+Valley.</p>
+
+<p>He was small, blue-eyed, fair-haired, slender, slight, with a long nose
+and sharp features. "With this nose," said Albrecht Durer, many years
+later, "he successfully hunted down everything but heresy."</p>
+
+<p>At eighteen he became a monk and proudly had his flaxen poll tonsured.
+His superior was fond of him, and prophesied that he would become a
+bishop or something.</p>
+
+<p>Children do not suffer much, nor long. God is good to them. They slide
+into an environment and accept it. This child learned to dodge the big
+bare feet of the monks&mdash;got his lessons, played a little, worked his wit
+against their stupidity, and actually won their admiration&mdash;or as much
+of it as men who are alternately ascetics and libertines can give.</p>
+
+<p>It was about this time that the lad was taunted with having no name.
+"Then I'll make one for myself," was his proud answer.</p>
+
+<p>Having entered now upon his novitiate, he was allowed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> to take a new
+name, and being dead to the world, the old one was forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>They called him Brother Desiderius, or the Desired One. He then amended
+this Latin name with its Greek equivalent, Erasmus, which means
+literally the Well-Beloved. As to his pedigree, or lack of it, he was
+needlessly proud. It set him apart as different. He had half-brothers
+and half-sisters, and these he looked upon as strangers. When they came
+to see him, he said, "There is no relationship between souls save that
+of the spirit."</p>
+
+<p>His sense of wit came in when he writes to a friend: "Two parents are
+the rule; no parents the exception; a mother but no father is not
+uncommon; but I had a father and never had a mother. I was nursed by a
+man, and educated by monks, all of which shows that women are more or
+less of a superfluity in creation. God Himself is a man. He had one son,
+but no daughters. The cherubim are boys. All of the angels are
+masculine, and so far as Holy Writ informs us, there are no women in
+heaven."</p>
+
+<p>That it was a woman, however, to whom Erasmus wrote this, lets him out
+on the severity of the argument. He was a joker. And while women did not
+absorb much of his time, we find that on his travels he often turned
+aside to visit with intellectual women&mdash;no other kind interested him, at
+all.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>o belong to a religious order is to be owned by it. You trade freedom
+for protection. The soul of Erasmus revolted at life in a monastery. He
+hated the typical monks&mdash;their food, their ways of life, their
+sophistry, their stupidity. To turn glutton and welcome folly as a
+relief from religion, he said, was the most natural thing in the world,
+when men had once started in to lead an unnatural life. Good food,
+daintily served, only goes with a co-ed mental regimen. Men eat with
+their hands, out of a pot, unless women are present to enforce the
+decencies. Women alone are a little more to be pitied than men alone, if
+'t were possible.</p>
+
+<p>Through emulation does the race grow. Sex puts men and women on their
+good behavior.</p>
+
+<p>Man's desire for power has caused him to enslave himself. Writes
+Erasmus, "In a monastery, no one is on his good behavior, except when
+there are visitors, but I am told that this is so in families."</p>
+
+<p>The greasy, coarse cooking brought on a nice case of dyspepsia for poor
+Erasmus&mdash;a complaint from which he was never free as long as he lived.
+His system was too fine for any monastic general trough, but he found a
+compensation in having his say at odd times and sundry. At one time we
+hear of his printing on a card this legend, "If I owned hell and a
+monastery, I would sell the monastery and reside in hell." Thereby did
+Erasmus supply General Tecumseh Sherman the germ<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> of a famous orphic.
+Sherman was a professor in a college at Baton Rouge before the War, and
+evidently had moused in the Latin classics to a purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Connected with the monastery where Erasmus lived was a printing-outfit.
+Our versatile young monk learned the case, worked the ink-balls,
+manipulated the lever, and evidently dispelled, in degree, the monotony
+of the place by his ready pen and eloquent tongue. When he wrote, he
+wrote for his ear. All was tested by reading the matter aloud. At that
+time great authors were not so wise or so clever as printers, and it
+fell to the lot of Erasmus to improve upon the text of much of the copy
+that was presented.</p>
+
+<p>Erasmus learned to write by writing; and among modern prose-writers he
+is the very first who had a distinct literary style. His language is
+easy, fluid, suggestive. His paragraphs throw a shadow, and are pregnant
+with meaning beyond what the lexicon supplies. This is genius&mdash;to be
+bigger than your words.</p>
+
+<p>If Erasmus had been possessed of a bit more patience and a jigger of
+diplomacy, he would have been in line for a bishopric. That thing which
+he praised so lavishly, Folly, was his cause of failure and also his
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>At twenty-six he was the best teacher and the most clever scholar in the
+place. Also, he was regarded as a thorn in the side of the monkery,
+since he refused to take it seriously. He protested that no man ever
+became a monk of his own accord&mdash;he was either thrust into a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> religious
+order by unkind kinsmen or kicked into it by Fate.</p>
+
+<p>And then comes the Bishop of Cambray, with an attack of literary
+scabies, looking for a young religieux who could correct his manuscript.
+The Bishop was going to Paris after important historical facts, and must
+have a competent secretary. Only a proficient Latin and Greek scholar
+would do. The head of the monastery recommended Erasmus, very much as
+Artemus Ward volunteered all of his wife's relatives for purposes of
+war.</p>
+
+<p>Andrew Carnegie once, when about to start for Europe, said to his
+ironmaster, Bill Jones, "I am never so happy or care-free, Bill, as when
+on board ship, headed for Europe, and the shores of Sandy Hook fade from
+sight."</p>
+
+<p>And Bill solemnly replied, "Mr. Carnegie, I can truthfully say for
+myself and fellow-workers, that we are never so happy and care-free as
+when you are on board ship, headed for Europe."</p>
+
+<p>Very properly Mr. Carnegie at once raised Bill's salary five thousand a
+year.</p>
+
+<p>The Carthusian Brothers parted with Erasmus in pretended tears, but the
+fact was they were more relieved than bereaved.</p>
+
+<p>And then began the travels of Erasmus.</p>
+
+<p>The Bishop was of middle age, with a dash of the cavalier in his blood,
+which made him prefer a saddle to the cushions of a carriage. And so
+they started away<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> on horseback, the Bishop ahead, followed at a
+discreet distance by Erasmus, his secretary; and ten paces behind with
+well-loaded panniers, rode a servant as rearguard.</p>
+
+<p>To be free and face the world and on a horse! Erasmus lifted up his
+heart in a prayer of gratitude. He said that it was the first feeling of
+thankfulness he had ever experienced, and it was the first thing which
+had ever come to him worth gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>And so they started for Paris.</p>
+
+<p>Erasmus looked back and saw the monastery, where he had spent ten
+arduous years, fade from view.</p>
+
+<p>It was the happiest moment he had ever known. The world lay beyond.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>he Bishop of Cambray introduced Erasmus to a mode of life for which he
+was eminently fitted. It consisted in traveling, receiving honors,
+hospitality and all good things in a material way, and giving his
+gracious society in return. Doors flew open on the approach of the good
+Bishop. Everywhere he went a greeting was assured. He was a
+Churchman&mdash;that was enough. Erasmus shared in the welcomes, for he was
+handsome in face and figure, had a ready tongue, and could hold his own
+with the best.</p>
+
+<p>Europe was then dotted with monasteries, nunneries and other church
+institutions. Their remains are seen there yet&mdash;one is really never out
+of sight of a steeple. But the exclusive power of the Church is gone,
+and in many places there are only ruins where once were cloisters,
+corridors, chapels, halls and gardens teeming with life and industry.</p>
+
+<p>The "missions" of California were founded on the general plan of the
+monasteries of Europe. They afforded a lodging for the night&mdash;a
+resting-place for travelers&mdash;and were a radiatory center of
+education&mdash;at least all of the education that then existed.</p>
+
+<p>In California these "missions" were forty miles apart&mdash;one day's
+journey. In France, Italy and Germany they were, say, ten miles apart.
+Between them, trudged or rode on horseback or in carriages, a
+picturesque array of pilgrims, young and old, male and female. To go
+anywhere and be at home everywhere, this was the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> happy lot of a church
+dignitary.</p>
+
+<p>The parts in church institutions were interchangeable; and by a system
+of migration, life was made agreeable, and reasonable honesty was
+assured. I have noticed that certain Continental banking institutions,
+with branches in various cities, keep their cashiers rotating. The idea
+was gotten from Rome. Rome was very wise&mdash;her policies were the
+crystallizations of the world-wisdom of centuries. The church-militant
+battle-cry, "The world for Christ," simply means man's lust for
+ownership, with Christ as an excuse. If ever there was a man-made
+institution, it is the Church. To control mankind has been her desire,
+and the miracle is that, with a promise of heaven, a threat of hell, and
+a firm grip on temporal power&mdash;social and military&mdash;she was ever induced
+partially to loosen her grip. To such men as Savonarola, Luther and
+Erasmus, do we owe our freedom. These men cared more for truth than for
+power, and their influence was to disintegrate the ankylosis of custom
+and make men think. And a thought is mental dynamite. No wonder the
+Church has always feared and hated a thinker!</p>
+
+<p>The Bishop of Cambray was not a thinker. Fenelon, who was later to
+occupy his office, was to make the bishopric of Cambray immortal.
+Conformists die, but heretics live on forever. They are men who have
+redeemed the cross and rendered the gallows glorious.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imga.jpg" alt="A" title="A" /></div><p>nd so the Bishop of Cambray and his little light-haired secretary fared
+forth to fame and fortune&mdash;the Bishop to be remembered because he had a
+secretary, and the secretary to be remembered because he grew into a
+great teacher.</p>
+
+<p>At each stopping-place the Bishop said mass&mdash;the workers, students and
+novitiates quitting their tasks to hear the words of encouragement from
+the lips of the great man. Occasionally Erasmus was pushed forward to
+say a few words, by the Bishop, who had to look after his own personal
+devotions. The assembled friends liked the young man&mdash;he was so bright
+and witty and free from cant. They even laughed out loud, and so, often
+two smiles were made to grow where there were no smiles before.</p>
+
+<p>Leisurely they rode&mdash;stopping at times for several days at places where
+the food and drink were at their best, and the society sulphide. At
+nunneries and monasteries were always guest-chambers for the great, and
+they were usually occupied.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was that every church-house was a sort of university, depending
+of course on the soul-size of the Superior or Abbe. These constant
+journeyings and pilgrimages served in lieu of the daily paper, the
+Western Union Telegraph, and the telephone. Things have slipped back, I
+fear me, for now Mercury merely calls up his party on the long-distance,
+instead of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> making a personal visit&mdash;the Angel Gabriel as well. We save
+time, but we miss the personal contact.</p>
+
+<p>The monastic impulse was founded on a human need. Like most good things,
+it has been sadly perverted; but the idea of a sanctuary for stricken
+souls&mdash;a place of refuge, where simplicity, service and useful endeavor
+rule&mdash;will never die from out the human heart. The hospice stands for
+hospitality, but we have now only a hotel and a hospital.</p>
+
+<p>The latter stands for iodoform, carbolic acid and formaldehyde; the
+former often means gold, glitter, gluttony and concrete selfishness,
+with gout on one end, paresis at the other and Bright's Disease between.</p>
+
+<p>The hospice was a part of the monastery. It was a home for the homeless.
+There met men of learning&mdash;men of wit&mdash;men of brains and brawn. You
+entered and were at home. There was no charge&mdash;you merely left something
+for the poor.</p>
+
+<p>Any man who has the courage, and sufficient faith in humanity to install
+the hospice system in America will reap a rich reward. If he has the
+same faith in his guests that Judge Lindsey has in his bad boys, he will
+succeed; but if he hesitates, defers, doubts, and begins to plot and
+plan, the Referee in Bankruptcy will beckon.</p>
+
+<p>The early universities grew out of the monastic impulse. Students came
+and went, and the teachers were a part of a great itinerancy. Man is a
+migratory animal. His evolution has come about through change of
+environ<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>ment. Transplantation changes weeds into roses, and the
+forebears of all the products of our greenhouses and gardens once grew
+in hedgerows or open fields, choked by unkind competition or trampled
+beneath the feet of the heedless.</p>
+
+<p>The advantage of university life is in the transplantation. Get the boy
+out of his home environment; sever the cord that holds him to his
+"folks"; let him meet new faces, see new sights, hear new sermons, meet
+new teachers, and his efforts at adjustment will work for growth.
+Alexander Humboldt was right&mdash;one year at college is safer than four.
+One year inspires you&mdash;four may get you pot-bound with pedant prejudice.</p>
+
+<p>The university of the future will be industrial&mdash;all may come and go.
+All men will be university men, and thus the pride in an imaginary
+proficiency will be diluted to a healthful attenuation. To work and to
+be useful&mdash;not merely to memorize and recite&mdash;will be the only
+initiation.</p>
+
+<p>The professors will be interchangeable, and the rotation of intellectual
+crops will work for health, harmony and effectiveness.</p>
+
+<p>The group, or college, will be the unit, not the family. The college was
+once a collection of men and women grouped for a mutual intellectual,
+religious or economic good.</p>
+
+<p>To this group or college idea will we return.</p>
+
+<p>Man is a gregarious animal, and the Christ-thought of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> giving all, and
+receiving all, some day in the near future will be found practical. The
+desire for exclusive ownership must be sloughed.</p>
+
+<p>Universities devoted to useful work&mdash;art in its highest sense: head,
+hand and heart&mdash;will yet dot the civilized world. The hospice will
+return higher up the scale, and the present use of the word
+"hospitality" will be drowned in its pink tea, choked with
+cheese-wafers, rescued from the nervous clutch of the managing mama, and
+the machinations of the chaperone. A society built on the sands of
+silliness must give way to the universal university, and the strong,
+healthful, helpful, honest companionship and comradeship of men and
+women prevail.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>he objective point of the Bishop was the University of Paris.</p>
+
+<p>Here in due time, after their lingering ride from Holland, the Bishop
+and his secretary arrived. They settled down to literary work; and in
+odd hours the beauty and wonder of Paris became familiar to Erasmus. The
+immediate task completed, the Bishop proposed going home, and thought,
+of course, his secretary was a fixture and would go with him. But
+Erasmus had evolved ideas concerning his own worth. He had already
+collected quite a little circle of pupils about him, and these he held
+by his glowing personality. At this time the vow of poverty was looked
+upon lightly. And anyway, poverty is a comparative term. There were
+monks who always trudged afoot with staff and bag, but not so our
+Erasmus. He was Bishop of the Exterior.</p>
+
+<p>The Bishop of Cambray, on parting with Erasmus, thought so much of him
+that he presented him with the horse he rode.</p>
+
+<p>Erasmus used to take short excursions about Paris, taking with him a
+student and often two, as servants or attendants. Teaching then was
+mostly on an independent basis, each pupil picking his tutors and paying
+them direct.</p>
+
+<p>Among other pupils whom Erasmus had at Paris was a young Englishman by
+the name of Lord Mountjoy. A great affection arose between these two,
+and when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> Lord Mountjoy returned to England he was accompanied by
+Erasmus.</p>
+
+<p>At London, Erasmus met on absolute equality many of the learned men of
+England. We hear of his dining at the house of the Lord Mayor of London,
+and there meeting Sir Thomas More and crossing swords with that worthy
+in wordy debate.</p>
+
+<p>Erasmus seems to have carried the "New Humanism" into England. It has
+been said that the world was discovered in Fourteen Hundred Ninety-two,
+but Man was not discovered until Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six. This is
+hardly literal truth, since in Fourteen Hundred Ninety-two, there was a
+theologico-scientific party of young men in all of the European
+Universities who were reviving the Greek culture, and with it arose the
+idea of the dignity and worth of Man. To this movement Erasmus brought
+the enthusiasm of his nature. Perhaps he did as much as any other to fan
+the embers which grew into a flame called "The Reformation."</p>
+
+<p>He constantly ridiculed the austerities, pedantry, priggishness and
+sciolism of the old-time Churchmen, and when a new question came up, he
+asked, "What good is there in it?"</p>
+
+<p>Everything was tested by him in the light of commonsense. What end does
+it serve and how is humanity to be served or benefited by it?</p>
+
+<p>Thus the good of humanity, not the glory of God, was the shibboleth of
+this rising party.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Erasmus gave lectures and taught at Cambridge, Oxford and London.</p>
+
+<p>Italy had been the objective point of his travels, but England had, for
+a time, turned him aside. In the year Fifteen Hundred, Erasmus landed at
+Calais, saddled his horse, and started southward, visiting, writing,
+teaching, lecturing, as he went. The stimulus of meeting new people and
+seeing new scenes, all tended toward intellectual growth.</p>
+
+<p>The genius monk made mendicancy a fine art, and Erasmus was heir to most
+of the instincts of the order. His associations with the laity were
+mostly with the nobility or those with money. He was not slow in asking
+for what he wanted, whether it was a fur-lined cloak, a saddle, top
+riding-boots, a horse, or a prayer-book. He made no apologies&mdash;but took
+as his divine right all that he needed. And he justified himself in
+taking what he needed by the thought that he gave all he had. He
+supplied Sir Thomas More the germ of "Utopia," for Erasmus pictured
+again and again an ideal society where all would have enough, and none
+suffer from either want or surfeit&mdash;a society in which all would be at
+home wherever they went.</p>
+
+<p>Had Erasmus seen fit to make England his home, his head, too, would have
+paid the forfeit, as did the head that wrote "Utopia." What an absurd
+use to make of a head&mdash;to separate it from the man's body!</p>
+
+<p>Italy received Erasmus with the same royal welcome<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> that England had
+supplied. Scholars who knew the Greek and Roman classics were none too
+common. Most monks stopped with the writings of the saints, as South
+Americans balk at long division.</p>
+
+<p>Erasmus could illumine an initial, bind a book, give advice to printers,
+lecture to teachers, give lessons on rhetoric and oratory, or entertain
+the ladies with recitations from the Iliad and the Odyssey.</p>
+
+<p>So he went riding back and forth, stopping at cities and towns,
+nunneries and monasteries, until his name became a familiar one to every
+scholar of England, Germany and Italy. Scholarly, always a learner,
+always a teacher, gracious, direct, witty, men began to divide on an
+Erasmus basis. There were two parties: those for Erasmus and those
+against him.</p>
+
+<p>In Fifteen Hundred Seventeen, came Luther with his bombshells of
+defiance. This fighting attitude was far from Erasmus&mdash;his weapons were
+words. Between bouts with prelates, Luther sent a few thunderbolts at
+Erasmus, accusing him of vacillation and cowardice. Erasmus replied with
+dignity, and entered into a lengthy dispute with Melanchthon, Luther's
+friend, on the New Humanism which was finding form in revolution.</p>
+
+<p>Erasmus prophesied that by an easy process of evolution, through
+education, the monasteries would all become schools and workshops. He
+would not destroy them, but convert them into something different. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+fell into disfavor with the Catholics, and was invited by Henry the
+Eighth to come to England and join the new religious regime. But this
+English Catholicism was not to the liking of Erasmus. What he desired
+was to reform the Church, not to destroy it or divide it.</p>
+
+<p>His affairs were becoming critical: monasteries where he had once been
+welcomed now feared to have him come near, lest they should be
+contaminated and entangled. It was rumored that warrants of arrest were
+out. He was invited to go to Rome and explain his position.</p>
+
+<p>Erasmus knew better than to acknowledge receipt of the letter. He headed
+his horse for Switzerland, the land of liberty. At Basel he stopped at
+the house of Froben, the great printer and publisher. He put his horse
+in the barn, unsaddled him, and said, "Froben, I've come to stay."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgi.jpg" alt="I" title="I" /></div><p> was mousing around the other day in a book that is somewhat disjointed
+and disconnected, and yet interesting&mdash;"The Standard Dictionary"&mdash;when I
+came across the word "scamp." It is a handy word to fling, and I am not
+sure but that it has been gently tossed once or twice in my direction.
+Condemnation is usually a sort of subtle flattery, so I'm not sad. To
+scamp means to cut short, to be superficial, slipshod, careless,
+indifferent&mdash;to say, "Let 'er go, who cares&mdash;this is good enough!" If
+anybody ever was a stickler for honest work, I am that bucolic party. I
+often make things so fine that only one man out of ten thousand can buy
+them, and I have to keep 'em myself.</p>
+
+<p>You know that, when you get an idea in your head, how everything you
+read contains allusions to the same thing. Knowledge is mucilaginous.
+Well, next day after I was looking up that pleasant word "scamp," I was
+reading in the Amusing Works of Erasmus, when I ran across the word
+again, but spelled in Dutch, thus, "schamp." Now Erasmus was a
+successful author, and he was also the best authority on paper, inks,
+bindings, and general bookmaking in Italy, Holland or Germany. Being a
+lover of learning, and listening to the lure of words, he never wallowed
+in wealth. But in his hunt for ideas he had a lot of fun. Kipling says,
+"There is no hunt equal to a man hunt." But Kip is wrong&mdash;to chase a
+thought is twice the sport. Erasmus chased ideas, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> very naturally
+the preachers chased Erasmus&mdash;out of England, through France, down to
+Italy and then he found refuge at Basel with Froben, the great Printer
+and Publisher.</p>
+
+<p>Up in Frankfort was a writer-printer, who, not being able to answer the
+arguments of Erasmus, called him bad names. But this gentle pen-pusher
+in Frankfort, who passed his vocabulary at Froben's proofreader, Erasmus
+in time calls a "schamp," because he used cheap paper, cheap ink and
+close margins. Soon after, the word was carried to England and spelled
+"scamp"&mdash;a man who cheats in quality, weight, size and count. But the
+first use merely meant a printer who scamps his margins and so cheats on
+paper. I am sorry to see that Erasmus imitated his enemies and at
+times was ambidextrous in the use of the literary stinkpot. His
+vocabulary was equal to that of Muldoon. Erasmus refers to one of
+his critics as a "scenophylax-stikken," and another he calls a "schnide
+enchologion-schistosomus." And perhaps they may have been&mdash;I really do
+not know.</p>
+
+<p>But as an authority on books Erasmus can still be read. He it was who
+fixed the classic page margin&mdash;twice as wide at the top as on the
+inside; twice as wide at the outside as the top; twice as wide at the
+bottom as at the side. And any printer who varies from this displays his
+ignorance of proportion. Erasmus says, "To use poor paper marks the
+decline of taste, both in printer and in patron." After the death of
+Erasmus,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> Froben's firm failed because they got to making things cheap.
+"Compete in quality, not in price," was the working motto of Erasmus.</p>
+
+<p>All of the great bookmaking centers languished when they began to scamp.
+That worthy wordissimus at Frankfort who called Erasmus names gave up
+business and then the ghost, and Erasmus wrote his epitaph, and thus
+supplied Benjamin Franklin an idea&mdash;"Here lies an old book, its cover
+gone, its leaves torn, the worms at work on its vitals."</p>
+
+<p>The wisdom of doing good work still applies, just as it did in the days
+of Erasmus.</p>
+
+<p>Erasmus proved a very valuable acquisition to Froben. He became general
+editor and literary adviser of this great publishing-house, which was
+then the most important in the world.</p>
+
+<p>Besides his work as editor, Erasmus also stood sponsor for numerous
+volumes which we now know were written by literary nobodies, his name
+being placed on the title-page for commercial reasons.</p>
+
+<p>At that time and for two hundred years later, the matter of attributing
+a book to this man or that was considered a trivial affair. Piracies
+were prevalent. All printers revised the work of classic authors if they
+saw fit, and often they were specially rewarded for it by the Church. It
+was about this time that some one slipped that paragraph into the works
+of Josephus about Jesus. The "Annals" of Tacitus were similarly
+doctored, if in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> fact they were not written entire, during the Sixteenth
+Century. It will be remembered that the only two references in
+contemporary literature to Jesus are those in Josephus and Tacitus, and
+these the Church proudly points to yet.</p>
+
+<p>During the last few years of his life Erasmus accumulated considerable
+property. By his will he devised that this money should go to educate
+certain young men and women, grandchildren and nephews and nieces of his
+old friend, Johann Froben. He left no money for masses, after the usual
+custom of Churchmen, and during his last illness was not attended by a
+priest. For several years before his death he made no confessions and
+very seldom attended church service. He said, "I am much more proud of
+being a printer than a priest."</p>
+
+<p>A statue of Erasmus in bronze adorns one of the public squares in
+Rotterdam, and Basel and Freiburg have honored themselves, and him also,
+in like manner.</p>
+
+<p>As a sample of the subtle and keen literary style of Erasmus, I append
+the following from "In Praise of Folly:"</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The happiest times of life are youth and old age, and this for no
+reason but that they are the times most completely under the rule
+of folly, and least controlled by wisdom. It is the child's freedom
+from wisdom that makes it so charming to us; we hate a precocious
+child. So women owe their charm, and hence their power, to their
+"folley," that is, to their obedience to the impulse. But if,
+perchance, a woman wants to be thought wise,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> she only succeeds in
+being doubly a fool, as if one should train a cow for the
+prize-ring, a thing wholly against Nature. A woman will be a woman,
+no matter what mask she wear, and she ought to be proud of her
+folly and make the most of it.</p>
+
+<p>Is not Cupid, that first father of all religion, is not he stark
+blind, that he can not himself distinguish of colors, so he would
+make us as mope-eyed in judging falsely of all love concerns, and
+wheedle us into a thinking that we are always in the right? Thus
+every Jack sticks to his own Jill; every tinker esteems his own
+trull; and the hobnailed suitor prefers Joan the milkmaid before
+any of milady's daughters. These things are true, and are
+ordinarily laughed at, and yet, however ridiculous they seem, it is
+hence only that all societies receive their cement and
+consolidation.</p>
+
+<p>Fortune we still find favoring the blunt, and flushing the forward;
+strokes smooth up fools, crowning all their undertakings with
+success; but wisdom makes her followers bashful, sneaking and
+timorous, and therefore you commonly see that they are reduced to
+hard shifts; must grapple with poverty, cold and hunger; must lie
+recluse, despised, and unregarded; while fools roll in money, are
+advanced to dignities and offices, and in a word have the whole
+world at command. If any one thinks it happy to be a favorite at
+court, and to manage the disposal of places and preferments, alas,
+this happiness is so far from being attainable by wisdom, that the
+very suspicion of it would put a stop to advancement. Has any man a
+mind to raise himself a good estate? Alas, what dealer in the world
+would ever get a farthing, if he be so wise as to scruple at
+perjury, blush at a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> lie, or stick at a fraud and overreaching?</p>
+
+<p>It is the public charter of all divines, to mold and bend the
+sacred oracles till they comply with their own fancy, spreading
+them (as Heaven by its Creator) like a curtain, closing together,
+or drawing them back, as they please. Thus, indeed, Saint Paul
+himself minces and mangles some citations he makes use of, and
+seems to wrest them to a different sense from what they were first
+intended for, as is confessed by the great linguist, Saint Hieron.
+Thus when that apostle saw at Athens the inscription of the altar,
+he draws from it an argument for the proof of the Christian
+religion; but leaving out great parts of the sentence, which
+perhaps if fully recited might have prejudiced his cause, he
+mentions only the last two words, namely, "To the Unknown God"; and
+this, too, not without alteration, for the whole inscription runs
+thus: "To the Gods of Asia, Europe, and Africa, to all Foreign and
+Unknown Gods."</p>
+
+<p>'T is an imitation of the same pattern, I will warrant you, that
+our young divines, by leaving out four or five words in a place and
+putting a false construction on the rest, can make any passage
+serviceable to their own purpose; though from the coherence of what
+went before, or follows after, the genuine meaning appears to be
+either wide enough, or perhaps quite contradictory to what they
+would thrust and impose upon it. In which knack the divines are
+grown now so expert that the lawyers themselves begin to be jealous
+of an encroachment on what was formerly their sole privilege and
+practise. And indeed what can they despair of proving, since the
+forementioned commentator did upon a text of Saint Luke put an
+interpretation no more agreeable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> to the meaning or the place than
+one contrary quality is to another.</p>
+
+<p>But because it seemed expedient that man, who was born for the
+transaction of business, should have so much wisdom as should fit
+and capacitate him for the discharge of his duty herein, and yet
+lest such a measure as is requisite for this purpose might prove
+too dangerous and fatal, I was advised with for an antidote, and
+prescribed this infallible receipt of taking a wife, a creature so
+harmless and silly, and yet so useful and convenient, as might
+mollify and make pliable the stiffness and morose humor of man. Now
+that which made Plato doubt under what genus to rank woman, whether
+among brutes or rational creatures, was only meant to denote the
+extreme stupidness and Folly of that sex, a sex so unalterably
+simple that for any one of them to thrust forward and reach at the
+name of wise, is but to make themselves the more remarkable fools,
+such an endeavor being but a swimming against the stream, nay, the
+turning the course of Nature, the bare attempting whereof is as
+extravagant as the effecting of it is impossible: for as it is a
+trite proverb, that an ape will be an ape, though clad in purple,
+so a woman will be a woman, that is, a fool, whatever disguise she
+takes up. And yet there is no reason women should take it amiss to
+be thus charged, for if they do but rightly consider, they will
+find to Folly they are beholden for those endowments wherein they
+so far surpass and excel Man; as first for their unparalleled
+beauty, by the charm whereof they tyrannize over the greatest of
+tyrants; for what is it but too great a smatch of wisdom that makes
+men so tawny and thick-skinned, so rough and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> prickly-bearded, like
+an emblem of winter or old age, while women have such dainty,
+smooth cheeks, such a low, gentle voice, and so pure a complexion,
+as if Nature had drawn them for a standing pattern of all symmetry
+and comeliness? Besides, what greater or juster aim and ambition
+have they than to please their husbands? In order whereunto they
+garnish themselves with paint, washes, curls, perfumes, and all
+other mysteries of ornament; yet, after all, they become acceptable
+to them only for their Folly. Wives are always allowed their humor,
+yet it is only in exchange for titillation and pleasure, which
+indeed are but other names for Folly; as none can deny, who
+consider how a man must dandle, and kittle, and play a hundred
+little tricks for his helpmate.</p>
+
+<p>But now some blood-chilled old men, that are more for wine than
+wenching, will pretend that in their opinion the greatest happiness
+consists in feasting and drinking. Grant it be so; yet certainly in
+the most luxurious entertainments it is Folly must give the sauce
+and relish to the daintiest delicacies; so that if there be no one
+of the guests naturally fool enough to be played upon by the rest,
+they must procure some comical buffoon, that by his jokes and
+flouts and blunders shall make the whole company split themselves
+with laughing; for to what purpose were it to be stuffed and
+crammed with so many dainty bits, savory dishes, and toothsome
+rarities, if after all this epicurism, the eyes, the ears, and the
+whole mind of man, were not so well foisted and relieved with
+laughing, jesting, and such like divertisements, which, like second
+courses, serve for the promoting of digestion? And as to all those
+shoeing-horns<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> of drunkenness, the keeping every one his man, the
+throwing high jinks, the filling of bumpers, the drinking two in a
+hand, the beginning of mistresses' healths; and then the roaring
+out of drunken catches, the calling in a fiddler, the leading out
+every one his lady to dance, and such like riotous pastimes&mdash;these
+were not taught or dictated by any of the wise men of Greece, but
+of Gotham rather, being my invention, and by me prescribed as the
+best preservative of health: each of which, the more ridiculous it
+is, the more welcome it finds. And indeed, to jog sleepingly
+through the world, in a dumpish, melancholy posture, can not
+properly be said to live.</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p>
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h2><a name="BOOKER_T_WASHINGTON" id="BOOKER_T_WASHINGTON"></a>BOOKER T. WASHINGTON</h2>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img0416.jpg" alt="BOOKER T. WASHINGTON" title="BOOKER T. WASHINGTON" /></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>There is something in human nature which always makes people reward
+merit, no matter under what color of skin merit is found. I have
+found, too, that it is the visible, the tangible, that goes a long
+way in softening prejudices. The actual sight of a good house that
+a Negro has built is ten times more potent than pages of discussion
+about a house that he ought to build, or perhaps could build. The
+individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in
+the end, make his way regardless of his race.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;<i>Booker T. Washington</i></p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>BOOKER T. WASHINGTON</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>his is a story about a Negro. The story has the peculiarity of being
+true. The man was born a slave in Virginia. His mother was a slave, and
+was thrice sold in the market-place. This man is Booker T. Washington.</p>
+
+<p>The name Booker was a fanciful one given to the lad by playmates on
+account of his love for a certain chance dog-eared spelling-book. Before
+this he was only Mammy's Pet. The T. stood for nothing, but later a
+happy thought made it Taliaferro.</p>
+
+<p>Most Negroes, fresh from slavery, stood sponsor to themselves, and chose
+the name Washington; if not this, then Lincoln, Clay or Webster.</p>
+
+<p>This lad when but a child, being suddenly asked for his name, exclaimed,
+"Washington," and stuck to it.</p>
+
+<p>The father of this boy was a white man; but children always take the
+status of the mother, so Booker T. Washington is a Negro, and proud of
+it, as he should be, for he is standard by performance, even if not by
+pedigree.</p>
+
+<p>This Negro's father is represented by the sign <i>x</i>. By remaining in
+obscurity the fond father threw away his one chance for immortality. We
+do not even know his name, his social position, or his previous
+condition of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> turpitude. We assume he was happily married and
+respectable. Concerning him legend is silent and fable dumb. As for the
+child, we are not certain whether he was born in Eighteen Hundred
+Fifty-eight or Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine, and we know not the day or
+the month. There were no signs in the East.</p>
+
+<p>The mother lived in a log cabin of one room, say ten by twelve. This
+room was also a kitchen, for the mother was cook to the farmhands of her
+owner. There were no windows and no floor in the cabin save the
+hard-trodden clay. There were a table, a bench and a big fireplace.
+There were no beds, and the children at night simply huddled and cuddled
+in a pile of straw and rags in the corner. Doubtless they had enough
+food, for they ate the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table&mdash;who,
+by the way, wasn't so very rich.</p>
+
+<p>One of the earliest recollections of Black Baby Booker was of being
+awakened in the middle of the night by his mother to eat fried chicken.
+Imagine the picture&mdash;it is past midnight. No light in the room save the
+long, flickering streaks that dance on the rafters. Outside the wind
+makes mournful, sighing melody. In the corner huddled the children,
+creeping close together with intertwining arms to get the warmth of each
+little half-naked body.</p>
+
+<p>The dusky mother moves swiftly, deftly, half-frightened at her task.</p>
+
+<p>She has come in from the night with a chicken! Where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> did she get it?
+Hush! Where do you suppose oppressed colored people get chickens?</p>
+
+<p>She picks the bird&mdash;prepares it for the skillet&mdash;fries it over the
+coals. And then when it is done just right, Maryland style, this mother
+full of mother-love, an ingredient which God never omits, shakes each
+little piccaninny into wakefulness, and gives him the forbidden
+dainty&mdash;drumstick, wishbone, gizzard, white meat, or the part that went
+through the fence last&mdash;anything but the neck.</p>
+
+<p>Feathers, bones, waste are thrown into the fireplace, and what the
+village editor calls the "devouring element" hides all trace of the
+crime. Then all lie down to sleep, until the faint flush of pink comes
+into the East, and jocund day stands tiptoe on the mountain-tops.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>This ex-slave remembers a strange and trying time, when all of the
+colored folk on the plantation were notified to assemble at the "big
+house." They arrived and stood around in groups, waiting and wondering,
+talking in whispers. The master came out, and standing on the veranda
+read from a paper in a tremulous voice. Then he told them that they were
+all free, and shook hands with each. Everybody cried. However, they were
+very happy in spite of the tears, for freedom to them meant heaven&mdash;a
+heaven of rest. Yet they bore only love towards their former owners.</p>
+
+<p>Most of them began to wander&mdash;they thought they had to leave their old
+quarters. In a few days the wisest came back and went to work just as
+usual. Booker T.'s mother quit work for just half a day.</p>
+
+<p>But in a little while her husband arrived&mdash;a colored man to whom she had
+been married years before, and who had been sold and sent away. Now he
+came and took her and the little monochrome brood, and they all started
+away for West Virginia, where they heard that colored men were hired to
+work in coalmines and were paid wages in real money.</p>
+
+<p>It took months and months to make the journey. They carried all their
+belongings in bundles. They had no horses&mdash;no cows&mdash;no wagon&mdash;they
+walked. If the weather was pleasant they slept out of doors; if it
+rained they sought a tobacco-shed, a barn, or the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> friendly side of a
+straw-stack. For food they depended on a little cornmeal they carried,
+with which the mother made pone-cakes in the ashes of a campfire. Kind
+colored people on the way replenished the meal-bag, for colored people
+are always generous to the hungry and needy if they have anything to be
+generous with. Then Providence sent stray, ownerless chickens their way,
+at times, just as the Children of Israel were fed on quails in the
+wilderness. Once they caught a 'possum&mdash;and there was a genuine banquet,
+where the children ate until they were as tight as drums.</p>
+
+<p>Finally they reached the promised land of West Virginia, and at the
+little village of Maiden, near Charleston, they stopped, for here were
+the coal mine and the salt-works where colored men were hired and paid
+in real money.</p>
+
+<p>Booker's stepfather found a job, and he also found a job for little
+Booker. They had nothing to live on until pay-day, so the kind man who
+owned the mine allowed them to get things at the store on credit. This
+was a brand-new experience&mdash;and no doubt they bought a few things they
+did not need, for prices and values were absolutely out of their realm.
+Besides, they did not know how much wages they were to get, neither
+could they figure the prices of the things they bought. At any rate,
+when pay-day came they were still in debt, so they saw no real
+money&mdash;certainly little Booker at this time of his life never did.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgg.jpg" alt="G" title="G" /></div><p>eneral Lewis Ruffner owned the salt-works and the coalmine where little
+Booker worked. He was stern, severe, strict. But he believed Negroes
+were human beings, and there were those then who disputed the
+proposition.</p>
+
+<p>Ruffner organized a night-school for his helpers, and let a couple of
+his bookkeepers teach it. At this time there was not a colored person in
+the neighborhood who could spell cat, much less write his name. A few
+could count five. Booker must have been about ten years old when one day
+he boasted a bit of his skill in mathematics. The foreman told him to
+count the loads of coal as they came out of the mine. The boy started in
+bravely, "One&mdash;two&mdash;three&mdash;four&mdash;dere goes one, dere goes anoder,
+anoder, anoder, anoder, anoder!"</p>
+
+<p>The foreman laughed.</p>
+
+<p>The boy was abashed, then chagrined. "Send me to the night-school and in
+a month I'll show you how to count!"</p>
+
+<p>The foreman wrote the lad an order which admitted him to the
+night-school.</p>
+
+<p>But now there was another difficulty&mdash;the boy worked until nine o'clock
+at night, the last hour's work being to sweep out the office. The
+night-school began at nine o'clock and it was two miles away.</p>
+
+<p>The lad scratched his head and thought and thought. A great idea came to
+him&mdash;he would turn the office clock ahead half an hour. He could then
+leave at nine o'clock,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> and by running part of the way could get to
+school at exactly nine o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>The scheme worked for two days, when one of the clerks in the office
+said that a spook was monkeying with the clock. They tried the plan of
+locking the case, and all was well.</p>
+
+<p>Booker must have been about twelve years old, goin' on thirteen, when
+one day as he lay on his back in the coalmine, pushing out the broken
+coal with his feet, he overheard two men telling of a very wonderful
+school where colored people were taught to read, write and cipher&mdash;also,
+how to speak in public. The scholars were allowed to work part of the
+time to pay for their board.</p>
+
+<p>The lad crawled close in the darkness and listened to the conversation.
+He caught the names "Hampton" and "Armstrong." Whether Armstrong was the
+place and Hampton was the name of the man, he could not make out, but he
+clung to the names.</p>
+
+<p>Here was a school for colored people&mdash;he would go there! That night he
+told his mother about it. She laughed, patted his kinky head, and
+indulged him in his dream.</p>
+
+<p>She was only a poor black woman; she could not spell ab, nor count to
+ten, but she had a plan for her boy&mdash;he would some day be a preacher.</p>
+
+<p>This was the very height of her imagination&mdash;a preacher! Beyond this
+there was nothing in human achievement. The night-school came after a
+day of fourteen hours'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> work. Little Booker sat on a bench, his feet
+dangling about a foot from the floor. As he sat there one night trying
+hard to drink in knowledge, he went to sleep. He nodded, braced up,
+nodded again, and then pitched over in a heap on the floor, to the great
+amusement of the class, and his own eternal shame.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, however, as he was feeling very sorrowful over his sad
+experience, he heard that Mrs. Ruffner wanted a boy for general work at
+the big house.</p>
+
+<p>Here was a chance. Mrs. Ruffner was a Vermont Yankee, which meant that
+she had a great nose for dirt, and would not stand for a "sassy nigger."
+Her reputation had gone abroad, and of how she pinched the ears of her
+"help," and got them up at exactly a certain hour, and made them use
+soap and water at least once a day, and even compelled them to use a
+toothbrush; all this was history, well defined.</p>
+
+<p>Booker said he could please her, even if she was a Yankee. He applied
+for the job and got it, with wages fixed at a dollar a week, with a
+promise of twenty-five cents extra every week, if he did his work
+without talking back and breaking a tray of dishes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgg.jpg" alt="G" title="G" /></div><p>enius! No hovel is safe from it!" says Whistler.</p>
+
+<p>Genius consists in doing the right thing without being told more than
+three times.</p>
+
+<p>Booker silently studied the awful Yankee woman to see what she really
+wanted. He finally decided that she desired her servants to have clean
+skins, fairly neat clothing, do things promptly, finish the job and keep
+still when they had nothing to say.</p>
+
+<p>He set himself to please her&mdash;and he did.</p>
+
+<p>She loaned him books, gave him a lead-pencil, and showed him how to
+write with a pen without smearing his hands and face with ink.</p>
+
+<p>He told her of his dream and asked about Armstrong and Hampton. She told
+him that Armstrong was the man and Hampton the place.</p>
+
+<p>At last he got her consent to leave and go to Hampton.</p>
+
+<p>When he started she gave him a comb, a toothbrush, two handkerchiefs and
+a pair of shoes. He had been working for her for a year, and she
+thought, of course, he saved his wages. He never told her that his money
+had gone to keep the family, because his stepfather had been on a strike
+and therefore out of work.</p>
+
+<p>So the boy started away for Hampton. It was five hundred miles away. He
+didn't know how far five hundred miles is&mdash;nobody does unless he has
+walked it.</p>
+
+<p>He had three dollars, so he gaily paid for a seat in the stage. At the
+end of the first day he was forty miles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> from home and out of money. He
+slept in a barn, and a colored woman handed him a ham-bone and a chunk
+of bread out of the kitchen-window, and looked the other way.</p>
+
+<p>He trudged on east&mdash;always and forever east&mdash;towards the rising sun.</p>
+
+<p>He walked weeks&mdash;months&mdash;years, he thought. He kept no track of the
+days. He carried his shoes as a matter of economy.</p>
+
+<p>Finally he sold the shoes for four dollars to a man who paid him ten
+cents cash down, and promised to pay the rest when they should meet at
+Hampton. Nearly forty years have passed and they have never met.</p>
+
+<p>On he walked&mdash;on and on&mdash;east, and always forever east.</p>
+
+<p>He reached the city of Richmond, the first big city he had ever seen.
+The wide streets&mdash;the sidewalks&mdash;the street-lamps entranced him. It was
+just like heaven. But he was hungry and penniless, and when he looked
+wistfully at a pile of cold fried chicken on a street-stand and asked
+the price of a drumstick, at the same time telling he had no money, he
+discovered he was not in heaven at all. He was called a lazy nigger and
+told to move on.</p>
+
+<p>Later he made the discovery that a "nigger" is a colored person who has
+no money.</p>
+
+<p>He pulled the piece of rope that served him for a belt a little tighter,
+and when no one was looking, crawled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> under a sidewalk and went to
+sleep, disturbed only by the trampling overhead.</p>
+
+<p>When he awoke he saw he was near the dock, where a big ship pushed its
+bowsprit out over the street. Men were unloading bags and boxes from the
+boat. He ran down and asked the mate if he could help. "Yes!" was the
+gruff answer.</p>
+
+<p>He got in line and went staggering under the heavy loads.</p>
+
+<p>He was little, but strong, and best of all, willing, yet he reeled at
+the work.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you had any breakfast? Yes, you liver-colored boy&mdash;you, I say,
+have you had your breakfast?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir," said the boy; "and no supper last night nor dinner
+yesterday!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I reckoned as much. Now you take this quarter and go over to that
+stand and buy you a drumstick, a cup of coffee and two fried cakes!"</p>
+
+<p>The lad didn't need urging. He took the money in his palm, went over to
+the man who the night before had called him a lazy nigger, and showing
+the silver, picked out his piece of chicken.</p>
+
+<p>The man hastened to wait on him, and said it was a fine day and hoped he
+was well.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>Arriving at Hampton, this colored boy, who had tramped the long, weary
+miles, stood abashed before the big brick building which he knew was
+Hampton Institute.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgh.jpg" alt="H" title="H" /></div><p>e was so little&mdash;the place was so big&mdash;by what right could he ask to be
+admitted?</p>
+
+<p>Finally he boldly entered, and in a voice meant to be firm, but which
+was very shaky, said, "I am here!" and pointed to the bosom of his
+hickory shirt.</p>
+
+<p>The Yankee woman motioned him to a chair. Negroes coming there were
+plentiful. Usually they wanted to live the Ideal Life. They had a call
+to preach&mdash;and the girls wanted to be music-teachers.</p>
+
+<p>The test was simple and severe: would they and could they do one useful
+piece of work well?</p>
+
+<p>Booker sat and waited, not knowing that his patience was being put to
+the test.</p>
+
+<p>Then Miss Priscilla, in a hard, Neill Burgess voice, "guessed" that the
+adjoining recitation-room needed sweeping and dusting. She handed Booker
+a broom and dust-cloth, motioned to the room, and went away.</p>
+
+<p>Oho! Little did she know her lad. The colored boy smiled to
+himself&mdash;sweeping and dusting were his specialties&mdash;he had learned the
+trade from a Yankee woman from Vermont! He smiled.</p>
+
+<p>Then he swept that room&mdash;moved every chair, the table, the desk. He
+dusted each piece of furniture four times. He polished each rung and
+followed around the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> baseboard on hands and knees.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Priscilla came back&mdash;pushed the table around and saw at once that
+the dirt had not been concealed beneath it. She took out her
+handkerchief and wiped the table top, then the desk.</p>
+
+<p>She turned, looked at the boy, and her smile met his half-suppressed
+triumphant grin.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll do," she said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgg.jpg" alt="G" title="G" /></div><p>eneral Samuel C. Armstrong, the founder of Hampton Institute, and the
+grandfather of Tuskegee, was a white man who fought the South valiantly
+and well.</p>
+
+<p>He seems about the only man in the North who, at the close of the war,
+clearly realized that the war had just begun&mdash;that the real enemies were
+not subdued, and that these enemies were ignorance, superstition and
+incompetence.</p>
+
+<p>The pitiable condition of four million human beings, flung from slavery
+into freedom, thrown upon their own resources, with no thought of
+responsibility, and with no preparation for the change, meant for them
+only another kind of slavery.</p>
+
+<p>General Armstrong's heart went out to them&mdash;he desired to show them how
+to be useful, helpful, self-reliant, healthy. For the whites of the
+South he had only high regard and friendship. He, of all men, knew how
+they had suffered from the war&mdash;and he realized also that they had
+fought for what they believed was right. In his heart there was no hate.
+He resolved to give himself&mdash;his life&mdash;his fortune&mdash;his intellect&mdash;his
+love&mdash;his all, for the upbuilding of the South. He saw with the vision
+of a prophet that indolence and pride were the actual enemies of white
+and black alike. The blacks must be taught to work&mdash;to know the dignity
+of human labor&mdash;to serve society&mdash;to help themselves by helping others.
+He realized that there are no menial tasks&mdash;that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> all which serves is
+sacred.</p>
+
+<p>And this is the man who sowed the seeds of truth in the heart of the
+nameless black boy&mdash;Booker Washington. Armstrong's shibboleth, too, was,
+"With malice toward none, but with charity for all, let us finish the
+work God has given us to do."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgi.jpg" alt="I" title="I" /></div><p> do not know very much about this subject of education, yet I believe I
+know as much about what others know about it as most people. I have
+visited the principal colleges of America and Europe, and the methods of
+Preparatory and High Schools are to me familiar. I know the
+night-schools of the cities, the "Ungraded Rooms," the Schools for
+Defectives, the educational schemes in prisons, the Manual-Training
+Schools, the New Education (first suggested by Socrates) as carried out
+by G. Stanley Hall, John Dewey, and dozens of other good men and women
+in America. I am familiar with the School for the Deaf at Malone, New
+York, and the School for the Blind at Batavia, where even the sorely
+stricken are taught to be self-sufficient, self-supporting and happy. I
+have tumbled down the circular fire-escape at Lapeer with the inmates of
+the Home of Epileptics, and heard the shouts of laughter from lips that
+never laughed before. I have seen the Jewish Manual Training School of
+Chicago transform Russian refugees into useful citizens&mdash;capable,
+earnest and excellent. I know a little about Swarthmore, Wellesley,
+Vassar, Radcliffe, and have put my head into West Point and Annapolis,
+and had nobody cry, "Genius!"</p>
+
+<p>Of Harvard, Yale and Princeton I know something, having done time in
+each. I have also given jobs to graduates of Oxford, Cambridge and
+Heidelberg, to my sorrow and their chagrin. This does not prove that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>
+graduates of the great universities are, as a rule, out of work, or that
+they are incompetent. It simply means that it is possible for a man to
+graduate at these institutions and secure his diploma and yet be a man
+who has nothing the world really wants, either in way of ideas or
+services.</p>
+
+<p>The reason that my "cum laude" friends did not like me, and the cause of
+my having to part with them&mdash;getting them a little free transportation
+from your Uncle George&mdash;was not because they lacked intelligence, but
+because they wanted to secure a position, while I simply offered them a
+job.</p>
+
+<p>They were like Cave-of-the-Winds of Oshkosh, who is an ice-cutter in
+August, and in winter is an out-of-door horticulturist&mdash;a hired man is
+something else.</p>
+
+<p>As a general proposition, I believe this will not now be disputed: the
+object of education is that a man may benefit himself by serving
+society.</p>
+
+<p>To benefit others, you must be reasonably happy: there must be animation
+through useful activity, good-cheer, kindness and health&mdash;health of mind
+and health of body. And to benefit society you must also have patience,
+persistency, and a firm determination to do the right thing, and to mind
+your own business so that others, too, may mind theirs. Then all should
+be tinctured with a dash of discontent with past achievements, so you
+will constantly put forth an effort to do more and better work.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When what you have done in the past looks large to you, you haven't done
+much today.</p>
+
+<p>So there you get the formula of Education: health and happiness through
+useful activity&mdash;animation, kindness, good-cheer, patience, persistency,
+willingness to give and take, seasoned with enough discontent to prevent
+smugness, which is the scum that grows over every stagnant pond.</p>
+
+<p>Of course no college can fill this prescription&mdash;no institution can
+supply the ingredients&mdash;all that the college can do is to supply the
+conditions so that these things can spring into being. Plants need the
+sunlight&mdash;mushrooms are different.</p>
+
+<p>The question is, then, what teaching concern in America supplies the
+best quality of actinic ray?</p>
+
+<p>And I answer, Tuskegee is the place, and Booker Washington is the man.</p>
+
+<p>"What!" you exclaim. "The Ideal School a school for Negroes, instituted
+by a Negro, where only Negroes teach, and only Negroes are allowed to
+enter as students?"</p>
+
+<p>And the answer is, "Exactly so."</p>
+
+<p>At Tuskegee there are nearly two thousand students, and over one hundred
+fifty teachers. There are two classes of students&mdash;"day-school" and
+"night-school" students. The night-school students work all day at any
+kind of task they are called upon to do. They receive their board,
+clothing and a home&mdash;they pay<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> no tuition, but are paid for their labor,
+the amount being placed to their credit, so when fifty dollars is
+accumulated they can enter as "day students."</p>
+
+<p>The "day students" make up the bulk of the scholars. Each pays fifty
+dollars a year. These all work every other day at manual labor or some
+useful trade.</p>
+
+<p>Tuskegee has fully twice as many applicants as it can accommodate; but
+there is one kind of applicant who never receives any favor. This is the
+man who says he has the money to pay his way, and wishes to take the
+academic course only. The answer always is: "Please go elsewhere&mdash;there
+are plenty of schools that want your money. The fact that you have money
+will not exempt you here from useful labor."</p>
+
+<p>This is exactly what every college in the world should say.</p>
+
+<p>The Tuskegee farm consists of about three thousand acres. There are four
+hundred head of cattle, about five hundred hogs, two hundred horses,
+great flocks of chickens, geese, ducks and turkeys, and many swarms of
+bees. It is the intention to raise all the food that is consumed on the
+place, and to manufacture all supplies. There are wagon-shops, a
+sawmill, a harness-shop, a shoe-shop, a tailor-shop, a printing-plant, a
+model laundry, a canning establishment. Finer fruit and vegetables I
+have never seen, and the thousands of peach, plum and apple trees, and
+the vast acreage of berries that have been planted, will surely some day
+be a goodly source of revenue.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The place is religious, but not dogmatically so&mdash;the religion being
+merely the natural safety-valve for emotion. At Tuskegee there is no
+lacrimose appeal to confess your sins&mdash;they do better&mdash;they forget them.</p>
+
+<p>I never heard more inspiring congregational singing, and the use of the
+piano, organ, orchestra and brass band are important factors in the
+curriculum. In the chapel I spoke to an audience so attentive, so alert,
+so receptive, so filled with animation, that the whole place looked like
+a vast advertisement for Sozodont.</p>
+
+<p>No prohibitive signs are seen at Tuskegee. All is affirmative, yet it is
+understood that some things are tabu&mdash;tobacco, for instance, and strong
+drink, of course.</p>
+
+<p>We have all heard of Harvard Beer and Yale Mixture, but be it said in
+sober justice, Harvard runs no brewery, and Yale has no official brand
+of tobacco. Yet Harvard men consume much beer, and many men at Yale
+smoke. And if you want to see the cigarette-fiend on his native heath,
+you'll find him like the locust on the campus at Cambridge and New
+Haven. But if you want to see the acme of all cigarette-bazaars, just
+ride out of Boylston Street, Boston, any day at noon, and watch the boys
+coming out of the Institute of Technology.</p>
+
+<p>I once asked a Tech Professor if cigarette-smoking was compulsory in his
+institution. "Yes," he replied; "but the rule is not strictly enforced,
+as I know three students who do not smoke."</p>
+
+<p>Tuskegee stands for order, system, cleanliness, industry,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> courtesy and
+usefulness. There are no sink-holes around the place, no "back yards."
+Everything is beautiful, wholesome and sanitary. All trades are
+represented. The day is crammed so full of work from sunrise to sunset
+that there is no time for complaining, misery or faultfinding&mdash;three
+things that are usually born of idleness. At Tuskegee there are
+no servants. All of the work is done by the students and
+teachers&mdash;everybody works&mdash;everybody is a student, and all are teachers.</p>
+
+<p>We are all teachers, whether we will it or not&mdash;we teach by example, and
+all students who do good work are good teachers.</p>
+
+<p>When the Negro is able to do skilled work, he ceases to be a problem&mdash;he
+is a man. The fact that Alexandre Dumas was a Negro does not count
+against him in the world's assize.</p>
+
+<p>The old-time academic college, that cultivated the cerebrum and gave a
+man his exercise in an indoor gymnasium, or not at all, has ruined its
+tens of thousands. To have top&mdash;head and no lungs&mdash;is not wholly
+desirable. The student was made exempt from every useful thing, just as
+the freshly freed slave hoped and expected to be, and after four years
+it was often impossible for him to take up the practical lessons of
+life. He had gotten used to the idea of one set of men doing all the
+work and another set of men having the culture. To a large degree he
+came to regard culture as the aim of life. And when a man begins to
+pride himself upon his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> culture, he hasn't any to speak of. Culture must
+be merely incidental, and to clutch it is like capturing a butterfly:
+you do not secure the butterfly at all&mdash;you get only a grub.</p>
+
+<p>Let us say right here that there is only one way in which a Negro, or a
+white man, can ever make himself respected. Statute law will not do it;
+rights voted him by the State are of small avail; making demands will
+not secure the desired sesame. If we ever gain the paradise of freedom
+it will be because we have earned it&mdash;because we deserve it. A
+make-believe education may suffice for a white man&mdash;especially if he has
+a rich father, but a Negro who has to carve out his own destiny must be
+taught order, system, and quiet, persistent, useful effort.</p>
+
+<p>A college that has its students devote one-half their time to actual,
+useful work is so in line with commonsense that we are amazed that the
+idea had to be put into execution by the ex-slave as a life-saver for
+his disenfranchised race. Our great discoveries are always accidents: we
+work for one thing and get another. I expect that the day will come, and
+erelong, when the great universities of the world will have to put the
+Tuskegee Idea into execution in order to save themselves from being
+distanced by the Colored Race.</p>
+
+<p>If life were one thing and education another, it might be all right to
+separate them. Culture of the head over a desk, and indoor gymnastics
+for the body, are not the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> ideal, and that many succeed in spite of the
+handicap is no proof of the excellence of the plan. Ships that go around
+the world accumulate many barnacles, but barnacles as a help to the
+navigator are an iridescent dream.</p>
+
+<p>A little regular manual labor, rightly mixed with the mental, eliminates
+draw-poker, highballs, brawls, broils, Harvard Beer, Yale Mixture,
+Princeton Pinochle, Chippee dances, hazing, roistering, rowdyism and the
+bulldog propensity. The Heidelberg article of cocked hat and insolent
+ways is not produced at Tuskegee. At Tuskegee there is no place for
+those who lie in wait for insults and regard scrapping as a fine art. As
+for college athletics at the Orthodox Universities, only one man out of
+ten ever does anything at it anyway&mdash;the college man who needs the
+gymnasium most is practically debarred from everything in it and serves
+as a laughing-stock whenever he strips. Coffee, cocaine, bromide,
+tobacco and strong drink often serve in lieu of exercise and ozone, and
+Princeton winks her woozy eye in innocency.</p>
+
+<p>Freedom can not be bestowed&mdash;it must be achieved. Education can not be
+given&mdash;it must be earned. Lincoln did not free the slaves&mdash;he only freed
+himself. The Negroes did not know they were slaves, and so they had no
+idea of what freedom meant. Until a man wants to be free, each kind of
+freedom is only another form of slavery. Booker Washington is showing
+the colored man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> how to secure a genuine freedom through useful
+activity. To get freedom you must shoulder responsibility.</p>
+
+<p>If college education were made compulsory by the State, and one-half of
+the curriculum consisted of actual, useful manual labor, most of our
+social ills would be solved, and we would be well out on the highway
+towards the Ideal City.</p>
+
+<p>Without animation, man is naught&mdash;nothing is accomplished, nothing done.
+People who inspire other people have animation plus.</p>
+
+<p>And animation plus is ecstasy. In ecstasy the spirit rushes out, runs
+over and saturates all. Oratory is an ecstasy that inundates the hearer
+and makes him ride upon the crest of another's ideas.</p>
+
+<p>Art is born of ecstasy&mdash;art is ecstasy in the concrete. Beautiful music
+is ecstasy expressed in sound, regulated into rhythm, cadence and form.
+"Statuary is frozen music," said Heine.</p>
+
+<p>A man who is not moved into ecstasy by ecstasy is hopeless. A people
+that has not the surging, uplifting, onward power that ecstasy gives, is
+decadent&mdash;dead.</p>
+
+<p>The Negro is easily moved to ecstasy. Very little musical training makes
+him a power in song. At Tuskegee the congregational singing is a feature
+that, once heard, is never to be forgotten. Fifteen hundred people
+lifting up their hearts in an outburst of emotion&mdash;song! Fifteen hundred
+people of one mind, doing anything in unison&mdash;do you know what it means?
+Ecstasy is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> essentially a matter of sex. In art and religion sex can not
+be left out of the equation. The simple fact that in forty years the
+Negro race in America has increased from four million to ten million
+tells of their ecstasy as a people. "Only happy beings reproduce
+themselves," says Darwin. Depress your animal and it ceases to breed; so
+there are a whole round of animals that do not reproduce in captivity.
+But in slavery or freedom the Negro sings, and reproduces&mdash;he is not
+doomed nor depressed&mdash;his soul arises superior to circumstance.</p>
+
+<p>Without animation, education is impossible. And the problem of the
+educator is to direct this singing, flowing, moving spirit of the hive
+into useful channels.</p>
+
+<p>Education is simply the encouragement of right habits&mdash;the fixing of
+good habits until they become a part of one's nature, and are exercised
+automatically.</p>
+
+<p>The man who is industrious by habit is the only man who wins. The man
+who is not industrious except when driven to it, or when it occurs to
+him, accomplishes little.</p>
+
+<p>Man gets his happiness by doing: and work to a slave is always
+distasteful. The power of mimicry and imitation is omitted&mdash;the owner
+does not work&mdash;the strong man does not work. Ergo&mdash;to grow strong means
+to cease work. To be strong means to be free&mdash;to be free means no work!</p>
+
+<p>It has been a frightfully bad education that the Negro has had&mdash;work
+distasteful, and work disgraceful! And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> the slave-owner suffered most of
+all, for he came to regard work as debasing.</p>
+
+<p>And now a Negro is teaching the Negro that work is beautiful&mdash;that work
+is a privilege&mdash;that only through willing service can he ever win his
+freedom. Architecture is fixed ecstasy, inspired always by a strong man
+who gives a feeling of security. Athens was an ecstasy in marble.</p>
+
+<p>Tuskegee is an ecstasy in brick and mortar.</p>
+
+<p>Don't talk about the education of the Negro! The experiment has really
+never been tried, except spasmodically, of educating either the whites
+or the blacks in the South&mdash;or elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>A Negro is laying hold upon the natural ecstasy of the Negro, and
+directing it into channels of usefulness and excellence. Can you
+foretell where this will end&mdash;this formation of habits of industry,
+sobriety and continued, persistent effort towards the right?</p>
+
+<p>Booker Washington, child of a despised race, has done and is doing what
+the combined pedagogic and priestly wisdom of ages has failed to do. He
+is the Moses who by his example is leading the children of his former
+oppressors out into the light of social, mental, moral and economic
+freedom.</p>
+
+<p>I am familiar in detail with every criticism brought against Tuskegee.
+On examination these criticisms all reduce themselves down to three:</p>
+
+<p>1. A vast sum of money has been collected by Booker<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> Washington for his
+own aggrandizement and benefit.</p>
+
+<p>2. Tuskegee is a show-place where all the really good work is done by
+picked men from the North.</p>
+
+<p>3. Booker Washington is a tyrant, a dictator and an egotist.</p>
+
+<p>If I were counsel for Tuskegee&mdash;as I am not&mdash;I would follow the example
+of the worthy accusers, and submit the matter without argument. Booker
+Washington can afford to plead guilty to every charge; and he has never
+belittled himself by answering his accusers.</p>
+
+<p>But let the facts be known, that this man has collected upward of six
+million dollars, mostly from the people of the North, and has built up
+the nearest perfect educational institution in the world.</p>
+
+<p>It is probably true that many of his teachers and best workers are
+picked people&mdash;but they are Negroes, and were selected by a Negro. The
+great general reveals his greatness in the selection of his generals: it
+was the marshals whom Napoleon appointed who won for him his victories;
+but his spirit animated theirs, and he chose them for this one
+reason&mdash;he could dominate them. He infused into their souls a goodly
+dash of his own enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>Booker Washington is a greater general than Napoleon. For the Tuskegee
+idea no Waterloo awaits. And as near as I can judge, Booker Washington's
+most noisy critics are merely camp-followers.</p>
+
+<p>That the man is a tyrant and a dictator there is no doubt. He is a
+beneficent tyrant, but a tyrant still, for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> he always, invariably, has
+his own way in weighty matters&mdash;in trivialities others can have theirs.
+And as for dictatorship, the man who advances on chaos and transforms it
+into cosmos is perforce a dictator and an egotist.</p>
+
+<p>Booker Washington believes he is in the right, and he makes no effort to
+conceal the fact that he is on earth. In him there is no disposition to
+run and peep about, and find himself a dishonorable grave. All live men
+are egotists, and they are egotists just in proportion as they have
+life. Dead men are not egotists. Booker Washington has life in
+abundance, and through him I truly believe runs the spirit of Divinity,
+if ever a living man had it. A man like this is the instrument of Deity.</p>
+
+<p>Tuskegee Institute has applications ahead all the time, from all over
+America, for competent colored men and women who can take charge of
+important work and do it. Dressmakers, housekeepers, cooks, farmers,
+stockmen, builders, gardeners, are in demand. The world has never yet
+had enough people to bear its burdens.</p>
+
+<p>Recently we have heard much of the unemployed, but a very little search
+will show that the people out of work are those of bad habits, which
+make them unreliable and untrustworthy. The South, especially, needs the
+willing worker and the practical man. And best of all the South knows
+it, and stands ready to pay for the service.</p>
+
+<p>A few years ago there was a fine storm of protest from Northern Negroes
+to the effect that Booker Washington<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> was endeavoring to limit the Negro
+to menial service&mdash;that is, thrust him back into servility. The first
+ambition of the Negro was to get an education so that he might become a
+Baptist preacher. To him, education meant freedom from toil, and of
+course we do not have to look far to see where he got the idea. Then
+when Tuskegee came forward and wanted to make blacksmiths, carpenters
+and brick-masons out of black men, there was a cry, "If this means
+education, we will none of it&mdash;treason, treason!" It was assumed that
+the Negro who set other Negroes to work was not their friend. This phase
+of the matter requires neither denial nor apology. We smile and pass on.</p>
+
+<p>In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-seven, the Negro was practically
+disenfranchised throughout the South, by being excluded from the
+primaries. He had no recognized ticket in the field. For both the blacks
+and the whites this has been well. To most of the blacks freedom meant
+simply exemption from work. So there quickly grew up a roistering,
+turbulent, idle and dangerous class of black men who were used by the
+most ambitious of their kind for political ends. To preserve the peace
+of the community, the whites were forced to adopt heroic measures, with
+the result that we now have the disenfranchised Negro.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the Eighties, Booker Washington realized that, politically,
+there was no hope for his race. He saw, however, that commerce
+recognized no color line. We<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> would buy, sell and trade with the black
+man on absolute equality. Life-insurance companies would insure him,
+banks would receive his deposits, and if honest and competent, would
+loan him money. If he could shoe a horse, we waived his complexion; and
+in every sort and kind of craftsmanship he stood on absolute equality
+with the whites. The only question ever asked was, "Can you do the
+work?"</p>
+
+<p>And Booker Washington set out to help the Negro win success for himself
+by serving society through becoming skilled in doing useful things. And
+so it became Head, Hand and Heart. The manual was played off against the
+intellectual.</p>
+
+<p>But over and beyond the great achievement of Booker Washington in
+founding and carrying to a successful issue the most complete
+educational scheme of this age, or any other, stands the man himself. He
+is one without hate, heat or prejudice. No one can write on the lintels
+of his doorpost the word, "Whim." He is half-white, but calls himself a
+Negro. He sides with the disgraced and outcast black woman who gave him
+birth, rather than with the respectable white man who was his sire.</p>
+
+<p>He rides in the Jim Crow cars, and on long trips, if it is deemed
+expedient to use a sleeping-car, he hires the stateroom, so that he may
+not trespass or presume upon those who would be troubled by the presence
+of a colored man. Often in traveling he goes for food and shelter to the
+humble home of one of his own people.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> At hotels he receives and
+accepts, without protest or resentment, the occasional contumely of the
+inferior whites&mdash;whites too ignorant to appreciate that one of God's
+noblemen stands before them. For the whites of the South he has only
+words of kindness and respect; the worst he says about them is that they
+do not understand. His modesty, his patience, his forbearance, are
+sublime. He is a true Fabian&mdash;he does what he can, like the royal
+Roycroft opportunist that he is. Every petty annoyance is passed over;
+the gibes and jeers and the ingratitude of his own race are forgotten.
+"They do not understand," he calmly says. He does his work. He is
+respected by the best people of North and South. He has the confidence
+of the men of affairs&mdash;he is a safe man.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p>
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THOMAS_ARNOLD" id="THOMAS_ARNOLD"></a>THOMAS ARNOLD</h2>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img0418.jpg" alt="THOMAS ARNOLD" title="THOMAS ARNOLD" /></div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Let me mind my own personal work; keep myself pure and zealous and
+believing; laboring to do God's will in this fruitful vineyard of
+young lives committed to my charge, as my allotted field, until my
+work be done.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;<i>Thomas Arnold</i></p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THOMAS ARNOLD</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>homas Arnold was born in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-five, and died in
+Eighteen Hundred Forty-two. His life was short, as men count time, but
+he lived long enough to make for himself a name and a fame that are both
+lasting and luminous. Though he was neither a great writer nor a great
+preacher, yet there were times when he thought he was both. He was only
+a schoolteacher. However, he was an artist in schoolteaching, and art is
+not a thing&mdash;it is a way. It is the beautiful way&mdash;the effective way.</p>
+
+<p>Schoolteachers have no means of proving their prowess by conspicuous
+waste, and no time to convince the world of their excellence through
+conspicuous leisure; consequently, for histrionic purposes, a
+schoolteacher's cosmos is a plain, slaty gray. Schoolteachers do not
+wallow in wealth nor feed fat at the public trough. No one ever accuses
+them of belonging to the class known as the predatory rich, nor of being
+millionaire malefactors. They have to do their work every day at certain
+hours and dedicate its results to time.</p>
+
+<p>For many years Thomas Arnold has been known as the father of his son.
+Several great men have been thus overshadowed. The father of Disraeli,
+for instance, was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> favored by fame and fortune, until his gifted son
+moved into the limelight, and after that Pater shone mostly in a
+reflected glory. Jacopo Bellini was the greatest painter in Venice until
+his two sons, Gian and Gentile, surpassed him, and history writes him
+down as the father of the Bellinis. Lyman Beecher was regarded as
+America's greatest preacher until Henry Ward moved the mark up a few
+notches. The elder Pitt was looked upon as a genuine statesman until his
+son graduated into the Cabinet, and then "the terrible cornet of horse"
+became known as the father of Pitt. Now that both are dust, and we are
+getting the proper perspective, we see that "the great commoner" was
+indeed a great man, and so they move down the corridors of time
+together, arm in arm, this father and son. That excellent person who
+carried the gripsacks of greatness so long that he thought the luggage
+was his own, Major James B. Pond, launched at least one good thing. It
+was this: "Matthew Arnold gave fifty lectures in America, and nobody
+ever heard one of them; those in his audience who could no longer endure
+the silence slipped quietly out."</p>
+
+<p>Matthew Arnold was a critic and writer who, having secured a tuppence
+worth of success through being the son of his father, and thus securing
+the speaker's eye, finally got an oratorical bee in his bonnet and went
+a-barnstorming. He cultivated reserve and indifference, both of which he
+was told were necessary factors of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> success in a public speaker.</p>
+
+<p>And this is true. But they will not make an orator, any more than long
+hair, a peculiar necktie, and a queer hat will float a poet on the tide
+of time safely into the Hall of Fame.</p>
+
+<p>Matthew Arnold cultivated repose, but instead of convincing the audience
+that he had power, he only made them think he was sleepy. Major Pond,
+having lived much with orators, and thinking the trick easy, tried
+oratory on his own account, and succeeded as well as did Matthew Arnold.
+No one ever heard Major Pond: his voice fell over the footlights, dead,
+into the orchestra; only those with opera-glasses knew he was talking.</p>
+
+<p>But to be unintelligible is not a special recommendation. Men may be
+moderate for two reasons&mdash;through excess of feeling and because they are
+actually dull.</p>
+
+<p>Matthew Arnold has slipped back into his true position&mdash;that of a man of
+letters. The genius is a man of affairs. Humanity is the theme, not
+books. Books are usually written about the thoughts of men who wrote
+books. Books die and disintegrate, but humanity is an endless
+procession, and the souls that go marching on are those who fought for
+freedom, not those who speculate on abstrusities.</p>
+
+<p>The credential of Thomas Arnold to immortality is not that he was the
+father of Matthew and eight other little Arnolds, but it lies in the
+fact that he fought for a wider horizon in life through education. He
+lifted his voice for liberty. He believed in the divinity of the child,
+not in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> its depravity. Arnold of Rugby was a teacher of teachers, as
+every great teacher is. The pedagogic world is now going back to his
+philosophy, just as in statesmanship we are reverting to Thomas
+Jefferson. These men who spoke classic truth, not transient&mdash;truth that
+fits in spite of fashion, time and place&mdash;are the true prophets of
+mankind. Such was Thomas Arnold!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgi.jpg" alt="I" title="I" /></div><p>f Thomas Arnold had been just a little bigger, the world probably would
+never have heard of him, for an interdict would have been placed upon
+his work. The miracle is that, as it was, the Church and the State did
+not snuff him out.</p>
+
+<p>He stood for sweet reasonableness, but unintentionally created much
+opposition. His life was a warfare. Yet he managed to make himself
+acceptable to a few; so for fourteen years this head master of a
+preparatory school for boys lived his life and did his work. He sent out
+his radiating gleams, and grew straight in the strength of his spirit,
+and lived out his life in the light.</p>
+
+<p>His sudden death sanctified and sealed his work before he was subdued
+and ironed out by the conventions.</p>
+
+<p>Happy Arnold! If he had lived, he might have met the fate of Arnold of
+Brescia, who was also a great teacher. Arnold of Brescia was a pupil of
+Abelard, and was condemned by the Church as a disturber of the peace for
+speaking in eulogy of his master. Later, he attacked the profligacy of
+the idle prelates, as did Luther, Savonarola and all the other great
+church-reformers. When ordered into exile and silence, he still
+protested his right to speak. He was strangled on order of the Pope, his
+body burned, and the ashes thrown into the Tiber. The Baptists, I
+believe, claim Arnold of Brescia as the forerunner of their sect, and
+certain it is that he was of the true Roger Williams type.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thomas Arnold, too, was filled with a passion for righteousness. His
+zeal for the upright, manly life constituted his strength. Of course he
+would not have been executed, as was Arnold of Brescia&mdash;the times had
+changed&mdash;he would simply have been shelved, pooh-poohed, deprived of his
+living and socially Crapseyized. Death saved him&mdash;aged forty-seven&mdash;and
+his soul goes marching on!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>he parents of Thomas Arnold belonged to the great Middle Class&mdash;that
+class which Disraeli said never did any thinking on its own account, but
+to the best of its ability deferred to and imitated the idle rich in
+matters of religion, education and politics.</p>
+
+<p>Doctor Johnson maintained that if members of the Middle Class worked
+hard and economized, it was in the hope that they might leave money and
+name for their children and make them exempt from all useful effort.</p>
+
+<p>"To indict a class," said Burke, "is neither reasonable nor right." But
+certain it is that a vast number of fairly intelligent people in England
+and elsewhere regard the life of the "aristocracy" as very desirable and
+beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>To this end they want their boys to become clergymen, lawyers, doctors
+or army officers.</p>
+
+<p>"Only two avenues of honor are open to aspiring youth in England," said
+Gladstone&mdash;"the Army and the Church."</p>
+
+<p>The father of Thomas Arnold was Collector of Customs at Cowes, Isle of
+Wight. Holding this petty office under the Government, with a half-dozen
+men at his command, we can easily guess his caliber, habits, belief and
+mode of life. He was respectable; and to be respectable, a Collector of
+Customs must be punctilious in Church matters, in order to be acceptable
+to Church people, for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. The parents of
+Thomas Arnold very naturally centered their ambitions for him on the
+Church, as he was not very strong.</p>
+
+<p>When the child was only six years old, the father died from "spasm of
+the heart." At this time the boy had begun to take Latin, and his
+education was being looked after by a worthy governess, who daily
+drilled his mental processes and took him walking, leading him by the
+hand. On Sundays he wore a wide, white collar, shiny boots and a stiff
+hat. The governess cautioned him not to soil his collar, nor to get mud
+on his boots.</p>
+
+<p>In later years he told how he looked covetously at the boys who wore
+neither hats nor boots, and who did not have a governess.</p>
+
+<p>His mother had a fair income, and so this prim, precise, exact and
+crystallized mode of education was continued. Out of her great love for
+her child, the mother sent him away from home when he was eight years
+old. Of course there were tears on both sides; but now a male man must
+educate him, and women were to be dropped out of the equation&mdash;this that
+the evil in the child should be curbed, his spirit chastened, and his
+mind disciplined.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that a child rather liked to be fondled by his mother, or that
+his mother cared to fondle him, was proof of total depravity on the part
+of both.</p>
+
+<p>The Reverend Doctor Griffiths, who took charge of the boy for two years,
+was certainly not cruel, but at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> same time he was not exactly human.
+In Nature we never hear of a she-lion sending her cubs away to be looked
+after by a denatured lion. It is really doubtful whether you could ever
+raise a lion to lionhood by this method. Some goat would come along and
+butt the life out of him, even after he had evolved whiskers and a mane.</p>
+
+<p>After two years with Doctor Griffiths, young Arnold was sent to
+Manchester, where he remained in a boys' boarding-house from his tenth
+to his fourteenth year. To the teachers here&mdash;all men&mdash;he often paid
+tribute, but uttered a few heretical doubts as to whether discipline as
+a substitute for mother-love was not an error of pious but overzealous
+educators.</p>
+
+<p>At sixteen years of age he was transferred to Corpus Christi College at
+Oxford. In Eighteen Hundred Fifteen, being then twenty years of age, he
+was elected a Fellow of Oriel College, and there he resided until he was
+twenty-four.</p>
+
+<p>He was a prizeman in Latin, Greek and English, and was considered a star
+scholar&mdash;both by himself and by others. Ten years afterwards he took a
+backward glance, and said: "At twenty-two I was proud, precise, stiff,
+formal, uncomfortable, unhappy, and unintentionally made everybody else
+unhappy with whom I came in contact. The only people I really mixed with
+were those whose lives were dedicated to the ablative."</p>
+
+<p>When twenty-four he was made a deacon and used<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> to read prayers at
+neighboring chapels, for which service he was paid five shillings. Being
+now thrown on his own resources, he did the thing a prizeman always
+does: he showed others how. As a tutor he was a success: more scholars
+came to him than he could really take care of. But he did not like the
+work, since all the pupil desired, and all the parents desired, was that
+he should help the backward one get his marks, and glide through the eye
+of a needle into pedagogic paradise.</p>
+
+<p>At twenty-six he was preaching, teaching and writing learned essays
+about things he did not understand.</p>
+
+<p>From this brief sketch it will be seen that the early education of
+Thomas Arnold was of the kind and type that any fond parent of the
+well-to-do Middle Class would most desire. He had been shielded from all
+temptations of the world; he could do no useful thing with his hands;
+his knowledge of economics&mdash;ways and means&mdash;was that of a child; of the
+living present he knew little, but of the dead past he assumed and
+believed he knew much.</p>
+
+<p>It was purely priestly, institutional education. It was the kind of
+education that every well-to-do Briton would like to have his sons
+receive. It was, in short, England's Ideal.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgr.jpg" alt="R" title="R" /></div><p>ugby Grammar School was endowed in Sixteen Hundred Fifty-three by one
+Laurence Sherif, a worthy grocer. The original gift was comparatively
+small, but the investment being in London real estate, has increased in
+value until it yields now an income of about thirty-five thousand
+dollars a year.</p>
+
+<p>In the time of Arnold there were about three hundred pupils. It is not a
+large school now; there are high schools in a hundred cities of America
+that surpass it in many ways.</p>
+
+<p>Rugby's claim to special notice lies in its traditions&mdash;the great men
+who were once Rugby boys, and the great men who were Rugby teachers.
+Also, in the fact that Thomas Hughes wrote a famous story called, "Tom
+Brown at Rugby."</p>
+
+<p>Rugby Grammar School was one hundred twenty-five years old when Sir
+Joshua Reynolds commissioned Lord Cornwallis to go to America and fetch
+George Washington to England, that Sir Joshua might paint his portrait.</p>
+
+<p>For a hundred years prior to the time of Arnold, there had not been a
+perceptible change in the methods of teaching. The boys were herded
+together. They fought, quarreled, divided into cliques; the big boys
+bullied the little ones. Fagging was the law; so the upper forms
+enslaved the lower ones. There was no home life, and the studies were
+made irksome and severe, purposely,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> as it was thought that pleasant
+things were sinful.</p>
+
+<p>If any better plan could have been devised to make study absolutely
+repulsive, so the student would shun it as soon as he was out of school,
+we can not guess it.</p>
+
+<p>The system was probably born of inertia on the part of the teachers. The
+pastor who pushes through his prescribed services, with mind on other
+things, and thus absolves his conscience for letting his congregation go
+drifting straight to Gehenna, was duplicated in the teacher. He did his
+duty&mdash;and nothing more.</p>
+
+<p>Selfishness, heartlessness and brutality manipulated the birch. Head was
+all; heart and hand nothing. This was schoolteaching. As a punishment
+for failure to memorize lessons, there were various plans to disgrace
+and discourage the luckless ones. Standing in the corner with face to
+the wall, and the dunce-cap, had given place to a system of fines,
+whereby "ten lines of Vergil for failure to attend prayers," and ten
+more for failure to get the first, often placed the boy in hopeless
+bankruptcy. If he was a fag, or slave of a higher-form boy, cleaning the
+other's boots, scrubbing stairs, running on foolish and needless
+errands, getting cuffs and kicks by way of encouragement, he saw his
+fines piling up and no way ever to clear them off and gain freedom by
+promotion.</p>
+
+<p>Viewed from our standpoint, the thing has a ludicrous bouffe air that
+makes us smile. But to the boy caught in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> the toils it was tragic. To
+work and evolve in an environment of such brutality was impossible to
+certain temperaments. Success lay in becoming calloused and indifferent.
+If the boy of gentle habits and slight physical force did not sink into
+mental nothingness, he was in danger of being bowled over by disease and
+death.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, the physical condition of the pupils was very bad: smallpox,
+fevers, consumption, and breaking out with sores and boils, were common.</p>
+
+<p>Thomas Arnold was thirty-three years old when he was called as head
+master to Rugby. He was married, and babies were coming along with
+astonishing regularity. He had taken priestly orders and was passing
+rich on one hundred pounds a year. Poverty and responsibility had given
+him ballast, and love for his own little brood had softened his heart
+and vitalized his soul.</p>
+
+<p>As a writer and speaker he had made his presence felt at various college
+commencements and clergymen's meetings. He had challenged the brutal,
+indifferent, lazy and so-called disciplinary methods of teaching.</p>
+
+<p>And so far as we know, he is the first man in England to declare that
+the teacher should be the foster-parent of the child, and that all
+successful teaching must be born of love.</p>
+
+<p>The well-upholstered conservatives twiddled their thumbs, coughed, and
+asked: "How about the doctrine of total depravity? Do you mean to say
+that the child<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> should not be disciplined? What does Solomon say about
+the use of the rod? Does the Bible say that the child is good by
+nature?"</p>
+
+<p>But Thomas Arnold could not explain all he knew. Moreover, he did not
+wish to fight the Church&mdash;he believed in the Church&mdash;to him it was a
+divine institution. But there were methods and practises in the Church
+that he would have liked to forget.</p>
+
+<p>"My sympathies go out to inferiority," he said. The weakling often
+needed encouragement, not discipline. The bad boy must be won, not
+suppressed.</p>
+
+<p>In one of these conferences of clergymen, Arnold said:</p>
+
+<p>"I once chided a pupil, a little, pale, stupid boy&mdash;undersized and
+seemingly half-sick&mdash;for not being able to recite his very simple
+lesson. He looked up at me and said with a touch of spirit: 'Sir, why do
+you get angry with me? Do you not know I am doing the best I can?'"</p>
+
+<p>One of the clergymen present asked Arnold how he punished the boy for
+his impudence.</p>
+
+<p>And Arnold replied: "I did not punish him&mdash;he had properly punished me.
+I begged his pardon."</p>
+
+<p>The idea of a teacher begging the pardon of a pupil was a brand-new
+thing.</p>
+
+<p>Several clergymen present laughed&mdash;one scowled&mdash;two sneezed. But a
+Bishop, shortly after this, urged the name of Thomas Arnold as master of
+Rugby, and added to his recommendation this line: "If elected to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
+office he will change the methods of schoolteaching in every public
+school in England."</p>
+
+<p>The ayes had it, and Arnold was called to Rugby. The salary was so-so,
+the pupils between two and three hundred in number&mdash;many were home on
+sick-leave&mdash;the Sixth Form was in charge.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>The genius of Arnold was made manifest, almost as soon as he went to
+Rugby, by the way in which he managed the boys who bullied the whole
+school, and what is worse, did it legally.</p>
+
+<p>Fagging was official.</p>
+
+<p>The Sixth Form was composed of thirty boys who stood at the top, and
+these boys ran the school. They were boys who, by reason of their size,
+strength, aggressiveness and mental ability, got the markings that gave
+them this autocratic power. They were now immune from authority&mdash;they
+were free. In a year they would gravitate to the University.</p>
+
+<p>We can hardly understand now how a bully could get markings through his
+bullying propensities; but a rudimentary survival of the idea may yet be
+seen in big football-players, who are given good marks, and very gentle
+mental massage in class. If the same scholars were small and skinny,
+they would certainly be plucked.</p>
+
+<p>The faculty found freedom in shifting responsibility for discipline to
+the Sixth Form.</p>
+
+<p>Read the diary of Arnold, and you will be amazed on seeing how he fought
+against taking from the Sixth Form the right to bodily chastise any
+scholar in the school that the king of the Sixth Form declared deserved
+it.</p>
+
+<p>If a teacher thought a pupil needed punishment, he turned the luckless
+one over to the Sixth Form. Can we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> now conceive of a system where the
+duty of certain scholars was to whip other scholars? Not only to whip
+them, but to beat them into insensibility if they fought back?</p>
+
+<p>Such was schoolteaching in the public schools of England in Eighteen
+Hundred Thirty.</p>
+
+<p>Against this brutality there was now a growing sentiment&mdash;a piping voice
+bidding the tide to stay!</p>
+
+<p>But now that Arnold was in charge of Rugby, he got the ill-will of his
+directors by declaring that he did not intend to curtail the powers of
+the Sixth Form&mdash;he proposed to civilize it. To try out the new master,
+the Sixth Form, proud in their prowess, sent him word that if he
+interfered with them in any way, they would first "bust up the school,"
+and then resign in a body. Moreover, they gave it out that if any pupil
+complained to the master concerning the Sixth Form, the one so
+complaining would be taken out by night and drowned in the classic Avon.</p>
+
+<p>There were legends among the younger boys of strange disappearances, and
+these were attributed to the swift vengeance of "The Bloody Sixth."</p>
+
+<p>Above the Sixth Form there was no law.</p>
+
+<p>Every scholar took off his hat to a "Sixth." A Sixth uncovered to
+nobody, and touched his cap only to a teacher.</p>
+
+<p>And custom had become so rooted that the Sixth Form was regarded as a
+sort of police necessity&mdash;a caste which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> served the school just as the
+Army served the Church. To reach the Sixth Form were paradise&mdash;it meant
+liberty and power&mdash;liberty to do as you pleased, and power to punish all
+who questioned your authority.</p>
+
+<p>To uproot the power of the Sixth Form was the intent of a few reformers
+in pedagogics.</p>
+
+<p>There were two ways to deal with the boys of the Sixth&mdash;fight them or
+educate them.</p>
+
+<p>Arnold called the Rugby Sixth together and assured them that he could
+not do without their help. He needed them: he wanted to make Rugby a
+model school, a school that would influence all England&mdash;would they help
+him?</p>
+
+<p>The dogged faces before him showed signs of interest. He continued,
+without waiting for their reply, to set before them his ideal of an
+English Gentleman. He persuaded them, melted them by his glowing
+personality, shook hands with each, and sent them away.</p>
+
+<p>The next day he again met them in the same intimate way, and one of the
+boys made bold to assure him that if he wanted anybody licked&mdash;pupils or
+teachers&mdash;they stood ready to do his bidding.</p>
+
+<p>He thanked the boy, but assured him that he was of the opinion that it
+would not be necessary to do violence to any one; he was going to unfold
+to them another way&mdash;a new way, which was very old, but which as yet
+England had not tried.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>he great teacher is not the one who imparts the most facts&mdash;he is the
+one who inspires by supplying a nobler ideal.</p>
+
+<p>Men are superior or inferior just in the ratio that they possess certain
+qualities. Truth, honor, frankness, health, system, industry,
+kindliness, good-cheer and a spirit of helpfulness are so far beyond any
+mental acquisition that comparisons are not only odious, but absurd.</p>
+
+<p>Arnold inspired qualities, and in this respect his work at Rugby forms a
+white milestone on the path of progress in pedagogy.</p>
+
+<p>To an applicant for a position as teacher, Arnold wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>What I want is a man who is a Christian and a gentleman, an active
+man, and one who has commonsense, and understands boys. I do not so
+much care about scholarship, as he will have immediately under him
+the lowest forms in the school, but yet, on second thought, I do
+care about it very much, because his pupils may be in the highest
+forms; and besides, I think that even the elements are best taught
+by a man who has a thorough knowledge of the matter. However, if
+one must give way, I prefer activity of mind and an interest in his
+work to high scholarship; for the one may be acquired far more
+easily than the other. I should wish it also to be understood that
+the new master may be called upon to take boarders in his house, it
+being my intention for the future to require this of all masters as
+I see occasion, that so in time the school-barracks may die a
+natural death. With this to offer, I think I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> have a right to look
+rather high for the man whom I fix upon, and it is my great object
+to get here a society of intelligent, gentlemanly and active men,
+who may permanently keep up the character of the school, and if I
+were to break my neck tomorrow, carry it on.</p></div>
+
+<p>Ideas are in the air, and great inventions are worked out in different
+parts of the world at the same time. Rousseau had written his "Emile,"
+but we are not aware that Arnold ever read it.</p>
+
+<p>And if he had, he probably would have been shocked, not inspired, by its
+almost brutal frankness. The French might read it&mdash;the English could
+not.</p>
+
+<p>Pestalozzi was working out his ideas in Switzerland, and Froebel, an
+awkward farmer lad in Germany, was dreaming dreams that were to come
+true. But Thomas Arnold caught up the threads of feeling in England and
+expressed them in the fabric of his life.</p>
+
+<p>His plans were scientific, but his reasons, unlike those of Pestalozzi,
+will not always stand the test of close analysis. Arnold was true to the
+Church, but he found it convenient to forget much for which the Church
+stood. He went back to a source nearer the fountainhead. All reforms in
+organized religion lie in returning to the primitive type. The religion
+of Jesus was very simple; that of a modern church dignitary is very
+complex. One can be understood; the other has to be explained and
+expounded, and usually several languages are required.</p>
+
+<p>Arnold would have his boys evolve into Christian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> gentlemen. And his
+type of English gentleman he did not get out of books on theology&mdash;it
+was his own composite idea. But having once evolved it, he cast around
+to justify it by passages of Scripture. This was beautiful, too, but
+from our standpoint it wasn't necessary.</p>
+
+<p>From his it was.</p>
+
+<p>A gentleman to him was a man who looked for the best in other people,
+and not for their faults; who overlooked slights; who forgot the good he
+had done; who was courteous, kind, cheerful, industrious and clean
+inside and out; who was slow to wrath, fervent in spirit, serving the
+Lord. And the "Lord" to Arnold was embodied in Church and State.</p>
+
+<p>Arnold used to say that schoolteaching should not be based upon
+religion, but it should be religion. And to him religion and conduct
+were one.</p>
+
+<p>That he reformed Rugby through the Sixth Form is a fact. He infused into
+the big boys the thought that they must help the little ones; that for a
+first offense a lad must never be punished; that he should have the
+matter fully explained to him, and be shown that he should do right
+because it is right, and not for fear of punishment.</p>
+
+<p>The Sixth Form was taught to unbend its dignity and enter into
+fellowship with its so-called inferiors. To this end Arnold set the
+example of playing cricket with the "scrubs."</p>
+
+<p>He never laughed at a poor player nor at a poor scholar. He took dull
+pupils into his own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> house, and insisted that his helpers, the other
+teachers, should do the same. He showed the Sixth Form how much better
+it was to take the part of the weak, and stop bullying the lower forms,
+than to set the example of it in the highest. Before Arnold had been at
+Rugby a year, the Sixth Form had resolved itself into a Reception
+Committee that greeted all newcomers, got them located, introduced them
+to the other boys, showed them the sights, and looked after their wants
+like big brothers or foster-fathers.</p>
+
+<p>Christianity to Arnold was human service. In his zeal to serve, to
+benefit, to bless, to inspire, he never tired.</p>
+
+<p>Such a disposition as this is contagious. In every big business or
+school, there is one man's mental attitude that animates the whole
+institution. Everybody partakes of it. When the leader gets melancholia,
+the shop has it&mdash;the whole place becomes tinted with ultra-marine. The
+best helpers begin to get out, and the honeycombing process of
+dissolution is on.</p>
+
+<p>A school must have a soul, just as surely as a shop, a bank, a hotel, a
+store, a home, or a church has to have. When an institution grows so
+great that it has no soul&mdash;simply a financial head and a board of
+directors&mdash;dry-rot sets in and disintegration in a loose wrapper is at
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>This explains why the small colleges are the best, when they are: there
+is a personality about them, an animating spirit that is pervasive and
+preservative.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thomas Arnold was not a man of vast learning, nor could one truthfully
+say he had a surplus of intellect; but he had soul, plus. He never
+sought to save himself. He gave himself to the boys of Rugby. His heart
+went out to them, he believed in them&mdash;and he believed them even when
+they lied, and he knew they lied. He knew that humanity was sound at
+heart; he believed in the divinity of mankind, and tried hard to forget
+the foolish theology that taught otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>Like Thomas Jefferson, who installed the honor system in the University
+of Virginia, he trusted young men. He made his appeal to that germ of
+goodness which is in every human soul. In some ways he anticipated Ben
+Lindsey in his love for the boy, and might have conjured forth from his
+teeming brain the Juvenile Court, and thus stopped the creation of
+criminals, had his life not been consumed in a struggle with stupidity
+and pedantry gone to seed that cried to him, "Oh, who ever heard of such
+a thing as that!"</p>
+
+<p>The Kindergarten utilizes the propensity to play; and Arnold utilizes
+the thirst for authority. Altruism is flavored with a desire for
+approbation.</p>
+
+<p>The plan of self-government by means of utilizing the Sixth Form was
+quite on the order of our own "George Junior Republic." "A school," he
+said, "should be self-governing and cleanse itself from that which is
+harmful." And again he says: "If a pupil can gratify his natural desire
+for approbation by doing that which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> is right, proper and best, he will
+work to this end instead of being a hero by playing the rowdy. It is for
+the scholars to set the seal of their approval on character, and they
+will do so if we as teachers speak the word. If I find a room in a
+tumult, I blame myself, not the scholars. It is I who have failed, not
+they. Were I what I should be, every one of my pupils would reflect my
+worth. I key the situation, I set the pace, and if my soul is in
+disorder, the school will be in confusion."</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is done without enthusiasm. It is heart that wins, not head, the
+round world over. And yet head must systematize the promptings of the
+heart. Arnold had a way of putting soul into a hand-clasp. His pupils
+never forgot him. Wherever they went, no matter how long they lived,
+they proclaimed the praises of Arnold of Rugby. How much this earnest,
+enthusiastic, loving and sincere teacher has influenced civilization, no
+man can say. But this we know, that since his day there has come about a
+new science of teaching. The birch has gone with the dunce-cap. The
+particular cat-o'-nine-tails that was burned in the house of Thomas
+Arnold as a solemn ceremony, when the declaration was made, "Henceforth
+I know my children will do right!" has found its example in every home
+of Christendom.</p>
+
+<p>We no longer whip children. Schools are no longer places of dread, pain
+and suffering, and we as teachers are repeating with Friedrich Froebel
+the words of the Nazarene, "Suffer little children to come unto me,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> and
+forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."</p>
+
+<p>Also, we say with Thomas Arnold: "The boy is father to the man. A race
+of gentlemen can only be produced by fostering in the boy the qualities
+that make for health, strength and a manly desire to bless, benefit and
+serve the race."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p>
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h2><a name="FRIEDRICH_FROEBEL" id="FRIEDRICH_FROEBEL"></a>FRIEDRICH FROEBEL</h2>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img0420.jpg" alt="FRIEDRICH FROEBEL" title="FRIEDRICH FROEBEL" /></div>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The purpose of the Kindergarten is to provide the necessary and
+natural help which poor mothers require who have to be about their
+work all day, and must leave their children to themselves. The
+occupations pursued in the Kindergarten are the following: free
+play of a child by itself; free play of several children by
+themselves; associated play under the guidance of a teacher;
+gymnastic exercises; several sorts of handiwork suited to little
+children; going for walks; learning music, both instrumental and
+vocal; learning the repetition of poetry; story-telling; looking at
+really good pictures; aiding in domestic occupations; gardening.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;<i>Froebel</i></p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>FRIEDRICH FROEBEL</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgf.jpg" alt="F" title="F" /></div><p>riedrich Froebel was born in a Thuringian village, April Twenty-first,
+Seventeen Hundred Eighty-two. His father was pastor of the Lutheran
+Church. When scarcely a year old his mother died. Erelong a stepmother
+came to fill her place&mdash;but didn't. This stepmother was the kind we read
+about in the "Six Best Sellers."</p>
+
+<p>Her severity, lack of love, and needlessly religious zeal served the
+future Kindergartner a dark background on which to paint a joyous
+picture. Froebel was educated by antithesis. His home was the type
+etched so unforgetably by Colonel Ed. Howe in his "Story of a Country
+Town," which isn't bad enough to be one of the Six Best Sellers.</p>
+
+<p>At the age of ten, out of pure pity, young Friedrich was rescued from
+the cuckoo's nest by an uncle who had a big family of his own and love
+without limit. There was a goodly brood left, so little Friedrich, slim,
+slender, yellow, pensive and sad, was really never missed.</p>
+
+<p>The uncle brought the boy up to work, but treated him like a human
+being, answering his questions, even allowing him to have stick horses
+and little log houses and a garden of his own.</p>
+
+<p>At fifteen his nature had begun to awaken, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> uncle, harkening to
+the boy's wish, apprenticed him for two years to a forester. The young
+man's first work was to make a list of the trees in a certain tract and
+approximate their respective ages. The night before his work began he
+lay awake thinking of the fun he was going to have at the job. In
+after-years he told of this incident in showing that it was absurd to
+try to divorce work from play.</p>
+
+<p>The two years as forester's apprentice, from fifteen to seventeen, were
+really better for him than any university could have been. His
+stepmother's instructions had mostly been in the line of prohibition.
+From earliest babyhood he had been warned to "look out." When he went on
+the street it was with a prophecy that he would get run over by a cart,
+or stolen by the gypsies, or fall off the bridge and be drowned. The
+idea of danger had been dinged into his ears so that fear had become a
+part of the fabric of his nature. Even at fifteen, he took pains to get
+out of the woods before sundown to avoid the bears. At the same time his
+intellect told him there were no bears there. But the shudder habit was
+upon him.</p>
+
+<p>Yet by degrees the work in the woods built up his body and he grew to be
+at home in the forest, both day and night. His duties taught him to
+observe, to describe, to draw, to investigate, to decide. Then it was
+transplantation, and perhaps the best of college life consists in taking
+the youth out of the home environment and supplying him new
+surroundings.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Forestry in America is a brand-new science. To clear the ground has been
+our desire, and so to strip, burn and destroy, saving only such logs as
+appealed to us for "lumber," was the desideratum. But now we are
+seriously considering the matter of tree-planting and tree-preservation,
+and perhaps it would be well to ask ourselves if two years at forestry,
+right out of doors, in contact with Nature, wrestling with the world of
+wood, rock, plant and living things, wouldn't be better for the boy than
+double the time in stuffy dormitories and still more stuffy
+recitation-rooms&mdash;listening to stuffy lectures about things that are
+foreign to life.</p>
+
+<p>I would say that a boy is a savage, but I do not care to give offense to
+fond mammas. To educate him in the line of his likes, as the race has
+been educated, seems sensible and right. How would Yellowstone Park
+answer for a National University, with Captain Jack Crawford, William
+Muldoon, John Burroughs, John Dewey, Stanley Hall and a mixture of men
+of these types, for a faculty?</p>
+
+<p>Froebel thought his two years in the forest saved him from consumption,
+and perhaps from insanity, for it taught him to look out, not in, and to
+lend a hand. At times he was a little too sentimental, as it was, and a
+trifle more of morbidity and sensitiveness would have ruined his life,
+absolutely.</p>
+
+<p>The woods and God's great out-of-doors gave him balance and ballast,
+good digestion and sweet sleep o' nights.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The two years past, he went to Jena, where he had an elder brother. This
+brother was a star scholar, and Friedrich looked up to him as a pleiad
+of pedagogy. He became a professor in a Jena preparatory school and then
+practised medicine; but he never had the misfortune to affront public
+opinion, and so oblivion lured and won him, and took him as her own.</p>
+
+<p>At Jena poor Froebel did not make head. His preparatory work hadn't
+prepared him. He floundered in studies too deep for one of his age, then
+followed some foolish advice and hired a tutor to help him along. Then
+he fell down, was plucked, got into debt, and also into the "carcer,"
+where he boarded for nine weeks at the expense of the State.</p>
+
+<p>In the carcer he didn't catch up with his studies, quite naturally, and
+the imprisonment almost broke his health. Had he been in the carcer for
+dueling, he would have emerged a hero. But debt meant that he had
+neither money nor friends. When he was given his release, as an economic
+move, he slipped away between two days and made his way to the Forestry
+Office, where he applied for a job as laborer. He got it. In a few days
+he was promoted to chief of apprentices.</p>
+
+<p>Forestry meant a certain knowledge of surveying, and this Froebel soon
+acquired. Then came map-making, and that was only fun. From map-making
+to architecture is but a step, and Froebel quit the woods to work as
+assistant to an architect at ten pounds a year and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> found, it was
+confining work, and a trifle more exacting than he had expected&mdash;it
+required a deal of mathematics, and mathematics was Froebel's short
+suit. Froebel was disappointed and so was his employer&mdash;when something
+happened. It usually does in books, and in life, always.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgg.jpg" alt="G" title="G" /></div><p>enius has its prototype. Before Froebel comes Pestalozzi, the Swiss,
+who studied theology and law, and then abandoned them both as futile to
+human evolution, and turned his attention to teaching. Pestalozzi was
+inspired by Jean Jacques Rousseau, and read his "Emile" religiously. To
+teach by natural methods and mix work and study, and make both play, was
+his theme. Pestalozzi believed in teaching out of doors, because
+children are both barbaric and nomadic&mdash;they want to go somewhere. His
+was the Aristotle method, as opposed to those of the closet and the
+cloister. But he made the mistake of saying that teaching should be
+taken out of the hands and homes of the clergy, and then the clergy said
+a few things about him.</p>
+
+<p>Pestalozzi at first met with very meager encouragement. Only poor and
+ignorant people entrusted their children to his care, and some of the
+parents were actually paid in money for the services of the children.
+The thought that the children were getting an education and being useful
+at the same time was quite beyond their comprehension.</p>
+
+<p>Pestalozzi educated by stealth. At first he took several boys and girls
+of eight, ten or twelve years of age, and had them work with him in his
+garden. They cared for fowls, looked after the sheep, milked the cows.
+The master worked with them, and as they worked they talked. Going to
+and from their duties, Pestalozzi would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> call their attention to the
+wild birds, and to the flowers, plants and weeds. They would draw
+pictures of things, make collections of leaves and flowers, and keep a
+record of their observations and discoveries. Through keeping these
+records they learned to read and write and acquired the use of simple
+mathematics. Things they did not understand they would read about in the
+books found in the teacher's library. But books were secondary and quite
+incidental in the scheme of study. When work seemed to become irksome
+they would all stop and play games. At other times they would sit and
+just talk about what their work happened to suggest. If the weather was
+unpleasant, there was a shop where they made hoes and rakes and other
+tools they needed. They also built bird-houses, and made simple pieces
+of furniture, so all the pupils, girls and boys, became more or less
+familiar with carpenter's and blacksmith's tools. They patched their
+shoes, mended their clothing, and at times prepared their own food.</p>
+
+<p>Pestalozzi found that the number of pupils he could look after in this
+way was not more than ten. But to his own satisfaction, at least, he
+proved that children taught by his method surpassed those who were given
+the regular set courses of instruction. His chief difficulties lay in
+the fact that the home did not co-operate with the school, and that
+there was always a tendency to "return to the blanket."</p>
+
+<p>Pestalozzi wrote accounts of his experiments and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> emphasized his belief
+that we should educate through the child's natural activities; also that
+all growth should be pleasurable. His shibboleth was, "From within,
+out." He thought education was a development and not an acquirement.</p>
+
+<p>One of Pestalozzi's little pamphlets fell into the hands of Friedrich
+Froebel, architect's assistant, at Frankfort.</p>
+
+<p>Froebel was twenty-two years old, and Fate had tossed him around from
+one thing to another since babyhood. All of his experiences had been of
+a kind that prepared his mind for the theories that Pestalozzi
+expressed.</p>
+
+<p>Besides that, architecture had begun to pall upon him. "Those who can,
+do; those who can't, teach." This was said in derision, but it holds a
+grain of truth.</p>
+
+<p>Froebel had a great desire to teach. Now, in Frankfort there was a Model
+School or a school for teachers, of which one Herr Gruner was master.
+This school was actually carrying out some of the practical methods
+suggested by Pestalozzi. Quite by accident Gruner and Froebel met.
+Gruner wanted a teacher who could teach by the Pestalozzi methods.
+Froebel straightway applied to Herr Gruner for the position. He was
+accepted as a combination janitor and instructor and worked for his
+board and ten marks, or two and a half dollars a week.</p>
+
+<p>The good-cheer and enthusiasm of Froebel won Gruner's heart. Together
+they discussed Pestalozzi and his works, read all that he had written,
+and opened<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> up a correspondence with the great man. This led to an
+invitation that Froebel should visit him at his farm-school, near
+Yverdon, in Switzerland.</p>
+
+<p>Gruner supplied Froebel the necessary money to replace his very seedy
+clothes for something better, and the young man started away. It was a
+walk of more than two hundred miles, but youth and enthusiasm count such
+a tramp as an enjoyable trifle. Froebel wore his seedy clothes and
+carried his good ones, and so he appeared before the master spick and
+span.</p>
+
+<p>Pestalozzi was sixty years old at this time, and his hopes for the "new
+method" were still high. He had met opposition, ridicule and
+indifference, and had spent most of his little fortune in the fight, but
+he was still at it and resolved to die in the harness.</p>
+
+<p>Froebel was not disappointed in Pestalozzi, and certainly Pestalozzi was
+delighted and a bit amused at the earnestness of the young man.
+Pestalozzi was working in a very economical way, but all the place
+lacked Froebel, in his exuberant imagination, made good.</p>
+
+<p>Froebel found much, for he had brought much with him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgf.jpg" alt="F" title="F" /></div><p>roebel returned to Frankfort from his visit to Pestalozzi, full of
+enthusiasm, and that is the commodity without which no teacher succeeds.
+Gruner allowed him to gravitate. And soon Froebel's room was the central
+point of interest for the whole school. But trouble was ahead for
+Froebel.</p>
+
+<p>He had no college degrees. His pedagogic pedigree was very short. He
+hoped to live down his university record, but it followed him. Gruner's
+school was under government inspection, and the gentlemen with double
+chins, who came from time to time to look the place over, asked who this
+enthusiastic young person was, and why had the worthy janitor and
+ex-forester been so honored by promotion.</p>
+
+<p>In truth, during his life, Froebel never quite escaped the taunt that he
+was not an educated man. That is to say, no college had ever supplied
+him an alphabetic appendage. He had been a forester, a farmer, an
+architect, a guardian for boys and a teacher of women, but no
+institution had ever said officially he was fit to teach men.</p>
+
+<p>Gruner tried to explain that there are two kinds of teachers: people who
+are teachers by nature, and those who have acquired the methods by long
+study. The first, having little to learn, and a love for the child, with
+a spontaneous quality of giving their all, succeed best.</p>
+
+<p>But poor Gruner's explanation did not explain.</p>
+
+<p>Then the matter was gently explained to Froebel, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> he saw that in
+order to hold a place as teacher he must acquire a past. "Time will
+adjust it," he said, and started away on a second visit to Pestalozzi.
+His plan was to remain with the master long enough so he could secure a
+certificate of proficiency.</p>
+
+<p>Again Pestalozzi welcomed the young man, and he slipped easily into the
+household and became both pupil and teacher. His willingness to work&mdash;to
+do the task that lay nearest him&mdash;his good-nature, his gratitude, won
+all hearts.</p>
+
+<p>At this time the plan of sending boys to college with a tutor who was
+both a companion and a teacher, was in vogue with those who could afford
+it. It will be remembered that William and Alexander von Humboldt
+received their early education in this way&mdash;going with their tutor from
+university to university, teacher and pupils entering as special
+students, getting into the atmosphere of the place, soaking themselves
+full of it, and then going on.</p>
+
+<p>And now behold, through Gruner or Pestalozzi or both, a woman of wealth
+with three boys to educate applied to Froebel to come over into
+Macedonia and help her.</p>
+
+<p>It was in Eighteen Hundred Seven that Froebel became tutor in the Von
+Holzhausen family. He was twenty-five years old, and this was his first
+interview with wealth and leisure. That he was hungry enough to
+appreciate it need not be emphasized.</p>
+
+<p>He got goodly glimpses of Gottingen, Berlin, and was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> long enough at
+Jena to rub the blot off the 'scutcheon. A stay at Weimar, in the Goethe
+country, completed the four years' course.</p>
+
+<p>The boys had grown to men, and proved their worth in after-years; but
+whether they had gotten as much from the migrations as their teacher is
+very doubtful. He was ripe for opportunity&mdash;they had had a surfeit of
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Then came war. The order to arms and the rush of students to obey their
+country's call caught Froebel in the patriotic vortex, and he enlisted
+with his pupils.</p>
+
+<p>His service was honorable, even if not brilliant, and it had this
+advantage: the making of two friends, companions in arms, who caught the
+Pestalozzian fever, and lived out their lives preaching and teaching
+"the new method."</p>
+
+<p>These men were William Middendorf and Henry Langenthal. This trinity of
+brothers evolved a bond as beautiful as it is rare in the realm of
+friendship. Forty years after their first meeting, Middendorf gave an
+oration over the dead body of Froebel that lives as a classic, breathing
+the love and faith that endure.</p>
+
+<p>And then Middendorf turned to his work, and dared prison and disgrace by
+upholding the Kindergarten System and the life and example of his dear,
+dead friend. The Kindergarten Idea would probably have been buried in
+the grave with Froebel&mdash;interred with his bones&mdash;were it not for
+Middendorf and Langenthal.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>he first Kindergarten was established in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-six,
+at Blankenburg, a little village near Keilhau. Froebel was then
+fifty-four years old, happily married to a worthy woman who certainly
+did not hamper his work, even if she did not inspire it. He was
+childless, that all children might call him father.</p>
+
+<p>The years had gone in struggles to found Normal Schools in Germany after
+the Pestalozzian and Gruner methods. But disappointment,
+misunderstanding and stupidity had followed Froebel. The set methods of
+the clergy, accusations of revolution and heresy, tilts with pious
+pedants as to the value of dead languages, all combined with his own
+lack of business shrewdness, had wrecked his various ventures.</p>
+
+<p>Froebel's argument that women were better natural teachers than men on
+account of the mother-instinct, brought forth a retort from a learned
+monk to the effect that it was indelicate if not sinful for an unmarried
+female, who was not a nun, to study the natures of children.</p>
+
+<p>Parents with children old enough to go to school would not entrust their
+darlings with the teaching experimenter&mdash;this on the advice of their
+pastors.</p>
+
+<p>Middendorf and Langenthal were still with him, partners in the disgrace
+or failure, for none was willing to give up the fight for education by
+the natural methods.</p>
+
+<p>A great thought and a great word came to them, all at once&mdash;out on the
+mountain-side!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Begin with the children before the school age, and call it the
+Kindergarten!</p>
+
+<p>Hurrah! They shouted for joy, and ran down the hill to tell Frau
+Froebel.</p>
+
+<p>The schools they had started before had been called, "The Institution
+for Teaching According to the Pestalozzi Method and the Natural
+Activities of the Child," "Institution for the Encouragement and
+Development of the Spontaneous Activities of the Pupil," and "Friedrich
+Froebel's School for the Growth of the Creative Instinct Which Makes for
+a Useful Character."</p>
+
+<p>A school with such names, of course, failed. No one could remember it
+long enough to send his child there&mdash;it meant nothing to the mind not
+prepared for it.</p>
+
+<p>What's in a name? Everything. Books sell or become dead stock on the
+name. Commodities the same. Railroads must have a name people are not
+afraid to pronounce.</p>
+
+<p>The officers of the law came and asked to see Froebel's license for
+manufacturing. Others asked as to the nature of his wares, and one
+dignitary called and asked, "Is Herr Pestalozzi in?"</p>
+
+<p>The Kindergarten! The new name took. The children remembered it.
+Overworked mothers liked the word and were glad to let the little
+other-mothers take the children to the Kindergarten, certainly.</p>
+
+<p>Froebel had grown used to disappointments&mdash;he was an optimist by nature.
+He saw the good side of everything, including failure.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He made the best of necessity. And now it was very clear to him that
+education must begin "a hundred years before the child is born." He
+would reach the home and the mother through the children. "It will take
+three generations to prove the truth of the Kindergarten Idea," he said.</p>
+
+<p>And so the songs, the gifts, the games&mdash;all had to be invented,
+defended, tried and tried again. Pestalozzi had a plan for teaching the
+youth; now a plan had to be devised for teaching the child. Love was the
+keystone, and joy, unselfishness and unswerving faith in the Natural or
+Divine impulses of humanity crowned the structure.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgf.jpg" alt="F" title="F" /></div><p>roebel invented the schoolma'am. That is, he discovered the raw product
+and adapted it. He even coined the word, and it struck the world as
+being so very funny that we forthwith adopted it as a term of provincial
+pleasantry and quasi-reproach. The original term used was "school
+mother," but when it reached these friendly shores we translated it
+"schoolmarm." Then we tittered, also sneezed.</p>
+
+<p>Froebel died in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-two. His first Kindergarten was
+not a success until he was nearly sixty years old, but the idea had been
+perfecting itself in his mind more or less unconsciously for over thirty
+years.</p>
+
+<p>He had been thinking, writing, working, experimenting all these years on
+the subject of education, and he had become well-nigh discouraged. He
+had observed that six was the "school age." That is, no child could go
+to school until he was six years old&mdash;then his education began.</p>
+
+<p>But Froebel had been teaching in a country school and boarding 'round,
+and he had discovered that long before this the child had been learning
+by observing and playing, and that these were formative influences,
+quite as potent as actual school.</p>
+
+<p>In the big families where Froebel boarded, he noticed that the older
+girls took charge of the younger ones. So, often a girl of ten, with
+dresses to her knees, carried<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> one baby in her arms and two toddled
+behind her, and this child of ten was really the other-mother. The true
+mother worked in the fields or toiled at her housework, and the little
+other-mother took the children out to play and thus amused them while
+the mother worked.</p>
+
+<p>The desire of Froebel was to educate the race, but what are a few hours
+a day in a schoolroom with a totally unsympathetic home environment!</p>
+
+<p>To reach and interest the mother in the problem of education was
+well-nigh impossible. Toil, deprivation, poverty, had killed all the
+romance and enthusiasm in her heart. She was the victim of arrested
+development; but the little other-mother was a child, impressionable,
+immature, and she could be taught. The home must co-operate with the
+school, otherwise all the school can teach will be forgotten in the
+home. Froebel saw, too, that often the little other-mother was so
+overworked in the care of her charges that she was taken from school.
+Besides, the idea was abroad that education was mostly for boys, anyway.</p>
+
+<p>And here Froebel stepped in and proved himself a law-breaker, just as
+Ben Lindsey was when he inaugurated the juvenile court and waived the
+entire established legal procedure, even to the omission of swearing his
+witnesses, and believed in the little truant even though he lied.
+Froebel told the little other-mothers to come to school anyway and bring
+the babies with them.</p>
+
+<p>And then he set to work showing these girls how to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> amuse, divert and
+teach the babies. And he used to say the babies taught him.</p>
+
+<p>Some of these half-grown girls showed a rare adaptability as teachers.
+They combined mother-love and the teaching instinct.</p>
+
+<p>Froebel utilized their services in teaching others in order that he
+might teach them.</p>
+
+<p>He saw that the teacher is the one who gets the most out of the lessons,
+and that the true teacher is a learner. These girl teachers he called
+school-mothers, and thus was evolved the word and the person.</p>
+
+<p>Froebel founded the first normal and model school for the education of
+women as teachers, and this was less than a hundred years ago.</p>
+
+<p>The years went by and the little mothers had children of their own, and
+these children were the ones that formed the first actual, genuine
+kindergarten.</p>
+
+<p>Also, these were the mothers who formed the first mothers' clubs.</p>
+
+<p>And it was the success of these clubs that attracted the attention of
+the authorities, who could not imagine any other purpose for a club than
+to hatch a plot against the government.</p>
+
+<p>Anyway, a system which taught that women were just as wise, just as good
+and just as capable as men&mdash;just as well fitted by nature to
+teach&mdash;would upset the clergy. If women can break into the school, they
+will also break into the church. Moreover, the encouragement of play was
+atrocious. Mein Gott, or words to that effect, play in a schoolroom!
+Why, even a fool<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> would know that that is the one thing that stood in
+the way of education, the one fly in the pedagogic ointment. If Mynheer
+Froebel would please invent a way to do away with play in schoolrooms,
+he would be given a pension.</p>
+
+<p>The idea that children were good by nature was rank heresy. Where does
+the doctrine of regeneration come in, and how about being born again!
+The natural man is at enmity toward God. We are conceived in sin and
+born in iniquity. The Bible says it again and again.</p>
+
+<p>And here comes a man who thinks he knows more than all the priests and
+scholars who have ever lived, and fills the heads of fool women with the
+idea that they are born to teach instead of to work in the fields and
+keep house and wait on men.</p>
+
+<p>Mein Gott in Himmel, the women know too much, already! If this thing
+keeps on, men will have to get off the earth, and women and children
+will run the world, and do it by means of play. Aha! What does Solomon
+say? Spare the rod and spoil the child. Aber nicht, say these girls.</p>
+
+<p>This thing has got to stop before Germany becomes the joke of
+mankind&mdash;the cat-o'-nine-tails for anybody who uses the word
+kindergarten!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgs.jpg" alt="S" title="S" /></div><p>uffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of
+such is the Kingdom of Heaven." Had the man who uttered these words been
+given a little encouragement, he probably would have inaugurated a
+child-garden and provided a place and environment where little souls
+could have bloomed and blossomed. He was by nature a teacher, and his
+best pupils were women and children. Male men are apt to think they
+already know and so are immune from ideas.</p>
+
+<p>Jerusalem, nineteen hundred years ago, was about where Berlin was in
+Eighteen Hundred Fifty. In both instances the proud priest and the
+aristocrat-soldier were supreme. And both were quite satisfied with
+their own mental attainments and educational methods. They were sincere.
+It was a very similar combination that crucified Jesus to that which
+placed an interdict on Friedrich Froebel, making the Kindergarten a
+crime, and causing the speedy death of one of the gentlest, noblest,
+purest men who have ever blessed this earth.</p>
+
+<p>Froebel was just seventy when he passed out. "His eye was not dimmed nor
+his natural force abated"&mdash;he was filled with enthusiasm and hope as
+never before. His ideas were spreading&mdash;success, at last, was at the
+door, he had interested the women and proved the fitness of women to
+teach&mdash;his mothers' clubs were numerous&mdash;love was the watchword. And in
+the midst of this flowering time, the official order came, without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
+warning, apology or explanation, and from which there was no appeal. The
+same savagery, chilled with fear, that sent Richard Wagner into exile,
+crushed the life and broke the heart of Friedrich Froebel. But these
+names now are the pride and glory of the land that once scorned them.
+Men who govern should be those with a reasonable doubt concerning their
+own infallibility, and an earnest faith in men, women and children. To
+teach is better than to rule. We are all children in the Kindergarten of
+God.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p>
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h2><a name="HYPATIA" id="HYPATIA"></a>HYPATIA</h2>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img0422.jpg" alt="HYPATIA" title="HYPATIA" /></div>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Neo-Platonism is a progressive philosophy, and does not expect to
+state final conditions to men whose minds are finite. Life is an
+unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can
+comprehend. To understand the things that are at our door is the
+best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;<i>Hypatia</i></p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>HYPATIA</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>he father of Hypatia was Theon, a noted mathematician and astronomer of
+Alexandria. He would have been regarded as a very great man had he not
+been cast into the shadow by his daughter. Let male parents beware.</p>
+
+<p>At that time, astronomy and astrology were one. Mathematics was useful,
+not for purposes of civil engineering, but principally in figuring out
+where a certain soul, born under a given planet, would be at a certain
+time in the future.</p>
+
+<p>No information comes to us about the mother of Hypatia&mdash;she was so busy
+with housework that her existence is a matter of assumption or a priori
+reasoning; thus, given a daughter, we assume the existence of a mother.</p>
+
+<p>Hypatia was certainly the daughter of her father. He was her tutor,
+teacher, playmate. All he knew he taught to her, and before she was
+twenty she had been informed by him of a fact which she had previously
+guessed&mdash;that considerable of his so-called knowledge was conjecture.</p>
+
+<p>Theon taught his daughter that all systems of religion that pretend to
+teach the whole truth were to a great degree false and fraudulent. He
+explained to her that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> his own profession of astronomy and astrology was
+only for other people. By instructing her in all religions she grew to
+know them comparatively, and so none took possession of her to the
+exclusion of new truth. To have a religion thrust upon you, and be
+compelled to believe in it or suffer social ostracism, is to be cheated
+of the right to make your own. In degree it is letting another live your
+life. A child does not need a religion until he is old enough to evolve
+it, and then he must not be robbed of the right of independent thinking
+by having a fully-prepared plan of salvation handed out to him. The
+brain needs exercise as much as the body, and vicarious thinking is as
+erroneous as vicarious exercise. Strength comes from personal effort. To
+think is natural, and if not intimidated or coerced the man will evolve
+a philosophy of life that is useful and beneficent.</p>
+
+<p>Religious mania is a result of dwelling on a borrowed religion. If let
+alone no man would become insane on religious topics, for the religion
+he would evolve would be one of joy, laughter and love, not one of
+misery or horror. The religion that contemplates misery and woe is one
+devised by priestcraft for a purpose, and that purpose is to rule and
+rob. From the blunt ways of the road we get a polite system of
+intimidation which makes the man pay. It is robbery reduced to a system,
+and finally piously believed in by the robbers, who are hypnotized into
+the belief that they are doing God's service.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted
+by self-respecting persons as final," said Theon to Hypatia. "Reserve
+your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to
+think at all."</p>
+
+<p>Theon gave lectures, and had private classes in esoterics, wherein the
+innermost secrets of divinity were imparted. Also, he had a plan for the
+transmutation of metals and a recipe for perpetual youth. When he had
+nothing else to do, he played games with his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>At twenty-one Hypatia had mastered the so-called art of Rhetoric, or the
+art of expression by vocal speech.</p>
+
+<p>It will be remembered that the Romans considered rhetoric, or the art of
+the rhetor, or orator, as first in importance. To impress people by your
+personal presence they regarded as the gift of gifts.</p>
+
+<p>This idea seems to have been held by the polite world up to the Italian
+Renaissance, when the art of printing was invented and the written word
+came to be regarded as more important than the spoken. One lives, and
+the other dies on the air, existing only in memory, growing attenuated
+and diluted as it is transferred. The revival of sculpture and painting
+also helped oratory to take its proper place as one of the polite arts,
+and not a thing to be centered upon to the exclusion of all else.</p>
+
+<p>Theon set out to produce a perfect human being; and whether his charts,
+theorems and formulas made up a complete law of eugenics, or whether it
+was dumb<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> luck, this we know: he nearly succeeded. Hypatia was five feet
+nine, and weighed one hundred thirty-five pounds. This when she was
+twenty. She could walk ten miles without fatigue; swim, row, ride
+horseback and climb mountains. Through a series of gentle calisthenics
+invented by her father, combined with breathing exercises, she had
+developed a body of rarest grace. Her head had corners, as once
+Professor O. S. Fowler told us that a woman's head must have, if she is
+to think and act with purpose and precision.</p>
+
+<p>So having evolved this rare beauty of face, feature and bodily grace,
+combined with superior strength and vitality, Hypatia took up her
+father's work and gave lectures on astronomy, mathematics, astrology and
+rhetoric, while he completed his scheme for the transmutation of metals.
+Hypatia's voice was flute-like, and used always well within its compass,
+so as never to rasp or tire the organs. Theon knew the proper care of
+nose and throat, a knowledge which with us moderns is all too rare.
+Hypatia told of and practised the vocal ellipse, the pause, the glide,
+the slide and the gentle, deliberate tones that please and impress. That
+the law of suggestion was known to her was very evident, and certain it
+is that she practised hypnotism in her classes, and seemed to know as
+much about the origin of the mysterious agent as we do now, even though
+she never tagged or labeled it.</p>
+
+<p>One very vital thought she worked out was, that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> young mind is
+plastic, impressionable and accepts without question all that it is
+told. The young receive their ideas from their elders, and ideas once
+impressed upon this plastic plate of the mind can not be removed.</p>
+
+<p>Said Hypatia: "Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and
+miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most
+terrible thing. The child-mind accepts and believes them, and only
+through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after-years relieved
+of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as
+for a living truth&mdash;often more so, since a superstition is so intangible
+you can not get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so
+is changeable."</p>
+
+<p>Gradually, over the mind of the beautiful and gifted Hypatia, there came
+stealing a doubt concerning the value of her own acquirements, since
+these were "acquirements," and not evolutions or convictions gathered
+from experience, but things implanted upon her plastic mind by her
+father.</p>
+
+<p>In this train of thought Hypatia had taken a step in advance of her
+father, for he seems to have had a dogmatic belief in a few things
+incapable of demonstration; but these things he taught to the plastic
+mind, just the same as the things he knew. Theon was a dogmatic liberal.
+Possibly the difference between an illiberal Unitarian and a liberal
+Catholic is microscopic.</p>
+
+<p>Hypatia clearly saw that knowledge is the distilled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> essence of our
+intuitions, corroborated by experience. But belief is the impress made
+upon our minds when we are under the spell of or in subjection to
+another.</p>
+
+<p>These things caused the poor girl many unhappy hours, which fact, in
+itself, is proof of her greatness. Only superior people have a capacity
+for doubting.</p>
+
+<p>Probably not one person in a million ever gets away far enough from his
+mind to take a look at it, and see the wheels go round. Opinions become
+ossified and the man goes through life hypnotizing others, never
+realizing for an instant that in youth he was hypnotized and that he has
+never been able to cast off the hypnosis.</p>
+
+<p>This is what our pious friends mean when they say, "Give me the child
+until he is ten years old and you may have him afterward." That is, they
+can take the child in his plastic age and make impressions on his mind
+that are indelible. Reared in an orthodox Jewish family a child will
+grow up a dogmatic Jew, and argue you on the Talmud six nights and days
+together.</p>
+
+<p>Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist, the same. I once knew an Arapahoe
+Indian who was taken to Massachusetts when four years old. He grew up
+not only with New England prejudices, but with a New England accent, and
+saved his pennies to give to missionaries that they might "convert" the
+Red Men.</p>
+
+<p>When the suspicion seized upon the soul of Hypatia that her mind was but
+a wax impression taken from her father's, she began to make plans to get
+away from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> him. Her efforts at explanations were futile, but when placed
+upon the general ground that she wished to travel, see the world and
+meet people of learning and worth, her father acquiesced and she started
+away on her journeyings. He wanted to go, too, but this was the one
+thing she did not desire, and he never knew nor could know why.</p>
+
+<p>She spent several months at Athens, where her youth, beauty and learning
+won her entry into the houses of the most eminent. It was the same at
+Rome and in various other cities of Italy. Money may give you access to
+good society, but talent is always an open sesame. She traveled like a
+princess and was received as one, yet she had no title nor claim to
+nobility nor station. Beauty of itself is not a credential&mdash;rather it is
+an object of suspicion, unless it goes with intellect.</p>
+
+<p>Hypatia gave lectures on mathematics; and there was a fallacy abroad
+then as there is now that the feminine mind is not mathematical. That
+the great men whom Hypatia met in each city were first amazed and then
+abashed by her proficiency in mathematics is quite probable. Some few
+male professors being in that peculiar baldheaded hypnotic state when
+feminine charms dazzle and lure, listened in rapture as Hypatia
+dissolved logarithms and melted calculi, and not understanding a word
+she said, declared that she was the goddess Minerva, reincarnated. Her
+coldness on near approach confirmed their suspicions.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgj.jpg" alt="J" title="J" /></div><p>ust how long a time Hypatia spent upon her pilgrimage, visiting all of
+the great living philosophers, we do not know. Some accounts have it one
+year, others ten.</p>
+
+<p>Probably the pilgrimages were extended over a good many years, and were
+not continuous. Several philosophers proved their humanity by offering
+to marry her, and a prince or two did likewise, we are credibly
+informed. To these persistent suitors, however, Hypatia gently broke the
+news that she was wedded to truth, which is certainly a pretty speech,
+even if it is poor logic. The fact was, however, that Hypatia never met
+a man whose mind matched her own, otherwise logic would have bolstered
+love, instead of discarding it.</p>
+
+<p>Travel, public speaking and meeting people of note form a strong trinity
+of good things. The active mind is the young mind, and it is more than
+the dream of a poet which declares that Hypatia was always young and
+always beautiful, and that even Father Time was so in love with her that
+he refused to take toll from her, as he passed with his hourglass and
+scythe.</p>
+
+<p>In degree she had followed the example of her great prototype, Plotinus,
+and had made herself master of all religions. She knew too much of all
+philosophies to believe implicitly in any. Alexandria was then the
+intellectual center of the world. People who resided there called it the
+hub of the universe. It was the meeting-place of the East and the West.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And Hypatia, with her Thursday lectures, was the chief intellectual
+factor of Alexandria.</p>
+
+<p>Her philosophy she called Neo-Platonism. It was Plato distilled through
+the psychic alembic of Hypatia. Just why the human mind harks back and
+likes to confirm itself by building on another, it would be interesting
+to inquire. To explain Moses; to supply a key to the Scriptures; to
+found a new School of Philosophy on the assumption that Plato was right,
+but was not understood until the Then and There, is alluring.</p>
+
+<p>And now the pilgrims came from Athens, and Rome, and the Islands of the
+Sea to sit at the feet of Hypatia.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgh.jpg" alt="H" title="H" /></div><p>ypatia was born in the year Three Hundred Seventy, and died in Four
+Hundred Thirty. She exerted an influence in Alexandria not unlike that
+which Mrs. Eddy exerted in Boston. She was a person who divided society
+into two parts: those who regarded her as an oracle of light, and those
+who looked upon her as an emissary of darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Strong men paid her the compliment of using immoderate language
+concerning her teaching. But whether they spoke ill or well of her
+matters little now. The point is this: they screeched, sneezed, or
+smiled on those who refused to acknowledge the power of Hypatia. Some
+professors of learning tried to waive her; priests gently pooh-poohed
+her; and some elevated an eyebrow and asked how the name was spelled.
+Others, still, inquired, "Is she sincere?"</p>
+
+<p>She was the Ralph Waldo Emerson of her day. Her philosophy was
+Transcendentalism. In fact, she might be spoken of as the original
+charter member of the Concord School of Philosophy. Her theme was the
+New Thought, for New Thought is the oldest form of thought of which we
+know. Its distinguishing feature is its antiquity. Socrates was really
+the first to express the New Thought, and he got his cue from
+Pythagoras.</p>
+
+<p>The ambition of Hypatia was to revive the flowering-time of Greece, when
+Socrates and Plato walked arm in arm through the streets of Athens,
+followed by the greatest group of intellectuals the world has ever
+seen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was charged against Hypatia that Aspasia was her ideal, and that her
+ambition was to follow in the footsteps of the woman who was beloved by
+Pericles. If so, it was an ambition worthy of a very great soul.
+Hypatia, however, did not have her Pericles, and never married. That she
+should have had love experiences was quite natural, and that various
+imaginary romances should have been credited to her was also to be
+expected.</p>
+
+<p>Hypatia was nearly a thousand years removed from the time of Pericles
+and Aspasia, but to bridge the gulf of time with imagination was easy.
+Yet Hypatia thought that the New Platonism should surpass the old, for
+the world had had the Age of Augustus to build upon.</p>
+
+<p>Hypatia's immediate prototype was Plotinus, who was born two hundred
+four years after Christ, and lived to be seventy. Plotinus was the first
+person to use the phrase "Neo-Platonism," and so the philosophy of
+Hypatia might be called "The New Neo-Platonism."</p>
+
+<p>To know but one religion is not to know that one.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, superstition consists in this one thing&mdash;faith in one religion,
+to the exclusion of all others.</p>
+
+<p>To know one philosophy is to know none. They are all comparative, and
+each serves as a small arc of the circle. A man living in a certain
+environment, with a certain outlook, describes the things he sees; and
+out of these, plus what he imagines, is shaped his philosophy of life.
+If he is repressed, suppressed, frightened, he will not see very much,
+and what he does see will be out of focus.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> Spiritual strabismus and
+mental myopia are the results of vicarious peeps at the universe. All
+formal religions have taught that to look for yourself was bad. The
+peephole through the roof of his garret cost Copernicus his liberty, but
+it was worth the price.</p>
+
+<p>Plotinus made a study of all philosophies&mdash;all religions. He traveled
+through Egypt, Greece, Assyria, India. He became an "adept", and
+discovered how easily the priest drifts into priestcraft, and fraud
+steps in with legerdemain and miracle to amend the truth. As if to love
+humanity were not enough to recommend the man, they have him turn water
+into wine and walk on the water.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the labyrinth of history and speculation Plotinus returned to
+Plato as a basis or starting-point for all of the truth which man can
+comprehend. Plotinus believed in all religions, but had absolute faith
+in none. It will be remembered that Aristotle and Plato parted as to the
+relative value of poetry and science&mdash;science being the systematized
+facts of Nature. Plotinus comes in and says that both were right, and
+each was like every good man who exaggerates the importance of his own
+calling. In his ability to see the good in all things, Hypatia placed
+Plotinus ahead of Plato, but even then she says: "Had there been no
+Plato, there would have been no Plotinus; although Plotinus surpassed
+Plato, yet it is plain that Plato, the inspirer of Plotinus and so many
+more, is the one man whom philosophy can not spare. Hail, Plato!!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>he writings of Hypatia have all disappeared, save as her words come to
+us, quoted by her contemporaries. If the Essays of Emerson should all be
+swept away, the man would still live in the quotations from his pen,
+given to us by every writer of worth who has put pencil to paper during
+the last fifty years. So lives Sappho, and thus did Charles Kingsley
+secure the composite of the great woman who lives and throbs through his
+book. Legend pictures her as rarely beautiful, with grace, poise and
+power, plus.</p>
+
+<p>She was sixty when she died. History kindly records it forty-five&mdash;and
+all picture her as a beautiful and attractive woman to the last. The
+psychic effects of a gracefully-gowned first reader, with sonorous
+voice, using gesture with economy, and packing the pauses with feeling,
+have never been fully formulated, analyzed and explained. Throngs came
+to hear Hypatia lecture&mdash;came from long distances, and listened
+hungrily, and probably all they took away was what they brought, except
+a great feeling of exhilaration and enthusiasm. To send the hearer away
+stepping light, and his heart beating fast&mdash;this is oratory&mdash;which isn't
+so much to bestow facts, as it is to impart a feeling. This Hypatia
+surely did. Her theme was Neo-Platonism. "Neo" means new, and all New
+Thought harks back to Plato, who was the mouthpiece of Socrates. "Say
+what you will, you'll find it all in Plato." Neo-Platonism is our New
+Thought, and New Thought is Neo-Platonism.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There are two kinds of thought: New Thought and Secondhand Thought. New
+Thought is made up of thoughts you, yourself, think. The other kind is
+supplied to you by jobbers. The distinguishing feature of New Thought is
+its antiquity. Of necessity it is older than Secondhand Thought. All
+genuine New Thought is true for the person who thinks it. It only turns
+sour and becomes error when not used, and when the owner forces another
+to accept it. It then becomes a secondhand revelation. All New Thought
+is revelation, and secondhand revelations are errors half-soled with
+stupidity and heeled with greed.</p>
+
+<p>Very often we are inspired to think by others, but in our hearts we have
+the New Thought; and the person, the book, the incident, merely remind
+us that it is already ours. New Thought is always simple; Secondhand
+Thought is abstruse, complex, patched, peculiar, costly, and is passed
+out to be accepted, not understood. That no one comprehends it is often
+regarded as a recommendation.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, "Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image," is
+Secondhand Thought. The first man who said it may have known what it
+meant, but surely it is nothing to us. However, that does not keep us
+from piously repeating it, and having our children memorize it.</p>
+
+<p>We model in clay or wax, and carve if we can, and give honors to those
+who do, and this is well. This<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> commandment is founded on the fallacy
+that graven images are gods, whatever that is. The command adds nothing
+to our happiness, nor does it shape our conduct, nor influence our
+habits. Everybody knows and admits its futility, yet we are unable to
+eliminate it from our theological system. It is strictly
+secondhand&mdash;worse, it is junk.</p>
+
+<p>Conversely, the admonition, "Be gentle and keep your voice low," is New
+Thought, since all but savages know its truth, comprehend its import,
+and appreciate its excellence.</p>
+
+<p>Dealers in Secondhand Thought always declare that theirs is the only
+genuine, and that all other is spurious and dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>Dealers in New Thought say, "Take this only as it appeals to you as your
+own&mdash;accept it all, or in part, or reject it all&mdash;and in any event, do
+not believe it merely because I say so."</p>
+
+<p>New Thought is founded on the laws of your own nature, and its
+shibboleth is, "Know Thyself."</p>
+
+<p>Secondhand Thought is founded on authority, and its war-cry is, "Pay and
+Obey."</p>
+
+<p>New Thought offers you no promise of paradise or eternal bliss if you
+accept it; nor does it threaten you with everlasting hell, if you don't.
+All it offers is unending work, constant effort, new difficulties;
+beyond each success is a new trial. Its only satisfactions are that you
+are allowing your life to unfold itself according to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> the laws of its
+nature. And these laws are divine, therefore you yourself are divine,
+just as you allow the divine to possess your being. New Thought allows
+the currents of divinity to flow through you unobstructed.</p>
+
+<p>Secondhand Thought affords no plan of elimination; it tends to
+congestion, inflammation, disease and disintegration.</p>
+
+<p>New Thought holds all things lightly, gently, easily&mdash;even thought. It
+works for a healthy circulation, and tends to health, happiness and
+well-being now and hereafter. It does not believe in violence, force,
+coercion or resentment, because all these things react on the doer. It
+has faith that all men, if not interfered with by other men, will
+eventually evolve New Thought, and do for themselves what is best and
+right, beautiful and true.</p>
+
+<p>Secondhand Thought has always had first in its mind the welfare of the
+dealer. The rights of the consumer, beyond keeping him in subjection,
+were not considered. Indeed, its chief recommendation has been that "it
+is a good police system."</p>
+
+<p>New Thought considers only the user. To "Know Thyself" is all there is
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>When a creator of New Thought goes into the business of retailing his
+product, he often forgets to live it, and soon is transformed into a
+dealer in Secondhand Thought.</p>
+
+<p>That is the way all purveyors in secondhand revelation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> begin. In their
+anxiety to succeed, they call in the police. The blessing that is
+compulsory is not wholly good, and any system of morals which has to be
+forced on us is immoral. New Thought is free thought. Its penalty is
+responsibility. You either have to live it, or else lose it. Its reward
+is Freedom.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgi.jpg" alt="I" title="I" /></div><p>t was only a little more than a hundred years before the time of
+Hypatia that the Roman Empire became Christian. When Constantine
+embraced Christianity, all of his loyal subjects were from that moment
+Christians&mdash;Christians by edict, but Pagans by character, for the
+natures of men can not be changed by the passing of a resolution. From
+that time every Pagan temple became a Christian church, and every Pagan
+priest a Christian preacher.</p>
+
+<p>Alexandria was under the rule of a Roman Prefect, or Governor. It had
+been the policy of Rome to exercise great tolerance in religious
+matters. There was a State Religion, to be sure, but it was for the
+nobility or those who helped make the State possible. To look after the
+thinking of the plain people was quite superfluous&mdash;they were allowed
+their vagaries.</p>
+
+<p>The Empire had been bold, brazen, cruel, coercive in its lust for power,
+but people who paid were reasonably safe. And now the Church was coming
+into competition with the State and endeavoring to reduce spoliation to
+a system.</p>
+
+<p>To keep the people down and under by mental suppression&mdash;by the engine
+of superstition&mdash;were cheaper and more effective than to employ force or
+resort to the old-time methods of shows, spectacles, pensions and costly
+diversions. When the Church took on the functions of the State, and
+sought to substitute the gentle Christ for C&aelig;sar, she had to recast the
+teachings<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> of Christ. Then for the first time coercion and love dwelt
+side by side. "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared
+for the devil and his angels," and like passages were slipped into the
+Scriptures as matters of wise expediency. This was continued for many
+hundred years, and was considered quite proper and legitimate. It was
+slavery under a more subtle form.</p>
+
+<p>The Bishop of Alexandria clashed with Orestes the Prefect. To hold the
+people under by psychologic methods was better than the old plans of
+alternate bribery and force&mdash;so argued the Bishop.</p>
+
+<p>Orestes had come under the spell of Hypatia, and the Republic of Plato
+was saturating his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"To rule by fettering the mind through fear of punishment in another
+world is just as base as to use force," said Hypatia in one of her
+lectures. Orestes sat in the audience and as she spoke the words he
+clapped his hands. The news was carried to the Bishop, who gently
+declared that he would excommunicate him.</p>
+
+<p>Orestes sent word back that the Emperor should be informed of how this
+Bishop was misusing his office by making threats of where he could land
+people he did not like, in another world. Neither the Bishop nor the
+Prefect could unseat each other&mdash;both derived their power from the
+Emperor. For Orestes to grow interested in the teachings of Hypatia,
+instead of siding with the Bishop, was looked upon by the loyalists as
+little short of treason.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Orestes tried to defend himself by declaring that the policy of the
+C&aelig;sars had always been one of great leniency toward all schools of
+philosophy. Then he quoted Hypatia to the effect that a fixed, formal
+and dogmatic religion would paralyze the minds of men and make the race,
+in time, incapable of thought.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, the Bishop should keep his place, and not try to usurp the
+functions of the police. In fact, it was better to think wrongly than
+not to think at all. We learn to think by thinking, and if the threats
+of the Bishop were believed at all, it would mean the death of science
+and philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>The Bishop made answer by declaring that Hypatia was endeavoring to
+found a Church of her own, with Pagan Greece as a basis. He intimated,
+too, that the relationship of Orestes with Hypatia was very much the
+same as that which once existed between Cleopatra and Mark Antony. He
+called her "that daughter of Ptolemy," and by hints and suggestions made
+it appear that she would, if she could, set up an Egyptian Empire in
+this same city of Alexandria where Cleopatra once so proudly reigned.</p>
+
+<p>The excitement increased. The followers of Hypatia were necessarily few
+in numbers. They were thinkers&mdash;and to think is a task. To believe is
+easy. The Bishop promised his followers a paradise of ease and rest. He
+also threatened disbelievers with the pains of hell. A promise on this
+side&mdash;a threat on that! Is it not a wonder<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> that a man ever lived who
+put his honest thought against such teaching when launched by men
+clothed in almost absolute authority!</p>
+
+<p>Hypatia might have lived yesterday, and her death at the hands of a mob
+was an accident that might have occurred in Boston, where a respectable
+company once threw a rope around the neck of a good man and ran him
+through streets supposed to be sacred to liberty and free speech.</p>
+
+<p>A mob is made up of cotton waste, saturated with oil, and a focused idea
+causes spontaneous combustion. Let a fire occur in almost any New York
+State village, and the town turns wrecker, and loot looms large in the
+limited brain of the villager. Civilization is a veneer.</p>
+
+<p>When one sees emotionalism run riot at an evangelistic revival, and five
+thousand people are trooping through an undesirable district at
+midnight, how long, think you, would a strong voice of opposition be
+tolerated?</p>
+
+<p>Hypatia was set upon by a religious mob as she was going in her carriage
+from her lecture-hall to her home. She was dragged to a near-by church
+with the intent of making her publicly recant, but the embers became a
+blaze, and the blaze became a conflagration, and the leaders lost
+control. The woman's clothes were torn from her back, her hair torn from
+her head, her body beaten to a pulp, dismembered, and then to hide all
+traces of the crime and distribute the guilt so no one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> person could be
+blamed, a funeral-pyre quickly consumed the remains of what but an hour
+before had been a human being. Daylight came, and the sun's rays could
+not locate the guilty ones.</p>
+
+<p>Orestes made a report of the affair, resigned his office, asked the
+Government at Rome to investigate, and fled from the city. Had Orestes
+endeavored to use his soldiery against the Bishop, the men in the ranks
+would have revolted. The investigation was postponed from time to time
+for lack of witnesses, and finally it was given out by the Bishop that
+Hypatia had gone to Athens, and there had been no mob and no tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>The Bishop nominated a successor to Orestes, and the new official was
+confirmed.</p>
+
+<p>Dogmatism as a police system was supreme.</p>
+
+<p>It continued until the time of Dante, or the Italian Renaissance. The
+reign of Religious Dogmatism was supreme for well-nigh a thousand
+years&mdash;we call it the Dark Ages.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p>
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h2><a name="SAINT_BENEDICT" id="SAINT_BENEDICT"></a>SAINT BENEDICT</h2>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img0424.jpg" alt="SAINT BENEDICT" title="SAINT BENEDICT" /></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>If any pilgrim monk come from distant parts, if with wish as a
+guest to dwell in the monastery, and will be content with the
+customs which he finds in the place, and do not perchance by his
+lavishness disturb the monastery, but is simply content with what
+he finds: he shall be received, for as long a time as he desires.
+If, indeed, he find fault with anything, or expose it, reasonably,
+and with the humility of charity, the Abbot shall discuss it
+prudently, lest perchance God had sent for this very thing. But, if
+he have been found gossipy and contumacious in the time of his
+sojourn as guest, not only ought he not to be joined to the body of
+the monastery, but also it shall be said to him, honestly, that he
+must depart. If he does not go, let two stout monks, in the name of
+God, explain the matter to him.</p></div>
+
+<p>&mdash;<i>St. Benedict</i></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>SAINT BENEDICT</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imga.jpg" alt="A" title="A" /></div><p>s the traveler journeys through Southern Italy, Sicily and certain
+parts of what was Ancient Greece, he will see broken arches, parts of
+viaducts, and now and again a single, beautiful column pointing to the
+sky. All about is the desert or solitary pastures, and only this white
+milestone, marking the path of the centuries and telling in its own
+silent, solemn and impressive way of a day that is dead.</p>
+
+<p>In the Fifth Century a monk called Simeon the Syrian, and known to us as
+Simeon Stylites, having taken the vow of chastity, poverty and
+obedience, began to fear greatly lest he might not be true to his
+pledge. And that he might live absolutely beyond reproach, always in
+public view, free from temptation, and free from the tongue of scandal,
+he decided to live in the world, and still not be of it. To this end he
+climbed to the top of a marble column, sixty feet high, and there on the
+capstone he lived a life beyond reproach.</p>
+
+<p>Simeon was then twenty-four years old.</p>
+
+<p>The environment was circumscribed, but there was outlook, sunshine,
+ventilation&mdash;three good things. But beyond these the place had certain
+disadvantages. The capstone was a little less than three feet square,
+so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> Simeon could not lie down. He slept sitting, with his head bowed
+between his knees, and indeed, in this posture he passed most of his
+time. Any recklessness in movement, and he would have slipped from his
+perilous position and been dashed to death upon the stones beneath.</p>
+
+<p>As the sun arose he stood up, just for a few moments, and held his arms
+out in greeting, blessing and prayer. Three times during the day did he
+thus stretch his cramped limbs, and pray with his face to the East. At
+such times those who stood near shared in his prayers, and went away
+blessed and refreshed.</p>
+
+<p>How did Simeon get to the top of the column?</p>
+
+<p>Well, his companions at the monastery, a mile away, said he was carried
+there in the night by a miraculous power; that he went to sleep in his
+stone cell and awoke on the pillar. Other monks said that Simeon had
+gone to pay his respects to a fair lady, and in wrath God had caught him
+and placed him on high. The probabilities are, however, Terese, as
+viewed by an unbeliever, that he shot a line over the column with a bow
+and arrow and then drew up a rope ladder and ascended with ease.</p>
+
+<p>However, in the morning the simple people of the scattered village saw
+the man on the column. All day he stayed there. The next day he was
+still there.</p>
+
+<p>The days passed, with the scorching heat of the midday sun, and the cool
+winds of the night.</p>
+
+<p>Still Simeon kept his place.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The rainy season came on. When the nights were cold and dark, Simeon sat
+there with bowed head, and drew the folds of his single garment, a black
+robe, over his face.</p>
+
+<p>Another season passed; the sun again grew warm, then hot, and the
+sand-storms raged and blew, when the people below almost lost sight of
+the man on the column. Some prophesied he would be blown off, but the
+morning light revealed his form, naked from the waist up, standing with
+hands outstretched to greet the rising sun.</p>
+
+<p>Once each day, as darkness gathered, a monk came with a basket
+containing a bottle of goat's milk and a little loaf of black bread, and
+Simeon dropped down a rope and drew up the basket.</p>
+
+<p>Simeon never spoke, for words are folly, and to the calls of saint or
+sinner he made no reply. He lived in a perpetual attitude of adoration.</p>
+
+<p>Did he suffer? During those first weeks he must have suffered terribly
+and horribly. There was no respite nor rest from the hard surface of the
+rock, and aching muscles could find no change from the cramped and
+perilous position. If he fell, it was damnation for his soul&mdash;all were
+agreed as to this.</p>
+
+<p>But man's body and mind accommodate themselves to almost any condition.
+One thing at least, Simeon was free from economic responsibilities, free
+from social cares and intrusion. Bores with sad stories of unappreciated
+lives and fond hopes unrealized, never broke in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> upon his peace. He was
+not pressed for time. No frivolous dame of tarnished fame sought to
+share with him his perilous perch. The people on a slow schedule, ten
+minutes late, never irritated his temper. His correspondence never got
+in a heap.</p>
+
+<p>Simeon kept no track of the days, having no engagements to meet, or
+offices to perform, beyond the prayers at morn, midday and night.</p>
+
+<p>Memory died in him, the hurts became calluses, the world-pain died out
+of his heart, to cling became a habit. Language was lost in disuse. The
+food he ate was minimum in quantity; sensation ceased, and the dry, hot
+winds reduced bodily tissue to a dessicated something called a
+saint&mdash;loved, feared and reverenced for his fortitude.</p>
+
+<p>This pillar, which had once graced the portal of a pagan temple, again
+became a place of pious pilgrimage, and people flocked to Simeon's rock,
+so that they might be near when he stretched out his black, bony hands
+to the East, and the spirit of Almighty God, for a space, hovered close
+around.</p>
+
+<p>So much attention did the abnegation of Simeon attract that various
+other pillars, marking the ruins of art and greatness gone, in that
+vicinity, were crowned by pious monks. Their thought was to show how
+Christianity had triumphed over heathenism. Imitators were numerous.
+About that time the Bishops in assembly asked, "Is Simeon sincere?" To
+test the matter of Simeon's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> pride, he was ordered to come down from his
+retreat.</p>
+
+<p>As to his chastity, there was little doubt, and his poverty was beyond
+question; but how about obedience to his superiors?</p>
+
+<p>The order was shouted up to him in a Bishop's voice&mdash;he must let down
+his rope, draw up a ladder, and descend.</p>
+
+<p>Straightway Simeon made preparation to obey. And then the Bishops
+relented and cried, "We have changed our minds, and now order you to
+remain!"</p>
+
+<p>Simeon lifted his hands in adoration and thankfulness and renewed his
+lease.</p>
+
+<p>And so he lived on and on and on&mdash;he lived on the top of that pillar,
+never once descending, for thirty years.</p>
+
+<p>All of his former companions grew a-weary; one by one they died, and the
+monastery-bells tolled their requiem as they were laid to rest. Did
+Simeon hear the bells and say, "Soon it will be my turn"?</p>
+
+<p>Probably not. His senses had flown, for what good were they! The young
+monk who now at eventide brought the basket with the bottle of goat's
+milk and the loaf of dry bread was born since Simeon had taken his place
+on the pillar. "He has always been there," the people said, and crossed
+themselves hurriedly.</p>
+
+<p>But one evening when the young monk came with his basket, no line was
+dropped from above. He waited and then called aloud, but all in vain.</p>
+
+<p>When sunrise came, there sat the monk, his face between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> his knees, the
+folds of his black robe drawn over his head. But he did not rise and
+lift his hands in prayer.</p>
+
+<p>All day he sat there, motionless.</p>
+
+<p>The people watched in whispered silence. Would he arise at sundown and
+pray, and with outstretched hands bless the assembled pilgrims?</p>
+
+<p>But as they watched a vulture came sailing slowly through the blue
+ether, and circled nearer and nearer; and off on the horizon was
+another&mdash;and still another, circling nearer and nearer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgi.jpg" alt="I" title="I" /></div><p>n humanity's march of progress there are a vanguard and a rearguard.
+The rearguard dwindles away into a mob of camp-followers, who follow for
+diversion and to escape starvation. Both the vanguard and the rearguard
+are out of step with the main body, and therefore both are despised by
+the many who make up the rank and file.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, out of pity, the main body supplies ambulances and
+"slum-workers," who aim to do "good"&mdash;but this good is always for the
+rearguard and the camp-followers, never for those who lead the line of
+march, and take the risk of ambush and massacre.</p>
+
+<p>But this scorn of the vanguard has its recompense&mdash;often delayed, no
+doubt&mdash;but those who compose it are the only ones whom history honors
+and Clio crowns. If they get recognition in life, it is wrung tardily
+from an ungrateful and ungracious world. And this is the most natural
+thing in the world, and it would be a miracle if it were otherwise, for
+the very virtue of the vanguard consists in that their acts outrun human
+sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Benedict was a scout of civilization. In his day he led the vanguard. He
+found the prosperous part of the world given over to greed and gluttony.
+The so-called religious element was in partnership with fraud,
+superstition, ignorance, incompetence, and an asceticism like that of
+Simeon Stylites, leading to nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Men know the good and grow through experience. To<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> realize the
+worthlessness of place and position and of riches, you must have been at
+some time in possession of these. Benedict was born into a rich Roman
+family, in the year Four Hundred Eighty. His parents wished to educate
+him for the law, so he would occupy a position of honor in the State.</p>
+
+<p>But at sixteen years of age, at that critical time when nerves are
+vibrating between manhood and youth, Benedict cut the umbilical domestic
+cord, and leaving his robes of purple and silken finery, suddenly
+disappeared, leaving behind a note which was doubtless meant to be
+reassuring and which was quite the reverse, for it failed to tell where
+his mail should be forwarded. He had gone to live with a hermit in the
+fastnesses of the mountains. He had desired to do something peculiar,
+strange, unusual, unique and individual, and now he had done it.</p>
+
+<p>Back of it all was the Cosmic Urge, with a fair slip of a girl, and
+meetings by stealth in the moonlight; and then those orders from his
+father to give up the girl, which he obeyed with a vengeance.</p>
+
+<p>Monasticism is a reversal or a misdirection of the Cosmic Urge. The will
+brought to bear in fighting temptation might be a power for good, if
+used in co-operation with Nature. But Nature to the priestly mind has
+always been bad. The worldly mind was one that led to ruin. To be good
+by doing good was an idea the monkish mind had not grasped. His way of
+being good was to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> be nothing, do nothing&mdash;just resist. Successfully to
+fight temptation, the Oriental Monk regarded as an achievement.</p>
+
+<p>One day, out on that perilous and slippery rock on the mountain-side,
+Benedict ceased saluting the Holy Virgin long enough to conceive a
+thought. It was this: To be acceptable to God, we must do something in
+the way of positive good for man. To pray, to adore, to wander, to
+suffer, is not enough. We must lighten the burdens of the toilers and
+bring a little joy into their lives. Suffering has its place, but too
+much suffering would destroy the race.</p>
+
+<p>Only one other man had Benedict ever heard of, who put forth this
+argument, and that was Saint Jerome; and many good men in the Church
+regarded Saint Jerome as little better than an infidel. Saint Jerome was
+a student of the literature of Greece and Rome&mdash;"Pagan Books," they were
+called, "rivals of the Bible." Saint Anthony had renounced and denounced
+these books and all of the learning of Paganism. Saint Anthony, the
+father of Christian Monasticism, dwelt on the terrible evils of
+intellectual pride, and had declared that the joys of the mind were of a
+more subtle and devilish character than those of the flesh.</p>
+
+<p>Anthony, assisted by inertia, had won the ear of the Church; and dirt,
+rags and idleness had come to be regarded as sacred things.</p>
+
+<p>Benedict took issue with Anthony.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>he Monastic Impulse is a protest against the Cosmic Urge, or
+reproductive desire.</p>
+
+<p>Necessarily, the Cosmic Urge is older than the Monastic Impulse; and
+beyond a doubt it will live to dance on the grave of its rival.</p>
+
+<p>The Cosmic Urge is the creative instinct. It includes all planning,
+purpose, desire, hope, unrest, lust and ambition. In its general sense,
+it is Unfulfilled Desire. It is the voice constantly crying in the ears
+of success, "Arise and get thee hence, for this is not thy rest." It is
+the dissatisfaction with all things done&mdash;it is our Noble Discontent. In
+its first manifestation it is sex. In its last refinement it means the
+love of man and woman, with the love of children, the home-making sense,
+and an appreciation of art, music and science&mdash;which is love with seeing
+eyes&mdash;as natural results.</p>
+
+<p>Deity creates through its creatures, of which man is the highest type.
+But man, evolving a small spark of intellect, sits in judgment on his
+Creator, and finds the work bad. Of all the animals, man is the only one
+so far known that criticizes his environment, instead of accepting it.
+And we do this because, in degree, we have abandoned intuition before we
+have gotten control of intellect.</p>
+
+<p>The Monastic Instinct is the disposition ever to look outside of
+ourselves for help. We expect the Strong Man to come and give us
+deliverance from our woes. All nations have legends of saviors and
+heroes who came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> and set the captives free, and who will come again in
+greater glory and mightier power and even release the dead from their
+graves.</p>
+
+<p>The Monastic Impulse is based on world-weariness, with disappointed
+love, or sex surfeit, which is a phase of the same thing, as a basis.
+Its simplest phase is a desire for solitude.</p>
+
+<p>"Mon" means one, and monasticism is simply living alone, apart from the
+world. Gradually it came to mean living alone with others of a like mind
+or disposition.</p>
+
+<p>The clan is an extension of the family, and so is originally a monastic
+impulse. The Group Idea is a variant of monasticism, but if it includes
+men and women, it always disintegrates with the second generation, if
+not before, because the Cosmic Urge catches the members, and they mate,
+marry and swing the circle.</p>
+
+<p>Ernst Haeckel has recently intimated his belief that monogamy, with its
+exclusive life, is a diluted form of monasticism. And his opinion seems
+to be that, in order to produce the noblest race possible, we must have
+a free society, with a State that reverences and respects maternity and
+pensions any mother who personally cares for her child.</p>
+
+<p>Monasticism and enforced monogamy often carry a disrespect, if not a
+positive contempt, for motherhood, especially free motherhood. We breed
+from the worst, under the worst conditions, and as punishment God has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>
+made us a race of scrubs. If we had deliberately set about to produce
+the worst, we could not do better.</p>
+
+<p>It will at once be seen that a penalized free motherhood is exactly like
+the Monastic Impulse&mdash;a protest and a revolt from the Cosmic Urge. Hence
+Ernst Haeckel, harking back to Schopenhauer, declares that we must place
+a premium upon parenthood, and the State must subsidize all mothers,
+visiting them with tenderness, gentleness, sanctity and respect, before
+we shall be able to produce a race of demigods.</p>
+
+<p>The Church has aureoled and sainted the men and women who have
+successfully fought the Cosmic Urge. Emerson says, "We are strong as we
+ally ourselves with Nature, and weak as we fight against her or
+disregard her." Thus does Emerson place himself squarely in opposition
+to the Church, for the Church has ever looked upon Nature as a lure and
+a menace to holy living.</p>
+
+<p>Now, is it not possible that the prevalency of the Monastic Impulse is
+proof that it is in itself a movement in the direction of Nature?
+Possibly its error lies in swinging out beyond the norm. A few great
+Churchmen have thought so. And the greatest and best of them, so far as
+I know, was Benedict. Through his efforts, monasticism was made a power
+for good, and for a time, at least, it served society and helped
+humanity on its way.</p>
+
+<p>That the flagellants, anchorites, or monks with iron collars, and Simeon
+Stylites living his life perched on a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> pillar, benefited the human
+race&mdash;no one would now argue. Simeon was simply trying to please God&mdash;to
+secure salvation for his soul. His assumption was that the world was
+base and bad. To be pure in heart you must live apart from it. His
+persistence was the only commendable thing about him, and this was the
+persistence of a diseased mind. It was beautiful just as the persistence
+of cancer is beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Benedict, while agreeing that the world was bad, yet said that our
+business was to make it better, and that everything we did which was
+done merely to save our own souls, was selfish and unworthy. He
+advocated that, in order to save our own souls, we should make it our
+business to save others. Also, to think too much about your own soul was
+to have a soul not worth saving. If this life is a preparation for
+another, as Simeon thought, he was not preparing himself for a world
+where we would care to go. The only heaven in which any sane man or
+woman, be he saint or sinner, would care to live, would be one whose
+inhabitants would be at liberty to obey the Cosmic Urge just as freely
+as the Monastic Impulse, and where one would be regarded as holy as the
+other. So thought Saint Benedict.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>here is a natural law, well recognized and defined by men who think,
+called the Law of Diminishing Returns, sometimes referred to as the Law
+of Pivotal Points.</p>
+
+<p>A man starts in to take systematic exercise, and he finds that his
+strength increases. He takes more exercise and keeps on until he gets
+"stale"&mdash;that is, he becomes sore and lame. He has passed the Pivotal
+Point and is getting a Diminishing Return.</p>
+
+<p>In running a railroad-engine a certain amount of coal is required to
+pull a train of given weight a mile, say at the rate of fifty miles an
+hour. You double the amount of your coal, and simple folks might say you
+double your speed, but railroad men know better. The double amount of
+coal will give you only about sixty miles instead of fifty. Increase
+your coal and from this on you get a Diminishing Return. If you insist
+on eighty miles an hour, you get your speed at a terrific cost and a
+terrible risk.</p>
+
+<p>Another case: Your body requires a certain amount of food&mdash;the body is
+an engine; food is fuel; life is combustion. Better the quality and
+quantity of your food, and up to a certain point you increase your
+strength. Go on increasing your food and you get death. Loan money at
+five per cent and your investment is reasonably secure and safe. Loan
+money at ten per cent and you do not double the returns; on the
+contrary, you have taken on so much risk. Loan money at twenty per cent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>
+and you will probably lose it; for the man who borrows at twenty per
+cent does not intend to pay if he can help it.</p>
+
+<p>The Law of Diminishing Returns was what Oliver Wendell Holmes had in
+mind when he said, "Because I like a pinch of salt in my soup is no
+reason I wish to be immersed in brine."</p>
+
+<p>Churches, preachers and religious denominations are good things in their
+time and place, and up to a certain point. Whether for you the church
+has passed the Pivotal Point is for you yourself to decide. But remember
+this, because a thing is good up to a certain point, or has been good,
+is no reason why it should be perpetuated. The Law of Diminishing
+Returns is the natural refutation of the popular fallacy that because a
+thing is good you can not get too much of it.</p>
+
+<p>It is this law that Abraham Lincoln had in mind when he said, "I object
+to that logic which seeks to imply that because I wish to make the negro
+free, I desire a black woman for a wife."</p>
+
+<p>Benedict had spent five years in resistance before it dawned upon him
+that Monasticism carried to a certain point was excellent and fraught
+with good results, but beyond that it rapidly degenerated.</p>
+
+<p>To carry the plan of simplicity and asceticism to its summit and not go
+beyond was now his desire.</p>
+
+<p>To withdraw from society he felt was a necessity, for the petty and
+selfish ambitions of Rome were revolting.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> But the religious life did
+not for him preclude the joys of the intellect. In his unshaven and
+unshorn condition, wearing a single garment of goatskin, he dared not go
+back to his home. So he proceeded to make himself acceptable to decent
+people. He made a white robe, bathed, shaved off his beard, had his hair
+cut, and putting on his garments, went back to his family. The life in
+the wilderness had improved his health. He had grown in size and
+strength and he now, in his own person, proved that a religious recluse
+was not necessarily unkempt and repulsive.</p>
+
+<p>His people greeted him as one raised from the dead. Crowds followed him
+wherever he went. He began to preach to them and to explain his
+position.</p>
+
+<p>Some of his old school associates came to him.</p>
+
+<p>As he explained his position, it began more and more to justify itself
+in his mind. Things grow plain as we analyze them to others&mdash;by
+explaining to another the matter becomes luminous to ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>To purify the monasteries and carry to them all that was good and
+beautiful in the classics, was the desire of Benedict. His wish was to
+reconcile the learning of the past with Christianity, which up to that
+time had been simply ascetic. It had consisted largely of repression,
+suppression and a killing-out of all spontaneous, happy, natural
+impulses.</p>
+
+<p>Very naturally, he was harshly criticized, and when he went back to the
+cave where he had dwelt and tried to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> teach some of his old companions
+how to read and write, they flew first at him, and then from him. They
+declared that he was the devil in the guise of a monk; that he wished to
+live both as a monk and as a man of the world&mdash;that he wanted to eat his
+cake and still keep it. By a sort of divine right he took control of
+affairs, and insisted that his companions should go to work with him,
+and plant a garden and raise vegetables and fruits, instead of depending
+upon charity or going without.</p>
+
+<p>The man who insists that all folks shall work, be they holy or secular,
+learned or illiterate, always has a hard road to travel. Benedict's
+companions declared that he was trying to enslave them, and one of them
+brewed a poison and substituted it for the simple herb tea that Benedict
+drank. Being discovered, the man and his conspirators escaped, although
+Benedict offered to forgive and forget if they would go to work.</p>
+
+<p>Benedict adhered to his new inspiration with a persistency that never
+relaxed&mdash;the voice of God had called to him that he must clear the soil
+of the brambles and plant gardens.</p>
+
+<p>The thorn-bush through which he had once rolled his naked body, he now
+cut down and burned. He relaxed the vigils and limited the prayers and
+adorations to a few short exercises just before eating, sleeping and
+going to work. He divided the day into three parts&mdash;eight hours for
+work, eight hours for study, eight hours<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> for sleep. Then he took
+one-half hour from each of these divisions for silent prayer and
+adoration. He argued that good work was a prayer, and that one could
+pray with his heart and lips, even as his hands swung the ax, the sickle
+or the grub-hoe. All that Benedict required of others, he did himself,
+and through the daily work he evolved a very strong and sturdy physique.
+From the accounts that have come to us he was rather small in stature,
+but in strength he surpassed any man in his vicinity.</p>
+
+<p>Miraculous accounts of his physical strength were related, and in the
+minds of his simple followers he was regarded as more than a man, which
+shows us that the ideals of what a man should be, or might be, were not
+high. We are told that near Benedict's first monastery there was a very
+deep lake, made in the time of Nero by damming up a mountain stream.
+Along this lake the brambles and vines had grown in great confusion.
+Benedict set to work to clear the ground from this lake to his
+monastery, half a mile up the hillside. One day a workman dropped an ax
+into the lake. Benedict smiled, his lips moved in prayer and the ax came
+to the surface. The story does not say that Benedict dived to the bottom
+and brought up the ax, which he probably did. The next day the owner of
+the ax fell into the water, and the story goes that Benedict walked out
+on the water and brought the man in on his shoulders. We who do not
+believe that the age of miracles has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> passed, can well understand how
+Benedict was an active, agile and strong swimmer, and that through the
+natural powers which he evolved by living a sane and simple life, he was
+able to perform many feats which peasants round about considered
+miraculous. Benedict had what has been called the Builder's Itch. He
+found great joy in planning, creating and constructing. He had an eye
+for architecture and landscape-gardening. He utilized the materials of
+old Roman temples to construct Christian churches, and from the same
+quarry he took stone and built a monastery. A Roman ruin had a lure for
+him. It meant building possibilities. He stocked the lake with fish, and
+then made catches that rivaled the parable of the loaves and fishes.
+Only the loaves of Benedict were made from the wheat he himself raised,
+and the people he fed were the crowds who came to hear him preach the
+gospel he himself practised&mdash;the gospel of work, moderation and the
+commonsense exercise of head, hand and heart.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>o Benedict came twelve disciples. But further applications becoming
+numerous, to meet the pressure Benedict kept organizing them into groups
+of twelve, appointing a superior over each group. In order to prove his
+sense of equality, he had but eleven besides himself in the monastery.
+He recognized that leadership was a necessity; but the clothes he wore
+were no better than, and the food he ate no different from, what the
+others had. Yet to enforce discipline, rules were made and instant
+obedience was exacted. Benedict took his turn at waiting on the table
+and doing the coarsest tasks.</p>
+
+<p>Were it not for the commonsense methods of life, and the element of
+human service, the Christian monastery and probably Christianity itself
+would not have survived. The dogma of religion was made acceptable by
+blending it with a service for humanity. And even to this day the
+popular plan of proving the miracles of the Old Testament to have been
+actual occurrences is to point to the schools, hospitals and orphan
+asylums that Christian people have provided.</p>
+
+<p>In the efforts of Benedict to combine the life of unselfish service with
+intellectual appreciation of classic literature, he naturally was
+misunderstood. Several times he came near having serious collisions with
+the authorities of the Church at Rome.</p>
+
+<p>His preaching attracted the jealous attention of certain churchmen, but
+as he was not a priest, the Pope refused<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> to take notice of his supposed
+heresies.</p>
+
+<p>An effort was made to compel him to become a priest, but Benedict
+refused on the plea that he was not worthy. The fact was, however, that
+he did not wish to be bound by the rules of the Church.</p>
+
+<p>In one sense, his was a religion inside a religion, and a slight
+accident might have precipitated an opposition denomination, just as the
+Protestant issue of Luther was an accident, and the Methodism of the
+Wesleys, another.</p>
+
+<p>Several times the opposition, in the belief that Benedict was an enemy
+of the Church, went so far as to try to kill him. And once a few pious
+persons in Rome induced a company of wanton women to go out to
+Benedict's monastery and disport themselves through his beautiful
+grounds. This was done with two purposes in view; one was to work the
+direct downfall of the Benedictines, with the aid of the trulls, and the
+other was to create a scandal among the visitors, who would carry the
+unsavory news back to Rome and supply the gossips raw stock.</p>
+
+<p>Benedict was so deeply grieved by the despicable trick that he retired
+to his former home, the cave in the hillside, and there remained without
+food for a month.</p>
+
+<p>But during this time of solitude his mind was busy with new plans. He
+now founded Monte Cassino. The site is halfway between Rome and Naples,
+and the white, classic lines of the buildings can be seen from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>
+railroad. There on the crags, from out of a mass of green, has been
+played out for more than a thousand years the drama of religious life.
+Death by fire and sword has been the fate of many of the occupants. But
+the years went by, new men came, the ruins were repaired, and again the
+cloisters were trodden by pious feet of holy men. Goths, Lombards,
+Saracens, Normans, Spaniards, Teutons, and finally came Napoleon
+Bonaparte, who confiscated the property, making the place his home for a
+brief space. Later he relented and took it from the favorite upon whom
+he had bestowed it and gave it back to the Church. It then remained a
+Benedictine monastery until the edict of Eighteen Hundred Sixty-six,
+which, with the help of Massini and Garibaldi, made the monastery in
+Italy a thing of the past. The place is now a school&mdash;a school with a
+co-ed proviso. Thus passes away the glory of the world, in order that a
+greater glory shall appear.</p>
+
+<p>Six hundred years before Benedict's day, on the site of the cloister of
+Monte Cassino stood a temple to Apollo, and just below was a grove
+sacred to Venus.</p>
+
+<p>Two hundred years before Benedict's time the Goths had done their work
+so well that even the walls of the temple to Apollo were razed, and the
+sacred grove became the home of wild beasts.</p>
+
+<p>To this deserted place came Benedict and eleven men, filled with a holy
+zeal to erect on this very spot an edifice worthy of the living God.
+Here the practical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> builder and the religious dreamer combined. If you
+are going to build a building, why not build upon the walls already laid
+and with blocks ready hewn and fashioned!</p>
+
+<p>The Monte Cassino monastery of Benedict rivaled in artistic beauty the
+temple that it replaced.</p>
+
+<p>Man is a building animal, and the same Creative Energy that impelled the
+Greeks and later the Romans to plan, devise, toil and build, now played
+through the good monk Benedict. His desire to create was a form of the
+great Cosmic Urge, that lives eternally and is building in America a
+finer, better and nobler religion than the world has ever seen&mdash;a
+Religion of Humanity&mdash;a religion of which at times Benedict caught vivid
+passing glimpses, as one sees at night the landscape brilliantly
+illumined by the lightning's flash.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>he motto of Benedict was "Ecce Labora." These words were carved on the
+entrance to every Benedictine Monastery.</p>
+
+<p>The monastic idea originated in the Orient, where Nature placed no
+special penalty on idleness. Indeed, labor may have been a curse in
+Asia. Morality is crystallized expediency, and both, as we are told, are
+matters of geography, as well as time.</p>
+
+<p>And truth it is, that north of the Mediterranean idleness is the curse,
+not labor.</p>
+
+<p>The rule of Benedict was not unlike that of the Shakers, for near every
+monastery was a nunnery. The association of men and women, although
+quite limited, was better for both than their absolute separation, as
+with the Trappists, who regard it as a sin even to look upon the face of
+a woman.</p>
+
+<p>The thrift and industry of the Benedictines was worthy of Ann Lee and
+our friends at Lebanon. A man who works eight hours, with fair
+intelligence, and does not set out to make consumption and waste the
+business of his life, grows rich. Thoreau was right&mdash;an hour a day will
+support you. But Thoreau was wrong in supposing men work only to get
+food, clothing and shelter. To work only an hour a day is to evolve into
+a loafer. We work not to acquire, but to become.</p>
+
+<p>The group idea, cemented by able leadership and a religious concept, is
+always successful. The Mormons, Quakers, Harmonyites, Economites, and
+the Oneida<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> Community, all grew very rich, and surpassed their neighbors
+not only in point of money, but in health, happiness, intelligence and
+general mental grasp.</p>
+
+<p>Brook Farm failed for lack of a leader with business instinct; but as it
+was, it divided up among its members a rich legacy of spiritual and
+mental assets. In family life, or what is called "Society," there is a
+constant danger through rivalry, not in well-doing or in human service,
+but in conspicuous waste and conspicuous leisure. The religious rite of
+feet-washing is absolutely lost, both as a rite and as an idea. In
+truth, "good society" is essentially predatory in its instincts. In
+communal life, or the life of a group, service and not waste is the
+watchword. This must be so, since every group, at its beginning, is held
+together through the thought of service. To meet and unite on a basis of
+jealous rivalry and sharp practise is unthinkable, for these are the
+things that disintegrate the group.</p>
+
+<p>It is an economic law that a group founded upon and practising the idea
+of each member giving all, wins all. Benedict's idea of "Ecce labora"
+made every Benedictine monastery a center of wealth. Work stops
+bickering, strife and undue waste. It makes for health and strength. The
+reward of work is not immunity from toil, but more work&mdash;an increased
+capacity for effort.</p>
+
+<p>De Tocqueville gave this recipe for success: Subdue yourself&mdash;Devote
+yourself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That is to say, subdue the ego to a point where it gets its
+gratification in concentrating on unselfish service. He who does this
+always succeeds, for not only is he engaged upon a plan of life in which
+there is little competition, but he is working in line with a divine
+law, the law of mutuality, which provides that all the good you do to
+others, you do for yourself.</p>
+
+<p>Benedictine monasticism leads straight to wealth and great power. The
+Abbot of the group became a Baron. "I took the vow of poverty, and it
+led to an income of twenty thousand pounds a year. I took the vow of
+obedience and find myself ruler of fifty towns and villages." These are
+the words which Sir Walter Scott puts into the mouth of an Abbot, who
+became a Baron through the simple law of which I have hinted. And in his
+novel of "The Abbot," Sir Walter gives a tragic picture of how power and
+wealth can be lost as well as won. Feudalism began with the rule of the
+monastery.</p>
+
+<p>Benedict was one of the world's great Captains of Industry. And like all
+great entrepreneurs, he won through utilizing the efforts of others. In
+picking his Abbots, or the men to be "father" of each particular group,
+he showed rare skill. These men learned from him and he learned from
+them. One of his best men was Cassiodorus, the man who evolved the
+scheme of the scriptorium. "To study eight hours a day was not enough,"
+said Cassiodorus. "We should copy the great works of literature so that
+every monastery shall have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> a library as good as that which we have at
+Monte Cassino." He himself was an expert penman, and he set himself the
+task of teaching the monks how to write as well as how to read. "To
+write beautifully is a great joy to our God," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Benedict liked the idea, and at once put it into execution. Cassiodorus
+is the patron saint of every maker of books who loves his craft.</p>
+
+<p>The systematic work of the scriptorium originated in the brain of
+Cassiodorus, and he was appointed by Benedict to go from one monastery
+to another and inform the Abbot that a voice had come from God to
+Benedict saying that these precious books must be copied, and presented
+to those who would prize them.</p>
+
+<p>Cassiodorus had been a secretary of state under the Emperor Theodoric,
+and he had also been a soldier. He was seventy years of age when he came
+under the influence of Benedict, through a chance visit to Monte
+Cassino. Benedict at first ordered him to take an ax and work with the
+servants at grubbing out underbrush and preparing a field for planting.
+Cassiodorus obeyed, and soon discovered that there was a joy in
+obedience he had before never guessed. His name was Brebantus Varus, but
+on his declaring he was going to remain and work with Benedict, he was
+complimented by being given the name of Cassiodorus, suggested by the
+word Cassinum or Cassino. Cassiodorus lived to be ninety-two, and was
+one of the chief factors, after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> Benedict himself, in introducing the
+love of art and beauty among the Benedictines.</p>
+
+<p>Near Monte Cassino was a nunnery presided over by Scholastica, the twin
+sister of Benedict.</p>
+
+<p>Renan says that the kinship of Scholastica and Benedict was a spiritual
+tie, not one of blood. If so, we respect it none the less. Saint Gregory
+tells of the death of Benedict thus:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Benedict was at the end of his career. His interview with Totila
+took place in Five Hundred Forty-two, in the year which preceded
+his death; and from his earliest days of the following year, God
+prepared him for his last struggle, by requiring from him the
+sacrifice of the most tender affection he had retained on earth.
+The beautiful and touching incident of the last meeting of Benedict
+and his twin sister, Scholastica, is a picture long to remember. At
+the window of his cell, three days after her death, Benedict had a
+vision of his dear sister's soul entering heaven in the form of a
+snowy dove. He immediately sent for the body and placed it in a
+sepulcher which he had already prepared for himself, that death
+might not separate those whose souls had always been united in God.</p>
+
+<p>The death of his sister was the signal of departure for himself. He
+survived her forty days. He announced his death to several of his
+monks, then far from Monte Cassino. A violent fever having seized
+him, he caused himself on the sixth day of his sickness to be
+carried to the chapel of Saint John the Baptist; he had before
+ordered the tomb in which his sister already slept to be opened.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There, supported in the arms of his disciples, he received the holy
+Viaticum, then placing himself at the side of the open grave, but
+at the foot of the altar, and with his arms extended towards
+heaven, he died, standing, muttering a last prayer. Such a
+victorious death became that great soldier of God. He was buried by
+the side of his beloved Scholastica, in a sepulcher made on the
+spot where stood the altar of Apollo, which had been replaced by
+another to our beloved Savior.</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>In the very year, and at the same time, that Justinian and Theodora were
+preparing the Justinian Code, Benedict was busy devising "The Monastic
+Rules." Benedict did not put his rules forth as final, but explained
+that they were merely expedient for their time and place. In this he was
+singularly modest. If one can divest himself of the thought that there
+was anything "holy" or "sacred" about these communal groups called
+"monasteries," and then read these rules, he will see that they were
+founded on a good knowledge of economics and a very stern commonsense.</p>
+
+<p>Humanity was the same a thousand years ago that it is now. Benedict had
+to fight inertia, selfishness and incipient paranoia, just as does the
+man who tries to introduce practical socialism today. A few extracts
+from this very remarkable Book of Rules will show the shrewd Connecticut
+wisdom of Benedict. To hold the dowdy, indifferent, slipshod and
+underdone in their proper places, so they could not disturb or destroy
+the peace, policy and prosperity of the efficient, was the task of
+Benedict.</p>
+
+<p>Benedict says: "Written and formal rules are necessary only because we
+are all faulty men, with a tendency towards selfishness and disorder.
+When men become wise, and also unselfish, there will be no need of rules
+and laws."</p>
+
+<p>The Book of Rules by Benedict is a volume of more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> than twenty thousand
+words. Its scope reveals an insight that will appeal to all who have had
+to do with socialistic experiments, not to mention the management of
+labor-unions. Benedict was one of the industrial leaders of the world.
+His life was an epoch, and his influence still abides.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span></p>
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h2><a name="MARY_BAKER_EDDY" id="MARY_BAKER_EDDY"></a>MARY BAKER EDDY</h2>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img0426.jpg" alt="MARY BAKER EDDY" title="MARY BAKER EDDY" /></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The chief stones in the temple of Christian Science are to be found
+in the following postulates: that Life is God, good and not evil;
+that Soul is sinless, not to be found in the body; that Spirit is
+not and can not be materialized; that Life is not subject to death;
+that the spiritual real man has no consciousness of material life
+or death.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;<i>Mary Baker Eddy</i></p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>MARY BAKER EDDY</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgl.jpg" alt="L" title="L" /></div>
+<p>et the fact be here stated that Mary Baker Eddy was the founder of
+Christian Science. This woman lived long and well.</p>
+
+<p>She was alert, earnest, highly intelligent, receptive. She was ever
+discovering. We know this because she put out a new message every little
+while, or modified an old one, having come in the meantime into a
+position to get a nearer and clearer view of the fact. The last edition
+of "Science and Health" is a different book from the first one.</p>
+
+<p>Christian Science is not a fixed, formed, fossilized, ossified
+structure. Possibly it may become so. But the probabilities are it will
+grow, expand, advance. Life and growth consist in eliminating dead
+matter and evolving new tissue. The institution, commercial, artistic,
+social, political, religious, that has ceased to grow has begun to
+disintegrate.</p>
+
+<p>Christian Scientists do not flee the world, renouncing and denouncing
+it. As a people they are well, happy, hopeful, enthusiastic and
+successful. I am fairly well informed on the history of all great
+religions. In degree I know the character of intellect possessed by the
+folks who make or made up their membership. And my opinion is, that no
+religion that has ever existed contained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> so large a percentage of
+intelligent people, competent, safe and sane, as does Christian Science.
+There is an adage to the effect that a prophet is not without honor save
+in his own country.</p>
+
+<p>In the case of Mary Baker Eddy, the adage just quoted goes awry. Mrs.
+Eddy as long as she lived, retained the good-will of Concord, Boston and
+Brookline, where she chose to make her home. Very many of the leading
+men and women of each of these cities are Christian Scientists.</p>
+
+<p>The Christian Science Church at Concord cost upwards of two hundred
+thousand dollars, and was the gift of Mrs. Eddy. Over the entrance, cut
+deep in granite, are the words, "Presented by Mary Baker Eddy,
+Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science." As to the argument that
+the truths of Christian Science have always been known and practised by
+a few, Mrs. Eddy issued her direct challenge. In all of her literature
+she set out the unqualified statement that she was "The Discoverer and
+the Founder." She was never apologetic; she assumed no modesty she did
+not feel; she spoke as one having authority, as did Moses of old, "Thus
+saith the Lord!"</p>
+
+<p>She entered into no joint debates; she did not answer back. This intense
+conviction which admits of no parley was one of the secrets of her
+power. For many years the Billingsgate Calendar was directed at her upon
+every possible occasion.</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Eddy won out, and legislation and courts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> were compelled to
+whistle in their hounds. Your right to keep well in your own way is now
+fully recognized. Doctors are not liable when they give innocent
+sweetened water and call it medicine, nor do we place Christian
+Scientists on trial if their patients die, any more than we do the M.
+D.'s.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, Mrs. Eddy influenced both of the so-called sciences of medicine
+and theology. Even those who are perfectly willing to deny her, and
+noisily discard her tenets, are debtors to her.</p>
+
+<p>Homeopathy modified the dose of all the Allopaths; and Christian Science
+has attenuated the Hahnemannian theory of attenuations, it having been
+found that the blank tablet often cures quite as effectively as the one
+that is medicated. Christian Science does not shout, rant, defy nor
+preach. It is poised, silent, sure, and the flagellants, like the
+dervishes, are noticeable by their absence.</p>
+
+<p>The Reverend Billy Sunday is not a Christian Scientist. The Christian
+Scientist does not cut into the grape; specialize on the elevated
+spheroid; devote his energies to bridge whist; cultivate the scandal
+microbe; join the anvil chorus, nor shake the red rag of wordy warfare.
+He is diligent in business, fervent in spirit, and accepts what comes
+without protest, finding it good.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Baker Eddy lived a human life. Through her manifold experiences she
+gathered gear&mdash;she was a very great and wise woman. She was so great
+that she kept<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> her own counsel, received no visitors, made no calls, had
+no Thursday, wrote no letters, and even never went to the church that
+she presented to her native town. Mrs. Eddy's step was ever light, her
+form erect&mdash;a slender, handsome, queenly woman. When she passed on, in
+December, Nineteen Hundred Ten, in her ninetieth year, she looked scarce
+more than sixty. Her face showed experience, but not extreme age. The
+day I saw her, a few years before her death, she was dressed all in
+white satin and looked like a girl going to a ball.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes were not dimmed nor her face wrinkled.</p>
+
+<p>Her hat was a milliner's dream; her gloves came to the elbow and were
+becomingly wrinkled; her form was the form of Bernhardt. Her secretary
+stood by the carriage-door, his head bared. He did not offer his hand to
+the lady nor seek to assist her into the carriage. He knew his
+business&mdash;a sober, silent, muscular, bronzed, farmer-like man, who
+evidently saw everything and nothing.</p>
+
+<p>He closed the carriage-door and took his seat by the side of the driver,
+who wore no livery. The men looked like brothers. The big, brown horses
+started slowly away; they wore no blinders nor check-reins&mdash;they, too,
+had banished fear. The coachman drove with a loose rein. The next day I
+waited in Concord to see Mrs. Eddy again. At exactly two-fifteen the
+big, brown, slow-going horses turned into Main Street. Drays pulled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> in
+to the curb, automobiles stopped, people stood on the street corners,
+and some&mdash;the pilgrims&mdash;uncovered.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Eddy sat back in the carriage, holding in her white-gloved hands a
+big spray of apple-blossoms, the same half-smile of satisfaction on her
+face&mdash;the smile of Pope Leo the Thirteenth. The woman was a veritable
+queen, and some of her devotees, not without reason, called her the
+Queen of the World.</p>
+
+<p>Some doubtless prayed to her&mdash;and may yet, for that matter. Mrs. Eddy
+was married three times. First, to Colonel George W. Glover, an
+excellent and worthy man, who was the father of her only child, a son.
+On the death of Glover, the child was taken by Glover's mother and
+secreted so effectually that his mother did not see him until he was
+thirty-four years old, and the father of a family.</p>
+
+<p>Her second husband was Daniel Patterson, who was not only a rogue but
+also a fool&mdash;a flashy one, who turned the head of a lone, lorn young
+widow, who certainly was not infallible in judgment. In two years the
+wife got a divorce from him, on the grounds of cruelty and desertion, at
+Salem, Massachusetts. Her third marital venture was Doctor Asa G. Eddy,
+a practising physician&mdash;a man of much intelligence and worth. From him
+Mrs. Eddy learned that the Science of Medicine was not much of a science
+after all. Mrs. Eddy used to say that her husband was her first convert;
+certain it is that Dr. Eddy gave up his practise to assist<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> his wife in
+putting before the world the unreality of disease. That he did not fully
+grasp the idea is shown by the fact that he died of pneumonia. This,
+however, did not shake the faith of Mrs. Eddy in the doctrine that
+sickness was an error of mortal mind. For a good many years Mrs. Eddy
+drove the memory of her two good husbands tandem, hitched by a hyphen,
+thus: Mary Baker Glover-Eddy. Many a woman has joined her own name to
+that of her husband, but what woman ever before so honored the two men
+she had loved by coupling their names! Getting married is a bad habit,
+Mrs. Eddy would probably have said, but you have to get married to find
+it out.</p>
+
+<p>In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-nine, Mrs. Eddy organized the First Church
+of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, and became its pastor. In Eighteen
+Hundred Eighty-one, being then sixty years of age, she founded the
+Massachusetts Metaphysical College, in Boston. For fifteen years she had
+been speaking in public, affirming that health was our normal condition
+and that as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. From her forty-fifth
+to her sixtieth year she was glad to speak for what was offered,
+although I believe that even then she had discarded the good old
+priestly plan of taking up a collection. The Metaphysical College was
+started to prepare students for teaching Mrs. Eddy's doctrines.</p>
+
+<p>The business ability of the woman was shown in thus organizing and
+allowing no one to teach who was not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> duly prepared. These students were
+obliged to pay a good stiff tuition, which fact made them appreciative.
+In turn they went out and taught; all students paid the tidy sum of one
+hundred dollars for the lessons, which fee was later cut to fifty.
+Salvation may be free, but Christian Science costs money. The
+theological genus piker, with his long, wrinkled, black coat, his collar
+buttoned behind, and his high hat, has been eliminated.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Eddy was manager of the best-methodized institution in the world,
+save only the Roman Catholic Church and the Standard Oil Company. How
+many million copies of "Science and Health" have been sold, no man can
+say. What percentage of the money from the lessons went to Mrs. Eddy,
+only an Armstrong Committee could ascertain, and really it was nobody's
+business but hers.</p>
+
+<p>That Mrs. Eddy had some very skilful helpers goes without saying. But
+here is the point&mdash;she selected them, and reigned supreme. That the
+student who paid fifty dollars got his money's worth, I have no doubt.
+Not that he understood the lessons, but he received a feeling of courage
+and a oneness with the whole which caused health to flow through his
+veins and his heart to beat with joy. The lesson might have been to him
+a jumble of words, but he lived in hopes that he would soon grow to a
+point where the lines were luminous.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime, all he knew was that whereas he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> once lame he could
+now walk. Even the most bigoted and prejudiced now agree that the cures
+of Christian Science are genuine. People who think they have trouble
+have it, and it is the same with pain. Imagination is the only
+sure-enough thing in the world. Mrs. Eddy's doctrines abolish pain and
+therefore abolish poverty, for poverty, in America at least, is a
+disease. Mrs. Eddy's chief characteristics were:</p>
+
+<p>First, Love of Beauty as manifest in bodily form, dress and
+surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>Second, A zeal for system, order and concentrated effort on the
+particular business she undertakes.</p>
+
+<p>Third, A dignity, courage, self-sufficiency and self-respect that comes
+from a belief in her own divinity.</p>
+
+<p>Fourth, An economy of time, money, materials, energy and emotion that
+wastes nothing, but which continually conserves and accumulates.</p>
+
+<p>Fifth, A liberality, when advisable, which is only possible to those who
+also economize.</p>
+
+<p>Sixth, Yankee shrewdness, great commonsense, all flavored with a dash of
+mysticism and indifference to physical scientific accuracy.</p>
+
+<p>In other words, Christian Science is a woman's science&mdash;she knows! And
+it is good because it is good&mdash;this is a science sound enough for
+anybody&mdash;I guess so! Christian Science is scientific, but not for the
+reasons that its promoters maintain. Male Christian Scientists do not
+growl and kick the cat.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Women Christian Scientists do not nag. Christian Scientists do not have
+either the grouch or the meddler's itch. Among them there are no
+dolorosos, grumperinos or beggars. They respect all other denominations,
+having a serene faith that all will yet see the light&mdash;that is to say,
+adopt their doctrines. The most radical among old-school doctors could
+not deny that Mrs. Eddy's own life was conducted on absolutely
+scientific lines. She never answered the telephone, never fussed nor
+fumed.</p>
+
+<p>She hired big, safe people and paid them a big wage. She gave her
+coachman fifty dollars a week, and her cook in proportion, and thus
+secured people who gave her peace. She went to bed with the birds and
+awoke with the dawn. At seven o'clock she was at her desk, dictating
+answers to the very few letters her secretary deemed it advisable she
+should see. She had breakfast at nine o'clock&mdash;ate anything she liked,
+taking her time and fletcherizing. After breakfast she worked upon her
+manuscripts until it was time for the daily ride.</p>
+
+<p>At four o'clock she dined&mdash;two meals a day being the rule. If, however,
+she cared to dissipate a little and eat three meals a day, she was not
+afraid to do so.</p>
+
+<p>She knew her horses and cows and sheep by name, and gave requests as to
+their care, holding that the laws of mind obtain as to dumb animals the
+same as man. Dogs she did not care for, and if she ever had an aversion
+it would have been cats. Her servants she called "My<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> helpers."
+Christian Scientists very naturally believe in the equality of the
+sexes. When girl babies are born to them they bless God, just the same
+as when boy babies are born. In truth they bless God for everything, for
+to them all is beautiful and all is good. Paid preachers they do not
+have; they do not believe in priests or certain men who are nearer to
+God than others. All have access to Eternal Truth, and thus is the
+ecclesiastic excluded. To eliminate the theological middleman is well,
+and as for the Church itself, surely Mrs. Eddy eliminated it also; for
+she never entered a church, or at least not more than once a year, and
+then it was only in deference to the architect. A Church! Is it
+necessary? For herself Mrs. Eddy said, No.</p>
+
+<p>But as for others, she said, Yes, a church is good for those who need
+it. Mrs. Eddy was the most successful author in the world, or, indeed,
+that the world has ever seen. No other writer ever made so much money as
+she, none is more devoutly read.</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare, with his fortune of a quarter of a million dollars, fades
+into comparative failure; and Arthur Brisbane, with his salary of
+seventy-five thousand a year, is an office-boy compared with this regal
+woman, who gave fifty thousand dollars a year for good roads.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>he valuable truths and distinguishing features of Christian Science are
+not to be found in Mrs. Eddy's books, but in Mrs. Eddy's life. She was a
+much bigger woman than she was a writer. Emerson says that every great
+institution is the lengthened shadow of a single man. Every great
+business enterprise has a soul&mdash;one man's spirit animates, pervades and
+tints the whole. You can go into any hotel or store, and behold! the
+nature or character of the owner or manager is everywhere proclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>You do not have to see the man, and the bigger the institution the less
+need is there for the man to show himself. His work proclaims him, just
+as a farmer's livestock all moo, whinny and squeal his virtues&mdash;or lack
+of them. As a boy of ten I learned to know all of our neighbors by their
+horses. The horses of a drunkard, blanketless, hungry, shivering,
+outside of the village tavern, do they not proclaim the poor, despised
+owner within?</p>
+
+<p>You can walk through the passenger-coaches of a train made up at a
+terminal and read the character unmistakably of the general
+passenger-agent. The soul of John Wesley ran through Methodism and made
+it what it was. The Lutheranism of Luther yet lives; Calvinism the same;
+and the soul of John Knox still goes marching on, carrying the
+Presbyterian banner.</p>
+
+<p>Every religion partakes of the nature of its founder, until this
+religion is mixed with that of another and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> its character lost, as
+happened to the religion of Christ when it was launched by Paul and was
+finally fused with Paganism by the Roman Emperor, Constantine.</p>
+
+<p>Christian Science is as yet the lengthened shadow of Mary Baker Eddy.
+Her own immediate, personal pupils are still teaching, and her life and
+characteristics impressed upon them are given out to each and all. Every
+phase of life is solved by answering the question, "What would Mrs. Eddy
+do?" Mrs. Eddy's ideas about dress, housekeeping, business, food,
+health, the management of servants, the care of children&mdash;all are
+blended into a composite, and this composite is the Christian Scientist
+as we see and know him.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that Mrs. Eddy was methodical, industrious, economical,
+persevering, courageous, hopeful, helpful, neat in her attire and
+smiling, makes all Christian Scientists exactly so. She did not play
+cards and indulge in the manifold silliness of so-called good society,
+and neither do they. Indeed, that one thing which has been referred to
+as "the plaster-of-Paris smile," the one feature in Christian Science to
+which many good people object, is the direct legacy of Mrs. Eddy to her
+pupils. "Science and Health" says nothing about it; no edict has been
+put forth recommending it; but all good Christian Scientists take it
+on&mdash;the smile that refuses to vacate the premises. And to some it is
+certainly very becoming. Mrs. Eddy's self-reliant, silent, smiling
+personality has given the key to conduct for the hundreds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> of thousands
+of people who love her and revere her memory.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Eddy was a rare good listener. She did not argue. Once upon a time,
+indeed, she was guilty of waving the red flag of wordy warfare; but the
+passing of the years brought her wisdom, and then her only answer to
+impatience was the quiet smile. As for eating, her table always had
+enough, but it stopped short of surfeit; the service was dainty, and all
+these things are now seen in the homes of Christian Scientists. Always
+in the home of a good Christian Scientist the bathroom is as complete as
+the library, and both are models of good housekeeping, seemingly always
+in order for the inspection committee.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Eddy did not say much about hot water, soap and clean towels; but
+the idea, regardless of the non-existence of matter, is fixed in the
+consciousness of every Christian Scientist that absolute bodily
+cleanliness, fresh linen and fresh air are not only next to godliness,
+but elements of it. All of which you could never work out of "Science
+and Health with Key to the Scriptures" in a lifetime of study, any more
+than you could mine and smelt the Westminster Catechism out of the
+Bible.</p>
+
+<p>The vital truths of right living come to us as a precious heritage from
+the character of this great woman. She, herself, perhaps may not have
+known this; but before she wrote her book and formulated her religion,
+she lived her life. Her book was an endeavor to explain her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> life, and
+as her life grew better, stronger and more refined, she changed her
+book. Her book reacted on her life, and the person who got the most good
+out of "Science and Health" was Mary Baker Eddy herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Science and Health" is mystical and beautifully human. The author's oar
+often fails to catch the water. For instance, she tries to show that
+animal magnetism, spiritualism, mental science, theosophy, agnosticism,
+pantheism and infidelity are all bad things and opposed to the science
+of "true being."</p>
+
+<p>This statement presupposes that animal magnetism, infidelity, theosophy
+and agnosticism are specific entities or things, whereas they are only
+labels that are clapped quite indiscriminately on empty casks or full
+ones; and the contents of the casks may be sea-water or wine, and are
+really unknown to both mortal and divine mind, whatever these things
+are. Theosophists like Annie Besant, Spiritualists like Alfred Russel
+Wallace, Agnostics like Huxley and Ingersoll, are very noble and
+beautiful people. They are good neighbors and useful citizens.</p>
+
+<p>"Science and Health" is an attempt to catch and hold in words the
+secrets of an active, honest, healthful, seeking, restless, earnest
+life, and as such is more or less of a failure.</p>
+
+<p>Our actions are right, but our reasons seldom are.</p>
+
+<p>Christian Science as a plan of life, embodying the great yet simple
+virtues, is beautiful. "Science and Health<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> with Key to the Scriptures"
+does not explain the Scriptures. The book, as an attempt to explain and
+crystallize truth, is a failure. It ranks with that great mass of
+literature, written and copied at such vast pains and expense, bearing
+the high-sounding title, "Writings of the Saints."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imga.jpg" alt="A" title="A" /></div><p>ll publishers are familiar with inspired manuscripts. Such work always
+has one thing in common&mdash;unintelligibility. Good literature is lucid to
+the average mind. In fact, that is its distinguishing feature. We
+understand what the man means. No able writer uses the same word over
+and over with varying sense. Alfred Henry Lewis and William Marion Reedy
+use the mortal mind, and their work is understandable. You can sit in
+judgment on their conclusions and weigh, sift and decide for yourself.
+They make an appeal to your intellect.</p>
+
+<p>But you can not sit in judgment on "Science and Health," because its
+language is not the language we use in our common, every-day intercourse
+with one another. It speaks of Christ as a person, a principle, a
+spirit, a motive; as "Truth"; as one who was born of one parent or no
+parents; who lived, died, or never lived, never was born, and can not
+die.</p>
+
+<p>Metaphysics is an attempt to explain a thing and thereby evade the
+trouble of understanding it. You throw the burden of proof on the other
+fellow&mdash;and make him believe he does not comprehend because he is too
+stupid. This is not fair!</p>
+
+<p>Language is simply an agreement between people that certain vocal
+sounds, or written symbols, shall stand for certain ideas, thoughts or
+things. Inspired writers string intelligent words together in an
+unintelligent manner, and thereby give the reader an opportunity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> to
+read anything into them that his preconceived thoughts may dictate.
+Metaphysical gibberish is a rudimentary survival of the practise of
+reading to the people in a dead language. The doctors continue the plan
+by writing prescriptions in Latin.</p>
+
+<p>I once worked in a studio where the boys scraped their palette-knives on
+a convenient board. One day we took the board out and had it framed
+under glass, with a double, deep-shadow box. We gave it the best place
+in the studio and labeled it, "A Sunset at Sea&mdash;an Impression in
+Monochrome."</p>
+
+<p>The picture attracted much attention and great admiration from certain
+symbolists. It also created so much controversy that we were obliged to
+take it down in the interests of amity.</p>
+
+<p>To assume that God inspired the Scriptures, and did the work so ill
+that, after more than two thousand years, it was necessary to inspire
+another person to make a "Key" to them, is hardly worthy of our serious
+attention. If God, being all-wise, all-powerful and all-loving, turns
+author, why does He produce work so muddy that it requires a "Key"?</p>
+
+<p>Individuals may use a code that requires a "Key," because they wish to
+keep their matter secret from others. There may be for them a penalty on
+truth, but why Deity should write in a secret language, and then wait
+two thousand years before making the matter plain, and then to one
+single woman in Boston, is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> incomprehensible. What the world wants now
+is a Key to "Science and Health." In reading a book, the question that
+interests us is not, "Is it inspired?" but, "Is it true?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Eddy's ranks are recruited almost entirely from Orthodox
+Christianity. On page six hundred eight of "Science and Health," pocket
+edition of Nineteen Hundred Six, a lawyer gives testimony to the good he
+has gotten from Christian Science, and explains that he has long been a
+member of the Episcopal Church. He is delighted to know that he has not
+had to relinquish any of his old faith, but has simply kept the old and
+added to it the new.</p>
+
+<p>This explains, in great degree, the popularity of Christian Science.
+People cling to the religious superstitions into which they were born.
+Mrs. Eddy's recruits were not from theosophy, spiritualism, agnosticism,
+unitarianism, universalism or infidelity. You can't give a freethinker a
+book with a statement of what he must find in it.</p>
+
+<p>He has acquired the habit of thinking for himself.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Eddy had no faith in Darwin, Spencer or Haeckel. She quoted Moses,
+Jesus and Paul to disprove the evolutionists, sat back and smiled
+content, innocently unaware that citations from Scriptures are in no
+sense proof to free minds. All of the Bible she wished to waive, she
+did. The cruelty and bestiality of Jehovah were nothing to her. Her
+"Key" does not unlock the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> secrets of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, nor
+does it shed light on the doctrines of eternal punishment, the vicarious
+atonement, or the efficacy of baptism as a saving ordinance.</p>
+
+<p>Explanations about mortal mind, divine mind and human mind, citing
+specific errors of the human mind, with a calm codicil to the effect
+that the human mind has no existence, are not what you might call
+illuminating literature. The stuff is simply "inspired." Mrs. Eddy was
+very wise in not allowing her "readers" or followers to sermonize or
+explain her writings. These writings are simply to be read. And so the
+hearers sit steeped in mist and wrapped in placidity, returning to their
+work rested and refreshed, without being influenced in any way, save by
+the soothing calm of forceful fog and mental vacuity.</p>
+
+<p>The rest and relief from all thought is good. The related experiences of
+Christian Scientists are the things that convince and carry weight, not
+"Science and Health." "Science and Health" was made to sell. It was not
+given to you to be understood: it was to be bought and believed. If you
+doubt any portion of it, at once you are told that this is the work of
+your mortal mind, which is filled with error. Good Christian Scientists
+do not try to understand "Science and Health"&mdash;they just accept and
+believe it. "It is inspired," they say, "so it must be true&mdash;you will
+know when you are worthy to know."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And so we see our old friend Intellectual Tyranny come back in another
+form, not with cowl and cape, but tricked out with feminine finery and
+jewelry and gems that lure and dazzle. There is one thing quite as
+valuable as health, and that is intellectual integrity. To say, "Oh,
+'Science and Health' is certainly inspired&mdash;just see how old Mrs.
+Johnson was cured of the rheumatism!" is not reasoning.</p>
+
+<p>And it has given the scoffers excuse for calling it woman's logic. Such
+reasoning is on the plane of, "Why, Jesus must have been the only
+begotten son of God, born of a virgin, for if you don't believe it, just
+see the hospitals, orphan asylums and homes for the aged that
+Christianity has built!" Mrs. Johnson was surely cured of the rheumatism
+all right, but that does not prove that Mrs. Eddy is correct in her
+claim that Eve was made from Adam's rib; that agamogenesis is a fact in
+Nature; that to till the soil will not always be necessary; that human
+life in these bodies will have no end; and that an absent person can
+poison your health and happiness through malicious animal magnetism; or
+that a good person can give you absent treatment and cure your
+indigestion.</p>
+
+<p>I agree with Mrs. Eddy as to the necessity of eliminating a medical
+fetish, but I disagree with her about religiously preserving a
+theological one. I have read "Science and Health with Key to the
+Scriptures" for twenty years, and I have also read the Scriptures for a
+much longer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> period. Also, I have lived in the same house for many
+months with very intelligent Christian Scientists.</p>
+
+<p>And after mature consideration I regard both the Scriptures and "Science
+and Health" as largely made up of the errors of mortal mind. My
+intuitions are just as valuable to me as Mrs. Eddy's were to her.</p>
+
+<p>My conscience is quite as sacred to me as hers was to her. And in being
+an agnostic I object to being classed as blind, stubborn, wilful,
+malicious and degenerate.</p>
+
+<p>We should honor our Creator by cleaving to the things that seem to us to
+be true, and not abandon the rudder of our minds to any man or any
+woman, be they living or dead. Let us not be dishonest with ourselves,
+even to rid us of our physical diseases. As for health, I have all of it
+that Christian Science ever gave or can give. I have no "testimony" of
+healing to relate, for I have never been sick an hour. And I think I
+know how I have kept well. I make no secret of it. It is all very
+simple&mdash;nothing miraculous.</p>
+
+<p>My knowledge of how to keep well is not inspired knowledge, save as all
+men are inspired who study and know the Laws of Nature. Health, after
+all, is largely a matter of habit.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgb.jpg" alt="B" title="B" /></div><p>ack of the reading-desks, in the "Mother Church," at Boston, are
+quotations from Paul and Mrs. Eddy, side by side. But the quotation from
+Paul, which is behind the desk of the woman reader, is not this: "Let
+women keep silence in the churches."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Eddy believed the Scriptures are all true, word for word. Yet when
+she quoted Paul she picked the thing she wanted and avoided all that did
+not apply to her case. Personally, I like the plan. I do it myself. But
+I do not believe the Scriptures are inspired by an all-wise Deity. So
+far as I know, all books were written by men, and very often by faulty,
+human men at that. Mrs. Eddy's "Key" does not unlock anything; and she
+did not try to unlock any passages except the passages that seemingly
+had a bearing on her belief. That is, Mrs. Eddy believed things first,
+and then skirmished for proof. This is a very old plan. Says
+Shakespeare: "In religion what damned error but some somber brow will
+bless it and approve it with a text, hiding the grossness thereof with
+fair ornament." Let no one read "Science and Health" in the hope of
+finding in it simple and sensible statements concerning life and its
+duties. They are not there.</p>
+
+<p>I append a few quotations, and in mentioning the page I refer to the
+pocket or "Oxford" edition of Nineteen Hundred Six. On page one hundred
+eighty-three of "Science and Health" I find, "The Scriptures inform<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> us
+that sin, or error, first caused the condemnation of man to till the
+ground, and indicate that obedience to God will remove this necessity."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Eddy evidently believed that work is a punishment, and that the day
+will come when God will remove the necessity of farming and making
+garden. Can a sane person reply to such lack of logic?</p>
+
+<p>On page five hundred forty-seven is this: "If one of the statements in
+this book is true, every one must be true, for not one departs from its
+system and rule. You can prove for yourself, dear reader, the Science of
+healing, and so ascertain if the author has given you the correct
+interpretation of Scripture."</p>
+
+<p>This is evidently inspired by Paul's quibble, "If the dead rise not from
+the grave, then is our religion vain." Lincoln once referred to this
+kind of reasoning by saying, "I object to the assumption that my
+ambition is to have my son marry a negress, simply because I am
+struggling for emancipation." Mrs. Eddy may heal you, but that does not
+prove that her interpretation of Scripture is true. Because this
+happens, that does not necessarily follow. Neither, because a thing
+precedes a thing or goes with a thing, is the thing the cause of the
+thing. On page five hundred fifty-three is this: "Adam was created
+before Eve. Herein it is seen that the maternal egg never brought forth
+Adam. Eve was formed from Adam's rib, not from a fetal ovum."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In reading things like this in "Science and Health," let us not be too
+severe on Mrs. Eddy, but just bear in mind that such silly superstitions
+and barbaric folklore are yet officially believed by all orthodox
+clergymen and members of orthodox churches. You can accept a belief in
+Adam's fall and the vicarious atonement and still make money and have
+good health.</p>
+
+<p>Page one hundred two: "The mild forms of animal magnetism are
+disappearing, and its aggressive features are coming to the front. The
+looms of crime, hidden in the dark recesses of mortal thought, are every
+hour weaving webs more complicated and subtle. So secret are its present
+methods that they ensnare the age into indolence, and produce the very
+apathy on this subject which the criminal desires."</p>
+
+<p>This passage reveals the one actually dangerous thing in Christian
+Science&mdash;the fallacy that one mind can weave a web that will work the
+undoing of another. This is the basis of a belief in witchcraft, and
+justifies the hangings at Salem. On page one hundred three I find this:
+"As used in Christian Science, animal magnetism or hypnotism is the
+specific term for error, or mortal mind."</p>
+
+<p>"It is the false belief that mind is in matter, and both evil and good;
+that evil is as real as goodness, and more powerful. This belief has not
+one quality of truth or good. It is either ignorant or malicious. The
+malicious form of animal magnetism ultimates in moral idiocy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> The
+truths of immortal mind sustain man; and they annihilate the fables and
+mortal mind, whose flimsy and gaudy pretensions, like silly moths, singe
+their own wings and fall into dust. In reality there is no mortal mind,
+and consequently no transference of mortal thought and will-power." Page
+five hundred two: "Spiritually followed, the book of Genesis is the
+history of the untrue image of God, named a sinful mortal. This
+deflection of being, rightly viewed, serves the spiritual actuality of
+man, as given in the first chapter of Genesis. When the crude forms of
+human thought take on higher symbols and significations, the
+scientifically Christian views of the universe will appear, illuminating
+time with the glory of eternity."</p>
+
+<p>I append these two passages simply as samples of "inspired literature."</p>
+
+<p>Any one who tries to understand such printed matter is headed for
+Bloomingdale. You must leave it alone absolutely or else accept it and
+read it with your mental eyes closed, mumbling it with your lips, and
+let your mind roam like a priest reading his breviary in the
+smoking-apartment of a Pullman car. The question then arises, "Was Mrs.
+Eddy sincere in putting forth such writings?"</p>
+
+<p>And the answer is, she was most certainly sincere, and she was certainly
+sane. She was an honest woman. But she was not a clear or logical
+thinker, except on matters of finance and business, and consequently she
+did not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> give forth a clear expression when she essayed philosophy. In
+order to write lucidly you must think lucidly. Mrs. Eddy had no sense of
+literary values. She was absolutely devoid of humor, and humor is only
+the ability to detect a little thing from a big one&mdash;to perceive a wrong
+adjustment from a right one.</p>
+
+<p>Style in literature is taste. But the lack of style, taste and humor is
+general in mankind. The world has produced only a few great thinkers,
+and one of them was Darwin, a name which Mrs. Eddy mentioned in "Science
+and Health" with reproach. Great writers are even more rare than great
+thinkers, because to write one must have the ability not only to think
+clearly, but the knack or technical skill to use the right word, the
+luminous word, and so arrange, paragraph and punctuate them that your
+meaning will be clear to average minds. To say that Mrs. Eddy was not a
+thinker nor a writer, is not an indictment of the woman, although it may
+be a reflection on the mental processes of the people who think she was.</p>
+
+<p>To say that there are two million people reading Mrs. Eddy, also proves
+nothing, since numbers are no vindication. Over a hundred million people
+have kissed the big toe of Saint Peter in Rome.</p>
+
+<p>And surely the Roman Catholic Church contains a vast number of highly
+educated people. The things you do not know, you do not know. And Mrs.
+Eddy, knowing nothing of literary style, knew nothing of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> literary art.
+Her prose and her poetry are worse than ordinary. All inspirational
+poetry I ever read is rot, and all inspired paintings I ever saw are
+daubs. Mrs. Eddy should not be blamed for her limitations.</p>
+
+<p>Many people who are great in certain lines labor under the hallucination
+that they are also great in others. Matthew Arnold was a great writer,
+and he also thought he was a great orator.</p>
+
+<p>But when he spoke, his words simply fell over the footlights into the
+orchestra and died there. He could not reach the front row. Most
+comedians want to play Hamlet, and all of us have heard girls attempt to
+sing who thought they could sing, and who were encouraged in the
+hallucination by their immediate kinsfolk.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Eddy thought she could write, and unfortunately she was
+corroborated in her error by the applause of people who, not being able
+to read her book, kindly attributed the inability to their own
+limitations and not to hers, being prompted in this by the suggestion
+oft repeated by Mrs. Eddy, herself. The resemblance of Mrs. Eddy's
+thought to that of Jesus was never noticed until Mrs. Eddy first
+explained the matter. Mrs. Eddy was by no means insane. Swedenborg was a
+civil engineer and a mathematician. He wrote forty books that are nearly
+as opaque as "Science and Health." If you write stupidly enough, some
+one will surely throw up his cap and cry "Great!" And others will follow
+the example and take up the shout, because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> it is much easier, as Doctor
+Johnson affirmed, to praise a book than to read and understand it. The
+custom of reading to a congregation in a dead or foreign language, which
+the listeners do not understand, has never caused any general protest
+from the listeners. The scoffers are the only ones who have ever noticed
+the incongruity, and they do not count, since they probably would not
+attend, anyway.</p>
+
+<p>Next to reading from a book written in the dead language, is to read
+from a book that is unintelligible. To listen to such makes no tax upon
+the intellect, and with the right accessories is soporific, restful,
+pleasing and to be commended. If it does not supply an idea, it at least
+imparts a feeling. Mrs. Eddy's success in literature arose from the
+extreme muddiness of her thinking and her opacity in expression.</p>
+
+<p>If she had written fairly well, her mediocrity would have been apparent
+to every one; but writing absolutely without rhyme or reason, we bow
+before her supreme assurance. The strongest element in men is
+inertia&mdash;we agree rather than fight about it. We want health&mdash;and health
+is what Mrs. Eddy gives to us&mdash;therefore, "Science and Health with Key
+to the Scriptures" is the greatest book in the whole world. Sancta
+simplicitas! Why not, indeed!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgp.jpg" alt="P" title="P" /></div><p>eople turn to Mrs. Eddy's book for relief just exactly as they formerly
+went to the doctor for the same reason.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to bodily health, Mrs. Eddy gives joy, hope, worldly
+success; and even superior minds, seeing these practical results of
+Christian Science, move in the line of least resistance and are quite
+willing to accept the book, not troubled at all about its medieval
+reasoning. In Ungania is a very great merchant who, not content with
+having the biggest store in the Kingdom, aspires to the biggest
+University. The fact that the higher criticism is to him only a trivial
+matter, and really unworthy of the serious attention of a busy man,
+simply reveals human limitation.</p>
+
+<p>The specialist is created at a terrific cost, and that a person will be
+practical, shrewd, diplomatic and wise in managing the buying public and
+an army of employees, and yet know and love Walt Whitman, is too much to
+expect. This keen and successful merchant, an absolute tyrant in certain
+ways, has his soft side and many pleasant qualities. Why any one should
+ever question the literal truth of the Bible is beyond his
+comprehension.</p>
+
+<p>He is convinced that "Leaves of Grass" is an obscene book, never having
+read it; yet he knows nothing about the third, eleventh and thirteenth
+chapters of Second Samuel, having read the Book all his life. He has a
+pitying, patronizing smile for any one who suggests that David was a
+very faulty man, and that possibly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> Solomon was not the wisest person
+that ever lived. "What difference does it make, anyway?" he testily
+asks. If you work for him you have to agree with him, or else be very
+silent as to what you actually believe. We often find an avowed and
+reiterated love for Jesus, the non-resistant, going hand in hand with a
+passion for war, a miser's greed, a lust for power and a thirst for
+revenge.</p>
+
+<p>There may be a prating about righteousness while the hand of the man is
+feeling for his sword-hilt, and his eye is locating your jugular. The
+Ten Commandments are all rescinded in war time. The New York "Evening
+Post" noted the peculiar fact that nine out of ten of the delegates at
+The Hague International Peace Conference were theological heretics. As a
+rule, Orthodox Christians stand for war, and also for capital
+punishment. How do we explain these inconsistencies?</p>
+
+<p>We do not try to: they are simply facts in the partial development of
+the race. Why millionaires should patronize the memory of Jesus is
+something no one can understand, save that things work by antithesis.
+Mrs. Eddy was of the same shrewd, practical type as the merchant prince
+just mentioned. She was the greatest woman-general of her day and
+generation. She possessed all the qualities that go to make successful
+leadership.</p>
+
+<p>She was self-reliant, proud, arrogant, implacable in temper, rapid in
+decision, unbending, shrewd, diplomatic&mdash;and a good hater.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At times she dismissed her critics with simply a look. No man could
+dictate to her, and few dared make suggestions in her presence. To move
+her, the matter had to be brought to her attention in a way that led her
+to believe that she had discovered it herself. And of course all the
+credit went to her. In all Christian Science churches are various
+selections from her writings, and beneath every one is her name. "Thou
+shalt have no other gods before me!" is the one controlling edict
+breathed forth by her life and words. One of her orders was that
+whenever one of her hymns was announced, always and forever it must be
+stated that it was written by Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy. Always and forever,
+the "student" giving testimony refers, in terms of lavish praise and
+fulsome adulation, to "Our Blessed Teacher, Guide and Exemplar, Mary
+Baker Eddy." God Almighty and Jesus occupy secondary positions in all
+Christian Science meetings.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Eddy is mentioned five times to where they are once. And I would
+not criticize this if Mrs. Eddy had but regarded Jesus as simply a great
+man in history and "God" as an abstract term referring to the Supreme
+Intelligence in Nature. But to her, God and Jesus were persons who
+dictated books, and very frequently she was careful to explain that her
+method of healing was exactly the same as that practised by Jesus. Side
+by side with His words are hers. Passages from the Bible are read
+alternately with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> passages from "Science and Health." If both were
+regarded as mere literature, this would be pardonable, but when we are
+told that both are "sacred" writ, and "damned be he who dares deny or
+doubt," we are simply lost in admiration for the supreme egotism of the
+lady. To get mad about it were vain&mdash;let us all smile. Surely the
+imagination that can trace points of resemblance between Mrs. Mary Baker
+Eddy and Jesus, the lowly peasant of Nazareth, is admirable. Jesus was a
+communist in principle, having nothing, giving everything. He carried
+neither scrip nor purse. He wrote nothing. His indifference to place,
+pelf and power is His distinguishing characteristic. Mrs. Eddy's love of
+power was the leading motive of her life; her ability to bargain was
+beautiful; her resorts to law and the subtleties of legal aid were all
+strictly modern; and the way she tied up the title to her writings by
+lead-pipe-cinched copyrights reveals the true instincts of Connecticut.</p>
+
+<p>This jealousy of her rights and the safeguarding of her interests were
+among the emphatic features of her life, and set her apart as the
+antithesis of Jesus.</p>
+
+<p>There is one character in history, however, to whom Mrs. Eddy bore a
+close resemblance&mdash;and that is Julius C&aelig;sar, who was educated for the
+priesthood, became a priest, and was Pope of Rome before he ventured
+into fighting and politics as a business. Mrs. Eddy's faith in herself,
+her ability to decide, her quick intuitions,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> the method and simplicity
+of her life, her passion for power, her pleasure in authorship&mdash;all
+these were the traits which exalted the name and fame of C&aelig;sar.</p>
+
+<p>The inventor of the calendar ordered that it should be known as the
+"Julian Calendar," and it is so called, even unto this day. Once Carlyle
+sat smoking with Milburn, the blind preacher. They had been discussing
+the historicity of Jesus. Then they sat smoking in silence. Finally,
+Tammas the Techy knocked the ashes out of his long clay t. d. and
+muttered, half to himself and half to Milburn, "Ah, a great mon, a great
+mon&mdash;but he had his limitations!" The same remark can truthfully be
+applied to Mrs. Eddy. And about the only point that Jesus and Mrs. Eddy
+have in common is this matter mentioned by Carlyle.</p>
+
+<p>The superior shrewdness and the keen business instinct of Mrs. Eddy are
+seen in the use of the words "Christian" and "Science." The sub-title,
+"With Key to the Scriptures," is particularly alluring. And the use of
+the Oxford binding was the crowning stroke of commercial insight. Surely
+Mrs. Eddy must command our profound respect. She was undoubtedly a very
+great business genius, to say the very least.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgw.jpg" alt="W" title="W" /></div><p>hen John Henry Newman became a Catholic, he gave as a reason for his
+decision that he had found no place in literature or art to rest his
+head. His reward for not finding a place in literature or art for his
+head was the red hat.</p>
+
+<p>Let the followers of Mrs. Eddy take comfort in that their great teacher
+had plenty of high precedent for believing that Adam was created by
+fiat, and Eve was made from his rib, all the fiat being used; that
+Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and it obeyed, even when the
+order should have been given to the earth; that Lazarus was raised from
+the dead after his body had become putrid; that witchcraft is a fact in
+Nature; and that children can be born with the aid of one parent a
+little better than in the old-fashioned way&mdash;parthenogenesis, I think
+they call it.</p>
+
+<p>These inconsistencies of absolute absurdity, existing side by side with
+great competence and sanity, are to be found everywhere in history.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Eddy excited the envy of the medical world in her demonstration
+that good health and happiness are the sure results of getting rid of
+the doctor habit; but they got even with her when she said that virgin
+motherhood would yet become the rule, and tilling of the soil would
+cease to be a necessity.</p>
+
+<p>Saint Augustine thought, as did most of the early Churchmen, that to do
+evil that good might follow was not only justifiable, but highly
+meritorious. So they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> preached hagiology to scare people into the narrow
+path of rectitude.</p>
+
+<p>Chapman, Alexander, Torrey, Billy Sunday and most other professional
+evangelists believe in and practise the same doctrine.</p>
+
+<p>The literary conscience was a thing known in Greece, but only recently,
+say within two hundred years, has it been again manifest, and as yet it
+is rare. It consists in the scorn and absolute refusal to write a line
+except that which stands for truth.</p>
+
+<p>The artistic conscience that refuses to paint for hire or model on order
+is the same. Wagner, Millet, Rembrandt, William Morris and Ruskin are
+examples of men who were incapable of anything but their highest and
+best creative work, and refused to truckle to the mercenary horde. Such
+men may be without conscience in a business way. And a person may be
+absolutely moral in all his acts of life, except in writing and talking,
+and here he may be slipshod and uncertain.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Eddy was beautifully lacking in the literary conscience, just as
+much so as was Gladstone when he attempted to reply to Ingersoll in "The
+North American Review," and resorted to sophistry and evasion in
+lieu of logic. Absolute truth to Gladstone was a matter of
+indifference&mdash;expediency was his shibboleth. Truth to Mrs. Eddy was also
+a secondary matter; the only things that really mattered were Health and
+Success. Health and Success are undoubtedly great things and well<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span>
+worthy of possession, but I wish to secure them only through the
+expression of truth. If you gag my tongue, chain my pen and cry,
+"Believe and you will have Health," I would say, "Give me liberty or
+give me death!" Christian Scientists ask you to buy Mrs. Eddy's book,
+"Science and Health."</p>
+
+<p>When the volume is handed you, you are promised health and success if
+you believe its every word; and if you don't, you are threatened with
+"moral idiocy."</p>
+
+<p>It is the old promise of Paradise and the threat of Hell in a new guise.
+As for me, I decline the book.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgs.jpg" alt="S" title="S" /></div><p>tephen Girard was a great merchant who had a great love of truth; but
+if he had been in a retail business, his zeal for truth might have been
+slightly modified.</p>
+
+<p>As a rule, the world of humanity can be divided into two parts: the
+practical men and the searchers for truth. Usually the latter have
+nothing to lose but their head. Spinoza, Galileo, Bruno, Thomas Paine,
+Walt Whitman, Henry Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, are the pure type. Then
+come Theodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson, crowded out of their
+pulpits, scorned by their Alma Mater, pitied by the public&mdash;yet holding
+true to their course.</p>
+
+<p>And lo! they grew rich; whereas, if they had stuck close to the shore
+and safety, they would have been drowned in the shallows of oblivion.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, we find in, say, the directorate of the Standard Oil
+Company, many men who are zealous members of the orthodox churches,
+giving large sums in support of the "gospel," and taking an active
+interest in its promulgation. All of them say, with the late Mr. Morgan,
+"My mother's religion is good enough for me." So here we get practical
+shrewdness combined with minds that, so far as abstract truth is
+concerned, are simply prairie-dog towns.</p>
+
+<p>These men belong to a type that will cling to error as long as it is
+soft, easy and popular. Most certainly these men are not fools&mdash;they are
+highly competent and useful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> in their way. But as for superstition, they
+find it soothing; it saves the trouble of thinking, and all their
+energies are needed in business.</p>
+
+<p>Religion, to them, is a social diversion, with a chance of salvation on
+the side. Inertia does not grip them when it comes to commerce&mdash;but in
+religion it does. Lincoln once said that there was just one thing, and
+only one thing, that God Almighty could not understand: and that was the
+workings of the mind of an intelligent American juror.</p>
+
+<p>Herbert Spencer says that Sir Isaac Newton was one of the six best
+educated men the world has seen. He was the first man to resolve light
+into its constituent elements. Voltaire says that when Newton discovered
+the Law of Gravitation he excited the envy of the scientific world.</p>
+
+<p>"But," adds Voltaire, "when he wrote a book on the Bible prophecies, the
+men of science got even with him." Sir Isaac Newton defended the literal
+inspiration of the Scriptures and was a consistent member of the Church
+of England. Doctor Johnson was unhappy all day if he didn't touch every
+tenth picket of the fence with his cane as he walked downtown.</p>
+
+<p>Blackstone, the great legal commentator, believed in witchcraft, and
+bolstered his belief by citing the Scriptural text, "Thou shalt not
+suffer a witch to live"&mdash;thus proving Moses a party to the superstition.
+Sir Matthew Hale, Chief Justice of England, did the same.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Gladstone was a great statesman, and yet he believed in the Mosaic
+account of Creation, just as did Mary Baker Eddy.</p>
+
+<p>John Adams was a rebel from political slavery, but lived and died a
+worthy Churchman, subsisting on canned theology&mdash;and canned in England,
+at that.</p>
+
+<p>Franklin and Jefferson were rebels from both political and theological
+despotism, but looked leniently on leeches and apothecaries. Herbert
+Spencer had a free mind as regards religion, politics, economics and
+sociology; yet he was a bachelor, lived in the city, belonged to a club,
+played billiards and smoked cigars. Physical health was out of his
+reach, and with all his vast knowledge, he never knew why. All through
+history we find violence and gentleness, ignorance and wisdom, folly and
+shrewdness side by side in the same person.</p>
+
+<p>The one common thing in humanity is inconsistency. To account for it
+were vain. We know only that it is.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/imgt.jpg" alt="T" title="T" /></div><p>he very boldness of Mrs. Eddy's claims created an impetus that carried
+conviction.</p>
+
+<p>The woman certainly believed in herself, and she also believed in the
+Power, of which she was a necessary part, that works for righteousness.
+She repudiated the supernatural, not by denying "miracles," but by
+holding that the so-called miracles of the Bible really occurred and
+were perfectly natural&mdash;all according to Natural Law, which is the
+Divine Law.</p>
+
+<p>And the explanation of this Divine Law was her particular business. Thus
+did she win to her side those who were too timid in constitution to
+forsake forms and ceremonies and stand alone on the broad ground of
+Rationalism.</p>
+
+<p>Christian Science is not a religion of fight, stress and struggle. Isn't
+it better to relax and rest and allow Divinity to flow through us, than
+to sit on a sharp rail and call the passer-by names in falsetto? May
+Irwin's motto, "Don't Argufy," isn't so bad as a working maxim, after
+all.</p>
+
+<p>All Christian denominations are very much alike. Their differences are
+microscopic, and recognized only by those who are immersed in them.
+Martin Luther only softened the expression of the Roman Catholic
+Church&mdash;he did not change its essence.</p>
+
+<p>Benjamin Franklin declared that he could not tell the difference between
+a Catholic and an Episcopalian. But Christian Science is a complete
+departure from all other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span> denominations, and while professing to be
+Christian, is really something else, or if it is Christian, then
+orthodoxy is not.</p>
+
+<p>Christian Science strikes right at the root of orthodoxy, since it
+divides the power of Jesus with Mary Baker Eddy and affirms that Jesus
+was not "The Savior," but A Savior.</p>
+
+<p>This is the position of Thomas Paine, and all other good radicals.
+Christian Science places Mrs. Eddy's work right alongside of the Bible.
+No denomination has ever put out a volume stating that the book was
+required in order to make the Bible intelligible. No denomination has
+ever put forth a person as the equal of Jesus. This has only been done
+by unbelievers, atheists and free-thinkers.</p>
+
+<p>Christianity is at last attacked in its own house and by its own
+household. It is thoroughly understood and admitted everywhere that
+there are two kinds of Christianity. One is the kind taught by the
+Nazarene; and the other is the institutional variety, made up of
+denominations which hold millions upon millions of dollars' worth of
+property without taxation, and parade their ritual with rich and costly
+millinery.</p>
+
+<p>The one was lived by a Man who had not where to lay His head; and the
+other is an acquirement taken over from pagan Rome, and continued
+largely in its pagan form even unto this day. Christian Science is
+neither one nor the other, and the obvious pleasantry that it is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span>
+neither Christian nor scientific is a jest in earnest. Christian Science
+is a modern adaptation of all that is best in the simplicity and
+asceticism of Jesus, the commonsense philosophy of Benjamin Franklin,
+the mysticism of Swedenborg, and the bold pronunciamento of Robert
+Ingersoll. It is a religion of affirmation with a denial-of-matter
+attachment.</p>
+
+<p>It is a religion of this world. Jesus was a Man of Sorrows but Mary
+Baker Eddy was a Daughter of Joy.</p>
+
+<p>And as the universal good sense of mankind holds that the best
+preparation for a life to come, if there is one, is to make the best of
+this, Christian Science is meeting with a fast-growing popular
+acceptance.</p>
+
+<p>The decline of the old orthodoxy is owing to its clinging to the fallacy
+that the world's work is base, and Nature is a trickster luring us to
+our doom. Mrs. Eddy reconciled the old idea with the new and made it
+mentally palatable. And this is the reason why Christian Science is
+going to sweep the earth and in twenty years will have but one
+competitor, the Roman Catholic faith.</p>
+
+<p>Orthodoxy, blind, blundering, stubborn, senile, is tottering&mdash;the
+undertaker is at the door. Indeed, the old idea of our orthodox friends
+that they were preparing to die, was literally true.</p>
+
+<p>The undertaker's name and business address attached to the front of many
+a city church is a sign too subtle to overlook. Not only was the
+undertaker a partner of the priest, but he is now foreclosing his claim.
+Christian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> Science is not final. After it has lived its day, another
+religion will follow, and that is the Religion of Commonsense, the
+esoteric religion which Mrs. Eddy herself lived and practised.</p>
+
+<p>As for her believers, she gave them the religion of a Book&mdash;two Books,
+the Bible and "Science and Health." They want form and ritual and
+temples.</p>
+
+<p>She gave them these things, just as doctors give sweetened water to
+people who still demand medicine; and as if to supply the zealous
+converts, just out of orthodoxy, their fill of ecclesiastic husks, she
+built fine churches&mdash;churches rivaling the far-famed San Salute of
+Venice. Let them have their wish! Paganism is in their blood&mdash;they are
+even trying to worship her!</p>
+
+<p>Let them go on and eventually they will pray not in temples nor on this
+or that mountain, but in spirit and in truth, just as did Mrs. Eddy, one
+of the world's most successful women.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>Christian Science is orthodox Christianity, minus medical fetish and the
+fear that a belief in sin, sickness, death and eternal punishment
+naturally lends, plus the joy of a natural, healthy, human life. The
+so-called rational Christian sects preserve their Devil in the form of a
+Doctor, and Hell in the shape of a Hospital.</p>
+
+<p>My hope and expectation is that Christian Science will become a Rational
+Religion instead of a one-man institution, or a religion of authority,
+such as it now is. Its superstitious features have doubtless been strong
+factors in its rapid growth&mdash;serving as stays or stocks to aid in the
+launching.</p>
+
+<p>But now, the sooner the ship floats free the better. Christian
+Scientists, being men and women, can not continue to grow if fettered
+with an Index Expurgatorius and mandatory edicts and encyclicals. That
+which binds and manacles must go&mdash;the good will remain.</p>
+
+<p>Christian Science brings good news, and good news is always curative.
+Mrs. Eddy animated her patients with a new thought&mdash;the thought of
+harmony, the denial of disease, and the affirmation that God is good and
+life is beautiful. The animation thus produced is in itself the most
+powerful healing principle known to science. Life is born of love. Joy
+is a prophylactic. Christian Science comes to the "student" as a great
+flood of light. His circulation becomes normal, his muscles relax, the
+nerves rest, digestion acts, elimination takes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> place&mdash;and the person is
+well.</p>
+
+<p>Fear has congested the organs&mdash;love, hope and faith place them in an
+attitude so Nature plays through them. The patient is healed. In it
+there is neither mystery nor miracle. It is all very simple.</p>
+
+<p>Let us rid ourselves of a belief in the strange and occult! The
+Christian Science organization is an expediency. It is an intellectual
+crutch. The book is a necessity. It is a scaffolding. Yet he who
+mistakes the scaffolding for the edifice is a specialist in scaffolding.</p>
+
+<p>Truth can never be caught and crystallized in a formula. Also this:
+truth can never be monopolized by an "ite" or an "ist." Eventually the
+label will be eliminated with the scaffolding, and the lumber of ritual
+and rite will have to go.</p>
+
+<p>We will live truth instead of talking about it. Among Christian
+Scientists there are no drunkards, paupers or gamblers. Also, there are
+no sick people. To them sickness is a disgrace.</p>
+
+<p>Orthodox Christians get sick and gratify their sense of approbation by
+receiving pastoral calls and visits from the doctor and neighbors. The
+biblical injunction to visit the sick was never followed by Mrs.
+Eddy&mdash;she always decided for herself just what injunctions should be
+waived and what followed.</p>
+
+<p>Those which she did not like she interpreted spiritually or else glided
+over. The biblical statement that man's days are few and full of
+trouble, and also the assertion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> that man is prone to wickedness as the
+sparks fly upwards, are both very conveniently glossed.</p>
+
+<p>Christian Scientists know the rules of health, just as most people do;
+but what is more, they follow them, thus avoiding the disgrace of being
+pointed out. They have made sickness not only tabu, but invalidism
+ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p>When things become absurd and preposterous, we abandon them.
+Unpopularity can do what logic is helpless to bring about. The reasoning
+of Christian Scientists is bad, but their intuitions are right.</p>
+
+<p>While denying the existence of matter, no people on earth are as canny,
+save possibly the Quakers. A bank-balance to a Christian Scientist is no
+barren ideality. It is like falsehood to a Jesuit&mdash;a very present help
+in time of trouble. Sin, to them, consists in making too much fuss about
+life and talking about death. Do what you want and forget it. Quit
+talking about the weather, night air, miasma.</p>
+
+<p>Knowingly or unknowingly Christian Scientists cultivate resiliency. They
+are proof against drafts and microbes. Eat what you like, but not too
+much of it. Be moderate. Christian Scientists get their joy out of their
+work. This is essentially hygienic. They breathe deeply, eat moderately,
+bathe plentifully, work industriously&mdash;and smile. This is all sternly
+scientific. It can never be argued down.</p>
+
+<p>No school of medicine has ever offered a prophylactic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span> equal to work and
+good-cheer, and no system of religion has ever offered a working formula
+for health, happiness and success equal to that launched by Mrs. Eddy.
+The science of medicine is a science of palliation.</p>
+
+<p>Christian Scientists avoid the cause of sickness, and thus keep well.</p>
+
+<p>There is no vitality in drugs. Nature cures&mdash;obey her. In this matter of
+bodily health just a few plain rules suffice. And these rules, fairly
+followed, soon grow into a pleasurable habit. Fortunately, we do not
+have to oversee our digestion, our circulation, the work of the millions
+of pores that form the skin, or the action of the nerves. Folks who get
+fussy about their digestion and assume personal charge of their nerves
+have "nerves" and are apt to have no digestion.</p>
+
+<p>"I have a pain in my side," said the woman who had no money to the busy
+doctor. "Forget it," was the curt advice. Get the Health Habit, and
+forget it.</p>
+
+<p>This is the quintessence of Christian Science. Your mental attitude
+controls your body. Happiness is your health. There is no devil but
+fear. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span></p>
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+<p>SO HERE ENDETH "LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF GREAT TEACHERS," BEING
+VOLUME TEN OF THE SERIES, AS WRITTEN BY ELBERT HUBBARD; EDITED AND
+ARRANGED BY FRED BANN; BORDERS AND INITIALS BY ROYCROFT ARTISTS, AND
+PRODUCED BY THE ROYCROFTERS, AT THEIR SHOPS, WHICH ARE IN EAST AURORA,
+ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK, MCMXXII</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great
+Teachers, by Elbert Hubbard
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+</pre>
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+</body>
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@@ -0,0 +1,8878 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great
+Teachers, by Elbert Hubbard
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers
+
+Author: Elbert Hubbard
+
+Release Date: July 29, 2006 [EBook #18936]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE JOURNEYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Janet Blenkinship and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  Little
+  Journeys
+  To the Homes of Great Teachers
+
+
+  Elbert Hubbard
+
+
+  Memorial Edition
+
+
+
+
+  Printed and made into a Book by
+  The Roycrofters, who are in East
+  Huron, Erie County, New York
+
+  Wm. H. Wise & Co.
+  New York
+
+  Copyright, 1916,
+  By The Roycrofters
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+
+  MOSES                                                                9
+
+  CONFUCIUS                                                           41
+
+  PYTHAGORAS                                                          69
+
+  PLATO                                                               97
+
+  KING ALFRED                                                        123
+
+  ERASMUS                                                            149
+
+  BOOKER T. WASHINGTON                                               183
+
+  THOMAS ARNOLD                                                      217
+
+  FRIEDRICH FROEBEL                                                  245
+
+  HYPATIA                                                            269
+
+  SAINT BENEDICT                                                     293
+
+  MARY BAKER EDDY                                                    327
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: MOSES]
+
+MOSES
+
+
+    And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt
+    thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
+    And God said, moreover, unto Moses: Thus shalt thou say unto the
+    children of Israel, The Lord God of your Fathers, the God of
+    Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto
+    you: this is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all
+    generations.
+
+    --_Exodus iii: 14, 15_
+
+
+MOSES
+
+Moses was the world's first great teacher. He is still one of the
+world's great teachers. Seven million people yet look to his laws for
+special daily guidance, and more than two hundred millions read his
+books and regard them as Holy Writ. And these people as a class are of
+the best and most enlightened who live now or who have ever lived.
+
+Moses did not teach of a life after this--he gives no hint of
+immortality--all of his rewards and punishments refer to the present. If
+there is a heaven for the good and a hell for the bad, he did not know
+of them.
+
+The laws of Moses were designed for the Now and the Here. Many of them
+ring true and correct even today, after all this interval of more than
+three thousand years. Moses had a good knowledge of physiology, hygiene,
+sanitation. He knew the advantages of cleanliness, order, harmony,
+industry and good habits. He also knew psychology, or the science of the
+mind: he knew the things that influence humanity, the limits of the
+average intellect, the plans and methods of government that will work
+and those which will not.
+
+He was practical. He did what was expedient. He considered the material
+with which he had to deal, and he did what he could and taught that
+which his people would and could believe. The Book of Genesis was
+plainly written for the child-mind.
+
+The problem that confronted Moses was one of practical politics, not a
+question of philosophy or of absolute or final truth. The laws he put
+forth were for the guidance of the people to whom he gave them, and his
+precepts were such as they could assimilate.
+
+It were easy to take the writings of Moses as they have come down to us,
+translated, re-translated, colored and tinted with the innocence,
+ignorance and superstition of the nations who have kept them alive for
+thirty-three centuries, and then compile a list of the mistakes of the
+original writer. The writer of these records of dreams and hopes and
+guesses, all cemented with stern commonsense, has our profound reverence
+and regard. The "mistakes" lie in the minds of the people who, in the
+face of the accumulated knowledge of the centuries, have persisted that
+things once written were eternally sufficient.
+
+In point of time there is no teacher within many hundred years following
+him who can be compared with him in originality and insight.
+
+Moses lived fourteen hundred years before Christ.
+
+The next man after him to devise a complete code of conduct was Solon,
+who lived seven hundred years after. A little later came Zoroaster, then
+Confucius, Buddha, Lao-tsze, Pericles, Socrates, Plato,
+Aristotle--contemporaries, or closely following each other, their
+philosophy woven and interwoven by all and each and each by all.
+
+Moses, however, stands out alone. That he did not know natural history
+as did Aristotle, who lived a thousand years later, is not to his
+discredit, and to emphasize the fact were irrelevant.
+
+Back of it all lies the undisputed fact that Moses led a barbaric people
+out of captivity and so impressed his ideals and personality upon them
+that they endure as a distinct and peculiar people, even unto this day.
+He founded a nation. And chronologically he is the civilized world's
+first author.
+
+Moses was a soldier, a diplomat, an executive, a writer, a teacher, a
+leader, a prophet, a stonecutter. Beside all these he was a farmer--a
+workingman, one who when forty years of age tended flocks and herds for
+a livelihood. Every phase of the outdoor life of the range was familiar
+to him. And the greatness of the man is revealed in the fact that his
+plans and aspirations were so far beyond his achievements that at last
+he thought he had failed. Exultant success seems to go with that which
+is cheap and transient. All great teachers have, in their own minds,
+been failures--they saw so much further than they were able to travel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All ancient chronology falls easily into three general divisions: the
+fabulous, the legendary, and the probable or natural.
+
+In the understanding of history, psychology is quite as necessary as
+philology.
+
+To reject anything that has a flaw in it is quite as bad as to have that
+excess of credulity which swallows everything presented.
+
+It is not necessary to throw away the fabulous nor deny the legendary.
+But it is certainly not wise to construe the fabulous as the actual and
+maintain the legendary as literally true. Things may be true
+allegorically and false literally, and to be able to distinguish the one
+from the other, and prize each in its proper place, is the mark of
+wisdom.
+
+If, however, we were asked to describe the man Moses to a jury of sane,
+sensible, intelligent and unprejudiced men and women, and show why he is
+worthy of the remembrance of mankind, we would have to eliminate the
+fabulous, carefully weigh the traditional, and rest our argument upon
+records that are fair, sensible and reasonably free from dispute.
+
+The conclusions of professional retainers, committed before they begin
+their so-called investigations to a literal belief in the fabulous,
+should be accepted with great caution. For them to come to conclusions
+outside of that which they have been taught, is not only to forfeit
+their social position, but to lose their actual means of livelihood.
+Perhaps the truth in the final summing up can best be gotten from those
+who have made no vows that they will not change their opinions, and have
+nothing to lose if they fail occasionally to gibe with the popular.
+
+On a certain occasion after Colonel Ingersoll had delivered his famous
+lecture entitled, "Some Mistakes of Moses," he was entertained by a
+local club. At the meeting, which was of the usual informal kind known
+as "A Dutch Feed," a young lawyer made bold to address the great orator
+thus: "Colonel Ingersoll, you are a lover of freedom--with you the word
+liberty looms large. All great men love liberty, and no man lives in
+history, respected and revered, save as he has sought to make men free.
+Moses was a lover of liberty. Now, wouldn't it be gracious and generous
+in you to give Moses, who in some ways was in the same business as
+yourself, due credit as a liberator and law-giver and not emphasize his
+mistakes to the total exclusion of his virtues?"
+
+Colonel Ingersoll listened--he was impressed by the fairness of the
+question. He listened, paused and replied: "Young man, you have asked a
+reasonable question, and all you suggest about the greatness of Moses,
+in spite of his mistakes, is well taken. The trouble in your logic lies
+in the fact that you do not understand my status in this case. You seem
+to forget that I am not the attorney for Moses. He has more than two
+million men looking after his interests. I am retained on the other
+side!"
+
+Like unto Colonel Ingersoll, I am not an attorney for Moses. I desire,
+however, to give a fair, clear and judicial account of the man. I will
+attempt to present a brief for the people, and neither prosecute nor
+defend. I will simply try to picture the man as he once existed, nothing
+extenuating, nor setting down aught in malice. As the original office of
+the State's Attorney was rather to protect the person at the bar than to
+indict him, so will I try to bring out the best in Moses, rather than
+hold up his mistakes and raise a laugh by revealing his ignorance.
+Modesty, which is often egotism turned wrong side out, might here say,
+"Oh, Moses requires no defense at this late day!" But Moses, like all
+great men, has suffered at the hands of his friends. To this man has
+been attributed powers which no human being ever possessed.
+
+Moses lived thirty-three hundred years ago. In one sense thirty-three
+centuries is a very long time. All is comparative--children regard a man
+of fifty as "awful old." I have seen several persons who have lived a
+hundred years, and they didn't consider a century long, "and thirty-five
+isn't anything," said one of them to me.
+
+Geologically, thirty-three centuries is only an hour ago. It does not
+nearly take us back to the time when men of the Stone Age hunted the
+hairy mammoth in what is now Nebraska, nor does thirty-three centuries
+give us any glimpse of the time when tropical animals, plants and
+probably men lived and flourished at the North Pole.
+
+Egyptian civilization, at the time of Moses, was more than three
+thousand years old. Egypt was then in the first stage of senility,
+entering upon her decline, for her best people had settled in the
+cities, and this completes the cycle and spells deterioration. She had
+passed through the savage, barbaric, nomadic and agricultural stages and
+was living on her unearned increment, a part of which was Israelitish
+labor. Moses looked at the Pyramids, which were built more than a
+thousand years before his birth, and asked in wonder about who built
+them, very much as we do today. He listened for the Sphinx to answer,
+but she was silent, then as now. The date of the exodus has been fixed
+as having probably occurred during the reign of the Great Pharaoh,
+Mineptah, or the nineteenth Egyptian Dynasty. The date is, say, fourteen
+hundred years before Christ. An inscription has recently been found
+which seems to show that Joseph settled in Egypt during the reign of
+Mineptah, but the best scholars now have gone back to the conclusions I
+have stated.
+
+At the time of the Pharaohs, Egypt was the highest civilized country on
+earth. It had a vast system of canals, an organized army, a goodly
+degree of art, and there were engineers and builders of much ability.
+Philosophy, poetry and ethics were recognized, prized and discussed.
+
+The storage of grain by the government to bank against famine had been
+practised for several hundred years. There were also treasure-cities
+built to guard against fire, thieves or destruction by the elements. It
+will thus be seen that foresight, thrift, caution, wisdom, played their
+parts. The Egyptians were not savages.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About five hundred years before the birth of Moses there lived in Arabia
+a powerful Sheik or Chief, known as Abraham. This man had a familiar
+spirit, or guide, or guardian-angel known as Yaveh or Jehovah. All of
+the desert tribes had such tutelary gods; and all of these gods were
+once men of power who lived on earth. The belief in special gods has
+often been held by very great men: Socrates looked to his "demon" for
+guidance; Themistocles consulted his oracle; a President of the United
+States visited a clairvoyant, who consented to act as a medium and
+interpret the supernatural. This idea, which is a variant of ancestor
+worship, still survives, and very many good people do not take journeys
+or make investments until they believe they are being dictated to by
+Shakespeare, Emerson, Beecher or Phillips Brooks. These people also
+believe that there are bad spirits to which we must not harken.
+
+Abraham was led by Jehovah; what Jehovah told him to do he did; when
+Jehovah told him to desist or change his plans, he obeyed. Jehovah
+promised him many things, and some of these promises were fulfilled.
+
+Whether these tutelary gods or controlling spirits had any actual
+existence outside of the imagination of the people who believed in
+them--whether they were merely pictures thrown upon the screen by a
+subconscious spiritual stereopticon--is not the question now under
+discussion. Something must be left for a later time: the fact remains
+that special providences are yet relied upon by sincere and intelligent
+people.
+
+Abraham had a son named Isaac. And Isaac was the father of Jacob, or
+Israel, "the Soldier of God," so called on account of his successful
+wrestling with the angel. And Jacob was the father of twelve sons. All
+of these people believed in Jehovah, the god of their tribe; and while
+they did not disbelieve in the gods of the neighboring tribes, they yet
+doubted their power and had grave misgivings as to their honesty.
+Therefore, they had nothing to do with them, praying to their own god
+only and looking to him for support. They were the chosen people of
+Jehovah, just as the Babylonians were the chosen people of Baal; the
+Canaanites the chosen people of Ishitar; the Moabites the chosen people
+of Chemos; the Ammonites the chosen people of Rimmon.
+
+Now Joseph was the favorite son of Jacob, and his brethren were
+naturally jealous of him. So one day out on the range they sold him into
+slavery to a passing caravan, and went home and told their father the
+boy was dead, having been killed by a wild beast. To make the matter
+plausible they took the coat of Joseph and smeared it with the blood of
+a goat which they had killed. Nowadays, the coat would have been sent to
+a chemist's laboratory and the blood-spots tested to see whether it was
+the blood of beast or human. But Jacob believed the story and mourned
+his son as dead.
+
+Now Joseph was taken to Egypt and there arose to a position of influence
+and power through his intelligence and diligence. How eventually his
+brethren, starving, came to him for food, there being a famine in their
+own land, is one of the most natural and beautiful stories in all
+literature. It is a folklore legend, free from the fabulous, and has all
+the corroborating marks of the actual.
+
+For us it is history undisputed, unrefuted, because it is so natural. It
+could all easily happen in various parts of the world even now. It shows
+the identical traits of human nature that are alive and pulsing today.
+
+Joseph having made himself known to his brethren induced some of them
+and their neighbors to come down into Egypt, where the pasturage was
+better and the water more sure, and settle there. The Bible tells us
+that there were seventy of these settlers and gives us their names.
+
+These emigrants, called Israelites, or Children of Israel, account for
+the presence of the enslaved people whom Moses led out of captivity
+three hundred years later.
+
+One thing seems quite sure, and that is that they were a peculiar people
+then, with the pride of the desert in their veins, for they stood
+socially aloof and did not mix with the Egyptians. They still had their
+own god and clung to their own ways and customs.
+
+That very naive account in the first chapter of Exodus of how they had
+two midwives, "and the name of one was Shiphrah and the other Puah," is
+as fine in its elusive exactitude as an Uncle Remus story. Children
+always want to know the names of people. These two Hebrew midwives were
+bribed by the King of Egypt--ruler over twenty million people--in
+person, to kill all the Hebrew boy babies. Then the account states that
+Jehovah was pleased with these Hebrew women who proved false to their
+master, and Jehovah rewarded them by giving them houses.
+
+This order to kill the Hebrew children must have gone into execution, if
+at all, about the time of the birth of Moses, because Aaron, the brother
+of Moses, and three years older, certainly was not killed.
+
+Whether Moses was the son of Pharaoh's daughter, his father an
+Israelite, or both of his parents were Israelites, is problematic. Royal
+families are not apt to adopt an unknown waif into the royal household
+and bring him up as their royal own, especially if this waif belongs to
+what is regarded as an inferior race. The tie of motherhood is the only
+one that could over-rule caste and override prejudice. If the daughter
+of Pharaoh, or more properly "the Pharaoh," were the mother of Moses,
+she had a better reason for hiding him in the bulrushes than did the
+daughter of a Levite, for the order to kill these profitable workers is
+extremely doubtful. The strength, skill and ability of the Israelites
+formed a valuable acquisition to the Egyptians, and what they wanted was
+more Israelites, not fewer.
+
+Judging from the statement that there were only two midwives, there were
+only a few hundred Israelites--perhaps between one and two thousand, at
+most.
+
+So leaving the legend of the childhood of Moses with just enough mystery
+mixed in it to give it a perpetual piquancy, we learn that he was
+brought up an Egyptian, as the son of Pharaoh's daughter, and that it
+was she who gave him his name.
+
+Philo and Josephus give various sidelights on the life and character of
+Moses. The Midrash or Commentaries on the History of the Jews, composed,
+added to or modified by many men, extending over a period of twenty
+centuries, also add their weight, even though the value of these
+Commentaries is conjectural.
+
+Egyptian accounts of Moses and the Israelites come to us through
+Hellenic sources, and very naturally are not complimentary. These
+picture Moses, or Osarsiph, as they call him, as an agitator, an
+undesirable citizen, who sought to overturn the government, and failing
+in this, fled to the desert with a few hundred outlaws. They managed to
+hold out against the forces sent to capture them, were gradually added
+to by other refugees, and through the organizing genius of Moses were
+rounded into a strong tribe.
+
+That Moses was their supreme ruler, and that to better hold his people
+in check he devised a religious ritual for them, and impressed his god,
+Jehovah, upon them, almost to the exclusion of all other gods, and thus
+formed them into a religious whole, is beyond question. No matter what
+the cause of the uprising, or who was to blame for it, the fact is
+undisputed that Moses led a revolt in Egypt, and the people he carried
+with him in this exodus formed the nucleus of the Hebrew Nation. And
+further, the fact is beyond dispute that the personality of Moses was
+the prime cementing factor in the making of the nation. The power,
+poise, patience and unwavering self-reliance of the man, through his
+faith in the god Jehovah, are all beyond dispute. Things happen because
+the man makes them happen.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The position of the Israelites in Egypt was one of voluntary vassalage.
+The government was a feudal monarchy. The Israelites had come into Egypt
+of their own accord, but had never been admitted into the full rights of
+citizenship. This exclusion by the Egyptians had no doubt tended to fix
+the Children of Israel in their religious beliefs, and on the other
+hand, their proud and exclusive nature had tended to keep them from a
+full fellowship with the actual owners of the land.
+
+The Egyptians never attempted to traffic in them as they did in slaves
+of war, being quite content to use them as clerks, laborers and
+servants, paying them a certain wage, and also demanding an excess of
+labor in lieu of taxation. In other words, they worked out their
+"road-tax," which no doubt was excessive. Many years later, Athens and
+also Rome had similar "slaves," some of whom were men of great intellect
+and worth. If one reads the works of modern economic prophets, it will
+be seen that wage-workers in America are often referred to as "slaves"
+or "bondmen," terms which will probably give rise to confusion among
+historians to come.
+
+Moses was brought up in the court of the king, and became versed in all
+the lore of the Egyptians. We are led to suppose that he also looked
+like an Egyptian, as we are told that people seeing him for the first
+time, he being a stranger to them, went away and referred to him as
+"that Egyptian." He was handsome, commanding, silent by habit and slow
+of speech, strong as a counselor, a safe man. That he was a most
+valuable man in the conduct of Egyptian official affairs, there is no
+doubt. And although he was nominally an Egyptian, living with the
+Egyptians, adopting their manners and customs, yet his heart was with
+"his brethren," the Israelites, who he saw were sore oppressed through
+governmental exploitation.
+
+Moses knew that a government which does not exist for the purpose of
+adding to human happiness has no excuse for being. And once when he was
+down among his own people he saw an Egyptian taskmaster or foreman
+striking an Israelitish workman, and in wrath he arose and killed the
+oppressor. The only persons who were witnesses to this affair were two
+Hebrews. The second day after the fight, when Moses was attempting to
+separate two Hebrews who had gotten into an altercation with each other,
+they taunted him by saying, "Who gavest thee to be a ruler over
+us?--wilt thou also kill us as thou didst the Egyptian?"
+
+This gives us a little light upon the quality and character of the
+people with whom Moses had to deal. It also shows that the ways of the
+reformer and peacemaker are not flower-strewn. The worst enemies of a
+reformer are not the Egyptians--he has also to deal with the Israelites.
+
+I once heard Terence V. Powderly, who organized the Knights of
+Labor--the most successful labor organization ever formed--say, "Any man
+who devotes his life to helping laboring men will be destroyed by them."
+And then he added, "But this should not deter us from the effort to
+benefit."
+
+As the Hebrew account plainly states that the killing of all the male
+Hebrew children was carried out with the connivance of Hebrew women who
+pretended to be ministering to the Hebrew mothers, so was the flight of
+Moses from Egypt caused by the Hebrews, who turned informants and
+brought him into disgrace with Pharaoh, who sought his life.
+
+Very naturally, the Egyptians deny and have always denied that the order
+to kill children was ever issued by a Pharaoh. They also point to the
+fact that the Israelites were a source of profit--a valuable asset to
+the Egyptians. And moreover, the proposition that the Egyptians killed
+the children to avoid trouble is preposterous, since no possible act
+that man can commit would so arouse sudden rebellion and fan into flame
+the embers of hate as the murder of the young. If the Egyptians had
+attempted to carry out any such savage cruelty, they would not only have
+had to fight the Israelitish men, but the outraged mothers as well. The
+Egyptians were far too wise to invite the fury of frenzied motherhood.
+To have done this would have destroyed the efficiency of the entire
+Hebrew population. An outraged and heartbroken people do not work.
+
+When one person becomes angry with another, his mental processes work
+overtime making up a list of the other's faults and failings.
+
+When a people arise in revolt they straightway prepare an indictment
+against the government against which they revolted, giving a schedule of
+outrages, insults, plunderings and oppressions. This is what is politely
+called partisan history. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was a literary indictment
+of the South by featuring its supposed brutalities. And the attitude of
+the South is mirrored in a pretty parable concerning a Southern girl who
+came North on a visit, and seeing in print the words "damned Yankee,"
+innocently remarked that she always thought they were one word. A
+description of the enemy, made by a person or a people, must be taken
+cum grano Syracuse.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Moses fled, after killing the Egyptian, he went northward and east
+into the land of the Midianites, who were also descendants of Abraham.
+At this time he was forty years of age, and still unmarried, his work in
+the Egyptian Court having evidently fully absorbed his time.
+
+It is a pretty little romance, all too brief in its details, of how the
+tired man stopped at a well, and the seven daughters of Jethro came to
+draw water for their flocks. Certain shepherds came also and drove the
+girls away, when Moses, true to his nature, took the part of the young
+ladies, to the chagrin and embarrassment of the male rustics who had
+left their manners at home. The story forms a melodramatic stage-setting
+which the mummers have not been slow to use, representing the seven
+daughters as a ballet, the shepherds as a male chorus, and Moses as
+basso-profundo and hero. We are told that the girls went home and told
+their father of the chivalrous stranger they had met, and he, with all
+the deference of the desert, sent for him "that he might eat bread."
+
+Very naturally Moses married one of the girls.
+
+And Moses tended the flocks of Jethro, his father-in-law, taking the
+herds a long distance, living with them and sleeping out under the
+stars.
+
+Now Jethro was the chief of his tribe. Moses calls him a "priest," but
+he was a priest only incidentally, as all the Arab chiefs were.
+
+The clergy originated in Egypt. Before the Israelites were in Goshen,
+the "sacra," or sacred utensils, belonged to the family; and the head of
+the tribe performed the religious rites, propitiating the family deity,
+or else delegated some one else to do so. This head of the tribe, or
+chief, was called a "Cohen"; and the man who assisted him, or whom he
+delegated, was called a "Levi." The plan of making a business of being a
+"Levi" was borrowed from the Egyptians, who had men set apart,
+exclusively, to deal in the mysterious. Moses calls himself a Levi, or
+Levite.
+
+After the busy life he had led, Moses could not settle down to the
+monotonous existence of a shepherd. It is probable that then he wrote
+the Book of Job, the world's first drama and the oldest book of the
+Bible. Moses was full of plans. Very naturally he prayed to the
+Israelitish god, and the god harkened unto his prayer and talked to him.
+
+The silence, the loneliness, the majesty of the mountains, the great
+stretches of shining sand, the long peaceful nights, all tend to
+hallucinations. Sheepmen are in constant danger of mental aberration.
+Society is needed quite as much as solitude.
+
+From talking with God, Moses desired to see Him. One day, from the
+burning red of an acacia-tree, the Lord called to him, "Moses, Moses!"
+
+And Moses answered, "Here am I!"
+
+Moses was a man born to rule--he was a leader of men--and here at
+middle life the habits of twenty-five years were suddenly snapped and
+his occupation gone. He yearned for his people, and knowing their
+unhappy lot, his desire was to lead them out of captivity. He knew the
+wrongs the Egyptian government was visiting upon the Israelites. Rameses
+the Second was a ruler with the builder's eczema: always and forever he
+made gardens, dug canals, paved roadways, constructed model tenements,
+planned palaces, erected colossi. He was a worker, and he made everybody
+else work. It was in this management of infinite detail that Moses had
+been engaged; and while he entered into it with zest, he knew that the
+hustling habit can be overdone and its votaries may become its
+victims--not only that, but this strenuous life may turn freemen into
+serfs, and serfs into slaves.
+
+And now Rameses was dead, and the proud, vain, fretful and selfish
+Mineptah ruled in his place. It was worse with the Israelites than ever!
+
+The more Moses thought of it the more he was convinced that it was his
+duty to go back to Egypt and lead his people out of bondage. He himself,
+having been driven out, made the matter a burning one with him: he had
+lost his place in the Egyptian Court, but he would get it back and hold
+it under better conditions than ever before!
+
+He heard the "Voice"! All strong people hear the Voice calling them. And
+harkening to the Inner Voice is simply doing what you want to do.
+
+"Moses, Moses!"
+
+And Moses answered, "Lord, here am I."
+
+The laws of Moses still influence the world, but not even the orthodox
+Jews follow them literally. We bring our reason to bear upon the
+precepts of Moses, and those which are not for us we gently pass over.
+In fact, the civil laws of most countries prohibit many of the things
+which Moses commanded. For instance, the eighteenth verse of the
+twenty-second chapter of Exodus says, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to
+live." Certainly no Jewish lawyer nor Rabbi, in any part of the world,
+advocates the killing of persons supposed to be witches. We explain that
+in this instance the inspired writer lapsed and merely mirrored the
+ignorance of his time. Or else we fall back upon the undoubted fact that
+various writers and translators have tampered with the original
+text--this must be so, since the book written by Moses makes record of
+his death.
+
+But when we find passages in Moses requiring us to benefit our enemies,
+we say with truth that this was the first literature to express for us
+the brotherhood of man.
+
+"Thou shalt take no gift: for the gift blindeth the wise and perverteth
+the words of the righteous." Here we get Twentieth-Century Wisdom. And
+very many passages as fine and true can be found, which prove for us
+beyond cavil that Moses was right a part of the time, and to say this
+of any man, living or dead, is a very great compliment.
+
+In times of doubt the Jewish people turn to the Torah, or Book of the
+Law. This book has been interpreted by the Rabbis, or the learned men,
+and to meet the exigencies of living under many conditions, it has been
+changed, enlarged and augmented. In these changes the people were not
+consulted. Very naturally it was done secretly, for inspired men must be
+well dead before the many accept their edict. To be alive is always more
+or less of an offense, especially if you be a person and not a
+personage.
+
+The murmurings against Moses during his lifetime often broke into a
+rumble and a roar. The mob accused him of taking them out into the
+wilderness to perish. To get away from the constant bickering and
+criticisms of the little minds, Moses used to go up into the mountains
+alone to find rest, and there he communicated with his god. It was
+surely a great step in advance when all the Elohims were combined into
+one Supreme Elohim that was everywhere present and ruled the world.
+Instead of dozens of little gods, jealous, jangling, fearful, fretful,
+fussy, boastful, changing walking-sticks to serpents, or doing other
+things quite as useless, it was a great advance to have one Supreme
+Being, dispassionate, a God of Love and Justice, "with whom can be no
+variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning." This gradual
+ennobling of the conception of Divinity reveals the extent to which man
+is ennobling his own nature.
+
+Up to within a very few years God had a rival in the Devil, but now the
+Devil lives only as a pleasantry. Until the time of Moses, the God of
+Sinai was only the God of the Hebrew people, and this accounts for His
+violence, wrath, jealousy, and all of those qualities which went to make
+up a barbaric chief, including the tendency of His sons and servants to
+make love to the daughters of earth.
+
+It is probable that the idea of God--in opposition to a god, one of many
+gods--was a thought that grew up very gradually in the mind of Moses.
+The ideal grew, and Moses grew with the ideal.
+
+Then from God being a Spirit, to being Spirit, is a natural, easy and
+beautiful evolution.
+
+The thought of angels, devils, heavenly messengers, like Gabriel and the
+Holy Ghost, constantly surrounding the Throne, is a suggestion that
+comes from the court of the absolute monarch. The Trinity is the
+oligarchy refined, and the one son who gives himself as a sacrifice for
+all the people who have offended the monarch is the retreating vision of
+that night of ignorance when all nations sought to appease the wrath of
+their god by the death of human beings.
+
+God to us is Spirit, realized everywhere in unfolding Nature. We are a
+part of Nature--we, too, are Spirit. When Moses commands his people that
+they must return the stray animal of their enemy to its rightful owner,
+we behold a great man struggling to benefit humanity by making them
+recognize the laws of Spirit. We are all one family--we can not afford
+to wrong or harm even an enemy.
+
+Instead of thousands of warring, jarring families or tribes, we have now
+a few strong federations of States, or countries, which, if they would
+make war on one another, would today quickly face a larger foe. Already
+the idea of one government for all the world is taking form--there must
+be one Supreme Arbiter, and all this monstrous expense of money and
+flesh and blood and throbbing hearts for purposes of war, must go, just
+as we have sent to limbo the jangling, jarring, jealous gods. Also, the
+better sentiment of the world will send the czars, emperors, kings,
+grand dukes, and the greedy grafters of so-called democracy, into the
+dust-heap of oblivion, with all the priestly phantoms that have obscured
+the sun and blackened the sky. The gods have gone, but MAN IS HERE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The plagues that befell the Egyptians were the natural ones to which
+Egypt was liable: drought, flood, flies, lice, frogs, disease. The
+Israelites very naturally declared that these things were sent as a
+punishment by the Israelitish god. I remember a farmer, in my childhood
+days, who was accounted by his neighbors as an infidel. He was struck by
+lightning and instantly killed, while standing in his doorway. The
+Sunday before, this man had worked in the fields, and just before he was
+killed he had said, "dammit," or something quite as bad. Our preacher
+explained at length that this man's death was a "judgment." Afterward,
+when our church was struck by lightning, it was regarded as an accident.
+
+Ignorant and superstitious people always attribute special things to
+special causes. When the grasshoppers overran Kansas in Eighteen Hundred
+Eighty-five, I heard a good man from the South say it was a punishment
+on the Kansans for encouraging Old John Brown. The next year the
+boll-weevil ruined the cotton crop, and certain preachers in the North,
+who thought they knew, declared it was the lingering wrath of God on
+account of slavery.
+
+Three nations unite to form our present civilization. These are the
+Greek, the Roman and the Judaic. The lives of Perseus, Romulus and Moses
+all teem with the miraculous, but if we accept the supernatural in one
+we must in all. Which of these three great nations has contributed most
+to our well-being is a question largely decided by temperament; but
+just now the star of Greece seems to be in the ascendant. We look to art
+for solace. Greece stands for art; Rome for conquest; Judea for
+religion.
+
+And yet Moses was a lover of beauty, and the hold he had upon his people
+was quite as much through training them to work as through his moral
+teaching. Indeed, his morality was expediency--which is reason enough
+according to modern science. When he wants them to work, he says, "Thus
+saith the Lord," just the same as when he wishes to impress upon them a
+thought.
+
+No one can read the twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth
+chapters of Exodus without being impressed with the fact that the man
+who wrote them had in him the spirit of the Master Workman--a King's
+Craftsman. His carving the ten commandments on tablets of stone also
+shows his skill with mallet and chisel, a talent he had acquired in
+Egypt, where Rameses the Second had thousands of men engaged in
+sculpture and in making inscriptions in stone.
+
+Several chapters in Exodus might have been penned by Albrecht Durer or
+William Morris. The commandment, "Thou shalt not make unto thyself any
+graven image," was unmistakably made merely to correct a local evil: the
+tendency to worship the image instead of the thing it symbolized. People
+who do not contribute to the creation of an object fall easy victims to
+this error. With all the stern good sense that Moses revealed, it is
+but fair to assume that he did not mean the command to be perpetual. It
+was only through so much moving about that the Jews seemed to lose their
+art spirit.
+
+And certainly the flame of art in the Jewish heart has never died out,
+even though at times it has smoldered, for wherever there has been peace
+and security for the Jews, they have not been slow to evolve the talent
+which creates. History teems with the names of Jews who, in music,
+painting, poetry and sculpture, have devoted their days to beauty. And
+the germ of genius is seen in many of the Jewish children who attend the
+manual-training and art schools of America.
+
+Art has its rise in the sense of sublimity. It seems at times to be a
+fulfilment of the religious impulse. The religion which balks at work,
+stopping at prayer and contemplation, is a form of arrested development.
+
+The number of people in the exodus was probably two or three thousand.
+Renan says that one century only elapsed between the advent of Joseph
+into Egypt and the revolt. Very certain it was not a great number that
+went forth into the desert. A half-million women could not have borrowed
+jewelry of their neighbors--the secret could not have been kept. And in
+the negotiations between Moses and the King, it will be remembered that
+Moses asked only for the privilege of going three days' journey into the
+wilderness to make sacrifices. It was a kind of picnic or religious
+campmeeting. A vast multitude could not have taken part in any such
+exercise. We also hear of their singing their gratitude on account of
+reaching Elim, where there were "twelve springs and seventy palm-trees."
+Had there been several million people, as we have been told, the
+insignificant shade of seventy trees would have meant nothing to them.
+
+The distance from Goshen in Egypt to Canaan in Palestine was about one
+hundred seventy-five miles. But by the circuitous route they traveled it
+was nearly a thousand miles. It took forty years to make the passage,
+for the way had to be fought through the country of foes who very
+naturally sought to block the way. Quick transportation was out of the
+question. The rate of speed was about twenty-five miles a year.
+
+Here was a people without homes, or fixed habitation, beset on every
+side with the natural dangers of the desert, and compelled to face the
+fury of the inhabitants whose lands they overran, fearful,
+superstitious, haunted by hunger, danger and doubt. By night a man sent
+ahead with a lantern on a pole led the way; by day a cavalcade that
+raised a cloud of dust. One was later sung by the poets as a pillar of
+fire, and the other a cloud. Chance flocks of quail blown by a storm
+into their midst were regarded as a miracle; the white exuding wax of
+the manna-plant was told of as "bread"--or more literally food.
+
+Those who had taken part in the original exodus were nearly all
+dead--their children and grandchildren survived, desert born and savage
+bred. Canaan was not the land flowing with milk and honey that had been
+described. Milk and honey are the results of labor applied to land.
+Moses knew this and tried to teach this great truth. He was true to his
+divine trust. Through doubt, hardship, poverty, misunderstanding, he
+held high the ideal--they were going to a better place.
+
+At last, worn by his constant struggle, aged one hundred twenty, "his
+eye not dim nor his natural force abated"--for only those live long who
+live well--Moses went up into the mountain to find solace in solitude as
+was his custom. His people waited for him in vain--he did not return.
+Alone there with his God he slept and forgot to awaken. His pilgrimage
+was done. "And no man knoweth his grave even unto this day."
+
+History is very seldom recorded on the spot--certainly it was not then.
+Centuries followed before fact, tradition, song, legend and folklore
+were fused into the form we call Scripture. But out of the fog and mist
+of that far-off past there looms in heroic outline the form and features
+of a man--a man of will, untiring activity, great hope, deep love, a
+faith which at times faltered, but which never died. Moses was the first
+man in history who fought for human rights and sought to make men free,
+even from their own limitations. "And there arose not a prophet since
+Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face."
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: CONFUCIUS]
+
+CONFUCIUS
+
+
+     The highest study of all is that which teaches us to develop those
+     principles of purity and perfect virtue which Heaven bestowed upon
+     us at our birth, in order that we may acquire the power of
+     influencing for good those amongst whom we are placed, by our
+     precepts and example; a study without an end--for our labors cease
+     only when we have become perfect--an unattainable goal, but one
+     that we must not the less set before us from the very first. It is
+     true that we shall not be able to reach it, but in our struggle
+     toward it we shall strengthen our characters and give stability to
+     our ideas, so that, whilst ever advancing calmly in the same
+     direction, we shall be rendered capable of applying the faculties
+     with which we have been gifted to the best possible account.
+
+     --_"The Annals" of Confucius_
+
+
+CONFUCIUS
+
+The Chinese comprise one-fourth of the inhabitants of the earth. There
+are four hundred millions of them.
+
+They can do many things which we can not do, and we can do a few things
+which they have not yet been able to do; but they are learning from us,
+and possibly we would do well to learn from them. In China there are now
+trolley-cars, telephone-lines, typewriters, cash-registers and American
+plumbing. China is a giant awaking from sleep. He who thinks that China
+is a country crumbling into ruins has failed to leave a call at the
+office and has overslept.
+
+The West can not longer afford to ignore China. And not being able to
+waive her, perhaps the next best thing is to try to understand her.
+
+The one name that looms large above any other name in China is
+Confucius. He of all men has influenced China most. One-third of the
+human race love and cherish his memory, and repeat his words as sacred
+writ.
+
+Confucius was born at a time when one of those tidal waves of reason
+swept the world--when the nations were full of unrest, and the mountains
+of thought were shaken with discontent.
+
+It was just previous to the blossoming of Greece.
+
+Pericles was seventeen years old when Confucius died. Themistocles was
+preparing the way for Pericles; for then was being collected the
+treasure of Delos, which made Phidias and the Parthenon possible. During
+the life of Confucius lived Leonidas, Miltiades, Cyrus the Great,
+Cambyses, Darius, Xerxes. And then quite naturally occurred the battles
+of Marathon, Salamis and Thermopylae. Then lived Buddha-Gautama,
+Lao-tsze, Ezekiel, Daniel, Haggai, Zechariah, Pythagoras, Pindar,
+AEschylus and Anacreon.
+
+The Chinese are linked to the past by ties of language and custom beyond
+all other nations. They are a peculiar people, a chosen people, a people
+set apart. Just when they withdrew from the rest of mankind and
+abandoned their nomadic habits, making themselves secure against
+invasion by building a wall one hundred feet high, and settled down to
+lay the foundations of a vast empire, we do not know. Some historians
+have fixed the date about ten thousand years before Christ--let it go at
+that. There is a reasonably well-authenticated history of China that
+runs back twenty-five hundred years before Christ, while our history
+merges into mist seven hundred fifty years before the Christian era.
+
+The Israelites wandered; the Chinese remained at home. Walls have this
+disadvantage: they keep people in as well as shut the barbarians out.
+But now there are vast breaches in the wall, through which the
+inhabitants ooze, causing men from thousands of miles away to cry in
+alarm, "the Yellow Peril!" And also through these breaches, Israelites,
+Englishmen and Yankees enter fearlessly, settle down in heathen China,
+and do business.
+
+It surely is an epoch, and what the end will be few there are who dare
+forecast.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This then is from the pen of Edward Carpenter, the Church of England
+curate who was so great a friend and admirer of our own Walt Whitman
+that he made a trip across the sea to join hands with him in preaching
+the doctrine of democracy and the religion of humanity.
+
+     In the interior of China, along low-lying plains and great
+     river-valleys, and by lake-sides, and far away up into hilly and
+     even mountainous regions,
+
+     Behold! an immense population, rooted in the land, rooted in the
+     clan and the family,
+
+     The most productive and stable on the whole Earth. A garden one
+     might say--a land of rich and recherche crops, of rice and tea and
+     silk and sugar and cotton and oranges;
+
+     Do you see it?--stretching away endlessly over river-lines and
+     lakes, and the gentle undulations of the low-lands, and up the
+     escarpments of the higher hills;
+
+     The innumerable patchwork of civilization--the poignant verdure of
+     the young rice; the somber green of orange-groves; the lines of
+     tea-shrubs, well hoed, and showing the bare earth beneath; the
+     pollard mulberries; the plots of cotton and maize and wheat and yam
+     and clover; the little brown and green tiled cottages with
+     spreading recurbed eaves, the clumps of feathery bamboo, or of
+     sugar-canes;
+
+     The endless silver threads of irrigation canals and ditches,
+     skirting the hills for scores and hundreds of miles, tier above
+     tier, and serpentining down to the lower slopes and plains--
+
+     The accumulated result, these, of centuries upon centuries of
+     ingenious industry, and innumerable public and private
+     benefactions, continued from age to age;
+
+     The grand canal of the Delta plain extending, a thronged waterway,
+     for seven hundred miles, with sails of junks and bankside villages
+     innumerable;
+
+     The chain-pumps, worked by buffaloes or men, for throwing the water
+     up slopes and hillsides, from tier to tier, from channel to
+     channel;
+
+     The endless rills and cascades flowing down again into pockets and
+     hollows of verdure, and on fields of steep and plain;
+
+     The bits of rock and wildwood left here and there, with the angles
+     of Buddhist or Jain temples projecting from among the trees;
+
+     The azalea and rhododendron bushes, and the wild deer and pheasants
+     unharmed;
+
+     The sounds of music and the gong--the Sin-fa sung at eventide--and
+     the air of contentment and peace pervading;
+
+     A garden you might call the land, for its wealth of crops and
+     flowers,
+
+     A town almost for its population.
+
+     A population denser, on a large scale, than anywhere else on
+     earth--
+
+     Five or six acre holdings, elbowing each other, with lesser and
+     larger, continuously over immense tracts, and running to plentiful
+     market centers;
+
+     A country of few roads, but of innumerable footpaths and waterways.
+
+     Here, rooted in the land, and rooted in the family, each family
+     clinging to its portion of ancestral earth, each offshoot of the
+     family desiring nothing so much as to secure its own patrimonial
+     field,
+
+     Each member of the family answerable primarily to the family
+     assembly for his misdeeds or defalcations,
+
+     All bound together in the common worship of ancestors, and in
+     reverence for the past and its sanctioned beliefs and accumulated
+     prejudices and superstitions;
+
+     With many ancient, wise, simple customs and ordinances, coming down
+     from remote centuries, and the time of Confucius,
+
+     This vast population abides--the most stable and the most
+     productive in the world.
+
+            *       *       *       *       *
+
+     And Government touches it but lightly--can touch it but lightly.
+
+     With its few officials (only some twenty-five thousand for the
+     whole of its four hundred millions), and its scanty taxation (about
+     one dollar per head), and with the extensive administration of
+     justice and affairs by the clan and the family--little scope is
+     left for government.
+
+     The great equalized mass population pursues its even and accustomed
+     way, nor pays attention to edicts and foreign treaties, unless
+     these commend themselves independently;
+
+     Pays readier respect, in such matters, to the edicts and utterances
+     of its literary men, and the deliberations of the Academy.
+
+            *       *       *       *       *
+
+     And religious theorizing touches it but lightly--can touch it but
+     lightly.
+
+     Established on the bedrock of actual life, and on the living unity
+     and community of present, past and future generations.
+
+     Each man stands bound already, and by the most powerful ties, to
+     the social body--nor needs the dreams and promises of Heaven to
+     reassure him.
+
+     And all are bound to the Earth.
+
+     Rendering back to it as a sacred duty every atom that the Earth
+     supplies to them (not insensately sending it in sewers to the sea),
+
+     By the way of abject commonsense they have sought the gates of
+     Paradise--and to found on human soil their City Celestial!
+
+
+The first general knowledge of Confucius came to the Western world in
+the latter part of the Sixteenth Century from Jesuit missionaries.
+Indeed, it was they who gave him the Latinized name of "Confucius," the
+Chinese name being Kung-Fu-tsze.
+
+So impressed were these missionaries by the greatness of Confucius that
+they urged upon the Vatican the expediency of placing his name upon the
+calendar of Saints. They began by combating his teachings, but this they
+soon ceased to do, and the modicum of success which they obtained was
+through beginning each Christian service by the hymn which may properly
+be called the National Anthem of China. Its opening stanza is as
+follows:
+
+  Confucius! Confucius!
+  Great was our Confucius!
+  Before him there was no Confucius,
+  Since him there was no other.
+  Confucius! Confucius!
+  Great was our Confucius!
+
+The praise given by these early Jesuits to Confucius was at first
+regarded at Rome as apology for the meager success of their
+ministrations. But later scientific study of Chinese literature
+corroborated all that the Jesuit Fathers proclaimed for Confucius, and
+he stands today in a class with Socrates and the scant half-dozen whom
+we call the saviors of the world.
+
+Yet Confucius claimed no "divine revelation," nor did he seek to found a
+religion. He was simply a teacher, and what he taught was the science of
+living--living in the present, with the plain and simple men and women
+who make up the world, and bettering our condition by bettering theirs.
+Of a future life he said he knew nothing, and concerning the
+supernatural he was silent, even rebuking his disciples for trying to
+pry into the secrets of Heaven. The word "God" he does not use, but his
+recognition of a Supreme Intelligence is limited to the use of a word
+which can best be translated "Heaven," since it tokens a place more than
+it does a person. Constantly he speaks of "doing the will of Heaven."
+And then he goes on to say that "Heaven is speaking through you," "Duty
+lies in mirroring Heaven in our acts," and many other such New-Thought
+aphorisms or epigrams.
+
+That the man was a consummate literary stylist is beyond doubt. He spoke
+in parables and maxims, short, brief and musical. He wrote for his ear,
+and always his desire, it seems, was to convey the greatest truth in the
+fewest words. The Chinese, even the lowly and uneducated, know hundreds
+of Confucian epigrams, and still repeat them in their daily conversation
+or in writing, just as educated Englishmen use the Bible and Shakespeare
+for symbol.
+
+Minister Wu, in a lecture delivered in various American cities, compared
+Confucius with Emerson, showing how in many ways these two great
+prophets paralleled each other. Emerson, of all Americans, seems the
+only man worthy of being so compared.
+
+The writer who lives is the man who supplies the world with portable
+wisdom--short, sharp, pithy maxims which it can remember, or, better
+still, which it can not forget.
+
+Confucius said, "Every truth has four corners: as a teacher I give you
+one corner, and it is for you to find the other three."
+
+The true artist in words or things is always more or less
+impressionistic--he talks in parables, and it is for the hearer to
+discover the meaning for himself.
+
+An epigram is truth in a capsule. The disadvantage of the epigram is the
+temptation it affords to good people to explain it to the others who are
+assumed to be too obtuse to comprehend it alone. And since explanations
+seldom explain, the result is a mixture or compound that has to be
+spewed utterly or taken on faith. Confucius is simple enough until he is
+explained. Then we evolve sects, denominations and men who make it their
+profession to render moral calculi opaque. China, being peopled by human
+beings, has suffered from this tendency to make truth concrete, just as
+all the rest of the world has suffered. Truth is fluid and should be
+allowed to flow. Ankylosis of a fact is superstition. Confucius was a
+free-trader.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+China has always been essentially feudal in her form of government.
+China is made up of a large number of States, each presided over by a
+prince or governor, and these States are held together by a rather loose
+federal government, the Emperor being the supreme ruler. State rights
+prevail. State may fight with State, or States may secede--it isn't of
+much moment. They are glad enough, after a few years, to get back, like
+boys who run away from home, or farmhands who quit work in a tantrum.
+The Chinese are very patient--they know that time cures all things, a
+truth the West has not yet learned. States that rebel, like individuals
+who place themselves beyond the protection of all, assume grave
+responsibilities.
+
+The local prince usually realizes the bearing of the Social
+Contract--that he holds his office only during good behavior, and that
+his welfare and the welfare of his people are one.
+
+Heih, the father of Confucius, was governor of one of these little
+States, and had impoverished himself in an effort to help his people.
+Heih was a man of seventy, wedded to a girl of seventeen, when their
+gifted son was born. When the boy was three years old the father died,
+and the lad's care and education depended entirely on the mother. This
+mother seems to have been a woman of rare mental and spiritual worth.
+She deliberately chose a life of poverty and honest toil for herself
+and child, rather than allow herself to be cared for by rich kinsmen.
+The boy was brought up in a village, and he was not allowed to think
+himself any better than the other village children, save as he proved
+himself so. He worked in the garden, tended the cattle and goats, mended
+the pathways, brought wood and water, and waited on his elders. Every
+evening his mother used to tell him of the feats of strength of his
+father, of his heroic qualities in friendship, of deeds of valor, of
+fidelity to trusts, of his absolute truthfulness, and his desire for
+knowledge in order that he might better serve his people.
+
+The coarse, plain fare, the long walks across the fields, the climbing
+of trees, the stooping to pull the weeds in the garden, the daily bath
+in the brook, all combined to develop the boy's body to a splendid
+degree. He went to bed at sundown, and at the first flush of dawn was up
+that he might see the sunrise. There were devotional rites performed by
+the mother and son, morning and evening, which consisted in the playing
+upon a lute and singing or chanting the beauty and beneficence of
+creation.
+
+Confucius, at fifteen, was regarded as a phenomenal musician, and the
+neighbors used to gather to hear him perform. At nineteen he was larger,
+stronger, comelier, more skilled, than any other youth of his age in all
+the country round.
+
+The simple quality of his duties as a prince can be guessed when we are
+told that his work as keeper of the herds required him to ride long
+distances on horseback to settle difficulties between rival herders. The
+range belonged to the State, and the owners of goats, sheep and cattle
+were in continual controversies. Montana and Colorado will understand
+this matter. Confucius summoned the disputants and talked to them long
+about the absurdity of quarreling and the necessity of getting together
+in complete understanding. Then it was that he first put forth his
+best-known maxim: "You should not do to others that which you would not
+have others do to you."
+
+This negative statement of the Golden Rule is found expressed in various
+ways in the writings of Confucius. A literal interpretation of the
+Chinese language is quite impossible, as the Chinese have single signs
+or symbols that express a complete idea. To state the same matter, we
+often use a whole page.
+
+Confucius had a single word which expressed the Golden Rule in such a
+poetic way that it is almost useless to try to convey it to people of
+the West. This word, which has been written into English as "Shu,"
+means: My heart responds to yours, or my heart's desire is to meet your
+heart's desire, or I wish to do to you even as I would be done by. This
+sign, symbol or word Confucius used to carve in the bark of trees by the
+roadside. The French were filled with a like impulse when they cut the
+words Liberty, Fraternity, Equality, over the entrances to all public
+buildings.
+
+Confucius had his symbol of love and friendship painted on a board,
+which he stuck into the ground before the tent where he lodged; and
+finally it was worked upon a flag by some friends and presented to him,
+and became his flag of peace.
+
+His success in keeping down strife among the herders, and making peace
+among his people, soon gave him a fame beyond the borders of his own
+State. As a judge he had the power to show both parties where they were
+wrong, and arranged for them a common meeting-ground.
+
+His qualifications as an arbiter were not, however, limited to his
+powers of persuasion--he could shoot an arrow farther and hurl a spear
+with more accuracy than any man he ever met. Very naturally there are a
+great number of folklore stories concerning his prowess, some of which
+make him out a sort of combination Saint George and William Tell, with
+the added kingly graces of Alfred the Great. Omitting the incredible, we
+are willing to believe that this man had a giant's strength, but was
+great enough not to use it like a giant.
+
+We are willing to believe that when attacked by robbers, he engaged them
+in conversation and that, seated on the grass, he convinced them they
+were in a bad business. Also, he did not later hang them, as did our old
+friend Julius Caesar under like conditions.
+
+When twenty-seven he ceased going abroad to hold court and settle
+quarrels, but sending for the disputants, they came, and he gave them a
+course of lectures in ethics. In a week, by a daily lesson of an hour's
+length, they were usually convinced that to quarrel is very foolish,
+since it reduces bodily vigor, scatters the mind, and disturbs the
+secretions, so the man is the loser in many ways.
+
+This seems to us like a very queer way to hold court, but Confucius
+maintained that men should learn to govern their tempers, do equity, and
+thus be able to settle their own disputes, and this without violence.
+"To fight decides who is the stronger, the younger and the more skilful
+in the use of arms, but it does not decide who is right. That is to be
+settled by the Heaven in your own heart."
+
+To let the Heaven into your heart, to cultivate a conscience so
+sensitive that it can conceive the rights of the other man, is to know
+wisdom.
+
+To decide specific cases for others he thought was to cause them to lose
+the power of deciding for themselves. When asked what a just man should
+do when he was dealing with one absolutely unjust, he said, "He who
+wrongs himself sows in his own heart nettles."
+
+And when some of his disciples, after the Socratic method, asked him how
+this helped the injured man, he replied, "To be robbed or wronged is
+nothing unless you continue to remember it." When pushed still further,
+he said, "A man should fight, only when he does so to protect himself
+or his family from bodily harm."
+
+Here a questioner asked, "If we are to protect our persons, must we not
+learn to fight?"
+
+And the answer comes, "The just man, he who partakes moderately of all
+good things, is the only man to fear in a quarrel, for he is without
+fear."
+
+Over and over is the injunction in varying phrase, "Abolish
+fear--abolish fear!" When pressed to give in one word the secret of a
+happy life, he gives a word which we translate, "Equanimity."
+
+
+The mother of Confucius died during his early manhood. For her he ever
+retained the most devout memories.
+
+Before going on a journey he always visited her grave, and on returning,
+before he spoke to any one, he did the same. On each anniversary of her
+death he ate no food and was not to be seen by his pupils. This filial
+piety, which is sometimes crudely and coarsely called "ancestor
+worship," is something which for the Western world is rather difficult
+to appreciate. But in it there is a subtle, spiritual significance,
+suggesting that it is only through our parents that we are able to
+realize consciousness or personal contact with Heaven. These parents
+loved us into being, cared for us with infinite patience in infancy,
+taught us in youth, watched with high hope our budding manhood; and as
+reward and recognition for the service rendered us, the least we can do
+is to remember them in all our prayers and devotions. The will of Heaven
+used these parents for us, therefore parenthood is divine.
+
+That this ancestor worship is beautiful and beneficial is quite
+apparent, and rightly understood no one could think of it as
+"heathendom." Confucius used to chant the praises of his mother, who
+brought him up in poverty, thus giving a close and intimate knowledge of
+a thousand things from which princes, used to ease and luxury, are
+barred.
+
+So close was he to nature and the plain people that he ordered that all
+skilful charioteers in his employ should belong to the nobility. This
+giving a title or degree to men of skill--men who can do things--we
+regard as essentially a modern idea.
+
+China, I believe, is the first country in the world to use the threads
+of a moth or worm for fabrics. The patience and care and inventive skill
+required in first making silk were very great. But it gives us an index
+to invention when we hear that Confucius regarded the making of linen,
+using the fiber of a plant, as a greater feat than utilizing the strands
+made by the silkworm. Confucius had a sort of tender sentiment toward
+the moth, similar to the sentiments which our vegetarian friends have
+toward killing animals for food. Confucius wore linen in preference to
+silk, for sentimental reasons. The silkworm dies at his task of making
+himself a cocoon, so to evolve in a winged joy, but falls a victim of
+man's cupidity. Likewise, Confucius would not drink milk from a cow
+until her calf was weaned, because to do so were taking an unfair
+advantage of the maternal instincts of the cow. It will thus be seen
+that Confucius had a very fair hold on the modern idea which we call
+"Monism," or "The One." He, too, said, "All is one." In his attitude
+toward all living things he was ever gentle and considerate.
+
+No other prophet so much resembles Confucius in doctrine as Socrates.
+But Confucius does not suffer from the comparison. He had a beauty,
+dignity and grace of person which the great Athenian did not possess.
+Socrates was more or less of a buffoon, and to many in Athens he was a
+huge joke--a town fool. Confucius combined the learning and graces of
+Plato with the sturdy, practical commonsense of Socrates. No one ever
+affronted or insulted him; many did not understand him, but he met
+prince or pauper on terms of equality.
+
+In his travels Confucius used often to meet recluses or monks--men who
+had fled the world in order to become saints. For these men Confucius
+had more pity than respect. "The world's work is difficult, and to live
+in a world of living, striving and dying men and women requires great
+courage and great love. Now we can not all run away, and for some to
+flee from humanity and to find solace in solitude is only another name
+for weakness."
+
+This sounds singularly like our Ralph Waldo who says, "It is easy in the
+world to live after the world's opinions; it is easy in solitude to live
+after our own; but the Great Man is he who in the midst of the crowd
+keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
+
+Confucius is the first man in point of time to proclaim the divinity of
+service, the brotherhood of man, and the truth that in useful work there
+is no high nor low degree. In talking to a group of young men he says:
+
+"When I was keeper of the herds I always saw to it that all of my cattle
+were strong, healthy and growing, that there was water in abundance and
+plenty of feed. When I had charge of the public granaries I never slept
+until I knew that all was secure and cared for against the weather, and
+my accounts as true and correct as if I were going on my long journey to
+return no more. My advice is to slight nothing, forget nothing, never
+leave things to chance, nor say, 'Nobody will know--this is good
+enough.'"
+
+In all of his injunctions Confucius never has anything in mind beyond
+the present life. Of a future existence he knows nothing, and he seems
+to regard it as a waste of energy and a sign of weakness to live in two
+worlds at a time. "Heaven provides us means of knowing all about what is
+best here, and supplies us in abundance every material thing for present
+happiness, and it is our business to realize, to know, to enjoy."
+
+He taught rhetoric, mathematics, economics, the science of government
+and natural history. And always and forever running through the fabric
+of his teaching was the silken thread of ethics--man's duty to man,
+man's duty to Heaven. Music was to him a necessity, since "it brings the
+mind in right accord with the will of Heaven." Before he began to speak
+he played softly on a stringed instrument which perhaps would compare
+best with our guitar, but it was much smaller, and this instrument he
+always carried with him, suspended from his shoulder by a silken sash.
+Yet with all of his passion for music, he cautioned his disciples
+against using it as an end. It was merely valuable as an introduction to
+be used in attuning the mind and heart to an understanding of great
+truth.
+
+Confucius was seventy-two years old at his death. During his life his
+popularity was not great. When he passed away his followers numbered
+only about three thousand persons, and his "disciples," or the teachers
+who taught his philosophy, were seventy in number.
+
+There is no reason to suppose that Confucius assumed that a vast number
+of people would ever ponder his words or regard him as a prophet.
+
+At the time that Confucius lived, also lived Lao-tsze. As a youth
+Confucius visited Lao-tsze, who was then an old man. Confucius often
+quotes his great contemporary and calls himself a follower of Lao-tsze.
+The difference, however, between the men is marked. Lao-tsze's teachings
+are full of metaphysics and strange and mystical curiosities, while
+Confucius is always simple, lucid and practical.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Confucius has been revered for twenty centuries, revered simply as a
+man, not as a god or as a divinely appointed savior. He offered no
+reward of heaven, nor did he threaten non-believers with hell. He
+claimed no special influence nor relationship to the Unseen. In all his
+teachings he was singularly open, frank and free from all mystery or
+concealment. In reference to the supernatural he was an agnostic. He
+often said, "I do not know." He was always an inquirer, always a
+student, always open to conviction. History affords no instance of
+another individual who has been so well and so long loved, who still
+holds his place, and who, so far as his reasoning went, is unassailed
+and unassailable. Even the two other great religions in China that rival
+Confucianism--Buddhism and Taoism (the religion of Lao-tsze)--do not
+renounce Confucius: they merely seek to amend and augment him.
+
+During his lifetime Confucius made many enemies by his habit of frankly
+pointing out the foibles of society and the wrongs visited upon the
+people by officials who pretended to serve them. Of hypocrisy,
+selfishness, vanity, pretense, he was severe in his denunciation.
+
+Politicians at that time had the very modern habit of securing the
+office and then leaving all the details of the work to menials, they
+themselves pocketing the perquisites. As Minister of State, Confucius
+made himself both feared and detested on account of his habit of
+summoning the head of the office before him and questioning him
+concerning his duties. In fact, this insistence that those paid by the
+State should work for the State caused a combination to be formed
+against him, which finally brought about his deposition and exile, two
+things which troubled him but little, since one gave him leisure and the
+other opportunity for travel.
+
+The personal followers of Confucius did not belong to the best society;
+but immediately after his death, many who during his life had scorned
+the man made haste to profess his philosophy and decorate their houses
+with his maxims. Humanity is about the same, whether white or yellow,
+the round world over, and time modifies it but little. It will be
+recalled how John P. Altgeld was feared and hated by both press and
+pulpit, especially in the State and city he served. But rigor mortis had
+scarcely seized upon that slight and tired body before the newspapers
+that had disparaged the man worst were vying with one another in glowing
+eulogies and warm testimonials to his honesty, sincerity, purity of
+motive and deep insight. A personality which can neither be bribed,
+bought, coerced, flattered nor cajoled is always regarded by the
+many--especially by the party in power--as "dangerous." Vice, masked as
+virtue, breathes easier when the honest man is safely under the sod.
+
+The plain and simple style of Confucius' teaching can be gathered by the
+following sayings, selected at random from the canonical books of
+Confucianism, consisting of the teachings of the great master which were
+gathered together and grouped by his disciples and followers after his
+death:
+
+     The men of old spoke little. It would be well to imitate them, for
+     those who talk much are sure to say something it would be better to
+     have left unsaid.
+
+     Let a man's labor be proportioned to his needs. For he who works
+     beyond his strength does but add to his cares and disappointments.
+     A man should be moderate even in his efforts.
+
+     Be not over-anxious to obtain relaxation or repose. For he who is
+     so, will get neither.
+
+     Beware of ever doing that which you are likely, sooner or later, to
+     repent of having done.
+
+     Do not neglect to rectify an evil because it may seem small, for,
+     though small at first, it may continue to grow until it overwhelms
+     you.
+
+     As riches adorn a house, so does an expanded mind adorn and
+     tranquillize the body. Hence it is that the superior man will seek
+     to establish his motives on correct principles.
+
+     The cultivator of the soil may have his fill of good things, but
+     the cultivator of the mind will enjoy a continual feast.
+
+     It is because men are prone to be partial toward those they love,
+     unjust toward those they hate, servile toward those above them,
+     arrogant to those below them, and either harsh or over-indulgent to
+     those in poverty and distress, that it is so difficult to find any
+     one capable of exercising a sound judgment with respect to the
+     qualities of others.
+
+     He who is incapable of regulating his own family can not be capable
+     of ruling a nation. The superior man will find within the limits of
+     his own home, a sufficient sphere for the exercise of all those
+     principles upon which good government depends. How, indeed, can it
+     be otherwise, when filial piety is that which should regulate the
+     conduct of a people toward their prince; fraternal affection, that
+     which should regulate the relations which should exist between
+     equals, and the conduct of inferiors toward those above them; and
+     paternal kindness, that which should regulate the bearing of those
+     in authority toward those over whom they are placed?
+
+     Be slow in speech, but prompt in action.
+
+     He whose principles are thoroughly established will not be easily
+     led from the right path.
+
+     The cautious are generally to be found on the right side.
+
+     By speaking when we ought to keep silence, we waste our words.
+
+     If you would escape vexation, reprove yourself liberally and others
+     sparingly.
+
+     There is no use attempting to help those who can not help
+     themselves.
+
+     Make friends with the upright, intelligent and wise; avoid the
+     licentious, talkative and vain.
+
+     Disputation often breeds hatred.
+
+     Nourish good principles with the same care that a mother would
+     bestow on her newborn babe. You may not be able to bring them to
+     maturity, but you will nevertheless be not far from doing so.
+
+     The decrees of Heaven are not immutable, for though a throne may be
+     gained by virtue, it may be lost by vice.
+
+     There are five good principles of action to be adopted: To benefit
+     others without being lavish; to encourage labor without being
+     harsh; to add to your resources without being covetous; to be
+     dignified without being supercilious; and to inspire awe without
+     being austere. Also, we should not search for love or demand it,
+     but so live that it will flow to us.
+
+     Personal character can only be established on fixed principles, for
+     if the mind be allowed to be agitated by violent emotions, to be
+     excited by fear, or unduly moved by the love of pleasure, it will
+     be impossible for it to be made perfect. A man must reason calmly,
+     for without reason he would look and not see, listen and not hear.
+
+     When a man has been helped around one corner of a square, and can
+     not manage by himself to get around the other three, he is unworthy
+     of further assistance.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: PYTHAGORAS]
+
+PYTHAGORAS
+
+
+     Consult and deliberate before you act, that thou mayest not commit
+     foolish actions. For 't is the part of a miserable man to speak and
+     to act without reflection. But do that which will not afflict thee
+     afterwards, nor oblige thee to repentance.
+
+     --_Pythagoras_
+
+
+PYTHAGORAS
+
+With no desire to deprive Mr. Bok of his bread, I wish to call attention
+to Pythagoras, who lived a little more than five hundred years before
+Christ.
+
+Even at that time the world was old. Memphis, which was built four
+thousand years ago, had begun to crumble into ruins. Troy was buried
+deep in the dust which an American citizen of German birth was to
+remove. Nineveh and Babylon were dying the death that success always
+brings, and the star of empire was preparing to westward wend its way.
+
+Pythagoras ushered in the Golden Age of Greece. All the great writers
+whom he immediately preceded, quote him and refer to him. Some admire
+him; others are loftily critical; most of them are a little jealous; and
+a few use him as a horrible example, calling him a poseur, a pedant, a
+learned sleight-of-hand man, a bag of books.
+
+Trial by newspaper was not invented in the time of Pythagoras; but
+personal vilification has been popular since Balaam talked gossip with
+his vis-a-vis.
+
+Anaxagoras, who gave up his wealth to the State that he might be free,
+and who was the teacher of Pericles, was a pupil of Pythagoras, and used
+often to mention him.
+
+In this way Pericles was impressed by the Pythagorean philosophy, and
+very often quotes it in his speeches. Socrates gave Pythagoras as an
+authority on the simple life, and stated that he was willing to follow
+him in anything save his injunction to keep silence. Socrates wanted
+silence optional; whereas Pythagoras required each of his pupils to live
+for a year without once asking a question or making an explanation. In
+aggravated cases he made the limit five years.
+
+In many ways Pythagoras reminds us of our friend Muldoon, both being
+beneficent autocrats, and both proving their sincerity by taking their
+own medicine. Pythagoras said, "I will never ask another to do what I
+have not done, and am not willing to do myself."
+
+To this end he was once challenged by his three hundred pupils to remain
+silent for a year. He accepted the defi, not once defending himself from
+the criticisms and accusations that were rained upon him, not once
+complaining, nor issuing an order. Tradition has it, however, that he
+made averages good later on, when the year of expiation was ended.
+
+There are two reasonably complete lives of Pythagoras, one by Diogenes
+Laertius, and another by Iamblichus. Personally, I prefer the latter, as
+Iamblichus, as might be inferred from his name, makes Pythagoras a
+descendant of AEneas, who was a son of Neptune. This is surely better
+than the abrupt and somewhat sensational statement to the effect that
+his father was Apollo.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The birthplace of Pythagoras was Samos, an isle of Greece. He was born
+of wealthy but honest parents, who were much in love with each other--a
+requisite, says Pythagoras, for parentage on its highest plane. It is
+probable that Pythagoras was absolutely correct in his hypothesis.
+
+That he was a very noble specimen of manhood--physically and
+mentally--there is no doubt. He was tall, lithe, dignified, commanding
+and silent by nature, realizing fully that a handsome man can never talk
+as well as he looks.
+
+He was quite aware of his physical graces, and in following up the facts
+of his early life, he makes the statement that his father was a
+sea-captain and trader. He then incidentally adds that the best results
+are obtained for posterity where a man is absent from his family eleven
+months in the year. This is an axiom agreed upon by many modern
+philosophers, few of whom, however, live up to their ideals.
+Aristophanes, who was on friendly terms with some of the disciples of
+Pythagoras, suggested in one of his plays that the Pythagorean domestic
+time-limit should be increased at least a month for the good of all
+concerned.
+
+Plato, Xenophon and Aristotle make frequent references to Pythagoras. In
+order to impress men like these, the man must have taught a very exalted
+philosophy. In truth, Pythagoras was a teacher of teachers. And like all
+men who make a business of wisdom he sometimes came tardy off, and
+indulged in a welter of words that wrecked the original idea--if there
+were one.
+
+There are these three: Knowledge, Learning, Wisdom. And the world has
+until very recent times assumed that they were practically one and the
+same thing.
+
+Knowledge consists of the things we know, not the things we believe or
+the things we assume. Knowledge is a personal matter of intuition,
+confirmed by experience. Learning consists largely of the things we
+memorize and are told by persons or books. Tomlinson of Berkeley Square
+was a learned man. When we think of a learned man, we picture him as one
+seated in a library surrounded by tomes that top the shelves.
+
+Wisdom is the distilled essence of what we have learned from experience.
+It is that which helps us to live, work, love and make life worth living
+for all we meet. Men may be very learned, and still be far from wise.
+
+Pythagoras was one of those strange beings who are born with a desire to
+know, and who finally comprehending the secret of the Sphinx, that there
+is really nothing to say, insist on saying it. That is, vast learning is
+augmented by a structure of words, and on this is built a theogony.
+Practically he was a priest.
+
+Worked into all priestly philosophies are nuggets of wisdom that shine
+like stars in the darkness and lead men on and on.
+
+All great religions have these periods of sanity, otherwise they would
+have no followers at all. The followers, understanding little bits of
+this and that, hope finally to understand it all. Inwardly the initiates
+at the shrine of their own conscience know that they know nothing. When
+they teach others they are obliged to pretend that they, themselves,
+fully comprehend the import of what they are saying. The novitiate
+attributes his lack of perception to his own stupidity, and many great
+teachers encourage this view.
+
+"Be patient, and you shall some day know," they say, and smile frigidly.
+
+And when credulity threatens to balk and go no further, magic comes to
+the rescue and the domain of Hermann and Kellar is poached upon.
+
+Mystery and miracle were born in Egypt. It was there that a system was
+evolved, backed up by the ruler, of religious fraud so colossal that
+modern deception looks like the bungling efforts of an amateur. The
+government, the army, the taxing power of the State, were sworn to
+protect gigantic safes in which was hoarded--nothing. That is to say,
+nothing but the pretense upon which cupidity and self-hypnotized
+credulity battened and fattened.
+
+All institutions which through mummery, strange acts, dress and ritual,
+affect to know and impart the inmost secrets of creation and ultimate
+destiny, had their rise in Egypt. In Egypt now are only graves, tombs,
+necropolises and silence. The priests there need no soldiery to keep
+their secrets safe. Ammon-Ra, who once ruled the universe, being finally
+exorcised by Yaveh, is now as dead as the mummies who once were men and
+upheld his undisputed sway.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Egyptians guarded their mysteries with jealous dread.
+
+We know their secret now. It is this--there are no mysteries.
+
+That is the only secret upon which any secret society holds a caveat.
+Wisdom can not be corraled with gibberish and fettered in jargon.
+Knowledge is one thing--palaver another. The Greek-letter societies of
+our callow days still survive in bird's-eye, and next to these come the
+Elks, who take theirs with seltzer and a smile, as a rare good joke,
+save that brotherhood and good-fellowship are actually a saving salt
+which excuses much that would otherwise be simply silly.
+
+All this mystery and mysticism was once official, and later, on being
+discarded by the authorities, was continued by the students as a kind of
+prank.
+
+Greek-letter societies are the rudimentary survivals of what was once an
+integral part of every college. Making dead languages optional was the
+last convulsive kick of the cadaver.
+
+And now a good many colleges are placing the seal of their disapproval
+on secret societies among the students; and the day is near when the
+secret society will not be tolerated, either directly or indirectly, as
+a part of the education of youth. All this because the sophomoric mind
+is prone to take its Greek-letter mysteries seriously, and regard the
+college curriculum as a joke of the faculty.
+
+If knowledge were to be gained by riding a goat, any petty crossroads,
+with its lodge-room over the grocery, would contain a Herbert Spencer;
+and the agrarian mossbacks would have wisdom by the scruff and detain
+knowledge with a tail-hold.
+
+There can be no secrets in life and morals, because Nature has so
+provided that every beautiful thought you know and every precious
+sentiment you feel, shall shine out of your face so that all who are
+great enough may see, know, understand, appreciate and appropriate. You
+can keep things only by giving them away.
+
+When Pythagoras was only four or five years old, his mother taught him
+to take his morning bath in the cold stream, and dry his baby skin by
+running in the wind. As he ran, she ran with him, and together they sang
+a hymn to the rising sun, that for them represented the god Apollo.
+
+This mother taught him to be indifferent to cold, heat, hunger, to exult
+in endurance, and to take a joy in the glow of the body.
+
+So the boy grew strong and handsome, and proud; and perhaps it was in
+those early years, from the mother herself, that he gathered the idea,
+afterward developed, that Apollo had appeared to his mother, and so
+great was the beauty of the god that the woman was actually overcome, it
+being the first god at which she had ever had a good look.
+
+The ambition of a great mother centers on her son. Pythagoras was filled
+with the thought that he was different, peculiar, set apart to teach the
+human race.
+
+Having compassed all there was to learn in his native place, and, as he
+thought, being ill appreciated, he started for Egypt, the land of
+learning. The fallacy that knowledge was a secret to be gained by word
+of mouth and to be gotten from books existed then as now. The mother of
+Pythagoras wanted her son to comprehend the innermost secrets of the
+Egyptian mysteries. He would then know all. To this end she sold her
+jewels, in order that her son might have the advantages of an Egyptian
+education.
+
+Women were not allowed to know the divine secrets--only just a few
+little ones. This woman wanted to know, and she said her son would
+learn, and tell her.
+
+The family had become fairly rich by this time, and influential. Letters
+were gotten from the great ones of Samos to the Secretary of State in
+Egypt. And so Pythagoras, aged twenty, "the youth with the beautiful
+hair," went on his journey to Egypt and knocked boldly at the doors of
+the temples at Memphis, where knowledge was supposed to be in stock.
+Religion then monopolized all schools and continued to do so for quite
+some time after Pythagoras was dead.
+
+He was turned away with the explanation that no foreigner could enter
+the sacred portals--that the initiates must be those born in the shadows
+of the temples and nurtured in the faith from infancy by holy virgins.
+
+Pythagoras still insisted, and it was probably then that he found a
+sponsor who made for him the claim that he was a son of Apollo. And the
+holy men peeped out of their peep-holes in holy admiration for any one
+who could concoct as big a lie as they themselves had ever invented.
+
+The boy surely looked the part. Perhaps, at last, here was one who was
+what they pretended to be! Frauds believe in frauds, and rogues are more
+easily captured by roguery than are honest men.
+
+His admittance to the university became a matter of international
+diplomacy. At last, being too hard-pressed, the wise ones who ran the
+mystery monopoly gave in, and Pythagoras was informed that at midnight
+of a certain night, he should present himself, naked, at the door of a
+certain temple and he would be admitted.
+
+On the stroke of the hour, at the appointed time, Pythagoras, the youth
+with the beautiful hair, was there, clothed only in his beautiful hair.
+He knocked on the great, bronze doors, but the only answer was a faint,
+hollow echo.
+
+Then he got a stone and pounded, but still no answer.
+
+The wind sprang up fresh and cold. The young man was chilled to the
+bone, but still he pounded and then called aloud demanding admittance.
+His answer now was the growling and barking of dogs, within. Still he
+pounded! After an interval a hoarse voice called out through a little
+slide, ordering him to be gone or the dogs would be turned loose upon
+him.
+
+He demanded admittance.
+
+"Fool, do you not know that the law says these doors shall admit no one
+except at sunrise?"
+
+"I only know that I was told to be here at midnight and I would be
+admitted."
+
+"All that may be true, but you were not told when you would be
+admitted--wait, it is the will of the gods." So Pythagoras waited,
+numbed and nearly dead.
+
+The dogs which he had heard had, in some way, gotten out, and came
+tearing around the corner of the great stone building. He fought them
+with desperate strength. The effort seemed to warm his blood, and
+whereas before he was about to retreat to his lodgings he now remained.
+
+The day broke in the east, and gangs of slaves went by to work. They
+jeered at him and pelted him with pebbles.
+
+Suddenly across the desert sands he saw the faint pink rim of the rising
+sun. On the instant the big bronze doors against which he was leaning
+swung suddenly in. He fell with them, and coarse, rough hands seized his
+hair and pulled him into the hall.
+
+The doors swung to and closed with a clang. Pythagoras was in dense
+darkness, lying on the stone floor.
+
+A voice, seemingly coming from afar, demanded, "Do you still wish to go
+on?"
+
+And his answer was, "I desire to go on."
+
+A black-robed figure, wearing a mask, then appeared with a flickering
+light, and Pythagoras was led into a stone cell.
+
+His head was shaved, and he was given a coarse robe and then left alone.
+Toward the end of the day he was given a piece of black bread and a bowl
+of water. This he was told was to fortify him for the ordeal to come.
+
+What that ordeal was we can only guess, save that it consisted partially
+in running over hot sands where he sank to his waist. At a point where
+he seemed about to perish a voice called loudly, "Do you yet desire to
+go on?"
+
+And his answer was, "I desire to go on."
+
+Returning to the inmost temple he was told to enter a certain door and
+wait therein. He was then blindfolded and when he opened the door to
+enter, he walked off into space and fell into a pool of ice-cold water.
+
+While floundering there the voice again called, "Do you yet desire to go
+on?"
+
+And his answer was, "I desire to go on."
+
+At another time he was tied upon the back of a donkey and the donkey was
+led along a rocky precipice, where lights danced and flickered a
+thousand feet below.
+
+"Do you yet want to go on?" called the voice.
+
+And Pythagoras answered, "I desire to go on."
+
+The priests here pushed the donkey off the precipice, which proved to be
+only about two feet high, the gulf below being an illusion arranged with
+the aid of lights that shone through apertures in the wall.
+
+These pleasing little diversions Pythagoras afterward introduced into
+the college which he founded, so to teach the merry freshmen that
+nothing, at the last, was as bad as it seemed, and that most dangers are
+simply illusions.
+
+The Egyptians grew to have such regard for Pythagoras that he was given
+every opportunity to know the inmost secrets of the mysteries. He said
+he encompassed them all, save those alone which were incomprehensible.
+
+This was probably true.
+
+The years spent in Egypt were not wasted--he learned astronomy,
+mathematics, and psychology, a thing then not named, but pretty well
+understood--the management of men.
+
+It was twenty years before Pythagoras returned to Samos. His mother was
+dead, so she passed away in ignorance of the secrets of the gods--which
+perhaps was just as well.
+
+Samos now treated Pythagoras with great honor.
+
+Crowds flocked to his lectures, presents were given him, royalty paid
+him profound obeisance.
+
+But Samos soon tired of Pythagoras. He was too austere, too severe; and
+when he began to rebuke the officials for their sloth and indifference,
+he was invited to go elsewhere and teach his science of life. And so he
+journeyed into Southern Italy, and at Crotona built his Temple to the
+Muses and founded the Pythagorean School. He was the wisest as well as
+the most learned man of his time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some unkind person has said that Pythagoras was the original charter
+member of the Jesuits Society. The maxim that the end justifies the
+means was the cornerstone of Egyptian theology. When Pythagoras left
+Egypt he took with him this cornerstone as a souvenir. That the priests
+could hold their power over the masses only through magic and miracle
+was fully believed, and as a good police system the value of organized
+religion was highly appreciated. In fact, no ruler could hold his place,
+unsupported by the priest. Both were divine propositions. One searches
+in vain for simple truth among the sages, solons, philosophers, poets
+and prophets that existed down to the time of Socrates. Truth for
+truth's sake was absolutely unimagined; freethought was unguessed.
+
+Expediency was always placed before truth.
+
+Truth was furnished with frills--the people otherwise would not be
+impressed. Chants, robes, ritual, processions, banging of bells, burning
+of incense, strange sounds, sights and smells: these were considered
+necessary factors in teaching divine truth.
+
+To worship with a noise seems to us a little like making love with a
+brass band.
+
+Pythagoras was a very great man, but for him to eliminate theological
+chaff entirely was impossible. So we find that when he was about to
+speak, red fire filled the building as soon as he arose. It was all a
+little like the alleged plan of the late Reverend T. DeWitt Talmage,
+who used to have an Irishman let loose a white pigeon from the
+organ-loft at an opportune time.
+
+When Pythagoras burned the red fire, of course the audience thought a
+miracle was taking place, unable to understand a simple stage-trick
+which all the boys in the gallery who delight in "Faust" now understand.
+
+However, the Pythagorean School had much virtue on its side, and made a
+sincere and earnest effort to solve certain problems that yet are vexing
+us.
+
+The Temple of the Muses, built by Pythagoras at Crotona, is described by
+Iamblichus as a stone structure with walls twenty feet thick, the light
+being admitted only from the top. It was evidently constructed after the
+Egyptian pattern, and the intent was to teach there the esoteric
+doctrine. But Pythagoras improved upon the Egyptian methods and opened
+his temple on certain days to all and any who desired to come. Then at
+times he gave lectures to women only, and then to men only, and also to
+children, thus showing that modern revival methods are not wholly
+modern.
+
+These lectures contain the very essence of Pythagorean philosophy, and
+include so much practical commonsense that they are still quoted. These
+are some of the sayings that impressed Socrates, Pericles, Aristotle and
+Pliny. What the Egyptians actually taught we really do not know--it was
+too gaseous to last. Only the good endures. Says Pythagoras:
+
+     Cut not into the grape. Exaltation coming from wine is not good.
+     You hope too much in this condition, so are afterwards depressed.
+     Wise men are neither cast down in defeat nor exalted by success.
+     Eat moderately, bathe plentifully, exercise much in the open air,
+     walk far, and climb the hills alone.
+
+     Above all things, learn to keep silence--hear all and speak little.
+     If you are defamed, answer not back. Talk convinces no one. Your
+     life and character proclaim you more than any argument you can put
+     forth. Lies return to plague those who repeat them.
+
+     The secret of power is to keep an even temper, and remember that no
+     one thing that can happen is of much moment. The course of justice,
+     industry, courage, moderation, silence, means that you shall
+     receive your due of every good thing. The gods may be slow, but
+     they never forget.
+
+     It is not for us to punish men nor avenge ourselves for slights,
+     wrongs and insults--wait, and you will see that Nemesis unhorses
+     the man intent on calumny.
+
+     A woman's ornaments should be modesty, simplicity, truth,
+     obedience. If a woman would hold a man captive she can only do it
+     by obeying him. Violent women are even more displeasing to the gods
+     than violent men--both are destroying themselves. Strife is always
+     defeat.
+
+     Debauchery, riot, splendor, luxury, are attempts to get a pleasure
+     out of life that is not our due, and so Nemesis provides her
+     penalty for the idle and gluttonous.
+
+     Fear and honor the gods. They guide our ways and watch over us in
+     our sleep. After the gods, a man's first thought should be of his
+     father and mother. Next to these his wife, then his children.
+
+So great was this power of Pythagoras over the people that many of the
+women who came, hearing his discourse on the folly of pride and
+splendor, threw off their cloaks, and left them with their rings,
+anklets and necklaces on the altar.
+
+With these and other offerings Pythagoras built another temple, this
+time to Apollo, and the Temple to the Muses was left open all the time
+for the people.
+
+His power over the multitude alarmed the magistrates, so they sent for
+him to examine him as to his influence and intents. He explained to them
+that as the Muses were never at variance among themselves, always living
+in subjection to Apollo, so should magistrates agree among themselves
+and think only of being loyal to the king. All royal edicts and laws are
+reflections of divine law, and therefore must be obeyed without
+question. And as the Muses never interrupt the harmony of Heaven, but in
+fact add to it, so should men ever keep harmony among themselves.
+
+All officers of the government should consider themselves as runners in
+the Olympian games, and never seek to trip, jostle, harass or annoy a
+rival, but run the race squarely and fairly, satisfied to be beaten if
+the other is the stronger and better man. An unfair victory gains only
+the anger of the gods.
+
+All disorders in the State come from ill education of the young.
+Children not brought up to be patient, to endure, to work, to be
+considerate of their elders and respectful to all, grow diseased minds
+that find relief at last in anarchy and rebellion. So to take great care
+of children in their infancy, and then leave them at puberty to follow
+their own inclinations, is to sow disorder. Children well loved and kept
+close to their parents grow up into men and women who are an ornament to
+the State and a joy to the gods. Lawless, complaining, restless, idle
+children grieve the gods and bring trouble upon their parents and
+society.
+
+The magistrates were here so pleased, and satisfied in their own minds
+that Pythagoras meant the State no harm, that they issued an order that
+all citizens should attend upon his lectures at least once a week, and
+take their wives and children with them.
+
+They also offered to pay Pythagoras--that is, put him on the payroll as
+a public teacher--but he declined to accept money for his services. In
+this, Iamblichus says, he was very wise, since by declining a fixed fee,
+ten times as much was laid upon the altar of the Temple of the Muses,
+and not knowing to whom to return it, Pythagoras was obliged to keep it
+for himself and the poor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Churchmen of the Middle Ages worked the memory of Pythagoras great
+injustice by quoting him literally in order to prove how much they were
+beyond him. Symbols and epigrams require a sympathetic hearer, otherwise
+they are as naught.
+
+For instance, Pythagoras remarks, "Sit thou not down upon a bushel
+measure." What he probably meant was, get busy and fill the measure with
+grain rather than use it for a seat.
+
+"Eat not the heart"--do not act so as to harrow the feelings of your
+friends, and do not be morbid.
+
+"Never stir the fire with a sword"--do not inflame people who are
+wrathful.
+
+"Wear not the image of God upon your jewelry"--do not make religion a
+proud or boastful thing.
+
+"Help men to a burden, but never unburden them." This saying was used by
+Saint Francis to prove that the pagan philosophers had no tenderness,
+and that the humanities came at a later date. We can now easily
+understand that to relieve men of responsibilities is no help; rather do
+we grow strong by carrying burdens.
+
+"Leave not the mark of the pot upon the ashes"--wipe out the past,
+forget it, look to the future.
+
+"Feed no animal that has crooked claws"--do not encourage rogues by
+supplying them a living.
+
+"Eat no fish whose fins are black"--have nothing to do with men whose
+deeds are dark.
+
+"Always have salt upon your table"--this seems the original of "cum
+grano salis" of the Romans.
+
+"Leave the vinegar at a distance"--keep sweet.
+
+"Speak not in the face of the sun"--even Erasmus thought this referred
+to magic. To us it is quite reasonable to suppose that it meant, "do not
+talk too much in public places."
+
+"Pick not up what falls from the table"--Plutarch calls this
+superstition, but we can just as easily suppose it was out of
+consideration for cats, dogs or hungry men. The Bible has a command
+against gleaning too closely, and leaving nothing for the traveler.
+
+"When making sacrifice, never pare your nails"--that is to say, do one
+thing at a time: wind not the clock at an inopportune time.
+
+"Eat not in the chariot"--when you travel, travel.
+
+"Feed not yourself with your left hand"--get your living openly and
+avoid all left-handed dealings.
+
+And so there are hundreds of these Pythagorean sayings that have vexed
+our classic friends for over two thousand years. All Greek scholars who
+really pride themselves on their scholarship have taken a hand at them,
+and agitated the ether just as the members of the Kokomo Woman's Club
+discuss obscure passages in Bliss Carman or Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Learned
+people are apt to comprehend anything but the obvious.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The School of Pythagoras grew until it became the chief attraction of
+Crotona. The size of the town was doubled through the pilgrims who came
+to study music, mathematics, medicine, ethics and the science of
+government.
+
+The Pythagorean plan of treating the sick by music was long considered
+as mere incantation, but there is a suspicion now that it was actual
+science. Once there was a man who rode a hobby all his life; and long
+after he was dead, folks discovered it was a real live horse and had
+carried the man long miles.
+
+Pythagoras reduced the musical scale to a mathematical science. In
+astronomy he anticipated Copernicus, and indeed, it was cited as the
+chief offense of Copernicus that he had borrowed from a pagan.
+Copernicus, it seems, set the merry churchmen digging into Greek
+literature to find out just how bad Pythagoras was. This did the
+churchmen good, but did not help the cause of Copernicus.
+
+Pythagoras for a time sought to popularize his work, but he soon found
+to his dismay that he was attracting cheap and unworthy people, who came
+not so much out of a love of learning as to satisfy a morbid curiosity
+and gain a short cut to wisdom. They wanted secrets, and knowing that
+Pythagoras had spent twenty years in Egypt, they came to him, hoping to
+get them.
+
+Said Pythagoras, "He who digs, always finds." At another time, he put
+the same idea reversely, thus, "He who digs not, never finds."
+
+Pythagoras was well past forty when he married a daughter of one of the
+chief citizens of Crotona. It seems that, inspired by his wife, who was
+first one of his pupils and then a disciple, he conceived a new mode of
+life, which he thought would soon overthrow the old manner of living.
+
+Pythagoras himself wrote nothing, but all his pupils kept tablets, and
+Athens in the century following Pythagoras was full of these Pythagorean
+notebooks, and these supply us the scattered data from which his life
+was written.
+
+Pythagoras, like so many other great men, had his dream of Utopia: it
+was a college or, literally, "a collection of people," where all were on
+an equality. Everybody worked, everybody studied, everybody helped
+everybody, and all refrained from disturbing or distressing any one. It
+was the Oneida Community taken over by Brook Farm and fused into a
+religious and scientific New Harmony by the Shakers.
+
+One smiles to see the minute rules that were made for the guidance of
+the members. They look like a transcript from a sermon by John Alexander
+Dowie, revised by the shade of Robert Owen.
+
+This Pythagorean Community was organized out of a necessity in order to
+escape the blow-ins who sailed across from Greece intent on some new
+thing, but principally to get knowledge and a living without work.
+
+And so Pythagoras and his wife formed a close corporation. For each
+member there was an initiation, strict and severe, the intent of which
+was absolutely to bar the transient triflers. Each member was to turn
+over to the Common Treasury all the money and goods he had of every kind
+and quality. They started naked, just as did Pythagoras when he stood at
+the door of the temple in Egypt.
+
+Simplicity, truth, honesty and mutual service were to govern. It was an
+outcrop of the monastic impulse, save that women were admitted, also.
+Unlike the Egyptians, Pythagoras believed now in the equality of the
+sexes, and his wife daily led the women's chorus, and she also gave
+lectures. The children were especially cared for by women set apart as
+nurses and teachers. By rearing perfect children, it was hoped and
+expected to produce in turn a perfect race.
+
+The whole idea was a phase of totemism and tabu.
+
+That it flourished for about thirty years is very certain. Two sons and
+a daughter of Pythagoras grew to maturity in the college, and this
+daughter was tried by the Order on the criminal charge of selling the
+secret doctrines of her father to outsiders.
+
+One of the sons it seems made trouble, also, in an attempt to usurp his
+father's place and take charge of affairs, as "next friend." One
+generation is about the limit of a Utopian Community. When those who
+have organized the community weaken and one by one pass away, and the
+young assume authority, the old ideas of austerity are forgotten and
+dissipation and disintegration enter. So do we move in circles.
+
+The final blow to the Pythagorean College came through jealousy and
+misunderstanding of the citizens outside. It was the old question of
+Town versus Gown. The Pythagoreans numbered nearly three hundred people.
+They held themselves aloof, and no doubt had an exasperating pride. No
+strangers were ever allowed inside the walls--they were a law unto
+themselves.
+
+Internal strife and tales told by dissenters excited the curiosity, and
+then the prejudice, of the townspeople.
+
+Then the report got abroad that the Pythagoreans were collecting arms
+and were about to overthrow the local government and enslave the
+officials.
+
+On a certain night, led by a band of drunken soldiers, a mob made an
+assault upon the college. The buildings were fired, and the members were
+either destroyed in the flames or killed as they rushed forth to escape.
+Tradition has it that Pythagoras was later seen by a shepherd on the
+mountains, but the probabilities are that he perished with his people.
+But you can not dispose of a great man by killing him. Here we are
+reading, writing and talking yet of Pythagoras.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: PLATO]
+
+PLATO
+
+
+     How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the
+     question, "How does love suit with age, Sophocles--are you still
+     the man you were?"
+
+     "Peace," he replied; "most gladly have I escaped that, and I feel
+     as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master."
+
+     That saying of his has often come into my mind since, and seems to
+     me still as good as at the time when I heard him. For certainly old
+     age has a great sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax
+     their hold, then, as Sophocles says, you have escaped from the
+     control not of one master only, but of many. And of these regrets,
+     as well as of the complaint about relations, Socrates, the cause is
+     to be sought, not in men's ages, but in their characters and
+     tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel
+     the pressure of age, but he who is of an opposite disposition will
+     find youth and age equally a burden.
+
+     --_The Republic_
+
+
+PLATO
+
+A thinking man is one of the most recent productions evolved from
+Nature's laboratory. The first man of brains to express himself about
+the world in an honest, simple and natural way, just as if nothing had
+been said about it before, was Socrates.
+
+Twenty-four centuries have passed since Socrates was put to death on the
+charge of speaking disrespectfully of the gods and polluting the minds
+of the youths of Athens. During ten of these centuries that have passed
+since then, the race lost the capacity to think, through the successful
+combination of the priest and the soldier. These men blocked human
+evolution. The penalty for making slaves is that you become one.
+
+To suppress humanity is to suppress yourself.
+
+The race is one. So the priests and the soldiers who in the Third
+Century had a modicum of worth themselves, sank and were submerged in
+the general slough of superstition and ignorance. It was a panic that
+continued for a thousand years, all through the endeavor of faulty men
+to make people good by force. At all times, up to within our own decade,
+frank expression on religious, economic and social topics has been
+fraught with great peril. Even yet any man who hopes for popularity as
+a writer, orator, merchant or politician, would do well to conceal
+studiously his inmost beliefs. On such simple themes as the taxation of
+real estate, regardless of the business of the owner, and a payment
+of a like wage for a like service without consideration of sex, the
+statesman who has the temerity to speak out will be quickly relegated
+to private life. Successful merchants depending on a local constituency
+find it expedient to cater to popular superstitions by heading
+subscription-lists for the support of things in which they do not
+believe. No avowed independent thinker would be tolerated as chief ruler
+of any of the so-called civilized countries.
+
+The fact, however, that the penalty for frank expression is limited now
+to social and commercial ostracism is very hopeful--a few years ago it
+meant the scaffold.
+
+We have been heirs to a leaden legacy of fear that has well-nigh
+banished joy and made of life a long nightmare.
+
+In very truth, the race has been insane.
+
+Hallucinations, fallacies, fears, have gnawed at our hearts, and men
+have fought men with deadly frenzy. The people who interfered, trying to
+save us, we have killed. Truly did we say, "There is no health in us,"
+which repetition did not tend to mend the malady.
+
+We are now getting convalescent. We are hobbling out into the sunshine
+on crutches. We have discharged most of our old advisers, heaved the
+dulling and deadly bottles out of the windows, and are intent on
+studying and understanding our own case. Our motto is twenty-four
+centuries old--it is simply this: KNOW THYSELF.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Socrates was a street preacher, with a beautiful indifference as to
+whether people liked him or not. To most Athenians he was the town fool.
+Athens was a little city (only about one hundred fifty thousand), and
+everybody knew Socrates. The popular plays caricatured him; the topical
+songs misquoted him; the funny artists on the street-corners who modeled
+things in clay, while you waited, made figures of him.
+
+Everybody knew Socrates--I guess so!
+
+Plato, the handsome youth of nineteen, wearing a purple robe, which
+marked him as one of the nobility, paused to listen to this uncouth man
+who gave everything and wanted nothing.
+
+Ye gods! But it is no wonder they caricatured him--he was a temptation
+too great to resist.
+
+Plato smiled--he never laughed, being too well-bred for that. Then he
+sighed, and moved a little nearer in.
+
+"Individuals are nothing. The State is all. To offend the State is to
+die. The State is an organization and we are members of it. The State is
+only as rich as its poorest citizen. We are all given a little sample of
+divinity to study, model and marvel at. To understand the State you must
+KNOW THYSELF."
+
+Plato lingered until the little crowd had dispersed, and when the old
+man with the goggle-eyes and full-moon face went shuffling slowly down
+the street, he approached and asked him a question.
+
+This man Socrates was no fool--the populace was wrong--he was a man so
+natural and free from cant that he appeared to the triflers and
+pretenders like a pretender, and they asked, "Is he sincere?"
+
+What Plato was by birth, breeding and inheritance, Socrates was by
+nature--a noble man.
+
+Up to this time the ambition of Plato had been for place and power--to
+make the right impression on the people in order to gain political
+preferment. He had been educated in the school of the Sophists, and his
+principal studies were poetry, rhetoric and deportment.
+
+And now straightway he destroyed the manuscript of his poems, for in
+their writing he had suddenly discovered that he had not written what he
+inwardly believed was true, but simply that which he thought was proper
+and nice to say. In other words, his literature had been a form of
+pretense.
+
+Daily thereafter, where went Socrates there went Plato. Side by side
+they sat on the curb--Socrates talking, questioning the bystanders,
+accosting the passers-by; Plato talking little, but listening much.
+
+Socrates was short, stout and miles around. Plato was tall, athletic and
+broad-shouldered. In fact, the word, "plato," or "platon," means broad,
+and it was given him as a nickname by his comrades. His correct name was
+Aristocles, but "Plato" suited him better, since it symbols that he was
+not only broad of shoulder, but likewise in mind. He was not only noble
+by birth, but noble in appearance.
+
+Emerson calls him the universal man. He absorbed all the science, all
+the art, all the philosophy of his day. He was handsome, kindly,
+graceful, gracious, generous, and lived and died a bachelor. He never
+collided with either poverty or matrimony.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Plato was twenty-eight years old when Socrates died. For eight years
+they had been together daily. After the death of Socrates, Plato lived
+for forty-six years, just to keep alive the name and fame of the great
+philosopher.
+
+Socrates comes to us through Plato. Various other contemporaries mention
+Socrates and quote him, some to his disadvantage, but it was left for
+Plato to give us the heart of his philosophy, and limn his character for
+all time in unforgetable outline.
+
+Plato is called the "Pride of Greece." His contribution to the wealth of
+the world consists in the fact that he taught the joys of the
+intellect--the supreme satisfaction that comes through thinking. This is
+the pure Platonic philosophy: to find our gratifications in exalted
+thought and not in bodily indulgence. Plato's theory that five years
+should be given in early manhood to abstract thought, abstaining from
+all practical affairs, so as to acquire a love for learning, has been
+grafted upon a theological stalk and comes down to our present time. It
+has, however, now been discarded by the world's best thinkers as a
+fallacy. The unit of man's life is the day, not the month or year, much
+less a period of five years. Each day we must exercise the mind, just as
+each day we must exercise the body. We can not store up health and draw
+upon it at will over long-deferred periods. The account must be kept
+active. To keep physical energy we must expend physical energy every
+day. The opinion of Herbert Spencer that thought is a physical
+function--a vibration set up in a certain area of brain-cells--is an
+idea never preached by Plato. The brain, being an organ, must be used,
+not merely in one part for five years to the exclusion of all other
+parts, but all parts should be used daily. To this end the practical
+things of life should daily engage our attention, no less than the
+contemplation of beauty as manifest in music, poetry, art or dialectics.
+The thought that every day we should look upon a beautiful picture, read
+a beautiful poem, or listen for a little while to beautiful music, is
+highly scientific, for this contemplation and appreciation of harmony is
+a physical exercise as well as a spiritual one, and through it we grow,
+develop, evolve.
+
+That we could not devote five years of our time to purely esthetic
+exercises, to the exclusion of practical things, without very great
+risk, is now well known. And when I refer to practical affairs, I mean
+the effort which Nature demands we should put forth to get a living.
+Every man should live like a poor man, regardless of the fact that he
+may have money. Nature knows nothing of bank-balances. In order to have
+an appetite for dinner, you must first earn your dinner. If you would
+sleep at night, you must first pay for sweet sleep by physical labor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Plato was born on the Island of AEgina, where his father owned an estate.
+His mother was a direct descendant of Solon, and his father, not to be
+outdone, traced to Codrus.
+
+The father of Socrates was a stonecutter and his mother a midwife, so
+very naturally the son had a beautiful contempt for pedigree. Socrates
+once said to Plato, "Anybody can trace to Codrus--by paying enough to
+the man who makes the family-tree." This seems to show that genealogy
+was a matter of business then as now, and that nothing is new under the
+sun. Yet with all his contempt for heredity, we find Socrates often
+expressing pride in the fact that he was a "native son," whereas Plato,
+Aspasia, the mother of Themistocles, and various other fairly good
+people, were Athenian importations.
+
+Socrates belonged to the leisure class and had plenty of time for
+extended conversazione, so just how much seriousness we should mix in
+his dialogues is still a problem. Each palate has to season to suit.
+Also, we can never know how much is Socrates and how much essence of
+Plato. Socrates wrote nothing, and Plato ascribes all of his wisdom to
+his master. Whether this was simple prudence or magnanimity is still a
+question.
+
+The death of Socrates must have been a severe blow to Plato. He at once
+left Athens. It was his first intention never to return. He traveled
+through the cities of Greece, Southern Italy and down to Egypt, and
+everywhere was treated with royal courtesies.
+
+After many solicitations from Dionysius, Tyrant of Syracuse, he went to
+visit that worthy, who had a case of philosophic and literary scabies.
+Dionysius prided himself on being a Beneficent Autocrat, with a literary
+and artistic attachment. He ruled his people, educated them, cared for
+them, disciplined them.
+
+Some people call this slavery; others term it applied socialism.
+Dionysius wanted Syracuse to be the philosophic center of the world, and
+to this end Plato was importuned to make Syracuse his home and dispense
+his specialty--truth.
+
+This he consented to do.
+
+It was all very much like the arrangement between Maecenas and Horace, or
+Voltaire and Frederick the Great. The patron is a man who patronizes--he
+wants something, and the particular thing that Dionysius wanted was to
+have Plato hold a colored light upon the performances of His Altruistic,
+Beneficent, Royal Jackanapes. But Plato was a simple, honest and direct
+man: he had caught the habit from Socrates.
+
+Charles Ferguson says that the simple life does not consist in living in
+the woods and wearing overalls and sandals, but in getting the cant out
+of one's cosmos and eliminating the hypocrisy from one's soul.
+
+Plato lived the simple life. When he spoke he stated what he thought. He
+discussed exploitation, war, taxation, and the Divine Right of Kings.
+Kings are very unfortunate--they are shut off and shielded from truth
+on every side. They get their facts at second hand and are lied to all
+day long. Consequently they become in time incapable of digesting truth.
+A court, being an artificial fabric, requires constant bracing. Next to
+capital, nothing is so timid as a king. Heine says that kings have to
+draw their nightcaps on over their crowns when they go to bed, in order
+to keep them from being stolen, and that they are subject to insomnia.
+
+Walt Whitman, with nothing to lose--not even a reputation or a hat--was
+much more kingly walking bareheaded past the White House than Nicholas
+of Russia or Alfonso of Spain can ever possibly be.
+
+Dionysius thought that he wanted a philosophic court, but all he wanted
+was to make folks think he had a philosophic court. Plato supplied him
+the genuine article, and very naturally Plato was soon invited to
+vacate.
+
+After he had gone, Dionysius, fearful that Plato would give him a bad
+reputation in Athens--somewhat after the manner and habit of the
+"escaped nun"--sent a fast-rowing galley after him. Plato was arrested
+and sold into slavery on his own isle of AEgina.
+
+This all sounds very tragic, but the real fact is it was a sort of
+comedy of errors--as a king's doings are when viewed from a safe and
+convenient distance. De Wolf Hopper's kings are the real thing.
+Dionysius claimed that Plato owed him money, and so he got out a
+body-attachment, and sold the philosopher to the highest bidder.
+
+This was a perfectly legal proceeding, being simply peonage, a thing
+which exists in some parts of the United States today. I state the fact
+without prejudice, merely to show how hard custom dies.
+
+Plato was too big a man conveniently either to secrete or kill. Certain
+people in Athens plagiarized Doctor Johnson who, on hearing that
+Goldsmith had debts of several thousand pounds, in admiration exclaimed,
+"Was ever poet so trusted before!" Other good friends ascertained the
+amount of the claim and paid it, just as Colonel H. H. Rogers graciously
+cleared up the liabilities of Mark Twain, after the author of
+"Huckleberry Finn" had landed his business craft on a sandbar.
+
+And so Plato went free, arriving back in Athens, aged forty, a wiser and
+a better man than when he left.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nothing absolves a reputation like silence and absence, or what the
+village editors call "the grim reaper." To live is always more or less
+of an offense, especially if you have thoughts and express them. Athens
+exists, in degree, because she killed Socrates, just as Jerusalem is
+unforgetable for a similar reason. The South did not realize that
+Lincoln was her best friend until the assassin's bullet had found his
+brain. Many good men in Chicago did not cease to revile their chiefest
+citizen, until the ears of Altgeld were stopped and his hands stiffened
+by death. The lips of the dead are eloquent.
+
+Plato's ten years of absence had given him prestige. He was honored
+because he had been the near and dear friend of Socrates, a great and
+good man who was killed through mistake.
+
+Most murders and killings of men, judicial and otherwise, are matters of
+misunderstandings.
+
+Plato had been driven out of Syracuse for the very reasons that Socrates
+had been killed at Athens. And now behold, when Dionysius saw how Athens
+was honoring Plato, he discovered that it was all a mistake of his
+bookkeeper, so he wrote to Plato to come back and all would be
+forgiven.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Those who set out to live the Ideal Life have a hard trail to travel.
+The road to Jericho is a rocky one--especially if we are a little in
+doubt as to whether it really is the road to Jericho or not. Perhaps if
+we ever find the man who lives the Ideal Life he will be quite unaware
+of it, so occupied will he be in his work--so forgetful of self.
+
+Time had taught Plato diplomacy. He now saw that to teach people who did
+not want to be taught was an error in judgment for which one might
+forfeit his head.
+
+Socrates was the first Democrat: he stood for the demos--the people.
+Plato would have done the same, but he saw that the business was extra
+hazardous, to use the phrase of our insurance friends. He who works for
+the people will be destroyed by the people. Hemlock is such a rare and
+precious commodity that few can afford it; the cross is a privilege so
+costly that few care to pay the price.
+
+The genius is a man who first states truths; and all truths are
+unpleasant on their first presentation. That which is uncommon is
+offensive. "Who ever heard anything like that before?" ask the literary
+and philosophic hill tribes in fierce indignation. Says James Russell
+Lowell, "I blab unpleasant truths, you see, that none may need to state
+them after me."
+
+Plato was a teacher by nature: this was his business, his pastime, and
+the only thing in life that gave him joy. But he dropped back to the
+good old ways of making truth esoteric as did the priests of Egypt,
+instead of exoteric as did Socrates. He founded his college in the grove
+of his old friend Academus, a mile out of Athens on the road to Eleusis.
+In honor of Academus the school was called "The Academy." It was
+secluded, safe, beautiful for situation. In time Plato bought a tract of
+land adjoining that of Academus, and this was set apart as the permanent
+school. All the teaching was done out of doors, master and pupils seated
+on the marble benches, by the fountain-side, or strolling through the
+grounds, rich with shrubs and flowers and enlivened by the song of
+birds. The climate of Athens was about like that of Southern California,
+where the sun shines three hundred days in the year.
+
+Plato emphasized the value of the spoken word over the written, a thing
+he could well afford to do, since he was a remarkably good writer. This
+for the same reason that the only man who can afford to go ragged is the
+man with a goodly bank-balance. The shibboleth of the modern schools of
+oratory is, "We grow through expression." And Plato was the man who
+first said it. Plato's teaching was all in the form of the "quiz,"
+because he believed that truth was not a thing to be acquired from
+another--it is self-discovery.
+
+Indeed, we can imagine it was very delightful--this walking, strolling,
+lying on the grass, or seated in semicircles, indulging in endless talk,
+easy banter, with now and then a formal essay read to start the
+vibrations.
+
+Here it was that Aristotle came from his wild home in the mountains of
+Macedonia, to remain for twenty years and to evolve into a rival of the
+master.
+
+We can well imagine how Aristotle, the mountain-climber and horseman, at
+times grew heartily tired of the faultily faultless garden with its high
+wall and graveled walks and delicate shrubbery, and shouted aloud in
+protest, "The whole world of mountain, valley and plain should be our
+Academy, not this pent-up Utica that contracts our powers."
+
+Then followed an argument as to the relative value of talking about
+things or doing them, or Poetry versus Science.
+
+Poetry, philosophy and religion are very old themes, and they were old
+even in Plato's day; but natural science came in with Aristotle. And
+science is only the classification of the common knowledge of the common
+people. It was Aristotle who named things, not Adam. He contended that
+the classification and naming of plants, rocks and animals was quite as
+important as to classify ideas about human happiness and make guesses at
+the state of the soul after death.
+
+Of course he got himself beautifully misunderstood, because he was
+advocating something which had never been advocated before. In this lay
+his virtue, that he outran human sympathy, even the sympathy of the
+great Plato.
+
+Yet for a while the unfolding genius of this young barbarian was a
+great joy to Plato, as the earnest, eager intellect of an ambitious
+pupil always is to his teacher. Plato was great in speculation;
+Aristotle was great in observation. Well has it been said that it was
+Aristotle who discovered the world. And Aristotle in his old age said,
+"My attempts to classify the objects of Nature all came through Plato's
+teaching me first how to classify ideas." And forty years before this
+Plato had said, "It was Socrates who taught me this game of the
+correlation and classification of thoughts."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The writings of Plato consist of thirty-five dialogues, and one essay
+which is not cast in the dramatic form--"The Apology." These dialogues
+vary in length from twenty pages, of, say, four hundred words each, to
+three hundred pages. In addition to these books are many quotations from
+Plato and references to him by contemporary writers. Plato's work is as
+impersonal as that of Shakespeare. All human ideas, shades of belief,
+emotions and desires pass through the colander of his mind. He allows
+everybody to have his say.
+
+What Plato himself thought can only be inferred, and this each reader
+does for himself. We construct our man Plato in our own image. A
+critic's highest conception of Plato's philosophy is the highest
+conception of the critic's own. We, however, are reasonably safe in
+assuming that Plato's own ideas were put into the mouth of Socrates, for
+the one intent of Plato's life was to redeem Socrates from the charges
+that had been made against him. The characters Shakespeare loved are the
+ones that represent the master, not the hated and handmade rogues.
+
+Plato's position in life was that of a spectator rather than that of an
+actor. He stood and saw the procession pass by, and as it passed,
+commented on it. He charged his pupils no tuition and accepted no fees,
+claiming that to sell one's influence or ideas was immoral.
+
+It will be remembered that Byron held a similar position at the
+beginning of his literary career, and declared i' faith, he "would not
+prostitute his genius for hire." He gave his poems to the world. Later,
+when his income was pinched, he began to make bargains with Barabbas and
+became an artist in per centum, collecting close, refusing to rhyme
+without collateral.
+
+Byron's humanity is not seriously disputed. Plato also was human. He had
+a fixed income and so knew the worthlessness of riches. He issued no
+tariff, but the goodly honorarium left mysteriously on a marble bench by
+a rich pupil he accepted, and for it gave thanks to the gods. He said
+many great things, but he never said this: "I would have every man poor
+that he might know the value of money."
+
+"The Republic" is the best known and best read of any of Plato's
+dialogues. It outlines an ideal form of government where everybody would
+be healthy, happy and prosperous. It has served as inspiration to Sir
+Thomas More, Erasmus, Jean Jacques Rousseau, William Morris, Edward
+Bellamy, Brigham Young, John Humphrey Noyes and Eugene Debs. The
+sub-division of labor, by setting apart certain persons to do certain
+things--for instance, to care for the children--has made its appeal to
+Upton Sinclair, who jumped from his Utopian woodshed into a rubber-plant
+and bounced off into oblivion.
+
+Plato's plan was intended to relieve marriage from the danger of
+becoming a form of slavery. The rulers, teachers and artists especially
+were to be free, and the State was to assume all responsibilities. The
+reason is plain: he wanted them to reproduce themselves. But whether
+genius is an acquirement or a natural endowment he touches on but
+lightly. Also, he seemingly did not realize "that no hovel is safe from
+it."
+
+If all marriage-laws were done away with, Plato thought that the men and
+women who were mated would still be true to each other, and that the
+less the police interfered in love-relations, the better.
+
+In one respect at least, Plato was certainly right: he advocated the
+equality of the sexes, and declared that no woman should be owned by a
+man nor forced into a mode of life, either by economic exigency or
+marriage, that was repulsive to her. Also, that her right to bear
+children or not should be strictly her own affair, and to dictate to a
+mother as to who should father her children tended to the production of
+a slavish race.
+
+The eugenics of "The Republic" were tried for thirty years by the Oneida
+Community with really good results, but one generation of communal
+marriages was proved to be the limit, a thing Plato now knows from his
+heights in Elysium, but which he in his bachelor dreams on earth did not
+realize.
+
+In his division of labor each was to do the thing he was best fitted to
+do, and which he liked to do. It was assumed that each person had a
+gift, and that to use this gift all that was necessary was to give him
+an opportunity. That very modern cry of "equality of opportunity" harks
+back to Plato.
+
+The monastic impulse was a very old thing, even in the time of Plato.
+The monastic impulse is simply cutting for sanctuary when the pressure
+of society gets intense--a getting rid of the world by running away from
+it. This usually occurs when the novitiate has exhausted his capacity
+for sin, and so tries saintship in the hope of getting a new thrill.
+
+Plato had been much impressed by the experiments of Pythagoras, who had
+actually done the thing of which Plato only talked. Plato now picked the
+weak points in the Pythagorean philosophy and sought, in imagination, to
+construct a fabric that would stand the test of time.
+
+However, all Utopias, like all monasteries and penitentiaries, are made
+up of picked people. The Oneida Community was not composed of average
+individuals, but of people who were selected with great care, and only
+admitted after severe tests. And great as was Plato, he could not
+outline an ideal plan of life except for an ideal people.
+
+To remain in the world of work and share the burdens of all--to ask for
+nothing which other people can not have on like terms--not to consider
+yourself peculiar, unique and therefore immune and exempt--is now the
+ideal of the best minds. We have small faith in monasticism or
+monotheism, but we do have great faith in monism. We believe in the
+Solidarity of the Race. We must all progress together. Whether
+Pythagoras, John Humphrey Noyes and Brigham Young were ahead of the
+world or behind it is really not to the point--the many would not
+tolerate them. So their idealism was diluted with danger until it became
+as somber, sober and slaty-gray as the average existence, and fades as
+well as shrinks in the wash.
+
+A private good is no more possible for a community than it is for an
+individual. We help ourselves only as we advance the race--we are happy
+only as we minister to the whole. The race is one, and this is monism.
+
+And here Socrates and Plato seemingly separate, for Socrates in his life
+wanted nothing, not even joy, and Plato's desire was for peace and
+happiness. Yet the ideal of justice in Plato's philosophy is very
+exalted.
+
+No writer in that flowering time of beauty and reason which we call "The
+Age of Pericles" exerted so profound an influence as Plato. All the
+philosophers that follow him were largely inspired by him. Those who
+berated him most were, very naturally, the ones he had most benefited.
+Teach a boy to write, and the probabilities are that his first essay,
+when he has cut loose from his teacher's apron-strings and starts a
+brownie bibliomag, will be in denunciation of the man who taught him to
+push the pen and wield the Faber.
+
+Xenophon was more indebted, intellectually, to Plato than to any other
+living man, yet he speaks scathingly of his master. Plutarch, Cicero,
+Iamblichus, Pliny, Horace and all the other Roman writers read Plato
+religiously. The Christian Fathers kept his work alive, and passed it on
+to Dante, Petrarch and the early writers of the Renaissance, so all of
+their thought is well flavored with essence of Plato. Well does Addison
+put into the mouth of Cato those well-known words:
+
+  It must be so--Plato, thou reasonest well!--
+  Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
+  This longing after immortality?
+  Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror,
+  Of falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul
+  Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
+  'T is the divinity that stirs within us;
+  'T is heaven itself, that points out an hereafter,
+  And intimates eternity to man.
+
+All of that English group of writers in Addison's day knew their Plato,
+exactly as did Cato and the other great Romans of near two thousand
+years before. From Plato you can prove that there is a life after this
+for each individual soul, as Francis of Assisi proved, or you can take
+your Plato, as did Hume, and show that man lives only in his influence,
+his individual life returning to the mass and becoming a part of all the
+great pulsing existence that ebbs and flows through plant and tree and
+flower and flying bird. And today we turn to Plato and find the
+corroboration of our thought that to live now and here, up to our
+highest and best, is the acme of wisdom. We prepare to live by living.
+If there is another world we better be getting ready for it. If heaven
+is an Ideal Republic it is founded on unselfishness, truth, reciprocity,
+equanimity and co-operation, and only those will be at home there who
+have practised these virtues here. Man was made for mutual service. This
+way lies Elysium.
+
+Plato was a teacher of teachers, and like every other great teacher who
+has ever lived, his soul goes marching on, for to teach is to influence,
+and influence never dies. Hail, Plato!
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: KING ALFRED]
+
+KING ALFRED
+
+
+     A saint without superstition, a scholar without ostentation, a
+     warrior who fought only in defense of his country, a conqueror
+     whose laurels were never stained with cruelty, a prince never cast
+     down by adversity, nor lifted up to insolence in the hour of
+     triumph--there is no other name in English history to compare with
+     his.
+
+     --_Freeman_
+
+
+KING ALFRED
+
+Julius Caesar, the greatest man of initiative the world has ever seen,
+had a nephew known as Caesar Augustus.
+
+The grandeur that was Rome occurred in the reign of Augustus. It was
+Augustus who said, "I found your city mud and I left it marble!" The
+impetus given to the times by Julius Caesar was conserved by Augustus. He
+continued the work his uncle had planned, but before he had completed
+it, he grew very weary, and the weariness he expressed was also the old
+age of the nation. There was lime in the bones of the boss.
+
+When Caesar Augustus said, "Rome is great enough--here we rest," he
+merely meant that he had reached his limit, and had had enough of
+road-building. At the boundaries of the Empire and the end of each Roman
+road he set up a statue of the god Terminus. This god gave his blessing
+to those going beyond, and a welcome to those returning, just as the
+Stars and Stripes welcome the traveler coming to America from across the
+sea. This god Terminus also supplied the world, especially the railroad
+world, a word.
+
+Julius Caesar reached his terminus and died, aged fifty-six, from
+compulsory vaccination. Augustus, aged seventy-seven, died peacefully
+in bed.
+
+The reign of Augustus marks the crest of the power of Rome, and a crest
+is a place where no man nor nation stays--when you reach it, you go over
+and down on the other side.
+
+When Augustus set up his Termini, announcing to all mankind that this
+was the limit, the enemies of Rome took courage and became active. The
+Goths and Vandals, hanging on the skirts of Rome, had learned many
+things, and one of the things was that, for getting rich quick, conquest
+is better than production. The barbarians, some of whom evidently had a
+sense of humor, had a way of picking up the Termini and carrying them
+inward, and finally they smashed them entirely, somewhat as country
+boys, out hunting, shoot railroad-signs full of holes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the Middle Ages the soldier was supreme, and in the name of
+protecting the people he robbed the people, a tradition much respected,
+but not in the breach.
+
+To escape the scourge of war, certain families and tribes moved
+northward. It was fight and turmoil in Southern Europe that settled
+Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and produced the Norsemen. And in making for
+themselves a home in the wilderness, battling with the climate and
+unkind conditions, there was evolved a very strong and sturdy type of
+man.
+
+On the north shore of the Baltic dwelt the Norsemen. Along the southern
+shore were scattered several small tribes or families who were not
+strong enough in numbers to fight the Goths, and so sought peace with
+them, and were taxed--or pillaged--often to the point of starvation.
+They were so poor and insignificant that the Romans really never heard
+of them, and they never heard of the Romans, save in myth and legend.
+They lived in caves and rude stone huts. They fished, hunted, raised
+goats and farmed, and finally, about the year Three Hundred, they
+secured horses, which they bought from the Goths, who stole them from
+the Romans.
+
+Their Government was the Folkmoot, the germ of the New England Town
+Meeting. All the laws were passed by all the people, and in the making
+of these laws, the women had an equal voice with the men.
+
+When important steps were to be taken where the interests of the whole
+tribe were at stake, great deference was paid to the opinions of the
+mothers. For the mother spoke not only for herself, but for her
+children. The mother was the home-maker. The word "wife" means weaver;
+and this deference to the one member of the family who invented,
+created, preparing both the food and the clothing, is a marked Teutonic
+instinct. Its survival is seen yet in the sturdy German of the middle
+class, who takes his wife and children with him when he goes to the
+concert or to the beer-garden. So has he always taken his family with
+him on his migrations; whereas the Greeks and the Romans left their
+women behind.
+
+South America was colonized by Spanish men. And the Indians and the
+Negroes absorbed the haughty grandee, yet preserved the faults and
+failings of both.
+
+The German who moves to America comes to stay--his family is a part of
+himself. The Italian comes alone, and his intent is to make what he can
+and return. This is a modified form of conquest.
+
+The Romans who came to Brittany in Caesar's time were men. Those who
+remained "took to themselves wives among the daughters of Philistia," as
+strong men ever are wont to do when they seek to govern savage tribes.
+And note this--instead of raising the savages or barbarians to their
+level, they sink to theirs. The child takes the status of the mother.
+The white man who marries an Indian woman becomes an Indian and their
+children are Indians. With the Negro race the same law holds.
+
+The Teutonic races have conquered the world because they took their
+women with them on their migrations, mental and physical. And the moral
+seems to be this, that the men who progress financially, morally and
+spiritually are those who do not leave their women-folk behind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When we think of the English, we usually have in mind the British Isles.
+But the original England was situated along the southern shore of the
+Baltic Sea. This was the true Eng-Land, the land of the Engles or
+Angles. To one side lay Jute-Land, the home of the Jutes. On the other
+was Saxony, where dwelt the Saxons.
+
+Jute-Land still lives in Jutland; the land of the Saxons is yet so
+indicated on the map; but Eng-Land was transported bodily a thousand
+miles, and her original territory became an abandoned farm where
+barbarians battled.
+
+And now behold how England has diffused herself all over the world, with
+the British Isles as a base of supplies, or a radiating center. Behind
+this twenty miles of water that separates Calais and Dover she found
+safety and security, and there her brain and brawn evolved and expanded.
+So there are now Anglo-Americans, Anglo-Africans, Anglo-Indians,
+Anglo-Australians, and Anglo-New-Zealanders. As the native Indians of
+America and the Maoris of New Zealand have given way before the onward
+push and persistence of the English, so likewise did the ancient Britons
+give way and were absorbed by the Anglo-Saxons; and then the Saxons,
+being a little too fine for the stern competitor, allowed the Engles to
+take charge. And as Dutch, Germans, Slavs and Swedes are transformed
+with the second generation into English-Americans when they come to
+America, so did the people from Eng-Land fuse Saxons, Norsemen, Jutes,
+Celts and Britons into one people and fix upon them the indelible stamp
+of Eng-Land.
+
+Yet it is obvious that the characters of the people of England have been
+strengthened, modified and refined by contact with the various races she
+has met, mixed with and absorbed. To influence others is to grow. Had
+England been satisfied to people and hold the British Isles, she would
+ere this have been outrun and absorbed by Spain or France. To stand
+still is to retreat. It is the same with men as it is with races.
+England's Colonies have been her strength. They have given her poise,
+reserve, ballast--and enough trouble to prevent either revolution,
+stagnation or introspection.
+
+Nations have their periods of youth, manhood and old age. Whether
+England is now passing into decline, living her life in her children,
+the Colonies, might be indelicate to ask. Perhaps as Briton, Celt, Jute
+and Saxon were fused to make that hardy, courageous, restless and sinewy
+man known as the Englishman, so are the English, the Dutch, the Swede,
+the German, the Slav, transplanted into America, being fused into a
+composite man who shall surpass any type that the world has ever seen.
+In the British Isles, just as in the great cities, mankind gets
+pot-bound. In the newer lands, the roots strike deep into the soil, and
+find the sustenance the human plant requires.
+
+Walls keep folks in as well as shut other folks out. The British Isles,
+rock-faced and sea-girted, shut out the enemies of England without
+shutting the English in. A country surrounded by the sea produces
+sailors, and England's position bred a type of man that made her
+mistress of the seas. As her drum-taps, greeting the rising sun, girdle
+the world, so do her lighthouses flash protection to the mariner
+wherever the hungry sea lies in wait along rocky coasts, the round world
+over. England has sounded the shallows, marked the rocks and reefs, and
+mapped the coasts.
+
+The first settlement of Saxons in Britain occurred in the year Four
+Hundred Forty-nine. They did not come as invaders, as did the Romans
+five hundred years before; their numbers were too few, and their arms
+too crude to mean menace to the swarthy, black-haired Britons. These
+fair stranger-folk were welcomed as curiosities and were allowed to
+settle and make themselves homes. Word was sent back to Saxony and
+Jute-Land and more settlers came. In a few years came a shipload of
+Engles, with their women and children, red-haired, freckled, tawny. They
+tilled the soil with a faith and an intelligence such as the Britons
+never brought to bear: very much as the German settlers follow the
+pioneers and grow rich where the Mudsock fails. Naturally the
+fair-haired girls found favor in the sight of the swarthy Britons.
+Marriages occurred, and a new type of man-child appeared as the months
+went by. More Engles came. A century passed, and the coast, from Kent
+to the Firth of Forth, was dotted with the farms and homes of the people
+from the Baltic. There were now occasional protests from the original
+holders, and fights followed, when the Britons retreated before the
+strangers, or else were very glad to make terms. Victory is a matter of
+staying-power. The Engles had come to stay.
+
+But a new enemy had appeared--the Norsemen or Danes. These were
+sea-nomads who acknowledged no man as master. Rough, bold, laughing at
+disaster, with no patience to build or dig or plow, they landed but to
+ravish, steal and lay waste, and then boarded their craft, sailing away,
+joying in the ruin they had wrought.
+
+The next year they came back. The industry and the thrift of the Engles
+made Britain a land of promise, a storehouse where the good things of
+life could be secured much more easily than by creating or producing
+them. And so now, before this common foe, the Britons, Jutes, Celts,
+Saxons and Engles united to punish and expel the invaders.
+
+The calamity was a blessing--as most calamities are. From being a dozen
+little kingdoms, Britain now became one. A "Cyng," or captain, was
+chosen--an Engle, strong of arm, clear of brain, blue of eye, with long
+yellow hair. He was a man who commanded respect by his person and by his
+deeds. His name was Egbert.
+
+King Alfred, or Elfred, was born at Wantage, Berkshire, in the year
+Eight Hundred Forty-nine. He was the grandson of Egbert, a great man,
+and the son of Ethelwulf, a man of mediocre qualities. Alfred was shrewd
+enough to inherit the courage and persistence of his grandfather. Our D.
+A. R. friends are right and Mark Twain is wrong--it is really more
+necessary to have a grandfather than a father.
+
+English civilization begins with Alfred. If you will refer to the
+dictionary you will find that the word "civilization" simply means to be
+civil. That is, if you are civilized you are gentle instead of
+violent--gaining your ends by kindly and persuasive means, instead of
+through coercion, intimidation and force.
+
+Alfred was the first English gentleman, and let no joker add "and the
+last." Yet it is needless and quite irrelevant to say that civilized
+people are not always civil; nor are gentlemen always gentle--so little
+do words count. Many gentlemen are only gents.
+
+Alfred was civil and gentle. He had been sent to Rome in his boyhood,
+and this transplantation had done him a world of good. Superior men are
+always transplanted men: people who do not travel have no perspective.
+To stay at home means getting pot-bound. You neither search down in the
+soil for color and perfume nor reach out strong toward the sunshine.
+
+It was only a few years before the time of Alfred that a Christian monk
+appeared at Edin-Borough, and told the astonished Engles and Saxons of
+the gentle Jesus, who had been sent to earth by the All-Father to tell
+men they should love their enemies and be gentle and civil and not
+violent, and should do unto others as they would be done by. The natural
+religion of the Great Spirit which the ancient Teutonic people held had
+much in it that was good, but now they were prepared for something
+better--they had the hope of a heaven of rest and happiness after death.
+
+Christianity flourishes best among a downtrodden, poor, subdued and
+persecuted people. Renan says it is a religion of sorrow. And primitive
+Christianity--the religion of conduct--is a beautiful and pure doctrine
+that no sane person ever flouted or scoffed.
+
+The parents of Alfred, filled with holy zeal, allowed one of the
+missionary monks to take the boy to Rome. The idea was that he should
+become a bishop in the Church.
+
+Ethelred, the elder brother of Alfred, had succeeded Ethelwulf, his
+father, as King. The Danes had overrun and ravished the country. For
+many years these marauding usurpers had fed their armies on the products
+of the land. And now they had more than two-thirds of the country under
+their control, and the fear that they would absolutely subjugate the
+Anglo-Saxons was imminent. Ethelwulf gave up the struggle in despair and
+died. Ethelred fell in battle. And as the Greeks of old in their terror
+cast around for the strongest man they could find to repel the Persian
+invaders, and picked on the boy Alexander, so did the Anglo-Saxons turn
+to Alfred, the gentle and silent. He was only twenty-three years old. In
+build he was slight and slender, but he had given token of his courage
+for four years, fighting with his brother. He had qualities that were
+closely akin to those of both Alexander and Caesar. He had a cool, clear
+and vivid intellect and he had invincible courage. But he surpassed both
+of the men just named in that he had a tender, sympathetic heart.
+
+The Danes were overconfident, and had allowed their discipline to relax.
+Alfred had at first evidently encouraged them in their idea that they
+had won, for he struck feebly and then withdrew his army to the marshes,
+where the Danish horsemen could not follow.
+
+The Danes went into winter quarters, fat and feasting. Alfred made a
+definite plan for a campaign, drilled his men, prayed with them, and
+filled their hearts with the one idea that they were going forth to
+certain victory. And to victory they went. They fell upon the Danes with
+an impetuosity as unexpected as it was invincible, and before they could
+get into their armor, or secure their horses, they were in a rout. Every
+timid Engle and Saxon now took heart--it was the Lord's victory--they
+were fighting for home--the Danes gave way. This was not all
+accomplished quite as easily as I am writing it, but difficulties,
+deprivations and disaster only brought out new resources in Alfred. He
+was as serenely hopeful as was Washington at Valley Forge, and his
+soldiers were just as ragged. He, too, like Thomas Paine, cried, "These
+are the times that try men's souls--be grateful for this crisis, for it
+will give us opportunity to show that we are men." He had aroused his
+people to a pitch where the Danes would have had to kill them all, or
+else give way. As they could not kill them they gave way. Napoleon at
+twenty-six was master of France and had Italy under his heel, and so was
+Alfred at the same age supreme in Southern Britain--including Wessex and
+Mercia. He rounded up the enemy, took away their weapons, and then held
+a revival-meeting, asking everybody to come forward to the
+mourners'-bench. There is no proof that he coerced them into
+Christianity. They were glad to accept it. Alfred seemed to have the
+persuasive power of the Reverend Doctor Torrey. Guthrum, the Danish
+King, who had come over to take a personal hand in the looting, was
+captured, baptized, and then Alfred stood sponsor for him and gave him
+the name of Ethelstan. He was made a bishop.
+
+This acceptance of Christianity by the leaders of the Danes broke their
+fierce spirit, and peace followed. Alfred told the soldiers to use their
+horses to plow the fields. The two armies that had fought each other now
+worked together at road-making and draining the marshes. Some of the
+Danes fled in their ships, but very many remained and became citizens of
+the country. The Danish names are still recognizable. Names beginning
+with the aspirate, say Herbert, Hulett, Hubbard, Hubbs, Harold, Hancock,
+are Danish, and are the cause of that beautiful muddling of the "H" that
+still perplexes the British tongue, the rule governing which is to put
+it on where it is not needed and leave it off where it is. The Danes
+called the Engles, "Hengles," and the Engles called a man by the name of
+Henry, "Enry."
+
+In saving Wessex, Alfred saved England for the English people; for it
+was from Wessex, as a center, that his successors began the task of
+reconquering England from the Danes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the rule of Alfred begins the England that we know. As we call
+Herodotus the father of history, so could we, with equal propriety, call
+Asser, who wrote in the time of Alfred, the father of English history.
+The oldest English book is the "Life of Alfred" by Asser the monk.
+
+That Asser was a dependent on his subject and very much in love with
+him, doubtless gave a very strong bias to the book. That it is right in
+the main, although occasionally wrong as to details, is proved by
+various corroborating records.
+
+The king's word in Alfred's time was law, and Alfred proved his modesty
+by publicly proclaiming that a king was not divine, but only a man, and
+therefore a king's edicts should be endorsed by the people in Folkmoot.
+Here we get the genesis of popular government, and about the only
+instance that I can recall where a very strong man acting as chief ruler
+renounced a part of his power to the people, of his own accord. Kings
+usually have to be trimmed, and it is revolution that does the shearing.
+It is the rule that men do not relinquish power of their own
+accord--they have to be disannexed from it.
+
+Alfred, however, knew the popular heart--he was very close to the common
+people. He had slept on the ground with his soldiers, fared at table
+with the swineherd's family, tilled the soil with the farmer folk. His
+heart went out to humanity. He did not overrate the average mind, nor
+did he underrate it. He had faith in mankind, and knew that at the last
+power was with the people. He did not say, "Vox populi, vox Dei," but he
+thought it. Therefore he set himself to educating the plain people. He
+prophesied a day when all grown men would be able to read and write, and
+when all would have an intelligent, personal interest in the government.
+
+There have been periods in English history when Britain lagged woefully
+behind, for England has had kings who forgot the rights of mankind, and
+instead of seeking to serve their people, have battened and fattened
+upon them. They governed. George the Third thought that Alfred was a
+barbarian, and spoke of him with patronizing pity.
+
+Alfred introduced the system of trial by jury, although the fact has
+been pointed out that he did not originate it. It goes back to the hardy
+Norseman who acknowledged no man as master, harking back to a time when
+there was no law, and to a people whose collective desire was supreme.
+In fact, it has its origin in "Lynch Law," or the rule of the
+Vigilantes. From a village turning loose on an offender and pulling him
+limb from limb, a degree of deliberation comes in and a committee of
+twelve are selected to investigate the deed and report their verdict.
+
+The jury system began with pirates and robbers, but it is no less
+excellent on that account, and we might add that freedom also began with
+pirates and robbers, for they were the people who cried, "We
+acknowledge no man as master."
+
+The early Greeks had trials by jury--Socrates was tried by a jury of
+five hundred citizens.
+
+But let the fact stand that Alfred was the man who first introduced the
+jury system into England. He had absolute power. He was the sole judge
+and ruler, but on various occasions he abdicated the throne and said: "I
+do not feel able to try this man, for as I look into my heart I see that
+I am prejudiced. Neither will I name men to try him, for in their
+selection I might also be prejudiced. Therefore let one hundred men be
+called, and from these let twelve be selected by lot, and they shall
+listen to the charges and weigh the defense, and their verdict shall be
+mine."
+
+We sometimes say that English Common Law is built on the Roman Law, but
+I can not find that Alfred ever studied the Roman Law, or ever heard of
+the Justinian Code, or thought it worth while to establish a system of
+jurisprudence. His government was of the simplest sort. He respected the
+habits, ways and customs of the common people, and these were the Common
+Law. If the people had a footpath that was used by their children and
+their parents and their grandparents, then this path belonged to the
+people, and Alfred said that even the King could not take it from them.
+
+This deference to the innocent ways, habits and natural rights of the
+people mark Alfred as supremely great, because a great man is one great
+in his sympathies. Alfred had the imagination to put himself in the
+place of the lowly and obscure.
+
+The English love of law, system and order dates from Alfred. The
+patience, kindliness, good-cheer and desire for fair play were his,
+plus. He had poise, equanimity, unfaltering faith and a courage that
+never grew faint. He was as religious as Cromwell, as firm as
+Washington, as stubborn as Gladstone. In him were combined the virtues
+of the scholar and patriot, the efficiency of the man of affairs with
+the wisdom of the philosopher. His character, both public and private,
+is stainless, and his whole life was one of enlightened and magnanimous
+service to his country.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the age of Augustus there was one study that was regarded as more
+important than all others, and this was rhetoric, or the art of the
+rhetor. The rhetor was a man whose business it was to persuade or
+convince.
+
+The public forum has its use in the very natural town-meeting, or the
+powwow of savages. But in Rome it had developed and been refined to a
+point where the public had no voice, although the boasted forum still
+existed. The forum was monopolized by the professional orators hired by
+this political clique or that.
+
+It was about like the political "forum" in America today.
+
+The greatest man in Rome was the man who could put up the greatest talk.
+So all Roman mammas and matrons had their boys study rhetoric. The
+father of Seneca had a school of oratory where rich Roman youths were
+taught to mouth in orotund and gesticulate in curves. He must have been
+a pretty good teacher, for he had two extraordinary sons, one of whom is
+mentioned in the Bible, and a most exemplary daughter.
+
+Oratory as an end we now regard as an unworthy art. The first requisite
+is to feel deeply--to have a message--and then if you are a person of
+fair intelligence and in good health, you'll impress your hearers. But
+to hire out to impress people with another's theme is to be a
+pettifogger, and the genus pettifogger has nearly had his day.
+
+History moves in circles. The Chicago Common Council, weary of rhetoric,
+has recently declined to listen to paid attorneys; but any citizen who
+speaks for himself and his neighbors can come before the Council and
+state his case.
+
+Chief Justice Fuller has given it as his opinion that there will come a
+day in America when damage-cases will be taken care of by an automatic
+tribunal, without the help of lawyers. And as a man fills out a request
+for a money-order at the Post-Office, so will he file his claim for
+damages, and it will have attention. The contingent fee will yet be a
+misdemeanor. Also, it will be possible for plain citizens to be able to
+go before a Court of Equity and be heard without regard to law and
+precedent and attorney's quillets and quibbles, which so often hamper
+justice. Justice should be cheap and easy, instead of costly and
+complex.
+
+Evidently the Chief Justice had in mind the usages in the time of King
+Alfred, when the barrister was an employee of the court, and his
+business was to get the facts and then explain them to the King in the
+fewest possible words.
+
+Alfred considered a paid advocate, or even a counselor, as without the
+pale, and such men were never allowed at court. If the barrister
+accepted a fee from a man suing for justice, he was disbarred.
+
+Finally, however, the practise of feeing in order to renew the zeal of a
+barrister grew so that it had to be tolerated, because things we can't
+suppress we license, and a pocket was placed on each barrister's back
+between his shoulders where he could not reach it without taking off his
+gown, and into this pocket clients were allowed slyly to slip such
+gratuities as they could afford.
+
+But the general practise of the client paying the barrister, instead of
+the court, was not adopted for several hundred years later, and then it
+was regarded as an expeditious move to keep down litigation and punish
+the client for being fool enough not to settle his own troubles.
+
+In England the rudimentary pocket still survives, like the buttons on
+the back of a coat, which were once used to support the sword-belt.
+
+In America we have done away with wigs and gowns for attorneys, but
+attorneys are still regarded as attaches of the court, even though
+one-half of them, according to Judge DeCourcy of Boston, are engaged
+most of the time in attempts to bamboozle and befog the judge and jury
+and defeat the ends of justice. Likewise, we still use the word "Court,"
+signifying the place where lives royalty, even for the dingy office of a
+country J. P., where sawdust spittoons are the bric-a-brac and
+patent-office reports loom large, and justice is dispensed with. We now
+also commonly call the man "the Court."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alfred was filled with a desire to educate, and to this end organized a
+school at the Ox Ford, where his friend Asser taught. This school was
+the germ of the University of Oxford. Attached to this school was a
+farm, where the boys were taught how to sow and plant and reap to the
+best advantage. Here they also bred and raised horses and cattle, and
+the care of livestock was a part of the curriculum. It was the first
+College of Agriculture.
+
+It comes to us as somewhat of a surprise to see how we are now going
+back to simplicity, and the agricultural college is being given the due
+and thoughtful consideration which it deserves. Twenty years ago our
+agricultural college was considered more or less of a joke, but now that
+which adds greatly to the wealth of the nation, and the happiness and
+well-being of the people, is looked upon as worthy of our support and
+highest respect.
+
+Up to the time of Alfred, England had no navy. For the government to own
+ships seemed quite preposterous, since the people had come to England to
+stay, and were not marauders intent on exploitation and conquest, like
+the Norsemen.
+
+But after Alfred had vanquished the Danes and they had settled down as
+citizens, he took their ships, refitted them, built more and said: "No
+more marauders shall land on these shores. If we are threatened we will
+meet the enemy on the sea."
+
+In a few years along came a fleet of marauding Norse. The English ships
+on the lookout gave the alarm, and England's navy put out to meet them.
+The enemy were taken by surprise, and the fate that five hundred years
+later was to overtake the Spanish Armada, was theirs.
+
+From that time to this, England has had a navy that has gradually grown
+in power.
+
+Let no one imagine that peace and rest came to Alfred. His life was a
+battle, for not only did he have to fight the Danes, but he had to
+struggle with ignorance, stupidity and superstition at home. To lead men
+out of captivity is a thankless task. They always ask when you take away
+their superstition, "What are you going to give us in return?" They do
+not realize that superstition is a disease, and that to give another
+disease in return is not nice, necessary or polite.
+
+
+Alfred died, at the age of fifty-two, worn out with his ceaseless labors
+of teaching, building, planning, inventing and devising methods and
+means for the betterment and benefit of his people.
+
+After his death, the Danes were successful, and Canute became King of
+England. But he was proud to be called an Englishman, and declared he
+was no longer a Dane.
+
+And so England captured him.
+
+Then came the Norman William, claiming the throne by right of
+succession, and successfully battling for it; but the English people
+reckoned the Conqueror as of their own blood--their kith and kin--and so
+he was. He issued an edict forbidding any one to call him or his
+followers "Norman," "Norse" or "Norsemen," and declared there was a
+United England. And so he lived and died an Englishman; and after him no
+ruler, these nine hundred years, has ever sat on the throne of the
+Engles by right of conquest.
+
+Both Canute and William recognized and prized the worth of Alfred's
+rule. The virtues of Alfred are the virtues that have made it possible
+for the Teutonic tribes to girdle the globe. It was Alfred who taught
+the nobility of industry, service, education, patience, loyalty,
+persistence, and the faith and hope that abide. By pen, tongue, and best
+of all by his life, Alfred taught the truths which we yet hold dear. And
+by this sign shall ye conquer!
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: ERASMUS]
+
+ERASMUS
+
+
+     We see not a few mortals who, striving to emulate this divine
+     virtue with more zeal than success, fall into a feeble and
+     disjointed loquacity, obscuring the subject and burdening the
+     wretched ears of their hearers with a vacant mass of words and
+     sentences crowded together beyond all possibility of enjoyment. And
+     writers who have tried to lay down the principles of this art have
+     gained no other result than to display their own poverty while
+     expounding abundance.
+
+     --_Erasmus on "Preaching"_
+
+
+ERASMUS
+
+Erasmus was born in Fourteen Hundred Sixty-six, and died in Fifteen
+Hundred Thirty-six. No thinker of his time influenced the world more. He
+stood at a pivotal point, and some say he himself was the intellectual
+pivot of the Renaissance.
+
+The critics of the times were unanimous in denouncing him--which fact
+recommends him to us.
+
+Several Churchmen, high in power, live in letters for no other reason
+than because they coupled their names with that of Erasmus by reviling
+him. Let the critics take courage--they may outwit oblivion yet, even
+though they do nothing but carp. Only let them be wise, and carp, croak,
+cough, cat-call and sneeze at some one who is hitching his wagon to a
+star. This way immortality lies. Erasmus was a monk who flocked by
+himself, and found diversion in ridiculing monkery. Also, he was the
+wisest man of his day. Wisdom is the distilled essence of intuition,
+corroborated by experience. Learning is something else. Usually, the
+learned man is he who has delved deep and soared high. But few there be
+who dive, that fish the murex up. Among those who soar, the ones who
+come back and tell us of what they have seen, are few. Like Lazarus,
+they say nothing.
+
+Erasmus had a sense of humor. Humor is a life-preserver and saves you
+from drowning when you jump off into a sea of sermons. A theologian who
+can not laugh is apt to explode--he is very dangerous. Erasmus, Luther,
+Beecher, Theodore Parker, Roger Williams, Joseph Parker--all could
+laugh. Calvin, Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards never gurgled in glee,
+nor chortled softly at their own witticisms--or those of others.
+
+Erasmus smiled. He has been called the Voltaire of his day. What
+Rousseau was to Voltaire, Luther was to Erasmus. Well did Diderot say
+that Erasmus laid the egg which Luther hatched. Erasmus wrote for the
+educated, the refined, the learned--Luther made his appeal to the plain
+and common mind.
+
+Luther split the power of the Pope. Erasmus thought it a calamity to do
+so, because he believed that strife of sects tended to make men lose
+sight of the one essential in religion--harmony--and cause them simply
+to struggle for victory. Erasmus wanted to trim the wings of the papal
+office and file its claws--Luther would have destroyed it. Erasmus
+considered the Church a very useful and needful organization--for social
+reasons. It tended to regulate life and conduct and made men
+"decentable." It should be a school of ethics, and take a leading part
+in every human betterment. Man being a gregarious animal, the
+congregation is in the line of natural desire. The excuse for gathering
+together is religion--let them gather. The Catholic Church is not two
+thousand years old--it is ten thousand years old and goes back to Egypt.
+The birth of Jesus formed merely a psychosis in the Church's existence.
+
+Here he parted company with Luther, who was a dogmatist and wanted to
+debate his ninety-five theses. Erasmus laughed at all religious
+disputations and called them mazes that led to cloudland. Very
+naturally, people said he was not sincere, since the mediocre mind never
+knows that only the paradox is true. Hence Erasmus was hated by
+Catholics and denounced by Protestants.
+
+The marvel is that the men with fetters and fagots did not follow him
+with a purpose. Fifty years later he would have been snuffed out. But at
+that time Rome was so astonished to think that any one should criticize
+her that she lost breath. Besides, it was an age of laughter, of revolt,
+of contests of wit, of love-bouts and love-scrapes, and the monks who
+lapsed were too many to discipline. Everybody was busy with his own
+affairs. Happy time!
+
+Erasmus was part and parcel of the Italian Renaissance. Over his head
+blazes, in letters that burn, the unforgetable date, Fourteen Hundred
+Ninety-two. He was a part of the great unrest, and he helped cause the
+great unrest. Every great awakening, every renaissance, is an age of
+doubt. An age of conservatism is an age of moss, of lichen, of rest,
+rust and ruin. We grow only as we question. As long as we are sure that
+the present order is perfect, we button our collars behind, a thing
+which Columbus, Luther, Melanchthon, Erasmus, Michelangelo, Leonardo and
+Gutenberg, who all lived at this one time, never did. The year of
+Fourteen Hundred Ninety-two, like the year Seventeen Hundred
+Seventy-six, was essentially "infidelic," just as the present age is
+constructively iconoclastic. We are tearing down our barns to build
+greater. The railroadman who said, "I throw an engine on the scrap-heap
+every morning before breakfast," expressed a great truth. We are
+discarding bad things for good ones, and good things for better ones.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rotterdam has the honor of being the birthplace of Erasmus. A storm of
+calumny was directed at him during his life concerning the irregularity
+of his birth. "He had no business to be born at all," said a proud
+prelate, as he gathered his robes close around his prebendal form. But
+souls knock at the gates of life for admittance, and the fact that a man
+exists is proof of his right to live. The word "illegitimate" is not in
+the vocabulary of God. If you do not know that, you have not read His
+instructive and amusing works.
+
+The critics variously declared the mother of Erasmus was a royal lady, a
+physician's only daughter, a kitchen-wench, a Mother Superior--all
+according to the prejudices preconceived. In one sense she was surely a
+Mother Superior--let the lies neutralize one another.
+
+The fact is, we do not know who the mother of Erasmus was. All we know
+is that she was the mother of Erasmus. Here history halts. Her son once
+told Sir Thomas More that she was married to a luckless nobody a few
+months after the birth of her first baby, and amid the cares of raising
+a goodly brood of nobodies on a scant allowance of love and rye-bread,
+she was glad to forget her early indiscretions. Not so the father. The
+debated question of whether a man really has any parental love is
+answered here.
+
+The father of Erasmus was Gerhard von Praet, and the child was called
+Gerhard Gerhards--or the son of Gerhard. The father was a man of
+property and held office under the State. At the time of the birth of
+the illustrious baby, Gerhard von Praet was not married, and it is
+reasonable to suppose that the reason he did not wed the mother of his
+child was because she belonged to a different social station. In any
+event the baby was given the father's name, and every care and attention
+was paid the tiny voyager. This father was as foolish as most fond
+mothers, for he dreamed out a great career for the motherless one, and
+made sundry prophecies.
+
+At six years of age the child was studying Latin, when he should have
+been digging in a sand-pile. At eight he spoke Dutch and French, and
+argued with his nurse in Greek as to the value of buttermilk.
+
+In the meantime the father had married and settled down in honorable
+obscurity as a respectable squire. Another account has it that he became
+a priest. Anyway, the little maverick was now making head alone in a
+private school.
+
+When the lad was thirteen the father died, leaving a will in which he
+provided well for the child. The amount of property which by this will
+would have belonged to our hero when he became of age would have
+approximated forty thousand dollars.
+
+Happily, the trustees of the fund were law-wolves. They managed to break
+the will, and then they showed the court that the child was a waif, and
+absolutely devoid of legal rights of any and every kind. He was then
+committed to an orphan asylum to be given "a right religious education."
+It's a queer old world, Terese, and what would have become of Gerhard
+Gerhards had he fallen heir to his father's titles and estate, no man
+can say. He might have accumulated girth and become an honored
+burgomaster. As it was he became powder-monkey to a monk, and scrubbed
+stone floors and rushed the growler for cowled and pious prelates.
+
+Then he did copying for the Abbe, and proved himself a boy from Missouri
+Valley.
+
+He was small, blue-eyed, fair-haired, slender, slight, with a long nose
+and sharp features. "With this nose," said Albrecht Durer, many years
+later, "he successfully hunted down everything but heresy."
+
+At eighteen he became a monk and proudly had his flaxen poll tonsured.
+His superior was fond of him, and prophesied that he would become a
+bishop or something.
+
+Children do not suffer much, nor long. God is good to them. They slide
+into an environment and accept it. This child learned to dodge the big
+bare feet of the monks--got his lessons, played a little, worked his wit
+against their stupidity, and actually won their admiration--or as much
+of it as men who are alternately ascetics and libertines can give.
+
+It was about this time that the lad was taunted with having no name.
+"Then I'll make one for myself," was his proud answer.
+
+Having entered now upon his novitiate, he was allowed to take a new
+name, and being dead to the world, the old one was forgotten.
+
+They called him Brother Desiderius, or the Desired One. He then amended
+this Latin name with its Greek equivalent, Erasmus, which means
+literally the Well-Beloved. As to his pedigree, or lack of it, he was
+needlessly proud. It set him apart as different. He had half-brothers
+and half-sisters, and these he looked upon as strangers. When they came
+to see him, he said, "There is no relationship between souls save that
+of the spirit."
+
+His sense of wit came in when he writes to a friend: "Two parents are
+the rule; no parents the exception; a mother but no father is not
+uncommon; but I had a father and never had a mother. I was nursed by a
+man, and educated by monks, all of which shows that women are more or
+less of a superfluity in creation. God Himself is a man. He had one son,
+but no daughters. The cherubim are boys. All of the angels are
+masculine, and so far as Holy Writ informs us, there are no women in
+heaven."
+
+That it was a woman, however, to whom Erasmus wrote this, lets him out
+on the severity of the argument. He was a joker. And while women did not
+absorb much of his time, we find that on his travels he often turned
+aside to visit with intellectual women--no other kind interested him, at
+all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To belong to a religious order is to be owned by it. You trade freedom
+for protection. The soul of Erasmus revolted at life in a monastery. He
+hated the typical monks--their food, their ways of life, their
+sophistry, their stupidity. To turn glutton and welcome folly as a
+relief from religion, he said, was the most natural thing in the world,
+when men had once started in to lead an unnatural life. Good food,
+daintily served, only goes with a co-ed mental regimen. Men eat with
+their hands, out of a pot, unless women are present to enforce the
+decencies. Women alone are a little more to be pitied than men alone, if
+'t were possible.
+
+Through emulation does the race grow. Sex puts men and women on their
+good behavior.
+
+Man's desire for power has caused him to enslave himself. Writes
+Erasmus, "In a monastery, no one is on his good behavior, except when
+there are visitors, but I am told that this is so in families."
+
+The greasy, coarse cooking brought on a nice case of dyspepsia for poor
+Erasmus--a complaint from which he was never free as long as he lived.
+His system was too fine for any monastic general trough, but he found a
+compensation in having his say at odd times and sundry. At one time we
+hear of his printing on a card this legend, "If I owned hell and a
+monastery, I would sell the monastery and reside in hell." Thereby did
+Erasmus supply General Tecumseh Sherman the germ of a famous orphic.
+Sherman was a professor in a college at Baton Rouge before the War, and
+evidently had moused in the Latin classics to a purpose.
+
+Connected with the monastery where Erasmus lived was a printing-outfit.
+Our versatile young monk learned the case, worked the ink-balls,
+manipulated the lever, and evidently dispelled, in degree, the monotony
+of the place by his ready pen and eloquent tongue. When he wrote, he
+wrote for his ear. All was tested by reading the matter aloud. At that
+time great authors were not so wise or so clever as printers, and it
+fell to the lot of Erasmus to improve upon the text of much of the copy
+that was presented.
+
+Erasmus learned to write by writing; and among modern prose-writers he
+is the very first who had a distinct literary style. His language is
+easy, fluid, suggestive. His paragraphs throw a shadow, and are pregnant
+with meaning beyond what the lexicon supplies. This is genius--to be
+bigger than your words.
+
+If Erasmus had been possessed of a bit more patience and a jigger of
+diplomacy, he would have been in line for a bishopric. That thing which
+he praised so lavishly, Folly, was his cause of failure and also his
+friend.
+
+At twenty-six he was the best teacher and the most clever scholar in the
+place. Also, he was regarded as a thorn in the side of the monkery,
+since he refused to take it seriously. He protested that no man ever
+became a monk of his own accord--he was either thrust into a religious
+order by unkind kinsmen or kicked into it by Fate.
+
+And then comes the Bishop of Cambray, with an attack of literary
+scabies, looking for a young religieux who could correct his manuscript.
+The Bishop was going to Paris after important historical facts, and must
+have a competent secretary. Only a proficient Latin and Greek scholar
+would do. The head of the monastery recommended Erasmus, very much as
+Artemus Ward volunteered all of his wife's relatives for purposes of
+war.
+
+Andrew Carnegie once, when about to start for Europe, said to his
+ironmaster, Bill Jones, "I am never so happy or care-free, Bill, as when
+on board ship, headed for Europe, and the shores of Sandy Hook fade from
+sight."
+
+And Bill solemnly replied, "Mr. Carnegie, I can truthfully say for
+myself and fellow-workers, that we are never so happy and care-free as
+when you are on board ship, headed for Europe."
+
+Very properly Mr. Carnegie at once raised Bill's salary five thousand a
+year.
+
+The Carthusian Brothers parted with Erasmus in pretended tears, but the
+fact was they were more relieved than bereaved.
+
+And then began the travels of Erasmus.
+
+The Bishop was of middle age, with a dash of the cavalier in his blood,
+which made him prefer a saddle to the cushions of a carriage. And so
+they started away on horseback, the Bishop ahead, followed at a
+discreet distance by Erasmus, his secretary; and ten paces behind with
+well-loaded panniers, rode a servant as rearguard.
+
+To be free and face the world and on a horse! Erasmus lifted up his
+heart in a prayer of gratitude. He said that it was the first feeling of
+thankfulness he had ever experienced, and it was the first thing which
+had ever come to him worth gratitude.
+
+And so they started for Paris.
+
+Erasmus looked back and saw the monastery, where he had spent ten
+arduous years, fade from view.
+
+It was the happiest moment he had ever known. The world lay beyond.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Bishop of Cambray introduced Erasmus to a mode of life for which he
+was eminently fitted. It consisted in traveling, receiving honors,
+hospitality and all good things in a material way, and giving his
+gracious society in return. Doors flew open on the approach of the good
+Bishop. Everywhere he went a greeting was assured. He was a
+Churchman--that was enough. Erasmus shared in the welcomes, for he was
+handsome in face and figure, had a ready tongue, and could hold his own
+with the best.
+
+Europe was then dotted with monasteries, nunneries and other church
+institutions. Their remains are seen there yet--one is really never out
+of sight of a steeple. But the exclusive power of the Church is gone,
+and in many places there are only ruins where once were cloisters,
+corridors, chapels, halls and gardens teeming with life and industry.
+
+The "missions" of California were founded on the general plan of the
+monasteries of Europe. They afforded a lodging for the night--a
+resting-place for travelers--and were a radiatory center of
+education--at least all of the education that then existed.
+
+In California these "missions" were forty miles apart--one day's
+journey. In France, Italy and Germany they were, say, ten miles apart.
+Between them, trudged or rode on horseback or in carriages, a
+picturesque array of pilgrims, young and old, male and female. To go
+anywhere and be at home everywhere, this was the happy lot of a church
+dignitary.
+
+The parts in church institutions were interchangeable; and by a system
+of migration, life was made agreeable, and reasonable honesty was
+assured. I have noticed that certain Continental banking institutions,
+with branches in various cities, keep their cashiers rotating. The idea
+was gotten from Rome. Rome was very wise--her policies were the
+crystallizations of the world-wisdom of centuries. The church-militant
+battle-cry, "The world for Christ," simply means man's lust for
+ownership, with Christ as an excuse. If ever there was a man-made
+institution, it is the Church. To control mankind has been her desire,
+and the miracle is that, with a promise of heaven, a threat of hell, and
+a firm grip on temporal power--social and military--she was ever induced
+partially to loosen her grip. To such men as Savonarola, Luther and
+Erasmus, do we owe our freedom. These men cared more for truth than for
+power, and their influence was to disintegrate the ankylosis of custom
+and make men think. And a thought is mental dynamite. No wonder the
+Church has always feared and hated a thinker!
+
+The Bishop of Cambray was not a thinker. Fenelon, who was later to
+occupy his office, was to make the bishopric of Cambray immortal.
+Conformists die, but heretics live on forever. They are men who have
+redeemed the cross and rendered the gallows glorious.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And so the Bishop of Cambray and his little light-haired secretary fared
+forth to fame and fortune--the Bishop to be remembered because he had a
+secretary, and the secretary to be remembered because he grew into a
+great teacher.
+
+At each stopping-place the Bishop said mass--the workers, students and
+novitiates quitting their tasks to hear the words of encouragement from
+the lips of the great man. Occasionally Erasmus was pushed forward to
+say a few words, by the Bishop, who had to look after his own personal
+devotions. The assembled friends liked the young man--he was so bright
+and witty and free from cant. They even laughed out loud, and so, often
+two smiles were made to grow where there were no smiles before.
+
+Leisurely they rode--stopping at times for several days at places where
+the food and drink were at their best, and the society sulphide. At
+nunneries and monasteries were always guest-chambers for the great, and
+they were usually occupied.
+
+Thus it was that every church-house was a sort of university, depending
+of course on the soul-size of the Superior or Abbe. These constant
+journeyings and pilgrimages served in lieu of the daily paper, the
+Western Union Telegraph, and the telephone. Things have slipped back, I
+fear me, for now Mercury merely calls up his party on the long-distance,
+instead of making a personal visit--the Angel Gabriel as well. We save
+time, but we miss the personal contact.
+
+The monastic impulse was founded on a human need. Like most good things,
+it has been sadly perverted; but the idea of a sanctuary for stricken
+souls--a place of refuge, where simplicity, service and useful endeavor
+rule--will never die from out the human heart. The hospice stands for
+hospitality, but we have now only a hotel and a hospital.
+
+The latter stands for iodoform, carbolic acid and formaldehyde; the
+former often means gold, glitter, gluttony and concrete selfishness,
+with gout on one end, paresis at the other and Bright's Disease between.
+
+The hospice was a part of the monastery. It was a home for the homeless.
+There met men of learning--men of wit--men of brains and brawn. You
+entered and were at home. There was no charge--you merely left something
+for the poor.
+
+Any man who has the courage, and sufficient faith in humanity to install
+the hospice system in America will reap a rich reward. If he has the
+same faith in his guests that Judge Lindsey has in his bad boys, he will
+succeed; but if he hesitates, defers, doubts, and begins to plot and
+plan, the Referee in Bankruptcy will beckon.
+
+The early universities grew out of the monastic impulse. Students came
+and went, and the teachers were a part of a great itinerancy. Man is a
+migratory animal. His evolution has come about through change of
+environment. Transplantation changes weeds into roses, and the
+forebears of all the products of our greenhouses and gardens once grew
+in hedgerows or open fields, choked by unkind competition or trampled
+beneath the feet of the heedless.
+
+The advantage of university life is in the transplantation. Get the boy
+out of his home environment; sever the cord that holds him to his
+"folks"; let him meet new faces, see new sights, hear new sermons, meet
+new teachers, and his efforts at adjustment will work for growth.
+Alexander Humboldt was right--one year at college is safer than four.
+One year inspires you--four may get you pot-bound with pedant prejudice.
+
+The university of the future will be industrial--all may come and go.
+All men will be university men, and thus the pride in an imaginary
+proficiency will be diluted to a healthful attenuation. To work and to
+be useful--not merely to memorize and recite--will be the only
+initiation.
+
+The professors will be interchangeable, and the rotation of intellectual
+crops will work for health, harmony and effectiveness.
+
+The group, or college, will be the unit, not the family. The college was
+once a collection of men and women grouped for a mutual intellectual,
+religious or economic good.
+
+To this group or college idea will we return.
+
+Man is a gregarious animal, and the Christ-thought of giving all, and
+receiving all, some day in the near future will be found practical. The
+desire for exclusive ownership must be sloughed.
+
+Universities devoted to useful work--art in its highest sense: head,
+hand and heart--will yet dot the civilized world. The hospice will
+return higher up the scale, and the present use of the word
+"hospitality" will be drowned in its pink tea, choked with
+cheese-wafers, rescued from the nervous clutch of the managing mama, and
+the machinations of the chaperone. A society built on the sands of
+silliness must give way to the universal university, and the strong,
+healthful, helpful, honest companionship and comradeship of men and
+women prevail.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The objective point of the Bishop was the University of Paris.
+
+Here in due time, after their lingering ride from Holland, the Bishop
+and his secretary arrived. They settled down to literary work; and in
+odd hours the beauty and wonder of Paris became familiar to Erasmus. The
+immediate task completed, the Bishop proposed going home, and thought,
+of course, his secretary was a fixture and would go with him. But
+Erasmus had evolved ideas concerning his own worth. He had already
+collected quite a little circle of pupils about him, and these he held
+by his glowing personality. At this time the vow of poverty was looked
+upon lightly. And anyway, poverty is a comparative term. There were
+monks who always trudged afoot with staff and bag, but not so our
+Erasmus. He was Bishop of the Exterior.
+
+The Bishop of Cambray, on parting with Erasmus, thought so much of him
+that he presented him with the horse he rode.
+
+Erasmus used to take short excursions about Paris, taking with him a
+student and often two, as servants or attendants. Teaching then was
+mostly on an independent basis, each pupil picking his tutors and paying
+them direct.
+
+Among other pupils whom Erasmus had at Paris was a young Englishman by
+the name of Lord Mountjoy. A great affection arose between these two,
+and when Lord Mountjoy returned to England he was accompanied by
+Erasmus.
+
+At London, Erasmus met on absolute equality many of the learned men of
+England. We hear of his dining at the house of the Lord Mayor of London,
+and there meeting Sir Thomas More and crossing swords with that worthy
+in wordy debate.
+
+Erasmus seems to have carried the "New Humanism" into England. It has
+been said that the world was discovered in Fourteen Hundred Ninety-two,
+but Man was not discovered until Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six. This is
+hardly literal truth, since in Fourteen Hundred Ninety-two, there was a
+theologico-scientific party of young men in all of the European
+Universities who were reviving the Greek culture, and with it arose the
+idea of the dignity and worth of Man. To this movement Erasmus brought
+the enthusiasm of his nature. Perhaps he did as much as any other to fan
+the embers which grew into a flame called "The Reformation."
+
+He constantly ridiculed the austerities, pedantry, priggishness and
+sciolism of the old-time Churchmen, and when a new question came up, he
+asked, "What good is there in it?"
+
+Everything was tested by him in the light of commonsense. What end does
+it serve and how is humanity to be served or benefited by it?
+
+Thus the good of humanity, not the glory of God, was the shibboleth of
+this rising party.
+
+Erasmus gave lectures and taught at Cambridge, Oxford and London.
+
+Italy had been the objective point of his travels, but England had, for
+a time, turned him aside. In the year Fifteen Hundred, Erasmus landed at
+Calais, saddled his horse, and started southward, visiting, writing,
+teaching, lecturing, as he went. The stimulus of meeting new people and
+seeing new scenes, all tended toward intellectual growth.
+
+The genius monk made mendicancy a fine art, and Erasmus was heir to most
+of the instincts of the order. His associations with the laity were
+mostly with the nobility or those with money. He was not slow in asking
+for what he wanted, whether it was a fur-lined cloak, a saddle, top
+riding-boots, a horse, or a prayer-book. He made no apologies--but took
+as his divine right all that he needed. And he justified himself in
+taking what he needed by the thought that he gave all he had. He
+supplied Sir Thomas More the germ of "Utopia," for Erasmus pictured
+again and again an ideal society where all would have enough, and none
+suffer from either want or surfeit--a society in which all would be at
+home wherever they went.
+
+Had Erasmus seen fit to make England his home, his head, too, would have
+paid the forfeit, as did the head that wrote "Utopia." What an absurd
+use to make of a head--to separate it from the man's body!
+
+Italy received Erasmus with the same royal welcome that England had
+supplied. Scholars who knew the Greek and Roman classics were none too
+common. Most monks stopped with the writings of the saints, as South
+Americans balk at long division.
+
+Erasmus could illumine an initial, bind a book, give advice to printers,
+lecture to teachers, give lessons on rhetoric and oratory, or entertain
+the ladies with recitations from the Iliad and the Odyssey.
+
+So he went riding back and forth, stopping at cities and towns,
+nunneries and monasteries, until his name became a familiar one to every
+scholar of England, Germany and Italy. Scholarly, always a learner,
+always a teacher, gracious, direct, witty, men began to divide on an
+Erasmus basis. There were two parties: those for Erasmus and those
+against him.
+
+In Fifteen Hundred Seventeen, came Luther with his bombshells of
+defiance. This fighting attitude was far from Erasmus--his weapons were
+words. Between bouts with prelates, Luther sent a few thunderbolts at
+Erasmus, accusing him of vacillation and cowardice. Erasmus replied with
+dignity, and entered into a lengthy dispute with Melanchthon, Luther's
+friend, on the New Humanism which was finding form in revolution.
+
+Erasmus prophesied that by an easy process of evolution, through
+education, the monasteries would all become schools and workshops. He
+would not destroy them, but convert them into something different. He
+fell into disfavor with the Catholics, and was invited by Henry the
+Eighth to come to England and join the new religious regime. But this
+English Catholicism was not to the liking of Erasmus. What he desired
+was to reform the Church, not to destroy it or divide it.
+
+His affairs were becoming critical: monasteries where he had once been
+welcomed now feared to have him come near, lest they should be
+contaminated and entangled. It was rumored that warrants of arrest were
+out. He was invited to go to Rome and explain his position.
+
+Erasmus knew better than to acknowledge receipt of the letter. He headed
+his horse for Switzerland, the land of liberty. At Basel he stopped at
+the house of Froben, the great printer and publisher. He put his horse
+in the barn, unsaddled him, and said, "Froben, I've come to stay."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was mousing around the other day in a book that is somewhat disjointed
+and disconnected, and yet interesting--"The Standard Dictionary"--when I
+came across the word "scamp." It is a handy word to fling, and I am not
+sure but that it has been gently tossed once or twice in my direction.
+Condemnation is usually a sort of subtle flattery, so I'm not sad. To
+scamp means to cut short, to be superficial, slipshod, careless,
+indifferent--to say, "Let 'er go, who cares--this is good enough!" If
+anybody ever was a stickler for honest work, I am that bucolic party. I
+often make things so fine that only one man out of ten thousand can buy
+them, and I have to keep 'em myself.
+
+You know that, when you get an idea in your head, how everything you
+read contains allusions to the same thing. Knowledge is mucilaginous.
+Well, next day after I was looking up that pleasant word "scamp," I was
+reading in the Amusing Works of Erasmus, when I ran across the word
+again, but spelled in Dutch, thus, "schamp." Now Erasmus was a
+successful author, and he was also the best authority on paper, inks,
+bindings, and general bookmaking in Italy, Holland or Germany. Being a
+lover of learning, and listening to the lure of words, he never wallowed
+in wealth. But in his hunt for ideas he had a lot of fun. Kipling says,
+"There is no hunt equal to a man hunt." But Kip is wrong--to chase a
+thought is twice the sport. Erasmus chased ideas, and very naturally
+the preachers chased Erasmus--out of England, through France, down to
+Italy and then he found refuge at Basel with Froben, the great Printer
+and Publisher.
+
+Up in Frankfort was a writer-printer, who, not being able to answer the
+arguments of Erasmus, called him bad names. But this gentle pen-pusher
+in Frankfort, who passed his vocabulary at Froben's proofreader, Erasmus
+in time calls a "schamp," because he used cheap paper, cheap ink and
+close margins. Soon after, the word was carried to England and spelled
+"scamp"--a man who cheats in quality, weight, size and count. But the
+first use merely meant a printer who scamps his margins and so cheats on
+paper. I am sorry to see that Erasmus imitated his enemies and at
+times was ambidextrous in the use of the literary stinkpot. His
+vocabulary was equal to that of Muldoon. Erasmus refers to one of
+his critics as a "scenophylax-stikken," and another he calls a "schnide
+enchologion-schistosomus." And perhaps they may have been--I really do
+not know.
+
+But as an authority on books Erasmus can still be read. He it was who
+fixed the classic page margin--twice as wide at the top as on the
+inside; twice as wide at the outside as the top; twice as wide at the
+bottom as at the side. And any printer who varies from this displays his
+ignorance of proportion. Erasmus says, "To use poor paper marks the
+decline of taste, both in printer and in patron." After the death of
+Erasmus, Froben's firm failed because they got to making things cheap.
+"Compete in quality, not in price," was the working motto of Erasmus.
+
+All of the great bookmaking centers languished when they began to scamp.
+That worthy wordissimus at Frankfort who called Erasmus names gave up
+business and then the ghost, and Erasmus wrote his epitaph, and thus
+supplied Benjamin Franklin an idea--"Here lies an old book, its cover
+gone, its leaves torn, the worms at work on its vitals."
+
+The wisdom of doing good work still applies, just as it did in the days
+of Erasmus.
+
+Erasmus proved a very valuable acquisition to Froben. He became general
+editor and literary adviser of this great publishing-house, which was
+then the most important in the world.
+
+Besides his work as editor, Erasmus also stood sponsor for numerous
+volumes which we now know were written by literary nobodies, his name
+being placed on the title-page for commercial reasons.
+
+At that time and for two hundred years later, the matter of attributing
+a book to this man or that was considered a trivial affair. Piracies
+were prevalent. All printers revised the work of classic authors if they
+saw fit, and often they were specially rewarded for it by the Church. It
+was about this time that some one slipped that paragraph into the works
+of Josephus about Jesus. The "Annals" of Tacitus were similarly
+doctored, if in fact they were not written entire, during the Sixteenth
+Century. It will be remembered that the only two references in
+contemporary literature to Jesus are those in Josephus and Tacitus, and
+these the Church proudly points to yet.
+
+During the last few years of his life Erasmus accumulated considerable
+property. By his will he devised that this money should go to educate
+certain young men and women, grandchildren and nephews and nieces of his
+old friend, Johann Froben. He left no money for masses, after the usual
+custom of Churchmen, and during his last illness was not attended by a
+priest. For several years before his death he made no confessions and
+very seldom attended church service. He said, "I am much more proud of
+being a printer than a priest."
+
+A statue of Erasmus in bronze adorns one of the public squares in
+Rotterdam, and Basel and Freiburg have honored themselves, and him also,
+in like manner.
+
+As a sample of the subtle and keen literary style of Erasmus, I append
+the following from "In Praise of Folly:"
+
+     The happiest times of life are youth and old age, and this for no
+     reason but that they are the times most completely under the rule
+     of folly, and least controlled by wisdom. It is the child's freedom
+     from wisdom that makes it so charming to us; we hate a precocious
+     child. So women owe their charm, and hence their power, to their
+     "folley," that is, to their obedience to the impulse. But if,
+     perchance, a woman wants to be thought wise, she only succeeds in
+     being doubly a fool, as if one should train a cow for the
+     prize-ring, a thing wholly against Nature. A woman will be a woman,
+     no matter what mask she wear, and she ought to be proud of her
+     folly and make the most of it.
+
+     Is not Cupid, that first father of all religion, is not he stark
+     blind, that he can not himself distinguish of colors, so he would
+     make us as mope-eyed in judging falsely of all love concerns, and
+     wheedle us into a thinking that we are always in the right? Thus
+     every Jack sticks to his own Jill; every tinker esteems his own
+     trull; and the hobnailed suitor prefers Joan the milkmaid before
+     any of milady's daughters. These things are true, and are
+     ordinarily laughed at, and yet, however ridiculous they seem, it is
+     hence only that all societies receive their cement and
+     consolidation.
+
+     Fortune we still find favoring the blunt, and flushing the forward;
+     strokes smooth up fools, crowning all their undertakings with
+     success; but wisdom makes her followers bashful, sneaking and
+     timorous, and therefore you commonly see that they are reduced to
+     hard shifts; must grapple with poverty, cold and hunger; must lie
+     recluse, despised, and unregarded; while fools roll in money, are
+     advanced to dignities and offices, and in a word have the whole
+     world at command. If any one thinks it happy to be a favorite at
+     court, and to manage the disposal of places and preferments, alas,
+     this happiness is so far from being attainable by wisdom, that the
+     very suspicion of it would put a stop to advancement. Has any man a
+     mind to raise himself a good estate? Alas, what dealer in the world
+     would ever get a farthing, if he be so wise as to scruple at
+     perjury, blush at a lie, or stick at a fraud and overreaching?
+
+     It is the public charter of all divines, to mold and bend the
+     sacred oracles till they comply with their own fancy, spreading
+     them (as Heaven by its Creator) like a curtain, closing together,
+     or drawing them back, as they please. Thus, indeed, Saint Paul
+     himself minces and mangles some citations he makes use of, and
+     seems to wrest them to a different sense from what they were first
+     intended for, as is confessed by the great linguist, Saint Hieron.
+     Thus when that apostle saw at Athens the inscription of the altar,
+     he draws from it an argument for the proof of the Christian
+     religion; but leaving out great parts of the sentence, which
+     perhaps if fully recited might have prejudiced his cause, he
+     mentions only the last two words, namely, "To the Unknown God"; and
+     this, too, not without alteration, for the whole inscription runs
+     thus: "To the Gods of Asia, Europe, and Africa, to all Foreign and
+     Unknown Gods."
+
+     'T is an imitation of the same pattern, I will warrant you, that
+     our young divines, by leaving out four or five words in a place and
+     putting a false construction on the rest, can make any passage
+     serviceable to their own purpose; though from the coherence of what
+     went before, or follows after, the genuine meaning appears to be
+     either wide enough, or perhaps quite contradictory to what they
+     would thrust and impose upon it. In which knack the divines are
+     grown now so expert that the lawyers themselves begin to be jealous
+     of an encroachment on what was formerly their sole privilege and
+     practise. And indeed what can they despair of proving, since the
+     forementioned commentator did upon a text of Saint Luke put an
+     interpretation no more agreeable to the meaning or the place than
+     one contrary quality is to another.
+
+     But because it seemed expedient that man, who was born for the
+     transaction of business, should have so much wisdom as should fit
+     and capacitate him for the discharge of his duty herein, and yet
+     lest such a measure as is requisite for this purpose might prove
+     too dangerous and fatal, I was advised with for an antidote, and
+     prescribed this infallible receipt of taking a wife, a creature so
+     harmless and silly, and yet so useful and convenient, as might
+     mollify and make pliable the stiffness and morose humor of man. Now
+     that which made Plato doubt under what genus to rank woman, whether
+     among brutes or rational creatures, was only meant to denote the
+     extreme stupidness and Folly of that sex, a sex so unalterably
+     simple that for any one of them to thrust forward and reach at the
+     name of wise, is but to make themselves the more remarkable fools,
+     such an endeavor being but a swimming against the stream, nay, the
+     turning the course of Nature, the bare attempting whereof is as
+     extravagant as the effecting of it is impossible: for as it is a
+     trite proverb, that an ape will be an ape, though clad in purple,
+     so a woman will be a woman, that is, a fool, whatever disguise she
+     takes up. And yet there is no reason women should take it amiss to
+     be thus charged, for if they do but rightly consider, they will
+     find to Folly they are beholden for those endowments wherein they
+     so far surpass and excel Man; as first for their unparalleled
+     beauty, by the charm whereof they tyrannize over the greatest of
+     tyrants; for what is it but too great a smatch of wisdom that makes
+     men so tawny and thick-skinned, so rough and prickly-bearded, like
+     an emblem of winter or old age, while women have such dainty,
+     smooth cheeks, such a low, gentle voice, and so pure a complexion,
+     as if Nature had drawn them for a standing pattern of all symmetry
+     and comeliness? Besides, what greater or juster aim and ambition
+     have they than to please their husbands? In order whereunto they
+     garnish themselves with paint, washes, curls, perfumes, and all
+     other mysteries of ornament; yet, after all, they become acceptable
+     to them only for their Folly. Wives are always allowed their humor,
+     yet it is only in exchange for titillation and pleasure, which
+     indeed are but other names for Folly; as none can deny, who
+     consider how a man must dandle, and kittle, and play a hundred
+     little tricks for his helpmate.
+
+     But now some blood-chilled old men, that are more for wine than
+     wenching, will pretend that in their opinion the greatest happiness
+     consists in feasting and drinking. Grant it be so; yet certainly in
+     the most luxurious entertainments it is Folly must give the sauce
+     and relish to the daintiest delicacies; so that if there be no one
+     of the guests naturally fool enough to be played upon by the rest,
+     they must procure some comical buffoon, that by his jokes and
+     flouts and blunders shall make the whole company split themselves
+     with laughing; for to what purpose were it to be stuffed and
+     crammed with so many dainty bits, savory dishes, and toothsome
+     rarities, if after all this epicurism, the eyes, the ears, and the
+     whole mind of man, were not so well foisted and relieved with
+     laughing, jesting, and such like divertisements, which, like second
+     courses, serve for the promoting of digestion? And as to all those
+     shoeing-horns of drunkenness, the keeping every one his man, the
+     throwing high jinks, the filling of bumpers, the drinking two in a
+     hand, the beginning of mistresses' healths; and then the roaring
+     out of drunken catches, the calling in a fiddler, the leading out
+     every one his lady to dance, and such like riotous pastimes--these
+     were not taught or dictated by any of the wise men of Greece, but
+     of Gotham rather, being my invention, and by me prescribed as the
+     best preservative of health: each of which, the more ridiculous it
+     is, the more welcome it finds. And indeed, to jog sleepingly
+     through the world, in a dumpish, melancholy posture, can not
+     properly be said to live.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: BOOKER T. WASHINGTON]
+
+BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
+
+
+     There is something in human nature which always makes people reward
+     merit, no matter under what color of skin merit is found. I have
+     found, too, that it is the visible, the tangible, that goes a long
+     way in softening prejudices. The actual sight of a good house that
+     a Negro has built is ten times more potent than pages of discussion
+     about a house that he ought to build, or perhaps could build. The
+     individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in
+     the end, make his way regardless of his race.
+
+     --_Booker T. Washington_
+
+
+BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
+
+This is a story about a Negro. The story has the peculiarity of being
+true. The man was born a slave in Virginia. His mother was a slave, and
+was thrice sold in the market-place. This man is Booker T. Washington.
+
+The name Booker was a fanciful one given to the lad by playmates on
+account of his love for a certain chance dog-eared spelling-book. Before
+this he was only Mammy's Pet. The T. stood for nothing, but later a
+happy thought made it Taliaferro.
+
+Most Negroes, fresh from slavery, stood sponsor to themselves, and chose
+the name Washington; if not this, then Lincoln, Clay or Webster.
+
+This lad when but a child, being suddenly asked for his name, exclaimed,
+"Washington," and stuck to it.
+
+The father of this boy was a white man; but children always take the
+status of the mother, so Booker T. Washington is a Negro, and proud of
+it, as he should be, for he is standard by performance, even if not by
+pedigree.
+
+This Negro's father is represented by the sign _x_. By remaining in
+obscurity the fond father threw away his one chance for immortality. We
+do not even know his name, his social position, or his previous
+condition of turpitude. We assume he was happily married and
+respectable. Concerning him legend is silent and fable dumb. As for the
+child, we are not certain whether he was born in Eighteen Hundred
+Fifty-eight or Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine, and we know not the day or
+the month. There were no signs in the East.
+
+The mother lived in a log cabin of one room, say ten by twelve. This
+room was also a kitchen, for the mother was cook to the farmhands of her
+owner. There were no windows and no floor in the cabin save the
+hard-trodden clay. There were a table, a bench and a big fireplace.
+There were no beds, and the children at night simply huddled and cuddled
+in a pile of straw and rags in the corner. Doubtless they had enough
+food, for they ate the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table--who,
+by the way, wasn't so very rich.
+
+One of the earliest recollections of Black Baby Booker was of being
+awakened in the middle of the night by his mother to eat fried chicken.
+Imagine the picture--it is past midnight. No light in the room save the
+long, flickering streaks that dance on the rafters. Outside the wind
+makes mournful, sighing melody. In the corner huddled the children,
+creeping close together with intertwining arms to get the warmth of each
+little half-naked body.
+
+The dusky mother moves swiftly, deftly, half-frightened at her task.
+
+She has come in from the night with a chicken! Where did she get it?
+Hush! Where do you suppose oppressed colored people get chickens?
+
+She picks the bird--prepares it for the skillet--fries it over the
+coals. And then when it is done just right, Maryland style, this mother
+full of mother-love, an ingredient which God never omits, shakes each
+little piccaninny into wakefulness, and gives him the forbidden
+dainty--drumstick, wishbone, gizzard, white meat, or the part that went
+through the fence last--anything but the neck.
+
+Feathers, bones, waste are thrown into the fireplace, and what the
+village editor calls the "devouring element" hides all trace of the
+crime. Then all lie down to sleep, until the faint flush of pink comes
+into the East, and jocund day stands tiptoe on the mountain-tops.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This ex-slave remembers a strange and trying time, when all of the
+colored folk on the plantation were notified to assemble at the "big
+house." They arrived and stood around in groups, waiting and wondering,
+talking in whispers. The master came out, and standing on the veranda
+read from a paper in a tremulous voice. Then he told them that they were
+all free, and shook hands with each. Everybody cried. However, they were
+very happy in spite of the tears, for freedom to them meant heaven--a
+heaven of rest. Yet they bore only love towards their former owners.
+
+Most of them began to wander--they thought they had to leave their old
+quarters. In a few days the wisest came back and went to work just as
+usual. Booker T.'s mother quit work for just half a day.
+
+But in a little while her husband arrived--a colored man to whom she had
+been married years before, and who had been sold and sent away. Now he
+came and took her and the little monochrome brood, and they all started
+away for West Virginia, where they heard that colored men were hired to
+work in coalmines and were paid wages in real money.
+
+It took months and months to make the journey. They carried all their
+belongings in bundles. They had no horses--no cows--no wagon--they
+walked. If the weather was pleasant they slept out of doors; if it
+rained they sought a tobacco-shed, a barn, or the friendly side of a
+straw-stack. For food they depended on a little cornmeal they carried,
+with which the mother made pone-cakes in the ashes of a campfire. Kind
+colored people on the way replenished the meal-bag, for colored people
+are always generous to the hungry and needy if they have anything to be
+generous with. Then Providence sent stray, ownerless chickens their way,
+at times, just as the Children of Israel were fed on quails in the
+wilderness. Once they caught a 'possum--and there was a genuine banquet,
+where the children ate until they were as tight as drums.
+
+Finally they reached the promised land of West Virginia, and at the
+little village of Maiden, near Charleston, they stopped, for here were
+the coal mine and the salt-works where colored men were hired and paid
+in real money.
+
+Booker's stepfather found a job, and he also found a job for little
+Booker. They had nothing to live on until pay-day, so the kind man who
+owned the mine allowed them to get things at the store on credit. This
+was a brand-new experience--and no doubt they bought a few things they
+did not need, for prices and values were absolutely out of their realm.
+Besides, they did not know how much wages they were to get, neither
+could they figure the prices of the things they bought. At any rate,
+when pay-day came they were still in debt, so they saw no real
+money--certainly little Booker at this time of his life never did.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+General Lewis Ruffner owned the salt-works and the coalmine where little
+Booker worked. He was stern, severe, strict. But he believed Negroes
+were human beings, and there were those then who disputed the
+proposition.
+
+Ruffner organized a night-school for his helpers, and let a couple of
+his bookkeepers teach it. At this time there was not a colored person in
+the neighborhood who could spell cat, much less write his name. A few
+could count five. Booker must have been about ten years old when one day
+he boasted a bit of his skill in mathematics. The foreman told him to
+count the loads of coal as they came out of the mine. The boy started in
+bravely, "One--two--three--four--dere goes one, dere goes anoder,
+anoder, anoder, anoder, anoder!"
+
+The foreman laughed.
+
+The boy was abashed, then chagrined. "Send me to the night-school and in
+a month I'll show you how to count!"
+
+The foreman wrote the lad an order which admitted him to the
+night-school.
+
+But now there was another difficulty--the boy worked until nine o'clock
+at night, the last hour's work being to sweep out the office. The
+night-school began at nine o'clock and it was two miles away.
+
+The lad scratched his head and thought and thought. A great idea came to
+him--he would turn the office clock ahead half an hour. He could then
+leave at nine o'clock, and by running part of the way could get to
+school at exactly nine o'clock.
+
+The scheme worked for two days, when one of the clerks in the office
+said that a spook was monkeying with the clock. They tried the plan of
+locking the case, and all was well.
+
+Booker must have been about twelve years old, goin' on thirteen, when
+one day as he lay on his back in the coalmine, pushing out the broken
+coal with his feet, he overheard two men telling of a very wonderful
+school where colored people were taught to read, write and cipher--also,
+how to speak in public. The scholars were allowed to work part of the
+time to pay for their board.
+
+The lad crawled close in the darkness and listened to the conversation.
+He caught the names "Hampton" and "Armstrong." Whether Armstrong was the
+place and Hampton was the name of the man, he could not make out, but he
+clung to the names.
+
+Here was a school for colored people--he would go there! That night he
+told his mother about it. She laughed, patted his kinky head, and
+indulged him in his dream.
+
+She was only a poor black woman; she could not spell ab, nor count to
+ten, but she had a plan for her boy--he would some day be a preacher.
+
+This was the very height of her imagination--a preacher! Beyond this
+there was nothing in human achievement. The night-school came after a
+day of fourteen hours' work. Little Booker sat on a bench, his feet
+dangling about a foot from the floor. As he sat there one night trying
+hard to drink in knowledge, he went to sleep. He nodded, braced up,
+nodded again, and then pitched over in a heap on the floor, to the great
+amusement of the class, and his own eternal shame.
+
+The next day, however, as he was feeling very sorrowful over his sad
+experience, he heard that Mrs. Ruffner wanted a boy for general work at
+the big house.
+
+Here was a chance. Mrs. Ruffner was a Vermont Yankee, which meant that
+she had a great nose for dirt, and would not stand for a "sassy nigger."
+Her reputation had gone abroad, and of how she pinched the ears of her
+"help," and got them up at exactly a certain hour, and made them use
+soap and water at least once a day, and even compelled them to use a
+toothbrush; all this was history, well defined.
+
+Booker said he could please her, even if she was a Yankee. He applied
+for the job and got it, with wages fixed at a dollar a week, with a
+promise of twenty-five cents extra every week, if he did his work
+without talking back and breaking a tray of dishes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Genius! No hovel is safe from it!" says Whistler.
+
+Genius consists in doing the right thing without being told more than
+three times.
+
+Booker silently studied the awful Yankee woman to see what she really
+wanted. He finally decided that she desired her servants to have clean
+skins, fairly neat clothing, do things promptly, finish the job and keep
+still when they had nothing to say.
+
+He set himself to please her--and he did.
+
+She loaned him books, gave him a lead-pencil, and showed him how to
+write with a pen without smearing his hands and face with ink.
+
+He told her of his dream and asked about Armstrong and Hampton. She told
+him that Armstrong was the man and Hampton the place.
+
+At last he got her consent to leave and go to Hampton.
+
+When he started she gave him a comb, a toothbrush, two handkerchiefs and
+a pair of shoes. He had been working for her for a year, and she
+thought, of course, he saved his wages. He never told her that his money
+had gone to keep the family, because his stepfather had been on a strike
+and therefore out of work.
+
+So the boy started away for Hampton. It was five hundred miles away. He
+didn't know how far five hundred miles is--nobody does unless he has
+walked it.
+
+He had three dollars, so he gaily paid for a seat in the stage. At the
+end of the first day he was forty miles from home and out of money. He
+slept in a barn, and a colored woman handed him a ham-bone and a chunk
+of bread out of the kitchen-window, and looked the other way.
+
+He trudged on east--always and forever east--towards the rising sun.
+
+He walked weeks--months--years, he thought. He kept no track of the
+days. He carried his shoes as a matter of economy.
+
+Finally he sold the shoes for four dollars to a man who paid him ten
+cents cash down, and promised to pay the rest when they should meet at
+Hampton. Nearly forty years have passed and they have never met.
+
+On he walked--on and on--east, and always forever east.
+
+He reached the city of Richmond, the first big city he had ever seen.
+The wide streets--the sidewalks--the street-lamps entranced him. It was
+just like heaven. But he was hungry and penniless, and when he looked
+wistfully at a pile of cold fried chicken on a street-stand and asked
+the price of a drumstick, at the same time telling he had no money, he
+discovered he was not in heaven at all. He was called a lazy nigger and
+told to move on.
+
+Later he made the discovery that a "nigger" is a colored person who has
+no money.
+
+He pulled the piece of rope that served him for a belt a little tighter,
+and when no one was looking, crawled under a sidewalk and went to
+sleep, disturbed only by the trampling overhead.
+
+When he awoke he saw he was near the dock, where a big ship pushed its
+bowsprit out over the street. Men were unloading bags and boxes from the
+boat. He ran down and asked the mate if he could help. "Yes!" was the
+gruff answer.
+
+He got in line and went staggering under the heavy loads.
+
+He was little, but strong, and best of all, willing, yet he reeled at
+the work.
+
+"Have you had any breakfast? Yes, you liver-colored boy--you, I say,
+have you had your breakfast?"
+
+"No, sir," said the boy; "and no supper last night nor dinner
+yesterday!"
+
+"Well, I reckoned as much. Now you take this quarter and go over to that
+stand and buy you a drumstick, a cup of coffee and two fried cakes!"
+
+The lad didn't need urging. He took the money in his palm, went over to
+the man who the night before had called him a lazy nigger, and showing
+the silver, picked out his piece of chicken.
+
+The man hastened to wait on him, and said it was a fine day and hoped he
+was well.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Arriving at Hampton, this colored boy, who had tramped the long, weary
+miles, stood abashed before the big brick building which he knew was
+Hampton Institute.
+
+He was so little--the place was so big--by what right could he ask to be
+admitted?
+
+Finally he boldly entered, and in a voice meant to be firm, but which
+was very shaky, said, "I am here!" and pointed to the bosom of his
+hickory shirt.
+
+The Yankee woman motioned him to a chair. Negroes coming there were
+plentiful. Usually they wanted to live the Ideal Life. They had a call
+to preach--and the girls wanted to be music-teachers.
+
+The test was simple and severe: would they and could they do one useful
+piece of work well?
+
+Booker sat and waited, not knowing that his patience was being put to
+the test.
+
+Then Miss Priscilla, in a hard, Neill Burgess voice, "guessed" that the
+adjoining recitation-room needed sweeping and dusting. She handed Booker
+a broom and dust-cloth, motioned to the room, and went away.
+
+Oho! Little did she know her lad. The colored boy smiled to
+himself--sweeping and dusting were his specialties--he had learned the
+trade from a Yankee woman from Vermont! He smiled.
+
+Then he swept that room--moved every chair, the table, the desk. He
+dusted each piece of furniture four times. He polished each rung and
+followed around the baseboard on hands and knees.
+
+Miss Priscilla came back--pushed the table around and saw at once that
+the dirt had not been concealed beneath it. She took out her
+handkerchief and wiped the table top, then the desk.
+
+She turned, looked at the boy, and her smile met his half-suppressed
+triumphant grin.
+
+"You'll do," she said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+General Samuel C. Armstrong, the founder of Hampton Institute, and the
+grandfather of Tuskegee, was a white man who fought the South valiantly
+and well.
+
+He seems about the only man in the North who, at the close of the war,
+clearly realized that the war had just begun--that the real enemies were
+not subdued, and that these enemies were ignorance, superstition and
+incompetence.
+
+The pitiable condition of four million human beings, flung from slavery
+into freedom, thrown upon their own resources, with no thought of
+responsibility, and with no preparation for the change, meant for them
+only another kind of slavery.
+
+General Armstrong's heart went out to them--he desired to show them how
+to be useful, helpful, self-reliant, healthy. For the whites of the
+South he had only high regard and friendship. He, of all men, knew how
+they had suffered from the war--and he realized also that they had
+fought for what they believed was right. In his heart there was no hate.
+He resolved to give himself--his life--his fortune--his intellect--his
+love--his all, for the upbuilding of the South. He saw with the vision
+of a prophet that indolence and pride were the actual enemies of white
+and black alike. The blacks must be taught to work--to know the dignity
+of human labor--to serve society--to help themselves by helping others.
+He realized that there are no menial tasks--that all which serves is
+sacred.
+
+And this is the man who sowed the seeds of truth in the heart of the
+nameless black boy--Booker Washington. Armstrong's shibboleth, too, was,
+"With malice toward none, but with charity for all, let us finish the
+work God has given us to do."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I do not know very much about this subject of education, yet I believe I
+know as much about what others know about it as most people. I have
+visited the principal colleges of America and Europe, and the methods of
+Preparatory and High Schools are to me familiar. I know the
+night-schools of the cities, the "Ungraded Rooms," the Schools for
+Defectives, the educational schemes in prisons, the Manual-Training
+Schools, the New Education (first suggested by Socrates) as carried out
+by G. Stanley Hall, John Dewey, and dozens of other good men and women
+in America. I am familiar with the School for the Deaf at Malone, New
+York, and the School for the Blind at Batavia, where even the sorely
+stricken are taught to be self-sufficient, self-supporting and happy. I
+have tumbled down the circular fire-escape at Lapeer with the inmates of
+the Home of Epileptics, and heard the shouts of laughter from lips that
+never laughed before. I have seen the Jewish Manual Training School of
+Chicago transform Russian refugees into useful citizens--capable,
+earnest and excellent. I know a little about Swarthmore, Wellesley,
+Vassar, Radcliffe, and have put my head into West Point and Annapolis,
+and had nobody cry, "Genius!"
+
+Of Harvard, Yale and Princeton I know something, having done time in
+each. I have also given jobs to graduates of Oxford, Cambridge and
+Heidelberg, to my sorrow and their chagrin. This does not prove that
+graduates of the great universities are, as a rule, out of work, or that
+they are incompetent. It simply means that it is possible for a man to
+graduate at these institutions and secure his diploma and yet be a man
+who has nothing the world really wants, either in way of ideas or
+services.
+
+The reason that my "cum laude" friends did not like me, and the cause of
+my having to part with them--getting them a little free transportation
+from your Uncle George--was not because they lacked intelligence, but
+because they wanted to secure a position, while I simply offered them a
+job.
+
+They were like Cave-of-the-Winds of Oshkosh, who is an ice-cutter in
+August, and in winter is an out-of-door horticulturist--a hired man is
+something else.
+
+As a general proposition, I believe this will not now be disputed: the
+object of education is that a man may benefit himself by serving
+society.
+
+To benefit others, you must be reasonably happy: there must be animation
+through useful activity, good-cheer, kindness and health--health of mind
+and health of body. And to benefit society you must also have patience,
+persistency, and a firm determination to do the right thing, and to mind
+your own business so that others, too, may mind theirs. Then all should
+be tinctured with a dash of discontent with past achievements, so you
+will constantly put forth an effort to do more and better work.
+
+When what you have done in the past looks large to you, you haven't done
+much today.
+
+So there you get the formula of Education: health and happiness through
+useful activity--animation, kindness, good-cheer, patience, persistency,
+willingness to give and take, seasoned with enough discontent to prevent
+smugness, which is the scum that grows over every stagnant pond.
+
+Of course no college can fill this prescription--no institution can
+supply the ingredients--all that the college can do is to supply the
+conditions so that these things can spring into being. Plants need the
+sunlight--mushrooms are different.
+
+The question is, then, what teaching concern in America supplies the
+best quality of actinic ray?
+
+And I answer, Tuskegee is the place, and Booker Washington is the man.
+
+"What!" you exclaim. "The Ideal School a school for Negroes, instituted
+by a Negro, where only Negroes teach, and only Negroes are allowed to
+enter as students?"
+
+And the answer is, "Exactly so."
+
+At Tuskegee there are nearly two thousand students, and over one hundred
+fifty teachers. There are two classes of students--"day-school" and
+"night-school" students. The night-school students work all day at any
+kind of task they are called upon to do. They receive their board,
+clothing and a home--they pay no tuition, but are paid for their labor,
+the amount being placed to their credit, so when fifty dollars is
+accumulated they can enter as "day students."
+
+The "day students" make up the bulk of the scholars. Each pays fifty
+dollars a year. These all work every other day at manual labor or some
+useful trade.
+
+Tuskegee has fully twice as many applicants as it can accommodate; but
+there is one kind of applicant who never receives any favor. This is the
+man who says he has the money to pay his way, and wishes to take the
+academic course only. The answer always is: "Please go elsewhere--there
+are plenty of schools that want your money. The fact that you have money
+will not exempt you here from useful labor."
+
+This is exactly what every college in the world should say.
+
+The Tuskegee farm consists of about three thousand acres. There are four
+hundred head of cattle, about five hundred hogs, two hundred horses,
+great flocks of chickens, geese, ducks and turkeys, and many swarms of
+bees. It is the intention to raise all the food that is consumed on the
+place, and to manufacture all supplies. There are wagon-shops, a
+sawmill, a harness-shop, a shoe-shop, a tailor-shop, a printing-plant, a
+model laundry, a canning establishment. Finer fruit and vegetables I
+have never seen, and the thousands of peach, plum and apple trees, and
+the vast acreage of berries that have been planted, will surely some day
+be a goodly source of revenue.
+
+The place is religious, but not dogmatically so--the religion being
+merely the natural safety-valve for emotion. At Tuskegee there is no
+lacrimose appeal to confess your sins--they do better--they forget them.
+
+I never heard more inspiring congregational singing, and the use of the
+piano, organ, orchestra and brass band are important factors in the
+curriculum. In the chapel I spoke to an audience so attentive, so alert,
+so receptive, so filled with animation, that the whole place looked like
+a vast advertisement for Sozodont.
+
+No prohibitive signs are seen at Tuskegee. All is affirmative, yet it is
+understood that some things are tabu--tobacco, for instance, and strong
+drink, of course.
+
+We have all heard of Harvard Beer and Yale Mixture, but be it said in
+sober justice, Harvard runs no brewery, and Yale has no official brand
+of tobacco. Yet Harvard men consume much beer, and many men at Yale
+smoke. And if you want to see the cigarette-fiend on his native heath,
+you'll find him like the locust on the campus at Cambridge and New
+Haven. But if you want to see the acme of all cigarette-bazaars, just
+ride out of Boylston Street, Boston, any day at noon, and watch the boys
+coming out of the Institute of Technology.
+
+I once asked a Tech Professor if cigarette-smoking was compulsory in his
+institution. "Yes," he replied; "but the rule is not strictly enforced,
+as I know three students who do not smoke."
+
+Tuskegee stands for order, system, cleanliness, industry, courtesy and
+usefulness. There are no sink-holes around the place, no "back yards."
+Everything is beautiful, wholesome and sanitary. All trades are
+represented. The day is crammed so full of work from sunrise to sunset
+that there is no time for complaining, misery or faultfinding--three
+things that are usually born of idleness. At Tuskegee there are
+no servants. All of the work is done by the students and
+teachers--everybody works--everybody is a student, and all are teachers.
+
+We are all teachers, whether we will it or not--we teach by example, and
+all students who do good work are good teachers.
+
+When the Negro is able to do skilled work, he ceases to be a problem--he
+is a man. The fact that Alexandre Dumas was a Negro does not count
+against him in the world's assize.
+
+The old-time academic college, that cultivated the cerebrum and gave a
+man his exercise in an indoor gymnasium, or not at all, has ruined its
+tens of thousands. To have top--head and no lungs--is not wholly
+desirable. The student was made exempt from every useful thing, just as
+the freshly freed slave hoped and expected to be, and after four years
+it was often impossible for him to take up the practical lessons of
+life. He had gotten used to the idea of one set of men doing all the
+work and another set of men having the culture. To a large degree he
+came to regard culture as the aim of life. And when a man begins to
+pride himself upon his culture, he hasn't any to speak of. Culture must
+be merely incidental, and to clutch it is like capturing a butterfly:
+you do not secure the butterfly at all--you get only a grub.
+
+Let us say right here that there is only one way in which a Negro, or a
+white man, can ever make himself respected. Statute law will not do it;
+rights voted him by the State are of small avail; making demands will
+not secure the desired sesame. If we ever gain the paradise of freedom
+it will be because we have earned it--because we deserve it. A
+make-believe education may suffice for a white man--especially if he has
+a rich father, but a Negro who has to carve out his own destiny must be
+taught order, system, and quiet, persistent, useful effort.
+
+A college that has its students devote one-half their time to actual,
+useful work is so in line with commonsense that we are amazed that the
+idea had to be put into execution by the ex-slave as a life-saver for
+his disenfranchised race. Our great discoveries are always accidents: we
+work for one thing and get another. I expect that the day will come, and
+erelong, when the great universities of the world will have to put the
+Tuskegee Idea into execution in order to save themselves from being
+distanced by the Colored Race.
+
+If life were one thing and education another, it might be all right to
+separate them. Culture of the head over a desk, and indoor gymnastics
+for the body, are not the ideal, and that many succeed in spite of the
+handicap is no proof of the excellence of the plan. Ships that go around
+the world accumulate many barnacles, but barnacles as a help to the
+navigator are an iridescent dream.
+
+A little regular manual labor, rightly mixed with the mental, eliminates
+draw-poker, highballs, brawls, broils, Harvard Beer, Yale Mixture,
+Princeton Pinochle, Chippee dances, hazing, roistering, rowdyism and the
+bulldog propensity. The Heidelberg article of cocked hat and insolent
+ways is not produced at Tuskegee. At Tuskegee there is no place for
+those who lie in wait for insults and regard scrapping as a fine art. As
+for college athletics at the Orthodox Universities, only one man out of
+ten ever does anything at it anyway--the college man who needs the
+gymnasium most is practically debarred from everything in it and serves
+as a laughing-stock whenever he strips. Coffee, cocaine, bromide,
+tobacco and strong drink often serve in lieu of exercise and ozone, and
+Princeton winks her woozy eye in innocency.
+
+Freedom can not be bestowed--it must be achieved. Education can not be
+given--it must be earned. Lincoln did not free the slaves--he only freed
+himself. The Negroes did not know they were slaves, and so they had no
+idea of what freedom meant. Until a man wants to be free, each kind of
+freedom is only another form of slavery. Booker Washington is showing
+the colored man how to secure a genuine freedom through useful
+activity. To get freedom you must shoulder responsibility.
+
+If college education were made compulsory by the State, and one-half of
+the curriculum consisted of actual, useful manual labor, most of our
+social ills would be solved, and we would be well out on the highway
+towards the Ideal City.
+
+Without animation, man is naught--nothing is accomplished, nothing done.
+People who inspire other people have animation plus.
+
+And animation plus is ecstasy. In ecstasy the spirit rushes out, runs
+over and saturates all. Oratory is an ecstasy that inundates the hearer
+and makes him ride upon the crest of another's ideas.
+
+Art is born of ecstasy--art is ecstasy in the concrete. Beautiful music
+is ecstasy expressed in sound, regulated into rhythm, cadence and form.
+"Statuary is frozen music," said Heine.
+
+A man who is not moved into ecstasy by ecstasy is hopeless. A people
+that has not the surging, uplifting, onward power that ecstasy gives, is
+decadent--dead.
+
+The Negro is easily moved to ecstasy. Very little musical training makes
+him a power in song. At Tuskegee the congregational singing is a feature
+that, once heard, is never to be forgotten. Fifteen hundred people
+lifting up their hearts in an outburst of emotion--song! Fifteen hundred
+people of one mind, doing anything in unison--do you know what it means?
+Ecstasy is essentially a matter of sex. In art and religion sex can not
+be left out of the equation. The simple fact that in forty years the
+Negro race in America has increased from four million to ten million
+tells of their ecstasy as a people. "Only happy beings reproduce
+themselves," says Darwin. Depress your animal and it ceases to breed; so
+there are a whole round of animals that do not reproduce in captivity.
+But in slavery or freedom the Negro sings, and reproduces--he is not
+doomed nor depressed--his soul arises superior to circumstance.
+
+Without animation, education is impossible. And the problem of the
+educator is to direct this singing, flowing, moving spirit of the hive
+into useful channels.
+
+Education is simply the encouragement of right habits--the fixing of
+good habits until they become a part of one's nature, and are exercised
+automatically.
+
+The man who is industrious by habit is the only man who wins. The man
+who is not industrious except when driven to it, or when it occurs to
+him, accomplishes little.
+
+Man gets his happiness by doing: and work to a slave is always
+distasteful. The power of mimicry and imitation is omitted--the owner
+does not work--the strong man does not work. Ergo--to grow strong means
+to cease work. To be strong means to be free--to be free means no work!
+
+It has been a frightfully bad education that the Negro has had--work
+distasteful, and work disgraceful! And the slave-owner suffered most of
+all, for he came to regard work as debasing.
+
+And now a Negro is teaching the Negro that work is beautiful--that work
+is a privilege--that only through willing service can he ever win his
+freedom. Architecture is fixed ecstasy, inspired always by a strong man
+who gives a feeling of security. Athens was an ecstasy in marble.
+
+Tuskegee is an ecstasy in brick and mortar.
+
+Don't talk about the education of the Negro! The experiment has really
+never been tried, except spasmodically, of educating either the whites
+or the blacks in the South--or elsewhere.
+
+A Negro is laying hold upon the natural ecstasy of the Negro, and
+directing it into channels of usefulness and excellence. Can you
+foretell where this will end--this formation of habits of industry,
+sobriety and continued, persistent effort towards the right?
+
+Booker Washington, child of a despised race, has done and is doing what
+the combined pedagogic and priestly wisdom of ages has failed to do. He
+is the Moses who by his example is leading the children of his former
+oppressors out into the light of social, mental, moral and economic
+freedom.
+
+I am familiar in detail with every criticism brought against Tuskegee.
+On examination these criticisms all reduce themselves down to three:
+
+1. A vast sum of money has been collected by Booker Washington for his
+own aggrandizement and benefit.
+
+2. Tuskegee is a show-place where all the really good work is done by
+picked men from the North.
+
+3. Booker Washington is a tyrant, a dictator and an egotist.
+
+If I were counsel for Tuskegee--as I am not--I would follow the example
+of the worthy accusers, and submit the matter without argument. Booker
+Washington can afford to plead guilty to every charge; and he has never
+belittled himself by answering his accusers.
+
+But let the facts be known, that this man has collected upward of six
+million dollars, mostly from the people of the North, and has built up
+the nearest perfect educational institution in the world.
+
+It is probably true that many of his teachers and best workers are
+picked people--but they are Negroes, and were selected by a Negro. The
+great general reveals his greatness in the selection of his generals: it
+was the marshals whom Napoleon appointed who won for him his victories;
+but his spirit animated theirs, and he chose them for this one
+reason--he could dominate them. He infused into their souls a goodly
+dash of his own enthusiasm.
+
+Booker Washington is a greater general than Napoleon. For the Tuskegee
+idea no Waterloo awaits. And as near as I can judge, Booker Washington's
+most noisy critics are merely camp-followers.
+
+That the man is a tyrant and a dictator there is no doubt. He is a
+beneficent tyrant, but a tyrant still, for he always, invariably, has
+his own way in weighty matters--in trivialities others can have theirs.
+And as for dictatorship, the man who advances on chaos and transforms it
+into cosmos is perforce a dictator and an egotist.
+
+Booker Washington believes he is in the right, and he makes no effort to
+conceal the fact that he is on earth. In him there is no disposition to
+run and peep about, and find himself a dishonorable grave. All live men
+are egotists, and they are egotists just in proportion as they have
+life. Dead men are not egotists. Booker Washington has life in
+abundance, and through him I truly believe runs the spirit of Divinity,
+if ever a living man had it. A man like this is the instrument of Deity.
+
+Tuskegee Institute has applications ahead all the time, from all over
+America, for competent colored men and women who can take charge of
+important work and do it. Dressmakers, housekeepers, cooks, farmers,
+stockmen, builders, gardeners, are in demand. The world has never yet
+had enough people to bear its burdens.
+
+Recently we have heard much of the unemployed, but a very little search
+will show that the people out of work are those of bad habits, which
+make them unreliable and untrustworthy. The South, especially, needs the
+willing worker and the practical man. And best of all the South knows
+it, and stands ready to pay for the service.
+
+A few years ago there was a fine storm of protest from Northern Negroes
+to the effect that Booker Washington was endeavoring to limit the Negro
+to menial service--that is, thrust him back into servility. The first
+ambition of the Negro was to get an education so that he might become a
+Baptist preacher. To him, education meant freedom from toil, and of
+course we do not have to look far to see where he got the idea. Then
+when Tuskegee came forward and wanted to make blacksmiths, carpenters
+and brick-masons out of black men, there was a cry, "If this means
+education, we will none of it--treason, treason!" It was assumed that
+the Negro who set other Negroes to work was not their friend. This phase
+of the matter requires neither denial nor apology. We smile and pass on.
+
+In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-seven, the Negro was practically
+disenfranchised throughout the South, by being excluded from the
+primaries. He had no recognized ticket in the field. For both the blacks
+and the whites this has been well. To most of the blacks freedom meant
+simply exemption from work. So there quickly grew up a roistering,
+turbulent, idle and dangerous class of black men who were used by the
+most ambitious of their kind for political ends. To preserve the peace
+of the community, the whites were forced to adopt heroic measures, with
+the result that we now have the disenfranchised Negro.
+
+Early in the Eighties, Booker Washington realized that, politically,
+there was no hope for his race. He saw, however, that commerce
+recognized no color line. We would buy, sell and trade with the black
+man on absolute equality. Life-insurance companies would insure him,
+banks would receive his deposits, and if honest and competent, would
+loan him money. If he could shoe a horse, we waived his complexion; and
+in every sort and kind of craftsmanship he stood on absolute equality
+with the whites. The only question ever asked was, "Can you do the
+work?"
+
+And Booker Washington set out to help the Negro win success for himself
+by serving society through becoming skilled in doing useful things. And
+so it became Head, Hand and Heart. The manual was played off against the
+intellectual.
+
+But over and beyond the great achievement of Booker Washington in
+founding and carrying to a successful issue the most complete
+educational scheme of this age, or any other, stands the man himself. He
+is one without hate, heat or prejudice. No one can write on the lintels
+of his doorpost the word, "Whim." He is half-white, but calls himself a
+Negro. He sides with the disgraced and outcast black woman who gave him
+birth, rather than with the respectable white man who was his sire.
+
+He rides in the Jim Crow cars, and on long trips, if it is deemed
+expedient to use a sleeping-car, he hires the stateroom, so that he may
+not trespass or presume upon those who would be troubled by the presence
+of a colored man. Often in traveling he goes for food and shelter to the
+humble home of one of his own people. At hotels he receives and
+accepts, without protest or resentment, the occasional contumely of the
+inferior whites--whites too ignorant to appreciate that one of God's
+noblemen stands before them. For the whites of the South he has only
+words of kindness and respect; the worst he says about them is that they
+do not understand. His modesty, his patience, his forbearance, are
+sublime. He is a true Fabian--he does what he can, like the royal
+Roycroft opportunist that he is. Every petty annoyance is passed over;
+the gibes and jeers and the ingratitude of his own race are forgotten.
+"They do not understand," he calmly says. He does his work. He is
+respected by the best people of North and South. He has the confidence
+of the men of affairs--he is a safe man.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THOMAS ARNOLD]
+
+THOMAS ARNOLD
+
+
+     Let me mind my own personal work; keep myself pure and zealous and
+     believing; laboring to do God's will in this fruitful vineyard of
+     young lives committed to my charge, as my allotted field, until my
+     work be done.
+
+     --_Thomas Arnold_
+
+
+THOMAS ARNOLD
+
+Thomas Arnold was born in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-five, and died in
+Eighteen Hundred Forty-two. His life was short, as men count time, but
+he lived long enough to make for himself a name and a fame that are both
+lasting and luminous. Though he was neither a great writer nor a great
+preacher, yet there were times when he thought he was both. He was only
+a schoolteacher. However, he was an artist in schoolteaching, and art is
+not a thing--it is a way. It is the beautiful way--the effective way.
+
+Schoolteachers have no means of proving their prowess by conspicuous
+waste, and no time to convince the world of their excellence through
+conspicuous leisure; consequently, for histrionic purposes, a
+schoolteacher's cosmos is a plain, slaty gray. Schoolteachers do not
+wallow in wealth nor feed fat at the public trough. No one ever accuses
+them of belonging to the class known as the predatory rich, nor of being
+millionaire malefactors. They have to do their work every day at certain
+hours and dedicate its results to time.
+
+For many years Thomas Arnold has been known as the father of his son.
+Several great men have been thus overshadowed. The father of Disraeli,
+for instance, was favored by fame and fortune, until his gifted son
+moved into the limelight, and after that Pater shone mostly in a
+reflected glory. Jacopo Bellini was the greatest painter in Venice until
+his two sons, Gian and Gentile, surpassed him, and history writes him
+down as the father of the Bellinis. Lyman Beecher was regarded as
+America's greatest preacher until Henry Ward moved the mark up a few
+notches. The elder Pitt was looked upon as a genuine statesman until his
+son graduated into the Cabinet, and then "the terrible cornet of horse"
+became known as the father of Pitt. Now that both are dust, and we are
+getting the proper perspective, we see that "the great commoner" was
+indeed a great man, and so they move down the corridors of time
+together, arm in arm, this father and son. That excellent person who
+carried the gripsacks of greatness so long that he thought the luggage
+was his own, Major James B. Pond, launched at least one good thing. It
+was this: "Matthew Arnold gave fifty lectures in America, and nobody
+ever heard one of them; those in his audience who could no longer endure
+the silence slipped quietly out."
+
+Matthew Arnold was a critic and writer who, having secured a tuppence
+worth of success through being the son of his father, and thus securing
+the speaker's eye, finally got an oratorical bee in his bonnet and went
+a-barnstorming. He cultivated reserve and indifference, both of which he
+was told were necessary factors of success in a public speaker.
+
+And this is true. But they will not make an orator, any more than long
+hair, a peculiar necktie, and a queer hat will float a poet on the tide
+of time safely into the Hall of Fame.
+
+Matthew Arnold cultivated repose, but instead of convincing the audience
+that he had power, he only made them think he was sleepy. Major Pond,
+having lived much with orators, and thinking the trick easy, tried
+oratory on his own account, and succeeded as well as did Matthew Arnold.
+No one ever heard Major Pond: his voice fell over the footlights, dead,
+into the orchestra; only those with opera-glasses knew he was talking.
+
+But to be unintelligible is not a special recommendation. Men may be
+moderate for two reasons--through excess of feeling and because they are
+actually dull.
+
+Matthew Arnold has slipped back into his true position--that of a man of
+letters. The genius is a man of affairs. Humanity is the theme, not
+books. Books are usually written about the thoughts of men who wrote
+books. Books die and disintegrate, but humanity is an endless
+procession, and the souls that go marching on are those who fought for
+freedom, not those who speculate on abstrusities.
+
+The credential of Thomas Arnold to immortality is not that he was the
+father of Matthew and eight other little Arnolds, but it lies in the
+fact that he fought for a wider horizon in life through education. He
+lifted his voice for liberty. He believed in the divinity of the child,
+not in its depravity. Arnold of Rugby was a teacher of teachers, as
+every great teacher is. The pedagogic world is now going back to his
+philosophy, just as in statesmanship we are reverting to Thomas
+Jefferson. These men who spoke classic truth, not transient--truth that
+fits in spite of fashion, time and place--are the true prophets of
+mankind. Such was Thomas Arnold!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If Thomas Arnold had been just a little bigger, the world probably would
+never have heard of him, for an interdict would have been placed upon
+his work. The miracle is that, as it was, the Church and the State did
+not snuff him out.
+
+He stood for sweet reasonableness, but unintentionally created much
+opposition. His life was a warfare. Yet he managed to make himself
+acceptable to a few; so for fourteen years this head master of a
+preparatory school for boys lived his life and did his work. He sent out
+his radiating gleams, and grew straight in the strength of his spirit,
+and lived out his life in the light.
+
+His sudden death sanctified and sealed his work before he was subdued
+and ironed out by the conventions.
+
+Happy Arnold! If he had lived, he might have met the fate of Arnold of
+Brescia, who was also a great teacher. Arnold of Brescia was a pupil of
+Abelard, and was condemned by the Church as a disturber of the peace for
+speaking in eulogy of his master. Later, he attacked the profligacy of
+the idle prelates, as did Luther, Savonarola and all the other great
+church-reformers. When ordered into exile and silence, he still
+protested his right to speak. He was strangled on order of the Pope, his
+body burned, and the ashes thrown into the Tiber. The Baptists, I
+believe, claim Arnold of Brescia as the forerunner of their sect, and
+certain it is that he was of the true Roger Williams type.
+
+Thomas Arnold, too, was filled with a passion for righteousness. His
+zeal for the upright, manly life constituted his strength. Of course he
+would not have been executed, as was Arnold of Brescia--the times had
+changed--he would simply have been shelved, pooh-poohed, deprived of his
+living and socially Crapseyized. Death saved him--aged forty-seven--and
+his soul goes marching on!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The parents of Thomas Arnold belonged to the great Middle Class--that
+class which Disraeli said never did any thinking on its own account, but
+to the best of its ability deferred to and imitated the idle rich in
+matters of religion, education and politics.
+
+Doctor Johnson maintained that if members of the Middle Class worked
+hard and economized, it was in the hope that they might leave money and
+name for their children and make them exempt from all useful effort.
+
+"To indict a class," said Burke, "is neither reasonable nor right." But
+certain it is that a vast number of fairly intelligent people in England
+and elsewhere regard the life of the "aristocracy" as very desirable and
+beautiful.
+
+To this end they want their boys to become clergymen, lawyers, doctors
+or army officers.
+
+"Only two avenues of honor are open to aspiring youth in England," said
+Gladstone--"the Army and the Church."
+
+The father of Thomas Arnold was Collector of Customs at Cowes, Isle of
+Wight. Holding this petty office under the Government, with a half-dozen
+men at his command, we can easily guess his caliber, habits, belief and
+mode of life. He was respectable; and to be respectable, a Collector of
+Customs must be punctilious in Church matters, in order to be acceptable
+to Church people, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. The parents of
+Thomas Arnold very naturally centered their ambitions for him on the
+Church, as he was not very strong.
+
+When the child was only six years old, the father died from "spasm of
+the heart." At this time the boy had begun to take Latin, and his
+education was being looked after by a worthy governess, who daily
+drilled his mental processes and took him walking, leading him by the
+hand. On Sundays he wore a wide, white collar, shiny boots and a stiff
+hat. The governess cautioned him not to soil his collar, nor to get mud
+on his boots.
+
+In later years he told how he looked covetously at the boys who wore
+neither hats nor boots, and who did not have a governess.
+
+His mother had a fair income, and so this prim, precise, exact and
+crystallized mode of education was continued. Out of her great love for
+her child, the mother sent him away from home when he was eight years
+old. Of course there were tears on both sides; but now a male man must
+educate him, and women were to be dropped out of the equation--this that
+the evil in the child should be curbed, his spirit chastened, and his
+mind disciplined.
+
+The fact that a child rather liked to be fondled by his mother, or that
+his mother cared to fondle him, was proof of total depravity on the part
+of both.
+
+The Reverend Doctor Griffiths, who took charge of the boy for two years,
+was certainly not cruel, but at the same time he was not exactly human.
+In Nature we never hear of a she-lion sending her cubs away to be looked
+after by a denatured lion. It is really doubtful whether you could ever
+raise a lion to lionhood by this method. Some goat would come along and
+butt the life out of him, even after he had evolved whiskers and a mane.
+
+After two years with Doctor Griffiths, young Arnold was sent to
+Manchester, where he remained in a boys' boarding-house from his tenth
+to his fourteenth year. To the teachers here--all men--he often paid
+tribute, but uttered a few heretical doubts as to whether discipline as
+a substitute for mother-love was not an error of pious but overzealous
+educators.
+
+At sixteen years of age he was transferred to Corpus Christi College at
+Oxford. In Eighteen Hundred Fifteen, being then twenty years of age, he
+was elected a Fellow of Oriel College, and there he resided until he was
+twenty-four.
+
+He was a prizeman in Latin, Greek and English, and was considered a star
+scholar--both by himself and by others. Ten years afterwards he took a
+backward glance, and said: "At twenty-two I was proud, precise, stiff,
+formal, uncomfortable, unhappy, and unintentionally made everybody else
+unhappy with whom I came in contact. The only people I really mixed with
+were those whose lives were dedicated to the ablative."
+
+When twenty-four he was made a deacon and used to read prayers at
+neighboring chapels, for which service he was paid five shillings. Being
+now thrown on his own resources, he did the thing a prizeman always
+does: he showed others how. As a tutor he was a success: more scholars
+came to him than he could really take care of. But he did not like the
+work, since all the pupil desired, and all the parents desired, was that
+he should help the backward one get his marks, and glide through the eye
+of a needle into pedagogic paradise.
+
+At twenty-six he was preaching, teaching and writing learned essays
+about things he did not understand.
+
+From this brief sketch it will be seen that the early education of
+Thomas Arnold was of the kind and type that any fond parent of the
+well-to-do Middle Class would most desire. He had been shielded from all
+temptations of the world; he could do no useful thing with his hands;
+his knowledge of economics--ways and means--was that of a child; of the
+living present he knew little, but of the dead past he assumed and
+believed he knew much.
+
+It was purely priestly, institutional education. It was the kind of
+education that every well-to-do Briton would like to have his sons
+receive. It was, in short, England's Ideal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rugby Grammar School was endowed in Sixteen Hundred Fifty-three by one
+Laurence Sherif, a worthy grocer. The original gift was comparatively
+small, but the investment being in London real estate, has increased in
+value until it yields now an income of about thirty-five thousand
+dollars a year.
+
+In the time of Arnold there were about three hundred pupils. It is not a
+large school now; there are high schools in a hundred cities of America
+that surpass it in many ways.
+
+Rugby's claim to special notice lies in its traditions--the great men
+who were once Rugby boys, and the great men who were Rugby teachers.
+Also, in the fact that Thomas Hughes wrote a famous story called, "Tom
+Brown at Rugby."
+
+Rugby Grammar School was one hundred twenty-five years old when Sir
+Joshua Reynolds commissioned Lord Cornwallis to go to America and fetch
+George Washington to England, that Sir Joshua might paint his portrait.
+
+For a hundred years prior to the time of Arnold, there had not been a
+perceptible change in the methods of teaching. The boys were herded
+together. They fought, quarreled, divided into cliques; the big boys
+bullied the little ones. Fagging was the law; so the upper forms
+enslaved the lower ones. There was no home life, and the studies were
+made irksome and severe, purposely, as it was thought that pleasant
+things were sinful.
+
+If any better plan could have been devised to make study absolutely
+repulsive, so the student would shun it as soon as he was out of school,
+we can not guess it.
+
+The system was probably born of inertia on the part of the teachers. The
+pastor who pushes through his prescribed services, with mind on other
+things, and thus absolves his conscience for letting his congregation go
+drifting straight to Gehenna, was duplicated in the teacher. He did his
+duty--and nothing more.
+
+Selfishness, heartlessness and brutality manipulated the birch. Head was
+all; heart and hand nothing. This was schoolteaching. As a punishment
+for failure to memorize lessons, there were various plans to disgrace
+and discourage the luckless ones. Standing in the corner with face to
+the wall, and the dunce-cap, had given place to a system of fines,
+whereby "ten lines of Vergil for failure to attend prayers," and ten
+more for failure to get the first, often placed the boy in hopeless
+bankruptcy. If he was a fag, or slave of a higher-form boy, cleaning the
+other's boots, scrubbing stairs, running on foolish and needless
+errands, getting cuffs and kicks by way of encouragement, he saw his
+fines piling up and no way ever to clear them off and gain freedom by
+promotion.
+
+Viewed from our standpoint, the thing has a ludicrous bouffe air that
+makes us smile. But to the boy caught in the toils it was tragic. To
+work and evolve in an environment of such brutality was impossible to
+certain temperaments. Success lay in becoming calloused and indifferent.
+If the boy of gentle habits and slight physical force did not sink into
+mental nothingness, he was in danger of being bowled over by disease and
+death.
+
+Indeed, the physical condition of the pupils was very bad: smallpox,
+fevers, consumption, and breaking out with sores and boils, were common.
+
+Thomas Arnold was thirty-three years old when he was called as head
+master to Rugby. He was married, and babies were coming along with
+astonishing regularity. He had taken priestly orders and was passing
+rich on one hundred pounds a year. Poverty and responsibility had given
+him ballast, and love for his own little brood had softened his heart
+and vitalized his soul.
+
+As a writer and speaker he had made his presence felt at various college
+commencements and clergymen's meetings. He had challenged the brutal,
+indifferent, lazy and so-called disciplinary methods of teaching.
+
+And so far as we know, he is the first man in England to declare that
+the teacher should be the foster-parent of the child, and that all
+successful teaching must be born of love.
+
+The well-upholstered conservatives twiddled their thumbs, coughed, and
+asked: "How about the doctrine of total depravity? Do you mean to say
+that the child should not be disciplined? What does Solomon say about
+the use of the rod? Does the Bible say that the child is good by
+nature?"
+
+But Thomas Arnold could not explain all he knew. Moreover, he did not
+wish to fight the Church--he believed in the Church--to him it was a
+divine institution. But there were methods and practises in the Church
+that he would have liked to forget.
+
+"My sympathies go out to inferiority," he said. The weakling often
+needed encouragement, not discipline. The bad boy must be won, not
+suppressed.
+
+In one of these conferences of clergymen, Arnold said:
+
+"I once chided a pupil, a little, pale, stupid boy--undersized and
+seemingly half-sick--for not being able to recite his very simple
+lesson. He looked up at me and said with a touch of spirit: 'Sir, why do
+you get angry with me? Do you not know I am doing the best I can?'"
+
+One of the clergymen present asked Arnold how he punished the boy for
+his impudence.
+
+And Arnold replied: "I did not punish him--he had properly punished me.
+I begged his pardon."
+
+The idea of a teacher begging the pardon of a pupil was a brand-new
+thing.
+
+Several clergymen present laughed--one scowled--two sneezed. But a
+Bishop, shortly after this, urged the name of Thomas Arnold as master of
+Rugby, and added to his recommendation this line: "If elected to the
+office he will change the methods of schoolteaching in every public
+school in England."
+
+The ayes had it, and Arnold was called to Rugby. The salary was so-so,
+the pupils between two and three hundred in number--many were home on
+sick-leave--the Sixth Form was in charge.
+
+
+The genius of Arnold was made manifest, almost as soon as he went to
+Rugby, by the way in which he managed the boys who bullied the whole
+school, and what is worse, did it legally.
+
+Fagging was official.
+
+The Sixth Form was composed of thirty boys who stood at the top, and
+these boys ran the school. They were boys who, by reason of their size,
+strength, aggressiveness and mental ability, got the markings that gave
+them this autocratic power. They were now immune from authority--they
+were free. In a year they would gravitate to the University.
+
+We can hardly understand now how a bully could get markings through his
+bullying propensities; but a rudimentary survival of the idea may yet be
+seen in big football-players, who are given good marks, and very gentle
+mental massage in class. If the same scholars were small and skinny,
+they would certainly be plucked.
+
+The faculty found freedom in shifting responsibility for discipline to
+the Sixth Form.
+
+Read the diary of Arnold, and you will be amazed on seeing how he fought
+against taking from the Sixth Form the right to bodily chastise any
+scholar in the school that the king of the Sixth Form declared deserved
+it.
+
+If a teacher thought a pupil needed punishment, he turned the luckless
+one over to the Sixth Form. Can we now conceive of a system where the
+duty of certain scholars was to whip other scholars? Not only to whip
+them, but to beat them into insensibility if they fought back?
+
+Such was schoolteaching in the public schools of England in Eighteen
+Hundred Thirty.
+
+Against this brutality there was now a growing sentiment--a piping voice
+bidding the tide to stay!
+
+But now that Arnold was in charge of Rugby, he got the ill-will of his
+directors by declaring that he did not intend to curtail the powers of
+the Sixth Form--he proposed to civilize it. To try out the new master,
+the Sixth Form, proud in their prowess, sent him word that if he
+interfered with them in any way, they would first "bust up the school,"
+and then resign in a body. Moreover, they gave it out that if any pupil
+complained to the master concerning the Sixth Form, the one so
+complaining would be taken out by night and drowned in the classic Avon.
+
+There were legends among the younger boys of strange disappearances, and
+these were attributed to the swift vengeance of "The Bloody Sixth."
+
+Above the Sixth Form there was no law.
+
+Every scholar took off his hat to a "Sixth." A Sixth uncovered to
+nobody, and touched his cap only to a teacher.
+
+And custom had become so rooted that the Sixth Form was regarded as a
+sort of police necessity--a caste which served the school just as the
+Army served the Church. To reach the Sixth Form were paradise--it meant
+liberty and power--liberty to do as you pleased, and power to punish all
+who questioned your authority.
+
+To uproot the power of the Sixth Form was the intent of a few reformers
+in pedagogics.
+
+There were two ways to deal with the boys of the Sixth--fight them or
+educate them.
+
+Arnold called the Rugby Sixth together and assured them that he could
+not do without their help. He needed them: he wanted to make Rugby a
+model school, a school that would influence all England--would they help
+him?
+
+The dogged faces before him showed signs of interest. He continued,
+without waiting for their reply, to set before them his ideal of an
+English Gentleman. He persuaded them, melted them by his glowing
+personality, shook hands with each, and sent them away.
+
+The next day he again met them in the same intimate way, and one of the
+boys made bold to assure him that if he wanted anybody licked--pupils or
+teachers--they stood ready to do his bidding.
+
+He thanked the boy, but assured him that he was of the opinion that it
+would not be necessary to do violence to any one; he was going to unfold
+to them another way--a new way, which was very old, but which as yet
+England had not tried.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The great teacher is not the one who imparts the most facts--he is the
+one who inspires by supplying a nobler ideal.
+
+Men are superior or inferior just in the ratio that they possess certain
+qualities. Truth, honor, frankness, health, system, industry,
+kindliness, good-cheer and a spirit of helpfulness are so far beyond any
+mental acquisition that comparisons are not only odious, but absurd.
+
+Arnold inspired qualities, and in this respect his work at Rugby forms a
+white milestone on the path of progress in pedagogy.
+
+To an applicant for a position as teacher, Arnold wrote:
+
+     What I want is a man who is a Christian and a gentleman, an active
+     man, and one who has commonsense, and understands boys. I do not so
+     much care about scholarship, as he will have immediately under him
+     the lowest forms in the school, but yet, on second thought, I do
+     care about it very much, because his pupils may be in the highest
+     forms; and besides, I think that even the elements are best taught
+     by a man who has a thorough knowledge of the matter. However, if
+     one must give way, I prefer activity of mind and an interest in his
+     work to high scholarship; for the one may be acquired far more
+     easily than the other. I should wish it also to be understood that
+     the new master may be called upon to take boarders in his house, it
+     being my intention for the future to require this of all masters as
+     I see occasion, that so in time the school-barracks may die a
+     natural death. With this to offer, I think I have a right to look
+     rather high for the man whom I fix upon, and it is my great object
+     to get here a society of intelligent, gentlemanly and active men,
+     who may permanently keep up the character of the school, and if I
+     were to break my neck tomorrow, carry it on.
+
+Ideas are in the air, and great inventions are worked out in different
+parts of the world at the same time. Rousseau had written his "Emile,"
+but we are not aware that Arnold ever read it.
+
+And if he had, he probably would have been shocked, not inspired, by its
+almost brutal frankness. The French might read it--the English could
+not.
+
+Pestalozzi was working out his ideas in Switzerland, and Froebel, an
+awkward farmer lad in Germany, was dreaming dreams that were to come
+true. But Thomas Arnold caught up the threads of feeling in England and
+expressed them in the fabric of his life.
+
+His plans were scientific, but his reasons, unlike those of Pestalozzi,
+will not always stand the test of close analysis. Arnold was true to the
+Church, but he found it convenient to forget much for which the Church
+stood. He went back to a source nearer the fountainhead. All reforms in
+organized religion lie in returning to the primitive type. The religion
+of Jesus was very simple; that of a modern church dignitary is very
+complex. One can be understood; the other has to be explained and
+expounded, and usually several languages are required.
+
+Arnold would have his boys evolve into Christian gentlemen. And his
+type of English gentleman he did not get out of books on theology--it
+was his own composite idea. But having once evolved it, he cast around
+to justify it by passages of Scripture. This was beautiful, too, but
+from our standpoint it wasn't necessary.
+
+From his it was.
+
+A gentleman to him was a man who looked for the best in other people,
+and not for their faults; who overlooked slights; who forgot the good he
+had done; who was courteous, kind, cheerful, industrious and clean
+inside and out; who was slow to wrath, fervent in spirit, serving the
+Lord. And the "Lord" to Arnold was embodied in Church and State.
+
+Arnold used to say that schoolteaching should not be based upon
+religion, but it should be religion. And to him religion and conduct
+were one.
+
+That he reformed Rugby through the Sixth Form is a fact. He infused into
+the big boys the thought that they must help the little ones; that for a
+first offense a lad must never be punished; that he should have the
+matter fully explained to him, and be shown that he should do right
+because it is right, and not for fear of punishment.
+
+The Sixth Form was taught to unbend its dignity and enter into
+fellowship with its so-called inferiors. To this end Arnold set the
+example of playing cricket with the "scrubs."
+
+He never laughed at a poor player nor at a poor scholar. He took dull
+pupils into his own house, and insisted that his helpers, the other
+teachers, should do the same. He showed the Sixth Form how much better
+it was to take the part of the weak, and stop bullying the lower forms,
+than to set the example of it in the highest. Before Arnold had been at
+Rugby a year, the Sixth Form had resolved itself into a Reception
+Committee that greeted all newcomers, got them located, introduced them
+to the other boys, showed them the sights, and looked after their wants
+like big brothers or foster-fathers.
+
+Christianity to Arnold was human service. In his zeal to serve, to
+benefit, to bless, to inspire, he never tired.
+
+Such a disposition as this is contagious. In every big business or
+school, there is one man's mental attitude that animates the whole
+institution. Everybody partakes of it. When the leader gets melancholia,
+the shop has it--the whole place becomes tinted with ultra-marine. The
+best helpers begin to get out, and the honeycombing process of
+dissolution is on.
+
+A school must have a soul, just as surely as a shop, a bank, a hotel, a
+store, a home, or a church has to have. When an institution grows so
+great that it has no soul--simply a financial head and a board of
+directors--dry-rot sets in and disintegration in a loose wrapper is at
+the door.
+
+This explains why the small colleges are the best, when they are: there
+is a personality about them, an animating spirit that is pervasive and
+preservative.
+
+Thomas Arnold was not a man of vast learning, nor could one truthfully
+say he had a surplus of intellect; but he had soul, plus. He never
+sought to save himself. He gave himself to the boys of Rugby. His heart
+went out to them, he believed in them--and he believed them even when
+they lied, and he knew they lied. He knew that humanity was sound at
+heart; he believed in the divinity of mankind, and tried hard to forget
+the foolish theology that taught otherwise.
+
+Like Thomas Jefferson, who installed the honor system in the University
+of Virginia, he trusted young men. He made his appeal to that germ of
+goodness which is in every human soul. In some ways he anticipated Ben
+Lindsey in his love for the boy, and might have conjured forth from his
+teeming brain the Juvenile Court, and thus stopped the creation of
+criminals, had his life not been consumed in a struggle with stupidity
+and pedantry gone to seed that cried to him, "Oh, who ever heard of such
+a thing as that!"
+
+The Kindergarten utilizes the propensity to play; and Arnold utilizes
+the thirst for authority. Altruism is flavored with a desire for
+approbation.
+
+The plan of self-government by means of utilizing the Sixth Form was
+quite on the order of our own "George Junior Republic." "A school," he
+said, "should be self-governing and cleanse itself from that which is
+harmful." And again he says: "If a pupil can gratify his natural desire
+for approbation by doing that which is right, proper and best, he will
+work to this end instead of being a hero by playing the rowdy. It is for
+the scholars to set the seal of their approval on character, and they
+will do so if we as teachers speak the word. If I find a room in a
+tumult, I blame myself, not the scholars. It is I who have failed, not
+they. Were I what I should be, every one of my pupils would reflect my
+worth. I key the situation, I set the pace, and if my soul is in
+disorder, the school will be in confusion."
+
+Nothing is done without enthusiasm. It is heart that wins, not head, the
+round world over. And yet head must systematize the promptings of the
+heart. Arnold had a way of putting soul into a hand-clasp. His pupils
+never forgot him. Wherever they went, no matter how long they lived,
+they proclaimed the praises of Arnold of Rugby. How much this earnest,
+enthusiastic, loving and sincere teacher has influenced civilization, no
+man can say. But this we know, that since his day there has come about a
+new science of teaching. The birch has gone with the dunce-cap. The
+particular cat-o'-nine-tails that was burned in the house of Thomas
+Arnold as a solemn ceremony, when the declaration was made, "Henceforth
+I know my children will do right!" has found its example in every home
+of Christendom.
+
+We no longer whip children. Schools are no longer places of dread, pain
+and suffering, and we as teachers are repeating with Friedrich Froebel
+the words of the Nazarene, "Suffer little children to come unto me, and
+forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."
+
+Also, we say with Thomas Arnold: "The boy is father to the man. A race
+of gentlemen can only be produced by fostering in the boy the qualities
+that make for health, strength and a manly desire to bless, benefit and
+serve the race."
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: FRIEDRICH FROEBEL]
+
+FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
+
+
+     The purpose of the Kindergarten is to provide the necessary and
+     natural help which poor mothers require who have to be about their
+     work all day, and must leave their children to themselves. The
+     occupations pursued in the Kindergarten are the following: free
+     play of a child by itself; free play of several children by
+     themselves; associated play under the guidance of a teacher;
+     gymnastic exercises; several sorts of handiwork suited to little
+     children; going for walks; learning music, both instrumental and
+     vocal; learning the repetition of poetry; story-telling; looking at
+     really good pictures; aiding in domestic occupations; gardening.
+
+     --_Froebel_
+
+
+FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
+
+Friedrich Froebel was born in a Thuringian village, April Twenty-first,
+Seventeen Hundred Eighty-two. His father was pastor of the Lutheran
+Church. When scarcely a year old his mother died. Erelong a stepmother
+came to fill her place--but didn't. This stepmother was the kind we read
+about in the "Six Best Sellers."
+
+Her severity, lack of love, and needlessly religious zeal served the
+future Kindergartner a dark background on which to paint a joyous
+picture. Froebel was educated by antithesis. His home was the type
+etched so unforgetably by Colonel Ed. Howe in his "Story of a Country
+Town," which isn't bad enough to be one of the Six Best Sellers.
+
+At the age of ten, out of pure pity, young Friedrich was rescued from
+the cuckoo's nest by an uncle who had a big family of his own and love
+without limit. There was a goodly brood left, so little Friedrich, slim,
+slender, yellow, pensive and sad, was really never missed.
+
+The uncle brought the boy up to work, but treated him like a human
+being, answering his questions, even allowing him to have stick horses
+and little log houses and a garden of his own.
+
+At fifteen his nature had begun to awaken, and the uncle, harkening to
+the boy's wish, apprenticed him for two years to a forester. The young
+man's first work was to make a list of the trees in a certain tract and
+approximate their respective ages. The night before his work began he
+lay awake thinking of the fun he was going to have at the job. In
+after-years he told of this incident in showing that it was absurd to
+try to divorce work from play.
+
+The two years as forester's apprentice, from fifteen to seventeen, were
+really better for him than any university could have been. His
+stepmother's instructions had mostly been in the line of prohibition.
+From earliest babyhood he had been warned to "look out." When he went on
+the street it was with a prophecy that he would get run over by a cart,
+or stolen by the gypsies, or fall off the bridge and be drowned. The
+idea of danger had been dinged into his ears so that fear had become a
+part of the fabric of his nature. Even at fifteen, he took pains to get
+out of the woods before sundown to avoid the bears. At the same time his
+intellect told him there were no bears there. But the shudder habit was
+upon him.
+
+Yet by degrees the work in the woods built up his body and he grew to be
+at home in the forest, both day and night. His duties taught him to
+observe, to describe, to draw, to investigate, to decide. Then it was
+transplantation, and perhaps the best of college life consists in taking
+the youth out of the home environment and supplying him new
+surroundings.
+
+Forestry in America is a brand-new science. To clear the ground has been
+our desire, and so to strip, burn and destroy, saving only such logs as
+appealed to us for "lumber," was the desideratum. But now we are
+seriously considering the matter of tree-planting and tree-preservation,
+and perhaps it would be well to ask ourselves if two years at forestry,
+right out of doors, in contact with Nature, wrestling with the world of
+wood, rock, plant and living things, wouldn't be better for the boy than
+double the time in stuffy dormitories and still more stuffy
+recitation-rooms--listening to stuffy lectures about things that are
+foreign to life.
+
+I would say that a boy is a savage, but I do not care to give offense to
+fond mammas. To educate him in the line of his likes, as the race has
+been educated, seems sensible and right. How would Yellowstone Park
+answer for a National University, with Captain Jack Crawford, William
+Muldoon, John Burroughs, John Dewey, Stanley Hall and a mixture of men
+of these types, for a faculty?
+
+Froebel thought his two years in the forest saved him from consumption,
+and perhaps from insanity, for it taught him to look out, not in, and to
+lend a hand. At times he was a little too sentimental, as it was, and a
+trifle more of morbidity and sensitiveness would have ruined his life,
+absolutely.
+
+The woods and God's great out-of-doors gave him balance and ballast,
+good digestion and sweet sleep o' nights.
+
+The two years past, he went to Jena, where he had an elder brother. This
+brother was a star scholar, and Friedrich looked up to him as a pleiad
+of pedagogy. He became a professor in a Jena preparatory school and then
+practised medicine; but he never had the misfortune to affront public
+opinion, and so oblivion lured and won him, and took him as her own.
+
+At Jena poor Froebel did not make head. His preparatory work hadn't
+prepared him. He floundered in studies too deep for one of his age, then
+followed some foolish advice and hired a tutor to help him along. Then
+he fell down, was plucked, got into debt, and also into the "carcer,"
+where he boarded for nine weeks at the expense of the State.
+
+In the carcer he didn't catch up with his studies, quite naturally, and
+the imprisonment almost broke his health. Had he been in the carcer for
+dueling, he would have emerged a hero. But debt meant that he had
+neither money nor friends. When he was given his release, as an economic
+move, he slipped away between two days and made his way to the Forestry
+Office, where he applied for a job as laborer. He got it. In a few days
+he was promoted to chief of apprentices.
+
+Forestry meant a certain knowledge of surveying, and this Froebel soon
+acquired. Then came map-making, and that was only fun. From map-making
+to architecture is but a step, and Froebel quit the woods to work as
+assistant to an architect at ten pounds a year and found, it was
+confining work, and a trifle more exacting than he had expected--it
+required a deal of mathematics, and mathematics was Froebel's short
+suit. Froebel was disappointed and so was his employer--when something
+happened. It usually does in books, and in life, always.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Genius has its prototype. Before Froebel comes Pestalozzi, the Swiss,
+who studied theology and law, and then abandoned them both as futile to
+human evolution, and turned his attention to teaching. Pestalozzi was
+inspired by Jean Jacques Rousseau, and read his "Emile" religiously. To
+teach by natural methods and mix work and study, and make both play, was
+his theme. Pestalozzi believed in teaching out of doors, because
+children are both barbaric and nomadic--they want to go somewhere. His
+was the Aristotle method, as opposed to those of the closet and the
+cloister. But he made the mistake of saying that teaching should be
+taken out of the hands and homes of the clergy, and then the clergy said
+a few things about him.
+
+Pestalozzi at first met with very meager encouragement. Only poor and
+ignorant people entrusted their children to his care, and some of the
+parents were actually paid in money for the services of the children.
+The thought that the children were getting an education and being useful
+at the same time was quite beyond their comprehension.
+
+Pestalozzi educated by stealth. At first he took several boys and girls
+of eight, ten or twelve years of age, and had them work with him in his
+garden. They cared for fowls, looked after the sheep, milked the cows.
+The master worked with them, and as they worked they talked. Going to
+and from their duties, Pestalozzi would call their attention to the
+wild birds, and to the flowers, plants and weeds. They would draw
+pictures of things, make collections of leaves and flowers, and keep a
+record of their observations and discoveries. Through keeping these
+records they learned to read and write and acquired the use of simple
+mathematics. Things they did not understand they would read about in the
+books found in the teacher's library. But books were secondary and quite
+incidental in the scheme of study. When work seemed to become irksome
+they would all stop and play games. At other times they would sit and
+just talk about what their work happened to suggest. If the weather was
+unpleasant, there was a shop where they made hoes and rakes and other
+tools they needed. They also built bird-houses, and made simple pieces
+of furniture, so all the pupils, girls and boys, became more or less
+familiar with carpenter's and blacksmith's tools. They patched their
+shoes, mended their clothing, and at times prepared their own food.
+
+Pestalozzi found that the number of pupils he could look after in this
+way was not more than ten. But to his own satisfaction, at least, he
+proved that children taught by his method surpassed those who were given
+the regular set courses of instruction. His chief difficulties lay in
+the fact that the home did not co-operate with the school, and that
+there was always a tendency to "return to the blanket."
+
+Pestalozzi wrote accounts of his experiments and emphasized his belief
+that we should educate through the child's natural activities; also that
+all growth should be pleasurable. His shibboleth was, "From within,
+out." He thought education was a development and not an acquirement.
+
+One of Pestalozzi's little pamphlets fell into the hands of Friedrich
+Froebel, architect's assistant, at Frankfort.
+
+Froebel was twenty-two years old, and Fate had tossed him around from
+one thing to another since babyhood. All of his experiences had been of
+a kind that prepared his mind for the theories that Pestalozzi
+expressed.
+
+Besides that, architecture had begun to pall upon him. "Those who can,
+do; those who can't, teach." This was said in derision, but it holds a
+grain of truth.
+
+Froebel had a great desire to teach. Now, in Frankfort there was a Model
+School or a school for teachers, of which one Herr Gruner was master.
+This school was actually carrying out some of the practical methods
+suggested by Pestalozzi. Quite by accident Gruner and Froebel met.
+Gruner wanted a teacher who could teach by the Pestalozzi methods.
+Froebel straightway applied to Herr Gruner for the position. He was
+accepted as a combination janitor and instructor and worked for his
+board and ten marks, or two and a half dollars a week.
+
+The good-cheer and enthusiasm of Froebel won Gruner's heart. Together
+they discussed Pestalozzi and his works, read all that he had written,
+and opened up a correspondence with the great man. This led to an
+invitation that Froebel should visit him at his farm-school, near
+Yverdon, in Switzerland.
+
+Gruner supplied Froebel the necessary money to replace his very seedy
+clothes for something better, and the young man started away. It was a
+walk of more than two hundred miles, but youth and enthusiasm count such
+a tramp as an enjoyable trifle. Froebel wore his seedy clothes and
+carried his good ones, and so he appeared before the master spick and
+span.
+
+Pestalozzi was sixty years old at this time, and his hopes for the "new
+method" were still high. He had met opposition, ridicule and
+indifference, and had spent most of his little fortune in the fight, but
+he was still at it and resolved to die in the harness.
+
+Froebel was not disappointed in Pestalozzi, and certainly Pestalozzi was
+delighted and a bit amused at the earnestness of the young man.
+Pestalozzi was working in a very economical way, but all the place
+lacked Froebel, in his exuberant imagination, made good.
+
+Froebel found much, for he had brought much with him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Froebel returned to Frankfort from his visit to Pestalozzi, full of
+enthusiasm, and that is the commodity without which no teacher succeeds.
+Gruner allowed him to gravitate. And soon Froebel's room was the central
+point of interest for the whole school. But trouble was ahead for
+Froebel.
+
+He had no college degrees. His pedagogic pedigree was very short. He
+hoped to live down his university record, but it followed him. Gruner's
+school was under government inspection, and the gentlemen with double
+chins, who came from time to time to look the place over, asked who this
+enthusiastic young person was, and why had the worthy janitor and
+ex-forester been so honored by promotion.
+
+In truth, during his life, Froebel never quite escaped the taunt that he
+was not an educated man. That is to say, no college had ever supplied
+him an alphabetic appendage. He had been a forester, a farmer, an
+architect, a guardian for boys and a teacher of women, but no
+institution had ever said officially he was fit to teach men.
+
+Gruner tried to explain that there are two kinds of teachers: people who
+are teachers by nature, and those who have acquired the methods by long
+study. The first, having little to learn, and a love for the child, with
+a spontaneous quality of giving their all, succeed best.
+
+But poor Gruner's explanation did not explain.
+
+Then the matter was gently explained to Froebel, and he saw that in
+order to hold a place as teacher he must acquire a past. "Time will
+adjust it," he said, and started away on a second visit to Pestalozzi.
+His plan was to remain with the master long enough so he could secure a
+certificate of proficiency.
+
+Again Pestalozzi welcomed the young man, and he slipped easily into the
+household and became both pupil and teacher. His willingness to work--to
+do the task that lay nearest him--his good-nature, his gratitude, won
+all hearts.
+
+At this time the plan of sending boys to college with a tutor who was
+both a companion and a teacher, was in vogue with those who could afford
+it. It will be remembered that William and Alexander von Humboldt
+received their early education in this way--going with their tutor from
+university to university, teacher and pupils entering as special
+students, getting into the atmosphere of the place, soaking themselves
+full of it, and then going on.
+
+And now behold, through Gruner or Pestalozzi or both, a woman of wealth
+with three boys to educate applied to Froebel to come over into
+Macedonia and help her.
+
+It was in Eighteen Hundred Seven that Froebel became tutor in the Von
+Holzhausen family. He was twenty-five years old, and this was his first
+interview with wealth and leisure. That he was hungry enough to
+appreciate it need not be emphasized.
+
+He got goodly glimpses of Gottingen, Berlin, and was long enough at
+Jena to rub the blot off the 'scutcheon. A stay at Weimar, in the Goethe
+country, completed the four years' course.
+
+The boys had grown to men, and proved their worth in after-years; but
+whether they had gotten as much from the migrations as their teacher is
+very doubtful. He was ripe for opportunity--they had had a surfeit of
+it.
+
+Then came war. The order to arms and the rush of students to obey their
+country's call caught Froebel in the patriotic vortex, and he enlisted
+with his pupils.
+
+His service was honorable, even if not brilliant, and it had this
+advantage: the making of two friends, companions in arms, who caught the
+Pestalozzian fever, and lived out their lives preaching and teaching
+"the new method."
+
+These men were William Middendorf and Henry Langenthal. This trinity of
+brothers evolved a bond as beautiful as it is rare in the realm of
+friendship. Forty years after their first meeting, Middendorf gave an
+oration over the dead body of Froebel that lives as a classic, breathing
+the love and faith that endure.
+
+And then Middendorf turned to his work, and dared prison and disgrace by
+upholding the Kindergarten System and the life and example of his dear,
+dead friend. The Kindergarten Idea would probably have been buried in
+the grave with Froebel--interred with his bones--were it not for
+Middendorf and Langenthal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first Kindergarten was established in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-six,
+at Blankenburg, a little village near Keilhau. Froebel was then
+fifty-four years old, happily married to a worthy woman who certainly
+did not hamper his work, even if she did not inspire it. He was
+childless, that all children might call him father.
+
+The years had gone in struggles to found Normal Schools in Germany after
+the Pestalozzian and Gruner methods. But disappointment,
+misunderstanding and stupidity had followed Froebel. The set methods of
+the clergy, accusations of revolution and heresy, tilts with pious
+pedants as to the value of dead languages, all combined with his own
+lack of business shrewdness, had wrecked his various ventures.
+
+Froebel's argument that women were better natural teachers than men on
+account of the mother-instinct, brought forth a retort from a learned
+monk to the effect that it was indelicate if not sinful for an unmarried
+female, who was not a nun, to study the natures of children.
+
+Parents with children old enough to go to school would not entrust their
+darlings with the teaching experimenter--this on the advice of their
+pastors.
+
+Middendorf and Langenthal were still with him, partners in the disgrace
+or failure, for none was willing to give up the fight for education by
+the natural methods.
+
+A great thought and a great word came to them, all at once--out on the
+mountain-side!
+
+Begin with the children before the school age, and call it the
+Kindergarten!
+
+Hurrah! They shouted for joy, and ran down the hill to tell Frau
+Froebel.
+
+The schools they had started before had been called, "The Institution
+for Teaching According to the Pestalozzi Method and the Natural
+Activities of the Child," "Institution for the Encouragement and
+Development of the Spontaneous Activities of the Pupil," and "Friedrich
+Froebel's School for the Growth of the Creative Instinct Which Makes for
+a Useful Character."
+
+A school with such names, of course, failed. No one could remember it
+long enough to send his child there--it meant nothing to the mind not
+prepared for it.
+
+What's in a name? Everything. Books sell or become dead stock on the
+name. Commodities the same. Railroads must have a name people are not
+afraid to pronounce.
+
+The officers of the law came and asked to see Froebel's license for
+manufacturing. Others asked as to the nature of his wares, and one
+dignitary called and asked, "Is Herr Pestalozzi in?"
+
+The Kindergarten! The new name took. The children remembered it.
+Overworked mothers liked the word and were glad to let the little
+other-mothers take the children to the Kindergarten, certainly.
+
+Froebel had grown used to disappointments--he was an optimist by nature.
+He saw the good side of everything, including failure.
+
+He made the best of necessity. And now it was very clear to him that
+education must begin "a hundred years before the child is born." He
+would reach the home and the mother through the children. "It will take
+three generations to prove the truth of the Kindergarten Idea," he said.
+
+And so the songs, the gifts, the games--all had to be invented,
+defended, tried and tried again. Pestalozzi had a plan for teaching the
+youth; now a plan had to be devised for teaching the child. Love was the
+keystone, and joy, unselfishness and unswerving faith in the Natural or
+Divine impulses of humanity crowned the structure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Froebel invented the schoolma'am. That is, he discovered the raw product
+and adapted it. He even coined the word, and it struck the world as
+being so very funny that we forthwith adopted it as a term of provincial
+pleasantry and quasi-reproach. The original term used was "school
+mother," but when it reached these friendly shores we translated it
+"schoolmarm." Then we tittered, also sneezed.
+
+Froebel died in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-two. His first Kindergarten was
+not a success until he was nearly sixty years old, but the idea had been
+perfecting itself in his mind more or less unconsciously for over thirty
+years.
+
+He had been thinking, writing, working, experimenting all these years on
+the subject of education, and he had become well-nigh discouraged. He
+had observed that six was the "school age." That is, no child could go
+to school until he was six years old--then his education began.
+
+But Froebel had been teaching in a country school and boarding 'round,
+and he had discovered that long before this the child had been learning
+by observing and playing, and that these were formative influences,
+quite as potent as actual school.
+
+In the big families where Froebel boarded, he noticed that the older
+girls took charge of the younger ones. So, often a girl of ten, with
+dresses to her knees, carried one baby in her arms and two toddled
+behind her, and this child of ten was really the other-mother. The true
+mother worked in the fields or toiled at her housework, and the little
+other-mother took the children out to play and thus amused them while
+the mother worked.
+
+The desire of Froebel was to educate the race, but what are a few hours
+a day in a schoolroom with a totally unsympathetic home environment!
+
+To reach and interest the mother in the problem of education was
+well-nigh impossible. Toil, deprivation, poverty, had killed all the
+romance and enthusiasm in her heart. She was the victim of arrested
+development; but the little other-mother was a child, impressionable,
+immature, and she could be taught. The home must co-operate with the
+school, otherwise all the school can teach will be forgotten in the
+home. Froebel saw, too, that often the little other-mother was so
+overworked in the care of her charges that she was taken from school.
+Besides, the idea was abroad that education was mostly for boys, anyway.
+
+And here Froebel stepped in and proved himself a law-breaker, just as
+Ben Lindsey was when he inaugurated the juvenile court and waived the
+entire established legal procedure, even to the omission of swearing his
+witnesses, and believed in the little truant even though he lied.
+Froebel told the little other-mothers to come to school anyway and bring
+the babies with them.
+
+And then he set to work showing these girls how to amuse, divert and
+teach the babies. And he used to say the babies taught him.
+
+Some of these half-grown girls showed a rare adaptability as teachers.
+They combined mother-love and the teaching instinct.
+
+Froebel utilized their services in teaching others in order that he
+might teach them.
+
+He saw that the teacher is the one who gets the most out of the lessons,
+and that the true teacher is a learner. These girl teachers he called
+school-mothers, and thus was evolved the word and the person.
+
+Froebel founded the first normal and model school for the education of
+women as teachers, and this was less than a hundred years ago.
+
+The years went by and the little mothers had children of their own, and
+these children were the ones that formed the first actual, genuine
+kindergarten.
+
+Also, these were the mothers who formed the first mothers' clubs.
+
+And it was the success of these clubs that attracted the attention of
+the authorities, who could not imagine any other purpose for a club than
+to hatch a plot against the government.
+
+Anyway, a system which taught that women were just as wise, just as good
+and just as capable as men--just as well fitted by nature to
+teach--would upset the clergy. If women can break into the school, they
+will also break into the church. Moreover, the encouragement of play was
+atrocious. Mein Gott, or words to that effect, play in a schoolroom!
+Why, even a fool would know that that is the one thing that stood in
+the way of education, the one fly in the pedagogic ointment. If Mynheer
+Froebel would please invent a way to do away with play in schoolrooms,
+he would be given a pension.
+
+The idea that children were good by nature was rank heresy. Where does
+the doctrine of regeneration come in, and how about being born again!
+The natural man is at enmity toward God. We are conceived in sin and
+born in iniquity. The Bible says it again and again.
+
+And here comes a man who thinks he knows more than all the priests and
+scholars who have ever lived, and fills the heads of fool women with the
+idea that they are born to teach instead of to work in the fields and
+keep house and wait on men.
+
+Mein Gott in Himmel, the women know too much, already! If this thing
+keeps on, men will have to get off the earth, and women and children
+will run the world, and do it by means of play. Aha! What does Solomon
+say? Spare the rod and spoil the child. Aber nicht, say these girls.
+
+This thing has got to stop before Germany becomes the joke of
+mankind--the cat-o'-nine-tails for anybody who uses the word
+kindergarten!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of
+such is the Kingdom of Heaven." Had the man who uttered these words been
+given a little encouragement, he probably would have inaugurated a
+child-garden and provided a place and environment where little souls
+could have bloomed and blossomed. He was by nature a teacher, and his
+best pupils were women and children. Male men are apt to think they
+already know and so are immune from ideas.
+
+Jerusalem, nineteen hundred years ago, was about where Berlin was in
+Eighteen Hundred Fifty. In both instances the proud priest and the
+aristocrat-soldier were supreme. And both were quite satisfied with
+their own mental attainments and educational methods. They were sincere.
+It was a very similar combination that crucified Jesus to that which
+placed an interdict on Friedrich Froebel, making the Kindergarten a
+crime, and causing the speedy death of one of the gentlest, noblest,
+purest men who have ever blessed this earth.
+
+Froebel was just seventy when he passed out. "His eye was not dimmed nor
+his natural force abated"--he was filled with enthusiasm and hope as
+never before. His ideas were spreading--success, at last, was at the
+door, he had interested the women and proved the fitness of women to
+teach--his mothers' clubs were numerous--love was the watchword. And in
+the midst of this flowering time, the official order came, without
+warning, apology or explanation, and from which there was no appeal. The
+same savagery, chilled with fear, that sent Richard Wagner into exile,
+crushed the life and broke the heart of Friedrich Froebel. But these
+names now are the pride and glory of the land that once scorned them.
+Men who govern should be those with a reasonable doubt concerning their
+own infallibility, and an earnest faith in men, women and children. To
+teach is better than to rule. We are all children in the Kindergarten of
+God.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: HYPATIA]
+
+HYPATIA
+
+
+     Neo-Platonism is a progressive philosophy, and does not expect to
+     state final conditions to men whose minds are finite. Life is an
+     unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can
+     comprehend. To understand the things that are at our door is the
+     best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond.
+
+     --_Hypatia_
+
+
+HYPATIA
+
+The father of Hypatia was Theon, a noted mathematician and astronomer of
+Alexandria. He would have been regarded as a very great man had he not
+been cast into the shadow by his daughter. Let male parents beware.
+
+At that time, astronomy and astrology were one. Mathematics was useful,
+not for purposes of civil engineering, but principally in figuring out
+where a certain soul, born under a given planet, would be at a certain
+time in the future.
+
+No information comes to us about the mother of Hypatia--she was so busy
+with housework that her existence is a matter of assumption or a priori
+reasoning; thus, given a daughter, we assume the existence of a mother.
+
+Hypatia was certainly the daughter of her father. He was her tutor,
+teacher, playmate. All he knew he taught to her, and before she was
+twenty she had been informed by him of a fact which she had previously
+guessed--that considerable of his so-called knowledge was conjecture.
+
+Theon taught his daughter that all systems of religion that pretend to
+teach the whole truth were to a great degree false and fraudulent. He
+explained to her that his own profession of astronomy and astrology was
+only for other people. By instructing her in all religions she grew to
+know them comparatively, and so none took possession of her to the
+exclusion of new truth. To have a religion thrust upon you, and be
+compelled to believe in it or suffer social ostracism, is to be cheated
+of the right to make your own. In degree it is letting another live your
+life. A child does not need a religion until he is old enough to evolve
+it, and then he must not be robbed of the right of independent thinking
+by having a fully-prepared plan of salvation handed out to him. The
+brain needs exercise as much as the body, and vicarious thinking is as
+erroneous as vicarious exercise. Strength comes from personal effort. To
+think is natural, and if not intimidated or coerced the man will evolve
+a philosophy of life that is useful and beneficent.
+
+Religious mania is a result of dwelling on a borrowed religion. If let
+alone no man would become insane on religious topics, for the religion
+he would evolve would be one of joy, laughter and love, not one of
+misery or horror. The religion that contemplates misery and woe is one
+devised by priestcraft for a purpose, and that purpose is to rule and
+rob. From the blunt ways of the road we get a polite system of
+intimidation which makes the man pay. It is robbery reduced to a system,
+and finally piously believed in by the robbers, who are hypnotized into
+the belief that they are doing God's service.
+
+"All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted
+by self-respecting persons as final," said Theon to Hypatia. "Reserve
+your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to
+think at all."
+
+Theon gave lectures, and had private classes in esoterics, wherein the
+innermost secrets of divinity were imparted. Also, he had a plan for the
+transmutation of metals and a recipe for perpetual youth. When he had
+nothing else to do, he played games with his daughter.
+
+At twenty-one Hypatia had mastered the so-called art of Rhetoric, or the
+art of expression by vocal speech.
+
+It will be remembered that the Romans considered rhetoric, or the art of
+the rhetor, or orator, as first in importance. To impress people by your
+personal presence they regarded as the gift of gifts.
+
+This idea seems to have been held by the polite world up to the Italian
+Renaissance, when the art of printing was invented and the written word
+came to be regarded as more important than the spoken. One lives, and
+the other dies on the air, existing only in memory, growing attenuated
+and diluted as it is transferred. The revival of sculpture and painting
+also helped oratory to take its proper place as one of the polite arts,
+and not a thing to be centered upon to the exclusion of all else.
+
+Theon set out to produce a perfect human being; and whether his charts,
+theorems and formulas made up a complete law of eugenics, or whether it
+was dumb luck, this we know: he nearly succeeded. Hypatia was five feet
+nine, and weighed one hundred thirty-five pounds. This when she was
+twenty. She could walk ten miles without fatigue; swim, row, ride
+horseback and climb mountains. Through a series of gentle calisthenics
+invented by her father, combined with breathing exercises, she had
+developed a body of rarest grace. Her head had corners, as once
+Professor O. S. Fowler told us that a woman's head must have, if she is
+to think and act with purpose and precision.
+
+So having evolved this rare beauty of face, feature and bodily grace,
+combined with superior strength and vitality, Hypatia took up her
+father's work and gave lectures on astronomy, mathematics, astrology and
+rhetoric, while he completed his scheme for the transmutation of metals.
+Hypatia's voice was flute-like, and used always well within its compass,
+so as never to rasp or tire the organs. Theon knew the proper care of
+nose and throat, a knowledge which with us moderns is all too rare.
+Hypatia told of and practised the vocal ellipse, the pause, the glide,
+the slide and the gentle, deliberate tones that please and impress. That
+the law of suggestion was known to her was very evident, and certain it
+is that she practised hypnotism in her classes, and seemed to know as
+much about the origin of the mysterious agent as we do now, even though
+she never tagged or labeled it.
+
+One very vital thought she worked out was, that the young mind is
+plastic, impressionable and accepts without question all that it is
+told. The young receive their ideas from their elders, and ideas once
+impressed upon this plastic plate of the mind can not be removed.
+
+Said Hypatia: "Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and
+miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most
+terrible thing. The child-mind accepts and believes them, and only
+through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after-years relieved
+of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as
+for a living truth--often more so, since a superstition is so intangible
+you can not get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so
+is changeable."
+
+Gradually, over the mind of the beautiful and gifted Hypatia, there came
+stealing a doubt concerning the value of her own acquirements, since
+these were "acquirements," and not evolutions or convictions gathered
+from experience, but things implanted upon her plastic mind by her
+father.
+
+In this train of thought Hypatia had taken a step in advance of her
+father, for he seems to have had a dogmatic belief in a few things
+incapable of demonstration; but these things he taught to the plastic
+mind, just the same as the things he knew. Theon was a dogmatic liberal.
+Possibly the difference between an illiberal Unitarian and a liberal
+Catholic is microscopic.
+
+Hypatia clearly saw that knowledge is the distilled essence of our
+intuitions, corroborated by experience. But belief is the impress made
+upon our minds when we are under the spell of or in subjection to
+another.
+
+These things caused the poor girl many unhappy hours, which fact, in
+itself, is proof of her greatness. Only superior people have a capacity
+for doubting.
+
+Probably not one person in a million ever gets away far enough from his
+mind to take a look at it, and see the wheels go round. Opinions become
+ossified and the man goes through life hypnotizing others, never
+realizing for an instant that in youth he was hypnotized and that he has
+never been able to cast off the hypnosis.
+
+This is what our pious friends mean when they say, "Give me the child
+until he is ten years old and you may have him afterward." That is, they
+can take the child in his plastic age and make impressions on his mind
+that are indelible. Reared in an orthodox Jewish family a child will
+grow up a dogmatic Jew, and argue you on the Talmud six nights and days
+together.
+
+Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist, the same. I once knew an Arapahoe
+Indian who was taken to Massachusetts when four years old. He grew up
+not only with New England prejudices, but with a New England accent, and
+saved his pennies to give to missionaries that they might "convert" the
+Red Men.
+
+When the suspicion seized upon the soul of Hypatia that her mind was but
+a wax impression taken from her father's, she began to make plans to get
+away from him. Her efforts at explanations were futile, but when placed
+upon the general ground that she wished to travel, see the world and
+meet people of learning and worth, her father acquiesced and she started
+away on her journeyings. He wanted to go, too, but this was the one
+thing she did not desire, and he never knew nor could know why.
+
+She spent several months at Athens, where her youth, beauty and learning
+won her entry into the houses of the most eminent. It was the same at
+Rome and in various other cities of Italy. Money may give you access to
+good society, but talent is always an open sesame. She traveled like a
+princess and was received as one, yet she had no title nor claim to
+nobility nor station. Beauty of itself is not a credential--rather it is
+an object of suspicion, unless it goes with intellect.
+
+Hypatia gave lectures on mathematics; and there was a fallacy abroad
+then as there is now that the feminine mind is not mathematical. That
+the great men whom Hypatia met in each city were first amazed and then
+abashed by her proficiency in mathematics is quite probable. Some few
+male professors being in that peculiar baldheaded hypnotic state when
+feminine charms dazzle and lure, listened in rapture as Hypatia
+dissolved logarithms and melted calculi, and not understanding a word
+she said, declared that she was the goddess Minerva, reincarnated. Her
+coldness on near approach confirmed their suspicions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Just how long a time Hypatia spent upon her pilgrimage, visiting all of
+the great living philosophers, we do not know. Some accounts have it one
+year, others ten.
+
+Probably the pilgrimages were extended over a good many years, and were
+not continuous. Several philosophers proved their humanity by offering
+to marry her, and a prince or two did likewise, we are credibly
+informed. To these persistent suitors, however, Hypatia gently broke the
+news that she was wedded to truth, which is certainly a pretty speech,
+even if it is poor logic. The fact was, however, that Hypatia never met
+a man whose mind matched her own, otherwise logic would have bolstered
+love, instead of discarding it.
+
+Travel, public speaking and meeting people of note form a strong trinity
+of good things. The active mind is the young mind, and it is more than
+the dream of a poet which declares that Hypatia was always young and
+always beautiful, and that even Father Time was so in love with her that
+he refused to take toll from her, as he passed with his hourglass and
+scythe.
+
+In degree she had followed the example of her great prototype, Plotinus,
+and had made herself master of all religions. She knew too much of all
+philosophies to believe implicitly in any. Alexandria was then the
+intellectual center of the world. People who resided there called it the
+hub of the universe. It was the meeting-place of the East and the West.
+
+And Hypatia, with her Thursday lectures, was the chief intellectual
+factor of Alexandria.
+
+Her philosophy she called Neo-Platonism. It was Plato distilled through
+the psychic alembic of Hypatia. Just why the human mind harks back and
+likes to confirm itself by building on another, it would be interesting
+to inquire. To explain Moses; to supply a key to the Scriptures; to
+found a new School of Philosophy on the assumption that Plato was right,
+but was not understood until the Then and There, is alluring.
+
+And now the pilgrims came from Athens, and Rome, and the Islands of the
+Sea to sit at the feet of Hypatia.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hypatia was born in the year Three Hundred Seventy, and died in Four
+Hundred Thirty. She exerted an influence in Alexandria not unlike that
+which Mrs. Eddy exerted in Boston. She was a person who divided society
+into two parts: those who regarded her as an oracle of light, and those
+who looked upon her as an emissary of darkness.
+
+Strong men paid her the compliment of using immoderate language
+concerning her teaching. But whether they spoke ill or well of her
+matters little now. The point is this: they screeched, sneezed, or
+smiled on those who refused to acknowledge the power of Hypatia. Some
+professors of learning tried to waive her; priests gently pooh-poohed
+her; and some elevated an eyebrow and asked how the name was spelled.
+Others, still, inquired, "Is she sincere?"
+
+She was the Ralph Waldo Emerson of her day. Her philosophy was
+Transcendentalism. In fact, she might be spoken of as the original
+charter member of the Concord School of Philosophy. Her theme was the
+New Thought, for New Thought is the oldest form of thought of which we
+know. Its distinguishing feature is its antiquity. Socrates was really
+the first to express the New Thought, and he got his cue from
+Pythagoras.
+
+The ambition of Hypatia was to revive the flowering-time of Greece, when
+Socrates and Plato walked arm in arm through the streets of Athens,
+followed by the greatest group of intellectuals the world has ever
+seen.
+
+It was charged against Hypatia that Aspasia was her ideal, and that her
+ambition was to follow in the footsteps of the woman who was beloved by
+Pericles. If so, it was an ambition worthy of a very great soul.
+Hypatia, however, did not have her Pericles, and never married. That she
+should have had love experiences was quite natural, and that various
+imaginary romances should have been credited to her was also to be
+expected.
+
+Hypatia was nearly a thousand years removed from the time of Pericles
+and Aspasia, but to bridge the gulf of time with imagination was easy.
+Yet Hypatia thought that the New Platonism should surpass the old, for
+the world had had the Age of Augustus to build upon.
+
+Hypatia's immediate prototype was Plotinus, who was born two hundred
+four years after Christ, and lived to be seventy. Plotinus was the first
+person to use the phrase "Neo-Platonism," and so the philosophy of
+Hypatia might be called "The New Neo-Platonism."
+
+To know but one religion is not to know that one.
+
+In fact, superstition consists in this one thing--faith in one religion,
+to the exclusion of all others.
+
+To know one philosophy is to know none. They are all comparative, and
+each serves as a small arc of the circle. A man living in a certain
+environment, with a certain outlook, describes the things he sees; and
+out of these, plus what he imagines, is shaped his philosophy of life.
+If he is repressed, suppressed, frightened, he will not see very much,
+and what he does see will be out of focus. Spiritual strabismus and
+mental myopia are the results of vicarious peeps at the universe. All
+formal religions have taught that to look for yourself was bad. The
+peephole through the roof of his garret cost Copernicus his liberty, but
+it was worth the price.
+
+Plotinus made a study of all philosophies--all religions. He traveled
+through Egypt, Greece, Assyria, India. He became an "adept", and
+discovered how easily the priest drifts into priestcraft, and fraud
+steps in with legerdemain and miracle to amend the truth. As if to love
+humanity were not enough to recommend the man, they have him turn water
+into wine and walk on the water.
+
+Out of the labyrinth of history and speculation Plotinus returned to
+Plato as a basis or starting-point for all of the truth which man can
+comprehend. Plotinus believed in all religions, but had absolute faith
+in none. It will be remembered that Aristotle and Plato parted as to the
+relative value of poetry and science--science being the systematized
+facts of Nature. Plotinus comes in and says that both were right, and
+each was like every good man who exaggerates the importance of his own
+calling. In his ability to see the good in all things, Hypatia placed
+Plotinus ahead of Plato, but even then she says: "Had there been no
+Plato, there would have been no Plotinus; although Plotinus surpassed
+Plato, yet it is plain that Plato, the inspirer of Plotinus and so many
+more, is the one man whom philosophy can not spare. Hail, Plato!!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The writings of Hypatia have all disappeared, save as her words come to
+us, quoted by her contemporaries. If the Essays of Emerson should all be
+swept away, the man would still live in the quotations from his pen,
+given to us by every writer of worth who has put pencil to paper during
+the last fifty years. So lives Sappho, and thus did Charles Kingsley
+secure the composite of the great woman who lives and throbs through his
+book. Legend pictures her as rarely beautiful, with grace, poise and
+power, plus.
+
+She was sixty when she died. History kindly records it forty-five--and
+all picture her as a beautiful and attractive woman to the last. The
+psychic effects of a gracefully-gowned first reader, with sonorous
+voice, using gesture with economy, and packing the pauses with feeling,
+have never been fully formulated, analyzed and explained. Throngs came
+to hear Hypatia lecture--came from long distances, and listened
+hungrily, and probably all they took away was what they brought, except
+a great feeling of exhilaration and enthusiasm. To send the hearer away
+stepping light, and his heart beating fast--this is oratory--which isn't
+so much to bestow facts, as it is to impart a feeling. This Hypatia
+surely did. Her theme was Neo-Platonism. "Neo" means new, and all New
+Thought harks back to Plato, who was the mouthpiece of Socrates. "Say
+what you will, you'll find it all in Plato." Neo-Platonism is our New
+Thought, and New Thought is Neo-Platonism.
+
+There are two kinds of thought: New Thought and Secondhand Thought. New
+Thought is made up of thoughts you, yourself, think. The other kind is
+supplied to you by jobbers. The distinguishing feature of New Thought is
+its antiquity. Of necessity it is older than Secondhand Thought. All
+genuine New Thought is true for the person who thinks it. It only turns
+sour and becomes error when not used, and when the owner forces another
+to accept it. It then becomes a secondhand revelation. All New Thought
+is revelation, and secondhand revelations are errors half-soled with
+stupidity and heeled with greed.
+
+Very often we are inspired to think by others, but in our hearts we have
+the New Thought; and the person, the book, the incident, merely remind
+us that it is already ours. New Thought is always simple; Secondhand
+Thought is abstruse, complex, patched, peculiar, costly, and is passed
+out to be accepted, not understood. That no one comprehends it is often
+regarded as a recommendation.
+
+For instance, "Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image," is
+Secondhand Thought. The first man who said it may have known what it
+meant, but surely it is nothing to us. However, that does not keep us
+from piously repeating it, and having our children memorize it.
+
+We model in clay or wax, and carve if we can, and give honors to those
+who do, and this is well. This commandment is founded on the fallacy
+that graven images are gods, whatever that is. The command adds nothing
+to our happiness, nor does it shape our conduct, nor influence our
+habits. Everybody knows and admits its futility, yet we are unable to
+eliminate it from our theological system. It is strictly
+secondhand--worse, it is junk.
+
+Conversely, the admonition, "Be gentle and keep your voice low," is New
+Thought, since all but savages know its truth, comprehend its import,
+and appreciate its excellence.
+
+Dealers in Secondhand Thought always declare that theirs is the only
+genuine, and that all other is spurious and dangerous.
+
+Dealers in New Thought say, "Take this only as it appeals to you as your
+own--accept it all, or in part, or reject it all--and in any event, do
+not believe it merely because I say so."
+
+New Thought is founded on the laws of your own nature, and its
+shibboleth is, "Know Thyself."
+
+Secondhand Thought is founded on authority, and its war-cry is, "Pay and
+Obey."
+
+New Thought offers you no promise of paradise or eternal bliss if you
+accept it; nor does it threaten you with everlasting hell, if you don't.
+All it offers is unending work, constant effort, new difficulties;
+beyond each success is a new trial. Its only satisfactions are that you
+are allowing your life to unfold itself according to the laws of its
+nature. And these laws are divine, therefore you yourself are divine,
+just as you allow the divine to possess your being. New Thought allows
+the currents of divinity to flow through you unobstructed.
+
+Secondhand Thought affords no plan of elimination; it tends to
+congestion, inflammation, disease and disintegration.
+
+New Thought holds all things lightly, gently, easily--even thought. It
+works for a healthy circulation, and tends to health, happiness and
+well-being now and hereafter. It does not believe in violence, force,
+coercion or resentment, because all these things react on the doer. It
+has faith that all men, if not interfered with by other men, will
+eventually evolve New Thought, and do for themselves what is best and
+right, beautiful and true.
+
+Secondhand Thought has always had first in its mind the welfare of the
+dealer. The rights of the consumer, beyond keeping him in subjection,
+were not considered. Indeed, its chief recommendation has been that "it
+is a good police system."
+
+New Thought considers only the user. To "Know Thyself" is all there is
+of it.
+
+When a creator of New Thought goes into the business of retailing his
+product, he often forgets to live it, and soon is transformed into a
+dealer in Secondhand Thought.
+
+That is the way all purveyors in secondhand revelation begin. In their
+anxiety to succeed, they call in the police. The blessing that is
+compulsory is not wholly good, and any system of morals which has to be
+forced on us is immoral. New Thought is free thought. Its penalty is
+responsibility. You either have to live it, or else lose it. Its reward
+is Freedom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was only a little more than a hundred years before the time of
+Hypatia that the Roman Empire became Christian. When Constantine
+embraced Christianity, all of his loyal subjects were from that moment
+Christians--Christians by edict, but Pagans by character, for the
+natures of men can not be changed by the passing of a resolution. From
+that time every Pagan temple became a Christian church, and every Pagan
+priest a Christian preacher.
+
+Alexandria was under the rule of a Roman Prefect, or Governor. It had
+been the policy of Rome to exercise great tolerance in religious
+matters. There was a State Religion, to be sure, but it was for the
+nobility or those who helped make the State possible. To look after the
+thinking of the plain people was quite superfluous--they were allowed
+their vagaries.
+
+The Empire had been bold, brazen, cruel, coercive in its lust for power,
+but people who paid were reasonably safe. And now the Church was coming
+into competition with the State and endeavoring to reduce spoliation to
+a system.
+
+To keep the people down and under by mental suppression--by the engine
+of superstition--were cheaper and more effective than to employ force or
+resort to the old-time methods of shows, spectacles, pensions and costly
+diversions. When the Church took on the functions of the State, and
+sought to substitute the gentle Christ for Caesar, she had to recast the
+teachings of Christ. Then for the first time coercion and love dwelt
+side by side. "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared
+for the devil and his angels," and like passages were slipped into the
+Scriptures as matters of wise expediency. This was continued for many
+hundred years, and was considered quite proper and legitimate. It was
+slavery under a more subtle form.
+
+The Bishop of Alexandria clashed with Orestes the Prefect. To hold the
+people under by psychologic methods was better than the old plans of
+alternate bribery and force--so argued the Bishop.
+
+Orestes had come under the spell of Hypatia, and the Republic of Plato
+was saturating his mind.
+
+"To rule by fettering the mind through fear of punishment in another
+world is just as base as to use force," said Hypatia in one of her
+lectures. Orestes sat in the audience and as she spoke the words he
+clapped his hands. The news was carried to the Bishop, who gently
+declared that he would excommunicate him.
+
+Orestes sent word back that the Emperor should be informed of how this
+Bishop was misusing his office by making threats of where he could land
+people he did not like, in another world. Neither the Bishop nor the
+Prefect could unseat each other--both derived their power from the
+Emperor. For Orestes to grow interested in the teachings of Hypatia,
+instead of siding with the Bishop, was looked upon by the loyalists as
+little short of treason.
+
+Orestes tried to defend himself by declaring that the policy of the
+Caesars had always been one of great leniency toward all schools of
+philosophy. Then he quoted Hypatia to the effect that a fixed, formal
+and dogmatic religion would paralyze the minds of men and make the race,
+in time, incapable of thought.
+
+Therefore, the Bishop should keep his place, and not try to usurp the
+functions of the police. In fact, it was better to think wrongly than
+not to think at all. We learn to think by thinking, and if the threats
+of the Bishop were believed at all, it would mean the death of science
+and philosophy.
+
+The Bishop made answer by declaring that Hypatia was endeavoring to
+found a Church of her own, with Pagan Greece as a basis. He intimated,
+too, that the relationship of Orestes with Hypatia was very much the
+same as that which once existed between Cleopatra and Mark Antony. He
+called her "that daughter of Ptolemy," and by hints and suggestions made
+it appear that she would, if she could, set up an Egyptian Empire in
+this same city of Alexandria where Cleopatra once so proudly reigned.
+
+The excitement increased. The followers of Hypatia were necessarily few
+in numbers. They were thinkers--and to think is a task. To believe is
+easy. The Bishop promised his followers a paradise of ease and rest. He
+also threatened disbelievers with the pains of hell. A promise on this
+side--a threat on that! Is it not a wonder that a man ever lived who
+put his honest thought against such teaching when launched by men
+clothed in almost absolute authority!
+
+Hypatia might have lived yesterday, and her death at the hands of a mob
+was an accident that might have occurred in Boston, where a respectable
+company once threw a rope around the neck of a good man and ran him
+through streets supposed to be sacred to liberty and free speech.
+
+A mob is made up of cotton waste, saturated with oil, and a focused idea
+causes spontaneous combustion. Let a fire occur in almost any New York
+State village, and the town turns wrecker, and loot looms large in the
+limited brain of the villager. Civilization is a veneer.
+
+When one sees emotionalism run riot at an evangelistic revival, and five
+thousand people are trooping through an undesirable district at
+midnight, how long, think you, would a strong voice of opposition be
+tolerated?
+
+Hypatia was set upon by a religious mob as she was going in her carriage
+from her lecture-hall to her home. She was dragged to a near-by church
+with the intent of making her publicly recant, but the embers became a
+blaze, and the blaze became a conflagration, and the leaders lost
+control. The woman's clothes were torn from her back, her hair torn from
+her head, her body beaten to a pulp, dismembered, and then to hide all
+traces of the crime and distribute the guilt so no one person could be
+blamed, a funeral-pyre quickly consumed the remains of what but an hour
+before had been a human being. Daylight came, and the sun's rays could
+not locate the guilty ones.
+
+Orestes made a report of the affair, resigned his office, asked the
+Government at Rome to investigate, and fled from the city. Had Orestes
+endeavored to use his soldiery against the Bishop, the men in the ranks
+would have revolted. The investigation was postponed from time to time
+for lack of witnesses, and finally it was given out by the Bishop that
+Hypatia had gone to Athens, and there had been no mob and no tragedy.
+
+The Bishop nominated a successor to Orestes, and the new official was
+confirmed.
+
+Dogmatism as a police system was supreme.
+
+It continued until the time of Dante, or the Italian Renaissance. The
+reign of Religious Dogmatism was supreme for well-nigh a thousand
+years--we call it the Dark Ages.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: SAINT BENEDICT]
+
+SAINT BENEDICT
+
+
+     If any pilgrim monk come from distant parts, if with wish as a
+     guest to dwell in the monastery, and will be content with the
+     customs which he finds in the place, and do not perchance by his
+     lavishness disturb the monastery, but is simply content with what
+     he finds: he shall be received, for as long a time as he desires.
+     If, indeed, he find fault with anything, or expose it, reasonably,
+     and with the humility of charity, the Abbot shall discuss it
+     prudently, lest perchance God had sent for this very thing. But, if
+     he have been found gossipy and contumacious in the time of his
+     sojourn as guest, not only ought he not to be joined to the body of
+     the monastery, but also it shall be said to him, honestly, that he
+     must depart. If he does not go, let two stout monks, in the name of
+     God, explain the matter to him.
+
+     --_St. Benedict_
+
+
+SAINT BENEDICT
+
+As the traveler journeys through Southern Italy, Sicily and certain
+parts of what was Ancient Greece, he will see broken arches, parts of
+viaducts, and now and again a single, beautiful column pointing to the
+sky. All about is the desert or solitary pastures, and only this white
+milestone, marking the path of the centuries and telling in its own
+silent, solemn and impressive way of a day that is dead.
+
+In the Fifth Century a monk called Simeon the Syrian, and known to us as
+Simeon Stylites, having taken the vow of chastity, poverty and
+obedience, began to fear greatly lest he might not be true to his
+pledge. And that he might live absolutely beyond reproach, always in
+public view, free from temptation, and free from the tongue of scandal,
+he decided to live in the world, and still not be of it. To this end he
+climbed to the top of a marble column, sixty feet high, and there on the
+capstone he lived a life beyond reproach.
+
+Simeon was then twenty-four years old.
+
+The environment was circumscribed, but there was outlook, sunshine,
+ventilation--three good things. But beyond these the place had certain
+disadvantages. The capstone was a little less than three feet square,
+so Simeon could not lie down. He slept sitting, with his head bowed
+between his knees, and indeed, in this posture he passed most of his
+time. Any recklessness in movement, and he would have slipped from his
+perilous position and been dashed to death upon the stones beneath.
+
+As the sun arose he stood up, just for a few moments, and held his arms
+out in greeting, blessing and prayer. Three times during the day did he
+thus stretch his cramped limbs, and pray with his face to the East. At
+such times those who stood near shared in his prayers, and went away
+blessed and refreshed.
+
+How did Simeon get to the top of the column?
+
+Well, his companions at the monastery, a mile away, said he was carried
+there in the night by a miraculous power; that he went to sleep in his
+stone cell and awoke on the pillar. Other monks said that Simeon had
+gone to pay his respects to a fair lady, and in wrath God had caught him
+and placed him on high. The probabilities are, however, Terese, as
+viewed by an unbeliever, that he shot a line over the column with a bow
+and arrow and then drew up a rope ladder and ascended with ease.
+
+However, in the morning the simple people of the scattered village saw
+the man on the column. All day he stayed there. The next day he was
+still there.
+
+The days passed, with the scorching heat of the midday sun, and the cool
+winds of the night.
+
+Still Simeon kept his place.
+
+The rainy season came on. When the nights were cold and dark, Simeon sat
+there with bowed head, and drew the folds of his single garment, a black
+robe, over his face.
+
+Another season passed; the sun again grew warm, then hot, and the
+sand-storms raged and blew, when the people below almost lost sight of
+the man on the column. Some prophesied he would be blown off, but the
+morning light revealed his form, naked from the waist up, standing with
+hands outstretched to greet the rising sun.
+
+Once each day, as darkness gathered, a monk came with a basket
+containing a bottle of goat's milk and a little loaf of black bread, and
+Simeon dropped down a rope and drew up the basket.
+
+Simeon never spoke, for words are folly, and to the calls of saint or
+sinner he made no reply. He lived in a perpetual attitude of adoration.
+
+Did he suffer? During those first weeks he must have suffered terribly
+and horribly. There was no respite nor rest from the hard surface of the
+rock, and aching muscles could find no change from the cramped and
+perilous position. If he fell, it was damnation for his soul--all were
+agreed as to this.
+
+But man's body and mind accommodate themselves to almost any condition.
+One thing at least, Simeon was free from economic responsibilities, free
+from social cares and intrusion. Bores with sad stories of unappreciated
+lives and fond hopes unrealized, never broke in upon his peace. He was
+not pressed for time. No frivolous dame of tarnished fame sought to
+share with him his perilous perch. The people on a slow schedule, ten
+minutes late, never irritated his temper. His correspondence never got
+in a heap.
+
+Simeon kept no track of the days, having no engagements to meet, or
+offices to perform, beyond the prayers at morn, midday and night.
+
+Memory died in him, the hurts became calluses, the world-pain died out
+of his heart, to cling became a habit. Language was lost in disuse. The
+food he ate was minimum in quantity; sensation ceased, and the dry, hot
+winds reduced bodily tissue to a dessicated something called a
+saint--loved, feared and reverenced for his fortitude.
+
+This pillar, which had once graced the portal of a pagan temple, again
+became a place of pious pilgrimage, and people flocked to Simeon's rock,
+so that they might be near when he stretched out his black, bony hands
+to the East, and the spirit of Almighty God, for a space, hovered close
+around.
+
+So much attention did the abnegation of Simeon attract that various
+other pillars, marking the ruins of art and greatness gone, in that
+vicinity, were crowned by pious monks. Their thought was to show how
+Christianity had triumphed over heathenism. Imitators were numerous.
+About that time the Bishops in assembly asked, "Is Simeon sincere?" To
+test the matter of Simeon's pride, he was ordered to come down from his
+retreat.
+
+As to his chastity, there was little doubt, and his poverty was beyond
+question; but how about obedience to his superiors?
+
+The order was shouted up to him in a Bishop's voice--he must let down
+his rope, draw up a ladder, and descend.
+
+Straightway Simeon made preparation to obey. And then the Bishops
+relented and cried, "We have changed our minds, and now order you to
+remain!"
+
+Simeon lifted his hands in adoration and thankfulness and renewed his
+lease.
+
+And so he lived on and on and on--he lived on the top of that pillar,
+never once descending, for thirty years.
+
+All of his former companions grew a-weary; one by one they died, and the
+monastery-bells tolled their requiem as they were laid to rest. Did
+Simeon hear the bells and say, "Soon it will be my turn"?
+
+Probably not. His senses had flown, for what good were they! The young
+monk who now at eventide brought the basket with the bottle of goat's
+milk and the loaf of dry bread was born since Simeon had taken his place
+on the pillar. "He has always been there," the people said, and crossed
+themselves hurriedly.
+
+But one evening when the young monk came with his basket, no line was
+dropped from above. He waited and then called aloud, but all in vain.
+
+When sunrise came, there sat the monk, his face between his knees, the
+folds of his black robe drawn over his head. But he did not rise and
+lift his hands in prayer.
+
+All day he sat there, motionless.
+
+The people watched in whispered silence. Would he arise at sundown and
+pray, and with outstretched hands bless the assembled pilgrims?
+
+But as they watched a vulture came sailing slowly through the blue
+ether, and circled nearer and nearer; and off on the horizon was
+another--and still another, circling nearer and nearer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In humanity's march of progress there are a vanguard and a rearguard.
+The rearguard dwindles away into a mob of camp-followers, who follow for
+diversion and to escape starvation. Both the vanguard and the rearguard
+are out of step with the main body, and therefore both are despised by
+the many who make up the rank and file.
+
+And yet, out of pity, the main body supplies ambulances and
+"slum-workers," who aim to do "good"--but this good is always for the
+rearguard and the camp-followers, never for those who lead the line of
+march, and take the risk of ambush and massacre.
+
+But this scorn of the vanguard has its recompense--often delayed, no
+doubt--but those who compose it are the only ones whom history honors
+and Clio crowns. If they get recognition in life, it is wrung tardily
+from an ungrateful and ungracious world. And this is the most natural
+thing in the world, and it would be a miracle if it were otherwise, for
+the very virtue of the vanguard consists in that their acts outrun human
+sympathy.
+
+Benedict was a scout of civilization. In his day he led the vanguard. He
+found the prosperous part of the world given over to greed and gluttony.
+The so-called religious element was in partnership with fraud,
+superstition, ignorance, incompetence, and an asceticism like that of
+Simeon Stylites, leading to nothing.
+
+Men know the good and grow through experience. To realize the
+worthlessness of place and position and of riches, you must have been at
+some time in possession of these. Benedict was born into a rich Roman
+family, in the year Four Hundred Eighty. His parents wished to educate
+him for the law, so he would occupy a position of honor in the State.
+
+But at sixteen years of age, at that critical time when nerves are
+vibrating between manhood and youth, Benedict cut the umbilical domestic
+cord, and leaving his robes of purple and silken finery, suddenly
+disappeared, leaving behind a note which was doubtless meant to be
+reassuring and which was quite the reverse, for it failed to tell where
+his mail should be forwarded. He had gone to live with a hermit in the
+fastnesses of the mountains. He had desired to do something peculiar,
+strange, unusual, unique and individual, and now he had done it.
+
+Back of it all was the Cosmic Urge, with a fair slip of a girl, and
+meetings by stealth in the moonlight; and then those orders from his
+father to give up the girl, which he obeyed with a vengeance.
+
+Monasticism is a reversal or a misdirection of the Cosmic Urge. The will
+brought to bear in fighting temptation might be a power for good, if
+used in co-operation with Nature. But Nature to the priestly mind has
+always been bad. The worldly mind was one that led to ruin. To be good
+by doing good was an idea the monkish mind had not grasped. His way of
+being good was to be nothing, do nothing--just resist. Successfully to
+fight temptation, the Oriental Monk regarded as an achievement.
+
+One day, out on that perilous and slippery rock on the mountain-side,
+Benedict ceased saluting the Holy Virgin long enough to conceive a
+thought. It was this: To be acceptable to God, we must do something in
+the way of positive good for man. To pray, to adore, to wander, to
+suffer, is not enough. We must lighten the burdens of the toilers and
+bring a little joy into their lives. Suffering has its place, but too
+much suffering would destroy the race.
+
+Only one other man had Benedict ever heard of, who put forth this
+argument, and that was Saint Jerome; and many good men in the Church
+regarded Saint Jerome as little better than an infidel. Saint Jerome was
+a student of the literature of Greece and Rome--"Pagan Books," they were
+called, "rivals of the Bible." Saint Anthony had renounced and denounced
+these books and all of the learning of Paganism. Saint Anthony, the
+father of Christian Monasticism, dwelt on the terrible evils of
+intellectual pride, and had declared that the joys of the mind were of a
+more subtle and devilish character than those of the flesh.
+
+Anthony, assisted by inertia, had won the ear of the Church; and dirt,
+rags and idleness had come to be regarded as sacred things.
+
+Benedict took issue with Anthony.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Monastic Impulse is a protest against the Cosmic Urge, or
+reproductive desire.
+
+Necessarily, the Cosmic Urge is older than the Monastic Impulse; and
+beyond a doubt it will live to dance on the grave of its rival.
+
+The Cosmic Urge is the creative instinct. It includes all planning,
+purpose, desire, hope, unrest, lust and ambition. In its general sense,
+it is Unfulfilled Desire. It is the voice constantly crying in the ears
+of success, "Arise and get thee hence, for this is not thy rest." It is
+the dissatisfaction with all things done--it is our Noble Discontent. In
+its first manifestation it is sex. In its last refinement it means the
+love of man and woman, with the love of children, the home-making sense,
+and an appreciation of art, music and science--which is love with seeing
+eyes--as natural results.
+
+Deity creates through its creatures, of which man is the highest type.
+But man, evolving a small spark of intellect, sits in judgment on his
+Creator, and finds the work bad. Of all the animals, man is the only one
+so far known that criticizes his environment, instead of accepting it.
+And we do this because, in degree, we have abandoned intuition before we
+have gotten control of intellect.
+
+The Monastic Instinct is the disposition ever to look outside of
+ourselves for help. We expect the Strong Man to come and give us
+deliverance from our woes. All nations have legends of saviors and
+heroes who came and set the captives free, and who will come again in
+greater glory and mightier power and even release the dead from their
+graves.
+
+The Monastic Impulse is based on world-weariness, with disappointed
+love, or sex surfeit, which is a phase of the same thing, as a basis.
+Its simplest phase is a desire for solitude.
+
+"Mon" means one, and monasticism is simply living alone, apart from the
+world. Gradually it came to mean living alone with others of a like mind
+or disposition.
+
+The clan is an extension of the family, and so is originally a monastic
+impulse. The Group Idea is a variant of monasticism, but if it includes
+men and women, it always disintegrates with the second generation, if
+not before, because the Cosmic Urge catches the members, and they mate,
+marry and swing the circle.
+
+Ernst Haeckel has recently intimated his belief that monogamy, with its
+exclusive life, is a diluted form of monasticism. And his opinion seems
+to be that, in order to produce the noblest race possible, we must have
+a free society, with a State that reverences and respects maternity and
+pensions any mother who personally cares for her child.
+
+Monasticism and enforced monogamy often carry a disrespect, if not a
+positive contempt, for motherhood, especially free motherhood. We breed
+from the worst, under the worst conditions, and as punishment God has
+made us a race of scrubs. If we had deliberately set about to produce
+the worst, we could not do better.
+
+It will at once be seen that a penalized free motherhood is exactly like
+the Monastic Impulse--a protest and a revolt from the Cosmic Urge. Hence
+Ernst Haeckel, harking back to Schopenhauer, declares that we must place
+a premium upon parenthood, and the State must subsidize all mothers,
+visiting them with tenderness, gentleness, sanctity and respect, before
+we shall be able to produce a race of demigods.
+
+The Church has aureoled and sainted the men and women who have
+successfully fought the Cosmic Urge. Emerson says, "We are strong as we
+ally ourselves with Nature, and weak as we fight against her or
+disregard her." Thus does Emerson place himself squarely in opposition
+to the Church, for the Church has ever looked upon Nature as a lure and
+a menace to holy living.
+
+Now, is it not possible that the prevalency of the Monastic Impulse is
+proof that it is in itself a movement in the direction of Nature?
+Possibly its error lies in swinging out beyond the norm. A few great
+Churchmen have thought so. And the greatest and best of them, so far as
+I know, was Benedict. Through his efforts, monasticism was made a power
+for good, and for a time, at least, it served society and helped
+humanity on its way.
+
+That the flagellants, anchorites, or monks with iron collars, and Simeon
+Stylites living his life perched on a pillar, benefited the human
+race--no one would now argue. Simeon was simply trying to please God--to
+secure salvation for his soul. His assumption was that the world was
+base and bad. To be pure in heart you must live apart from it. His
+persistence was the only commendable thing about him, and this was the
+persistence of a diseased mind. It was beautiful just as the persistence
+of cancer is beautiful.
+
+Benedict, while agreeing that the world was bad, yet said that our
+business was to make it better, and that everything we did which was
+done merely to save our own souls, was selfish and unworthy. He
+advocated that, in order to save our own souls, we should make it our
+business to save others. Also, to think too much about your own soul was
+to have a soul not worth saving. If this life is a preparation for
+another, as Simeon thought, he was not preparing himself for a world
+where we would care to go. The only heaven in which any sane man or
+woman, be he saint or sinner, would care to live, would be one whose
+inhabitants would be at liberty to obey the Cosmic Urge just as freely
+as the Monastic Impulse, and where one would be regarded as holy as the
+other. So thought Saint Benedict.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a natural law, well recognized and defined by men who think,
+called the Law of Diminishing Returns, sometimes referred to as the Law
+of Pivotal Points.
+
+A man starts in to take systematic exercise, and he finds that his
+strength increases. He takes more exercise and keeps on until he gets
+"stale"--that is, he becomes sore and lame. He has passed the Pivotal
+Point and is getting a Diminishing Return.
+
+In running a railroad-engine a certain amount of coal is required to
+pull a train of given weight a mile, say at the rate of fifty miles an
+hour. You double the amount of your coal, and simple folks might say you
+double your speed, but railroad men know better. The double amount of
+coal will give you only about sixty miles instead of fifty. Increase
+your coal and from this on you get a Diminishing Return. If you insist
+on eighty miles an hour, you get your speed at a terrific cost and a
+terrible risk.
+
+Another case: Your body requires a certain amount of food--the body is
+an engine; food is fuel; life is combustion. Better the quality and
+quantity of your food, and up to a certain point you increase your
+strength. Go on increasing your food and you get death. Loan money at
+five per cent and your investment is reasonably secure and safe. Loan
+money at ten per cent and you do not double the returns; on the
+contrary, you have taken on so much risk. Loan money at twenty per cent
+and you will probably lose it; for the man who borrows at twenty per
+cent does not intend to pay if he can help it.
+
+The Law of Diminishing Returns was what Oliver Wendell Holmes had in
+mind when he said, "Because I like a pinch of salt in my soup is no
+reason I wish to be immersed in brine."
+
+Churches, preachers and religious denominations are good things in their
+time and place, and up to a certain point. Whether for you the church
+has passed the Pivotal Point is for you yourself to decide. But remember
+this, because a thing is good up to a certain point, or has been good,
+is no reason why it should be perpetuated. The Law of Diminishing
+Returns is the natural refutation of the popular fallacy that because a
+thing is good you can not get too much of it.
+
+It is this law that Abraham Lincoln had in mind when he said, "I object
+to that logic which seeks to imply that because I wish to make the negro
+free, I desire a black woman for a wife."
+
+Benedict had spent five years in resistance before it dawned upon him
+that Monasticism carried to a certain point was excellent and fraught
+with good results, but beyond that it rapidly degenerated.
+
+To carry the plan of simplicity and asceticism to its summit and not go
+beyond was now his desire.
+
+To withdraw from society he felt was a necessity, for the petty and
+selfish ambitions of Rome were revolting. But the religious life did
+not for him preclude the joys of the intellect. In his unshaven and
+unshorn condition, wearing a single garment of goatskin, he dared not go
+back to his home. So he proceeded to make himself acceptable to decent
+people. He made a white robe, bathed, shaved off his beard, had his hair
+cut, and putting on his garments, went back to his family. The life in
+the wilderness had improved his health. He had grown in size and
+strength and he now, in his own person, proved that a religious recluse
+was not necessarily unkempt and repulsive.
+
+His people greeted him as one raised from the dead. Crowds followed him
+wherever he went. He began to preach to them and to explain his
+position.
+
+Some of his old school associates came to him.
+
+As he explained his position, it began more and more to justify itself
+in his mind. Things grow plain as we analyze them to others--by
+explaining to another the matter becomes luminous to ourselves.
+
+To purify the monasteries and carry to them all that was good and
+beautiful in the classics, was the desire of Benedict. His wish was to
+reconcile the learning of the past with Christianity, which up to that
+time had been simply ascetic. It had consisted largely of repression,
+suppression and a killing-out of all spontaneous, happy, natural
+impulses.
+
+Very naturally, he was harshly criticized, and when he went back to the
+cave where he had dwelt and tried to teach some of his old companions
+how to read and write, they flew first at him, and then from him. They
+declared that he was the devil in the guise of a monk; that he wished to
+live both as a monk and as a man of the world--that he wanted to eat his
+cake and still keep it. By a sort of divine right he took control of
+affairs, and insisted that his companions should go to work with him,
+and plant a garden and raise vegetables and fruits, instead of depending
+upon charity or going without.
+
+The man who insists that all folks shall work, be they holy or secular,
+learned or illiterate, always has a hard road to travel. Benedict's
+companions declared that he was trying to enslave them, and one of them
+brewed a poison and substituted it for the simple herb tea that Benedict
+drank. Being discovered, the man and his conspirators escaped, although
+Benedict offered to forgive and forget if they would go to work.
+
+Benedict adhered to his new inspiration with a persistency that never
+relaxed--the voice of God had called to him that he must clear the soil
+of the brambles and plant gardens.
+
+The thorn-bush through which he had once rolled his naked body, he now
+cut down and burned. He relaxed the vigils and limited the prayers and
+adorations to a few short exercises just before eating, sleeping and
+going to work. He divided the day into three parts--eight hours for
+work, eight hours for study, eight hours for sleep. Then he took
+one-half hour from each of these divisions for silent prayer and
+adoration. He argued that good work was a prayer, and that one could
+pray with his heart and lips, even as his hands swung the ax, the sickle
+or the grub-hoe. All that Benedict required of others, he did himself,
+and through the daily work he evolved a very strong and sturdy physique.
+From the accounts that have come to us he was rather small in stature,
+but in strength he surpassed any man in his vicinity.
+
+Miraculous accounts of his physical strength were related, and in the
+minds of his simple followers he was regarded as more than a man, which
+shows us that the ideals of what a man should be, or might be, were not
+high. We are told that near Benedict's first monastery there was a very
+deep lake, made in the time of Nero by damming up a mountain stream.
+Along this lake the brambles and vines had grown in great confusion.
+Benedict set to work to clear the ground from this lake to his
+monastery, half a mile up the hillside. One day a workman dropped an ax
+into the lake. Benedict smiled, his lips moved in prayer and the ax came
+to the surface. The story does not say that Benedict dived to the bottom
+and brought up the ax, which he probably did. The next day the owner of
+the ax fell into the water, and the story goes that Benedict walked out
+on the water and brought the man in on his shoulders. We who do not
+believe that the age of miracles has passed, can well understand how
+Benedict was an active, agile and strong swimmer, and that through the
+natural powers which he evolved by living a sane and simple life, he was
+able to perform many feats which peasants round about considered
+miraculous. Benedict had what has been called the Builder's Itch. He
+found great joy in planning, creating and constructing. He had an eye
+for architecture and landscape-gardening. He utilized the materials of
+old Roman temples to construct Christian churches, and from the same
+quarry he took stone and built a monastery. A Roman ruin had a lure for
+him. It meant building possibilities. He stocked the lake with fish, and
+then made catches that rivaled the parable of the loaves and fishes.
+Only the loaves of Benedict were made from the wheat he himself raised,
+and the people he fed were the crowds who came to hear him preach the
+gospel he himself practised--the gospel of work, moderation and the
+commonsense exercise of head, hand and heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To Benedict came twelve disciples. But further applications becoming
+numerous, to meet the pressure Benedict kept organizing them into groups
+of twelve, appointing a superior over each group. In order to prove his
+sense of equality, he had but eleven besides himself in the monastery.
+He recognized that leadership was a necessity; but the clothes he wore
+were no better than, and the food he ate no different from, what the
+others had. Yet to enforce discipline, rules were made and instant
+obedience was exacted. Benedict took his turn at waiting on the table
+and doing the coarsest tasks.
+
+Were it not for the commonsense methods of life, and the element of
+human service, the Christian monastery and probably Christianity itself
+would not have survived. The dogma of religion was made acceptable by
+blending it with a service for humanity. And even to this day the
+popular plan of proving the miracles of the Old Testament to have been
+actual occurrences is to point to the schools, hospitals and orphan
+asylums that Christian people have provided.
+
+In the efforts of Benedict to combine the life of unselfish service with
+intellectual appreciation of classic literature, he naturally was
+misunderstood. Several times he came near having serious collisions with
+the authorities of the Church at Rome.
+
+His preaching attracted the jealous attention of certain churchmen, but
+as he was not a priest, the Pope refused to take notice of his supposed
+heresies.
+
+An effort was made to compel him to become a priest, but Benedict
+refused on the plea that he was not worthy. The fact was, however, that
+he did not wish to be bound by the rules of the Church.
+
+In one sense, his was a religion inside a religion, and a slight
+accident might have precipitated an opposition denomination, just as the
+Protestant issue of Luther was an accident, and the Methodism of the
+Wesleys, another.
+
+Several times the opposition, in the belief that Benedict was an enemy
+of the Church, went so far as to try to kill him. And once a few pious
+persons in Rome induced a company of wanton women to go out to
+Benedict's monastery and disport themselves through his beautiful
+grounds. This was done with two purposes in view; one was to work the
+direct downfall of the Benedictines, with the aid of the trulls, and the
+other was to create a scandal among the visitors, who would carry the
+unsavory news back to Rome and supply the gossips raw stock.
+
+Benedict was so deeply grieved by the despicable trick that he retired
+to his former home, the cave in the hillside, and there remained without
+food for a month.
+
+But during this time of solitude his mind was busy with new plans. He
+now founded Monte Cassino. The site is halfway between Rome and Naples,
+and the white, classic lines of the buildings can be seen from the
+railroad. There on the crags, from out of a mass of green, has been
+played out for more than a thousand years the drama of religious life.
+Death by fire and sword has been the fate of many of the occupants. But
+the years went by, new men came, the ruins were repaired, and again the
+cloisters were trodden by pious feet of holy men. Goths, Lombards,
+Saracens, Normans, Spaniards, Teutons, and finally came Napoleon
+Bonaparte, who confiscated the property, making the place his home for a
+brief space. Later he relented and took it from the favorite upon whom
+he had bestowed it and gave it back to the Church. It then remained a
+Benedictine monastery until the edict of Eighteen Hundred Sixty-six,
+which, with the help of Massini and Garibaldi, made the monastery in
+Italy a thing of the past. The place is now a school--a school with a
+co-ed proviso. Thus passes away the glory of the world, in order that a
+greater glory shall appear.
+
+Six hundred years before Benedict's day, on the site of the cloister of
+Monte Cassino stood a temple to Apollo, and just below was a grove
+sacred to Venus.
+
+Two hundred years before Benedict's time the Goths had done their work
+so well that even the walls of the temple to Apollo were razed, and the
+sacred grove became the home of wild beasts.
+
+To this deserted place came Benedict and eleven men, filled with a holy
+zeal to erect on this very spot an edifice worthy of the living God.
+Here the practical builder and the religious dreamer combined. If you
+are going to build a building, why not build upon the walls already laid
+and with blocks ready hewn and fashioned!
+
+The Monte Cassino monastery of Benedict rivaled in artistic beauty the
+temple that it replaced.
+
+Man is a building animal, and the same Creative Energy that impelled the
+Greeks and later the Romans to plan, devise, toil and build, now played
+through the good monk Benedict. His desire to create was a form of the
+great Cosmic Urge, that lives eternally and is building in America a
+finer, better and nobler religion than the world has ever seen--a
+Religion of Humanity--a religion of which at times Benedict caught vivid
+passing glimpses, as one sees at night the landscape brilliantly
+illumined by the lightning's flash.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The motto of Benedict was "Ecce Labora." These words were carved on the
+entrance to every Benedictine Monastery.
+
+The monastic idea originated in the Orient, where Nature placed no
+special penalty on idleness. Indeed, labor may have been a curse in
+Asia. Morality is crystallized expediency, and both, as we are told, are
+matters of geography, as well as time.
+
+And truth it is, that north of the Mediterranean idleness is the curse,
+not labor.
+
+The rule of Benedict was not unlike that of the Shakers, for near every
+monastery was a nunnery. The association of men and women, although
+quite limited, was better for both than their absolute separation, as
+with the Trappists, who regard it as a sin even to look upon the face of
+a woman.
+
+The thrift and industry of the Benedictines was worthy of Ann Lee and
+our friends at Lebanon. A man who works eight hours, with fair
+intelligence, and does not set out to make consumption and waste the
+business of his life, grows rich. Thoreau was right--an hour a day will
+support you. But Thoreau was wrong in supposing men work only to get
+food, clothing and shelter. To work only an hour a day is to evolve into
+a loafer. We work not to acquire, but to become.
+
+The group idea, cemented by able leadership and a religious concept, is
+always successful. The Mormons, Quakers, Harmonyites, Economites, and
+the Oneida Community, all grew very rich, and surpassed their neighbors
+not only in point of money, but in health, happiness, intelligence and
+general mental grasp.
+
+Brook Farm failed for lack of a leader with business instinct; but as it
+was, it divided up among its members a rich legacy of spiritual and
+mental assets. In family life, or what is called "Society," there is a
+constant danger through rivalry, not in well-doing or in human service,
+but in conspicuous waste and conspicuous leisure. The religious rite of
+feet-washing is absolutely lost, both as a rite and as an idea. In
+truth, "good society" is essentially predatory in its instincts. In
+communal life, or the life of a group, service and not waste is the
+watchword. This must be so, since every group, at its beginning, is held
+together through the thought of service. To meet and unite on a basis of
+jealous rivalry and sharp practise is unthinkable, for these are the
+things that disintegrate the group.
+
+It is an economic law that a group founded upon and practising the idea
+of each member giving all, wins all. Benedict's idea of "Ecce labora"
+made every Benedictine monastery a center of wealth. Work stops
+bickering, strife and undue waste. It makes for health and strength. The
+reward of work is not immunity from toil, but more work--an increased
+capacity for effort.
+
+De Tocqueville gave this recipe for success: Subdue yourself--Devote
+yourself.
+
+That is to say, subdue the ego to a point where it gets its
+gratification in concentrating on unselfish service. He who does this
+always succeeds, for not only is he engaged upon a plan of life in which
+there is little competition, but he is working in line with a divine
+law, the law of mutuality, which provides that all the good you do to
+others, you do for yourself.
+
+Benedictine monasticism leads straight to wealth and great power. The
+Abbot of the group became a Baron. "I took the vow of poverty, and it
+led to an income of twenty thousand pounds a year. I took the vow of
+obedience and find myself ruler of fifty towns and villages." These are
+the words which Sir Walter Scott puts into the mouth of an Abbot, who
+became a Baron through the simple law of which I have hinted. And in his
+novel of "The Abbot," Sir Walter gives a tragic picture of how power and
+wealth can be lost as well as won. Feudalism began with the rule of the
+monastery.
+
+Benedict was one of the world's great Captains of Industry. And like all
+great entrepreneurs, he won through utilizing the efforts of others. In
+picking his Abbots, or the men to be "father" of each particular group,
+he showed rare skill. These men learned from him and he learned from
+them. One of his best men was Cassiodorus, the man who evolved the
+scheme of the scriptorium. "To study eight hours a day was not enough,"
+said Cassiodorus. "We should copy the great works of literature so that
+every monastery shall have a library as good as that which we have at
+Monte Cassino." He himself was an expert penman, and he set himself the
+task of teaching the monks how to write as well as how to read. "To
+write beautifully is a great joy to our God," he said.
+
+Benedict liked the idea, and at once put it into execution. Cassiodorus
+is the patron saint of every maker of books who loves his craft.
+
+The systematic work of the scriptorium originated in the brain of
+Cassiodorus, and he was appointed by Benedict to go from one monastery
+to another and inform the Abbot that a voice had come from God to
+Benedict saying that these precious books must be copied, and presented
+to those who would prize them.
+
+Cassiodorus had been a secretary of state under the Emperor Theodoric,
+and he had also been a soldier. He was seventy years of age when he came
+under the influence of Benedict, through a chance visit to Monte
+Cassino. Benedict at first ordered him to take an ax and work with the
+servants at grubbing out underbrush and preparing a field for planting.
+Cassiodorus obeyed, and soon discovered that there was a joy in
+obedience he had before never guessed. His name was Brebantus Varus, but
+on his declaring he was going to remain and work with Benedict, he was
+complimented by being given the name of Cassiodorus, suggested by the
+word Cassinum or Cassino. Cassiodorus lived to be ninety-two, and was
+one of the chief factors, after Benedict himself, in introducing the
+love of art and beauty among the Benedictines.
+
+Near Monte Cassino was a nunnery presided over by Scholastica, the twin
+sister of Benedict.
+
+Renan says that the kinship of Scholastica and Benedict was a spiritual
+tie, not one of blood. If so, we respect it none the less. Saint Gregory
+tells of the death of Benedict thus:
+
+     Benedict was at the end of his career. His interview with Totila
+     took place in Five Hundred Forty-two, in the year which preceded
+     his death; and from his earliest days of the following year, God
+     prepared him for his last struggle, by requiring from him the
+     sacrifice of the most tender affection he had retained on earth.
+     The beautiful and touching incident of the last meeting of Benedict
+     and his twin sister, Scholastica, is a picture long to remember. At
+     the window of his cell, three days after her death, Benedict had a
+     vision of his dear sister's soul entering heaven in the form of a
+     snowy dove. He immediately sent for the body and placed it in a
+     sepulcher which he had already prepared for himself, that death
+     might not separate those whose souls had always been united in God.
+
+     The death of his sister was the signal of departure for himself. He
+     survived her forty days. He announced his death to several of his
+     monks, then far from Monte Cassino. A violent fever having seized
+     him, he caused himself on the sixth day of his sickness to be
+     carried to the chapel of Saint John the Baptist; he had before
+     ordered the tomb in which his sister already slept to be opened.
+
+     There, supported in the arms of his disciples, he received the holy
+     Viaticum, then placing himself at the side of the open grave, but
+     at the foot of the altar, and with his arms extended towards
+     heaven, he died, standing, muttering a last prayer. Such a
+     victorious death became that great soldier of God. He was buried by
+     the side of his beloved Scholastica, in a sepulcher made on the
+     spot where stood the altar of Apollo, which had been replaced by
+     another to our beloved Savior.
+
+
+In the very year, and at the same time, that Justinian and Theodora were
+preparing the Justinian Code, Benedict was busy devising "The Monastic
+Rules." Benedict did not put his rules forth as final, but explained
+that they were merely expedient for their time and place. In this he was
+singularly modest. If one can divest himself of the thought that there
+was anything "holy" or "sacred" about these communal groups called
+"monasteries," and then read these rules, he will see that they were
+founded on a good knowledge of economics and a very stern commonsense.
+
+Humanity was the same a thousand years ago that it is now. Benedict had
+to fight inertia, selfishness and incipient paranoia, just as does the
+man who tries to introduce practical socialism today. A few extracts
+from this very remarkable Book of Rules will show the shrewd Connecticut
+wisdom of Benedict. To hold the dowdy, indifferent, slipshod and
+underdone in their proper places, so they could not disturb or destroy
+the peace, policy and prosperity of the efficient, was the task of
+Benedict.
+
+Benedict says: "Written and formal rules are necessary only because we
+are all faulty men, with a tendency towards selfishness and disorder.
+When men become wise, and also unselfish, there will be no need of rules
+and laws."
+
+The Book of Rules by Benedict is a volume of more than twenty thousand
+words. Its scope reveals an insight that will appeal to all who have had
+to do with socialistic experiments, not to mention the management of
+labor-unions. Benedict was one of the industrial leaders of the world.
+His life was an epoch, and his influence still abides.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: MARY BAKER EDDY]
+
+MARY BAKER EDDY
+
+
+     The chief stones in the temple of Christian Science are to be found
+     in the following postulates: that Life is God, good and not evil;
+     that Soul is sinless, not to be found in the body; that Spirit is
+     not and can not be materialized; that Life is not subject to death;
+     that the spiritual real man has no consciousness of material life
+     or death.
+
+     --_Mary Baker Eddy_
+
+
+MARY BAKER EDDY
+
+Let the fact be here stated that Mary Baker Eddy was the founder of
+Christian Science. This woman lived long and well.
+
+She was alert, earnest, highly intelligent, receptive. She was ever
+discovering. We know this because she put out a new message every little
+while, or modified an old one, having come in the meantime into a
+position to get a nearer and clearer view of the fact. The last edition
+of "Science and Health" is a different book from the first one.
+
+Christian Science is not a fixed, formed, fossilized, ossified
+structure. Possibly it may become so. But the probabilities are it will
+grow, expand, advance. Life and growth consist in eliminating dead
+matter and evolving new tissue. The institution, commercial, artistic,
+social, political, religious, that has ceased to grow has begun to
+disintegrate.
+
+Christian Scientists do not flee the world, renouncing and denouncing
+it. As a people they are well, happy, hopeful, enthusiastic and
+successful. I am fairly well informed on the history of all great
+religions. In degree I know the character of intellect possessed by the
+folks who make or made up their membership. And my opinion is, that no
+religion that has ever existed contained so large a percentage of
+intelligent people, competent, safe and sane, as does Christian Science.
+There is an adage to the effect that a prophet is not without honor save
+in his own country.
+
+In the case of Mary Baker Eddy, the adage just quoted goes awry. Mrs.
+Eddy as long as she lived, retained the good-will of Concord, Boston and
+Brookline, where she chose to make her home. Very many of the leading
+men and women of each of these cities are Christian Scientists.
+
+The Christian Science Church at Concord cost upwards of two hundred
+thousand dollars, and was the gift of Mrs. Eddy. Over the entrance, cut
+deep in granite, are the words, "Presented by Mary Baker Eddy,
+Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science." As to the argument that
+the truths of Christian Science have always been known and practised by
+a few, Mrs. Eddy issued her direct challenge. In all of her literature
+she set out the unqualified statement that she was "The Discoverer and
+the Founder." She was never apologetic; she assumed no modesty she did
+not feel; she spoke as one having authority, as did Moses of old, "Thus
+saith the Lord!"
+
+She entered into no joint debates; she did not answer back. This intense
+conviction which admits of no parley was one of the secrets of her
+power. For many years the Billingsgate Calendar was directed at her upon
+every possible occasion.
+
+But Mrs. Eddy won out, and legislation and courts were compelled to
+whistle in their hounds. Your right to keep well in your own way is now
+fully recognized. Doctors are not liable when they give innocent
+sweetened water and call it medicine, nor do we place Christian
+Scientists on trial if their patients die, any more than we do the M.
+D.'s.
+
+In fact, Mrs. Eddy influenced both of the so-called sciences of medicine
+and theology. Even those who are perfectly willing to deny her, and
+noisily discard her tenets, are debtors to her.
+
+Homeopathy modified the dose of all the Allopaths; and Christian Science
+has attenuated the Hahnemannian theory of attenuations, it having been
+found that the blank tablet often cures quite as effectively as the one
+that is medicated. Christian Science does not shout, rant, defy nor
+preach. It is poised, silent, sure, and the flagellants, like the
+dervishes, are noticeable by their absence.
+
+The Reverend Billy Sunday is not a Christian Scientist. The Christian
+Scientist does not cut into the grape; specialize on the elevated
+spheroid; devote his energies to bridge whist; cultivate the scandal
+microbe; join the anvil chorus, nor shake the red rag of wordy warfare.
+He is diligent in business, fervent in spirit, and accepts what comes
+without protest, finding it good.
+
+Mary Baker Eddy lived a human life. Through her manifold experiences she
+gathered gear--she was a very great and wise woman. She was so great
+that she kept her own counsel, received no visitors, made no calls, had
+no Thursday, wrote no letters, and even never went to the church that
+she presented to her native town. Mrs. Eddy's step was ever light, her
+form erect--a slender, handsome, queenly woman. When she passed on, in
+December, Nineteen Hundred Ten, in her ninetieth year, she looked scarce
+more than sixty. Her face showed experience, but not extreme age. The
+day I saw her, a few years before her death, she was dressed all in
+white satin and looked like a girl going to a ball.
+
+Her eyes were not dimmed nor her face wrinkled.
+
+Her hat was a milliner's dream; her gloves came to the elbow and were
+becomingly wrinkled; her form was the form of Bernhardt. Her secretary
+stood by the carriage-door, his head bared. He did not offer his hand to
+the lady nor seek to assist her into the carriage. He knew his
+business--a sober, silent, muscular, bronzed, farmer-like man, who
+evidently saw everything and nothing.
+
+He closed the carriage-door and took his seat by the side of the driver,
+who wore no livery. The men looked like brothers. The big, brown horses
+started slowly away; they wore no blinders nor check-reins--they, too,
+had banished fear. The coachman drove with a loose rein. The next day I
+waited in Concord to see Mrs. Eddy again. At exactly two-fifteen the
+big, brown, slow-going horses turned into Main Street. Drays pulled in
+to the curb, automobiles stopped, people stood on the street corners,
+and some--the pilgrims--uncovered.
+
+Mrs. Eddy sat back in the carriage, holding in her white-gloved hands a
+big spray of apple-blossoms, the same half-smile of satisfaction on her
+face--the smile of Pope Leo the Thirteenth. The woman was a veritable
+queen, and some of her devotees, not without reason, called her the
+Queen of the World.
+
+Some doubtless prayed to her--and may yet, for that matter. Mrs. Eddy
+was married three times. First, to Colonel George W. Glover, an
+excellent and worthy man, who was the father of her only child, a son.
+On the death of Glover, the child was taken by Glover's mother and
+secreted so effectually that his mother did not see him until he was
+thirty-four years old, and the father of a family.
+
+Her second husband was Daniel Patterson, who was not only a rogue but
+also a fool--a flashy one, who turned the head of a lone, lorn young
+widow, who certainly was not infallible in judgment. In two years the
+wife got a divorce from him, on the grounds of cruelty and desertion, at
+Salem, Massachusetts. Her third marital venture was Doctor Asa G. Eddy,
+a practising physician--a man of much intelligence and worth. From him
+Mrs. Eddy learned that the Science of Medicine was not much of a science
+after all. Mrs. Eddy used to say that her husband was her first convert;
+certain it is that Dr. Eddy gave up his practise to assist his wife in
+putting before the world the unreality of disease. That he did not fully
+grasp the idea is shown by the fact that he died of pneumonia. This,
+however, did not shake the faith of Mrs. Eddy in the doctrine that
+sickness was an error of mortal mind. For a good many years Mrs. Eddy
+drove the memory of her two good husbands tandem, hitched by a hyphen,
+thus: Mary Baker Glover-Eddy. Many a woman has joined her own name to
+that of her husband, but what woman ever before so honored the two men
+she had loved by coupling their names! Getting married is a bad habit,
+Mrs. Eddy would probably have said, but you have to get married to find
+it out.
+
+In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-nine, Mrs. Eddy organized the First Church
+of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, and became its pastor. In Eighteen
+Hundred Eighty-one, being then sixty years of age, she founded the
+Massachusetts Metaphysical College, in Boston. For fifteen years she had
+been speaking in public, affirming that health was our normal condition
+and that as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. From her forty-fifth
+to her sixtieth year she was glad to speak for what was offered,
+although I believe that even then she had discarded the good old
+priestly plan of taking up a collection. The Metaphysical College was
+started to prepare students for teaching Mrs. Eddy's doctrines.
+
+The business ability of the woman was shown in thus organizing and
+allowing no one to teach who was not duly prepared. These students were
+obliged to pay a good stiff tuition, which fact made them appreciative.
+In turn they went out and taught; all students paid the tidy sum of one
+hundred dollars for the lessons, which fee was later cut to fifty.
+Salvation may be free, but Christian Science costs money. The
+theological genus piker, with his long, wrinkled, black coat, his collar
+buttoned behind, and his high hat, has been eliminated.
+
+Mrs. Eddy was manager of the best-methodized institution in the world,
+save only the Roman Catholic Church and the Standard Oil Company. How
+many million copies of "Science and Health" have been sold, no man can
+say. What percentage of the money from the lessons went to Mrs. Eddy,
+only an Armstrong Committee could ascertain, and really it was nobody's
+business but hers.
+
+That Mrs. Eddy had some very skilful helpers goes without saying. But
+here is the point--she selected them, and reigned supreme. That the
+student who paid fifty dollars got his money's worth, I have no doubt.
+Not that he understood the lessons, but he received a feeling of courage
+and a oneness with the whole which caused health to flow through his
+veins and his heart to beat with joy. The lesson might have been to him
+a jumble of words, but he lived in hopes that he would soon grow to a
+point where the lines were luminous.
+
+In the meantime, all he knew was that whereas he was once lame he could
+now walk. Even the most bigoted and prejudiced now agree that the cures
+of Christian Science are genuine. People who think they have trouble
+have it, and it is the same with pain. Imagination is the only
+sure-enough thing in the world. Mrs. Eddy's doctrines abolish pain and
+therefore abolish poverty, for poverty, in America at least, is a
+disease. Mrs. Eddy's chief characteristics were:
+
+First, Love of Beauty as manifest in bodily form, dress and
+surroundings.
+
+Second, A zeal for system, order and concentrated effort on the
+particular business she undertakes.
+
+Third, A dignity, courage, self-sufficiency and self-respect that comes
+from a belief in her own divinity.
+
+Fourth, An economy of time, money, materials, energy and emotion that
+wastes nothing, but which continually conserves and accumulates.
+
+Fifth, A liberality, when advisable, which is only possible to those who
+also economize.
+
+Sixth, Yankee shrewdness, great commonsense, all flavored with a dash of
+mysticism and indifference to physical scientific accuracy.
+
+In other words, Christian Science is a woman's science--she knows! And
+it is good because it is good--this is a science sound enough for
+anybody--I guess so! Christian Science is scientific, but not for the
+reasons that its promoters maintain. Male Christian Scientists do not
+growl and kick the cat.
+
+Women Christian Scientists do not nag. Christian Scientists do not have
+either the grouch or the meddler's itch. Among them there are no
+dolorosos, grumperinos or beggars. They respect all other denominations,
+having a serene faith that all will yet see the light--that is to say,
+adopt their doctrines. The most radical among old-school doctors could
+not deny that Mrs. Eddy's own life was conducted on absolutely
+scientific lines. She never answered the telephone, never fussed nor
+fumed.
+
+She hired big, safe people and paid them a big wage. She gave her
+coachman fifty dollars a week, and her cook in proportion, and thus
+secured people who gave her peace. She went to bed with the birds and
+awoke with the dawn. At seven o'clock she was at her desk, dictating
+answers to the very few letters her secretary deemed it advisable she
+should see. She had breakfast at nine o'clock--ate anything she liked,
+taking her time and fletcherizing. After breakfast she worked upon her
+manuscripts until it was time for the daily ride.
+
+At four o'clock she dined--two meals a day being the rule. If, however,
+she cared to dissipate a little and eat three meals a day, she was not
+afraid to do so.
+
+She knew her horses and cows and sheep by name, and gave requests as to
+their care, holding that the laws of mind obtain as to dumb animals the
+same as man. Dogs she did not care for, and if she ever had an aversion
+it would have been cats. Her servants she called "My helpers."
+Christian Scientists very naturally believe in the equality of the
+sexes. When girl babies are born to them they bless God, just the same
+as when boy babies are born. In truth they bless God for everything, for
+to them all is beautiful and all is good. Paid preachers they do not
+have; they do not believe in priests or certain men who are nearer to
+God than others. All have access to Eternal Truth, and thus is the
+ecclesiastic excluded. To eliminate the theological middleman is well,
+and as for the Church itself, surely Mrs. Eddy eliminated it also; for
+she never entered a church, or at least not more than once a year, and
+then it was only in deference to the architect. A Church! Is it
+necessary? For herself Mrs. Eddy said, No.
+
+But as for others, she said, Yes, a church is good for those who need
+it. Mrs. Eddy was the most successful author in the world, or, indeed,
+that the world has ever seen. No other writer ever made so much money as
+she, none is more devoutly read.
+
+Shakespeare, with his fortune of a quarter of a million dollars, fades
+into comparative failure; and Arthur Brisbane, with his salary of
+seventy-five thousand a year, is an office-boy compared with this regal
+woman, who gave fifty thousand dollars a year for good roads.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The valuable truths and distinguishing features of Christian Science are
+not to be found in Mrs. Eddy's books, but in Mrs. Eddy's life. She was a
+much bigger woman than she was a writer. Emerson says that every great
+institution is the lengthened shadow of a single man. Every great
+business enterprise has a soul--one man's spirit animates, pervades and
+tints the whole. You can go into any hotel or store, and behold! the
+nature or character of the owner or manager is everywhere proclaimed.
+
+You do not have to see the man, and the bigger the institution the less
+need is there for the man to show himself. His work proclaims him, just
+as a farmer's livestock all moo, whinny and squeal his virtues--or lack
+of them. As a boy of ten I learned to know all of our neighbors by their
+horses. The horses of a drunkard, blanketless, hungry, shivering,
+outside of the village tavern, do they not proclaim the poor, despised
+owner within?
+
+You can walk through the passenger-coaches of a train made up at a
+terminal and read the character unmistakably of the general
+passenger-agent. The soul of John Wesley ran through Methodism and made
+it what it was. The Lutheranism of Luther yet lives; Calvinism the same;
+and the soul of John Knox still goes marching on, carrying the
+Presbyterian banner.
+
+Every religion partakes of the nature of its founder, until this
+religion is mixed with that of another and its character lost, as
+happened to the religion of Christ when it was launched by Paul and was
+finally fused with Paganism by the Roman Emperor, Constantine.
+
+Christian Science is as yet the lengthened shadow of Mary Baker Eddy.
+Her own immediate, personal pupils are still teaching, and her life and
+characteristics impressed upon them are given out to each and all. Every
+phase of life is solved by answering the question, "What would Mrs. Eddy
+do?" Mrs. Eddy's ideas about dress, housekeeping, business, food,
+health, the management of servants, the care of children--all are
+blended into a composite, and this composite is the Christian Scientist
+as we see and know him.
+
+The fact that Mrs. Eddy was methodical, industrious, economical,
+persevering, courageous, hopeful, helpful, neat in her attire and
+smiling, makes all Christian Scientists exactly so. She did not play
+cards and indulge in the manifold silliness of so-called good society,
+and neither do they. Indeed, that one thing which has been referred to
+as "the plaster-of-Paris smile," the one feature in Christian Science to
+which many good people object, is the direct legacy of Mrs. Eddy to her
+pupils. "Science and Health" says nothing about it; no edict has been
+put forth recommending it; but all good Christian Scientists take it
+on--the smile that refuses to vacate the premises. And to some it is
+certainly very becoming. Mrs. Eddy's self-reliant, silent, smiling
+personality has given the key to conduct for the hundreds of thousands
+of people who love her and revere her memory.
+
+Mrs. Eddy was a rare good listener. She did not argue. Once upon a time,
+indeed, she was guilty of waving the red flag of wordy warfare; but the
+passing of the years brought her wisdom, and then her only answer to
+impatience was the quiet smile. As for eating, her table always had
+enough, but it stopped short of surfeit; the service was dainty, and all
+these things are now seen in the homes of Christian Scientists. Always
+in the home of a good Christian Scientist the bathroom is as complete as
+the library, and both are models of good housekeeping, seemingly always
+in order for the inspection committee.
+
+Mrs. Eddy did not say much about hot water, soap and clean towels; but
+the idea, regardless of the non-existence of matter, is fixed in the
+consciousness of every Christian Scientist that absolute bodily
+cleanliness, fresh linen and fresh air are not only next to godliness,
+but elements of it. All of which you could never work out of "Science
+and Health with Key to the Scriptures" in a lifetime of study, any more
+than you could mine and smelt the Westminster Catechism out of the
+Bible.
+
+The vital truths of right living come to us as a precious heritage from
+the character of this great woman. She, herself, perhaps may not have
+known this; but before she wrote her book and formulated her religion,
+she lived her life. Her book was an endeavor to explain her life, and
+as her life grew better, stronger and more refined, she changed her
+book. Her book reacted on her life, and the person who got the most good
+out of "Science and Health" was Mary Baker Eddy herself.
+
+"Science and Health" is mystical and beautifully human. The author's oar
+often fails to catch the water. For instance, she tries to show that
+animal magnetism, spiritualism, mental science, theosophy, agnosticism,
+pantheism and infidelity are all bad things and opposed to the science
+of "true being."
+
+This statement presupposes that animal magnetism, infidelity, theosophy
+and agnosticism are specific entities or things, whereas they are only
+labels that are clapped quite indiscriminately on empty casks or full
+ones; and the contents of the casks may be sea-water or wine, and are
+really unknown to both mortal and divine mind, whatever these things
+are. Theosophists like Annie Besant, Spiritualists like Alfred Russel
+Wallace, Agnostics like Huxley and Ingersoll, are very noble and
+beautiful people. They are good neighbors and useful citizens.
+
+"Science and Health" is an attempt to catch and hold in words the
+secrets of an active, honest, healthful, seeking, restless, earnest
+life, and as such is more or less of a failure.
+
+Our actions are right, but our reasons seldom are.
+
+Christian Science as a plan of life, embodying the great yet simple
+virtues, is beautiful. "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures"
+does not explain the Scriptures. The book, as an attempt to explain and
+crystallize truth, is a failure. It ranks with that great mass of
+literature, written and copied at such vast pains and expense, bearing
+the high-sounding title, "Writings of the Saints."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All publishers are familiar with inspired manuscripts. Such work always
+has one thing in common--unintelligibility. Good literature is lucid to
+the average mind. In fact, that is its distinguishing feature. We
+understand what the man means. No able writer uses the same word over
+and over with varying sense. Alfred Henry Lewis and William Marion Reedy
+use the mortal mind, and their work is understandable. You can sit in
+judgment on their conclusions and weigh, sift and decide for yourself.
+They make an appeal to your intellect.
+
+But you can not sit in judgment on "Science and Health," because its
+language is not the language we use in our common, every-day intercourse
+with one another. It speaks of Christ as a person, a principle, a
+spirit, a motive; as "Truth"; as one who was born of one parent or no
+parents; who lived, died, or never lived, never was born, and can not
+die.
+
+Metaphysics is an attempt to explain a thing and thereby evade the
+trouble of understanding it. You throw the burden of proof on the other
+fellow--and make him believe he does not comprehend because he is too
+stupid. This is not fair!
+
+Language is simply an agreement between people that certain vocal
+sounds, or written symbols, shall stand for certain ideas, thoughts or
+things. Inspired writers string intelligent words together in an
+unintelligent manner, and thereby give the reader an opportunity to
+read anything into them that his preconceived thoughts may dictate.
+Metaphysical gibberish is a rudimentary survival of the practise of
+reading to the people in a dead language. The doctors continue the plan
+by writing prescriptions in Latin.
+
+I once worked in a studio where the boys scraped their palette-knives on
+a convenient board. One day we took the board out and had it framed
+under glass, with a double, deep-shadow box. We gave it the best place
+in the studio and labeled it, "A Sunset at Sea--an Impression in
+Monochrome."
+
+The picture attracted much attention and great admiration from certain
+symbolists. It also created so much controversy that we were obliged to
+take it down in the interests of amity.
+
+To assume that God inspired the Scriptures, and did the work so ill
+that, after more than two thousand years, it was necessary to inspire
+another person to make a "Key" to them, is hardly worthy of our serious
+attention. If God, being all-wise, all-powerful and all-loving, turns
+author, why does He produce work so muddy that it requires a "Key"?
+
+Individuals may use a code that requires a "Key," because they wish to
+keep their matter secret from others. There may be for them a penalty on
+truth, but why Deity should write in a secret language, and then wait
+two thousand years before making the matter plain, and then to one
+single woman in Boston, is incomprehensible. What the world wants now
+is a Key to "Science and Health." In reading a book, the question that
+interests us is not, "Is it inspired?" but, "Is it true?"
+
+Mrs. Eddy's ranks are recruited almost entirely from Orthodox
+Christianity. On page six hundred eight of "Science and Health," pocket
+edition of Nineteen Hundred Six, a lawyer gives testimony to the good he
+has gotten from Christian Science, and explains that he has long been a
+member of the Episcopal Church. He is delighted to know that he has not
+had to relinquish any of his old faith, but has simply kept the old and
+added to it the new.
+
+This explains, in great degree, the popularity of Christian Science.
+People cling to the religious superstitions into which they were born.
+Mrs. Eddy's recruits were not from theosophy, spiritualism, agnosticism,
+unitarianism, universalism or infidelity. You can't give a freethinker a
+book with a statement of what he must find in it.
+
+He has acquired the habit of thinking for himself.
+
+Mrs. Eddy had no faith in Darwin, Spencer or Haeckel. She quoted Moses,
+Jesus and Paul to disprove the evolutionists, sat back and smiled
+content, innocently unaware that citations from Scriptures are in no
+sense proof to free minds. All of the Bible she wished to waive, she
+did. The cruelty and bestiality of Jehovah were nothing to her. Her
+"Key" does not unlock the secrets of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, nor
+does it shed light on the doctrines of eternal punishment, the vicarious
+atonement, or the efficacy of baptism as a saving ordinance.
+
+Explanations about mortal mind, divine mind and human mind, citing
+specific errors of the human mind, with a calm codicil to the effect
+that the human mind has no existence, are not what you might call
+illuminating literature. The stuff is simply "inspired." Mrs. Eddy was
+very wise in not allowing her "readers" or followers to sermonize or
+explain her writings. These writings are simply to be read. And so the
+hearers sit steeped in mist and wrapped in placidity, returning to their
+work rested and refreshed, without being influenced in any way, save by
+the soothing calm of forceful fog and mental vacuity.
+
+The rest and relief from all thought is good. The related experiences of
+Christian Scientists are the things that convince and carry weight, not
+"Science and Health." "Science and Health" was made to sell. It was not
+given to you to be understood: it was to be bought and believed. If you
+doubt any portion of it, at once you are told that this is the work of
+your mortal mind, which is filled with error. Good Christian Scientists
+do not try to understand "Science and Health"--they just accept and
+believe it. "It is inspired," they say, "so it must be true--you will
+know when you are worthy to know."
+
+And so we see our old friend Intellectual Tyranny come back in another
+form, not with cowl and cape, but tricked out with feminine finery and
+jewelry and gems that lure and dazzle. There is one thing quite as
+valuable as health, and that is intellectual integrity. To say, "Oh,
+'Science and Health' is certainly inspired--just see how old Mrs.
+Johnson was cured of the rheumatism!" is not reasoning.
+
+And it has given the scoffers excuse for calling it woman's logic. Such
+reasoning is on the plane of, "Why, Jesus must have been the only
+begotten son of God, born of a virgin, for if you don't believe it, just
+see the hospitals, orphan asylums and homes for the aged that
+Christianity has built!" Mrs. Johnson was surely cured of the rheumatism
+all right, but that does not prove that Mrs. Eddy is correct in her
+claim that Eve was made from Adam's rib; that agamogenesis is a fact in
+Nature; that to till the soil will not always be necessary; that human
+life in these bodies will have no end; and that an absent person can
+poison your health and happiness through malicious animal magnetism; or
+that a good person can give you absent treatment and cure your
+indigestion.
+
+I agree with Mrs. Eddy as to the necessity of eliminating a medical
+fetish, but I disagree with her about religiously preserving a
+theological one. I have read "Science and Health with Key to the
+Scriptures" for twenty years, and I have also read the Scriptures for a
+much longer period. Also, I have lived in the same house for many
+months with very intelligent Christian Scientists.
+
+And after mature consideration I regard both the Scriptures and "Science
+and Health" as largely made up of the errors of mortal mind. My
+intuitions are just as valuable to me as Mrs. Eddy's were to her.
+
+My conscience is quite as sacred to me as hers was to her. And in being
+an agnostic I object to being classed as blind, stubborn, wilful,
+malicious and degenerate.
+
+We should honor our Creator by cleaving to the things that seem to us to
+be true, and not abandon the rudder of our minds to any man or any
+woman, be they living or dead. Let us not be dishonest with ourselves,
+even to rid us of our physical diseases. As for health, I have all of it
+that Christian Science ever gave or can give. I have no "testimony" of
+healing to relate, for I have never been sick an hour. And I think I
+know how I have kept well. I make no secret of it. It is all very
+simple--nothing miraculous.
+
+My knowledge of how to keep well is not inspired knowledge, save as all
+men are inspired who study and know the Laws of Nature. Health, after
+all, is largely a matter of habit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Back of the reading-desks, in the "Mother Church," at Boston, are
+quotations from Paul and Mrs. Eddy, side by side. But the quotation from
+Paul, which is behind the desk of the woman reader, is not this: "Let
+women keep silence in the churches."
+
+Mrs. Eddy believed the Scriptures are all true, word for word. Yet when
+she quoted Paul she picked the thing she wanted and avoided all that did
+not apply to her case. Personally, I like the plan. I do it myself. But
+I do not believe the Scriptures are inspired by an all-wise Deity. So
+far as I know, all books were written by men, and very often by faulty,
+human men at that. Mrs. Eddy's "Key" does not unlock anything; and she
+did not try to unlock any passages except the passages that seemingly
+had a bearing on her belief. That is, Mrs. Eddy believed things first,
+and then skirmished for proof. This is a very old plan. Says
+Shakespeare: "In religion what damned error but some somber brow will
+bless it and approve it with a text, hiding the grossness thereof with
+fair ornament." Let no one read "Science and Health" in the hope of
+finding in it simple and sensible statements concerning life and its
+duties. They are not there.
+
+I append a few quotations, and in mentioning the page I refer to the
+pocket or "Oxford" edition of Nineteen Hundred Six. On page one hundred
+eighty-three of "Science and Health" I find, "The Scriptures inform us
+that sin, or error, first caused the condemnation of man to till the
+ground, and indicate that obedience to God will remove this necessity."
+
+Mrs. Eddy evidently believed that work is a punishment, and that the day
+will come when God will remove the necessity of farming and making
+garden. Can a sane person reply to such lack of logic?
+
+On page five hundred forty-seven is this: "If one of the statements in
+this book is true, every one must be true, for not one departs from its
+system and rule. You can prove for yourself, dear reader, the Science of
+healing, and so ascertain if the author has given you the correct
+interpretation of Scripture."
+
+This is evidently inspired by Paul's quibble, "If the dead rise not from
+the grave, then is our religion vain." Lincoln once referred to this
+kind of reasoning by saying, "I object to the assumption that my
+ambition is to have my son marry a negress, simply because I am
+struggling for emancipation." Mrs. Eddy may heal you, but that does not
+prove that her interpretation of Scripture is true. Because this
+happens, that does not necessarily follow. Neither, because a thing
+precedes a thing or goes with a thing, is the thing the cause of the
+thing. On page five hundred fifty-three is this: "Adam was created
+before Eve. Herein it is seen that the maternal egg never brought forth
+Adam. Eve was formed from Adam's rib, not from a fetal ovum."
+
+In reading things like this in "Science and Health," let us not be too
+severe on Mrs. Eddy, but just bear in mind that such silly superstitions
+and barbaric folklore are yet officially believed by all orthodox
+clergymen and members of orthodox churches. You can accept a belief in
+Adam's fall and the vicarious atonement and still make money and have
+good health.
+
+Page one hundred two: "The mild forms of animal magnetism are
+disappearing, and its aggressive features are coming to the front. The
+looms of crime, hidden in the dark recesses of mortal thought, are every
+hour weaving webs more complicated and subtle. So secret are its present
+methods that they ensnare the age into indolence, and produce the very
+apathy on this subject which the criminal desires."
+
+This passage reveals the one actually dangerous thing in Christian
+Science--the fallacy that one mind can weave a web that will work the
+undoing of another. This is the basis of a belief in witchcraft, and
+justifies the hangings at Salem. On page one hundred three I find this:
+"As used in Christian Science, animal magnetism or hypnotism is the
+specific term for error, or mortal mind."
+
+"It is the false belief that mind is in matter, and both evil and good;
+that evil is as real as goodness, and more powerful. This belief has not
+one quality of truth or good. It is either ignorant or malicious. The
+malicious form of animal magnetism ultimates in moral idiocy. The
+truths of immortal mind sustain man; and they annihilate the fables and
+mortal mind, whose flimsy and gaudy pretensions, like silly moths, singe
+their own wings and fall into dust. In reality there is no mortal mind,
+and consequently no transference of mortal thought and will-power." Page
+five hundred two: "Spiritually followed, the book of Genesis is the
+history of the untrue image of God, named a sinful mortal. This
+deflection of being, rightly viewed, serves the spiritual actuality of
+man, as given in the first chapter of Genesis. When the crude forms of
+human thought take on higher symbols and significations, the
+scientifically Christian views of the universe will appear, illuminating
+time with the glory of eternity."
+
+I append these two passages simply as samples of "inspired literature."
+
+Any one who tries to understand such printed matter is headed for
+Bloomingdale. You must leave it alone absolutely or else accept it and
+read it with your mental eyes closed, mumbling it with your lips, and
+let your mind roam like a priest reading his breviary in the
+smoking-apartment of a Pullman car. The question then arises, "Was Mrs.
+Eddy sincere in putting forth such writings?"
+
+And the answer is, she was most certainly sincere, and she was certainly
+sane. She was an honest woman. But she was not a clear or logical
+thinker, except on matters of finance and business, and consequently she
+did not give forth a clear expression when she essayed philosophy. In
+order to write lucidly you must think lucidly. Mrs. Eddy had no sense of
+literary values. She was absolutely devoid of humor, and humor is only
+the ability to detect a little thing from a big one--to perceive a wrong
+adjustment from a right one.
+
+Style in literature is taste. But the lack of style, taste and humor is
+general in mankind. The world has produced only a few great thinkers,
+and one of them was Darwin, a name which Mrs. Eddy mentioned in "Science
+and Health" with reproach. Great writers are even more rare than great
+thinkers, because to write one must have the ability not only to think
+clearly, but the knack or technical skill to use the right word, the
+luminous word, and so arrange, paragraph and punctuate them that your
+meaning will be clear to average minds. To say that Mrs. Eddy was not a
+thinker nor a writer, is not an indictment of the woman, although it may
+be a reflection on the mental processes of the people who think she was.
+
+To say that there are two million people reading Mrs. Eddy, also proves
+nothing, since numbers are no vindication. Over a hundred million people
+have kissed the big toe of Saint Peter in Rome.
+
+And surely the Roman Catholic Church contains a vast number of highly
+educated people. The things you do not know, you do not know. And Mrs.
+Eddy, knowing nothing of literary style, knew nothing of literary art.
+Her prose and her poetry are worse than ordinary. All inspirational
+poetry I ever read is rot, and all inspired paintings I ever saw are
+daubs. Mrs. Eddy should not be blamed for her limitations.
+
+Many people who are great in certain lines labor under the hallucination
+that they are also great in others. Matthew Arnold was a great writer,
+and he also thought he was a great orator.
+
+But when he spoke, his words simply fell over the footlights into the
+orchestra and died there. He could not reach the front row. Most
+comedians want to play Hamlet, and all of us have heard girls attempt to
+sing who thought they could sing, and who were encouraged in the
+hallucination by their immediate kinsfolk.
+
+Mrs. Eddy thought she could write, and unfortunately she was
+corroborated in her error by the applause of people who, not being able
+to read her book, kindly attributed the inability to their own
+limitations and not to hers, being prompted in this by the suggestion
+oft repeated by Mrs. Eddy, herself. The resemblance of Mrs. Eddy's
+thought to that of Jesus was never noticed until Mrs. Eddy first
+explained the matter. Mrs. Eddy was by no means insane. Swedenborg was a
+civil engineer and a mathematician. He wrote forty books that are nearly
+as opaque as "Science and Health." If you write stupidly enough, some
+one will surely throw up his cap and cry "Great!" And others will follow
+the example and take up the shout, because it is much easier, as Doctor
+Johnson affirmed, to praise a book than to read and understand it. The
+custom of reading to a congregation in a dead or foreign language, which
+the listeners do not understand, has never caused any general protest
+from the listeners. The scoffers are the only ones who have ever noticed
+the incongruity, and they do not count, since they probably would not
+attend, anyway.
+
+Next to reading from a book written in the dead language, is to read
+from a book that is unintelligible. To listen to such makes no tax upon
+the intellect, and with the right accessories is soporific, restful,
+pleasing and to be commended. If it does not supply an idea, it at least
+imparts a feeling. Mrs. Eddy's success in literature arose from the
+extreme muddiness of her thinking and her opacity in expression.
+
+If she had written fairly well, her mediocrity would have been apparent
+to every one; but writing absolutely without rhyme or reason, we bow
+before her supreme assurance. The strongest element in men is
+inertia--we agree rather than fight about it. We want health--and health
+is what Mrs. Eddy gives to us--therefore, "Science and Health with Key
+to the Scriptures" is the greatest book in the whole world. Sancta
+simplicitas! Why not, indeed!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+People turn to Mrs. Eddy's book for relief just exactly as they formerly
+went to the doctor for the same reason.
+
+In addition to bodily health, Mrs. Eddy gives joy, hope, worldly
+success; and even superior minds, seeing these practical results of
+Christian Science, move in the line of least resistance and are quite
+willing to accept the book, not troubled at all about its medieval
+reasoning. In Ungania is a very great merchant who, not content with
+having the biggest store in the Kingdom, aspires to the biggest
+University. The fact that the higher criticism is to him only a trivial
+matter, and really unworthy of the serious attention of a busy man,
+simply reveals human limitation.
+
+The specialist is created at a terrific cost, and that a person will be
+practical, shrewd, diplomatic and wise in managing the buying public and
+an army of employees, and yet know and love Walt Whitman, is too much to
+expect. This keen and successful merchant, an absolute tyrant in certain
+ways, has his soft side and many pleasant qualities. Why any one should
+ever question the literal truth of the Bible is beyond his
+comprehension.
+
+He is convinced that "Leaves of Grass" is an obscene book, never having
+read it; yet he knows nothing about the third, eleventh and thirteenth
+chapters of Second Samuel, having read the Book all his life. He has a
+pitying, patronizing smile for any one who suggests that David was a
+very faulty man, and that possibly Solomon was not the wisest person
+that ever lived. "What difference does it make, anyway?" he testily
+asks. If you work for him you have to agree with him, or else be very
+silent as to what you actually believe. We often find an avowed and
+reiterated love for Jesus, the non-resistant, going hand in hand with a
+passion for war, a miser's greed, a lust for power and a thirst for
+revenge.
+
+There may be a prating about righteousness while the hand of the man is
+feeling for his sword-hilt, and his eye is locating your jugular. The
+Ten Commandments are all rescinded in war time. The New York "Evening
+Post" noted the peculiar fact that nine out of ten of the delegates at
+The Hague International Peace Conference were theological heretics. As a
+rule, Orthodox Christians stand for war, and also for capital
+punishment. How do we explain these inconsistencies?
+
+We do not try to: they are simply facts in the partial development of
+the race. Why millionaires should patronize the memory of Jesus is
+something no one can understand, save that things work by antithesis.
+Mrs. Eddy was of the same shrewd, practical type as the merchant prince
+just mentioned. She was the greatest woman-general of her day and
+generation. She possessed all the qualities that go to make successful
+leadership.
+
+She was self-reliant, proud, arrogant, implacable in temper, rapid in
+decision, unbending, shrewd, diplomatic--and a good hater.
+
+At times she dismissed her critics with simply a look. No man could
+dictate to her, and few dared make suggestions in her presence. To move
+her, the matter had to be brought to her attention in a way that led her
+to believe that she had discovered it herself. And of course all the
+credit went to her. In all Christian Science churches are various
+selections from her writings, and beneath every one is her name. "Thou
+shalt have no other gods before me!" is the one controlling edict
+breathed forth by her life and words. One of her orders was that
+whenever one of her hymns was announced, always and forever it must be
+stated that it was written by Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy. Always and forever,
+the "student" giving testimony refers, in terms of lavish praise and
+fulsome adulation, to "Our Blessed Teacher, Guide and Exemplar, Mary
+Baker Eddy." God Almighty and Jesus occupy secondary positions in all
+Christian Science meetings.
+
+Mrs. Eddy is mentioned five times to where they are once. And I would
+not criticize this if Mrs. Eddy had but regarded Jesus as simply a great
+man in history and "God" as an abstract term referring to the Supreme
+Intelligence in Nature. But to her, God and Jesus were persons who
+dictated books, and very frequently she was careful to explain that her
+method of healing was exactly the same as that practised by Jesus. Side
+by side with His words are hers. Passages from the Bible are read
+alternately with passages from "Science and Health." If both were
+regarded as mere literature, this would be pardonable, but when we are
+told that both are "sacred" writ, and "damned be he who dares deny or
+doubt," we are simply lost in admiration for the supreme egotism of the
+lady. To get mad about it were vain--let us all smile. Surely the
+imagination that can trace points of resemblance between Mrs. Mary Baker
+Eddy and Jesus, the lowly peasant of Nazareth, is admirable. Jesus was a
+communist in principle, having nothing, giving everything. He carried
+neither scrip nor purse. He wrote nothing. His indifference to place,
+pelf and power is His distinguishing characteristic. Mrs. Eddy's love of
+power was the leading motive of her life; her ability to bargain was
+beautiful; her resorts to law and the subtleties of legal aid were all
+strictly modern; and the way she tied up the title to her writings by
+lead-pipe-cinched copyrights reveals the true instincts of Connecticut.
+
+This jealousy of her rights and the safeguarding of her interests were
+among the emphatic features of her life, and set her apart as the
+antithesis of Jesus.
+
+There is one character in history, however, to whom Mrs. Eddy bore a
+close resemblance--and that is Julius Caesar, who was educated for the
+priesthood, became a priest, and was Pope of Rome before he ventured
+into fighting and politics as a business. Mrs. Eddy's faith in herself,
+her ability to decide, her quick intuitions, the method and simplicity
+of her life, her passion for power, her pleasure in authorship--all
+these were the traits which exalted the name and fame of Caesar.
+
+The inventor of the calendar ordered that it should be known as the
+"Julian Calendar," and it is so called, even unto this day. Once Carlyle
+sat smoking with Milburn, the blind preacher. They had been discussing
+the historicity of Jesus. Then they sat smoking in silence. Finally,
+Tammas the Techy knocked the ashes out of his long clay t. d. and
+muttered, half to himself and half to Milburn, "Ah, a great mon, a great
+mon--but he had his limitations!" The same remark can truthfully be
+applied to Mrs. Eddy. And about the only point that Jesus and Mrs. Eddy
+have in common is this matter mentioned by Carlyle.
+
+The superior shrewdness and the keen business instinct of Mrs. Eddy are
+seen in the use of the words "Christian" and "Science." The sub-title,
+"With Key to the Scriptures," is particularly alluring. And the use of
+the Oxford binding was the crowning stroke of commercial insight. Surely
+Mrs. Eddy must command our profound respect. She was undoubtedly a very
+great business genius, to say the very least.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When John Henry Newman became a Catholic, he gave as a reason for his
+decision that he had found no place in literature or art to rest his
+head. His reward for not finding a place in literature or art for his
+head was the red hat.
+
+Let the followers of Mrs. Eddy take comfort in that their great teacher
+had plenty of high precedent for believing that Adam was created by
+fiat, and Eve was made from his rib, all the fiat being used; that
+Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and it obeyed, even when the
+order should have been given to the earth; that Lazarus was raised from
+the dead after his body had become putrid; that witchcraft is a fact in
+Nature; and that children can be born with the aid of one parent a
+little better than in the old-fashioned way--parthenogenesis, I think
+they call it.
+
+These inconsistencies of absolute absurdity, existing side by side with
+great competence and sanity, are to be found everywhere in history.
+
+Mrs. Eddy excited the envy of the medical world in her demonstration
+that good health and happiness are the sure results of getting rid of
+the doctor habit; but they got even with her when she said that virgin
+motherhood would yet become the rule, and tilling of the soil would
+cease to be a necessity.
+
+Saint Augustine thought, as did most of the early Churchmen, that to do
+evil that good might follow was not only justifiable, but highly
+meritorious. So they preached hagiology to scare people into the narrow
+path of rectitude.
+
+Chapman, Alexander, Torrey, Billy Sunday and most other professional
+evangelists believe in and practise the same doctrine.
+
+The literary conscience was a thing known in Greece, but only recently,
+say within two hundred years, has it been again manifest, and as yet it
+is rare. It consists in the scorn and absolute refusal to write a line
+except that which stands for truth.
+
+The artistic conscience that refuses to paint for hire or model on order
+is the same. Wagner, Millet, Rembrandt, William Morris and Ruskin are
+examples of men who were incapable of anything but their highest and
+best creative work, and refused to truckle to the mercenary horde. Such
+men may be without conscience in a business way. And a person may be
+absolutely moral in all his acts of life, except in writing and talking,
+and here he may be slipshod and uncertain.
+
+Mrs. Eddy was beautifully lacking in the literary conscience, just as
+much so as was Gladstone when he attempted to reply to Ingersoll in "The
+North American Review," and resorted to sophistry and evasion in
+lieu of logic. Absolute truth to Gladstone was a matter of
+indifference--expediency was his shibboleth. Truth to Mrs. Eddy was also
+a secondary matter; the only things that really mattered were Health and
+Success. Health and Success are undoubtedly great things and well
+worthy of possession, but I wish to secure them only through the
+expression of truth. If you gag my tongue, chain my pen and cry,
+"Believe and you will have Health," I would say, "Give me liberty or
+give me death!" Christian Scientists ask you to buy Mrs. Eddy's book,
+"Science and Health."
+
+When the volume is handed you, you are promised health and success if
+you believe its every word; and if you don't, you are threatened with
+"moral idiocy."
+
+It is the old promise of Paradise and the threat of Hell in a new guise.
+As for me, I decline the book.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Stephen Girard was a great merchant who had a great love of truth; but
+if he had been in a retail business, his zeal for truth might have been
+slightly modified.
+
+As a rule, the world of humanity can be divided into two parts: the
+practical men and the searchers for truth. Usually the latter have
+nothing to lose but their head. Spinoza, Galileo, Bruno, Thomas Paine,
+Walt Whitman, Henry Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, are the pure type. Then
+come Theodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson, crowded out of their
+pulpits, scorned by their Alma Mater, pitied by the public--yet holding
+true to their course.
+
+And lo! they grew rich; whereas, if they had stuck close to the shore
+and safety, they would have been drowned in the shallows of oblivion.
+
+On the other hand, we find in, say, the directorate of the Standard Oil
+Company, many men who are zealous members of the orthodox churches,
+giving large sums in support of the "gospel," and taking an active
+interest in its promulgation. All of them say, with the late Mr. Morgan,
+"My mother's religion is good enough for me." So here we get practical
+shrewdness combined with minds that, so far as abstract truth is
+concerned, are simply prairie-dog towns.
+
+These men belong to a type that will cling to error as long as it is
+soft, easy and popular. Most certainly these men are not fools--they are
+highly competent and useful in their way. But as for superstition, they
+find it soothing; it saves the trouble of thinking, and all their
+energies are needed in business.
+
+Religion, to them, is a social diversion, with a chance of salvation on
+the side. Inertia does not grip them when it comes to commerce--but in
+religion it does. Lincoln once said that there was just one thing, and
+only one thing, that God Almighty could not understand: and that was the
+workings of the mind of an intelligent American juror.
+
+Herbert Spencer says that Sir Isaac Newton was one of the six best
+educated men the world has seen. He was the first man to resolve light
+into its constituent elements. Voltaire says that when Newton discovered
+the Law of Gravitation he excited the envy of the scientific world.
+
+"But," adds Voltaire, "when he wrote a book on the Bible prophecies, the
+men of science got even with him." Sir Isaac Newton defended the literal
+inspiration of the Scriptures and was a consistent member of the Church
+of England. Doctor Johnson was unhappy all day if he didn't touch every
+tenth picket of the fence with his cane as he walked downtown.
+
+Blackstone, the great legal commentator, believed in witchcraft, and
+bolstered his belief by citing the Scriptural text, "Thou shalt not
+suffer a witch to live"--thus proving Moses a party to the superstition.
+Sir Matthew Hale, Chief Justice of England, did the same.
+
+Gladstone was a great statesman, and yet he believed in the Mosaic
+account of Creation, just as did Mary Baker Eddy.
+
+John Adams was a rebel from political slavery, but lived and died a
+worthy Churchman, subsisting on canned theology--and canned in England,
+at that.
+
+Franklin and Jefferson were rebels from both political and theological
+despotism, but looked leniently on leeches and apothecaries. Herbert
+Spencer had a free mind as regards religion, politics, economics and
+sociology; yet he was a bachelor, lived in the city, belonged to a club,
+played billiards and smoked cigars. Physical health was out of his
+reach, and with all his vast knowledge, he never knew why. All through
+history we find violence and gentleness, ignorance and wisdom, folly and
+shrewdness side by side in the same person.
+
+The one common thing in humanity is inconsistency. To account for it
+were vain. We know only that it is.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The very boldness of Mrs. Eddy's claims created an impetus that carried
+conviction.
+
+The woman certainly believed in herself, and she also believed in the
+Power, of which she was a necessary part, that works for righteousness.
+She repudiated the supernatural, not by denying "miracles," but by
+holding that the so-called miracles of the Bible really occurred and
+were perfectly natural--all according to Natural Law, which is the
+Divine Law.
+
+And the explanation of this Divine Law was her particular business. Thus
+did she win to her side those who were too timid in constitution to
+forsake forms and ceremonies and stand alone on the broad ground of
+Rationalism.
+
+Christian Science is not a religion of fight, stress and struggle. Isn't
+it better to relax and rest and allow Divinity to flow through us, than
+to sit on a sharp rail and call the passer-by names in falsetto? May
+Irwin's motto, "Don't Argufy," isn't so bad as a working maxim, after
+all.
+
+All Christian denominations are very much alike. Their differences are
+microscopic, and recognized only by those who are immersed in them.
+Martin Luther only softened the expression of the Roman Catholic
+Church--he did not change its essence.
+
+Benjamin Franklin declared that he could not tell the difference between
+a Catholic and an Episcopalian. But Christian Science is a complete
+departure from all other denominations, and while professing to be
+Christian, is really something else, or if it is Christian, then
+orthodoxy is not.
+
+Christian Science strikes right at the root of orthodoxy, since it
+divides the power of Jesus with Mary Baker Eddy and affirms that Jesus
+was not "The Savior," but A Savior.
+
+This is the position of Thomas Paine, and all other good radicals.
+Christian Science places Mrs. Eddy's work right alongside of the Bible.
+No denomination has ever put out a volume stating that the book was
+required in order to make the Bible intelligible. No denomination has
+ever put forth a person as the equal of Jesus. This has only been done
+by unbelievers, atheists and free-thinkers.
+
+Christianity is at last attacked in its own house and by its own
+household. It is thoroughly understood and admitted everywhere that
+there are two kinds of Christianity. One is the kind taught by the
+Nazarene; and the other is the institutional variety, made up of
+denominations which hold millions upon millions of dollars' worth of
+property without taxation, and parade their ritual with rich and costly
+millinery.
+
+The one was lived by a Man who had not where to lay His head; and the
+other is an acquirement taken over from pagan Rome, and continued
+largely in its pagan form even unto this day. Christian Science is
+neither one nor the other, and the obvious pleasantry that it is
+neither Christian nor scientific is a jest in earnest. Christian Science
+is a modern adaptation of all that is best in the simplicity and
+asceticism of Jesus, the commonsense philosophy of Benjamin Franklin,
+the mysticism of Swedenborg, and the bold pronunciamento of Robert
+Ingersoll. It is a religion of affirmation with a denial-of-matter
+attachment.
+
+It is a religion of this world. Jesus was a Man of Sorrows but Mary
+Baker Eddy was a Daughter of Joy.
+
+And as the universal good sense of mankind holds that the best
+preparation for a life to come, if there is one, is to make the best of
+this, Christian Science is meeting with a fast-growing popular
+acceptance.
+
+The decline of the old orthodoxy is owing to its clinging to the fallacy
+that the world's work is base, and Nature is a trickster luring us to
+our doom. Mrs. Eddy reconciled the old idea with the new and made it
+mentally palatable. And this is the reason why Christian Science is
+going to sweep the earth and in twenty years will have but one
+competitor, the Roman Catholic faith.
+
+Orthodoxy, blind, blundering, stubborn, senile, is tottering--the
+undertaker is at the door. Indeed, the old idea of our orthodox friends
+that they were preparing to die, was literally true.
+
+The undertaker's name and business address attached to the front of many
+a city church is a sign too subtle to overlook. Not only was the
+undertaker a partner of the priest, but he is now foreclosing his claim.
+Christian Science is not final. After it has lived its day, another
+religion will follow, and that is the Religion of Commonsense, the
+esoteric religion which Mrs. Eddy herself lived and practised.
+
+As for her believers, she gave them the religion of a Book--two Books,
+the Bible and "Science and Health." They want form and ritual and
+temples.
+
+She gave them these things, just as doctors give sweetened water to
+people who still demand medicine; and as if to supply the zealous
+converts, just out of orthodoxy, their fill of ecclesiastic husks, she
+built fine churches--churches rivaling the far-famed San Salute of
+Venice. Let them have their wish! Paganism is in their blood--they are
+even trying to worship her!
+
+Let them go on and eventually they will pray not in temples nor on this
+or that mountain, but in spirit and in truth, just as did Mrs. Eddy, one
+of the world's most successful women.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Christian Science is orthodox Christianity, minus medical fetish and the
+fear that a belief in sin, sickness, death and eternal punishment
+naturally lends, plus the joy of a natural, healthy, human life. The
+so-called rational Christian sects preserve their Devil in the form of a
+Doctor, and Hell in the shape of a Hospital.
+
+My hope and expectation is that Christian Science will become a Rational
+Religion instead of a one-man institution, or a religion of authority,
+such as it now is. Its superstitious features have doubtless been strong
+factors in its rapid growth--serving as stays or stocks to aid in the
+launching.
+
+But now, the sooner the ship floats free the better. Christian
+Scientists, being men and women, can not continue to grow if fettered
+with an Index Expurgatorius and mandatory edicts and encyclicals. That
+which binds and manacles must go--the good will remain.
+
+Christian Science brings good news, and good news is always curative.
+Mrs. Eddy animated her patients with a new thought--the thought of
+harmony, the denial of disease, and the affirmation that God is good and
+life is beautiful. The animation thus produced is in itself the most
+powerful healing principle known to science. Life is born of love. Joy
+is a prophylactic. Christian Science comes to the "student" as a great
+flood of light. His circulation becomes normal, his muscles relax, the
+nerves rest, digestion acts, elimination takes place--and the person is
+well.
+
+Fear has congested the organs--love, hope and faith place them in an
+attitude so Nature plays through them. The patient is healed. In it
+there is neither mystery nor miracle. It is all very simple.
+
+Let us rid ourselves of a belief in the strange and occult! The
+Christian Science organization is an expediency. It is an intellectual
+crutch. The book is a necessity. It is a scaffolding. Yet he who
+mistakes the scaffolding for the edifice is a specialist in scaffolding.
+
+Truth can never be caught and crystallized in a formula. Also this:
+truth can never be monopolized by an "ite" or an "ist." Eventually the
+label will be eliminated with the scaffolding, and the lumber of ritual
+and rite will have to go.
+
+We will live truth instead of talking about it. Among Christian
+Scientists there are no drunkards, paupers or gamblers. Also, there are
+no sick people. To them sickness is a disgrace.
+
+Orthodox Christians get sick and gratify their sense of approbation by
+receiving pastoral calls and visits from the doctor and neighbors. The
+biblical injunction to visit the sick was never followed by Mrs.
+Eddy--she always decided for herself just what injunctions should be
+waived and what followed.
+
+Those which she did not like she interpreted spiritually or else glided
+over. The biblical statement that man's days are few and full of
+trouble, and also the assertion that man is prone to wickedness as the
+sparks fly upwards, are both very conveniently glossed.
+
+Christian Scientists know the rules of health, just as most people do;
+but what is more, they follow them, thus avoiding the disgrace of being
+pointed out. They have made sickness not only tabu, but invalidism
+ridiculous.
+
+When things become absurd and preposterous, we abandon them.
+Unpopularity can do what logic is helpless to bring about. The reasoning
+of Christian Scientists is bad, but their intuitions are right.
+
+While denying the existence of matter, no people on earth are as canny,
+save possibly the Quakers. A bank-balance to a Christian Scientist is no
+barren ideality. It is like falsehood to a Jesuit--a very present help
+in time of trouble. Sin, to them, consists in making too much fuss about
+life and talking about death. Do what you want and forget it. Quit
+talking about the weather, night air, miasma.
+
+Knowingly or unknowingly Christian Scientists cultivate resiliency. They
+are proof against drafts and microbes. Eat what you like, but not too
+much of it. Be moderate. Christian Scientists get their joy out of their
+work. This is essentially hygienic. They breathe deeply, eat moderately,
+bathe plentifully, work industriously--and smile. This is all sternly
+scientific. It can never be argued down.
+
+No school of medicine has ever offered a prophylactic equal to work and
+good-cheer, and no system of religion has ever offered a working formula
+for health, happiness and success equal to that launched by Mrs. Eddy.
+The science of medicine is a science of palliation.
+
+Christian Scientists avoid the cause of sickness, and thus keep well.
+
+There is no vitality in drugs. Nature cures--obey her. In this matter of
+bodily health just a few plain rules suffice. And these rules, fairly
+followed, soon grow into a pleasurable habit. Fortunately, we do not
+have to oversee our digestion, our circulation, the work of the millions
+of pores that form the skin, or the action of the nerves. Folks who get
+fussy about their digestion and assume personal charge of their nerves
+have "nerves" and are apt to have no digestion.
+
+"I have a pain in my side," said the woman who had no money to the busy
+doctor. "Forget it," was the curt advice. Get the Health Habit, and
+forget it.
+
+This is the quintessence of Christian Science. Your mental attitude
+controls your body. Happiness is your health. There is no devil but
+fear. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SO HERE ENDETH "LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF GREAT TEACHERS," BEING
+VOLUME TEN OF THE SERIES, AS WRITTEN BY ELBERT HUBBARD; EDITED AND
+ARRANGED BY FRED BANN; BORDERS AND INITIALS BY ROYCROFT ARTISTS, AND
+PRODUCED BY THE ROYCROFTERS, AT THEIR SHOPS, WHICH ARE IN EAST AURORA,
+ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK, MCMXXII
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great
+Teachers, by Elbert Hubbard
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