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diff --git a/old/66145-0.txt b/old/66145-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index e2e9d87..0000000 --- a/old/66145-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1333 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Religio Journalistici, by Christopher -Morley - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Religio Journalistici - -Author: Christopher Morley - -Release Date: August 25, 2021 [eBook #66145] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Emmanuel Ackerman, David E. Brown, and the Online - Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This - file was produced from images generously made available by - The Internet Archive) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RELIGIO JOURNALISTICI *** - - - - - -_Religio Journalistici_ - - - - -OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR - - -_Fiction_ - - PARNASSUS ON WHEELS - THE HAUNTED BOOKSHOP - KATHLEEN - TALES FROM A ROLLTOP DESK - WHERE THE BLUE BEGINS - - -_Essays_ - - SHANDYGAFF - MINCE PIE - PIPEFULS - PLUM PUDDING - TRAVELS IN PHILADELPHIA - THE POWDER OF SYMPATHY - INWARD HO! - RELIGIO JOURNALISTICI - - -_Poetry_ - - SONGS FOR A LITTLE HOUSE - THE ROCKING HORSE - HIDE AND SEEK - CHIMNEYSMOKE - TRANSLATIONS FROM THE CHINESE - PARSONS’ PLEASURE - THE BOWLING GREEN - - - - - _Religio Journalistici_ - - _By_ - - _Christopher Morley_ - - [Illustration] - - - _Garden City_ _New York_ - _Doubleday, Page & Company_ - _1924_ - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY - DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY - - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - - COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY THE CENTURY CO. - - PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES - AT - THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. - - _First Edition_ - - - - -_Religio Journalistici_ - - - - -RELIGIO JOURNALISTICI - - - It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall.... - I too knitted the old knot of contrariety, - Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak, - Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant.... - Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these - wanting, - Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly, yet - never told them a word. - --Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” - - The secret thoughts of a man run over all things without shame or - blame; which verbal discourse cannot do farther than the judgment - shall approve of the time, place, and persons.--Hobbes’s “Leviathan.” - - -I was coming home from Buffalo in a train delightfully called “The -Black Diamond.” I had any number of books in my bag, but my lower -instincts were uppermost: I was tired, and pined for the narcosis of -newspapers. I asked the porter, also a black diamond, to see if there -were any lying around. He brought me a great mass of them: Chicago -papers, Buffalo papers, Wilkes-Barre papers. With great happiness I -browsed among their cheerful simplicities. From Wilkes-Barre I learned -that - - Shakespeare’s marvellous plays could never have been written by a - dyspeptic. He ate carefully, sensibly, and had excellent digestion. - -(I had just come back from the dining car when I read that, and -wondered a little sadly if I had been sensible.) - -From Chicago (“The World’s Greatest Newspaper”) I learned, in an -article on “A Perfume to Suit Your Personality,” that - - The vampire had best be sparing in her use of any odour. An oriental - bouquet of jasmine, tube rose, cassie, and civet would enhance the - individuality of the colourful type. For a perfume combination of - this sort when used correctly can create a sensation akin to ecstasy, - bringing to the wearer a feeling of tremendous vitality. - -But in this Chicago paper I found so much to perpend that I never -reached the journals of other cities. I learned in an interview with -Lady Diana Manners (“Pressed for Precious Secrets of Pulchritude, She -Reveals a Surprising Lack of Them”) that - - The life of a newspaper person is not without its recompenses--aside - from the weekly stipend. Sometimes it is a hard life--when, say, you - scratch and pound upon the old dome, pleading, begging its tenant, - Mr. Brain, to give up an idea, and you get in response a loud and - hollow echo convincing you he has left for parts unknown! - -I learned from Chicago that - - The literary life of New York continues to rattle on. And it is a - rather grand life: though a number of writers appear to scratch - an existence from the soil of Greenwich Village and the purlieus - of mean streets, most of the men who write our books live quite - comfortably. One meets them every day--a prosperous crew--who lunch - cosily at the ---- or at the ---- and not infrequently the ----, then - are whisked homeward in shining limousines to put in another hour or - so on the manuscript of a new novel. - -A few days later, filled with pensive, affectionate, and somewhat -irreverent thoughts about the newspaper business, I went uptown to the -offices of a very great New York paper--a paper which, as a gatherer -of news, though it does not claim the “Greatest” phrase, comes a lot -nearer to it than that one in Chicago. A beautiful bronze elevator -lifted me gently to the tenth floor, a beautiful bronze attendant -took my name politely and asked me to wait until my host emerged from -conference. I gazed amazedly into the editorial penetralia, churchly -in aspect, with groined ceiling, panelled alcoves, like pews, and -lead-veined glass. Very handsome young women came strolling from those -shadowy cloisters of opinion. A scholarly-looking young man, with -tortoise spectacles, sat under a reredos of books. If not a curate, -at least a curator. It all came down upon me with crushing force. How -could one chaff this magnificent thing? How could one speak jocularly -of The Press? This was all so terribly real, so unmistakably there. -I remembered my amazement when I first entered the Curtis Building -in Philadelphia. Beside the humble little state house where a nation -was founded rises that gigantic cube of Americanization; in more -senses than one it is the exact spiritual centre of America. Does it -not contain a mosaic glass picture with “over a million pieces”? It -has been told, with the jolliest humour, how several of the world’s -greatest artists were commissioned, one after another, to create a -painting of Plato’s Grove of Academe for that lobby; but they kept on -“passing away” before it was done. There is something most quaintly -American, I believe, in adoring Plato with a vast painting rather than -by listening to what he had to say. At a window on the seventh floor -(I think it was the seventh) might have been seen the strong masculine -face of the fashion editor of the _Ladies’ Home Journal_ gazing out -with a sudden unaccountable nostalgia. The trademarked patroness of the -“L. H. J.,” I remembered, was Pallas Athene. Pallas is right, I said to -myself, studying that building. This _must_ be a home of literature, -the walnut panelling is so fine. This huge bulk, edified from the ribs -of a simple, shrewd, courageous, and strangely wistful little man from -Maine--surely if the Muse were looking for a comfortable lodging, this -is where she would habit? - -Sometimes it is with an effort that one must remind oneself, a thing is -not necessarily wrong because it is so large. - -Well, all that came back to me as I sat waiting in the New York -newspaper office. Painful doubts, too, as to whether what I am anxious -to say is worth attempt. For it is sure to be misconceived. I am not -satirizing anything. These matters are far too serious for mere satire, -which is so agreeably easy. No, I am merely attempting to think. - -I remembered also how, not long before, it strangely befell me to speak -in a large church on a Sunday afternoon. I had not rightly apprehended -the situation beforehand: I found that I should have to mount into -what the cheerful minister called “the high pulpit.” Sitting behind a -thin frondage of palms, and scanning the scene in some frightfulness, -I waited my exposure. It was a beautiful church, and there was a large -and friendly congregation. In one of the front pews there was even a -gentleman with a silk hat. There was music, the thrilling tumult of -the organ, a choir, a soprano soloist with a clear and lovely voice. -There were prayers, and great words were said. And in the same way that -the editorial magnificence of that newspaper office came down upon me -from above, so I felt the whole weight and beauty and tradition of Holy -Church moulding me and subduing my poor little premeditated ardours. -I felt the awful hopelessness of attempting to convey, in those -circumstances, my feeble and futile sense of the love and liberty -of life. I knew then why Christ preached in the open air. And I knew -that the people in those pews, dear friendly people the latchets of -whose minds I was not worthy to unloose, desired me to say what was -in my heart just as keenly as I desired to say it. Yet it could not, -fully, be done. Holy Church was too strong for them as it was for me. -I knew then, even in the small, imperfect way I know things, something -of the whole history of religions. I knew how the majesty and glamour -and noble gravity of institutions and authorities must have lain heavy -on the hearts of schismatics and reformers. It is not that those poor -brave souls did not love the rote they questioned. But the rote must be -kept in its place. I knew then, for the first time, the real dangers of -the pulpit. And yet even that polished wood was once alive, growing -from earth toward sky. - - - - -§2 - - -The world of newspapers and the life of newspaper men are for the -most part vulgar, and therefore delightful. I mean vulgar in its -exact sense: it is a word neither of praise nor blame, both of which -are foreign to philosophy. O thrilling, delicious, childish world! -The other day, from a green glade in the country, I telephoned to a -newspaper office. “City room, please,” I said. The connection was -made, and as the receiver was taken down, I could hear that old -adorable hum, the quick patter of typewriters, voices on the copy desk -tersely discussing the ingenious minutiæ of the job. No man who has -dabbled, ever so amateurishly, in that spirited child’s-play outgrows -its irrational and cursèd charm. Over miles of telephone wire that -drugging hum came back to my ear, that furious and bewildering pulse -of excitement which seems so frantically important and really means -so little. O world so happy, so amusing, so generously emotional, so -exempt from the penalty of thought! World that deals with quaintly -codified and abstracted notions of life! How idle to ask whether -newspapers tell the truth! With truth they have little concern. Their -trade is in facts; like all prosperous tradesmen they are reasonably -conscientious. To belittle newspapers for not telling the truth is as -silly as to regard them as training-ground for literature. Literature -and journalism rarely overlap. - -For the newspaper world, that vast, brightly coloured, contentious, -and phantasmagoric picture of life that it evolves for its readers, is -mostly a spurious world evolved for hurried and ignorant people. It -is a world so happily out of touch with the world of philosophy that -when, on rare occasions, the newspapers get wind of the things that -philosophers habitually and calmly discuss, it causes a terrible to-do -in the headlines. The world of newspaper thinking is almost the last -resort of the truly childish in heart. With princely accuracy is it -called “the newspaper game.” Children are not friendly to philosophy, -nor hostile. They are simply not aware it exists. - -And the game of newspapers, which I greatly love, being at heart no -philosopher, is enormously important. The prevailing temperament of its -players is worth careful study. The mere existence of newspapers is a -proof of the religious instinct among men, that passionate interest in -one another which implies that we are all gossips together. Gossips -are people who have only one relative in common, but that relative the -highest possible; namely, God. There is truly some strange analogy -between church and press. Whether it is the successful newspaper’s -taste for making itself clerical in architecture, or the successful -church’s appetite for front-page controversy; whether it is that they -both make the cruellest and deadliest of enemies if annoyed; whether -it is that the newspaper carries on the medieval church’s lust of -persecution; or that they both mobilize for war sooner than any one -else; or that both are vehicles of great realities, but vehicles so -gorgeously mechanized and ritualed that the passenger has almost been -forgotten--whatever the basis of the analogy may be, I am not sure; but -I feel it to be there. - -Journalism, like every skilled _métier_, tends to become a sort of -priesthood. All such professional groups admit with cynical or humorous -readiness, inside the circle, truths that it is unmannerly to gossip -abroad. But now and then some happy member feels he has absorbed -enough hokum to last him for a reasonable lifetime. He has enjoyed, -perhaps even profited by, the sharp childishness of that way of life. -He escapes for a time, with aspiration to think it over. He wearies of -the tragic ingenuity of men at concealing their real thoughts. There -are no longer any codes of manners to be considered, any possibly -tender readers to be sheltered, any powerful patrons to be placated. Of -course genuinely detached thinking, even if it were possible, is likely -to be discouraged; for detachment is always assumed to be malignant. -But, anyhow, let’s be at least like so many houses in the suburbs, -semi-detached. - -Yes, there is a sort of spring fever of the soul, a seizure when, in -moments of golden tranquil intuition, we see Lucretius’s “coasts of -light.” We would hope to savour, as he bids us, not merely the honey -that is greased round the rim of the cup--the honey of our daily -amusement and distraction--but even the chill purging wormwood of -the draft. Suddenly the quotidian employ, the haggling scruples of -detail, seem strangely insignificant. Languor and lassitude and uneasy -hankering pervade the spirit--an intimation of unearthliness. There is -passion to go seeking “those things that are requisite and necessary.” -In Walt’s noble phrase, “to sign for soul and body.” Then, unashamed of -the hunger and trouble of human spirits, it seems irrelevant either -to chaff or to praise the dear farce of life. One dreams of uttering -only some small granule of broken truth, something more than the jocund -trickery of the press. - -Every philosopher is a humorist who has been squeezed. And the -newspaper man, odd as this may sound, is not the least appropriate -student to pursue the wingy mysteries in divinity. For he is kinspirit -of the parson in this, that church and press are perhaps the two -professions that have most frankly regarded themselves as separate -estates, above and apart from the common man. The priest esteems -himself the vicar of God. The pressman appoints himself vicar of News. -The priest transmits to the congregation as much of God’s doings as he -thinks will be not too embarrassing for them to hear. And the newspaper -man lays bare that portion of the event which he considers the public -will be most anxious to pay for. Both are anthologists. - -For some time I had been saving clippings of newspaper stories about -recent religious controversy. I meant to sit down some evening and read -them through, patiently, to see how much humane sense I could winnow. -But I found I could not force my eyes through them. For the sake of -record, to notify the quaintness of mankind, I copied down a few of the -headlines. “CHRIST HELD DIVINE OR ILLEGITIMATE: Dr. Pettingill Makes -Baptists Gasp by Strong Defense of Virgin Birth.” (New York _World_.) -DR. GUTHRIE FINDS YULE ALL PAGAN: St. Mark’s Rector Says Gift Custom -Was Roman, Mistletoe Celtic and Tree Teutonic. (New York _Times_.) -MODERNISM FOUND HERE MID RITUALS, DOGMA MID GLARE. (New York _Evening -Post_.) DR. GUTHRIE SCENTS CLASHES TO COME. (New York _Times_.) And so -on. I threw the mass of clippings into the fire. - -And yet throughout those naïve burblings the reader felt a strange -mixture of exhilaration and disgust. For the newspapers, with their -unerring instinct, realize that men are keenly and desperately -interested in these matters. Hidden inside that mysterious carcass, -your neighbour, is the universal cry, “I want to be happy!” And with -all their agile and cautious skill at hiding what they really think, -men wildly crave those liberating sorceries (liquor and love and -laughter, perhaps even literature, too) that roll away the stone from -the door of the heart. - -Yet perhaps no man in his senses talks about religion except for the -pleasure of the talk, which is a sufficient human excuse. For the -less we talk about religion, probably, the nearer we come to the heart -of it. By religion we mean, I suppose, our ligatures with an unseen -world--a world not realized, as Wordsworth says in those “Intimations” -that are a whole prayer-book in themselves. There are “high instincts,” -he tells us, before which we tremble “like a guilty thing surprised.” -Our guilt, surely, is that we know ourselves to have been so wearily -and perversely disloyal to that unseen world of beauty and ecstasy; -and our surprise, that when we escape into the honest solitudes of the -mind we find it waiting for us. There is a great saying to the effect -that wherever two or three are gathered together, I shall be among you. -But, alas! it is even more true perhaps (one must not forget a plenty -of perhapses) that wherever two or three are gathered together, there -I am _not_. Human meeting introduces awkwardly human difficulties and -embarrassments. It introduces, for instance, vanity and humility, -both awkward encumbrances to truth. Is there a man who does not know, -sorrowfully, that he is much “better company” when he is alone? As -old Doctor Donne found in the absence of his mistress, there is a -“close corner of the brain” where the purest and loveliest embraces -are possible. Of all mistresses, the fairest and the farthest away is -Truth. God is known, if at all, in solitude. - - - - -§3 - - -The theological bickerings of our time and their “tincture of choler,” -as Hobbes would say, are due perhaps to the uneven progress of a great -shift in the human notion of God. The primitive imagination of Deity -is often of a gigantic omnipotent and omnipresent personality. Then, -later, men come to think of God as a kind of force or law, or a harmony -among infinite laws and forces. This process of magnifying God from -a person to a “far-off Divine Event” proceeds unevenly, as do all -ideas. And there is no squabbling so violent as that between people -who accepted an idea yesterday and those who will accept the same idea -to-morrow. More important than the novelty of ideas is the differential -in the rate at which people accept them. Or it might even be put the -other way round--the rate at which ideas accept people as vehicles. An -idea often hops into a person and uses him, more or less as we hop into -taxicabs. Bernard Shaw remarked, not unwisely, that his “Irrational -Knot” was a first try (on the part of “the Life Force”) to get the -theme of “A Doll’s House” written in English. - -Robinson Crusoe’s religion was merely a calculus of personal benefit. -When he found that the seeds he threw away had sprouted and come up, -he suddenly remembered the goodness of God. But gradually men tend to -rise sufficiently above their own pangs and pleasures to relish the -conception of a vaster God--a God who does not even know that we exist. -There are still, astounding as it seems, actual and living parsons who -tell us that the Museum of Natural History is an affront to the Deity. -Their simplicity is as delightful as that of Edmund Gosse’s father (if -you remember that great book, “Father and Son”). The rock that his -reason split upon was the problem whether Adam and Eve, created _de -novo_, had navels. There are others who find in the spider webs and -redwood rings of the museum a powerful impulse to wonder and praise. At -any rate, this process of magnifying God from an invisible bishop of -friable temper to a universal phantom of legality is what Thomas Hardy -had in mind when he urged “the abandonment of the masculine pronoun in -allusions to the Fundamental Energy.” Nor, on consideration, do we find -the masculine pronoun a symbol of such benevolent majesty that it need -much longer be retained as spokesman for Deity. It is necessary for man -to know, as astronomers do, the inconceivable minuteness of himself and -his affairs. - -Yet, knowing his unimportance, it is equally urgent for man to act -as though his business were momentous. For the whole intellectual -life is based upon paradox and dainty artifice. And here we encounter -some fundamental characteristics of human behaviour which are highly -interesting. - -First of all, man is orderly. Finding himself in a grotesquely -complicated universe, he hastily tries to reduce what he sees to some -general principles. He concocts helpful formulæ, rules of thumb, -mnemonic rhymes, all sorts of proverbs, to simplify matters. There -has been a rather absurd eagerness on the part of the newspapers to -reproach the church for its adherence to formalism. But man is a -formula-bearing animal. And I doubt if the most rigid bishop who ever -lived was more at the mercy of ritual and formulated ways of expression -than the average city editor. An incident may be as interesting as you -please, but unless it fits into his carefully ratiocinated scheme -of what constitutes a “story” and how it should be “played,” it gets -little attention. I have mentioned the Museum of Natural History; -let’s take it again as an illustration. I took there a small girl -four years old. At first she was appalled and horrified by the things -she saw. Live animals, at the zoo, she was familiar with. But these -so genuine-looking and yet motionless creatures, plausible enough -in their synthetic facsimile surroundings, yet with a gruesome air -of not-quite-rightness--she was badly puzzled. They fitted into no -preconceived frame in her small mind. - -“Are they real, Daddy?” she inquired. - -“They were once real, and now are stuffed,” I said. - -Her eager mind leaped at this. Here was a happy little formula. And at -every succeeding specimen, whether a wolf or a puma or a walrus or a -whale, with monotonous insistence she asked, “Is it real and stuffed?” -To which I replied, each time, with patient repetition, “Yes, real and -stuffed.” It satisfied her perfectly until we came to the figures of -Indians and Eskimos. Here a new formula had to be devised, that they -were “Not real, but made to look like it.” These trifling statements -made the museum, for her, a rational and not too terrifying place. - -Once in a while, if you are fond of self-scrutiny, you will catch -yourself in the very act of creating or parroting some useful formula. -Formulæ swarm in the mind just as birds do in an orchard. And though -they destroy some fruit, they also help to exterminate lesser vermin -which might do much harm. For the most part we are all mercifully -unaware of our dependence on them. - -Secondly, then, once formulæ are made, another subtle trick of the mind -enters into function. Man’s sovereign faculty of pretense works upon -them. He persuades himself that these little rites and short-cuts are -not really made by himself, but that they are sacred. Man’s capacity -for pretense, I dare say, has been the only thing that has kept him -going in a rough, bruising world. He has found, throughout history, -that the percolation of certain fictions into affairs made order and -government more easy. Indeed the number of generally accepted fictions -in currency is not such a bad test of civilization: the more such -harmless pretenses, the pleasanter life is. The divine right of kings -was one great fiction that had a long serial career and gradually -tapered off. Oliver Cromwell “Garred kings ken they had a lith in -their necks”; the Prince of Wales’s horses seem to have suggested the -same thing. That adorable old shrew, Thomas Hobbes, whose wise and -racy survey of human foibles might almost have made any subsequent -palaver unnecessary, had people patience to read “Leviathan” nowadays, -is copious in instance of men’s love of standing “in awe of their own -imaginations.” We are all quick to believe anything, he remarks, from -teachers who can “with gentleness and dexterity take hold of our fear -and ignorance.” Whereas any truth, no matter how rationally arrived at, -that counters our passion and interest, we naturally reject. “I doubt -not but,” says the darling old cynic, “if it had been a thing contrary -to any man’s right of dominion that the three angles of a triangle -should be equal to two angles of a square, that doctrine should have -been, if not disputed, yet by the burning of all books of geometry, -suppressed.” - -Master Hobbes is very jolly, too, on a matter that has interested -every thoughtful observer since civilization began--that religion is -always heartily favoured by prosperous people. Obviously; for it is -a stabilizing force. I was greatly struck, approaching Pittsburgh on -the train, passing through a black, cindered region where life must -lack many of its most harmless pleasures, to notice the astounding -number of churches. These, surely, are not there without some sound -social reason. There are three prime consolations known to man in the -difficulty of his life, God, love, and money. Of any two of these you -may deprive him without hearing much grumble, provided he has plenty -of the third. But if he lacks all three, there is sure to be trouble. - -I have often noticed, in burning a pile of dead leaves, that the -mass that seems burned through will, if turned over with the rake, -burst into fresh flame. Down under the mound, smothered by weight and -closeness, were many fragments that needed only air and freedom to -burst into golden blaze. Perhaps it is so with any industrial society. -To turn it top to bottom now and then would liberate brilliant human -combustions that now lie choked. It is a dangerous doctrine, but so are -all doctrines that are any fun. It is a thoroughly Christian doctrine, -too. - -Before we leave the topic of human relish in pretense, let’s mention -one very innocent and amusing example. One of the gay hilarities of -existence is the way the current social pretenses shift and vary -and move in recurring orbits. The négligé of one period becomes the -_haut ton_ of the next. A few years ago, during a very severe winter, -it became the mode for young women to go trapesing about in galoshes -which were left floppingly unbuckled. What, then, do we see? A year or -so later galoshes are put on the market, very cunningly devised with -drooping webbed tops to _look_ as though they were carelessly left -undone. These at once became, particularly in rustic high schools, -excellently _de rigueur_. It was a daintily accurate exposition of our -human taste for illusion. - -And the third fundamental characteristic that I am thinking of is our -universal liability to habit. This is too familiar for comment. Take -merely one instance which has pleasing analogies. Suppose you go to a -small haberdasher to buy a pair of socks. In payment, you give him a -five-dollar gold piece. As he makes change, he is obscurely troubled. -He will ask if you haven’t a bill instead. He doesn’t relish that coin, -because he isn’t used to it. Yet, if I understand correctly, gold is -the only genuine money there is; all the other stuff is merely money -by convention. And how beautifully valid in regard to truth as well. -Half-truths to which men are accustomed are so much easier to pass than -the golden mintage they rarely encounter! What was it Mr. Don Marquis -has remarked: “If you make people think they think, they’ll love you. -If you really make them think, they’ll hate you.” - - - - -§4 - - -Certainly these three coercive factors, and many others, too, bear -strangely upon all our attempts to think. The beauty and the happiness -of religion, perhaps, lie in the fact that it has little to do -with thinking. As far as any man knows, up to now, the universe is -insoluble; and the mind, ardent particle, rather resents insolubility. -It resents the solemn circling of the Dipper, seen from the front -porch every clear night. Filling itself with slow darkness, gently -tilting and draining again, it too cruelly reminds us of the orderly -immensities of space. And religion may very well be considered a form -of art and of anesthetic to soften the onset of that insolvency. It -is reason’s petition in bankruptcy, “to drown the memory of that -insolence.” If it makes us happy, we need inquire no further; for -happiness is what all pursue. Perhaps, indeed, we are but memoranda -in the note-book of the cosmic Author, jottings of some story that -flashed into His mind one day, but which He did not trouble to write. -So we are hunting, hunting endlessly for the rest of the plot. Or we -are surf-bathers in an ocean where one step carries us beyond our -depth. Accept any figure of speech that appeals to you. No work of art -or literature yet, so far as I know, has given an adequate presentment -of the glory and agony and mirth and excitement of being alive. Suppose -some visitor from another planet dropped in for an evening and could -communicate his inquisition. We wanted to give him just one book that -would offer a picture, trustworthy, frank, recognizable, of the life -we have known--man’s long campaign with nature, with other men, with -woman, with himself. Some suggest “Candide,” but I find that great -book too pitiless. Some, Browne’s “Religio Medici,” but is it not too -witty? We might, in a hasty ransack of the shelves, linger momently -upon Boswell or Walt Whitman or Shakespere’s Sonnets or “Moby Dick”; or -upon the Book of Common Prayer or a photograph of Gozzoli’s “Viaggio -dei Re Magi.” But not even these would duly serve. It would have to be -an anthology, I fear; perhaps Robert Bridges’s “Spirit of Man,” though -it should really have a stouter infusion of the seventeenth century, -when God-intoxicated and Eros-maddened poets like John Donne and Andrew -Marvell uttered their ecstatic and magnanimous despair. - -And that brings us to another cusp in this only too risible indent upon -the infinite. Religion is an attempt, a noble attempt, to suggest in -human terms more-than-human realities. The seat of Peter has always -lain beyond the Alps. The church, like the poet, is an ambassador from -abroad; from the strangest of countries, that lying within our own -bosoms. And what is the virtue of an ambassador? Surely, tact. The -one thing that makes ambassadors useless or dangerous is too great a -zest to blurt out truths that many of us know, but have agreed not -to emphasize. He thinks in the language of his homeland; he must -speak--though always, we trust, with winningly foreign accent--the -tongue to which he is accredited. The ambassador knows, better than -any other, that truth is condiment, not diet. It is rough manners to -shove truth at people when they are not expecting it. There is always -charming significance in popular phrases. “The dreadful truth” is such -a one. Truth is always dreaded, not so much because it is gruesome or -tragic, but because it is so often absurd. - -The church, then, comes before us as envoy from the world of spirit to -the world of flesh; and here is the anomaly, that only too probably -these worlds have small interest in common. So is our envoy but -demi-potentiary. In medieval time the problem was simple; flesh and -spirit were assumed to be deadly enemies one of the other. But nowadays -we lean toward a casuistry far more perplexed; that body is soul’s -noblest ally, that whatever makes flesh satiate and merry is so much -gain for soul. Blithe, ruddy doctrine! Yet, sadly enough, it is even -possible that truth is neither Trojan nor avoirdupois. Flesh and spirit -sometimes look terribly incommensurable. Saint Paul did not fully plumb -the real tragedy of the situation. The most bitter wisdom of the human -voice is the very opposite of Paul’s cry. Transpose it so: _Video -deteriora proboque, meliora sequor._ - -Body and soul, tied together back to back, see different realms of -sky. And the innermost capsule of mind, that very I of very I, though -wretchedly at the mercy of pains and lusts, is yet also oddly detached. -Sitting in the dentist’s chair, the innermost self says: “Here we are. -This is terrible. Now he is going to hurt me. Is it the essential me -he is going to hurt, or is it just the make-believe me?” But when the -pang comes, then truly for an instant all me’s whatsoever coalesce into -one indignant craven whole. Yet even in that horrid shudder I think -we are obscurely aware that it is not our essence that surrenders. -That volatile quiddity has retreated in disgust, loath to attend the -deplorable scene. He is as cheerfully regardless of body as is the -tenant of a house he has merely rented, and for rather less than value. -He is, perhaps, not unlike the fire on the hearth, the brightness and -warm centre of the home, yet caring nought for your cherished odds and -ends. What’s Hecuba to him? Given a chance, that same domestic ember -would devour the whole building; and is no different, in essence, from -the roaring streamers that once ran wild in Baltimore and San Francisco. - -I knew a lovely and thoughtful woman who, with a few other adepts, -used to do graceful figure-skating on the far side of a college -skating-pond. There, in a quiet little cove of clear ice, apart from -the crowd and the rhythmic, hollow undersong of the whole vibrating -lake, this little group swung and twirled. I can see her small slender -figure, her bright cheek, the lovely float and spread of her skirt as -she curved and poised in that steely waltzing. College students and -wild hockey berserks and miscellaneous small fry scuttled and careered -about; now and then a rubber puck would skim across the ice, and like a -pack of hounds the barbarian rout would sweep upon that tranquil shore -of the pond. For a moment the pensive skaters would be blotted out by -swirling movement--clattering sticks, ringing skates, noisy shouts. -Then the rabble would whirl away. The fancy skaters would be seen -again; and that lonely figure, swinging, leaning in airy curves, aware -of it all with thoughtful eyes a little sparked with annoyance, aloof -from the turmoil, yet not unkindly so. - -Not otherwise, perhaps, our hidden capsule of identity is a solitary -skater. The wild rush of emotions, desires, passions, timidities, -comes tearing across the pond; lonely Diana is hidden, even shouldered -off her lagoon of clear crystal. But then they go racketing away. The -pirouette begins again, and the soul is happy with her own concerns. - -What language, then, is our ambassador to utter, dealing with two -worlds appallingly incongruous? Is it strange if, like the rest of us, -he falls back upon prudential and cheery approximations? That witty -writer Stella Benson mentions in one of her novels (“The Poor Man”) -a character who “knew too well the difficulties and dangers of being -alive to despise those who sought for safety in tremulous platitudes.” - - - - -§5 - - -Speaking of ambassadors there was one in the sixteenth century who told -the following story: - - At Constantinople I saw an Old Man, who, after he had taken a Cup - of Wine in his Hand to Drink, us’d first to make a hideous Noise; I - asked his Friends, Why he did so? They answered me, that, by this - Outcry, he did, as it were, warn his Soul to retire to some secret - Corner of his Body, or else, wholly to Emigrate, and pass out of it, - that it might not be guilty of that Sin which he was about to Commit, - nor be defiled with the Wine that he was about to guzzle down. - -This humorous ancient was not unlike the modern newspaper man. The -hideous noise of the press, its conscience-annulling haste, its sense -of power and almost uncontradictable certainty,[A] are what he employs -to warn his soul, his reason, not to look over his shoulder while he is -at work. The fact is that the whole ingenious mechanism of a newspaper -is so automatically conjointed and revolves so rapidly that by sheer -fury and speed of movement it takes on a kind of synthetic life of its -own. It could well be imagined thundering round and round of its own -accord in a great jovial, shouting stupor. A leading editorial, tearing -passions to tatters, could arise by spontaneous combustion, exhaling -itself somehow from the general uproar and joy. Virgin birth would be -no miracle in a newspaper office: I have seen, and myself committed, -editorial matter whose parent had never been approached by any siring -intelligence. - -Or, in the case of the reporter, painfully trained in a generous human -skepticism, enforced student of the way people behave and the way -things happen, alert to discern the overtones of irony and pathos in -the event, you might expect him to be the least credulous of beings. -If so, the general flavour of the press little represents him. He -acquiesces, consciously or unconsciously, in the fact that in all but -a few really intelligent journals the news columns are edited down -to the level of the proprietor’s intelligence, or what the active -managers imagine to be the proprietor’s taste. Not in facts, but in -the tone adopted in setting out those facts. An Index Expurgatorius -is issued for office guidance, lists made of words and phrases not -to be mentioned in news stories. The more essentially vulgar a paper -is, the more cautious it will be not to use words the managing editor -believes dirty. “Obscene,” for example, is deleted, and the truly -disgusting word “spicy” is substituted. And the reporter himself -having acquiesced, it is not unnatural that the readers of the paper -do also. The great majority of them, tippling their customary sheet -day after day with the regularity of dram-fiends, are so indurated -to the grotesque psychology of the more popular news columns that to -find a paper habitually speaking recognizable moderate sense would -afflict them with a warmth of indecency and dismay. The daily journals -give them the same pleasure that the serial parts of Dickens’s novels -gave the early Victorians eighty and ninety years ago. So we have the -agreeable paradox that these papers we see all round us, roaring their -naïvetés and scandals, are written and compiled by those who are, as -individuals, studious, serene, and gently acetic skeptics. - -It is an entertaining thought. If it is true, I believe it is due -to what I think of as the carburetor-adjustment of the human mind, a -delicate, unconscious, and continuous process. It pleases me to imagine -that in the intellect there is a valve that regulates the mixture of -truth and convention that we utter, just as gasolene and heated air are -mixed and vaporized in the carburetor of an engine. Whenever we meet -any one, or at any rate any stranger, we are likely to be on our guard. -We have our own little private reservoir of sincerity, but we don’t -intend to draw on it too largely until we know we are safe. There are -some people, as you must have noticed, to whom it is almost impossible -to say a word of what you really believe. Accordingly, automatically -and almost unconsciously, we make a mental adjustment of our “mixture.” -We admit into it just as much truth as we believe the other is likely -to relish, or willing to receive. But we may have made a bad guess. -The conversation begins to back-fire. That means the mixture is too -“lean.” Very well; pull out the choke, enrich it with more candour, -all goes delightfully. Too “rich” a mixture, however, is, every -mechanician knows, as bad as too “lean.” The mind gets crusted with -carbon--unassimilated truth. The analogy seems to me highly applicable, -even down to the infusion of what used to be called, in a bygone slang, -“hot air.” Through this needle-valve, for the most part unconsciously, -we regulate our mental ignition. - -All this, as you shall see presently, has its just bearing on our -topic of religion. We need, but are little likely to get, a new -“Areopagitica” to liberate our press from its cheery bondage of -vulgarity and slip-slop thinking. The newspaper man who has pride in -his honourable tradition may well feel grim to see the things he has -sweat for trafficked across counters like bundles of merchandise; yes, -and to see the transaction applauded by eminent statesmen and divines -who feel the need of a front-page quote. A little pride is desirable -now and then; yes, in God’s name, a little pride, gentlemen. We who -have lived, as best we could, for the decency of letters; who have -vigiled with Chaucer and taken wine with Descartes and changed opinion -with Doctor Johnson, are we to be hired to and fro by the genial -hucksters who know the art of print chiefly as a rapid factory for -gaily tinted palaver? - -In his tight place, beset by doubts just as acute as those of the young -theologian, our newspaper man ratiocinates upon the quaint processes -of mind. He broods on the haphazard, interest-tainted, and fallible -nature of most mortal opinion. He studies the relativity of truth -and the proliferation of rumour. He notes how every event is like a -stone cast into a pond; it ejaculates concentric vibrations, widening -loops of hearsay. Varying layers or rings of truth are available for -different classes of bystanders, or bythinkers. How well he knows the -queer fact that you can say, unrebuked, in a weekly what would never -pass in a daily! You can say still more in a monthly; in a quarterly -review almost all the beans can be decanted. And in a book, quite often -you can print your surmises in full. Of course, to tell exactly what -happens, as Pepys did, it is best to be dead. (How odd is the saying, -“Dead men tell no tales.” Why, they tell the best tales of all.) It -does sometimes seem as though the more immediate readers there are for -any bit of print, the less candour can be rationed out for each.[B] - -So every human being stands at the centre of a little eddy or whirl -of testimony. If one could make a map or editor’s projection of him -considered as a news item--it would be as complicated as an ocean chart -with festoons of barographs and isotherms, curves and twists and arrows -indicating set of currents, prevailing winds, soundings. On such a -chart, we would denote here a cyclone of scandal, there a hot monsoon -of misappreciation, yonder a steady trade-wind of generous sympathy. -In an ocean so various we should find our victim leading a thousand -different phantom lives in the opinion of others. If you begin to think -about this sort of thing, the asylum waits; for truly, confronted by -the alternating delights and possibilities of life, the mind is not -unlike that chameleon that went mad when tethered on a Paisley shawl. - -The newspaper man, then, begins to feel perhaps that it is necessary -for him to undertake the burden of fidelity to human realities--that -burden that is often so lightly shrugged off by bishops. Looking at -things in the large, or trying to, he strongly suspects that formal -religion, as we have known it, is dying; lovelier and greater poetries -are pushing in. (There are thousands of years still to come, you -know.) The highest honour that he can pay to sacred matters is to -regard them as so thrillingly actual that they can be accepted into -the great general body of human life. To regard them, indeed, as news, -as the word Gospel itself suggests. It would seem fairly obvious that -the miracles and parables of the New Testament, like the various -creeds themselves, were intended as vivid and stunning apologues. -To batter them down to the level of facts seems to degrade them, as -it would be degrading to reject Keats’s sonnet because there are no -peaks in the isthmus of Darien, and because it wasn’t Cortes. The -newspaper man prefers to take his stand with Tolstoy, who said, in -that thrilling book “A Confession”: “I wish to understand in such -a way that everything that is inexplicable shall present itself to -me as _necessarily_ inexplicable.” He prefers that when there is -an available and mortally recognizable way of understanding things, -they should so be understood. Take, for example, the story of the -miracle at Cana. To a man trained to observe the delightful ways -in which testimony arises and is transmitted, how does that story -explain itself? Here is a wedding party, at which appears the amazing -stranger. He seems a man more fascinating, more charming, more utterly -delightful, than any that those country folk have ever encountered. -They are all very merry, the toasts go round, the wine runs short. But -the ruler of the feast, turning to the stranger, says, prettily enough, -I think, “With _you_ here, water is as good as wine.” Some one else -takes it up, echoing the sentiment, seeking to add to it. “Right!” he -cries. “Our friend here makes the water into wine. Here’s to you!” And -with friendly applause the gathering ratifies the compliment. One of -the servants overhears, and carries the incident into the kitchen. How -quickly it grows and passes down the village street! “They’ve got some -one in there who’s turning water into wine!” Can it be denied that this -is the way that human events are reported? - -Let us take an example of a miracle-germ in our own time. When Horace -Traubel, faithful and simple-minded disciple of Walt Whitman, died in -September, 1919, his body was taken to the Community Church, at Park -Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street, New York, for the funeral service. -But when the body reached the church, the little company of mourners -could not enter; the building had suddenly caught fire. Imagine this -episode handed down through generations of simple people by word of -mouth. The intimate disciple of a great poet, both of them impatient -of the genteel religions, is borne dead to a sacred edifice. It bursts -into flame. Would that not be taken as some authentic Pentecost, and -at the very least as a proof of Walt’s divinity? Yet we know well -enough that the event was no miracle, but rather what Hobbes called “an -extraordinary felicity.” - -There is one more Biblical passage I should like to refer to, one that -has often been considered a knotty saying. It is the parable of the -talents and the unprofitable servant. I like to conceive Deity in the -guise of that hard master who wanted his own with usury. “Well,” I can -imagine God saying to the newly dead, “what did you think of that world -I gave you?” “Not so bad, on the whole,” replies the embarrassed soul. -“What!” cries God. “Simpleton, do you mean to say you took it as you -found it, accepted it, swallowed it down without question? Depart from -me, unprofitable servant! You were supposed to remould it nearer to -your heart’s desire, to create out of my materials a new world of your -own.” - -Old Doctor Jewett said to Margot Asquith, “You must believe in God -in spite of what the clergy say.” And truly I don’t think that any -man who has worked in downtown New York can be much of an atheist. In -that great jungle of violent life, under the glittering spires of such -steep cathedrals, he must inevitably be a trifle mad. Even Manhattan, -supposed to be most material of cities, is best known for the fantastic -figure she cuts against the sky. The loveliest picture I ever saw of -her profile was a photograph given me by an amateur lensman who caught -it by accident. It shows that uneven scarp of buildings in soft masses -of dark and shadow, looming on a queerly pebbled and fuscous twilight, -like an eclipse. And this, as my astonished friend learned from his -film-dealer, was an accident, due to mildew on the gelatin. So some -of the most lovely visions of reality are printed on minds that are -mildewed. The madman and the nincompoop often see more beauty than -the sane and solid cit. The only possible suggestion that one might -humbly venture to offer to the authoritative officers of Holy Church -is that they are too sane and too businesslike. They ask us to believe -not things that are too hard, but too easy. They are too eager to lock -the stable door after the Messiah has been stolen. They have learned -the tricks of our world of flesh so glibly that they seem sometimes to -forget the manners of that world of spirit they are commissioned to -represent. - -For the world is fascinating and painful beyond human power of -testimony. The best of every life is unprintable. If one were given -five minutes’ warning before sudden death, five minutes to say what -it had all meant to us, every telephone-booth would be occupied by -people trying to call up other people to stammer that they loved them. -You would want to tell a whole lot of people that you love them, but -had been too clumsy and too shy to admit it. And the newspaper man -himself, who both loves and hates his queer trade, would be the first -to remember that one always is severest with what one adores. Every -movement is set in some strange turning of wonder. As a man will -suddenly discover in himself some miserable petty trick of behaviour -which, he painfully realizes, is a true microcosm and characteristic -of his life as a whole, so now and then with the world at large. We -are aware of lights and shadows and moments of millennium that seem -a part of some vast consistency. You know the thrill of a letter or -parcel that comes from some one you are fond of, far away. As you -undo the string, you say, foolishly, but with a genuine quaver of -sentiment, “When that was tied up, So-and-so handled it!” Well, there -are instants of preposterous happiness, clear insight, that are just -like that--little packages of reality, tied up in the twine of our time -sense, that come to us direct, intact, from the eternity and infinity -we call God. It matters little how you explain that great word to -yourself. Perhaps you mean by it the sum total of all human awarenesses -of beauty. In that sense of prevailing loveliness we are all obscurely -united. In those moments, moments of heavenly farce and unredeemable -tragedy, we can forgive ourselves for being only human. - -But in these matters silence is the final eloquence. One does not -argue with moonlight. Men talk of “finding God,” but no wonder it is -difficult; He is hidden in that darkest of hiding-places, your own -heart. You yourself are a part of Him. The chief danger is to be too -prosaic. Any one who has ever done proof-reading knows the delicious -fidelity and strict zeal and maddening literalness with which the -professional corrector marks a galley-proof. How he construes the text -according to his own rote and rigid scheme; how he resents any unusual -use of words; how he is so busy querying things that look odd to him -that he misses many of the downright errors. That is precisely the -attitude of man toward the universe, which he is so daringly anxious to -interpret in some comforting sense. The journalist, whatever his sins -and stupidities, would hope to enjoy the text of life in the spirit of -a collaborating author rather than presume to correct it. And he will -not do any great poet, such as Christ, the dishonour of taking him too -literally. - -We cannot hope until we have learned to despair. Let me remind you of -some great lines by Andrew Marvell: - - My love is of a birth as rare - As ’tis for object strange and high: - It was begotten by Despair - Upon Impossibility. - - As lines, so loves oblique, may well - Themselves in every angle greet: - But ours, so truly parallel, - Though infinite, can never meet. - - -THE END - - - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[A] Mr. C. E. Montague writes as follows of the origin of his novel -_A Hind Let Loose_, a witty satire of newspaper life: “It arose from -much study--in the course of my daily work--of the editorial articles -of the best-reputed English papers. I found that they consisted, -to a wonderfully large percentage, of certain stock expressions of -positiveness, dislike and contempt. These, I noticed, were so general -that they constantly recurred in all sorts of discussions on various -subjects, and the fancy took me that their use could be carried further -and further until all reference to any particular topic vanished and -nothing but quite general positiveness remained, the Olympian mentality -and temper just going on asserting themselves for assertion’s sake.” - -[B] There is a very able book called _The Gospel According to Judas_, -written by a professor at a Western college, which has circulated -in MS. among publishers for ten years, without yet finding one who -is willing to take a chance on its very remarkable wit and uniquely -original conception of the New Testament story. I have often wondered -whether it will ever get printed. - - - - -TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: - - - Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. - - Obvious typographical errors have been standardized. - - Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RELIGIO JOURNALISTICI *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. 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