Chapter VII: Part 7

I once talked with a discouraged, or let us say pessimistic, humanitarian, the twenty best years of whose life had been devoted to corrective and ameliorative work among dependents and defectives, young and old, criminals, the physically undermined and the insane. This man had worked to have various laws passed in various States which would tend to lessen the brutality of their treatment and also to bring about some method whereby their self-reproduction would be painlessly stopped. His idea, after twenty years of experimenting, was that the processes by which the criminal and defectives generally were being gathered and governed and improved, however laudable in theory, was destined to eventually prove economically impossible and so shirked. The tares were too many, too elusive, too expensive to gather and govern. “The thing can’t be done,” I remember his saying. “As society is at present governed or constituted something which is by no means humanitarian or ideal prevails, and in spite of the best intentions of idealists or philanthropists you have the enormous toll of inefficiency and nepotism to contend with. Always the old Adam breaks loose somewhere, and by the time you have investigated and reinvestigated and built institutions and passed laws and elected officials the thing becomes a social and financial burden beyond reckoning--lost,” he added, “in abstrusities and bad management. Politicians juggle with it, and newer reformers or reactionaries undo what you have done. Besides,” he concluded, “normal, healthy men and women do not appear to be able to concern themselves with the day-to-day variations and aberrations of dependent defectives and criminal types. You have the spectacle then of official and even medical neglect, brutality, rotten meat being served to criminals or those detained or cared for--in short, all the horrors that spring from some curious opposition in Nature to anything which is not able to take care of itself. Her plan apparently is to let them die. I tell you that the law of the survival of the strongest cannot be set aside. Any attempt to do so merely begets a vast tangle of effort and expense which results in the final operation of that law anyhow.”

My own observations of the working of various plans and theories calculated to improve or “save” mankind coincide with this and suggest to me the conclusion that there is, on the one hand, inherent in the chemic impulses and appetites of life (which man does not create), an instinct toward individuality which may be for good or for ill, plus, on the other hand, this law of balance or equation but over which neither the humanitarian nor the idealist, any more than the criminal or indifferent or self-seeking realist, has any control whatever. If this were not true there would be no explaining such strange social developments as the lusts of certain individuals, the vast animal hungers and abnormalities which seem to contradict any possibility of an exact social equation. While the ascetic passions and self-sacrifice of such men as St. Francis, Jesus, Buddha and the like may belie an entirely material or animal interpretation of this very material scene, the more material one of an Alexander VI., a Medici, a Morgan and a Gould do suggest that an equation or balance between the types is holding in Nature. Men do fight and die for idealistic or moral beliefs just as plainly as they do for material ends. This would indicate, as I said before, a desire for rough balance or equilibrium in Nature between the starkest extremes of its creative impulses--equation, equation. Nothing more nor less.

But a God directing and calling?

Oh, no; not that necessarily, but a condition in Nature itself perhaps which will not permit it to move save by a process of checks and balances--variety in unity, and vice versa.

If one takes no more varied types than Christ and Nero, or Alexander VI. and St. Francis, one sees how plain this is, in so far as our earthly state is concerned. God, or Nature, or Life, permits both, creates both. In these examples one sees how the impulses of the flesh always vary and how difficult it is, where millions outrival these in secret tendencies and impulses, to suggest a working harmony; and yet there is a harmony and they do harmonize, or, by triturating the one the other maintain a working balance, the tendencies of the one being offset by those of the other, and vice versa.

No less latitude, perhaps, could or would serve in a world or a universe which breeds individuals by quadrillions, momentarily perhaps, and which conceals or contains forces of whose impulses, emotions, necessities we know nothing, and so equation is and can be the only answer. What can we know, for instance, of the impulses or morals of the Sun, whose heat apparently breeds all forms of life we know here, horrific and otherwise? And yet we also know that heat is balanced by cold in the universe; light by no light; matter by force; tenderness by savagery; lust by asceticism; love by hate; and so on _ad infinitum_. No thing is fixed. All tendencies are permitted apparently. Only a balance is maintained.

The thing which the evolutionist has discovered and put forward with considerable enthusiasm is this: that life in every form has tended to evolve from the simple to the complex, and only through a vast complexity or organization has it managed to attain this spectacle of things which we call life or beauty--division of itself, as it were. The complexity of the individual thing which we call a tree or a flower or an animal, or, if you please, a social state (and indeed those more or less abstruse things which we know as arts and sciences), are but a further evolution of the complexity of the world machine, and life has brought them about and apparently saved them to the world, possibly for the purpose of partial self-expression. At the same time there has always been involved in this process the law of the survival of the strongest or temporarily and accidentally most favored, a process which the humanitarians are never prone to accept because it belies the theory of saving anything except by a compensative condition of slaughter and neglect of other things less strong--or, as the phrase has it, unfit things. In the theory of the religionist and the moralist the horrific processes that work in the sea and the jungle, and other unsocialized and enigmatic phases of imminent life, are entirely outside the scheme of a just and merciful God or Creator, not countenanced by Him! When His will is known and His suggestions are obeyed, these will be overcome and disappear! Well, this may be true, only it does not appear from any material or mental examination of the scene.

Even now, as we talk of sweeter and less avid processes which might be brought into play by a superior power, life is maintaining its ancient balance of evil and good, or extremities of one kind balanced against extremities of another. Even now, under the very noses of the religionists and the moralists, these processes are at work and show no sign of being abated. For every neighborhood of taste and comfort, witness the vast areas of poverty, poor taste, neglect, dull thought, inefficiency. For every comfortable man a lean one, or many. For every mind of the first order a million of a weaker, fumbling character. For every tender, Christ-like soul how many of another kind--avid, selfish, cruel, hideous almost! Are the poor governed by the rich--and well? Do the shrewd rule the ignorant, and to their advantage? Do the strong control the weak, and to their advantage? Are the inefficient well or badly housed, well or badly nourished, neglected, left to stew in their own juice of misery and live and die as best they can, or are they looked after, as the religionist and moralist suggest and hope for? Only the dull or dishonest among the moralists and religionists can, it seems to me, fail to perceive or dare deny what even the dull or the ignorant now being trampled upon do already vaguely perceive and understand.

And yet behold! the song of ultimate perfection continues yearly, from century to century, to be sung. The Divine, far-off event (which, if anything, is Nirvana) is surely coming. A sweeter and less avid process will be brought into play. Man is to be saved from hunger, cold, thirst, lust, undue material ambition, by telling him how horrible they are and asking him to be kind. Well, he may make a comfortable social organization for himself here on earth, but that will by no means prove that the universe or God is moral. For, behold--man himself is superimposed upon other forms of life, a ruthless Lord or devil to them, and thrives only by their destruction. Do you suppose the ox, the hog, the horse, the fish, or any of the multitude of creatures man slays or enslaves in order that he may be comfortable and spiritually at rest, could be made to look upon him as tender, merciful, a creature necessarily to be saved to a higher spiritual state--representing, for instance, an all-kind God? I doubt it. What about the God who allows their organization and so-called right to life to be disrupted in our favor? Where the universal harmony, justice, mercy there? We are to develop a social organization in which gentleness, mercy and harmony will prevail among us, but we do not hesitate to curb the efforts or aspirations of lesser creatures, even rival nations--the Indians, say--in the same direction. In the great days to come no man will contest with his neighbor, but only with the universe--which of course raises the question of why fight the universe. And where do the rights of the universe come in, which we are hoping to rob to our own advantage and its enslavement?

Aside from the confusion involved as to the character of man and the governing forces of life, there is no quarrel with a portion of this theory. To a certain extent harmony, or a “dependent equation,” as Spencer was pleased to term it, will always be attained between individuals assembled in vast numbers on earth or in the sea perforce, because it may not be escaped. If one reads chemistry and physics correctly it is a condition which underlies everything. An equation between matter and force and the elements to which apparently they give rise, must be struck, a balance attained, if life as we see it is to appear or go on. The slightest disturbance of the existing equations which produce life as we see it, as Loeb and Crile and others have shown, ends in monstrosities or confusion, and life as we know it ceases. In our own social life, if equation did not hold, internecine contest would soon decimate and gradually eliminate the vast majority of us. The late great war indicated as much. Indeed there is scarcely any doubt that social life as we know it will yet need to be organized upon an even more closely balanced scale than at present, since the elements and powers which make for contest and self-defense are becoming more numerous. Hunger, cold, thirst and many other ills to which the flesh is heir may yet be eliminated among men, or the individuals of one dominant state. It is now, by certain orders of men and insects; the bee-hive and the ant-colony offer suggestions. But it does not follow that the basic elements of Nature or God, or man, would thereby be changed. Is it not more likely that here and now, in a small way and for the time being, only their disruptive as opposed to their constructive characteristics are restrained? Such stabilized centers of motion do occur in Nature from time to time in small ways and places. All human and animal bodies, machines and forms of government even, are illustrations in point. But does that prove or augur that the changeful elemental conditions everywhere prevailing outside these delicate arrangements in Nature may not eventually sweep in and make over that which has been established here into such a condition as we find in the sea, for instance, where life insistently and apparently mechanistically preys on life? Why not? The glory of pagan life and art--were they saved? Or was their knell sounded by the advent of Christianity?

Many, observing only the satisfactory results of harmony or equation or balance, and entirely failing to note the essential disharmonies out of which alone harmonies may take their rise, have assumed the existence of an emasculate God whose virtues are all negative, ignoring the positive horrors by which we live and progress. For them the cataclysms of physics, the fumbling failures of biology, are meaningless, if they exist at all. Yet plainly the creative force is neither as generous nor as amiable as they think. Rather, brilliant as is all this evolutionary process, and it reveals startling harmonies, beauties and seeming intelligence, it still only argues some such fumbling hit-or-miss mechanistic scheme as the chemists and physicists are beginning to outline and which allows for far more latitude in morals and conduct, as well as invention and discovery even, than the religionist has hitherto been willing to grant. The only one who appears to sense the true process or processes of Nature is the mechanistic chemist or physicist, who does not deny the possibility of extremes and horrors existing in the Divine mind or will of the creative impulse. “Murder,” say these scientific seekers after truth, or at least their facts point to this, “is a disturbing and disrupting process. It destroys the equation best expressed in ‘Live and let live.’ It affects individual peace. If you do so unto others they will do the same unto you. Chemically and physically, according to the law of reaction or equation, they cannot very well avoid it. Therefore do not murder.” Yet where is there any Divine command in that? Is it not rather a simple and easily understandable interpretation of a very obvious and inescapable law of equation, under which nevertheless, so roughly is this law adjusted and so casually does it work, murder and many other forms of non-equation may and do take their rise and do persist? If that is God or Good, then God permits murder, repays with murder, or asks you to be the judge as to whether you will tolerate murder in your State. Rather, to the physicist and chemist, it appears to be not so much a Divine command as an accidental and inescapable condition of equation.

We are told, by way of dogmatic moral comfort, that man has achieved somewhat that the animals have not, and that therefore he is superior. But also, as is now becoming perfectly plain, he has been able to discover and perpetuate for his own satisfaction crimes and iniquities for which no animal apparently within its small range of instinct or mechanistic control has the skill. Nature makes both, yet she does not, or cannot, or at least has not, made the animals as delicately and resourcefully evil in some things as is man. That is why he is able to dominate them. In one way, then, man is worse than the animals, and in another better--a balance presumably in the favor of man, though not necessarily so. The truth is that most of the ways wherein man has been differentiated from the animals by forces over which he has no control concern not ethics, as we understand and act upon them, but mechanical articulations and utilitarian comforts, the construction and normal use of which lie entirely apart from the realm of ethics. There is nothing either moral or immoral in the development and use or non-use of steam, electricity, plumbing, the tractor engine, automobiles and so on. They are mechanistic and non-moral. Thus we have developed architecture, machinery and the arts. It is true that in so far as man himself is concerned these are helpful to him in his mass phase and provide a larger freedom, which has resulted in a large experience, hence intelligence or comprehension in every direction. Yet have they improved his morals? Or lowered them? Who would say so? Yet perceiving this development or change, and, more faintly, the need of balance and equation which runs through all and underlies all, man has set about the task of writing about it, framing the inescapable equational laws which all changes suggest and compel into definite unbreakable commands from a definite God, singing songs about Him, painting pictures of Him, and directing attention to what man has ignorantly assumed to be a universal source of supply which will or should permit the greatest possible number to live under some such scheme of equation as is here suggested. Unfortunately this has not been proved as yet, and at any rate it is not the same as the presumably provable scheme of moral order which has been foisted upon man by the dull, designing or poetically enthusiastic of all ages, and which involves the laying aside of nearly every forceful, vigorous, natural, or human or pagan, attribute. Quite the contrary.

In this connection I should like to reiterate that to the Christian and other metaphysical idealists neither dishonesty nor vice nor any crime is contemplated by God, and therefore should not exist, any more than any other variation from that perfect state, best indicated perhaps by what the Ten Commandments forbid and the Beatitudes imply. God does not will them. He personally resents and will punish their appearance. The first part of this (i. e., that He does not will them) might be accepted as true if the fact that he permits them, or at least that they _are_, in spite of Him, not denied. But of course religion, as all those who philosophically struggle with life now know or should, is an abstraction, an ideal, whose dogmas can only in part be approximated in life. For life, as we nearly all know by now or should, is a shifty and evasive mechanism, chemic in part at least, and material and inscrutable, with which the abstractions of the religionist have little if anything in common. The best that religion and ethics have so far done is to take credit for the inherent and necessary tendency to compromise which has previously been indicated and which is manifested by all phases of natural energy, as much by that shown in our body politic as anywhere else. Indeed, the very best that religion can show is no better than that which life, or Nature Herself, could and did long before any religion appeared, namely, a rough equation, a balance struck; so that if a man had done a consciously wrong thing in one place he was chemically or emotionally moved to do a right thing in another, and if his actions were bad in one way it might be that he was compelled by forces outside his control to counterbalance them by good ones in another. All animal forms above those merely mechanistic or tropic (those governed by tropisms of various kinds) appear to display most of the virtues exercised by humans--the care of their young, for instance, distress at their loss, loyalty, ability to organize and so observe group laws; characteristics celebrated by man, where exercised by him, as virtues, beatitudes and what not else. Yet these lower forms cannot possibly know of religious or moral precepts in any revealed or instructed sense, via a Messiah or Redeemer. Instincts or tropisms as developed and verified by oppositions or aids (accidental or otherwise)--once more the law of balance or equation--appear to have been their sole guides. Hence to the religionist and moralist, thus far at least, they have been beyond the pale of ethical consideration, things almost beyond the willing, and so beyond the care, of the Creator Himself. An especial opponent of God or Good had to be devised in order to take care of them. And yet are they not an excellent illustration of this same creative and governing force in Nature which, while apparently seeking variety in unity, is itself subject to a law of balance or harmony as well as one of disharmony or change, and this without any evidence self-conscious on its part? At least the investigations of the chemists and the physicists thus far appear to indicate as much. “Vengeance is mine” declared the old Hebraic Jahveh, and by that very assertion he admitted that he did not expect to establish the abstractions of right, truth, justice and mercy on earth but rather, since he could not, he would at least attempt to strike a balance and would exact, in the form of pain or disaster, repayment for things done in opposition to his code.

Well, that requires no Sinaitic command or religious law to make it true. It is not a matter for great churches and confessionals and pence and genuflections--or is it? It is true, whether God or Moses or any one else ever said so or not. It is a material and an economic fact as well as a chemic or psychic law. If you wish to glorify God or Nature for that, well and good. Your mood may be admirable or interesting, if not exactly necessary. But certainly, whether one admits the existence of a self-willing Creator or not, it is too much to say that man obtains exact justice or that an exact return is made anywhere for energies expended, ideals struggled for, efforts, good, bad or indifferent, made. We know that is not true. Nor is it true that there is not a counter impulse to withhold it. There is. And men, fellow-units in the great self-balancing cosmos, all too frequently reflect that impulse. Man is no more essentially just than he is unjust. He is an impulse, a will to live, a sharply reflected chemical and physical impulse in Nature, which acts or reacts as the nature of other chemical and physical stimuli in immediate contact with him suggests or compels, and which same may be by no means as moral as we think. Man, as a representation of chemical and physical impulses coming from somewhere, has an innate desire for power for extreme movement for himself; but so have all other mechanical or physical representations of that impulse. And it is but the balancing pressure of his fellows which keeps him in position at or near a median line. If you examine him carefully you will find that in the main he desires so-called “justice” for himself only, a fair balance for himself, liberty for himself, or that which is related to him via pleasure or profit, and so on _ad infinitum_. At the same time he is a slave, a tool, a medium for something, an intruded if not self-intruding, self-seeking insect, but without power to control or fend against major impulses and powers. Still, between man and man, tribe and tribe, nation and nation, there are these necessary equations or balances plus their internal hopes or chemic tendencies, each one for himself, to change and achieve; yet the same being but roughly worked out; on the one hand to balance or equation in favor of all the others, on the other hand to supremacy or extreme liberty of movement for each. Where only failure is achieved there is either a lull, temporary only, or a storm soon or late (revolution), or periods of horror in which chaos rules, or peace in which nothing is achieved. The world is sad over its inability to obtain freedom, great scope of emotion, for itself, or gleeful because of its triumph in this direction. But all the time it is struggling and maintaining but a rough and in the main brief balance, part with part or unit with unit.

One might go on indefinitely contemplating other phases of this same equational law, its relation to love of parents, love of country, love of home, love of one’s neighbor, love of this, love of that. Are not all of these held up as duties, virtues, perfections even Sinaitic commands, as in “Honor thy father and thy mother,” when as a matter of fact and inwardly we know that this is a matter of equation or balance and cannot absolutely as a commandment from on high exist where no reasonable return in kind is predicated. What, love a shameless, brutal, unparental or non-filial father or mother, son or daughter, in whom, let us say, exists not one redeeming trait or quality of all that we consider essential to or characteristic of those states? It is not chemically therefore not humanly possible. What is meant is that it is not only possible but natural to make a reasonable return where affection, kindness or care has been extended. Now while it is entirely conceivable that one might love one who was cruel to oneself and generous to others, or generous to oneself and cruel to others, who in some way or some one direction fulfilled some phases of balance or equation, in however weak or impossible a way, still one could not possibly love one who was in no wise kind or generous to any one, a thing without reciprocal or balancing relations in some direction. The law of balance or equation which governs in all processes, even thought, will not permit it. There must be something given in some way, directly or indirectly, before anything can be returned or evolved, even in thought. And if one reverses the picture and attempts to conceive of hating some one or thing equationally just, fair or balanced, not attempting to take from any one or thing too much and not withholding from any one or thing that which is equationally his, it is quite as psychically impossible. One cannot cerebrate inimically toward that person or thing as being evil, reprehensible or what not. It cannot be done. Sometimes, where by reason of plenty or inherent weakness of mind or force, or carelessness of thought or interest, an individual is in any way indifferent to a “reasonable” or balanced return to himself for effort made, labor given, thought expended and what not, and where this results in no injury to himself or others, it is entirely possible to look upon him with indifference or as a fool, or as one who is weak-minded or not capable of balancing himself against the shrewd and self-interested minds of others. But such indifference or lack of self-interest would not indicate that one looked upon him as being evil, scarcely even a discreditable force, save possibly where his operations, or lack of them, affected the interests or rights or privileges of another or others.

Not love of God, then, it would seem, nor fear of God, although these abstractions have come to be real enough to some minds, prevents one individual from overriding the dreams and hopes of his neighbor, but fear of retaliation which his selfishness might produce. “Thou shalt not” springs plainly from “Thou hadst best not, it is dangerous,” to which might be added the strangest quality of all, the tendency in large or small bodies or masses to quiescence, the love of peace, or inertia. Our evoluted mechanistic chemism has become so diffused or varied that we may even now speak of such intangible and yet vital forces as love of the fixed scene, which appears to be little more than a reflected form of helio, or ego, or someother form of tropism, the inherent power in everything to attract something to itself and so maintain itself, for the time being anyhow. That things are inclined to a static or inert state or to congeal and so stratify and endure in that form (Nirvana?) is as true as that they must change; and, under certain conditions, Nature seems to abhor too much speed, as too little.

Is there anywhere in this to be found that universal right, truth, justice, mercy, as we have hitherto deemed it or them to be or exist? Perhaps not, but it is all of so-called right, truth, mercy or justice, universal or otherwise, that we will ever know, all of it that is involved with life. Does this, by any chance, contain truth? Yes, indeed, it is truth, for it is a fact. Is it right? Well, for life as we find it conditioned it is apparently the only way. Who can suggest a better? Should the fact that we find ourselves thus conditioned, confronted by Nature in all Her complexity and with only this necessity for equation to fall back on, disconcert or dishearten us? Need it or must it take the savor out of life? No; not, at least, in my judgment. Life in its most terrible as well as its most halcyon aspects is at once an enticing and a fit game. It seems well enough suited to our capacities, and we to it, since essentially we are of it--it, in fact. At least it leaves or provides us much to strive for, and strife is the only key to knowledge or sensation and life that we have. Abstractions and theories are good as games at which the human mind may play if it chooses, and whenever life becomes too severe for any group or part of it it is easy enough to invent a theory or abstraction which will then make it seem different. And this is almost invariably done, as witness all the impossible religions and theories that at one time and another have filled the world. Like chess or checkers, they furnish a diversion or relief to life-weary minds. If you have nothing better to do even a religion may be worth while. At worst it can only narrow your vision, and if that is a comfort--well, it is a comfort, but you do not thus escape the essential facts of life. You merely invent a shield against their too-sharp blows. Regardless of whatever dogmatic moralities may have been dreamed, or yet may be, or attempted, life is still avid, treacherous, astounding. Our little safety, if we have any, lies not in the desires or intentions of our fellow-mortals, good, bad or indifferent, or in their churches or creeds, or ours really, but in their limitations. _They dare not do unto us for fear of what we will do to them, or of what the machinery of equation which life has set up or is conditioned by and now operates, will do to them._ All else is a poet’s dream.

What, then, shall man do? Weep for that? Shall he despair and call life a failure and a torment? Shall he say that it is limited, that there is no opportunity for progress, or that the sweetness of those things defined as love, charity, mercy, neighborliness and race sociability are by such a governing condition destroyed? Not at all. Wherein is the temperament of Nature Herself, Her sweetness, if such there be; Her romance, if such there be; Her beauty, if such there be, altered by this? Life is as it is--active, dancing, changeful, beautiful, at once brutal and tender--regardless of how our theories would seek to make it seem, and though it does as it chooses at times, or appears to, and invents or assumes various guises of perfection, it is as it has always been, both good and bad, yet held in a kind of equational vise or harmony--neither too good nor too bad--or we would not now be here at all, any of us, to tell the tale. As it is, and well within its equational swing or law, there is room for the will to superiority in the super-man as well as the trembling fears of the least of created creatures. Nor is it impossible for man, with his puny strength or with such force as he may gather, to attempt to upset this very equation and so rule all; or, on the contrary, choose to live in sweetest peace with his neighbor, if he can. He may, and great will be the wonder and charm of his existence if he no more than try. But that he should succeed in permanently so doing is not within his scope unless he should grow to be the universe itself. On the other hand, under this same controlling equation, a man may be a Colossus and bestride the world without upsetting the equation ultimately. Like Alexander, he may sigh for more worlds to conquer; or, like Hannibal, take refuge in despair and death. Or, better yet, like some forceful and yet humble laborer at some small task, he may seek to hide himself away in some simple peaceful realm, free of the storms which rock these greater worlds, and still be secure in one of those minor equilibriums which in the shadow of some of the greater ones are always holding somewhere in part. For, roughly, equation is always holding in one or many forms--dependent equations, which consist of many, many equations or balances, joined in some still greater one or synthesis--and apparently always will. Who shall say? To our present senses the ultimate facts of life are not altering; although that is not for petty man to know.

On the other hand, I should say that the condition of equation which is everywhere evident does not deny or belie any elements of softness, color, beauty or art which now sweeten, or seem, to, a picture which must seem to many inherently grim. God, Good, Nature, Force, is not now, and never has been apparently, without some of these aspects in part, nor bare of the easing limitations indicated by the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule and the Beatitudes. For before these were _it_ was, and if they are or ever were true they still are so, for they took their rise out of it and so must be and remain in it, forever and ever, emanations or adjustments (equation, no doubt) suggested by the desire for expression on the part of the cosmos as a whole. Yet the knowledge that they are the result of a condition or equation which the universe, the life force itself, cannot escape, is or should be most encouraging. Nature must let many things live in reasonable equation or peace, for it is in them and they in it. “I am in the Father; the Father is in me.”

If, then, man is savage he is also tender, inherently so apparently, for by what measure would he measure savageness if not by its contrary? And if he is avid, centripetal, individual, is he not somewhat of their contrary also? In truth, somewhere in the scheme of things is implanted a love of beauty and order as well as their contraries, which can only find expression via equation, and this it is, chemical, inherent awareness of it no doubt, which eases the ache of existence for us all (God, man, devil). For if life loves change, movement, difference, contest, it also plainly loves their contraries, for these exist, and we could not know the one without the other. Order exists as a half of its opposite, disorder, and the one could not well be without the other, and peace exists, if at all, as the complement or antithesis of what is not peaceful. Yet through all and all, and in all and all, are the sting and gayety of change and the consciousness of it, and these remain, possibly forever and ever, outside Nirvana, which Nature may never wish to see or know. It may be impossible for Her to die or be still.

Equation, then, is that which is involved in the lust of the lover for his sweetheart, and her acceptance; the husband for his wife, and her faith; the mother for her child, and its love; the citizen for his neighbor; the individual for his friend. Art, the love of life for itself, is nothing more than a synthesis of many equations whereby many lovely harmonies and their opposites are expressed or implied. Hunger, balanced against satiation, creates more beauty. Life builds and wills far beyond the ken of man or his companion animals, and all that he can know is the chemic thrill of life, its joys, the necessity of equation and so-called fair play, or rhythm and balance. For, behold, life is ever dancing and does not will to be still. Not to want too much, because one cannot get too much; not to seek to devour the whole world, because one cannot; not to threaten, because of vanity and self-appreciation, all else with extermination, because one cannot possibly exterminate all else without disturbing the general balance and so bring the weight, the conditioning and crushing force of equation itself upon oneself, is to say what may offend the individual life-lover but which nevertheless produces the only condition in which the general totality in all its glittering variety, which it appears to crave, can best express itself outside Nirvana. And this it is which should drive the fog of religious theory out of our minds.

For why pray in beggarly fashion for that which will be, whether we pray or not--which, as the mechanists believe and show cannot escape its own destiny? Rather sing and be joyful, I should say, for one’s unescapable share in so great a spectacle. The game is open, free, a thrashing, glorious scene. Our God, if we have one, is not a namby-pamby, milk-and-water solution, suitable for the stomachs and optics of still more namby-pamby men, but a vast somewhat which offers a splendid universe-eating career to the giant, if he wills, an opportunity to thrive and grow to even the most spindling of beginners. Our God, if we have one, is a vast somewhat too great for the perception or understanding or destruction or solution of any minor portion of Him, such as we are. He is a creator of spectacles, a slinger of thunder-bolts, a breather of fire, a master of cataclysm. His, or Its, least breath is storm. Its sigh is earthquake or orbital derangement. No attributes such as man can conceive can apply--neither good nor evil, virtue or its opposite--for these apply only as mild suggestions at moments of equation in one minor part of the great whole or another. Our God is tragedy and comedy, terror and delight. He is limitless opportunity and endless opposition and destruction, for His way is extremes in equation, and nothing more and nothing less.

What then? Despair over that? Is there not, in all conscience, under a loose equation (loose and operative only in extremes) room for all the lusts, the terrors, the wonders, the simplicities of the greatest as well as the least? Alexander may yet be again, or the devil himself in all his power and lurid glory, before he is crushed and set aside, for the time being, by his inherent antithesis, the thing which is not devil.

And as for the religionist, may not Jesus, St. Francis, St. Simon Stylites come again? Let man fight for their return if he will. Who is to gainsay him?--not God, Force, the Universal Substance. Obviously it does not care how it expresses itself, so long as it achieves avid, forceful, artistic expression.

PHANTASMAGORIA.

CHARACTERS:

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE
BEAUTY
AMBITION
PITY
LOVE
HATE
DESPAIR
REASON
HOPE
FEAR
GREED
FIRST }
SECOND }
THIRD }
FOURTH } POWERS OF DARKNESS
FIFTH }
SIXTH }
SERAPHIM
CHERUBIM

_Clouds upon clouds of birds, snakes, fish, animals, men, flowers, trees, planets, suns._

SCENE I--_The House of Birth_.
SCENE II--_The House of Life_.
SCENE III--_The House of Death_.

SCENE I. THE HOUSE OF BIRTH

SCENE: _Darkness and illimitable space. Æons of time, as measured
by the illusion of time, elapse._ THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE, _as
force, inert, yet all-in-all, rests quiescent. A faint pulsing
begins. Without thought or reason, restless, chaotic, the idea of
separateness and individuality generates--an insane dream. The
cloudy length of a giant outlines itself, reclining in endless
space. It appears and disappears, now a thigh, now an arm, only to
fade again. The vague outlines of a brow and cheek appear, only to
fade again. Æons of time elapse. The illusion reasserts itself.
Cloudy fire-mists pour from his nostrils. Poles of light erect
themselves from materialized temples. Blazing suns and meteors
burst forth and swirl about his head. Strange and multitudinous
forms manifest themselves--animals, birds, fishes, horned and
winged things. They appear and disappear, as thoughts form and
fade. He is blind, aged, insane. He erects imaginary titanic arms
and rubs his changing, stupendous face with his changing hands._

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE

Oh, ho, ho, ho! Oh, ho, ho, ho! (_He sinks back wearily, all but the outlines of his head disappearing._)

BEAUTY (_a thought_)

(_Leaping, pink-limbed and perfect, from his brain, a figure of delight._) Lord, thou hast created me! I am thy perfect thought, thy happiest illusion! I will be worshiped! I will be worshiped! (_She springs sinuously among the spinning, changing spheres, a radiant smile upon her face, her arms tossed upward in delight._)

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE

(_Materializing himself fully, a paretic smile upon his lips. He rubs his face and imagines eyes, giving himself sight, and surveys her broodingly._) Have I created thee? Oh, ho, ho, ho! (_He rubs his flaming hair._) I must not forget thee! I must not forget thee! Oh, ho, ho! Thou art Beauty! (_His expression changes; an unimaginable weariness settles upon his face, aged, æonic. He frowns and leers and partly fades, re-establishing himself after a time. As he does so_, AMBITION, _a sinister thought, club in hand and darkling and scowling, a figure of terror, leaps from his eyes_.)

AMBITION

(_Brandishing his club._) I will be obeyed! I will be obeyed! Out of thy terror, Lord, thou hast created me! War and strife will I have! War! War! (_He struts and stares._)

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE

(_The darkling mood passing, a light of momentary peace settling on his face. He gazes at the figure tolerantly._) Have I created thee? Weary! Weary! I am weary! (_He stretches his arms._) But stay! I am lonely. Be thou what thou art. (_He draws himself to a sitting position, all the height and depth of space._)

BEAUTY

(_Threading a necklace of suns._) I will be worshiped! I will be worshiped! (_She croons joyously._)

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE

(_His mood changing, a giant despair creeping into his eyes._) Forever and ever! Oh, ho, ho, ho! Forever and ever! It is a dream! (_He staggers to his feet, the great shadowy arms flailing wildly. As he does so he imagines Space and Time, and begins to wander down their lengths, staggering as he goes. From his brow leap_ HATE, DESPAIR, PITY, HOPE, FEAR, _thoughts all, the last two with great round eyes and open mouths. At the same time clouds upon clouds of unimaginable forms and characters, previously non-existent, come into being, the product of his fancy. Suns, worlds, fire-mists, swarms of birds, snakes, fishes, animals and men are born, strange wraiths that float in wreaths about him and traverse all immensity. They circle, murmur, mutter, cry. The avatars of men come forth, huge forms of gas. They are preceded and followed by vast clouds of thoughts of their own--ravening, embodied fancies that bicker and contest. These immense companies and semblances appear and disappear, as the primary figure thinks or loses memory of what he has thought. He alternately laughs and groans, maundering._)

BEAUTY

(_Dancing on before._) I will be worshiped! I will be worshiped!

AMBITION

(_Gathering at his back vast clouds of restless, threatening figures like himself._) I am his thought of strength! I am his thought of power. I am his thought of rage! I am his thought of contest! Oh, ho, ho, ho! Follow me! Follow me! See, we will sow destruction! We will spread despair! We will slay! We will burn! Oh, ho, ho, ho!

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE

(_Wildly, his fancy flaming furiously._) Oh, ho, ho, ho! I am God! I am that I am--all in all! I am my dream of myself! I will dream me dreams, visions. These are my creations, all! (_He turns and surveys his endless fancies of horror and delight._) Oh, ho, ho, ho! Come, Art! Come, Love! Come, Hope! Come, Death! Dream as I dream! Create destiny, suffer! I am God! I cannot die! Insane! Insane! Insane! Oh, ho, ho, ho! (_He shouts in agony, then joy, then sobs, staggering as he does so, ending in a gale of lunatic laughter._)

PITY

(_To_ LOVE, _hovering near_.) We are his children; and we can do nothing?

LOVE

Nothing, save he think on us.

PITY

(_To_ HOPE.) Canst thou do nothing?

HOPE

Nothing, save he think on me and thee.

HATE

(_Clasping the hand of_ DESPAIR.) Come aside. Are not we his thought also? What have we in common with them?

DESPAIR

(_Darkly._) Nothing! Nothing! Yet are we his thought also, but not of them! No, no, no! He should sleep again! He should sleep!

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE

(_Staggering and writhing._) Oh, ho, ho, ho! Oh, ho, ho, ho! I am God! I dream me dreams! I build me endless wonders, endless pleasures, endless horrors! Oh, ho, ho, ho! (_He staggers madly on._)

BEAUTY

Build thou me temples of beauty, Lord! I will be worshiped! I will be worshiped!

AMBITION

Make thou me worlds and legions! Worlds! Worlds! And legions! I would rule! I would slay! I would burn!

LOVE

Oh, but wilt thou make flowers and vast realms of quiet places, Lord? Or but little valleys, if thou wilt? Make streams and pretty shelters! Give not all to Ambition, Lord! Give not all to war!

HATE

(_Springing before his face._) Make thou me implements of terror! Create thou me forms of horror, of evil! Spin thou me dark chains and darker places! Make thou tortures of failure and regret, Lord--tortures! Tortures! (_He glowers about him._)

PITY

Nay, Lord, let not all be of horror and hate! Think thou on me, Lord, of sweet pity and tender things! Or, if thou canst not, think thou but of ways that I may heal what Hate will destroy, what Ambition would crush. Think thou thus, Lord! I am a thought of thine also!

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE

(_Wearily._) Oh, ho, ho, ho! (_He staggers on._)

FEAR

Lord, do thou protect me! Do thou conceal me! Forget me not, Lord! Forget me not! I fear! I fear!

DESPAIR

Why dost thou not sleep, Lord? Of what avail are we, thy fancies? Oh, why dost thou not sleep? Sleep! Sleep! Sleep!

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE

(_Staggering on._) Oh, ho, ho, ho! Oh, ho, ho, ho! Space--Time--I have made me these! Suns--Planets--I have made me these! Love--Hate--I have made me these! Hope--Fear--I have made me these! Beauty--I have made me this! Oh, ho, ho, ho! Oh, ho, ho, ho! (_He staggers on, gesticulating and laughing stupendously._)

BEAUTY

(_Wildly._) I will be worshiped! I will be worshiped!

SCENE II: THE HOUSE OF LIFE.

SCENE: _The cloudy realms of space. At a point, halls of
illimitable and indescribable splendor, the colorings of the dawn.
Beyond, a swirling belt of suns and satellites glittering thinly
against the dark. Beyond this, in measureless nothingness, the
suggestion of other clouds of suns and planets, spinning. At the
center, the Presence, couched upon gold and porphyry, high-piled,
cloud on cloud. Poles of outpouring thought, great flames, radiate
from his brows; about him a nimbus of fire. He is now fully
self-materialized and concentrated, but sits quiescent, weary,
lonely, a compendium of vagrom, changeful, insane emotions and
ideas. Immediately before him_, BEAUTY, LOVE, PITY, HOPE,
REASON--_colorful shadows all--as well as beasts, birds, fishes,
reptiles, flowers, trees; men and women in cloudy, wraith-like
masses. Above him, immense legions of_ CHERUBIM _and_ SERAPHIM,
_figures of translucent light, radiant, choral. In the background_,
AMBITION; _about him swirl, darkling_, HATE, FEAR, GREED, DESPAIR,
_and behind them, cloud upon cloud, sinister figures, emissaries,
dreams, the darker products of the Lord’s fancy_.

SERAPHIM AND CHERUBIM

(_Fanning with glittering wings._) Hail, our Creator! Hail, Lord! Do thou remain forever in thought our Creator, our Thinker! Blessed be thy reality! Hail! Hail!

BEAUTY

(_Surveying from a glistering footstool, nearest of all the swarming universe._) Am I not beautiful, Lord? Am I not thy thought of Beauty? Art thou not content to think on me, thy first thought? And shall I not be thy last? Thou hast but commanded, and they worship me! Thou but thinkest, and I am supernal in beauty! (_She smiles._) They worship me! They worship me!

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE

(_Broodingly._) Sweet thought--my dearest thought!

AMBITION

(_Clanking ponderous armor, a cloudy giant in moody meditation._) We wait! We wait! He thinks not on us! He thinks not on us. Now are his thoughts of drooling pleasure--of Beauty, of Hope, Peace--pale nothings all--Seraphim and Cherubim, mere fluttering figures of light! Beauty reigns! Hope and Reason and Pity are at her feet! See how the universe peoples itself with these, his fancies! He dreams but fair dreams!

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE

(_To_ BEAUTY, _turning slowly and viewing complacently the immensity and beauty of his fancy_.) Art thou pleased, then, with what I have made for thee? See, see--dreams, dreams, sweet dreams all--mad fancies all--mad! Mad! That which I make is madness all--disordered dreams! I am mad, mad!

BEAUTY

Wondrous, Lord, of whom I am the first! Great Creator! Thou art wonder and beauty all. Sweet are thy dreams! Sweet thy madness! Sweet am I! But sleep no more, Lord! Dream on. It is sweet to be worshiped so! I would be worshiped! I would be worshiped!

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE

Sayest thou so, perfect thought? It is sweet madness? Oh, ho, ho, ho! A thing of now, and then no longer! Thou art a fair dream, a dear one, but nothing--nothing! Is not that transcendant sorrow--madness?

BEAUTY

(_Caressingly._) Oh, think not so, Lord! Think not so! A dear dream! A wondrous dream!

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE

(_Darkly and broodingly._) What am I? What art thou? What are these? (_He waves a vast hand._) What it all is I cannot think--or why--or whence--or where. I dream and sleep--I sleep and dream! Oh, ho, ho, ho! Oh, ho, ho, ho! A dream! A dream! Sayest thou a sweet dream? A sweet dream! Oh, ho, ho, ho! I have lost the key! I have lost the key! (_He laughs loudly, sadly._)

AMBITION

(_In the background, rumbling._) He has lost the key! He has lost the key!

BEAUTY

A sweet dream, Lord! A sweet dream! Sleep no more, Lord! Sleep no more! It is all too sweet! Sleep no more! (_She smiles._)

AMBITION

(_Restlessly._) He dreams but useless things! We grow to thin nothings! (_He clanks his armor weakly._)

PITY

Think kindly, Lord! Kind and tender thoughts! It is best ever!

THE POWERS OF DARKNESS

(_Rumbling._) Hail! Let Hope be forgotten! And Love! And Pity! Hail!

BEAUTY

(_Rising and laying a hand upon his brow._) Lord, I am thy first-born. After me came these. (_She motions to_ HOPE, PITY, REASON.) I am thy first thought, thy thought of Beauty! Say it! Remember me! Forget me not! All else avails so little! And think thou not on Ambition or Hate. They would destroy--even me! Even me! (_She smiles._)

THE POWERS OF DARKNESS

(_Thundering_:) Yea, even Beauty, Lord! What is Beauty to thee?

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE

(_Gazing dully._) Beauty! Beauty! Can I remember thee always, even though I would? Thine eyes! What is it I meant by thine eyes? (_He gazes into them._) Mad! Mad! Mad!

AMBITION

(_Angrily, clanking his armor._) He drools and dreams! Me, his best thought--his greatest--he forgets! I am his horror, his strength, his despair, his power--yet he thinks not on me! Beauty! Beauty! And I wait in shadow! I, his rage--yet he sleeps in vagrom thoughts of beauty! Awake, Lord! Forget these pale shadows! Are not thy darker thoughts better? Think thou on me! On Power! Come, Hate! Come, Anger! Come, Despair! Come, Fear! Sit ye all with me!

FEAR

Only let me return unto thee, Lord! I fear! I fear!

BEAUTY

(_To_ AMBITION, _angrily_.) And if he thought on thee, what then? Storms, horrors, all blackness and rage! Thou art such! Is not Beauty better?--this light?--this song?--these Cherubim and Seraphim? Wilt thou have naught but shadow? Avaunt! To think on thee is death, destruction, the end of all! Oh, no, Lord! Oh, no, no, no! Put them all hence! Think thou on me! Are not all thy fair dreams, in which suns cluster and lovely forms bud forth, more to thee than these, thy darker? (_She smiles winningly._)

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE

(_Heavily._) I am that I am!

AMBITION

(_Fiercely glowering and sulking._) Yea; Terror, Might, Strength, Death thou art! Think thou on me!

BEAUTY

Nay--Love, Beauty, All Perfectness, Light, Joy, Song--so art thou, and so only! Think thou on me, Lord! Think thou on me! (_She smooths his hands._)

HATE, FEAR, GREED, DESPAIR

(_In chorus._) Think thou on us! Are not we of thee?

LOVE, PITY, HOPE, REASON

(_In chorus._) Think thou on us! Are not we of thee?

CHERUBIM AND SERAPHIM

Thou everlasting glory--Hail! Hail!

AMBITION

(_Angrily._) Vanish, vain things! Dream, Lord, no more! (_He glowers and sulks._)

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE