Chapter VIII: Part 8

(_To_ BEAUTY _sadly_.) I know not whether thou art best or worst. But stay, stay! Stay thou with me but yet a while! Let me not forget this thing that thou art--wonder, light, a glorious dream! (_He sighs._) Oh, ho, ho, ho! Let me think no more of horrors! Of that I am aweary! Mad! Mad! Mad! Yet now I have thee--thou art a pleasant thought, thou joyous dream of fair things! Beauty! Beauty! Oh, Beauty! (_He smooths her cheek._)

A CLOUD OF SERAPHIM

(_Fluttering nigh._) He dreams of Beauty! We will not die! Hail! Hail!

A CLOUD OF CHERUBIM

He smiles on Beauty! We will not die! Hail! Hail!

AMBITION

(_A hovering, terrible figure in the gloom._) He rests and drools! All is light and song! He thinks not on death!

(_The shadows recede into the darkness, to all but nothingness; the endless legions of suns twinkle; the clouds of_ CHERUBIM _and_ SERAPHIM _swirl and turn_.)

SCENE III: THE HOUSE OF DEATH

SCENE: _A chamber of unimaginable horrors, vast, murky, involute,
in which serpents twist and writhe; tortured figures crawl and
groan; beasts of many heads and paws prowl to and fro, and all
slimy odorous forms interlace in welters and sloughs and draperies
and festoons. At the center, the Throne of the Lord, a mound of
unclean beasts and serpents, hung over by clouds of evil spirits;
his present embodied thoughts. At his side, huddled in despair,
faint, pale shadows of their former selves, the thinnest of
dreams_--BEAUTY, REASON, PITY, HOPE, LOVE. _Before him in glowering
fullness, grown to vast proportions_, AMBITION, _and behind him the
legions of his fancy, black and fulgurous, drawn close about.
Insane, fevered, maundering, the LORD OF THE UNIVERSE bellows of
destruction_.

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE

Oh, ho, ho, ho! Oh, ho, ho, ho! Death! Death! Death! Thou dearest death! Bring thou me heaps of dead--the endless slain! Breed winged and forked things, horrors all! Bring thou me shames, despairs, disasters, with which to torture and slay! Go forth! Go forth! Sweep thou with Hate, with Rage, with Despair, with Fear! Breed me vast powers of evil, and still vaster! Rank thou me them rank on rank--file by file! (_He thinks on tortured forms._) Make me armies of horrors, of woes, of immedicable griefs! (_As he thinks, from his brain leap forth, many-headed, forked, winged, the first six Powers of Darkness, and after them, clawed and winged forces of ravening aspect and disaster._)

BEAUTY

(_Sadly, in a thin voice._) Lord, am I forgotten? (_He makes no answer._)

LOVE

(_In a thin voice._) Lord, canst thou no longer think on me? (_He makes no answer._)

HOPE

(_Weakly._) Lord, am I no more to thee? (_No answer._)

PITY

Canst thou not remember me, Lord? (_No answer._)

REASON

Lord, am I as nothing to thee now? (_No answer._)

AMBITION

(_To the clouds of darkness behind him as the first of the six great Powers leap forth._) Join them thou! Forth!

FIRST POWER OF DARKNESS

(_Hundred-headed, winged and fanged, leaping from the brain of the Creator at illimitable speed._) Hail! I go to harry! To slay!

SECOND POWER OF DARKNESS

(_Hundred-headed, winged and fanged, rushing forth at illimitable speed._) Hail! I go to rack, to torture!

THIRD POWER OF DARKNESS

(_Hundred-headed, winged and fanged, rushing forth at illimitable speed._) Hail! I go to ravage! To gall! To flay!

FOURTH POWER OF DARKNESS

(_Hundred-headed, winged and fanged, rushing forth at illimitable speed._) Hail! Where Sorrow is not, I carry it!

FIFTH POWER OF DARKNESS

(_Hundred-headed, winged and fanged, rushing forth at illimitable speed._) Hail! Where Happiness is, I destroy it!

SIXTH POWER OF DARKNESS

(_Hundred-headed, seven-horned, winged and fanged, rushing forth at illimitable speed._) Hail! Hail! Where Peace is, and Love, I make them as not! (_They speed to his right hand and to his left, above and beneath him, before and behind him._)

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE

Forth! Forth! Fury upon fury! Bring me masses of destruction! Undo! Undo! Undo! I would have change! Death! Woe! Tears--bring me tears, tears, tears! Wipe out all dreams! Make ashes of fancies! Destroy! Destroy! Destroy! Let all be of horror, of death, of sorrow, of pain! Make of life an ending in misery! Mad! Mad! I am mad! Oh, ho, ho, ho! (_He bellows in insane rage._)

AMBITION

(_Raveningly, to the clouds of Darkness behind._) Join thou these! Forth! Forth! Out upon his glistering thoughts! Undo! Undo! He is sick of pity, of peace! Harry thou with these! Destroy! Make dust of suns! Breed distempers in all flesh! Reduce, level, macerate, decay! Make of everything nothing! Forth! Forth!

THE LEGIONS OF DARKNESS

(_Rumbling in anticipation._) Hail! (_They speed outward._)

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE

(_Rocking to and fro in insane pain._) To my right hand and to my left! Above me, and beneath! Before me, and behind! Out--on! Harry! Destroy! Cease, Time! Be nothing, Space! Oh, ho, ho, ho! Oh, ho, ho, ho! End thou me the weariness of this! (_He weeps in frenetic misery._)

A CLOUD OF SERAPHIM

(_Faded to but pale rays._) Oh, Measureless Wonder of all Wonders! Oh, Creator of all Things! Canst thou not think on us? We die! We die! (_They begin to fade._)

A CLOUD OF CHERUBIM

(_Shrunken to a thin line._) Nor on us--on us? We die! We die! (_They slowly fade also._)

BEAUTY

(_Rising and viewing all with weary eyes._) He dreams on me no more--on Beauty no more! Oh, mad, mad, Lord! Oh, fevered, useless dreams! Gone all the sweet Seraphim and Cherubim--the halls of light and wonder--his suns and jewel-stars! His dreams have changed. These his horrors are now his mood. And death--and nothingness--for all of us, his mood! (_To_ DESPAIR.) Hail! Hail! thou unutterable one. (_To_ AMBITION, _glowering near_.) And thou, great evil one, his torturous swelling thought! Now is thy dark hour! But sleep and nothingness is the end of this for thee and all! Thou wouldst destroy even me, oh evil thing! Yet if he but thought on me, how different! His singing world again! But wait, wait! If he think on thee for long comes death and the end of all this--of thee, as of me! By death, sleep! And by sleep, if he sleep--where then is his thought of thee or me? Pray that he change!

AMBITION

(_Arrogantly._) Avaunt, thin thing! Now is my Lord awake--he thinks on me, not thee! To harry, burn, slay! To his right hand and to his left! Above him, and beneath! Before him, and behind! He is for strife, strength, conflict! To harry, slay, lay waste! It is as it is! He knows thee not! (_The destroying legions rumble._)

PITY

(_Drawing near to_ BEAUTY.) He thinks not on me again! I am grown so thin! Is there no change? Is peace worth nothing--the tender heart--the end of agonies and storms?

AMBITION

Avaunt! He knows thee not! (PITY _shrinks exceeding small_.)

LOVE

(_Drawing near, a pale shadow._) Or all the lovely thoughts that fluttered into happiness--are they worth nothing?

AMBITION

Avaunt! He knows thee not, thin wraith! (_She fades to a point._)

REASON

Nor me? Not even order?

AMBITION

Hence! (REASON _steps aside_.)

HOPE

Nor yet the thought he had in me? Can he not remember me?

AMBITION

Vanish! Thy Lord is for destruction! He thinks not on thee--but on me! Hence! (HOPE _pales to a thin flame_.)

BEAUTY

(_Proudly._) Yet am I Beauty, his first thought! Rage on, thou evil one! Of what avail, since thou wilt end also? Destroy as thou wilt, he will not forget me! I am that which he is--Beauty! His first thought! Think madly as he may, yet will his last thought, as his first, be of me. I am in him, and he in me. From him, when he wake, if ever, will I come! I will be worshiped! I will be worshiped!

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE

(_Writhing in a last insane agony._) Oh, ho, ho, ho! Oh, ho, ho, ho! Let me have done with Life! Let me have done with Thought--Pain--with Order, Beauty, Hope! Let me have done with all things! Oh, ho, ho, ho! Sick--sick! Death! Death! Burn! Harry! Slay! Oh, ho, ho, ho! I will have done with all! (_He tears at his snaky locks._)

REASON

(_Sadly._) Great Master of us all, so this then is the end? I, who was thy thought of order, am disordered! I, who was thy strength, am thy weakness! So sink I back to nothingness! (_He re-enters the brow of the Lord._)

LOVE

And I, who was his thought of happiness! So come I to nothingness again! (_She re-enters the forehead of the Lord._)

PITY

And I, who was his thought of tenderness! (_She fades into his brain._)

HOPE

And I, who was his thought of love and peace! (_She disappears also._)

BEAUTY

(_Paling._) Yet is he not done with me! Mad though he be, even though he sleep, now I feel his thought! He is in me, as I in him! I will be worshiped! I will be worshiped! (_She re-enters his brow undiminished._)

FIRST POWER OF DARKNESS

(_Returning and entering in._) All that was to thy left hand is not!

THE LORD

’Tis well!

SECOND POWER OF DARKNESS

(_Returning and entering in._) All that was to thy right hand is not.

THE LORD

’Tis well!

THIRD POWER OF DARKNESS

(_Returning and entering in._) All that was before thee is not!

THE LORD

’Tis well!

FOURTH POWER OF DARKNESS

(_Returning and entering in._) All that was behind thee is not!

THE LORD

’Tis well!

FIFTH POWER OF DARKNESS

(_Returning and entering._) All that was above thee is not!

THE LORD

’Tis well!

SIXTH POWER OF DARKNESS

(_Returning and entering._) All that was beneath thee is not!

THE LORD

’Tis well!

AMBITION

’Tis well! Hail, Lord! As thou wouldst, I have ended thy dreams! Canst thou not rest?

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE

(_Writhing._) Oh, ho, ho, ho! Oh, ho, ho, ho! I dream! I dream! It is too much! Destroy! Destroy! I will have peace! I will have peace! (_He turns and writhes, sinking in weariness as he does so, and partially disappearing. Æons elapse._)

FIRST POWER OF DARKNESS

(_Beginning to fade in the brain of the Lord._) It is of me that he ceases to think! I fail! (_He disappears._)

AMBITION

(_Sadly._) It is the end!

SECOND POWER OF DARKNESS

(_Beginning to fade in the brain of the Lord._) It is of me he ceases to think. Oh, ho, ho, ho! I fail! (_He disappears._)

AMBITION

(_Sadly._) It is the end!

THIRD POWER OF DARKNESS

(_Writhing and fading in the brain of the Lord._) It is of me he ceases to think! I fail! Oh, ho, ho, ho! (_He disappears._)

AMBITION

It is the end!

FOURTH POWER OF DARKNESS

(_Fading into the brain of the Lord._) It is of me he ceases to think! I fail! (_He groans and disappears._)

AMBITION

It is the end!

FIFTH POWER OF DARKNESS

It is of me he ceases to think! I fail! (_He disappears._)

AMBITION

It is the end!

SIXTH POWER OF DARKNESS

It is of me he ceases to think! I fail! (_He disappears._)

AMBITION

It is the end!

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE

(_Stretching prone in space and all but vanishing. Only faint outlines are visible here and there, the brow and face intact._) Peace! Peace! It is enough! It is enough! I have done! Let it be as it ever was from everlasting to everlasting--a dream--a dream! Oh, ho, ho, ho! (_He sighs heavily. The last writhing beasts thin and are gone._ AMBITION, _paling and thinning, stands wide-eyed, agape, before the fading brow of the Lord_.)

AMBITION

At last! And I--it is of me he ceases to think--even me! I have done! I have done! (_He vanishes._)

BEAUTY

(_A thin star in the brow of the Lord, glistering and yet paling._) It is even of me he ceases to think! Lord, hast thou forgotten thy first-born?

THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE

Peace! Peace! Enter thou into me! (_He sighs and begins to vanish completely._)

BEAUTY

(_Fading into his sleep._) I will be worshiped! I will be worshiped! (_She smiles._)

_The illusion of reality ceases. Suns and planets are gone. Time
and Space are not. That which was is as that which was not._

ASHTORETH

What has impressed me most about life, always, is the freshness and newness of everything, the perennial upwelling of life in every form; the manner in which, as age steals on for some, youth, new, innocent, inexperienced, believing, takes charge, its eyes alight with aspiration, its body ablaze with desire. We know that the world is old, old, and societies also in every form, while the average span of life for the individual is little more than forty years--yet step into the streets and witness the immemorable clangor and newness, the present visible portion of the unbroken thread or pattern that reaches back into eternity. And for all that life is so old, old, and atoms of the life pattern or chain are feeble, is life old? Does the bit of thread or pattern that we see here now show the least evidence of wear or tear? Is not the race as new, as fresh as ever? We rise betimes and the ancient sunlight streams fresh and strong and _new_ into our passing window--this window which, in a few years, will be as forgotten and as non-recoverable as we ourselves shall be.

And the ways without--are they crowded with the aged, the worn, the soul-weary? Here and there, perhaps, a halting, bent or time-worn specimen that attracts attention for its _age_! In the main, at every turn, youth is in charge, laughing, singing, whistling, the newest modes of the _Zeitgeist_ adorning it, the latest coats, the latest hats, the latest shoes heightening the charm of bodies utterly evanescent. The percentage of the really aged abroad is as one to one hundred--one thousand. Viewing the swift tides of life as they burble in the great thoroughfares they are utterly negligible. And it is always so. A large crowd of the old and the weak and the defective would be an astounding sight anywhere in life that is so old.

Yes, life is careful to do away with all evidences of age in the public places where it runs so gaily. The sick--are they here or in hospitals or darkened bedrooms? The maimed, the blind, the defective in any way--are they here, or hidden away in institutions where the young and the hopeful may not see? Life apparently resents them. It will not have its ways bestrewn by its discarded implements and shells. Out, out, since it is done with them. Away! There is much talk of charity and the beatitudes, but let one lose an arm, a leg, an eye, a hand. Practically the entire world shudders and withdraws. Better, indeed, a criminal, whole and exhibiting that self-sufficiency which the life impulse demands, than to have been injured in any worthy or even glorious contest. Rarely if ever, and never willingly, does Life obtrude upon our unwilling gaze a suggestion of the brevity of our own strength or charm, or present to the eye even a faint suggestion of the inscrutable and astounding and even wholesale cruelty of itself. Indeed, where Nature with her illusions has her way, pain, weariness and death are never to be accepted as the huge controlling facts that they are.

What--Nature cruel? Look at the freshness of Her face, the joy of Her perpetual youth, the glory of Her springs, the richness and variety of Her facets and changes! Quite so. She is the subtlest of all our enemies, the wisest of all our craftsmen and managers. Her instinct and therefore Her business is to keep the eternal freshness and durability and zest of life uppermost, and this She does with unbelievable skill. For although we are here, young and new, believing vigorously in our destiny, the grand sum of our future and its durability, still only forty or fifty years ago there were all of a billion people here who were as fresh and as vigorous and as youthful as we are now. They believed in their grand destinies as we believe in ours, and where are they? Gone. No trace--no memory even--no care. Only we are what is left of what was them, their descendants. And the astonishing tragedies, the painful diseases, the most grinding and wearing of denied hopes, by reason of which they are no longer here and we are--how adroitly even the memory of these have been removed! The wonder! Yet _life_ is as fresh now as it was then. _It_ has not aged. _It_ has not gone. The endless chain is as bright and strong as ever--stronger, maybe. To-morrow when we are where they are it will be as taut and shining and swift-moving and as new as ever.

But these young bustling souls swinging their canes, lighting their cigarettes, whistling and dreaming of a perfect to-morrow--do they know aught of this? Not a word. And will they? Not, in the main, until it is too late to affect their lives. And, better yet, and what is really more important, they do not care. Life has one admirable trait: it limits the sensibility of many. “Never mind, dearie,” it seems to say, “do not worry about me, or older days. The old was nothing, the new is all. Eat, drink, be merry and forget. It is best.” Thus life, and it is her intention that they shall. Each sorrow or deprivation or disaster as it befalls them is painted in their consciousness as special to them. Never before was there one such to equal this. No, no. Life would not be so cruel. She would not intentionally do this to any one. “What!” she whispers artfully and convincingly, “life induce such bitter tears? Life ruthlessly and cruelly deprive any one of a hand? an eye? of life itself? Never. To be injured thus indifferently, when so many are not, was never intended by her for you, as you can see. If that is not so, why is it so many are well, hale, happy?” So she lies, for well she knows that each can know but a very little, has no time to learn more. And she sees that he has not.

But in the dark places, the back rooms, the upper floors or cellars of tenements or great houses, the hospitals, the asylums, the jails, the farms and homes for the aged--and the enormous graveyards! Look and see. Here are those who but a little while since were a part of this pell-mell vigorous scene. They were her tools, as you are now, her victims. She fashioned them as one might a small machine, used them for a while for something and then threw them aside. Like a knife or any tool, they grew a little dull, and it is so much easier to fashion a new one. We are intended to last only a little while. While your strength is budding that of others is failing. While your cheeks are reddening theirs are paling. While your eyes are sharpening in shrewdness theirs are weakening to a dim myopia, and you may soon out-see them and push them aside. Yet the bodies of the old that so offend you now were as lithe as your own, and they in their hour were grumbling at the ineffectiveness of age.

But the darkest part of it is that aside from the small modicum of service which you may render at top speed and with the utmost enthusiasm, Nature has not the slightest care for you or yours. With the same cavalier air with which She provides a hundred drones for the single love-flight of the queen bee, all the failures to die, so She provides a thousand, or ten thousand, or a hundred thousand, that one--and only one--may think the necessary thought, invent the necessary machine, build the necessary bridge or lead the necessary army. The rest may die as they will. They are chaff. Lay them out in hundreds--in millions--to be blown whithersoever the wind listeth, to poverty, to death, perchance even to fortune, a brief hour. Who cares? Not She. Only the ways of life must be kept fresh and new, the illusion of newness and vigor maintained. Only through new bright instruments will She work, and none other. A tasteful maid. In the blood-stream of your body are quadrillions of little entities--so many millions to the single blood drop--whose total destiny, apparently, is to your life about as yours is to the race--and no more. They hurry that you may live. They toil that you may smile, seek, yearn, blaze with ecstasy. A fraction of a minute each, and their little cycles have been run. So yours here. But do they know? Or care? Or do you? There is that much wisdom or tenderness or practicality in Nature, that for the majority She inhibits the power of memory or perspective or too great sensitiveness to joy or pain. Else what a cursing, else what a wailing, else what a ceasing--even in the face of Her imperial will.

THE REFORMER

Among the interesting phenomena of life is the periodic appearance in every walk of life of the reformer, the individual who, according to some theory based on clear perception or some delusion that has developed in his brain, seeks to readjust conditions as he finds them to something more in accord with what is agreeable to him, and who accordingly, by a process of transference akin to that which has been so adequately set forth in psychoanalysis, seeks to represent himself to himself as a world need. Always it is life, not himself, that is in need of this new condition, and so him. And what is it that as a rule he offers or seeks? Without exception, if you trouble to examine the great instances--Buddha, Christ, Confucius, St. Francis, Luther, Mohammed--it is a revision of a current, and in itself passing, condition which has become irritating to his sense of balance or proportion or equation in things mundane, his personal and physical reaction to or sensory repulsion from conditions which have become chemically (socially, spiritually, anything you will) too far removed from a norm or mean or equation which appeals to him, his eternal and special view of harmony. But this after all is chemic and natural, and when he is successful he merely represents an inevitable tendency in nature to maintain a balance or equation between one type of mood and another, only one of which can be dominant for a time and of which he becomes the passing representative.

It is the only way apparently in which the moving spirit which creates us can express--or, better yet, change--itself. Our self-propulsive emotions, moods or appetites have somehow a tendency, if uninterrupted, to lead us too far in some one direction--to the place, for instance, where a chemical or physical non-balance is threatened to that dependent equation of rival forces in which we all find ourselves immersed or held. Then, apparently, by an inhering law which compels balance or equation in all things, a counter-tendency which is most likely to first present itself in the shape of a reformer, or instructor, or warner, always chemical in his significance, appears (Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, Luther), and you have a readjustment toward a happy medium again, as it were. One phase of life, let us say, grows and presses too dominantly on another. Forthwith a spokesman or mouthpiece of some kind arises, the antithesis of the dominant thing, by no means remote or divine but plainly human and simple and easily understandable, if he is to prove of any value. That is why it is always esoterically safe in gross material days to look forward to the coming of a Christ or Messiah, or reformer, or changer, of one type or another. He is in reality a chemic and psychic sign. He cannot help coming. He is merely an individual expression of the general tendency toward balance or equation. And he will surely come when things swing too far in any given direction. Any one can be a mouthpiece for an extreme lack of balance in human affairs, any one. The accident of circumstances usually distinguishes that one.

But by that we are not told that extremes, either of the gross or material, or on the other hand of the spiritual or ascetic, are to be permanently done away with or “reformed,” or that either, when dominant, is essentially evil or good, or that the replacing thing is essentially better and so should remain forever. Rather, what is new and ameliorative--be it religious, ethic or economic--is merely one or the other half or portion or face of that which was before it came, a change from, or the obverse of, the other. Indeed the essential character of God, or the biologic force, or the Universe, is not made much clearer unless we see in this tendency to change or equation in all things that it or he is both good and evil. Since chemically or spiritually we are compelled always to seek a level or balance and maintain it, roughly enough it is true; since to live is to swing to and fro, past a mean and between extremes, may we not deduce from that that equation, balance, is an attribute of God or the life force, a conditioning attribute, and one under which it _must_ express itself?

For in life, as we may always note, and at the very moment the greatest reformers are operating, there are also working--and quite as vigorously, else the reformer would have little to do--anti-reformers, or anti-Christs, or reactionaries, if you will, creatures who represent the obverse of what is sought by the reformer or changer, and who will by no means be permanently disposed of by him. Life apparently goes on two legs, or opposites, always--heat: cold; high: low; external: internal; strength: weakness; little: much; excluded: included. Side by side with millions or billions who wish one type of thing are always millions or billions who wish another, whose impulses, desires and necessities are the very antithesis of those advocated by the reformers, saviors, adjustors then operating. Thus as Christ walked the earth there were Herod, and the whole brood of Roman, Greek and Egyptian philosophers--pagans all--scouting his beliefs and dreams, and their descendants are with us yet. About St. Francis were the millions of gourmandizers and lechers of France, Italy and the European world generally (to say nothing of the skeptical Innocent III.), too gross to perceive the significance of that which the saint represented. Yet St. Francis was little more than a chemical reaction against a too-heavy materialism that enveloped Europe--nothing more, truly. He was, as it were, poetry as opposed to the grossest and most sodden type of materialistic thought. This is equally true of Luther and so many others. Christ the same; Mohammed the same. Yet plainly the creative force which we worship as God, the underlying chemistry with its cell mechanism, was as much the maker of the fat sensualists who surrounded and enraged Luther as it was of Luther. It was and is in both, and both in it. Else how explain their joint presence and conflict, their psychic as well as chemic necessity to each other, the one useless without the other--no devil no saint, and vice versa? I for one am convinced that the Universe, or God, or Good, is no more concerned with our saints than with our sinners. Both may be essential, no doubt are. Certainly both are in it, from it, necessary to it, expressive of different moods of it, and as such necessary to each other, in order that it or life shall exist, express itself, at all. From this I see no escape by any path.

The great aim of all reformers--that of permanently reforming man in his social as well as his religious ways or intentions, in his lusts after sensuality and the like, from a (in their estimation) condition of too great license to one of none at all--is of course ridiculous. Although always “Justice,” “Right,” “Truth,” “Eternal law” are supposed to be involved in their commandments or demands, and presumed to represent a permanent and unchanging state of perfection of some kind--the all-good in some direction, and as such to be the direct commandments of God Himself--what is really, often unintelligently, sought is an easement of a too-great social swing in any one direction. Not perfection, but a better balance, is all that is really sought or ever attained. Yet so errant and nonsensical is life, its social or chemic drift--mere idle rocking of force in one direction or another at times--that man, for a time at least at one period or another, may be made to believe in or at least conform to, even coincide with, some current conception of the ideal which may or may not be in line with his greatest need, equation, in his affairs here or elsewhere at the time--which, indeed, may be absolutely inimical to his mental progress, as in the case of Mohammedanism, Shintoism, Christianity and the like. In other words, the necessity for obtaining a better equation in one place may very well upset a very excellent equation elsewhere. Thus, while it might be of passing advantage in one country--Arabia, say--that a readjustment via the thoughts of a Mohammed would be in order, it does not follow that his local “Rights,” “Truths” and homilies would elsewhere be essential. Yet essential or no, an impetus flowing from such a center may well disturb a better equation elsewhere. This was illustrated when Mohammedanism assailed Christianity in Europe.

The truth is that what the reformers are always seeking, ignorantly or otherwise, is a better balance in things social or mental or moral, less accentuated tendencies of any kind--usually away from the too-gross, although at times away from the too-ascetic also, toward which extremes life appears to swing at times. And what they do is to identify their meager, if equational, perceptions of life with eternal thought or order, and to insist that the half of the balance which they represent is the whole of it. As a rule they are quite unfitted by ignorance as well as by the time mood of which they are the expression to see that without that against which they war neither they nor their divine creator would have the least excuse for existing.

To me, not violent extremes of any kind, although these are productive of great suffering at times, but the suave inanity which imagines it wants only unchanging good or, on the other hand, unchanging evil, is the thing to be feared. Fortunately or unfortunately, as one may view this thing, a strictly median condition, while excellent as a haven of refuge from extremes, is nevertheless never wholly or easily attained in life, and never, apparently, seriously desired by it, as an end in itself, and never quite satisfactory. Indeed it is the equivalent of nothingness and would produce just that if the world sought to persist in it. Yet wise Nature is our rescuer in this as in many another plight in which betimes She places us for ends of Her own, for Nature seeks, if She seeks anything, motion, although apparently in no straight line. Her mood, if anything, is synchronic, rhythmic, pendulumic. She wishes, if one may interpret Her wishes from what may be seen here, to swing in a semi-balanced way between extremes of so-called good and evil--never all good and never all evil, but a little of both, or plenty, in order that there may be contention, strife, something to live _about_ and for. These violent extremes of any kind--ascetic, religious, barbaric, or repulsive--which affect life and irritate our souls, or the souls of some of us, are not at all offensive to Nature in Her entirety apparently. She appears to like extremes as well as a median line, the latter as a fence or break between them, and will have nothing of perpetual anything in any one direction. And life, it seems to me, would be more understandable, less disturbing to most of us, if in hours of stress of any kind we were able to realize this--that Nature adores extremes, with always a happy medium as the guiding and dividing line to which She can return and on which She can fix, as the mariner on the North Star. And if some such more liberal conception of God, or force, or life, or the creative impulse, could be introduced, it would be better. What we really need is a better stomach for life as it is, and Nature, in the course of time, may possibly build us such.

MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE

“_Whom does not love rule? And where is he not Lord?_”

_Epiphanes Soter._

“_There is no advisable love unless it is as reverent as it is
romantic, as permanent as it is passionate._”

_George M. Gould._

“_Faithful monogamy must ever be woman’s standard in love, because
only in its still certainty can she fitly prepare and keep the
place for her child._”

_Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale._

“_Too many have forgotten that love is as much a subject of the law
of evolution or progressive development as any other biologic
thing._”

_Haeckel._

_N. B. The attached six questions, to which I have appended answers, were once submitted to me by an American publication for comment or solution! At the time I was unable to make an intelligible reply, but having since given the matter thought I have answered them, largely for my own satisfaction. They are submitted with no faith in any possible fixed solution but merely as meat for passing discussion._

I

_Why is it, when there are so many evidences in favor of marriage
as we practice it, that so many marriages fall short of just the
purpose they seem meant to serve?_

In the first place, are there so many evidences in favor of marriage as we practice it? In part the question contains its own answer when it states that so many marriages fall short of just the purpose they seem meant to serve. Statistics for marriage and divorce show that one out of every seven marriages ends in the divorce court. For every one thus openly disrupted, how many others are restrained or concealed for reasons of religion, morality, children, society and business policy or permitted license? Many a couple agree to go their ways separately, doing as they please and shielding each other in their privileges. Others drift into a quarrelsome or unhappy state from sheer inertia or lack of means or charm or courage to establish or create a new condition. Millions sink in the slough of despond because they have not strength of any kind. Age, poverty, thickness of wit does for them completely.

Now there is no need, and should be no desire, to evade the biologic necessity implied by marriage. Children must be brought into the world and reared if life is to go on. All the why-fors of this are given in a thousand biologic and anthropologic volumes, and so no need to discuss them here. But this much may be said, that among animals the limits of the control of the maternal feeling or instinct are rigidly confined to simple necessity. Love seems to disappear as soon as the young can possibly walk or fly and get their food--proof of its mechanistic or chemic quality and origin and its lack of any sacrosanct and “for eternity” spiritual character. Indeed, under most phases of animal life the father is absolutely indifferent to the fate of his offspring. In many, perhaps most, animals he seems to care no more for his children than if they were moving bushes. Certainly he cares no more for his own than for those of another, and the idea of any love toward grandchildren is absurd. Not even the mother shows this.

But it is of the greatest interest to note that with the appearance of humanity and its ideas of home and property (both products of maternal instinct or the chemic necessity in her for the care of her young) there has arisen a natural extension of the scope and control of the family instinct, so that the interest of the parents continues into or through adult life. Support and protection of the mother continues beyond the child-bearing period, grandchildren are beloved, more distant relatives are held within the family affection, and the patriarchal type of society is established. Since the higher ideals of society and civilization have been permitted to arise the ægis of love has extended over the nation, and patriotism, with its great influence in war and history, has appeared. Finally that highest development of humanity, ethics or love of humanity, has arisen (still an actual outgrowth and extension of maternal instinct or love apparently), as well as the theory of the existence of a Divine Father-Mother of humanity and of all life.

Yes, since the period of the law and the influence of Rome and the idea of love, the practice of it by enduring families has become rapidly more complex. To the force of sex compulsion and instinct, never omitted, have been added permanency, monogamy, home-keeping virtues, pedagogy, public health, civic and political honor, democracy and a thousand such compounds. Has it stood up well under them? Is the load too great? Our riotous divorce practices and statistics, as well as the so-called sex or prostitution problem, raises a sharp question. Does the average strong successful man confine himself to one woman? Has he ever? Does the exceptionally beautiful and dynamic woman confine herself to one man? Has she ever? Has not fear frightened the weak into a kind of rat-like dodging or a sniveling, quarreling, complaining compliance? It may be and no doubt is true that the so-called “building of the future,” contemplated by the mechanistic or biologic impulse, if by anything, cannot be based on sensuality entirely; but the retort may be that Nature never seems to desire or achieve a wholesale debauchery any more than she desires a cold and narrow monogamy--the religionists and ethic-mongers to the contrary notwithstanding. At best she strikes a balance, wishes apparently virtue opposed to debauchery, _and vice versa_, for ends of her own.

But to return. However mechanically and instinctively it may have started, Life has since developed the more or less gorgeous chemistry of love with which now, if never in the past, it is invested. Human beings are apparently capable of higher and more enduring synthetic and chemic affinities, and this to many has seemed to warrant the second thought wherewith this interview is prefaced. Yet, for all this higher development, the strain of practical life appears to be too much for it. Besides the compulsion imposed by the biologic process which draws two people together there is a process of self-evolution and variation which seems to conflict with the marriage tie. How subtle is that problem which is to keep two people, subject to internal and external chemical and physical changes, harmonious for the eternity for which they are supposed to be linked? Nothing short of this is the theory which the religionist propounds. The moralist, not bound by religious dogma, will make the bond for life only. The philosopher or chemist transmutes the bond into a problem and speculates on how many weeks, or months, or years, the unstable equation may endure.

In considering the validity of our ideas in regard to marriage we either accept the current religionistic or moralistic theory, or we do not. For those who do there is no problem: they must accept their chains and slavery, if so they find marriage to be, and make a virtue of their sufferings. For those who do not there is the agonizing problem of the need of an equation in the matter of change. Somewhere they must draw the line, or necessity, increasing age, the difficulty of living in a moving-van, will fix the line for them. Again, there is a limit to any individual’s capacity for change, however kaleidoscopic that may be. After all, any individual, male or female, however attractive, is but single in quantity, and the choice offered to either of a suitable helpmate or companion is not so very large. One may be forever lowering a hook into the water, but not all the fishes in the sea may take it even if they would. Solomon may have had three hundred wives and seven hundred concubines, but it can scarcely be said that he needed them or that they got much out of it; and while it is conceivable that a man or woman in swift kaleidoscopic search, and devoting him or herself strictly to the task in hand, might enjoy as many as a thousand or so of the opposite sex in the course of a lifetime, it can scarcely be considered valuable from the point of view of public policy and little less than difficult and, as it would seem to one at least, profitless from the point of view of the individual himself.

On the other hand there enters into the matter the very serious problem suggested by question IV, which I will include and touch on here for a moment only: “Are the children of any union better served by successive marriages than by a home where parents are held together, even though not by love but rather by a sense of duty to their children?” Obviously, Nature intended marriage for the reproduction and care of children, but I beg to call attention to the fact that Nature, or God, or the biologic process, or what you will, is no better planner or executor of any given theory or scheme it may have in mind than man himself. If this were not true there would be no physically imperfect men or women. The student of the pathology of sex, as well as of the sources of life itself, is confronted by a thousand variations from that happy norm on which the moralistic marriage must be based. Nature has not provided all its creatures with the capacity for a happy marriage. Plainly, it has cursed or endowed many of them with strange and horrible vices, with vast and self-torturing passions, with immeasurable longings and desires, which unfit them for the proper fulfillment of the monogamic conception of the perfect marriage, hence of the care of the ensuing children. What then is to be done? Who is to blame--Nature or man? And if Nature is to blame, or God, cannot we charge the presumed misery of the children up to Him also?

Personally, I am not prepared to admit that children are made miserable or destroyed by divorce and change. But granting that, certainly man is not to blame, for from the very beginning he has been crucified upon a rood which is not of his devising. He did not institute marriage; it was instituted for him, the biologic process having devised it long before he appeared apparently. I would gladly have all living creatures endowed with every capacity which would fit them for a peaceful and contented enjoyment of a moralistic life, if that were intended or important, but since in the vast and secret laboratory of Nature alone can man be properly outfitted for the adventure, and since, obviously, in many cases he is not, I submit that the matter of matrimony and the welfare of the ensuing children cannot be solved by talk and that Nature and its concomitants, change and divorce, must be permitted to take their free and unlimited way as they will. The great tides and forces of life which burst upon men and animals and change them do not always give notice that they are about to rise and change things. They rise in their great strength, and man, to his bewilderment, finds himself changing and changed. Hence I would say that the trouble with marriage is that in its extreme interpretation it conflicts with the law of change, or balance and equation, and hence suffers a severe and seemingly destructive defeat.

II

_What would be the result were we generally to adopt Ellen Key’s
conception of marriage: “Marriage is only moral when it grows from
an inner necessity, and not from outward pressure?”_

Very pleasant, I should say, if logic and ideal syllogism ruled in life. The trouble with this world is that no ideal, however eagerly pursued, is guaranteed a happy fruition. You may lay down your formula for happiness and say: “Thus and so being done all will be well,” but can you make human nature do anything according to any one finite individual theory? Man does not make or regulate Nature: Nature makes and regulates man, and She makes him any way She pleases--vile, lovely, strong, weak, simple, complex, and so on. There is no one theory that fits all climates or types of people. Life would be very dull if this were true.

But I presume by “inner necessity” Ellen Key means intense desire plus a marked affinity of two people for each other, and if the union is for only so long as this endures I should see no drawback to it whatever. I should say that humanity would be much better able to endure the stresses and difficulties of the world if they were all so happily mated, and indeed there might not be so many stresses and difficulties to endure. No doubt we all wish that this would come true, but not all people are motivated by either love or passion. They would not marry for love if they could but rather for social precedence, material luxuries and the like. They accept children as a somewhat unfortunate concomitant, and so you have the curious problem of whether this state and its results are good, bad or indifferent in so far as society is concerned. For my part I would paraphrase Christ’s idea and say: “Render unto Materiality the things that are Material, and to Love the things that are Love’s.” Then the world would remain just about as it is now.

III

_Would a succession of unions, expressing different phases of true
love, be of higher value to the individual soul and to the life of
the race than one unbroken although loveless marriage?_

My answer to this question, based on my own individual temperament, would be Yes, but I cannot help speculating as to the opinions of those whose temperaments are so cool or so unemotional that they can put social precedence, material comfort, or the general welfare of the state, as they see it, above affection or passion. Thousands of people are by temperament sacrificial, one might almost say masochistic. They never put themselves first, and that for the very simple reason that their emotions or desires do not compel them so to do. The religionist, the moralist and the fanatic, for reasons of order or material development, as he sees them, would and does look upon love and passion as a disturbing, unsatisfactory and almost unnecessary element in life. Passion is sin or weakness to him, and the individual who requires more than one union to express his emotional necessities is either a lunatic or a criminal. His first impulse is to drive him out of society, to lock him up and reform him by some iron system of training; failing this he will shun him and form little communities of his own into which the victims of emotion and passion must never venture save as thieves steal into a house at night. This last is well and as it should be no doubt in his special case, but on the other hand he is the type of man who is determined that there shall be no divorce for others very unlike himself, who would make wife-desertion a criminal offense of the first order and who would almost punish adultery with death if he could. He is a puritan soul. He does not see Nature in all Her subtle ramifications and climatic and chemic variations, and he helps to make that endless war between the so-called light and darkness of life--between sin and virtue--and these special phases of asceticism or temperamental coolness are the foundation of all religions apparently.

Such individuals would argue, for instance, that the child of a loveless marriage is as well off as a child of a marriage of any other kind, provided he is clothed and fed, washed and schooled and thoroughly inculcated with the belief that sex is a crime. The less love enters into the child’s life at any time the better, say they. Children will do better, make better men and women, and make more money, if they do not love too much. Thus stands the world, divided between the hot and the cold, the stern and the tender, the fools of passion and the fools of material order and well-being. Is the one better or wiser than the other? I do not know. You may pay your money and take your choice, for you cannot well serve passion and materiality at the same time. Personally I stand with the fools of love, because I think for all their follies and errors and Lear-like ends they are happier.

IV

_If the answer is Yes, are the children better served by successive
marriages than by a home where parents are held together if not by
love by a sense of duty to their children?_

I would not say that children are, in the main, better served by successive marriages due to changes of temperament, because I do not know, but I can truly say that I am fairly well satisfied, from my personal observation, that they are no worse served. In the first place the fate of the modern child is not nearly so much in the hands of individual parents as it is in those of the state, the public schools and their teachers, the newspapers and their editors, the judges of courts and public and private citizens generally; for the modern child can almost say to-day that the state is both my father and my mother and it will take care of me. When it can really say this we will be much better off, for we are all going to be happier. The extremes of misery in childhood are going to be done away with.

In the next place it is a part of my personal observation that children of warring or troubled homes, where they are made to endure them, are worse off than are those who have escaped through fracture and been thrown on their own resources or are assisted by the charity of the state, or relatives, or the citizens of the country generally, to say nothing of the love or obligation of one or both of the separated parents. There is a deal too much sentiment attaching to the home as such to-day, sentiment not justified by facts. All homes are not ideal rearing-places for children, by any means. Consider the vast factory communities everywhere, too easily forgotten by the comfortable intellectual classes, and again the slums. The homes in these are, if one were to pay strict attention to the moralist, as ideal rearing-places for children as any other; yet we know that life offers pits of horror as well as abodes of sweetness and light in the guise of the modern so-called home. Again, it should be remembered that the home was made for man, not man for the home, and when the home fails as a vehicle of comfort and aid it should be done away with. It is, after all, only wood or stone or plaster, an economic convenience at best. And, anyhow, where the heart is is home, though it be a bed under the open sky or in a new lodging-house every hour. And this generalization is not intended to exclude children either. The children of troubled warring homes live in a kind of hell of temperament from which they are glad enough to escape as they grow older, and from which they evolve the dream of building something better for themselves, for they realize the horror of the thing they have endured.

The basic reason for destroying many a home is that the children may not be injured. All life administers its sternest reprimands to those who abuse children. Life loves children. It really prefers them to their elders--the biologic process so does. There is a public obligation to them which we all acknowledge. But this is not to say that all parents should therefore be compelled to rear their children. It may well be that they are not fitted economically or mentally or otherwise so to do. Their whole duty is, or might well be, done when they support them properly. The state should do the rest, for, as I have just suggested, most people are not fit to rear their children; and I say this with the greatest respect for the human and very charming impulse which causes them to wish to. The intellectual standards of the average individual are not much; those of the state are in the main better and should and may be trusted to do better by the children than any of millions of parents.

V

_Under what circumstance is divorce justifiable?_