Chapter V: Part 5

"R. H.: 'Yes, I did this in her face. I couldn't help it. She was
so impossible to move. It was wrong of me, but I couldn't help
it.' [I myself well remember this fist-shaking incident, and how
we others laughed over it after Hodgson had taken his leave. What
had made him so angry was my sister-in-law's defense of some
slate-writing she had seen in California.--W. J.]"

(Pr. XXIII, 112): "On Jan. 30, 1906, Mrs. M. had a sitting. Mrs.
M. said:

"'Do you remember our last talk together, at N., and how, in
coming home we talked about the work?' (R. H.): 'Yes, yes.' Mrs.
M.: 'And I said if we had a hundred thousand dollars--'R. H.:
'Buying Billy!!' Mrs. M.: 'Yes, Dick, that was it--"buying
Billy."' R. H.: 'Buying only Billy?' Mrs. M.: 'Oh no--I wanted
Schiller too. How well you remember!'

"Mrs. M., before R. H.'s death, had had dreams of extending the
American Branch's operations by getting an endowment, and
possibly inducing Prof. Newbold (Billy) and Dr. Schiller to
co-operate in work.

This buying Billy and Schiller brought Podmore squarely around, for the first time, I think, from his previous life-long fight against telepathy. He says (_Newer Spiritualism_, p. 222):

"It is impossible to doubt that we have here proof of a
supernormal agency of some kind--either telepathy by the trance
intelligence from the sitter or some kind of communication with
the dead."

Two pages farther on, however, appears the _advocatus diaboli_ (_Op. Cit._, p. 224):

"When asked to give the contents of any sealed letters written in
his life-time for the express purpose of being read by him after
death the two sentences were given: 'There is no death' and 'out
of life into life eternal' (p. 102). Whatever Hodgson may have
written, it was surely not quite so commonplace as that."

To my gullible apprehension, it seems eminently appropriate.

* * * * *

Among the interesting phenomena investigated by the S. P. R., have been the automatic, or I should prefer to say heteromatic, writing of Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Holland, which were not made in trance. Vol. XX of the Proceedings is entirely given up to the consideration of it by Mrs. Verrall. She is the wife of a professor in Cambridge, and herself lecturer in Newnham College. The phenomena themselves are of moderate interest beside most of those described in these pages, but their evidential value is high, and their implications most important, and the treatment of them is pervaded by wide scholarship, and is charming. The experiences, however, do not connect with the main Moses--Piper--G. P.--Hodgson--Myers thread on which these brief extracts have naturally strung themselves, and I will not attenuate that thread to make room for this outside strand. I especially commend Mrs. Verrall's volume, however, to anybody who combines with an interest in Psychical Research, an interest in really "elegant letters."

* * * * *

The following scrap relating to Hodgson is from an account by Miss Johnson (Research officer of the S. P. R.) of Mrs. Holland (pseudonym) (Pr. XXI, 303f.):

"In February, 1905 ... Mrs. Holland found that the automatic
writing was beginning to make her feel faint or sleepy. The
condition was obviated at the time.... It now began to recur.
[This sort of thing is noted in several places as preceding the
advent of a new, and especially a strong control. Ed.]

"Mrs. Holland learned of Hodgson's death on January 2, 1906. Her
script on Friday, February 9, 1906, 9 P. M., is as follows (Pr.
XXI, 304):

"... S j d i b s e I p e h t p o--Only one letter further on--

18 8
9 15
3 4
8 7
1 19
18 15
4 14
-- --

"They are not haphazard figures read them as letters--....

"K. 57. [a Christian name]--Gray paper--

"I found that in spite of the rather obvious hints....--'Only one
letter further on' and 'Not haphazard figures read them as
letters,'--Mrs. Holland had not deciphered the initial
conundrums. The first letters are formed from the name 'Richard
Hodgson' by substituting for each letter of the name the letter
following it in the alphabet; the numbers represent the same name
by substituting for each letter the number of its place in the
alphabet.

"I asked Mrs. Holland if she had ever played at conundrums of
this kind. She told me that as a child in the nursery she had
played at a 'secret language' made by using either the letter
before or the letter after the real one. But she had never
practised or thought of using numbers in this way. She noted
afterwards: 'When my hand wrote them I thought they were an
addition sum and hoped [my subliminal] would add it very
correctly and quickly. [My supraliminal] is _very_ poor at
figures.'"

Hodgson in life was very fond of these puzzles.

All this anticipates a scrap of explanation out of a much longer and more interesting manifestation. Mrs. Holland wrote to Miss Johnson (Pr. XXI, 171f.):

"Any automatic writing that comes to me is nearly always in
verse, headed--

"'Believe in what thou canst not see,
Until the vision come to thee.'

"The verses, though often childishly simple in wording and
jingling in rhyme, are rarely trivial in subject. I once wrote
down fourteen poems in little over an hour.... When I write
original verse I do so slowly and carefully, with frequent
erasures: automatic verse is always as if swiftly dictated and
there are never any erasures. I am always fully conscious, but my
hand moves so rapidly that I seldom know what words it is
forming.

"... I copy one set of verses.... I wrote it down as quickly as
it was possible for my hand to move, and was surprised afterwards
to find that it had a definite form of its own. It is exactly as
it came to me, not 'polished' or altered in the least.

"'I whom he loved, am a ghost,
Wandering weary and lost.
I dare not dawn on his sight,
(Windblown weary and white)
He would shudder in hopeless fright,
He who loved me the best.
I shun the paths he will go,
Because I should frighten him so.
(Weary and lacking rest).

Two stanzas are omitted from lack of space.

"'Should I beat on the window pane,
He would think it the wind and rain,
If he saw my pale face gleam
He would deem it a stray moonbeam
Or the waft of a passing dream.
No thought for the lonely dead,
Buried away out of sight.
And I go from him veiling my head, (1896)
Windblown weary and white.'

"... Automatic verses do not deal much with facts, but once when
I was staying in Italy, in an old palazzo I had never before
seen, the day after my arrival, and before I had been into the
garden, the impulse to write came on me, and I yielded to it,
without however ceasing to take part in the conversation of two
friends who were with me. One of them, who knew about my
automatic writing, asked me to read what had come to me. I did
so:--

"'Under the orange tree
Who is it lies?
Baby hair that is flaxen fair,
Shines when the dew on the grass is wet,
Under the iris and violet.
'Neath the orange tree
Where the dead leaves be,
Look at the dead child's eyes!' (1901)

"'This is very curious,' said my friend, 'there is a tradition
that a child is buried in the garden here, but I know you have
never heard it.'"

These heteromatic poems appear to be but extreme illustrations of the "inspiration" that poets have generally claimed for themselves. The author's modest deprecations seem to me unjust to her own.

* * * * *

Mrs. Holland continues (p. 173f.):

"I have said that automatic verses do not deal much with facts,
but once, when I was sensitive after illness, I experienced a new
form of automatic writing, in the shape of letters which my hand
insisted on writing to a newly-made acquaintance.

"The first of these letters began with a pet name I did not know,
and was signed with the full name of someone I had never heard
of, and who I afterwards learnt had been dead some years. It was
clearly impressed upon me for whom the letter was intended, but
thinking it due to some unhealthy fancy of my own, I destroyed
it. Having done so I was punished by an agonizing headache, and
the letter was repeated, till in self-defense I sent it and the
succeeding ones to their destination."

This is perhaps the most "evidential" thing I know.

* * * * *

It has been natural to follow the career of Hodgson both incarnate and alleged post-carnate, without interrupting for the post-carnate career of Myers who had died in 1901, four years before Hodgson. Myers was perhaps the leading English spirit in the S. P. R., and everybody interested in Psychical Research--the skeptical as well as the credulous--was looking with great interest for manifestations professing to come from that spirit in a post-carnate state. As usual, they are a terrible jumble. Myers was not a demonstrative person. He had not, like Hodgson, salient characteristics of manner or expression. In that respect the communicating personality resembles him. His absorbing interests were the S. P. R., poetry, and classical literature. In those respects, too, the personality resembles him.

Mr. George Dorr of Boston got from the Myers control, through Mrs. Piper, a large mass of classical lore which Mr. Dorr asserts he never could have possessed himself, and which certainly Mrs. Piper never did (Pr. XXIV).

Myers' appearances, though of great interest to students, do not make as good general reading as G. P.'s and Hodgson's, and we will make space for only one.

On September 16, 1903, nearly three years after Myers' death and his first alleged appearance through Mrs. Thompson, there was apparently the first appearance of a Myers control through Mrs. Holland. Myers, as his control intimates later, wrote, like Hodgson, for evidential purposes in cryptic ways that the heteromatist probably never would have deliberately used. The writing was, says Miss Johnson (Pr. XXI, 178):

"On two sides of a half-sheet of paper; the first side begins
with the initial 'F.,' and the second ends with the initial 'M.';
the whole passage is divided into four short sections, the first
three ending respectively in '17/,' '/1' and '/01.' January 17th,
1901, was the date of Mr. Myers's death, mentioned in _Human
Personality_; but the simple device of separating these initials
and items from one another was completely effective in its
apparent object. I read the passage a good many times before I
saw what they meant and I found that the meaning had entirely
escaped Mrs. Holland's notice."

This refers to the script containing the notorious stanza (Pr. XXI, 192) which excited the derision of the Philistine world of both continents, and disturbed not a small portion of the enlightened world:

"Friend while on earth with knowledge slight
I had the living power to write
Death tutored now in things of might
I yearn to you and cannot write."

Why the stanza excited so much adverse comment I cannot clearly make out: for what is it but a demonstration of what it claims, "I ... cannot write," unless it be also a demonstration that the tired shade, or befogged subliminal, or impotent group of world-soul elements, or what you please, could not criticise either?

It is worth remarking, by the way, that the Myers control, despite this and some other complaints of inefficiency, generally professed, as do the controls generally, to be in a condition of great happiness.

* * * * *

A word should be said of the very instructive and tedious subject of Cross-Correspondence, which has lately attracted more attention from the S. P. R. than any other topic.

If Mrs. Verrall in London and Mrs. Holland in India both, at about the same time, write heteromatically about a subject that they both understand, that is probably coincidence; but if both write about it when but one of them understands it, that is probably teloteropathy; and if both write about it when neither understands it, and each of their respective writings is apparently nonsense, but both make sense when put together, the only obvious hypothesis is that both were inspired by a third mind. The term Cross-Correspondence has been reserved for such a phenomenon. There are many famous ones--famous in a small circle, if that's not too Hibernian. The subject is entirely too complex for any treatment in our space. The reader is referred to Pr. XVIII, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIV and XXV.

* * * * *

The critics generally agree upon two points as the strongest against the spiritistic hypothesis. They were not enough for Myers, Hodgson and Sir Oliver Lodge, but they were strongest in suspending the judgment of James, Newbold and others of eminence.

The first is that Myers and Miss Wilde, of Holyoke, Mass., left sealed letters, the contents of which they purposed to announce should they be able to do so in a post-carnate life. The words ostensibly given by them through Mrs. Piper bore no relation to those found in the envelopes. Apologists offer in explanation that the memories are much confused by death, and means of communication at best very poor. There are many other cases where there is no apparent need of such apology: that there should be need of it in perhaps the most crucial cases of all, is itself suspicious. Farther, the apologists say that while it is well, and may be in the System of Things, that we should have enough communication with the world beyond to give souls aspiring that way, hope enough to keep their aspirations alive, it would not be well, and apparently is not in the System of Things, that we should have such certainty as to interfere with our living our lives here "for all we are worth"; and in support of this contention are cited the useless and worse than useless lives that, in spite of many cases far to the contrary, have been led in direct consequence of assumed certainty of a future life.

Hodgson was supposed to have left some sealed letters with intentions like those of Myers and Miss Wilde, but no such letters have been found. His control, however, gave some sentences alleged to be in them which are quoted some pages back.

The other hard nut in the S. P. R. records which resists the spiritistic hypothesis, is that Moses living told Myers that the Imperator gang gave certain well known names as borne by them on earth, and that Moses post-carnate (?) gave Professor Newbold an entirely different set of names for the same individualities. Of course the apologies for the envelope failures can be tried on this case, whether they fit it or not. And there is also the ampler, though perhaps less adequate one, that the whole Imperator business looks like a complex telepathic freak of the imaginations of Moses, Mrs. Piper, Professor Newbold, Hodgson and God knows how many others.

But a proof that the spiritistic hypothesis will not fit these cases, is no proof that it will not fit the cases of G. P., Hodgson, Gurney, Myers and hosts of others who were known to the witnesses, and whose post-carnate manifestations tally with their incarnate ones, and yet with occasional and, so far, unexplainable lapses and inconsistencies.

Perhaps the best opinion of the investigators who have not reached the faith of Myers, Hodgson and Lodge, is that while failure of the sealed letters, and the Moses inconsistencies, are unanswerable on the negative side, there are other circumstances equally unanswerable on the positive side--especially the cumulative weight of the evidence, and the dramatic renderings which apparently would be impossible from any source but the characters themselves; that the contradictions or paradoxes are merely like many others in the borderland of our knowledge: for instance, that between free will and determinism; and that the only rational attitude is a suspense of opinion until more evidence accumulates. This was the attitude of James, who served a term as President of the S. P. R., and contributed voluminously to its Proceedings.

But, however we may interpret the phenomena, or if we do not interpret them at all, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that they point to modes of Force and reaches of Mind vastly wider than before suspected, and promising well to repay farther investigation. To some they may also suggest a recovery from the scrap-heap of abandoned things, and an appropriation to new uses, of that sadly battered and misapplied old virtue known as Faith.

* * * * *

And now we will give the attitude of the latest of James' successors, so far as it can be conveyed by a few extracts from the inaugural address of Professor Bergson.

As to his estimate of the labors of the Society: in thanking them for the honor of his election, he said (Pr., Part LXVII, Vol. XXVI, 462-3):

Je ne connais que par des lectures les phénomènes dont la Société s'occupe; je n'ai rien vu, rien observé moi-même. Comment alors avez-vous pu venir me prendre, pour me faire succéder aux grands savants, aux penseurs éminents qui ont occupé tour à tour le fauteuil présidentiel.... Si j'osais plaisanter sur un pareil sujet, je dirais qu'il y a eu ici un effet de télépathie ou de clairvoyance, que vous avez senti de loin l'intérêt que je prenais à vos recherches, et que vous m'avez aperçu, à travers les quatre cents kilomètres qui nous séparaient, lisant attentivement vos comptes-rendus, suivant vos travaux avec une ardente curiosité. Ce que vous avez dépensé d'ingéniosité, de pénétration, de patience, de ténacité, à l'exploration de la _terra incognita_ des phénomènes psychiques me paraît en effet admirable. Mais, plus encore ... j'admire le courage qu'il vous a fallu pendant les _premières_ années surtout, pour lutter contre les préventions d'une bonne partie du monde savant et pour braver la raillerie, qui fait peur aux plus intrépides. C'est pourquoi je suis fier--plus fier que je ne saurais le dire--d'avoir été élu président de la Société de recherche psychique. J'ai lu quelque part l'histoire d'un officier subalterne que les hasards de la bataille, la disparition de ses chefs tués ou blessés, avaient appelé à l'honneur de commander le régiment: toute sa vie il y pensa, toute sa vie il en parla, et du souvenir de ces quelques heures son existence entière restait imprégnée. Je suis cet officier subalterne, et toujours je me féliciterai de la chance inattendue qui m'aura mis--non pas pour quelques heures, mais pour quelques mois--à la tête d'un régiment de braves.

* * * * *

He accounted for the indifference long shown by men of science to the phenomena studied by the S. P. R. by the fact that they do not square with the widely accepted theory of parallelism between mental action and brain function. This is of course especially the case with phenomena indicating the mind's survival of the body. He then proceeded to dispose of the doctrine of parallelism (_Op. cit._, 470-75):

Bref, l'hypothèse d'un _parallélisme_ rigoureux entre le cérébral et le mental paraît éminemment scientifique. D'instinct, la philosophie et la science tendent à écarter ce qui contredirait cette hypothèse ou ce qui serait mal compatible avec elle. Et tel paraît être, à première vue, le cas des faits qui relèvent de la "recherche psychique,"--ou tout au moins le cas de bon nombre d'entre eux....

Pour une seule fonction de la pensée, en effet, l'expérience a pu faire croire qu'elle était localisée en un certain point du cerveau: je veux parler de la mémoire, et plus particulièrement de la mémoire des mots. Ni pour le jugement, ni pour le raisonnement, ni pour aucune autre faculté de la pensée proprement dite nous n'avons la moindre raison de supposer qu'elle soit attachée à tels ou tels processus cérébraux déterminés.... Si l'on examine de près tous les faits allégués en faveur d'une exacte correspondance et d'une espèce _d'adhérence_ de la vie mentale à la vie cérébrale (je laisse de côté, cela va sans dire, les sensations et les mouvements, car le cerveau est certainement un organe sensori moteur), on voit que ces faits se réduisent aux phénomènes de mémoire, et que c'est la localisation des aphasies, et cette localisation seule, qui semble apporter à la doctrine paralléliste un commencement de preuve expérimentale.

* * * * *

He says that lesions in the place in the brain already alluded to

"rendent, en réalité, impossible ou difficile _l'évocation_ des souvenirs; elles portent sur le mécanisme du rappel, et sur ce mécanisme seulement. Plus précisément, le rôle du cerveau est ici de faire que l'esprit, quand il a besoin de tel ou tel souvenir, puisse obtenir du corps une certaine attitude ou certains mouvements naissants, qui présentent au souvenir cherché un cadre approprié. Si le cadre est là, le souvenir viendra, de lui-même, s'y insérer. L'organe cérébral prépare le cadre, il ne fournit pas le souvenir.... Dans le travail de la pensée en général, comme dans l'opération de la mémoire, le cerveau nous apparaît comme chargé d'imprimer au corps les mouvements et les attitudes qui _jouent_ ce que l'esprit _pense_ ou ce que les circonstances l'invitent â penser.... Il en connaîtrait tout juste ce qui est exprimable en gestes, attitudes et mouvements du corps, ce que l'état d'âme contient d'action en voie d'accomplissement, ou simplement naissante: le reste lui échapperait.... Les phénomènes cérébraux sont en effet à la vie mentale ce que les gestes du chef d'orchestre sont à la symphonie: ils en dessinent les articulations motrices, ils ne font pas autre chose. On ne trouverait donc rien des opérations de l'esprit proprement dit à l'intérieur du cerveau....

Orienter notre pensée vers l'action, l'amener à préparer l'acte que les circonstances réclament, voilâ ce pour quoi notre cerveau est fait...."

* * * * *

Then he turns to the strange memories of the dream state, in ordinary sleep, hypnosis and trance:

Bien des faits semblent indiquer que le passé se conserve jusque dans ses moindres détails et qu'il n'y a pas d'oubli réel. Vous vous rappelez ce qu'on raconte des noyés et des pendus qui, revenus à la vie, déclarent avoir eu, en quelques secondes, la vision panoramique de la totalité de leur vie passée....

Mais ce que je dis de la mémoire serait aussi vrai de la perception. Je ne puis entrer ici dans le détail d'une démonstration que j'ai faite autrefois: qu'il me suffise de rappeler que tout devient obscur, et même incompréhensible, si l'on considère les centres cérébraux comme des organes capables de transformer en états conscients des ébranlements matériels, que tout s'éclaircit au contraire si l'on voit simplement dans ces centres (et dans les dispositifs sensoriels auxquels ils sont liés) des instruments de sélection chargés de choisir, dans le champ immense de nos perceptions virtuelles, celles qui devront s'actualiser.... J'estime que nous percevons virtuellement beaucoup plus de choses que nous n'en percevons actuellement, et qu'ici encore le rôle de notre corps est d'écarter du champ de notre conscience tout ce qui ne nous serait d'aucun intérêt pratique, tout ce qui ne se prête pas à notre action.

* * * * *

This implies what is more fully stated elsewhere in M. Bergson's works, and suggested by nearly all the philosophers, that mind pervades the universe, and flows through each organism, according to its constitution, as force and matter do.

He does not go into the paradox (perhaps another of those we have already alluded to) of individuality surviving as part of the universal mind, but contents himself with saying merely:

Mais si les faits, étudiés sans parti pris, nous amènent au contraire à considérer la vie mentale comme beaucoup plus vaste que la vie cérébrale, la survivance devient si probable que l'obligation de la preuve incombera à celui qui la nie, bien plutôt qu'à celui qui l'affirme; car, ainsi que je le disais ailleurs, "l'unique raison que nous puissions avoir de croire à une extinction de la conscience après la mort est que nous voyons le corps se désorganiser, et cette raison n'a plus de valeur si l'indépendance _au moins_ partielle de la conscience à l'égard du corps est, elle aussi, un fait d'expérience."

* * * * *

Regarding telepathy, he made the following suggestions (_Op. cit._, 465, 466, 475-6):

Si la télépathie est un fait réel, c'est un fait susceptible de se répéter indéfiniment. Je vais plus loin: si la télépathie est un fait réel, il est fort possible qu'elle opère à chaque instant et chez tout le monde, mais avec trop peu d'intensité pour se faire remarquer, ou en présence d'obstacles qui neutralisent l'effet au moment même où il va se manifester. Nous produisons de l'électricité à tout moment, l'atmosphère est constamment électrisée, nous circulons parmi des courants magnétiques; et pourtant des millions d'hommes ont vécu pendant des milliers d'années sans soupçonner l'existence de l'électricité. Il pourrait en être de même de la télépathie. Mais peu importe. Un point est en tous cas incontestable, c'est que, si la télépathie est réelle, elle est naturelle, et que, le jour où nous en connaîtrions les conditions, il ne nous serait pas plus nécessaire, pour obtenir un effet télépathique, d'attendre une hallucination vraie, que nous n'avons besoin aujourd'hui, quand nous voulons voir l'étincelle électrique, d'attendre que le ciel veuille bien nous en donner le spectacle pendant une scène d'orage....

Pour ma part, quand je repasse dans ma mémoire les résultats de l'admirable enquête poursuivie continuellement par vous pendant plus de trente ans, quand je pense à toutes les précautions que vous avez prises pour éviter l'erreur, quand je vois comment, dans la plupart des cas que vous avez retenus, le récit de l'hallucination avait été fait à une ou plusieurs personnes, souvent même noté par écrit, avant que l'hallucination eût été reconnue véridique, quand je tiens compte du nombre énorme des faits et surtout de leur ressemblance entre eux, de leur air de famille, de la concordance de tant de témoignages indépendants les uns des autres, tous examinés, contrôlés, soumis à la critique,--je suis porté à croire à la télépathie de même que je crois, par exemple, à la défaite de l'Invincible Armada. Ce n'est pas la certitude mathématique que me donne la démonstration du théorème de Pythagore; ce n'est pas la certitude physique où je suis de la vérité de la loi de la chute des corps; c'est du moins toute la certitude qu'on obtient en matière historique ou judiciaire.

Nos corps sont extérieurs les uns aux autres dans l'espace; et nos consciences, en tant qu'attachées à ces corps, sont extérieures les unes aux autres aussi. Mais si elles ne tiennent au corps que par une partie d'elles-mêmes, on peut conjecturer que, pour le reste, elles ne sont pas aussi nettement séparées. Loin de moi la pensée de considérer la personnalité comme une simple apparence, ou comme une réalité éphémère, ou comme une dépendance de l'activité cérébrale! Mais il est fort possible qu'entre les diverses personnalités s'accomplissent sans cesse des échanges comparables aux phénomènes d'endosmose. Si cette endosmose existe, on peut prévoir que la nature aura pris toutes ses précautions pour en neutraliser l'effet, et que certains mécanismes devront être spécialement chargés de rejeter dans l'inconscient les représentations ainsi provoquées, car elles seraient fort embarrassantes dans la vie de tous les jours. Telle ou telle de ces représentations pourrait cependant, ici encore, passer en contrebande, surtout quand les mécanismes inhibitifs fonctionnent mal; et sur elles encore s'exercerait la "recherche psychique."

TWO NEGLECTED VIRTUES

Two virtues are generally ignored in the systematic books on morals and in the informal admonitions of fathers to sons, yet upon these virtues depends most of the ease, delight and profit which comes to us in human fellowship. Let me illustrate.

There is in the Metropolitan Museum a very handsome funeral slab of a certain bailiff of Sesostris I., Menthu-Weser. This steward prepared his own epitaph with conviction and most carefully. Among many assertions of his own merits the most striking is, "I was one who really listened." Here seems evidence that in Egypt early in the second millennium before Christ the virtues of reticence and tact were valued. Ever since they have had scant enough recognition in the world. In our own days particularly the robust virtues have the preference. We acclaim the square deal. We are socially minded, meaning that we aggressively mind the business of others. Naturally such quiet and unsensational virtues as tact and reticence are gone out of fashion. In a land where all are equals, tact is likely to pass for truckling, or worse for condescension, whereas reticence must perforce be abhorrent to a generation which has trusted to an unlimited publicity the remedying of most earthly ills. Lest we think too hardly of our own generation, let me hasten to repeat that no age has done full justice to these dubious virtues. Holy Writ, to be sure, extols the value of the "word in season," while to the much married Solomon is ascribed the proverbs, "He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life, but he that openeth wide his lips shall have destruction." But this sinister aspect of loquaciousness is evidently proper to an oriental despotism and not to a free republic. We gain but faint glimpses of our unscheduled virtues from moralist and theologian. The Roman Church, always meticulously analytical of both the virtues and vices, finds no official rubric either for tact or reticence. These capacities, indispensable stay and safeguard of the confessional, may indeed have been regarded as the trade secret of the clergy, and, as tending to produce too astute a laity, unfit for promulgation. However that be, it is not to the pious manuals that we must go for examples of tactful sayings or happy silences, but to the extra-clerical expressions of such vagrom clerics as Boccaccio and Bandello. From their collections of ready and witty retorts many instances of tact might be selected, but neither of these storytellers can be said conspicuously to illustrate the virtue of reticence.

Reticence in fact is perhaps the most unpopular of virtues. What most people like is loquaciousness and its kindred vice tactlessness. The reticent man is seldom that meritorious thing, a good mixer, and he suffers from the suspicion of moroseness. Open-heartedness, on the contrary, is charitably credited to the habitual chatterer. He is, as the Irish happily say, an easy spoken man, joyously gregarious. A similar credit attaches itself to the habitually tactless person. You know where to find him. He speaks his mind without regard to your sensibilities. At bottom, an expression which a clever French writer has shrewdly remarked always means exceptionally, he is surely amiable, a thoroughly good sort--at bottom. It is significant, however, that reticence and tact may be partially condoned by the possession of great wealth. Only recently a multimillionaire won prominence in his obscure class, and a nickname, merely on his silence, while another who was all things to all men, and to many women, is still remembered as a prince charming whether among sportsmen or statesmen. All of which goes to show that our twin virtues are essentially aristocratic or at least capitalistic, and appraised accordingly. A statesman or politician, being in a democracy a hybrid between the classes and masses, must practice the virtue of tactfulness but by the same token resolutely eschew that of reticence. The political aspirant is heard for his much speaking, and when silent may be said to cease to exist.

Now for such misvaluations there is generally a specious and respectable reason. Indeed one reason will doubtless explain nine-tenths of popular delusions--the habit of judging not from the long but from the short run. The blurting way is the easiest way of meeting a situation and wins the praise of frankness. It takes time and pains to weigh a situation and adjust one's attitude to that of another, and such considerateness often passes for obliquity. Of course the blurting habit itself is often merely a form of pose; confidence men practice it for good business reasons. The man who overrides you will as often be pursuing a tactic as he cajoles you. Indeed the professionally downright man is often more devious than the tactful person. Battering you with a confusing flow of argument, imposing his will at random, he is precisely the man you do not know where to find. You yield to him in small matters out of weariness and avoid him in great. But at any particular moment he does seem outspoken, and he leaves a general impression of strength and candor. Beyond such false appearances an untrained mind will rarely inquire. The tactful man who watches his opportunity to set his matter agreeably before you, taking you on your best side, is proceeding quite straight-forwardly, but to an impatient or unattentive or irresolute person the processes of tact may well seem both dilatory and crooked. Thus the merely assertive man will usually get undue credit on first hearing while the tactful man generally wins his standing only on prolonged acquaintance. The great painter Delacroix, a fastidious man if there ever was one, used to deplore the ease with which at first meeting persons of a certain persistent aggressiveness took him in.

Talkativeness, like tactlessness, has an undeniable face value that largely disappears on inspection. Ten times a day in casual contacts it might be pleasanter and easier to deal with a chatty person than with a silent one, that is, easier and pleasanter for one to whom time was small object. The commercial traveller is proverbially loquacious, though in the higher ranges of the calling doubtless a businesslike taciturnity prevails. An ex-grocer's clerk has been publishing some amusing confessions in a popular magazine--in our unreticent age confessions singularly abound--and he tells that his sole instructions were "Chin the women." Evidently what was assumed of his fair customers was rather amenability than intelligence or thrift. In a world where there was little or no intelligence, tact and reticence would be unnecessary virtues, rational persuasion being impossible. In such a world the human compact would imply infinite blundering and unrestrained conversability. Such is still the unwritten law of life among people who have not wholly reached the conscious stage. "Yes, I burnt it," my cook says beamingly with the air of inviting a compliment, carelessness being quite normal in her code.

The trouble with the virtues of reticence and tact--and naturally the ground of their unpopularity--is precisely that they are products not of the heart but of the head. To possess these qualities opens one to the suspicion of being a cold fish. Nobody objects to the warmer and less rationalized virtues. If we accept the convenient and I believe quite psychologically defensible list drawn up by the mediæval schoolmen, we shall find that the standard virtues are almost without exception of the heart. Obviously this is true of the prime theological virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity. Despite utilitarian interpretations, these remain temperamental qualities. We are born believing, hopeful, and loving, or not. And even such of us as are deficient in these merits by heredity or from policy at least will accord to the entire Pauline triad the tribute of a distant admiration. When we approach the pagan list, Fortitude, Prudence, Temperance and Justice, the virtues begin to make enemies. With Fortitude no one quarrels, for that is an instinctive virtue, an expression largely of ample circulation and steady nerves. It is the only secular virtue that is completely popular. Justice may share such esteem in a measure, for the inclination towards the square deal and a rough sense of its needfulness are deeply seated in the race. Prudence and Temperance, on the contrary, within which larger categories our special virtues of reticence and tact are comprised, have ever been grudgingly practiced and even theoretically disallowed. Humanity has ever boasted a sporting contingent to whom to be prudent and temperate was anathema. The deeply rooted feeling that every young man must sow his wild oats is the express disavowal of these virtues so far as male youth is concerned. Reticence and tact, then, must be content to share the unpopularity of all the cerebral virtues. The man who is delicately considerate of his neighbor's case must be content to be regarded as a schemer, and he who cautiously weighs his utterances must bear the reproach of ungeniality.

But as soon as a society becomes conscious and complicated, tact and reticence assume high and even indispensable value. No physician who had the confidential ways of a country postmistress would be tolerated. Why is a parvenu stranded in a society which may consist of his inferiors in capacity and morals? Because he has no clear notion of his attitude to his new fellows or of theirs to him and to each other, he lacks the tact for an untried situation. The grace of a reticent observation may gain him time and save him appalling blunders. If his social intelligence be keen, he will adopt such Fabian tactics until some opening in mutual sympathy establishes itself. But this implies reticence. As a matter of fact, he will usually be restive, and will talk at random and constrainedly, being ignorant of what that particular company likes to hear said or left unsaid. His utterances successively betray him and he progressively writes himself down an ass. Nor is his case made better, as humanitarians confidently profess, by kindliness. His heart may be the best in the world and understanding of the minds and manners of new people denied him. His kindliness may condone the spectacle he cuts, but to make his position good wants intelligence which good-heartedness may supplement but not supplant. Nor is his dilemma due, as Socialists will perhaps maintain, merely to the fact that his difference is arrogantly ascribed by snobbishness to personal inferiority. In the same circumstances a far humbler person, a forest-guide or a sailor, will comport himself agreeably and without constraint. Perhaps the close quarters of tent and forecastle conduce to tolerant understanding between very different individuals, and set natural limits to forced or heedless talk.

Between the reticent and the merely taciturn person there is constant confusion. The silent man may simply be devoid of interests, morose and with nothing to say. A trappist is merely speechless; not reticent. The reticent man has much to say, but for reason says only the part that his judgment approves. He is his own censor. His abstentions are due to a fundamental conviction that many things never need to be said at all, and that most personal difficulties best adjust themselves with fewest words. His attitude evinces respect for certain privacies. His intimate business is not in the show window nor on the bargain counter, and he assumes as much of the personal concerns of his fellows. If there be a human type peculiarly intolerable, it is that which insists on stated explanations of every trifling misunderstanding. There are minds for which no slightest transaction is outlawed and no statute of limitations admitted. What shall that woman say who wastes five minutes explaining why she didn't bow to me yesterday when a real occasion of conference arises? How shall I respect the man who insists on divulging most physiologically the mysteries of his bed and board? How shall I bear that my own humble Lares and Penates be bywords on reckless lips? On the whole the finest gentleman I have ever met was the Japanese Samurai and art critic, the late Okakura Kakuzo. I recall as vividly his courteous and expectant silences as I do his always eloquent and brilliant discourse. Indulgent to the small talk of others, he declined to share it. If he ever gave utterance to a mere prejudice or to any petty personal concern, it was not in my hearing. He appeared to husband himself until the talk should take a wide impersonal range, and then his comment was fervent and illuminating. A noted American poet and critic has somewhat similar habits. His prolonged silences are comfortable, even deferential, his rare speech instinct with sympathetic understanding of men and books and nature. The late John LaFarge who was in congenial society a continuous talker offered an interesting equivalent for reticence in the allusiveness of his touch and in a beautiful perception of the kind of sympathetic response you would have made had you not been better occupied in listening to him. He had what most free talkers signally lack, perfect tact.

Perhaps the most distressing and alarming feature of our American civilization is the complete lack of any ideal of reticence. Scientists babble for the press, clergymen fan the prurient flame of curiosity after each especially noxious _cause célèbre_, chorus girls divulge the hygiene of their personal charms, nameless outrage becomes the favorite theme of venal dramatists, young girls make small talk of the pros and cons of marriage and free love, shallow journalists glorify the vices of the city slums, an unprincipled press and an untrained laity freely review the findings of the courts, clever but irresponsible scribblers pillory wholesale our industry and finance--in short we live in an age when to expose anything is the highest good, and to conceal anything passes for a manner of treason. When everything conceivable has been said, boggled and muddled out, a reaction must come. Wearied by the vociferations of the nostrum vendors, the plain man will come to realize that what is read counts little in comparison with what is marked and inwardly digested. In a thoroughly unreticent age we get mere data, much of it false, far too fast. We have yet to learn the elementary lesson of the Stoics, to learn and fix upon that which concerns ourselves. A chief merit of the Pragmatic philosophy, with most of which I cordially disagree, is to have shown that we must bring words and thought to the test of action, and a very simple test of the worth or worthlessness of talk or writing on social matters would be whether the residual impression is a mere perturbation, or titillation, or a firm purpose to do some definite remedial thing. If I am taught to be merely uneasy about the sharp practices of my retail grocer, or more likely of his wholesale grocer, without seeking for tangible relief and redress, my last estate is worse than my first. I merely eat in bitterness of spirit the preservatives and adulterants which otherwise I might have negotiated at the cost of a slight dyspepsia. Where Mr. Roosevelt has most deserved ill of the republic is in fomenting this general atmosphere of suspicion in the people while lodging both the recognition of the criminal and his proper punishment in some transcendental capacity of his own personality. He is the Dr. Munyon of the diseased body politic, and his power consists largely in continual and breathless reiteration of universal symptoms under which each man may have the grateful illusion of registering his own particular ache. Mr. Roosevelt seems to me a supreme example of the inconveniences, nay danger, of incorrigible and thoroughly well meaning garrulity in a political leader. But Mr. Roosevelt's tact is often as noteworthy as his prolixity, even his indiscretions are calculated or inspired to meet the call of the occasion. Why of X? was his remark when a scholar of international repute was introduced at the White House as "of X University."

The case of Mr. Roosevelt and in a quite different sense that of John LaFarge make me question sometimes what really seems axiomatic that no free talker can be completely tactful. Carlyle, Ruskin, Gladstone seem to illustrate the rule, and even Lowell, as his intimates admit, long retained certain asperities. It seems obvious that one who has never quietly looked into himself and seen clearly, nor studied his fellow man at leisure and accurately, can acquire the art of compatibility. To think otherwise is to assert that the tactful man, poetlike, is born not made. Were this so, cases of tact among young children should be fairly common, and I doubt if the fondest parent could supply any genuine instance. So I feel that such apparent exceptions to the rule as John LaFarge and Mr. Roosevelt would fall into line if one knew the whole story. There must have been a time when both, like the steward, Menthu-Weser, listened much and took keenest note of the ways and moods of other men.

Tact is so readily divined and so difficult of definition that I have avoided what might seem an essayist's plain duty. Yet a tactful reader will not require a pedantic formulation in these matters of common experience. I suppose the basis of tact is a good understanding with one's self, a comprehension of the permanent disposition and passing moods of those with whom one deals, a desire to approach men on their best side, combined with the force and initiative that enable one to act promptly on such knowledge. Tact may or may not be coupled with expansive kind-heartedness. In such association it gains an added grace. Tact implies at the least a vivid human curiosity hardly distinguishable from sympathy. If it were otherwise there would be no motive for exercising tact in cases which involve no material interest. And I suppose the genuinely tactful person finds his greatest incentives and rewards in emergencies that offer only the satisfaction of a neatly played game. In the whole matter the sense of timeliness is everything. To wait for a softening expression, to suppress a cherished witticism the appositeness of which has passed, to exhaust without insistence a happy vein, to rise sharply to any worthy lure and refuse an unworthy one without offence--such are some of the delightful and legitimate arts of the tactful person. Whether men or women possess these gentle arts in fuller measure would be matter for a separate essay. The impression prevails that women do, indeed the phrase "feminine tact" is quite stereotyped among us. I presume that a scrutiny of the memoirs of the most highly developed society of modern times, the French salons of the old régime, would confirm this judgment. From my own limited experience I can only say that while I have met ten tactful women for one tactful man, the consummate exemplars of this virtue in my acquaintance have been of the so-called sterner sex, and I am inclined to believe that the finest flower of considerateness grows best in the rocky soil of the masculine intelligence. The mere fact that the personal adjustment is more difficult between men with no reconciling tradition of chivalry prevailing may make for finer transactions. Possibly too, the absence of a conventional sex loyalty, a relatively detached and impersonal habit of thought, a somewhat ruthless will to understand, a practice of moving resolutely in difficult affairs, may make the tact of a man when it occurs at all a more precious and complicated product. So at least it strikes one who confessedly knows the world largely through books. I would rather have overheard the talk and silences of David and Jonathan, or for that matter of Charles Eliot Norton and Carlyle, than that of any man and woman or of any two women recorded by historian or novelist. If, fair reader, this be treason, make the most of it.

To the notion that tact requires both a perceptive and an active part, I must for a moment return. The fact seems to me to explain the oft discussed case of the shy person. In my observation shy people are usually quite delicately perceptive, victims in fact of an almost morbid open-mindedness and sympathy. Where they lack is in prompt decision between diverging courses, in the sense of relativity which brings the right word or silence at the right moment, and precisely and only for that moment's sake. I fancy many shy persons are not egotists, as an impatient and genial world is prone to hold them, but absolutists, expecting of human intercourse a sort of abstract fitness in the light of an eternal aspect which for the really tactful man has no practical existence. In heaven and probably in hell the shy should get along capitally. In the celestial domain active tact would be unnecessary--it would merely trouble the perpetual beatitude; in the nether realm tact would simply mitigate those tense affinities and antipathies which are implied in a future punitive state. The damned, if really tactful folk, would never have to be strictly regimented among their infernal peers with the inevitability which a Dante or a Swedenborg describes. In the sphere of intelligence indeed inevitability has no meaning. Alternatives always exist. A determinist's god cannot be tactful, and if Professors James and Royce have been allured by the idea of a conditioned deity, I fancy it has been largely with the hope of shading the arid conception of omnipotence with one of the most amiable human qualities. It is a compromise which the Christian effects less philosophically in the doctrine of the God-man. Yet the Jesus of the Gospels remains for the philosopher much more of a God than of a man, despite the efforts of orthodox and skeptical criticism to elucidate the historic figure. His sayings transcend tact, and the Jews, eminently a negotiating, compromising and tactful race, bore true report when they said "He speaks as never man spake."

Such serious and remote but I trust illuminating aspects of our topic may merely be glanced at. In closing I may note that while the finest exhibitions of tact arise between individuals or in small groups, there is also a collective type of tact which must be mastered by the artist, the actor, and the orator. St. Paul manifested it in the highest degree when he addressed the curious Babists, Vedantists, Christian Scientists, Spiritualists, Vitalists, Relativists, and Materialists (my Greek has lapsed so I offer modern equivalents) of Athens as men "pre-eminently religious." And it is characteristic of the touch and go quality of every sort of tact that nothing much moved the loiterers on Mars Hill except the Apostle's beginning. Need I add that tact itself loyally obeys the law of measure and occasion which it imposes on its subservient material? The high exercise of tact requires high occasions. Of this sort was John Hancock's grim and enlightening jest in the Continental Congress on all hanging together lest they all hang separately. It took perhaps a singularly tactless personality to husband this supreme and isolated flash for a lifetime until the right occasion should occur. Merely one among countless examples of Lincoln's tact was his solicitous inquiry as to the brand of Grant's whiskey when a meddler brought gossip of the great General's potations. Charles II's famous apology for unconscionable delay in dying is frequently cited as a consummate example of tact. To me it seems merely witty, containing as it does a hint that the attendants had let something of impatience or weariness transpire.

It is the negative part of tact always to save at least two faces--leaving neither party to a transaction discomforted. The most solemn example of entire tactlessness within my knowledge was perpetrated by a very learned man, the by no means inconspicuous father of a far more famous son, Dr. John Rubens. During a prolonged absence of that rather unsatisfactory husband, William of Orange, Dr. John deeply engaged the volatile affections of Queen Anna. When the affair was uncovered he wrote to the Prince a letter of apology, the tenor of which was that such infelicities had been the common lot of monarchs, as history showed, and the present mishap was the more tolerable that he himself, Dr. John Rubens, was a man of parts and station, a Doctor of Laws from no mean university, and at court the equal of a baron. It does not appear that such plain intimation that the queen might have erred with some base fellow, perhaps a mere Bachelor of Arts, in any way comforted the taciturn Prince. When Dr. Rubens left prison it was not because of this letter but through the importunity of a singularly loyal wife. To emphasize the relativity of tact let me cite a family anecdote, the appositeness of which must condone a certain lack of reticence in its telling. My father once in conducting a defence before a magistrate, by directing a single crucial question to the plaintiff put him overtly in the wrong, and noting the judge's involuntary nod of assent, rested the case, promptly obtaining a favorable verdict. As regards the judge this was perfect tact, but not as regards the client. He rightly expected a more ample parade of professional skill and probably still grudges the fee.

How much needless travail and fuss a truly reticent and tactful man might spare himself and his neighbors--privacies profaned, trifling misunderstandings magnified, maimed reputations, distracted aims, thwarted accomplishment! Upon all this I could still enlarge, but I am already rebuked by the ambiguously smiling shade of Samuel Butler of "Erewhon" who remarks in his "Notebooks:"

"No man should try even to allude to the greater part of what he sees in his subject, and there is hardly a limit to what he may omit. What is required is that he shall say what he elects to say discreetly, that he shall be quick to see the gist of a matter, and give it pithily without either prolixity or stint of words."

THE UNFERMENTED CABINET