VI
IN THE ADIRONDACKS
For the last few days I have been living in camp on a mountain lake in the Adirondacks. All about me are mountains and unlumbered forest. The tree lies where it falls; the undergrowth chokes the trails; and on the hottest day it is cool in the green, sun-chequered wilderness. Deer start in the thickets or steal down to drink in the lake. The only sounds are the wood-pecker's scream, the song of the hermit-thrush, the thrumming and drumming of bull-frogs in the water. My friend is a sportsman; I am not; and while he catches trout I have been reading Homer and Shelley. Shelley I have always understood; but now, for the first time, I seem to understand Homer. Our guide here, I feel, might have been Homer, if he had had imagination; but he could never have been Shelley. Homer, I conceive, had from the first the normal bent for action. What his fellows did he too wanted to do. He learned to hunt, to sail a boat, to build a house, to use a spear and bow. He had his initiation early, in conflict, in danger, and in death. He loved the feast, the dance, and the song. But also he had dreams. He used to sit alone and think. And, as he grew, these moods grew, till he came to live a second life, a kind of double of the first. The one was direct, unreflective, and purposeful. In it he hunted wild beasts that he might kill them, fought battles that he might win them, sailed boats that he might arrive somewhere. So far, he was like his fellows, and like our guide, with his quick observation, his varied experience, his practical skill. But then, on the other hand, he had imagination. This active life he reproduced; not by recapitulating it – that the guide can do; but by recreating it. He detached it, as it were, from himself as centre; ceased, indeed, to be a self; and became all that he contemplated – the victor and the vanquished, the hunter and the hunted, the house and its builder, Thersites and Achilles. He became the sun and the moon and the stars, the gods and the laughter of the gods. He took no sides, pronounced no judgment, espoused no cause. He became pure vision; but not passive vision. To see, he had to re-create; and the material his observation had amassed he offered up as a holocaust on the altar of his imagination. Fused in that fierce fire, like drew to like, parts ran together and formed a whole. Did he see a warrior fall? In a moment the image arose of "a stately poplar falling by the axe in a meadow by the riverside." Did a host move out to meet the foe? It recalled the ocean shore where "wave follows wave far out at sea until they break in thunder on the beach." Was battle engaged? "The clash of the weapons rang like the din of woodcutters in the mountain-glades." Did a wounded hero fall? The combatants gathered about him "like flies buzzing round the brimming milk-pails in the spring." All commonest things, redeemed from isolation and irrelevance, revealed the significance with which they were charged. The result was the actual made real, a reflexion which was a disclosure, a reproduction which was a recreation. And if experience, as we know it, is the last word of life, if there is nothing beyond and nothing behind, if there is no meaning, no explanation, no purpose or end, then the poetry of Homer is the highest reach of human achievement.
For, observe, Homer is not a critic. His vision transmutes life, but does not transcend it. Experience is ultimate; all the poet does is to experience fully. Common men live, but do not realise life; he realises it. But he does not question it; it is there and it is final; glorious, lovely, august, terrible, sordid, cruel, unjust. And the partial, smiling, unmoved, unaccountable Olympians are the symbol of its brute actuality. Not only is there no explanation, there is not even a question to be asked. So it is, so it has been, so it will be. Homer's outlook is that of the modern realist. That he wrote an epic, and they novels, is an accident of time and space. Turgeneff or Balzac writing 1000 years before Christ would have been Homer; and Homer, writing now, would have been Turgeneff or Balzac.
But Shelley could never have been Homer; for he was born a critic and a rebel. From the first dawn of consciousness he challenged and defied the works and ways of men and the apparent order of the universe. Never for a moment anywhere was he at home in the world. There was nothing attainable he cared to pursue, nothing actual he cared to represent. He could no more see what is called fact than he could act upon it. His eyes were dazzled by a different vision. Life and the world not only are intolerable to him, they are unreal. Beyond and behind lies Reality, and it is good. Now it is a Perfectibility lying in the future; now a Perfection existing eternally. In any case, whatever it be, however and wherever to be found, it is the sole object of his quest and of his song. Whatever of good or lovely or passionate gleams here and there, on the surface or in the depths of the actual, is a ray of that Sun, an image of that Beauty. His imagination is kindled by Appearance only to soar away from it. The landscape he depicts is all light, all fountains and caverns. The Beings with which it is peopled are discarnate Joys and Hopes; Justice and Liberty, Peace and Love and Truth. Among these only is he at home; in the world of men he is an alien captive; and Human Life presents itself as an "unquiet dream."
"'Tis we that, lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings."
When we die, we awake into Reality – that Reality to which, from the beginning, Shelley was consecrated:
"I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine – have I not kept my vow?"
He calls it "intellectual Beauty"; he impersonates it as Asia, and sings it in verse that passes beyond sense into music:
"Life of Life! thy lips enkindle
With their love the breath between them;
And thy smiles before they dwindle
Make the cold air fire; then screen them
In those looks, where whoso gazes
Faints, entangled in their mazes.
Child of Light! thy limbs are burning
Through the vest which seems to hide them;
As the radiant lines of morning
Through the clouds ere they divide them;
And this atmosphere divinest
Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest.
Fair are others; none beholds thee,
But thy voice sounds low and tender
Like the fairest, for it folds thee
From the sight, that liquid splendour,
And all feel, yet see thee never,
As I feel now, lost for ever!
Lamp of Earth! where'er thou movest
Its dim shapes are clad with brightness,
And the souls of whom thou lovest
Walk upon the winds with lightness,
Till they fail, as I am failing,
Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!"
This we call poetry; and we call the Iliad poetry. But the likeness is superficial, and the difference profound. Was it Homer or Shelley that grasped Reality? This is not a question of literary excellence; it is a question of the sense of life. And – oddly enough – it is a question to which the intellect has no answer. The life in each of us takes hold of it and answers it empirically. The normal man is Homeric, though he is not aware of the fact. Especially is the American Homeric; naïf, spontaneous, at home with fact, implicitly denying the Beyond. Is he right? This whole continent, the prairies, the mountains and the coast, the trams and trolleys, the sky-scrapers, the factories, elevators, automobiles, shout to that question one long deafening Yes. But there is another country that speaks a different tongue. Before America was, India is.
VII
THE RELIGION OF BUSINESS
In the house in which I am staying hangs an old coloured print, representing two couples, one young and lusty, the other decrepit, the woman carrying an hour-glass, the man leaning on a stick; and underneath, the following inscription:
"My father and mother that go so stuping to your grave,
Pray tell me what good I may in this world expect to have?"
"My son, the good you can expect is all forlorn,
Men doe not gather grapes from of a thorn."
This dialogue, I sometimes think, symbolises the attitude of the new world to the old, and the old to the new. Not seldom I feel among Americans as the Egyptian is said to have felt among the Greeks, that I am moving in a world of precocious and inexperienced children, bearing on my own shoulders the weight of the centuries. Yet it is not exactly that Americans strike one as young in spirit; rather they strike one as undeveloped. It is as though they had never faced life and asked themselves what it is; as though they were so occupied in running that it has never occurred to them to inquire where they started and whither they are going. They seem to be always doing and never experiencing. A dimension of life, one would say, is lacking, and they live in a plane instead of in a solid. That missing dimension I shall call religion. Not that Americans do not, for aught I know, "believe" as much as or more than Europeans; but they appear neither to believe nor to disbelieve religiously. That, I admit, is true almost everywhere of the mass of the people. But even in Europe – and far more in India – there has always been, and still is, a minority who open windows to the stars; and through these windows, in passing, the plain man sometimes looks. The impression America makes on me is that the windows are blocked up. It has become incredible that this continent was colonised by the Pilgrim Fathers. That intense, narrow, unlovely but genuine spiritual life has been transformed into industrial energy; and this energy, in its new form, the churches, oddly enough, are endeavouring to recapture and use to drive their machines. Religion is becoming a department of practical business. The Churches – orthodox and unorthodox, old and new, Christian, Christian-Scientific, theosophic, higher-thinking – vie with one another in advertising goods which are all material benefits: "Follow me, and you will get rich," "Follow me, and you will get well," "Follow me, and you will be cheerful, prosperous, successful." Religion in America is nothing if not practical. It does not concern itself with a life beyond; it gives you here and now what you want. "What do you want? Money? Come along! – Success? This is the shop! – Health? Here you are! Better than patent medicines!" The only part of the Gospels one would suppose that interests the modern American is the miracles; for the miracles really did do something. As for the Sermon on the Mount – well, no Westerner ever took that seriously.
This conversion of religion into business is interesting enough. But even more striking is what looks like a conversion of business into religion. Business is so serious that it sometimes assumes the shrill tone of a revivalist propaganda. There has recently been brought to my attention a circular addressed to the agents of an insurance society, urging them to rally round the firm, with a special effort, in what I can only call a "mission-month." I quote – with apologies to the unknown author – part of this production:
The Call to Action
"How about these beautiful spring days for hustling? Everything is on the move. New life and force is apparent everywhere. The man who can stand still when all creation is on the move is literally and hopelessly a dead one.
"These are ideal days for the insurance field-man. Weather like this has a tremendously favourable effect on business. In the city and small town alike there is a genuine revival of business. The farmer, the merchant, the manufacturer, are beginning to work overtime. Spring is in the footstep of the ambitious man as well as in the onward march of nature. This is the day of growth, expansion, creation, and re-creation.
"Consciously or unconsciously every one responds to the glad call to new life and vigour. Men who are cold and selfish, who are literally frozen up the winter through, yield to the warm, invigorating, energising touch of spring.
"Gentlemen of the field force, now is the psychological moment to force your prospects to action as indicated by the dotted line. As in nature, some plants and trees are harder to force than others, so in the nature of human prospects, some are more difficult than others. Sunshine and rain will produce results in the field of life-underwriting.
"Will it not be possible for you during these five remaining days not only to increase the production from regular sources, but to go out into the highways and hedges and compel others to sign their applications, if for only a small amount?
"Everything is now in full swing, and we are going to close up the month
"IN A BLAZE OF GLORY."
Might not this almost as well have been an address from the headquarters of the Salvation Army? And is not the following exactly parallel to a denunciation, from the mission-pulpit, of the unprofitable servant?
"A few days ago we heard of a general agent who has one of the largest and most prosperous territories in this country. He has been in the business for years, and yet that man, for some unknown reason, rather apologises for his vocation. He said he was a little ashamed of his calling. Such a condition is almost a crime, and I am sure that the men of the Eastern Department will say, that man ought to get out of the business.
"Instead of being ashamed of his calling, he should be mortally ashamed of his not calling.
"Are you happy in your work? If not, give it up and go into some business more to your liking."
Why Is It?
"So many times the question is asked, 'Why is it, and how is it, that Mr. So-and-so writes so much business? There is not a week but he procures new applications.' Gentlemen, there's but one answer to this question. There is a great gulf between the man who is in earnest and works persistently every day and the man who seems to be in earnest and makes believe he is working persistently every day.
"One of the most successful personal producers said to the writer the other day: 'No wonder certain agents do not write more business. I couldn't accomplish very much either if I did not work longer hours than they do. Some insurance agents live like millionaires and keep bankers' hours. You cannot expect much business from efforts like that.' This man speaks from practical knowledge of the business. He has written
$147,500 in personal business in the last six weeks
"It does seem rather strange, sometimes, that half of the men in the Eastern Department should be writing twice as much business as the other half. They are representing the same company; presenting the same propositions; are supposed to be talking to practically the same number of men; have the same rates, same guarantees, and the same twenty-four hours in each day, and yet are doing twice the business. In other words, making more money. What really makes this difference? I will tell you. They put heart into their work. There is an enthusiasm and earnestness about them that carries conviction. They are business through and through, and everybody knows it.
"Are you getting your share of applications? If some other agent is up early, wide-awake and alert, putting in from ten to fifteen hours per day, he is bound to do business, isn't he? This is a plain, every-day horse-sense business fact. No one has a patent on time or the use of it. To work and to succeed is common property. It is your capital, and the use of it will determine your worth."
I think, really, this is one of the most remarkable documents that could be produced in evidence of the character of American civilisation. There is all the push, initiative, and enterprise on which they justly pride themselves; there is also the reduction of all values to terms of business, the concentration of what, at other times, have been moral and religious forces upon the one aim of material progress. In such an atmosphere it is easy to see how those who care for spiritual values are led to protest that these are really material; to pack up their goods, so to speak, as if they were biscuits or pork, and palm them off in that guise on an unsuspecting public. In a world where every one is hustling, the Churches feel they must hustle too; when all the firms advertise, they must advertise too; when only one thing is valued, power, they must pretend they can offer power; they must go into business, because business is going into religion!
It is a curious spectacle! How long will it last? How real is it, even now? That withered couple, I half believe, hanging on the wall, descend at night and wander through the land, whispering to all the sleepers their disquieting warning; and all day long there hovers at the back of the minds of these active men a sense of discomfort which, if it became articulate, might express itself in the ancient words:
"My son, the good you can expect is all forlorn,
Men doe not gather grapes from of a thorn."
VIII
RED-BLOODS AND "MOLLYCODDLES"
I am staying at a pleasant place in New Hampshire. The country is hilly and wooded, like a larger and wilder Surrey; and through it flows what, to an Englishman, seems a large river, the Connecticut. Charming villas are dotted about, well designed and secluded in pretty gardens. I mention this because, in my experience of America, it is unique. Almost everywhere the houses stare blankly at one another and at the public roads, ugly, unsheltered, and unashamed, as much as to say, "Every one is welcome to see what goes on here. We court publicity. See how we eat, drink, and sleep. Our private life is the property of the American people." It was not, however, to describe the country that I began this letter, but to elaborate a generalisation developed by my host and myself as a kind of self-protection against the gospel of "strenuousness."
We have divided men into Red-bloods and Mollycoddles. "A Red-blood man" is a phrase which explains itself, "Mollycoddle" is its opposite. We have adopted it from a famous speech of Mr. Roosevelt, and redeemed it – perverted it, if you will – to other uses. A few examples will make the notion clear. Shakespeare's Henry V. is a typical Red-blood; so was Bismarck; so was Palmerston; so is almost any business man. On the other hand, typical Mollycoddles were Socrates, Voltaire, and Shelley. The terms, you will observe, are comprehensive, and the types very broad. Generally speaking, men of action are Red-bloods. Not but what the Mollycoddle may act, and act efficiently. But, if so, he acts from principle, not from the instinct of action. The Red-blood, on the other hand, acts as the stone falls, and does indiscriminately anything that comes to hand. It is thus he that carries on the business of the world. He steps without reflection into the first place offered him and goes to work like a machine. The ideals and standards of his family, his class, his city, his country and his age, he swallows as naturally as he swallows food and drink. He is therefore always "in the swim"; and he is bound to "arrive," because he has set before himself the attainable. You will find him everywhere in all the prominent positions. In a military age he is a soldier, in a commercial age a business man. He hates his enemies, and he may love his friends; but he does not require friends to love. A wife and children he does require, for the instinct to propagate the race is as strong in him as all other instincts. His domestic life, however, is not always happy; for he can seldom understand his wife. This is part of his general incapacity to understand any point of view but his own. He is incapable of an idea and contemptuous of a principle. He is the Samson, the blind force, dearest to Nature of her children. He neither looks back nor looks ahead. He lives in present action. And when he can no longer act, he loses his reason for existence. The Red-blood is happiest if he dies in the prime of life; otherwise, he may easily end with suicide. For he has no inner life; and when the outer life fails, he can only fail with it. The instinct that animated him being dead, he dies too. Nature, who has blown through him, blows elsewhere. His stops are dumb; he is dead wood on the shore.
The Mollycoddle, on the other hand, is all inner life. He may indeed act, as I said, but he acts, so to speak, by accident; just as the Red-blood may reflect, but reflects by accident. The Mollycoddle in action is the Crank: it is he who accomplishes reforms; who abolished slavery, for example, and revolutionised prisons and lunatic asylums. Still, primarily, the Mollycoddle is a critic, not a man of action. He challenges all standards and all facts. If an institution is established, that is a reason why he will not accept it; if an idea is current, that is a reason why he should repudiate it. He questions everything, including life and the universe. And for that reason Nature hates him. On the Red-blood she heaps her favours; she gives him a good digestion, a clear complexion, and sound nerves. But to the Mollycoddle she apportions dyspepsia and black bile. In the universe and in society the Mollycoddle is "out of it" as inevitably as the Red-blood is "in it." At school, he is a "smug" or a "swat," while the Red-blood is captain of the Eleven. At college, he is an "intellectual," while the Red-blood is in the "best set." In the world, he courts failure while the Red-blood achieves success. The Red-blood sees nothing; but the Mollycoddle sees through everything. The Red-blood joins societies; the Mollycoddle is a non-joiner. Individualist of individualists, he can only stand alone, while the Red-blood requires the support of a crowd. The Mollycoddle engenders ideas, and the Red-blood exploits them. The Mollycoddle discovers, and the Red-blood invents. The whole structure of civilisation rests on foundations laid by Mollycoddles; but all the building is done by Red-bloods. The Red-blood despises the Mollycoddle; but, in the long run, he does what the Mollycoddle tells him. The Mollycoddle also despises the Red-blood, but he cannot do without him. Each thinks he is master of the other, and, in a sense, each is right. In his lifetime the Mollycoddle may be the slave of the Red-blood; but after his death, he is his master, though the Red-blood know it not.
Nations, like men, may be classified roughly as Red-blood and Mollycoddle. To the latter class belong clearly the ancient Greeks, the Italians, the French, and probably the Russians; to the former the Romans, the Germans, and the English. But the Red-blood nation par excellence is the American; so that, in comparison with them, Europe as a whole might almost be called Mollycoddle. This characteristic of Americans is reflected in the predominant physical type, – the great jaw and chin, the huge teeth, and predatory mouth; in their speech, where beauty and distinction are sacrificed to force; in their need to live and feel and act in masses. To be born a Mollycoddle in America is to be born to a hard fate. You must either emigrate or succumb. This, at least, hitherto has been the alternative practised. Whether a Mollycoddle will ever be produced strong enough to breathe the American atmosphere and live, is a crucial question for the future. It is the question whether America will ever be civilised. For civilisation, you will have perceived, depends on a just balance of Red-bloods and Mollycoddles. Without the Red-blood there would be no life at all, no stuff, so to speak, for the Mollycoddle to work upon; without the Mollycoddle, the stuff would remain shapeless and chaotic. The Red-blood is the matter, the Mollycoddle the form; the Red-blood the dough, the Mollycoddle the yeast. On these two poles turns the orb of human society. And if, at this point, you choose to say that poles are points and have no dimensions, that strictly neither the Mollycoddle nor the Red-blood exist, and that real men contain elements of both mixed in different proportions, I have no quarrel with you except such as one has with the man who states the obvious. I am satisfied to have distinguished the ideal extremes between which the Actual vibrates. The detailed application of the conception I must leave to more patient researchers.
One point more before I close. This Dichotomy, so far as I can see, applies only to man. Woman appears to be a kind of hybrid. Regarded as a creature of instinct, she resembles the Red-blood, and it is to him that she is first attracted. The hero of her youth is the athlete, the soldier, the successful man of business; and this predilection of hers accounts for much of human history, and in particular for the maintenance of the military spirit. On the other hand, as a creature capable of and craving sympathy, she has affinities with the Mollycoddle. This dual nature is the tragedy of her life. The Red-blood awakens her passion, but cannot satisfy it. He wins her by his virility, but cannot retain her by his perception. Hence the fact, noted by a cynic, that it is the Mollycoddle who cuckolds the Red-blood. For the woman, married to the Red-blood, discovers too late that she is to him only a trophy, a scalp. He hangs her up in the hall, and goes about his business. Then comes the Mollycoddle, divining all, possessing and offering all. And if the Red-blood is an American, and the Mollycoddle an European, then the situation is tense indeed. For the American Red-blood despises woman in his heart as profoundly as he respects her in outer observance. He despises her because of the Mollycoddle he divines in her. Therefore he never understands her; and that is why European Mollycoddles carry off American women before the very eyes of the exasperated Red-blood. "Am I not clean?" he cries. "Am I not healthy? Am I not athletic and efficient?" He is, but it does not help him, except with young girls. He may win the body; but he cannot win the soul. Can it be true then that most women would like two husbands, one Red-blood, the other Mollycoddle, one to be the father of their children, the other to be the companion of their souls? Women alone can answer; and, for the first time in history, they are beginning to be articulate.