UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 WORK 
 
 PLAY md 
 
 LOVE 
 
 WORSHIP 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD C. CABOT 
 
 ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE 
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
 
 45418 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 27 43 10
 
 COPYRIGHT, I914, BY RICBASD C CABOT 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published January, 1914 
 
 TWENTY-SEVENTH IMPRESSION, NO\'EMBER, I922
 
 Ci' 
 
 TO MY WIFE 
 
 INCOMPARABLE LEADER AND COMRADE 
 
 IN THE WORK, PLAY, LOVE, AND WORSHIP 
 
 OF MANY YEARS
 
 PREFACE 
 
 This book has been written in many Pullmans and in 
 
 the homes of many friends. I fear it bears evidence 
 
 of the Pullmans; I am proudly certain that it shows 
 
 traces of all the friends, — of Dr. and Mrs. Philip 
 
 ^ King Brown, of San Francisco; Bruce Porter, of the 
 
 " same impressive city; Maulsby Kimball, of Buffalo; 
 
 Professor W. E. Hocking, of New Haven; Florence 
 
 Painter, Rosalind Huidekoper Greene, and Henry 
 
 Copley Greene, of Boston. The last five have read the 
 
 '^entire manuscript, corrected many errors, and put in 
 
 many improvements; to all I am deeply grateful. 
 
 I owe still more to my wife, whose influence appears, 
 
 J I hope, on every page. Other friends, visible and in- 
 
 >! visible, have also helped, — G. K. Chesterton, Josiah 
 
 *.Royce, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and so many others 
 
 J that no title-page would hold their beloved names. I 
 
 must be content with thanking them for whatever is 
 
 true and absolving them from whatever is false in the 
 
 pages to follow. 
 
 My title is that of one of Tolstoy's most beautiful 
 stories. Such use of his words is quite in accord with 
 the spirit and letter of his beliefs and with the gratitude 
 which I owe him. 
 
 Parts of several chapters have already been printed 
 in the Atlantic Monthly and are here reprinted by cour- 
 tesy of the editor.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction xi 
 
 PART I: WORK 
 
 I. Work, Play, and Drudgery .... 3 
 
 II. The Call of the Job as a Doctor hears it ii 
 
 III. The Joy of Work 21 
 
 IV. The Points of a Good Job 27 
 
 V. The Reproach of Commercialism: Thought 
 
 and Action in Work 38 
 
 VI. The Glory of Raw Materlal .... 50 
 
 VII. The Radiations of Work 59 
 
 VIII. Work and Loyalty: The Idealization of 
 
 Work 65 
 
 IX. The Rewards of Work 73 
 
 PART II: PLAY 
 
 X. Playfulness, Seriousness, and Dullness . 89 
 
 XL Play, Recreation, and the Other Arts . 98 
 XI I. The Popular Arts, the Minor Arts, and 
 
 THEIR BioJBrOTHERS 106 
 
 XIII. Jewels 112 
 
 XIV. GiVE-AND-TaKE IN THE MiNOR ArTS AND 
 
 Elsewhere 117 
 
 XV. Trance in Play 130 
 
 XVI. Chaotic Plays, Disjointed Plays, and 
 
 Others 136
 
 I CONTENTS 
 
 ^ XVII. The Game, or Art, of Impersonation in 
 
 Work, Play, and Love . . . .142 
 
 XVI 1 1. The Penetration of Work by Play and 
 
 THE Minor Arts 151 
 
 XIX. By-Products of Play: Consecration of 
 
 Play 154 
 
 PART III: LOVE 
 
 XX. The Allies of Love 167 
 
 XXI. Love's House of Many Mansions . .175 
 XXII . Our Awareness of Infinite Love . .181 
 
 XXIII. Symbolism in Love 187 
 
 XXIV. Loyalty in Love 200 
 
 XXV. Impersonality in Love 210 
 
 XXVL Integrity in Love 219 
 
 XXVI I. Reticence, Modesty, Chastity . . . 222 
 
 XXVI 1 1. Imperfect Mutuality in Love: Romance 232 
 
 XXIX. Marrl^ge 239 
 
 PART IV: WORSHIP 
 
 XXX. Spiritual Fatigue: Mountain-Top Views 267 
 
 XXXI. Recollection: Disenthrallment: Soli- 
 tude AND Sincerity: The Reenforce- 
 ment of Association 279 
 
 XXXII. Confession: Petition: Praise . . . 298 
 
 XXXIII. Communion: The Answer to Prayer: 
 
 Summary 314 
 
 XXXIV. All Together 324 
 
 Index 337
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 In the spring of IQ09, I had been gnawing away at 
 three tough and ancient problems which came to me 
 through the Social Service Department of the Massa- 
 chusetts General Hospital: What is the best way to 
 care for the tuberculous? How can *' nervous people" 
 (neurasthenics) be restored to balance and happiness? 
 Where can we find help that is worth offering to a girl 
 facing motherhood without a husband? 
 
 A vacation in England that summer took me far 
 enough away from the surface details of these prob- 
 lems to see that the solutions thus far suggested for 
 them all have a strong family likeness and illustrate 
 three stages of opinion. 
 
 An institution is our first idea for all these sufferers. 
 A sanitarium for the tuberculous, a nervine for the 
 neurasthenics, a ** Rescue Home'* for the unmarried 
 mother. This solution contents us for a time, but 
 further experience shows us how limited is the good 
 which an institution can do. Even at its best it is too 
 artificial, too much of a hothouse existence, to accom- 
 plish more than the beginning of a cure. The violent 
 herding of special miseries in one place — disease 
 facing similar disease, day in and day out — makes 
 physical or moral contagion always a danger, sometimes 
 a fact. More individual attention is needed for each
 
 xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 body and soul. Mass treatment will accomplish only 
 the first stages of cure. 
 
 Personal care, then, personal teaching, personal 
 influence, seem to be the need. We form a small group 
 of consumptives into a ** class.** The doctor and the 
 nurse not only teach the patients hygiene, but use 
 their Christian names and try to become friendly with 
 each. The nurse visits the tenement and tries to show 
 the poor consumptive how to carry out at home the 
 sanitary regime of the hospital. Personal influence is 
 appealed to for the momentum needed to encourage the 
 sufferer along the barren, ugly path toward recovery. 
 
 So with sexual troubles. The reaction against insti- 
 tutionalism brings us to rely on personal influence and 
 personal teaching. Some one must win the affection 
 of each sufferer, penetrate the intricacies of the past, 
 and guide the future better. Not alms or institutions, 
 but a friend is what we hope to provide. Not material 
 aid or mere instruction, but one's self, one*s best serv- 
 ice, seems now the ideal gift. 
 
 But though this is certainly part of the answer, we 
 cannot rest content with it, for any one who tries to 
 give ** himself** in this way soon finds out that the gift 
 is pitifully small and weak. We soon use up our slender 
 stock of wisdom. The appeal, " Do this for my sake,** 
 soon wears out. No human personality is rich enough 
 to suffice for another*s food. Moreover, in proportion 
 as this plan succeeds, we perceive the dangers of de- 
 pendence. The sufferer must learn to stand upon his
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 own feet. He must get back into life. "Real Life," 
 then, as we now begin to see, is after all the best teacher 
 and the best doctor. Nothing less fruitful will nourish 
 body and soul. We do not give up friendship and per- 
 sonal influence ; but we see that they must take their 
 part with the other sanative elements of normal ex- 
 perience. 
 
 For the neurasthenic and for those struggling with 
 problems of sex, this need of **real life'* is now pretty 
 generally recognized. Seclusion in sanitaria or rescue 
 homes is being replaced by efforts to get the sufferers 
 back into the industrial world, back into family life, 
 back to the surroundings which keep ordinary people 
 a-going. It is not so obvious that the tuberculous need 
 anything of the kind as a means of cure. Yet, if not, 
 why do consumptive doctors at a sanitarium like 
 Trudeau get along better than other consumptive 
 patients? Because (so Dr. Trudeau once told me) the 
 doctors are living a more normal life, — they can 
 sometimes do a little doctoring or microscopy, and so 
 forget that they are patients. The successful progress 
 of their work in sick-room or laboratory gives them 
 courage to be faithful to rules and to force down food. 
 
 In three widely separate fields, then, I think I see 
 a similar evolution, away from institutionalism, away 
 from dependence upon personal influence, — toward 
 a plan, the essence of which is to get the sufferer back 
 to real life: not back to "nature,** but back to the best 
 that civilization has to offer to normal people.
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 Educators, social workers, and physicians with whom 
 I have talked, seem to agree upon the following mysti« 
 cal prescription : — 
 
 » 
 
 REAL LIFE an indefinite 
 
 amount 
 
 Take a full dose after meals and 
 at bedtime. 
 
 But what do we mean by " real life *' ? What are the 
 essentials which we want to secure for consumptives, 
 neurasthenics, and "wayward" youth of both sexes? 
 
 Watching like a Boswell the practice of experts in 
 the healing of broken souls and wounded characters, 
 I have noticed that besides work — my own favorite 
 prescription — the experts apply two other remedies: 
 recreation (through play, art, or natural beauty) and 
 affection. They also hope rather helplessly that a fourth 
 resource, worship, will somehow get into the sufferer's 
 life. 
 
 Out of the dazzle and welter of modern civilization, 
 which offers a hundred quack remedies for every ill 
 of the soul, work, play, and love emerge as the per- 
 manent sources of helpfulness to which parents, edu- 
 cators, and social workers are now turning with con- 
 fidence, while over their shoulders they glance wistfully 
 toward worship.
 
 INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 **Real Life," then, if it is to mean the nourishing, 
 sustaining, and developing of existence, demands work, 
 play, and love, and so much of the material and spirit- 
 ual conditions of existence as make these possible. 
 
 Though I came to this belief first from a doctor's 
 point of view, and as the result of search for the essen- 
 tial principles of healing within a special field, I have 
 since come to notice that the special groups of people 
 whom I see as patients are not the only ones who need 
 these great medicines. I notice a growing tendency 
 to center all remedial effort upon the same trio of ends, 
 no matter what sort of trouble is at hand. More satis- 
 fying and interesting occupation, more refreshment 
 through art and play, deeper and more intense affection, 
 are the life-preservers which one wants to secure about 
 the blind, the maimed, the invalid, the discharged 
 prisoner, the boy who lies and steals but is not yet a 
 prisoner, the orphan, the deserted wife, the discour- 
 aged, down-at-the-heel family, the neglected or abused 
 child, the alcoholic, the convalescent, the insane, the 
 feeble-minded, the morphinist, the boy who has in- 
 herited millions, and the society girl who has got 
 through "coming out." In genuine emergencies and 
 for those overdriven in their industrial harness, material 
 relief (food, rest, air, sleep, warmth) may be the first 
 necessity, but unless we can give the vital nourishment 
 which I am now advising, all material relief soon be- 
 comes a farce or a poison, just as medicine is in most
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 chronic diseases a farce or a poison. Vitality and re- 
 sisting power are what we most need, and these must 
 be created for the sick out of the same nourishment 
 which keeps the well people well. 
 
 I made just now a long list of sufferers. Did I men- 
 tion all who need the essentials of real life? Obviously 
 not, for those who are going right need these life-saving 
 activities as much as those who are going wrong. It is 
 the stake in life given us by our work, our play, and our 
 love that keeps any one from going wrong. The con- 
 servative needs them to leaven his conservatism ; the 
 radical needs them to hold him down to solid ground. 
 Young and old need them, for by these three principles 
 we are helped to grow up and saved from growing old. 
 
 In this style I was sailing confidently along when 
 one day a friend asked me: "How do you distinguish 
 Work, Play, and Love from Drudgery, Frivolity, and 
 Lust? You have made saints of your favorites and put 
 halos around their heads, but not every one can see 
 the halos or can believe in them upon your say-so." 
 
 "True!*' I should answer, "not on my say-so, but 
 on your own. You believe in them now.** Everybody 
 sees halos and worships saints of some kind, though 
 many have learned to hide the habit even from them- 
 selves. Work, play, and love are my saints, and in this 
 book I want to draw their lineaments and make their 
 halos visible to others. The religion of work, or art, 
 ^d of love is not the strongest or the truest, but it is
 
 INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 a good beginning. There one finds outlet for devotion 
 and gropes toward God. One can do all but speak to 
 God. One fails only when it comes to worship, which 
 is to-day so unfashionable a habit that one must be 
 prepared to shock the modern ear and to violate all the 
 scientific proprieties if one confesses belief in it. Civili- 
 zation is supposed to have carried us beyond the need 
 of rites and forms and to have fused the demonstra- 
 tive and emotional side of religion into daily work, 
 play, and affection. 
 
 But this is theory, not observation. As a matter 
 ol fact the doctor, social worker, or teacher who be- 
 lieves that all true religion can be woven into work, 
 play, or affection falls into the same fallacy as those who 
 think English composition can be taught by weaving 
 it into the courses in history, science, and philosophy. 
 Experience shows, I think, that vital religion and the 
 ability to write good English are not acquired in this 
 incidental way. Scientists, economists, and historians 
 often write barbarously. We must practice the art of 
 writing directly as well as incidentally, else we shall 
 duplicate the catastrophe of our public-school system, 
 wherein the conscientious effort to avoid proselyting, 
 to abolish sectarian teaching, and let religion take care 
 of itself, has now brought us perilously near the French 
 secularism. 
 
 There is no originality in my suggestion that we 
 should focus our efforts upon work, play, love, and
 
 xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 worship. For though we talk a great deal about "effi- 
 ciency," economics, hygiene, and other matters of 
 secondary importance, at bottom we all know well 
 enough what we need, and what all the paraphernalia 
 of civilization, money, health, and education, are 
 really meant for. If I were not persuaded that, in our 
 right minds, we know the fundamental reasons for all 
 this hurry and bustle, I should not venture to write a 
 reminder. We know where we are traveling, but we 
 need a time-table to remind us of details. 
 
 I do not say that every one wants only the ends which 
 I have named. He usually wants fame, riches, wisdom, 
 talents, personal beauty, and an easy time of it gener- 
 ally. He may be too sleepy and comfortable, or too 
 tired and miserable, to want anything but Nirvana or 
 release. Yet, enervated by heat, calloused by routine, 
 steeped in sin, crazed with pain, stupefied by luxury 
 or by grief, still he needs four inexorable blessings. 
 
 The interplay of these four is the end of life, and the 
 sole worthy end, in my creed. This is the fruit of 
 the *'life and liberty '* which are guaranteed under our 
 Constitution. This is the goal to be secured through 
 efficient and progressive governmental machinery. 
 This is the end of all education and all moral training. 
 This is the food of the soul in health or in disease, needed 
 by the doctor, the social worker, the teacher, and the 
 statesman, to feed their own souls as well as to prevent 
 and to cure social ills. This is our justification for the 
 enormous machinery and the costly ugliness of civili-
 
 INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 zation. This is the essential of that "more abundant 
 Jife" which many modern prophets^ extol without 
 defining. 
 
 Every human being, man, woman, and child, hero 
 and convict, neurasthenic and deep-sea fisherman, 
 needs the blessing of God through these four gifts. 
 With these any life is happy despite sorrow and pain, 
 successful despite bitter failure. Without them we 
 lapse into animalism or below it. If you want to keep 
 a headstrong, fatuous youth from overreaching 
 himself and falling, these must be the elements of 
 strength. When you try to put courage and aspiration 
 into the gelatinous character of the alcoholic or the 
 street-walker, you will fail unless you can give respon- 
 sibility, recreation, affection, and through them a 
 glimpse of God. 
 
 I do not believe that evolution, revolution, or de- 
 cadence have power to change these elemental needs. 
 For all I know, we may be this instant in the position 
 of the French court before the Revolution. At this 
 very moment we may be lurching over the smooth 
 bend of a cataract that is to overwhelm us; but if so, 
 it is because we have not enough of that unchanging 
 valor which has preserved us so far, and will reconsti- 
 tute us after our downfall. For work, play, love, and 
 prayer are open to rich and poor, to young and old ; 
 they are of all times^and all races in whom character 
 is an ideal. 
 
 > For example, Ellen Key.
 
 XX INTRODUCTION 
 
 On each of these gigantic forces I have particular 
 designs: I want to show the sacredness of work and 
 love; I want to show the accessibiHty and the univer- 
 sality of play and worship. That despite our secular 
 habits, we are so close to worship that we may at 
 any time abruptly fall into it; that play and art can 
 be closely woven into the fabric of work, till drudgery 
 is reduced to a minimum; that work is our key to 
 the sacredness of material nature, and that affection 
 can be disciplined only by consecration. These are my 
 theses. 
 
 This book has still another motive: gratitude for 
 the good things that have come to me through work, 
 play, love, and worship. Is it not churlish to make no 
 attempt at hearty applause for all that is given us in 
 this world? Grant that I am shielded from much that 
 makes others curse God or nature ; shall I not praise 
 my side of the shield? 
 
 *'0n the 19th of July, 1857," says Tolstoy, ''in 
 Lucerne before the Schweizerhof Hotel, where many 
 rich people were lodging, a wandering minstrel sang for 
 half an hour his songs and played his guitar. About 
 a hundred people listened to him. The little man in 
 the darkness poured out his heart like a nightingale in 
 couplet after couplet, song after song. Near by on the 
 boulevard were heard frequent murmurs of applause, 
 though generally the most respectful silence reigned. 
 The minstrel thrice asked them all to give him something.
 
 INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 Not one person gave him anything^ and many made fun 
 oj him:' (The italics are Tolstoy's.) 
 
 There is no sin that I would not rather have upon my 
 soul than to have displayed to the universe such in- 
 gratitude. 
 
 Do you say that the universe cares as little about 
 our praise as the ocean for Byron's command to "roll 
 on"? Well, I vote against you. I believe the universe 
 does care, and needs our gratitude.
 
 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 PART I: WORK
 
 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 WORK, PLAY, AND DRUDGERY 
 
 A CAMPER starting into the woods on his annual 
 vacation undertakes with enthusiasm the familiar task 
 of carrying a Saranac boat upon a shoulder-yoke. 
 The pressure of the yoke on his shoulders feels as good 
 as the grasp of an old friend*s hand. The tautening of 
 'his muscles to the strain of carrying seems to gird up his 
 loins and true up his whole frame. With the spring of 
 the ground beneath him and the elastic rebound of the 
 boat on its resilient yoke, he seems to dance over the 
 ground between two enlivening rhythms. 1 1 is pure fun. 
 
 In the course of half a mile or so, the carry begins to 
 feel like work. The pleasant, snug fit of the yoke has 
 become a very respectable burden, cheerfully borne, 
 for the sake of the object in view, but not pleasant. 
 The satisfaction of the carry is now something antici- 
 pated, no longer grasped in the present. The job is 
 well worth while, but it is no joke. It will feel good to 
 reach the end and set the boat down. 
 
 Finally, if in about ten minutes more there is still 
 no sight of the end, no blue, sparkling glimmer of dis- 
 tant water low down among the trees, the work be- 
 comes drudgery. Will it ever end? Are we on the right
 
 4 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 trail at all? Is it worth while to go on? Perhaps not; 
 but to stop means painfully lowering the boat to the 
 ground and later heaving it up again, which is the 
 worst task of all — worse than going on as we are. 
 So we hang to it, but now in scowling, stumbling, 
 swearing misery, that edges ever nearer to revolt. 
 
 In varying proportions every one's life mingles the 
 experiences of that carry. At its best and for a few, 
 work becomes play, at least for blessed, jewel-like mo- 
 ments. By the larger number it is seen not as a joy 
 but a tolerable burden, borne for the sake of the chil- 
 dren's education, the butter on the daily bread, the 
 hope of promotion. Finally, for the submerged fraction 
 of humanity who are forced to labor without choice 
 and almost from childhood, life seems drudgery, borne 
 simply because they cannot stop without still greater 
 misery. They are committed to it, as to a prison, and 
 they cannot get out. 
 
 It is not often, I believe, that a whole life is possessed 
 by any one of these elements, — play, work, or drudg- 
 ery. Work usually makes up the larger part of life, with 
 play and drudgery sprinkled in. Some of us at most 
 seasons, all of us at some seasons, find work a galling 
 yoke to which we have to submit blindly or angrily for 
 a time, but with revolt in our hearts. Yet I have rarely 
 seen drudgery so overwhelming as to crush out alto- 
 gether the play of humor and good-fellowship during 
 the day's toil as well as after it.
 
 WORK, PLAY, AND DRUDGERY 5 
 
 In play you have what you want. In work you know 
 what you want and believe that you are serving or ap- 
 proaching it. In drudgery no desired object is in sight; 
 blind forces push you on. 
 
 Present good, future good, no good, — these possi- 
 bilities are mingled in the crude ore which we ordinarily 
 call work. Out of that we must smelt, if we can, the 
 pure metal of a vocation fit for the spirit of man. The 
 crude mass of "work," as it exists to-day in mines, 
 ships, stores, railroads, schoolrooms, and kitchens, con- 
 tains elements that should be abolished, elements that 
 are hard, but no harder than we need to call out the 
 best of us, and here and there a nugget of pure delight. 
 
 I want to separate, in this book, the valuable in- 
 gredients from the conglomerate loosely called work, 
 especially those ingredients which preserve a "moral 
 equivalent" ^ for the virtues bred in war, in hunting, 
 and in the savage's struggle against nature. For in 
 battle, in the chase, and in all direct dealing with ele- 
 mentary forces, we have built up precious powers of 
 body and of mind. These we are in danger of losing 
 in our more tame and orderly civilization, as William 
 James has so convincingly shown. 
 
 His warning is echoed in different keys by President 
 Briggs,2 and by others, who fear that kindergarten 
 
 * William James, " The Moral Equivalent for War," Memories and 
 Studies. Longmans, Green & Co., 191 1. 
 
 ' LeBaron R. Briggs, School^ College, and Character, Houghton 
 Mifflin Company, 1901.
 
 6 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 methods in education are making children soft and 
 spiritless, and that all sting and stubbornness has been 
 extracted from modem school work. President Briggs 
 quotes, apparently with approval, the opinion of James 
 Martineau that ** power to drudge at distasteful tasks 
 is the test of faculty, the price of knowledge, and the 
 matter of duty.*' 
 
 This conception blurs, I think, the most vital distinc- 
 tion in the whole matter, that, namely, between work 
 and drudgery on the one side and that between 
 work and play on the other. Work, like morality and 
 self-government, differs from play because play is 
 spontaneous and delightful, while work is done soberly 
 and against resistance. Nevertheless we work because 
 we want the fruit of work — not from pure dogged 
 determination. To force ourselves along without any 
 desire for a goal of attainment is drudgery. Work 
 is doing what you don't now enjoy for the sake of a 
 future which you clearly see and desire. Drudgery is 
 doing under strain what you don't now enjoy and 
 for no end that you can now appreciate. 
 
 To learn how to work is so to train our imagination 
 that we can feel the stimulus from distant futures, as 
 the coast cities of California get heat, light, and power 
 from distant mountain streams. In all work and all 
 education the worker should be in touch with the dis- 
 tant sources of interest, else he is being trained to 
 slavery, not to self-government and self-respect.
 
 / 
 
 WORK, PLAY, AND DRUDGERY 7 
 
 Defined in this way, work is always, I suppose, an 
 acquired taste. For its rewards are not immediate, but 
 come in foretastes and aftertastes. It involves post- 
 ponement and waiting. In the acquisition of wealth, 
 economists rightly distinguish labor and waiting, but in 
 another sense labor is always waiting. You work for 
 your picture or your log house because you want it, V 
 and because it cannot be had just for the asking. It 
 awaits you in a future visible only to imagination. Into 
 the further realization of that future you can penetrate 
 only by work: meantime you must wait for your re- 
 ward. 
 
 Further, this future is never perfectly certain. There 
 is many a slip between the cup and the lip; and even 
 when gross accidents are avoided, your goal — your 
 promotion, your home, the degree for which you have 
 worked — usually does not turn out to be as you have 
 pictured it. This variation you learn to expect, to 
 discount, perhaps to enjoy, beforehand, if you are a 
 trained worker, just because you have been trained in 
 faith. For work is always justified by faith. Faith, >* 
 holding the substance (not the details) of things un- ) 
 seen, keeps us at our tasks. We have faith that our 
 efforts will some day reach their goal, and that this 
 goal will be something like what we expected. But no 
 literalism will serve us here. If we are willing to accept 
 nothing but the very pattern of our first desires, we are 
 forever disappointed in work and soon grow slack in it. 
 In the more fortunate of us, the love of work includes
 
 8 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 a love of the unexpected, and finds a pleasant spice of 
 adventure in the difference between what we work for 
 and what we actually get. 
 
 Yet this working faith is not pure speculation. It in- 
 cludes a foretaste of the satisfaction to come. We plunge 
 into it as we jump into a cold bath, not because the 
 present sensations are altogether sweet, but because 
 they are mingled with a dawning awareness of the glow 
 to follow. We do our work happily because the future 
 is alive in the present — not like a ghost but like a 
 leader. 
 
 Where do we get this capacity to incarnate the future 
 and to feel it swelling within us as a present inspiration? 
 The power to go in pursuit of the future with seven- 
 le^ued boots or magic carpets can hardly be acquired, 
 or even longed for, until we have had some actual 
 experience of its rewards. We seem then to be caught 
 in one of those circles which may turn out to be either 
 vicious or virtuous. In the beginning, something or 
 somebody must magically entice us into doing a bit of 
 work. Having done that bit, we can see the treasure 
 of its results; these results will in turn spur us to re- 
 doubled efforts, and so once more to increased rewards. 
 Given the initial miracle and we are soon established 
 in the habit and in the enjoyment of work. 
 
 But there is a self-maintaining circularity in dis- 
 ease, idleness, and sloth, as well as in work, virtue, and 
 health. Until we get the result of our work, we cannot
 
 WORK, PLAY, AND DRUDGERY 9 
 
 feel the motive for exertion. Until we make the exer- 
 tion (despite present pain and a barren outlook), we 
 cannot taste the delightful result, nor feel the spur to 
 further effort. The wheel is at the dead point! Why 
 should it ever move? 
 
 Probably some of us are moved at first by the leap 
 of an elemental instinct in our muscles, which act be- 
 fore and beyond our conscious reason. Other people 
 are tempted into labor by the irrational contagion of 
 example. We want to be "in it" with the rest of our 
 gang, or to win some one's approval. So we get past 
 the dead point, — often a most alarming point to pa- 
 rents and teachers, — and once in motion, keep at it by 
 the circular process just described. 
 
 Various auxiliary motives reinforce the ordinary 
 energies of work. Here I will allude only to one — a 
 queer pleasure in the mere stretch and strain of our 
 muscles. If we are physically fresh and not worried, 
 there is a grim exhilaration, a sort of frowning delight, 
 in taking up a heavy load and feeling that our strength 
 is adequate to it. It seems paradoxical to enjoy a dis- 
 comfort, but the paradox is now getting familiar. For 
 modem psychologists have satisfactorily bridged the 
 chasm between pleasure and pain, so that we can now 
 conceive, what athletes and German poets have long 
 felt, the delight in a complex of agreeable and disagree- 
 able elements. In work we do not often get as far as 
 the "selige Schmerzen*' so familiar in German lyrics, 
 but we welcome difficulties, risks, and physical strains
 
 10 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 because (if we can easily conquer them) they add a 
 spice to life, — a spice of play in the midst of labor. 
 Work gets itself started, then, by the contagion of 
 some one else's example, or by an explosion of animal 
 energies within us. After a few turns of the work-rest 
 cycle we begin to get a foretaste of rewards. A flavor 
 of enjoyment appears in the midst of strain. Habit 
 then takes hold and carries us along until the taste for 
 work is definitely acquired.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE. CALL OF THE JOB AS A DOCTOR HEARS IT 
 
 Most doctors have set a good many women to work 
 and taken a good many men out of it. Doctors 
 have, therefore, a doubly fortunate opportunity to see 
 what work can do for people, and a better right than 
 any one else to speak (if, alas, they cannot sing!) of 
 its blessings. 
 
 We all of us see something of the man out of work, 
 thanks to strikes, freaks of fashions, and shifts in trade 
 currents. But in these crises it is the pressing need of 
 the work's wage that holds our attention — not the 
 desire for work itself. Because the doctor's angle of 
 vision is different, he sees another type of suffering. He 
 sees men to whom the pinch of hunger is unknown 
 languish, chafe, and fret when forcibly removed from 
 their daily work. I recall the illness of an old stage- 
 driver. He had no need to work. His children were 
 eager and willing to supply his wants. But despite 
 good medical care he would not or could not conva- 
 lesce till his sons lifted him into his wagon-seat and put 
 "the lines" into his feeble hands. Then you could see 
 him gain every day. 
 
 In an old man, shaped and warped by his work 
 through seventy years, this tug of habit is perhaps only 
 natural. But such habits of work are often early formed.
 
 12 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 The schoolboy usually wants to get back to school as 
 fast as he can after an illness, and if he finds some- 
 thing besides pure work to attract him in school, he is 
 like his elders in this also. For work is seldom "pure," 
 — rarely separated or shut away from the other ele- 
 ments of sociability, exciting variety and fun. 
 i I want to set down what I can of the good which 
 I have seen accomplished by work for two classes 
 of people : — for men temporarily deprived of it, and 
 for women who are experiencing its rewards for the 
 first time. 
 
 Many times I have seen work pull people out of the 
 misery of a self -centered existence. Without work many 
 a woman has thought herself fundamentally selfish, or 
 if she was not so rough with herself, her relations have 
 vented a similar lament. For almost all people think , 
 about themselves when they are not enticed by the i 
 call of the world's work into thinking of something 
 else. To get busy is the way out of most cases of self- 
 centeredness. We are like wells. When our life is full, 
 the dregs of shallow selfishness at the bottom do not 
 often rise to consciousness. But when we are empty, 
 our selfishness is necessarily exposed, and we are to \ 
 blame only if we have made no effort to fill up the 
 aching void with what we know belongs there, — 
 especially work. 
 
 ^ The nervous sufferer or the chronic invalid is often 
 no more to blame for his selfishness than for the piti- 
 
 i 
 
 1
 
 THE CALL OF THE JOB 13 
 
 ful meagemess of his muscles. The long and the short 
 of it is, he is not nourished; his vitality has been 
 emptied out. Till he gets back into life he cannot help 
 staring at the four blank walls of his nairrow self. But 
 to get back into life, or to get into it for the first time 
 (as many women have to) is practically what work 
 means. For the world is primarily a working world. 
 From the insects to the angels, creation hums with 
 work, and through work fits us for play. 
 
 Idleness is corrosive. Human energies, like human 
 stomachs, turn inward perversely and self-destructively 
 if they have not material to work on. Deprived of work, 
 people exhaust themselves like crazed animals beating 
 against their bars, even when the cage is of their own 
 making. fThoughts, that should run out in path-finding, 
 path-making labor, circle round and round within the 
 mind, till it is dizzy and all distinctions are blurred^ By 
 work you straighten out such cramped and twisted 
 energies, as you shake out a reefed sail. 
 
 Healthy people deprived of the outlet and stimulus 
 of work are in danger of getting into one or another 
 sexual muddle. For we are many of us creatures who 
 can be purified only by motion, as the running stream 
 drops out its pollutions when its current grows swift, 
 but gets defiled as soon as it stagnates in shallows. 
 Consciousness, if not kept fully occupied with its proper 
 business, is pretty sure to upset the whole human ma- 
 chine by turning its light on what ought to be in dark
 
 14 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 unconsciousness. A person is normally unconscious of 
 his eyes, of his heart's action, of his stomach, his in- 
 testines, and all the rest of his separate and serviceable 
 organs^ But the moment consciousness gets focused 
 on any one bit of the human body, we get disaster like 
 to that of the dancer who becomes conscious of his feet. 
 He becomes, as we mistakenly say, *' self-conscious.** 
 We mean that he is narrowly and painfully conscious 
 of a very small piece of himself, and forgetful of a 
 very much larger area. A workingman*s "self" is the 
 whole milieUy the whole ''proposition" in which he is 
 normally engaged. Because he is the engineer of his 
 train, the policeman of his beat, his "self" is enriched 
 and employed by the extent, the variety, the dignity 
 and worth of his job. The awareness of his separate 
 organs and functions, a torture to him in idleness, van- 
 ishes as soon as he gets actively busy. 
 
 But sedentary and emotional occupations are im- 
 possible for some people because of the sexual tension 
 which they tend to produce. One of the justifications 
 of the apparently wasteful and unintelligent "hus- 
 tling" in our modem world is here. What Tolstoj 
 seeks to accomplish on his country estate by exhaust- 
 ing labor out of doors, the city man brings to pass by 
 rushing and hurrying about like a June-bug. He 
 works off superabundant energy in irrational ways, 
 because he is not bright enough to work it off other- 
 wise. But it is surely a good thing to work it off 
 somehow.
 
 THE CALL OF THE JOB 15 
 
 Work dispels discouragement because it turns con- 
 sciousness away from our disheartening littleness and 
 lights up the big world — our world — of possible 
 achievement. Consciousness cannot voluntarily ex- 
 tinguish itself. Its light must beat upon the inner walls 
 of our narrow self and illumine them with an unnatural 
 glare unless we have windows into the world's great in- j 
 terests. Through these consciousness can escape. With- 
 out them it is turned upon itself. There is no fault 
 in that. The self-centeredness of the invalid, of the 
 man out of work, or of the rich female loafer is a nec- 
 essary consequence of the fact that consciousness, like a 
 lighted lamp, must illumine something. It will hit with 
 false intensity on the nearest thing if outlets are cut off. 
 
 Now that "nearest thing" in the case of conscious- 
 ness is our own bodies : — hence the bodily miseries, 
 the over-sensitiveness and the squeamishness of the 
 idle. The next "nearest thing " is our poor scanty outfit 
 of powers and virtues. Small and cheap they look in 
 their naked isolation, and the one big thing that they 
 can produce is shadows. The shadow of whatever is 
 crowded up close to the light of consciousness is big 
 enough to blacken the whole world. Hence discourage- 
 ment is a natural and blameless consequence when 
 idleness blocks the light of consciousness. To be idle 
 is to be shut in, and in such confinement one feels 
 powerless and insignificant. 
 
 The platform speaker whose audience is deserting 
 him hears his own voice pronouncing words which
 
 i6 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 hitherto have sounded valuable and potent; — now 
 they seem tawdry and foolish. He has been left high 
 and dry, alone with his naked self. Before the exodus 
 he had courage because he could lose himself in his 
 subject. He had an audience and a message for them. 
 They clothed him, dignified him, gave worth to his 
 vocal gymnastics and meaning to his oratorical labors. 
 But without the response of his audience he is merely 
 a voice, a ghost haunting a world that has forgotten him. 
 , Work gives every man an audience and a message. 
 Through work his personality, small enough in itself, 
 gets out of itself and acquires a strange and blessed 
 ownership of fruitful soil. For his job certainly belongs 
 to him in some sense. It is his spiritual property, and 
 thus, like all property, it gives courage because it en- 
 riches personality. Deprived of work and its comrade- 
 ship, we are lonely and therefore discouraged, for lone- 
 liness is so close to discouragement that it is hard to 
 slip the knife-blade of a definition between them. 
 
 To find one's work is to find one's place in the world. 
 Most discouragement means homelessness; when down- 
 cast there seems to be no place for us in the world. 
 Everybody else seems to be needed and to belong 
 somewhere. But in idleness no one is needed. Idly to 
 watch the busy people in one's own country or abroad 
 is a heart-breaking business. Hence prolonged travel 
 is bearable only if one adopts some plan of work, makes 
 a business of sight-seeing, or in some other way earn ) 
 every day one's appreciable share of knowledge.
 
 THE CALL OF THE JOB 17 
 
 I have said that a job is a special form of property. 
 One gets a right to it, as to any form of property, in pro- 
 portion as one works it up, by making it fruitful for 
 some community, visible or invisible. The scientific 
 investigator, the inventor, the unappreciated artist, 
 the martyr, works for an invisible community not yet 
 bom, or hidden on the other side of the earth or else- 
 where. If he escapes discouragement, it is because he 
 has learned to see an audience invisible to others. 
 Without this he is hopeless. Whoever is forced to work 
 where he cannot see with the spirit's sense this invisible 
 community and cannot "paint the thing as he sees it 
 for the God of things as they are," becomes disheart* 
 ened and may have to seek some smaller but more tan- 
 gible piece of property, some task bringing with it an 
 heartening social recognition. 
 
 Courage for life, then, comes when one gets out of 
 isolation, owns, surveys, and fences in a bit of the 
 uncharted world. Such a place-in-the-world is a job. 
 It matters little whether others see it or not, but if you 
 cannot see it yourself, you are lost in the wilderness. 
 The courage given us by our work is like the self-re- 
 liance which Emerson has made forever glorious. Like 
 self-reliance, courage is ultimately a reliance on widen- 
 ing cbncentric circles of property which reach to God. 
 
 As a physician I have had the happiness of seeing 
 work cure many persons who have suffered from that 
 trembling palsy of the soul which results from over-
 
 i8 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 mastering doubts, hesitation, vacillation, and fear. 
 Work often cures this kind of skepticism (*' solvitur 
 ambulando**)f which is not thinking but worry. It 
 comes from thinking in a circle instead of thinking 
 straight. 
 
 80 ' must 
 
 it, 
 
 \ 
 
 find 
 
 stand 
 
 1\ 
 
 some 
 
 can't 
 
 
 work. 
 
 \5 
 
 ing. 
 
 
 /But 
 2/ am 
 
 kill- 
 
 
 I 
 
 is 
 
 
 fit 
 
 iness y 
 Lone-/ 4 
 
 
 for 
 8\ ^"'^^ 
 
 unfit. 
 
 
 How 
 
 the 
 
 
 lone- 
 
 of 
 
 
 . ly 
 
 one 
 
 
 it 
 
 be to is 
 
 Vacillation {folie de doute) has the same circular 
 character, or pendulous swing. 
 
 so 
 
 1 
 
 guess 
 
 now, 
 
 .\ 
 
 I'll 
 
 buy 
 
 buy 
 
 I 
 
 
 stock 
 
 if 
 
 
 at 
 
 rich 
 
 
 once. 
 
 get 
 
 
 
 to 
 
 
 ,/But 
 
 chance 
 
 
 /the 
 
 did 
 
 
 price 
 
 splen- 
 
 
 may 
 
 a 
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 \ fall. 
 3\ 
 
 there . 
 
 
 I 
 
 But/4 
 
 
 guess 
 it's 
 
 now. 
 
 
 safer 
 
 buy 
 
 4-^ 
 
 not
 
 THE CALL OF THE JOB 19 
 
 "Break away," says the wise world. For this sort 
 of thing is checked by breaking out anywhere into the 
 real world and going straight in any direction. The 
 "pale cast of worry" was what Hamlet miscalled 
 "thought." Thought is good, and so is action, but 
 circularity is neither thought nor action, nor anything 
 but a round dance of badly trained brain cells. 
 
 Many doubts and fears of the circular type are cured 
 by work, because it gives us the evidence needed to 
 banish the fear. " Mr. Accomplishment " is the witness 
 whom we must secure, because the doubts and fears 
 that we are talking about now are doubts of one's own 
 powers, or fears of one *s own weakness. A doctor or 
 friend may asseverate till he is black in the face: "You 
 have this power ; you need n't fear that weakness." But 
 nothing convinces, or ought to convince in such a mat- 
 ter, except waking up to find one's self actually doing 
 the thing for which one could not, by taking thought, 
 conceive one's strength sufficient. 
 
 In all such healing of worry through work we begin 
 with a plunge and a submersion of consciousness. For 
 "action," when we contrast it with "thought," means 
 an amaizing descent into the arms of the elemental 
 which supports us and carries us to achievement across 
 a gulf of unconsciousness. In singing one throws the 
 voice at a high note wisely oblivious of just how one 
 gets there. One measures the stream before leaping it, 
 but not in the moment of the leap. In enthusiasm, 
 elan, and the most successful flights of invention or
 
 20 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 creative art, we shut our eyes, and surrender ourselves 
 into the hands of some force that we trust but cannot 
 watch. How does this differ from recklessness and 
 jumping at conclusions? It differs in its preparation. 
 The hfe that we have lived before we thus surrender 
 ourselves guides us even in our passivity. Training and 
 conscious practice lead us up to the brink of the gulf 
 and fix the direction of our leap. But the final plunge, 
 the miracle of fresh achievement, cometh not during 
 observation, but in darkness when the sun has set.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE JOY OF WORK 
 
 Sunday, September 15, 1907, I could not find a 
 seat in Faneuil Hall, Boston's colonial relic, where 
 President Dennis Driscoll, of the Boston Central Labor 
 Union was to answer what President Eliot had said 
 on the previous Sunday on the rights, duties, and privi- 
 leges of the manual laborer. With manual laborers the 
 hall was so crowded that I found standing-room only 
 in the middle aisle. President Driscoll finished what he 
 had to say about the ** closed shop" and turned to 
 another topic : — 
 
 '* President Eliot spoke last Sunday to us working- 
 men about The Joy of Work!" said the speaker, and 
 paused. Then as he lifted his head from his manuscript 
 and looked out over the crowded hall, a sound of de- 
 risive laughter spread in wave after wave over the 
 audience. There was but one thing to think of such 
 an idea as **The Joy of Work." It was a bitter joke. 
 To the workmen present, it was really ludicrous that 
 a man could be so foolish, so ignorant of manual work 
 as to believe that there is any enjoyment in it. 
 
 To me that laughter was one of the saddest facts 
 that I have faced. This audience of manual workers 
 was instantly and instinctively of one mind. Their 
 leader had no need even to express his thought. It
 
 22 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 was enough to put together in one sentence the idea o! 
 joy and the idea of work; the absurdity, the contra- 
 diction, was then self-evident. Any joy that was to come 
 to them must come out of working hours. Their work 
 was drudgery to which they were bound by the ancient 
 curse: " In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." 
 But though necessity bound them, their minds were 
 still free to protest. If work were already full of joy, 
 would they, the manual workers, be united to change 
 and improve the conditions of labor? Their very 
 existence as members of "organized labor,** their very 
 presence in that hall, meant that they were vehe- 
 mently dissatisfied with their work and with one whom 
 they viewed as a soft-handed academic professor, ig- 
 norant of the actual conditions of modem manual work, 
 and therefore deluded enough to suppose that there is 
 joy in it. How little they knew President Eliot ! 
 
 I have told this incident to sharpen further the pre- 
 viously defined distinction between work and drudgery. 
 Even if drudgery has its blessings,^ it is surely no bless- 
 ing to him whose life contains little or nothing else. For 
 President Driscoll's audience the satisfactions of 
 drudgery (though President Eliot called it work) were 
 nonexistent. They did not know what he was talking 
 about, and he (they felt sure) did not know their lives. 
 His **work** was their "play.** In the zest of their 
 labor-union discussions (never thought of as "work"), 
 tliey perhaps got nearer to the enjoyment of something 
 
 » W. C. Gannett, D.D., "Blessed be drudgery."
 
 THE JOY OF WORK 23 
 
 which he would have called work than at any other 
 time ; but they never imagined that he could mean any- 
 thing like that. 
 
 Much, perhaps most, that is called work in modem 
 industrial society weighs upon the laborer as a blight 
 and a burden, something to be hated and so far as may 
 be banished out of life. Now we can all agree, can't we, 
 that whatever feels like this ought not to be praised 
 and cultivated? We may say that this is slavery, not 
 real work, that it is the abuse, not the fruition, of man's 
 labor. But then we must not extol indiscriminately 
 all that goes by the name of work. 
 
 A rich man may find it very good fun to task his 
 muscles now and then with wood-chopping or horse- 
 shoeing, but he is a fool if he supposes that the wood- 
 chopper or the horse-shoer gets this amateur's pleasure 
 out of his trade. ** Arizona is a delightful place to live, 
 is n't. it?" I said co a consumptive doctor whom I met 
 on his daily rounds near Flagstaff. *'0h, yes," he an- 
 swered,*' if you don't have to live here." The tourist's, 
 the greenhorn's, the amateur's view of manual work 
 dwells on its picturesque, its novel, and exciting aspects. 
 But this is rightly rejected by the day laborer. Who 
 can blame him for indignation against those who praise 
 manual work because they have never done any? 
 
 But is it so bad, even In present-day factory condi- 
 tions, — is it so joyless as President Driscoll's audience 
 felt it to be that Sunday afternoon? Was there not
 
 24 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 something of pure misunderstanding and cross-pur- 
 poses in that lamentable mirth at President Eliot's 
 expense? Question any prosperous, hustling American 
 male (who would sooner work than eat) ; put to him the 
 question, "Do you find joy in your work?" he will 
 deny it with an oath or with a good version of the de- 
 risive laugh which I heard in Faneuil Hall. 
 
 For in the first place "joy" is too "hifalutin" a word 
 for him to take upon his lips. It recalls to him some 
 pink-and-blue-ribboned frivolity, or the grotesque 
 frenzy of a religious camp-meeting. If you asked: 
 " How do you like your job? " or if you got him talking 
 about its technicalities, there would ooze out in his 
 talk something of his solid satisfaction in it, some of its 
 spice and variety, even some genuine emotion about 
 its rewards and adventures. I have asked that question 
 of a great many workingmen under conditions of inti- 
 macy when mutual understanding was to be relied 
 upon, and I never received more than two or three 
 negative answers. If we ask about "joy," then na- 
 tional peculiarities, masculine shyness, and fear of 
 emotion play a part in the discouraging answers. 
 There is an instinct, too, against the vivisection of this 
 fragile element, — joy, — from out the tissue of working 
 life. 
 
 Yet, even in manual labor, just as it is in America 
 to-day and with all our sins and blunders upon its head, 
 there is still, I believe, much satisfaction to the work- 
 man. Else why is it that when he is sick he complains
 
 THE JOY OF WORK 25 
 
 in that most pregnant phrase: ''Doctor, IVe lost all 
 my ambition"? By ambition he means zest and spirit 
 for work. A mere slave, a hopeless drudge, would not 
 know what this "ambition" meant. One cannot lose 
 one's appetite for life and work unless despite their 
 monotony and strain they once tasted good. The sense 
 of competence, the conscious possession of skill that 
 the apprentice cannot learn in many months, — there 
 is almost always some satisfaction in that. Then the 
 comradeship in work, the gossip and jokes over it, the 
 twist and turn of the unexpected in every day's work, 
 the appreciation of friends and onlookers, all these 
 weave about the monotonous job a web of genuine 
 interest. The job itself, — parts of it, anyway, — may 
 then become as automatic as breathing or eating. Only 
 the invalid is oppressed by the curse of labor in his 
 physiological functions, as he draws his breath, chews 
 his meat, or handles his knife and fork. 
 
 Yet President Driscoll's speech, his audience, and 
 their scorn of President Eliot's "joy of work " are facts 
 which we must take seriously to heart. For any other 
 audience of manual laborers would doubtless have 
 laughed just as bitterly at the idea that there was joy 
 in. their work — partly, as I believe, from dislike of 
 the word "joy," partly from misunderstanding of the 
 speaker's motive, but largely because they believe that 
 they have been forced, without any choice of their 
 own, into work in which they do not believe they are
 
 26 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 getting their fair share of return, in which they cannot 
 recognize their own achievement, and in which they 
 get no human touch with their employers. It is not so 
 much the work itself, nor even its unhealthful condi- 
 tions that wage-earners resent. It is rather the state 
 of society by reason of which (as they believe), some- 
 one no better or wiser than they, someone whom they 
 never chose to lead them, has U3urped the right to force 
 work upon them under unsanitary conditions and at 
 low wages. Social and political leaders they can choose. 
 ** Captains of industry*' they must find and follow, too 
 often, with bitter protest. 
 
 To remedy these great evils economic readjustments, 
 — socialism or some halfway house on the road to it, — 
 will doubtless be tried within the next few decades. But 
 no one will like his job any better unless not only the 
 economic but the psychical conditions are notably 
 improved. Above all, our personal relations and per- 
 sonal ideals must improve, else economic reforms will 
 amount to nothing. Things are bad; but it is people, ( 
 not mere things that make them so. Economic reforms, 
 better hours and wages, will do good if they mirror and 
 accompany an improvement in your character and mine ; 
 not otherwise. As fast as we grow more honest, more 
 generous, and more ambitious, we shall make a better 
 industrial system and a new form of government to 
 clothe our larger powers. Meantime " class conscious- 
 ness," which means class hatred, delays our advance.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE POINTS OF A GOOD JOB 
 
 In the crude job as we get it there is much rubbish. 
 For work is a very human product. It is no better 
 than we have made it, and even when it is redeemed 
 from brutal drudgery it is apt to be scarred and warped 
 by our stupidities and our ineptitudes. Out of the 
 rough-hewn masses in which work comes to us, it is our 
 business, it is civilization's business, to shape a voca- 
 tion fit for man. We shall have to remake it again 
 and again; meantime, before we reject what we now 
 have, it is worth while to see what we want. 
 
 What (besides better hours, better wages, healthier . 
 conditions) are the points of a good job? Imagine a 
 sensible man looking for satisfactory work, a voca- 
 tional adviser guiding novices towards the best avail- 
 able occupation, and a statesman trying to mould the 
 industrial world somewhat nearer to the heart's desire, 
 — what should they try for? Physical and financial 
 standards determine what we get out of our work. But 
 what shall we get in it? Much or little, I answer, ac- 
 cording to its fitness or unfitness for our personality, — 
 a factor much neglected nowadays. 
 
 Among the points of a good job I shall name seven: | 
 (i) Difficulty and crudeness enough to call out our ' 
 latent powers of mastery. (2) Variety so balanced by
 
 28 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 monotony as to suit the individuars needs. (3) A boss. 
 (4) A chance to achieve, to build something and to 
 recognize what we have done. (5) A title and a place 
 which is ours. (6) Connection with some institution, 
 some firm, or some cause, which we can loyally serve. 
 (7) Honorable and pleasant relation with our com- 
 rades in work. Fulfill these conditions and work is 
 one of the best things in life. Let me describe them 
 more fully* 
 
 J 
 
 We want a chance to subdue. Boys like to go stamping 
 
 through the woods in thick-soled boots. They like to 
 crush the sticks in their path and to jerk off the 
 branches that get in their way. If there is need to clear 
 a path, so much the better; the pioneer's instinct is 
 the more strongly roused. For there is in most of us 
 an ancient hunger to subdue the chances which we 
 meet, to tame what is wild. As another's anger calls 
 out ours, so the stubbornness of nature rouses our de- 
 termination to subdue it. We want to encounter the 
 raw and crude. Before the commercial age, war, hunt- 
 ing, and agriculture gave us this foil. We want it still, 
 and for the lack of it often find our work too soft. 
 
 Of course, we can easily get an overdose of crude 
 resistance. A good job should offer us a fair chance of 
 our winning. We have no desire to be crushed without 
 a struggle. But we are all the better pleased if the fish 
 makes a good fight before he yields. 
 
 Not only in the wilderness, but wherever we deal
 
 THE POINTS OF A GOOD JOB 29 
 
 with raw material, our hands meet adventures. Every 
 bit of wood and stone, every stream and every season, 
 has its own tantalizing but fascinating individuality; 
 and as long as we have health and courage, these novel- 
 ties strike not as frustration but as challenge. 
 
 Even in half-tamed products, like leather or steel, 
 there are, experts tell me, incalculable variations which 
 keep us on the alert if we are still close enough to the 
 elemental to feel its fascinating materiality. When a 
 clerk sells dry-goods over the counter, I suppose he has 
 to nourish his frontiersman*s spirit chiefly in foiling the 
 wily bargain-hunter or trapping the incautious country- 
 man. But I doubt if the work is as interesting as a 
 carpenter*s or a plumber's. It reeks so strong of civili- 
 zation and the ''finished product'* that it often sends 
 us back to the woods, to seek in a ''vacation" that 
 touch with the elemental which should properly form 
 part of daily work. 
 
 V We want both monotony and variety. The monotony 
 of work is perhaps the quality of which we most often 
 complain, — often justifiably. Yet monotony is really 
 demanded by almost every one. Even children cry 
 for it, though in doses smaller than those that suit 
 their^ elders. Your secretary does not like her work if 
 you put more than her regular portion of variety into 
 it. She does not want to be constantly undertaking new 
 tasks, adapting herself to new situations. She wants 
 some regularity in her traveling, some plain stretches in
 
 30 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 which she can get up speed and feel quantity of accom- 
 plishment; that is, she wants a reasonable amount of 
 monotony. Change and novelty in work are apt to 
 demand fresh thought, and to reduce our speed. 
 
 Of course, there is a limit to this. We want some va- 
 riety, some independence in our work. But we can 
 easily get too much. I have heard as many complaints 
 and felt in myself as many objections against variety 
 as against monotony. I have seen and felt as much dis- 
 content with ** uncharted freedom" as with irksome 
 restraint. Bewilderment, a sense of incompetence and 
 of rudderless drifting, are never far off from any one of 
 us in our work. There is in all of us something that 
 likes to trot along in harness, — not too tight or galling, 
 to be sure, — but still in guidance and with support. 
 That makes us show our best paces. 
 
 Nor is there anything slavish or humiliating in this. 
 It is simply the admission that we are not ready at 
 every moment to be original, inventive, creative! We 
 have found out the immense strain and cost of fresh 
 thinking. We are certain that we were not born to be 
 at it perpetually. We want some rest in our work, some 
 relief from high tension. Monotony supplies that relief. 
 Moreover the rhythmic and habitual elements in us (an* 
 cient, labor-saving devices) demand their representa- 
 tion. To do something again and again, as the trees, 
 the birds, and our own hearts do, is a fundamental 
 need which demands and receives satisfaction in work 
 as well as in play. .
 
 THE POINTS OF A GOOD JOB 31 
 
 For the tragedies and abominations, the slaveries and 
 degradations, of manual labor, we cannot put all the 
 blame on the large element of monotony and repeti- 
 tion which such labor often contains. We should revolt 
 and destroy any undertaking that was not somewhat 
 monotonous. But the point is that work ought to offer 
 to each worker as much variety and independence as 
 he has originality and genius, no more and no less. Give 
 us either more or less than our share and we are miser- 
 able. We can be crushed and overdriven by too much 
 responsibility, as well as by too little. Our initiative as 
 well as our docility can be overworked. 
 
 We want a boss, especially in heavy or monotonous 
 work. Most monotonous work is of the sort that is cut 
 out and supplied ready to hand. This implies that some 
 one else plans and directs it. If we are to do the pulling, 
 some one else should hold the reins. When I am digging 
 my wife's garden-beds, I want her to specify where they 
 shall go. We all want a master of some kind, and most 
 of us want a master in human shape. The more manual 
 our work is the more we want him. Boatmen poling a 
 scow through a creek need some one to steer and to tell 
 them which should push harder as they turn the bends 
 of th6 stream. The steersman may be chosen by lot 
 or each may steer in turn, but some boss we must have, 
 for when we are poling we can't well steer and we don't 
 want the strain of trying fruitlessly to do both. This 
 example seems to me to typify a large proportion of the
 
 32 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 world's work. It demands to be bossed, and it is more 
 efficient, even more original, when it is bossed, — just 
 enough ! 
 
 Monotony, then, and bossing we need, but in our 
 own quantity and also of our own kind. For there are 
 different kinds (as well as different doses) and some are 
 better than others. For example, to go to the same place 
 of work every day is a monotony that simplifies life 
 advantageously for most of us, but to teach the same 
 subject over and over again is for most teachers an 
 evil, though it may be just now a necessary evil. 
 
 We must try to distinguish. When we delight in 
 thinking ourselves abused, or allow ourselves the luxury 
 of grumbling, we often single out monotony as the tar- 
 get of our wrath. But we must not take all complaints 
 (our own or other people's) at their face value. A coat 
 is a misfit if it is too big or too small, or if it puckers 
 in the wrong place. A job can be a misfit in twenty 
 different ways and can be complained of in as many 
 different tones. Let us be clear about this. If our 
 discontent is as divine as it feels, it is not because 
 all monotony is evil, but because our own particular 
 share and kind of monotony have proved to be a de- 
 grading waste of energy. 
 
 We want to see the product of our work. The bridge we 
 planned, the house we built, the shoes we cobbled, help 
 us to get before ourselves and so to realize more than 
 a moment's worth of life and effort. The impermanence
 
 THE POINTS OF A GOOD JOB 33 
 
 of each instant's thought, the transience of every flush 
 of effort, tends to make our lives seem shadowy even 
 to ourselves. Our memory is a sieve through which 
 most that we pick up runs back like sand. But in work 
 we find refuge and stability, for in the accumulated 
 product of many days' labor we can build up and pre- 
 sent at last to our own sight the durable structure of 
 what we meant to do. Then we can believe that our 
 intentions, our hopes, our plans, our daily food and 
 drink, have not passed through us for nothing, for we 
 have funded their worth in some tangible achievement 
 which outlasts them. 
 
 Further, such external proofs of our efficiency wiiv 
 us not only self-respect, but the recognition of others. 
 We need something to show for ourselves, something 
 to prove that our dreams are not impotent. Work gives 
 us the means to prove it. 
 
 I want to acknowledge here my agreement in the 
 charge often brought against modern factory labor, — 
 namely, that since no workman plans or finishes his 
 product, no one can recognize his product, take pride 
 in it, or see its defects. Even when factory labor 
 is well paid, its impersonal and wholesale merging of 
 the man in the machine goes far to make it unfit for 
 men and women. 
 
 **Goes far," I say, — but not the whole way. For 
 division of labor means specialism, and specialism, as 
 we know in the professions, has its glories despite its 
 dangers. A specialty, as Professor G. H. Palmer has
 
 34 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 told us,* can be a window through which we look out 
 on all the world. One subject, deeply studied, gives us 
 clues and analogies to many others, gives us member- 
 ship in the freemasonry of those who have mastered 
 something, develops the power to respect and the right 
 to be respected. I have known as patients men who, 
 through their mastery of one small process in watch- 
 making, had developed a liberal outlook on other 
 difficult arts, a just pride in good workmanship and 
 an inventor's energy. This is not common or easy in 
 any sort of specialism, but it is never impossible. 
 
 We want a handle to our name. Every one has a right 
 to the distinction which titles of nobility are meant to 
 give, but it is from our work that we should get them. 
 The grocer, the trapper, the night-watchman, the cook, 
 is a person fit to be recognized, both by his own timid 
 self and by the rest of the world. In time the title of 
 our job comes to stand for us, to enlarge our personal- 
 ity and to give us permanence. Thus it supplements the 
 standing which is given us by our product. To "hold 
 down a job" gives us a place in the world, something 
 approaching the home for which in some form or other 
 every one longs. *'Have you any place for me?" we 
 ask with eagerness; for until we find **a place" we are 
 tramps, men without a country. 
 
 A man with a job has, at least in embryo, the kind of 
 recognition from his own gang which we all crave. He 
 
 * G. H. Palmer. The Teacher, chap. vi. Houghton Mifflin Co., 1908^
 
 THE POINTS OF A GOOD JOB 35 
 
 has won membership in a club that he wants to belong 
 to and especially hates to be left out of. To be in it as 
 a member in full standing gives a taste of self-respect 
 and self-confidence. 
 
 Despite certain puritanical traditions there are many 
 people who like to accent the fact of their member- 
 ship in the great club of job-holders by some scrap of 
 uniform, partly because this distinguishes them still 
 further from the untitled. A decidedly amateurish 
 pastry-cook of my acquaintance shifted from his bak- 
 ery into private service at the first opportunity, but 
 the flat-topped white cap which he had acquired in the 
 bakery he cherished still when he was set to work in 
 the tiny kitchen of a mountain shanty. It was his badge 
 of office and he was proud of it. Why should nurses 
 and naval officers have uniforms and rejoice in them, 
 while bankers and professors remain undistinguished? 
 I see no good reason for the arbitrary decrees of fashion 
 in such matters. tWhile on duty I think every trade and 
 every profession should have its distinguishing dress.; 
 Our common citizenship while off duty would then be 
 all the better expressed. 
 
 I have been trying to point out the features which 
 ought to dignify and enrich our work. Mastery, tangible 
 achievement, and the title which goes with even the 
 most unsatisfactory job enlarge our personality by 
 making us stand for something permanent and recog- 
 nizable. So does connection with a firm, a college, a 
 municipality, a labor union, a trade association. The
 
 36 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 consciousness of membership takes away something 
 of the self-seeking character of economic effort. Even 
 when we feel hostile to the people or the policies just 
 now in control of our working group, we find both a 
 stimulus and a wholesome restraint in the member- 
 ship. 
 
 We want congeniality with our fellow workmen. One 
 of the few non-physical "points" which people have 
 already learned to look for in selecting work is the tem- 
 per and character of the "boss/* Men, and especially 
 women, care almost as much about this as about the 
 hours and wages of the job. Young physicians will work 
 in a laboratory at starvation wages for the sake of being 
 near a great teacher, even though he rarely notices 
 them. The congeniality of fellow workmen is almost 
 as important as the temper of the boss. Two un- 
 friendly stenographers in a single room will often give 
 up their work and take lower wages elsewhere in order 
 to escape each other. 
 
 All this is so obvious to those who look for jobs that 
 I wonder why so few employers have noticed it. The 
 housewives who keep their servants, the manufac- 
 turers who avoid strikes, are not always those who pay 
 the best wages and offer the best conditions of work. 
 The human facts, the personal relations of employer 
 and employee, are often disregarded, but always at 
 the employer's peril. The personal factor is as great 
 as the economic in the industrial unrest of to-day.
 
 THE POINTS OF A GOOD JOB 37 
 
 Are not even the "captains of industry" beginning to 
 wake up to this fact? 
 
 The psychical standards which I have now tried to 
 enumerate, — balanced variety and monotony, initia- 
 tive and supervision, the chance to subjugate nature or 
 personally to create something, pleasant companion- 
 ship, a title and an institutional connection, — go far 
 to give us happiness in work. But even if we have the 
 ideal job there is much in the temper with which we 
 take it. Our temperament may be one of those incur- 
 ably sad or anxious ones that can never pluck any values 
 out of daily existence or draw them from the future 
 by anticipation. The remedies for this are hard to 
 seek. They can rarely be found in work, sometimes in 
 play, in love, or in worship. 
 
 45418
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE REPROACH OF COMMERCIALISM: THOUGHT AND 
 ACTION IN WORK 
 
 If any one tells me that Modern America is lament- 
 ably, even dangerously, weak in the capacity to ap- 
 preciate the accumulated treasures of literature, to 
 learn the lesson of history, and to distinguish true from 
 shoddy goods in philosophy and art, I have to agree. 
 Nor can I deny that we are ludicrously unaware of the 
 exuberant life of the trees and flowers, so close around 
 us, so full of their own kind of ingenuity, skill, and 
 strength, as well as of beauty. We don*t know much 
 about animals, clouds, mountains, or rivers, — which 
 could give us pointers about our jobs as well as a shiver 
 of admiration at the way they do theirs. We are dunces 
 at music, sculpture, poetry, religion. The only arts we 
 appreciate are drama, dancing, and baseball, the only 
 "literature" we read is in the newspapers. 
 
 Yet, when my old friend Thomas Davidson^ used 
 to rail at the commercialism of our time and compare 
 our life disdainfully with that of Athens, its temples 
 with our factories, its Platonic and Aristotelian wisdom 
 with our cheap newspaper sensationalism, its art with 
 our ugliness, I always wondered what would become 
 of a people all of whom sat under apple trees writ- 
 
 1 C. W. Bakewell, Thomas Davidson: A Memoir,
 
 THE REPROACH OF COMMERCIALISM 39 
 
 ing poetry. We can no more live by admiring each 
 other^s sculpture than by taking in each other's wash- 
 ing. It would be an awful fate to live among a nation 
 of artists and philosophers, or to read nothing but 
 epics and sonnets in the morning paper. Like most 
 of those who hanker after Greek perfection, Davidson 
 seemed to ignore the fact that only a vast subterranean 
 foundation of slave labor and trade made possible the 
 precarious superstructure of Greek art and philosophy. 
 
 At Brook Farm, where in the early forties the re- 
 formers tried to abolish commercialism, the result was 
 that a few devoted people nearly slaved themselves to 
 death while the rest of the party felt themselves ' ' called *' 
 to comparatively easy tasks. Take away our "com- 
 mercialism" and we should obviously starve; but even 
 while the provisions lasted we should be bored and 
 miserable. Poets and prophets leaven the lump of 
 ordinary humanity; but to live with a townful of them 
 would be as insufferable as eating twenty dinners on 
 end. Most art and most philosophy ought to be the 
 by-product or the holiday adventure of lives soaked 
 through by the teaching of more humdrum occupations. 
 The artistic, philosophic, literary, or scientific specialist 
 ought always to be as rare as a jewel or a high light, 
 getting his meaning and power from his setting. 
 
 Without commercialism, most folks, while waiting 
 for starvation, would have to loaf or tramp. They would 
 be far more unhappy as well as far more vicious than 
 they are now. For Satan is still on the job. The human
 
 40 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 world has always been a commercial world, busy for 
 the most part like the birds in getting its living. 
 
 Whether we are socialists or apostles of art, culture^ 
 and the spiritual life, all that we have a right to object 
 to in modern commercialism is that while centralizing 
 industry it has also partially crushed individuality. The 
 man who made a whole house and who lived in a whole 
 house must have developed in the process more human 
 nature, more skill, ingenuity, and resource than the 
 man who specializes on window blinds and lives in a 
 tenement. 
 
 No one admires the type of man who lives on bana- 
 nas in a tropical island and usually can't be hired to 
 work, because a few days' labor each year will feed him. 
 We all agree, I take it, that we should n't want (even 
 if we could get it) a planet peopled with beautiful child- 
 like loafers such as Stevenson and LaFarge found in the 
 islands of the Pacific. We agree that men need regular 
 work, with hardship, responsibility, and strain, not as 
 their chief reward, but as an element in their dadly 
 occupation. The robust, the resourceful, the venture- 
 some, the tough, persistent characteristics which we 
 all prize in men and women don't develop (so far as 
 anybody knows) in vacico, — without the pressure and 
 drive which if overdone beget slavery. As long as we 
 prize these characteristics we shall always need to 
 keep a sharp lookout lest industry make slaves of us. 
 There is something fearful about the industry of great 
 and fruitful workers, something ascetic and at times
 
 THE REPROACH OF COMMERCIALISM 41 
 
 almost barbaric. They narrowly escape being con- 
 quered by their work. 
 
 But such narrow escapes for the soul are not peculiar 
 to commercialism. The advancing organization of 
 science is always close to pedantry; the possessor of 
 good habits is always on the verge of becoming a crea- 
 ture of habit, the person of acute sensibility is always 
 on the brink of sentimentalism. No age and no organi- 
 zation of society can escape such dangers. Any one who 
 thinks we can get more of the benefits of organized in- 
 dustry with less of its dreadful by-products must show 
 us how to do it. Meantime, it is idiotic for us to 
 reproach ourselves and our age for being commercial. 
 We can blame ourselves only for not being more of 
 something else beside commercial, or for being commer- 
 cial in so unintelligent a way; for a man without 
 muscles would be no more of a monstrosity than an 
 age without commerce. I think that commerce, like 
 muscles, can be made beautiful, intelligent, and re- 
 sourceful as well as powerful. To make it so is our 
 present need. 
 
 Many of those who decry "commercialism" are 
 fond of accenting the contrast between those who work 
 with their brains and those whose work they suppose 
 to be merely manual or muscular. In their desire to 
 exalt the spiritual powers of man they are fond of mak- 
 ing a hierarchy in which lawyers, writers, teachers, 
 poets, philosophers, preachers, and statesmen come at
 
 42 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 the top, while those who use their senses and their 
 muscles come at the bottom. 
 
 But is head-work nobler than hand-work? Should we 
 all strive to become brain-workers as far and as fast as 
 we can? Or at the other extreme is Tolstoy right when 
 he insists that every one should do " bread -work," 
 something that directly increases the amount of food 
 upon the earth? 
 
 The important distinction which these phrases are 
 meant to mark is that between thought and action: — ' 
 thought plans action; action executes thought. The 
 instant that thought relinquishes its task of exploring 
 the future and closes the office where various plans and 
 alterations are being appraised, a relatively mechanical 
 *' carrying-out" process begins. Simply to carry out a 
 fixed and detailed plan is so machine-like that a ma- 
 chine will probably be devised to do it better. For the 
 new machines that carry out the logical consequences 
 of any proposition, the machines that copy or that per- 
 form the arithmetical process of adding, subtracting, 
 multiplying, and dividing, are not the less machines 
 because they do what is often called "clerical" work. 
 They do not call up the past, they do not plan or choose 
 between future alternatives. 
 
 It would seem, then, as if all labor were tending to 
 become more and more motionless and mental while 
 many machines and a few unskilled machine-tenders 
 take from the skilled workers and the entrepreneurs 
 the monotonous, exhausting, mindless portions of the
 
 THE REPROACH OF COMMERCIALISM 43 
 
 world's work. But while this is something like the 
 truth, there are some further facts, rather shy amd un- 
 noticed, that make the separation of thought and action 
 even less wide. 
 
 Mr. Greenhorn's plans have this form: ''I will say 
 to Nature x; she will answer y; I will then rejoin with 
 2**; and so on. -For example, **I will get an axe and 
 chop into the base of that tree. It will fall toward the 
 stream and I will then tow it down.** Or: ^*I will put 
 this patient in a sanitarium. She will get rested. I will 
 then take out her appendix.'* Or: ** I will buy some of 
 this railroad stock offered me as a special favor. I will 
 go in *on the ground floor,' and when the railroad flour- 
 ishes, I shall get rich." 
 
 The second step in each of these processes, the spon- 
 taneous maturing of our project, is the one on which 
 labor men suppose "capitalists" are resting. Nature 
 carries out our plan: we sit back and cut the coupons 
 when they mature. But do things work out so? The 
 tree we planned to fall into the stream gets caught 
 overhead in a most unforeseeable way. It can be worked 
 free; but a new plan, modifying the old one, must be 
 made first. The patient's "rest cure" may not rest 
 her at all. I may find that nothing rests her but work, 
 and meantime the appendix quiets down and does n't 
 have to be removed. 
 
 The material into which our plan burrows like 
 a tunnel under construction, is always more or less 
 refractory. Whether it is the actors of our cast, the
 
 44 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 characters of our novel, the voters of our district, the 
 members of our week-end party, the steel of our cast- 
 ings, the wood we are carving, — in any case the "ma- 
 terial" resists more or less. Hence we are forced to 
 feel our way and to form while in action a considerable 
 part of our plan. 
 
 Though this is trite and obvious, we often forget it 
 when we are declaiming about the divorce of manual 
 labor from mental work, or the chasm between thought 
 and action. Good thinking feels its way hy action. Good 
 manual work is full of thought. Is the sculptor's task 
 manual or mental? Of course bad sculpture may be 
 purely manual (that is, purely imitative or conven- 
 tional). There is also an opposite kind of sculptural 
 monstrosity, which looks as if it were gnawed out of 
 the stone by a man without hands.. Does a man sing 
 with his soul or with his vocal cords? Some "vocal 
 artists" seem to be all vocalization and nothing else; 
 some voiceless sentimentalists seem to be trying to sing 
 without opening their mouths. But is n*t it clear as day 
 that brain and muscle wait each upon the other for the 
 opportunity to do what God meant them to do? The 
 wise thought, the successful plan says: "I'll say to 
 Nature x, and then see what she says. My next step, 
 y, will depend upon her answer." Her answer comes to 
 us through our muscles and our senses, and keeps us 
 alive from head to foot. It is married to our thought 
 and completes it. 
 
 We cannot value manual work, — what Tolstoy
 
 THE REPROACH OF COMMERCIALISM 45 
 
 calls "bread- work/* — merely because it is not brain- 
 work. Yet his warnings may be greatly needed. He is 
 right in telling us that we may get warped and neuras- 
 thenic, cold-hearted and footless, if our muscles are 
 never used, our vitality never husbanded by the mono- 
 tony of routine and the simplicity of the elemental. 
 Yet farmers are not all wise and virtuous. Tolstoy's 
 solution of our difficulty is too simple. If the race is 
 getting stunted and neurotic, puny and degenerate, 
 because it is tied down to any particular kind of work, 
 disproportionately manual or mental, it is time for 
 revolution or reform. Somewhere in our life, in our 
 play, if not in our work, every part and element in us 
 ought to find a chance to praise God in its own fashion. 
 
 If indoor work, machine work, literary work, farm 
 work, or any other job leaves a large part of us unserv- 
 iceable, then we ought either to find some outlet for 
 that strength during the hours away from work or to 
 change the work. But I don't find that agriculture has 
 turned out any better type of man than railroading and 
 shopkeeping. That it weakens health is a serious indict- 
 ment of any trade ; but so far we have no proof that the 
 health of manual workers is any better than the health 
 of those of us who use our brains as well as our hands. 
 
 Tolstoy does not convince me that we are always 
 kinder, more neighborly, more comradely in the more 
 elemental and manual trades than in brain-work. A 
 touch of nature does make all the world kin, but it is a 
 touch rather than prolonged pressure. The elemental,
 
 46 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 impinging in the form of sharp, brief illness, may bring 
 a family together. But chronic illness, prolonged and 
 infiltrated through days, nights, meals, and holidays, 
 may estrange and embitter a family. A party of peo- 
 ple cruising on a yacht get wonderfully friendly and 
 even intimate during a week's trip, provided the yacht 
 is not so luxurious as to exclude them from the work 
 of sailing her. But this is true just because the contact 
 with elemental life is a passing one. A shortage of 
 food or even the long continuance of comfortable cruis- 
 ing life sometimes wears out nature's power to make our 
 souls kin. When we are tied to such a life, as Dana 
 was in his *'Two Years before the Mast," we do not 
 appear to treat each other more kindly than the city 
 folk. 
 
 Action staged always among elemental conditions 
 cannot be trusted to make us wise. But neither can we 
 depend upon slippered "thinkers" for wisdom. If the 
 problem is to know what 's wrong with a business, what 
 people will buy, how an election is to be won, or when 
 the psychological moment for action has arrived, he is 
 most likely to be right who can muster the widest ramge 
 of human experiences, hold them fairly before him in 
 review, like a hand of cards, and then judge. 
 
 A state superintendent of education might seem to 
 be as much emancipated from the need of manual work 
 as any one could be. He deals with mental and spirit- 
 ual problems, with the course of study, with the per- 
 sonalities of teachers and pupils, the humor of parents,
 
 THE REPROACH OF COMMERCIALISM 47 
 
 school committees, and legislatures. True; but that 
 is not all. He has also to test out courses in music, 
 drawing, physical culture, hygiene, manual and indus- 
 trial training, and even if he decides to rule them all 
 out of his curriculum, he must know just what they are 
 before he can exclude them wisely. He will be unfair 
 to athletics, to drawing, to forge- work, to folk-dancing, 
 nature study, or sex hygiene, unless he is an all-round 
 man and not merely a pedagogue. He must have done 
 enough work with every sense, with every muscle, to 
 know its worth and its dangers. 
 
 Just what dose of original planning and what stint 
 of executing other people's plans is good for each indi- 
 vidual is never a fixed quantity. But every one needs 
 both, and therefore no one can make a hierarchy with 
 the ** mental*' or "spiritual" tasks at the top and the 
 "manual" ones at the bottom. The proportion of 
 thought and of action which is proper to each of us 
 depends somewhat upon our age. Hence the ordinary 
 process of promotion from less responsible and simpler 
 to more complex and difficult positions as men get older 
 is, I think, somewhere near what it ought to be. For 
 old men are apt to be wiser in counsel ; to use and bal- 
 ance their energies they need less of a grapple with the 
 elemental than when they were young. They ought not 
 to be hustling like the youngsters, for if they really 
 were youngsters once and were not born old, all the old 
 activities of eye, ear, and hand, all the crudities and 
 the elementals will sit as representatives in the chamber
 
 48 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 of their minds and contribute their vote when called 
 for. 
 
 Commercialism, then, should not be used as a term 
 of reproach. Like romanticism or asceticism it has its 
 good and its bad side. What it needs is reshaping to 
 fit our actual needs rather than the accidents of develop- 
 ment. Remembering how intolerable a world of poets 
 and philosophers would be, we should never say or 
 imply that work which deals largely with material ob- 
 jects is any lower in the scale of worth than the calling 
 of the thinker or the scholar. For science and art are 
 most intimately concerned with the material world and 
 derive from it their expressions of truth and beauty. 
 The practice of any art or craft cuts clean across the dis- 
 tinctions between "mental** and "manual" work and 
 weaves both into a truer whole. 
 
 Let us abolish terms like "physical culture" or 
 " mental training.** To be concerned either with one's 
 mind or one*s body is a morbid practice. One should 
 be occupied with tasks that make us forget both mind 
 and body in a higher union of both. 
 
 Thought is not nobler than action. It is the first or 
 last stage of action and its worth depends on the act 
 which it plans or mirrors. Good thinking is reshaped 
 again and again by contact with the obstacles and de- 
 murrers of its material. The proportions of thought and 
 action, of commerce and poetry, in any life, must be 
 worked out by each person, each nation, and each age 
 to fit individual needs.
 
 THE REPROACH OF COMMERCIALISM 49 
 
 Action, manual work, Tolstoy's ''bread- work," are 
 not nobler than the practice of art, science, and govern- 
 ment. Tolstoy was right in insisting that morally and 
 intellectually we need to use our muscles as well as 
 our minds, wrong in supposing that his own noble 
 scheme of life is ordained for all.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE GLORY OF RAW MATERIAL 
 
 The material side of life may be enjoyed, scorned, 
 endured, investigated, or ignored. We may wallow in 
 it luxuriously. We may try to forget it and live 
 above it. We may bear with it (sullenly or stoically) 
 as the coal-heaver does. We may turn it into physics 
 and chemistry. We may not notice it at all. These 
 five ways of behavior towards the cruder facts of life 
 are familiar enough to all. We all know sensualists, 
 idealists, day-laborers, and scientists, — besides many 
 who are not concerned in any way with our present 
 problems. 
 
 But I am especially interested in another type, one 
 which has figured brilliantly in the writings of Charles 
 Ferguson and Gerald Stanley Lee, yet is still too little 
 appreciated. I mean the man who genuinely respects 
 and even loves the material world, but is very silent 
 about it. The object of the present chapter is to de- 
 scribe this man, and the world as he sees it. He be- 
 longs in this section of my book, because he is not only 
 a worker, but the typical worker of the present day, 
 soaked with the spirit of work and therefore with re- 
 spect for matter and with knowledge of its nature. He 
 is incarnate in some of the best doctors, scientists, and 
 business men of my acquaintance, but I shall begin
 
 THE GLORY OF RAW MATERIAL 51 
 
 with his most superficial and forbidding aspect, the face 
 that he turns, in self-defense, to an unsympathizing 
 world. 
 
 To match his mood of incessant industry there has 
 grownup in him a certain " set " of the spiritual muscles. 
 His mind is bent down and inward like the prehensile 
 hands of the day-laborer. Outwardly he is stoical and 
 grim, not because he is low-spirited, but because he 
 wants to protest against sentimentalism and gush. He 
 abhors a book like this because he is sick of all theoriz- 
 ing. **Tall talk, but mighty little performance," is his 
 favorite phrase of reproach. Vividly conscious of his 
 own limitations and of the world's vast and dangerous 
 power, he is like a burnt child who fears life's fires. 
 
 Most of all, perhaps, he fears the flames of emotion, 
 of love, worship, and hot faith. He sees fools hovering 
 about those flames, eager, boastful, and reckless. He 
 has his own type of enthusiasm, — well hidden beneath 
 a stoical exterior, — but his work has taught him 
 chiefly humility. Indeed, he is humble not only for 
 himself, but for the whole race; too humble to expect 
 progress, divinity, or immortality. Absolute assurance 
 on all such matters has been knocked out of him by 
 nature's stubborn resistance to his attack. He bows 
 before the world with a shrug and a patient stoop. 
 
 Silence is characteristic of the man whom I am 
 describing, and therefore I am all the more eager to de- 
 scribe him. He is taciturn, partly because he has little 
 aptitude for words as a medium of exchange, partly
 
 52 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 because he never forgets Booker Washington's story 
 of the Negro who found the cotton he was picking so 
 "grassy" and the sun so powerful hot that he guessed 
 he had a call to preach. People who give up work and 
 turn to talking about socialism or religion, because 
 talking is easier than working, excite in him a holy 
 horror. The smooth drawing-room ideals which they 
 teach so glibly are sure to end as they began, in talk. 
 "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach," he says 
 with scorn. 
 
 I agree with much of this indictment. Idealism 
 does often begin in talk the tasks that it never finishes 
 in action. The discouragements encountered as we 
 approach the later and harder places of an undertaking 
 lead many of us to glide out of it and start a new one. 
 Our devious and scrappy lives follow Chesterton's re- 
 vised version of Longfellow: — 
 
 "Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing, so I my life conduct. 
 Each morning sees some task begun, each evening sees it chucked.** 
 
 Reformers love to talk and think, for in thought we can 
 freely shape the early stages of great projects. But 
 when we begin to carry them out, we get into regions 
 not so malleable by thought, — regions full of obsta- 
 cles that make us feel ignorant and helpless. 
 
 Such obstacles the creative worker whom I am here 
 describing has often fought and conquered. When he 
 remembers the blood and sweat which he has expended 
 in the struggle, he feels a deep respect for the enemy 
 rvho made him work so hard, and deep disdain for those
 
 THE GLORY OF RAW MATERIAL 53 
 
 who are always lisping out the beginnings of cam- 
 paigns in high-sounding phrases, but never completing 
 their sentence in action. A legislative campaign, for 
 instance, often begins in eloquent and glorious discus- 
 sion. That is easy and pleasant. But in its later compli- 
 cations, among the quick thrusts and parries at close 
 range, the glory goes out of it; it becomes sheer work. 
 The fight to a finish is the best test of sincerity and 
 strength. Then it is that contact with hard facts begins 
 to knock the conceit out of us. 
 
 For the pioneer whom I describe the world is colored 
 by memories of many such fights. He thinks of it and 
 attacks it as a mass of resistance, a huge and humbling 
 opponent. The knots in lumber, the frost which spoils 
 crops and orange trees, the aridity and barrenness 
 of soils, earthquakes which devastate cities, fires that 
 wipe out forests, are obstacles that make us respect the 
 enemy and remember our littleness. But the pioneer 
 whose praises I am now celebrating, the creative 
 worker and subduer of nature, is merely humbled, not 
 crushed, by his contact with the material world. Its 
 crude, tough resistance nerves his spirit's leap. For 
 matter is the sire of necessity, as necessity is the mother 
 of invention. The defiance of unbridged streams and 
 devastating disease kindles his fighting spirit to subdue 
 them. They are whip and spur to his imagination. 
 Inventiveness and valor are born of the contact. The 
 lure of the unconquered, the threat of death and disas- 
 ter, draw out of him resources of ingenuity which could
 
 54 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 never have been bom unaided. The shock of raw 
 nature's adventures and incalculable chances string 
 him taut like a cold bath. He sees his work fronting 
 him, and runs to meet it with fierce joy. 
 
 He knows that he need not run far. He need not 
 always be venturing into the wilderness. The raw ma- 
 terial of creative work is close at hand. There is plenty 
 of elemental resistance to be met in homely facts like 
 the stupidity of school children, male voters, and un- 
 enfranchised women, the recalcitrancy of old habits, 
 the anarchy of warring elements within us, the resulting 
 vice and crime of cities, the resulting languor and de- 
 gradation of country districts. Plenty of virgin soil 
 for cultivation here. Plenty of untrodden wastes to 
 be explored. 
 
 For the "material world" is not only outside us. It 
 is inside us as well. We can recognize it everywhere by 
 the familiar marks of crudity, resistance, disorder, and 
 darkness. Rhapsodies about the universe may seem less 
 poetical to conventional minds if we cross out the word 
 ** nature ** wherever itoccurs, and substitute "my body" 
 or "my cross old aunt," or "my own stupidity." But 
 there is poetry enough in all these tragic facts, and work 
 enough, too. No one can deny that our own uncivilized 
 impulses, organs, and relatives are part of nature and 
 afford ample food for wonder, for ingenuity, and for 
 taming the wild. We need not take ship for distant 
 lands or hark back to savagery. There is chaos enough 
 close at hand; there is beauty enough alsor
 
 THE GLORY OF RAW MATERIAL 55 
 
 The pioneer is well aware of this. He begins at home 
 and in the back yard. In his r61e of engineer he has 
 been recently offering us advice in matters of health 
 and education. He will not be confined to spanning 
 deserts and torrents. He knows that the terror and 
 havoc of raw nature oppress us just in proportion to 
 our ignorance, our forgetfulness, and our dullness. 
 These make volcanoes terrific, climates deadly, and 
 soils sterile. These crowd our foreground with dull 
 pupils, venal corporations, and applicants for divorce. 
 So long as we are too stupid to conquer it, the material 
 world is a perpetual menace to our false security. The 
 best flowers of art, science, and virtue are always in 
 danger while ignorance grumbles underground in vol- 
 canic unrest. 
 
 But is not this very danger a temptation to better 
 work? Like a prophet, and in the spirit of Carlyle, the 
 material world summons us to be up and doing. To 
 defend our homes and our civilization we must fight 
 the inroads of chaos upon our little trim corner of the 
 cosmos. But we must also fight against our own self- 
 satisfaction, and in this campaign the creative worker 
 with bent back and stem face is still our leader. He 
 teaches us to see our civilization as all too human and 
 man-made. Fresh from contact with elemental forces, 
 he finds our civilization reeking of our littleness as well 
 as of our valiant endeavor. He finds it tame, academic, 
 formal; for it repeats itself and every one's self. 
 
 In contrast with all this smugness of so-called civili-
 
 S6 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 zation, the creative worker sees nature as the vast store- 
 house of the undiscovered. What is now "brute fact," 
 crude matter, animal instinct, contains all the future 
 possibilities of discovery and of creation. Reverence 
 for the material is the recognition of this infinite re- 
 sourcefulness on the part of nature, together with a 
 manly welcome for the buffets which come to us in 
 work, — **tum earth's smoothness rough," and shape 
 our faculties to learn new truth. 
 
 This reverence becomes love in those who realize 
 that the material world provides what most of all their 
 spirits crave: an outlet for the adventurous, the ro- 
 mantic and heroic impulses. To set them afire, the 
 initial check and friction of the elemental are just what 
 is needed. 
 
 Why have I linked the material side of existence with 
 work rather than with play, love, or worship? Because 
 play, love, and worship do not so often force us into 
 humbling yet ultimately refreshing contact with what 
 is crude. So long as it is play to shingle a roof, we do 
 not notice the ache of our cramped legs, nor the strain 
 -upon our back muscles. When these elemental dis- 
 comforts force themselves upon our notice, the shin* 
 gling-game begins to feel like work. When love meets 
 resistance, when it is thwarted by the screens of flesh, 
 forgetfulness, distance, misunderstanding, and rivalry, 
 it too begins to seem like work. It becomes a loyalty 
 worth working for, or else a hateful and hopeless 
 drudgery.
 
 THE GLORY OF RAW MATERIAL 57 
 
 Because this is so, — because work forces us to stare 
 almost incessantly at the material world and gives us, 
 despite its fascinations, so huge a slice of humble pie, 
 — we are always in danger of biting off more than we 
 can chew, imbibing more ugliness than we trans- 
 form and assimilate. But that is a chance which we 
 must take, all the more cheerfully because history has 
 taught us that honest pessimism, and even honest 
 atheism, bring about precious reforms in conventional 
 religion, purifying it by revolt against its all too easy 
 solution of the riddle of existence. If you become a 
 "materialist" in the popular sense, you may arouse 
 the dormant faith of your age, as the resistance of a 
 tough wad adds force to the ignited powder behind it. 
 i Nevertheless our long bondage to the elemental 
 and to earth is not always good for us. Our self-abase- 
 ment in work may become barren and dreary because 
 the work has become the extinguisher of the soul which 
 it was meant decently to clothe. To be spiritually 
 abased by work is virtue; to be spiritually squashed 
 by work is failure. Common sense should teach us to 
 take off the kettle when it boils, rather than humbly 
 wait and be scalded when it spits. 
 
 Of course I am speaking here not of the low-paid 
 wa^e-eamers who are often weighed down and blighted 
 by the burdens of our industrial system. I am con- 
 cerned here and throughout this chapter with the 
 *' pushing man," relatively well-to-do, strong, sound- 
 sleeping, and of voracious appetite. His danger is to
 
 58 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 be squashed or scalded not by reason of poverty or 
 overstrain, but because he does not raise his head from 
 work to notice the ancient and beautiful world in 
 which he lives. Industrial reform will not help him 
 much. What he needs is common sense.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE RADIATIONS OF WORK 
 
 The good intentions with which hell is paved are 
 those that we offer as excuses for inaction, not the 
 intentions which remain unfulfilled despite our best 
 efforts to make them good. If you say, **No, I have 
 not done anything this month, but I have had the 
 best of intentions," you have condemned all the days 
 which you describe. \ But if you say nothing about your 
 intentions, make no apologies, but do your level best, 
 then your unfulfilled intentions speak for you with 
 the tongues of men and angels. Sincere intentions left 
 unfulfilled despite our best efforts are perhaps the 
 most valuable parts and the best fruits of character. 
 In any action we may distinguish two parts : First, 
 what the person himself knowingly and intentionally 
 does. Second, and most valuable, the unconscious radi- 
 ations which emanate from any one in full activity. 
 These unconscious products, which are by far the best 
 of our output, are like the quiet by-effects of a college, 
 — what students get "just by rubbing against the walls 
 of college buildings." Likewise unconscious are the 
 best teachings of the mother who serves high ideals 
 and intends to impart them to her children. She does 
 not deliver just those goods, yet her intentions are not 
 fruitless. The good which she does may issue in quite
 
 60 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 another direction from that which she planned, yet i£ 
 she had not made that apparently futile plan, she would 
 not have achieved her unconscious but beneficent in- 
 fluence. 
 
 This explains part of Luther's insistence that of him- 
 self a man can do nothing, that his efforts are nil and 
 God's grace all. A literal reading of this logic would 
 make us give up trying, as some misguided teachers 
 have advised.' But the truth seems to be that we 
 should give up expecting to accomplish anything just 
 as we plan it, and should not be disappointed if 
 
 "All we have hoped for and darkly have groped for' 
 Come not in the form that we prayed that it should." * 
 
 Luther's insistence that no man can be "saved" 
 (i.e., can accomplish anything that he really wants to 
 accomplish) by **good works," and that works without 
 faith are dross, can be justified if we are not too literal 
 in our understanding of his terms. Your "works" are 
 what you do self-consciously and with the effort to 
 assume a virtue though you have it not. But your real 
 success is not attained, your real merit is not limited, by 
 the pitifully small results which you thus achieve. 
 From the standpoint of achievement we are all fail- 
 ures, although, as Stevenson says, we can be "faith- 
 ful failures" and through faithfulness attain such suc- 
 cess as we deserve. 
 .. I want to exemplify the value of our unconscious 
 
 * From Gelett Burgess's stirring poem, "Here 's to the Cause."
 
 THE RADIATIONS OF WORK 6i 
 
 output in four different fields: in morals, in music, in 
 business, and in science. 
 
 The unconscious radiations of moral ' * example ' ' don't 
 work when the man is trying to set an example. Char- 
 acter talks when we are silent. A doctor wins confid- 
 ence, not by what he says, but by his methods, what 
 he takes for granted, his unconscious presence, the 
 foundations of his certainty laid in years of hard work. 
 For a similar reason the authority of Miss Jane Addams 
 springs less from what she says than from what she 
 has done, from the unconscious influence of her char- 
 acter previously known to her audiences, and to the 
 whole country. 
 
 Tschaikowsky's ^ method of musical composition illus- 
 trates the point, but here the unconscious radiations of 
 work illumine first of all the worker himself, his better 
 self, — lost to sight for the time being till the radiations 
 search him out. Tschaikowsky found that his inspired 
 self, the creator in him, often got lost and could be 
 found only through the lantern of hard work, — a lan- 
 tern so constructed that it threw no light behind it, 
 no light on the plodding working self. He found that 
 inspiration for composition often failed him wholly. 
 For weeks at a time he could force out nothing that 
 he valued. Yet if he waited patiently or impatiently 
 for the inspiration, it did not come, for the kingdom 
 of heaven and the inspirations of genius come not with 
 
 * M. I. Tchaikowsky, Life and Letters of Peter I Tchaikowsky, 
 John Lane, 1908.
 
 62 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 observation. He found that he must go to his desk 
 each day and do something, the best he could, to 
 get out some music. Then, in time, and quite unex- 
 pectedly, rich musical ideas would come pouring into 
 his head (whence, God only knows) faster than he 
 could write them down. They were the unconscious 
 radiations of his uninspired daily toil. 
 
 Competent business men have told me that the best 
 new ideas about their work come to them quite unex- 
 pectedly, often on a holiday when their minds were not 
 trying to evolve anything of the kind. Yet, if they 
 take a permanent holiday no such inspirations come. 
 In business or anywhere else the best fruit of work 
 is, of course, originality. That is what brings money, 
 fame, lasting usefulness, and it is what every worker 
 wants to get out of his efforts. But all originality, all 
 new ideas are miracles and come through us rather 
 than of our own making. 
 
 So it is that ideas come to us in science, "Any one 
 who works hard,** says Ostwald, the world-renowned 
 physical chemist in his Natur philosophies "will find 
 something new.** But this "something** is usually 
 found, accidentally as we say, while we are looking for 
 something else. It is in this sense that genius results 
 from taking infinite pains. It produces something never 
 looked for, yet something which without the infinite 
 pains could never have come to light. 
 
 The heretical Scylla is to suppose that we are ** jus- 
 tified " by our works themselves, achieved with our own
 
 THE RADIATIONS OF WORK 63 
 
 naked "self-made" hands. The heretical Charybdis 
 ?s to suppose that because action is greater in its by- 
 products than its intention, therefore action is useless. 
 Religious tradition, artistic experience, the history of 
 scientific discoveries, the natural history of personal 
 influence in families, friendship, school-teaching, public 
 life, the "best ideas" of the man of action, — all these 
 lines of evidence converge to show that the flower of 
 a man*s work is that which he does not directly intend 
 or deserve. His flashes of genius spring, — he knows 
 not how, — like a flower from the deep root of his faith- 
 ful labor. He labors in faith that some good not now 
 seen or certain will somehow, somewhere come, if only 
 he does his best. 
 
 We are accustomed to think of "genius" mostly 
 in the field of the fine arts, but I believe that all the 
 unconscious by-products of faithful work are fashioned 
 from the stuff of genius. Genius has its part in indus- 
 trial invention, in scientific discoveries, in good jokes, 
 in the happy grace of a skillful hostess. It plays through 
 our disciplined natures to express the higher purposes 
 of the race. Conscientious effort to win virtue or succes? 
 by direct attack, is for most men the necessary precur- 
 sor of genius, yet the effort itself is clumsy and amateur- 
 ish'. For all self-conscious effort to do better than one 
 has hitherto done involves impersonation, as I shall 
 try to explain more fully in "Play" (chapter xvii)/ 
 We assume the virtue not yet possessed and try to 
 play up to the character which we aspire to attain.
 
 64 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 Indeed, from one point of view this is the whole of 
 morality. But in our highest moments, in all genius 
 and heroism, whenever we are swept along by generous 
 or aspiring impulse, impersonation and self-conscious- 
 ness vanish. Somehow the deed is done, and as we 
 look back we see that it springs out in the direction of 
 our previous and painful efforts to do right. But it 
 astonishes the doer almost as much as the beholder. 
 Who can say that Shelley is wrong if he attributes his 
 moments of genius to a Power who is greater than him- 
 self, yet always at hand as answer to the prayer of 
 utter sincerity?
 
 CHAPTER Vlir 
 
 WORK AND LOYALTY: THE IDEALIZATION OF WORK 
 
 I WAS returning some years ago from a medical meet- 
 ing in Washington, D.C., when I had the good fortune 
 to overhear in the Pullman smoking-compartment a 
 bit of conversation between the best-known doctor and 
 the best-known lawyer in Boston. Both had been tak- 
 ing a bit of vacation at the capital. Both were fierce, 
 hungry workers; each loved his profession and led it. 
 
 "I hope," said the doctor to the lawyer, "that you 
 are coming back to your work with fresh enthusiasm." 
 
 The lawyer laughed and shrugged his shoulders, 
 then puffed his cigar and looked out of the window with 
 a grim smile. 
 
 " Because," went on the doctor, "you ought to set us 
 all a good example and convert us to righteousness. 
 I *m coming back to my work with loathing^ 
 
 " What ! " says the novice, "don't they like their work 
 after all ; if they do, why do they hate to come back 
 to it?" Yes, that *s just the paradox which we must 
 get used to, because it is a true reading of the facts. 
 Th^se men loved their calling as soon as they were in 
 harness, yet when out of harness they sometimes sank 
 into moods of revolt. 
 
 "Out of harness!" There's a deal of significance in 
 that trivial phrase. For all work is a yoke and a harness.
 
 66 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 We slip it off every night (or ought to) and many times 
 we hate to shp it on again in the morning. We slip it 
 off (or try to) when we get round to our Sundays and 
 vacations. It is often hard to put it on again, all the 
 harder sometimes if the vacation, the opera, the base- 
 ball game, has relaxed our muscles and made us forget 
 how to carry the burdens and responsibilities of our 
 trade. 
 
 This paradox, loving a task on the whole and yet 
 hating it when we are *'out of harness," must be a per- 
 sonal experience to many of us as it is to me. I have 
 loved my work intensely and for many years, yet I 
 often feel an absolute repulsion for it when I Ve been 
 "out of harness" a little while. I have all the anarchic 
 caprices, irrational freaks, and dispirited morning lan- 
 guors pictured by William James: "I know a person, 
 for example, who will poke the fire, set chairs straight, 
 pick dust-specks from the floor, arrange his table, 
 snatch up the newspaper, take down any book which 
 catches his eyes, trim his nails, waste the morning 
 anyhow J in short, and all without premeditation, simply 
 because the only thing he ought to attend to is the prep- 
 aration of a lesson in formal logic which he detests. 
 Anything but thatT'^ 
 
 Such a mood is not wholly devilish. If we look coolly 
 
 at it, even while we are shaking it off, we shall see 
 
 some sense in our revolt. Although a man ought to 
 
 make a harness for himself and wear it, although only 
 
 * William James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. i, p. 421.
 
 WORK AND LOYALTY 67 
 
 that harness will enable him to support the responsi- 
 bilities which I Ve been celebrating, yet he should he 
 able to see himself, sometimes, as a tiny ant, hurrying 
 about to accomplish an ant's proportion of the world's 
 work, but no more. Then his harness looks cheap and 
 mean. 
 
 And though our work and our science are symbolic, 
 as I believe, of an eternal and glorious destiny, they are 
 literally very inglorious and insignificant. Only their 
 intention, only the vision that creates and sustains 
 them, is great. Our work is the best we know, and in it 
 as in a ship we have embarked with our treasures; but 
 still it is human-made, and bears the impress of our 
 limitations. Work seen literally is a misfit, and now 
 and then our tired eyes see it so; then it looks like a 
 curse. We should spurn it but for a voice within us 
 which rebukes literalism and calls it a lie. That voice is 
 loyalty. 
 
 Loyalty is a force that holds a man to his job even 
 in the moments when he hates it and sees no great 
 significance in it. When this kind of blindness falls 
 upon us, loyalty supplies a new method of guidance 
 towards the substance of things not seen. Like all 
 faith, it holds to the visible framework of daily labor 
 by grim or by smiling determination. It bids us to 
 be prompt at the office, to answer all letters at once, 
 to look as brisk and interested as we can, till the mood 
 passes and the familiar objects and occupations resume 
 their halos.
 
 68 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 The modern world is so out of sympathy with the 
 language and atmosphere of religion that it is hard for 
 most people to recognize religion in work. Yet I am 
 convinced that into our prosaic and practical details 
 of business life we often unconsciously transfer that 
 ancient power to *' invest the world with its own di- 
 vinity*' which is the essence of faith, though not of 
 prayer. The faith with which we hold to the routine of 
 our calling through moods of discontent and disillu- 
 sionment, is not altogether different from the faith that 
 makes heroes, saints, and martyrs, and gives them 
 vision of God and of immortality. 
 
 William James has reminded us that we cannot fix 
 attention on a point, because attention won't stay 
 there: — 
 
 "Try to attend steadfastly to a dot on the paper or 
 on the wall. You presently find that one or the other 
 of two things has happened : either your vision has be- 
 come blurred, so that you can see nothing distinct at 
 all, or else you have involuntarily ceased to look at the 
 dot in question and are looking at something else. But 
 if you ask yourself successive questions about the 
 dot, — how big it is, how far, of what shape, what shade 
 of color, etc., — in other words if you turn it over, if you 
 think of it in various ways and along with various kinds 
 of associates, — you can keep your mind on it for a 
 comparatively long time.*' ^ 
 
 Your mind circles round the point, connects it with 
 
 » Talks to Teachers. 1909, p. 104.
 
 WORK AND LOYALTY 69 
 
 other points (distant, past, or future, hypothetical 
 and ideal variations, imaginary extensions or dimin- 
 utions). As soon as ever you begin to think about 
 anything, you begin to encircle it with a network of 
 context. This context may be due to very arbitrary 
 associations, sometimes harmless and neutral, some- 
 times vicious and destructive. The wolfish old Tartar 
 in Tolstoy's "Prisoner in the Caucasus" sees around 
 the head of every innocent Russian the malignant faces 
 of the Russian soldiers who once killed six of his seven 
 sons and forced him to kill the seventh with his own 
 hand. Though the face of a Russian may beam with 
 kindness and childlike purity, that is lost to sight in the 
 hovering cloud of memories which the old Tartar sees 
 round any Russian. Just because he is a Russian 
 the old Tartar bristles and snarls at him in fury. Hate 
 at first sight is thus as possible as love at first sight, 
 if one sees about a personality so intense a cloud of 
 hellish witnesses. 
 
 Emotional life, whether of enthusiasm or intense dis- 
 gust, depends largely upon clouds or penumbrae, which 
 to a bystander may be quite invisible. Now and then 
 a man gets down to Peter Bell's level, where 
 
 "A primrose by the river's brim 
 ' A yellow primrose was to him 
 
 And it was nothing more." 
 
 But most of us see above the primrose a cloud of associ- 
 ations of some sort. The momentous question is * * What 
 sort, and how far does it reach?"
 
 70 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 The best grade of penumbra is native, not imported. 
 It belongs on him that wears it and is there discov- 
 ered as well as created by the onlooker's faith. Its 
 colors blend with the wearer's and are not in violent 
 and unnatural contrast. When George Meredith's 
 sentimental English youth fell out of love with Vittoria, 
 the heroic Italian singer, because he detected a whiff 
 of tobacco-smoke in her hair, he did what the old Tar- 
 tar did, — forced down a wholly unnatural and unfit 
 shadow upon an innocent creature's head. 
 
 When, on the other hand, a man sees in his towering 
 factory chimney the promise and potency of all the 
 business that is coming to him with its help, when he 
 sees rising from that chimney a vision of the position 
 he is to hold, the influence he is to wield, the improve- 
 ments he will make in the customs of his trade and in 
 the politics of his town, — that sort of penumbra really 
 fits. 
 
 Such a net of associations clustering around a person- 
 ality is made up of the things he stands for. Round a 
 President's head we see the glories and the perils, the pol- 
 icies and war-cries of the United States. Round a baby's 
 head his mother sees the promise of his future. Crowned 
 with this halo of future glory, the baby represents far 
 more than he literally is. For the principle of halos is the 
 principle of symbolism and of representation, whereby 
 everything means more than it shows on the surface. 
 
 There is nothing unusual or meritorious about halo- 
 making. Everybody goes beyond surfaces to some
 
 WORK AND LOYALTY 71 
 
 extent. But one of the most important of the differen- 
 ces between man and man is in the extent and quahty 
 of this halo-making faculty. Three artists before the 
 same landscape will paint it quite differently, not so 
 much because their eyes are different as because their 
 interests are different. Each of a group of financiers 
 facing the same opportunity will see different possi- 
 bilities in it. But how far do we go, how wide, how ac- 
 cessible is the field of opportunity which we see in any 
 business venture, any bit of untamed nature, any per- 
 sonal or political situation? If you know that, you 
 can measure the essential differences between great 
 capacity and moderate or small capacity. 
 
 The halo of origins, suggestions, and possibilities, 
 about a person has, like all halos, a misty edge, growing 
 dimmer as it recedes from its owner. More or less clearly 
 we recognize that the halo has no definite end or mar- 
 gin. If we are busy and "practical '* (as we usually are) 
 we are not much interested in this misty fact; we are 
 soon engrossed in putting through the plans which are 
 the most obvious hints from the halo. At any time, 
 however, our chatter may be struck dumb, our sleepy 
 heads may be shocked broad awake by a sudden con- 
 sciousness of what this mistiness means. It means that 
 if we could follow the whole of anybody's halo we- should 
 grasp the whole universe and its meaning. For every- 
 body stands for the universe, and is a small edition of 
 it, not in what he achieves but in what he means. 
 Everybody's halo really stretches to infinity, though
 
 72 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 our eyesight does not. Hence we are always staring 
 and blinking at the whole, though we can distinguish 
 only a tiny fragment of it. 
 
 No man who loves his work sees it without its halo; 
 and because that halo really has no end, the love of 
 work may at any moment take on a religious tinge. But 
 whether or not we see this divinity in work, it is there, 
 and we all live on its surface, upborne by it as by the 
 solid earth.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE REWARDS OF WORK 
 
 Payment can be given a workingman only for what 
 some other man might have done, because the pay is 
 fixed by estimate of 'Vhat the work is worth," i.e., 
 what you can get other people to do it for. Hence 
 you never pay any one for what he individually does, 
 but for what **a man like him,*' — that wholly ficti- 
 tious being, that supposedly fair specimen of his type 
 and trade, — can be expected to do. 
 
 The man himself you cannot pay. Yet any one who 
 does his work well, or gets satisfaction out of it, puts 
 himself into it. Moreover, he does things that he can- 
 not be given credit for, finishes parts that no one else 
 will notice. Even a mediocre amateur musician knows 
 that the best parts of his playing, his personal tributes 
 to the genius of the composer whom he plays, are heard 
 by no one but himself and "the God of things as they 
 are." There might be bitterness in the thought that in 
 our work we get paid or praised only for what is not 
 particularly ours, while the work that we put our hearts 
 into is not recognized or rewarded. But in the struggle 
 for spiritual existence we adapt ourselves to the un- 
 appreciative features of our environment and learn to 
 look elsewhere for recognition. We do not expect people 
 to pay us for our best. We look to the approval of
 
 74 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 conscience, to the light of our ideal seen more clearly 
 when our work is good, or to the judgment of God. 
 Our terms differ more than our tendencies. The essen- 
 tial point is that for appreciation of our best work we 
 look to a Judge more just and keen-sighted than our 
 paymaster. 
 / Nevertheless there is a spiritual value in being paid 
 in hard cash. For though money is no measure of the 
 individual value in work, it gives precious assurance 
 of some value, some usefulness to people out of the 
 worker's sight. Workers who do not need a money 
 wage for the sake of anything that they can buy with 
 it, still need it for its spiritual value. Doctors find this 
 out when they try to get invalids or neurasthenics to 
 work for the good of their health. Exercise done for 
 exercise* sake is of very little value, even to the body, 
 for half its purpose is to stimulate the will, and most 
 wills refuse to rise at chest- weights and treadmills, 
 however disguised. But our minds are still harder to 
 fool with hygienic exercises done for the sake of keeping 
 busy. To get any health or satisfaction out of work it 
 must seem to the worker to be of some use. If he knows 
 the market for raffia baskets is nil, and that he is merely 
 being enticed into using his hands for the good of his 
 muscles or of his soul, he soon gets a moral nausea at 
 the whole attempt. 
 
 This is the flaw in ideals of studiousness and self- 
 culture. It is not enough that the self-culture shall seem 
 good to President A. Lawrence Lowell or to some kind
 
 THE REWARDS OF WORK 75 
 
 neurologist. The college boy himself, the psychoneu- 
 rotic herself, must feel some zest along with the labor 
 if it is to do any good. And this zest comes because 
 they believe that by this bit of work they are "get- 
 ting somewhere,'* winning some standing among those 
 whose approval they desire, serving something or some- 
 body besides the hired teacher or trainer.^ 
 
 I once set a neurasthenic patient, formerly a stenog- 
 rapher, to helping me with the clerical work in my office. 
 She began to improve at once, because the rapid return 
 of her former technical skill made her believe (after 
 many months of idleness and gnawing worry about 
 money) that some day she might get back to work. But 
 what did her far more good was the check which I 
 sent her at the end of her first week's work. She had 
 not expected it, for she did not think her work good 
 enough. But she knew me well enough to know that 
 I had sworn off lying in all forms (even the most 
 philanthropic and hygienic) and would not deceive her 
 by pretending to value her work. The money was 
 good for what it would buy; it was even better because 
 it proved to her the world's need for what she could do, 
 and thus gave her a right to space and time upon the 
 earth. 
 
 * A^ Arequipa, Dr. Philip King Brown's sanitarium for the tubercu- 
 lous, near Fairfax, California, this principle is recognized and embodied. 
 Dr. Brown has succeeded in curing patients because the pottery which 
 his patients make is salable, as well as good in style and workmanship. 
 Some of the patients need the money which their work earns, but they 
 also need to feel their touch with the world outside. To make something 
 which will sell gives them courage, self-respect.
 
 76 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 This is the spiritual value of pay. So far no one has 
 thought of so convenient and convincing a way to 
 wrap up and deliver at each citizen*s door a parcel of 
 courage for the future, and a morsel of self-respect which 
 is food for the soul. 
 
 Gratitude, given or received, is one of the best things 
 in the world. We need far more of it and of far better 
 quality. Yet I have never read any satisfactory account 
 of what it so gloriously means. Its value begins just 
 where the value of pay ends. Thanks are personal, and 
 attempt to fit an adequate response to the particular 
 service performed. Pay is an impersonal coin which has 
 been handed out to many before it reaches you, and 
 will go to many others when it leaves you. It is your 
 right and you are not grateful for it. But thanks are a 
 free gift and enrich the giver. There is no nobler art 
 than the art of expressing one's gratitude in fresh, 
 unhackneyed, unexaggerated terms which answer 
 devotion with fresh devotion, fancy with new fancy, 
 clarity with sincerity. Artists who get their reward 
 only in money and in the stale plaudits of clapping 
 hands are restless for something more individual. They 
 want to be intimately understood and beautifully an- 
 swered. For such gratitude they look to brother artists, 
 to the few who really understand. There they find their 
 best reward ; but even this leaves something wanting. 
 > Why is it so notoriously difficult to accept thanks? 
 Most things that I am thanked for I am not conscious 
 
 1
 
 THE REWARDS OF WORK 77 
 
 of having done at all. Obviously the thanks are mis- 
 directed. Or, if I am conscious of having done what 
 the thanker is grateful for, I am likewise conscious that 
 I only handed on to a third person what had previously 
 been given to me. I learned from Smith and then en- 
 lightened Jones. Smith is the man to thank. Or again, 
 one is thanked for simply carrying out a contract ; but 
 one could not honorably do less. Thanks for going 
 along the usual and necessary road seem gratuitous 
 and undeserved. Or, finally, one receives gratitude 
 for what one did with joy; that seems as queer as being 
 thanked for eating one's dinner. 
 
 But suppose that the deed one is thanked for was 
 not an act of passing along what came originally from 
 another, as you pass money in a street-car. Suppose a 
 man has really originated something, an invention, 
 a poem, a statue. He hardly claims it as his, for he 
 does not know where it came from. He did not "make 
 it up." It sprang into his mind, given to him as much 
 as if he had received it from a friend. He does not feel 
 that he is the one to receive thanks. The thanks should 
 pass through him, as the gift did, to some one else, — 
 to his parents who gave him and taught him so much, 
 to his race, his nation, his health, his friends, his oppor- 
 tunities. That is where it all came from ; that is where 
 thanks are due. But each of these influences is itself 
 the recipient of countless other influences. Every fact 
 in the universe depends on every other fact. Ulti- 
 mately, then, not he but the universe must be thanked.
 
 78* WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 He deals with firms and employees, but he looks be- 
 hind them, over their shoulders, and re-directs their 
 thanks elsewhere, — ultimately, if he but knew it, to 
 the World Spirit. One may not remember that Spirit. 
 One often does not bother about the world's work. 
 Thinking exhausts some people and fatally confuses 
 others. But if one thinks at all, he runs up hard against 
 the world plan, and finds it the bulkiest object in sight. 
 
 The unsentimental male American as I have de- 
 scribed him is almost morbidly apt to deride anything 
 like gratitude, sentiment, or moralizing in relation to 
 himself and his work. " No joy is mine ! " he would say; 
 ''what do you take me for anyway, — a holy roller?" 
 
 He is just as quick to reject the idea that he cares 
 about serving anybody or anything. He may admit 
 that he wants to "make good" in a fair and square 
 way, according to the rules of the game. But "service," 
 like **joy," sounds too "stuck up" and Pharisaical 
 for him. 
 
 Nevertheless I firmly believe that his derision is 
 only a ruse to conceal his morbid bashfulness and 
 oafish sensitiveness. For in point of fact service is one 
 of the things that pretty much everybody wants, 
 however much he may disguise it and conceal it from 
 himself. I have never seen any more unsentimental 
 and raw-boned being than the American medical stu- 
 dent; yet he is simply hankering for service. Medical 
 teachers spread .before him banquets of tempting
 
 THE REWARDS OF WORK 79 
 
 "opportunities," rare *' cases," "beautiful" specimens, 
 easy chances to distinguish himself in research and to 
 absorb his medical food in predigested mouthfuls. He 
 often remains indifferent. But the moment you give 
 him a place to work in a clinic, to serve as Dr. Blank's 
 fourteenth assistant in a hospital where good work is 
 done, he will jump at the chance. The work is much 
 harder and more monotonous than his regular studies. 
 Much of it is not teaching him medicine. He has to go 
 on doing Fehling's test for sugar and trying knee jerks 
 long after he has learned the trick. He has to measure 
 stomach contents, to weigh patients, to bandage legs, 
 and to write down names and addresses in monotonous 
 routine day after day. Yet he loves the work, and de- 
 spite all the drudgery, he learns far more medicine by 
 holding down an actual job of this kind than by lectures 
 and classes. If you separate out the instructive por- 
 tion of his day's work and present it to him without 
 assigning him any regular position and duties, he does 
 not like the work so well or learn so much. 
 
 He is hungry for reality. Service as an assistant is 
 reality. He knows that something genuine is occurring 
 and that he plays a real part in it. He knows that he 
 would be missed and that things would go wrong if he 
 were «iot there. He senses a real need for him and feels 
 it drawing him like a magnet. At the medical school 
 his classes do not need him, though he is supposed to 
 need them. Nothing would happen if he were not there. 
 He feels ghostly and unreal like the lesson. For the
 
 80 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 lesson is a copy of reality; constantly it portrays an 
 imaginary state of things: — 
 
 "If you find a man unconscious, if you examine a 
 tuberculous lung after death, if you give one half-grain 
 of strychnin, if you wash out the stomach, such and 
 oUch results will follow." Almost all medical teaching 
 is thus blighted with unreality, mildewed with time. 
 Laboratory work seems more real, but even laboratory 
 work is usually artificial, a make-believe. You are not 
 really analyzing medicines in search of possible adul- 
 terants. Nobody wants your work. There is no tug of 
 the world's need to which you respond. It is true that 
 in laboratory instruction we give the student something 
 more or less like the real conditions of life. We try to 
 set him to work as if he were holding down a real job. 
 But he knows that in fact he is only practicing for Self- 
 improvement, one of the flimsiest of the pretexts by 
 which we try to call out a man's energies. 
 
 Extraordinarily sound, those students' instincts! 
 They are bored when we offer them opportunities to do 
 what is easy and self-centered, but outside the current 
 of reality. It is only when we give them hard, dry 
 work like an assistantship in a clinic, a place where they 
 can accomplish something that has a real value in the 
 actual world, that they fall to with real appetite. 
 
 The sense of somebody's need is, I believe, the most 
 powerful motive in the world, one that appeals to the 
 largest number of people of every age, race, and kind. 
 It wakes up the whole nature, the powers that leam
 
 THE REWARDS OF WORK 8i 
 
 as well as those that perform ; it generates the vigor of 
 interest that submerges selfishness and cowardice; it 
 rouses the inventiveness and ingenuity that slumber 
 so soundly in students* classrooms. For many of us, 
 for more every time the world takes a step in the right 
 direction, work that is service taps a great reservoir of 
 power, sets free some of our caged and leashed energy. 
 
 Pay^ gratittide, and service^ as ends of work, have 
 each a value, though not of exactly the sort one might 
 expect. How about success? Financial rewards are 
 nowadays less talked about than the general prosperity 
 which they express. Civic ideals are kept in the fore- 
 ground alike by "boosters," real estate men, and cham- 
 bers of commerce. According to these authorities busi- 
 ness success means a flourishing city and a contented 
 community. To help build up a fine city is what we are 
 asked to do in case we take the investment offered us. 
 A fine city is an efficiently-managed, well-lighted com- 
 munity, with plenty of schools, parks, and churches. 
 But stop a moment. What is the use of such a place? 
 When we have built and finished this perfect city, with 
 its smooth-running government, then at last its crime- 
 freed, sanitary streets will be swept and garnished all 
 ready to begin, — what? 
 
 It is hard to hear any answer. Few are interested 
 enough even to attempt one. For the interest of civic 
 reform is mainly in the process — far less in the result
 
 82 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 Boys who build a boat or a play-house usually find that 
 there is far more fun in the process of building than in 
 using the finished product. So it is with the reform of 
 a slum or a municipal government. The best of it is in 
 the reforming. We shall hardly stop to notice it when 
 it is perfect. We shall take it for granted, as we do the 
 safe delivery of the letters which we post, and be off on 
 another campaign. Our civic goals are like the scented 
 rushes in **Wool and Water." The most beautiful 
 ones Alice found were always those just beyond her 
 reach. Perfect adaptation to environment, which 
 seems to be what the sanitary and civic reformers aim 
 at, would mean absolute stagnation, — attainment 
 that buds no more. For what should stir us further? 
 
 "Well, anyway, to reform our city is the best thing 
 in sight. It is certainly in the right direction." Ah, 
 then we know what the right direction is ! That is some- 
 thing far more significant than any single step in civic 
 progress. If we know the true direction, we can point 
 beyond the civic models to something towards which 
 they are on the road and get our satisfaction all along 
 its course. 
 
 The worship of ' ' the right direction " is a fundamental 
 motive in art and play as well as in work. Every noble 
 game and work of art calls for others, incites to pil- 
 grimages, reforms, and nobler arts. Art is not meant 
 to give us something final ; everything in it is pointing 
 ahead and getting its justification because it is **in the 
 right direction." Everything in art, as in civics, gets
 
 THE REWARDS OF WORK 83 
 
 the courage to exist and to push on because of its read- 
 iness to be corrected by experience to a truer version 
 of its own purpose. Sincere people want the true in 
 their work as well as in their thinking. But the truth is 
 an Infinite, and the will to approach it is an infinite in- 
 tention. The fruit of this infinite intention would be our 
 utter prostration of self before the vision. ** Do with me 
 as thou wilt." *'Thy will not mine be done." 
 
 I cannot see the end of all this. I see reform after 
 reform of character and of civilization, progress after 
 progress in science and art, rising like mountain ranges 
 one behind the other. But there is no conceivable 
 sense in all these upheavals if they are mere changes, 
 mere uneasy shifts in the position of a dreaming world- 
 spirit. To make sense they must be moving in a single 
 direction fulfilling a single plan. 
 
 It is obvious enough that all work is supposed to ful- 
 fill some one's plan, — the worker's plan or his master's. 
 It is good for something. But every one of the goods we 
 buy with our work is itself a means to something else, 
 a coin with which to purchase something more. The 
 goods we supply, the clothes, food, transportation, 
 medicine, knowledge, inspiration which we give, are 
 themselves means to something else, perhaps to com- 
 fort, health, education, courage. These again are means 
 to better work, to civic perfection, to family happiness. 
 But these once more are in themselves as worthless 
 as fiat money or dolls stuffed with sawdust unless there 
 is absolute value behind them. Happiness, civic per-
 
 84 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 fection, love, are sometimes named as the ultimate ends 
 towards which the activities of busy men and women 
 are means, but anybody who experiences any of these 
 states and is not a Buddhist wallowing in vague bliss 
 finds that they incite us to new deeds. If they are not 
 soporific drugs, they are spurs to fresh action. 
 
 Taken literally, the ideals of utility and civic reform 
 are like the old myth which explained the world's sup- 
 port as the broad back of an elephant. Who supports 
 the elephant? He rests on a gigantic tortoise; and who 
 supports the tortoise? No answer is audible in the busi- 
 ness sections of our cities or in the schoolrooms or in 
 the colleges. The church's answer is derided or ignored 
 by a large fraction of us. But it is the right one ; and we 
 shall learn to listen to it or pay the penalty. Govern- 
 ment does not rest ultimately on the consent of the 
 governed, but on their conformity to the will of the 
 world-spirit which makes and unmakes civilizations. 
 
 "Success" in industry, in art, or in love is saved 
 from bitterness and disappointment because we re- 
 gard our achievements far more symbolically than we 
 know, and rest far more than we are aware upon the 
 backing of God. 
 
 Assuming that in every one there is an infinite and 
 restless desire to get into the life of the world, — to 
 share any and all life that is hot and urgent or cool and 
 clear, — we can tackle this infinite task in two ways: — 
 ^ By trying to understand the universe in the samples
 
 THE REWARDS OF WORK 85 
 
 of it which come into our ken and to draw from these 
 bits a knowledge which typifies and represents the 
 whole. That is science. 
 
 By trying to serve. When we try to serve the world 
 (or to understand it), we touch what is divine. We get 
 our dignity, our courage, our joy in work because of 
 the greatness of the far-off end. always in sight, always 
 attainable, never at any moment attained. Service is 
 one of the ways by which a tiny insect like one of us 
 can get a purchase on the whole universe. If we find 
 the job where we can be of use, we are hitched to the 
 star of the world, and move with it.
 
 PART II: PLAY^
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 PLAYFULNESS, SERIOUSNESS, AND DULLNESS 
 
 Why is it that everybody is taking play so seriously 
 to-day? Our fathers considered it permissible within 
 limits, something which we might indulge in, some- 
 thing necessary, even, for young people in order that 
 they might be the better prepared for work. **A11 
 work and no play," they used to say, ** makes Jack 
 a dull boy," — dull, of course, at his lessons which 
 were supposedly the real object of his existence. But 
 despite these admissions no one would have dreamed, 
 a generation ago, of a National Playground Associa- 
 tion, or of groups of sober adults taking counsel to- 
 gether in prayerful spirit and with missionary zeal, 
 to the end that they might spread abroad the gos- 
 pel of play! To our fathers that would have sounded 
 as blasphemous as a gospel of laxity, as absurd as a 
 gospel of sweetmeats. 
 
 Jack has been permitted (for motives of economy 
 and of hygiene) to play, but this indulgent proverb 
 was framed to excuse only the young. There is no hint 
 that married women and professors, clergymen and 
 bankers in business suits, are also prone to dullness, 
 or worse, if they fail to frisk and gambol on the green. 
 Yet here we are to-day, first broadening our idea of 
 play till it spells recreation, then dreaming of public
 
 90 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 recreation as the birthright of all men, women, and 
 children, — finally venturing, since Miss Addams's 
 great book, "The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets," 
 to think of recreation as something holy. 
 
 What is it that has come over us so swiftly and so 
 silently? Can we deliberate about play, devote time, 
 money, and brains to working it up, without losing our 
 sense of humor and of proportion, — without stulti- 
 fying ourselves? I hope to answer these questions with 
 a " Yes " that has some ring to it. Would it might echo 
 and pass on to you a deep and rallying note from the 
 spirit of youth and from the city streets, both of which 
 I love! 
 
 Take first the question of playfulness in its relation 
 to seriousness. Are they opposites? Need they sup- 
 press each other? Shall we become a less serious people, 
 a more flippant and trifling people, if we grow more 
 playful? 
 
 The answer is this: Seriousness is so fundamental a 
 trend of the soul that it can accompany any of the 
 soul's efforts. One can play seriously, as children, base- 
 ball experts, and chess-players do. One can be both 
 serious and funny : witness G. B. Shaw ( passim), Lowell 
 in the " Biglow Papers," and the fool in "Lear." Work, 
 love, and even prayer can be either flippant or serious. 
 
 But just because seriousness is universally accept- 
 able as an ingredient, it tastes harsh and crude when 
 we get it alone. Bare and unadorned seriousness is
 
 PLAY AND ITS ENEMIES 91 
 
 indistinguishable from dullness. Like the sky, we al- 
 ways want it as a background. But put it in the fore- 
 ground, take away all else, and seriousness becomes a 
 void or a mist quenching animation, vivacity, and 
 effort. 
 
 This should not surprise us, for seriousness is only 
 one of many things which are essential as backgrounds, 
 but disastrous as foregrounds. Any bodily function, 
 breathing, for example, is another such background. It 
 should rarely be suspended, but it should never ob- 
 trude itself. Apoplectic old persons, whose breathing 
 has become a serious and noisy business, try at least 
 to conceal the fact as best they can. They do not pride 
 themselves on their puffing and wheezing. Only when 
 a man is near to death and has left behind him the 
 powers and beauties which make him human, do we say, 
 *'Yes, he is still breathing.'* 
 
 Seriousness simon-pure is a residual state into which 
 one relapses when one has nothing better to do or say. 
 The preacher who cannot kindle us for righteousness, 
 or summon us to repentance, or re-create in us some 
 vision of the living Christ, falls back on pure serious- 
 ness, that is on dullness. No impassioned speaker or 
 skillful fighter is ever thought of as "serious." We take 
 his seriousness for granted like his good intentions, be- 
 cause it has flowered into something more vital. Seri- 
 ousness at the funeral of a stranger may be all that is 
 left us, if we can feel no poignancy of grief, or triumph- 
 ant love, but see only the blackness of it all. For to be
 
 92 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 merely serious is to be as colorless as those somber 
 trappings, which are so often a libel of the glorious 
 dead. 
 
 No less somber is the *' serious" editorial, sermon, 
 or essay written by one who cannot be crisp nor richly 
 ornate nor smooth and musical, nor sarcastic nor pro- 
 phetic nor minatory. Of course seriousness may and 
 usually does underlie all these moods, but if we get 
 down to the threadbare and colorless solemnity of the 
 merely serious we reach the soporific. 
 
 Sleep, indeed, is the blood brother and dearest friend 
 of seriousness. 
 
 *'Yes, we are always serious at breakfast," said a 
 charming Canadian girl at an uproarious Californian 
 breakfast-table in the summer of 1904. "I don't see 
 how you can laugh so much in the morning. Grand- 
 mamma sometimes smiles at breakfast, but then you 
 see she gets up at half-past five." 
 
 Seriousness is in itself no crime. Most of us pass 
 through two zones of it daily, on our way to sleep at 
 night and back again in the morning. It is a natural 
 phenomenon when the machinery of the mind is run- 
 ning down, or not yet in full play. But in Heaven's 
 name let us make no virtue of it. Let us decently con- 
 ceal it, like our yawns, for (with apologies to John Mil- 
 ton) it is only a kind of "linked yawning long drawn 
 
 out." 
 
 Unfortunately for all such good resolutions, this 
 form of sleepiness, unabashed and chronic, is apt to
 
 PLAY AND ITS ENEMIES 93 
 
 invade every corner of the day. It will not be confined 
 to the breakfast hour, nor to the mysterious and silent 
 watches of the night, when the editorials of morning 
 papers are written. What is this melancholy and crest- 
 fallen line of persons, whom I see moving along Beacon 
 Street or Commonwealth Avenue, towards the heart 
 of the city, a little before nine, in the crisp and frosty 
 morning? So mechanical and spiritless is their gait 
 as they plod along that one might fancy them mem- 
 bers of the sad, exploited proletariat, crushed by over- 
 work, exhausted by want of sleep. In fact they are 
 prosperous bankers and lawyers on their way to busi- 
 ness, and the only trouble with them is that they have 
 just lapsed into being serious and serious only. It has 
 never occurred to them that walking can be anything 
 better than a means of sober progression. Poetry in 
 walking? Don't suggest that to practical men. They'll 
 think you a dangerous character. 
 
 Well ; demonstration is better than argument. Look 
 at that four-year-old walking to Ms business at the 
 same hour in the morning, and improvising rhythms 
 not only with his legs, but with every animated 
 muscle. His themes are suggested by the curbstone, 
 the granolithic pavement, or the morning itself. He 
 is not merely fooling. The serious intention of getting 
 somewhere underlies all his skips and dances; he has 
 on the whole a direction, but he is not merely progress- 
 ing like most of us "serious" walkers. The rhythm of 
 his steps is not like his elder's, a stern barbaric tom-tom.
 
 94 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 bare and monotonous. It is flexible and various; it 
 becomes hopping staccato or sliding legato y as his mood 
 demands. It is not bound to a single tempo, but, like 
 the winds of the spirit, it is slow and lingering, or fast 
 and furious. Could any picture be more moving, and 
 yet more humiliating, to heavy adults? Surely some 
 future '* Golden Treasury of Moving Pictures" will 
 contain a reproduction of that exquisite rhapsody 
 called ** Steps Taken While Crossing Harvard Bridge 
 at School Time,*' by Lyve Chylde, Esq., — a truly 
 moving lyric composed in his fifth year! 
 
 But why is it that almost all the best pictures in 
 that Golden Treasury of lyric motions, which each of 
 us is compiling in his memory, are composed before the 
 thirteenth year? Simply because the child is still alive 
 and trailing clouds of poetry as he walks, while we 
 "serious" adult walkers are half dead or half asleep. 
 Our creative energies are domiciled elsewhere, like ab- 
 sentee landlords, far from the tenements of our clay. 
 Yet it is not always so. I have seen a man who, even 
 under the responsibilities of the highest office in the 
 Commonwealth of Massachusetts, kept his soul fresh 
 and alive in his moving body. One of the pictures that 
 I treasure in memory is the figure of Governor Roger 
 Wolcott walking to the State House in the morning. 
 He was magnificently alive and therefore creative. 
 With every step he was composing triumphant martial 
 music. I could almost hear the themes as I walked 
 behind him. He little knew "what argument his gait
 
 PLAY AND ITS ENEMIES 95 
 
 to his neighbor's creed had lent." Many others must 
 be thanking him to-day, if not with their lips yet cer- 
 tainly in their lives. For in his established maturity 
 he radiated vigor and abundance like a happy child. 
 
 I wonder how many of us now living can bear such 
 a comparison? One I know who can: a doctor in Chi- 
 cago whose American lineage stretches far back of the 
 Mayflower, back of any pale-faced newcomer to this 
 continent. I do not forget that as doctor and as civic 
 leader he has put Chicago and the whole country 
 deeply in his debt. But my memory picture of him 
 (and yours if you know him, as you probably do) will 
 live to inspire and rebuke us even when we forget 
 Chicago and civics and medical ideals. For they are 
 only part of life, while our friend F. is the very incar- 
 nation of life as he moves in the city streets. He brings 
 the open country with him and the untarnished free- 
 dom of mountain air. You can learn both "the cause 
 and the cure of civilization" if you will walk with him 
 on Michigan Avenue; for nothing in modern civiliza- 
 tion has cramped him, not even its "serious" clothes. 
 
 What an incubus we (males) carry with us in the 
 dull and solemn monotony of our clothes! They are 
 serioifs as the school history of England used in ** Alice 
 in Wonderland," to dry the wet company about the 
 pool of tears. "It's the dryest thing I know," said the 
 Dodo. Our garments, we boast, are quiet, staid, and 
 unobtrusive; yes, like the mien of the drooping horse 
 in the treadmill ! But not because any one really likes
 
 96 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 them. It is simply because we are too stupefied by 
 custom, too much cowed by the threat of fashion, to 
 do otherwise than as- our neighbors do. Who can blame 
 us? To put a feather in our cap might lose us our job, 
 and there are many better causes for self-sacrifice than 
 dress reform. But let us never again insult children or 
 childlike races by inviting them to step up to our level 
 and become as dull and ugly as we are in our gait, our 
 dress, and our behavior. Let us clearly recognize that 
 we stepped down to a lower level when we gave up 
 playfulness and adopted the merely serious carriage and 
 the "quiet" clothes of the modern civilized adult. 
 
 Let us cease to blaspheme against the spirit of eter- 
 nal youth by supposing (as Karl Groos ^ does) that Play 
 means chiefly a preparation for the "serious" work of 
 life. Whatever has seriousness as its dominant note is 
 a senile degeneration, a sad relapse from the healthy, 
 adventurous playfulness of childhood. 
 
 Worst of all, perhaps, is our habit of associating 
 morality with a drab and bleak solemnity. Why should 
 we confuse morality, the stuff of which heroes are made, 
 with the dead-and-alive tissues of seriousness? Perhaps 
 it may be as Joseph Lee surmises that the grim "prac- 
 tical" determination, which we have come to associate 
 with Puritanism and "morality," was originally an 
 armor-of -proof which we put on temporarily for battle 
 against the Cavaliers, and then in a fit of absent- 
 mindedness forgot to take off, like a tired man who 
 
 » The Play of Man, pp. 2, 168, and passim. D. Appleton & Co., 1908,
 
 PLAY AND ITS ENEMIES 97 
 
 drops asleep with his b<x)ts on. Perhaps there was 
 once real use in the stiff, ugly armor miscalled serious- 
 ness. Perhaps it served to scare the enemy or to di- 
 minish the appetite for everything but battle, and so 
 save costly supplies. 
 
 Our present business, in any case, is to divorce 
 morality from dullness. God never put them together. 
 If in the past, for temporary and specific purposes, 
 man has brought them together, it is now man's duty 
 in the service of eternal ends to keep them apart. 
 Would to Heaven this book might sever them once for 
 all! 
 
 We have begun to make the separation, else we never 
 could have initiated to-day's revival of interest in play. 
 In this interest we have come to recognize that moral- 
 ity need not be dull, and what is more, that it must 
 be sometimes playful. We are beginning to take play 
 seriously as all children do, yet without forgetting 
 that it is play and not work or worship. This brings 
 us back to our starting-point both in this chapter 
 and in life. We need not be afraid of taking play 
 seriously so long as we distinguish seriousness from 
 dullness. What is more enchanting than the serious- 
 ness of child's play, — the "top-heavy solemnity " with 
 which he applies himself to piling sand into a bucket 
 and emptying it out again. Yet he is never dull, no 
 matter how impressive his seriousness. It is the tired 
 adult who is always prone to relapse into dullness in 
 his gait, his talk, and his dress.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 PLAY, RECREATION, AND THE OTHER ARTS 
 
 With the decline of the mistaken respect for mere "se- 
 riousness" (which is either congenital dullness or sim- 
 ple sleepiness exposed in public view) we are to-day 
 cultivating play instead of merely permitting it. We 
 want it recognized in schools (and ultimately in col- 
 leges) as an essential part of the curriculum. Why 
 should it be allowed to grow up like a weed outside the 
 garden of childhood? Froebel knew better; he put 
 play in the very center of that garden. To-day we see 
 a long procession of educators, social workers, munic- 
 ipalities, and churches tardily trailing behind Froebel, 
 quite ignorant of the fact that he is their leader. Buv 
 their direction is right. At last they are on the move, 
 determined to put play where it belongs because they 
 believe, with Stevenson, in the duty of happiness and 
 in the destiny of man while serving his God **to enjoy 
 Him forever.'* We want to diminish the amount of 
 submerged **busy" work and to expunge all desperate 
 and hopeless work; we want to see fun and games 
 playing through it, as heat lightning plays through 
 heavy clouds. 
 
 I will not be entangled at this point in any liaison 
 with fascinating definitions. I know that one can de- 
 fend a definition of work which will include all that I
 
 PLAY AND ART 99 
 
 mean by play; but I think that it is more convenient 
 to distinguish the two. I know a few rare people who 
 can touch any dull job with a magic which turns it 
 into sparkling play. I am quite aware that it is the 
 spirit which we bring with us, not the necessities or laws 
 of nature, which labels certain things *'Work" and 
 others "Play." Along comes a blithe and bird-like 
 spirit, picks off all the work-labels from monotonous 
 tasks (such as typewriting, book-keeping, and chart- 
 making), sticks play-labels upon them all and proceeds 
 to make their new titles good. With such an example 
 daily before my eyes, I am not likely to forget that 
 radiant souls can change the gray of work to the golden- 
 green of play. 
 
 Mindful of this exhilarating fact, I nevertheless re- 
 cognize that, for most of us, work and play often split 
 apart and call for separate names. Fiddling is good, but 
 not while Rome burns. Why not? Because fiddling, 
 just at that juncture, may result in the abolition of all 
 future fiddling through the combustion of fiddles, 
 fiddlers, and their audiences. Nero, I suppose, retired 
 to a safe distance before he began his historic perform- 
 ance, but not all fiddlers can get away in time. Some- 
 body must stay and put out the fire, which is work. 
 We work in part because we must, in part because we 
 have not got what we want and are divided into a rest- 
 less or unsatisfied present and a yearned-for goal in the 
 future. But in play we possess what we want. The ten- 
 sion of present against future is released. Definitions,
 
 100 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 educators, and all of us, then, must recognize that play 
 has a soul of its own and that Jesus played in the streets 
 of his native town. ^ 
 
 We have ceased to think of play chiefly as an indul- 
 gence, as a loosening of bonds, or even as a pleasure. We 
 have begun to admire it not only as recreation, but as 
 re-creation. That idea makes us open our eyes, for any- 
 thing that can make us over anew calls out the respect 
 even of a utility-ridden age like ours. Even our Puritan 
 ancestors would have hastened to a healing spring if 
 they had believed in it, and so we go tumbling over each 
 other to learn recreation when we hear that it can renew 
 our power to work. Great is the power of a hyphen! If 
 play is not only recreation but re-creation, why then 
 it is to be bom again (a wholly orthodox procedure) 
 and better born. It becomes a form of applied eu- 
 genics. Perhaps after rebirth we may go back to our 
 work with deeper-seeing eyes. We may even be less 
 "stupid in the affections.'* Play recommends itself 
 more highly when we see it from this point of view. We 
 begin to think there may be something in it besides 
 fooling. 
 
 That mighty engine, the hyphen, which like some 
 giant telescope has helped us to see new worlds, new 
 freedom, spring-time and rejuvenation in the familiar 
 word "recreation," can give it yet another glory. For 
 
 > "We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced ; we have mourned 
 unto you and ye have not lamented." Matthew xi, 17.
 
 PLAY AND ART loi 
 
 what is it that art, music, literature, drama do for us? 
 Is it not the re-creating of jaded, humdrum lives? Art 
 carries us off into a far country, more beautiful, more 
 poignant, more tragic, perhaps more humorous and 
 sparkling, perhaps nobler and more heroic, than is 
 shown us in the workshop or the home. We emerge re- 
 freshed by this intense experience, and for a few pre- 
 cious minutes we look upon the world as if our eyes had 
 never been dulled and stupefied by repetition and inat- 
 tention, never lost the child's divine power of surprise. 
 
 Art and play, then, fulfill the same function, provide 
 us the same refreshment. Moreover, they are both their 
 own excuse for being. In work, and to some extent in 
 love, we are building for the future ; we are content to 
 save, to sacrifice, and to repress, for the sake of a "far- 
 off divine event.'* But in all art, including the variety 
 called play, we anticipate heaven and attain immediate 
 fruition: we give full rein to what strains against the 
 leash. Subject to the rules of the game, or the rules 
 of the art, we let our energies go at full gallop. We 
 utter ourselves, like a schoolhouse turned inside out for 
 recess. You know the sound ! 
 
 Play and art, I believe, are essentially one; beauty 
 lives in each, and though the beauty of athletics or of 
 whist is not always quite obvious, it is no more obscure 
 than the beauty of tragedy or of rhyme. Artificial they 
 all are; an outlet for the cramped human spirit they all 
 furnish.
 
 102 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 Luckily for my present thesis, dancing has lately 
 come so much to the fore that our minds are prepared 
 for the transition from art to athletics and play. Any- 
 body can see without an opera-glass that dancing is at 
 once play, art, and athletics. So is baseball, though I 
 fear that some of my readers have not been regular 
 enough in their attendance upon the exhibitions of our 
 greatest national art to thrill with recollection as I men* 
 tion the exquisite beauty of the line-drive over short 
 stop, and the noble dignity of the curved throw from 
 third to first. Nothing in the art of dancers like Isa- 
 dora Duncan is more beautiful than the habitual mo- 
 tions of ball-players as they throw, strike, catch, or 
 slide. Of course beauty is not the whole of baseball nor 
 of any art. There are also significance, heroism, sus- 
 pense, response. Also there are serviceable materials, 
 such as catgut, pigskin, horsehair, oil-paint, grease- 
 paint, printer's ink, voices, muscles, whereby spiritual 
 meanings are expressed and conveyed from the artists 
 who create to us the "creative listeners" in the 
 audience. 
 
 We get fun and sometimes health from play and from 
 some other arts ; but if any reader thinks that athletic 
 games exist chiefly for the sake of fun, let him turn for 
 a moment to another field of art and look over my 
 shoulder at the face of the painter or musician while 
 I inflict upon him that ancient painful congratulation: 
 **What a pleasure it must be to you, Mr. Genius, to 
 produce so much beauty." Now watch his effort to
 
 PLAY AND ART 103 
 
 cover with a smile his pitying contempt for your green- 
 horn's ignorance. ** Pleasure? Yes, but at what a cost ! " 
 Art is grinding hard work, much of the time; so is 
 football ; and but for this arduous element, half its at- 
 traction to the youth would be gone. He wants what is 
 hard, adventurous, and therefore exhilarating. Things 
 soft and easy, like listening to lectures, or passing 
 college examinations, do not attract him. 
 
 My thesis, then, is this: Play is at least one quarter 
 of life and love another quarter, hence "conduct*' in 
 Matthew Arnold's sense cannot be three quarters of 
 life. But play, the quarter which concerns us now, 
 means recreation, and this is also the essential function 
 of art. Play is one type or aspect of art, a fleeting, 
 fragile improvisation in children oftentimes, a sternly 
 disciplined construction in games like chess, football, or 
 aviation. But like other arts it is at all times relatively 
 complete in itself. It is not, like washing, gymnastics, 
 or telephones, a means to life. It is life itself, striving 
 quixotically for immediate perfection, breaking for a 
 moment into perishable blossoms. 
 ^. It must be admitted that some of the noblest and 
 wisest men in America still think of athletics chiefly 
 as a means to health and morality. College presidents 
 are wont to praise the sound body chiefly because they 
 consider it a means to mental soundness. They think 
 of athletics, and even of dancing, as a good method 
 to build up the body and divert sexual energy from
 
 104 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 vicious outlets. - That athletics and dancing may be 
 means to these ends is true. It is also true that cows are 
 a valuable means to leather boots and (I believe) to 
 gum-drops; but I doubt if that is the end and aim of 
 the cow's existence. Dancing strengthens the calves. 
 ''Nothing like dissection," said Bob Sawyer (you 
 remember), "to give one an appetite." 
 
 Violin-playing strengthens the fingers. But it is 
 hardly worth while to remark that we don't play the 
 violin for our health or for our finger-ends. Violin- 
 playing also flattens, deforms, and callouses the finger- 
 ends, but there are easier ways of obtaining these re- 
 sults. The art is good despite these drawbacks. So 
 football is good despite many injuries, not because it 
 always improves health, but because it is a magnificent 
 expression of the human spirit, a fine example of popu- 
 lar art. 
 
 We make a ridiculous fetish of health nowadays. 
 Three of the very best things in life — heroism, artistic 
 creation, and child-bearing — are often bad for the 
 health. To avoid heroism, creative work, and child- 
 bearing because they may injure the health, would 
 show a conception of life no more warped and distorted 
 than that which bids us dance and be merry because 
 forsooth it is healthy to do so! As a rule, and in the 
 long run, athletics and games probably promote that 
 total enhancement of life, one aspect of which is health. 
 But temporarily, and in some cases permanently, they 
 Jcave their scars upon the body, though not such scars
 
 PLAY AND ART 105 
 
 as are ploughed into mortals by the more strenuous 
 and dangerous activities of helping to create a new 
 machine, a new symphony, or a new child. 
 
 Let us, therefore, give play, recreation, and the other 
 popular arts their proper place beside the fine arts, and 
 avoid the common error which degrades play to a medi- 
 cal instrument. Thus we shall help to preserve the "fine 
 arts" from dying of isolation. That is a real danger 
 to-day. Chilled by our formal respect, discouraged by 
 our practical neglect, mortified by our sentimental 
 petting, the musician, sculptor, and painter are dan- 
 gerously out of the current of vigorous American life. 
 Or, to put it from the other side, American life is dan- 
 gerously neglectful of some forms of art as well as of 
 most forms of scholarship. The drama, baseball, and 
 dancing are now the only popular arts of America to- 
 day. Let us realize that they are nevertheless genuine 
 arts, and plant them close beside music, literature, 
 painting, and sculpture. Such a realization will help 
 to keep vulgarity out of popular art, and to save the 
 fine arts from degenerating into fastidiousness or dying 
 of super-refinement.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE POPULAR ARTS, THE MINOR ARTS, AND THEIR 
 BIG BROTHERS 
 
 In the name of informality the guests at a large club 
 dinner (with a presiding officer and speeches to follow) 
 are sometimes left to seat themselves. Some sad and 
 embarrassing moments follow. The presiding officer 
 finds his chair of honor and there he stands alone, 
 gazing wistfully at the rest of the company, as they 
 place themselves at so respectful a distance from him 
 that empty chairs, half a dozen or more on each side, 
 are his only support. Respect for greatness turns out 
 to mean the painful isolation of greatness, until at last 
 some one takes pity on the unfortunate great or is rue- 
 fully begged to move up and be neighborly. 
 
 So it is with the "fine arts." A society should be 
 formed to alleviate their cruel isolation. In the first 
 place, more amateurs are needed. What would not our 
 painters and sculptors give for such unfeigned interest, 
 such discriminating approval and criticism as is daily 
 shouted out by thousands of spectators to those happy 
 and unconscious artists, the "Red Sox," the *'Cubs,'* 
 and the "Giants." A baseball audience is made up 
 of enthusiastic amateurs, a considerable fraction of 
 whom are confident that they "could have made that 
 play far b^ter." To get such audiences for ordinary
 
 MAJOR AND MINOR ARTS 107 
 
 artists every one should be brought up to paint and to 
 play some musical instrument, as all boys are brought 
 up to play baseball. We know that very few of the 
 children who learn writing in our schools will ever 
 reach any greater literary distinction than the compo- 
 sition of a good letter. But we do not, therefore, give 
 up teaching them to write. Neither should we fail to 
 teach children painting merely because we know that 
 only one or two in a million will ever get beyond the 
 pleasures and appreciations of the amateur. 
 
 The Fine Arts are now treated as an aristocratic 
 affair, an occupation for fastidious and delicate souls. 
 So we think of them, so we treat them. Are we not 
 brutally imposing these misconceptions upon the un- 
 fortunate and struggling artist? Are we not forcing 
 him to play a part that is utterly foreign to his nature? 
 I think so. For art, I think, is as full-blooded and dash- 
 ing a pursuit as fox-hunting or football. The artist dif- 
 fers from you and me chiefly because he is more alive. 
 He burns; we smoulder. Everybody is slowly burning 
 up in the fire of physiological metabolism. What we 
 call "fire" is simply a bit of creation where the forces 
 of life burn a little faster, a little hotter, and more beau- 
 tifully than in human tissues. Were there more reali- 
 zation of this among us there would be less "patroniz- 
 ing'* and more love of the fine arts, less listening and 
 gazing, more practice. 
 
 But there are many to plead the cause of Fine Arts, 
 and the Popular Arts (baseball, dancing, and drama)
 
 io8 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 need no amateur eulogist, since the magazines began 
 to do them justice. My chief concern is with the 
 minor arts, such as humor and good humor, and 
 especially with some of the simplest among them, — 
 speaking, gesticulating, letter- writing, seeing beauty 
 in common things or putting it there, anticipating 
 another's wish, threading one's way deftly in a crowded 
 street, steering a discussion into profitable channels. 
 
 The major games and the finer arts are arranged to 
 fill up any space that may be left in or after a working 
 day. They come at stated hours ; we leave our jobs and 
 our homes to attend them. Doubtless this must always 
 be so with the more heroic and permanent forms of 
 art. We cannot play a football game on the hearthrug. 
 We cannot carve statues while waiting on customers. 
 But some of the humbler and less celebrated forms of 
 art can penetrate every place and irradiate every 
 hour. 
 
 I mentioned just now a couple of the most important 
 minor arts: humor; and good-humor, a form of good 
 manners. Shining examples of both these arts are close 
 round us in daily work, though we often ignore them. 
 In 1 9 10, I knew a butcher dying of lingering disease 
 who by his fun and radiant good humor kept at bay 
 the specter of death, and in ** the pleasant land of coun- 
 terpane" maintained to the last a successful and happy 
 life. When on my morning visit I would ask him to 
 turn upon his side that I might examine his back, you
 
 MAJOR AND MINOR ARTS 109 
 
 would fancy from his expression that I had invited a 
 hungry man to eat. He could have answered with no 
 ,^ore engaging alacrity if I had proffered him the 
 i:hance to step back into health. He took pleasure and 
 gave it in each of the trifling services rendered him in 
 the hospital routine. He beamed and thanked me for 
 shifting a pillow as if I had given him a diamond. He 
 chuckled over my clumsy attempt to tilt the glass feed- 
 ing-tube into his mouth without forcing him to raise his 
 head; and each morning he smoothed and folded the 
 flap of the top sheet like one performing an act of 
 ritual. 
 
 As we exchanged the most unpoetic information 
 about his daily routine, the dull framework of question 
 and answer was spangled over with a profusion of deli- 
 cate, brilliant, meaningful looks that rose and flowered 
 silently over his listening face, or leaped out of dull sen- 
 tences like morning-glories on a trellis. So step by step 
 as he went down the last gray week of his life, he taught 
 me all unconsciously as many lessons about art, beauty, 
 and playfulness as about heroism. 
 
 One of his greatest and most naive arts, one of the 
 best of all his good manners, was that million-hued 
 miracle called a smile. I can recall but a tithe of the 
 unspoken verses, the soundless improvisations of his 
 smile, — serene, wistful, mischievous, deprecating, 
 tender, joyful, welcoming. Not a moment of his ebbing 
 life seemed prosaic or joyless, for each had in it the fore- 
 taste or the aftertaste of a smile, born without effort
 
 no WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 and dying without pain; birth, fruition, and end, all 
 equally beautiful. Sometimes at the beginning of our 
 talk his face and eyes were silent, and only the lines 
 of his eloquent hand spoke to me. Then, at some 
 rousing recollection, there would break from his face 
 a perfect chorus of meanings, each feature carrying 
 its own strand of harmonious but varied melody. 
 
 Well, I must stop talking about him and try to 
 explain what he has to do with play and art. He exem- 
 plifies two of the minor arts through which life may be 
 enhanced and refreshed from moment to moment, 
 whether marching up hill or down dale. It is said that 
 the best crew is the one which gets its rest between 
 every two strokes. So between every two strokes oi 
 effort we need the games and the arts to re-create us 
 from moment to moment so that our souls shall never 
 be prosaic or discouraged. Play and beauty, running 
 like a gold thread through the warp and woof of our 
 life-fabric, are surely as needful as the more concen- 
 trated and exclusive recreations. To sing (or whistle) 
 at one's work, to carry melodies and verses in our heads, 
 to do things with a swing and a rhythm as some Japan- 
 ese and all sailors do, is to preserve our souls from 
 drouth. The games that we play with vocal intonations, 
 the dramas we carry on with smile and glance and 
 grimace, need not interrupt work. They call for no 
 apparatus and no stage. Best of all, each of us "makes 
 the team" in these games; in these dramas each of us 
 has **a speaking part/*
 
 MAJOR AND MINOR ARTS in 
 
 All these arts, major and minor, need, as I have al- 
 ready intimated, more intimacy with one another. In 
 them all there is beauty and renewal of the soul. There 
 are fun cind play in them all. A material basis is pre- 
 supposed for them all. Health is an uncertain by- 
 product in them ail. Being thus congenial, they need 
 one another. Popular arts and minor arts can win 
 dignity and strength from closer association with 
 fine arts. The latter will gain inspiration, dash, and 
 effectiveness when they are freed from solitary con- 
 finement and allowed to mingle about town with their 
 less self-conscious fellow arts. 
 
 Our generation ought to introduce these long-es- 
 tranged brothers, each to each. We have made a be- 
 ginning in the revival of pageantry and *' folk-dancing." 
 The pageant and the folk-dance have beauty, form, and 
 technique like a fine art. Yet they are done in a playful 
 spirit and by the general public, unversed in the fine 
 arts, unconscious as ball-players. The special, secluded 
 class of " artists" is suddenly merged in a crowd of de- 
 lighted performers, who have all the better right to be 
 called artists because they do not call themselves so. 
 This is a good beginning. Further progress can be 
 better charted out when we have considered in the 
 coming chapters another group of minor arts.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 JEWELS 
 
 I HAVE a prejudice against precious stones because 
 they cost so much and can be enjoyed by so few. But 
 suppose we strip away the coarser husks of people's 
 enjoyment of them, especially the element of exclusive 
 possession and the suggestion that their wearer is 
 richer and therefore better than the rest of us. Suppose 
 we isolate the peculiar beauty and power which jewels 
 possess, do we not find that all can have it? What 
 jewel sparkles like the glint of a low sun on the windows 
 of a distant house, or like dewdrops on the grass, or 
 like the opalescent snow-crystals seen when you look 
 towards an afternoon sun across a fresh snow-field? 
 Shift your position one inch and the whole amazing 
 cluster of lights has changed to a new set. You see not 
 one jewel, but hundreds; not one color only, but rose, 
 green, and violet sown across the white snow in tiny 
 globes of fiery light which make the "precious " stones 
 seem dull by comparison. 
 
 What more would you get if you could pick them off 
 the snow, keep them, and call them yours? Do the 
 jewels that you buy ever again look so marvelous to 
 you as they did when first you handled them on the 
 jeweler's velvet? One may clench his teeth and shut his 
 fists and swear that he will not let himself ** get so used *'
 
 JEWELS 113 
 
 to the beauty of things that he hardly notices them. 
 To some extent one may succeed by various devices in 
 postponing or diminishing the depreciation of his own 
 pleasure in his property. But nothing can prevent it. 
 
 One need not try to prove that possession is pure evil 
 or that familiarity steals a// that we care for. Doubt- 
 less possession has its counterbalancing advantages. 
 But, on the other hand, I cannot doubt that there are 
 great and certain advantages in the jewels which we 
 cannot keep. ** Verweile dock; du hist so schon/' is al- 
 ways a risky thing to say to one's experiences. The very 
 brevity and fugitiveness of their flash may be needed 
 to "stab our spirits broad awake"; a longer, slower 
 illumination may not arouse us at all. Slow down a 
 sparkling scherzo by Tschaikowsky or Chopin till each 
 note stays with us a minute instead of a tenth of a 
 second. It is ruined, of course, but its ruin is not more 
 complete than the dilapidation of our possessions, stone 
 by stone, as appreciation is undermined by the stealthy 
 seeping waters of time. 
 
 Of course we can and must fight against this ineradi- 
 cable, original sin of satiety, — original sin because it 
 is one in which even the most saintly and heroic share. 
 Great souls keep it under, but no one wipes it out. Yet 
 it is not "original" in the sense of being inborn. Chil- 
 dren are marvelously free from it. 
 
 Because we cannot preserve intact, as children do, 
 this virgin freshness of the often repeated, we need 
 especially to cultivate the minor art of seeing jewels, of
 
 114 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 expecting the unexpected and absorbing its full im« 
 pression, so that on the canvas of later memory it will 
 shine like a high light. 
 
 Perhaps I should here explain more concretely what 
 I mean by the jewels of daily life. Here are some: 
 the flash of a moving violin bow (as well as of the note 
 it invokes), the shock of cool water on your heated face, 
 a thrush note at dawn, a cadenza of swift laughter, the 
 crash and foam of a breaking wave, the silver needle 
 of a fife note, the rocket flight of a piccolo flute, all fire- 
 works and brilliant lights in city streets, the light of 
 speaking or laughing eyes, the first glimpse of an hepat- 
 ica in spring with the white ends of its stamens shin- 
 ing against its deep purple cup like stars in a summer 
 night, — all these brilliant points of delight have this 
 in common that, like an electric spark, they set oflf 
 trains of thought and action which of ourselves we are 
 powerless to ignite. 
 
 Down through the stratified layers of our inheritance 
 deep into the geologic ages of our souls the jeweFs 
 flash can penetrate, and from those black depths come 
 up tiny but precious specimens of what were otherwise 
 inaccessible. Ancient, fragmentary perceptions which 
 no other power can exhume, leap to the surface of con- 
 sciousness when I hear a thrush sing, and though I for- 
 get them, they have had ** their moment'* and have 
 acted on the whole texture and surface of my thoughts. 
 
 Brief and limited though it is, — this game which 
 we play with the jewel-like elements of perception, — •
 
 JEWELS 115 
 
 yet it possesses one of the typical merits of fine art; 
 its intense and far-reaching suggestiveness. The con- 
 centrated and profound significance of a jewel-like 
 moment can sustain and nourish us through long 
 stretches of Matthew Arnold's "conduct" and give 
 edge and point to the dullest thinking. A shining mo- 
 ment may center the meaning of a whole month, as a 
 single cadence dominates the development of a whole 
 symphony. 
 
 Why should we not prize these ubiquitous jewels the 
 more because they are accessible to all? They are more 
 brilliant than rubies, less subject to the depreciation of 
 familiarity, or fashion, and infinitely more various, 
 since they can appeal to us through sound, touch, odor, 
 and taste as well as through the vibrations of light. 
 That possession of them costs nothing and excludes no 
 one is surely a reason for valuing them still more highly. 
 No one wants to be selfish. It is hard for any one to 
 appropriate money or delight for the lack of which we 
 know that others may be hungry. On the other hand, 
 the homage we pay to the neglected jewels of light, 
 water, sound and fire, so far from dispossessing other 
 people may enrich them ; for it may become contagious. 
 Others may catch such enthusiasms without diminish- 
 ing our stock. Our abundance cannot mean another's 
 lack. 
 
 They are democratic, then, these jewel-like experi- 
 ences, — free to all, shareable by all, the privilege of 
 each. Yet to those who prize (as I do) the virtues of
 
 Ii6 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 the monarchical state and want to see them somehow 
 persist in the amber of democracy, it is comforting to 
 observe that in its own kingdom every jewel is an abso- 
 lute monarch. A high light is annulled if copies of it 
 are peppered across a picture. Like every climax, it 
 makes our pulses throb and our imaginations leap just 
 because it is a monarch on its throne, honored by de- 
 pendents and subordinates around it. Its virtues, like 
 those of monarchy, are communicated to all parts of 
 the picture, but the less luminous tones have no equal- 
 ity or fraternity in relation to the high light. Their 
 virtue is in their subordination. 
 
 This monarchical quality of jewel-like moments 
 gives them power over long spaces of time. They live 
 in their afterglow and in the thought and action which 
 they touch off. We mourn their brevity, their intense 
 but fugitive energy, as mothers repine because their 
 children will not stay young; but in truth we do not 
 want them prolonged any more than we want quick 
 music slowed down, or a smile that is put on to stay. 
 
 What is the peculiar value of the minor art of finding 
 jewels? In the first place, any one can practice it. 
 There is no lack of such sparkling bits in any one's 
 environment. Next, they are extraordinarily dynamic ; 
 like high power explosives they can open up deep hidden 
 strata of consciousness and unlock the springs of last- 
 ing happiness. For they are in fact little bits of heaven 
 which we see by anticipation, as children peek at the 
 Christmas tree through the curtains.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 GIVE-AND-TAKE IN THE MINOR ARTS AND 
 ELSEWHERE 
 
 Overlooked, ridden down, and left by the roadside, 
 there lies a host of divinely simple arts and games. But 
 though we must try to pick up and take home with us 
 as many as we can, we need not crowd out thereby any 
 of the regular occupants of our home. We can play 
 these games and do our "useful" work (good luck to 
 it!) at the same time. They may serve to brighten and 
 tone up whole chapters of otherwise prosaic existence, 
 and even when they are scarcely noticed they often give 
 a sparkling surface to the world we are living in. They 
 are various in a hundred ways, yet in essentials they 
 are much the same. 
 
 One of the essentials in the minor arts and games (as 
 well as in the fine arts, in work, in love, and in worship) 
 is *' give-and-take," or initiative and response. In the 
 major arts this fundamental may be so overlaid with 
 technique and sestheticism that it needs to be speci- 
 ally pointed out, but in the minor arts it stands out 
 clear. Take, for example, one of the unnamed sports 
 which I will christen as the game of "Getting a Mean- 
 ing Across." 
 
 We can easily learn to recover the child's delight in 
 getting a meaning across and in receiving a return. All
 
 Ii8 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 boys, and some undegenerate elders, are fascinated 
 by the technique of giving and taking a message by 
 wig- wagging or with a Morse telegraphic key. The 
 precise nature of the message is a minor point. For until 
 we grow dulled and rusted we enjoy the art of getting 
 any message to or from another. It is good fun to wig- 
 wag any command, to send any words, no matter how 
 dull or familiar, through the ticking key. 
 
 Two things only we demand : there must be somebody 
 watching at the other end, and the words which we send 
 must mean something. No art for art*s sake will do 
 here. We are down to fundamentals. We are recogniz- 
 ing and being recognized, ever sacred and mystic arts. 
 
 So my dying patient, the butcher, turned with a hom- 
 ing instinct in his last days to some of the least of these 
 arts, and found happiness in the elemental, — yes, the 
 sacramental, — "give-and-take'* of speech. He still 
 possessed that privilege which we hope is not withheld 
 from any part of creation. If the soils, the flowers, and 
 the animals get meaning across to each other, doubtless 
 they enjoy the art as deeply as children do, or as adults 
 who learn a new language by practicing it upon every 
 foreigner. My dying friend enjoyed the miracle of com- 
 munication no matter how simple and unoriginal was 
 the matter conveyed. He spoke with a smile and an- 
 swered with a smile, not only for politeness' sake, but 
 because he enjoyed the give-and-take. 
 
 Recognition — no matter of what — is always a 
 surprise and an adventure, until our appreciation has
 
 THE ARTS OF GIVE-AND-TAKE 119 
 
 died down into dull, senile gazing. Some one holds up 
 his fingers and we delight to see a rabbit*s head in the 
 shadow on the wall. We were not told beforehand what 
 we were to see. From among the shadows we plucked 
 out that bit of clear meaning afresh and for ourselves. 
 Therefore it has all the zest of a ** find." It was not iso- 
 lated, framed, labeled, or double-starred in a Baedeker. 
 We are given the same privilege of discovery whenever 
 we listen to the simplest word that falls from another's 
 lips. Till it actually issues, any meaning is possible. 
 The prophetic, the illuminating, word for which the 
 world is hungering may leap forth. 
 
 And it is not only from a noble soul, like my butcher's, 
 that the miracle may be expected. ** We may be talking 
 with a peevish and garrulous sneak. We are watching 
 the play of his paltry features, his evasive eyes and 
 babbling lips. Suddenly the face begins to change and 
 harden, the eyes glare like the eyes of a mask, the whole 
 face of clay becomes a common mouthpiece and the 
 voice that comes forth is the voice of God uttering His 
 everlasting soliloquy." ^ 
 
 So in the midst of a madman's chatter I have heard 
 the awful word of Truth sounding through. I have 
 heard a maniac expound a scheme to save my soul and 
 yours, a scheme saner, more practicable, and far-seeing 
 than most that I have yet heard. He is well now and 
 venturing forth to put that plan in practice. It holds 
 good now that the madness has left him, yet he never 
 
 * G. K. Chesterton, Life of Browning, p. 202.
 
 120 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 conceived it or uttered it till he was in the grip of in* 
 sanity. 
 
 But I am still more interested that we should recog- 
 nize and cultivate the very primitive game of Recog" 
 nition (called "see the point" or "catch the idea"), 
 when nothing great or beautiful is specially to be looked 
 for. You give a look, throw out an idea, hazard a guess. 
 You take back an impression, a surprise, a delight. 
 Tennis is a great game, even when it is played by duf- 
 fers, and when you play the game of Recognition with 
 any person, there need be no heroic wisdom on the one 
 side nor impressive beauty on the other. You do not 
 even need another person. You can play the game alone. 
 For instance : — 
 
 The hour is seven in the morning and, though it is 
 summer and bright sunshine, you are still sleepy. But 
 though your mind is not yet fully awake, something 
 unexpectedly fires you into the ancient game of Recog- 
 nition. 
 
 "What is that thing over there?" 
 
 With your ocular and pupillary muscles, with retina, 
 brain and mind, you aim and fire. 
 
 "Just there," you send your bullet. " I *11 bet I know 
 what it is." There is a moment of suspense. Y'es, you 
 have got it. It is as you thought; that wonderful and 
 beneficent object is a toothbrush ! But in your new posi- 
 tion the toothbrush sends something back to you. You 
 have given ; now you take the return. You are forced to 
 recognize something that you did not pursue or expect
 
 THE ARTS OF GIVE-AND-TAKE 121 
 
 "What *s this that I find upon my retina, left here like 
 a foundling, just as I am starting upon another errand? 
 Why, it is as beautiful as the rainbows over the Niagara 
 mist and far more brightly colored. Surely no one has 
 put an opal into the handle of that toothbrush." 
 
 Then naming begins and the first flush of miracle 
 fades, as we recognize that "this" is the "light of com- 
 mon day" striking the glass handle of the toothbrush 
 and broken into rainbow colors on the towel beneath. 
 It is only the "hygienic glass-handled toothbrush" 
 which you have recently purchased. But it has given 
 you a glorious hunt, and though the quarry is now 
 bagged and lifeless compared to what it was before you 
 fired a leaden conclusion into it, you have still the 
 hunter's golden memories to look back to. 
 
 To take a message or send a message by the tele- 
 graphic system which we call sight or speech, is a pleas- 
 ant game to many children, many Italians, Negroes, 
 French, in fact I suppose to pretty much all the na- 
 tions except the sober "Anglo-Saxons," — a game 
 endlessly flexible and variable, a sport of which one 
 never tires. The "give-and-take" of sight (never 
 "take" alone if intelligence is awake) has the excite- 
 menf of battledore and shuttlecock. Nay, rather battle- 
 dore and shuttlecock is fun because it apes language 
 in the fullness and neatness of its give-and-take. 
 
 Here I believe is one of the most searching tests of 
 any game or art: Is it so various, so flexible, and yet
 
 122 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 so artistically limited, that there is room in it for many 
 kinds of give-and-take, such as improvisation, surprise, 
 adventure, clear success, and obvious failure? If so^ 
 it is a good game, a fine art. If not, it is sure to degener- 
 ate into gambling, into technique and aestheticism, into 
 nirvanesque vagueness, or into a simple bore. Let us 
 follow this clue somewhat further. 
 
 With each ball sent in, the baseball pitcher "gives" 
 and the batter *' takes," or leaves, an opportunity. 
 Never before in the history of the world has precisely this 
 chance been given or taken. Hence freedom and the 
 stamp of individuality is in every play. But more than 
 that, the r61es are perpetually changing. If the batter 
 hits the ball, it is his turn to give and the fielder*s to 
 take a chance. The peculiar greatness of baseball, com- 
 pared with other games, is in the endless variety of 
 opportunities given, taken, refused, or missed, and the 
 innumerable ways in which one can give, take, or miss. 
 Success and failure are clean-cut. There is no limbo 
 between. 
 
 In football, tennis, billiards, leap-frog, shooting, 
 fishing, boxing, wrestling, fencing, chess, whist, hide- 
 and-seek, — the fascinating variety of ** gives" and 
 '* takes" is clear. But this is not so true of rowing, bi- 
 cycling, sailing, swimming, skating, coasting, and track 
 athletics, for it is now with inanimate antagonists that 
 we engage. Oar and water hit or miss each other as we 
 row, but it is not a very vital sort of conversation. 
 Ice is still less various and responsive. When we come
 
 THE ARTS OF GIVE-AND-TAKE 123 
 
 to track athletics, we must confess that the running- 
 track and the ground from which the jumper "takes 
 off" as he rises, can hardly be said to respond at all. 
 It is because these sports are lacking in give-and-take 
 that men rarely sprint or jump merely for the fun of it. 
 Hence competition is left as the heart and soul of all 
 track athletics and marks them thereby as inferior to 
 games like baseball and whist, which contain a back- 
 and-forth element. There is mighty little fun in a mile 
 run or a hammer- throw unless you win. It is hard work 
 and soon grows monotonous. In other words, it is not 
 the best sort of play. 
 
 Oratory, if the audience and the orator are at their 
 best, is a fine example of an art built up and adorned 
 by give-and-take. The true orator does not merely 
 spout a piece previously learned by heart. He answers 
 the n\ood of his audience as dancers answer one an- 
 othet in their dance. Back and forth goes the impulse 
 and the idea, — perhaps through spoken question or 
 comment from the audience, oftener through responses 
 swiftly written in the faces of the hearers and deftly 
 read by the speaker. Ordinary lectures and sermons, 
 on the other hand, suffer because of the passivity of 
 the audience. It is all give and no take, all batting 
 and no return of the ball. 
 
 Not so is it with adventure. The give-and-take be- 
 tween man and nature becomes a lively game of " ques- 
 tion and answer'* when we explore an old clock, a new
 
 124 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 country, an animal tissue, or a gas. Our search is no 
 passive observation and record of what happens; it 
 is a voyage of discovery. Sometimes we put a loose, 
 open-minded question as in roaming, browsing, tramp- 
 ing, "gypsying"; sometimes we plan a tight, narrow 
 search for one thing only: "Is arsenic present or ab- 
 sent in this wall-paper ? ' ' But the essentials of give-and- 
 take are always the same. First we shape a searching 
 question which we cast out like bait or serve like a ten- 
 nis-ball. Then comes the answer from nature, some- 
 thing caught by the bait of your question, some return 
 of your service. If we get no definite answer the search 
 is a failure ; it was not sufficiently well planned. Good 
 exploring knows what it is after and shapes its plan so 
 that it is sure to get an answer telling whether it has 
 succeeded or failed. The explorer who seeks the Pole 
 must know when he gets there; if not he should stay at 
 home. 
 
 If there is a long interval between service and return, 
 between question asked and answer received, we call 
 this investigation "work," not "play." For example, 
 it is bent and painful toil to count the red corpuscles of 
 the blood ; for during the lengthy operation, the mind is 
 suspended between the question : "Any anaemia here? " 
 and the answer, "Yes" or "No." We touch no firm 
 ground of interest on either side. The count is an ad- 
 venture of the mind, but, as in many adventures, there 
 is a stretch of desert to be plodded through. Much 
 scientific work has this arduous, laborious character;
 
 THE ARTS OF GIVE-AND-TAKE 125 
 
 it is far more work than play. But if the answers to our 
 questions come in thick and fast, as they do when we 
 explore a new acquaintance, a virgin forest, or an old 
 house, then science becomes one of the best forms of 
 the Great Game of Give-and-Take. 
 
 Contrast the lack of this vital response in the pas- 
 sive music-guzzling of languid matin6e audiences. Art 
 is there debased. Consider M. Des Esseintes of Huys- 
 man*s romance, with his concert of smells.^ **By 
 means of his vaporizer the room was filled with an 
 essence skillfully compounded by an artist's hand and 
 well deserving its name — ' Extract of the Flowering 
 Plain.* . . . Having completed his background he 
 breathed over it all a light spray of essences . . . such 
 as powdered and painted ladies use and added a sus- 
 picion of lilac.** 
 
 But what can he do about it all? What answer can 
 he toss back? What thanks? No "inner imitative 
 creation,** no creative attention is possible. Unless 
 he has the senses of a Helen Keller, he is more power- 
 less and passive before his chorus of smells than 
 before any other vivid experience. As hand answers 
 hand in touch, so we can answer sound with sound, 
 look with look, dance with dance, landscape with pic- 
 ture or poem. But before a concert of smells we can 
 only breathe and nod. It is pleasure, but nothing more. 
 It is no game, no art. 
 
 No art, I say, for the best of art is never in looking 
 
 * Quoted from Groos, The Play of Man, pp. 19-20.
 
 126 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 on; always in getting into the game. So in watching 
 a jumper I have seen a dozen spectators, at the moment 
 of his leap, quite unconsciously jerk up a leg till the 
 foot was in position to enter a horse's stirrup. Each 
 spectator was giving his mite of aid, and a very substan- 
 tial aid it is, seeing that practically all the best jumping 
 records are made with the help of an audience. In the 
 cold, alone, men hardly ever jump or run their best. 
 
 In listening to music or looking at pictures the same 
 sort of aid and response must be given by audience to 
 artist, if the art is to be fine art. This active aid is what 
 Mr. Schauffler has called so finely the art of "creative 
 listening." ^ We follow the movement of music as 
 spectators follow the flight of the tennis-ball in a match 
 game, craning heads rhythmically to right and left, as 
 if they had but a single neck. "Tone movement glides, 
 turns, twists, hops, leaps, dances, bows, sways, climbs, 
 quivers, blusters and storms — all with equal ease. To 
 reproduce this in the physical world, a man would 
 have to dash himself to pieces, or become imponder- 
 able.'* ^ Yet when we listen to music we seem to per- 
 form all these impossible feats (as we do in dreams) 
 and thus give back to the player the response which he 
 needs. We play up to his playing as subordinates sup- 
 port a star. — "Look! I show you a hazy, level horizon 
 over a hot desert," says the music. — "Aye, aye, sir," 
 says the audience, and sees it. — "Now, it's rearing 
 
 > Robert H. Schauffler, The Musical Amateur, and Other Essays. 
 Houghton Mifflin Co., 1912. 
 
 * Kostlin, quoted by Groos, The Play oj Man, p. 28.
 
 THE ARTS OF GIVE-AND-TAKE 127 
 
 up against the sky like a drawbridge. — Fly up with it 
 and over it. — Swoop down on the other side," comes 
 the order, and with surprised alacrity we obey. 
 
 Such a maneuver, initiated by music, carried out 
 with free improvisations by the audience, is to be dis- 
 tinguished from the simpler movements suggested by 
 rhythm. To rhythm, the response of the audience, 
 with nodding heads and tapping feet, is much easier 
 and much more obvious. What is our response to the 
 pitch and quality and intensity of musical tones? I do 
 not know. It is one of the problems that I hope to see 
 worked out. But we may rest assured, I think, that we 
 respond in some way to all that we appreciate in art. 
 We play over within us what is given us, reshaping 
 and continuing the idea as we do in talk. This is the 
 "inner imitative creation" of Souriot. 
 
 To *'play the game" of life is a phrase that is often 
 on our lips. I think it should always include both serv- 
 ing and taking the return whatever matter it may be, 
 grave or trifling, that is sent over the net. Again and 
 again in this chapter I have said or implied that play 
 and art find something very fundamental or even sa- 
 cred in the practice of * ' give-and-take. " In " Work ' * I 
 tried to suggest the same thing. Labor without return, 
 abundance passively gulped down without labor, are 
 degrading. To make labor worthy, service and return 
 must occur within such a span as the imagination 
 can bridge, else we have not work, but drudgery. I 
 shall try to bring out the same vital responsiveness
 
 128 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 in every form of love and of worship which deserves 
 respect. 
 
 I suppose any one may be misled into quoting Scrip- 
 ture in support of his fads and fancies. I hope I shall 
 not do so, but I intend to take the risk, for I have long 
 been impressed by the importance of the passages 
 in which Christ emphasized the elemental and univer- 
 sal significance of response : — 
 
 "Ask and it shall be given you; Seek and ye shall 
 find; Knock and it shall be opened unto you." 
 
 **Take, eat, this is my body." 
 
 "He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." 
 
 In the crude ideals of justice ("an eye for an eye and 
 a tooth for a tooth"), in the Christian idea of return- 
 ing good for evil, in the marriage ceremony when vows 
 and rings are given and received, in the communion 
 service, in the funeral service, even in the service of 
 baptism when the child is offered by its parents and 
 received into the church and state as a gift of God, we 
 find give-and-take wrought into some of our most 
 sacred and time-honored institutions. If this is so in 
 fundamentals, it seems to me only what we might ex- 
 pect that responsiveness should be the keynote of good 
 play and the criterion for distinguishing it from bad. 
 
 Summing up my sketch of the minor arts I will men- 
 tion some of their most characteristic advantages : — 
 (i) Anybody can learn one or more of them and most
 
 THE ARTS OF GIVE-AND-TAKE 129 
 
 people do so. They require no musical ear, no expensive 
 training in Paris. They can be practiced at any time, 
 even in the midst of work and love. 
 
 (2) While the service of major arts may drain the 
 artist dry and leave him no vitality for human inter- 
 course, the minor arts (especially humor and good 
 humor) are not so exacting. They exhaust no one ; they 
 ease and sweeten our daily life with our fellows. This 
 refreshment is all the more constant because the minor 
 artist seldom finds his audience cold. He has a hun- 
 dred appreciators (in America, at least) for every one 
 who supports the major arts by his sympathy. Give- 
 and-take flies fast and furious between every minor 
 artist and his audience. 
 
 (3) **Good nature" is a singularly rich and pregnant 
 art. Did you ever think of its literal meaning, its head- 
 long plunge to the sweet, sound core of a man? The 
 "good-natured" man is easy to please and hard to 
 sour, because of his supple readiness to play any minor 
 art or game that is going on and to suggest one if no- 
 body else offers to do so. Any minor art and any minor 
 part suits him. He demands no leading roles, no monu- 
 ment of permanence. His ready smile is the symbol of 
 all thfs ; it is the flag which he flies whenever a game is 
 begun, an adventure launched, or a return taken.
 
 XV 
 
 TRANCE IN PLAY 
 
 At the height of our appreciation of beauty and play 
 there is a tendency to dreamy states of mind, and 
 finally to trance. For Ecstasy is the goal and climax to 
 which musician, painter, dancer, poet are leading us, 
 and if we cling to that climax and try to prolong it, 
 we may easily slide over into a sort of Nirvana where 
 life is quenched. The beauty overpowers us. **Vedi 
 Napoli e poi moriy 
 
 Oriental music and dancing are directed straight at 
 this goal. They are meant to produce an anticipation 
 of Nirvana by quenching desire, thought, and all 
 awareness of self. In Occidental art there is also much 
 of this semi-hypnotic quality. Strongly marked and 
 monotonous rhythms, with very little melody woven 
 upon them, approach the confines of trance. One favors 
 the hypnotic state or true sleep by listening to any 
 monotonous regularly repeated sound : a ticking clock, 
 a buzzing bell-hammer, a humming insect, the rhyth- 
 mic clank of sleeping-car wheels. 
 
 Music, dancing, and verse make use of this thought- 
 quenching power, whenever a simple rhythm is al- 
 lowed to become the dominating element, as in bar- 
 baric music it always is. In a drum corps, on the other 
 hand, the rhythm is broken; its staccato quality is in
 
 TRANCE IN PLAY 131 
 
 itself arousing. It wakes us up, as irregular noises 
 always tend to do. 
 
 Now sleep is one thing and play another. Any play 
 which tends to put us to sleep is a poor play, especially 
 if it puts us partially asleep, drugging our intelligence 
 like alcohol and leaving the rest of us awake but un- 
 governed. Swinging, rocking, chewing gum, and any 
 formless type of music, dance, or verse exemplify 
 what I mean. Such plays are essentially formless. They 
 have no beginning, middle, or end. They minimize 
 variety. They are as circular as worry, returning again 
 and again to the same point, and soon approach the 
 mechanical "running on" of the machine. They leave 
 us passive as the clay of the potter spinning upon its 
 wheel after his shaping hand is withdrawn. 
 
 At any moment one can break the trance and relieve 
 the monotony of pure rhythm by weaving an improvisa- 
 tion upon it. Boys seldom stay long in a swing without 
 contriving "stunts'* to put variety and adventure into 
 the drowsy motion; but I have seen girls swing in- 
 definitely without variation or check. Such formless 
 plays are meant to kill time, — the Oriental ambition. 
 They are like the endless rhythmic rocking of idiots, 
 or the restless to-and-fro of caged animals. Human 
 prisoners also have such spasms of aimless walking up 
 and down their cells. It quiets the frantic mind. 
 
 But in any life-giving play or art these shapeless and 
 narcotizing waves of sound or motion meet their own 
 type of control. There are rules of the game, conven-
 
 132 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 tions of the art, a climax, opportunities for originality 
 and courage. Even the loosest nonsense-book, the 
 roughest horse-play, obeys some unwritten code of 
 laws. Despite the groping, sprawling outbursts of 
 energy, it is still pointed towards a vaguely defined end. 
 
 It is to be admitted that the utterly loose and form- 
 less plays, like rocking, swinging, and gum-chewing, 
 bring with them a fascination of their own. If we sur- 
 render ourselves to them we may succeed in loosing 
 ourselves. Then our finite sorrows as well as our hot 
 ambitions are swallowed up. But such an empty in- 
 finity devoid of meaning and activity is, for Christian 
 people, and for any one not poisoned by opium or by 
 the idea of Nirvana, a hell, not a heaven. 
 
 We must admit, then, that every game has in it the 
 seeds of degeneration. Like any fine art it can easily 
 slide over into sensualism and fooling. There is truth 
 in the reproach directed against art by the "practical" 
 men and against play by the anti-kindergartners. 
 The soft, pleasure-seeking, enervating effeminacy of the 
 mere aesthete is a danger always threatening us both 
 in the fine arts and in play. But any one who realizes 
 this danger can give the alarm and call the police when 
 he finds that a game, a song, or a dance is beginning 
 to be dominated by the Infinite Void in the shape of 
 slow rhythm. We must clearly recognize that every 
 intense delight is a trap unless treated lightly, symbol- 
 ically, or as a climax. Crystals are refreshing and re- 
 juvenating if we glance at them and pass on. But
 
 TRANCE IN PLAY 133 
 
 crystal-gazing is a disease which splits apart the united 
 soul. 
 
 "He who bends to himself a Joy 
 Doth the winged life destroy. 
 But he who kisses a Joy as it flies 
 Lives in Eternity's sunrise." 
 
 (Blake.) 
 
 To bend the Joy to one's self, to cling to it, prolong 
 it, imagine it extended to eternity, crushes out its life 
 in satiety or in the coma of somnolent ease. 
 
 "Move on" is the watchword of the Lord, obeyed 
 in every live play and art, as it is in every animal tissue 
 that holds off death by reincarnation. But this eternal 
 and ever valid command meets in play and art an 
 obstacle. 
 
 *'Got what I want,*' says Play. 
 
 ** Bound for death in trance if you stick there," is the 
 answer. 
 
 For what decent human being is so smug that he 
 wants to remain as he is? Your vision of beauty and 
 delight is a call to action. Intense emotion calls for 
 intense and far-reaching action in response to the call 
 note of beauty. In work we know this well enough. 
 In'art and play we are tempted to forget it, and try to 
 snatch at heaven. For play is a little heaven, a symbol 
 and foretaste of that closer hold on God which in wor- 
 ship is still more nearly attained. 
 
 To kill time and personality instead of using them 
 is the defect of the trance-like types of arts and play.
 
 134 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 There is no proper response, novelty, and adventure 
 in them, — no moving on from life to greater life, as 
 there ought to be in work, play, love, and worship 
 alike. Lacking response, any one of these four blessings 
 will soothe us into passivity, and become at last a 
 curse. When work deadens and enslaves us by its monot- 
 ony, it is because it lacks either initiative or response. 
 Slavery is all give, no take; but the slave of business 
 habits or office routine, the drudge who never sees the 
 product of his own labor, gets no more response from 
 earth or soul than the beast of burden. Pay is, indeed, 
 a symbol of response; we take it in answer to our 
 effort. But this symbol, like a dead religious rite, may 
 become a mere form unless there is life or substance 
 behind it. 
 
 Play and art, then, like commerce, live by the inter- 
 change of value. Barter is native to all games and all 
 creative work. By the swapping of values, beauty as 
 well as wealth is distributed. But if one tries to main- 
 tain converse with the empty air or passively to breathe 
 in the spirit of beauty, sleep or lethargy results. "You 
 bet they do," said a "practical" man to me the other 
 day; "and that's why artists are such a lot of sensual 
 loafers. They howl against us commercial people, but 
 in the clubs and wherever the fleshpots are, you '11 find 
 the artists congregated like flies and not paying their 
 debts either." 
 
 To escape such reproaches the devotee of art or 
 of sport must prove to us that he can recognize and
 
 TRANCE IN PLAY 135 
 
 escape the dangers of trance and lethargy which lurk 
 near his road. For his efforts must always aspire to 
 be crowned with a moment of ecstasy and in ecstasy 
 he will linger till it becomes lethargy, unless he has 
 something of the Puritan or of the ascetic in him, some 
 Briinhilde who beckons him on like Siegfried from 
 present victory *'zu neuen Thaten.**
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 CHAOTIC PLAYS, DISJOINTED PLAYS, AND OTHERS 
 
 Much of our physiological need for recreation is in 
 truth not a need for rest, but for freer activity. We 
 must bend and huddle over our work to get it done 
 without mistakes; but the stoop leaves us cramped. 
 We want to stretch. Self-control, which is essential in 
 good work, results not merely in the guidance of some 
 energies but the suspension of many more. The col- 
 legian at his studies is far more conscious of a generail 
 repression than of any particular guidance. Some 
 one is sitting on the lid of him; that is his chief im- 
 pression. 
 
 Now, in play, somebody gets off the lid and what- 
 ever is beneath flies up, with all the stored energy of 
 repression, — provided the cramp has not been too 
 long continued. In time repression may produce such 
 atrophy and flaccidity of our mental muscles that we 
 are incapable of play. But if the great muscles of the 
 soul, unused in ordinary work, have not degenerated, 
 one of the greatest blessings of play is to unleash our 
 straining energies. 
 
 Watch a dog that has been tied up, yapping and 
 springing to the limit of his chain, while his master is 
 getting ready for a walk. This is what work means to
 
 GOOD AND BAD PLAY 137 
 
 many. Then watch him when the chain is snapped off; 
 how he rushes away ventre d terre, every particle of his 
 energy flung into each bark and leap, as he tears hither 
 and thither. He does not know or care what he is after. 
 He knows only that he is free and that the whole of him 
 is in action. Children just out of school explode with the 
 same whole-hearted and formless glee. We say that 
 the holiday spirit is in them. But anxious householders 
 (with orchards or gardens near by) say that the devil 
 is in them. For like the dog just unleashed, they will 
 run over anything and anybody that happens to stand 
 in the path of their rush. Respectable elderly people 
 ruefully tolerate the destructive explosions of youthful 
 energy, or lament the lack of application and dili- 
 gence in the young people of to-day. It is hard for 
 "grown-ups'* to realize that application and diligence 
 bring with them necessary evils, which it is one of 
 the tasks of play to undo; hard to appreciate the 
 wild onrush of youth's torrents. Spring torrents they 
 certainly are, for they issue in destruction as well as 
 beauty. 
 
 Play has in it some of this torrential energy demand- 
 ing relief. It wants to get out and it ought to get out, 
 It'is unhealthy and destructive for the human spirit 
 to issue forth always in parsimonious driblets, as it 
 must in work, never letting out its full force. Play bal- 
 ances work because for children and childlike adults it 
 is one of the most wholehearted things that they ever 
 do, — almost as enfranchising as a sneeze. Birds sing
 
 138 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 and puppies bark not merely with their throats, but 
 with their tails and with every intermediate bit of 
 themselves. More of this freedom we all need ; more to- 
 tality flung into our days. Athletics provides glimpses 
 of such an outlet to one, music to another, drunkenness, 
 I suppose (for lack of a better), to a third; but no play 
 can satisfy our hunger for total and sincere expression. 
 Worship is the outlet which we really need. Play is a 
 useful safety-valve, but the safety-valve is hardly more 
 beautiful than the steam whistle. It lets off energy; 
 but that is the best we can say of it. 
 
 "Expense regardless of pleasure" is the formula for 
 some of the worst forms of architecture, interior dec- 
 oration, and dress. Expenditure of energy, careless of 
 form, goal, or skill, is the formula for a good deal of 
 bad play, — bad if it continues long enough to be called 
 play at all. An occasional "barbaric yawp,** a brief 
 "fit of the giggles," may give harmless relief; yet it is 
 neither play nor sin. So moderate doses of horse-play 
 in the right place and time do no harm; but prolonged, 
 premeditated horse-play soon becomes as tiresome to 
 the players as to the spectators. It is chaotic, and only 
 the degenerate can take chaos in large doses, without 
 a desire to force order into it. 
 
 Besides the trance-like plays and the chaotic plays 
 there is another low-grade variety which we may call 
 the ' ' scrappy ' * or " flashy * * plays. Most of these games 
 provide their own funerals, for they dissipate desire
 
 GOOD AND BAD PLAY 139 
 
 without satisfying it; but some of them linger on in 
 deserted corners because they are not challenged and 
 killed out by better sports. If boys can think of nothing 
 better to do, they will wander about, stare in an aim- 
 less and vacant way at the doings of their elders, or 
 tear things to bits, not from curiosity to know what is 
 inside them, but from mere restlessness. Adults in the 
 same mood twiddle their fingers, tap with their feet, 
 and read miscellaneous newspaper items. Picking up 
 cigarette stubs and teasing the "cop" are also scrappy 
 games, yet redeemed to some extent because they con- 
 tain a leaven of adventure which raises them above 
 mere lumpishness. They soon lose their fascination, 
 however, when boys get the chance and the brains for 
 baseball, for scouting, or any play which calls for more 
 originality, more accumulation of skill, and more team- 
 work. 
 
 Gambling, the king of bad plays, is both scrappy, 
 — because no one can carry out a plan, — and passive 
 or lethargic. You get your result, for gain or loss, 
 without any proportionate effort. You open your 
 mouth, shut your eyes, and take what comes. But what 
 you give has no relation to what you take. There is no 
 response and no progress. 
 
 Just here, threatening to smash the thesis which I 
 meant to maintain, comes the thought : But God treats 
 us just this way now and then! He gives us friends, 
 powers, delights, and also black losses that we have 
 done nothing to deserve, and when we fail to live up to
 
 140 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 them he still gives and forgives again and again. The 
 gambler, then, is the man who tries to play God's part, 
 to scale the walls of heaven and act as Providence to 
 himself. He disintegrates morally because it is not for 
 us to decide when we are to have a perfectly unmerited 
 gift or an unearned sorrow. 
 
 A summary of the good and bad elements in play 
 may help to pull this chapter together. In bad play we 
 may find rhythm dominant and all other form sacri- 
 ficed. Rules, limits, and finish are at the minimum. 
 Dash, risks, construction, and originality are not en- 
 couraged. Everything is bound, with the fetters of per- 
 fect safety or of perfect fatalism. People can keep up 
 a bad game indefinitely or fitfully without a tendency 
 to rebound into work or constructive thought. Pas- 
 sivity and receptivity are so completely in possession 
 of us that there is little for the "actor" to do but to 
 sit still until he becomes a mere spectator. Gambling, 
 listening to lectures, gossip, swinging, rocking, chewing 
 tobacco or gum, opium-smoking, and, in some people, 
 cigarette-smoking, are amusements of the vicious type. 
 They have no end or form. They leave you as passion- 
 less and passive as the suburbanite reading his after- 
 breakfast newspaper on the train to town. 
 
 Good play is subject to rules; it has a clear-cut form 
 and organization. It may use rhythm and repetition, 
 but subordinates them to improvisation and adven- 
 ture. It gives intense and varied delight, but in
 
 GOOD AND BAD PLAY 141 
 
 such dynamic form that pleasure is ever quickly lost 
 and found again. It is full of give-and-take, dramati- 
 cally loses its life to find it, and ever seeks, asks, knocks 
 at the door of the unexplored. Its house is full of sym- 
 bols and empty of idols.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE GAME, OR ART, OF IMPERSONATION IN WORK. 
 PLAY, AND LOVE 
 
 Play is drenched with symboHsm and ritual. Think 
 of the mystical significance of being "it" in tag, or in 
 hide-and-seek! A unique and invisible crown of dis- 
 tinction descends suddenly upon a boy and he is "it." 
 Just the tag, just the mystical laying-on of a hand, has 
 transformed your harmless and undistinguished fellow 
 into a bearer of destiny and danger. The responsibil- 
 ity may fall upon any one, regardless of color, creed, or 
 previous condition of servitude; but how swiftly it 
 transforms one's every feature and movement! Uni- 
 form and insignia of office are unnecessary because 
 every one sees them in imagination. 
 
 All play begins with such an impersonation. Every 
 player assumes a part and if time permitted should be 
 costumed. The lowly second hand at whist should cer- 
 tainly have a costume to distinguish him from the dash- 
 ing and original first hand, and the lordly, judicial 
 third hand. But in whist, roles are exchanged so swiftly 
 that no quartette of lightning-change artists could keep 
 pace with them. The musician who throws himself 
 into his music assumes in each piece a new character. 
 An actor of extraordinary versatility he thus assumes 
 himself to be, and he fails if he cannot prevent us
 
 THE GAME^OF IMPERSONATION 143 
 
 from recognizing his familiar personality sticking out 
 through the monkish cowl of Bach, the Byronic cloak 
 of Chopin, and the goat-skin mantle of Debussy. 
 
 To paint, one must put off the spectacles of every 
 day through which one perceives the literal and utili- 
 tarian aspects of nature, and put on a mask which shuts 
 away one 's ordinary features and senses. For to front 
 nature as a painter is to be blind to the interests of the 
 landowner, farmer, miner, or woodsman. 
 
 This ever-present need of impersonation in play and 
 art is closely bound up with their symbolism. For to use 
 symbolism is to put a new personality into an object, 
 while impersonation puts a new personality into one*s 
 self. A football loose in a broken field of players is the 
 very incarnation of desire; it is only when the whistle 
 blows for an intermission that the ball becomes as dead 
 as the dirt beneath it. 
 
 Moreover, though impersonation is perhaps more 
 complete and successful in play than an3rw'here else, 
 play enjoys no monopoly. Play-acting turns up in 
 almost every department of life. We put on a char- 
 acter in work, in love, and in every moral effort. In 
 medical work, for instance, we assume at the start the 
 r61e of medical student and try to play that sardonic 
 part with success. Underneath the mask we still re- 
 cognize ourselves as scatter-brained boys, but we do 
 our best to forget this and to maintain the disguise. ^^ 
 Next, in our hospital service, we don the white coat 
 and the lofty airs of the house-officer, while still unused
 
 144 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 to being addressed as "doctor '' and feeling a bit of hum- 
 bug in the title. Finally we graduate as full-fledged 
 doctors and sit in an office waiting for patients. But 
 there we are more than ever conscious of impersonat- 
 ing some one woefully different from ourselves. We are 
 cast for the part of the wise old physician. We who have 
 been in scrapes half our lives! We, who are in terror 
 that our ignorance may any day be unmasked, are set 
 here to inspire others with confidence in our wisdom! 
 For did not the professor tell us that the first essential 
 for success is to "gain the confidence of your patient"? 
 My ! what a fool that patient will be if he gives any such 
 confidence ! 
 
 I know that there is need of the art of impersonation 
 in medical work, and I see no reason to believe that the 
 budding lawyer, legislator, or plumber feels any more 
 at home in his r61e. After many years the costume 
 comes to fit better, and when our growth stops alto- 
 gether we are wholly reconciled to our part and begin 
 to take ourselves "seriously." In time we may even be 
 persuaded (if we are dull and credulous) that we fill 
 our parts well. But as long as there is any fresh sap 
 flowing in us, we shall recognize the humor and the 
 pathos of our attempt to be what our professional title 
 proclaims us to be. A game it will always be, a game to 
 play the best we can, to practice as hard and learn as 
 thoroughly as our nature allows ; but still a game. 
 
 Thus art, play, and impersonation seep into every 
 crack and crevice of the structure called work. Is it any
 
 THE GAME OF IMPERSONATION 145 
 
 different in love and friendship? What man has not 
 suffered from stage fright when set to impersonate that 
 most august, yet most versatile and accomplished 
 character, the husband? Nor is the r61e of a "friend** 
 a much easier one to play. No friend feels friendly all 
 the time ; yet he cannot tear off his wig and let out his 
 raucous natural voice every time that he happens to 
 feel less than amicable. Nor can he throw up his job 
 whenever he feels sulky and envious of those who play 
 the leading r61es, such as lover, boss, or professor! 
 
 What more exciting game, what more difficult art! 
 It is not all play. Mighty hard work sometimes. But 
 the spirit of play has come to aid the spirit of work. 
 Effort and fruition, work and play, are interwoven as 
 tightly as the strands in a carpet. 
 
 One more word about the art of impersonation in 
 relation to knowledge and to love. Sympathy is ad- 
 mittedly a long step towards love. Sympathy with every 
 product of creation is the desire of every one who wants 
 to live intelligently in the world and not monkishly out- 
 side it. There is no comprehension without sympathy, 
 and sympathy means impersonation. Therefore, to be 
 able to impersonate like an actor every scoundrel and 
 simpleton, every wind of prejudice and current of 
 politics, brings us to the limit of pure intelligence and to 
 the threshold of love. How can we deal wisely with 
 the simpleton, justly with the scoundrel, unless we 
 learn to put ourselves, like an actor, in their places?
 
 s 
 
 \ 
 
 146 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 This involves no danger of adopting permanently the 
 characters that we impersonate. We can choose good 
 from bad all the more clearly if we know them inti- 
 mately, by true sympathy. To cultivate love sounds 
 mawkish and unnatural, but to cultivate sympathy 
 is a large part of liberal education. I can see no limit 
 to the benefit of impersonative sympathy in a well- 
 balanced mind. I have a friend who likes to imperson- 
 ate a wave or a bam swallow. I am sure he gets closer 
 than the rest of us to the life of waves and swallows 
 because he loves to shape himself into their image. 
 It is hard, I admit, for swift, locomotive Americans 
 to impersonate (as Oriental mystics do) the rigid im- 
 mobility of the tree or the smiling passivity of sunshine, 
 but we must acknowledge our limitation. Only the 
 narrowly anthropomorphic can be content to say, "I 
 count nothing human as foreign to me." What about 
 the non-human world? No doubt our nearest kith and 
 kin should come first. Charity begins at home and 
 impersonation, the servant and forerunner of charity, 
 should naturally begin with the imitation of Christ. 
 But when he told us to consider the lilies of the field, 
 he did not invite us to look down upon them patron- 
 izingly nor, at the other extreme, to worship their 
 beauty. He meant us to divest ourselves of human 
 prejudices and to recognize their superiority to us in 
 certain traits, — worthy our respectful and sympa- 
 thetic imitation. 
 
 Impersonation, then, is an art much needed in order
 
 THE GAME OF IMPERSONATION 147 
 
 to prepare and discipline our stiff-necked individuality 
 for the love and the knowledge of all created beings. 
 
 Impersonation includes the whole field of morality: 
 ** Be a brave girl and don't cry " ; " Behave like a gentle- 
 man"; "Take a man's part in this fight." Such ex- 
 hortations bid us assume a virtue if we have it not, and 
 in assuming it to impersonate a better self. So long as 
 we are growing, so long as we are divided within our- 
 selves, striving to be or to become what as yet we are 
 not (but ought to be), there is impersonation in our 
 effort. 
 
 Why, then, is a school of acting not the only school 
 of morality? Because in learning to act we are trained 
 to suppleness of impersonation ; we are taught to sym- 
 pathize with any character so deeply that it becomes 
 for the time ours. An actor should be able to imper- 
 sonate a mean sneak or a cruel liar as sympathetically 
 as he dons the hero's mantle. Carry this process to 
 the limit and a man's native character could be dis- 
 solved not developed, his moral vision dazzled not 
 clarified, and his progress towards his own personal 
 ideals nil. But of course the actor, even of the Salvini 
 tradition, does not carry acting to the limit. He leads 
 his own life and minds his own business both on the 
 stage and off. In so doing he chooses, as we all do, the 
 sort of personality (which means a mask) that shall be 
 his. He is no longer impartial and pliant. He is himself. 
 
 The sort of impersonation which is the whole of
 
 148 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 morality, and constitutes a large part of work, play, 
 and love, differs from theatricality, first because each 
 actor chooses the part which he thinks will best suit 
 him and tries to stick to it (more or less successfully) 
 until he sees a better. He is not at all ready to play the 
 heavy old gentleman, the dastardly villain, or the dis- 
 appointed lover. He claps the lid upon his sympathies 
 when they run to self-pity. The professional actor 
 must welcome the opportunity sympathetically to 
 impersonate self-pity like any other characteristic. In 
 life one does not practice the art of losing one's temper 
 or beating one's wife, but on the stage these accom- 
 plishments are strictly in the line of business. 
 
 I have said that impersonation is the whole of moral- 
 ity. The growing sapwood of our nature, all that is 
 struggling against itself towards perfection, advance- 
 ment, or skill, is perpetually passing in and out of the 
 art of impersonation. All this? What, then, is left? 
 Very little, it appears ; for are we not to be ever press- 
 ing forward towards the mark of our high calling? Does 
 not all that is decent in us want to be up and growing 
 more decent? Shall we not perpetually aspire, or at 
 any rate "climb"? 
 
 No. For the morality of impersonation and self- 
 conquest is not the whole of life. At our worst we 
 sink below impersonation ; but at our best we rise above 
 it. There is no impersonation in heroism. A self-con- 
 scious, theatrical hero is a contradiction in terms.
 
 THE GAME OF IMPERSONATION 149 
 
 Either he is carried away by his impulse or he is no more 
 heroic than you or I. Art, when it rises beyond talent 
 to genius, is the product of a present self-surrender, 
 though perhaps of a past self-conquest. Overwhelming 
 grief is no impersonation. It is elementally sincere. 
 
 On the other hand, innocence is not impersonation. 
 Children pass through a period when there is no per- 
 ceptible division of better against worse, no straining 
 towards a future, no attempt to be other than they 
 are. In this Blilthezeit they attain perfections which 
 their elders never reach. Or, quite uncorrupted, they 
 may commit acts which in an adult would be sin. 
 
 Adults, I believe, occasionally lapse or escape into 
 this innocence. *^I never hear the word escape," says 
 Emily Dickinson, *' without a quicker blood, a sudden 
 expectation, a flying attitude." In the vast majority 
 of us, such passion to escape is simply a blunder or a 
 bit of selfishness, and corrupts when it conquers. But 
 it may be a flash of genius ; it may rush into musical or 
 metrical composition. It may also be an irruption of 
 the animal in us which wrecks lives around us, yet 
 leaves us ourselves unscathed because there has been 
 no yielding, nor any informing consciousness of what 
 we are about. In one's self l^ Is safe to assume that such 
 passivity is always bad. But let us sometimes give 
 others the benefit of the doubt. They may be feeble- 
 minded. They may be innocent. 
 
 Impersonation, then, is essentially playful. Yet it 
 penetrates into every part of active life, plays its part
 
 150 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 in work, in love, and even in worship, which must 
 be learned like everything else by throwing ourselves 
 whole-heartedly into what seems at first strange. 
 This means that the divisions named in the title of 
 this book are not mutually independent. Like key, 
 time, shading, and timbre in music, the four energies 
 of which I am writing cannot be torn apart without 
 wounds or death for all. In a book one can fix atten- 
 tion on one at a time, but in life they constantly inter- 
 act. The better the life, the more perfectly they answer 
 one another, as I shall try to show in the final chapter.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE PENETRATION OF WORK BY PLAY AND THE 
 MINOR ARTS 
 
 I WAS watching the engineer of the train which I 
 left at the terminus the other day, as he climbed down 
 from his cab for a word or two with the conductor. In 
 their talk you could see "work" and **play" swiftly 
 alternating and interweaving as they do so often in 
 American life. First there was a moment of work, — 
 the exchange of serious professional information. Then 
 I heard a reference to ** the old man " (whoever he was)^ 
 and instantly fun began to roll about in their cheeks 
 like a quid of tobacco. Feet and legs began to twitch, 
 sketching suggestions of a cake-walk or a double- 
 shuffle, while words were jerked out in snatches over 
 their shoulders. Business flashed in again when a 
 passing brakeman hooked his hand into the conductor's 
 elbow and emitted a brief message. Their faces fell 
 and stiffened for an instant, but relaxed again as the 
 engineer pulled himself up the perpendicular cab-steps 
 with a parting witticism. 
 
 In America this leaven of humor is, I suppose, the 
 commonest of the interpenetrating minor arts. As it 
 plays through and around the dullest tasks, one wonders 
 whether the solution of the problem of drudgery may 
 not come in part through learning to get our work done
 
 152 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 as automatically and unconsciously as we perform the 
 huge labor of breathing. Consciousness might mean- 
 time be occupied with something better worth while. 
 Many people whistle or sing as they work, and I think 
 it is especially in the dullest jobs like housework and 
 coal-heaving that I have heard them sing. 
 
 The engineer and conductor whose skillful inter- 
 weaving of work and play I tried just now to sketch, 
 remind me of another dull job, irradiated by the beauty 
 of art. To take tickets as one walks down the aisle of 
 a railway car is ordinarily a very serious and mechan- 
 ical process, dull work if not drudgery. I have occasion- 
 ally seen it done with pleasure and grace by a chatty 
 and amusing conductor, but the greatest triumph 
 of art that I remember was the performance of M. 
 on a suburban branch of the Boston and Albany Rail- 
 road. For though he lacked the facilities of gossip and 
 humor, he succeeded in making the dry act of surren- 
 dering one's ticket a pleasure to every suburbanite who 
 rode on that branch. 
 
 The exquisite, deferential, and courtly was his line. 
 He wore the regular conductor's uniform of dark-blue 
 cloth and brass buttons, but he contrived to keep the 
 blue so glossy and the brass so resplendent that his 
 entrance quite lighted up the car. He had, as I have 
 said, no conversational powers. Perhaps it was this lack 
 which led him to the quaint but pleasant habit of carry- 
 ing a rosebud, or some other flower, in his lips. It 
 sounds expensive ; perhaps he was a disguised mil-
 
 PLAY IN WORK 153 
 
 lionaire and gathered the blossoms in his own green- 
 house each day. Anyway, he carried the perfume and 
 fresh beauty of somebody's greenhouse into those dingy 
 cars every day throughout the winter that I rode with 
 him. 
 
 He took each ticket with a slight bow and just the 
 ghost of a smile, but most characteristic of all was the 
 reverential care with which he received the ticket, as 
 if to express his sense of the great favor that you did 
 him in surrendering it at all. He reminded me of the 
 minister's gracious tenderness as he takes a baby from 
 its mother to baptize it. 
 
 With the reception of the ticket M.'s art ceased 
 abruptly. He punched it like any other machine. 
 Could he have done otherwise, I wonder? Could 
 Cyrano de Bergerac have punched each ticket with 
 spirit and originality? Is there an irreducible residue of 
 pure, eternal drudgery? Surely not. You and I reach 
 our limit. We are checked by something we cannot 
 mould to the purpose of art, — something that re- 
 mains hard work and nothing else. But then you and 
 I cannot take tickets like M., nor make rhymes while 
 we fence like Cyrano. We are still too serious and self- 
 cojiscious; but there are hopes for us yet with the Jews, 
 Irish, and Italians pouring in to leaven our lump of 
 Anglo-Saxondom.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 BY-PRODUCTS OF PLAY: CONSECRATION OF PLAY 
 
 The central value of play is apt to be obscured by 
 over-emphasis upon its minor issues. Among these are 
 health and disease, pleasure and honor, education and 
 victory. 
 
 Health as I have already said, sometimes results from 
 some games and arts. Thus well-to-do girls on the 
 whole probably get physical benefit from dancing par- 
 ties, though the late hours and bad air go far to neutral- 
 ize any benefit. Whist and chess, painting and music 
 probably do us more harm than good physically, but 
 no one abandons them, or ought to abandon them on 
 that account. The net hygienic results of college foot- 
 ball have been calculated differently by different ob- 
 servers. I believe that they are good on the whole, 
 though not in every team or in every member of any 
 team. But even if the bad hygienic results overbal- 
 anced the good (as I think they do in music), I should 
 believe in the game just the same. Many a player looks 
 back upon his football career and is glad of k for the 
 sake of the game itself, though he bear the honorable 
 scars of contest. 
 
 Pleasure certainly bears an organic relation to play. 
 Unless for money or some other extraneous reason, no
 
 REWARDS AND GOALS 155 
 
 one, I suppose, pursues an art or game which is painful 
 on the whole. On the other hand, many pleasurable 
 acts ; — sucking candy, for instance — are not games 
 or arts. Pleasure is the sense of getting what we want, 
 and play is one of the things which we want. Pleasure, 
 therefore, accompanies it as it also accompanies wor- 
 ship, the receipt of money, the process of going to 
 sleep, and many other non-playful acts. It is a natural 
 accompaniment of play, but not a mark by which to 
 characterize it. 
 
 The education of minds and muscles by play is of 
 great value. It also helps to educate us towards self- 
 control, originality, and many other good qualities. 
 But education, like pleasure, must usually be forgot- 
 ten if you are to attain it in play. If you think of your 
 feet while dancing,..you cannot dance. If you think 
 of your educational gain or your pleasure-income while 
 you are in the heat of play, you will miss both. For 
 mental Integrity — knitting up the divided mind — 
 is essential to play. To throw one's self into a game, as 
 good players do, is to forget one's self and all one's 
 possible earnings. 
 
 Victory is the part of play most often abnormally 
 prominent in popular games. Of course nobody wants 
 to fail in a game or anything else ; but when one loses 
 one grants to be a good loser, and this art of being a 
 good loser is half the battle both in good play and 
 in good living. If it is a pure misery to lose (as it is
 
 156 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 in gambling), then the game or the player Is debased. 
 Furthermore, if the only satisfaction is in winning, all 
 close games are misery until the result is known, and 
 then they are over. This predominance of what we 
 don't want would soon drive us into disgust with 
 any game, if winning were its only point. That most 
 boys like to play games, such as football and baseball, 
 which are often close, that boys dislike one-sided games 
 and weak opponents, proves that the desire to win is 
 not the only motive nor the chief one. Yet the desire to 
 win must be a factor, else the game is tasteless. 
 
 In all good sport, then, we are in a paradoxical state 
 of mind. We want to win, but we want still more to 
 play the game according to the rules and against a 
 tough antagonist. We want to win fairly and in a con- 
 test that puts us on our mettle. To win easily is not 
 much fun. To win by cheating leaves us aware that, 
 in fact, we did not win at all. Cheating is rife especially 
 among two groups of players ; first, those who are play- 
 ing for money (salaries, bets, or bribes) or who have 
 lost their interest in the game itself; secondly, among 
 beginners who have never acquired much fondness for 
 it. Cheating is also common in all games with ill- 
 defined rules, games such as horse-dealing and the man- 
 ipulation of investments. 
 
 Education towards good sport consists in the proper 
 placing of the desire to win, a desire which is essentially 
 the same in athletics, professional life, and moral as- 
 piration. Walking, talking, eating, running after one's
 
 REWARDS AND GOALS 157 
 
 hat, — every conceivable act wants to win its goal. 
 The presence of a visible competitor is not essential. 
 Winning and losing feel much the same whether there 
 is a human competitor or not. For when you win you 
 always defeat something (if not somebody). To be 
 beaten by the waves when you are trying to swim the 
 English Channel must feel very much the same as 
 being beaten in the race with a man. The worst of the 
 disaster is in losing, not in losing to somebody else. 
 Unless you happen to hate your competitor, you do not 
 care who gets the trade or the game which you lose. 
 It is your own loss that hurts, because it is a blow to 
 pride and self-respect, rather than because it deprives 
 you of any tangible prize. In amateur athletics this 
 point is usually obvious, though the social honors 
 naturally paid to winners somewhat obscure the issue. 
 Even these honors, however, show that the heart of 
 the desire to win is a hunger for increased self-respect. 
 The praise of others feeds our fundamental desire **to 
 make good." 
 
 Moral aspiration is nothing else but this *' desire to 
 win" generalized. The moral aspirant, like the athlete, 
 has to learn the spirit of fair play and good sport. His 
 desire to win must be disciplined till it is a desire either 
 to win under the rules of life's game or to take defeat 
 in good part. You want an education, a chance to put 
 your powers at the service of the public, an opportun- 
 ity to know the people who will show you your limita-
 
 158 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 tions and tempt you beyond them. But you do not 
 want these prizes unconditionally. You do not want 
 education if you have to steal the money to get it. 
 You will not take the money if that acceptance means 
 crushing the life out of your family, draining their 
 resources dry in order to push you ahead. If another 
 member of your family can obviously do better with 
 that education than you can, family affection will 
 make you want your own defeat. That is only fair 
 play. The popular prayer, " May the best man win,*' is 
 as appropriate for educational aspiration as it is for 
 athletics. 
 
 This prayer is the absolute and unconditional wish 
 behind all the renunciations of good sport. When both 
 teams before a football game heartily and uncondition- 
 ally wish that the best team may win, they can both 
 be sure (barring flukes) that they will get that wish ful- 
 filled. So in a sense they all win, whatever happens. 
 If accidents seriously interfere with the game, it ought 
 to be played over, as in some cases it is. At any rate, 
 fair play and the honest desire to prove which team is 
 best, demand that the game shall be played over. 
 
 Is it a bodiless abstraction, — this desire for a fair 
 game, this chastened but mighty desire which can al- 
 ways win its end? On the contrary, with mature play- 
 ers (who are the best players) the desire for good sport 
 may become as whole-hearted and natural as any bodily 
 appetite. They get their satisfaction, as singers do, in 
 the game itself, and they get it all the way along, not
 
 REWARDS AND GOALS 159 
 
 simply in the triumphant termination of the games 
 which they happen to win. Moreover, they are al- 
 ways thinking of other games and in this sense "never 
 know when they are beaten." They try to learn from 
 each game (successful or unsuccessful) what will serve 
 to win the next. Thus contests, like years or tennis 
 games, get linked up in sets, and our losses in one guide 
 us to the next. In view of what went wrong in the last, 
 one plans for better success, or at any rate a game fight 
 in the next. 
 
 To lose a game or a political fight, without losing 
 one's courage, is to feed on the invisible when visible 
 food is taken away. Beaten in every obvious and literal 
 sense, the undiscouraged loser falls back upon the inner 
 life. He takes to his inner line of defenses, there to 
 maintain the fight unbeaten and undismayed. The 
 "lost cause" becomes idealized into something which 
 no one can lose until he loses the courage to fight for 
 it. No sensualist, no one who has not some sort of 
 faith in the ultimate victory of the invisible right 
 which he serves, can keep his courage in any defeat, 
 great or small. 
 
 On the other hand, no winner can avoid conceit and 
 the pride which traditionally precedes a fall, if he takes 
 his victory at its face value. The sympathy and ap- 
 plause of the bystanders are rank poison to a winner 
 who has not learned to discount them, to look away 
 from them, and point his admirers to the value of com- 
 rades, the wisdom of trainers, the good luck and good
 
 i6o WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 teamwork on which he has ridden to victory. Standing 
 as the product, the representative, the symbol of all 
 these great forces, he can take his victory without 
 inner disaster. 
 
 The good winner is apt to take victory lightly for 
 still another reason. Like the good loser, he is always 
 looking forward to another and greater contest. Now 
 that he has topped a foothill, he sees the steeper ranges 
 ahead. The very moment of victory over the last hill 
 spreads out before him for the first time the arduous 
 prospect of the one ahead. Victory, literal and un- 
 abashed, means looking backward. The good winner 
 looks backward too ; he is not blind to what he has won; 
 for one ecstatic moment he tastes its full sweetness, but 
 next instant he looks ahead and prepares for the 
 harder contest. 
 
 The consecration of play, the element of spiritual 
 nobility which utilitarians and the unplayful cannot 
 see in it, is the necessary result of faithfulness to an 
 invisible ideal of good sport. To be a good winner and 
 a good loser is a wholly spiritual desire. In the politi- 
 cal battles of some Spanish-American republics, the 
 winning party guzzles and tyrannizes ; the losing party 
 revolts and tries to kill or banish the winning team. 
 This means simply that there is no loyalty to the rules 
 of the game. The desire to win is unconditional; the 
 spoils of office are the only moving power and the only 
 reward of the winner. The loser cherishes no hopes for 
 his lost "cause," but sulks or storms.
 
 REWARDS AND GOALS i6l 
 
 But in good sport or good politics there emerges the 
 paradox of self-government, the subordination of a 
 self to a Self (good citizenship, lawful government, fair 
 play) which lives on and deserves our best service 
 whether we win or lose. In good sport neither success 
 nor failure is taken at its face value. Victory is not 
 purely sweet ; defeat has its compensations. The cause 
 which you work for in athletics is rarely recognized, 
 I suppose, as part of the service of God. But in honest 
 politics (for which "good sport'* is certainly the best 
 training) most sincere enthusiasts believe themselves to 
 be servants of "the people," and many aspire to find, 
 through them, the will of God. Ask any one who has 
 worked to uphold the standard of good sport and later 
 has labored for good government, whether the two 
 efforts do not call for the same spirit and exercise the 
 same spiritual muscles. Not only leaders and prophets of 
 sport, but all subordinate players who obey the rules of 
 the game and learn to be good winners and good losers, 
 are working to uphold the standards of good sport. 
 They are practicing the art of taking victory and de- 
 feat symbolically ; they are living the spiritual life. 
 
 I, must digress at this point to explain more clearly 
 what I mean by symbolism both in play and outside 
 it. Most of us hear of symbols in algebra or in religion, 
 but have no idea of meeting them in play. Yet to my 
 mind play without symbolism is like music without 
 notes or verse without words.
 
 i62 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 A symbol Is a representative, standing for something 
 greater than itself. The golden balls stand for the pawn- 
 broker, the striped suit for the convict, the cross for 
 Christianity. Increasingly civilization rests on symbol- 
 ism, as commerce rests on credit. Yet to the unin- 
 formed, all symbols are meaningless. The savage may 
 value an old newspaper more than a thousand-dollar 
 bill, because the newspaper is larger. He takes the bill 
 as literally as some people take death or birth, recog- 
 nizing no larger value behind it. The bill is a bit of 
 paper. To the savage it is nothing more, while to most 
 of us it is hard to recall the time when we saw it merely 
 as paper. 
 
 The great value of symbols is that they enable us to 
 handle or to express what would otherwise be too great 
 for us. To carry a thousand dollars in silver or gold 
 would make swift or nimble motions impossible and 
 fatigue always imminent. To carry about and barter 
 the goods which this thousand will purchase is quite 
 impracticable. Hence money-symbols are short cuts 
 and labor-saving devices. When word-symbols replace 
 our earlier picture language, we save the time needed 
 to draw and to understand the pictures. Further, 
 people are enabled, by symbols as by the switching- 
 towers in a railway yard, to plan and to execute much 
 more complex, far-reaching, and accurate results. 
 
 Whether in play, in speech, in currency, in rejigion, 
 or in politics, symbols are precious because they con- 
 vey a wealth of meaning in compact form. Despite
 
 REWARDS AND GOALS 163 
 
 their convenience they are quite arbitrary and ridicu- 
 lous to those who do not grasp them. So are the rules 
 of a game, which limit the players* freedom and unite 
 them despite their rivalry. These rules are as arbitrary 
 as the designs on currency, and incapable, like currency, 
 of giving us an immediate reward or tangible utility. 
 "Hang the rules,** we are all of us prone to say when 
 they balk us of victory. Shall a few sentences, perhaps 
 not even printed but only handed down by tradition, 
 — shall these bodiless ideas stand in the way of our 
 getting what we hotly want? Yes, they shall do just 
 that, and we shall learn to submit to them as we submit 
 to greater laws, national, moral, and divine. For every 
 business man is tempted to ** hang the rules " when they 
 interfere with his profits, and every one of us longs to 
 hang the moral law when it interferes with what we 
 want to do. 
 
 Respect for vital but intangible meaning behind a 
 reasonable law, which baffles or defeats our will, is a 
 training in the use of great symbols and so in the exer- 
 cise of spiritual muscles. Respect for the same law 
 when it brings us profit and success, means triumph in 
 a yet more searching test, and exercises another set of 
 spiritual muscles. 
 
 Our moments of success or of defeat are not merely 
 what they seem on the face of them. They stand as 
 symbolic representatives of what the law and the in- 
 visible powers of the world have put up to us. They 
 are interpreted like words or coins by remembering
 
 i64 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 what stands behind them, out of sight. For In success 
 we recognize (or ought to) that without the protection 
 of the law we should not have won. Chance or the crude 
 strength of those opposed to us would have rolled us 
 in the dust but for the law. In almost every sport 
 there are moments when it is only by the rules that 
 our opponents are prevented from running away with 
 the game. In some of our great cities there are crimi- 
 nal gangs which, but for the law and its enforcement, 
 would break over us like a tidal wave. It is not by 
 our own personal merits, but by the force of law and 
 by the help of our fellows that we win free space for 
 happiness and creation. Elemental nature, too, is kept 
 at bay, not by what you and I do, but by the police 
 protection of science which keeps us safe because we 
 obey the laws of that great game. 
 
 Play, then, is consecrated by its symbolism and the 
 ideals of good sport which it embodies. But the es- 
 sence of good sport, — obedience to rules, ability to be 
 a modest winner and cheerful loser, — is also the es- 
 sence of self-government, good service, and spiritual 
 growth.
 
 PART III: LOVB
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE ALLIES OF LOVE 
 
 It seems hardly decent to discuss so sacred a matter 
 in the publicity of print. Dimly aware of this, we 
 try to approach the subject delicately through such 
 phrases as "The Spirit of Youth" (Jane Addams) or 
 "The Life Force" (G. Bernard Shaw in "Man and 
 Superman"). To free the word "love" from its asso- 
 ciation with boudoirs and morbid novels, we try to 
 identify it with something genial and all-pervasive, to 
 ally it with the great, sane forces of nature. For we 
 believe that if these allies stimulate and reinforce per- 
 sonality, if they awaken and intensify our feeble ener- 
 gies, then they tend to ennoble our affections. 
 
 Elemental nature is one such ally. A group of people 
 who start on a camping trip tolerably indifferent to 
 each other, will usually come home bubbling over with 
 friendliness. There may have been very little talking 
 during the entire trip. What has drawn them together? 
 Is it not the close contact with elemental conditions 
 in paddling, carrying, cooking, and sleeping by the 
 camp-fire? To share fatigue, disappointment, surprise, 
 hunger, and good appetite, gives people a common 
 life. Facing nature they join hands, reinvigorated. 
 
 Friends who went through the horrors of the San
 
 i68 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 Francisco earthquake in 1906, and kept their spiritual 
 senses alert, tell me that their most poignant experience 
 was not one of horror or of pity, but of the almost 
 miraculous attainment of human brotherhood. Dur- 
 ing the days just after the disaster, when rich and poor 
 waited in line together for their allowance of bread and 
 milk, "I saw," says a friend, "a rich woman from the 
 St. Francis Hotel lying asleep on a doorstep with her 
 head on a muff. A long sable coat was thrown over 
 her and under one corner of it a young Japanese boy 
 was curled up asleep. . . . Everybody was everybody's 
 friend, and though we were all dog-tired, there was not 
 a word of complaint or ill-nature." To bivouac together 
 in the park and take care of each other's babies around 
 fires of driftwood gathered from the beach, made men 
 and women once more defenseless children of the earth, 
 revealed each to each in their innate and genuine love- 
 ableness. Common danger and mutual helpfulness, 
 common misfortune, common work, common confront- 
 ation with the elemental, brought a swift achievement 
 of almost ideal brotherhood. A crushing blow made 
 all the world for a time kin. 
 
 Within a few weeks, it is true, the San Franciscans 
 forgot this beneficent revelation and slid back into their 
 old animosities. Any other set of people would have 
 done likewise. But even that pitiful relapse serves to 
 make my present point the clearer. Affection, this time 
 in the form of comradeship, was for a day reinforced, 
 almost consecrated, by contact with hostile nature;
 
 THE ALLIES OF LOVE 169 
 
 then lost its sacredness again, when the bond of con- 
 tact was broken and "civilization** once more got the 
 upper hand. 
 
 In hospital work patients, doctors, and nurses, who 
 face terror and disease together, are often knit into 
 comradeship, like soldiers on a campaign. The *'new 
 patient" just entering a hospital is often forlorn and 
 terror-stricken as a child lost in a forest or landed 
 friendless in a strange country. The menace of illness, 
 the hospital's dark and fearful suggestions, its sights 
 and sounds and smells, make him hunger for friendly 
 guidance. Hence it is marvelously easy to serve him as 
 a friend in need. Through the simplest physical help- 
 fulness or decent sympathy, one gains a foothold in 
 friendship which could not be won in months of acquain- 
 tance outside of the hospital. Why? Because disaster 
 and sickness renew our instinctive alliance with any 
 human being against the assaults of the non-human 
 world. 
 
 I have been speaking so far of strangers made friendly 
 by working together against elemental nature. But 
 nature can bring new strength not only to the most 
 general and vague affections, but to all affections, 
 even to the most sacred of human ties. On one of our 
 rare country outings last spring, my wife and I wandered 
 away from the violets and the apple blossoms and came 
 all at once upon a place where the grass was afire. 
 Some stumps and one small cedar were also burning. 
 It was a bit of country precious to us both ; so as soon
 
 I70 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 as we had explored a little and mapped out our task, we 
 started to choke out the remnants of the fire. 
 
 Some parts we could beat out with a stick, others we 
 smothered with damp earth. Before long each of us was 
 possessed by that passion of accomplishment which so 
 often carries one far beyond the original plan. We quite 
 forgot each other, and when at last I straightened up 
 and looked over the stump which I had been pounding, 
 I could just see my wife far off on the brow of a hill. 
 Her back was towards me, but I could see that she was 
 stamping and beating out the patches of smouldering 
 fire, quite as engrossed in her work as I had been in 
 mine. When I joined her, her shoes were white with 
 dust. There were flakes of ashes on her black hair. 
 Her skirt was pinned up, and she was on the warpath, 
 so intent on her task that when she raised her head 
 her eyes scanned me for an instant almost as if I had 
 been a stranger. But what I felt most vividly was that 
 we had both been down into a bath in the elemental — 
 "the healthy underworld where things slumber and 
 grow,'* — and that in our very forgetfulness of each 
 other, our love had taken up into itself some of the 
 sweetness and patience of the earth. 
 
 We are apt to think that our contact with nature, in 
 work or play, is good chiefly because it benefits our 
 health or increases our knowledge. But I think we 
 should remember and cultivate nature's beneficent in- 
 fluence upon our affections. On them, as well as on our 
 muscles, nature bestows new spring, tone, and control.
 
 THE ALLIES OF LOVE 171 
 
 Art no less than nature can enrich and reinforce the 
 springs of our affection. How warmly we sometimes 
 feel toward those with whom we have just sung a stirring 
 chorus or a noble hymn ! Have not all of us come away 
 from some deeply moving music, aware of something 
 curiously familiar and endearing in those previously 
 indifferent to us? Any lover of Wagner will recall, 
 for instance, the wonderful passage in the second act 
 of "Lohengrin,*' after the marriage of the hero and 
 heroine. Their love for each other rises to a higher 
 power when Lohengrin goes to the window and throws 
 it open. A flood of spring moonlight and spring fra- 
 grance pours in. Permeated by the beauty of the 
 night, spring's creative forces in their veins, they are 
 more deeply united to each other, and every spectator 
 who has ears to hear is also united more sacredly with 
 whosoever is dear to him. 
 
 We must agree with Tolstoy that lawless art stirs up 
 lawless love. On the other hand, to read of Stevenson's 
 affection for Walter Ferrier ^ or Dante's exalted pas- 
 sion for Beatrice, surely increases our capacity for the 
 nobler types of love; for to appreciate is always in 
 some measure to appropriate. 
 
 Each of love's neighbors contributes something pre- 
 cious towards the richness of its chords. Nature gives 
 them a new timbre, art adds an ampler vibration. Play- 
 fulness, patriotism, loyalty to truth and to honor but- 
 * As suggested in the essay called "Old Mortality."
 
 172 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 tress and strengthen them like contrapuntal melodies. 
 Like a symphony without its mischievous scherzo, 
 love is maimed and darkened if it cannot express it- 
 self in "jest and sport and quip and crank.*' We laugh 
 for love as well as for joy or triumph, and smiles carry 
 the messages of affection as often as those of fun. 
 
 By nature and art, by playfulness, patriotism, truth- 
 fulness, and all the greatest forces in our nature, love 
 is penetrated, nourished, and supported. I marvel 
 sometimes when I see two people marry, and then try 
 to feed their love simply on each other. It is incon- 
 ceivable that any love can live and grow unless it draws 
 sustenance, as every soul and body must, from the 
 world around us, from work, from play, and from all 
 the higher loyalties that we serve. 
 
 Another ally of love comes to light when we answer 
 the question: Should one ever force or impersonate 
 affection? Surely not, yet love, like a musical ear, can 
 be cultivated to some extent through knowledge. 
 There must be something to build on, some basis of 
 respect, or at least of compassion. But given that, 
 we may confidently call to our aid that great master- 
 builder of affection, knowledge. If we give a man every 
 chance, he is almost sure to disclose some lovable 
 quality. Knowledge joined with faith is the way to 
 give him these chances. For example, you know 
 people better in their own homes; you have there a 
 promising opportunity to catch a liking for them. 
 You find out some people's strength by seeing them
 
 THE ALLIES OF LOVE 173 
 
 at play, others' by learning the structure and history 
 of their past, others' by watching them as they build 
 up plans for the future. 
 
 Of course such fuller acquaintance may reveal not 
 strength but weakness; we may be repelled where we 
 hoped to be attracted through close intimacy. Yet there 
 is no other path. We are taking the only chance, and 
 if we persevere there are few personalities so repellent 
 as to foil us altogether. I speak with confidence upon 
 this point because some of the strongest and most in- 
 spiring friendships that I have known were raised from 
 very near the zero point of attraction to the pleasantest 
 warmth simply by taking every opportunity for better 
 knowledge, and by hunting for favorable points of 
 view. The afifection which gradually developed was 
 from the first genuine and unforced, but it would never 
 have come to anything had it not been cultivated and 
 reinforced through every available avenue of knowl- 
 edge. And after all, is it not quite natural that human 
 affection should come to us, in part at least, through 
 intimacy of acquaintance? One gets fond of many 
 a city, many a landscape, many an art or science in 
 just the same way, and most of our antipathies — 
 though not all — are to be explained like Charles 
 Lamb's by our ignorance. 
 
 A friend said to Lamb: ^'Come here. I want to in- 
 troduce you to Mr. A." 
 
 Lamb replied with his characteristic stammer and 
 drawl: "No, thank you."
 
 174 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 ''Why not?" 
 
 ** Don't like him? But you don't know him!" 
 
 "That's the reason I don't like him." 
 
 I do not mean to suggest that we can often win a 
 friend merely by scraping together a fund of knowledge 
 about him. I mean that if you are once convinced that 
 you ought to conquer a certain dislike or acquire a cer- 
 tain friendliness, knowledge is one way to go at it. 
 
 The influence of elemental nature, of knowledge, 
 beauty, playfulness, patriotism, truth-seeking, — all the 
 reinforcements which I have been describing, are for the 
 most part a consecration of love, often a blessing, rarely 
 a curse. For most of the perversions and diseases of 
 love, which are just now so much in the public mind 
 under the false title of "sex," are due, as I believe, less 
 to an excess than to a deficiency of vitality, — less to 
 lack of control than to lack of depth. 
 
 But not all ! Swift-running streams drop out some 
 impurities, but there are intrinsic qualities in the chem- 
 istry of the water-borne molecules which cannot be 
 changed from bad to good by any increase of power in 
 the stream which surrounds them. We want a swift- 
 flowing stream but the internal structure of the water 
 — its chemistry — must also be right, else the water 
 is bad. Love also may still remain a vague, impersonal 
 life-force unless its internal structure is right. That 
 structure is my next topic.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 LOVE'S HOUSE OF MANY MANSIONS 
 
 In a happy marriage the wife's affection for her hus- 
 band is often maternal as well as conjugal. She treats 
 him like a grown-up son, looks after him and mothers 
 him like one of her own boys. We all know this habit 
 and love it. We should recognize that something was 
 missing if there were nothing but the maternal in a wife's 
 attitude. But we should also recognize something miss- 
 ing if there were nothing but the conjugal. Moreover 
 the pair should be good comrades as well as husband- 
 and-wife and mother-and-son. Together these three af- 
 fections make a richer love than any one of them alone. 
 
 The filial and maternal may also be united in a single 
 relation. I knew a little girl of ten, devotedly attached 
 to her mother and fond of sleeping near her on the 
 porch of their house. One night a storm blew in ; the 
 mother was awakened not by the storm, but by the 
 touches and whispered words of her little daughter 
 who was at her bedside covering her with a rainproof 
 blanket, and (as soon as she saw that her mother had 
 waked) pouring out a stream of such endearments as 
 a mother uses to her child. She was mothering her 
 own mother; yet the next morning she was as much 
 her mother's child as any one could wish. 
 
 Extend to their limit the possibilities suggested in
 
 176 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 these examples : then all possible human affections are 
 united in the richness of a single love. I have a brother 
 who is good enough to make his home with me and to 
 share with me the privilege of affectionate intimacy 
 with his children. As I read or play with his eight-year- 
 old daughter I find in my love for her, elements of 
 every type of affection that I can conceive. The touch 
 of her hand thrills me. I am equally conscious of the 
 impulse to protect and guide her, to fight for her, to 
 foresee and prevent the dangers that will meet her at 
 play and in school, — in short, to be a father to her. 
 I also want her comradeship; I want to work and to 
 play with her as an equal and not merely as a hopeless 
 "grown-up." And when I see how much clearer than 
 mine is her sight for the new, how much fresher her 
 enthusiasm, how much more beauty of speech, gesture, 
 and mood her life contains than mine, how much more 
 wisdom there is in her unconsciousness than in most 
 of my thinking, I look up to her with veneration. 
 Around and beyond all this I see that she belongs to 
 the larger life of the world and to that Personality 
 which envelops us all. 
 
 If I am right in the interpretation of these exam- 
 ples, we must learn to think of personal love not so 
 much as a single quality or impulse, but as a house of 
 many rooms. Each room represents some type of 
 affection, — conjugal, paternal, filial, or friendly. Each 
 room opens into those next it, so that an impulse 
 originating in one must pass freely through all. More-
 
 LOVE'S HOUSE OF MANY MANSIONS 177 
 
 fver, the house is open outwardly. Through its win- 
 dows there is a perpetual give-and-take between our 
 affections and the infinite love of God. The currents 
 of infinite love as they sweep through the universe 
 rush through all the chambers of love's house, giving 
 to all, receiving from each, mingling them with each 
 other and with the divine. 
 
 What are the practical results? If each member of 
 the family of affections possess some traits of each of 
 the others, then each is enriched without surrendering 
 its central characteristics. We find, then, in each affec- 
 tion a structure something like the present elective 
 system at Harvard and at Yale, where each student 
 must so choose his courses that he studies a great deal 
 of one branch and a little of all the other main branches 
 of knowledge. His scholarship is mainly of one type, 
 but includes a dash of the other types for better sym- 
 pathy with their aims. So a father will be mainly a 
 father to his son, but will also be something of a com- 
 rade and a brother to him, and will even look up to 
 him in some respects as he would to a father. 
 
 A physical element should enter into all affection. 
 Even to clasp hands should always be a pleasure. But if 
 we feel no physical attraction for a person, the contact 
 of hands is boresome or distasteful. In exuberant and 
 affectionate families, especially Europeans, it is natural 
 for men to kiss men now and then, as women so gener- 
 ally kiss women. This is the normal. When those of the 
 same sex fall in love with each other, it means simply
 
 178 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 an exaggeration of the normal physical attraction which 
 should play a part in all human relationships. This is 
 no more shocking than masculinity in women, effemi- 
 nacy or "old-womanishness" in men. The child pre- 
 maturely old, the tomboy, the "sissy" have each of 
 them too large a share of sympathy with types other 
 than their own. But some such sympathy there ought 
 to be as a basis for affection and mutual understand- 
 ing. Why should a man be all strength and no ten- 
 derness, or a woman all tenderness and no strength? 
 Why should we not preserve as we grow up some of 
 the child's playfulness, some of the boy's independence, 
 and the girl's swift intuition? 
 
 As character is the richer for a mixture of many sym- 
 pathies and interests under control of a single purpose, 
 so I think love is ennobled when all types of affection 
 are united within it, under the leadership of one. A 
 mother's love for her son becomes too clinging and 
 sentimental if she is only his mother and not also his 
 comrade. As conarades respect each other, every 
 mother must learn to respect something in her son, 
 and to recognize somewhere in their relation his au- 
 thority over her as well as hers over him. He will 
 come to treat her paternally as he grows up. Very 
 early in boyhood he will have the instinct to protect 
 her if she recognizes and responds to it. 
 
 When a man is tempted to be base in his treatment 
 of a woman, one can sometimes appeal to him with suc- 
 cess in the name of her weakness. Because she is weak
 
 LOVE'S HOUSE OF MANY MANSIONS 179 
 
 she needs his brotherly or fatherly protection; his 
 guidance, not his pursuit. He would not treat his own 
 sister so; but she is in part his sister, because he has in 
 him at least the germ of brotherly love for her. 
 
 All the unworthy or unhappy affections that I know 
 of could be set right, I believe, by a greater infusion 
 of some other type of affection. By the appeal to 
 chivalry we can call out a romantic element latent in 
 most men's love for women just as we call on a boy to 
 '* be a man " when he is babyish. He is not a man, but 
 there are germs of manliness in him and to these we 
 appeal. 
 
 So far, I have been maintaining that love is true 
 and right when all its varieties (physical, paternal or 
 maternal feeling, filial respect, comradeship, and the 
 rest) are duly mingled with each other or open into 
 each other like the rooms of a house. Disasters here 
 threaten us when we shut the outer doors and win- 
 dows of our affection, shutting out the love of truth, 
 the love of country, of art, of nature, and of God. 
 
 Jealousy is a consumption bred within the structured 
 house of love when all its windows are sealed. When we 
 arc jealous we try to shut ourselves up in shadowed 
 privacy or timid miserliness. We want someone all 
 to ourselves ; we fear that if we open the doors and let in 
 the currents of others* affection or the winds of imper- 
 sonal interest, our own share of love may be swept 
 away. A woman may be jealous not only of her hus-
 
 i8o WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 band's friends but of his work, and even of his religion. 
 This means that she has kept her windows closed and 
 shuttered, so that she looks always at the walls of 
 her house of love, never through and beyond them. 
 
 Personal love is enhanced and purified by the con- 
 tact with elemental nature, by the inspiration of art, 
 play, truth-seeking, or patriotism. Floating in through 
 the windows of love's house, these interests sweep out 
 impurities and cleanse the air in stagnant corners. 
 They may be imperious and insistent, but unless they 
 are allowed to break down the partitions and monop- 
 olize the whole house, they leave it brighter and 
 richer, never dimmer or poorer. They kill nothing but 
 the germs of disease. Yet, if we are to persuade a con- 
 servative and timid love to open its windows, we must 
 first convince it that a friendly and beneficent Spirit is 
 always touching our spirits as the infinite space touches 
 our bodies, a Spirit which pursues us like the "Hound 
 of Heaven."^ 
 
 A vague and traditional awareness of this infinite 
 spirit is preserved in the familiar idea of the "divine 
 spark" within every man. But we know a great deal 
 more about this divinity than our ordinary habits 
 betray. 
 
 * In Francis Thompson's poem.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 OUR AWARENESS OF INFINITE LOVE 
 
 A COLLEGE friend of mine, devotedly fond of his friends, 
 was also devoted to his diary. On a certain page of this 
 he inscribed their names and arranged them in the 
 order of his preference. Here he listed his (i) best 
 friend; (2) next best; (3) third best, etc., though he 
 reserved the right to shift this order now and then. He 
 thought this an admirably clear arrangement, and 
 was much surprised when he found that all to whom 
 he confided his list were moved straightway to inex- 
 tinguishable laughter! 
 
 But why this joyful noise over my friend 's pet scheme ? 
 Why do we look with mingled pity and amusement at 
 that diary and at all attempts to arrange our friends in 
 an order of preference? Order, we are told, is Heaven's 
 first law, and certainly everything under the sun can 
 (and sometimes ought to be) put in order and arranged 
 in just such a hierarchy as we indignantly reject when 
 applied to our friends. I believe that you will find it 
 true that all finite facts can be arranged in a series and 
 sometimes should be so arranged. The population of 
 cities, the prices of pictures, the weights of children, 
 the chemical ingredients of foods, the magnitude of 
 the stars, — one could go on indefinitely with the cata-
 
 i82 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 logue of finite things which can be reduced to a com- 
 mon denominator and arranged in a row, often with 
 profit. But you run against a snag the instant you be- 
 gin to deal with things or thoughts which are infinite. 
 Try to answer, or even seriously to ask the question, 
 ** Which is longer, past time or future time?" and you 
 attempt the absurd. Try to state which is longer, the 
 distance which you might travel through the space 
 to your right or that which you might go to your left, 
 and how either of these compares with the distances 
 which you might go in any one of the infinite num- 
 ber of other directions. You are involved at once in 
 absurdity.^ 
 
 The same absurdity results when you attempt to 
 rank your friends. They cannot be arranged in a row 
 and numbered as first, second, and third because each 
 of them is infinitely lovable, infinitely valuable in his 
 own unique service to the rest of the world. No good 
 mother will admit that she loves one of her children 
 more than another. She loves each with all her strength. 
 There Is no limit to her power of loving each of them, 
 no limit to the amount of loveliness which she can find 
 in each. With scrupulous and sacred sincerity she can 
 write to each of her children a letter beginning "My 
 Dearest." 
 
 What does this prove? It seems to me to show that 
 our love is traversed by the current of an infinite af- 
 
 * I know that some infinites are greater than others; but I see no such 
 difference in the size of the particular infinites which we call persons.
 
 OUR AWARENESS OF INFINITE LOVE 183 
 
 fection which sweeps through us and off to whomever 
 we love, — a current which cannot be compared with 
 any other, because it is an infinite love, and if infinite, 
 divine. 
 
 Another familiar example may make this idea more 
 credible. *' How often shall I forgive my brother? Unto 
 seven times?" Christ's answer: "Yea, I say unto you 
 unto seventy times seven," does not mean four hundred 
 and ninety. One limit is just as vicious as another. 
 Christ meant that our forgiveness of any one whom we 
 love is infinite, — that in true love there is literally 
 no end to forgiveness so long as it means not condoning 
 or forgetting, but the ampler understanding which is 
 pardon. 
 
 Not all forgiveness can be thus infinite. Forgiveness 
 must be definitely limited, for example, in the official 
 relation of employer and employee. There is an end 
 to the number of mistakes which an employer can 
 rightly forgive in an employee. But it makes all the 
 difference to that employee if, when he comes to lose 
 his job, he sees that, though as an employee he cannot 
 be further forgiven, as a friend he still holds his place. 
 I remember that to my mother, after fifteen years of 
 service on a school committee, was assigned the task of 
 telling superannuated teachers that it was time for 
 them to go. Why this was always my mother*s job 
 is clear enough, I think, when I say that many of these 
 poor teachers came away from the fateful interview 
 loving my mother as a friend. They could not help
 
 i84 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 seeing that, although in her official capacity forgive- 
 ness must be limited, she never forgot the warmer and 
 more human tie, limited by no official duties. 
 
 We can make it hard for the gigantic forces about us 
 to do their proper work within us. We can plaster up 
 all the chinks of our nature for a time, but we cannot 
 long escape the "majestic instancy" of God. I believe 
 that the idea of a structural continuity of human and 
 divine love was contained as a part in the meaning of 
 Christ's words: "For I was an hungered, and ye gave 
 me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was 
 a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed 
 me : I was sick, and ye visited me : I was in prison, and 
 ye came unto me. 
 
 "Then shall the" (literal-minded) "righteous answer 
 him, saying. Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and 
 fed thee? or athirst, and gave thee drink? and when 
 saw we thee a stranger and took thee in? or naked, and 
 clothed thee? And when saw we thee sick, or in prison, 
 and came unto thee? 
 
 "Verily I say unto you. Inasmuch as ye did it unto 
 one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it 
 unto me." 
 
 Christ's word "inasmuch" implies the sort of con- 
 tinuity which we know in physics. As I write I am press- 
 ing (not merely leaning) with an appreciable weight 
 on my table. But inasmuch, or just as much, as I press 
 on this table, I press upon the whole earth. Precisely
 
 OUR AWARENESS OF INFINITE LOVE 185 
 
 as much power as I exert at this point is transmitted 
 to the entire globe because of the continuity of matter 
 and the indestructibility of energy. Inasmuch as I 
 do anything to this table I do it to all that is in continu- 
 ity with this table. Inasmuch as I vote and influence 
 others to vote right, I influence the whole country, be- 
 cause my vote and my influence are part of a practi- 
 cally continuous spiritual whole. 
 
 Because Christ is in a relation of spiritual continuity 
 with ** the least of these" and with each of us who feeds 
 him or gives him drink, all the good will which we 
 put out is transmitted to Christ and to the Father of 
 us all. 
 
 I do not see how we can make sense of Christ's words 
 and believe them true unless we have, at least vaguely, 
 in our minds the permeable structure by which I pic- 
 ture our love in its relation to God, a structure such 
 that love freely given to any of the children of men must 
 at the same time pass through him to his Maker. Unless 
 the whole structure of divine and human love is thus 
 permeable, I cannot understand how our human love 
 and our worship, our love of nature and of country, of 
 work, of play, and of God can mingle and reinforce 
 each other as they do. Furthermore, unless we think 
 of our own personality in such a relation to Infinite 
 Personality as ,1 have hinted, I do not see how any 
 sociable human being can bear without intolerable 
 humiliation the volume of affection and gratitude that 
 is poured out on him. In practice one explains it, one
 
 i86 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 makes it sweet and sane only by passing it on. No 
 human being can support the full weight and impact 
 of another human being's love. It turns to absurd- 
 ities and blasphemies, unless it can pass through us 
 to God.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 SYMBOLISM IN LOVE 
 
 Symbolism is a late and meager growth in many of 
 us New Englanders showing itself considerably more 
 in play than in love or worship. As a boy I saw no 
 sacredness in the national flag nor in the symbols of 
 religion. What others called "enthusiasm about the 
 flag" seemed to me a false and painful attempt to 
 pump up emotions which could not spontaneously 
 arise. One set of symbols, namely, words, I was even 
 then accustomed to use. Literally a word is nothing 
 but a grunt or a cough, a vibrating current of air in 
 the larynx, or a series of black marks on white paper. 
 Yet by almost every one these literal facts are sym- 
 bolically interpreted. Indeed the force of this habit is 
 so imperious that when we wish to divest ourselves of 
 it in reading proof-sheets, so that we can see precisely 
 what the black scratches are, it is almost impossible. 
 In this field of symbolism, then, we are almost all of 
 us expert; but our proficiency is very limited. Our 
 own home or our own fireside has usually a symbolic 
 sacredness and value. We do not stare at its walls with 
 cold literalness. We love them, and there are a few 
 other symbols, such as bowing, mourning, Christmas 
 ceremonies, patriotic songs, which most of us love.
 
 188 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 Nevertheless, the average American is stiff and awk- 
 ward, when he tries to use symbols. Current thought 
 and life discourage the use of such imagination and 
 penetrative intelligence as symbolism demands: for a 
 symbol which does its work must awaken us to the 
 invisible. If we love the flag, it is not merely be- 
 cause its image falls on the retina, but because we see in 
 it much that is invisible. We see the history of our 
 country as we know and love it, the beauty which we 
 believe is characteristic of America, the national 
 energy and inventiveness of which we are proud. In 
 moments of enthusiasm for the flag these hopes and 
 memories surge up and rush across the surface of con- 
 sciousness like the picture in a cinematograph. It is 
 because we see invisible facts that any symbol becomes 
 for us pregnant with meaning. 
 
 The marriage vow Is a great symbol because it calls 
 up with marvelous swiftness and vividness great realms 
 of the past and future, moments which have led up to 
 the consummation of this union, happiness which we 
 look to In the future. In this vow we call the future 
 before us as a witness ; * ' f or better, for worse, for richer, 
 for poorer, in sickness and in health." Before these 
 invisible witnesses called to range themselves around 
 a man and woman at the altar, the pledge to faithful- 
 ness is taken. 
 
 Any symbolic act or phrase points beyond itself. 
 The most sacred symbols point to the widest and most 
 precious reaches of invisible life. The most durable
 
 SYMBOLISM IN LOVE 189 
 
 and universally solid symbols are actually part of the 
 larger life which they call up. They serve us not merely 
 by chance association, as a post-box calls up in our 
 mind as we pass it the thoughts with which we last 
 posted a letter there. The best symbol gives us a 
 sample of what it symbolizes. Being married is part 
 of marriage. Words like "thunder" and "zigzag" por- 
 tray in miniature what they symbolize. An autograpIT 
 stands for its signer: but not arbitrarily, for something 
 of his character is given you visibly in the shape and 
 arrangement of his letters. Unless the symbol is a 
 piece of the reality which it symbolizes, and recalls 
 that reality as a face recalls a character, it cannot 
 serve the needs of many persons or extend its influence 
 through the centuries. 
 
 There are symbols that mean abnormality and weak- 
 ness, not power. People who are clumsy in the use of 
 spoken language try to make good their deficiencies by 
 more or less grotesque gestures, emphases, and atti- 
 tudes. The symbolic act is then evidence partly of in- 
 eptitude. But, on the other hand, a man's acts may 
 beautifully convey what words are too poor to express. 
 There are feelings so elemental yet so intense that ac- 
 tion seems to express them more naturally than speech. 
 When the dead are borne past us in the street, we 
 uncover our heads because that silent act conveys 
 our reverence better than words. The act of bowing 
 can be a trivial or ludicrous thing, but those of us who 
 have seen President Eliot bow as he presents the
 
 190 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 degree of LL.D. will agree that only poetry could ex* 
 press in words so much of dignity and significance. 
 What splendid fitness and fullness of expression there 
 may be in the act of kneeling, when soldiers kneel 
 about the grave of a dead comrade, or when a woman 
 kneels by her child's bed ! 
 
 The physical symbolism of affection expresses an- 
 other deep human need. The clasp of two hands is lit- 
 erally a physical contact of two pieces of human flesh. 
 Woefully secular and lifeless it can be !„We-allJinow the 
 flabby, the dinging, the nervous, the icy hand-grasp^ 
 Yet who has not sometimes rejoiced in the grasp of a 
 hand that conveys life and love? Two souls are here 
 united by a physical contact that gives birth to new 
 aspirations and-new-'certakities. Two human beings 
 are here linked hand to hand, in mutual respect, 
 mutual trust, and mutual encouragement. 
 
 Part of the richness and value of such experiences 
 comes from the cloud of unseen witnesses who cluster 
 about them. When I said good-bye to my father in 1 898, 
 going into what turned out to be a ludicrously slight 
 danger in the Spanish War, the farewell clasp of hands 
 joined me also to many memories. I faced uncertain- 
 ties and possibilities that gave me, I suppose, the same 
 experience that I should have had, if the war had 
 proved serious. My mind traveled back to the evenings 
 when my father used to read to us from Emerson's " Es- 
 says " the passages that meant most to him, recalled the 
 long mornings in his study among the pine woods at
 
 SYMBOLISM IN LOVE 191 
 
 Beverly where he was patient with my struggle to learn 
 
 German, the afternoons by his side under a sketching 
 
 umbrella, — my first lessons in drawing. At partings 
 
 such memories flash through one's mind and one sees 
 
 as from a hilltop, in a single panoramic glance, the high 
 
 points of the past. There are pledges, too, in such a 
 
 hand-grasp, unspoken but no less binding, that may 
 
 reach across the grave, pledges of mutual faith, trust, 
 
 and backing: "My faith in your fidelity till you come 
 
 back to us " : " My love with you always." The parting 
 
 words of Pandora to Prometheus in W. V. Moody's 
 
 *'Fire-Bringer," express incomparably the spirit of 
 
 such a parting, and of all parting. 
 
 "Whither thou goest I am; there even now 
 I stand and cry thee to me." 
 
 Because we thus envisage the invisible past, the in- 
 calculable future, somewhat as God must see the whole 
 life of the world, the physical symbols of farewell contain 
 in their union a myriad of meanings, hopes, memo- 
 ries, and pledges to the unborn. Like the most inti- 
 mate physical union of man and woman, the hand- 
 grasp should set creative forces working through us and 
 be consecrated in them. Live and ardent people always 
 strike fire out of each other like flint and steel. Your 
 best friend strikes thoughts and deeds out of you that 
 f'you never knew were in you, and that truly were not 
 full formed in you till your friend woke them to life. 
 ^The need of them, the whisper of their coming, was 
 there, but it took both o f you fully to create them .
 
 192 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 It is through the symbolism of the physical acts such 
 as meeting, parting, or waiting upon one another's 
 physical wants that one understands the deeper signifi- 
 cance of conjugal affection. Many resent the physical 
 intimacies of love, because they take them literally, 
 not symbolically; looking straight at them instead of 
 through them. Nothing can bear that direct, passive 
 stare and retain its sacredness. Viewed In hard literal- 
 ness what is more ludicrous than the ceremony of rais- 
 ing one's hat to a lady, what is more worthless than a 
 dirty greenback ? Yet without a moment's hesitation 
 we go behind the surface appearance of these symbols. 
 In them, matter and its meaning, body and spirit, are 
 fused into harmony as they should be, and as they are 
 in the following words written by one of my dearest 
 friends to one of hers: — 
 
 "I want to tell you very boisterously and worship- 
 fully how much I love you. I also want not to tell you 
 at all, but to do something for you with my hands and 
 feet, to make your bed, to pick lavender pine-cones for 
 you, to do something you would never know that I had 
 done. For of the many ways of love, one of the dearest 
 is to serve in silence, to celebrate and not be found 
 out. Mothering is a great business on these lines. The 
 babies never guess or care how many myriad thoughts 
 of love go into bed-making, or hair-brushing." 
 
 In this letter the joy of giving expression to love 
 in physical service is mingled with the exultant aware- 
 ness of a purifying secrecy, which banishes the thought
 
 SYMBOLISM IN LOVE 193 
 
 of reward. But her joy in the expression of love "with 
 my hands and feet" is just now my special interest, 
 because it is an example of that *' unity of soul and 
 sense" in love which symbolism makes possible. 
 
 Though soul and sense belong together, they have 
 a constant tendency to split apart, in work, play, 
 and worship as well as in love. Work splits into physi- 
 cal drudgery on the one side and unpractical scheming 
 on the other. Thus we breed anaemic "thinkers" who 
 accomplish nothing, and submerged laborers who put 
 no soul into their work because they get no freedom 
 out of it. 
 
 Play and art are always in danger of suffering a simi- 
 lar schism; music without expression, pictures that are 
 all technique, exemplify the fate of sense divorced from 
 spirit in the field of art. When shapeless "Spirit" tries 
 to live without body, we are afflicted by the perform- 
 ance of amateurs who neither learn nor inherit their 
 art, — but try to sing without breathing and to draw 
 without outlines. 
 
 In love the same split produces, as we know so well, 
 a blind and destructive passion which bums itself out 
 without vision of individuality. But on the other side 
 of the chasm we find a corresponding monstrosity often 
 mistaken for virtue, a sterile and frigid aloofness that 
 shudders at loud-voiced enthusiasm and is insuscep- 
 tible to physical charm. It is as bad to be dried up as 
 to be burned up, but worse still is to live in perpetual 
 winter because we were bom withered. Such desola-
 
 194 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 tion is no ground for blame; like any other inborn 
 deformity, it deserves only our pity. But it never de- 
 serves praise or helps us to defend a standard of noble 
 love. For love, like all that mirrors divinity, must be 
 incarnate. 
 
 The "puritanical" reticence about the body is right 
 enough if we are equally reticent about the disembodied 
 soul, and refuse to describe or cultivate either body or 
 soul save in terms of the other. We are often told that 
 we should "teach" the sacredness of the body. Yes, 
 but the body is most sacred when most forgotten in 
 the absorption of hard work or keen sport, in the en- 
 thusiasm of dancing, painting, singing, oratory, love, 
 or worship. So it is with the soul. Taken literally 
 "mental culture" seems to me as bad as "physical 
 culture" wherewith the devilish split of body and soul 
 has invaded the domain of education. To think about 
 one's body or one's soul, to love with one's body or 
 one's soul, is to paralyze the best activities of both. 
 The foreground of consciousness should never be lit- 
 tered up with such fragments of a dismembered self. 
 We want to devote the whole of ourselves to our job, 
 to our family and friends,to nature, to play, to beauty, 
 and to God. 
 
 In the industrial world the division of labor and the 
 necessity of doing one thing at a time splits us up into 
 woefully small and centrifugal units. This we cannot 
 altogether avoid, but we must fiercely insist that each 
 of these units shall be a fragment of soul incarnatet
 
 SYMBOLISM IN LOVE 195 
 
 never an arid wisp of disembodied soul or a shapeless 
 lump of flesh. If we can prevent that diabolic schism 
 we shall never be crushed by the dead weight of drudg- 
 ery, or enervated by fruitless and unchristian attempts 
 to disembody our meanings or to realize them without 
 the travail of incarnation. 
 
 So far as we succeed in this attempt we keep sym- 
 bolism alive in every action. When we build our houses 
 and sweep our offices, clothe and feed our children, we 
 look through these acts to a deeper significance behind 
 them. We do them in the name of the Highest that we 
 know, — be it business, family, nation, or God. We feel 
 a deeper respect for the material, greater willingness to 
 study its texture and detail, because we believe that it 
 stands for infinitely more than appears. 
 
 If I have conveyed anything of the sacredness of the 
 physical expression of love, it will now be obvious why 
 we shudder at its desecration. The greater the sym- 
 bol the more horrible is its perversion. In **The Ring 
 and the Book " Browning makes us feel the snaky loath- 
 someness of Guido's crime because it concealed itself 
 beneath a priestly robe. The crime was terrible 
 enough in itself, but far more revolting because per- 
 petrated by a priest, who used the great offices of the 
 Church for mercenary and sensual ends. Was not 
 Judas's kiss of betrayal the most awful act in history 
 because it was through this sacred symbol of love that 
 his treachery was consummated? So it is with that 
 greatest disgrace in modern civilization, prostitution.
 
 196 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 It is not chiefly because of the physical miseries that 
 may (or may not) follow in its train. It is because of 
 the holiness of that great physical symbol which it 
 drags in the mire, the misdirection of a world-force that 
 ought to mean the creation or re-creation of all that is 
 best in life. 
 
 Love is consecrated not only by its purity from for- 
 eign admixtures, but by taking up into itself the best 
 life of elemental nature, knowledge, art, play, patriot- 
 ism, and the devoted search for truth. These vivid 
 spirits permeate love, and revive it by the infusion of 
 their own virtues. When, moreover, the whole family of 
 human affections and the Infinite Love which contains 
 them are represented in each of the separate affections, 
 then each of them is consecrated by the strength and 
 tenderness of all. When through symbolism we "hold 
 infinity in the palm of our hand*' (or our hand-clasp) 
 and *' eternity in an hour," we are at the altar o/ 
 consecration. 
 
 When we make a dead failure of a living affection, 
 we secularize it. Sometimes we begin the day with a dis* 
 aster of this kind. Our "Good-morning" is as secular 
 as a snore. We come downstairs half awake, our lipf 
 so sleepy that they scarcely move, our minds still 
 torpid and vague. We shuffle into the breakfast-room 
 and slide into a chair. Physically, mentally, spiritually, 
 we have scarcely been penetrated by personality. 
 Far within us its fires burn at a point near to extinctioa
 
 SYMBOLISM IN LOVE 197 
 
 But there is another and still worse element of secu- 
 larity in our greeting. We scarcely notice who it is we 
 greet. The personality that should exhilarate us is for 
 the time veiled by familiarity. So often we have greeted 
 just this comrade at breakfast that to-day the greeting 
 has become automatic. The spirit has gone out of it. 
 Were a stranger at the table, perhaps we might be 
 aroused. A new personality might bring us to our 
 senses like a dash of cold water. But as it is, our dull 
 eyes merely record the outlines and colors of the 
 person before us, like a savage who sees only black and 
 white scratches in a piece of manuscript. 
 
 When we are at our best, a flood of life pours itself 
 out in the simple old words, "Good-morning," — a 
 flood of meaning which strains to express itself in a 
 thousand ways, but has to be content with verbal sym- 
 bols. Our physical and vital energies, our love, our 
 playfulness, our stores of gratitude for the world's past 
 gifts, all that is calling us toward the future, comes 
 rushing out in the time-mellowed greeting. The depths 
 of us, the concentrated and imprisoned energy of our 
 inmost life call across the distance to the unseen 
 depths of our fellow. 
 
 'Through the external' and symbolic, the invisible 
 
 depths of any friend loom up, not only in moments of 
 
 enthusiasm, but whenever we are clearly aware of his 
 
 individuality. "Love," G. B. Shaw somewhere says,^ 
 
 **i^^ gross -exaggeration of the difference between 
 
 * Quoted by Ernest Jones, M.D., Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 
 19", p. 235. ..
 
 198 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 one person and all the rest." Translated from pagan 
 into Christian terms this means that in love we call 
 out to what is unique and individual iiiMDur^friend and 
 therefore infinitely different from all other beings. 
 His individuality is always staring us in the face, but 
 we wake up to it only when we love him. Others may 
 not see it. That is their misfortune. 
 
 In our use of symbols and in our effort to penetrate 
 through them to what is lovable, we must give every 
 one credit for his own type of symbol and his own 
 fashion of consecrating it through affection. The rail- 
 road magnate gazing at a mountain-side, blasted and 
 seared by the clearings which his engines have found 
 necessary, sees there the vision and symbol of the great 
 railroa^d which is to be built. That is his child. He is 
 blind to the mere external effects that to you and me 
 are secular and shocking, the scarred and denuded 
 hillside, the splendid trees and cliffs torn from their 
 places. For the hopes and visions of the future, his 
 dreams and plans of service, center in this spot. Their 
 light illuminates the place for him. He sees it with no 
 such alien and disillusioned eyes as ours, and we must 
 put ourselves in his place, even though we may think 
 that he has chosen the object of his affection strangely. 
 
 We should be even more modest when we judge the 
 historic symbols of the Church. If we can take the 
 Sacrament of the Lord's Supper as an act of consecra- 
 tion, it is because deep calls unto deep. We bring to it 
 our best store of thankfulness, of reminiscence, and
 
 SYMBOLISM IN LOVE 199 
 
 communion with the personality of Christ. Through 
 the symbolic elements, and in the service, we feel the 
 light and heat of Christ's personality more vividly 
 than at other times. Yet I remember that, looking on 
 this ceremony as a child, I found it not only devoid of 
 anything to excite my reverence, but prone to drag 
 me below my normal level. Nothing can constrain us 
 to symbolism. We may be bored or amused or even 
 disgusted by it. Nothing can force us to find a thing 
 sacred ; nothing can remain secular if we determine to 
 make it sacred. 
 
 Any unconsecrated affection, any infatuation, jeal- 
 ousy, or nagging habit, any horror such as prostitu- 
 tion or careless excess within marriage, errs through a 
 low tone of personal energy, a feeble, drifting, slavish 
 attitude, or, on the other hand, through an impersonal 
 gaze. It sees a thing, a case, a machine, where it ought 
 to see an infinitely valuable person. 
 
 A symbolic deed of love is mystical, not because it 
 is vague, but because of the richness of meaning packed 
 into one narrow act.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 LOYALTY IN LOVE 
 
 Writing of love and marriage in " Virginihus Puer- 
 isgue'' Stevenson says: "I hate questioners and ques- 
 tions. * Is it still the same between us ? * Why, how can it 
 be ? It is eternally different and yet you are still the 
 friend of my heart. Do you understand me ? God knows ; 
 I should think it highly improbable." 
 
 Stevenson hated such questions because he found it 
 impossible to answer them truly. But I wager that he 
 hated them also because of their dearth of venture and 
 generosity. Such a timid questioner, anxiously scan- 
 ning the weather-gauge of affection, finds it steadily 
 falling toward zero. Under such observation no love 
 can grow or flourish. We need not contribute all the 
 warmth without waiting to be invited, but surely we 
 must contribute some of it. 
 
 I lived for a time some years ago in a community 
 whose members seemed to me more tempest- tossed and 
 unhappy than any human beings I have ever known. 
 They were so "stupid in the affections" that they had 
 never learned the most elementary lesson about human 
 relationships, — that a passive attitude never works. 
 Two of them happened to notice that they felt fond 
 of each other; they married. Shortly afterward they 
 observed no particular fondness for each other, and
 
 LOYALTY IN LOVE 201 
 
 therefore separated. The winds of feeling blew them 
 now together, now apart. Mated or severed, they 
 were quite helpless and apparently quite unaware 
 that they could do anything to help themselves or to 
 maintain any single direction among the veering cur- 
 rents of feeling. 
 
 Probably every one of them knew that if he con- 
 sulted his feelings each morning as to whether he should 
 wash his face or not, he would find the forces of desire 
 often at the zero point or on the negative side of the 
 scale. But being moderns they probably pay no atten- 
 tion to their feelings as regards so important a matter 
 as cleanliness! In all practical affairs (among which 
 the average American does not include affection) we 
 know that loyal adherence to one's original intention, 
 however one happens to feel, is one of the greatest 
 forces that make for success. Passivity, reliance on the 
 moment's whim, literalism in reading the face of the 
 future or of the present, is fatal to happiness and to 
 success. No business venture and no human creature 
 can bear the passive stare of the utterly disengaged 
 soul. 
 
 Chesterton reminds us that if we face man with the 
 cold and fishy eye of science, we cannot overlook the 
 ludicrous and damning fact that he has two legs. To 
 see him waddling over the ground between these two 
 points of support is more than any one could bear 
 with composure did he not view the apparition with 
 a gaze tempered by affection, good nature, and faith.
 
 202 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 Yet, as he tells us, there is one still more unforgivable 
 fact about man when we view him with the literal eye. 
 How can one ever again view with favor, still less with 
 love, a being whom one has actually caught in the act 
 of making an opening in his face into which he then 
 puts portions of the outer world? 
 
 The point of these illustrations is this. Without 
 commitment, faith, the power to distinguish and disre- 
 gard what is unessential, there is no stability in any 
 human relation. It takes but little experience to show 
 us that no human being is merely what he is seen to be 
 at any one moment. He can no more display himself 
 in a single act or a single year than a musical theme 
 can be expressed in one of its notes. A musical theme is 
 all that it can become before the desire which launched 
 it is slaked. So a human being is in truth all that he 
 has been and can become, not because he now embodies 
 it, but because that vast arc is the only sufficient 
 explanation of his behavior, the only working basis for 
 affection. 
 
 But this attainable personality he certainly will not 
 attain without your help. His fate is determined in part 
 by what you do about it, and the most important thing 
 that you can do is to expect of him always a little more 
 than you can see, projecting your vision toward the 
 unseen depths of his soul, not arbitrarily, but in the 
 direction suggested by what he has already done. 
 
 This creative act of loyalty as it overcomes another's 
 diffidence is not unlike a football team ** getting the
 
 LOYALTY IN LOVE 203 
 
 jump on*' its opponents. The opposing teams face 
 each other in the rush line. The game, pausing after 
 one of its "downs,*' is renewed. Each side tries to push 
 the other backward. But it is not chiefly a predom- 
 inance in weight or in strength that determines which 
 line shall make an advance, which shall yield. It is 
 rather a question of alertness. One of the teams will 
 *'get the jump on" the other by being the first to lunge 
 forward. Whoever succeeds in preempting this initial 
 ictus takes the other slightly at a disadvantage and 
 puts himself into a correspondingly stronger position. 
 The opponent's disadvantage still further weakens his 
 opposition and lets the successful team advance with 
 increased momentum. 
 
 You can "get the jump on" another's diffidence if 
 you shoot into his soul a message of welcome, of encour- 
 agement, of faith in his power to do something better 
 than he has yet done. You do not wait for him to show 
 his best. Your impulse of welcome breaks down his 
 reserve, melts his shyness, and brings him nearer to the 
 thing that you expect of him. This is mirrored in his 
 face. You see it, and your original faith is reinforced. 
 You follow up the trail of sparks which you have spied 
 within him ; the spirit and exuberance of your quest 
 redoubling in him the fire which you seek. 
 
 No one can set a limit to this wonderful give-and- 
 take, as the lightning of two souls leaps back and forth. 
 Yet it is no mystical or unusual affair. Emerson re- 
 ferred to something of the kindwhen he said: " I have
 
 204 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 heard with admiring submission the experience of the 
 lady who declared that the sense of being well-dressed 
 gives a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion is 
 powerless to bestow ! " ^ 
 
 Mr. Slack, a timid citizen, emerges from his door 
 unusually well-dressed and thereby "gets the jump 
 on" his passing friend Bouncer. The good impression 
 made upon Bouncer is written in his face and instantly 
 makes him more attractive and stimulating to Slack 
 who brightens and responds by giving something bet- 
 ter than his ordinary pale gruel of talk; a delightful ex- 
 change is set in oscillation ; the day becomes brighter 
 and the two march downtown to business in a path of 
 glory. 
 
 This process of "getting the jump on" any one is 
 an expression in modern slang of a spiritual truth which 
 sustains the life of industry, invigorates science as well 
 as religion, and is the essence of psycho- therapeutic 
 "suggestion." 
 
 A fine example of this occurs in Shakespeare's 
 " Henry V." The king is before Harfleur. His soldiers 
 lean on their scaling-ladders, taking breath in a pause 
 of the fight. By all they hold sacred in home and coun- 
 try Henry urges them once more to the attack. Then 
 his creative faith breaks loose : — 
 
 **I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, 
 Straining upon the start. The game's afoot; 
 Follow your spirit: and, upon this charge, 
 Cry — God for Harry! England! and Saint George! " 
 
 * R. W. Emerson, Letters and Social Aims. Essay on "Social Aims.**
 
 LOYALTY IN LOVE 205 
 
 He saw them straining, — yes, with the eye of faith. 
 They tugged Hke greyhounds in the slips, — especially 
 after he had recognized their eagerness. He brought to 
 birth in them more spirit than had otherwise been 
 born, and they in turn brought to his lips, as he faced 
 them, the very nobility of his words. A disloyal or 
 uninterested spectator would have seen merely a crowd 
 of dirty, sweaty soldiers. King Henry saw that, too. 
 But within the gross total of what he saw he selected and 
 summoned forth what most belonged to him and to them: 
 — their germinating souls, their destiny, the courage 
 which they had when he believed in it, not otherwise. 
 
 Thus the best of one's loyalties, those to vocation 
 and to one's mate, begin with a choice. With this 
 profession, with this person we determine to unite our 
 forces. But if we are to keep these pledges and preserve 
 the spirit of youth, the initial choice must be renewed 
 again and again. After choosing the physician's calling, 
 I have still to determine what sort of physician and finally 
 what particular physician I shall be. Within the broad 
 field of medical service I must select the kind of work 
 (research, teaching, public health, surgery, midwifery, 
 general practice) which is best suited to me and seems 
 most needed at the present time. Then within that field 
 I must find some particular path, some combination 
 of fnethods and manners which are individual and pro- 
 gressive. Year by year our initial choice is thus revived 
 and made more sharply distinctive. Success and hap- 
 piness demand that it shall be so.
 
 206 V%^HAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 It IS the same in marriage or in friendship. Again 
 and again we repeat and re-form our original choice. 
 Within the domain of our friend's life we find a certain 
 corner (his recreation, perhaps) where we can contrib- 
 ute something to enrich the friendship. There are other 
 parts — say his family life — where with our present ig- 
 norance we are in the way. We choose and cultivate the 
 parts that we are fit for, leaving the rest for the present 
 undisturbed. Next year, when we come to choose again, 
 we may be able to direct our efforts more effectively. 
 Here we can learn ; there we are baffled. Here we are inr 
 full sympathy ; there we are in the dark. We select and 
 select again, as often as a wave of enlightenment 
 strikes us. 
 
 But selection goes further still. There are double 
 and triple meanings in many of your friend's re^ 
 marks. You can make a sentence or a person mean 
 different things by the emphasis you put on selected 
 bits. Then, if you are tactful, you pick out and answer 
 the meaning most in harmony with the whole texture 
 of your friendship; the other meanings you ignore. 
 I do not mean anything subtle. A woman hears in her 
 husband's greeting at night fatigue, anxiety, a shade of 
 irritability, and a touch of playfulness. She ignores all 
 but the playfulness, and by encouraging that healing 
 element helps him to recover his balance. Just so she 
 starves out some of her child's faults by choosing to 
 ignore them and to cultivate his best. 
 
 You can be willful and cruel instead of beneficial in
 
 LOYALTY IN LOVE 207 
 
 this selection, or in all innocence you may go clean 
 astray, but you cannot escape the necessity of choice 
 by remaining passive, for even passivity is never neu- 
 tral. It reinforces some element in your friend's char- 
 acter. If you decline to choose, the wheel of chance 
 makes the selection for you. 
 
 An old Scotch phrase describes a lively companion 
 as ''good at the uptake.'* He is responsive, always 
 ready to help out, always keen for the game. If he 
 pauses it is but to make sure what game it is. On 
 such responsiveness friendship thrives. When we ask 
 a friend for the loan of his cloak, he is swift to strip off 
 his coat also. When we ask for advice he gives us also 
 sympathy and his purse. Later as an historian he may 
 place and judge us, but now and as a man of action 
 your friend takes his chances and contributes to fate 
 his best strength. 
 
 To meet our opportunity as Newton met the falling 
 apple, to greet our friend as the "wasteful woman" 
 greeted Jesus when she poured out the box of precious 
 ointment (and was chidden by the onlookers for doing 
 so much more than was demanded) — this is the way 
 not only to friendship, success, and health, but to orig- 
 inality and creative power. It is when we "greet the 
 unseen with a cheer," then, that we and our opportun- 
 ity enter into each other and of our union something 
 new is born. 
 
 In love, as in work and in play, give-and-take is the
 
 208 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 great source of novelty, of creativeness, and so of 
 miracle. Therefore between friends there should grow 
 up a child, a new truth and vision sprung from both. 
 This miracle of sprouting friendship and truth is not 
 best described as "giving " or "getting." It buds while 
 we talk or merely sit together, fruit of our lives like 
 other children, common delight to all, gift of God to 
 all. Each of us contributes something ; God over our 
 shoulders contributes far more, which neither of us is 
 conscious of giving but each of receiving. 
 
 Friends always face the unseen child of their friend- 
 ship, if they are faithful to their unspoken oath. Faith- 
 fulness to this new child should guide every moment, 
 every sentence. In every hearty hand-clasp, in every 
 flash of eye to eye, something new is created. As you 
 speak to a responsive friend you feel him speaking 
 through your surprised lips. Then your words live 
 and fit the occasion. You try eagerly to thank your 
 friend for giving you such thoughts to utter. But it is 
 rather God's bounty — his perpetual miracle of new 
 life sprung up between two lives — that deserves our 
 gratitude. 
 
 For our "child" and in his name we can accept 
 laudation without shame or self-consciousness just 
 as we welcome money for precious ends. For the 
 work, or the new insight which we create . together, 
 we can take — nay, demand — " favors" which mod- 
 esty would prevent our taking for our naked self, 
 unclothed by the loyalties which dignify our clay. We
 
 LOYALTY IN LOVE 209 
 
 can accept money, time, love in quite an amazing 
 way, provided it is for the palace we are building. For 
 this palace is one not built with hands, — eternal in 
 the heavens.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 IMPERSONALITY IN LOVE 
 
 One of the most sacred things about human ties is 
 this, that in any intimate and sincere affection you 
 discover what is unique and, choosing it out of all the 
 world, unite yourself with it. To you if you love your 
 father there is literally no one else like him on earth. 
 To outsiders he looks much like the rest of mankind ; 
 not so to you. It is true that you did not choose your 
 parents, yet much that is most precious in your family 
 tie is of your own making. Your own family life you 
 have helped to build up ; the family jokes and customs, 
 the pet words, tones, and gestures, are sacred to you 
 in part because you have helped to create them, by 
 what you have encouraged and what you have dis- 
 couraged. 
 
 1 The more durable relationships are moulded and 
 perfected by a multitude of distinctions. If these dis- 
 tinctions are blurred, the love within us that should go 
 to build up a family life, a center for our other activi- 
 ties, may burst its proper channels as electricity darts 
 from the overcharged wire, destroying itself and other 
 lives outside. When marriage is late or unhappy, be- 
 cause of poverty, because people cannot find their 
 mates, or for less worthy reasons, love becomes imper- 
 sonal, a blind, gigantic world-energy, hardly a blessing,
 
 IMPERSONALITY IN LOVE 211 
 
 easily a curse. When it fails to build up a home or a 
 happiness, it may ennoble us like any other lost cause; 
 failing that, it may drag us lower than the beast. 
 
 In perverted forms love falls from the spiritual 
 heights of choice and mutual understanding, and is 
 swept into a current where there are no distinctions 
 between right and wrong, between higher and lower, 
 between person and person, or between person and 
 thing. The essential shame of perverted affection is its 
 impersonality. It is so impartial that almost anything 
 will serve its purpose. Losing the miraculous clear- 
 sightedness of loyal love, we follow the blind vague urg- 
 ings of a force that stupefies and debases us until we 
 bump up against a human being as though he were a 
 post. Persons are treated like machines. Indeed, a 
 clever machine might do as well. 
 . If I am right in charging up the sins of the flesh to 
 the score of impersonality, the scope of our campaigns 
 against them must be widened and the tone of our just 
 condemnations must be changed. In a recent book 
 called *' Hygiene and Morality " (though it deals almost 
 wholly with disease and immorality), the great power 
 of the truth is weakened by a bitterness which stimu- 
 lates that most disastrous of all class antagonisms, the 
 antsigonism of all women against all men. 
 
 Such bitterness would be impossible if we realized 
 that the essence of the sin against which we fight is 
 impersonality, the sin of treating a person as less than a 
 person. For is not that a sin of which we all are guilty?
 
 212 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 Is there one of us who does not sometimes treat a peA 
 son like a machine? Do we always think of the rail- 
 road conductor as more than a machine for taking 
 tickets? Do we not often treat our fellow-creatures like 
 masks or flat cards without substance and personality? 
 I have been striving for years to overcome in myself 
 and in my medical fellows the stupid professional 
 habit of treating a person as a **case/* or a walking 
 disease. But the habit of impersonality persists like 
 original sin in myriad forms and unexpected ways. In 
 law courts we treat a human being as a "prisoner at 
 the bar," as the ''plaintiff" or "defendant," to the 
 exclusion of the fact that he is as real and sensitive 
 as ourselves. 
 
 I often hear my faculty colleagues talk with similar 
 impersonality about "the student," his failings and 
 malefactions. But few of the teachers who speak in 
 this way know their students even by name. They are 
 further still from grasping the personalities which make 
 up their classes. Yet merely from the point of view of 
 success in teaching, it is folly not to know those whom 
 we are trying to teach. I have often found that after a 
 man has given me the opportunity to learn something 
 of his personal life, his home and family, his hopes and 
 forebodings, he begins to do better work in class. Such 
 improvement goes to show that we never get the best 
 out of people so long as we treat them as a class, ignor- 
 ing the unique interest and value of each individual. 
 Love at its best is a command as well as a desire and an
 
 IMPERSONALITY IN LOVE 213 
 
 intimacy. Its law reads, "Find and create a new per- 
 sonality in so far as loyalty to your previous pledges 
 and insights allows you." 
 
 If your love is pledged to one God, it is sacrilege to 
 worship others. If you have sworn fealty to one coun- 
 try, it is treason to work against it in the interests of 
 another. If you commit yourself to the faith of Christ, 
 you cannot experiment with teachings which contra- 
 dict it, unless you first renounce your faith. You hate 
 to see a dilettante meander from flower to flower of 
 literature, or friendship, because you know that such 
 a life is full of broken pledges and is falling apart from 
 the rottenness of its own structure. 
 
 But in many of our most poignant experiences we 
 seem to love what is impersonal, and to make no 
 pledges of loyalty. When a man drinks his wine or 
 jumps into a mountain stream for pleasure, we do not 
 reproach him with unfaithfulness or brutality. Some 
 people certainly love animals as much as they do 
 human beings. I think Emerson preferred companion- 
 ship with trees, flowers, brooks, and skies to the com- 
 pany of men and women. Many a musician loves 
 music, many a poet loves ** inanimate'* nature as pas- 
 sionately as he is capable of loving any being. Yet 
 these aifections seem to involve no loyalty. We turn 
 from one to another in a way that would be villainous 
 if we were dealing with persons. 
 
 Love of food and warmth, of reading and sewing, 
 adventure and research, love of beauty, — these may
 
 214 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 be very impersonal and lukewarm emotions in some 
 of us, yet no cooler than our love of persons. From 
 birth to death, tepid may be the hottest one knows 
 in human relation, and there is no standard of normal 
 temperature in affection. Neither is there any stand- 
 ard for the degree of personality which we should 
 recognize in our fellow men. Most of us can be justly 
 blamed, when we stumble over a fellow creature as if 
 he (or she) were a chair — most of us, but not all. Age 
 makes a difference. 
 
 On a crowded sidewalk of the tenement district have 
 you never felt a baby wandering between your legs and 
 fending you off with its hands precisely as if you were 
 a tree? A few years later he will duck and dodge around 
 your person in the heat of an exciting pursuit with just 
 as little realization of your august and delicate soul. 
 Such impersonality is normal enough in babyhood. But 
 some of us grow long and wide, put on the dress and 
 occupation of adults, and are piloted about the streets 
 without ever ceasing to be babies at heart, — without 
 ever acquiring the heart that recognizes a person as a 
 person. More often we get over the baby's absent- 
 mindedness, but never grow beyond, say, the ten-year- 
 old's or the adolescent's limited sense of individuality. 
 
 Swedenborg expresses this by saying that, in its 
 early and elemental forms, our love is attracted by 
 seXy not yet by one of the sex. Even in babyhood some 
 girls show a decided preference for men. Love of a 
 whole sex is already awake in them, but they are rarely
 
 IMPERSONALITY IN LOVE 215 
 
 devoted to one man to the exclusion of all others. A 
 newcomer is especially welcomed. This means that their 
 love is at first general and vague, though later it will 
 attach itself to one individual and cleave to him, for- 
 saking all others. This lesson we sometimes fail to 
 learn. We then remain impersonal and desire the emo- 
 tions of love, as many people desire the emotions of 
 music, without any awareness of an individual, or of 
 the meaning of the piece. To yield to such a desire is 
 villainy in case we really know better (as we usually 
 do), but not otherwise. When we listen to good music 
 we are actually listening to the outpourings of the 
 composer's heart. He is speaking to us earnestly and 
 intensely and we are listening to him, — not to it. And 
 yet it is often no crime to drink in music merely as 
 pleasure; indeed, for most people it cannot be a crime 
 because they know no better. But it is always a ghastly 
 mistake, for it is treating music, which is a bit of a 
 person's life, as a means of sensual gratification. 
 
 Do not misunderstand me. I condemn the act of 
 man or woman who, knowing the nature of the act, 
 uses another as a means of pleasure. But I insist that 
 there are some who do not know the nature of their 
 acts, loose livers who have no more idea that they are 
 dealing with immortal souls than most of us have 
 when we drink in an artist's music merely for our 
 pleasure. Ignorance is often their curse. Sin there 
 may be, but if so, it is the sin of impersonality and of 
 uentimentalism.
 
 2i6 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 For the rake is a sentimentalist, that is, he loves emo* 
 tion for its own sake. He will take or buy emotion from 
 many, just as a girl may dissipate her energies in a 
 multitude of suitors or of novels, sucking in the enjoy- 
 ment for its own sake without answering by word or 
 deed, without learning anything or building anything 
 out of the experience. Her mind is too feeble to recog- 
 nize individuality and to treat it accordingly. Let us 
 blame her as we blame the ignorant sexual offender. 
 For if we exclude (as in some cases we can) the evils of 
 disease, alcoholism, slavery, secrecy, and violation of 
 marriage vows, the curse of prostitution is this: It in- 
 volves degradation because it treats life as less than 
 life. That is a grievous error, but one of which every 
 one of us is guilty in some degree. 
 
 To recognize the universality of the sin which we are 
 discussing makes us condemn ourselves enough and 
 others enough, but no one too much. It is essentially 
 the same sin which we meet in many forms : in official 
 insolence, in professional blindness to the person be- 
 hind the medical or legal case, in heartless gossip, flir- 
 tation, prostitution. 
 
 Have I been justified in using the sacred word 
 "love" so broadly as to include sex-relations outside 
 marriage? It is easier and cheaper to draw a sharp dis- 
 tinction between love and the more elemental sex- 
 relations which we condemn as merely *' physical" or 
 brutal. But I believe that the use of these distinctions
 
 IMPERSONALITY IN LOVE 217 
 
 often does harm. To condemn even the most imper- 
 sonal and momentary attraction as "merely physical" 
 is like calling a man a mere brute or a child a mere 
 blockhead. The name of the act tends to brand itself 
 on the person, and to degrade him at a time when he 
 most needs help. 
 
 Call a dog a bad name and hang him. Throw mud 
 enough and some of it will stick. The more degraded 
 a man is the more he is hurt by our contempt. But in 
 their ordinary context ** merely physical" or "mere 
 lust" are words of contempt, not of scientific descrip- 
 tion. To condemn any conscious human act by calling 
 it "merely physical" is not only bad psychology; it is 
 an attempt to push a living act out among the dead, 
 and the attempt may succeed. It is like cutting an ac- 
 quaintance or disdaining a poor relation. Just when 
 an act is most in need of improvement, we damn it 
 with a phrase. Just when a traveler is most dreadfully 
 astray from his road, we further dishearten him by 
 telling him that he has no road. 
 
 In the less personal types of love, falsely called "phys- 
 ical,*' an elemental impulse, almost blind to the sacred 
 meaning of its trend, is groping its way along. We 
 should help it to find its goal, instead of branding it as 
 forever outcast. If I think of my sight and my hearing 
 as "merely physical," or if I am convinced that I am 
 tone-deaf and color-blind, in either event no spiritual 
 comprehension of music and color is possible for me, 
 I can only give up trying.
 
 2i8 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 Those who are color-blind and tone-deaf in their 
 affections are rare. They include among others the 
 * * moral imbeciles ' * of the courts. If we have accurately 
 named them, they cannot do right or wrong, and can- 
 not be hurt or helped whatever term we apply to them. 
 But in the vast majority of instances we apply these 
 terms with reproach and condemnation. First we sepa- 
 rate body and soul by an impassable chasm; then we 
 attempt to spiritualize and subdue the body. A hun- 
 dred recent books on '*sex hygiene" tell us that we 
 should teach the sacredness of the body and of sex. But 
 the instant we have branded love as ''body" or as 
 "sex," we have begun to deprive it of sacredness. For 
 the sacredness of love comes from choice, and a "body " 
 cannot choose. The sacredness of love springs from 
 enthusiasm and self -direction such as no "body" 
 possesses. 
 
 It is with an instinct that we are dealing, and the 
 sacredness of an instinct is developed by showing its 
 profound though vague spirituality. The lower can 
 be rationally governed by the higher only if they share 
 a common nature. Passion can be mastered only by 
 an intenser passion, not by any power that stands aloof 
 and contemptuously denies its kinship. Personality 
 is what we want in love, because personality is always 
 both physical and spiritual. In the impersonal, one of 
 these elements often seems to get lost, though it is 
 never gone beyond recovery.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 INTEGRITY IN LOVE 
 
 Personal love begins with a choice and a pledge. It 
 lives on through daily reincarnations of that original 
 choice in finer discriminations. It is debased whenever 
 it becomes impersonal or passive. 
 
 I have still two points to enlarge upon: first, the 
 integrity of love; and second, its centralization. 
 
 Integrity^ whether in love, athletics, or debate, 
 means that one's personality is well knit, cleanly ar* 
 ticulated, "all there" when needed. 
 
 "Nur wo du bist sei Alles, 
 Immer kindlich. 
 So bist du Alles, 
 Bist uniiberwindlich." 
 
 {Goelhe.) 
 
 The opposite of an integrated personality is an im- 
 personal "loose-liver," and his sin is not only in his 
 impersonality (just dwelt upon), but in his looseness. 
 This looseness is like our dawdling days, our shapeless, 
 plagiarizing or windy speech (which hits all around the 
 mark like a drunken carpenter), our slack-minded 
 skimming of newspapers, our vague complaisant purr- 
 ing 'before a sunset or a symphony. Vagueness and 
 diffuseness in love are bad, among other reasons, be- 
 cause they disintegrate personality. Life literally goes 
 to pieces. The scenes and acts of its drama express no
 
 220 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 plan, have no unity. The loose-liver drifts into an 
 amour and out of it as drunkards drift down a street 
 of theaters, lurching into one playhouse after another, 
 without comprehension of their own lives or of the 
 spectacle before them. The loose-liver wants the emo- 
 tion for its own sake without relation to any loyal plan 
 of life. This is bad in sexual relations outside marriage. 
 It is just as bad inside marriage. It is shamefully com- 
 mon in our relations to friends and to art. 
 
 Personality, as contrasted both with loose-living 
 and with an official and business-like way of behaving, 
 is a fine art. To be a person, not an automaton, and 
 to treat others as persons, not as stuffed images, is a 
 task like that of commanding an army. We need to 
 see what is now and for the first time before our eyes. 
 We want to know exactly what we are about. If our 
 love declines from integrity into infatuation or jeal- 
 ousy, we are drifting in the trough of the sea. 
 
 Such a declension takes many forms. A familiar 
 type of it often causes undue alarm. When women 
 lose control of their affections for other women, the 
 life-giving force that makes friendship great, loses its 
 guide and becomes infatuation. The evil of such 
 "crushes" or infatuations is not that some morbid 
 and evil element called ''sex" has suddenly entered 
 the relation, but simply that the people have lost their 
 heads. They forget their other interests and duties; 
 they neglect their studies, their friends, and their 
 health. They get morbid and sentimental, self-cen^
 
 INTEGRITY IN LOVE 221 
 
 tered and soft. They are so near one another that they 
 cannot see their way. They can no longer choose at 
 all, for infatuation is idolatry, a form of slavery. 
 
 The evil of infatuation or idolatry takes the form of 
 jealousy when we are so near a person that we cannot 
 see his background or our own. If you are infatuated, 
 you want a person all to yourself; then jealousy is 
 inevitable. The world's claim, the claim of other 
 friends, is forgotten. You are so blind, so deaf that 
 you want to own another person. But not even in the 
 closest love of man and woman is there any excuse for 
 forgetting that they belong also to the world and are 
 here to do its work. 
 
 Jealousy and idolatry are opposite perversions. In 
 jealousy you want to keep a person wholly to yourself. 
 In idolatry you want to give yourself wholly to a per- 
 son. These opposites may be combined. Idolatry may 
 take the form of jealousy. But whether simple or com- 
 plex, the diagnosis of the trouble is essentially the 
 same. Choice, orientation, self-guidance are in abey- 
 ance. The personality has become split into conflict- 
 ing parties and now one of these, now another enslaves 
 the rest. Reason — that greatly maligned habit — is 
 now precisely what we want. Reason cannot cure many 
 of the diseases to which love is subject, but when our 
 integrity is split apart, when we have lost our way and 
 are wandering at random, common sense, the matter- 
 of-fact spirit, the ability to reason things out, is the ob- 
 vious remedy and in my experience efficient.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 RETICENCE, MODESTY, CHASTITY 
 
 In the attempt to write about love, I am rushing in 
 where angels fear to tread. Some of the most angelic 
 and heroic people whom I have known never would 
 suffer a sentence to be wrung from them on such a sub- 
 ject, and my admiration for them is all the greater 
 because of their silence. For it was their reverence 
 which made them dumb. Love and religion, they 
 thought, are cheapened and besmirched by being dis- 
 cussed in public. I agree that this is often true. I have 
 seen writings which cheapen and debase those great 
 subjects; much which can be said about them should 
 never be said. The idea that anything can profitably 
 be blurted out in any language and to any audience, 
 the ideal" of pure frankness, is babyish and barbaric. 
 Babies and fools have no reserves, because they make 
 no choices. Personality, decency, and all that is human 
 in us grows up through selection. By their choice of 
 work, of play, of companions, of words, people are made 
 what they are. 
 
 But every choice is also a multitude of rejections, 
 more numerous and more instructive the further we 
 advance. There is no virtue in emptying out your 
 mind as a boy does his pockets ; for minds, like pockets.
 
 RETICENCE, MODESTY, CHASTITY 223 
 
 contain not only valuables, but rubbish of all sorts. 
 Literal frankness is achieved only by maniacs and by 
 village gossips, the doors of whose minds swing free 
 and let out indiscriminatingly whatever happens to 
 have accumulated inside. Such literal frankness con- 
 ceals nothing, has no more reserve than one of the lower 
 animals. I recently saw an advertisement of a book 
 (tj^ical of many more) boasting that about sex the 
 author *'has no reserves and shuns no details." 
 
 This is like saying, " Dr. Skinemalive is bold enough 
 to reveal all the details of heaven, together with the 
 anatomy and physiology of angels, the method of tun- 
 ing harps and the construction of street pavements in 
 the New Jerusalem. He has thrown off all false mod- 
 esty. He has no reserves; he shuns no details." 
 
 Any one who supposes that he knows so much about 
 love and sex that he needs only to open his mouth and 
 frankly emit the truth on these matters is astoundingly, 
 pathetically, ludicrously ignorant of the huge continent 
 whose shore he is touching. Frankness is a virtue only 
 when the subject in hand is perfectly simple. For in- 
 stance: "Are you or are you not hired by the United 
 Railways to vote in their interest?" "Have you more 
 than one wife? " " Do you like my cooking? " To answer 
 thescr questions frankly may be a difficult moral act, 
 but there is no need of modesty about our knowledge. 
 We know enough to answer. The only question is. 
 Shall we let it out? But the people who are quite ready 
 to be frank and open about love, forget that their
 
 224 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 minds do not contain what they are offering, but only 
 a caricature of it, ghostly as the harp and angel pic- 
 tures of heaven, grotesque as the ideal of married life 
 depicted in comic supplements of Sunday papers. 
 The "virtue" of frankly letting out what we do not 
 possess is a vice or a misfortune. 
 
 For a half or quarter truth may be, in result if not in 
 intention, a gross libel. To call a string quartette **the 
 scraping of horses' hairs on cats' bowels" is literally 
 true, but if any one believed it to be the whole truth, it 
 would become a blasphemy. Most of the "frank" 
 statements made or printed about sex within the past 
 decade seem to me as false and misleading as an account 
 of music in terms of gut and horsehair. What we ven- 
 ture to say on so great a subject must attempt to be 
 representative of the vast regions left untouched, as 
 the flag represents the country, — not literally, but 
 symbolically. 
 
 But grant {per impossihile) that a person might know 
 all that is vitally important about love ; would frank- 
 ness be then the chief quality that he would need in 
 order to enlighten others? Does a great teacher of 
 history or music need chiefly frankness to convey his 
 knowledge to others? Does he not rather need art, 
 painstaking choice of methods, scrupulous avoidance 
 of anything that is misleading? Good teaching of his- 
 tory requires eloquence, penetration, and grasp; it also 
 requires (and this is my present point) rejection, ret- 
 icence, and reserve.
 
 RETICENCE, MODESTY, CHASTITY 225 
 
 The limitation of our knowledge and the difficulties 
 of presentation should be enough to make any one 
 aware that frankness will avail but little in speaking or 
 writing upon any great subject. But in dealing with 
 love and sex there is especial need of restraint. One 
 brings up the subject presumably because one hopes to 
 direct some one's attention profitably, to help some one 
 to guide himself toward what is beautiful or heroic in 
 love and away from its baser aspects; in short, to focus 
 some one's consciousness aright. This attempt implies 
 that consciousness can get out of focus, or can get its 
 focus in the wrong place. Indeed it can, and most dis- 
 astrously! Medical students, while studying saliva, 
 sometimes become so vividly aware of their own 
 mouths (the inside of them, I mean) that a copious and 
 sometimes ludicrously inconvenient salivation results. 
 I have seen a hospital patient drooling night and day 
 as the result of a "fixed idea" about the inside of his 
 mouth. He began to think about it and could not stop! 
 You can try the experiment and verify the result (on 
 a small scale) whenever you like, but I advise you not 
 to. I should not have brought up the unpleasant sub- 
 ject at all but for a desire to reduce to absurdity the 
 statement so often made that there is nothing about 
 sex which cannot harmlessly and profitably be talked 
 about. This belief is false. It is contradicted by the 
 physiology of reflex action. Saliva can be made to flow 
 copiously not only by pepper or any other irritant, but 
 by thinking about the saliva in one's mouth. To be
 
 226 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 constantly or imperatively conscious of sex is to be in 
 a miserable or a dangerous state. Talk about sex may 
 produce or augment this danger. 
 
 There is ample reason, then, for reticence and mod- 
 esty when we approach anything so sacred as love. 
 There ought to be a taboo, not about venereal diseases 
 and their consequences, but about anything that tends 
 to upset the scenery of consciousness and dislocate the 
 background into the foreground. There is much that 
 ought to be kept out of sight and out of consciousness 
 most of the time, for the same reason that wise people 
 do not think of their saliva, of their personal beauty, 
 or of their personal ugliness. Consciousness does harm 
 whenever it interferes with something meant to be left 
 out of it, — the heart, the digestion, one's feet while 
 dancing, one's self while speaking in public. 
 
 One of the saving graces of reserve, then, is to pre- 
 serve consciousness from dislocation. It has other uses. 
 Reserve is normal and right about anything that is 
 germinating in consciousness. To talk about such things 
 is like pulling a young plant up to look at its roots, or 
 pulling open a closed bud. You can seriously hurt a 
 germinating aspiration, a nascent perception of beauty, 
 truth, or love by exhibiting it in public or even in the 
 full light of consciousness. Such things should grow, 
 like roots, in quiet and in darkness. Books or talks that 
 are rightly considered "too old" at any particular 
 stage of a child's growth, do harm either by withering 
 what is not yet ready for the light, or by stimulating
 
 RETICENCE, MODESTY, CHASTITY 227 
 
 premature growth. I have no doubt that some of us 
 adults are still too young for many of the ideas that are 
 floating about to-day. But who is wise enough to act 
 as censor? 
 
 Each ''grown-up" must decide for himself, and to 
 onlookers his decisions about reserves must often seem 
 arbitrary. The choice of what you will bring into the 
 full light of publicity, what you will reveal to a few, 
 and what you will not fully reveal even to yourself, 
 is as personal, as private a matter as the choice of a 
 profession or of a mate. If each is true to the best 
 he knows, his fundamental reserves and choices must 
 often seem incomprehensible to the rest of us. We 
 should expect and respect such obscurities in each other 
 as we admire the half lights and shadows of a picture. 
 We should deprecate the lack of them. 
 
 One night, after reading Swedenborg, and imbibing, 
 I suppose, something of his habits of mind, I dreamed 
 that I heard the sound of many voices, and when I in- 
 quired of my spectral guide what their meaning might 
 be, he told me that they were praising the virtues of 
 men. 
 
 '*Look,** said one, "with what an agony of heroic 
 effort that poor athlete is struggling to lift a hen's 
 feather!" 
 
 "True," said another. *'But can you not pity and 
 praise still more that generous millionaire? See, he is 
 giving his hard-won copper cent in bounteous charity
 
 228 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 to the newsboy who begs of him to buy the last of the 
 evening papers." 
 
 "My admiration,** said a third voice, **goes out irre- 
 sistibly to that high-born Fifth Avenue damsel who 
 from cannibalism so rigidly refrains. In all the unspot- 
 ted record of her life where can you find one charge 
 of breaking and entering, one moment's yielding to 
 the sweet lure of assault and battery?" 
 
 I believe that much which is called chastity is about 
 as virtuous as the people of my dream. Chastity surely 
 means nothing without some temptation to be unchaste. 
 It is as soulless and dead as the "courage '* of those who 
 are not aware of danger, or the " temperance" of those 
 who hate the taste of liquor. In frigid people the ab- 
 sence of sexual sin is no more virtuous than the ab- 
 sence of hair on a bald head. Purity, like health or 
 peace, may be an accident or an apathy. It may be the 
 fruit of heroic victories. Only the Eternal knows. No 
 acquaintance with a man's daily doings reveals any- 
 thing decisive about the matter. Statistics and science, 
 when asked to testify, have other engagements. Hence 
 no one will ever be able justly to indict half the human 
 race till a measure of temptation as well as of tempera- 
 ture is invented. With such an instrument who knows 
 how many zero readings would be registered? 
 
 We cannot praise chastity as the abstention from cer- 
 tain acts, for then normal marriage would be unchaste. 
 We cannot praise it as the innocence of evil, for with- 
 out temptation there can be no virtue. Chastity must
 
 RETICENCE, MODESTY, CHASTITY 229 
 
 mean victory over the enemy, not ignorance of his 
 strength. We must feel the temptation and overcome 
 it. By what power? By cultivating the highest type of 
 personal relation to which we can attain. Whatever per- 
 son, book, game, or art wakes us to admire or to ap- 
 proximate heroism in personal relations, discourages 
 unchastity , for heroism in personal relations is the basis 
 of all genuine chastity. 
 
 By the consecration of affection we gain victory over 
 the lower or impersonal affection. We do not eliminate 
 the enemy altogether, but we prevent his dwelling on 
 our territory. For unchastity is domination by the 
 impersonal love of sex rather than by love of an indi- 
 vidual. Such domination (inside or outside marriage) 
 disorganizes soul and body even when no visible act 
 of unchastity is committed. A certain type of day- 
 dreaming and novel-reading may disintegrate and ruin 
 character more hopelessly than prostitution. 
 
 What is it that is poisoned or deformed by unchas- 
 tity so defined? No law of the state and no law of health 
 need be broken. In many forms of unchastity no other 
 person need be injured, no utility need be destroyed. 
 What is injured is that for which the state, the laws of 
 hygiene, and all other utilities exist : the integrity and 
 richness of personality. The worth of a personality is 
 not determined altogether by the quality of the ideas or 
 impulses which pass through it. Many of the thoughts 
 and desires of maniacs, criminals, and degenerates 
 have at some time, in sleep or waking, passed through
 
 230 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 most people's minds. But normal minds do not wel- 
 come such thoughts or give them harborage. They are 
 pushed out by an instinct of mental integrity which 
 it is one of the main tasks of education to cultivate. 
 They are warned to "move on" because they threaten 
 that integrity. 
 
 But in the effort to suppress mental anarchy it is 
 foolish simply to eject offending thoughts and try to 
 keep busy in athletics, science, or business. As soon as 
 our attention is distracted by fatigue or leisure, what 
 was forcibly (not rationally) thrown out comes creep- 
 ing in again. An evil or impersonal love must be cher- 
 ished and made personal, — developed, not crushed. 
 The saint must become more human than the sinner, 
 or fall below him because impersonal love (unwisely 
 called "mere sex attraction") is less than human, 
 
 I wish to head off two false conclusions which might 
 be drawn from the foregoing remarks: first, that celi- 
 bacy is lower than the marriage state; and, second, 
 that in marriage, love can find its perfection. I see no 
 reason to believe in either of these popular modern 
 dogmas. The second depends upon the first. If we 
 believe that in marriage it is possible to achieve the 
 highest ideal of love, to reach the goal of perfection in 
 personal relations, of course celibacy is at best a neces- 
 saiy evil. But if we believe, as I do, that marriage 
 and every other form of human happiness becomes idol- 
 atrous and hollow unless it is conceived and lived out 
 as a symbolic representation of our union with God,
 
 RETICENCE, MODESTY, CHASTITY 231 
 
 then in celibacy one may find other (and, for some 
 persons, better) symbols of that union. 
 
 The idea that marriage gets its highest significance 
 as a means to the perpetuation of the race is to my 
 mind another shallow one. Marriage is a means to more 
 human life, but what is human life for? It is perfected, 
 we are told, in marriage, wherein again it perpetuates 
 i.rself in its offspring. This is arguing in a circle. The 
 Christian idea of the sacramental or symbolic purpose 
 of marriage seems to me the true one.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 IMPERFECT MUTUALITY IN LOVE: ROMANCE 
 
 We expect and demand mutuality in all sorts of places. 
 We are always striving for it in talk, in the interchange 
 of actors and audience, in the relations of labor and 
 capital, as well as in affection. Doleful and comic are 
 the failures of mutuality in shaking hands. Some hold 
 and pump our hands ad nauseam. Others go into a 
 hand-grasp as gingerly as they pick a hot coal from 
 the carpet. Yet for a lover, the touch of a beloved 
 hand is almost a kiss. 
 
 What have we to hope for in the attainment of a 
 more perfect response in love? What can we do about 
 it? 
 
 Perfect response in any sort of human intercourse Is 
 almost as unattainable as literal justice (falsely called 
 '*poetic"). Some cherish the hope of a justice which 
 always responds or corresponds with what we deserve. 
 But as no man knows what he deserves or what would 
 repay him, justice can never be more than a clumsy 
 approximation to his desires. 
 
 All responses are tainted with the same imperfection. 
 When I laugh at your joke our wits do not precisely 
 meet. Only a practiced tolerance or an unusual dull- 
 ness can prevent us from seeing that there is more (or 
 less) meaning in the joke than in the laugh; there
 
 MUTUALITY AND ROMANCE 233 
 
 must be, just because the joke is yours. It has been 
 bred amidst the particular associations, the unshar- 
 able memories, the comic failures and abortive aspira- 
 tions of your life. By these your own appreciation of 
 your joke is tinged; but my appreciation cannot be. 
 Perhaps I see more in it than you do ; I cannot see pre- 
 cisely the same. But the point is that I see enough to 
 join you, to follow you, perhaps lead you, as my an- 
 swering laugh seems to say. 
 
 My response means more. It dives as far as it can 
 go in the direction of your meaning, then shoots along 
 the rest of the way by the impetus of faith. God only 
 knows exactly what your joke means to you. He knows 
 far better than you do. He also knows exactly how 
 much my answering laugh understands. In Him, and 
 only in Him we ultimately meet, and it is our more or 
 less enlightened consciousness of this absolute but hid- 
 den union which makes the joke a success. We intend 
 to meet, and because of that intention we do meet, by 
 faith, which takes here one of its protean disguises, 
 — an all-encompassing good nature. We laugh, partly 
 at the point of the joke, partly out of pure good nature 
 which pardons inanities and supplies missing links, be- 
 cause it is determined to make the joke a success, at all 
 hazards. Such good nature makes mutuality possible 
 in fun. 
 
 In simpler words, laughter is partly contagious, not 
 purely intelligent. We often laugh from general sym- 
 pathy or because spme one "sets usoff,'* not because we
 
 234 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 see the joke. The general upshot of his laughter hits us, 
 whether we catch the point or not. Sometimes this 
 contagion in fun happens without any effort on our 
 part. Sometimes it is impossible without an effort, 
 first to see what the joke means and then to project 
 ourselves into the mirth any way by hook or crook. 
 In lifeless moods we fail. We find the doors of our sym- 
 pathy tight shut against the warmth of most people's 
 fun. Their words and gestures penetrate but leave us 
 frigid unless we can summon good nature enough to 
 feel their spirit. 
 
 Without a free gift of good nature there can be no 
 mutual understanding, especially in love. Congenial- 
 ity, physical, intellectual, emotional, or spiritual, can 
 never be perfect as long as we remain human growing, 
 imperfect beings. Lock and key can be made to fit 
 each other perfectly because they are dead, but if they 
 were alive they would never fit. Only the less-than- 
 human or the more-than-human can fit each other 
 perfectly or answer each other's love in complete 
 mutuality. Yet in love, as in laughter, faith can do 
 wonders. Love meets love to some extent by spon- 
 taneous sympathy, but far more by intention and 
 contagion. 
 
 Because of this ** justification by faith" well-meant 
 failures are infinitely touching and mutually endearing 
 to many a faithful couple. Only Omniscience holds the 
 whole of what a kiss or a blunder can mean, but when 
 two mates know thatf there is no end to their power to
 
 MUTUALITY AND ROMANCE 235 
 
 bear, to forgive, to supplement, to take for granted, 
 in love and word. 
 
 Mutuality, then, is attained not because a prees- 
 tablished harmony brings together exactly the right 
 people at precisely the right time and gives each of 
 them identical thoughts, identical joy, or identical 
 affection which flame up simultaneously but indepen- 
 dently in each. We meet and answer one another bur- 
 dened by a double imperfection; neither can express 
 what he means, neither can precisely understand even 
 the bit that gets expressed. But love excites love in 
 part, as laughter begets laughter, by the contagion of 
 its intention. Granted that we are determined once 
 for all to play the game and to meet somehow ; then 
 we play into a common intention as court-tennis play- 
 ers play against the same wall, not directly at each 
 other. Practice makes us apt to anticipate our fellow's 
 position. Mutuality in love is an "art" in which pro- 
 ficiency is attained by labor rather than by preestab- 
 lished harmony. But the labor draws us into adven- 
 tures, into danger and daring, which is in itself enough 
 to explain our incurable tendency to find love romantic 
 and so perpetually to anger Mr. George Bernard Shaw. 
 
 Shaw, and all who strive for literalism in love, set 
 to work first to take the uncertainties and the infini- 
 ties out of it. Marriage, they say, shall be a contract 
 for specified purposes under state control. Love is "a 
 ridiculous exaggeration of the difference between one
 
 236 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 person and another." These differences are in truth 
 so slight that there can be no romantic adventure in 
 finding one another, no danger of losing one another, 
 no mystery anywhere, but only confusion and muddle- 
 headedness. 
 
 Now, romance, I take it, is the sense of mystery, 
 beauty, danger, and infinity in love. We find these 
 blessings in love as we do in night. Mr. Shaw finds 
 them, too, wherever he is especially interested ; for in- 
 stance, in the '* hallucination" out of which his writ- 
 ings (as he now tells us)^ spring. 
 
 To ignore the romance in love, in history, in games, 
 in music, or anywhere else, is one of the easiest things 
 in the world. One has only to slouch because one is 
 sick of standing erect, to refuse the task of looking 
 behind the obvious and relapse into sleepy literalism. 
 As one's eyes grow fatigued with reading, the letters 
 cease to be symbols and become letters only. Meaning, 
 interest, and beauty die out of the words on the page. 
 They are only printer's type, no longer signposts to 
 infinite meaning. 
 
 There is no sin in this sort of blindness, provided 
 one recognizes that one's fatigue and not the letters 
 are at fault. But to sneer at the letters because they 
 are only ridiculous black scratches, to sneer at all who 
 find wisdom or beauty in what these scratches mean, is 
 simply to stagger and lurch because one is too bored to 
 
 * In an answer to the inquiry of the Modern Historic Records Asso- 
 ciation, quoted in Boston Transcript, June 15, 1912.
 
 MUTUALITY AND ROMANCE 237 
 
 walk straight. Every one finds romance in what he 
 loves. He cannot keep it out. No one finds romance 
 when he is too indifferent to look for it or too tired to 
 translate symbols into meaning. A baby is a lump of 
 flesh, a symphony is a long, confused noise, a picture 
 is a bit of discolored canvas, and man is an ugly, 
 featherless biped to any one who has not interest 
 enough to see more. 
 
 To all of us, when we are sleepy or seasick, the world 
 presents itself in these terms. Now and then Mr. Shaw 
 attracts notice by loudly exclaiming, in print, that a 
 man can see best when his eyes are too sleepy to open, 
 and that under these conditions he sees no romance in 
 the world. Romance is not a surface quality. It is, 
 therefore, no more visible on the surface of the sleepy 
 man's world than excitement in the pages of the sleepy 
 man's book. 
 
 By being just a trifle more blase than Mr. Shaw one 
 can wipe science, mathematics, color, and shape out of 
 the world. All the experiences of our devitalized moods 
 are flat, colorless, meaningless, and stale, and it is as 
 easy to let ourselves get devitalized as it is to drop our 
 end of the load which we are helping to carry. If we ^ 
 give up the effort of attention which sustains the world 
 of rpmance in love, then science, commerce, and social 
 life simultaneously collapse and we progress towards 
 savagery. But tell me what most vitally interests a 
 man and I will tell you where to look for the saving 
 romantic grace of his nature. 
 
 ¥
 
 238 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 Mystery^^b^aiity, danger, and a prehensile affection 
 spring up in many a modem's mind when he thinks of 
 his new automobile or of the wildcat stocks which he 
 manipulates. Romance crops out in strange places, 
 but better anywhere than nowhere, for without it we 
 creak like dry sole leather.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 MARRIAGE 
 
 In this book marriage means such a union of one man 
 and one woman as is described in the Christian marriage 
 service. For various reasons such an ideal union is not 
 always attained in modern "civilized" communities. 
 But of late we have been told by certain "advanced" 
 writers that it ought not to be attained, or retained, any 
 longer. Other institutions, they say, — the State, the 
 Church, — have been radically transformed ; but mar- 
 riage, at least in theory, has retained its old-fashioned 
 shape, which, according to G. B. Shaw, suits only a 
 small minority of the (English) people. Is it not time 
 for matrimony to join the march of evolution and be 
 brought up to date? 
 
 Moral and spiritual growth certainly ought to take 
 place in the marriage relation, but it is often forgotten 
 that change and growth are not the same. Change 
 may be so radical as to destroy growth. Forest fires 
 and popular crazes are changes which abolish develop- 
 ijient. Nothing grows unless it has a central core of 
 identity which does not change. A tree can be changed 
 into parlor matches, but it cannot grow parlor matches 
 like leaves. The State can grow only so long as some 
 idea of government persists. It can decay into anarchy, '
 
 240 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 but it cannot grow into anarchy, because no **it** is 
 left to grow. 
 
 So marriage will not grow but decay if it "outgrows *' 
 its fundamental purpose. But before considering radi- 
 cal changes, would it not be well to give it fair trial? 
 We can hardly say that marriage has been fairly tried, 
 as long as man remains so fitfully and imperfectly mono- 
 gamic as he now is. Let us call to mind what can be 
 said, first in defense, then in praise, of the plan to 
 make it a fact instead of — as now — an ideal. 
 
 That monogamy is enjoined by Christianity and by 
 modem Judaism, that it is the law of the land, that 
 public opinion supports it enough to make frank polyg- 
 amy a disgrace, that the history of marriage seems to 
 tend on the whole towards monogamy, in theory if 
 not in practice, — all these are important facts. But to 
 my mind they are not a final justification of monogamy. 
 For the current interpretations of religion, law, tradi- 
 tion, and public opinion are subject to change, and may 
 be modified by the conscience of a later generation. 
 The torture of law breakers was once supported by 
 religion, law, tradition, and public opinion; in fact, it is 
 only within a century that these currents have been 
 reversed. Marriage must have a foundation deeper 
 than any tradition or enactment. 
 
 Against secret polygamy and violation of the marriage 
 vow it may be urged, first, that such secrecy involves 
 lying and sneaking about back streets; second, that 
 jealousy and marital bitterness are almost sure to
 
 MARRIAGE 241 
 
 poison the lives of those concerned; and third, that a 
 family racked by any such strain makes a poor nest for 
 any children who may be born. These three reasons 
 for monogamy are more important than those derived 
 from shifting tradition or enactments. Yet they do not 
 seem to me final. If public opinion changed, the re- 
 straint of secrecy might be removed and lying would 
 become unnecessary. If every one willingly agreed to 
 polygamous and polyandrous relations, there might be 
 no bitterness or jealousy in them, and it seems at least 
 possible than any arrangement which suited parents 
 might be made to suit children. They might not object 
 to being brought up by the State according to the 
 platonic principle. 
 
 George Bernard Shaw and other Socialists appear 
 to think that economic reasons are basic in the sup- 
 port of monogamic marriage. If wealth were justly 
 (i.e., socialistically) produced and distributed, no one, 
 they think, could afford the expense of plural marriage. 
 But if all parents worked and the birth of children were 
 prevented, I do not see why plural marriage need in- 
 volve increased expense. 
 
 If monogamic marriage is to continue in theory and 
 to be steadily approached in practice, we must have 
 better reasons than any of these. Our belief in it must 
 be founded on something more fundamental than 
 economy. The temporary codes of Church, law, and 
 public opinion must have something back of their 
 fiat.
 
 242 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 A sound defense of monogamy must justify first of 
 all its exclusiveness: — ** Forsaking all others, keep 
 thee only unto her so long as ye both shall live." Of 
 course this does not mean that married people shall not 
 make friends among both sexes. It can only mean that 
 there shall be in marriage a core of primary intimacies 
 shared with no other human being. The law insists 
 only upon the physical and economic side of this prim- 
 acy. So long as a man does not commit adultery, so long 
 as he supports his wife and is not cruel, or, in variously 
 defined ways, intolerable, to her, the law is satisfied. 
 It makes no attempt to buttress the spiritual privacy 
 of the marriage, but on the physical side the law stands 
 for absolute privacy. Whatever else is shared, this 
 shall not be shared. It is for the public good that tlie 
 marital relation shall not be public or promiscuous. 
 So says the law. 
 
 Yet such exclusiveness is contrary to the general 
 trend of the times. We are less and less tolerant of ex- 
 clusive rights and private ownership. Hence it is natu- 
 ral that a considerable wing within the Socialist party 
 should be opposed to all legal sanctions for the exclu- 
 siveness of marriage. 
 
 The justification of any sort of exclusiveness is its 
 fruits in character. Tradition, law, and public opinion 
 have been guided thus far by the belief that character, 
 service, and happiness are best built up through affec- 
 tions which are to some extent exclusive because they
 
 MARRIAGE 243 
 
 are loyal to the objects of their own free choice. Is this 
 reasonable? 
 
 Let us draw some parallels from outside the field of 
 married love. It is generally agreed that in the choice 
 of a country, an occupation, or a residence there should 
 be, if possible, finality. A man who wanders from coun- 
 try to country soon becomes a "man without a coun- 
 try." He is usually unhappy and amounts to little. 
 It is hard for him to form lasting ties of interest, friend- 
 ship, and service or to become a happy and growing 
 creature. Law backs up this conclusion to a certain 
 extent. Sometimes it forbids a man to emigrate or im- 
 migrate. Invariably (so far as I know) it forbids him 
 to hold citizenship in one country and then act against 
 it in the interests of another. Such laws are violated, 
 but the sentiment that each man owes loyalty to one 
 (native or adopted) country is still strong enough to re- 
 sist overt internationalist propaganda. Most of us be- 
 lieve that, while we should be friendly with all coun- 
 tries and open-minded towards their ideas and customs, 
 such a brotherhood of nations ought not to mean fusion 
 of nations. Like the * ' J^ck of all trades * * the ' * Jack of all 
 nations" is too superficial in his acquaintance with any 
 to serve it (and through it, all of us) well. 
 
 Very rare in my acquaintance are the people who have 
 changed from trade to trade and yet succeeded in any. 
 The rolling man gathers no skill because he is not faith- 
 ful to any job long enough to learn the soul of it, or to 
 get its best rewards. May it not be the same with the
 
 244 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 "free lover"? While attracted to one mate, he per- 
 ceives the counter-attractions of others. He is not 
 narrow-minded. He recognizes beauty and goodness 
 everywhere and wishes a generous share of both. But 
 precisely similar counter-attractions offer themselves 
 to every man who has set himself to do a piece of work. 
 The other man's job, like the other man's wife, often 
 looks more attractive than his own. Few men stick to 
 their work because they are perpetually in love with 
 it and never in love with any other. They stick to it 
 because they have learned to believe that nobody ac- 
 complishes anything unless he binds himself to resist 
 his momentary impulses and to learn one trade as 
 thoroughly as he can. Moreover the best rewards of 
 work, financial and personal, usually come late. To 
 leave one job for another usually means to leave it 
 before we have got the best of it or given it our best 
 service. 
 
 To go from city to city within one's country is prob- 
 ably commoner in America than elsewhere, and no 
 one deprecates changes made before we have chosen a 
 place to live. The preliminary survey of many places, 
 if one can afford it, is as wise as it is to see many possi- 
 ble mates before one marries. But when the choice of a 
 place to live has once been made, every one regards it 
 as an evil, though perhaps a necessary evil, to move 
 away. 
 
 These choices — of country, residence or job (or 
 mate) — are usually exclusive. In taking one we reject
 
 MARRIAGE 245 
 
 many, and often find the rejection very painful. Like a 
 polygamist we want to grasp several of the alternatives 
 offered. But we have learned the necessity of sacrifice, 
 not only for moral reasons, but from pure prudence. 
 If we try for several, we lose all. Moreover, most of 
 these choices, since they are final, involve not only 
 exclusiveness and sacrifice at the start, but devotion 
 all the way along. No man likes his business every 
 day: sometimes he loathes it; yet he knows that to 
 throw it up and try another, or to drift about, would be 
 crazy. He learns to disregard or to crush his impulses 
 of repulsion for his job. He must "make good" in it 
 whether he feels like it or not. 
 
 All this we Americans have learned in business be- 
 cause work is the thing we have learned best. But in 
 love a wave of indifference or dislike is taken very seri- 
 ously, perhaps interpreted to mean "time for divorce" 
 or "right to be unfaithful.'* We are foolish enough to ex- 
 pect constancy of feeling in love, though we know that 
 in everything else our feelings vary like the weather. 
 
 One reason for greater stupidity in affection than in 
 business is this. You have one business and not (as a 
 rule) a dozen near-businesses besides. But though you 
 have rightly but one mate, you have many friends of 
 her sex. A close parallel to the difficulties thus sug- 
 gested and to the right solution of them is to be found 
 in painting. The landscape artist does not welcome to 
 his canvas all the beauties that he sees and loves as he 
 sits down to sketch. The laws of his art force him not 
 
 (
 
 246 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 only to reject much that fascinates him, but to choose 
 one point of delight for the focus of his picture and sub- 
 ordinate all else. It is torture sometimes for the ama- 
 teur, this enforced sacrifice of rival beauties, all of them 
 desired. But the sacrifice (unlike that of monogamy) is 
 enforced by no convention, by no law of State or of 
 religion, but only by the nature of his own original 
 choice. If he tries to combine all that attracts him he 
 will do justice to nothing. When he chooses a subject, 
 he pledges himself to one interest, forsaking all others ; 
 but unless he is a saint or a simpleton he is tempted 
 a hundred times, while he paints, to combine rival 
 beauties, loved but incompatible. Why incompatible? 
 Because his picture, like his life, must contain a center 
 of interest, a graded scale of values and of devotion. 
 Without that center it falls to pieces. 
 
 So in our human relationships, whether religion, law, 
 and custom say so or not, each of us must try to estab- 
 lish a center. Our faithfulness to friends and acquaint- 
 ances must be subordinate to one primal loyalty, and 
 what is owed and received in that primal loyalty must 
 decide what can be given to others in the same field. 
 
 It appears, then, that in many other fields of life we 
 have convincing proof of the principle on which monog- 
 amy rests. In science, in art, in practical affairs, in 
 patriotism we habitually select a single interest to 
 which all else then becomes secondary. Would it not 
 be strange, then, if there were no need to establish by 
 marriage such a center?
 
 MARRIAGE 247 
 
 A plausible attack may be made on monogamy by 
 picturing it as slavery. If monogamy is inviolate, one 
 person seems to some extent to own another. In this 
 twentieth century and in a land of freedom are we to 
 admit property in persons? Certainly. All loyalty is 
 binding as well as enfranchising. It is voluntary sur- 
 render of one's freedom in the service of a cause. Our 
 country owns us enough to punish us for treason if we 
 are unfaithful to our citizenship. Any one who binds 
 himself legally or morally to a business, a college, or a 
 science is in some respect owned. Nothing is less free 
 than art or thought or love. E^ch undertakes to con- 
 struct something which needs time, perhaps eternity, 
 to complete it. Each is going somewhere, and is bound, 
 therefore, upon its journey. That journey, that desire, 
 which is the kernel of individuality, certainly limits 
 freedom, but it does not in any proper sense enslave. 
 It is not slavery to bind one's self to fidelity because 
 one wants something supremely. 
 
 In support of these reasons for partial ownership of 
 one person by another and for such surrender of free- 
 dom as is implied in loyalty to the marriage vow, con- 
 sider this : Whatever other basis there may be for pri- 
 vate ownership of land, tools, or persons, it is generally 
 agreed that the labor which a person puts into any- 
 thing gives him some right to it. A stethoscope that I 
 have long used fits my ear and trains my ear until the 
 two belong together; no one else can use that tool or 
 serve the community as well with it as I can. Hence
 
 248 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 the community is interested that a durable bond be- 
 tween me and my tool should be established. Only 
 long practice brings swift, skillful, and economic use 
 of anything. In short periods a man and his tool can- 
 not grow to fit each other. It pays, then, to let the 
 workman keep his own tool (as he probably prefers to 
 do) and not to share it impartially with others. It shall 
 belong to him because he can probably do better work 
 with it than any one else can. 
 
 An unfinished manuscript or picture naturally be- 
 longs to him who began it, because he can probably 
 bring more value out of it than any one else. One need 
 not insist that no one else could have done better with 
 the subject had he started independently to bring out 
 all that was in it. One need not insist that all mar- 
 riages are made in heaven and could not have been 
 better arranged. But is there not every reason to sup- 
 pose that in marriage, as in work, it generally pays for 
 partners to stay together and finish the structure of 
 family life which they have started? Each has begun 
 to bring something out of the other. Each has become 
 used to the other, more or less, as tool and hand, writer 
 and subject, are constantly shaping each other. As 
 time goes on, husband and wife each acquire a hold 
 upon the other like that of the musician and his violin. 
 Each stimulates the other, now and then at least, to 
 his best work, his best citizenship, his greatest happi- 
 ness. Outsiders can rarely do so much. 
 
 Beyond the field of personal relations there may be
 
 MARRIAGE 249 
 
 still more fundamental loyalties which call one away 
 from wife, from friends, and acquaintances alike. At the 
 call of the country we rightly interrupt all personal 
 relations. At the call of science and humanity it may 
 be any one's duty to give up his life as uncounted Amer- 
 ican physicians have given theirs. The call of con- 
 science or of God may be so clear that a man may 
 rightly leave wife, friends, country, and bury himself 
 in a hermitage or in study that is without any known 
 human benefit. 
 
 These are rare calls, and partly because of this rarity 
 they may bring grievous conflict of one loyalty against 
 another. But when the final choice is made, it involves 
 none of that disloyalty which monogamy forbids. * ' For- 
 saking all others** does not mean ignoring country, 
 science, art, or God. It means that as long as we are 
 loyal to personal claims at all, — as long as there is no 
 call to give up all persons (including,'it maybe, our own) 
 for a supra-personal good, — one must keep a central 
 primacy and privacy. 
 
 Within the field of personal relations one should 
 be loyal to each of one's subordinate ties, to friend, 
 business associate, official superior or inferior, mere 
 acquaintance, each after his kind. The artist may need 
 as moich delicacy of touch to deal with a subdued 
 accessory in his picture as to finish its focal center. 
 Each of the less intimate personal relations is likewise 
 a fine art in itself. None can be confusedly mistaken 
 or mistreated for any other without harm.
 
 250 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 I do not say that married people should belong to each 
 other only so long as they bring out each other's best. 
 The fundamental reason for continuity in marriage is 
 not this mutual inspiration. It is the need of a prim- 
 acy among our affections of various degrees. But when 
 for this and other reasons people persevere in marriage 
 despite many temptations to break away from it, 
 they often reap in later life a harvest of mutual re- 
 sponsiveness which only years can bring to maturity. 
 Some of the best traits of marriage, — the subtle under- 
 standing of what need not be spoken, the instinctive 
 habit of filling in one another's deficiencies or antici- 
 pating one another's needs, — these never have time 
 to develop unless man and wife resist some of the storms 
 and shocks of their earlier years. 
 
 It is fashionable nowadays to talk of marriage as a 
 contract between husband and wife. This is something 
 like calling violin-music a contact between fiddle and 
 bow. It is not untrue; it is merely foolish. There is a 
 contract in marriage and there is a contact between bow 
 and strings. But there is so much else that no one in 
 his senses should pick out this subordinate element to 
 characterize the whole. 
 
 What sort of contract Is marriage? How does it 
 differ from a contract between a housebuilder and a 
 (prospective) householder? First of all in this: Con- 
 tracting parties are not usually drawn together by any 
 mysterious and elemental attraction. Employer and
 
 MARRIAGE 251 
 
 employee exert, as a rule, no subtle fascination on each 
 other. Their differences have to be adjusted, while the 
 differences of married people are often their most effec- 
 tive bond. Give the complementary differences of sex 
 a chance and they will work for each other's benefil 
 without pay, without effort and even without capacity. 
 In marriage, when mind and conscience sleep, our sub- 
 conscious elemental energies may be busily serving 
 the common good, despite our ineptitudes and even 
 despite our sins. Of course this is not the whole truth. 
 No matter how devotedly a man is attached to his 
 wife, he does not want to be fastened to her beauty, 
 any more than to her apron-strings. He wants to be 
 rationally as well as magically linked to her. He wants 
 to be led by her experience and her nobility as well as 
 by charm. It is good to be thus linked by bonds of 
 many colors, as we are in marriage, rather than by one 
 dull instrument, a contract. 
 
 For the many-sidedness of marriage gives it strength. 
 Even two interests shared throw light on each other 
 and on those who share them. Each reflects and multi- 
 plies all, like a group of mirrors. Married people share, 
 as a rule, more and more diverse interests with each 
 other than with any one else. Houses, children, sorrows, 
 relations (poor and not so poor), finances, reputations, 
 meals, beds, opinions, prejudices, sickness and health, 
 — who but mates can share so many and so richly 
 varied realities? Who else has the chance to realize 
 with soul and with sense how each reenforces the rest?
 
 252 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 Contrast with the many-stranded union of marriage 
 the feeble bond that holds two philosophers met in 
 argument. With only their professional studies to join 
 them, is it any wonder that they so rarely convince each 
 other? If philosophers were really serious in their desire 
 to comprehend each other, they would live together, 
 cook, eat, and sleep together like pioneers, share their 
 gawky pre-philosophic past with each other, plan some 
 romantic, some strikingly extra-philosophic adventure 
 together, study each other's behavior in money matters, 
 love-affairs, games, and family tiffs. It would take 
 time — just as marriage does ; it would try each of them 
 sorely — as marriage does ; but it might well bring to 
 them and to their opinions some fraction of the mutual 
 conversion, the mutual enlightenment, intimacy, and 
 esteem that bless marriage. 
 
 Any one who wishes to strengthen his basis of agree- 
 ment with another, to appropriate all he can of an- 
 other's greatness or to communicate his most cher- 
 ished aspirations, must, I believe, do what he can to 
 ape and copy marriage, humbly imitating the con- 
 ditions it so richly furnishes for all these supreme 
 achievements. It is because employer and employee, 
 radical and conservative, plaintiff and defendant, are 
 in contact at so few points, share so few of the benefits 
 of long and close association, — are, in short, so be- 
 reft of the trials and blessings of marriage, — that they 
 waste so much vigor in fighting each other.
 
 MARRIAGE 253 
 
 Theoretically our form of government ought to make 
 us experts in marriage ; for we are supposedly familiar 
 with the fact that in union there is strength. But in 
 fact we shall learn more of what the national unity-in- 
 variety should be, by recalling how in marriage, sorrows 
 explain and justify creeds, how children and other re- 
 sponsibilities explain expenditures, how children and 
 other miracles teach tolerance, how words are inter- 
 preted by personal history, and hands grow beautiful 
 in their remembered use. 
 
 Of course I have not done justice to the richness of 
 the marriage union: only music gives me the parallel 
 that I need. There, the interweaving strands of mel- 
 ody and harmony — each carrying its own spirit and 
 meaning, each modifying and enriching the rest, all 
 blended in the current of a single utterance — seem 
 to me the fittest of images to suggest the interweav- 
 ing and reenforcing of interests in marriage. Not a 
 note in the chord or a phrase in the melody is itself 
 without the rest. United they stand and give life 
 each to each. Divided they fall and scatter like seeds, 
 until some one plants them once more in fruitful 
 company. 
 
 Perhaps the greatest blessing in marriage is that it 
 lasts so long. The years, like the varying interests of 
 each year, combine to buttress and enrich each other. 
 Out of many shared years, one life. In a series of tem- 
 porary relationships, one misses the ripening, gathering, 
 harvesting joys, the deep, hard-won truths of marriage.
 
 254 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 The unmarried can rarely follow so many strands of 
 interest at once. They share food with one friend, 
 work with another, play with a third, travel with L 
 fourth, failure with a fifth, quarrels with a sixth. But 
 with no human being can they share the light shed by 
 each of these experiences on all the rest. 
 
 The ripening of money by compound interest is slow 
 and feeble compared to the ripening of compounded 
 interests in married life. God forbid that I should be- 
 little the sacredness of first love because I hold just 
 now a brief for enduring marriage. But there is fas- 
 cination in familiarity as well as in the first glimpse of 
 a new world. A love that can remember its own develop- 
 ment, can look down the lengthening vista of its ad- 
 venturous past and project its future, has perhaps less 
 quivering intensity but surely more volume and rich- 
 ness than its opening days could possess. Such elastic 
 strength comes only with time. Early love may be 
 incomparable in its creative brilliance, but in maturer 
 love we win the fruits of security. 
 
 I know well that this very security may be base and 
 slack. People may become so sleepily content with 
 their marriage that they cease to care much about any- 
 thing, even about each other. But there is another 
 security that is not base ; I mean the reliance on one's 
 footing that nerves one to a bold leap, the firm founda- 
 tion which gives time to think and plan, opportunity 
 to serve, to appreciate, and to grow. Even business 
 needs some security if it is to get in motion at all. Even
 
 MARRIAGE 255 
 
 the bomb-thrower must be relatively safe while he pre- 
 pares and throws his bomb. 
 
 Not tamely .secure are the blessings and fruits of 
 marriage. They must be rewon again and again. But 
 well-grounded reliance on our right to try for them, 
 and on our hope of rewinning them as often as we sin- 
 cerely try, — that we surely need and find in mar- 
 riage. 
 
 All security ties some future's hands in order that 
 we may risk something else. Fortified by good health, 
 one may risk money; buttressed by money one may 
 perhaps risk health. In marriage, the security ordi- 
 narily attained is this: there is some one who forgives 
 us more often and more freely than the unmarried can 
 expect; some one who makes God's infinite forgiveness 
 more credible. There is some one who loves us long 
 after we have forfeited any natural right to be loved 
 and long before we have won any. Supernatural in this 
 sense marriage almost always is; thus it prepares and 
 enfranchises us for religion. 
 
 In the forefront of my tribute to marriage I have put 
 forgiveness, because I know nothing that we need more. 
 We need it not merely to lighten the burdens of dis- 
 couragement, but to stir us out of the apathy of habit. 
 Fresh impulse to our work, fresh heart for the imperson- 
 ations which every art and every game presuppose, new 
 love of life and its author, — such are the issues of for- 
 giveness. Your better half forgives not only your more 
 obvious sins, but your awkwardness (behind which
 
 256 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 she sees some grace quite hidden to other mortals), 
 your foolishness, your dumbness, your blank and un- 
 inspiring face. Despite all these drab exteriors she sees 
 something worth while in you, and because she sees it 
 she helps it to be born. 
 
 Forgiveness is to the spirit what home is to the 
 householder. It is the assurance that in the house of 
 the spirit some one waits for our deed, — the deed 
 never yet done, but always due. That expectation is a 
 stronghold to which we return at night, from which we 
 carry vigor to our morning's work. Such security ener- 
 vates only when it no longer nettles us to deserve 
 it and, by this effort, to reestablish it. **Thy face a 
 home, a flying home to me, " says Chesterton to his 
 wife. There is no ignoble torpor about a flying home. 
 Unless we make shift to fly a bit ourselves, we are left 
 behind. 
 
 There is a bracing negative aspect to the marriage 
 vow. It commits us more or less irrevocably to forsake 
 all others. It cuts off the freedom to act on the spur 
 of the moment. Unmarried, we are like the riderless 
 horse who allows only for his own height when he ducks 
 under low branches in the forest. In marriage we must 
 choose our path more carefully. But this is just what 
 the vast majority of us need. We need to be fenced 
 into a narrower field than of ourselves we should even 
 find. We need to be harnessed and given a bit of road 
 to cover. In the end we put out more power and win 
 more happiness when our choice is thus restricted and
 
 MARRIAGE 257 
 
 our path narrowed by a promise, given and taken. 
 We get somewhere because we are no longer so free to 
 change our course. 
 
 Any responsibility gives us direction and continuity, 
 but marriage brings us in addition some of the choicest 
 adventures that the world has in store. Certain of these 
 adventures, or tests, every modern must meet and con- 
 quer, as the mediaeval knight met the enchanters and 
 dragons of the forest. If he misses them, he will slip 
 out of life like a boy entering college heavily condi- 
 tioned. Can you remember? Can you imagine? Can 
 you be a good winner, a game loser? Can you resist 
 satiety? Such questions form part of the examination 
 which, early or late, every one must take. For some of 
 these questions marriage gives us the best-known prep- 
 aration and the fairest marking system. 
 
 Take the last question as a sample. Can you resist 
 satiety? Only by miracle, it seems; for every day you 
 and all of us pay cool insults to the clouds, the trees, 
 and the cities, to pictures and books, to fire, rain, and 
 nightfall. You turn upon them the ignominy of your 
 neglect and upon yourself that ignominy returns a 
 thousandfold. With shame you discover that the pic- 
 ture on your wall is practically invisible to you after 
 the^first few months. Just with the tail of your eye you 
 brush across its surface now and then. Yet it has done 
 nothing to deserve such treatment. It has not degen- 
 erated. It is you who have degenerated, your color 
 and freshness that have faded, your mental structure
 
 258 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 that has collapsed. Part of you has been killed to 
 avenge the slur you cast upon an artist's child. 
 
 Familiar and humiliating enough, — this defeat. In 
 everyday life we have almost given up the hope of 
 avoiding it. But in marriage we sight a better chance to 
 win at least partial victory. For there, the well-nigh 
 immovable body of our dullness meets an awakening 
 force as nearly irresistible as any that human life 
 encounters. There the test, **Can you resist satiety?** 
 is squarely put up to us and we are given an un- 
 equaled chance to win a victory or to duck under to 
 one of the devil's most soul-destroying blows. Nothing 
 in creation less deserves our neglect than the soul and 
 body of the person we are pledged to for life. Nothing 
 has so good a chance to rouse us and to save us. Trees 
 and birds speak our language far less clearly. If they 
 love us and forgive us, they are usually silent about it. 
 When they serve us it is far from clear that they were 
 meant so to serve. If they summon up the past and call 
 in the future to refresh and to defend us, we are none 
 the wiser. But the one soul that has a fair chance of 
 saving us from the ignominious death of satiety, by 
 warming our dull life with greater life, is the faithful 
 soul called our better half. 
 
 Victory here gives us hope of victory elsewhere. In- 
 asmuch as we learn to see the perpetual novelty, rest, 
 and charm which marriage offers to all, we have mas- 
 tered one stage in the art of unsated happiness and of 
 unchecked growth. Successfully married people have
 
 MARRIAGE 259 
 
 more news to tell each other and more capacity to hear 
 it eagerly than any less closely, less durably united 
 couple can have. The habit of seeing and hearing freshly 
 can be acquired in marriage if anywhere, and once 
 acquired here, it may be gradually extended into more 
 difficult regions. 
 
 So it is I believe with most of the other tests with 
 which the world invariably confronts us. If in marriage 
 a man cannot learn to see himself as others see him, he 
 will probably never learn it at all. If there he learns 
 nothing of the art of vicarious living, he will never have 
 again in all human probability so easy and inspiring a 
 teacher. If family life does not spur him so to envisage 
 the distant and the future that he expresses himself 
 and controls himself somewhat as the present demands, 
 he is apt to remain a donkey to the end. 
 
 So far I have written mostly of strength and of the 
 trials of strength in marriage. So much for the deep 
 root of it. Now for its shoots and branches. 
 
 Everybody wants to be understood by somebody ; but 
 in the natural course of events everybody is more or 
 less misunderstood or distortedly understood by most 
 of his friends and acquaintances. They have no "call " 
 to pay special attention to him and are rightly engaged 
 in their own business. In heaven, scripture tells us, we 
 shall know as we are known, wholly; but to most of 
 us this perfect knowledge would be inconceivable but 
 for the glimpses and tastes of it in marriage. Marriage 
 gives us the best chance in sight to grasp our share of
 
 26o WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 complete mutual comprehension. I believe that any 
 benedict among us, the " pick-and-shovel " man, the 
 shipping-clerk, the plumber, or the railroad magnate, 
 is more apt to be understood by his wife than by any 
 other human being. The bachelor and the maid (old 
 or young) are less often appreciated with that ripe 
 mixture of favoritism and keen sight which the married 
 enjoy. 
 
 Enjoy it they certainly do. Almost every one wants 
 to pour out his joys, his troubles, and his plans to some- 
 one who will meet him halfway. The number of re- 
 served people dwindles towards zero in the intricate 
 understanding of marriage. Most of them were re- 
 served before marriage because they feared to be 
 laughed at, quoted, or misunderstood. There remain a 
 few who can never quite trust themselves and their 
 secrets to any human being. They become monks (or 
 their equivalent) ; or missing that outlet are apt to be- 
 come dry and brackish. An outlet for free expression 
 IS the only way of insuring an inlet, — an intake of new 
 power. Friends and acquaintances give us precious bits 
 of their confidence and their attention, but except for 
 our mate there is seldom any one who cares to hear all 
 that we would say and to say all that we would hear. 
 Others are more keenly interested elsewhere. No one 
 else has so good a reason to be interested ; no one else 
 is so often interested (and interesting) beyond reason. 
 
 The intimate commingling of new thoughts and 
 plans too fragile and tender to be grasped by any save
 
 MARRIAGE 261 
 
 one, is as intense and peculiar a joy as any form of 
 union can give. It is mutual creation, and all the leap- 
 ing wonder and holy fear of creation attend it. The 
 "marriage of two minds,'* in those who are also mar- 
 ried in every other sense, is full of adventure and the 
 pioneer spirit. I know well that this can be missed in 
 marriage. But where else can it be so often found? Its 
 perfection of swift give-and-take, heightening each 
 personality by inflow of the other, is equaled perhaps 
 when two musicians in some miraculous hour make 
 and interpret music together. But it is only in the oc- 
 casional raptures of nascent music that they can enjoy 
 themselves in this heaven-glimpsing way, while hus- 
 band and wife can sound each year the chords of a 
 myriad newborn thoughts. 
 
 Wonderfully close to the most sacred purpose of 
 marriage is its greatest danger, — idolatry. But in this 
 respect it is like all other good things. From marriage, 
 as from every great gift, we are meant to learn some- 
 thing greater, something more vital than itself. But we 
 may miss its spirit and stick fast at its letter, like pupils 
 who fasten upon the master's fascinating tricks and 
 foibles instead of plodding past him to seek from God 
 their own share of beauty and truth, unshared before. 
 AIL human teachers are dangerous but necessary. We 
 are tempted to depend upon them, not merely at the 
 start, but so permanently that they pauperize instead 
 of enriching us. Their finite stock of food exhausted, 
 we starve. By the same fatal error, business which
 
 262 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 should be our symbol becomes our life, art degenerates 
 into conventionality and marriage love, which should 
 acquaint us with divinity, is worshiped instead for its 
 own sake. 
 
 Have you never watched the debasement of a beau- 
 tiful voice under training? Its own original glimpse of 
 beauty is soon lost and the image of another's manner- 
 ism becomes indelibly fixed on it. So I have seen people 
 lose their religion in marriage. The great teacher spoils 
 them, because they have failed to go behind his teach- 
 ing to the sources of his wisdom. Yet some such teacher 
 we all must have. We may avoid the idolatries of mar- 
 riage only by exposing ourselves to the same dangers 
 in some other form. For, married or single, we learn 
 mainly by imitation. 
 
 How, then, can we best guard ourselves from the 
 dangers besetting every attempt to appropriate the 
 blessings of a great teacher, a fascinating symbol, like 
 marriage? 
 
 The chief dangers and failures of which we must take 
 account are two: idolatry and '' hifalutinism'' The 
 idolatrous marriage is slavishly content with its ma- 
 terial and spiritual conveniences. The hifalutin mar- 
 riage is a bungling of sentimental amateurs who will not 
 learn their technique, who try to play the game without 
 knowing the rules. It is too high and mighty to notice 
 plain, or even beautiful, facts. It parallels the amateur 
 artist's attempt to enjoy the spirit of his art when 
 he has never mastered its materials or acquired its
 
 MARRIAGE 263 
 
 technique. It tries to loll in the second-story balcony 
 of love's home before it has put in the underpinning. 
 
 All that I can say of the defenses against idolatrous 
 failure I have already said. Of the hifalutin I have 
 something more to say. I have insisted, perhaps too 
 often, on the need of piercing through the letter of ex- 
 perience to its spirit. For in this attempt it is easy to 
 forget that what we want is the spirit of this letter — 
 precisely this letter — not something like it. If we 
 want to interpret the meaning of a text, the first es- 
 sential is to catch our text, and to read it word by 
 word. Then — only then — comes the leap of inter- 
 pretation. 
 
 One can miss the best happiness of marriage because 
 one travels through it in kid gloves, Pullman cars, 
 first-class staterooms, and grand hotels. Rich, city- 
 bred, voluntarily childless, one can mince through mar- 
 riage as sightseers promenade in a forest on a graveled 
 path with hand-rails, signposts, and seats. On the other 
 hand, one may know marriage as Kipling's Mowgli 
 knew the forest, because he traveled as well in the tree- 
 tops as on the springy ground. No one knows a tree 
 unless he has climbed it, tasted its bark, felt out the 
 spring and thrust of its limbs with pencil on paper, cut 
 into it with an axe, clung to high branches in a rain- 
 storm, as John Muir did in the High Sierras, studied 
 minutely its cells, its osmotic currents and tropisms. 
 After such knowledge of a tree one is fit to treat it as a 
 symbol, not before. So it is in marriage. Knowledge
 
 264 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 and skill should precede as well as follow that vision 
 without which we perish. 
 
 In the chapter on "The Glory of Raw Material" 
 and in the paragraphs on the good loser, I tried to 
 acknowledge my reverence for the hard, raw surface 
 of things because it is through just this surface, out of 
 just this unique tang of crudeness, that a true vision of 
 deeper meaning, wider truth, richer happiness is to 
 come. Horror of the lapdog view of life, — fear of the 
 amateur's bungling vagaries, recoil from the lie of con- 
 ventional piety and chromo-colored enthusiasm, brings 
 me back to the same theme as I try to base the idealism 
 of marriage broad on the roots of things. 
 
 Marriage, then, as a great teacher and symbol, bids 
 us, first of all, study the facts, learn our technique 
 faithfully, and play the game for all it is worth, with no 
 shirking of its hard knocks, no fatuous assumption that 
 we know it before we have learned it, no quailing be- 
 fore the twin giants, — Success and Failure, — who are 
 to be enemies or friends as we shall decide. We follow 
 the game wherever it leads. Good winners and good 
 losers we are schooled to become, in marriage as in 
 sport. Then from the springboard of reality and skill 
 comes the leap of faith. "Thy God shall be my God." 
 We say to the beauties and puzzles of marriage as Ruth 
 said to Naomi and as the Christian says to Jesus; 
 "Where thou goest I will go." What thou teachest I 
 will learn.
 
 FART IV: WORSHIP
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 SPIRITUAL FATIGUE: MOUNTAIN-TOP VIEWS 
 
 It is a favorite trick with those who pretend to read 
 the palm or the handwriting to say, with special em- 
 phasis and secrecy to eacn customer: *' I can see in your 
 hand that the deepest and best of you has never yet 
 found expression. Half unconsciously you are repress- 
 ing a flood of power which pushes ever for freedom. 
 To set it free will be the deepest joy of your life." 
 
 The beauty of this ever-successful trick is that what 
 the sharper pretends to discover in this individual, he 
 knows to be true of every living being. We are pite- 
 ously unexpressed. We differ only in the means that 
 can set us free. How many in whom we least suspect 
 it are longing to sing, — not to interpret a genteel mel- 
 ody, but to let themselves out in song! The efforts 
 expended in business, in sport, and even in affection 
 seem comparatively impersonal and indirect. They do 
 not free the breast, they do not tell the tale. 
 
 How many in whom we least suspect it are longing 
 to pray ! How many who hardly suspect it themselves L 
 I believe that the craving to sing is but a partial and i 
 imperfect image of the craving to pray. What song' 
 is to prosy speech, that prayer is to song. It is the 
 supremely personal and direct utterance for which 
 creation longs, for which hard toil prepares.
 
 268 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 Yet worship is out of fashion. The average man 
 thinks of it as something mediaeval or obsolete. He may 
 excuse it like any other fondness for what is old- 
 fashioned ; he may find it interesting, amusing, even 
 endearing, in those who throw themselves into it sin- 
 cerely. But in any case he looks on at it as a spectator; 
 it is not for him. 
 
 This is not horrifying or even surprising to one who 
 believes, as I do, that worship is a permanent and neces- 
 sary privilege of the human spirit. There are plenty 
 of loafers and drudges who never learn to work, plenty 
 of workers who cannot play, and whole nationsful of 
 people who have only the most elementary acquain- 
 tance with love. A vital organ of the soul sickens and 
 shrivels; yet the person survives in some sort through 
 the marvelous compensatory readjustments uncon- 
 sciously wrought out within him. 
 
 More serious than dropping prayer altogether out of 
 sight is the tendency to dilute it by bland and innoc- 
 uous additions which make it more acceptable to the 
 fastidious, but less nutritious. Thus Du Maurier tries 
 to make us think that we are all more worshipful than 
 we had supposed: — "Trilby sang a song of B6- 
 ranger's and I'Endormi said : ' Cest egal, voyez-vous, 
 to sing like that is to pray and thinking is praying very 
 often (don't you think so?), and so is being ashamed 
 when one has done a mean thing, and grateful when it 
 is a fine day. What is it but praying when you try to 
 keep up after losing all you care for, and a very
 
 THE APPROACH TO JPRAYER 269 
 
 good praying, tooPCErayers without words are the 
 best.'" 
 
 "Yes," one might add, "and so are poems without 
 words, and music without notes, and landscape with- 
 out color or modeling, and life without/ mnscipusi 
 Doubtless the acts wliich Du Maurier so cheermgly 
 
 puts forward as prayer are steps, perhaps long steps, 
 in the right direction. They may prepare us .as kneel- 
 ing and other symbolic acts prepare us for ^^ayer. But 
 we must demand mbre of ourselves, because our deeper 
 selves demand more of us. Emerson^ asserts that 
 " The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed 
 it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of 
 his oar, are true prayers, heard throughout nature, 
 though for cheap ends." I doubt it. 
 
 The farmer may have been cursing the weeds. Yet 
 his kneeling and Trilby's singing might well have been 
 preparation for prayer. We must recognize the value 
 of symbolic and habitual acts like kneeling. Physical 
 attitudes help us to think and to feel as well as to pray. 
 When we want to concentrate our thoughts we relax 
 the larger muscles and fix the eye. Emotion has also 
 its physical symbols and accelerators, all the more 
 useful because habit links them up with the emotion 
 they last accompanied. 
 
 There is nothing more ceremonious and super- 
 stitious about kneeling and closing the eyes before 
 prayer than there is about lying down to promote sleep. 
 
 * In his essay on " Self -Reliance."
 
 270 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 In both cases the action initiates and promotes the 
 state of ^ mind which we desire, especially when habit 
 and association reenforce the connection. We need such 
 tfv^^^y symbols just as we need the symbols called "words" 
 L_pr "atoms." However dry and meaningless in them- 
 selves they yet preserve and clarify the meaning which 
 we give them. The fact that worship surrounds itself 
 with beauty, with symbols, symbolic acts and rites, 
 means simply that it is sensible and well-planned like 
 baseball or business. For athletics and commerce have 
 their own symbols which every one uses as a matter of 
 course. We modems are indifferent or averse to wor- 
 ship, not because it employs ceremonies and symbols, 
 but largely because of our clumsy shyness in the use of 
 this particular set. 
 
 But though many of us are now adrift and far from 
 / the land of worship, the shores of that great conti- 
 nent are vast and deep-cut and the wind of the spirit 
 j blows perpetually toward them. We may not land and 
 1 explore, but we can never tack very far from shore. 
 To-day we veer away from some jutting cape, but to- 
 morrow we wake to find ourselves in the shadow of 
 some deep fiord, or catch a glimpse of snow-capped 
 peaks as the land-fog lifts. Whenever beauty over- 
 ^ whelms us, whenever wonder silences our chattering 
 hopes and worries, we are close to worship. Dumb im- 
 pulses toward it haunt us in the pause before battle. 
 To follow thought nearer and nearer home in lingering
 
 THE APPROACH TO PRAYER 271 
 
 meditation is to grope for God. The deep joy of mutual 
 love or parenthood, the decisive victory of the right 
 in national life or in ourselves, brings us that wistful, 
 wondering pause, that ** orbed solitude" which is close 
 to prayer. 
 
 So, unless we are blind to beauty, deaf to the call 
 lof righteous battle, incapable of prolonged reflection, 
 fa stranger to the poignancies of joy and sorrow, in- 
 capable of wonder, we are in perpetual danger of falling 
 into worship as the tired mortal falls asleep. 
 
 Worship renews the spirit as sleep renews the body.^ 
 Our souls as well as our bodies get drained, now and 
 again, of available energy. We "go stale" as Hamlet 
 did, and to our jaundiced view the world too becomes 
 "stale, flat, and unprofitable," or "sicklied o'er with 
 the pale cast" of our own low-grade cerebration. This 
 is not always the result of physical fatigue ; for people 
 who never did a stroke of work in their lives are as 
 prone as any to the symptoms of spiritual fatigue. 
 
 Those symptoms consist for the most part of "stale- 
 ness " in various forms. They may be acute, chronic, or 
 recurrent. In the normal growing man they return 
 with each cycle of his growth and could be traced in his 
 soul like the rings of a severed tree-trunk. The tired 
 spirit finds a waning interest in familiar tasks; even 
 
 * Throughout these chapters on Worship I have borrowed freely from 
 Professor W. E. Hocking's book, The Meaning of God in Human Ex- 
 perience. Yale University Press, 191 2.
 
 272 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 contempt may be bred by this ingrowing familiarity. 
 What *s the use? What is it all for? we ask ourselves. 
 Minor waves of spiritual fatigue, daily, weekly, or 
 monthly, are often dully borne because custom has 
 mistaught us to assume that all novelty must wear 
 off, that familiarity necessarily blunts the keenness of 
 appreciation, and that no love can last forever. The 
 appetite for life, the zest and pleasure in recreation de- 
 cline or disappear. In the acute and extreme cases a 
 positive nausea of existence may seize us. 
 
 Moreover, spiritual fatigue shows itself in loss of 
 power as well as in a lack of feeling for life. We see 
 neither straight nor far. We magnify trifles and ignore 
 the universe. We pin our faith on the success of a party. 
 We expect mathematically exact justice for our deserts. 
 We cling to the letter of the law and demand our 
 pound of flesh. We exaggerate the purity of our own 
 motives and the impurity of others. Like a tired body 
 heading for the elevator, we drift into thought-sparing 
 devices, such as physical explanations of crime or 
 economic conceptions of history. We demand quick 
 returns on every expenditure of love or labor. The 
 gambling habit, the cynical spirit, incredulity of 
 goodness, timidity before new action, restless craving 
 for new sen^tion, betray that irritable weakness which 
 is characteristic of fatigue in the spirit as in the body. 
 
 This suffering and impotence are natural enough 
 because the efforts of work, the cramped application 
 that is symbolized by bending over a desk and confining
 
 THE APPROACH TO PRAYER 273 
 
 the attention to a single point "provide for their own 
 arrest," as Professor W. E. Hocking has so beautifully 
 shown. As the growth of a colony of bacteria is checked 
 by the chemical products of its own way of living, as 
 there is something in the very nature of work that calls 
 (through fatigue) for rest, so there is that in all Godless 
 living which tends to draw us (through the^ain aud_ 
 paralysis of spiritual fatigue) back to God .U' Worsh ip / 
 is the self-c onscious^part of th^ ,jiatural recovery of 
 value" in life, when it has grown stale. For worship 1 
 is the conscious love of the Spirit of the Universe, and ,' 
 we need i t regularly: like food or sleep. 
 
 We need it to cure us of absorption in the fragment) — 
 to free it of lonely isolation. All good work implies 
 concentration on detail, and all such concentration 
 involves temporary blindness, like that of the unused 
 eye of the microscopist, who looks at a bright, nar- 
 row, intensely interesting field with one eye; his other 
 eye is wide open, but voluntarily blinded. It actually 
 sees nothing because it intends to see nothing. Search- 
 light vision is strong and keen within its own field, 
 powerless outside it. Taken alone, it is false because 
 it ignores much. The mind is hungry for truth and for 
 the whole truth ; it grows weak and restless when it has 
 only, fragments to feed upon. 
 
 We who can give ourselves wholly to the whole alone, 
 are perpetually trying to give ourselves whole-heart- 
 edly to this piece of business, to that reform, to this pa- 
 tient, to this picture. We are not built so. We cannot
 
 274 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 get the whole of ourselves into our daily work, not 
 even into our play or our love. The fruitless attempt 
 results in a cramp of the soul which hardens into per- 
 manent contracture, unless we relieve it by a soul- 
 stretch, such as a tired man gives when he opens arms 
 and legs wide and extends himself like a starfish. 
 Prayer has been often and rightly described in meta- 
 phors of opening a shuttered and darkened existence 
 Vto let in the light of Heaven. The figure implies that 
 normally we are in open communication with the 
 whole spirit and purpose of life, just as our bodies are 
 in open communication, through the interchange of 
 breathing and the radiation of heat, with the whole 
 physical universe. 
 
 Nevertheless we attempt again and again to shut our- 
 selves off in spiritually unventilated corners. There 
 we stifle and droop. Play and love revive us partially 
 because they take us into better- ventilated, less 
 cramped activities. Worship fulfills what play, art, and 
 cl love attempt.^ "Pleasure, recreation, friendship, the 
 companionship of men and women, beauty, — all 
 these recall the outgoings of ambition and moral effort 
 and unite a man with his natural appreciation. Wor- 
 ship is the whole which includes them." ^ 
 
 Because worship is a renewal of our depleted spiritual 
 
 * " Worship is ideally capable of fulfilling all the functions of the other 
 means of re-integrating selfhood, whether of love, of recreation, or of 
 sleep itself (witness the exploits in comparative sleeplessness of Madame 
 Guyon, of Philip of Alcantara, and of many another)." Hocking, p. 563. 
 
 « Hocking, p. 418.
 
 THE APPROACH TO PRAYER 275 
 
 energies, it is naturally intermittent. One need not jeer 
 at the worshiper for spending so little time on that 
 which he declares to be his salvation. For it is in work, 
 play, and love that he must earn the right to pray as 
 he earns the promise of sleep. No one can find out 
 except by trying whether he needs prayer once an hour, 
 once a week, or less often. The rhythm of its recurrence 
 should be governed like that of any physiological func- 
 tion, varying like food, sleep and recreation, with our 
 expenditures of effort and energy.* 
 
 We often advise each other to " think it over and see 
 what on the whole seems best"; or we say, ^' All things 
 considered, I have decided to go." Any one who did 
 this would be near to prayer. Such phrases are loosely 
 used, but they suggest that once upon a time, in the 
 morning of life, when the phrase and the phrase- 
 maker were new, some one verily tried to shape his 
 decision after considering all things that lay within his 
 range of vision. Preserved in that phrase is somebody's 
 revulsion from snap- judgments, some one's determina- 
 tion to get a view of the background and middle dis- 
 tance of his life as well as its foreground, and to shape 
 his course accordingly. We live in choked and con- 
 fusing foregrounds, full of noise and fury, but crammed 
 with significance. We must not miss the message of the 
 
 * There is, however, another type of prayer-like consciousness which, 
 like breathing, should be in perpetual operation. Perhaps something 
 more like aspiration than prayer is what St. Paul had in mind when he 
 bade us "pray without ceasing," something which I shall try to describe 
 more fully below.
 
 276 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 moment. The present is full of brand-new events, 
 each bearing in its hand a letter personally addressed 
 to you and another to me. These messages must be 
 read and promptly answered, else we miss our chance 
 and disappoint many hopes. But if we are not to be 
 batted about like clowns in a circus, we must now and 
 then pull out of the stress and see what it means, after 
 "considering all things" that are past and distant, or 
 future and shadowy, but still alive and at work in our 
 minds. 
 
 "Considering all things" is turning from part to 
 whole, from brilliant near-seen views, all foreground, no 
 perspective, to a vision like that from a mountain-top. 
 Whoever tries to "see life steadily and see it whole" 
 by retiring to a viewpoint detached from the current 
 quotations and the latest news has moved in the direc- 
 tion of prayer. Your soul and mine axe parts of God. 
 We forget this. Prayer reminds us. 
 
 It is especially when we are confused and uncertain 
 what next to do that we turn from partial to wider 
 views. When lost in the woods you climb the highest 
 tree in sight. From the top of it you may be able to 
 see where you have come from, where you are, and 
 where you should go next. Such a view is precisely 
 what prayer gives. It orients us. As we look over our 
 stumbling, circuitous past we see where we have veered 
 from the track that we meant to keep. We see just 
 where our mingled success and failure have landed us. 
 We look ahead and shape our course afresh.
 
 THE APPROACH TO PRAYER 277 
 
 It takes time, this tree-climbing, and in any party 
 of woodsmen there is usually one who begrudges that 
 time. The evening is pressing on. Tree-climbing 
 does n't get us ahead. It may give pretty views, but 
 while we are waiting idle here we might, by ranging 
 about, have hit upon the path. Similar reproaches 
 are directed at prayer and worship. The immediate 
 utility of the rites and ceremonies of worship is as little 
 as that of painfully shinning up the tree. We are not 
 then or there getting ahead with our jobs. We have 
 turned away from the world; we seem to be getting 
 "other-worldly" and monkish. 
 
 But it is the greenhorn, not the old woodsman, who 
 chafes at the halt for a look around. The best way to 
 get ahead is sometimes to stop short and see where we 
 are. The best way to advance our work is, sometimes, 
 to lay it aside and go to bed. On the whole, all things 
 * considered, we may find ourselves on the wrong track. 
 Then our pause has been time well spent. 
 
 When the captain takes an observation at sea to 
 settle the ship's position, her run and her course, he 
 gives up for the time being the task of sailing the ship. 
 Whatever he has been doing to earn his pay and get the 
 ship ahead, he must quit while he is taking his daily 
 observation. His detachment from ordinary work 
 during that observation, has a parallel in the apparent 
 uselessness of prayer. It bakes no bread ; it cuts no ice. 
 It leaves the present and the foreground of life for others 
 to attend to. It retires for a fresh look at the whole,
 
 278 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 as a painter stops and backs away from his canvas, 
 now and then, to get a truer impression of what he has 
 been doing, and has still to do. "Why don't you stick 
 to your painting? '* an outsider might say. "You 'd get 
 along much faster if you kept your eyes open and 
 painted steadily, instead of stopping so often and 
 squinting through your half-closed eyelids." Smart 
 but false. 
 
 There are many other familiar acts which suggest 
 the value of prayer-pauses in the zealous practice of our 
 vocation. The locomotive engineer, peering about the 
 vitals of his engine during a stop, has often reminded 
 me of Sunday worship. The shopman who periodically 
 closes shop and refuses customers, while he takes ac- 
 count of stock, knows better at the end of the pause 
 where, on the whole, he is and what he should do next. 
 The factory engineer knows that his machinery, like 
 his help, needs to rest one day in seven. When the power 
 is turned off, he can carefully go over his machinery, 
 find flaws and weak spots (as any one of us finds them 
 in himself when he prays), and thus true up the wholcc
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 RECOLLECTION: DISENTHRALLMENT: SOLITUDE AND 
 SINCERITY: THE REENFORCEMENT OF ASSOCIATION 
 
 No one is armor-proof against forgetfulness. Most of 
 the facts and faces that we meet, soon become as dead 
 as if they had never lived in our experience. We do 
 not keenly regret their death. But our plight becomes 
 more serious when we forget what we had intended to 
 remember. To me the stupendous total of our unin- 
 tended forgettings is one of the tragic and humiliating 
 facts of existence. Most serious of all, however, is the 
 kind of forgetfulness acknowledged by a boy of my 
 acquaintance who, after shirking his music lesson, 
 very truthfully explained that, though he had not for- 
 gotten the lesson, he had forgotten the importance of it} 
 It is this sort of forgetfulness that really disintegrates 
 personality. A little more of this and a man splits into 
 "multiple personalities," a polite way of saying that 
 he has "gone to pieces." 
 
 The double and triple lives that we lead may trans- 
 gress no law of conventional morality and yet may dis- 
 sipate our force and squander the spirit's patrimony 
 more than riotous living. Home life, business life, and 
 recreation dwell in compartments so separate that each 
 forgets the others and may contradict them. This 
 division and mutual estrangement of our energies surely 
 
 » See Every Day Ethics, by Ella Lyman Cabot. H. Holt & Co., p. 217.
 
 28o WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 calls for some effort to pull ourselves together, to intro- 
 duce the different sides of ourselves each to each and 
 see them at least cooperate instead of competing. 
 
 When we set ourselves to this work of collecting or 
 re-collecting the scattered pieces of ourselves, we be- 
 gin a task which, if carried to its natural conclusion, 
 ultimately becomes prayer. We are driven to some- 
 thing of the sort when the shock of illness, war, bank- 
 ruptcy, or death has shaken us out of the rut of habit 
 and brought us face to face with the mess which we are 
 making of our years. It was after such a shock Lincoln 
 called the whole nation to prayer in his message of 
 December l, 1862: '*The dogmas of the quiet past are 
 inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is 
 piled high with difficulty and we must rise to the occa- 
 sion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and 
 act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we 
 shall save our country." 
 
 Recollection leads now and again to disenthrallment. 
 But innocence preserves us perpetually free of the en- 
 thrallments of habit and falsehood. In Hans Christian 
 Andersen's story, ''The Emperor's New Clothes,*' two 
 rogues offer to weave for his majesty a suit of extra- 
 ordinary beauty, which, however, will be invisible to 
 all who are stupid and to all who are unfit to hold their 
 present offices. The sharpers are awarded the contract 
 and set to work with nimble fingers pretending to 
 weave a fictitious fabric on empty looms. Courtiers 
 and high officials visit the weavers and see nothing,
 
 REENFORCEMENTS 281 
 
 but dare not say so, since such a confession would prove 
 them dull or unfit for office. For the same reason 
 the king pretends to see and to admire the invisible fab- 
 ric on the empty looms, puts on the imaginary clothes, 
 and sallies forth to exhibit them amid the hypocritical 
 applause and fawning enthusiasm of his courtiers. 
 
 ''But he has nothing on!'' said a child, who saw him 
 from its doorstep. 
 
 Ah ! what cheers and whooping should now be echo- 
 ing down the centuries, what rockets and Bengal lights 
 should light up the heavens to applaud that magnifi- 
 cent act of disenthrallment ! With a child's miraculous 
 strength he pulled himself out of the entangling net of 
 human prejudices and saw the whole fact, as T?sus did 
 when he stood by the woman of Samaria. To see 
 straight, to speak or write truly we have first and 
 chiefly to get ourselves cleansed of the encrusted de- 
 posits of other people's ideas, and of our own caked 
 habits. 
 
 * "Suitably clad externally, but mentally clogged with 
 a thousand irrelevant thoughts, I go to visit a friend." ' 
 To be worthy of this friendship I must first cleanse and 
 disenthrall myself by "full imaginative recall of that 
 friend's life and my relation to it. This is the begin- 
 ning of a "prayer before action," the preliminary puri- 
 fication which tradition has so long prescribed for us. 
 
 When one gathers himself for a leap, poises and fo- 
 cuses his energies, quelling internal conflicts, banishing 
 
 ' From an unpublished paper on Prayer, by Ella Lyman Cabot.
 
 282 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 irrelevant twitches and tremors, he acts out a phys- 
 ical analogy to the prayer before battle. He may go 
 beyond analogy. A college football player earned some 
 newspaper notoriety and much ridicule a few years 
 ago when it became known that he was accustomed to 
 pray before a match game. The idea of begging God 
 to favor his team and to weaken the rival team natur- 
 ally excited derision and contempt, for '* Prayer that 
 craves a particular commodity, anything less than all 
 good, is mean and vile,"^ as Emerson says. But I know 
 from team-mates of the derided player that his prayer 
 was essentially like Lincoln*s: ** I am not trying to find 
 out whether God is on our side, but whether we are on 
 God's side." 
 
 He was pulling himself together, trying to get m 
 touch with the ultimate sources of his strength, and, 
 not being unduly influenced by the modern fad of 
 atheism, he naturally turned to God. 
 
 But it is with the disenthrallment which initiates the 
 prayer before action, and all other prayers, that I am 
 just now concerned. If you make a failure of your visit 
 to the friend from whom you have been separated for 
 months, if you fill up the precious minutes with chat 
 about superficialities which neither of you wants to 
 recall, and if you leave untouched the deeper or more 
 fruitful interests in which your friendship has been 
 built up, it is usually because there has been no 
 preliminary cleansing of the surface of your mind 
 * Emerson's Essays, First Series, Riverside Edition, p. 76.
 
 REENFORCEMENTS 283 
 
 where are accumulated all sorts of riff-raff, news and 
 happenings, gossip and comment, which have stuck 
 there from your miscellaneous contacts with uninvited 
 experience. 
 
 These clogging impurities confuse you like the thick- 
 ets in which the woodsman loses his way. Your mind 
 must be free of them before it can see its course. Such 
 disenthrallment is essential in attempts to rid ourselves 
 of the curse of indecision. All prayers for direction 
 spring, I suppose, out of the misery of indecision. 
 Opposite courses of action are balanced evenly ; we are 
 drawn to each and repelled from each. A classical in- 
 stance is Emerson's doubt about leaving the ministry. 
 There were no heretic hunters on his trail. The pres- 
 sure was all directed toward inducing him to stay. 
 Only his own conscience urged his breaking away from 
 the church whose traditions he loved; he was by no 
 means certain that his scruples (about his fitness to 
 perform the rite of the Lord's Supper) were of import- 
 ance. He dropped his work and went to the mountains 
 to find help in his indecision. I do not know that he 
 prayed. What interests me now is his act of disenthrall- 
 ment, his decision to put distance and new surround- 
 ings between himself and the tangled situation. He 
 wanted a fresh view from a height ; he got it, came back, 
 and resigned his pastorate. 
 
 I have strung together these familiar experiences of 
 spiritual fatigue, of mountain-top views, nautical ob- 
 servations, stock-taking, re-collecting our scattered
 
 284 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 selves, and of disenthrallment in the pause before de- 
 cisive action, because I want to show that we are again 
 and again in a state of mind close to the shores of prayer. 
 We usually sheer off, it is true ; but it would be just as 
 natural to land, and just as common, were it not that 
 modern fashions and modern education have made us 
 half unconsciously dislike the sensation of touching this 
 firm ground. Disenthrallment, for which Lincoln ap- 
 pealed to the nation in the early threatening months of 
 the Civil War, is an attempt to go back to first prin- 
 ciples, to free ourselves of prejudices which check grow- 
 ing insight into a new situation. It is perhaps the most 
 important of the approaches to prayer, and I want to 
 illustrate it further. 
 
 We often say to each other that the person who has 
 lost, or never acquired, the capacity for wonder, is 
 bound to dry up. Premature senility is always threat- 
 ening him if his mind cannot rest in admiration. If 
 he cannot surrender himself to pure wonder in the pres- 
 ence of a child, a crystal, a skyscraper, a starry night, 
 or a leaping salmon, he does not get that bath of spirit- 
 ual refreshment which keeps us young. Wonder rejuv- 
 enates us first because it floats off the load of respon- 
 sibility; for the moment it washes the mind clean of 
 all thoughts, good and bad, sad or pleasing. Thereby 
 wonder brings our ordinary mental life to a standstill. 
 It makes one stop talking ("struck dumb with aston- 
 ishment") and even suspends the ordinary uses of
 
 REENFORCEMENTS 285 
 
 thought. The mind comes to rest without going to 
 sleep. It draws in its strained projects, recalls the scat- 
 tered flocks of thought, and rounds itself up like the 
 resting amoeba. The soul stares as the eye stares, and 
 stands stock-still like the body. 
 
 But wonder, with its disconcerting and eirresting 
 mystery, disconnects us as well. To be rapt in amaze- 
 ment means by derivation to be snatched out of the 
 orderly or disorderly sequence of our ordinary behavior. 
 In our amazement we no longer notice what else be- 
 sides the wonderful apparition is around us. We are 
 deaf and blind as well as dumb. This quenching and 
 isolation of the soul is but half, the negative half, of 
 wonder. The other half is an effortless absorption in 
 the marvel which is before us. We see, hear, and re- 
 member what astonishes us; it stamps itself photo- 
 graphically upon us. Then, freed from ourselves and 
 our ordinary thought-harness, we dive into the heart 
 of something better. 
 
 Wonder does not always lead to prayer; it may 
 lead to stupefaction. I suppose we can waste as much 
 time in watching a child as in any other way. Our 
 wondering gaze may degenerate into automatic and 
 fruitless staring. Like all disenthralled states, like all 
 prayer and worship, it is to be judged by its results. 
 Refreshment, new plans of action, more energy, more 
 adaptability, more sympathy, should issue from the 
 momentary monastic retreat into which wonder 
 tempts us. Wonder at a child makes for mental sound-
 
 286 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 ness and vigor, because it may shock us out of our 
 "anxious consistency" with our previous little ideas 
 about children. But it may simply suspend all mental 
 progress and leave us drifting and swinging in vacancy, 
 as boys swing on a gate, half hypnotized by the motion. 
 For wonder, like beauty, is a gate that we are not meant 
 to swing on. We are to open it and pass through into 
 prayer or into action. 
 
 The danger that wonder may degenerate into "mere 
 wondering" is parallel to the risks of aestheticism. The 
 average man believes by instinct that there is some- 
 thing of namby-pamby in the career of any one who 
 devotes himself to beauty. This is a healthy instinct 
 For the disenthrallment which beauty achieves for 
 us ought to be brief and brilliant, a "cool silver shock 
 of the pool's living water" which sends us bouncing 
 back to some definite task. While it lasts, neverthe- 
 less, beauty ought to be one of our surest and swiftest 
 aids to disenthrallment, to worship, and through them 
 to action. 
 
 I have already tried to describe the miraculous power 
 of beauty and affection to whirl us about, turning our 
 backs to the working world, and directing our delighted 
 eyes to a vista of refreshment. In that vista I cannot 
 tell where love and recreation cease and worship begins, 
 for I do not believe that the man most conscious that 
 he Is praying is always the most prayerful. But when- 
 ever we begin to recognize that our "beholding and
 
 REENFORCEMENTS 287 
 
 jubilant sour* is directly continuous with the Soul of 
 the Universe, we have begun to worship. 
 
 That saturation with beauty brings us nearer to 
 prayer has been instinctively realized in planning the 
 outlook, the architecture, the decoration, the music, 
 and incense of many churches. But our perception of 
 this analogy and our consequent recoil from the bar- 
 renness of our grandfather's "meeting-house" has 
 made us forget that there are types of beauty that do 
 not promote worship at all. Operatic and amorous 
 music is often sung in churches in a style fit to secular- 
 ize and suppress any movement towards prayer. 
 
 I have given up trying to believe that in sorrow and 
 failure we can always find blessings disguised. I now 
 think that such blows may contract, harden, even 
 crush, a soul until it has, so far as we can see, no power 
 to react. Just as beauty, and even love, may spoil a 
 child by soothing it into a lackadaisical and flabby 
 acquiescence, so frustration, and disappointment, 
 though they brace and stimulate some of us, cer- 
 tainly seem to hammer the life out of others. Yet, 
 though I do not believe that it is always a good thing 
 to be balked and thrown back upon ourselves, I can- 
 not doubt that it may be just what we need. It de- 
 pends on what else there is in the sufferer and around 
 him. 
 
 But whether the final outcome of sorrow and failure 
 is good or bad, their immediate effect is certainly to
 
 288 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 pull us up short. "No farther now in that direction," 
 they say to us. *' Give up these hopes, shut that desk, 
 lay down those tools.** One of the results of this ar- 
 rest is to make us look ourselves squarely in the face, 
 and a rueful sight it is for most of us! We are eager to 
 recommend such a mirror to others, but rarely feel the 
 need of it ourselves. Even if we do feel the need, we 
 may be incapable of turning to face it. Then ill-fortune 
 takes us by the shoulders and twitches us about with a 
 whirl that has all the suddenness and externality of 
 the revolution wrought by beauty. Despite the agony 
 and wasted effort by the way, such a revolution may be 
 salvation. For to array one self against another in 
 bitter civil war may be the only discoverable way of 
 saving both. We rarely do any thinking unless we 
 have to ; one of the forces which most often knocks us 
 out of self-contentment in a round of conventional or 
 unconventional habits, is misfortune. When forced 
 to reflect and be reflected, I may be driven to ask, 
 'What am I here for?** "What have I been doing?*' 
 Then I touch the solid ground of repentance, near to 
 prayer. 
 
 "When half -gods go, the gods arrive.** Thinking is 
 not worship, but if it is initiated by a wrench of sorrow 
 which banishes the half -gods of our superficial existence, 
 God may appear. That is why we need the wrench. 
 
 In some of us the difference between serious thinking 
 and prayer is the difference between half speed and 
 full speed. Thinking plus agonized questioning of the
 
 REENFORCEMENTS 289 
 
 scheme of things which has rolled me in the dust, has 
 not the confident appeal of the believer to his God ; 
 but if it is serious it will probably come to that. 
 
 I have tried to picture disenthrallment, the initial 
 stage of worship, springing from experiences of recol- 
 lection, of danger and decisive action, of wonder, 
 beauty, sorrow, and failure. I have still to write of 
 joy and success as disenthrallments. 
 
 "A man of average capacity never feels so small as 
 when people tell him that he is great," said Professor 
 G. H. Palmer, after listening to a torrent of eulogy at 
 the dinner celebrating his fortieth year as a Harvard 
 teacher. Joy and success tell us that we are great. We 
 may be foolish enough to believe it ; but sometimes we 
 are plunged into humiliation by the staring contrast 
 between our own insignificance and the splendor of 
 the opportunity with which happiness crowns us. One 
 looks so paltry and mean under a crown fit for a demi- 
 god. I lifted a six-year-old girl off an electric car the 
 other day because her father had the baby in his arms. 
 She did not distinguish me from the machinery of the 
 car till she had reached the sidewalk and got a grip of 
 her father's hand. Then she turned and sent after me a 
 flash, of smiling recognition that made me feel like the 
 tinker who was carried to the king's palace while asleep, 
 dressed in magnificent clothes, and saluted as prince 
 when he awoke. 
 
 So she saluted me, whom she had never seen before,
 
 290 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 and her look almost crushed me beneath the weight of 
 honor, blessed but painfully undeserved. Such a min- 
 gling of abasement and exaltation gives one for the mo- 
 ment a new heaven and a new earth. Familiar objects 
 look strange and new, old problems soluble. We are 
 in Lincoln's phrase disenthralled, — free for the instant 
 to see truly, as Hans Christian Andersen's little boy 
 saw the truth. But every bit of pure truth has in it 
 the quality and aroma of the whole, wherein honor, hu- 
 mor and pathos, victory, pain, and defeat are wonder- 
 fully mingled. Linked with that perception of our own 
 littleness which is pressed home upon us in any mo- 
 ment of entrancing joy, is the contrasted majesty and 
 beneficence of the universe. We could not feel so small 
 and at the same time so richly blessed, unless we felt 
 that we are placed, given a home in the world. The 
 spiritual essentials are for an instant clearly isolated by 
 the experience of disenthrallment ; and whatever gives 
 us clear sight of these brings us close to worship. . 
 
 Before battle and before any action which we are 
 alert enough to perceive as decisive, there is a natural 
 impulse to pull ourselves together and look over past 
 and future with an ingathering sweep which prepares 
 us for prayer. I suppose that many a man who has 
 rarely tried to pray at other times finds himself groping 
 in that direction when the sense of impending action 
 descends upon him. Responsibility and danger are 
 closely linked in their power to turn us toward the
 
 REENFORCEMENTS 291 
 
 Eternal, to make us "theotropic." Any responsibility 
 vividly felt calls the risk of failure to our minds and at 
 the same time centers those risks around our own de- 
 cisive action. We see how small is our ingenuity com- 
 pared with the incalculable chances of disaster. But we 
 also see that just here and now the universe has put it 
 "up to us." 
 
 Like other prayer-compelling forces, responsibility is 
 always close to us. Opportunity is always now or never 
 for us, and every day is Judgment Day. But what- 
 ever makes us feel this afresh — appointment to office, 
 marriage, parenthood — gives us a simplicity at once 
 humble and bold, disentangles us from the trees and 
 lets us see the forest. To find these nodal points of 
 concentrated insight and recollection is also vital to 
 the growth of friendship, and it is in this sense that 
 prayer is as valuable before a visit as before a battle. 
 
 As an axe-blow upon a tree, shaking the ground in 
 which it is rooted, shivers through the entire globe 
 and out through every part of the universe, so any act 
 spreads outward through a network of endless con- 
 sequences. Responsibility is my thread of connection 
 with this infinite labyrinth. I should be mad if I at- 
 tempted to follow it to an end. But worse than mad- 
 ness is the spiritual near-sightedness which leads us to 
 think, feel, and work as if we had no such connections 
 with the infinite. Such short-sightedness is a species of 
 insanity perhaps more widespread than any other. To 
 go as far as we can into the network of thoughts re-
 
 292 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 suiting from any thought or of consequences following 
 any act, and then to see that our part permeates and 
 is permeated by the whole life of the universe, is the 
 path of practical wisdom, of spiritual hygiene, but also 
 of worship. For there is that in every thought and act 
 which tells us all we need to know of the whole uni- 
 verse, just as any foot of space cuid any minute of time 
 stands for the whole and mirrors its nature. 
 
 Is this still disenthrallment? From our workaday 
 associations, yes. To be launched in responsibility 
 brings us into wider and deeper connections by snapping 
 the narrower ones. We withdraw from people, from 
 work, and from all the half -gods of ordinary existence, 
 into a solitude wherein we can be sincere. 
 
 Many of us put on for company an artificial manner, 
 a forced expression or a *' society smile." This mask 
 need not be false or fraudulent in the ordinary sense. 
 It may be only the expression of that decent self-re- 
 spect which makes us stand erect instead of slouching, 
 or dress ourselves properly before appearing in public. 
 Yet propriety is a mask which may hide us from our- 
 selves, if it becomes habitual. We forget to take off our 
 "society" thoughts with our ** society" clothes. The 
 habit of keeping up with the moods and demands of 
 the others may dampen and finally quench the desire 
 to be sincere with ourselves. It may keep us from 
 asking ultimate questions or entertaining ultimate 
 doubts.
 
 REENFORCEM ENTS 293 
 
 Furthermore, all moral effort involves the kind of 
 pretense which I have already described as '' impersona- 
 tion." Long before they fit us we have to take up the 
 responsibilities and put on the manners of adult life, 
 of bread-winning, parenthood, salaried work, truth- 
 telling, and chastity. -We have to act as if we were fit 
 and competent in order to make ourselves so. We have 
 to assume a virtue when we have it not and thus pain- 
 fully to acquire it. This is as it should be, but sooner 
 or later the accumulated fatigue of impersonation, the 
 heat and weight of our moral costume, grow oppres- 
 sive, and should be thrown off, like any other fatiguing 
 burden. To strip away the disguises of moral strenuous- 
 ness and of social compliance as the actor plucks off his 
 wig in the greenroom may lead only to moral laxity or 
 to sleep; yet it is through this same gate that we must 
 pass to that solitude and ultimate sincerity which is 
 one of the approaches to prayer. For our best as well 
 as our worst may be buried under the disguises of 
 moral and social effort. 
 
 (Woe to the man who cannot stop acting; who makes 
 no difference between stage and greenroom, and who 
 is afraid of solitude!] Mob-contagion, the automatic 
 registration and reproduction of actions which no one 
 stai:ts but all transmit, needs no crowd. Two or three 
 can create it, spread it and magically transform each 
 other into helpless puppets, dangling on strings and 
 twitched by the dread hand of Nobody-in-particular. 
 Lowered on our wires to such a marionette stage we
 
 294 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 surely ** descend to meet,** as Emerson said, for any 
 value that there is in us splits into a hodge-podge of 
 gregariousness. 
 
 Make this state of things bad enough, and with the 
 instinct of self-preservation we react ; we feel a salutary 
 hunger for solitude and renewal. Unfortunately this 
 reaction may not be fierce enough to carry us farther 
 than unabashed hygiene prescribes. We retreat to the 
 mountains, the sea, or the country. We "go abroad" 
 in search of health, distraction, or "art," and unfortu- 
 nately we often partially succeed. These palliative 
 remedies may so far satisfy us that we fail to retreat 
 into ourselves. We do not burrow back to our origins ; 
 we reach no original and life-saving insight. We stop 
 on this side of prayer. 
 
 A dread of solitude is often partially responsible for 
 the abortiveness of this recoil toward prayer. We hear 
 of solitude most often nowadays in connection with 
 vice or imprisonment. The dangers and the abuses 
 of solitude are uppermost in our minds. And solitude 
 in its literal sense, which we do not often face, is really 
 hell. If in solitude you meet no fresh thoughts which 
 lead you back to the sources of healing and forgiveness, 
 if instead you meet only the tortures of helpless lone- 
 liness, then solitude is your worst foe. But in the popu- 
 lous solitude of disenthrallment, the noises which drown 
 God's voice are stilled.
 
 REENFORCEMENTS 295 
 
 While describing the aids and approaches to worship 
 I have ignored some that have proved historically 
 most helpful ; I mean the reenforcements of association 
 in churches and church ceremonies. Crowd-contagion, 
 as I have just sketched its evil influence, is headless 
 and blind. It leads to monarchy or to murder; it exalts 
 or destroys a man or an institution, with as little in- 
 tention as an earthquake or a drought. 
 
 But in church we see the possibility of directing and 
 marshaling the gregarious impulses of mankind so as 
 to concentrate and reenforce our theotropic power. The 
 forces that make soldiers steadier and bolder when 
 they can touch shoulders, may also magnify in every 
 member of a congregation the timorous impulse toward 
 worship. For the crowd is not simply gathered to- 
 gether, but gathered together in the name of Christ, 
 under the leadership and unifying influence of a revered 
 personality. 
 
 Many who feel gauche or irritable in church can 
 share the enthusiastic church-member's experiences by 
 recalling a college commencement or the meetings of 
 some professional society or political club pervaded 
 by a genuine instinct of membership. I believe that 
 many college graduates get their nearest approach to 
 the experience of public worship in the surging feelings 
 of devotion and loyalty called out by Commencement 
 songs, exercises, and speeches. Few of us go to Com- 
 mencement as a duty ; we take the day as a privilege 
 and an opportunity. We forget for a day the claims of
 
 296 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 naked utility and the restraints of self-consciousness. 
 There is aroused in us a powerful emotion of gratitude 
 and loyalty to an institution, very little of which is 
 visible or tangible. It is genuinely a spirit to which the 
 graduates are loyal, a college spirit to which they con- 
 tribute and from which they draw new inspiration for 
 the coming year. They have funded there their best 
 ideals for the country and for young Americans. Yet 
 they do not feel that they have made or invented the 
 spirit of this institution as skeptics say men invent 
 God. They were bom in it, nourished by it, and love 
 to think of its permanence through past and future, 
 through civil war and through the passing crazes of 
 the time. 
 
 This is the spirit in which we ought to go to church, 
 if we go at all, because we love it and find there our 
 chance for service and for refreshment, a renewing of 
 tarnished standards, an outlet for reverence and aspira- 
 tion. All this men do find in Commencement Day, and 
 that day is therefore the nearest approach that many 
 of them ever find to worship. Some results of worship, 
 the reenforcement of loyalty, devotion, and self-abase- 
 ment, one certainly does achieve in these half-secular 
 gatherings for the praise of an institution. 
 
 By incorporeal aid, as well as by visible comrades 
 we rise above our common level, both in church and in 
 non-ecclesiastical gatherings. We are companioned by 
 the many-colored memories of former gatherings, 
 what is left to us and what is gone, what has leaped up
 
 REENFORCEMENTS 297 
 
 anew In us and what has changed almost beyond re- 
 cognition ; all reenforce and renew the sacredness of the 
 experience. We feel the unseen presence and the instant 
 sympathy of many who have sat or knelt beside us in 
 troublous or in jubilant days long piist, *'als knieten 
 viele ungesehen und beteten mit mir,''
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 CONFESSION: PETITION: PRAISE 
 
 When a child wakes in the grip of a nightmare, sobs 
 and stammers it out to his mother, and finds that its 
 horrors have swiftly vanished, he has discovered the 
 value of confession. Through expression something 
 confused and inarticulate has lost its terrors. By con- 
 fession he marshals his troubles in consciousness and 
 spreads them out in form and order; thus he gains 
 command of them and of himself. 
 
 Confession in more or less secular forms, confession 
 to a doctor or a chum, gives some relief to the tortures 
 of internal strife, — duplicity and fraud, the burden of 
 lies, thefts, treachery, or concealment, or, it may be, 
 the more subtle duplicity of warring ideals, curiosities, 
 and doubts. In any case we seek instinctively through 
 confession some inner peace or at least some truce to 
 inner war. We make these secular confessions primarily 
 because we cannot hold in any longer. We confess 
 not so much because murder will out, but rather be- 
 cause the tension between what we are and what wc 
 seem has grown intolerable. 
 
 An interesting variety of confession, rediscovered 
 and reapplied by the German neurologist S. Freud, 
 forms part of his "psycho-analytic" treatment of 
 functional nerv^ous disorders. People suppress and try
 
 CONFESSION: PETITION: PRAISE 299 
 
 to bury a disappointed hope or an evil desire ; but ac- 
 cidentally they bury it alive, so that it struggles and 
 shrieks beneath the weight of daily life piled on top of 
 it. This is, I think, the essence of the Freudian doc- 
 trine. Now and then the struggles of this fragment of 
 buried existence shake the surface of everyday life and 
 emerge in a fit of weeping or of rage. "You begin to 
 cry," said a small boy of my acquaintance, "for the 
 thing that made you cry, but you go on crying for all 
 the sad and sorry things that ever happened." You 
 had never quite laid the ghost of these ancient sor- 
 rows. From the deeper inconsequent strata of your 
 existence it rises to haunt and oppress 3'ou. 
 
 So in rage: we begin to be angry with a companion 
 for some trifling annoyance, but we go on into a "fit of 
 rage" because our momentary anger is reen forced by 
 the renascent memories of a multitude of other in- 
 juries, long half -consciously brooded, never quite for- 
 given. All this submerged corruption boils up to the 
 surface, sometimes with our own aid; we may work 
 ourselves into a passion for the sake of the vent it gives 
 to our repressed and smouldering resentment. 
 
 A better vent is given by full confession. To see 
 clearly that we are abusing our fellow for his part in 
 spats which both should have forgiven and forgotten 
 long ago, shames us or makes us laugh. The air is 
 cleared ; the ghosts of past quarrels are laid. To tempt 
 the sufferer into confessing what he did not know 
 enough to confess, is the substance of psycho-analysis.
 
 300 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 though Freud has misled many into supposing that 
 all such confessions must deal with one topic, sex. 
 
 The assisted and guided confession of half -conscious 
 troubles, and the more spontaneous outpourings for 
 relief of tortured and desperate memories, are of ob- 
 vious value in moral hygiene. But what is their con- 
 nection with worship? The answer seems to be this: 
 We confess because of a hunger for soundness. * ' What, ' ' 
 we ask, "can heal the divisions of this wounded spirit? 
 What shall make us whole?" It is confession. But the 
 healing of one wound makes us aware of other and 
 • deeper suffering, and of an unsatisfied hunger for friend- 
 ship, not only between the hostile parts of our own per- 
 sonality, but between that personality and the social 
 order which nourishes it. We claim our right and duty 
 to take a man's part, not a parasite's, in the society 
 around us. We want to lift our part of the load and to 
 deserve some portion of the good things that come to 
 us. 
 
 But this Is not enough. We are conscious — fitfully 
 and in glimpses — that our deepest gratitude and serv- 
 ice cannot be paid to any visible institution like the 
 State, the progress of science or civilization. Behind 
 these are the universe and Its Spirit, which made them 
 and will unmake them if they fail. Fundamentally we 
 want to get down to bed-rock. We long for harmony, 
 not only with the better part of our own selves, not 
 only with the quite fallible and temporary institutions 
 of society, but with the bottom principle of things..
 
 CONFESSION: PETITION: PRAISE 301 
 
 If we follow home the impulse, it prompts confession 
 to One who knows better than we how to frame that 
 confession and hears what we mean but cannot say. 
 
 I have now described as well as I can the steps by 
 which one may reach prayer in its usual and traditional 
 sense, namely, petition. I shall not try to prove that 
 our minds are given their nourishment and their sense 
 by sharing in a Total Mind through which, as through 
 an atmosphere, we speak to each other and deal^with 
 nature. That proof, as I believe, is abundantly sup- 
 plied in other books, and lives in the deeds of all 
 noble people. 
 
 But many who are aware of God, and try to live ac- 
 cording to what they believe to be his will, still feel that 
 petition is a relic of barbarous or of naive ages, some- 
 thing not to be taken seriously by reasonable people. 
 Prayers for rain, for victory in battle, for the recov- 
 ery of the sick, — what are these but frantic attempts 
 to break the laws of nature? And even if they could 
 succeed, would they not be grossly selfish? For my 
 victory is often another's despair. The rain which falls 
 on my crops leaves my distant neighbor's all the longer 
 in drought. But if we admit that ' * all prayer that craves 
 a particular commodity — anything less than all good 
 — fs mean and vile," do we eliminate all the prayers 
 that any needy mortal wants to make? '*A11 good" is 
 a pretty large order and a tolerably vague one. 
 
 In answer to this question, which often troubled me
 
 302 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 in past years, Christ's words in the garden of Geth- 
 semane now seem wholly satisfying: "If it be possible 
 let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless thy will, not 
 mine be done.** 
 
 No one who believes in God, and thinks of duty as 
 the increasing approximation to his will, can absolutely 
 desire any particular commodity or immunity. Every 
 wish becomes conditional and "has a string to it.'* 
 Strange though it sounds, a conditional wish is not 
 absurd or even uncommon. You want to win your foot- 
 ball game, — yes, but you don't want to win by any 
 means or unconditionally. You want to win if you 
 can do so under the rules of the game and with no more 
 luck than is compatible with the dominance of skill and 
 science. In other words, what you want above all else 
 is good sport, a well-played game, and an antagonist 
 worthy of your steel. To win by a fluke, as yacht- 
 races are sometimes won, to win by undetected viola- 
 tion of the rules, or to win over an antagonist half your 
 size, is not what you want. Your desire to win is lim- 
 ited on every side. If it be possible I want victory. 
 Nevertheless let the best man win. Let the traditions 
 of good sport be maintained whoever wins or loses. 
 If I can only win by a fluke or a fraud, then I want 
 to lose and to lose well. 
 
 A scientific investigator wants his experiment to 
 succeed ; he wants to be known and promoted through 
 success. He is looking, perhaps, for a cancer cure. But 
 if it turns out that he is looking in the wrong place.
 
 CONFESSION: PETITION: PRAISE 303 
 
 he wants nature to tell him so decisively. He wants no 
 fame and promotion that are based on a fluke or a 
 misunderstanding. He would rather fail and waste the 
 time and money which he has spent on his research 
 than publish as fact any "may be." Behind his intense 
 desire, there is for him, as there was for Christ, a "never- 
 theless." 
 
 Any high-minded man wants prosperity for his party, 
 his nation, his race, or his cause. But he wants it con- 
 ditionally. The "rules of the game" still govern him. 
 If his nation can survive only by sucking the vitality of 
 other struggling nations, then he wants his nation to go 
 down. Our devotion to any cause becomes conditional 
 as soon as by sympathy and foresight we see that 
 our cause can only win by breaking the rules of the 
 game. 
 
 Whoever, by religious instinct or religious philos- 
 ophy, has come to believe that the universe is a team 
 of which he is a member, wants the success of the team 
 unconditionally and with his whole heart, and wants 
 nothing else, save with the condition, "provided this 
 does not contravene the needs of the team." Such is 
 the spirit of Christ's prayer. Obviously, then, condi- 
 tional wishing is part of our daily exercise. The baby- 
 ish tendency to "want what you want when you want 
 it" Is squelched or modified in every piece of concerted 
 work, in every advance of science, and every harmoni- 
 ous family. To revise and subordinate our wills until 
 they are conditional on the success of a city, a party, or
 
 304 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 any other team to which we are loyal, is among the most 
 familiar and unheroic necessities of civilized life. 
 
 We take the further step, from loyal team-work in 
 business, science, or politics, to world-loyalty whenever 
 we realize that we are part of the world and not merely 
 part of our own town. When one is driven by the ne- 
 cessities of thought or drawn by some swifter process to 
 recognize the living universe beyond the city limits, 
 one has no longer any absolute desire except that the 
 Will expressed in that universe shall prevail. This 
 desire is the perpetual though often half-hearted prayer, 
 *'Thy will be done." My own conditional will is not 
 wiped out, unless it hopelessly conflicts with itself, 
 i.e., with my unconditional will for the success of the 
 universe. Loyal citizenship is thus one of the approaches 
 to religious loyalty and to prayer. 
 
 Since we are so bound together that we must succeed 
 or fail together, each at bottom wants each of the rest 
 to succeed in his own way, so far as he can find it. For 
 the same reason, each nation not too blind to see the 
 facts is interested in the national success of the whole 
 family of nations. To crush out a single nation or a 
 single will is to weaken the world-team. 
 
 Whoever "craves a particular commodity," uncon- 
 ditionally and without consulting, as well as he can, the 
 interests of all concerned, is not praying. Before 
 prayer he must confront his desire first with all the 
 visible objections to see if they can be harmonized with 
 it. Then finally in prayer he binds himself , absolutely
 
 CONFESSION: PETITION: PRAISE 305 
 
 and in advance, to modify or wipe out his will so far as 
 this may be necessary in order to meet any objections 
 now unknown to him and so to harmonize it with the 
 Will of the Whole. 
 
 Any one who sincerely wants the truth, even when it 
 wrecks his other desires, is in the attitude of prayer. 
 If a man is sincere when he asks you to tell him the 
 truth about his fitness for a certain office, he will take 
 his medicine, even though the verdict is "utterly un- 
 fit." On the whole, all things considered, he does not 
 any longer want the office, since he is unfit. 
 
 But it takes time and struggle to get to this point. 
 It is hard to squelch the rampant energies which tell 
 him to grab the office anyway, to get the honor and 
 profit of it and cover up the traces of his unfitness. 
 All sorts of sophistries rise up in him to defend his will 
 against his Will. "Some one equally unfit will get the 
 office if I don't. I need the money for my children's 
 education. Surely I must n't neglect my family." To 
 struggle against these sophistries is the struggle of 
 prayer. For the sincerest people may be unwilling to 
 ask advice of any living man in such a dilemma. They 
 fight the problem out "alone," seeking the truth in the 
 presence and before the tribunal of the best they know. 
 If there is a genuine fight, if the man's native desire for 
 the place is given a fair hearing, not simply brushed 
 aside without consideration, and if the judge is not in 
 the pay of native desire itself, but is chosen because 
 he represents the squarest judgment available, then
 
 306 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 something very like prayer is going on whether the 
 name of God is mentioned or not. 
 
 If he is sincere he means to find the Truth, or the 
 nearest available approach to it, and to correct his 
 decision as often as new light appears. This desire, 
 like all desires to find the solid fact or the True Course 
 of action, is really an infinite desire. The presence of 
 such an infinite desire judging our finite cravings is the 
 presence of God in our prayer. 
 
 Petition, then, is not a mean whimpering for favors; 
 it is the only honorable and manly act for any one in 
 doubt about his belief or his course of action. All 
 straight thinking means asking for the truth and get- 
 ting the best answer that we can find. Petition is merely 
 one expression of sincerity and of clearness in thought. 
 
 There is a superficial resemblance between condi- 
 tional wishing and a cowardly or a fatalistic submis- 
 sion to whatever comes, just as there is a certain like- 
 ness between humility and the slimy "umbleness" of 
 Uriah Heep. Sincerity is the touchstone which decides. 
 If you sincerely want a true judgment about the worth 
 of your desire for office, you will give fair consideration 
 to the possibility that despite all your sins and limita- 
 tions you may really deserve that office yourself. Your 
 crude desire may be wholly right. You do not intend 
 always to duck your head to others, nor to crush and 
 forget your desires by keeping busy about something 
 else, nor to avoid the responsibilities and reproaches 
 of taking the best berth in sight. You want to be fair
 
 CONFESSION: PETITION: PRAISE 307 
 
 to your own elemental cravings as well as to the claims 
 of other people. Hence prayer does not always mean 
 renunciation. It means perpetual readiness either for 
 victory or for renunciation, whichever is the verdict 
 of the best judgment in sight. 
 
 So far as we achieve this readiness, we achieve as deep 
 a peace as any human being has a right to. We are on 
 more solid ground than when we simply hustled along 
 and tried to forget our desires for the much coveted or 
 the apparently unattainable. For desires controlled 
 only by the pressure of work and concentration spring 
 up again when that pressure slackens. Even while we 
 are working they color our outlook and tend to make us 
 sour, or at best merely stoical. After facing a desire 
 with the best wisdom which we can reach, after thinking 
 it through with absolute sincerity, which is the presence 
 of God, we can begin to work again whole-heartedly 
 because there are no longer any rebels in camp. We 
 have expelled both the doubts about our right to success 
 and the sullen misgivings about the need of our renoun- 
 cing it. 
 
 Such decisions cannot often be made once for all. 
 They drag along indefinitely. In every wide-awake 
 person I think there must be such trials, prolonged for 
 years because the evidence is not all in. It may take one 
 a long time to make sure that he is in the right pro- 
 fession, or to decide whether he ought to give up all for 
 a cause. Here *^the readiness is all,** — the readiness 
 to change just as soon as the evidence is sufficient to
 
 3o8 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 demand a change, and the equal readiness"to keep on 
 waiting and hunting for new light until sincerely con- 
 vinced, or until it is clear that further indecision is in 
 itself a decision and the wrong one. Meantime we play 
 the game under the rules for all that it is worth. 
 
 This is, I suppose, one of the meanings in St. Paul's 
 phrase, **Pray without ceasing.** 
 
 What about prayers for others? One may agree that 
 there is petition in all good thinking, and petition to the 
 Absolute Spirit by all who aspire in the spirit of abso- 
 lute sincerity. But when we pray for another's safety 
 or success, are we not asking for a change in the laws of 
 nature? When President McKinley was sick, it cer- 
 tainly seemed as if some prayed for him with a gam- 
 bler*s superstition that it could n't do any harm and 
 might do good. Is not this to play fast and loose with 
 sacred things? 
 
 Again Christ's words set us straight. *' If it be pos- 
 sible let this cup pass from me,** — or from him, we can 
 say with equal right, if we add as all Christians must: 
 ** Nevertheless thy will, not mine bedone.** Our friends, 
 if we love them, make up so large a partof ourselves that 
 our desires include them. Such desires, like all others, 
 are crude and need to be purified in the fire of the 
 thought of God. Prayer is, then, a struggle for mutual 
 accommodation between one of my desires and the 
 Judge of all my desires, a struggle bom of our need to 
 live at peace together. Can I think of any way of help*
 
 CONFESSION: PETITION: PRAISE 309 
 
 ing my friend In his trouble without making matters 
 worse, without neglecting prior claims? If not, I can 
 at any rate drive out panicky impulses to despair and 
 curse ; for if before God I clearly picture the situation 
 and my friend in it, these childish tendencies drop 
 away. 
 
 In a crude and vague form, something that is akin to 
 the praise of God celebrated in hymns and church ser- 
 vices, often breaks out in the midst of rejoicings over 
 college victories, success in politics, love, or war, and 
 especially in the presence of overwhelming natural 
 beauty. But such jubilations are often formless and 
 thoughtless. Even in Emerson's magnificent definition 
 of worship as the ''soliloquy of a beholding and jubi- 
 lant soul,'* the jubilant soul appears a little indefinite. 
 It does not seem to know quite what it is rejoicing about. 
 Somehow its gratitude and exultation spread beyond 
 the event or spectacle in the foreground, to "every- 
 thing else." It is not merely that 
 
 "Morning's at seven, 
 The hillside *s dew-pearled " ; 
 
 but that, moreover, 
 
 "God's in his heaven, 
 All's right with the world." 
 
 There is the same vagueness in the enthusiasm of 
 people who sing hymns with real fervor, but do not 
 notice the meaning of the words, or, if they do, are 
 repelled. Yet I believe that the religious sentiment
 
 3IO WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 intended by the composer of the hymn does reach many 
 who sing it in this vague way. 
 
 The weakness of such enthusiasms is that they for- 
 get for the time the blind cruelties of nature, the un- 
 deserved sufferings of children, the famines, the prisons^ 
 and the insane asylums. To deserve the name of wor- 
 ship and the praise of God, our enthusiasm must be 
 such as to remember, include, and surmount these 
 evils. This requirement is hard to fulfill and must 
 compel most of us to confess that we know very little of 
 such experiences. James Russell Lowell counts but 
 three in his lifetime, and somehow we resent his arith- 
 metic because it seems that so great an experience 
 ought to change the color and texture of one's life so 
 radically that another such experience would be as in- 
 commensurable with the first as odors are incommen- 
 surable with mathematical equations. 
 
 I have nothing of my own to report here, though I 
 think the experiences of exaltation and gratitude which 
 have come to me, as to thousands, in the hymns and 
 liturgies of the Christian Church are somewhat more 
 definitely religious than the expansive enthusiasm for 
 things in general which springs out of us after a plunge 
 of ecstatic delight in art, nature, love, or victory. But 
 any one who has been carried away from his usual moor- 
 ings by a wave of intense gratitude for opportunity, 
 for human nobility, or for beauty, must have noticed 
 the painful internal pressure of the desire to repay some 
 one while at the same instant the impossibility of ade-
 
 CONFESSION: PETITION: PRAISE 311 
 
 quately repaying any one stares him in the face. Some- 
 thing has to give way when an irresistible force meets 
 anything less than an immovable body. We should be 
 torn to pieces or made silly by the effort to express our 
 endless gratitude, or to spend it on some finite object, 
 were we not dimly or clearly aware that benefits re- 
 ceived from any one of God's creatures can be repaid 
 to any or all of the others. Indirectly through them, 
 directly through the praise of God, we can utter in 
 Infinite time the full force of our gratitude. What I 
 owe to A, I can repay to some extent through love and 
 service to B, C, and D. But how can I get even with 
 the rainbow? What can express the torrent of thank- 
 fulness I feel to Christ? Worship is the only answer. 
 Through worship the stored residue of our unexpended 
 gratitude, all we could never pay, all men ignored when 
 we tried to pay it, flows straight or deviously back to 
 God, who sees the whole. 
 
 By tracing out the full meaning of gratitude, I believe 
 one might trace the full outline of belief in God and in 
 immortality. For gratitude, like love, is by birth and 
 lineage an infinite emotion, satisfied with no finite ser- 
 vice or praise, exhausted by no measure of effort and 
 expression. It implies an infinite object and an infinite 
 life^as one end of a stick implies another. Meantime 
 inarticulate gratitude is tolerable only because we are 
 aware, vaguely or less vaguely, that some one under- 
 stands and receives what we cannot express in word 01 
 deed. Without that awareness gratitude would be like
 
 312 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 a wild beast in our breasts. In worship or the praise 
 of the Almighty and All-comprehending Spirit contin- 
 uous with ours, we conquer at last our inarticulateness 
 and are relieved for the time of our burden. 
 
 By overflowing enthusiasm and by gratitude, then, 
 we are enticed near to the shores of prayer, and no 
 human being can ever deny to another the right to 
 believe that in some moment of joy and thanksgiving 
 he has actually landed and knelt. 
 
 Reverence is a familiar and manly emotion and few 
 are ashamed to confess it; yet it stops this side of wor- 
 ship only when it is too shy and timid to recognize its 
 own thinly disguised meaning. Take it for a moment 
 from the other fellow's point of view. No one can stand 
 reverence paid to himself or fail to see that the billet 
 is addressed to some one else and by a most lovable 
 blunder delivered at the wrong house. 
 
 ** Farther up the same road — in fact an infinite dis- 
 tance from here," one must call out to the messenger. 
 "Your direction is all right, and I know the Person 
 whom you are after, in fact I am a poor relation of his, 
 but He does n't live here." 
 
 Yet we reverence others. Can we, then, go on pur- 
 posely paying unto others that which we know could 
 never conceivably be paid to ourselves without blas- 
 phemy? Every one of us knows that no amount of 
 added virtue or subtracted sin would make him fit to 
 receive reverence. For the trouble is not with our par- 
 ticular incapacity and littleness, but with the inherent
 
 CONFESSION: PETITION: PRAISE 313 
 
 unfitness of any finite being to contain the outpourings 
 of an infinite impulse. We must pass it along as we do 
 gratitude expressed to ourselves ; we pass it to others so 
 far as we can, but chiefly and most directly to God. 
 
 Any of us not wholly devoid of modesty and curiosity 
 must sometimes have been set to wondering at the pro- 
 fusion of valuable goods which nature leaves at our 
 door, obviously not meant for us. How disorderly and 
 capricious, it seems, on nature^s part ! How humiliating 
 and embarrassing for us to find at the breakfast- table 
 a crown we are quite incapable of wearing, to find in the 
 sunset a poem we cannot read, to have gratitude given 
 us in a smile for work we never performed. Rewards 
 fifty sizes too large for us, five hundred times greater 
 than what we bought and paid for, are delivered to 
 us daily. 
 
 That sunset, that magnificent thunderstorm. What 
 are they really meant for? Whom or what do they help 
 in the struggle for existence? They were there before 
 man came on earth. They surely do not fit me; they 
 humiliate and overwhelm me. They are meant for 
 some one else, yet I, too, understand a bit of them. They 
 are not addressed to any being who contradicts my 
 aspirations. 
 
 Tsay that they are aimed, like all reverence, toward 
 God. They hit you and me on the way, because we are 
 on the path to Him.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 COMMUNION: THE ANSWER TO PRAYER: SUMMARY 
 
 The gaucherie and shamefacedness, the scorn or re- 
 volt of the up-to-date man invited to take part in wor- 
 ship, reaches a climax when we approach communion. 
 Rapture, ecstasy, and the mystic states associated 
 with them, are to the minds of most of us either the 
 fakes and hysteria of ** mediums" or the fanaticism of 
 dancing dervishes. Part of this instinctive discredit is 
 due to our distrust of emotionalism and all that goes 
 with it. Good citizens are alarmed at the idea of being 
 "carried away" by music, acting, athletics, politics, 
 religion, or anything else. '*When was Lincoln ever 
 carried away?" they will ask you. "Did n't he chew 
 his straw, smile or frown a little, tell a story or two, 
 and maintain his steady composure throughout all the 
 crises of his maturer life?" 
 
 I do not know how far this tradition does justice to 
 Lincoln, but in any case I think it represents a trun- 
 cated ideal of a man. The person who cannot be "car- 
 ried away" by any music is to be pitied, not admired, 
 on that account. He probably lacks a musical ear or 
 an acquaintance with the human experience which 
 music portrays. He is blighted and numb like one who 
 cannot fall in love. But if one is more fortunately 
 endowed on the emotional side and has never become
 
 COMMUNION: ANSWER TO PRAYER 315 
 
 sour and hlascj then he can be rapt and entranced by 
 art as much as any devotee by religion. He will look 
 as ridiculous and behave as unsocially as a dervish ; or 
 he may look utterly passive and dreamy, although in 
 truth his outward *' passivity" is a mask concealing 
 intense activity, "like the motionlessness of the rapid 
 wheel or the ease and silence of light." ^ 
 
 Any one who cares for music is able to follow sym- 
 pathetically, even if he cannot share, the accounts of 
 the religious experience called "communion with God.*' 
 He knows what is meant by an intense but "effortless 
 attention." It is a concentrated mental activity com- 
 prehending a multitude of present facts without drop- 
 ping stitches by the way, coursing over wide realms of 
 memory and anticipation as people do when in great 
 and sudden danger. In this conspectus, one gets be- 
 yond trying; one wakes to an experience that is not less 
 but more definite than our ordinary consciousness. 
 
 Of course such states of entrancement are justified 
 only by their results. Partial intoxication with ether 
 or nitrous oxide gas produces moods which feel much the 
 same as religious ecstasy ; but they differ in that they 
 have no beneficial or lasting effects. If we do not reap 
 new explanations, new clews to action, new powers of 
 self-devotion and self-control, new appreciation of 
 others' strength and of our own weakness, then our 
 worship has been fruitless ; in the end it may degener- 
 ate into self-indulgence, a wallowing in emotion for 
 
 * Hocking, p. 384.
 
 3i6 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 emotion's sake or a slavish engrossment in details o! 
 habitual rite. 
 
 Though nothing can be plainer or more terrible than 
 sin, the shameful and intentional violation of our own 
 standards, it is now fashionable to ignore it. This will 
 not do. The attempt to dilute and modify sin by call- 
 ing it ** unintentional mistake'* or "an infraction of un- 
 conventional rules" means muddleheadedness or so- 
 phistry. No one loses the consciousness of sin unless 
 he loses it on purpose, that is, by sinning until he has 
 calloused himself. 
 
 In prayer we seek forgiveness for our sins. But what 
 can that forgiveness mean? Christ has told us to look 
 for its meaning in our own struggle to forgive those who 
 trespass against us. To forgive those who have wronged 
 us is not to forget the injury. For some people forget- 
 ting is as easy as it is inane; for others it is impossible; 
 for all it is valueless or harmful. In forgiveness there is 
 always struggle ; in forgetting there may be none. We 
 struggle to regain through forgiveness our regard or 
 affection despite the culpable weakness which we 
 recognize. " Nevertheless " is the crucial and victorious 
 word in forgiveness, as it was in Christ's prayer that 
 the cup might pass from him. Our affection is not un- 
 changed, but nevertheless we make a new venture of 
 hope and faith. 
 
 So Christians believe that the world-spirit gives us^ 
 another fair chance whenever we sincerely repent of our
 
 COMMUNION: ANSWER TO PRAYER 317 
 
 6ins. This is a miracle like all forgiveness, for it implies 
 that the laws of cause and effect are not the only fac- 
 tors in the workshop where character is moulded. Ac- 
 cording to the law of cause and effect we get **an eye 
 for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,*' since action and 
 reaction are equal and opposite; every sin leaves an 
 indelible mark not to be wiped out by repentance and 
 reform. This is true as long as we deal with the arith- 
 metic of finite quantities and closed circuits. A ball 
 batted against the walls of a closed rectangular room 
 takes mathematically predictable directions, at veloci- 
 ties that depend on the rigidity of the walls, the elas- 
 ticity of the ball, and the force with which it is driven. 
 
 But by forgiveness an unmeasurable power is dis- 
 covered. We may cut away virtue from character by 
 sin, yet, through the infinite quality of forgiving love, 
 we may have left a chance of achievement still infinite. 
 A similar miracle happens when one cuts off a bit of a 
 line. In the piece which has been cut away there was 
 room for many points, yet in the piece which is left 
 there is still an infinite opportunity to find more 
 points. So for love, even for our human love, there 
 are still infinite ''points** to be found in a person whom 
 we forgive, even though by sin some possibilities have 
 been cut away. 
 
 This miraculous fertility in the infinite resources is 
 opened to us sinners only by the sincerity of our prayer 
 for forgiveness, the sincerity of our repentance. For 
 sincerity has in it always an infinite quality like that
 
 3i8 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 of love and reverence. It may be an absolute sincerity, 
 prepared for endless trial and sacrifice. One who sin- 
 cerely devotes himself to the service of truth wants 
 truth at whatever cost of labor, humiliation, and re- 
 form. He is prepared with an answer to all possible ob- 
 jectors, however numerous, each plausibly presenting 
 him as a substitute for truth something ** just as good 
 for less money." Sincere repentance is likewise infinite 
 because there is no end to its sorrow and no limitation 
 to what it is ready to perform in the way of expiation. 
 If to any right demand for sacrifice or humiliation a 
 repentant soul can answer, "Ah, no, not that, any- 
 thing but that," then his repentance is so far insincere 
 and forgiveness is so far helpless. 
 
 Absolute obedience is a virtue not highly prized in 
 America to-day. But whatever be our belief as to the 
 need of it in other fields, there can be no question that 
 absolute forgiveness presupposes absolute obedience. 
 If we are to be forgiven we must be beaten to a stand- 
 still: "Lord, here am I: what wouldst thou that I 
 should do?" St. Francis of Assisi attained this spirit 
 and trained his followers in it. 
 
 "A certain poor and infirm man came unto him. On 
 whom having much compassion, St. Francis began to 
 speak to one of his followers of the other*s poverty and 
 sickness; but his follower said to St. Francis: * Brother 
 it is true that he seems poor enough ; but it may be that 
 in this whole province there is not one who wishes more 
 to be rich than he.' And being at once severely re-
 
 COMMUNION: ANSWER TO PRAYER 319 
 
 proved by St. Francis he confessed his fault"; — the 
 fault of uncharitably imputing sin. Then comes the test 
 of true repentance. "Blessed Francis said unto him: 
 'Wilt thou do for this sin the penance which I shall bid 
 thee?* Who answered (in unconditional obedience), 
 *I will do it willingly.' Then Francis said unto him, 
 ' Go and put off thy tunic and throw thyself naked at 
 the poor man's feet, and tell him how thou hast sinned 
 against him in speaking evil of him in that matter and 
 ask him to pray for thee.* He went, therefore, and did 
 all the things which blessed Francis had told him." 
 
 We moderns are proud to say that we owe absolute 
 obedience only to our consciences, but I wonder how 
 many of us possess a conscience that is quite uninflu- 
 enced by a desire to be easy on the culprit whom it 
 judges, a conscience that is as ready as St. Francis was 
 to demand of us the expiation that really expiates? 
 
 The forgiveness of sin is perhaps the whole of the 
 answer to prayer, its all-inclusive result. For the at- 
 tainment of spiritual peace, the quenching of uncer- 
 tainty, the freeing of shackled powers, and all that one 
 could hope to obtain through prayer, can, I suppose, 
 be properly included under forgiveness. That we are as 
 dull,^s habit-bound, and unoriginal as we are is doubt- 
 less largely our own fault. If so, the divine forgiveness 
 will mean a burst of originality in thought, word, and 
 deed. 
 
 To be original, in musical composition, in scientific
 
 320 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 hypothesis, or in the control of one's temper is a mir- 
 acle, like all novelty. Whatever is really new, is some- 
 thing uncommensurable with former experiences, un- 
 predictable as the face of a new baby. One veritably 
 original thing each man does. He gets born, and the 
 mother's assurance that there never was such a baby 
 as this is literally and absolutely correct. Every birth 
 is a miraculous birth, because no two individuals are 
 alike, and novelty is always inexplicable. The birth of 
 a new thought, a new habit, a new leaf, a new day, is 
 just as miraculous, because its newness is the one thing 
 that all law and all previous experience cannot explain. 
 
 When saint or sinner asks with all his might: What 
 shall I do next? What does this puzzling experience 
 mean? What will best express this idea? — he is not 
 reaching for a dictionary or thesaurus in which to find 
 ready-made what he needs. He is reaching for the truth 
 and the right. Ultimately he is reaching for God's 
 help, and when his question is answered he gets all he 
 can hear of the answer to prayer. 
 
 Intense wondering, determined groping after the 
 truth, seeks the new, not for novelty's sake, but be- 
 cause nothing else is true to this minute's and this in- 
 dividual's need. We want the new in order to save 
 our lives, to save us from dying away into habits of 
 vegetative existence ; to save us from petty picking and 
 stealing among the trite old words and deeds which 
 lumber up the world. 
 
 In composing music to a song, if a melody does n't
 
 COMMUNION: ANSWER TO PRAYER 321 
 
 come to one ready-made, by the free and miraculoul 
 grace of the universe, one dives again and again for 
 the pearl of sincerity. "What do those verses mean to 
 iTie? What is the music that properly belongs with 
 them?" 
 
 But what does one dive into? In what direction does 
 one stare when he is striving for the true musical ex- 
 pression of a verse? Surely he is staring into the face 
 of the deepest truth he knows or can reach. The verit- 
 ably right phrase is the one he peers after. We are here 
 vitally interested not so much in what he attains as in 
 what he faces, — the infinite vista down which he 
 directs the infinite longing of his gaze. Surely he is 
 straining towards the Origin of all things. He is plead- 
 ing with the Creator for his one mite of creativeness ! 
 He is trying to prostrate himself before the Absolute 
 Truth upon this theme, for that Truth is all that he 
 wishes to express. 
 
 So far as I can see, no prayer for light or strength 
 does anything else than this. As one struggles in ear- 
 nest talk to hear the new from one*s comrade, and to 
 find the accurate phrase for one's own meaning, one 
 stares with the mind as intently as one fixes the muscles 
 and the eyes. Then what does the eye of the mind seek 
 to envisage? What else but the invisible Truth in 
 which men who seek with all their heart find more than 
 they deserve? 
 
 Here, then, is another way of obedience to Paul's 
 **pray without ceasing." The effort to be original
 
 322 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 defeats itself, but the effort to be sincere, the desire to 
 say what one means without too shamefully wronging 
 the beauty of the truth that one looks off to on the 
 mind's horizon, is a perpetual seeking of God*s pres- 
 ence, a prayer ever joyfully renewed. 
 
 Originality of thought and speech is perhaps the 
 least important of the sincerities which are the goal of 
 all earnestness. To brace up one's standards in any sor- 
 riest corner of their tattered and disreputable substance 
 is to be original, and that in the most arduous and 
 honorable way. Why should n*t a man stop beating 
 his wife's long-suffering soul with the cudgels of his 
 inconsiderateness? To be more decent to her would be 
 a perfectly original work of art, doubtless hung upon 
 the line in the gallery of man's humorous or pathetic 
 approximations to the beauty of holiness. 
 
 The need of worship reflects an intense weariness 
 with what is old and habitual, a hunger for what is 
 radically new and untried. In the pain of spiritual 
 fatigue, it is the *' impulse for spiritual self-preserva- 
 tion," and renews the worth of life as we see it, by re- 
 minding us of our ultimate Good. 
 
 The conscious approaches to worship, like the effort 
 to dispel prejudice in scientific and dispassionate judg- 
 ment, are largely negative. By beauty, joy or sorrow 
 or danger, we are detached from the habits and associa- 
 tions which, like the shell of a crustacean, both register 
 our progress and limit it.
 
 COMMUNION: ANSWER TO PRAYER 323 
 
 In worship we seek to know our God by absorption 
 and contagion, as we catch the spirit of a command- 
 ing gesture, or feel the sweep of a national crisis. We 
 throw ourselves into worship, as we dive into the ocean, 
 confident of its well-tested power to lift and refresh 
 us, but no longer balancing, sustaining, or directing 
 ourselves by step and step as we do on the land of 
 ordinary thought and action. 
 
 The answer to prayer is in the forgiveness of sins, 
 conditioned by the sincerity of our repentance, and in 
 a heightened power of fresh or original vision, which is 
 the servant of reform.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 ALL TOGETHER 
 
 I HAVE sketched four pictures of "real life/' the world 
 of healing, refreshment, and strength. I hope they do 
 not all look alike. The sharp contrasts, the vivid in- 
 dividuality of each should never be merged. For in 
 all the range of creation nothing is more vitally inter- 
 esting than its differences of mood and tone, of light 
 and dark, of right and wrong. In fact, there is nothing 
 comparable to the fascination of these contrasts except 
 the opposite, — their unity. 
 
 Most people that I meet or read about seem to find 
 the contrasts more obvious than their unity. The 
 talkative, plastic, sociable people are amazed at the 
 silence of the laboratory and the mechanical rigidity 
 of the workshop. Serious professors and mill treasur- 
 ers look askance at play and art, or revile it as foolish 
 frivolity; the clergy, who have been beaten into tolera- 
 tion, are wistful and puzzled at the thought of the total 
 inefficiency and uselessness of whist, chess, or polar 
 exploration. Most of all unreasonable and blank seems 
 to most modems the worshiping mystic and his retreat 
 from the world. To workers, players, and lovers alike 
 this monkish withdrawal from the living interchange of 
 society and of nature seems incomprehensible, — at 
 best something to be borne with a shrug or a pitying 
 smile for its mediaevalism.
 
 ALL TOGETHER 325 
 
 Thus we are split into camps and cliques which are 
 perhaps more dangerous in their smiling or sneering 
 toleration than they would be in open warfare. For 
 war might bring about a contact close enough for mu- 
 tual comprehension — in the end. Toleration may mean 
 a lazy acquiescence in contradictions that ought to 
 arouse. We may bear the conflict between what I think 
 right and what you think wrong so equably, so peace- 
 ably, so amiably that we come at last to tolerate a 
 similar conflict within our own breasts, — which is dis- 
 aster and damnation. When my act says ** right" and 
 my conscience says "wrong," and I all the while look 
 tolerantly down upon the conflict as from some height 
 of Olympian calm, — then God have mercy on my 
 soul! Even the peaceful toleration of a similar differ- 
 ence between my standards and my neighbor's is dan- 
 gerous unless it is a truce or a pause in prayer for light. 
 
 It is the same with our camps and cliques. We do 
 not march behind fighting banners of play, of love, or 
 of worship, as organized labor and organized capital 
 march and countermarch behind their standards. We 
 sit in little offices, shops, and kitchens, content not 
 merely to mind our own business, but mindlessly to 
 ignore its kinship with other business. We each keep 
 our eyes and our minds at home. The result is that the 
 devotees of Work, Play, Love, and Worship are sus- 
 picious of each other. They do not touch shoulders 
 or act together as a team. 
 
 I should be sorry to aggravate these puzzles or to
 
 326 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 sharpen still further these divergences and mutual 
 suspicions. For just because Work, Play, Love, and 
 Worship diverge so sharply each from each, they must 
 have a common root. Things can only differ when they 
 differ in something. Races differ in color, habits, morals, 
 and cookery because they all possess color, habits, 
 morals, and cookery. So it is with the sustaining 
 powers by which men live. All varieties spring from 
 likeness. Hence it is the task of any one who exploits 
 the variety to pounce speedily upon the unity, — if he 
 can. What is it, then, to live? 
 
 To live is to talk with the world. Work, Play, Love, 
 and Worship are four good ways of keeping up the 
 conversation. The experiments of the working scien- 
 tist or philosopher are the questions which he puts to 
 reality. The answers come in the form of reactions, 
 results, or readings. The dialogue need not be noisy, 
 but it must be active. A science which cannot think 
 of a question or get an answer when face to face with 
 nature is unproductive. Even a working hypothesis 
 must earn its pay by asking more and more insistently 
 for the answer called verification. 
 
 In agriculture, mining, or navigation it is still question 
 and answer that busy us, — but now in a rougher, 
 noisier exchange. We wrestle with the elemental, ex- 
 changing blows or benefits, issuing commands and 
 watching for signs, like an officer, or more often like 
 a private.
 
 ALL TOGETHER 327 
 
 All the earth plays this game. Strategic moves (like 
 chess play) are made by the bacteria as they search out 
 our weakest tissue and by the bacteriologist who tries 
 to foil their attack. Within a decade Paul Ehlich 
 put a question to nature 606 times, each time in slightly 
 different language : — "Will you or you or you," he said 
 to one newly made chemical compound after another, 
 *' carry arsenic in lethal dose to my enemy the treponema 
 pallidum, without harming on your way any human 
 cell?" 
 
 At the 606th attempt he heard an answer that suited 
 him better than any nature had given him thus far; 
 the great drug salvarsan was christened forthwith. 
 
 The army of science has many men listening for 
 answers to the questions asked by each. Sometimes 
 the answer to your question is heard after your death 
 by a youngster with keener hearing. Sometimes a 
 friend (or an enemy) with better gift for language will 
 reshape your question, modify your experiment so 
 that a clear "yes" or "no" comes back from nature, 
 hitherto quite silent. 
 
 But the natural sciences are no more talkative than 
 the rest. All good thinking, all faithful research, 
 whether in history, philosophy, mathematics, econo- 
 mics, or any other branch of knowledge, takes the form 
 of question and answer, as it interrogates the material 
 which it studies. To sit speechless before nature i3 
 to drowse; to ask questions that find no answer is to 
 fail. Often the tiie-d'tBte is hard to maintain. The
 
 328 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 student runs dry of topics. He hears' no answer and 
 wonders (like the worshiper) whether any answer is on 
 its way. Or he fails (like the uninspired artist) to put 
 his desire into definite form. 
 
 This is natural! and familiar enough in the labora- 
 tory or the studio, as it is at the breakfast- table. But 
 table talk is simpler than art or science because the 
 great conversations of work and play allow us no grace- 
 ful retirement. No genteel silence will do. For all the 
 live forces in the world are chattering away. Money 
 talks ; music speaks ; the vessel answers your hand upon 
 the wheel ; the soil responds or fails to respond to your 
 cultivation. To be deaf or dumb is to be entranced, 
 stage-struck, or paralyzed. 
 
 Out of this slough, training and the inspiration of 
 others* example are the best roads. We must be 
 trained for all sorts of intercourse with our world, 
 taught to play, to love, or to pray, as well as to work. 
 Our shyness in the give-and-take which is life, can be 
 trained out of us by hard knocks, our coldness mitigated 
 by the radiant warmth of good friends. But we must 
 anticipate our dangers and be fore-armed. To all of 
 us comes the temptation to be less than alive, to pull 
 out of the talk, to stop listening, or to go on using the 
 same phrases long after the poor, bored universe has 
 ceased to attend. That is a weak game, a brutalizing 
 job, a languid affection, a formalistic worship full of 
 "vain repetitions such as the heathens use," or "those 
 wanton revels in mere perception which are at present
 
 ALL TOGETHER 329 
 
 the bane of our art, of our literature, of our social 
 ideals and of our religion." ^ 
 
 If it is true that initiative and response are the neces- 
 sary framework of all life, then the sociable woman with 
 a silent husband may take comfort in the thought that 
 perhaps he is as loquacious as any one, but in his own 
 way. Conversation in its ordinary form, she then 
 perceives, is but one of the living world's perpetual 
 interchanges. There is a similar give-and-take in the 
 games her husband enjoys, in the business that seems 
 to submerge him, and in the wilderness where he takes 
 his solitary vacation. If she and all of us can believe 
 that our different roads converge toward one goal, 
 we are less lonely each upon his own. 
 
 Of special importance, as I believe, is a reiteration 
 of the ancient truth that the solitary worshiper or 
 ascetic leaves men and nature behind him because he 
 is seeking better company. Of course worship is not al- 
 ways solitary, but there are times when the conditions 
 for intimacy of appeal and clarity of response which 
 man just then needs are not to be had in the parlor, in 
 the market, or even in a church. Hence he forsakes the 
 world in order to get closer to the World. He is not 
 doing something wholly different from his busy, play- 
 ful f and sociable brethren. He is in touch with reality 
 and with facts. He aims to be as busy as the laborer, 
 as creative as the artist, and more ardent than the 
 lover. Yet he does not attempt any fusion of these 
 • Josiah Royce, The Problem of Christianiiy, vol. n, p. 163.
 
 330 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 separate activities. He seeks, above all, to orient him* 
 self and to get his sailing orders before he goes farther. 
 For he is going farther. Unlimited and exclusive wor- 
 ship is to him an abomination like unmitigated drudg- 
 ery, perpetual diversion, or unremitting domesticity. 
 
 Yet worship is not strictly correlative with work, 
 play, and love, for it balances and supports them 
 all. Without them worship would have, so far as I see, 
 no significance. But each and all of them tends toward 
 spiritual fatigue from which worship alone can revive 
 us. I will not say that worship is the climax and cul- 
 mination of all that is most active in daily life. For God 
 can be reached through many channels outside wor- 
 ship. But to it man returns from all other activities 
 as he comes back to his home, — the common goal and 
 starting-point of every fresh endeavor. 
 
 Thus far I have found in all the deeds by which men 
 live, one salient feature, — the responsive interplay 
 between purpose and fulfillment, between initiative 
 and return. But this exchange is not a mere shuttling 
 of rigid materials across the world's loom. In all forms 
 of vital reciprocity something new emerges. Even the 
 shuttle is not a mere shuttle. It helps to create a fab- 
 ric. So our shuttling questions, conversations, barter- 
 ings, experiments, political actions and reactions, must 
 build something if they are to give us new spirit and 
 take up our spirit into themselves. Service given and 
 knowledge received must be continuous and construe-
 
 ALL TOGETHER 331 
 
 tive, else they are no better than idleness or sleep. Con- 
 versation becomes gossipy and desultory unless talkers 
 pursue some quest together. 
 
 Look at the negative side of this idea. A desperate 
 consciousness of anguish or of oppression is no life- 
 giver, because it is static or revolves in a circle. It 
 may be as full of sensation, of passion, of intimacy and 
 intensity as the trashiest modem novel or the yellow- 
 est modern journalism, and yet contain as little of 
 truth or worth. Passion cannot hear. Anguish cannot 
 speak. Neither can create, though both are often 
 linked, more or less unconsciously, with some greater 
 power which makes them take part in creation. Pad- 
 erewski strikes the piano with the fire of passion, but 
 without its blunders and deafness. If he struck with 
 his fist instead of with his fingers we should get the 
 fruits of passion pure. 
 
 Is it not true that we rightly desire to abolish from 
 the earth whatever lacks creative interchange? I re- 
 cently heard a patient declare that not for anything 
 would he have been deprived of the experience given 
 him by a year's illness, not yet ended. But what we 
 wotddwiWmgly be deprived of, what we strive to banish, 
 is the sick man's desperate or fruitless struggle with 
 overmastering pain, the immigrant's forlorn, bewil- 
 dered wanderings in an ill-managed port of entry, the 
 prisoner's soul-numbing walk up and down his cell, 
 the child's suffering under punishment which he believes 
 unjust or cruel, the fruitless aridity of the desert, the
 
 332 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 torpor of the tropics, the paralyzing cramp of poverty, 
 the exhaustion of industrial overstrain. 
 
 The four essentials which I have been describing 
 throughout this book are united, then, by their root. 
 They are rooted in one deep fact which seems to be as 
 fundamental in the natural as in the spiritual world. 
 They all create something new out of an interchange 
 which can be called give-and-take, initiative and re- 
 sponse, adaptation to environment and by environ- 
 ment, or simply conversation. They all sprout sym- 
 bols, like leaves, as soon as they grow up, and through 
 these they draw their nourishment. This means that 
 absolute faithfulness, in work, in play, or in love, brings 
 us into contact with God whether we know it or not. 
 Whatever we do **for its own sake** looking to no 
 ulterior reward, we are treating in fact as a symbol 
 of what-is-best-worth-while-in-the- world. Ultimately, 
 if we think it through, this means what our forefathers 
 meant by God. 
 
 The divinity of work, play, and art is in their abso- 
 lute faithfulness, their care for a degree of perfection 
 which cannot be recognized or rewarded by men. The 
 same faithfulness expresses much of the religion which 
 is love ; beyond that, the endless power of forgiveness 
 that is in any pure devotion, points to its share in the 
 infinite fertility and resource of the divine. To be con- 
 scious of the divinity which is directly continuous 
 with our own effort whenever we do our best, en- 
 hances the effort and the joy in it. But the contin-
 
 ALL TOGETHER 333 
 
 uity and the contact are there whether we recognize 
 them or not. We cannot get away from God, though 
 we can ignore him. When Him we fly, He is the 
 wings. 
 
 Because the four heroes of my tale are thus intimately 
 related through their common ancestor in man's need, 
 it is but natural that they should support and shape 
 sach other by their difference as well as their likeness, 
 rhey do not fuse or drop their individuality, but play 
 into each other, work toward each other, befriend 
 3ne another, and send each to the other's shrine. 
 
 Recall some examples of this interchange. Unsatis- 
 fied with the best we can do at our work, we turn (if 
 ive are wise and healthy) to the lessons to be learned 
 from play, — from Franz Kneisel's string quartette, 
 for instance. That quartette plays with the dash, the 
 precision, the reserve which we want to get into our 
 ivork. The artists in that quartette have carried their 
 nusic through the laborious and painful to the playful 
 itage before they let us hear it. After the concert 
 they will set to work again upon some new and sterner 
 task, in turn to be mastered and transformed to 
 something fit to play in public. The working side of 
 ife seems to belong more properly in private, where we 
 prepare and whet ourselves for play. Every new game 
 Dr art requires work before we can learn it. The shape- 
 ess silly games which can be mastered without labor 
 md cannot be improved by practice, are fit only for
 
 334 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 the feeble-minded or for the feeble-minded hours near 
 to sleep. 
 
 Love, like beauty and play,brightens and strengthens 
 us for work. We labor to deserve the miraculous gift. 
 We work to prove our devotion, to express our gratitude 
 for what is given us, to pass along and fix its inspira- 
 tion in permanent form. One suspects the genuineness 
 of any affection that does not issue in work. **If ye 
 love me,*' says the vision at the heart of every affec- 
 tion, **keep my commandments," carry them out in 
 work and in joy. Every strong emotion ought to be 
 worked off or worked out somehow, as William James 
 and others have told us, — the emotion of love above 
 all. '* Do you love your country? Well, then, what work 
 are you doing for it?" You say that you care for 
 poetry. " Did you ever master any or learn it by heart? 
 If not, your head, not your heart, is in it." 
 
 When love springs up between people who have not 
 known hard work their union lacks something that 
 labor would have taught them. Such an affection lacks 
 the patience, the long foresight, and tenacious memory 
 which work trains, while in the process it knocks some 
 of the nonsense out of us. So work teaches us to love. 
 
 On the other hand, love teaches us how and why 
 to work. To attach one's self to a tcisk **for better, for 
 worse " may seem impossibly quixotic and barren unless 
 one is already learning through love in marriage that 
 total commitment is a joy which makes all half-hearted 
 and temporary contracts look cheap.
 
 ALL TOGETHER 335 
 
 In the love of those who cannot play one suspects 
 no lack of fidelity. Fruitlessness is a more'probable fault. 
 Play gives us the rest, change, fresh surfaces, new 
 lights, and tastes by which to keep our affections fruit- 
 ful. Play and the renewing of our minds and bodies by 
 beauty, as well as by worship, make our love creative. 
 The minor art of humor is especially quickening and 
 restorative. Until we can laugh at each other as well as 
 with each other, our love is vulnerable. It lacks the 
 comradeship and equanimity that even shallow ac- 
 quaintances may possess. It is topheavy. 
 
 Work, love, and play make a strong team together. 
 They brace and re enforce each other. Yet they all leave 
 us rudderless and unsatisfied without prayer. They 
 can attain creative power only in worship, which — in- 
 choate or full formed — is the source of all originality, 
 because it sends us to our origin. The harder we work 
 and play and the more intensely we devote ourselves 
 to whomever and whatever we love, the more press- 
 ing is our need for reorienting, recommiting, refresh- 
 ing ourselves in an appeal to God. 
 
 Yet worship is itself refreshed and supported by 
 daily life. One mistrusts the sincerity of all religious 
 expression by those whose lives do not furnish a large 
 proportion of performance to a relatively small amount 
 of prayerful pledge or petition. For religious expression 
 is our superlative, and becomes cheap and weak unless 
 through stored and gathered efforts we earn our right
 
 336 WHAT MEN LIVE BY 
 
 to use it. The most religious people are not those who 
 talk and write the most about God, but those who best 
 prove their love in faithful performance of what they 
 believe to be his will. 
 
 Each of the foods by which our spirit lives makes us 
 hungry for the rest. We may ignore or misinterpret the 
 desire, but unless it is satisfied, we shrivel. Each of the 
 four languages in which we may talk with our neighbor, 
 the world, falls on deaf ears and fails of response unless it 
 is spoken with creativeness, with symbolism, and with 
 loyalty to a central motive. Work falls flat, play and 
 art become sterile, love and worship become conven- 
 tional, unless there is originality, personal creation in 
 each. I must do my job in my own way, find an in- 
 dividual outlet in the symbols of art or game, and an 
 individual answer in love and prayer if I am to feel at 
 home in the world. Yet this individual note is no cry 
 in the void because it claims brotherhood with all 
 future and distant notes. 
 
 By originality and by symbolism, then, the home of 
 our spirit is consecrated, but still more truly, perhaps, 
 by our free and final allegiance. Our will is needed to 
 invest the world with its own divinity. We hoist a flag 
 and take possession once for all with a sort of "cosmic 
 patriotism," grateful for our escape from chaos and 
 the dark. 
 
 THE END
 
 INDEX
 
 INDEX 
 
 Addams, Jane, 6i, 90, 167. 
 Andersen, Hans Christian, 280. 
 Arequipa, 75. 
 Arnold, Matthew, 103. 
 Arts, loi. 
 
 fine, 107. I 
 
 minor, 108, 115. 
 
 popular^ 107, III. 
 
 Briggs, Le Baron R., 5. 
 Brown, Dr. Philip King, 75. 
 Browning, Robert, 195. 
 Burgess, Gelett, 60. 
 Business, 62. 
 
 Cabot, Ella Lyman, 279, 281. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 55. 
 
 Chastity, 227-30. 
 
 Chesterton, G. K., 52, 119, 201, 
 
 256. 
 Children, 93, 97. 
 Choice, 206, 222, 244. 
 Christ, 184, 207, 302, 308. 
 and forgiveness, 183. 
 Christianity, 264. 
 Commercialism, 38. 
 Communion, 314. 
 Comradeship, 167-80. 
 Confession, 298. 
 
 Davidson, T., 38. 
 Dickinson, Emily, 149. 
 Disenthrallment, 282. 
 DriscoU, D., 21. 
 Drudgery, 4, 6. 
 
 Education, 6, 155, 194. 
 
 medical, 79-80. 
 Ehrlich, Paul, 327. 
 Elemental, the, 167. 
 Eliot; C. W., 21. 
 
 Emerson, R. W., 203, 213, 269, 282, 
 309. 
 
 Faith, 7, 202, 234. 
 Fatigue, spiritual, 271-73. 
 Ferguson, Charles, 50. 
 
 Forgiveness, 256, 316. 
 Francis of Assisi, 318. 
 Frankness, 223. 
 Freud, S., 298. 
 Froebel, 98. 
 
 Games, 130-53. 
 Genius, 63. 
 Give-and-take, 117-29, 326. 
 
 in adventure, 123. 
 
 games, 122, 134. 
 
 love, 232-35. 
 
 oratory, 123. 
 
 religion, 128. 
 
 science, 327. 
 God, 332. 
 
 love of, 185. 
 
 service of, l6l. 
 Goethe, 219. 
 Grace, divine, 60, 64. 
 Gratitude, 76-78, 311. 
 Groos, Karl, 96, 125. 
 Growth, 239. 
 
 Halos, 70. 
 
 Hocking, W. E., 271, 273, 274, 315, 
 
 Humor, 151. 
 
 Humor and good-humor, 108. 
 
 Huysmans, 125. 
 
 Idleness, 13. 
 
 Idolatry, 221. 
 
 Impersonality and love, 199, 210-1& 
 
 Impersonation, 63, 142-50. 
 
 in love, 145. 
 
 morality, 147. 
 
 play, 142. 
 
 work, 143. 
 
 James, William, 5, 66, 68, 334. 
 Jealousy, 179, 221. 
 Jewels, 1 12-16. 
 
 Knowledge, 172. 
 Kostlin, 126. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 173.
 
 340 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Laughter, 233, 335. 
 
 Lee, G. S., 50. 
 
 Lee, Joseph, 96. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 280, 314. 
 
 Literalism, 201. 
 
 Love, allies of, 167-80. 
 
 consecration of, 196. 
 
 creation in, 191. 
 
 impersonal, 199. 
 
 infinite, 181-86. 
 
 integrity in, 219-22. 
 
 loyalty in, 200-09. 
 
 mutuality in, 232-35. 
 
 physical element in, 177, 192, 
 217. 
 
 split apart, 193. 
 
 stupidity in, 200. 
 
 symbolism in, 187-99. 
 
 types of, 175-80. 
 Loyalty, 65-68. 
 
 to cosmos, 304. 
 Luther, Martin, 60. 
 
 Martineau, James, 6. 
 Medicine, 169. 
 Meredith, George, 70-72. 
 Modesty, 222-27. 
 Moody, W. v., 191. 
 Marriage, 230, 239-64. 
 
 bond, 250. 
 
 choice in, 244. 
 
 exclusiveness of, 242. 
 
 forgiveness in, 255. 
 
 hifalutin, 262-63. 
 
 idolatry in, 261. 
 
 and possession, 247. 
 
 security in, 254. 
 
 understanding in, 259-61. 
 
 vows of, 188. 
 Morality, 61, 157. 
 Music, 61, 314. 
 
 "Nature," 54. 
 Neurasthenia, 75. 
 
 Orientation, 276-78. 
 Originality, 62, 319-21. 
 Ostwald, W., 62. 
 
 Palmer, G. H., 34, 289. 
 Petition, 301. 
 
 Plans and their ripening, 43. 
 Play, 5, 87. 
 
 and art, loi, 105. 
 
 and health, 104. 
 
 and rhythm, no, 130, 
 
 by-products of, 154. 
 
 chaotic, 138. 
 
 consecration of, 160, 164. 
 destructive, 137. 
 
 good and bad, 140. 
 
 trance in, 130-35. 
 Praise, 309. 
 
 from nature, 313. 
 Prayer, 267-336. 
 
 answer to, 316-23. 
 
 beauty and, 287. 
 
 and communion, 314. 
 
 conditional element in, 30a. 
 
 disenthrallment in, 282. 
 
 Du Manner on, 268. 
 
 Emerson on, 269, 282. 
 
 and fatigue, 271. 
 
 fulfilment in, 274. 
 
 forgetfulness and, 279. 
 
 and forgiveness, 317. 
 
 and gratitude, 311. 
 
 W. E. Hocking on, 271, 273, 
 274. 
 
 hunger for, 267. 
 
 joy and, 289. 
 
 justification of, 315. 
 
 orientation in, 276-78. 
 
 originality from, 319-21. 
 
 and praise, 309. 
 
 and repentance, 318. 
 
 solitude and, 293. 4 
 
 sorrow and, 287. 
 
 and truth-seeking, 305. 
 
 unfashionable, 268. 
 
 wonder in, 284. 
 
 Recognition, art of, 118. 
 Recollection, 279. 
 Repentance and prayer, 318. 
 Romance, 236-38, 
 Royce, Josiah, 329. 
 
 Sacrament, 198. 
 Sacrifice in art, 245. 
 Satiety, 257. 
 Schauffler, R. H., 126. 
 Science, 62, 67. 
 Secularity, 196. 
 Self-government, l6l. 
 Sentimentalism, 216. 
 Seriousness, 89-97, 
 Service, 78.
 
 INDEX 
 
 341 
 
 Shakespeare, William, 204. 
 
 Shaw, G. B., 90, 167, 197, 236, 239. 
 
 Socialism, 26. 
 
 Solitude and prayer, 293. 
 
 Sport, good, 156. 
 
 Stevenson, R. L., 171, 200. 
 
 Success, 81. 
 
 Suggestion, psychotherapeutic, 204. 
 
 Swedenborg, E., 214. 
 
 Symbolism, 142, 161. 
 
 in affection, 187-99. 
 
 good and bad, 189. 
 
 physical, 190. 
 
 Tschaikowsky, Peter 1., 61. 
 Theotropism, 290, 295. 
 Thompson, Francis, 180. 
 Tolstoy, L., 14, 44, 45, 69, 171. 
 
 Unconsciousness, 19. 
 
 Victory, 155. 
 
 Wagner, Richard, 171. 
 War, moral equivalents, 5. 
 Wolcott, Roger, 94. 
 Wonder and prayer, 284. 
 
 Work, 4-87. 
 
 and the amateur, 23. 
 
 and anarchy, 66. 
 
 and its boss, 31. 
 
 and its companionship, 36. 
 
 and courage, 17. 
 
 and thecrude, 28, 40, 44, 50, 58. 
 
 defined, 4, 99. 
 
 and discouragement, 15. 
 
 and habit, li. 
 
 joy of, 21. 
 
 and loyalty, 65. 
 
 manual and mental, 41-49. 
 
 monotony of, 29, 32. 
 
 motive for, 8-10. 
 
 and its product, 32. 
 
 psychical standards of, 27, 37, 
 
 and its radiations, 59^4. 
 
 and religion, 84-85. 
 
 and its reward, 73-85. 
 
 and specialism, 34. 
 
 and talk, 52. 
 
 and our title, 34. 
 
 and usefulness, 74-79. 
 Worry, 18. 
 Worship, 267-336. 
 
 (See also Prayer.)
 
 BOOKS BY RICHARD C. CABOT, M.R 
 
 The Christian Approach to Social Morality 
 
 National Board of Young Women's Christian Associations, 1913, 
 600 Lexington Ave., New York City 
 
 Differential Diagnosis 
 
 W. B. Saunders Company, Philadelphia. Two editions, 191 1 .. 
 1912 
 
 Social Service and the Art of Healing 
 
 Moffat, Yard & Co., New York, 1909 
 
 Psychotherapy and its Relation to Religion 
 
 Moffat, Yard & Co., New York, 1908 
 
 Case Teaching in Medicine 
 
 W. M. Leonard, Boston. Two editions, 1906-1912 
 
 Physical Diagnosis 
 
 William Wood & Co., New York. Five editions, 1901-1912 
 
 Serum Diagnosis of Disease 
 
 William Wood & Co., New York, 1899 
 
 Clinical Examination of the Blood 
 
 William Wood & Co., New York. Five editions, 1896-1^4 
 
 »T 43 1
 
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