THE UNIVERSAL ORDER "What canst thoufear if the Universal Order be thy friend. The UNIVERSAL ORDER FriederikaQuitmanOgden Published by Paul Elder <$ Company o/San Francisco 9SI COPYRIGHT, 1915 PAUL ELDER & COMPANY SAN FRANCISCO "We Count It Death to Falter, Not To Die" 327215 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH MRS. FRIEDERIKA QUITMAN OGDEN, YOUNG EST DAUGHTER OF GENERAL JOHN ANTHONY QUITMAN AND ELIZA TURNER, WAS HORN AT MONMOUTH, MISSISSIPPI, IN 1844 AND LIVED THERE UNTIL HER MARRIAGE AT EIGHTEEN TO MR. FRANCIS EUGENE OGDEN. IT WAS THE PERIOD OF THE CIVIL WAR AND, AS IN THE CASE OF MANY A YOUNG COUPLE AT THAT TIME, THE BRIDE AND GROOM WERE SOON PARTED NOT TO BE TOGETHER AGAIN UNTIL THE TERRIBLE STRUGGLE BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH ENDED. NOT LONG AFTER THE CLOSE OF THE WAR MR. OGDEN DIED AND MRS. OGDEN RETURNED TO HER OLD HOME AT MONMOUTH. EVER SINCE HER HUSBAND S DEATH SHE HAD BEEN SOMEWHAT OF AN INVALID. SHE SUF FERED MORE AS TIME WENT ON, UNTIL WHEN A LITTLE OVER THIRTY SHE BECAME A "SHUT IN," BEARING HER CONDITION WITH MUCH PATIENCE BECAUSE OF AN UNDAUNTED FAITH IN ULTIMATE RECOVERY. DURING HER YEARS OF GREATEST HELPLESS NESS SHE MADE HER HOME AT BERKELEY SPRINGS, WEST VIRGINIA, AND IT WAS HERE THAT SHE WROTE A JOURNAL, RECORDING IN IT BRIEF SKETCHES OF OUT-DOOR NATURE, HER OWN SPIRITUAL PROGRESS, MEDITA- IX TIONS ON THE WORDS AND DEEDS OF GREAT AUTHORS OR SOMETIMES OF THE VILLAGE PEOPLE WHO WERE HER FRIENDS. SHE WAS A WOMAN OF INTENSE LOYALTY IN FRIENDSHIP. MRS. JEFFERSON DAVIS WAS AMONG THOSE DEAR TO HER MRS. SIDNEY LANIER. NAME AND RANK, HOW EVER, MATTERED NOT AT ALL. WHETHER RICH OR POOR, HIGH OR LOW, CHILD OR PHILOSOPHER, A FRIEND, TO MRS. OGDEN, WAS ONE WHO IN SOME WAY SATISFIED HER SOUL. SOME EIGHT OR NINE YEARS AGO, HER HEALTH REING IMPROVED, SHE WAS MAR RIED TO MR. AUSTIN W. SMITH, A FIRST COUSIN OF MR. OGDEN S. ROTH MR. AND MRS. SMITH DIED IN 1911, MRS. SMITH SURVIVING HER HUSBAND BUT FOUR MONTHS AND DYING AT "SARRAGOSSA," THEIR COUN TRY HOME NEAR NATCHEZ. SHE HAD NO CHILDREN. IN HER OWN CHILDHOOD SHE WAS REMARKARLY BEAUTIFUL AND THE LOVELINESS OF HER EARLY YEARS CONTIN UED TO DEVELOP THROUGHOUT A NOBLY GRACEFUL WOMANHOOD, EVEN HER POOR HEALTH HAVING NO POWER TO EFFACE IT ALL. WHAT HER MIND WAS, THE READER MAY GATHER FROM HER THOUGHTS IN THIS LITTLE VOLUME. E. C. Is. INTRODUCTION FROM THE BED OF AN INVALID WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN, LIKE HEINE S, A "MAT TRESS GRAVE" THE FOLLOWING THOUGHTS WERE JOTTED DOWN AT INTERVALS BETWEEN MORE OR LESS LINGERING PERIODS OF IN TENSE SUFFERING. THEY ARE THE ME MORIAL NOT MERELY OF A BRAVE AND PERSEVERING FIGHT FOR HEALTH, BUT OF A SOUL WRESTLING FOR TRUTH WITH A MIND UPTURNED AND DARKENED BY DOUBT AND AT TIMES IN BLANK DESPAIR. IT IS A STRUGGLE LIKE THAT OF JACOB WITH THE ANGEL, "l WILL NOT LET THEE GO EXCEPT THOU BLESS ME." THROUGH SEVEN YEARS OF STRESS THE RECORD GOES, THE PHYSICAL POWERS AFTER MANY DISAPPOINTMENTS MAKING HEADWAY AND THE SOUL-LIFE OUTRUNNING THEM IN EVER WIDENING AND DEEPENING SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE, THE HEART OF THE SUFFERER MEANTIME OPEN TO THE BEAUTIFUL IN NATURE, AND HER MIND, BY THE POWER OF A DEVOTED AND UNCONQUERABLE WILL, OCCUPIED WITH THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. THAT THE STRUGGLE AVAILED IN ITS RE SULTS FOR OTHERS, WE WHO KNEW HER CAN TESTIFY. WE KNOW ALSO THAT THIS EPOCH WAS IN HER OWN CAREER AN UN- XI CONSCIOUS PREPARATION FOR A BEAUTIFUL AND TENDER PERIOD OF FULLER LIFE DUR ING THE YEARS OF GRADUALLY RETURNING HEALTH WHICH FOLLOWED. HER JOURNAL, RECORDING, AS IT DOES, A "LONELY HUMAN SOUL S" INDIVIDUAL WAY OF SEEKING OUT AND FINDING GOD AS THE IDEAL TRUTH AND LOVE AND BEAUTY, IS A SOURCE OF INSPIRATION TO US TODAY, WHILE, FOR THE MEMORY OF HER DEEP HEART AND UNFALTERING SPIRIT, WE "THANK GOD AND TAKE COURAGE." H. L. J. XII CONTENTS BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ix INTRODUCTION xi WITH NATURE On the Seashore 3 A Peaceful Scene 4 Solitude with Nature 4 The Living Whole 5 Morning Under the Trees 6 True Worship 6 Reason 7 The Uniting Principle of Love . . . 7 Autumn s Melancholy Music .... 8 The Beauty of the Morning .... 8 Genius 9 Poetry 9 Joan of Arc 11 The "Odor of Sanctity" 12 Rain 12 Preconscious Nature 13 Nature at Pause 14 Morning 14 A Dreamer 15 Autumn Sky 15 The Poet Is Protean 15 The Return of the Birds 16 October 16 No Drones 16 The Peace of the Sky 17 Visitors 17 Sleep and Re-awakening to Pain ... 18 TRANSPLANTATION The Dawn of Faith 21 Snow 22 Joy a State of Sanity 22 Transplanting ........ 23 Innocent Joy 23 A Day Like Distant Music 25 "Do Justly and Love Mercy" .... 25 XIII There Is a Light of Lights .... 25 The Bitter 26 Spring, and Signs of Physical Progress . 26 The Soul Obedient to Nature .... 27 The Universe Is Good 27 Moving with Night and Morning ... 28 Life Is Good 28 The Soul s New World . . . . . . 29 Trees 29 The Wren 32 Joy in All Guises 32 August 33 Joy, Not Hell 34 Rousseau 35 Under the Trees 36 The Happiness of a Double Existence . 37 The Tragedy of Life 38 Innocent Joy a Phoenix 38 Hope and Faith 38 Beethoven s Eighth Symphony ... 39 The Holy Stars 40 To Rest 40 A Methodical Life 40 To the Condemned 42 The Day of Peace at Hand .... 42 Beauty 43 Branches and Stars 43 Walt Whitman s Death 44 Goethe 44 The Body 45 Great Truths 45 The Ocean 4 5 The Storm Is Raging 46 Butterflies 46 The Morning s Baptism of Light and Life 46 Divinity in Monotony 47 My Miracles 47 The Little Hen 48 The Winter of the Heart 48 As One of the Stars of Heaven ... 48 The Pride and Self-Poise of Genius . . 49 A Mind Omnivorous 49 Poetry Versus Science 49 Sudden Events 50 XIV UNFOLDING The Soul Awaking 53 Soul Travail 54 The Ideal Vision of the Universe ... 56 Drifting 57 The Bleeding Heart 58 An Inrush of Power 58 The Soul s Contentment 58 The Blooming of the Grape .... 59 Clouds 59 Doves Voices 60 Why the World Is So Beautiful ... 60 Robins 60 Is the Bitter Sweet To-day? .... 61 A Little Moment of Divine Life ... 61 The Pine Tree 61 The Life of the Mind 62 Brain and Spirit 62 The Commonplace 62 Summer 63 A Divine Music 64 An Exquisite Pain of Soul 64 Transmutation 64 The Soul in Transition 64 "Gods, Though in the Germ" .... 65 The Poetic Perspective 66 Resignation 66 A Jar of Grasses 66 Stages of the Soul s Unfolding ... 67 The Poet 68 Poetry Involves Abstract Ideas ... 69 Swinburne 69 The Joy of Trust 72 "O Peter, Go Ring Dem Bells" .... 72 The Diver of the Soul 72 Clouds and Moods 73 Eternal Thought 73 The Sciences the Slaves of Thought . . 74 Tennyson s Death 74 Indian Summer 75 The Lone Farm House 75 The Why 76 Modern Progress and Sentiment ... 77 Sunrise 79 XV IN HARMONY The World of the Still Things ... 88 The Common Nature 84 The Pity of It 84 Acquired Touthfulness 85 The Day of Knowledge 86 The Red-Bird s Song 88 A Vision of the Sun 88 My Method of Study 88 To the Plum Tree 90 Sounds to the Poet 91 The Solemn Procession of the Clouds . 91 One Happy Moment 91 As the Thread Through a String of Pearls 92 The Mystic Power of Spring .... 92 Only One of the Gleaners 92 Imprisonment 93 Philosophy 93 The Cry of Dives 94 Philosophy Is Homesickness .... 94 In a Thunderstorm 94 The Divine Doors 95 Under the Sky 96 Entering Upon the Mastery of Life . . 97 Co-operation 98 Heaven Here and Now 99 Despair the Tempter in the Desert . . 100 Ladye Spiritual 100 A Moment in the Eternal Now . . . 101 Truth Is Not Cheap 101 Metaphysic 102 Woman Suffrage 102 The Brute Law Versus the Higher Law . 103 Creative Love Versus War and Plunder . 104 The Life of the Soul Like the Globe in Variety 106 The Crushed Herb s Fragrance . . . 106 The Bird with a Poet s Heart . . . .107 The Flowers Death-Song 108 The Inner Voice 108 The Empyrean of Ideas 108 When Life Appears Unreal . . . .109 Madame de Stael 109 The Poetry of Life 109 XVI Poetry Makes Rich 110 The Cost of the Right Road . . . .110 The Beautiful Tree of Poetry .... Ill Music 113 I Know Only My Ignorance .... 113 Inspiration and Purposive Action . . . 114 Mediocrity and Genius 114 Sons of God 114 The Poem of My Own Life . . . .116 Genius Makes a New Era 116 Memories 116 The Cheering Principles of Philosophy . 117 Philosophy Versus Agnosticism . . . 117 A Person of Genius 117 Four Moments of Life 118 A Drive in the Mountains 118 As the Shekinah to Israel 119 Little Efforts 119 Good Only Is Real 120 XVII With Nature I knew myself a conscious part of a Living Whole; conscious of the sense of touch with the Living Whole. WITH NATURE JUNE 4, 1887. The sound of the ocean is On the in my ears. I see the long, blue line of its Seashore magnificent waters from my window. I hear the songs of the birds, the chirp of the cricket, and look out upon spreading fields of buttercups and other wild flowers. Above, the heavens are seen without let or hindrance. One can be very near to Nature here. SEPTEMBER 5. Spent the afternoon on the inland dune, reading Emerson s "Plato." SEPTEMBER 9. In these days Nature is seen in her most beautiful aspects. The skies are wonderfully deep and blue, the air is a very wine of life, the dear woods are full of the voices of the winds, of birds, of insects. The trees and flowering plants and all the little weeds have borne their fruits. Mind and heart are arriv ing at fuller development; the spirit, too, is bearing fruit a spiritual harvest time 3 V:i*i.>JV :i.,; A-.WITH NATURE to match the harvest of Nature. I am growing into an ever-deepening sense of the One-ness, the Common-ness of all things. Henceforth I shall rejoice more than weep. I stand upon the threshold of a new life. A Peaceful SEPTEMBER 27. Spent almost the whole Scene day, yesterday, in the field and on the inland dune, reading "The Invisible Lodge" and Comte s Philosophy by John Stuart Mill. The air was soft and balmy. The sun shone out fitfully from behind many shifting clouds. The landscape of fered a peaceful scene and in the distance was the ocean with its ships. NOVEMBER 2. I had a good view of the Statue of Liberty the gift to America from the French Republic. The majestic figure fills the heart with renewed love of freedom. Solitude MAY 15, 1888. For months I have battled with Nature alone with the p OW ers of Darkness. All my efforts toward recovery have proved worse than failures. Marred, bruised, crippled, almost dead from mortal com bat with the deadly powers of human ignorance, I was brought out into the wholesome, saving influences of the coun try. Here I began a life outdoors, taking rugs and lying on the grass all day. I got well sun-burned. As I journeyed out, 4 WITH NATURE Spring was visible in tender buds on bough and twig. Even the dirt roads, the naked branching trees and the in creasing solitudes, poured balm into my wounds. Nature, my nourishing Mother, has nursed her sick child upon her bosom and I am better. The work of restoration will be slow. OCTOBER 14. Returning health flows through my life channels. Surely this summer s solitude with Nature, where I drank direct from her eternal fountains, and the wise books I had for compan ions, went far toward bringing all my past life of thought and feeling under the focussing light of a newer and larger conception, which in due season will bring forth fruits for a higher and nobler life simpler and humbler. NOVEMBER 12. I am reading the noble TheTA philosophy of Epictetus. There is a grow- Wliole ing, an ever-deepening intimacy between the Soul and the Universe. Last night as I looked out my window into the sky and saw the stars, a vital and living sense of nearness came into my soul. I knew my self a conscious part of a Living Whole; conscious of the sense of touch with the Living Whole. The Soul was awed and cried aloud. O for an ever-increasing realization of the Eternal Presence! WITH NATURE Morning JULY 30, 1889. I see Miss Mollie s corn Under patch. It is bearing grain. I see the tall the Trees stalks, each one erect and rejoicing in its life, the leaves glistening in the sun. I saw it planted in the spring. The trees stand erect, near-by, uncom plaining. Overhead the sun "rejoices as a giant to run his course" in the calm and eternal heaven, that ethereal ocean upon whose bosom all life is reposing planets, suns, systems. Shall the Soul alone grovel in the dust of discontent, in the midst of this cheerful company? What canst thou fear if the Universal Order be thy friend? True JULY 31. What is true worship? Is it Worship not having a mind reverent to law, that law we call divine because it is uni versal? Worship does not consist in thought only, but also in act thought made moral by action. True worship is guided by reason and set on fire by feeling. Right feeling is the flower of reason. Reason is the power by which we judge, by which we know. Reason is the direct door to un derstanding. Jesus has said that you must enter the Kingdom of God by the door. He spoke of himself as the door, because he lived and taught by reason, 6 WITH NATURE not by instinct and passion as do most men. Matthew Arnold speaks of the "Sweet reasonableness" of Jesus. The true worshiper can enter the temple of the Divine only by the door of sweet reasonableness. AUGUST 3. The Soul grows strong to Reason stand alone. A clear, beautiful vision on the Mount today! Reason was seen to be a veritable part of divine Reason. All the good that comes into life, as well as the good tnat comes out of seeming mis fortune, comes through reason s right activity, when her dictates are listened to and passion permits her free activity. My soul was filled with truth. She com muned with divine Reason. Love is the flowering of reason. AUGUST 4. I see the universe moving on- The Unitii ward in stars, systems, galaxies, by the Principle same law of love attraction that thrills of Love and controls the life of the Soul; the same law of love that brings together friends, lovers, comrades, uniting the Lonely Human Soul into one life with her comrade-Soul lonely no more for she enters into the universe of Truth, and love elevates and exalts the Soul. She becomes united by the law of love with friends, lovers and comrades in the league of the Universal. WITH NATURE Autumn s AUGUST 6. I hear the death songs of the Melancholy little crickets in the seeded grass. The Music songs of the birds are hushed. Already some leaves are turning and dropping. There is a note of autumn in the sound of the rain s constant drip, drip. The winds begin to roam with that wild free dom and melancholy music peculiar to this season. The wild flowers, which little G 1 brings to me, are tinted with the rich autumn colors. Sadness steals down from the skies and pervades the air. The Lonely Human Soul is for saken. All things speak of the coming of winter, of solitude, of death. Phil osophy, faith, alone keep the Soul from sinking into despair. The Spirit falls but arises once more, standing erect with head upward toward the skies! "We count it death to falter, not to die." The Beauty AUGUST 12. My soul is intoxicated with of the the beauty of this morning, as one drunk Morning with a fine wine. There is not a cloud in the depths above. The sunshine falls over all, like a plenary indulgence. The air is cool. The winds are roaming abroad, fluttering branches and leaves, making exquisite little pictures in light and shade. All Nature is glistening, mov ing, radiant. O to wander forth, far away into the mountains! 8 WITH NATURE AUGUST 13. Genius is the culmination, in Genius one individual, of the general progress of many preceding generations; but genius has its limitations. Its power to promul gate truth cannot exceed the power of the constituents which go to make up the tendency of the thought of the age to which the genius may belong. AUGUST 15. Poetry awakens the mind Poetry from the slumber of the utilitarian and the commonplace. It awakens universal sympathy with all creatures and all things. Poetry broadens the spiritual horizon and gives perspective to life. With the poetic imagination, I see this little earth-ship sailing rhythmically through the blue ether, as she follows the sun in his vaster sweep through the starry spaces. I who constitute but one atom of life in my one swift, ebbing moment of time I transcend myself and gaze upon this picture of duration. It becomes as present a reality for me as though I endured with Time and Space, with worlds and systems. So does the poetic imagination lift up the mind into the realm of the god-like. Poetry sees persons and things as types, as classes, each one forming, as it were, lights and shadows, in the great Picture of Life in which are infinite WITH NATURE Poetry gradations of color and form, not the least of which is without its due sig nificance. Poetry strikes back into the first springs of existence, into the original purpose of Nature, by showing the com mon-ness, the kinship of all. Poetry re lates all things. She may be likened to the great, sympathetic, nervous system in the human body, whose function is to unite all the other systems together. Poetry is the voice of God singing the song of the evening star in the Soul. The farther the exact sciences pro gress the more proofs do they give that the universe is a related whole. These truths were long antedated in the dreams and rhapsodies of the poets. Hence are poets called seers. They have the vision of the deepest realities the spiritual significance of things, the deep things of Nature in their primeval simplicity. Hence true poetry is simple, strong. The artificial, the conventional, the frivolous have no part in her. Real poetry en dures. Poetry sets the mind at equipoise. The poetic Soul is at peace with Nature. The old Hermits were poets at heart, else they could not have lived in those sublime solitudes of desert and mountain. The poetic mind knows the right pro- 10 WITH NATURE portions of things and disdains worldly ambition, finding joy in simplicity. The poet is independent of circumstance and convention, resting joyfully upon Nature, feeling her universal relations. Poetry meets Philosophy on the Heights; one flies thither on wings, the other toils up the crags, step by step, staff in hand a pilgrim to the Shrine of Truth. Wordsworth sings of "Joy in widest commonalty spread," and Con fucius declares, "With a few grains of rice, a cup of cold water, and my bended arm for a pillow, I still know joy." Poetry is not concerned with clothing and feeding mankind. She clothes and feeds the Soul with grace and beauty in so far as the Soul can perceive and receive her truth into its own. Those who do not possess the poetic perception lose one of the highest and most exalting enjoyments of life. AUGUST 28. I have just finished reading Joan of An Michelet s "Joan of Arc." It is written simply and with poetic sensibility. Strip the story as one may of legend and mir acle, there is left the fact that a young girl, in the ignorance of peasant life, was moved by inner power to lead the armies of her people, to effect the cor onation of her king, to die heroically, un- 11 WITH NATURE dismayed by persecution and desertion. AUGUST 29. The life story of that pure, heroic soul, la Pucelle, lingers with me, profiting my soul. It is a living poem of unselfishness, heroic endurance and fidel ity. Shall I not strive to be as she was, in that last moment when she forgot her own cruel fate; forgot the flames which were waiting for her? Her soul was filled only with a sublime consideration for the Dominican priest who attended her on the scaffold, imploring him to save himself, when she saw the executioner put the torch to the pile! The "Odor SEPTEMBER 4. O the peace, the light, of Sanctity" the piety, of this morning! All so still, so perfect, as though the earth were adoring the heavens. The "odor of sancity" over all a spiritual essence from out the infinite Spirit of the uni verse. The fragrance from my ripened grapes is the physical correspondence of this heavenly essence, which penetrates the hidden recesses of my soul, awak ening the spirit to "make melody before the Lord." Eain SEPTEMBER 10. I listened this morning to the music of the raindrops the regular tramp, tramp of the footsteps of the rain, as it were an army of tiny beings on the roof and on the ground. I hear the liquid 12 WITH NATURE splashing into puddles beneath the cot tage eaves. It is the dripping from the grapevines. The birds have gone some where for shelter, I know not where. Seldom do I hear a single chirp. All other sounds are lost in the music of the rain. I wish to get as nearly outdoors as pos sible. I sit on the porch beneath an umbrella, for the roof leaks. I wish to get as near to the rain as possible without being soaked. I watch the soft, steel-blue tints, begot of rain and mist, that have come over the landscape. In what tender colors do they paint all Nature ! A lovely picture, full of peace and trembling with life. SEPTEMBER 11. Is unconscious Nature, in Preconscioi tree and stock and stone, nearer to "Pre- Nature conscious" Nature which lies back of this shifting "Maia," than is conscious man who, though higher in the scale of life, yet by virtue of his very consciousness and power of choice, is farther removed from the immediate workings of the Pre- conscious? For man s activities are mediate through his perceptions and will. Will man ever progress so far as to meet the other end of the great circle of Life and, by means of his perfected per- 13 WITH NATURE ceptions and will, come into perfect union with intelligent realization of the Pre-conscious? Nature SEPTEMBER 13. Nature seems to pause, as at Pause though swooning from the excess of "mellow fruitfulness" with which she has crowned orchard, garden, field and for est. A breathless stillness is over all as though some cherished purpose were now fulfilled and earth rested in quiet joy after the days of showers, mists and damp. This peace, this quiet joy, sink deep into my soul, calming and purify ing. O to be as Nature is, bountiful, modest, loving, patient, never-failing. Morning SEPTEMBER 18. The sun is silently mount ing up the eastern sky. Millions of dew- drops glisten on the grass, as though some munificent squanderer had thrown diamonds, sapphires and rubies there. I hear the music of the cowbells from dis tant roads and fields where kine are grazing. The air, pure and stimulating as nectar for soul and body, gently flut ters the little leaves. The death-songs of the autumn crickets and other insects keep up a melancholy monotony, a sort of fugue in the music of Nature. The birds are silent save that at rare inter vals I hear the jocund whistle of the red- bird, or the cheerful voice of some other 14 WITH NATURE "Little Brother." I hear the dreamy hum ming of the bees, sipping my ripened grapes. The sound affects my imagina tion similarly to the sound of the human hive, heard at a distance, to give the poetic perspective. SEPTEMBER 29. What capacity have I for A Dreamer accomplishing any work in life? What is Nature s purpose in regard to me? What was I made to do, to achieve? There is no lack of aspiration the writer, the artist, the musician can 1 be any one of these? With chagrin I own my incapacity. I have no powers of composition, of construction. I am not original, creative, giving form to ideas; only a dreamer; yet daring, courageous, profound, vague, illimitable, poetic. SEPTEMBER 30. A blue dome above me, Autumn Ski as I sit outdoors, flecked over by little, white, woolly clouds in flocks, like sheep grazing in heavenly pastures. The air is cool, still, full of sunshine that says, "It is autumn." OCTOBER 8. I find that each person of The Poet talent has only his own limited powers Is Protean of perception and little stock of truths, on hearing which, all is said. It is not so with the poet. He is ever new and re freshing, because creative; he is protean, like Nature herself. The poet is her 15 WITH NATURE favorite child; to whom she has given perpetual youth the power of being ever born again. The Return OCTOBER 9. The birds have returned of of tJi Birds late. During the latter part of the sum mer their songs were hushed. I hear, first one, then another little friend of last spring. How glad I am to welcome them back! How much consolation they bring me! Their sweet notes stimulate the poetic imagination to its happiest mood, whereby the heart is refreshed and glad dened by visions of beauty and peace. October OCTOBER 10. It is warmer today. I sit out of doors. The sky has a paler blue with here and there thin, feathery cloud lets, one shaped like a long, slender plume. The winds are stirring, rustling the dead leaves about me, like memories of lost hopes. The redbird sings in a near tree. Earlier, a flock of partridges, with a great, rushing, whirring sound, flew into the osage orange hedge, near my cottage, to remain but a few moments, when, with much whistling to each other and great excitement and fluttering of wings, off they flew to the mountain. No Drones OCTOBER 14. Everyone ought to wish to add something to the world s store of wealth. Those who have their living without working ought to satisfy the 16 WITH NATURE claims of justice by doing a certain amount of free work for the world. No one should be a drone, an idler, a mere consumer. Everyone ought to do his share of production for the privilege of living and enjoying life in this palace of the sky. OCTOBER 15. An ideal October day! The The Peace sky is poetical giving expression to of the Sky spiritual realities in the forms of beauty. It is a tender blue, mild, temperate, pas sionless; looking dow y n upon a distracted world like a great, calm face, quieting the hot, restless soul of man gone mad with strife and passion. O beautiful Face! look down into this heart and in thy smile send quietness, peace, joy. OCTOBER 16. The sky is one solid, light- Visitors grey color. No sunshine. The birds are singing as though it were spring. The air is still. One tiny Little Brother tripped into my cottage this morning where I was alone, lying on the couch. He hopped from chair to chair, with ex quisite grace and airy motion. I felt glad of his gentle, silent presence. I wished he might approach close to me, but I did not know in what manner to act so as not to frighten him. Soon, however, some noise outside frightened him and away he flew. 17 WITH NATURE Little C 1 came to ray cottage yester day and sang for me : "The hills, The beautiful hills The hills" etc. The child voice, the slim little figure, the look of innocence on his face, his rustic simplicity, made a picture not to be forgotten. Chrysanthemums and nasturtiums are blooming. Little G 1 keeps me supplied with them. Sleep and NOVEMBER 19. What does the condemned Ee-awaJcening man dream of? Is sleep to him a bit of to Pain oblivion? When he awakens, is it diffi cult for him to realize again his terrible doom? Is it torture, this often repeated experience of oblivion and re-awakening to the consciousness of a cruel fate? The Soul s experience is similar to this. She falls asleep. She forgets in dreams. She is once more free and happy. She awakens. She arises. The old Pain says: "Good morning," takes her by the hand, remains close with her all day. Oh, when will the hour arrive for the Soul to stand erect, once more free? 18 Transplantation The Soul is uprooted from the place of care and grief and planted again in the new soil of increasing health, hope, joy. TRANSPLANTATION JANUARY 4, 1890. The hour of dawn of The Dawn the Day of Health approaches. The long, of Faith black, painful Night is passed. A great faith, a great trust in the power of uni versal Good-will, the Cosmic Power, God s life call it what you will fills the Lonely Human Soul as water fills a well. This universal Good-will, by means of faith built on reason, will "Renew my youth like the Eagle," will "Heal all my diseases," will "Restore my soul." Did not Jesus say to the sick one made well: "Thy faith hath made thee whole?" The Lonely Human Soul stands upon the threshold of a new and higher life. Power flows in, intellectual, moral, phys ical. The days of apprenticeship are over. The life of the master-workman will commence. The horizon widens in every direction. The Lonely Human Soul is the child of God, consecrated to 21 TRANSPLANTATION do his will. Is this presumption, or is it true humility? The latter surely, be cause the Soul acknowledges that all her power is God s power in her. Snow JANUARY 18. There was a snow storm last night. There is a spirit of purifica tion abroad embodied in this spotless snow. O to receive that imprint upon the heart! Joy a State JANUARY 31. These are days of "silent of Sanity demand" and of prophecy. Quoth Saint Anthony, "To be built up in virtue, one must be built up in tears." That is the first stage the preparation but to ar rive at spiritual maturity the Soul s ever lasting dome must be built up of joy. To be joyful is the only sane temper in which to live. It is the temper of Nature and of her prophet and seer the poet. Those persons who go through life fret ful, peevish, discontented are partially insane. The poet is the sanest of men. Wordsworth sang of life as joy, in "Daf fodils" and "Early Spring." Emerson had the same temperament of the poet. How glad he makes you feel; how plentiful he is to feed the Soul, like some old apple tree that loads the ground with fruit! Saint Paul tells us of joy as one of the "fruits of the spirit." It is the purpose of the universe that every creature be 22 TRANSPLANTATION full of innocent joy, merry, gleeful joy, like that which Beethoven gives in his Pastoral Symphony. FEBRUARY 1. When a plant is trans- Transplanting planted, it passes through a trying time. It has been uprooted from its old familiar spot. At first it is weakened until the roots take firm hold upon the new soil and it begins to draw force from the air. If the climate is better adapted to the nature and requirements of the plant than the old one, the plant will become stronger, with increased power of flowering and fruition. The Soul is now passing through the trying time of trans plantation. She is uprooted from the place of care and grief and planted again in the new soil of increasing good health, hope, joy. Life will be richer and happier. FEBRUARY 8. Happiness as an end is in- Innocent sufficient and may lead to vice; hence Joy the utilitarian ideal is not the correct one. The purely moral motive, without the emotion of happiness, is incomplete and unsatisfying. Though great and heroic it fails to meet all the require ments of the heart and mind. A perfect ideal should meet every aspiration of the Soul. Such is the ideal of innocent joy. The poet in his rhapsody knows innocent 23 TRANSPLANTATION Innocent joy. Robert Browning looked out on the Joy world and declared: "I report as a man may of God s work, all s love and all s law." Again he sings: "Life with all it yields of joy and woe, And hope and fear, Is just our chance o the prize of learn ing love How love might be, hath been indeed, and is " And Edwin Arlington Robinson: "Love s complete communion is the end Of anguish to the liberated man." Where all is love, there all is innocent. The world must be infinite joy to satisfy an ever increasing thirst for an ever re newed state of innocent joy offering new fields of discovery, of fresh thought and feeling. The ideal of innocent joy leads to con structive work. Its tendencies are funda mental and rejuvenating. There is no medicine to be compared to the medicine of joy. Grief is destructive. Innocent joy can be attained only by obedience to the spiritual law. The practice of virtue tends to joy. FEBRUARY 14. The air is soft and vibrat- 24 TRANSPLANTATION ing with birds songs. I hear the red- bird. The sun shines gently amid light- moving clouds. There is a manner of grace, an air of tenderness about the day that comes to the heart like distant music. It is the season for new-born love, for tender sighs, for pensive moods. MARCH 29. EASTER. Criminals ought to be treated as patients in a hospital. They should not be treated as moral beings re sponsible for their acts. They are chil dren needing to be educated into moral ity, not by means of the knout, of ball and chain, of solitary confinement, or of any other cruel method, but by teaching them truth, honesty, fidelity, justice, self- control, love, forgiveness, mercy. By in justice you can not make a just man; by unkindness a kind man; by hatred and passion a loving man. If it were so then there would be no truth in the command: "Do justly and love mercy." APRIL 1. With closed eyes I was lying on my couch. On opening my eyes the white light from the sky flooded me with brightness and purity. The following thoughts rose up out of my heart: There is a Light of lights, Oh, that my eyes could see! Only the light of the sun Is visible to me. 25 A Day Like Distant Music "Do Justly and Love Mercy" There Is a Light of Lights TRANSPLANTATION There is a Light of lights, Oh, that my eyes could see! It is the Light of the Soul, And only the Soul can see. The Bitter At night the Soul had drunk of the bitter of Verlaine s poe me: "Les sanglots long Des violons De 1 autumne; Blessent mon coeur, D une langueur Monotone. "Tout suffocant Et bleme, quand Sonne 1 heure; Je me souviens Des jours anciens Et je pleure. "Et je m en vais Au vent mauvais, Qui m emporte De ci, de la, Pareil a la Feuille morte." Spring and APRIL 20. The spring is fairly with us. Signs of I see the first tender, yellowish-green tint Physical stealing forth on the trees in the garden. Progress The birds are my daily companions. I wonder if they know it! Their songs are my music. Ah, thou dear Pine Tree! 26 TRANSPLANTATION I forget thee not and thy soft murmurs. My old Friend, the great aspen tree, budded and blossomed last spring and now stands dead near my window. It will give me the music of the humming bees among its blossoms not this time, nor any more. I miss thy consolations, dear old Tree! Ah, the poor body! How is it with thee? Ailing, ailing; better than two months ago; better than one month ago, yet still benumbed by disease, rendering it perilous to walk out. The Soul is striving to conform to the laws of Nature in every habit, yielding up herself, more and more, to the con trol of spiritual law. JUNE 1. When the Soul becomes obedi- The Soul ent to Nature, she enters upon her real Obedient life. When she comes into unison with to Nature the Eternal through obedience to the law, in which alone she shall find her freedom by the emptying of self through renuncia tion to be refilled with universal life, she then becomes creative, as the universe is creative. "Drift, drift," says Emerson, "the current knows the way." JUNE 26. The universe is good. When The jj n i vers e you do evil you are using some of the isGood force of the universe to make yourself unlike the common i. e. universal na- 27 TRANSPLANTATION ture. And there is a reacting power in the nature of things which forces evil to become finally transmuted into good, thus ever preserving the balance of the whole. When the mind becomes rational, which is its natural tendency under favoring conditions, the desire to do evil is eliminated, for the rational mind par takes of the nature of the universe and is in ever-growing harmony with universal order. Life does not desire death, nor does health desire pain, nor does the heart desire to be hated and spurned. Moving with J UNE 27. The secret of life lies in Night and humble, faithful, patient doing. Rage Morning and despair but destroy us, as do im patience and negligence. All things must grow. Nothing may be forced to its perfect fruition. Patient, unfailing duty done, is alone capable of accomplishing good results. To gain in the long run, to have power, each person must take his appointed place in the great order, and move along with night and morning, with the seasons and the stars, be as they are, regular, never-fail ing. To the silent, faithful act belongs victory. Life Is Good JUNE 28. It is a high standpoint to reach when pain and sorrow are seen to be good as well as pleasure and joy. It is 28 TRANSPLANTATION the uses of things which constitute their worth. The noble mind will transmute all things into good, seeing the uses of pain and sorrow as well as of pleasure and joy. The noble mind is not tainted with pessimism; it sees that life is good and that there is no blot to mar the beauty of it. JULY 3. The Soul is passing out of the The Soul s old life, into the new; from out the old New World material world of vanity, of desire for admiration, of pride, of selfishness, of luxury, of frivolity, of ignorance, of ex- clusiveness, of idleness, of sensuality out, out, far, far out into the distant new world of Renunciation, of self- abandonment, of common Brotherhood with all; not with man only, but with animals, birds, insects, fishes, stocks and stones; yea, with the very elements them selves; into the new world of work, of seriousness, of plain living; the new world of knowledge; into the higher world of intelligence; of the Spirit, the tender, the true, the discriminating, per ceiving world of the Divine! JULY 9. I love trees. They feed me with Trees fruits. They warm me with fragrant wood fires. They are my friends and the friends of my race. I love trees because we are the chil- 29 TRANSPLANTATION Trees dren of one common parent, because we have one common nature and one com mon destiny. I love trees because they are good; be cause they are kind, because they are modest, because they have dignity of character. How hospitable they are to the birds and the little squirrels, giving them homes! They give food without money and without price. In the sum mer days how pleasant are their shadows where the weary may find rest. They are Quakers, for peace abideth with them. They are philosophers, saints and poets. Trees are the friend of man. He could not find a home upon the earth were it not for trees. They could live without him, but not he without them. They call the gracious rains together, bringing harvests to their ungrateful brother whose brutal hand is too often laid upon their beauty. Can words describe the grace of their myriad branches, or the tenderness of those arms, garlanded and veiled with leaves, outstretched with longing to em brace the sun? What shadows, what colors, what motion live paintings done by the hand of Nature where imagina tion may nestle with birds or skip from branch to branch like squirrels. Happy 30 TRANSPLANTATION lovers seek those shadows for their tryst. Trees When the branches are bare and strip ped, they are like the widowed heart. They point upward to the sky like prayers. The violin with its human voice comes out of the heart of trees. It is a revela tion of their kinship with man when these, his silent brothers silent now no longer, but, with an eloquence exceeding that of man himself give voice to the imprisoned poetry of his soul. Trees are the friend of man in his Religion as in his Art. They give con solation to the Soul when burdened with its weight of bitter agony. Christ went to the trees in His hour of bloody sweat. Elijah and the other Prophets and the Saints of old went to the trees seeking rest. Trees were the only witnesses to the Buddha s act of renunciation in his solemn hour of enlightenment. Trees are the comforters and compan ions of mankind. Philosophers, saints and poets are not unmindful of them. They know that trees are a company of peacemakers. They know that Christ, preaching the Sermon on the Mount, in the midst of trees, included them as joint heirs to the beatitude, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the Children of God." 31 TRANSPLANTATION The Wren JULY 10. Thou tiny, fluttering thing, quivering with life and joy, the music of thy chatter tells me of thy simple, happy life. Thou singest not of heroic deeds, nor of the heart s sorrow. Thy days are passed in sprightly chatterings~to all live things about thee. Thou dost enliven me, and I love thee and am thankful. Thy gentle virtues are suited to thy home mission and its tranquil rounds. Thou art a commonsense philosopher and no mystic with deep vision. Lightly dost thou sit on the hough lightly poised as the bee in mid-air. Light is thy burden. Thou dost take no thought for the mor row. Thou art a true Christian. Thou dost trust thy Heavenly Father for "all of these things which shall be added unto thee." Thou makest me glad when I listen to thy music as it ripples out in a tiny stream of happy life. O, Jenny Wren; O, Jenny Wren! Joy in All JULY 19. Joy goes through the world in Guises all guises. She comes anywhere and at any time. Sunday morning in the solemn hymn-tones of the children in the church the Soul finds the human longing for a purer life and intimations of a love faith ful beyond the grave. She finds it in the picture painted on the blue sky by the tinkling dances of the aspen leaves; or 32 TRANSPLANTATION in the soft wavings of the palms of the Paradise tree; or in the symmetry of the spider s silver-spun web shining in the sun under the cottage eaves. AUGUST 1. Of all the months of the year August I most love August. It is the season of the harvest. It is the fullness of time in the year. The day of preparation is past. The labor is done. The waiting is over. Nature is banqueting on the fruits of the Fullness-of-Time. Joy and Peace sit be side her a seraphic company! My heart longs to partake of that perfect feast, for then I shall be satisfied. August is the time of the perfect fruition sprung from the wedding of the winter with the spring, as the child is the consummation of the perfect union of man with woman. A marriage without a child is as a broken ring, an unfinished circle a year without an August. In August, not the least of a tiny weed, not a wild tree, not a vine, which bears not its seed-child upon its bosom. Not a bird or insect but has fulfilled its proper function and is receiving the re ward of love. Nature is then August in all the fullness of Maternity. She drinks of the wine of the Fullness-of-Time. From out the depths of her great heart is heard the Song of the Seasons: "Now is the 33 TRANSPLANTATION Hour come; now are the hopes fulfilled; now is the time of the consummation." O blessed and consecrated moment, the Sabbath Day of Nature her festival of Rest and earthly type of eternal Peace! The Soul will await the coming of the Fullness-of-Time the coming of August in the circle of her life. Shall she ever sit at that banqueting table, and with Joy and Peace drink of that cup? She will trust and wait, knowing that every event comes in its due season; that the moment she shall deserve happiness, that moment she shall receive it. Kant sublimely teaches that man ought not to strive for happiness, but so live as to be worthy of it. Joy, AUGUST 2. What a comedy is life often Not Hell seen to be! How many foolish beliefs and customs mislead mankind, hither and thither, as the Will-O -the-Wisp fantastic ally misleads the lonely night wayfarer in the story book! Think of a company gathered together to sing doleful songs about the vanity of life and the torments of hell, relegating all joy to some future, possible heaven. Whereas the truth is, life is no vanity, the "Preacher" notwith standing, save only as one may make it so. Life is a divine existence of un speakable \vorth and there is "Joy in 34 TRANSPLANTATION widest commonalty spread." As to the so much be-preached and be-sung hell torments, they exist only in the imagina tion. The reality is that God is a god of love and the visible universe is an out burst his own divine joy, not wrath. AUGUST 3. I am reading Rousseau s Con- ftousseau fessions. What a book it is! What a revelation of the heart and of life! I ad mire his ability to stand outside the pas sions, as it were, when passing judgment upon himself. It must have required moral courage; or was it simply that ex ceptional force which comes with genius, to show the naked truth; to portray the soul "with all its imperfections on its head" to the outside world? What a study the book is! What in tricacies, what subtle variations of char acter were bound up together in that one human being named Jean Jacques Rousseau! How vividly he shows the power of circumstance and incident to influence and mould character and life! What a gift of penetrating expression he has, which enables his words to get into the mind so that the reader seems to be come, for the time being, Jean Jacques Rousseau, himself, living again through scenes and incidents in that remarkable life. What delicate humor, what a lov- 35 TRANSPLANTATION able nature, what a singular being! What extreme opposites brought together in one personality voluptuous yet loving the pure, fickle yet faithful, lying yet de voted to truth, thieving yet honest! He seemed a living Aeolian harp responding to every note of life about him. Gould any other pen tell the same things with such skill and delicacy in the use of language? Rousseau did not prostitute his reason by using sophistry to condone the errors into which his inflammable temperament and the customs of the times led him. He judged and condemned himself. Gould a bad man prefer the compan ionship of streams, flowers, the sky and his own thoughts in the country quiet, to the excitements of a life in Paris? It was his misfortune to live in an age of loose sexual morals and manners; even so, I believe that had he early met and married the woman whom he could truly love he would have been faithful. Under AUGUST 11. I come down to be alone the Trees with the trees, to see how the sunlight and the shadows gild and paint them as they are moved by the gentle summer breeze; to be with the birds, now almost songless, to watch their swift and silent flight from tree to tree; to look at the 36 TRANSPLANTATION blue sky above me where sails a great white cloud; to watch the matchless grace of the little leaves as they dance to the music of the winds. I came out, stagger ing beneath my load of pain, to live one hour with Beauty in the midst of this sweetness, that my soul may swim out into the ocean of spiritual perception, wash and be clean, strengthened and restored by these living waters of contemplation. AUGUST 23. It is very warm. The The Happiness turkeys have sought the shadows under of a Double a clump of small trees where the shade Existence is dense. They are picking and cleaning their feathers. Occasionally I hear them peeping to each other in low tones. How I wish that I, too, could so order my life as to trust wholly to Nature for every provision, as do these poor fowls wiser than I! I desire a life rid of all artificial arrangements; to live out of doors, without house or possessions, as did Saint Anthony. But could I live alone as he did? No. I am not great enough. The heart bleeds in secret for a human comrade. As did Rousseau, so does the Soul crave for the happiness of a double existence in the perfect union of two souls in one; yet, like Amiel, noth ing that might give offense to the Ideal in her would satisfy. 37 TRANSPLANTATION Alone, the Soul knows not happiness. How was it with the grand old Saint and Father of Hermits? The Tragedy AUGUST 26. I look out on the world. of Life What do I see? I see the writhing worm trodden down upon the roadside. I see the man of truth and courage languish ing in the dungeon Christ nailed to the tree; Socrates condemned to drink the fatal cup. I see the untimely dropping of buds and young fruits. I see the trust ing heart betrayed and left desolate. I see every creature preyed upon by some other creature. - Innocent Joy AUGUST 27. Innocent joy is the realiza- a Phoenix tion of the fable of the phoenix. It is the only state that possesses the inherent power of renewing itself. All other states wear themselves out; joy alone persists, because it is a state of holiness, or, wholeness. Joy is the essence of Eternal Life. Hope AUGUST 28. The nature of Hope is child- and Faith like. She breathes of the innocence of ignorance. She knows not Truth, hence Watts represents her as blindfolded. There lingers about her garments the scent of wild flowers, and the fresh air of the fields of childhood s immaturity. She is light-hearted and merry as the child is playful and sunny-tempered. 38 TRANSPLANTATION Faith is god-like. Hope is mortal, wayward. She frolics beside us in our hours of ease, and in our seasons of weakness we need this sunny child of the human breast to chase away our gloom, to soothe the days of peevishness and care. Do not take this sweet child from us! We need her smiles, her inno cent prattle in the April seasons of life, before the Soul has grown strong enough to journey up the Heights reached only by the austere virtues of Reason, by strong souls in seasons of achievement, there to grasp the hand of Faith as she stands alone, sublime, crowned by the everlasting spaces and the stars. OCTOBER 17. I heard the Boston Sym- Beethoven s phony Orchestra, in concert, on the even- Eighth ing of the 15th at Memorial Hall. What Symphony were my emotions on entering that tem ple dedicated to the memory of those who had fought and died fighting against my beloved country, my beloved South land! Did the Soul receive a jar? While listening to Beethoven s Eighth Sym phony I freely forgave. Reconciliation passed into my heart, not alone to the soldiery dead, but to those also who had cast the mud of brutal insult upon the Soul s fairest part. Peace descended, clasped my hand and led me up! 39 TRANSPLANTATION Beethoven said, "He to whom my music reveals its whole significance is lifted up above all the sorrows of the world." The Holy OCTOBER 18. I close not my window Stars curtains, for I will not shut out the most that I can see of Beauty. In the day there are the sky, the sun and the clouds. At night there are the moon, the holy stars and the mysteries of space. And why are the stars called "holy?" Because they bring truths. Aye, the little earth, the gravel, and the sand bring truths also. Nay, but the stars bring truths illimitable, infinite. Therefore are they called holy. ToEest FEBRUARY 18, 1891. To rest means to stop all conscious, voluntary activities, withdrawing attention from everything and turning the whole mind toward the realization of the truth that there is no life save the divine life which flows into and fills all things continually, and then, just to let that life flow in and fill you consciously. A Methodical FEBRUARY 19. The thought of a methodi- Life cal life grows within the Soul. What then shall be her life-work? It must be one for which she may be fitted by nature and opportunity. She believes that she belongs to the dumb species. What then can she work at? Nature 40 TRANSPLANTATION has given her the great heart overflow- A Methodical ing with love and compassion for all Life things. Though born and reared in the so-called "aristocratic" station in life, her heart turns from that to the so-called "common" people with love and sym pathy. It is their need she understands; their joy and sorrow which touch her most deeply. She often shrinks from contact with the "upper" classes those "lesser barbarians," as Garlyle calls them because of their frivolous, not to say brutal, pastimes; their self-assumed su periority over the great mass of the people. The folly, the injustice of it all comes over her like a flood that will sweep the last vestige of it from her own heart. The great Mother has enwrapped the Soul in an atmosphere of ideal harmony, the temper of which is all too sensitive for the ordinary associations of life. Circumstance and sorrow have cut the ties of the usual family experience. The great Mother s voice is heard calling, "Thou art separated that thou shalt do thy work for my desolate children. The fields are white to the harvest and the laborers are few. " MARCH 5. The evening star shining in glory, undimmed by the crescent moon 41 TRANSPLANTATION To the the evening star and the Lonely Human Condemned Soul. Beauty and Silence are the re ligion of the hour. The Soul bows her head. She asks to be shown her work. Nature declares it shall be in prisons where the condemned sit alone, friendless and unpitied. "Go thou to them. Be thou the friend of the friendless. Take thy free gift of pity and love. Show thou the face of Truth, that looking upon her the sorrow ful may be healed and made glad." O God! canst thou give strength for this? The Soul sensitive to every impression, even to suffering keenly from ordinary contacts in life, can she become strong to enter the condemned cell and to have fellowship with criminals? Courage abandons her. "The criminal is thy brother, thy poor, untaught, hungry, naked brother. For him, as for thee, the evening star shines in glory, and Beauty and Silence to gether descend from the heavens upon the earth." The Day MARCH 6. The state of ill health can not of Peace last the state of ill-at-easement of Soul at Hand and body. All will be well when the Soul shall arrive at her proper relations with Life when perfect connection is made between the spirit and Spirit. 42 TRANSPLANTATION The day of peace is at hand the day of health, of silent joy, of great working power when eyes and hands and lips shall become as active as hitherto have been only the brain and the abounding, suffering heart. Ah, the Soul has striven all her life to reach such a harmony of living! How far short has she fallen! How often sunk into the mire of folly! to recover herself always, never to be wholly lost; as Christian fell into the Slough of Despond, yet got out on the side toward the Celestial City. MARCH 7. Nature makes nothing for Beauty Beauty s sake, simply to be beautiful. She aims not at Beauty, for Beauty is not outside of Nature. She makes a flower, a tree, a sunset, a man, a woman. There is need for the thing, therefore it is produced and therefore it is beau tiful; for Nature is Beauty. Beauty means perfect adaptation, perfect fitness to use. There is purpose in the color on a rose leaf, or in the milky whiteness of a lily s throat. MARCH 8. I am filled with joy on see- Branches ing a green branch waved by the breeze; and Stars or when looking at the stars as they swing in space, moved by God s thought, my soul stands awed; one is beautiful, the other is sublime. The one I under- 43 TRANSPLANTATION stand; the other is beyond my compre hension, being lost in the mists and mys teries of infinite magnitude and distance. Walt APRIL 10. Walt Whitman died on the Whitman s 25th of March a great soul gone else- Death w here! Goethe APRIL 12. In his loves Goethe expressed the Romantic spirit in its extreme stage; that is to say, individual experience was given full sway without regard to con trol of self or justice toward others; which is the opposite of the moral soul who, strong in his individuality, yet recognizes the claims of others and is all the stronger for so doing; who is the truly social character, regarding himself not as the isolated god of life to think and act according as his own sweet will may elect from moment to moment, but rather as an organic member of one uni versal, divine system of life. Surely the maxims of the old prophets have no part in Goethe s loves "To do justly and to love mercy." He showed neither justice nor mercy to the unfortunate women whom he adored for one passing hour only to desert them the next. Love should be the outcome, the flower ing of a soul that is true to itself; true to the principles of the spiritual life; faithful as are the stars in their courses. 44 TRANSPLANTATION APRIL 19. How wonderful is the human The Body body! What a marvelous apparatus for the uses of the indwelling spirit! What admirable adjustments! What conveni ent appliances! The feet to the legs, the toes to the feet, the nails to the toes. The eyes to the brain that marvelous workshop where is wrought out the ideas. Finer workmanship is done there than is executed with rare skill by gold and silver artisan, by miniature painter, or by the grinder of great lenses where with to see that which eye hath not seen. I am awed when I think of the number less cycles that were needed in which to complete this perfect shape moulded by the indwelling spirit struggling for expression in the world. APRIL 20. Life appears to us in mo- Great Truths ments which are always fleeting; but just as there is a perpetual daybreak, a per petual noonday, a perpetual midnight as the earth wheels on her everlasting flight among the stars, so do there abide the Great Truths, although we see them not in the swift and changing thoughts of time. APRIL 21. The Soul will say why it is The Ocean that she loves the ocean with so deep and undying love. It is because the 45 T R A X S P L A N T A T I O N ocean is the symbol of her inner life eternally restless, unfathomable, omnivo rous, illimitable! The Storm APRIL 24. The day is fair, but within Is Raging the inner world this human microcos- mos the storm is raging pain, weak ness, sorrow. The Soul will be faithful. She will say, "Though thou slay me, yet will I trust in thee." She will look to spiritual power for her ease, for her strength, for her consolation. In pain, yet she shall know quietness. In weak ness, she shall have strength. In sorrow, she will kiss the cheek of joy. Butterflies JULY 28. This is the time of the butter flies. I see them, with their great, black wings spotted over with yellow, flutter ing and hovering over the sweet phlox blooms. I see the small, pure-white but terflies, often two, sometimes three to gether, seeming at play with each other, there is such whirling up and down, coming together in apparent kisses, flut tering away again, and round and round each other, up and down, sideways, for ward, backward, in some delicious dance of lightness, grace and joy. The Morning s AUGUST 22. I sit outdoors by the old Baptism of hedge, among the grasses all wet with Light and Life yesterday s rain. The Soul is beginning to hold herself erect, self-poised because 46 TRANSPLANTATION pivoted on God. The forces of Nature sustain me. I refuse to remain indoors. I need the outdoor communion the morning s baptism of light and life from the open sky upon my naked soul. As regards the body, what are a few trifling sensations that try to force themselves upon my notice, to the inflowing of divine life of which I am conscious as filling my entire being. AUGUST 23. Great souls see divinity in Divinity in monotony; in plain and simple things. Monotony Kant was not bored by a monotonous life. He never went out of the district in which he was born, and he passed outwardly a monotonous existence, doing the same things day in and day out, as the sun and the moon and the earth do the same things. Only vacant minds are bored by monot ony. It is themselves with whom they are bored. The mind rich in thought possesses not one kingdom only, but all kingdoms for its own. AUGUST 24. This growing into one-ness My Miracles with the universe: this being fitted to one s place in Nature the infinite build ing not made with hands as the stone is chipped by the mason and fitted into its proper place in the human habita tion: this swelling and bursting of the 47 TRANSPLANTATION spiritual seed-pod: this reaching out of the Soul s antennae to receive the thrill that comes from personal touch with the Spirit of the universe: these silent yet potent moments of revelation ah, these are the miracles I believe in! The Soul who knows them has some what to say, if she find words. The Little Hen SEPTEMBER 7. I listen to the little hen as she sings her psalm of content, in one long-drawn crescendo note, followed by staccatos in quick succession. There is a rasping quality in her tone as though her throat were some rude violin made of a gourd, having the notes and pitch but not the timbre of the violin as she sings her psalm of content. The Winter of the Heart As One of the Stars of Heaven SEPTEMBER 11. The Lonely Human Soul is faltering today. Her world is the desolation of desolation and scarcely to be borne are the voices of the little crickets in the grass harbingers of a yet distant winter. They tell of the winter of the heart where only echoes of Love s death-song may be heard. SEPTEMBER 12. Oh, may thy life with "all its crimes upon thy head," with all its poor failures, yet become useful and shine out with the beauty of holiness, for thou dost not cease to "strive on with unswerving will:" even as the little 48 TRANSPLANTATION earth, though carrying upon her bosom her black load of sorrow and despair, yet shines to other worlds as one of the stars of heaven! SEPTEMBER 13. The unconquerable pride The Pride and self-poise of genius does it come and Self -Poise from the consciousness of possessing of Genius superior talents, or from excess of sensi tiveness required for genius, or from both? The man or woman of genius they do not seek confidence and affec tion. Their natures silently make their demand. Where they do not receive, they are as an exile in the world, or as an alien shut out from his proper dominion. They can not go out to ask for that which yet they need. The kings of the earth may not become her beggars. SEPTEMBER 14. My mind is omnivorous. A Mind My difficulty in acquiring knowledge is Omnivorous that I can hardly confine my attention to any one special study. I desire phil osophy, the sciences, poetry, history, general literature all at once, with an impatience hard to control; in fact, I am troubled with an appetite greater than I have digestive powers to take charge of. SEPTEMBER 15. Poetry engages intellect Poetry Versus and heart. Science engages only the in- Science tellect. Poetry needs facts, ideas and feelings, science only facts and ideas. 49 TRANSPLANTATION Poetry gives expression to emotions of love and reverence; science has no emo tions. Science looks at a flower merely as an object and describes it, poetry sees a flower as a living being and recognizes its relations in the bonds of sympathy to universal life. Science is the world of description, poetry the world of in sight. Science knows not beauty. Poetry sees nothing apart from beauty. Science requires the analytic faculty, poetry the receptive. Sudden Events SEPTEMBER 16. What we call sudden events are simply those moments when that which has already existed becomes visible. 50 Unfolding The Soul stands upon the threshold of the next and final stage of a grand philosophical faith and vital religion. UNFOLDING MARCH 5, 1892. The soul is awaking The Soul more and more fully. She is real-izing life; seeing that the divine nature of things is the only actuality. She is ar riving at her freedom. Little now re mains which can give her offense. For merly she was vulnerable at all points, a poor, weak creature indeed, who might fall a prey at any moment to the smallest incident or accident of life the fa miliarity of a servant, or of a "common" person, any slight or neglect from a per son of fashion, any act of injustice to ward her, any under-valuation of her powers and personal qualities. None of these things can now humiliate or hurt the Soul. The barriers are gone. She now regards the "common" people as her equals. She desires their confidence and friendship. She desires to draw near to them as one of them. As for the person of fashion, he or she is seen to 53 UNFOLDING be only an object of pity, whom the Soul desires to lift out of the mire of folly and vanity if possible. Any act of injustice done to the Soul she regards as an opportunity for the practice of virtue, as a test whether or no she pos sesses the true spirit of humility, if she can bear with patience and without bit terness to be thought ill of, reminding herself how much nearer the truth such an estimation is than that conveyed by words of praise and flattery. For after all the Lonely Human Soul is but a poor creature struggling upward a little worm crawling up a mountain. To be spoken of as a worm struggling in the dust would be nearer the truth than to be called an angel of light. Soul APRIL 22. A terrible impatience has Travail possessed the Soul of late. She feels that she can not wait for Nature to do her work. Shut within her room, which ap pears as the cell of a convict, the sounds of outside life come to her. She hears the busy hammers of the house-builders, merry whistlings of young men and boys as they pass rapidly by. She knows, too, of the beauty of the springtime, of the bursting of the buds and the silent process of the robing of the trees. But none of these things are for her. Alone, 54 walled in, she lies stretched upon her Soul bed of pain. Travail The Soul will arise from this low plane of suffering and fear up to the Heights where Epictetus lived, where Emerson lived, where the Saints and Prophets of old lived. She will learn self-denial and a wise and loving obedience to the Cosmic Order. She will look up at the little picture of the sea hanging on the wall. She will gaze in imagination far out toward the Ocean of Truth upon whose shores she now stands. She will listen to the sound of the surf rolling in, bringing freedom and consolation to her here entangled in the net of sorrow. MAY 2. The voice of the oriole sounds like the cry of a lost spirit for its Beloved One. In the midst of the marvelous beauty of this season the Lonely Human Soul lies scourged and imprisoned. Shall not these stripes become her pathway leading up to the Verities? MAY 3. How is it possible to rise so com pletely above bodily pain, unfavorable surroundings, and the heart s sorrow as to be not only equable but cheerful and at peace? Did Epictetus, did Socrates achieve this, or was it that they, too, only saw Truth 55 UNFOLDING which might be attained, yet fell short of it in their daily practice of virtue, just as I fall short? When the Soul lies in the Valley of Humiliation, every sound is interpreted by the imagination as a note of sadness. The voices of the mating birds wound her heart. The sounds of the noisy car penters harrow the mind that has no home. The heavens which hold the sun of life s blessings, sink beneath the horizon, and the night-side alone is vis ible, without a star of consolation, and the storm rages, and the Soul is beaten and tossed by the tempest. Stand firm, O Soul! lest thou be found not worthy to preach the great Truths when the hour shall arrive and thou wilt arise in freedom to go forth into the world. If thou livest not for Truth, thou wouldst better die. To live to eat and to sleep would be a shame just so much room in the world taken up, and by an unfruitful fig tree, which shall be cut down and cast into the fire. The Ideal MAY 4 - When I visited the Convent, one Vision of sweet Sister told me that whenever she the Universe was not engaged in active duties she escaped to the Chapel to visit the "Blessed Sacrament;" and so will I, when disen gaged and alone, yield up the eyes of my 56 UNFOLDING soul to contemplation of the Blessed Sacrament of the Ideal Vision of the Uni verse. I lie prostrate and adoring in the Real Presence of this beauteous picture of Spiritual Immensities. I desire to be come in harmony with this Reality. I find my rest in contemplation. MAY 10. All the energies must now go to Drifting the healing of the wounded parts. I have not been able to study for months and can read but little, just lying all day, in half sleeping, half w r aking state; drifting, drifting, farther and farther toward the deep current of Divine Being, with an ever increasing realization of the truth that all things are the expression of in telligence, the young leaf that comes forth from the woody branch, as well as myself. I seem to be passing through some pro cess of death, slowly dying, inch by inch, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment; dying to the old life to awaken to the new. I am nerveless. An irresisti ble indifference and lack of power for action takes possession of me. As the seaweed floats on the bosom of the ocean, so do I lie upon the bosom of the great deep of divine Life drifting, drifting. MAY 11. Beside me stands a jar of apple blossoms; another of the purple lilac and 57 UNFOLDING The Bleeding the lovely red wings off the maple trees. Heart On my desk stands a large bunch of dog wood twigs, pine and spirea. On the bookcase, wild honeysuckles, wild pan- sies and the bleeding heart the bleeding heart. Oh, the bleeding heart! Is there consciousness in these exquisite blos soms? An Inrush MAY 12. I wish I could describe the state of Power of my thought and feeling. At times I am aware of an immense inrush of power, an enormous storing up of energy to think, to feel, to do, to go; to start off on long foot journeys, to tramp over native and foreign countries, ming ling with the people; to engage in social work, where I shall receive wings, the wings of good health, where there will be no longer consciousness of the body s machinery to put in motion, but con sciousness only of will and thought to do. The Soul s JUNE 6. The Soul is visited by moments Contentment of exquisite happiness. She knows not from whence they come. Outward cir cumstances are not such as to warrant these glimpses of the Soul s serenity the serenity of Beethoven s Pastoral Sym phony nevertheless the heavens open above and shower upon her moments of sweetest bliss the Soul s content ment. 58 UNFOLDING The Soul fears not ennui, for time is not long enough for the lover of all things. She fears not the future. She rests in faith that the good she earns is coming with the process of the suns, and the honest Soul ought to ask no more. She fears not treachery. The heart may not again place her fully garnered store all in one frail granary. She fears not death, for death is the arms of Nature ! JUNE 7. The blooming of my grapevine The Blooming is accomplished. Beneath the broad, of the Grape green leaves this silent and divine drama was enacted. All that I saw or was sen sible of was that a halo of pale gold rays came forth and a delicious fragrance filled the air. The gold vanished and the scent was gone and all was done. The marriage rite was solemnized and life was given, so silent, so potent and so beautiful. Would that human life might be like this! JUNE 12. I lie out under the open sky, to Clouds watch the silent dignity of the clouds as they come up over the mountain. First there is a mere speck or rim of white, or a little peak jutting above the green crest, rising higher every moment, grow ing larger and larger until a great cloud looms up ana sails away to the zenith. 59 UNFOLDING What grand leisure, what freedom in the motions of the clouds, forever expanding and moving onward! How they are con tinually changing, separating, rearrang ing, melting into one another, combin ing into new forms, shaping great conti nents and huge mountains, islets and fragments of vaporous stuff, like "the baseless fabric of a dream." They seem to be alive. They are the thoughts of the sky, and the stars are its memories! Doves Voices JUNE 16. The air is full of the music of the doves languishing voices. They seem to be the sighs of love coming up from out the great heart of Nature that great bosom of love too full to be repressed. I look to see the green grass heave in rhythmical breaths as I listen to those love-notes which move my soul to tears of tenderness. Why the JUNE 17. Life would not be worth the World Is living, worth the pain and struggle, were So Beautiful ft no t f or j ov> the joy of loving and being loved. This is why the world is so beautiful a fitting palace in which to celebrate the marriage of souls, the wed dings of spirit comrades. Robins J UNE 22. The air is resounding with the jubilate shouts of the robins. Two little red-breasted bird-men are shouting at once and the chorus beats anything I 60 UNFOLDING ever heard. The high pitch, the precis ion of the notes, the sweetness of tone, the volubility, the lusty vigor, the ram pant spirits, the positive gladness of it all, produces an impression upon me which is actually exciting. I am told that these concerts celebrate the occasions of hatching out of the young. What hymns of joy they seem to be! O, thou Little Brother, thou dost teach this poor, low- spirited heart to look up and be thank ful! JUNE 23. Years of pain and solitary con- i s the Bitter finement become the season of the Soul s Sweet Today? purgation. Is the bitter sweet today, O Soul? It is not altogether bitter. JULY 3. A little moment of divine life A Little came to the Soul this afternoon. She was Moment of content to suffer and to wait for the Divine Life fulness of time. JULY 5. The pine tree changes with the The Pine Tree hours of the day. In the morning it stands dark and mys terious against the eastern sky, like the young poet waiting for fame. At mid-day it is crowned with a pale gold shower of light the voice of the people s acclamation and the mysteri ous shadows have retreated within its depths of trunk and branch, as the most 61 UNFOLDING sensitive thought retires into the depths of the heart before the glare of the world. At evening, from the west, the sun shines upon the young blossoming cones, and behold! the tree is hung with a thousand tapers of light, as the sun sets and night comes down from the sky. It is the smile of the Holy One, crowned and blessed, who is bidding farewell to the world. The Life of JULY 6. My mind seems to have a life of the Mind its own, distinct from the life of the body. I do not lose consciousness of dis eased conditions, yet at times it almost seems to be the body of some other per son, so free, independent and rejoicing is the life of the mind. Brain and JULY 12. As the ear is but the physical Spirit contrivance, by means of which the slower ether waves are transmitted to the brain, so may the brain be the mere physical contrivance by means of which matter is brought into contact with spirit. The JULY 18. What is the commonplace? It Commonplace is thought and action without purpose, without need. Every act that is from necessity has its poetical aspect. Only the needless act is without poetry. It is mean from end to end. Hence all af- 62 UNFOLDING fectations are commonplace and can not become poetical. JULY 19. It is summer, summer, summer- Summer land! I sit on the little porch overhung with grapevines, in wild gracefulness untrimmed by the pruning knife. Sun shine floods the world. A dewdrop sap phire trembles between two leaves. Some tint of red calls to my eyes, it is the clover-heads standing like an army of little soldiers, each one proudly holding up his gay-colored helmet to the sun. As the breeze moves over the spider webs on the grass, it appears as a magician who conjures up silver to scatter in shimmering threads as he goes. In the distance the green dome of a large tree rises against the sky; nothing is more beautiful than the tremors of the morn ing winds there. As they pass along each leaf, the tree is hung with tiny bells of light. Radiant spots of sunshine are reflected from the leaves in the tops of the plum tree, forming a miniature galaxy of stars arranged in clusters and festoons similar to the suns on the Milky Way. Such semblance hath all things in Nature from the leaf to the star! JULY 20. What I believe to be the pro- foundest truth in life is the opposite of the dogma of Total Depravity. It is that 63 UNFOLDING A Divine instead of man s thoughts being evil con- Music tinually and his heart desperately wicked, the deepest note in his constitution to be struck is one that will give out a divine music and no chord of hell. An Exquisite AUGUST 20. The Poet has an exquisite Pain of Soul pain of the Soul. She can do nothing but lie still and weep. Life Nature is touching her with infinite grace and beauty. Transmutation AUGUST 30. All the filth, all the bad smells all belong to the earth. She is able to take care of all. She receives all into her bosom, as the heart of a divine love receives back with forgiveness the most criminal offender, purifying, regen erating. I try to escape from these noxious things. They do not belong to me. But they be long to the earth. She does not try to escape from them. They are hers. In her divine life she transmutes all into the good of her own uses. May not I too be come cosmic, transmuting evil into good, recreating all that may come to me, as the earth recreates, into the pure gold of a divine existence? The Soulin AUGUST 31. The Soul is passing through Transition a transition stage. She lies as the seed in the ground that appears to die before it germinates into the new life. There 64 UNFOLDING is a pause. Thought is asleep. When it awakens, it will be to a new and higher interpretation of life; the old agony passed away; the fluctuations of hope and despair sunk out of sight; the new life of faith and power and joy; the new interpretation of the universe in its spiritual significance. SEPTEMBER 3. It is said that Moses went "Gods, up into the mountain and received the Though in divine law. I say that I, too, go up into the Germ" the mountain and receive the divine law. I am called a skeptic and an infidel. I say that those persons who so speak are themselves skeptics and infidels because they say that only a few persons, who lived thousands of years ago, were in spired; but I say that inspiration is tak ing place today. They draw the limit to the operation of divine power, while I draw no limit to it. They say that Jesus only was the Son of God, and I say that you are the Son of God, and I am the Son of God and that everyone is the Son of God because God is the Father and Creator of everyone. Inspiration is the perception of Truth. Inspiration is here. Receive it. Divinity is here. Use it. SEPTEMBER 4. Other life than our own we call "nature," such as the cricket, 65 UNFOLDING The Poetic with its musical and solitary note, or Perspective trees, or mountains in their silent beauty, and that nature in its totality appears clothed in a garment of divine peace. We talk of love for Nature as though communion with her brought us nearer to God. The truth is that Nature ap pears thus majestic because she is not our own life. We are at a sufficient dis tance from her to see with the poetic perspective. We can look with dispas sionate eyes at that which is outside and beyond ourselves. Could we view it from the poetic perspective we should see that our own existence is "nature" and that it, too, is clothed in a garment of divine beauty and peace. Only the philosopher and the poet can discern life truly, be cause they rise to those heights whence man is seen in his divine aspect. Resignation SEPTEMBER 12. The Soul is sinking deeper and deeper into the world of res ignation. She is frequently visited by moments of spiritual acceptance. The hour of impatience, of rebellion, of bitter agony, is passing away. A Jar of SEPTEMBER 13. I lie and take not my Grasses eves o ff a j ar o f grasses that stands upon my table. I am entranced by their simple beauty. I will be still and at peace, as they are still and at peace. 66 UNFOLDING OCTOBER 2. Few there be who give the Stages of Soul food to eat, or drink to slake her the Soul s thirst. In solitude she is filled. When Unfolding alone, then is she fed and given drink. Does this mean that the Soul receives more from herself than from others? "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you," said Christ. The Soul has passed through all stages of unfolding which the intellectual de velopment of the world has experienced, She has had her emergence out of un consciousness; her stage of ignorance and mere sensation when she began to look about her; her period of absolute cre dulity, followed by that of wonder and doubt, and her flood of revolt and skep ticism which swept all before it all the accumulations of false beliefs. After that came the period in which was developed the habit of a slow and painstaking ef fort to gather knowledge, at which time a cold and critical materialism predom inated. The Soul cried aloud, but Nature was dead and gave no reply. She is now well advanced in the scientific stage. She is putting into its proper place each fact, slow T ly accumulated during the years. She is learning to generalize and begin ning to grasp principles. It is now a de lightful occupation to think. As each idea appears, she places it in its proper 67 UNFOLDING setting. It is like making mosaic pic tures and seeing each stone drop into its proper place. Instead of the old pain and despair, comes the delight of creat ing her world, as the painter sees his canvas begin to breathe, or the sculptor is enraptured when he beholds the marble assuming the outlines and activities of life. The Soul stands upon the threshold of the next and final stage of a grand philosophical faith and vital religion. The Poet OCTOBER 3. The poet is not occupied with his own individual interests, as is the practical man. The poet becomes all persons and all things. Through sym pathy he loses himself in other lives. He lies out in the sunshine seemingly idle. In reality he is working with the laborer, down in the ditch digging to lay the water pipes; or he is playing with the school children at recess, until the school bell rings to call them back to tasks, and the voices at play are hushed. He sees the distant home of one he loves. He lives the newly wedded life. He brings to all the elements of love and sym pathy. He is the personal friend of the near pine tree. He responds to its in vitation to come and dwell with it. OCTOBER 4. Poetry involves abstract ideas. I hear a child s merry laugh. It 68 UNFOLDING becomes poetry for me only as the sound Poetry suggests the idea of a child s merry laugh Involves as an element in life; that is to say, the Abstract concrete idea of the individual laugh Ideas must be lifted into the abstract idea of any child s laugh. The particular must be seen in the light of its universal, and restored again to its particularity, refined and purified, bringing back higher and enlarged relations. "Fine distinctions are prosaic," says Novalis. Poetry needs broader touches. Having thrown the light of the universal upon the particular, in other words, having carried up the concrete idea into the region of the ab stract, the poet descends again. He as cended only to fasten the object of thought to its proper background, as a picture is hung in the true light that it may be seen to the best advantage. He comes down again to behold the thought in its new and proper light. OCTOBER 5. I am reading "Songs Before Swinburne Sunrise." What a day it is for me! The book has lain a year on my shelf, not even the leaves cut. I did not dream that this poet would so awaken my soul. I am one with him in his love of freedom, intellectual freedom from binding cords of creed and dogma freedom and love for all. I am one with him in his 69 UNFOLDING Swinburne fearless truth-speaking; in his condemna tion of the power of kings and nobles over the people; of the unjust claims of mere caste; of priestcraft and of time- and-place-serving. Swinburne is for me a poet because he voices what is in my own heart, giving wings of light to my dumb thought that lies in darkness, unable to rise, and with the swiftness of the morning fly out through the heavens. He sings of the mind s darkness and of the slavery of man in the land of kings. His words ring with the sadness of a terrible truth. "Here with a hope hardly to wear, Naked nations and bare Swim, sink, strike out for the dawn." His thought is permeated with the thought of the Bible I mean its stories and poetical allegories. Scattered throughout his poems occur ideas that strike the thought-chord of the dawn "By the first white light that stirs and strives and hovers As the bird above the brood her bosom covers " Ever sustaining the key-note of Songs Be fore Sunrise sounding musically through the mind. He uses simple words and 70 UNFOLDING every sentence contains a thought- jewel: Swinburne "The rhythmic anguish of growth and the motion of mutable things." "Was it love brake forth flower-fash ion, a bird with gold on his wings?" The philosophy of his thoughts belongs to modern Post-Kantian Idealism. "Space is thoughts, and the wonders thereof, and the secrets of space; Is thought not more than the thunders and lightnings? Shall thought give place?" "Time, father of life, and more great than the life it begat and began, Earth s keeper and heaven s and their fate, lives, thinks and hath substance in man." "By the spirit are things overcome; they are stark and the spirit hath breath." The two distinctively modern poets, Swinburne and Walt Whitman, whether consciously or unconsciously, sing in the thought of Ideal Philosophy. Both recog nize the organic unity of thought with its object. Walt Whitman s theme is love. Swinburne s is freedom. OCTOBER 6. Surely this is the beginning, at least, of resignation. The Soul is visited by moments of a full conscious- 71 UNFOLDING The Joy ness of the delicious pain of sorrow, of of Trust purgation by the purifying waters of sor row; the uplifted, the uprisen joy of arms emptied by grief of that which was individual and partial, to be filled by that which is eternal; the joy of trust, of knowing that it is well, that it is the ful fillment of the law. "0 Peter, OCTOBER 21. The Soul knows not whence Go Ring it comes that she is so happy today. She Dem Bells- could shout in the words of the old negro hymn: "O Peter, go ring dem bells. I ve heard from heaven today!" The Diver OCTOBER 22. There is an ever-increasing of the Soul desire, nay, a hunger and thirst of the Soul, to teach, to comfort the poor and ignorant, to give them light on their dark way; to show them that life fulness of life lies within and not without in the hands of some arbitrary Dens ex machind who may bless or curse them as he pleases. That joy and power and divinity lie within their own souls and there only may God be found; and if God, then all the power, all the riches, all the sweet ness in the world. The diver of the Soul shall plunge into the deepest waters of the spirit to seek for the pearl of great price. He will then cease not until he share his treasure with his fellows. 72 UNFOLDING OCTOBER 23. The eastern sky this even- Clouds ing is a living picture of the moods of and Moods the mind. Great white clouds are com ing up from the horizon with long pro jections stretching to the zenith symbols of noble aspiration followed by masses of dark, storm clouds the frowns and despondency of the Soul. OCTOBER 29. Is it not more unreasonable Eternal to say that man was produced from non- Thought living matter, than to say that force, energy, is the manifestation of Eternal Thought, infinite Spirit? It may be urged that non-living matter the inorganic is a fact of experience which no one can doubt; whereas Eternal Thought is merely assumed to exist. But we see order and intelligence operating all the processes of the universe; hence reflection points as definitely and positively to the existence of Eternal Thought, as do our senses con strain us to believe in the existence of the inorganic. To speak more accurately, there is no non-living matter, for the in organic itself is alive, itself manifests the presence of order and intelligence, and the clearness of the dividing line grows less and less, as the mind progresses on its onward march of knowledge. OCTOBER 30. Poetry hath wings to fly whithersoever she pleases. Poetry is 73 UNFOLDING The Sciences free. The particular sciences are the the Slaves slaves of thought. They fetch and carry of Thought for tne mind. Poetry is thought at its mastery the Queen, the Empress she sits upon the throne of the intellect and the heart. Tennyson s OCTOBER 31. O Beautiful Soul, sent to Death earth to sing of heavenly harmonies! O beautiful passing away Light and Nature to the end! O Sweetness, O Peace, O Joy, passing into Eternity! O tender consideration toward all! O his thanks to his nurses! O beautiful form in death! O marks of time and contention softly passing away! O the noble face, still and fresh and calm! O the moon, a desolate world, shedding light upon all! O like the heart of the Renunciant whence flows purest blessedness! O the darkness and the silence and no light save the moonlight! O the gentle passing away! O the season of the katydid s last song! O the season of the death-song of the cricket! O the season of the goodbye-song of the lonely grasshopper! 74 UNFOLDING O the dying colors of Autumn on field and mountain! O to know that Tennyson is dead! O the resurrection song of the redbird! O the resurrection song of the human Soul! NOVEMBER 11. These pale, golden days, Indian the last of autumn, the Indian Summer of Summer the year! See the soft, white clouds lying still in the blue above, like ships at anchor, or moving onward, slowly and majestic, like ships far out at sea. O that the restless heart might be still and at peace as Nature is at peace a ship at anchor, a cloud poised and at rest on the bosom of heaven! NOVEMBER 26. The sun poured down his The Lone gold upon the world, and the little boy Farmhouse came in the carriage with the old horse, to drive her out to the fields and the valleys, and the lone farmhouse. The good mother had spread a full Thanksgiving table in the decent kitchen \vith floor scrubbed white and open hearth where crackled the fire-logs. The low, small-paned windows gay with pot ted plants and the mountains standing outside like Eternity looking down upon the little passing hour. The lone farmhouse and the old cherry tree and afterward the friends "good- 75 UNFOLDING bye." The drive home with the simple child seated beside, muffled in old coat, and hat only half concealing the little white face with its sweet and thoughtful look upon it. the memory of love, and all the hun ger of the heart, and the sky, and the whiteness, and the space, and the two uplifted visions of the mountains, far away, melting into blue ether, like the Spirit of Poetry hovering on the one side, and the Spirit of Peace, on the other side, of the lone farmhouse plain and quiet upon its hill! The Why NOVEMBER 27. The Poet yields up her self to the great contemplation the holding in her thought the vast concep tion of the universe. She sees worlds upon worlds wheeling onward upon their Eternal courses through infinite space. With the Psalmist she exclaims: *^\ 7 hen 1 consider thy heavens . . . what is man that thou beholdest him, or the son of man that thou shouldst consider him?" She beholds the constitution and nature of suns and worlds as vague con ceptions, some peopled with many kinds of beings, animals, plants. She beholds the human race, she sees her own destiny in the light of eternity. She hears the unfathomable yearning of the Why. 76 UNFOLDING NOVEMBER 28. Modern progress is not in- Modern compatible with sentiment nor sentiment Progress and with progress; on the contrary, the Sentiment noblest sentiment is now more possible than ever before, because there are wider fields of activity on altruistic lines. Sentiment does not consist of crude schoolgirl musings. Real sentiment is based on living facts; its source lies in a wholesome, natural impulse of the human heart. It is fine feeling expressed in ideas and ready to pass over into moral activity if there be need. It is the opposite of sentimentality, which never is ready to pass over into moral activity. Real sentiment is ever accompanied by a willingness to make a sacrifice in behalf of its object. With sentimentality, on the contrary, there is present a shrinking from obligation; it merely poses as senti ment, making much of unrealities. With modern progress new and wider fields for thought and feeling are opening for humanity. True poetic sentiment all real sentiment has poetry in it must be plastic and open to further develop ment. As knowledge increases, modern progress calls for a new poetry of life a new, a purer, a larger sentiment; a poetry which will include not man only, as the sole monarch of the world, but woman also as his co-equal in all future 77 UNFOLDING Modern development; and not only the man and Progress and the woman blessed by the smiles of for- Sentiment tune, but the poor and ignorant must be received now on equal terms. "By God! I will accept nothing which all can not have their counterpart of on the same terms," says Walt Whitman. The doctrine of evolution in science, and the principle of development in philoso phy, which embrace the grandest ideas of modern thought, teach us to include within the sphere of our meditative love even our dumb servants, the animals; nay, plant life itself, with its marvelous beauty; aye, and the very stocks and stones of earth call for love and recog nition; that man may no longer suppose he inhabits a world of which he is sole master, wherein to disport himself in good humor or cruelt3 r , as the passing mood may so please him to do; but that he shall become a reverent dweller in the divine Temple of Life, wherein all is sacred and shall be so regarded. As science and philosophy lead the van of progress, sentiment and poetry shall progressively remould their forms, and take their objects of contemplation and of rhapsody from out the great store houses of assured and rational truth. Swinburne and Whitman, one the singer of human freedom, the other, the singer 78 UNFOLDING of human comrade-love, would have been impossible in the time of Homer, who, according to the childish mode of con ception in his day and generation, re garded the mind as only a fainter copy, a reflection of the body, and supposed that a man s real self was destroyed with the body, Homer thus makes the souls of his heroes descend into the underworld while they themselves are a prey for dogs and birds. The spirit of Romance, I conceit, need not expire or lose its vitality under the stress of modern progress, if only it be plastic, if only it be tempered to the on ward march. The old spirit of Romance which had its expression at any cost, is now called on to recast its forms, to recognize the necessity of the moral dis cipline of bringing the individual experi ence into its right relation as an element in the organic unity of society and the world of thought. And so shall the spirit of Sentiment become purified and ex alted. DECEMBER 13. The sunrise is the festival Sunrise of the Sky prepared by Nature for the god s triumphal entrance on the day. There is an overhanging arch from east to west. It is of pale blue. In the east there gathers a host of glittering armorial 79 UNFOLDING Sunrise knights. A few of the scattered cohorts of the day are swiftly coming on the wings of the winds. Others approach with slow and measured pace. A red- bird sings the morning hymn. The sol emn mountain, "clothed in purple and fine linen," stands with uncovered head reverentially. The Poet, too, stands and adores, for now the god appears, "as a giant to run his course/* his head crowned with the glory of the world. 80 In Harmony My uprisen thought of good health and harmony hovers over the physical part, leading the stricken body as the Shekinah irradiated the Ark of the Covenant before the Israelites. IN HARMONY JANUARY 2, 1893. There is, of late, a The World strong tendency toward rest from all out- of the ward activity and a call to turn inward; stl11 a need to cease from study and to listen quietly to the voice within the Soul; need for a great deal of sleep, for a great many hours in which to lie still, realizing con tact with silent Nature. O the time of weakness, of convalescence 1 O the world of privation and to be thrown in upon one s self; of looking to the inward power alone to sustain and cheer! The being alone in the World of the Still Things of distant sounds, of birds notes, of winds soughing in pine trees, of mute sunshine, and silent shad ows, the Soul the only human alive. The radiant figure of Hope, so long the companion of the Soul upon the dark road over which she has come, has de parted. The Soul is alone. It is the season of waiting, of trusting, of faith. 83 IN HARMONY The Common JANUARY 3. There is need, now and then, Nature for a time of rest in which to drink deeply of the common Nature. All exist ence is simply the being of things. Take away any particular thing by itself, examine it, analyze it, reduce it to its elements, reduce them again until you can go no farther. You will find there is only a simple being and a combination for a certain purpose of uses; you will see that the only persistent, the only en during is the common Nature. When I rest I drink deeply of the common Nature. I fall into the poetic mood. I listen to distant sounds. I am touched by their spiritual significance. I see how all things vibrate with the common Nature. The tiny cowbell s tone makes a note in the great Symphony, as the caw of the distant crow and the far-off shouts of the boys. The Pity of It JANUARY 4. It seems a pity, oh, the pity of it! that no sooner do people arrive at middle age the time when they have only just learned how to live, when they have acquired some knowledge, some wisdom, when heart and mind are ripe, than they lie down and die; many of them instead of entering as they might upon the richest period of life; the sea son when the soil of mind and heart is 84 IN HARMONY ready to produce crops of usefulness and happiness impossible before. Kant wrote his three great critiques after fifty years of age. See Mr. Gladstone, premier of England at eighty-four, and Tennyson writing poems up to the time of his death at over eighty. It would appear that these men were naturally so filled with the divine life, although they, too, held the divine spark instinctively, that the inherited and associated instinct to begin to fail at middle age, was post poned many years beyond the ordinary term. JANUARY 5. Is it not possible for self- Acquired conscious power to replace the in- Youthfulness stinctive? Heart and lungs expand, di gestion and assimilation take place moved on by an automatic activity of the nervous centers. Now let these vital functions become the servants of the self-conscious cerebral cortex. From birth to "midway upon the journey of our life" the fulness of vigor is in stinctive. Why may not power be ac quired to live youthfully after fifty years, by self-conscious living self-conscious thought used for the purpose of acquir ing continued youthfulness of frame, continued good health and activity far beyond the period now set and generally 85 IN HARMONY recognized as the inevitable term of active life. It is already stated as a fact in science that living organisms are formed slowly by conscious effort. Each creature and thing forms itself according to its need and environment by virtue of its own inherent power, which is, in fact, a part of the power and purposes of the eternal universe. In his essay on Fate, Emerson has this to say: "The Soul contains the event that shall befall it; for the event is only the actualization of its thoughts, and what we pray to ourselves is always granted. The event is the print of your form. . . History is the action and re action of these two nature and thought. . . . Every solid in the universe is ready to become fluid on the approach of mind, and the power to flux it is the measure of the mind." The Day of JANUARY 6. In youth the Soul was dumb. Knowledge She was without speech and without knowledge. She was oppressed and crushed into silence by the helplessness of ignorance. True, an irresistible intui tion led her to oppose herself inwardly to the teachings of her elders; yet she knew nothing. She had no arguments with which to assert and hold a new posi- 86 IN HARMONY tion. She knew nothing, yet she believed The Day of that human slavery was wrong; that re- Knowledge spect for class distinctions in society and the privileged few was a crime against humanity and that theological dogmas were mere superstitions. The young Soul was as one imprisoned in a dungeon where she dreamed of free dom freedom from the old forms of thought and custom. The principles taught her under those old forms were those of truthfulness, justice and clean ness. For this she shall always rejoice and feel thankful. Now is arriving the day of knowledge, of some speech and freedom when the Soul may help spread the Gospel of Truth. The early, helpless, dumb life, contrasted with ripened maturity, is as the time when the human race was as yet struggling in its dumb, animal existence, compared with the present period of a great art and literature. A little space yet of patience and may not the Soul step forth, full-fledged and gloriously en dowed with a new life, a higher and a grander youth the self-conscious youth? JANUARY 7. When vice-like pain clinches the body and there is no interval of rest, when eyes are painful and refuse to serve; when all heart seems to have died 87 IN HARMONY The out of everything then life is simply Red-Bird s a n endurance; as it is with the wretched Song criminal in his cell, when the hopeless ness of captivity overcomes him. Yet the air is mild that comes in through the open window and the heart hears the red-bird s song outside. A Vision of JANUARY 8. The thought of a grand Res- the Sun ignation enters the Soul. There are moments when she kisses the rod that smites. In her darkest hour, when she was prostrate in the dungeon, alone and in pain, rejected and despised, like Benvenuto Cellini in his dungeon she prayed for a vision of the sun. Like him, the Soul, too, was shown that vision, and shall faith fail now? the vision of the sunrise of the day of self-conscious, moral control over passion, the day of virtue, the day of knowing, the day of a grand faith, the day of a divine joy! My Method JANUARY 9. The method I use in study- of Study ing any subject or branch of knowledge which was naturally evolved and not consciously adopted is as follows: First there is the interest to supply the motor power. I begin to gather facts as I may have opportunity. As one puts down stakes when laying off a new piece of ground, so do I place in my mind my first gathered facts relating to the sub- 88 IN HARMONY ject in hand. They may be scattered, My Method irregular and even seemingly opposed to of Study each other, yet they serve as a beginning, and I allow none to slip past me. I hold the facts tentatively, not attempting any judgment as yet. I continue reading on the subject, and do not become impatient if, at first, I fail fully to comprehend all that I read, being aware that a good deal of the subject will escape me because of my unfamiliarity with it. I am not yet prepared to grasp the full meaning of all, so take hold of only so much as I can hold to. Then I begin filling in between the stakes first laid down, frequently re arranging, as I find myself able to place any facts in better order and properer relations to each other. This con tinues until something like a general concept is formed. I am then able to move forward more rapidly and under- standingly; learning all the time to get and keep my bearings more and more clearly. Finally, when I have attained a tolerably good grasp and comprehensive view of the subject, I feel prepared to scrutinize every statement made, allow ing nothing to pass by without a clear understanding of it, often going back over the ground, examining and compar ing in the light of enlarged acquisitions. I often transpose and reconstruct a 89 IN HARMONY sentence for the purpose of trying to find the meaning of it more perfectly. I hold tentatively the opinion and judg ments of any one author, passing on to another who may offer an opposing opin ion, or present a different point of view. After having thus examined many differ ent views on the same subject I then pro ceed to conciliate one with the other, perhaps casting out certain opinions alto gether and when such introduction may be allowable introducing in their stead views of my own to make out a satis factory solution of any problem, or to complete a systematic view of the sub ject; often, as in philosophy, when it is difficult to hold the attention closely, I shut my eyes and repeat sentence after sentence, until I receive the meaning clearly in my mind. To the JANUARY 12. O Plum Tree! Thou didst Plum Tree k ear ^g f a j res t fruit and sweet to the taste in the summer season. Thou dost now stand, patient and trustful, through the darkness and the cold of the winter season. O teach me thy patience and thy trust! O the patience and the silent trust of all vegetation! JANUARY 13. All sounds which are dis tant enough to become poetical are dear 90 IN HARMONY to the poet. He loves the sound of the Sounds woodman s axe; the humming bee on the to the Poet wing; the shouts of school children; the song of the wagoner as he passes by, drawn by his patient beasts; the chat tering of the sparrows; the reedy, flute- tones of little cedar birds; the buzz of passing insect; even the prosaic crow of the cock-fowl; the lowered speech-tunes of the farmer to his horses as they turn the corner on the street, "Woa-haw;" the light-hearted whistle of the young man as he passes by. FEBRUARY 13. I am very weary and must The Solemn rest again from my studies. I will lie Procession of down and watch the solemn procession the Clouds of the clouds, to receive refreshment from contemplation of Nature, to be filled again with that divine wine and essence of life which I have used up, until now I am empty and need to go to the wells to draw and drink my fill. FEBRUARY 19. One happy moment came One Happy to the Soul this morning. The birds were Moment singing as though it were spring. A red- bird sat in the boughs of a near locust tree, whistling some sweet, sad, happy note. The Soul rejoiced in his tune and in the mild, tissuey sunlight, and the warm air, and the rushing voice of the snow-swollen stream. 91 IN HARMONY As the Thread MARCH 3. I see it stated by the high caste Through a Brahmin, Swami Vivekananda, that, "The String Lord has declared to the Hindu, in his of Pearls incarnation of Krishna, I am in every religion as the thread through a string of pearls. " I was surprised because of the similarity of my own thought already ex pressed in this journal wiiere I said, "In the impelling struggle for truth and right in the world divine love is concealed like a thread upon which are strung, like beads, the thoughts of men. Few are crystal-pure enough to irradiate the light of the divine thread within. If they be, then that is truth, but most are dull and black and they be the false beliefs of men." The Mystic MARCH 5. Spring that dreamy, sug- Power gestive season has come. I hear her low, of Spring murmuring voice, of a "thousand blended notes," coming out of the depths of earth and sky. I feel her mystic power. Only One of MARCH 9. The question is now ferment- the Gleaners ing and struggling for a final answer What shall be the life work of the Soul, in the great human hive? She has never had any work; work that earns money, or is regular and compulsory. Aspiration has assumed many forms, poetry and music are the chief. It is clear now that she possesses not one talent. She is only 92 IN HARMONY a dreamer. On that foundation or with out any foundation at all, except that which was given by Nature herself, she shall perforce live and act. "The leopard can not change his spots, nor the Ethi opian his skin." Knowledge, culture these are the outlines to follow, and to jot dow r n, as she may be able to catch some fleeting forms and colors in her dreams, so that some good word Oh, may the word be good! may be left for others when the Soul has gone hence, to be no more seen; also, to do all the good she can along the pathway as she goes, even to the least act of justice and mercy. She is not appointed by Nature to plough, sow or reap in the great har vest fields of the world, where the strong laborers are at work, but is appointed, in the divine Order, as only one of the gleaners who may gather the grain that has been dropped and fallen by the way side. MARCH 21. A cloudy morning so is the imprisonment inner w r orld of the Soul. She has been imprisoned for years. Some are im prisoned for life. MARCH 24. The clouds are abroad a Philosophy frowning world to face. Yesterday I finished the first volume of Caird s Crit ical Philosophy of Kant. I inscribed 93 IN HARMONY upon the last leaf of the book these words: "Philosophy is the Revelation of God in the intellect." The Cry APRIL 11. The fires of purgatory are of Dives purging body and soul burning the dross to leave the pure gold. Yesterday snow fell all day. In anguish the Soul cried out, like another Dives in hell, that the cold snowflakes might fall upon her inward fires. Philosophy Is APRIL 12. The Soul yearns for that which Homesickness abides. She is heartsick of the infideli ties of life. This longing lies at the root of her love for philosophy. It is the one need of the Soul to find the permanent. Novalis says that philosophy is home sickness. In a MAY 7. Last night during the storm the Thunderstorm Soul was alone in the cottage. She shrank in terror from the lightning and thunder. She recollected an account she had read of the awful tidal wave that destroyed Lost Island, on the coast of Mississippi, and all its inhabitants, save one negress and a little child. She remembered, too, what Heine said, how philosophy had made him feel like a god, and afterwards how he felt him self shrivel to the insignificant dimen sions of a helpless human being where he lay upon his "mattress grave." 94 IN HARMONY The Soul, too, believes that thought is god-force. She, too, feels that there lives within her an invincible power; yet, as she lay in her bed, unable to walk, or even to sit up, cowering in terror from the cannonading of the skies, her hands covering her eyes, her fingers closing the avenues to the sensitive organs of hear ing that the delicacy of these conductors to the heart be not too heavily jarred, she almost laughed aloud as she said to her self: "Another god, as poor Heine thought himself, and another shrinkage to pitiful human estate. A god indeed! Skulking in terror from the sound of his own thunder!" MAY 12. The Divine Doors are open T ^ such beneficent, joyous Nature! The Divine Doors Soul s Doors are open. She longs to em brace her Friend with boundless love and confidence. Is Nature at times so rav- ishingly beautiful, so divinely tender, because she would put aside all the wretchedness, all the wrong-doing of her children and take them to her bosom without conditions? Is such a day as today one of those rapturous moments when the universe throbs with infinite love toward every creature? In such moments, Nature would clasp her erring children to her bosom, forgiving 95 IN HARMONY all their crimes against her. Such a day is her coronation day, to be celebrated by opening every prison, by breaking every chain, by giving to all her uni versal love and mercy. Are we in the presence of God and do not know it? Under MAY 13. The cup of poetry is offered the Sky me for drink. I thankfully partake of this fine wine of life. The dove s tender voice will not allow me to study philosophy. The Poet swims in the seas of music, beauty and poetry. The sun shines gently upon her, send ing his rays through fluttering, dancing leaves spring leaves, fresh and young. The sky is of a pale, tender blue. The birds are hopping about and with their songs the air is in continuous musical vibration. In the midst of this sparkling gaiety the dark pine trees stand like solemn thoughts. And there is the little rick of new-mown hay beneath the pines, and the shadows playing on it. All Nature is companionable the rays of the sun together, the little leaves together, the birds, the playing shadows, and the dove breathing out her love-note to her mate. But the Soul is alone. 96 IN HARMONY And now the little clouds appear, where before there was nothing, only the blue sky. They come into life like spirits emerging from the Infinite. From out the Unknown will someone come to the Soul? MAY 14. The Soul now passes into the Entering self-conscious life the world of self- Upon the knowledge, of disciplined will, of vie- Mastery tory. Into the youth of the self-conscious f Ll f e life, out from the world of instinct, pas sion and ignorance the world of decay, defeat and death. The Soul shall now stand alone, self- poised. She will trust and wait. She stands in the presence of God and beholds the revelation of Life. She uses divine powers and knows she uses them. She will remain silent and abide her time, knowing that all shall be fulfilled in due order. The days of her apprenticeship are over. She enters upon the mastery of life. MAY 20. At times the Soul, for whom all things were made; for whom exist new and unknown worlds only that she may conquer them, is god-like, possessing all things. Again, and the Soul appears but as a "for tuitous aggregation of sensations" sus pended in infinite space by unseen and 97 IN HARMONY unknown forces. The threads may break at any moment, precipitating the Soul into the Abysm of Nothingness. She is the mere creature and toy of the uni verse, in which, in fact, she holds no per manent place. She is but an apparition, a bubble of froth, seen for one moment on the bosom of the Deep, the next, gone forever; a speck of vapor on the Sky of Vastness to dissipate as soon as seen. Does this intense and never-silent yearn ing for permanence the voice of Philos ophy in the Soul bear within it no seed of promise of the knowledge of what things really are? Philosophy gives me an affirmative answer. The Soul is cre ative. The Soul is divine. The Ideas of Reason reach, like fair marble columns, up from man to God! Co-operation MAY 21. Go-operation is the law of life. "All things work together for good to them who love God." These are they who love the law of the universe; who fall into line with Nature; who become obedient to the great Mother s teachings. Thus sang the Rishis of the Veda : "Thou art our Father. Thou art our Mother. Thou art our loved Friend. "Thou art He who bearest the burdens of the universe. Help us to bear the bur den of this little life!" 98 IN HARMONY It is co-operation among the molecules that magnetizes the iron each molecule moving onward in the same direction. The Soul shall become adaptable. She will co-operate with the universe in which she finds herself. Powell, in that noble book, "Our Hered ity from God," declares that the human ity of the future the ideal man and woman will be they who have learned to adapt themselves to any environment, by overcoming its antagonisms; they who in wisdom shall find that all things subserve the good and wise. The Soul will then search out the will of her great Mother, who has her now as clay, and is moulding and shaping her. All things else vanish before the neces sity of this supreme work of developing the powers of the Soul. The Soul shall be like unto an instru ment, well strung and attuned for the great symphony of Immortality. O to give out a pure tone when Thy hand shall sweep the strings! MAY 22. Life is a continuous Revelation. Heaven John in Patmos held no monopoly. The Here and Now Soul, as did he, bathes and swims in the Eternal Thought. She shall have indi viduality in proportion as she uses and develops the power of infinite Nature 99 IN HARMONY which flows through her. There is no need to wait for another life to enter into heaven; she will enter into heaven here and now, by realizing the divine in herself. Jesus saw this truth when he said : "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." Despair the MAY 27. The hardest to bear is not the Tempter in hour of bitterest agony, when every pulse the Desert beats with fury; when the entire con sciousness is awake with extraordinary sensitiveness; when every fibre is strained to the utmost; when all the forces of life are in a raging tempest around you, and soul and body seem on the eve of break ing, as bones and sinews break on the wheel of torture: but it is when, long after the storm is over, and the fair image of Hope fades before your straining eyes, and the first enthusiasm of friends and neighbors sweet charity for you has faded away also, and you lie alone with only the monotonous, dull, voiceless pain to bear. Then it is that Despair comes to tempt you in the desert. Ladye J UNE 9. It is the day of the inner con- Spiritual fl i ct in the moral life a silent battle, but a struggle to the death. Thy choice is made, O Soul! Thou shalt follow the leadings of thy deepest nature. Thy chosen path lies through a lonely 100 IN HARMON.Y/A; land the development of the highest irrespective of self-interest or sensuous pleasure. The people of thy class find thee not companionable. They "pass thee by on the other side." The wounds they give they bind not up again with oil and the balm of Gilead. It may not be other wise. Thou shalt not ask that others give to thee. Thou shalt give to others. In the old Anglo-Saxon tongue "Ladye" means Loaf-giver one who of her abun dance gives away to those who lack. See to it that thou be Ladye Spiritual, and of thy store give freely to the poor. JUNE 10. A moment in the Eternal Now. A Moment Life as we know it is but a moment in i n the the "Eternal Now." The hour of the Eternal Now Soul s suffering is but a lesser moment in that Moment. Her season of pain and restraint is long and tedious only in the seeming. JUNE 11. Truth is not cheap. There is Truth Is need that the Soul learn the facts of life Not Cheap in due order. With the untutored eye all is seen at a glance. With the scholar it is not so. With him there is perforce innumerable watchings. Steady, long and frequent must be the penetrating glance of the scholar the watching, the seeing, the waiting, the thinking, the loving of a lifetime. Shall not the Soul 101 IN HARMONY desire to attain scholarship in the life spiritual? Metapfiysic JUNE 12. Metaphysic is the physiology of intellect, the chemistry of mind. Woman JUNE 13. I was talking on the subject Suffrage of woman suffrage to a man who is op posed to it. The point he made was that to give woman the ballot would be to in troduce into politics an "irresponsible element." An irresponsible element! I was shocked to hear pronounced such an estimate of woman by man. If this is a fair repre sentative view held by the male sex, no wonder that woman is politically classed with infants, idiots and madmen! In the light of such a verdict how do the Sap- phos, the Hypatias, the Joan of Arcs, the Queen Elizabeths, the George Eliots ap pear? Or indeed that countless host of intelligent, educated, conscientious women who hold the destinies of the race in their keeping? Is such a light a true light? Is such a verdict a just ver dict from the man-world to his sister woman-world? Viewing w r oman merely in respect of her relations to man and as nothing outside of those relations, is such a verdict just? Woman as man s mother, wife, sister, friend shall she be regarded as an irre- 102 IN HARMONY sponsible being? To hold her as respon sible in these relations, and as irrespon sible (that is, without the sense of moral responsibility) in other relations, would be irrational. Think of any irrespon sible mother, an irresponsible wife! Does a man never consult his mother or his wife on matters of serious import? Does he, then, entrust the education and form ing of the moral character of his sons to an irresponsible being? Does a man hold his wife irresponsible in the matter of the sex relation? Have God and Nature placed the stamp of irresponsibility upon woman by making her the mother of the race? What is the testimony of history? Of science? Has she not been the leader of armies, the political ruler, the poet, the saint, the priestess? And now biology comes forward to crown her with prior ity in the grand march of evolution. JUNE 23. The question to be settled is The Brute Law to reconcile the brute law of "Might is Versus the right," with the higher law of renuncia- Higher Law tion; to ascertain how far the first may be justified as a working basis for con duct, and at what point we ought to de part from it and pass over to the higher law. The brute law rules in the vegetable and animal worlds, as also in almost the 103 IN HARMONY whole of the human world. Is it a stage in development, and a necessary stage, and as such to be tolerated? Or should the higher law be taught at once to all under all circumstances? Is the higher law workable among the poor and ignorant, the money-makers, and wealth-producers? If not, ought the higher law to be taught until these vari ous classes shall become eliminated from society? Might not the wealth needed for civilization be produced by co operative methods which would not con flict with the higher law? Creative Love JUNE 24. I remember hearing a certain Versus War lecture on philosophy. The lecturer and Plunder stated that the universe owes its exist ence to spontaneous activity of creative Love. If this be so, shall we who have arrived at the self-conscious life the nearest to god-life we know of shall we continue to tear and rend each other, as in wars between peoples, and to devour our con scious fellow-beings as the flesh-eaters do? The microbe, the lowest in the scale of existence, devours his fellow-creatures the microbe and the tiger and the hyena, who have not arrived at the stage of a likeness to the Divine at which man is arriving in the self-conscious life. 104 IN HARMONY The few, the "Saving remnant," desire to Creative Love "do justly and to love mercy" and to ex- Versus War tend this law to their fellow-man, as also and Plunder to their other fellow-creatures the ani mals, and the birds, and the fishes, and all sentient creatures; not taking the sweetness out of that life by selfish exac tion or selfish indifference, nor by taking that life itself the outcome of spontane ous divine joy which life they cannot give and to which we see that we hold no title, when we enter into the self- conscious life the life that knows and knows that it knows; the life which re flects upon its own divinity. It is said of Jesus that to all who received him he gave the power to become the Sons of God. This means that Jesus saw that they who receive the truths which he taught the truths of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God do become, in spirit, the Sons of God. Jesus saw that man is divine. He de clared that the kingdom of heaven is in the soul itself. If, then, man is divine and possesses heaven within him why not acknowledge this divine nature and act upon it? The highest thought must reach out in every direction by virtue of its power, as light radiates from the sun filling all space. The moral insight of philosophy 105 IN HARMONY is the deepest secret of life; it consists of rational, disciplined sympathy. It is the key to the divine outreach of Jesus thought and activity of Buddha s, of Socrates. The Life JUNE 29. The life of the Soul is like the of the Soul surface of the globe. There are broad Like the Globe continents with here and there great m Variety cities of the mind and heart There are serene lakes, happy valleys, dark forests filled with savage beasts and birds of prey, gloomy volcanos burning and burst ing with woe. There are mighty rivers and laughing streams, lofty mountains, austere and remote, touching heaven. The Soul passes now over the great Sa hara Desert. There is no friend, no com panion, no familiar; arid sands only. On the edge of the far horizon she can scarcely discern a few dark specks. They are the palm trees which she has been forced to leave behind. Beautiful and erect they stand, but lost to her. Memory s mocking mirage alone is here reflecting happy days of other lands. The Crushed JULY 3. The Lonely Human Soul has the Herb s eye for celestial sight, the ear for celes- Fragrance tial music; else how could she bear the Hour of pain and lonely sorrow? Often when helpless misery threatens to over whelm her, all the pain, the loneliness 106 IN HARMONY and the sorrow are gently withdrawn, and in their place appear the smiling joys of heaven, in tint and form of cloud, in song of bird, in the sweet silences of trees. As the crushed herb gives up its inmost fragrance, so the heart when most deeply bruised awakens to the finest thought. In her most unhappy moments the Soul then sees with clearest vision the incom parable beauty of Nature, that extreme, tender beauty and deep peace which adorns each bud and flower, leaf and stalk, branch and trunk, bird and cloud, form and color, scent and tone. "Tis whispered balm, Tis sunshine spoken." As though the very anguish of the spirit moved to sweet charity the bosom of the great Mother. JULY 5. There is a bird with a poem in his heart that comes at rare intervals to visit me. He has never permitted me to see him, only to listen to his violincello tones which breathe out enthusiasm, pas sion and despair. It is the spirit of Mignon. JULY 6. I am in the midst of a throng of lovely beings flowers plucked and brought to my bedside, honeysuckles, sweet peas, larkspur, marigolds, black- 107 The Bird with a Poet s Heart IN HARMONY The Flowers eyed Susans, field-daisies. The scent of Death-Song the flower betrays the nature of the Soul, as Swedenborg declared the spirit of man exhales its sweet or foul odor as thought is pure or indecent. When the living smell departs, the soul of the flower has fled to the paradise of its mortality. The Inner JULY 7. The way the Soul has ever come Voice to say anything that may be worth read ing is this: She lies still and drifts naturally into the contemplative mood, when suddenly and without effort the inner Voice begins to speak. The JULY 8. I am arriving at that point Empyrean when material nature is not sufficient. of Ideas I move in the world of thought far more than in the world of observation. When ideas cease to flow, then life seems dull and worthless. There is need to spread the wings of the Soul for yet a higher mount into the Empyrean of Ideas. Visible and audible nature becomes a mere perch from which to start on the winged flight upward and out and be yond. I wish my thought to feed others as great writers thoughts feed me. JULY 9. When the Soul awakens in the morning, life appears unreal and dream like. It is a daily rite that necessity im poses upon her of re-identifying herself for the new day; a recalling of what she 108 IN HARMONY was yesterday, a restating of personal relations to people and things. Only as the day advances does the Soul stand on firmer ground, where experience and things become real. Especially does a state of suffering and unhappiness ap pear strange and dreamlike. When the Soul is happy and at peace, then life be comes a reality. Most of the life of the Soul, then, has appeared as a dream from which she has awakened occasionally to the happy reality. Dreams during sleep often appear more real than her waking life. JULY 10. I have seen it stated that Madame de Stael said of herself that none of her faculties had ever been fully developed save only the faculty of suf fering. JULY 11. Do you know what it is to realize the poetry of life to know how the vision often lifts the present burden of pain? You see yourself as you may see the image of a person in a vision, in a magic mirror, a character in a book, a figure in a great painting. You see that which is to come the future as you see that which has been the past. Poetry lifts you up out of the present prosaic ennui. Your step quickens. Your eye brightens. Your spirit is 109 When Life Appears Unreal Madame de Stael TJie Poetry of Life IN HARMONY buoyed up. What is it? Wherefore? You see the ships, far out on the horizon, coming full sail, with joy, for you! You are no longer bounded by the com monplace facts about you. You have leapt over them. You have entered the world of the illimitable. The actual is limited, says Victor Hugo, the possible is immense. Poetry carries you up into the world of the possible. Poetry JULY 12. Poetry makes rich. The poet Makes Eich owns the wealth of all the world. He is life s millionaire. The poet sees the young man, lately wedded, going to his day s work in the journeyman s dress, his implements across his shoulders, singing, as he walks with swinging step. All the sweet happiness lying hidden in his heart belongs to the poet also, and the poet is happy with his happiness, and with him sings the song of joy. The Cost JULY 14. The world is of divine sub- of the stance. The agony and the pain are Eight Road proof that it is tremendously worth while to be in harmony with Eternal Nature. Go against Nature and anguish and tears proclaim from the house-tops that the right road is lost and shall be found only at every cost. Groans and tears purify the world, turning the Soul back into the right road. Quoth Saint 110 IN HARMONY Anthony: "The soul that is built up in virtue must be built up in tears." "Steep and craggy is the path of the gods," said Porphyry. JULY 15. The seed in the Soul needs The Beautiful the right soil as the grain-seed in the Tree of Poetry earth before the beautiful tree of poetry may spring forth to spread its sheltering branches, to give its pleasant shade, to flower, to bear its fruit of beauty and inner joy. If the soil be not ripe, vain are the hopes and wishes to see the tree spring forth in mind of friend, brother, sister, child. I see people with faces sad and weary. No joy, no inner well-springs of sweet waters. Maras only; at best with the pallid hopes of the churches playing upon their bloodless faces of a reward hereafter for belief in this world in cer tain doctrines, and not because of moral living and purity of thought. I long to give those sad lives some sweetness now, of the life lived here beneath this pleasant Shade Tree, where food for the soul is never lacking, nor distilled juices of her fairest fruits to slake the spirit- thirst. I may nourish and water but can not plant. "Poets are born, not made." Nature, that just and bountiful Mother, puts the little seed in all. In few 111 IN HARMONY The Beautiful souls is found the rich soil in which the Tree of Poetry seed may grow the seed that lies deep beneath the accumulated rubbish of the opinions of ages, so that it can not reach the sunshine of truth in which to grow. It perishes unseen and unknown in dark ness below, and the starved soul feeds upon the husks of old, dead opinion, wan and wasted for lack of joy and beauty, little dreaming of the divine seed hidden within. In some rare souls the pile of rubbish does not accumulate, so clean, so pure, so childlike are they. They do not take on the conventions, the lifeless customs of beliefs. The seed springs forth. The tree grows apace. The Soul can say with Confucius: "With a few grains of rice, a cup of cold water, and my bended arm for a pillow, I still know joy." The people go hungry and thirsty along the road of life, sweating and sinking be neath the scorching rays of the sun and over the arid desert sands; not heeding the little seed within them, which could bring forth the beautiful Tree of Poetry to refresh their weary souls. They have closed their ears and hear not the voice of Nature calling to them: "Toil not neither spin the warp and woof of false beliefs. Open your eyes. Behold the divine presence of Life now. Postpone 112 IN HARMONY not that Beatific Vision to some uncer tain, ghostly day of Hereafter. Know ye not, O ye of little faith, that your Heavenly Father knoweth ye have need of these things?" The beautiful Tree of Poetry shelters from the arid sands and the scorching heat on the great, dusty road of life. You bear the tiny seed within you. Let it grow. JULY 24. In music the Soul catches hold Music of something from out the abysm of the Infinite. It is touched, only to be lost in the same instant. The Soul seeks in despair for that tone, for that ex quisite thrill of love, for that one flash of light which came and was not, which possessed her being yet which had no tangible existence. Music is the contact of the Soul with God. JULY 25. I had thought I knew some I Know Only philosophy. I find I know only my My Ignorance ignorance. Even this is a far step on the way and the first real gain towards proceeding further. Few know their ignorance. JULY 26. What a wonderful work that of building up a Self or world of beauti ful thoughts and ideas! The bird sings. Its tones convey to me ideas of spiritual beauty and purity. 113 IN HARMONY Inspiration Let the great reservoir of the Self be and ever kept open to the highest aspiration, Purposive even open to receive the impossible. But Action w hen an y particular work is to be under taken, then look well about. Know surely just what are your materials, that your present acquirements are sufficient for achievement. Then draw within your limits and work. Mediocrity JULY 27. The difference between medi- and Genius ocrity and genius is that the former lives and acts by instincts and conventions, while genius lives and acts by intellect and imagination. Sons of God JULY 28. To be a god one need not be a supreme god. A god is a being pos sessed of divine powers. Man is such a god. All his power is god-power. Does he not mount up into heaven when he puts the sun in his science-scales and marks down the weight thereof? Or when he travels into space and tallies the nebulae, outreaching beyond the Milky Way that highroad of life, whose very dust is composed of countless galaxies of suns ? yet does he take his evening and morning stroll far out be yond that infinite Rim of Being. Man is a god when he brings forth the hidden energies of nature compelling them to fetch and carry for him as his 114 IN HARMONY slaves. Man is a god when he reads the Sons of God Hieroglyphic Book of Truth, in his own higher reason and in his heart. It is then he ascends to Olympus and sees God, his Father, face to face, in sacred kinship in the moral Ideal. Above all is he a god when he ceases to desire vengeance and forgives those who have wronged him; when he knows and loves the law and recognizes mercy as the higher justice. To be a god man need not be such a being as Heine supposed that Hegel claimed him to be; that is, one who can have external and mechanical control over all things in heaven and earth; one who can perform miracles in the old dogmatic sense; which indeed is a vul gar interpretation to give to the act or event called a miracle. Man, to me, is a god in a far better and higher sense than that. Jesus saw that man is a god. He declared that men would do greater works than he; that men are the sons of God. If a human being has a son, is not the son a human being? If God have sons, are they not gods, by nature and inheritance? AUGUST 3. It is the poem of her own life that engages the attention of the Soul and absorbs her reflection. As 115 IN HARMONY Tlie Poem of novelists and poets write of the lives of My Own Life imaginary persons, so does the Soul write of her own life. Most persons are myopic and can not see, for the nearness, the poetry of their own lives. Genius Makes AUGUST 4. It is the thought that sur- a New Era rounds us which makes us what we are. Genius alone rises above the common thought and makes a new era for the people. Memories AUGUST 7. Voices divine of string and horn the aspiration of the dominant, the home-returning tones of the tonic! The heaven-high tones in the lights and tints of Nature, and her deep heart-tones in colors and shadow! The mountains! and the summer sun gently sinking beyond the ridge. The little grasshopper s summer song and the dirge song of my heart no more to hear the footsteps I love coming up to me from the old Home abandoned, now a wilderness to me, sitting alone in my cottage and the mountains echoing voices divine of string and horn, and the dirge song of my heart echoing the music of the past! AUGUST 8. It is the stern principles of philosophy which have prevented the Soul from sinking into despair. They are the silent voices which sound in the 116 IN HARMONY Soul forever, forbidding her to falter. She would have died long ago, had it not been for these inner voices. In lone liness, shame, humiliation, neglect, pain, weakness, darkness and silence of years, they have sustained and upheld her. They illuminate the silence and the dark ness of her prison. They have softened and consoled the dreary length of soli tary days. They have pointed to the way out of misery. They have cheered, up held and encouraged her sinking foot steps. They have spoken to her when there was no human voice to speak. They have unraveled the tangled thought when all was perplexity. They have been the pillar of fire by night and the pillar of cloud by day, as the Soul has wandered, lost, in the wilderness these "forty days" of her hundred months. AUGUST 9. Religion believes in God. Philosophy explains God. Agnosticism is no philosophy at all. Philosophy is an affirmation but Agnosticism is a nega tion. The aim of philosophy is to ex plain the universe. Agnosticism denies that there can be any explanation. AUGUST 10. A person of genius is like the sun. Swift is the circulation of his thought. He is made up of forces that culminate in cyclones and hurricanes. 117 The Cheering Principles of Philosophy Philosophy Versus Agnosticism A Person of Genius IN HARMONY Do not approach too near. You are liable to be scorched and burned. At a safe distance he becomes a beneficent power giving light to all who turn their faces toward him a bright star of beauty, in spiration and love. Four Moments AUGUST 11. There are four moments of of Life life in which Happiness has appeared to the Soul: When Philosophy has opened the sanctuary and elevated the host of Truth; when Poetry has lighted her altar with stars; when the eyes of Sorrow have been lifted in gratitude; when the voice of Love has spoken its benediction. A Drive in AUGUST 12. There they are the sweet the Mountains fields some painted brown, some gray, some purpled o er with little weed-tufts. In the great drought the sun goes down like a ball of bloody yet burnished brass. Night comes on and the young moon is a ruddy crescent. The trees stand silent and solemn. The Poet would be glad to spend the night with them; to tramp along the road in the cool darkness; to watch the lonely farmhouses with their solitary lights shine out from the small windows. But the horses dash forward over the steep hills and the friends will soon be home from their drive in the mountains. 118 IN HARMONY AUGUST 13. My uprisen thought of good As the health and harmony hovers over the Shelcinah physical part, leading the stricken body to Israel as the Shekinah irradiated the Ark of the Covenant before the Israelites. AUGUST 14. The utility, the efficacy, the Little Efforts resulting power of little efforts, of even the least, most incidental, ragged bits of things prove that all is divine, that all is composed of god-stuff. As the material vesture of all science, philosophy, art, literature is composed of rags old, dirty, frayed bits and ends, the very leavings and cast-offs of living thrown aside as useless yet from such as these come forth the magnificent libraries of the world: so this Journal which was begun in moments of sheer despair, with the hope only of catching a few outlines, a rag, a bit-end of thought and feeling; this poor Journal has been deemed fit to pass under the eyes of one who knows,* and he tells me that he is interested in reading it interested in reading the bits and rags of thought- life. O marvelous existence, that thy very shreds and refuse may be a medium of vital communication w r ith what is holy and divine! *John Burroughs. 119 IN HARMONY Good Only AUGUST 15. I know that good only is IsEeal real. It exists of necessity. Evil does not exist of necessity. It is a spurious manufacture. That which exists of necessity is eternal. Good only is eternal. 120 HERE ENDS "THE UNIVERSAL ORDER," AS WRITTEN BY FRIEDERIKA QUITMAN OGDEN. PUBLISHED IN BOOK FORM BY PAUL ELDER & COMPANY, AND PRINTED AT THEIR TOMOYE PRESS, IN THE CITY OF SAN FRANCISCO, DURING THE MONTH OF AUGUST, NINETEEN HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN. Ogden,MrsJF.(Q.3272i.1 The universal order ft D H37 327215 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY