The Joyful Heart Part 10

The master-makers have long been expending their share of the power.

It is high time they were enjoying their share of the glory. What an unconscionable leveling up and down there will presently be when it dawns upon humanity what a large though inglorious share it has been having in the spiritually creative work of the world! In that day the seats of the mighty individualists of science, industry, politics, and discovery; of religion and its ancient foe ecclesiasticism; of economy, the arts and philosophy, will all be taken down a peg by the same knowledge that shall exalt "them of low degree."

I can imagine how angrily ruffled the sallow shade of Arthur Schopenhauer will become at the dawn of this spiritual Commune. When the first full notes of the soul's "Ma.r.s.eillaise" burst upon his irritable eardrums, I can hear above them his savage snarl. I can see his malignant expression as he is forced to divide his unearned increment of fame with some of those _Mitmenschen_ whom he, like a bad Samaritan, loved to lash with his tongue before pouring in oil of vitriol and the sour wine of sadness. And how like red-ragged turkey-c.o.c.ks Lord Byron and Nietzsche and Napoleon will puff out when required to stand and deliver some of their precious credit!

There will be compensations, though, to the genius who, safely dead, feels himself suddenly despoiled of a fullness of fame which he had counted on enjoying in _saecula saeculorum_. When he comes to balance things up, perhaps he will not, after all, find the net loss so serious. Though he lose some credit for his successes, he will also lose some discredit for his failures. Humanity will recognize that while the good angels of genius are the masters by proxy, the bad angels of genius exert an influence as negative and destructive as the influence of the others is positive and constructive.

How jolly it will be, for all but the bad angels, when we can a.s.sign to them such failures as Browning's "The Inn Alb.u.m"; Davy's contention that iodine was not an element, and Luther's savage hounding of the n.o.bles upon the wretched peasants who had risen in revolt under his own inspiration. But enough of the bad angels! Let us inter them with this epitaph: "They did their worst; devils could do no more."

Turn we to the bright side of the situation. How delighted Keats will be when at last the world develops a little sense of proportion, and after first neglecting and then over-praising him, finally proposes to give poor old Severn his due as a master by proxy. Imagine Sir William Herschel's pleasure when his beloved sister Caroline begins to receive her full deserts. And Tschaikowsky will slough his morbidness and improvise a Slavic Hallelujah Chorus when his unseen patroness comes into her own. It is true that the world has already given her memory two fingers and a perfunctory "thank ye." This was for putting her purse at Tschaikowsky's disposal, thus making it possible for him to write a few immortal compositions instead of teaching mortals the piano in a maddening conservatory. But now, glory! hallelujah! the world is soon going to render her honor long overdue for the spiritual support which so ably reinforced the financial.

And Sir Thomas More, that early socialist--imagine his elation! For he will regard our desire to transfer some of his own credit to the man in the pre-Elizabethan street as a sure sign that we are steadily approaching the golden gates of his Utopia. For good Sir Thomas knows that our view of heroes and hero-wors.h.i.+p has always been too little democratic. We have been over-inclined, with the aristocratic Carlyle, to see all history as a procession of a few transcendent masters surrounded, preceded, and followed by enormous herds of abject and quite insignificant slaves. Between these slaves and the masters, there is, in the old view, about as much similarity as exists in the child's imagination between the overwhelming dose of castor oil and the single pluperfect chocolate drop whereby the dose is supposed to be made endurable. Already the idea is beginning to glimmer that heroic stuff is far more evenly distributed throughout the throng than we had supposed.

It is, of course, very meet and very right and our bounden duty to admire the world's standard, official heroes. But it is wrong to revere them to the exclusion of folk less showy but perhaps no less essential. It is almost as wrong as it would be for the judges at the horse-show to put the dog-cart before the horse and then focus their admiring glances so exclusively upon the vehicle that they forgot the very existence of its patient and unself-conscious propeller.

It is especially fitting that we should awake to the worth of the master by proxy just now, when the movement for the socialization of the world, after so many ineffectual centuries, is beginning to engage the serious attention of mankind. Thus far, one of the chief reactionary arguments against all men being free has been that men are so shockingly unequal. And the reactionaries have called us to witness the gulf that yawns, for example, between the G.o.d-like individualist, Ysaye, and the worm-like little factory girl down there in the audience balanced on the edge of the seat and listening to the violin--her rapt soul sitting in her eyes. Now, however, we know that, but for the wireless tribute of creativeness that flashes up to the monarch of tone from that "rapt soul" and others as humble and as rapt--the king of fiddlers would then and there be obliged to lay down his horsehair scepter and abdicate.

We have reached a stage of social evolution where it is high time that one foolish old fallacy should share the fate of the now partially discredited belief that "genius will out" in spite of man or devil.

This fallacy is the supposition that man's creativeness is to be measured solely by its visible, audible, or tangible results.

Browning's old Rabbi made a shrewd commentary on this question when he declared:

"Not on the vulgar ma.s.s Called 'work,' must sentence pa.s.s, Things done that took the eye and had the price....

But all the world's coa.r.s.e thumb And finger failed to plumb....

Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped: All I could never be, All men ignored in me, This, I was worth to G.o.d, whose wheel the pitcher shaped."

Yes, we are being slowly socialized, even to our way of regarding genius; and this has been until now the last unchallenged stronghold of individualism. We perceive that even there individualism must no longer be allowed to have it all its own way. After a century we are beginning to realize that the truth was in our first socially minded English poet when he sang:

"Nothing in the world is single, All things by a law divine In one another's being mingle."

To-day we have in library, museum, gallery, and cathedral tangible records of the creativeness of the world's masters. Soon I think we are to possess--thanks to Edison and the cinematographers--intangible records--or at least suggestions--of the modest creativeness of our masters by proxy. Some day every son with this inspiring sort of mother will have as complete means as science and his purse affords, of perpetuating her voice, her changing look, her walk, her tender smile. Thus he may keep at least a gleam of her essential creativeness always at hand for help in the hour of need.

I would give almost anything if I could have in a storage battery beside me now some of the electric current that was forever flowing out of my own mother, or out of Richard Watson Gilder, or out of Hayd Sampson, a glorious old "inglorious Milton" of a master by proxy whom I once found toiling in a small livery-stable in Minnesota. My faith is firm that some such miracle will one day be performed. And in our irreverent, Yankee way we may perhaps call the captured product of the master by proxy--"canned virtue." In that event the twenty-first centurion will no more think of setting out on a difficult task or for a G.o.d-forsaken environment without a supply of "canned virtue" than of starting for one of the poles equipped with only a pocketful of pemmican.

There is a grievous amount of latent master-making talent spoiling to-day for want of development. Many an one feels creative energy crying aloud within himself for vicarious spiritual expression. He would be a master by proxy, yet is at a loss how to learn. Him I would recommend to try learning the easiest form of the art. Let him resolve to become a creative listener to music. Once he is able to influence reproducers of art like pianists and singers, he can then begin groping by a.n.a.logy toward the more difficult art of influencing directly the world's creators. But even if he finds himself quite lacking in creativeness, he can still be a silent partner of genius if he will relax purse-strings, or cause them to be relaxed, for the founding of creative fellows.h.i.+ps.

I do not know if ever yet in the history of the planet the mighty force which resides in the masters by proxy has been systematically used. I am sure it has never been systematically conserved, and that it is one of the least understood and least developed of earth's natural resources. One of our next long steps forward should be along this line of the conservation of "virtue." The last physical frontier has practically been pa.s.sed. Now let us turn to the undiscovered continents of soul which have so long been awaiting their Columbuses and Daniel Boones, their country-life commissions and conferences of governors.

When the hundredth part of you possible masters by proxy shall grow aware of your possibilities, and take your light from under the bushel, and use it to reinforce the flickering flame of talent at your elbow, or to illumine the path of some unfortunate and stumbling genius, or to heighten the brilliance of the consummate master--our civilization will take a mighty step towards G.o.d.

Try it, my masters!

THE END

By Robert Haven Schauffler

THE JOYFUL HEART.

Sc.u.m O' THE EARTH AND OTHER POEMS.

THE MUSICAL AMATEUR.