The Crow's Nest Part 5

This was one of the incidents that made me dislike Mr. Sanine. I liked his being honest, and I liked his being down on prudery and humbug. But I thought his theory of life was a good deal too simple. "Don't repress your instincts," he said. That's all very well, but suppose a man has more than one kind? If a cheap peeping instinct says "Look," and another instinct says "Oh, you bounder," which will you suppress? It comes down to a question of values. Life holds moments for most of us which the having been a bounder will spoil.

The harmonizing of body and spirit and all the instincts into one, so we'll have no conflicting desires, is an excellent thing--when we do it; and we can all do it some of the time, with the will and the brains to.

But no one can, all the time. And when you are not fully harmonized, and hence feel a conflict--different parts of your nature desiring to go different ways--why, what can you do? You must just take your choice of repressions.

As to Sanine, his life is worth reading, and--in spots--imitating. But I thought he was rather a cabbage. A cabbage is a strong, healthy vegetable, honest and vigorous. It's closely in touch with nature, and it doesn't pretend to be what it isn't. You might do well to study a cabbage: but not follow its program. A cabbage has too much to learn.

How our downright young moderns will learn things, I'm sure I don't know. Sanine scornfully says "not by repression." Well, I don't think highly of repressions; they're not the best method. Yet it's possible that they might be just the thing--for a cabbage.

Long before Sanine was born--in the year 1440 in fact--there was a man in India who used to write religious little songs. Name of Kabir. I tried to read his books once, but couldn't, not liking extremes. He was pretty ecstatic. I could no more keep up with him than with Sanine.

In his private life Kabir was a married man and had several children. By trade he was a weaver. Weaving's like knitting: it allows you to make a living and think of something else at the same time. It was the very thing for Kabir, of course. Gave him practically the whole day to make songs in, and think of religion. He seems to have been a happy fellow--far more so than Sanine.

Sanine's comment would have been that Kabir was living in an imaginary world, not a real one, and that he was autointoxicating himself with his dreamings.

[Ill.u.s.tration: I couldn't keep up with Kabir]

Kabir's answer would have been that Sanine ought to try that world before judging it, and had better begin by just loving people a little.

More love, and more willingness to deal with his poor fellow-creatures, instead of flinging them off in impatience--that would have been Kabir's prescription. And, as a fact, it might really have been an eye-opener for Sanine.

Of the two, however, I preferred Sanine to Kabir. The trouble with Kabir was, he wouldn't let you alone. He wanted everybody to be as religious as he was: it would make them so happy, he thought. This made him rather screechy.

He sang some songs, however, that moved me. Like many a modern, I'm not religious; that is, I've no creed; but I don't feel quite positive that this army of planets just happened, and that man's evolution from blindness to thought was an accident and that nowhere is any Intelligence vaster than mine.

Therefore, I'm always hoping to win some real spiritual insight. It has come to other men without dogma (I can't accept dogmas) and so, I keep thinking, it may some day come to me, too. I never really expect it next week, though. It's always far off. It might come, for instance, I think, in the hour of death. And here is the song Kabir sang to all men who think that:

"_O Friend! hope for Him whilst you live, know whilst you live, understand whilst you live; for in life deliverance abides._

"_If your bonds be not broken whilst living, what hope of deliverance in death?_

"_It is but an empty dream, that the soul shall have union with Him because it has pa.s.sed from the body:_

"_If He is found now, He is found then._

"_If not, we do but go to dwell in the City of Death._

"_If you have union now, you shall have it hereafter._"

Both Sanine and Kabir should have read Tarkington's novel, The Turmoil, which is all about the rush and hustle-bustle of life in America. It would have made them see what great contrasts exist in this world. Kabir thought too much about religion. Sanine, of s.e.x. n.o.body in The Turmoil was especially troubled with either. Some went to church, maybe, and sprinkled a little religion here and there on their lives; but none deeply felt it, or woke up in the morning thinking about it, or allowed it to have much say when they made their decisions. And as to s.e.x, though there were lovers among them, it was only incidentally that they cared about that. They satisfied nature in a routine way, outside office hours. No special excitement about it. Nothing hectic--or magical.

Now, s.e.x is a fundamental state and concern of existence: it's a primary matter. If it's pushed to one side, we at least should be careful what does it. And religion, too, G.o.d or no G.o.d, is a primary matter, if we stretch the word to cover all the spiritual gropings of man. Yet what is it that pushes these two great things aside in America? What makes them subordinate? Business. We put business first.

And what is this business? What is the charm of this giant who engrosses us so? In Tarkington's novel you find yourself in a town of neighborly people, in the middle west somewhere; a leisurely and kindly place--home-like, it used to be called. But in the hearts of these people was implanted a longing for size. They wished that town to grow.

So it did. (We can all have our wishes.) And with its new bigness came an era of machinery and rush. "The streets began to roar and rattle, the houses to tremble, the pavements were worn under the tread of hurrying mult.i.tudes. The old, leisurely, quizzical look of the faces was lost in something harder and warier."

"You don't know what it means, keepin' property together these days,"

says one of them. "I tell you when a man dies the wolves come out of the woods, pack after pack ... and if that dead man's children ain't on the job, night and day, everything he built'll get carried off.... My Lord!

when I think of such things coming to _me_! It don't seem like I deserved it--no man ever tried harder to raise his boys right than I have. I planned and planned and planned how to bring 'em up to be guards to drive the wolves off, and how to be builders to build, and build bigger.... What's the use of my havin' worked my life and soul into my business, if it's all goin' to be dispersed and scattered, soon as I'm in the ground?"

Poor old business! It does look pretty sordid. Yet there is a soul in this giant. Consider its power to call forth the keenness in men and to give endless zest to their toil and sharp trials to their courage. It is grimy, shortsighted, this master--but it has greatness, too.

Only, as we all know, it does push so much else to one side! Love, spiritual gropings, the arts, our old closeness to nature, the independent outlook and disinterested friends.h.i.+ps of men--all these must be checked and diminished, lest they interfere. Yet those things are life; and big business is just a great game. Why play any game so intently we forget about life?

Well, looking around at mankind, we see some races don't. The yellow and black--and some Latins. But Normans and Saxons and most Teutons play their games hard. Knight-errantry was once the game. See how hard they played that. The Crusades, too,--all gentlemen were supposed to take in the Crusades. Old, burly, beef-crunching wine-bibbers climbed up on their chargers and went through incredible troubles and dangers--for what? Why, to rescue a shrine, off in Palestine, from the people who lived there. Those people, the Saracens, weren't doing anything very much to it; but still it was thought that no gentleman ought to stay home, or live his life normally, until that bit of land had been rescued, and put in the hands of stout prelates instead of those Saracans.

Then came the great game of exploring new lands and new worlds. Cortez, Frobisher, Drake. Imagine a dialogue in those days between father and son, a sea-going father who thought exploration was life, and a son who was weakly and didn't want to be forced into business. "I don't like exploration much, Father. I'm seasick the whole time, you know; and I can't bear this going ash.o.r.e and oppressing the blacks." "Nonsense, boy!

This work's got to be done. Can't you see, my dear fellow, those new countries _must_ be explored? It'll make a man of you."

So it goes, so it goes. And playing some game well _is_ needful, to make a man of you. But once in a while you get thinking it's not quite enough.

An Ode to Trade

"Recent changes in these thoroughfares show that trade is rapidly crowding out vice."--_Real Estate Item._

O restless Spirit, from whose cup All drink, and at whose feet all bow May I inquire what you are up To now?

Insatiable, I know, your maw, And ravenous of old your shrine; But still, O Trade, you ought to draw The line.

Our health, our pride, our every breath Of leisure--do not these suffice?

Ah, tell me not you're also death On vice.

Ah, tell me not yon gilded h.e.l.l That has from boyhood soothed my grief Must fall into the sere and yellow leaf;

That dens my wayward comrades know Must also share this cruel lot: That every haunt of sin must go To pot.

I who have seen your roaring marts Engulf our aristocracy, Our poets, all who love the arts But me:

I who have watched your bounteous purse Seduce, I say, the world's elect-- I, in my clear and ringing verse, Object.

You've stripped existence to the bone; You see us of all else bereft; You know quite well that vice alone Is left.

You claim our every thought and prayer, Nor do we grudge the sacrifice.

But worms will turn! You've got to spare Us vice

[Ill.u.s.tration]