By the Christmas Fire Part 4

I am beginning to feel the same way even about Ibsen. Time was when he had an uncanny power over my imagination. He had the wand of a disenchanter. Here, I said, is one who has the gift of showing us the thing as it is. There is not a single one of these characters whom we have not met. Their poor s.h.i.+fts at self-deceit are painfully familiar to us. In the company of this keen-eyed detective we can follow human selfishness and cowardice through all their disguises. The emptiness of conventional respectabilities and pieties and the futility of the spasmodic attempts at heroism are obvious enough.

It was an eclipse of my faith in human nature. The eclipse was never total because the shadow of the book could not quite hide the thought of various men and women whom I had actually known.

After a while I began to recover my spirits. Why should I be so depressed? This is a big world, and there is room in it for many embodiments of good and evil. There are all sorts of people, and the existence of the bad is no argument against the existence of quite another sort.

Let us take realism in literature for what it is and no more. It is, at best, only a description of an infinitesimal bit of reality. The more minutely accurate it is, the more limited it must be in its field. You must not expect to get a comprehensive view through a high-powered microscope. The author is severely limited, not only by his choice of a subject, but by his temperament and by his opportunities for observation. He is doing us a favor when he focuses our attention upon one special object and makes us see it clearly.

It is when the realistic writer turns philosopher and begins to generalize that we must be on our guard against him. He is likely to use his characters as symbols, and the symbolism becomes oppressive. There are some businesses which ought not to be united. They hinder healthful compet.i.tion and produce a hateful monopoly. Thus in some states the railroads that carried coal also went into the business of coal-mining.

This has been prohibited by law. It is held that the railroad, being a common carrier, must not be put into a position in which it will be tempted to discriminate in favor of its own products. For a similar reason it may be argued that it is dangerous to allow the dramatist or novelist to furnish us with a "philosophy of life." The chances are that, instead of impartially fulfilling the duties of a common carrier, he will foist upon us his own goods, and force us to draw conclusions from the samples of human nature he has in stock. I should not be willing to accept a philosophy of life even from so accomplished a person as Mr. Bernard Shaw. It is not because I doubt his cleverness in presenting what he sees, but because I have a suspicion that there are some very important things which he does not see, or which do not interest him.

It is really much more satisfactory for each one to gather his life philosophy from his own experience rather than from what he reads out of a book, or from what he sees on the stage. "The harvest of a quiet eye"

is, after all, more satisfying than the occasional discoveries of the unquiet eye that seeks only the brilliantly novel.

The inevitable discrepancy between the literary representations of life and life itself has been the cause of the ancient feud between teachers of morals and writers of fiction. Because of this Plato would banish poets from his Republic and the Puritans would exclude novelists and play-actors from their conventicles. But it is curious to observe how the character of the complaints varies with the change in literary fas.h.i.+ons. The argument of serious persons against works of fiction used to be that they put too many romantic ideas into the reader's head.

This was the charge made by Mrs. Tabitha Tenney, one of the first of the long line of American novelists. She wrote a novel ent.i.tled "Female Quixotism; exhibited in the Romantic Opinions and Extravagant Adventures of Dorcasina Sheldon." The work was addressed "to all Columbian Young Ladies who read Novels and Romances." To these young ladies the solemn advice of Mrs. Tabitha Tenney was, "Don't."

Miss Dorcasina was certainly a distressing example. "At the age of three years this child had the misfortune to lose an excellent mother, whose advice would have pointed out to her the plain, rational path of life, and prevented her imagination from being filled with the airy delusions and visionary dreams of love and raptures, darts, fire and flames, with which the indiscreet writers of that fascinating kind of books denominated Novels fill the heads of artless young girls to their great injury, and sometimes to their utter ruin." Her father allowed her to indulge her fancy, "never considering their dangerous tendency to a young, inexperienced female mind." The various calamities into which Miss Dorcasina Sheldon fell may be imagined by those who have not the patience to search for them upon the printed pages. Her parting words to those who had the guardians.h.i.+p of female minds had great solemnity.

"Withhold from their eyes the pernicious volumes, which while they convey false ideas of life, and inspire illusory expectations, will tend to keep them ignorant of everything worth knowing; and which if they do not eventually render them miserable may at least prevent them from becoming respectable. Suffer not their imaginations to be filled with ideas of happiness, particularly in the connubial state, which can never be realized."

If Mrs. Tabitha Tenney were to come to life in our day I think she would hardly feel like warning the Columbian young ladies against the effect of works of fiction in exaggerating the happiness of life in general or of the connubial state in particular. The young ladies are much more in danger of having their spirits depressed by the painstaking representation of miseries they are never likely to experience. The gloomy views of average human nature which once were conscientiously expounded by "painful preachers" are now taken up by painful play-wrights and story-tellers. Under the spell of powerful imaginations it is quite possible to see this world as nothing but a vale of tears.

Happily there is always a way of escape for those who are quick-witted enough to think of it in time. When fiction offers us only arid actualities, we can flee from it into the romance of real life.

I sympathize with a young philosopher of my acquaintance. He took great joy in a Jack-o-lantern. The ruddy countenance of the pumpkin was the very picture of geniality. Good-will gleamed from the round eyes, and the mouth was one luminous smile. No wonder that he asked the privilege of taking it to bed with him. He shouted gleefully when it was left on the table.

But when he was alone Mr. Jack-o-lantern a.s.sumed a more grimly realistic aspect. There was something sinister in the squint of his eye, and uncanny in the way his rubicund nose gleamed. On entering the room a little while after I found it in darkness.

"What has become of your Jack-o-lantern?"

"He was making faces at me. I looked at him till I 'most got scared, so I just got up and blew him out."

I commended my philosopher for his good sense. It is the way to do with Jack-o-lanterns when they become unmannerly.

And I believe that it is the best way to treat distressing works of the imagination, though I know that their authors, who take themselves solemnly, will resent this advice.

We can't blow out a reality, just because it happens to make us miserable. We must face it. It is a part of the discipline of life. But a book or a play has no such right to domineer over us. Our own imagination has the first rights in its own home. If some other person's imagination intrudes and "makes faces," it is our privilege to blow it out.

IV

The Ignominy of Being Grown-up

[Ill.u.s.tration]

As I have already intimated, my greatest intellectual privilege is my acquaintance with a philosopher. He is not one of those unsocial philosophers who put their best thoughts into books to be kept in cold storage for posterity. My Philosopher is eminently social, and is conversational in his method. He belongs to the ancient school of the Peripatetics, and the more rapidly he is moving the more satisfactory is the flow of his ideas.

He is a great believer in the Socratic method. He feels that a question is its own excuse for being. The proper answer to a question is not a stupid affirmation that would close the conversation, but another question. The questions follow one another with extreme rapidity. He acts upon my mind like an air pump. His questions speedily exhaust my small stock of acquired information. Into the mental vacuum thus produced rush all sorts of irrelevant ideas, which we proceed to share.

In this way there comes a sense of intellectual comrades.h.i.+p which one does not have with most philosophers.

For four years my Philosopher has been interrogating Nature, and he has not begun to exhaust the subject. Though he has acc.u.mulated a good deal of experience, he is still in his intellectual prime. He has not yet reached the "school age," which in most persons marks the beginning of the senile decay of the poetic imagination.

In my walks and talks with my Philosopher I have often been amazed at my own limitations. Things which are so easy for him are so difficult for me. Particularly is this the case in regard to the more fundamental principles of philosophy. All philosophy, as we know, is the search for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. These words represent only the primary colors of the moral spectrum. Each one is broken up into any number of secondary colors. Thus the Good ranges all the way from the good to eat to the good to sacrifice one's self for; the Beautiful ascends from the most trifling prettiness to the height of the spiritually sublime; while the True takes in all manner of verities, great and small. In comparing notes with my Philosopher I am chagrined at my own color-blindness. He recognizes so many superlative excellences to which I am stupidly oblivious.

In one of our walks we stop at the grocer's, I having been asked to fill the office of domestic purveyor. It is a case where the office has sought the man, and not the man the office. Lest we forget, everything has been written down so that a wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein,--baking-powder and coffee and a dozen eggs, and last and least, and under no circ.u.mstances to be forgotten, a cake of condensed yeast. These things weigh upon my spirits. The thought of that little yeastcake shuts out any disinterested view of the store. It is nothing to me but a prosaic collection of the necessaries of life. I am uncheered by any sense of romantic adventure.

Not so with my Philosopher. He is in the rosy dawn of expectation. The doors are opened, and he enters into an enchanted country. His eyes grow large as he looks about him. He sees visions of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in all their bewildering, concrete variety. They are in barrels and boxes and paper bundles. They rise toward the sky in shelves that reach at last the height of the gloriously unattainable. He walks through the vales of Arcady, among pickles and cheeses. He lifts up his eyes wonderingly to snowy Olympus crowned with Pillsbury's Best. He discovers a magic fountain, not spurting up as if it were but for a moment, but issuing forth with the mysterious slowness that befits the liquefactions of the earlier world. "What is that?" he asks, and I can hardly frame the prosaic word "Mola.s.ses."

"Mola.s.ses!" he cries, gurgling with content; "what a pretty word!" I hadn't thought about it, but it is a pretty word, and it has come straight down from the Greek word for honey.

He discovers works of art. Surprising pictures, glowing in color, are on the walls. These are cherubs rioting in health, smiling old men, benignant matrons, radiant maidens, all feasting on nectar and ambrosia.

Here and there is a pale ascetic, with a look of agony on his emaciated face.

"What makes that man feel so bad?" asks my Philosopher, anxious to extract a story from the picture. It seems like an inadequate explanation to say that he is only a martyr to his own folly in not getting the right kind of breakfast food.

For one thing, my Philosopher has a great physical advantage over me when it comes to seeing things. His eyes are only two feet ten inches from the ground, while mine are some five feet ten. Three feet do not count for much when we are considering astronomical distances, but they make a great difference in the way things seem. There is a difference in the horizon line, and the realm of mystery begins much nearer. There is no disenchanting bird's-eye view of the counter with all things thereon.

There are alluring glimpses of piled-up wealth.

There particularly is the land of the heart's desire in a square gla.s.s-covered case. There are many beautiful things in the store to be admired from below; but one supremely beautiful and delectable object is the crowning glory of the place.

The artist who spends his life in attempting to minister to dull adult sensibilities never created a masterpiece that gave such pure delight as the candy dog which my Philosopher spies.

"See the dog!" It is, indeed, a miracle of impressionist art. It is not like the dogs that bite. It offers itself alluringly to the biter,--or rather to one who would leisurely absorb it. Even now there is a vagueness of outline that suggests the still vaguer outlines it will have when it comes into the possession of a person of taste.

This treasure can be procured for one copper cent. My Philosopher feels that it is a wise investment, and I thoroughly agree with him. However much the necessaries of life may have advanced in price, the prime luxuries are still within the reach of all. We still have much to be thankful for when with one cent we can purchase a perfect bliss.

It is all so interesting and satisfactory that we feel that the visit to the grocer's has been a great success. It is only when we are halfway home that we remember the yeastcake.

Sometimes my Philosopher insists upon my telling him a story. Then I am conscious of my awkwardness. It is as if my imagination were an old work-horse suddenly released from its accustomed tip-cart and handed over to a gay young knight who is setting forth in quest of dragons. It is blind of both eyes, and cannot see a dragon any more, and only s.h.i.+es, now and then, when it comes to a place where it saw one long ago.

There is an element of insincerity in these occasional frights which does not escape the clear-eyed critic. It gets scared at the wrong times, and forgets to prance when prancing is absolutely demanded by the situation.

When my Philosopher tells a story, it is all that a story ought to be.

There is no labored introduction, no tiresome a.n.a.lysis. It is pure story, "of imagination all compact." Things happen with no long waits between the scenes. Everything is instantly moulded to the heart's desire.

"Once upon a time there was a little boy. And he wanted to be a c.o.c.k-a-doodle-doo. So he was a c.o.c.k-a-doodle-doo. And he wanted to fly up into the sky. So he did fly up into the sky. And he wanted to get wings and a tail. So he did get some wings and a tail."

Physiologists tell us that the trouble with advancing years is that the material which in youth went directly to building up the vital organs is diverted to the connective tissue, so that after a time there gets to be too much connective tissue and too little to connect. When the imagination is in its first freshness, a story is almost without connective tissue. There seems hardly enough to hold it together. There is nothing to take our minds off the successive happenings. If it is deemed desirable that a little boy should be a c.o.c.k-a-doodle-doo, then he is a c.o.c.k-a-doodle-doo. All else is labor and sorrow.

As a listener my Philosopher is no less successful than as an improviser. He is not one of those fickle hearers whose demands for some new thing are the ruination of literary art. When he finds something beautiful it is a joy to him forever, and its loveliness increases with each repet.i.tion. In a cla.s.sic tale he is quick to resent the slightest change in phraseology. There is a just severity in his rebuke when, in order to give a touch of novelty, I mix up the actions appropriate to the big bear, the little bear, and the middle-sized bear. This clumsy attempt at originality by means of a willful perversion of the truth offends him. If a person can't be original without making a mess of it, why try to be original at all?

With what keen expectancy he awaits each inevitable word, and how pleased he is to find that everything comes out as he expected! He reserves his full emotion for the true dramatic climax. If a great tragedian could be a.s.sured of having such an appreciative audience, how pleasant would be the pathway of art! The tragedy of c.o.c.k Robin reaches its hundredth night with no apparent falling off in interest. It is followed as only the finest critic will listen to the greatest actor of an immortal drama. He is perfectly familiar with the text, and knows where the thrills come in. When the fatal arrow pierces c.o.c.k Robin's breast, it never fails to bring an appreciative exclamation, "He's killed c.o.c.k Robin!"

Of the niceties of science my Philosopher takes little account, yet he loves to frequent the Museum of Natural History, and is on terms of intimacy with many of the stuffed animals. He walks as a small Adam in this Paradise, giving to each creature its name. His taste is catholic, and while he delights in the humming birds, he does not therefore scorn the less brilliant hippopotamus. He has no repugnance to an ugliness that is only skin deep. He reserves his disapprobation for an ugliness that seems to be a visible sign of inner ungraciousness. The small monkeys he finds amusing; but he grows grave as he pa.s.ses on to the larger apes, and begins to detect in them a caricature of their betters. When we reach the orang-outang he says, "Now let's go home."

Once outside the building, he remarks, "I don't like mans when they're not made nice." I agree with him; for I myself am something of a misanthropoidist.