THE toil of the laborer is artless. There is in it neither form, nor color, nor tone. For months I have been working as only workingmen work, and in the dreary round of the hours it has come to me that the thing which is wearisome and disheartening about it is that it is utterly devoid of art. In the construction of a building, for instance, whereat we labored for three long months, I discovered that with each day’s labor I was in contact only with that which was formless and colorless and toneless. Huge, misshapen, disheartening piles of brick; commonplace, indifferent and colorless masses of stone, wood, iron, sand, cement; bone and sinew of what was to be, but in themselves devoid of all that could appeal to the eye or touch the heart, and scattered about in such an aimless way as to bring to the mind nothing but a wearying sense of disorder. This disorder, however, as soon became clear to me, was not apparent in a definite way to all those who worked amidst it. These mixers of mortar and carriers of brick toiled in the grime and dust without seeming to realize that it was a wretched condition, hard, grim and, so far as the sum of their individual lives was concerned, but meagerly profitable. Carpenters, masons and iron-workers went sturdily about their labors, but the artless and unlovely nature of their work was over it all, and despite their seeming unconsciousness to it one felt the drag of its absence, their eagerness to get away, their innate yearning to be where things were not in the making, the urge to be out in the larger and more perfect world where form and color and tone do abound.

For, after all, in the main, things do stand complete, as we see them. The hills have their enduring roundness, the trees their perpetual forms. Landscapes and skylines are not torn and scraped as in the vicinity of some (comparatively) minute constructive labor. Nature is nearly always cunningly pleasing to the eye on the surface, whatever may go on below, whereas the average constructive processes are so often discordant, broken, disordered.

Seeing this, and not being able in my own consciousness to explain why, my heart was sad and I wondered why life should be thus grimly organized; why formlessness in the parts of the thing to be formed; why tonelessness in that which when laboriously organized would be all tone; why colorlessness in that which in the end would enliven the heart with color and dance before the eye a perfect thing.

In the progress of the work, however, it was given me to see that, in the production of all things here, there is at bottom this very formlessness innate. For to organize and perfect one thing we must take from and destroy another; and in doing that we fly in the face of that which we most desire: order and harmony. Therefore, if we would have that which the inexplicable urge for something new and more beautiful commands, we must apparently steel our hearts against the old and destroy it, although, having committed the offense of destruction, we must repay or balance by the labor of construction.

It is not given to all of us to follow the ramifications of Nature’s planning nor to see wherein justice or the seeming injustice lies. Most of those about me—average short-reasoning creatures—took their labor drearily enough and were not able to see in any definite inspiriting way the approaching beauty of that which their hands were building. It did not concern them. Many of them came and labored but a little while, doing but a minute portion of that which was to be the whole, seeing only the mass and chaos of it without ever obtaining one glimpse of the loveliness which was to be.

But when the labor had been completed, when the mortar had been mixed and the brick and stone removed from their uneven masses and set in order, when the wounds of the earth had been smoothed over, the scattered débris removed and the grass allowed to grow, when in the light of the restful evening there rose, in this instance, high in the air a perfect tower, buttressed, arched and pinnacled, with here a window reflecting the golden Western glow and there a pillar standing out in delicate relief against the perfect background of the sky, the meaning of the chaos came home. Here it was: color, form, tone, beauty. The labor of the excavator, the toil of the iron-worker, the irritating beats of the carpenters’ hammers, the mess and disorder of the field of action, had all blended together finally and made this perfect thing—only they were no longer a part of it. To most of them it was all but meaningless. Having labored on but portions of it they could scarcely conceive it as a whole.

And yet as I looked my heart rose up, and I, for one, was thankful to have been in part a worker, to have worked a little, to have wearied a little, to have sighed a little, that so lovely a thing might be.

II

The toil of the laborer is thoughtless. There is in it neither conception nor initiative nor the development of that which is new. Though the hands labor and the body bend, the heart is not in it. It is all a weariness and a travail of the flesh, and the profit is unseen.

In a certain factory, not far from the heart of the city of New York, I worked as a laborer. My duty was to carry shavings and lumber and to sweep the floor. All day, from the blowing of the whistle at seven in the morning to its welcome blast at six at night, my body was busy bending and lifting in the effort to keep the floor clean of shavings and supplying a half-dozen machines with lumber. The slow, unchanging, imperative nature of the work, the fact that I went on whether one man came or another one stayed away, the dreary persistence with which it was necessary to repeat the same motion day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, was, to the thinking and restless mind, maddening.

In this factory at the time there ruled a foreman well fitted to the scheme of things. He was a strange, egotistic, vainglorious soul, with a mind so set up by the fact that he had been foreman of this little shop that there was no living with him. He was arbitrary; his word was law. With an air that might have become a tragedian, he walked about his domain and glared upon each and all, meditating upon his exalted position. Every word was either a command or a reproof, and in times of excitement or depression, such as naturally flow from the hurry or the lack of work, he was always about, venting his humor or wrath, as his mood dictated.

This situation, coupled with the meager wages, the enormous wealth of the corporation which controlled it all, the utter indifference of those who sat at the top to those who worked at the bottom, was a difficult thing to endure. It was so very apparent to any one who thought that the work of those at the bottom was entirely without point save as a means of subsistence. To lift and carry, to move along given lines and within certain limits—this was the sum and substance of wisdom required, and it mattered little who did it. Some small personal characteristics figured in, such as whether a man was naturally quick or slow, good-humored or ill-humored and the like, but the main point was to do the work as conceived, planned, initiated and developed by some one above. And this could be acquired until it was not a matter of thought but of rote. What you thought or how you felt was not involved.

One of its pathetic aspects was that it was involved with the maintenance of a condition which was not necessarily beneficial or worthy of approval. So many of the owners, for whom these thousands upon thousands of individuals labored, were mere idlers in society, social loafers, daily bulletined as the chief factors in a dozen trivial amusements, and as wholly unconscious of this under-condition which made for their situation and pleasure as if it did not exist at all. For every motion and bending here, some one else was deriving the privilege not to move or bend there. It was as if some untoward power were momentarily taking something from each of these and giving it to some one who did not even know whence it came.

And the saddest part of it was that these toilers, born for the most part to a condition and with brains unsuited to anything much better, were still not so dull that they could not see, and that rather plainly, how scurvily Nature was using them, with what a vast, contemptuous indifference. It was little to Her whether they lived or died, did poorly or well. Most of them were mere machines who had acquired the little they knew by observing others, who, if they were capable of thinking at all, were restricted by the nature of their labor in utilizing thought, and yet they could see so plainly that those above them did very little or nothing, and received much, so much more. It was one of those situations in which labor, a mere round of motions, took the place of thought and left them weary and disinterested at the close of the day, not fit to originate a thought if it had been possible or necessary.

And yet, after a time, it occurred to me that it was not, perhaps, so much the thoughtlessness of it that was so wretched as that any human being, toiling to his full capacity, should not receive more of the legitimate profits of his labor. These men, ignorant and, in a way, valueless without direction, were nevertheless useful creatures and, in this sense if no other, were deserving of a far more reasonable share of the profit which their efforts created. That it should not be so, that despite their willing or non-willing they should be driven early and late to create a surplus which was not directly applied to the pressing needs of society as a whole, but to the frittering amusements of the few, not much better in the main than themselves, seemed hard.

And yet sometimes when I looked out upon the world as it glimmered before my windows—when I saw, as it so chanced, the waters of the river flowing by, the splendid boats riding at anchor or steaming peacefully past, and the wonder of the hills and hollows, all set suggestively before the eyes—it came to me that, perhaps, in spite of the seeming injustice involved in this situation, variety was as essential to happiness as so-called justice or equation, and that the very inequalities I was bemoaning were the things which I was admiring in Nature. To blot out the light and the shadows, to remove the hills and dales, to take away the far reaches which spread between luxury and want, idleness and toil—might not these be the things which after all would rob life of much of its value and charm? Might they not?

But as I turned again to the weariness of my labor and saw once more the routine, the comparative slavery, the drag of almost endless hours, I could not help wishing for each that there might be some better solution than this necessity for variety—that perhaps the heights and hollows need not after all be so vast. To survey a mountain, to view a desert—was not this the privilege of but a few? And might not the true beauty of life exist in the way-places where are neither heights nor depths but only a tender and appealing undulation? I wondered, and still do, for in spite of endless personal inconvenience I have never been able to believe that an unbreakable dead level of equality should maintain, that none should suffer overmuch, that none should want to the extreme. And yet at this time, in this place, the less varied seemed the all-to-be-desired. That it was not to be found in so starkly diversified a world as here offers did not lessen the pain of the labor or the value of the ideal in the least. To work, to wait, to hope, to pray for some such change—how important these loomed in the hour of weariness! And yet the charm that hope cast over effort was as though the difference had already in part been bridged and that the realization of the ideal was almost at hand.

III

The toil of the laborer is without mercy, its grim insistence unrequited by anything save the meager wages wherewith it is paid. There is no true beauty in it, no tenderness. There is no thought of anything save what muscle and the strength of the individual can be made to yield. More than this, the sum of what is accomplished passes almost entirely into other hands. There is no provision made for those who will be as tattered remnants when the things for which they labored have been accomplished.

For several months I worked with the laborers for a great railroad. It was the kind of labor that falls to the lot of every man who is unskilled and whose sense of honesty or compulsion or duty or need commands that he labor. Those with whom I worked were employed to carry lumber, load brick, shovel earth and mix mortar. The work was requited at the rate of fifteen cents an hour, and nothing more than this was allowed for overtime. We worked nine or ten hours a day, as the light permitted. There was no rest for those here employed save in a form of subterfuge, which was as wearisome as the toil itself to one not accustomed to it by long years of practice. To be sure one might delay in the carrying of anything; it was possible to be deliberate, to hang first on one foot and then the other; there was a way of resting on one’s pick before lifting it; but the gain was scarcely worth the pains. At the close of the day the sum of idleness thus secured would not be sufficient to produce a restful feeling, and the knowledge that a watchful foreman was well aware of the spirit of your labor was not conducive to comfort.

We were under a foreman whose conception of life was that it meant toil, and who himself was perfectly equipped physically to meet it. He did not stop to parley or temper the necessities with tenderness but shouted and cursed his commands, the fulfilling of which was as much of a burden on his mind as upon our bodies. Work there was in plenty, vast quantities of labor extending into the weeks and years, and the only thought which the conclusion of one hard day’s toil could bring was that there was another exactly like it tomorrow. It had no end for the individual save in arbitrary cessation on his part, the ending of his pay, or in disintegration and death. And need drove so many to continue day after day, without rhyme or reason in so far as the individual was concerned.

I could not help pondering over this from time to time, wondering at the lust of the controlling powers at the top for money and place, the fierceness of Nature in placing such an impulse in them, the fierceness of the temper of our immediate masters (general managers, superintendents, foremen and the like), the persistence of their frowns, the manner in which, when anything was delayed or the work went wrong, they visited the blame upon the heads of those beneath them, the urge and blame finally falling with sharp effect upon the carriers and serfs at the bottom. Life did not seem to require or justify it, I often thought. The rewards achieved by those at the bottom at least were too inconsiderable. The enormous and almost useless surplus of this great corporation flowering out into exotic social forms at the top was proof that it was an unjust exaction. A man should be a man in spite of the orders of his superiors. Mercy and tenderness should qualify our every deed.... So it looked from the bottom.

And then one day I was made a foreman.

I was determined that I, as foreman, would hold persistently, through whatever wearinesses might come, to this earlier creed of courtesy and consideration. I told myself that I would do better than these others. There should be no harshness in my tone. I would not swear. A moderate effort would be demanded of my men, but nothing more. So much for good intentions.

In this new capacity I found that my duties were of a different nature from those of my former. Here, instead of running at the beck and call of another, I had men running for me. I had from a dozen to fifteen men under me, as the work varied, and my principal duty was to see that they did not shirk.

I accepted this with a light heart. It seemed easy enough, something which could be accomplished in the most gracious spirit. All I had to do was to take my position beside my gang, humming a tune, and to watch (as I thought) their progress with a gentle and merry heart.

How speedy and how sad was my disillusionment!

Before one day was gone I was made to feel that the pressure which was on me from above must be transferred to those who were below, regardless. There were orders to be complied with, periods to be observed, standards of quality to be maintained in certain kinds of work, which my men did not always understand. Nor did an explanation or a simple request always result in understanding or ready willingness to comply. They were often tired, a night’s rest not always apparently repairing the weariness of the day before. None were so dull that they could not see that many reaped where they had not sown, took joy in that for which they had never paid, while others like themselves sweated under a load which they had never willed to carry. Dark looks, dark moods, dark wishes were as common as ever, yet if my own position or my superior’s good will were worth anything to me I could not allow them to fall below their quota of toil. It was necessary to achieve a given result, or resign, and at every turn there were rules, rules, rules.

How hard I tried to adjust my new relationship to the ideal which had previously been mine, and at the same time comply with the rules of the company, I will not say. For a time I did manage to keep a cheerful attitude and to speak gently. I tried to overlook the indifference and subterfuge which I knew they were practicing and which before, in part at least, had seemed justifiable but which must also in part be overcome, if life were to go on at all. For Nature, as I had come to see, had established these inequalities, the smallness of mind in some, the strength and vision in others. Who was I to set about establishing exact justice or equation, where I had not created? Or how or where? Or I might smile and smile and urge with pleasant compliments, but how did that justify or make amends? And although for a time it seemed as though I might succeed in avoiding all difficulty, still the memory of my own recent feelings was too fresh not to influence me deeply.

Then came a day when the pressure of work to be done was so much greater than it had been before that the usual subterfuge of the men became an irritation to me. They were painfully and exasperatingly slow, if not without reason, and the pressure on me from above was heavy also. A heavy rain had washed the earth into a long trench which we had been excavating. It was necessary to hurry the reopening of this in order not to delay other work. Concrete had to be prepared, a large foundation set by a given date. We were under urgent surveillance from our superiors and could but follow out their orders or resign.

In this situation I confess that I did not do much parleying with my sense of equation or justice. Although I knew these men to be in the main underpaid and overworked, and in so far as the corporation was concerned mere machines to be pushed to the limit of their capacity and discharged when no longer useful, still I stood beside them and ordered and commanded, urging first one and then the other with shouts and gruff words, until at last they were as wrought up and as harried by me as they had been by any one of whom I had previously complained. They were driven, harassed by me, until one, irritated by the anachronism of it all, no doubt, my previous enthusiasm for better conditions, turned on me with: “Yes—hurry! Hurry! You didn’t work so hard yourself, though!”

I paused in my ordering and walked aside a little space to consider. How true was the thing he said! I had not worked so. It had been a constant complaint with me, in my own mind at least, that so much insistence and heartless driving had never been justified by the reward offered, that the men were entitled to more than they received for the grudging toil they gave. And here was I outdoing these drivers who to me had seemed most brutal!

For that day then, and for many others, I tried to discover just how it was that I had drifted into so rough and exacting an attitude. Did I not know now, as well as before, that the corporation for which we were all working was enormously rich? Had I not more evidence than before that the men were overworked and underpaid, my own demands proving it? Could I not see in the orders given me that there was no consideration for them, but only the thing to be accomplished at the least possible expense?

I acknowledged freely that this was absolutely true, and yet I now pleaded with myself that I saw no way to remedy it and that if I did not fulfill the company’s orders some one else would. The work had to be done. There was no way of permitting these men to shirk and take their time, without noticeably delaying the work. If the corporation was to be run, its present efficiency maintained and the public served, it would of course have to be done at a profit which would induce men of initiative and skill at the top to serve; otherwise no man would undertake the matter, and there would be no labor at all for any of these men at the bottom. For Nature apparently went on the theory of great reward for those who could or would originate and conduct in a large way, little for those who could not; and these at the bottom did not and apparently could not originate. Their reasoning powers were not as yet sufficiently developed for that. They were, by reason of their mental equipment, hewers of wood and drawers of water.

After a time I felt that I could no longer go on without making a definite choice: I must serve them or their masters wholeheartedly. The retort of the laborer had proved too great a shock, and it was long before I recovered my exterior equanimity, and never again my internal peace, here. Plainly I was not one called by nature to this task. Reason as I would, the two elements of capital and labor, exacting strength and helpless weakness, would not adjust themselves within my consciousness save in some such rough way as I here saw operating, and so because of my natural sympathy for these underlings I was forced in spite of myself to choose sides. Either I must relinquish my former attitude of sympathy for the men and opposition to the indifference of the company, or I must side with them. There could be no middle ground, and until I should choose my conscience would give me no peace.

It was after a particularly hard day’s work and because of some special conditions that I managed finally to reach a decision, which, however much it may have benefited me, helped them in no least way. We had been mixing concrete and, a touch of my old cynical uncertainty dominating me, I had been driving them all the day long, urging one to shovel faster, calling to another to bring the wheelbarrows of stone almost before they were needed, sending this one for water and that one for cement, until the men were running about like ants. About four o’clock of this long day it began to rain. It had been gray and lowery all day but now the moisture descended in a fine drizzle and we were compelled to work or leave unfinished the batch of concrete we were just beginning. In a sullen mood, because of my own dreary part in this, I stood and held them to their task, not caring much what became of them or myself either, until at last the work was completed. At dusk, damp and dreary, I took my lunch-box and tramped doggedly along the tracks toward the depot, comforted by one thought only: that the day was over and I myself was free.

It was at that hour when the traffic outward from the great city assumes its most imposing aspect. Along this magnificent highway of steel were speeding the trains of one of the wealthiest corporations in the world. Limiteds were passing, their splendid interiors aglow with half a hundred lights. Seemingly more prosperous citizens than we were reclining there in comfort. Others were gazing out idly. The dining cars of various trains were set with silver and white linen.

As I paused near the station to turn my eye on this truly appealing scene and to gather its significance as contrasted with that which I had just left, there passed by, going in my direction, the little procession of Italians over whom I ruled, bearing with them the tools with which they had been laboring. There was Philip, whom I had often noted as I stood beside the trench in which he was working, his body all twisted and bent from long years of unremitting toil; there was Angelo, old and leathern in feature, whose one boast was that he had never missed a day’s work in seventeen years; there was Matteo, thin, spare, worn-looking, whose eye was alight with a kindly humor and whose willingness to work I had never been able to question; there were John and Collarbrace (as we called one Calabrian), Mussolin and Jimmie, all trudging patiently onward like cattle, the day of their labor having brought forth nothing but a night of weariness.

And as I stood there looking at them I could not help contrasting the weariness of their labor with this (one of many, many), flowers which it, or labor like it, had produced at the top. Here was this immerse corporation with its magnificent equipment, its palatial depots, its comfortable trains speeding onward bearing their burdens of the comfortable (?) and the more fortunate (?), and here at the very bottom were these humble trudgers making their way homeward in the night and the rain. And as I thought of the meagerness of their wages, the manner in which I had driven them, and the profitless luxury, in so far as they were concerned, to which their labor trended, I resolved that I, for one, would have nothing more to do with it.

Not to drive where I could not ease, not to urge where I could not repay, not to be a tool in the hands of their indifferent masters who could not or would not interest themselves in them, was something, even though my ceasing could not relieve them of their toil.

PERSONALITY

The truth is all good things are gifts, a voice, strength of body, vigor of mind, vision, the power to lead, as in war, any art, beauty, charm. This is not to say that these things may not be technically improved, and are, but this is the business with which mediocrity is chiefly concerning itself. I know that the world, where it lacks the strength to think on the subject, thinks differently, but this is mere nonsense and without import.

The man of personality or destiny realizes the guidance, enmity or favor of not necessarily higher, we will say, but different powers. (I am not for saints, guardian angels, Buddhas, Christs, perfect gods all.) He realizes all too keenly the element of chance, luck, unpropitious as well as propitious hours. Sometimes, in spite of himself and to his wonder, he notes that his affairs prosper. “There is a tide—” At other times (and who has not realized this?), try as he will, he had better lay aside all effort and disappear. Fortune will have none of him. The furies hover over his path. Harpies beset him. Go where he will, there will be elements to annoy him, if no more than an ill wind to blow his cap away or to cast dust into his eyes. He, above all others, knows that time and chance happen to all men.

But it is so easy to cite the old-time virtues of honesty, stability, truthfulness, fair-dealing, etc., as proving character, its value, and the power of any one, however weak or defective, personally to achieve it. But always, in spite of the advocates of simple and normal and moral things as proving in themselves genius and worth, there is something more—magnetism, for instance, a thing not necessarily or solely a part of these other so-called virtues, and strength, assurance, courage, generous or the reverse. These are not things of ethical import necessarily, but they make for success just the same. Observe that youth admires color, flare, pugnacity, brute courage and daring; middle age, knowledge of sorts, aggressiveness, endurance, success; old age, wisdom, generosity, humility, etc. How many of the former are ethical? In the quiet halls of learning or reflection certain of the tabulated virtues may be extolled, but to whom does the world pay attention, to whom has it paid attention? Darius, Artaxerxes, Alexander, Cæsar, Hannibal, Attila, Alaric, Peter the Hermit, Napoleon, the Kaiser; possessing what of all these virtues? Cæsar kind, patient, honest, truthful? Napoleon the same? Antony the same? Attila the same? Not even the popes, the preachers, the founders of religion were so. Always craft, force, diplomacy; but little of the sacrificial media so extolled and commended to the rank and file in order to keep them at rest.

It is significant of the intellectual development of America, if not of other countries, that we hear less these days of character, that something or somewhat which we were all supposed to have, or at least develop for ourselves or make (!) à la Washington, Lincoln, Grant, etc., who in most American schoolbook essays and college addresses were and still are supposed to have made their skill, endurance, resourcefulness, etc.; and more of that other thing which we call personality and which for a long time apparently we were not supposed to have, that unexplainable, inescapable something with which we come and in which even here in America we are now beginning to believe. Yes, we are beginning to suspect that there are certain things which some of us cannot do, however much we may wish or try to. Also that ability in many realms and forms comes without volition on our part, fate and circumstance causing it to blaze for us whether we will or no. After many volumes of another kind of mush, this is at last becoming rather apparent. There is less talk now of being Napoleons all, adding inches to our stature by taking thought (lifting ourselves by our boot-straps, in other words), and more of plain effort according to our especially inherited abilities or capacities. It is a sad truth for most men, more especially for most Americans, when they discover it, but it is nevertheless an economic and helpful one. Men do better once they realize their genuine limitations and cease reaching for the moon. For so very long, here in America at least, we have been fed on something so very different: our inalienable ability to do anything and everything equally well.

One wonders at times whether the light is really breaking. Can it be that we are getting ready to admit that we are not Cæsars each and all, held back by our own idleness and indifference? One begins to rub one’s eyes. I have often wondered why it is that the word “common,” in its sense of being plentiful and therefore indifferent, has not struck home to the many of us for what it is: an expression of contempt; and that “uncommon,” “extraordinary,” denote approbation. Why, if this is not true, should everything that is common be held so lightly of the mass, whereas that which is special or individual, inherited or no, is of such intense interest to it? For example, the individual skill or personal traits of the actor, painter, writer, sculptor, the exceptionally talented in any field?

The truth is that the average man, dull as he is, realizes quite well that a creature who has little or nothing that is different from millions of his kind is of small import here or anywhere. There is no especial demand for what he has to offer. If he wishes to stand out above his fellows he must bring something new, and this he cannot provide by mere wishing or thinking. There is something more than that—inherent capacity, a something which he cannot create for himself, try as he may. He also knows that Nature sends bubbling up from her inexhaustible springs an infinitude of creatures who are of small import, because they have no inherent power wherewith to develop very special characteristics, or better yet individual impulses—in other words, personality. They cannot, and are not asked to, create them after they arrive here. They must have them to begin with, or they are not important, cannot make their way easily. And again, it is obviously quite right that a creature with qualities except those of the species should have to confine its claim to an existence entirely within the limits of the species, and live a life conditioned by them. If Nature wishes one to rise above the conditions wherewith he finds himself surrounded at birth She usually provides him with the equipment for so doing during gestation, or before, and in addition accidental and most opportune circumstances invariably aid him. He is the heir of most propitious conditions. Vide Cæsar, Napoleon, Shakespeare, Luther, Lincoln, even Goethe. Yet, it is impossible, I presume, to convince the mass that this is true. It would be too discouraging.

Again, it is a common fallacy among the ignorant that no lower animal possesses more than the generic characteristics of its species—such-and-such powers, such-and-such limitations, such-and-such instincts,—although this of course is not true. There are weak and strong animals of the same species, more cunning and less, more ferocious and less, better-natured and less, just as there are among men. (If you do not believe this study cats and dogs, the historic wolf of Cevennes in France.) Indeed in many intellectual circles, so-called, it is still claimed for man that he is the only one to possess individual character. But this is not true, as the “Origin of Species” plainly shows. Sometimes I think that man, take him by and large, presents less differences than some of the individuals of species of the so-called lower animals. He is supposed to reason more, but does he? It seems to me that the average cat reasons quite as well as the average plumber or grocer, if not better. Give a good pagan tomcat a man’s body and sensory capacity, and how long do you suppose he would remain a plumber? The truth is that man, somewhat confused at present in his response to those chemic instincts which appear originally to have guided him, has been all but done for mentally by vain isms and theories. At times these same appear to be able, and quite completely, to do for him mentally, as does cancer and tuberculosis for him physically—vide Christianity, Mohammedanism, Shintoism, etc. On the other hand, the animal has no such handicap, let us say, as Catholicism, Shintoism, or what Mohammed or Buddha or Zoroaster said. It has just life and its own bare wits or chemical responses wherewith to do, no restraining and deadening rules. Hence it has very marked personality at times, and makes its way exceedingly well and without restraint or deadening aid of community or mass governmental advice. This is true of snakes, birds, fishes, monkeys and all other creatures lower, so-called, than man.

In most men, individual character, that thing which is supposedly so superior to lower animals, comes to very little. They run in schools, join secret orders or churches, vegetate, label themselves in a dull way democrats, republicans, socialists, and strive in all ways to make themselves as like others (those within their immediate ken) as possible. My father, for instance (peace to his spirit!), wished to prepare himself by self-abnegation, prayers and good works here on earth to fit himself for an entirely mythical heaven, to be a standardized angel—wings, harp, robes and all—such as he saw in the “saint pictures” in the various Catholic churches which he attended from time to time. These were the only representations of the future life with which he was familiar, hence he accepted them as true! Indeed as a rule the average or ordinary man (fortunately there is no exact average) cannot think or see beyond his quite immediate environment and binding rules, his neighborhood, his church, what somebody else says or thinks.

A plumber wants to be exactly like the next successful plumber he sees; a grocer, the same; an undertaker, the same. Most rich men would like to live in a house like that of all the other rich men they know. Show them the very different house of a rich man in Spain, in Egypt, in India, in Japan—it would never, never do. It is not like that which they know. Their thoughts and desires, like their faces, are those of the species to which they belong. In the main, they are of a trivial, commonplace character, as unimportant as a bean or a pea. Like animals of so limited a mentality as the duck and the penguin, if you know one you know all. You might almost say that they have come to their end spiritually. Nothing can be done for them. Some more vigorous active thing—i. e., the thinking, restless, dissatisfied individual—must come along to rebel and push them aside. If ever the surface of the commonplace is to be disturbed the individual moved by some inherited or bestowed impulse must do it: Luther, Galileo, Keppler, Newton, Columbus.

Anything that is strong, special, different must, as a matter of course and by its very nature, stand alone in the world where so many things are not strong, special, different. That which places one being over another and sets differences between man and man is not alone intellect or knowledge, as some would have us believe (Schopenhauer, for one), but these plus, other things being equal, the vital energy to apply them or the hypnotic power of attracting attention to them—in other words, personality. It is that peculiar quality or ability which makes a way for our plans, desires, dreams. Cunning, which is by no means knowledge in the sense in which we use that word, nor intellect of a high order perhaps (although it may well be), still may play a magnificent share in personality and contribute to its triumph. No truer book than Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” although it earned him the distinction of equaling the devil, was ever written, although the necessary gift of hypnotic personality was by no means sufficiently insisted upon. Was not one of the amazing qualities of Julius Cæsar, as of Hannibal, Napoleon and, indeed, most of the outstanding figures of history, cunning? The average man, realizing his own limitations, does not like to believe it, but it is none the less true. Did Alexander the Great, for instance, lack it? Or Lincoln? On the other hand, mere strength without cunning is so little. Contrast the tiger and the Norman horse or an elephant. Which of the three is truly superior? Which one commands your innate respect?

Whatever else you do, believe nothing in regard to the individual’s ability to develop an especial and remarkable capacity, unless it is already inherent in him at birth. Nature works in no other way. Another thing, life cannot do without brains, however much disassociated from beatific virtues these may be; for these are a gift and can no more be created here than you can add to your height by taking thought. What life does is to develop and train especial inherent capacities—an eye, a hand, a taste, a smell perhaps; but the instinct and the ability to foreknow, to appreciate, understand—these things are not taught in schools. Schools labor with them to improve, polish, give them a special turn or bent; little more and little less.

A COUNSEL TO PERFECTION

Looking at most lives—the defeated, the hungry, the poorly equipped mentally and physically, the homely, those seized on in childhood by the strong and shrewd and made to serve pointless and wretched purposes entirely alien to their lives—I should say that Nature does not care and that distinctly for them life may not be worth its pains. On the other hand, where crass chance lifts a given organism to great power or builds it with such care that it is an almost perfect and delicately responsive machine, life may well be and no doubt is worth all its costs. Many organisms, by accident of dullness or non-responsiveness of a higher sort, come off with less pain, and Nature, either accidentally or intentionally, builds most of these. They are machines well suited to the rough grind of material and psychic forces, and may be said to strike such a neat equation with the circumstances of life that they achieve a kind of sensory comfort or satiation and so do well enough. Again, dulling religion or illusions of one type and another, fatuitous hopes far beyond the pale of possibility, sensory response of a comfortable character to this earthly scene as a spectacle, or depleted nervous energy or force which reduces many to the point where nervous or sensory response is lacking, eases many to the place where it may be said that if they do not enjoy keenly they at least do not suffer keenly.

But is man happy? Is his game worth the candle? The sophisticated reply that the fear of death proves that life is worth while, since all are so eager to avoid it. But this is worse than no answer for it predicates either no life at all, which is certainly no recommendation, or that there may be worse things there than those which befall man here—certainly no proof of a keen joy in this.

The essential tragedy of life, then, and the thing which makes it painful to consider, is this: that once man is raised above the non-cerebrating and automatic sensory responsiveness of the beast he becomes conscious of the rather obvious fact that he is either an intelligently or an accidentally evoluted mechanism or minute tool in the hands of something so much more significant than himself that he is as nothing; and again, that to this force or intelligence above him his little earthly schemes bear about as much relationship as do those of an office boy bent on becoming a baseball pitcher to those of the Standard Oil Company or the German Emperor bent on world dominion. And again—and this is the darkest thought of all—it, our personal Creator, assumed by the religionists at least to be so careful of our individual welfare, may be little more than the veriest tyro in so far as the larger and largest creative forces or impulses in the universe are concerned. Manifesting little or no interest in us, no more perhaps than is needful to its own welfare, it may be as little to the powers above it as are we to it. For who can guess whether the thing or power which makes man is the ultimate power or guiding force in so spacious a thing as the universe? Already our chemists and physicists are inclined to doubt it. Its impulses, humors, appetites and methods, as manifest in man, are by no means of so glorious or illuminating a character as to inspire admiration, even in its machine: man. Plainly, its methods and actions bespeak as much of the lowest as of the highest that we know, and this is as much evidenced by the thoughts, aspirations, tastes or habits, chemically compulsory or no, of man, its product, and through whom it seemingly expresses itself, as by its methods and procedure in other ways, fumbling efforts and failures of all kinds. For man in his capacity as chemist, physicist, fumbling philosopher, didactic or synchronetic poet, experimenter or agnostic is scarcely a fit creature for one to contemplate as the highest product of a so-called supreme intelligence or God, or Good, however well he might look as the product of a minor and so seeking hieratic power. For if God, or Good, as so many have already pointed out, can do no better than produce the quarreling, eating, seeking, spewing thing we know as man—and that is the chief concern of His intelligence—!!!

We will assume that you have read at least a simple work on astronomy or chemistry or physics. If so, could you possibly believe that the present intelligence of man, or even any conceivable progress which he can make in his present limited form and with his present equipment of senses, would be of sufficient force to gather either the meaning or sensory impact of spaces, distances, weights, relationships which at present, except in the most minute and fragmentary way, are entirely beyond him? Consider the meaninglessness of numbers to you, of great weights, distances. I for one would be the last to cast a shadow upon man’s dreams or pride, but when one investigates even the little we are permitted to know—the darkness, the inexplicable confusion, the non-reason in all the things we think, believe, hope for—it would, at the least, suggest that æons must elapse and man himself change radically and develop powers (which, if they are his at all at present, are in embryo) before he could begin to conceive of the significance of even the smallest of the forces which he seems to use but which in reality use him.

All the great things, the creative impulses and substances such as produce even the most minute forms of life which at present we can see, are entirely outside the range of his limited group of senses. He does not know, for instance, where heat or cold begin or end; what shades lie beyond the outer edges of the spectrum; what are the limits or the immediate beyond of sound, light, weight, space, etc. His weak senses plus his devised instrumental aids offer him no real help. They merely multiply his difficulties. Something has invented an eye, an ear, an olfactory nerve, the ganglia of the fingertips, the central cerebral cortex and so-called reason, all of which appear to be nothing more than assembled and synchronized reactions to other and unknown stimuli, wherewith it is possible now for man to apprehend only minute portions of the immense energies and substances blowing about him. Yet with all these aids and the evidences of the mechanism of the universe outside him which they yield, still man, attacking special bits and portions, finds it quite impossible to suggest the reason for anything. He lacks the equipment and power, which even the thing which made him may not have, of creating such finer perceptive organs as might aid him. At present and at best apparently, he is allowed only to invent some things—such, for instance, as are or may be useful to the propagation and rearing of man in the matter of numbers, not brains. His Creator apparently is either unable or unwilling to endow him with such equipment as might make for great knowledge. Tremendous psychic opportunities appear and go by, as when a duller and more ignorant Rome conquers a sensitive and highly perceptive and meditative Greece. Owing to his minor equipment, ignorance and vain beliefs flourish, and he stumbles from one vain illusion and delusion to another—to achieve what? Something, possibly, which his Creator can use. Or so it would seem.

But it is not this phase alone which is troublesome. One might and does get along well enough knowing but a minute portion of that which, it would seem, our immediate Creator must plainly know concerning the processes by which we arrive, depart and function during our little stay here, but to a seeking intelligence there is inescapable tragedy in the plain implication, written large over everything, that to the accidental Creator of man the largest intelligence of whatsoever bent or character among him is of no more importance to the ruling force than the veriest gnat or leaf. It, whatever it is that makes man and the animal, manufactures intelligences as though they were buttons or pins, and though it create from time to time an Anaximander, a Plato, an Alexander, a Socrates, a Keppler, a Newton, a Leonardo or any other titanic brain, yet to it the least ditch-digger or wastrel is as important. The mass is everything, the individual nothing. With the greatest nonchalance or blundering inconsequence it strikes down a Hertz, a Raphael, a Curie, a Spinoza, a Schubert, a Keats. Seventy years is the allotted span for all, great or small, an average amount of strength, the same stomach and blood capacity. Though an individual had seemingly the most important ideas under consideration, great schemes wherewith to benefit or further the so-called progress of man (the especial care, as we learn, of his Maker), still this is of no least importance to his Creator. It is invariably on, on, out of the way, as though the Creator had most carefully arranged not to take advice from any one He made, or as though a blind process were at work which could not. If the former, one might say small blame to one so powerful. Presuming Him even moderately intelligent, how unimportant His little mannikins must be to the ultimate scheme of things, the giant forces through which He manifests Himself and which grind, helplessly create, helplessly control! Imagine taking advice from a loaf of bread you had accidentally evolved, or listening to the protests or advice of a ginger-snap of your own creating!

Nevertheless if it were possible in the face of the driving forces which seem wholly to manipulate him to reach man and by a suggestion aid him, it would be that in the face of so much confusion he no longer wastes time on theories wholly unrelated to himself or his own material welfare, his essential necessities here, but rather that he see to it first of all, and clearly, that his life here is something which is to be lived here and now to the utmost, in the best form for all—during seventy years, if not longer—here, and not elsewhere, and that some reasonable and concentrated effort be made to make it livable for man here and now instead of elsewhere, however glittering or picturesque that elsewhere may be, thin romance that it is. For is it not high time that we all realized how essential it is to make life worth while for all here, knowing as we now do that man is not a pet in Nature and that if he makes anything of himself and his social as well as his mental state here it must be with the full understanding that he can expect but little if any aid from Nature or the forces directing him, certainly none that would tend to ultimately enlarge his own mental clarity and supremacy. To this end therefore it would seem advisable that man as a whole throw over as swiftly as possible all his old-time religious and moral conceptions, his restraining conventions, taboos and the like, and re-examine for himself the data concerning which, accidentally or otherwise, he now finds himself capable of cerebrating and according to which he is now supposed to regulate his life. It may not be true that he should limit himself as his present theories and ethics suggest. And furthermore, his greatest problem being that of living longer, of being stronger, happier, not so much the butt and jest of chance or the willful or indifferent moods of the surrounding and stronger forces in Nature, that he devote himself entirely to solving those problems.

Elsewhere I have indicated a possibly broader moral conception which may be of value to this end. One of the greatest achievements, of course, would be to rid the human mind of all vain illusion concerning things spiritual, to get it to see, if it were possible, that man is not necessarily an enduring spiritual creature endowed—for who can know?—with an enduring and progressive soul, but rather that he is an implement or tool in the hands of something else which is creating or using him as, for example, the vine does the leaf, yet which itself may be of no great import in Nature.

If, by any process of investigation, and as now seems possible, it could be proved that man’s Creator is no universal lord by any means but a blind fumbling force, it should be possible for man to do one of two things: either ally himself strictly with such impulses and instincts as he can detect as coming from this lesser and plainly more immediate Creator—many of them plainly non-moral enough, as we may see by like impulses in him, and so aid this Creator to discover Himself; or, now that he has a foothold here and appears to be a fairly self-perpetuating machine, to endeavor to reveal to himself and for himself the secret of self-creation and perpetuation and so become the equal of the force or forces now using him. But to that end he would need to rid himself of the delusion that anything in life should be accepted in blind faith and without question as permanent. One of the oldest of the Hebraic sayings is “My son, get wisdom, get understanding,” and a later saw declares “Knowledge is power,” and so it is. Adam, in the fable of the genesis of man, was condemned not so much for eating of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge as for the fact that “in the day ye eat thereof your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” And Prometheus (forethought), the other “God” who is supposed to have created man out of earth and water and who for man’s benefit “stole fire from heaven in a hollow tube” and taught him all the useful arts, was punished for this by Zeus, the supreme “God,” by being chained to a rock and having his liver daily torn by an eagle—certainly a most significant fable, for he was trying to make something of man, or rather teaching man to help himself, and this the Supreme Ruler of the Universe did not want, probably for the same reason that the Hebraic “God” wanted Adam to remain a dull machine or clod.

But the Greek fable is far more hopeful and significant than is the Hebraic one, for, in the former, strength (Hercules) subsequently slew the eagle and released Prometheus, or forethought, thus allowing him to aid man; while in Genesis man is condemned, slave-like and forever after, to “eat his bread in the sweat of his face,” a very sharp commentary on the nature of his Maker as the ancients conceived him. What is implied by both fables is that man is a waif or accident in Nature, not intentionally endowed with wisdom or the power to get it, and that Nature (Zeus, Jehovah, anything you will) markedly objects to his obtaining any “lest he become as one of us” and “put forth his hand and take also of the Tree of Life and eat and live forever.”

In view of this one might ask, Is life worth living? Is there any use? Perhaps there would be if man, accidentally evoluted or not, but coming at last, by accident or not, to the place where he finds himself able to reason upon the processes which have brought him thus far, could seize upon the constructive processes and so begin a creative, constructive career of his own which would redound to his own benefit and comfort and none other. Only there is no least evidence as to that yet, i. e., that it is possible. In so far as one may judge by chemistry and physics man appears to be in the grip of a blind force or process which cannot help itself and from which man can derive no power to help himself save by accident or peradventure. Even now, for all one can know, he may be sinking into a blind, unreasoning mush instead of evoluting further, so many are the theories which counsel him to believe in some vague, aimless peace hereafter and which he so readily accepts. The important thing for him to do, supposing that he could, would be to avoid henceforth all destroying notions of this character and to think of himself rather as a waif, an unloved orphan in space, who must nevertheless and by his own effort make his own pathetic way in the world. Or, if that is too harsh, then to think of himself as part and parcel (leaf and vine) of some hard-pressed Creator, a sun, a group of chemic forces synthetized into an individual somewhat like himself, not a Supreme God, by any means, but a kind of local manufacturer or well-meaning Prometheus who is trying to make something out of man and Himself at the same time, being in or of man, or man in Him (“I am in the Father; the Father is in me”), but who in turn and so through him, man, is being assailed by larger or rival forces and cannot always make His way as well as He might wish. Hence, He needs the consideration and even help of man, the atomic force of which He is composed. That being the case, the burden of life might possibly come to seem less hard.

But, aside from such an hypothesis, thought offers but small comfort to the thinker viewing the drift of fact as one must. For see how painfully and often most sadly our scientists and philosophers dig at this riddle of existence and how slowly, if at all, we are really fitting ourselves for the giant task, these greater and greater contests with Nature, which must come if man is to come to anything. Even individual self-preservation via chemistry, physics, mathematics, economics, sociology, philosophy, astronomy, botany, biology, and what not, is a slow and difficult process. On every hand are destructive forces that beset us, and we have apparently only ourselves to look to that we be not so persistently tortured. All religions and theories of Divine aid to the contrary, man has been and is now compelled to battle hourly and momentarily for his “right” (how pale is that word!) to live and grow, let alone think—against heat, cold, destructive rivals and enemies of all kinds, destructive insects, savage animals, savage men, droughts, storms, dissensions, diseases, death—whereas he in turn has sought and does now seek to help himself via farmers, butchers, inventors, scientists, doctors, seeking to wrest from forces apparently alien to the one which prospers him, if there is such an one, some of the powers which apparently they hold in such vast abundance and which might even contain the secret of eternal life. Who knows? Indeed, surveying what has befallen him throughout the ages, I should suggest to man that he accept as true the fabled statement made by “God” in Genesis iii. 14:19, and seek persistently and without too much reverence for some method of solving his own difficulties. He should reject vain theory, especially that which relates to a mythical reward hereafter, and cling only to those methods and forms of procedure which give promise or hope of a larger reward here, tending to strengthen his capacity for living here and now. Such a theory or belief, however antagonistic to current religious theories, would at least tend to make man less depressed and indifferent to his state here and more conscious of the fact that if he is to extract any joy out of his span he must think and plan to make things better not only for himself but for others, since joy for himself depends upon his joy in others and they in him. Indeed, it would give him more zest for the game here if he did. By that last I am not arguing with the moralists for all their shabby, little pinchbeck repressions, the idea that the less you do and know the better you are; but rather that the more you do and know the better off you are, physically and mentally, and the more you make your state or form of government do and let you know the better.

How soon would not such an attitude—not on the part of all, for one cannot hope for that, but of even a moderate minority—make for a more vivid, aggressive, fascinating world! How soon might not the now seemingly sealed doors open, unsolvable (so-called) riddles end as solved, man acquire new reasoning faculties, senses and powers, and finally stand forth a creative force himself, a genuine creator on his own account, able not only to fend and forefend against many of his present disasters here but to give new powers and thought, and even creative force, to things which now crawl meekly at the feet of man? Who knows? Is not courage better than fear? a healthy, if skeptical, seeking better than blind, dull acceptance of anything or nothing, as the case may be? I, for one, think so, and, for my part, would prefer to be a seeking Prometheus chained to a rock and my liver gnawed daily by the eagle of an irritated and jealous higher power than a crawling worm or whimpering slave praying for some endless Nirvana, or a minute part in an endless legion of cherubim harping the glory of something which had plainly sought neither my peace nor my significance but only my painful, unimportant and even worthless service.

NEUROTIC AMERICA AND THE SEX IMPULSE

Again, look at any American city where morality or religion, or both, presumably have full sway (and in what American city are they not supposed to be dominant?), and what do you find? The most desirable locations in the best portions of the city, outside of the trade centers, given over to the leading churches and the newspapers, which preach a lofty code of ethics and morals which they themselves find difficult if not impossible to practice; while elsewhere the local bookstores and picture shops and bill-boards are crowded with a class of literature and illustration, or so-called “art,” which to read or view, according to the adjacent churches and newspapers, would result in the loss of your immortal soul as well as your local standing. And yet these same are displayed, sold and read plentifully and with avidity, for the very good reason, no doubt, that they satisfy a craving and a thirst not otherwise open to satiation. In any town of any size, what pictures are not displayed and sold: “September Morn,” “Youth,” “Purity,” “Innocence,” “Yes,” “Waiting,” and the like, disguised as little as the law will permit. Again, where will you not find a swarm of sex magazines labeled “breezy,” “snappy” and the like, the kind that any sex-suppressed neurotic might well crave, and all received with the profoundest gratitude and widest distribution? Where in America, any more than abroad (barring countries of Asia, Africa and the South Pacific, where sex-suppression is not the order of the day) does one lack for pornographic nudes or privately circulated writings of the most lurid character? Are the art or book or drug stores of the small towns free of them? Is it not true that you can still buy almost everywhere, “Three Weeks,” “Life’s Shop Window,” “The Yoke,” and other such classics, whereas those admirable volumes of life and satire “The Decameron,” “Droll Stories,” “The Confessions,” Cellini, are only to be discovered, and that by chance and peradventure and “against the law,” on the dark and musty shelves of some out-of-the-way old book store, and these consumed by the intelligensia and the sex-satisfied only, and with an upward mouth-curl of amusement at the innate humors of passion? The hobble-skirt, the tango dance, the Hula-Hula or Hawaiian melodies—what did each in its day indicate? Plays like “Everywoman,” “Experience,” “The Girl from Rector’s,” “Parlor, Bedroom and Bath”—what did they suggest?

Not so very long since, I stopped for a little while in a town of a hundred thousand population in the South. It was moral, religious, conventional—in other words, American. It might as well, however, have been in New England, the Northwest, the Southwest, the Middle West, for any difference to be discovered in its moral texture. In this home of chivalry, courtesy, purity and the like, erected originally on the backs of driven slaves, a number of its most interesting points of vantage were as usual occupied by the churches, as impressive and prosperous as those anywhere. It had only one theater of consequence, and that open only two nights a week, if so often. Its poorer classes were entertained by three or four moving-picture establishments (“Passed by the National Board of Censors”); but the well-to-do also attended these, for they had no other place to go for amusement. Yet, in the face of the highly censored “movies,” theater and bookstores and the absence of houses of ill-repute (all suppressed), there were two or three “first-class” hotels, all with their Thès Dansantes, cabaret suppers and the like, of the character of which I propose to speak later. The most exclusive bookstore was so very moral that it would not carry any books not approved by the “Watch and Ward” and “Library Protection” association, nor would the vine-covered library in the best section, although at any time you might have gone to the principal dry-goods store and by a roundabout process secured nearly all that you desired.

While I was in this city a twelve-year-old boy was arrested at one of the railroad stations about two hundred yards from the principal beach for appearing in a two-piece bathing suit. It was not asserted in the prosecution which followed (which was vigorously defended by his father) that a twelve-year-old boy in a two-piece bathing suit was immoral, but a man in a one-piece one or a girl in any kind at all would be, and to avoid the possible vitiation of public purity which might thus follow the boy was arrested. He was discharged with a warning—but even so. You can see how high the virtue at this city should be.

Yet, at the same time, in this same city, were the three aforementioned hotels with their Thès Dansantes, roof gardens, cabaret grills, this, that and the other, and in these might have been seen, any late afternoon or evening, winter and summer, such a collection of sex-struck infants and elders as would be worth the same price of admission anywhere. The clothes! The wondrous shoes and gaudy purses, the subdued and yet moving and suggestive combination of colors! The efforts to flagellate the already too harried imagination with a promise of delights which the local morality squad, I fear, would never permit to be realized. You could pay as much in either of these places for a pot of tea and three little thin slices of toast as you could anywhere in the world. In their efforts to provide you with a superior (sex) atmosphere they made it possible for you so to do.

Wrong? Not a bit. I am not describing it for that purpose; nor am I quarreling with human nature for expressing its inmost desires, being what it is: avid, alluring, secret, hungry. I am smiling at the anachronistic spirit of the same community which would arrest the boy in the bathing suit, prohibit “near beer,” snip every even weakly suggestive passage out of a “movie,” “run” any indecent play (“Hedda Gabler,” let us say, or “The Wild Duck,” since it could not understand them) out of town. No copies of “The Song of Songs,” Rousseau’s “Confessions,” “The Decameron,” or the unexpurgated “Arabian Nights.” Never, never, never! Yet look at these same hotels, these girls and youths clinging to each other in the suggestive dances! The movements, the sinuous, almost savage, abandon, the love-looks, the whispers! And the automobiles lined up along distant country roadsides in the dark later—although not a single house of assignation or prostitution was tolerated within the city limits. One had to secure a Ford and employ the open woods and fields instead. And in the basement next to the barbershop in each hotel was one or more “manicure booths,” curtained confessionals or recessionals, into which one might retire with a manicure maid to have one’s fingers done. Owing to the dashing quality of these maids the business was large.

For myself, I do not know what the psychic or spiritual or creative significance of these impulses of the sexes may be, unless, in truth, within equational limits they are moral or at least essential, and so to be cherished as a good instead of an evil; but one thing is certain: their appearance in this florid public form and in the center of a vice-cured city would indicate that either the attitude of the nation is wrong or that we have in our midst a host of neurotic or sex-struck degenerates who ought to be eliminated from the body civic in a very radical manner. But are they neurotic? Or is it the nation that is wrong, and these but the neurotic symptoms of its error? Certainly, nowhere outside of America and especially in such a vice-taboo realm as this, I fancy, are the terrors of sex excess, the degradation and disease following sex libertinage, more enthusiastically or more glowingly pointed out as the psychic or spiritual aftermath or heavenly punishment of these “sins”; and, yet, for all the length of time these horrors have been “known” or insisted upon or pointed out, and regardless of whether they are really true or not, is there any marked diminution of the so-called sex evil in America? Has the denying of drink or prophylactics to the American sailor or soldier cured him of his interest in sex? Will it? The world apparently, or that part of it expressed by, in or through the sexes, is as avid and seeking as ever. We know, or some of us do, that the chemistry by which we and the sex impulse are compounded is above the knowledge or volition of man, although its object in so far as human moods and passions are concerned, is plain enough. But in America we are not willing, if we do know, to admit it. Our increasing numerical presence here should be evidence enough of its force, but we waive that in favor of our theories in regard to the inherently moral and Christian home—even the complete suppression of sex! That a balance or equation between excess and license and inane, mollusc-like passivism in regard to sex and its expression is all that is ever struck in Nature, is plain enough to those who think; but that an American in authority in state or church should admit it! Life, apparently, is never exact in anything, and the desirability of having it so is of course open to question. But still——

Yet, to me, the impulses we are trying to suppress are, this side of excess, perfectly normal, while the thing we think we want is an infantile conception of life and its processes, unsuited to thinking men and women. Our conviction is apparently that sexuality is essentially wrong and debasing, and yet we do not really think so, as our intense national interest in every phase of sex proves. We are afraid to face ourselves honestly and openly in anything, neurotically so, and that is what makes the American intellect so utterly contemptible and negligible at times. What is nearer the truth is that our attitude is to be psychoanalytically traced in various ways to the strangely exaggerated (neurotic, I think) conceptions of the part sex or its over-emphasis plays in life due to repression, which have followed upon impossible religious theories brought from abroad (Quaker, Methodist, Puritan, Mennonite, Catholic), and our reaction to them. These have developed that repressive social and biologic ignorance regarding sex characteristic of so many American families, offspring of these sects even when they are no longer of them. The conviction that sex is debasing, dominant at least at this time in nearly every American mind, I believe, is to be traced so often to these earlier experiences, particularly with regard to parents and their views. The average American child—and I suppose England is not much better, judging by their novels and morals—is permitted to base its ideals of life and social relations, especially sex relations, on this earlier pretense on the part of parents that sex does not exist—for them at least.