Class 'PSe /T/o ightN°-L3 Z>Q ^ COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. POEMS AND ESSAYS BY ALFRED HITCH PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR BOX 273, STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA I92O Copyright, j 920 by Alfred Hitch NOV 23 1820 ©CI.A604631 I want to see, and feel, and know Not only what is well; I ask not, coward- like, to go Blindfolded down to Hell. I ask for human life and breath, And pure, without alloy, Life with the bitterness of death, With all its grief and joy. CONTENTS Poems Love I Come to Thee 23 When I Think of Thee 23 Ulysses 24 My Favorite Poet 24 The Faithful 24 Need 25 Woman 25 Weeping Willow 26 The Flower of Love 26 From Far Away 26 The Wedding 27 The Assignation 27 Nympholepsy 28 Love Without a Lover 28 Memoria 29 Divorced 29 Married Love 29 Love Triumpant 30 At the Theatre 31 Summa Summarum 31 Mater Dolorosa 31 The Meaning of Love 31 At the Dance , 2 Procreation 32 A Maiden Mortal -><* At the Ball 33 Love and Friendship 33 Othello-Jove 34 Modern Love 34 Her Father's Daughter 34 The Frailty of Love 3c In You 35 The Parting 35 Jealousy 35 Fooled Religion At Church Sacrifice The Eucharist One World at a Time To a Christian Mind The Truth Saint and Sinner 36 3« 33 The City and Its God 39 For the Truth 39 39 The Myth of the Soul 4 o 40 4i Ready-made Religion 4! Hell 4I 4 The Scarlet Letter" 42 To a Christian Maiden 42 The Ordination 42 43 43 43 Directions For Building 44 Mortality 44 Reincarnation 44 The One Thing Needful 45 How Shall God Know His Own ? 45 Carpe Diem 45 The Individual 46 God 47 Fathers and Sons 47 To Jesus of Nazareth 48 Nativity Hymn 48 "Jesus Wept" 49 Faith 49 A Challenge 49 Walt Whitman or Christ ? 50 "Bishop Brougham's Apology" 50 My Father 51 Men 51 A Devotee 52 Dies Irse 52 Materialism 52 Animal Life Chicago Stockyards 53 November 54 Fear 54 To the Horse 55 To an Elephant 55 Night 55 Roosevelt in Africa 56 Quiet 56 Fishing 57 Thanksgiving 57 The White Badge of Cruelty 58 Hogs 58 The Tyrants of the Earth 59 Henry Bergh 59 The Praying Mantis 60 "And God gave Man Dominion" 60 War 1914 61 Conscripts 62 The Casualty List 62 The Soldiery 63 "Where is Thy Brother Abel ?" 63 The Voice of Our Age 63 The Tragedy of the Young Men 64 A Hero 64 Religion in the Trenches 65 Love and Loyalty 65 A Suggestion of the Devil 65 Crime and Punishment 66 To the German Emperor 1 6 Advice to a Soldier 66 Militarism 67 The Triumph of Mind 67 The Price of Valor 67 The Conquered Country 68 Miscellaneous The New World 69 Wheels 69 The City of Unrest 70 To the Sphinx 70 At the Inn of Life 7 1 Agreed 7 1 Spring 7 2 A Face in the Glass 72 To a Butterfly 72 To a Field of Celery 73 Hirelings 73 The Great Divide 73 To a Boy 74 An Autumn Thought 74 Instability 74 To Double Roses 75 To a Reformer 75 Sleep 75 Eex Scripta 76 Dispossessed 76 Ex Parte 76 The Wreck of the Titanic 77 At a Social Reception 77 Gold 77 Alter Ego 78 The Overland Limited 78 The White Eights 78 Of My Brothers 79 The Emergence of Man 79 To the Indian Pipe 79 A Merry Go-round 80 Lost Days 80 In the City 81 The Dream 81 Vanitas Vanitatum 82 To the Sea 82 From a Car- window 83 Nature 83 My Heart and I 84 Sunday Evening 84 Wander Song 85 Hypersensitive 85 The Unattainable 86 Alone 86 To a Baby 86 In the Slums 87 Tobacco Smoke 87 In Extremis 88 Between the Bays 88 A Toiler's Conscience 89 The Aeroplane 89 Blood 89 The Beggar 90 A House Divided Against Itself 90 Whip-poor-will 90 Water on the Desert 91 To a Pine Tree 91 When Thou art Old 92 Old Age 92 Spectres 93 Empty Bottles 93 God Said 93 Rockaby Baby 94 Microbes 95 Ivike a Flower 95 An Invocation to Paternity 96 The Black Side 9 6 Revenge 97 John Doe and Richard Roe 97 Knights-errant 97 The Vagabond 9 8 From the Outside 98 Streets 99 Beauty 99 Wealth and Poverty 100 The Hardest Thing in the World to Do 100 A Friend 100 The Laborer 101 Master and Servant 101 Wanderlust 102 Loneliness 102 Impasse 102 The Return 103 Desire 103 The Masquerade 103 At the Road's End 104 Flowers 104 My Lost Ideal 105 Through Life by Train 105 The Deserted House 106 A Birth 106 Death, the Inquisitor 106 Vain Advice 107 Imagination 107 Science 107 A Camp-meeting Promenade 108 Limitations 108 Alfalfa 109 Thoughts no Beauty and Distance no Tenants no The Sisters of Mercy 11 1 The Child-king in "The Female of the Species" 112 The Answer 112 Brothers 113 Liberty 113 To Know and Not to Know 113 The Unpardonable Sin 113 Forsythia and Daffodils 114 The Mountain Trail 115 The Rocky Mountain Columbine 116 To the California Poppy 116 Coyote 1 16 Cause and Effect 1 17 The Wanderer 1 17 Elizabeth 1 17 Nocturne 1 17 W. C. T. U. 1 18 An Epitaph 118 The Drunkard's Toast 119 The Course of Empire 1 19 Personal To Swinburne 1 20 To George Sterling 1 20 To Rudyard Kipling 1 2 1 To Dante 1 2 t G. K. Chesterton 122 To F. W. H. Myers 122 Shakespeare and the Baconians 123 Annie Besant 123 John Brown 123 Keats 124 Izaak Walton 124 To Joyce Kilmer 125 To Father Tabb 125 Thoreau at Walden 126 To Eugene V. Debs 126 Ave et Vale 127 The Iliad 127 At the Sign of the Lyre 128 Open House 128 The Dead Boss 129 130 Sold Pi,acb Spring in Delaware 131 San Francisco 132 California 132 Days on Pnget Sound 132 Mojave Hills 133 Chicago 133 The Desert: Nevada 134 Casa Grande 134 The Seven Cities of Cibola 135 Sunset in Arizona 135 The Desert: Arizona 136 An Arizona Toast 136 Romance in Californina 137 Essays Protoplasm and Consciousness 141 Morality and Consciousness 141 Creation and Consciousness 142 The Hunter-Sportsman 143 Love and Hate 143 Matter 144 Patriotism 145 True Greatness 146 Democracy and Autocracy 147 Notes on Nietzsche 148 "Man, the Erect" 153 Carlyle and Hero-worship 154 The Great Mystery 155 Studies in Irrationality 155 Caveat Emptor 156 Beauty and Pleasure 156 Life 157 Food, Clothing, and Shelter 157 Nature *5 8 Pragmatism and Truth 159 Reason and Desire 164 The Mortality of the Ego 165 Religion and Woman 167 Optimism 167 The Vital Element in Religion 168 Trees and Ideas 169 Religion and Morality 169 Christ and Conventional Religion 170 Creation and Evolution 173 "The Rest is Silence" 173 The Hope of the World 174 Intolerance 175 ,,The Fear of God" 176 Skepticism 176 A Democracy Afraid of Itself 177 The Human Revolt 178 Imagination and Desire 178 The Supernatural 179 A Metaphysical Dream 179 Health and Deceit 179 Poetry 180 In My Garden 180 A Plea for the Worst Books 181 Poets, Past and Present 181 Working for Wages 182 The Reformer 182 The Cigar-hero 183 The Penitentiary 183 Marriage 184 Explanation 184 War Notes War and Consciousness 185 Arms and the Fool 187 The Weakness of Force 188 Preparedness 188 What the War Teaches 189 1919 190 Definition and Suggestion 191 POKMS LOVE I COME TO THEE I COMK to thee with the yearning Of a thousand million loves, Out of the infinite loving Of life and all that moves. I come to thee as the pollen The light winds lift and blow Comes to the waiting flower — O welcome me so ! WHEN I THINK OF THEE When I think of thee, I wonder why men ever tire of love And why they ever struggle to get free ? I'd go triumphantly to be thy slave And find it sweet to die murdered by thee. 24 IvOVB ULYSSES Ulyssks, noted for his wisdom, Sailing borne from Troy, Saw the sirens, Love and Beauty, Heard them sing of joy; But he stopped not for their singing, Nor for pleading eyes, Sailed right on and so escaped Death, but was he wise ? MY FAVORITE POET Since she read the cherished volume Of my favorite English poet, More than ever it is dear. As she read the verses over, Did she think of me, I wonder, As I read and think of her ? THE FAITHFUL As the kneeling Mussulman To Mecca turns to pray, So my heart, dear, turns to thee And never turns away. NEED Your need should be my will And make me strong To master every ill All the day long. / need your need of me, darling, I need your need of me. Your need should be the spur To life in me, And so help me conquer The world for thee. / need your need of me, darling, I need your need of me. WOMAN Hk has no home who has no wife, For woman is the home of man. There's no one else to love him, No one else that can; Only woman shares his life, Only woman knows; He came from woman and to woman goes. 2.6 IvOVB WEEPING WILLOW I would I were a willow, planted My lady's grave above, Slow -growing through the years, outlasting The mein'ry of our love. I'd grow down in the earth to find her, The love love could not save, And wind my rooty arms around her And weep above her grave. THE FLOWER OF LOVE Past love hath blossomed, maid, in thee, Love red with crime And white with jealousy And dreamy-eyed with memories, — Thou flower of the centuries And fruit of time. FROM FAR AWAY As I walked the streets of this distant city, I have missed thee from my side all day ; And now darkness falls over land and sea — I love thee in dreams and far away. LOVE _£T THE WEDDING Only a year ago he died, And today she weds again. His children lead the bridal march — His children — The wedding bells in the church ring out Over the grave where her husband lies. But there's no protest from the dead, From the grave he does not rise. "Speak now or forever hold your peace," And the dead man does not rise. Only a year ago, and today To another man his wife is wed. If he were not dead, he now would die Ay, surely he is dead. THE ASSIGNATION We met as shadows in the dark To purposeless and half-thought deed; Yet lo ! the night rang out with it And woke the startled day And echoes of eternity. s8 I«OVB NYMPHOLEPSY The face of a maiden seen in the street, It haunts me wherever I go; We never met and shall never meet, And it was years and years ago. And was she beautiful ? I do not know I know that she looked at me And I looked into her eyes, and O ! All else seemed but as vanity. I walk the streets when the day is done And watch the faces go by — A thousand faces, but never the one For which I pine and die. LOVE WITHOUT A LOVER To love without a lover, How dull the days go by, The days that bring him never, The nights that wait and sigh. If you should see my lover, O little birds that fly, Tell him the years are passing, Tell him I fade and die. LOVE 29 MEMORIA Years come and go, still bringing New fashions and new themes, But she forever reigneth Queen of my heart and dreams. As perfume of dead roses Shut in old books of rhyme, She lives in memory only, Beyond the reach of time. DIVORCED Divorced from husband and wife, But not from father and mother; In your children ye shall go Down the centuries together. MARRIED LOVE When deepened and confined, The w T ide and shallow stream that runs to waste Is turned into a torrent, so love, Confined within the channel of our lives, Conserves its strength and passion through the years. 30 LOVE LO VK TRIUMPHANT Thb world grows chill and overcast — Hold me fast, Love, hold me fast ! — Say not farewell, but hold me fast Lest Death be lord of love at last — Hold me fast, Love, hold me fast ! The ground is frozen hard, and white Hold me tight, Love, hold me tight ! The wind is howling through the night; Thou art fading from my sight Hold me tight, Love, hold me tight ! I know that in the coffin-chest Hold me, press me to thy breast ! I can never, never rest Except thou fold me to thy breast — Clasp me, fold me to thy breast ! The world grows chill and overcast- Hold me fast, Love, hold me fast ! Say not farewell, but hold me fast Lest Death be lord of love at last — Hold me fast, Love, hold me fast ! LOVE J* AT THE THEATRE Before the world in audience met, As Carmen or as Juliet, You play a part and seem to be — But be your own dear self to me, SUMMA SUMMARUM Upon the earth that holds thee now. Or in the Heaven above, There's naught so beautiful as thou And naught so sweet as love. MATER DOLOROSA The girlish dream of happiness In wife and mother dies, For love begins in selfishness And ends in sacrifice. THE MEANING OF LOVE Our love, dear, for each other is a child That will care nothing for us. 32 LOVE AT THE DANCE The sexual organs of the tulip tree She has pinned to her maidenly breast; Their heavy perfume pervades the room And fills the soul with unrest. The delicate arms and heaving chest, Plump shoulders bare to the waist, For a moment are pressed to the manly breast, Then swung for others to taste. She would barely speak should we meet on the street When tomorrow's sunlight gleams; But tonight I can clasp her in a lover's grasp, And clasp her still in my dreams. PROCREATION From the sexual embrace of the night, Each morning I arise immortal. This is the perpetual fountain of youth, "The resurrection of the body and life everlasting." It paints the plumage and tints the petal And fills the world with its fragrance, The blossoms, the flowers, are sexual, sensual, All pale with passion or blushing with love. LOVH U A MAIDEN MORTAL I would not court the lily. Nor see an an gel home; Let flowers wed with flowers And Heaven keep her own. I love a maiden mortal, Eve's latest daughter, With all her mother's sin; I love her faults and follies, Her pimples and her freckles, The moJe upon her chin. AT THE BALL What means the rose in thy attire ? Are roses, dear, the fashion — Flame-colored petals of desire, Red riot of passion ? LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP IT was not love, he asked, but friendships And so went lonely to the end; For one may have a dozen lovers And not a single friend. 34 love OTHELLO-LOVE False to thee ? Ah, vain Moor ! The question is not whether she were false to thee, But whether she were true unto herself. And jealousy's not murder; one may be jealous And still not be a murderer. There are whose very love is criminal — Othello-love, that kisses and then kills. MODERN LOVE Although she left me for a greater love, And though my life went out with her, I opened wide the door And blessed her ere she went. Love shah not make Me tyrant or a murderer. I want no love that is not free to love. HER FATHER'S DAUGHTER I'd have thee, dear, all woman; I speak of love, but falter when — When your dead father looks at me Out of your eyes. ■ LOVE 35 THE FRAILTY OF LOVE Love is as frail as sweet, Delicately agile; The lily on its stalk Is not more fragile. 'Tis the slight spirit of dreams — Ah, who can grasp it ? No fleshly lip can kiss Nor arm can clasp it. Love is too frail for work And rough endeavor. Sighing, bid love adieu, 'Tis thine forever. IN YOU In you, Life hath clothed herself in beauty, Desire hath grown to love — O daughter of the past and mother of the future ! ?& LOVE THE PARTING Love is no more a child And we no more are children; The love our youth beguiled Suits not the man and woman. Once we could agree, But time hath made us strangers; Alas ! for you and me The dream of youth is over. 'Tis time to say good-by, And now, before we cry, Good-by, good-by forever. JEALOUSY By the love she hath for thee, She can love some other man. As rare things come packed carefully, So love comes wrapped in jealousy. FOOLED We marry for love and live — for children. Nature, to get her work done, how she fools us RELIGION I have no heart to preach, or teacA, Or argue my belief; I would not change a single thought Nor break a single leaf. I only write asfrie?id to friend, As one in foreign land Writes to a friend across the wyrldL That hi may understand. 39 RELIGION AT CHURCH The sabbath comes at length, The church-bells ring the date, And thitherward repair The young men in their strength, The maidens, slim and fair, And old folk, scant of breath, — All seeking respite from the fate That threatens everywhere, The tragedy of life and death, Around, beneath, and overhead; And let us leave them there The living praying to the dead. SACRIFICE Men came to sacrifice to God. Some brought the gift of other lives, Dumb, helpless cattle, children, wives, And some, ill passions and desire9, And gave to sacrificial fires; But no one brought his soul, none gave Himself. God answered from the grave: "Ah, vain the gifts your fears devise To cheat the purpose in ye furled Yourselves shall be the sacrifice Upon the altar of the world. ' ■ RELIGION 39 THE CITY AND ITS GOD Broadway — Saint Paul's and Trinity. O city loud with strife, Is this thy God, The troubled, pale, ascetic Christ, Who entered not the lists of life, But turned aside To muse on death and destiny ? O city of industry, Is this thy God ? FOR THE TRUTH Though God himself a devil were And Truth itself should die of fear, Still I'd brave Hell and shout and roar, The Truth , the 7 ruth forevermore \ THE EUCHARIST The snowy altar cloth is laid, and thereupon The feast of Christ is spread with benediction; But I 1 have no appetite for Christian food, For bread that tastes of lJesh and wine that tastes of blood. *) RELIGION THE MYTH OF THE SOUL A winged Thottght of Desire, Fast hid in a cell of the brain, Till the cell is crumbled to dust, When it flies on its way again. It comes as a dream in the night - ^> And goes as a thought of day, Invisible, impalpable, known In no conceivable way. And this is the myth of the soul That flatters the human ear. 'Tis as old as man and will last As long as desire and fear. ONE WORLD AT A TIME The Church it holds for future use The present and the real; And while the Christian kneels in prayer The thieves break through and steal. Let's live today and for today, Live for our country and our homes, And if tomorrow comes, why, then We'll live tomorrow — when it comes. RELIGION 41 TO A CHRISTIAN ■ You say, O friend, that God is love, But when you turn and kneel, 'Tis not to love, but tyranny, That you make your appeal. Praise God for favors past, you sing, And those to be received; Praise for reward is flattery, And can God be deceived ? READY-MADE RELIGION Men buy religion as they buy Their clothing, ready-made; But they were naked else, Soul-naked, shivering and afraid. Then let them buy cheap clothing For cheap souls. HELL If men of every age and race Could come together in one place, Mediaeval, modern — well, They'd need no fire to make it Hell. RELIGION "THE SCARLET LETTER" The law made sacred grew a sin To plague and torture Hester Prynne; Virtue itself became a crime By making it holy and divine. Zealots harm more than ribalds can, For Virtue turned a Puritan And hardened into cruelty Drives us to hate morality. worship, sacredness, divinity — The cardinal sins of Christianity ! TO A CHRISTIAN MAIDEN Ye meet in secret prayer, enticed By love of the divine, Spouse of thy lord, the Jesus Christ My Jove would be a crime. THE ORDINATION The Church has gained a priest to ." Live on the Christian plan; The maid has lost a lover And life has lost a man. RELIGION 43 — — -. -* II ■■■■ I ■ ■ I ■■ ■ I ■!■ - — ■ ■■■ — M il ■■N ^ ■ MIND ThekK is no trace of God as mind In all creation's laws; Mind is the long result of life, And not its moviug cause. Bom to the freedom of the earth, And men without a peer, We make us gods of lesser things To worship and to fear. THE TRUTH No opium-dream of faith for me; I will not drug my soul with faith nor be A coward to the truth. But give me life And the religion of the brave, the Truth - The Truth, although it be a sword And I die on the point ! SAINT AND SINNER Each hold the laws of life as naught But human vanities, The saint, the sinner, — the pales of thought. The two insanities. 44 RELIGION DIRECTIONS FOR BUILDING Build the house of life On the Rock of Fact, The foundation stone Of the universe. Who builds on faith Builds castles in the air. MORTALITY Lifk goes weeping to the grave; Without death, where would the pathos be t Mortality gives significance to life And makes the hours precious; It gives us sympathy for suffering And relief in tears. Who goes with me to death ? REINCARNATION Ay, we shall be made flesh again In lives and ways not now believed; As mice we shall come back at night And haunt the houses where we lived. RELIGION 45 THE ONE THING NEEDFUL The preacher prays God for all things, From sinners saved to napkin-rings; But strange, of all his wants immense, He never prays for common-sense. This one thing needful could we share, There'dbe no use for further prayer, And Hell would lose and Heaven win. For want of common-sense we sin. HOW SHALL GOD KNOW HIS OWN ? The man that suffered on the rack And he that bound him down, Each followed duty and the right How shall God know his own ? CARPE DIEM We have learned that in death there's no waking, So in life there shall be no 6leep; We will live life out in the living And in death have nothing to weep. 46 RELIGION THE INDIVIDUAL Thus cries the individual In his atomic sorrow, Foreseeing his decay: "I want to live forever, And if I die tomorrow, Why live a single day?" Desire is the unconscious Law of force and matter In all that creep and crawl. Wert thou not filled with longing To live and live forever, Thou wouldst not live at all. The earth was old with aeons When thou wert young beside thee Warm Mesozoic sea; And still the aeons crumble And still thou art immortal In thy mortality. Life's infinite progression, And through rebirth and shifting Evolves the greater mind; So thou must live and perish That thon mayst live more grandly In lives thou leav'st behind. RELIGION 4-7 Still cries the individual In his atomic sorrow: "The thought that I must die O'er-baJances all others; 'Tis I would live forever, 'Tis I, and I, and I !" GOD God is neither love nor hate — God is Fate. Beyond our joy and grieving, Beyond our prayer and praising, He evermore abides; God of the good and evil, God of the Turk and Christian- He never taketh sides. FATHERS AND SONS The day our parents died, we buried their lives witU them. And broke their household gods and set up to be men; Yet still for us, for whom they once did toil and save, Dead faces look reproach and hands reach from the grave. 48 RELIGION TO JESUS OF NAZARETH Thou lonely one, the eternal outcast of mankind — Killed for a man and worshiped for a God. Lonely thou didst live and lonely die, And lonelier still thy state, if thou couldst know, For the unintelligent praise of men Hurts worse than their senseless scorn. Christ, it must be lonely to be worshiped ! Thou wert man and touched with race, And still men crucify thee in thy race, Still crucify thee every day anew, Even they, thy worshipers. Christ, it must be lonely to be worshiped ! NATIVITY HYMN In thee, O new-born child, I see Man's immortality New -risen from the bath of birth And savior of the earth. This is that natal morn The wise men sought afar. Behold ! the night is vanquished And in the east a star. Unto us a child is born And Christ is risen from the dead. RBUGION 49 "JESUS WEPT" What we love and comprehend Is not the Christ, but weeping friend, Not that Lazarus who slept Awoke, but this, that "Jesus wept." And still death takes the fair and brave I weep with Jesus at the grave. FAITH "Why faith when we have reason ?" And Religion, a woman dressed in mourning, replied: 4 'To believe that God is good, in man and immortality, We need faith." Ay, we need faith indeed ! A CHALLENGE By nineteen centuries of war and hate, Where is thy boasted Jove of neighbor, Rome ? By all the hungry thousands on the streets, Where is thy self-denial, O Christendom ? 50 RgUGION _ WALT WHITMAN OR CHRIST ? Christ preached the life to come, cot life; Heaven, not the world; the ideal, not the real. He disbelieved in life and gave his life to save it O noble unbeliever ! Whitman believed in life, Not merely this life or that life, Not merely my life or thy life, but life ! — Life without qualification or limitation, Without addition or elimination — life ! O Whitman, the supreme and profound believer in lifet Dost thou believe in life with Whitman Or disbelieve with Christ ? Dost thou believe in life? — Life carnivorous, omnivorous ? its evil and its good ? The saint, the sinner? the murderer and the murdered? Dost thou believe in life ? "BISHOP BROUGHAM'S APOLOGY" O MERCENARY, doubting bishop, ye Argue that the Church stands equally For the believer and the doubter; true, But not the disbeliever, add thereto. RELIGION 51 MY FATHER My father was a Roundhead captain, Of serious thought and surly mien. For him, there was no chance or happen And no expedient, I ween. He could not put by wrong and sorrow, Make merry in the House of Death; He felt the shadow of tomorrow In slower pulse and shorter breath. He hated as he loved and evil Knew the tremendous blows he dealt. He could not be both plain and civil, But .spake the hot words that he felt. He was a worker and a faster, Who thought it sin to loaf or play; No silly clown was he or jester, No masquer at life's holiday. MEN "We're men, and boast our manhood." Ayjorsooth, Men enough to war and will, Men enough to fight and kill; But are ye men enough to know the truth ? 52 RBUGION A DKVOTEE She reads and prays in reverence and devotion pale, For long disease hath left her sallow features, body- frail; Yet sorrow hath its recompense, and she doth gain A sweet seraphic peace, renouncing joy, resigned to pain. She hath the calm and patience of infinitude And moves as though she were immortal. Nothing can intrude Upon the still life of the soul that's here interred — The passions of the world, like winds in distant forests, heard. DIES IRM When the accusing faces of his creatures Shall stand before God in judgment, Heaven and earth shall be no more And God himself shall flee, a shrieking maniac, Into the night of eternity ! MATERIALISM We are all materialists, For we must be materialists to live; And what is spirit but the ghost of matter ? ANIMAL LIFE CHICAGO STOCKYARDS HbrB life is driv'n to slaughter And dies without a tear; Cain kills his brother Abel And there is none to hear. I think with Machavelli, Amid the bloody reek, That might, not right, is final. 11 'Tis miser'ble to be weak." And still they come by thousands. The helpless forms of life, And in their throats he plunges The sharp two-edged knife. His flesh and blood relation He murders in a trice That men may live upon them — Say, is life worth the price ? 54 ' ANIMAL I/IFE NOVEMBER November comes in sullen mood And takes from life its green defense; And now begins, in field and wood, ' 'The slaughter of the innocents. ' ' Man feels the savage in him stir, An instinct deeper than his race, Impels him forth to run with hounds And follow in the cruel chase. Man, ere he had to manhood grown, Ere he had learnt to build and plow, Took other life to save his own And lived upon the hunt, but now No longer hunts for food or place, Yet with his dog he follows still The fierce excitement of the chase, The bloody pleasure of the kill. FEAR Pear gave the antelope its speed, The bird its wings, And half the world is saved by flight And fear of things. ANIMAI, WFB 55 TO THE HORSB Thy harnessed strength, strength shod with speed, Is slave to man's desire and need, A«d, wanting thee, we still had been A forest savage clothed in skin. Thy harnessed strength has been our strength, This strength has made us gods at length, But what to thee thy workmanship, Still pulling thy load beneath the whip ? TO AN ELEPHANT How strange thou seernest to our eyes, Amorphous, cumbrous, monstrous size, A mountain of flesh from tropic palms. With scent of sandalwood and balms; And sad thou art, in mien and mood, With sorrows older than the flood. NIGHT The strong were the lords of the day, So the weak, they hid in the night, But the strong, they tracked and pursued them, Pursued them into the night; And deeds of terror are done there, Under the cover of darkness, Under the shadow of night. 56 ANIMAI, UFB ROOSKVELT IN AFRICA The primal instincts of a race That lived upon the cruel chase, The lust for blood, the greed for spoil, Have made a joy of arduous toil That builds not, lifts not, but destroys, Unthinking as an idle boy's. God hath no favorites in his plan, But all are equal, beast and man, The beast that dies, the man that slays, Both struggling in the path of days, The beast that kills to live and feast, The man because he once was beast. QUIET Though quiet are the fields and woods, 'Tis not the quiet of peace that's there, Where the rabbit lives by stealth And the red fox has his lair. There is blood upon the fern, Bones a-bleaching on the hill, Where the hunt was yesterday And the red fox had his fill. ANIMAL UFE 57 FISHING O sweet and cool is the summer breeze Over the morning bay ! A push from shore and a pull at the oars, And we are off for fishing today. A jerk on the line, a flash in the air — "A bite !" But O the pain Of a floundering, dying fish in the boat Gasping for breath in vain ! From its humid, bulging eyes, What a human, pitiful look ! 'Tis life ! O God ! 'tis I myself Impaled on the end of a hook ! O cool and sweet is the summer breeze Over the morning bay ! But pull for the shore, O sailor lads, We'll fish no more today. THANKSGIVING Today we thank God eating turkey; I wonder if our thanks are heard, If God cares only for mankind, L,ike man, and nothing for the bird. 5g ANIMAL LIPB THE WHITE BADGE OF CRUELTY To the egrets' breeding ground Came the hunter, stealing round; Killed them by the hundreds there, Fluttering helpless in the air; Left the young to stretch and cry Vainly to the pitiless sky; And 'twas done, this cruel act, To decorate my lady's hat. Tender-hearted, thoughtless, vain, Weeping o'er another's pain, While she wears remorselessly The white badge of cruelty. HOGS Johnson feeds his hog to fatness For the the killing in the fall. To the pen he comes and feeds him As he answers to his call, Looks and smiles his satisfaction, And the hog, he grunts in kind — Neither seeing, neither knowing, They alike are brute and blind. ANIMAL I*IFS 59 THE TYRANTS OF THE EARTH Destruction waits upon our steps, In all our paths and roads, 'Mong weak inhabitants of earth That dwell in frail abodes. We maim or kill, for food or sport, All other life on earth; If to be brutal makes the brute, Why claim a higher birth ? Flesh is flesh and blood is blood, Whate'er the lineament; Though life and life may differ, yet They are not different. We kill our brother in the brute, We kill our brother, then Sit down to eat his flesh and ask The grace of God. Amen. HENRY BERGH Founder of The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to A?iimals. An advocate before the Throne of Life, He pled for them that could not plead, Came with entreaty to the blind that kill From the dumb that bleed. 6o ANIMAI, IvlFK THE PRAYING MANTIS Men named thee praying mantis fair, For thou seem'st to be at prayer, And so thou art, when all is said, A-preying for thy living food; And prays not man, too, in this mood, "Give U6 this day our daily bread ?" "AND GOD GAVE MAN DOMINION" Their destiny is in his hand And live and die at his command The cattle on a thousand hills. Unfeeliaig as the senseless stone And blind to every want except his own, He kills and knows not that he kills. WAR 1914 The blood of the fathers still Runs in the veins of their sons, And they rise to do the will Of death and the deadly guns. Like the phantoms of the night, Like the ghosts of the past, they .seem, For they know not why they fight, And they fight like men in a dream. They only know they must fight, And the day shall find them brave, And they shall sleep at night With their forebears in the grave.. 62 WAR CONSCRIPTS Sent by our parents and our sweethearts, Sent by our country to the grave, We have no chance to shirk or falter, We have no choice but to be brave. We hear the nearing roar of battle And see by night its ruddy glow, And yet we turn not back nor linger; Fate drives us onward; we must go. And on the eve of morrow's fighting, And as the hour approaches nigh, Our last thoughts are of friends and lovers. it was their will and we must die; Fate drives us onward and we go. THE CASUALTY LIST To be an American citizen, It was no Irifling thing for them; We others live, the merchant thrives, But they — they paid for it with their lives. A hundred more dead in the fight, And still no victory in sight, A hundred more dead, bitter cost ! Whoever wins, now, they have lost. WAR 63 THE SOLDIERY They fight with bodies, for they have no souls, With bullets in default of minds; Yet who would grudge them fame and honor-rolls, For virtue is of many kinds ? And though in higher, nobler actions they May fail, yet not in hardihood, The brutal heroes of a brutal day, The chivalry of flesh and blood. "WHERE IS THY BROTHER ABEI MISCELLANEOUS THE CITY OF UNREST In the Valley of Illusion Lies the City of Unrest, With blue mountains m the distance And a road into the west. There the sun is paler, dimmer, Than the liquid moon at night, And the etars sbine in the daytime With a preternatural light. And that city's ay distracted, And shall be eternally, With the noise of preparation And the stir of things to be. Travelers are leaving ever By that road on far-off quest, For the mountains seem to beckon, Shadowy -like, into the wesfc. TO THE SPHINX O Spirit of the Changeless Past, What think'st thou of our present state? Thou look'st quite through us, and beyoml - The eyes of Death gazing at Fate. MISCELLANEOUS ft AT THE INN OF IJflB O cosmic travelers Met at the Inn of Life From windy roads of space And dusty fields of strife ! Today we meet as men, And have we met before ? And shall we meet again When we are men no more ? When you are no longer you And I am no longer I, In what guise shall we meet On land, in sea, or sky ? 1 he Toast Here's to that meeting, friend. On land, in sea, or sky, When you are no longer you And I am no longer I. AGREED They were always agreed that something was wroi^g*. But what the wrong was, could never agree. J 2 MISCELLANEOUS SPRING 'Tis spring again in the valley; The lilacs bloom as of yore; The spring comes back to the country, But the dead return no more. 'Tis spring again in the valley; The swallows come back as of yore And build their ne6ts in the chimneys, But the dead return no more. A FACE IN THE GLASS Thk lady looked at her face in the glass, And smiled to see that she was fair; The lady smiled at her face in the glass And all her wealth of golden hair. But that was a long, long time ago (And time is thing no one can trust); The lady's been dead for many a year; The city she lived in has fallen to dust. TO A BUTTERFLY Thou winged, fluttering dream of the worm, Man's symbol of immortality, Frail as his hope, brief as a summer's day ! MISCELLANEOUS 73 TO A FIELD OF CELERY I share thy green life, blind and mute, In the soft, moist earth and sun-warmed air. I feel the rain about the root, The deadly fungi on thy leaves As on my heart. We are mutual friends and our fate is one, Never to flower and come to seed, Used for ends that are not our own. My soul has gone into thy stalks and leaves To be hawked and sold in the vegetable mart With cabbage and beets, To wither and perish with thee. HIRELINGS We are the hirelings, men who know The desolation of chill dawns That call us to another's work And the black night that covers all. THE GREAT DIVIDE Between us the impassible barrier of Mind; I cannot go to you and you cannot come to me. £4 MISCELLANEOUS TO A BOY O BAGSR youth a-going For to see and know Into the future, Where I cannot go ! Today moves toward tomorrow, The thought moves in the mind, But time that takes thee forward Will leave me behind. AN AUTUMN THOUGHT The wind blew chill o'er the bare fields, I shivered and a sudden fear Gripped at my heart — what if the spring Should not return again next year ! INSTABILITY I fbel the earth move under me at every step, And I am like a mouse upon a moving disc That slips beneath him as he runs, Runs and advanceth not one step. The earth, unstable, moves beneath my feet And everything I hold to, breaks. MISCELLANEOUS 75 TO DOUBLE ROSES Perverted beauty, sterile, futile, Cut roses in a va9e — O gelded flowers of Art and Science That made and claim your petaled grace f O dream ye yet of love's fruition That sweetens still the summer's breath ? Life beautiful unto no purpose, Love beautiful in death ! TO A REFORMER The wrong, you say, is this or that, Some law of state or pelf. O friend, it is not this or that That's wrong, but life itself. SLEEP Morn calls; the sleepers drowsily protest. But there will come no rousing morn when we Discard the warm flesh garments of our life And in the night of death, stripped to the bone. Lie down to centuries of sleep. 76 MISCELLANEOUS LEX SCRTPTA Though from the truth itself you make a Law by which to live and die, You will surely mar or turn it To a vice or to a lie. Life is changing and evolving, And no two lives are the same, And no general A can measure Out each individual blame. DISPOSSESSED White took and made their own A. This, the Indians' ancient home. Dazed and homeless, see them stand, Aliens in their native land ! EX PARTE 'Tis well, I know, and right, indeed, To side with party and to lean, To fight for nation, hold to creed, And yet how littte and how mean ! MISCEIXANBOUS JJ THE WRECK OF THE TITANIC To the saving of the women, Their last thoughts were given and planned; And they died like men, died bravely. To the music of the band. And we, too, are shipwrecked travelers, Helpless, drowning on the land. Let us die like men, die bravely, To the music of the band. AT A SOCIAL RECEPTION Tonight they've tacitly agreed To lay aside their loves and hates And meet upon the neutral ground Of triviality, — To talk and yet say nothing, To laugh when one would cry, To carry life off with a jest For an hour and say good-by. GOLD Day coins itself in sunset gold, Night-buried in the distant west , And we who bought the day and sold — Have we like gold unto our rest ? MISCELLANEOUS AI/TER EGO Not for ourselves the world is won, Not for ourselves we live and die, But for some dear, beloved one, Known or unknown, or far or nigh. The book we read, the words we write, One knows and shares our thought and view, Seen or unseen in the daylight, Known or unknown to me or you. THE OVERLAND LIMITED From the past we've taken flight And we are rushing through the night And on into tomorrow. O train into the future ! O future dark with fate ! To what end are we rushing And what tomorrows wait ? THE WHITE LIGHTS O The lighted streets and the lighted stage t O Youth and Beauty, the night and the age ) The music calls and the white lights glow And life is new; come, let us go ! MISC BIX ANSOUS f^ OF MY BROTHERS Otf my brothers in the strife — How each one became the fate Dreadful to some other life — Seeing which, I was all hate. Of my brothers — how their love. Blundering in a night of fears, Was the hate of each that strove — Feeling which, I was all tears. THE EMERGENCE OF MAN When the groping God had blundered Blind into man, The earth was torn with battle And the red blood ran, When talon, tusk, and beak had blossomed In the skull of man, When the groping God had blundered Blind into man. TO THE INDIAN PIPE WmTB,, like the flesh of man, Like man, a parasite, — Thou naked plant, half -bidden among the leaves* Didst thou, too, fall through sin ? So MISCELLANEOUS A MERRY-GO-ROUND The world is a merry-go-round, And gaily and fast we ride. With the double motion of days and years, We swing out far and wide. "But 'around' is a road that leads nowhere," The bored ones cry, "The lost go around in a circle." Youth laughs its reply. O the world is a merry-go-round; No place 'tis to think or abide; So let '6 go dizzy with motion, I^et us be children and ride. LOST DAYS Not for the days I shall not live, *Tis not for them I grieve and pine, But for the days that I have lived, And, living, did not make them mine, — The days that once were mine to mold And fashion to the heart's desire, But spoilt and ruined with bungling hands And lost and trampled in the mire. MISCELLANEOUS •■ IN THE CITY They that live within the city, Days of noise and nights of glamour, They have to pay the price, you know; Some with soul of truth and honor, Some, alas ! with youth and beauty, But all with life that ends in woe. The houses look down on the people, Walking in their giant shadow — They seem to threaten and to stare; And the people shrink and shiver With a dread unspoken never At the marble menance there. THE DREAM My life draws inward to a dream. After the folly and the fret; The door is shut against the world, Against departure locked and set. Pale with defeat, and deathly pale, These limbs that no more burdens take- I will be silent and forget And dream of death and never wake. B3 MISCELLANEOUS VANITAS VANITATUM I walked and mused on many things, On warrior-heroes, saints, and kings, Evil and good — On life and death; and when I came To where they stood , Those vagabonds of time and aim, Unto my mood, They seemed to say, "There is no deed Under the sky Worthy to wreak our souls upon, And that is why That we stand idle in the sun. ' ' TO THE SEA I come to thee, salt, unresting sea, As a child to its parent, For I was born of thee; Thy salt is in my blood And thy unrest is in my soul — Ay, I am the soul of thee, The spirit of thy mood, And eagerly 1 sniff the air and watch the billows roll MISCELLANEOUS t 83 FROM A CAR-WINDOW With smile, and sigh, and wave of hand, They greet the traveler through the land To fairer lands beyond, From dreams behind to hopes before, From city unto city, o'er A lone and sterile ground. O'er-labored under leaden skies, They view with dimly yearning eyes The great, rich world go by. They hear it roaring through the night, And in their dreams for Heart's Delight They, too, take train and fly. NATURE The hill, and wood, and meadow Are nature, but not mine; They brood in peace and quiet, While, restless, I repine. Why do I feel so keenly What they so calmly take ? They're nature sleeping, dreaming, I'm nature wide awake. 64 MISCELLANEOUS MY HEART AND I O Heart of me that fails and falters While youth and love are passing by, Longing to go, afraid to venture, Afraid to live, afraid to die ! O Heart, whence comes this coward shrinking From out the lists of high emprise, Fearing alike men'B praise and censure And what we love and what despise ? Methinks we 've lived through cataclysms, The only things that did not die, Or crouched in dread 'mid succulent grasses While monstrous mastodons went by, Or in some ancient, hideous battle I think we must have died of fright — A fleeing shape of nameless terror Pursued through vast primeval night. SUNDAY EVENING Cold suppers and deserted streets — I walk alone; The evening chill and unknown dread Cut to the bone. MISCEU,ANBOUS 65 WANDER SONG I pass with time from place to place, Like time, return no more; Always a new, immortal face To greet me at the door. Friends alter not nor love grows cold, No change in life is rung; For me the old were always old, The young are always young. I pass with time from place to place, Like time, return no more; Always a new, immortal face To greet me at the door. HYPERSENSITIVE I have no joy in Nature's drama, Trembling, thinking of my part. I cannot hear the sweet bird music For the beating of my heart. I cannot see the splendid sunrise For the shadow on my brain. I cannot feel life's joy and rapture For its bitterness and pain. «5 MISCELLANEOUS THE UNATTAINABLE WE feel in distance and in sound Vague yearnings never put in speech; And, seeking, we have never found, And heaven's just beyond our reach. We fail and faint in alien lands And all seems lost, yet all is well, For pleasures grasped melt in the hands And heaven gained would turn to hell. ALONE I walk the streets, restless, unknown, Then back to this one room, alone. I turn and fret in aimless quest And fruitless yearnings unexpressed. I chafe the silence of the years, And life-long worries grow to fears And fierce regrets none understands — Feeling my life slip through my hands. TO A BABY So small and frail thou art, baby, In paths untrod, That I, who never cried to God, Cry out, O God ! MISCELLANEOUS 87 IN THE SLUMS "Why are the people poor ? " I asked, Replied one the motley throng: "Ourlabor'e cheap, the food is dear, And everything is wrong." "Why are the poor so dirty here ?" Again I would informed be. "Is it because the water's dear ?" But no one answered me. TOBACCO SMOKE The conflagration of great cities, Of Moscow, Rome, Lit up the nights of weeks, but this, The conflagration of man, Glows in the coals of time And smoulders through eternity. IN EXTREMIS Dying, we find no rest, Tired out beyond all sleep, Lashed on by pain to death Beyond all tears to weep. 8d MISCEIXANEOUS BKTWHEN THE BAYS O dark, and damp, and drizzly daya, Among the creeks, between the bays ! Black swamps and ponds covered with fogs And mossy stumps and rotting logs Alive with terrapins and frogs. A drowned land 'neath murky skies, Where humid vegetation thrives, Of rapid growth and quick decay; And if the clouds uplift a day, Again they sink and settle down O'er quaggy marsh and gloomy town. O dark, and damp, and drizzy days, Among the creeks, between the bays ! A TOILER'S CONSCIENCE I cannot read, or write, or idle In clear, fair weather, but must moil la the plowed fields, urged on by conscience Born of an ancestry of toil. But when the day is wet and stormy, Or Winter drives us from the field, It sets me free for reading, writing, A joy that labor ne'er can yield. MISCEIXANBOUS 9g THE AEROPLANE Like birds, men fly into the air, But do not leave the earth, Although the moon is seen afar And beacons many a star. O man who dreams and dares ! O fragile, winged car ! How distant is the goal ! How far the nearest star ! BLOOD O thou red fluid of being, Life, In what alembic brewed, under what spell ? A distillation of the dawn or liquid flame ? O who shall say what thing thou art, Thou flux of life red from the heart ? THE BEGGAR With mute appeal and white head bowed, The beggar stands amid the crowd. Amid the moving stream of life — A spectre in the streets of strife. <*> MISCELLANEOUS A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF Ws fight iu civil warfare, Where victory means defeat, And Poverty, a jackal, \.« Hangs on the day's retreat. We straggle in confusion, Divide our strength and fall, A strength that held together Would make us lords of all. How long this insurrection, How long before we know We have one life and welfare Against a common foe ! WHIP-POOR-WILL A voick is heard, but no one is seen, A cry in the night, O what can it mean ? It sounds like our own, but is not ours — A mimic voice of the twilight hours. Is it the Night's mock at the Day's vain strife? Or the Voice of Spring in the the dusk of life ? MISCELLANEOUS g« WATER ON THE DESERT Water flowing on the desert, Flowing from the mountains down, Flux of life in motion, mingling With the dry earth, bare and brown; TiJl the slumbering sands awaken At the liquid touch anew, Waken into grass and flowers, And the dream of life comes true. Water flowing on the desert, Cooling to the parched breath, Flux of life forever flowing From the rigid jaws of death. TO A PINE TREE What vague desire was the germ of thee That stirred into life and grew to a tree, And blossomed in sex and fruited in seed. What yearning, what groping, felt lack or need t O life in the sap ! O soul in the pine ! How strange is thy life compared unto mine I Yet the same world-yearning, the same earth-plaa. That made thee a tree made me a man. 9* MISCEIXANBOUS WHEN THOU ART OLD Whkn thoa art old Thou shalt go on a crutch, leaning heavily , Or, sit stagnant, propped with pillows, Feeble, febrile, apathetic, pathetic. Thy days shall be days of utter weariness, Of insipidity and imbecility, And the night shall bring no respite; Thy sleep shall come by starts and fits And leave a bad taste in the mouth. No recognizing intelligence shall flash a greeting From the eyes, but thou shalt meet thy old cronie* With clash and jar of wood and stone, Dull and heavy. And so thou shalt die for years, And when thou art utterly dead Thy heirs shall share thy goods among them And bury thee with a secret feeKng of relief. OLD AGK To be young and then to be old — There is nothing sadder in life than tbia. Old age with its white hair, A signal of distress, white flag of surrender. MISCELLANEOUS 9$ SPECTRES That old man creeping down the fttreet Was once the baby of a rosy-cheeked girl. O boy-father and girl-mother, If you could have seen your baby then As he is now, the spectre of love and youth, How it would have frightened you ! Alas ! we all turn to spectres in old age And haunt the scenes of our youth. EMPTY BOTTLES A child is playing with empty bottles The drunken father's thrown away. There's nothing left but empty bottles And the play — Tragedy. GOD SAID God said: "The hero's part, to play it, The flowers of life, the good of ill, Are yours if you but say, I wiW — And do you know ? I could cot say it. ^ 94 MISCELLANEOUS ROCKABY BABY Infant, asleep in the cradle, I sit and wonder to what tbou art sleeping, Plain man or god, leader or led, One in a million or the million, Whether to a self-important man-of -affairs, Or to a shrinking, cringing vagabond, Who shall through dreary years hang limp Along the crowded ways of life. Perhaps thou'lt live a dope-slave or a drunkard, Fast bound by the chains of habit In a burning hell of remorse. where and what is thy fatal defect. Thy ' tcndo Achillis ? Is it a hereditary taint in the blood To break forth into virulent corruption And make life loathsome ? Or some insignificant blotch upon the brain To slowly spread, grow with the growing man, Till the whole mind if blurred, and dulled, and dead ? Whether thou art born to this or that, 1 know not, but one thing I know: That as thou wast born of thy parents' yearning, Yea, of the yearning of ten thousand thousand parents, Yea, of ten thousand thousand centuries, MISCELLANEOUS ff Yea, of eternity, so thou shalt live and die Still yearning, vainly struggling, Grasping the impalpable air in thy empty palms. MICROBES The world is bitter with its strife And all its ways are choked with life. There is blight in the orchard, anthrax in the stable. And fever in the house. O life is a battle with life ! I am weary of life — Life that preys upon life, bacterial life, Infintesimal, multitudious, parasitic, pestiverous < Where, O where shall I find death ? 'Tis not in the wormy grave, not there, not here. The world is a-squirming and crawling with life; Great God ! the very rocks are alive ! From life, from a thousand lives, I cry For the peace and stillness of death ! AS A FLOWER My life is furled and droopeth as a flower In desolate days of rain, And it shall not outlast the pelting hour, Ne'er lift its head again. 96 MISCELLANEOUS AN INVOCATION TO PATERNITY O Father ! Mother ! Ye are as gods to kill or make alive; Within your hands the helpless future lies — O guide and save ! O Father ! Mother ! is it well, the life ye gave, Maimed and wronged, a shame and a reproach ? Have the unborn no rights ? Shall mind ne'er enter in the making of the mind, But only blind and senseless lust ? O Father ! Mother ! Ye are as gods to kill or make alive; Within your hands the helpless future lies — O guide and save ! THE BLACK SIDE In the race struggle, we have learnt White man and white man's cruelty, For we have been tortured and burnt In the red flames of jealousy. Yet not in kind, but kindness, we repay The hatred that no kindness can remove. Though we may have the child's mind, as they say, We have the child's heart, too, and that is love. MISCELLANEOUS 97 REVENGE "I slew bim for my enemy, Wronged and enraged thereat." "O fool, to kill your enemy; Disease would tend to that." "'Twas right that he should suffer for The evil he did plan. " "Why, then, you should have let him live And suffer being man." JOHN DOE AND RICHARD ROE John Doe and Richard Roe, Names of men that no men know. What if it should prove to be You and I the mystery, You and I that no men know — John Doe and Richard Roe ? KNIGHTS- ERRANT As knights of the eternal quest, We've no abiding, know no rest, And start and stop not with the breath- The feet of life, the winds of death. 98 MISCELLANEOUS THE VAGABOND You ask me of my vagabondage, And this is all I have to say: Who travels without purse must travel A weary way, aweary way. I came through valleys, over mountains, Beautiful, I have been told — I only know the days were lonely, I only know the nights were cold. A land of homes, and friends, and lovers, But no welcome waited me; Every dog was fierce against me, Every man my enemy. FROM THE OUTSIDE Ye who live safe in houses And look out from the windows, What know ye of the outside, Of wet, or cold, or cloudy ? That's left for ue, the homeless, Who watch the days and shudder, Who know the cold of winter, The night of sleet and snow, When homes, like stars, are lighted And we've no where to go. MISCELLANEOUS 99 STREETS These streets are paths of duty To the toiling crowds and show All drab and grey in the morning, But at night they glimmer and glow With tbe tired content of the evening To the thousands that homeward wend, Yet to me who walk uncertain They have no meaning or end. Barred out from the world and its pleasure, I nightly turn from my hut To walk the deserted pavements, And when doors are opened and shut, I hear glad voices and laughter And see from the cheerless street On the blinded windows the shadows Of wife and children, sweet. BEAUTY Beauty is not the hue and glow of right Nor for man's pleasure given; E'en Hell itself is beautiful at night From the far windows of Heaven. loo MISCELLANEOUS WEALTH AND POVERTY Wealth means leisure, freedom; Poverty is care. Wealth owns the pearls of morning And sunset gold. I swear Who owns the earth owns heaven; For him the clouds are rolled; Even poppies by the wayside Are bought with yellow gold. THE HARDEST THING IN THE WORLD TO DO The hardest thing in the world to do Is the thing you put off doing, The thing you did not do yesterday, The thing you did not do last month; The hardest thing in the world to do Is the thing you put off doing. A FRIEND Gold is the Friend Munificent, A necessary friend that makes All other friends unnecessary. MISCELLANEOUS IOt THE LABORER For his work his work has given him Hard thews and a big coarse hand, And his eyes are snnk, half-seeing, In a face all bearded and tanned. How long since a milk-white baby He clung to his mother's breast, While the girls all ran to kiss him With laughter, cooing, and jest ! And what is the fruit of his labor, Long days in the wind and the sun ? Stone streets and heavy steel railroads, Canals, vast levees upthrown. He has lain down his life for others, Bleeding at every pore, And the world of wealth and leisure Goes carelessly riding o'er. MASTER AND SERVANT The mind that scorns to be a servant The role of master, too, will swerve; What makes the servant makes the master; It is as base to rule as serve. 102 MISCELLANEOUS WANDERLUST With vague unrest about the heart, I wander far and near, Drawn by a Want that has no part In all I see or hear. A Want each day made manifest In every thought and act, North and south and east and west, In this and that. LONELINESS I walk the streets alone, yet not alone, For though they do not note or heed, I have the company of thousands; Yet if one should speak to me I should be lonely indeed. IMPASSE Driven in on myself from every side — No outward world for me. Turn inward, O soul, turn inward and glow, A red coal of thought hidden In the white ashes of silence. MISCELLANEOUS 103 THE RETURN I'll go back at lilac -time From my wandering around the world, I'll go home in the spring. Nay, but I am grown old with wandering — I'll go back at autumn With the frost and falling leaf, I'll go home in the fall. Nay, the folks are dead and gone, And I'll go home no more at all. DESIRE My life is all a long desire That years have brought no nigher, Left unfulfilled. Love at the heart of yearning, cry — Cry out before we die, By loneliness killed. THE MASQUERADE Lifk is a masquerade. The fool is king, The nobleman, a rogue — life is a masquerade. 164 MISCELLANEOUS AT THE ROAD'S END I was Youth and Romance Fresh from sleep and dream; I was Youth and up before the sun; My heart went forth to meet the dawn. Now I have been and I have seen, And I have not a word to say. I have been and I have seen, And I am weary of the day And turn again to sleep and dream, Turn again into the night. FLOWERS As flowers that men pluck wantonly, Clutch at their beauty and sweet, In a moment are faded, discarded, So ye girl-flowers of the street. As the flowers of the field and the forest Bloom not for beauty, but life, So the flower of man in woman — Daughter, mother, and wife. MISCELLANEOUS 105 MY LOST IDEAL, Unto my youth's Ideal, "Adieu," I said, "but stay; I serve the world and for Tomorrow give today. ' ' Now after many years I am returned again To seek my youth's Ideal, And seek and seek in vain. 'Tis lost and gone for ay; I ne'er shall find it more, Though I should seek fore'er The wide world o'er. Whate'er our lot or fate, We can't evade or shirk. The man is what he does; His life is in his work. THROUGH LIFE BY TRAIN Wk hurry through life by train, And fast and faster it goes ; But we will pause at the journey's end And rest in deep repose. 106 MISCELLANEOUS THE DESERTED HOUSE Back from the road it stands, House of another day; No more at life's commands It keeps its ancient way. No waking at the morn, No neighing in the stalls; Day lies, like night, forlorn; No footstep in the halls. A brooding memory The olden time endears, In ruin and left to the Obliterating years. A BIRTH A sinful secret babbled to the world In baby words, in infant clouts unfurled. A moment's joy turned to a life of pain, To die a thousand thousand times in vain. DEATH, THE INQUISITOR Death tortures before he kills On the rack of disease, Death, the Inquisitor of life. MISCELLANEOUS 107 VAIN ADVICE My heart, no more, with vain repining, Profane the sacredness of grief, When the whole world is filled with sorrow, And seeks, but cannot find, relief. But there is no degree in sorrow, My heart made answer, and of all The many millions that have suffered None ever thought his sorrow small. And 'twere inhuman to find comfort In others' agony and moan; The suffering of my fellow mortals Can only add unto my own. IMAGINATION Imagined work is play, Imagined life is art. The child and artist, they Have chosen the better part. SCIENCE Science, the lamp of knowledge In the night of the world, Lighting the steps of Man, the Explorer. IOS MISCELLANEOUS A CAMP-MEETING PROMENADE A ring of life and light In the black night And spectral wood. Life goes in couples, arm and arm; Flesh thrills to flesh,; the night feels warm With lust and glare. And round and round they go, Sweetheart and beau, Expectant, eager, smiles and sighs, And hot -flushed cheeks and love-lit eyes, Maiden and boy. An altar there, the Christian's goal, Erected to life's sin and dole, Dark, silent, now, the mourners gone; Youth circles round, a merry throng, With beating hearts and faces bright, For Youth's in love with life tonight — The altar and the coffin wait. LIMITATIONS We look through telescopes to see — Infinity; And with the blocks of time build for — Eternity. MISCELLANEOUS IO9 ALFALFA The flower of the pasture, Blossoming protein. Grazed by the lowing cattle, Cut by the mowing blades, I grow again and blossom After the ruthless raids. The grazing and the mowing But bring me on my way; I sprout and spring perennial After a crop of hay. The bee, too, is my partner, Looks after all my flowers, The tireless wing and pander Of my numb sexual powers. Mowed by the frost of winter, I start again to birth, Tenacious, firmly rooted In the deep soiled earth. HO MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS Each soul is a separate thought, A separate thought of God, And thought and thought ignite From friction of contact And give light to the world. My soul is a thought of God In a wayward mood expressed, A feeling of forlornness and failure. BEAUTY AND DISTANCE The glad, the beautiful, the fair, Are found in yesterday's despair, Old griefs made beautiful by time And set to music and to rhyme. TENANTS When that white domed Palace of the Mind, The Mind vacates, vile worms the tenants are; And through the windows there, where once the Soul Looked forth in speculation on the world, The worms crawl in and out. MISCELLANEOUS III THE SISTERS OF MERCY They come from the last sickness, A white corpse void of breath — Clad in the garb of mourning, They bring U6 news of death. When through the merry-making They, silent, take their way, The mirth dies from the music, Men cross themselves and pray. They come like pale-faced spirits Breathing awhile our breath; Clad in the garb of mourning, They bring us news of death. THE CHILD-KING "Woe to thea, O land, when thy king is a child !" A child upon the throne of Life — Life trembles at its fate. But Time will make and crown him Man- The centuries on him wait. 112 MISCELLANEOUS "THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES" Yes, "the female of the species is more deadly than the male" To the foe that tracks her offspring ' 'and her instincts never fail." In the hour of danger often the male turns coward, slinks away; Leaves the female to defend them from the animals that prey. Often, too, she must defend them e'en from him from whom they sprung, For the male is blind and vicious and will sometimes eat his young. Therefore, hers the place of honor, hers the forefront in the strife, She, the mother of the species and defender of their life. THE ANSWER "What is this life-force ? What ami?" To which my soul did make reply: 4 'The restless spirit of the earth That groans and travails unto birth, Deep down in elemental night A blind god yearning toward the light." MISCELLANEOUS 1 1 3 BROTHERS Brothers we were born Into the centuries, And brothers we in prejudice That makes us enemies. LIBERTY A thousand years ago begun The fight for liberty; A thousand battles have been won — And still we are not free. TO KNOW AND NOT TO KNOW Not to know is Hate That in cruelty wreaks its fears. To know is Love, And pity is Love in tears. THE UNPARDONABLE SIN Sexual levity is the sin unpardonable, Man false to himself and the purpose o'er him. Who laughs and jeers at woman as woman Laughs and jeers at the mother that bore him , IT4 MISCELLANEOUS FORSYTHIA AND DAFFODILS When blooms the rich forsythia We know that Spring is here — All flower and all yellow Before the leaves appear. She, while as yet retreating snow Makes white the distant hills, In the brown earth, 'neath the bare boughs, Blooms with the daffodils. Her flowers are golden bells Hung in March winds and ring The bridal march of Spring, While faery daffodils, In garden plot and row, Their golden trumpets blow. And the dreaming folk below The airy dales and dells Can hear them blow And ring, The trumpets and the bells Of Spring. MISCELLANEOUS U5 THE MOUNTAIN TRAIL See the snow-peaks in the distance ! Here begins the quest and venture — Leave behind the hearts that quail. Here's the end of road and wagon; Saddle ponies, pack the burros, Ride upon the mountain trail ! Where the trail goes winding upward Over broken, rugged country, Over porphyry and shale, There are hints of fortunes waiting In the float from hidden ledges, Fortunes on the mountain trail. We shall seek for hidden treasure Through the day, and in the evening Hear the old prospector's tale, Stories told around the campfire — Sleeping out beneath the pine trees, Dreaming on the mountain trail. In the dawn, auspicious, golden, Saddle ponies, pack the burros, For the quest o'er hill and vale, Fording streams and climbing ranges — Forward, Youth, upon adventure, Ride upon the. mountain trail ! Il6 MISCELLANEOUS THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN COLUMBINE She lives in the lonely, high mountain glen, Aerial, lucid, unpampered by men, Queen flower of the mountains, the columbine, And breathes the delicate air of summer, Cooled by the snow-caps, fragrant with pine. She has stood on the bank and heard in a dream, Through countless summers, the rush of the stream O'er rocks that impede and confine, Till the soul of the rock and the river Blooms in the columbine. TO THE CALIFORNIA POPPY O poppy, thou hast conquered with thy beauty The valley meadows and the uplands warm, Until thy flaming banners are advanced Up mountain walls and take the world by storm. COYOTE A howling coyote, The plain and dreariness- The spirit of the desert Crying its loneliness. MISC EIX ANEOUS 117 CAUSE AND EFFECT In Tennyson, life full and free Outpoured in songs of ecstasy. A misborn Pope, writhen in pain — Song turned to satire on his lips. THE WANDERER I fbei, shut up in place, and go; There is a longing in the mind; O do I travel to escape, Or is it something I would find ? ELIZABETH She was the maiden hope of life, Our dear Elizabeth, A hope forever lost to life And was not gained by death. NOCTURNE Each sailing world hangs out a light, In depths of space their distant vigils keep. Silence, an ocean dim with night, Breaks in dream around the couch of sleep. Il8 MISCELLANEOUS W. C. T. U. For sons, and brothers, and husbands, As mothers, and sisters, and wives — By love, and the lives we gave them, We plead with men for their lives. Each year we bear and breed them, Ten thousand men, and strong, To be drugged and killed with poison, A sacrifice to Wrong. For sons, and brothers, and husbands, As mothers, and sisters, and wives — By love and the lives we gave them, We plead with men for their lives. AN EPITAPH My words — they wronged me, And my work — it cheated me; But I am done with words and work And words and work are done with me. MISCELLANEOUS 119 THE DRUNKARD'S TOAST Fill up the glass ! We drink to death, The death this drink shall bring to pass ! To death-in-life, the drunkard's death ! Fill up the glass ! We drink to death ! We drink confusion unto life, To prudence and the work of years; We drink to failure and neglect, To child-wrong and to woman's tears, Ay, drink to crime and to distress And then drink to forgetfulness. Fill up the glass ! W r e drink to death ! THE COURSE OF EMPIRE "Westward the course of empire takes its way"- Westward to the East, to be supreme. Japan becomes an empire of today And China wakens from her opium-dream. PERSONAL TO SWINBURNE Thou hast thrilled us into rapture As a woman thrills her lover, And we praise thee with the passion Thou hast stirred to life and being, And its scorn, its wrath and hatred, Keep for the. unfeeling critic Of thy poetry. TO GEORGE STERLING Since thou hast lived, O true-born poet, Earth's more beautiful than before; Thou hast added a new splendor To the wave and to the shore. PERSONA!, 12 I TO RUDYARD KIPLING You love the rage of relentless battle, For it was there that your soul was born, Love life to risk it and fight for the fight's sake, And have for everything else but scorn. We have met before; we need no introduction; We fought and tore in the primeval mud. You were the victor and I was the vanquished, And you quenched your thirst with my warm red blood. Now we meet again; the old hurt rankles; I hate with the hate of the weak for the strong And you with the hate of insolent swagger And sheer brute strength that can do no wrong. You conquer once more, but perhaps tomorrow When we shall arise from the dust again, You shall have outslept the brute and the warrior And grant the peace I now crave in vain. TO DANTE O Spirit of Vengeance and of Flame, Who took the name of Love in vain, Tbank Heaven, by thee no life is crossed, For wert thou God then man were lost. 122 PERSONAL G. K. CHESTERTON He who should have been the leader Of bis age until the last, Like Memory, turns backward To the graveyard of the pa6t, Foregoes the Great Adventure, The dream of a better way — What part is his in the future Who has none in today ? But the fear of unknown tomorrow Shall stay not the feet that climb, And the banners of Life are advanced On the parapets of Time. TO F. W. H. MYERS Doubt-driven from Christianity And sorrowing after immortality, And groping for it in the dark unknown, — What blind thing hast thou stumbled on In that dark, desperate night ? What hidden truth hast brought to light ? But if it be not immortality What matters it to thee ? PERSONAL I£3 SHAKESPEARE AND THE BACONIANS "But he that filches from me my good name, Kobs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed." — Shakespeare. The laureate of the poets — lo, his fame Has reached at last the dull ears of the mob, Who have, roused from indifference to hate, Profaned with vulgar hands the poet's grave And stolen the laurels from the poet's brow To crown a hero of their own, the lord. O greatest theft of time, beggaring the world ! What fame is sure since Shakespeare's is not sure? ANNIE BESANT She, the gentlest of the sage, Rose above her sex and age, But unequal to the strain, Sighed, became woman again. JOHN BROWN John Brown, the indiscreet, Imprudent for the truth, fanatic for the right, Yet grander in defeat Than they who temporized, the men that won the fight. 124 PERSONAL KEATS The Greek religion (piety) Is now a theme for poetry. In broken fane and painted urn, Its foolish creeds And cruel deeds Are overgrown With moss and beauty not their own. When we are one with Greece and Rome, And our religion, in its turn, Its turn completes, Becomes mythology, Then Christianity Shall have its Keats. IZAAK WALTON He felt the beauty that he sought, But not the havoc that he wrought, While angling, listening to the flow Of silver streams through tangled green, Himself the discord in the scene. But life is sleep — how should he know ? And death brought on a deeper sleep; And o'er him sleeping let us weep, But not too loud lest he awake And seeing all his gentle heart should break. PERSONAL 125 TO JOYCE KILMER After reading his poem, "To a Young Poet Who Killed Himself " in which he calls the dead poet "a coward and ait ass." Do only cowards kill themselves That "coward" you must cry ? Is it not cowardice to live For him who fears to die ? Not cowardice excites your spleeen, Though "coward" you must cry; It is because his bitter death Gives your smug creed the lie. TO FATHER TABB Thy right to be a father The Church took without shame, And then as if in irony Gave to thee the name. Renouncing earth for Heaven, Thou lost the life divine — The laugh of little children, A woman's hand in thine. 126 PERSONAL THOREAU AT WARDEN I wonder if, soul-satisfied, He felt at home with birds and trees, And never tossed from side to side At night, restless and ill at ease, And if he did not, missing, grieve And yearn, like Adam before Eve, The rustle of a dainty dress, A voice, a touch, a soft caress. TO EUGENE V. DEBS Socialist ca n dida te for pre si den t. Hail champion of the losing fight For Brotherhood and Love and Right 'Gainst Hate and Greed, ne'er counting cost, A losing fight that's never lost ! PERSONAL 127 AVE ET VALE Homer Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Like dead volcanoes stand, Vast vents of ancient, burnt-out passion In a forgotten land. O dramas made of crime and folly And epics of the sword, Ye please no more, your date is ended, Never to be restored. For time shall bring a greater Shakespeare, An Iliad different far — A tragedy without a murder, Brave men without a war. THE ILIAD They did not win and lose as men, But as the puppets of the gods, Who pulled the strings, deciding when And how the war and what the odds. No heroes they, not even men, But puppets of the dallying gods. And these half-men and meddling gods A poet has made immortal. 128 PERSONA!, AT THE SIGN OF LYRE To My Favorite Poet At the Sign of the Lyre With many poets I have caroused, But thou alone didst never tire And life from dullness always roused. And my last journey there shall end At the Sign of the Lyre, For it is there that I would spend The last night before the fire. And I shall smile with thee at pain And shall in death, as life, rejoice, And I shall hear thee sing again And die with rapture on thy voice. OPEN HOUSE " 'With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart;' once more. Did Shakespeare ? If so, the less Shakespeare he." — Drowning. You, Browning, wrote your brains away, And did you nowhere show your heart ? Aha ! you thought to be o'er-smart, Conceal yourself behind your art — It palpitates — 'tis plain as day. PERSONAL 129 THE DEAD BOSS Matthew S. Quay; odztt, 1904.. The boss is dead ! Office seekers, Henchmen and heelers, Bow the head And mourn your loss, For the boss is dead. The great, great boss ! He was a great man in a small way: He robbed the people and won their applause And ruled a whole state as his own. He was a great man in a small way: His heart ne'er thrilled to a noble cause, And he lived for power alone. Henchmen and heelers, pass on before The gilded casket where the dead boss lies. He worked for you, but his work is o'er; Then mourn and weep, — Weep, weep, weep, — And bury him deep, — Deep, deep, deep, — So deep that his spirit may never arise To trouble the world any more ! 13O PERSONAL SOLD An Election Day i?i Delaware. Though its badge was an eagle, the party must own it Was the dollar that won, not the eagle upon it. Addicks bought it, you know very well; So who shall question his right to sell Or do as he please with the thing he bought ? The. sovereign people, the young and the gray, All marched to the poles on election day And voted their liberty clean away. For a rake-oft advanced, they sold him the right To stab in the back and plunder at night. They were bought and sold like hogs on the drive, A white man for ten and a nigger for five, Wheedled and driven and cheated and sold — He bought them with silver to sell them for gold ! In selling themselves they surely were soldi — Soldi sold! soldi PLACE SPRING IN DELAWARE Spring in Delaware — You can see it in the flowers, You can feel it in the air, You can hear it in the singing Of the birds a-building there. Spring in Delaware, In the heart and in the air; Once I felt it and I lived it, Spring and youth in Delaware. J 32 PLACE SAN FRANCISCO The earth it shook and opened, And the city fell, But men again have builded On the lid of Hell. And should again it crash down, Again they'd build their will; Earth-thunder cannot daunt them And only death can kill. CALIFORNIA Emigrants — Westward to California, Sunset and dreams — But the sun still sets in the west And the ocean rolls between us and our dreams. DAYS ON PUGET SOUND Days of grey on Puget Sound, Sunless days that dripped with rain, Lost in fog and mist profound, Never to be found again. PLACE 133 MOJAVE HILLS The herds find here no grazing, The birds no welcome trees; The life that passes by us Is the only life one sees. Our loneliness, men feel it; They look and go away. We are weary of being silent And tired of the night and day. The road upon the hillside, It leads where, do you know ? What lies beyond the horizon ? We brood and long to go. CHICAGO 'Tis the city of the West, of democracy and toil, Of the great, broad prairie and its deep, rich soil. O the labor that builds and the wealth that employs ! O city of action and stunned by its noise ! 'Tis the West of London, Vienna, Berlin — As young as youth and as old as sin. 134 PLACE THE DESERT: NEVADA Stricken by the hand of Fate, All things, motionless, await The rain that never comes; no hope In cloudless skies. Far westward slope Low bastioned hills without a tree, Dead-guarding some dread mystery. The land lies far in weary miles, Under the sun, across the sands. An aromatic scent beguiles, Of sage, sole plant in arid lands. From desert floors, wind-swept, arise Dust-clouds, like smoke, unto the skies. CASA GRANDE Arizona Wind across the ancient ruin, Blown from the forgotten past, With what memories it is laden, Dreams and loves that could not last ? Blown from out the brooding silence, Blown across the desert sand, Cries of battle, lamentations Of a race that lost the land ! p lace y£ THE SEVEN CITIES OF CIBOLA Arizona From my labor in the valley I often turn and northward gaze At the far mountains, faint in distance, Dim with atmospheric haze. Those are no mountains of trap or granite; They are touched by no earthly beams; Those shapes are air castles, romantic, And in the shadowy land of dreams. It was here came Coronado And it was yonder that he sought The seven cities of Cibola, Resplendent, like a golden thought. I, too, some day shall go to seek them, Perchance ne'er to return again, The seven cities of Cibola That Coronado sought in vain. SUNSET IN ARIZONA The day's heat settles along the horizon, Behind the crater-shaped hills that glow, The furnaces of even. 136 PLACE THE DESERT: ARIZONA The mountains rise abrupt and angular From the plain, dry and bare. Rock and sand heaped pell-mell on The desert floor, the fragments of a world, Cleft by an ancient water-course, The dried-up river of Time. A lizard, see, on some forgotten errand Has fallen asleep. A giant cactus stands, With headless trunk and blunt arms stretched, Imploring, to the sky. AN ARIZONA TOAST Draughts of heaven, distilled sunlight, Transparent, tonic, dry, Blown down mountain and o'er desert Out of the clear blue sky. Standing in the crystal ether, The desert floor upon, Fill, we drink to Arizona The goblets of the sun. PLACE 137 ROMANCE IN CALIFORNIA Ay, there was romance once in California, A gleam upon the mountain and the plain, And then the booster came, And he would grasp it in his hand, Advertised it, offered it for sale, And it vanished from the land. ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS PROTOPLASM AND CONSCIOUSNESS Consciousness is a stage in the evolution of sensa- tion. Without the sensitive medium of living proto- plasm there could be no consciousness — no thought, mind, soul. What feels, thinks, and speaks in us is the universe, the universe become partially conscious. As electricity passing through a carbon filament is turned into light, so sensation in the brain of man is turned into consciousness; but, unlike electricity, it first reconstructs the medium through which it is turn- ed into consciousness. MORALITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS 'If I had one prayer to make it would be, God give me to understand." — Ferrand. Because so-called morality is often more or less im- moral, some people have decided that we would be bet- ter without it, while others have declared that there is no such thing as morality. But morality should not be taken at man's valuation any more than him- self. If you will analyze so-called morality, you will find at the bottom intention, intention to do what is 142 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS right, but intention itself cannot distinguish right from wrong. We must know the right before we can put it into practice. In other words, the morality of the indi- vidual is dependent upon his consciousness. It is not morality that is at fault, but our idea of morality. All the religion, all the good intentions in the world, will profit a man nothing if he lack understanding. CREATION AND CONSCIOUSNESS "The intestine rules the world. Life is a void that only death can fill." —Fabre. I saw a black snake yesterday with a green frog in its mouth. I would engrave this on our walls and monuments as a symbol of organic life — a snake with a frog in its month. That one species of animals should prey upon an- other, and should be compelled thereunto by the ne- cessities of existence, is damnable, yet this principle lies at the root of all life. Life is the infinite conver- sion of one form of life into another. It is intensely cruel, but unconsciously so, for whenever life becomes conscious of its own acts, of the conditions of exist- ence, it is filled with nausea, horror, and dismay thereat. Therefore, life as it is, life that preys upon life, could not have been the result of conscious design and foresight iti nature. The idea of a conscious god is monstrous. ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 43 THE HUNTER-SPORTSMAN "Boys throw stones at frogs in sport, but the frogs do not die in sport, but in earnest." — Bion. The hunter-sportsman is an animal that finds his pleasure in the suffering and death of other animals. There is nothing more horrible in life than an animal stalking its prey, and the most horrible feature of it is the pleasurable excitement m suffering and death, and the hunter-sportsman lingers as a survival of this pleasure. But he is not the monster that he appears to be, for he is unconscious of the suffering and death and feels only the sense of conflict. The conflict, however, is not between the life of the hunter and the life of the animal, but between the animal's chance to escape and chance of being killed. It is an unfair ad- vantage taken by the stong over the weak. It is not even sport; it is unconscious bullyism. We live at the expense of other life and even our pleasures are sanguinary and fatal. LOVE AND HATE Love and hate are both partial. Love cannot be depended upon for justice any more than hate. "Love is a passion, not a virtue," declared Ninon de Lenclos, and when we see thwarted love end in cruelty and murder we feel inclined to agree with her; 144 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS nor is our opinion altered when we turn to so-called spiritual love, the love of God that burnt heretics at the stake and the love of morality that ends in immo- rality. Hate is often an indirect result of love. The love of what we believe to be good is the hate of what we believe to be evil. It is because the patriot loves his own country that he hates his neighbor-country. Men hate because they "love, not wisely, but too well," and the remedy is to be found in the rationalization of love, consciousness. It is useless to preach love: if one lack understand- ing, it will only get him into trouble; if he have under- standing, love will take care of itself. The Christian religion is an example of the folly of attempting to drive out hate with love; instead of driviug it out, it only increased it. Christianity, the religion of love, surpasses all others in hate. MATTER When I ask my friends what they mean by spirit, ual they talk about the invisible, the unseen, and point to the ether of space. But I have already been there, although I have no memory of it, for there is no mem- ory in that place, nor knowledge, nor life. Out of the vapor and invisible gasses I have arrived and walk firmly on the solid earth. Visible and palpable matter ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 45 is the last word in evolution, the highest stage, not the lowest. I do not scorn nor flout matter. I cling to the gran- ite of matter. I embrace the earth with affection. O matter ! matter ! how precious you are to us whose lives you condition, beautiful in the colors of the land- scape, sweet to kiss in the red lips of the maiden ! After all, the so-called spiritualist does not care for the spiritual, or non-matter, any more than the mate- rialist. When he attempts to picture a future life it is always in the terms of matter. His spirit is the ghost of matter. PATRIOTISM Patriotism is the instinct of self-preservation or self-assertion as a racial or national unit. In the average citizen it takes the form of racial jealousy or idealized prejudice — "my country, right or wrong." We cannot get rid of our instincts, nor is it desirable that we should, but we can rationalize them, and if patriotism were rationalized we would be able to treat our neighbor-nations fairly, and even to symyathize with their aspirations, without losing our racial integ- rity. The evil of patriotism is not in patriotism itself, but in the patriot, and the remedy is civilization or the coming of age of instinct, which is reason. I46 ESSAYS IN COKSCIOUSNESS TRUE GREATNESS It is not the scientist whom the people call great and delight to honor, not the men who have helped and benefited mankind through scientific discovery and invention, but the warriors and conquerors, the Alexanders and Napoleons. The only thing that the fool and the bully can understand is a licking. Napoleon could win victories, but he did not know what to do with them when he had won them. War followed war and one battle led to another and to nothing else. No man ever made a greater failure of his life than Napoleon, his victories being only prelude to defeat, his leadership ending not only in the ruin of himself, but in the ruin of his country also. He left death and destruction in his wake and cut down the stature of the French race nearly two inches. He was worse than the black plague that swept through Europe in the Middle Ages, depopulating towns and cities, for the plague took its toll of death from old and young, weak and strong, alike, but Napoleon would have only the pick of mankind, the young and the strong. His fame is not founded upon individual worth, but upon the folly of mankind that makes such a career possible. The glory of Napoleon is the dis- grace of mankind. Let us compare him with another Frenchman, Pas- teur, who, by fighting and conquering the real enemy of mankind, disease, has added to the life and endur- ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 47 ance of the human race, and the effect of whose work is cumulative and will last as long as there is reason in the brain of man. The truly great man is the scientist who adds to the sum of human knowledge. "The rest is all but leather or prunella." DEMOCRACY AND AUTOCRACY Democracy, like autocracy, is a system or method of government and not the government itself, which may be anything from individualism to socialism, from competition to co-operation. A democracy is a state where questions of government are submitted to the tribunal of the mind of the people and the defeated party agrees to abide by the decisio?i, provided he have the liberty of free speech with which to defend his measure and appeal from the decision. Free speech is the weapon of democracy. The victories of de- mocracy are won in the brain, not on the battlefield; with ballots, not with bullets. Autocracy is founded on physical force, the only thing the ignorant can understand; democracy is a matter of intelligence. War is an institution of au- tocracy and has no place in a democracy except as a defense against autocracy. When the United States resorted to civil war to decide the 6lavery question it ceased, for the time being, to be a democracy. I48 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS NOTES ON NIETZSCHE Cruelty and Consciousness The outstanding feature in the philosophy of Nietz- sche is cruelty. He speaks of cruelty as "one of the festal joys of mankind" and mouths it over and over as though it were a sweet morsel. He is even more blindly cruel than the animal, for the animal does usually have some regard for its own species, or it would cease to exist, but the selfishness of Nietzsche is directed against the members of his own species. The lamb-killing eagle, his symbol of ruthlessne6s, is not such a fool as Nietzsche, for the eagle preys upon lambs, not upon other eagles. His tirade against sympathy and pity is the wolf in his nature howling at the dawn of consciousness. The first step in consciousness is the realization that there is something in the world besides yourself and which carries with it the recognition of the equal right of that something to life, liberty, and the pur- suit of happiness. A superman such as Nietzsche predicted, a man of superior intelligence and unscru- pulously cruel at the same time, is unnatural and im- possible. After all, nature does not make supermen; it makes one-sided men, and it is by fitting the sides, ends, and angles of men together that we get the su- perman or complete man. To the assertion that cruelty is a biological necessity ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 49 our answer i6 that life is not a necessity and is not worth cruelty. Democracy and Aristocracy Democracy is the highest political expression of in- dividual liberty, and if his philosophy were merely the philosophy of egoism it would have been to his interest to support and uphold it. It is not so much the philosophy of egoism as it is of despotism. He could not think of individual expression except in the terms of domination. He had the temperament of a petty tyrant or bully who thinks the way to show his own importance is to domineer and tyrannize over other people. Democracy provides the struggle necessary for the development of individuality. It is aristocracy that stands for suppression and is the leveler. It sup- presses, confines, and levels men into castes and class- es, while in a democracy there are as many levels as there are individuals. The equality of democracy is merely the equality of opportunity. A pampered ar- istocracy on the one hand and an enslaved working class on the other means degeneration for both. Physical exercise and moral restraint are as necessary for the well-being of the aristocrat as they are for the proletariat. He describes his ruling aristocracy as an aristocracy of birth and then goes on to speak of it as an aristoc- I5Q ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS racy of philosophers, but it could not be both. What we demand in an executive is executive talent, and it is a well-known fact that the abstract thinking of the philosopher unfits him for practical affairs. This in- consistency is the result of combining in his superman what he himself was with what he wanted to be. He thought of himself as a philosopher, and his superman is, therefore, a philosopher. But Nietzsche was also a contemptible snob with a hankering after the title and the rank of the nobility, and his superman must, also, be an aristocrat. The trend of the world toward democracy and co- operation is the natural and inevitable result of intel- lectual growth and enlightenment, and Nietzsche re- acted against it. Master-morality and Stave-morality It was not from history that Nietzsche derived his idea that sympathy and pity are slave-morality, but from hie imagination. Whenever the slave has had an opportunity he has shown himself to be just as cruel and vindictive as his master. The slave is a slave because of his ignorance and ignorance is always cruel and must either dominate or serve. Slave- morality is not sympathy and pity, but worship and reverence, and reverence, next to cruelty, is exactly what Nietzsche most admires, not only in the slave, but in the master, which goes to show that master- ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 151 morality and slave-morality are different phases of the same thing, the master standing in the same relation to his king and god that the slave does to his master. The master is the complement of the slave, and the result is not a master-morality and a slave-morality, but a master-and-slave-morality. It is not the sympathy and pity in Christianity that make it a slave-religion, but its worship and reverence. Christianity is no more slave than any other religion 6ince worship and reverence are the ritual of all relig- ion. What little sympathy and pity there are in Christianity are owing to the growing consciousness of mankind. Reverence for one's self and one's equals and con- tempt for everybody else — one does not have to be an aristocrat to have that kind of feeling; all that is nec- essary is to be a prig. The difference between mas- ter-morality and slave-morality is the difference be- tween prig and snob and Nietzsche was both. What he describes as master-morality is the pride and arro- gance of a small mind in a high position. Slavery and barbarism go together, and Nietzsche is the belated philosopher of barbarism, the degen- erate philosopher of swell-heads, highwaymen, and cut-throats. His thesis, "Nothing is true; all things are permissible," was the creed of the sect of Assas- sins, who were the terror of Syria in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It was the savage in his nature that craved the excitement of danger: the freedom of I5 2 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS the outlaw is danger; the freedom of civilization is safety. Tyranny and slavery, cruelty and rever- ence — this is his philosopy. It is what Tamerlane practiced and what Nero might have written. It is like echoes of demoniac laughter heard at night around the ruins of the. past. There are two ways in which a man can get a living: one way is to exploit nature or himself and the other way is to exploit the other fellow. And here we get the crux of the whole matter, the tragedy of trage- dies, the the human tragedy, the exploitation of man by man. His philosophy is limited to master and slave, but there is a teriium quid, a freeman who is neither mas- ter nor slave and despises both, the modern man, whom Nietzsche could only rail at because he could not understand. It is this man who will make the history of the future, in which there will be neither master nor slave. To get beyond the slave we must get beyond the master. Egotism a?id Ig?wrance Without sympathy there can be no understanding. Egotism limits a man to himself and makes knowledge impossible. Nietzsche was limited to his talent and taste. He had no talent or taste for science, but he could not wholly ignore it, so he made it his business to belittle ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 53 it and heap contempt acid derision upon scientists. Even in philosophy his sympathy did not extend beyond his own kind of philosophy, the introspective and inspirational, and he refused to recognize any- thing else as philosophy. His pride was a mark of ignorance, for the wise man knows that he has noth- ing to be proud of. He shut himself up in his con- ceit and was poisoned and driven mad by the venom of his own hatred. Dionysian Nietzsche showed a sense for the eternal fitness of things in selecting the old mythological god of drunk- enness, Dionysos, and the orgies held in his celebra- tion, to symbolize his individual unrestraint and law- lessness. His philosophy is indeed Dionysian. "MAN, THE ERECT" It is written in the Hebrew religion that no man can look upon the face of God and live; and, in truth, all religion is a shrinking from fact, an evasion that does not evade. But now that our turn has arrived, let us not kneel and cower, but stand up and look God in the face. 154 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS CARLYLE AND HERO-WORSHIP Hero-worshp is the religion of barbarians and sav- ages. In a state of barbarism there are no ideas, but only persons, and the person that can make the great- est impression upon the ignorance and credulity of the people, who is usually the least worthy, is the hero. But as the people become enlightened and civilized they begin to turn from men to ideas, begin to look within for light and guidance and not without. So hero-worship has been a dismal failure. Carlyle's defense of chattel slavery was not an inci- dent nor a vagary, but the complement of hero- worship. Worship implies tyranny on the one hand and servility on the other. No one worships but a slave and no one but a slave or a bully would want to be worshiped. Hero-worship and reverence — what an anachronism! The modern attitude toward the world is neither rev- erence nor irreverence, but curiosity, and the demo- cratic attitude toward man is respect, not reverence. We stand ready to shake hands with the world, with kings and gods, but nix on the reverence and worship business. Carlyle and Nietzsche, let us hope, are the last de- spairing cries of monarchy and feudalism in Europe. ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 155 THE GREAT MYSTERY The universe is the Great Mystery, and the better we understand it, the greater mystery it becomes. The unconscious know no more of mystery than of knowledge and are incapable of wonder. The Great Mystery cannot be apprehended by the mind that can be satisfied with such naive explanation as "God made." There may be mystery connected with the belief in a God-made universe, but the Great Mystery does not really begin until we get beyond the God-hypothesis. It is to science, therefore, and not to religion, that we must go for mystery as well as knowledge. That mystery itself is not an object of worship is proved by the fact that the men to whom the uni- verse appears as the greater mystery have no inclina- tion to worship. It is not mystery that men worship, but gods and kings^-^v-Mre>v . STUDIES IN IRRATIONALITY The tragedies of literature are largely the tragedies of mistake and misunderstanding and could with pro- priety be classed as Studies in Irrationality. In a ra- tional world the only tragedy would be life itself, which, however, would probably become, in consequence, so overwhelming that life would be unendurable. 156 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS CAVEAT EMPTOR Salesmanship is the art persuasion, which means to take an unfair advantage of a mind that is incapable of defending itself. It offers the greatest opportunity in life for the qualities of shrewdness and cunning, and the salesman has not been slow to take advantage of it. But set aside the sharp dealing of salesmanship and trade still remains ignoble, and this condition is inevitable from its nature, the desire to buy cheap and sell dear. He who can stand at the point of contact between buyer and seller, where prices are actually made, and not despise himself and mankind is an in- sensible brute. Salesmanship is the only work that is ignoble, yet it is the work to which everyone aspires. BEAUTY AND PLEASURE Beauty and pleasure are merely the means to an end, which is neither pleasant nor beautiful. They are the lure of the gods, the bait in the trap of life. Look for the. flower tomorrow and you will find a seed; for youth in the arms of love and you will find a fam- ily of children. We are enamoured of beauty and pleasure and are, therefore, miserable. The ends of life are not ours. We want no end, or, rather, we want the means to be the end, sensation for its own sake. ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 57 LIFE Insect, reptile, man, are different phases of the Bame thing — life. It is only an accident that man is not the animal he butchers acid eats. The farmer driving his cattle to market can say truly, in the lan- guage of Richard Baxter: "There, but for the grace of God, gol." He who through the breeding of swine converts the life -protoplasm into the hog-ego is as vile and dis- gusting as the animals themselves. The contemplation of the animal forms of life and their low states of consciousness is as horrible and de- pressing as a nightmare. FOOD, CLOTHING, AND SHELTER The master- workman said to his men: ,4 If you will give a certain number of hours, or years, of your life to working for food, clothing, and shelter, you can bave the remainder of the time to live in." But after the men had quit working for food, clothing, and shel- ter, they became listless and dissatisfied, and so went back to work, for, after all, food, clothing, and shelter was their life. We make vast preparation to live, but we never get beyond preparation, food, clothing, and shelter. 158 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS NATURE "I have loved colors, and not flowers; Their motion, not the swallow's wings; And wasted more than half my hours Without the comradship of things." — Arthur Symons. We call ourselves nature-lovers who have really very little love or sympathy for nature. We do not think of nature as nature, but for ourselves. We are in love with the landscape of nature, its picture, its poetry, made beautiful by distance. To describe na- ture as beautiful is to admit that we have never seen it. We cannot feel for nature, frozen and broken in the rock; we cannot see its still struggling nor hear its inarticulate groans. The world seen through a micro- scope is a squirming mass of legs. We are most of us like a certain squab-raiser. He said he chose squab-raising as a vocation because of his great love for birds. He loved nature to breed, kill, and eat it. For him who can feel for animals, the business of keeping them as live-stock is intol- erable. We are inclined to look upon the world as made for our special use and delight, and forget that while we are nature, we are only a part, and that the greater part lies outside ourselves. ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 159 PRAGMATISM AND TRUTH Wiluam James was right in saying that philosophy is a matter of temperament, which he divided into "tough-minded" and "tender-minded." By "tough- minded" he meant the temperament that faces the facts of life regardless of how disagreeable they may be, while by "tender-minded" he meant the tempera- ment that shrinks from whatever is disagreeable or distasteful. The first-mentioned temperament may be described as the desire-to-know and the second as the desire-to-get, or scientific and religious, respect- ively. Now, if the desire-to-get philosopher can prove that there is no "know" outside of "get," no knowledge outside of "use and good, "then the argument of the desire-to-know philosopher falls to the ground, and that is what James attempted to do. He attempted to make the "use and good" of psychology the meas- ure of truth by confounding it with the "use and good" of physical science, and thus giving it an ap- pearance of credibility; for the "use and good" of physical science is a matter of fact, while the "use and good" of psychology may or may not be a matter of fact and is often understood to mean what cheers or comforts the mind. To show the unreliabilty of the "use and good" of psychology as a measure of truth, let us take the case of an invalid mother whose son had been seriously in- l6o ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS jured, the knowledge of which would undoubtedly have had the effect of making her condition worse, and to whom the nurse, therefore, explained the ab- sence of the son until the crisis was past by invent- ing a falsehood. Here "use and good" turn6 out to be a lie. And by way of further illustration: If a man driven to the wall by his enemy should believe that friends more powerful stood on the other side ready to come to his aid at a moment's notice, although there were no friends nor help, would not the mere belief have the same effect upon his mind as the reality ? Would it not make him just as confident and fearless and thus help him to win the battle that he otherwise might lose? Here, again, "use and good" turns out to be a lie. "Believe and thou shalt be saved." Man is helped by believing that he is helped. Delusion and falsehood can make brave men out of cowards, sober men out of drunkards, healthy people out of sick people. "Evil will bless and ice will burn." The argument of James is that all we know of facts ifi "use and good" and that this is what we mean by truth, but the facts mentioned are certainly known in some other way than through the relation of "use and good. " It is an old story in philosophy that all we know of reality is relation, but it w r as left for pragmatism to limit relation to "use and good." James confounded the "suggestion" of psychology with the "fact" of physical science and explained the ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS l6l latter in the terms of the former, his object being to jolly the mind by 6aying that what jollies the mind is the truth. "The true is the useful and the useful is the true." To the pragmatist, truth is a very useful cow that supplies him with an abundance of milk. The dark- ened brain of the animal is limited to use — it can know nothing beyond it; but man — it is just this that makes him man, the ability to rise beyond the personalmeas- ure of use unto the impersonal measure of his measure. "Use" will milk the cows and bring home the day's harvest, but it will not take us to Heaven nor keep us from death. "Facte are not true." So it follows that pragma- tism is not true as a matter of fact, but in pragmatic or Pickwickian sense. James scorned the idea that facts were something for him to agree with and intimated that facts must agree with him. In other words: " 'Facts are stubborn things,' but I am stubborner. " And while he talked and boasted about getting the best of facts, facts turn- ed on him and ground him into dust. James's friendship for facts was mere camouflage. He recognized them only because he could not avoid them and feigned friendship that he might get an opportunity to stab them in tne back. The only thing that James cared about was aimself , his ego. His objection to materialism was not that it is not true, but that ' 'its sun sets in a sea of disappointment. ' ' 1 62 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS Pragmatism is an attempt to steal the meaning of the word truth as applied to "fact" and apply it to "use." If this were not the intention the pragmatist could have no objection to our saying what his argu- ment really amounts to, that there is no truth, since all we mean by "truth" is "fact." If the definition of truth as the useful were not believed to be true as a matter of fact it would not be useful psychologically, would have no pragmatic value. In the act of deny- ing that truth is a matter of fact he uses the w T ord in that very sense. Pragmatism is an attack on truth, the latest attempt of man to make truth subject to his will. What the pragmatist really means is "man, not truth" — human- ism. He is a special attorney for the ego and his ar- gument is a quibble. With the perversity of a child, he has muddled the pools of thought and tangled the thread of existence. James offered pragmatism as a theory of truth that "works," but our objection to it is that it does not work as truth, but as mental suggestion in religion and therapeutics, which is an entirely different thing. The working theory of truth is the objective, not the subjective; the truth of science, not of metaphys- ics. The working theory of truth is that everything is related to every other thing, and that while this re- lationship is constantly changing, the law of relation- ship is unchanging, inevitable, irrevocable; that truth is a law of nature, and not a whim of the human ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 65 mind; that truth is discovered, not "made." We can know a thing to the extent of its relationship with other things, and when a new relation is discovered our knowledge is modified to that extent. This is the explanation of the pragmatic phrase, "truth grows. ' ' For those who may object that in defining truth in the terms of relationship we leave out things, we will add: It is relationship that determines whether a thing shall be rock, tree, dog, or man, and with the change in relationship the thing that came into existence with it is changed into 6ome other thing. For instance, sodium and chlorine unite to form salt, and when the relationship is dissolved the thing salt disappears, is changed back into sodium and chlorine. So it is im- material whether we speak of truth in the terms of relationship or things, since things come into existence with change in relationship and go out of existence with it. Pragmatism is immensely popular, but the truth will never be popular. It is not subjective, but ob- jective; not man only, but the world, also. 1 64 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS REASON AND DESIRE Reason is the arithmetic of consciousness. It is the highest attribute of man; without it, he were a beast. And yet he has always regarded it with sus- picion and distrust. The favorite argument of the egoist, or desire-to-get philosopher, is his attempt to discredit the intellect, knowing that if this were once done he could put forth any fool doctrine that he might please to put forth without fear of contradiction. In the attempt to prove his nobility man becomes ignoble. Man wants his delusions and illusions, and in the white light of reason he stands disillusioned and dis- appointed. And this brings us to faith. Faith is reason corrupted by desire or intimidated by fear. (When man is not engaged in deceiving himself he is busy deceiving some one else. Six days he devotes to cheating his neighbor and one day to cheating himself. ) The fear of knowledge can be traced and felt, like a premonition of coming sorrow, through all the tradi- tions of the human race. Knowledge was the sin in the Garden of Eden. And this fear was not wholly without reason, for knowledge has only confirmed the suspicion raised by death. So long as the known is surrounded by the un- known, desire will have its argument. So long as there is night, there will be dreams. ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 165 THE MORTALITY OF THE EGO We should be doubly suspicious of any opinion in which we have a personal interest; suoh is immortality. As between the man that believes his desire and the man that does not, the presumption of truth is in favor of him that does not, since the bias of the mind is al- ways on the side of its desire. The desire of life is life, and if this desire be admit- ted as evidence of immortality in the case of man it must be so admitted in respect to all other forms of life. But, in any event, this desire is violated in death, since the desire is for life now and here and not otherwise. This desire is explained in the tend- ency of a thing once started in motion to continue in the same direction forever, a tendency, however, which is always defeated. To say that the ego is im- mortal is to say that a phase of motion is immortal, which is incredible. It is not an accident that consciousness is found only in connection with protoplasm. Consciousness is so closely related to the physical body that we can- not even rest the body without becoming unconscious. Since we cannot even rest without becoming uncon- scious, why should we expect it to be otherwise when we shall be entirely worn out, broken and dispersed? A man would not breed if he himself were immor- tal, for it would not be necessary. As the plant pro- duces its seed against its death, so man, the child. 1 66 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS Individuals are never found alone, nor can they live alone, but they live through one another and in num- bers and repetition. The individual is net a finished product, nor a thing per se, but merely a phase of growth or change from one condition to another, the child of yesterday, the parent of tomorrow. Birth is a reaching out and death a process of elimination. The individual is the body; humanity, the soul. It is the law of change and growth that has made im- mortality impossible, a god unnecessary, and keeps the world forever young and fresh. The individual is not tven an individual in the sense of oneness, but is a compound built up of many individual cells. It is the most fragile thing in the universe and, when once broken, can never be re- stored, as weak as flesh, as brief as life. But the greatest argument against the immortality of man is man himself. When I read the terrible history of mankind I feel relieved to know that the dead are safely dead. Man's boast of immortal im- portance is as absurd as his life is petty and sordid. The hope and salvation of humanity is not in the preservation and immortality of the ego, but in its evolution through life into higher and nobler forms. Life itself may be immortal, but not the life of John Smith or Bill Jones. Nature has gone as far as she can in you — "ye must be born again." Death is the tragedy of the individual, but even tragedy has its compensations. The knowledge that ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 67 life is a tragedy and that we are the actors can fill us with emotion that is not wholly unpleasant. But however that may be, let us act up to the tragedy; let us not turn it into a farce by playing at make-believe. RELIGION AND WOMAN Women have given to religion their affection and solicitude, have made it the medium of their thought and aspiration so long, that for us it has the features of our mothers, sisters, wives, and it is, therefore, almost impossible for us to consider it intelligently. Ah, woman ! woman ! you make us men and then you unmake us with your sentimentality and irrationality. OPTIMISM "God's in his Heaven — all's right with the world." In other words, the East End of London is all right and should remain the East End of London; social in- injustice, child-degradation, and beer-squalor are all right and should continue just as they are. And this is optimism — optimism indeed that turns God into a devil and leaves the world without hope ! There is no pessinist like your optimist. 168 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS THE VITAL ELEMENT IN RELIGION The vital element in religion is the belief in a help- ing God, and it is this belief, and not God, that helps and saves men from evil passions and habit-forming drugs. The faith of Christianity is similar to sugges- tion in hypnotism. In religious conversion the indi- vidual passes through an emotional experience in which the mind is hypnotized by suggestion. "He [Jesus] could there do no mighty work because of their unbe- lief. " This is the language of hypnotism. But how weak must be that life that turns to false- hood for consolation and support ! And the good is more than offset by the evil that follows from believ- ing that which is not true. The faith of the Christian is in the God of the Church, and that the Bible, the work of a barbarous age, is his written law or guide; and the result is that this faith has always fought, and is still fighting, the scientific advancement and amel- ioration of humanity. Let us make and enforce laws against habit-forming drugs so that the habit will not be formed in the first place, and then we shall need no God to save us from them. Since there is no God to love and help us so much the more necessary it is that we love and help one another. In our loss of a personal God let us hope we may be drawn together in closer union and brotherhood. ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 69 TREES AND IDEAS "A tree is known by its fruit," but not an idea. It would be impossible to form a definite conception of Christianity from its "fruit." The Jesuits believed the Christian doctrine of love, and Europe suffered the horrors of the Inquisition. The people of the French Revolution believed in liberty, equality, and fraternity, and the result was the Red Terror. The effect (fruit) of an idea upon the mind is not determined by the idea, but by the consciousness of t he mind in which it finds lodgment. So we see that ideas cannot reform the world, except indirectly, by helping to reform the mind. RELIGION AND MORALITY A moral religion probably does more harm than if it were immoral, because it brings discredit upon morality. "If we delude our children with pious fa- ble, " wrote Plato, "is it not possible that when they come to discard the fable they may also discard the truth that is taught with it ?" And this is not merely a possibility; it happens every. It has ruined the lives of unnumbered thousands. 170 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS CHRIST AND CONVENTIONAL RELIGION Christ had the greatest aversion, apparently, for the scribes and Pharisees. "Except your righteous- ness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of Hell?" Now, the scribes and Pharisees were the orthodox people of that day just as the Christians are the orthodox people of today. They were eminently respectable, the upholders and expounders of law, convention, and fig-leaf morality. His fiery denunciation of scribes and Pharisees must have surprised and puzzled many a good Christian that has turned to history to learn what particular wickedness the scribes and Pharisees were up to only to find that they were people very much like himself. Indeed, some of the Christian eommetators speak with an injured air about it. One says: "It is an obvious injustice. " Another naively says: "Christian practice is, on the whole, in favor of the Pharisee." The explanation is to be found in the sentence, **He spoke as one having authority, and not as the scribes and Pharisees. " But Christians never speak as having authority; they speak as the scribes and Pharisees. Christ was the kind of man that never subscribes to any creed except his own, and that is why no Christian can ever be like Christ. ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 171 Men may be divided into two classes: thinkers and believers, believers of what somebody else has thought. Christ was a thinker, and came in conflict with the believers of his day, the scribes and Pharisees. "Woe unto ye, scribes and Pharisees!" In other words, woe unto ritualism, dogma, tradition I But the tables are now turned and the religion of Christ himself has become a convention and the Christians are the scribes and Pharisees of today. Christ revolted as an individual thinker against con- ventional or organized religion. The only use for the Old Testament in the study of Christ is to show what he reacted against. Take, for instance, the story of the Pharisee who made long, formal prayers and the 1 publican who stood afar off and smote his hand upon his breast, saying, "Lord, be merciful to me, a sin- ner !" Now, if the prayer of the publican were cop- ied by the Christian and repeated day after day, it would degenerate into a ceremony and be no better than the prayer of the Pharisee. Its merit was in ite spontaneity and sincerity, that it was the expression of the individual himself — in a word, that it was not conventional religion. The religion of Christ is per- sonal, the religion of Christ himself, and to attempt to formulate it into a creed or to organize it into a sect is to lose it. Is it not strange that the Christians should have adopted the old Jewish Sabbath when the only refer- ence Christ made to the Sabbath was to break it ? — [72 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS the work of scribes and Pharisees, surely. After the scribes and Pharisees, the rich man came in for the condemnation of Christ, not for any special wickedness, but because he was rich. "Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God." — "but woe unto ye that are rich, for ye have received your consolation !" The Christians seem to think there must be some mistake about these and similar utter- ances and have attempted to explain them away. But is not this pretty much what we might expect from one who had not where to lay his head ? And is not the fact that the rich man remains rich amid the pov- erty and destitution of his neighbors good evidence that he does not love his neighbor as himself ? Christ was a social outcast and non -conformist and his relig- ion is the religion of the social outcast and non-con- formist, and the attempt to convert it into a religion for business men and society women is ridiculous. "The whirligig of time brings in its revenges," and the social outcast is now the Lord of society and the non -conformist is the God of conformity. All religion begins as heterodoxy and becomes or- thodoxy when it falls into the hands of the mob and becomes a convention. Christ was heterodox; the Christian is orthodox. Heterodoxy is thought orig- inal, individual, genuiue; while orthodoxy is a base imitation of heterodoxy, a counterfeit. ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 73 CREATION AND EVOLUTION Every individual is a new creation to the extent of his difference from every other individual. The child stands not only in the succession, but in the evolution. Man is not made, but in the making. Variation is the greatest fact in nature. Life is being constantly crea- ted before our eyes, and always unconsciously, and it is the destiny of the child to break his parents' hearts by growing beyond them. The act of creation, or procreation, is a thing of instinct, of passion, the de- lirium of desire and unreason. Evolution is from the simple to the complex, from gas to solids, from sensation to consciousness, and if there is a higher intelligence than man in the universe it must be in a higher stage of evolution, not in a low- er or primary stage, not in a First Cause. Evolution has made it possible for the created to be greater than the creator. Sensation and action came before thought and God is the end, not the beginning, of life. "THE REST IS SILENCE" The babbler wearies us with iteration, but when he lies still in death, silent at last, his silence impresses us as his babble never did and moves us to tears — no longer dull and commonplace, but pathetic, eloquent. 174 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS THE HOPE OF THE WORLD The life of man is expressed in the terms of a metal, as hard and unfeeling as the metal itself. Life itself is for him the abstract, the incomprehensible, and he can only apprehend it through the medium of a con- vention or symbol, and he ends by mistaking the sym- bol for the thing symbolized. The hope of the race is not in the immortality of the ego, but in its evolu- tion. The hope of the world, the goal of life, is con- sciousness. Man owes as much to death as to life, for, without death, the death of innumerable lower forms of life, he could not have come into existence. Death and birth are the great reformation, death that ends the present and birth that ushers in the future. We have hardly begun to live as a race. We are only in the dawn of consciousness, intellectual child- hood. Even the words with which we try to express ourselves are words of anticipation — civilization, soul. We have come up from the primeval mud past the lair of the beast and are on the way to the house of man. Life is the fountain of youth and every generation we renew ourselves in the bath of birth. The man-ego was alive in prehistoric time and it lives in us today. It has never died. It sloughs off the individual as the snake caste its last year's skin and lives on through the centuries and cycles of change. ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 75 INTOLERANCE Christianity serves to strengthen and confirm the individual in his prejudices by putting divine approval upon them. What was merely opinion becomes the word of God, which all men are bound to believe and obey. It is no longer a question for rational consider- ation or discussion, but it is a case of believe or be damned. It answers argument with threat and curses. It "set a man at variance against bis father, a daugh- ter against her mother," and turned Europe into a slaughter-house. "Liberty of thought . . . this conclusion, so far as I can judge, is the most important ever reached by man," said Lord Acton. And this most important conclusion ever reached by man was fought bitterly by the Christian Church with every physical torture that a diabolical imagination could invent or hate and cruelty could inflict. It forged the chains of intellect- ual slavery and dragged the intellect in triumph before its gibbering votaries. The history of civilization in Europe is the history of the struggle between science and Christianity. The Church has fought on the los- ing side for a thousand years. It has done everything it could to quench the only divine spark in life — intellect. Were I a Christian in fact, I could not endure to be so in name, a name that has condoned every crime and that is polluted with the blood of the innocent. It hangs like a fog on the intellectual horizon and the meridian of Christianity is known as the Dark Ages. 176 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS "THE FEAR OF GOD" In the words of Elbert Hubbard, "The Christian Church has capitalized fear." It has materialized the suffering resulting from the violation of the laws of nature into a place of eternal torment. It has invest- ed death with new terror, invented a Hell that can serve no purpose except revenge. He who is converted to Christianity through fear is not likely to lose it in becoming a Christian. Fear acts as a poison in the human system and the preach- ing of fear is a crime against humanity. It is true that there is no pity in nature, that the laws of nature are inexorable and irrevocable; but when we resort to personification the blank face of nature takes on the grin of a fiend and the inexorable and irrevocable become the malignant and implacable. It is the business of science to exorcise the spirits raised by the imagination and lead us back to an im- personal nature. The Christian is hag-ridden by a metaphor. SKEPTICISM "If I doubted Christianity, fear would make me a Christian." The skeptics are all in the Church. Doubt that does not lead to belief ends in the doubt of doubt; so the mere doubter goes around in a circle and comes back to the point from which he started. ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 77 A DEMOCRACY AFRAID OF ITSELF The United States is a democracy that is afraid of democracy. While the constitution confers equal suf- frage, it puts a check upon it by making it as difficult as possible to make new laws. The two houses of the English Parliament, after which our Congress was modeled, represent the two classes in a monarchy, lords and commons, but two houses in a democratic congress serve no purpose except to hinder legislation. The belief that the senators represent the states and the representatives the people is a fiction; their duties are identical; the state cannot be separated from the people. When legislation succeeds in passing through both houses of Congress and is signed by the presi- dent, it can still be defeated by the Supreme Court judges, who are appointed for life by the president, and are thus removed as far as possible from the peo- ple. The seuators, instead of being elected for the same term as the president, are elected for six years, one-third of the number retiring every two years, so that it often happens in a presidential election that the defeated party retains a majority in the senate, which results in a presidential administration without any definite policy and a government that works with the greatest difficulty. Are these checks really necessary ? Shall we never have enough confidence in our own form of govern- ment to make a working government out of it instead of one that remains impasse half the time ? I78 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS THE HUMAN REVOLT The people of the Kingdom of Life are in rebellion. They declare against the Jaws of life and challenge their God to battle. They throw their spears at the sun and fight against the moon. They demand that the wheels of time be stayed, that today endure for- ever. They want the sweet without the bitter, the good without the evil, life without death, motion without change. They cry in vain to an unapproachable God seated on his Throne of Indifference. They are caught, and crushed, and ground in the revolving wheels of chance and change forever and the earth resounds with their lamentations. IMAGINATION AND DESIRE The child spends his life at play, in an imaginary world. In the man he starts out to make his dreams and desires come true, and the desires that are unrealized and unrealizable, repressed desires, find vent in imagi- nation, but he no longer calls it play, but religion, art. What is God but the personification of the will of the individual ? What is soul but the personification of his desire ? What is salvation but the salvation of the desire by the will ? What is religion, after all, but the imagination of repressed desire ? ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 79 THE SUPERNATURAL A belief in the supernatural presupposes a nature outside of nature, that nature is not creative and suf- fient unto itself, but inert, mechanical, dead, and im- possible without an outside and greater nature. Man lives too near God to recognize and reverence him and so runs after false gods. Earth is merely earth to them that live upon it; ten million miles away it is a brilliant star. When we discover the law of what is called the supernatural, when it becomes capable of explanation, it is no longer the supernatural, but the natural. A METAPHYSICAL DREAM I FELL asleep while reading German metaphj'sics, and I dreamt I heard the mirrors in the room learn- edly discussing the nature of man and what came within the range of their vision, and the only thing they seemed to be in any sense agreed upon was: "Man is my idea." HEALTH AND DECEIT Christian Science is the science of self-deception. The beneficial effect is derived from the self-deception of mental suggestion. The problem for the future will be, how to be healthy and happy without making a fool of one's self ? l8o ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS POETRY Poetry is emotion, with an aesthetic thrill, com- municated in words. Thoughts that stated in prose would be depressing or absurd in poetry thrill us with pleasure. The pessimism in the poetry of James Thomson (B. V.) and the absurdity in the poetry of Francis Thompson are as thrillingly beautiful as the optimism in Browning or the romanticism in Keats. The poet turns his grief into poetry and it is no long- er grief, but a joy forever. The fault is not in the poetry, but in ourselves, that what was an inspiration yesterday may have no effect upon us today; and the fact that we felt the inspiration yesterday is proof that it is still there and that others like ourselves will feel it in the years to come. If my verse shall move the reader to praise it once, I care not what he may say afterwards. IN MY GARDEN I take refuge in my garden from the pain and suf- fering of animal life. I find companionship in the silence of the plants and cooling is the touch of their leaves to my fevered brow. The rose is a sleeping beauty and I am her lover, but I have no desire to play the fairy prince and awaken her with a kiss. ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS l8l A PLEA FOR THE WORST BOOKS A library of the best books is not the best library. The best library is not a selection, but a collection, impartial, uncritical. An hour devoted to the worst books, a sentence here and there, a paragraph or two, is a stimulus to the imagination, and when we go back to the best books they glow with added luster and we understand many things that escaped us be- fore. When Paul ' determined to know nothing but Jesus and him crucified," he shut himself out from knowing even that. We can only arrive at knowl- edge after infinite comparison. ''Beware of the man of one book," for he is a dangerous fanatic. POETS, PAST AND PRESENT The modern poets appeal to me as those of the past do not. They are my poets because they have the mind, accent, and flavor of the age. I maintain that the age that is conscious will recognize and delight in its soul while living and present, and not merely in retrospect, dead and past. I maintain that the poet that misses the ear of his age misses the audience for which his poetry was intended and that it can never be so thoroughly enjoyed by any other. 1 82 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS WORKING FOR WAGES For the employe, it is often not a question of whether his work is right or wrong, but what the boss thinks about it, which is demoralizing. And all dependence and servitude are demoralizing. Econom- ic freedom is as essential in the life of the individual as political freedom. Wages are tolerable only in so far as they are capable of making one independent of wages. The evil of machinery is wage-slavery, and one of the problems of the future will be, how to get the full benefit of our mechanical inventions without the de- moralization of wage-slavery ? I must do my own work, not somebody else's. Wages is the price the devil pays for a man's soul. THE REFORMER "Occasional windows have been raised, with vistas of far and fair coun- tries and breaths of ^rave mornings." — Herron. In the future, not the past, is the land of romance and the reformer is the knight-errant. Dream-inspired, he calls to noble strife and leads into tomorrow. So long as there is injustice or suffering in the world, he will never be for the thing that is. ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 83 THE CIGAR-HERO The hero of the popular American novel is usually depicted as an embodiment of the Will to Power with a cigar in its mouth. But the cigar makes us doubt that the will is as strong as the novelist would have us believe, for tobacco-smoking is a yielding of will to a habit-forming drug, a yielding of life to the forces of death, and however little, it is a yielding. It is a case of will all right, but it is a will on fire. The fire goes out at times, but it is always relighted at the pauses in the conversation. The moods and emotions of the cigar-hero are mi- nutely and accurately indicated by the manner of his smoking. The story is of striving and accomplish- ment, while the smoke of a smouldering fire, so small that one heeds, arises in faint rings and winds through the story, a portent of disaster, a story within a story — the smoke of a smouldering fire. THE PENITENTIARY It stands in center of the state, the gray stone walls of the penitentiary, bleak, massive, forbidding, high walls that shut out the sky, reach down to hell, and cast a shadow across the world. It is here that society imprisons its derelicts and delinquents. These walls are the walls of society. (But are they the walls of society ?) 184 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS MARRIAGE Marriage is a co-partnersbip contract. The con- sideration is love and, like the nominal dollar of con- tracts, is merely for the purpose of binding the con- tract. The business to be conducted is life, but not the life of the co-partners, but that of a third party, the child. Marriage is a sacrifice; procreation is not the bus- iness of the individual, but of the species. We would fain get beyond sacrifice, but it is impossible; our very instincts delude and betray us. EXPLANATION I was asked to explain myself and I meditated what I should say. First, I brought to mind certain things that I thought might be an explanation, but when I had considered them, I found that they were modified by others, and, after further consideration, I found that these others were modified by still others, and so on. In the end, I said, "I have noth- ing to say." ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 85 WAR-NOTES WAR AND CONSCIOUSNESS The war has awakened in the citizen the latent spirit of social service, which gives him a feeling of complacency and self-righteousness, and which finds expression in numerous essays, novels, and dramas. But, after all, it only helps to prolong the struggle and adds to its intensity and destructiveness. We have all the virtues there are, loyalty, courage, sacri- fice; but, in our hands, they turn into hatred, cruelty, murder. We have all the virtues there are, but we lack the intelligence to use them. Social service it seems to the men behind the guns, but to the men, women, and children in front it looks like devils' work. The death and destruction of war have awakened in the people the spirit of social service, something that life could never do. Their sentiments and emo- tions have been touched by the gross, brutal, obvious acts of war, while the finer issues of peaceful, un- eventful life escape them entirely. They do not ral- ly to the defense of life — it is too tame; only death can excite their imagination. We make a bungle of liv- ing, but we are great at dying. 1 86 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS If the soldiers engaged in the war and the men who are responsible for it are conscious of their actions, then we have no reason to believe that there will not always be men who, like them, will resort to the mur- der and destruction of war. The only hope of a bet- ter world is in the belief that these men are uncon- scious, that conscious life does not act in this manner and that consciousness is a matter of evolution. War has been described as "a necessary condition of growth." It is true that there can be no progress without the war of ideas. The pre-eminence of Europe is not the result of its bloody battles, but of the con- flict of ideas that produced them. China came to a standstill for the want of ideas. The test of civiliza- tion is just this: the ability to transfer the battlefield from the body to the mind. When we can fight without killing one another, then we may indeed call ourselves civilized. The tragedies of war are many, but there are two that deserve special mention: the tragedy of the young men willing and eager to do something worth while, and the best they can do is to murder one an- other; the tragedy of the individual who, as a mem- ber of society, is compelled to fight and die in what he believes to be a useless or unjust war. ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 87 ARMS AND THE FOOL "The war has vindicated melodrama," writes a dramatic critic. It has given us the material of mel- odrama, it is true, but not the conventional stage motif, the struggle between good and evil, hero and villain. It is melodrama without a villain, lor the combatants are fighting for the same thing, patriotism and right. Vast bodies of people are impelled by like motives to mutual destruction. With the best inten- tions in the world, they murder one another without quarter and without compunction. They commit acts of villainy without being villains and rise to heights of courage and sacrifice without being heroes. In the tragedy of life there is neither hero nor villain, but only fool ! fool ! fool ! The war can be summed up in four words, Arms and the Fool ! Heaven and Hell are for the righteous and wicked, respectively, but the fool is neither, unworthy Heav- en, not worthy even of Hell. Literary writers are seriously discussing the ques- tion of whether literature will remain the same after the war. H. G. Wells confesses that the effect of the war upon him has been to make the ante-bellum writers seem insipid and out-of-date. He has mis- taken the mental numbness of shell-shock for intel- lectual development. 1 88 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS THE WEAKNESS OF FORCE It was the preparedness of Germany for war that arrayed the world against her. She was attacked not because she was weak, but because she was power- ful. Make yourself feared and you will be hated. The German psychology was at fault in believing that people can be intimidated into submission by a campaign of frightfulness. Fear does not drive brave men to yield, but to resist. The dependencies of Great Britain that proved loy- al in the day of trial were those that enjoyed the greatest freedom of self-government, while Ireland and India, dominated by force, seized the opportunity to start a revolution. People may be forced into sub- mission, but not into loyalty. Mutual understanding and good will are the only permanent social foundation. All government found- ed on force is destroyed, sooner or later. The best diplomacy is the diplomacy of friendship. PREPAREDNESS To prepare for war, and to prepare adequately, the people must believe in, and expect, it, for human nature is so constituted that men shrink from work that they believe to be useless or meaningless. But all preparation, however inadequate, will have its ef- ect in leading to war by suggesting war. If we pre- pare for war, talk war, think war, we will have war. E SSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 189 WHAT THE WAR TEACHES That men are still brutes. That racial hatred is stronger than Christian love. That courage and sacrifice without consciousness are futile. That our virtues are also our vices — loyalty, honor, patriotism. That nations go to war on a pretext and defend their action with an excuse. That, men sacrifice themselves in war in an effort to sacrifice somebody else. That the suppression of free speech is essential to the successful prosecution of war. That where his patriotism is concerned, the opinion of the philosopher is worth no more than that of the peasant. That war is murder and that the cause of war is theft, and all the chivalry and bravery of mankind cannot make it anything else. The tremendous victory possible by man over na- ture if the energy and ingenuity that are now worse than lost in war and in the preparation for war could be diverted to human ends. That the only crime of kings is failure. The Rus- sians and Germans stood by their sovereigns through 1 9£ ESSAYS IN CO NSCIOUSNESS pillage and murder and turned from them — when they failed. And they call it revolution ! That idealism cannot keep us from war. President Wilson, the idealist, was responsible for the participa- tion of the United States in the war, for it was within his power to sway the country either for or against war. He now proposes a League of Nations to pre- vent war, but so long as nations are provoked as easily, and go to war as readily, as President Wilson, there will be war, and no League of Nations can prevent it. We went to war for nothing and got nothing out of it; therefore, we are idealists. What we need is less idealism and more common-sense. 1919 For four years the energy and ingenuity of the human race have been devoted to its destruction. The armistice was signed last November, but the murder- ing still goes on. Armies have degenerated into mobs of hungry men that plunder and murder at random. The nations are bankrupt; the people are starving. But what else can we expect from creatures that mur- dered their own God and the symbol of whose religion is the instrument of torture upon which they nailed him? Over this scene of death and desolation, of bleaching bones and ruined cities, looms the cross and on the cross he hangs, the murdered God of murder- ers, the dead God of a dying world ! ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS I9I DEFINITION AND SUGGESTION Religion is a mental narcotic. Virtue is merely plain common-sense. Faith is the last citadel of superstition. There is a skeleton in the closet of life. Spiritualism is camouflaged materialism. Give me facts and I will not ask for truth. The next thing that needs reforming is God himself. Faith is a mental blank where the priest writes his signature. "Man made God in his own image," and all worship is idolatry. The insensible make a virtue of the hardihood of insensibility. Hope is the lance of daring youth, a staff the old man leans upon. You do not have to cling to the truth; the truth will cling to you. The Kingdom of Heaven is a despotic monarchy; I am a republican. I92 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS It is not so much the will to power that counts as the ability to power. Advertisement is always a half-lie because it never tells the whole truth. When Passion enters the house of Thought, Prej- udice closes the door. Not to fear is not courage, but insensibility. Cour- age is to fear and still attempt. Religion is the poetry of the vulgar — doggerel. Poetry is the religion of the artist. The possible always happens, sooner or later, and so long as war is possible it will happen. Christianity is bad art. Its "resurrection" is an anti-climax; its "heaven and hell," supererogation. Today we celebrate Independence Day, but the day that war comes to an end will be Interdependence Day. If you would appear odd or original, affect common- sense, for it is the most uncommon thing in the world. Society is the paradise of fools. The less people have in themselves the more they seek for it in other people. The only thing genuine about society is its frivolity. People can meet as friends only on the plane of in- sincerity. ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 93 Amateur: Youth, the adventurer — the zest of life, the quest for knowledge. Professional: monotony and routine. Our love and hate are equally fatal. In our love for others we are like a child squeezing a kitten in its clumsy hands. Faith is a woman. She is helpless and so incon- sistent that she appeals to Reason to defend her against Reason. As courage is the virtue of the strong, so coward- ice is the virtue of the weak. Courage in a rabbit would be foolish and fatal. The definition of God as love is not a deduction from experience, but it is merely an expression of man's own feeling and desire. The negro in the woodpile of argument and contro- versy is prejudice. In religion, prejudice is called faith and is cultivated as a virtue. Mysticism is the explanation of mystery with mys- tery, or if the subject itself be simple, it gives it an appearance of profundity by treating it obscurely. Our revolutionary fathers declared that taxation without representation is tyranny, but taxation with representation may be tyranny, also, for the minority. 194 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS When they that fight for right are defeated, they still have their cause; but when they that fight for might (might makes right) lose, they lose everything. When woman had won her fight for equality with man, the first use she made of it was to demand an equal right to his vices, the tobacco and alcohol habits. It is useless to speak of beauty to the worn and wor- ried. Beauty must be felt before it can be seen, and it can only be felt through joy and mental freedom. "Virtue is its own reward," and anything else is a bribe. In other words, the reward must be the nat- ural effect of a condition, and not something foreign to it. The only immortality that man is worthy of would be preservation in alcohol along with other reptiles and insects, but then one or two specimens would be enough. A cigar is a swindle. The tobacco-smoker is a vic- tim of sensation without perception or of a weak will. He is the fool of pleasure. He is a child playing with fire. Do not handicap your child with another man's name. Children named for famous people serve only as reminders of somebody else's life. A new life de- serves a new name. ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS 1 95 To demand faith is to put a premium upon igno- rance and superstition, and it is prima facie evidence that the thing it supports is false since the truth is able to stand on its own merit. The picture of Walt Whitman in his old age print- ed as a frontispiece to his poems gives the lie to every- thing he wrote. What he left out of his poems, the suffering and pathos of life, is written in his counte- nance. Life is a choice of evils. The object of argument should not be merely to point out the evil of the con- trary opinion, which is so easy to do, but to show in what respect we believe it to be a greater evil than our own opinion. Is it not strange that in the custom of treating a friend the universally recognized treat should be a subtle poison, more suitable, surely, to be given to an enemy than to a friend ? But perhaps it is not so 6trange, after all — perhaps the joke is on friendship. The idealist philosopher makes man his starting- point in philosophy and explains the world in the terms of idea, will, desire, while the realist or scien- tific philosopher takes the universe for his starting- point and explains the world in the terms of matter, motion, evolution. I96 ESSAYS IN CONSCIOUSNESS I may have spoken bitterly, but I have never said that without the restraint and incentive of reward and punishment men would all be liars, thieves, murderers. This most terrible indictment ever made against the human race is made by unreflect- ing Christianity. It is a crime against humanity for a prospective parent to do anything that could possibly impair the vitality of the life to be, such as the impairment of his own health through narcotic indulgence, for in- stance, for an injury done to the unborn is a crime just as much as an injury done to the living. LIBRARY OF CONGRES I illHIUIllWllllllffllllllllll wsBm Bgg gg fflBlll gg H lgg ag figgS ■I iliiiS MB