The Story of My Life
receive shallow answers, or, to speak more correctly, they are quieted
by such answers.
"Where did I come from?" and "Where shall I go when I die?" were
questions Helen asked when she was eight years old. But the explanations
which she was able to understand at that time did not satisfy, although
they forced her to remain silent, until her mind should begin to put
forth its higher powers, and generalize from innumerable impressions
and ideas which streamed in upon it from books and from her daily
experiences. Her mind sought for the cause of things.
As her observation of phenomena became more extensive and her vocabulary
richer and more subtle, enabling her to express her own conceptions and
ideas clearly, and also to comprehend the thoughts and experiences of
others, she became acquainted with the limit of human creative power,
and perceived that some power, not human, must have created the earth,
the sun, and the thousand natural objects with which she was perfectly
familiar.
Finally she one day demanded a name for the power, the existence of
which she had already conceived in her own mind.
Through Charles Kingsley's "Greek Heroes" she had become familiar with
the beautiful stories of the Greek gods and goddesses, and she must
have met with the words GOD, HEAVEN, SOUL, and a great many similar
expressions in books.
She never asked the meaning of such words, nor made any comment when
they occurred; and until February, 1889, no one had ever spoken to her
of God. At that time, a dear relative who was also an earnest Christian,
tried to tell her about God but, as this lady did not use words suited
to the comprehension of the child, they made little impression upon
Helen's mind. When I subsequently talked with her she said: "I have
something very funny to tell you. A. says God made me and every one out
of sand; but it must be a joke. I am made of flesh and blood and bone,
am I not?" Here she examined her arm with evident satisfaction, laughing
heartily to herself. After a moment she went on: "A. says God is
everywhere, and that He is all love; but I do not think a person can
be made out of love. Love is only something in our hearts. Then A. said
another very comical thing. She says He (meaning God) is my dear father.
It made me laugh quite hard, for I know my father is Arthur Keller."
I explained to her that she was not yet able to understand what had been
told her, and so easily led her to see that it would be better not to
talk about such things until she was wiser.
She had met with the expression Mother Nature in the course of her
reading, and for a long time she was in the habit of ascribing to Mother
Nature whatever she felt to be beyond the power of man to accomplish.
She would say, when speaking of the growth of a plant, "Mother Nature
sends the sunshine and the rain to make the trees and the grass and the
flowers grow." The following extract from my notes will show what were
her ideas at this time:
Helen seemed a little serious after supper, and Mrs. H. asked her of
what she was thinking. "I am thinking how very busy dear Mother Nature
is in the springtime," she replied. When asked why, she answered:
"Because she has so many children to take care of. She is the mother of
everything; the flowers and trees and winds."
"How does Mother Nature take care of the flowers?" I asked.
"She sends the sunshine and rain to make them grow," Helen replied; and
after a moment she added, "I think the sunshine is Nature's warm smile,
and the raindrops are her tears."
Later she said: "I do not know if Mother Nature made me. I think my
mother got me from heaven, but I do not know where that place is. I
know that daisies and pansies come from seeds which have been put in the
ground; but children do not grow out of the ground, I am sure. I have
never seen a plant-child! But I cannot imagine who made Mother Nature,
can you? I love the beautiful spring, because the budding trees and the
blossoming flowers and the tender green leaves fill my heart with joy.
I must go now to see my garden. The daisies and the pansies will think I
have forgotten them."
After May, 1890, it was evident to me that she had reached a point where
it was impossible to keep from her the religious beliefs held by those
with whom she was in daily contact. She almost overwhelmed me
with inquiries which were the natural outgrowth of her quickened
intelligence.
Early in May she wrote on her tablet the following list of questions:
"I wish to write about things I do not understand. Who made the earth
and the seas, and everything? What makes the sun hot? Where was I before
I came to mother? I know that plants grow from seeds which are in
the ground, but I am sure people do not grow that way. I never saw a
child-plant. Little birds and chickens come out of eggs. I have seen
them. What was the egg before it was an egg? Why does not the earth
fall, it is so very large and heavy? Tell me something that Father
Nature does. May I read the book called the Bible? Please tell your
little pupil many things when you have much time."
Can any one doubt after reading these questions that the child who was
capable of asking them was also capable of understanding at least
their elementary answers? She could not, of course, have grasped such
abstractions as a complete answer to her questions would involve;
but one's whole life is nothing more than a continual advance in the
comprehension of the meaning and scope of such ideas.
Throughout Helen's education I have invariably assumed that she can
understand whatever it is desirable for her to know. Unless there had
been in Helen's mind some such intellectual process as the questions
indicate, any explanation of them would have been unintelligible to her.
Without that degree of mental development and activity which perceives
the necessity of superhuman creative power, no explanation of natural
phenomena is possible.
After she had succeeded in formulating the ideas which had been slowly
growing in her mind, they seemed suddenly to absorb all her thoughts,
and she became impatient to have everything explained. As we were
passing a large globe a short time after she had written the questions,
she stopped before it and asked, "Who made the REAL world?" I replied,
"No one knows how the earth, the sun, and all the worlds which we call
stars came to be; but I will tell you how wise men have tried to account
for their origin, and to interpret the great and mysterious forces of
nature."
She knew that the Greeks had many gods to whom they ascribed various
powers, because they believed that the sun, the lightning, and a hundred
other natural forces, were independent and superhuman powers. But after
a great deal of thought and study, I told her, men came to believe that
all forces were manifestations of one power, and to that power they gave
the name GOD.
She was very still for a few minutes, evidently thinking earnestly. She
then asked, "Who made God?" I was compelled to evade her question, for
I could not explain to her the mystery of a self-existent being. Indeed,
many of her eager questions would have puzzled a far wiser person than
I am. Here are some of them: "What did God make the new worlds out of?"
"Where did He get the soil, and the water, and the seeds, and the first
animals?" "Where is God?" "Did you ever see God?" I told her that God
was everywhere, and that she must not think of Him as a person, but
as the life, the mind, the soul of everything. She interrupted me:
"Everything does not have life. The rocks have not life, and they cannot
think." It is often necessary to remind her that there are infinitely
many things that the wisest people in the world cannot explain.
No creed or dogma has been taught to Helen, nor has any effort been made
to force religious beliefs upon her attention. Being fully aware of my
own incompetence to give her any adequate explanations of the mysteries
which underlie the names of God, soul, and immortality, I have always
felt obliged, by a sense of duty to my pupil, to say as little as
possible about spiritual matters. The Rt. Rev. Phillips Brooks has
explained to her in a beautiful way the fatherhood of God.
She has not as yet been allowed to read the Bible, because I do not see
how she can do so at present without getting a very erroneous conception
of the attributes of God. I have already told her in simple language
of the beautiful and helpful life of Jesus, and of His cruel death. The
narrative affected her greatly when first she listened to it.
When she referred to our conversation again, it was to ask, "Why did not
Jesus go away, so that His enemies could not find Him?" She thought the
miracles of Jesus very strange. When told that Jesus walked on the sea
to meet His disciples, she said, decidedly, "It does not mean WALKED, it
means SWAM." When told of the instance in which Jesus raised the dead,
she was much perplexed, saying, "I did not know life could come back
into the dead body!"
One day she said, sadly: "I am blind and deaf. That is why I cannot see
God." I taught her the word INVISIBLE, and told her we could not see God
with our eyes, because He was a spirit; but that when our hearts were
full of goodness and gentleness, then we saw Him because then we were
more like Him.
At another time she asked, "What is a soul?" "No one knows what the soul
is like," I replied; "but we know that it is not the body, and it is
that part of us which thinks and loves and hopes, and which Christian
people believe will live on after the body is dead." I then asked her,
"Can you think of your soul as separate from your body?" "Oh, yes!" she
replied; "because last hour I was thinking very hard of Mr. Anagnos, and
then my mind,"--then changing the word--"my soul was in Athens, but my
body was here in the study." At this moment another thought seemed to
flash through her mind, and she added, "But Mr. Anagnos did not speak
to my soul." I explained to her that the soul, too, is invisible, or in
other words, that it is without apparent form. "But if I write what my
soul thinks," she said, "then it will be visible, and the words will be
its body."
A long time ago Helen said to me, "I would like to live sixteen hundred
years." When asked if she would not like to live ALWAYS in a beautiful
country called heaven, her first question was, "Where is heaven?" I was
obliged to confess that I did not know, but suggested that it might be
on one of the stars. A moment after she said, "Will you please go first
and tell me all about it?" and then she added, "Tuscumbia is a very
beautiful little town." It was more than a year before she alluded to
the subject again, and when she did return to it, her questions were
numerous and persistent. She asked: "Where is heaven, and what is it
like? Why cannot we know as much about heaven as we do about foreign
countries?" I told her in very simple language that there may be many
places called heaven, but that essentially it was a condition--the
fulfilment of the heart's desire, the satisfaction of its wants; and
that heaven existed wherever RIGHT was acknowledged, believed in, and
loved.
She shrinks from the thought of death with evident dismay. Recently, on
being shown a deer which had been killed by her brother, she was greatly
distressed, and asked sorrowfully, "Why must everything die, even the
fleet-footed deer?" At another time she asked, "Do you not think we
would be very much happier always, if we did not have to die?" I said,
"No; because, if there were no death, our world would soon be so crowded
with living creatures that it would be impossible for any of them to
live comfortably." "But," said Helen, quickly, "I think God could make
some more worlds as well as He made this one."