Thoughts of a fool
road made no complaint except against the harassments imposed upon her
by a swarm of flies. She lashed at the ravenous insects with her tail,
made an occasional snap at them with her teeth, and a desultory dart
at them with a hoof in her frantic effort to be rid of her tormentors.
She laid down on the roadside, breaking the shafts of the wagon, killed
some of the flies, but most of the flies got away and jumped on the ass
again when she arose. This operation was repeated a great many times.
She was a tired beast when she reached her journey’s end several hours
behind time, and it was a relief to get into the friendly shelter of a
stable, where she might enjoy hay and water, secure from the merciless
flies. The wisest of the flies however had accompanied her into the
stable, and, perching on the donkey’s best ear, he buzzed his plaint of
misery thus.
“Thou dolt and ingrate! All day hast thou manifested displeasure
because of the great love we bear thee. We sang to thee our sweetest
songs, and our proddings gave thee strength to complete thy journey
to this haven of rest. Had it not been for us how couldst thou have
reached the succulent fodder which is now thy portion?”
The penitent ass bowed her head in shame before these reproaches.
“I had not estimated your help at its proper value,” she brayed,
humbly, “and I beg to be forgiven, miserable sinner that I am!”
Was ever donkey in such manner wooed? I forgot to mention the fact that
it was a “she” donkey.
Away back in “the blurred bush of bygones” it was a most important
religious ceremonial to eat the flesh of our grandmothers. The priest
of that day assured us of eternal damnation did we omit reverent regard
for that sacrament, however tough the fiber of the feast.
And the priest of this day tells us that, were it not for him, we would
still be dining on grandma.
“See what government has done for you!” shrieks the vehement
politician. “It gives you your rights and protects you in them!”
In refusing to admit the claims of priest and politician I lay myself
open to the indictment of being the same sort of an ingrate as the wise
fly charged the patient donkey with being, but I know the story of
Napoleon’s handwriting, and the donkey didn’t.
Whatever progress humanity has made toward decency, considerateness and
justice have been accomplished in spite of church and state, and not
because of them.
Nevertheless the wise flies keep on buzzing their claims unto the
patient donkey, and the ass believes.
Every onward step from cannibalism, slavery, tyranny, injustice, was
made against the protest of church and state.
Our truly great have become so only as they have taught us to laugh to
scorn the magniloquent claims of authority.
Every form of Magna Charta, in every age, was wrested from some
unwilling king, who protested that it was his great love for us that
resisted our demands.
Authority maintains its institutions in order to teach the masses
patriotism, religion, and wisdom. It behooves us to discount
authoritarian definitions if we would attain happiness.
When the wise established institutions to inject wisdom into fools,
the foolishness of the fools infected the wisdom of the wise and they
became foolish. When the state establishes military academies to train
cowards into heroes, the cowardice of the coward is assimilated by the
heroes, and they in turn refuse to fight. When great institutions are
founded to teach the masses, the masses unlearn the professors, so
that they question their own wisdom. While I agree with the wise ones
that things will settle themselves all right, I must say that we have
progressed in spite of them, and if we would see ourselves as the wise
see us, then they must see that we are getting less and less religious,
less and less virtuous, less and less patriotic, less and less wise.
We are safe in abjuring authoritarian religion that we may become
sanely religious. We must rebel against institutionalized patriotism if
we would evince a decent regard for the rightful claims of humanity.
We must become less wise and less virtuous from conventional points of
view to be truly virtuous and practically wise.
Lest we be as the credulous donkey.
NET BALANCE
The task of taking stock of myself has not proven a pleasant one. I
have been trying to figure out what society has granted me, and to what
extent I have responded with an equivalent. I find that I wear clothes
I did not make. I consume food I did not grow nor prepare. I inhabit
a dwelling which I neither designed, built, nor furnished. I enjoy
facilities of transportation, though I have built neither roads nor
vehicles.
Figure it as I may, I discover my account to be in a bad way. The
assets present a goodly array, but they dwindle mightily before the
overwhelming formidableness of the list of liabilities. I have been
running into debt to society at an alarming rate. Funny I never thought
of it until stocktaking day.
Altogether the discovery is disconcerting in the extreme. My
conscience is not a satisfactory book-keeper under these conditions.
That conscience of mine will not allow my charging up against the
liabilities the unction I would lay to my soul that I have been
sympathetic, and held high ideals. And, indeed, when I essay to
apply the unction I realize that I cannot find my soul. Where had my
soul gone? What had become of that much-prized soul? I have lost my
soul in this insolvency. I tried to increase my spiritual assets by
attaching myself to certain religious organizations, but could find
no consolation there, till at last I decided that I ought to go into
spiritual bankruptcy and ask for a receiver. In this wide world, where
you can get most everything, I have failed to find the spiritual court
with jurisdiction that qualifies it for that position. I have searched
everywhere, and find to my amazement that all are in the same fix.
Society as a whole is spiritually bankrupt--it, too, has lost its soul.
The cause of this strange state of affairs I found to be not due to the
direct intention of life to defraud itself, but society’s spiritual
auditors made a grave mistake in stocktaking. The trouble seems to
be that these functionaries have underestimated the ultimate cost of
things. They thought that the price it pays for its labor represents
the cost. We have thought that pieces of mud, gold, and silver are
equivalent to life, and that by paying a certain wage we had acquitted
ourselves of all obligation. Then, by supplanting men in the workshops
with women and children, we reduced the cost, because we paid less
for about the same stent of work. We thought society economical by
putting children at work at mining our coal; that the seventy-five
cents paid for their daily efforts represents the cost to society for
getting the coal out of the mines. But this is not the cost; it is the
price. The cost to society towers away above the price that figures
in the commercial account current. The cost of working childhood at
coal-mining is the brutalization of the embryo citizen; the killing of
the love instinct that is in him, and destroying the possibilities of a
glorious manhood. The price has been paid but the big end of the cost
is still a liability.
By putting women to work in noisome sweat-shops we cheapen the price of
shirt-waists. But we do not reduce the cost. Unfitting the toiler for
normal motherhood, we encourage the production of poorly born children
from her tired frame, and such progeny are in the account. Look there
for the cost. We cannot destroy souls without finding the item writ
large in the account at judgment day!
Man must work to enjoy life. When his work is to his liking, and he is
fitted to perform the service, the cost is very little, or none at all.
Then his work is educative and he develops; it is nourishing and he
grows. If he be doomed to monotonous work that calls up no note of joy
in his heart, and where no thought is necessary, wherein some muscles
are overexerted while others have insufficient play, we make our toiler
lopsided, and for his loss of symmetry and unfoldment society must pay,
and it is in the account over and above the price we have paid with the
dross of money.
When work is pleasure it requires no spielmark requital--the pleasure
is its sufficient pay. Where there is not joy in the work no price is
sufficient. “It is only by thought that work can be made pleasurable,
and it is only by work that thought may be made healthy.”
Society is morally bankrupt. We have sold our birthright for a mess of
pottage. The wealth of a nation does not consist of an inventory of its
gold and silver coin vaults, nor its gold and silver epaulettes on the
trappings of its military and naval heroes, nor its gold and silver
trimmings on the apparel of dear Lady Disdain, nor in the gold and
silver that flows through the arteries of commerce. The solid assets of
society consist of its arts, not in pictures and statues in the museums
nor in the monuments in the parks; not in the grandeur of the public
buildings, but the pleasure in the lives of the people, made beautiful
by devotion to the arts of peace.
Oh, Angels of Heaven and devils from Hades, come and help me to lament
the great “I am”! Let us weep crocodile tears for man that built the
world. Man has conquered nature, cleared the forests, erected great
cities, and civilized a world--and has lost his own soul.
Art for art’s sake; money for money’s sake; knowledge for the sake
of knowledge; science for the sake of science; virtue for virtue’s
sake--but nowhere anything for Man’s sake. Man built a world and left
himself out.
O Divine Mathematics! What a net balance is this!
THE UNIVERSAL SECRET
What is it that everybody knows, and is talking about, and still
remains a secret? You don’t know! Well, let me put the question
differently. What is it that you discuss with your friend, with your
husband, your husband with his friends; girls among themselves, boys
among themselves; a respectable man never with a lady; a mother will
keep it a secret from her daughter, a father from his son, a teacher
from a pupil; something that everybody possesses, yet it is a secret?
Well, I will tell you.
It is sex!
Anything pertaining to sex is talked of in whispers in society (for
fear the guardian of morality might overhear). It is too vile a subject
to be discussed. It is called immoral by church and state, and for that
reason you can discuss it with your friends of the same sex behind
closed doors, but not of the opposite sex under any condition if you
wish to be classed among the respectable. We discussed it at the
academy where I was sequestered. We locked the doors and talked about
it. Yes, and we did more than that; we--no, I don’t believe I will,
until I consult the postmaster-general.
A friend of mine, a little Jew, was telling some stories of the Talmud,
among them the ritual of sex. I tolerated it, there being others
present. After they had left I told him that if he wanted to tell
immoral stories, not to tell them in my house. My friends have told me
the same things in a more forceful manner, and I did not think them
immoral. The story in itself was not immoral; the immorality consists
in that it was told by a person of the opposite sex. The wise by
their continuous slander have created a feeling that sex and all its
relationship is vile, and is to be dreaded, and is only tolerated as a
matter that cannot be helped. How very much nicer, cleaner, and holier
it would be if babes could be gotten from the church or government
warehouses! How much cleaner and holier we would be were we sexless
beings. Some of the wise are even looking for a time when we will