The Forerunner Part 72

"Your hair is mostly false," said pretty Poll. "And your teeth--and your outlines. You eat too much. You are lazy. You ought to exercise, and don't know enough. Better apologize to this lady for backbiting!

You've got to listen."

The trade in parrots fell off from that day; they say there is no call for them. But the people who kept parrots, keep them yet--parrots live a long time.

Bores were a cla.s.s of offenders against whom I had long borne undying enmity. Now I rubbed my hands and began on them, with this simple wish: That every person whom they bored should tell them the plain truth.

There is one man whom I have specially in mind. He was blackballed at a pleasant club, but continues to go there. He isn't a member--he just goes; and no one does anything to him.

It was very funny after this. He appeared that very night at a meeting, and almost every person present asked him how he came there. "You're not a member, you know," they said. "Why do you b.u.t.t in? n.o.body likes you."

Some were more lenient with him. "Why don't you learn to be more considerate of others, and make some real friends?" they said. "To have a few friends who do enjoy your visits ought to be pleasanter than being a public nuisance."

He disappeared from that club, anyway.

I began to feel very c.o.c.ky indeed.

In the food business there was already a marked improvement; and in transportation. The hubbub of reformation waxed louder daily, urged on by the unknown sufferings of all the profiters by iniquity.

The papers thrived on all this; and as I watched the loud-voiced protestations of my pet abomination in journalism, I had a brilliant idea, literally.

Next morning I was down town early, watching the men open their papers.

My abomination was shamefully popular, and never more so than this morning. Across the top was printing in gold letters:

All intentional lies, in adv., editorial, news, or any other column. .

.Scarlet All malicious matter. . .Crimson All careless or ignorant mistakes. . .Pink All for direct self-interest of owner. . .Dark green All mere bait--to sell the paper. . .Bright green All advertising, primary or secondary. . .Brown All sensational and salacious matter. . .Yellow All hired hypocrisy. . .Purple Good fun, instruction and entertainment. . .Blue True and necessary news and honest editorials. . .Ordinary print

You never saw such a crazy quilt of a paper. They were bought like hot cakes for some days; but the real business fell off very soon. They'd have stopped it all if they could; but the papers looked all right when they came off the press. The color scheme flamed out only to the bona-fide reader.

I let this work for about a week, to the immense joy of all the other papers; and then turned it on to them, all at once. Newspaper reading became very exciting for a little, but the trade fell off. Even newspaper editors could not keep on feeding a market like that. The blue printed and ordinary printed matter grew from column to column and page to page. Some papers--small, to be sure, but refres.h.i.+ng--began to appear in blue and black alone.

This kept me interested and happy for quite a while; so much so that I quite forgot to be angry at other things. There was _such_ a change in all kinds of business, following the mere printing of truth in the newspapers. It began to appear as if we had lived in a sort of delirium--not really knowing the facts about anything. As soon as we really knew the facts, we began to behave very differently, of course.

What really brought all my enjoyment to an end was women. Being a woman, I was naturally interested in them, and could see some things more clearly than men could. I saw their real power, their real dignity, their real responsibility in the world; and then the way they dress and behave used to make me fairly frantic. 'Twas like seeing archangels playing jackstraws--or real horses only used as rocking-horses. So I determined to get after them.

How to manage it! What to hit first! Their hats, their ugly, inane, outrageous hats--that is what one thinks of first. Their silly, expensive clothes--their diddling beads and jewelry--their greedy childishness--mostly of the women provided for by rich men.

Then I thought of all the other women, the real ones, the vast majority, patiently doing the work of servants without even a servant's pay--and neglecting the n.o.blest duties of motherhood in favor of house-service; the greatest power on earth, blind, chained, untaught, in a treadmill.

I thought of what they might do, compared to what they did do, and my heart swelled with something that was far from anger.

Then I wished--with all my strength--that women, all women, might realize Womanhood at last; its power and pride and place in life; that they might see their duty as mothers of the world--to love and care for everyone alive; that they might see their dirty to men--to choose only the best, and then to bear and rear better ones; that they might see their duty as human beings, and come right out into full life and work and happiness!

I stopped, breathless, with s.h.i.+ning eyes. I waited, trembling, for things to happen.

Nothing happened.

You see, this magic which had fallen on me was black magic--and I had wished white.

It didn't work at all, and, what was worse, it stopped all the other things that were working so nicely.

Oh, if I had only thought to wish permanence for those lovely punishments! If only I had done more while I could do it, had half appreciated my privileges when I was a Witch!

[Unt.i.tled]

"I can understand," says Eugene Wood, "how some women want to vote. And I can understand how some women do not want to vote."

"But I can't understand how some women do not want other women to vote."

BELIEVING AND KNOWING

What is Believing--psychologically? What does the brain do when it "believes" that is different from what it does when it "knows"?

There is a difference. When you know a thing you don't have to believe it. There is no effort, and no credit attached, in knowing; but this act of "believing" has long been held as both difficult and worthy.

There seems to be not only a clearly marked distinction between knowing and believing, but a direct incompatibility. It may be said roughly that the less we know the more we believe, and the more we know the less we believe. The credulity of the child, the savage, and the less educated cla.s.ses in society, is in sharp contrast with the relative incredulity of the adult civilized human, and the more highly educated.

There is a difference also shown in our mental sensations as to a thing believed and a thing known. If a man tells you that gra.s.s is red and the sky yellow, you merely think him color blind--It does not anger you nor alter your opinion. If he tells you that two and two make ten, you think him ignorant, weak-minded, but your view is not changed, nor are you enraged by him. But if he contradicts you on some religious dogma you are hurt and angry. Why? As a matter of direct physicho-psychological action, why?

To make a physical comparison, it is like the difference between being pushed against when you stand square on your feet, and pushed when you stand on one leg.

Or again, the thing you know is like something nailed down, or planted and growing; the thing you believe like something held up by main force, and quite likely to be joggled or blown away. "Do not try to shake my faith!" protests the believer. He does not object to your trying to shake his knowledge.

If the new knowledge you bring him is evidently a matter of fact, if his brain rationally perceives that he was wrong about this thing, and you are right, he removes his incorrect idea and establishes the correct one, with no more disagreeable sensation than a little sense of shame:--not that, if he was wise enough to admit ignorance gracefully.

But the new faith you bring him is quite another matter. He hangs on to his old faith as if there was a virtue in the mental att.i.tude of belief--aha! now we are on the track! He has been taught that there is!

We receive knowledge and faith in quite different ways, with quite different emphasis. The child learns--and learns--and learns--every day of his life; learns year after year, as long as his brain is able to receive impressions. This vast ma.s.s of knowledge is for the most part received indiscriminately and a.s.sorted by the brain after its own fas.h.i.+on.

There are but few departments of knowledge to which we have attached arbitrary ideas of superiority; and those fortunately, are all old ones.

Knowledge of "the cla.s.sics" was once kept in the same box with social standing, if not with orthodoxy; and to this day an error in spelling or grammar will condemn a person far more than entire ignorance of physiology or mechanics. Knowledge is a vast range, an unlimited range, visibly subject to extension; each new peak surmounted showing us many more. We learn, unlearn, and relearn, without much opposition or criticism, so long as our little bunch of specialties is a.s.sured--the spelling, for instance.

But when it comes to believing, disbelieving, and rebelieving--that is a different matter. Certain things were given us to believe--in our racial infancy--before we knew much of anything, and were therefore far more capable of believing. These articles of belief were sincerely held to be the most important matters; and they were too; because, if any stronger minded race infant refused to believe them, he was ostracised--or executed. What a man believed, or disbelieved, was the keynote of life--in that interesting race infancy of ours. All the other mental processes were as nothing compared to this. Knowledge?

There was none to speak of. Doubt was a crime. Inquiry was the beginning of doubt.

The dogmas inserted did change, though slowly; but their importance in the scheme of life did not change. Whatever else the man might or might not be the first question was, "Art thou a Believer?" And he was. What he believed might be the One Absolute Truth; or one of many contemptible heresies; but he was always a believer.

They began with the helpless little children, and told them as the most important basic truths, whatsoever religious doctrines were current at the time; and renewed this process with every generation until this very day--and are still at it. Many of the most p.r.o.nounced free-thinkers not only prefer to have their women still "devout," but insist on putting their children through the old course of instruction.

So, in the course of these unbroken ages; under a combined treatment of rigid "natural selection"--the elimination of the unfit, who were burned or beheaded--and of the heaviest social pressure, in both education and imitation; we have developed in the race mind a special area for "believing" as distinct front knowing. This area is abnormally sensitive because in those long ages behind us, it was the very vital base of life itself. If your Belief was steady and intact, you were permitted to live. If it was in the least degree wavering you were in danger. Is it any wonder we object so automatically to anyone's trying to "shake our faith?"

The change of the last century in this regard has been not only in the sudden opening up of new fields of knowledge; not only in the adoption of entire new methods in the acquisition of knowledge; not only in the rapid popularization of knowledge; but most of all in a new relation of ideas. We are beginning dimly to grasp something of the real scheme of life; to get our sense of the basic verities from observation of facts.