Over the Fireside with Silent Friends Part 7

_Humanity_

"Humanity is one, and an injury to one member is an injury to the whole." I cull this line from Mr. Gilbert Cannan's book, "The Anatomy of Society." And I quote it because I believe that it sums up in a few words, not only the world-politics of the future, but the religion--the real, practical religion, and therefore the only religion which counts in so far as this life is concerned--of the future as well. The s...o...b..ll--if I may thus describe it symbolically--has just begun to roll, but it will gather weight and impetus with every succeeding year, until, at last, there will be no nations--as we understand nations to-day--but only _one_ nation, and that nation the whole of the human race. The times are dead, or rather they are dying, which saw civilisation most clearly in such things as the luxury of the Ritz Hotels, the parks and palaces of Europe, the number of tube trains and omnibuses running per hour along the rail and roadways of London, and the imitation silk stockings in which cooks and kitchenmaids disport themselves on Sundays. A New Knowledge is abroad--and that New Knowledge is a fuller realisation that the new world is for all men and all women who work and do their duty, for all humanity, and not merely for the few who get rich upon the exploitation of poverty and helplessness of the ma.s.ses. And this realisation carries with it the realisation that the governments of the future will be more really governments of the people for the people--and by people I do not mean merely those of Britain or France, or whichever nation men happen to belong to, but humanity all over the world. The things which nowadays only money can buy must be brought within the grasp of the poorest, and civilisation must be recognised as coming _from the bottom upwards_, and not only from the _top_--a kind of golden froth which strives to hide the dirt and misery and suffering beneath. So long as slums exist, so long as poverty is exploited, so long as the great ma.s.ses of men and women are forced to lead sordid, unbeautiful, cramped, hopeless, and helpless lives, as they are forced to live now--call no nation civilised. So long as these things exist--call no nation religious. The one is a mockery of human life; the other is a mockery of G.o.d.

It always strikes me that the greatest lack in all education--and this applies to the education of princes as well as paupers--is the spirit of splendid vision. Most things are taught, except the "vision" of self-respect and responsibility. The poor are not taught to respect themselves at all, and certainly their lives do not give them what their education has forgotten. They are never encouraged to learn that each individual man and woman is not only responsible to him and herself, but to all men and all women. Certainly the rich never teach it them. For the last thing which rich people ever realise is that their wealth carries with it human obligations, human responsibilities, as well as the gratifications of their own appet.i.tes and pleasures.

The only objects of education seem to be to teach men to make money, nothing is ever done to teach them how best to make life full of interest, full of human worth, full of those "visions" which will help to make the future or the human race proud in its achievements. The failure of education as an intellectual, social, and moral force is best shown the moment men and women are given the opportunity to do exactly as they please. Metaphorically speaking, the poor with money in their pockets immediately go on the "booze," and the rich "jazz."

And men of the poor work merely for the sake of being able to booze, and the rich merely for the sake of being able to jazz. And the rich condemn the poor for boozing, and the poor condemn the rich for jazzing--but this, of course, is one of life's little ironies.

_Responsibility_

Personally, I blame the poor for boozing less than I blame the rich for "jazzing." If I had to live the lives which millions of working men and women lead, and amid the same surroundings, and with the same hopeless future--I would booze with the booziest. You can't expect the poor to respect themselves when the rich do not respect them. Without any feeling of human responsibility in the wealthier cla.s.ses, you cannot expect to find any human responsibility in the lower orders.

And by human responsibility I do not mean some vague thing like "Government for the People," or subscriptions to hospitals, or bazaars for the indigent blind, or anything of that sort--though these things are excellent in themselves. I mean something more practical than that. Hospitals should be state-owned, and the indigent blind should be pensioned by the state. These things should not be left to private enterprises, since they are human responsibilities and should be borne by humanity. I mean that all owners of wealth should be made to realise their moral responsibilities to their own workmen--the men and women who help to create their wealth--and that with poverty there should not go dirt and drudgery and that total lack of beauty and encouragement to a cleaner, finer life without which existence on earth is h.e.l.l--h.e.l.l being preached at from above.

_The Government of the Future_

The worst of government by the people is that the moment the people put them into power they are gracefully forgotten. The only _real_ government by the people comes through the people themselves in the form of disturbances and strikes and revolutions. Then, alas, the tiny craft of Progress is borne towards the ocean on a river of bad blood--which means waste and unnecessary suffering, and leaves a whole desert of anger and revenge behind it. The most crying need of the times is the very last to be heard by governments. They are so engrossed in the financial prosperity of the country that they forget the social and moral prosperity altogether--and financial prosperity without social and moral progress is but the beginning of bankruptcy after all. A government, to be a real government and so to represent authority in the eyes of the people, has not only to nurse and to harbour, but also to _rebuild_. It does something more than govern.

It has been placed there _by the people_ in order that it may help rebuild the lives _of the people_--so that, besides helping capital to increase and develop, it at the same time safeguards the people against exploitation by capital, and sees to it that, through this capital, the people are enabled to live cleaner, better, happier lives, are given an equal chance in the world, and encouraged and given the opportunity to live self-respecting lives--lives full not only of responsibility to themselves, but to humanity at large. That to my mind is the true socialism--and it is a socialism which could come within the next ten years, and without any sign of revolution, were the Government to realise that it is something more than the foster-mother of capital--that it is also a practical rebuilder of the human race--yes, even though it has to cut through all the red-tape in the world and throw the vested interests, owners and employers, on the sc.r.a.p-heap of things inimical to human happiness in the bulk. Sometimes I think that the franchise of women will do a great deal towards this juster world when it comes. Women have no "political sense," it is said. Well, thank G.o.d they haven't, say I! They have the _human sense_--and that will be the only political sense of any importance in the world of to-morrow.

And this war has been the great revelation. Ma.s.ses of men and women who never thought before--or, rather, who thought but vaguely, not troubling to put their thoughts into words--have by war become articulate. They are now looking for a leader, and upon their faces there is the expression of disappointment. They do not yet realise that they have discovered within their own minds and hearts that Splendid Vision which once came through one, or, at most, a small group of individuals. This vision is the vision of humanity as apart from the vision of one special nation. It sees a new world in which science, the practical knowledge and the material advancement of the West, combine with the greater peace and happiness of the East, to make of this world an abiding place, an ideal nearer the ideal of Heaven.

Man, after all, possesses mind. His failure has been that, so far, he has not learned wisdom--the wisdom to employ that mind for the realisation of his own soul--that realisation without which life becomes a mockery and civilisation a sham.

_The Question_

Can a man love two women at the same time? If he be married to one of them--Yes. If he isn't--well, I cannot imagine it possible. Nor can I imagine that every man is capable of this double pa.s.sion. Some people (in parenthesis, the lucky ones!) have characters so simple, so direct, so steadfast, so very peaceful. Their soul is not torn asunder, first this way, then that, perfectly sincere in all its varying moods, though the mood changes like the pa.s.sing seasons. Once having liked a thing, they like it always, and the opposite has no attraction for them.

These people are, as it were, born husbands and born wives. They are faithful, though their fidelity may not be exciting. This type could hardly love two people, though they are quite capable of loving twice.

As individuals they are to be envied, because for them the inner life is one of simplicity and peace. But there are other people who, as it were, seem to be born _two people_. They are capable of infinite goodness; also they are capable of the most profound baseness. And never, never, never are they happy. For the good that is in them suffers for the bad, and the bad also suffers, since it knows that it is unworthy. So their inner life is one long struggle to attain that ideal of perfection which they prize more than anything else in the world, but are incapable of reaching--or, rather, they are incapable of _sustaining_--because, within their natures, there is a "kink" which always thwarts their good endeavour. Thus for ever do they suffer, since within their souls there is a perpetual warfare between the good which is within them and the bad. These people, I say, can love two people at the same time, since two different people seem to inhabit the same body, and both yearn to be satisfied; both _must_ be satisfied at some time or another. The Good within them will always triumph eventually, even though the Bad must have its day. But do not blame these people. They suffer far more than anyone can suspect. They suffer, and only with old age or death does peace come to them. If there are people born to be unhappy in this world, they are surely in the forefront of that tragic army!

_The Two Pa.s.sions_

Yet these people, as I said before, _must be married_ to one of the two Adored, if their sentiment for each can be called Love. Love, in which pa.s.sion plays the larger part, is so all-absorbing while it lasts, that only the deep affection and respect which may come through the intimacy of matrimony can exist within the self-same heart great enough to be called Love. A man may adore and wors.h.i.+p the woman who has proved herself a perfect mate, who is the mother of his children, and yet be unfaithful to her--not with any woman who crosses his path and beckons, but with the _One_ who appeals to the wild, romantic adventurer which is also part of his nature, though neither the best part, nor the strongest.

But I cannot imagine a man adoring and respecting a woman who is not his wife the while he loves with a burning pa.s.sion another woman who promises rapture, pa.s.sion, and delight. Pa.s.sion is so intense while it lasts that there is in the heart of man no equal place for another woman who holds him by no legal and moral tie. But a man, having a double nature, can wors.h.i.+p his wife, yet love with pa.s.sion another woman--even though he hates and despises himself for so doing. But it is rare, if not impossible, for one woman to completely satisfy the man whose nature is made up of good and bad, of high ideals and low cravings, of steadfast fidelity, yet with a yearning for the wild, untrammelled existence of the mountain tops. With such a man--and how many there are, if we but knew!--the woman he respects will always win in the end, even though the woman who entices has also her day of victory. The Good Woman will suffer--G.o.d knows she will! But the man will suffer too. A man has to be wholly bad to thoroughly enjoy evil. The man who is only half a saint--secretly goes through h.e.l.l. That is his punishment, and it is far more difficult for him to bear than the finger pointed in contempt.

Therefore, I believe that the happiest men and women are the men and women who are born good and steadfast, simple and true, or those who cultivate with delight scarcely one unselfish thought. That is why the vast majority of people live so really lonely, so secretly sad at heart and soul. Only the born-good or the born-bad know the blessedness of inner peace.

_Our "Secret Escapes"_

I suppose that we all of us have our own little secret "dream-sanctuary"--our way-of-escape which n.o.body knows anything about, and by which we go when we are weary of the trivialities of the domestic hearth and sick unto death of the "cackle-cackle" of the crowds. When we are very young we long to share this secret little dream-sanctuary with someone else. When we are older and wiser, we realise that if we don't keep it to ourselves we are spiritually lost; for, with the best intentions in the world, the best-beloved, to whom in rapture we give the key, either, metaphorically speaking, leaves the front gate open or goes therein and turns on a gramophone. We come into this world alone, and we leave it by ourselves; and the older we grow the more we realise that, in spite of our own heart's longing to share, we are most really at peace when we are quite alone in our own company. When we are young we hope and expect our "dreams" to become one day a glorious reality. When we are older we realise that our "dreams" will always remain "dreams", and, strange as it may sound, they become more real to us, even as "dreams,"

than do any realities--except bores and toothache. For the "dreams" of youth become the "let's pretend" of age. And the person who has forgotten the game of "let's pretend" is in soul-colour of the dulness of ditch-water. And "let's pretend" is a game which we can best play by ourselves. Even the proximity of a living being, content to do and say nothing, robs it of its keenest enjoyment. No, we must be by ourselves for the world around us to seem really inhabited by people we love the most amid surroundings nearest our ideal. There are no bores in our dream-world. Nothing disagreeable happens there. And, thank Heaven, we can enter it almost anywhere--sometimes if we merely close our eyes! And we can be our real selves in this dream-world of ours too, there is n.o.body to say us nay; there are no laws and no false morals; we are fairy kings and queens in a fairy kingdom. I always pity the man or woman who is no monarch in this very real kingdom of shadows which lies all around us, and which we can enter to reign therein whenever the human "jar" is safely out of the way. There we can be our true selves and live our true life, in what seems a very real world--a world, moreover, which we hope one day will be the reality of Heaven.

_My Escape and Some Others_

Everybody, as I said before, has his or her own receipt for "getting away." Some find it in long "chats" over the fireside with old friends; some in reading and music and art; some in travel, some in "good works"

and just a few in "bad" ones. A new hat will often lift a woman several floors nearer to the seventh heaven. A good dinner in prospect will sometimes elevate the spirit of man out of the dreary "rut" and give that _soupcon_ of something-to-live-for which can take the ordinary everyday and turn it into a day which belongs to the _extraordinary_. For myself, I like to get out into the country alone; or, if I can't do that, or the weather sees to it that I shan't, I like to get by myself--anywhere to dream, or, preferably, to explore some unknown district or street or place in my own company. Sometimes I find that to open a new book or a favourite old one, soon takes the edge off "edgyness," and makes me see that the pin-p.r.i.c.ks of life are merely pin-p.r.i.c.ks, from which, unless there are too many of them, I shan't die, however much I may suffer. But even when reading--I like best to read alone--I am never really at ease when at any moment a companion may suddenly break the silence and bring me back to reality by asking the unseen listening G.o.ds "if they've locked the cat out?" You condemn me? Well, perhaps I am wrong. And if you can find happiness perpetually surrounded by people, then I envy you. It is so much easier to go through life requiring nothing but food, friends, and a bank balance, than always to hide misanthropic tendencies behind a social smile. I envy you, because I realise that the fight to be alone, the fight to be yourself, is the longest fight of all--and it lays you open to suspicion, unfriendliness, even dislike, everywhere you go. But, if I must be honest, I will confess that I _hate_ social pastimes. To work and to dream, to travel, to listen to music, to be in England in the springtime, to read, to give of myself to those who most specially need me--if any there be?--that is what I now call happiness, the rest is merely boredom in varying degree. My only regret is that one has generally to live so long to discover what the const.i.tuents of happiness are, or what is worth while and what worthless; what makes you feel that the everyday is a day well spent, and not a day merely got through somehow or other. You lose so much of your youth, and the best years of your life, trying to find happiness along those paths where other people informed you that it lay. It takes so many years of experience to realise that most of the things which men call "pleasure" are but, as it were, tough dulness covered with piquant sauce--a tough mess of which, when you tire of the piquant sauce the toughness remains just so long as you go on trying to eat it.

_Over the Fireside_

Most especially do I feel sorry for those people who cannot find a certain illusion of happiness in reading. I thank whatever G.o.ds there be that I can generally find the means of "getting-away" between the covers of a book. A book has to be very puerile indeed if I cannot enjoy it to a certain extent--even though that extent be merely a mild ridicule and amus.e.m.e.nt. I can even enjoy books about books--if they are very well done, which is rare. I am not particularly interested in authors--especially the photographs of authors, which usually come upon their admirers with something approaching shock--because I always think that the most interesting part of an author is what he writes, not what he looks like. What he writes is generally what he _is_. You can't keep everything of yourself out of anything you may write--and thank Heaven for it! Apart from the story--often indeed, before the story itself--the most delightful parts of any book are the little gleams of the writer's point of view, of his philosophy, of his own life-experiences, which glint through the matter in hand, and sometimes raise a commonplace narrative into a volume of sheer entrancing joy. And perhaps one of the most difficult things to write is to write about books--I don't mean "reviews." (Almost anybody can give their opinion on books they have read, and tell you something about them--which is nine hundred and ninety per cent. of literary reviews.) But to write about books in a way which amuses you, or interests you, and makes you want immediately to read the book in question--that is a more difficult feat. And sometimes what the writer about books says about books is more entertaining than the books themselves. But then that is because of those little gleams of the personal which are always so delightful to find anywhere.

_Faith Reached Through Bitterness and Loss_

Looking back on one's life, I always think it is so strange that just those blows of fate which logic would consider as certain to destroy such things as Faith and Belief, optimism and steadfastness of soul-vision, so many times provide their very foundations. How often those whose Belief in a Life Hereafter is the firmest have little reason to encourage that belief. We often find through sorrow, a happiness--no, not happiness, but a peace--which is enduring. When the waves of agnosticism and atheism have broken over our souls, the ebb tide is so often Faith and Hope. And, as we approach nearer and nearer to the time when, in the ordinary course of events, we so soon _shall know_, there creeps into our hearts a certainty that all is not ended with life, a belief which defies reason, and logic, and common sense, and which, to outsiders, often appears to be merely a clutching at straws. But these straws save us, and, through their means, we eventually reach the sh.o.r.e where doubts cannot flourish and agnosticism gives way to a Faith which we _feel_ more than we can actually define.

_Aristocracy and Democracy_

I believe in the _heart_ of democracy, but I am extremely suspicious of its _head_. Popular education among the ma.s.ses is the most derelict thing in all our much-vaunted civilisation. To talk to the ma.s.ses concerning anything outside the radius of their own homes and stomachs is, for the most part, like talking to children. It is not their fault.

They have never had a real chance to be otherwise. When I contemplate the kind of education which the average child of the slums and country villages is given--and the type of man and woman who is popularly supposed to be competent to give it--I do not wonder that they are the victims of any firebrand, crank, or plutocrat who comes to them and sails into the Mother-of-All-Parliaments upon their votes. For the last six years I have been placed in circ.u.mstances which have enabled me to observe the results of what education has done for the average poor man.

The result has made me angry and appalled. The figure is low when I declare that ninety per cent. of the poor not only cannot write the King's English, but can neither read it nor understand it--beyond the everyday common words which a child of twelve uses in his daily vocabulary. Of history, of geography, of the art and literature of his country, of politics or law, of domestic economy--he knows absolutely nothing. Nothing of any real value is taught him. Even what he knows he knows so imperfectly that absolute ignorance were perhaps a healthier mental state. Until education is regarded with the same seriousness as the law, it is hopeless to expect a new and better world. For education is the very foundation of this finer existence. You can't expect an A1 nation among B3 intellects. Ornamental education is not wanted--it is worse than useless until a _useful education_ has been inculcated. And what is a useful education? It is an education which teaches a man and woman to be of some immediate use in the world; to know something of the world in which they live, and how best to fulfil their duty as useful members of a community and in the world at large. At present the average boy and girl are, as it were, educationally dragged up anyhow and launched upon the world at the first possible moment to earn the few s.h.i.+llings which two hands and an undeveloped intelligence are worth in the labour market. No wonder there is Bolshevism and cla.s.s war and anarchy and revolution. Where the ruled are ignorant and the ruling selfish--you can never expect to found a new and happier world.

_Duty_

As for a sense of duty, to talk to the average man and woman, no matter what may be their cla.s.s in life, of a sense of duty, is rather like reading Shakespeare to a man who is stone deaf. And yet, an education which does not at the same time seek to teach duty--duty to oneself, to the state, to humanity at large--is no real education at all. But in the world in which we live at present, a sense of duty is regarded as nonsense. Labour does not realise its duties, neither does wealth; neither does the Church, except to churchmen; nor Parliament, except to the party which provides its funds. And yet, as I said before, a sense of duty is the very foundation of all real education.

Even if the children of the poor were taught the rudiments of some trade while they were at school, the years they spend there would not be so utterly and entirely wasted. Even though they did not follow up that trade as their occupation in life, it would at any rate give them some useful interest in their hours of recreation. As it is they know nothing, so they are interested in nothing. And this, of course, applies to the so-called educated people as well. It always amuses me to listen to the well-to-do discussing the working cla.s.ses. To hear them one would think that the working cla.s.ses were the only people who wasted their time, their money, and their store of health. It never seems to strike them that the working cla.s.ses for the most part live in surroundings which contain no interest whatsoever--apart from their work. They are given education--and _such_ education! They are given homes--and _such_ homes! They are plentifully supplied with public houses--and ye G.o.ds, such public houses! The Government hardly realises yet that it is there, not to listen to its own voice and keep its own little tin-pot throne intact, but as a means by which the ma.s.ses may arrive at a healthier, better, more worthy state of existence. The working-cla.s.ses are not Bolshevik, nor do I think they ever will be; but deep down in their hearts there is a determination that they and their children shall receive the same educational advantages, the same right to air and light and decent amus.e.m.e.nt, as the children of the wealthy. Because I am poor, they say to themselves, why should I therefore have to inhabit a home unfit for decent habitation, receive education utterly useless from every practical point of view--be forced to live in surroundings which absolutely invite degradation of both mind and body? There will always be poverty, but there ought never to be indecent poverty. Better education; better housing; better chances for healthy recreation--these are the things for which the ma.s.ses are clamouring. Why is it wrong for a workman who has made money during the war to buy a piano--and to hear people talk that seems to be one of their most dastardly crimes--when it is quite all right for his employer, who has made more money out of the war, to pay five pounds for one good dinner, or a night's "jazzing"?

_Sweeping a.s.sertions from Particular Instances_