Читать книгу The Middle Way - Poems and Essays from 'The Theosophical Path' - Talbot Mundy - Страница 15

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WE ARE the masters of our destiny, and our modern world appears to be waking to that fact, which the ancients knew well enough. They looked forward, whereas we for the most part waste time wishing for the might-have-been, blaming ourselves, our politicians, and our forebears for the dilemma with which we are faced, so psychologized by evil as to view the future only through the lens of hopelessness. Nevertheless, there are those who see that the past, so far as we can change it or its consequences, is a closed book; "nor all thy piety nor all thy wit can ... cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it." The past is sealed. Remains to scan the future, to relay its courses; and it can be done. There are more armed men in the world today than there were in 1914, and there is less apparent Brotherhood; but that is only on the surface, for the tide has turned — that "tide in the affairs of men" that sweeps whole nations forward, or drowns them. We have our choice to sink or swim.

The clearest symptom of the turning tide is discontent, as often as not amounting to contempt for outworn theories. There is not one land remaining in the world in which the doctrine of righteousness of war is not dishonored and discredited. It is still possible to believe, and to make others believe, that war is inevitable, but the prospect is no longer viewed with zeal. Treaties to prevent war are regarded cynically, but only because it is known how lightly "scraps of paper" were regarded in the past. There are comparatively very few today, even among those who constantly proclaim the certainty of future war, who are not ready to mock the theory that war can possibly benefit even the conqueror. It is beginning to be understood at last that no good comes of evil. And although that understanding brews despair in the hearts of those who can see nothing but evil on every hand, there are those who dare to look a second and a third time, and to hope, and to shout their hope above the din of pessimism — a brave, increasing company, not least of whom are L.P. Jacks and H.G. Wells, authors to whom the world is lending an increasingly attentive ear. The time is ripe. Their doctrine may be wrong. But it will not be their fault if the world does not look for itself, and hope again, and through hope discover a way out of its predicament.

It would be unfair to Wells, Jacks, and the world to pretend that either man has been doing more than splendid plow-work. They are breaking up barren fields in a dreary, horizontal wilderness, preceded in the task by G.B. Shaw, who smashed immovable rocks of self-contented stupidity, using a disrespectful hammer and the acid of merciless ridicule. The seed is being sown by another hand. The cultivation waits for the rest of us to do.

All three men — Shaw, Jacks, Wells — are perfectly aware that what the world needs is spiritual thinking. It may be that they all three know what spiritual thinking is. But if so they have held their hand wisely because if they had sown that seed in the unploughed waste of materialism, it never could have sprung up. What little spiritual propaganda they emit suggests plowmen whistling at their work, not accomplishing much music (the tune is now and then off-key) but encouraging themselves, which is the main thing, for because of it the breaking of long furrows in the rock-ribbed thought of men is being well done. One does not plow a wilderness by arguing in terms of semiquavers; nor need one respect the plowman any less if a blackbird's song in the hedgerow fails to divert his attention from the excellence of bread and cheese. For after all, and in the last analysis, it is of bread and cheese that all three sing. The point is, they are honest plowmen.

It is possible to imagine that Shaw, Jacks, and Wells may be dissatisfied with the seed that someone is planting in their tireless wake, for it is seed of a forgotten sort. All plowmen are conservatives. Cincinnatus, be it remembered, went back to his plowing after he had saved Rome; he broke up what was wrong, prepared the soil for something better, and, when progress came, took no delight in it. Nevertheless, he was a hero and his name survives, as those of Shaw, Jacks, and Wells surely should do long after the names of the abominations they assail shall have been forgotten.

Shaw has been so praised and hated, and so gloriously misunderstood; so much of his sledge-hammer work has been done, and he has survived the hornet-stings of criticism so cheerfully, that he may be left chuckling while he considers some new satirical assault on the world's cruelty and self-esteem. Shaw is sure to be surprising when he swings his sledge again. Meanwhile, Wells, and Jacks are more in the public eye.

"MEN LIKE GODS"

H.G. Wells has come out openly and said: "I desire the confederation of mankind." In the first of a series of syndicated newspaper articles, which provide for him a more numerous and probably more attentive audience than any previous writer has ever had in his own lifetime, he prefaces his effort with a statement which assures us we are not wasting time listening to a mere experimenter with the world's emotions. "Since 1917," he writes, "I have given much more of my waking life to that vision of a confederated mankind than I have given to any other single interest or subject." Good. That means, we have a duty to ourselves to listen seriously, for whatever may be said in disparagement of Wells by his critics he is undeniably a thinker, whose mode of expressing his thought is clear, who habitually thinks before he writes, and who is not afraid to irritate those who do not agree with him. Men Like Gods (1923) preceded these newspaper articles. It is the most recent of forty-five books by the same author, and it seems to be his effort to depict a vision that he sees, toward which he would like to lead the world. He seeks to show us what the world might be, if we would only abandon all the idiotic suppositions and false standards that have led us to the present state of conflict; and he undoubtedly succeeds in describing a prodigiously more agreeable planet than that on which we live and move and have our being at the moment.

His hero, Mr. Barnstaple, is a typical Wells hero, a kindly, obscure, rather bewildered father of a family, who loves his wife and grown-up sons with quiet devotion, but who finally rebels against the tyranny of a suburban household and starts out in a small motor-car on a vacation by himself. By a miracle that leaves the reader to imagine what he likes about Einstein's Relativity, but that does not preclude the probability that Wells has been studying The Secret Doctrine. Mr. Barnstaple suddenly finds himself on another planet, on another dimension. The miracle turns out to have been engineered by two scientific experimenters on this four-dimensional planet, and the same explosion (or whatever it was that happened) catches in its vortex and transfers along with Mr. Barnstaple another motor-car full of individuals whom the author adroitly uses to typify those elements of society that are holding our own world back from the fair development that would be possible if it were not for their political power, their stupidity, and their convictions.

The limousine's occupants consist of Mr. Catskill, Secretary of State for War; Mr. Burleigh, a great conservative leader; Lady Stella, one of the upper ten; Mr. Freddy Mush, secretary to Mr. Catskill and incidentally an intellectual poseur; Father Amerton, A Roman Catholic priest very much 'in society,' whose reputation has been made by denouncing society's sins; and Robert, the chauffeur. To these, in yet another car that has been caught in the blast of the experiment, are presently added Lord Barralanga, a business man who has recently purchased a peerage; Miss Greta Grey, a rather notorious actress; an American named Hunder, the 'cinema king'; Emile Dupont, a Frenchman; and Ridley, a chauffeur. The party of 'earthlings' now includes sufficient pegs for the author to hang most of our world's stupidities to, with Mr. Barstaple charmingly and modestly acting the part of Magdalene. He is the only sympathetic character among the 'earthlings,' as the author manifestly intends, and Mr. Barnstaple is so well drawn that he succeeds in balancing the purposely exaggerated crudity of all the others. But it is perhaps a pity that Lady Stella was not used to illustrate the effect on a really spiritual-minded woman of being suddenly transferred to the author's fourth-dimension planet. In fact, the book's one weakness is that there is not a woman in it whom we can like and with whom we can sympathize, as we like and sympathize with Mr. Barnstaple.

Even among the Utopian women whom we meet in the course of the story there is none whom we feel particularly sorry to leave behind us when the story is finished, although the author devotes considerable space to describing the condition of the women of this Utopia and several individuals have the stage to themselves for a while.

Like the men of Utopia, the women go without clothes; they are modest; and they realize that these earthlings are in no fit mental state to follow their example; when Greta Gray makes bold to imitate them, they provide her with a garment. And it is interesting to observe that the only members of the 'earthling' party who take offense at the Utopians' nudity are Father Amerton and the two chauffeurs.

The story is too good to be told in a review, and its imaginative scope is too vast to be compressed into any sort of tabloid form. The author has described for us a world in which there are no churches, no parliaments, no poverty, no idleness, not much disease, and in which nevertheless, men and women feel themselves no more than on the threshold of evolution. They are conscious of a past, by them referred to as the "Age of Confusion," in which conditions were about the same as those on our own world today; a past in which wars, disease, and competition were considered necessary. The author contrives to show the patient steps by which the Utopians escaped from the "Age of Confusion" and emerged into a truer civilization, not omitting to point out how slow and painstaking, as well as how worth while, the process necessarily must be.

But therein lies the principal weakness of the author's argument. It is beside the issue to suggest that other men and other women might imagine an Utopia more to their liking; Mr. Wells has a perfect right to paint his own picture, and he has produced one well worth studying. But he has also emphasized the fact that it will take time — long, faithfully, successively devoted lifetimes — years reckoned by the thousand before we can arrive at the Utopia of his vision. He has discarded commonplace religious dogmas — those alleged incentives toward altruism that have done their full share in bringing our world to its present sorry predicament. But what incentive has he substituted? The tawdry old retort "what did posterity ever do for me," swinish though it is and repugnant to every man or woman possessed of a spark of the Divine Fire, disarms him entirely unless he has the truth unanswerable in reserve. (And that may well be. Mr. Wells is plowing, not teaching; he is getting the ground ready for the seed.)

THE HEART-SATISFYING LOGIC OF REINCARNATION

He shows us, wittily and with a skill that compels admiration, how we mortals might react to an environment too good for our present mental and spiritual development. The humor of the situation is immense when the 'earthlings' — quarantined in a castle because they have brought disease with them to which the Utopians have long since ceased to be immune, the disease having vanished from their economy — proceed to try to conquer Utopia, relying partly on the disease they brought with them to weaken the ranks of their opponents. The speciousness with which the would-be conquerors justify themselves; the attitude of Hunker the American, who refuses to enter into an entangling alliance but is willing to help do the fighting and more than willing to share in the prospective profits; the insistence by Dupont, the Frenchman, that there must be "some guarantee, some effective guarantee, that the immense sacrifices France has made and still makes in the cause of civilized life, will receive their proper recognition and their due reward in this adventure," are all to the point; they emphasize the selfishness of the minds that must be changed before Utopia could be anything more than an excuse for new cruelty and conquest. They remind us of Pizarro and his conquistadores; of Blücher surveying London from the dome of St. Paul's saying "Was für Plunder!"; of Clive and Hastings and their swarm of followers "shaking the pagoda-tree"; of the Forty-niners tearing down the forests, wresting out the gold, and squandering the proceeds; of all the argonauts who ever saw a good thing and devoured it. Mr. Barnstaple's refusal to take part in the proposed conquest constitutes him, in the eyes of the others (the women included), a traitor to mankind. And that is all very marvelously drawn; probably no other pen than that of Wells could do it. But, except that he makes the reader sympathize, makes out no case against the proposed iniquity. The 'earthlings' are defeated by Utopian methods as drastic in their own way as those that the 'earthlings' had in mind to use. The result is merely the defeat of a lower materialism by one that is more intelligent and therefor possessed of more resources.

Mr. Barnstaple, responding to a truly spiritual impulse, offers himself at last for experiment. The Utopians are to try to return him to earth; and they succeed. Mr. Barnstaple rejoins his family in the London suburb, possessed by a vision of Utopia and a hope for the redemption of the world. But on what is his hope based? The reader is left wondering how Mr. Barnstaple shall persuade the world to mend its ways, without any prospect to offer them that he who shall truly labor for the advancement of mankind shall inevitably see the consequences of his labor. It is easy enough to enjoy Mr. Wells' vision of Utopia, and to realize how Mr. Barnstaple must have been thrilled by it. But Mr. Barnstaple is a more than middle-aged man, who must die before long. The author leaves him helpless without the heart-satisfying logic of reincarnation on which to base his program of reform.

If we accept the fact of reincarnation, Mr. Wells' vision of Utopia becomes a reasonable prospect, within reach, worth striving for, to be amended and improved as our imagination grows and we learn by experience. But if, when we die, we are dead and don't come back again, why all this plowing? Why not eat and drink, cease hoping and be done with it? There is, there must be, a tremendous faith, a knowledge, that makes Mr. Wells plow (and whistle) so sturdily. He would have done well had he intimated why evolution should be interesting to us all, how we are all a part of it, and how we are all inevitable gainers if we strive for posterity's benefit, because posterity is we ourselves.

"LEGENDS OF SMOKEOVER"

L.P. Jacks is Principal of Manchester College, Oxford, and Editor of "The Hibbert Journal". One may safely look to him, as to Wells, for a book that compels thinking. In The Legends of Smokeover, the most recent of eleven books, he has striven mightily to lift the world a little on an upward course and, unlike Wells, he more than hints at ways and means. He has written a delightful story, in which he seems to overrate the power of money to accomplish spiritual purposes — even as Wells appears to overrate the power of material comfort to produce a zeal for spiritual living — but he has brought out from the half-respect, to which the creeds have all conspired to relegate it, one of the splendid elements of human character; and his story contains two women who are really spiritual beings, blessing everyone and everything they touch. Withal, they are human, credible, likeable. And in the mouth of one of them he puts a question whose correct answer solves the whole riddle of the world's course out of its present tragic condition.

The quality that L.P. Jacks has stressed and seeks to build upon is sportsmanship. By frequent instance he shows what sturdy stuff that is, how it persists in all layers of society, and how the practice of it comforts even those who are dying in agony. To all intents and purposes the author invites the world to 'take a chance,' perhaps a very long chance, for the benefit of all mankind; and he has come extremely close to true prophecy or, to coin a word, true seersmanship.

The story is divided into five legends, the first of which concerns the rise to fortune of Rumbelow, the betting man. His birth is obscure, but in early youth he is the reputed son of a drunken rascal of that name, who goes the round of the country fairs with a Coco-nut Shy. At the age of ten the youth began his studies of the Doctrine of Probability, as the result of which he finally evolved a formula. The disreputable Rumbelow senior is conveniently killed, the boy takes over the Coco-nut Shy, sticks to his formula and makes a fortune, and for a while disappears from view. He is known to be traveling abroad, and it is hinted that he is acquiring an education.

Here at once is the Achilles' heel of Mr. Jacks' whole argument. His story is an appeal to the world to wake up and be educated; he shows wittily and well how that splendid quality of sportsmanship inherent in most human beings is the educators' opportunity; but he does not point out who shall teach the educators, or where they shall derive the knowledge which shall redeem mankind. He shows us Rumebelow, the man of zeal, who is afraid of nothing, not even the Pharisees; Mr Lady, Rumbelows's wife, with whom he returns from his mysterious journey in quest of an education and who thereafter is his wise confederate, adviser, guide, and friend. We are introduced to the "Mad Millionaire," Mr. Hooker, who has Quaker principles but who is foisted into a war-fortune in spite of himself and howled at as a profiteer. Mr. Hooker with his millions becomes one of the syndicate of five who conspire to teach the world; and a charming old conspirator he is, possessing tact and modesty. We have Miss Margaret Walfstone, a born educator, almost too wise and delightful to be true, whose successful school for girls is wrecked through the spite of the reactionary element in Smokeover. And that part of the story is amazingly well told. The fourth legend concerns Professor Ripplemark, "Regius Professor of Virtue in the University of Oxford," a V.C. man, possessed of humor, who ultimately resigns his "Chair of Virtue" to become the fifth member of the board of conspirators.

It is all very cleverly done, with such good humor and such earnestness that it is difficult to lay the book down once the first page is turned. The author has assembled five characters who convince themselves, and thus the reader, that the world must be educated out of its materialism. There is not a dull page in the book, nor a hint of pessimism. All that is lacking is the key. The reader is left wondering what this new education shall be all about, and whether the deadweight of Rumbelow's and Hooker's millions will not in any event prove to be more than the magnificent ideal can carry. From owning Coco-nut Shies Rumbelow proceeds until he is the proprietor of a titanic betting establishment which will work out mathematically and declare the odds on anything from a horse's chance to win a selling-plate to a clergyman's prospect of promotion to a bishopric. The firm even takes up insurance on a downright betting basis, naming the scientifically calculated odds and accepting wagers as to whether or not a house will burn down, whether or not a man will die before he shall have saved enough for his dependents. One suspects Mr. L.P. Jacks of deliberately poking fun at pious humbug, rather than of pretending that Rumbelow's fortune is acquired by desirable means.

At any rate, Rumbelow, a most appealing character, grows fabulously rich, and he worships that mysterious wife of his, whom he insists on everyone addressing as "My lady." It is she who directs his titanic energy along the altruistic course, and she who voices the question whose proper answer shall solve the riddle of the world's unrest.

"WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?"

Rumbelow's experience as a gambler convinces him that the universe is not governed at all. The relation of Spirit to the world, according to him, is that of a lover to his beloved — anything but the relation of a power-loving potentate to his subjects. Professor Ripplemark, confirming that opinion, adds that "teaching" is primary, "ruling" is secondary. Rumbelow adds to that again: "Government should be a department of education instead of education a department of government." It is on that platform that the five conspirators agree, Rumbelow adding that sportsmanship is a "bridge between time and eternity." Says he: "the sporting instinct is the easiest transformed into its spiritual equivalents." But it is "My Lady" who transforms that platform from a mere experiment in phrasing into a spiritual possibility with her quiet question, "Who is my neighbor?" When the men and women of the world wake up and realize that all of us are neighbors there will be no more need to strive to pin down spiritual thinking into formulas; then there will be no more poverty and no more war between the nations — incidentally no need for Mr. Rumbelow and his gigantic betting firm.

But the fact that two such books as these by H.G. Wells and L.P. Jacks can command an audience is proof enough that the tide has turned. The world is waking up. Neither Wells nor Jacks has given us a satisfying reason why we should take seriously in hand the task of leaving behind us a world more fit for posterity to live in. Both speak of evolution as a fact. Neither of them shows how evolution is the intimate concern of all of us. But both have succeeded in showing by contrast and illustration how hugely better the world might be, and Jacks has hinted — hardly more than hinted — at the process by which transformation is to be accomplished.

Who is my neighbor? The word is hardly intimate enough. We all are brothers. Change Wells' word "confederacy" into "Brotherhood," add Jacks' "spiritual equivalent of the sporting instinct," and we are not far from the Path blazed by Theosophy. For sportsmanship is a will to meet the other fellow more than half-way and a determination never to accept unfair advantage.

But the underlying reason for the hope that rises eternal in the human breast, despite all the piled up horrors of materialism and the failure of all dogmas to provide more than a temporary anaesthetic, is the fair, heart-satisfying fact of Reincarnation, and of all-compensating Karma — fact that men know intuitively, and that springs forth as the clods of material delusion are broken up. The plowing is being well done. The seed is sown in secret. Let Theosophists not neglect its cultivation; for the weeds turned under by the plow persist interminably, and the one hope for the seed is to keep it growing.