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 The buried ideal / 
 
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THE 
 BURIED IDEAL 
 
 BY 
 CHARLES LAWSON 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 
 
 EV, 
 
h 
 
 \3 vinos' 
 
 
 
 l^v 
 
 Copyright, 1914 
 
 ShEEMAN, FeENCH &» COMPANT 
 
CONTENTS 
 THE COMPANIONSHIP 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1. Preliminary 8 
 
 2. Promissory 4 
 
 3. Beginnings 7 
 
 4. Poetical 10 
 
 5. Historical 19 
 
 6. Characteristics 24 
 
 7. Apotheosis 35 
 
 8. Pollution 43 
 
 9. Petrifaction 49 
 
 THE CROWD 
 
 1. Freedom 61 
 
 2. Activities 66 
 
 3. Criteria 71 
 
 4. Social Aims 76 
 
 5. Principle 80 
 
 6. Public Opinion 86 
 
 7. Democracy 93 
 
 8. Brotherhood 101 
 
 9. Looking Backward 104 
 
THE MESSAGE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1. Heart of Max 123 
 
 2. Idea of Duty 128 
 
 3. The Grateful 134 
 
 4. The Generous 139 
 
 5. Industrial-domestic 153 
 
 6. Parental Sphere 159 
 
 7. Schooling 163 
 
 8. Big Brother Movement 169 
 
 9. Religion at Length 175 
 
 10. What Follows 180 
 
BOOK I 
 THE COMPANIONSHIP 
 
1. PRELIMINARY 
 
 Nowadays when several dozen social gospels 
 are to be seen stalking about in dismayed baffle- 
 ment before the general indifference of the society 
 they offer to save; when eager and gratuitous 
 guides to every sort of glittering goal have be- 
 come abounding bores, — - it behooves the intend- 
 ing spokesman of any new propaganda to find 
 himself some justification of speaking out in the 
 present face of things or feel himself peremptorily 
 excused from spokesmanship. In fact, unless this 
 latest gospel is considerably more than merely 
 splendid prospectus of an earthly paradise, — un- 
 less it has intrinsic drawing or driving power, its 
 prophet may well spare himself and us both speech 
 and gesture. 
 
 For this same power to pull or push men into 
 performance is just what, it must strike the medi- 
 tative observer, the great majority of the afore- 
 said gospels do in very large degree lack; in con- 
 sequence of which their gilded goals are for all 
 probabilities of general journeying afloat far out 
 at sea. And not only that. For meanwhile the 
 talk keeps up about them: seas of cant encompass 
 them ; the depths of platitude slop over on all their 
 original brightness; they are dimmed and almost 
 
4 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 sullied to our sight. One might name a number 
 of noble ideals — Brotherhood for comprehensive 
 example — at whose mention one must stifle a first 
 feeling of disgust. 
 
 But the talking must keep up till what is com- 
 monplace to the fit though few becomes such to 
 the multitude, and may not be left to the most 
 gifted only ; and if anyone believes that he can 
 off'er a new approach to any of the numberless de- 
 sirable ends he may feel morally bidden to go 
 about it. 
 
 This cheerful belief the present pamphleteer 
 confesses — not through persuasion of his own or- 
 iginality, but because it has happened to him to 
 stumble in the course of certain explorations of 
 our racial past on a whole scheme of life which 
 was once foimd both admirable and workable, and 
 which, as it has never been canted about or 
 slopped upon, may be found acceptable by these 
 times — in the hearing at least. No, reader ; 
 this attempt is not a piece of dilettante anti- 
 quarianism or modem showmanism of any sort: 
 though its message is scarcely of panacean prom- 
 ise — is doubtless of limited appeal, it is cer- 
 tainly worth delivering to " the right parties." 
 Of whom if but one — the rest is somewhat musty. 
 
 2. PROMISSORY 
 
 The making of this volume will not, however, 
 mark the first time that some aspects of the sim- 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 5 
 
 pie old Germanic virtue have been mirrored to 
 a more sophisticated and perhaps less " virtuous " 
 age, nor the second, third, or maybe thirtieth 
 attempt on part of various literary pulpiteers to 
 take a teaching for their present from that past. 
 But this will, to my knowledge, be the first time 
 that the most important part of all that former 
 mode of life has been presented with due emphasis 
 upon its deep and permanent importance. Other 
 writers have applauded the commonplaces of Ger- 
 manic custom apparently without a second 
 thought concerning the most instructive institu- 
 tion of Germanic life and with next to none for 
 the spirit which sprang therefrom and gained in 
 time the power to re-shape all practice after its 
 own law. Small blame to them ; for one must 
 bring along with him a good part of whatever he 
 finds anywhere, and it is only because I happen 
 to have brought something hither and here found 
 it strengthened and enforced that what I have to 
 say about this ancient institution claims a mo- 
 ment's present hearing and a somewhat longer 
 patience for its application to some matters of 
 to-day. 
 
 Not, however, that I am about to exhume this 
 petrified practice for resuscitation among our 
 modern selves: there is neither need nor chance 
 for it in our general social plan. But because 
 there is both an abiding need and a yet lingering 
 chance to breathe some portion of its spirit into 
 these our present practices I have undertaken this 
 
6 THE BimiED IDEAL 
 
 task of evoking that same spirit from its too-long 
 sleep, of exhibiting some samples of its former 
 animation, of establishing the causes of its grow- 
 ing torpor, and of pointing out some circum- 
 stances of its near unbroken hibernation even un- 
 til now. 
 
 And I shall try to do so in somewhat the follow- 
 ing way : — 
 
 I shall try to show how from the practices of 
 this Comitatus — or Companionship, as we shall 
 call it — a spirit sprang which in itself exempli- 
 fied the truest and the loftiest ideal of Duty, lit- 
 erally defined and actually done, that ever dwelt 
 with men: and how this spirit was no petty off- 
 spring of a narrow system but as broad as human- 
 kind, and flourished best not among lilies under 
 smiling skies, but amid blood and battle, storm 
 and gnawing winter's stress — among, in short, 
 all ancient antetypes of things in our improved 
 competitive world. I shall show that in the pur- 
 est of responses which the appeal of a newly 
 spreading Christianity aroused that spirit found 
 its genuine religious counterpart, which it could 
 interpret fully in the terms of its own inner life: 
 but that this response was soon perverted and in 
 time almost entirely corrupted by the base appeals 
 of a later proselytism-at-any-price, and has only 
 in rare cases fuUy recovered its first purity. I 
 shall roughly trace the parallel growth of this 
 Companionship into a scheme of national govern- 
 ment — the Feudal System, namely, — and note 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 7 
 
 furthermore how by the transformation therein 
 of the fluent forms of the old spirit into rigid 
 formulas of duty the deep personal loyalty of an- 
 cient life was gradually loosened and eventually 
 came to spend its latent energy in various self- 
 provident enterprises, out of which it could at 
 length recover nothing of its former state but an 
 impersonal and superficial code of morals, in 
 whose pedantisms, priggeries, and platitudes it 
 has lain sleepful ever since. And I shall point 
 out some few manifestations of our present spirit- 
 ual state, and find the reader, if he shall not long 
 before have found them for himself — or left my 
 neighborhood, some lessons from that former age 
 which, well learned by these complaining times, 
 might make their remedy. 
 
 And I shall not, if possible, hereafter practice 
 this unhappy style of circumscriptive speech, but 
 strike straight to the' heart of those examples 
 which would speak to us across the stretch of ten 
 forgetful centuries. 
 
 3. BEGINNINGS 
 
 Several deep diggers of the scholarly persuasion 
 have given us their divers deep opinions on the ori- 
 gin and early growth of the Companionship, — 
 foregoing all which we shall get at once to certain 
 passages in the Germania * of Tacitus which keep 
 for us a portrait of the practice at its highest 
 
 * Chapters XIII and XIV. 
 
8 THE BUKIED IDEAL 
 
 flourishing. This portrayal is at best in abstract 
 outline only: neither the full figure nor the living 
 soul do we find here. But another place and 
 speech supply both lacks ; in whose words the 
 shapes are flesh and the spirit breathes discernible 
 therethrough. To these the reader shall in time 
 be brought. 
 
 First, then, we find our Roman author telling 
 us that " it is no disgrace for any German youth 
 to show himself among the members of a Com- 
 pany " ; and if we wonder why shame might at- 
 tach to the position we are duly told by certain 
 Tacitean commentators that the legal standing of 
 a Companion toward his chief was that of slave 
 to lord. Such voluntary slavery was the price 
 paid to a chosen leader by the impecunious 
 or aspiring young Germanic warrior for his living 
 and the gift of battle-horse and terrible " bloody 
 and victorious " battle-sp'ear. But, as our his- 
 torian has hastened to inform us, so far from 
 being held disgraceful, such a servitude was held 
 in highly honorable demand. " For the strength 
 and glory of each chieftain lay in having always 
 a great band of chosen youth about him, as an or- 
 nament in time of peace, a guard in war: by 
 means of them his fame might spread not only 
 through his own tribe but to neighboring nations 
 also, gaining him both reverence and gifts and 
 winning wars with his mere name." 
 
 Whereby these bands were soon become an in- 
 dispensability to the most modest princeling and 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 9 
 
 might almost dictate their own terms of service. 
 These were not, however, very hard; in addition 
 to good fare and furnishings, they demanded from 
 their leader only ample grounds for admiration 
 of himself; without which, truly, no amount of 
 promised pampering and splendid apparatus could 
 have slightly tempted them. " Shameful is it," 
 says our Roman, " when the battle has been joined, 
 for a prince to be surpassed in bravery." Then, 
 indeed, his band would not be long in taking back 
 their freedom and betaking themselves to a nobler 
 leader. But such necessity was rare enough, if 
 ever it occurred; for the chieftain lived upon his 
 reputation and became in fact the servant of his 
 servants' eyes in order to preserve it. 
 
 And what therefor was asked of the compan- 
 ions .'' — Perfect readiness at all times to sur- 
 render their lives utterly. " Shameful is it," Tac- 
 itus continues, " for Companions when in battle 
 not to be the equals of their lord in bravery. 
 Yea, truly, it is life-long infamy and crime for any 
 to retreat from fight survivor of his lord. To 
 defend him, guard him, give their bravest deeds to 
 brighten his own glory, — these are the Compan- 
 ions' special part and sacred duty. Princes strive 
 for victory; Companions for their princes." 
 
 Here, then, are certain traits of this our chosen 
 type, — thus pictured to us in the skeleton shapes 
 of their politico-economical aspects only, but de- 
 spite it promising the patient reader much more 
 animated matter when their bones are once em- 
 
10 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 bodied in live flesh. Does not, indeed, a pious 
 scholarship in footnote furnish us with the aus- 
 picative example of a practising Companionship 
 from a certain late contemporary of Tacitus, one 
 Ammianus MarcelHnus, who relates how, when 
 Chief Chochiliacus of the Alamanni had been 
 taken by the Romans, his whole following, unfor- 
 tunately absent at the earlier time, came after 
 him to share the chances of captivity? 
 
 And now we pass from Chochiliacus and his 
 Companions — whose reputation might have been 
 much wider-spread had he possessed a pensionary 
 bard or people not been naturally bashful about 
 naming him — to some whose names and deeds 
 and spirits also have been splendidly enshrined for 
 us by the first craft of English song. 
 
 4. POETICAL 
 
 History has certified to us through several of 
 her lofty functionaries that the settlement in 
 Britain of her continental conquerors was nothing 
 less than a transfer thither in its fullest form of 
 Anglo-Saxon society. Natural enough, then, 
 that the early English should find nothing alien 
 in the poetical transplantations from whose slips 
 and shoots in time sprang up their epic lay of 
 Beowulf. For such, a cloud of commentators has 
 assured us, were the origins and was the growth 
 of that most ancient modern song. Many other 
 things concerning the said Beowulf they do alsq 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 11 
 
 at great length assure us ; but concerning any 
 present helpfulness or every-day unliterary value 
 to be got thence they have nothing to say; and 
 we shall therefore in re-visiting the region travel 
 as if on new ground. 
 
 With Beowulf on friendly errand, to the aid of 
 Hrothgar against Grendel, giant fen-fiend, came 
 his twelve Companions, heartened for whatever 
 fate their chief should find. 
 
 And when at evening the hero, having boasted 
 duly — as became one in those days — and dis- 
 armed himself to meet the monster on fair terms, 
 had bedded him . in the great Hall of Hart, 
 " there bowed themselves to rest about him many a 
 brave sea-fighter," — the full number, our mag- 
 niloquent word-smith would say, of that somewhat 
 meagre band. He might slumber, feeling safe in 
 the prowess of his several horse-power hand-grip ; 
 not so securely they. For they had heard how 
 " slaughterous death within the wine-hall had 
 snatched away ere now by much too many of the 
 Danish folk, and not one of them thought that he 
 should thereafter see his own dear land, his tribe, 
 or noble city, where he had been reared." But 
 nonetheless they slept upon the premonition, al- 
 lowing Grendel, who came scritheing down into 
 the hall toward midnight — " livid flame was 
 standing from his eyes " — to seize upon one of 
 the watch, " rend him unawares, bite his bone- 
 locker, drink his blood, and swallow him in bits." 
 By which time, however, Beowulf is ready to re- 
 
12 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 ceive the visitor with a most gladsome hand of 
 welcome, and his friends awake to find themselves 
 once more in occupancy of the back-ground to 
 his battle-play. And in background they must 
 keep both during that impenetrable mix-up out 
 of which the unbidden guest emerges minus arm 
 and appetite, and while the fight is fought again 
 with speeches and potations. Not until the splen- 
 dor of their leader's presence disappears in Gren- 
 del's pool and stays under nine full days, do they 
 shine again with unreflected light. 
 
 To this spot the hero had been brought by 
 Hrothgar's retinue to pay return-call upon Gren- 
 del's dam, who had visited the hall in dire venge- 
 ance of his death. And when the neighboring 
 bands of water-snakes and consanguineal sea- 
 monsters were for the time being dispossessed by 
 his Companions' spears, Beowulf had gone down 
 into the submarine home of the Grendel family. 
 And become, so thought his poor Companions, 
 almost a member, by incorporation, of the same. 
 So, too, did not doubt the white-haired old men 
 natives, and, having said as much, departed home- 
 wards. But " the strangers sat there still upon 
 the ness and, sick in spirit, stared upon the pool. 
 They hoped, but not expected, ever to behold their 
 own dear lord again." Somewhat suggestive, 
 truly, of a certain other ancient twelve — then 
 lacking one — left likewise lonesome and discon- 
 solate. 
 
 But when the " helm of seamen " did at length 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 13 
 
 get back on land, they hastened to him ; " God 
 they thanked," interpolates a later piety, " and 
 took joy of their lord, that they might behold 
 him safe once more." And now begins again their 
 own eclipse, which they enter with no specified 
 repinings. His the glory and the torchlight; 
 theirs as great a joy in shadow. Did these simple 
 spirits never guess the high advantages and 
 strong delights of Individualism ? Evidently not ; 
 perhaps, indeed, they could not have appreciated 
 them. 
 
 Nor was Beowulf himself, so far as one can 
 well discover, such an overweening individualist. 
 Contrarily, one can discover him, — when, gifted 
 with large treasure by the grateful Hrothgar, he 
 has returned to Hygelac his overlord and duly 
 told his tale and ably boasted, for the times be- 
 comingly, both of his prowess and the prizes it 
 had won, — making some remarks in quite another 
 mood. For he ends with: " These (said prizes) 
 I would gladly bring thee and bestow them joy- 
 fully on thee, O king of men. Still doth every 
 good thing begin with thee. Take thou full joy 
 of aU." Whereafter the famed hero did not hesi- 
 tate to enter his own position of eclipse, and con- 
 trived to occupy it, says his poet, lawfully — 
 without, when drunken, slaying any of his com- 
 rades, — which was something, for those days. 
 
 Nor, when Hygelac had gone a-warring once 
 too often, and remained to feed the ravens and 
 the wolves of Friesland, did Beowulf, who, having 
 
14 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 cleared the field of Frisians, had come thence by 
 swimming, accept the chance of kingship proffered 
 him by dowager queen Hygd, who feared for her 
 son's strength against his foes, and probably 
 hoped, too, for Beowulf as second husband; but 
 upheld young Heardred with kindly counsel till he 
 grew of age to rule the land. 
 
 Finally, however, when young Heardred had 
 followed the paternal path, " departed other- 
 whither," who but warrior Beowulf should hold 
 the kingdom, have the queen ? So, indeed, he did ; 
 and ruled both well for fifty years. 
 
 But then it chanced unfortunately that a 
 dragon, previously well-behaved enough, " began 
 to be unruly on dark nights." Such beasts, it 
 seems, were at that time accustomed to seek out 
 some treasure-hoard deep-buried by a " lonesome, 
 kinless, joy-forsaken man," and keep a life-long 
 watch of it. And this one, fallen carelessly 
 asleep in conduct of his chosen business, had been 
 deceived and robbed by a certain banished man, 
 who bore away a precious drinking-cup, hoping 
 therewith to appease his wrathful lord. But the 
 greedy dragon, grudging any of his gold for what- 
 soever worthy purposes, flamed forth spewing 
 sparks and gledes and taking payment for his 
 precious cup in conflagration of fair homesteads. 
 Thus it came about that Beowulf must in his old 
 age go against the " loathsome stranger-one " ; 
 and up against him went he, one of twelve. 
 
 Having thus fared forth to beard, full literally, 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 15 
 
 the dragon in his den, Beowulf, foreboding ill but 
 ever careful of his comrades, bids them remain 
 out of harm's way while he does " deeds of earl- 
 ship," and then, advancing single, addresses the 
 dragon also, not in friendly wise. 
 
 So the fight begins, but goes not well for Beo- 
 wulf, who soon finds himself encompassed by the 
 dragon's fiery breath and suffering sore straits. 
 And now " not at all do his close comrades cour- 
 ageously crowd round him," but betake them to 
 the wood to save their skins and lives. They had 
 not been trained to such a business as this : fighting 
 winged furnaces was scarcely in the current prac- 
 tice of Companionship. 
 
 Well, perhaps not, ye discreet or panic-stricken ; 
 but the perfect spirit of a practice pauses at no 
 letter in its law. So inspirited was one at least 
 among that throng. Wiglaf was he named, " a 
 loved shield-warrior." He, when he saw his lord 
 beneath the battle-mask, laboring from the heat, 
 " bethought him then of all the honors that in 
 former days his prince had given him, the wealthy 
 homestead of his family and every folk-right that 
 his father owned. He might not then hold back " 
 — had to go, urged by his gratitude — " but 
 grasped his shield and drew his olden blade. That 
 was the first time the young warrior must bear 
 the brunt of battle with his own dear lord. His 
 soul melted not away, nor did the sword left of 
 his kinsman weaken in the fight; this the dragon 
 found out when they met together." 
 
16 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 First, however, says our poet, he addressed his 
 distant, quite inauditory comrades, — more length- 
 ily, I must believe, than any living Wiglaf would 
 have done, — but not badly, nor does the didacti- 
 cism trouble me as it might some. " Wiglaf," 
 says our bard, " spoke many a righteous word, 
 for his soul was sorrowful; he said to his com- 
 rades : ' I mind me of the time we drank the 
 mead, how we vowed then to our lord in mead-hall, 
 unto him who gave these rings to us, that we 
 would repay him for our battle trappings, for 
 those helmets and well-tempered swords, if this- 
 like need should chance to him. . . . Now is the 
 day come that our liege-lord needs the strength 
 of goodly warriors. Let us go to him. ... As 
 for me God knoweth I had liefer far the fire should 
 enfold my body with my giver of gold. ... I 
 trow well it were not the debt long due him that 
 of all his folk he bear the brunt, fall in the strife. 
 Sword and helmet, shield and mail-coat shall be 
 one for both of us.' He went then through the 
 slaughter-reek, bore aid to his lord." 
 
 But of the terrible beauties of the mixed combat 
 that follows my tiresome determination to be only 
 incidentally entertaining forbids me to discourse 
 in full, and my affectionate regard allows no 
 scanting. The unfamiliar reader, if regretful, 
 may obtain them finely Englished — in prose for 
 the small price of one dime^ poetry at propor- 
 tionately higher rates. We shall stick to the di- 
 dactic. 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 17 
 
 In short, then, the sword of Beowulf betrays 
 him in the strife, his several horse-power strength 
 of hand (for thus the bard exonerates the blade 
 and glorifies the bearer) trying overmuch any 
 sword whatever; the dragon with his bitter fangs 
 takes in all the hero's throat, and Beowulf's life- 
 blood wells forth in waves. But thane Wiglaf, 
 heeding not the dragon's head or his own burnt 
 hand, manages to smite the flaming foe a little 
 lower ; his sword sinks in ; and the fire begins to 
 fail. Through such perforation, and escape of 
 fiery strength, or possibly by sudden draught 
 upon his heating apparatus, the dragon now grows 
 languid, and it is not long before the two are 
 able to bisect him. Beowulf, however, has been 
 done for, and soon thereafter his soul departs, 
 leaving only his earlship to be praised, " as was 
 meet in those times, that a man should foster a 
 lord's fame and hold him in heart when he must 
 forth from the body to become as a thing of 
 nought." 
 
 We, however, have chief notice still to take of 
 those he left behind, " who bore now with shamed 
 faces their shields and war-weeds where the old 
 man lay. They looked on Wiglaf, who sat wea- 
 ried at the shoulder of his lord, trying with cold 
 water to awaken him. No whit, however, might 
 he speed thereby. 
 
 " To the youth then was a grim answer easy to 
 find for those whose courage had before that fled. 
 Wiglaf spake, the son of Weohstan ; sorrowful of 
 
18 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 heart the hero looked on them he scorned : ' This, 
 lo! may he say that will speak sooth, that your 
 own lord, he who gave you all these treasures, the 
 troop-trappings that ye stand in, when he on the 
 ale-bench often gave those sitting in the hall, the 
 king to his thanes, helms and burnies of the best, 
 — that he then in wretched wise threw utterly 
 away that battle-gear, so soon as warfare should 
 befall him. Truly, not at all the folk-king needed 
 boast his comrades in the battle. Defenders too 
 few thronged about their prince when the time 
 of peril came upon him. . . . Now shall hope of 
 treasure-taking and the gift of swords, all inher- 
 ited delights of home, fail from your kindred. 
 Of your homesteads every man must go, empty 
 of his land-right, after athelings afar have heard 
 tell of your flight, of your inglorious deed. Death 
 is better for every earl than a life of infamy.' " 
 
 No mercy, my Wiglaf, no forgiveness to men's 
 frailty ; nor even to the innocent of second and 
 third generations .J" A bad business this; but in- 
 deed a custom that must be obeyed in those times 
 when a family stood or fell together. More than 
 fear of the like fate had urged thee forward, more 
 than shrinking from disgrace or inner shame. 
 Pure love spurred thee, kept thee steadfast, sped 
 thy stroke. Hail to thee, thane Wiglaf: a true 
 type of goodness I declare thee, in spirit not far 
 from the highest. Or does not the term apply to 
 perfect loyalty, but only to the quiet cultivation 
 of small virtues for a payment, or perhaps for 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 19 
 
 their own poor sake? — A question which may ul- 
 timately seem worth our consideration. Mean- 
 while, what more should we remark of thee, my 
 Wiglaf, thane worthy beyond telling? 
 
 S. HISTORICAL 
 
 " Much enthusiasm for a phantom," mutters 
 Matter-of-factness ; " for was not Thane Wiglaf 
 merely that ? " True enough ; but after aU how 
 came that phantom-figure to be bodied forth? 
 There must, I guess, have been some matter for 
 imagining it out of, some material at hand from 
 which the maker took a hint or two. How many 
 a Wiglafian warrior, may we well suppose, gave 
 somewhat to this making, and, otherwise forgot- 
 ,ten, gained thus a pseudonymous immortality ! 
 Canst thou not thyself, reader, body-forth 
 such forest-combat, — not of needs with dragon, 
 nowadays an unfamiliar beast, — but at least with 
 bear — original of Grendel, some suggest — or 
 other suchlike animal? Or, again, a forest-fire or 
 a domestic conflagration might have been behind 
 these elements of the impossible, — not to mention 
 numerous mythic possibilities, of which not one, 
 however, can in the slightest damage the deep 
 probability of those strong human figures for 
 whom they are, in fact, no unbecoming back- 
 ground and time-atmosphere. 
 
 Or if the reader would deal rather with a veri- 
 fied reality alone, let him look at this scene of an 
 
20 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 ancient English court : * Northumbrian king 
 Edwin (Eadwine) sits in talk with Eumer, am- 
 bassador from Cwichelm, king of the West-Sax- 
 ons. All at once up springs Eumer, whips out 
 a " two-edged dagger dipped in poison," and 
 leaps upon the king. But soft, ambassador-as- 
 sassin ; here is thane Lilla, " best beloved of the 
 king's body-guard," will rush between and take 
 the blow. Which in fact has driven the dagger 
 through him and even into the king, — but wiped 
 clean of poison, we suppose, in good thane Lilla's 
 heart. 
 
 But lest this virtue too much seem that of he- 
 roic individuals here and there, it were well I 
 showed the long-enduring reader some more speci- 
 mens of it, — taken this time from Old English 
 general usage. For I fear that after all the bard 
 of Beowulf and Wiglaf did not do full justice to 
 the common members of that institution whereof 
 they were part. Few institutions, truly, could 
 have faced such saurian assault ; — and was not 
 the bard determined anyhow to get his hero glo- 
 riously slain and his successor furnished with a 
 strong inaugural situation.? Nay, unless the loy- 
 alty of which we have been saying much and prom- 
 ising to prove still more be one discoverable in 
 the common heart of man, examination of these 
 scattered instances were dismal mole-work or mere 
 dilettantism, with small possibility in my case of 
 apology for being. 
 * Bede's Ecclesiastical History : II ; 9. 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP SI 
 
 Hear, then, if it please you, how, according to 
 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,* two practising Com- 
 panionships came to collision and disastrous end. 
 For King Cynewulf of Wessex having been sur- 
 prised unaccompanied and slain by Alderman 
 Cynehard, who had long fed a family feud with 
 him, his Companions shut up Cynehard and Com- 
 pany in a town and sat down before it. And then 
 Cynehard " offered them their own desire of land 
 and money " if they would come over to him, but 
 they answered that " never would they join the 
 slayer of their lord." And then they made offer 
 of amnesty to certain relatives of theirs who were 
 with Cynehard, which these in turn refused. So 
 they all fell to fighting round the gate, and kept 
 it up till all were killed except one hostage, who 
 apparently had to fight also, or wouldn't lose the 
 opportunity, and he was wounded. 
 
 And behind how many of those brief obituary 
 notices in which the Chronicle abounds — " this 
 year King So-and-So was slain " — might not an 
 adequately penetrative scholarship discover much 
 the same devotion under howsoever differing cir- 
 cumstances? But the actors lacked both patient 
 chroniclers and pious bards ; and the penetrative 
 scholarship which we, alas, are now so far from 
 lacking can in these things tell us nothing. Only 
 from the last days of Old English history has an- 
 other appearance of Companionship in operation 
 been preserved to us, — with, however, all the an- 
 ♦Year 755. 
 
ga THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 cient spirit full-displayed, or fittingly infused, per- 
 haps, by one who knew well how they used to do 
 those things of old. Truly, this Battle of Mal- 
 don does not yield to Beowulf itself in any of the 
 finer features which they both portray. But let 
 the reader look and judge. 
 
 In 991 A. D. a Danish army landed on the east- 
 em coasts of England and for some time plundered 
 as they pleased. But on the banks of the Black- 
 water stream near Maldon they were met and 
 stopped by Alderman Byrhtnot of Essex. To 
 him, accordingly, they made with their accustomed 
 Danish modesty request for payment to depart. 
 And to them the earl made answer, partially: 
 " Payment ? We will pay you spears and poison- 
 ous points and trusty swords. . . . Too shameful 
 seems it that ye with our tributes should take ship 
 unfought, now that ye have come thus far in pn 
 our land." 
 
 So both sides drew up for battle, with Black- 
 water stream between them. But the Danes soon 
 found the fording-place past hope of fording. 
 Accordingly, with nerve astounding even in the 
 Danes, they asked crossing, and the alderman, who 
 held it also shameful to lose such a chance of fight- 
 ing, gave the fatal leave. Numbers could now 
 overcome mere bravery ; and before long Byrhtnot 
 fell, having previously looked to heaven and 
 thanked God for joys past. So much of the brave 
 Byrhtnot, whose valor overwent his wisdom. 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 23 
 
 " And now turned in flight two thanes of Byrht- 
 not and forsook the good chief who had given them 
 many a horse." These, the brothers Godric and 
 Godwig — valiant individualists — one bestriding 
 Byrhtnot's battle-steed, both galloped oiF. " They 
 did not care for fighting, they preferred the wood. 
 And with them went more warriors than was any- 
 way meet if they had been mindful of his merits 
 who had done such good to them. Many of them, 
 truly, thought the fleeing Godric was their lord, 
 and on that account the folk upon the field were 
 parted and the shield-defense was broken." It 
 was the beginning of the end. 
 
 But when his hearth-companions saw their lord 
 thus lying dead, " they stepped forth, the proud 
 thanes, to leave life or avenge their loved one." 
 And young warrior Alfwine thus incited them: 
 " Remember now the times that we oft at our mead- 
 driaking spake and boasted about combat. . . . 
 Never shall the warriors of my nation twit me that 
 I wanted to desert this troop, seek home, now my 
 lord lies slain in strife. That is to me the most 
 of ills : he was both my kinsman and my chief." 
 Then forth he went against the enemy. And then 
 was OiFa, the chief counselor of his late lord, who 
 had formerly, it seems, with sorrowful exactitude 
 foretold the individualism and its event, also slain 
 in conflict. " He had, nevertheless, accomplished 
 what he vowed unto his lord when, before, he 
 boasted to his benefactor that they should both 
 
M THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 ride back into the town, whole to their homes 
 again, or fall in battle, die upon the slaughter- 
 field ; he lay thane-like near his lord." 
 
 And now the shields are broken, and the sea-men 
 stride among the warriors. There is time for lit- 
 tle more of set speechmaking ; but the speech of 
 Byrhtnot's old companion is doubtless the best 
 possible. " Mind must be the braver," shouts he, 
 " heart the keener, courage the greater, as our 
 strength grows less. Here lies our leader slaugh- 
 tered, the good one on the ground. Ever may 
 he mourn that now from this battle-play thinketh 
 to turn him! I am old of life: I will not from 
 hence ; but think to lay me by the side of my lord, 
 by so dear a man." Soon he, too, has fallen, 
 practising his precepts, and the fragmentary 
 poem comes to final stop. 
 
 In such words, then, has the poet well inter- 
 preted for these true, loving thanes the deep 
 thoughts of their hearts, which they could tell in 
 feeble language only, and better far by deeds 
 alone. And herewith have we come to momentary 
 pause in this poetico-historical examination. 
 
 6. CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 The picture that I have for some time now been 
 painting at — of Companionship in operation — 
 is probably as near complete as any further mani- 
 folding of the figures found therein could make it. 
 The several groups, whatever their respective situ- 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 25 
 
 ations, have surely a sufficient similarity of pos- 
 ture and sameness of animating spirit for one 
 instance to have served for all; and my relentless 
 multiplication of examples has been aimed chiefly 
 to show that essential sameness under various 
 conditions. It remains for us, before we move 
 to other aspects of our survey, briefly to remark 
 the characteristics of this bond. A mere naming 
 of them would suffice, and probably prove quite 
 superfluous, if our modern minds were not in large 
 degree shut to their deeper meaning and the mes- 
 sage that it holds. Whereof the evidence shall 
 be forthcoming. Now for the thing itself. 
 
 The bond, then, as we have been told, began in 
 the need of chief for fighting-men and the wish of 
 landless warriors who disliked work to be kept by 
 one who could afford to keep them. Clearly not 
 a very noble, — rather a most business-like and 
 mutually beneficial bond. " You keep us in time 
 of peace; we'll keep you in time of war: mean- 
 while we are ornamental and enlarge your dig- 
 nity." " ' Give ' and ' Give back,' " says some 
 Northern gnomist, " make the longest friends — if 
 there be luck withal." 
 
 But, this business-like bond established, better 
 things grow out of it. For, as the thanes have 
 given themselves over to a leader's keeping, it 
 becomes his place, and only safe policy, to keep 
 them kindly, — to be mild and gracious toward 
 them, and above all generous in treasure-giving. 
 " Ring-giver " is the regular epithet of princes, 
 
26 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 who gave not the slight finger sort but broad arm- 
 rings and bracelets and neck-rings curiously 
 wrought of gold. Such a one, possessed also of 
 bravery, was the ideal lord, best typified, per- 
 haps, by Beowulf, who " slew not at all when 
 drunk his hearth-companions," and when sober 
 showed more positive appreciation of his obliga- 
 tions. Such a one was not King Heremod of Den- 
 mark, stock example of a bad, cruel king. He 
 did slay his hearth-companions, without fit excuse 
 of drunkenness, and did not dispense rings as be- 
 came his high estate. He disappointed the popu- 
 lar expectation of his father's son, lived joyless, 
 and was finally left lonely to his foes. " Be not 
 like him, dear Beowulf," Hrothgar advises the de- 
 parting hero, " but lay hold on manly worth." 
 
 But this too is in turn only the beginning of 
 better and of best. For, whether or not this gene- 
 rosity came primarily from pure affection — 
 was the outflow of a naturally kind lord's love, it 
 led eventually to that very love, or largened it if 
 previously present. Strange, perhaps, but not at 
 all unnatural, for it is a commonplace of prac- 
 tical psychology that not only does emotion lead 
 to action, but that action tends to the development 
 of its appropriate emotion. " Grin long enough," 
 says this psychology, " and you will end by grow- 
 ing glad; sigh if you desire to be sad; gnash 
 your teeth if you are anxious to become enraged ; 
 so in time the feeling that you have by certain ac- 
 tions wakened will itself take charge and be the 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 27 
 
 cause of action." Or, somewhat more consonantly 
 with the case of Companionship, if for any reason, 
 worthy or unworthy, one seek the welfare of his 
 friends, he will at length have grown a love for 
 them which will itself thereafter urge and guide 
 him. A truly wonderful law of mind, this seems 
 to me, — applicable to both the olive-habit and the 
 highest philanthropy, and to what things are be- 
 tween ; a strong capability of soul, underlying all 
 real spiritual progress whatsoever. 
 
 Such a progress our ancient princelings must 
 often have exemplified. Their long beneficence 
 and its close personal relations could not fail, ex- 
 cept perhaps in utterly perverted cases, to grow 
 in them a warm, eff^usive love. Thanes are the 
 dear comrades of their lord, his care through life 
 and in the face of deathful possibilities. " Be 
 thou guardian to my kinsman thanes, Hrothgar, 
 — to my close companions, if the strife shall take 
 me," urges Beowulf, who was not, we may there- 
 from infer, of entirely utilitarian temperament, 
 but, unbusinesslike, wanted his thanes treated well 
 even when he should have no further use for them. 
 And had not " glorious Hrothgar " during the as- 
 cendency of Grendel, into whom there had de- 
 scended some five dozen of select retainers, suff'ered 
 " thane-sorrow," pined for the Companionship 
 thus scattered or consumed.'' Hard to doubt the 
 genuineness of such afi'ection. 
 
 Or if one should insist on doubting that, there 
 is no suspecting the response it could call into 
 
28 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 common practice. Of this responsiveness on part 
 of various Companionships we have recently had 
 several views, and now need little more than name 
 its character and note its reputation. It was for 
 the most part a pure loyalty, not paid accord- 
 ing to punctilious agreement merely, or from 
 moral reverence or meaner fear, but from the 
 warrior's heart and soul, urged by his grateful 
 love. Such love the average Germanic warrior 
 felt for his " friendly lord " — how could he fail 
 to feel it.? Strange indeed if their free-handed 
 daily fellowship and shoulder-comradeship in fight 
 should not develop such a bond and strengthen it 
 against the very stroke of death ! The comrade, 
 mindful of a dear lord's love, " may not hold 
 back," must give the life bought long before by 
 lordly giving. Behind the bargained, visible debt, 
 non-payment whereof might expect swift social 
 penalties, had thus sprung up a spirit of pure love 
 which could even joyously achieve the utmost pay- 
 ment. And, furthermore, men feel in time that 
 such love is no less a part of duty than is actual 
 service; that spiritual payment is quite as in- 
 cumbent as material ; and that a man must love 
 his lord as well as serve him. There comes, in 
 fact, to be a final test of this affection: the lov- 
 ing servant dies not only for his master's life but 
 for his master's death; his vain defense turns to 
 a violent despair, and death alone can calm him. 
 Revengefulness and dutiful observance of the law 
 of vengeance were doubtless also in the fighting. 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 29 
 
 but in the suffering and dying was balm to grief. 
 Consider Chochiliacus and Company once more: 
 the voluntary captives could not hope to rescue or 
 revenge their lord ; they hoped to share the worst 
 that he expected. And be sure the tribe thereby 
 diminished did not disapprove the manner of its 
 diminution. Quite painfully, no doubt, it would 
 have shown its disapproval to returned Comrades, 
 deserters of their lord. Life-long infamy for 
 them and theirs, outlawry and the loss of all but 
 life: a generously revengeful indignation. 
 
 Well, I have now done with my dissection of 
 Companionship, and must prepare to meet the 
 question of why it was worth while going back 
 among barbaric usages to show that men are some- 
 times generous, and often grateful. 
 
 Perhaps, however, one part of the defense is 
 aided by the implicit accusation. The very fact 
 that in societies so crude, — so fond of slaughter, 
 and not afraid of cruelty, for there were numerous 
 hard-driven slaves ; so fond of sodden drunkenness 
 and violent conversation ; and fonder far of plun- 
 der than of principles, — that in such societies 
 there could spring up this pure and lofty feeling, 
 is a luminous comment on the ethical constitution 
 of mankind, and as such not without some bearing 
 on the moral business of our present social state 
 and a message discoverable by the investigative 
 mind. 
 
 But besides determining just what Companion- 
 ship was in respect particularly of its spirit, it 
 
80 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 seems necessary to note something that it just as 
 certainly was not. This, because the thing, 
 though in itself obvious enough to any one who 
 will approach it closely, is, when seen afar, 
 through media of later moral developments and 
 possibly some film of the observer's eyes, suscepti- 
 ble of much misapprehension. For example, Pro- 
 fessor F. B. Guramere, who in his book Germanic 
 Origins has written instructively and entertain- 
 ingly of things Teutonic, tells us that " The sense 
 of Duty, the sense of standing and enduring for a 
 principle, has always been the mainspring of Ger- 
 manic success." I should like to know just when 
 that " always " entered the course of Germanic 
 civilization: its arrival did not, very evidently, 
 come till later than the period of the Companion- 
 ship. For although the practice of this truly rep- 
 resents, in spirit and performance, the payment of 
 a duty — is, in fact, the highest possible exempli- 
 fication of dutifulness — yet in neither spirit nor 
 performance does this practice correspond to 
 " standing and enduring for a principle." Any 
 one, it seems to me, whose moral atmosphere was 
 not still haunted by the ghosts of Kantian cate- 
 gorical imperatives could easily see that. Indeed, 
 the noticeable thing about this business of Duty 
 in those days is that in the first place it did not 
 at all get done for Duty's sake — from " reverence 
 for moral law," and that in the second place the 
 greater part of what did get done, which our 
 moral commentators have called Duty, was not, 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 31 
 
 accurately speaking, such at all, nor in its essence 
 worthy of high praise. And as none of this, O 
 tired reader, is of merely antiquarian interest, but 
 of present-day importance, and such, truly, as 
 might profit many of us well to know, I am em- 
 boldened, despite danger of desertions, to dwell 
 awhile on the idea of Duty as illuminated by the 
 practice of these times. 
 
 Definitions of Duty have been the hobby of past 
 generations of philosophers ; but unfortunately 
 the philosophical definers were not, as Nietzsche 
 recommends, also philologists, and in their mak- 
 ing of definitions seem never to have thought of 
 looking at the innate meaning of the word they 
 would define. This, however, their successors have 
 thought of doing, and are able to assure us that 
 the word Duty, which of course means merely 
 " something due " — a veritable debt, applied orig- 
 inally, whether in its French, its German, or its 
 English form, to service rendered for value re- 
 ceived, usually by retainer to overlord. Exactly, 
 let us note, the idea of Duty that the practice of 
 Companionship exemplified; and an idea no less 
 applicable to that highest payment, of grateful in 
 return for generous love, which the moralists of 
 that day did indeed regard as Duty. Let us note, 
 too, as of present import, that such Duty carried 
 its own impulse to performance, not in " reverence 
 for moral law," but in the debtor's longing to re- 
 quite service with service, love with love. Let us 
 lastly note that this dutifulness was its own suffi- 
 
m THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 cient reward: that it was in itself right joyful — 
 all the more so since it did not aim at the enjoy- 
 ment ; and hence never had to be commanded with 
 apologies, and but rarely with threats, to help 
 push it into performance. It was, in short, the 
 loftiest idea of Duty, literally defined and actually 
 done, the richest in its own reward, that ever op- 
 erated among men. And is the ablest, by the way, 
 to be called back into like operation. 
 
 But beside the custom of Companionship there 
 were operative other types of morality or custom- 
 ariness, which had been developed by this tribal 
 society to suit its numerous other needs. These 
 concerned, of course, the various activities and 
 relations of village, field, home, family, and fight, 
 and were consequently of several sorts, — com- 
 mands to courage, honesty, sincerity, chastity, and 
 the like ; but it is possible to find in all of them a 
 certain sameness — one characteristic note. They 
 are with no marked exception prohibitions of 
 some natural instinct; commands not to do the 
 natural dictate of the circumstances, — not to flee 
 from dangerous odds — no need of urging cour- 
 age for the gain of plunder ; — not to take an- 
 other's goods or wife or life ; and so forth through 
 the entire social sphere. They were generally 
 needful prohibitions, but not exactly joyful; and 
 of themselves could never have checked the fears 
 and greeds and raging lusts of men: they most 
 decidedly had to have some sort of outside 
 strengthening. 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 33 
 
 That strengthening was the power of Popular 
 Opinion, operating as pohce force, and backed 
 upon occasion by spiked clubs or even heavier and 
 sharper verbal penalties. Hence those hortatory 
 snatches in the old English battle songs, warning 
 the disheartened of worse things awaiting flight, 
 " the twitting of the thanes in one's own native 
 town." Who does not know how nearly all the 
 social virtues — all, perhaps, except that of pure 
 gratitude, which seems a sort of gravitational 
 property of the soul, — were originally products 
 of this Popular Opinion, caring for the social wel- 
 fare, of the race's preservation of itself.? Who- 
 ever does not had best hasten to the congregated 
 charms of any among the mighty number of trea- 
 tises on Sociology and find out the fascinating 
 evidence. Meanwhile he may take my word. 
 
 This, then, is that Germanic morality which 
 from Tacitean admiration to Kantian formulation 
 has enjoyed a chorus of rapt praise, and of which 
 Nietzschean derogation is doubtless to many a 
 Germanically moulded mind no less than desecra- 
 tion — the unpardonable sin. At any rate the 
 practice of this species of morality is what Pro- 
 fessor Gummere describes as " standing and en- 
 during for a principle." Was it.? Not unless 
 the " principle " was the general law that clubs 
 are harder than heads, and barbed words able to 
 pierce toughest feelings. These various vetoes 
 were no doubt needful and valuable enough, but 
 they brought with them no meed of joy, and got 
 
34. THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 but grudged obedience. They were in fact, as I 
 promised to make clear, not " duties " in the lit- 
 eral sense at all, and nearly never done for their 
 own sufficient sake. I am speaking, reader, of the 
 far past, but I cannot help it if you apply my 
 comments to the present-day character and repu- 
 tation of principles. 
 
 For principles as a modem symptom are of 
 course lineally descended from these ancient pro- 
 hibitions, — the public conscience having through 
 long effort finally got itself fixed as our private 
 conscience and appropriately formulated by the 
 philosophers ; and I fear, now that I come to think 
 of it, still keep for most of us their former unat- 
 tractiveness. We obey their orders, either from 
 good-nature or because of social or religious hopes 
 or fears ; but unless we are specimens of the rare 
 Emersonian species, not with any actual joy. Of 
 all this more later on. 
 
 These, then, are the kinds of " Duty " of which 
 old English life affords us plentiful exemplifica- 
 tion, and this chapter ample opportunity for com- 
 parison. That kind which was exemplified in the 
 practice of Companionship we saw to have been 
 genuine — a veritable debt of service or of love ; 
 to have been joyful; and to have been workable 
 of its own strength, without auxiliary bribes or 
 pains and penalties. All the other " duties " that 
 were not such debts we also saw to have been sev- 
 eral chiefly negative things: not genuine, not joy- 
 ful, and not workable except with outside 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 35 
 
 strengthening. And we discovered, not without 
 grief, certain striking family resemblances between 
 this second kind and many modern kinds of Prin- 
 ciple. But I do not recollect that we were forced 
 to recognize any modern counterpart of the Com- 
 panionship. 
 
 Perhaps these foregoing remarks may be ac- 
 cepted in partial apology for my having chosen 
 to unfold the doctrine of Companionship and 
 chronicle some portion of its practice. I hope 
 that by completing in the next three chapters my 
 sketch of its whole career I shall have made a 
 quite acceptable apology. For this spectacle of 
 the complete career of the Companionship can tell 
 us more about the' making of a moral system than 
 most commentaries I have ever met, and as much 
 about the marring of one as most commentators 
 have exemplified. 
 
 Let us, therefore, trace the practice up to the 
 splendid climax of its power and glory — its 
 apotheosis, in short ; and thence down through its 
 pollution to its petrifaction and final sepulture: 
 and then consider if it be not now both possible 
 and well we should shape forth a modern some- 
 thing, not in the likeness of its long-neglected 
 corpse, but fit for its everlasting spirit to inhabit 
 and inform. 
 
 7. APOTHEOSIS 
 
 Having hereunto arrived, the reader has been in 
 at the death and, incidentally, the long-belated 
 
36 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 obsequies of the original live body of Companion- 
 ship. The dead body of it stayed above ground 
 a good while, even swelled immoderately and man- 
 aged now and then to show signs of galvanic life. 
 Which, in fact, was worse by far than knowing it 
 was dead and getting itself duly buried. 
 
 Meanwhile, however, the spirit of it had found 
 out a sanctuary, wherein it might have dwelt and 
 wrought until the end of days ; but didn't, as we 
 shall see, for quite discoverable reasons. Let us 
 again begin with the beginnings. 
 
 It has been written that one brings with him 
 the best part of whatever he finds anywhere; and 
 we may likewise remark, with the activities re- 
 versed, that one must already have a good part of 
 whatever he receives. The materials of imagina- 
 tion, the life-imparting power, are stored in the 
 man himself or nowhere : he must interpret all 
 evangels through stored-up experience. Well 
 enough, then, if he can thus piece together a fair 
 comprehension of the message and accommodate 
 it to some chamber of his mind ; but better far and 
 best of all, if by a long experience of his own he 
 has prepared a place for counterpart experiences 
 of a higher sphere and may welcome them with 
 joyful recognition. 
 
 Such was the case when Christianity ap- 
 proached Companionship. Beneath the ecclesi- 
 astical encumbrances and theological accretions of 
 five centuries the simple spirit of the ancient cus- 
 tom recognized a spiritual counterpart, sprang 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 37 
 
 forth to clasp it, and thereupon proclaimed it in 
 the familiar terms of its own life. Whereof a few 
 examples may perhaps prove not entirely super- 
 fluous. 
 
 When, for example, some patient bard, at bid- 
 ding of a pious royal convert to the new-come 
 faith or perchance of his own piety, would pop- 
 ularize Scripture, he forthwith changed the gos- 
 pel legend to accordance with the epic type, 
 making of the Prince of Peace and his discipleship 
 a chief and chosen thane. In the " Heliand," or 
 " Savior," a ninth century Saxon gospel para- 
 phrase, when Jesus speaks of his approaching 
 entry into Jerusalem, Thomas, " that true thane," 
 turns to the disciples : " Up ! Stay we with him. 
 To suffer with the Folk-King, that is a Compan- 
 ion's part: that he stand by his lord's side and 
 gladly die with him. Let us follow him upon the 
 journey and count our own lives nothing worth." 
 And again, in the garden, " the wise ones at the 
 wicked deed of Judas stood full of deep sorrow, 
 and said to their lord : ' If it be thy will, 
 mighty lord, that here they shall spear us upon 
 their points, so were it best we died for thee and 
 grew pale in death.' " Thus does our bard try 
 to disguise Hebraic and decidedly un-Teutonic 
 hesitation ; and thus enthusiastically offsets it : 
 " Then rushed forth Simon Peter, the swift sword 
 thane ; his heart boiled, so that he spoke no word 
 — and boldly went he, the quick warrior, to stand 
 before his lord. His mind was not wavering nor 
 
38 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 his heart doubtful, but he drew his weapon, his 
 sword from his side, and struck as guard against 
 the enemy with his arm's strength." Easy to 
 place our poet's sympathies in such affairs : sub- 
 mission did not to him seem better than the sword. 
 But Peter had to be rebuked, the enemy to tri- 
 umph ; and the Folk-King's company had not been 
 trained to such self-sacrifice as the companions of 
 that other prince, Chochiliachus, long after taken 
 captive by the selfsame power of this world. 
 
 Or read at your peril, reader, in Anglo-Saxon 
 sacred poetry the whole world-drama of revolt in 
 Heaven, conference in Hell, conquest of Eden, re- 
 demption, resurrection, and last judgment told in 
 terms of thanehood. 
 
 In Heaven the angels are God's thanes. Satan 
 is a recreant thane, forgetful of his " debt im- 
 mense of endless gratitude," who aims at over- 
 throw of God, and draws into revolt those thanes 
 dependent on him, Satan, as their prince. Hurled 
 down to Hell, he rallies there the warriors who 
 have shared his fall, reminds them of his gifts in 
 other days, and offers that one who will undertake 
 the ruin of mankind a seat on the Satanic throne. 
 The successful one, it is to be observed, while 
 journeying back to Hell rejoices far more in the 
 expectation of his lord's approval than in the an- 
 ticipation of his own reward, — a notable rebuke 
 out of the depths, one thinks, to several throne- 
 seeking members of a better-esteemed band since 
 active on the shores of Galilee. Thus these old 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 39 
 
 bards, we find, looking at all things in the light of 
 their ideal of loyalty, believed in giving every loyal 
 devil his due, regardless of his remaining charac- 
 ter and general reputation. And surely, if the 
 mind is its own place, a loyal, loving devil has suc- 
 ceeded for a time in making Heaven of Hell by 
 the transmuting strength of love. 
 
 Nor was Eden without thanehood. Adam 
 stood in that relation toward God, and his diso- 
 bedience was deliberate treachery. God's venge- 
 ance on him and the race, with other of God's 
 " all-too-human " traits, was found as fitting in 
 a heavenly as in an earthly king. Had not Lord 
 Wiglaf rooted out those other recreant thanes 
 from house and homestead, their crime embracing 
 branch and seed forevermore? And might not 
 God enjoy as great a vengeance no less justly.'' 
 No idea in^ this of God as the asserter of eternal 
 righteousness : he is neither priggish nor pedantic, 
 but quite naturally, from Teutonic standpoint, 
 wrathful and revengeful over his defeated plans. 
 Perhaps a warmer and more human-hearted deity 
 than some " Power not ourselves that makes for 
 righteousness." 
 
 But God, just like a humanly good-natured 
 king, at length relents, and to the rescue of his 
 servants captive unto the power of Hell sends 
 forth his son the Christ. Christ's apostles are, 
 as in the Heliand, his dear comrades, who, in the 
 Christ of Cynewulf, chief of Anglo-Saxon sacred 
 poets, are overwhelmed with grief at his ascension : 
 
40 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 they burst into " unbroken weeping " ; " their 
 bosoms surge within, their thoughts are all 
 a-glow." At the judgment " there shall be a glo- 
 rious band of His own thanes." But those that, 
 " working wickedness, knew not the thanks that 
 were God's due for that He hung upon the holy 
 tree all for the base misdeeds of humankind and 
 sold his life there lovingly upon that day for man- 
 kind's sake " * — they shall fare otherwise. For 
 " what hope hath he who wittingly refuses to 
 keep in mind his master's mild love and the miser- 
 ies that he endured for men because he would that 
 we might have the home of bliss to all eternity? 
 They did not know the thanks due to the Ruler 
 for their heritage : therefore shall they now " * — 
 and so forth. Base thanklessness is the burthen 
 of reproach, here as in the practice of Companion- 
 ship, of which the whole religious scheme was a re- 
 working. 
 
 None of this re-working need, however, perforce 
 strike one as especially remarkable. What 
 should, however, strike one as indeed remarkable 
 about this outward transformation of meek fol- 
 lowers into warlike thanes is its success in seizing 
 on the inner and essential likeness of true Chris- 
 tianity and pure Companionship. We know, I 
 trust, what was the spirit of pure Companionship: 
 perhaps we are less sure — and little wonder, see- 
 ing what has since been offered us as such, — about 
 that of true Christianity. But both, these an- 
 * From The Christ of Cynevmlf. 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 41 
 
 cient bards were able to discover, were essentially 
 the same: the soul of each was its whole-hearted 
 devotion whether to a human master or to a di- 
 vine. And it seemed to them most natural not 
 only to name the new after the old but to feel it 
 too: the highest joys of Heaven are only height- 
 ened versions of those of the earthly Hall. In 
 the Wanderer the exile, " stirring with his 
 hands the rime-cold sea " till sorrow and sleep 
 together bind him, dreams that " he clasps and 
 kisses his liege-lord and on his knees lays hand 
 and head, as of old he used while his chief yet en- 
 joyed the gift-seat"; and the Christ concludes, 
 descriptive of the place prepared for the faithful : 
 
 " There is the gracious presence of the Lord, 
 Brighter than the sun for all the blessed ones; 
 There is the love of the beloved; life without death's 
 
 end. 
 A gladsome host of men; youth without age; 
 The glory of the heavenly chivalry. . . . 
 . . . There that blissful band. 
 The fairest of all hosts, shall aye enjoy 
 Their Sovran's grace, and glory with their King." 
 
 And thus Companionship, in recognition of con- 
 spicuous accomplishment on many a mundane 
 occasion, has got deservedly elevated to celestial 
 rank and station. 
 
 Mark, furthermore, in most of this the grati- 
 fyingly large lack of theological and ecclesiastical 
 interest. Some amount of it there must be, for 
 
n THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 explanatory and spectacular purposes ; but all 
 such was kept in absolute subordination to the re- 
 directing of the ancient loyalty. The Scripture 
 story is repeated as material more for entertain- 
 ment than for meritorious reaffirmation and re- 
 iterated recitation. Small merit, thought they, in 
 repeating what their simple minds accepted with- 
 out doubt: they wanted to do something, and, de- 
 nied the opportunity of later times to spend their 
 strength on inward wrestlings with recitative out- 
 lets, they poured it forth in the performance of 
 their faith through its commands, explicit or im- 
 plied. 
 
 But all this is getting away from my main busi- 
 ness of showing how the spirit of Companionship 
 was an anticipation of the spirit of Christianity, 
 and in its social and religious phases the utter- 
 most development in duty and religion which the 
 human spirit could or can receive. It raised duty 
 to a spiritual payment ; religious bondage to free, 
 grateful love. That in the latter case it did so 
 on more or less false premises does not much mat- 
 ter: the feelings, not the facts of it, shall judge a 
 faith. And it was of heart full strong ; and would 
 in due time have got greater wisdom. 
 
 But before that time could come, the feeling had 
 itself become impaired or been perverted, and in 
 most cases could at best do good things for bad 
 reasons, which, from one point of view, was rather 
 worse than doing bad for good. Of this also shall 
 the eager reader soon be given chance to judge. 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 43 
 
 8. POLLUTION 
 
 The reader has had opportunity of noting those 
 parts of Christianity which poets and practition- 
 ers of Companionship found most familiar and 
 made paramount in precept and in practice. He 
 will now please note the operation of those other 
 parts of Christian teaching which soon came to 
 overcast, to stain, and in the end almost entirely 
 to corrupt the purity of these. 
 
 For this pure type of religion had always, it is 
 quite superfluous to say, been forced to bear the 
 company of impure, ranging the whole scale of 
 bribes and browbeats between Heaven and Hell. 
 The transplanted Scripture had itself abounded in 
 appeals to the cupidity and cowardice of human- 
 kind, and doubtless often made its welcome by 
 these means. " Believe, recite at any rate — and 
 Heaven is yours ; refuse, and you will get Hell 
 gratis." The depths of baseness, our free-think- 
 ing friends declare. A bad beginning, anyone 
 would naturally think. 
 
 But the fact is, friends, that this beginning, or 
 at least the better half of it, was, looked at from 
 ethical standpoint, undoubtedly the ablest and 
 the best then possible. We have in recent cen- 
 turies heard much of Justification by Faith and 
 Justification by Works, concerning which the 
 chamber battles of theology are probably still 
 raging. Concerning which, however, we shall 
 now say nothing more than that, considered ethic- 
 
44 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 ally, this same former creed of Faith is of the two 
 the only one to be considered. Climbing into 
 Heaven, scrambling out of Hell, by whatsoever 
 works and deeds — what goodness is in that ? 
 Merely the cheapest prudence possible to the be- 
 liever; and to the beholder, far-sighted selfishness 
 more painful than the reckless kind. Well ! am I 
 about to applaud recitative religion? Far from 
 it ; but about to mention that, whereas the creed of 
 Works left little or no chance of goodness for the 
 worker, that of Faith left all, and added the in- 
 citement to make use of it. " God so loved the 
 world," says the text especially adapted to prose- 
 lytizing purposes, " that He gave His only begot- 
 ten son that whosoever believeth in him should not 
 perish but have everlasting life." To us of these 
 days not a very convincing doctrine, whether we 
 regard the love as so great that it tacks such con- 
 ditions to its gifts, or as so wise that it frames 
 such useful ones. But they in those days of pre- 
 Copemican astronomy could find the doctrine quite 
 believable. God of course had all of their good 
 qualities ; and was it not quite natural that Heav- 
 en's king should, just as Anglia's, want his off- 
 spring recognized, and very good indeed of him 
 to pay so liberally for the recognition.'' They 
 would take a riskless chance on such attractive 
 terms ; — and thus, probably, the new faith found 
 its earliest converts. But observe that, this bribe- 
 taking over and Heaven won by these recitative 
 and genuflective tactics, the worshipper had now 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 45 
 
 a chance such as a Heaven-to-be-worked-for faith 
 could not have offered him. He might now work 
 just as well as any worker for promised pay, in 
 grateful love for him who had already given the 
 reward. This labor now became his debt to 
 Christ, a Christian service like that of Compan- 
 ionship and so regarded by the earliest Christian- 
 ized Companions. 
 
 Here, then, Christianity had reached its highest 
 individual altitude. The practice of it was of 
 course imperfect ; but its soul and essence was the 
 purest and the strongest possible, and, once 
 caught up with by its practical reason, would have 
 urged the highest general aims into accomplish- 
 ment. Here, however, at this height, it did not 
 stay and draw the nations up to it, but itself got 
 gradually dragged down to the vulgar level and 
 hidden under the devotions of the crowd. Here- 
 after, when it does in a rare instance reappear in 
 earlier loftiness, it surprises the historian and 
 calls forth his special mention. 
 
 And the reason and the nature of this downfall 
 were as follows : 
 
 Among the mass to whom Christianity made its 
 appeal many were of course unfit for a pure form 
 of it. The great majority of Englishmen had 
 not the special preparation of Companionship, 
 which was an aristocratic institution. Hard- 
 driven slaves, hard-struggling freemen, for how 
 many generations, — and with how much family af- 
 fection all along the line ? — they had probably 
 
46 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 had little enough training in the loving grateful- 
 ness which could have helped them without aid of 
 social antetypes to feel the very self of Christian- 
 ity. They might readily profess the faith for 
 sake of what it promised ;. but how speedily per- 
 form what it enjoined? And then, the gospel of 
 Faith proving insufficient, the gospel of Works 
 appears. It says to the inactive recitationists : 
 " Don't fool yourselves with expectation of a 
 Heaven so easily won. Believing is serving, as 
 you may discover from text so-and-so, and had 
 best observe — for hope of Heaven or escape of 
 Hell." A good and useful form of exhortation, 
 doubtless, if used as a last resort ; not at all good 
 as a beginning. But the trouble was that this 
 last stroke, being simpler and yet stronger than 
 more spiritual appeals, came to be brought first 
 into play. Priests were plentiful whose shrewdness 
 overleaped their wisdom and whose doctrine of de- 
 votion dealt solely with devotion to oneself. And 
 if these aimed chiefly at the increase of their 
 church and candles, even those of broader aim 
 embraced the same means of impressment into their 
 scheme of a Christian social service. In Cynewulf, 
 together with the words of pure religious fervor 
 one finds others of smooth promise for those who 
 " gladsomely with gentle cheer have welcomed 
 needy men," and of grim for those who " have for- 
 bidden the poor to enter 'neath their roof, and in 
 their hard hearts withheld from them full every- 
 thing." To these says Cynewulf, speaking for 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 4.7 
 
 Christ in words of Dantean power : " Why hast 
 thou hanged me worse on thy hands' cross than 
 when of old I hung? " and continues, threatening. 
 Eventually the practice comes to supersede the 
 spirit in importance. 
 
 " Well, and why not ? " some pre-eminently 
 practical person may reply. " The spirit is 
 worth only what it can accomplish, and it here 
 failed to get the homeless sheltered and the starv- 
 ing fed. It was high time an abler method had a 
 trial, and a good thing they of that time could 
 apply it. A great pity we can't now." 
 
 To which, however, I must answer: Much de- 
 pends on our respective premises. If we make of 
 man a social tool, which must at any cost be got 
 into smooth, sharp, practical condition, then per- 
 haps it is of little matter how we oil and grease 
 or knock and file him. But if we take him for a 
 flesh-clothed soul, here to be taught and trained 
 up in the expectation or chance hope of some stu- 
 pendous future " practice," then, immediately, it 
 seems of rather more importance in what manner 
 we approach this spirit and handle it. Consider- 
 ably better it will seem to us, I say, that man 
 should be a pure and faithful spirit, though a poor 
 fool in performance, than that he be a selfish use- 
 ful person such as practical society especially ad- 
 mires. 
 
 Well, at any rate, the practical of those days 
 had their way as do the practical of these; for 
 great is practicality. First they took away the 
 
48 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 possibility of any wholly pure religious feeling by 
 putting heavenly promise on a business basis, mak- 
 ing of it something offered to be served for instead 
 of something given, to be grateful for. And then 
 they found, as teachers of the auctioneering class 
 are always likely to find, that many chose to keep 
 the cash and let the credit go. What was now to 
 do.'' Why, those who won't be led may yet be 
 driven : they would now drive men to good deeds. 
 Heaven failing. Hell came to the fore. 
 
 And there it stayed ten dismal centuries, and 
 threw its mingled glare and gloom upon the spirit 
 of Christianity. The long reign of religious ter- 
 ror now began in which none but the noblest could 
 avoid base fear, and they not always. One reads 
 with admiration of that old pagan king who, when 
 some foolish missionary sought to clinch his con- 
 version with the assurance that his dead and un- 
 converted relatives had gone to Hell, replied that 
 he too would go with them ; and is then obliged to 
 wonder if some of his bravery were not due to 
 incredulity or else to weakness of imagination. 
 But soon the credulous had their imaginations 
 cared for by kind Mother Church, and none needed 
 lack his full and vivid knowledge of one place es- 
 pecially prepared for him. And when Hell had 
 become to many the natural heritage of human- 
 kind for their abominable sin of being bom, who 
 but a fool would not buy off the wrath to come 
 with any possible expenditure of piety.? And 
 piety thus gets its general character of fear- 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 49 
 
 wrung tribute to the terrible Jehovah of fero- 
 ciously revengeful righteousness. 
 
 " But we have heard of much pure piety among 
 the medieval sainthood." Doubtless ; and perhaps 
 in that respect Hell could perform the effect of 
 Heaven. Being given Heaven would perhaps 
 arouse in any proud race no sincerer gratitude 
 than being saved from Hell in one persuaded of 
 its utter loathsomeness. But the former had been 
 a frank, joyous love outflowing into manful serv- 
 ice: it regarded Christ as a leader, a doer, of the 
 kind that it had always been accustomed to. The 
 latter was a love which, looking at Christ chiefly 
 as a sufferer, flowed forth in fellow suffering, and 
 so became a thing of tears and agonies to no good 
 end. 
 
 And now Companionship, thus disappointed of 
 its Christian possibilities, can place hope only iu 
 a secular career. In which career we shall a short 
 while follow it. 
 
 9. PETRIFACTION 
 
 Some time ago we saw how this whole business 
 of Companionship came into being by the landless 
 warrior's becoming thrall to some rich, famous 
 chief. We may imagine that in such a situation 
 the retainer naturally sought the service closest 
 to his lord, — this from motives both of admiration 
 and of desire to be well in at the distributing of 
 gifts. Thus the offices most coveted are, in Saxon 
 
60 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 society, those of Hraegel-thane, which is Rail- 
 thane or keeper of the king's clothes ; of Staller or 
 Horse-thane, keeper of the royal horse; of Dish- 
 thane or table-servant; and of Byrele or Scenca, 
 one who poured especially for the king, and was 
 probably kept busy at it. None of them occupa- 
 tions that appeal particularly to our independent, 
 self-respecting times. 
 
 But as by help of his Companions the prince's 
 spoils increase from the war-trappings of a few 
 slain owners to the sack of townships and the 
 wealth of kingdoms, the Companions' part in them 
 keeps pace, and so too their appreciation of posi- 
 tion near the royal person and in the popular re- 
 gard. We shall not, however, trace the rise of 
 these originally menial functions to offices of na- 
 tional importance: hear in few words how after 
 several centuries of royal service these same serv- 
 ants, — Clothes-thane, Horse-thane, Dish-thane, 
 Bottle-thane, have risen to the offices whose names 
 are more familiar to us in their corresponding 
 Frankish forms of Chamberlain or keeper of the 
 royal property, of Marshal or commander of the 
 royal troops, of Steward (Seneschal) or major in 
 the royal house. What independent, self-respect- 
 ing citizen would not be pleased to occupy such a 
 position nowadays.'' 
 
 But with modern nomenclature enters no small 
 part of modem character. Between the Anglo- 
 Saxon Clothes-thane and his successor the Nor- 
 man Chamberlain, lies a mighty gap, material and 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 51 
 
 moral, — to be bridged by us with briefest possible 
 explanation. 
 
 First, then, with regard to the material side. 
 We may properly suppose that as a king or lord 
 enlarged his lands beyond his power of personal 
 supervision, he would set over them those whom he 
 might most trust, his nearest thanes or servitors. 
 And these, as fit reward for their increase of 
 service, are given name and partial fruits of 
 ownership, the final fact of it remaining as before. 
 For it must be remembered that the vassal is, 
 legally, a slave: the king owns him and so what- 
 ever he by courtesy is said to own. He in turn 
 will under royal leave own his retainers, of whom 
 some may in like manner hold their lands and 
 slaves. Has not the reader recognized in these 
 arrangements the beginnings of a Feudal System, 
 which shall rule all Europe through the Middle 
 Ages and prolong its crippled power even into 
 modem times.? 
 
 But the beginning of a Feudal System marks 
 the ending, from a moral standpoint, of its parent 
 form. Real Companionship is passing, and with 
 it the spirit of Companionship. The causes of 
 this change ? Were doubtless several, of which the 
 more immediate seem as follows : 
 
 First in sight if not in strength among such 
 causes was the now necessitated separation be- 
 tween thane and lord: as the king's vice-gerent 
 the noble becomes valuable proportionally to that 
 separation. But, on the other hand, the bond 
 
52 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 between the two is thereby enfeebled: in place of 
 the close personal relation and free play of feeling 
 rises distant, cold officialdom. Contrast the 
 warmth of that old English hall-life where the re- 
 tainer clasped and kissed his lord and laid hand 
 and head upon his knees, with the ice of that for- 
 mality whereby his vassals swore to Conqueror 
 WilHam : " Hear, my lord ; I become liege man 
 of yours for life and limb and earthly regard ; and 
 I will keep faith and loyalty to you for life and 
 death, God help me ! " and received the investing 
 kiss from him who " was stark man to all that 
 knew him." A powerful performance it must cer- 
 tainly have been — though methinks said vassals 
 did protest too much and William was unnecessa- 
 rily affectionate, for absolute sincerity — ; one 
 which, at any rate, would make the deepest possi- 
 ble impression on whatever moral sense the swearer 
 might possess. But neither that nor any feeling, 
 good or bad, for his stark brother could keep 
 Bishop Odo from revolting against him at the 
 earliest opportunity. A dungeon, even starker 
 than his relative, did keep him in the end; I won- 
 der if a little less starkness and some love might 
 not have kept him in the beginning. So much, 
 however, of the oath of homage and its operation 
 in this instance. For the other instances we are 
 justified in guessing that the Conqueror's precau- 
 tion of dispensing scattered holdings and of de- 
 manding a direct allegiance from each under-vas- 
 sal dwelling thereupon proved more efficacious as 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 63 
 
 preventives of disloyalty than did the liegeman's 
 memory of his homage and loud public protesta- 
 tion. The temptation of power and possession 
 had otherwise proved stronger than his unsup- 
 ported probity could bear. 
 
 But, it will or ought to be objected, the loyalty 
 that must be kept alive by constant petting and 
 that can't survive the test of exile, isn't worth 
 accounting such. True enou^; we may account 
 it non-existent ; and then, if we are so inclined, we 
 may explore the reasons of its non-existence. 
 Was the trouble with the character of Earl or that 
 of Lord or those of both ? Probably the last ; but 
 for present purposes a brief look at the first case 
 will suffice to show us that for one thing the 
 princely character itself could no longer inspire 
 pure loyalty. Let us compendiously compare the 
 older practice and the newer. 
 
 We have doubtless long since come, by multi- 
 plied examples and remarks, to know that charac- 
 teristic of the ancient prince which could inspire 
 his earldom's uttermost devotion. It was a love 
 for them revealing itself not alone nor chiefly 
 through the medium of many ceremonious gifts, 
 but also and quite as convincingly, perhaps, 
 through the accompaniments of these, — the word, 
 the look, the smile, the touch, which carried deeper 
 messages from soul to soul. We may furthermore 
 remember the hypothesis that this feeling was if 
 anything less likely to have been spontaneous 
 than to have been produced by an originally sel- 
 
64. THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 fish care, through long activity creating for itself 
 a soul of love. 
 
 But, however general among the great this state 
 of feeling had once been, or however largely a 
 bard's dream of good, in time there came to view 
 the evidences of a gradual departure from the old 
 ideal. Whether with the growth of kingdoms and 
 the cares thereof, and the consequent loosening of 
 close friendships, or with the prince's magnified 
 esteem of power for its own sake and the concom- 
 itant weakening of the power of popular opin- 
 ion over him, the prince does not in these new 
 days prove such as to secure the love of his Com- 
 panions. A testimony thereto not the less trust- 
 worthy for its indirectness meets us in the record 
 of successive laws under the Saxon and the Danish 
 kings of England, securing the Companion against 
 possible abuse by his prince. Even in Alfred's 
 day such special legislation had multiplied sur- 
 prisingly; and when, in the next century, the 
 Danish conqueror, Canute, revived the old form 
 from the wreck of conquest, his Housecarles, as 
 they now were called, got rights and privileges 
 amounting practically to emancipation. What 
 better testimony were discoverable.'' In olden 
 days these rights were taken as a matter of course, 
 merged and forgotten in enjoyment of far greater 
 privileges ; and the talk was chiefly about duties. 
 Imagine Beowulf presenting Bills of Rights 
 against Lord Hygelac, " with whom all good had 
 its beginning," or Wiglaf against Beowulf, " the 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 55 
 
 mildest and most gracious of mankind." Rights 
 must be guarded when need is, but well for those 
 who need not wake to know them. The law, while 
 it remains unwritten, written only on the heart, is 
 warm and living ; when it must be written down on 
 record, there is proof that it has left the heart, 
 the life of it approaching petrifaction. 
 
 Thus Companionship approaches petrifaction, 
 from an immediate cause which seems to us most 
 plain. The causes of this cause, however, do not 
 require our exploration: to ask whether this so 
 general worsening in the character of prince be 
 chargeable to betterment in his material circum- 
 stances or to a difference of race, the Danish and 
 the Norman individualistic violence of nature 
 kicking against calmer Saxon custom and upset- 
 ting utterly the tottering power of popular opin- 
 ion, were for our aim asking quite too curiously. 
 The result, at any rate, and of this the immediate 
 cause, are nowise doubtful. Who ever clasped the 
 knees of a Plantagenet except, perhaps, in frigid 
 homage or forced supplication — in hope of get- 
 ting profit from him or of getting safely from his 
 villainies and lusts.'' 
 
 Nor will it be worth our while to wonder how 
 a feudal baronage no less violently individualistic 
 than their overlord would have behaved toward 
 overlord of ancient model, had one been vouch- 
 safed them. How they did behave toward what 
 they did have we know well enough, and need not 
 hunt particular examples of the general decline 
 
56 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 and fall. Of those that were not treacherous in 
 act how many were not treacherous in thought, 
 lacking not will but way; and of the small re- 
 mainder how many, pure affection being quite im- 
 possible, held faith from " pure reverence for 
 moral law," and not from pure fear of the royal 
 power? And in any case how great a fall from 
 the pure, free spirit of Companionship ! 
 
 There is left for us only to note those further 
 ways where through the Feudal System spread its 
 wide infection. As it had entered into and taken 
 possession of the corpse of a terrestrial Compan- 
 ionship, so it now fastened on the corpse of a ce- 
 lestial. The God whom early Christianity had 
 kept in background, hid behind Lord Christ, this 
 Feudal Christianity brought back, where any- 
 where, into old Hebraic dominance. This time, 
 however, he came not as God of righteousness but 
 of his own will, which made right. As such, he 
 received from Feudalism, when anything, the 
 homage due " whom thunder had made greater," 
 and occasionally other tokens of browbeat obedi- 
 ence. Nay, when our modern " mere morality " 
 talks of its duties and its unconditional commands, 
 who cannot discover in the former the old debts of 
 feudal days and in the latter only a slight alter- 
 ation of that once entirely conditional command, 
 loud-bullying in tone and backed by minatory 
 clubs and hungry dungeons as conditions of all 
 disobedience? 
 
 To this custom, then, have victimized mankind 
 
THE COMPANIONSHIP 57 
 
 descended from the ancient custom: the soul of 
 that, 
 
 " grown clotted ■with contagion, 
 Imbodies and imbrutes, and loses quite 
 The divine property of her first being." 
 
 And to this modern mere morality or customari- 
 ness have civilized mankind quite literally de- 
 scended or come down, and 
 
 " Not once perceive their foul disfigurement. 
 
 But boast themselves more comely than before;" 
 
 are very proud of their " degenerate and de- 
 graded state," I do believe. 
 
 And so with these farewell to thee, Companion- 
 ship. Thy corpse, possessed of various devils, has 
 remained with us some ages, and still gives much 
 trouble to be got entirely under ground, — but thy 
 spirit, when shall that come back to gladden us 
 again.'' 
 
BOOK II 
 THE CROWD 
 
1. FREEDOM 
 
 Well, we have at length got much of those half- 
 putrified, half petrified remains of a Companion- 
 ship out of our smell and sight. And what times 
 there were before and in the act of burying that 
 pestilential and impenetrable corpse ! What 
 viperous broods were to be stopped up within, and 
 what jackal and hyena bands to be slain ofF! But 
 bestiarial metaphors are mild compared with the 
 human actualities. In 1066 King Harold, last of 
 the folk-kings, went out, and with him the last 
 faint phosphorescent gleamings of Companion- 
 ship. In 1137, we may hear by means of the Pe- 
 terborough Chronicle, " they " — the later shep- 
 herds of the people — " took those who they 
 thought had any goods and tortured them un- 
 speakably. Never were martyrs tortured as these 
 men. Some they hanged up by the feet and 
 smoked them with foul smoke ; some they hanged 
 up by the thumbs or head with armor fastened to 
 their feet; others they tied round the head with 
 knotted strings and twisted them until they went 
 to the brain. Some, moreover, they cast into cells 
 where snakes and toads were and so killed them. 
 Some they put into torture-houses, which were 
 narrow, short, and shallow chests, packed sharp 
 
 61 
 
62 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 stones upon them, and then pressed them until 
 they broke all their limbs." Some, too, they 
 hitched up in spiked halters, and others they en- 
 tertained with manifold devices more. Why men- 
 tion, after such evidences of inventive individual- 
 ism, that they starved many thousands and 
 " spared neither church nor church-yard " .'' 
 
 Such plagues, however, having finally devoured 
 all valuable victims, their virulent activity halts 
 for lack of food, and the near-perished people has 
 a chance to spring and to grow strong again. 
 So, after nineteen years, according to the Chron- 
 icle, of barren fields and burned towns, and of vil- 
 lages " deserted at the coming of two mounted 
 men," the good king kindly dying, the good king 
 next in line could get sufBcient help partly to 
 cleanse the land. And so was the worst got over 
 with. 
 
 But much remains to do, which, not demanding 
 such immediate remedy, must be endured for sev- 
 eral centuries before it can begin even slightly to 
 be cured. The dead hand of authority, royal and 
 rehgious, holds the individual down ; and he, poor 
 devil! happy at not being squeezed quite out of 
 life, will bear what may be borne. Nay, will he 
 not on some occasions kiss the hand and thank it 
 for the room to Wriggle in? The King, who had 
 long ago been " cyning " (son of the tribe, and 
 bearer only of lent power), now becomes Heaven's 
 representative and very properly careful of its 
 honor as vested in himself, and takes two or three 
 
THE CROWD 63 
 
 hundred years to be set straight about the situa- 
 tion once again. And, that accompKshed, Upper 
 Class must gradually be urged to sit less heavily 
 upon the neck of Lower Class. Meanwhile some 
 of us may not choose whom we would to talk for 
 us on national occasions of the talking kind, must 
 pay our taxes without such preliminary conver- 
 sation, and are righteously aggrieved thereat. 
 This too is finally adjusted on both sides of the 
 Atlantic to the general satisfaction of the right- 
 eously aggrieved. We, on this side, have some 
 questions of like nature to consider, but in due 
 time get them also settled smoothly and the same 
 on both sides of our Mason and Dixon's line. So 
 that, politically speaking. Freedom dwells in the 
 midst of us and waves her sheltering wings ; we 
 have the glorious privilege of choosing whatsoever 
 we can get to talk for us, and should ever mind 
 our debt of gratitude. 
 
 Other freedoms were, however, to be won ; in 
 which warfare progress has crept even more 
 slowly, but gratifyingly withal. That other tyr- 
 anny, which sat in Heaven and made right and 
 wrong by word of mouth, has been reduced in some 
 minds to benevolent despotism or to paternalism, 
 has by others been republicanized to presidency of 
 an Ethical Society, and by many has been abro- 
 gated and retired altogether. In like manner the 
 domestic tyranny of former times has given place to 
 milder modes of household government, which may 
 be better or may be worse, but are in either case 
 
64 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 come to remain some little while. Nay, has not 
 the Spirit of Freedom flown in the face of Moral 
 Law itself, refusing to be bullied about by any 
 such impersonal phantom, and following some 
 inner guidance of its own, not necessarily so far, 
 far worse? In close company with which proud 
 Spirit are apparent many anarchists of excellent 
 character and other perfectly free persons of va- 
 rious species and reports. 
 
 Wherefrom it seems we may assume that Free- 
 dom in its several forms and aspects has arrived 
 to some of us at least. We know full well that as 
 a serious fact Freedom is far from having arrived 
 to all of us ; that as a matter of evident fact 
 Feudalism still dwells among us, and under altered 
 name and mildened demeanor keeps much the 
 same old character. We know that for many of 
 us Freedom means the liberty of choosing to take 
 what wages we can get, for what hours, under what 
 conditions, or to die, perhaps not unaccompanied, 
 by process of starvation. This is our modem 
 Feudalism, commonly called Industrialism, with 
 acquisitive employer superseding robber baron- 
 age: it is doubtless some advance on the old sys- 
 tem, but still far from a truly delightful state of 
 things. And this being so, some of us will prob- 
 ably maintain that it is the immediate duty of all 
 social pulpiteers and pamphleteers steadfastly to 
 demand for these survivors of old serfdom greater 
 and still greater degrees of genuine freedom, and 
 
THE CROWD 65 
 
 meanwhile to rejoice quite tamely in what freedom 
 has been won. 
 
 Be all that, however, as it may, it is not the 
 writer's present intention to join any section of 
 the social struggle. That struggle is now being 
 vigorously fought by leaders abler than he in their 
 chosen battle-field, his own ability and present jus- 
 tification of pamphleteering having been got 
 chiefly from experience in another sphere; and 
 such being so, he makes this eff'ort in the nature 
 either of supplement to the crowned efforts of past 
 leaders or of accompaniment to the present cam- 
 paign, which can easily use a little more impulsive 
 power. And as such it is, he thinks, no less than 
 enlistment in the louder-raging struggle, — nay, 
 in some ways rather more than this, — a useful 
 and a needful undertaking. 
 
 For it is to be remembered that this modern 
 struggle is mainly one for wages, hours, and con- 
 ditions, all of which are highly important, but not 
 all — or ultimately important ; and probably not 
 best obtained by fighting for them only. Only 
 with higher urgencies in mind do men seem likely 
 to be mindful of these and mend them. 
 
 The place and possibility of such urgencies 
 among us we are shortly going to consider; and 
 had better, therefore, first consider briefly the 
 chosen activities of those of us to whom freedom 
 has in some degree arrived. 
 
66 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 2. ACTIVITIES 
 
 Considering how much music, poetry, and sculp- 
 ture has been made in Freedom's name, and what 
 worship of the abstract goddess has been general 
 among new-free, joyful folk, one scanning his- 
 tory will be surprised to note how few of the afore- 
 said joyful folk and of their progeny would stay 
 rejoiced in peaceful unoppressed possession of 
 their old Divinity or would seek at any time to 
 spread her happy reign. He will, in fact, soon 
 find how few of all her one-time worshipers were 
 verily devoted to the goddess, she being somewhat 
 too abstract, — how few fought and bled in Free- 
 dom's cause, and how many merely to be free. 
 Perhaps, too, he may here remember Burke's re- 
 mark, that " Liberty inheres in some sensible ob- 
 ject " — meaning one that may be grasped by the 
 senses, often a very foolish one indeed; and fol- 
 lowing this clue, he will shortly reach the reason 
 of this failure to rejoice perpetually in the safe- 
 held prize. It was not for Freedom, and not 
 merely to be free, that most men fought and bled, 
 but to be free from doing these things which they 
 did not like, for doing those things which they 
 did. Hence these hortatory " Who so base as be 
 a slave? " s, which even now can fire our long 
 since franchised blood. Nay, if mere rest from 
 tyranny has once seemed happiness, the recu- 
 perated spirit seeks activity and strives anew. 
 How, then, we are to ask, does the present ac- 
 
THE CROWD 67 
 
 tive throng of our free citizens employ those op- 
 portunities which their forefathers purchased, 
 often at supreme expense? 
 
 Looking over the favored crowd of us who can 
 to some degree choose our activities, we find — 
 confusion worse confounded! But let us group 
 as many as possible of these pursuits about some 
 common spirit that impels them all. Doing this 
 we find that throughout the widest-distant walks 
 of life, from Leisure Place to Labor Alley, two 
 motives are the main impulses of free efi'ort, which 
 may therefore be appraised from reference to 
 these. 
 
 Of these one is so generally recognized as to be 
 embodied in an ideal, — the ideal of " getting a 
 good time," the doctrine and the creed of Play. 
 This for many is the faith. The articles of it are 
 vastly different among the various scattered, 
 sometimes mutually hostile, sects of the great cult ; 
 so also are the worship-places. The former range 
 from firm conviction that the chief end of man is a 
 theater seat, down by innumerable degrees 
 through absolute belief in field or air or water 
 sports, to inarticulate asseveration of the ecstasies 
 of gin. And the latter, the temples of their 
 practices, preserve appropriateness respectively. 
 They are mostly of the " world's sweet inn " type, 
 magnified to operatic palace or diminished to back- 
 alley barroom with unutterable lodgings over- 
 head, but keeping in all cases the taper of their 
 common spirit burning clear. And among these 
 
68 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 beaconing abodes or other regions of allurement 
 the multitude divides itself and undertakes to feed 
 on superfine pure joy. A considerably greater 
 number, we may remark just to complete the meta- 
 phor, have trouble getting free from rather ur- 
 gent previous engagements not of joyful sort, and 
 so rarely join the generous feast. Wherefore 
 they are pitied much both by themselves and by 
 the better-natured of the banqueters. " We want 
 amusement," they proclaim ; and the sympathetic 
 answer : " Poor things ! We'll try to amuse you ; 
 perhaps we'll get you up a pageant or a parade, 
 which is also highly educational " ; or ask queru- 
 lously, " Why have not our brothers been 
 amused.'' " 
 
 But we shall by no means dwell upon these inci- 
 dentals of the scheme. And the various activities 
 of the diversion process, whether carried on with 
 public approbation and triumphant blatancy or 
 under secret circumstances which prohibit public 
 mention, need not concern us now: I now want 
 only to make clear the spirit which impels much of 
 our freely chosen life. But does that spirit stand 
 in need of any such elucidation.? Is it not seen 
 and known and taken as a matter of course by 
 more than notice or imagine any other mode of 
 self-expression in the world to-day.? For this 
 the fathers fought and sometimes died; for this 
 the children seek and cry. " Let us play ! Let 
 us play! What is the use of freedom without 
 play; or rather what is freedom but the oppor- 
 
THE CROWD 69 
 
 tunity of playing? " Without this play man is 
 not free ; he is " tied-down " to this or that, to 
 these or those, and can't get free to go and do : 
 he lacks diversion, and his life is slavery — a liv- 
 ing death indeed. Such, then, is the standing of 
 diversion in the estimation of many of our modern 
 free-conditioned citizens. It is, in truth, the 
 creed of the crowd, their simple axiom solving all 
 life's mystery - — except, perhaps, the problem of 
 why Providence has not provided better for their 
 entertainment. A troubling problem this, which 
 some solve by concluding that the Providence which 
 does not provide better, therefore is not, or were 
 quite as well not, anyway. But this is beside our 
 mark, which is merely to note the number that 
 under Freedom make, or would make if they 
 might, diversion their life's end and aim. 
 
 Perhaps the careful reader has discovered in the 
 foregoing commentary signs that I partly disap- 
 prove the creed of the diversionists. That is true ; 
 and for several reasons, hereinafter to be ren- 
 dered. Meanwhile, however, we have the other 
 kind of activity to notice. 
 
 Set everlastingly against diversion stands de- 
 votion, and invites us to turn out antitheses. 
 Checking the full flow of our responsive inclina- 
 tion, we shall turn out only one, and that not 
 novel. Is it not, then, simply this : that diversion 
 seeks to get ; devotion seeks to give : that the first, 
 seeking its own satisfaction, is entirely selfish ; that 
 the second, spending itself freely, is pure unselfish- 
 
70 THE BUMEB IDEAL 
 
 ness? So, indeed, we have it variously exampled, 
 — from the rugged dutifulness which is often also 
 resignation, through the several commercial, sci- 
 entific, and artistic " consecrations," up to those 
 deep personal devotions which are probably the 
 commonest cases in this kind. And the certain 
 test of such devotion is its unconditional self-sur- 
 render. This it is that utterly distinguishes all 
 sham devotion — all service seeking its reward, all 
 mouth enthusiasm and dilettantism, all gregarious 
 good-nature and mere animal lust — all, in a word, 
 which asks to get, from that which asks only to 
 give. 
 
 And how — through what visible activities — 
 does this spirit of devotion chiefly reveal itself? 
 It may indeed do so through any into which the 
 spirit can penetrate. Does not even the diversion- 
 ist in his diversions often, involuntarily, illustrate 
 this ? The grateful gourmand — to begin with 
 baser sort — may " devote " some part of his 
 gorged strength to eulogy of dinner, will probably 
 reward its live accessories with lavish tipping; the 
 " devoted " sportsman will attain disinterested 
 heights in praise and in promotion of his pastime, 
 and business, art, truth, virtue, and their sort 
 have each its genuine and more or less joyous devo- 
 tees. But the best devotion this world knows, the 
 commonest and gladsomest, is that of one soul 
 to another. Most of humankind are not held by 
 devotion to a practice or a principle, cannot tem- 
 porarily entertain it, and do not indeed at all at- 
 
THE CROWD 71 
 
 tempt it. Spirit asks the call of spirit to respond 
 with fullest strength. Nay, have not our philo- 
 sophic, moralistic, and artistic friends missed 
 something in an abstract object of devotion, 
 and endeavored to supply the lack of living 
 personality with some makeshift personification 
 each of his own pursuit.'' Hence these various 
 proper-namings of " divine Philosophy," " gra- 
 cious Virtue," " glorious Art " — in most cases, I 
 imagine, with rather poor success. These, at any 
 rate, speak only to the merest fraction of man- 
 kind; the immense majority of us must have a liv- 
 ing object to awaken and receive our love. In 
 such case only will however much devotion we may 
 have to give come free and warm from our full 
 hearts. And so in these loves for the living, — in 
 the love of dog for man, of man for master, friend 
 for friend, throughout the family bond, and in 
 all further manifestations whether animal, human, 
 or divine, — we find the perfect types of pure de- 
 votion, the love that longs not in the least to get, 
 but longs only to give. 
 
 3. CRITERIA 
 
 " And therewith gives away its freedom ! " our 
 shrewd diversionist exclaims with copious con- 
 tempt ; " throws away its birthright and the whole 
 worth of its being ! " 
 
 Well, that is tragic if the fact; but is it after 
 all the fact.-* Let us weigh and judge the claims 
 
72 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 of these two practices upon our optional activity. 
 
 " Ah, yes," replies our playful friend, " we know 
 the sound of that decoy. You want to snare us 
 in the net of social service. But we aren't to be 
 caught that way. We have not received devotion 
 from society, we don't ask it, and we won't give 
 any. Tie yourself up as you will, but leave us to 
 pursue our paths of happiness." 
 
 Your pardon, friend ; I aim to help you in that 
 same pursuit, or rather in accomplishment of the 
 same end by better methods than pursuing. I do 
 not plan to spend the glowing energy of your pur- 
 suit for satisfying social claims ; I shall not once 
 mention them. I shall at present judge these two, 
 diversion and devotion, on no other ground than 
 that of their intrinsic joyfulness. This is surely 
 not a priggish or pedantic ground of judgment ; 
 and judgment on this ground is, all considered, 
 easily possible. So let us be about it. 
 
 If it is by joy alone that life is to be justified, 
 where shall that joy itself be found and tested.'' 
 Life, we know, is lived within ; it is of the feelings, 
 and must have its judgment here. So much feel- 
 ing, so much life: that is the simple formula. 
 There are many feelings, though? Yes, but all of 
 them, each in its own degree, will, for present 
 purposes at least, come within one or other of two 
 kinds of feeling, of loving or of hating, its reverse. 
 The degrees range from our little likes and dis- 
 likes to our soul-compelling passions, but through- 
 out their range are somewhere within these kinds. 
 
THE CROWD 73 
 
 Now one of these need not detain our notice ; the 
 good hater, though very much aHve, is not gen- 
 erally thought of as a highly joyful creature, and 
 not many people practice hating with much satis- 
 faction to themselves. Love, then, is the element 
 in which joy grows ; and life to each possessor has 
 the present value only of its various loves. 
 
 So much love, then, so much life. But life, or 
 love, has its levels, has its height no less than its 
 expanse ; and the fondest feedings of our glutton- 
 ous congregation, the most delighted gapings of 
 our spectatorial multitudes, are rightly judged — 
 and on no priggish ground, but on the single basis 
 of their own possession of pure joy — to be on 
 somewhat lower levels than are several other sorts 
 of love. What are these more elevated? They 
 are widely various, no doubt, but have at least one 
 trait in common. The characteristic of them all, 
 the seal and certification of all higher loves, is 
 that they give themselves to the thing loved, to the 
 beloved, that they burst forth in devotion. 
 
 And what diverted attitude of soul can stand 
 with this devoted? Look at the life diversion 
 leads, or rather note the lack in much of it of any 
 actual living. For life is a condition of inner 
 activity, or feeling; and diversion for the most 
 part represents a minimized inner activity, a 
 passivity approaching torpor and spiritual death. 
 It means to most the mere having of things hap- 
 pen to them which produce a tickled feeling: to 
 the more enterprising remainder, an opportunity 
 
74 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 to fling their limbs about or perhaps employ their 
 upper faculties : but in all these cases with what de- 
 gree of genuine delight? Well enough and doubt- 
 less needful we should have such soothing changes, 
 revivifying vacations from intenser living ; but here 
 they are held up as life itself — a sad revelation 
 of the value of existence to some people. For life 
 in its activities of larger value is necessarily a 
 state of love ; and the most active, even violent di- 
 versionist lives less intensely than the mildest 
 devotee. The former sometimes spurts a plente- 
 ous stream of sparks, but from surface friction 
 chiefly ; the latter glows within. That is the psy- 
 chological gap between the two: pastime rarely 
 penetrates the bosom's core and kindles us at heart, 
 but leaves us cold with an increasing coldness which 
 becomes disgust. Or if it does penetrate and 
 kindle us, it thereby loses its own nature, diver- 
 sion changing to devotion. Therein lies its great- 
 est hope. Beginning possibly with promotion of 
 mere pastime, with applause of a performer, or 
 with trying to delight the palates or the pulses of 
 one's friends, devotion enters the ascending path of 
 life and joy, the scale of loves whose highest is a 
 sort of ecstasy, a being carried out of self into a 
 state beside which all diversion is but as the near 
 approach of death. Love it is that looses us from 
 the dominion of a deathly life and lifts us into the 
 ecstatic spheres of its devotion. 
 
 But what diversionist untried in such devotion 
 
THE CROWD 75 
 
 will believe our word? Then leave theorizing and 
 repair to the store of its examples. Not to lug 
 in the case of lovers, overworked nowadays, who 
 will think the warrior-thane of old, ranging the 
 long shores and seas or drinking mead in mead- 
 hall, hearing the song of scop or gleeman and oc- 
 casionally shouting his own tipsy praise, lived such 
 life as when in overflowing loyalty he clasped the 
 knees of his dear lord or flung himself before him 
 in the battle-clash or followed him into defeat and 
 death? And we have heard among our modern 
 instances of more than several who when their loved 
 ones died and freed them from slave-like devotion, 
 have shortly followed after in the face of infinite 
 diversionary possibilities. Why, work itself of the 
 most drudging - — not to speak of the most trifling 
 play — may be turned into devotion, — best, prob- 
 ably, by being turned toward persons — and 
 thereby become a sort of spiritual play surpassing 
 the corporeal in purity and permanence of joy. 
 But this too what diversionist will heed? 
 
 Here, at any rate, abide these two, diversion and 
 devotion — the one a turning from the way of life, 
 the other a straight driving onward. And be- 
 tween these two the crowd divides itself, with what 
 prevailing choice is plain to see. Alas, poor crowd, 
 how utterly indeed are you diverted, turned aside ! 
 And how indeed shall you be brought back into 
 pathways of devotion? 
 
76 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 4. SOCIAL AIMS 
 
 It has perhaps occurred to the patient reader, 
 unless sleep has long since anticipated the occur- 
 rence, to wonder what may be my aim in weighing 
 these activities, diversion and devotion. Is it my 
 philanthropic purpose to persuade joyful diver- 
 sionists into devotion's greater joys? There 
 would seem more loudly crying needs and plaintive 
 opportunities for our persuasion. It were some- 
 what better, I believe, to let the joyful throng 
 gather its joys as hitherto — the harvest probably 
 repays the reaping — and turn our altruistic ef- 
 forts toward that growing number whom diversion 
 does not satisfy and that greater multitude whom 
 it has rarely visited, never for long. 
 
 But it will hardly do to bid either diverted or 
 undiverted : " Be ye devoted " ; because they sim- 
 ply won't act on instructions, and will probably 
 laugh scornfully. For very rarely are men ever 
 got to hunt the higher joys on straight tips and 
 inside information. Tipsters and informants 
 there have been since the beginnings of communi- 
 cation, and many famous formulas of happiness — 
 Pythagorean, Platonic, Epicurean, Stoic, and 
 Christian, with their medieval and modern varia- 
 tions and negations, — have been spoken out of 
 deep experience and repeated endlessly by sundry 
 sign-posts eloquent planted over the world path- 
 way, — to what practical effect.? The mass of us, 
 hedged and hindered by necessity and habitude. 
 
THE CROWD 77 
 
 have been quite satisfied to hunt only happiness 
 enough, spying it in the diversions of our native 
 ditch or alley, and leaving with sceptical or scorn- 
 ful laugh the heights and the expanse to the as- 
 piring or adventurous few. 
 
 And even if men were progressive enough to un- 
 dertake experiments, the outcome would probably 
 for the majority of experimenters prove quite dis- 
 appointing. It is written that Saint Francis 
 could with chanting the joys of serving Our Lady 
 Poverty win any whom their female relatives had 
 not hidden away ; but it is also written that the 
 brethren of Saint Francis, when they had out- 
 spread the personal supervision of the saint, de- 
 posed the earlier Lady and set up several other 
 Ladies in her stead. They had not found in a 
 joy-seeking service the joys that he had promised: 
 they had not brought with them the ingredients of 
 that joy which Francis, having brought them, 
 could find there. And the saint himself might 
 have remembered how the summons came to him: 
 not a coaxing call to happiness it was that came 
 into his tavern life, no invitation to come revel in 
 devotion ; but another voice, announcing duty and 
 if needful adding, not persuasive but imperative: 
 " Thou thriftless debtor, pay thy debt long due, 
 or — ." It made little mention, I surmise, of joys 
 in store, spoke not at all of paying debt for sake 
 of further gift ; but had something to say, per- 
 haps, of a certain debtors' prison, rather painful 
 then to the imaginative mind. Thus much — 
 
78 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 somewhat too much — hy way of illustrating what 
 in philosophic dialect is called hedonistic paradox, 
 and popularly explained to mean that one doesn't 
 generally get. joy hunting it. 
 
 That is, as we have been trying to say, few are 
 in the first place hard gripped by persuasive pre- 
 cepts and fewer still held fast. So that few in- 
 deed have found their higher joys until these came 
 as the unlooked-for consequences of necessity or 
 duty, which did not commend, but commanded, 
 even harshly. Comes Pure Reason to commend 
 some loftier and broader life, how many will at- 
 tempt it, or approve it.'' But comes the bidding 
 clad in a right Voice of Duty, and then — for 
 some of us, at least — those dear former pleasures 
 " shake and despoil themselves, and grow gray " 
 with ashen pallor of lost charm in presence of that 
 awful or that lovely word; and those alien heights 
 that seemed so barren of all joy are now the only 
 resting places for fear-goaded souls, and heaven- 
 touched pavilions for love-guided, who may bless 
 the bidding that made them attainable. 
 
 Therefore, though our expansive-smiling, com- 
 fort-careful philanthropic friends would coax men 
 to do thus and so in order to be happy, we that 
 have profited from universal-historical allusions 
 and Franciscan references, with subjoined ob- 
 servations, will set to work in other ways. We 
 will speak as mouthpieces, or if possible act as 
 personifications — though that is anticipating — 
 of imperatives without promissory postscripts, 
 
THE CROWD 79 
 
 which command unquestioning and unreckoning 
 devotion. But we will the more on this account 
 make sure the utmost meed of joy dwells in the 
 doing or waits to crown it — that we do not sac- 
 rifice the person to the imperative. 
 
 And we will also — since we are now in the way 
 of planning — test our imperative-to-be for possi- 
 bilities of general utility. It shall produce not 
 only for the individual joy the greatest — many 
 closet, studio, and family devotions can do that, 
 and little more — but " joy in widest commonalty 
 spread " ; it shall be of double benefit, the latter 
 half of which may be much manifolded. 
 
 For the fact is, reader, that this little book is 
 only, as I may already have remarked, another of 
 those social gospels wherewith we have of late been 
 pelted, though this will prove, I trust, a trifle dif- 
 ferent. As such, it aims not merely to move whom 
 it may to any kind of devotion — office, study, 
 studio, family, or mixed — but, more ambitiously, 
 to move the individual into general devotion. To 
 bring each into some kind aiid degree of devotion 
 to all, is, I take it, the object of most social aims 
 and gospels, whether under name of civic virtue, 
 social righteousness, or other offensive title. And 
 as the several dozen social imperatives now in 
 occupancy of their appropriate spheres seem 
 sorely lacking in impulsive strength, or at most do 
 not seem charged with an all-adequate degree of 
 it, I have ventured to push into their company 
 this resuscitation of that ancient type which was 
 
80 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 once found beautifully workable and is at least 
 still voluble, by me, to present-day — deafness, 
 perhaps. 
 
 But before I do proceed to introduce and am- 
 plify my revived imperative, let me, to make it 
 room, for the brief remainder of this Second Book 
 examine certain extant and still reputable, but 
 more or less dilapidated and undermined social 
 measures, and try to sweep away the worthless. 
 For so a proper spiritual builder must, before he 
 brings on his own " architecture," sweep away 
 usurping piles, leveling relentlessly all leaning 
 towers of authority, all cluttered chambers of dis- 
 use, all guileful labyrinths, and all the world's 
 sweet inns adjacent which could deceive or drowse 
 a possible discipleship. Then o'er the wreckage 
 he has wrought shall rise the temple of his own 
 neat plan. 
 
 5. PRINCIPLE 
 
 Ask the average reformer, professional or ama- 
 teur, what average unreformed humanity most 
 needs, and it is ten to one he tells you, " Princi- 
 ple; to get more principle into its make-up; to 
 brace and build its moral fibre." What, then, we 
 must next ask, is the nature of this tonic Princi- 
 ple that is to raise the spiritual health-rate of 
 society? And lest the average reformer unnec- 
 essarily complicate things, let us leave him to his 
 reformations and try to answer shortly for our- 
 selves. 
 
THE CROWD 81 
 
 Principle itself is of course a compound of prin- 
 ciples, but happUy for our powers of endurance 
 there is no need to enumerate. From these nu- 
 merous principles may be formulated a composite 
 principle, the divers formulas of these being swal- 
 lowed all and well digested into " Do as you'd be 
 done by," as the wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, 
 best their doctrine has to say. Will not this for- 
 mula suffice? Is it not sufficiently elastic? It 
 may be stretched to signify " Do as you hope to 
 be done by " — but seldom is, I believe ; it may be 
 twisted into " Don't do as you wouldn't be done 
 by " — the shape under which it sometimes op- 
 erates ; and it may be squeezed down into " Do as 
 you are willing to be done by if ever you are fool 
 enough to occupy the other fellow's place " — a 
 very popular version, I have reason to suppose. 
 An elastic formula, certainly. Quite too elastic, 
 some might say, and proceed to make suggestions ; 
 but none need trouble to, because for purposes of 
 present remark it does not minutely matter what 
 any or all principles have to say. What I have 
 now to say will fit any and all formulas of princi- 
 ple. 
 
 First, then, notice that enunciation of any prin- 
 ciple in the ear of conscience by whatever inner 
 or outer voice, is by no means the whole business. 
 Would it were; for then, with all the numerous 
 enunciations which now vibrate in and round about 
 us, there might be some chance of getting a num- 
 ber of desirable things done. Nor is it possible 
 
83 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 that there is not enough interior and exterior 
 enunciation : would that were so ; for then greater 
 publicity were easily to be got: who that reads 
 newspapers or public libraries does not know one 
 amiable philotomist at least who would back a 
 Principle Publicity Company, bearing his own 
 name? But the amiable backer may invest to bet- 
 ter advantage elsewhere, for in this business the 
 fact is, friends, that announcements and announc- 
 ers both have become of late abounding bores, to 
 no proportionate betterment of our principles. 
 Not only do our amply present opportunities for 
 splendid application remain embraced of very few, 
 but our omnipresent opportunities for dirty enough 
 desecration of principle are rather eagerly seized 
 upon. We still slander our enemies, deceive our 
 friends, cheat our customers, smuggle goods if we 
 dare, keep rotten tenements if we are rich or a 
 church corporation, and pour our sewage into 
 other people's water supply, — not at all in ig- 
 norance but in absolute contempt of principle. 
 And in various parts of the country high-princi- 
 pled persons hold up astonished hands at our do- 
 ings, themselves an interesting and pathetic sight. 
 An interesting and pathetic sight, I say, be- 
 cause they really expect us to be ruled by princi- 
 ple, and are painfully disappointed when they find 
 how few of us care anything about it. Whereas 
 the reasons of this general indifference are natural 
 enough and not necessarily discouraging. Let us 
 begin again at the status quo and continue our re- 
 
THE CROWD 83 
 
 searches into how a principle, having got itself 
 heard, gets itself duly practised, or rather — 
 shall we not say? — into why it usually fails in the 
 second undertaking. But this being a matter of 
 mental behavior, we must consult our friends the 
 psychologists. 
 
 Our psychological friends assure us that before 
 all action comes emotion, that feeling is behind all 
 doing whatsoever, and that the practice of a prin- 
 ciple or anything else depends upon the power of 
 its appeal to our feelings. To what feelings, 
 then, and with what power, does principle appeal? 
 
 The feelings to which a principle or anything 
 else must appeal for performance are those of 
 Love and Fear, which in some kind and degree im- 
 pel all our performances. Now with respect to 
 pure and simple Principle-for-its-own-sake, which 
 feeling gives the impulse — love or fear — is no- 
 wise doubtful. Once in a while we meet some 
 transcendental person, a specimen of the rare Em- 
 ersonian species, who has been ravished by the 
 beauty of Eternal Law and yields it a delighted 
 obedience ; but the greater part of our small prin- 
 cipled class are not in love with principle. Their 
 feeling toward it for its own sake is probably some 
 modem derivative of old-time fear, such as awe at 
 its sudden " unconditional command " or reverence 
 for its lofty character. " Reverence for Moral 
 Law " is the formula which Kant, once Chief Form- 
 ulator in this matter, pronounced the proper im- 
 pulse of all principled conduct, and then added 
 
84 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 that perhaps no conduct ever was purely so im- 
 pelled, — which somewhat diminishes the value of 
 his formula. The fact is — and it does not call 
 for proof, since even Kant could see it — that few 
 and very few, if any of us at all, have such a fund 
 of reverential feeling or see any reason why we 
 ought to get one or regret the lack of it. " Why," 
 we ask ■ — unless we are of the funded few — " why 
 should we obey the voice of Principle, an abstract, 
 bloodless, lifeless thing, that never yet did any- 
 thing for anybody to deserve his love and obedi- 
 ence.? " This we ask, those of us who do not 
 love the thing for its own sake, and who also think 
 occasionally, but with a vague feeling of our rebel- 
 lion ; for the old tyranny of principle is deep- 
 seated, and we are new to questioning. But are 
 we not right.'' What right have principles as such 
 to command anything.? If they can charm us 
 into delighted obedience, well and good ; but when, 
 failing to be lovable, they try to be terrible, 
 standing off and shouting unconditional com- 
 mands at us, — what of that ? If Duty is, as they 
 tell us it began by being, a matter of actual re- 
 payment, these demands of principles are, I fear, 
 somewhat in the nature of extortion. A bullying 
 and extortionate lot are principles : — are they 
 not indeed decidedly unprincipled.? 
 
 All this, I think, those of us who sometimes 
 meditate the matter are resolved upon, and the 
 rest dimly realize. There is no duty about the 
 
THE CROWD 85 
 
 business: some purblind philosophers have mis- 
 taken the false feeling of obligation — begotten 
 we have since seen how — for a valid sense of duty 
 — with what foolish consequences we have also 
 seen ; they are long since undeceived, and the 
 sooner we are the better. For if mankind are 
 ever to look upon Duty with pleasure instead of 
 resignation or disgust, if they are ever really and 
 truly to be captivated by it — - please don't laugh, 
 good reader, — then something in their make-up 
 or in the doctrine's, I surmise, must eventually 
 suffer change. But our philosophers have so far 
 failed to find the needful dose of denaturalization 
 for converting our warm human feelings into cold 
 fish-like gaze at Principle-for-its-own-sake, and 
 meanwhile we are going on the same as usual and 
 daily getting farther in the other way. Whence 
 it may seem well, since human nature will not 
 modify its throbbing breast to gills, its devising 
 hands to fins, and thus sea-changed, swim off to 
 meet the school of principles in their own element, 
 that the principles should somehow get themselves 
 equipped with suitable land-organs and appendages 
 in order to associate with humankind. 
 
 Of course, it does not follow that we are at 
 present villains or unprincipled, but that our 
 principles are otherwise pushed into action: by 
 sympathy or piety or, chiefly, by regard for pub- 
 lic opinion, — in most cases by some symptom of 
 that same old deep-indwelling fear. But of all 
 
86 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 this by and by ; for this chapter is consercated to 
 principles in themselves and for their own precious 
 sake. 
 
 What is left to say of them? No word of part- 
 ing lamentation for their past and present neg- 
 lect; of parting hope for their final recognition? 
 Not by me, good friends: I find that there are 
 things both worse to neglect and better to recog- 
 nize. By me, then, only a word of wonder at the 
 splendid reputation that principles, despite their 
 generally joyless inutility, have so long enjoyed, 
 — at the way in which our wise men have been so 
 long and perfectly imposed on by them. 
 
 And now a chapter in simple explanation of the 
 imposition and in compound condemnation. It 
 will prove, I fear, stale stuff to some, but it is a 
 necessary course in our present fare, and those 
 who have already had their fill of it need only nib- 
 ble briefly. 
 
 6. PUBLIC OPINION 
 
 It used not long ago to be a matter of much 
 debate among the philosophically bent whence 
 came this appeal of principle, voice of conscience, 
 or moral sentiment, which was regarded as the 
 chief conservator of human society. Now, 
 thanks to Evolutionary lore, there is no longer 
 any smell of mystery about the matter, and one 
 may read in any of the fascinating sociologies 
 aforesaid just whence and why and how the moral 
 sentiment came to be whatever it now is. Or one 
 
THE CROWD 87 
 
 may take my word on their authority that it has 
 grown naturally in the course of centuries from a 
 public to a private sentiment. The feeling of the 
 tribe on all acts making for its welfare or its ill- 
 fare was the earliest kind of conscience, and for 
 long the only kind. Another kind came out of 
 this much later, when finally the tribal feeling, by 
 dint of bribes to due observance and blows for 
 disobedience, got fixed in most individuals as a 
 feeling of their own. Wherein as private con- 
 science it has persisted even to this day. 
 
 Meanwhile the moralists have not been mute, 
 but copiously proclamatory of their various opin- 
 ions on this presence of a conscience in mankind, 
 which have pleasantly complicated matters for 
 some length of time. They in fact first called the 
 feeling " conscience," and not knowing how else to 
 account for it, gave God full credit for its being 
 in us, and seeking to encase the feeling in a for- 
 mula, began defining it in various high astound- 
 ing terms. Of these Chief Formulator Kant's are 
 most remarkable: he, having pieced together the 
 separate precepts into which the voice of con- 
 science was popularly supposed to split itself for 
 each particular occasion, found them to make up 
 one voice, his famous Categorical Imperative or 
 unconditional command of Duty : " Act always 
 in such a way as you might will to be a universal 
 law." Such was his collective version, which 
 proved very popular with the philosophic and 
 other thoughtful folk. 
 
88 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 So much, then, for whence and why and how the 
 voice got heard, and what it finally got under- 
 stood to say. Nowadays its supernatural reputa- 
 tion has suffered with the thoughtful, but its 
 natural power is probably not much impaired: we 
 all hear it more or less and are more or less moved 
 to obey. Something, then, seems now in need of 
 mention as to how this voice of Duty has ever got 
 its dictates done : to what in us has it trium- 
 phantly appealed for their performance.'' Let us 
 look a moment at the real workings of morality. 
 
 Now the analyzing that we have already done 
 in the case of principles has shown us one strange 
 thing, that morality as matter of customariness or 
 social conduct has not enough force in itself of 
 either love or fear to accomplish what has been 
 accomplished in its name. Its chief force has been 
 the vis inertm of habit (after that has developed 
 out of custom), and whenever there has been need 
 of breaking that bondage in favor of a better, or 
 of checking outbreaks toward a worse, morality 
 itself has usually needed outside strengthening. 
 That strengthening also we have already hinted 
 at: it has usually, as in the beginning, been the 
 power of Public Opinion, backed with all its avail- 
 able clubs and bribes, or, more rarely, that of 
 Heavenly Opinion, supported likewise by all its 
 spiritual weapons and prizes. 
 
 This, then, is what morality in most cases really 
 amounts to : not following an inner light, but fol- 
 lowing any sufficiently compulsive outer opinion 
 
THE CROWD 89 
 
 wherever it may point. It happens now to point 
 such or such a way: had it always pointed oppo- 
 site, how many of us would not now be following 
 thither? And now we know well from our afore- 
 said Evolutionary lore that the opinion has been 
 subject to historical variations and is still to 
 geographical vagaries, and is after all its fuss 
 far from an everlasting and exalted affair. One 
 development we must give it fullest credit for: it 
 has set its face against active cruelty of any sort, 
 and turned it slightly toward active kindliness ; 
 but for the rest it is only a continuation of the 
 racial and social instinct of self-preservation, and 
 spends its greatest strength for purely selfish pur- 
 poses. 
 
 Yet I have nothing to say against Public Opin- 
 ion on the score of its selfishness. Even if the 
 selfishness were ten times greater, it would still be 
 natural enough and far more reasonable than the 
 righteousness of principle-for-its-own-sake. I 
 cannot therefore follow my fiercely individualistic 
 friends in reviling it altogether. On the con- 
 trary, I can find it, despite its steady stupidities 
 and occasional idiocies, generally salutary. For 
 generally it speaks no theoretic rightness, but the 
 experience of centuries, gathered at length into 
 good gray wisdom. Its stupidities and idiocies 
 are largely the result of its modern attempt, 
 urged by Hebraic theology and Germanic categor- 
 ical morality, to speak from a standpoint of pure 
 righteousness instead of from one of general pro- 
 
90 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 tection or, better-than-to-be-expected, from one 
 of specific human happiness. On the whole, how- 
 ever, I can wish it much more power — and wis- 
 dom. 
 
 But it now becomes my painful duty to manifest 
 to the admiring and all-confident friends of Pub- 
 lic Opinion some limitations of the ablest possible 
 future performances of their champion. If it 
 should ever prove a fairly efficient moral police 
 force in preventing outright attacks on human 
 happiness, it will never, so far as I can see, get 
 past this negative achievement, get to the promo- 
 tion of positive happiness. It may some time be 
 itself benevolent enough — representative, that is, 
 of enough real beneficence — to feel like coaxing 
 people into active goodness, but that will be its 
 very best ability. It can never successfully com- 
 mand kindliness as a social duty, even if that ever 
 throve under compulsion. Cold charity it may 
 indeed command as social protection, and get what 
 it can through increased taxation ; but nothing 
 more. A certain amount of coaxing it may do, 
 with its sweet promises of reward — when it has 
 itself set the example; but when, I wonder, will 
 that be.'' Just now it has its hands, or rather its 
 mouth full trying to keep trusts and politicians 
 out of its pockets, and is likely to be so engaged 
 some length of time. 
 
 Another cruel fact, quite necessary, however, 
 for the all-confident friends to face: that the 
 power of Public Opinion is not keeping pace with 
 
THE CROWD 91 
 
 the growth of its wisdom (mostly newspaper-culti- 
 vated) ; but has been for years on the decline, and 
 is now only the shadow of its ancient self. Once 
 there was a Public Opinion that was really the 
 voice of the people, nearly unanimous on all mat- 
 ters of importance, and able to club, banish, burn, 
 or otherwise annoy the contrary-minded. Now 
 there is, properly speaking, no public opinion, no 
 unanimous sentiment at all, but only a number of 
 often differing opinions professed by separate sec- 
 tions of the public. The opinion called " pub- 
 lic " by the newspapers is only the largest of these 
 which has the happiness of finding newspaper ex- 
 pression ; and there are plenty of others less in- 
 telligent and decent which offer a kind patronage 
 and a comfortable refuge. Society has, in fact, 
 long ceased to be unanimous on even the elements 
 of morality. If the Hon. Thomas Picker, polit- 
 ical or common thief, chances to incur the harsh 
 censure of our public, he is none the less acquitted 
 by his public of any fault save that of careless- 
 ness, which is one in that it narrows opportunity. 
 Or if John B. Heartbreaker, who has crushed all 
 rivals and squeezed the general public, thereby 
 incur our " unfavorable comment," his special 
 public notices only application of biological law 
 to business ; and when he has washed his hands 
 and put them promisingly into his pockets, what 
 Temple or University can have the heart to blame 
 him.'' Since Public Opinion, so called, has lost the 
 power of speedy punishment, being stopped by 
 
92 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 legal opinion and civil power, its reputation has 
 sadly dwindled, peaked, and pined. The safe of- 
 fender against it can find ample praise or solace 
 in the opinion of his coterie or club or gang; and 
 if the near faces are friendly, why fear a distant 
 frown ? 
 
 So, too, is it now with the upper private, or 
 Celestial Opinion: that also has lost its power 
 with its penalties. Time was when mankind found 
 both Heaven and Hell believable, and many, scur- 
 rying from the fire's clutch, got headed on the 
 heavenward ascent. But now most of mankind, 
 having trampled out the nether flames or quite 
 easily extinguished them with a few slight squirts 
 of ethical theology, have no upward impetus. 
 The House of Many Mansions never was very 
 attractive, save perhaps by contrast with the fiery 
 Prison-house since razed, and cannot now com- 
 pare with numerous world's sweet inns much nearer 
 by. And the Host as well as the House seems 
 rather misty to most of us: his possible opinion, 
 his face and hand withheld, is a smaller matter 
 than the positive opinions that live in visible faces 
 and act by palpable hands. 
 
 No, no, all-confident friends ; Public Opinion 
 is nowadays pretty much split up, and of itself 
 well-nigh powerless. Its best hope lies in getting 
 legal opinion and strength of the law behind it 
 and putting some of its ancient vigor into the 
 operation of those. In which undertaking all 
 good-luck to it. 
 
THE CROWD 93 
 
 So much, then, for the practical aspect, the out- 
 ward workings of Public Opinion morality. Too 
 much, perhaps : at any rate not much remains. It 
 is, of course, my wish, through a strange whim 
 of mine, to speak a word of the inner workings or 
 spiritual aspect of the matter, but that can't help 
 being briefly spoken. It is on the whole well, I 
 suppose, since we are social beings, and unavoida- 
 ble, since we have been so long bred to it, that we 
 should have a " decent regard for the opinion of 
 mankind," especially in our immediate neighbor- 
 hood. But to live for this, as many do in an un- 
 liveried lackeyhood, — what is more disgusting.'' 
 To place one's happiness in other people's mouths, 
 to taste it chiefly upon their report — that is eat- 
 ing ashen Dead Sea apples, surely. And to find 
 one's wretchedness therein, that — to repeat the 
 prandial metaphor — is feeding on the husks of 
 which the swine do eat. 
 
 And so farewell to all this for a good long 
 while. 
 
 7. DEMOCRACY 
 
 Such being the present writer's sentiments on 
 the subject of Public Opinion, he can hardly be 
 expected to admire its parent and sponsor, De- 
 mocracy. But that depends upon the point of 
 view. Democracy as a method of manning the 
 ship of state is easily the best available. Impa- 
 tient passengers may complain of the vessel's slow 
 and winding progress and of the lagging crew, 
 
9* THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 largely given to rifling the freight, and sigh for a 
 good old one-man guidance. But the thoughtful 
 traveler realizes that masterful officers are rare 
 and rather likely, if found, to prove reckless of 
 the surrounding rocks and shoals, and that it is 
 considerably better to have a slow sure lot, who 
 will stick to charts and compass and who may al- 
 ways — blessed remembrance ! — if the passen- 
 gers will but agree, be put ashore at the next port. 
 No, my fearful fellow passengers, it is not neces- 
 sary to warn us specially, when an itinerant ex- 
 captain takes private passage once more, that our 
 ship must be steered according to principles, not 
 persons. Perhaps the persons are more splen- 
 didly attractive; but the principles, being lifeless, 
 are safer, and we know it. We will, since it is 
 necessary, let principles regulate our governmen- 
 tal course, be glad if we can get something fairly 
 good and human to apply them, and having thus 
 safeguarded ourselves, look elsewhere for our joys. 
 Shall we find these in the social workings of De- 
 mocracy.'' Not to the best of my observation and 
 belief. Democracy has now been tried — at least 
 in spots, if the petulant orators are allowed their 
 say — sufficiently to show its meaning — its 
 achievement and its aims. What, then, is the 
 highest praise that laudatory orators heap upon 
 it.? The praise, usually, that it offers perfect 
 freedom of opportunity, that it gives everyone a 
 chance to develop his powers to their fullest, to 
 live his own life as he rightly chooses. Of course 
 
THE CROWD 95 
 
 we know quite well, when released from the spell of 
 enthusiastic oratory, that many a splendid and 
 delightful path of choice is conspicuously pla- 
 carded " No Thoroughfare for Poverty," or is 
 hopelessly hard going for stupidity, or from ex- 
 cessive popularity is crammed almost to suffoca- 
 tion ; but we are giving Democracy credit for the 
 best it aims at, and this seems to be that best. 
 A great deal it truly is, considering how, not so 
 long ago, we were cabined, cribbed, bound down 
 to the conditions of our birth, which only the 
 strongest could break through, and how at present 
 by way of school and shop and farm a hundred 
 doors lead out into careers as numerous, and any 
 one may hope some day to be president of some- 
 thing or reach any other more or less glorious 
 goal. 
 
 But what, now, is the generic name of these 
 great goals.? Why, what a question! It is Suc- 
 cess, of course, Success. And as the visiblest suc- 
 cess is surely best, chiefly success in making money. 
 After that the various professional and artistic 
 successes, in proportion to their publicity and 
 pay ; and then — to be scientifically accurate ■ — 
 success in character-growing, in being something 
 besides the visiblest possible, does receive occa- 
 sional mention, though not from a united Democ- 
 racy. It is for these others that Democracy saves 
 its voice, but for them uplifts it freely. And if in 
 addition to having succeeded, a man is modest 
 enough to believe, or mock-modest enough to make- 
 
96 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 believe that he is no better than any one else — 
 which Democracy recites as public creed and pri- 
 vately disbelieves, — then a proud Democracy ex- 
 claims " How democratic ! " and is thoroughly de- 
 lighted. 
 
 Dare we intrude on such delight with the carp- 
 ing question of what this success does really 
 amount to in the measure of private and public 
 happiness, of joy the greatest and in widest com- 
 monalty spread? We shall, since we must; and 
 Democracy, if not too disgusted for answer, will 
 tell us somewhat stammeringly, for it seldom tests 
 its standards, that this success measures up to the 
 happiness of knowing that one is successful and 
 that others know it. 
 
 Now this strikes us as curious, that Democracy 
 should, as the first part of its recipe for happiness, 
 practically repeat the recipe of arch-aristocrat 
 Nietzsche, who diagnosed happiness as " the feel- 
 ing that power increases." But it ceases to 
 strike us so if we reflect that both the Nietzschean 
 and the democratic version are based on blind Evo- 
 lutionary instinct born in all conditions of men ; 
 and we know from our deep study of Public Opin- 
 ion that the second half of the democratic formula 
 is only of later Evolutionary origin, and not at 
 all surprising. However, I do not intend to in- 
 vestigate the validity of either version. I have 
 already, if I remember rightly, weighed the worth 
 of each and given no violently favorable judg- 
 ment ; but if the reader has forgotten, he need not 
 
THE CROWD 97 
 
 struggle to recall it. Let us grant, then, though 
 a trifle hesitatingly, the great joys of this sort of 
 success ; and thereupon proceed to remark the in- 
 consistency of Democracy in especially prizing 
 them. For very evidently only the scantest hand- 
 ful do succeed in any such fashion as to feel and 
 to reveal their power: is Democracy, then, strain- 
 ing its eiFort for these, trying to develop an aris- 
 tocracy ? 
 
 No, it would answer ; whatever we may most ad- 
 mire, we aim to help all toward the happiness of 
 their proper choice. Which proves generally to be 
 some unsocial if not anti-social practice or the 
 greatest possible variety of diversions. Play and 
 selfish folly is a very large by-product of your 
 processes, if not in fact the most considerable end 
 of these. Yes, that is one trouble with your help- 
 fulness: it is half-blind, and helps people toward 
 it knows not what. 
 
 Perhaps, however,, the finer democratic spirits 
 would declare this helpfulness itself, and not the 
 use made of it. Democracy's chief praise. Pos- 
 sibly ; but what, again we are obliged to ask, does 
 that in fact or feeling really amount to? In 
 point of fact, to the giving by a few of large sums 
 from larger superfluities in an impersonal and 
 institutional sort of way, and of smaller sums by 
 greater numbers, also impersonally and institu- 
 tionally. The grand total of gifts, the mere bulk 
 of our charitabilities and other benefactions 
 through organizations, institutions, or restitu- 
 
98 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 tions is something magnificent. But when we look 
 for something more than size — for the giving, 
 not of some part of one's fortune, but of some 
 part of one's self - — the findings are less satisfac- 
 tory. The magnitude is admirable but not the 
 magnanimity. Our helpfulness, however prompt 
 and ample, is rarely a lasting and full eff'ort : it is 
 often only accidental — depending on newspaper 
 reports or like appeal to the passing quiver of 
 pity ; or, if planned and permanent, is seldom more 
 than incidental to a dozen dearer aims, and paid 
 as the purchase from public opinion or private of 
 leave whole-heartedly to spend elsewhere. 
 
 " Why, of course," replies Democracy, or 
 would if it were listening ; " you surely don't ex- 
 pect us to find any great happiness in helping 
 people ? " No, indeed ; it would be strange if you 
 did, seeing how you go about it. As things are, 
 the benefaction business can hardly be expected 
 to bless either him that gives or him that takes. 
 It does not spring gladly from our hearts, being 
 rather the spasmodic response provoked by a 
 chance irritation of our pity or a hard, stiff sched- 
 ule, operated " on principle " through hired help- 
 ers, with various small motives pushing it along; 
 and, being apparently aimed out of pockets' ful- 
 ness, not feelings', evidently at either stomachs or 
 heads, it naturally doesn't find the way to hearts. 
 What else, when all this helpfulness passes, usu- 
 ally, from stranger to stranger, too often through 
 perfunctory hands, neither helped nor helper 
 
THE CROWD 99 
 
 knowing the other as more than a face or a name. 
 In point of feeling, then, what possibility of any- 
 thing better than a nugatory good-nature, with 
 nothing deep, passionate, devoted anywhere about 
 it? 
 
 In fact, this general good-nature seems the most 
 striking social trait of modern Democracy. It is 
 reflected in our spirit of fair play, in our tolerat- 
 ing of almost any opinion not put into unpleas- 
 ant practice, and our welcoming of almost any 
 amusing person into appropriate society. Our 
 crowds are notably good-natured, and the nation 
 too. Of course, business is business, and politics 
 is also ; but for what of life is left we wish our 
 fellows well, and will often in our swift pursuit 
 of happiness stop and aid them this side of dis- 
 comfort. Nothing, as we say, is too good for our 
 friends, and we do provide splendidly for their 
 feeding and like entertainment, with very little in- 
 termixture of vanity. Except for those who want 
 to share our property and talents because their 
 own parents haven't properly supplied them with 
 such, and of certain others who criticize us in 
 acrid earnest and try variously to improve us, we 
 are a very agreeable lot of people. 
 
 Spiritually, also, this same good-nature marks 
 the triumph of Democracy, and — I fear I must 
 remark — its failure. It is truly an achievement 
 for a large part of society to have got up from a 
 state of religious, social, political, and patriotic 
 savagery to a level of general good-nature, and 
 
100 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 doubtless justifies the self-congratulation of the 
 age. But it is to be remembered amid our jubila- 
 tion that we haven't in the long run and from the 
 loftiest viewpoint gained much, that we have only 
 been regaining our lost ground. It is out of the 
 pits into which we had slipped from our apehood 
 with the coming of humanization that we have been 
 climbing, not above the level of the ground. We 
 have been brutal (but that is a libel on the brutes ; 
 let us rather say, savage), and now we are grow- 
 ing human, or let us say, ape-like once more. 
 Why should we protest the comparison ? Putting 
 aside our intellectual and esthetic superiorities, 
 and passing upon our spiritual capacity, — which 
 I here take, or make to mean our power of love 
 and devotion, we may find much flattering resem- 
 blance. Are not the apes too a good-natured lot 
 and, barring unavoidable business competition, 
 very willing to oblige.'' They will perform the 
 most intimate personal services for one another, 
 I believe, and according to Darwin, they are capa- 
 ble on real demand of almost human heroism — 
 all but the medals and the advertising. Even 
 more human seem to me their normal occupations, 
 - — their pleasant parties, grinning, affable club 
 gatherings, and chatting coteries, — more human, 
 and most democratic. Our manners have changed 
 from theirs, often for the better; but our morals 
 — we ourselves have made the distinction neces- 
 sary — remain much the same. 
 
 Considered in its mechanism, Democracy is eas- 
 
THE CROWD 101 
 
 ily our most advanced attempt, and Is making fur- 
 ther efforts of promise; tested spiritually, it has 
 a very long way yet to go, and isn't trying very 
 hard to get along it, — is even in some cases con- 
 scientiously taking an entirely opposite and hope- 
 less course. 
 
 8. BROTHERHOOD 
 
 " Well, what you want is evidently Brother- 
 hood," observes the reader, with a bored expres- 
 sion. Yes, reader, you are right, in both assump- 
 tion and expression. For Brotherhood is about 
 the best thing one can want ; but so many have 
 been wildly wanting or prettily preaching it that 
 signs of tedium at another mention of it are nat- 
 ural and pardonable. Besides, there can be no 
 good need for further bawling or canting about 
 the fact of Brotherhood: since a century ago we 
 have generally agreed — none denying but those 
 in the lowest stages of neglected ignorance or the 
 highest of cultivated idiocy — that there is a 
 bond, derivable either from the same original soul- 
 stuff or from the ancient dust of earth, a bond 
 between all men. This bond we are generally will- 
 ing enough to recognize — in the abstract ; less so 
 in concrete cases. We own the brotherhood, and 
 disown the brother ; and are sometimes conscious 
 of the discrepancy and smitten with the sense of 
 it, — " but really, this is a workaday world, you 
 know," with little time for feeling sentiment and 
 less for putting it into practice. Or do not many 
 
102 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 of us think the recognition, plus the negative 
 practice of refraining from cutthroatery or pock- 
 etpicking, — perhaps plus the positive achieve- 
 ment of good-nature, — quite enough for any defi- 
 nition of fraternity? And not without a certain 
 show of reason, seeing how few family brother- 
 hoods amount to very much more : — why should 
 universal ? 
 
 In fact, if Brotherhood does signify more than 
 smiling good-nature, — does stand for some degree 
 of love and devotion, there seems little likelihood 
 of our reaching it through any recognition of the 
 fact alone. The fact of itself, whether working 
 through one family or throughout the earth, will 
 do only a limited amount of work without the 
 feeling, and the feeling does not ordinarily spring 
 from the fact. It springs most full from having 
 felt a larger love, the finest property of parent- 
 hood or mastership or any like relation, embracing 
 all and aiming to foster love among them. But 
 what a rarity both to feel such love and to find 
 such fostering its chief care! Rare enough even 
 in the family bond, where prevention of fraternal 
 hostilities is usually held sufficient, and vastly 
 rarer in the universal, where regulation of them is 
 the furthermost achievement. For here — in the 
 universal relationship — what have we to inspire 
 love and devotion? The memory of our afl'ec- 
 tionate forefather the Amoeba? Not that, I 
 fear; and daily close association does it only for 
 the naturally generous-hearted few. " If a man 
 
THE CROWD 103 
 
 love not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall 
 he love his Father in Heaven whom he hath not 
 seen ? " asked one with a natural gift of loving. 
 But he was in that respect not only the best- 
 talented of twelve but of twelve thousand ; and by 
 the remainder a father-love or its equivalent must 
 be felt before a brother-love will follow. For 
 universal brotherhood the best and only good hope 
 lies in the sense of Heavenly fatherhood, — which 
 is not exactly a new saying. 
 
 Is it also a good expectation.'' Alas! the an- 
 swer here is new, or at least far more freely and 
 widely rendered than of old. We shall not repeat 
 the open expression or interpret the tacit convic- 
 tion: we do not just now intend to theologize; 
 only to recognize things as they are on earth, how- 
 ever they may be in heaven. And on earth the 
 sense of heavenly fatherhood is not in fashion. 
 " For a father," Zarathustra overhears the watch- 
 men saying to each other, " he takes too little 
 care of his children : human fathers do it better." 
 Watchmen and others whose chief concern is with 
 wages and such things — that is, most of human- 
 kind — are making the same remark, — making it 
 openly, to general approval, or silently, despite 
 their contrary recitations, and practically, what- 
 ever they profess. " Hard common sense " is 
 the intellectual virtue of the majority, and hard 
 common sense demands the evident and material. 
 Recently we were rejoicing at having got the su- 
 perstitious fabric of religion down to a common- 
 
104 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 sense basis of Fatherhood and Brotherhood, and 
 now we notice common sense at work again, seek- 
 ing a substantial and material foundation of the 
 doctrine, and dissatisfied with its findings. No ; 
 it is not to common sense that we must look in this 
 case ; and the uncommon kind — is not common, 
 or noticeably increasing. 
 
 Well, then, we have not any good expectation 
 from this source.? For the present, none. Yet 
 not without hope do we stand and wait; or need 
 not, with several hopeful props at hand. This 
 watchmen's word is not the last word to be said 
 upon the subject: we shall try to say a later and 
 a better before we end our little book. But for 
 some time this word will by the majority be taken 
 as absolutely final; and meanwhile we must work 
 with what we have available. 
 
 Before, however, we begin to plan any future 
 operations, let us turn a look upon our operations 
 to this point, and try to recollect from our ram- 
 bling misty progress the few salient features that 
 are really, the writer thinks, scattered somewhere 
 along its course. 
 
 9. LOOKING BACKWARD 
 
 The long course that we have been skipping 
 lightly over — it is one of fifteen hundred years 
 — off^ers us not only several varieties of social 
 architecture, but also a chance to notice the 
 change of structure, gradual or sudden, to trace 
 
THE C310WD 105 
 
 the alteration of old to new, and to pass upon the 
 relative fitness of each for purpose of the full- 
 est living. Let us briefly embrace the opportu- 
 nity of this breathing-pause to bring back into 
 mind some characteristics of each type, and ignor- 
 ing what we have gained, which has trumpeters 
 a-plenty, see what we have lost in changing from 
 the old to the new, and how we can regain some of 
 the former strength for future social building. 
 
 We saw some time ago the most striking feature 
 of that life of old, the institution of Companion- 
 ship ; and we found in the deep, pure, personal 
 devotion of Companionship the truest and the fin- 
 est thing that old life had to offer. Personal de- 
 votion: note it well. A generously loving devo- 
 tion of lord to thane, and a gratefully loving 
 devotion of thane to lord. A social relation that 
 comprehends a whole moral scheme; and that to 
 us a truly remarkable morality. For it was 
 lofty, and joyful, and successful: it was meant to 
 work, and did so — even under difficulties. Notice 
 also the personal character of all other of these 
 ancient social measures. A man must be brave 
 and loyal because society, careful of its welfare 
 and as well of its ideals, had commanded bravery 
 and loyalty. Men were responsible to men for 
 specific human happiness ; not to principles for 
 abstract righteousness. They knew what they 
 ought to do, never in that day doubted or mistook 
 the oughtness of it ; and did it — or paid penalties. 
 
 We saw also how the living heart of these 
 
106 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 close personal relationships died gradually with 
 their growing impersonality, the loving warmth of 
 it left with nothing to feed upon but principles. 
 We saw it saved from long-drawn-out death only 
 by the sudden arrival of the Norman individual- 
 ism, which had never within memory owned a 
 heart, but was all belly, — bitter and full of abom- 
 inations and bad appetites. We saw the dead 
 body of Companionship shackled on mankind, and 
 mankind struggling centuries to get free from the 
 body of that death. And we saw another crew, 
 the ecclesiastical, helping keep the shackles tight 
 and binding on another body, the corpse of a ce- 
 lestial Companionship, which, fortunately, for the 
 most part weighed less heavily. 
 
 We have seen society getting free or half-free 
 from its feudal bondages, and straightway turning 
 to diversion for its hopes of happiness. It has 
 forgotten all about devotion: doesn't know the 
 difference between that and slavery; wants above 
 all to be " independent "— which is natural, con- 
 sidering its experience; and reviles whatever sa- 
 vors of dependence. Viewing with alarm this lav- 
 ish spirit of freedom, the philosophers, powerless 
 to curb it, for its guidance point to Principles, 
 which they have provided with a better genealogy 
 than they deserve, and hope will regain some of 
 the lost allegiance. Other hopes — some worse, 
 some better — have their voices, but this particu- 
 lar hope needs special notice; for it is the last 
 
THE CROWD 107 
 
 step of a " progress " that has long been going 
 on. 
 
 Let us notice this long progress. It comprises 
 our departure from the old ideal of loving per- 
 sonal devotion and our arrival, after difficult trav- 
 eling, at the new ideal of reverence for these im- 
 personal makeshifts — principles. For we must 
 remember they are nothing more than makeshifts, 
 — not a free, but a forced choice. Probably not 
 even the philosophers would ever have hit upon 
 this hierarchy of principles if a hierarchy of per- 
 sons worthy of devotion had to their knowledge 
 anywhere survived: surely they could never have 
 foisted any such invention on their trustful listen- 
 ers. But no personal relationships could possibly 
 survive the ravages of feudalism and the following 
 wild dash to get free; and so our philosophers, 
 seeking some kind of much-needed moral " archy " 
 or rule, hit upon this of principles as the ablest 
 possibility. Thus they did, to the best of their 
 taste and judgment — though to the disgust of 
 the generality; and therefore, much as we might 
 enjoy scolding them, we cannot be brought to do it. 
 And of course we can't scold principles themselves 
 any more than we may accuse the weather. They, 
 like that, poor things, are not alive to receive our 
 accusation, — have never lived, to deserve it : they 
 are only poor, everlastingly lifeless things, and 
 their rule only a makeshift of the moral imagina- 
 tion. 
 
108 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 We have also — to take up again the recoUec-. 
 tions of our progress — had a chance to see how, 
 with this moral makeshift reigning its utmost, 
 things were still chaotic, very few finding any- 
 thing lovable about these phantom principles, and 
 few more anything terrible about them; and how 
 in the end they could command only a small 
 amount of " good wiU " and persuade a rather 
 slight degree of " self-respect." How, in fact, 
 their chief effectiveness came through the helpful 
 force of Public Opinion, and how this itself was 
 not effective very far, and powerless outside its 
 straitened sphere. 
 
 Notice, then, if it is necessary, that this prog- 
 ress from persons to principles ends in general 
 disappointment and disgust. The majority 
 neither love nor fear them, find them neither hot 
 nor cold, — only lukewarm ; and accordingly spew 
 them out. The almost imperceptible minority, the 
 moralists, who have cultivated the service of prin- 
 ciples and sought to spread its growth, have been 
 much more grievously disappointed. What else, 
 we wonder, could have been expected, or even fa- 
 natically hoped.'' And yet some misguided men- 
 of-principle are really surprised and sorely dis- 
 appointed at the indifference of mankind ; are so 
 thoroughly misguided that they go on butting 
 their good heads against the same bad job. It is 
 sometimes almost pathetic to watch them at their 
 occupation, — so persevering, and with never a 
 suspicion that the fault is not with people but with 
 
THE CROWD 109 
 
 principles. A late estimable character, George 
 William Curtis, spends a good part of his time in 
 preaching an enlightened patriotism, which he 
 somewhere speaks of as " devotion to a principle." 
 What principle we need not inquire; for, needless 
 to say, our publicist — I believe that is the name 
 - — did not noticeably increase the popular store of 
 patriotism. 
 
 Patriotism — since we happen upon the subject 
 — in its growth and changes presents a highly 
 illustrative study of the very " progress " that we 
 have been investigating. The modem feeling of 
 patriotismy we may find, has a comparatively re- 
 cent origin. In our Germanic beginnings there 
 was no such thing as " love of country " : love 
 of lord was in those days the chief source of de- 
 votion, and for seven or eight centuries thereafter. 
 Even when the ruler had grown nearly a stranger 
 to the nation, his person was still held the only 
 possible object of devotion, and his good-natured 
 presence could gain loving devotees. We are told 
 that modern Democracy was born on the field of 
 Crecy, — perhaps also modem patriotism; but 
 during their long minority monarchy had the day, 
 and force of habit could breed strong devotion 
 long after rulers were fit objects only for the fee- 
 blest brand of it. In fact, devotion was itself still 
 felt as something joyful, and persons were thought 
 absolutely needful for the enjoyment of it. So 
 much so that when English patriotism did at 
 length in the reign of Elizabeth reach its major- 
 
110 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 ity and first fit its name, it was still less strong 
 than loyal feeling for the Queen, — for the Eliza- 
 beth to whom England, if not — as to certain of 
 her predecessors — a rich prey, was yet only an 
 excellent milch cow, to be kept carefully for milk- 
 ing purposes. Yes, devotion could now feed on 
 less than in the days of Hygelac, with whom " all 
 good had its beginning " ; could even find its own 
 supplies. If royalty will only keep hands ofl', 
 or at least not squeeze too hard, England will 
 gratefully lick the royal hand, and see in the royal 
 person the source and increase of its glories. 
 Only when some fool king gives the game away 
 and shows himself an unmistakable enemy of Eng- 
 land, do patriots Pym and Hampden rise, and 
 patriotism, deprived of its royal personages, turns 
 to " love of country." 
 
 What, then, is this love of country, and what 
 does it amount to .'' It is several things ; least of 
 all, in practice and importance, what its name im- 
 plies. Love of the land itself, its " rocks and 
 rills," its " woods and templed hills," is chiefly 
 the expression of poetasters. In normal persons 
 it may sometimes amount to love of native scenery 
 and a willingness to fight against " desecration " 
 of it. But this feeling, celebrated though it be, 
 does not strike the calm critic as almost " divine." 
 It is somewhat nearer canine: a dog grows fond 
 of his surroundings, and will also fight for any 
 bones that he has buried thereabouts. And the 
 
THE CROWD 111 
 
 feeling is, moreover, in its full intensity compara- 
 tively rare. 
 
 Another interpretation of the " country " takes 
 it to represent the national glories, — past achieve- 
 ments and present institutions — number of bat- 
 tleships, for example. This also will be literally 
 fought for on occasion and blatantly boasted of 
 at all times. It is seldom felt as gratitude to the 
 institutions or their founders : usually it is only a 
 cheap pride, — nearly universal, for no nation is 
 so poor in exploits or imagination as not to sup- 
 port it, — a universal vulgar vanity that loves and 
 lauds its country as a personal possession, su- 
 perior ipso facto to all other nations. This is 
 probably the commonest and certainly the mean- 
 est type of patriotism. To be sure, when purged 
 in the fire of warfare, it can bum with splendid 
 devotion; but in time of peace it is one of our 
 most disgusting phenomena, — not " divine " at 
 all, but very decidedly canine. So might talking 
 poodles speak of their respective masters, and per- 
 mit no aspersions while their fangs held good. 
 
 Then, among the current types of patriotism 
 there is that (of rather restricted currency) which 
 has been defined by our late publicist friend as 
 " devotion to a principle," or in other words, a 
 fondness for those things — such as liberty, equal- 
 ity, and the like abstractions — which the nation 
 is supposed to represent. It is the patriotism of 
 the intellectual class, in so far as is any. It also 
 
112 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 will fight, in the superior positions ; but is chiefly 
 found in the conversation of club-members, to 
 which its activities are limited. No one not of 
 that intellectual club-membership would momen- 
 tarily imagine this an important type of patriot- 
 ism, and yet among that membership it is regarded 
 as the last development. It has been purged of 
 personality; it does not unduly excite the emo- 
 tions ; it endangers no club-member's calm or feel- 
 ing of perfect independence: it is ideally imper- 
 sonal. 
 
 That. is why I have taken all this time to arrive 
 at, and then to notice it. It marks the last stage 
 of our " progress " from persons to principles — 
 therein I agree with the gentlemen. I differ only 
 as regards the angle of that progress. They re- 
 gard it as pointing up, up to a splendid altitude, 
 — one must really tilt one's armchair to admire 
 it ; and I as leading down to a rather cheerless 
 region, less suitable for human beings than for 
 something submarine, with power of keeping its 
 cold fishlike gaze fast fixed on principles. At its 
 worst, however, this type is well-bred, and so in- 
 comparably better than patriotic blatancy. 
 
 But, aside from this same blatancy, what does 
 our patriotism in time of peace amount to? Al- 
 most nothing. It tries generally, not to give the 
 country anything, but to get something out of it. 
 How otherwise ? The country as such has no evi- 
 dent existence: to most it takes on entity only 
 when a time of warfare strengthens their imagina- 
 
THE CROWD 113 
 
 tion to the point of power to personify it. As a 
 gracious Mother, threatened by a villainous horde, 
 the country does command devotion, till the proto- 
 cols are signed. Then the stimulus loses strength, 
 and certain of the lately devoted sons will unhesi- 
 tatingly try to pick their parent's pocket of a 
 tax or customs duty. Reformers will lament the 
 fact and ascribe it to the failure of their fellow-, 
 citizens to personify the country. Right you are, 
 reformers ; that is the trouble : and how will you 
 remedy it.? By getting up a war to foster the 
 splendid self-deception? Impracticable, I be- 
 lieve; but how else shall we excite devotion.'' 
 People do demand persons, not principles, we per- 
 ceive: see how they will chase and clap the itiner- 
 ant politician, at present our best object of gen- 
 eral devotion. 
 
 Patriotism? Since we are upon the subject, 
 let us notice the one thoroughly sane type. It is 
 not found anywhere along the line of this " prog- 
 ress " that we have just traced ; it does not espe- 
 cially appeal to any of the patriots we have in- 
 spected. It considers simply the people of a 
 country — not its templed hills, exploits, institu- 
 tions, or principles — as the truly important part 
 of it. It does not even find it necessary to regard 
 these people as the choicest stock on earth or in 
 any other way particularly meritorious. It re- 
 gards them merely as its nearest neighbors in the 
 human brotherhood, whom it may therefore the 
 most easily serve. Somewhat simpler than the 
 
114 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 other patriotisms and saner, is it not? Yet not 
 perceptibly popular just now, and not likely soon 
 to be. For many patriots it doesn't roar enough ; 
 for some it offers too little opportunity for self- 
 deception ; for others it implies more effort than 
 is required in patriotism of the conversational 
 type; and for all it means no more pleasing dis- 
 paragement of other peoples : it is only that tire- 
 some brotherhood business again, and nothing 
 truly and splendidly " patriotic." 
 
 So much for this matter of patriotism and im- 
 personalism. This is perhaps the 'most conspicu- 
 ous instance of our " progress," but more results 
 of it are readily discoverable. Our whole society 
 seems a mass of the same impersonalism. We are 
 far from each other even in the closest company, 
 and dare not intrude upon each other's " pri- 
 vacy." Once men ' spake their full hearts each 
 to other,' and there was a real bond between them. 
 Now, 
 
 " in the sea of life enisl'd . . . 
 We mortal millions live alone," 
 
 making signs and grimaces from our lonesome iso- 
 lation; and between us washes the estranging sea 
 of our self-centered and impersonalistic age. Do 
 we ever feel a longing like despair to be once more 
 parts of a single continent? If so, we stifle it as 
 sentimental or impracticable, and fall back upon 
 our independence and our principles. 
 
 Why are things so? Well, for half a dozen 
 
THE CROWD 115 
 
 reasons which we needn't consider, and for one 
 which is worthy of remark. It is remarkable that 
 with our " culture," which seems to mean the 
 cultivation of our intellect, our strength of feeling 
 is likely to grow less. Our feelings are to-day 
 no weaker to begin with than they were ten cen- 
 turies ago, and they are rather more refined. But 
 in our vastly grown sophistication and self-con- 
 sciousness we neglect them for things of the intel- 
 lect, or we check them from the fear of cultivated 
 criticism ; and in either case come to the same re- 
 sult, — that the feelings so treated pine and lan- 
 guish from this lack of expression, dwindle with 
 each act of repression, and in the end die utterly. 
 Our man of mind avoids confessing the possession 
 of a heart, and discourages the acknowledgment 
 in others. He must not wear it on his sleeve for 
 daws to peck at; and he hardly dares display it 
 to his dearest friend: it would for both be dread- 
 fully embarrassing. 
 
 And now, as we repress and repulse the bodily 
 expression of feeling, just so we try to get along 
 without any further personal manifestation of 
 it, without open help or helpfulness of any sort. 
 We are not by any means unwilling to be helpful ; 
 the best of us would doubtless rather help than be 
 helped; but either to give or to receive directly in 
 any large degree is so offensive, the former to a 
 proper " reserve," the latter to a proper " self-re- 
 spect," the chief virtue of all persons of principle, 
 as to be positively painful. But if we can only put 
 
116 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 all personality out of sight, — if the giver doesn't 
 know or see the taker, nor the taker him who 
 gives ; if the one can cloak his generosity and the 
 other hide his gratitude, — there is no unseemly 
 show of feeling; no one's isolated independence is 
 irreparably infringed; and no great damage has 
 been done. 
 
 Do I perchance seem to exaggerate? Let us 
 suppose an example, or rather superpose one on a 
 slight foundation of fact. Who has not heard 
 how dear wealthy Andrew, ever devising some 
 good-natured scheme, recently planned a corpora- 
 tion which should pension oif the superannuated 
 of the professorial class; and how, at the news, 
 marked symptoms of pleasure appeared all over 
 the surface of professorial calm.'' But suppose 
 the amiable benefactor had gone about things 
 otherwise. Suppose he had proceeded in person 
 to the personal office of the aged or rapidly aging 
 professorial one, and there seated facing him, had 
 in his most kindest manner spoken extemporane- 
 ously somewhat thus : " My very good and dear 
 sir, you have grown old after twenty-five years 
 spent in the loftiest intellectual pursuits, always 
 with the highest regard for principle; but alas! 
 a thing dreadful in these days, — you have not 
 grown wealthy or even well-to-do. And I there- 
 fore, in token of my sympathy, and for other rea- 
 sons unnecessary to mention, wish herewith to 
 hand you this thirty or forty thousand dollars; 
 or rather, to relieve you of all care in the matter, 
 
THE CROWD 117 
 
 I shall give you every year good interest on your 
 money. My dear friend " — drawing a little 
 closer — " I wish you joy of it." 
 
 Suppose this, if you please ; and imagine, if you 
 can, the momentary speechlessness of our pro- 
 fessor, the stammering of his amazement, the flush 
 of his shame, and finally the words — of indigna- 
 tion or of grief, according to his character — 
 wherein are found the familiar phrases, " Appre- 
 ciate your kind intentions "; " But not an object 
 of charity " ; " No self-respecting person could 
 possibly - — " ; and the like. Perhaps, however, he 
 might in time, by appropriate representations, be 
 persuaded to accept something as merely due his 
 merit. 
 
 Once it was not necessary to apologize to any 
 one for helping him or even making him unmerited 
 gifts. His self-respect received no wound, and 
 his mad love of independence, being in some ways 
 much tamer in those times, did not chafe or 
 threaten to bite. He took all that he could get, 
 gladly ; was willing to be " under obligation " for 
 it, to be bound by a strong sense of gratitude ; re- 
 paid in proportion to his power; and did not feel 
 degraded in proportion to the margin that re- 
 mained. Now we, who would also like all we can 
 get, are unwilling to take, for fear of being bound 
 thereby, of not being able, by an equal return, 
 to get free from obligation, and of losing, conse- 
 quently, our feeling of independence, and our 
 friend's and own respect. Once possessions were 
 
118 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 a very small matter between friends, — no more 
 than the Constitution among politicians: to give 
 and to receive them gladly was the natural quality 
 of friendship. Now we must be careful not to 
 wound each other's delicate pride, which is espe- 
 cially tender on the matter of possessions. Not a 
 very general condition, you object.? No; but 
 very prevalent among all most respectable per- 
 sons, to whom, of course, I am exclusively speak- 
 ing. I have heard that the poor and lowly despise 
 impersonal, organized " philanthropy," — prob- 
 ably for not the best of reasons ; but I observe 
 that the loftily respectable can't bear any other 
 kind. The helping of them must be impersonal- 
 ized and mechanized before it can become accept- 
 able: it must have the human touch taken out of 
 it ; and therewith half its health and all its beauty. 
 For there is both health and beauty in an act of 
 genuine giving, — nowhere more ; and no less in 
 receiving truly. The smallest act of alms may 
 have both, if it be on the one side not the dripping 
 of a too-full pocket or a sop to principle, but the 
 expression of a heart which accompanies it, look- 
 ing through the eyes in pity and love ; and on the 
 other, of a grateful heart likewise revealed, not at 
 all of greedy cunning. It is beautiful, this meet- 
 ing of two on the basis of their human brotherhood. 
 For a moment their meaner aims are forgotten: 
 the one forgets his pursuits and his principles ; the 
 other his hunger and need; not only their hands 
 but their hearts touch, and kindle in a common 
 
THE CROWD 119 
 
 flame. Then back, each to his selfish business 
 again, and the moment fades out of their memory. 
 But while it lasted it was beautiful; and the 
 healthful effect of it lasts longer. 
 
 More beautiful and healthful, when act and mo- 
 ment are enlarged beyond this giving for bread of 
 flour, to be a giving of bread of life and of part 
 or all of the giver's life besides. For so does every 
 one give who gives his time, " the stuff that life 
 is made of," to the helping of another along the 
 way of life. To give one's life, not to " sell it 
 dearly " by battle, flood, or field, but to give it 
 freely and gladly ; and not to throw it wildly 
 away for a cause or a principle, but to lay it 
 down gently and lovingly for one's fellows, — that 
 has been generally esteemed of all actions the most 
 beautiful, and may be surpassed only by the giv- 
 ing that is not soon over but lasts the length of 
 life in daily service and devotion. Less beautiful 
 than only this, the true and deep receiving of that 
 gift — the recognition not alone of the service 
 but of the gift of love that goes therewith, and the 
 response of later wakened but not less strong 
 love. This has been the bond of all most firmly 
 banded fellowships of men, — of the best compan- 
 ionships, discipleships, and brotherhoods that have 
 ever been. It is the most beautiful thing in all our 
 general life, fair with no awful but with sweet and 
 gracious beauty, and yet with a human grandeur 
 before which that of abstract " causes " and prin- 
 ciples hides its diminished head. 
 
120 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 Yet for principles and causes — not to speak 
 of other pursuits, diversions, and associations of 
 the tinkling cymbal kind, " where no love is " — 
 have we forgotten or put by these possibilities, 
 with what success is plain to see, a sorry spectacle 
 to thoughtful men. What shall we do about it? 
 — That question is too big for this chapter or 
 book to answer adequately, but in what brief space 
 is left we shall try to name some means of remedy. 
 
BOOK III 
 THE MESSAGE 
 
1. HEART OF MAN 
 
 Social cure-alls, and remedial measures of less 
 splendid promise, are, roughly speaking, of two 
 kinds. There are those put up for external ap- 
 plication only, with the guarantee that if rubbed 
 vigorously over the body (politic) they will re- 
 move the most troublesome symptoms ; and there 
 are those intended to reach the source and seat of 
 the disorder and, by changing the condition of 
 things there, bring about a whole and lasting bet- 
 terment. Of the two the former are more favored 
 by society, because they are produced in much the 
 greater numbers and seem to offer a simpler, 
 speedier, and more tangible mode of treatment ; 
 whereas the latter find their way with few, since 
 people are suspicious of attempts to meddle with 
 their inwards, and have usually, in fact, to be 
 treated without knowing it. Neither method may 
 be called especially popular, for both are objec- 
 tionable to a large number who, never having been 
 truly well for any length of time, do not know 
 they are sick, and to many others who are wadded, 
 with joy or resignation, to their lot, and to more 
 besides who are doubtful of all remedies. So that 
 doctoring society, by either rubbing or dosing, is 
 a rather diflScult matter. 
 133 
 
124 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 For it is a plain enough fact, though few prac- 
 titioners appear to notice it, that all remedies, in- 
 cluding those for external application only, must 
 make internal application for leave or strength to 
 he applied. Yes, you say, they must of course 
 appeal to our reason first. Yes, and thereafter, 
 if not hefore that, to our feeling. Our reason, 
 forsooth, — what is that after all but only servant 
 of our feelings, and fit only to serve.? Look 
 within you and watch how it works. You feel 
 thus or so, — have love or hate or hope or fear ; 
 and does not your feeling, the blind impulse 
 merely, bid your reason find out ways of satisfying 
 it.? And then poor colorless reason, which has 
 hitherto lain sleepful, will get up and willingly 
 obey — the good bidding or the bad, — a colorless 
 and characterless thing indeed. Which, then, is 
 the more of man, — his reason, which responds to 
 any call, or his feelings, which make up his char- 
 acter.? 
 
 Our feelings, — these are our fund of life, our 
 largest heritage. A remarkable heritage, consid- 
 ering the distance that it has come down to us. 
 From far behind our modern exploits and ephem- 
 eralities, from that impenetrable prehistoric re- 
 gion where our ancestry becomes mankind in gen- 
 eral have flowed down into us these feelings that 
 compose our chiefest part. Nay, are not many 
 of a vastly earlier birth, and traceable no doubt 
 to various origins along the scale of protoplasmic 
 growth.? Likely enough our forefather the 
 
THE MESSAGE 125 
 
 Amoeba bequeathed us such emotions as a swim- 
 ming stomach might — how much in us harks back 
 to that incarnate Hunger, and is blind as that ! — 
 and every new development made its addition to 
 the now fast-gathering throng. Called thus to 
 life by natural necessity or social need, have they 
 steadily developed and expanded with each step 
 of our long painful progress, whereof possibly 
 they are the deeper purpose, not yet come to pub- 
 lic view. Here, however, may we see emotions in 
 the making, — experience changing into impulse, 
 and this growing, getting regulated into will. 
 Here also rises the social practice and the stamp 
 of popular approval, whose power has encouraged 
 or checked certain feelings age by age, and even 
 developed a feeling for itself, in some most power- 
 ful of all. Such, at any rate, is the chief heritage 
 of humankind, a mighty estate for mortal to ad- 
 minister. 
 
 Yes, the only simple, sane, and truly economical 
 method of dealing with these social cases is to 
 apply our remedies directly to the source and seat 
 of the ailment — to try to bring about an abiding 
 " change of heart." 
 
 Perhaps also a simpler method than it seems, 
 if we know how to work it. If we know, that is to 
 say, the nature of our stuff, which is the heart of 
 man, and the means of summoning its fittest feel- 
 ings and bidding them be rulers in that heart. 
 Luckily for us this needful knowledge is not hard 
 to gain : we may find its sources in our selves, or in 
 
126 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 any other self that shows itself fully; or we may 
 piece it together from the scattered gleanings of 
 our experience. For there is common to mankind 
 a large store of feeling, lodged " deep in the gen- 
 eral heart of men." Men, of course, differ vastly 
 in their practical display of feeling: there is a 
 greater difference, the philosophers tell us, be- 
 tween one of themselves and an African savage 
 than between the savage and an ape. But the 
 difference is chiefly due to intellectual causes, and 
 so far as feelings are concerned, is of degree 
 rather than of kind. Even these poles of human 
 culture, the philosopher and the savage, owe much 
 of their most characteristic conduct to the self- 
 same feelings. Is it not in each case a like feeling 
 of curiosity that urges them, the one to surmount 
 the flaming walls of the world and go voyaging the 
 vast immense in mind and soul, and the other to 
 evacuate his cave and investigate his surround- 
 ings.? Or is not for our savage the triumphant 
 snap of his twig trap upon its furred or feathered 
 prey, and for our scientist the exultant click of his 
 slot-machine-like intellect, as each new fact slides 
 into class and section, — is not for each his pet 
 operation productive of a common type of pleas- 
 ure.'' Between saint and villain it is only a case 
 of one's having specially developed one set of feel- 
 ings and the other's having chosen another: both 
 were much the same before their over-specializa- 
 tion began. And in the common course of life the 
 existence of a common store of feeling, of this 
 
THE MESSAGE 127 
 
 " general heart of men " is always proving its 
 reality. 
 
 But the trouble is, that for our purpose, which 
 is to engage those feelings filled with greatest joy 
 for the owner and the others, the common store 
 contains much stuff — some bad, some worthless, 
 and some of quite mistaken worth, — which never- 
 theless gets very largely engaged. The general 
 heart is not all sound : the disease of Self is seated 
 there, and produces many obviously morbid condi- 
 tions ; and with them many others — such as the 
 fiery itch of success, the damp-rot of pleasure, 
 and the dry-rot of righteousness — whose fatal 
 character usually goes unrecognized, — often, in 
 fact, is regarded as the highest state of health. 
 Besides which, the sound remainder is so thickly 
 covered and so tightly choked with the clothes and 
 trappings of our present civilization that it seldom 
 shows itself in full, free action, and we that watch 
 its cumbered and spasmodic movements can but 
 guess what lies beneath. That is why it is well 
 for us in seeking to know human nature to ground 
 our study in the humankind of some departed age, 
 when feelings were simple, strong, and free. Then, 
 rather than now, when they are complicated, im- 
 paired, or perverted by various processes of civ- 
 ilization, they truly show themselves ; and there 
 rather than here do we find them most informing. 
 As an exhibition of the broad bases of human na- 
 ture the Nibelungen Lied is probably better than 
 Vanity Fair; Beowulf and the Chronicle than Ma- 
 
128 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 caulay. And that is why we have begun this 
 study of ours with a visit to the life of our fore- 
 fathers, — where we have found, I trust, at least 
 two powerful and lasting traits of human charac- 
 ter which are not just now appreciated at their 
 worth. 
 
 Each of which, however, shall hereinafter re- 
 ceive as token of our appreciation a chapter to it- 
 self. But first a few words which will try to point 
 out certain sides of their importance. 
 
 3. IDEA OF DUTY 
 
 We have spoken of the plain unvarnished in- 
 structiveness of those old shamless times in re- 
 spect of our deepest and most lasting make-up. 
 It is, thus, in their power not merely to teach us 
 much concerning many of our present practices 
 ■ — to show us the whence and how and what-for of 
 their being done, or of their often failing to be, — 
 but also to bring forward abler in the place of 
 present feeble sort. Not to meddle overmuch with 
 antiquarian matters, we may sometimes, for exam- 
 ple, find the simplest piece of philological research, 
 the hunting back of a single word, surprisingly 
 illuminative, and in fact reformative, of many a 
 modern idea, — perhaps the most valuable of com- 
 mentaries. 
 
 For nowadays when nearly all our words of doc- 
 trine carry a tradition, trailing clouds of past in- 
 terpretation over the present view, so that our 
 
THE MESSAGE 129 
 
 understanding of them strays in general fog, it 
 behooves us in our use of any doubtful word to 
 ask neither what the seven or seventy sages mean 
 thereby nor what we ourselves will make it mean, 
 but first of all to find out what the mere word of 
 itself does or once did mean, and take some meas- 
 ure of our meaning by its own. Thus we can at 
 least discover how well the definitions foisted on it 
 suit its innate sense, and set up a sure test of our 
 random usages. And in this way, furthermore, 
 we have always hope to find an inspiration pent 
 up still within the root of our perhaps dead-seem- 
 ing word. For words were once ideas, living 
 thoughts indeed; and their inmost messages, if 
 thoroughly dug out, may yet reveal some valuable 
 novelties of ancient truth. So I have found in 
 several instances, of which the following shall 
 stand in justification of my philological remarks. 
 Duty is the word that I wish hastily to deal 
 with, — a word of immense significance, one about 
 which many volumes have been made, without 
 much understanding of the word itself. Volumes 
 indeed ; for have we not had our " Whole Duty of 
 Man " s and our extremely magnified fragments 
 of the whole for application to particular times 
 and places ? And have we not also had denials of 
 both whole and parts (not without mutual recrimi- 
 nation) until between our moralistic and our in- 
 dividualistic friends we can't help finding it a very 
 much befogged aff^air.? Duty, proclaim the for- 
 mer, is whatever a man feels bound to do. It is 
 
130 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 the unconditional command of conscience. Duty, 
 reply the latter, is the voice of social tyranny, the 
 bullying echo of ancient tribal custom, the sancti- 
 fication of soul-crushing law. And so the verbal 
 battle rages, with no apparent possibility of com- 
 position. 
 
 But is there not for both these moral-verbal 
 combatants a broad ground of agreement, to 
 which the word Duty itself will lead the way? I 
 suppose, for example, that any decent person, how- 
 ever wildly individualistic, believes in paying his 
 just debts, and I imagine this same is a tenet of 
 most moralists. Well, then, we have thus much 
 of agreement with regard to Duty, and the differ- 
 ences that remain do not much matter. This is 
 the important part, and as to this we are in per- 
 fect agreement. A man should pay his just debts, 
 surely, 
 
 " But," you begin, " we don't see what this has 
 to do with Duty." No ; there is the trouble, that 
 while the whole race of philosophers has been 
 plaguing us with their far-fetched definitions of 
 Duty they have only darkened counsel with words, 
 because they would not look into the native mean- 
 ing, the origin and lineage of the word they wanted 
 to define. For " Duty," if we are to use it as a 
 truly descriptive, and not an arbitrarily wrested 
 term, must mean something literally " due." Ob- 
 viously, you will say. Yes! just so obviously — 
 just so plainly on the public way — that in all our 
 talk about the word this idea of it has been trod- 
 
THE MESSAGE 131 
 
 den down or kicked aside, and decently observed 
 by tradedom mostly, in its daily use of bills and 
 debt. Though truly our investigators usually 
 state that Duty is some due to something else, 
 they do not see or say the truth, — that Duty 
 means a veritable debt, as real in its spiritual sense 
 as any matter for a money payment ; and con- 
 versely, that no valid duty can exist without such 
 an indebtedness. 
 
 Thus much meaning have we got out of our 
 philological interpretation of the word: a histor- 
 ical investigation of it would furnish plentiful ex- 
 amples of a consonant practice, — of a morality 
 of Duty that chimed with this meaning. It were 
 indeed a useful and a fascinating task to trace the 
 growth of this idea of Duty from its first, material 
 stage to those stages in the sphere of purest spir- 
 ituality. We may imagine its first dim embodi- 
 ment as debt by bargain, with a club to back the 
 contract, and behold its next advance, when by 
 dint of clubbing in all cases of recalcitrancy it has 
 got confirmed, some generations later, into a habit 
 of belief that debts should be discharged even if 
 no clubbing were inevitable for the other faith. 
 But here too is a club at hand, the race's self- 
 protective instinct, shaped now into the weapon of 
 a Public Opinion no less punishing than any olden 
 sledge. And in time this wiU maintain the nat- 
 urally following development of the idea of debt 
 or duty, identical with the dictation of every good 
 heart, as voluntary giving in return for voluntary 
 
132 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 gift; and maintain, moreover — with full agree- 
 ment, as before, of all human goodness then exist- 
 ent, — that if some feeling urge or be itself the 
 gift, an appropriate feeling should be paid. 
 
 This, then, is our idea of Duty, or rather the 
 idea which the word itself would indicate to any 
 one who chanced to notice it. Few, however, have 
 hitherto taken their opportunity, even of those 
 who are most given to persuasive or to combative 
 talk about it and about. Yet they might do 
 worse than notice it: they might, for example, 
 keep on at their present task of dinning stale tra- 
 dition into deaf ears and of knocking at hearts 
 absent on more taking business. Or they might 
 do better still, by staying altogether away from 
 definitions and folio dust until the chamber-blind- 
 ness had fallen from their eyes and they could 
 look at the doings and into the feelings of men. 
 Heaven knows, it is high time that they, that we 
 all did so! The old Duty, that hardly ever got 
 itself done for its own sake, but for abler reasons, 
 bullying or coaxing, has now lost the greater part 
 of its collateral strength and is sorely lacking in 
 any of its own. Nay, even those who were once 
 servants of Duty, faithful if not joyful, now find 
 themselves emancipated through the march of 
 Evolution, which takes from most of so-called 
 Duty the least remainder of its unconditional com- 
 mand. 
 
 Wherefore several of us are wondering what it 
 has left, this Evolutionary truth destructive of so 
 
THE MESSAGE 13S 
 
 much. Nothing, answer some, and are joyfully 
 agitated. Something, I demur: this whole scheme 
 of literal Duty utterly unchanged, or even 
 strengthened somewhat, as would seem. It has 
 indeed destroyed the solemn state of various gray 
 Moralities (or customs), masquerading as ambas- 
 sadors of the Most High, and so claiming our al- 
 legiance ; but this simply powerful plan, which has 
 genuinely " evolved " in fashion after its own 
 heart, it has not come near. And so our cham- 
 pion, spared hitherto, now takes the idle field in a 
 new warfare, hereby able to make almost his own 
 terms, we trust. 
 
 Able, also, to gain higher triumphs. For in 
 this theoretic warfare the spectatorial applause 
 is after all the most important prize. The gen- 
 eral heart of man is by no means negligible in our 
 combats, being that for which, as some believe, 
 the whole performance has been planned. This, 
 and not the philosophic brain, box-seated and 
 aloof, shall judge the prize. Thus far it has un- 
 fortunately taken altogether too much teaching 
 from those boxed-up brains, not trusting half 
 enough the deeper thoughts of its own feeling. 
 It has tried, the philosophic species crying " Tinge 
 morality with emotion," to feel enthusiasm for the 
 exploits of that cold, dim-armored Moral I/aw 
 against warm-glowing Human Error ; but with 
 slight success. Poor Moral Law, dim ineffectual 
 phantom, has got many a buffet from lusty Hu- 
 man Error, with only laughter for sad sympathy 
 
134 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 — with small admiration even in its triumphs. 
 But now, that dismal phantom having amid little 
 lamentation — that chiefly of low philosophic wail 
 soon quieted — made forevermore its exit, enter a 
 reality which, having been nursed up by all human- 
 ity, will make the hopefuUest appeal to human 
 feeling, of which it is itself a part. 
 
 3. THE GRATEFUL 
 
 The feeling, in a word, is Gratitude: not the 
 gratitude of giving thanks or paying compliments 
 for petty favors, or of jumping to get free of 
 " obligation " ; but the feeling wakened deep 
 within the common heart of creatures by a pene- 
 trating force of Love, proclaimed thereto by its 
 accompaniment of deeds or felt in any way what- 
 ever. It is the merely natural response of merely 
 normal human nature to a " categorical impera- 
 tive " if ever one was spoken, to the unconditional 
 command of Duty if ever such existed. Do you 
 ask, dear sirs of Philosophdom, why we owe the 
 payment of a voluntary love with love? It is no 
 idle question, this of why. For doubtless we do 
 not in legal ethics " owe " even though we have 
 taken the love or its eff^ects, unless we have prom- 
 ised payment in some pen-made manifesto, with 
 attorney-witnessing as well ; and might even then 
 obtain discharge from indebtedness on the ground 
 of inability to force our feelings. But for us at 
 present the sufficing fact is that the hopeful part 
 
THE MESSAGE 135 
 
 of humankind, if they have felt such love, do take 
 and do repay it not less scrupulously, perhaps 
 more so, than a money debt or righteous " duty," 
 and far more freely, gladly, lovingly. 
 
 And why, then, are we grateful? Why also are 
 we warm? Because we feel so; not because we 
 think we ought to be. And why do we feel so? 
 Because such feeling is the sowing of the race in us 
 — a growth of ages, not to be uprooted or ever 
 wholly overgrown. Strange indeed if we could 
 fail to feel so, seeing how far such a situation — ■ 
 that of love for real or imagined love — underlies, 
 informs all finer life of family and state. Clearly 
 enough in case of family, I trust, and not less 
 surely, history has shown, in that of state as well. 
 Why, this much beprated " love of country " — 
 even when, as usually, it takes the form of a cheap 
 " patriotic pride " and blatant boastfulness — 
 what is it but the outgrowth of a grateful love 
 first given by the thane or follower to chief or 
 overlord whose love went with his treasure-giving ; 
 thence in time transferred to king, who sometimes 
 loved, and always was by courtesy supposed to 
 love his people; and at length, with the decay of 
 loving sovereignty even as a fiction, given through 
 process of personification to the land itself, its 
 scenery, natural resources, customs, and traditions 
 fallibly but often valuably imaged as a mother's 
 faithful fostering? Such feelings have so swelled 
 within us the latent founts of loving thankfulness 
 that now it springs whenever love has come to 
 
136 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 waken it, and meanwhile waits and hopes for wak- 
 ening. 
 
 See how, furthermore, it has in reputation also 
 found its way into the hearts of men, — not in the 
 dull guise of duty, which would have disgusted 
 many, but in the beauty of its simple and spon- 
 taneous self. Gratitude — I doubt if ever in any 
 moderately decent human society the feeling was 
 remarked with mirth or scorn, was not welcomed 
 as something truly fine and worthy of reverence. 
 The " good " are usually painful, the " bad " 
 sometimes delightful; but not in respect of this. 
 Gratitude covers a great deal of such goodness 
 and such badness ; and the lack of it nothing can 
 cover. For is not ingratitude, as " moral Mas- 
 singer " remarks, 
 
 ..." the sin of sins. 
 
 In which all sins are comprehended " ? 
 
 There is hope for the frenzied murderer ; none for 
 the hardened ingrate : for the murderer much may 
 be done; for the ingrate only one thing, and the 
 sooner the better. Why, the very individualists 
 and immoralists — some of them, at least — be- 
 lieve the doctrine of gratitude. Says Nietzsche, 
 " There is nothing in a man of genius more dis- 
 gusting than ingratitude." And again, " The 
 soul that is loved and does not love betrays its 
 sediment; its dregs come up." To gather 
 straightforth glorification were adding endless 
 praise to praise. Or, to pass from praise to prac- 
 
THE MESSAGE 137 
 
 tice, hear reported in a current paper the case of 
 a poor negro kept nine months in jail for non- 
 payment of a poll-tax. Then several impulsive 
 citizens subscribe the sum of the tax, four dollars 
 odd, and get him out. Whereupon, so says our 
 paper, his gratitude is touching — is unbounded, 
 his sole wish being to repay these same philanthro- 
 pists. The wish was not, I guess, desire to get rid 
 of " obligation," to " preserve his self-respect " : 
 such loftiness is not for niggers but philosophers. 
 It was, I take it, the fine flowering of a grateful 
 love, grown up within a heart not accidentally 
 hardened nor carefuUy fortified against the pene- 
 tration of aff'ection, or even of perfunctory and 
 cunctatory counterfeits thereof, and requiring 
 very little watering withal. Or run the social 
 scale to where the haughtiest of poets says in his 
 " Purgatory " : 
 
 " I beheld one toward me moving 
 
 With a look of so great love 
 
 As made me toward him like-loving "... 
 
 The feeling, then, is rooted in all sorts of human 
 soil — an element of our nature. There among 
 all manner of rocks, sands, muck, slime, which are 
 also elements, it grows, and is often hidden by 
 the abounding weeds, but will spring forth in re- 
 sponse wherever love can penetrate, or anything 
 that looks like it. 
 
 "But what of the impenetrable? " Well, how 
 have we established their impenetrability, — by 
 
138 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 the small impersonal proddings and other dutified 
 efforts of makeshift morality, which cannot in na- 
 ture reach the deep-set springs? For the springs 
 of gratitude are somewhere within us, having gath- 
 ered drop by drop, age after age, and despite all 
 latterly accumulated hindrances are able at the 
 true touch to burst forth again. Our present- 
 day ineptitudes do. Heaven knows, hinder them 
 enough, stopping up the access and passage to 
 them or warping their responsive impulse and 
 swallowing its outward flow,— but whose blame 
 is that, or what argument against the doctrine? 
 We are not yet to learn the meanness in our com- 
 mon make-up; we may even assume the baseness 
 absolute of a very considerable number of our 
 brotherhood and berate them in the abstract quite 
 becomingly: but unless we are ready to damn the 
 bulk of mankind, we must expect in men this ca- 
 pability of feeling gratitude; we must, further- 
 more, look to it as humanity's most general trait 
 of good, — above all others indispensable. It is 
 our first hope and our last, our readiest fuel and 
 our last lingering possibility of a spark. 
 
 There may indeed be those impenetrable by any 
 force of love whatever, but that is not the only 
 lamentable thing. It is rather that there are 
 those, a multitude, who stand in wistful waiting, 
 longing with the hunger of generations for that 
 touch of human love which they would answer with 
 their whole hearts ; and have yet no cure for their 
 craving — neither the narcotic of diversion to 
 
THE MESSAGE 1S9 
 
 deaden it nor the strength of voluntary devotion 
 to transform and glorify. They that hunger and 
 thirst for generosity, not greedily but with the 
 soul's desire, wistful flocks waiting for some kind 
 shepherd, — when shall they be fed ? 
 
 And well for him who has found such a one to 
 feed his yearning ! For him life, howsoever hard 
 its terms, takes on a fairer meaning. It is no 
 longer mere grim struggle, unending dulness, or 
 dispirited play: the world, whether previously 
 spiked trap or plush upholstery, changes now for 
 him to a far better field of labor, of effort with a 
 living object and a loving aim. Well indeed for 
 him who has found these ! Having found a friend 
 to love and a work for his love to strive in, he may 
 now forget the madding struggle and turn his back 
 upon the frantic chase; for both life and happi- 
 ness are his, — nay, blessedness, and something of 
 holiness, the highest name. 
 
 4. THE GENEROUS 
 
 But for this one further thing is needful, — that 
 there be those toward whom men may feel this 
 gratitude, that some by loving gift or service shall 
 have earned this grateful love. As gratitude is 
 the general virtue of humanity, springing up not 
 only in pure, fertile natures but in any ordinarily 
 decent human soil, though requiring to be quick- 
 ened withal, — so generosity is the special virtue, 
 possessing a diviner quality, that, like sun or 
 
140 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 shower, descending on this fallow ground, can 
 quicken it to flowering glory. Both in their best 
 are much similar forms of the same feeling, — vis- 
 ible devotions of that love which is one kind 
 through all degrees and, whether it rock the 
 cradle or, as some say, move the sun and other 
 stars, is perfect in proportion to its fulness of 
 devotion. And as love is the all-inclusive virtue, so 
 these activities of it — generosity and gratitude, 
 the quickening and the quickened — are no less in- 
 clusive, a complete moral system. 
 
 As a moral system this has, we may mention, 
 marked advantages over certain others of that 
 name. It does not depend for operation on half- 
 hearted feelings chiefly painful — fear or its rever- 
 ential derivatives : it is itself the impulsive feeling, 
 joyful and its own sufficient reward. It has also, 
 we must mention, some disadvantages in common 
 with its kind, and with whatever has to deal with 
 variable human nature : it depends partly, as most 
 other schemes do mainly, on a doubtful factor, one 
 not always surely found or safely depended upon. 
 For whereas we may reasonably look to find in 
 everyone a certain strength of gratitude, may in 
 fact demand it in the name of duty and decency, — 
 we may neither look nor call for any large gener- 
 osity, nor hope to find it fairly common. It is 
 not in normal human nature to be largely gener- 
 ous : that is the godlike attitude — the divine na- 
 ture, as we guess at it: for average humanity a 
 
THE MESSAGE 141 
 
 good, lasting power of gratitude is all that may 
 with wisdom be expected. 
 
 Nor is it within my expectation or most ambi- 
 tious hope, by means of this or any other book or 
 word whatever, noticeably to increase the number 
 of the generous. That does not happen in the 
 twinkling of an eye or turning of a page : it comes, 
 when not by lucky chance of birth, only by long 
 care and tending, or perhaps transference of a 
 re-directed, usually religious, gratitude. But the 
 present number of generous, though comparatively 
 small, is absolutely considerable, — numerous 
 enough, at any rate, to be addressed with hope of 
 an occasional hearing; and it is for this group, 
 then, that these utterances are intended. 
 
 What is there to say to these? Nothing as to 
 their private quality ; but something as to their 
 generally obtaining public practice, — which is not 
 at all, in my opinion, the ablest and best possible, 
 but proceeds with dubious aims or makes for mis- 
 regarded or mistaken ends. An instance.? Well, 
 the common instances are needless to enumerate: 
 notice rather the exceptional practice that should 
 be the rule. For if there is anything of truth or 
 worth in all that I have thus extendedly been say- 
 ing, the chief aim of generosity should be the stim- 
 ulation of gratitude, — the conscious begetting, 
 cherishing, and cultivating of it to its highest 
 health, strength, and achievement. Now that is 
 not the usual aim of generosity : the most generous 
 
143 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 usually have it least of all in mind. And yet what 
 better aim might be, — what truer magnanimity 
 than to give the means of loving gratefully — a 
 joy greater than all other given joys, and of giving 
 in return devotion? With commendable modesty 
 the generous keep themselves in the background of 
 their giving, their devotion, and show themselves 
 but half and briefly, craving some, but fearing too 
 much interchange of feeling. With more com- 
 mendable boldness might they stand forth to claim, 
 not for their own but for the giver's sake, the full- 
 est of devotion. Were not that possible without 
 suspicion of pride or conviction of vanity.'' That 
 is not, I think, the danger that deters our gener- 
 ous : it is not so much magnanimous modesty as it 
 is pusillanimous impersonalism that fears, while it 
 craves, the personal approach, the human touch in 
 anything, and makes a virtue of its vain perversity. 
 Thus it goes, and the generous of the age might 
 almost seem in league against its greater joy. 
 They will give freely of their goods, their strength, 
 their lives and selves, to furnish opportunities for 
 public play, to preach the trivial virtues and the 
 petty impersonalities of moralism, or otherwise 
 labor blindly in " the general good " : and will 
 shrink the while from reaching forth one finger of 
 themselves to touch those inner springs of personal 
 love, of that single joy through which alone the 
 general is found and fed. How we have changed ! 
 how utterly forgotten the old life of hall and field, 
 
THE MESSAGE 143 
 
 — the childlike generosity and gratitude, the shoul- 
 der-comradeship in arms, the ever-ready life-sur- 
 render ! Forgotten, too, the feeble struggles, when 
 all this had gone, of what little righteousness was 
 left, against the raging lusts of men. But though 
 we have forgotten this shelved and faded history, 
 how can we shut eye to the daily evidences of our 
 need, the need of something more than makeshift 
 moralism as the connection between men, — the 
 need of some bond that shall be both strong and 
 full of joy, human and made for men? The world 
 demands it ; begs for such a bond. How can we 
 mistake men's craving for it, testified perchance in 
 their complaint that such a one (politician proba- 
 bly, as best shepherd of the people in these days) 
 is too distant, cold, impersonal ; or their praise of 
 him for the main merit of some aimless genferosity 
 that showed his human heart.'' 
 
 Yes, the world does genuinely long to love, and 
 craves a living, visible ob j ect of grateful devotion ; 
 but at the same time — and here's the rub — for- 
 bids anyone to aim at its affections and demands 
 that he be only incidentally lovable. And thus, 
 too, the generous natures that would gladly show 
 the love within them feel and shrink from the bleak 
 barriers of their age's frigid life and thought. 
 Their warm, impulsive hearts spring forth to close 
 the gap between themselves and others and become 
 once more " parts of a single continent," but with 
 the first move feel the forbidding flow of icy cus- 
 
144f THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 torn, recognize their severance, and resign them- 
 selves to crowded isolation and faint signalings 
 from shore to shore. 
 
 But must their bounds be endless? Is it not 
 both possible and devoutly to be undertaken — 
 this vitalizing of the unlive ties of life? And the 
 opportunity that especially offers is through the 
 stimulation and direction of gratitude. If there 
 be those who by loving generously may with love's 
 bold modesty demand the due response of grati- 
 tude, were it not advisable they did so — both for 
 the debtor's sake and for sake of those to whom 
 they might direct the practical payment? See 
 how with all our feigned indifference and fostered 
 neglect these sleeping possibilities have now and 
 again waked into very active realities, — have 
 given the gratitude and devotion that we did not 
 ask or want, and wondered what to do with, in 
 considerable embarrassment. 
 
 What to do with such devotion — that were in- 
 deed a question, — not to be answered now but 
 briefly pondered in its full significance. Think 
 what this does truly mean by the mere fact of its 
 being askable: that men may be not only glad- 
 dened through their gratitude but also governed 
 and guided through their love — helped by their 
 own help, and brought to multiply the broader 
 aims innumerably. Aims themselves — good, 
 bad, and mixed — are, Heaven knows, numerous 
 enough : they push upon us from all quarters ; arid 
 men are familiar with them to the point of con- 
 
THE MESSAGE 14.6 
 
 tempt, — without ever a thought of following, 
 because they do not touch the deeper springs, and 
 failing this, only tease the surface feelings into 
 scorn. But here we have the motive ready to our 
 aims ; able to be guided, and eager to follow the 
 guidance. Surely this is something — a consum- 
 mation opening into still more splendid oppor- 
 tunity: the opportunity of founding fairer Com- 
 panionships than those of old; of disposing the 
 Companion's powers not within the outer fringes 
 of our glory, but abroad ; and of building a better 
 feudal order than the olden, to embrace a blesseder 
 mankind. 
 
 Feudalism is nowadays, I understand, a dread- 
 ful word, the merest mention of it making modern 
 ears to tingle and teeth to gnash in anguished 
 imagination. Not without cause, considering 
 that olden feudalism of irresponsible power, and 
 the fiendishness that followed; whence it has 
 seemed well to most of us that the whole execra- 
 ble business should have been swept utterly away. 
 And justly seemed so, as regards its fiefs and 
 serfdoms, its possibilities for ill; but unjustly 
 and deplorably, as regards its power for good. 
 And now that we have come out of the first fit of 
 our Democratic ecstasy and found things not so 
 fine as we expected, perhaps we may be better 
 able to appreciate these other possibilities and 
 hopes. For behind this ancient land- and body- 
 holding that we have now more or less got rid of, 
 was a genuine strength-having founded in the na- 
 
146 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 ture of things, a possession of personal power 
 which lasts always, and will not without a cata- 
 clysm in human character be forbidden its full 
 scope and play. And there exists no less than 
 this an instinctive necessary turning of the 
 weaker toward the stronger for all kinds of help 
 and guidance, though chiefly material, which is 
 also a great spiritual opportunity. Democracy 
 is now realizing with dismayed surprise that 
 declarations of equality cannot change the fact of 
 natural inequality and the dependence, whether 
 for wages or for wisdom, of the many on the few ; 
 but it has thus far generally refused to recognize 
 the opportunities that lie in this and the possi- 
 bilities that sleep therein. It is trying — and 
 quite rightly, all considered — to reduce all kinds 
 of material dependence to a minimum; but then 
 goes on to make the least of any spiritual de- 
 pendence that is likely to be left, and never dreams 
 that it might better be attempting even now to 
 make the most of it. Spiritual dependence, to- 
 gether with most things spiritual, it thinks little 
 about, but having based its ideal helpfulness upon 
 the animal good-nature of men, it would doubtless 
 glare on any who found in its spiritual inequalities 
 its greatest possibilities and highest hopes. 
 
 Feudalism of some material sort may be counted 
 on as the accompaniment of any reasonably im- 
 aginable progress. Masters there must always 
 be, and those beneath them; no wildest dream of 
 any modern " ism " expects to do away with that. 
 
THE MESSAGE 147 
 
 Feudalism of a certain spiritual sort will also last 
 as long as it is possible for any to confer benefits 
 upon any who can feel themselves thereby put 
 " under obligation." The highest form of feudal- 
 ism, where the one loves generously and the other 
 gratefully, — well, that is somewhat rare ; but to 
 establish it more broadly — were not that an un- 
 dertaking worthier than some which now engage 
 the generous? 
 
 Generous — the word had once a larger mean- 
 ing than we give to it. Among the Romans it 
 meant literally, " full of breeding " — well-bom, 
 and by nature noble in ambition ; whereas we have 
 limited the term to mean " free in the giving of 
 good things." Would that both uses might com- 
 bine to make a better than either : that our ambi- 
 tious young men might be brought to feel the no- 
 bility of but one kind of ambition ; and our liberal 
 to recognize a larger liberality than the mone- 
 tary — the giving also of selves and lives ! Am- 
 bition, the desire of power, and liberality in the 
 spending of such power — that were a combina- 
 tion which would swell the number of the truly 
 generous. 
 
 Thereby, indeed, the number of the generous 
 might be considerably swelled, — if but some few 
 of the ambitious would believe our word. They 
 are not innumerous, nor ungenerous — though 
 their ambitions are not usually counted among 
 the generosities. They give freely of their 
 strength, their life; often give it wholly to some 
 
148 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 cherished aim or chosen service : witness the many 
 commercial, scientific, artistic, and professional 
 devotions that thrive or strive among us. 
 Though the majority recites and in so far as pos- 
 sible practises the creed of play, there is a grow- 
 ing number that from nobler bent or disappoint- 
 ment of insipid experience believes and lives a bet- 
 ter creed. Activity of some kind all men crave, — 
 most merely to throw away their excess strength, 
 but some to throw it into well-aimed effort and 
 change it into lasting forms. These active, that 
 aim to do or make some durable thing, are those 
 that avail ; and they are not innumerous. 
 
 But what of their activities: are the things 
 they do and make most certainly the best and 
 ablest possible; or are better waiting to be made 
 and done.'' Public Opinion, arbiter of activities, 
 here saith no helpful word; speaketh emphatically 
 in favor of any useful activities, and mildly in dis- 
 favor of the useless, — but no more. If a young 
 man, tired of play, turns, chiefly for the sake of 
 something else to do, to the making of money, or 
 of other articles, such as bronzes, marbles, books, 
 or paintings ; to service of the state (through pol- 
 itics, of course) ; to doctoring or defending hu- 
 mankind ; and does all only for the sake of having 
 something to do, — that will be generally under- 
 stood and more or less admired : and if all for the 
 sake of humankind, that will be more admirable, 
 to some, — though to most less understandable. 
 But if any one should undertake for the same 
 
THE MESSAGE 149 
 
 reason to win the love of men, to bind them to 
 himself and bend them to his will, — what would 
 Public Opinion think of that? That, I fear, 
 would be at first thought quite beyond it — ut- 
 terly outside its late experience. Now if he were 
 after votes, it would be different. 
 
 Once, however, this way of life — the giving 
 and the gaining of love and service — was univer- 
 sally understandable, and even demanded by a 
 Public Opinion able to demand. The ancient 
 overlord might not mistake his work, was every- 
 where apprized of public expectation, and did not 
 disappoint it. A cunning, greedy expectation, 
 some assert, wherein the giver's gain is also very 
 evident. Possibly, in its beginnings — most men 
 are greedy to begin with ; but in its outcome often 
 wholly beautiful. For both master and man be- 
 fore long felt the strength of an unselfish bond; 
 felt the perfect fitness of such giving and seeking 
 of human love. Wealth of things — what was 
 that to wealth of hearts. This our rude old war- 
 rior-lords and thanes had found by long experi- 
 ence to be the wisest wisdom, — that a man's 
 wealth is in what he loves and serves, and is loved 
 and served by ; and not in anything else whatever. 
 This the bards and prophets both before and after 
 these exemplars have proclaimed and repeated as 
 their utmost, ultimate message to all times ; but 
 this our modern time, brought up on Evolutionary 
 prophesying, which says little of these things, 
 considers probably a humbug and certainly a 
 
150 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 bore: and our generous, ambitious youth hardly 
 hear of such a service, but have very different 
 ideals held up for their copying. 
 
 Ideals very different indeed from this and ap- 
 parently from each other, but with the similarity 
 among themselves of being based on the same 
 formula, the Evolutionary creed — long since be- 
 come a precious piece of cant — of developing 
 one's powers, tending one's innate endowment of 
 whatever sort, in the calm assumption that the 
 practice is the best possible for any one in any 
 possible world-scheme. Some good there may be 
 in such calmly confident tending ; more at any rate 
 than in reckless squandering abroad: and it may 
 somehow fit somewhere, and deserve some thanks, 
 though small. But can you confidently think, 
 talented young creature of whatever kind, that 
 petting your particular toy aptitude for this or 
 that artistic or scientific fooling or performance 
 will necessarily adapt itself to the dearest inter- 
 ests of — anything.? Do you think that in the 
 present state of things your little feat is ever so 
 slightly needful.? No man is indispensable, I 
 hear with doubt ; but with no doubt will say that 
 most of all dispensable is the doing over of what 
 has been adequately done. And done to utmost 
 adequacy, surely, is the random self-developing 
 and self-expressing that floods the archives of 
 mankind and fills the present view. It has pro- 
 duced masterpieces, of course, authenticated by 
 the " leading critics " everywhere as pinnacles of 
 
THE MESSAGE 151 
 
 human effort and eternal monuments of the im- 
 mortal mind; but now the question comes of 
 whether it has not done quite enough of even this 
 for any real purposes. And if enough of master- 
 pieces, what, oh. Heavens! shall we say of our 
 vast stretch of petty self-developments and self- 
 expressions and of the species that persist there- 
 in? What a sordid stretch it is, — much diversi- 
 fied, no doubt, with manifold dilettantisms shame- 
 lessly parading themselves as praiseworthy stunts 
 and shows ; — but sparsely populated. Heaven 
 knows, by any generously useful persons, givers 
 to the common good ! 
 
 More masterpieces, sham or real, or more true 
 masterships, — which, then, is the more needful ? 
 Are we living scattered through a universe where 
 
 — " each in his separate star 
 Shall work at the thing as he sees it 
 For the God of things as they are " ? 
 
 Not quite, we are obliged to say ; but crowded into 
 one world full of work far other, long waiting to 
 be done. And we shall do it never by laboring at 
 impersonal makeshifts or masterpieces, or making 
 part of the intelligent patronage that murmurs 
 soft applause; but, if ever, by observing the re- 
 quirements of fit workmanship in our necessitous 
 surroundings, and them fulfilling faithfully, or 
 even only properly directing our applause. They 
 are the requirements of men, whose mortal need is 
 not of various achievements, exploits, and accom- 
 
152 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 plishments, of master-workings and of master- 
 pieces, but of masterships, of personal love and 
 patient, loving guidance. 
 
 And these masterships — shall not they too 
 produce their masterpieces, better than all others 
 by as much as men are more than things? " Ben 
 Jonson his masterpiece," said the poet of his little 
 son ; and rightly as regards the product, though 
 the credit was with Nature rather than with Ben. 
 But what of him who builds above this bodily soil ; 
 who, having based his building on the natural 
 rock of loving gratitude, shapes with finest craft 
 the rough, rude blocks of character into the tem- 
 ple of a spirit sweet and strong; of a soul which 
 shall itself go forth and work likewise with many.'' 
 That, I take it, is the loftiest efi^ort of creation, 
 the finest product possible to man ■ — beyond com- 
 parison with all other masterpieces whatsoever. 
 
 my advanced friends that with right violent 
 Evolutionary craving hunger and thirst for 
 strength and mastery, here may you have your 
 utmost will. Here is stuif to test your strength, 
 and greaten it — human material to command 
 that shall move not only in command but ever- 
 more in love. The feeling of power I have heard 
 praised as man's nearest possible approach to 
 godlikeness, but I can conceive a better way of 
 drawing near. Power, though good to feel, is of 
 itself bleak and lonesome after all: with love gov- 
 erning and guiding it, is heaven. For heaven 
 lives wherever love sends forth its full strength, 
 
THE MESSAGE 153 
 
 howsoever weak, unto howsoever slight a victory. 
 Have we not found that the love which some say 
 moves the sun and other stars and that which 
 moves only the cradle or the armchair as its ut- 
 most are of equal joy and like divinity? 
 
 O my advanced violent friends, will you play 
 the god in paltriness of power ? — Foolishest of 
 Evolution's apes ! Will you not be strong in gen- 
 erosity, and godlike in the giving of your lives 
 and love? 
 
 These last by way of peroration only, — not, of 
 course, in expectation of hereby perceptibly in- 
 creasing the number of the generous. Eventually 
 we shall try to see if that in any way be possible, 
 but just now I had rather suggest some of the ways 
 wherein our present store of generosity might 
 work with practice patterned on the olden. 
 
 6. INDUSTRIAL-DOMESTIC 
 
 If we seek amid these modem circumstances to 
 reproduce the spirit of a departed Companionship, 
 where shall we look for the material environment 
 most fitted to develop it? What present fellow- 
 ship of men has closest correspondence with that 
 former one? 
 
 It is the group of workers of whatever kind 
 that looks to some masterworker for work and 
 wages. This bond is our best modern substitute 
 for the old predatory Companionship — the thing 
 nearest it in external structure and perhaps in 
 
154 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 practical operation, but intrinsically not much 
 resembling it. For these latter-day associations, 
 leagues, alliances, or other bindings together for 
 strictly business purposes are not, I take it, gen- 
 erally marked by mutual affection. Few of our 
 latest overlords in either the up-to-date employer 
 class or any other superintending or guiding of- 
 fice are chiefly desirous of being surrounded by 
 picked companions of the employee type and find 
 their greatest delight in tending to the joys or 
 the necessities of these, or suffer an unselfish sor- 
 row when death or a rival house has reft any of 
 them away. Nor do the hired comrades often 
 volunteer devotion or hold it " lifelong infamy " 
 to shirk in the daily struggle, or even wish to 
 clasp the employer's hand • — as equivalent of the 
 ancient knees — with any sort of genuine, heart- 
 felt affection. 
 
 " But things have changed, and both members 
 of the bond may now find devotion enough else- 
 where." 
 
 Well, whether or not they do indeed find devo- 
 tion elsewhere or anywhere, they should find it 
 everywhere ; for it is the very stuff of life, the soul 
 of living. Life, we saw, is lived through feeling, 
 thrives or fades within us, not upon the surface 
 of ourselves. It is not a matter of visible and 
 tangible combinations merely — something held 
 together with tough hooks and clasps; it is the 
 fluent spirit beneath all these forms, that makes 
 them to live according to its own strength and 
 
THE MESSAGE 155 
 
 keeps us alive after its kind and its degree. So 
 much joy, which is the love of something, so much 
 life ; and of this sort of life we are not threatened 
 with an excess. 
 
 But what opportunities of living we habitually 
 let pass, or rather spurn away from us unknown ! 
 Chief among them, perhaps, this of the industrial 
 life, the world of work and workers, where men 
 must stand by one another outwardly at least, 
 and might stand together through and through 
 with an immeasurably better quality of success. 
 This opportunity we plod past or dash aside, dog- 
 gedly or recklessly indifferent for the time being 
 to anything but getting the work done — perhaps 
 taking, it is true, a certain grim joy in the ele- 
 ment of struggle, but more probably looking to 
 the breaks in it for our short intervals of delight. 
 And thus the greater part of life is given over to 
 loss in its neglect of joy, the only justifiable ob- 
 j ect of life, the final aim of all its doing. 
 
 Now is not this a matter for melancholy amaze- 
 ment, this reckless spurning and trampling of 
 our peace and happiness.'' What an opportunity, 
 we must repeat : men leagued in a common work ; 
 not temporarily met to " converse and waste the 
 time together," but to work with common aims 
 together day by day ; to do something worth the 
 doing, and filled with perfect possibilities of help- 
 fulness and fellowship. Work alone is much, 
 pacific and tonic to the spirit, but not all, nor 
 enough for more than very few ; and for most it is 
 
156 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 to some degree mere drudgery. But work, if 
 mixed with fellowship, is largely lightened; and if 
 fired with love, wrought in devotion, is wholly 
 changed — purged of its soil, robbed of its labor, 
 lent living strength, — mightily transformed and 
 glorified. 
 
 The thing can be done and has been ; but not 
 without a beginning: it will not spring from mere 
 proximity or community of effort ; it must be be- 
 gun by either party to the association, and grow 
 thereafter by return and interchange of services. 
 But he who is best able to be generous is of course 
 the master, with numerous ways of showing good 
 will at command, and plentiful opportunities. 
 And is it not possible that there should come to be 
 a set of masters who would take their mastership 
 in greater or less degree as just such an oppor- 
 tunity to be generous ; who, after furnishing their 
 families with an adequate number of dwellings 
 and automobiles, might consider furnishing their 
 workers with certain no less necessary things ; 
 and who, having got them bodily comfortable, 
 might next begin, through greater and more inti- 
 mate generosities of personal care and interest, to 
 gain their deeper gratitude and true devotion, and 
 thereby lead them into broader aims and a like 
 generosity? That, it seems to me, would be the 
 making of considerably more valuable articles 
 than are turned out in most manufactories, — 
 yes, and in most studies, studios, or other places 
 where " creative artists " occupy themselves. 
 
THE MESSAGE 157 
 
 Palpitating forms of Shakespeare; solemn- 
 breathing marbles of Michael Angelo : — give us 
 a factory full of men for our creative purposes. 
 
 A simpler kind of creation this than the ar- 
 tistic, one would think; and no less gratifying to 
 the worker therein: yet not commonly practised, 
 I believe, by any sort of master-workers. 
 
 Occasionally, though, it does get tried. One 
 Samuel Jones of Toledo, inventor and manufac- 
 turer of some kind of tool (name by me forgot- 
 ten), believes in the brotherhood of man, and 
 really attempts to put his belief into practice. 
 This almost unaccountable conduct can be ac- 
 counted for only from the fact that he was, to 
 begin with, a rather ignorant man, unschooled in 
 classical or commercial study ; that he read the 
 Bible for himself instead of resting through pul- 
 pitical expositions ; and that, according to some, 
 the womanly element was large in him. At any 
 rate, he does attempt to practise his peculiar the- 
 ories : establishes his business on a profit-sharing 
 basis ; encourages economy and decency among 
 his men ; even encourages singing among them and 
 builds up a choral society and a band ; and writes 
 them from time to time a number of letters, now 
 obtainable under the title, " Letters of Labor and 
 Love," — put together in simple brotherly fash- 
 ion; not burdened with conscious theorizing, as 
 some more ambitious things are; and very read- 
 able — even, from their unique quality, valuable, 
 as some other things, I fear, are not. For reward 
 
158 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 he gets dubbed " Golden Rule Jones " by the ap- 
 preciative public, and is much contemned by his 
 own class as a subverter of business and political 
 principles. It is also to be mentioned that his 
 friends the workers love him greatly, make and 
 keep him mayor, and follow him in death singing 
 the songs he has shaped them, " with a very storm 
 of melodious adoring admiration and sun-dyed 
 showers of tears." Which some will believe a bet- 
 ter tribute than eulogies, obituaries, mausoleums, 
 epitaphs, volumes of memorial verses, and critical 
 comment to the end of time. 
 
 But it is not to be expected that our modern 
 tradesman, merchant prince, or captain of indus- 
 try will unimpelled develop, consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, any such ideal as that of the old Com- 
 panionship. The purely generous impulse is here 
 as elsewhere largely lacking, and the social com- 
 pulsion, in so far as in such things it gets beyond 
 mere selfish care against inconvenience, is directed 
 mainly toward material ends of hours, wages, and 
 the like impersonal makeshifts, and never dreams 
 of more embracing aims and better goals more 
 easily attainable. And neither, of course, does 
 modern business, which is not blessed with the di- 
 vine spirit of meditation, dream in any such di- 
 rection. How should it when its time and interest 
 are taken up with modern competitive warfare. 
 Abstinence from piracy is the most that may be 
 expected. 
 
 So, too, with the matter of domestic service, 
 
THE MESSAGE 159 
 
 which, I understand, is a problem quite as trou- 
 blous in its own small way as labor questions of a 
 bigger magnitude. For here too the problem 
 seems on either side the same, — how to get as 
 much, while giving as little, as possible; and the 
 contracting parties keep up their familiar strife 
 or menacing front of peace, in which concession is 
 the sign of fear. Yet here too what an oppor- 
 tunity, — an opportunity for the lady in the con- 
 tract to live up to all the gracious implications of 
 her title ; — yes, to be more than even that im- 
 plies, and instead of considering her poor helper 
 as a necessary evil — to be tolerated, placated, 
 or resisted, as need arises — to consider herself 
 the real helper, the harbinger and in some sort 
 the bringer of a heavenly favor and beauty to 
 those whose lives are ail-too earthly ; to be the 
 best embodiment of animate divinity that they 
 have ever met with, and a better than the imaged 
 kind they are accustomed to. 
 
 But these suggestions border on the humorous 
 and mar the general solemnity of the book. 
 
 6. PARENTAL SPHERE 
 
 The somewhat humorous, or shall we say mel- 
 ancholy, incongruity between my foregoing sug- 
 gestions and the actual conditions of the indus- 
 trial and domestic world is greatly widened if we 
 consider that in the sphere of parenthood, where, 
 supposedly, the love elsewhere lacking is present 
 
160 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 as an ample impetus, there is little or no attempt 
 at using it for ends of ethical guidance, and that 
 if the modern lord and lady tried to play parent 
 to those in their charge, they would botch the job 
 almost as badly as they do their actual endeav- 
 ors. In fact, parenthood, which should be among 
 the noblest of occupations, not to say professions, 
 is at present far and away the poorest, cheapest, 
 shabbiest of them all. Others require for any 
 slightest following some special equipment or 
 preparation ; this, simply a chance. 
 
 Whence it seems to me excusable in any one to 
 offer the multitude of parents, though from an 
 outside situation, any harmless sort of admonition, 
 and in myself to advise them according to my own 
 queer views. 
 
 With two common kinds of parents, with the 
 fathers and mothers, namely, who take their chil- 
 dren as an indisputable possession, to be adminis- 
 tered during nonage more or less benevolently, but 
 chiefly for parental profit or other satisfaction; 
 and with those who take them mainly as encum- 
 brances, to be kept by any means out of the way ; 
 or with the perhaps still commoner combination 
 of both kinds, — it will not be worth our while to 
 deal, for of course these things do not touch us 
 nearly. We are now concerned only with the 
 parents of our own set, those who are bent upon 
 making their ofi^spring good or happy, no matter 
 how much it hurts either party to the undertak- 
 ing. 
 
THE MESSAGE 161 
 
 Now there are, roughly speaking, three ways 
 of proceeding about this. We shall take them up 
 in the order of their popularity. 
 
 The first way, and the one most widely prac- 
 tised, is that of trying to bribe the subject into 
 being " good." Just what the goodness may con- 
 sist in doesn't for us at all matter: the method is 
 the thing for us to notice. " If Thomas or 
 Mary," the formula recites, " will be a good boy 
 or a good girl while father or mother is out, he 
 or she wUl get something nice " ; if not, something 
 other than nice, we trust. And so through the 
 whole scale of conduct ; and Thomas and Mary 
 soon learn to equip all life's imperatives with an 
 " if " ; such a thing is to be done if something 
 else is to be gained thereby; nothing as a duty. 
 This is an extremely popular way of moral edu- 
 cation, but has been observed to have several dis- 
 advantages. 
 
 The second method, though less generally, is 
 more vigorously followed than the first, and works 
 in quite another way. It tries to teach the child 
 that he should do this thing or that because the 
 thing is " right," whatever that may mean, and 
 for that cause alone. And by dint of endless ding- 
 ing in his ears the method sometimes has its way: 
 the child is occasionally bullied or befooled into 
 doing " what is right," which seems to mean Mo- 
 saic morality, for its own sake ; he becomes truly 
 " righteous," perhaps a prig and probably a bore. 
 Or as often, if not far oftener, he puts the pre- 
 
162 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 cepts privately away — for rare personal, but 
 more frequent public reference; becomes a highly 
 successful financier or most respectable business 
 man ; and in leisure hours an excellent lay preacher 
 of the same morality. And sometimes the youth 
 throws all this wisdom of the elders wildly to the 
 winds, will not be driven whither he is not drawn, 
 and becomes instead of any notable thing a 
 " good-fellow " or a good-for-nothing, possibly 
 most likable of the lot. But not very valuable, 
 though, so far as I can see. 
 
 And thirdly, there is that possible class of par- 
 ent, — perhaps somewhere existent, though in 
 place unknown to me, but certain some time visibly 
 to be, — who have for several reasons rejected the 
 scheme of bought behavior and all other varieties 
 of venal morality, and also put by as a false and 
 feeble makeshift the pedantico-priggish brands of 
 abstract righteousness, and come — perhaps un- 
 consciously, and without preliminary dumping of 
 past schemes — to depend upon the power of the 
 simplest, purest personal relations, the interplay 
 of generosity and gratitude, which are the strong- 
 est living forces of all finer conduct whatsoever. 
 
 These properly illuminated parents will there- 
 fore try above all things, by the free giving of 
 theirs and of themselves to bring their child into 
 the bonds of grateful love ; to make themselves for 
 the time being the fountain-head of all his joys 
 and the master-light of all his doing. And if the 
 child of this extraordinary pair be only not too 
 
THE MESSAGE 163 
 
 far under the ordinary, he will answer with full 
 heart this offering of affection, and find therein 
 addition to his joy. 
 
 And if, or rather when, offences come, for come 
 they must, is there not now at hand the strength 
 of a Parental Opinion stronger far than any pub- 
 lic kind, to chasten and subdue? 
 
 Thus in the beginning. Thereafter the child's 
 larger activities will for some time follow his el- 
 ders' guidance. If toward the everlasting hopes, 
 he has been prepared by experience of the godlike 
 in his father and mother to hope the best ; and if 
 immediately toward humankind, he may dispense 
 with heavenly possibilities and pattern himself 
 after parental example. 
 
 But I perceive that this to some will seem quite 
 blasphemous, and to others no less ludicrous, and 
 in any case had better be concluded. 
 
 7. SCHOOLING 
 
 Since the state must take upon itself to play the 
 remainder of the role of parent for those whose 
 parenthood is satisfied with producing and pro- 
 visioning its offspring or hopelessly perplexed in 
 its further efforts, let us see how the state through 
 its process of schooling can help in the moral 
 education of the child. 
 
 Education has been so beautifully and magnifi- 
 cently defined that to compare the ideal of the 
 dictionary with the practice of the schools were 
 
164 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 wanton cruelty. We shall simply take things as 
 they are, or rather as they are trying to he, and 
 see if from the moral standpoint they might not 
 be somewhat bettered. Schooling, then, as I take 
 it to be commonly attempted, aims first to fit the 
 scholar for the struggle of life; and in this at- 
 tempt, all things considered, it does succeed rea- 
 sonably well. In its second and third undertak- 
 ings, — to make the child delightful to himself 
 and useful to society, there is considerably more 
 to be desired. With the effort to confer this self- 
 delightfulness we shall not now directly deal; that 
 to develop social usefulness will take enough of 
 our attention. 
 
 There is in this attempt, as we have said, much 
 to be desired. For the usefulness resultant from 
 it is, taken on a very high average, almost entirely 
 negative: mainly it amounts to a state of harm- 
 lessness, which, though surely something, is not 
 usefulness at all. And then, if our schooling, 
 having got its charges to keep their hands off' the 
 public throat and out of the public pocket, tries 
 to supplement this passivity with some activity 
 of general value, it finds itself far nearer failure 
 than success. Naturally, and not so very re- 
 grettably ; for see to what sort of activity it coun- 
 sels and encourages. Chiefly the cultivation of 
 the " civic virtues," which involves becoming a 
 member of the " body of enlightened public opin- 
 ion " and voting intelligently. And on what im- 
 pulses of our hopeful citizens do these moderate 
 
THE MESSAGE 165 
 
 requests depend for a proper responsiveness? 
 Why, unfortunately, either upon plain self-interest 
 or upon two impulses not generally very re- 
 sponsive, — that of gratitude to the state at large 
 or to some imaginary personification of it, for 
 more or less imaginary virtues ; and that of gen- 
 erosity to people in general; neither of which im- 
 pulses is often furnished with sufficient impetus to 
 carry its possessor long or far. 
 
 For here, too, as almost everywhere these casual 
 eyes are cast, there is no real devotion, — none ex- 
 pected, none provided for. The nice tame virtues 
 will do quite well, thank you; and for the remain- 
 der of your time please to divert yourselves inof- 
 fensively. Only, the nice tame virtues don't 
 attract, and the inoffensive diversions don't very 
 greatly delight ; and there you have the moral and 
 spiritual aspects of the scholastic situation. It 
 is a situation which reflects the larger world ; a 
 state of things where little or no love is, because 
 though finely fitted forth and stuffed with facts 
 and principles, it is so painfully lacking in person- 
 alities, — in lovable persons, able to govern and 
 guide through giving and receiving individual de- 
 votion. 
 
 The diagnosis suggests the remedy, though this 
 is easier prescribed than furnished. At any rate, 
 the hope lies chiefly in our chance of getting teach- 
 ers fit for this larger teaching, not of facts and 
 principles, but of life itself through love and 
 service ; in the chance of finding men whose knowl- 
 
166 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 edge of their little subject is the least part of their 
 worth ; men who will not make themselves mere 
 empty mouthpieces of school discipline, stupefy- 
 ing or infuriating the child, according to his dis- 
 position, by appeal to rules and regulations, which 
 every normal child detests, but will make them- 
 selves and their own wills sufficient cause of con- 
 duct; who can quicken their pupils into grateful 
 affection and thence into generous emulation, thus 
 by personal relations binding their young charges 
 both to them and to one another. 
 
 In short, the ideal teacher is such a one, I judge, 
 as the angels dream of ; but one in no respect 
 above the hope of partial realization, and not 
 likely, please note, to demand a salary propor- 
 tionate to his worth. Only one objection — the 
 startling and perhaps fatal eflFect that he would 
 have upon his fellow pedagogs. 
 
 It is only just to add that such a teacher must 
 at present — struggling with the offspring of 
 those parentages aforesaid, who have been still 
 further developed by the processes of our civiliza- 
 tion of divertisement — find his efforts pretty ef- 
 fectually dammed up. Somewhere, however — 
 here and there among the stony generation — he 
 might make his way with welcome; and the fact 
 of this, whether certainty or slight possibility, calls 
 for the attempting. 
 
 But as for the higher schooling which should 
 give us such guides of the young and our guides 
 of society in general — good heavens! what is to 
 
THE MESSAGE 167 
 
 be hoped from that ? That is in this respect quite 
 the most disappointing educational phenomenon of 
 to-day. Of to-day ? — It is indeed in point of 
 time contemporaneous, but in point of character 
 belongs to a period of five centuries since, and 
 might as well for all its social value of the sort 
 that we are seeking have departed with them — 
 anywhither. For, apart from its professional 
 preparation, which necessarily escapes present 
 criticism, what ideal does dominate our higher 
 education? Unless things have changed mightily 
 since my recent experience of the process, it is 
 simply the old Renaissance ideal of knowledge, 
 culture, taste, or whatever we chose to call it — of 
 power, partly for its own sake and partly for the 
 sake of being known to possess it — that still dom- 
 inates our higher education, rides it like an in- 
 cubus, and cripples its best possibilities. Not 
 that any of these are not worth, and very well 
 worth, having for their own sake, or even for the 
 second, quite human reason, but that this is in ef- 
 fect the whole ideal, the chief accomplishment, at 
 any rate, of all our cultural education, and that 
 any adequate social ideal, any eiFort to develop a 
 feeling for social helpfulness through personal re- 
 lationships, is, to speak conservatively, very 
 largely lacking. 
 
 " Nay, but that," I hear, " is not the business 
 of everybody ; is taken care of by appointed per- 
 sons ; does in fact develop out of attendant circum- 
 stances and activities." 
 
168 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 Well, as for the first, it only echoes the former 
 condemnation, in that any leader could be satisfied 
 with delegated duties and quite content to stop 
 with their performance; and as for the second, 
 those appointed persons who comment on social 
 matters supply little enough of social spirit, prof- 
 fering principles instead of persons, and pointing 
 toward impersonalities of practice that must share 
 all previous convictions of futility. Whereas, for 
 the third, what can be expected to grow out of 
 those mere circumstances and activities but a few 
 half-selfish loyalties that fade in the fierce con- 
 federate stress of life, or at best do not branch 
 out into a spread of spirit full of shade and com- 
 fort for any. 
 
 The young eager soul, seeking some fit occupa- 
 tion for its growing strength — so full of the finer 
 possibilities and so open to persuasion — this our 
 higher teachers introduce to great root heaps of 
 fact-for-its-own-sake, whereof they encourage it 
 to swallow much stale sort ; or summon it to par- 
 take the " fruits of culture " ; or present it with the 
 hard, cold pebbles of principle; or perchance ad- 
 vise it to go tumble another about by way of de- 
 veloping character and coming into closer fellow- 
 ship : but how often do they — metaphors fail me 
 — give or try to give some part of themselves for 
 living purposes — as example and impulse for the 
 larger practices of Life, which after all is one, or 
 should be, both within and without their little 
 sphere ? 
 
THE MESSAGE 169 
 
 Alas, ye higher teachers, ye were the best hope 
 left: by slumbrous abdication of the former pas- 
 tors the future shepherds of the flock were yours 
 to train. And they find you not especially con- 
 cerned with sheep or sheepcraft, but to mutual ad- 
 miration sorting chafF, " compiling " sticks and 
 stones, or just tickling noses with pleasant wisps 
 of straw. 
 
 8. BIG BROTHER MOVEMENT 
 
 All the pleasanter is it, therefore, to observe 
 beside this utter waste or clumsy misuse of human 
 material — more woful than the waste of natural 
 resources much talked of nowadays — the cultiva- 
 tion on however small a scale of a practice at least 
 properly rooted, and promising with due direction 
 richer fruitage and far wider spread. This Big 
 Brother Movement means in brief the effort on the 
 part of properly equipped persons to play big 
 brother, in somewhat more than the usual exempli- 
 fication of the term, to some child wholly or in 
 part parentless, or spiritually orphaned, with par- 
 ents an unfortunate fact, whom the law has kindly 
 caught while young and given to the aforesaid fit 
 persons' friendly care. 
 
 This, then, is the movement, " founded on be- 
 lief in any child's natural capacity for goodness," 
 that hopes to spread from its present narrow be- 
 ginnings in the Juvenile Courts of several large 
 cities to towns, villages, and wherever any object 
 
170 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 for it may be found; at the same time to branch 
 out into various preventive as well as curative ac- 
 tivities ; and therewithal to propagate Big Sister 
 Movements, in all things like itself. Such are its 
 hopes ; and such are not, in some degree, past rea- 
 sonable expectation. 
 
 So far, and as far as possible in that direction, 
 good enough. For this present case of helper and 
 helped, please notice, contains a no less splendid 
 set of possibilities than certain actualities of that 
 ancient Companionship which in spirit it may al- 
 most duplicate, and does at its best come pretty 
 near to being an ideal ethical situation. It brings 
 into play the generosity of the giver and the grati- 
 tude of the taker, and promises out of this inter- 
 play to bring forth others — new generosities of 
 the grateful, and new gratitudes — in multiplying 
 " spheres of influence," that may widen without 
 measure. 
 
 But while these beginnings are yet young we 
 shall do well to mark wherein the knowledge we 
 have got with looking into past companionships 
 and at this nigh companionshipless present may 
 profit us in way of warning and of guidance. Of 
 this seeming impertinence on my part there is in 
 truth more need than the prime movers themselves 
 might ever imagine. For they, like many other 
 vigorously practical folk, seem just now to be 
 moving about in circumstances and among possi- 
 bilities only in part realized, with never a misgiv- 
 ing of their understanding of the situation; and 
 
THE MESSAGE 171 
 
 it thus devolves upon some dreamer-over of old 
 things and weigher of new to attempt with a mini- 
 mum of impudence to rouse and set them straight 
 in this affair. 
 
 In the first place, then, the sponsors of this 
 movement which contains so much of ethical cir- 
 cumstance and possibility in its exercise of gen- 
 erosity and its appeal to gratitude do not seem to 
 recognize the character of the essential circum- 
 stances or of the most hopeful possibilities of their 
 enterprise. They have not discovered, namely, 
 that their own generosity and the gratitude of 
 their charges are the two chief facts of the situa- 
 tion, and should be made the leading factors of 
 its further growth ; or if they have felt this some- 
 what in spite of the precautions of the age, are 
 afraid to give their feeling head, and end by 
 curbing it altogether as undesirable and even dan- 
 gerous. 
 
 How otherwise, when the whole practise of these 
 triumphantly independent and impersonalistic 
 times has been to keep persons as far apart as 
 possible, each stretching after or strung up to his 
 pet plaything or principle, and its whole bearing 
 gathered into one horrific frown against their com- 
 ing together upon any other basis than a mu- 
 tually armor-plated interest in the said playthings 
 or principles .'' Thus in the present case of patron 
 and protege: the former is expected to perform 
 his part from motives, I presume, of social effi- 
 ciency, or impelled by similar moral imperatives; 
 
173 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 and that part is intended to develop in the lat- 
 ter a sense of self-respect, of principle, of civic 
 responsibility, of almost everything but grati- 
 tude; to make of him a perfectly respectable in- 
 dependent and properly impersonalized citizen, — 
 that is, something of a prig and considerable of a 
 bore. It is intended, consciously or otherwise, 
 chiefly to protect the already ample number of 
 moral mechanisms self-called Society by the addi- 
 tion thereto of some more, re-made in its own 
 image of respectability. 
 
 But meanwhile the human nature of us works, 
 with scant encouragement, more wisely than we 
 know. Do we for a moment fancy, when forced 
 to consider the case, that the most impersonal 
 specimen of patron, sponsor, or prime mover in 
 the matter, howsoever called, can long regard his 
 charge as a mere mite, to be scoured up for final 
 contribution to the social treasury or to the re- 
 pository of principle, or to his, the sponsor's, pri- 
 vate stock of self-respect, and not as a being to 
 be dealt with for his own sake first of all, and 
 only afterward for sake of further usefulness? 
 Will he not in truth, to begin with, and without 
 any thought about the business, have approached 
 his protege in a spirit of generosity.'' And the 
 protege, on his part, if he be of nature fit to bear 
 the superimposition of our modern moral struc- 
 ture of principles — self-respect, thrift, honesty, 
 and suchlike — will be found to have beneath all 
 this the ancient natural foundation of all finer 
 
THE MESSAGE 173 
 
 moral feeling — gratitude. Or will be found, if 
 lacking in this latter, to be susceptible of develop- 
 ment in the former only after fashions ill repay- 
 ing the expenditure of pains. For a reckless or a 
 shiftless person spurred into some degree of help- 
 fulness through the operation of his gratitude is 
 a far finer being than the naturally cautious or 
 ambitious person who grasps any opportunity 
 given, to become a selfishly efficient example of 
 " success in life " ; and if also rarer far, is worthy 
 of the farther search and larger recognition. 
 
 But, such being the case, it may be well to act 
 accordingly; and better for the giver, instead of 
 disguising his generosity under name of social, 
 civic, or other chilly service and checking the 
 spontaneous gratitude of the taker, to stagnate 
 in little pools of righteous self-regard and trivial 
 virtues, — somewhat better for him, I imagine, to 
 make the most of these far stronger feelings in 
 their original strength. 
 
 Let him, therefore, rather show than hide his 
 generosity, and heap it up the more, that he may 
 the more demand its recompense. And let him 
 turn this recompense into the making, not of a 
 smug mechanic or other complacent citizen with 
 full belief in honesty and industry as the best pol- 
 icy, but of a somewhat similarly generous member 
 of the human brotherhood, which such re-makings 
 might in time make something more than a much- 
 canted name. 
 
 This, then, is the possibility of our Big Brother 
 
174. THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 Movement, no less a possibility in many spheres 
 besides that of its present stage, — extensible from 
 Boy Scout bands to seminars in Archaeology, and, 
 in fact, wherever help is to be given and received. 
 And this is the fine flower of helpfulness, for which 
 our most magnificent methods of mechanized be- 
 neficence are but so much gross soil — just now 
 of largely waste fertility. The beneficences are 
 acceptable, usually as belated dues ; but they must 
 not be all. What has he done who has flooded the 
 land out of his superfluity, with a froth of brick 
 beneficences, to compare in point of spiritual mag- 
 nitude with the accomplishment of him who has 
 quickened one soul, tended it, and made it full of 
 growing? Not in our impersonal philanthropies, 
 our fondness for humanity in the abstract, our 
 devotion to the beautiful ideal of brotherhood, 
 does social salvation lie; but in getting at un- 
 beautiful and objectionable John Brown, and try- 
 ing what we can make out of him. Love of hu- 
 manity in the mass is good for poetic purposes ; 
 but for practical we will permit a man to damn 
 humanity in the mass as any kind of foolish, knav- 
 ish lot he pleases, if only he will undertake to 
 wrestle with one or two concrete specimens. We 
 will in such case even forgive him any amount of 
 philanthropy. 
 
 Enough now of ancient practices and modem 
 opportunities. Not, of course, that the stock of 
 applicabilities is anywhere nearly exhausted, but 
 
THE MESSAGE 175 
 
 that the reader may be, and because in any case 
 the nearer need is not of further directing gen- 
 erosity, which, once started right, could easily 
 find out its way, but of further developing the 
 spirit of it among men for application to preseiit 
 thronging chances. For the barely possible com- 
 ing to pass of such a hope we must look to quite 
 another sphere than the rhetorical, and may as 
 well, whatever our expectations therefrom, forth- 
 with be about it. 
 
 9. RELIGION AT LENGTH 
 
 At length, then, we come to the mention of re- 
 ligion, the ultimate means whereby the number of 
 the generous may hope to be enlarged. By way 
 of this mention I might begin a plea in behalf of 
 the practice of some sort of Companionship by 
 those who have already got themselves one kind or 
 other of active rather than recitative religion ; 
 but the foregoing pages may perhaps have served 
 as the body of such a plea, and what is left of it 
 shall be the wind-up of my spokesmanship. For 
 the present I prefer to scan the prospects of re- 
 ligion itself, which must be regarded as the prime 
 mover, the recruiting and guiding or driving en- 
 ergy in much of our higher social planning. 
 
 Speaking of these prospects as something quite 
 apart, of course, from probable increase or de- 
 crease in the bulk of our religious establishments 
 or in the amount of that good behavior popularly 
 
176 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 tagged " true Christianity " — considering them 
 merely as the future of our feeling of relationship 
 to the Spirit of the Universe, it is fair to say that 
 they are promising. 
 
 And safe also ; for no longer need the speaker 
 fear response of satirical sniff or splenetic snort 
 from the highly intellectual listener, who some- 
 times from patient curiosity reads things like 
 this. Time was rather recently when most of the 
 highly intellectual stood beside the swirling, bot- 
 tomless gulf of things as once another body of 
 supposedly bereaved Companions stood beside 
 that dismal mere wherein the light of their lord's 
 presence had gone out, staring upon the depths 
 and expecting never to behold his face again. 
 But that time is no more ; and those of the watch- 
 ers who did not accept the pleasant invitations of 
 the town but stayed awhile trying to fathom- the 
 awful wonder of it all have found satisfactory 
 signs of Something moving in the gulf. 
 
 But the Something that moves veiled in mystery 
 is a very different thing from the imagined God 
 whom lately we saw go down in the gulf. What it 
 is we know not, but we have learned several things 
 it certainly never is. Theology, our little guess 
 at God, after being intellectual so long is at length 
 becoming intelligent. Men no longer go into their 
 studies, redolent of Aristotle and Aquinas, shut 
 doors, draw shades, and then try to fill in a " na- 
 ture of God " stuffed out in all good features to 
 infinity. They now look upon the world without 
 
THE MESSAGE 177 
 
 and see all round them sights of woe and various 
 other evidence that this planet is not such a per- 
 fect masterpiece as people once supposed — or 
 recited. The world-old problem of the presence 
 of evil in the world presents itself with ever-fresh 
 insistency and refuses to be solved by any of the 
 old solutions. If infinite love working with in- 
 finite power, we ask, why infinitesimal evil? And 
 the dodging answers of either crude or transcen- 
 dental theology do not fool us. Even the very 
 best answer hitherto, the apology for suffering as 
 a refinement of the soul, — if it implies that God 
 could have made us angels to begin with and 
 spared us the preparatory teasing or torturing, 
 is really the worst insult offered him since the pub- 
 lication of Paradise Lost. 
 
 No ; the only ground left for an intelligent re- 
 ligion of the future is the idea of God not as the 
 All-powerful who refuses but as the Striver, the 
 Worker under difficulties, hedged and hindered by 
 the unalterable conditions of the world; of that 
 world not as masterpiece but makeshift, a train- 
 ing-ground and necessary stage in the growth of 
 souls : and of ourselves as parts of a single spir- 
 itual continent, portions of the Highest which 
 could not instantaneously be raised to the " an- 
 gelic " state but must individually undergo the 
 process, howsoever painful, of this life, in order 
 thus to gain the experience which makes us con- 
 scious and conservative of ourselves — and one 
 another. 
 
178 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 These few planks, then, — rather diiFerent from 
 the ancient buttressed and spired certainties, may 
 be found floating about on the abyss of things as 
 our best buoys of hope. " Hope? We'd like a 
 little solid ground of evidence." Well, that is 
 outside present guidance ; * but, pardon me, you 
 really do more greatly need the hope. The day 
 of evidence as the chief factor of religious faith 
 has happily gone forever. When theology was 
 half ugly threat and half insipid promise, then 
 evidence was indeed necessary to drive people into 
 their religion; but with us nowadays unless the- 
 ology can in itself be beautiful enough to draw 
 men with a minimum of evidence, unless religion 
 can thrive on far other things than fear or greed, 
 both had better die at once. Unless God is a hope 
 beside whose possibility all other hopes are pale, 
 he might better be impossible. To make him thus 
 desirable above all sure desires of earth is a pres- 
 ent task for the religiously theological. 
 
 And here, at any rate, the problem comes back 
 to those matters of Duty (as embodied in the Com- 
 panionship) and of moralism (as seen in current 
 practice) which are the main business of this book. 
 For, so far from God's being generally hoped and 
 desired, he has so long been exploited by society 
 — propped up scarecrow-like for the protection 
 of respectability, — and by an obliging piety as 
 
 * Obtainable, however, from such books as Edward Car- 
 penter's Art of Creation or F. C. Schiller's Biddleg of the 
 Sphinx, or even by use of the naked mind. 
 
THE MESSAGE 179 
 
 the revengeful despot of righteousness, so much 
 fonder of principles than of persons that he 
 must be " reconciled " to the latter for slighting 
 the former, — that most are glad on merely human 
 grounds, and some on truly ethical, to find his 
 despotic authority faded. But when, deprived of 
 his despotism, God joins an Ethical Society, to 
 appear as patron of pure righteousness, the 
 change does not tend toward his greater popu- 
 larity. 
 
 What, in brief, will tend that way.!" Nothing, 
 certainly, which tries to use religion chiefly as a 
 means of bribing or browbeating people into pub- 
 lic measures, and nothing which asks them to an- 
 swer the far-off appeal of abstract principle. 
 Fatherhood and sonship in their purest sense? 
 Alas, the terms have no pure sense to many, and 
 are spoiled by canting use for not a few. But if 
 not fatherhood and sonship, then at least the old 
 Companionship as type and pattern of the bond. 
 And with God as generous overlord from whom we 
 hold our lease of soul, who would not be his will- 
 ing thane and fight his battle for the world.'' 
 Could not such religion be the flower not alone 
 of rich and fertile spirits but of the ordinarily 
 decent soil of average humanity .'' " The soul 
 which knows that it is loved," says Nietzsche, 
 " but does not itself love, betrays its sediment : 
 its dregs come up." The soul that, feeling itself 
 given such a gift of love, does not respond in an 
 exalted gratitude — we shall pity, and perhaps 
 
180 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 in time think it expedient to coerce, but first we 
 might make sure that it has had a chance. 
 
 This, then, is the religion, patterned on the old 
 Companionship, which alone, I take it, can wake 
 the corpse of moralism into live devotion. It can 
 even satisfy the fierce immoralist : once more says 
 Nietzsche : " What is done out of love always 
 takes place beyond good and evil " — beyond the 
 meddling of society and the bullying of " moral 
 law." 
 
 Conscience and the stars astonish you. Pro- 
 fessor Kant.'' Well, having ceased to be in the 
 least astonished by my conscience or even greatly 
 troubled thereby, I can yet find that even as the 
 greatest of all natural laws is that whereby the 
 rushing worlds are kept in calmest poise and the 
 stars help one another in their courses, each fur- 
 thest sun and star on all the rest relying, — so 
 easily the strongest among spiritual bonds is that 
 whereby the soul that lives in its divinity is drawn 
 to all the other universe of soul and brought, into 
 the orbit of a serviceable life. 
 
 10. WHAT FOLLOWS 
 
 Returning from this little digression to the pro- 
 longation of our previous route, I find the latter 
 turning into this, — what may have seemed a by- 
 way becoming the highway and main route hence- 
 forth, and the other only a dwindling lane that 
 leads nowhither. For we know what normal hu- 
 
THE MESSAGE 181 
 
 man generosity amounts to, and what may be 
 looked for from the source that is fed only from 
 beneath the stars. And even when any generous 
 devotion does occasionally come thence, its aim 
 will probably be far different from that of the 
 higher born. 
 
 For it does indeed make a difference in what 
 terms we interpret ourselves, — whether as soul- 
 less accidents, the perishing spawn of a certain 
 minor planet, or as vessels of even the faintest 
 heavenly hope. In the one case some slight duties 
 to be done at the dictation of necessity or good- 
 nature : and for the rest, Paterian or Priapic rap- 
 tures, spiritual or sportive pastimes, as we list 
 and the native near-god Rumor, or Public Opin- 
 ion, will aUow, — with, perhaps, sporadic generos- 
 ity trying to lessen the misery and increase the 
 comfort of mankind or keep themt more or less 
 amused through various menageries, colleges, 
 museums, and educational parades. In the other 
 case, the hope of a heavenly Companionship and 
 its high consummations to guide us at our best: 
 the fear of being false in such a possible high 
 calling to keep us faithful in our feeblest hope; 
 and while we wait the true interpretation, work 
 more than the comfort-making kind to keep us pa- 
 tient, even happy while we wait. 
 
 Yes, it does make a considerable difference if 
 we read the riddle in these latter terms, a two- or 
 threefold difference, in fact. For apart from that 
 most high Companionship they open to us, do not 
 
182 THE BURIED IDEAL 
 
 they almost alone make possible the higher human 
 companionships and services? Mankind as such 
 hardly invite our service: they are rather too 
 generally engaged at throat-grips or in rubbing 
 noses or in less pictorial pursuits to prove intrin- 
 sically attractive; and the circumstance of our 
 being all in the same boat, bound none knows 
 whither, does not inevitably draw us into fonder 
 fellowship. No, our religions of humanity have 
 long been starved out, and now stalk about dis- 
 tractedly, a painful spectacle to sympathetic 
 men. Only belief in some more binding tie than 
 our common muddy Amoeba-birth, — only belief 
 
 in some sublimer, mystic bond of kinship only 
 
 the faith or hope of a God-origin and heavenly 
 soulhood can perfect our fellowship, giving it 
 shape and plan. Thus and not otherwise will 
 Brotherhood be easy, when the soul beneath its 
 most unlovely vesture shall seem beautiful and 
 lovable because it is a soul, that came from God 
 and may go back to Him much glorified and great- 
 ening evermore. . . . O benevolent reader, with- 
 out such belief or hope this book had not, for bet- 
 ter or for worse, been written ; but one, if any, 
 very different — quite probably for worse. 
 
 But the evident fact is that this or any other 
 theology, even the minimum of it needful for re- 
 ligion, does not take the crowd, and will not, for 
 ample and persistent reasons, in some centuries 
 take them. And it becomes, therefore, the mis- 
 sion of those who in these times have either faith 
 
THE MESSAGE 183 
 
 or hope to show forth something of their under- 
 standing of the higher things to those who can or 
 do have neither faith nor hope, nor understanding 
 of any high thing. They shall be themselves the 
 embodied messages and breathing images of a 
 heavenly generosity, through them made visible, 
 though in miniature, to the blindest among men. 
 Notable about this business of message-bearing 
 and of image-being is the fact that it demands be- 
 ings and bearers, actual ambassadors instead of 
 distant senders, mere communicators, and imper- 
 sonal mouthpieces. It can never be accomplished 
 through the mechanism of any philanthropical 
 foundations, organizations, institutions or restitu- 
 tions whatsoever. Peace to all these: they have 
 their uses and their praises, and are likely to lack 
 neither soon. But the more that these may do to- 
 ward making our common life bearable and com- 
 fortable, the more is there need of something that 
 shall make it beautiful and j oyf ul in so far as that 
 may be. And that may be not by the accomplish- 
 ment of mechanism or moralism, but by the com- 
 passing of spirit through Companionships of men.