Part 39

I meant to pass by the subject, and leave out the last law, rather than arouse a self-consciousness, which was the opposite of what I hoped to awaken. But unintentionally the conversation led to a better understanding.

I spoke again of reverence, as I had done to Alfred, of the small self awed in supreme moments, before the immensity of its whole self.

“Do you mean,” asked Leo, “that it makes us feel how small we are?”

I tried to make it clear. I spoke of the feeling of nothingness that overcomes us, when we stand under the stars at night, and realize them as worlds and suns, and our planet as a dot of light in immensity.

They had all felt so, except Henry.

He said: “It does not make me feel small. I feel that I am a part of it all, and one with the universe.”

“Yours is the true feeling,” I answered, “for you are, indeed, a part of it, and the realization of it is within yourself. A kitten in your place would not feel it.”

“I know,” said Marian, “that many people do not feel it. For I have sometimes walked with some one out in the night, or by the sea, and could not speak. And suddenly they said some trivial thing, which showed they did not feel as I did.”

Alfred said he felt overawed by the sea, because it was so strong and big.

“You mean,” I asked, “that it makes you feel helpless before its might?”

“Yes.”

“It has been said,” Henry went on, “that one cannot be an astronomer and not worship, I believe it is true.”

“And now,” I said, “we are coming to the seventh law after all. For by aloofness I mean that the artist, during his act of creation, feels his own immense self, feels the whole universe, and sees himself and all other things as a part in relation to it.”

“I have felt that way sometimes,” said Florence, “just for a moment.”

“It is a momentary realization,” I answered.

“Don’t you think,” asked Ruth, “that it is a superior feeling, though; a cold, perfect feeling?”

“No,” I answered; “though it lifts us above petty concern for ourselves, it does not lift us out of sympathy and action.”

Henry said: “When I go to Riverside and see all the lights, and think of the millions of people, I feel them all.”

It reminded me of the day Marian had said she felt so when she thought of all the windows and rooms in all the apartment houses.

“Suppose,” I asked, “that you had failed in a very important examination, Henry, would you feel bad?”

“Yes,” he said, “if it were a very, very important one.”

“Then, if you went to Riverside Drive and forgot yourself in that immense feeling, when you returned home you would not only be over your sore, bitter disappointment, but you would be full of energy to begin work again.”

“Yes,” he answered, “I would.”

“So, you see, it is a creative, sympathetic, living aloofness, not cold and far off.”

We put down for the seventh law:

7. Aloofness.

Knowing what we meant thereby.

Ruth said she had noticed that the artistic life was a selfish ideal.