Part 41

The last law, the idea of aloofness, of being above as well as within life, of being actor and spectator at once, they do not understand, and I made no further effort to explain. Henry said he left it out—for that reason—when writing his paper.

I said Henry had mentioned we did prefer and choose the artistic life. But why? I suspected, from something they said, that they did not grasp the reasons.

Virginia said she didn’t care what the reasons were, she knew she liked it best. The reasons, at any rate, had not impressed them. So I repeated what I had said, of the artistic life including the other two, of how the artist must know science and love goodness before he can create beauty.

“Then,” said Florence, “the great artists were philosophers?”

“Always,” I answered. “Take the ancient religious writings, such as the Vedas and the Bible. They were always poems, the work of artists who were also philosophers and scientists.”

“Scientists?” asked Marian incredulously.

“Surely,” I answered, “men such as Moses, who gave laws on sanitation and daily life, were the scientists of their time.”

“An artist must understand science,” said Virginia, “natural science, if he wants to paint. And he must know physiology, too. I am beginning to realize that at school.”

Some one mentioned Franklin. “Was he more scientist, or philosopher, or artist in his life?”

“I think he was a philosopher,” said Virginia.

“No,” Marian answered, “he just gathered a lot of bromidic proverbs, that were as old as the world, and said them over in an impressive way.”

“But they were philosophical,” Virginia protested.

“No,” said Marian, “I don’t think so. They were scientific, for they dealt with little disjointed parts of life.”

I told them I wanted to paraphrase a certain verse in the Bible, the verse:

“Faith, Hope and Charity, but the greatest of these is Charity.”

“How?” asked Ruth, much interested.

“I would say,” I went on, “‘Truth, Goodness and Beauty, but the greatest of these is Beauty’—because it includes the other two.”

Now I changed the first law into terms of life:

“Life is a symbol of the complete Self, in a definite shape.”

Life must express that Self in definite and individual lines, that is, in beauty.

I spoke again of small and great genius, of art expressing a lesser or a greater completeness, of “Jenny Kissed Me” and “Faust,” Florence’s examples. “With people you must have noticed the same thing. Some people whose lives seem very limited, who understand and know little, still have such harmonious natures that in their spheres they seem complete. But with still other people you feel that their lives are much larger, that they grasp more of life and possess more, because they understand more. The more we understand, sympathize and love, the larger is our life.”

Marian looked puzzled.

“What is it, Marian?” I asked.

“Why,” she said, “should some people be larger and more complete than others?”

“How do you mean, Marian?”

“Why is it so? Why aren’t we all alike?”

“If we were,” said Henry, “it would be very monotonous.”

“Oh, I know that,” said Marian. “But why is it so, anyway?”