Part 45

It turned out, however, that Virginia’s monkeys were figurative, and that she meant ugly children. This was disconcerting to Ruth, Marian and Florence, and caused prolonged giggles.

I said that would simply be contrast, not discord, that contrast might please and make even the ugly look beautiful, but discord, two beautiful houses so placed together that neither looked well, two colors that “killed” each other, these were ugly. Beauty had to find for itself or make for itself the right surroundings, in order to be truly beautiful.

Florence said: “I think it is a shame people should be liked just for their looks. I know girls who are liked just because they are pretty, when there’s nothing to them, and others who are homely, but much nicer, who are liked less. I try never to let it influence me.”

Henry said he never did let it; that he always liked people for what they really were, and not for looks.

“I can’t help it,” said Virginia. “I know a girl who is horrid in every way, and when she is away I can’t bear her; but the minute I see her I forgive her, because she is so beautiful.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “if you knew her from the inside, as she knows herself, you might think that no one could help liking her.”

“No,” said Virginia; “she’s one of the people who, I feel sure, cannot think that of herself.”

Marian agreed with Virginia. She said when she met people she was interested in the good-looking ones, and always judged them by their faces.

“That is different,” I said, “to judge people by the character written in their faces, as we judge them by all things. But though all beauty is good, the beauty of the personality, of life itself, is surely best.”

TWELFTH MEETING

Through inevitable circumstances the club had been discontinued for six weeks. But I was in personal touch with all the members during this interval.

“We have not met for so long,” I said, “I wonder whether you have forgotten anything of what we had done?”

They all assured me that it was clear in their minds. Henry said: “It has had time to sink in.”

“I am glad,” I went on, “that we happened to stop at the end of a part; that now we begin anew at a new thing. But I am a little afraid to go on. For now we are going to speak of morals, of goodness.”

“Why are you afraid?” asked Marian.

“Because I am so afraid we are going to moralize, to become petty.”

“Don’t be afraid of that,” said Marian; “I have had too much experience to be likely to do it.”

“Well, then,” I said, “first of all we must find out what we consider good, what we mean by the good—that misused word—and to distinguish between the true and the artificial good. Have you any ideas about it?”

None of them had any definite idea of what they meant by the good, or of the distinction between the goody-goodiness which repelled them, and the goodness which they loved. They thought immediately of “good” people who are unlovable or stupid. Virginia and Marian exchanged remarks about a girl they had met that morning at Sunday-school; and all through the meeting, until I found effective means to stop them, they referred to her as an example.

“Now,” I said, “I will tell you of the true good, and by the light of it you will clearly distinguish the artificial. You remember the first law of art.”

Henry had the paper with him. It was: “Art is a symbol of completeness in a definite shape.”

“So the good, too, is a symbol of completeness in a definite shape,” I said. “Goodness is always of relation. It means the right relation, sympathy and unity of those who know each other. And the good man is the man who makes a complete world, a symbol of the perfect awakened universe, out of those few people whom he knows—that is, of whose existence he is aware—and of all that he knows in the universe, which is a small part of the whole. He makes it complete and perfect, by making all his relations with life complete, and understanding and beautiful. You realize that a Robinson Crusoe, alone on his desert island, if he never expected to see human beings again, could not be either good or bad.”

“Yes, he could,” said Virginia, “in the way he treated the animals.”

“That is right,” I answered. “If you include the animals as selves, he could still be good or bad in his relation with them. But you see that goodness is of relation. It is having our relations right, good and sympathetic, as far as they reach.

“That, then, is the law, the only law. All moralities and systems were made to uphold and fulfil that law, and they all change with the needs of man and his circumstances, but that one law is always the same, is always true, is the spirit which makes all actions either good or bad. For I believe there is no action in itself either good or bad, but all must be tested by this law. ‘Is it good?’ means: Does it make for true and understanding relations between men? Do you agree with me?”

“Yes,” they said.

“Take the laws of Moses, or any system of laws,” I went on, “and you will see that they were made by men, who realized in themselves the one supreme law, the law of progress toward the human whole. These systems of laws, if followed by people incapable of seeing the broad way for themselves, would lead toward that end. But the lesser laws change with circumstance, as a path changes with the landscape. Take the Mosaic laws. The first laws, ‘Thou shalt have no other God,’ ‘Thou shalt not take his name in vain,’ and ‘Thou shalt keep the Sabbath,’ seem to us now much less important than some later laws, such as ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ and so on. But if you stop to think, you will see that these first were most necessary; for the people’s idea of God, so much more limited than ours, was still, like ours, the reason for their morality, the law of laws, the ‘I Am’ that gave meaning to goodness. In their condition, if they had not reverenced and feared God, they would not have kept the laws of Moses. The actions or ways of life we often hear called good, but which arouse in us a feeling of contempt, as if it were goody-goodiness, or self-righteousness, are actions according to petty laws of goodness, by people who do not know the spirit, the great law above all laws. Sometimes they are actions no longer good at all, acted according to petty laws that we have passed. Do you see what I mean?”

“Give me an example of what you mean,” Marian said.