Part 48

“They are unhappy themselves,” said Florence.

I told them a story of three apple seedlings. The first said: “I will not grow; there is so little room; I will not help crowd out the others.” He died, a weakling. The second said: “I will not bear apples, because the effort might spoil the glossy appearance and fulness of my foliage.” He was good to look at, but—useless. The third one said: “Apple-trees were made to bear apples. I like to do it, I want to do it, and I will.” And he did, and so served himself and many beside.

“I never could understand the morality,” I said, “that tells us to live only for others.”

“It would be impossible,” said Henry; “one has to live first for one’s self.”

“And last for one’s self,” I went on, “for that biggest self which is our own life in relation with all that we know. If we lived only for others, others would still live for others, and so on, with no end and no sense. It is like that idea of living for future generations.”

“What of it?” asked Marian. “I am particularly interested.”

“That we shall live for future generations, and the future generations shall live also for future generations, and so on forever and ever!”

“Unless it were all for the last generation,” said Henry.

“But that will never come,” I answered, “or, if it does, it will surely not be worth while. I believe that whoever lives the best life for himself, and does the thing he is most impelled to do, for his whole big self, is also best for all others. He must be, since they are a part of him.”

“It seems to me,” said Marian, who had been dreaming, “that there is no absolute truth. When people claim that they have found the whole truth, and try to explain it to me, I never feel convinced.”

“Does our idea strike you so, Marian?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” she said, “not at all. You never make positive statements.”

“No,” I answered, “I am willing to grant that what seems true to me now may one day be included in a larger truth.”

We spoke a few words, here, of envy. They agreed at once that artistic envy, the envying of capabilities and talents, was impossible to one who felt that others were doing things for him, that what he lacked in himself he would find in others, for his satisfaction.

“But,” said Florence, “there are so many other kinds of envy, where other people having the thing does you no good.”

“That’s true,” I said; “a beggar, for instance, envying the rich people in a restaurant for their food, will not lose his hunger through seeing them eat.”

I told them of the danger and difficulty of our philosophy of right and wrong, how I hesitated to tell it to them for fear they might misuse it, and how much harder it was to guide one’s self by so big a standard than by an unbeautiful, ready-made morality of little laws and precepts. He must take the straight and narrow path, who cannot guide himself across the prairies by the path of stars and planets.

Virginia insisted on my repeating some facts I had told her lately. A young French girl of good education, made desperate by poverty and lack of work, slashed a picture in the Louvre, in order to be arrested, get shelter and food, and attract attention to the injustice of her lot. We discussed such cases, and decided that where society did so great a wrong, the lesser wrong might be part of the cure.

“I cannot judge people,” I said, “when circumstances drive them to do wrong in self-defence.”

We came near forgiving every one, when I reminded them of the sternness of our standard. It made us lenient with others, who did not—and perhaps could not—know that they might master circumstance, and that the whole world was their whole self. But with ourselves it made us terribly exacting.

“Some people are like animals,” said Virginia. “I can’t understand them, and cannot sympathize with them.”

“That,” I said, “is your loss, you superior animal. Ruskin says somewhere, and quite truly, that who cannot sympathize with the lower cannot sympathize with the higher.”

Now Virginia plunged off into a stream of delightful nonsense, told us how she sometimes loved and sometimes hated herself, how, if she was very happy, she had to pay the penalty of reaction, and how interesting she was, altogether. As a punishment we made her keep still for five minutes by the watch. I hoped Alfred would talk instead. Suppose we punished him by making him talk for five minutes!

Florence said: “What I like most of all is to be liked. I often envy people their lovableness.”

“Naturally,” said I, “that is what we all like most, isn’t it?

“And the truly good person, in our sense of good, is also the lovable, beloved person.”

Marian and Virginia exchanged glances. They were thinking again of that girl in Sunday-school, who, they said, was thoroughly good, but not at all lovable.

“The good person,” I said, “is also the intelligent, sympathetic person. Sympathy, understanding love, is the great virtue. I have made a list of seven virtues. Would you like to hear them? First, Love.”