Part 53

“Maybe,” I said, “for the cry makes us know of the pain. At one time, however, a virtue was made of the mere suffering with others; and I suppose in its good time this was necessary, because it developed the feeling which makes sympathy possible.”

“I think it is good,” said Virginia, “for when my sister was ill, I did not know how she felt, or understood her, and so I couldn’t sympathize with her; but later I understood, and then I wished I had felt with her as she did. It would have been better.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “for it would have taught you to feel. To know how others feel is the best thing in the world. But to let that feeling overcome and crush you, to pity them, is weakness. I think it is a weakness we have all felt, and longed to overcome, when we suffered so much with others that we were unable to act.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Ruth.

“To be strong to help and strong to do, not overcome with world-sorrow,” I said, “to face suffering in ourselves and others as something to be overcome and used!”

Virginia spoke of a curious calmness in herself that made her not act excitedly when anything happened, but always wait first to see the outcome. “If a child falls in the street,” she said, “I don’t go rushing toward it as some people do, but wait to see if it will pick itself up.”

“But if it fell out of a window,” said Ruth, “I suppose you would rush forward.”

“No,” she answered, “not unless it were necessary. I would wait to see what happened. When my hat blows off, I never go rushing after it till I see where it is going to stop.”

The juxtaposition of a falling child and a falling hat was disconcerting.

“I know how Virginia feels,” I said; “it is the artist in her always looking on at all that happens. It is a good way, too. Now what other virtues are there, like justice, that are really substitutes for right feeling?”

They could not think of the others. So I mentioned honesty, which is much like justice—even a form of it; steered clear of a reef of arguments on truth-telling, showed them how honesty would not even be mentioned where there was perfect love, and went on to the next and most important, namely, duty. They had not thought of it in this way before. They all disliked the word duty.

I spoke again of the girl who stays home from the theatre with some one she does not love, because she feels it to be her duty. Why does she do it?

“Because she chooses,” said Alfred; “she wants to do it most.”

“But why?” I asked.

“She may think,” said Ruth, “that the other person would do the same for her.”

“But she may not think so,” I said, “and still she would stay.”

“Because,” said Virginia, “she would feel good afterward.”

“Yes,” I said, “in a sense it is that. It would give her satisfaction.”

“I would do it,” said Ruth, “but I don’t think I would feel any particular satisfaction afterward.”

“But,” I said, “if you didn’t do it, you would feel dissatisfied with yourself. And therein lies the explanation of duty. Duty is a substitute for love. It is the substitute the mind imposes on us when our feelings will not fulfil the scheme of beauty and order which is our strongest desire. To do your duty is to fulfil your strongest desire—lacking the great love. Love shall overcome duty. Duty means only debt. It is limited, small. It is the ugly framework that love must make before it can build its beautiful dwelling-place. The strong man always does his duty, because he flinches at nothing that is on the path, but more and more he loses duty in love.”

Virginia said: “I think it is fun sometimes to hate things, such as hating to go to school.”

“Why?”

“Because to do a thing you hate to do makes you feel good sometimes. I like it.”

“We have come to love the hard thing,” I said, “because it is the growing thing. We get to fancy that when we do something hard we must be getting ahead, because generally it is true.”

Virginia said: “I like the poem by Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm:

‘When joy and duty clash, Let duty go to smash.’”

“I wish joy and duty were the same,” I said, “and that is just what they are when love conquers. You have to do your duty when love fails, and so it often seems an unpleasant job.”

I spoke now of promises, and of how unnecessary they would be were it not for our failures in love. Then we went on to speak of obedience. We said that where love was perfect one would not think of obedience or disobedience. Obedience is a substitute for understanding. He who understands does not obey. He acts. We spoke of necessary obedience, the substitute, and then of the family where parents and children were so much at one that obedience was never mentioned.