Part 66

Ruth said she knew one never thought especially of one’s self at such a time. Experiences, however, were scarce. Virginia spoke of the time she was with me in a burning trolley car, and how she had been interested rather than excited. But then she was a very, very little girl. Ruth said she didn’t remember how she felt when she was almost run down by an automobile.

Marian asked: “One is not always conscious of the spectator?”

“No,” I answered, “one is conscious of him only at rare moments. For it is the actor who acts and lives, and the spectator controls him. The spectator is oftenest silent. He watches. And he must choose.”

“But is the spectator always sure?” asked Marian. “Sometimes you cannot tell what seems to you best, until you talk it over with others.”

“The spectator,” I said, “judges and chooses according to all he can know. Surely, he chooses in relation with others. He can use all experience; he goes even beyond his sorrow and pain. Do you understand? He goes beyond sorrow and pain, and uses them. Do you remember I spoke to you once of all things being a memory, of the body itself being a memory? The basis of all sympathy is experience and memory. So the spectator grows and uses everything. He is, as it were, in partnership with the whole, with God. And he rises on his own knowledge. The higher he goes, the farther can he see. Do you understand that aloofness, the judging from the standpoint of the whole, of the whole self, is the basis of morality? It is the part judging and living for the whole. Those who know this make the laws for all, according to their knowledge; and the others, who are only actors, whose spectator is not wide awake, have to obey.”

At first they protested. Was this true? They did not understand. Henry asked did I mean making laws to control anarchists? I explained how some had to be forced to conform, even for their own good, and how the others were free, because the law that was good for all, they knew to be best for themselves.

I said: “My own limited personal life is my weapon and means, the only weapon and means I have to come to completeness. I will always remember that it is a means, something to use; but it is my only means, and for that reason it is important and precious to me above all else.”

“You mean,” said Virginia, “that you don’t want to dream away your life, like the ascetics of the middle ages, who dreamed of the whole, but didn’t do their part?”

“Yes,” I said, “exactly. It is as if we were all watching a vast chessboard, all together interested in the game, but each able to control only one pawn, and yet anxious to play in such a way as to win the game along with the others, each for the sake of the whole. And that pawn is our own life; the only power we have.”

“Aren’t we ourselves the pawns?” asked Marian.

“No,” said Henry; “then we couldn’t manage them.”

“We are both pawn and player,” I said; “for if we were only the pawn, in the crowd of little players, we could not see ahead, and would go blindly forward without aim. One must be above the board to see it.”

And now I asked: “Shall we look once more over all we have said in these few months?”

They answered that it seemed to them this last meeting had been a review.

“Yes,” I answered, “aloofness, which a while ago you could not understand, is now wholly clear to you; and more than that, it includes all we have said.”

“It doesn’t include it all,” said Henry, “but it finishes and rounds it out.”

“And our little club is finished,” I asked, “artistically finished?”

“Yes,” they said.

“I have noticed that sometimes some of you call it ‘class.’ Is it a class? Is it not rather a club; have we not all gone forward together?”

Ruth answered: “It is each or both. Sometimes we speak of it as class, or club, or lesson.”

“Surely it is a lesson,” said Henry, “because we have learned something from it. Whatever you learn from is a lesson.”

Well, after all, I suppose I have given them my thought; and that is what I must have meant to do.

I asked them what practical result the ideas had had upon their lives.

“Do you mean in action?” asked Marian. “I never stop to think of it when I act, but I find that I refer my thoughts again and again to this standard, when I don’t mean to, or expect to.”

“It is a habit of thought,” I answered, “and our habits of thought unconsciously make our actions.”

“Yes,” said Virginia, “things that happen are always bringing to mind the things we speak of here.”

“But we have not yet reached an absolute, stiff conclusion, have we?” insisted Marian.

“No,” I answered; “we are going to be seekers all our lives—are we not?—comrades in the search for light?”