________________________________________________
_ Note.--When Mrs. W. asks how can a millionaire give a single
dollar to colleges and museums while one human being is destitute
of bread, she has answered her question herself. Her feeling for
the poor shows that she has a standard of benevolence; there she
has conceded the millionaire's privilege of having a standard;
since she evidently requires him to adopt her standard, she is by
that act requiring herself to adopt his. The human being always
looks down when he is examining another person's standard; he
never find one that he has to examine by looking up.
The Man-Machine Again
Young Man. You really think man is a mere machine?
Old Man. I do.
Y.M. And that his mind works automatically and is
independent of his control--carries on thought on its own hook?
O.M. Yes. It is diligently at work, unceasingly at work,
during every waking moment. Have you never tossed about all
night, imploring, beseeching, commanding your mind to stop work
and let you go to sleep?--you who perhaps imagine that your mind
is your servant and must obey your orders, think what you tell it
to think, and stop when you tell it to stop. When it chooses to
work, there is no way to keep it still for an instant. The
brightest man would not be able to supply it with subjects if he
had to hunt them up. If it needed the man's help it would wait
for him to give it work when he wakes in the morning.
Y.M. Maybe it does.
O.M. No, it begins right away, before the man gets wide
enough awake to give it a suggestion. He may go to sleep saying,
"The moment I wake I will think upon such and such a subject,"
but he will fail. His mind will be too quick for him; by the
time he has become nearly enough awake to be half conscious, he
will find that it is already at work upon another subject. Make
the experiment and see.
Y.M. At any rate, he can make it stick to a subject if he
wants to.
O.M. Not if it find another that suits it better. As a
rule it will listen to neither a dull speaker nor a bright one.
It refuses all persuasion. The dull speaker wearies it and sends
it far away in idle dreams; the bright speaker throws out
stimulating ideas which it goes chasing after and is at once
unconscious of him and his talk. You cannot keep your mind from
wandering, if it wants to; it is master, not you.
After an Interval of Days
O.M. Now, dreams--but we will examine that later.
Meantime, did you try commanding your mind to wait for orders
from you, and not do any thinking on its own hook?
Y.M. Yes, I commanded it to stand ready to take orders when
I should wake in the morning.
O.M. Did it obey?
Y.M. No. It went to thinking of something of its own
initiation, without waiting for me. Also--as you suggested--at
night I appointed a theme for it to begin on in the morning, and
commanded it to begin on that one and no other.
O.M. Did it obey?
Y.M. No.
O.M. How many times did you try the experiment?
Y.M. Ten.
O.M. How many successes did you score?
Y.M. Not one.
O.M. It is as I have said: the mind is independent of the
man. He has no control over it; it does as it pleases. It will
take up a subject in spite of him; it will stick to it in spite
of him; it will throw it aside in spite of him. It is entirely
independent of him.
Y.M. Go on. Illustrate.
O.M. Do you know chess?
Y.M. I learned it a week ago.
O.M. Did your mind go on playing the game all night that
first night?
Y.M. Don't mention it!
O.M. It was eagerly, unsatisfiably interested; it rioted in
the combinations; you implored it to drop the game and let you
get some sleep?
Y.M. Yes. It wouldn't listen; it played right along. It
wore me out and I got up haggard and wretched in the morning.
O.M. At some time or other you have been captivated by a
ridiculous rhyme-jingle?
Y.M. Indeed, yes!
"I saw Esau kissing Kate,
And she saw I saw Esau;
I saw Esau, he saw Kate,
And she saw--"
And so on. My mind went mad with joy over it. It repeated it
all day and all night for a week in spite of all I could do to
stop it, and it seemed to me that I must surely go crazy.
O.M. And the new popular song?
Y.M. Oh yes! "In the Swee-eet By and By"; etc. Yes, the
new popular song with the taking melody sings through one's head
day and night, asleep and awake, till one is a wreck. There is
no getting the mind to let it alone.
O.M. Yes, asleep as well as awake. The mind is quite
independent. It is master. You have nothing to do with it. It
is so apart from you that it can conduct its affairs, sing its
songs, play its chess, weave its complex and ingeniously
constructed dreams, while you sleep. It has no use for your
help, no use for your guidance, and never uses either, whether
you be asleep or awake. You have imagined that you could
originate a thought in your mind, and you have sincerely believed
you could do it.
Y.M. Yes, I have had that idea.
O.M. Yet you can't originate a dream-thought for it to work
out, and get it accepted?
Y.M. No.
O.M. And you can't dictate its procedure after it has
originated a dream-thought for itself?
Y.M. No. No one can do it. Do you think the waking mind
and the dream mind are the same machine?
O.M. There is argument for it. We have wild and fantastic
day-thoughts? Things that are dream-like?
Y.M. Yes--like Mr. Wells's man who invented a drug that made
him invisible; and like the Arabian tales of the Thousand Nights.
O.M. And there are dreams that are rational, simple,
consistent, and unfantastic?
Y.M. Yes. I have dreams that are like that. Dreams that
are just like real life; dreams in which there are several
persons with distinctly differentiated characters--inventions of
my mind and yet strangers to me: a vulgar person; a refined one;
a wise person; a fool; a cruel person; a kind and compassionate
one; a quarrelsome person; a peacemaker; old persons and young;
beautiful girls and homely ones. They talk in character, each
preserves his own characteristics. There are vivid fights, vivid
and biting insults, vivid love-passages; there are tragedies and
comedies, there are griefs that go to one's heart, there are
sayings and doings that make you laugh: indeed, the whole thing
is exactly like real life.
O.M. Your dreaming mind originates the scheme, consistently
and artistically develops it, and carries the little drama
creditably through--all without help or suggestion from you?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. It is argument that it could do the like awake without help
or suggestion from you--and I think it does. It is argument that
it is the same old mind in both cases, and never needs your help.
I think the mind is purely a machine, a thoroughly independent
machine, an automatic machine. Have you tried the other
experiment which I suggested to you?
Y.M. Which one?
O.M. The one which was to determine how much influence you
have over your mind--if any.
Y.M. Yes, and got more or less entertainment out of it. I
did as you ordered: I placed two texts before my eyes--one a
dull one and barren of interest, the other one full of interest,
inflamed with it, white-hot with it. I commanded my mind to busy
itself solely with the dull one.
O.M. Did it obey?
Y.M. Well, no, it didn't. It busied itself with the other one.
O.M. Did you try hard to make it obey?
Y.M. Yes, I did my honest best.
O.M. What was the text which it refused to be interested in
or think about?
Y.M. It was this question: If A owes B a dollar and a
half, and B owes C two and three-quarter, and C owes A thirty-
five cents, and D and A together owe E and B three-sixteenths of
--of--I don't remember the rest, now, but anyway it was wholly
uninteresting, and I could not force my mind to stick to it even
half a minute at a time; it kept flying off to the other text.
O.M. What was the other text?
Y.M. It is no matter about that.
O.M. But what was it?
Y.M. A photograph.
O.M. Your own?
Y.M. No. It was hers.
O.M. You really made an honest good test. Did you make a
second trial?
Y.M. Yes. I commanded my mind to interest itself in the
morning paper's report of the pork-market, and at the same time I
reminded it of an experience of mine of sixteen years ago. It
refused to consider the pork and gave its whole blazing interest
to that ancient incident.
O.M. What was the incident?
Y.M. An armed desperado slapped my face in the presence of
twenty spectators. It makes me wild and murderous every time I
think of it.
O.M. Good tests, both; very good tests. Did you try my
other suggestion?
Y.M. The one which was to prove to me that if I would leave
my mind to its own devices it would find things to think about
without any of my help, and thus convince me that it was a
machine, an automatic machine, set in motion by exterior
influences, and as independent of me as it could be if it were in
some one else's skull. Is that the one?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. I tried it. I was shaving. I had slept well, and my
mind was very lively, even gay and frisky. It was reveling in a
fantastic and joyful episode of my remote boyhood which had
suddenly flashed up in my memory--moved to this by the spectacle
of a yellow cat picking its way carefully along the top of the
garden wall. The color of this cat brought the bygone cat before
me, and I saw her walking along the side-step of the pulpit; saw
her walk on to a large sheet of sticky fly-paper and get all her
feet involved; saw her struggle and fall down, helpless and
dissatisfied, more and more urgent, more and more unreconciled,
more and more mutely profane; saw the silent congregation
quivering like jelly, and the tears running down their faces. I
saw it all. The sight of the tears whisked my mind to a far
distant and a sadder scene--in Terra del Fuego--and with Darwin's
eyes I saw a naked great savage hurl his little boy against the
rocks for a trifling fault; saw the poor mother gather up her
dying child and hug it to her breast and weep, uttering no word.
Did my mind stop to mourn with that nude black sister of mine?
No--it was far away from that scene in an instant, and was
busying itself with an ever-recurring and disagreeable dream of
mine. In this dream I always find myself, stripped to my shirt,
cringing and dodging about in the midst of a great drawing-room
throng of finely dressed ladies and gentlemen, and wondering how
I got there. And so on and so on, picture after picture,
incident after incident, a drifting panorama of ever-changing,
ever-dissolving views manufactured by my mind without any help
from me--why, it would take me two hours to merely name the
multitude of things my mind tallied off and photographed in
fifteen minutes, let alone describe them to you.
O.M. A man's mind, left free, has no use for his help. But
there is one way whereby he can get its help when he desires it.
Y.M. What is that way?
O.M. When your mind is racing along from subject to subject
and strikes an inspiring one, open your mouth and begin talking
upon that matter--or--take your pen and use that. It will
interest your mind and concentrate it, and it will pursue the
subject with satisfaction. It will take full charge, and furnish
the words itself.
Y.M. But don't I tell it what to say?
O.M. There are certainly occasions when you haven't time.
The words leap out before you know what is coming.
Y.M. For instance?
O.M. Well, take a "flash of wit"--repartee. Flash is the
right word. It is out instantly. There is no time to arrange
the words. There is no thinking, no reflecting. Where there is
a wit-mechanism it is automatic in its action and needs no help.
Where the wit-mechanism is lacking, no amount of study and
reflection can manufacture the product.
Y.M. You really think a man originates nothing, creates nothing.
The Thinking-Process
O.M. I do. Men perceive, and their brain-machines
automatically combine the things perceived. That is all.
Y.M. The steam-engine?
O.M. It takes fifty men a hundred years to invent it. One
meaning of invent is discover. I use the word in that sense.
Little by little they discover and apply the multitude of details
that go to make the perfect engine. Watt noticed that confined
steam was strong enough to lift the lid of the teapot. He didn't
create the idea, he merely discovered the fact; the cat had
noticed it a hundred times. From the teapot he evolved the
cylinder--from the displaced lid he evolved the piston-rod. To
attach something to the piston-rod to be moved by it, was a
simple matter--crank and wheel. And so there was a working
engine. [1]
One by one, improvements were discovered by men who used
their eyes, not their creating powers--for they hadn't any--and
now, after a hundred years the patient contributions of fifty or
a hundred observers stand compacted in the wonderful machine
which drives the ocean liner.
Y.M. A Shakespearean play?
O.M. The process is the same. The first actor was a
savage. He reproduced in his theatrical war-dances, scalp-
dances, and so on, incidents which he had seen in real life. A
more advanced civilization produced more incidents, more
episodes; the actor and the story-teller borrowed them. And so
the drama grew, little by little, stage by stage. It is made up
of the facts of life, not creations. It took centuries to
develop the Greek drama. It borrowed from preceding ages; it
lent to the ages that came after. Men observe and combine, that
is all. So does a rat.
Y.M. How?
O.M. He observes a smell, he infers a cheese, he seeks and
finds. The astronomer observes this and that; adds his this and
that to the this-and-thats of a hundred predecessors, infers an
invisible planet, seeks it and finds it. The rat gets into a
trap; gets out with trouble; infers that cheese in traps lacks
value, and meddles with that trap no more. The astronomer is
very proud of his achievement, the rat is proud of his. Yet both
are machines; they have done machine work, they have originated
nothing, they have no right to be vain; the whole credit belongs
to their Maker. They are entitled to no honors, no praises, no
monuments when they die, no remembrance. One is a complex and
elaborate machine, the other a simple and limited machine, but
they are alike in principle, function, and process, and neither
of them works otherwise than automatically, and neither of them
may righteously claim a PERSONAL superiority or a personal
dignity above the other.
Y.M. In earned personal dignity, then, and in personal merit
for what he does, it follows of necessity that he is on the
same level as a rat?
O.M. His brother the rat; yes, that is how it seems to me.
Neither of them being entitled to any personal merit for what he
does, it follows of necessity that neither of them has a right to
arrogate to himself (personally created) superiorities over his
brother.
Y.M. Are you determined to go on believing in these
insanities? Would you go on believing in them in the face of
able arguments backed by collated facts and instances?
O.M. I have been a humble, earnest, and sincere Truth-Seeker.
Y.M. Very well?
O.M. The humble, earnest, and sincere Truth-Seeker is
always convertible by such means.
Y.M. I am thankful to God to hear you say this, for now I
know that your conversion--
O.M. Wait. You misunderstand. I said I have BEEN a Truth-Seeker.
Y.M. Well?
O.M. I am not that now. Have your forgotten? I told you
that there are none but temporary Truth-Seekers; that a permanent
one is a human impossibility; that as soon as the Seeker finds
what he is thoroughly convinced is the Truth, he seeks no
further, but gives the rest of his days to hunting junk to patch
it and caulk it and prop it with, and make it weather-proof and
keep it from caving in on him. Hence the Presbyterian remains a
Presbyterian, the Mohammedan a Mohammedan, the Spiritualist a
Spiritualist, the Democrat a Democrat, the Republican a
Republican, the Monarchist a Monarchist; and if a humble,
earnest, and sincere Seeker after Truth should find it in the
proposition that the moon is made of green cheese nothing could
ever budge him from that position; for he is nothing but an
automatic machine, and must obey the laws of his construction.
Y.M. After so--
O.M. Having found the Truth; perceiving that beyond question
man has but one moving impulse--the contenting of his own spirit--
and is merely a machine and entitled to no personal merit for
anything he does, it is not humanly possible for me to seek further.
The rest of my days will be spent in patching and painting and
puttying and caulking my priceless possession and in looking the
other way when an imploring argument or a damaging fact approaches.
-----
1. The Marquess of Worcester had done all of this more than a
century earlier. _
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