Human harmonies and the art of making them

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HUMAN HARMONIES AND THE ART OF MAKING THEM

CHAPTER I We Are Educational Laggards

IT is plain to be seen that, as a rule, when men and women do the wrong thing it is because they lack the mental equipment that would enable them to do the right thing.

Of course, they may be forced into wrong conduct by their social environment. This, however, is but a reflection of this same lack in themselves — a product of their own foolishness.

Obvious as this fact is, however, its tremendous practical importance is overlooked by educators and reformers. In education we find too little reform; and reform., instead of being educational and successful, is largely a failure, for the reason that it is attempted with punishment and charity; both of which are degrading, instead of reforming.

It is not difficult to believe that about all the wrong conduct in the world is due to a wrong start in life ; bad parental conditions, neglected home training, stupid schooling — ignorant parents and teachers. 9

And about all the help that any person (even the weak-willed) needs in life is: first, encouragement, then to be awakened to a consciousness of his own possibilities ; helped to see the importance of his own improvement. This awakening belongs of natural right to every human being, but even this is denied by most homes and schools — the awakened individual will care for his own betterment, — he will become self-made, and can very well dispense with the University course of schooling. Why it is that we find so many going wrong in the world, is because they have been denied what is due them from their homes and their schools. In our books we have stored an abundance of self-help information, — splendid ideals of conduct that we do not succeed in educating into practice.

The bulk of the wrong of which men and women are guilty, against both themselves and others, is due much more to what they do not know than to what both they and others think they know, but fail to perform.

There is always something we do not know, that belongs with what we think we know but can not practice — it is not practical for the reason that more needs to be known.

Knowledge can not become truly practical till it is sufficiently broadened to embrace will and feeling. All gain of knowledge strengthens the will and corrects the feelings.

Much of the conduct of life is wrong because it is that into which men and women are led by their feelings, feelings that are determined by their inherited pro-

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pensities, — the part of themselves that belongs to a past age of the world — the savage in them. For the reason that they have been incompletely instructed, imperfectly fitted into modern life by education, a large part of their conduct is merely instinctive; what little they know of the new has not yet become a matter of feeling, it is, therefore, inoperative, h :

Intelligence equips the individual with higher motives for his conduct; with intelligence he both knows and feels what is best to do.

Selfishness stands at one extreme of human conduct and unselfishness, when it becomes self-sacrifice, at the other. As motives, when compared with the one of perfect justice, they are both primitive and somewhat foolish. I have natural rights, but so have you, and no wise man will deprive another of his rights, nor will he degrade himself by accepting of the fruits of sacrifice from another. Selfishness and unselfishness are educational forms used in the kindergarten stage of human growth and instruction — that are left behind by men and women of larger growth.

Charity is made necessary by injustice, and injustice is the product of ignorance. This secret of human harmony, success and happiness that can be found in enlightenment, is but dimly seen by even the most intelligent among us, and is almost entirely hidden from the not well informed majority.

There is an unnecessary waste of energy in the world, as well as too much suffering and turmoil, when there is stored in our books abundance of information to prevent most of this waste, and some way should be found to so place this information in human minds as to make it operative.

The greater part of bad and stubborn tempers, dishonesty, fear, laziness, poverty, sickness and crime would disappear from among us, if in some way the grade of human intelligence could be raised twenty per cent.

The world has accumulated a large amount of educational information that it does not yet use ; its power is largely a latent one, little more than a possibility, for the simple reason that we lack the home and the school equipment to either place this information in the minds of the rising generation, or to so stir, enthuse and awaken the pupil that he will do this for himself after leaving the school.

Even philanthropic educators are yet far from being able to see how, by means of enlightenment, the majority could be changed physically, intellectually and morally, into men and women of as high a grade as are now the best among us, and what this would do for everybody.

Than this one of education, no other undertaking among men so much deserves united effort, irrespective of race, nationality, color, creed or politics.

The part of this process that is needed more than any other, is the stirring, enthusing, spurring, awakening. Nothing better could be inaugurated than a national, or even a world lecture campaign, carried out for the sole purpose of creating a general knowledge-seeking en-

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thusiasm; reaching socially, from top to bottom; it is this that would bring peace and progress.

In spite of the praise of our flatterers, educationally speaking, we are about two-thirds asleep ; dull, indifferent, pessimistic, afraid, discouraged and lazy. We are also too fatalistic. Our too great belief in the unavoidable makes inevitable that which is not in the least necessary.

This is a time during which Nature is trying to drive us to appreciate our educational possibilities, — trying to awaken us to the very great benefits to be derived from its voluntary application, and we must suffer just so long as, and to the extent that we fail to respond.

All the inharmonies of our lives tyrannize over us in the proportion that we allow them, in our ignorance, to do so. Almost every person can see that he has fallen in his life far short of his possibilities ; for the reason that education did not play its part with him as well as it might have done. There are few of us who do not feel that (had we been taught as we might have been taught, and as early in our lives as we might have been taught, what the world had to teach) our lives might have been lived much more efficiently and satisfactorily.

Because he does not know what he can make of and do with himself, the average person learns comparatively little in life; he takes to the long, hard, expensive way of experience; he loafs away his spare time and waits to be driven by his needs or blindly enticed by his feelings into all sorts of uncomfortable situations ; he lacks both the knowledge and the stamina to improve and make use of himself and his surroundings.

In this lack of the proper information we find the cause of the larger part of the present increasing family inharmony and divorce. Men and women do not know how to so keep pace with progress as to meet co-operatively the requirements of life's highest functionings. The cause here is the same as that of social and business inharmony, — it is a lack of practical information.

Even under present unjust social conditions most of this family squabble, divorce, crime and tragedy could be avoided, if each of every married pair knew what they could do within the confines of their own home by cultivating within themselves the attractions of personal worth, and between themselves the attractions of common interests; to build between themselves the affinitytie of things; to acquire a knowledge of such items of life as interest both, to cultivate mutual loves, to voluntarily set about the education of the two in company; they should be companions, comrades, chums. This could be accomplished to a very large extent, independent of or in spite of, social surroundings that would tend to prevent harmony.

Of course, as a first step in the interest of home and family harmony each should learn not to expect too much of the other.

The close observer has very good reason to believe that never in the history of the world has there been a case of perfect harmony in the married life. In fact, marriage is but a part of one great plan to educate

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through experience ; in marriage the intent seems to be not to have too much difference but just enough between the two for this purpose of making them think and act without separation.

In cases where ignorance is great on either side, this supply of diff erence will be too great for the purpose. „ •

The intent of the law seems to be that through enlightenment the supply of inharmony in the married life shall be kept down to where, in the majority of cases, the happiness will be greater than the misery. This must be so or marriage would soon cease to exist as an institution.

The destruction of this institution, through this increasing disturbance, due to educational neglect, is what seems to be rapidly coming about. This unbearable uncomfortableness is rapidly approaching the majority of cases, and with the present impetus the tendency is to go beyond the majority of cases to the disruption of the established institution of marriage. So that if the present order is to be preserved, the cause of this growing inharmony must be found and removed. The only alternative to this is to wait for the gradual disintegration of the present order, and from the wreckage, for the evolution of a new institution to regulate the association of men and women.

CHAPTER II We Are Primitive

EVERY experience of life may be considered, in its effect, educating and all men educators. There are, therefore, specifically speaking, many kinds of education and of educators in the world; it is this contact that stirs up variety of thought.

But for convenience of treatment these kinds admit of being divided into : " Teachers and Reformers," proper, with their constructive purposeful instruction, on the one hand ; and on the other hand, the sports with what they have to offer. The sports have the advantage over constructive educators of being able to reach and interest young people and children through their primitive traits, — their play, their desultory, instinctive proclivities. This is why sports are, as instructors, though often leading their flock backward and downward, so much more successful in their line than educators, properly so-called, are in theirs : sports lead their followers over the line of least resistance. Nearly all persons will not only take sporting education willingly, but they will also cheerfully pay well for it, while education proper requires a sacrifice on the part of others in the way of public support, in taxes. Educa- 16

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tion meets with resistance by acting along new race lines of mental effort.

To interest a person is about all there is to his education, and in doing this, the constructive educator will succeed better by keeping in mind the sport in his pupil — the primitive, the barbarian. This is what educators are slowly learning to do. The learner must be led out of the old and into the new, partly over old tracks.

An intense desire to learn should be awakened, because this embraces nearly all that is needed to create human affinities and harmonies in the world. Successful co-operation in all the various departments of life, including co-operation between the man and the woman in their home life, depends very largely upon that general knowledge, wide information and liberal culture which give mutual understanding.

Comparatively few of those who have missed the home and the school awakening have that within them which enables them to awaken themselves ; they do not, therefore, set about with any very deliberate purpose to learn much in life ; they do not see the importance of doing so with sufficient clearness to overcome their dislike for effort ; they invariably squander their spare time. | There are thousands of better things in life to think ( about, to work for and to enj oy, than those in which / the majority are interested.

Hence, it becomes the duty of every awakened person to offer to others some of that which he has learned. Without obtrusiveness, every well-informed person can, by giving to others, become a center of radiating influence.

The mental outlook of each of most married pairs is extremely narrow, consisting largely of opinions picked up from different sources. Many of these opinions held by one of the pair contradict those of the other, and it is very often that neither has the truth of the matter in dispute.

Narrow people — those with but meager information — can hardly be other than dogmatic and uncomfortable, difficult to live with, being, as we most often find them, egotistical, selfish, fussy, stubborn, suspicious, jealous, disputatious, easily offended, sulky, intolerant and childish.

Hence, it is rarely that there can be found a pair among the meagerly informed majority, both of whom are willing to do their part in life. It requires no very careful observer to see that one of the two of a very large majority of wedded pairs is a selfish shirk or an uncomfortable fault-finding ignoramus, blinded by a large supply of egotism. In not a few cases, it happens that one of the pair thinks he or she is the aristocrat of the combination, by way of some illustrious eighty-fifth cousin and has married the other largely for accomodation, — more as a matter of ornament than use. This is decidedly primitive and snobbish.

There is but one kind of aristocracy that can win permanently, and they who are of this one must be chiefly characterized by knowledge, by a strong will, by good work and by high moral character ; these qualities can,

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in most cases, be cultivated by the persons themselves ; and they will be by every individual the moment he awakens.

With a short course of the right instruction, not less than seven pairs out of every ten could be given the key to affinity-making.

Again, the one great need of the world to-day is educational awakening. This needs repetition, and the task, even if not an easy one, could be accomplished, were it possible to awaken an interest sufficiently widespread and intense to set in motion a united and determined effort on the part of educators and men of means. And because it is through enlightenment that the best possible way can be found to the solution of our present-day problems, this work of enlightenment stands at the head of all needed undertakings. Of course, there are open to the world two other ways to solve these problems ; one through a long-continued agony of slow, involuntary evolution and the other by breaking up the old order with a destructive revolution. We can select the way that suits us best, but the way of education is the only short, inexpensive and comfortable way.

If, therefore, the comparatively few who monopolize the larger part of the opportunities of the world (and thereby control about all of the wealth) could by some miracle become suddenly wise (merely for their own best interest of happiness, if for nothing else) this campaign of educational awakening would not be long delayed. The danger needs to be educated out of the individual. It is the individual who needs attention ; every person has coiled up within himself possibilities, and he is surrounded by opportunities of which he is entirely unconscious.

Education holds in waiting for the human family rewards of happiness that are to-day beyond our dreams. Were we able to use our present educational supply; were the means available to meet the expense which would be necessary to equip the minds of the majority with practical knowledge to the extent that our books are stored with theoretical knowledge, this old world would then be quite the Millennium world, of which we are now dreaming and for which we are fighting, instead of spreading enlightenment to obtain it.

The entire world stands very much in need of the uplifting power of higher ideals.

For the purpose of educating these into practice there is need of great teachers. The greatest teacher, then, is the one who can inspire his pupils ; one who can fill them with a burning desire to know something and to do something; one who can arouse in them a permanent knowledge-hunger, an enthusiasm, a moral ambition that remains with them continuously after they leave the school. The thing of most value in the teacher is the ability to awaken the powers of the pupil — to make him work and unloose his constructive energy.

CHAPTER III Cause and Effect

AVERY large part of all the money and effort expended in trying to reform and to educate neglected men and women is wasted, for the reason that the work is not sufficiently fundamental, not wisely directed. Reformers, as a class, feel more than they think, their reform is sentimental, ephemeral, patchwork reform ; they lack the power to generalize that a thorough scientific education would give them; so we find them entangled in a maze of surface effects which they mistake for causes and among which they expend the larger part of their efforts fruitlessly.

We live in a world of effects, entirely. From which it is impossible for the human being to so disentangle himself as to see the first cause of anything. But the more we learn to generalize the farther back can we wend our way. And as we do this, we find that in proportion to the distance retraced, these effects grow less in number and ever more fundamental in their power, as causes, to produce other effects. Hence, so far as we can see, every cause is, first, an effect, functioning as a cause to give rise to more than one other effect; these in their turn, also become causes. It is this that enables the flowers to bloom, and man to grow 21

(larger) ; but it is, also, what keeps this surface world in which we live, bristling with effects that we are trying to sort, classify and understand, meanwhile fighting among ourselves.

Let us now seek a way back through this blinding maze of effects for the purpose of locating and removing the cause of the principal part of this surface turmoil.

We have many reasons to suspect that we are misled and confused by appearances, and thus prevented from seeing realities ; or in other words we have not learned to look beneath the surface for the more fundamental causes of everyday effects.

We can, however, prove very satisfactorily to ourselves that most of our problems have their rise in a common cause. For if we can spare the time to feel our way back among these effects, we find them giving way one after another to effects more remote and less in number, till we reach one that can be demonstrated to be the cause of all these difficulties and inharmonies of life — the one cause of all our problems.

This cause is simply ignorance, and as fast as that is removed will our troubles flee ; this is the only way to a wholesale, sweeping solution of problems. Even the problem of laziness can be thus solved, because knowledge stimulates human action reflexively. Men become more ambitious and active, and will accomplish more, in the proportion that they learn more; they see more to do, and enjoy their work.

Ignorance is the one cause of poverty, sickness, dis-

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honesty, disputes, fights, suffering and inharmony. It is found among all sorts of human beings regardless of sex. Ignorance is the cause of greed and selfishness and of every crime in the catalogue of crimes ; it is then, of course, the cause of marriage inharmony, and is a matter with which sex has little to do, and takes no part.

Of course, in our discussions of family quarrels, we make considerable of that temperamental adaptability which we call sex compatibility or affinity. And where a case of this kind is found, we also find that trifling differences do not so easily give rise to disturbance. There is, of course, more sympathy to smooth the way ; it enlists the feelings and holds the attention — it is but another form of this same mutuality or common feeling mentioned above.

But whatever the immediate or precipitating cause of any dispute may be, in threading our way back to find the fundamental cause we come upon ignorance on the part of somebody ; parent, teacher or of the individual himself.

There is perhaps no one of the immediate causes that gives rise to more family quarrels than physical discomfort, — sickness. Sickness, however, is but the reaping of the fruit of ignorance; it is the reprimand of a lack of knowledge, practical ignorance.

The doctor habit, like the law-suit habit is, in its final analysis, but little more, if any more, than the habit of an ignoramus ; due to a lack of information that might easily have been obtained. Two-thirds of all the sickness and as large a proportion of the law-suits in the world are due to this cause that could be easily removed.

In money matters it is the same. Financial failure is due to a lack of that information which every individual in the community could easily and should take time to obtain. The less a person knows, the more helpless is he in every way ; the more uncomfortable as an associate do we find him in any walk of life. The less a person has of true knowledge, or wisdom, the more does he find to fight about ; the more quickly can he detect slight differences of opinion, and over these the more stubbornly will he dispute ; the more excited and loud will he become in his arguments; the more grossly will he lie and the more persistently will he contend for the final word.

Among common men, in fact, there are few who can enter into any form of helpful discussion without turning it at once into an argument, in the course of which both parties usually indulge in foolish personal remarks, and quit in a bad temper. This is a waste of time and of good health, that will kill success in almost anything. Nor is it needful for any writer to spare himself, the more foolishness he has passed through the more certain does he feel of the truthfulness of what he writes.

This information has been preserved for us and passed along in books ; it is a very rich storehouse of knowledge, a very great privilege that human beings of to-day hold over our ancestors of three thousand years ago. This, the only short road to knowledge, is not

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yet very well understood and appreciated. Its great importance must yet be learned.

Knowledge is the inclusive remedy for domestic snarls and snarling as well as for these same things found in all departments of life, but this remedy must be obtained and applied by an expenditure of energy ; its practical appropriation requires effort.

All the destructive fights of life, in all times and in all places, have decreased, and they will continue to decrease in an exact proportion to the amount of knowledge that men and women hold in common, and to which they give common consent, on which they agree ; in proportion to the universality of eduction. The less they hold in common the weaker do we find them ; " in union there is strength," and in common knowledge there is union ; — knowledge is, also, the true patriotism.

We do not solve our problems by merely accumulating educational material; by experimenting, discovering and booking information ; this is not even one-half of the program; the important part, and by far the larger and the practical part, consists of transferring this information into human heads.

It is for the reason that the world has not learned to educate, that we are yet to have wars ; in the realm of ignorance, war is inevitable.

This globe was once inhabited by warring tribes ; to-day, tribal warfare has almost ceased, and national lines will become gradually obliterated by enlightenment. In knowledge we find the great cohering power. The moment any person knows much he can see too many interesting things that ought to be done to throw away his time in fighting, either at home or abroad.

One need not be a very close observer to see that the person who is always ready to contend is one who has an extremely narrow view of life and its peaceful possibilities. In business, he who is always fighting his competitors is evidently one who fears them. In the first place he is greedy and questions his ability to satisfy his greed while competing in an open market. So we find him resorting to many dishonest methods. And among these dishonest methods, the most dastardly, cowardly and criminal is the form we call the trust; this monopoly of the opportunities of others that forces them to remain in idleness. The next in rank of infamy is graft ; the form of business robbery that acts under the guise of service, either public or private. All society props and unions are the crutches of fear that return to the individual far too little help for his time and money.

The cause of greed, of strife, and of dishonesty, is fear ; the cause of fear is ignorance, and the cause of ignorance is a lack of energy properly applied. For all practical purposes, we can call this latter laziness ; it does not need to be called by a milder term. For all practical purposes in our search for the cause of these inharmonies of life, lack of purposeful effort, to gain and apply information, is as far back as we need to go. All the inharmony problems in this wide world are due to this lack of effort which allows empty heads or shoddy-filed heads to exist.

CHAPTER IV There is Plenty for All

IT is not due to any niggardliness of Nature that the majority of the human family are struggling with debt and want and sickness.

It is due to the fact that instead of producing things needed and distributing them honestly, delivering them where they belong, they who form this majority spend a large part of their time in idleness, in stealing from, and in other ways trying to get the best of each other, and in preventing the despoiled from stealing it back.

There is abundance of raw material in the world to make that which would supply every human need; to do this, there are millions of idle hands eager to be employed; there is now machinery enough to multiply the productive power of these hands ten times ; there are, also, the conveyances of distribution ; millions of currency, — money sufficient in amount to effect all needed exchange of products, but held out of use in congested bank vaults.

These social, these co-operative functions of life depend for their proper discharge upon the general intelligence ; of this we have so far gained comparatively little ; it is this that explains our present suffering from 27 universal stagnation. The natural opportunities on which this energy should be acting productively are held up by monopolies.

It not only deprives others, but it is a great injury to the man himself, who, by some form of monopoly, holds out of use many times the amount sufficient for his personal needs and his public enterprises.

Our average practical life is the operation of our average knowledge, our average ideal and our average morality ; these are struggling upward against the demoralizing influence of a system that pays men to be dishonest instead of honest. This system is the greatest enemy with which progressive education has to contend. It is this that holds the average helpless voter, in his intelligence, his ideals and his morality, where he can admire the cheap sophistry and platitudes of the demagogue ; where he desires to emulate the greatest robber among us, — the man who, by means of the trust, a monopoly, deprives of their natural share of production millions of men and women. It is this low order of ideal, this lack of intelligence, that explains why the average man is able to look upon the grafter without supreme disgust, why he even sees graft seeking place as a business as legitimate as any other pursuit ; why it is that occasionally one meets with an individual openly confessing his desire to find for himself a place for the purpose of grafting.

How, then, can we expect any rapid reform ; what can we look for in the way of family life, when and where there is strewn among us so large a percentage of these,

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— some of them degenerate and others unevolved human beings ?