The Forging of Passion Into Power

Preface

PREFACE

In matters of external advantage the poor must feed on the crumbs which fall from the rich man's table. In the mental science of how to suspend passion so as to convert it into power, the inverse rule holds good. Or perhaps it would be a truer statement of the case if we said that the same rule holds good in both realms, but the classification is inverted: the rich in the goods of this world have to ask for crumbs which fall from the table of the others.

Many of the world's wealthy ones appear to be sincerely desirous to give to us more than crumbs of their external advantages. But there seems to be some insuperable obstacle in the way. The poor in money, health, sanity, culture, and reputation are always with us, and the other poor, the poor in the science of forging passion into power, are with us too.

Perhaps one reason why the world's favoured ones find it difficult to reach us either to give or to receive effectively, is that we, the poor, do not reach each other. Perhaps if we were more generous to each other, the current thus set flowing might draw with it the possibility of effective currents being set flowing across barriers made by worldly prosperity.

I hope in this volume to introduce to each other various kinds of persons who, in various ways, have successfully learned the great art of converting passion into power.

If, or in so far as, any of the world's favoured ones should at some future day read, and in any manner profit by, the following pages, what they receive will be a gift from the poor to the rich, from the sick to the healthy, from those who have lacked the advantages of education to those who have enjoyed them, from patients in lunacy wards to commissioners in lunacy, from overworked and struggling illegitimate children to their sheltered and well-cared-for legitimate cousins, from Asia to Europe, from Celts to Anglo-Saxons, from despised and oppressed races to their conquerors, from the hooligan class to the respectable, from Jews to Christendom, from benighted and superstitious orthodox Jews to their liberal and enlightened co-religionists, from everything that is despised and rejected to whosoever is honoured by the world.

But for the present we, the less favoured ones, are going to have a little talk together.

Of those who have assisted in accumulating the information contained in this work, such as are still in the flesh can claim their share of credit (or discredit?) if they like to do so. There is a word or two that must be said about some who have passed into the Silent Land.

Nicolas Antoine Boulanger.—Left school a hopeless dunce, who could not learn algebra. Died in his fortieth year, a good mathematician, and a famous engineer. Was one of the Enyclopædists. Left behind him writ- ings from which it appears evident that he had recovered the Ancient Secret Method used in Egypt and India for training scientific men, engineers, and prophets.

John Boole.—Made shoes, shortly after the date of the French Revolution, in an underground and sometimes very damp cellar in London. Kept a French dictionary in the drawer with his tools. Set up a shoemaker's shop in Lincoln. After his death, his widow, being congratulated on the achievements of her son, a distinguished mathematician, replied: "Yes; George is a clever lad. But did you know his father, sir? He was a philosopher."

George Everest.—Went to India at sixteen years old, in the service of the East India Company. Put himself under the tuition of natives of India. Learned from them Oriental languages, religion, and philosophy, and taught himself European mathematics from books. Became Surveyor-General of India.

George, soft of the above-named John Boole.—Earned his own living from the age of fifteen and a half. Was prevented from going to college by the necessity of assisting to maintain his parents and younger brothers. Became distinguished in logic and mathematics.

James Hinton.—Began life at about fifteen as cashier in a woollen-draper's shop. Wrote books on morphology and psychology that considerably affected the trend of science.

David Marks.—Was brought up at the Jews' Free School, and earned his own living from the age of fourteen. In his youth no honourable careers were open to Jews, except as teachers among their own people, and, being really much attracted by the New Testament, the brilliant boy was terribly tempted for some years to make a profession of Christianity in order to open up for himself a possibility of entering some university. But by the age of twenty he had finally taken his resolution; to use his own expression, he had decided that "there was life in the old ship yet." He came to the conclusion that the best Christianity for a Jew is to conduct himself and his ritual so that Jesus Christ, if He were on earth, might worship beside him with satisfaction. Never were more significant words uttered in London than when David Marks said to his congregation at Berkeley Street: "If the Founder of Christianity came back to earth, where would He be to-day? In church? No, but here with us, repeating the Shemang Israel as a good Jew should, and as He did when on earth."

On his ninetieth birthday David Marks received congratulations and thanks from Jews all over the world for having pioneered the way for Israel from slavery and superstition towards culture and progress.

But the reformer, in his anxiety to purify the old Hebrew ritual from superstitious and misleading accretions, left out several elements of overwhelming importance to our knowledge of the methods of culture in use in the Sacred Past where men were trained in the science of prophecy. These elements have mercifully been preserved for us by old-fashioned Jews in Russia and Poland and the Ghetto quarters of East London:— "This strange people, wading through the ages, bearing on their shoulders the burden of their great trust."

Lucy Everest Boole.—Never at any college. Learned chemistry in order to qualify to act as dispenser or shop assistant in pharmacy. Became Fellow of the Institute of Chemistry, Lecturer on Chemistry, and Head of the Chemical Laboratories at the London School of Medicine for Women.

"Frances," only child of an Irish gentleman of good family who died early, leaving her a ward of the English Court of Chancery. During an illness which supervened on the death of her mother, she was found, by a jury consisting of two or three English doctors (who were not her peers), guilty of two crimes, viz., incapacity for taking care of money, and the habit of using Oriental imagery to express thoughts too subtle or too sublime to find expression in ordinary English. She was imprisoned in a lunatic asylum. The familiarities and spiritual promiscuity of such places being intolerable to her sensitive instincts, she took refuge in a mode of self-protection often resorted to in such cases: she set up a claim to be called Queen, and surrounded herself with a sort of mock court etiquette. She took the title of "Queen of Servia " (Land of Slaves), and the signature "Frances Obrenovitch," and occupied herself in studying psychology and in acting as a sort of confidante, confessor, or chaplain to such of the patients (and they were not a few) as she could induce to listen to her exhortations. I met her when she had been already four years in captivity; she was, I think, the grandest spiritual force which ever came into my life. She was so little under any real delusion about her title that from the time she realised my respect for her spiritual instincts she forbade me to kiss her hand, or to address her as "your Majesty." She suffered terribly from the constant companionship of lunatics, some of whom were vicious, and of doctors and nurses, all of whom were ignorant of psychology, and, though kindly and well-meaning, often hideously irreverent. I offered to procure her freedom by taking out a certificate as lunatic attendant and getting her consigned to my care. The temptation to consent was evidently very great. But she had scruples about hampering my work and career; and, after a few days of heroic struggle with herself, she not only refused to accept my offer, but gave me to understand that the continuance of our friendship depended on my abstaining in future from putting such temptation in her way. To her I owe nearly all that I know about adumbrations and nostalgias; about the conditions under which hallucinations become fixed, and the manner in which they can be dispersed; about the formation of protective optical illusions and the prevention of dangerous delusions. She gave me my first clear insight into the systematic use of Oriental imagery as an organic scientific notation. To her also I owe—though without her knowledge—my clear perception of how a person like myself may be led into crime; for, had Frances ever for one hour so far lost her head as to express a wish to be avenged, there is no telling what I might not have been tempted to do. But Frances never lost her self-control or her spiritual judgment; her own influence over others gave to her both an awe-struck sense of her own responsibility, and a respectful sympathy with all persons in any kind of responsible position. Though revolutionary in every fibre of her being, she would never allow a disrespectful word to be said of any official person in her presence without rebuking it.

"Vengeance is Mine," says the Eternal Pulsator. Had Frances remained at large, she would have been known only as a pious and well-meaning, but somewhat eccentric, lady. By incarcerating her, her guardian made of her a valuable factor in that great chain of inter-racial sympathies which is so rapidly making all races subject to the British crown aware of certain subtle dangers to which they expose themselves by trusting English officials.

There was another woman, whose name shall be wrapped in silence. She was the "illegitimate" daughter of a well-to-do man. She refused to accept from her "honourable" father the insolent patronage which such men offer to those who have inherited their own pride; preferring to face the struggle for life in a world of strangers. She bequeathed, to some who have helped me, a large share of hereditary intellectual power, and a determination to base a true morality on solid fact, and not to be satisfied with any imitation constructed of parchments tied together with red tape, smeared over with white paint, and stuffed with corruption.

MARY EVEREST BOOLE.

Chapter 1

THE FORGING OF PASSION INTO POWER

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

This is a book for those who have leisure to think. To the hasty reader and the careless critic it has nothing to say, beyond bidding them God-speed in the perusal of any kind of literature which suits their state of mind.

I am writing for such persons as these:—

For the voyager to far countries, who can take one or two small volumes in his small luggage. It may help him to prepare for a better understanding of the relation between the people he is leaving behind and those whose acquaintance he is about to make.

For the young mother, who has a little time to read on Sunday evening after her baby has gone to sleep, and plenty of time to think over what she has read while she makes its clothes or holds it to her breast. It may help her to steer the child into something like its true place in the world in which it will have to live.

For the cloistered sister who is beginning to wonder why she cut herself off from the joys which other women prize—provided, that is to say, that she has the courage to ask the question of God, and wait to hear His answer; not thinking it necessary to stun herself, as the heathen do, with vain repetitions of pious statements which she does not believe but only thinks she ought to believe.

For the lady of the demi-monde:—provided she has the courage to face her situation calmly in the morning hours; not thinking it necessary to stun herself all day long with noise, drink, affectations, and the strumming of unmusical tunes on some unmusical instrument.

For the man or woman condenmed by circumstances either to a life of monotonous drudgery or to one of dreary idleness, or to a still more dreary round of so-called social duties, which are not really due to anyone, and of so-called social pleasures which do not please.

For the man who knows he has something to tell the world, but has not found his way to any adequate mode of utterance.

For the paralytic confined to his chair.

For the felon confined in a gaol.

And, last and chiefly, for the patient in the lunatic asylum.

For any and all who have, temporarily or finally, drifted out of the main current of social life into some stagnant (and perhaps muddy) backwater.

Whoever the reader is, he or she will find the understanding of the book much facilitated by interposing at least one night between the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next.

Dear friends, never suppose that, because you yourselves are unable to swim in mid-channel, therefore you are cut off from the great joy of delivering your message to your fellow-men and women.

Thoughts are facts; and they can pass through barriers impenetrable to human bodies.

Let me help you, if I can, to understand yourselves. If you once do that, believe me, you will somehow succeed in getting the world to understand you.

I want to help you, if you will allow me, to learn the art (for it is an art, quite as much so as music and painting) of the orderly arrangement of thought.

It is a common mistake to suppose that the Art of Thinking can be learned only by thinking of what are called "learned" topics. This is not the case. The finest music is made not by clashing together heavy masses of gems or of precious metals, but by "scraping the guts of a cat with hairs from the tail of a horse." But you must do the scraping according to the Laws of Music.

The Art of Thinking can be learned, and practised, with very homely and even unbeautiful material to think about. It is said that the finest poetry in the Yiddish language was written by a man who toiled seventeen hours a day in a factory and lived in a hideous tenement of New York.

A man in prison once wrote to a woman outside:—

Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds, innocent and quiet, take That for a hermitage."

People who are well-to-do, free and cultured, and who live in beautiful surroundings, admire those lines and find enjoyment in reading them; but you, who are in prison, say, and say truly, that they bring no message of comfort to you; stone walls do make a prison for you, and you see no use in pretending to deny it.

You are quite right. Those who offer you things written by other people by way of consolation, mistake, it seems to me, the whole lie of the situation. Can you imagine the delight of writing those verses; of feeling the music of them flow into one from some Source Unseen, and through one out into the world? The material out of which the man built up his verses consisted of:—stone walls and iron bars. Whatever the material, the joy of the artist in the act of creating harmony under inspiration is the same.

“I am a lonely man,” said he; “The storm-tossed mariner, alone, Echoing back the wild wind’s moan, Breathes not my loneliness,” said he. “All alone; all unknown; Like the sun, like the moon.”

“There is,” I said, “a loneliness That lights the soul like fireflies Dim twinkling under darkening skies; ’T is near akin to happiness. All alone it hath shone, Like the sun, like the moon.”

“I’m not a manly man,” said he; “A worm upon the path, I fear The fight for life is too severe. They’ve crushed me under foot,” said he. “All alone, nothing won, Myself I seem to shun.”

“A worm there is, a worm,” said I, “That strives to glimmer on the earth, A light for all. Is that not worth A life as in the changeful sky? Shines the moon, shines the sun Not unknown unto One.”

The writer of these lines had no literary skill, and could not write good rhyme and rhythm; but he could, and did, weave the symptoms and symbols of mere melancholic passion into exquisitely organic imagery; he translated the sense of hopeless loneliness into the useful solitude of the light-house, and the sensation of being abject like a worm into the vision of a glow-worm. Do you think he felt abject or lonely while he was writing these lines? His passion had become transformed into power.

Perhaps some reader may feel inclined to say that his mind is neither innocent nor quiet; that he has nothing to think of except anger, hatred, and unsatisfied lusts. That is not quite true of anybody; still, let that pass. I am neither parson nor moralist; it is no part of my function to tell you that such passions are wicked. They are, in their own way, not bad material for art. If you have nothing to think about except stormy passions and desires, think about them; but think about them truly according to the laws of your own thinking machinery. We cannot all acquire skill in weaving words into harmonious verse, but we can all be artists in thought and group ideas harmoniously. Whatever you have to think about, learn to think according to the Laws of Thought.

If you are on a long voyage across a monotonous ocean, learn to think artistically, not only about the sea and sky and the sailors’ work, but also about the fact of monotony.

If you have become a criminal after being brought up “respectably,” as it is called, learn to think artistically about the relations and the contrast between what is called respectability and what is called crime.

If, on the contrary, you were brought up by thief parents, and have nothing in your memory but a life of more or less successful dodging of the police, learn to think artistically about the relations between your class and the police:—there is plenty that needs thinking out in that matter, and the world would be the better for hearing what you have to say about it.

And you, young mother, you at least have plenty of thought-material close at hand, in your baby’s cries and smiles. He will begin to cut his teeth presently, and the first use he will wish to make of them will be to bite you. You have to decide whether you will allow him to do so or not. Decide it carefully, according to what you know of your child’s heredity; not forgetting to take into account the amount of your own stamina and power of endurance. Do not forget that, in this matter more perhaps than in any other—

“As we chose in small things always We must choose at last in great; For ’t is then the gods deny us Our own hand upon our fate.”

Now you are going to ask me whether or not you shall let baby cut his teeth upon your flesh! How should I know? I am an artist, not a quack-doctor with a universal prescription to suit all constitutions. Whether a baby ought or ought not to bite his mother, depends, as I said, on his heredity and the extent of her powers of endurance; also on her and the father’s conception of the meaning and use of family life. On the father’s conception especially. I am trying to teach you, not a code suited to all families, but the Art of Thinking on the facts presented to you by your own life and circumstances.

And you, whom the world calls mad, you at least can have no lack of material for thought. And you well know—some of you—that the so-called “sane” world is ignorant of much which you have seen, and hideously irreverent to much that you feel to be sacred. Pull yourselves together, friends, and learn to deliver your message in such-wise that the outer world must listen, and revere. You do not, you cannot, doubt the value of your own message to the world; many of you are certified “megalomaniacs” because you cannot be got to disbelieve it. What you most long for is that someone in the outer world should believe in it with you. Courage, friends; I believe in it,—because I have seen. Now, therefore, let us, who understand each other, learn some logic together, and write so that the world shall understand something of which you have caught a glimpse, and which you know to be part of the scientific framework round which must be organised anything which could claim the right to describe itself as an organic art of thinking.

Chapter 2

CHAPTER II

THE TRAINING OF THE IMAGINATION

For learning the art of the orderly arrangement of thought, no previous knowledge is necessary of logic or of any science whatever. What is necessary is a willingness on the part of the readers not to resist but to aid the writer in furnishing their minds with simple imagery, derived from various departments of human life, including science.

The imagery will be used, not in order to prove any doctrine, but to facilitate the orderly arrangement of thought material. When we are trying to put our household goods in order, we find it useful to provide ourselves with convenient shelves, racks, and hooks on which to store them; when we are trying to put our thoughts in order, we find it advisable to fasten up in our memories a convenient framework of imagery on which we can register our thought-processes.

Let us think of Time as a mass of water in a pool or tank. That is to say, Time Past is the water. Time Future shall be represented by the air above it. Water is continually coming slowly in at the top of the pool, and trickling away below into cavernous depths out of sight.

The surface of the pool represents Time Present.

Now let us represent the consciousness of an individual by a stick floating at the surface of the pool. On one end of the stick is written “Emotion and Sensation”; on the other, “Action and Influence.”

Please get this idea fixed up in your mind, before you read any further. Little precautions of this kind go a great way towards conferring clearness of understanding and preventing fogginess and misapprehension of a writer’s meaning. Get the vision fixed quite firmly; it is not a mere ornament, but a hook on which you are going, presently, to hang a weight, perhaps a heavy one.

We have supposed the stick lying flat on the surface of the water. As long as it does so, it represents a consciousness lying wholly in the present time.

Doctors and other teachers sometimes tell us very glibly that sanity and health, and all that deserves to be called “normal,” consist in being “adapted to one’s environment”; all which is not so they call “abnormal.” This mode of speaking is capable of being interpreted in two senses. As usually understood, it is very false, misleading the utterers even more than the hearers—as indeed slip-shod phrases of doubtful meaning usually do.

Let us look at our mind-picture of the floating stick.

As long as it lies horizontal it represents what we may call the commonplace condition of the consciousness, which is what some people really mean when they use such words as “sanity” and “health.”

The most commonplace consciousness wabbles slightly up and down at times; so that one end dips a little way back, or down, into the Past, and the other a little way forward, or up, into the Future.

But there are other conditions of consciousness besides the commonplace ones:—genius, asceticism, insanity, idiocy, criminal tendency, melancholy, suicidal mania, all that is eccentric, abnormal, or out of line with the commonplace average proceedings of the age in which the individual lives. All of these can be represented by a more serious tilting of the stick; or by its being bent, or half broken, so that both ends dip at once into the Past, or one half may dip into the Past and the other still be in the Present.

What does all this prove? Nothing whatever. What is it leading up to? I do not know. What is the use of it all? That all depends on the use which you may choose to make of it. I have provided the entrance-hall of your house of thought with a rack, such as my experience has shown me is of convenient form for arranging things on. At present, our business is to see that the rack is in proper order and well fixed up. Exercise your imagination at your leisure, in picturing—or, as it is sometimes called, visualising—the floating stick. Shut your eyes and see it—first in one condition, then another. See it stiff and straight, then bent; then half broken. Picture it always with its labels on: at one end “Emotion and Sensation,” at the other “Action and Influence.” Picture it, first with one end dipping down, then the other; then bent so that both ends dip; with the emotion end floating, then the other end. Go on with this exercise till the slightest exertion of your will suffices to put clearly before your mental vision a picture of the stick in any condition or position that you think of.

Now, the problem of forging Passion into Power is that of changing any position of the stick which represents a condition of the consciousness that is not commonplace and that is undesirable, into some position which represents a desirable one. Which positions represent undesirable states and which desirable ones, we shall see as we go on. For the present, the business on hand is to familiarise your imagination with the stick in all its possible positions.

Chapter 3

CHAPTER III

ECONOMY OF FORCE

Surely the secret of Moral Agriculture is to hitch one’s Plough to the Great Pulsator and make manure of the devil.

There is no cure for the world’s evils except linking them together in suitably assorted pairs, in such-wise that they neutralise the evilness of each other.

There can be no adequate supply of heat-force till we convert into heat the great devastating meteorological forces.

There will be no stop to the supply of criminal classes till the brutal and rowdy type of hooligan is trained as magnetic healer to the over-sensitive, over-intellectual, over-conscientious, over-refined type of man and woman.

There will be no stopping the spread of insanity till different types of abnormal neurosis act as magnetic healers to each other.

There can be no sound scheme of education till we know how to assort children in pairs and link them so that they give each other a strong impetus towards some desirable end.

There is no real solution of the sanitation problem or the food-supply problem till we devise good systems of sewage-farming and of earth-to-earth burial. I am glad to take this opportunity of stating my conviction that cremation and burying under stone are polar mistakes. Cremation may be necessary in cases of zymotic disease until we have devised something better. But I feel convinced that the scientific solution is that every carcase of man and beast shall be buried underground and a fruit-tree planted over it. The superstition against eating fruit grown on the dead bodies of one’s friends is a good specimen of the wasteful and distracting kind of idolatry which keeps the world in bondage. What are fruit-trees for, if not to forge and transform cannibalistic selfishness into sacramental joy? While we eat meat, we are obliged to cut the lives of creatures short, because those which die a natural death are unsuitable for food. But fruit lives on that which has died at its own time.

Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV

DESTRUCTIVE MANIA

We are going to think to-day about a Passion which is neither innocent nor quiet. It is known by many names. It occurs in nearly all small children, and is then called “love of mischief.” In boys between the ages of seven and twelve it is called either “cruelty and spite” or “fine manly spirit,” according to the religious and moral point of view of the speaker.

In quite commonplace persons it begins at about twelve years old to die down or be absorbed, recurring afterwards only in occasional gentle oscillations. When one of these mild fits comes on, the individual, if wealthy, takes a few days or weeks of shooting at birds or beasts reared on purpose. If poor, he flings stones at sparrows, or goes rat-hunting; or teases his mother or sister; or punches the head of his little brother. But in individuals who are more “out of the common” the dip of the stick is deeper and more serious.

If one of these larger oscillations seizes a Malay, he is said to “run amok” and is hanged by the English. In a regiment of English soldiers, it is called “martial ardour,” and rewarded with medals and public receptions. If it seizes a wealthy Englishman, he provides himself with elaborate killing apparatus and goes off to shoot big game, and is called an “adventurous spirit.” If it seizes a band of hobbledehoys of the so-called “working class,” they come in collision with the police and the orderliness of the town, and are called hooligans. If it comes with special violence to an adult, he makes a murderous assault on somebody, and the passion is described in the newspapers either as vile and brutal violence, or as homicidal mania, according to the taste and fancy of the doctors who give evidence at his trial. In the former case he is hanged; in the latter he is confined at Broadmoor “during his Majesty’s pleasure.” And there, to all outward seeming, is an end of his influence on society.