Humanly Speaking. Samuel McChord Crothers
Number One. We mean well, but we have not the facilities for doing it easily. In fact, we are not so civilized as we sometimes think.
For example, we have never carried out to its full extent the most important invention that mankind has ever made—money. Money is a device for simplifying life by providing a means of measuring our desires, and gratifying a number of them without confusion.
Money is a measure, not of commodities, but of states of mind. The man in the street expresses a profound philosophy when he says, "I feel like thirty cents." That is all that "thirty cents" means. It is a certain amount of feeling.
You see an article marked "$1.50." You pass by unmoved. The next day you see it on the bargain counter marked "98 cents," and you say, "Come to my arms," and carry it home. You did not feel like a dollar and a half toward it, but you did feel exactly like ninety-eight cents.
It is because of this wonderful measure of value that we are able to deal with a multitude of diverse articles without mental confusion.
I am asked to stop at the department store and discover in that vast aggregation of goods a skein of silk of a specified shade, and having found it bring it safely home. Now, I am not fitted for such an adventure. Left to my own devices I should be helpless.
But the way is made easy for me. The floorwalker meets me graciously, and without chiding me for not buying the things I do not want, directs me to the one thing which would gratify my modest desire. I find myself in a little place devoted to silk thread, and with no other articles to molest me or make me afraid. The world of commodities is simplified to fit my understanding. I feel all the gratitude of the shorn lamb for the tempered wind.
At the silken shrine stands a Minerva who imparts her wisdom and guides my choice. The silk thread she tells me is equivalent to five cents. Now, I have not five cents, but only a five-dollar bill. She does not act on the principle of taking all that the traffic will bear. She sends the five-dollar bill through space, and in a minute or two she gives me the skein and four dollars and ninety-five cents, and I go out of the store a free man. I have no misgivings and no remorse because I did not buy all the things I might have bought. No one reproached me because I did not buy a four-hundred-dollar pianola. Thanks to the great invention, the transaction was complete in itself. Five cents represented one choice, and I had in my pocket ninety-nine choices which I might reserve for other occasions.
But there are some things which, as we say, money cannot buy. In all these things of the higher life we have no recognized medium of exchange. We are still in the stage of primitive barter. We must bring all our moral goods with us, and every transaction involves endless dickering. If we express an appreciation for one good thing, we are at once reproached by all the traffickers in similar articles for not taking over bodily their whole stock in trade.
For example, you have a desire for culture. You haven't the means to indulge in very much, but you would like a little. You are immediately beset by all the eager Matthew Arnolds who have heard of your desire, and they insist that you should at once devote yourself to the knowledge of the best that has been known and said in the world. All this is very fine, but you don't see how you can afford it. Isn't there a little of a cheaper quality that they could show you? Perhaps the second best would serve your purpose. At once you are covered with reproaches for your philistinism.
You had been living a rather prosaic life and would like to brighten it up with a little poetry. What you would really like would be a modest James Whitcomb Riley's worth of poetry. But the moment you express the desire the University Extension lecturer insists that what you should take is a course of lectures on Dante. No wonder that you conclude that a person in your circumstances will have to go without any poetry at all.
It is the same way with efforts at social righteousness. You find it difficult to engage in one transaction without being involved in others that you are not ready for. You are interested in a social reform that involves collective action. At once you are told that it is socialistic. You do not feel that it is any worse for that, and you are quite willing to go on. But at once your socialistic friends present you with the whole programme of their party. It is all or nothing. When it is presented in that way you are likely to become discouraged and fall back on nothing.
Now, if we had a circulating medium you would express the exact state of your desires somewhat in this way: "Here is my moral dollar. I think I will take a quarter's worth of Socialism, and twelve and a half cents' worth of old-time Republicanism, and twelve and a half cents of genuine Jeffersonian democracy, if there is any left, and a quarter's worth of miscellaneous insurgency. Let me see, I have a quarter left. Perhaps I may drop in to-morrow and see if you have anything more that I want."
The sad state of my good friend Bagster arises from the fact that he can't do one good thing without being confused by a dozen other things which are equally good. He feels that he is a miserable sinner because his moral dollar is not enough to pay the national debt.
But though we have not yet been able adequately to extend the notion of money to the affairs of the higher life, there have been those who have worked on the problem.
That was what Socrates had in mind. The Sophists talked eloquently about the Good, the True, and the Beautiful; but they dealt in these things in the bulk. They had no way of dividing them into sizable pieces for everyday use. Socrates set up in Athens as a broker in ideas. He dealt on the curb. He measured one thing in terms of another, and tried to supply a sufficient amount of change for those who were not ashamed to engage in retail trade.
Socrates draws the attention of Phædrus to the fact that when we talk of iron and silver the same objects are present to our minds, "but when any one speaks of justice and goodness, there is every sort of disagreement, and we are at odds with one another and with ourselves."
What we need to do he says is to have an idea that is big enough to include all the particular actions or facts. Then, in order to do business, we must be able to divide this so that it may serve our convenience. This is what Socrates called Philosophy.
"I am a great lover," he said, "of the processes of division and generalization; they help me to speak and think. And if I find any man who is able to see unity and plurality in nature, him I follow, and walk in his steps as if he were a god."
Even in the Forest of Arden life was not so simple as at first it seemed. The shepherd's life which "in respect of itself was a good life" was in other respects quite otherwise. Its unity seemed to break up into a confusing plurality. Honest Touchstone, in trying to reconcile the different points of view, blurted out the test question, "Hast any philosophy in thee, Shepherd?" After Bagster has communed with Chocorua for six months, I shall put that question to him.
THE CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS OF ROME
I
"You here, Bagster?" I exclaimed, as in the Sistine Chapel I saw an anxious face gazing down into a mirror in which were reflected the dimmed glories of the ceiling. There was an anxiety as of one who was seeking the Truth of Art at the bottom of the well.
One who is in the habit of giving unsolicited advice is likely to take for granted that his advice has been acted upon, even though experience should teach him that this is seldom the case. I had sagely counseled Bagster to go to the New Hampshire woods, in order to recuperate after his multifarious labors. I was therefore surprised to find him playing truant in Rome.
My salutation did not at first cause him to look up. He only made a mysterious sign with his hand. It was evidently a gesture which he had recently learned, and was practiced as a sort of exorcism.
"I am not going to sell you cameos or post cards," I explained.
When he recognized a familiar