,religio ,journalistici ,,other ,,books ,,by ,,the ,,same ,,author ,fiction ,,parnassus ,,on ,,wheels ,,the ,,haunted ,,bookshop ,,kathleen ,,tales ,,from ,a ,,rolltop ,,desk ,,where ,,the ,,blue ,,begins ,essays ,,shandygaff ,,mince ,,pie ,,pipefuls ,,plum ,,pudding ,,travels ,,in ,,philadelphia ,,the ,,powder ,,of ,,sympathy ,,inward ,,ho6 ,,religio ,,journalistici ,poetry ,,songs ,,for ,a ,,little ,,house ,,the ,,rocking ,,horse ,,hide ,,and ,,seek ,,chimneysmoke ,,translations ,,from ,,the ,,chinese ,,parsons' ,,pleasure ,,the ,,bowling ,,green ,religio ,journalistici ,by ,christopher ,morley ,illustration ,garden ,city ,new ,york ,doubleday1 ,page ,company #aibd ,,copyright1 #aibd1 ,,by ,,doubleday1 ,,page ,,company ,,all ,,rights ,,reserved ,,copyright1 #aibd1 ,,by ,,the ,,century ,,co4 ,,printed ,,in ,,the ,,united ,,states ,,at ,,the ,,country ,,life ,,press1 ,,garden ,,city1 ,n4 ,y4 ,first ,edition ,religio ,journalistici ,,religio ,,journalistici ,it is not upon you alone the dark patches fall4444 ,i too knitted the old knot of contrariety1 ,had guile1 anger1 lust1 hot wishes ,i dared not speak1 ,was wayward1 vain1 greedy1 shallow1 sly1 cowardly1 malignant4444 ,refusals1 hates1 postponements1 meanness1 laziness1 none of these wanting1 ,saw many ,i loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly1 yet never told them a word4 --,whitman's 8,crossing ,brooklyn ,ferry40 ,the secret thoughts of a man run over all things without shame or blame2 which verbal discourse cannot do farther than the judgment shall approve of the time1 place1 and persons4--,hobbes's 8,leviathan40 ,i was coming home from ,buffalo in a train delightfully called 8,the ,black ,diamond40 ,i had any number of books in my bag1 but my lower instincts were uppermost3 ,i was tired1 and pined for the narcosis of newspapers4 ,i asked the porter1 also a black diamond1 to see if there were any lying around4 ,he brought me a great mass of them3 ,chicago papers1 ,buffalo papers1 ,wilkes-,barre papers4 ,with great happiness ,i browsed among their cheerful simplicities4 ,from ,wilkes-,barre ,i learned that ,shakespeare's marvellous plays could never have been written by a dyspeptic4 ,he ate carefully1 sensibly1 and had excellent digestion4 7,i had just come back from the dining car when ,i read that1 and wondered a little sadly if ,i had been sensible47 ,from ,chicago 78,the ,world's ,greatest ,newspaper07 ,i learned1 in an article on 8,a ,perfume to ,suit ,your ,personality10 that ,the vampire had best be sparing in her use of any odour4 ,an oriental bouquet of jasmine1 tube rose1 cassie1 and civet would enhance the individuality of the colourful type4 ,for a perfume combination of this sort when used correctly can create a sensation akin to ecstasy1 bringing to the wearer a feeling of tremendous vitality4 ,but in this ,chicago paper ,i found so much to perpend that ,i never reached the journals of other cities4 ,i learned in an interview with ,lady ,diana ,manners 78,pressed for ,precious ,secrets of ,pulchritude1 ,she ,reveals a ,surprising ,lack of ,them07 that ,the life of a newspaper person is not without its recompenses--aside from the weekly stipend4 ,sometimes it is a hard life--when1 say1 you scratch and pound upon the old dome1 pleading1 begging its tenant1 ,mr4 ,brain1 to give up an idea1 and you get in response a loud and hollow echo convincing you he has left for parts unknown6 ,i learned from ,chicago that ,the literary life of ,new ,york continues to rattle on4 ,and it is a rather grand life3 though a number of writers appear to scratch an existence from the soil of ,greenwich ,village and the purlieus of mean streets1 most of the men who write our books live quite comfortably4 ,one meets them every day--a prosperous crew--who lunch cosily at the ---- or at the ---- and not infrequently the ----1 then are whisked homeward in shining limousines to put in another hour or so on the manuscript of a new novel4 ,a few days later1 filled with pensive1 affectionate1 and somewhat irreverent thoughts about the newspaper business1 ,i went uptown to the offices of a very great ,new ,york paper--a paper which1 as a gatherer of news1 though it does not claim the 8,greatest0 phrase1 comes a lot nearer to it than that one in ,chicago4 ,a beautiful bronze elevator lifted me gently to the tenth floor1 a beautiful bronze attendant took my name politely and asked me to wait until my host emerged from conference4 ,i gazed amazedly into the editorial penetralia1 churchly in aspect1 with groined ceiling1 panelled alcoves1 like pews1 and lead-veined glass4 ,very handsome young women came strolling from those shadowy cloisters of opinion4 ,a scholarly-looking young man1 with tortoise spectacles1 sat under a reredos of books4 ,if not a curate1 at least a curator4 ,it all came down upon me with crushing force4 ,how could one chaff this magnificent thing8 ,how could one speak jocularly of ,the ,press8 ,this was all so terribly real1 so unmistakably there4 ,i remembered my amazement when ,i first entered the ,curtis ,building in ,philadelphia4 ,beside the humble little state house where a nation was founded rises that gigantic cube of ,americanization2 in more senses than one it is the exact spiritual centre of ,america4 ,does it not contain a mosaic glass picture with 8over a million pieces08 ,it has been told1 with the jolliest humour1 how several of the world's greatest artists were commissioned1 one after another1 to create a painting of ,plato's ,grove of ,academe for that lobby2 but they kept on 8passing away0 before it was done4 ,there is something most quaintly ,american1 ,i believe1 in adoring ,plato with a vast painting rather than by listening to what he had to say4 ,at a window on the seventh floor 7,i think it was the seventh7 might have been seen the strong masculine face of the fashion editor of the ,ladies' ,home ,journal gazing out with a sudden unaccountable nostalgia4 ,the trademarked patroness of the 8,l4 ,h4 ,j410 ,i remembered1 was ,pallas ,athene4 ,pallas is right1 ,i said to myself1 studying that building4 ,this must be a home of literature1 the walnut panelling is so fine4 ,this huge bulk1 edified from the ribs of a simple1 shrewd1 courageous1 and strangely wistful little man from ,maine--surely if the ,muse were looking for a comfortable lodging1 this is where she would habit8 ,sometimes it is with an effort that one must remind oneself1 a thing is not necessarily wrong because it is so large4 ,well1 all that came back to me as ,i sat waiting in the ,new ,york newspaper office4 ,painful doubts1 too1 as to whether what ,i am anxious to say is worth attempt4 ,for it is sure to be misconceived4 ,i am not satirizing anything4 ,these matters are far too serious for mere satire1 which is so agreeably easy4 ,no1 ,i am merely attempting to think4 ,i remembered also how1 not long before1 it strangely befell me to speak in a large church on a ,sunday afternoon4 ,i had not rightly apprehended the situation beforehand3 ,i found that ,i should have to mount into what the cheerful minister called 8the high pulpit40 ,sitting behind a thin frondage of palms1 and scanning the scene in some frightfulness1 ,i waited my exposure4 ,it was a beautiful church1 and there was a large and friendly congregation4 ,in one of the front pews there was even a gentleman with a silk hat4 ,there was music1 the thrilling tumult of the organ1 a choir1 a soprano soloist with a clear and lovely voice4 ,there were prayers1 and great words were said4 ,and in the same way that the editorial magnificence of that newspaper office came down upon me from above1 so ,i felt the whole weight and beauty and tradition of ,holy ,church moulding me and subduing my poor little premeditated ardours4 ,i felt the awful hopelessness of attempting to convey1 in those circumstances1 my feeble and futile sense of the love and liberty of life4 ,i knew then why ,christ preached in the open air4 ,and ,i knew that the people in those pews1 dear friendly people the latchets of whose minds ,i was not worthy to unloose1 desired me to say what was in my heart just as keenly as ,i desired to say it4 ,yet it could not1 fully1 be done4 ,holy ,church was too strong for them as it was for me4 ,i knew then1 even in the small1 imperfect way ,i know things1 something of the whole history of religions4 ,i knew how the majesty and glamour and noble gravity of institutions and authorities must have lain heavy on the hearts of schismatics and reformers4 ,it is not that those poor brave souls did not love the rote they questioned4 ,but the rote must be kept in its place4 ,i knew then1 for the first time1 the real dangers of the pulpit4 ,and yet even that polished wood was once alive1 growing from earth toward sky4 #b ,the world of newspapers and the life of newspaper men are for the most part vulgar1 and therefore delightful4 ,i mean vulgar in its exact sense3 it is a word neither of praise nor blame1 both of which are foreign to philosophy4 ,o thrilling1 delicious1 childish world6 ,the other day1 from a green glade in the country1 ,i telephoned to a newspaper office4 8,city room1 please10 ,i said4 ,the connection was made1 and as the receiver was taken down1 ,i could hear that old adorable hum1 the quick patter of typewriters1 voices on the copy desk tersely discussing the ingenious minuti of the job4 ,no man who has dabbled1 ever so amateurishly1 in that spirited child's-play outgrows its irrational and cursd charm4 ,over miles of telephone wire that drugging hum came back to my ear1 that furious and bewildering pulse of excitement which seems so frantically important and really means so little4 ,o world so happy1 so amusing1 so generously emotional1 so exempt from the penalty of thought6 ,world that deals with quaintly codified and abstracted notions of life6 ,how idle to ask whether newspapers tell the truth6 ,with truth they have little concern4 ,their trade is in facts2 like all prosperous tradesmen they are reasonably conscientious4 ,to belittle newspapers for not telling the truth is as silly as to regard them as training-ground for literature4 ,literature and journalism rarely overlap4 ,for the newspaper world1 that vast1 brightly coloured1 contentious1 and phantasmagoric picture of life that it evolves for its readers1 is mostly a spurious world evolved for hurried and ignorant people4 ,it is a world so happily out of touch with the world of philosophy that when1 on rare occasions1 the newspapers get wind of the things that philosophers habitually and calmly discuss1 it causes a terrible to-do in the headlines4 ,the world of newspaper thinking is almost the last resort of the truly childish in heart4 ,with princely accuracy is it called 8the newspaper game40 ,children are not friendly to philosophy1 nor hostile4 ,they are simply not aware it exists4 ,and the game of newspapers1 which ,i greatly love1 being at heart no philosopher1 is enormously important4 ,the prevailing temperament of its players is worth careful study4 ,the mere existence of newspapers is a proof of the religious instinct among men1 that passionate interest in one another which implies that we are all gossips together4 ,gossips are people who have only one relative in common1 but that relative the highest possible2 namely1 ,god4 ,there is truly some strange analogy between church and press4 ,whether it is the successful newspaper's taste for making itself clerical in architecture1 or the successful church's appetite for front-page controversy2 whether it is that they both make the cruellest and deadliest of enemies if annoyed2 whether it is that the newspaper carries on the medieval church's lust of persecution2 or that they both mobilize for war sooner than any one else2 or that both are vehicles of great realities1 but vehicles so gorgeously mechanized and ritualed that the passenger has almost been forgotten--whatever the basis of the analogy may be1 ,i am not sure2 but ,i feel it to be there4 ,journalism1 like every skilled mtier1 tends to become a sort of priesthood4 ,all such professional groups admit with cynical or humorous readiness1 inside the circle1 truths that it is unmannerly to gossip abroad4 ,but now and then some happy member feels he has absorbed enough hokum to last him for a reasonable lifetime4 ,he has enjoyed1 perhaps even profited by1 the sharp childishness of that way of life4 ,he escapes for a time1 with aspiration to think it over4 ,he wearies of the tragic ingenuity of men at concealing their real thoughts4 ,there are no longer any codes of manners to be considered1 any possibly tender readers to be sheltered1 any powerful patrons to be placated4 ,of course genuinely detached thinking1 even if it were possible1 is likely to be discouraged2 for detachment is always assumed to be malignant4 ,but1 anyhow1 let's be at least like so many houses in the suburbs1 semi-detached4 ,yes1 there is a sort of spring fever of the soul1 a seizure when1 in moments of golden tranquil intuition1 we see ,lucretius's 8coasts of light40 ,we would hope to savour1 as he bids us1 not merely the honey that is greased round the rim of the cup--the honey of our daily amusement and distraction--but even the chill purging wormwood of the draft4 ,suddenly the quotidian employ1 the haggling scruples of detail1 seem strangely insignificant4 ,languor and lassitude and uneasy hankering pervade the spirit--an intimation of unearthliness4 ,there is passion to go seeking 8those things that are requisite and necessary40 ,in ,walt's noble phrase1 8to sign for soul and body40 ,then1 unashamed of the hunger and trouble of human spirits1 it seems irrelevant either to chaff or to praise the dear farce of life4 ,one dreams of uttering only some small granule of broken truth1 something more than the jocund trickery of the press4 ,every philosopher is a humorist who has been squeezed4 ,and the newspaper man1 odd as this may sound1 is not the least appropriate student to pursue the wingy mysteries in divinity4 ,for he is kinspirit of the parson in this1 that church and press are perhaps the two professions that have most frankly regarded themselves as separate estates1 above and apart from the common man4 ,the priest esteems himself the vicar of ,god4 ,the pressman appoints himself vicar of ,news4 ,the priest transmits to the congregation as much of ,god's doings as he thinks will be not too embarrassing for them to hear4 ,and the newspaper man lays bare that portion of the event which he considers the public will be most anxious to pay for4 ,both are anthologists4 ,for some time ,i had been saving clippings of newspaper stories about recent religious controversy4 ,i meant to sit down some evening and read them through1 patiently1 to see how much humane sense ,i could winnow4 ,but ,i found ,i could not force my eyes through them4 ,for the sake of record1 to notify the quaintness of mankind1 ,i copied down a few of the headlines4 8,,christ ,,held ,,divine ,,or ,,illegitimate3 ,dr4 ,pettingill ,makes ,baptists ,gasp by ,strong ,defense of ,virgin ,birth40 7,new ,york ,world47 ,,dr4 ,,guthrie ,,finds ,,yule ,,all ,,pagan3 ,st4 ,mark's ,rector ,says ,gift ,custom ,was ,roman1 ,mistletoe ,celtic and ,tree ,teutonic4 7,new ,york ,times47 ,,modernism ,,found ,,here ,,mid ,,rituals1 ,,dogma ,,mid ,,glare4 7,new ,york ,evening ,post47 ,,dr4 ,,guthrie ,,scents ,,clashes ,,to ,,come4 7,new ,york ,times47 ,and so on4 ,i threw the mass of clippings into the fire4 ,and yet throughout those nave burblings the reader felt a strange mixture of exhilaration and disgust4 ,for the newspapers1 with their unerring instinct1 realize that men are keenly and desperately interested in these matters4 ,hidden inside that mysterious carcass1 your neighbour1 is the universal cry1 8,i want to be happy60 ,and with all their agile and cautious skill at hiding what they really think1 men wildly crave those liberating sorceries 7liquor and love and laughter1 perhaps even literature1 too7 that roll away the stone from the door of the heart4 ,yet perhaps no man in his senses talks about religion except for the pleasure of the talk1 which is a sufficient human excuse4 ,for the less we talk about religion1 probably1 the nearer we come to the heart of it4 ,by religion we mean1 ,i suppose1 our ligatures with an unseen world--a world not realized1 as ,wordsworth says in those 8,intimations0 that are a whole prayer-book in themselves4 ,there are 8high instincts10 he tells us1 before which we tremble 8like a guilty thing surprised40 ,our guilt1 surely1 is that we know ourselves to have been so wearily and perversely disloyal to that unseen world of beauty and ecstasy2 and our surprise1 that when we escape into the honest solitudes of the mind we find it waiting for us4 ,there is a great saying to the effect that wherever two or three are gathered together1 ,i shall be among you4 ,but1 alas6 it is even more true perhaps 7one must not forget a plenty of perhapses7 that wherever two or three are gathered together1 there ,i am not4 ,human meeting introduces awkwardly human difficulties and embarrassments4 ,it introduces1 for instance1 vanity and humility1 both awkward encumbrances to truth4 ,is there a man who does not know1 sorrowfully1 that he is much 8better company0 when he is alone8 ,as old ,doctor ,donne found in the absence of his mistress1 there is a 8close corner of the brain0 where the purest and loveliest embraces are possible4 ,of all mistresses1 the fairest and the farthest away is ,truth4 ,god is known1 if at all1 in solitude4 #c ,the theological bickerings of our time and their 8tincture of choler10 as ,hobbes would say1 are due perhaps to the uneven progress of a great shift in the human notion of ,god4 ,the primitive imagination of ,deity is often of a gigantic omnipotent and omnipresent personality4 ,then1 later1 men come to think of ,god as a kind of force or law1 or a harmony among infinite laws and forces4 ,this process of magnifying ,god from a person to a 8far-off ,divine ,event0 proceeds unevenly1 as do all ideas4 ,and there is no squabbling so violent as that between people who accepted an idea yesterday and those who will accept the same idea to-morrow4 ,more important than the novelty of ideas is the differential in the rate at which people accept them4 ,or it might even be put the other way round--the rate at which ideas accept people as vehicles4 ,an idea often hops into a person and uses him1 more or less as we hop into taxicabs4 ,bernard ,shaw remarked1 not unwisely1 that his 8,irrational ,knot0 was a first try 7on the part of 8the ,life ,force07 to get the theme of 8,a ,doll's ,house0 written in ,english4 ,robinson ,crusoe's religion was merely a calculus of personal benefit4 ,when he found that the seeds he threw away had sprouted and come up1 he suddenly remembered the goodness of ,god4 ,but gradually men tend to rise sufficiently above their own pangs and pleasures to relish the conception of a vaster ,god--a ,god who does not even know that we exist4 ,there are still1 astounding as it seems1 actual and living parsons who tell us that the ,museum of ,natural ,history is an affront to the ,deity4 ,their simplicity is as delightful as that of ,edmund ,gosse's father 7if you remember that great book1 8,father and ,son074 ,the rock that his reason split upon was the problem whether ,adam and ,eve1 created de novo1 had navels4 ,there are others who find in the spider webs and redwood rings of the museum a powerful impulse to wonder and praise4 ,at any rate1 this process of magnifying ,god from an invisible bishop of friable temper to a universal phantom of legality is what ,thomas ,hardy had in mind when he urged 8the abandonment of the masculine pronoun in allusions to the ,fundamental ,energy40 ,nor1 on consideration1 do we find the masculine pronoun a symbol of such benevolent majesty that it need much longer be retained as spokesman for ,deity4 ,it is necessary for man to know1 as astronomers do1 the inconceivable minuteness of himself and his affairs4 ,yet1 knowing his unimportance1 it is equally urgent for man to act as though his business were momentous4 ,for the whole intellectual life is based upon paradox and dainty artifice4 ,and here we encounter some fundamental characteristics of human behaviour which are highly interesting4 ,first of all1 man is orderly4 ,finding himself in a grotesquely complicated universe1 he hastily tries to reduce what he sees to some general principles4 ,he concocts helpful formul1 rules of thumb1 mnemonic rhymes1 all sorts of proverbs1 to simplify matters4 ,there has been a rather absurd eagerness on the part of the newspapers to reproach the church for its adherence to formalism4 ,but man is a formula-bearing animal4 ,and ,i doubt if the most rigid bishop who ever lived was more at the mercy of ritual and formulated ways of expression than the average city editor4 ,an incident may be as interesting as you please1 but unless it fits into his carefully ratiocinated scheme of what constitutes a 8story0 and how it should be 8played10 it gets little attention4 ,i have mentioned the ,museum of ,natural ,history2 let's take it again as an illustration4 ,i took there a small girl four years old4 ,at first she was appalled and horrified by the things she saw4 ,live animals1 at the zoo1 she was familiar with4 ,but these so genuine-looking and yet motionless creatures1 plausible enough in their synthetic facsimile surroundings1 yet with a gruesome air of not-quite-rightness--she was badly puzzled4 ,they fitted into no preconceived frame in her small mind4 8,are they real1 ,daddy80 she inquired4 8,they were once real1 and now are stuffed10 ,i said4 ,her eager mind leaped at this4 ,here was a happy little formula4 ,and at every succeeding specimen1 whether a wolf or a puma or a walrus or a whale1 with monotonous insistence she asked1 8,is it real and stuffed80 ,to which ,i replied1 each time1 with patient repetition1 8,yes1 real and stuffed40 ,it satisfied her perfectly until we came to the figures of ,indians and ,eskimos4 ,here a new formula had to be devised1 that they were 8,not real1 but made to look like it40 ,these trifling statements made the museum1 for her1 a rational and not too terrifying place4 ,once in a while1 if you are fond of self-scrutiny1 you will catch yourself in the very act of creating or parroting some useful formula4 ,formul swarm in the mind just as birds do in an orchard4 ,and though they destroy some fruit1 they also help to exterminate lesser vermin which might do much harm4 ,for the most part we are all mercifully unaware of our dependence on them4 ,secondly1 then1 once formul are made1 another subtle trick of the mind enters into function4 ,man's sovereign faculty of pretense works upon them4 ,he persuades himself that these little rites and short-cuts are not really made by himself1 but that they are sacred4 ,man's capacity for pretense1 ,i dare say1 has been the only thing that has kept him going in a rough1 bruising world4 ,he has found1 throughout history1 that the percolation of certain fictions into affairs made order and government more easy4 ,indeed the number of generally accepted fictions in currency is not such a bad test of civilization3 the more such harmless pretenses1 the pleasanter life is4 ,the divine right of kings was one great fiction that had a long serial career and gradually tapered off4 ,oliver ,cromwell 8,garred kings ken they had a lith in their necks02 the ,prince of ,wales's horses seem to have suggested the same thing4 ,that adorable old shrew1 ,thomas ,hobbes1 whose wise and racy survey of human foibles might almost have made any subsequent palaver unnecessary1 had people patience to read 8,leviathan0 nowadays1 is copious in instance of men's love of standing 8in awe of their own imaginations40 ,we are all quick to believe anything1 he remarks1 from teachers who can 8with gentleness and dexterity take hold of our fear and ignorance40 ,whereas any truth1 no matter how rationally arrived at1 that counters our passion and interest1 we naturally reject4 8,i doubt not but10 says the darling old cynic1 8if it had been a thing contrary to any man's right of dominion that the three angles of a triangle should be equal to two angles of a square1 that doctrine should have been1 if not disputed1 yet by the burning of all books of geometry1 suppressed40 ,master ,hobbes is very jolly1 too1 on a matter that has interested every thoughtful observer since civilization began--that religion is always heartily favoured by prosperous people4 ,obviously2 for it is a stabilizing force4 ,i was greatly struck1 approaching ,pittsburgh on the train1 passing through a black1 cindered region where life must lack many of its most harmless pleasures1 to notice the astounding number of churches4 ,these1 surely1 are not there without some sound social reason4 ,there are three prime consolations known to man in the difficulty of his life1 ,god1 love1 and money4 ,of any two of these you may deprive him without hearing much grumble1 provided he has plenty of the third4 ,but if he lacks all three1 there is sure to be trouble4 ,i have often noticed1 in burning a pile of dead leaves1 that the mass that seems burned through will1 if turned over with the rake1 burst into fresh flame4 ,down under the mound1 smothered by weight and closeness1 were many fragments that needed only air and freedom to burst into golden blaze4 ,perhaps it is so with any industrial society4 ,to turn it top to bottom now and then would liberate brilliant human combustions that now lie choked4 ,it is a dangerous doctrine1 but so are all doctrines that are any fun4 ,it is a thoroughly ,christian doctrine1 too4 ,before we leave the topic of human relish in pretense1 let's mention one very innocent and amusing example4 ,one of the gay hilarities of existence is the way the current social pretenses shift and vary and move in recurring orbits4 ,the nglig of one period becomes the haut ton of the next4 ,a few years ago1 during a very severe winter1 it became the mode for young women to go trapesing about in galoshes which were left floppingly unbuckled4 ,what1 then1 do we see8 ,a year or so later galoshes are put on the market1 very cunningly devised with drooping webbed tops to look as though they were carelessly left undone4 ,these at once became1 particularly in rustic high schools1 excellently de rigueur4 ,it was a daintily accurate exposition of our human taste for illusion4 ,and the third fundamental characteristic that ,i am thinking of is our universal liability to habit4 ,this is too familiar for comment4 ,take merely one instance which has pleasing analogies4 ,suppose you go to a small haberdasher to buy a pair of socks4 ,in payment1 you give him a five-dollar gold piece4 ,as he makes change1 he is obscurely troubled4 ,he will ask if you haven't a bill instead4 ,he doesn't relish that coin1 because he isn't used to it4 ,yet1 if ,i understand correctly1 gold is the only genuine money there is2 all the other stuff is merely money by convention4 ,and how beautifully valid in regard to truth as well4 ,half-truths to which men are accustomed are so much easier to pass than the golden mintage they rarely encounter6 ,what was it ,mr4 ,don ,marquis has remarked3 8,if you make people think they think1 they'll love you4 ,if you really make them think1 they'll hate you40 #d ,certainly these three coercive factors1 and many others1 too1 bear strangely upon all our attempts to think4 ,the beauty and the happiness of religion1 perhaps1 lie in the fact that it has little to do with thinking4 ,as far as any man knows1 up to now1 the universe is insoluble2 and the mind1 ardent particle1 rather resents insolubility4 ,it resents the solemn circling of the ,dipper1 seen from the front porch every clear night4 ,filling itself with slow darkness1 gently tilting and draining again1 it too cruelly reminds us of the orderly immensities of space4 ,and religion may very well be considered a form of art and of anesthetic to soften the onset of that insolvency4 ,it is reason's petition in bankruptcy1 8to drown the memory of that insolence40 ,if it makes us happy1 we need inquire no further2 for happiness is what all pursue4 ,perhaps1 indeed1 we are but memoranda in the note-book of the cosmic ,author1 jottings of some story that flashed into ,his mind one day1 but which ,he did not trouble to write4 ,so we are hunting1 hunting endlessly for the rest of the plot4 ,or we are surf-bathers in an ocean where one step carries us beyond our depth4 ,accept any figure of speech that appeals to you4 ,no work of art or literature yet1 so far as ,i know1 has given an adequate presentment of the glory and agony and mirth and excitement of being alive4 ,suppose some visitor from another planet dropped in for an evening and could communicate his inquisition4 ,we wanted to give him just one book that would offer a picture1 trustworthy1 frank1 recognizable1 of the life we have known--man's long campaign with nature1 with other men1 with woman1 with himself4 ,some suggest 8,candide10 but ,i find that great book too pitiless4 ,some1 ,browne's 8,religio ,medici10 but is it not too witty8 ,we might1 in a hasty ransack of the shelves1 linger momently upon ,boswell or ,walt ,whitman or ,shakespere's ,sonnets or 8,moby ,dick02 or upon the ,book of ,common ,prayer or a photograph of ,gozzoli's 8,viaggio dei ,re ,magi40 ,but not even these would duly serve4 ,it would have to be an anthology1 ,i fear2 perhaps ,robert ,bridges's 8,spirit of ,man10 though it should really have a stouter infusion of the seventeenth century1 when ,god-intoxicated and ,eros-maddened poets like ,john ,donne and ,andrew ,marvell uttered their ecstatic and magnanimous despair4 ,and that brings us to another cusp in this only too risible indent upon the infinite4 ,religion is an attempt1 a noble attempt1 to suggest in human terms more-than-human realities4 ,the seat of ,peter has always lain beyond the ,alps4 ,the church1 like the poet1 is an ambassador from abroad2 from the strangest of countries1 that lying within our own bosoms4 ,and what is the virtue of an ambassador8 ,surely1 tact4 ,the one thing that makes ambassadors useless or dangerous is too great a zest to blurt out truths that many of us know1 but have agreed not to emphasize4 ,he thinks in the language of his homeland2 he must speak--though always1 we trust1 with winningly foreign accent--the tongue to which he is accredited4 ,the ambassador knows1 better than any other1 that truth is condiment1 not diet4 ,it is rough manners to shove truth at people when they are not expecting it4 ,there is always charming significance in popular phrases4 8,the dreadful truth0 is such a one4 ,truth is always dreaded1 not so much because it is gruesome or tragic1 but because it is so often absurd4 ,the church1 then1 comes before us as envoy from the world of spirit to the world of flesh2 and here is the anomaly1 that only too probably these worlds have small interest in common4 ,so is our envoy but demi-potentiary4 ,in medieval time the problem was simple2 flesh and spirit were assumed to be deadly enemies one of the other4 ,but nowadays we lean toward a casuistry far more perplexed2 that body is soul's noblest ally1 that whatever makes flesh satiate and merry is so much gain for soul4 ,blithe1 ruddy doctrine6 ,yet1 sadly enough1 it is even possible that truth is neither ,trojan nor avoirdupois4 ,flesh and spirit sometimes look terribly incommensurable4 ,saint ,paul did not fully plumb the real tragedy of the situation4 ,the most bitter wisdom of the human voice is the very opposite of ,paul's cry4 ,transpose it so3 ,video deteriora proboque1 meliora sequor4 ,body and soul1 tied together back to back1 see different realms of sky4 ,and the innermost capsule of mind1 that very ,i of very ,i1 though wretchedly at the mercy of pains and lusts1 is yet also oddly detached4 ,sitting in the dentist's chair1 the innermost self says3 8,here we are4 ,this is terrible4 ,now he is going to hurt me4 ,is it the essential me he is going to hurt1 or is it just the make-believe me80 ,but when the pang comes1 then truly for an instant all me's whatsoever coalesce into one indignant craven whole4 ,yet even in that horrid shudder ,i think we are obscurely aware that it is not our essence that surrenders4 ,that volatile quiddity has retreated in disgust1 loath to attend the deplorable scene4 ,he is as cheerfully regardless of body as is the tenant of a house he has merely rented1 and for rather less than value4 ,he is1 perhaps1 not unlike the fire on the hearth1 the brightness and warm centre of the home1 yet caring nought for your cherished odds and ends4 ,what's ,hecuba to him8 ,given a chance1 that same domestic ember would devour the whole building2 and is no different1 in essence1 from the roaring streamers that once ran wild in ,baltimore and ,san ,francisco4 ,i knew a lovely and thoughtful woman who1 with a few other adepts1 used to do graceful figure-skating on the far side of a college skating-pond4 ,there1 in a quiet little cove of clear ice1 apart from the crowd and the rhythmic1 hollow undersong of the whole vibrating lake1 this little group swung and twirled4 ,i can see her small slender figure1 her bright cheek1 the lovely float and spread of her skirt as she curved and poised in that steely waltzing4 ,college students and wild hockey berserks and miscellaneous small fry scuttled and careered about2 now and then a rubber puck would skim across the ice1 and like a pack of hounds the barbarian rout would sweep upon that tranquil shore of the pond4 ,for a moment the pensive skaters would be blotted out by swirling movement--clattering sticks1 ringing skates1 noisy shouts4 ,then the rabble would whirl away4 ,the fancy skaters would be seen again2 and that lonely figure1 swinging1 leaning in airy curves1 aware of it all with thoughtful eyes a little sparked with annoyance1 aloof from the turmoil1 yet not unkindly so4 ,not otherwise1 perhaps1 our hidden capsule of identity is a solitary skater4 ,the wild rush of emotions1 desires1 passions1 timidities1 comes tearing across the pond2 lonely ,diana is hidden1 even shouldered off her lagoon of clear crystal4 ,but then they go racketing away4 ,the pirouette begins again1 and the soul is happy with her own concerns4 ,what language1 then1 is our ambassador to utter1 dealing with two worlds appallingly incongruous8 ,is it strange if1 like the rest of us1 he falls back upon prudential and cheery approximations8 ,that witty writer ,stella ,benson mentions in one of her novels 78,the ,poor ,man07 a character who 8knew too well the difficulties and dangers of being alive to despise those who sought for safety in tremulous platitudes40 #e ,speaking of ambassadors there was one in the sixteenth century who told the following story3 ,at ,constantinople ,i saw an ,old ,man1 who1 after he had taken a ,cup of ,wine in his ,hand to ,drink1 us'd first to make a hideous ,noise2 ,i asked his ,friends1 ,why he did so8 ,they answered me1 that1 by this ,outcry1 he did1 as it were1 warn his ,soul to retire to some secret ,corner of his ,body1 or else1 wholly to ,emigrate1 and pass out of it1 that it might not be guilty of that ,sin which he was about to ,commit1 nor be defiled with the ,wine that he was about to guzzle down4 ,this humorous ancient was not unlike the modern newspaper man4 ,the hideous noise of the press1 its conscience-annulling haste1 its sense of power and almost uncontradictable certainty1,a are what he employs to warn his soul1 his reason1 not to look over his shoulder while he is at work4 ,the fact is that the whole ingenious mechanism of a newspaper is so automatically conjointed and revolves so rapidly that by sheer fury and speed of movement it takes on a kind of synthetic life of its own4 ,it could well be imagined thundering round and round of its own accord in a great jovial1 shouting stupor4 ,a leading editorial1 tearing passions to tatters1 could arise by spontaneous combustion1 exhaling itself somehow from the general uproar and joy4 ,virgin birth would be no miracle in a newspaper office3 ,i have seen1 and myself committed1 editorial matter whose parent had never been approached by any siring intelligence4 ,or1 in the case of the reporter1 painfully trained in a generous human skepticism1 enforced student of the way people behave and the way things happen1 alert to discern the overtones of irony and pathos in the event1 you might expect him to be the least credulous of beings4 ,if so1 the general flavour of the press little represents him4 ,he acquiesces1 consciously or unconsciously1 in the fact that in all but a few really intelligent journals the news columns are edited down to the level of the proprietor's intelligence1 or what the active managers imagine to be the proprietor's taste4 ,not in facts1 but in the tone adopted in setting out those facts4 ,an ,index ,expurgatorius is issued for office guidance1 lists made of words and phrases not to be mentioned in news stories4 ,the more essentially vulgar a paper is1 the more cautious it will be not to use words the managing editor believes dirty4 8,obscene10 for example1 is deleted1 and the truly disgusting word 8spicy0 is substituted4 ,and the reporter himself having acquiesced1 it is not unnatural that the readers of the paper do also4 ,the great majority of them1 tippling their customary sheet day after day with the regularity of dram-fiends1 are so indurated to the grotesque psychology of the more popular news columns that to find a paper habitually speaking recognizable moderate sense would afflict them with a warmth of indecency and dismay4 ,the daily journals give them the same pleasure that the serial parts of ,dickens's novels gave the early ,victorians eighty and ninety years ago4 ,so we have the agreeable paradox that these papers we see all round us1 roaring their navets and scandals1 are written and compiled by those who are1 as individuals1 studious1 serene1 and gently acetic skeptics4 ,it is an entertaining thought4 ,if it is true1 ,i believe it is due to what ,i think of as the carburetor-adjustment of the human mind1 a delicate1 unconscious1 and continuous process4 ,it pleases me to imagine that in the intellect there is a valve that regulates the mixture of truth and convention that we utter1 just as gasolene and heated air are mixed and vaporized in the carburetor of an engine4 ,whenever we meet any one1 or at any rate any stranger1 we are likely to be on our guard4 ,we have our own little private reservoir of sincerity1 but we don't intend to draw on it too largely until we know we are safe4 ,there are some people1 as you must have noticed1 to whom it is almost impossible to say a word of what you really believe4 ,accordingly1 automatically and almost unconsciously1 we make a mental adjustment of our 8mixture40 ,we admit into it just as much truth as we believe the other is likely to relish1 or willing to receive4 ,but we may have made a bad guess4 ,the conversation begins to back-fire4 ,that means the mixture is too 8lean40 ,very well2 pull out the choke1 enrich it with more candour1 all goes delightfully4 ,too 8rich0 a mixture1 however1 is1 every mechanician knows1 as bad as too 8lean40 ,the mind gets crusted with carbon--unassimilated truth4 ,the analogy seems to me highly applicable1 even down to the infusion of what used to be called1 in a bygone slang1 8hot air40 ,through this needle-valve1 for the most part unconsciously1 we regulate our mental ignition4 ,all this1 as you shall see presently1 has its just bearing on our topic of religion4 ,we need1 but are little likely to get1 a new 8,areopagitica0 to liberate our press from its cheery bondage of vulgarity and slip-slop thinking4 ,the newspaper man who has pride in his honourable tradition may well feel grim to see the things he has sweat for trafficked across counters like bundles of merchandise2 yes1 and to see the transaction applauded by eminent statesmen and divines who feel the need of a front-page quote4 ,a little pride is desirable now and then2 yes1 in ,god's name1 a little pride1 gentlemen4 ,we who have lived1 as best we could1 for the decency of letters2 who have vigiled with ,chaucer and taken wine with ,descartes and changed opinion with ,doctor ,johnson1 are we to be hired to and fro by the genial hucksters who know the art of print chiefly as a rapid factory for gaily tinted palaver8 ,in his tight place1 beset by doubts just as acute as those of the young theologian1 our newspaper man ratiocinates upon the quaint processes of mind4 ,he broods on the haphazard1 interest-tainted1 and fallible nature of most mortal opinion4 ,he studies the relativity of truth and the proliferation of rumour4 ,he notes how every event is like a stone cast into a pond2 it ejaculates concentric vibrations1 widening loops of hearsay4 ,varying layers or rings of truth are available for different classes of bystanders1 or bythinkers4 ,how well he knows the queer fact that you can say1 unrebuked1 in a weekly what would never pass in a daily6 ,you can say still more in a monthly2 in a quarterly review almost all the beans can be decanted4 ,and in a book1 quite often you can print your surmises in full4 ,of course1 to tell exactly what happens1 as ,pepys did1 it is best to be dead4 7,how odd is the saying1 8,dead men tell no tales40 ,why1 they tell the best tales of all47 ,it does sometimes seem as though the more immediate readers there are for any bit of print1 the less candour can be rationed out for each4,b ,so every human being stands at the centre of a little eddy or whirl of testimony4 ,if one could make a map or editor's projection of him considered as a news item--it would be as complicated as an ocean chart with festoons of barographs and isotherms1 curves and twists and arrows indicating set of currents1 prevailing winds1 soundings4 ,on such a chart1 we would denote here a cyclone of scandal1 there a hot monsoon of misappreciation1 yonder a steady trade-wind of generous sympathy4 ,in an ocean so various we should find our victim leading a thousand different phantom lives in the opinion of others4 ,if you begin to think about this sort of thing1 the asylum waits2 for truly1 confronted by the alternating delights and possibilities of life1 the mind is not unlike that chameleon that went mad when tethered on a ,paisley shawl4 ,the newspaper man1 then1 begins to feel perhaps that it is necessary for him to undertake the burden of fidelity to human realities--that burden that is often so lightly shrugged off by bishops4 ,looking at things in the large1 or trying to1 he strongly suspects that formal religion1 as we have known it1 is dying2 lovelier and greater poetries are pushing in4 7,there are thousands of years still to come1 you know47 ,the highest honour that he can pay to sacred matters is to regard them as so thrillingly actual that they can be accepted into the great general body of human life4 ,to regard them1 indeed1 as news1 as the word ,gospel itself suggests4 ,it would seem fairly obvious that the miracles and parables of the ,new ,testament1 like the various creeds themselves1 were intended as vivid and stunning apologues4 ,to batter them down to the level of facts seems to degrade them1 as it would be degrading to reject ,keats's sonnet because there are no peaks in the isthmus of ,darien1 and because it wasn't ,cortes4 ,the newspaper man prefers to take his stand with ,tolstoy1 who said1 in that thrilling book 8,a ,confession03 8,i wish to understand in such a way that everything that is inexplicable shall present itself to me as necessarily inexplicable40 ,he prefers that when there is an available and mortally recognizable way of understanding things1 they should so be understood4 ,take1 for example1 the story of the miracle at ,cana4 ,to a man trained to observe the delightful ways in which testimony arises and is transmitted1 how does that story explain itself8 ,here is a wedding party1 at which appears the amazing stranger4 ,he seems a man more fascinating1 more charming1 more utterly delightful1 than any that those country folk have ever encountered4 ,they are all very merry1 the toasts go round1 the wine runs short4 ,but the ruler of the feast1 turning to the stranger1 says1 prettily enough1 ,i think1 8,with you here1 water is as good as wine40 ,some one else takes it up1 echoing the sentiment1 seeking to add to it4 8,right60 he cries4 8,our friend here makes the water into wine4 ,here's to you60 ,and with friendly applause the gathering ratifies the compliment4 ,one of the servants overhears1 and carries the incident into the kitchen4 ,how quickly it grows and passes down the village street6 8,they've got some one in there who's turning water into wine60 ,can it be denied that this is the way that human events are reported8 ,let us take an example of a miracle-germ in our own time4 ,when ,horace ,traubel1 faithful and simple-minded disciple of ,walt ,whitman1 died in ,september1 #aiai1 his body was taken to the ,community ,church1 at ,park ,avenue and ,thirty-fourth ,street1 ,new ,york1 for the funeral service4 ,but when the body reached the church1 the little company of mourners could not enter2 the building had suddenly caught fire4 ,imagine this episode handed down through generations of simple people by word of mouth4 ,the intimate disciple of a great poet1 both of them impatient of the genteel religions1 is borne dead to a sacred edifice4 ,it bursts into flame4 ,would that not be taken as some authentic ,pentecost1 and at the very least as a proof of ,walt's divinity8 ,yet we know well enough that the event was no miracle1 but rather what ,hobbes called 8an extraordinary felicity40 ,there is one more ,biblical passage ,i should like to refer to1 one that has often been considered a knotty saying4 ,it is the parable of the talents and the unprofitable servant4 ,i like to conceive ,deity in the guise of that hard master who wanted his own with usury4 8,well10 ,i can imagine ,god saying to the newly dead1 8what did you think of that world ,i gave you80 8,not so bad1 on the whole10 replies the embarrassed soul4 8,what60 cries ,god4 8,simpleton1 do you mean to say you took it as you found it1 accepted it1 swallowed it down without question8 ,depart from me1 unprofitable servant6 ,you were supposed to remould it nearer to your heart's desire1 to create out of my materials a new world of your own40 ,old ,doctor ,jewett said to ,margot ,asquith1 8,you must believe in ,god in spite of what the clergy say40 ,and truly ,i don't think that any man who has worked in downtown ,new ,york can be much of an atheist4 ,in that great jungle of violent life1 under the glittering spires of such steep cathedrals1 he must inevitably be a trifle mad4 ,even ,manhattan1 supposed to be most material of cities1 is best known for the fantastic figure she cuts against the sky4 ,the loveliest picture ,i ever saw of her profile was a photograph given me by an amateur lensman who caught it by accident4 ,it shows that uneven scarp of buildings in soft masses of dark and shadow1 looming on a queerly pebbled and fuscous twilight1 like an eclipse4 ,and this1 as my astonished friend learned from his film-dealer1 was an accident1 due to mildew on the gelatin4 ,so some of the most lovely visions of reality are printed on minds that are mildewed4 ,the madman and the nincompoop often see more beauty than the sane and solid cit4 ,the only possible suggestion that one might humbly venture to offer to the authoritative officers of ,holy ,church is that they are too sane and too businesslike4 ,they ask us to believe not things that are too hard1 but too easy4 ,they are too eager to lock the stable door after the ,messiah has been stolen4 ,they have learned the tricks of our world of flesh so glibly that they seem sometimes to forget the manners of that world of spirit they are commissioned to represent4 ,for the world is fascinating and painful beyond human power of testimony4 ,the best of every life is unprintable4 ,if one were given five minutes' warning before sudden death1 five minutes to say what it had all meant to us1 every telephone-booth would be occupied by people trying to call up other people to stammer that they loved them4 ,you would want to tell a whole lot of people that you love them1 but had been too clumsy and too shy to admit it4 ,and the newspaper man himself1 who both loves and hates his queer trade1 would be the first to remember that one always is severest with what one adores4 ,every movement is set in some strange turning of wonder4 ,as a man will suddenly discover in himself some miserable petty trick of behaviour which1 he painfully realizes1 is a true microcosm and characteristic of his life as a whole1 so now and then with the world at large4 ,we are aware of lights and shadows and moments of millennium that seem a part of some vast consistency4 ,you know the thrill of a letter or parcel that comes from some one you are fond of1 far away4 ,as you undo the string1 you say1 foolishly1 but with a genuine quaver of sentiment1 8,when that was tied up1 ,so-and-so handled it60 ,well1 there are instants of preposterous happiness1 clear insight1 that are just like that--little packages of reality1 tied up in the twine of our time sense1 that come to us direct1 intact1 from the eternity and infinity we call ,god4 ,it matters little how you explain that great word to yourself4 ,perhaps you mean by it the sum total of all human awarenesses of beauty4 ,in that sense of prevailing loveliness we are all obscurely united4 ,in those moments1 moments of heavenly farce and unredeemable tragedy1 we can forgive ourselves for being only human4 ,but in these matters silence is the final eloquence4 ,one does not argue with moonlight4 ,men talk of 8finding ,god10 but no wonder it is difficult2 ,he is hidden in that darkest of hiding-places1 your own heart4 ,you yourself are a part of ,him4 ,the chief danger is to be too prosaic4 ,any one who has ever done proof-reading knows the delicious fidelity and strict zeal and maddening literalness with which the professional corrector marks a galley-proof4 ,how he construes the text according to his own rote and rigid scheme2 how he resents any unusual use of words2 how he is so busy querying things that look odd to him that he misses many of the downright errors4 ,that is precisely the attitude of man toward the universe1 which he is so daringly anxious to interpret in some comforting sense4 ,the journalist1 whatever his sins and stupidities1 would hope to enjoy the text of life in the spirit of a collaborating author rather than presume to correct it4 ,and he will not do any great poet1 such as ,christ1 the dishonour of taking him too literally4 ,we cannot hope until we have learned to despair4 ,let me remind you of some great lines by ,andrew ,marvell3 ,my love is of a birth as rare ,as 'tis for object strange and high3 ,it was begotten by ,despair ,upon ,impossibility4 ,as lines1 so loves oblique1 may well ,themselves in every angle greet3 ,but ours1 so truly parallel1 ,though infinite1 can never meet4 ,,the ,,end ,,footnotes3 ,a ,mr4 ,c4 ,e4 ,montague writes as follows of the origin of his novel ,a ,hind ,let ,loose1 a witty satire of newspaper life3 8,it arose from much study--in the course of my daily work--of the editorial articles of the best-reputed ,english papers4 ,i found that they consisted1 to a wonderfully large percentage1 of certain stock expressions of positiveness1 dislike and contempt4 ,these1 ,i noticed1 were so general that they constantly recurred in all sorts of discussions on various subjects1 and the fancy took me that their use could be carried further and further until all reference to any particular topic vanished and nothing but quite general positiveness remained1 the ,olympian mentality and temper just going on asserting themselves for assertion's sake40 ,b ,there is a very able book called ,the ,gospel ,according to ,judas1 written by a professor at a ,western college1 which has circulated in ,,ms4 among publishers for ten years1 without yet finding one who is willing to take a chance on its very remarkable wit and uniquely original conception of the ,new ,testament story4 ,i have often wondered whether it will ever get printed4 ,,transcriber',s ,,notes3 ,italicized text is surrounded by underscores3 italics4 ,obvious typographical errors have been standardized4 ,inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized4