Chapter III: Part 3

The truth is that America has not as yet had an intelligence or a culture worthy the name. It has no visible intellectual purpose, unless it be that of getting money. What little so-called culture we have had, if we have had any, has been borrowed from abroad--principally England, which itself has needed to be revivified along the lines of true culture; for it, too, as to its written and spoken professions at least, has become puritan, pharisaic, religious and never has been democratic. If you want to see America illustrated rather clearly as to its cultural, or lack of cultural, results contemplate the American millionaire. He had, if he has not now, the prevailing idea that money is power; he worshiped and slaved for it in the hope that it would make him wonderful in the eyes of all men.

But consider the pathetic result. He got it. A great war crisis arrived. He wished to be useful with his great (and purely imaginary) power, to do some significant thing which would help the world or at least his country in its hour of stress. Had he the mental or spiritual equipment to see or even feel what was needed? Or was he but one of that immense class of American men and women who discovered in this crisis that business somehow failed to fulfill their spiritual needs and reached out from it, only to find themselves lost in a maze of wider relationships for which they had no technique? Ford organized a peace ship! He, with a little load of editors, journalists, preachers and what not, going to Europe to “call the men out of the trenches by Christmas!” (1915). And the wise American papers, especially in our Middle and Far West, full of his praises, and the probability of success! It could be done! And that, in the face of an amazing and subtle racial movement and propaganda, with war and conquest as its under-stones, organizing in Germany since the year 1813. The rest contented themselves with making more money. So much for one American business giant’s success, and his intellectual grasp on life!

* * * * *

Take yet another phase in conclusion. At the beginning of the great world war we were constantly hearing talk of “the obligations laid upon us,” “our duty to civilization,” the necessity for “making the world safe for democracy,” when, as a matter of fact and according to our chief spokesman’s own admission it was not until between the third and fourth year of the war that we began to realize the true program or purpose of the enemy and that some such enthusiasm as was at first called for might be necessary! We talked of the time having come for us “to play our part among the societies of the world”--and then sent a Root and a Francis (corporation lawyers and agents both, and long since discredited by the American people themselves) to argue with the representatives of a torn and war-worn people seeking a new and better form of social and political life. In the war itself it was apparently assumed that “men, money and ships” (the old American idea of quantity, you see, not ideas or wits wherewith to match the deepest schemes of our adversaries as well as our friends) was the point. But life or international politics and relations or diplomacy is something more than that. It may, and did, require nothing less than a mobilization of new characteristics and unique forces on the part of the pacifistic and religious-minded American. It actually compelled him to open his brains to the fact that life is more dark and mysterious than he had supposed, more forceful and terrible and cruel than his petty little pacifistic and puritanic dreams would previously have permitted him to believe. A door was unlocked, a window opened, and looking out or in on the deeps of Nature he saw--dimly enough even then, it must be admitted--what he has not even yet digested; that Nature has no strict and God-given rules, that nothing is really fixed; anything may arise, and that within the bounds of an unknown arc of equation anything may happen--anything.

But it took a world horror to crack the armor of smug, ignorant self-sufficiency which has covered the average American from crown to sole.

And has he learned? Does life really mean any more to him than it did before? I wonder. As some one else has brilliantly said:

“The fierce, rudimentary mass mind of America, like that of some inchoate, primeval monster, relentlessly concentrated in the appetite of the moment, knows nothing as yet apparently of its own vast, inert, almost nerveless body encrusted with parasites. One looks out to-day over the immense vista of our society, stretching westward in a succession of dreary steppes, and one realizes what it means to possess no cultural initiative or tradition, filling in the interstices of energy and maintaining a steady current of life over and above the ebb and flow of individual necessity or animal appetite or purpose.” Money, money, money. To build, build, build, in order to make more money, to make a show, to be better than thou--financially only. It is told of the quondam Russell Sage that he kept near him in his office a strongbox containing $78,000,000 in what he called “gilt-edge” securities, the which, whenever he wished to prove how wonderful he was and how great his life had been, he brought forth and exclaimed: “There--there isn’t a man in America who can show that many first-class stocks and bonds! Not one!”

And there wasn’t, perhaps.

But what of it?

He died, and not knowing what to do with it (splendid testimony to the American financial intellect), left it all to his wife; who, old and ignorant herself and not knowing what to do with it, but fearing its senseless distribution, left it, after various benefactions to sectarian schools and much influence brought to bear, to the Russell Sage Foundation. And the Russell Sage Foundation, not knowing exactly what to do with it, has been “investigating,” and re-investigating and re-re-investigating ever since, this, that and the other, with a view to finding out what it should do with it, what one thing, if any, to help. And what great thing, if any, has the Russell Sage Foundation done?

Well, America, in its own peculiar and interesting way, may find itself intellectually. As an old char-woman who worked for me remarked, “I’m not so dumb than I look.” So, possibly and probably, America.

To be sure, a new country must at first borrow its culture from somewhere. One does not come by such a thing instanter and out of a silk hat. Still here is a nation now three hundred years old; it has one hundred and twenty millions of people, if not more; it has as great, and in their way forceful, cities as exist anywhere on the globe; its architecture is already most imposing and fast attaining a splendor hitherto never equaled by any land; a far better and more satisfying mechanical equipment is here than in any nation elsewhere. We have, in so far as material facilities are concerned, more and better opportunities for genuine culture than are now available to the mass anywhere. Then, why are we so bent, I should like to know, upon more money, and, when not that, upon idealistically misinterpreting life? The few genuine thinkers that America has thus far produced are taboo: Poe, Whitman, Twain. Only in one field, finance--not in war, politics, the arts and sheer intellect--do our essential individuals compare favorably with those of other lands. In the main we are too idealistic or illusioned in all but our material affairs. But why all the delusion in re the ordinary intellectual facts of life? No single nation has more of wealth, courage, industry, or more impressive varieties of scenery, be it of mountains, lakes, valleys, the coast. We should be, and for all I know are (although the signs are not numerous), at the opening of an era of art and letters such as the world in none of its great periods has surpassed. Yet in spite of all this, and in so far as the mass and its ostensible leaders are concerned, we are intellectually dull and unperceiving in regard to all the basic facts of life. All men are still honest, kind and true (or should be) in America; all women pure as driven snow (or should be) in America. The Sermon on the Mount is our real Constitution; the Ten Commandments our only laws. We all do justly, think kindly, and it is only bad men from the world without, strangers and evil-thinkers, who come from heaven knows where--for our intellectual and spiritual cosmogony does not admit them--to cause us trouble.

America in its own good time may come to a great end. And again it may not. It may be--who knows?--a mere money machine, a honey-gatherer like the bee, a material welter like Rome, without the slightest vision as to what to do or how to act once it has its great store. Other and shrewder nations, far less able financially or physically, may yet lead the giant by the hand, pull him around by the nose. He may be psychologically the same as the wealthy heir to whom life’s pains and doubts are and remain unknown, who, being pulled in upon expensive pleasures or the ventures of others and given a superficial reason, is cheerfully willing to pay the bill and depart.

Well, if so be, so be. Who can help it? Nature, if not man, has a way however, if not wisdom. In the course of time She disposes of nations and their dreams, as well as man and his, by rotting them and their material splendors back into primal chemical substances and forces and forgetting them. Rome has gone; Greece has gone; and many, many another. But speaking for a nation that wishes to stand forth mentally significant among the peoples of the earth, that wishes to lead or at least be among those that lead, must not thought--intelligent, artistic, accurate vision--be among its primary characteristics? And is it not possible that as with individuals so with nations--where the power to think is lacking failure follows? Sometimes, and in view of the careers of various nations past and still present, one is hounded by the thought that as with individuals so with nations; some are born fools, live fools, and die fools. And may not America perchance be one such?

One hopes not.

But--

THE DREAM

SCENE: _The vicinity of 115th Street and Broadway, New York City,
on a warm, lowery May night. Time, 11.15._

_Approach along Broadway from 116th Street George Paul Syphers,
Professor of Chemistry; Forbes Mitchell, Professor of Philosophy;
Abner Barrett, Professor of Physics. Syphers is medium in height,
slim, fiery, black-whiskered, barbered to perfection. He is
loquacious and demonstrative. Mitchell is attenuated, humped, gray.
He is quite old. Barrett is fifty, blonde, bald, heavy, silent._

SYPHERS

(_As they reach the corner._) Well, I turn off here. That was an interesting discussion we had, eh? The fact is, Mitchell, as I told you the other day, I have passed out of my old materialistic point of view to a certain extent--not entirely--but now I see more order in things than I once did--a necessary if mechanistic order. It seems more or less inescapable to me, doesn’t it to you?

MITCHELL

(_Doubtfully_.) Well, yes, I might say--only--of course----

BARRETT

(_Dogmatically._) I do not see how any one can doubt law. Everything obeys law of one kind and another.

SYPHERS

Quite so! Quite so! Law, of course. Everything obeys a law or laws of one kind and another. Nevertheless, there are so many confusing contradictions. Laws seem to conflict at times, don’t you think, even in chemical and sidereal space. You don’t deny that, do you?

BARRETT

Still, more knowledge might prove them to be anything but contradictory.

SYPHERS

Well, I admit that, too. Only I was merely suggesting that I see more definite order than I once did. A few years ago I could see nothing but disorder, chaos, the inexplicable clashing of forces. Of late I am not so sure. This matter of orthogenesis now; it appeals to me very much as demonstrating an intellectual if not a spiritual order, some great controlling force somewhere. I seem to see a definite tendency to order in things. Life has certainly built itself up through the ages in a very intelligent way indeed, don’t you think?

BARRETT

(_Loftily._) Ye-es, of course, only there have been many errors and conflicts there too--sudden stoppage of plans in various directions.

MITCHELL

True, as I was about to point out.

SYPHERS

(_Almost unconscious of interruption._) I admit that. I admit that. What I am getting at is this: all life, as we know it, is based on the cell--cell origination, cell multiplication, cell arrangement. That is an old story. Now here is something which is my own idea--it’s a mere theory, of course--that the whole thing may have been originated, somehow, somewhere else, worked out beforehand, as it were, in the brain of something or somebody and is now being orthogenetically or chemically directed from somewhere, being thrown on a screen, as it were, like a moving-picture, and we mere dot pictures, mere cell-built-up pictures, like the movies, only we are telegraphed or telautographed from somewhere else, like those dot pictures that are now made electrically, built up dot by dot, millions of them coming rapidly by wireless or wire and being thrown on a screen of some kind--ether, the elements--you know what I mean. You have seen the telautograph pictures I mean, of course?

BARRETT

Yes, of course. Very ingenious. Very ingenious. But how do you prove the origination of the cell in the fashion that you want?

MITCHELL

(_Aside._) A rather slow movie, I should say, considering the length of time it has taken to build it up.

SYPHERS

Well, in this way--it has its drawbacks, of course; you remember the experiments of that Irish scientist Burke, don’t you? He generated what he called a radiobe--a single cell in a plasm culture which he had hermetically sealed and which he kept under the influence of radium. I do not recall the exact facts of the case at the moment, and I do not believe that his deductions have since been accepted, but that is neither here nor there. That idea of his illustrates mine very well. If we could prove that one cell, one radiobe, had been or could be originated or generated by an outside influence of this kind--radium, if you wish, in a plasm of that kind--we would have to admit that the whole thing might be built up in some such fashion. Why, you could base a new philosophy on that, Mitchell. One radiobe generated in a plasm culture under radium or something else, some autogenetic force manifesting itself through a thing like radium, and there you are. After that you would have to grant the possibility of millions and billions of cells coming in that fashion, whole nations constructed of cells, as they have been.

MITCHELL

My dear Syphers!

BARRETT

There was some hitch in that experiment, however. The chain wasn’t quite complete.

SYPHERS

I know--I know. I grant you that. All I’m insisting on is that if one cell, one radiobe, say, can be generated by a synthesis of energy, why not millions? And if millions, why not billions, the whole human family, in short, since we are a synthesis of cells--this whole visible scene in all its details? I know it sounds wild, but (_to Mitchell_) I have heard you yourself say that you thought it might be possible that we were all a part of some invisible psychic body, force body, in the mechanism of which we function in some way, just as the cells do in ours.

MITCHELL

(_Much flattered._) Yes, I have said as much.

SYPHERS

Well, then, why may not my theory be true?

BARRETT

May? May? Of course it may. But how are you going to prove it? I myself have suggested that Mitchell’s larger psychic body, as he calls it, may be nothing more than a fetus, a secondary creature being built in the womb of a still larger organism, but what of it? All of us, everything that we see here, may be nothing more than parts of organs that are being constructed in some huge womb. This so-called higher psychic body may not even be complete yet, not ready to be born in its realm. But how do we know? There’s nothing to prove it.

SYPHERS

Just the same, if I had a few hundred thousand dollars I would enlarge my laboratory and pursue this subject. I believe that something may be discovered. I believe that I could prove it in the course of time. Why, snow crystals, tree and flower forms, everything, gives us a hint, sometimes instantaneously. Why do snow crystals assume almost instantaneously and out of nothing their beautiful forms? The controlling impulse is certainly artistic, isn’t it, and outside of anything we know? (_He notes that he is pressing the matter too far and boring his two friends._) Well, good night. Glad to see you two at the meeting to-night. It was interesting, wasn’t it?

BARRETT

Very. (_To himself._) He’s a terrible bore.

MITCHELL

Delightful. (_To himself._) I’m glad he’s done. (_They bow and depart._)

SYPHERS

Dolts! Fogies! That’s always the way, dull and cautious.

BARRETT

(_As they walk up the street._) An ingenious theory, but dangerously speculative. He ought to read Stromeyer on “Impulse.”

MITCHELL

I often wonder about his work and just how sound he is.

(_SYPHERS reaches his own door and goes up the steps, unlocks it and mounts the inside stairs to his room. He lights the gas in a chamber which is half library and half bedroom._)

SYPHERS

(_Seating himself and gazing about dreamily._) A great idea. I’m sure of it. Along this line is coming a scientific revolution. If I had enough radium and stromium, why--but they cost so much. (_He yawns._) Life is really a dream. We are all an emanation, a shadow, a moving picture cast on a screen of ether. I’m sure of it. (_He gazes about, yawns again, and begins to undress._)

A TELEGRAPH INSTRUMENT

(_At 110th Street Station._) Tick--tick-tick---- tick-tick-tick--tick-tick---- tick--tick-tick-tick-tick-tick----

TELEGRAPH OPERATOR

There goes that blamed machine again (_begins to write_.) “Professor George Paul Syphers, 621 West 115th Street, New York City. Your uncle, Edward Fillmore, died at eleven to-night. By the terms of his will you are the sole heir to the bulk of his fortune, three hundred thousand dollars. Come at once. A. J. Larywind, Counsellor,” (_Aside._) I wish someone would leave me three thousand cents. (_To a waiting messenger._) Here, Patsy. Take this up to 115th Street.

PATSY LAFERTY

(_Cock-eyed, overgrown, contentious._) Sure, it’s just de night to keep busy. It’s goin’ to rain, an’ it’s me late watch. Oh, well, dere’s nuttin’ like bein’ poor an’ honest. (_He seizes a black cotton umbrella almost as large as himself and goes out._)

SYPHERS

(_Crawling into his bed._) The curious thing is: why should any dominant force outside this seeming life wish to create it--the smallness, the pettiness, the suffering? I must write a book about that. Here I am--(_he suddenly bethinks him of opening a window and gets out. Looking out_). It’s going to rain, I do believe. (_He returns and stretches himself to rest._) There, it’s thundering already.

PATSY LAFERTY

(_Trudging solemnly up Broadway._) It’s funny, dese mokes wot git messages at one in de mornin’. I’ll lay a even bet I don’t git nuttin’, neider. If you’d come wit a million dollars after twelve o’clock dere’s guys wot’d git sore.

SYPHERS

(_Dozing, but still continuing his speculations hazily._) I must try to find the psychic impulse which originates and directs the cell. That is the great thing. We’re all shadows, I say, shadows--adumbrations--impalpable nothings--rumors--dreams. (_He turns on his side._) If our ills become too great we might be able to wake up or drive them away by thinking of this. It may be that that’s what we do when we die--wake up. But that’s Christian Science, isn’t it? Bah! (_He snores slightly._)

PATSY LAFERTY

(_Arriving at the door and closing his umbrella._) A fine night, dis. An’ he won’t be in. Dat’s my luck. (_He rings the bell._)

SYPHERS

(_Beginning to dream._) Radiobes! Radiobes! Flying radiobes as big as houses--monsters--(_He stirs. As he does so the ringing of the bell, the rising wind and the thunder and lightning, which rapidly become violent, identify themselves in some weird way with his thoughts. He is on a large plain now over which a battle is being fought. The flashes of lightning and bellows of thunder gradually identify themselves in his mind with some impending disaster, vague and yet oppressive. He begins to cerebrate in an imaginative, illogical way. A sense of something ominous pervades him, a feeling of great change. Then the rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns begins and armed figures running and fighting appear in the distance._)

SYPHERS

(_Who once saw military service._) War! And fighting men! (_It begins to rain._) That is a machine gun. Now I am in real danger. How did I come here, anyhow? (_He moves a hand, thinking he is hurrying to cover._)

PATSY LAFERTY

(_Standing at the door, ringing the bell and shifting from one foot to the other._) Wot a swell night! Wot a swell night! Now it’s startin’ to pour an’ I’ll have to stand here aw’ile, I guess. Holy Cripes, dem drops is as big as marbles! (_He pushes the bell again._)

THE PROFESSOR

(_Hearing the whirr of the buzzer in his dreams and taking it for the rush of artillery and men._) Ah, the horror of war! What was I thinking?--ah, yes! If one had some method of waking up. (_He mingles the dream notions of his waking philosophy with the figures of his dream._) Then there would be no more war, no horrors. It is entirely possible, now that we know this existence of ours is a dream. I may be dreaming now--who knows? If so, I could wake up and all my ills would vanish--or would they? (_As the thunder and lightning increase._) How horrible this is! (_The dream sky lights up as if with red fire._)

PATSY LAFERTY

T-r-r-r! T-r-r-r-r! T-r-r-r-r-r! Wot’s de matter wit dis bell? W’y don’t de guy answer?

THE PROFESSOR

(_Dreaming and looking about him in apprehension._) War! War! How terrible! How did I come here? How does there happen to be war? Those are fighting men over there! They are killing each other! Horrors! But the great thing is to escape. That fire is dreadful. It means death. (_He struggles to put himself in motion and grunts in his sleep._)

PATSY LAFERTY

(_Ringing again._) Well, dis is some sleeper, all right. Or else dere ain’t nobody home. I’ll kick, I will. (_He kicks._) Come to! I ain’t supposed to stand here all night. (_Kicks and knocks are without result._)

SYPHERS

(_Still dreaming heavily._) And here comes a file of soldiers--I hear them tramping--a great company. Merciful heavens, they see me! (_He begins to run. As he does so the file of dream soldiers begin to run also._)

THE FILE OF DREAM SOLDIERS

Halt!

THE PROFESSOR

(_Breaking into a heavy sweat._) Great God! I haven’t a place to hide! Oh, Lord, what shall I do? (_He turns, and in his dream he imagines a deserted stone hut set in a grove of thick tall trees, which seems to offer shelter. He runs towards the hut._) As I live, here is a stone hut among thick trees! I’ll hide in it. Perhaps they won’t see me. _(He dashes wildly in, slamming a heavy door behind him._)

A SCORE OF DREAM SOLDIERS

(_Hurrying after him and knocking with their musket butts on the door._) Knock! Knock! Knock!

PATSY LAFERTY

(_At the door._) Knock! Knock! Knock! Gee, wot a night! Dese raindrops look like spits. An’ dat lightning! Dat last one looked like a telegraph pole standin’ straight in de air!

SYPHERS

(_Cowering in a corner._) Oh, Lord! My life is worth nothing! Here I lie hiding in an empty stone hut, and those men at the door want my life. What is life? A dream! A dream!--but, oh, such a precious dream! I would not want to disappear--not yet! No, no! I would not want to wake up. I don’t want to die--not yet. Not yet! (_As he lies there cowering, all the coruscations and thunder of a great battle afflict him; cannon, machine guns, human cries, commands. He cowers lower, and yet in spite of the thickness of the walls which seem to protect him he can see through them to the surrounding trees to where the dream soldiers await him--tall men in red coats and towering shakos--and beyond them again to the battlefield, red with flame and gore. As he stares, the men in the shakos glare at him._)

FIRST DREAM SOLDIER

(_Pointing at him and speaking to another._) We’ll easily get him out of there. Can’t you see him lying there, close by the wall? (_To the other soldiers._) Bring a battering ram. (_A soldier starts off._) No, bring a cannon. We’ll blow him out. (_A second soldier goes._) He thinks we can’t get him, but we can. (_Other soldiers draw near. They move in the curious, indefinite way common to figures in dreams. Nothing is clear, and yet there is a sense of impending disaster. The Professor studies the nature of his predicament with a sense of horror._)

THE PROFESSOR

(_Lying on the floor, close to the wall._) Ah, if I could only escape! I was thinking a while ago that life was a shadow of something else, an adumbration, a thing built up point by point like the dots of a telautographed picture. Now if that were so I could get out of here. It would be a dream. I could wake. I could cry “Avaunt!” I could stir and it would all disappear and become as nothing. But here! Here--(_he pauses and stares. A company of dream soldiers on horseback gallop up and swing a cannon into position._)

THE CAPTAIN OF THE DREAM SOLDIERS

(_Dramatically._) Position! (_They unhook the horses and man the guns._) Load! (_A shell is put in._) Fire! (_It belches flame and smoke. A great hole is torn in the wall of the hut._)

PATSY LAFERTY

(_At the door._) Gee, dat las’ crack was a bold! If he kin sleep troo dat he soitenly won’t hear me--or maybe he ain’t home. Well, I might as well stand here. I can’t go back in dis. (_He decides to make himself comfortable in the doorway._)

THE PROFESSOR

(_Imagining he is crying._) Help! Help! Oh, save me! Save me! (_He realizes that he emits no sound, and groans._)

FIRST DREAM OFFICER

Once, more, men! Another shell here! (_Another is put in._) Fire!

THE CANNON

Poof! Boom! (_Another great hole is torn in the wall._)

PATSY LAFERTY

(_As a second electric crash occurs._) I don’t know wedder I’d better stay here. I don’t wanna get killed. (_He walks about uneasily._)

THE PROFESSOR

(_Heavily and desperately._) I am lost! I know it. Oh, if my idea were only true! What if all this turmoil and agony were a figment of the mind merely, a cell or dot picture? Here I am in this hut; these soldiers are about to destroy me. If I could just cry “Avaunt!” “Disappear!”--or if I could know that I am not real, and disappear myself. I wonder if I might not try it? (_He jumps to his feet._)

A FLASH OF LIGHTNING

Click--Sssssss!

A CLAP OF REAL THUNDER

Boom----!

THE PROFESSOR

(_To the dream soldiers, defiantly._) I defy you! Do your worst! You’re not real! I’m not real! This whole thing is a dream! I’m a dream, or I’m dreaming! I defy you!

FIRST DREAM SOLDIER

(_Drawing near with a rifle._) Is that so? You defy me, do you? I’ll show you whether I’m real or not. (_He takes deliberate aim._)

SECOND DREAM SOLDIER

Yes, kill him. That’s the way!

THE PROFESSOR

(_Lifting his hand._) Wait a moment! Don’t! I--I’m not sure!

FIRST DREAM SOLDIER

But I will, just the same. You say I’m not real? I’ll show you whether I am or not! (_He fires._) How does that feel?

THE PROFESSOR

(_Who has twisted himself about until he has one hand under him in a most painful position._) Oh, God, I’m shot! And now I’ll die! This whole scene, real or not real, will pass away and I will never know--or will I? And yet once I was a man, and it was good to be alive. Oh! Oh! Oh! (_He weeps and sinks down. A powerful clap of thunder half arouses him. The knocking of Patsy Laferty becomes dimly audible, a cross between the clatter of musketry and a knock. He stares at the soldiers, some of whom seem already to be growing thin and wavering._) Dying! Alas! I’m dying! Never will I see this wonderful world any more! (_He partially wakes._) Or will I? What’s this--I’m not dying, after all! They’re not real! I’m only dreaming. How astonishing! (_To the dream soldiers, defiantly._) You’re not real, after all. You’re mere shadows, thin air. I’m dying, but you’re not real. This house isn’t real. It couldn’t have holes in it if it were, or at least I couldn’t have seen through it in the first place if it hadn’t. You’re shadows, tissues of nothing, a mere fancy of the brain. Oh, wonderful!

FIRST DREAM OFFICER

(_Standing by the cannon._) Are we? Well, you’re a fool! Wait! You may be waking into another state, but you’ll be dead to this one. But we won’t. Ha! Ha! We’ll still be here, alive. (_To the second dream soldier._) He thinks he’s not real. He thinks we’re not real. He thinks he’s not going to die, but wake up into something else! Ha! Ha! (_They look at each other in a strange, fading, unreal way._) When he passes out of this won’t he be dead to this, though?

THE PROFESSOR

(_Amazedly._) What is this? Am I dying, or waking up? Which is it? Are there various worlds, one within another? Are those soldiers really real? Great heavens! How strange! I am waking up, and yet this world in which I am is real enough. I died there. I certainly did, or I am dying there. (_The house begins to dissolve like smoke; the trees can be seen through the bodies of the soldiers._)

PATSY LAFERTY

(_At the door._) I’ll give dis guy one more spin an’ den I’ll quit. I ain’t gonna stand here all night, rain or no rain. Clump! Clump! Clump! (_He kicks with his heel at the same time that he rings._)

THE PROFESSOR

(_Bounding out of bed._) Oh, blessed heaven! What is that? I’m not dead, after all! I am really alive! It was a dream, all of it. How glad I am to be awake! (_He reaches for his trousers._) But those soldiers! They argued with me about it! They did! They made fun of me! Isn’t that amazing! This dream is a call to me to seek out this mystery. If ever I get money enough to do it that is certainly what I will do. I shall devote all my life to solving this mystery. If only I could find somebody who would endow a laboratory for this purpose. (_He pauses and stares, as the bell whirrs._) Yes, yes! I’m coming! (_He bustles downstairs, turning up the light as he goes._)

PATSY LAFERTY

(_Irritably, as the door is opened._) Syphers?

THE PROFESSOR

Yes.

PATSY LAFERTY

Tellygram. Sign here. (_He produces about a half inch of pencil and holds up a signature blank. The Professor signs. Absentmindedly he tears open the message, but while doing so turns and closes the door. Patsy Laferty stares at it disconsolately._)

THE PROFESSOR

(_Reading._) A miracle! $300,000! Just what I need for that laboratory! It’s a sign! The dream is a portent, a call! My poor dear, good uncle! What moved him to leave me that? Now I know the dream was an omen. And yet--(_thinking of a certain maiden he has been courting._)--should I really do that? Three hundred thousand are three hundred thousand, and where would I ever get that much again? (_He hesitates mentally._) We could live beautifully on that. I’m not so sure. Perhaps I could get some one else to furnish that money. (_He starts upstairs._) But that poor boy! I forgot to give him a penny, and it’s storming. (_Returns and reopens the door, looks up and down the street, and comes back._) Dear, dear, dear! I should have given him a dime, anyhow--bringing such a fortunate message. But I must think about this laboratory, though, and this money. I must not act too hastily or inadvisedly. Three hundred thousand are three hundred thousand, and---- (_He goes upstairs again solemnly._)

PATSY LAFERTY

(_One block south, staring at the sidewalk._) Wot did I say? Wot did I say? Dey never comes across wit nuttin’ after twelve--nuttin’. Not if you handed dem a million.

THE AMERICAN FINANCIER

The long line of American financiers, beginning with Stephen Girard (1750-1831), and extending via Astor, the Vanderbilts, Goulds, J. P. Morgan and F. W. Woolworth to Henry Ford of the present time, suggests nothing so much as a procession of thrifty and, in the main, cat-like animals weaving a devious way amid intricacies of law and public opinion and theories as to morals, duty, charity and the like, until finally one is led to conclude that, by and large, the financial type is the coldest, the most selfish, and the most useful of all living phenomena. Plainly it is a highly specialized machine for the accomplishment of some end which Nature has in view. Often humorless, shark-like, avid, yet among the greatest constructive forces imaginable; absolutely opposed to democracy in practice, yet as useful an implement for its accomplishment as for autocracy; either ignorant or contemptuous of ethical niceties as related to thine and mine, yet a stickler for all that concerns mine; moral and immoral sexually--both types abound; narrow to all but an infinitesimal line in nearly all that relates to the humanities as applied to individuals; wise and generous in the matter of large, even universal benefactions, yet guilty of the meanest subterfuge where their own interests are concerned; and seeking always to perpetuate their own fame. In other words, typical men and women of an avid pagan world (vide Hetty Green, Russell Sage), yet surrounded by religious and ethical abstrusities for which they care little and of which they understand less.

Such might be called the pathology of the genus financier, not only in America, but everywhere.

In regard to our American specimens it is more or less anachronistic to speak of them as purely American in character, although, in a way, they are. The organizing and financial type of mind--American, European or any other--is really little different from that of all preceding countries and ages. Yet financial manipulation, in the extended modern sense, is comparatively new. It dates from the industrial revolution in England in the eighteenth century. There was a time when the organizing type of mind, comparable to our modern examples, was engaged in other things: money-lending and exchange principally. The machinery for finance in the modern sense was lacking. You might have found a J. P. Morgan, a J. D. Rockefeller, or a Russell Sage as Keeper of the Exchequer and Supervisor of the Grain Stores of, say, Egypt or Assyria, or Adviser to the King, whether he ruled in Babylon, Persia or elsewhere. One cannot help thinking what an excellent type of Keeper of the Exchequer, Vizier or High Priest our own John D. Rockefeller would have made. The robes! The sanctity!

As we come forward in history to the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of that mental darkness known as the Middle Ages, when all intelligence, financial and other, seems to have been completely swept away, we find the purely financial and organizing type but slowly developing. Joseph (he of the coat of many colors), fabled Crœsus, who ruled in Asia Minor, and Lepidus and Mæcenas, friends of triumvirs, emperors and poets, are excellent examples of the ancient financial type. Their like is not to be found until after the revival of banking and trade in the fifteenth century. And if you look back you will see that to-day, in another way, we have been repeating in Wall Street (or were until a few years ago), the type of man who occasionally sat as Emperor over all the Romans. If you are inclined to doubt this you might, if the opportunity offered, examine the collection of portrait busts of Roman Emperors of the highly executive and financial type (Hadrian, Trajanus, Titus, Caracalla and the rest) in the Vatican, the Musee del la Terme and the British Museum. Hadrian, for instance, was as much like the late Commodore Vanderbilt, side whiskers and all, as one man might be to another; and Trajanus greatly resembled the late Mark Hanna, whose name somehow suggests that of a Roman. Any one of ten or fifteen portrait busts of ancient Roman Emperors might almost be mistaken for Armour, Morgan, Gould, Sage, Crocker, Stanford, Hearst. For example, compare Russell Sage to Julius Cæsar; or Wm. H. Vanderbilt to Augustus Cæsar. Indeed, if you were to examine some of the major operations of the successful Roman Emperors you would find that their power to maintain their positions with the Prætorian Guard and the Patrician Class (which was really the Roman world, so far as they were concerned) was largely financial and organizing in the same peculiar spirit in which we find those qualities operating to-day.

It is not until the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy, Flanders and north Germany that one encounters financial types very like those with which we have been very recently dealing. Italy of the Renaissance found a most interesting specimen of this type of mind in Cosimo I. of the Medici--“Pater Patriæ,” as he was called--who was little more than a very active Vanderbilt I. of his day. The family first conducted a successful pill business, then Cosimo engaged in the banking business. Being a financier he secured control of nearly all the financial channels of Italy, France, Greece, a portion of Egypt, and the Lowlands. It is charged that he brought about the death of one or two enemies in Florence, not because he disliked them, but because he thought they were dangerous to his interests, and once he came very near to being gibbeted himself. He was a patron of the arts, not so much because he was emotionally and poetically enthusiastic about art as because, as at present, it was a distinguished thing to be. The trick of currying favor via art patronage is old. His descendants, having less of his force and more of the refinement which invariably follows wealth, did more for art and less for trade, and so while we see the Medici family identified with the most brilliant period of Italian art we also see it slowly sinking into financial and political insignificance. That it finally degenerated and passed out is no reflection on the significance of Cosimo, his primary import. Although the coldest and most financial of them all, he was also the best.

This was equally true of Louis XIV of France and Frederick the Great of Germany, organizing and financial types both, although monarchs by birth.

England has had its full share of the type in the officers and directors of its famous East India Company (Warren Hastings, for one) and their efforts to monopolize and exploit the Indian Empire, as well as in the very excellent Rothschild, who flourished at the time of the Battle of Waterloo and who stood behind a tree to view the battle in order that he might decide for himself which side was going to win and so get to London and the stock-market first. There he spread the report that England had lost so that the already trembling stocks of the nation might tumble and he be able to buy them for a song. When he had gathered in all the shares he could carry he gave out the correct news of the victory and reaped his harvest. Dishonest? As you choose to look at such things. But when has high finance been honest, or let us say, considerate of the interests of others? The financial history of this particular individual is so selfishly single-minded as to be almost ridiculous, suggesting a power which invents man for one purpose and no other, as generals, saints and the like are invented.

In America, the history of our financiers is so full of thievery and selfishness as to appear comic were it not for the mass misery which so many of their deeds involved. Stephen Girard, for instance, stole his employers’ ship at the outbreak of the American Revolution (pretending it had been sunk, of course), and with the proceeds opened a wine and cider business in Philadelphia. John Jacob Astor drugged the Indians with fire-water and bought their furs for a song, as well as bribed Government agents to permit him so to do. J. P. Morgan senior at the outbreak of the Civil War sold the Government five hundred of its own condemned rifles for twenty-two dollars each, after having but the moment before bought them _from_ the Government for three dollars and fifty cents each, and that with money borrowed on the strength of the proposed contract. (History of the Great American Fortunes, Myers, Vol. II., page 172.) Cornelius Vanderbilt blackmailed the United States Steamship Company, plying between New York and California, in the amount of nearly $500,000 a year by threatening to operate a rival line. (Ibid. Vol. II., pp. 120-121.) Jay Gould robbed the various States through which his railroad ran and drove some of his rivals to suicide. Russell Sage robbed the city of Troy of a railroad and bribed the Minnesota and other State Legislatures. (Ibid. Vol II., pp. 12-16.) The record is too long to be more than mentioned here; those interested should read Myers’ remarkable work, in which the crimes as well as genius of our long line of money kings are described in full.

That the world has always been troubled with the huge financial innovator and the self-seeker is of course a commonplace; the objection to him has been, as a rule, that he has too few human traits. Like the astronomer, the mathematician, the philosopher and the historian, his thoughts are more or less remote from the concerns of the ordinary individual, although his dealings are with him. To do anything which is to be of benefit to the individual it requires the mind that sees the individual en masse rather than in particular. Indeed, the thing that has always confronted the individual of ability since the beginning, aside from his own inner driving emotions, ambitions and needs, is this same organized need of the mass as represented in constitutions, governments, declarations, which in order to advantage himself he must flatter, satisfy or exploit--but which he must meet in some way or fail. And only when the organized sense of the mass becomes sufficiently intelligent for it to act in concert is it possible to sweep away or even curb the individual. For the individual and the mass are interdependent facts, and the one cannot escape the other, try as each may.

But never, apparently, previous to the French Revolution, which was a revolt against centralized and hereditary constructive craft and ingenuity, had it occurred to the world, or rather the mass, to rout these individuals and make pariahs of them, although the world in recent days has developed an especial aptitude for it, one must admit. England, which is not so much a democracy as an ordered hierarchy of powers, largely financial in character, has never felt called upon to drive these gentlemen from their positions or quarrel with them for the often singular and fantastic manner in which they have achieved their success, or the indifference they may have displayed toward the millions below them. The gentlemen at the top may or may not have intentionally done anything for the peasants at the bottom in the past, but until very recent days they have not been asked to relinquish their control of the machinery. Yet now the world presents another angle to this proposition: the organizer and financier is being suspected and harried everywhere. Only in America, the home of anti-financial legislation, the multi-millionaire is apparently becoming safer than ever and more powerful. Yet to the economist, the historian, the student of politics, it is already a truism that economic reforms are not and never have been permanent; also that no one, however self-interested, ever succeeds wholly in working for himself. He must do something for the mass if he is to do anything for himself. It is a condition of life, not a theory.

The trouble in America, in so far as this type of mind is or was concerned, is or was this: that when it appeared it came rather speedily and roughly into contact with the pen-written notion or ideal embodied in our American Declaration that all men are born free and equal, and that they are possessed of certain inalienable rights, among which of course are those of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And these latter were not supposed to be interfered with by financiers or organizers seeking power. Yet the race has always been, and will so remain, of course, to the swift, the battle to the strong; chemical and physical laws not being easily upset by fiats of government. Time and chance still continue to operate as before, sometimes to destroy the strong, sometimes to destroy the weak. The best that can be said for the theories laid down in the American Declaration is that they do more credit to the hearts of those who penned them than to their heads. Yet that these sentiments so expressed should have moved to bring about a conflict between the American individual and the American mass might well have been foreseen, although curiously it has not yet done so. Other countries without any Declaration are far more alive to their inalienable (so-called) rights than is America, if one may judge by recent developments in Russia and elsewhere. All good things may be and, no doubt, are gifts, but they are not conferred by governments, any more than death and disaster can be prevented by governments. Sometimes innate strength and fortuitous circumstances help some of us, yet this merely illustrates once more the truism that nature “plays favorites” and that many are vastly better equipped than others.

A great voice, for instance, is a gift, and cannot be acquired at any school or for any price; the beauty of a woman, however modest or staggering, is a gift and cannot be purchased or even manufactured (amazing as that may seem in the face of all the drug companies), although ugliness, apparently, can almost be wished on a person, so lavish is life with its disfavors. The ability to paint a great picture, to design a great building, to lead an army, to organize a government, to construct a philosophy, to dream a religion, is a gift and cannot be added to any one by taking thought, however quickly it may be taken away. Neither can the possessors of these be reduced to the level of those who have nothing to offer, no ideas, no dreams. Christ said one really significant thing, “Who by taking thought can add a cubit to his stature?” If He had followed the logic of that statement He would never have delivered the Sermon on the Mount or the Beatitudes and would not now be so popular, but apparently He was genius enough to be illogical.

What has confronted the American organizing genius, now known as a captain of industry, a multi-millionaire, a financier and the like, has been--aside from a mass need for this, that and the other and his desire to supply it in order that he might improve his own condition, strengthen his own individuality, etc.--this same pen-written theory about all men being free and equal. Free they might be to begin with, one might hear him saying to himself--to a very limited extent, anyhow--but equal to himself, however much they might be equal one to another, never. It became his business, therefore, as he soon found and as he afterwards phrased it, to “drive a horse and wagon through the Constitution,” or indeed any other law that might be devised to stop him and his dreams. I do not believe that any financial genius, American or other, anywhere or at any time, ever stopped to consider that there was such a thing as law or a Declaration of Independence or a Constitution when he began; or, if he did, it was as something to be evaded or overcome. To the aggressive organizing mind life is and always has been a free and practically uncharted sea. It finds itself blazing with an impulse to get some one new thing done; it conceives some great scheme, is inspired with some great enthusiasm for something; and thereafter all else is as nothing. Being strong and magnetic and enthusiastic, it rushes in where it is generally assumed angels fear to tread and seizes upon all which it deems may aid it in its dreams. The average man is of as little significance to such a temperament as a stalk of grain to a reaper. Any ideal other than its own is likely to be looked upon as an impediment. But always, of course, there exists the tramping mass of lesser individuals who have been going to school and church and there learning (in America at least) all the religious and copy-book maxims, which argue that the world was made for the individual and that he was born free and equal, each as good as any other and each called upon to aid the other; and these begrudge, and always have and always will, these great giants their power. They often fight them and sometimes beat them.

But they are not to be wholly undone by them at any time, anywhere. Like the Lilliputians, the mass as often succeeds in binding Gulliver with their threads as Gulliver succeeds in tearing through their petty stays. The twain are ever being born side by side in nature; the giant and the pygmy, the shark and the bluefish, the whale and the minnow. “Look,” cry the minnows to their fellows, “this whale imagines he is better, wiser, greater, than we! He moves in larger ways, disturbs our great sea, taking his choice of the realms and pleasures of life. Why should this be? Are we not as good as he? And yet he does all these things which we cannot; he breaks the law which governs the average minnow, whereas we cannot. Therefore he must be evil. We will seize and bind him and so end his privileges, if not him.” Immediately and always, at this point, there arises an intermediate figure or group, the sophisticated “advocates of the people,” “tribunes of the people,” individuals less powerful than the giants, though shrewder than the pygmies, their employers, many of whom are sincere enough in their conviction of unselfishness; others self-seekers and charlatans purely, yet each and every one crying that he will deliver the mass from its bondage, and actually attempting, or pretending, to adjust the impossible demands of the people with the almost impossible individualism of the egoist. But, honest or dishonest as they may be, the mass is never made quite free; the financiers or individuals are never wholly curbed. Both merely proceed to develop new issues and new battlefields.

Personally I believe that most of us would prefer that the mass should not sweep away the individual, for each of us would prefer to be somebody in however small a way rather than mere unrecognizable cogs in a machine or bees in a bee-hive. At best, we are little more than that; even our greatest individuals, individual as they may seem. They, too, are but minute factors in the total machinery, little able to forefend against disaster or the ultimate nothingness that swallows them. But one thing is sure: the individual in the course of the development of his dreams and ambitions does scheme out and construct or bring into organic operation functions which are valuable to mass prosperity, and on that score there is scarcely any fault to be found with him.

The thing that might seriously concern a thinking American would be whether the American financial type, as contrasted with those of other lands and times, is more or less admirable. Greece had Crœsus; Rome, Lepidus, Hadrian; Italy, Lorenzo, the money-gathering Popes; France, Louis XIV, the Baron de Hirsch; England, the first Rothschild, the late Cecil Rhodes, Harmsworth, Strathcona; Japan, Shibusawa.