Jean Toomer once told his publisher, Horace Liveright: “My racial composition and my position in the world are realities that I alone may determine.” He would brook no narrow definitions of race, either for himself or for his iconic work published in 1923, Cane. Yet, in his insistence that Cane not be marketed as a “negro” work, Toomer distanced himself from the culture that indeed made his most famous book so memorable. Inasmuch as he turned away from his African American heritage – a turn consummated especially in the decades after Cane – he shifted as a writer from the modernist topics of love and conflict between blacks and whites to the doctrines of mysticism and Quaker religiosity in which the contemporary meanings of “race” are multiple and fluid.
The racial realities of Gilded Age segregation shaped Toomer’s early life. Born Nathan Pinchback Toomer in Washington, DC, in 1894, he came into the world exactly two years before the Supreme Court’s ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson sanctioned racially “separate but equal” public spaces. When Toomer was very young, his father (also named Nathan Pinchback Toomer) abandoned his wife, Nina, who moved back into the home of her parents. Toomer’s maternal grandfather, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback, had had an illustrious Reconstruction-era political career, being the first person of African descent to govern a state in the United States. Aside from a few years in a predominantly white neighborhood in New Rochelle, New York, Jean Toomer spent most of his time in former Governor Pinchback’s Washington, DC, home.
The careers of Jean Toomer and P.B.S. Pinchback are a study in contrast. Whereas Toomer eventually disavowed his African ancestry and the public recognition of it, Pinchback traded in them. Born in Georgia to a former slave of mixed Native American, African, and European ancestry, Pinchback was an antebellum hustler and gambler who became active in Reconstruction-era Republican politics in Louisiana, his combative style appealing to African Americans in the South. He rose to become Acting Lieutenant Governor under Republican Henry Clay Warmouth in 1871, and then served as Interim Governor for 35 days when Warmouth was impeached. Elected to both the House of Representatives and the Senate for the United States, Pinchback faced fierce opposition from white Democrats, who were eventually seated in his place. By 1880, he was one of the founders of all-black Southern University, a federal appointee under President Chester Arthur, and a member of the Comité des Citoyens, the civil rights group that helped drive Homer A. Plessy’s challenge to railroad segregation in 1892.
Growing up in the shadow of this history, Jean Toomer alleged that his grandfather was a white man masquerading as part-black. Still, Toomer’s lifestyle in part resulted from his grandfather’s successful and lucrative political career. Toomer attended the prestigious Dunbar High School, one of the leading African American secondary schools of the era; and, after his graduation in 1914, he pursued an education at various colleges and universities, including the University of Wisconsin, the University of Chicago, and New York University. When he returned to DC in 1919, Toomer had already finished the short story “Bona and Paul,” which would eventually become part of Cane. Within the next year he was in Greenwich Village forming friendships with experimental writers like Waldo Frank and Gorham Munson. Later, Toomer’s service as a temporary principal at the segregated Sparta Agricultural and Industrial Institute in Georgia personally exposed him to racial segregation, disfranchisement, and discrimination. Yet the cultural power of African American folklore and the possibility of its decay amid the Great Migration also moved him. Thus, in late 1921, by the time he returned to New York, his manifold experiences inspired him to write “Kabnis,” one of the most moving sections of Cane. Published with a foreword by friend and fellow Greenwich Village artist Waldo Frank, this book of tightly woven poems and short stories was remarkable particularly for bridging African American vernacular with modernist experimentation. (Sherwood Anderson’s 1919 book of short stories Winesburg, Ohio was a formative influence in the latter respect.) Nonetheless, Cane barely sold five hundred copies.
Even as Cane occupies a seminal place in African American literature, Toomer spent the rest of his career writing literature that distanced him from this book and from the African American folk life it illustrated. (An exception is Balo, subtitled “a sketch of Negro life,” that he wrote in 1922 but did not see staged until 1924, when the Howard Players produced it during their 1923–1924 season, and published until 1927, when the collection Plays of Negro Life: A Source-Book of Native American Drama, edited by Alain Locke and Montgomery Gregory, appeared.) He said once that he viewed Cane as the “song of an end,” and did not know why people wanted him to write more books like it.
Divorcing the underlying creative impulses of Cane from those of his subsequent literary career would be a mistake, however. Even though the spiritualism and theories of human development of Armenian mystic George I. Gurdjieff inspired Toomer, especially after he started engaging the doctrine in 1924, spiritual aesthetics and racial ambivalence had long been twin themes in his writings. As Matthew Guterl notes, regarding Toomer’s 1928 short story “York Beach”: “If, as Toomer wrote to Liveright in 1923, ‘his racial composition’ and his ‘position in the world’ were ‘realities’ that he ‘alone’ could shape, ‘York Beach’ is an attempt to lay out the psychological mechanism that enabled this Promethean ability. It is most interesting, as well, that these questions should emerge from a text without any sustained discussion of skin color and race.” Such an assessment guides a reading of the other short story Toomer published in 1928, “Winter on Earth,” and the essay he published a year later, “Race Problems in Modern Society,” in which he explains why race remains such a “somewhat confused and uncertain subject” amid a modern American society whose cultures, ideologies, and technologies remain “in flux.” Finally, his long poem, The Blue Meridian (1931), likewise envisions a future in which white, black, and red-skinned people fuse into new, blue men.
Toomer was twice married. Margery Latimer, his first wife, died in childbirth in 1932; and Marjorie Content, his second, moved with him to Doylestown, Pennsylvania, in 1940. He joined the Quakers and largely withdrew from society until his death in 1967.
Armstrong, Julie Buckner. “Mary Turner’s Blues.” African American Review 44.1 (2011): 207–220.
Beal, Wesley. “The Form and Politics of Networks in Jean Toomer’s Cane.” American Literary History 24.4 (2012): 658–679.
Ford, Karen Jackson. Split-Gut Song: Jean Toomer and the Poetics of Modernity. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005.
Graham, T. Austin. “O Cant: Singing the Race Music of Jean Toomer’s Cane.” American Literature 82.4 (2010): 725–752.
Guterl, Matthew. “Jean Toomer.” African American Literature Beyond Race: An Alternative Reader. Ed. Gene Andrew Jarrett. New York: New York University Press, 2006. 143–146.
Hutchinson, George. “Identity in Motion: Placing Cane.” Jean Toomer and the Harlem Renaissance. Eds. Geneviève Fabre and Michel Fleiss. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001. 38–56.
Lutenski, Emily. “‘A Small Man in Big Spaces’: The New Negro, the Mestizo, and Jean Toomer’s Southwestern Writing.” MELUS 33.1 (2008): 11–32.
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Sherrard-Johnson, Cherene. Portraits of the New Negro Woman: Visual and Literary Culture in the Harlem Renaissance. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007. Ch. 4.
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Whalan, Mark. Race, Manhood, and Modernism in America: The Short Story Cycles of Sherwood Anderson and Jean Toomer. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007.
Wilks, Jennifer. “Writing Home: Comparative Black Modernism and Form in Jean Toomer and Aime Cesaire.” MFS 51.4 (2005): 801–823.
Yellin, Michael. “Visions of Their America: Waldo Frank’s Jewish-Modernist Influence on Jean Toomer’s ‘Fern.’” African American Review 43.2 (2009): 427–442.
On the school gymnasium floor, young men and women are drilling. They are going to be teachers, and go out into the world … thud, thud … and give precision to the movements of sick people who all their lives have been drilling. One man is out of step. In step. The teacher glares at him. A girl in bloomers, seated on a mat in the corner because she has told the director that she is sick, sees that the footfalls of the men are rhythmical and syncopated. The dance of his blue-trousered limbs thrills her.
Bona: He is a candle that dances in a grove swung with pale balloons.
Columns of the drillers thud towards her. He is in the front row. He is in no row at all. Bona can look close at him. His red-brown face –
Bona: He is a harvest moon. He is an autumn leaf. He is a nigger. Bona! But dont all the dorm girls say so? And dont you, when you are sane, say so? Thats why I love – Oh, nonsense. You have never loved a man who didnt first love you. Besides –
Columns thud away from her. Come to a halt in line formation. Rigid. The period bell rings, and the teacher dismisses them.
A group collects around Paul. They are choosing sides for basketball. Girls against boys. Paul has his. He is limbering up beneath the basket. Bona runs to the girl captain and asks to be chosen. The girls fuss. The director comes to quiet them. He hears what Bona wants.
“But, Miss Hale, you were excused – ”
“So I was, Mr. Boynton, but – ”
“ – you can play basket-ball, but you are too sick to drill.”
“If you wish to put it that way.”
She swings away from him to the girl captain.
“Helen, I want to play, and you must let me. This is the first time I’ve asked and I dont see why – ”
“Thats just it, Bona. We have our team.”
“Well, team or no team, I want to play and thats all there is to it.”
She snatches the ball from Helen’s hands, and charges down the floor.
Helen shrugs. One of the weaker girls says that she’ll drop out. Helen accepts this. The team is formed. The whistle blows. The game starts. Bona, in center, is jumping against Paul. He plays with her. Out-jumps her, makes a quick pass, gets a quick return, and shoots a goal from the middle of the floor. Bona burns crimson. She fights, and tries to guard him. One of her team-mates advises her not to play so hard. Paul shoots his second goal.
Bona begins to feel a little dizzy and all in. She drives on. Almost hugs Paul to guard him. Near the basket, he attempts to shoot, and Bona lunges into his body and tries to beat his arms. His elbow, going up, gives her a sharp crack on the jaw. She whirls. He catches her. Her body stiffens. Then becomes strangely vibrant, and bursts to a swift life within her anger. He is about to give way before her hatred when a new passion flares at him and makes his stomach fall. Bona squeezes him. He suddenly feels stifled, and wonders why in hell the ring of silly gaping faces that’s caked about him doesnt make way and give him air. He has a swift illusion that it is himself who has been struck. He looks at Bona. Whir. Whir. They seem to be human distortions spinning tensely in a fog. Spinning … dizzy … spinning … Bona jerks herself free, flushes a startling crimson, breaks through the bewildered teams, and rushes from the hall.
Paul is in his room of two windows.
Outside, the South-Side L track cuts them in two.
Bona is one window. One window, Paul.
Hurtling Loop-jammed L trains throw them in swift shadow.
Paul goes to his. Gray slanting roofs of houses are tinted lavender in the setting sun. Paul follows the sun, over the stock-yards where a fresh stench is just arising, across wheat lands that are still waving above their stubble, into the sun. Paul follows the sun to a pine-matted hillock in Georgia. He sees the slanting roofs of gray unpainted cabins tinted lavender. A Negress chants a lullaby beneath the mate-eyes of a southern planter. Her breasts are ample for the suckling of a song. She weans it, and sends it, curiously weaving, among lush melodies of cane and corn. Paul follows the sun into himself in Chicago.
He is at Bona’s window.
With his own glow he looks through a dark pane.
Paul’s room-mate comes in.
“Say, Paul, I’ve got a date for you. Come on. Shake a leg, will you?”
His blond hair is combed slick. His vest is snug about him.
He is like the electric light which he snaps on.
“Whatdoysay, Paul? Get a wiggle on. Come on. We havent got much time by the time we eat and dress and everything.”
His bustling concentrates on the brushing of his hair.
Art: What in hell’s getting into Paul of late, anyway? Christ, but he’s getting moony. Its his blood. Dark blood: moony. Doesnt get anywhere unless you boost it. You’ve got to keep it going –
“Say, Paul!”
– or it’ll go to sleep on you. Dark blood; nigger? Thats what those jealous she-hens say. Not Bona though, or she … from the South … wouldnt want me to fix a date for him and her. Hell of a thing, that Paul’s dark: youve got to always be answering questions.
“Say, Paul, for Christ’s sake leave that window, cant you?”
“Whats it, Art?”
“Hell, I’ve told you about fifty times. Got a date for you. Come on.”
“With who?”
Art: He didnt use to ask; now he does. Getting up in the air. Getting funny.
“Heres your hat. Want a smoke? Paul! Here. I’ve got a match. Now come on and I’ll tell you all about it on the way to supper.”
Paul: He’s going to Life this time. No doubt of that. Quit your kidding. Some day, dear Art, I’m going to kick the living slats out of you, and you wont know what I’ve done it for. And your slats will bring forth Life … beautiful woman …
Pure Food Restaurant.
“Bring me some soup with a lot of crackers, understand? And then a roast-beef dinner. Same for you, eh, Paul? Now as I was saying, you’ve got a swell chance with her. And she’s game. Best proof: she dont give a damn what the dorm girls say about you and her in the gym, or about the funny looks that Boynton gives her, or about what they say about, well, hell, you know, Paul. And say, Paul, she’s a sweetheart. Tall, not puffy and pretty, more serious and deep – the kind you like these days. And they say she’s got a car. And say, she’s on fire. But you know all about that. She got Helen to fix it up with me. The four of us – remember the last party? Crimson Gardens! Boy!”
Paul’s eyes take on a light that Art can settle in.
Art has on his patent-leather pumps and fancy vest. A loose fall coat is swung across his arm. His face has been massaged, and over a close shave, powdered. It is a healthy pink the blue of evening tints a purple pallor. Art is happy and confident in the good looks that his mirror gave him. Bubbling over with a joy he must spend now if the night is to contain it all. His bubbles, too, are curiously tinted purple as Paul watches them. Paul, contrary to what he had thought he would be like, is cool like the dusk, and like the dusk, detached. His dark face is a floating shade in evening’s shadow. He sees Art, curiously. Art is a purple fluid, carbon-charged, that effervesces beside him. He loves Art. But is it not queer, this pale purple facsimile of a red-blooded Norwegian friend of his? Perhaps for some reason, white skins are not supposed to live at night. Surely, enough nights would transform them fantastically, or kill them. And their red passion? Night paled that too, and made it moony. Moony. Thats what Art thought of him. Bona didnt, even in the daytime. Bona, would she be pale? Impossible. Not that red glow. But the conviction did not set his emotion flowing.
“Come right in, wont you? The young ladies will be right down. Oh, Mr. Carlstrom, do play something for us while you are waiting. We just love to listen to your music. You play so well.”
Houses and dorm sitting-rooms are places where white faces seclude themselves at night. There is a reason …
Art sat on the piano and simply tore it down. Jazz. The picture of Our Poets hung perilously.
Paul: I’ve got to get the kid to play that stuff for me in the daytime. Might be different. More himself. More nigger. Different? There is. Curious, though.
The girls come in. Art stops playing, and almost immediately takes up a petty quarrel, where he had last left it, with Helen.
Bona, black-hair curled staccato, sharply contrasting with Helen’s puffy yellow, holds Paul’s hand. She squeezes it. Her own emotion supplements the return pressure. And then, for no tangible reason, her spirits drop. Without them, she is nervous, and slightly afraid. She resents this. Paul’s eyes are critical. She resents Paul. She flares at him. She flares to poise and security.
“Shall we be on our way?”
“Yes, Bona, certainly.”
The Boulevard is sleek in asphalt, and, with arc-lights and limousines, aglow. Dry leaves scamper behind the whir of cars. The scent of exploded gasoline that mingles with them is faintly sweet. Mellow stone mansions overshadow clapboard homes which now resemble Negro shanties in some southern alley. Bona and Paul, and Art and Helen, move along an island-like, far-stretching strip of leaf-soft ground. Above them, worlds of shadow-planes and solids, silently moving. As if on one of these, Paul looks down on Bona. No doubt of it: her face is pale. She is talking. Her words have no feel to them. One sees them. They are pink petals that fall upon velvet cloth. Bona is soft, and pale, and beautiful.
“Paul, tell me something about yourself – or would you rather wait?”
“I’ll tell you anything you’d like to know.”
“Not what I want to know, Paul; what you want to tell me.”
“You have the beauty of a gem fathoms under sea.”
“I feel that, but I dont want to be. I want to be near you. Perhaps I will be if I tell you something. Paul, I love you.”
The sea casts up its jewel into his hands, and burns them furiously. To tuck her arm under his and hold her hand will ease the burn.
“What can I say to you, brave dear woman – I cant talk love. Love is a dry grain in my mouth unless it is wet with kisses.”
“You would dare? right here on the Boulevard? before Arthur and Helen?”
“Before myself? I dare.”
“Here then.”
Bona, in the slim shadow of a tree trunk, pulls Paul to her. Suddenly she stiffens. Stops.
“But you have not said you love me.”
“I cant – yet – Bona.”
“Ach, you never will. Youre cold. Cold.”
Bona: Colored; cold. Wrong somewhere.
She hurries and catches up with Art and Helen.
Crimson Gardens. Hurrah! So one feels. People … University of Chicago students, members of the stock exchange, a large Negro in crimson uniform who guards the door … had watched them enter. Had leaned towards each other over ash-smeared tablecloths and highballs and whispered: What is he, a Spaniard, an Indian, an Italian, a Mexican, a Hindu, or a Japanese? Art had at first fidgeted under their stares … what are you looking at, you godam pack of owl-eyed hyenas? … but soon settled into his fuss with Helen, and forgot them. A strange thing happened to Paul. Suddenly he knew that he was apart from the people around him. Apart from the pain which they had unconsciously caused. Suddenly he knew that people saw, not attractiveness in his dark skin, but difference. Their stares, giving him to himself, filled something long empty within him, and were like green blades sprouting in his consciousness. There was fullness, and strength and peace about it all. He saw himself, cloudy, but real. He saw the faces of the people at the tables round him. White lights, or as now, the pink lights of the Crimson Gardens gave a glow and immediacy to white faces. The pleasure of it, equal to that of love or dream, of seeing this. Art and Bona and Helen? He’d look. They were wonderfully flushed and beautiful. Not for himself; because they were. Distantly. Who were they, anyway? God, if he knew them. He’d come in with them. Of that he was sure. Come where? Into life? Yes. No. Into the Crimson Gardens. A part of life. A carbon bubble. Would it look purple if he went out into the night and looked at it? His sudden starting to rise almost upset the table.
“What in hell – pardon – whats the matter, Paul?”
“I forgot my cigarettes – ”
“Youre smoking one.”
“So I am. Pardon me.”
The waiter straightens them out. Takes their order.
Art: What in hell’s eating Paul? Moony aint the word for it. From bad to worse. And those godam people staring so. Paul’s a queer fish. Doesnt seem to mind … He’s my pal, let me tell you, you horn-rimmed owl-eyed hyena at that table, and a lot better than you whoever you are … Queer about him. I could stick up for him if he’d only come out, one way or the other, and tell a feller. Besides, a room-mate has a right to know. Thinks I wont understand. Said so. He’s got a swell head when it comes to brains, all right. God, he’s a good straight feller, though. Only, moony. Nut. Nuttish. Nuttery. Nutmeg … “What’d you say, Helen?”
“I was talking to Bona, thank you.”
“Well, its nothing to get spiffy about.”
“What? Oh, of course not. Please lets dont start some silly argument all over again.”
“Well.”
“Well.”
“Now thats enough. Say, waiter, whats the matter with our order? Make it snappy, will you?”
Crimson Gardens. Hurrah! So one feels. The drinks come. Four highballs. Art passes cigarettes. A girl dressed like a bare-back rider in flaming pink, makes her way through tables to the dance floor. All lights are dimmed till they seem a lush afterglow of crimson. Spotlights the girl. She sings. “Liza, Little Liza Jane.”
Paul is rosy before his window.
He moves, slightly, towards Bona.
With his own glow, he seeks to penetrate a dark pane.
Paul: From the South. What does that mean, precisely, except that you’ll love or hate a nigger? Thats a lot. What does it mean except that in Chicago you’ll have the courage to neither love or hate. A priori. But it would seem that you have. Queer words, arent these, for a man who wears blue pants on a gym floor in the daytime. Well, never matter. You matter. I’d like to know you whom I look at. Know, not love. Not that knowing is a greater pleasure; but that I have just found the joy of it. You came just a month too late. Even this afternoon I dreamed. To-night, along the Boulevard, you found me cold. Paul Johnson, cold! Thats a good one, eh, Art, you fine old stupid fellow, you! But I feel good! The color and the music and the song … A Negress chants a lullaby beneath the mate-eyes of a southern planter. O song … And those flushed faces. Eager brilliant eyes. Hard to imagine them as unawakened. Your own. Oh, they’re awake all right. “And you know it too, dont you Bona?”
“What, Paul?”
“The truth of what I was thinking.”
“I’d like to know I know – something of you.”
“You will – before the evening’s over. I promise it.”
Crimson Gardens. Hurrah! So one feels. The bare-back rider balances agilely on the applause which is the tail of her song. Orchestral instruments warm up for jazz. The flute is a cat that ripples its fur against the deep-purring saxophone. The drum throws sticks. The cat jumps on the piano keyboard. Hi diddle, hi diddle, the cat and the fiddle. Crimson Gardens … hurrah! … jumps over the moon. Crimson Gardens! Helen … O Eliza … rabbit-eyes sparkling, plays up to, and tries to placate what she considers to be Paul’s contempt. She always does that … Little Liza Jane … Once home, she burns with the thought of what she’s done. She says all manner of snidy things about him, and swears that she’ll never go out again when he is along. She tries to get Art to break with him, saying, that if Paul, whom the whole dormitory calls a nigger, is more to him than she is, well, she’s through. She does not break with Art. She goes out as often as she can with Art and Paul. She explains this to herself by a piece of information which a friend of hers had given her: men like him (Paul) can fascinate. One is not responsible for fascination. Not one girl had really loved Paul; he fascinated them. Bona didnt; only thought she did. Time would tell. And of course, she didn’t. Liza … She plays up to, and tries to placate, Paul.
“Paul is so deep these days, and I’m so glad he’s found someone1 to interest him.”
“I dont believe I do.”
The thought escapes from Bona just a moment before her anger at having said it.
Bona: You little puffy cat, I do. I do!
Dont I, Paul? her eyes ask.
Her answer is a crash of jazz from the palm-hidden orchestra. Crimson Gardens is a body whose blood flows to a clot upon the dance floor. Art and Helen clot. Soon, Bona and Paul. Paul finds her a little stiff, and his mind, wandering to Helen (silly little kid who wants every highball spoon her hands touch, for a souvenir), supple, perfect little dancer, wishes for the next dance when he and Art will exchange.
Bona knows that she must win him to herself.
“Since when have men like you grown cold?”
“The first philosopher.”
“I thought you were a poet – or a gym director.”
“Hence, your failure to make love.”
Bona’s eyes flare. Water. Grow red about the rims. She would like to tear away from him and dash across the clotted floor.
“What do you mean?”
“Mental concepts rule you. If they were flush with mine – good. I dont believe they are.”
“How do you know, Mr. Philosopher?”
“Mostly a priori.”
“You talk well for a gym director.”
“And you – ”
“I hate you. Ou!”
She presses away. Paul, conscious of the convention in it, pulls her to him. Her body close. Her head still strains away. He nearly crushes her. She tries to pinch him. Then sees people staring, and lets her arms fall. Their eyes meet. Both, contemptuous. The dance takes blood from their minds and packs it, tingling, in the torsos of their swaying bodies. Passionate blood leaps back into their eyes. They are a dizzy blood clot on a gyrating floor. They know that the pink-faced people have no part in what they feel. Their instinct leads them away from Art and Helen, and towards the big uniformed black man who opens and closes the gilded exit door. The cloak-room girl is tolerant of their impatience over such trivial things as wraps. And slightly superior. As the black man swings the door for them, his eyes are knowing. Too many couples have passed out, flushed and fidgety, for him not to know. The chill air is a shock to Paul. A strange thing happens. He sees the Gardens purple, as if he were way off. And a spot is in the purple. The spot comes furiously towards him. Face of the black man. It leers. It smiles sweetly like a child’s. Paul leaves Bona and darts back so quickly that he doesnt give the door-man a chance to open. He swings in. Stops. Before the huge bulk of the Negro.
“Youre wrong.”
“Yassur.”
“Brother, youre wrong.
“I came back to tell you, to shake your hand, and tell you that you are wrong. That something beautiful is going to happen. That the Gardens are purple like a bed of roses would be at dusk. That I came into the Gardens, into life in the Gardens with one whom I did not know. That I danced with her, and did not know her. That I felt passion, contempt and passion for her whom I did not know. That I thought of her. That my thoughts were matches thrown into a dark window. And all the while the Gardens were purple like a bed of roses would be at dusk. I came back to tell you, brother, that white faces are petals of roses. That dark faces are petals of dusk. That I am going out and gather petals. That I am going out and know her whom I brought here with me to these Gardens which are purple like a bed of roses would be at dusk.”
Paul and the black man shook hands.
When he reached the spot where they had been standing, Bona was gone.
1923
[Autumn dawn. Any weekday.1 Outside, it is damp and dewy, and the fog, resting upon the tops of pine trees, looks like fantastic cotton bolls about to be picked by the early morning fingers of the sun. As the curtain rises, the scene is that of a Negro farmhouse interior. The single room, at all times used for sleeping and sitting, on odd occasions serves as a kitchen, this latter due to the fact that a great fireplace with hooks for pots and kettles, occupies, together with a small family organ, the entire space of the left-hand wall. This huge hearth suggests that perhaps the place might once have been a plantation cookroom. This is indeed the case, and those who now call it home (having added two rooms to it) remember the grandmother – in her day MARSA2 HARRIS’ cook – telling how she contrived to serve the dishes hot despite the fact that the big house was some hundred yards away. The old frame mansion still stands, or rather, the ghost of it, in the direct vision of the front door, its habitable portion tenanted by a poor-white family who farm the land to the south of it and who would, but for the tradition of prejudice and the coercion of a rural public opinion, be on terms of a frank friendship with their colored neighbors, a friendship growing out of a similarity of occupations and consequent problems. As it is, there is an understanding and bond between them little known or suspected by northern people. The colored family farms the land to the north. The dividing line, halfway between the two homes, has no other mark save one solid stake of oak. Both farmers did well last year, resisted the temptation to invest in automobiles and player-pianos,3 saved their money, and so, this season, though their cotton crop failed with the rest, they have a nest egg laid away, and naturally are more conscious of their comparative thrift and prosperity than if the times were good. As was said, the curtain4 rises upon the general room of the Negro farmhouse. The man himself, in rough gray baggy trousers and suspenders showing white against a gray flannel shirt, is seen whittling a board for shavings and small kindling sticks to start a fire with. As he faces the audience, the half-light shades his features, giving but the faint suggestion that they are of a pleasing African symmetry. Having enough kindling, he arranges it in the hearth, strikes a match, and, as the wood catches, tends and coaxes it, squatting on his hams. The flames soon throw his profile into relief. It is surprisingly like that of an Indian. And his hair (lack of hair, really), having been shaved close, completes the illusion. A quick glance around the room now reveals a closed door (to the left) in the back wall, underneath which a narrow strip of light shows. To the right of the door, against the wall, is a heavy oak bed which has been perfectly made even at this early hour. In the right wall, by the bed, a curtained window lets in at first the gray, and then as the mist lifts, the yellow light of morning. This side of5 the curtain is a magnificent6 oak dresser, a match for the bed, but otherwise out of place and proportion in the room. Both of these are gifts to the family (and have become heirlooms) from old MARSA. A window may be understood to be in the wall facing the audience. Likewise, in this wall to the left, a door opens on the outside. The walls are plastered and whitewashed. They are sprinkled with calendars, and two cheap pictures of fruit (such as are supposed to be found in a dining room), and one or two inevitable deathlike family portraits. Chairs are here and there about a central table, in the middle of which, resting on a white covering, is a wooden tray for nut picks7 and crackers. The floor is covered with a good quality carpet. The fire in the hearth now burns brightly, but fails to fill all but a small portion of it, and so gives one the impression of insufficiency. While WILL LEE is still crouching down, the rear door swings open and his wife comes in. Her complexion is a none too healthy yellow, and her large, deep-set, sad and weary eyes are strangely pathetic, haunted, and almost unearthly in the dawnlight. With such a slim and fragile body it is surprising how she manages to carry on her part of the contract.]
SUSAN LEE: [Her voice is high and somewhat cracked] Come on in. [She turns about, and re-enters the kitchen. WILL, satisfied with his fire, rises and, as he follows her, speaks.]
WILL: Whar’s Bob an’ Bettie Kate?
SUSAN: [Through the half-open door] Sent them for to catch an’ milk th’ cows.
WILL: Whar’s th’ boys?
SUSAN: You-all know they was up all night a-grinding an’ a-boiling cane.8 Come on in. [WILL passes out, and soon his voice is heard in blessing.]
WILL: We thank thee, Heavenly Father, fo’ yo’ blessin’s of th’ night. Once more thou hast kept yo’ children thru’ th’ time of Satan an’ of sin. Bless us, O Lord. Thou hast brought us like th’ dew thru’ temptations of th’ evil darkness inter th’ glory of th’ morning’ light. Have mercy, Lord. Keep us, an’ give us strength t’ do yo’ will terday. An’ every day. An’ we asks you t’ bless this yere food prepared in His dear name. Amen. Amen. [Just as WILL begins his prayer, two young fellows enter through the front door, but on hearing the blessing in progress, stop, and wait with bowed heads until it is over. Whereupon they advance, and are heard by WILL.]
WILL: That you, Tom?
TOM: [The larger of the two boys. A Negro farm hand with a smiling9 face and easy gait, distinguished at first from BALO only by his taller figure and the fact of a seedy black coat which he wears over his patched blue faded overalls.] Yassur.
WILL: How much you git?
TOM: Mighty nigh eighty gallons.
WILL: That’s right. Had yo’ breakfast?
TOM: Yassur.
WILL: That you thar, Balo?
BALO: Yassur, dat’s me.
WILL: Reckon you had yo’ breakfast too?
BOTH: Yassur we done et.
WILL: Slept any?
BOTH: Nasur, dat we ain’t.
WILL: Well, git yo’ Bibles down an’ read fo’ fifteen minutes, then you-all jes’ stretch yo’selfs befo’ th’ fire and I’ll wake you up by an’ by.
BOTH: Yassur. [They get their Bibles from the table and stretch out in front the hearth, and begin to read. BALO is nearer the audience. As he reads he mumbles his words aloud, and, by the twitching of his face and the movements of his hands, is seen to be of a curious nervous texture beneath his surface placidity. TOM soon falls asleep, and begins to breathe deeply and rhythmically. The monotony of this respiration10 together with the sound of his own voice seems to excite BALO peculiarly. His strange, half-closed eyes burn with a dancing light, and his entire body becomes animated and alive. At this juncture, young voices and young feet enter the room to the rear. SUSAN has trouble in getting them seated, and WILL in blessing the food. Laughs, shouts, and admonitions, in reality, continue all during the following scene, but as Balo does not hear them, and as the audience is absorbed in BALO, all sound from the kitchen ceases on the stage. BALO by this time has risen to his feet. Facing the audience, he continues to read, and his words become audible. He is reading St. Matthew VII, 24.]
BALO: “Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not; for it was founded upon a rock. And everyone that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great the fall of it.” [Here BALO’s excitement is so considerable that he leaves off the Bible and chants, with additions, certain passages of it from memory.]
An’ th’ floods came, an’ th’ wind blew,
An’ th’ floods came, an’ th’ winds blew,
An’ th’ floods came, an’ th’ winds blew,
O Lord have mercy, Lord, O Lord
Have mercy on a soul what sins,
O Lord, on a darky sinner’s soul.
[He repeats this two or three times and is almost beside himself when the tumult from the rear room breaks in on him. He is at first entirely bewildered, but then with an instinctive rapidity, and before the children enter, stretches himself beside TOM on the hearth, and pretends to be asleep. Before so very long, this pretended sleep passes into the real thing. BOB and BETTIE KATE run through, take a whack at both of them, and go out the front door. WILL and SUSAN follow them into the front room, and, after they have gone, seat themselves before the fire.]
WILL: [In substance, this is repeated each morning, so that SUSAN almost knows it by heart.] Ain’t much t’ do this morning, Susan. Farmin’s gittin’ p’oly down this way when a man what’s used t’ work can set afo’ the fire handlin’ han’s, an’ it’s yet a month t’ Christmas. Money ain’t t’ be made when syrup can be bought fer what it takes t’ haul th’ cane, an’ git it ground an’ biled. An’ corn at fifty cents a bushel. Cotton’s th’ crop for Georgia. Weevils11 or no weevils. An’ God will take them away when people ain’t so sinful. [He indicates the boys.] When folks goes t’ sleep with Bibles in their han’s. Susan, whar is that there theology book? Mus’ be studyin’. Can’t afford t’ waste no time when I’s in th’ service of th’ Lord. Sho’ can’t.
SUSAN: It’s around somewheres, Will. You-all still studyin’ seriously t’ be a preacher? Thought I changed you back a week ago.
WILL: That I is, sho’ an’ there’s lots worse a-heap. Sin is stomping up an’ down th’ world an’s Satan’s drivin’ with loose reins. Needs a righteous man t’ grab them from him ’round this way. Wouldn’t let you had that frolic here t’night but what I thought ’twould be as good a chance as any t’ turn th’ people t’ His ways. An’ that I wouldn’t. … Cousin Bob an’ Mamie comin’ early. [Outside a voice is heard calling WILL.]
WILL: That you, Mr. Jennings? Come in, sir.
JENNINGS: [Coming in. He is their white neighbor – a well-built man with ruddy cheeks and pointed nose, dressed like WILL but for his shirt which is of khaki.] Nothin’ ter do, eh, Will, but hold yer hands afor th’ fire? Lucky last year put a few dollars in th’ bank.
WILL: Yassur, lucky sho’. [Both remain standing, a little awkwardly despite the friendly greeting. SUSAN has kept her seat, and says nothing until directly spoken to.]
JENNINGS: [Pointing to the sleeping boys.] Nothin’ fer them ter do, eh, sleepin’ away th’ days an’ it ain’t yet Christmas.
WILL: Nasur. Them’s been up all night tho’, grindin’ cane.
JENNINGS: Saw Balo there a while back actin’ like he was crazy. An’ what do yer think he said? An’ kept on repeatin’ it, “White folks ain’t no more’n niggers when they gets ter heaven, white folks ain’t no more’n niggers when they gets ter heaven.” [Laughs.] How much you get?
WILL: ’Bout eighty gallons.
JENNINGS: Not bad from that little biddie piece of land, eh?
WILL: Nasur, not bad ’tall. But us has more’n we can use, an’ ’twouldn’t pay t’ ship it at th’ present price they pays fer it.
JENNINGS: Trade?
WILL: Fer what?
JENNINGS: Corn; turnips.
WILL: Nasur, got too many of them myself. Too much syrup, too. Take some along with you; don’t want nothin’ sir.
JENNINGS: All right, Will. Notice yer ax handle was busted. I’ll send12 th’ boy over.
WILL: Yassur, that’s right, sho’.
JENNINGS: What you got ter say ’bout it, Susan?
SUSAN: I don’t want him t’ preach, Mr. Jennings. Preachin’ means neglect th’ farm. Up north they say there’s lots of things you don’t get here. An’ I don’t know, Mr. Jennings, but I’d like t’ get somethin’.
JENNINGS: Wall,13 what do yer call somethin’ if money in the bank ain’t somethin’ when th’ times are hard?
SUSAN: Yassur, money, but there’s somethin’ more’n life besides all the money in th’ world. I want that somethin’ else; an’ folks say I might could get it if I sent up north.
JENNINGS: How about that, Will?
WILL: Dunno, sir. Maybe so, but I knows this place, an’ it don’t know that. ’Spects Georgia’s big enuf t’ hold me till I dies.
JENNINGS: Me, too, Will. Wall, mus’ be goin’. I’ll send the can here fer that syrup. An’ th’ handle.
WILL: Don’t mind th’ can, Mr. Jennings, sir, jest roll th’ barrel over, an’ roll it back when you is thru’.
JENNINGS: All right. Thanks, Will – return the same some day. So long.
WILL: [Seeing him to the door] Yassur, good evenin’ Mr. Jennings. [He closes the door and returns to SUSAN. The boys are still sleeping soundly.] Wish you’d root me out that book, Susan. [SUSAN gets up, rummages around, and finds the book. WILL immediately drops into his chair, and is at once absorbed. Like BALO, though in not quite so pronounced a manner, he too mumbles as he reads. SUSAN enters the rear room. At this point the curtain descends for a moment to indicate the passing of the morning, and of the first five hours of the afternoon. When it ascends, WILL is seated as before, in front of the fire which now burns briskly and with a sizzling sound in thankful contrast to the dull gray light that filters through the windows. It has clouded up outside, and threatens rain. The boys have left the hearth. WILL has exchanged his theology book for the Bible. His eyes seem to be in a concentrated daze, focused on the glowing ashes. A voice coming from the outside arouses him.]
VOICE: Whoo thar, you, Will?
WILL: [Collecting himself] That you, Cousin Bob? Come on in. Don’t need no ceremonies t’ enter this yer house. Come in. Come in. [COUSIN BOB and his wife, Negro country folks, and six small children from twelve to two and a half years old enter through the rear door by way of the kitchen. COUSIN MAMIE carries a large basket covered with a spotless white napkin.]
WILL: What’s that fer on yo’ arm, Cousin Mamie?
MAMIE: Supper, Cousin Will. Know’d you’d hab enuf t’ share with us-all, but reckoned I’d jes’ tote it wid me, ’kase dese hungry mouths don’t nebber git enuf t’ eat, does you, honey? [Addressing the oldest, who shakes his head bashfully in negation] I’ll jes warm ’tup over yo’ fire dar when you-all goes in t’ eat. [The family all group themselves in a semicircle around the hearth, the older folks on chairs, the younger ones on the floor or standing, shifting ill at ease from foot to foot, uncomfortable in their Sunday shoes.]
COUSIN BOB: Cotton po’ wid you dis year I ’speck, Will.
WILL: P’oly, Cousin Bob, p’oly. Three bales at th’ outset, an’ doing good at that.
BOB: Any corn?
WILL: More’n I know what t’ do with.
BOB: Pigs?
WILL: Doin’ well on hogs, Cousin Bob, doin’ well. [The conversation dies out. They sit in perfect silence. Then SUSAN greets the new arrivals, kissing each child. BOB and BETTIE KATE are boisterous and demonstrative, and take delight in their more backward playmates. By the time SUSAN’s ritual is through with, the front door opens and a middle-aged Negro comes in, assisting an old, (no one know how old he is) gray-haired bearded fellow who is blind. This old man has a dignity and a faraway other-worldly expression such as might have characterized a saint of old. Indeed, one immediately thinks of him as some hoary Negro prophet, who, having delivered his message, waits humbly and in darkness for his day to come. He is called UNCLE NED, and is so greeted by all as he enters. He returns the greeting.]
UNCLE NED: [Deep and low, and remarkably clear for one of his infirmities] Chillun, chillun. Blind eyes ain’t supposed t’ see an’ ain’t supposed to cry, but, chilluns, voices allus seem t’ be so sad, an’ I had reckoned as if th’ Lord had minded Him t’ make sech reservations, fer th’ old. An’ Uncle Ned has had his chillun since th’ days befo’ th’ war. ’Tain’t now like it used t’ be – he could see ’em with his two eyes then, an’ now he has t’ see ’em with his heart. An’ ’tain’t easy any more. Hearts ain’t all a-shinin’ as they used to be. [Abruptly] God bless and keep you all.
WILL: Th’ kind Lord bless an’ preserve you, Uncle Ned.
SAM: [UNCLE NED’s companion] Amen. Amen. [UNCLE NED is seated in the center, before the fire. SUSAN goes out, and presently calls to WILL. WILL beckons to BOB and BETTIE KATE, and then asks all to have a bite with him.]
WILL: Some supper, folks?
ALL: No, Will, no. Thank y’ jest th’ same.
MAMIE: I’ll take t’ feed all those that wants t’ eat in here.
WILL: Reckon you will at that. [He and the children go out. TOM comes in with an armful of wood, then follows WILL. WILL is heard blessing the food. Everyone in the front room bows his head.]
WILL: Give us this day, our daily bread, O Lord, an’ hearts filled up with thanks for Him in whose dear name all food an’ goodness is prepared in. Amen, Amen.
SAM: [After WILL] Amen. Amen. [MAMIE sets about warming up some sweet potatoes, meat, and corn bread. She gets a dish or two from the kitchen, and fixes one for UNCLE NED. The children eat from one large pan. The grown-ups talk in undertones.]
SAM: What’s got inter Will he lettin’ Susan have a frolic?
BOB: Dunno.
MAMIE: ’Deed I dunno neither. Queer goin’s on fer him sho’.
SAM: Ef I was a bettin’ man I’d lay a dollar t’ a cotton stalk Will’ll turn this yer frolic inter a preacher’s meetin’ afo’ he’s thru’.
UNCLE NED: That’s right; that’s true. Will has got t’ fear o’ God in ’im as sho’s you’re born.
MAMIE: Ain’t many comin’ on a night like this.
SAM: That’s right; niggers is sho’ funny ’bout gettin’ theyself wet. [BALO comes in, but finding no seat around the fire, installs himself before the organ. His feet begin to pump, and his fingers to touch a key here and there. The sequence of notes finally arranges itself into a Negro melody. It is the one called “Steal Away.” As his ear catches the tune, he begins to play in earnest.14 The folks all join in, at first by humming and then they sing the words. UNCLE NED’s gray head swings slowly and with his right hand he seems to be conducting. TOM enters from the kitchen. Likewise WILL and SUSAN and the children. They all sing. As most everyone knows, the words are:
Chorus:
Steal away, steal away, steal away to Jesus,
Steal away, steal away home,
I ain’t got long to stay here.
Verse:
My Lord calls me, He calls me by the thunder,
I ain’t got long to stay here.
My Lord calls me, He calls me by the lightning,
The trumpet sounds within my soul,
The trumpet sounds within my soul,
I ain’t got long to stay here.
[This is repeated several times. At each repetition the emotional excitation becomes greater. At about the third round, the ordered sequence of words is interrupted at will with such phrases as, “O Lord,” “Have Mercy,” yet the rhythm and the tune are maintained. Thus is achieved one of the striking soul-stirring effects of Negro melody. The song reaches its climax, and then gradually sinks and fades away. After the singers once get well under way, BALO stops playing, except that now and then he emphasizes a passage by a full chord. He sings, and his own emotion grows greater than the rest. As the song dies out, this seems to diminish also. And when all is still, he seems quieter15 than the others. But then, after a pause of some seconds, and utterly without warning, he bursts forth.]
BALO: [Rising from his seat and going to the center of the room as if in a somnambulistic16 trance]
An’ th’ floods came, an’ th’ winds blew,
An’ th’ floods came, an’ th’ winds blew,
An’ th’ floods came, an’ th’ winds blew,
Have mercy, Lord, have mercy, Lord,
On me, O yes, on me, on me,
Have mercy, Lord, on me, on me.
[The folks do not seem at all surprised at this outburst. A head or two are slowly nodded while it lasts.]
SAM: [As BALO finishes] – Amen. Amen.
UNCLE NED: Have mercy, Lord, have mercy.
WILL: Amen. Amen. [And now voices and raps on the door announce new arrivals. Two couples. They are strikingly similar both in looks and in dress. Black faces that in repose are sad and heavy, but when they break in smiles become light-hearted and gay. The men have on white shirts and collars, loose black coats, pressed dark trousers, and polished black shoes. The two women are in white shirt waists and plain dark skirts. The room, of course, is now quite crowded. The group around the fire breaks up to greet them. BALO is again left to compose himself. “Good evenings” and “hellos” are exchanged, and by the time the wraps are disposed of on the bed, SAM has proposed a game of “kyards.” They all look suspiciously, as if undecided, at WILL. He, however, turns his gaze into the fire, and by his silence gives consent. Two tables are arranged. Seated around them are the two recent couples, SAM and SUSAN, BOB and MAMIE. They begin to play, and as they forget WILL’s presence, become quite lively. Some of the children watch the games. Some are still around the fire. WILL, with BALO, TOM and UNCLE NED hug the hearth. Their conversation is audible, for the players on the stage reduce their jollity to gestures, etc., though of course in fact such is not the case.]
UNCLE NED: Cotton drapped this year as wus’ as I ever seed it. An’ in every weevil I see sho’ th’ fingers of th’ Lord. Reckon you farmers better drap down on your knees an’ pray, an’ pray ter th’ Lord fer ter free you from yo’ sins. White folks hit th’ same as black this time.
WILL: They sho’ is.
UNCLE NED: Boll weevils come ter tell us that it’s time to change our ways. Ain’t satisfied with sinnin’, but gits wus’. An’ th’ Lord looks down an’ is angry, an’ he says, “Stop,” says he, “ken you stop now? If you ken, you ken be saved. I’m a-warning yer. An’ them what heeds my warnin’ has time befo’ th’ Judgement ter repent their sins an’ ter be born again. Ter be born again.”
WILL: Amen, Uncle Ned, Amen. An’ true, true. Like Saul, y’know, Saul of Tarsus,17 we is all on our way to Damascus, an’ breathin’ out threatnin’s an’ slaughter ’gainst th’ Lord. But we can be born again. We mus’ be born again an’ see th’ light that Saul saw when he fell down t’ th’ earth, an’ hear th’ voice that Saul heard when he lay there kickin’ on th’ ground an’ stirrin’ up th’ dust on th’ road that led inter Damascus. We can be born again, that’s sho’. Brother, we can be born again an’ go out like Saul an’ preach th’ gospel of th’ Lord. O Lord. [They all, that is, all around the hearth, slip immediately and easily into humming an indefinite air derived from a melody. As this increases in volume, BALO is seen to tilt back in his chair, and his eyes roll ecstatically upward. Even more suddenly than before he jumps to his feet.]
BALO: Jesus, Jesus, I’ve found Jesus.
Th’ light that came t’ Saul when he was born again,
Th’ voice that spoke t’ Saul when he was born again,
Jesus, Jesus, I’ve found Jesus,
One mo’ sinner is a-coming home.
[Here he falls to his knees, face raised in pain and exaltation,
hands clasped in supplication above his head]
[Continuing]
O Jesus, Jesus, savior of my soul,
One mo’ sinner is a-comin’ home,
One mo’ sinner is a-coming home.
Th’ light that came t’ Saul when he was born again,
Th’ voice that spoke t’ Saul when he was born again,
The light that came t’ Saul when he was born again,
O Jesus, Jesus, savior of my soul,
Jesus, Jesus, I’ve found Jesus,
One mo’ sinner is a-coming home.
[BALO stops, and gives a desperate glance around the room. Seeing UNCLE NED, who has turned to face him, he throws himself into his arms, and breaks into a violent and spasmodic sobbing. UNCLE NED raises one arm in blessing, while with the other he encircles him in love. The card players, having become uneasy when UNCLE NED first began to talk, stopped their game entirely at BALO’s outburst, and now file out, heads lowered, in sheepishness and guilt. And as the curtain descends, the others, with the exception of UNCLE NED and BALO, are seen leaving.]
Curtain
1922
1924, 1927
The physical seasons are still recurring. Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn – they still recur. The physical seasons recur. The eyes of men who inhabit America have seen these seasons. Ages ago perhaps they started. Ages hence perhaps they will stop. They seemingly start and stop within a period of eighty years for one man. Eighty times a man sees the seasons. But eighty times are not enough for a man to learn that either he has never seen them or else he will see them eternally.
Day and night recur. 29,200 times a man sees day and night. But 29,200 times are not enough for him to learn that either he has never seen them or else he will see them eternally.
Inhalation and exhalation recur. A man breathes 840,960,000 times. But eight hundred forty million, nine hundred sixty thousand times are not enough for a man to learn that either he has never breathed or else he breathes endlessly.
Neither are there enough times or enough man for a multitude of greater or lesser truths to be learned.
What significance does a man derive from his existence?
Reckoning by the Earth’s time, that is, according to the way men see this planet’s calendar, the body of land called North America, or simply, America, is of recent formation. Perhaps great convulsions and slidings caused its rise. Whatever was the manner of its birth, whether it was merely physical, or organic and accompanied by the great mystery of all organic births, and physical births, America is still a young continent, perhaps not for the first or last time. But for the men who now exist upon it, so short is their time, the continent America is ancient. To be old as the continent is to be very old. Its career extends forward unto disappearance sometime in far off future years. It exists now. It is the geographical base of a great nation. No more. No less.
Ah, yes, much, much less.
The America which dies and is about to live salutes the world!
The big light,
Let the big light in.
There was a time,2 we may assume, where there were no seasons such as we have now. There was a time when there was no America. And even to-day it is unknown to millions of people who exist elsewhere on the Earth.3 People near the North and South Poles, people in the Andes, in Peru, in Africa, in Asia Minor, in India, Tibet and China, in Siberia, even in Europe, yes, even in America there are people who have never even heard of it. Nor will it matter if they never do. Beyond the Earth to hosts of beings who exist on other planets of the Universe, America is of course unknown.
Men move across its surface and act strangely.
These men have seen the recurrence of recently established seasons. They have seen the somewhat longer established recurrent phases of the moon. Within these recurrent changes many things have happened. Even for the short time from the days of the Pilgrims and Indians, through Emerson4 and Whitman,5 to the days of Rockefeller,6 Edison,7 and Ford,8 this is a long history rich with natural and material conquests, wars, finance, politics, science, art, and the joys and sufferings of millions of struggling and bored souls.
To what purpose? Why are there seasons? Why is the moon? Why is there time for things to happen in? Why are there men? Why are there eyes? Why do they see? Why do they not see?
For three hundred years the generations of America have witnessed no irregularities in Nature to cause their sight profound disturbance. Nature, save for a tornado here, a flood or an earthquake there, is peaceful now. Does the sun not rise and set regularly, causing regular alternations of night and day? What should the sun not rise, not set? Pity the wild startled eyes of helpless Americans.
They have experienced nothing to cause profound transformations in their souls. Yes, there was the Great War.9 Well? Do they not regularly wake and sleep? What should they wake up, never again to sleep in the Universe? Suppose men awoke to behold the terror and the glory of what some men mock and most men dream of, and call God? Pity the cowering, shivering souls. What burden and terror there would be while these strangely acting beings who could become souls were acquiring the intelligence, conscience, and ability to exist in God’s time in an eternally awake Universe.
What should they fail to acquire intelligence and conscience? No. Suppose intelligence and conscience were not called forth from them?
Suppose they lacked the ability to sustain and transcend the foretastes of this consciousness.
Then would strong fears besiege them and force them to pray for a miracle to cast them from the Cosmos back into the confines of their isolate home called Earth where they habitually exist snug away as if outside the Universe.
They would become devout, devotion of this kind meaning whatever aimed to close their eyes to vast radiance and narrow down to comfort the perceptions of their minds.
They would pray and be religious obversely.
“Deliver us from the living God!”
The Americans are now a devout people. They have a lukewarm infidelity which they are not ashamed to call religion. But they lack the fervor caused by a great necessity. It is easy for them without intensity to dope themselves and to be doped to sleep.
What purpose do they find in sleep? Neither force nor effort nor intelligence nor conscience is needed to sleep endlessly.
We sleep. Who profits by our dreams?
It was Winter. Intense cold contracted10 the earth and almost froze the vegetation throughout the entire middle area of America. Nature looked as if she had been turned into a rusty trash-heap and frozen stiff. Fields were colored a dark purplish brown. Foot-paths worn across them were so hard and lumpy that the men who stumbled along them had their spines jolted with each step. A shock rang through anyone who stubbed his toe. Ears and noses knew that the cold was bitter. Blasts of wind swept over the bleak hill and whistled and moaned where anything resisted them. The cold whipped men before it without mercy.
“It is damn cold,” said one lean man to another as both stood rocking back and forth and stamping their feet, waiting for the approach of something. Already one foot pained too much to put weight on it. Their threadbare overcoats flapped like gauze and were no protection against zero weather.
“It is cold, hellish cold,” said the other as he tried to squeeze into his bones. His jaw was stiff. His head was pulled down into his coat, and he was reluctant to move it. But his long red nose was dripping and freezing; he had to wipe it. It was painful when he tried to remove a worn-out woolen mitten from his right hand, the fingers of which were crooked and stiffened. He did so with difficulty, reached into his hip pocket and could hardly grasp the soiled crusted handkerchief to draw it forth.
“Some poor devil will freeze to death to-night,” the first man muttered, as the cold stung his face and nearly took his breath away.
“Yeah. The bastards,” the second man cursed against the world.
Their own scrub beards were stiff and brittle.
Their own breaths became watery and froze.
The first man said:
“Old Ormstead always was a cruel bastard, but now he’s gone and lost his sense.”
“How so?” asked the second lean man. His teeth chattered.
“Leaving them horses out,” the first man complained.
Neither of them looked or turned around, but both of them knew that down in the hollow two shaggy old horses were trying to nip grass by an ice-coated pond.
“Ain’t they got coats?” the second grumbled.
“Ain’t we got coats? What the hell good are coats against this cold?”
“Who the hell fixed this Earth?”11 the second cursed.
“Go south,” the first recommended.
“Yeah, and roast to death.”
“No, you don’t. I’ve been there,” the first reassured.
“Why didn’t you stay there?” asked the second.
The cold made men everywhere begrudge their energies. Everyone was tight, closed-fisted, curt, and surly until he got indoors, where, if it was warm, he thawed out, expanded, and felt jovial and large-hearted.
The newspapers headlined only a fraction of the number who froze to death. But these figures, accompanied by short descriptions of where and in what conditions the bodies had been found, were enough to make sympathetic people wince, and a few of them even went so far as to condemn the civilization that permitted such things to happen. For to meet death by freezing in a dismal hallway or in some off-street gutter was, they said, a shame and degradation worse than anything that could befall an animal.
Then came the snow.
High above the Earth, it formed, and flurried in wild adventures downward towards the planet’s barren surface. The snowflakes were reckless and courageous. Born in space without protection and without support it was their destiny to ride the winds but always fall towards a nameless planetary form.
The white snow was heedless of the terror men would feel where they crystallized in space far above the Earth and made to whirl and fall upon an unknown surface.
The moon glowed in a black sky like a disc of silver.
Where is the planet Earth?
Where do men think they are?
The Young Man Who Tripped12 On. The Young Man Who Tripped On.
A young man wearing a tailored suit and smart top coat which draped with style over his slender somewhat effeminate body – this young man was tripping down the wintry street swinging his cane jauntily and clicking his heels against the sidewalk. His multicolored muffler, showing above his coat, was more of an ornament than a protection against the cold. His face, still youthful looking, was the kind that girls go crazy about, though already it had lost the apple look that made it irresistible two years ago. It was not so ruddy pink and full. It was a trifle sallow now, with lips still cupid-like but slightly drooping, and under the eyes were the beginnings of bags and dark circles. But his eyes still told the world that there was nothing to do but love the girls. They all fell for him as he tripped down the street swinging his cane jauntily and clicking his heels against the sidewalk.
He had just emerged from an all-night party and breakfast dance. The place, a studio apartment, had been overheated and stuffy, with clouds of smoke and cigarette butts everywhere. Drinks – gin, scotch, and cocktails galore. There were young married couples, and plenty of single members of both sexes. They were as thick and curling as the smoke. Everyone13 got drunk enough to cut loose and do just what he or she damned well felt like. Their mouths smelt and tasted of alcohol and tobacco. But they could stand a lot, these young people. The laughter was riotous, somewhat forced. There had been a few scraps and ugly sluggish words, but not enough to cramp things. Petting14 was going on in all the corners and on all the lounges in the swank apartment. Whoever wished to dance, got up, and two others slid into their places on the couches. The music was supplied by a high-priced, studio jazz orchestra. And, when this stopped to rest, the radio was turned on.
Our young man had his eye on the pretty girl-wife of a friend of his. The friend from time to time kept his eyes on his wife, because he was still not so dulled and loose as not to care, now and again, what she did, and to see who kissed and petted her. This feeble watchfulness of his friend put a little spice into the affair for our young man. So he watched his chance, his mind made up to put one over on all of them. He did. Unknown to anyone, he cleverly snuck off with the girl-wife of his dear friend and led her to a back room. He closed the15 door and locked it. And there, with the noise of the party beating in on them, he had an affair with her. Moreover, he kept her there until almost breakfast time. And when they finally did ease into the party again, and his dear friend, vaguely remembering now that he saw her and that he had not seen her for some time, asked his girl-wife where she had been, it gave our young man quite a kick to hear her reply to her husband and his friend: “None of your damned business.”
This is why our young man, having had scrambled eggs and coffee and having left his own girl behind, emerged from the party feeling much set up. Striking the cold16 air outside further braced him. Owing to these causes, he felt like walking – something he hardly ever did. So, just about the time when women who don’t know what else to do flock downtown for unnecessary shopping, and long after the people who like machine-run things had gone to work, our young man sallied forth, snuffed the air, felt a tingle17 in his cheeks, and began tripping down the street, an attractive youth, swinging his cane jauntily and clicking his heels against the sidewalk. And even now his eyes told the world that there was nothing to do but love the girls. Many whom he passed wished they had him on their lists.
He walked and he walked and he walked – quite unusual, even strange for our young man. And then all of a sudden he forgot who he was. His name, his occupation, his place of residence, the make of his car, what kind of clothes he wore, the number of his bank book, the number of his insurance policy, even his telephone number, in fact all phone numbers and everything just suddenly passed away from him as if they had never been. He was suddenly blank, aware of nothing – but his body kept moving on.
He tripped on and on.
On and on.
He walked on.
His body walked on.
He tripped on and on until finally he stepped clear off the Earth and went on and on swinging his cane with a hollow jauntiness, clicking his heels in cold space.
The moon glowed in a black sky like a disc of silver.
Near what men call the Earth huge snow clouds massed. Their upper surface was cold and brilliant. Beneath, in the direction of America, all was dark. In this dark space the snowflakes18 formed and began their journey towards nothing.
Some few men were still upon the streets, a few stragglers, a few night-hawks whose presence made the streets seem particularly silent and deserted. Street lights were large and bright enough to show these people the way home. But their luminosity did not carry far. From the height of a tall building, a skyscraper, if one looked down, feeling dizzy, their feeble glow like pinpoints could still be seen. But a mile from the Earth the lights were lost.
Some few men were still upon the streets – people going home from night clubs and all-night cafes, taxi drivers, stray policemen, waiters, bakers, milkmen, two prostitutes, one, and old timer, the other quite new to the game, she having been broken in only the night before after liquor and dope had had effect on her. These people saw the pure snow falling and felt relief from the intense sterile cold.
One man, hilarious, saluted it and cried, “Hail to you, white snow!”
A few people who remained awake late into the night saw it drifting past their windows and before street lights. If they looked up, the snow seemed to come from nowhere.
One such person, alone, high up in the office of a skyscraper, his the only light to be seen in19 the high rows of ghost windows, this man cursed the snow because if it fell heavy enough it might spoil the scheme he had been working on all night. Next day he hoped to close a deal with a man who was now sleeping in a little cottage far out in the country. This skyscraper man owned a portion of the Earth which, could he show it off to good advantage, could be sold with large profit to himself. No one wished to see or to buy land in a blizzard. So he cursed the snow.
Another man was reading by the window of his room in a modern apartment hotel. When he looked out and saw snow falling, a swift jet of emotion compelled him to put his book down. Forced to feel what he habitually kept hidden, he began dreaming of a girl whom he had first kissed one snowy night several winters ago, and who had ever since consistently refused to marry him.
One old woman who could not sleep, tired of tossing about, and finally threw back the covers, feebly felt her way from bed, covered herself with a warm kimono,20 turned on a light and, Bible21 in hand, let herself down into a large chair drawn close to a cold radiator. When the snow came she was looking out, out somewhere, not seeing the rows of houses across the street. Her mind and feelings were roused now and again by memories of quarrels she had had with the families of her married children. These came to mind quickly, and as suddenly passed away. In the intervals between their coming and going, she pictured and felt that she was still a young girl; and she also felt that death was imminent. She had opened the Bible22 to the page where it tells of the birth of Christ in Bethlehem.
Two others who saw the snow were sitting in a front parlor near the bay-windows with lights out.
“It is tough to be all alone in the world,” the boy said.
The girl did not answer. Her cheek was pressed against his heart. She listened to its beats as it thudded regularly against her. There seemed no cause to stir or speak.
“But now I’ve got you. We’ve got each other,” he continued in a low voice which revealed love mingled with unformed suffering. He pressed her closer to him, kissed her, and as tenderly23 as he could stroked her hair. His fingers were rather thick and stubby. His face, regularly formed, youthful, but somewhat heavy, gave evidence of having had its share of hard knocks. Against his will, his eyes grew moist.
“It’s nothing to get sentimental about. But you’re the first one … Gee, it just comes out. When a feller has been alone since he was a kid … I’ve told you that my old man and mother died on me. Well … This world ain’t no joke when it comes right down to it. I’ve seen the toughest of ’em knuckle under when they thought no one was looking, and blubber like kids. Gee, kid, it’ll take time for me to get used to it.”
He pulled himself together, and felt reassured by the sense of his muscles and the picture of his trim square build.
“Look, Harry,” she said softly, snuggling still closer to him, “look, it’s snowing.”
“How can you see?” he asked, looking down to see her almost enfolded by him.
“With one eye,” she answered. They both laughed.
There was a period of silence while they both looked out and saw snowflakes,24 like tiny white kittens, alight upon the window-sill.
Then, rousing himself, he said:
“Sorry, sweet – I hate to do it, but it’s half way across town before I get home. Motormen only run cars between crap games at night. Say, look,” he exclaimed, pointing to the snow which was now coming down thick and fast, “if it keeps up this way, they’ll have to get the snow plows out. Now, gorgeous … Up a little bit. Now! There ain’t no censor to cut this kiss.”
Before daylight, in different places, a number of men-children were born upon the Earth. And there were those who made swift transits, which men call death, into either nothing or into an unimaginable world.
But millions of people did not see the snow until they awoke at various hours the next morning. Already, a white blanket covered everything, and the snow, now in large flakes and faster, was still falling.
After a few days, Chicago, which is midway America, was almost snow-bound.
Chicago is a depression between New York and San Francisco.
Chicago is the greatest city in the world.
The snow fell upon Chicago irrespective of these phrases.
It brought a pure white beauty to the city parks and streets and boulevards. No skyscraper glistened white like it. No drab shanty but what underwent a snow-white transformation.
Shovels had been put to work, and high embankments lined the streets and sidewalks. At first, these piles were almost white, but they soon became soiled and dirty looking. There was too much soot and dirt for pure white snow. During the first phases of the blizzard, the people of Chicago displayed towards each other25 a good-will and almost joyous friendliness uncommon in the routine life of city dwellers.
Usually these city folk, and, for that matter, most Americans, go down the streets each one shut up behind his own mask as if confined in solitary cells, as if cursed and forbidden to share existence with their fellow-men.
Strange beings! Where do they think they are? Where do they think they are going? What can they possibly tell themselves they are about? What purpose do they think they serve?
Count all of them. Not only Americans, but human beings everywhere: they are all more or less the same. Take the measure26 of the planet Earth. See it somewhere in a vast universe. Why do its inhabitants act the way they do? Who poisoned them?
See this tiny creature wearing high heels, a skirt, and a fur coat. Where has she come from, where is she going? No one knows. But she is walking down the street rapidly and with some style, going two blocks, and soon to duck into some doorway which will hide her from view. Two blocks is a short distance even when compared to distances which can be known on Earth. It is infinitesimal when compared with transmigration through worlds.
Her face is set, expressionless. She holds27 herself aloof, body held in and almost rigid. Several people just like her pass by within arm’s reach. All are mute. All seem mutually repellent. All are doubtless preserving something from each other. Are they aiming at some great objective? With lips held tight or loose, they look, not at each other, but straight ahead or down – at what?
Where are they going? What are they doing?
Should someone28 speak to another, the person who spoke would be fearful lest he be rebuffed; and the person spoken to would not like it, and might be offended.
One can be put in prison for speaking to another.
Should one of them be asked the reason, then, if he did not29 suspect you of being crooked or crazy, he would quickly tell you that his fellow men are not to be trusted, that they are tricky and treacherous, and that if one of them approaches or speaks to you, it is likely to be for his gain and your loss. This information comes from first-hand experience; doubtless the man who gives it knows what he is talking about. But what would be gained? What would be lost? What is gained? What is lost?
Each one feels that he must preserve something worthwhile30 in the Universe31 from the attacks of other people who live just where he does and who act just as he does.
Men call such behavior human society in a state of civilization.
Where this lack of ability to be social is most marked – this is indeed a very high state of civilization.
There is much civilization in the great cities of America, including Chicago.
Are human beings born this way? Or do they secretly conspire to make themselves so? Perhaps they are under the illusion that this is the way to become dignified and noble. Perhaps they believe that by acting so they will each gather within eighty years a rich harvest from the Earth experience, and present a radiant face and a great soul when they pass away from their small globe to God.
But while it snowed, some force of Nature thawed men out and allowed them to feel just a little bit that after all they were all in the world together. But there was enough of it to survive these shocks, so that even conductors had a few good words for the crowds that jammed and jostled in street cars. Automobiles got stuck in ruts of snow. Other cars, instead of honking their heads off with irritation and impatience, honked and sounded for the fun of it, gave the stuck cars boosts, and helped them get started. Men gave their arms to women over crossings. And there was occasional camaraderie32 gaiety,33 and laughter, as men and women, all bundled up, trudged and crunched back and forth along the snow-packed sidewalks.
An island rose out of the sea.
From the north it looked formidable and uninhabited. Waves rolled and dashed against a band of rocks, some rounded by the action of the waters, some still jagged and looking as if they34 had recently broken off and fallen from the towering bleak cliff. Way up, projecting35 over a wall of solid rock, a huge boulder-stone appeared to be imperfectly balanced and ready to topple over and hurl down to join the ranks of rocks below it. But this huge stone had been perched in this reckless position as far back as the inhabitants of this island knew of. In their language they called it “Lover’s Leap.”
Mixed in with their legends was the story of how a beautiful island girl had rescued36 from shipwreck a great prince of the mainland. They had fallen in love. When37 the prince departed, this girl, left with a broken heart, had leapt38 off this rock. And ever since it had been called Lover’s Leap. And though a few of them ever used it, it did sometimes happen that a young man or young girl dashed away from the town and sought the friendliness of this bleak spot. It was never melancholy which drove them; it was always a deep agony which their stoicism compelled them to face alone with God.
But for the most part, the men and women of this island were too occupied in the struggle and adventure of existence to visit the rock. It was the occasional resting place of screaming white sea birds.
From the south the island stood forth in different aspects. If it were seen against the horizon as the sun-rise illumined and detached it from the sea, it rose up like a legendary castle, and stood isolate and dominant, the sole thing between sky and sea. If it were revealed close at hand as a mist scattered and the sun shone through, it glittered like a gem, its verdant curved hills set in a gold sand beach. But the best time to see it was near noon-time, with the blue sky brilliant and the sea a bottle-green. Then39 let there be a bracing wind, waves choppy, eager, and a few white clouds moving swiftly overhead. It was then indeed White Island, a miracle of nature, a form so beautiful and wild and free that many on first beholding it doubted that their eyes had seen the real, and suspected it to be the work of instant magic.
On the summit of White Island, high above all else, and where solid rock had once again emerged from under upward sloping green mounds and fields, there was a stone structure. It rested there as if always on the look-out, commanding as it did a full view of the island, the town beneath, and the open sea in all directions. It was nature-worn and ancient. Save for its shape, it might easily have been taken for a sentinel or lighthouse – in the ordinary sense. It was, in fact, a house of God.
It had been built, so the legends told, by the holy men of this island over a thousand, yea, many thousands of years ago. Its construction showed a workmanship of crude simplicity combined with the art and knowledge of a strangely perfect architecture.
For generations this place, save on rare occasions, had been unused. But there were men in each succeeding generation who learned from their fathers how to replace some worn or weakened part with new and strong materials. It received such watchfulness from year to year that it was now practically the same structure and as solid as when first completed. So it stood, high above all else, a symbol to those people of devotion and of the long chain of their ancestors.
Some distance below it, and towards the north, there was a wood, almost a forest. Here and there clearings had been made, and two roads cut at right angles through it. One clearing had been made into a rough farm, but the others were used for cutting wood. And the roads were mostly used for hauling wood from the forest to the town. But they also served of evenings to reach the foot-paths which wound around this wild part of the island. Young lovers from the town liked to stroll along these paths, sing their folk and love songs, sometimes dance about the forest, and now and again pretend to be engaged in some especially dangerous adventure. The40 smell of wood was mingled with salt air. And often the wind made weird and fascinating whispers, cries, wailings. One foot-path led to Lover’s Leap. Another, to a rocky slope from which the sunset could be seen in all its splendor. All paths abruptly terminated at some surprising spot and there disclosed a start or lovely vista.
Towards the south, there were rolling green hills and fields, places where cattle grazed, and long strips and squares of cultivated farmland. There were springs and brooks, cool and quiet and shaded by green leaves. There were gorgeous flowers, aromatic herbs, and fruit trees. Way down the slope one could see the town, a cluster of red roofs, nestling against a protecting41 hill. And below and spreading out before the town there was the glittering gold sand beach. And where the beach shelved down, the green sea came. Sometimes it came in gentle laps and ripples. Sometimes it came in great waves and white foam. Then its roar and pounding could be heard and even felt, it seemed, everywhere on White Island.
Behind a high curved arm of land which formed a cove, there was a place where sails and spars were made and where ships were built. In the cove the fishing fleet lay at anchor. Bright colored sails were furled. But everywhere in the harbor there was activity. Men in light swift boats passed to and fro. Sometimes their deep voices carried for miles around. A few men worked on riggings. Some were getting their lines in order. Others mended nets. Some few lolled about and smoked and talked, their bronzed sea-faces shining rivals of the sun.
These were a fishing, sea-faring, farming, religious people.
Some men on the island had, in their day, touched almost every spot on the habitable globe. They had gone to the mainland and shipped as mates and captains. They returned invariably to White Island, having seen the main ports of America, Europe, Africa and Asia.
It was a long and honored tradition among them that no son must die and be buried on any mainland. Either die at sea and be given a sea burial, or else return and die at home.
There was a tale told of how one of them, having been stricken with fever in a foreign port, and near to die, got up in the quiet night when there was no one to restrain him, and, stumbling down to the water’s edge, found a skiff, pushed off in it, rowed with the last strength of a dying man until the harbor lights were dim behind him, and there, just as he failed for the last time, slid his body over the side of the skiff and let it sink into the clean cool water, saying with his last breath as he sank down, “Thy son I am, White Island.”
Most often those who had a taste for adventuring in far off seas and countries left home quite young. They saw and experienced all in the world they wished to, and then, just at the age of ripe maturity, they returned to the island, told of what they had seen and learned, and with great joy resumed their places among their people.
Now and again one of them would marry42 a daughter of the mainland. All of them had the world for love and marriage. As a race they were handsome, tall, and strong, possessed of a natural dignity which carried everything before it. Their fearlessness and stoicism were proverbial. Girls and women everywhere were known to love them madly at first sight. To be from White Island was to have a universal passport.
Nonetheless, and though there was no hard and fast tradition against doing so, they seldom married away from home. Now and again, however, one of them did, and brought his wife to live with him on White Island. They never settled permanently on the mainland. And also, now and again, a son of the mainland married a girl of White Island. In both cases, the mainlanders always came to dwell on the island. Indeed, having once seen and lived on it even for a short while, one could not wish to permanently dwell elsewhere, so beautiful and free and noble was it and its people.
In the language of the White Islanders, the same word which meant “stranger” also meant “guest.” Strangers were received as guests: it was their natural privilege to partake of the best to be had. They were welcomed to the food and drink, shelter, work, song, dance, festivals and ceremonies of these people. The island life caught them up in its joyous stream. What was their surprise to see the beauty of the island women! What was their strange joy and sense of liberation to hear the whole island burst forth in soft and robust singing! For this was a custom on White Island: They had songs for all their ways of life, craft-songs, songs of the fields and crops and seasons, songs for the sea and fishing, dance, festival, and songs that were sacred. All on the island, from the very youngest to the oldest, knew these songs. There were times for singing: often at dawn and sunset, always during meals, for marriages, harvests, and events of significance to the whole community. But it was no unusual thing for some man in the fields, or some woman in her home, or some child upon the beach, to start singing because they felt like it, and then to have this song taken up and sung by people all over the island. At such times it was as if the whole place was one human organ. Then the song would die away and once again there would be silence save for the sounds of wind and waves.
What was the surprise of visitors to learn how these islanders were governed, and how they shared communal life! All adults on the island worked: it was their joy to be skilled craftsmen, potters, weavers, makers of sails, artists in wood, stone, and with lasting colors which they from ancient times had known how to make. It was said that in one part of the island there was a rich vein of gold; but the islanders kept this knowledge strictly to themselves, and thus it was that nations which had great warships and armies never bothered them. The foreign powers thought the island too small and valueless to be worth even an easy conquest. The islanders themselves never touched the gold. They had no need for it at home; and gold could not buy elsewhere what they had by natural merit on White Island.
The people of White Island governed themselves by a system which seemed very simple, and yet which was in fact quite exacting. When for some reason a new governor was to step forth, the people gathered in and around the house of God upon the summit of their island. Whoever felt compelled by some deep urge within his soul to assume this office, which was at once a privilege and a sacrifice, stepped forth of his own accord and gave his life to guide them. Such a one became at once responsible in his own eyes to God and to his people to be both law-giver and chief instructor in their ancient learning. As he stepped forth, his own conscience had to face the eyes and hearts of those he loved. No one became governor without the ordeal of an inward struggle. No two men had ever been known to step forth at once. Having elected to be governor, and conveyed this fact to the assembled people by fulfilling an ancient ceremony, this man, whoever he was, immediately received the blood and soul allegiance of his people. And so he governed until death or accident or his own inward sense of right and justice caused his removal.
This form of government seemed at first impossible to visitors from the mainland, but they soon became a part of it, and a part of all life on the island. This was their right as guests. They were sternly dealt with if they abused this privilege. Few visitors ever did. The islanders could count on the fingers of one had the number of people during the past hundreds of years who had violated their kindness. These transgressors became so out of place that they were asked to leave the island; conveyance to the mainland was offered them. When they refused to leave, they were then forced to enter the sea and swim in the direction of the mainland. Two of these were said to have perished in the attempt. A third was supposed to have been picked up by a fishing ship and carried to some distant port.
This severe manner of dealing with whoever violated their hospitality was, of course, well known to people on the mainland. But it was not fear of this eventuality which caused visitors to behave as they should. Indeed, if they knew of it, soon after landing they forgot it because of the joy and warmth with which they were received. It was the islanders themselves, their way of living, the largeness, the simplicity, the wisdom of it – it was this which made it almost impossible for anyone43 to violate their hospitality. To do so was to violate oneself.
Not all of the men of White Island who went away to foreign places followed the sea. And even those who did, carried an unwritten commission to experience all they could, and to understand the lives of all whom they came in contact with. In this way, White Island kept informed by first-hand experience of conditions everywhere the world over.
Certain of the White Islanders deliberately went abroad to study and acquaint themselves with the types and conditions of existence of different peoples: their governments, customs, commerce, arts, religions,44 sciences, and philosophies.
One such White Islander, having chosen America as his place of residence and study, grew to like this nation, formed deep friendships there, and came to be a figure of great significance in its culture. He lived at different times and for varying durations in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. And then, having received life and given completely back to life until the age of forty-three, he left America and departed on a long voyage. The people of America never heard of him thereafter. It was assumed that he met with accident. In fact, he returned to White Island, lived long afterwards, and finally, when almost two hundred years of age, peacefully died in the place he loved as he loved no other place on Earth.45
Another White Islander, in pursuit of the same purpose, went to live and study in the Orient.
And, from among a number, there was a third – even now his return was expected. The whole island was preparing dance and festival to rejoice and welcome him, by one acclaim, the greatest of White Islanders.
His name was Jend.
He was remembered, twenty years ago, as a youth whose strength and gift of wisdom amazed even them, they themselves a strong wise people. At an early age he had mastered all the crafts on the island. All that could be done with wood and stone he learned, from the felling of trees to the making of simple articles of use, the shaping of spars, the building of ships and houses. He came to understand the soil, the earth: his hand was perfect sowing seed. And to handle a sail and ride the sea were cut for him by nature. He was a striking figure at the helm in a wild high sea: his face, in profile, eagle-like, and, in front view, marvelously cast for man; his body, a muscled symmetry,46 braced as if it were engaged in victorious contest with wind and waves.
But most extraordinary was the rapidity with which he learned and mastered the knowledge and traditions of his people.
White Island, the legends ran, was so called because the Angels, long ago, had descended and dwelt there. They had been sent down to Earth by God, commissioned to teach and aid the men of Earth to improve their way of living. Everywhere over the broad lands men had departed from universal harmony. And as a result of this their bodies grew sick, and their souls became diseased. The Angels chose this spot from which to direct their ministrations because it was isolate from the mainland and the way between was washed with clean waters.
One day as an Angel strolled47 along the gold sand beach, absorbed in divine contemplation,48 he was suddenly surprised to see a man-child brought in by the waves and deposited as if by hands before his feet. He took this for a sign that this child’s destiny was to rule. So he gave the child unto the group of Angels who nursed and reared him. When this child had grown to be a marvelous flower of earth-manhood, he and a young Angel were joined in love; and thus arose the race of White Islanders who sometimes called themselves Children of the Sun.
The Angels remained on Earth long enough to see this well started, to teach them to till the earth, command the sea; to teach them to know themselves and great cosmic mysteries. Here was the source from which sprang the knowledge and the traditions of the White Islanders.
Jend mastered these. From men returned to White Island from far off places he learned diverse languages and customs.
In a time of emergency, young as he was, he even became governor of White Island for a short period.
And then came the compelling urge to see and understand the world. So he set off.
Now, after twenty years, he was expected to return.
The whole island expected him. One of their ships had already been sent to convey him home from the nearest mainland port. And on the island itself everyone49 was preparing for a three-day continuous day and night ceremony of rejoicing.
Very gay and active in this preparation was Naril, she whom everyone50 acknowledged to merit Jend’s love. Naril, like most of the women of White Island, was a pagan in the gaiety of her body and a priestess in her spirit. Even now she had climbed high to the summit of White Island and stood there, lithe and beautiful in the free winds and bright sun, near the house of God, alternately praying and dancing with joy for the first sight of the great Jend, her Jend, as he came51 sailing home.
* * * * *
The snow drove in blinding sheets across a prairie. Nowhere could anything be seen save swirls and drives of blinding snow. The glassy road lay across an endless flat-land, a cold white wilderness in which nothing grew or could ever grow. Two people drove a car across a prairie in a blizzard. Four large eyes, straining on the look-out, peered out from behind a frosted wind-shield. A fog-horn should have shrieked for them, for they, driving at great speed, peered out and could see not farther in front of them52 than where the head-light shot against the whirling blanket of white snow and reflected backwards. The car stood still, rushed on and set the snow a wild dance all around it. The car was metal. On and on the man and woman drove. Four large eyes peered out from behind a frosted wind-shield. On and on they drove across a flat civilization. They were in a car. The car was in snow. The snow was in a closed cold world.
Upward in this Actual.
Octaves beyond the idols
Aspired to in biped picturing.
Not Jacob pillowed on the rock53
Could dream this prospect
I walk through the Universe
Two men walked in the shadow of a great cathedral.
Its sheer majestic form was as if it had been hewn from a mountain and then carved in a complex harmony of forms exquisitely. Upon blended angles of pure rock a spire rested and pointed upwards.
One of the two men was a thousand years old. His body had the strength of a bull and the litheness of a tiger. It54 appeared more supple than powerful.
Wide-spaced beneath a broad high brow his eyes shown forth as from a god.
He could look in his brain and see all stars.
Knowledge, life, and power – these in him were perfectly formed and blended in supreme synthesis.
The other man was thirty55 years old. He wished to know how to be able. His steps were sensitive, as if he felt that he did not merit walking company with the older man. His steps were human.
The older man, using a simple pictorial language, spoke to the understanding of the younger man.
He said:
“Provided that you make effort you will gradually learn what and why you and all men are. But now you must acquire an essential sense of where you and all men are. Men are in the Universe. Without the world-view which arises from this sense of actual location, which is the sense of actual existence, you will not be able to go far.
“Man cannot transcend the Universe and its great laws.
“But man can master all that he need master by first becoming master in power, love, and knowledge of himself.
“Remember.”
The Universe above, the Universe below;
The stars above, stars below;
God above, men below.
They had come to the place where they would part company for an unknown duration. They stopped walking.
The elder man then turned to the younger, and, permitting himself to be what he was, he radiated a love so deep and great that the young man, with a sharp pang of instant liberation felt himself surge with force, felt his heart overflowing; instinctively he knelt before the older man with inexpressible veneration.
The maker blessed the young man, bid him rise, and embraced him. Then, without words, each went his way.
The young man strode away rapidly, half in the ecstasy of great devotion, half feeling that his heart had been torn from him.
The old man entered the great cathedral. His vast work on Earth was finished, and the time had come for his return to the Unknown Father, the Prime Source, the great darkness, immovable, more luminous than light.
The young man walked on. The narrow street, quite deserted, up-hill, was half in moonlight, half in shadow. Good people slept peaceably in the low rows of two- and three-story houses.56
He finally came to the door of his own house. He opened it, stepped in, and ascended to his room57 which was on the top floor. There, seating himself by an open window, he remained active and sleepless.
“Wherever men go, whatever they do, they are in the Universe.
“Are men sleeping, waking, breeding, killing, loving, thinking? They are in the Universe.
“Even if we die we must die in the Universe.
“Wherever men go, whatever they do, they are in the Universe.
“Are men sleeping, waking, breeding, killing, loving, thinking? They are in the Universe.
“Even if we die we must die in the Universe.
“Are men on land, in the air, under the sea, within the earth, on the sea, in deserts, on mountains, at the poles, on ships, in churches, in prisons, in skyscrapers, in huts, in houses, in dentist chairs, on operating tables, in rooms, in beds? Men are in the Universe.
“Are you in a room? Do you think that is outside58 the Universe? Do you think that the room’s ceiling is the upper boundary of the great world? Push back the ceiling and you will see above you and including you a vast space and millions of giant stars. Do you think the room’s floor and below you and including you, you will find the great world. Push back your walls. Above, below, and on all sides there is an infinite Universe which inexorably59 contains you.
“Where are you? What is above, below, on all sides, all around you?
“What reality have your artificial blinds and shutters? One instant of time can expose you to the boundless world.
“You, they, people, I, all of us are in the Universe.
“Be in your grave and you are still in it.
“Be with God and you will find Him in it.
“You cannot escape from the Universe.”
“Have you ever been solitary and exposed in a wilderness of unbroken desert?
“Have you ever been solitary and exposed in a wilderness of unbroken ocean?
“Have you ever been solitary and exposed in a wilderness of Earth?
“Are you solitary and exposed in the wilderness of the physical Universe?
“You shrink into your bones.
“No, dear. As I have wished done to me, so I now offer you the open friendliness of one human heart.
“The gift, almost the grace, is over.
“Now step back and for years learn to be powerfully alone.”
1928
From whatever angle one views modern society and the various forms of contemporary life, the records of flux and swift changes are everywhere evident. Even the attitude which holds that man’s fundamental nature has not altered during the past ten thousand years must admit the changes of forms and of modes which have occurred perhaps without precedent and certainly with an ever increasing rapidity during the life period of the now living generations. If the world is viewed through one or more various formulated interpretations of this period, or if one’s estimate rests upon the comparatively inarticulate records of day-to-day experience, the results have the common factor of change. Let it be Spengler’s Decline of the West,2 or Keyserling’s The World in the Making,3 or Waldo Frank’s4 survey of Western culture, or Joseph Wood Krutch’s5 analysis of the modern temper, and there is found testimony to the effect that the principles of cohesion and crystallization are being rapidly withdrawn from the materials of old forms, with a consequent break-up of these forms, a setting free of these materials, with the possibility that the principles of cohesion and crystallization will recombine the stuff of life and make new forms.
Bertand Russel6 has indicated the revisions of mental outlook made necessary by recent scientific and philosophic thinking. James Harvey Robinson7 has shown why we must create new forms of thinking and bring about a transformation of attitude. From a different angle, the social science of the world-wide struggle between the owning and the laboring classes, clearly summarized by Scott Nering,8 comes to much the same conclusion, in so far as the factor of change is concerned. Again, the records of psychology bear striking witness of this factor. For though, on the one hand, there are in vogue a number of dogmas and pat formulas which assume a constant set of simple factors, and allow, say, Leonardo da Vinci9 to be seen at a glance, and which offer ready explanations of why, say, George Santayana10 writes, on the other hand, the practice of psychology discloses a surprising and bewildering flux and chaos both in the individual and in the collective psyche. And in general, what is taking place in most fields of life is sufficiently radical for Baker Brownell11 to see it resulting in a new human universe.
Be it shifting forms of relation between men and women, or the revolt of youth everywhere, or the widespread emergence and concurrence of the machine, mechanical techniques, and civilized instinctive life-rhythms, or the phenomenon of the radio, or the possibility of super-power, or the “rising tide of color” and the change of status among races, or the threat of another war, or the menace of opium, or the counter problems of degeneracy and eugenics, or the effects of mal-education and the efforts to re-educate, or the promise of a general renaissance of art and literature, or the decay of religions and the rising of new teachings and new prophets, or the forming of what appear to be new psychological types of human beings, or the increasing beliefs in vast earth-disturbances and changes – in short, wherever one is placed, and whatever aspect of the world condition he may focus on or experience, he is likely to be aware of the movement of forces that have at least in part broken from old forms and that have not yet achieved stability in new forms.
This is true, it seems, of the human world in general. Modern society is in flux. The psychology of the main peoples is the psychology of a transitional period.
And at the same time – paradoxical enough – it is also evident that there are certain forms of modern society which, at least for the time being, are not only not changing in the above sense, but are growing and strengthening as they now exist. I refer to the established economic and political systems – and their immediate by-products – of Western12 nations, especially of the English speaking nations. For despite the disorganized13 aspect of the economic situation as a consequence of the War, and as described by Keynes,14 it is, I think, the agreed opinion of students of Western economic and political institutions, particularly of those which obtain in the United States, that these systems, especially the philosophy which has been grown up about them, have become stronger and more organized within the past thirty years. Their development during this period in the United States, for example, is suggested by these general facts: that this country now turns out, and is increasingly turning out, a surplus of both money and products; that it is sending in larger quantities this surplus into foreign fields; that since 1900 it has become a lending, instead of a borrowing nation; that Henry Ford has become a philosopher. One student of economic conditions states that within ten years all the main European boards of directors will be dominated and controlled by Americans. Thus, irrespective of all the changes suggested15 at the beginning of this article, irrespective of16 the example and influence of the Soviet Union from without, and of radical and liberal labor and political forces from within, the World War notwithstanding, and despite the protests and revolts of foreign peoples, the business, political, legal, and military organizations and expansion of Western nations have advanced. At the present time they at least appear to be more solid and crystallized than ever. And they are growing stronger. So true is this, and so dominant an influence do these systems exercise on all the other forms of life, that, should one view the modern Western nations from within the business and political worlds – and their outgrowths – one might well conclude that there were no radical changes occurring17 anywhere, or that at most these changes were taking place only in minor social forms and concerned only an uninfluential minority.
For the growth of business and of business-technique, and the increased support that the political and legal systems give to the dominant economic practices, this growth and this increase have parallels in all the forms of life that are at all connected with these systems. Thus, wealth, and such power as wealth gives, are increasingly considered valuable: more and more men are devoting themselves to their attainment, seeing in them the end of life and the highest goal that life offers. The big businessman is the modern hero. The average man, that is, the average businessman, is already the ideal, even the idol, of millions of people; and there is a growing tendency for institutions of higher education, physicians, and psychologists to accept and affirm the average businessman as the ideal to which all people of sound sense should aim. The notions of prosperity and of necessary progress go hand in hand, and both are being elevated in the public mind. To have a larger bank-account, to live in a socially better located house, to drive a better car, to be able to discuss the stock-exchange and the servant problem – these are items which have an ever stronger appeal to an ever larger number of people. And not a bit of so-called religion is used as an aid to such fulfilment. The fact that most of us are just one step ahead of the sheriff is a thing that one mentions less and less. As our need to keep ahead of him increases, so does our optimism. Yes, crime does increase, but we are thousands of years in advance of backward peoples, and each day sees us further outdistance them. Social position is a matter of spending-power and possession of the items of prosperity. Never has aristocracy been taken so seriously. Results are looked for, and measured in terms of, silver dollars. Even sermons and poems must pass the success test before anyone considers them of merit. And all the while, the inner content of life is decreasing and rapidly losing significance. The inclination to prosperity and the inclination to suicide are somehow compatible. At any rate, both are increasing.
So, that, as I have said, if one viewed the modern world from the point of view of Western economic and political systems, and their direct outgrowths, the evidence of their growth and crystallization18 would seem so weighty, widespread, and generally influential, that it might well be concluded that the organization and advance of old forms have precedence and power over the forces that are bringing about changes. It could be held that these changes, however radical they might be, are all tending to take place round and about the fixed points of our economic system and its by-product.
Of course, within the form of big business, the materials are often unstable and the event uncertain, and there are many swift unexpected turnovers and reversals; and it may be that the very nature of this system is transient in character and capable of no long duration. But my personal experience is that the form itself is growing. And though we are no longer warranted in thinking in terms of extended periods of gradual growth only, but must think also in terms of sudden transformations, it being possible that our whole economic scheme will change, as it were, overnight, I cannot now see any signs of its break-up, from within, in the immediate future. And while it is true that there is of necessity an intricate interchange occurring19 between the fixed factors and the factors of change, it is no less true that the dominant rhythms come from what we all concede to be our dominant institutions.
Thus, while it is a fact that modern society is in flux, it is also a fact that modern society is crystallized and formed about the solid structure of big business; and while the modern psychology is the psychology of a transitional period, it is also20 the psychology of a stabilized big business period. It is desirable to keep both of these general facts in mind when we now turn to consider the particular matter of race problems and their relation to the other forms of the modern social order.
But now, in order to give this article focus and points of concrete reference, I shall take America – that is, the United States – as a sufficiently representative modern society, and as a social scheme that contains a sufficiently representative class of race problems. For here in America there are changing forms and established forms; and with the possible exception of the Soviet Union, the main features of our economic and political systems and their social outgrowths have points in common with those that obtain in other modern nations. And – again with the exception of the Soviet Union, in which, I am told, the economic and political causes of race problems either no longer exist or are being removed, the minority races and peoples being guaranteed similar right, the children of all peoples being taught that all races are similar – American race problems have points in common with the race problems of other countries (the British and Hindu, the Eurasian, the gentile and Jew on the Continent, the whites and blacks in South Africa) and with the large number of problems everywhere – such as nationality problems – which are psychologically similar to race problems.
It will be well to note here that no serious student of race claims to know what race really is; nor do we know. Therefore the term “race problem” is a loose sociological term, which contains a variety of vague meanings; it is subject to being used with whatever meaning one happens to give it.
Scientific opinion is in doubt as to what race is. Authorities such as Roland Dixon,21 Franz Boas,22 A.L. Kroeber,23 Ellsworth Huntington,24 and Flinders Petrie25 agree that from the point of view of exact knowledge, the whole subject of race is uncertain and somewhat confused. It is clear that the human race is something different from the other orders of life of the natural kingdom. It is noticeable26 that there are differences within the human group. But it is not admissible to define and understand race solely on the basis of an obvious variation of a single physical feature, such as color of skin; and when one seeks for a fundamental knowledge of it, then, despite the exact biological ideas of the germ-plasm and genes, and despite the exact anthropological ideas associated with measurements of physical features, the difficulties encountered tend to mount faster than one’s understanding.
One may, with Professor Kroeber, try to understand27 and use the term “race” in its strict biological sense, and hold it to mean an hereditary subdivision of a species. I personally think that this is a much needed practice, because, among other things, it calls attention to the strictly biological aspect of race, it points28 to race as an organic phenomenon, and it allows the purely sociological aspects of racial matters to be distinguished and seen for what they are. Surely, there cannot29 be much advance in the understanding of race problems, until we do clearly distinguish between organic and social factors. But from the point of exact definition and real knowledge, the term “hereditary subdivision of a species” is hardly better understood than the term “race.” For again we are brought up to the questions: What is a subdivision? Upon what criteria should our ideas of a subdivision rest? Can these criteria be used to adequately define and understand race? Does anyone really know what a subdivision is? The fact is that the difficulties involved in the present ideas of, and approach to race, are causing thoughtful men to recast their data and take new directions. In some cases there is a tendency to step out of the scientific confusion by accepting the notions of race in common usage. As an example of this, I quote the following remarks of Louis Wirth:30
What sort of criteria enable us to tell what constitutes a race and who belongs to it? If the present study shows anything, it indicates that the word race has been used in a great many contradictory ways, and that the physical anthropologists, with their anthropometric measurements, reduce a race to a highly variable statistical concept. A race, it may turn out, is after all not so much a clearly delimitable, homogenous biological group, as a cultural group, whose self and group consciousness is more or less attached to some clearly visible biological trait.
Perhaps the old naive notion of classifying faces by skin color has, in the final analysis, more practical value than the minute and complex measurements of cephalic31 index, nostrility, hair shape, etc. If Dr. Herskovits’s32 data and interpretations are correct, a race is something social rather than biological. A race, it turns out, is a group of people that we treat as if they were one. You belong to a certain race, if you feel yourself to be a member, and if others treat you as if you were.
This is a clear statement of what race is commonly taken to mean. It has a certain sound sense to recommend it. But in effect it does no more than transpose race from the confusion of science back again to the confusion of public opinion. Nor do I think that we will profit by giving scientific questions also into the keeping of the “average man.” It may be that we will have to discard the notion of race. At any rate, I consider it likely that scientific investigation will increasingly use other, and perhaps more fruitful, concepts in its future attempts to understand human differences. In view of the phenomena to be dealt with, and also because of the now evident tendencies to think in terms of “type,” it is possible that the conception of type, types of men, physico-psychological types of men, will, among thoughtful people, largely supplant the now prevalent33 notions of races. However this may be, suffice it here to repeat that race is a somewhat confused and uncertain subject.
This being the case with the main term, how then am I to give any real clarity to the term “race problem”? What is it that distinguishes race problems from all the other problems with which man is belabored? In what real way do racial maladjustments burden34 men’s psyche? Just how are sociological debates about race different from the endless series of debates on all possible subjects that men are continually engaging in? In another place I have pursued an investigation of race problems that gives these questions a more detailed treatment than is possible here. And in the same work I have indicated, among other things, that the answer which is often given – namely, that biological race-differences explain the nature of race problems – is incorrect.35 For this answer is involved in the confusion36 between organic and social factors. Professor Kroeber has pointed out the error of such practice. It assumes that biological race-phenomena give rise to sociological race problems. But the strictly racial history of man, with its repeated crossings and re-crossings of all the sub-groups of the human stock, shows clearly that as organisms we are noticeably free from concern with the issues that we sociologically contend with – that so-called race problems are not due to biological causes, but to the super-imposed forms and controversies of our social milieu.37
The same conclusion is reached by both social and personal psychology. For herein it is seen that it is first necessary that we be conditioned by the factors of our social environment, before we do and can respond in terms of racial similarities and differences. If we were never taught and never acquired ideas, opinions, beliefs, and superstitions about race, if we were never conditioned to have feelings and so-called instincts about these notions and beliefs, we would never have any response or behavior in terms of race: we would not experience race prejudice and animosity. To an unconditioned child – that is, to a child that has not acquired racial notions and feelings from its environment, let the child be of whatever race you will – differences in skin color are no more or no less than differences of color of its toys or dresses. No child has prejudice against a toy because its color is white or black. No racially unconditioned child has prejudice against a person because his color is white or black. Differences of texture of hair are similarly no more and no less than differences between the hair texture of animals – a shaggy dog, and a sleek cat. And so it is with all the other physical characteristics that are commonly supposed to provoke supposedly innate racial prejudices and preferences. There are no such things as innate racial antipathies. We are not born with them. Either we acquire them from our environment or else we do not have them at all. So that, paradoxical as it may sound, the fact is that race, as such, does not give rise to race problems. The physical aspects of race do not cause the problems that center around what are called racial hatreds and prejudices. This is the conclusion of experimental psychology. And biologists, those who hold no brief in favor of environment as a dominant factor in the making of adult man, are inclined to agree with this position as to the origin of race problems. “It is only just to admit at once,” says Professor East,38 a geneticist, “that many cases of racial antagonism have no biological warrant.”
The meaning and the importance of the above conclusion consists in this: since race problems are social and psychological in origin, they can be fundamentally dealt with – they can be radically changed and even eliminated – by use of the proper social and psychological39 instruments. It is possible for man and society to constructively handle the racial situation. I shall return to this matter and treat it more in detail in a short while.
So, then, race problems are sociological and psychological both in cause and in character. When we deal with them, we are entirely in the field of socio-psychological phenomena. Thus, if you could, so to speak, cut away man’s psyche, leaving him to exist as a straight organic product, you would by that act eliminate, not only race problems, but most of the other so-called human problems as well. But I do not propose this method as a solution of race problems. Though if I did, I would not be in want of support. Many are now trying to do substantially just this thing. The attempts variously go under the guise, sometimes of education, sometimes psychology, liquor, opium, while the principal of cutting, interpreted as killing, and applied now to the body instead of to the psyche, would win half the world, as the last war showed, to its support. But this is another matter.
In telling what race problems are not, I suggested what they are. A race problem is any form of behavior, be it a scientific problem, a maladjustment, or a debate or discussion, which is associated with ideas, opinions, beliefs, etc., about races. Once we leave the sphere of science, the fact that we do not know what races are does not prevent our having notions, beliefs, preferences, and prejudices about them. On the contrary, since it is never knowledge but the lack of it that provides the most fruitful condition for racial animosities, our lack of understanding supplies the very best circumstance for racial maladjustments to multiply and continue from generation to generation. Let a person be once conditioned to respond in terms of notions and beliefs about race, and his prejudice will stand in direct proportion to his misinformation, while the stress of his prejudice, animosity, etc., will determine the acuteness of his problem.
In considering race problems, we may, I think, for the present purpose divide them into three classes. First, there is the class of race problems which falls in the domain of scientific investigation. These consist of the racial matters dealt with in biology, anthropology, and psychology. They have to do with man’s biological and cultural make-up and behavior. They involve the attempt to ascertain40 the facts and understand the principles of human organic, social, and psychological existence – in so far as these are particularly concerned with matters of race. They include the aim of applying the knowledge thus gained for the best possible regulation of human affairs.
Second, there are race problems that take the form of discussion and debate. There are serious discussions of the race question. These discussions often draw upon the data of science, and, pressing beyond prejudice and petty issues, they also aim to arrive at a theoretically sound understanding of racial matters, and at practical conclusions that can be relied upon to guide men in the developing of intelligence, character, and ability. These discussions are frequently reducible to the question of interbreeding – of intermarriage. Sometimes they get entangled in arguments about heredity and environment, about superiority and inferiority. Too often they get lost in a maze of unconscious assumptions in favor of one’s own type of life,41 one’s own standards. As often as not they tend to lose sense of genuine values. The race-theme can compel the partial or total eclipse of all else. They are sometimes too solemn, too serious; too seldom does a good laugh relieve the tenseness. And now and again, I am afraid, the people who engage in these discussions are taken in by the humbug of education and civilization. In these cases the serious discussions of race fall far below the intelligence displayed by creative thinking in other fields. At their best, however, they do lead to clarification, and to the taking of measures for increasing constructive racial life and interracial relationships.
Then there are all manner of absurd and sometimes explosive remarks and debates over racial issues. These range all the way from parlor and backyard gossip about “niggers,” “crackers,” “kikes,” “wops,” etc., through naive verbal releases for hurt emotions, to propagandist and pathological speeches, articles and books. Debates of this type are particularly notable in that they usually repeat what has already been said to no profit thousands of times, and in that they take place in shameless ignorance of new and constructive ideas and attitudes.
Then, third, there is the class of race problems which arise from, or, better, which are the actual day-to-day experiences of maladjustments due to factors of a racial character. These include experiences caused by the drawing of the color line; by fights – physical, legal, and otherwise – between the races; by all manner of racial aggressions, resistances, oppositions, oppressions, fears, prejudices, hatreds; and by the occasional stoning and burning of houses, riots, and lynchings.
Race problems of the scientific class and of the serious discussion class are decidedly the minority. They comprise but a small portion of the total behavior concerned with race. Indeed, in common use, the term “race problem” does not include them. For race problems, in the popular mind, are those associated with racial animosities and prejudices. Race problems of the social gossip, propagandist, and pathological debate class, and those of the actual maladjustment class, are by far the most numerous. They comprise the bulk of the racial situation. Soon I shall give a brief social description of this situation. For the present it is enough to remark in general that it is spreading to involve all of America, and it is, it seems, rapidly growing more acute.
Having made the above groupings, I am now able to indicate what seems to me to be the true relation of these classes of race problems to the other forms of our social order. With this relationship established, I will then review some of the more important questions of the race issue, and at least suggest tentative answers.
What explanations are there for the persistence and increase of the kind of race problems which intelligent opinion considers negative, undesirable, to be eliminated? How comes it that in this age of increasing scientific knowledge, these negative aspects of life also increase? Why is it that in the midst of such radical changes as we noted at the beginning of this article, race problems, in their established forms, are becoming more crystallized? Since everyone who is sincerely interested in an intelligent and constructive regulation of human life wishes that race problems be fundamentally solved, since these problems can be basically dealt with by taking the proper social and psychological measures, since there is a sufficient knowledge to begin this work, why is it that we have not devised and applied the proper instruments? In what now follows we will see the situation that gives rise to these and other important questions, particularly to the question: What is to be done about it?
Recalling what was said as to the existence in modern society of two classes of forms, one of which was undergoing radical changes, one of which was becoming more crystallized, we may now ask, Into which class of forms do race problems fall? It is probable, and I think it is accurate to say that race problems of the scientific and of the serious discussion type belong to the changing category. They are among the forms that are undergoing radical changes. For not only are they in touch with the forces and factors that are in general producing new intellectual and conscious42 outlooks, but they are also being strongly influenced by the particular discovery of new racial data and of new methods of dealing with race. Though the science of man shows less striking revolutions than the science of physics, it is nevertheless certain that its progress has caused the forming of new attitudes and of new approaches to racial phenomena. From the scientific point of view, the whole matter of race is something different – perhaps quite different – from what is was twenty or thirty years ago. But race problems of this type only comprise a small fraction of the racial situation.
The bulk of racial behavior belongs to the established crystallizing category. Most race problems, in their given forms, are tending, not to radically change, but to crystallize. By far the larger part of our racial situation, with its already given patterns and tendencies,43 is rapidly growing more acute. These facts, if such they be, will be brought out if we note with what other social forms race problems are most closely associated, and if we see some of the main patterns and tendencies.
There is no need to present new facts to support the statement that race problems are closely associated with our economic and political systems, and that they are most distant from the intellectual and cultural activities that now manifest marked changes. It is well known that whenever two or more races (or nationalities) meet conditions that are mainly determined by acquisitive interests, race problems arise as by-products of economic issues. The desire for land, the wish to exploit natural resources, the wish for cheap labor – wherever these motives have dominated a situation involving different races, whether the races are set in rivalry, or with one dominant and the other dominated, race problems also have sprung up. Just this is the situation in China, India, South Africa, Europe and in different sections of the United States. The economic and political causes of race problems in these places are too well known to need more than bare statement.
In America, the “acquisitive urge” for land, natural resources, and cheap labor variously gave rise to the problems of the whites and the Indians, the whites and the negroes, the whites and the Asiatics, the old stock and the immigrants. The Indian problem began over land deals, and, in so far as it still exists, it is still a matter of white men desiring Indian territory for economic profit. Political and legal devices have all tended to be in the service of this interest. The Asiatic problem is obviously economic, and its “solution” is always seen with an eye to the economic situation. Immigrant problems are the direct outgrowth of demands for cheap labor, and of the circumstances attending the immigrant’s economic condition after he arrives in this country. While the way in which the negro problem has been and still is tied up with our economic and political systems, and their social outgrowths, is even more evident. This is not to say that economic causes and factors are the only ones giving rise to race problems; there are certainly other causes and factors, while the basic cause of all of man’s negative problems must be sought, I think, in some abnormal feature of man’s fundamental make-up. Here I am simply indicating the relationship between the organized expressions of man’s acquisitive urge, namely, between our economic and political systems, and race problems. In addition to the various historical and social science studies that show this relationship, it can be clearly seen if one has the patience to go over the Congressional Records that bear on this subject. And there recently appeared in Harper’s Magazine an article which deals with the future of America, written by an eminent biologist, wherein much that is relevant to the present point, and indeed to the general trend of this paper, is considered.
Just as race problems are closely associated with our economic and political systems, so are they with one of the main outgrowths of these systems – our social scheme of caste distinctions. No small measure of racial animosity is due to this scheme. This scheme is crystallizing. The economic and political systems are increasing. And so are race problems. How could it be otherwise than that the things which are causing an increased anti-Americanism abroad, and an increase of crime and degeneracy, and a decrease of intelligence at home, also cause more and more race antagonism.
Certain factors of American race problems, particularly certain of the factors involved in the race problems of the whites and negroes, were modified by the Civil War. Many more factors were added then, and have been added since then. But the main forms of these problems, namely, the sharp sociological divisions between the white and colored people, have persisted from the beginning of American history, and they have steadily become more and more fixed and crystallized, they have grown up, so to speak, with the growth of our economic, political, and social systems. And the probability is that they will continue to increase with the increase of these systems. Scientific and liberal opinion, and intelligent humanism, will tend to have as much, and no more, influence on the character of race problems as they have on the character of big business and on the characters of Republican and Democratic party politics.
So much, then, by the way of indicating the relation between race problems and the other main forms of our social order. Now to see the racial situation, its main patterns and tendencies.
Many accounts of race problems in the United States might well lead a reader to the conclusion that everywhere about our streets he would see race problems enacted day after day. The impression is often given that race issues are to be met with as frequently and as tangibly as one meets newsboys selling papers. Whereas the fact is that our towns and streets, of whatever section, are often so noticeably44 without any race behavior, that one wonders, sometimes, where are all these problems the books tell us America is burdened with. Again, books frequently treat race problems as if they existed only in books, in theory, abstracted from the psyche of living men. From what I have written thus far, one might get the impression that race issues assemble in and about “systems” and “institutions.” Of course they don’t. Race problems, where they do exist, exist and are manifest in living men, and nowhere else. And, of course, they do not obtain in some quantity. But their forms and manifestations often have very little in common with what is written about them. It is difficult to treat, in a well-balanced and reasoned way, a subject which in nature is irrational. And it is particularly difficult to do this when one must meet the requirements of a short exposition.
The South – that is, the southern section of the United States – is particularly open to strange descriptions. Reports of the South would have it that white Southerners are always indefatigably engaged on the one hand, in keeping the negro in his place, and, on the other, in prying into the family closets of their white economic, political, and social enemies, with the intent of discovering there some trace of dark blood with which to stigmatize and break these enemies. Doubtless such things do happen. I am told that occasionally it is somehow discovered that some white family of hitherto high repute has indeed a drop of negro blood – whereon this family is likely to fall below the social level of prosperous negroes. And there are reports of ingenious tests devised for detecting the presence of dark blood in those who otherwise would pass for pure white. This is similar to the assertion that some people in Vienna wish to make blood tests compulsory for every school-child, in order that any trace of Semitic blood may be detected. Doubtless there are such tests, or wishes for such tests, in both places. And, of course, in our South there are lynchings, peonage, false legal trials, and no court procedure at all, political disfranchisement, segregation, and, on the social level, a rigid maintenance of caste distinctions. And, among negroes, there is a sizable amount of discontent, fear, hared, and an effort to get better conditions. Certainly both races are enslaved by the situation. But there are, on the other hand, intelligent attempts on the part of both white and colored men to constructively deal with the existing factors. And there are thousands of both whites and blacks who from day-to-day experience no active form of race problem, but who are, like masses of people everywhere, sufficiently content to go their way and live their life, counting their day lucky if, without working them too hard, it has given them the means to eat and sleep and reproduce their kind.
There is no doubt, however, that the race problem is at least a latent problem with almost everyone, not only in the South, but everywhere within the United States. For America is a nation in name only. In point of fact, she is a social form containing racial, national, and cultural groups which the existing economic, political, and social systems tend to keep divided and repellent. Moreover, each group is left to feel, and often taught and urged to feel, that some other group is the cause of its misfortune. Against the actual and potential antagonisms thus caused, many of our churches and other orders of so-called brotherhood and good will do no more than make feeble, and, often enough, hypocritical gestures.
Below the sociological level, all the races and stocks present in America – and almost all of the main peoples in some numbers are assembled here – have met and mingled their bloods. Biologically, what has taken place here somewhat justifies the name “melting pot.” But it is thus everywhere where people meet. Let people meet and they mingle. This is biology, the reproductive urge within man, acting with no thought of sociological differences, acting even in the face of social prohibitions and restraints of all sorts. These organic acts are fundamental in human biology. This mingling of blood has been recognized and formulated as a maxim by anthropology. Subject to the influence of the American environment, the different peoples and stocks have so intermixed here, that – among others, and notably – Dr. Ales Hrdlicka45 sees forming of a distinct racial type, which he calls the American type. But the consciousness of most so-called Americans lags far behind the organic process.
When we view the scene sociologically, then, as I have said, we everywhere see strong tendencies to form separatist and repellent groups. On the social level, the term “melting pot” is somewhat of a misnomer. Of so-called racial divisions and antagonisms, there is the nationwide46 separation of the white and colored groups. Jews and gentiles tend to remain apart. The bewildering number of nationalistic groups – English, German, French, Italians, Greeks, Russians, etc., etc. – tend to do likewise. And it sometimes happens that those of Northern and Southern European descent are as prejudiced against each other, or against newly arrived technical citizens, as they are against negroes. Negroes do not care too much for foreigners. There are a number of fairly defined prejudices within each of the several groups; while lines drawn, and the animosities aroused, by differences of sectional, fraternal, business, political, social, artistic, religious, and scientific allegiance are quite considerable. So that, all in all, it is rare indeed to find anyone who is genuinely conscious of being an American. We have slogans: one hundred per cent American; America first; etc. But they do not mean much. The character of perhaps the greatest American – Walt Whitman – is as antipathetic to the conduct of the majority of those who dwell here, as the ideals of liberty and union, and the high values that have ever been and still are somehow present in the spirit of this country, are antipathetic to this same conduct.
Just as separatism has everywhere increased since the War, so the above mentioned separatistic tendencies have here increased since then.
The World War and its consequences gave a decided turn to the racial situation within the negro group. But this turn was not, and is not, in a radically new direction. Rather, it has resulted in a strengthening of certain of the forces and factors implicit in the form that has existed since the Civil War, and indeed ever since the introduction of negroes into America – the form, namely, which in its main outline divides white from black. And thus this form itself has become further strengthened and crystallized. A number of factors – among which are greater pressure from without, increased organization and articulateness within the group, and, as a result of the World War, a deeper seated disillusion as regards the promises of the dominant white American – these, together with other factors, have caused an intensification47 of negro race consciousness. And with this there has come an increased aggressiveness – more fight. It is no small factor in favor of this fighting attitude that it is being recognized and affirmed by other American minority groups. It is remarked, for instance, that whereas the Indians are hopeless because they do not try to fight for and help themselves, the negroes demand and therefore deserve better conditions. There is more bitterness, an ever increasing absorption and concern with race issues; very few intelligent negroes are permitted to be interested in anything else. Within the negro world there has come about a parallel growth and organization of economic and professional activities, and, consequently, an increased group independence and the emergence of a fairly well defined middle class, a tendency to deliberately withdraw from attempts to participate as Americans in the general life of the United States, a greater attempt to participate as negroes in the general life, a stronger demand, for some, for social equality, and from others, for economic and educational opportunity, some spread of proletarian class consciousness, some activity in art and literature.
From the point of view of deliberate intention, it would seem that the new negro is much more negro and much less American than was the old negro of fifty years ago. From the point of view of sociological types, the types which are arising among negroes, such as the businessman,48 the politician, the educator, the professional person, the college student, the writer, the propagandist, the movie enthusiast, the bootlegger, the taxi driver, etc. – these types among negroes are more and more approaching the corresponding white types. But, just as certain as it is that this increasing correspondence of types makes the drawing of distinctions supposedly based on skin color or blood composition appear more and more ridiculous, so it is true that the lines are being drawn with more force between the colored and white groups. Negroes are themselves now49 drawing these lines. Interbreeding and intermarriage, for instance, are becoming as taboo among negroes as among whites.
A similar increase of separatism is to be seen among Nordics. There are those who, with greater urgency50 than ever are aiming toward an inviolate white aristocracy. Their already fixed inclination toward a Western modification of the caste system is stimulated, sometimes overstimulated, by the threat that the rising tide of Southern and darker peoples may cause them to lose control. They tend to see all virtue menaced by this rising tide. They increasingly tend to feel and think that not only their own souls, but also the very spirit of America, and even in the world, would be violated, should any save those of their own stock exercise decisive influence. And there are some whites who would like to see the darker peoples, particularly51 the negroes, either deported, or sterilized, or swept off by a pestilence.
There are Jews who are more and more emphasizing the actuality and distinction of the Jewish race. They would have the Jews remain strictly as they are, preserving and transmitting their character and culture in more or less isolation from the other peoples of America.
While the Indian, still being pressed off his land and increasingly compelled to attend United States schools, holds aloof so far as possible from the white man, and sometimes indicates the white man’s presence in America by a symbolic pile of tin cans.
The main tendencies toward separatism are observed and given a brilliant record in André Siegfried’s America Comes of Age.52 And therein will also be found an excellent summary, from one point of view, of the deadlock existing in the American racial situation. For despite the movement above suggested, the situation is indeed in deadlock. The races cannot draw nearer together; nor can they draw much farther apart – and still remain races in America. But they will undoubtedly push away from one another, until they have completely occupied what small room for withdrawal is still left. For, as I have indicated, the strongest forces now active are tending to intensify and crystallize the very patterns, tendencies, and conditions that brought about the present situation.
Thus, from a racial point of view, and, to my mind, from several other points of view, America, which set out to be a land of the free, has become instead a social trap. The dominant forms of her social life – her economic, political, educational, social, and racial forms – compel her people to exist and meet in just the ways most conducive to the maintenance of this trap. All Americans are in it – the white no less than the black, the black no more than the red, the Jew no more than the gentile. It is sometimes thought, both by themselves and by others, that the dominant white Protestant holds the keys to the situation, and could, by a simple turn of the hand, unlock it if he wished to. But this is not fact – it is fiction. The dominant white is just as much a victim of his form as is the negro of his; while both are equally held by the major American customs and institutions. This is sound social science and it is sound psychology. And until all parties recognize it to be so, and stop berating one another, and get down to work to bring about basic constructive changes, it is romance to talk about solving race problems. As it is, both white and colored people share the same stupidity; for both see no other way out than by intensifying the very attitudes which entrapped them. And so, Americans of all colors and of most descriptions are crawling about their social prison, which is still called Democracy. They are unable to see, and indeed they do not suspect, what it is that holds them; perhaps they do not realize that they are held, so busy they are with their by now habitual rivalries, fears, egotisms, hatreds, and illusions.
But perhaps it is premature to call the prevalent racial tendencies stupid and short-sighted. It may be that a solution does lie in the direction which calls for an increase to bursting point of the existing conditions. Circumstances have been known to change as a result of the accentuation of their negative factors. But as often as not, the change, when summed up, is seen to have consisted of no more than a complete disappearance of all positive factors. However this may be, there is no doubt that race prejudice, and all associated with it, is tending to carry the entire body of America toward some such climax. Much of the writing about Nordics and negroes, and much of the talk as to who is superior and who is inferior and who is equal, and all the other nonsense about race, is just so much verbal fanfare accompanying the actual march.
Too often the very agencies and instruments that might turn its course, or even change its character, are themselves either no more than adjuncts of the prevalent economic, social, and racial forms, or else the force of these forms tends to render them helpless. Thus our churches, our schools, colleges, universities, newspapers, large lecture platforms, are frequently just so many systematized parts of the machine itself; while even the science of anthropology is sometimes constrained to use the language of popular opinion and prejudice. And, as I have said before, liberal opinion and intelligent humanism affect the race question just about as much as they affect the practice of big business and the politics of the Republican and Democratic parties.
But no description of the situation in America is faithful to the entire scene, which fails to notice and consider the positive possibilities contained in the emergence of a large number of the type of people who cannot be classified as separatist and racial. These people are truly synthetic and human. They exist all over America. And though they may not be so defined and articulate as the separatist type, and though they are less in numbers, it is quite possible that their qualitative significance will exercise the greater influence in shaping the future of this country. M. Siegfried53 and others failed either to note this type or to give due weight to it, with the consequence that their pictures of the American situation are, to say the least, incomplete.
There are present here individuals, and even groups, drawn from all fields of life – business, the crafts, the professions, the arts and sciences – who, in the first place, and in general, affirm truly human values, and sincerely strive that life may contain the greatest possible meaning, and who, in the second place, actually do something toward bringing about a worthwhile day-to-day existence. When people of this type face the racial situation, they either have no prejudices or antagonisms, or else they press beyond them, in order to apply the standards of intelligence, character, and ability to this aspect of life also. And it is generally agreed that both individual growth and the development of America as a whole are intimately concerned with achieving a creative synthesis of the best elements here present.
Putting aside the matter of type for the moment, I would like to quote in this connection the following passage:
I have no sympathy with a regimen of repression on the part of the whites, and no sympathy with the militant aggressiveness of such organizations as the Association for the Advancement of the Colored People, which lobby and threaten, to gain the acceptance of ill-advised programs. There is no reason for trying to make university-men either of all negroes or all whites. To give the ballot to morons and illiterates of either race is foolish. But is does seem to me that many of the unpleasant elements of the situation can be eliminated by approaching all matters from the individualistic rather than the racial point of view. I am inclined to believe that even the strictly genetic phases of the matter can be settled on this basis. It is a question of eugenics ideals. An aristocracy of brains is difficult to establish and still more difficult to maintain. There is too much variability everywhere. Each individual54 must stand on his own merits.
This is the well-considered position of Edward M. East, who approaches the subject from the genetic point of view. I do not give it as being representative of the type mentioned above – some will think it a bit conservative. But I do give it as a sign of intelligent liberal opinion, and as a sign that real values are beginning to displace petty issues in racial matters. The various forms of contemporary literature contain numerous examples of the same tendency.
But the greater number of people of the expanding type are not articulate. They are confused and scattered. Their psychology partakes of the transitional transforming aspect of this age. They are not sure of themselves. They do not as yet feel certain of their position. They are not sufficiently conscious of their type. Often they exist isolate and nebulous, and come to feel, because of the contrary conduct all around them, either that they must be wrong, or else that they must hide their real selves and deny their true values. Often they have been so compelled, and are now so accustomed, to use the dominant, which is to them an alien, language, that they can find no words for even talking to themselves, much less to others. When it comes to a particular matter of race and race problems, this type of American, though never actively participating in the various clashes and controversies, oppressions and protests against oppressions,55 are frequently drawn into a passive participation in narrow racial, social, and cultural issues, simply because they can find no opportunity56 for positive action in what really concerns them. For seldom do the various race problems and propagandists speak in their terms. Hardly ever are they directly appealed to by and for aims to which they can genuinely respond. Too seldom is there possibility for them to align themselves with constructive human undertaking. For most racial programs, like most political programs, are alien to this type. But it is, I think, this type of American who must and will provide the unprejudiced energy, the intelligence, and the clean vision necessary for the solution of what, even to the most narrow-minded, is a distressing racial situation.
Race problems can be solved. In so far as they are sociological in character, and we established the fact earlier in this paper that most so-called race problems are of this character, they can be constructively dealt with by using the proper social and psychological means. These means are available. We have enough of the right kind of tools for beginning work. Modern psychology, and particularly the behavioristic method worked out by Doctor Watson,57 provides the means for rightly conditioning children, and for gradually rightly reconditioning adults. New and better methods of teaching are to be had for the general training of young and coming generations. History and social science show us where our large systems and institutions are at fault, and theoretically at least the way is open for constructive changes. The science of man has enough sound data about race, so that no one need ever be misinformed in ways that lead to prejudice and antagonism. Human values have a sufficiently clear definition, so that everyone can recognize what they are. In short, in so far as race problems are environmental, we have the means to understand our job and set about it.
And there is enough knowledge of biology and genetics to enable us to make a similar start at solving the organic problems of race.
Stripped to its essentials, the positive aspect of the race problem can be expressed thus: how to bring about a selective fusion of the racial and cultural factors of America, in order that the best possible stock and culture may be produced. This implies the need and desirability of breeding on the basis of biological fitness. It implies the need and desirability of existing and exchanging on the basis of intelligence, character, and ability. It means that the process of racial and cultural amalgamation58 should be guided by these standards.
We have, as I have said, enough knowledge to start solving this problem. Why don’t we do something? Why do we, instead, let the negative features of the racial situation run on and intensify? How comes it that in this age of increasing general scientific knowledge, these and other undesirable aspects of life also increase? Why is it that in the midst of such racial changes as we noted at the beginning of this article, race problems, in their established forms, are becoming more crystallized?
There is the obvious answer that all of this is so because race problems are closely associated with the other main forms of our social order, which are also increasing, namely, with our economic, political, and social systems. These systems express and stimulate acquisitive passion for money, power, antisocial urges; and since it is their nature to arouse and maintain all kinds of antagonisms, it is only natural that they also stimulate and feed racial animosities. Socially constructive forms of activity, being less powerful and in the minority, can make but little impression upon59 and headway against them. Put differently, the most influential men and women of our age and nation are so committed to practices that are against intelligence and hostile to well-being, that they either consciously or unconsciously do not favor and are often opposed to the use of those agencies and60 instruments that could bring about constructive changes. These men and women are sufficiently powerful in their hostility to good measures to prevent their being tried. Men and women of sound sense and good conscience are comparatively helpless. Essentialized, this means that man, the destructive being, still is stronger than man, the intelligent being. The destructive part of us is increasing, even while our intelligence expands. These parts are in vital contest. It is a critical struggle for supremacy61 in its most fundamental aspect. Thus far, the negative has proven stronger than the positive. This is the explanation that is given, not only to tell why race problems are unsolved, but also to explain the presence among us of war, degeneracy, and most of the other ills of man.
As regards racial animosities, I should like to add two other brief considerations. For one: all that has to do with race and prejudice and beliefs about race, falls into the class of opinions and feelings which James Harvey Robinson has shown to stubbornly resist and resent questioning and change under any conditions. Prejudices and superstitions of all kinds are among the stubborn decorations of man’s psyche. It is regrettable – more, it is shameful, but it is no cause for wonder – that they throw us, far more often than we successfully contend with them.
For another: our psychological posture is prostrate. With much activity outside, our spirit is strangely inactive. We are so habituated to living miserably, that it is hard for most of us to realize that we contain within us the possibility of living otherwise. It is difficult for people born and reared in prison to envisage and wish for a free life. We have lied and cheated so much and so long, that we have become cynical as to62 the existence of real virtue. Too much routine and cheap pleasure, and perhaps an overdose of book learning, have dulled our sense of potentialities. Too little meaning too long in life has led us to doubt that life has any real significance. When men are in psychological states of these kinds, it is difficult for positive appeals to energize them. They are inclined not to see or recognize good means when these are offered them. They are inclined to let the best of tools lie useless. And thus we face the possibility that we, who have almost enough knowledge to separate the atom, may fail to separate men from their antagonisms.
1929
Jean Toomer, “Bona and Paul,” from Cane. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1923. Copyright © 1923 by Boni & Liveright, renewed 1951 by Jean Toomer. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation. Jean Toomer, “Balo,” from Plays of Negro Life: A Sourcebook of Native American Drama, ed. Alain Locke and Montgomery Gregory. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1927. Used by permission of The Yale Committee on Literary Property, Yale University. Jean Toomer, “Winter on Earth,” from Second American Caravan: A Yearbook of American Literature, eds. Alfred Kreymborg, Lewis Mumford, and Paul Rosenfield. New York: Macaulay Co., 1929. Used permission of The Yale Committee on Literary Property, Yale University. Jean Toomer, “Race Problems in Modern Society,” from Man and His World: Northwestern University Essays in Contemporary Thought, VII. Chicago: Van Nostrand, 1929. Used permission of The Yale Committee on Literary Property, Yale University.
CANE
1 Original reads: some one [ed.].
BALO
1 Original reads: week-day [ed.].
2 Marsa Master.
3 player-pianos self-playing pianos popular in the early twentieth century.
4 Original reads: curain [ed.].
5 Original reads: This side of of [ed.].
6 Original reads: magnificient [ed.].
7 nut picks thin, pointed tools used for prying nut kernels out from their shells.
8 cane sugarcane.
9 Original reads: smiliing [ed.].
10 Original reads: resperation [ed.].
11 Weevils or boll weevils; beetles that destroyed cotton crops across the American South in the 1910s and 1920s.
12 Original reads: sned [ed.].
13 Wall Well.
14 Original reads: ernest [ed.].
15 Original reads: more quieter [ed.].
16 somnambulistic sleepwalking.
17 Saul of Tarsus Originally a persecutor of Christians, Saul of Tarsus underwent a miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus (being blinded and then cured after being baptized); he became known as the Apostle Paul (Acts 9:1–31).
WINTER ON EARTH
1 First published in The Second American Caravan: A Yearbook of American Literature, Volume 2 (1928), edited by Alfred Kreymborg, Lewis Mumford, and Paul Rosenfeld.
2 Original reads: atime [ed.].
3 Original reads: earth [ed.].
4 Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson, transcendentalist essayist and philosopher (1803–1882).
5 Whitman Walt Whitman, American poet (1819–1892).
6 Rockefeller John D. Rockefeller, American industrialist and founder of Standard Oil (1839–1937).
7 Edison Thomas Edison, American inventor of the phonograph, light bulb, and motion pictures, among other things (1847–1931).
8 Ford Henry Ford, American founder of Ford Motor Company and pioneer of mass production (1863–1947).
9 Great War World War I (1914–1918; the US entered the war in 1917).
10 Original reads: crontracted [ed.].
11 Original reads: earth [ed.].
12 tripped walked in a lively and quick fashion.
13 Original reads: Every one [ed.].
14 petting caressing.
15 Original reads: he [ed.].
16 Original reads: old [ed.].
17 Original reads: felt tingle [ed.].
18 Original reads: snow flakes [ed.].
19 Original reads: seenin [ed.].
20 Original reads: kimona [ed.].
21 Original reads: bible [ed.].
22 Original reads: bible [ed.].
23 Original reads: tenderely [ed.].
24 Original reads: snow flakes [ed.].
25 Original reads: otheer [ed.].
26 Original reads: meassure [ed.].
27 Original reads: hold [ed.].
28 Original reads: some one [ed.].
29 Original reads: no [ed.].
30 Original reads: worth while [ed.].
31 Original reads: universe [ed.].
32 Original reads: comraderie [ed.].
33 Original reads: gayety [ed.].
34 Original reads: looking as they [ed.].
35 Original reads: projeting [ed.].
36 Original reads: rescured [ed.].
37 Original reads: when [ed.].
38 Original reads: lept [ed.].
39 Original reads: then [ed.].
40 Original reads: the [ed.].
41 Original reads: protecdting [ed.].
42 Original reads: marray [ed.].
43 Original reads: any one [ed.].
44 Original reads: religiions [ed.].
45 Original reads: earth [ed.].
46 Original reads: semmetry [ed.].
47 Original reads: stolled [ed.].
48 Original reads: comtemplation [ed.].
49 Original reads: every one [ed.].
50 Original reads: every one [ed.].
51 Original reads: cane [ed.].
52 Original reads: then [ed.].
53 Jacob pillowed on the rock while sleeping on a rock, the biblical patriarch Jacob has a miraculous dream (Genesis 28:10–22).
54 Original reads: it [ed.].
55 Original reads: thiry [ed.].
56 Original reads: two and three stories houses [ed.].
57 Original reads: toom [ed.].
58 Original reads: outsided [ed.].
59 Original reads: exorably [ed.].
RACE PROBLEMS IN MODERN SOCIETY
1 First published in Problems of Civilization: Northwestern University Essays in Contemporary Thought, Volume 7 (1929), edited by Baker Brownell.
2 Spengler’s Decline of the West book published in 1918 by Oswald Spengler that rejects a Euro-centric version of history and argues that Western civilization is in decline.
3 Keyserling’s The World in the Making 1927 book by Hermann Graf Keyserling (1880–1946), German philosopher.
4 Waldo Frank (1889–1967), American historian and critic.
5 Joseph Wood Krutch (1893–1970), American writer.
6 Bertand Russel Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), British philosopher.
7 James Harvey Robinson (1863–1936), American historian.
8 Scott Nering Scott Nearing (1883–1983), American writer and economist.
9 Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Italian artist and inventor.
10 George Santayana (1863–1952), Spanish American philosopher and writer.
11 Baker Brownell (1887–1965), American philosopher.
12 Original reads: western [ed.].
13 Original reads: disorganiszed [ed.].
14 Keynes John Keynes, British economist (1883–1946).
15 Original reads: suggesteed [ed.].
16 Original reads: irrespectiveof [ed.].
17 Original reads: occuring [ed.].
18 Original reads: crytallization [ed.].
19 Original reads: occuring [ed.].
20 Original reads: alos [ed.].
21 Roland Dixon (1875–1934), American anthropologist.
22 Franz Boas (1848–1942), American anthropologist.
23 A.L. Kroeber (1876–1960), American anthropologist.
24 Ellsworth Huntington (1876–1947), American geographic economist.
25 Flinders Petrie (1853–1942), British archeologist.
26 Original reads: noticable [ed.].
27 Original reads: undestand [ed.].
28 Original reads: point [ed.].
29 Original reads: can not [ed.].
30 Louis Wirth Louis Worth (1897–1952), American sociologist.
31 Original reads: cepahlic [ed.].
32 Dr. Herskovits Melville Herskovits (1895–1963), American cultural anthropologist who studied African and African American culture; argued that race is a social, not a biological, construct.
33 Original reads: prevalant [ed.].
34 Original reads: maladjustments that burden [ed.].
35 Original reads: that this answer is incorrect [ed.].
36 Original reads: confustion [ed.].
37 milieu environment.
38 Professor East Edward Murray East (1879–1938), American botanist and geneticist.
39 Original reads: pschological [ed.].
40 Original reads: tacertain [ed.].
41 Original reads: type life [ed.].
42 Original reads: consciious [ed.].
43 Original reads: tendacies [ed.].
44 Original reads: noticably [ed.].
45 Dr Ales Hrdlicka (1869–1943), Czech anthropologist.
46 Original reads: nation wide [ed.].
47 Original reads: intenification [ed.].
48 Original reads: business man [ed.].
49 Original reads: not [ed.].
50 Original reads: urgence [ed.].
51 Original reads: paricularly [ed.].
52 America Comes of Age subtitled “A French Analysis,” translated into English by H.H. Hemming and Doris Hemming, and published in 1927 by André Siegfried (1875–1959), a Professor of Economics at the Paris School of Social Sciences.
53 Original reads: Seigfried [ed.].
54 Original reads: indivdiual [ed.].
55 Original reads: opressions [ed.].
56 Original reads: opportuntiy [ed.].
57 Doctor Watson John B. Watson (1878–1958), American psychologist who advanced the behaviorist school.
58 Original reads: amalgramation [ed.].
59 Original reads: opon [ed.].
60 Original reads: nad [ed.].
61 Original reads: sumpremacy [ed.].
62 Original reads: tho [ed.].