Will Levington Comfort

“ Then we talked of that mysterious harmony from the beehives, and we saw at once that it has to do with Order, that Inertia was mastered there—that the spirit of wheat has mastered Inertia—so that there is a nobility, even about the golden husk. It occurred to us, of course, then, that all the aristocrats of Nature—rose and wheat and olives and bees and alabaster and grapes—must all have their part of the harmony, for Order has come to their chaos. Their spirit has come forth, as in the face of a far-come child—the brute earth-bound lines of self gone—the theme of life, Service. ”

“ One plan is written in every atom, woven in and through and around us in a veritable robe of glory.... The farther a man goes in vision, the more he sees that the plan is for joy; that the plan is one; that separateness and self-sense is illusion and pain; that one story is written in every stone and leaf and star and heart—the one great love story of the universe.
Miracles? They are everywhere; every day to one who enters upon the higher vision. I heard a young man speak for an hour recently—rising to superb rhythm, his voice modulated, his mind constructive and inspired. ”

“ Unless our life here is a sort of spontaneous ebullition out of the bosom of nature, without significance to us before and after, we are moving about our business of house and country and world in a most stupid, cruel and short-sighted fashion. I realise, and this is the wine of life, that the hearts of men are tender and lovable, naturally open and subject by nature to beauty and faith; that the hearts of men, indeed, yearn for that purity of condition in which truth may be the only utterance, and the atmosphere of untruth as revolting as bad air to the nostrils. ”

“ Every man has the flower that fits him, and very often it is the badge of his place in human society.
"The morning-glory is sweeter natured and somewhat finer in colour than the petunia, but very greedy still. It does not appreciate good care. Plant it in rose soil and it will pour itself out in lush madness that forgets to bloom—like a servant that one spoils by treating as a human. Each flower tells its story as does a human face. One needs only to see deeply enough. The expression of inner fineness makes for beauty." ”

“ The man who undertakes to give the people what the people want is not an artist or a true leader of any dimension. He is a tradesman and finds his place in his generation.
The rising workman in any art or craft learns by suffering that all good is ahead and not elsewhere; that he must dare to be himself even if forced to go hungry for that honour; that he must not lose his love for men, though he must lose his illusions. Sooner or later, when he is ready, one brilliant little fact rises in his consciousness—one that comes to stay, and around which all future thinking must build itself. ”

“ Expression of some sort is imperative. It is the right hand. We receive with the left, so to speak, but we must give something of our own for what we receive. It is the giving that completes the circle; the giving formulates, makes matter of vision, makes the dream come true. You know the tragedies of dreaming without expression. Even insanity comes of that. I have never told her matters of technique in writing, and was amazed to find that she has something that none of us grown-ups have, who are formed of our failures and drive our expression through an arsenal of laws and fears. ”

“ Do you think that our Clovelly roses have come to be of themselves? Do you think that the actual hurt of [Pg 289] their beauty—the restless, nameless quest that comes spurring to our hearts from their silent leaning over the rim of a vase—is nothing more than a product of soil and sun? Has their great giving to human romances been dead as moonlight? Have roses taken nothing in return?... I would not insist before the world that the form and fragrance and texture of the rose has come to be from the magnetisms of lovers, but we of the Chapel may think as we will. That liberty is our first law. ”

“ Ireland is here in America, and the last and stiffest of her young blood is afield for England. Her sons have always taken the field—that is their way—and the mothers have brought in more sons born of sorrow—magic-eyed sons from the wombs of sorrow. Elder brothers afield—fathers gone down overseas—only the fairies left by the hearth for the younger sons to play with.... So they have sung strange songs and seen strange lights and moved in rhythms unknown to many men. It is these younger sons who are Ireland now. Not a place, but a passion; not a country, but a romance.... ”

“ A certain automobile factory decides to build one hundred thousand machines within a year. It is almost like a cataclysm when one begins to consider the maiming of the human spirit which follows in the wake of such a commercial determination. Mortgages, the impulse to stretch the means, the binding slavery to matter to pay, the rivalry of neighbours, actual lapses of integrity, the lie, the theft, the desire, the spoliation of children, the lowered vibration of the house, the worry, the fear—to say nothing of the ten thousand factory workers, each of whom has built nothing. ”

“ The many are almost ready to grasp the great unifying conception. This is the next step for the human family as a whole; this the present planetary brooding. Much we have suffered from identifying ourselves with parts. Rivalries, boundaries, jealousies, wars—all have to do with the making of parts. Beauty, harmony, peace and brotherhood have to do with the assembly of parts into one. That which is good for the many is good for the one; and that which is good for the one is good for the many—the instant we leave the part and conceive the whole. ”

“ I would inculcate in the educational ideal, first of all, that in every man there is a dream, just as there is a soul, and that to express the dream of the soul in matter is the perfect individual performance. I would impress upon the youth that in all arts and crafts, the dream fades and the spirit of the product dies away, when many are made in the original likeness. Nature does not make duplicates; her creative hallmark is upon every leaf and bee; upon every cliff and cloud and star.
I would not endow the young workman while he is learning his trade or art ”

“ He will not lure you to the low earth; he will love you best when your arms turn upward in aspiration. [Pg 247] ... A whirlpool, a vortex—this is but the beginning of ecstasy.
This is your hour. The flame that glows upon your mighty mating is from the future. The woman is a love-instrument now, played upon by creative light. This is the highest mystery of Nature—all hitherto is background for this hour. The flight of the bee-queens, the lifting of wings through all the woodland festivals, the turning of comets back to the sun—such are but symbols. ”

“ I believe that every great moment of expression in poetry and invention and in every craft and bit of memorable human conduct, is significant of the momentary arousing of this sleeping giant within. I believe that modern life and modern education of the faculties of brain and memory are unerringly designed to deepen the sleep of this giant. I believe, under the influence of modern life on a self-basis, and modern education on a competitive basis, that the prison-house closes upon the growing child—that more and more as the years draw on, the arousing of the sleeping giant becomes impossible ”

“ Each with its fragrance—the elm, the silentest and sweetest of all. The elm has forgotten her body in spreading her grace to the stars; the elm for aspiration, loving the starlight so well that she will not hide it from the ground; most beautiful of all, save the beech in winter, a swift and saintly passing of a noble life. The maple warms you in spite of herself, giving up her secrets which are not all clean—a lover of fatness, her shade too dense, a hater of winter, because she is bare, and the secret of all ugliness in her nudity. ”

“ We are infinitely greater than our brains. If I can arrive at the truth of any subject, I need have no worry about sleepy heads or Inertia. A disclosure of truth, and the process of it made clear, is the perfect awakener, for truth is the aliment of the soul. It is not what I say, but what a truth suggests to them, that determines the value of their expression of it.
Expression is the triumph. Every time the brain gives expression to the real self, there is a memorable vitality, not only in the expression, but strength and authority added to the brain itself. ”

“ A thousand lesser workmen may improve his product, lighten it, accelerate its potency, adapt it to freight rates—but that is no concern of the dream.
The payment of it all, the glory of it all, is that the real workman finds himself. His soul has awakened. In the trance of his task, he has lost the love of self which the world knows, and found the blessedness of the source of his being. He does not need to state it philosophically, for he lived it. He found the secret of blessedness, if not of happiness. ”

“ The thousands come in and out and pass to the unprepared houses. They are mute—suffering is unspoken in their eyes. Even their faces and hands are unfinished. They leave no gift nor message. Nature who brought them does not spare them from the infinite causes of death.
... Would you hesitate to go into the wilderness to meet such a Guest?... But you will not hear the call to the wilderness unless your heart is listening—unless your limbs are mighty for the Quest—the little things of life silenced, the passions of the self put away. ”

“ Self-men try to gather in the results to themselves. The world-man wants to give something to his people—the best he has from his hand or brain or spirit. That's the transaction—the most important in any life—to turn out instead of in.... Here I am repeating the old formula for the making of men, as if in the thrill of the absolutely new—the eternal verity of loving one's neighbour.
Each man of us has his own particular knack of expression. Nothing can happen so important to a man as to find his particular thing to do. The best thing one man can do for another is to help him find his work. ”

“ You will always be kind in your thoughts of these early days, for that is the deep law of good men and women; indeed one must reverence one's teacher, for the teacher is the symbol of Nature, of Mother, of Giving. But there must be equality first. My brain is somehow filled now; the time will come when yours is more filled than mine with the immediate matters of our life. For children become old, and the old become children, if their days are happy. ”

“ We didn't find full-leafed trees there (for that would hide the lineaments of beauty, as the character of a face is concealed in fatness) —but branch and leaf, the need each of the other, and the promise of the fruit. It was the globe again—the union of the strong and the fragile for a finer dimension of power—bow and cord, ship and sail, man and woman, stalk and leaf, stone and vine—yes, and that which surprised me at the beginning—that gleam of red in the wash of water upon the greys. ”

“ The bulb is an instrument like the brain. You turn on the power, and there is light. You would not rely upon the passing machine, when you know the secret of its force. Matter is driven, flesh is driven, all that answers to the pull of the ground is driven and changed and broken down and reunited in ever refining forms. That in your heart—that sleeping one—is dynamic with all that you have been. Your brain knows only the one. Do not forget your native force, as an immortal being. You may be workers in magic. ”

“ It was not until I had read of this mating of waters that I realised the slightly different conditions in the Chapel, the young men not being there.
... The strangest humility stole over me. It had become the life-theme—to bring a breath from the open splendour of the future to the matings of men and women. I have never been able to understand how anything can be expected of men, if women are not great. I have never been able to understand how men and women can take each other as a matter of course. Most of all, I have been unable to understand how women can accept the man-idea of things. ”

“ You cannot buy any bit of fine spirit with money, no gift of love or friendship, no turning toward you of any creative force. That which goes to you for a price, is of the dimension of the price—matter yields unto you matter. You can only purchase a fine instrument, or a fine horse, or the love of woman or child, by presenting a surface that answers. You possess them in so far as you liberate their secrets of expression.
I moved with a rich man about an estate which he had bought—and he didn't know the dogwood from the beech. ”

“ There is not one human voice in a thousand that is of a quieting influence and friendly to higher aspirations. The voice is a filler, in lieu of shortages of intellect and intuition. More and more, among fine people explanations are out of order. A man is silent in proportion to what he knows of real fineness and aspiration. Outside of that speech which is absolutely a man's duty to give out, one can tell almost to the ampere, the voltage of his inner being, or its vacantness and slavery, by the depth of his listening silences, or the aimlessness of his filling chatter. ”

“ Manhood is built quite as much by learning to avoid evil as by cultivating the aspiration for the good.
Just as certainly as there are thousands suffering for the freedom of spaces, far advanced in a losing fight of vitality against the cruel tension of city life, there are whole races of men who have yet to meet and pass through this terrifying complication of the crowds, which brings a refining gained in no other way. All growth is a passage through hollows and over hills, though the journey regarded as a whole is an ascent. ”

“ One does not learn the Dakotan's kind in a day or a year. There is a continual changing and refining production about our truest friends—the same thing in a woman that a man can love in the highest—that quickens us always to higher vision and deeper humanity. The point is that we must change and increase to be worthy of our truest relations. One must always be restless and capacious. When our eyes rest on the horizon, and do not yearn to tear it apart; when the throb of the Quest sinks low in our breast—it is time to depart. ”

“ Philosophically, it may be said that wars have brought great benefits to the race; that materialism has taught us our place here below as no other passion [Pg 204] could; that trade has wrought its incomparable good to the races of men; that Fear has been the veritable mother of our evolution, its dark shadow forever inciting us, breaking our Inertia, bringing swiftness and strength first to the body, then to brain. Even desire for self, on the long road behind, has been the good angel of our passage, for we had to become splendid beasts before the dimension of man could be builded.... ”