WHO IS THE **I

This figure and its implications hâve detained ns ; but the time will not hâve been wasted, if the figiure is allowed to remain now as a gaieral scheme in the mind; it will give point and significance to many apparently obscure and irrelevant passages in Towards Democracy which, after the lapse of thirty years, remains not only the most original, profound, and inspired of ail Carpenter's writing, but also one of the few Works of real genius which bave appeared within the memory of any living man.

In the study of the Old Testament it is at times a perplexing problem to make sure whether the first Personal pronoun stands for the individual who is actually uttering the words, or for the nation as a whole, or for a group within the nation. A quite similar question anses in regard to Towards Democracy — ^who, or what, is the " I " ? Carpenter faimself has said that he does not know. His sole confession is that he has striven at ail times to be perfectly genuine and true to his ^ feeling, using tenus — without too much laboured reflection upon them — which seemed to make most vividly clear what he felt and saw. Examining the internai évidence of the writings themselves, we shall find that sometimes the content of the " I " is intensely individual, and sometimes intensely sympathetic, practically universal.

If I am not level with the lowest I am nothing ; and if I did not know for a certainty that the craziest sot in

46 INDIVroUAL AND UNIVERSAL

the village is my equal, and were not proud to hâve him vralk with me as my friend, I would not write another word — for in tfais is my strength.^

Hère the consdousness îs poignantly indivîdual ; but on the very next page the " I " is equated with Nature.

I am the ground ; I listen the sound of your feet. They corne nearer. I shut my eyes and feel titieir tread over my face. '

I am the trees ; I reach downward my long arms and touch you, though yen heed not, ^th enamoured fingers ; my leaves and zigzag branches write wonderful words against the evening sky — for you, for you — say, can you not even spell them ? *

Still agaîn, in many passages,» the " I " îs quite evidently the world-soul, Democracy itself, becoming articulate.

Perhaps, bearing in mind what was said in the last chapter, it is not necessary to distinguish too carefully between thèse différent contents ; they represent différent strata of the same conscious personality, and vary — now deeper, now more superficial — ^with the mood, thought, or feeling, i or outlook of the moment.

The poem Towards Democracy opens with a great burst of joy, a paean of the deliverance of the soûl into the Universal Life :

I breathe the sweet aether blowing of the breath of ^ God.

* r. £>., p. 6. « /Wi., p. 7.

• E.g. IUd.t pp. ï6, 38, 33.

INDIVIDUAL AND UNIVEBSAL 47

Deep as the miivarae is my llfe and I know H; nothing can dislodge tbe knowledge of it ; noUiIng caa destroy, nothing can harm me.^

For the momait, the soûl is content to bathe itself, dandng and laughing, in the waves of this new-found deligfat — '* I dash me with amorous wet/' as Whitman puts it ; but anon the consciousness of union with nature and ail humanity passes into the sensé of power, espedally of redemptive power :

0 child of mine !

See ! you are in prison, and I can give yon spaœ ;

You are choked down bdow there, by the dust of yoiir own raising, and I can give you the pore intoxicating air of the mountains to breatiie ;

1 can make you a king, and show you aU the lands of the earth;

And from yourself to yourself I can deliver you.*

And when the freed soûl surveys " ail the lands of the earth " they look différent from what they did bef ore ; a new interest and hope anses ; the gaze does not terminate in extemals, but pénétrâtes beneath them, and wherever it pénétrâtes it beholds the promise of the ascendiii^ life, the grain within the husk, the birth within the agony. Flash the imderstanding eyes east and west, backward and forward along the river of human Uf(

Mighty long-ddaying vagiant stream I Of innumerable growing rustiing lils 1 Out of scme cavem mouth

1 T. D.. p. 2. » Ibid., p. 8.

48 "TOWARDS DEMOCRACy

long ago where the cave-dweUers sat gnawing bumt bones, down to to-day — ^th ever-growing tumult, and glints of light upon thee in the distance as of half-open eyes, and the sound of countless voices ont of thee, nearer, nearer, past promontory after promontory wind<ing, widening, haatening!^ — ^

and ail the process of history is unified and explained by the vision of the slow rising from within of the Son of Man, the true, the human Society, Democracy. Its final émergence will not be without a struggle, for the crust îs thick and the husk is tough ; there is no use in denying this, or in underrating the obstacles ; organized Society is fuU of self-deceit, smooth-faced respectability, cowardice, infidelity, soul-stifling mechanism, rule-of-thumb morality, formai religion^ mutual distrust^ aliénation from nature, greed, selfishness, slavery, conventionalism, the puppet dance of gentility, condescension, charitable proprietorship ; and heavily overlaid with a heaped-up mass of

exclusiveness, and of being in the svdm ; of the drivel of aristocratie connections ; of drawing-rooms and levées and the theory of animated clothes-pegs generally ; of belonging to clubs and of giving pence to crossing- Bweepers without apparently seeing them ; of hèlplessly livmg in houses with people who feed you, dress you, dean you, and despise you ; of driving in carnages ; of being intcdlectual ; of prancing about and taUdng g^ibly on sûl subjects on the theory of setting things right — and leaving othexB to do the dirty work of the world ;

< r* D.i p# II'.

TOWARDS DEMOCRACT*' 40

of having read books by tbe score, and beîng yet miabl» to read a single page ; of writing, and 3ret ignorant bow to sign your name ; of talking abont political eoonomy and politics, and never having done a single day's labour in your life; of being a magistrate or a jndge, and never having oonimitted a oommon crime, or been in fhe position to commit one ; of being a panon and afiaid to be seen toping with Christ in a public ; a barritter and to tiavel in a third-dass cairiage ; an officer and to

walk with one of your own men.*

AU this, and much more that might be named of the same sort, is apparently enough to stifle, choke, strangle any puise of spiritual ideaUstic life ; and truly there are many hearts of men and women that are exhausted, prostrated, bruised, broken, and brought nigh unto death beneath it ; but Democracy passes in and out among ail, touching ail, forgetting none, giving everjTwhere the answers of faithfulness, understanding everything, despising nobody, accepting ail, waiting its own time, and ever bearing on ; délicate, frail, impsdpable as it is, yet as sure to tritunph over the oppressive incubus and smothering dead-weight of the status quo, as the growth from the Uving seed can force its way through, and shatter, the asphalt road. It is bound to corne. The meanings slowly unfold, but the fuU Word shall at last be uttered, resuming and making ail plain, the End which was in the Beginning. Democracy cannot be deceived, and cannot fail ; '* I shall arrive."