THE HERLAND TRILOGY: Moving the Mountain, Herland & With Her in Ourland (Complete Edition). Charlotte Perkins GilmanЧитать онлайн книгу.
where families sat on broad piazzas, swung in hammocks, played tennis, ball, croquet, tether-ball and badminton, just as families used to.
Groups of young girls or young men — or both — strolled under the trees and disported themselves altogether as I remembered them to have done, and happy children f rolicked about in the houses and gardens, all the more happily, it would appear, because they had their own place for part of the day.
We had seen the fathers come home in time for the noon meal. In the afternoon most of the parents seemed to think it the finest thing in the world to watch their children learning or playing together, in that amazing Garden of theirs, or to bring them home for more individual companionship. As a matter of fact, I had never seen, in any group of homes that I could recall, so much time given to children by so many parents — unless on a Sunday in the suburbs.
I was very silent on the way back, revolving these things in my mind. Point by point it seemed so vividly successful, so plainly advantageous, so undeniably enjoyed by those who lived there; and yet the old objections surged up continually.
The “noisy crowd all herding together to eat!” — I remembered Mr. Masson’s quiet dining-room — they all had dining-rooms, it appeared. The “dreadful separation of children from their parents!” I thought of all those parents watching with intelligent interest their children’s guarded play, or enjoying their companionship at home.
The “forced jumble with disagreeable neighbors!” I recalled those sheltered quiet grounds; each house with its trees and lawn, its garden and its outdoor games.
It was against all my habits, principles, convictions, theories, and sentiments; but there it was, and they seemed to like it. Also, Owen assured me, it paid.
Chapter 8
AFTER all, it takes time for a great change in world-thought to strike in. That’s what Owen insisted on calling it. He maintained that the amazing up-rush of these thirty years was really due to the wholesale acceptance and application of the idea of evolution.
“I don’t know which to call more important — the new idea, or the new power to use it,” he said. “When we were young, practically all men of science accepted the evolutionary theory of life; and it was in general popular favor, though little understood. But the governing ideas of all our earlier time were so completely out of touch with life; so impossible of any useful application, that the connection between belief and behavior was rusted out of us. Between our detached religious ideas and our brutal ignorance of brain culture, we had made ourselves preternaturally inefficient.
“Then — you remember the talk there was about Mental Healing — ‘Power in Repose’ — ‘The Human Machine’ — or was that a bit later? Anyway, people had begun to waken up to the fact that they could do things with their brains. At first they used them only to cure diseases, to maintain an artificial ‘peace of mind,’ and tricks like that. Then it suddenly burst upon us — two or three important books came along nearly at once, and hosts of articles — that we could use this wonderful mental power every day, to live with! That all these scientific facts and laws had an application to life — human life.”
I nodded appreciatively. I was getting quite fond of my brother-in-law. We were in a small, comfortable motor boat, gliding swiftly and noiselessly up the beautiful Hudson. Its blue cleanness was a joy. I could see fish — real fish — in the clear water when we were still.
The banks were one long succession of gardens, palaces, cottages and rich woodlands, charming to view.
“It’s the time that puzzles me more than thing,” I said, “even more than the money. How on earth so much could be done in so little time!”
“That’s because you conceive of it as being done in one place after another, instead of in every place at once,” Owen replied. “If one city, in one year, could end the smoke at once,” Owen replied. “If one city, in one year, could end the smoke nuisance, so could all the cities on earth, if they chose to. We chose to, all over the country, practically at once.”
“But you speak of evolution. Evolution is the slowest of slow processes. It took us thousands of dragging years to evolve the civilization of 1910, and you show me a 1940 that seems thousands of years beyond that.”
“Yes; but what you call Evolution’ was that of unaided nature. Social evolution is a distinct process. Below us, you see, all improvements had to be built into the stock — transmitted by heredity. The social organism is open to lateral transmission — what we used to call education. We never understood it. We thought it was to supply certain piles of information, mostly useless; or to develop certain qualities.”
“And what do you think it is now?” I asked.
“We know now that the social process is to constantly improve and develop society. This has a necessary corollary of improvement in individuals; but the thing that matters most is growth in the social spirit — and body.”
“You’re beyond me now, Owen.”
“Yes; don’t you notice that ever since you began to study our advance, what puzzles you most is not the visible details about you, but a changed spirit in people? Thirty years ago, if you showed a man that some one had dumped a ton of soot in his front yard he would have been furious, and had the man arrested and punished. If you showed him that numbers of men were dumping thousands of tons of soot all over his city every year, he would hiave neither felt nor acted. It’s the other way, now.”
“You speak as if man had really learned to ‘love his neighbor as himself,’” I said sarcastically.
“And why not? If you have a horse, on whose strength you absolutely depend to make a necessary journey, you take good care of that horse and grow fond of him. It dawned on us at last that life was not an individual affair; that other people were essential to our happiness — to our very existence. We are not what they used to call ‘altruistic’ in this. We do not think of ‘neighbors,’ ‘brothers,’ ‘others’ any more. It is all ‘ourself.’”
“I don’t follow you — sorry.”
Owen grinned at me amiably. “No matter, old chap, you can see results, and will have to take the reasons on trust. Now here’s this particular river with its natural beauties, and its unnatural defilements. We simply stopped defiling it — and one season’s rain did the rest.”
“Did the rains wash away the rail-roads?”
“Oh, no — they are there still. But the use of electric power has removed the worst evils. There is no smoke, dust, cinders, and a yearly saving of millions in forest fires on the side! Also very little noise. Come and see the way it works now.”
We ran in at Yonkers. I wouldn’t have known the old town. It was as beautiful as — Posilippo.”
“Where are the factories?” I asked.
“There — and there — and there.”
“Why, those are palaces l”
“Well? Why not? Why shouldn’t people work in palaces? It doesn’t cost any more to make a beautiful building than an ugly one. Remember, we are much richer, now — and have plenty of time, and the spirit of beauty is encouraged.”
I looked at the rows of quiet, stately buildings; wide windowed; garden-roofed.
“Electric power there too?” I suggested.
Owen nodded again. “Everywhere,” he said. “We store electricity all the time with wind-mills, water-mills, tide-mills, solar engines — even hand power.”
“What!”
“I mean it,” he said. “There are all kinds of storage batteries now. Huge ones for mills, little ones for houses; and there are ever so many people whose work does