mill lnoTQise

mmpMets
Psychologic Series
— 1 —
Living Is Developing
by

N. J. Toomer
 The price of this pamphlet is 50 cents.
Copies of it can be obtained by addressing
F. N. Davenport
Mill House Press
Doylestown, Penna.

Copyright, 1937 '

N. J. Toomer
LIVING IS DEVELOPING
 I FIRST AFFIRMATIONS

W E ARE in the universe, so let us be, exist, and live in it.

We are men, then let us be men, functioning in all actuality, striving to
actualize all potentiality.
We are — if we are — Americans. Then let us fulfill the psychological
reality of it, as people who can be most, exist more vividly, function more
fruitfully here than in any other country.
In what other way can we merit being Americans, being men, existing in
the universe?
In being, all are equal. This is the realm of universal equality. Our ideals
of equality are reflections of this cosmic truth.
In development, all are unequal. This is the realm of dynamic inequality,
of gradations, scales, and hierarchies. No two men are developed alike. One is
more, one is less. Development is strenuous enough in the nature of it; no
artificial barriers should be put in the way of the less becoming more, of the
more becoming greater. Our ideals of opportunity for all reflect this truth. Men
should aid each other's development and respect each other's being.
Being and becoming, existing and living — these are the principles of
man's core. To be, to become, to exist, to live — these are concentrates of man's
inherent values. Agent-I will demonstrate that living is developing — it is
this, or it is contrary to human value, it violates man's essence, and comes to
nothing worth living for.
All facts may be against me, but all potentialities are with me. All actuality
may deny, but all inherency will affirm.
Why is it so difficult for us to be what we are, to become what we should
be?
These questions, so simple sounding, underlie all the questions that are or
can be asked of man as a wayward from his nature. All problems in the human
crock are reducible to this. What is our fatal arrestation? What is it that we are
struck off thus: beings, no; human beings, no; men, no; women, no — but are
no more than variously labeled fractions of what we should be and could
become.

1
 Lesser answers to lesser questions will not do the work. Witness the world
we live in: scores of sensible answers to lesser questions on every hand, prac­
tical answers to pressing problems, yet our problems multiply faster than our
sanity, and man 1936 shows grave signs of becoming history's greatest maniac.
The evil root must be discovered and understood, then pulled out by the
tractors of the human spirit.
Nor can one man do it alone. Nor can he do it elsewhere than in the
country and with the people who put it in him. Rescue is unmindful of exiles.
Salvation avoids the hermit as well as the herd. Since we are in life, with others,
then in life with others we must do it, or never will it be done.
Fortunately for us, we need not know all the complex causes in order to
effect the cure. What is required of us this: to understand the character of the
illness, to receive from some high source, instruction in the proper treatment of
it — and then to apply what we know.
My farm-land is acid and will not produce. No need for me to investigate
all causes of acidity — the failures of previous owners to rotate crops, plough
under, etc. etc. No need to learn the complete depressing history of its rape
and exploitation. Enough to know what it needs now. Enough for me to realize
that it is acid, and then to sow it with lime. Thus fed, the fields will sweeten
and produce. And, provided that I tend them rightly in the future, they will
outgrow all trace and even memory of acid, and will be sweet soil for all that
they can grow.
The restoration of man is more difficult than that of soil, but the same
principle applies. More difficult, yes — because it is part of our problem that
we can and do apply to objects and to others what we will not apply to
ourselves, each one to himself. But more rewarding, too. The potentialities of
land are limited and liable to be exhausted. The potentialities of human nature
are limitless and, as far as we know, inexhaustible. There are millions of records
of human arrestation. There is not one single record of human limit. No one can
say where mankind would stop if all the elements of our nature were released
for growth by proper cultivation.
Why so difficult for us to be men, men to men in life, human beings on
earth, beings in the universe? Why arrested this side of humanity?
Because there forms in us, as we grow up, starting in the early years when
we are helpless and exposed to a predominantly unfitting environment, a false
psyche which begins as a protector of the unformed human essence, but which
gradually strangles that which it was designed to protect. This false psyche is
the shyster lawyer of man's world, who, having gained power-of-attorney to
act in our defense, misuses this power and swindles us. It is the misguided
mother who swaddles, spoils and "protects" her first-born. It is that in us which
grows strong as we grow weak, with which we identify and call "I."
Thereafter it rules our lives, supported by vote, sanctioned by mandate,
kept in power by perpetual armament. Its conditions are simple and to the point.

2
Over the individual it demands unquestioned dictatorship. In its relationships
with others it demands "armed peace." Should Christ Himself go counter to
it, it would pilate Him. Then what chance has the weakened-through-slavery
spirit of the individual? Prostrate it is, and passive to its jailor. It can but gaze
from its cell or close its eyes at the horror of it, and suffer the touch of alien
hands.
Now if there be no meaning in this plight other than the evident meaning
of misery, then I can see no meaning in human life. If there be no use to which
just this adverse condition can be put, then what use in living? If this ghastly
detour from our true nature be of no use in the ultimate development of this
nature, then are we fatally undone, then are we dense fools for not ending it at
once. There must be potential use in all adversity, there must be potential
meaning in all misery, else mankind is a nightmare which the universe would
well be rid of.
For see how it is with the rest of Nature. With a plant it is not as with us.
A plant cannot be other than a plant, enduringly true to its own nature.
An animal cannot be other than animal, not even when domesticated. Only
man. Man alone is other than himself, chronically untrue to his own being.
I have seen corn, upstanding, with solid ears of golden grain. What mar­
velous cornness! I have seen corn blighted, yet cornness prevailed over the
blight. Corn, however, does not attack itself.
Does manness prevail over our blight? Does humanness withstand the
attacks of inhumanity? Sometimes I think it does. Sometimes I think it does
not. It depends upon whether I am regarding man-actual or man-potential.
The records of man-actual give impressive data for pessimism. The one
exception is that despite our greeds, frustrations and defeats, we are as decent
as we are. And, of course, it does mean a considerable something that we per­
sist at all. What stuff in us, what incredible structures and functions, that we
still work, at all, after having suffered such abuse!
Man-potential is incalculably marvelous, evoking faith and a strong su­
spicion that he may be sublime.
Man-actual — the decent, the ridiculous, the bestial.
Man-potential — the divine.
And this is our sound hope. Though at the present time the actual, but a
fraction, overshadows the great potential, the great potential can be reached
and touched and actualized. It is all there, somnolent as that princess was until
aroused by the right touch. Not only there, but protected and kept intact by the
very mal-formation which deforms our lives. In us it is, removed from "good"
but also removed from further "evil." In jail, and forgotten there, left alone,
unheeded, without voice, without vote, weak, unformed, but intact. The divine
never leaves man, hower much he may leave it. This is the region of human
inherency. As long as it survives, man may be a lost soul unto himself, but the
living world does not regard him as such.

3
 II OUR FOND WORLD

^^-AKE no mistake as to this. This world which we

fondly call "ours," inoculates us. Ruled as it is by the compulsion towards catas­
trophe, it inoculates us against itself. To protect us from its diseases it impreg­
nates us with the germs of them. We do survive, but in a milieu hostile to our
bodies and lethal to our minds. Live? We do but counteract. The anti-bodies
have grown more vital than our blood. Circulate? We do but ward off. And we
have come to believe that this condition is normal. Chronic dis-ease, this is our
norm. Derived from our parents, ingrained by experience, supported by educa­
tors, enforced by law, this is our norm — the fulfillment of what we do not
want, the frustration of what we do want. For this we receive the inoculations
of "our" world. For this we survive.
Yes, we survive. And there we stop. There we are held, as in prison, by the
"system" of our fond world. There we are caught — caught at the level of sur­
vival, prevented from rising to the level of improvement and development
— by what? By Nature? She who gave us the brains that made these tools, she
holding us? Does the farmer who hitches the horse to the plow hold the
horse? Then neither does Nature hold us. Then who, then what? What pre­
cisely has trapped us that we, with our minds and our machines, are still slaves,
indentured to survival, mortgaged to labor unceasingly for products which are
consumed as fast as we get them, without deposit in our undying essence?
Not Nature, surely not God. It must be man who holds man, who traps
himself and constricts his life within a prison system all of wardens, who
"needles" his own arm, who is swept by sex to conceive new flesh for needling,
who brings the biologic bodies of new children into the world, who commits
these bodies and potential souls unto the blight of our fond world.
Consciously? Of course not. We do not realize what goes on, nor the harm
thereof, nor the possibility that it could be otherwise. For of the three prime
factors of the human situation we attend to one or two but ignore the third.
Thanks to the naturalists and evolutionists we are somewhat conscious of Nature

4
and the function of its part in the human totality. Thanks to historians, anthro­
pologists, and sociologists we are somewhat conscious of Society and the func­
tion of its part in the human totality. Thanks to certain psychologists we are
somewhat conscious of the results of the interplay between heredity and environ­
ment in the conditioning and mal-conditioning of the "psyche." But of the
third great part, namely, human inherency, we are unconscious because we have
not been directed to attend to it, because lopsidedly concerned with Nature and
Society, we either deny or ignore the promptings of our own essence, and thus
negate its potential contributions as the third great factor of man's totality. Thus
we commit ourselves to the gospel of fatality which holds that as it has been
throughout natural history (not that we know all natural history), so it must be
now and throughout the future; as it has been throughout social history (not
that we know all social history), so it must be now and throughout the future.
In fine, with a two-thirds view we pronounce judgment upon the whole —
and do it, moreover, in the name of "science" and "common sense and a
"sense of reality"—and take some pride in the fiction that we are viewing life
"realistically." Yes, in the name of the real we deny the reality of our human
nature and its potentialities.
Our natural or organic nature — this is admitted into the picture. Our
social nature — that which has been formed in us by our experiences in our fond
worlci — yes, we admit this. But our human nature — the realm of human in­
herency, the sphere of potentialities upon which, in ultimate analysis, all the
other natures depend — no, this we avoid, this we rule from the picture — and
do it with a certain vindictiveness. And it is just this rejection which arrests us
at the level of survival, for it makes us forfeit the very real possibility that hu­
man life can be developmental. Realists? Rather are we people who derive
perverse delight from spiritual castration. Evolutionists? Contrary to Nature and
to our own natures we are bent on defeating the one consummation which
would give evolution meaning.
Faithless to God, faithless to Nature, faithless to our own natures, faithless
to being, faithless to existence, faithless to life, faithless to development, we
are faithless even to survival. For see our unholy dedication to war and other
measures which insure speedy destruction. What, then, are we faithful to?
To germs. To the vims in us. To our false psyche. To "our" fond world
and "our" fond life. To reproduce and perpetuate these. To that of this world
which infects us against a better world, to that in this life which rejects a better
life, to the infections of the false against the real, the disjections of the abnor­
mal against the normal. To perpetuate the prison and the "system" which keeps
us in it, which inducts into its lethal chambers all new human beings as they
come of age. To this we are faithful, to this we are clenched — and, as if our liv­
ing hands were death grips, as if "frozen" to wires of fatal voltage, we will not
be pried loose, we cannot let go.
Or can we? Of course we can, for some have done it. Some have realized

5
what we all know. Realization has set them free. Realization, releasing the deep
forces of the essence, has transformed "I cannot" into "I can," "I am not"
into "I am."
This is restoration. This is "return" to what we once were but have for­
gotten. For believe me, you who now are "adult," you were not always thus.
In this life of ours there was a time when we were faithful to all that we
now reject, we rejected all that to which we are now committed. We were
faithful to being, we rejected the beingless, we were faithful to becoming, we
rejected the unbecoming, we were faithful to Nature and rejected the anti-
natural. We were faithful to our own natures and rejected all that warped and
blighted them, we were faithful to growth, in protest against arrestation, were
prepared to be faithful to development and the life thereof, and all fruits and
fulfillments. Thus we were before the world of our ancestors put its blight
in us.
But that world was overwhelming, we unconscious. It happened with pain
and protest, with suffering and rebellion, but otherwise there was no language
of the happening, no understanding of what it meant and where it led, no
effective sense that we were being conscripted, as our parents before us, as
their parents before them, into an alien army which gives each new recruit the
weapons of self-destruction and makes him use them.
There are notable exceptions, but that the vast majority of human beings
are thus overcome points to a basic weakness of the human essence. This is in
truth the basic weakness. Prolonged disease, chronic infection has rendered our
essential resistance low. Doubtless it is transmitted through heredity. We come
into life susceptible to the infections of this world. There are few or no great
physicians of the spirit to build us up before the blight comes. It hits us and we
succumb to it. We are conscripted and obey. Weapons of destruction are placed
in our hands. We thrash about. We even come to delight in it, even come to
glorify it and shout and tell the heavens that the earth has never seen such a
swarm of heroes.
Nor is it thus with you or me only, or only with modern men and not with
ancients, or only with ancients and not with modern men, or only with Eu­
rope and not with America, or only with America and not with Europe. It
tends to be thus with everyone. It is not thus with everyone. Some men actual­
ize the predisposition of their essence to be normal. Some carry through and
carry on the faiths and possibilities of childhood to mature fulfillment. Some
develop superbly. Some live, exist, and be as it is in men to live, to exist and to
be. It tends to be thus with everyone, for the world is heavy, for there is a
league to support and perpetuate its false weight, for we are blind and do not
realize that there is or can be any world other than this.
Infections of this kind do not retreat at national lines, or class lines, or
racial lines. No nation is exempt, be it of north, south, east or west. No class is
exempt. Upper class, middle class, lower class, fascist and communist, autocrat

6
and democrat — all tend to be affected and infected in basically the same way.
The members of each class and all classes will thus be infected unless they strug­
gle to make it otherwise. White, black, red, brown — neither does any racial
group escape, nor any civilization. On the plane of infection there is indeed a
brotherhood. And this is what we call "living." And this is what we call the
world.
No wonder that those who have genuine world-views have world-sorrow.
Childhood — comparatively normal, more rather than less as we should
be.
Youth — losing oneself to find one's labels.
"Adult"—the above, consummated.
Maturity — the above, reversed. The struggle to lose our labels so as to find
ourselves.
What have our fond world and our fond life to say of this? They consider
children as nuisances, youths as "problems," adults as all right, and mature
people as "queer," suspect, perhaps inimical to the best interests of the best
society. Our world and our life prescribe the "needle" and then the "tunnel"
for everyone of all sexes, all races, all regions, all classes, all fields, and
are ready, of course, to pay their premiums to all who subscribe, to deny and
starve all others. It is fear of this denial that persuades us to undertake our own
spiritual suicide. Rather than face the denials or even the displeasure of our
fond world, we would kill every potentiality in us. Our excuse is, "We must
live, mustn't we? We must, mustn't we, get something out of life?" What
shame, what tragedy, that those who are men and those who are women submit
their total strength to the rule of this partial weakness, "sell out," reject that
which they should accept, and accept that which they should reject.
And what is the net result? What man, in his secret heart, can tell himself
what as he gained by the sell-out? All he has is sorrow of what is lost. Then
you would think that the men of the world would speak out and tell the truth.
They might at least do this in their old age. As old men, freed of the illusions
of this world and this life, with no more either to be gained or lost, they might
then break the oath not to betray the bitch to whom as young men they sold
out, and say, "It is wrong. It is all a ghastly mistake. Fellowmen, especially
you who are growing up, there are ashes at the end if you live as we did.
We have all, and we have nothing. Our bodies but invest our emptiness. Follow
not our way, but give yourselves to precisely that which we left out.
But no, not they. Their sorrow and their knowing go into the grave with
them, and to their sons they say, as it was said to them by their secretly tragic
fathers —"My son, this world loves them who love it, and rewards them with
every prize. Be clever rather than wise. Be shrewd and politic and forget your
conscience after twenty-one. Think not of what is in you. Be not troubled by
your heart or any feeling which has no place in this world. Harden yourself.
Go into the world and make a name. A name is enough; a soul superfluous.

7
Solve your problems as I did. Play the game, be what the world wants, give
people what they believe they like, outwit all men that they not outwit you.
Trust no one. Use everyone. Make fools of others. See that you do not become
a fool yourself. Above all else, make money, get position, get power, you under­
stand — the things that count. In short, my son, be happy."
The "happy" father dies. The "happy" son, true to tradition, carries on.
He dies, but not without having imparted to his son the true road to happiness.
And this son in turn, while committing spiritual suicide, brings still another son
into this atmosphere, to subject this fresh body to the same blight, to push this
fresh spirit into the same tunnel, to tell this new soul the same lie. It is a lie. We
know it. Yet we perpetuate it. Why? Because we cannot bring ourselves to con-
jess inner failure until we know and practice the way to inner fulfillment. In lieu
of such knowing, this fond world and the life thereof will forever be "ours,"
ours to maintain and propagate even though we realize it to be the blight of the
entire universe.
Do not mistake me. The above may seem to apply chiefly or only to the
fathers and sons of business life, or military life, or political life, or financial
life. No, it applies also to those of the arts, the churches, and education. A
painter paints a horrible figure. "See," he says, "this is life." He does not say,
"This is this life." No, he says this is Life. And by this we know that his life is
like his figure, and that he recognizes no other or the possibilty of any other. A
writer writes a book of lechery. "See," he says, "this is life." He does not say,
"This is this life." No, he too says this is all Life. His own life, then, is like his
book. The venal, the false, the stagnant, the vicious, the ugly and the meaning­
less pass in and out of studios, churches, and classrooms no less than in and
out of barracks, the backrooms of politicians, and the polished offices of bankers.
This is an indictment of this world, from another world, an indictment of this
life by another life, a charge against these people by their own inner judgments.
Ah, people, that we know so well how to kill, so little how to create;
so well how to fight, so little how to make effort; so well how to be overcome,
so little how to overcome; so well how to become non-essential, so little how
to be essential; that we are so able to circulate poison, so unable to contain it,
to suffer it, to transmute it to good; so well how to counteract, so little how
to extract; so well how to blight and arrest, so little how to develop.
Goethe had this consciousness. He realized that this world demands that
the essential give way to nonessentials, that this life commands that greater
values be sacrificed for lesser ones — and that we, sheep, obey. Wrote he:
"By far the greater number of men are led into a school of hardship, where
after a stinted and checkered season of enjoyment, they are at length con­
strained to renounce their dearest wishes, and to learn forever to dispense with
what once hovered before us as the highest value of existence."
Is this learning? Then better we had never learned. Then must we unlearn
that and learn this, namely, how to reverse it, how to renounce that world and

8
cultivate our own inherency, how to dispense with what is nonessential to ex­
istence, and hold as indispensible just these highest values of existence. Not to
do this in idea alone, but to do it with our totality, implemented by a workable
technique. This would be living, for this would be developing; this would be
learning, for it would teach us how to live.
Yet, it would seem that "learning to dispense with the highest value of ex­
istence" is, by some considered true learning. Witness the council of certain
psychiatrists, psycholanalysts, and physicians. Witness the teaching even of cer­
tain educators. Get rid of your ideals, they say. Bury your soul under the
world's debris. Learn to accept the world. Learn to adjust to it. Indeed these
mentors, having themselves committed spiritual suicide, not only advise others
to do likewise but lay it down as law that nothing else can be done.
To the "advice" of our parents, our friends, our neighbors, all those "in­
terested in our welfare," to our own forming "sense of what life is," these
professional "guides of the psyche" add the weight of "scientific" authority. It
is no wonder that we succumb. It is no wonder that we come to regard
"growing pains" as futile pains to be rid of at whatever cost. It is no wonder
that we try our best to give up the ghost, to deny our deepest desires, asking
nothing but that we suffer no more. It is no wonder that we do sell out, accept
the tunnel of adulthood, enter it with thanksgiving, and thereafter consider
ourselves fortunate if, escaping the worst infections and catastrophes, we reach
a "ripe old age."
Youths, forewarned, could of course refuse to be tunneled. They could say,
"I won't," and mean it, mean it and do it. But if their "I won'ts" are to bear
fruit, they must have the way of "I will," lest they be caught and arrested in
rebellion. A chronic rebel is no better off than a chronic conformer. Both are
tunnel-bound. If I won't enter the tunnel then I must will to climb the sheerest
mountain in the world, whose summit is a vast and fertile plateau, with other
mountains rising in the distance.
If our minds and tools are to be used to release us from slavery-to-survival,
then must the free volunteer for the work of development, that not only we our­
selves but all mankind be born above the body, to be, to exist, to live.
That world, the world of development, the sphere of psychological con­
sciousness and experience, is so near, indeed interpenetrating this world; and
though we, consciously, may never try to reach it, it touches us more often than
we remember. Even in the tunnel it gives us signs and tokens of itself, of that
in us which corresponds to it.
Though tunnel-bound, it does happen occasionally that a great brightness
and beauty come to us, certainly not from "out there," certainly from "within."
It may be love, it may be death, it may be a spark of some potentiality, what­
ever it is it lifts us from ourselves as men transformed. The tunnel dissolves.
The ordinary vanishes. We are. Simply and profoundly we are. Our being is
moved, its senses stir, we feel empowered to fulfill the promise of great life.

9
But only for a day, rarely for a week. And then — that which opened, closes;
that which lifted us lets us down, and the reverse experience occurs. We are
annihilated, the tunnel reappears. Gone are our stirrings to great experience,
gone, and soon forgotten, passed away as if they had never been. Not a trace
remains in our conscious minds. When we think of Life, we do not recall this.
No, now we see only the tunnel and its experiences, and think only of it.
"This is Life," we say. When we think of ourselves we do not remember this.
No, now we see only our ordinary persons, and think only of them. "This is
me," we say. It is upon the tunnel that we base our sense of life. It is upon our
limitations that we base our sense of ourselves. And upon these we dogmatize
as to what is possible and what is not.
Our world-view — if we can be said to have one — is made up of the
massed data of uneventful or abortive, inert or explosive, meaningless or dis­
ruptive, experience. Underlying it is not the wonder that we live at all, no sense
of mystery, no marvel, no humility, no sense of something unutterably great,
but merely a chronic mood of depression and irritation. Significant experiences,
though deeply impressive at the time, though they claim our complete affirma­
tion then, come quickly and go, leaving no records remembered or available.
If they remain with us at all they sink and become as sub-currents of nostalgia
and remorse. Thus are we blind, thus are we even hostile to what we might be.
We visualize our fears, we visualize our hates and prejudices and pessimisms,
we see and see again the things and people and experiences we are familiar
with; we have no vision of potentialities. What we see we desire. What we
desire we demand. What we do not see we neither desire nor demand.
Repetitions of the familiar — this if our "life," this is our art, this our
religion. Is this developing? Then neither is it living. Then to live, then to de­
velop, then to learn to make use of the very tunnel itself, of all infections,
of all denials, of survival, of the base upon which our present life rests,
of our fond world, to achieve the very results which they deny. To oppose this
Yes to that No, and then to generate the drama of development.

10
 Ill SEVERAL MATTERS

_L HERE was a time when I felt that Hamlet, in his im­

mortal soliloquy, had asked the human question; for I, like him, suffered the
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and knew not what to do with them,
for I also wished to write finis to the whips and scorns of time, sign off from
troubles and torments that I could not see the point of — though, curiously, it
never entered my head that the job could be done for me personally with the
dispatch of a modern bodkin.
Since then, it would seem that I have outgrown the Hamlet stage, and
though I still respond to the emotion of it, and even more to Shakespeare's
grand language, I feel an urge, qualified by whatever adjective, to take issue
with the ideas. Thus —
To be, or not to be: this precisely is not the question. We are — and it
is quite beyond our power not to be. True, we can be more or less, we can de­
sire to be greatly, or to be nothing much at all. True too, we can realize or fail
to realize, we can perfect or imperfect; but cease to be? No, this is quite beyond
us. We are. In the world of being we always were and always will be. The
body of David could slay the body of Goliath, the body of Jack could kill the
body of the Giant, our bodies, as we demonstrate each day, can destroy other
bodies, great and small, but it is a sheer impossibility that any organism, even
if endowed with cosmic dynamite, destroy being.
Life is another thing. It, as we know but do not realize, is mortal. We who
live today did not live a hundred years ago and may not live through tomorrow.
We live — and, unfortunately, it is quite within our power not to live. So it
is to me that this was Hamlet's question — to live, or not to live. And if to
live, then how to live. For how to live is also within our power. Thus re-stated,
the famous lines have not only poetic and symbolic but also psychologic sig­
nificance.
To live, or not to live — and, if to live, then how to live. Hamlet, as the
play shows, decided to live, in any case to continue living much as he had been
living. Hamlet, as the play also shows, was, in that soliloquy and thenceforth
unto his mortal end, undecided as to how to live. He, like most of us, could

11
see no use to which the wrongs and miseries of life can be put. Specifically, he
was in a quandary of critical proportions; he did not know how to face it, what
to do, or how to do it. The only "solution" which occurred to him was the
tunnel of death. And when he rejected this, ostensibly because of fear of what
might come after, he was thrown back upon his inadequacy, caught by fate,
and plunged through a tragedy of indecision, the fatal end of which was im­
plicit in his inability to think as well as to act.
The tragedy of Hamlet is that of the human emotions, taxed to breaking
point by the terrific strain of life, without purpose, without adequate psycho-
logic guidance. Placed in that pod, he was a pea who knew not how to make
use of it, to make it useful for his own growth. The very conditions of his
nurture poisoned him. The very situations of his development destroyed him.
He reacted nobly, but extracted nothing. Yet, having made this last statement
I am not so sure of it. it seems improbable that any human essence could go
through such tension of experience, however unconsciously, without extracting
something. However this may be —
It is certain that his famous question is a question still. How to live, how
to make use, how to be, to exist and to live as becomes man. He asked it of the
air; that element is still silent. And then the fair Ophelia interrupted him.

This orphanness. . . the feeling that we belong to no one and that no

one belongs to us; this uprootedness, this cut-off-from-source. . . the knowing
that we are disconnected not only from the soil but from the soul, from our­
selves, from our deep resources; this discontinuity, doing this, doing that, dab­
bling in a broken world, moved here, taken there, now this job, now that, no
relatedness, no carrying through of one great project; this ice in our hearts,
the chill that nothing melts or warms; this unholy separateness which bars
surrender and renders us incapable of giving our whole heart to any work or
to anyone — these are not the lesser problems of person, place, and time, these
are human problems common to the generality of mankind, relating to the
basic conditions of man's life, from which stem the lesser problems of the per­
son, the race, the class, the nation, the civilization, and the question to be asked
regarding them is — is each different from the other, each due to a different
cause, each requiring a separate solution, or, on the contrary, are they funda­
mentally alike, each due to the same basic cause, each to be solved in the same
essential way, all to be worked out by application of one method — in short,
are human problems many, or is there, at base, but one?
The view of psychologic is that basically there is but one, though this one
is so buried and has so many branches that, in practical experience, we must
work downward from the surface, from many points on the surface, using as
many approaches and solutions as there are branches. Thus this work itself,
which aims to go as directly as possible to the one chief trouble, is necessarily
multiple in its formulations and in its methods, and welcomes all sound methods

12
from whatever field. In a matter of this gravity there is no place for the conceits
and vanities which claim to have found the only method, or for the jealousies
which sicken at the thought that someone else may "get there first."
At the same time, it inevitably will happen that this work will become and
be the work for some. It will become theirs because it will be found to corres­
pond to their types and characters, to their already formed inner views of life,
to the way in which they are endowed to work best and to function best. Because
it will confirm their inner sensings and implement what, in perhaps a vague way,
they have been trying to do all along. For such people, it is not only natural
but right that they think, feel, and act that this is the way for them, and
that, in their measure, they become just critics of this and other ways.
Here and in other writings, agent-I will formulate and reformulate the
one basic "problem," formulate and reformulate the approach thereto, the
work to be done, and how to do it, trying to make it clear for myself as well as
for others. Here in this paper I want to touch on several matters and then pass
on. Thus —
We are cut off from our own essences, from essence-resources and forces.
That which establishes this connection "solves" the essential problem.
Nor is it only that we are disconnected from essence; we are connected
with a false nature, a shell, a mask. This false psyche is connected with and in
control of our organisms, and thus determines our behavior. Thus our behavior
is generally non-essential, and at least half the time it is contrary to our reason
and to our best feelings. This is not so noticeable in the routine of daily living.
It is most noticeable when we are "stirred up." True, we may succeed in
"keeping our heads"; for we have heads, are connected with them, have some
control of them. But keep ourselves? Rarely. For we have not ourselves to keep.
Ourselves are neither at their own nor at our disposal. They are in bondage
to our false selves, to our fond false egos.
The body, as we know, is not an idea. It is an actual formation made up
of biological matters. Neither is the essence — the true psyche, the true self —
an idea. It too, though not yet formed, actually exists and is made up of psy­
chological matters. Neither is the false psyche — the "psymus," as we tech­
nically call it — an idea. It also is an actual formation, made up, if you will,
of psycho-illogical matters, existing as an actual formation in the totality of any
given individual, fed and kept going by our fond world, whose child it is. And
thus it is that though this work may and usually does involve a struggle of ideas
—of true ideas to displace false ideas — it also and chiefly involves the strug­
gle of formations — the psyche struggling to overcome and eliminate the psy­
mus. Believe me, the field of battle may be blurred at first, but this is no
shadow boxing; it is the most difficult and also the most rewarding contest that
the "I" of man can engage in.
The struggle essentially is one. That which disconnects the psymus con­
nects the psyche, that which destroys the false nature builds up the true nature,

i 13
that which starves the false feeds the real. It is a matter of effort rightly applied
and sustained until the result has been achieved.
All men, by their nature as men, have effort-ability. By nature all men are
able to make effort to make use. It is question of whether or not their false na­
ture will allow them to make this effort which means its disruption. It is a fur­
ther question if this false nature will permit us to receive aid to the making of
this effort. For see what has happened.
As children we come into a world ruled by people who, both with respect
to us and to themselves, have more power than wisdom, more force than being.
For in them the psymus is dominant, the psyche passive or eclipsed. Inevitably
they treated us unbecomingly. They could not help it. As it had been done to
them so they in turn did it to us.
One form of the mistreatment consisted of this — almost invariably we
were regarded and handled as objects, seldom or never as subjects. This was
and is because these "adults," these "elders" of the world both then and now,
have themselves no true subjectivity, are themselves not feeling subjects, and
hence do not and can not treat others as such. Their world, their life, their so­
ciety, their relationships, all proceeded as if human beings, though they might
occasionally be feeling subjects unto themselves in privacy, were as a general
rule unfeeling objects, to be treated as such. Nor was this attitude and the prac­
tice of it confined to "outsiders"; it obtained between husband and wife, par­
ents and children.
Unto our parents we were objects. Objects of too much affection or too
little care, too much love or not enough, objects of discipline, objects of irrita­
tion, objects of education, objects of worry and anxiety, objects of hate or fear
and exploitation, objects always. What we felt was never taken into considera­
tion unless we were provoked to express it. Our inner lives were passed in utter
solitude, unheeded, unknown, even unsuspected by the world around us. What
we needed, our essential needs as growing subjects, simply ignored. What we
ourselves as feeling subjects derived from our surroundings was a matter of
chance; all plans and cares were expended on us as objects — and necessarily,
we came to regard all others as objects.
As objects we grew. Feed and clothes were provided. As objects we
were educated. As objects we were groomed or misfit to take our place in a
world of objects. As subjects? Ah, here was the rub. It was a cruel rub. It be­
came increasingly cruel as we grew up. For as we grew up our subject-needs and
desires increased, and the more we wanted right, the more we suffered wrong,
the more we needed food, the more we suffered privation, the more we needed
guidance, the more we suffered the lack of it. Finally we reached the stage
where we vowed to suffer no more. Of people, of life, of the world we said,
"Don't touch me." We resolved that no one ever would.
Nor did we stop at that. Our life was in awful revolution, in the process
of which there formed in us a rejective will, a will to undo ourselves, to carry

14
to extremes what life had done and failed to do for us, particularly to reject any
and all offers of help, since just this help had been denied us when we most
needed it. The strength of our former needs became the measure of our
rejective strength. Thenceforth we were to be sealed, tight to everything save
that which fed our sense of bitter defeat.
So now, in our later years, still sealed, still tight, we lie in wait, primed
and cocked, and derive a sense of power from rejecting aid. That the power
is false and impotent does not detract from the momentary satisfaction it gives
us. That it has blocked us from the way to true power does not disturb us in
the least. It filled us at the time — and we are even proud of it.
Further wounds we will accept. Further frustrations we may even wel­
come with perverse satisfaction. Our house is open to assignation. In it we will
prostitute and parasite. He who would rape us is welcome. Our house is shut
to salvation. In it we will not respect or generate, nor re-create ourselves, nor
allow anyone thus to aid us. At the slightest hint that help has come — up go
our false backs.
And this, if you please, is the help-rejection mechanism which operates
with hair-trigger rapidity between, yes, oneself and the world, but also be­
tween oneself and oneself, for it bars all commerce with the subject, so that
even the person cannot touch himself. Since indeed it is the prize deposit
placed in us by our fond world, we might dignify it with the title of savior-
rejection mechanism.
Nor is it only that it is in us, that it operates in us; it is that we — or
something which passes for us — cling to it. We are bound and determined
not to let go.
And thus we live. Live? Then unconsciously, for we do not realize what
has gone on, what is going on, what will go on until we die and come to life
again, unless we do something about it.
Thus we exist, but essentially unconsciously.
Thus we are, but unconsciously. Yea, in the great universe we are, but
without realization.
For if we realized being would we exist this way? If we realized exist­
ence would we live this way? If we realized life would we ignore or thwart
that which is the very essence and meaning of life? And if we were conscious
of this essence and this meaning would we violate that of us which contains
and could fulfill them? Then attribute our crimes against the living subject to
an involuntary but vicious somnambulism.
Then see what our aim must be. First, to wake up. To see. To become con­
scious psychologically. Then to revive the subject. Then to tear down the dis­
ject. Then to connect the subject with its physical instrument (the body) . Then
to live as subject, to develop as subject, to manifest towards others as feeling
subject to feeling subject, and, upon this basis,, have a Society and a World
arise.

15
 IV THE TOUCH IS THE MAN
=aa

E ARE in the universe, so let us be in it. Furthermore,

it would seem that we will always be in it, inescapably, death notwithstanding.
Death? How can we realize death, we who have never realized life? And
perhaps it also works the other way around. How can we realize life, we
who have never realized death?
We are men, then let us be men.
Forty-five seconds to write these lines. Ten seconds to read them. Yet how
tragically difficult to effect and to realize them.
Let us in any case make effort to effect a sense of them, to arouse the
senses of the subject.
First the idea. Then the feeling. Then the sense.
From the sense we will be able to generate the deep feeling. From the
feeling we will be able to generate the profound understanding. From all
three together we will be able to effect the complete realization — and
then to make it thus in our total life.
Without this sense of being men who inhabit even if only a tiny remote
planet of the inhabited universe, what sense is there to anything? What sense
can be made of anything?
If "man-in-the-universe" is left out, then what is left in? Surely nothing
that we should grow grey hairs about. Better keep hair blond or brunette, the
face without wrinkles, the brow without care, and the mouth without bitter­
ness, simply by standing at a fence-row and gazing with intent envy at the
cows in perfect adjustment to their environment. For is it the great purpose of
our labor, the great fruit of our minds and tools, to work like hell to become
eventually as well situated as the cows already are?
Man's lot, evidently, is not that of other creatures. Of this fact there are,
it is to me, but two interpretations. Either we are fools for whom there is no
adequate adjective in any language, or we have potentialities which other crea­
tures do not possess, one of these potentialities being precisely that of the

16
latent ability to make developmental use of just those features of our lot which
distinguish our lives from the lives of animals. My conscious life is based on
the assumption that this latter interpretation is correct; and I, as agent of a
Work vastly greater than myself, would have others thus base their conscious
lives. i
Most people, as far as I have been able to ascertain, do believe that the
latter interpretation is correct. Not one single person have I found who be­
lieved, through and through, that he was a dense fool and that his life and lot
were utterly meaningless. Yes, we believe there is sense in us, we believe that
there is meaning in life, we belive that there must be some use of the pains
and sufferings, the efforts and the struggles which are of our lot. We believe —
and there the majority of us stop. True, we carry through, but we do not live
it. We believe, but we have not proven it to ourselves, by experiment and ex­
perience, beyond all doubt. We believe it, but we do not work it. We muddle
through. We skiwer through. We close our eyes and clench our jaws and hope.
We meet the issue vaguely, preferring not to face it unless we absolutely have
to. We are all in pieces about it. There is no unity in us. In fine, we do not
make concerted effort. And this is why the belief does us not much good. And
this is why we put up with small meaning and miss the great one.
We do not work it. We do not make it work each hour of each day, in
all relationships, in all situations, in all circumstances, in all conditions. We
have not this base, this center of functioning within ourselves. A few ideas,
yes. A few feelings, yes. Even some convictions. But no dynamic indefatigable
center of functioning. Hence we do not, on every occasion, in every experi­
ence, make use.
Pain hits us and we faint. Suffering arises and we crumble. Fear sweeps us
and we run away. Problems arise and we try to solve them, rather than using
them as the conditions and the means of our own development. A feather
diverts us, a breeze disperses, a blast disrupts, a blow stops. People irritate us.
Betrayals but make us bitter, instead of our using them to deepen ourselves.
In short, we are used.
What we want is to use and to be of use. We want to use greatly and to
be of great use. We want to find the fruit of misery. We want to be able to
give meaning, purpose, and direction to our inevitable struggles. We want to
be able to answer the profound wish in every man and every woman that our
lives be surrendered to a work of great design. And what can this work be un­
less it be just that of the development of mankind brought about by making
use of the very factors which now impede this development?
But use follows instruments. There must be tools before we can use them.
We must sense and envision the possibility of tools and their use before we
can set to work to make them. All begins with a sense of the possible, a true
sense of the true possible.
As for those tools we already have — right use depends upon right know-

17
ledge, and right knowledge is without foundation unless based upon right
sensing. The touch of the finger upon matter, the touch of the hand upon
materials — this is the primary contact, the source of all issues, the determinant
of folly or wisdom. The touch is the man.
If it is in his body, it is in him. If it is not in his body, it is not in him
— in any event, not to be manifested by him in this life with this body.
Not what he has in his head but what he has in his fingers — this is
the basis of evaluation. All evolutionary progression is from the base to the
apex. However, in the psychologic of man there is a simultaneity of processes
according to which the apex directs the base as well as the base determining
the apex. From the base, of course, we should proceed to include the heart and
the head and even those organs of those bodies, unsensed, unknown, unimag-
ined by the generality of men. But whatever his development, the touch is the
man.
Therefore watch your touch. Were I as wise as Buddha I could give no
wiser counsel.
The touch of the man upon his work, the touch of the man upon himself,
the touch of the man in all relationships, the touch of man upon the earth —
that finger, raised, to touch the air and atmosphere and all the particles of cos­
mos which circulate therein.

There is waste of earth and of earth materials. It is more important for man
to reclaim and use the wastelands within himself than all the swamps and des­
erts of the planet. The land now useable is large and fecund enough to support
the bodies of every psyche, if we would but use it rightly. What is in man is
good enough if we would but develop it.
What use to reclaim, if only to misuse the reclamation?
There is waste of man and of human materials. But there need not be.
Nothing need be wasted. All can be used. The petty can be used. The mon­
strous can be used. We know that the good can be used. So can the evil. The
message is of this possible.
Make effort to make use.
It is the struggle itself that deposits constructive results. It is the struggle
— the opposition of this Yes to that No — that upgrades, spiritualizes, forms
and transforms.
Human being A is, we will say, relatively normal in his functioning. In
him there are but few false properties which arrest this functioning. He desires
to become, that is, to develop himself so as to be, a musician and composer.
To this end he makes effort to master the piano and composition. His effort
is the Yes, the resistances offered by his undertaking are the No. This Yes op­
posed to this No generates his drama of development. He does develop.
Human being B is part normal, part abnormal. There is illogic in him.
He desires to become, that is, to develop himself so as to be, center-logical and

18
psychological. To this end he makes effort to master the illogic in him. His
effort is the Yes, the resistances offered by his undertaking are the No. This
Yes opposed to this No generates his drama of development. He does develop.
Both men exert the same kind of effort. It is developmental effort. Both
men achieve the same kind of results. They are developmental results. That the
factors which make up the resistances encountered by man A are very different
from the factors which constitute the resistances encountered by man B, is
comparatively unimportant. The important matter is that both men do en­
counter resistances, whatever the composition of them, and that both men do
make effort to overcome.
For the purpose of development, a neurosis is as useful a resistance as a
musical instrument, scrubbing a floor as useful as writing a book, making use
of a prison-condition as useful as making use of a palace-condition. What the
resistance is, how much effort is made, whether the results are quickly manifest
or slow in showing themselves — these matters are relative to the individual.
The principle is the same for all.
We should penetrate beneath superficial differences and look to see this
principle operating in each man. The eye should be kept on the development of
A relative to A, on the development of B relative to B. Comparisons between
man A and man B usually involve us in judgments which are unfair and which
blind us to the essential matter. Our approval should be accorded A when and
as he develops beyond his present self; the same approval should be accorded B
when and as he develops beyond his present self. In other words, it is when
each adds a cubit to his already given stature, that our essence should acclaim
them with the deep feeling that here are men, each in his own way, each over­
coming what each has to contend with, advancing in the struggle of the human
spirit to develop its full powers.
Nor should man A compare himself with man B and feel superior. Such
comparisons hinder development. Rather should he help and learn from B.
He may compare his past self with his present self, what he can become with
what he is now, his potential with his actual. Such comparisons are spurs to
development.
Nor should man B compare himself with man A, and feel inferior. Such
comparisons are fatal to development. Yes, he may take A as an example, he
may learn from him and help him, but here again if there is any comparing to
be done, then man B, like man A, should compare his present with his former
self, what he can become with what he is now, his potential with his actual.
This would be generative and fruitful.
Let us summarize it thus. Developmental effort we will call E. The re­
sistance, whatever it may be, we will call R. The developmental results of the
struggle we will call D. Here then we have the formula of development applic­
able to all men, whatever the variances of individual, circumstance and condi­
tion. E added to R makes D.

19
 Effort, right struggle — this is the key. Right struggle with evil will pro­
duce good. Right struggle with chaos will produce cosmos. Right struggle with
lack of understanding will produce understanding.
This, as you must know, is not a brief for "negatives." It is a brief for
positives, an attempt to show in simple terms, how negatives can be converted
into things of developmental use.
Abnormality? I am neither glad nor sad that it is in us. The attitude is
this: Since it is in us, let us make good use of it, indeed let us make great use of
it. It offers excellent resistance. Indeed it offers resistance of such force that the
deepest forces of our normal nature are called into play by the very attempt to
expel it.
Wretchedness? It is the lot of the majority of men. Then the majority have
it to use. If they will and do, then they will develop, and, as a by-product,
they will develop out of wretchedness.
Happiness? It is a lure, a bait for adolescents, a seduction for adults, and
illusion for the aged.
I am unconcerned with these states, except as signs and means. As ends?
No. It is sheer waste of the materials and energies of life to spend one's life
trying not to be unhappy, trying to be happy. It is fruitful to use unhappiness
as a means to growth, and to accept happiness gratefully but without great
value save as a radiance in which we rest or work, assured by it that we are de­
veloping harmoniously.
Really, it doesn't matter which. What matters is the use I make of which­
ever and whatever state I happen to be in. This is the attitude of dynamic de­
velopment, this is the state of being from which there arises the profound
view that living is developing.
Nor does it matter how we are circumstanced, provided that circumstances
do not preclude this work. Those whose lives are eventful — make use of the
events. Those whose lives are uneventful — make use of the absence of
events. Those who are up to their necks in world-affairs, those who are out of
it and lonely, with much money, with little money, married, single — as we
are, as 'we are circumstanced, this is the starting point. Here, now, in me,
in this.
i'ne aim is not to change the frame but the man in it. The center of grav­
ity is not to be "out there" but in oneself. The point of application is not to
be on what is in the world, but on what is in oneself. To work on what is at
hand to get it in hand, to master it as a means to the production of three-fold
results: inner results for oneself, outer results for others which can be converted
by them into inner results — self and mutual development, and the develop­
ment of whatever work, craft, business, art, science, or relationship we happen
to touch.

20
 A full rich sense of self, the sense of man within himself, a sense of man
amongst men, a sense of man on earth, a sense of man in the universe — how
to effect this?
I have an idea that it may arise with and following an intense desire to
penetrate and understand the psyche of man in its three aspects — objective,
disjective, and subjective. Xo make this touch, this primary contact.
For if we desire it intensely we will do it, and if we do it we will come
to understand. And if we understand, then we will be able to extract psycho­
logical substances from all experience. It is with such substances that we, as
spiritual entities, are fed, formed, and developed.
As with body, so with psyche. All formations and all functions on all
planes require and depend upon the intake of the proper respective materials,
their digestion and assimilation. If our sensings are inadequate, our feelings
shrunken, our minds weak, our spirits starved, it is because we do not feed
them. Then to feed them, to institute the processes of psycho-spiritual metabo­
lism. "
But how to do this? How to start this ball rolling? How to begin this oc­
tave? How to arouse and generate this sincere intense desire for self-know-
ledge in us — in us who are committed by tradition, habit, and education to
know only what is outside of ourselves?
Let us try. Let us indeed initiate this work by an effort to penetrate
through outer coatings so as to reach and activate the processes of the human
essence.
Crusts and shells and roles and masks, layer upon layer; words and ges­
tures, doctrines and dogmas, layer upon layer; what we do and what we don't
do, race and nation, class, occupation, layer upon layer; what we want, what
we don't want, illusions and disillusions, entanglements and mazes, layer
upon layer — and the kernel buried deep beneath it all. Under what debris
the human seed.
Ah, people, why are you people? This lament, put into my heart by a
man of great resourcefulness, carries through my seasons and echoes in my
fields, while over all my earth these lines march —
We are in the universe, so let us be in it.
We are men, then let us be men.

November, 1936

21
 This paper, the first of the Psychologic Series, will
be followed by others. The second will probably be titled
— Work-Ideas 1

19 3 6

Wood Cut of Water Wheel Pamphlet designed

by Wharton Esherick by John Winchester
•