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Meaning in Life Vol 3 The Harmony of Nature and Spirit
Irving Singer Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Irving Singer
ISBN(s): 9780262513586, 0262513587
Edition: Reprint
File Details: PDF, 10.77 MB
Year: 2010
Language: english
MEANING
in LIFE
The Harmony of
Nature and Spirit

Irving Singer
with a new preface by the author
M E AN I N G
IN
LIFE

Volume Three
 BOOKS BY IRVING SINGER

Meaning in Life trilogy with new prefaces, The Irving Singer Library
The Nature of Love trilogy with new prefaces, The Irving Singer Library
Mozart & Beethoven: The Concept of Love in Their Operas with new preface,
The Irving Singer Library
Philosophy of Love: A Partial Summing-Up
Cinematic Mythmaking: Philosophy in Film
Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher: Reflections on His Creativity
Three Philosophical Filmmakers: Hitchcock, Welles, Renoir
Sex: A Philosophical Primer, expanded edition
Feeling and Imagination: The Vibrant Flux of Our Existence
Explorations in Love and Sex
Sex: A Philosophical Primer
George Santayana, Literary Philosopher
Reality Transformed: Film as Meaning and Technique
Meaning in Life:
The Creation of Value
The Pursuit of Love
The Harmony of Nature and Spirit
The Nature of Love:
Plato to Luther
Courtly and Romantic
The Modern World
Mozart and Beethoven: The Concept of Love in Their Operas
The Goals of Human Sexuality
Santayana’s Aesthetics
Essays in Literary Criticism by George Santayana (editor)
The Nature and Pursuit of Love: The Philosophy of Irving Singer
(ed. David Goicoechea)
M E AN I N G IN L I F E
Volume Three

T H E

HARM O N Y
O F NATU RE

AND SP IRIT

Irving Singer

T HE MIT PR ESS
CAMB RID G E , MASSAC HU S ET T S
L O ND O N, ENG LA N D
 ©2010 Irving Singer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or
mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval)
without permission in writing from the publisher.

MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promo-
tional use. For information, please email [email protected] or write to Special
Sales Department, The MIT Press, 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA 02142.

This book was set in Janson 55 and Mantinia by The MIT Press. Printed and bound in the
United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Singer, Irving.
The harmony of nature and spirit / Irving Singer.
p. cm. — (Meaning in life ; v. 3) (The Irving Singer library)
Originally published: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, c1996. With new pref.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-51358-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Life. 2. Meaning (Philosophy)
3. Philosophy of nature. 4. Spirit. I. Title.
B945.S6573H37 2009
128—dc22
2009009937

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 To Roslyn
For Her Generous Spirit
 Contents

Preface to the Irving Singer Library Edition ix

Preface xvii

Introduction: Nature and Spirit 1

1
Schopenhauer’s Pendulum: Is Happiness Possible? 18
2
Beyond the Suffering in Life 33
3
The Nature and Content of Happiness 49
4
Play and Mere Existence 65
5
Living in Nature 81
6
Imagination and Idealization 96
7
Harmonization through Art 111
8
Art and Spirituality 129
9
The Continuum of Ends and Means 145
10
Aesthetic Foundations of Ethics and Religion 159

Conclusion: Love, Meaning, Happiness 184

Notes 213
Index 219
 Preface to the Irving Singer Library Edition

In a brief conversation I had with the poet Allen Ginsberg a year

before he died, I mentioned that I had just finished a book that was
entitled The Harmony of Nature and Spirit. When he asked what that
was, I said its meaning is incorporated in a three-letter word. I asked
him and two companions who were with him to tell me what they
thought the word might be. One companion suggested it was sex,
the other yin, and Ginsberg proposed sun. I then told them that for
me it was art. To which Ginsberg replied: “I see, you are using that
term in a very broad sense.” He was right in this surmise. The entire
book, and those that have now issued from it, tries to articulate the
dimensions of a good life from an aesthetic point of view manifest-
ing possibilities that might enable human beings to pursue the art
of living well.
In more than one respect, the book is not only the third volume
of a trilogy but also a watershed of much of what I had been at-
tempting to do previously. In it I continue speculations introduced
throughout my earlier writing while using them as a springboard
for additional investigations about love, value, and meaning, of-
ten linked to questions I could not have approached before. In my
development as a philosophical thinker, and in my life, this book
marked a redirection after which I ventured forth into other works
of a somewhat different kind. The three books on related topics that
I wrote shortly afterward, and the four on the philosophy of film,
could not have come into being without the stimulus of having com-
pleted a major portion of my youthful and middle age struggles with
the obscurities of love and meaning in life.
During the years that immediately preceded my undertaking
The Harmony of Nature and Spirit, I had scarcely given much thought
to the concrete components in happiness or play or the capacity to
live a life in nature. As a moral and aesthetic theorist, I wrote about

ix
x P R E FA C E

such phenomena at a level of abstraction that I had been trained to

consider essential for philosophical proficiency. Though it seeks to
retain systematic clarity and more than minimal analysis, The Har-
mony of Nature and Spirit reaches toward further goals. As I remarked
in the original preface, I knew that my academic colleagues would
have difficulty classifying this genre of writing: “What exactly, they
will say, is he doing in this work? It does not belong to the domi-
nant strands of analytic philosophy or Continential postmodernist
theory. It is not ethics or aesthetics or even metaphysics as they are
commonly understood.”
As a preliminary answer or apologia, I alluded to the Wittgen-
steinian notion of Weltbilt, meaning a world picture or general vi-
sion that portrays aspects of human reality that elude formal proof,
rigorous statement, or purely scientific evidence. However much the
discussions, and the suggestions I make, may incorporate thought
that is both logical and wholly rational, they are designed to illu-
minate feelings, intuitions, and personal perceptions that reflective
artists also rely upon and that operate within a special, nowadays
much neglected, conceptual art form of its own.
In accordance with this outlook, the introductory pages sketch
the naturalist, humanist, and pluralist perspective that is foremost in
all my writings. Instead of thinking of nature and spirit as belonging
to different and distinct categories, as most traditional philosophers
have, I argue that it is imperative to perceive spirit, and therefore
spirituality, as an emanation that arises out of nature. What we call
spirit is the part of nature that embodies the values and ideals that
beings such as we create in order to make life worth living. Before
spirit occurs in animate creatures, nature is devoid of it. Nor does
spirit exist apart from nature, though spirit may sometimes transform
it in the ways that I describe. There is no independent or ethereal
state of spirit or spirituality toward which human beings can plau-
sibly aspire. My subject is primarily the human spirit, in its kinship
with the life of other animals, since there is little we can know of any
other type. I was amused when a lecture I delivered on this book in a
Spanish university was advertised under the title of “Nature and the
Spirits.” Nothing could have been further from my intention.
 P R E FA C E xi

I begin this investigation with the problematics issuing from

Schopenhauer’s claim that human happiness is an impossibility,
since—as he maintained—any basic harmony between nature and
spirit is precluded by the reality of our condition. According to
Schopenhauer, human existence, and in principle all life, is a trag-
edy. In the second volume of The Nature of Love, I had devoted over
thirty pages to his negativistic philosophy of nature, which I consid-
ered paradigmatic of “Romantic pessimism” that became prevalent
in the second half of the nineteenth century. But I had not addressed
Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the pendulum of desire in human nature
that precluded any experience of authentic happiness throughout
the pendulum’s trajectory. In the first stage, Schopenhauer tells us,
there is only a lack and sense of needing something we do not have
but want. As such, this entails the suffering of deprivation. When we
then pursue whatever may fulfill the need and so diminish the lack,
we undergo the hardships of wrestling with recalcitrant nature. If we
succeed, however, Schopenhauer assures us that an all-too-common
satiety will cause us to suffer from the state of boredom with what
we have achieved. He concludes that true and lasting happiness can-
not occur, nor any genuine sense of meaning in life.
In The Creation of Value, I had asserted that meaningfulness and
happiness are not necessarily compatible. People who have highly
meaningful lives are often relatively unhappy as a result, while oth-
ers who seem to be quite happy may live lives that are not especially
meaningful. Having said little in that book about the character and
content of happiness itself, I devoted a large part of this one to spec-
ulation about it, and I needed Schopenhauer’s pessimistic views as a
springboard for the kind of solution I wished to attain.
The three chapters that follow the one on the alleged pendulum
are directly addressed to questions about the nature of happiness,
its relation to meaningfulness, and the manner in which playfulness
and a life of mere existence may (or may not) be conducive to both
meaning and happiness. In the chapter that completes this part of
the book, I also deal with the effort of many people to learn, particu-
larly nowadays in our time of environmental dangers, how human
beings can and should live in nature, close to nature, and in rap-
xii P R E FA C E

port with its beauty and the simplified existence it supports. Where
the shadow of Schopenhauer falls upon the preceding chapters, this
one is dominated by the constructive wisdom of John Stuart Mill.
Without agreeing with everything in his general perspective, I have
always thought of Mill as one of my heroes in philosophy. His es-
say entitled “On Nature” and others related to it have largely been
ignored, but I seek to remedy that while also using my discussion
of his moral philosophy to round out my reflections about the rela-
tionship between happiness and meaningfulness.
The next chapter in this book, on imagination and idealization,
should be read as intermediate between earlier statements that I
voiced in the Nature of Love trilogy and then extended, a few years
later, in Feeling and Imagination: The Vibrant Flux of Our Existence. In
the first chapter of the love trilogy, I argued that in all its variations
love is an imaginative agency that ranges beyond the limits of ra-
tionality and follows its own kind of logic. I interpreted idealization
as the making of ideals and thus based on neither some prior and
metaphysical objectivity, as in Plato’s philosophy, nor on a subjective
overvaluation of the beloved, as Freud thought. Here I seek to show
how imagination and idealization are interwoven as companionate
elements of the good life. In Feeling and Imagination I sought a more
detailed and probing analysis of each of these. The efforts in this
literary venture are separate and autonomous, but the last of them
could not have existed without the explorations and shortcomings of
the ones that preceded it.
In terms of my ideas about the harmonization of nature and
spirit, the next two chapters are pivotal. Being guided by my overall
conviction that the aesthetic is a fundamental aspect of nature as
human beings directly experience it, and also the key to understand-
ing how spirit differs from mere materiality, I argue that art unites
the quest for meaning and for happiness through imagination and
idealization. In the second of these chapters, I argue that while art
is not the only type of spirituality, it nevertheless serves as “a model
or explanatory principle” for other types. In that context I introduce
ideas about the relationship between artistic consummation and the
nature of spirit in general as well as the special kind of truthfulness
 P R E FA C E xiii

that art is able to yield and that spirituality requires. This mode of
reasoning also feeds into subsequent reflections that appear in Feel-
ing and Imagination and my book on creativity.
My discussions about art and aesthetics are indicative of the im-
portant role that John Dewey’s philosophy has always had in my
thinking. Among the many strands that have influenced me, I con-
centrate most of all upon his seminal teachings about “the contin-
uum of ends and means.” In the chapter to which I give that title,
chapter 9, I applaud the strength of Dewey’s doctrine while freely
moving beyond it in various ways. Having reacted critically to Scho-
penhauer’s negativism in his notions about the pendulum of desire
as he conceives of it, I now express my approbation for his unswerv-
ing, though misguided, realism in contrast to Dewey’s buoyant but
perhaps overly buoyant activism. At the same time, I appreciate the
wholesome healthy-mindedness that characterizes Dewey’s philoso-
phy. That is what I try to duplicate in the context of his specula-
tions about the ends–means continuum as he employs then in his
aesthetic analysis. If the coalescence of ends and means pervades the
aesthetic, and if the aesthetic embodies the consummatory aspect
of experience, then most or all of life can be considered potentially
aesthetic and to that extent a fulfillment when structured in accor-
dance with the ends–means continuum. No one before Dewey had
developed this argument as persuasively as he did.
But though art and the aesthetic may be so interpreted, one
must still elucidate the possible harmony between nature and spirit
in the areas of practical behavior and cosmic wonderment, as exem-
plified in ethics and religion. The chapter that probes the aesthetic
(in the broadest sense) as foundational to these aspects of what hu-
man beings value also reveals how thoroughly imagination, idealiza-
tion, and feelings related to them determine our decisions as well as
beliefs in matters of morality and religious faith.
The chapter on the aesthetic foundations of ethics and religion
begins with comments about inadequacies in Santayana’s philosophy
that stem from the Neoplatonic elements in his ontology. All the
same, this critique does not diminish my admiration for the resolute
naturalism that appears in everything he wrote. From that vantage
xiv P R E FA C E

point, I launch a coordinated attack against Kantian rationalism in

ethics as well as its utilitarian and intuitionist antagonists. They all
minimize the essential importance of quasi-instinctive feelings such
as love and hate that underlie the language and phenomenology of
right and wrong, good and bad, acceptable and unacceptable con-
duct in relation to the actual experience of men and women in so-
ciety. Dubious as Santayana’s conception of spirit may be in some
crucial details, the many trenchant insights in his creative and moral
writings escape the vulnerability of the abstract theorization in the
standard philosophies I have just mentioned.
A remark by Percy Bysshe Shelley that I delight in quoting re-
veals why the aesthetic, rather than any deductive rationalism, serves
as the grounding for morality as it exists in nature: “A man, to be
greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must
put himself in the place of another and many others; the pains and
pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument
of the moral good is the imagination.” With respect to religious be-
liefs, which I discussed more extensively in The Nature of Love and
in a chapter in The Pursuit of Love, I sketch a similar differentiation
between the dogmas of any transcendental creed and the aesthetic
qualities that truly motivate feelings of cosmic wonder whether or
not one shares the faith that some people have in the existence of a
loving deity.
In order to show how aesthetic sentiments pertain to ethics as
it is lived, I revert to the distinction between sympathy, empathy,
and compassion that I made, briefly, in The Pursuit of Love. In his
masterful book The Basis of Morality, shamefully unknown by ethical
philosophers nowadays, Schopenhauer repudiated Kant’s a prioris-
tic rationalism in this area and suggested that morality arises out
of feelings of oneness with the suffering of others, which is to say,
compassion that nature has endowed our species with as a counter-
balance to the selfishness that generally dominates in all purposive
existence. In the last chapter of this book, I go beyond that position
by thoroughly distinguishing compassion from sympathy and em-
pathy alone. I also disagree with the metaphysical implications of
what Schopenhauer says about the nature of compassion.
 P R E FA C E xv

This in turn leads to a renewed discussion about Nietzsche’s

concept of amor fati and the difficulties in his views that I have been
grappling with for some time and in several books. The alternate
approach that has been evolving in me concerns the love of life it-
self, wherever it occurs and in whatever form, and also the love one
may possibly have for the love in everything that is animate. The
latter questioning had been scantily mentioned in Santayana’s essay
entitled “Ultimate Religion.” I try to make sense of it in my own
fashion and as a supreme example of how nature and spirit can be
harmonized.
The upshot of that termination to the Meaning in Life trilogy
is summarized in a statement near the end of this final chapter. In
it I speak of art as an agency of consummatory experience that uses
imagination and idealization to make life meaningful to some de-
gree. The art of living is analogous. It enables us to unite our self-
ish interests with our compassionate inclinations. By means of this
“grand aesthetic synthesis,” as I call it, we effect the harmony of
nature and spirit within which the naturalistic values of ethics and
religion can find their legitimate place. I envision the good life in
its totality as including the love of persons, things, and ideals so
intricately intermeshed that the meaning in one contributes to the
meaningfulness of the other two. That eventuates in the state of
happiness everyone desires.

I. S.
February 14, 2009
 Preface

This book is a sequel to both The Creation of Value and The Pursuit of
Love. The three constitute a trilogy, or triptych, about the good life.
Though internally related to one another, they can be read in any
order and independently of one another. Throughout The Creation
of Value I distinguished between panoramic questions about a single,
all-encompassing meaning of life that one might hope to discover
and, on the other hand, meaningfulness that living entities are able
to create for themselves in the natural world they inhabit. Most of
the book dealt with the ways in which such meaningfulness comes
into being and regardless of whether it eventuates in any commen-
surate form of happiness. In The Pursuit of Love I extended this ap-
proach by mapping the concept of love in relation to the human
propensity to create meaning through a love of things, persons, or
ideals and through self-love, sexual love, social love, and the variet-
ies of religious love. Treating love as a search for meaning, I was able
to bypass philosophies that try to reduce all love either to the physi-
ological instinct of libidinal sexuality or else to a replication of what
humankind receives from some theological source.
In the present book I use these earlier themes as leitmotifs in a
further investigation not only of love, value, and meaning but also of
their interaction with happiness that everyone wants and that many
have considered paramount in the good life. I place this discussion in
the context of traditional distinctions between nature and spirit that
serve for me as a means of probing basic problems about whatever
happiness or meaning is (or is not) available to us as human beings.
In the Introduction, I examine the concepts of nature and spirit
and suggest that we can overcome the disharmony between them
only by recognizing spirit’s place in nature itself. In Chapter 1 I dis-
cuss Schopenhauer’s belief that true happiness is not possible in the
life of either nature or spirit, and in Chapters 2 and 3 I sketch alter-

xvii
xviii P R E FA C E

native ideas that avoid the negativism in Schopenhauer. Presenting a

view of nature that is less pessimistic than his, I argue that the mean-
ing we create in life gives us access to a kind of positive happiness he
ignores. Instead of recommending a rejection of nature, as Schopen-
hauer does, I consider in Chapters 4 and 5 the possibility that we can
get beyond the suffering in life either by play, or by accepting our
mere existence, or by consciously living in accordance with nature.
These early chapters primarily seek to be exploratory; they sup-
ply no comprehensive solutions to the relevant issues. Some solu-
tions begin to emerge from Chapters 6, 7, and 8, where I discuss
imagination, idealization, art, and the aesthetic element of our exis-
tence. I suggest that the harmonization between nature and spirit,
and between meaning, love, and happiness, arises from an art of life
that employs the same aesthetic principles as those that are found in
all artistic creativity. In Chapters 9 and 10 I apply this hypothesis to
valuation in general and to the phenomenology of ethics and reli-
gion. In the last chapter I analyze love as a manifestation of compas-
sion, sympathy, and empathy, and show how the conclusions in this
book supplement those of the two that preceded it.
I do not think my reverberative mode of writing will be a dif-
ficulty for most readers, but I know that some professional philoso-
phers may be puzzled by it. What exactly, they will say, is he doing
in this work? It does not belong to the dominant strands of analytic
philosophy or Continental postmodernist theory. It is not ethics or
aesthetics or even metaphysics as they are commonly understood.
How should this kind of discourse be classified? I accept that as a
legitimate question about all my recent books and particularly about
this one. I myself think of it as a type of Weltbild, a world picture, as
Wittgenstein would have said.
In his final manuscripts, Wittgenstein remarks that a world pic-
ture provides the framework and the fundamental grounding for all
other major beliefs that one might have but is not itself defensible
by means of proofs or formal logic or even conclusive evidence. It is
instead a general vision, and as such it cannot be established or re-
futed in the way that other theorization might be. Far from relying
on consecutive argumentation, it communicates by means of what
Wittgenstein calls “persuasion.” 1
 P R E FA C E xix

In making this world picture, I have attempted to depict, as per-

suasively as I could, a philosophical naturalism that is meaningful to
me in the sense of being foundational to everything I believe about
human values, life, and nature as a whole. In many places the writing
consists of speculative meditation rather than explicit delineation of
steps that lead to a final inference. In this area of philosophy, intui-
tive insights are often more appropriate than syllogistic reasoning.
I offer my reflections with no pretense of objectivity. Those who can
profit from them may, however, feel encouraged to paint their own
world pictures, naturalistic or not, similar to mine perhaps but ide-
ally going beyond it in whatever manner expresses their own sense
of being alive, their own need to make sense of what it is for anything
to be alive.
❄
Among those whose comments and encouragement helped me to
finish this book, I particularly want to thank W. Jackson Bate, Her-
bert Engelhardt, Felipe Guardiola, Eric Halpern, Marvin Kohl,
Richard A. Macksey, Timothy J. Madigan, Arnold H. Modell, and
W. V. Quine. I am also indebted to students in my MIT course “The
Good Life” who criticized earlier drafts of the manuscript and to
David M. Epstein as well as the other members of his faculty semi-
nar on affect, in which one of its chapters was discussed. The book’s
contents served as the basis of public lectures I gave at several Span-
ish universities, in Madrid, Alcalá de Henares, Granada, Valladolid,
Sevilla, Córdoba, and Málaga. I am grateful to the scholars who
graciously made it possible for me to appear at these universities
and above all to Cándido Pérez Gállego, Isabel Durán, Jose Anto-
nio Gurpegui, Manuel Villar Raso, Juan J. Acero, José M. Martín
Morillas, José M. Ruiz Ruiz, Cayetano Estébanez, Francisco García
Tortosa, Leocadio Martín Mingorance, Barbara Ozieblo Rajkowska,
and their colleagues. Toward Willis G. Regier, who guided my book
as one of his first projects as director of the Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity Press, I have a special feeling of gratitude.

I. S.
1996
 INTRODUCTION

Throughout the history of philosophy one encounters distinctions

between "natureq7and "spirit" that seek to clarify an affective attitude
many people have. It is a feeling that we, as human beings, belong
to two worlds, two different realms of being. In the consciousness
that is characteristic of our species there resides a sense that what
pertains to us as natural entities is not identical with spiritual capa-
bilities we also possess. We tend to think of our body as immersed
in nature, and of our mind as a separate agency through which
we transcend nature either literally or figuratively. Being a part
of nature, we surmise that we belong to the flux of physical, quasi-
instinctual forces that not only govern our organic needs but also
prescribe the behavior appropriate for satisfying these needs. At the
same time we readily assume that our human orientation toward
values, ideals, and, in general, standards of good and bad indicates
that we have a place in a spiritual dimension that exceeds the natural.
This way of distinguishing between nature and spirit is unac-
ceptable to me. I t precludes an adequate understanding of how con-
sciousness, awareness, and the pursuit of ideal possibilities originate
in nature, and it thwarts our attempt to find the conditions under
which experience can be both meaningful and a source of happiness.
T o perceive how meaning in life may be united with the having of a
truly happy life, and how the two may cooperate in the search for
2 THE HARMONY OF NATURE AND SPIRIT

love, we need to discover the manner in which nature and spirit can
interpenetrate within the dimensions of a good life suitable to our
existence on earth.
Everything I will be saying issues from this "naturalist" point of
view. In this chapter I lay the groundwork for my later analyses by
examining some traditional approaches to the relationship between
nature and spirit in the context of various ideas about religion, the
religious attitude toward the world, spirituality of diverse sorts, and
different paths of fulfillment that human beings have often followed.
I begin with a remark by the ancient Greek writer Archilochus.
e said that the fox knows many little things but the hedgehog
g one. In an article on Tolstoy that has become
lin interpreted the character of empiricism, plu-
ralism, naturalism, and nonreductivist belief in general as illustrat-
ing the fox's view of the world. In Tolstoy's impassioned quest for
religious certitude he saw evidences of the hedgehog attitude.
Berlin argued that Tolstoy was a fox who wanted to be a hedgehog:
that was the key to his tortured sou1.l
In this place I have little more to say about Tolstoy7sfundamen-
tal problem. But Archilochus's distinction seems fruitful to me as a
way of understanding the distinction between nature and spirit. In
everyday existence we frequently feel a need to choose between two
modes of living that we can pursue. One of them leads to greater
complexity, the other to greater simplification. Each can provide its
own kind of meaning, and both can ideally eventuate in a sense of
happiness or well-being.
T h e first form of life consists in a willingness to accept multiple
challenges that may appear at any moment. These challenges arise
from our engagement with daily circumstances and are not always
of great importance in themselves. O n the contrary, the less impor-
tant they are, the easier it is for them to become a source of happi-
ness and even meaning. For instance, there is no deep significance
in the fact that a leaky faucet allows a drop of water to escape every
other minute. People who feel that they are inept in such matters,
or too busy or too wealthy to bother about them, will simply hire a
plumber (assuming they do not disregard the matter entirely). Such
 INTRODUCTION 3

people do not allow the faucet to have anything more than a pe-
ripheral role in their life.
When faucets function properly, that is how we normally treat
them. They become meaningful to us only when we pay attention
to them, as we do if we focus on the drip and expend whatever
energy or imagination is needed to eliminate it. Just to call the
plumber is already a step in this direction, but repairing the faucet
ourselves will obviously entail a greater personal involvement. We
must diagnose the situation. Is it likely that a new washer will stop
the drip? We must remove the old washer, if that seems indicated,
and install another one of the same size. must then reassemble
the faucet, and so on. Particularly if the activity is new to us, we
bestow importance upon it merely in carrying it out with some
degree of diligence and efficiency. Whether or not we succeed in
our plumbing venture, it helps to make our lives meaningful to an
extent that is dependent upon the attention we bestow. If we enjoy
this bit of practical behavior and if we are proud of what we have
done, our effort may further in its limited fashion whatever happi-
ness we are able to attain.
I have used an example that many will consider trivial, but I
chose it precisely because it is so commonplace. T h e first of the two
attitudes I mentioned cultivates challenges that present themselves
in ordinary life, lack any cosmic importance or large-scale implica-
tions, and fit within our usual capacities. Gadgeteers but also tech-
nicians, scientists, and executives of every kind fill their lives with
detailed efforts that are often comparable to changing a washer. In
doing so, they experience meaning and occasional happiness that
are unknown to people who disparage such interests or seek to
liberate themselves totally from them. Though the fox may be a
crass materialist whose system of values fills us with disgust, his
ability to increase and to magnify the moments in which his life is
both happy and meaningful for him may indeed seem enviable.
T h e second path can also provide meaning as well as happiness.
It is the route taken by those who seek freedom from distractions
that tie them to mundane existence and may be thought to consti-
tute the sinfulness of temporality. Having the hedgehog's assurance
4 T H E HARMONY OF NATURE AND S P I R I T

that they know the single all-inclusive truth that explains reality
as a whole, people of this sort feel that everything else becomes
meaningful only in relation to it. And will this not yield the greatest
happiness to anyone who can approach the demands of life with so
great a truth in mind, not dealing with them as worthless impedi-
ments but rather as derivatives of the compre ensive revelation that
applies to each necessity?
Men and women who seek the spiritual life have generally fol-
lowed the second path. ther they are ascetics who turn away
from pleasures of the or mystics contemplating the One
Which Is All, or metaphysicians probing their preferential access to
eing, they search for meaning and happiness through a
unified perspective that structures, sometimes even if that involves
excluding, the "lesser" or "lower" interests engendered by our con-
dition as natural entities. With its one big truth, the life of spirit
may then seem to be inimical to the life of nature and its multiple
but mainly vapid concerns.

In this book I explore the relationship between nature and the

life of spirit, and, above all, the possibility that they can be harmo-
nized with each other. Toward that end let me return, once again,
to the fable of Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium. It is richer
and even more suggestive than I, at least, had previously realized.
Aristophanes himself offers it as an account of how love springs
from our attempt to find the alter ego with whom we made a unity
before the gods split us into isolated halves. Later in the dialogue
Plato recasts the myth into his doctrine about humankind seeking
oneness with the Good as the only object truly worthy of being
loved. But if we remember that Plato believes the Good shows forth
the nature of reality, we may go somewhat deeper in reinterpreting
Aristophanes' fable. Not only is love a desire for unification with
a valued object, and a principal effort to make life meaningful for
ourselves, but also it seeks to overcome an ultimate division that
pervades our very being.
As Aristophanes suggests, members of our species must always
 INTRODUCTION 5

struggle with the fact that they are divided within themselves both
collectively and individually. hilosophy, literature, and other arts
have often tried to delineate e significance of this split. As a mat-
ter of scientific evidence, we may think it results from our evolution
as creatures whose remarkable powers of consciousness and thought
can function in partial separation from vegetative and appetitive
faculties needed for survival. Though there be no m
body, our mind considers itself different from the b
we know it is attached. any related distinctions, both in ordinary
language and in the history of ideas, reflect this primordial division
that most of us take for granted.
Like other philosophers before me, I will be considering ways
in which we can get beyond our sense of being split or divided in
ourselves. In particular the concepts of nature and spirit have tradi-
tionally presupposed this type of alienation, each of them belonging
to a system of ideas that fall into opposing classes. In one there are
notions of time, mere becoming, matter, and organic drive that
may culminate in happiness under favorable conditions. T h e other
is constituted by concepts of eternity, the supernatural, being-in-
itself, and a transcendental realm that reveals what is intrinsically
valuable. How are we to make sense of these grandiose terms? Do
the relevant ideas sustain the distinctions they articulate? And do
these distinctions help us to understand what life is like, or to dis-
cern the elements of a life worth living?
In the past the two ideational clusters were often used to define
alternate domains, distinct structures of ontology and of valuation.
Everything we could accept as reality would then be envisaged as
participating in one or another of these domains. And though be-
coming and being, or nature and the supernatural, or even happiness
and the life of spirit, were treated as possibly interactive, they were
defined as contrasting opposites. They were interpreted as having
about them the type of clearly sketched outlines that we see in
paintings by medieval artists like Giotto and Fra Angelico. T h e
separation between this world and the "other9' (higher) world was
evident from the graphically depicted differences in coloration and
composition within their works of art. As Pico della Mirandola later
6 THE H A R M O N Y O F NATURE AND S P I R I T

argued, human beings could have a life in either or both worlds.

the worlds themselves were conceived to be inherently detached
from each other.
If this is our vision of reality, however, we need to explain how
people can hope to have a good life in this world, how they can im-
prove their lot on earth and attain whatever salvation is available to
them. T h e traditional religions and philosophies offered one or an-
other of two solutions to this problem. They imagined either an up-
ward or a downward communication between the different realms,
and sometimes simultaneous movement in both directions-as
in the biblical image of angels traveling up and down on Jacob's
ladder. Above all in the case of humankind, the upward direction
involved the purification and possible sanctification of nature. Even
if nature is what we are put here to rise above, as th
Hepburn character says at one point in The African
elevation was usually thought to require a transformation of what is
natural rather than its total annihilation. When this transformation
occurs, the lower world emulates-and to some extent duplicates-
the superlative qualities of the higher one. By seeking the Good,
or following Christ, or cultivating standards of beauty, we would
enable nature to penetrate (in one degree or another) the reality
that lies beyond it. We might thereby experience heaven on earth.
T o that extent, the two realms are not considered wholly distinct.
For the most part, however, it was communication in the
opposite direction that was given priority. Without an infusion of
divinity, or some equivalent, it was thought that nature would not
be able to rise above itself. Without God's foot on the pedal of the
universe, nature could never achieve the energy needed for an up-
ward movement. In more secular philosophies, such as
Being was in principle more ultimate than Becoming but revealed
itself throughout the varied manifestations of Becoming. As the
English philosopher Bernard Bosanquet said, the real world is this
one seen "concretely." In other words, we exist as part of a natural
process, but we detect its meaning only by realizing that it shows
forth an absolute reality-which is also an absolute ideality-that
constantly transcends it. To acquire this splendid recognition,
 INTRODUCTION 7

human beings had to develop a special talent that was sometimes

identified as intuition and at other times as supreme rationality.
In my view all these philosophical systems are untenable. I be-
lieve that nature is our reality, that there is no other realm of being,
that what counts for us as either knowledge or value must always
derive from the fact that our life in nature consists of variegated
responses idiosyncratic to ourselves. Those who thought that Being
or divinity sanctifies nature by infusing it with sublime spirituality
occasionally claimed that they too were naturalists in philosophy. In
the doctrine known as pantheism, nature is identified with the deity,
God and nature somehow being the same. Because Spinoza claimed
as much, he was excommunicated on the grounds of atheism. But
not infrequently in pantheism a distinction is also made between
the aspect of nature that is God and the aspect that is not. In effect,
this restores the original separation between the two ontological
domains, even though they are portrayed as operating jointly within
the empirical world. T h e naturalism I propose is more radical. It
rejects entirely the original dualism.
At the same time I wish to avoid the reductivism that has viti-
ated the doctrines of earlier naturalists. They often repudiated con-
cepts of ideal beauty, value, or spirit as either delusory or confused.
In their eagerness to deflate metaphysical bigotry and tendentious-
ness, these naturalists became cynical scoffers. Since there is no
higher realm to legitimize the ends and values that human beings
espouse, and no sign of pure spirit in nature itself, they argued that
ends or values or references to spirit are merely devices that people
sometimes employ in their competitive struggle for mastery and
survival.
This reductive type of naturalism makes the same kind of error
that Descartes does in his formulation of skepticism. T h e idea of
doubting everything may be justifiable, but the conclusion Descartes
reaches-I think; therefore I am-is misleading. Descartes believes
that he has attained a final stage of analysis in recognizing that since
he is doing the thinking he at least must exist. What he does not
see, or adequately appreciate, is that his ability to think implies the
existence of other people and in fact the world itself. His experience
8 THE HARMONY OF NATURE AND SPIRIT

as a thinker does not occur in a vacuum. It depends on language,

beliefs, assumptions that originate and evolve in the human society
to which he belongs. In having a specific content, his thinking ad-
dresses itself to a material universe that has existed for some time
even though he, like all of us, is often deluded about it.
In a similar manner, those who wish to reduce the concepts of
value and of spirit to ideas that seem less edifying or more scientific
are often self-defeating. In their attempt to advocate an empiricism
that will cleanse philosophical discourse of pomposity, they become
incomplete and even truncated naturalists. thout our striving for
ideals, without our faith in the importance of values that have always
mattered to human beings, without our aspiration toward moral,
aesthetic, and mainly spiritual achievements, we would not exist in
nature as the species that we are. Nature is not inherently sacred or
an embodiment of divinity, and yet these possible attainments are
explicable in terms of natural phenomena that our imagination has
singled out as worthy of acceptance. This kind of idealization is in-
grained in our being, not merely as individuals but also as members
of a primate strand that happens to have that innate predilection.
T h e existence of this potential in human nature is undeniable. What
needs to be investigated is the means by which it operates, how it
employs the imagination, and how that can function in our lives as
pervasively as it does.
In suggesting that idealization and imagination can help to ex-
plain our ways of talking about transcendence, Being, and spirit, I
avail myself of the philosophical tools I found serviceable in my at-
tempts to analyze the creation of value and the pursuit of love.
Though the problems are significantly different in each case, they
lend themselves to a similar mode of approach.
that in its totality seems to have no meaning to it, a world that exists
in accordance with natural laws that are not themselves capable of
expressing love or meaning or anything like them. Yet life itself,
even among human beings who have become demoralized or have
little or no sense of purpose, is always creating value and new forms
of meaningfulness. These arise from within, as part of what it is to
 INTRODUCTION 9

be alive, and in organisms such as ours they tend to issue into a need
for love of one sort or another.
These facts of nature are most evident in creatures endowed
with imagination that enables them to entertain varied possibilities
beyond their actual existence from moment to moment. Our species
has this capacity to an extraordinary degree, and that is why love and
the quest for value-laden meaning matter so much to us. Through
idealization our imagination fabricates and holds aloft goals that we
consider exceptionally important. We bestow value upon them, as
evidenced by our powerful affective responses as well as by the con-
tinual redirection of our behavior in conformity to these responses.
act this way because we are a part of nature and nature engenders
such behavior in us. It is only in relation to nature as a whole that we
can understand the nature of spirit. Far from being the revelation of
eternity or some transcendental realm beyond the empirical world,
spirit must be seen as a segment of nature that manifests its own
unique employment of imagination and idealization.
*
For many people the mere conception of spirit issues from a sense
of despair. They are convinced that the good life is not to be found
here on earth. In feeling this, they are not just expressing disillu-
sionment about the constitution of life on this meager planet. Their
sentiments would not be altered if earth became more enjoyable or
if they could travel to a galaxy that would provide greater opportu-
nities for them to fulfill their heart's desire. To a great extent these
men and women view the order of nature itself, and our immersion
in it, with revulsion and disdain. They are like Dante7sFrancesca,
who knows she is in hell because she succumbed to illicit sexual
passion and yet laments that natural love can have this consequence.
E il rnodo ancor m70ffende, she tells Dante: "And the way of it still
troubles rne.'j2 Those who long for another realm of being beyond
the one that ordinary existence affords are often troubled that na-
ture, even the nature of love, should be as it is. They tend to use
words such as spirit to signify a type of reality that proves but also
10 THE HARMONY OF NATURE AND S P I R I T

rectifies their dismal expectations about the world all human beings
must experience from day to day.
Though I acknowledge the pervasiveness of this attitude, I want
to find a different resolution for the problems from which it derives.
For one thing, we must distinguish between spirit and spirituality,
and we must recognize that both can be independent of what is
normally deemed to be religion.
Rather than offering at the outset an explicit definition of spirit
and the two other terms, I turn to a distinction that John Dewey
made between "religion" and "the religious attitude." Dewey asso-
ciated traditional religions with beliefs about a supernatural entity
whose existence explains the being and condition of everything else.
Dewey quotes a definition of religion that appears in the Oxford
Dictio~zavy:"Recognition on the part of man of some unseen higher
power as having control of his destiny and as being entitled to obe-
dience, reverence and ~ o r s h i p . " ~
Like many others in the modern world, Dewey rejects the
systems of belief that try to perpetuate past or present religions. H e
thinks they have been discredited by contemporary advances in
science and philosophical analysis. But Dewey does not agree with
those who infer that a religious attitude must therefore be avoided.
H e claims that there are "distinctively religious values inherent in
natural e~perience."~ H e interprets the religious aspect of human
life as a voluntary and enduring adjustment to our natural estate.
This "adjustment" involves moral dedication that unifies the self
without neglecting our subordinate role in the universe. "The essen-
tially unreligious attitude is that which attributes human achieve-
ment and purpose to man in isolation from the world of physical
nature and his fellows." If we are religious, Dewey asserts, we rec-
ognize that our successes (both moral and physical) are contingent
upon the cooperation of nature. In saying this, Dewey does not
mean that piety involves submissiveness to natural occurrences.
Neither does he limit the religious attitude to mere ecology. T h e
religious extends beyond ethical involvement of a local sort. It
broadens human vision to the universe at large as the final source
from which ideals as well as individual realities come into being.
 INTRODUCTION II

I mention Dewey's ideas, elusive as they may seem, in order to

bolster our awareness that religion has no exclusive authority with
respect to what is religious. Religion is compacted out of dogmas,
theological theories, rituals, and institutional contrivances through
which believers may share the company of those who have a faith
that is similar to their own. None of this is required for the cultiva-
tion of a religious attitude. At the same time, I recognize that the
community and the ideological paraphernalia ingredient in religion
may serve a useful role for people who have need of them. Nor have
I any reason to deny that many of those who belong to one or an-
other religion succeed in developing an attitude we may consider
religious. But the substantival noun specifies something different
from the adjective, and it is important to see that what they individ-
ually refer to is not essentially the same. Religion and the religious
are therefore independent of, though also compatible with, each
other.
In saying this, I am disagreeing with Dewey's conclusions. H e
thought that religion and the religious are inevitably incompatible:
"The opposition between religious values as I conceive them and
religions is not to be bridged. Just because the release of these val-
ues is so important, their identification with the creeds and cults of
religions must be dissolved."6 On my view, one need not make this
kind of dissolution-at least, not a priori or as universally requisite
for all people under all conditions. One need only say that every
religion must justify itself on its own, but without our foreclosing in
advance the possibility that each may be justifiable. Religion can no
longer promote its dogmas by claiming that it alone engenders reli-
gious values. This much of what Dewey says seems to me correct.
Beyond that, however, every person must decide for him- or herself
whether a specific religion helps or hinders the achievement of a
religious attitude.
But what exactly is involved in this religious mode of living? My
ideas about spirit and spirituality may provide some clues once we
have clarified both and seen their differing roles in the life of human
beings. Life and spirit are not the same. Life has many properties
unrelated to spirit. Much of life consists of mechanisms that are, or
12 THE HARMONY OF NATURE AND SPIRIT

seem to be, wholly routine, even preprogrammed. T o a large extent

we are what we are by virtue of habitual responses that have devel-
oped in us. Since mind and body, consciousness and materiality, are
not totally distinct from each other, organisms such as ours can
never be pure spirits. They nevertheless experience themselves as
spirits, and they readily observe the presence of spirit in creatures
like themselves.
Spirit consists in the self-oriented capacity of living beings to
change the world in accordance with their own aspirations. In addi-
tion to being a biological phenomenon that follows rigid patterns
and predictable means of survival, life is-to whatever degree and
often haphazardly-creative throughout its spectrum. Spirit is the
consecutive energy or thrust that appears as a family resemblance
within the different ways by which living entities manipulate their
surroundings.
If there were nothing involved but manipulation, spirit would
merely be an aggressive desire to impose one's will. But though it
cannot exist without volition, spirit is that much of life which directs
the will toward novelty and innovation in the service of something
consciously considered good. This last clause is crucial. Many or-
ganisms are motivated by an impulse to rearrange existence for the
sake of getting what seems to be good for themselves. But the idea
of goodness is too abstract for most creatures to imagine it in itself
or as a concept. Spirit is needed for that. In being highly evolved
both cognitively and affectively, spirit may even activate ideas about
underlying goodness, value uniquely objective and authentic. That
is why theorists have often claimed that spirit can fully occur only
in human beings, or else in gods who resemble human beings in
having conceptualization of this sort. Nevertheless, spirit remains a
natural potency, subject to the laws of nature, that differs from voli-
tion in being directed toward goods that normally exceed our own
immediate interests or desires.
T h e notion of spirit, and particularly what is called "the human
spirit," contains a suggestion of momentum and progressivity built
into it. We think of the human spirit as something that links person
to person and augments from generation to generation. Hegel saw
 INTRODUCTION 13

it as the highest reach at any moment of an absolute spirit that

unfolds dynamically through all of time. His idea is true to the
buoyancy we associate with the human spirit. Life keeps bounding
forward as if reaching for ever more rewarding goals. If we study
the actual data, however, we have little reason to think that spirit is
forever making progress. Life always flutters on, but its destiny is
never assured. Life transforms itself creatively, and in
it changes vastly as it evolves across the years. But even in human-
kind at its best, spirit is not invariably progressive.
Still, the very fact that the human spirit treats progress as a pos-
sibility native to itself tells us something of importance. Spirit as it
exists in human beings yearns for self-improvement. This longing
results from our having the ability to conceive of infinite goodness
for which we hunger. T h e fabrication of, and subsequent striving
toward, remote ideals is typically human. Perfectionism that renders
us dissatisfied with our current capabilities, thereby instigating end-
less search for meaningful accomplishments, sets our species apart
from all others. T h e human spirit is constantly engaged in both
seeking and creating values, whether or not it advances uniformly.
Though ordinary people often speak proudly of the human
spirit, the men and women who further it most may not be aware of
how much they do so. T h e concept of spirit is either too philosoph-
ical or too amorphous for it to be clearly present in the mentality of
many persons who live creative lives. Great painters may feel a force
within themselves that enables them to make works of art whenever
it erupts and allows itself to be harnessed by their technique. They
may even think of it as an inspirational power that uses them to be
its funnel or transmitter. But if we ask them more specifically what
they do in their productions, they may only reply that they are
experimenting with pigments on a canvas, or playing with different
ways of organizing forms and materials, or simply tapping a gamut
of possibilities in the visual arts. They may never say that they
reveal the human spirit straggling in its perfectionism to attain an
ideal goodness through acts that creatively reconstitute nature.
That kind of characterization is typically philosophical; it arises
in the mind of a philosopher, and usually not in the thinking of an
14 T H E H A R M O N Y O F N A T U R E AND S P I R I T

artist. All the same it can be an accurate indication of what the artist
experiences while focusing on technical problems.
in solving these problems may be apparent only to an appreciative
student of the relevant art form, but it can also be seen as a triumph
for the human spirit.

Thus far I have avoided the word spiritual. Although this is the
adjective that pertains to spirit, it is both vague and ambiguous. As
they may shrink at the idea that they are the bearers of the human
spirit, so too may artists who convey it shy away from any sugges-
tion that they themselves are spiritual. They love the paints they ap-
ply or the clay their fingers mold, and possibly their models as well.
They do not wish to clutter their mind with pretentious abstrusi-
ties, though on occasion they may talk about their artistic ideals in
language that others find wildly mystical. If we say that someone is
spiritual, we tend to think of that person as a sensitive plant, an
ethereal being that has liberated itself from earth-bound materiality.
T h e artist may be nothing of the sort. More to the point, however,
spirituality differs from spirit in having a particular life of its own.
Spirit is an aspect of life in general, but the spiritual life is a special
way of living, and therefore it incorporates spirit in a manner that
differs from other attempts to make life meaningful.
To illustrate the concept of spirit, I described the behavior of
creative artists. I will do the same later with spirituality, but initially
at least we are more inclined to cite the lives of the saints. Since
spirituality involves a uniquely imaginative use of spirit, saints may
also be considered creative and even practitioners of an art.
the self-expression they cultivate has often been the expressing of a
self that seeks its own abnegation. That is spirituality of a negative
sort, an optional form that ascetics and other extremists choose in
their eagerness to avail themselves of anything that can induce self-
purification. Such behavior may catch the ecclesiastic fancy and
possibly cause these persons to be revered. But men and women
who are more wholesome in their saintliness have no need of his-
trionics. Their conduct is directed toward selflessness that does not
 INTRODUCTION I5

degenerate into a desire to hasten their own destruction. The saints

most worthy of adoration understand full well that they will be
annihilated in due time, like all other living entities, but they see no
necessity to dramatize this looming fate. Their spirituality consists
merely in their willed subjugation of their own willfulness, in their
assertive acts of beneficial submissiveness, in their staunch though
reluctant ability to accept suffering in themselves for the sake of
alleviating it in others.
In pursuing the spiritual life through responses of this kind, the
saintly attitude may well seem to be paradoxical. The saints are
themselves usually dissatisfied with their actual level of spirituality.
They are not serene, like Chinese sages or Stoic philosophers
pleased with their noble detachment. The saints are troubled. They
are aware of how much willfulness still remains in them, and of how
much more one must do in order to diminish the overall suffering
in the world.
The paradoxes to which I refer reveal the impossibility of deny-
ing oneself while also wanting to be efficacious as a self that prevails
in its attempts to help others. But the healthy-minded saints accept
their anomalous state and do what they can. Their efforts are wor-
thy of our admiration, even if they are basically incoherent. We may
disregard the dreary philosophy that some of the saints rely on in
their desire to justify the spirituality they seek. We may even feel
that their doctrinal utterances generally evince intellectual weakness
rather than superhuman insight. And we may believe that most of
them, devoted to worthy ends as they may be, have not managed to
improve life on earth very much. If we continue to stand in awe of
their proud struggle with materiality, we do so because we recognize
that they are thereby bestowing value upon spirit as a threatened
principle in life, and that this is what they really worship.
Since spirituality is the concerted effort to preserve, through
acts as well as ideas and feelings, the creative force that is spirit, one
can well understand why spirituality has traditionally been taken to
represent the religious attitude. Established religions have been able
to arrogate that honorific term to themselves because they learned,
early on in the history of our species, how to integrate spirituality
I6 THE H A R M O N Y O F NATURE AND S P I R I T

with the legends and the rituals that eople can easily digest.
just as adherence to a religion is not the same as being religious,
so too is spirituality no assurance that being named a saint means
having an authentic religious attitude. In his distru
ability to attain true saintliness, Luther suggested
in that direction comes from the devil and not from God. Even if
Luther was right, however, he failed to recognize that most of the
official saints whose sanctification he rejected also had doubts about
their attempts to overcome what they called sinfulness in them-
selves. We need not sit in judgment on this issue. We need only
conclude that the religious attitude is not necessarily present in
spirituality approved by a particular religion and may well occur in
the absence of it.
Indeed, the spirituality that most religions advocate has very
often been negative. It then encourages attitudes of renunciation
and unremitting hostility toward our natural condition. It defines
itself as the repudiation of nature rather than the consecration of it.
Instead of being an expression of spirit that is vibrant in its creativ-
ity and imagination, spirituality in this phase is sicklied o'er with the
assurance that life consists of misery more than happiness, suffering
more than joy, decline more than growth. When spirituality is
healthy or benign, it is not like that: it is then affirmative, not nega-
tive. It glories in whatever goodness and beauty there is in nature,
and it seeks to increase them.
Throughout this book I will be searching for the spirituality
that contributes to our self-realization as natural beings, rather than
any self-renunciation. Here I can only remind you that we often use
religious language in contexts that are quit emote from either tra-
ditional religion or negative spirituality. e talk about men and
women who are "saintly9' in their devotion to their discipline or
profession. We think of Socrates and Spinoza as persons who lived
saintly lives. Their "religion," so to speak, was primarily the love of
truth, and their dedication to the doing of philosophy was so in-
tense that they were willing to sacrifice their comfort and security
to this life-enhancing activity.
T h e same could be said about many artists who are driven by a
 INTRODUCTION 17

sense of their aesthetic mission. Scientists may sacrifice all else in

life to the pursuit of the knowledge that only they can provide. This
heroic commitment within oneself is surely a land of spirituality,
and the metaphoric ascription of a religion may also be acceptable.
Such extraordinary individuals show forth the religious attitude,
and they do so without having to believe in dogmas of self-denial
ordained by supernatural fiat.
Though most religions encourage dogmatic thinking of that
sort, neither the religious attitude nor positive spirituality does.
T h e life of spirit sets up no conceptual barriers that prevent one
from enjoying any or all of the goods that nature offers. Spirituality
that is negative and self-despising rejects the nature that sustains it
even in its act of rejection. It therefore tends toward puritanism,
which George Santayana describes in one place as "a natural reac-
tion against nature.997Since the spiritual life need not be puritani-
cal, however, its devotion and its dedication can be supremely
consummatory, a fulfillment rather than a dying away. It then
appears as a religious attitude that formal religions have attacked all
too frequently-an attitude that dares to be joyful as well as mean-
ingful, gratifying as well as humane, self-assertive as well as com-
passionate, and wholly naturalistic in its theoretical assumptions.
When human beings experience pleasure, contentment, joy, or
what they consider happiness, they usually feel that all's well with
the world. Their experience may even assure them that they are in
touch with reality. They easily conclude that they have found the
meaning of life, that it shows itself in the mere fact that they are
happy. As Wittgenstein said, "the man who is happy is fulfilling the
purpose of e~istence."~ That, at least, is what one feels in moments
of happiness.
Optimists in philosophy have lent cognitive support for this
feeling. T h e optimistic attitude has guided democratic and human-
istic thinking for the last two or three hundred years. Happiness is
taken to be not only an experiential good that all men and women
can attain in principle but also one that makes their lives meaning-
ful. A wise and moral society would therefore tend to maximize it
whenever possible.
It is this belief that philosophical pessimism seeks to refute. T h e
greatest of all pessimists in philosophy was Arthur Schopenhauer.
Though his arguments have generally been neglected by English
and American philosophers, they are now receiving new attention.
In trying to prove that the world is not beneficently designed or
ultimately concerned about the fulfillment of human interests,
Schopenhauer claimed that happiness is a rare phenomenon and,
when it does occur, "negative" rather than positive. H e meant that
happiness is always relative to some prior evil that people are strug-
gling to escape. Happiness is never a pure achievement. Our ability
to experience it is tainted by the presence of an unwanted and un-
desirable element in our being: namely, our condition as creatures
that undergo want or desire itself. For us to be happy, there must
have been something we did not have, something we lacked and
now must labor to obtain. T h e situation is inherently negative,
Schopenhauer thinks, because the wanting of anything bespeaks
deprivation, and that is already a type of suffering. As a prerequisite
for life in general, this condition cannot be changed by any experi-
ence of happiness. Those who think we were "made" to be happy
are fooling themselves.
If happiness were a positive and fundamental part of our exis-
tence, Schopenhauer says, it would occur spontaneously, pervasively,
and without being dependent on the misery that comes from not
having whatever it is we lack and therefore seek. Since happiness
must be preceded by the undesired wanting of what we do not have,
followed by a stressful striving to get it, the outcome must always be
uncertain and often fruitless. Even when our effort makes progress
toward its goal, it is still a discontent, since it forces the organism to
act in ways that are not themselves intrinsically valuable. Living
creatures want what they want, but usually they do not want the
wanting or the pursuing of it. As a result, gratification-assuming it
eventuates-can only exist within a context of basic unhappiness.
Moreover, Schopenhauer insists, the getting of what one wants
is not a guarantee of prolonged satisfaction. Though the reaching
of our goal may make us happy for a while, the gain does not last. By
quieting the original desire, our success creates satiety. But that
quickly turns into boredom, which is a form of unhappiness. T h e
constant that defines human experience is thus suffering in one
modality or another. To the extent that the search for happiness lib-
erates us from an evil, it merely leads to later evils that result from
our having coped with the earlier one.
20 T H E H A R M O N Y OF N A T U R E AND S P I R I T

Schopenhauer formulates his conception through the following

image of a pendulum:

The basis of all willing . . . is need, lack, and hence pain, and by its very
nature and origin [the organism] is therefore destined to pain. If, on the
other hand, it lacks objects of willing, because it is at once deprived of
them . . . by too easy a satisfaction, a fearful emptiness and boredom
come over it; in other words, its being and its existence itself become
an intolerable burden for it. Hence its life swings like a pendulum
to and fro between pain and boredom, and these two are in fact its
ultimate constituents. This has been expressed very quaintly by saying
that, after man had placed all pains and torments in hell, there was
nothing left for heaven but boredom.*

T h e word pain that this translation uses, as most others do, is a

suitable equivalent for Schopenhauer7s original. But the German
terms that he employs, notably Schmerz and Leiden, should not be
taken to mean pain that is essentially physical. Critics who have
misconstrued his terminology in this manner have sometimes re-
marked that desire does not always signify an attempt to eliminate
physical pain. As one of them says: "Someone who desires to go for
a walk or read a certain book will not be affected by painful sensa-
tions if his desires remain unfulfilled."3 As a generalization this is
quite true, but it misses the point. T h e painfulness of the human
dispensation to which Schopenhauer refers is the sorrow or distress
that exists in being unfulfilled, in not having what one desires before
or even after one tries to get it. T h e suffering he considers funda-
mental is mental and metaphysical whether or not it is also felt as a
localized sensation. It is a hardship in life itself, since everything that
lives wants something or other it does not have, or else the contin-
ued possession of what it does have but must always fear it may lose.
Even in this formulation, however, Schopenhauer7smessage has
been unpalatable to most of his readers. Is this because, as he would
say, our desperate yearning for happiness deludes us all, philoso-
phers as well as nonphilosophers? O r is it possible that something
in the nature of living entities, including human beings, defeats
 SCHOPENHAUERS PENDULUM 21

Schopenhauer9spessimistic conclusions? But, in this less than par-

adise that we inhabit, what could that be?

One of the telling arguments against Schopenhauer's pessimism that

has been suggested runs as follows: Schopenhauer analyzes human
experience in terms of two contrasting phases or conditions, the
wanting of something one does not have and the eventual attaining
of it; he assigns happiness to the experience of attainment but claims
this consummation does not last; what he neglects is the fact that
striving for the desired object can provide happiness in itself, happi-
ness that endures as long as one enjoys the purposive pursuit and
feels that progress is being made. In other words, happiness does
not come from the mere elimination of want or deprivation. It also,
and more characteristically, issues out of instrumental activities that
yield prior satisfactions on their own.
This kind of argument appears in the writings of various
nineteenth-century Romantics who maintain that happiness results
from the act of searching for happiness, as opposed to the attaining
of a previously desired object or goal. But would it not follow from
this that the search for happiness is therefore illusory? We want and
seek particular goods because we think they will make us happy.
If, however, it is only the act of wanting and seeking that causes
happiness, are we not invariably deluded about the so-called goods
we wished to have? Having got them, we can no longer care about
them; in fact, we must immediately reject them, since happiness, as
we learn, is produced by pursuit alone. The problem is expressed in
lines of a song by Irving Berlin (sung with ambivalent suggestive-
ness by Marilyn Monroe): "After you get what you want/You don't
want it!"
Of course, many Romantics, Stendhal for instance, were not
deterred by the possibility that happiness is based on illusion. That,
they believed, is just the price one must pay to be happy. Since hap-
piness consists in striving itself, they were willing to accept what-
ever self-deceptions enable us to strive at all.
22 T H E HARMONY O F NATURE AND S P I R I T

In his book Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, Georg Simmel articu-

lates a sophisticated version of the Romantic belief that happiness
belongs to search and not attainment. H e argues that Schopenhauer
ignores the way in which "the hope for happiness turns into the
happiness of According to Simmel, lasting gratifications, in
love for instance, "come through an uninterrupted increase, not in a
big leap from pure misery to pure happine~s."~ Simmel concludes
that real happiness "is merely an accompaniment of strife, quest,
and endeavor, such that achievement of the goal does not only fail
to provide added happiness but is as irrelevant as is a beacon after
one has put into port."6
This way of criticizing Schopenhauer is valid in one important
respect. It calls attention to the fact that happiness is a state that de-
pends on one's general attitude toward life rather than being geared
to the getting of something one desired which may or may not sat-
isfy. T h e person who lives in hope or feels that he or she is making
progress toward some cherished goal can experience authentic hap-
piness throughout the requisite pursuit. Whatever happiness results
from getting what one wants is an incidental supplement to the
pervasive goodness in having this affirmative attitude. To the extent
that Schopenhauer ignores such realities, his pessimism deserves to
be attacked.
All the same, Schopenhauer's critics have failed to recognize the
subtlety of his thinking. For he perceives, more clearly than they
do, the possible confusion or absurdity that always lurks within the
happiness of searching for happiness. H e sees the peril in hopeful-
ness that makes us happy before we attain whatever object we are
seeking. T o enjoy the process of pursuit, we must believe that it will
have an outcome we desire, and also that each stage in our endeavor
belongs to a pattern that is meaningful by virtue of that desired
outcome. But if the world, in human experience and in the universe
at large, is as Schopenhauer portrays it, all enjoyment is more or
less ephemeral as well as uncertain. Our feeling of anticipatory
happiness reduces to wish fulfillment that propels us forward but
scarcely alters the underlying suffering to which we are doomed.
 SCHOPENHAUERS PENDULUM 23

If that condition is indeed unavoidable, Schopenhauer's overall pes-

simism would seem to remain unscathed.

In arguing that the fundamental structure of our experience is

thus determined by the alternation between lack and boredom,
Schopenhauer does not deny that there may be ways in which one
can learn how to deal with this state of affairs. In effect, he sketches
two tactics available to persons who have become enlightened
through his philosophy. T h e first of these tactics is only melioristic,
but the second introduces a path of salvation that Schopenhauer
staunchly advocates. T h e lesser remedy involves stoical acceptance
of the fact that happiness can never be more than superficial, given
what life is like. Once we know that suffering is universal and
inescapable, we will be better prepared to face the ills that attend
misfortune or old age. We will recognize the inevitability of such
sorrows, and we may even be comforted by the reflection that "our
present suffering fills a place which without it would be at once
occupied by some other suffering which the one now present ex-
cludes."7 Schopenhauer does not deny that some sufferings can be
worse than others, but he thinks that believing all of life is normally
suffering in one form or another conduces to a sense of relative
peace. H e doubts, however, that many people will ever have the ra-
tionality needed for this salutary outlook.
Describing the second tactic, Schopenhauer notes that the
greatest misery in human existence occurs when the pendulum
swings back and forth too violently, or else remains too long ar-
rested at either of the termini. T h e greater our deprivation, in
quantity or length of time, the greater our suffering; and the same
is true about the boredom that follows upon the elimination of
the original lack. We lessen the unhappiness of life by reducing the
gap between the alternatives. All satisfaction of desires can lead to
boredom, but if our consummatory experience is quickly succeeded
by new desires, boredom will have little scope and scant duration.
Similarly, the needs and organic drives that motivate our ongoing
24 T H E H A R M O N Y O F N A T U R E AND S P I R I T

search for happiness will not be experienced as a devastating suffer-

ing if they occur within a process that includes gratifications that
both precede and follow them.
In his delineation of this alternative, Schopenhauer says that
causing "desire and satisfaction to follow each other at not too short
and not too long intervals, reduces the suffering occasioned by both
to the smallest amount, and constitutes the happiest life."$ But
Schopenhauer is not sanguine about the attainability of this level of
happiness. In only manipulating the movement of the pendulum, he
says, we do not liberate ourselves from the suffering and depen-
dency built into our condition. Even when we have experience that
controls the elements of striving and satiety, our life is still governed
by a succession of unwelcome lacks and ineluctable feelings of
boredom. In order to minimize the intervals between desire and
satisfaction, Schopenhauer claims that we must cultivate methods
of withdrawing, as completely as possible, from all conceivable fluc-
tuations of the pendulum. He insists that the "purest joy. . . lifts us
out of real existence and transforms us into disinterested spectators
of it." This derives from "pure knowledge which remains foreign
to all willing, [from] pleasure in the beautiful, [and from] genuine
delight in art."
These are the directions in which Schopenhauer later explores
the spiritual paths that afford whatever salvation is available to
humanity. But they scarcely alter the extent of his pervasive pes-
simism. For he insists that very few people can follow these paths of
salvation. And even those fortunate persons who are able to must
undergo a kind of suffering that others do not experience. The
higher one flies, Schopenhauer says, the more lonely one becomes
and the more prone to difficulties caused by one's rare and elevated
efforts.
Schopenhauer tries to support his metaphysical insights with
evidence about human nature. On the one hand, he states, we
observe that human beings do not feel lesser sufferings when they
are being tormented by greater ones, but once a major source of
suffering has been eradicated minor discomforts take on more im-
portance and occasion more unhappiness than they would have
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
was on a cattle ranch far out of reach of him; but the way the
horseman pronounced the name fairly took his breath away.
“Of all the men that I ever expected to hear of, that Davenport is the
beat!” said Henderson, throwing his reins upon his horse’s neck and
shoving his hands into his pockets. “I don’t believe I have thought of
him for six months, or if I did, I thought of him as dead, and here he
has turned up when I least expected it. By George! all my desire to
possess his wealth comes back to me; but how I am to get it I don’t
know. That boy has plenty of rifles to back him up, as Scanlan said
he would.”
This was the one thing of which I spoke that effectually destroyed all
Henderson’s idea of making a better man of himself. It was easy
enough to be good when temptation was not thrown in his way, but
when temptation came, he was no better than anybody else. He
rode along for two hours, thinking over Bob’s habits, and wondering
if it would be possible for him to steal the boy away, as he had been
on the point of doing in St. Louis, and not until the sun began to set
did he look around for a camping-place.
“I wish Scanlan was here now,” said he. “I am sure he would be apt
to think of something. There’s three men,” he added, shading his
eyes with his hand and gazing toward a belt of post-oaks in which
he intended to make his camp. “I wonder if they are good-natured,
or if they mean to go through my pockets? Time will tell.”
When he first discovered the three men in the timber two of them
were lying down, and the other was moving about as if making
preparations for supper. One saw his approach and called the
attention of the others to it, and then all got up and looked at him.
Evidently the men were not inclined to trust strangers, for he saw
that one of them, whom he took to be spokesman, raised up without
anything in his hands, while the others stood with their rifles in the
hollow of their arms. Henderson thought this looked a little
suspicious, but kept on and in a few minutes was close enough to
the camp to accost the men.
“How do you do, strangers?” said he.
“How-dy, pilgrim,” said the spokesman.
“Have you got room in your camp for another person?”
“Oh, yes! There’s plenty of room round here.”
“I’ve got some things in my haversack that may assist you in making
out your supper,” said Henderson.
“Well, alight and hitch,” said the spokesman. “There’s plenty of room
for your horse here too.”
Henderson dismounted and removed the saddle from his horse, the
men with the rifles regarding him suspiciously. When he had thrown
his saddle down by the fire, he coolly unhitched his revolver and
flung it down beside it; whereupon the men with the rifles drew a
long breath of relief, and deposited their weapons beside the trees
where they had taken them from. Henderson noticed this, and said,
as he made his lariat fast to his horse’s neck:
“You seem to be on the lookout for something. I am a trader.”
“Oh, you are, are you?” said the spokesman.
“Yes. And I have only got a few dollars in my pocket, so that it
would be useless for anybody to think of robbing me. I came out
here for the purpose of getting some cattle, but I found that the
drought was ahead of me. The stock isn’t worth what their hides and
tallow would cost. Now,” he added, having driven down his picket
pin and seated himself near the fire, “I’d like to know why all you
Texans pronounce me a ‘pilgrim’ as soon as you see me. Is there
anything about me that reminds you of the States?”
“Well, yes. The way you sit your horse is against you. A Texan does
not sit bent over, with his hands on the horn of his saddle, as if he
feared that the next step would pitch him overboard. And then those
gloves. A Texan doesn’t wear them.”
“And I have been here almost eight years,” said Henderson. “I guess
I shall have to ride a little more in order to get accustomed to the
customs of the country. What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t say,” returned the spokesman.
“My name is Henderson,” replied the guest, who wished most
heartily that he had gone somewhere else. He didn’t like the way the
spokesman answered his last question.
“My name is—— Which one do you want?”
“Why, the one you go by, of course.”
“Well, the name that I go by just now is Coyote Bill,” said the man,
pushing his spurred heels a little closer to the fire. “You have heard
of me, I reckon?”
Henderson was startled to hear this name. He had heard of him a
good many times while in Austin, and had never expected to meet
him in this unceremonious manner. He knew that he was in the
power of a desperado of the worst sort.
 CHAPTER XIII.
HENDERSON MEETS COYOTE BILL.

“Y es, that is the name I go by now,” said Coyote Bill, grinning

when he saw Henderson’s expression of astonishment. “What
my other name is no one in this country knows. Whenever you hear
that name spoken you will know what I look like. I came to this
country the same as you did.”
“The same as I did?” echoed Henderson, his surprise increasing.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Why, you got into some trouble up there with the police and had to
skip, that’s what I mean. A man of your education does not come
down to this country of his own free will.”
“Well, that’s a fact,” said Henderson, breathing easy again. A
desperate scheme had occurred to him, suggested by the outlaw’s
last words. He was wishing for Scanlan all the time, thinking that he
would be likely to propose something by which he could possess
himself of his brother’s wealth, and right here was the man who, by
a little management, could be induced to act Scanlan’s part. He
would try him at any rate, but he wanted first to see how much
Coyote Bill knew about him.
“Are these all the men you have in your band?” asked Henderson, at
length.
“No,” laughed Bill, as if the very idea amused him. “I’ve got one or
two more scattered around on the plains somewhere.”
“That means that you have thirty or forty more,” said Henderson.
“Well, I’ve got some in Austin, and that’s where they have seen you.
Although I had never seen you before, I knew you the moment you
hove in sight.”
Again Henderson breathed easy. He knew he hadn’t said anything
about his kidnapping scheme in Austin, or anywhere else, that
Coyote Bill could have got hold of it, and consequently Bill was just
guessing at his reason for being in Texas.
“Who are those men? What did I say in their presence that led them
to guess why I had come down here?”
“Oh, you said enough! I aint going to tell you just what you said, for
fear that you would know those men when you get back. Is the man
around here that you have got anything against?”
“I will speak to you after a while,” said Henderson, turning his gaze
toward the rest of the men at the fire.
“Oh, you may speak freely here! I never go into anything without
their consent. It’s share and share alike here. But if you would rather
speak to me alone, why it is all right. Have you got supper ready?”
The man appealed to nodded, and pointed to a pile of bacon and
corn bread that was waiting for them. It was such a supper as
Henderson, in his St. Louis home, would have turned up his nose at,
but he was ready for it now. During the meal but little was said, and
Henderson, out of the corner of his eye, took a good survey of the
man that everybody called Coyote Bill. He didn’t look like such a
desperate fellow, by any means, and all the men who had had
experience with him described him as a very different person. This
proved that Bill did not always lead his bands, but gave the
movement into somebody else’s hands, and appeared only when out
of reach of the settlers. He was as neat as a new pin, and showed
by every move he made that he had been well brought up. After
supper he lighted his pipe and motioned to Henderson to follow him
out on the plains. When out of reach of everybody he threw himself
down on the grass and invited Henderson to do the same.
“Now, then,” said he, “I am ready to hear all your plans.”
“I don’t know that I have got any,” said Henderson.
“Yes, you have,” said Coyote Bill, in a tone that showed he was not
in a mood to argue the matter. “A man needn’t come around here
with such a face as you have got on you and tell me anything like
that. What was the reason you did not go on and see Davenport? I
saw you talking with a cowboy of his not more than three hours
ago.”
“Where were you?” asked Henderson, more astonished than ever.
“We were just behind a neighboring swell, not more than half a mile
away. Your names are not alike, but still you must be some kin to
Davenport. What relationship are you?”
“I am his half brother.”
“That makes you next of kin, don’t it? Well, now, if that man dies,
who is going to inherit his property?”
“I am, if it were not for that little nuisance he has picked up
somewhere. You see it was just this way.”
With this introduction Henderson went on and gave Coyote Bill a full
history of the boy Mr. Davenport had adopted in the mines; or
rather, he intended to adopt him, but he didn’t do it. He had brought
him up from a little boy to think his property was all his own, giving
no heed to the half brother who might want some of it.
“And when I asked him for a little money—five hundred dollars were
all I wanted—he got up on his ear and said I couldn’t have it. That
made me mad, I tell you, and I left his house for good.”
“And never went into it again?” enquired Coyote Bill.
“Yes, I went into it once more,” said Henderson, thinking he might
as well tell the truth, now that he was about it. “I went in and made
an effort to steal the boy. I didn’t get caught at it, but my partner
did, and I reckon he’s serving the penalty before this time.”
“What were you going to do with him?” asked Coyote Bill, and it was
plain that he had a big respect for Henderson.
“I was going to put him in a lunatic asylum. I was going to keep him
there until he became of age, and then get him to sign his money
over to me. I tell you he would have done it before he had been
there two weeks.”
“And he just as sane as you are?” said Bill. “Didn’t you know that the
authorities would have turned—— By the way, how much is the old
man worth?”
“He’s worth a million of dollars. I know that he would have turned
the place upside down in the effort to find Bob, but I tell you I would
have been willing to risk it.”
“A million dollars! And you want to get hold of some of that money?”
“I tell you I want to get hold of all of it,” said Henderson. “It is mine,
and I don’t see why he should want that little nuisance to cheat me
out of it. The thing would be safe enough if I could get somebody to
trust. I want him to go to the old man’s ranch and find out where he
keeps his bonds hidden. It would be no trouble at all for him to steal
them.”
This was all Henderson found it necessary for him to say on that
subject; Coyote Bill “caught on” immediately. He understood that
Henderson wanted him to go to the ranch and steal those bonds. He
arose to a sitting posture and smoked audibly while he meditated.
“It seems to me that that could be easily done,” said he.
“Why, I know it could! If I was as I used to be in my brother’s
house, I would gain the whole thing in a week. But the trouble is I
threatened him when I left. I told him that if Bob ever lived to
become his heir, I would follow him up and make him know what it
was to be in want as I was at that moment.”
“Well, I’ll try it,” said Bill.
“You will?” asked Henderson, so overjoyed that he could scarcely
speak plainly. “I didn’t suppose that you would go there yourself, but
thought that maybe you could find some man to send in your place.”
“I would rather go myself, because I will know that everything has
been done. You see, there isn’t one man in ten who knows me. I
could go there and pass myself off for a miner.”
“That’s the idea! The old man has been there, and you could tell him
what you pleased. Have you ever been in the mines?”
“No. I am as close to them as I care to get. If I find that strategy
won’t work, I suppose I could put the Indians on them.”
“Indians?” said Henderson.
“Certainly. I was on my way to the reservation when I saw you
talking to the old man’s cowboy. You see, I don’t find much work to
do, and I am going there to rest up a bit. This drought will soon be
over, and then I shall have more than I can do.”
“What do you call your business, anyway?”
“Oh, stealing cattle. I take them to a little fertile spot in the Staked
Plains, kill them for their hides and tallow, and give the meat to the
Indians. I am chief of about a hundred men, and they will go their
lengths for me.”
“Well, well! I didn’t know that.”
“You see that I can easily get the money, or whatever it is that he is
keeping from you. Now, I want to know how much I am to get for
this. Say a half a million.”
“I will give you half of whatever I make. Can anything be fairer than
that? It may be more and it may be less than half a million.”
“Yes, that’s fair. Now let’s go back to the fire and see what the men
think of this. You had better go to bed, and we’ll see how it looks in
the morning.”
Henderson could scarcely sleep at all that night, and when he did he
awoke to find that Coyote Bill and his men were still discussing the
subject. The method of stealing the bonds instead of stealing the
boy promised much better than his original scheme, for he would
have no hand in it. Coyote Bill would be alone in the matter, and if
he should be detected and could not be prevailed upon to tell who
his accomplice was—— Ah! That was something he hadn’t spoken to
Bill about. In the morning he would broach that subject, and tell Bill
never to mention his name. If he did, all his hope of success would
be gone. He finally fell asleep and awoke to find breakfast waiting
for him. Bill greeted him with a good-morning, and immediately
referred to their last night’s conversation.
“Well, I am going to try it,” said he. “I have never stolen any of
Davenport’s cattle, and I don’t suppose there is anyone on his place
who knows me.”
“If you are caught, don’t mention my name,” said Henderson. “He
knows me, and he don’t expect any good of me, either.”
“If you knew me, pilgrim, you wouldn’t mention that at all,” said Bill;
and anybody could see that he was growing mad about it. “I shall
not call the name of Henderson once while I am there. If anybody
says anything to me about you I shall say I don’t know you.”
After breakfast Bill shook Henderson by the hand and started and
walked away. He took nothing with him except his brace of revolvers
and an old dilapidated blanket, which he slung over his shoulder. He
left his rifle and horse in charge of his men, who were to bring them
to him at some future time, Henderson didn’t know when or where it
was. Bill didn’t exchange any plans with Henderson, for he had
made up his mind what he wanted to do and he didn’t care to have
anyone know it. Henderson gazed at him in surprise as he walked
away.
“There’s a man who is going into trouble,” said he. “I could have
given him some things that I think would have helped him out.”
“Don’t you lose no sleep worryin’ about him,” said one of the men.
“He knows what he is going to do. Now you can find your way back,
can’t you? We have got to leave you here.”
Yes, Henderson could get along now all right, and he gladly parted
with the men, after dividing his corn meal and bacon with them, for
he was anxious to get away by himself and think the matter over. He
hadn’t known what happiness was before in a long while.
“If one of the men from whom I have just parted,” said he, as soon
as he was out of hearing, “had told me that he was the chief of a
hundred men who would go their lengths for him, I should have
believed him; but that is a queer thing for that neat-looking fellow to
say. How easily that villain fell in with my plans! If I had been going
there knowing what he does—— Whew! I believe I should have got
some advice from somebody.”
Meanwhile Coyote Bill walked along toward Mr. Davenport’s ranch,
keeping a lookout for horsemen who were on the watch for stray
cattle, whom he intended to dodge, and revolving in his mind certain
plans for stealing the bonds; for be it known that he put implicit faith
in Henderson’s word. No man could come to him and talk as
earnestly as he did when there was nothing behind it. He tramped
all that day, found a camp at night in a belt of timber with which the
country was thickly interspersed, laid down without a fire, and at ten
o’clock reached his destination. He was really foot-sore and weary
when he got there, for walking so far was something to which he
was not accustomed, and was glad to see the man for whom he was
looking sitting on the porch.
“Good-day to you, sir!” said Coyote Bill, lifting his hat. “Is this Mr.
Faber’s ranch?”
“Come up and sit down,” replied Mr. Davenport. “You have travelled
far and you look completely exhausted. Faber! I don’t know such a
man as that. He can’t have a ranch anywhere about here.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Bill. “I believe I am tired, and if it will suit you
will sit down for a while. May I make bold to ask for something to
eat?”
“Eat? Yes, you can have all you want. Bob, hunt up the cook and get
something. Have you travelled far, sir?”
“About a hundred miles, afoot and alone.”
“I guess that a drink of water would help you. We haven’t got much,
but what we’ve got you are welcome to. Bob,” he added, as the boy
came back after seeing the cook, “scare up a drink of water for this
gentleman. I speak of you, sir, as your clothes warrant me to speak.
You are not a Texan. You haven’t been long enough in this country
to become accustomed to their way of talking. You are from the
States.”
“Yes, sir; from Wisconsin,” said Bill, rightly concluding that Mr.
Davenport would not be acquainted with anybody in that far off
State. “I was engaged in doing a good business in Milwaukee, but I
fell in with some fellows who were going to the mines, and there I
lost what little money I had.”
“Did you go to California?”
“No; to Denver.”
“Then how did you happen to get way off here? This is not the road
to the States.”
“I know it; but I wanted to find my partner, who is in this country
engaged in the cattle business.”
“Well, Mr. Faber, if that’s his name, hasn’t got a ranch anywhere
around here. The men who live beyond me are Mr. Chisholm——”
Here Mr. Davenport went off into a paroxysm of coughing, to which
Bill listened with great concern pictured on his face.
“I am afraid you are talking too much,” said he. “Doesn’t this climate
agree with your health?”
“Oh, yes! I should probably have been in my grave long ago if I had
not come down here. Now, sir, your meal is ready. Will you step in
and sit down to it?”
Bill thanked him, and went in to a much finer spread than he had
been accustomed to while roaming with his men. He ate until he was
ashamed of himself, and came out on the porch with the air of one
who had enjoyed a good meal. There was one thing about it he told
himself: No matter what misfortunes his cattle might meet with, Mr.
Davenport intended that those who were dependent upon him
should fare the best.
“I have a little money left,” said he, “and I want to know——”
“Keep your money in your pocket,” returned Mr. Davenport. “When I
have twenty-five thousand head of cattle to sell for a dollar apiece I
can easily afford to give you something to eat. Sit down. You say
you were in the mines at Denver. What sort of work are they having
there?”
This was the very point that Coyote Bill had been dreading, but he
had gone over it so many times since leaving Henderson in camp,
that he had it at his tongue’s end. He knew no more about mining
than he had been able to glean from the conversation of his men,
some of whom were fresh from Mexico, and perhaps he got the two
pretty well mixed up. For example, he told of one mine he had been
in where they had been obliged to go down twelve hundred feet
before they could get gold in paying quantities. Then Mr. Davenport
began to look at him suspiciously. There might be some men at
some future time that would be able to go down that distance, but
there were none there now.
“I believe you are up to something,” said he to himself. “But what in
the world it is I don’t know. I believe I will keep you here for a while
and find out.” Then aloud he said: “Where are you going now? If
your friend isn’t around here, where do you think you will find him?”
“I guess I had better go back to Austin and work around there at
something until I can earn money enough to take me home,” said
Bill, hoping that Mr. Davenport would suggest something else to him.
“Any little thing that I can do will help me along.”
“How would you like to stay here and work on this ranch?”
“That would be all very well, but I can’t ride. I should have to do
something about the house or I shouldn’t earn my money.”
“You look like a man who could sit a horse.”
“I know it; but they buck and jump so that they throw me right off.
When I was in the mines I devoted myself entirely to work.”
“Well, I will tell you what I will do. I can find some work for you
around the ranch that you can turn your hand to.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“It won’t be much—like making the beds, for instance. Besides, you
look completely exhausted. You can stay here until you somewhat
recover yourself and make some enquiries among the cowboys, and
perhaps you will learn something about your partner. I am
determined to know what you are at,” added Mr. Davenport to
himself. “Can it be that you are any ways implicated with Clifford
Henderson? Well, I have got my will made out, and I will see what
you will do to it.”
Thus it came about that Coyote Bill became an inmate of Mr.
Davenport’s house. When the cowboys came in at supper time he
was as respectful to them as he was to Mr. Davenport, addressed
them all as “sir,” when he was speaking to them, and by giving them
a sharp look when they came in made up his mind that there was no
one among them who recognized him. He looked them squarely in
the eye when he talked to them, and listened while they told him of
the men who lived beyond them. There was no Mr. Faber in the lot.
He must be inside of them somewhere.
“What do you think of that fellow, Lem?” asked Frank, as the two
met under the trees to smoke their evening pipe. They had left Bill
in the house and he was busy at work with the dishes.
“He is here for no good, that’s what I think of him,” said Lem,
seating himself under the nearest tree. “He has been out to Denver,
and came out here to find somebody he never heard of. He never
had a pardner named Faber, and what do you think of his going into
a mine that extended twelve hundred feet under the ground? I tell
you he has never been near Denver.”
“And he can’t ride!” added Frank. “I see the marks on his boots
where he has had spurs on. I tell you he wants to be mighty careful
how he acts around here.”
“Do you mind them six-shooters he’s got?”
“I do, and I aint afraid of them, nuther. I guess I can get a pistol out
as quick as he can. Just keep your eye on him and we’ll see what he
is going to do.”
The days grew into weeks and the weeks into months, and still
Coyote Bill stayed around the house. In fact he didn’t say a word
about going since he was settled there. He seemed to think that the
man he was in search of was somebody he couldn’t reach, and he
was content to remain where he was. Mr. Davenport kept his eye out
at all times, and the only thing he found against Bill was when he
caught him trying to pick his desk. He came suddenly into the room
where Bill was at work, and the position he caught him in was
enough to condemn him. But Bill was equal to it. He greeted him
with a good-morning, and proceeded to tumble up his bed as though
nothing was the matter.
“Why do you have this door shut?” enquired Mr. Davenport, with
more sternness than he had ever thrown into his words. “I generally
leave it open.”
“I found it shut when I came in, sir,” said Bill. “I always make it a
point to leave things as I find them. It’s a fine day outside, sir.”
“Yes, of course it is a fine day here in this country,” said Mr.
Davenport, who was wishing every day that it would rain. “We never
see any clouds here.”
Things went on in this way until we came there, and for once Mr.
Davenport forgot himself and took us into his confidence. I had
noticed ’Rastus Johnson, and I didn’t think there was anything
strange about it, except that he seemed to sympathize with me,
because I had lost my cattle. But, then, that was something that fell
to everybody down there, and besides I had more than made my
loss good. Finally, the time came when I bearded the lion in his den,
and, prompted by Elam, called him by his right name. Of course he
was thunderstruck, but I think I did the best thing I could under the
circumstances. He made up his mind to steal the pocket-book at
once, and boldly proposed the thing to me as if I had agreed to
“become one of them.” I got out of it somehow, and that was the
night that he and Elam got into that “scrap.” He went off, as I
expected he would, and I did not see him again until he and Clifford
Henderson came to the ranch to hunt up the missing pocket-book.
You saw how he treated me while he was there. Tom Mason’s luck
came in; he found the pocket-book, and I hadn’t seen Bill since. And
now Henderson was gone, and I concluded that with all those men
watching us we couldn’t reach Austin without a fight. But we had ten
good men, and they were all good shots. And I saw that others felt
the same way. Well, let it come. I was sure of one of them, anyway.
 CHAPTER XIV.
PROVING THE WILL.

W hen Clifford Henderson turned his nag and galloped away from
us, he was about the maddest man I ever saw mounted on
horseback. When I said away from “us,” I mean from the three or
four men whom he had been trying to induce to buy his cattle, and
Tom Mason and myself. He had good reason to be angry. He had
come out to the ranch while we were there; and although he had
things all his own way, and one of the men who were with him had
searched us to prove that we didn’t have the pocket-book, he had
hardly got out of reach of the house when Tom had it in his
possession. That was as neat a piece of strategy as I ever heard of,
this finding the pocket-book after he had got through looking for it,
and I didn’t wonder that he felt sore over it. He meditated about it
as he rode along, and the more he thought about it, the more nearly
overcome with rage was he.
“To think that that little snipe should have gone and found the
pocket-book after I had got done looking for it—that’s what bangs
me!” he exclaimed, shaking his fists in the air. “No wonder they call
him Lucky Tom. But there is just this much about it: the pocket-book
is not going to do him any good. I’ll go and see Bill about it, and
then I’ll go to Austin, find the surrogate before he does, and
challenge the will. By that means I shall put him to some trouble
before he can handle the stock as he has a mind to.”
Henderson evidently knew where he was going, for he went at a
tremendous rate until nearly four o’clock in the afternoon, stopping
only twice at some little streams that he crossed to allow his horse
time to get a drink, and then he rode into a belt of timber where he
found Coyote Bill waiting for him. He had two men there with him as
a body-guard. Henderson got off his horse, removed his saddle, and
turned the animal loose before he said a word. Bill was watching him
all the time, and concluded that he had some bad news.
“Well,” said he impatiently, “as soon as you get ready to speak let us
hear from you.”
“I can easily think of myself as being fooled in this way, but for a
man like you, who makes his living by cheating other folks, I don’t
see any excuse at all for it!” said Henderson, as he threw himself on
the ground beside Bill. “We have lost the pocket-book!”
“Did those boys find it?” asked the man, starting up in amazement.
“Yes, sir; they have found it! I have seen the will.”
“Why, how in the name of common sense did they find it?” said Bill,
who could not believe that his ears were not deceiving him. “And
you have seen the will?”
“Yes, I have. Everything goes to that boy, dog-gone the luck!”
“Tell us all about it. I don’t understand it.”
“You know we saw them when we got to the ranch, and they found
the pocket-book. That’s all I know about it. When they returned they
found me trying to sell the cattle to some of the outfit, and they
produced the will. I saw it and read a portion of it.”
“Well, you are a pilgrim, and that’s a fact. Why didn’t you destroy
the will? I’ll bet you that if they showed me the will they would
never see it again.”
“Suppose there was a revolver pointed straight at your head. What
would you do then?”
“You were a dunce for letting them get that way.”
“Suppose there were three men, and while one of them had your
head covered with a pistol, another should ride up and lay hold of
your bridle? I don’t reckon you would help yourself much.”
“Did they have you that way? Then I beg your pardon,” said Bill,
extending his hand. “They didn’t give you much show, did they? But
you threatened them, didn’t you?”
“No; I simply told them that I was next of kin and wanted to see the
will. I could tell whether it was a fraud or not. I recognized my
brother’s handwriting at once, but I told them it was a lie out of the
whole cloth.”
“And does the will make the boy his heir?”
“It does. Now I want to go to Austin and get there before Chisholm
does. I can put him to some trouble before he handles that stock.”
“Is Chisholm going there?”
“He must, to get the will probated.”
“Then you just take my advice and keep away from Austin. Chisholm
would shoot you down as soon as he would look at you. You don’t
know Chisholm. He’s a mighty plain-spoken man when he’s let alone,
but you get his dander up and he’s just lightning. He has got an idea
that you are trying to cheat Bob out of his money and that you are a
rascal. No, sir; you keep away from Chisholm.”
“But what am I to do? Am I going to sit still and allow myself to be
cheated? That’s the way folks do things in St. Louis.”
“Yes; but it isn’t the way they do here. You needn’t allow yourself to
be cheated out of that money.”
“What do you propose to do?”
“Put the Indians on him.”
“The Indians?” exclaimed Henderson.
“Certainly,” said Bill coolly. “What do you suppose I have got the
Indians for if it isn’t to help me out in a job of this kind? You said
you wanted him shut up until he signed his property over to you,
and I don’t think you will find a better place.”
“Why, my goodness, they will kill him!” said Henderson, horrified at
the idea of making Bob a prisoner in the hands of those wild men.
“I’ll risk it. Just put him among the Indians with the understanding
that he is to remain there until he signs his property over to you,
and he’ll soon sign, I bet you.”
Henderson was silent for a long time after this. He didn’t see any
other way out of it. The idea of his going to Austin and being shot by
that man Chisholm was not exactly what it was cracked up to be. He
knew that Chisholm would shoot if he got a fair chance, for he had
already seen him behind his revolver; and he didn’t care to give him
another such a chance at him. Coyote Bill gave him time to think the
matter over and then said:
“Suppose the Indians do kill him; what then? It will only be just one
stumbling block out of your way. What do you say?”
“Are the Indians much given to making raids on the stockmen
hereabouts?” asked Henderson.
“They do it just as often as they get out of meat,” answered Bill.
“The only thing that has kept them from it has been the drought.
They know what these white men are up to. All this country will be
settled up some day, and then what will they do to get something to
eat? It will be perfectly safe putting the Indians on him.”
“Well, go on with it,” answered Henderson. “Remember, I don’t go in
for lifting a hand against his life. I want him to know what it is to be
in poverty. That’s what I am up to.”
“Well, if you find any more poverty-stricken people in the world than
the Comanches are, I will give it up,” said Coyote Bill, with a laugh.
“Let him stay among them. I will agree to keep him safe for twenty
years. Now I will go and see what the men think about it. What do
you say to that, Zeke? This is a squaw-man,” he added, turning to
Henderson. “The chief and all of them do just as he says.”
“I say you can’t find a purtier place to put a man than among the
’Manches,” said Zeke, as he pulled a pipe out of his pocket and filled
up for a smoke. “If you want to put him whar he’ll find poverty, put
him thar.”
“But I am afraid to trust the Indians with him,” said Henderson.
“They might kill him.”
“Not if the chief says ‘No,’ they won’t. This here is our chief,” he
answered, waving his hand toward Coyote Bill. “We aint beholden to
nobody when he says we shall go on a raid, an’ I think it high time
we were doin’ something. It’s almost sixteen months since we have
seen any cattle, an’ we’re gettin’ hungry.”
“Does Sam think the same way?” said Bill.
The man appealed to nodded, and so it came about that we did not
see any of Coyote Bill’s men while we were on our way to Austin. In
fact there were not enough of them. It would have taken twice the
number of our company to have placed their hands on that pocket-
book, feeling as we did then.
I never was more shaken up than I was when I rode into Austin, but
I didn’t say anything about it. Accustomed as I was to travelling long
distances on horseback, I must say that, when we rode up to our
hotel and dismounted, I didn’t have strength enough to go another
mile. Chisholm was as lively as ever. He got off his horse with
alacrity, looked around him and said:
“There! Two hundred miles in considerably less than forty-eight
hours. I guess Henderson can’t beat that. Seen anything of him
around, have you?”
The men all answered in the negative.
“I wish you boys would take these horses back to the stable,” said
he, “and the rest of you stay by when I call you. When you come
back go into the living room with the rest of the boys. Lem, you and
Frank seat yourselves on the porch and keep a lookout for
Henderson. If you see him I needn’t remind you that you are to pop
him over.”
“Oh, Mr. Chisholm!” exclaimed Bob.
“It has to be done,” said Mr. Chisholm earnestly. “We have stood as
much nonsense as we can. He has tried his level best to steal our
money from us, and now we have got to a place where we can’t be
driven any further. I’ve got a little business of my own to attend to.
Mr. Wallace, who has a thousand dollars or two of mine, is, I think, a
man I can trust.”
So saying Mr. Chisholm started off, and we all departed on our
errands—Frank and Lem to the porch to keep a bright outlook for
Henderson, the most of the men to the sitting room of the hotel to
wait Mr. Chisholm’s return, and us boys to take the horses to the
stable. I was surprised when I saw how Bob took Mr. Chisholm’s
order to heart—to pop Henderson over. I declare I didn’t feel so
about it at all. If Henderson so far neglected his personal safety as
to continue to pursue Mr. Chisholm when he was on the very eve of
getting the money, why, I said, let him take the consequences. Bob
didn’t say anything, but I well knew what he was thinking about. If
he had had a fair opportunity he would have whispered to
Henderson to keep away from the porch.
“You musn’t do it, Bob,” I said to him.
“Why, Carlos, I can’t bear that anybody should get shot,” he
answered. “And then what will they do to Lem and Frank for obeying
that order of Mr. Chisholm’s?”
“They won’t do anything to them. Mr. Chisholm is willing to take his
chances. Don’t you know that they never do anything to anyone who
shoots a man in this country?”
When we had put the horses away we returned to the porch, and
found Lem and Frank there keeping a lookout for Henderson; but I
would have felt a good deal more at my ease if we had known of the
interview that Henderson had held with Coyote Bill in regard to
putting the Indians on Bob. We took a look at them and then went
into the sitting-room to wait for Mr. Chisholm. He was gone about
half an hour and then he showed himself. He stopped to exchange a
few words with Lem and Frank, and then coming into the sitting-
room ordered us to “catch up!” We knew by that that he was ready
for us, so we fell in two abreast and followed Mr. Chisholm down the
street.
I wondered what the people in the Eastern cities would have
thought of us if they had seen us marching down the street, ten of
us, all with a brace of revolvers slung to our waists. The pedestrians
got out of our way, and now and then some fellow, with a brace of
revolvers on, would stop and look at us to see which way we were
going. But we did not care for anybody. We kept close at Mr.
Chisholm’s heels until he turned into a narrow doorway, and led us
up a creaking pair of stairs. Upon arriving at the top he threw open a
door, and we found ourselves in the presence of three or four men
who sat leaning back in their chairs with their heels elevated higher
than their heads, having a good time all by themselves. There were
a lot of papers and books scattered about, and I took it at once for a
lawyer’s office. They looked at us in surprise as we entered, and one
of the men took his feet down from the desk.
“Shut the door, Lem,” said Mr. Chisholm. “Now, which of you men is
it who proves the wills? You see,” he added, turning with an air of
apology to the other men in the room, “these fellows are mostly
remembered in the will, and so I brought them along. I never
proved a will before, and so I wanted men enough to back me up.”
“That is all right,” said the surrogate. “Where’s the will?”
Mr. Chisholm produced his pocket-book, Bob’s pocket-book, rather,
the one that had taken Tom and me on a four weeks’ journey into
the country, and produced the papers, while the rest of us stood
around and waited for him to read them. The lawyer read it in a
free-and-easy manner until he came to the place where Bob was
spoken of as worth half a million dollars, and then he suddenly
became interested.
“Where’s the man?” said he.
“Here he is, right here,” said Mr. Chisholm. “It is a big sum of money
for him to be worth, but he is big enough to carry it.”
“Why, sit down, gentlemen! If you can’t get chairs enough to
accommodate you, sit on the table. A half a million dollars! Does
anybody challenge this will?”
“Not that I know of,” answered Mr. Chisholm. “It is all there, and we
want it all, every bit.”
“Well, I’ll have it for you in half an hour,” answered the lawyer.
“Suppose you come in again in that time.”
“No, sir! Our time is worth nothing, and if it is all the same to you,
we’ll have that will before we go out. When I get through here I
have got to go to the bank. Take your time. We want it done up
right.”
Whether there was something in Mr. Chisholm’s manner—there
certainly was nothing in his words—that convinced the lawyer that
haste was desirable, I don’t know; but he got up with alacrity, went
to his books, and began writing, while the rest of us disposed of
ourselves in various attitudes about the room. The rest of the men
went on with their conversation where our entrance had interrupted
it,—it was something that afforded them a great deal of merriment,
—and now and then the lawyer took part in it, leaving his work and
coming over to where the men were sitting to make his remarks
carry weight. Mr. Chisholm watched this for a long time and at last
boiled over.
“See here, Mr. Lawyer,” said he, and I knew by the way he spoke the
words that his patience was all exhausted; “I would thank you to
attend to our business first.”
The lawyer was evidently a man who was not in the habit of being
addressed in this way. He took a good look at Mr. Chisholm, at his
revolvers, then ran his eye over the rest of us, and choking down
something that appeared to be rising in his throat, he resumed his
writing. After that there was no trouble. The men ceased their
conversation, and the lawyer went on with his writing to such good
purpose that in fifteen minutes the document was done.
“Now, who is this boy’s guardian?” asked the lawyer.
“He hasn’t got any that I know of,” said Mr. Chisholm.
“How old are you?” he added, turning to Bob.
“Sixteen,” was the reply.
“Then you must have a guardian,” said the lawyer. “Hold on, now,”
he continued, when he saw Mr. Chisholm’s eye begin to flash and his
hand to reach toward his pistol. “This guardian is a man who can
exercise much or little control over this property. He can say you
shall or you shall not spend your money for such particular things;
but all the while the boy can go on and do as he pleases. It does not
amount to anything.”
“Is that paper all ready for his signature?” asked Mr. Chisholm.
“It is all ready for the signature of his guardian,” said the lawyer.
“But I tell you it won’t amount to anything so long as he has no one
on it to act as his guardian. Why don’t you sign it, sir? You seem to
be on good terms with him.”
Mr. Chisholm did not know what to say, and so he looked around at
us for a solution. But the men all shook their heads and looked down
at the floor. They didn’t want anyone to act as Bob’s guardian, but
would rather that he should spend the money as he pleased. Finally
Bob came to the rescue.
“I will sign it with Mr. Chisholm, but with no one else,” said he. “This
lawyer knows more than we do.”
“And won’t you never ask my consent toward spending your
money?”
“No, sir; I never will.”
“Then I will sign it. Remember, Bob, there aint to be any foolishness
about this.”
Mr. Chisholm took the pen from the lawyer’s hand and signed his
name in bold characters, and although there was no occasion for
Bob’s signature in a legal point of view, the lawyer was afraid to
object to it, for there were too many pistols in the party.
“There, now; it is all right, and you’re master of that money,” said
Mr. Chisholm, drawing a long breath of relief. “Nobody can get it
away from us now. How much?”
“Ten dollars,” said the lawyer.
As Bob didn’t have any money, Henderson having taken all he had,
Mr. Chisholm counted out the ten dollars, after which he held out his
hand for the will. There was where he made another mistake. The
surrogate kept that will upon file, and then there was no chance of
its being lost, and anyone, years hence, if there happened to be any
legal points with regard to the disposition of this property, could
have the will to refer to. But Mr. Chisholm didn’t know that.
“I will take that document if you have got through with it,” said he.
“The will?” said the lawyer. “As soon as you go away I shall lock it
up. Then it will be safe.”
“You will, eh?”
In an instant his revolver was out and covering the lawyer’s head.
The other men sprang to their feet, but before they could make a
move they were held in check by four revolvers held in the hands of
our own party.
“I have just about submitted to all the nonsense I can stand with
regard to this will,” said Mr. Chisholm, in stern tones. “You made me
sign it as a guardeen when I aint got no business to, and now you
want to go and take the will away from us. Hand over that
document! One—two——”
 Probating the Will.
“There it is, and you can take it,” said the lawyer, turning white. “But
I tell you it won’t amount to anything as long as you have it in your
hands. There’s the notice of probate. You can take that down to the
bank with you, and that is all you want.”
“He is right, Mr. Chisholm,” said Bob, who seemed to keep all his wits
about him.
“Has he a right to take the will away from us?” demanded Mr.
Chisholm, in a stentorian voice.
“I have got wills here that were left by parties long before you ever
came to this country,” said the lawyer, turning to his safe.
“Not by a long sight you haven’t,” said Mr. Chisholm. “I want you to
understand that I have been in this country long before you ever
came out of a pettifogger’s office in the North. You can’t take that
will away, and that’s all about it.”
“Here is Jerry Wolfe’s,” said the lawyer, taking from his safe a big
bundle of papers all neatly endorsed as he had filed them away.
“You knew him, didn’t you?”
“Well—yes; and a right smart business man he was. Did his
guardeen leave his papers here?”
“His executor did, and that amounts to the same thing. And all those
in there are wills.”
“That may be law, but it isn’t justice,” said Mr. Chisholm, putting up
his revolver and stepping back; whereupon the men in his party,
who held their pistols in their hands, let down the hammers and
returned them to their cases. “Have you got done with us?”
“Yes, sir; we are all through.”
“Well, if you are right, I am sorry I pulled my revolver on you; if you
are wrong, I’m sorry I didn’t use it. You see, I never had any
experience before in proving wills, and I never want to have another,
unless I can have someone at my back who knows more than I do.”
“I assure you, it is all right,” said the lawyer; and, to show that he
was in earnest, he cordially shook hands with Mr. Chisholm. “You go
down to the bank, and if Mr. Wallace doesn’t say that it is all right,
I’ll make it so.”
I, for one, was glad to get out of reach of that surrogate’s office.
There was too much pulling of revolvers to suit me. I fell in behind
Mr. Chisholm, who led the way toward the bank.