The San Juan islander. [volume] (Friday Harbor, Wash.) 1898-1914, 1903-09-17
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Rt@s 81 [P(yl1[7l1f

so angular, compared with the men
and women that we create out Of the
subtle element Of thought. The actual
society In which we live Is SO
mediocre, so lusterless, so wanting In
proportion, compared with the society
that we have lived with on the heights
Of ina gination, on the peaks where we
dream our fairest dreams. Now, this
servitude is an inevitable result Of an
unbalanced subjectivity, and the cure
for 1t is to get into the habit OF nv-
Ing less inside ourselves, and more out
side ourselves In the great world OF
nature, and in that yet more interest
ing world made up Of actual women
and actual men.
What we want to learn to do Is to
see things as they are, and to do 80
we must objectivlze our consciousness,
our life. Here for instance, Is a per-
son afflicted with what In England Is
so appropriately called "the hurries. /"
When in England people are in state
of great internal agitation, fretfulness,
nervousness or undue anxiety, they
say they have ''the hurries." So many
Of us have this malady Of disordered
and incoherent nerves. And this NAL
ady has it's roots in subjectivity. We
live too much within ourselves, and
this interior world Of ours, great
though it be, is far too small sphere
for the soul to realize it's infinite pos
sibilities and to attain its largest and
its richest life.
The secret Of calm, the secret OF a
balanced and an ordered mind, the Sc
cret of poise, is not Christian science;
1t Is the secret Of common sense, Of
living out in touch with nature, the
best Of all physicians, the most perfect
therapeutic and the most salubrious Of
all the forces that can minister to the
mind diseased or to the heart dis
tressed.
Here Is a woman who Is unhappy
In her marital relations. Her husband
Is a good man, plain, simple man,
like any one of thousand other men.
A little while ago she was quite hap
py In the possession of ''her man."
whom she voluntarily chose to be her
husband, "for better, for worse, for
richer, for poorer" and now she is dis
satisfied, restless, unhappy. Why?
The reason 1 think in the great ma
jority of instances is traceable to the
subjective disease of excessive ideali-
cation. She pictures to herself an
ideal man, in all things perfect, chlv-
alrous, gracious, tender, intellectual,
urbane, endowed with all the talents
and with all the charms, but she for
gets that this ideal man is not to be
found anywhere upon this planet
earth.
He Is the creature Of her dreams, a
pattern that exists only In the mount
of Imagination. And / believe that a
great deal of this sorrow Of the home
would be dispelled like mist before
a breeze If men and women were to
cease thinking so much Of the ideal
and to live more In the actual.
If instead of living so much within
ourselves with the ideal husband that
we have not married, or the ideal wife
that we have not married, we would,
while our young love was yet intense
and warm and strong, dedicate our
selves unreservedly to the actual man
or the actual woman we have married;
Ii we would say he Is not perfect, she
is not perfect, but shall do my best
to make him perfect, my best to make
her perfect, I am sure that an i'm
mense weight of sorrow would, by
this very simple process of objectivity,
be lifted from the heart Of the world
How, too, the GENERALIZATION OF
thought makes for freedom and cath
olicity in the matter of religion. One
Of the sad facts Of the world today,
as In all past days, is the fact of ex-
clusiveness in our religious life The
Protestant lives so exclusively In his
Professionalism that he will not see any
truth in Catholicism. The Catholic
lives so exclusively in his Catholicism
that he will not see any truth In Prot
estantism. And they are both honest,
both sincere. The Protestant is hon
est, sincere In his narowness; the
Catholic honest. sincere In his narrow
ness.
The trouble is they do not under
stand each other. They live too en-
tirely within themselves, within their
own notions, within their own creeds
and symbols, within the narrow con-
fine of their own church. And not
knowing each the others point of
view. not knowing each the others
belief, the others history, the others
contribution to civilization, they fear
and antagonize each the other
A nd III L.. ,aE,xlr- La