The Hive

by Will Levington Comfort

The original idea was to use the title, The Hive, in relation to the happy intensity of Stonestudy days, but our ideal grew to adapt to the name, because of its revelations in regard to the new social order; the pure and instant abnegation of the self to the community; the active acceptance of the precept: That which is good for the one is good for the many, and that which is good for the many is good for the one.

We cannot lose ourselves long in our own misery when we realise the glory of yesterday, and the more spacious solar adventure of to-morrow. We cannot continue to feel our own isolation when we perceive a brother in the eye of a stranger, when we perceive the sons of God in the eyes of passing men. At length appears the task ahead—the great Fatherland, the Planetary Hive.

I have taken the hint from the new race children, that to transcend pain we must make joy of it. Given the hint, one realises that the masters of all ages have told the same story—how to make light of human shadow, how to make lustrous our own darkness. No matter what science says to the contrary, the quest for the Absolute means the same thing; this is the marriage at Cana, the turning of water into wine; this is the passion of the ancient alchemists, to transmute base metals into gold; this is healing; this is regeneration.

To make joy out of pain is still more: it is power for world's work; it is the light that one carries among men; it is the fire that makes man remembered by his fellows, that makes man significant in any task. It is loss of the sense of self; the death of the lower for the birth of the higher life; the subjugation of three-score-and-ten for immortality; an adios to the hands that cling, for the stride and rhythm of the Great Companions on the long road. It is not for the saint any more than for the soldier, not for the sage any more than for the politician, not for the poet any more than for the parent. It is not piety, it is power. One learns it best from the children. One becomes as a little child in learning it well.

We are learning rapidly these days. These are the days of humanity's passion and pilgrimage. The soul of humanity is passing along the dusty roads of Palestine, for the healing of its own weaknesses, the casting out of its own demons. One who is not carrying a part of the world burdens now, as well as his personal pack, seems forgotten of the gods. It has come to many of us that we dare not take more than a glimpse of our own allotted happiness—that we may not have more than a touch of the beloved's hand in these days of parturition everywhere.

But personally and nationally we shall come to that significant crossing where nothing else can be taken from us, where death seems the highest boon, and Master Pain has driven home his most pointed shaft.

That is the moment of laughter. Driven to the last ditch we turn and laugh. That is the moment of our expansion for a new kind of heroism. One builds from that deep hour.

The ultimate secret is not to identify oneself with that which changes. When these objects shift or break down, or some one takes them away, we suffer the old savage rent. The day comes when we disentangle from the final mesh of possession—cease the idolatry of things; then, and only then, are we rich—possessing the spirit and essence of all things, tallying the universe within according to its objective arrangements with the universe without.

Finally, to master the world, one must learn actually to enjoy the mutation of material things, as one of an audience watches the movements on the stage. No longer torn here and there in the small fury of detached affairs, one laughs richly at the progress of the Play. Possessing the spirit of all things within, he realises that nothing he has can really be taken away. No longer identifying himself with material objects, he is at last in touch with the perfect and changeless archetypes. This dispassion, so difficult to reach, at last extends over all world-forms. One ceases to love bodies; one loves souls. The son at the front, the daughter taken to a different house, the empty seat at the table, crash of finance or romance—all but a passing of symbols—Godspeed and a smile. Bit by bit the valiant reaches that profound and almost divine indifference to the external, having bound himself to the real, the enduring, the inner cosmos.