As a group, we are learning to come and go from each other. We have learned well not to lean—rather to anticipate the Law and leave the beloved when the tendency to cling becomes too keen.... There is a time to come and a time to go. I always think of the Master Jesus, leaving His disciples—saying that they would not find the Comforter within, if He remained with them always.
Shuk had much to do in bringing home to us this valuable concept. We had a way of thinking the world would come to us on the Lake Erie bluff. It would. It did. But we were getting fat and baronial; a bit fat of brain, perhaps.... Better than that, the gaunt, lean face forever at the window-panes of civilisation.... Comrades are always together. Big meetings, easy partings. One does not know how close he is to another, until their thoughts spark warm over a lot of mileage—the immortality of it all stealing in through the soft airs of night, perhaps.
I teach the young ones to stand alone at every chance. The idea is to make them penetrate for themselves, as swiftly as possible, the main tricks and illusions of matter; to make them see past any doubt that to be worldly-minded is to be inferior. Still they must see this for themselves. I formally renounced parentage in the case of the Little Girl. I take all my authority from the younger boys at frequent intervals—especially when they have been real mates:
"Don't advise with me," I tell them. "Show what you know about living.... Do it your way. If you begin to botch it, I'll come in and be a regular parent again, but the idea is to set you loose."
These matters come out naturally in relation to Shuk. He'll be surprised to read this. None of the young ones ever adequately credit the fact that I do a lot of sitting at their feet.... We could see the world as one piece better with Shuk in the room. His intense listening pulled my eyes constantly. He wanted to know about stories—about writing stories. His presence made us all better workmen because he was so zealous to become one. I had long been absorbed in the romantic side of world-politics, but Shuk decorated the subject with a new romance.... The farther away a country is, the more we know about it from a fiction standpoint. His mental forms are very strong. Shuk and I have practically covered the same run of thoughts in a morning's work—our machines a mile apart—no prearrangement. But this has worked out so often as to cease to be a novelty. The Little Girl's letters have often crossed with mine, carrying the same spiritual unfoldment—a four days' journey distant....
Another realisation related with Shuk's coming, is that I do not belong as the master of a school in the economic sense. There was much detail at Stonestudy, much householder's management required. I wouldn't have given it up, if I had been unable to do that part, but it was a waste of force—wretched economy for me to take charge of such affairs. We plan to support ourselves, but I cannot run a school, apportion tasks, or puzzle devotedly among the meshes of finance. This part of the work in California will doubtless be taken care of by those who do it well and profitably. There have been moments when I wanted to go among all the schools—happen in, stay an hour or a week—until the children and teachers forgot me, so I could find my own among the many.... But again it occurs to me that wiser plans than mine are behind it all. Those who are ready, come; numbers will take care of themselves; all we need to do is to make the most of the nearest, and keep up our song in such accord as we can in the midst of the world's sacrificial madness—many girls' voices now, for the war has plucked the boys....
Some of the things of Shuk's which I chose for this book were about the big war and are not profitable discussions now, but with his paper included in an earlier chapter, and one or two small things here, his quality can be seen. This is a letter to the Old Man:
... I haven't ceased to follow the Wars. Big one inside. Tremendous flights, dizzy careenings, impossible falls. Am tramping noisily through the forbidden garden of Books. Am becoming more and more vividly aware of Life, above actuality, beyond sorrow, interior to joy. Vital and thrilling peace to all your endeavours.... Enclosed a paragraph or two on tallying off the world-war within, with the world-war without:
Evil is stupid mixing of good things into in-harmony. Evil is simply ignorance. Ignorance does not fade away, but must be worked out, worn down. War is evil in this process. Man's higher nature is naturally at war with ignorance, manifesting in his lower nature. If man had always kept at this war against the domination of the lower self, he would never have needed another war to jar and jog him along. But man decided, in ignorance, that he had no cause for war with the lower self. This was his first illusion. The next mistake was natural. Man thought he would get rid of evil by killing off the lower selves of other men. All due to his first error in looking outside instead of in.
It's all wrong to think we must leave our own houses in order to fight the greatest battles conceivable. If we do not accept the fight within ourselves, we shall certainly have the same fight, once or twice removed, forced upon us....
Whatever portion of humankind is chastened and quickened by this big field-war and sea-war, is the first fruits of a nobler race. Man has had countless and continuous opportunities of doing this purifying process to himself in privacy and peace; instead, he has consistently, with rarest exceptions, used his will to serve the lesser self, or deal with the lesser selves of other men. Now, in these years, every man who failed, will learn the lesson, because it will be forced upon him. If our wisdom is not so great and old as we hope, if we have in the long past thrown away our chances, then we shall surely go out and fare as the others fare now—in exactly the right proportion.