Henry Miller
Children of the Earth
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This essay by Henry Miller originally appeared in the July 1959 edition of The London Magazine.
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After an absence of thirteen years certain aspects of France stand out like fragments of a forgotten dream. It is particularly refreshing to observe the remarkable behaviour and apparent contentment, often with little, of French children. Wise beyond their years, they seem no less joyous on that account.
In France one realises immediately that one is living in a world of adults; the children take second place. With us, as everyone knows, the children seem to come first. As a result we have men and women who have never matured, who are eternally dissatisfied, and who have no real respect for anything, least of all for one another. Is not much of the morbid, frenetic activity of the American traceable to the restlessness and discontent of childhood? The needless destruction and reconstruction which is constantly going on, presumably in the name of progress, is of a pattern with the behaviour of the spoiled child who, weary of his building blocks, destroys with a sweep of the hand what he has struggled for hours to create. The only valid reality with us seems to be that of the kindergarten.
We bewail the role of the mother in America, her domination in all spheres of activity, but is it not the result of the abdication of the male? If the man is nothing but a worker and provider is it not inevitable that the woman take over the reins? To the American woman the male, whether husband, son or lover, is a creature to be bullied, exploited and traduced.
The visitor to France cannot help but be impressed by the smiling look of the land. Love of the soil is an expression which still has meaning here. Everywhere there is evident the touch of the human hand; it is a constant, patient, loving attention which the French give to their soil. Indeed, one is almost tempted to say that it is love of soil rather than love of country or love for one’s neighbour which dominates.
Chez nous the hand is almost defunct. Wherever it is possible to use the machine the hand is replaced by this monster which performs the most prodigious labours, miracles often, but at what a cost! The ruthless exploitation of the soil, in America, is now a familiar story everywhere, but the tragedy of it has not fully penetrated the consciousness of the European. He too would like to use the machine to the fullest – but without paying the price exacted of us. He would like to reap the benefits of the machine age without sacrificing his traditional mode of life, which of course is an utter impossibility.
Every time I venture out into the world I find myself asking if people really want to change.
As one who has enjoyed the benefits of two utterly different worlds, what never ceases to cause me bewilderment is the seeming impossibility of one country to bestow its virtues upon another, or to exchange them, were better said. At a time when communication is no longer a problem, when it takes only a matter of hours to travel from one end of the world to another, the barriers between peoples, between so-called ‘free peoples’, are stronger than ever. Despite the Marshall Plan, despite the steady invasion of hordes of tourists, despite the existence of radio and television, despite the perpetual threat of war, it seems to me that French and Americans have less in common today than prior to 1914. What, to be honest, have we imbibed of French culture, or the art of living? Almost nothing, I would say. Whatever seeps through is arrested on the intellectual plane; the populace remains immune.
As for France, what has she in the way of comforts – which is about all we have to offer of value? To me it is as if nothing had changed since I left in 1939. I see no radical change in the French way of life. All the so-called comforts and improvements which Americans are endlessly striving to create – and in the process making themselves wretched and uncomfortable! – are missing here. Everything is still antiquated and complicated. Nothing gets done with dispatch and efficiency.
It must seem strange that one who so heartily despises the American way of life should remark on the un-American aspects of French life, but what I deplore are half measures. The French do not despise comfort, they envy us it; they admire efficiency but are temperamentally unsuited, it would seem, to practise it. An inexplicable inertia seems to hold them in its grip. ‘Français, encore un tout petit effort!’ I sometimes say to my intimate French friends. It is what the divine Marquis urged after the fall of the Bastille.
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Every time I venture out into the world I find myself asking if people really want to change. It is so very rare to find an individual who is content with his mode of life. Even the great souls appear to be disturbed, if not by reason of their own shortcomings then because of humanity’s sad lot. Those who have surmounted these problems, or transcended them, are virtually unknown to us; they are already living in the world of the future. It is interesting to reflect that, could one question these isolated spirits, these mages, sages or saints, the answer would probably be: ‘Accept the world as it is!’ Only through complete acceptance, they would insist, does one arrive at emancipation.
But it is not emancipation that the great majority seeks. When pressed, most men will admit that it takes but little to be happy. (Not that they practise this wisdom!) Man craves happiness here on earth, not fulfilment, not emancipation. Are they utterly deluded, then, in seeking happiness? No, happiness is desirable, but it is a by-product, the result of a way of life, not a goal which is forever beyond one’s grasp. Happiness is achieved en route. And if it be ephemeral, as most men believe, it can also give way, not to anxiety or despair, but to a joyousness which is serene and lasting. To make happiness the goal is to kill it in advance. If one must have a goal, which is questionable, why not self-realisation? The unique and healing quality in this attitude toward life is that in the process goal and seeker become one.
Reflections of this order are most frequently dismissed as being mystical. They are not, of course. They are of the very essence of reality. Nor are there a dozen different kinds of reality. There is but one, the reality of life, a reality which is shot through with truth. It is not to drown myself in the bogs of mysticism or metaphysics that I make use of such moot terms as reality and truth. There is something which endures, something which underlies and gives meaning to daily life, and it is in connection with this ever-present fund of creation that such terms have significance. That we have made of them empty symbols to be juggled by theologians and metaphysicians is to acknowledge that we have bled life of all meaning.
To condemn the whole structure of society does have a ring of madness.
There are moments in human history when, through lack of faith, lack of vision, man becomes identified with the frightening forces of chaos. Identified, let me add, not in a grandiose way but pitiably, like a vain sacrifice. Faced as we are today with possible annihilation, where is the ark, and with whom can a covenant be made? The catastrophe which menaces us, moreover, comes not from on high, but from man’s own thoughts and deeds. He is begging for destruction at his own hands.
Either we are at this awesome point in time or the destruction which threatens has been grossly exaggerated. In any case the decision which each one now makes for himself will determine the swing of the pendulum.
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I have often been criticised and ridiculed as a prophet of doom. It is true that hope is not a word to which I attach great importance. Nor even faith, in the sense of belief. Now and then, like the prophets of old, I have gone so far as to exult over the approaching doom. It was not man I condemned, however, but his way of life. For if there is one power which man indubitably possesses – have we not had proof of it again and again? – it is the power to alter one’s way of life. It is perhaps man’s only power.
To condemn the whole structure of society does have a ring of madness. More particularly when nothing tangible, nothing specific, nothing remotely resembling a panacea, is proffered. To urge, like the men of old – ‘Look to thyself!’ – is to invite ridicule. One can understand why five-year, ten-year, twenty-year programmes are more palatable. One can also understand why it is easier to accept the theory of man’s snail-like development than to invoke the advent of the miraculous. But which is more life-like, more fecundating – to regard oneself as the sport of an evolutionary hypothesis, and resign oneself to the march of time, or act as a responsible, creative being who, whatever the risk, is willing to assume the consequences of his acts?
The old man, ancestral man, is on his way out. Man has no age, except in the eyes of anthropologists. There is the man of yesterday and the man of tomorrow. Time plays no part in the quickening of the spirit. The gate is ever open. Today is like all other days. There is only today.
The impasse in which we now find ourselves is the result of looking two ways simultaneously. Perhaps there is no way out. But there may be a way in, a way back to the source of life. Of what use to raise the question of security, or even of survival? Who would want to live amidst the ruins of his world?
In penning these last words a hideous truth suddenly assaults me. Has man not been living amidst the ruins of this world for millennia? Go back as far as you will, you will meet only with the evidences of his abortive efforts. Man, as man, has never realised himself. The greater part of him, his potential being, has always been submerged. What is history if not the endless story of his repeated failures?
Man has his being not in a vacuum of historical facts but in a realm of magic and mystery. Only in the myth does he have the courage to acknowledge the glory of his origin, the power of his spirit.
Again and again it has been pointed out that there is no issue on the historical level. No genuine solutions are possible through political, social or economic changes, nor even through moral transformations. The only level on which a vital, meaningful change may take place is the level of spirit. To be regenerate means that one may travel back to the source, recover the creative powers with which to meet all problems. In the eternal trigon – God, Man, World – we have the three fundamental aspects of creation. Man is the measure of all three. He is that which he has named God and put beyond him. He is the world in all its multifarious aspects. But he is not yet man in that he refuses to accept the conditions of his sovereignty. By his refusal to live to the fullest he brings about the death of God and the utter meaninglessness of the world in which he finds himself.
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After all that man has suffered and endured throughout the ages it seems scarcely possible to believe that any fresh catastrophe, however terrible, however widespread, will cause him to alter his ways. His proclivity to submit, to bend the back – a proneness to abdicate, one might call it – seems inexhaustible. A thoroughly crucified being, he chooses to revolve on the wheel of hope and longing. The astounding variety of disorders – physical, mental and social – which now ravage human kind would indicate that it is the soul of man which is in revolt. For all his ills the only counsel that is offered him is: ‘Dog, return to your vomit!’
Of one thing he is now certain, that hell is not in some hereafter but here on earth, and that it is he, and he alone, who has made it such.
The whole activity of the race now seems to have but one end – to make life more and more the agony which it has become. Whether one functions separately or collectively, harmoniously or otherwise, the end points to disaster. Revolt has become meaningless. Man is in revolt against himself. How can he overthrow himself?
To die in root, seed and flower – that is man’s seeming purpose.
Life is not the tool of death. Life seeks ever to manifest itself more abundantly. It is not death, moreover, that man fears; it is the thought that he may cease to be. It is only when we give up that death takes over. Death is not the end of life, much less the goal. It is but another aspect of life. There is nothing but life, even among the dead.
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I come back to the children, the children of the world who have done nothing to bring about the present gruesome condition of things. As a father or mother one must hang one’s head in shame. Even the best of parents are condemned to look on helplessly. What about the fate of our children … is there nothing to be done for them? If there were still a spark of mercy, still a grain of intelligence, left in the human race, would it not be possible, even at this late hour, to do something about the plight of our progeny? Is there not a domain, a haven of safety, somewhere in this wide, wide world where the children of all the peoples of the earth could be gathered and protected against the folly and stupidity of their elders?
To rouse the sluggish minds of adults to such a point of awareness is in itself an almost insuperable task. But even more difficult, assuming that this might be accomplished, would be the task of getting them to agree as to how their young should be reared and by whom. In their present state of madness one is inclined to suspect that they would rather the young perished with them than risk the possibility of seeing them grow up into fearless, independent-minded, peace-loving individuals. Any solution, indeed, which envisages a separate fate for our children must seem, at the moment, utterly chimerical. That children have a special claim to life, a life uncontaminated by the vicious influence of their elders, is still unthinkable. A simple peasant, threatened with calamity, has sense enough to make provision for his seed, but the race as a whole, faced with its own imminent destruction, lacks the will and the wisdom to provide against the day of destruction. To die in root, seed and flower – that is man’s seeming purpose.
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Confronted with the naked horror of the world as one knows it today, I relive the anguish, the melancholy, the despair which I knew as a young man. The vacation which I had hoped to enjoy by going abroad has become an ordeal of a strange, intangible sort. Viewing the world as would a visitor from another planet, I have become involved once again in the throes of universal torment. As a young man, brash, impulsive, ridden with ideals, I came close to being annihilated by the sorrow and misery which surrounded me on all sides. To do something for my fellow man, to help deliver him, became my personal affair. Like every fanatical idealist, I ended by making my own life so miserable and complicated that soon all my time, all my efforts, all my ingenuity, were consumed in the mere struggle to survive. Though speedily disillusioned as to my own powers, I never became indifferent to the plight of those about me. It did appear to me, however, that something like a stubborn refusal to be aided was inherent in man’s nature. In the process of saving my own skin I gained a little wisdom, a greater sense of reality, and a compassion which stilled the senseless conflicts that had ravaged me.
Years later, many years later, in a manner altogether providential, I found myself living the life I had always desired to live, as a member of a small community, seemingly isolated and apart from the world. In these last years at Big Sur I have tasted to the full the bitterness of Hell and the delights of Paradise. Above all, I found a place in my own native land which I could call ‘home’.
Living in this remote corner of the world, I came to discover that one can be ‘out of the world’, as they say, yet closer to the earth and to all creation. It never occurred to me that I had deserted the ranks. On the contrary, I had the impression that for the first time in my life I was giving myself the chance to live the life which every sincere, sensitive, well-meaning individual desires to live.
Living apart and at peace with myself, I came to realise more vividly the meaning of the doctrine of acceptance. To refrain from giving advice, to refrain from meddling in the affairs of others, to refrain, even though the motives be the highest, from tampering with another’s way of life – so simple, yet so difficult for an active spirit! Hands off! Yet not to grow indifferent, nor refuse aid when it is sincerely demanded. Living thus, practising this simple way of life, strange things occurred; some might call them miraculous. And from the most unexpected quarters astonishing, most instructive lessons…
And all the while an obsessive desire was shaping itself, namely, to lead the anonymous life. The significance of this urge I can explain simply – to eradicate the zealot and the preacher in myself. ‘Kill the Buddha!’ the Zen master is known to say occasionally. Kill the futile striving, is the thought. Do not put the Buddha (or the Christ) beyond, outside yourself. Recognise him in yourself. Be that which you are – completely.
Before it is possible to love one another, it is necessary to respect one another, respect the privacy of the soul.
Naturally, when one attains to this state of awareness, there is no need, no urge, to convert the other to one’s way of thinking. It is not even necessary, as Vivekananda once phrased it, to go about doing good. The unknown Buddhas, those who preceded Gautama, he asserted, made no stir in the world. They were content to shed the light which was in them. Their sole purpose in living was to live, to live each day as if life were a blessing and not an ordeal or a curse.
To such emancipated souls what difference could it make in what circumstances they found themselves? To them Paradise was not associated with a remote and isolated corner of the earth, any more than in a beyond. nor was it to be attained, as a state of mind, through an austere and singular manner of living. They were free in every sense of the word. It mattered not what role they adopted or were obliged to live out. Even to live the life of a slave could hold no terror for them. They were in the world and of it, utterly. They renounced nothing; they made no distinctions; they counselled nothing. They were, and that was sufficient.
It was the example of these blessed ones which undoubtedly inspired the ‘saviours’. For these active spirits, however, the light of truth proved not only blinding but shattering. In ways unpremeditated and unforeseen they activated the soul of man. And in their wake strife and conflict multiplied. Man was not regenerated, not made over: he became the battleground of darker, more disturbing forces.
And so, regardless of their heroic behaviour, regardless of their sublime motives, I have come to regard such activity as indefensible. Even from the purest of motives one has not the right to ‘molest’ another. The effort to bring a man to God, or to bring him enlightenment, is an act of violation. It is even more reprehensible than to subjugate him bodily. Does not the whole art of living centre about the practice of tolerance, of non-interference? Before it is possible to love one another, as we are so often enjoined, it is necessary to respect one another, respect the privacy of the soul.
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To come back to Big Sur, to my new-found freedom, my inner peace, my sense of at-homeness and at-oneness… Is it selfish of me to try to preserve it? Is it anything which can be preserved, indeed? Can it be shared? And to whom would it have meaning, the meaning which it has assumed for me?
When all is said I nevertheless concede that as long as I continue to write I remain perforce a propagandist. Only one kind of writing have I ever found which is devoid of this lamentable element – and that is the Japanese haiku. It is a form of poetry limited to so many syllables wherein the poet expresses his love, usually of nature, without making comparisons, without the use of superlatives. He tells only what is, or how it is. The effect, upon the Western reader at least, is usually one of jubilation. It is as if a weight had been taken from his shoulders. He feels absolved. ‘Amen!’ is all he can exclaim.
To live one’s life in this spirit which informs the haiku strikes me as an ultimate. Even to voice the thought is to negate all I have written. Perhaps I am approaching that point (of illumination) which made Thomas Aquinas exclaim upon his death-bed: ‘All I have written now seems to me like so much straw.’
A new heaven and a new earth! Can they not be ushered in without slaughter and destruction? Can we not bring the machine to a halt, declare a moral holiday, as it were, and with a fresh new vision establish order, harmony, justice, peace? How much that is rotten and useless can be done away with by merely letting go! The greatest revolutions known to man had their inception in moments of silence. The inventions and discoveries, the visions and prophecies, all had their birth in moments of quiet. What was it that spoke? Whence these thoughts which again and again change the face of the earth? Travail there must be, assuredly, but a travail of the womb, in darkness and certitude.
Let us voice the thought openly: man will not perish from the earth! At the darkest hour his eyes will be opened. The earth and the fullness thereof are his, but not to destroy. Jehovah made that forever clear in answering Job.
But how much farther into the darkness must we descend?
In no celestial register is it written how far we must go nor how much we must endure. It is we, we ourselves, who decide. For some the darkest hour is already past; for others it may still be far off. We are all in the one pot, yet it is not the same pot for all. Our fate lies precisely in the ability to distinguish the endless transformations which this vessel of life – la condition humaine – is capable of undergoing. They who speak of it as one and the same speak the language of doom. Creator and creation are one and indivisible.
Whoever has experienced the oneness of life and the joy of life knows that to be is the all. ‘Ripeness is all,’ said Shakespeare. It is the same thing.
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Henry Miller was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist.
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