Volume I Part 30 (1/2)
When we go away to think of anything, we never do think. We all talk of life. We all have some thought now. Let us tell it. C----, what is life?'
”C---- replied,--'It is to laugh, or cry, according to our organization.'
”'Good,' said Margaret, 'but not grave enough. Come, what is life? I know what I think; I want you to find out what you think.'
”Miss P. replied,--'Life is division from one's principle of life in order to a conscious reorganization. We are cut up by time and circ.u.mstance, in order to feel our reproduction of the eternal law.'
”Mrs. E.,--'We live by the will of G.o.d, and the object of life is to submit,' and went on into Calvinism.
”Then came up all the antagonisms of Fate and Freedom.
”Mrs. H. said,--'G.o.d created us in order to have a perfect sympathy from us as free beings.'
”Mrs. A.B. said she thought the object of life was to attain absolute freedom. At this Margaret immediately and visibly kindled.
”C.S. said,--'G.o.d creates from the fulness of life, and cannot but create; he created us to overflow, without being exhausted, because what he created, necessitated new creation.
It is not to make us happy, but creation is his happiness and ours.'
”Margaret was then pressed to say what she considered life to be.
”Her answer was so full, clear, and concise, at once, that it cannot but be marred by being drawn through the scattering medium of my memory. But here are some fragments of her satisfying statement.
”She began with G.o.d as Spirit, Life, so full as to create and love eternally, yet capable of pause. Love and creativeness are dynamic forces, out of which we, individually, as creatures, go forth bearing his image, that is, having within our being the same dynamic forces, by which we also add constantly to the total sum of existence, and shaking off ignorance, and its effects, and by becoming more ourselves, i.e., more divine;--destroying sin in its principle, we attain to absolute freedom, we return to G.o.d, conscious like himself, and, as his friends, giving, as well as receiving, felicity forevermore. In short, we become G.o.ds, and able to give the life which we now feel ourselves able only to receive.
”On Sat.u.r.day morning, Mrs. L.E. and Mrs. E.H. were present, and begged Margaret to repeat the statement concerning life, with which she closed the last conversation. Margaret said she had forgotten every word she said. She must have been inspired by a good genius, to have so satisfied everybody.--but the good genius had left her. She would try, however, to say what she thought, and trusted it would resemble what she had said already. She then went into the matter, and, true enough, she did not use a single word she used before.”
The fame of these conversations spread wide through all families and social circles of the ladies attending, and the golden report they gave, led to a proposal, that Margaret should undertake an evening cla.s.s, of four or five lessons, to which gentlemen should also be admitted. This was put in effect, in the course of the winter, and I had myself the pleasure of a.s.sisting at one--the second--of these soirees. The subject was Mythology, and several gentlemen took part in it. Margaret spoke well,--she could not otherwise,--but I remember that she seemed enc.u.mbered, or interrupted, by the headiness or incapacity of the men, whom she had not had the advantage of training, and who fancied, no doubt, that, on such a question, they, too, must a.s.sert and dogmatize.
But, how well or ill they fared, may still be known; since the same true hand which reported for the Ladies' Cla.s.s, drew up, at the time, the following note of the Evenings of Mythology. My distance from town, and engagements, prevented me from attending again. I was told that on the preceding and following evenings the success was more decisive.