Chapter XXXVI

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

　　"Come on, - I'll show you the real dirt," Brissenden said to him,one evening in January.They had dined together in San Francisco, and were at the FerryBuilding, returning to Oakland, when the whim came to him to showMartin the "real dirt." He turned and fled across the water-front,a meagre shadow in a flapping overcoat, with Martin straining tokeep up with him. At a wholesale liquor store he bought twogallon-demijohns of old port, and with one in each hand boarded aMission Street car, Martin at his heels burdened with severalquart-bottles of whiskey.If Ruth could see me now, was his thought, while he wondered as towhat constituted the real dirt."Maybe nobody will be there," Brissenden said, when they dismountedand plunged off to the right into the heart of the working-classghetto, south of Market Street. "In which case you'll miss whatyou've been looking for so long.""And what the deuce is that?" Martin asked."Men, intelligent men, and not the gibbering nonentities I foundyou consorting with in that trader's den. You read the books andyou found yourself all alone. Well, I'm going to show you to-nightsome other men who've read the books, so that you won't be lonelyany more.""Not that I bother my head about their everlasting discussions," hesaid at the end of a block. "I'm not interested in bookphilosophy. But you'll find these fellows intelligences and notbourgeois swine. But watch out, they'll talk an arm off of you onany subject under the sun.""Hope Norton's there," he panted a little later, resisting Martin'seffort to relieve him of the two demijohns. "Norton's an idealist- a Harvard man. Prodigious memory. Idealism led him tophilosophic anarchy, and his family threw him off. Father's arailroad president and many times millionnaire, but the son'sstarving in 'Frisco, editing an anarchist sheet for twenty-five amonth."Martin was little acquainted in San Francisco, and not at all southof Market; so he had no idea of where he was being led."Go ahead," he said; "tell me about them beforehand. What do theydo for a living? How do they happen to be here?""Hope Hamilton's there." Brissenden paused and rested his hands."Strawn-Hamilton's his name - hyphenated, you know - comes of oldSouthern stock. He's a tramp - laziest man I ever knew, thoughhe's clerking, or trying to, in a socialist cooperative store forsix dollars a week. But he's a confirmed hobo. Tramped into town.I've seen him sit all day on a bench and never a bite pass hislips, and in the evening, when I invited him to dinner - restauranttwo blocks away - have him say, 'Too much trouble, old man. Buy mea package of cigarettes instead.' He was a Spencerian like youtill Kreis turned him to materialistic monism. I'll start him onmonism if I can. Norton's another monist - only he affirms naughtbut spirit. He can give Kreis and Hamilton all they want, too.""Who is Kreis?" Martin asked."His rooms we're going to. One time professor - fired fromuniversity - usual story. A mind like a steel trap. Makes hisliving any old way. I know he's been a street fakir when he wasdown. Unscrupulous. Rob a corpse of a shroud - anything.Difference between him - and the bourgeoisie is that he robswithout illusion. He'll talk Nietzsche, or Schopenhauer, or Kant,or anything, but the only thing in this world, not excepting Mary,that he really cares for, is his monism. Haeckel is his little tingod. The only way to insult him is to take a slap at Haeckel.""Here's the hang-out." Brissenden rested his demijohn at theupstairs entrance, preliminary to the climb. It was the usual two-story corner building, with a saloon and grocery underneath. "Thegang lives here - got the whole upstairs to themselves. But Kreisis the only one who has two rooms. Come on."No lights burned in the upper hall, but Brissenden threaded theutter blackness like a familiar ghost. He stopped to speak toMartin."There's one fellow - Stevens - a theosophist. Makes a prettytangle when he gets going. Just now he's dish-washer in arestaurant. Likes a good cigar. I've seen him eat in a ten-centhash-house and pay fifty cents for the cigar he smoked afterward.I've got a couple in my pocket for him, if he shows up.""And there's another fellow - Parry - an Australian, a statisticianand a sporting encyclopaedia. Ask him the grain output of Paraguayfor 1903, or the English importation of sheetings into China for1890, or at what weight Jimmy Britt fought Battling Nelson, or whowas welter-weight champion of the United States in '68, and you'llget the correct answer with the automatic celerity of a slot-machine. And there's Andy, a stone-mason, has ideas on everything,a good chess-player; and another fellow, Harry, a baker, red hotsocialist and strong union man. By the way, you remember Cooks'and Waiters' strike - Hamilton was the chap who organized thatunion and precipitated the strike - planned it all out in advance,right here in Kreis's rooms. Did it just for the fun of it, butwas too lazy to stay by the union. Yet he could have risen high ifhe wanted to. There's no end to the possibilities in that man - ifhe weren't so insuperably lazy."Brissenden advanced through the darkness till a thread of lightmarked the threshold of a door. A knock and an answer opened it,and Martin found himself shaking hands with Kreis, a handsomebrunette man, with dazzling white teeth, a drooping black mustache,and large, flashing black eyes. Mary, a matronly young blonde, waswashing dishes in the little back room that served for kitchen anddining room. The front room served as bedchamber and living room.Overhead was the week's washing, hanging in festoons so low thatMartin did not see at first the two men talking in a corner. Theyhailed Brissenden and his demijohns with acclamation, and, on beingintroduced, Martin learned they were Andy and Parry. He joinedthem and listened attentively to the description of a prize-fightParry had seen the night before; while Brissenden, in his glory,plunged into the manufacture of a toddy and the serving of wine andwhiskey-and-sodas. At his command, "Bring in the clan," Andydeparted to go the round of the rooms for the lodgers."We're lucky that most of them are here," Brissenden whispered toMartin. "There's Norton and Hamilton; come on and meet them.Stevens isn't around, I hear. I'm going to get them started onmonism if I can. Wait till they get a few jolts in them andthey'll warm up."At first the conversation was desultory. Nevertheless Martin couldnot fail to appreciate the keen play of their minds. They were menwith opinions, though the opinions often clashed, and, though theywere witty and clever, they were not superficial. He swiftly saw,no matter upon what they talked, that each man applied thecorrelation of knowledge and had also a deep-seated and unifiedconception of society and the Cosmos. Nobody manufactured theiropinions for them; they were all rebels of one variety or another,and their lips were strangers to platitudes. Never had Martin, atthe Morses', heard so amazing a range of topics discussed. Thereseemed no limit save time to the things they were alive to. Thetalk wandered from Mrs. Humphry Ward's new book to Shaw's latestplay, through the future of the drama to reminiscences ofMansfield. They appreciated or sneered at the morning editorials,jumped from labor conditions in New Zealand to Henry James andBrander Matthews, passed on to the German designs in the Far Eastand the economic aspect of the Yellow Peril, wrangled over theGerman elections and Bebel's last speech, and settled down to localpolitics, the latest plans and scandals in the union labor partyadministration, and the wires that were pulled to bring about theCoast Seamen's strike. Martin was struck by the inside knowledgethey possessed. They knew what was never printed in the newspapers- the wires and strings and the hidden hands that made the puppetsdance. To Martin's surprise, the girl, Mary, joined in theconversation, displaying an intelligence he had never encounteredin the few women he had met. They talked together on Swinburne andRossetti, after which she led him beyond his depth into the by-paths of French literature. His revenge came when she defendedMaeterlinck and he brought into action the carefully-thought-outthesis of "The Shame of the Sun."Several other men had dropped in, and the air was thick withtobacco smoke, when Brissenden waved the red flag."Here's fresh meat for your axe, Kreis," he said; "a rose-whiteyouth with the ardor of a lover for Herbert Spencer. Make aHaeckelite of him - if you can."Kreis seemed to wake up and flash like some metallic, magneticthing, while Norton looked at Martin sympathetically, with a sweet,girlish smile, as much as to say that he would be amply protected.Kreis began directly on Martin, but step by step Norton interfered,until he and Kreis were off and away in a personal battle. Martinlistened and fain would have rubbed his eyes. It was impossiblethat this should be, much less in the labor ghetto south of Market.The books were alive in these men. They talked with fire andenthusiasm, the intellectual stimulant stirring them as he had seendrink and anger stir other men. What he heard was no longer thephilosophy of the dry, printed word, written by half-mythicaldemigods like Kant and Spencer. It was living philosophy, withwarm, red blood, incarnated in these two men till its very featuresworked with excitement. Now and again other men joined in, and allfollowed the discussion with cigarettes going out in their handsand with alert, intent faces.Idealism had never attracted Martin, but the exposition it nowreceived at the hands of Norton was a revelation. The logicalplausibility of it, that made an appeal to his intellect, seemedmissed by Kreis and Hamilton, who sneered at Norton as ametaphysician, and who, in turn, sneered back at them asmetaphysicians. Phenomenon and Noumenon were bandied back andforth. They charged him with attempting to explain consciousnessby itself. He charged them with word-jugglery, with reasoning fromwords to theory instead of from facts to theory. At this they wereaghast. It was the cardinal tenet of their mode of reasoning tostart with facts and to give names to the facts.When Norton wandered into the intricacies of Kant, Kreis remindedhim that all good little German philosophies when they died went toOxford. A little later Norton reminded them of Hamilton's Law ofParsimony, the application of which they immediately claimed forevery reasoning process of theirs. And Martin hugged his knees andexulted in it all. But Norton was no Spencerian, and he, too,strove for Martin's philosophic soul, talking as much at him as tohis two opponents."You know Berkeley has never been answered," he said, lookingdirectly at Martin. "Herbert Spencer came the nearest, which wasnot very near. Even the stanchest of Spencer's followers will notgo farther. I was reading an essay of Saleeby's the other day, andthe best Saleeby could say was that Herbert Spencer nearlysucceeded in answering Berkeley.""You know what Hume said?" Hamilton asked. Norton nodded, butHamilton gave it for the benefit of the rest. "He said thatBerkeley's arguments admit of no answer and produce no conviction.""In his, Hume's, mind," was the reply. "And Hume's mind was thesame as yours, with this difference: he was wise enough to admitthere was no answering Berkeley."Norton was sensitive and excitable, though he never lost his head,while Kreis and Hamilton were like a pair of cold-blooded savages,seeking out tender places to prod and poke. As the evening grewlate, Norton, smarting under the repeated charges of being ametaphysician, clutching his chair to keep from jumping to hisfeet, his gray eyes snapping and his girlish face grown harsh andsure, made a grand attack upon their position."All right, you Haeckelites, I may reason like a medicine man, but,pray, how do you reason? You have nothing to stand on, youunscientific dogmatists with your positive science which you arealways lugging about into places it has no right to be. Longbefore the school of materialistic monism arose, the ground wasremoved so that there could be no foundation. Locke was the man,John Locke. Two hundred years ago - more than that, even in his'Essay concerning the Human Understanding,' he proved the non-existence of innate ideas. The best of it is that that isprecisely what you claim. To-night, again and again, you haveasserted the non-existence of innate ideas."And what does that mean? It means that you can never knowultimate reality. Your brains are empty when you are born.Appearances, or phenomena, are all the content your minds canreceive from your five senses. Then noumena, which are not in yourminds when you are born, have no way of getting in - ""I deny - " Kreis started to interrupt."You wait till I'm done," Norton shouted. "You can know only thatmuch of the play and interplay of force and matter as impinges inone way or another on our senses. You see, I am willing to admit,for the sake of the argument, that matter exists; and what I amabout to do is to efface you by your own argument. I can't do itany other way, for you are both congenitally unable to understand aphilosophic abstraction.""And now, what do you know of matter, according to your ownpositive science? You know it only by its phenomena, itsappearances. You are aware only of its changes, or of such changesin it as cause changes in your consciousness. Positive sciencedeals only with phenomena, yet you are foolish enough to strive tobe ontologists and to deal with noumena. Yet, by the verydefinition of positive science, science is concerned only withappearances. As somebody has said, phenomenal knowledge cannottranscend phenomena.""You cannot answer Berkeley, even if you have annihilated Kant, andyet, perforce, you assume that Berkeley is wrong when you affirmthat science proves the non-existence of God, or, as much to thepoint, the existence of matter. - You know I granted the reality ofmatter only in order to make myself intelligible to yourunderstanding. Be positive scientists, if you please; but ontologyhas no place in positive science, so leave it alone. Spencer isright in his agnosticism, but if Spencer - "But it was time to catch the last ferry-boat for Oakland, andBrissenden and Martin slipped out, leaving Norton still talking andKreis and Hamilton waiting to pounce on him like a pair of houndsas soon as he finished."You have given me a glimpse of fairyland," Martin said on theferry-boat. "It makes life worth while to meet people like that.My mind is all worked up. I never appreciated idealism before.Yet I can't accept it. I know that I shall always be a realist. Iam so made, I guess. But I'd like to have made a reply to Kreisand Hamilton, and I think I'd have had a word or two for Norton. Ididn't see that Spencer was damaged any. I'm as excited as a childon its first visit to the circus. I see I must read up some more.I'm going to get hold of Saleeby. I still think Spencer isunassailable, and next time I'm going to take a hand myself."But Brissenden, breathing painfully, had dropped off to sleep, hischin buried in a scarf and resting on his sunken chest, his bodywrapped in the long overcoat and shaking to the vibration of thepropellers.