_ I'm taking up Bergson this week.
Next week I'm going to take up Etruscan
vases and the Montessori system.
Oh, no, I haven't lost my interest in sociology.
Only the other night we went down in the auto
and watch the bread line.
Of course, one can take up TOO MANY things.
It's the spirit in which you take up a thing that
counts.
Sometimes I think the spirit in which you take
a thing up counts more than the thing itself -- counts
in its effect on you, you know.
Of course, the way to get the real meaning out
of any thing is to put yourself in a receptive attitude.
In serious things the attitude counts for everything.
One mustn't scoff.
If you look seriously and scientifically you'll'
see there's a great deal more than you suspected
in all this affinity and soul mate craze, for instance.
Not that I care much for the words "soul mate"
and "affinity" particularly; they have been so
VULGARIZED, somehow.
The Best People don't use those terms any more.
Psychic harmony is the new term.
The loveliest man explained all about it to us the
other day. I belong to a Little Group of Thinkers,
who take a serious interest in these things, you
know.
We are trying to find out how to make our
psychic powers count for the betterment of the
world. I am very psychic. Some are now.
This man had the most interesting eyes and the
silkiest beard, and he said his aura was pink.
If he should meet a girl, you know, with an aura
just the shade of pink that his aura is, why then
they would know they were in psychic harmony.
Simple, isn't it? But then all truly great ideas
ARE simple, aren't they?
But if his aura was blue, and her aura was yellow,
then, of course, they would quarrel. That's
what makes so much domestic unhappiness.
But he said something that gave me the most
frightfully insecure feeling.
He said the aura CHANGES its color as the soul progresses.
Two people may be in harmony today, and both
have pink auras, and in a year hers may be green
and his golden.
What desperate chances a woman takes when
she marries, doesn't she?
I sometimes think life must have been a much
more comfortable thing before the world got to
be so terribly advanced.
But, of course, it is our duty to sacrifice personal
comfort for the future of the race and the
betterment of the world.
As I was looking at the bread line the thought
came to me that the chief difference between this
advanced age and other ages was in the fact that
people today are willing to take a serious interest
in such things.
People are willing to sacrifice themselves today,
you know.
It is food for optimism, don't you think?
Not that I was really so uncomfortable in the
auto, you know. I had on my new mink coat. _