' One doesn't really know how much one's
own experience does help other people. Living with others certainly does
affect them, but I don't feel sure that isolating oneself from others does.
I think, on the whole, that everyone must take his place in a circle. We
are limited by time and space and matter, you know. You can know and love a
dozen people; you can't know and love a hundred thousand to much purpose. I
remember when I was a boy that there was a run on a Bank where we lived.
Two of the partners went there, and did what they could. The third, a pious
fellow, shut himself up in his bedroom and prayed. The Bank was saved, and
he came down the next day and explained his absence by saying he had been
giving them the most effectual help in his power. He thought, I believe,
that he had saved the Bank; I don't think the other two men thought so, and
I am inclined to side with them. Mind, I am not deriding the idea of a
vocation for intercessory prayer. I don't know enough about the forces of
the world to do that. It's a harmless life, a beautiful life, and a hard
life too, and I won't say it is useless. But I am not convinced of its
usefulness. It seems to me on a par with the artistic life, a devotion to a
beautiful dream, I don't, on the whole, believe in art for art's sake, and
I don't think I believe in prayer for prayer's sake. But I don't propound
my ideas as final. I think it possible--I can't say more--that a life
devoted to the absorption of beautiful impressions may affect the
atmosphere of the world--we are bound up with each other behind the scenes
in mysterious ways--and similarly I think that lives of contemplative
prayer _may_ affect the world.
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