第 57 页

one of his greatest oratorical triumphs with the theme of "The meek shall

inherit the earth."

At this period he began to acquire friends. He liked to speak of faith and he

found those who liked to listen. Only, he discovered that the bright, the

strong, the able boys of his class felt no need of listening, felt no need of

him at all. But the suffering and ill-endowed came to him. Drippy Munn began to

follow him about with the silent devotion of a dog. Billy Wilson lost his

mother, and came wandering to the Toohey house in the evenings, to sit with

Ellsworth on the porch, listening, shivering once in a while, saying nothing,

his eyes wide, dry and pleading. Skinny Dix got infantile paralysis--and would

lie in bed, watching the street corner beyond the window, waiting for Ellsworth.

Rusty Hazelton failed to pass in his grades, and sat for many hours, crying,

with Ellsworth’s cold, steady hand on his shoulder. It was never clear whether

they all discovered Ellsworth or Ellsworth discovered them. It seemed to work

more like a law of nature: as nature allows no vacuum, so pain and Ellsworth

Toohey drew each other. His rich, beautiful voice said to them: "It’s good to

suffer. Don’t complain. Bear, bow, accept--and be grateful that God has made you

suffer. For this makes you better than the people who are laughing and happy. If

you don’t understand this, don’t try to understand. Everything bad comes from

the mind, because the mind asks too many questions. It is blessed to believe,

not to understand. So if you didn’t get passing grades, be glad of it. It means

that you are better than the smart boys who think too much and too easily."

People said it was touching, the way Ellsworth’s friends clung to him. After

they had taken him for a while, they could not do without him. It was like a

drug habit.

Ellsworth was fifteen, when he astonished the Bible-class teacher by an odd

question. The teacher had been elaborating upon the text: "What shall it profit

258

a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Ellsworth

asked: "Then in order to be truly wealthy, a man should collect souls?" The

teacher was about to ask him what the hell did he mean, but controlled himself

and asked what did he mean. Ellsworth would not elucidate.

At the age of sixteen, Ellsworth lost interest in religion. He discovered

socialism. His transition shocked Aunt Adeline. "In the first place, it is

blasphemous and drivel," she said. "In the second place, it doesn’t make sense.

I’m surprised at you, Elsie. ’The poor in spirit’--that was fine, but just ’the

poor’--that doesn’t sound respectable at all. Besides it’s not like you. You’re

not cut out to make big trouble--only little trouble. Something’s crazy

somewhere, Elsie. It just don’t fit. It’s not like you at all."

"In the first place, my dear aunt," he answered, "don’t call me Elsie. In the

second place, you’re wrong."

The change seemed good for Ellsworth. He did not become an aggressive zealot. He

became gentler, quieter, milder. He became more attentively considerate of

people. It was as if something had taken the nervous edges off his personality

and given him new confidence. Those around him began to like him. Aunt Adeline

stopped worrying. Nothing actual seemed to come of his preoccupation with

revolutionary theories. He joined no political party. He read a great deal and

he attended a few dubious meetings, where he spoke once or twice, not too well,

but mostly sat in a corner, listening, watching, thinking.

Ellsworth went to Harvard. His mother had willed her life insurance for that

specific purpose. At Harvard his scholastic record was superlative. He majored

in history. Aunt Adeline had expected to see him go in for economics and

sociology; she half feared that he would end up as a social worker. He didn’t.

He became absorbed in literature and the fine arts. It baffled her a little; it

was a new trait in him; he had never shown any particular tendency in that

direction. "You’re not the arty kind, Elsie," she stated. "It don’t fit."

"You’re wrong, auntie," he said.

Ellsworth’s relations with his fellow students were the most unusual of his

achievements at Harvard. He made himself accepted. Among the proud young

descendants of proud old names, he did not hide the fact of his humble

background; he exaggerated it. He did not tell them that his father was the

manager of a shoe store; "he said that his father was a shoe cobbler. He said it

without defiance, bitterness or proletarian arrogance; he said it as if it were

a joke on him and--if one looked closely into his smile--on them. He acted like

a snob; not a flagrant snob, but a natural, innocent one who tries very hard not

to be snobbish. He was polite, not in the manner of one seeking favor, but in

the manner of one granting it. His attitude was contagious. People did not

question the reasons of his superiority; they took it for granted that such

reasons existed. It became amusing, at first, to accept "Monk" Toohey; then it

became distinctive and progressive. If this was a victory Ellsworth did not seem

conscious of it as such; he did not seem to care. He moved among all these

unformed youths, with the assurance of a man who has a plan, a long-range plan

set in every detail, and who can spare nothing but amusement for the small

incidentals on his way. His smile had a secret, closed quality, the smile of a

shopkeeper counting profits--even though nothing in particular seemed to be

happening.

He did not talk about God and the nobility of suffering. He talked about the

masses. He proved to a rapt audience, at bull sessions lasting till dawn, that

religion bred selfishness; because, he stated, religion overemphasized the

importance of the individual spirit; religion preached nothing but a single

259

concern--the salvation of one’s own soul.

"To achieve virtue in the absolute sense," said Ellsworth Toohey, "a man must be

willing to take the foulest crimes upon his soul--for the sake of his brothers.

To mortify the flesh is nothing. To mortify the soul is the only act of virtue.

So you think you love the broad mass of mankind? You know nothing of love. You

give two bucks to a strike fund and you think you’ve done your duty? You poor

fools! No gift is worth a damn, unless it’s the most precious thing you’ve got.

Give your soul. To a lie? Yes, if others believe it. To deceit? Yes, if others

need it. To treachery, knavery, crime? Yes! To whatever it is that seems lowest

and vilest in your eyes. Only when you can feel contempt for your own priceless

little ego, only then can you achieve the true, broad peace of selflessness, the

merging of your spirit with the vast collective spirit of mankind. There is no

room for the love of others within the tight, crowded miser’s hole of a private

ego. Be empty in order to be filled. ’He that loveth his life shall lose it; and

he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.’ The

opium peddlers of the church had something there, but they didn’t know what they

had. Self-abnegation? Yes, my friends, by all means. But one doesn’t abnegate by

keeping one’s self pure and proud of its own purity. The sacrifice that includes

the destruction of one’s soul--ah, but what am I talking about? This is only for

heroes to grasp and to achieve."

He did not have much success among the poor boys working their way through

college. He acquired a sizable following among the young heirs, the second and

third generation millionaires. He offered them an achievement of which they felt

capable.

He graduated with high honors. When he came to New York, he was preceded by a

small, private fame; a few trickles of rumor had seeped down from Harvard about

an unusual person named Ellsworth Toohey; a few people, among the extreme

intellectuals and the extremely wealthy, heard these rumors and promptly forgot

what they heard, but remembered the name; it remained in their minds with a

vague connotation of such things as brilliance, courage, idealism.

People began to ooze toward Ellsworth Toohey; the right kind of people, those

who soon found him to be a spiritual necessity. The other kind did not come;

there seemed to be an instinct about it. When someone commented on the loyalty

of Toohey’s following--he had no title, program or organization, but somehow his

circle was called a following from the first--an envious rival remarked: "Toohey

draws the sticky kind. You know the two things that stick best: mud and glue."

Toohey overheard it and shrugged, smiling, and said: "Oh, come, come, come,

there are many more: adhesive plaster, leeches, taffy, wet socks, rubber

girdles, chewing gum and tapioca pudding." Moving away, he added over his

shoulder, without smiling: "And cement."

He took his Master’s degree from a New York university and wrote a thesis on

"Collective Patterns in the City Architecture of the XlVth Century." He earned

his living in a busy, varied, scattered way: no one could keep track of all his

activities. He held the post of vocational adviser at the university, he

reviewed books, plays, art exhibitions, he wrote articles, gave a few lectures

to small, obscure audiences. Certain tendencies were apparent in his work. When

reviewing books, he leaned toward novels about the soil rather than the city,

about the average rather than the gifted, about the sick rather than the

healthy; there was a special glow in his writing when he referred to stories

about "little people"; "human" was his favorite adjective; he preferred

character study to action, and description to character study; he preferred

novels without a plot and, above all, novels without a hero.

He was considered outstanding as a vocational adviser. His tiny office at the

260

university became an informal confessional where students brought all their

problems, academic as well as personal. He was willing to discuss--with the same

gentle, earnest concentration--the choice of classes, or love affairs, or--most

particularly--the selection of a future career.

When consulted on love affairs, Toohey counseled surrender, if it concerned a

romance with a charming little pushover, good for a few drunken parties--"let us

be modern"; and renunciation, if it concerned a deep, emotional passion--"let us

be grownup." When a boy came to confess a feeling of shame after some unsavory

sexual experience, Toohey told him to snap out of it: "It was damn good for you.

There are two things we must get rid of early in life: a feeling of personal

superiority and an exaggerated reverence for the sexual act."

People noticed that Ellsworth Toohey seldom let a boy pursue the career he had

chosen. "No, I wouldn’t go in for law if I were you. You’re much too tense and

passionate about it. A hysterical devotion to one’s career does not make for

happiness or success. It is wiser to select a profession about which you can be

calm, sane and matter-of-fact. Yes, even if you hate it. It makes for

down-to-earthness."..."No, I wouldn’t advise you to continue with your music.

The fact that it comes to you so easily is a sure sign that your talent is only

a superficial one. That’s just the trouble--that you love it. Don’t you think

that sounds like a childish reason? Give it up. Yes, even if it hurts like

hell."..."No, I’m sorry, I would like so much to say that I approve, but I

don’t. When you thought of architecture, it was a purely selfish choice, wasn’t

it? Have you considered anything but your own egotistical satisfaction? Yet a

man’s career concerns all society. The question of where you could be most

useful to your fellow men comes first. It’s not what you can get out of society,

it’s what you can give. And where opportunities for service are concerned,

there’s no endeavor comparable to that of a surgeon. Think it over."

After leaving college some of his protégés did quite well, others failed. Only

one committed suicide. It was said that Ellsworth Toohey had exercised a

beneficent influence upon them--for they never forgot him: they came to consult

him on many things, years later, they wrote him, they clung to him. They were

like machines without a self-starter, that had to be cranked up by an outside

hand. He was never too busy to give them his full attention.

His life was crowded, public and impersonal as a city square. The friend of

humanity had no single private friend. People came to him; he came close to no

one. He accepted all. His affection was golden, smooth and even, like a great

expanse of sand; there was no wind of discrimination to raise dunes; the sands

lay still and the sun stood high.

Out of his meager income he donated money to many organizations. He was never

known to have loaned a dollar to an individual. He never asked his rich friends

to assist a person in need; but he obtained from them large sums and endowments

for charitable institutions: for settlement houses, recreation centers, homes

for fallen girls, schools for defective children. He served on the boards of all

these institutions--without salary. A great many philanthropic undertakings and

radical publications, run by all sorts of people, had a single connecting link

among them, one common denominator: the name of Ellsworth M. Toohey on their

stationery. He was a sort of one-man holding company of altruism.

Women played no part in his life. Sex had never interested him. His furtive,

infrequent urges drew him to the young, slim, full-bosomed, brainless girls--the

giggling little waitresses, the lisping manicurists, the less efficient

stenographers, the kind who wore pink or orchid dresses and little hats on the

back of their heads with gobs of blond curls in front. He was indifferent to

women of intellect.

261

He contended that the family was a bourgeois institution; but he made no issue