R. L.

STEVENSION

PAN'S PIPES

The world in which we live has been variously said and sung by the most ingenious
poets and philosophers: these reducing it to formulae and chemical ingredients, those striking the
lyre in high-sounding measures for the handiwork of God. What experi- ence supplies is of a
mingled tissue, and the choosing mind has much to reject before it can get together the materials
of a theory. Dew and thunder, destroying Attila and the Spring lambkins, belong to an order of
contrasts which no repetition can assimilate. There is an uncouth, outlandish strain throughout
the web of the world, as from a vexatious planet in the house of life. Things are not congruous
and wear strange disguises: the con-summate flower is fostered out of dung, and after nourishing
itself a while with heaven's delicate distillations, decays again into indistinguishable soil and
with Caesar's ashes, Hamlet tells us, the urchins make dirt pies and filthily besmear their
countenance. Nay, the kindly shine of summer, when tracked home with the scientific spyglass,
is found to issue from the most portentous nightmare of the universe —the great, conflagrant
sun: a world of hell's squibs, tumultuary, roaring aloud, inimical to life. The sun itself is enough
to disgust a human being of the scene which he inhabits; and you would not fancy there was a
green or habitable spot in a universe thus awfully lighted up. And yet it is by the blaze of such a
conflagration, to which the fire of Rome was but a spark, that we do all our fiddling, and hold
domestic tea-parties at the arbour door.

The Greeks figured Pan, the god of Nature, now terribly stamping his foot, so that armies
were dispersed; now by the woodside on a summer noon trolling on his pipe until he charmed the
hearts of upland ploughmen. And the Greeks, in so figuring, uttered the last word of human
experience. To certain smoke-dried spirits matter and motion and elastic aethers, and the
hypothesis of this or that other spectacled professor, tell a speaking story; but for youth and all
ductile and congenial minds. Pan is not dead, but of all the classic hierarchy alone survives in
triumph; goat-footed, with a gleeful and an angry look, the type of the shaggy world and in every
wood, if you go with a spirit properly prepared, you shall hear the note of his pipe.

For it is a shaggy world, and yet studded with gardens; where the salt and tumbling sea
receives clear rivers running from among reeds and lilies fruitful and austere; a rustic world;
sunshiny, lewd, and cruel. What is it the birds sing among the trees in pairing-time? What means
the sound of the rain falling far and wide upon the leafy forest? To what tune does the fisherman
whistle, as he hauls in his net at morning, and the bright fish are heaped inside the boat? These
are all airs upon Pan's pipe; he it was who gave them breath in the exultation of his heart, and
gleefully modulated their outflow with his lips and fingers. The coarse mirth of herdsmen,
shaking the dells with laughter and striking out high echoes from the rock ; the tune of moving
feet in the lamplit city, or on the smooth ballroom floor ; the hooves of many horses, beating the
wide pastures in alarm ; the song of hurrying rivers ; the colour of clear skies ; and smiles and the
live touch of hands ; and the voice of things, and their significant look, and the renovating
influence they breathe forth—these are his joyful measures, to which the whole earth treads in
choral harmony. To this music the young lambs bound as to a tabor, and the London shop-girl
skips rudely in the dance. For it puts a spirit of gladness in all hearts; and to look on the happy
side of nature is common, in their hours, to all created things. Some are vocal under a good
influence, are pleasing whenever they are pleased, and hand on their happiness to others, as a
child who, looking upon lovely things, looks lovely. Some leap to the strains with unapt foot, and
make a halting figure in the universal dance. And some, like sour spectators at the play, receive
the music into their hearts with an unmoved countenance, and walk like strangers through the
general rejoicing. But let him feign never so carefully, there is not a man but has his pulses
shaken when Pan trolls out a stave of ecstasy and sets the world a-singing.

Alas if that were all! But oftentimes the air is changed; and in the screech of the
night-wind, chasing navies, subverting the tall ships and the rooted cedar of the hills; in
the random deadly levin or the fury of headlong floods, we recognise the ' dread
foundation ' of life and the anger in Pan's heart. Earth wages open war against her
children, and under her softest touch hides treacherous claws. The cool waters invite us in
to drown; the domestic hearth burns up in the hour of sleep, and makes an end of all.
Everything is good or bad, helpful or deadly, not in itself, but by its circumstances. For a
few bright days in England the hurricane must break forth and the North Sea pay a toll of
populous ships.

And when the universal music has led lovers into the paths of dalliance, confident
of Nature's sympathy, suddenly the air shifts into a minor, and death makes a clutch from
his ambuscade below the bed of marriage. For death is given in a kiss; the dearest
kindnesses are fatal; and into this life, where one thing preys upon another, the child too
often makes its entrance from the mother's corpse. It is no wonder, with so traitorous a
scheme of things, if the wise people who created for us the idea of Pan thought that of all
fears the fear of him was the most terrible, since it embraces all. And still we preserve the
phrase: a panic terror. To reckon dangers too curiously, to hearken too intently for the
threat that runs through all the winning music of the world, to hold back the hand from
the rose because of the thorn, and from life because of death: this it is to be afraid of Pan.
Highly respectable citizens who flee life's pleasures and responsibilities, and keep, with
upright hat, upon the midway of custom, avoiding the right hand and the left, the
ecstasies and the agonies, how surprised they would be if they could hear their attitude
mythologically expressed, and knew themselves as tooth-chattering ones, who flee from
Nature because they fear the hand of Nature's God! Shrilly sound Pan's pipes; and behold
the banker instantly concealed in the bank parlour! For to distrust one's impulses is to be
recreant to Pan.
 There are moments when the mind refuses to be satisfied with evolution, and
demands a ruddier presentation of the sum of man's experience. Sometimes the mood is
brought about by laughter at the humorous side of life, as when, abstracting ourselves
from earth, we imagine people plodding on foot, or seated in ships and speedy trains,
with the planet all the while whirling in the opposite direction, so that, for all their hurry,
they travel back-foremost through the universe of space. Sometimes it comes by the spirit
of delight, and sometimes by the spirit of terror. At least, there will always be hours when
we refuse to be put off by the feint of explanation, nicknamed science; and demand
instead some palpitating image of our estate, that shall represent the troubled and
uncertain element in which we dwell, and satisfy reason by the means of art. Science
writes of the world as if with the cold finger of a starfish; it is all true; but what is it when
compared to the reality of which it discourses? where hearts beat high in April, and death
strikes, and hills totter in the earthquake, and there is a glamour over all the objects of
sight, and a thrill in all noises for the ear, and Romance herself has made her dwelling
among men ? So, we come back to the old myth, and hear the goat-footed piper making
the music which is itself the charm and terror of things; and, when a glen invites our
visiting footsteps, fancy that Pan leads us thither with a gracious tremolo; or, when our
hearts quail at the thunder of the cataract, tell ourselves that he has stamped his hoof in
the nigh thicket.

Clara Conway

Foreword

All teaching that is not purely mechanical connects itself vitally with the conduct of life and the
growth of character. This little study of Robert Louis Stevenson is offered to teachers that their
students may catch the inspiration of a brave, sunny spirit, in love with life, and not afraid of
death; that they, too, like our author, "may find out where joy resides, and give it a voice beyond
singing." It is offered, also, to the end that there! may be an economy of time and strength in the
study of rhetoric and literature, that there may be a closer correlation of these subjects, and
finally that students shall not be ex-pected to write well in a literary sense until they shall have
learned how to assimilate good literature by the processes of their own thought, and to interpret it
in the light of their own ever- widening experience.

1. Since the beginning of history, philosophers and poets have held opposite theories about the
world in which we live. Philosophy, in the name of science, claims that it is a world of matter,
poetry, that it is a world of spirit.

2. The Greeks held the poetic theory. They named the spirit of nature Pan, and claimed that Pan's
voice speaks from the heart of life to all who are in harmony with nature.

3. Gladness is common to all created things. Pan trolls his exultant song in every echoing dell
and rock, in the mirth of shepherd; their song of bird, the murmur of leaf, and the fall of water. If
we are glad, our note is part of the choral harmony, but even when our souls are heavy, we« are
moved to better things when Pan trolls his pipe of joy.

4. Nor should it count to the brave that Pan's note is not always joyous. Tempest and flood, fire
and earth- quake have their uses in the economy of nature. He who is faithful to his best impulses
will not quake in "panic" terror when Pan sounds his shrillest note.

5. Science does not answer every question. Evolu- tion is dumb when we ask the larger
questions. So we come back to the old Greek myth, and rest in the uni- versal truth typified by
Pan, "Spirit is at the heart of the world." (To the student: Write this summary in one short, strong
paragraph, observing carefully the laws of unity, coherence, and emphasis.)

STUDY OF WORDS

Tell the Greek myth, "Pan."

1. Name the English words derived from Pan. Use them.

2. Explain the use of Attila.

3. Note the following epithets (adjectives).

(1.) Portentous (a sign or warning of a calamity), conflagrant, tumultuous!, roaring.

(2.) Smoke-dried, elastic, ductile, congenial, classic, shaggy.

(3.) Fruitful, austere, rustic, sunshiny, lewd, cruel, hurrying, renovating, halting.

(4.) "Levin" is an obsolete word. (lightning, thunderbolt)

Clompare with its use in the poem, "Tropic Rain" ("Poems and Ballads"). Why does the author
use it? "

STUDY OF SENTENCES.

1. Are the sentences in paragraph 1 chiefly long or short? Are they loose or periodic?

2. In paragraph 2, change the first sentence so as to make it more strictly periodic. Note the
effect.

3. The opening sentence in paragraph 3 is loose. Why?

4. Change into a simple sentence, short and strong, the one in paragraph 3, "Highly respected
citizens," etc.

5. Change the closing senteence of the essay so that the last words shall be, "So we come back to
the old myth." How have you changed the form? Is the effect good?
FIGURES- ANTITHESIS.

1. "These reducing it to formulae and chemical in- gredients, those striking the lyre in high-
sounding measures." "Dew and thunder," "Destroying Attila and the spring lambkins," "The
consummate flower fostered out of dung," "Caesar's ashes . . . dirt pies," "Shine of summer. . .
portentous nightmare."

2. "Certain smoke-dried spirits . . . youth and all ductile and congenial minds," "Pan is not dead .
. . sur- vives in triumph."

3. "Shaggy world . . . studded with gardens," "Fruit- ful, yet austere," "Sunshiny and cruel," "The
young lambs . . . the London shop-girl."

4. "Softest touch . . . treacherous claws," "Death . . . in a kiss," "Dearest kindness . . . fatal,"

5. "Spirit of delight . . . spirit of terror," "Hearts beat high in April . . . death strikes," "Charm and
terror."

6. What striking figurei runs through the essay?

7; Note other figures.