CHAPTER 39

HYPOCRITES AND DIVORCE

NO human being can please every body, or even a good many bodies. Why try?

The best any soul can do for itself or the world is to please itself — in each emergency of life to so act that it can thoroughly approve its own action.

To hide a divorce is exactly as hard on the human character as to hide a liaison.

To hide mean and soiled underclothing under a showy gown; to rob yourself and children of necessities in order to make a show in society; to pretend to be what you are not; in short, to act the hypocrite about anything, is to damn and dwarf your own soul. What your neighbors think about it makes not one whit of difference one way or the other. What YOU think about it makes all the difference in the world.

It is the cringing and stooping to accomplish your desire which-distorts your being. Therein lies the real and only lasting punishment for any course of action.

If you know you are right, and if you accord to every other individual his right to think what he everlasting pleases about you, you will walk straight and free, like the god you are. Your soul-calm will not even be ruffled by "unpopularity," nor by its opposite. The waves of public opinion will swirl about you utterly without moving you. You will respect yourself. And in due time the waves of unpopularity will die away and people will know you as you are, not as they once thought you.

Truth prevails if you will only go calmly on your soul-directed way and let it.

The condemnation which comes to the popular person whose divorce is found out is not so much a condemnation of divorce itself; it is condemnation of the deception practiced. The popular idol has, in such a case, been sailing under false colors; and though human nature may like to be humbugged it despises the humbug.

Every human being has ideals. A great many people have the one-marriage, no-divorce ideal. They approve people who live up to that ideal.

But most people also carry an ideal of broad- minded tolerance which causes them to at least condone the offense of divorce, where there seems reasonable cause for the separation.

But nobody hugs an ideal of deceit, though many practice it. If the divorced one is honest and has the courage of her convictions, if she lives her life modestly but without concealment, she is in time forgiven, even if the neighbors thought her somewhat to blame in the matter; and in time the fault is almost or wholly forgotten, except as somebody for selfish reasons wants to rake it up against her.

Look at Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, as an instance. Nobody even remembers that she was ever divorced, except as some detractor tries to hatch up things against her. And when that happens she has tens of thousands of followers to affirm her "popularity."

Henry Ward Beecher was another about whom things "came out," things the world condemns as worse than divorce; and he, too, "lived it down" and accomplished a great work. His "popularity” suffered for a time; but out of it all grew a larger and deeper real public respect, based upon a knowledge of the man as he proved himself to be. And today most people believe Beecher was guiltless.

"Popularity" is based upon a superficial knowledge. A witty and unknown pretty girl goes into a new neighborhood; immediately she is accepted at face value, she is "popular." Of what value is such popularity? Its value is estimated merely in the good times the girl can have, through the invitations of the local young folks.

But let her stay in that neighborhood for years, and prove herself. There deepens about her a real public opinion, which is not mere popularity. It is a stable opinion, with its roots in her very being; and it cannot be shaken by rumors. If she "pans out," her "popularity" flowers in true friendship, rooted in her honestly revealed self. If she does not pan out; if she is unstable, deceptive, unreliable, unkind, her popularity dies and she is compelled — if she still values popularity — to migrate to some other neighborhood where she can for a time ride again on a new wave of popularity created by her appearance from the outside — which is so deceptive.

Don't imagine that the world will not forgive divorce. It will, and does. Those who know you best forgive you anything. And in time your whole world will know you, for there "is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed." To know all is to forgive all.

THE END
< WHAT I THINK ABOUT MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE

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