Thus I have left a bit of mystery, unintentional, that others, with bad intent can fill in from their imaginations. I did not intend it so.
My intentions in life did not include making a story of myself. I only wanted to know man and understand him.
I did not really care if he did not understand me, so long as he understood himself. I was the lesser part of my project. Some say this is unfortunate, but I do not find it so. I did not live to be understood, but to understand.
And it does not matter. Long ago, I ceased utterly to defend myself against lies and calumny where it occurred. To some this will be considered strange. But how can one control the vaporings of a press which never interviews one?
Does one condemn and fight each rumor or lie?
I long ago realized I had not the time. But mainly I had not the inclination to stop man’s speech and punish him for being what he was and for thinking what he did.
I learned early the folly of fighting the viciously inclined.
I was once expelled from an island, as a boy, by a gloomy and brooding governor, on a charge of always being happy and smiling. There was no more story than that.
So what does one do? Does one seek vengeance and death on men because they are ignorant, dull or intolerant?
Not when one’s mission is to understand and help men.
Does one defend oneself against lies and infamy when one is already too busy doing his job?
One chooses what one is to do. And does it. All else is foolish distraction.
Threats to myself are unimportant in the scheme of things. I knew I would attain my goals. I knew it a long time ago.
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I only once was frightened by the immensity of the implications of understanding man. It was when I had isolated in the late thirties what appeared to be the dynamic principle of existence and knew where such a discovery would lead.
I remembered man habitually crucified anyone who brought him wisdom or truly helped him.
I was frightened for a bit.
But I realized I had searched for an answer for too many years already to give up now. And then I accepted that condition. And have not halted on my way because of personal fear.
My life’s history has no import. I have lived.
My only real regrets have been killing men in the thunder and passion of war and though I wish I had not, still it was done.
What people say I as a being have or have not done has no bearing on the fact that my work has been done, done well and lives to help man become a better being. If I personally triumph for it or die for it in this life is not of the slightest possible importance.
What I have done for man’s use cannot be undone by thousands of hostile columns of press or a hundred billion slanderous lies. My friends, and I have many, know they are lies, which is quite enough.
I am myself. I can hold up my head to myself. I know what I have done in developing a new philosophy and certainly I am not so foolish as to suppose it has no consequences for me. Only a fool would expect or value praise from the insane and not expect damage from the act of attempting to assist a wounded wild animal. One takes the consequences with the act.
I have carried out my basic intention—to understand man and help him attain greater heights of civilization through knowledge of himself.
And any friend I have and many, many more are glad that I have lived.
And that is the story of my life—the only story that matters.
My adventures, my heartbreaks, the joy I take in the singing wind and sea, my pride in creating prose and pictures, my attempts to compose music, my laughter with my friends and likes, dislikes and deeds are none of them discreditable.
So there have been attacks. Need this startle anyone? Such actions only prove that man needs help and needs it badly if he attacks his friends.
A past researched relentlessly for sixteen years by the world’s press and even the police of a planet without the discovery of a single crime must be a singularly unstained past indeed!
Were you to read the press, up to 1950 . . .
I was a mildly famous, colorful person of excellent family, of unblemished repute, a member of famous clubs and societies, with many friends in high places.
On the publication of a book concerning the mind, I suddenly overnight was a dark villain with a terrible past (the crimes of course, unspecified, since there were none). From this we only learn that a person’s own mind is apparently a monopoly somewhere, property of a sensitive group that profits too much to lose control. In any year thousands of books are written on philosophy and the mind, many banal, many vicious, many harmful, with no protest from anyone. Many of such works are by important people.
