Quaker Hill: A Sociological StudyWilson, Warren H. (Warren Hugh)
Religion
Quaker Hill: A Sociological Study
Wilson, Warren H. (Warren Hugh)
Quaker Hill (N.Y.)
The quotation from Professor Carver bears the impression of
incompleteness, or rather of suggestiveness. If "making a virtue of
necessity" is idealization, is not symbolism also a form of "make
believe." If the "ability to persuade oneself that what is necessary is
noble or dignified or honorable or pleasant," is exhibited on Quaker
Hill as a "most important psychic factor," so is also the idealization
of the commonplace the "making believe" that peace and plainness, that
simple, old-fashioned dress, and seventeenth century forms of speech are
spiritual and are serviceable to the believing mind. The power of
idealization is nowhere exhibited as a social force more clearly than in
a Quaker community. Professor Carver's word, "make believe," is most
accurate. Quakers act with all sincerity the drama of life, using
costume and artificial speech, and attaching to all conduct peculiar
mannerisms; casting over all action a special veil of complacent
serenity; all which are parts in their realization of the ideal of life.
Their fundamental principle is that the divine spirit dwells and acts in
the heart of every man; not in a chosen few, not in the elect only, but
in all hearts. Quaker Hill to this day acts this out, in that every
person in the community is known, thought upon, reckoned and estimated
by every other. Towns on either side have a neglected population area,
but Quaker Hill has none. Pawling in its other neighborhoods has
forgotten roads, despised cabins, in which dwell persons for whom nobody
cares, drunkards, ill-doers, whom others forget and ignore. Quaker Hill
ignores no one. There are, indeed, rich and poor, but the former employ
the latter, know their state, enjoy their peculiarities, relish their
humor. It has apparently always been so. Elsewhere I have described the
measures taken by popular subscription to replace the losses suffered by
the humbler members of the community, in the tools of life (see Chapter
VII). It need not be said that the poorer members bear the rich in mind.
Every person resident on the Hill has come to partake in this sense of
the community, this practice of new Quakerism. No one is out of sight
and yet there is no dream of equality behind this communal sense. It is
as far from a communistic, as from a charitable state of mind. It is the
result of years of belief in common men and common things.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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