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Show 13. Carr family, or the socially determined attitudes of men and women, but as two voices which have eternally spoken in human minds. In the last few centuries we have heard more of the male voice, the Doctor's voice, which says that there is very little point in speaking to the world, when there is work to be done. The male voice shuts itself off from life itself: He says that woman speaks with nature. . . . But for him this dialogue is over. He says he is not part of this world, that he was set on this world as a stranger. He sets himself apart from woman and nature. This is a passage from a modern feminist, but it is not so far from the warning which Jeanne Carr insisted on giving to John Muir, when he was buried in his work on machines: You do not know how we hold you in our memories as one apart from all the other students, in your power of insight into Nature, and the simplicity of your love for her. I think you would love her if she did not turn mill wheels or grind anybodies grist. The path of mystical vision. To follow it he would have to be sensitive to what civilization would call the woman in him. When Jeanne Carr suggested that she and Muir engage in an exchange of thoughts through letters, he eagerly accepted. He had at least one soul mate who could understand his deepest longings. For her, John Muir had the "eye within the eye," but she knew that he needed to be reminded constantly, or he would lose his vision. She also knew that Muir could follow a path that |
