{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_46084/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_46084","id":"gutenberg_46084","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46084","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Diaries"],"text":"Note: Images of the original pages are available through\n      Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See\n      https://archive.org/details/secretlifebeingb00bisluoft\n\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\n      Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).\n\n      This e-text includes Greek and characters that require\n      UTF-8 (Unicode) file encoding. If any of these characters\n      do not display properly make sure your text reader\u2019s\n      \"character set\" or \"file encoding\" is set to Unicode\n      (UTF-8). You may also need to change the default font.\n      The reader will find a transliteration of the Greek in\n      the iso-8859-1 (Latin-1) text file\n      46084-8.txt or 46084.zip:\n      https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46084/46084-8.txt\n      or\n      https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46084/46084-8.zip\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE SECRET LIFE\n\nBeing the Book of a Heretic\n\n\n   \"Prove all things: hold fast that which is good.\"\n\n   _St. Paul, 1 Thessalonians v. 21._\n\n   \"Ici l'on voulut que tout f\u00fbt simple, tranquille, sans ostentation\n   d'esprit ni de science, que personne ne se cr\u00fbt engag\u00e9 \u00e0 avoir\n   raison, et que l'on f\u00fbt toujours en \u00e9tat de c\u00e9der sans honte,\n   surtout qu'aucun syst\u00e8me ne domin\u00e2t dans l'Acad\u00e9mie \u00e0 l'exclusion\n   des autres, et qu'on laiss\u00e2t toujours toutes les portes ouvert \u00e0\n   la v\u00e9rit\u00e9.\"     _Fontenelle._\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLondon: John Lane, The Bodley Head\nNew York: John Lane Company. MDCCCCVII\n\nCopyright, 1906\nBy John Lane Company\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n                                    PAGE\n L'Enfant Terrible                     1\n\n An Optimistic Cynic                   7\n\n A Poet Sheep-rancher                 10\n\n An Eaten Cake                        13\n\n Concerning Elbows on the Table       16\n\n An Autumn Impulse                    17\n\n John-a'-Dreams                       19\n\n The Fountain of Salmacis             41\n\n Two Siegfrieds                       44\n\n A Door Ajar                          47\n\n At Time of Death                     49\n\n The Curse of Babel                   49\n\n The Fourth Dimension                 52\n\n The Ant and the Lark                 58\n\n The D\u00f6ppelganger                     63\n\n \"A Young Man's Fancy\"                73\n\n An Arabian Looking-glass             78\n\n The Cry of the Women                 80\n\n The Beauty of Cruelty                95\n\n The Duke of Wellington's Trees      101\n\n The Boy with the Goose              103\n\n A God Indeed                        104\n\n A Question of Skulls                110\n\n The Modern Woman and Marriage       112\n\n The Ideal Husband                   120\n\n A New Law of Health                 126\n\n \"Dead, Dead, Dead\"                  139\n\n Verbal Magic                        140\n\n Hamlet                              143\n\n Ghosts                              149\n\n Amateur Saints                      153\n\n The Zeitgeist                       159\n\n The Abdication of Man               187\n\n Life                                205\n\n Portable Property                   206\n\n Are American Parents Selfish?       208\n\n A Question of Heredity              219\n\n The Little Dumb Brother             220\n\n Fever Dreams                        248\n\n A Misunderstood Moralist            250\n\n The Pleasures of Pessimism          255\n\n Moral Pauperism                     257\n\n On a Certain Lack of Humour in\n Frenchmen                           258\n\n The Value of a Soul                 267\n\n A Grateful Spaniard                 271\n\n Bores                               271\n\n Emotions and Oxydization            273\n\n Abelard to Helo\u00efse                  275\n\n Helo\u00efse to Abelard                  277\n\n Yumei Mujitsu                       279\n\n The Real Thing                      284\n\n \"Oh, Eloquent, Just, and Mighty\n Death\"                              286\n\n \"Philistia, be Thou Glad of Me\"     299\n\n \"Oh King, Live Forever!\"            305\n\n The Little Room                     307\n\n Aftermath                           312\n\n\n\n\nJune 21.\n\nL'Enfant Terrible.\n\n    \"The very Devil's in the moon for mischief:\n    There's not a day, the longest, not the twenty-first of June,\n    Sees half the mischief in a quiet way\n    On which three single hours of moonlight smile.\"\n\n\nAt my age, alas! one no longer gets into mischief, either by moonlight\nor at midsummer, and yet to-day all the tricksey spirits of the\ninvisible world are supposed to be abroad--tangling the horses' manes,\nsouring the milkmaid's cream, setting lovers by the ears. Some such\nfrisky Puck stirs even peaceable middle-aged blood at this season to\nmild little secret sins, such as beginning a diary in which to set down\none's private naughty views--the heresies one has grown too staid and\ncautious to give speech to any longer.\n\nAll, I think, have some Secret Garden where they unbind the girdle of\nconventions and breathe to a sympathetic listener the opinions they\nwould repudiate indignantly upon the housetops; but I know of no such\nkindred soul--indeed my private views are so heretical that I should\ntremble to whisper them even into the dull cold ear of night, lest I\nshould cause it to turn pink, and thereafter hymns would not purge it.\nHence no resource remains to ease my bosom of its perilous stuff but\nthe unprotesting innocence of the blank pages of a diary.\n\nThere is a story concerning the king of some ungeographical country,\nto whom came two adventurers of cynical tendencies, professing to be\nable--given a certain allowance of jewels and precious metals--to\nweave a garment of exceeding richness and of such subtle texture that\nno monarch on earth might hope to match it. Setting up a loom and\nproviding themselves with ample materials from the Royal treasury,\nthey went through the motions of stringing a warp and thereupon\nindustriously threw empty shuttles back and forth.\n\nWhen the king, accompanied by his court, was summoned to observe the\nprogress of the famous web, the puzzled ruler could see nothing but\nan empty loom, but before the eager explanations of the enthusiastic\nweavers, who pointed out here a glowing dye, there a splendid pattern,\nand having regard to the non-committal countenances of the courtiers,\nthe king nodded sagely and waited developments.\n\n\"Best of all, Sire,\" cried the cheerful rogues, \"so magical is this\nrobe we weave, that only those can see it whose tongue has never\nuttered a lie, whose hands have never taken a bribe.\"\n\nRises thereupon instant chorus of praise of the beautiful fabric from\na unanimous court. Next day a solemn procession through the streets of\nthe capital to display to the world the magic robe. Amazed multitude\nstaring at the king in pompous dishabille, but hearing the courtiers'\nadmiring cries, no man willing to admit his own blindness--when up\nspeaks Tiresome Child: \"Mother, why does the king ride abroad in his\nshirt?\"\n\nGeneral outburst of mortified veracity, and futile search for the\ndiscreetly vanished adventurers.\n\nSo ends the story. But nothing of the sort really took place. Instead,\nl'enfant terrible was slapped and put to bed, to meditate upon his\nill-timed outspokenness, and next day, and all the days thereafter,\nsees what his companions see. I know, because I myself am that Tiresome\nChild, and because my uncomfortable eyes refuse to see the imaginary\nrobe in which so many kings of this world are dressed I have spent\na large part of my life in disgrace. At last and tearfully I have\nlearned to hold my tongue, but when the tricksome spirits of Mid-summer\nEve are abroad, I get out pen and paper and, where no pious ear can\nbe violated, secretly vent my elderly naughtinesses. My respectable\nacquaintances will be all the safer in consequence that I have an\ninviolable confidant of the real thoughts that lie behind my but\nslightly wrinkled brow and unrevealing eyes. Thackeray once said, \"If\nwomen's eyes could only be _dragged_, what queer things one might\nlearn.\"... Ah, the Secret Life!--who among us can guess at the thoughts\nthat are concealed behind the clear brows and frank-seeming eyes of\neven those nearest us?\n\nWe live our lives draped and masked in our own bodies; forcing those\nbodies to speak the words, perform the actions expected from them,\nwhile we dwell alone within, thinking and wishing what we never, or\nrarely, express. It is this that drives us to diaries--the need to\nsomewhere, somehow, speak the truth in a world of conformable lies.\nIt is of no use to slip aside our masks or raise our draperies for an\ninstant, in the hope that our fellows will recognize a hand or an eye\nlike their own, and that thereupon even one of our companions will\ninvite us to come out from under our robe and walk about with him\nfriendlily, without disguise. Instead our companion makes signs of\ndistress and resentment through the veil of his concealment, and we\nhastily readjust the mask and domino and resist further temptation to\nfind a heart akin.\n\n\"It takes,\" says Thoreau, \"two to tell the truth--one to speak and\nanother to hear.\"\n\nCalled upon once to help a grief-stricken mother to lay away the\nbelongings of a boy summoned suddenly out of life, we unearthed\namong his abandoned treasures a curious collection of odds and ends\nconcerning which we could imagine no value that should have moved him\nto keep them by him. A shell, a bit of ribbon, a rusty nail; scraps\nof paper with a scribbled line or two; cuttings, whose printed words\nreferred to nothing which seemed to bear in any way upon what we might\nguess of as touching his life.\n\n\"I thought I knew every fibre of his heart,\" cried the mother in sudden\ntears, \"and yet of all these strange things he seems to have treasured\nso carefully I cannot divine the meaning of a single one!\" A whole\nworld of ambitions, interests, and sentiments foreign to her he had\ncarried away into eternal silence.\n\nIf I shall have persistence sufficient to continue this Heretic Diary,\nI am afraid it will find itself stuffed with an equally absurd number\nof my secret loves and hates, of the intolerable opinions for which\nI have been slapped and put to bed, of all the sentimental rubbish I\ncarry about with me in a fardel under my mask and domino--the poor\ninconsequential treasures of my secret life.\n\n\n\n\nJuly 7.\n\nAn Optimistic Cynic.\n\n\nAmiel's Journal:--I have been reading it with the half impatient\ninterest which such books always arouse--in me at least. It is a\nmore agreeable book, however, than Marie Bashkirtseff's disingenuous\nposings, or Rousseau's vulgar, insulting confidences. One is impatient\nwith the bore who talks about himself when one is impatient to bore him\nabout one's own self, and yet, somehow, one is fascinated by the hope\nof getting behind the mask of personality.\n\nI learned to read French that I might possess the contents of the\n\"Confessions.\" George Eliot called it the most interesting book she\nknew, which fired my ambition to read it. With the aid of a dictionary,\nthe four great volumes were got through somehow, and when the task was\naccomplished, though I loathed Rousseau, I had enough French to serve\nroughly for both reading and speech.\n\nWhat ambition and courage one had in those days! I studied French\nwhile I did the churning. Remembering the strength and persistency of\nthat time I wonder that I have come to middle age and done nothing.\nAthletic trainers say that there is in every one only a fixed capacity\nfor development. One may reach that limit readily, and once reached no\ntoil or patience will ever carry the power of the muscles beyond it\nby the smallest part of a fraction. Mentally, the same probably holds\ngood. My capacity was, no doubt, always small. So far as it went the\ncramping, unpropitious circumstances of youth had no power to chill\nit, but prosperity, leisure, opportunity, could not add one jot to its\npossibilities....\n\nIn all these journals what I find interesting is not so much what the\nwriter says as what he reveals unintentionally.\n\nThe impression Amiel leaves upon the reader is that he was at least a\ngentleman--that he had a gentle soul; clean and modest, continent and\ngrave. His melancholy seems neither so profound nor so touching as Mrs.\nHumphrey Ward and his other critics would have one believe. At least it\nis neither tragic nor torturing. He gives the impression of saying \"I\nhave no bread--but,\" he adds cheerfully, after a moment's reflection,\n\"the Lord will provide.\"\n\nHe is not rebellious. In moments of the most real gravity, when he is\nface to face with death, he clings to the egotistic superstition that\nperhaps--most probably--there is somewhere some wise kind Power deeply\ninterested in his doings, his emotions, his future. He is profoundly\nconvinced that it is important how he feels, how he bears himself. He\nhas no sense at all of the blind nullity of things. He asserts this\nnullity to be unthinkable.\n\nAll this is surprising when one remembers the insistence of his\ncommentators upon the intense modernity of his mind. Is this modern? I\ncannot see wherein it differs from the spirit of the past. Such natures\nwere not uncommon in other centuries--as was the nature of Erasmus for\nexample....\n\nThe man had no passion. He did not marry because, he says, he demanded\nperfection; could not find or give it, and therefore resigned himself\ncheerfully to celibacy. Passion, of course, would have blinded his\neyes to imperfections; having none, his eyes were always clear.... It\nis perhaps in this passionlessness that he is most modern. Most of us\nno longer demand perfection. Knowing it to be unattainable, modern\ncommon sense cheerfully agrees to abandon desire for it. This is\nvisible in our literature, in art, in love. No one reads or buys long\npoems any more, therefore the poets never contemplate a new Paradise\nLost. No one paints heroic pictures, for they are not salable. The\ngrandiose has no market and therefore grows obsolete. The law of supply\nand demand rules there as elsewhere. Passion and the perfection it\nlongs and strives for is d\u00e9mod\u00e9.\n\n\n\n\nJuly 20.\n\nA Poet Sheep-rancher.\n\n\nF---- is dead, and with the announcement by cable this morning comes\na belated letter from M----, full of hope and encouragement. A sudden\nrally had made her believe in a possibility of recovery--no doubt it\nwas that last flare which comes often just as the oil fails and the\nlight is about to go out.\n\nMy mind has been full of amazement all day. It is so difficult to\nrealize that a strong, aggressive personality is finally and definitely\nextinguished. I have been thinking of their odd, romantic story. He\nmust have had great seductive power--not easily realizable now--to\nhave come into her life and have persuaded her to abandon everything\nto follow him. I have heard her tell the story often. The tall young\nsheep-rancher from New Zealand, with his burning eyes and his pockets\nfull of sonnets, appearing one morning, and she suddenly abandons her\nbrilliant position, her jointure, her two orphan boys, and goes away,\ndespite the furious outcries of her family and friends, with a man\nseven years her junior; goes into the wilderness with him, New Zealand\nof more than a quarter of a century ago being decidedly wilderness,\nyet she calls those the happiest years of her life--spent in a shanty\nfifty miles from the nearest neighbour! She likes to recall the wild\nscrambles among the mountains; the wrestles to save the sheep from the\nspring floods; the vigils; the dances to which they rode on mountain\nponies, sixty or seventy miles; the makeshifts; the caring for flocks\nand shepherds in the stress of heat and cold, of sickness and sorrow;\nand the snow-bound nights beside the fire, when the sonnets came to\nthe fore again. After all it was youth, and love, and adventure; why\nshouldn't she have been happy? And she was justified in her faith.\nWhen I came to know them the detrimental young sheep-rancher moved in\na world of gilded aides-de-camp, with sentries and mounted escorts\nattending his steps, surrounded by tropical pomp and spacious luxury,\nand now, alas! he is but one more unit in the yearly tribute of flesh\nand blood demanded by England's Equatorial Empire.\n\nA handsome, brilliant, charming creature. The generation is the\npoorer for the loss of his graceful, cynical wit. He belonged to the\ngeneration who formed their ideals of manners upon _Pelham_ and _Vivian\nGrey_. It was Byronism translated into prose. M---- says he bore his\nsufferings--enormous sufferings--with the light and humorous courage\nwith which it was the ideal of the fine gentleman of his period to\nface all unpleasant situations.\n\n\n\n\nSeptember 4.\n\nAn Eaten Cake.\n\n\nThe S----s came in last night after dinner. They cling to the old\nfashion, common in England before the advent of afternoon tea, of\nhaving the tray brought in about ten o'clock, so I tried it to-night\nbecause of them, and found it not a bad idea.\n\nSimple, agreeable folk they are, of what is called in Scotland the\nmiddle classes. That is to say, they follow some commercial calling: I\nam not sure of its exact nature. They are very well educated in just\nthe way which differentiates the British middle-class education from\nthe other sort--they speak several modern languages fluently, and know\nlittle of the classics. All their learning is sound, unornamental,\nutilitarian. Some reference was made to a kinsman in a foreign\ntown which I had visited. I could not recall any association with\nthe name until the elder brother said quite simply and without any\nself-consciousness:\n\n\"He is Jones of Jones & Co. (a large haberdasher in P----)--you may\nhave been in his shop.\"\n\nIt was nicely done. I doubt if an American could have achieved it in\nquite the same way. If he had made the confidence it would have been\nmade with bravado, or he would have explained that the shop was an\n\"emporium.\"\n\nThe girl has such a good restful British calm about her--I felt it\nafter she was gone. It arises, I think, from lack of any special\ninterest in the impression she makes upon others. All the rest of\nus--we Americans--were desirous of being agreeable, amusing--of making\na good effect. We were consciously sympathetic, consciously vivacious,\nconsciously civil. She was just herself; we might take or leave her as\nshe was. It never occurred to her to attempt to be different for our\nsakes. The result of it is very reposeful. One is always conscious of a\nsense of strain in American society for this reason. It is because of\nthat desire to impress, to please, that American voices in conversation\ngrow sharp and hurried, that American faces grow keen and lined. We\nhave a tradition that English women are dull and bovine, but no doubt\nthey make the better mothers because of it. They hoard their energies\nto give to their sons. They bring their children into the world with\ndeep reserves of strength. I have often observed the great superiority\nof English men over Americans in the capacity for long, sustained,\nunflinching labour. I am sure they owe that to the immense fund of\nunexhausted power given them by their mothers, who are profound wells\nof calm vitality. It is the old story of being unable to eat one's cake\nand have it too. American women eat their cake in the form of a higher\nexhilaration in existence, but when the drain of creation comes they\nhave nothing save nervous energy to give. The rest of the cake has\nalready been devoured. There are no reserves for the child to call upon.\n\nI believe that Englishmen--without reasoning upon the matter--feel\nthis instinctively. They vastly prefer their own women as mates. I\nhave rarely known an Englishman to marry an American woman who had not\nthe extrinsic attraction of wealth. They do not hesitate to marry\npenniless countrywomen of their own.\n\n\n\n\nSeptember 12.\n\nConcerning Elbows on the Table.\n\n\nA---- was here to-day. What a formal little soul it is! She can never\nbegin where she left off. One has her acquaintance to make all over\nagain each time she comes.\n\nThe depths, the heights of her propriety!... Always that extremely well\nbehaved look, which never changes. P---- says, \"A---- is too modest to\ntake off and put on expressions in public.\"\n\nOne wonders if there is any privacy so entire that she would consider\ndishevelment of behaviour permissible. How exhausting to herself such\nflawless respectability must become!\n\nShe is the concentrated essence of the bourgeoisie. A savage can be\nnatural; he knows nothing else, but when his eyes are opened and he\nsees himself to be naked the reign of the fig-leaf begins. There is\nsomething pathetic in that long era of profound distrust of his own\nnature and impulses. What does he think he would do if he let himself\ngo?\n\nPerhaps he is, underneath all that propriety, still so close to\nsavagery that he dare not trust himself to be natural lest he instantly\nrelapse into barbarism. After many generations of breeding he dare be\nsavage and free again if he like--he is so sure of himself. As Mrs.\nB---- says, he becomes at last \"A man who can afford to put his elbows\non the table.\"\n\nWhen he reaches such a point I notice he is always impatient of the\nconstraint of those still bound by the shackles of self-conscious\npropriety, forgetting that he owes his own freedom to many generations\nthat laboured in bonds, struggling to slay or subdue the savage....\n\n\n\n\nOctober 14.\n\nAn Autumn Impulse.\n\n\nA bird sat on the balcony rail just outside my window to-day gossiping\nwith an unseen neighbour perched somewhere out of my range of vision.\nHe was rather a grimy little person, and as the day was cold he made a\nperfect puff ball of himself. I listened to them conversing with great\ninterest, feeling, as I always do when I hear birds talk, that if I\nonly paid a little closer attention it would be possible to understand\nall they say. It is somewhat the same sensation one has in overhearing\na rapid dialogue in French which one is too lazy to try to follow. When\nI came through I think I left some of the doors ajar behind me, and\nI remember my bird avatar especially clearly. Even yet, when autumn\ncomes, I am pursued by a fluttering longing to arise and go southward.\nI feel that something beautiful--some wide splendid ecstasy is calling\nme if I will only go to meet it. I can remember having that sensation\nin my earliest childhood. In my dreams I often fly, with beautiful\nswoopings and balancings, with sudden confident droppings, through the\nelastic air, and sometimes I am in an enclosed place, beating my wings\nagainst the bounds, knowing no other way to get out....\n\nWhen I look at birds they seem to know me. Not in the way of a mere\ncreature who puts out crumbs in convenient breakfasting places, or\nwho brings strawberries to one's cage, but they meet my eye with\nthat familiarity one sees in the glance of brothers--a look of mutual\nunderstanding. My own sense is of kinship of the closest character. I\nunderstand how they regard things--what they think and feel. I wish I\ncould so concentrate my attention as to catch what this grimy little\ncitizen is saying to his fellow on the nearby ledge. If I could, what a\nflood of other memories it would restore that are now dim and confused.\n\n\n\n\nNovember 1.\n\nJohn-a'-Dreams.\n\n\nI dreamed last night that I wore upon my breast a great necklace of\nflat golden plates cut in the shape of winged things, and these were\nlinked together with other flat plates of turquoise. My garments were\nof white semi-transparent stuff, and my limbs and body showed through\nit. Before me stood a building of some sort, creamy yellow in colour\nand of a style of architecture with which I am not familiar--though it\nseemed familiar enough to me in my dreams. Now I have only a confused\nsense of low domes set upon massive cubes. I was waiting for the\nsun to rise. The air was warm and dry and that white glamour of the\ndawning light lay upon the surrounding country, which seemed flat and\nnot very verdant. Suddenly the rays of the sun, which rose apparently\nimmediately behind this dome, spread out about it like an aureole\n(Gavin Douglas's \"Golden fanys\")--and this seemed a signal for me to\nlift my arms above my head and recite a sort of litany--and then--it\nall passed away....\n\nMost of one's dreams are confused and blurred by a sense of conflicting\npersonalities. There is generally a sort of impression that while the\nincidents are apparently happening to one's self, they are happening\nin reality to some other being, not quite one's self; but this one was\nvery clear, with no arri\u00e8re pens\u00e9e. I have worked out a theory which\nseems to me to quite solve the mystery of dreams.\n\nLifelong familiarity with the phenomena of sleep--with the trooping\nphantoms that inhabit slumber's dusk realm--has so dulled our wonder\nat the mystery of our double existence of the dark that night after\nnight we open with calm incuriousness the door into that ghostly\nunderworld, where we hold insane revels with fantastic spectres, babble\nwith foolish laughter at witless jests, stain our souls with useless\ncrime, or fly with freezing blood from the grasp of unnamable horrors,\nand with the morning we saunter serenely back from these adventures\ninto the warm precincts of the cheerful day, unmoved, unstartled, and\nforgetting.\n\nThe hypnotists, because they can make a man feel pain or pleasure\nwithout material cause, are gaped upon with awed surprise by the same\nman who once every twenty-four hours of his life, with no more magic\npotion than healthy fatigue, with no greater weapon for wonder working\nthan a pillow, may create for himself phantasmal illusions beside which\nall mesmeric suggestions are but the flattest of commonplace.\n\nThe naive egotism of superstition saw in the movements of the solar\nsystem only prognostications concerning its own bean crop, and could\ndiscern nothing in the dream-world but the efforts of the supernatural\npowers to communicate, in their usual shuffling and incompetent\nfashion, with man. The modern revolt from this childishness has swung\nthe pendulum of interest in dreams so far up the other curve of the arc\nthat there seems now to be a foolish fear of attaching any importance\nwhatever to the strange experiences of sleep, and as a result an\nunscientific avoidance of the whole subject. The consequence of this\nabsurd revulsion is that in a period of universal investigation one\nof the most curious functions of the brain is left unexamined and\nunexplained.\n\nSome dabbling there has been, with results of little more value\nthan were the contents of the greasy, bethumbed dream-books of the\neighteenth-century milkmaid or apprentice. The labour bestowed upon\nthe matter has been mainly directed to efforts to prove the extreme\nrapidity with which dreams pass through the mind, and that it is some\ntrivial outward cause at the very instant of awakening--such as a\nnoise, a light, or a blow--which rouses the brain to this miraculous\ncelerity of imaginative creation.\n\nThe persistent assertion that a dream occurs only at the moment of\nawakening shows how little real attention has been given to the\nmatter, since the most casual observation of \"the dog that hunts in\ndreams\" would have shown that he may be \"chasing the wild deer and\nfollowing the roe\" in the grey Kingdom of Seeming without breaking his\nslumbers. He will start and twitch, and give tongue after the phantom\nquarry he dreams he is pursuing, and yet continue his sleep without an\ninterval. But have it whichever way one likes, the heart of the mystery\nis not yet discovered. How do they explain why a noise or a gleam\nof light--such as the waking senses know familiarly--should at this\nmagical moment of rousing cause the brain to create with inconceivable\nrapidity a crowd of phantasmagoria in order to explain to itself the\nfamiliar phenomena of light and sound?\n\nDr. Friederich Scholz, in his recent volume upon \"Sleep and Dreams,\"\ngives an example of rapid effort of the mind to explain the sensations\nfelt by the sleeping body:\n\n\"I dreamed of the Reign of Terror, saw scenes of blood and murder,\nappealed before the Revolutionary Tribunal, saw Robespierre, Marat,\nFouquier-Tinville, all the personages of that time of horrors, argued\nwith them, was finally, after a number of occurrences, condemned to\ndeath, was carried to the place of execution on a cart through enormous\nmasses of people, was bound by the executioner to the board. The knife\nfell and I felt my head severed from my body. Thereupon I awoke and\nfound that a loosened rod of the bed had fallen on my neck like the\nknife of the guillotine, and this had happened, my mother assured me,\nat the very moment when I awoke.\"...\n\nThat the mind should, merely because of the body's sleep, be able to\n_create_ a whole scene of a terrible drama with a rapidity impossible\nwhen all the functions are awake and active is incredible. The only\nfunction of the brain capable of this lightning-like swiftness of\nvision is _memory_. To create requires a certain effort, consumes a\ncertain period of time, but a scene once beheld, an adventure once\nexperienced and vividly impressed upon the memory, can be recalled in\nits minutest details in a period of time too short to be reckonable.\n\nThat the sensitive plate of the brain never loses any clear picture\nonce received, has been demonstrated beyond doubt. The picture,\nthe sensation, may be overlaid and hidden for a long time beneath\nthe heaps of useless lumber that the days and years accumulate in\nthe mind's storehouse, but need or accident, or a similarity of\ncircumstance, will bring the forgotten belonging to light--sometimes\nwith startling effect. There is the well-known instance of a girl who,\nduring an attack of fever delirium, spoke in a language that no one\nabout her could understand. Investigation proved it to be Welsh--a\nlanguage of which, both before and after her illness, she was totally\nignorant. Further investigation showed that being born in Wales she\nhad understood the tongue as a very little child, but had afterwards\ncompletely forgotten it.\n\nIt is commonly known that in the struggle of the body against death by\nwater, the memory, stirred to furious effort, produces all her stores\nat once--probably in the frantic endeavour to find some experience\nwhich may be of use in this crisis.\n\nIt is often broadly asserted that the memory retains each and every\nexperience which life has presented for its contemplation, but this\nis hardly true. The memory makes to a certain extent a choice, and\nchooses oftentimes with apparent caprice. To demonstrate the truth of\nthis, let one endeavour to recall the first impression retained by his\nchildish mind and it usually proves to be something extremely trivial.\nMy own first clear memory is a sense of the comfort to my tired little\ntwo-year-old body of the clean linen sheets of the bed at the end of\na perilous and adventurous journey, of whose startling incidents my\nmemory preserved only one. Often this capricious faculty will seize\nupon some few high lights in a vivid picture and reject all the\nunimportant details. As a rule, however, it is the profound stirring of\nthe emotions which wakes the memory to activity. A woman never forgets\nher first lover. A man to the end of his life can recall his first\ntriumph, or his most imminent danger, and a trifle will often, after\nthe lapse of half a century, fill the eye with tears, make the cheek\nburn, or the heart beat with the power of the long-passed emotion,\npreserved living and fresh by the memory.\n\nThat the memory uses in sleep the material it has gathered during the\nday, and during the whole life, no dreamer will deny; but here again\nit is capricious; some parts of the day's--the life's--experiences\nare used, others rejected. Added to these natural and explicable\npossessions of the memory are a mass of curious, conflicting, tangled\nthoughts, which are foreign to our whole experience of existence, and\nwhich, when confused with our own memories, makes of our nights a wild\njumble of useless and foolish pictures. If it be true that it is by\nsome outward impression upon the senses that dreams are evoked, that\nit is the endeavours of the somnolent mind to explain to itself the\nmeaning of a noise, a light, a blow, which creates that delusion we\ncall dreams, then it is not upon the stores of our own memories alone\nthat the brain draws for material, since the falling rod awoke in the\nmind of Dr. Scholz a picture of the French revolution, which he had\nnever seen, and different in detail and vividness from any picture his\nreading had furnished.\n\nHeredity is an overworked jade, too often driven in double harness with\na hobby; but the link between generation and generation is so strong\nand so close that none may lightly tell all the strands of which it\nis woven, nor from whence were spun the threads that tie us to the\npast. It is very certain, despite the theories of Weismann, that the\nacquired characteristics of the parent may be transmitted to the child.\nThe boy whose father walked the quarter-deck is, nine times out of\nten, as certain to head for salt water as a seagull born in a hen's\nnest. The victim of ill-fortune and prisoner of despair who breaks\nthe jail of life to escape fate's malice leaves a dark tendency in\nthe blood of his offspring, which again and again proves the terrible\npower of an inherited weakness. Women who lose their mind or become\nclouded in thought at childbirth--though they come of a stock of _mens\nsana_--transmit the blight of insanity to their sons and daughters\nboth; and not only consumptive tendencies and the appetite for drink\nare acquired in a lifetime and then handed on for generations, but\npreferences, talents, manners, personal likeness--all may be the\nwretched burden or happy gift handed down to the son by the father. Who\ncan say without fear of contradiction that the memories of passions\nand emotions that stirred those dead hearts to their centre may not be\na part of our inheritance? The setting, the connection, is gone, but\nthe memory of the emotion remains. Such and such nerves have quivered\nviolently for such or such a cause--the memory stores and transmits the\nimpression, and a similar incident sets them tingling again, though two\ngenerations lie between.\n\nCertainly animals possess very distinctly these inherited memories. A\nyoung horse never before beyond the paddock and stables will fall into\na very passion of fear when a snake crosses his path, or when driven\nupon a ferry to cross deep, swift water. He is entirely unfamiliar\nwith the nature of the danger, but at some period one of his kind has\nsweated and throbbed in hideous peril, and the memory remains after the\nlapse of a hundred years. He, no more than ourselves, can recall all\nthe surrounding circumstances of that peril, but the threatening aspect\nof a similar danger brings memory forward with a rush to use her stored\nwarning. When the migrating bird finds its way without difficulty,\nuntaught and unaccompanied, to the South it has never seen, we call\nits guiding principle instinct--but what is the definition of the word\ninstinct? No man can give it. It but removes the difficulty one step\nbackward. Call this instinct an inherited memory and the matter becomes\nclear. Such memories, it is plain, are more definite with the animals\nthan with us; but so are many of their faculties, hearing, smell, and\nsight.\n\nEveryone has felt many times in his life a sense of familiarity with\nincidents that have had no place in his own experience, and has found\nit impossible to offer any explanation for the feeling. Coming suddenly\naround a turn of a hill upon a fair and unknown landscape, his heart\nmay bound with a keen sense of recognition of its unfamiliar outlines.\nIn the midst of a tingling scene of emotion, a sensation of the whole\nincident being a mere dull repetition will rob it of its joy or pain.\nA sentence begun by a friend is recognized as trite and old before it\nis half done, though it refers to matters new to the hearer. A sound,\na perfume, a sensation, will awaken feelings having no connection with\nthe occasion.\n\nThe first day I ever spent in a tropical country I was charmed with\nthe excessive novelty of everything about me; but suddenly that\nevening, being carried home in a chair by the coolie bearers, a flood\nof recognition poured over me like the waves of the sea, and for a\nfew minutes the illusion was so strong as to leave me breathless with\nastonishment. I had the sense of having often done this before. The\nwarm night, the padding of the bare feet in the dust, the hot smell of\nleaves, were all an old, trite experience. For days I struggled with\nthat tormenting sense, with which we are all familiar, of being unable\nto recall a something, a name, that is perfectly well known--is \"on\nthe tip of the tongue,\" as one says--but all in vain; and in time the\nrecognition grew fainter and more elusive with each effort to grasp it,\nuntil it slipped forever away into darkness. If such experiences as\nthese are not inherited memories, what are they?\n\nWith sleep, the will becomes dormant. Waking, it guards and governs;\nchooses what we shall do and be and think; stands sentinel over the\nmind and rejects all comers with which it is not familiar. Unless the\nthought comes from within the known borders of the body's own life, the\nwill will have none of it. But overtaken by fatigue and sinking into\nslumber with the night, his domain is left fenceless and unpatrolled,\nfor with the will goes his troop of watchmen, judgment, logic,\ndeliberation, ethics; and memory, ungoverned and uncontrolled, holds a\nfeast of misrule. The barrier between past and present melts away; all\nhis ancestors are merged into the individual; the events of the day are\ninextricably tangled with those of two centuries since, and this motley\nplay of time is called a dream.\n\nA man going back but to his great grandparents has already fourteen\ndirect progenitors, and is heir of such strange or striking episodes of\ntheir fourteen lives as were sufficiently deeply impressed upon their\nmemories to be transmittable. This alone is enough, one would think,\nto provide all the nights with material for the queer kaleidoscopic\njumbling of leavings, with which the nimble mind diverts itself,\nturning over the leaves of its old picture-book alone in the dark while\nits sluggish comrade snores; but there is no reason to believe that\nthere is a limit to these inheritances.\n\nThe most vivid sensation my night memory holds is of finding myself\nstanding alone, high up in a vast arena. It is open to the sky and\nthe night is falling swiftly and warm. Everyone has gone but myself,\nbut there is a tremulous sensation in my mind, as of very recent\nexcitement, noise, and tumult. I am waiting for someone who is coming\nthrough the arched door on the left, and I rise to go. I feel the\nrough coolness of the stone beneath my hand as I help myself to rise,\nand upon my throat and bosom I have a sensation of the light wool of\nmy garment. It has the vivid familiarity of a personal and perfectly\nnatural experience--so strong that, waking, I retain as keen a sense\nof it as if it were a happening of yesterday. I remember many more\ndreams of this type--momentary flashes of sensation of the trivial\nthings about me, such as all persons have felt in their waking lives,\nonly that the things about me in my dreams are totally unfamiliar to\nmy waking brain. In one of these I am emerging from the back door of a\nsmall white house--intensely white in the glare of a fierce sun. The\nhouse seems square and flat-topped, built of stone and with no windows\nvisible here in the rear. It opens on a narrow street of similar\nresidences. A man is with me, dressed in a long black robe and wearing\na curious black head-dress. He is reproaching me and remonstrating\nviolently concerning my indifference in regard to religious matters. I\nlook away, annoyed and bored by his vehemence, and the whole picture\nvanishes. It was as clear, as natural and familiar, as my own waking\nlife, while it lasted.... The narrow street of white houses seemed the\nonly possible form for a street. I had no consciousness of anything\ndifferent or more modern. The man's eager, stern face, with the heavy\nbeard and the high head-dress, looked in no way strange or unfamiliar.\nWith that double consciousness with which we are all familiar when\nawake, I watched the movement of his lips and the wagging of his beard\nas he talked, full of a sense of distaste, and thought, while listening\nto his flow of clear words, \"How tiresome these religious men are!\"\n\nAnother time I was aware of standing in the dark, sword in hand (I\nseemed to be a man and the seeming was not strange to me), listening\nwith furious pulses to a confusion of clashing blades and stamping\nof feet. Under the surface of passionate excitement the deeper\nsub-consciousness said: \"All is lost! The conspiracy is a failure!\"\nI was aware of a cool bravado which recognized the uselessness of\nattempting escape. The dice had been thrown--they had turned up wrong,\nthat was all. Yet so vigorous and courageous was the heart of this\nman that he was still buoyantly unafraid. There was a rush of bodies\nby him; the door swung back against him, crushing him to the wall,\nand a few moments later, under guard, he was passing through a long,\nlow corridor of stone. The torches showed the groined arch above him,\nand, a cell being unlocked, for the first time he felt afraid. Inside\nwas a big bear with a collar about its neck, and two villainous-faced\nmountebanks sat surlily upon the floor. The man was very much afraid at\nthe thought of such companions, for his hands were tied and he had no\nsword; yet he reasoned jovially with his guards, not wishing to show\nhis real terror. After some protests his sword was returned to him and\nhe stepped inside, again cheerfully confident. The door clanged to\nbehind him and the dream faded. All the conditions of the dream, the\nchange of sex, the strange clothes and faces, the arched corridor, the\nmen with the bear, seemed to my senses perfectly natural. They were\nquite commonplace, and of course. For the most part, however, my dreams\nare the fantastic hodge-podge common to dreamers, such as might result\nfrom the unsorted, unclassified memories of a thousand persons flung\ndown in a heap together and grasped without choice. One curious fact\nI have noted is that though I am a wide and omnivorous reader, I have\nnever had a dream or impression in sleep which might not have been part\nof the experience of some one of European or American ancestry. I am\nan ardent reader of travel and adventure, but never have I imagined\nmyself in Africa, nor have the landscapes of my dreams been other than\nEuropean or American.\n\nMr. Howells, in \"True I Talk of Dreams,\" added confirmation on this\npoint by saying that he had never been able to discover a dreamer\nwho had seen in his dreams a dragon or any such beast of impossible\nproportions.\n\nIt suggests itself--_en passant_--that dragons and other such \"fearful\nwild fowl\" are not uncommon in the cataclysmic visions of delirium, but\nperhaps the potency of fever, of drugs, of alcohol, or of mania, may\nopen up deeps of memory, of primordial memory, that are closed to the\nmilder magic of sleep. The subtle poison in the grape may gnaw through\nthe walls of Time and give the memory sight of those terrible days when\nwe wallowed--nameless shapes--in the prim\u00e6val slime. Who knows whether\nAlexander the Great, crowning himself with the gold of Bedlam's straws,\nmay not be only forgetful of the years that gape between him and his\nkingly Macedonian ancestor? Even Horatio's philosophy did not plumb all\nthe mysteries of life and of heredity.\n\nAnother interesting fact, in this connection, is that those who come\nof a class who have led narrow and uneventful lives for generations\ndream but little, and that dully and without much sensation; while the\nchildren of adventurous and travelled ancestors--men and women whose\npassions have been profoundly stirred--have their nights filled with\nthe movement \"of old forgotten far-off things and battles long ago.\"\nAgain, it is a fact that many persons, while hovering on the borders\nof sleep, but still vaguely conscious, are accustomed to see pictures\nof all manner of disconnected things--many of them scenes or faces\nwhich have never had part in their waking life--drifting slowly across\nthe darkness of the closed lid like the pictures of a magic lantern\nacross a sheet stretched to receive them, and these, by undiscernible\ngradations, lead the sleeper away into the land of dreams, the dim\ntreasure house of memory and the past.\n\nIf a dream is a memory, then the stories of their momentary duration\nare easily credible. The falling rod upon the sleeper's neck might\nrecall, as by a lightning flash, some scene in the Red Terror in which\nhis ancestor participated--an ancestor so nearly allied, perhaps,\nto the victim suffering under the knife as to know all the agonies\nvicariously, and leave the tragedy bitten into his memory and his blood\nforever.\n\nWhen the words heredity or instinct are contemplated in their broad\nsense they mean no more than inherited memory. The experiences of\nmany generations teach the animal its proper food and methods of\ndefence. The fittest survive because they have inherited most clearly\nthe memories of the best means of securing nourishment and escaping\nenemies. The marvellous facility gradually acquired by artisans who for\ngenerations practise a similar craft is but the direct transmission of\nthe brain's treasures.\n\nIn sleep the brain is peculiarly active in certain directions, not\nbeing distracted by the multitude of impressions constantly conveyed\nto it by the five senses, and experiments with hypnotic sleepers\nprove that some of its functions become in sleep abnormally acute and\nvigorous. Why not the function of memory? The possessions which during\nthe waking hours were useless, and therefore rejected by the will,\nsurge up again, vivid and potent, and troop before the perception\nunsummoned, motley and fantastic; serving no purpose more apparent\nthan do the idle, disconnected recollections of one's waking moments\nof dreaminess--and yet it may hap, withal, that the tireless brain,\nforever turning over and over its heirlooms in the night, is seeking\nhere an inspiration, or there a memory, to be used in that fierce and\ncomplex struggle called Life.\n\n\n\n\nNovember 6.\n\nThe Fountain of Salmacis.\n\n\nG---- was talking yesterday about the \"Sonnets from the Portuguese.\"\nLiked them. Thought them the high-water mark of Feminine Poetry....\n\nAlas, then, for that capitalized variety of verse!\n\nTo me these sonnets are extremely disagreeable. There is a type of\nman whose love is intolerably odious in all its manifestations to a\nwholesome woman. She feels that he is too nearly akin to her own sex\nfor his love to seem a natural, virile thing. Other men never appear to\nguess this cause of persistent lack of success with women.\n\nThey say: \"Jones is a good fellow--modest, clean-minded, gentle,--why\nis he so unlucky with women? The truth is, women like brutes.\"\n\nThe underlying femininity of Jones is not repulsive to them. They\nprobably feel, however, the same repugnance for the tendernesses of\nwomen who are too nearly akin to themselves.\n\nThe Greeks seem to have thought about and observed this. From their\nkeen vision none of the phenomena of life, apparently, was hid, and\nthey were quite aware of this occasional confusion of the nature and\nperson of the sex. As usual they typified it and invented legends\nabout it, though they were not, of course, aware of its cause--the\natavistic tendency to throw back to the primordial condition when both\nsexes existed in the same individual; but then they were poets and not\nscientists. They got at essential truths by instinct and revealed their\nknowledge by beautiful suggestion rather than by exact analysis. The\ndry-as-dusts fail even yet to see that their marbles and legends are as\nvaluable in the study of life as German theses.\n\n\"The Sonnets from the Portuguese\" give me the unwholesome,\nuncomfortable sense that one gets from those unlucky feminine men\nand masculine women. They mingle in a disagreeable fashion the pride\nand reserve of the woman who receives worship and the abandon and\naggressiveness of the man who sues.\n\nOne wonders why women cannot write poetry?--or rather, to speak with\nmore exactness--are never poets. Once or twice in their lives,\nperhaps, they may speak with sacred fire, but they are never, in the\nfull meaning of the word, poets. They cannot rise out of themselves.\n\nGosse says of Mrs. Browning: \"She was not striving to produce an\neffect; she was trying with all the effort of which her spirit was\ncapable to say exactly what was in her heart.\"\n\nThere is the whole secret of the feminine failure in art. It always\ndegenerates into an attempt to express, not humanity, but the\nindividual woman. Woman is inevitably personal. She still sits alone\nat the door of her wigwam. Of humanity, she is ignorant, and to it is,\nmoreover, indifferent.\n\nMrs. Browning was only once shaken out of herself--when she wrote that\nfine plaint \"De Profundis\"--voicing the griefs of the many in telling\nof her own. After all, a portrait of one's self only is not art, or is\nart in its most limited form. Aurora Leigh and all the rest are simply\nElizabeth Barrett masking under other names. However much the hand may\nresemble Esau's, the voice is always the voice of Jacob.\n\nByron had these same feminine limitations--\"dressing up\" (as the\nchildren say) as a Pirate, a Turk, or the like, and reciting a rhymed\nBaedeker for the benefit of the untravelled; but whether Pirate or\nGiaour, always unmistakably Byron.\n\nWhat the women with poetic gifts _can_ do is to translate delightfully.\nMrs. Browning's translations of Heine are quite the best in existence.\nEmma Lazarus made an English version of \"_Une Nuit de Mai_\" that is\nalmost more delightful than the original. She might have enriched our\ntreasury of verse with priceless transferences; instead of which she\nwasted her gifts upon unimportant \"expressions of herself.\"\n\n\n\n\nNovember 20.\n\nTwo Siegfrieds.\n\n\nA---- says there is no definite, abstract standard of beauty or\nperfection.\n\nWe were talking of Jean de Reszke's _Siegfried_. A---- was completely\nsatisfied with it. I explained that he was so only because he had not\nseen Alvary in the part. A---- was sure that even if he had done so de\nReszke might still be best to his taste; asserting again that there\nwas no ideal good in art, but only preference. Of course he does say\nthis for the very reason that I advanced--because he had not seen\nAlvary.\n\nPoor beautiful young creature! He died recently in Germany in horrible,\nuseless, ridiculous pain. Wagner, I am sure, would have thought him the\nideal _Siegfried_, for he never made vocal gymnastics a fetish, but\ndemanded satisfaction for the eye as much as for the ear.\n\nAlvary's _Siegfried_ was the very embodiment of splendid, golden,\njoyous youth. Balmung beaten into shape, he sprang from the forge,\nwhirling it and laughing at its glitter as an ecstatic child might. The\nsplitting of the anvil was the mere sudden caprice of youthful bravado\nand mischief. He looked about for an instant to find something on which\nto test his new toy, and struck the iron in half as a boy would snip\noff the head of a daisy with his new whip. All his movements had the\nunpremeditatedness of youth.\n\nDrunk with the struggle and the triumph of his contest with the dragon,\nhe killed _Mime_ more to sate this new lust of power than to mete out\njustice or due punishment. He threw himself, sweating with exertion,\nand swelling with a new realization of his manhood, upon the grasses\nby the stream, and as the breezes cooled his body and spirit, and the\nsoft peace of the green world stole upon him, romance woke in his face\nand voice: the rough uncouthness of boyhood fell away like a discarded\ngarment.\n\nWho that once saw and heard it can ever forget those fresh tones or\nthat slim-waisted boy wandering away into the sunlit forest, his\nbeautiful dreaming face lifted yearningly to the thrilling bird voice\nthat sang of love?... Youth seeking passion--the sleeping woman ringed\nwith fire.\n\nAh me!--all our hearts ached after him; after our own splendid moment.\n\nIt is useless to say that this is not absolute beauty. It is impossible\nthat a heavy-footed tenor (whose belt would have served for a saddle\ngirth) with a square Sclav head and pendulous cheeks can be equalized\nto the other by individual taste. Such taste is simply bad.\n\n\n\n\nJanuary 6.\n\nA Door Ajar.\n\n\nI have been reading Pater's \"Greek Studies\"; a volume which an amiable\nfriend presented to me as a Christmas gift.\n\nIt affects me physically as well as mentally. I must lay the book down\nnow and then, because I find my heart beats and my temples grow moist.\nIt is as if its covers were doors opening into the other world--that\nworld that is always just beyond one.\n\nI don't know whether it is a common experience, but from my earliest\nchildhood I have always had a sort of belief that if one stooped very\nlow, held one's breath, and made a bold spring, one would break through\nand under the barrier, and be _There_!\n\nOr one might go very suddenly around a corner and be _There_. Always\nthere was the sensation that it was lying just beyond, just outside of\none's self, and that only a certain heaviness of the flesh, a certain\nlack of concentration of attention, prevented one's participation in\nit.\n\nTwice the door almost opened. I sprang in spirit to cross the\nthreshold, and there was--nothing. The door was slammed in my face, but\nI never forgot that I had nearly got through. It was like death. As if\none's brain and heart had suddenly grown vast and vapourized. Pater's\nbook rouses some echo of those sensations.\n\nI can't define what the other life is. It is all around me. I feel\nit in the water when I swim--a sentiency. If I could only look close\nenough into the shifting depths, I should see--a hand clasped quickly\nenough would grasp--what always just evades.\n\nI feel it around me, breathing and watching in the woods. It is what I\ncannot quite catch in the talk of the birds. It is what the animals say\nwith their eyes.\n\nThe Greeks understood it. They called it Pan, and Cybele, and Dionysus,\nor dryads in the woods, or nymphs in the fountain, but those were\nonly terms by which they tried to express the inexpressible. It is so\nsubtle--so intoxicating. It is like love--a reblending with all the\nelements of nature. One aches and strains toward it, and yet feels a\ndelicious, shuddering reluctance to know.\n\n\n\n\nJanuary 7.\n\nAt Time of Death.\n\n\n        Oh High Heart of mine,\n          Now list to a wonder!\n        Thou shalt vent thy great rages\n          In lightning and thunder.\n    And the force of thy fury, more mighty than they,\n    Shall rock mountains, and rip them asunder.\n\n        When thou weepest, oh Heart!\n          All thy bitter deploring\n        In the white whirling rains\n          Shall have anguished outpouring.\n    And the salt and the sound of thy grief, like the sea,\n    Shake the night with its sullen wild roaring.\n\n        When thou lovest, oh Heart!\n          Into sudden fierce flower,\n        'Neath thy passionate breath\n          In one rapturous hour,\n    Earth shall blossom, all crimson and trembling with love,\n    Stirred to heart by thy rage and thy power.\n\n        Then, high Heart, be brave!\n          This death is but rending\n        Of limits that vexed,\n          And the ultimate blending\n    With the cosmical passions of Nature thine own,\n    Made immortal, insatiate, unending.\n\n\n\n\nJanuary 10.\n\nThe Curse of Babel.\n\n\nBoutet de Monvel, who had been lending H---- a polite but obviously\nfatigued attention, got up with alacrity as the clock struck ten and\nbowed himself out, with that military bend of the hips characteristic\nof French salutes. H---- passed his handkerchief around the top of his\ncollar and said:\n\n\"_Damn_ Babel!\"\n\nWe all laughed.\n\n\"Now, here,\" said H----, indignantly, \"is a man with a beautiful mind,\na man full of beautiful thoughts and visions, and because of those\ninfernal French verb inflections, because they will call tables and\nchairs 'he' and 'she' instead of 'it,' I can't communicate with him\nwithout boring him to death. We English-speaking people are a great\ndeal more lenient. Some of the pleasantest talks I've ever had have\nbeen with foreigners who waded through a slaughter of my native tongue\nto a positive throne in my respect. But no foreigner can ever tolerate\nbroken French or Spanish. They jump to the immediate conclusion that\na man who can't speak their abominable gibberish correctly must be\neither a boor or a fool, and they don't take the pains to conceal that\nimpression. Why don't they learn to speak English, so that a human\nbeing could talk to them?\"\n\nR---- told a story of recent experience in Italy, which he thought\nsuggested an equal arrogance in the Anglo-Saxon.\n\nHe had watched a young woman, an American, on the railway platform at\nNaples, explaining in lucid English to the porter her wishes concerning\nher luggage. The porter stared, shrugged, and seized a bag. The girl\ncaught his arm.\n\n\"Put that down,\" she said sternly. \"I mean that to go in the carriage\nwith me. Those two trunks are to be labelled for Rome and put in the\nvan.\"\n\nThe porter began to gesticulate and gabble.\n\n\"There's no use making so much noise,\" she commented contemptuously.\n\"Just do as I tell you and don't lose time.\"\n\nThe Italian hunched his shoulders, threw his hands out in fan-like\ngestures, and made volcanic appeals to heaven. R----, who is shy, but\nchivalrous, and who speaks six Italian dialects, felt called upon to\ntake part.\n\n\"Excuse me, Madam,\" he said, \"but you seem to be having some difficulty\nwith your luggage. As I speak Italian, perhaps I may be of service to\nyou.\"\n\nThe girl turned a cold eye upon him and waved him away.\n\n\"Thank you,\" she said, \"you are very kind, but all the world has got to\nspeak English eventually, and there is no use indulging these people in\ntheir ridiculous Italian now!\"\n\n\n\n\nJanuary 14.\n\nThe Fourth Dimension.\n\n\nI lunched with Mary R---- yesterday and heard a curious story. Mrs.\nM----, who is ordinarily so amusing, seemed _distrait_ and disturbed\nall through the meal, and when the other women had gone, Mary, who is\nextremely sensitive and sympathetic to the state of mind of everyone\nabout her, led Mrs. M----, in a manner fascinating in its skilfulness,\nto unpack her overladen spirit.\n\nShe said: \"I have been spending the morning with a friend, who is\nhalf mad with melancholia. She has had a terrible experience. She\nis a Philadelphia woman. Her husband was a manufacturer of window\nglass. He died about five years ago from typhoid fever and left her\nwith a small fortune and two daughters; one fourteen years old, one\nseventeen--nice, rosy, wholesome, well brought up girls. They had\nalways wanted to travel, but during her husband's lifetime he was too\nbusy and she would never leave him. About a year after his death, they\nconcluded, as the lease of their house had run out, to store their\nfurniture and go abroad for a time, with the idea that the girls could\nperfect themselves in languages and music and see something of the\nworld.\n\nI don't want you to think there was anything sensational about them.\nThey were just quiet, middle-class Philadelphians,--you know the\ntype,--modest, conventional, devoted to the proprieties. That's what\nmakes their story all the more tragic.\n\nThey arrived in London; took quiet lodgings in Dover Street, and\nconcluded to spend six months in England, seeing the sights, and\nmaking these London lodgings their headquarters. They had been there\nall through the month of May, doing picture galleries, churches, and\nthe museums, and occasionally a theatre. One Saturday they had tickets\nfor a concert, and as the place was near and the day was fine, they\ndecided to walk to the place where the concert was to be given,\nstopping at a shop in Regent street on the way to give an order about\nsomething being made there. I don't know what it was, or where the\nshop was situated, but at all events the three were walking abreast,\nthe girls chattering and joking about the order. The sidewalk was very\ncrowded, so that the mother stepped ahead, but heard her daughters'\nvoices at her elbow for several minutes.\n\nThe street grew clearer as she went, and she turned to beckon the girls\nalongside again. She didn't see them, and stood a few moments for them\nto catch up. After waiting awhile she walked back and still missed\nthem. It occurred to her that they might have passed ahead without her\nnoticing it, and gone on to the shop where they had planned to stop, so\nshe went there and waited twenty minutes. Then she imagined they might\nhave missed their way, and gone to the concert hall to wait for her.\nBy this time she felt sufficient anxiety to hail a cab, but no one had\nseen them at the concert hall, and she herself had all three of the\ntickets, so she returned to their lodgings, sure that they would turn\nup there eventually in any case.\n\nAt six o'clock they were still absent, and really frightened by this\ntime she visited all the near-by police stations, but could get no news\nof them.\n\nThat was four years ago, and from that day to this she has never seen\nor heard of them. She has travelled all over Europe and returned twice\nto America, has advertised in every possible way, and has employed the\nbest detectives of both continents. Now she has come back for the third\ntime, utterly broken in health and fortune. Their home in Philadelphia\nhas become a boarding-house, and she has taken a room and will spend\nthe rest of her life there, hoping that in that way, if they ever\nreturn, they may be able to reach her. Nearly all her money has gone\nin the search, and her mind is almost equally a wreck. She goes over\nto Philadelphia this afternoon, and I went in the morning to tell her\ngood-by.\"\n\nMary said--her lips were white--\"But, good heavens, Emily! where could\nthe girls have gone?\"\n\n\"That's the terrible part of it,\" Mrs. M---- answered. \"One can't\nimagine. They were both so young. It was in a foreign country: they had\nno money. As far as the mother knew, neither had, nor could have had,\nany reason for going, nor anyone a reason for taking them. If one only\nhad gone one might suspect a lover, or a sudden aberration of mind, but\nthere were two; it was in broad daylight. Three minutes before they\nhad been beside her. There was no struggle, no accident. No one could\nhave silently carried off or made way with _two_ grown girls in Regent\nStreet in midday. One minute they were there, laughing, happy, and\ncommonplace, and the next minute they had vanished utterly and forever,\nwithout a word or a cry.\"\n\n\"But why has one never heard of it?\" I said.\n\n\"Well, of course, the mother kept it out of the papers. For a long\ntime she feared they might have been the victims of the sort of person\nwho preys on young girls, and dreaded that there should be a scandal\nby which their lives should be ruined if they ever returned. To-day I\nthink she would be glad to find them even in the lowest brothel, if she\nmight only see them again.\"\n\n\"Hadn't any of the police or detectives a theory?\"\n\n\"Oh, thousands at first, but they never bore any fruit. Consider all\nthe circumstances. They were sensible, self-reliant American girls.\nBy this time, if they were alive, they would have found some means of\ncommunicating with their mother. She has published guarded appeals,\nwhich they would understand, and always in the English language, in\nabout every paper in this country and Europe.\"\n\n\"But what do you think?\"\n\n\"What can one think? Can you conceive of any solution when you consider\nall the facts?\"\n\n\"Has the mother no theory?\"\n\n\"Well, she has, but then she is hardly sensible, you know, after the\nstrain of such an experience. You've heard of the Fourth Dimension,\nhaven't you? She says if that's not the explanation, she cannot imagine\nany other. She doesn't really believe it, I think, but she says if\nthey did not stumble into it, where are they? And what answer can one\ngive her?\"\n\nBy this time it was late, and I came away. Outside the sun was shining\nand the trolley cars buzzing by. The theory of the Fourth Dimension\nseemed absurd, but I wondered where those poor young girls could have\ngone, and felt an oppression in my breathing.\n\n\n\n\nJanuary 23.\n\nThe Ant and the Lark.\n\n\nWho, I wonder, was the stupid phrase-maker guilty of saying that Genius\nwas only an infinite capacity for taking pains? And yet Shakespeare,\naccording to tradition, never blotted a line. How much pains had the\nlittle Mozart taken when he began his first concert tour? Creation\ncomes swiftly and with heat. The man who must take infinite pains\nin production is never a genius. Indeed, when one sees how little\nthe creation of beauty, harmony, or ideas is related to their human\ncreator, how little, in a way, he seems related to them, one is almost\ninclined to imagine that somewhere there exists a great reservoir of\nforce and that the \"genius\" is merely a cock through which the creative\nfluid runs. He happens to be the cock that is \"turned on\" while the\nhandles of the others are left untouched.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere was once a very ambitious and industrious Ant. Its home was in a\nfield where the grass and flowers bloomed.\n\nThis Ant had convictions as to the best uses of life, and wasted\nno time. So many hours a day she devoted to the improvement of her\nmind, and so many to her life labour, which was to build an ant-hill.\nEarly and late she toiled, and as she toiled she thought very deeply,\nelaborating numerous excellent and noble theories. All her theories\nconcerned the best use of opportunities, and the doing of some work\nwhich should make the world better because she had existed.\n\nOnce in a long while, when quite worn out by her labours, she would\nclimb to the top of a blade of grass, and look out into the world.\nSometimes the sun was just rising and the field was damascened with\nthe blue and white cups of morning-glories, and sometimes it was\nevening and the moon silvered the dew-hung grass, which palpitated with\nfireflies. At such times a divine yearning and great longing filled the\nheart of the tired little emmet, and she would hurry down to her work\nat once, saying bravely to herself:\n\n\"If I waste a moment my hill will never be high enough to look out upon\nthis beautiful world.\" And so would toil on without ceasing, taking\nthe greatest pains with every grain of sand, fitting and refitting it\ninto its place with infinite pains, and comforting herself for her slow\nprogress by saying:\n\n\"I am really not very old yet. I still have a great many days in which\nto complete my work.\" And would make some excuse to herself for going\ndown to stand on the ground beside it and gain encouragement by noting\nhow much greater was the hill than her own stature, and then went\nhappily back to her task.\n\nNear the Ant's hill a lark had built its home--a careless body, who\nroughly kicked out the earth for a nest, and who, being dull as she\nsat on her eggs, conversed at times with the Ant, for whom the matron\nmanifested an ill-concealed contempt.\n\n\"In heaven's name!\" she said, \"What is the use of wearing yourself to\nskin and bone working on that hill? Isn't it quite big enough for your\nuses already?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" replied the Ant, patiently, \"but it is every one's duty to make\nthe world as beautiful as they can, and I want to build the biggest and\nmost beautiful ant-hill in the world. And oh!\"--she cried, clasping her\nlittle paws and with a hungry look in her eyes--\"I do so want to be\nfamous!\"\n\n\"Fiddle-de-dee!\" answered the brown bird, contemptuously.\n\"Famous!--what is that? Are you wearing yourself out for such nonsense?\nAs for me, give me a fat worm for breakfast and luck with my eggs, and\nit's all I ask.\" Saying which, she tucked her head under her wing and\nwent to sleep, while the Ant hurried away to finish the daily task she\nset herself.\n\nIn course of time a young lark was hatched. A great red, sprawling,\nfeatherless thing, with a big bill and no idea but worms. The Ant used\nto try sometimes, when his mother was absent hunting food, to teach the\nugly young thing some of her own excellent theories, but the bird only\nblinked sleepily and scornfully and never answered a word, so the Ant\nwas reluctantly obliged to give up the hope of ever inspiring him with\nthe nobler ambitions of life.\n\nShe was growing much encouraged about her own work. All the other ants\nin the field wondered at and admired it, and as one could nearly see\nout above the grasses by standing upon her hill on tiptoe, the happy\ninsect began to dream of immortality.\n\nBy this time, too, the young lark had grown feathers, and one morning\nhe stumbled out of the nest, fluttered a moment to try his wings, and\nsuddenly, bursting into a flood of song, soared upward into the sunlit\nblue.\n\nThe Ant fell to the earth, breathless and paralyzed, but in a moment,\nstifling her pain and despair, she rose up and began, from mere habit,\nfitting more grains of sand into her unfinished hill.\n\nA Poet walked in the field that day, meditating some verses upon the\ndivine gift of genius. He cried aloud with joy at the lark's song, and\nwhile he gazed upward stumbled over the Ant's hill and demolished it,\nbut in his note-book he wrote:\n\n\"Oh, miracle of Genius, that lifts the Sons of God on golden pinions\nto the gates of heaven, while the dull myriads toil futilely at Babels\nbelow.\"\n\n\n\n\nJanuary 29.\n\nThe D\u00f6ppelganger.\n\n\nI suppose that everyone who has reached maturity has been aware of\na sense of a dual personality--of a something within him that is a\n_me_ and a _not me_; of opposing influences that puzzle his judgment,\nweaken his resolves, and warp his intention. These natures he finds\nengaged in an eternal conflict which sways him from the course he would\ninstinctively follow, and draws him along lines of thought and conduct\nsatisfying to neither side of his being, and achieving only a helpless\ncompromise between the two.\n\n\"To be?\"--\"Or _not_ to be?\" contend the two at every crossing of the\ntangled meshes of existence, and neither disputant is ever convinced by\nthe other's logic.\n\n\"To sleep\"--says one. \"Perchance to dream,\" replies the other coldly;\nand so gives pause to Hamlet's swift intentions.\n\nWhich is the real man? The Hamlet whose soul lusts for sudden brute\nrevenge, whose promptings are the instinctive play of the natural man,\nor that frigid censor who checks the impulses of the first speaker\nand chills him with cold reasons and balancings of right and wrong,\nso that the sword falls from his nerveless hand at the very moment of\nopportunity? Or after all, is the real man the one whose actions are\na continual endeavour to steer between the two promptings; the Hamlet\nwhose doings are not in direct answer to either voice--are but furious\nand confused outbursts of indecision?\n\nIf it were at all possible to decide between the two, one would incline\nto think that the second voice, that chilling critic, was another self,\nalien to us, though entrenched in the very depths of the soul--was the\n_not me_, in everlasting opposition to the _me_--was the past warring\nwith the present.\n\nThe warm, impulsive, blundering _me_ we know, but who is that other?\nWhence comes this double, this _alter ego_, this bosom's lord, and\nstrange, nameless ghost who haunts the house of life? How many thousand\ndeaths have we died to give him life? For he is inexpressibly aged,\ninfinitely sophisticated; and while the _me_ still crowns its locks\nwith youth's golden illusions, he is grey with knowledge and hoary with\ndisenchantment. Though a part of our most intimate selves, he is not at\none with us. He sympathizes with none of our enthusiasms, is tempted by\nnone of our sins.... Sins!... what should he do eating forbidden fruit\nwho is all compounded of the knowledge of good and evil?\n\n\"Ye shall be as gods, having eaten of that tree\"--and like a god he\nsits in the dusk of the soul's seat, knowing the past, predicating the\nfuture, calmly beholding the fulfilling of our destiny. And yet is his\ngrim wisdom of no avail, since--a shadowy Cassandra--he warns in vain.\nHis deity-ship is of no more worth than that of the Olympian heavens,\nwhich might punish or reward, but could not divert the decrees of a\npower higher than itself. It is indeed the fate of all gods to have\ntheir creations caught from between their shaping hands by the blind,\nfumbling fingers with the shears. Gods may teach; may command; may ban\nor bless, but the being once made is Fate's creature, not theirs.\n\nThis cynical, impotent _d\u00f6ppelganger_ goes by many names. His Christian\ncognomen is Conscience, and his voice is raised to exalt Christian\ntenets of clean living and high thinking.\n\n\"Thou shalt surely die,\" he declaims from the altar where he wears with\ncheerful indifference the livery of a faith in which he has no part,\nand we walk contentedly in the path he designates, flattering ourselves\nupon being upheld and guided by the voice of omnipotent truth, until\npassion trips our heels with some hidden snare, and, rolling headlong\nin the mire, we lift our stained faces in astonishment to behold that\ncalm-lidded countenance all unstirred by our wild mishap. He foresaw,\nbut he was helpless to prevent, nor does he greatly care, since he\nalso knows that age after age every reincarnation of the spirit must be\ntempted anew by the ever-renewed, ever-lustful, unalterable flesh.\n\nWeissman diverts himself and indulges the Teutonic weakness for\nword-building by naming this double self the \"germ-plasm\"--that\nimmortal, eternal seed of life that links the generations in an\nunbroken chain; changing and developing only through the unreckonable\nprocesses of time, and taking heed not at all of the mere passing\naccidents of fleeting avatars.\n\nWhy should not this germ-plasm, this eternal ghost, be infinitely\nsophisticated? What surprises can its mere momentary envelope contrive\nfor a consciousness as old as the moon? If temptations seduce the young\nflesh, though the old, old soul declares with scorn that teeth are set\non edge by the eating of sour grapes, it is not surprised at all when\nthe body persists in its will to seize upon the fruit of its desire,\nhaving seen in everyone of a myriad generations the same obstinacy and\nweakness of the flesh, which learns little and very hardly from the\nspirit.\n\nNow and again--in his moments of exalted seriousness--man listens to\nthis ancient voice of the spirit breathing the accumulated experience\nof time, and then it imposes upon him the ripened wisdom of its long\nretrospect of the generations, and man creates religions--by which he\ndoes not square his conduct--or philosophies--whose bit he immediately\ntakes between his teeth. But for the most part he stops his ears to the\nsoul's stern, sad preaching with the thick wax of sentimentalism, and\nthat undying determination that life shall be not what it is, but what\nhe wishes it to be--and so stumbles along, through ever-renewed pangs\nand tragedies, after a mirage in the hard desert of existence, to whose\nstones and flints, despite his bruises, he will not turn his eyes. And\nwell it is for us that upon many the mantle of flesh lies so warm and\nthick that this ghost called consciousness of self cannot chill their\nblood with his dank wisdom breathed from out a world of graves. In\nthe hearts of such as these all the sweet illusions of existence came\nto full and natural bloom. To their lusty egoism life has all the\nexhilaration and freshness of a new and special creation.\n\nFar otherwise is it with the haunted man, whose dwelling is blighted\nby that cold presence with its terrible memory. Forever echoes through\nhis chambers the cry that hope will be unfulfilled, that love will die,\nthe morning fade, that what has been will be again and forever again;\nthat the waters of life will climb the shore only to crawl back again\ninto the blind deeps of eternity; that the unit is forever lost in the\neternal ebb and flux of matter. Endeavour can find no footing in this\nprofundity of experience. To all desire, all aspiration, the ghost says\nin a paralyzing whisper:\n\n\"Scipio, remember that thou art a _man_--that everything has been done\neven if thou doest it not--that everything will be done whether thou\ndoest it or no.... Where are the poems that were written in Baalbec?\nWhere the pictures that were painted in Tadmor of the Wilderness? Are\nthere fewer pictures and poems to-day because the men who made them\nare not? Who was prime minister to the bearded King of Babylon? Where\nis his fame?... Ay, drink this cup if you will, but you know well the\ntaste of it is not good at the bottom. You have drunk it a thousand\nthousand of times, and the taste was never good, and yet you will drink\nit a thousand times again, hoping always that it will be good.\"...\n\nAnd the haunted man sits with idle hands and withered purpose,\nlistening always to the voice, while his neighbours push loudly on to\ndie futilely but gloriously in the unending battle.\n\n\"An end-of-the-century disease,\" say these full-fed, happy egotists\nwith lowered breath and eyes askance as they pass the haunted\nhouse. \"The mould of age has fallen upon him and made him mad.\" Yet\nbefore the walls of Troy these two--the ghost-ridden, and the happy\negotist--battled for the glowing shadow of a woman whom neither man\nloved nor desired. Achilles, blackly melancholy in his tent, heard the\nold voice cry\n\n  \"\u1f10\u03bd \u03b4\u1f72 \u1f30\u1fc7 \u03c4\u03b9\u03bc\u1fc7 \u1f20\u03bc\u1f72\u03bd \u03ba\u03b1\u03ba\u1f78\u03c2 \u1f20\u03b4\u1f72 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f10\u03c3\u03b8\u03bb\u03cc\u03c2\"\n\nand disdains the greatness of life and the littleness of it. To\nan iron inevitableness of fate he opposes only indifference and an\nunbending courage. That which has been will be, and the end is death\nand darkness. He has no illusions. He wars neither for love of country\nnor love of Helen. If Troy falls nothing is gained. If the Greeks fail\nnothing will be lost. In time all the sweat and blood shed upon Ilium's\nwindy plain will evaporate into a mere mist of uncredited legend. In\nAchilles, the other self, the _alter ego_, is the stronger man. The\nghost of dead experience is as living as he.\n\nNot so is it with Hector. All the passions of humanity are as new and\nfresh to him as if none before himself had known them. He looks neither\nforward nor back. The present is his concern. What though men have died\nand been forgotten, he will not lessen his utmost effort, even to the\ngiving up of his life to save Troy. That is to him the one thing of\nimportance. So robust is his courage, his faith, his love, that the sad\nspirit of memory within him cannot speak loud enough to make him hear.\nThere is no warring of dual personalities in him; he is aware of but\none--that rich momentary incarnation called Hector, more potent than\nthe memories and experiences of the thousands of lives that preceded\nhim, that gave him existence.\n\nWhat though Achilles was right; what though both be but dust and legend\nnow--who would not choose that flash of being called Hector--Hector\ndragged at the chariot-heel of Achilles--Hector with wife enslaved and\nchildren slaughtered and his city's proud towers levelled with the\nplain, rather than to have been the haunted victor, triumphing but not\ntriumphant; fighting without purpose or hope? The same end indeed came\nto both, but one died as he lived, for what he thought a glorious end,\nwhile the other too passed away--but with the cold knowledge that both\ndeaths were fruitless and vain.\n\nTroy is a dream, but the battle forever is waged between the fresh\nincarnation of being and the memories of past being. Every creature\nwakes out of childhood aware that he lives not alone in even the\nsecretest chambers of his life. Which is the _I_ he cannot always say.\nThe two companions are never at one. Sometimes the struggle breaks\ninto open flame. Sometimes the one is victor, sometimes the vanquished.\nEach fights for Helen, for his ideal of pleasure, of wisdom, or of\ngood, but in the very handgrips of battle a chilling doubt will fall\nbetween them whether she for whom they war--call her virtue, beauty,\nlust, life, what you will--is the real Queen, or only some misleading\neidolon whose true self is hid in distant Sparta; and so the grasp\nrelaxes, the tense breath falls free, the selves mingle. Man gropes for\ntruth and finds it vague, intangible, not to be grasped--a dream.\n\n\n\n\nFebruary 17.\n\n\"A Young Man's Fancy.\"\n\n\nWhat is that ineffable quality in the air that says _Spring_?\n\nLong ago, as far back as towards the end of January, there came\nsuddenly one day a sense that the winter was conquered. There has been\nmuch cold weather since--we shall have much cold still, but there is\nalways a promise in the air.\n\nThere is a sad day later in the year when one is aware all at once that\nsummer is ending, and the warm, mild weeks that follow never console\nfor that hour's realization that the apex is crossed and the rest of\nthe path slopes downward. Just such a day comes in one's life,--while\none is still young and strong--a sudden sense that youth is done; the\nclimacteric of passion passed. Life has a long Indian summer still,\nbut it's never again the real thing,--that ripening toward fruition;\nthat ecstasy of expansion and growth. There is no visible change for a\nwhile, yet every day there is an imperceptible fall in the temperature.\nAlways the nights are growing longer. The flowers drop away one by\none--the sap sinks a little, leaving the extreme delicate twigs\nmoribund. No one has seen the leaves fall, yet there are fewer upon the\nbough--winter is coming.\n\nAge is peaceful, perhaps--but middle age--! The wave clings to the\nshore, but the inexorable ebb draws it down relentlessly into the\ndeep. This is the time that men go _musth_, like old elephants. This\nis the period when both men and women do their mad deeds, which belie\nall their previous records. It is their one last frantic clutch after\nvanishing romance and passion. Men buy a semblance of it from young\nwomen sometimes, and resolutely endeavour to persuade themselves that\nit is the real thing--that gold can renew youth, can purchase a second\nsummer--but they know well that it is only a mechanical imitation.\nThose cruel old satirists, the comedy writers, loved to paint the\ntrembling dotard resolutely shutting his eyes to the lusty young rival\nhiding behind the jade's petticoats.\n\nAs for the women!--who shall tell the real story of the middle age of\nwomen?--of the confident coquette, who one day turns away to punish her\nslave, and finds, when she relents, that his eyes are fixed upon her\ndaughter?--of the bewildered inspection of the mirror, that still tells\na fluttering tale of curves and colours, though startled experience\nshows the eyes of men turning in preference to crude, red-elbowed\ngirls, obviously her inferior in grace and charm?--of the shock of\nfinding that the world is no longer much interested in her--the\namazement of the discovery that the handsome lads see little difference\nbetween a woman of thirty-five and one of fifty?--of the shame-faced\nmisery of learning that the passion, which she has virtuously resolved\nto repulse, is given in reality to her niece? Her charm, her sweetness,\nher well-preserved beauty is as nothing beside mere raw youth.\nUndeveloped figures, flat chests, blotchy complexions, are of more\nvalue than her rounded mellow loveliness. She is pushed from her throne\nby giggling girls, who stare at her in hard contempt and wonder openly\nwhat the old creature does lingering belated in this galley.\n\nThough she be called \"a fine woman\" still, men of all ages will turn\nfrom her to dote upon an empty-headed debutante. Her comprehension and\nsympathy, her wit and her learning are less enthralling than the vapid\nbabblings of red-cheeked misses just out of pinafores. Her heart is as\nyoung as ever; she knows herself capable of a finer, nobler passion\nand tenderness than the girl can dream of, yet the selfish, egotistic\nemotions of the self-confident chit awake a rapture that would be\ndulled by the richest warmth she could give.\n\n    \"Age, I do abhor thee:\n    Youth, I do adore thee;\n    O, my love, my love is _young_!\"\n\nThat she in her turn elbowed the preceding generation from its place\ncomforts her not at all. Oh, for again one hour only of the splendid\ndomination of youth--one rich instant of the power to intoxicate!...\n\nThere is nothing for it but to keep such things to one's self, and jog\non quietly and respectably to the end. One has had one's turn.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n    That mad girl Spring has passed up this way\n      With a hole in her pockets,\n    For here lies her money all strewn in the grass--\n      Broad dandelion ducats.\n\n    She'll be needing this wealth ere the end of the year\n      For a warm winter gown,\n    Though now she's content with a breast-knot of buds\n      And a violet crown.\n\n    She heard in the green blooming depths of the wood\n      The voice of a dove,\n    And she dropped all these flowering coins as she ran\n      To meet summer and love.\n\n    'Twill not serve you to gather from out her wild path\n      All your two hands can hold--\n    Only youth and the Spring may buy kisses and mirth\n      With this frail fairy gold.\n\n\n\n\nFebruary 18.\n\nAn Arabian Looking-glass.\n\n\nThere has been great recrudescence of the Essay of late--none of it\nvery important, I take the liberty of thinking. We moderns have lost\nthe trick of it. All of us, at least, but Stevenson, and he hardly\nseems a modern, so closely is he related to the great classics, with\nhis inheritance of the Grand Style, like the _bel canto_, now a lost\nart. And yet the Essay is a great temptation. Doubtless not one of\nall those who go down into the ink-bottle with pens has quite escaped\nits seduction. Generally it is, I suspect, merely an outcropping\nof the somewhat too widely known need of the artistic nature for\n\"self-expression\" in more definite terms than ordinary work permits.\n\nThe young fellows, still walking in the light of the eternal\npulchritudes, are touchingly anxious lest they \"falsify\nthemselves\"--pathetically unaware of the supreme unconcern of the\nrest of humanity as to their personal veracity. The line between art\nand the other thing is drawn just across this zone of egotism. \"The\nother thing\" is a man's expression of himself; Art is the mirror in\nwhich each observer sees only his own face. The Arabian legend of\nthe prosperous old beggar who, making a pilgrimage to Mecca, left to\nhis son, as his sole means of support, a looking-glass, and returned\nto find the boy starving and gazing into the mirror himself, is\nsupposed to cynically suggest the uses of judicious flattery, but has\ndeeper application. Speak of yourself--the world yawns. Talk to it of\nitself--rudely, vaguely, profoundly, how you will--and it hangs upon\nyour lips. Turn the mirror toward it and it says proudly, \"Of just\nsuch exalted devotion and sacrifice am I capable,\" or mutters with a\nshudder, \"There, but for the grace of God, goes Augustine.\"\n\nThe tenor sings \"_Sous ta Fenetre_\" and every face is lighted by the\ninner shining of romance. The strangest revelations are discerned upon\nthe countenances of respectable matrons, of rang\u00e9 men of affairs. They\nbeat their hands together in a flooding wave of applause, and the\ngreasy Italian in his uneasy evening dress swells with a strutting\nconsciousness of his vocal chords, of his method, his upper C, of his\nown value.\n\nO tempora! O mores! He is nothing whatever to them. It is only that\nin every human heart there is a chord that vibrates to C in alt. They\nare quite unaware of him, and of his greasy personality. Every man\nis singing with his own soul's voice under the lattice of his first\nbeloved. Every woman is leaning to listen to a dream lover yearning up\nto her through the warm scented moonlight. As for the garlicky loves of\nthe singer they care not one jot whether he loves or not. It is all a\nquestion of themselves, of a vibration.\n\n\n\n\nMarch 4.\n\nThe Cry of the Women.\n\n\nI have been clearing out a lot of old books, preparatory to moving,\nand have been amused to see how empty and dead many already are, which\na few years since were raging through edition after edition, and were\nthe subject of so much talk and interest. Already more than half have\ngrown as desiccated and unimportant as last year's leaves, and their\n\"timeliness\" seems of a time as far past as the deluge. There was\namong these dead books a group on the Woman Question, which already,\nin so short a space, has lost all its interrogation point. Is it\nthat there was really no Woman Question, or has the Question already\nreceived an answer?\n\nUsually one is inclined to think that when a book voices with truth\nand passion the needs and thoughts of even a portion of humanity, it\nhas a real claim to be classed as literature, though it fails of the\nimmortality which is the meed only of such writings as express with\nbeautiful verity the immortal, unchanging needs of life. But already\none regards with amused indifference yesterday's crop of novels written\nby women, with their vague ecstasies of longing, their confused cries\nof discontent, their indistinct moans and reproaches, though such a\nvery short time since those books faithfully expressed the mental\nstate of the sex, as one could not doubt, seeing the greediness with\nwhich editions were called for of \"The Heavenly Twins,\" \"Keynotes,\"\n\"A Superfluous Woman,\" and their like, or listening to the echoes\nawaked by their inchoate sentiments in the feminine mind. Yet the\nsum of the protest of all these books by women was like the cry of an\ninfant--suffering but inarticulate.\n\nI suppose the truth is that even so short a time since free thought\nand free speech were still so new to women that, struggling in the\nswaddling bands of ignorance and convention, it was small wonder that\nshe could not state with precision, or even define clearly to herself,\nwhere her pain lay, nor how she would allay it. She knew she was in\nrevolt against what had been. She could not yet choose what she would\nchange in the future. Some of them cried out for larger political\nrights, others were convinced that the abolition of stays and the\nintroduction of trousers was all that was needed to produce a feminine\nmillennium.\n\n\"Latch-keys!\" cried the browbeaten English girls--\"and freedom to be\nout after dark like our own brothers. Look at the men. They are quite\nhappy. It must be the possession of latch-keys that makes them so: give\nthem also to us.\"\n\n\"No,\" roundly declared a certain Mona Caird, \"what we really need is a\nlatch-key to let us out of the lifelong oppressive bond of marriage.\nIt weighs too heavily upon us--let us go free!\"\n\n\"Nonsense!\" contradicted Sarah Grand. \"Marriage is all right. What is\nwrong is man. He comes to the marriage altar with stained and empty\nhands, while he demands that ours be spotless, and heaped with youth,\nhealth, innocence, and faith. He swindles us. Reform man if you would\nmake us happy!\"\n\n\"Higher education\"--\"Equal wages\"--\"Physical development\"--\"No\nhousehold drudgery\"--\"Expansion of the ego,\" cried the conflicting\nvoices; each with a quack panacea for the disease of discontent.\n\nCan it be that all this was but ten years ago? How quickly ideas are\nchanging!\n\nI think that this noise among the women was the last wave of the\ndemocratic ideal expending itself. It was their restlessness under a\nsense of their inferiority to man. Until the nineteenth century, woman\nhad been content to accept the male of her kind, with his mental and\nphysical endowments, as the true standard of human excellence, and to\nhumbly admit that she permanently failed to reach that standard.\n\nThe universality of the democratic ideal aroused in her at last an\nunwillingness to admit her innate inferiority, and drove her to a\ndesperate search for some fountain of Salmacis that should transmute\nher to an exact likeness of her long-time lord and superior. The\nsearch, of course, was delayed and confused by that furious and\ndebasing _fin de siecle_ demand for happiness at all cost. She heard\nno talk anywhere of courage, submission, or duty. The later decades\nof the democratic century had refused to contemplate the world-old\nriddle of the blind Fates who create one vessel to honour and another\nto dishonour. So woman, no more than her fellows, would consider the\ncaprices of destiny which from the union of one man and one woman will\nproduce an heir to beauty, talent, and success, and from the same\nunion--without volition or intention upon anyone's part--brings forth\na cripple, an idiot, or the helpless Inadequate, who is foredoomed\nto failure with a grim gravitation no human laws or institutions can\narrest. The nineteenth century was a sentimental one; unwilling to\nconsider unpleasant truths. \"All men _are_ born equal,\" it stubbornly\npersisted in asserting, and then was rather shocked when some of its\noffspring sought this equality of happiness at the sword's point or the\nbomb's fuse--as if content was a coin to be stolen and concealed about\nthe person of the thief.\n\nOf course, the women finally became infected with the bacillus of\nunsound ideas, and struggling against the immutable burden of sex ran\nto and fro, crying \"Lo, here!\" and \"Lo, there!\" and wailing, \"Where\nis _my_ happiness? Who has my happiness? You men have stolen and are\nkeeping it from me!\"\n\nA certain part of the charge was true, too. Men had filched from her.\n\nThe theft was not a new one. If the statute of limitations could ever\nrun in crimes against nature it might have almost ceased to be a wrong\nin this case, after the lapse of nearly two thousand years.\n\nMorgan in his \"Ancient Society,\" dealing with the question of\n_M\u00fctter-Recht_, declares that throughout the earliest period of human\nexistence regarding which any knowledge is attainable, descent and\nall rights of succession were traced through the women of the _gens_\nor clans, into which primitive man was organized. Women, as being the\nbearers and protectors of the young, were regarded as the natural land\nowners, and therefore did not leave their homes to follow the fathers\nof their children, lest they should lose their own possessions and\nrights of inheritance. Instead, the men married into the sept of their\nwives. The power and independence of women was lost at last through the\npractice of making female captives in war. These had no land and were\nthe property of, and dependent upon the will of, their male captor. In\ncourse of time men naturally grew to prefer these subservient wives.\nThe Arab advises his son: \"It is better to have a wife with no claims\nof kin and no brethren near to take her part.\"\n\nWomen therefore began to dread capture as the greatest of evils. After\nthe movements of vast hordes began--the marches of the race columns\nacross the continents--with their wars of spoliation and conquest,\nthere was no security save in physical strength, and the females\nyielded all claims to the men in return for protection. It was better,\nthey thought, to be a slave at home than a slave among strangers. Still\nthe man, while asserting physical superiority, claimed none morally.\nUnder the pagan rule of Rome, the jurisconsults, by their theory\nof \"Natural Law,\" evidently assumed the equality of the sexes as a\nprinciple of their code of equity. Sir Henry Maine says there came a\ntime \"when the situation of the female, married or unmarried, became\none of great personal and proprietary independence; for the tendency of\nthe later law ... was to reduce the power of the guardian to a nullity,\nwhile the form of marriage conferred on the husband no compensating\nsuperiority.\"\n\nAmong the Germanic races of the Roman period, a woman was occasionally\nruler of the tribe, and the blue-eyed wife of the roving Barbarian,\nas well as the proud Roman matron, were held alike in high esteem for\ntheir functions as wife and mother. The priestess crowned with oak\nleaves, officiating at the sylvan altars of the forest, or the Vestal\nVirgin serving the fires of the white temples of Rome, were alike\nheld worthy of speaking face to face with the gods and of conveying\ntheir blessings to man. It was the humble religion of Judea--which\nwomen embraced with ardour, and to which they were early and willing\nmartyrs--that cursed them with a deadly curse. It denied woman not only\nmental and physical, but moral equality with man, and besmirched the\nvery fountain and purpose of her being with a shameful stain. It made\nher presence in the most holy places a desecration, and for the first\ntime regarded her feminine functions as a disgrace rather than a glory.\nAnd this although the founder of the Christian faith had set an example\nof reverence and tenderness for the sex in his own life, and had left\nhis mother to be raised to a heavenly throne by his worshippers. Never\nfrom his lips had fallen a word that could give warrant for the insult\noffered woman by his church. He was the first of all men living to\ndenounce the injustice of visiting upon the woman the whole penalty\nof a double sin, and his life was beautified with the tenderest\nfriendships with women. But already, before a church had been fairly\norganized, Paul was dictating silence to women, covered heads and\nsupreme submission to the male, and was declaring against marriage as a\nweakness. If a man must marry because of his weakness, he might do so,\nbut not to marry was better.\n\nScorn of woman and her functions grew. Antagonism to marriage\nintensified. Woman by the very law of her existence was a curse and\na temptation to sin. Hear Tertullian--one of the fathers of the\nChurch--on this subject:\n\n\"Do you not know that each one of you is an Eve? The sentence of God on\nthis sex of yours lives in this age; the guilt must of necessity live\ntoo. You are the devil's gateway; you are the unsealer of the forbidden\ntree; you are the first deserter of the divine law; you are she who\npersuaded him who the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You\ndestroyed so easily God's image, man. On account of your desert--that\nis death--the Son of God had to die!\"\n\nThis is but one of a thousand similar insults by the early writers of\nthe Church--all Patristic books bristle with them.\n\nLecky, comparing the Roman jurisprudence with the canon or\necclesiastical law, remarks that \"the Pagan laws during the earlier\ncenturies of the Empire were constantly repealing the disabilities of\nwomen, whereas it was the aim of the canon law to substitute enactments\nwhich should impose upon the female sex the most offensive personal\nrestrictions and stringent subordination.\"\n\nEven marriage and the production of offspring--which in the pagan world\nhad been an honour to both sexes--was stigmatized. No priest of God\nmight approach a woman, scarcely even look at her, and no woman was\nallowed to serve at God's altar. Celibacy was a virtue so great in man\nthat none set apart for the highest duties might marry, and woman was\nencouraged to suppress in herself all the sweet and wholesome instincts\nfor motherhood--an instinct upon which the race hung dependent, one for\nwhich she willingly suffered the sharp pangs of childbirth--and instead\nto immure herself in convents and endeavour to find solace in the\nspiritual ecstasies of morbid meditation.\n\nNow was woman at last robbed and poor indeed! Her social and civil\nequality having been yielded in exchange for protection, her protectors\nhad bereft her of all moral rights, and denounced as unclean the\nfunction for the perfect performance of which she had paid out all her\ngoods. It was the triumph of the Oriental idea over the ideals of the\nOccident, and so deeply did the Eastern thought stamp itself upon the\nWestern mind that only to-day the latter begins to free itself from the\nyoke of the Asian Paul's fierce egotism of sex. So deeply indeed did\nthis thought penetrate, that historians do not hesitate to attribute\nto this scorn of woman and her mission of childbearing a long delay in\nthe development of European civilization. The higher spiritual natures,\nbeing more under the influence of the Church, accepted its suggestions\nof asceticism and left the baser sort to perpetuate the race and thus\ndelayed the processes of evolution.\n\nIt was the denial by the Church of the beauty and nobility of natural\nlove that drove the Middle Ages to the invention of chivalry and the\nromantic love of the unwedded, that they might evade the ban and find\nsome outlet for the emotions.\n\nWith the Reformation, that first uprising of the Western mind against\nAsian domination, men threw off the yoke in so far as it bound their\nown necks, and declared the rightness and reasonableness of all their\nmental and physical functions. It was no longer a shame for the priest\nof God to mate with a woman, nor a weakness for a man to round his\nlife with the fulness of joy to be found in connubial love, when he at\nthe same time assumed its duties and responsibilities. The ingrained\ncontempt of women was not so easily eradicated. Honour the man defined\nfor himself as integrity, _wholeness_, a development of every power to\nits highest possibility. Honour for woman was simply chastity. That is\nto say, if she repressed all the animal side of life she might entirely\nneglect the spiritual. She might be but indifferently honest, a liar,\na slanderer and a tattler, guilty of every minor baseness, and yet be\nheld in good and honourable repute. The wonder is that woman's morals\nsurvived at all so false a training!\n\nCenturies of such teaching wrought their wretched work despite all\nthe forces of nature. Virginity instead of purity became the ideal\nof the highest type of woman, who shrank from the fulfilment of\nher functions as a stepping down, instead of glorying in it as the\nfulfilment of her sacred purpose. What had been urged upon her upon\nevery side she endeavoured to conform to in the spirit as well as the\nletter. Her mind strained towards the virginal as well as her body.\nThe higher type of woman cried out to man for spiritual rather than\nphysical love, and she found his natural sane tenderness for her person\nbrutal rather than beautiful. The young girl, sedulously guarded from\nknowledge of the fundamental reasons of her being, cast suddenly\nand unprepared into marriage, shrank with disgust from a relation\nwhich her husband--educated in wholeness of thought--regarded as the\nculmination of the flower of life into its fruit. It is not too much to\nsay that four fifths of all modest, pure girls--as a result of their\nfoolish training--contemplated the sexual relation with the bitterest\nreluctance. They had been led to believe that virginity was in itself\na virtue, instead of regarding it only as the sanctification of the\nbody until such time as it legitimately becomes the temple of life.\nWith many this feeling survived marriage, and embittered it to both the\nwife, who resented what she looked upon as a baser nature in the man,\nand to the man who resented, and was rebuffed by the coldness of his\ncompanion.\n\nAt least half of the disappointments and failures of marriage arose\nfrom the mistaken training of good women.\n\nTen years ago this Patristic ideal still had a strong hold upon\nthe race, but the long centuries of study of the Latin and Greek\nliteratures in the schools finally, almost suddenly, bore fruit. We\nhad through our school boys and girls imbibed the spirit of the two\nEuropean races whom the Semitic influences had never dominated. One\nwonders that some foolish so-called progressives should now be wishing\nto drop those literatures from the curriculum of students, though\nperhaps their work is done. At all events we hear very little now of\nthis talk of the inferiority of women.\n\nWhen the miracles of male achievement are pointed to to-day, women know\nenough to say proudly, \"Did man make this? Well, I made man\"; and is\ncontent.\n\n\n\n\nMay 4. Seville.\n\nThe Beauty of Cruelty.\n\n\nWhat a people are these,--these Spaniards! This afternoon--Sunday--I\nsaw my first bull-fight. One need never wonder again at the Roman Arena\nand its horrors. It is as incredible that human beings can sit through\nsuch spectacles as that women could have reversed their thumbs when a\nstaggering, bloody barbarian turned up a glazed eye to seek mercy....\nAnd this, after two thousand years of Catholicism, of Christianity!\n\nThese Spaniards say--staring stupidly at your horror--\"Mas, no es\nCristianos. They are only animals.\" Animals!--and yet Christians dare\ntalk of divine mercy; of their faith having softened hearts, and\nsweetened human nature. Civilization has done so, in truth, but where\nthis faith reigns most arbitrarily such an atrocious spectacle is\npermissible; goes undenounced of its priests.\n\nIt is not the baser sort alone who love this cowardly butchery. In the\nsame box with ourselves sat a woman and her two daughters, evidently\nmembers of the upper classes. The arena below was crowded with the\npeople--women in sulphur-coloured shawls, embroidered with sharp\nblues and scarlets--men of all classes--dandies and workmen cheek by\njowl--but the rows of boxes above held the women and children of the\nwell-to-do, even the aristocracy. The Royal family itself patronizes\nthe arena.\n\nThe women, whose faces I watched instead of the shambles after the\nfight began, grew devilish, a hard smile drew their lips back over\ntheir teeth; their eyes glittered; a look of lust strained the lines\nabout the nose. They forced the children--some of whom cried, and\nshrank from the horrid sight--to turn and see the blood and the\nstruggle.\n\nI believe the secret charm of this gory game to many is the prick that\nthe sight of blood gives to the senses. The history of war is full of\nevidence of this fact--that the sight of horrors spurs the passions. It\nwas curious to think that many of the people there owed their existence\nto just such a stimulus as this. Cruelty thus lies, hereditarily, at\nthe very roots of their being; intensified in each generation.\n\nFor the same reason, I suppose, that so much of my life seems to me\na glamour of tangled shadows, elusive and shifting, with no definite\nline between the real and the unreal, between to-day and all the\nyesterdays--for that reason the arena's gaunt, windowless walls and\npassages seemed startlingly familiar. Equally familiar the yellow,\nsand-strewn circle; the glaring blue sky above the bright-coloured\nmaelstr\u00f6m of faces; the whirl of fans all around the ring--as of a\ncircle of innumerable dancing butterflies; the cries of the venders;\nthe clang of the trumpets; the glitter of the tinsel and gew-gaws;\nthe bold rush of the black bull; the quick spatter of the applauding\nhands....\n\nNo animal was ever more beautiful than this splendid beast, the perfect\nfocus of power and rage. He knew that he was facing murder. There was\ndesperation in his glance from the first moment, but he simply didn't\nknow the meaning of cowardice. He knew there was no use in anything\nhe might do; that his courage, and beauty, and long battle for life,\nwould not stir to pity one of those hard, handsome faces with their\ndark shaven jaws and tight lips, but he struck at his foes with all his\nforce in mere sullen fury. He tore open the bellies of the shivering,\nsweating, blindfolded horses, who staggered a few steps trailing their\nentrails in the sand and then crumpled helplessly; he caught a man in\nthe breast and tossed him over the barrier with blood spurting from the\nhole his horn had made. He himself leaped the fence once, as agile as a\ndeer, and brushed the crowd back like flies, but he did it all without\na sign of hope, and _never made a sound_.\n\nPricked, goaded, red streams running over his satin skin and searing\nhis eyes, stumbling wildly here and there, his sides sunk in, his\nmuzzle dragging in the dust, dumb, dull fury in his heart at his\nuseless torture, spurred to new effort by explosive darts that tore\nhis flesh into gory, pendulous ribbons, hissed by the women, he fell at\nlast upon his knees in blind helplessness....\n\nHow it ended I don't know. A rage of horror squeezed my heart till the\ntears spurted from my lids. It seemed necessary to seize some weapon\nand slaughter indiscriminately the men who were murdering this poor\nbrute for mere amusement, the women who were hissing his death throes.\nIn such horrid sequence does cruelty engender cruelty.\n\nThe people about me regarded my emotion and retreat with surprise and\ncontempt. Some such sensation, I suppose, as would have been felt by\na Roman who should have seen me shed tears when the big cats of the\narena crushed the bones of some brave young barbarian or Christian.\nThese creatures were so far beneath him in the scale of existence that\nhe could not conceive of any poignancy of suffering or emotion in such\na mere animal. Was not one hair of a Roman worth many sparrows--or\nChristians?\n\nThe Jewish democrat tried to teach the world to recognize the value of\nthe individual, the sanctity of each human life--when will a Christ of\nthe beasts arise?\n\n\n\n\nMay 5.\n\n\nThis old world, with its horrors and its beauties, how tame it makes\nour smug, comfortable America appear!... Yesterday I wished to make a\nhecatomb of the Spaniards. To-day I forgive them everything because\nof the Sevillian dancers. My lusts are all of the eye. I can quite\nconceive Herod tossing the Baptist's head to the supple Salome in an\necstasy of approval. Dancing, when it is good, is more beautiful to me\nthan music. And this dancing is very good.\n\nThe muscular gymnastics, which modern Italy has imposed upon the world\nas dancing, are as dissimilar from the real thing as the fiorituri\nsinging is from the old bel canto. The Spaniards make dancing--as all\narts should be made--the poetical expression of life and love. Such\nardour and seduction, such abandon to the joy of living, such rage and\ndaring, such delicate coquetry and wild wooing!... there is nothing\nlike it out of Spain, the country where they torture helpless animals\nfor sport.\n\nIs there, perhaps, some secret tie between cruelty and beauty; between\ncrime and art? It is certain that religious reformers have always\nthought so, and have acted with logical fury. In our peaceful, decent\ncountry, beauty, except such as Nature herself affords, is rare. A\nrace that loves its neighbour as itself seems incapable of creating\nan art. The good Swiss have done nothing for the mind's delight: the\nvirtuous Spartans could not even appreciate loveliness when they saw\nit. Nearly all the great periods of flowering in art come after the\nroots of a nation have been watered in blood, after some frightful\n_crise_ of suffering. It would seem as if bringing forth must be always\naccompanied by birth-pangs.\n\n\n\n\nMay 7. Granada.\n\nThe Duke of Wellington's Trees.\n\n\nH---- said that the greatness of a people depended upon its trees.\nThis sounded rather cryptic, and I entreated him to be more diffuse.\nWe were walking home from that enchanted garden, owned by the\nPallavicini, which rewarded the Moor for betraying his city. The May\nmoon was shining on the white mountain tops, and the jargoning of the\nsnow-brooks sounded about our feet. The air smelled of orange flowers\nand roses, and the nightingales were _shouting_ in the gloom of those\none hundred thousand trees planted by the Duke of Wellington.\n\n\"This Spanish peninsula,\" H---- said, \"under the rule of the Moors,\nsupported thirty millions of people in comfort. The Christian kings\nallowed the upland forests to be ruthlessly sacrificed, and now look at\nSpain.\"\n\n\"One swallow\"--I quoted. \"Will one instance support a theory?\"\n\n\"No; but I could give you a dozen. Carlyle and the rest of the\nhistorians have talked the fearfulest rot about France under the\nmonarchy which preserved her forests. Of course, every one has weakly\ncredited the stories of oppression and starvation in aristocratic\nFrance. And yet the sons of these peasants, who were pitifully pictured\nsnatching at leaves of those forests for food, overran Europe. I don't\nbelieve that children bred in starvation could ever have had the\nvitality to be conquerors. At all events, when the land was divided and\nthe forests delivered to spoliation, the population of France began\nto decline. Possibly the modern effort at reforesting the country may\narrest that decline.\"\n\n\"Just listen to the noise of those nightingales,\" I said. \"Do you\nsuppose we shall be able to sleep?\"\n\n\n\n\nMay 15. Naples.\n\nThe Boy with the Goose.\n\n\nThe Pompeian bronze, which the guide books and catalogues name The Boy\nwith the Goose, is quite wrongly named. The lad carries a wine-skin.\nThe rude, swollen outlines of the pig are clear, and the attitude of\nthe boy one may see any water-seller in Tangier assume when called\nupon for a drink--the arm raised, the body tilted back upon the hip to\nelevate the lip of the skin, so that no more water may flow than is\nneeded. The whole, a delicious bit of _genre_, smiling and vivid after\ntwo thousand years.\n\nThere is a curious vitality of a trifling custom discoverable here in\nthe Pompeian museum. The great bronze horses of Balbo have forelocks\nwrapped and twisted in exactly the same fashion that still prevails\nall along this Neapolitan shore. The breed has changed utterly; bone\nand structure have altered and shrunk, but the vetturino, who drives\nthrough the streets of Naples to-day, twists up that bit of hair in\nexactly the same manner as did the coachman of Glaucus or Balbo.\n\n\n\n\nMay 30. Rome.\n\nA God Indeed.\n\n\nHow beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of--Apollo!... I have\nto-day, for the first time, seen a god.\n\nHe stands in the Vatican, and follows, with upthrown head and\nfar-seeing eye, the flight of the golden arrow that slays the serpent\nof the miasmatic marsh. One feels a sad tenderness for the poor\nbleeding deity, who hangs dead and helpless from a thousand crucifixes\nhere in Rome, but to-day, for the first time in my life, I felt the\nimpulse to fall on my knees and worship. Here is at last, and indeed\na god, whose fine feet disdain the earth, whose proud youth never\nknew suffering or defeat. Here is the embodiment of the ideal of the\nEuropean--beauty, health, power. How he must smile to stand here,\nmerely a statue, in the place where the Christian reigns, amid luxury\nand pomp, in the name of the sorrowful Hebrew democrat who had not\na place to lay his head. Apollo's ideal, his worship, still remains\ndominant, though they call his religion by another name. The European\nremains, and always will remain, a pagan; none more pagan than the\npopes with their lust for temporal power.\n\nOnly here in Rome is it possible to realize the long struggle for\nsupremacy between the European and Semitic ideas; for here is\ngathered the bulk of the relics of Greece--mother and nurse of our\nrace--who early broke the bonds of Asiatic thought and sought her own\ndevelopment, material rather than spiritual (if one accepts the theory\nthat spirit and matter are divisible), sensuous rather than mystical,\nconcerned more with the well-being of the body and the freedom and\nvigour of the mind than with the condition of the soul. She who threw\nherself with passion into the arms of Nature, and worshipped only the\nsublimated human characteristics and visible natural forces deified\ninto exquisite personifications. She who exalted the beauty and health\nof the body into a cult, strove after the demonstrable truths of\nscience, and loved man as he was--humorously loved him with all his\nfaults and limitations, rather than an impossible ideal of him.\n\nHere in Rome one finds all the records of the next great development\nof the European Erd-geist--the growth of its genius in military,\nsocial, and political organization. Still, as in Greece, clinging to\nthe aristocratic ideal; to the rule of the strong and gifted. The fruit\ndid not exist for the benefit of the vine; the vine existed to produce,\nto nourish, to minister to the perfect culmination of its species in\nthe fruit, which drank its sap as of right. Here again the European\nfollowed Nature, that Arch-Aristocrat who destroys multitudes to\nproduce a few perfect specimens--whose right is always might.\n\nThe Asian conquests brought again inroads of Asian thought; more\nparticularly the thought of that small tribe, the quintessential\nof Semitism, which was ever engaged in revolt against nature, and\nmaintaining democratic convictions in the teeth of all experience.\nImpatient of rulers, but submissive to those who scourged the impulses\nof their appetites. Scornful of kings, and turning from beauty and\ngenius to exalt the insane and insect-ridden fakir with knotted unshorn\nlocks who muttered vague prophecies. Struggling always to escape from\nthe grip of the inevitable cruelties of natural forces by opposing to\nthem bloody sacrifices and cruel self-restraints--flowering at last\ninto that supreme incarnation of the Semitic mind called Jesus Christ,\nwho wrested from asceticism a dream of a panacea for the brutalities of\nthe laws of life. The misshapen and undeveloped fruit of the tree of\nexistence, the windfalls--always a vast majority--received with ecstasy\nthis new gospel, absurd but fascinating, which denied actualities and\npromised impossibilities. The feeble majority clutched at a power\ndenied them by nature, and only by outwardly accepting the new tenets\nwere the strong few able to maintain their old dominance.\n\nNietsche's \"blond savage\" pouring in from the north found Rome\ndisintegrated by this Asian influence, and unable to discern that the\nnew faith was not an integral part of the civilization whose splendour\ndazzled him, accepted this theory of life as part of the lesson he set\nhimself humbly to learn at the feet of Italy.\n\nHence followed that blind welter of medi\u00e6valism; the material genius of\nthe European race struggling in the bonds of a creed entirely foreign\nand unsympathetic. The strong still ruled, as always, but ruled by new\nformul\u00e6, and moistened with blood and kneaded by swords the hard paste\nof the European Aryan was leavened by Semitism. Not willingly; never\nentirely. A thousand years after Rome's acceptance of the new cult the\nre-discovery of the old art and philosophy of Greece intoxicated Europe\nwith joy. Here was something of her own--natural to her--sympathetic.\nThe Renaissance became an ecstasy of negation of the heavy yoke under\nwhich her neck had so long been bowed. Learning again was glorious.\nThe philosopher dared assert his superiority to dirty, ignorant scions\nof the gutter, who had claimed equality with sovereigns by reason\nof not eating three meals a day, and because of the virtue which lay\nin the frequent recitation of gibberish. Art abandoned its endless\nrepetitions of a single theme, and essayed in faltering delight to\nrival the glorious fragments of those who had made nature their model\nand had joyed to picture life in all its rich grace and charm. The\nWestern world stood once more upon its feet and burst into a rapture of\ncreation. It laughed to scorn the narrow commands of Semitic asceticism\nagainst the graven image. Once more it allowed the beauty of visible\nnature to pour through its veins in a rich, fecundating flood.\n\nBut after all, the leaven had reached every part, and had tinctured\nit past any possible casting out. Never could the European be free of\nAsian influence. The pendulum has swung back and forth ever since--ever\nmoving a little higher toward the side of the natural, material\ndevelopment of the race, but ever checked and brought back to the old\nJewish revolt against nature. To-day the influence of Asia shows\nitself in the absurdities of democracy, the phantasies of socialism.\n\n... One of the most curious phases of the whole question is that the\nJew--dispersed throughout the Western world--has entirely succumbed to\nthe very ideas which he overthrew. He is the artist, the materialist of\nour times!\n\n\n\n\nJune 1.\n\nA Question of Skulls.\n\n\nThe portrait busts of the Romans were their highest achievements\nin art. One sees literally thousands of them in Italy, and their\npainstaking accuracy is obvious. What is to me most interesting is\nthat the sculptured Roman head and face might easily be taken for a\nportrait of the English people of to-day. In any congregation of the\nEnglish governing classes will be found constantly reproduced the long,\nnarrow skull, the bold aquiline nose, the stern lips and chin, and that\nclean fleshless outline of the Roman--resembling the keen modelling of\nthe head of the high-bred horse--repeated so frequently in marble and\nporphyry in all these museums.\n\nCan it be that Empire reproduces the type? Yet ethnologists trust more\nto the shape of the skull in the study of race affinities than to any\nother proof. The modern Italian skull is the extreme opposite in type;\nis short and broad; so indeed is the skull of all the continental races\nof Europe. I know that the skull measurements are not supposed to give\nthis result, but to the eye the English alone seem to possess this\nlong, narrow skull.\n\nAmusing also is it to remark that the Roman women were not handsome.\nIn both races the resemblance between the sexes is too strong. The\nfine, bony, equine type, so admirable in the male Roman and Englishman,\nbecomes hardness in the women, who lack seduction and charm. Also\ncurious to note, there is the same proud grace of costume and coiffure\nin the men; the same ugliness and lack of taste in the arrangement of\nthe hair and dress of the women of the two races.\n\n\n\n\nLondon. June 30.\n\nThe Modern Woman and Marriage.\n\n\nH---- and I dined last night with Mary L---- at the Carleton, and H----\nasked her, in his large generic fashion, what everybody had been doing\nat home during our absence.\n\n\"Oh, having their appendices cut out and getting divorced!\" she said\nflippantly, and H---- laughed outrageously, so that people turned and\nstared. It was probably the lobster we ate that made me think her\nremark more pathetic than funny while I turned it over in my mind all\nthe long hours I lay awake.\n\nHowells has said, with only humorous apology, that his sex, after\nnineteen hundred years, is but imperfectly monogamous, and yet our\nmodern women are beginning to treat marriage so disrespectfully, and\nchange partners for life as light-heartedly as if the engagement was as\nunimportant as an engagement for a dance!\n\nThat even this imperfect measure of self-denial and fidelity has been\narrived at by men seems to me to be almost solely due to the women of\nthe past. I know the Church claims--in her usual arrogant way--that she\nshould have the credit of it, but Lecky says in his \"European Morals\":\n\n\"The first consequence of the prominence of asceticism was a profound\ndiscredit thrown upon the domestic virtues. The extent to which this\ndiscredit was carried, the intense hardness of heart and ingratitude\nmanifested by the saints towards those who were bound to them by the\nclosest of earthly ties, is known to few who have not studied the\noriginal literature on the subject. These things are commonly thrown\ninto the shade by sentimentalists who delight in idealizing the\ndevotees of the past. To break by his ingratitude the heart of the\nmother who had borne him, to persuade the wife who adored him that it\nwas her duty to separate from him for ever, to abandon his children,\nuncared for and beggars, to the mercies of the world, was regarded by\nthe true hermit as the most acceptable offering he could make to his\nGod.\"\n\nThe root of family life is not mutual affection between man and woman,\nbecause that, alas!--whether it be founded on physical attraction or\nmental affinity--is subject to change. Age withers, and custom stales\nit: circumstance blights it, a diversity of spiritual growth rends\nit apart, and no man or woman can say with certainty that it will\nendure for a lifetime. But the fluctuations to which wedded love is\nsubject are unknown to the self-abnegating instinct of parenthood.\nMutual affection for the offspring will hold together the most opposite\nnatures; it will rivet for all existence two lives that must otherwise\ninevitably spring asunder by instinctive repulsion.\n\nLove of offspring is in man a cultivated emotion; in woman an instinct.\nThere are women lacking the instinct as there are calves born with\ntwo heads, but for purposes of generalization these exceptions may be\nignored. In many of the lower orders of life the female is obliged to\nprotect the young from the enmity of the male parent. The alligator\nfinds no meal so refreshing as a light lunch off his newly hatched\nchildren, and the male swine shares this epicurean taste for tender\noffspring. The stallion is a dangerous companion for the mare with colt\nat foot, though the colt be of his own get, and many species of male\nappear to experience a similar jealousy of the young while absorbing\nthe attentions of the female. Speaking generally of the animal world,\nthe young are obliged to look to the mother entirely for food and care\nduring the period of helplessness. With savage man of the lower grade\nthe paternal instinct is still faint and rudimentary, and even where\nthe woman has, through long ages of endeavour, succeeded in cultivating\nin the heart of the other parent a fair imitation of her own affection,\nthis affection, being a cultivated emotion and not an instinct,\nfrequently breaks down under stress of misbehaviour or frowardness on\nthe part of the child.\n\nTo this end, then,--that end \"toward which the whole creation\nmoves,\"--to effect this result of an equal care and affection for the\noffspring, all the energies of women have been bent for ages.\n\nShe has fought polygamy with incessant hatred; not only for its injury\nto herself, but its constant menace to her children. The secret strings\nof the woman's heart are wrapped about the fruit of her own flesh,\nbut the desire of the man is to the woman, and this desire she has\nused as a lever to work her will--not consciously, perhaps, not with\nreasoned forethought, but with the iron tenacity of blind instinct.\nReasoned will may be baffled or deflected, but water can by no means\nbe induced to run up hill; and so while woman has been apparently as\nfluidly yielding as water--to be led here and driven there according\nto the will of her master--she has stuck to her own ends with a silent\npersistency that has always tired out opposition at last. She has,\nlike Charity, suffered all things, endured all things; she has been\nall things to all men. She has yielded all outward show of authority;\nshe has submitted to be scoffed at as an inferior creation, to be\nsneered at for feebleness and shallow-mindedness, to be laughed at for\nchattering inconsequence, and to be regarded as a toy and trifle to\namuse man's leisure hours, or as a dull drudge for his convenience, for\nends are not achieved by talking about them. All the ages of masculine\ndiscussion of the Eternal Feminine show no reply from her, but to-day\nthe world is a woman's world. Civilization has, under the unrelaxing\npressure of endless generations of her persistent will, been bent to\nher ends. Polygamy is routed, and the errant fancy of the male tamed\nto yield itself to a single yoke. She has, \"with bare and bloody feet,\nclimbed the steep road of wide empire,\" but to-day she stands at the\ntop--mistress of the world. Man, with his talents, his strength, and\nhis selfishness, has been tamed to her hand. The sensual, dominant\nbrute with whom she began what Max Nordau calls \"the toilsome, slow\nascent of the long curve leading up to civilization,\" stands beside her\nto-day, hat in hand, her lover--husband; tender, faithful, courteous,\nand indulgent.\n\nThis is the conquest that has been made, the crown and throne achieved\nby the silent, uneducated woman of the past.\n\nMonogamous marriage is the foundation stone on which has been built her\npower; a power which, while it has endured to her own benefit, has not\nbeen exercised for selfish ends. She has raised the relation between\nman and herself from a mere contract of sensuality or convenience to\na spiritual sacrament within whose limits the purest and most exalted\nof human emotions find play. For the coarse indulgence and bitter\nenmities of polygamy has been substituted the happiest of bonds, in\nwhich the higher natures find room for the subtlest and completest\nfelicities, and within which the man, the woman, and the child form a\nholy trinity of mutual love and well-being.\n\nTo this jewel, so hardly won, so long toiled for, it would be natural\nto suppose that woman would cling with all the force of her nature;\nall the more as education broadened her capacity for reflection and\ndeepened her consciousness of self. On the contrary, the little\nlearning she has so far acquired seems, as usual, a dangerous thing,\nand with the development of self-consciousness the keen, unerring\n_flair_ of her instinct for the one thing needful has been blunted and\nenfeebled. It is not necessary to give undue weight to the blatant and\nempty-headed crew who announce marriage to be a failure, and that women\nare tired of, and will no longer submit to, child-bearing. There are\ncrowing hens in all barnyards, and their loud antics never materially\naffect the price of eggs.\n\nBut that the women of our own time should treat marriage--that\nhard-won, dear-bought triumph--with such profligate recklessness amazes\nme. We are making ducks and drakes of the treasure heaped up for us by\nour mothers. How long will this imperfectly monogamous animal respect\nan institution which is all for our benefit, if we ourselves regard it\nso lightly?\n\nThe modern woman is so spoiled, so indulged, that she does not realize\nhow much a man gives and how little he gets in marriage. He gives a\nhalf, sometimes--indeed often--more than half, of his earnings, his\nname and its honour, his protection and defence of her person, and a\nlifelong responsibility for her and her children, and he gets--what?\nHer person, and it is to be hoped her affection. The woman of the\npresent day lays too much stress upon this gift of her person. She\nappears to think that this gift alone renders man her eternal debtor.\nTo speak a little brutally, he knows that he can easily buy a like gift\nelsewhere and for a less price.\n\nI remember that last year Alice complained of some of Ned's small\nfoibles.\n\n\"Oh, you must be patient with him,\" I said. \"Think how much he gives\nyou; home, name, support, protection--everything. He works hard for you\nevery day. You are under tremendous obligations to him.\"\n\n\"Well, if you put it that way--\" she answered resentfully, \"but don't I\ngive him love and affection in return?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I countered triumphantly, \"but he gives you equal love and all\nthese other things beside. It seems to me there's no question who gives\nmost.\"\n\nShe opened her eyes rather wide and looked thoughtful.\n\n\n\n\nJuly 17.\n\nThe Ideal Husband.\n\n\nIt being the \"silly season\" a controversy is raging in the daily papers\nas to the ideal wife and the ideal husband, and much correspondence is\noccurring under various anonyms.\n\nAlas!--the only ideal husband who ever lived married the only ideal\nwife ever born. They were cut off in the flower of their youth--some\ntime during the first years of the Pliocene Period--and minute fossil\nfragments of their bones are now worn as relics by pious celibates,\nand are said to have worked miracles.\n\nOf so potent an essence are their mere memories, it is said his\nknightly ghost haunts the rosy chambers of all maiden dreams, and men\nseeking Her like find all other women less desirable because of her\nfabled virtues.\n\nI suppose all girls see him more or less in their lovers. Imagination\ndeceptively moulds their features to a similacrum of that noble\nlegendary person, until the fierce light which beats upon the married\nreveals the unprepossessing traits of plain everyday humanity. Yet\nevery woman begins her sentimental life with hopes unabated by the\ndepressing failures of others.\n\nA most quaint and charming creature--this ideal who haunts the dreams\nof maidenhood! Compounded all of purity and passion, of chivalry and\ngrace, of vigour and beauty. He can in moments of excitement tie the\npoker into love-knots, and has a hand of velvet with which to touch the\ndreamer's curls. A ruler of men, he is to be led by a single golden\nhair. Capable of volcanic passion, which renders him indifferent to\nmeals or to fatigue, he can yet be moved to these ecstasies by but\na single member of the sex, and despite snubs or coquetry can live\nfor decades upon the mere hope of her favour. He excels in all manly\nprowess and diversions, and yet is never guilty of causing the loved\none to mourn his absence during a golf widowhood. He adores poetry\nand is superior to all vulgar commercialism, and yet manages--in that\nsimple fashion known only to ideals--to accumulate a fortune and be\ngenerous in the matter of diamonds. He combines in one stalwart person\nall the virtues of Galahad, Arthur, Launcelot, and Baron Rothschild.\n\nLater on the wife develops an ideal less magnificently ornamental than\nthis choice collection of bric-\u00e0-brac virtues. The married idol must\nbe thoroughly domesticated: prepared to throw himself with enthusiasm\ninto the study of croup and measles; is deeply versed in the matter\nof female domestic service, and yet so full of tact as to be able\nto obliterate himself at moments of domestic crisis. Like the ideal\nservant, he must be never in the way and never out of it. He must be\nuncritical of failure, yet capable of enthusiasm for success; unselfish\nas a saint, yet commanding the secret of worldly achievement; and above\nall he must be hopelessly blind to the virtues and charms of every\nwoman but his wife.\n\nTaste as to details may differ according to temperament, nationality,\nand social condition, but, broadly speaking, this delightful person\nwith his eccentric combination of qualities figures in the abstract\naffections of all women.\n\nBut these are dreams; diversions of those pleasant moments when the\nhuman moth allows itself, with futile richness of imagination, to\nconsider the star as a possible companion, and it seems useless to hope\nthat such a person will ever appear in this sinful and unworthy world.\n\nPerhaps from time to time a man who faintly reflects the luminous\ncharms of this knightly husband-saint does arise to cheer and comfort\nthe weaker sex and keep their hopes and ideals alive, but the \"Mauds,\"\nand \"Charlottes,\" and \"Mrs. S. F. J.s,\" who have been extolling his\nattractions in print, seem not to have prayerfully considered whether\nthey themselves were fit mates for, or capable of satisfying the ideals\nof, this wholly impossible he. There is far less talk about the ideal\nwife--for two reasons, I suppose. One is that men have less time for\nchattering generalizations, and the other--alas!--is that men are far\nless interested in women than are women in men.\n\nThe American is supposed to more nearly approach this high standard\nthan the men of any other nationality, but that typical American\nhusband of novels has, I must confess, always seemed to me a paltry,\nbourgeois creature, with the soul of a bank clerk, a neglected mind,\nand with a low estimate and a sort of amused indulgence of women as\npretty, fantastic, inconsequent children with an insane greed of luxury.\n\nOf course, it is heresy to say so, but my observation leads me to\nthink that American women hold a general position far inferior to the\nwomen of Europe. The American man is pre-eminently generous to them\nin material things. Often while he slaves and goes shabby himself\nhe is willing to metaphorically back a van up to the coal-hole and\nfill the cellar full of jewels, but he denies to his women that whose\nprice is above rubies--his own society. Why is American society made\nup of women? What is the cause of our superfluity of women's clubs,\ncommittees, and classes? What place has the middle-aged or elderly\nwoman in America except as the mother of her daughters, or the\ndispenser of her husband's hospitalities and charities?\n\nAfter the period of sex-attraction has passed women have no power in\nAmerica. Who ever sees here, as is so often seen in Europe, an elderly\nwoman's drawing-rooms filled with politicians, financiers, artists, who\ncome for the refreshment and stimulation of her ideas and conversation?\nMentally American women do not interest American men.\n\n\n\n\nJuly 23.\n\nA New Law of Health.\n\n\nLouisa has become a raging Christian Scientist.\n\nA distant memory returns to me. Once upon a time there was a little\ngirl who, after the manner of her sex, feared greatly all and sundry\nof certain fierce beasts, among which were to be enumerated rats, mice,\nbumblebees, and more vividly and especially _DOGS_--whose culminating\ndirefulness was only to be expressed in italicized capitals. On a day,\nbeing bidden to go across the village street to deliver a note to an\nopposite neighbour, she set out, radiating the pleasing results of\nsoap, brushes, and a clean pinafore, but on reaching the gate came to\na sudden pause. A specimen of the worst of enemies, who seemed to the\nperspective of an eye only three feet from the ground to easily rival\nan elephant in size, lay prone across the path, lolling an intimidating\ntongue, and rolling an eye which, though outwardly calm, might be\nguessed to conceal a horrid intent. There was a swish of short starched\nskirts, a twinkle of bare knees, and appeal was made to that infallible\npower and knowledge which Providence has so wisely placed in mothers.\nBeing a person of nimble imagination this particular parent, realizing\nthat a mastiff as large in proportion to her own inches as this one was\nto the normal height of five years might well daunt her own courage,\nforbore to remonstrate or use reason.\n\n\"Here,\" she said placidly, \"is a lump of sugar. Put it on your tongue\nand hold it there. Of course, no dog will touch a person who has sugar\non her tongue.\"\n\nAnd so fortified, Five Years set forth with a conviction of immunity\nthat carried her triumphantly past the source of terror. The\nincident is not in itself, perhaps, of historic importance, but is a\nparticularly vivid example of the absolute divorce in the undeveloped\nmind between the laws of cause and effect, and in no department of\nhuman thought has that divorce continued so long as in the science\nof health. Every one of us can revive out of childhood a memory of\nthe balm that overspread the injured temple when a sympathetic nurse\nbestowed the richly deserved spanking upon the offending chair corner\nthat had caused the pain, or applied the clearly indicated plaster of\na kiss; and medicine in its long career has followed the intelligent\nexample of the nursery. But while medicine as a science has passed\nout of this stage with the general growth of knowledge, the bulk of\nmankind still continues to put sugar on the tongue as a protection\nagainst dogs, to castigate chair corners, and to apply remedies as\nunknown to the pharmacop\u0153ia as the feminine kiss. Perhaps the\nstolen potato carried in the pocket, or the bit of red flannel bound\non the left wrist, are not so trusted a remedy for the pangs of\nrheumatism as they were fifty years ago, and the dried heart of a mouse\nworn in a bag about the neck seems to have lost its potency against\nepileptic seizures, yet the very large sums spent annually upon patent\nmedicines--rivalling in amount what is known in temperance circles as\nthe \"Drink Bill\"--and the rise and popularity of innumerable mushroom\n\"cures\" and systems, proves that the laws of health are still as\nheterogeneous from the intelligence of the majority of mankind as are\nthe laws of the differential calculus.\n\nIt would be diverting, were it not so pathetic, to see the constant\nendeavour on the part of the multitude to lift itself by its own\nhygienic boot-straps in the form of barefoot cures, mind cures, prayer\ncures, cures by clairvoyance, by magnetism, red or blue lights, or by\npilgrimages and relics. The child moving about in worlds unrealized is\nstill the father and epitome of the man, and sees no reason why his own\nwill, or that of some Power wishing him individually well, should not\nbreak through the immutable sequence of cause and effect, or upset the\nmachinery of the universe in his behalf. His childish \"Let's pretend\"\nsweeps away for the moment the dull persistency of facts and opens a\nworld where it is possible to eat one's cake and have it too, and after\ndancing escape the bill for the fiddling.\n\nSpeaking accurately there is, of course, no such thing as a new\nlaw of health--such laws being of their very nature eternal--but a\nconsciousness of the hygienic code is as new as was the discovery\nnot more than a century ago of the forces of electricity, which had,\nthough the most powerful agent upon the earth, lain ready to our hands\nunrecognized throughout recorded time.\n\nThe unfortunate fact that the world of knowledge is not a globe is\nshown by this--that if, in setting out toward a fixed goal of truth,\none's face is turned in the wrong direction, no length of travel, no\nmiracle of persistency, ever conducts to the haven where one would\nbe. A truth of moral geography by no means universally accepted as\nyet, and indeed certain inherent tendencies of human nature, will\nforever prevent its unanimous acceptance, a chronic childishness of\nmind being so common that one would almost despair of the acceptance\nof any new truth, were it not that the adult intelligence of the few\neventually imposes its conclusions upon the multitude, or enforces\nat least an outward concurrence. The immature-minded many are always\nlusting after a sign of the wonderful, and kicking against the pricks\nof plain truth. Bullied out of crediting the existence of ghosts and\nfairies, they earnestly engage in burning witches, and shamed out of\nsuch mistaken zeal fling themselves into the arms of spiritualist\nmediums, flirt with the theosophists, or die under the ministrations\nof Christian Scientists. The whole history of supernaturalism has been\nthe history of travel in the wrong direction--a wrong turning that had\nits beginning in a childish impatience that would attain to its end by\nsudden leaps in lieu of dusty plodding along the highway that led by\nslow windings to the desired end.\n\nMan found painful barriers of time, space, and physical decay\nfencing him out of his Eden of gratified desire, and like a child\nhe straightway fell to dreaming of flying carpets, of magic lamps,\nof transmutable metals, of fountains of youth and elixirs of life.\nAt first these miracles were thought to be the gifts of shadowy,\nhigher powers, who were happily superior to the cruel limits of\nmaterial existence, and might give their assistance according to their\ncapricious elfin fancy. Later, man began to believe that in himself\nlay the powers which were to break the chains that bound him the\nunhappy slave of distance, of the need for labour, of the tyrannies\nof nature, with her resistless heat and cold, storm and flood, pain\nand age. A glimmering of the truth, this, at last, but only a faint\nreflection on the horizon of the rising sun, on which he had turned his\nback. There followed a period of fasts and macerations whose courage\nand persistency was to make the gods tremble in respectful terror--a\ntriumph over material passions which should give an occult power over\nmaterial limitations. The Buddhists stood moveless and speechless until\nthe birds reared their young in their hair, and thereby were supposed\nto grow so mighty that the mountains rocked beneath the weight of their\nthoughts, and space and time were annihilated.\n\nSuperb energies, passionate patience and ardour, master intellects,\nwere wasted in the long endeavour to find some means by which nature\ncould be conquered and man made master of circumstance--all given\nfruitlessly; thrown into that bottomless pit of error never to be\nfilled. And these earnest, misguided travellers--so blinded were\nthey--when one of their number turned about in the other direction\npromptly fell upon him and beat him into submission, as one who would\ncheck the struggle towards light and knowledge. Even now that the\nfact is accepted that nature is to be conquered by her own natural\nmeans only, and that supernaturalism is a waste and quaking morass\nupon which no edifice of truth is to be reared, there are many--sadly\nmany--descendants of Lot's wife casting longing glances back to the\nSodom of their intellectual sins. It is nothing to them that having\nonce faced about in the right direction the same amount of effort,\nproperly directed, has achieved that for which the supernaturalists had\nfor ages striven in vain.\n\nEating his due amount of food and attaching no mystical significance\nto anything, man tore his way through the heart of mountains, flashed\nhis thoughts under the wastes of ocean, sent his voice across a\nthousand miles, sailed into the teeth of the wind, devoured space with\nsteam, reared palaces more lofty than Aladdin dreamed of, and--his own\nKobold--dived into the darkness and fetched up gold and gems more than\nthe fairy tales ever knew. He made himself lord of the visible earth,\nof time, of distance, of wave and wind. He laid his hands upon all the\nforces which had awed his childhood and forced them to work miracles\nbeside which the fables of the Kabbalists seemed tame and feeble. And\nin spite of this there remain men and women who are more awed by a\nbanjo flying through a dark room than by the telephone; who find the\nuntying of knots in a cabinet, or the clutches of damp hands when the\nlights are turned down, more important than the automobile. It is the\nattitude of mind of a child, who is more interested by rabbits coming\nout of a conjurer's hat than by wireless telegraphy.\n\nThere is as great an inequality in the inheritance of health as in\nthe heirship of wealth or brains. Some are born with a fortune of\nvigour and soundness so large that not a lifetime of eager squandering\nwill leave them poor, and others enter the world paupers of so dire a\nneed that no charity of medicine will ever raise them to comfort; but\nmost of us have just that mediocre legacy of vitality which makes us\nindistinguishable units in the mass. It lies in the hands of each to\nimprove or waste that property as he chooses, for there are self-made\nmen physically as well as financially, and spendthrifts of health\ncome to as sorrowful an end as prodigals of gold. The body is a realm\nwhere a wise ruler brings happiness as surely as a foolish one ensures\ndistress, and wisdom here, as elsewhere, lies in the observance of\nnatural laws.\n\nIt is just these natural laws--simple, severe, inexorable--against\nwhich the majority chafe, for which some magic pill or potion is\noffered as a substitute. Temperance, cleanliness, activity, are the\nthree cardinal virtues of the body, as faith, hope, and charity are\nof the soul. As tithes of mint, anise, and cumin are easier to render\nthan the observance of law, justice, and judgment, so burnt-offerings\nof drugs are offered to the Goddess Hygeia in place of obedience to\nher regimen. After the excesses of the carnival came the brief rigours\nof the Lenten retreat, and after the Fat Tuesday of gluttony comes the\nshort atonement of the \"Cure\" at some mineral spring, where the priests\nof health are yielded a complete but passing submission. It is easier\nto repeat incessant formul\u00e6 of prayer than persistently to keep one's\nself unspotted from the world, and it is easier for fat old sinners to\npaddle about barefoot in the dew at a Kneippe cure than to abandon at\nonce and forever their little darling sins of greediness or indolence.\nOne hears a constant cry of \"Lo, Here!\" and \"Lo, There!\" and all the\nworld rushes to sit hopefully under blue glass or swathe itself in\npure wool in the ever-renewed belief that some substitute may be found\nfor the fatiguing necessity of obedience to the three rules.\n\nEven yet ill health is considered as a sort of supernatural visitation\nrather than a certain result of the infringement of plain laws. I\nremember reading once a clever book, less popular than it deserved to\nbe, which told of a country in the heart of the Andes in which the\nintelligent inhabitants looked upon crime as the unfortunate result of\ncongenital temperament; a disease demanding sympathy and treatment;\nbut ill health aroused only condemnation as a wilful infringement of\nwise and well understood laws. A bronchial case caused arrest and\nimprisonment, and friends of the family considered it rude to cough in\nthe presence of the criminal's unfortunate family; but a severe attack\nof embezzlement was cause of polite condolence, and cards were left\nupon the invalid with kind inquiries as to whether he was receiving the\nbest moral attention. An idea less whimsical than it may seem.\n\nParacelsus--who was accused of magic because his cures were effected\nby such simple means--always asserted that if he were allowed to\nabsolutely direct a child's diet from its birth he could build up a\nconstitution which might without difficulty be made to last out a\ncentury in undiminished vigour; and there are those who are prepared to\naccept literally the age of the antediluvian patriarchs, on the ground\nthat as at that time bread had not been discovered, digestions never\ncalled upon to struggle with starch found no difficulty in sustaining\nlife to Methuselah's term.\n\nIt is certain that the subtle but supremely important chemistry of\nnutrition has been shamefully neglected in favour of matters far less\ngermane to happiness, and that the same skill which has developed\nthe science of bacteriology and pursued the most elusive microbe\nto his most secret lair might have been more profitably applied.\nAfter the microbe has been found and named his dangerousness remains\nunattenuated. How much more valuable would be a knowledge--equally\nattainable--of exactly the amount and nature of the food for the best\nresults of growth and health.\n\nThere is a farmer ant in the West Indies, who, in a carefully prepared\nsoil, compounded of flowers and leaves, grows a tiny fungus on which he\nfeeds. The eggs of this ant seem, when hatched, to produce creatures\nall alike, but through different feeding they develop into warriors,\nfarmers, or queens, as may be needed. If through an accident the supply\nof warriors is dangerously lowered, larv\u00e6 being fed with the meat which\nnourishes farmers are transferred to the soldiers' nursery, and change\nof diet produces change of nature.\n\nAh! could we too know upon what meat to feed our C\u00e6sars, or Roosevelts,\nthat they might grow so great. What a much more important achievement\nthat would be than the naming of microbes which would be impotent to\ninjure a perfectly nourished body.\n\nTo know the law, to practise it daily--there is the secret of the\nfountain of youth, the elixir of life. These Christian Scientists, who\npractise the latest abracadabra to conjure away the effects of fixed\ncauses, who dream that pain arises from sin, and can be abolished by\nfaith, childishly overlook the fact that pain in itself is no evil,\nbut rather a good. It is simply a telegraphic message sent over the\nnerve-wires to the brain to inform it that some member of the physical\ncommonwealth is in danger and requires help.\n\nNot by magic is health to be obtained. Flying carpets will not reach\nit. Fasts and prayers will not call it down from heaven. Fixed,\nimmortal, the laws continue. Always unchanged; always inexorable. The\nwages of the sin of disobedience are disease.\n\n\n\n\nJuly 24.\n\n\"Dead, Dead, Dead.\"\n\n\nI wonder if there is still anyone in all the world to whom this date\nis important? And after all why should it be? In twenty-three years a\nwhole generation has come into life; has wept and laughed, and loved\nand married, and produced another generation to do the same thing--and\nwho remembers the roses that withered even yesterday?\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n          Oh, wild, loud wind,\n    Who, moaning, as in pain,\n    Beats with wet fingers at my door in vain,\n    Dost thou come from the graves with that sad cry\n    Which pleads for entrance, and denied, goes by\n    To faint in tears amidst the freezing rain?\n\n    In here the live red fire glows again.\n    Of life and living we are full and fain.\n    Here is no thought of death, or men that die--\n          Oh, wild, loud wind!\n\n    Why shouldst thou come then to my window pane\n    To wring thy hands and weep, and sore complain\n    That they alone all sad and cold must lie\n    In wet, dark graves, and we breathe not a sigh?\n    We have forgot. The quick and dead are twain,\n          Oh, wild, loud wind!\n\n\n\n\nSeptember 6.\n\nVerbal Magic.\n\n\nJ---- was reading me parts of his new book in manuscript to-day, and I\nobjected that it lacked style. \"Why, all the successful writers tell\nme that style is unnecessary,\" he said in an injured tone. \"D---- says\nhe just writes ahead and pays no attention to it. He says that the\nlaboriousness of Stevenson and Flaubert has 'gone out' and the public\nare bored by it. And just see how successful D---- is!\"\n\nWhat was one to say? I merely tried to look convinced and begged him to\ncontinue. And yet Emerson said that when the distraught Hamlet cried\nto the mailed spirit of his father,\n\n                  \"What may this mean,\n    That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel\n    Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon?\"\n\nhe was so possessed by the verbal magic of the phrase that he could\nattend no more to the rest of the play.\n\nPerhaps it is some penetrating assonance in that \"complete steel\"--in\nthose sibilant repetitions of \"revisit'st thus the glimpses\"--that\nmakes its witchery. Poe carefully analyzed the science of it--which is\nno science at all, but the inscrutable magic of inspiration. Such lines\nas\n\n    \"Came up through the lair of the lion\n    With love in her luminous eyes\"\n\nare built upon that theory of liquid consonants and open vowels, and\nit has no magic at all, while \"To Annie\"--which was written without\nconscious plan--is full of it.\n\n\"Her grand family funerals\" is instinct with that prickling delight of\nthe magic of words, as is \"the wizard rout\" of the bodiless airs that\nblew through her \"casement open to the night.\"\n\nTennyson's famous alliteration,\n\n    \"The moaning of doves in immemorial elms\n    And the murmur of innumerable bees\"\n\nlacks glamour. One scents the intention.\n\n        \"Ay! Ay! oh ay!\n    The wind that blows the brier\"\n\nrecaptures the elusive charm, because of its wild, unconscious lyrism.\n\nFancy these absurd, ignorant young writers talking of style having\n\"gone out\"! Apparently they suppose it means \"fine writing,\" in which\nnothing is more lacking than style. The essence of style, I suppose,\nis in the inspired, instinctive choice of words which present suddenly\nto the mind a _picture_ of what the writer is talking about. The whole\n_clou_ of Hamlet's phrase is that \"glimpses of the moon.\" It makes one\nsee the vague, intangible momentariness of the apparition. Sir Thomas\nBrowne's famous \"drums and tramplings of three conquests\" gives just\nthat flashing picture of the banners and rolling sounds of those long\nvanished invasions. And Keats's\n\n      \"Casements opening on the foam\n    Of perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn\"\n\npresents the indescribable to the eye.\n\nThere is, of course, that other element of musical quality, and\nHamlet's phrase is delicious for its strange, broken sibilations, but\nwithout the _picture_ the alliterations and vowel sounds are but dead\nthings. All the fine, rolling, organ-like sonority of Swinburne's Hymn\nto Proserpine would be tedious without the impressions of light and\ncolour that palpitate through the lines. For style I can think of no\nbetter modern example than the concluding paragraph in Lafcadio Hearn's\npaper on the dragon-fly in the volume called Kotto:\n\n\"... then let me hope that the state to which I am destined will not\nbe worse than that of a cicade or of a dragon-fly;--climbing the\ncryptomerias to clash my tiny cymbals in the sun,--or haunting, _with\nsoundless flicker of amethyst and gold_, some holy silence of lotus\npools.\"\n\n\n\n\nOctober 8.\n\nHamlet.\n\n\nOld Mr. A---- was most interesting to-night at dinner on the subject\nof the various Hamlets he has seen--apparently every actor of any\nimportance who has attempted the part in the last sixty years; not\nonly the English-speaking ones, but German and French as well. After\ndwelling upon all manner of details of the varied dress, business,\nscenery, and so forth, of the different men who have attempted the\nrole, I asked him which of them all he considered to have been the\nbest, and he decided after some hesitation that not one of them\nsatisfied him completely. \"Not one of them all,\" he concluded, \"seemed\nto me to have a clear, comprehensive grasp of the essentials of the\npart. Each appeared to try to express some one phase of it, but you\nfelt the thing as a whole escaped them.\" Which is, perhaps, not to\nbe wondered at, since, so far, it appears, as a complete conception,\nto have escaped every one. No one of the Shakespearian scholars has\nexpressed what definite meaning the play in its entirety conveyed to\nhis mind.\n\nMr. A----'s talk interested me immensely, much more than any of those\nlong-winded mystical triumphs of verbiage the Germans perpetrate. I\nhave seen but two eminent actors in the part. Booth's Hamlet was, of\ncourse, only a noble piece of elocution, not an interpretation, and\nwithout vitality. Mounet Sully--but then all Frenchmen believe Hamlet\nmad, despite his express warning to Horatio--\n\n        \"How strange or odd so'er I bear myself,\n     As I, perchance, hereafter _shall think meet\n    To put an antic disposition on_ ...\"\n\nAnd of his confidence to Guildenstern that he is but\n\n    \"Mad nor'-nor'-west. When the wind is southerly\n      I know a hawk from a hernshaw.\"\n\nOf course, I've a theory of my own about Hamlet. It seems to me that\nthe difficulty most persons experience in endeavouring to penetrate\nwhat they call \"the mystery\" of the Prince's character arises from\nthe fact that they read the play either carelessly or with some\nprepossession, to fit which they bend all that he says or does. The\nGerman critics blunder through forgetting how essentially sane and\nunmystical was Shakespeare in every fibre of his mind. To him the\ncloudy symbolism of the second part of Faust would have sounded very\nlike nonsense. His interest was in man--the normal, typical man and his\npassions of hate, love, ambition, revenge, envy, humour....\n\nTo me the key to Hamlet seems to be a proper regard for the attitude of\nthe mind of the seventeenth century toward the belief in ghosts. The\nEnglishman of Shakespeare's day hardly doubted their existence, but was\nunsettled as to the nature and origin of spectres. Whether they were\ntruly shades of the departed ones which they resembled, or were merely\nhorrid delusions of the mind, projected upon it by some malign and\nhellish influence, they were not clear.\n\nHamlet says:\n\n        \"The spirit that I have seen\n    May be the devil: and the devil hath power\n    To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps,\n    Out of my weakness and melancholy,\n    (as he is very potent with such spirits)\n    Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds\n    More relative than this....\"\n\nPersonally, my method of endeavouring to clear vexed questions is to\nmake an effort to conceive of my own emotions and actions in a like\ndifficulty. To understand Hamlet I try to imagine what my frame of\nmind would be if P---- had died, suddenly and tragically, during\nmy absence. Hastening home in all the turmoil of grief and shock I\nfind H---- has grasped all P----'s fortune and has promptly married\nM----, whom I had expected to find as afflicted as I. Naturally I\nwould be deeply horrified and offended and greatly puzzled over such a\nsituation. When one injects the warmth and power of one's own emotions\ninto a situation by personifying it with one's own kinspeople one\nbegins to realize Hamlet's condition of mind prior to the appearance\nof the Ghost. A ghostly visitation not being imaginable nowadays,\none may suppose one's self having a vivid and circumstantial dream,\nmaking all these curious conditions clear by an explanation of hideous\ncriminality. The hysterical distraction of Hamlet's interview with\nthe Ghost seems natural enough when one pictures one's own horror and\nincredulity on awaking from such a vision.\n\nOf course, a reaction would follow the first red lust for denunciation\nand for revenge of the deep damnation of the taking off of the\nhelpless victim. One would be continually paralyzed in the very act of\nvengeance by the remembrance that one had no better authority than a\ndream for proof of crime in those one had always loved and trusted.\nThe thing would seem so incredible, and yet the dream would explain\nall the puzzling facts so clearly. To a young and noble mind, evil in\nthose one loves appears impossible. One would be always fighting the\nthought--which pulled the very ground of confidence from under one's\nfeet--and yet always laying traps to prove one's suspicions true, as\nthe jealous notoriously do; wishing yet fearing to know the truth.\nHamlet's varying fits of violence and indecision seem natural enough\nunder the circumstances, and not a sign of madness nor of eccentricity\nof character. He is called the \"Melancholy Dane,\" but to a young\nconfiding heart the first revelation of the possibility of filth and\ncriminality in those near in blood and love causes distrust of all\nthe world; arouses a mad desire for escape out of a cruel existence\nwhere such spiritual squalour is possible. If one will bring the\nsituation home to one's self in this way--vivifying it with one's own\nheart--Hamlet no longer seems a strange and alien soul, but one's\nvery own self caught in a web of horrid circumstance, and doing and\nbeing just what one's self would do and be in like case. Temptation to\nsuicide, murder, \"unpacking one's heart with words,\" bitterness to, and\ndistrust of, the innocent Ophelia, treachery, doubt, indecision,--all\nare inevitable temptations. Looked at in this way, there is no mystery\nat all in the play if one reads it straight and simply, and from the\nhuman point of view--which view was always Shakespeare's, I think.\n\n\n\n\nDecember 13.\n\nGhosts.\n\n\nThe R----s are home this week from California, and full of a\nsurprising tale of their experience in renting and trying to live in\na haunted house. They had no idea of its unpleasant character when\nthey took it. Indeed they decided upon it principally because of the\nsunniness of the rooms and its generally cheerful character. The only\nsuspicious feature was the very moderate price; but that appears to\nhave aroused only gratitude instead of suspicion in their minds.\n\nThe sounds they heard, which finally drove them out of the house, were\nsuch commonplace ones--the clinking of medicine bottles, the mixing of\nstuff in saucers--that one hardly believes they could have invented\nthem. Invention would certainly have conceived a more dramatic excuse\nfor abandoning a house. Also, they solemnly aver that it was only upon\ntheir giving up the lease that they heard the story of the almost\nincredible tragedy of the former owner's death.\n\nThere certainly must be some manifestations such as are commonly\nknown as \"ghostly.\" I never have come across any personally, but the\ntestimony is too frequent and persistent for doubt. Some phenomena have\nundoubtedly been observed of which the laws are not yet understood.\nThe psychologists profess to be working in this direction, but the\npsychology of our day is still in about the condition of astronomy\nand chemistry in the days of the thirteenth-century astrologers and\nalchemists--mere blind flounderings. We need a psychological Copernicus\nbadly. I am convinced that what are commonly called \"superstitions\"\nare really observed results of unknown causes. When I was a child\nthe negroes always warned one that it brought bad luck to go near a\nstable when one had a cut finger. Nothing could seem more blindly\nuncorrelated, and yet it is now known that the germ of tetanus breeds\nonly in manure, which shows that their observation was correct,\nthough they had no conception of germs, or microbes. It was an old\nsuperstition, derided by the medical profession, that there was some\nmerit in hanging red curtains at the windows of a smallpox patient; yet\nrecently some interesting discoveries have been made as to the effect\nof red light upon sufferers from this disease.\n\nAgain there is the old-wife's belief that the howling of a dog presages\ndeath. I saw no sense in that until I was brought in contact with death\nfor the first time, and then discovered that a person near the end, and\nimmediately afterwards, emitted a powerful odour, very like the smell\nof tuberoses. In two cases within my experience this odour remained in\nthe death-chamber, despite persistent airing and cleaning, for fully a\nyear. My sense of smell is extremely acute, and no one seemed to remark\nthis odour but myself, nor have I ever heard or seen any mention of the\nphenomenon being noticed by others; but naturally a dog, whose sense of\nsmell must be a thousand times more acute than mine, is aware of this\nstrange, half repulsive perfume, which has the effect upon his nerves\nproduced also, apparently, by moonlight and by music.\n\nIf fresh rose leaves are shut closely into a drawer until they have\nthoroughly dried and crumbled, they will be found, when removed,\nentirely scentless, but the drawer will retain for years some\nintangible emanation which they have given off, and this will permeate\nany object left in the drawer. Recent delicate experiments have shown\nhow the violence of emotion will affect the weight of human beings, and\nno doubt, in supreme crises of feeling, living bodies may lose this\nweight by the throwing off of some emanation which may linger for a\nlong time in the immediate surroundings. It has been discovered that\nmany objects retain luminosity, after being long exposed to powerful\nrays; a luminosity invisible to our sight, but sufficient to make\ndim photographs upon highly sensitized plates. The \"ghosts\" are very\nprobably explicable on some such theory as this. Some individuals\nare like these extremely sensitive plates. The emanations thrown out\nin the condition of intense emotion affect them, and give them an\nimpression of sounds or sights which appear, in our present state of\nignorance, to be supernatural. Of course, any psychologist or scientist\nwould pooh-pooh this hypothesis of mine, if it were made public, but\nequally they would have sniffed fifty years ago at a guess at wireless\ntelegraphy, or the Ro\u00ebntgen ray, or the radioactivity of radium. After\nall, however, they are right in thinking that guesses are not very\nvaluable unless one has the industry to demonstrate their accuracy.\n\n\n\n\nDecember 20.\n\nAmateur Saints.\n\n\nIf there is any one thing more particularly repulsive to me than\nanother it is the way the average clerical person speaks of religious\nthings. One would suppose that such matters, if one really believed\nthem, would be the profoundest sentiments of one's nature, and be\nmentioned with the reserve and reverence with which the lay person\ntreats the deeper sentiments, such as love, honour, or patriotism.\n\nA little pamphlet came by mail to-day, which proved to be a sort of\nbegging letter from a community of Protestant clergymen, who are\nundertaking to imitate monasticism in America. Under a heading of a\ncross is this text, \"If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a\ngreat matter if we shall reap your worldly things?\" And there follows\nan appeal for assistance in building a monastery on the Hudson. The\nlanguage of this pamphlet is the usual language of begging letters,\nonly with that flavour of smug religiosity and bland business-like\ndealing with matters of the soul which amazes the lay mind.\n\nThis community of, presumably, able-bodied men who desire to reap of\nour worldly things naively sets forth in the following programme the\nmanner in which they intend to occupy their time:\n\n 5 A.M.         Rise.\n 5.30 to 6.     Meditation in Chapel.\n 6.             Morning Prayer and Prime.\n 6.50 to 8.     Celebrations of the Holy Eucharist.\n 8.             Breakfast.\n 9.30.          Terce and Intercessions.\n 12 M.          Sext and None.\n 12.30 P.M.     Dinner.\n 1 to 1.20.     Recreation (in common).\n 4.45.          Evensong.\n 5.15 to 5.45.  Meditation.\n 6.             Supper.\n 6.30 to 7.15.  Recreation (in common).\n 8.30.          Compline.\n 10.            Lights extinguished.\n\nAnd it is to permit them to spend their days in such fruitful fashion\nthat one is called upon to contribute the money earned by men who toil!\nThat many have already contributed is to be inferred from the fact that\nthis community has become possessed of seventy-five acres of valuable\nland, and has spent some forty thousand dollars on the erection of a\nmonastery.\n\nOf course, there are worthless idlers everywhere, but very few of them\nin our practical day assume their indolence as a merit, or call upon\ntheir neighbours to support them, in the name of the deeper sentiments\nof life.\n\nHare, in \"A Pair of Spectacles\" remarks cynically, when asked to\nhelp an indigent widow, \"Oh, I know that indigent widow; she comes\nfrom Sheffield.\" One knows these sturdy beggars. They come from out\nthe Middle Ages, when it was still felt that there was some special\nvirtue in abandoning the obvious duties of life to take up others more\nappealing to the Saint; more appealing precisely because they were\nanything but obvious.\n\nThe very name of Saint is a stench in my heretical nostrils. I never\nknew or read of one who was not a vain egoist, with all the cruelty,\nobstinacy, and selfishness of the egoist. Read the Lives of the Saints.\nNot one of these absurd chronicles but is a repulsive tale of an insane\nvanity trampling on the rights and feelings of others to achieve\nnotoriety. St. Louis is a sample of the type: renouncing his duties\nto his unlucky wife, squabbling with every other monarch unfortunate\nenough to be associated with him, and wrecking the expeditions in which\nhe joined because of some petty qualm about his meagre, unimportant\nlittle soul.\n\nThe person who extorts my reverence is not Saint Elizabeth, but\nthat poor boy, her husband, bearing the torments of her hysterical\nsqueamishness with such noble patience and chivalry. One can picture\nthat tired, sleepy young fellow, busy with his duties of government all\nday, dragged out of his proper slumber to behold his ridiculous wife\nclimbing out of bed to lie on the cold floor in her nightgown, while\nthe attendants stood about and crossed themselves in admiration.\n\nSt. Theresa seems to have been a sort of Moyen-Age Hedda Gabler; no\nbetter than an ecclesiastic flirt. Go through the whole list and the\nstory is always the same. One never hears of a person with a sense of\nhumour--which implies a sense of proportion--setting up as a saint. The\nbreath in the nostrils of these gentry is the stare of the unthinking\nmultitude, who are awed by anything out of the ordinary. And yet it\ntakes so much finer patience, so much greater self-abnegation, to do\nthe plain duties of life. I feel far more like crossing myself when\nI look at the humble commuter, who has sat on a stool all day, and\ntravels with his arms full of parcels to that cheap, draughty cottage\nin the cold dusk of Lonelyville, to listen patiently to Emily's\nrecitals of Johnny's cut finger and Mary Ann's impudence. It is upon\nsuch as he that civilization and the world's happiness and sunshine\ndepend. He has done a man's duties; upon him depends a helpless\nwoman, and innocent children. His tedious, petty drudgeries rise to\nnobility compared with the lives of these fat and lazy grubs with their\ncomplines and sexts and primes.\n\nSt. Theresa seems vulgar to me contrasted with the anxious Emily\ncheapening chops at the butcher's, and fighting around the bargain\ncounter to make her laborious commuter's meagre salary stretch over the\nneeds of her family. It requires a finer and sweeter, a more saintly\nnature to walk the floor patiently with a teething baby than to pose as\na saint on the floor to no one's benefit but one's own.\n\nAh, those humble, lovely souls bearing the whips and scorns of Time,\nand the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes--their\ncommonplace daily halos make the saints' diadems look like imitation\njewels.\n\n\n\n\nJanuary 1, 1900.\n\nThe Zeitgeist.\n\n\nBack from the gates of the City of Life there runs a great highway,\nwhose beginning is in the land--east of the sun and west of the\nmoon--where the unborn dwell. It is a broad and well-trodden road;\nbeaten smooth by the feet of the hurrying generations that tread sharp\nupon one another's heels as they press forward out of grey and airless\nnothingness into the warm atmosphere of existence.\n\nBy the side of this road lies a chim\u00e6ra, with woman's breasts couched\nupon lion's paws. It is the old direful Questioner of Thebes; the\nPropounder of Riddles; the prodigious Asker of Enigmas. Before entering\nthe gates of the City the jostling multitude must pause in their\nfurious haste towards life and listen to her as she propounds to each\ngeneration her problem. Every generation guesses at the riddle with\nfear or hope, with timidity or courage, as its nature may be, and then\nrushes on within the gates, not knowing if it has guessed aright, but\nwith the task laid upon it of living out its life by the light of that\nanswer, let the result be what it will.\n\nThe Sphinx lies watching the generations whirled past her into\nexistence. She listens to the cries, the turmoil, the bitter plaints of\nthose within the walls who believed that they had solved her problem a\ncentury ago, and as she listens she smiles her cold, incredulous smile.\nNot yet have they divined her secret, if one may judge from their loud\nprotests, and this new generation pouring in among them has but small\npatience with their failure. The newcomers are quite sure that they at\nlast have answered the immortal conundrum correctly. They have found it\nquite easy, and they mean to show their silly predecessors how simple\nit is to find happiness if one has only the correct formula.\n\nAll the preceding guesses have been wrong?--well, but it is just\nbecause they were wrong that the application failed. Here is the right\none at last, triumphantly evolved by the new heir of all the ages, and\nit will be soon seen how criminally, how almost incredibly mistaken the\nprevious generations have been in their foolish attempts to live by\nsuch palpably absurd theories of existence.\n\nMake way!--you silly old folk--make way for the young lords of life who\ncome bearing truth and wisdom to the world! Who come to inaugurate a\nreign of peace and plenty and delight!\n\nThe old generation, nearing the City's lower gate,--beyond which lies\nanother road, equally broad and well-travelled, but gloomier and more\nairless than the one by which they came,--shake their heads doubtingly\nat these assertions. They were quite as confident in their time, and\nyet, somehow, things did not work out as they expected. No doubt\ntheir own guess was quite right; they are almost sure of it; but many\nunforeseen exigencies interfered. People were obstinate. The formula\nwas perfect, but people were so very wrong-headed that it never had\na proper opportunity of proving how infallible it really was. And so\ndifficulties in the application arose, and--But the young newcomers\npush them, still babbling and explaining, out of the further gate, and\nset at once about regenerating the unfortunate city which has been\nforced to wait such a weary while for this the perfect solution of all\nproblems.\n\nAnd the old Questioner lying without the gates stares with her long,\ncalm eyes into the white mist from which yet more generations are to\ncome, and she smiles her fixed and scornful smile.\n\nIt was after this fashion our century, nineteenth of the era, came\nin--flushed, happy, confident. It came an army with banners, every\nstandard blazoned in letters of gold with its magic device--\"Liberty,\nEquality, Fraternity.\"\n\nHow it hustled the poor painted, formal, withered, old eighteenth\ncentury out at the nether gate! Smashing its idols, toppling over\nits altars, tearing down its tarnished hangings of royalty from the\nwalls, and bundling its poor antiquated furniture of authority out of\nwindows. All doors were flung wide; the barriers of caste, class, sex,\nreligion, race, were burst open and light poured in. The gloomy Ghettos\nwere emptied of their silent, stubborn, cringing population; forged by\nthe hammer of Christian hate through two thousand years into a race\nas keen, compact, and flexible as steel. The slave stood up free of\nbonds; half exultant, half frightened at the liberty that brought with\nit responsibilities heavier and more inexorable than the old shackles.\nWoman caught her breath and lifted up her arms. The old superstitious\nAsiatic curse fixed upon her by the church was laughed scornfully into\nnothingness. She was as free as the Roman woman again. Free to be proud\nof her sex, free to wed where she chose, free to claim as her own the\nchild for whom she had travailed to give life.\n\nA vast bonfire was made of the stake, the wheel, the gyve; of crowns,\nof orders, of robes of state. All wrongs were to be righted, all\noppressions redressed; all inequalities levelled, all cruelties\nforbidden. Men shuddered when they thought of the crimes of the past,\nwhen they talked of Calas. Such a crime would never be possible in this\nnew golden age. Only of oppression and cruelty was vice bred. Given\nperfect liberty and perfect justice the warring world would become\nArcadia once more. Lions if not hunted, and if judiciously trained by\nthe constant instilling of virtuous maxims, would acquire a perfect\ndisgust for mutton, and lambs would consequently lie down beside them\nand would grow as courageous and self-reliant as wolves.\n\nWhat a beautiful time it was, those first thrilling days of the new\nera! How the spirit dilates in contemplating it, even now. The heart\nbeat with the noble new emotions, the cheek flushed, the eyes glistened\nwith sensibility's ready tear. It was so pleasant to be good, to be\nkind, to be just; to feel that even the bonds of nationality were\ncast aside, and that all mankind were brothers striving only for\npre-eminence in virtue. It was a new chivalry, a new crusade. Only,\ninstead of lovely princesses to be succoured, or sepulchres to be\nsaved, it was the rescue of all the humble and suffering, a crusade\nagainst the paganism of the strong. The heart could hardly hold without\ndelicious pain this broad flood of universal kindness.\n\nIt was then that Anarcharsis Clootz presented to the National Assembly\nhis famous \"deputation of mankind.\"...\n\n\"On the 19th evening of June, 1790, the sun's slant rays lighted a\nspectacle such as our foolish little planet has not often to show.\nAnarcharsis Clootz entering the august _Salle de Man\u00e8ge_ with the human\nspecies at his heels. Swedes, Spaniards, Polacks, Turks, Chaldeans,\nGreeks, dwellers in Mesopotamia come to claim place in the grand\nFederation, having an undoubted interest in it.... In the meantime we\ninvite them to the honours of the sitting, _honneur de la s\u00e9ance_. A\nlong-flowing Turk, for rejoinder, bows with Eastern solemnity, and\nutters articulate sounds; but owing to his imperfect knowledge of the\nFrench dialect, his words are like spilt water; the thought he had in\nhim remains conjectural to this day.... To such things does the august\nNational Assembly ever and anon cheerfully listen, suspending its\nregenerative labours.\"\n\nIt was at this time the big words beginning with capitals made their\nappearance and were taken very seriously. One talked of the Good, the\nTrue, the Beautiful, and the Ideal, and felt one's bosom splendidly\ninflated by these capitalized mouthfuls. There were other nice phrases\nmuch affected at the time--the Parliament of Man, the Federation\nof the World, _la Republique de Genre Humain_. The new generation\nwas intoxicated with its new theory of life, with its own admirable\nsentiments.\n\nDiscrepancies existed, no doubt. The fine theories were not always put\ninto complete practice. While the glittering phrases of the Declaration\nof Independence were declaring all men free and equal, some million\nof slaves were helping to develop the new country with their enforced\nlabour. The original owners of the soil were being mercilessly hunted\nlike vermin, and the women of America had scarcely more legal claim to\ntheir property, their children, or to their own persons than had the\nnegro slaves. Nor did the framers of the Declaration show any undue\nhaste in setting about abolishing these anomalies.\n\nThe National Assembly of France decreed liberty, equality, and\nfraternity to all men, and hurried to cut off the heads and confiscate\nthe property of all those equal brothers who took the liberty of\ndiffering with them.\n\nBut it was a poor nature that would boggle at a few inconsistencies,\nwould quench this fresh enthusiasm with criticism. After all, mere\nfacts were unimportant. Given the proper emotion, the lofty sentiment\nof liberty and good-will, the rest would come right of itself.\n\nA new heaven and new earth, so it seemed, was to be created by this\nvirile young generation who had rid themselves of the useless lumber of\nthe past. The period was one of universal emotion, exhibiting itself in\nevery form: in iconoclastic rages against wrong--rages that could only\nbe exhausted by the destruction of all the customs, laws, and religions\nthat had bound the western world for two thousand years; it showed\nitself in sanguinary furies against oppression--furies which could be\nsatiated only by seas of blood; in floods of sympathy for the weak that\nofttimes swept away both strong and weak in one general ruin. It was\ndisplayed in convulsions of philanthropy so violent that a man might\nnot refuse the offered brotherhood and kindness save at the price of\nhis life. The cold dictates of the head were ignored. The heart was\nthe only guide. Is it any wonder that driven by the wind of feeling\nand with the rudder thrown overboard the ship pursued an erratic and\ncontradictory course. Seen in this way one is no longer surprised at\nthe lack of consistency of the _Declaration des Droits de l'Homme_,\nthat declared \"All men are born and continue free and equal in\nrights\"--that \"Society is an association of men to preserve the rights\nof man\"--that \"freedom of speech is one of the most precious rights,\"\nand yet that France, crying aloud these fine phrases, slaughtered\neven the most silent and humble who were supposed to maintain secret\nthoughts opposed to the opinions of the majority. It is no longer\nastonishing to read the generous sentiments of our own Declaration and\nto remember the persecutions, confiscations, and burnings that drove\nthirty thousand of those not in sympathy with the Revolution over the\nborders of the New England States into Canada, and hunted a multitude\nfrom the South into Spanish Louisiana. One is no longer amazed to\nhear de Tocqueville declare that in no place had he found so little\nindependence of thought as in this country during the early years\nof the Republic. By liberty--his adored liberty--the revolutionary\nsentimentalist meant only liberty to think as he himself did, and the\nwhole history of man records that there is nothing crueller than a\ntender heart ungoverned by a cooler head. It is in this same spirit\nthat the inquisitor, yearning in noble anguish over souls, burns the\nrecalcitrant. It is plain to him that such as are so gross and vicious\nas to refuse to fall in with his admirable intentions for their eternal\nwelfare can be worthy of nothing gentler than fire.\n\nBut whatever the discrepancies might be, the whole state of feeling\nwas vastly more wholesome, more promising, than the dry formalism,\nthe frivolous cynicism which it had annihilated and out of which it\nhad been bred. The delicate, fastidious, selfish formalists of the\neighteenth century were naturally aghast at the generation to which\nthey had given birth. It was as if an elderly dainty cat had been\ndelivered of a blundering, slobbering, mastiff puppy, a beast which\nwas to tear its disgusted and terrified parent in pieces. No doubt\nthey asked themselves in horror, \"When did we generate this wild\nanimal that sheds ridiculous tears even while drinking our blood?\" Not\nseeing it was the natural child and natural reaction from the selfish\nshort-sightedness of \"_Que ne mangent ils de la brioche?_\" from the\nfrigid sneer of \"_Apres nous le deluge_.\"\n\nThis torrent of emotionalism to which the nineteenth century gave\nitself up is amazing to our colder time. It manifested itself not only\nin its public policy, in its schemes for universal regeneration, but it\ncompletely saturated all the thought of the time, was visible in its\nwhole attitude toward life. Madame Necker could not bear the thought\nof her friend Moulton's departure after a short visit, so that he was\nobliged to leave secretly without a farewell. She fainted when she\nlearned the truth and says, \"I gave myself up to all the bitterness\nof grief. The most gloomy ideas presented themselves to my desolate\nheart, and torrents of tears could not diminish the weight that seemed\nto suffocate me\"--and all this about the departure of an amiable old\ngentleman from Paris to Geneva!\n\nThey had no reserves. The most secret sentiments of the heart were\nopenly discussed. Tears were always flowing. Nothing was too sacred for\nverbal expression. They wrote out their prayers, formal compositions\nof chaste sentiments, and handed them about among their friends as\nItalian gentlemen did sonnets in the Quattro Cento. On anniversaries or\nspecial occasion they penned long epistles full of elegant phrases and\ninvocations to friends living under the same roof, who received these\nletters next morning with the breakfast tray, and shed delicious tears\nover them into their chocolate.\n\n\"A delicate female\" was a creature so finely constituted that the\nslightest shock caused hysterics or a swoon, and it was useless to\nhope for her recovery until the person guilty of the blow to her\nsensitiveness had shed the salt moisture of repentance upon her cold\nand lifeless hand and had wildly adjured her to \"_live_\"--after which\nher friends of the same sex, themselves tremulous and much shaken by\nthe mere sight of such sensibility, \"recovered her with an exhibition\nof lavender-water\" or with some of those cordials which they all\ncarried in their capacious pockets for just such exigencies. Nor did\nthe delicate female monopolize all the delicacy and emotionalism. The\nMan of Feeling was her fitting mate, and the manly tear was as fluent\nand frequent as the drop in Beauty's eye. Swooning was not so much in\nhis line; there was less competition, perhaps, for the privilege of\nsupporting his languishing frame, but a mortal paleness was no stranger\nto his sensitive countenance, his features contracted in agony over\nthe smallest annoyance, and he had an ominous fashion of rushing madly\nfrom the presence of the fair one in a way that left all his female\nrelatives panting with apprehension, though long experience might have\ntaught them that nothing serious ever came of it.\n\nThus the Nineteenth Century entered upon its experiment with the\nverities, beginning gloriously; palpitating with generous emotion;\nready with its \"blazing ubiquities\" to light the way to the millennium.\nThe truth had been discovered, and needed but to be thoroughly applied\nto ensure perfect happiness. By 1840 the tide of democracy and\nliberalism had risen to flood. The minority were overawed and dumb.\nTo suggest doubts of the impeccable ideals of democracy was to awaken\nonly contempt; as if one should dispute the theory of gravity. It was\n_chose jug\u00e9e_. It did not admit of question. The experiment was in full\npractice and the new theory, having swept away all opposition, had free\nplay for the creation of Arcadias.\n\nAlas! Thus in the eighteenth period of our era had Authority cleared\nthe ground. It had burned, hanged, shut up in the Bastille all\ncavillers, and just as the scheme had a chance to work it crumbled\nsuddenly to pieces in the blood and smoke of revolutions. Democracy\nhad no fear of tragedy from the very nature of its principles, but\nit had decreed liberty, and liberty began to be taken to doubt its\nconclusions. There began to arise voices bewailing the flesh-pots and\nthe lentils of the ruined House of Bondage. Democracy had brought\nmuch good: that was not denied, but alas, what of the old dear things\nit had swept away, the sweet loyalties, the ties between server and\nserved. The enormous social and political edifice reared by feudalism\nhad had black dungeons, noisome cloac\u00e6, no doubt, but what of its\nrich carvings, of its dim, tender lights filtered through flowered\ntraceries? Where was its romance, its pageants and revels? The\nrectangular, ugly, wholesome building, which democracy had substituted\nas a dwelling for the soul of man, with its crude, broad light flooding\nevery corner, failed to satisfy many who forgot all the bitter\ninconvenience of the ancient castle, remembering in homesick longing\nonly its ruined beauties and hoary charm.\n\nScience in its hard unsentimental fashion commenced to demonstrate\nthe fallacy of the heart's ardent reasoning. She stripped the lovely\nveil from nature's face, and showed the tender springing grass of the\nfields, the flushed orchard blossoms, the nesting bird, the painted\ninsect floating in the breeze,--all, all engaged in a ferocious battle\nfor life--trampling on the weak, snatching the best food, always\neither devouring or devoured. It had been decreed with thunderous\nfinality that the feeble should be by law placed on equality with the\nstrong, and this was announced as the evident intention of beneficent\nnature. Science, however, relentlessly demonstrated that nature was\nnot beneficent; that in fact she was a heartless snob, and that to\n\"Nature's darling, the Strong,\" she ruthlessly sacrificed multitudes\nof the helpless. Democracy had made itself the champion of the humble,\nhad cursed the greedy and powerful; science proved that the humble and\nunaggressive were doomed, as was proved by their not surviving in the\nterrible struggle for life that was raging in all forms of nature,\nand of which the human m\u00e9lee was but an articulate expression. The\nconviction that humanity had once known perfect equality, and that\nfreedom had been filched by the unscrupulous, was shown to be quite\nunfounded. Rousseau's Contrat Social was made absurd by Darwin's\nDescent of Man. All research tended to prove that from the earliest\nPliocene it was not the weak or the humble, but he who\n\n    \"Stole the steadiest canoe,\n    Eat the quarry others slew,\n    Died, and took the finest grave,\"\n\nwho had founded families, developed races, brought order out of chaos,\nhad made civilizations possible, had ordained peace and security, and\nhad been the force of upward evolution.\n\nIt was thus that the freedom which the heart had given to the head was\nused to prove how fallible that generous heart was.\n\nThen out of all of this groping regret, out of this new knowledge,\nthere arose, with excursions and alarums, Carlyle; the first who dared\nfrankly impeach the new theory and decry its results. Through all\nhis vociferousness, through all his droning tautology, his buzzing,\nbanging, and butting among phrases like an angry cock-chafer, through\nthe general egregiousness of his intolerable style, there rang out\nclear once again the p\u00e6on of the strong. Here was no talk of the rights\nof man. His right as of old was to do his duty and walk in the fear of\nthe Lord.\n\n... \"A king or leader in all bodies of men there must be,\" he says.\n\"Be their work what it may, there is one man here who by character,\nfaculty, and position is fittest of all to do it.\"\n\nFor the aggregate wisdom of the multitude, to which Democracy pinned\nits faith, he had only scorn.\n\n... \"To find a Parliament more and more the expression of the people,\ncould, unless the people chanced to be wise, give no satisfaction....\nBut to find some sort of King made in the image of God, who could a\nlittle achieve for the people, if not their spoken wishes yet their\ndumb wants, and what they would at last find to be their instinctive\nwill--which is a far different matter usually in this babbling world\nof ours\" ... _that_ was the thing to be desired. \"He who is to be my\nruler, whose will is higher than my will, was chosen for me by heaven.\nNeither, except in obedience to the heaven-chosen, is freedom so much\nas conceivable.\"\n\nHere was the old doctrine of the divine right of the strong man to\nrule, come to life again, and masquerading in democratic garments.\n\nNo revolution resulted. Democracy did not fall in ruins even at the\nblast of his stertorous trumpet, but the serious-minded of his day\nwere deeply stirred by his words, more especially as that comfortable\nmiddle-class prosperity and content, to which the democrat pointed as\nthe best testimony to the virtue of his doctrines, was being attacked\nat the same time from another quarter. Not only did Carlyle scornfully\ndeclare that this bourgeois prosperity was a thing unimportant, almost\ncontemptible, but the proletariat--a new factor in the argument--began\nto mutter and growl that he had not been given his proper share in it,\nand he found it as oppressive and unjust as we had found the arrogant\nprosperity of the nobles intolerable.\n\nThat old man vociferous has passed now to where beyond these voices\nthere is peace, but the obscure mutterings of the man in the street,\nwhich was then but a vague undertone, has grown to an open menace.\nThe Sphinx smiles as she hears once more the same cries, the same\naccusations. We of the middle classes, who threw off the yoke of the\naristocracy, clamoured just such impeachments a century back. We are\namazed now to hear them turned against ourselves. To us this seems an\nadmirable world that we have made; orderly, peaceable, prosperous. We\nfind no fault in it. It has not worked out, perhaps, on as generous\nlines as we had planned, but on the whole each man gets, we think, his\ndeserts.\n\nWe ask ourselves wonderingly if the aristocrat of the eighteenth\ncentury did not, perhaps, see his world in the same way. He paid no\ntaxes, but he thought he did his just share of work for the body\npolitic; he fought, he legislated, he administered. Perhaps it seemed\nalso a good world to him; well arranged. Perhaps he was as indignant\nat our protests as we are at those of to-day. We thought ourselves\nintolerably oppressed by his expenditures of the money we earned, by\nhis monopoly of place and power; but we argue in our behalf, that as\nwe pay the taxes we should decide upon the methods of the money's use\nand have all the consequent privileges. What, we ask ourselves angrily,\ndo these mad creatures, who are very well treated, mean by their talk\nof slavery--of wage-slavery? How can there be right or reason in their\ncontention that the labourer rather than the capitalist should have the\nprofit of labour? Does not the capitalist govern, administer, defend?\n\nAttacked, abused, execrated, we begin to sympathize with those dead\nnobles, who were perhaps as honest, as well-meaning, as we feel\nourselves to be; who were as disgusted, as scornful, as little\nconvinced by our arguments as we by those who accuse us in our turn of\nbeing greedy, idle feeders upon the sweat of others. Perhaps to him the\nestablished order of things seemed as just and eternal as it does to\nus. We begin to have more comprehension of that dead aristocrat.\n\nFor a hundred years now democracy has had a free hand for testing\nits faiths and ideals. Let us reckon up the results of this reign of\nliberty, equality, fraternity.\n\nOut of the triumphant bourgeoisie has grown a class proud and dominant\nas the nobles of old days. They have wealth, luxury, and power, such\nas those nobles never dreamed of. Capital is organized into vast,\nincredibly potent aggregations. Labour in its turn has organized for\nitself a despotism far-reaching, unescapable, which the old r\u00e9gime\nwould never at its haughtiest have ventured upon. The two are arrayed\nagainst one another in struggles of ever-increasing intensity.\n\nThe Brotherhood of Man is still a dream. The continent of Europe is\ndominated by two autocratic sovereigns, who overawe others by the\nconsistent and continuous policy only possible to a despotism. The\nrepublics of France and of South America are the prey of a horde of\nadventurers who only alternate despotisms; the armaments of the world\nare so pretentious that each fears to wield so terrible a weapon. The\ngreat nations are dividing the weak among themselves as lions do their\nprey. All nations are exaggerating their barriers and differences.\nRussia is repudiating the Occidental languages and civilizations which\nshe at first received so gladly. Hungary has abandoned the German\ntongue, and the Hungarians, Czechs, and Bohemians, held together by\nthe bond of Austria, are restive and mutually repellent. The Celt\nrevives and renews his hatred of the Saxon, and in Ireland and in\nWales the aboriginal tongues and literatures are being disinterred\nand taught as a means of destroying the corporate nationalism of\nthe British Isles. The Bretons disclaim their part and interest in\nFrance. The Spanish empire has fallen into jealous and unsympathetic\nfragments. The Hindus are clamouring for an India for the Indians. All\nare rivals; envenomed, and seeking domination. And America,--America,\nthe supreme demonstration of the democratic ideal,--what of her?\nAmerica has embarked upon imperial wars: refuses sanctuary to the poor\nand oppressed as inadmissible paupers, and laughs at the claims to\nbrotherhood and citizenship of any man with a yellow skin.\n\nThe church, which is most opposed to individual liberty of thought,\nhas been reconquering great territory in the very citadels of free\nconscience. One large body of Protestants is repudiating its protests\nagainst irresponsible authority, and basing its claims rather upon\nappeal to ancient precedent.\n\nScience has one by one torn in pieces and scattered the iridescent\nbubbles of democracy's sentimental visions. The Ghetto is open, but the\nJews are still persecuted. A Calas is no longer sacrificed to bigoted\nchurchmen, but an intolerant army make possible the Affaire Dreyfus.\nZola, after a century of democracy, is called upon once more to take\nup the work of Voltaire. Woman is still waiting for political equality\nwith man. But perhaps the most surprising result is man's change in\nhis attitude towards himself. _Man_, who spelled himself with reverent\ncapital letters, who pictured the universe created solely for his\nneeds,--who imagined a Deity flattered by his homage and wounded by his\ndisrespect--Man, who had only to observe a respectable code of morals\nto be received into eternal happiness with all the august honours due a\ncondescending monarch, had fallen to the humility of such admissions as\nthese....\n\n\"What a monstrous spectre is this man, the disease of the agglutinated\ndust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing,\nfeeding, growing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown upon\nwith hair like grass, fitted with eyes that glitter in his face; a\nthing to set children screaming;-- ... Poor soul here for so little,\ncast among so many hardships filled with desires, so incommensurate\nand so inconsistent; savagely surrounded, savagely descended,\nirremediably condemned to prey upon his fellow lives, ... infinitely\nchildish, often admirably valiant, often touchingly kind; sitting down\nto debate of right or wrong and the attributes of the Deity; rising up\nto battle for an egg or die for an idea.... To touch the heart of his\nmystery we find in him one thought, strange to the point of lunacy,\nthe thought of duty, the thought of something owing to himself, to his\nneighbour, to his God; an ideal of decency to which he would rise if\npossible, a limit of shame, below which if it be possible he will not\nstoop.... Not in man alone, but we trace it in dogs and cats which we\nknow fairly well, and doubtless some similar point of honour sways the\nelephant, the oyster and the louse, of whom we know so little\"--\n\nAlas, Poor Yorick! How a century of liberty has humbled him. It is\nthus the successors of Rousseau, of Chateaubriand, of the believers in\nthe perfectibility of man, speak--saying, calmly, \"The Empire of this\nworld belongs to force\"--and that \"Hitherto in our judgments of men we\nhave taken for our masters the oracles and poets, and like them we have\nreceived for certain truths the noble dreams of our imaginations and\nthe imperious suggestions of our hearts. We have bound ourselves by the\npartiality of religious divinations, and we have shaped our doctrines\nby our instincts and our vexations.... Science at last approaches with\nexact and penetrating implements ... and in this employment of science,\nin this conception of things, there is a new art, a new morality, a\nnew polity, a new religion, and it is in the present time our task to\ndiscover them.\"\n\nWe must not forget to consider a little the amusing change our century\nhas seen in the alteration of its heroic ideals. For the sentimental\nrubbish, the dripping egotism of a Werther, of a Manfred, in whom\nthe young of their day found the most adequate expression of their\nself-consciousness, we have substituted the Stevenson and Kipling\nhero--hard-headed, silent, practical, scornful of abstractions,\ncontemptuous of emotions, who has but two dominant ideals, patriotism\nand duty; who keeps his pores open and his mouth shut.\n\nThe old democratic shibboleths still remain on our lips, are still used\nas if they were truisms, but in large measure we have ceased to live\nby them, we have lost all our cocksureness as to their infallibility.\nWe give frightened sops to our anarchical Cerberus. We realize that\ndespite all we so proudly decreed the strong still rule and plunder\nthe weak, and weak still impotently rage and imagine a vain thing of\nlegislation as a means of redressing this endless inequality.\n\nMuch of good we have given. How could an ideal so tender, so beautiful,\nso high of purpose, fail of righting a thousand wrongs?\n\nHow could those sweet, foolish tears fail to water the hard soil of\nlife and cause a thousand lovely flowers of goodness and gentleness to\nbloom? That we have not solved the riddle of the Sphinx, that we have\nnot found the secret of happiness, is hardly cause for wonder or shame.\nNeither will our successors find it, but it is interesting to speculate\nas to what clue they will use to guide them in the search. It is plain\nthat our ideals, our formul\u00e6, are being cast aside as inadequate, but\nthe new century is coming in with no programme as yet announced. It is\nthoughtful, silent; it avoids our drums and shoutings and vociferous\nover-confidence.\n\nWhat will be its Time-Spirit, since ours plainly will not serve? Will\nthe wage-earners shear the bourgeoisie of their privileges as we shore\nthe nobles a century ago--or will liberty sell herself to authority\nagain in return for protection against the dry hopelessness of\nsocialism, or the turmoil of anarchy? Or will the new generation evolve\nsome new thought, undreamed of as yet--some new and happier guess at\nthe great central truth at which we forever grasp and which forever\nmelts and eludes?\n\n\n\n\nFebruary 11.\n\nThe Abdication of Man.\n\n\nIn the midst of all these excursions and alarums of war, and\npreparation for war, a sudden and great silence has fallen upon the\neverlasting discussion of the relations of the sexes. Before the\nstern realities of that final and bloody argument of Republics, as\nwell as of Kings, further dissection of the Women Question has been\ndeferred. The most vociferous of the \"unquiet sex\" have been regarding\nrespectfully the sudden transformation of the plain, unromantic man\nwho went patiently to business every morning in a cable car, and sat\non a stool at a desk, or weighed tea, or measured ribbon, into a hero\nready to face violent annihilations before which even her imagination\nrecoils. The grim realisms of life and death have made the realism\nof such erstwhile burning dramas as The Doll House shrink into the\ntriviality of a drama fit only for wooden puppets. Sudden and violent\nreadjustments of ideas are apt to be brought about when human relations\nare jarred into their true place by the thunder of cannon. War\nlegitimatizes man's claim to superiority. When the sword is drawn he\nis forced to again mount that ancient seat of rule from which he has\nonly recently been evicted; or rather from which he has himself stepped\ndown. The democracy of sex at once becomes ridiculous--the old feudal\nrelation reasserts itself.\n\nIt is interesting to note that there has not been one feminine voice\nraised to protest against the situation. The entire sex, as represented\nin this country, has, as one woman, fallen simply and gladly into the\nold place of nurse, of binder of wounds, of soother and helpmeet. Not\none has claimed the woman's equal right to face villainous saltpetre,\nor risk dismemberment by harbour mines.\n\nI believe this to be because woman prefers this old relation. I believe\nthat if man were willing she would always maintain it; that it depends\nupon him whether she returns to it permanently or not. I believe that\nher modern attitude is not of her own choosing--that man has thrust\nthat attitude upon her. For the oldest of all empires is that of\nman; no royal house is so ancient as his. The Emperors of Japan are\nparvenus of the vulgarest modernity in comparison, and the claims of\nlong descent of every sovereign in Europe shrivel into absurdity beside\nthe magnificent antiquity of this potentate. Since the very beginning\nof things, when our hairy progenitor fought for mastery with the\nmegatherium, and scratched pictorial epics upon his victim's bones,\nthe House of Man has reigned and ruled, descending in an unbroken line\nfrom father to son in direct male descent. His legitimacy was always\nbeyond dispute; his divine right to rule was not even questioned, and\nwas buttressed against possible criticism not only by the universal\nconcurrence of all religious and philosophic opinion, but by the joyful\nloyalty of the whole body of his female subjects. Moses and Zoroaster,\nSt. Paul and Plato all bore witness to his supremacy, and the jury of\nwomen brought in a unanimous verdict in his favour without calling for\ntestimony.\n\nWomen yet living can recall a day when they forgot their pain for\njoy that a man-child--heir to that famous line of kings--was born\ninto the world. They can remember a time when their own greatest\nclaim to consideration rested upon the fact that they were capable of\nperpetuating the royal race. They recollect a period when even from his\ncradle the boy was set apart to be served with that special reverence\nreserved for those whose brows are bound with the sacred circlet of\nsovereignty--when a particular divinity did hedge even the meanest\nmale; a tenfold essence being shed about all those who were of the\nHouse of Aaron.\n\nWhy then--since all this is of so recent existence, since man's rule\nwas founded so deep on woman's loyalty--has he been swelling the\nmelancholy ranks of Kings in Exile? For that he has ceased to reign\nover woman does not require even to be asserted. It is self-evident.\n\nWhen was this amazing revolution effected? Who led the _emeute_ that\nthrust man from his throne? It is a revolt without a history; without\nthe record of a single battle. Not even a barricade can be set up\nto its credit, and yet no more important revolution can be found in\nthe pages of the oldest chronicles. So venerable, so deep-rooted in\nthe eternal verities seemed the authority of man over woman that the\nfemale mind, until the present day, never doubted its inevitableness.\nIndeed, as is the case with all loyal natures, she was jealous for\nthe absolutism of her master, and was quick to repair any such small\nomissions as he himself might have made in the completeness of his\ndomination. All of her sex were trained from their earliest infancy to\nstrive for but one end--to make themselves pleasing to their rulers.\nSuccess in the court of man was the end and aim of their existence,\nthe only path for their ambition, and no other courtiers ever rivalled\nthese in the subtle completeness of their flattery. Man's despotism,\nof course, like all other tyrannies, was tempered by his weaknesses,\nbut while woman wheedled and flattered and secretly bent him to her\nprojects she did not question his real right to govern.\n\nHere and there through the past there arose a few scattered pioneers\nin recalcitrance. One of the first to deny the innate supremacy of\nthe male was a woman who herself wore a crown. Elizabeth Tudor had a\nfashion of laying heavy hands upon her rightful lords whenever they\ndispleased her, and she appears to have rejected the whole theory of\nfeminine subordination. John Knox--strong in the power of the priest,\nwhose sublimated prerogatives man had skilfully retained in his own\nhands--could and did dominate Mary Stuart even upon the throne, but\nwhen he blew from Geneva his \"First Blast of the Trumpet Against the\nMonstrous Regiment of Woman,\" and called all the ages to witness that\nthe rule of a female was an affront to nature that trenchant lady who\nheld the English sceptre forbade him ever again to set foot in her\ndomains, and before he could do so, in his need, he had to digest a\nmost unwholesome dose of humble pie.\n\nElizabeth, however, was a unique personality and had few imitators.\nThe literature of her day abounds with expressions of supreme humility\nand loyalty from the one sex to the other. Elizabethan poets deigned\nto play at captivity and subjection to the overwhelming charms of\nSaccharissa and her sisters, and turned pretty phrases about her\ncruelty, but this was merely poetic license of expression. All\nserious, unaffected expression of conviction, such as was to be found\nin the religious writings of the time, and in the voluminous private\ncorrespondence, which gives us the most accurate description obtainable\nof the real actions and opinions of our ancestors, never suggested a\ndoubt of man's natural and inalienable superiority, mental, moral, and\nphysical. So undisturbed was this conviction, down almost to our own\nday, that the heresy of Mary Wollstonecraft gave the severest of shocks\nto her own generation. So heinous seemed her offence of _l\u00e8se-majest\u00e9_\nin questioning man's divine right that one of the most famous of her\ncontemporaries did not hesitate to stigmatize her as \"a hyena in\npetticoats.\"\n\nHistory gives us but one record of a general outbreak. In the\nthirteenth century the Crusades had so drained Europe of its\nable-bodied men that the women were forced to apply themselves to\nthe abandoned trades and neglected professions. They shortly became\nso intoxicated by the sense of their own competency and power that\nwhen the weary wearers of the cross returned from the East they were\nat first delighted to discover that their affairs were prospering\nalmost as well as ever, and then amazed and disgusted to find the\nwomen reluctant to yield up to their natural rulers these usurped\nprivileges. Stern measures were necessary to oust them. Severe laws\nwere enacted against the admission of women into the Guilds--the\nlabour organizations which at that period governed all the avenues\nof industrial advancement; and the doors of the professions were\nperemptorily slammed in the women's faces. Such episodes as these,\nhowever, were detached and accidental. Female treason never dared\nunrebuked to lift its horrid head until within the present generation.\n\nThe emancipated new woman has various methods of accounting for the\nhumbling of this hoary sovereignty. Some find it only a natural\nconcomitant of the general wreck of thrones and monarchical\nprivilege--in other words, that it is but one phase of advancing\ndemocracy. By some it is supposed that in this Age of Interrogation\nman's supremacy, along with all other institutions, has been called\nupon to produce an adequate reason for being, and producing no answer\nthat seems satisfactory, he has been summarily forced to abandon\npretensions which rested merely upon use and wont. It is said by some\nthat woman has been examining with coldly unprejudiced eye the claim of\nman to rule, has been measuring his powers against her own and has not\nbeen daunted by the comparison. The more noisy declare that she has\nstripped him of his royal robe and that, like Louis XIV., minus his\nhigh heels and towering peruke, she finds him only of medium stature\nafter all; that she has turned the rays of a cynical democracy upon\nthe mystery encompassing his Kingship and refuses to be awed by what\nshe sees there; that it is because of this she begins to usurp his\nprivileges, thrust herself into his professions, shoulder him even from\nthe altar, and brazenly seating herself on the throne beside him she\nlifts the circlet from his brows to try if it be not a fit for her own\nhead.\n\nThe weakness of all such explanations is that they do not take into\naccount the fact that woman is not by nature democratic. Whatever\npolitical principles the occasional or exceptional woman may\nprofess, the average woman is in all her predilections intensely\naristocratic;--is by nature loyal, idealistic, an idolater and a hero\nworshipper. Strong as the spirit of democracy may be, it could not\nby itself alone in one generation change the nature of woman. The\nexplanation must lie elsewhere.\n\nIn the language of a now famous arraignment--\"_J'accuse_\" man himself.\n\nNo ruler is ever really dethroned by his subjects. No hand but his own\never takes the crown from his head. No agency but his can wash the\nchrism from his brow. It is his own abdication that drives him from\npower--abdication of his duties, his obligations, his opportunities.\nCeasing to rule, he ceases to reign. When he ceases to lead he wants\nfor followers, and the revolt which casts him from power is only the\noutward manifestation of his previous abdication of the inward and\nspiritual grace of kingship. When man ceased to govern, woman was not\nlong in throwing off the sham of subjection that remained.\n\nLike other subjects, woman required of her master two things--_panem\net circenses_,--bread and circuses. When the industrial changes\nbrought about by the introduction of machinery put an end to the\nold patriarchal system of home manufactures, man found it less\neasy to provide for his woman-kind--more especially his collateral\nwoman-kind--and without any very manifest reluctance he turned her out\ninto the world to shift for herself. Here was a shock to her faith and\nloyalty! The all-powerful male admitted his inability to provide for\nthese sisters, cousins, aunts, and more distant kin who had looked up\nto him as the fount of existence, and had toiled and fed contentedly\nunder his roof, yielding to him obedience as the natural provider and\nmaster. Woman went away sorrowful and--very thoughtful.\n\nThis alone was not enough to quite alienate her faith, however. Woman\nwas still, as always, a creature of imagination--dazzled by colour, by\npomp, by fanfaronade. She was still a creature of romance, adoring the\npicturesque, yielding her heart to courage, to power, to daring and\nendurance--all the sterner virtues which she herself lacked. The man of\nthe past was often brutal to her--overbearing always, cruel at times,\nbut he fascinated her by his masterfulness and his splendour. She might\ngo fine, but he would still be the finer bird. When she thought of him\nshe was hypnotized by a memory of gold, a waving of purple, a glitter\nof steel, a flutter of scarlet. He knew that this admiration of hers\nfor beauty and colour was as old as the world. From primordial periods\nthe male has recognized this need of the female. The fish in the sea,\nthe reptile in the dust, the bird in the forest, the wild beast in the\njungle are all aware of their mates' passion for gleaming scales, for\nglowing plumes, for dappled hides and orgulous crests of hair. They\nknow, they have always known, that no king can reign without splendour.\nOnly man, bent solely upon his own comfort and, it would seem, upon the\nabandonment of his power, deliberately sets himself against this need\nof the female, which has become imbedded in her nature through every\nsuccessive step up in the scale of evolution. He alone fatuously prides\nhimself on the dark, bifurcated simplicity of his attire, intended only\nfor warmth and ease and constructed with a calculated avoidance of\nadornment. To avoid criticism he has set up a theory that a superior\nsort of masculinity is demonstrated by the dark tint and unbeautiful\nshape of garments (as if the fighting man, the soldier--who is nothing\nif not masculine--were not always a colourful creature); and chooses to\nignore or resent woman's weakness for this same gold-laced combatant,\nand for the silken, picturesque actor.\n\n\"_J'accuse_\" the man of abandoning his mastership and becoming a\nbourgeois in appearance and manner through a slothful desire for\nease. There can hardly be a question that Louis le Grand's red heels\nand majestic peruke were uncomfortable and a bore, but his sense of\nhumour and his knowledge of men were such that his bed curtains were\nnever untucked until his lion's mane had been passed in to him on the\nend of a walking stick, and was safely in its place. He could imagine\nhow unimposing the King of Beasts might be in _n\u00e9glig\u00e9_. He knew that\nto be reverenced one must be imposing. Louis the Unfortunate found\nit far less tedious to abandon stateliness, and work wigless and\nleather-aproned at his locksmith's forge, while his feather-headed\nqueen played at being a dairy-maid at Trianon, forgetting that the\npopulace, which had submitted humbly to the bitter exactions of the man\nwho dazzled them, seeing the bald head and leathern apron would get\nabruptly up from its knees and say: \"What! submit to the pretensions\nof a locksmith and a dairy-maid--common folk like ourselves--certainly\nnot!\" and proceed to carry their sovereign's suggestion of equality to\nthe distressingly logical conclusion to be found at the mouth of the\nguillotine.\n\n\"_J'accuse_\" man of carrying further this democracy of sex by adding\nrigid plainness of behaviour to ugliness of appearance, forgetting that\na woman, like the child and the savage, love pomp of manner as well\nas of garment, and that what she does not see she finds it hard to\nbelieve. Every wise lover soon learns it is necessary to reinforce the\ntenderness of his manner by definite assurances of affection several\ntimes in every twenty-four hours. Then, and then only, is a woman sure\nshe is loved.\n\nHow can she believe man heroic unless he use the appearance and manner\nof the hero?\n\nSir Hilary of Agincourt, returning from France, found his lady\nfrom home, and he and all his weary men-at-arms sat there--mailed\ncap-\u00e0-pi\u00e9--throughout the entire night until she returned to welcome\nthem home and receive their homage. What if at other times Sir Hilary\nmay have been something of a brute? Lady Hilary, flattered by this\nfine piece of steel-clad swagger, would, remembering it, forgive a\nthousand failures of temper or courtesy.\n\nWhen El Ahmed held the pass all through the darkness while his women\nfled across the desert, and his foes feared to come to hand grips with\nhim, not knowing he stood there dead,--propped against the spear he had\nthrust into his mortal wound to hold himself erect--there was no female\nrevolt against the domination of men who were capable of deeds that so\nfired women's imaginations.\n\nThese may, after all, seem to be frivolous accusations--that men do\nnot dress well; do not behave dramatically; but the signification of\nthese seemingly capricious charges lies deeper than may appear. Man has\nbeen seized with a democratic ideal, and after applying it to political\ninstitutions has attempted to carry it into domestic application. He\nis relentlessly forcing a democracy of sex upon woman; industrially,\nmentally, and sentimentally. He refuses to gratify her imagination;\nhe insists upon her development of that logical selfishness which\nunderlies all democracy, and which is foreign to her nature. Now,\nnature has inexorably laid upon woman a certain share of the work that\nmust be done in the world. In the course of ages humanity adjusted\nitself to its shared labours by developing the relation of master and\ndefender, of dependent and loyal vassal. Sentiment had adorned it\nwith a thousand graces and robbed the feudal relation of most of its\nhardships. Mutual responsibilities and mutual duties were cheerfully\naccepted.\n\nWoman was obliged to perform certain duties, and these could only be\nmade easy and agreeable by sentiment, by unselfishness. Man needed her\nministrations as much as she needed his. He realized that sentiment\nwas necessary to her happiness and he accepted the duty of preserving\nthat sentiment of loyalty and admiration for himself which made her\nhard tasks seem easy when performed for a beloved master. He took\nupon himself that difficult task of being a hero to a person even\nmore intimate than his valet. He took the trouble to please woman's\nimagination.\n\nThe hard democracy of to-day will take no note of the relation of\nmaster and dependent. Each individual has all the rights which do not\ncome violently in contact with other's rights, and has no duties which\nare not regulated by the law. Unselfishness is not contemplated in its\nscheme. Every individual has a right to all the goods of life he can\nget.\n\nWomen are beginning to accept these stern theories; beginning to apply\nthe cruel logic of individualism. So far from the power to win his\nfavour being her one hope of advancement or success, she does not\nhesitate to say on occasion that to yield to his affections is likely\nto hamper her in the race for fame or achievement. So far from the\ngiving of an heir to his greatness being the highest possibility of\nher existence, she sometimes complains that such duties are an unfair\ndemand upon her energies, which she wishes to devote exclusively to her\nown ends.\n\nThe universal unpopularity of domestic service proves that the duties\nof a woman are in themselves neither agreeable nor interesting.\nWhere is the man in all the world who would exchange even the most\nlaborious of his occupations for his wife's daily existence? The\nonly considerations that can permanently reconcile human beings to\nunattractive labours is first the sentiment of loyalty--that such\nlabours are performed for one who is loved and admired--and second the\nfine, noble old habit of submission. These incentives to duty, these\nhelps to happiness, man has taken from woman by weakly shuffling off\nhis mastership.\n\nI accuse man of having wilfully cast from him the noblest crown in the\nworld--of having wrongfully abdicated. War has at least this merit that\nit forces him to drop the vulgar careless ease of the bourgeois and\nresume for the time at least those bold and vigorous virtues which made\nhim woman's hero and her cheerfully accepted master.\n\n\n\n\nJune 13.\n\nLife.\n\n\n        It is a toy: a jingling bauble gay,\n    That children grasp with wondering, wide-eyed pleasure;\n    Soil it with too fierce use, and find their treasure\n    But rags and tinsel, which at close of day\n    Falls from their weary hands. It is a page\n    Whereon the child scribbles unmeaning scrawls.\n    Youth's glowing pen indites sweet madrigals.\n    Man tells a history, and sad old age--\n    Seeing that all the space that he hath writ before\n    But wrote in varying ways his folly large--\n    Sets \"Vanity\" upon the meagre marge.\n    And last Time prints \"The End\" and turns it o'er.\n\n\n\n\nJuly 2.\n\nPortable Property.\n\n\nThe Chinese pinks are in full bloom now. I have gathered pounds of them\nand arranged them in vases, and the mere outline of their feathery\ngrey-green foliage, set with those fringed flecks of warm colour, makes\nexistence seem an agreeable thing. The sound of children's voices\noutside, the smell of the cut grass, and the blue of the day, all\nseemed freshly sweet and pleasant because of the pleasure the freaked\nbeauty of the bowls full of pinks give me. I am sorry for the people\nwho don't care for flowers. The amiability they always awake in me is\none of my most valued bits of secret property. That is the kind of\npossession that moth and rust cannot corrupt. It is safe from burglars,\nand even age does not wither one's satisfaction in such belongings.\nMost of my life I have been poor, as the world reckons poverty, but in\nreality I have owned more than many millionaires.\n\nIt seems to me a wise thing to store up private wealth early. My nose\nto me a kingdom is, and emperors and any millionaire might envy me\nthe possession of my ears and eyes. There are pale-souled philosophers\nwho declare their contempt for the power of gold, and some narrow\ndull-witted folk are really oppressed by luxury--all of which seems\nnonsense to me; but if one can't and most of us can't, have high\nstepping horses, good frocks, paid service, and expensive homes, one\ncan at least own tangible treasures of smells and sights and sounds.\nAnd, ah! the odd bits of poetry I possess....\n\n    Now rising through the rosy wine of thought\n      Bright-beaded memories sparkle at the brim\n    Of the mind's chalice. Golden phrases wrought\n      By the great poets bubble to its brim.\n\n    My poets--as the patterned skies are mine,\n      The perfumes and the murmurs of the sea\n    Are all mine own--their cadences divine\n      Seem as my goodly heritage to me.\n\n    They trace the measures of all hidden things,\n      And into worded magic can translate\n    The hidden harmonies which Nature sings;\n      Her mighty music inarticulate.\n\n    And who will list hears sonorous vibrations\n      As though their thoughts strung harps from earth to heaven\n    That rung with golden, glad reverberations\n      As wide-winged dreams breathed through their strings at even.\n\n\n\n\nJuly 10.\n\nAre American Parents Selfish?\n\n\nP---- overwhelmed us last night at dinner by declaring that American\nparents were selfish. We dropped our fish-forks and stared at him in\namazement and disgust. H---- said, severely, \"You are a foreigner.\"\nP---- couldn't truthfully deny it, and the bare statement seemed\nsufficient, but H---- likes to clinch any nail he drives and he went on:\n\n\"It is admitted by every unprejudiced person--excepting, of course,\nthe ignorant and benighted foreigner--that the Americans are the\npeople, and that wisdom and virtue will necessarily die with them;\nthat all their customs and institutions, whether social or political,\nare the wonder, the envy, and despair of other nations, which makes an\nassertion like yours seem almost frivolous.\"\n\n\"Selfish!\" I struck in, \"selfish--indeed! on the contrary, the American\nis blamed as the most indulgent of parents. Surely selfishness is the\nlast charge that can justly be made.\"\n\nP---- tried to defend himself. He admitted that \"if indulgence\ninvariably implied unselfishness the American would certainly have\nnothing with which to reproach himself in his relations with his\nchildren.\"\n\nWe fought the question over until late, and this is about what our\ndiscussion came to. There can be no doubt that a fond gentleness of\nrule is in this country, the law of the average household. So far as\nis compatible with common sense, the children have entire liberty of\naction, and, so far as the means of the parents permit, the children\nare provided with every advantage and pleasure. Indeed, to such lengths\nat one time did fondness go that it too often degenerated into a\nlaxness that made the American child a lesson and a warning to other\nnations. Daisy Miller and her little, odious toothless brother were\nsupposed to typify the results of this fatuous feebleness of rule in\nour family life, but neither Daisy nor her brother can now be held\nto be typical pictures, though their prototypes still exist here and\nthere. The American parent of to-day rules more firmly and with greater\nwisdom. Such figures as those of the unhappy girl and the odious boy\nbrought home to us the truth--forgotten in our passion for universal\nliberty--that a relaxation of wise, strong government by the parent was\ncruelty of the most far-reaching and irreparable sort.\n\nNo doubt Henry James' mordant satire helped to inaugurate a salutary\nreform, and it is just possible that a new work of a similar nature is\nnow needed to suggest further serious reflections to American parents;\nto rouse them to consider whether their whole duty is performed in\nseeing their children well fed, well educated, and raised to man's\nestate. With most parents the sense of responsibility ceases when the\nboy begins to earn his own living, when the girl dons orange blossoms.\nLike the birds, the American parent works hard to feed the nestlings,\ncarefully teaches them to fly, and then tumbles them out into the\nworld to fend for themselves. So far in our history this elemental\nmethod has worked well, no doubt. The result of it has been to breed\nthe most precocious, self-reliant, vigorous, irreverent race the earth\nhas yet seen. One may see the whole situation epitomized in the\norchard any pleasant June day--an astonished fledgling ruffling his\nfeathers upon some retired bough, ruminating upon the sudden shocks\nand changes of existence, and afraid almost to turn his head in the\nlarge, new, lonesome world surrounding him. As the hours pass his\nmelancholy reflections are pierced by hunger's pangs. Heretofore, a\nbusy parent has always appeared to assuage such poignant sensations,\nbut now that hard-worked person may be seen--genially oblivious of\nobligations--refreshing himself with cherries, and the fledgling, with\na squawk of wounded amazement, discovers for the first time that even\nparents are not to be depended upon. His hunger meantime grows. An\nopportune insect flits by and is snapped at involuntarily. It proves\nto be of refreshing and sustaining quality, and digestion brings\ncourage. A hop and a flutter show the usefulness of wing and limb. More\nluck with insects demonstrates that the world belongs to the bold,\nand before the day is done the cocky young nestling of yesterday is\nshouldering his papa away from the ripest cherries.\n\nAll this is very well in a world where flies and cherries are free to\nall, but America is fast ceasing to be a happy uncrowded orchard in\nwhich the young find more than enough room and food for the taking.\n\nIn the past, the boy--inured to plain living and a certain amount of\nlabour from childhood--had only to take the girl of his choice by the\nhand and go make a home out of virgin soil, wheresoever chance or fancy\nled, himself and his parents both confident he could not suffer in a\nland where only industry was needed to ensure conquest. These boundless\npossibilities relieved the parent of half the cares incident to the\nrelation, and that sense of freedom from responsibility has remained,\nwhile conditions have altered. The bird-like fashion of refusing\nfurther liability once the child has made his first flight is still the\nrule.\n\nTo the European parent this seems a most flagrant abandonment of duty.\nThere the anxious care for the offspring reaches out to the third and\nfourth generation, and every safeguard which law or custom can devise\nis thrown around the child. From the moment of its birth the parent\nof Continental Europe begins to save, not only for the education and\nupbringing, but for the whole future existence of the child. It is not\nalone the daughter who is dowered, but the son also has provision made\nfor his married life, when, as his parents keenly realize, the greatest\nstrain will be made upon his resources and capabilities.\n\nIn America it is the custom--very nearly the universal custom--for\nthe parents to spend upon the luxuries and pleasures of the family\nlife the whole income. The children are educated according to this\nstandard of expenditure, and are accustomed to all its privileges.\nNo thought is taken of the time when they must set up households for\nthemselves--almost invariably upon a very different scale from the one\nto which they have been used. To the American parent this seems only\na natural downfall. He remarks cheerfully that he himself began in a\nsmall way, and it will do the young people no harm to acquire a similar\nexperience--forgetting that in most cases the children have been\neducated to a much higher standard of ease than that of his own early\nlife. The parents do not consider it obligatory to leave anything\nto their children at death. They have used all they could accumulate\nduring their own lifetime; let their children do the same. The results\nof the system are crystallized in the American saying: \"There are but\nthree generations from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves.\" The man who\nacquires wealth spends what he makes. His children, brought up in\nluxury, struggle unsuccessfully against conditions to which they are\nunused, and the grand-children begin in their shirt sleeves to toil for\nthe wealth dissipated by the two preceding generations.\n\nEuropeans frequently and curiously remark upon the American's\nprodigality of ready money. The small change which they part with so\nreluctantly the American flings about with a fine medi\u00e6val profusion.\nThe manner of life of the average well-to-do person in this country\npermits of it. The average man who earns ten or twenty thousand a\nyear invests none of it. He installs his family in a rented house in\nthe city in winter. Several servants are kept; the children are sent\nto expensive schools. All the family dress well, eat rich food, and\nindulge in costly amusements. In summer they either travel abroad, live\nin a hotel at a watering place, or rent again. The man's whole income\nis at his disposal to spend every year. None of it is deducted to be\nsafely stored in property. When his daughters marry he expects their\nhusbands to be solely responsible for their future, and if they do not\nsucceed in marrying wealth, why so much the worse for them. When his\nsons begin their career he looks to them to be self-supporting almost\nfrom the first, and not to undertake the responsibilities of a family\nuntil they are able to bear such a burden without aid from him. He\ncannot assist them without materially altering his own scale of living,\nwhich he is naturally loath to do. At his death the income generally\nceases in large part, and his widow, and such children as may still be\nunplaced in life, are obliged to relinquish the rented houses and the\nway of life to which they have been used.\n\nTo a Frenchman such an existence would seem as uncertain and disturbing\nas is generally supposed to be that of a person who has built upon\nthe crust of a volcano. He could not contemplate with equanimity the\nthought of chaos overtaking the ordered existence of his family upon\nhis demise. _Apr\u00e8s nous le deluge_ seems to him the insouciance of a\nmaniac, or of a monster of selfishness. Daily expenditure is regulated\nwithin a limit which permits of a constant investment of a margin. When\nhis daughter marries he insures in her carefully guarded dower that she\nshall continue her existence on somewhat the same scale to which she\nhas been accustomed, and, in case of premature widowhood or accident\nof fortune, she and her children shall not be called upon to face the\ndesperate strait of absolute pennilessness. He may deny her in her\ngirlhood many of the indulgences common to her American prototype, but\nhe denies himself at the same time in saving to insure the security\nand comfort of her future. The French father would think it terrible\nthat a tenderly nurtured daughter should be suddenly thrust into abject\ndependence upon a husband who may possibly abuse the power given him by\nthat circumstance, nor would he be more satisfied to think that she\nshould, during her first years of married life, while still young and\nencountering the strain of motherhood, be called upon to face narrow\nmeans and a perilously uncertain financial condition.\n\nWhen the son arrives at maturity the economies to which he, in company\nwith his parents, has submitted, bear fruit in substantial aid in\nbeginning his career, and he is not obliged to put out of his mind all\nthought of marriage during his youth, since his parents, and those\nof the woman of his choice, have provided for this very contingency\nthrough all the years of his minority.\n\nThe French--with the logical inevitableness of their mode of\nthought--carry this view of life to its extreme limit, but throughout\nall Europe, including England, the responsibility of the parent is\nmore broadly conceived than in this country, where the excuse for an\ninfinity of cheap flimsiness is the cynical phrase, \"It will last\nmy time.\" Men build cheaply, and forbear to undertake work of which\nthey cannot see the immediate result, because there is no sense of\nobligation to the coming generation. The democratic theory is that\neach man must fight for his own hand; no debt is owed to either\nancestry or posterity. The mind is not shocked by sudden destruction\nof families, by the sharp descent in the social scale, or the flinging\nof women into the arena of the struggle for life. The parent is quite\nwilling to share with the child the goods of existence as far as he can\nachieve them, but he is unwilling to deny either child or himself that\nthe child may benefit alone, or after he is gone.\n\nConditions in America are constantly assimilating themselves more and\nmore to those existing in the older countries, where the conflict for\nexistence is close and intense, and where the prudent, the careful,\nand the far-sighted inevitably crowd out the weaker and more careless\nindividuals and families. An almost unmistakable sign of \"an old\nfamily\" in America is conservatism in expenditure and modes of life.\nThe newly rich, who set the pace of public luxury, are always amazed\nat the probates of the wills of these quiet citizens. They cannot\nbelieve that one who spent so little should have so much, not realizing\nthat the simplicity of life made it possible to solidly invest a\nsurplus. The heirs of this solid wealth have been bred to prudence\nand self-denial. Such a family survives, while in all probability\nthe offspring of the other type may in two generations be hopelessly\ntrodden into the mire.\n\nThere is in the breasts of many parents a half-resentful feeling that\nthey should not be asked to sacrifice themselves to the new generation.\nThey insist upon their own right to all that is to be got out of life,\nfeeling that what they give to the children is never repaid. This\nselfish type forgets that in doing their duty they are but returning to\ntheir children what they themselves received from the past generation,\nand that the children will in turn pay to their descendants the\ninherited debt of honour with interest.\n\n\n\n\nJuly 30.\n\nA Question of Heredity.\n\n\nI was lunching out to-day, and sat beside Mrs. C---- S----. She told\nme her daughter was so hoping that the new child would be a girl. Four\nboys seemed a superfluity of masculinity in one household.\n\n\"I wish there was some way of knowing beforehand about such things,\"\nshe complained.\n\n\"When F---- came,\" I said, airily, \"there was the same feeling in\nour family; we all wanted so that she should be a girl. H---- was so\ncomforting. He said she certainly would be, if there was anything\nin heredity; her mother was a girl, and all her aunts, and both her\ngrandmothers. And she did turn out to be a girl, you see.\"\n\nMrs. C---- S---- looked at me with her mild blue eyes, and said,\nhappily--\"I wonder if there is really anything in that; for you know\nit's just the same in our family!\"\n\n\n\n\nOctober 6.\n\nThe Little Dumb Brother.\n\n\nI have been reading in one of the magazines a record of travel in the\nRocky Mountains of the Arctic regions. It is illustrated with pictures\nof some ten polar bear skins--two of them evidently mere babies of\nbears--a dead ram, a dead caribou--the former killed, the author\nexplains, to furnish the first food he had in forty-four hours. He\nconcludes his article with this naive charge: \"Wolves, when pressed\nby hunger, do not hesitate to fall upon one of their own number and\nsacrifice it to their beastly cravings. They are utterly lacking in\nconscience, and the young or weak of every class of land animals suffer\nfrom their wanton lack of mercy.\"\n\nSuch wicked wolves! And how about those baby bears?\n\nIt is the same point of view as that of the Spanish bull fighters.\n\"They are not Christians--they have no souls--why consider them?\"\n\nAs I have said before, very probably the decent, well-behaved, kindly\nRoman citizen of Nero's day, returning with his family from a pleasant\nafternoon at the gladiatorial shows, gathered his children about\nthe household altar, offered pious libation to the gods, and went\npeacefully to bed with a clean and untroubled conscience. It was all\nsimply a question of the point of view. A Roman citizen was certainly\nnot going to be disturbed by a sense of wrong-doing in watching the\npangs of such creatures as Christians or barbarians.\n\nThe theory that human beings were each and every one in a spiritual\nsense, brothers, came later to trouble this fine old crusted\nindifference, and now after nearly two thousand years the idea has so\ncompletely infiltrated human consciousness, that the death agonies\nof men can no longer anywhere serve as diversion to the gentle and\nthe good. But behind that sweeping assumption that we of all organic\nnature alone possess that element of immortality, binding us together\nwith spiritual ties, and laying upon all the mutual obligations of\njustice and mercy, we have been nourishing a towering and brutal\negotism, that moves blindly and stupidly about amid unreckonable\nmultitudes of sentient fellow creatures; unaware of their lives, their\npassions, or their languages. Contracted inside the shell of this\nfoolish prepossession we miss half the interest and wonder of the world\nwe inhabit, and--thinking of ourselves all the while as an honest\nand merciful fellow--we play an unimaginable devil to our unhappy\nneighbours.\n\nAnd yet I think even we at our worst would recoil could there be set\nbefore us in plain language the immitigable horrors of man's place\nin nature written from the point of view of even the most philosophic\nand amiable of the beasts. It makes the skin upon one's flesh crisp\nto reflect how black would be that long chronicle of poisonings,\nburnings, slayings, devourings. Those unmentionable tortures upon the\nvivisector's table; those maimings and clippings of well-loved pets to\ngratify a cheerful but perverted fancy; the treachery, ingratitude, and\nfantastic despotism practised every day, and always--throughout the\nwhole indictment set forth by the accusing animals,--would be seen a\ndark, everflowing stream of innocent blood, spilled purely for man's\nidle recreation. The fanged Nero of the jungle, the very Heliogabalus\nof the cobras would seem spotless saints contrasted with this horrid\nrecord of the deeds of what are commonly called kindly and upright men.\nThe beasts had never need to invent a devil myth. The model was always\nto their hand.\n\nCardinal Newman once remarked, with a sense of surprise, that \"we know\nless of the animals than we do of the angels,\" and when one remembers\nthe disproportionate attention given the two subjects this is hardly\ncause for wonder. One of the favourite texts of the never-ending\ndebates of the schoolmen of the Middle Ages was the question whether\nsixty thousand angels would have room to stand on the point of a\nneedle; and upon this and cognate subjects\n\n    ... \"Doctor and Saint--they heard great argument\n          About it, and About: and ever more\n        Came out by that same door wherein they went.\"\n\nBut of any study of what we call--in our topping human fashion--\"the\nlower orders of creation\" the history of the schools contains not a\nsingle record.\n\nEven since science has begun to divert the world's mind from the study\nof the macrocosm, to the contemplation of the microcosm this same\ningrained contempt and misunderstanding of the animals has led to the\nmost amazing ideas. Descartes, whose study of the reflex actions of\nthe muscles curiously anticipated some of the subtlest discoveries\nmade recently in Chicago by Professor Loeb, propounded the theory, in\nhis \"R\u00e9ponses,\" that animals were mere automata--which ate without\npleasure, cried without pain, desired nothing, knew nothing, and only\nsimulated intelligence as a bee simulates a mathematician. He says:\n\"Among the movements that take place in us there are many which do not\ndepend upon the mind at all, such as the beating of the heart, the\ndigestion of food, nutrition, and respiration, walking, singing, and\nother similar actions when they are performed without the mind thinking\nof them. And when one, who falls from a height throws his hands forward\nto save his head, it is in virtue of no ratiocination that he performs\nthis action. It does not depend upon his mind, but takes place merely\nbecause his senses being affected by present danger some change\narises in his brain which affects the nerves in such a manner as is\nrequired to produce the motion, in the same manner as in a machine, and\nwithout the mind being able to hinder it. Now since we observe this in\nourselves, why should we be so astonished if the light reflected from\nthe body of a wolf into the eye of a sheep has the same force to excite\nit into the motion of flight?\"\n\nWhy on the other hand should we refuse to think that the light\nreflected from the body of a lion into the eye of Descartes himself\nshould have the power of exciting him into the motion of flight,\nwithout his mind being concerned in the matter at all--except that\nDescartes himself would assure us with his own lips that this was not\nso.\n\nOur ignorance of the dialects of animals, our inability to understand\nthe medium by which they convey their thoughts, makes it possible for\nmen of even Descartes' abilities to generate such childish hypotheses.\nEven Huxley says blandly of animals that \"Since they have no language\nthey can have no trains of thought,\" though he admits that most of them\npossess that part of the brain which we have every reason to suppose to\nbe the organ of consciousness in man.\n\nIt is one of the most regrettable results of this human egotism, which\nhas dug so deep and permanent a gulf between ourselves and our fellow\ncreatures, that we have made no concerted or intelligent effort to find\na means of communication with our fellow beings. That such an effort\nwould produce results worth the labour it would entail we have reason\nto infer from the surprising success that has followed our struggles\nto elucidate the meaning of the fragments of language sculptured on\nthe broken stones that have been left by races extinct for thousands\nof years. We know how great are the barriers the varying tongues raise\nbetween living peoples: how much effort must be given to acquire a\nlanguage foreign to us, even when surrounded by the sound of it in our\ndaily life, and assisted by teachers, yet supreme human ingenuity has,\nfrom these fragments of broken stones, reconstructed dead tongues and\nforgotten histories of civilizations that for millenniums have been\nbut dust blown through voiceless deserts. Yet in all the great lapse\nof ages during which man has been living in close intimacy with his\ndomesticated animals not the slightest attempt has been made to cross\nthe width of silence lying between him and his faithful companions.\n\nThe student who makes the acquaintance of animals only in the trap or\nupon the vivisection table may well assert that the beast has\n\n \"No language but a cry,\"\n\nbut those who approach their fellow beings with a mind divested of\nthis self-righteous cant are well aware that the animals have means of\ncommunication as accurate as our own, and fully sufficient for all the\nneeds of their existence.\n\nTo an ant the man standing beside him is as a creature three thousand\nfeet high, would be to us. Now let us imagine this colossal person\nstooping to examine the tiny beings hurrying to and fro in a channel\nbetween a row of structures built of fragments that would appear to\nhim no bigger than grains of sand. He would, of course, be unaware\nthat this channel was called Broadway, or the Strand, or the Avenue de\nl'Opera.\n\n\"Do these tiny atoms think, reason, or speak?\" he would ask himself.\nHis ear, of course, would be unable to catch any vibrations of their\ninfinitesimal tones, but he would notice here and there two of them\npausing to touch their forepaws, remaining opposite one another for\nsome moments moving their minute lips, and that thereupon one or the\nother would abandon his travel along this channel and move off in\nanother direction, apparently led thereto by the communication of a\ncommand or suggestion from his companion. If this giant should chance\nto be an intelligent giant he would certainly infer that these men had\na language.\n\nNow let us step out upon the grass any day in June and in our turn use\nan intelligent eye. Here lies a dead grasshopper. A foraging ant comes\nwandering by. He surveys it carefully and estimates the horse power\nrequisite to move it, and then hurries away in the direction of home.\nMeeting another ant he stops, touches antennae for a few moments, and\npasses on. The second ant makes straight for the grasshopper and finds\nit without trouble. Nothing can be plainer than that the first ant told\nthe second one where to go. \"A glorious windfall!\" he probably said,\n\"There's a dead Leviathan about two miles from here. Keep straight on\ntill you come to a three-cornered rock, then turn to the left and you\nwill come upon three grains of sand and a straw. Climb the straw, and\nyou can't miss it. It's big enough to be seen a mile away.\" The second\nant, when it finds the grasshopper, does not go home. It sits down and\nwaits till the first one returns with a great gang of labourers, and\nthen every one seizes hold of a leg or wing and the stupendous mass is\nslowly removed to the nest. Would any person with ordinary common-sense\nsuppose these to be automata?\n\nHad Huxley pondered the Scriptures and gone to the ant to consider her\nways he would have certainly been cured of his haughty illusions, for\nnot only has each species of ant a language in which he can communicate\nwith other ants of the same species, but each nest or clan has,\nclearly, its own brogue; for an ant knows instantly whether another\nbelongs to its own nest or not. The ants of one nest murder those of\nanother. It is a point of honour with them.\n\nWe have seen that Huxley admits reluctantly that most animals have\nthose portions of brain development that we believe to be the seat\nof consciousness, but here is an insect with organs and functions as\nheterogeneous from our own as can well be imagined, and yet there is no\nmode of life that men have tried which one or another of the races of\nants is not pursuing to-day. Beside the agriculturists and herdsmen,\nsome keep slaves to do everything for them, some live by hunting\nand plunder, while others quarter themselves upon us and live by\nconfounding meum and tuum. Any ardent pomologist may study the herdsmen\ntribes by simply turning over the leaves of his young apple tree in\nthe spring. Upon the broad succulent meadows of the under side of his\nfoliage he will discover fat flocks of aphis cows, tended by brawny ant\ncow-herds, who keep a special eye upon the big brown bulls around which\nthe cows and calves gather to feed. The herdsmen conduct them from leaf\nto leaf as they exhaust the sap, and at night by the long twig paths\nand barky roads they carry the milk of the sweet honey dew with which\nthey are swollen. If the horticulturist be hard of heart and smear away\na whole herd with a sweep of his thumb, the horrified herdsmen will\nrush frantically home, bursting into the nest to report to some hyksos\nking of the termites, that the Philistines have fallen upon his charge\nand that \"I, only I, have escaped to tell the tale!\"\n\nThe most interesting of the agricultural races of ants is that one\ncommonly known in the West Indies as the parasol ant, from its fashion\nof carrying bits of flower petals over its shoulder at the angle\ncommonly used with a sunshade. This ant erects an enormous structure,\nas large in proportion to its size as is the City of London to any\none of its inhabitants. The dwellers in these cities are divided into\nclasses: farmers, road-makers, explorers, nurses, soldiers, street\nsweepers, policemen, and, of course, the Queen. The great town is kept\nperfectly clean and sanitary by the scavengers, who remove all refuse\nevery day. In case of death the bodies are removed some distance and\nburied. The soldiers guard the entrances to the city, and in case of\nattack by one of the Attila hordes of the barbarian hunter ants, they\nfight with a fury and courage so great that only after the entire army\nis destroyed is the city ever given up to pillage.\n\nThe explorers belonging to the nest scour the surrounding country in\nsearch of the material needed by the farmers, and following their\nindications, the road-makers clear paths a quarter of an inch in width\nand frequently a mile in length, through the immense tangles of the\ntropical forests,--roads as straight and useful as those of the Romans.\nAlong these the farmers pass, often at the end of it to climb a tree\nfifty feet high in search of the bits of flower petals, with which they\npass so continuously to the nest that the human observer will sometimes\nsee what appears to be a thin trickle of pink or yellow through the\njungle grass as far as the eye can reach. These flower petals are\npacked in the city's cellars, moistened, and sown with the spores of a\nminute fungus upon which the ants live.\n\nMost curious of all is that these ants also keep pets--several\nvarieties of tiny insects which they feed and protect, and which\napparently serve no purpose save to give pleasure by their playful\ngambols. In every well established city of the parasol ants there\nresides a small green snake in a chamber built about him by the\nants themselves, who feed and guard him, and when by any accident\nthe little reptile is removed they abandon all their affairs until\nanother is found to replace him. Unless this snake serves them as a\nfetish or deity there is no means of accounting for their desire for\nhis presence, for as far as can be discovered he fills no purpose of\nutility. Mark Twain declares that the ants \"vote, keep drilled armies,\nhold slaves and dispute about religion,\" and for all we know this\nlittle snake may be the centre of a complex system of theology.\n\nConsider too Maeterlinck's \"Life of the Bee,\" that remarkable study of\na civilization so unlike our own. It is common to dismiss the bee's\ngeometrical abilities with the futile word _instinct_, but honest\nstudents of the work of these astonishing insects have shown that,\ngiven a new situation to deal with, they first hold active counsel\ntogether concerning it, and then adapt their means to new conditions\nwith all the skill and flexibility that suggest powers of trained\nreasoning. Here is a race that works for an ideal. The general good\nof the hive inspires in them as inflexible a severity, as ardent\nan abandonment of the desires of the individual as did the Roman\npatriotism of the elder Brutus, or of the young Scaevola. No more\nremarkable story is to be found in literature than Maeterlinck's\ndescription of the nuptial flight of the Queen Bee. Choosing a warm\nand perfect day in the very prime of the season's glow, distilling as\nshe goes some intoxicating aroma--impalpable to our grosser senses--a\nperfume of love that drives every drone of the hives in passionate\nardour to that deadly encounter, to which only he may obtain who can\nfollow her arrowy course into the blue, where, out of sight of our\nfeeble eyes, that one lethal embrace occurs after which the lover\ncomes hurtling from the skies, dead and eviscerated. To provide this\nlover, whose potent tenderness shall ensure a myriad generation--this\nlover with greater wing flight than any of his fellows--with countless\nfacetted eyes, with greater body and stronger limbs, this creature\nof such passion as to sacrifice his life for one moment of joy--the\nunflagging life work of not less than five of the sexless workers must\nbe given, and hundreds of drones are raised each year that among them\none may prove strong enough to attain to that dizzy aerial love.\n\nBeside the stern, homogeneous, self-sacrificing civilization of\nthe bees that of even the Japanese shows but clumsy, disordered and\ninadequate.\n\nMany of the doings of these small brothers of ours seem\nincomprehensible and unreasonable to us, but imagine that three\nthousand foot giant looking down upon the mites in France and Germany\nin 1870 without an inkling as to the Spanish succession; upon the\nrecent incredible scufflings and passagings back and forth over the\nveldts of South Africa without being instructed as to the term of\nresidence required to obtain the franchise. To his ignorant eye how\npurposeless, how amazingly futile the whole affair would have seemed.\nAnd it is thus we move, stupid and contemptuous, amid great races and\nevents, heavily indifferent to their meaning, to their significance\nto ourselves. We walk surrounded by powers whose forces we ignore,\nwho work out their ends independent of us, yet against whom we are\nsometimes forced to battle mightily for existence. To the unreflecting\nman in the street the cinch bug seems a matter of small interest.\nNo one interviews the coddling moth to inquire his intentions. War\ncorrespondents pass by the locust and ignore the cotton worm; the fly\nweevil and the ox bot seem to such an one but a feeble folk, yet every\nyear in the United States alone these small races cost us more than\nthree hundred and fifty millions of dollars, destroy one tenth of our\nagricultural wealth, and are more expensive to us than was the yearly\ncost of the Boer war to England.\n\nWe are the victims of pigmy captains of pernicious industries, beside\nwhose gigantic operations such magnates as Carnegie or Mr. Morgan\nlook--in the language of the streets--like thirty cents.\n\nDarwin discovered that human and plant life would perish from the\nface of the earth were it not for the labours of that humble annelid,\ncommonly known as the angle worm, through whose body the entire\nsuperficial soil of the globe passes periodically, and by whose\ndigestive processes it is made amenable for agriculture. The termites\nsubserve the angle worm's efforts by turning over and aerating the\nsoil to an extent very nearly incredible to those who have given no\nattention to their industry. Our very existence is made possible by\nthe myriad beings for whom our bodies serve as homes and battlefields,\nand whose dimensions are so minute as to be invisible save under the\nmost powerful microscopes. Ferocious struggles take place within our\nown tissues between the germs of disease and the white corpuscles of\nthe blood, those brave and sleepless warriors who patrol our veins,\nand who die by thousands with unreflecting courage in combats with\nmalignant bacteria. When their ranks are thinned, their columns\ncrushed, we succumb helplessly to our invisible foes.\n\nHow many of the great and good have fallen victims to those\nBrinvilliers of the swamps--the anopheles mosquitoes? And a greater\nnumber of the young flower of the armies of America and England were\nslaughtered by the enteric germs carried by flies than fell victims to\nBoer or Spanish bullets.\n\nHow little have we regarded the fly, and yet the facts about this\nlittle brother stagger the imagination! It is said to be certain that\nhe came to this country in the Mayflower; but compare his conquests and\nfertility with that of the Pilgrims. Linn\u00e6us said that three flies\nand the generations that could spring from them could eat a dead horse\nmore rapidly than could a lion, but later knowledge shows that, barring\nmortality, the number of flies resulting from one female in a summer\nwould be something like seven hundred sextillions, and would in mere\nbulk outweigh every man, woman, and child on earth. Happily the fly has\nenemies.\n\nIn speaking of these smaller races an idea of their relations to us\ncan only be conveyed by figures; with the larger forms of life the\nindividual may be studied as a type of the race.\n\nWe, secure in a conviction of a unique value through the immortality we\nclaim, broadly stigmatize our living fellows as of \"the lower orders\nof life.\" They are different, it is true, but in what respect lower?\nTheir development is as commensurate with their needs as is ours.\nThe shibboleth of the Socialists--\"To each according to his needs,\nfrom each according to his abilities,\" has plainly been the rule with\nnature. Whatever we boast of achieving has been accomplished as well\nor better by these lower orders when their necessities have demanded\nit. Even the Japanese create inferior paper to that made by the wasps,\nwho number among the species the most skilled of carpenters and masons.\nWho can spin or weave as can the _arachn\u00e6_ and their cognate families?\nThe beautiful manufactures of the mollusks--even of the diatoms,\ninvisible save with the microscope--leave us beggared of admiration and\nenvy.\n\nIf it be a question of physical qualities let us compare the eye of the\neagle, or of a fly, with our own--pit our dull sense of smell with the\nsubtle olfactories of a dog or a wolf--or let one of us test our sense\nof hearing against that of a mouse or a robin. The albatross loafs in\nindolent circles about the swiftest of our turbine ships; the porpoise\ncan pass from point to point in his dense element with greater speed\nthan that of our swiftest express engine. The wild goose can do his\neighty miles an hour for ten hours without rest. Scare up little Molly\nCottontail from your path, and as she flies through the autumn grasses\nlike a light leaf blown before the wind, her delicate and harmonious\nplay of muscular powers leaves our most skilled athletes but clumsy\ncripples by comparison.\n\nIn sight, smell, hearing, speed, strength, grace, and endurance we are\nimmeasurably the inferiors of our dumb brothers. And turning from the\nmaterial to the spiritual and the ideal, we find that in industry,\ncourage, patriotism, loyalty, fidelity, friendship, chivalry, maternal\nlove, and racial solidity the lower orders have nothing to learn from\nus. Indeed some races we find advanced in moral progress in certain\ndirections far beyond our most hopeful endeavours.\n\nThe needs and laws of their being have developed their morals in\ndiffering degree, and the virtues of individuals vary as greatly as\namong ourselves. Of the characters and ideals of wild creatures we can\nsnatch but brief and tantalizing glimpses; from the larger domestic\nanimals our daily life is too removed to make intimacy possible, but\ndogs and cats, the free birds, and our caged pets--if considered with\na seeing eye--open a door through which we can learn much, though our\nindolence and stupidity still shut us off from the free community of\nspeech.\n\nCarlyle says: \"No nobler feeling than that of admiration for one higher\nthan himself dwells in the breast of man. It is at this hour, and at\nall hours the unifying influence in man's life. Religion, I find,\nstands upon it ... what, therefore, is loyalty proper, the life breath\nof all society, but an effluence of hero worship; submissive admiration\nfor the truly great! Society is founded upon hero worship.\"\n\nLockhart in his Life of Scot tells of a little pig who conceived a\npassion of admiration and affection for Scott which much embarrassed\nthe great story teller. This susceptible little porker would lurk\nabout, waiting for Scott's appearance, squealing with joy when he came,\nand trotting patiently all day at his heels through miles of wandering,\nproud and contented at merely being allowed to attend on Scott. What\nwas this but Carlyle's hero worship. It is not by the way recorded that\nany pig ever made a hero of Carlyle. I once had the pleasure of knowing\na goose who abandoned his kind for just such a human friendship, and\nthe same love of the admirable is mutual among the animals themselves.\nA small green paroquet, who lived in the freedom of a bird fancier's\nroom with a canary, was possessed of a passionate admiration for his\nmore gifted companion. His every waking moment was spent in the most\ntouching efforts to imitate the thrilling songs and graceful airiness\nof his more gifted friend, in no way discouraged by the contumely with\nwhich the yellow tenor treated his lumberingly pathetic failures. But\nthere is no more confirmed hero worshipper than your dog. Stevenson\nsays of a dog whom he knew and loved: \"It was no sinecure to be\nCoolin's idol. He was exacting like a rigid parent; and at every\nsign of levity in the man whom he respected he announced loudly the\ndeath of virtue and the proximate fall of the pillars of the earth.\"\nAnd, he adds, \"for every station the dog has an ideal to which the\nmaster--under pain of derogation--will do wisely to conform. How often\nhas not a cold glance informed me that my dog was disappointed, and how\nmuch more gladly would he not have taken a beating than to be thus\nwounded in the seat of piety.\"\n\n\"Because of all animals the dog is our nearest intimate we know more of\nhis ideals and of his moral traits than of those of the other races.\nWe know that he is vainer than man, singularly greedy of notice,\nsingularly intolerant of ridicule, suspicious like the deaf, jealous to\nthe degree of frenzy.\"\n\nTo quote Stevenson again: \"To the dog of gentlemanly feeling theft\nand falsehood are disgraceful vices. The canine like the human\ngentleman, demands in his misdemeanours Montaigne's 'je ne sais quoi\nde genereux!' He is never more than half ashamed of having barked\nor bitten, and for those faults into which he has been led by a\ndesire to shine before a lady of his race, he retains, even under\nphysical correction, a share of pride. But to be caught lying, if he\nunderstands it, instantly uncurls his fleece.\" \"Among dull observers\nthe dog has been credited with modesty. It is amazing how the use of\nlanguage blunts the faculties of man. That because vain glory finds\nno vent in words, creatures supplied with eyes have been unable to\ndetect a fault so gross and obvious is amazing. If a small spoiled dog\nwere to be endowed with speech he would prate interminably and still\nabout himself. In a year's time he would have gone far to weary out\nour love. Hans Christian Andersen, as we behold him in his startling\nmemoirs--thrilling from top to toe with excruciating vanity--scouting\nthe streets for cause of offence--here was your talking dog.\"\n\nWhile an egregious, incurable snob the dog is yet the very flower of\nchivalry. The beggar maid of his kind is sure of as distinguished a\nconsideration from him as is the queen of his race. Indeed he carries\nhis gallantry to so exquisite a point of quixotism that even a female\nwolf is safe from his teeth. Gratitude is the keynote of his character;\nto its claims he will subdue even his innate snobbishness, and his\ndevotion to the mysterious laws of his canine etiquette amount to\nslavishness. \"In the elaborate and conscious manners of the dog, moral\nopinions and the love of the ideal stand confessed. To follow for ten\nminutes in the street some swaggering canine cavalier is to receive\na lesson in dramatic art and the cultured conduct of the body; and in\nevery act and gesture you see him true to a refined conception. For to\nbe a high-mannered and high-minded gentleman, careless, affable, and\ngay, is the inborn pretension of the dog.\"\n\nOf all persons now living I personally should most prefer to be\nenabled to converse freely with that high-bred, subtle-natured lady\nwho follows me in my walks, who shares my meals and lies beside my\nfire. She has learned with ease to understand my speech, but I, in my\ngross sluggishness, have neglected to acquire her tongue, and yet how\ndifferent a place this dull world would appear could I learn all she\nmight tell me. What sights, sounds, and odours, what significances\nescaping my dull senses, might become open to me! A thousand times I\nhave been aware of her pitying impatience of my slow-wittedness in\nmatters so obvious to her keener intelligence. A whole world lies\noutside of my apprehension with which she is familiar, and all my life\nI shall suffer unappeased curiosity as to how she becomes aware of\napproaching changes in the weather; why a certain part of the wood is\ntaboo. What is it that warns her of a death in my family? Why does a\ncertain good and gentle woman fill her with loathing distrust, and what\nwas the peculiar refinement of insult she received in her puppyhood\nfrom the family butcher, which has made it possible for her daily for\nsix years to detect the sound of the butcher's wheels among many others\nwhile he is still not in sight, and daily produces in her a rage of\nresentment that no punishment, no offer of tidbits, has ever been able\nto allay?\n\nAll these things I shall never know. She shares my life, but I,\nregretfully, protestingly, must stand almost wholly outside of hers.\n\nWhen we at last seriously take up the great task of articulate\ncommunication with the animals, a new world will swim into our ken\nbeside which the discovery of America will seem but an unimportant\nevent. Half of the unexplained puzzles of science will be solved with\nease, and whole departments of knowledge as yet undreamed of will be\nopened to our astonished understandings.\n\nPerhaps by our little dumb brothers we are still compassionately\nreckoned as the deaf and blind giant.\n\n\n\n\nAugust 5.\n\nFever Dreams.\n\n\n    A thousand times the great clock's heart has beat--\n    A thousand, thousand times,\n    And ever at the hours the sudden, sweet,\n    Low, unexpected ringing of the chimes\n    Tells how the night doth slowly pass away.\n    The hissing snow fell through the air all day,\n    But with the dark did cease--\n    I hear the shivers of the frozen trees.\n    The night-lamp's gleam--though weak the flame and small--\n    Casts shadows giant tall\n    That to the ceiling crawl--\n    The cap-frill of the sleeping nurse doth fall\n    And nod this way and that against the wall.\n    Quiet the great dark house, and deeply sleep they all--\n    They held me fast, they could not hear the call\n    That I heard always--chill the winds did blow--\n    The skies were dark--the ways were white with snow--\n    He did not call--I wandered to think so.\n    But now they sleep, I will arise and go.\n    They think him dead, but his sweet voice I know.\n    I stretch my hands, my heart beats hard--his voice is sweet and low,\n    But muffled by the weight of earth, and hath a note of woe--\n    He calls to me: I cannot stay; I must arise and go--\n    I step out on the floor--\n    (How loud that nurse doth snore)\n    But I softly close the door.\n    I quickly pass from the outer door.\n    It is very, very cold!--\n    But he will me closely fold\n    With a tender clasping arm,\n    And still my deep alarm--\n    In his heart I shall be warm!\n    The snow is smooth as glass.\n    I scarcely leave a foot-print as I pass--\n    It is very cold, and the way is long, alas!\n    And they have buried him deep, so deep under the frozen grass.\n    It was cruel to bury him so deep;\n    He was not dead, he was only asleep--\n    He was not dead; it makes me weep\n    To think he is in this frozen ground--\n    Why does the moon whirl round and round!\n    My head is dizzy; I'm faint and ill--\n    Will no one make the moon stand still?\n    The foolish moon whirls round and round--\n    What is it that the pine trees know,\n    That they rustle and whisper together so?\n    Someone was buried under the snow\n    More than a thousand years ago!--\n    My long black shadow runs by my side.\n    Was it I, or my love that died\n    And was buried deeply under the snow\n    So many hundred years ago?\n    Oh! _how_ can I reach him under the ground?\n    I am burning with fire, my head turns round.\n    He does not call me, I hear no sound--\n    Ah!--will no one come to me? I'm all alone,\n    The nurse does not hear, she's as deaf as a stone,\n    The walls of the grave together have grown,\n    The dead man lies still and makes no moan,\n    They have left me here with this corpse alone--!\n    His golden hair is tarnished with rust;\n    His eyes have withered and fallen to dust--\n    His subtle, secret, amber eyes;\n    The worms might have spared those amber eyes--\n    His lips are grey with dust and sunken;\n    His heart is cold, and his cheeks are shrunken--\n    He must be dead, so still he lies!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n    I lay in my bed and he called to me,\n    They held me, but it might not be\n    That we should rest so far apart,\n    And we have lain here, heart to heart,\n    Since I came out across the snow\n    More than a thousand years ago.\n\n\n\n\nSeptember 7.\n\nA Misunderstood Moralist.\n\n\nMary R---- was telling us to-day the details of Zola's accidental\ndeath--if it was an accident. There are a few, she tells me, who\nwhisper privately that the enemies he made by \"Lourdes\" and \"Rome\" are\nof the sort who wait long and patiently, and strike hard, and strike\nat the back when the time of vengeance comes. That sounds rather\nsensational, and certainly the general public have heard no such\nsuggestion.\n\nThe story of the death-chamber is like a chapter from one of his own\nbooks, and one can't but feel how gruesome and vivid he would have made\nthe account of the tragedy could he have recorded it.\n\nIt's rather odd how the multitude still judge Zola at the rating of\ntwenty years since, before he had developed the meaning of his methods\nand proved himself one of the greatest of the moral teachers.\n\nIt was certainly as long ago as that when a battered, grimy copy of\n\"Nana\" drifted by some swirl of chance into my youthful hands. I was\nquite old enough to realize that my pastors and masters would be\nconvulsed with horror did they at all suspect what I was at, but being\nin those days as omnivorous as Lamb--\"Shaftesbury was not too genteel\nfor me, nor Jonathan Wild too low\"--everything on which a hand could\nbe laid passed into my greedy mental maw, from Locke \"On the Human\nUnderstanding\" to the novels of the Duchess, and I had intelligence\nenough not to chatter about every book I opened.\n\nI remember with perfect vividness the moral revelation given me by the\nchapter descriptive of the drunken orgie in Nana's rooms, where they\nwound up the gaieties of the evening by the spirited jest of pouring\nthe champagne into the piano. In a flash was made clear to me what I\nhad never previously suspected, that vice was tedious and unamusing!\n\nUntil that moment I had accepted in perfect good faith the insistence\nof the moralists upon the delicious, exciting, irresistible nature\nof vice, which, though deplorable in its eventual effects, was too\nagreeable to be refrained from unless fortified by either religion or\nthe choicest collection of moral maxims.\n\nWe were the contented owners, at that same period, of a large\nengraving of a popular painting entitled \"The Prodigal Son\"; one of\nthose pictures supposed to have a \"good moral\" and help silently,\nin season and out of season, to point towards virtue like a sign at\nthe crossroads. The engraving was divided into three parts, like a\ntriptych; the central, and by far the largest portion, showed the\nfamous ne'er-do-weel prodigalling with all his might in a sort of\nlordly pleasure dome, all columns and sweeping curtains and steps, open\nto the sunshine on every side, and decorated with the most expensive\ncut flowers. A meal, which plainly deserved to be called by no meaner\nname than a banquet, was toward, and the naughty young gentleman,\nbedecked in velvet and soothed by the music of viols, was feasting\namid a medley of young ladies of the most dazzling physical charms,\nall attired in those sketchy toilets which have no visible means\nof support, and which allow the artist to prove his inexhaustible\ntalent for drawing arms and busts. So vivacious and sumptuous was this\nscene that at first one hardly noticed the narrow panels to right\nand left, in one of which the profuse prodigal was on a subsequent\noccasion dining en famille with the swine, and later journeying toward\nforgiveness and veal.\n\nThe moralists, from Isaiah down, have so dearly loved to show their\ntalent for drawing arms and busts. The delineation of vice always\nusurps all the foreground of the canvas. According to them, the broad\nroad is unfailing in its crops of flowers, the wine is always red\nin the cup, \"with beaded bubbles winking at the brim.\" The frisky\nenchantresses are without exception young and charming. The reverse\nof the picture is depressingly bleak--by way of proper dramatic\ncontrast, perhaps, though to any one less austere than a moralist\nit would seem unintelligent to point out that in one direction all\nwas gay, brilliant, and agreeable, yet one must follow the gloomy,\ntedious, and unpleasant road in order to find some intangible spiritual\nsatisfaction, which to youthful and ardent minds seems drearily\nremote, and unsatisfying when reached. Besides it really isn't\ntrue. Life as a matter of fact is certainly more agreeable when one\nbehaves one's self decently. Nothing was ever more blatantly untrue\nthan the cynical proverb which declares that everything pleasant is\neither indigestible, expensive, or immoral. But the mind of youth\nis almost touchingly credulous. It rarely questions the accuracy of\nthe descriptions of the moralists, who claim to be experts, though\ninstinctively it develops a necessity for experimenting a little with\nthose forbidden sweets of which it has heard so much praise.\n\nUntil I read \"Nana\" it never occurred to me to question that vice was\nin itself agreeable, since I had never heard aught to the contrary;\nbut that champagne poured into the piano washed away the conviction\nforever. It seemed so squalid, so unimaginative, so dull; and all the\nvice I have observed since has shared its lack of charm. I found that\nthe broad road had no patent on flowers and sunshine, that dishonesty\nnine times out of ten failed of returns at all commensurate with the\nenergy devoted to it; that loose behaviour was nearly always noisome\nand fatiguing; that the prodigal, instead of being a beautiful young\nperson in velvet, generally had a red nose and a waist, and borrowed\nfrom his acquaintances, and that the enchantresses had not nearly as\ngood figures as the painters credited them with, and as a rule had no\nreal feeling for soap and water. The truth is that all forms of vice\nare for the most part not only repulsive but intolerably unamusing, and\nZola was the first of the moralists who had the courage to be original\nand speak disrespectfully of it.\n\n\n\n\nSeptember 10.\n\nThe Pleasures of Pessimism.\n\n\nA man who took me in to dinner Wednesday night said, pityingly,\n\n\"You seem to be a pessimist. Why is that? Are you unhappy?\"\n\nThat sort of remark is a shot between wind and water, and leaves one\nspeechless. I crossly denied being an ----ist of any sort, and changed\nthe subject.\n\nPossibly he was led to his banal personality by some remark I had made,\nof the sort that is commonly called cynical because it is true.\n\nThe optimists have a theory that those who don't take the same view\nof life as themselves must therefore be unhappy. It's an amazing\nconclusion. They seem to have no idea how the pessimists enjoy their\nown sense of superiority. It is as if the blind should say to the man\nwith eyes: \"How unhappy you must be to see things just as they are. Now\nI can imagine them to be anything I please!\"\n\nThe man with eyes could, of course, only smile; it being obviously\nimpossible to discuss such a proposition.\n\nThe believers in personal immortality labour under the same curious\nillusion apparently. They are so sorry for those who don't believe\nin it, and imagine them frightened at the thought of death. To their\nminds the universe is inconceivable without their presence, seemingly\nforgetful of the fact that it got on quite well before they came. It is\nrather an imposing bit of egotism, after all. It rises to the level of\ngrandeur.\n\nCatholics, I know, have the same pity and astonishment about the\nstate of mind of Protestants that the optimists feel for pessimists,\nthe religious for the unbelieving. Each thinks the heretic in parlous\nstate and fancies he must be secretly disturbed by it, when of a truth\nthe heretic is simply amused by this anxiety for his welfare, and\ncheerfully certain of his own superiority.\n\n\n\n\nSeptember 18.\n\nMoral Pauperism.\n\n\nM----, who has, with some flourish of trumpet and tuck of drum, gone\nover to Rome, is the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, I am told,\nand, what is odder still, is a very clever and humorous creature. One\ncan discount the parson and the cleverness, but a _humorous_ Protestant\n'verting is more difficult to understand.\n\nI tried hard to get some explanation from her as to her point of view,\nbut she was entirely vague. Fancy--she has a patron saint, beads, etc.!\nOne can only gape.\n\nVery probably every one is at birth--no matter what the\nenvironment--either Catholic or Protestant by nature. To many it is an\nabsolute necessity that someone else should furnish their spiritual and\nmental support. With these, no matter how frequently one sets them\non their feet their knees will give under them; no matter how often\none starts them in spiritual business one has eventually to come again\nto the rescue. To such an one the perpetual supervision and personal\ntyranny of the Catholic Church must seem deliciously comfortable and\nprotecting. No wonder they are drawn to it across all barriers.\n\nTo the born Protestant such bondage is as intolerable as spoon feeding\nand a wheeled chair would be to an athlete. Whatever the moral or\nmental situation may be he must deal with it for himself--must stand on\nhis own feet--use his own moral muscles. Neither can ever understand\nthe other. Their whole attitude toward life is directly opposed. Each\nseeks what his nature demands.\n\n\n\n\nSeptember 30.\n\nOn a Certain Lack of Humour in Frenchmen.\n\n\nThe book-club has eliminated Marcel Prevost's \"Mariage de Julianne\" as\ntoo naughty for our perusal--though not until we had _all_ read it, to\nsee how undesirable it was.\n\nTo what H---- calls my \"robust nature\" it seemed merely deliciously\nfunny and human, and I am not fond of French fiction as a rule. Most of\nit leaves in my mind only a sense of dreary nastiness--a sort of more\nclosely knit Hall Caine-ism, with his sloppiness of style left out.\nYet a good many of one's contemporaries profess to find French fiction\nvastly superior to English literature of the same sort: to find Balzac\na greater artist than Thackeray; but those who make this assertion\nare, I find, generally lacking in humour and imagination themselves,\nand therefore blind to a whole side of life. They, of nature, think\nmarionettes liker life than beings of flesh and blood. Balzac's dry,\nminute descriptions give them an impression of reality. To hear that\na man had a red nose, had iron-grey hair growing thin on top, and\nthat his bottle-green trousers wrinkled at the knees, gives them the\nsensation that Balzac is presenting them with \"a slice of life\"--not\nbeing aware, it would seem, that this might be equally truthful a\ndescription of a wax figure at Madame Tussaud's. Such matters as these\nare not the essentials that differentiate a man from his fellows.\n\nHenry James thinks this elaboration of detail is Balzac's \"strongest\ngift\" and adds, \"Dickens often sets a figure before us with\nextraordinary vividness, but the outline is fantastic and arbitrary--we\nbut half believe in it.\" It seems to me that James has, like Balzac,\nbut a half developed sense of life. He too is meticulous in his efforts\nto make one see and feel what he wishes to convey, because he only half\nfeels and sees it himself; though he is concerned rather with emotions\nthan objects, and in spite of the labour and care expended by each,\nbut a shadowy impression remains. Dickens can dash in a few broad,\nhalf caricatured lines of a portrait because the figure he wishes to\nshow is so vivid to his own eye he feels it only necessary to indicate\nit broadly to make others recognize it. Uncle Pumblechook in \"Great\nExpectations\" is suggested, as far as written description goes, in\nmerest outline--\"A large, hard-breathing, middle-aged, slow man, with a\nmouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, and sandy hair standing upright\non his head\"--yet after half a page of his conversation and his welcome\nto Pip at the funeral, \"breathing sherry and crumbs,\" one needs no\nmore. The man lives and moves. One knows him inside and out.\n\nJames speaks again of Balzac's \"choking one with his bricks and\nmortar,\" and thinks his houses, his rooms, his towns, \"unequalled for\nvividness of presentation, of realization.\" To an imaginative reader\nthey are as dry and superfluous as a real-estate agent's pamphlets; one\nhas a sense of the author's heavy straining effort to make the places\npalpable to his own mental vision. It is the weary iteration of the\nbore, who having no imagination can leave nothing to that of his hearer.\n\nDickens somewhere describes a room merely by telling how the winking\nfire was reflected in every smooth object. The fire winks cheerily; the\npewters winking dully, as if afraid of being suspected of not seeing\nthe joke; the furniture twinkling slyly from every polished point,\netc., etc., in Dickens's well-known fashion of pursuing a happy fancy\nround and round. There is not one word of catalogue of the room's\ncontents, yet it remains forever as vivid in the reader's memory as a\nchamber with which one is intimately familiar.\n\nBulwer says that \"French nature is not human nature,\" and if human\nnature was necessarily the Anglo-Saxon conception of life it would\nbe true. Nothing so points French heterogeneousness from ourselves\nas the attitude of our two chosen masters of the novel, Balzac and\nThackeray. Not a gleam of humour ever irradiates for a moment the pages\nof the former. A mere glimmer would make impossible his story of the\nyoung man who endeavours to compromise a pretty woman, whose refusal\nto yield to his dishonourable suggestions so puzzles and disgusts him\nthat he can only explain her coldness as being the probable results\nof some secret but mortal disease!... A lover abducts a reluctant\nfair by mingled force and stratagem, and attempts to brand her with\nhot irons; accompanying this gentle gallantry with the mummeries of a\nthirteenth-century Inquisition. This picturesque proof of devotion so\ntouches the lady that she promptly grovels in an agony of affection for\nthis chivalrous admirer....\n\nAll this is told with perfect gravity, the author having not the\nsmallest suspicion of its absurdity--and yet there be actually\nAnglo-Saxons who solemnly announce that Balzac knew human nature to its\ndepths. French nature, perhaps; certainly not ours....\n\nA spinster lives twenty years in a family, all of whose members she\nvenomously hates, and not one of them suspect her unselfish devotion\nuntil she aids in humiliating them and wrecking their fortunes....\nMadame Hulot is a saint, and yet at fifty years of age offers her\nperson to a repulsive scoundrel in order to provide a marriage portion\nfor her daughter; Balzac evidently considering this one of her noblest\nacts.\n\nThe point at which one finds the widest divergence of the French and\nEnglish attitudes toward life is in the essay made by each of these\nchosen spokesmen to show us the adventuress. Taine, who honestly tried\nto see English literature from English eyes and interpret it to his\ncountrymen, breaks down entirely when he reaches this angle of vision.\n\nHe says: \"There is a personage unanimously recognized as Thackeray's\nmasterpiece, Becky Sharp.... Let us compare her with a similar\npersonage of Balzac in 'Les Parents Pauvre,' Valerie Marneff. The\ndifference in the two works will exhibit the difference in the two\nliteratures\"--and they do indeed.\n\nValerie to the English reader is the old commonplace, stereotyped\nadventuress of the melodrama. One can imagine none save those as vile\nand stupid as herself being deceived by such a greedy, outrageous\ncreature. The descriptions of her looks and behaviour smack of the\nunhumorous shilling shocker. She gives glances from beneath \"her long\neyelids like the glare of cannon seen through smoke!\" ... and again\n\"her eyes flashed like daggers.\"\n\nSuch figures of speech sound like the pompous rhodomontade of a Laura\nJean Libby, yet Taine quotes them with much admiration.\n\nBecky, Taine finds incomprehensible. He complains that Thackeray\n\"degrades her\" when he laughingly reveals her secret vulgar shifts.\nAlso he is resentful because her carefully built schemes crumble one by\none like houses of cards, being ignorant, apparently, of that choice\nold utilitarian proverb as to Honesty being the best policy, founded\nupon a very general observation that the same cleverness and energy\nemployed by adventurers in their nefarious schemes pays a far higher\nrate of interest when turned to legitimate pursuits.\n\nThe half affectionate, half contemptuous humour with which her\ncreator regards Becky shocks Taine. With his French passion for\nlogical completeness he cannot comprehend that Thackeray's vision\nfor truth should make him capable of admitting and admiring that\narch-adventuress's good qualities,--the very qualities of her defects\nwhich made her career of deception possible. The consistent monster\nValerie could delude no one, while Becky's patience, gaiety, and good\nnature made Rawdon Crawley's devotion plausible, and forced even\nLord Steyne, who recognized her baseness, after a fashion to respect\nand like her, and consent to be used by her, until--by a fundamental\nimpulse of womanliness--\"she admired her husband standing there, grand,\nbrave, victorious,\" above the prostrate body of her seducer. It is that\nsame underlying womanliness in Becky--of which Valerie lacked even an\nintimation--which makes her human and real. Its absence leaves Valerie\nincredible and shadowy.\n\nTake again Lear and Goriot. The latter's children have no excuse\nwhatever for their crimes of greed and selfishness. They are grotesque\nsuccubi, while the astounding wickedness of Regan and Goneril is made\ncredible by Lear's own violent foolishness and vanity. His tempestuous\nsenility is of the sort that wakes the blindest revolt of youth, which\nis always restless under the dominance of age, a restlessness likely to\ndeepen to cruelty when age is unrestrained by wisdom or dignity.\n\nA Frenchman once complained to me bitterly of the comic porter in\nMacbeth, who comes grumbling to unlock the gate so soon after the\nhorror of the murder of Duncan. To him the touch of comedy seemed\nvulgar and inept. It was impossible to make him understand how to\nthe Anglo-Saxon mind this veracious touch of comedy jostling tragedy\nbut heightened the dramatic poignancy of the play. This incapacity\nto see the humorous contrasts of life and character is generally\ncharacteristic of youth with its narrow inexperience of realities, and\nthe French and the unhumorous of our own race seem never to outgrow\nthis juvenility.\n\n\n\n\nOctober 15.\n\nThe Value of a Soul.\n\n\nI wonder if anyone will ever muster up sufficient courage to write the\ntrue history of the ferocious egotism engendered in the human heart\nby a belief in human immortality. The most cynical might well shrink\nfrom the sorrowful task. Self-preservation, supposedly the first law\nof nature, is but a feeble instinct when placed in comparison, for\nmotherhood, patriotism, sexual love; a thousand minor passions will\ninduce human beings to abandon their inheritance in the warm precincts\nof the cheerful day, but all that a man hath, and all that his friends,\nand the wife of his bosom, and the children of his loins have, will he\ngive for that wretched little flyspecked object he calls his soul.\n\nBuckle rather shocked a pious world when he announced that in many\ncases the best kings, considered from the point of view of their\nprivate characters, made the worst rulers; but all history is loud\nwith this truth. The moment anyone in power began to consider the\nquestion of his soul with seriousness, tears and blood soon began to\nflow. A ruler who had strong secular tendencies usually had some sort\nof consideration for human happiness, but one who turned his mind to\nwhat was called \"higher things\" waded through the wretchedness of those\nin his power with noble insouciance. Henri IV., who was cheerfully\nindifferent as to whether he heard preaching by parsons or the mass\nof priests, provided he might have Paris for his capital, quieted the\nfratricidal religious conflicts of France and made life happy for his\nsubjects; and Henry II. of England, who was the only one of the Angevin\nKings entirely unconcerned about his immortal future, did more for\nEngland than any ruler since Alfred, and would have trebled those wise\nsecular benefits had \u00e0-Becket and the rest of the troublesome clergy\npermitted it.\n\nI have been roused to these moral generalizations by Quiller-Couch's\nnovel, \"Hetty Wesley.\" It's a poignant book.\n\nHetty was the sister of the founders of Methodism, and Quiller-Couch\nhas availed himself, in writing the book, of the letters and papers of\nthat remarkable family. He has told his tale very simply and with an\nartist's comprehension and sympathy, setting down nothing in malice and\nleaving the reader to draw his own inferences.\n\nThe picture of that damp Epworth Rectory where Charles and John were\nborn (two out of the ten living children, several others had died\nearly) makes the Bront\u00e9 Parsonage, over which it is the fashion to\nshiver, seem like an amiable idyl by contrast. Samuel Wesley, the\nfather, was passionately religious. The first of his concerns was the\nsaving of his own soul for immortal happiness, the second was the\nsaving of as many other like heirs to bliss as possible, and a part of\nthis second ambition implied the training of his sons for the ministry.\nIn pursuit of these ends he sacrificed the comfort and happiness of\nhis wife and seven lovely daughters with a ruthless persistency and\nconsistency that would be incredible did we not have his own complacent\nwritings in testimony thereto.\n\nThe sons found his example worthy of imitation, it appears. Of late,\napropos of the Wesley Centennial, one has heard much of John Wesley, of\nhis tangled love affairs and his amazing marriage, and one can't but be\nconscious of a secret liking for that tempestuous termagant, Mrs. John,\nbecause that she after a fashion avenged those eight unlucky kinswomen\nwhose lives he so complacently sucked dry to nourish his religious\naspirations.\n\nOne has wondered, when reading them, if those meek and loyal addresses\nfrom the scaffold, made to Henry VIII. by the innocent victims of his\nbloodthirstiness, could have been genuine documents. They contradict\nall one knows of human nature in their humble acquiescence and\nsubmissive affection; but here in this book we have Hetty Wesley's\nown tender appeal to her father--a father who had ruthlessly cast her\ninto a lifelong hell--to forgive what he called a sin, really only a\ngirl's generous foolish mistake, and we have also his answer. An answer\nwhich would have made even Tudor Henry blush for its cruelty. One\ncould almost wish that there was somewhere an immortal part of Samuel\nWesley, burning eternally in the knowledge of himself as he really was.\nMrs. John Wesley saves us the need of wishing that Hetty's brother had\na soul.\n\nAfter all, this is but one of thousands of grim stories of human beings\ntrampling upon the lives and hearts of their fellows in the endeavour\nto achieve for themselves an infinity of bliss. To my heretical mind\nsuch behaviour for such an end seems inexpressibly sordid, vulgar, and\nselfish. I at least prefer to be one with the dumb beasts that perish,\nbut who pass away knowing that no creature has ever suffered a pang in\norder that they may have saved their souls alive.\n\n\n\n\nA Grateful Spaniard.\n\n\n    Time is not long enough for me\n      To hate mine enemy perfectly,\n    But God is of infinite mercy and he\n      To Time has added Eternity.\n\n\n\n\nOctober 16.\n\nBores.\n\n\nI reproached J---- last night for sending me to dinner with E----.\n\"This is the third time you have done it,\" I grumbled, \"and it is just\ntwice too often. None of the other women will talk to him, and because\nI treat him decently you take advantage of my good nature.\"\n\n\"Oh, but my dear,\" she countered impishly, \"you know you are so juicy\nwith bores!\"\n\nOf course, that was true, though there is nothing I envy more\nthan the courage of ruthlessness--one of the first laws of social\nself-preservation. I am always the helpless prey of bores. They drink\nas they choose from my \"sacred fount,\" though it is shallow enough,\nheaven knows! for me to need all its contents for myself. If this\ncondition of affairs arose from good nature I should not be ashamed of\nit, but it is all sheer cowardliness. My imagination is so vivid that I\ncan feel the corroding humiliation of neglect and indifference to the\npoor souls as if it were being applied to my own skin, and I labour\non, crying protests inwardly, rather than free myself by a moment of\nbrutality.\n\n\"Tell bores who waste my time and me\" that the best hours of my life\nhave been burned in their dull fires. Again and again have I lost my\nopportunity to seek the friendship of some adorably amusing creature\nwhile sweating to pull the oar that was the bore's own proper task.\n\nThis indolent cowardice enfeebles me in a dozen ways; makes it\nimpossible for me to train my dogs for fear of hurting their feelings,\nand to discharge a servant costs me a white night and a _fausse\ndigestion_. It is not kindliness, it is only that I feel their\ndiscomfort more than they do themselves.\n\n\n\n\nNovember 7.\n\nEmotions and Oxydization.\n\n\nH---- told a curious story last night of the bobstay on his yacht,\nwhich time after time rusted, broke, and betrayed him at critical\nmoments of racing. Replacing with the best material and by the best\nworkmen was futile, though all the rest of the wire rigging remained\nintact. It seemed a \"hoodoo\" until it was discovered to be due to\noxydization from a bolt which touched a copper plate on the stem. F----\nsaid it was easy to see how, before the chemical action of steel and\ncopper were understood, the most sensible and logical mind might be\ndriven to attribute such a thing to witchcraft, and it occurred to me\nthat perhaps when we know more of the chemistry of psychology, many\nof our emotional puzzles will be more easily solved. Jealousy, anger,\nsuspicion, ingratitude, it will then be easy to correct by some simple\nact of insulation. We know that many evil moral tendencies are caused\nby pressure upon certain portions of the brain, and my own personal\nexperience and long observation makes me confident that half the baser\npassions are due to acidity in the blood. It makes one slow to indulge\none's emotions when one realizes they may simply be the result of a\nlack of a therapeutic alkali. With such a conviction one will generally\nwait for the slower and more balanced action of reason.\n\nWhat a great alteration would take place in the history of the world\nif it could be rewritten from the point of view of what the doctors\ndescribe as \"the gouty acid diathesis.\"\n\nBess of Hardwicke's marital troubles, which convulsed all England, and\neven drew Elizabeth and Burleigh into the turmoil, were due entirely to\nthe unhappy Earl's gout, as no one can doubt after reading his letters.\nCharles V. was driven from his throne by it, and Napoleon's gout lost\nhim the battle of Leipsic and set his feet in \"slippery places.\" Henry\nVIII.'s shoes were not slashed without reason, and Pitt was lost to\nEngland when she most needed him by the same agent. These are but a few\nof the notorious examples, but how many wars, revolutions, massacres,\nhad their origin in that same corroding oxydization of the spirit of\nman we will probably never fully determine.\n\n\n\n\nNovember 10.\n\nAbelard to Heloise.\n\n\n        Dear Sister in Christ:\n    God send you peace from Heaven!\n    I would that to your restless heart\n    His blessed peace was given,\n    And that you found\n    In contemplation of His love\n    Balm for that wound\n    That ever frets you sore.\n    'Twere meet you wore\n    Much sack cloth,\n    And with scourge and fasting drove\n    This passion from your soul....\n    Christ's Bride thou art;\n    Therefore give Him the whole.\n    I charge thou keep'st back not any part\n    Of His just due to spend upon a worm....\n    Nay, woman! would'st thou bring on me a curse\n    For that I stand between thy soul and God?...\n    Thy love for me is but a thing perverse.\n    Cast it forth from thee, or a heavy rod\n    May prove that God is still a jealous God.\n    But that you are a woman, and infirm\n    Of will and purpose, I should say\n    Some bitter words to purge you of this sin!\n    Natheless each day\n    I painful penance do\n    For that 'twas I who led you first astray--\n    (For which great sin may He my soul assoil!)\n    And wrestle mightily each night in prayer\n    That Christ may yet your stubborn heart subdue\n    To His sweet will, and--the sharp fret and coil\n    Of earth cast forth--He then may enter in\n    To find a garnished chamber, and an altar fair....\n    --Nay, now, bethink you!\n    Love like yours is grievous sin,\n    And the time wasteth swift toward death.\n    All love is but a breath\n    Which clouds the glass that we see darkly through--\n    When you to Heaven shall win\n    And there see face to face your risen Lord,\n    Wilt know 'twas but the hot fume of a word\n    Spake by a devil, dimmed your earthly glass....\n    In essence love is sin!--\n    Save only love of God.\n    It is a gin,\n    Set by the Evil One to snare the feet\n    Of those who haste toward Heaven,\n    By its false likeness to the spiritual love,\n    And by it man is driven\n    Down the steep slope to Hell.\n    'Tis thus when sanctioned by the Church; how then\n    Of love like thine, which is accursed of men,\n    And doubly cursed by God?...\n    Last night in dreams I trod\n    Up the long windings of the heavenly stair,\n    And heard the angels singing loud and sweet,\n    And neared the gate, when sudden both my feet\n    Were caught amid the tangles of thy hair,--\n    Spread like a cruel web across my path,--\n    In which I struggled, mad with woe and wrath,\n    And could not free me; so at last I fell,\n    Stumbling and plunging down to blackest Hell,\n    Wherein I cursed the hour I saw thy face,\n    And most I cursed the hour, the day, the place\n    When thou didst give me love....\n    Waking then, I strove\n    For holier thoughts, and could at last forgive\n    The wrong thou didst me.\n    But no more, I prithee, vex me with thy tale\n    Of love. It wearieth me, and henceforth I must live\n    In larger peace, or I may not prevail\n    Within the Schools\n    Against the babbling of the narrow fools\n    Who blindly are withstanding my new light\n    Upon the Divine Essence's nature, and my clasp\n    Of the ringed Trinitarian mysteries. Matters your slight\n    Woman's comprehension may not grasp....\n    Farewell. Neglect not prayer.\n\n\n\n\nHelo\u00efse to Abelard.\n\n\n    My good Lord Abbot:--But this once\n    I speak, and then no more.\n    I must not 'gainst the lore\n    Of the great Schools\n    Set my weak cries\n    For warmth and life and love.\n    The snow now lies\n    Deep round the Paraclete,\n    Where from my pale nuns rise\n    In never ceasing chant of nones and primes\n    Incense of prayers to ease the need of God\n    For broken contrite hearts and dropping tears.\n    And sometimes I have fears\n    That each one wears\n    'Neath her long habit\n    As sad a heart as mine,\n    For in their eyes,\n    Which each unto the skies\n    Lifts many times each day,\n    I see desire for love,\n    A gift they pray\n    From God, since man gives not\n    That which they need.\n    I watch them from my carven chair,\n    While lingering on a bead,\n    And add, beneath my hood,\n    Beads to my rosary of tears\n    To think how good\n    To each 'twould seem to change\n    This Latin drone and censer's clank\n    For the dear homely noise\n    Around the hearth\n    Of little girls and boys--\n    For all these weary prayers\n    The daily household cares\n    For some tired labourer\n    Who earned their bread.\n    Oh, little hands and feet!--\n    There is no room\n    Within this cloistered tomb\n    Wherein we worship God,\n    For one dear curly head.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n    Sometimes at prayers\n    A vision seems to rise--\n    Borne on an air\n    Mayhap that blows from Hell.\n    And then I see the great Lord Jove\n    And all His mighty peers\n    Who ruled so many years\n    Above the ancient heavens,\n    Dwindle, and fade, and pass away,\n    And only Love remains--\n    I see the doctors of the ancient schools,\n    Great Egypt's sages, those who made the rules\n    Of wisdom in the Academe,\n    Fade also like a dream;\n    All their wise thoughts grow foolishness\n    And all their learning turns to dust,\n    And only Love remains\n    Forever young, forever wise and great,\n    And in the time to come\n    I see the same strong fate\n    Seize on our Mighty God\n    Who binds us in his chains,\n    And makes our love a sin\n    To drive our souls to Hell,\n    He too, with all his doctors\n    Fades--and only Love remains\n    Forever and forever. Fare you well.\n\n\n\n\nNovember 30.\n\nYumei Mujitsu.\n\n\nThe Japanese possess a delightful word--Yumei Mujitsu--which signifies\n\"Having-the-Name-but-not-the-Reality.\" They use it to express certain\nassumptions--such, for example, as the claim of the Mikado's descent\nfrom the Sun Goddess, which, like the formul\u00e6 of Algebra, achieve\ndesired results though they recognize that in itself it has no\nexistence. How valuable such a word would be to express the attitude of\nthe Sentimentalist regarding a coloured man named Booker Washington,\nmuch discussed of late.\n\nNow if there is one creature more than a saint whom I fear and\ndistrust it is the Sentimentalist, whom Hawthorne pungently\ncharacterizes as \"that steel machine of the Devil's own make.\" The\nruthless heartlessness of the Sentimentalist would be unbelievable\nif one had not seen it with one's own eyes. Take, for example, the\nAbolitionists. To gratify their own emotions they caused the death\nof a million men, the infliction of wounds and pain that make the\nimagination shudder, and all that long succeeding anguish of a\npeople--the grief, the poverty, humiliation, and despair that burned\nitself indelibly upon the hearts of those who shared it.\n\nStevenson--that misunderstood moralist now chiefly remembered as a\nstory teller!--put his finger upon the enigma of the Sentimentalist's\ncruelty:\n\n\"Everywhere some virtue cherished or affected, everywhere some decency\nof thought or carriage, everywhere the ensign of man's ineffectual\ngoodness:--Ah, if I could show you these! if I could show you these\nmen and women all the world over ... clinging in the brothel and on\nthe scaffold to some rag of honour, the poor jewel of their souls!...\nThey may seek to escape and yet they cannot ... they are condemned to\nsome nobility, all their lives the desire of good is at their heels,\nthe implacable hunter.... To touch the heart of his mystery we find in\nhim the thought of something owing to himself, to his neighbour, to his\nGod.\"\n\nThe Sentimentalist, along with all his kind, is hunted by that\nimplacable need of virtue. To satisfy it he seizes upon the wrongs done\nby others, and in his hot denunciation of another's sin, in his clamour\nfor its punishment, he experiences the warm ennobling glow of personal\nmerit.\n\nThe pietist will meticulously perform rites and ceremonies in this same\nneed to soothe the imperious call within him for some justification\nof his life. Having washed and bowed and recited, his sins of\npractice trouble him but little--those genuflections have made his\nbalance good in the book of virtue. But the Sentimentalist cannot\ncontent himself with pale ceremonies. He is by instinct devouring and\nbloody, but his soul cringes before his inward monitor. By fierce\ndenunciation of the sins he has no mind to he can soothe his desire\nto inflict pain in perfect content, upborne by a consciousness of his\nown righteousness. Torquemada was a type, John Brown of Ossawatamie\nanother; both were criminal paranoics tortured by desire for blood\nand for self-justification. Real goodness does not stimulate the\nSentimentalist's emotions--it gives no opportunity for the outcries\nthat warm his heart with a consciousness of rectitude.\n\nThe Boer war was a great opportunity for the American Sentimentalist.\nProtesting against the suppression of a Republic, he could forget\nhis own suppression of the Confederate Republic and of the nascent\ngovernment of the Philippines. Execrating the burning of farmhouses\nin the Veldt, he could ignore the track of smoking desolation that\nmarked Sherman's march through Georgia or Sheridan's raid in Virginia.\nCriticism of British greed for gold kept him cheerfully superior to the\ncontrast of the gift of fifteen millions and the patient labour spent\nby the English to repatriate the Boer and start him again in life, with\nthe protest he and his kind made against General Grant's willingness\nto leave to the Southern soldier his starved horse as a means of\nreaching his ruined home.\n\nConscience, demanding of the Sentimentalist the bread of uprightness,\nhe prodigally offers it a stone upon which to break its gnawing teeth.\n\nThe African brother has long been one of the most valued of the\nSentimentalist's resources. Passionately generous demands for the\nnegro's equality have made it possible for him to cordially and\ncontentedly insult and oppress his white fellow countrymen.\n\nIt is in this relation that the Sentimentalists find Booker Washington\nso greatly to their taste. Washington, innocent of their purposes,\nof course is an admirable and sensible man, who has established an\nexcellent school for the young people of his race. A school far\nwiser and more merciful in conception than any attempt made by the\nnegrophiles to benefit their prot\u00e9g\u00e9s, and all honour is due this\nenlightened ex-slave for his own astonishing progress and his generous\nsharing of his fruitful labours with his own people. The Sentimentalist\nprofesses to find in it \"something godlike,\" a \"touch of the divine,\"\nas one of them recently characterized what is, reduced to simple facts,\nthe establishing of an industrial school for negroes by a negro.\n\n\n\n\nDecember 1.\n\nThe Real Thing.\n\n\nThe man who has educated the negro, the man who has had in him really a\ntouch of the divine, would never appeal to the Sentimentalist.\n\nBooker Washington, very properly, of course, lives and lives well upon\nthe results of his school. He has claimed from the rich, and justly has\nreceived, lavish aid for his enterprise. He dresses well, lives amply,\ntravels in comfort, is entertained by Royalty and Chief Magistrates,\nand with his family, is put beyond even a chance of narrow means by his\nsympathizers' lavishness. But who heeds the man who has really educated\nthe negro? What crowned head or President entertains the small farmer\nin rough brogans and faded jeans, who sweats over his hoe in the cotton\nand tobacco fields, or in the steaming rice and sugar-cane swamps, and\nwho has in forty years spent more than a hundred millions upon the\neducation of the negro? This is the man, and the son of the man who\nturned heart-brokenly home on the begrudged horse to fields overgrown\nand laid waste--fields to which his conquerors, unlike the English,\ncontributed no seeds or implements or stock--and from that land he has\nwrung by the hard labour of his hands that hundred millions which has\nbeen spent in educating his ex-slave.\n\nHe has lived hardly, in dingy, decaying houses, he has eaten of the\ncoarsest, he has known no beauty or grace, and but scant comfort, he\nhas been clothed in the plainest, he has politically known little but\ninjury and contempt from the larger and wealthier half of his country,\nand worst of all he has seen his sons grow to manhood but partially\nand inadequately equipped with learning, because so large a portion of\ntheir birthright must be shared in the teaching of the negro in whose\nname he had been plundered and slaughtered.\n\nThe touching point of the story is that it has all been done without\nany consciousness of special merit. The duty was to be done, and was\ndone without trumpets or drums. Such silent, patient, unreflecting,\nunadvertised goodness would, of course, never appeal to the\nSentimentalist. If he could be brought to see it 'twould merely disturb\nhis self-satisfaction.\n\nIt is only to the fantastic mind of a heretic that its meaning appeals,\nonly the heart of a cynic is touched by the instinctive heroism of the\nwhite man of the South.\n\n\n\n\nDecember 15.\n\n\"Oh, Eloquent, Just, and Mighty Death.\"\n\n\nI am just home from a meeting of one of those literary clubs we\nAmerican women so much affect, in the absence of any masculine society,\nand we have been talking about Stevenson as the poet most typical of\nthe mind of the nineteenth century. It was all that delicious welter in\nthe sentimentalities of the domestic affections which any assemblage\nof females finds it impossible to avoid; and we read aloud to one\nanother--with the _vox humana_ lilt turned on--all those decidedly\ndull little lyrics in the \"Child's Garden of Verses,\" and came away\nwith just that moist brightness of the eye, that wistful, tender\n\"mother-smile,\" which was correct of the occasion.\n\nI say _we_, but of course my wicked old eyes were as hard as horn,\nyet, thank heaven! my unruly tongue uttered not a note out of tune\nwith the Domestic Symphony. Who will say that social slappings have\ntaught me nothing? Even I can be daunted by the unhappy silences that\nso often greet my blurted comments, and by the soft rustles of relief\nthat respond to the rising of some gentle lady, who will obliquely but\ncertainly crush me with her pious phrases, that throb with the warm\nsweetness of the dear old human platitudes, and which are rewarded by\napplause which politely accentuates my disgrace.... Oh, amiable and\nphilosophic white page! To you I can be a tiresome and protesting bore,\nsure of no strictures in your silence. Here I can unpack my heart with\nwords, unrebuked. Here I can whisper safely my suspicion that dear R.\nL. S. himself would have been consumed with cheerful amusement at our\ngentle comments upon his doughty spirit.\n\nThe world says all sorts of absurd things about Stevenson. Some one\nthe other day called him \"an unquenchable Calvinist\"!--He who was all\npagan and Roman. The Calvinist was the European most subdued by the\nSemitic beliefs, most merged into Oriental preconceptions of life.\n\nCertainly the European mind in its natural state faced its\nconsciousness of existence with no preconceived theories. Its attitude\nwas that of the child. It found itself face to face with a great,\nastonishing, beautiful universe, and asked itself what it must think of\nthis universe; how use its opportunities therein. The child stumbled\ninto a thousand infantile delusions and misconceptions, but its\neyes were unclouded, its intelligence good. He soon discovered that\nthough many things were pleasant, these pleasant things, when used\nindiscreetly, had a hidden potentiality of pain. With this second\ndiscovery, however--being a wise child--came no foolish horror of all\npleasant things; only an illumination as to the value of moderation.\n\nThe phenomena of age, death, and decay left the child serious, but not\ndepressed. These were not pleasant things, admittedly; but since they\nappeared inevitable, there was plainly no use in attempting to escape\nthem. The proper attitude toward such solemnities was a manly courage,\na brave submission. In any case, the child concluded, with all the\nsufferings, contradictions, and puzzling inequalities of existence, at\nleast for all those called upon to face these griefs, there remained\nsome small space of clear, warm, beautiful life; sunshine, food, love,\nand--more and better than all--that tingling, exquisite quiver of the\nsenses which he agreed to call by the divine name of Beauty. He saw\nthat the pains, the joys, the growth and blight, decay and extinction,\nwere not of his lot only, but were shared by all his surroundings.\nFeeling himself alone neither in his opportunities nor his inevitable\ndoom, he accepted his fate with the courageous calm, the uncomplaining\nresignation, of his fellow-creatures. He lived and he died as\nunresentfully as did the summer leaves, whose season of existence was\nso much briefer than his own.\n\nHis kinship with encompassing nature was so close that it touched him\non every side. He became as aware of the souls of all things about him\nas he was aware of his own. He felt a similar spirit of life in the\ntrees of the forest, the stones of the mountains, in the sea winds,\nin the brooks, the rivers and their reeds. He guessed at their names,\ntheir loves, their histories, as one guesses at those of unknown\npassers-by travelling the same road. Out of these speculations arose\nall his arts, his poetry, his legends, and his myths. When the moon\nstooped toward the western hills she leaned in a passion like his own\ntoward youth and desire. The blood of a slain love became visible to\nhim as it returned to the upper air in dim, faint-scented blossoms,\nbearing written on their purple leaves the plaintive _ai! ai!_ of her\nleft mourning for dead beauty. The very breeze that sighed through the\nrushes was the wistful voice of one unwisely reluctant of earthly joy\nand pain.\n\nIt is almost impossible for us--so long saturated with Semitic\nthought--to recreate for ourselves the mind of the Greeks and\nRomans fed upon the strength and beauty of a noble pantheism--whose\ninterpretation of life knit their souls to the wholesome earth,\nand filled them with zest to live and patience to die--whose gods\nembodied their own lovely ideals of youth immortal, beauty unfading,\nserene wisdom, the soil's natural wealth, the vine's purple joy. Their\nattention was fixed upon the present life--their problem how to live it\nbravely, wisely, richly. All beyond this were uncertain shadows, about\nwhich it was impossible to know, and useless to speculate.\n\nUpon the Etruscan tombs, of all mortuary monuments the most lovely, is\nto be found a revelation clearer than words of the European attitude\ntoward death--those recumbent figures, all grace and peace, carved by\nthe hands of forgotten genius with so inexplicable a skill that the\nimmemorial stone grows deliquescent before one's eyes as if melting\nand sinking into the mother earth. In them is no sense of struggle or\nrebellion. They consent to extinction as gently as autumn's last day\nfades into the silence and darkness of winter. Their season has been\nfulfilled. They have lived and loved, and they are proudly willing to\nsink into the elements from which they rose.\n\nIt was not until the Asiatic conquests of Alexander brought the mind\nof Europe into contact with the religions of the East, that this\nsane attitude was darkened by a conception as radically opposite as\nthe antipodes. Nor did the Roman civilization suffer a shadow upon\nits manhood until it in turn brought home with its eastern captives\nthat fierce egotism that feared extinction as an irremediable horror.\nThis mind of the other hemisphere could never reconcile itself to\nthe inevitable blotting out of its own individuality. Impossible as\nit was to deny the incontrovertible fact of death, it conceived, as\nan escape from the greatest of evils, the idea of the continuance\nof its identity either in an endless round of reincarnations, or as\nan impalpable essence triumphant in heaven or defeated in hell. The\nshadow of their own terror cast upon their imagination the figures of\nmonstrous deities--thousand-armed, myriad-eyed, maleficent, and unakin\nto themselves. Gods not to be propitiated by song and dance, or the\noffering of fruit and flowers, but loving to snuff at altars drenched\nin blood; placated for the sins of the guilty only by the anguish of\nthe innocent, and so meticulous in their tyranny as to require not only\nthe abandonment of all natural appetites, but pursuing even unwitting\nlapses from submission with eternal and malignant penalties.\n\nOriental egotism flung itself with equal persistence against the\nlimitations of time, space, and character. In the East arose the\nsystems of magic which sought philosopher's stones, elixirs of youth;\nwhich endeavoured to overcome all obstacles through pure intensity of\nwill, and undertook to constrain even the prodigious gods it had itself\ncreated by sheer force of its own asceticism and determination.\n\nRome had been completely honeycombed and corrupted by Eastern mysticism\nbefore the final fatal clash of faiths occurred under Constantine,\nand the Semitic conception of the immortal importance of the human\nindividual overthrew European nature-worship. So potent was this\nidea that for more than a thousand years Europe lent itself to scorn\nand repression of nature, and attempted to deal with life as only a\npathway to death and the infinitely more important future beyond. The\nmiserable confusion of the Dark Ages was the result of this struggle\nof the materialistic spirit of the European race in the bonds of a\nmysticism foreign to its genius.\n\nThe Renaissance was rightly named a new birth. Out of the womb of this\nlong night arose once again the mind of the West in its natural shape.\nSlowly beauty, knowledge, health, regained their old empire. Life grew\nin importance, and the futile, millennial-long struggle against death\nbegan to seem what it truly was--a mere terrified dream of the darkness.\n\nAll this appears a long way around to Stevenson, but it is by this\navenue I travelled--amid all those soft declamations--to find him the\ntypical poet of the nineteenth century. Stevenson is pure Roman, not\na touch of the Semitic is upon him. Every line of his prose and verse\nattests it. Someone said the other day that Hardy was not so much\na pagan as a \"revolted Christian,\" and brought as a charge against\nhim that he did not resent the hard fates of the characters in his\nbooks. The second charge, of course, contradicts the first. It was\nthe Eastern rebellion against Fate--against things as they are--that\nnourished its mysticism. But however one may decide as to Hardy there\nis no uncertainty as to Stevenson. His relish for life--life with all\nits pains and limitations--was keen to ecstasy. He leaves no dubiety on\nthat head. Here was no wish for a city of gold and pearl, fenced from\ncare, in which to take the refuge of ease in an impossible Elysium. His\n\"House Beautiful\" was\n\n    \"A naked house, a naked moor\"\n\nand\n\n    --\"the incomparable pomp of Eve\"\n\nwas all he asked to make desirable \"this earth, our hermitage.\"\n\nThat this life leads to nothing more does not daunt him.\n\n    \"On every hand the roads begin,\n    And people walk with zeal therein,\n    But wheresoe'er the highways tend\n    Be sure there's nothing at the end.\"\n\nTo which he adds cheerfully:\n\n    \"Hail and farewell! I must arise,\n      Leave here the fatted cattle,\n    And paint on foreign lands and skies\n      My Odyssey of battle.\n\n    \"The untented Cosmos my abode,\n      I pass, a wilful stranger;\n    My mistress still the open road\n      And the bright eyes of danger.\n\n    \"Come ill or well, the Cross, the Crown,\n      The rainbow, or the thunder,\n    I fling my soul and body down\n      For God to plow them under.\"\n\nHe will allow no mistake as to the purpose of his existence. He cares\nnot what may lie beyond the portals of an undreaded death, but this\nbright, present existence is for manful struggle; a struggle not\nmaintained in hope of future, or terror of punishment, but because he\nloves not only\n\n    \"Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall,\n    A bin of wine, a spice of wit,\n    A house with lawns enclosing it,\n    A living river by the door,\n    A nightingale in the sycamore\"--\n\nbut loves also to\n\n      \"---- Climb\n    Where no undubbed civilian dares,\n    In my war-harness, the loud stairs\n    Of honour ----\"\n\nNothing so moves his scorn as the lazy maggot who shuts himself into\nthe snug nut of his religion and concern himself only to save his own\npoor, unimportant little soul. Hear the call of his \"Lady of the\nSnows\" to the pallid monks uttering prayers and _memento mori_. And\nStevenson speaks as does he who knows. It is easy enough for those\nsitting cozily at home to talk loudly of war and danger, but this was a\nman who literally fought with death daily. An extract from one of his\nprivate letters, written shortly before the end, says:\n\n\"For fourteen years, I have not had a day's real health; I have wakened\nsick and gone to bed weary; and I have done my work unflinchingly. I\nhave written in bed, and written out of it, written in hemorrhages,\nwritten in sickness, written torn by coughing, written when my head\nswam for weakness; and for so long, it seems to me I have won my wager\nand recovered my glove. I am better now, have been, rightly speaking,\nsince first I came to the Pacific; and still, few are the days when I\nam not in some physical distress. And the battle goes on--ill or well,\nis a trifle; so as it goes. I was made for a contest, and the Powers\nhave so willed that my battlefield should be this dingy, inglorious one\nof the bed and the physic bottle. At least I have not failed, but I\nwould have preferred a place of trumpetings and the open air over my\nhead.\"\n\nAnd after a desperate illness, when he rose gasping from the waters of\nextinction, his first cry on feeling the earth beneath his feet once\nmore were those brave verses \"Not Yet my Soul.\"\n\nHe was not upborne by any of that so amazing sense of superiority to\nthe rest of the universe which has aided vain humanity to minimize its\ndefeats. He knew how small was his place in what Carlyle calls \"the\ncentre of immensities, the conflux of eternities.\" Hear him paint what\nhe calls his \"Portrait,\" and he reiterated that his noblest impulses\nwere akin to \"a similar point of honour which sways the elephant, the\noyster, and the louse, of whom we know so little.\"\n\nFinally, in the famous Christmas Sermon he sums up in prose the\nthoughts that breathe through all the varying cadence of his verse--\n\n\"Whether we regard life as a lane leading to a dead wall--a mere bag's\nend, as the French say--or whether we think of it as a vestibule or\ngymnasium where we wait our turn and prepare our faculties for some\nnobler destiny ... whether we look justly for years of health and\nvigour, or are about to mount into a bath chair as a step towards\nthe hearse,--in each and all of these situations there is but one\nconclusion possible; that a man should stop his ears to paralyzing\nterror, and run the race that is set before him with a single mind.\"\n\nIn that Sermon is all the philosophy of Greece, the stern courage of\nRome.\n\n\n\n\nDecember 23.\n\n\"Philistia, be Thou Glad of Me.\"\n\n\nStrange things rise up to us out of the deeps. Because I am a heathen,\nand Apollo is my god rather than any other, I have never been quite\nable to comprehend the powerful appeal the Hebrew Messiah makes\nto the hearts of so many. The solution is to be found in this \"De\nProfundis\"--Oscar Wilde's posthumous volume. It is a beautiful book:\nlikely to become a classic of our language by reason of its beautiful,\nlimpid English, its amazing exposition of the course of reasoning by\nwhich an outcast of humanity reaches peace and reconciliation with his\nown soul.\n\nThe man's crime, I think, was the result of his reluctance to\nrelinquish youth, with its passions and stimulations of the senses. We\nall find its relinquishment a tragedy. Some of us refuse to accept the\nslow, cold enveloping of that cruel serpent of Time, which squeezes\nout of us our beauty, our vigour, our warmth, and leaves us pallid and\neviscerated before devouring us entirely. Wilde, whose whole existence\nwas the pursuit of passion and beauty, violently resenting the fact\nthat with the lapse of years he was no longer able to wake the old\nthrill of existence by any of the old methods--finding that poetry,\nart, and the beauty of women all left him more and more jaded and cold,\nhe grasped at vice as a means of heat, and brought himself within the\niron clutch of the law. One can guess, even without the aid of his own\nconfessions, at the hysterical rage of this sybaritic dandy caught in\nthe grim trap of the reprobation of Society. Not only the physical\ndiscomforts and restraints bore heavily, but more intolerable was the\ncontempt and disgust of the average man--the Philistine--to whom he\nhad always held himself airily and scornfully superior. The old primal\nlaws of the struggle for life lie too deep for even the boldest of us\nto lightly face universal condemnation. The worst of rebels and cynics\nis so dependent upon the countenance of his fellows that when good-will\nis withdrawn a sort of madness of despair falls upon him, and this\nvain, sensitive poet makes it plain how the passionate protest of the\nordinary criminal was in his case intensified to ecstasy. One sees the\npoor creature, like a rat in a cage, darting hither and thither, and\nshivering with sick and furious helplessness at the rigidity of the\nbarriers by which the world had shut him away from any further part in\nthe body corporate.\n\nIn the last exhaustion of his grief a light dawned for him. There was\none who had protested against these laws of reprobation which Society\nhad codified--one who had mercy for the sinner; who had insisted that\nthe suffering and sorrow experienced by those not conforming themselves\nto the pattern Society demanded regenerated the victims of sorrow,\nand they became of more worth than those who condemned them. Here was\na means of regaining his own peace with himself. Here was a way out of\nhis imprisonment in the scorn of his fellows.\n\nMary Magdalen, because of her sumptuous repentance, was of more value\nthan the busy and virtuous Martha. The Prodigal Son was more welcome\nthan the patient home-keeper. The lost sheep was the really important\nmember of the flock. The repentant thief was the heir of Paradise. The\nsinning woman was bid go in peace. All the offenders against the laws\nof Society were welcomed: the dull walkers in the beaten path were\ncontumeliously branded as Philistines and Pharisees. At once, by this\npoint of view, the prisoner was freed from his cell. It was possible to\nstand upright once more and return frown for frown with his judges. All\nthese were redeemed by their \"beautiful moment\"--? Well, let him too\nhave his beautiful moment and he was really of more worth than those\nwho had condemned him.\n\nHere is the secret of the hold the Hebrew thinker has had upon\nhumanity.\n\nWhen our race slowly began to stand up on their hind legs and to live\na life in common, they found--as the ants and bees had done before\nthem--that the common life was only to be made feasible by adopting\nsome general law of behaviour which would enable individuals to\nassimilate; and so morals and conscience had their generation. A man\nmight never leave his home if the tribe would not accept it as an evil\nto steal; might never sleep in peace if murder were not a crime; would\nnot feed his children were there not a rule against adultery which\nensured him against assuming duties to cuckoos. How bitter, slow, and\ntoilsome was that upward struggle to subdue for the good of the mass\nthe lusts of the individual all history relates. Always a remnant have\nprotested against these hard exactions of the general good at their\nexpense. Always the tribe has, for its own safety, slain, imprisoned,\ncast out the rebels. The war is not over yet; will, possibly, never\nend. Always those who prefer their own ends will strive to find\njustification for their wilfulness; will seek some ground for answering\nscorn with scorn--and their vociferousness, their lofty, sentimental\nphrases confuse the minds of the slow-witted.\n\nAlas! dear Philistine--what contumely you suffer at the hands of\nthe revolted! You have grown apologetic for your virtues, which the\nidealists cast in your teeth as a reproach. You are so foolish you\ncannot eat of the fruit of desire and at once make it as though it had\nnever been by one \"beautiful moment\" of emotion. You are so stupid you\ncannot content the neighbour who owned the fruit by accusing him of\nbeing hard because your repentance does not satisfy him for his loss.\nYou are \"stodgy\"; you are \"narrow.\" You are bitter and untender because\nyou worship the God of Things as They Are, instead of accepting a\ntheism of Things as They Might Be. Of course you really rule the world,\nand when your critics become too aggressive your logic of stone walls\nand iron bars makes a trenchant reply, but you are very inarticulate.\nNo one gives you credit for your patient, dull self-restraint. You\nalmost apologize to the scoffers for your persistent moral drudgery.\nYou talk very little about the temptations you have resisted--so much\nless dramatic than sins against your fellows histrionically washed away\nby repentant tears. Your painful drudging up the path of obvious duty\ndazzles and touches no one.--But I, at least, love and respect you--you\npoor old self-denying Pharisee!\n\n\n\n\nDecember 24.\n\n\"Oh King Live Forever!\"\n\n\n    Oh, King!--great King\n    Afar in that pleasant place--\n    (Sleeping in Avalon,\n    Island of Queens--)\n    What are thy dreams?\n    Where no sound cometh at all\n    Save the lapping of waves,\n    Of the lake's waves lapping the shore;\n    And the moving of winds\n    Stirring a rustle and ripple of leaves--\n    An infinite rustle and ripple of leaves--\n    And lifting a little, a little thy wide-strewn hair\n    Fadeless and gold--\n    What are thy dreams?\n    There where no bird sings,\n    Nor is any bruit by thy head\n    Save only the singing of Queens--\n    Seven and sad--\n    Singing of swords and of war,\n    Singing of Carleon--\n    Singing a magical lay,\n    Sweeter than lutes,\n    A song made of magic by Merlin\n    Dead in the wood....\n    What are thy dreams, oh King!--\n    Arthur--thy dreams?\n    Tristram is dead, and Gawain.\n    Galahad gone, and Sir Bors.\n    Merlin is dead in the wood.\n    The base peasant tramples the mire\n    That once was the heart and the lips\n    Of Mordred the base and the liar.\n    The wind of the Breton coast,\n    Stormy and sad,\n    Has blown for a thousand years\n    The dust of that Knight--\n    Launcelot's dust--\n    Dust of his bones--\n    To and fro in the roads--\n    And the dust of his sword\n    Blows in the eyes of brave men passing that way\n    And stings them to tears.\n    Oh, dread King, what are thy dreams?\n    Guinevere is but a name--\n    Frail, and lovely, and sad.\n    All whom thou lovedst are gone.\n    Beauty availed them not;\n    Courage, nor pride, nor desire.\n    The sound of their singing is dumb;\n    The sword is broken in twain;\n    Magic to folly is turned;\n    Even love might not avail.\n    Only the King liveth still--\n    Only the King\n    Liveth and dreams.\n    Only the heart above self--\n    Only the heart steadfast and wise\n    Liveth forever in Avalon,\n    Hearing a song\n    Always of swords and of war,\n    But dreaming of Peace,\n    Dreaming of Honour, oh King!\n    Dreaming great dreams.\n\n\n\n\nJanuary 1.\n\nThe Little Room.\n\n\nI remember that long ago when I used to be made to memorize Campbell's\nsentimental lines on The Exile, beginning,\n\n    \"There came to the beach a poor exile of Erin\"--\n\nthey only called forth my unsympathetic infantile jeers; but last\nspring I went home. Suddenly, as we passed along the tawny marshes\nlying like great dun lions by the edge of the misty gulf, I realized\nthat for twenty discontented years I too had been suffering the pangs\nof the Exile. Memories and emotions, so long disused as to be almost\nforgotten, boiled up with the impetuosity of geysers. Possessions of my\nsecret life that I think I was never really conscious of at all came to\nlife. I haven't the least idea, for example, why the buoyant feathery\nboughs of the first Southern cedar I saw made me strongly wish to weep\nlovely, sentimental tears, but I knew at once why I had invariably\nfelt bored with the conventional admiration of mountains. Why, indeed,\n_should_ scenery only be important when perpendicular? To my mind, to\nhave the landscape getting up on its hind legs and hiding the view is\nsimply tiresome. Here one could see everything--could open one's lungs\nand breathe what the Creoles used to call _la grande air_, and let\none's heart go out to the land.\n\nYou blessed mother country! Those people where I have lived so long\nseem not to care particularly for their birthplaces. Their patriotism\nis satisfied by an immense political abstraction and a striped flag.\nI have always suspected that if one took off the heads of such folk\nand looked down inside one would find inside only wheels and coiled\nsprings, instead of flesh and blood. David Yandell used to say, \"I'm\nfor the Yandells against the whole world, but if it's between the\nYandells and Dave, then I'm for Dave!\" One might be for that political\nabstraction against the world, but between that abstraction and\nLouisiana, then I'm for Louisiana.\n\nI began to suspect too that some of my heresies and revolts had really\nbeen caused by the bitterness of exile, though from the very beginning\nI have seen the King without his mantle. When my elders handed out to\nme the accepted platitudes in answer to my early attempts to realize\nthe world in which I moved, I stared at them \"in a wild surmise,\"\nthe aforesaid conventionalities appearing to me to be so at variance\nwith the facts as I saw them. They appeared to me--these elders--to\nbe imagining a King's cloak to cover the world as it really was; to\nbe neglecting and minimizing the things really worth while; to be\ninventing ideals and standards not in themselves noble.\n\nI struggled long against the mask and domino which muffled words and\nimpeded action, but time and the years have made me more patient.\nI have grown to see that they may have their uses. The average man\nshrinks aghast from the naked truth, even when it is beautiful. There\nis a sort of universal prudery that shrinks from the nude in life as\nwell as in art. Perhaps these universal draperies cover as much that is\nrepulsive as it does of the beautiful.\n\nVerestchagin, the Russian painter who was blown up on the Petropalovsk,\nhad three pictures with him when he was in this country that conveyed\nto me a much needed lesson. He called them \"Christ in the Wilderness,\"\n\"The Sermon on the Mount,\" and \"The Cursing of Jerusalem.\"--A haggard\nboy fleeing to the desert for meditation upon the tragedies of\nexistence, for which he is sure there must be some panacea if one\ncould only think it out; the triumphant youth announcing to humanity\nthe solution of all its difficulties; and the disappointed man crying\nreproachfully to the heedless multitude preferring its own old\nway--\"how often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen\ndoth gather her brood under her wings, and _ye would not_!\"\n\nAs time cools our cocksureness, more and more is one willing to let\nthe world go its own gait and retire into one's secret life; and there\ncomes at last one day a revelation of the meaning of it all, and this\nrevelation brings peace and poise. The four walls of character and\nenvironment are an unescapable prison. Heroic effort will not open a\ndoor or break through its blank solidity. One may look out upon the\nworld from one's little room, but there one must live one's appointed\ntime. In youth one does not understand or accept this: then anything\nseems possible of expansion or change, but _veillesse savait_.\n\nOnce this is accepted--not by word alone, but mentally grasped and\nrealized--the disordered, confusing bits of existence fall at once into\nan ordered pattern. Life must be lived in the Little Room. Others may\nnot enter; one's self may not escape. Action falls within its space and\ncan, therefore, be calmly ordered and planned. One will not undertake\naught that is impossible within its compass, and struggle, discontent,\nand confusion are therefore at an end. And within this inviolate\nenclosure one is safe and private. To those regarding it from without\nits appearance is much like that of all the other cubicles, but inside,\nif one chooses, it may be richly hung, sumptuously adorned, with the\ntreasures of one's secret life. Odd, outworn weapons of opinion may\ngive a martial touch to the walls here and there; treasures brought up\nfrom the deep may speak of the wild winds of young fancy, and taste yet\nof the salt of long dried tears. Soft imaginings may invite the weary\nhead, fine embroideries wrought from the many-coloured threads of life\nmay lie beneath the foot. The prison is, should one choose it, a palace.\n\nLong ago, of a summer morning, threading with soundless paddle and\nslow-sliding canoe one of the quiet streams that wound like a blue\nvein across the sunburned breast of those marshes, I found in the deep\ngrasses, that everywhere grew breast high, an illimitable garden of\nflowers. Looked at from above there was but the smooth, deep fleece\nof verdure--but thus intimate, close to the warm skin of these vast\nsalt prairies, thousands of beautiful freakish blossoms revealed\nthemselves--many-tinted, heavy as wax, fragile as cobwebs, perfumed,\nfantastic, multitudinous....\n\nI stared a little, pondering, and then passed on carelessly about my\nchildish business, unrealizing that I had found a picture and a parable\nto hang, after many years, upon the walls of my Little Room.\n\n\n\n\nJanuary 2.\n\nAftermath.\n\n\n    If it might be, Life's harvest being past,\n    And past the perfect fruitage of the soul,\n    I yet might gather up some small sweet dole\n    From out Time's fingers in the wide fields cast--\n    If it might be that though from out the vast\n    Blue spaces all the tides of light did roll,\n    There yet might linger some pale aureole\n    To faintly flush my western sky at last--\n    I would forbear youth's lordly large demands,\n    Nor swallow tears at sight of loaded wains\n    Of others who all full and rich did go;\n    Content that I, no more with empty hands,\n    Might bear across the level darkening lands\n    My sweet few sheaves home through the afterglow.\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\nObvious punctuation errors were corrected.\n\nThe Greek quotation on p70 [preceded by the phrase \"Achilles, blackly\nmelancholy in his tent, heard the old voice cry\"] is from Homer's\nIliad, Book 9, line 319. One possible translation is: \"and in one\nhonour are held both the coward and the brave\".","title":"The Secret Life: Being the Book of a Heretic","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":58482}