{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_46809/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_46809","id":"gutenberg_46809","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46809","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Biographies","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Plays/Films/Dramas","Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith), 1874-1936","Dewey, John, 1859-1952","Eucken, Rudolf, 1846-1926","Schiller, F. C. S. (Ferdinand Canning Scott), 1864-1937","Shaw, Bernard, 1856-1950","Wells, H. G. (Herbert George), 1866-1946"],"text":"SIX MAJOR PROPHETS\n\nBY\n\nEDWIN E. SLOSSON, M.S., Ph.D.\n\nLITERARY EDITOR OF \"THE INDEPENDENT\"\n\nASSOCIATE IN THE COLUMBIA SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM\n\nAUTHOR OF \"MAJOR PROPHETS OF TO-DAY,\" ETC.\n\n\nWhoever dies without recognizing the prophet of his time dies the death\nof a pagan.\n\nMohammedan proverb.\n\n\nBOSTON\n\nLITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY\n\n1917\n\n\n\n\nTO MY SON PRESTON WILLIAM SLOSSON\n\nWHOSE THOUGHTS AND PHRASES I HAVE MORE FREELY INCORPORATED THAN I AM\nWILLING TO ACKNOWLEDGE ELSEWHERE THAN ON THIS PAGE, THIS VOLUME IS\nGRATEFULLY DEDICATED\n\n[Illustration: G. B. Shaw]\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nA few years ago it occurred to me that there were living on the same\nplanet and at the same time as myself some interesting people whom I\nhad never seen and did not know so much about as I should. Since they\nor I might die at any moment, I determined not to delay longer. So I\nprepared a list of twelve men who seemed to me most worth knowing, and\nthen I set out to see them; not with the hope of becoming personally\nacquainted with them or even with the object of interviewing them,\nbut chiefly to satisfy myself that they really existed. One does\nnot go to Switzerland to find out how high the Alps are or how they\nlook. The traveler can get their altitude from Baedeker and their\nappearance from photographs, but if he is to talk about them with any\nsense of self-confidence he must have come within hailing distance of\nthe mountains themselves. It is sufficient to say that I got close\nenough to the Alps I had chosen to be able to vouch for their actuality.\n\nThe men I selected for study were those who, whether they called\nthemselves philosophers or not, seemed to me to have a definite\nphilosophy of life, those who had a message for their own times of\nsufficient importance and distinctiveness to merit public attention.\nIt is my purpose in these sketches to show the trend and importance\nof these diverse theories, so that a reader who had not had the\nopportunity to range over the complete works of a dozen authors\nmight find which of them was best adapted to serve him as \"guide,\nphilosopher, and friend.\" In a word, my part is merely to act as\nthe host at a reception who introduces his guests and then leaves\nthem to follow up such acquaintanceships as seem profitable. My aim\nis exposition rather than criticism. Although I have not thought it\nnecessary absolutely to suppress my own opinions, I trust this has\nnot prevented me from giving a fair and sufficiently sympathetic\npresentation of each man's views in turn.\n\nMy list of the \"Twelve Major Prophets of Today\" consisted of the\nfollowing names: Maurice Maeterlinck, Henri Bergson, Henri Poincar\u00e9,\nElie Metchnikoff, Wilhelm Ostwald, Ernst Haeckel, George Bernard\nShaw, Herbert George Wells, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, F. C. S.\nSchiller, John Dewey, and Rudolf Eucken. I had not taken nationality\ninto consideration, but I found that I had chosen four from England,\nthree from Germany, two from France, and one each from Belgium, Russia,\nand the United States of America. Four of the twelve were professors\nof philosophy; four were men of science, one of these a mathematician,\none a physician, one a zoologist, one a chemist; and four were men of\nletters, authors of novels, dramas, or essays. The twelve sketches\nappeared in _The Independent_ during the last few years, but they have\nbeen considerably extended for book publication. The first six named\nabove were published in the volume \"Major Prophets of To-day.\" The\nother six are given in the following pages.\n\nEDWIN E. SLOSSON\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nPreface\n\n    I George Bernard Shaw\n   II H. G. Wells\n  III G. K. Chesterton\n   IV F. C. S. Schiller\n    V John Dewey\n   VI Rudolf Eucken\n\n\nLIST OF PORTRAITS\n\n    George Bernard Shaw\n    H. G. Wells\n    G. K. Chesterton\n    F. C. S. Schiller\n    John Dewey\n    Rudolf Eucken\n\n\n\n    To write a book about a man who has written books about\n    himself is an impertinence which only an irresistible charm\n    of manner can carry off. The unpardonable way of doing it,\n    and the commonest, is to undertake to tell the public what a\n    writer has already told them himself, and tell it worse or\n    tell it wrong.\n\n    G. B. SHAW.\n\n\n\n\nSIX MAJOR PROPHETS\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\n\nGEORGE BERNARD SHAW\n\n\nDramatic Critic of Life\n\n\n    I am a journalist, proud of it, deliberately cutting out of\n    my works all that is not journalism, convinced that nothing\n    that is not journalism will live long as literature, or be\n    of any use whilst it does live. I deal with all periods, but\n    I never study any period but the present; and as a dramatist\n    I have no clue to any historical or other personage save\n    that part of him which is also myself.... The man who writes\n    about himself and his own time is the only man who writes\n    about all people and about all time.--G. B. S., in \"The\n    Sanity of Art.\"\n\n\nAugust 4, 1914, cuts time in two like a knife. The continuity of human\nprogress in science, arts, letters, commerce, philosophy, everything,\nwas broken off at that point--to be taken up again, who knows when?\nNothing in the world can remain quite the same as before. Everything\nis seen in a new light. All our old ideas, even the most ancient\nand most reverenced, will have to be taken out and looked over to see\nhow many of them remain intact and useful, just as after an earthquake\none overhauls the china closet. \"The transvaluation of all values\",\nwhich Nietzsche looked for, has come to pass sooner than he expected,\nalthough the results of this re\u00ebstimation are not likely to be what\nhe anticipated. It is not merely that the geographies will have to be\nrevised and the histories rewritten, but all books will be classified\nas antebellum or postbellum literature. It will, however, not be\nnecessary to mark them A. B. or P. B., for they will by their style\nof thought and language bear an indelible though invisible date with\nreference to this line of demarcation.\n\nWe are already beginning to look back upon the antebellum days as a\nclosed period, and those who were conspicuous in it are being seen in\nan historical perspective such as the lapse of a generation of ordinary\ntimes is needed to produce. Some reputations are shrinking, others\nare rising, as mountains seem from a departing train to rearrange\nthemselves according to their true height. The true prophets are\nbecoming distinguishable from the false.\n\nAmong those who have taken the test and stand higher than before is\nGeorge Bernard Shaw. Whether he will write better plays than before\nremains to be seen. Perhaps he will write no more of any kind. But\nthose he has written will be regarded with more respect because we can\nsee their essential truth, whereas before we feared lest we might be\nmerely fascinated by their glitter. Warnings which the world took for\njokes because of their fantastic guise now turn out too terribly real,\nand advice which the world ignored would better have been heeded.\n\nFew writers have as little to take back on account of the war as Shaw,\nalthough few have expressed such decided opinions in such extreme\nlanguage on so many topics. For instance, Kipling's \"The Bear that\nWalks Like a Man\" makes queer reading now that England is fighting to\ngive Russia what then she was ready to fight to prevent her getting.\nBut the full significance of Shaw's fable farce of \"Androcles and the\nLion\" is now for the first time being realized. The philosophy of\nthis, his most frivolous and serious play, is summed up by Ferrovius,\na converted giant of the Ursus type, who finds it impossible to keep\nto his Christian principle of nonresistance when brought into the\narena. The natural man rises in him and he slays six gladiators\nsingle-handed. This delights the emperor, who thereupon offers him a\npost in the Pretorian Guards which he had formerly refused. The fallen\nand victorious Ferrovius accepts, saying:\n\n    In my youth I worshiped Mars, the god of war. I turned from\n    him to serve the Christian God; but to-day the Christian God\n    forsook me; and Mars overcame me and took back his own. The\n    Christian God is not yet. He will come when Mars and I are\n    dust; but meanwhile I must serve the gods that are, not the\n    God that will be. Until then I accept service in the Guard,\n    Caesar.\n\nThe great cataclysm does not seem to have changed Shaw's opinions one\niota, but all England is changed, and so he appears in a different\nlight. More of his countrymen agree with what he used to preach to them\nthan ever before, yet he was never so disliked as he is to-day--which\nis saying a great deal. The British press has boycotted him. His\nletters, once so sought after by the most dignified journals, now no\nlonger appear except in _The New Statesman_. His speeches, be they\nnever so witty and timely, are not reported or even announced.\n\nConsequently those who wish to hear him have to resort to the\nadvertising expedients of the era before printing. A friend of mine\njust back from London tells me that he saw chalked on the side-walk\na notice of a meeting to be addressed by Shaw in some out-of-the-way\nhall. Going there, he found it packed with an enthusiastic crowd\ngathered to hear Shaw discuss the questions of the day. The\nanti-Shavian press said that he had to keep to his house, that he was\nafraid to stir abroad for fear of a mob, that his career was over, that\nhe was exploded, repudiated, disgraced, boycotted, dead and done for.\nAt the very time when we were reading things like this, he was, as we\nsince have learned, addressing weekly meetings in one of the largest\nhalls in London. Reporters who were sent to see him hounded off the\nplatform witnessed an ovation instead. The audience at his invitation\nasked him many questions, but not of a hostile character.\n\nShaw thrives on unpopularity or at least on public disapproval, which\nis not quite the same thing. It is not only that Shaw would rather be\nright than Prime Minister; he would rather be leader of the Opposition\nthan Prime Minister. He would be \"in the right with two or three\"; in\nfact, if his followers increased much beyond the poet's minimum, he\nwould begin to feel uneasy and suspect that he was wrong.\n\nWhen Shaw sees a lonely mistreated kitten or a lonely mistreated\ntheory, his tender heart yearns over it. For instance, when all\nhis set started sneering at \"natural rights\" as eighteenth-century\npedantry, he appeared as their champion, and, practically alone among\nmodern radicals and art lovers, he has dared to commend the Puritans.\nThe iconoclastic views which he expressed as dramatic and musical\ncritic in the nineties have been vindicated by events, and now when a\nyoung reader opens for the first time \"The Quintessence of Ibsenism\",\n\"The Perfect Wagnerite\", and the collection of \"Dramatic Opinions and\nEssays\", he wonders only why Shaw should get so excited about such\nconventional and undisputed things. It is no wonder Shaw is \"the most\nhated man in England.\" Nothing is more irritating than to say \"I told\nyou so\", and he can--and does--ay it oftener than anybody else, unless\nit is Doctor Dillon.\n\nShaw's brain secretes automatically the particular antitoxin needed\nto counteract whatever disease may be epidemic in the community at\nthe time. This injected with some vigor into the veins of thought\nmay not effect a cure, but always excites a feverish state in the\norganism. It is his habit of seeing that there is another side to a\nquestion and calling attention to it at inconvenient times that makes\nhim so irritating to the public. His opponents tried to intern him\nin Coventry as a pro-German on account of his pamphlet, \"Commonsense\nabout the War.\" But this is almost the only thing produced in England\nduring the first weeks of the war that reads well now. Compare it with\nits numerous replies and see which seems absurd. Doubtless it was not\ntactful, it might have been called treasonable, but it certainly was\nsensible. Shaw kept his head level when others lost theirs. That was\nbecause he had thought out things in advance and so did not have to\nmake up his mind in a hurry with the great probability of making it up\nwrong. In that pamphlet he presented the case for the Allies in a way\nmuch more convincing to the American mind than many that came to us in\nthe early days of the war, and his arguments have been strengthened\nby the course of events, while others advanced at that time have been\nweakened. Shaw was arguing before a neutral and international jury, and\nso he did not rest his case on the specious and patriotic pleas that\npassed muster at that time with the British public.\n\nAs for the charge of pro-Germanism, that may best be met by quoting\nfrom a letter written by him to a friend in Vienna early in 1915. The\nlanguage is evidently not pure Shavian. It has been translated into\nAustrian-German and thence retranslated into British journalese.\n\n    As regards myself, I am not what is called a pro-German. The\n    Germans would not respect me, were I at such a time as this,\n    when all thoughts of culture have vanished, not to stand by\n    my people. But also, I am not an anti-German. The war brings\n    us all on to the same plane of savagery. Every London coster\n    can stick his bayonet deeper into the stomach of Richard\n    Strauss than Richard Strauss would care to do to him.\n\n    Militarism has just now compelled me to pay a thousand\n    pounds war taxation in order that some \"brave little\n    Servian\" may be facilitated in cutting your throat or, that\n    a Russian mujik may cleave your skull in twain, although I\n    would gladly pay twice that sum to save your life, or to buy\n    some beautiful picture in Vienna for our National Gallery.\n\nShaw has always condemned militarism because of the type of mind\nit engenders in officers and men. But he has never been opposed to\npreparedness or to the use of force. In the London _Daily News_ of\nJanuary 1, 1914,--note the date,--he said:\n\n    I like courage (like most constitutionally timid civilians)\n    and the active use of strength for the salvation of the\n    world. It is good to have a giant's strength and it is not\n    at all tyrannous to use it like a giant provided you are\n    a decent sort of giant. What on earth is strength for but\n    to be used and will any reasonable man tell me that we are\n    using our strength now to any purpose?\n\n    Let us get the value of our money in strength and influence\n    instead of casting every new cannon in an ecstasy of terror\n    and then being afraid to aim it at anybody.\n\nAt that time, seven months before the storm burst, he not only\nanticipated the war, but said that it might be averted,\n\n    By politely announcing that war between France and Germany\n    would be so inconvenient to England that the latter country\n    is prepared to pledge herself to defend either country if\n    attacked by the other.\n\n    If we are asked how we are to decide which nation is really\n    the aggressor we can reply that we shall take our choice, or\n    when the problem is unsolvable we shall toss up, but that we\n    will take a hand in the war anyhow.\n\n    International warfare is an unmitigated nuisance. Have as\n    much character-building civil war as you like, but there\n    must be no sowing of dragon's teeth like the Franco-Prussian\n    War. England can put a stop to such a crime single-handed\n    easily enough if she can keep her knees from knocking\n    together in her present militarist fashion.\n\nOf course Shaw may have been wrong in supposing that an open\nannouncement of Great Britain's determination to enter the war would\nhave deterred Germany, but as we now know from the White Paper this\nsame opinion was held by the governments of both France and Russia.\nOn July 30 the President of France said to the British Ambassador at\nParis that\n\n    If His Majesty's Government announced that England would\n    come to the aid of France in the event of a conflict between\n    France and Germany as a result of the present differences\n    between Austria and Servia, there would be no war, for\n    Germany would at once modify her attitude.\n\nAnd on July 25, M. Sazonof, the Russian Foreign Minister, said to the\nBritish Ambassador at Petrograd that\n\n    He did not believe that Germany really wanted war, but her\n    attitude was decided by ours. If we took our stand firmly\n    with France and Russia, there would be no war. If we failed\n    her now, rivers of blood would flow, and we would in the end\n    be dragged into war.\n\nShaw now gives the same advice to the United States that he gave to\nhis own country before the war, that is, to increase its armament\nand not be afraid to use it. In a recent letter to the American\n_Intercollegiate Socialist_ he said:\n\n    I should strenuously recommend the United States to build\n    thirty-two new dreadnoughts instead of sixteen, and to spend\n    two billion dollars on its armament program instead of one.\n    This would cost only a fraction of the money you are wasting\n    every year in demoralizing luxury, a good deal of it having\n    been in the past scattered over the continental countries\n    which are now using what they saved out of it to slaughter\n    one another.\n\n    If the United States wishes to stop war as an institution,\n    that is, to undertake the policing of the world, it will\n    need a very big club for the purpose.\n\n    If I were an American statesman I should tell the country\n    flatly that it should maintain a Pacific navy capable of\n    resisting an attack from Japan and an Atlantic navy capable\n    of resisting an attack from England, with Zeppelins on the\n    same scale, a proportionate land equipment of siege guns,\n    and so forth. And until the nations see the suicidal folly\n    of staking everything in the last instance on the ordeal of\n    battle, no other advice will be honest advice.\n\nIn \"Major Barbara\" Cusins abandons the teaching of Greek to take up\nthe manufacture of munitions because he has the courage \"to make war\non war.\" It is in this play that is expounded the theory on which\nPresident Wilson based his policy. Lady Britomart tells Cusins: \"You\nmust simply sell cannons and weapons to people whose cause is right and\njust, and refuse them to foreigners and criminals.\" But Undershaft,\nthe munition-maker, replies: \"No; none of that. You must keep the true\nfaith of an Armorer, or you don't come in here.\" And when Cusins asks:\n\"What on earth is the true faith of an Armorer?\" he answers:\n\n    To give arms to all men who offer an honest price for\n    them, without respect of persons or principles; to\n    aristocrat and republican, to Nihilist and Tsar, to burglar\n    and policeman, to black man, white man and yellow man, to\n    all sorts and conditions, all nationalities, all faiths,\n    all follies, all causes and all crimes.... I will take an\n    order from a good man as cheerfully as from a bad one. If\n    you good people prefer preaching and shirking to buying my\n    weapons and fighting the rascals, don't blame me. I can make\n    cannons; I cannot make courage and conviction.\n\nIn this same conversation Shaw also gives a hint of his theology,\nwhen Cusins says to Undershaft: \"You have no power. You do not drive\nthis place; it drives you. And what drives this place?\" Undershaft\nanswers, enigmatically, \"A will of which I am a part.\" This doctrine\nof an immanent God working through nature and man to higher things\nwas developed more definitely in an address which Mr. Shaw delivered\nsome years ago in the City Temple at the invitation of the Reverend R.\nJ. Campbell. Here he argued that God created human beings to be \"his\nhelpers and servers, not his sycophants and apologists.\" Shaw continues:\n\n    If my actions are God's nobody can fairly hold me\n    responsible for them; my conscience is mere lunacy.... But\n    if I am a part of God, if my eyes are God's eyes, my hands\n    God's hands, and my conscience God's conscience then also I\n    share his responsibility for the world; and wo is me if the\n    world goes wrong!\n\nThis position enables him to explain evil on evolutionary principles as\n\"the Method of Trial and Error.\" When Blake asks of the tiger, \"Did he\nwho made the lamb make thee?\" Shaw conceives the Life-Force as replying:\n\n    Yes, it was the best I could devise at the time; but now\n    that I have evolved something better, part of the work\n    of that something better, Man, to wit, is to kill out my\n    earlier attempt. And in due time I hope to evolve Superman,\n    who will in his turn kill out and supersede Man, whose\n    abominable cruelties, stupidities and follies have utterly\n    disappointed me.\n\nIn the unactable third act of his \"Man and Superman\",[1] this theology\nis put into the mouths of two most unpromising preachers, Don Juan and\nthe Devil. Here is found one of the most eloquent arraignments of war\nin all literature. It is, remember, the Devil who is speaking:\n\n    I tell you that in the arts of life Man invests nothing;\n    but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and\n    produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of\n    plague, pestilence and famine. The peasant I tempt to-day\n    eats and drinks what was eaten and drunk by the peasants\n    of ten thousand years ago; and the house he lives in has\n    not altered as much in a thousand centuries as the fashion\n    of a lady's bonnet in a score of weeks. But when he goes\n    out to slay, he carries a marvel of mechanism that lets\n    loose at the touch of his finger all the hidden molecular\n    energies, and leaves the javelin, the arrow, the blowpipe\n    of his fathers far behind. In the arts of peace Man is a\n    bungler. I have seen his cotton factories and the like, with\n    machinery that a greedy dog could have invented if it had\n    wanted money instead of food. I know his clumsy typewriters\n    and bungling locomotives and tedious bicycles; they are\n    toys compared to the Maxim gun, the submarine torpedo boat.\n    There is nothing in Man's industrial machinery but his greed\n    and sloth. His heart is in his weapons.... Man measures his\n    force by his destructiveness.... In the old chronicles you\n    read of earthquakes and pestilences, and are told that these\n    showed the power and majesty of God and the littleness of\n    Man. Nowadays the chronicles describe battles. In a battle\n    two bodies of men shoot at one another with bullets and\n    explosive shells until one body runs away, when the others\n    chase the fugitives on horseback and cut them to pieces\n    as they fly. And this, the chronicle concludes, shows the\n    greatness and majesty of empires, and the littleness of\n    the vanquished. Over such battles the people run about the\n    streets yelling with delight, and egg their Governments on\n    to spend hundreds of millions of money in the slaughter,\n    whilst the strongest ministers dare not spend an extra penny\n    in the pound against the poverty and pestilence in which\n    they themselves daily walk.... The plague, the famine, the\n    earthquake, the tempest were too spasmodic in their action;\n    the tiger and the crocodile were too easily satiated and not\n    cruel enough; something more constantly, more ruthlessly,\n    more ingeniously destructive was needed; and that something\n    was Man, the inventor of the rack, the stake, the gallows\n    and the executioner; of the sword and gun; above all,\n    of justice, duty, patriotism, and all the other isms by\n    which even those clever enough to be humanely disposed are\n    persuaded to become the most destructive of all destroyers.\n\nThree years before the war Shaw wrote a little satirical skit, \"Press\nCuttings\",[2] which was deemed so dangerous to both Britain and Germany\nthat the censors of both countries agreed in prohibiting its production\non the stage. Since the British censor seemed to fear that the\nprincipal characters, \"Balsquith\" and \"Mitchener\", might be taken by\nthe public as referring to certain well-known statesmen, Shaw offered\nto change the names to \"Bones\" and \"Johnson.\" But even that concession\nwould not satisfy the censor's scruples, so the play was never publicly\nput on the stage, though, since there was then no censorship of\nliterature, it was published as a book. Here is a bit of the dialogue:\n\n    _Balsquith_--The Germans have laid down four more\n    Dreadnoughts.\n\n    _Mitchener_--Then you must lay down twelve.\n\n    _Balsquith_--Oh, yes; it's easy to say that; but think of\n    what they'll cost.\n\n    _Mitchener_--Think of what it would cost to be invaded by\n    Germany and forced to pay an indemnity of five hundred\n    millions....\n\n    _Balsquith_--After all, why should the Germans invade us?\n\n    _Mitchener_--Why shouldn't they? What else have their army\n    to do? What else are they building a navy for?\n\n    _Balsquith_--Well, we never think of invading Germany.\n\n    _Mitchener_--Yes, we do. I have thought of nothing else\n    for the last ten years. Say what you will, Balsquith, the\n    Germans have never recognized, and until they get a stern\n    lesson, they never _will_ recognize, the plain fact that the\n    interests of the British Empire are paramount, and that the\n    command of the sea belongs by nature to England.\n\n    _Balsquith_--But if they wont recognize it, what can I do?\n\n    _Mitchener_--Shoot them down.\n\n    _Balsquith_--I cant shoot them down.\n\n    _Mitchener_--Yes, you can. You dont realize it; but if you\n    fire a rifle into a German he drops just as surely as a\n    rabbit does.\n\n    _Balsquith_--But dash it all, man, a rabbit hasn't got a\n    rifle and a German has. Suppose he shoots you down.\n\n    _Mitchener_--Excuse me, Balsquith; but that consideration is\n    what we call cowardice in the army. A soldier always assumes\n    that he is going to shoot, not to be shot.\n\n    _Balsquith_--Oh, come! I like to hear you military people\n    talking of cowardice. Why, you spend your lives in an\n    ecstasy of terror of imaginary invasions. I don't believe\n    you ever go to bed without looking under it for a burglar.\n\n    _Mitchener_--A very sensible precaution,\n\n    _Balsquith._ I always take it. And in consequence I've never\n    been burgled.\n\n    _Balsquith_--Neither have I. Anyhow dont you taunt me with\n    cowardice. I never look under my bed for a burglar. I'm not\n    always looking under the nation's bed for an invader. And\n    if it comes to fighting, Im quite willing to fight without\n    being three to one.\n\n    _Mitchener_--These are the romantic ravings of a Jingo\n    civilian, Balsquith. At least you'll not deny that the\n    absolute command of the sea is essential to our security.\n\n    _Balsquith_--The absolute command of the sea is essential to\n    the security of the principality of Monaco. But Monaco isn't\n    going to get it.\n\n    _Mitchener_--And consequently Monaco enjoys no security.\n    What a frightful thing! How do the inhabitants sleep with\n    the possibility of invasion, of bombardment, continually\n    present to their minds? Would you have our English slumbers\n    broken in this way? Are we also to live without security?\n\n    _Balsquith_--Yes. Theres no such thing as security in the\n    world; and there never can be as long as men are mortal.\n    England will be secure when England is dead, just as the\n    streets of London will be safe when there is no longer a man\n    in her streets to be run over, or a vehicle to run over him.\n    When you military chaps ask for security you are crying for\n    the moon.\n\n    _Mitchener_--Let me tell you, Balsquith, that in these days\n    of aeroplanes and Zeppelin airships, the question of the\n    moon is becoming one of the greatest importance. It will be\n    reached at no very distant date. Can you as an Englishman\n    tamely contemplate the possibility of having to live\n    under a German moon? The British flag must be planted there\n    at all hazards.\n\nThe play ends with the establishment of universal military training\nand equal suffrage, thus doing away with a militarism that was both\ntimorous and tyrannical, snobbish and inefficient, and at the same\ntime making the nation truly democratic. It is characteristic of\nShaw that recently, when the papers were discussing what sort of a\nmonument should commemorate Edith Cavell, he interjected the unwelcome\nsuggestion that the country could honor her best by enfranchising her\nsex.\n\nThere is ever something in Bernard Shaw that suggests the eighteenth\ncentury, the age of Swift and Voltaire and Doctor Johnson. On the\ncredit side we must reckon lucidity, incisive wit, cleareyed logic,\nunashamed common sense, love of discussion and openness to new ideas,\nfreedom from prejudice of race or class, humanitarian aspiration\n--in a word the _Aufkl\u00e4rung_. On the debit side some items must\nunhappily be listed also: doctrinaire intellectualism, inability to\nsee either the limits of one's own doctrines or the point in other\npeople's, inadequate appreciation of historic institutions and popular\nsentiments, contempt for romance, intolerance for science, and\nincapacity for poetry.\n\nShaw seems to have inherited the famous _saeva indignatio_ of his\ngreat countryman, Swift. For all his simple diet he is not so eupeptic\nas Chesterton. Chesterton is most closely akin to Dickens, as may be\nseen from his sympathetic appreciations of Dickens's works. If I may\nbe permitted to express the relationship of the four in a mathematical\nformula, I should put it:\n\nShaw: Chesterton = Swift: Dickens.\n\nThe mordant wit of the two Irishmen is a very different thing from\nthe genial humor of the two Englishmen. Chesterton as usual makes a\ntheological issue out of it. He says of Shaw:\n\n    He is not a humorist, but a great wit, almost as great\n    as Voltaire. Humor is akin to agnosticism, which is only\n    the negative side of mysticism. But pure wit is akin to\n    Puritanism; to the perfect and painful consciousness of the\n    final fact in the universe. Very briefly, the man who sees\n    consistency in things is a wit--and a Calvinist. The man who\n    sees inconsistency in things is a humorist--and a Catholic.\n    However this may be, Bernard Shaw exhibits all that is\n    purest in the Puritan; the desire to see truth face to face\n    even if it slay us, the high impatience with irrelevant\n    sentiment or obstructive symbol; the constant effort to keep\n    the soul at its highest pressure and speed. His instincts\n    upon all social customs and questions are Puritan. His\n    favorite author is Bunyan. But along with what was inspiring\n    and direct in Puritanism, Bernard Shaw has inherited also\n    some of the things that were cumbersome and traditional. If\n    ever Shaw exhibits a prejudice it is a Puritan prejudice.\n\nWhen Shaw in the preface of his \"Plays for Puritans\" declared himself\n\"a Puritan in art\" it was regarded as one of his jokes. So it was,\nbut, as the world has found out since, his jokes are not nonsense. The\nmain reason why the assumption and ascription of the term \"Puritan\"\nto Shaw was thought absurd was because of the prevalent misconception\nof what sort of people the Puritans were. The word in its common\nacceptance implies orthodoxy, conventionality, prudishness, asceticism.\nNow the real Puritan was a revolutionary of the most radical type. Of\nall the socialists, anarchists, and extremists of various views with\nwhom I am acquainted, there is not one who lives in antagonism to his\nconventional contemporaries on so many points as did the Puritan in\nhis day. Milton's pamphlets in favor of republicanism, free speech,\ndivorce, and new theology were as scandalous to the seventeenth century\nas Shaw's \"Revolutionist's Handbook\" to the nineteenth. The Puritans\ninsisted that marriage was a purely civil contract to be made and\nannulled by the State, and they even forbade ministers to perform\nthe ceremony, while Catholics, Roman and Anglican, hold the contrary\ntheory, that marriage is a religious rite, only performed by priests\nand indissoluble. The Pilgrim Fathers who had a dozen children and two\nor three wives apiece--consecutive, of course--are not to be classed\nas ascetics; and if any one thinks them prudish, he has not read their\nliterature.\n\nOf course Shaw's opinions are different from those of the Puritans,\nindeed quite the opposite on some points. The Puritans, for\nexample, were not averse to blood, either in their food, their\npolitics, or their theology, while Shaw is almost Buddhistic in his\ntender-heartedness. Androcles is his caricature of himself. But still\nwe may say that Shaw is puritanical in his type of mind, his attitude\ntoward the established institutions and moral codes of his time, and\neven in his faults.\n\nConsider for instance his intolerance. No, I do not mean dogmatism.\nThat he comes to emphatic conclusions is much to his credit and\ndifferentiates him from the colloidal-minded mass of modern writers\nwho hold no convictions to have the courage of. But he does not,\nfor instance, content himself with the attitude: \"For the life of\nme I can't see what you find to admire in that absurd, romantic,\nweak-minded, sentimental, butcherly Scott.\" He would be quite justified\nin expressing his opinion thus-wise. He must add: \"There's nothing\nto him and if you say there is, you are deceiving me or--what is\nwickeder--yourself. In either case you are an Idealist, which in my\nunique vocabulary means liar.\" To which we might return an answer of\nthe Quaker sort: \"Friend, thee has two eyes and the usual number of\nbrains and so a right to thine opinion. But it need not follow that\nbecause thee sees not a merit in a writer that it does in nowise\nexist.\" Every one of Shaw's early heroes and heroines, from the\nUnsocial Socialist and the daughter of Mrs. Warren to Undershaft and\nLarry Doyle, admires himself or herself immensely for saying to every\nupholder of supposedly current morality: \"Bah! Humbug! Hypocrite!\" To\nwhich again the gentle reply should come: \"Friend, I be not an Humbug,\nnor yet an Hypocrite, nor even a Bah. A man may differ from thee and\nyet be sincere in his views, although this fact be dreamed not in thy\nphilosophy. I may be right or I may be wrong, but if thee call me an\nIdealist yet again, lo, I will lift this brick and cast it at thee.\"\n\nWells and Shaw are quite commonly bracketed like Scylla and\nCharybdis, Dickens and Thackeray, Tennyson and Browning, and the\nRoyal Bloodsweating Chesterbelloc of Holy Writ. These couplings are\noften absurd but rarely arbitrary. Some likeness of thought or mood\nor some contrast of viewpoint usually accounts for if not justifies\nsuch literary _m\u00e9salliances_. Wells and Shaw are both socialists, but\nthis is not the tie, for, as the English aristocrat said: \"We are all\nsocialists now.\" The real likeness is that each is an intellectual\nanarchist, although a political Socialist. Shaw is an isolated, not\nto say eccentric, figure even for a Socialist. Wells has gone further\nyet in his self-isolation by leaving the Fabian movement. But the\nunlikeness between the two men lies in the motive driving them to\ntheir respective hermitages. Shaw may often change his point of view,\nbut at any given moment it is almost brutally clear and detailed, and\nhe insists upon the fullest conformity on the part of his would-be\nfollowers. If they fall a step short of his iron boundary they are\nmere Philistines and bourgeois, if they go a step beyond they are\ninefficient and contemptible sentimental revolutionists. Shaw always\nhas \"doots o' Jamie's orthodoxy.\" But Wells seeks a Socialism without\nboundaries. Marxian Socialism, Fabian Socialism, State Socialism are\nall too narrow and dogmatic for his taste as he has said time and time\nagain. Finding no true all-inclusive, universe-wide Socialism he erects\nhis own banner for the nations to rally to and as a result suffers the\nuniversal fate of those who try to found Churches of Humanity and World\nLanguages, that is, merely succeeding in founding a new sect and a new\ndialect.\n\nShaw has two defects which militate against his popularity; first, he\nis too conventional, and, second, his conventions are peculiarly his\nown. \"There is,\" says his Undershaft, \"only one true morality for every\nman, but not every man has the same morality.\" Shaw is easily shocked,\nbut never by the same things that shock other people.\n\nHe himself ascribes his inability to see the same as others to his\nsight being abnormally normal. The oculist who examined them said they\nwere the only pair of absolutely correct eyes he had ever come across.\n\nOf course this illusion of possessing perfect mental vision is common\nto everybody. All the opinions I hold at this moment are, I believe,\nabsolutely correct; otherwise I should change them instanter, though I\nmust admit, seeing how often I have erred in the past, that _a priori_\nthe chances are against my being altogether right now. But what\nShaw means by his normality of vision is not merely common confidence\nin one's own orthodoxy, but has reference to his fanatical efforts to\ntear away all the illusions of life and see things as they are. I do\nnot think that he often succeeds. Isis has many veils, and those who\nhave torn away the first and the second are all the more likely to be\ndeceived in mistaking the third for the naked truth.\n\nThere is no doubting Shaw's intent to undeceive the world or his\nwillingness to undeceive himself. \"My way of joking is to tell the\ntruth,\" says his Father Keegan in \"John Bull's Other Island.\" But\nwhen he strains his eyes to see something clearly he sees only that\none thing. By following consistently one line of logic--instead of\nseveral as he should--he gets tangled up in illogicalities. His mode of\nreasoning is often the _reductio ad absurdum_ of his own theories, and\nthis is not a persuasive way of argumentation.\n\nBy temperament Shaw is a mystic, but his conscience compels him to\nassume the method of cold intellectualism. He is an artist in the\ndisguise of a scientist, not an uncommon thing to see in this so-called\nage of science.\n\nProbably Shaw is not more inconsistent than any man of agile mind\nwho is capable of seeing in succession different sides of a thing, but\nhe is franker in expressing the point of view he holds at the time.\nConsequently he has many admirers but few followers. They can't keep\nup. The only possible Shavian is Shaw.\n\nAs somebody has remarked there are two ways of saying a thing; there\nare writers who provoke thought and writers who provoke thinkers.\nShaw does both. This is intentional, and he defends it on the ground\nthat; \"If you don't say a thing in an irritating way, you may just as\nwell not say it at all--since nobody will trouble themselves about\nanything that does not trouble them.\" In short Shaw first got the ear\nof the public by pulling it, and he does not know how to let go. Shaw's\nargument is a wedge, but it is driven in blunt end first. A startling\nstatement, some monstrous paradox, is presented to the reader and\nrouses his antagonism, then it is gradually qualified and whittled\ndown, or wittily diverted, so that it seems, in contrast to its first\nform, quite innocuous and acceptable, and the reader is so relieved at\nnot having to swallow the dose first presented to him that he willingly\ntakes more than he otherwise would. Shaw has not the judicial mind and\ndoes not want to have. \"The way to get at the merits of a case,\" he\nsays \"is not to listen to a fool who imagines himself impartial, but\nto get it argued with reckless bias for and against.\" Put this on your\nbookmark when you read Shaw.\n\nGeorge Bernard Shaw's collection of opinions is unique. Perhaps no\nsingle view of his is quite original, but the combination certainly\nis. He belongs to no type and has founded no school. This makes Shaw\nan exasperating person for some people to read and causes them to\nset him down as frivolous or inconsistent. They find, for instance,\nfrom \"The Revolutionist's Handbook\" that Shaw believes in eugenics\nand the importance of natural science. \"Good!\" people say, \"now we\ncan classify him.\" They read \"The Doctor's Dilemma\" and find him a\nrabid antivivisectionist and filled with a profound contempt for\nmodern medicine in general. Or they find out that he is a vegetarian,\na teetotaler, and a Puritan, and classify him as some nonconformist\nminister of a pallid and overconscientious type. When they read what\nhe actually has to say about marriage in \"Misalliance\", about popular\nreligion and salvation by money and gunpowder in \"Major Barbara\",\nthey rush to the opposite conclusion that he is constitutionally an\nunconstitutional rebel with a fondness for aimless violence such\nas appears in \"Fanny's First Play.\" Reading \"The Conversion of Blanco\nBosnet\" they discover that he is a devout Theist. Reading the preface\nto \"Androcles\" they find him a higher critic. As a Fabian pamphleteer\nhe is in favor of abolishing all individual property of a productive\nsort and has no use for _laissez faire_. But when it comes to children\n(see \"Misalliance\") there cannot be too much _laissez faire_. He\nappears as an ultramodernist, a universal cynic, a disillusioned\nIbsenite, and a disbeliever in the very existence of progress.\n(Preface to \"Man and Superman\".) He offended half the radicals by his\n\"Impossibilities of Anarchism\" and the other half by his \"Illusions of\nSocialism\", and the conservatives by both.\n\nBut those who will take the trouble to compare these apparent\nantinomies will find that the contradictions are not so great as they\nseem from their paradoxical and partisan form, and that Shaw has\npreserved his intellectual consistency to a remarkable degree.\n\nWhen Shaw first burst into London, a young, red-haired Irishman, he\nannounced himself as an atheist, an anarchist, and a vegetarian, these\nheresies being arranged in crescendo fashion, putting last what was\nmost calculated to shock the British public. Now when we look back\nover his career we find that he has not been any more successful in\nsticking to his youthful heresy than others are in sticking to their\nyouthful orthodoxy. Whether he has ever violated his vegetarian faith\nby eating a beefsteak on the sly I do not know, but he has drifted far\nfrom orthodox anarchism, for Socialism is, in theory at least, at the\nopposite pole from anarchy. Once when Shaw was talking Socialism in\nHyde Park, he was much annoyed by the anarchists who circulated through\nthe crowd, selling copies of an early pamphlet of his on \"The Illusions\nof Socialism.\" As for his atheism he seems to have left that still\nfarther behind, for his present theological views, if expressed in less\nprovocative language, would pass muster in many a pulpit to-day. In\nfact, they have as it is.\n\nIn a recent letter to me, Mr. Shaw refers to the cordial reception he\nalways received when Reverend Reginald Campbell invited him to occupy\nthe pulpit of City Temple,[3] and adds:\n\n    My greatest and surest successes as a public speaker have\n    been on religious subjects to religious audiences; but\n    this is the common experience of all speakers. People are\n    still more concerned about religion than anything else,\n    and any reasonably good preacher can easily leave the best\n    political spellbinder behind.\n\nShaw as a Socialist differs from others who bear that name. He is too\nintense an individualist to be a good party man. He puts no faith in\nMarx as the prophet of the millennium, and he has no Utopian vision of\nhis own. But what chiefly distinguishes him as a reformer is his power\nof penetrating through shams to fundamental realities and his ability\nto do original constructive thinking.[4] All of us can find fault with\nthe existing order of things, and most of us do. But to point out\njust \"what's wrong with the world\" and to suggest a practical line of\nimprovement is not so easy. The Fabian Society has done more than set\noff fireworks and stir up mud. The Minority Report on the reform of the\nPoor Law is a fine piece of constructive statesmanship. This Minority\nReport was largely the work of the Fabian Society, though how much Shaw\nhad to do with it personally I do not know. We now know, however, that\nhe was the author of Fabian Tract Number 2 of 1884 that startled\nthe conservative classes of England, including the orthodox Marxians.\nHere are a few of the \"Opinions Held by the Fabians\" set forth in this\nfamous tract:\n\n    That since competition among producers admittedly secures to\n    the public the most satisfactory products, the state should\n    compete with all its might in every department of production.\n\n    That no branch of industry should be carried on at a profit\n    by the central administration.\n\n    That men no longer need special political privileges to\n    protect them against women, and that the sexes should\n    henceforth enjoy equal political rights.\n\n    That the established government has no more right to call\n    itself the State than the smoke of London has to call itself\n    the weather.\n\nShaw also wrote Fabian Tract Number 45 on \"The Impossibilities of\nAnarchism\", in which he pointed out what was not so clear in 1888 as it\nis to-day, that society was rapidly becoming communistic through the\nefforts of those who were most opposed to communism as a theory:\n\n    Most people will tell you that communism is known in this\n    country only as a visionary project advocated by a handful\n    of amiable cranks. Then they will stroll across a common\n    bridge, along the common embankment, by the light of the\n    common street lamp shining alike on the just and the unjust,\n    up the common street and into the common Trafalgar Square\n    where on the smallest hint that communism is to be tolerated\n    for an instant in a civilized country, they will be handily\n    bludgeoned by a common policeman and hauled off to the\n    common gaol.\n\nShaw's latest contribution to Fabian literature, the appendix to\nPease's \"History of the Fabian Society\", seems to me one of the most\nimportant, for in the final paragraphs he points out clearly a defect\nin our democracy that is rarely recognized and altogether unremedied:\n\n    Another subject which has hardly yet been touched, and which\n    also must begin with deductive treatment, is what may be\n    called the democratization of democracy, and its extension\n    from mere negative and very uncertain check on tyranny to a\n    positive organizing force. No experienced Fabian believes\n    that society can be reconstructed (or rather constructed,\n    for the difficulty is that society is as yet only half\n    removed from chaos) by men of the type produced by popular\n    election under existing circumstances likely to be achieved\n    before the reconstruction. The fact that a hawker cannot\n    ply his trade without a license whilst a man may sit in\n    Parliament without any relevant qualifications is a typical\n    and significant anomaly which will certainly not be removed\n    by allowing everybody to be a hawker at will. Sooner or\n    later, unless democracy is to be discarded in a reaction\n    of disgust such as killed it in ancient Athens, democracy\n    will demand that only such men should be presented to its\n    choice as have proved themselves qualified for more\n    serious and disinterested work than \"stoking up\" election\n    meetings to momentary and foolish excitement. Without\n    qualified rulers a Socialist State is impossible; and it\n    must not be forgotten (though the reminder is as old as\n    Plato) that the qualified men may be very reluctant men\n    instead of very ambitious ones.\n\nIt is this doubt, more or less clearly felt, lest a genuinely\ndemocratic society will fail to secure able and qualified leaders, that\nlies at the bottom of the prevalent distrust of popular government and\ncauses many persons to cling to antiquated and irrational institutions\nlike aristocracy and even monarchy.\n\nI sent Mr. Shaw a copy of an editorial entitled, \"And There Shall Be No\nMore Kings\", in _The Independent_ of March 22, 1915, and the following,\npenned on the margin of the clipping in his careful handwriting, is his\ncomment on what he calls \"a wise and timely article.\"\n\n    This war raises in an acute form the whole question of\n    republicanism versus German dynasticism. After the mischief\n    done by Franz Josef's second childhood as displayed in\n    his launching the forty-eight-hour ultimatum to Serbia\n    before the Kaiser could return from Stockholm, the world\n    has the right--indeed the duty--to demand that monarchies\n    shall at least be subject to superannuation as well as to\n    constitutional limitation.\n\n    All recent historical research has shown that the position\n    of a king, even in a jealously limited monarchy like the\n    British, makes him so strong that George III, who was\n    childish when he was not under restraint as an admitted\n    lunatic, was uncontrollable by the strongest body of\n    statesmen the eighteenth century produced. It is undoubtedly\n    inconvenient that the head of the state should be selected\n    at short intervals; but it does not follow that he (or she)\n    should be an unqualified person or hold office for life or\n    be a member of a dynasty.\n\n    I may add that if the policy of dismembering the Central\n    Empires by making separate national states of Bohemia,\n    Poland and Hungary, and making Serbia include Bosnia and\n    Herzegovina, is seriously put forward, it would involve\n    making them republics; for if they were kingdoms their\n    thrones would be occupied by cousins of the Hohenzollerns,\n    Hapsburgs and Romanoffs, strengthening the German hegemony\n    instead of restraining it.\n\nPerhaps the reader will think that I am rather too presumptuous in\nprofessing to know just what Shaw means and believes, when most people\nare puzzled by him. So I should explain that I have the advantage of\na personal acquaintance with Shaw. I may say without boasting--or at\nleast without lying--that at one period of his life I was nearer to him\nthan any other human being. The distance between us was in fact the\ndiameter of one of those round tables in the A. B. C. restaurants, and\nthe period was confined to the time it took to consume a penny bun\nand a cup of tea, both being paid for by him. I resorted to thorough\nFletchering for the purpose of prolonging the interview, and I wished\nthat either he or I had been a smoker. But although a vegetarian, he\neschews the weed, and smoking did not seem to be in accordance with\nFabian tactics.\n\nThe occasion was a recess in a Fabian Society conference. I did not\nsuppose that anything could shut off Socialists in the midst of debate.\nThe theme of discussion was the House of Lords, which the Fabians\nunanimously agreed ought to be abolished, though no two of them agreed\non the substitute. But while they were iconoclasts as to one British\ninstitution, they rendered homage to another by stopping to take tea in\nthe midst of a lovely scrap.\n\nThe Fabian Society was indirectly the fruit of one of the seeds which\nThomas Davidson scattered in many lands. You can track this peripatetic\nphilosopher through life, as you can Johnny Appleseed, by the societies\nthat sprung up along his pathway. In the Adirondacks he founded the\nGlenmore School of Philosophy. In the Jewish quarter of New York City\nanother of his schools still thrives and is enthused with something of\nhis zeal for learning. The circle of earnest young men and women\nwhom he gathered about him in London were the founders of the Society\nfor Psychical Research, the Fellowship of the New Life, and the\nFabian Society. Yet Davidson himself was neither a spiritualist nor a\nSocialist.[5]\n\nAt the Fabian Society one sees Shaw in his element. Every creature,\nsays Browning, like the moon,\n\nBoasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,\nOne to show a woman when he loves her.\n\nThe Fabian Society is Shaw's own true love, and to her he turns a\ndifferent face than to the outside world. As I watched him during\nthe afternoon--preceding and following the brief period of personal\ncontact of which I have been bragging--I was struck by the tact and\nkindliness which he showed in the course of the discussion. There\nwas in his occasional remarks no trace of the caustic and dogmatic\ntone which one gets from his writings. He has been not so much the\n\"shining light\" or \"presiding genius\" of the society, as one of the\n\"wheel horses\", and devoted himself diligently to the detailed and\ninconspicuous work of the organization. He had for twenty-seven years\nserved on the Executive Committee of the society when in 1911 he\nresigned to make way for the younger generation.\n\nThe question under discussion was, as I have said, that of the\nreconstruction of the House of Lords. This was shortly before the war,\nwhen such questions were regarded as important. Various plans were\nproposed in order to secure the election of the fittest, when Shaw took\nthe floor in defense of genuine democracy. His argument ran like this,\nas I remember it:\n\n    Our idea is that any 670 people is as good as any other for\n    governing, just as any twelve chosen by chance on the jury\n    have our lives and property in their hands.\n\n    Now if I and Mr. Sydney Webb here were sent to the House\n    of Commons it should be with unlimited opportunity to talk\n    but not to vote. To give us a vote would be to permit the\n    violation of the fundamental principle of democracy that\n    people should never be governed better than they want to\n    be. If you had a government of saints and philosophers the\n    people would be miserable. For instance, I would want to\n    stop all smoking and meat-eating and liquor drinking, but\n    like all superior persons now I have to convince other\n    people because I cannot compel them.\n\n    No elected body can possibly be representative, because\n    no man is elected as a normal man, but as an exceptional\n    one. The House of Lords is more representative than the\n    House of Commons, because a man in the House of Commons\n    is there because he has uncommon abilities, high or low.\n    Representatives ought to be, like jurymen, samples of the\n    commonalty picked at random and compelled to serve. Their\n    function is to explain where the shoe pinches. But the shoe\n    must be made by skilled legislators and statesmen, and these\n    should be eligible only when they have satisfied a very high\n    standard of qualification, and should sit without votes\n    though with unlimited powers of explanation and criticism.\n\nThese remarks, delivered in a musical and sympathetic voice with\nfrequent flashes of a broad row of white teeth, sounded very different\nfrom the way they read in cold type. I do hope the phonograph will be\nperfected before Shaw dies or his voice goes cracked, so posterity\ncan have a vocal version of his plays and prefaces. Otherwise his\npersonality stands little chance of being understood.\n\nShaw is tall and uses his eyeglasses for gesticulating as an orchestra\nleader uses a baton. His hair was once a fiery red, but is now tempered\ninto gray. His eyes are light blue. Between his brows there are three\nperpendicular wrinkles, but not of the cross and fretful type. His face\nis long and pointed, but he looks not in the least Mephistophelian\nas the caricaturists represent him. In short, Shaw is not so black\nas he is painted by himself and others.\n\nIt is not necessary in this chapter, as it was in the case of some\nof my \"Twelve Major Prophets of To-day\", for me to give biographical\ndetails at any length, for these are easily accessible. Shaw has not\nbeen reticent in talking about himself in various books and prefaces,\nand he is fortunate in having in Professor Henderson of the University\nof North Carolina a biographer of the Boswell kind--probably the best\nkind there is. His big volume contains as much about Shaw's life and\nwords up to the time it was published, 1911, as any one needs to know.\nChesterton's book on Shaw is an impressionistic sketch rather than a\nportrait, giving the author an opportunity of saying \"what's wrong with\nthe world\", including Shaw. Other lives of Shaw are mentioned in the\nappendix of this chapter.\n\nGeorge Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin, July 25, 1856. His father\nwas an Irish gentleman, Protestant, improvident and respectable, a\nwholesale dealer in corn, with a profound contempt for all retail\ntradesmen. His mother was a musician, and it was to her that Mr. Shaw\nowed his own moderate talent and remarkable knowledge of music. When\nhe went to London at the age of twenty, with artistic, musical\nand literary ambitions, his mother practically supported the family\nby teaching music there. As Shaw says in one of his autobiographical\nfragments:\n\n    I did not throw myself into the struggle for life. I threw\n    my mother into it. I was not a staff to my father's old\n    age. I hung on to his coat tails. His reward was to live\n    just long enough to read a review of one of these silly\n    novels written in an obscure journal by a personal friend\n    of my own, prefiguring me to some extent as a considerable\n    author. I think, myself, that this is a handsome reward, far\n    better worth having than a nice pension from a dutiful son\n    struggling slavishly for his parents' bread in some sordid\n    trade.\n\nHis only schooling was at Dublin, where he says he learned little,\nand this is confirmed by the school records which place him near the\nbottom of his class. His opinion of the sort of education he got he has\nexpressed in several places, especially in the preface to \"Misalliance.\"\n\n    My school made only the thinnest pretence of teaching\n    anything but Greek and Latin.... To this day, though I\n    can still decline a Latin noun and repeat some of the old\n    paradigms in the old meaningless way, because their rhythm\n    sticks to me, I have never yet seen a Latin inscription on\n    a tomb that I could translate throughout. Of Greek I can\n    decipher perhaps the greater part of the Greek alphabet.\n    In short I am, as to classical education, another\n    Shakespeare. I can read French as easily as English; and\n    under pressure of necessity, I can turn to account some\n    scraps of German and a little operatic Italian; but these\n    three were never taught at school. Instead, I was taught\n    lying, dishonorable submission to tyranny, dirty stories, a\n    blasphemous habit of treating love and maternity as obscene\n    jokes, hopelessness, evasion, derision, cowardice, and all\n    the blackguard's shifts by which the coward intimidates\n    other cowards.\n\nWhy is it that British authors give us such horrible pictures of their\nschool days? They usually look back upon them as a most unpleasant and\nunprofitable period of their lives, and when they attempt to eulogize\nit they make it all the more shocking. Kipling in \"Stalky and Company\"\nreveals an even more detestable state of affairs than Dickens does of\n\"Dotheboys Hall.\" Shaw takes the American view of it and condemns with\nhorror the \"flagellomania\" of the British schoolmaster. It is curious\nto observe that in Great Britain the schoolmasters have weapons, and\nthe policemen have none. In America clubs have been given to the\npolice, and the canes taken away from the teachers. The New York\nschool-teachers are not allowed to deliver even a casual box on the ear\nor a friendly shaking, yet they are making very decent citizens out of\nmost unpromising material, and the policemen's clubs are mostly used\non the immigrants who have been trained in the flagellant schools of\nEurope.\n\nIt is doubtless a good thing that Shaw did not go through Oxford, but\nhe should have had a course in biology under Huxley such as Wells had.\nThis would have given him an acquaintance with the aims and methods of\nmodern science and freed him from such prejudice as he displayed, for\ninstance, in \"The Doctor's Dilemma\" and \"The Philanderer.\"\n\nShaw's early efforts at authorship did not meet with encouragement.\nIf we may take his word for it, he earned six pounds in nine years\nby his pen, and five of those came from writing a patent medicine\nadvertisement. He wrote five novels in five years, all at first\nrejected by the book publishers. Four of them, \"The Unsocial\nSocialist\", \"The Irrational Knot\", \"Cashel Byron's Profession\", and\n\"Love Among the Artists\" have since been reprinted from the short-lived\nSocialist periodicals in which they originally appeared. The first\nnovel he wrote, \"Immaturity\", has never been printed.\n\nWilliam Archer sent these novels to Robert Louis Stevenson, then trying\nto recover his health at Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks. Stevenson's\nletters refer to them as \"blooming gaseous folly\", \"horrid fun\", \"a\nfever dream of the most feverish\",\n\n\"I say, Archer, my God, what women!\" \"If Mr. Shaw is below five and\ntwenty, let him go his path; if he is thirty, he had best be told that\nhe is a romantic and pursue romance with his eyes opened; perhaps he\nknows it; God knows!--my brain is softened.\"\n\nA plan to relieve struggling authors and secure the earlier recognition\nof genius by means of an endowment fund and a system of substantial\nprizes was once proposed by Upton Sinclair, author of \"The Jungle\",\nwho wrote to a number of authors, asking their opinion of the scheme.\nAmong those who responded were Wells, Bennett, De Morgan, Philpotts,\nGalsworthy, London, and Shaw.[6] I quote part of what Shaw said about\nit because of its biographical interest:\n\n    There is only one serious and effective way of helping young\n    men of the kind in view, and that is by providing everybody\n    with enough leisure in the intervals of well-paid and not\n    excessive work to enable them to write books in their spare\n    time and pay for the printing of them. Nothing else seems to\n    me to be really hopeful. I myself seem an example of a man\n    who achieved literary eminence without assistance; but as\n    a matter of fact certain remnants of family property made\n    all the difference. For fully nine years I had to sponge\n    shamelessly on my father and mother; but even at that\n    we only squeezed through because my mother's grandfather\n    had been a rich man. In fact, I was just the man for whom\n    Upton wants to establish his fund. Yet for the life of me I\n    cannot see how any committee in the world could have given\n    me a farthing. All I had to show was five big novels which\n    nobody would publish, and as the publishers' readers by\n    whose advice they were rejected included Lord Morley and\n    George Meredith, it cannot be said that I was in any worse\n    hands than those of any committee likely to be appointed. Of\n    course Sinclair may say to this that if Morley and Meredith,\n    instead of having to advise a publisher as to the prospects\n    of a business speculation, had only had to consider how to\n    help a struggling talent without reference to commercial\n    consideration, they might have come to my rescue.\n    Unfortunately, I have seen both their verdicts; and I can\n    assure Sinclair that I produced on both of them exactly\n    the impression that is inevitably produced in every such\n    case: that is, that I was a young man with more cleverness\n    than was good for me and that what I needed was snubbing\n    and not encouraging. No doubt there are talents which are\n    not aggressive and do not smell of brimstone; but these\n    are precisely the talents which are marketable, except, of\n    course, in the case of the highest poetry, which, however,\n    is out of the question anyhow as a means of livelihood.\n    William Morris, when he was at the height of his fame as a\n    poet, long after the publication of his popular poem, \"The\n    Earthly Paradise\", told me that his income from his poems\n    was about a hundred a year; and I happen to know that Robert\n    Browning threatened to leave the country because the\n    Income Tax Commissioners assessed him with a modest but\n    wholly imaginary income on the strength of his reputation.\n    Poetry is thus frankly a matter of endowment, but for the\n    rest I think a writer's chance of being helped by the fund\n    would be in inverse ratio to his qualifications as conceived\n    by Upton Sinclair.\n\nShaw's first essays in the field where he was to attain his greatest\nsuccess were as discouraging as his efforts at novel writing. His first\nplay, \"Widower's Houses\", dealing with tainted money, shocked but did\nnot attract the public. His \"The Philanderer\" was published before a\ntheater would accept it. His third play, \"Mrs. Warren's Profession\",\nwas prohibited by the censor. Of the seven that followed only one could\nbe called a decided success on its first presentation in London. But in\nbook form, with attractively written stage directions and argumentative\nprefaces, they found a host of readers who wanted to see them in the\ntheater. \"Candida\" was not presented in London till 1904, nearly ten\nyears after it was written. It was with \"Candida\" that Arnold Daly\nintroduced Shaw to the theater-going public of America, and for the\nlast few years there have often been three Shaw plays running at the\nsame time in New York.\n\nShaw's plays were popular in America when they were tabooed or\npooh-poohed in England. His \"Pygmalion\" had its _premi\u00e8re_ in the\nHofburg-theater in Vienna instead of London. I saw it, or rather heard\nit, since it is a phonetic instead of a spectacular play, at the\nDeutsches Theater of Irving Place, New York, in March, 1914, six months\nbefore Mrs. Patrick Campbell gave it here in English. In spite of the\nfact that the play depends upon variations in English dialects, it was\ngiven better in the German than in the English.\n\nShaw is in fact an internationalist, much more honored in America,\nRussia, Germany, France, Scandinavia, and Japan than in his own\ncountry, that is, Ireland. It must be interesting to see \"You Never Can\nTell\" or \"Man and Superman\" on the Tokyo stage. The _Kobe Herald_ says:\n\"He appeals to the Japanese of progressive ideas because he prefers\npotatoes, cabbages and beans to porter-house steak and lamb chops.\"\n\nThe reason why Shaw's prefaces read so well and his plays go better\non the stage than would be anticipated is because they are composed\nby ear. Since reading aloud has gone out of fashion, there has arisen\na generation of young writers who do not realize that language is\nintended to be spoken. Consequently one has to read them by eye\nonly, switching off for the time the internal auditory apparatus\nso as to avoid their discords and dull rhythm. A little girl who was\ntrying to read to herself a story by one of our pyrotechnic authors\nsuddenly threw down the magazine with the cry: \"I can't read this any\nmore! It dazzles my ears.\"\n\nShaw is a musician, and he writes musical prose. He uses shorthand in\ncomposing, which is the next best thing to dictating to a phonograph.\nNaturally he resents the established spelling of English which\npreserves the form of words while allowing the words themselves to\ndecay, thus sacrificing speech to print. He has often argued for\nphonetic spelling,[7] and has used as much of it in his works as his\npublisher would permit. The point he makes in the following passage is\nundeniably proving true:\n\n    All that the conventional spelling has done is to conceal\n    the one change that a phonetic spelling might have checked;\n    namely, the changes in pronunciation, including the waves\n    of debasement that produced the half-rural cockney of Sam\n    Weller and the modern metropolitan cockney of Drinkwater\n    in \"Captain Brassbound's Conversion.\"... Refuse to teach\n    the Board School legions your pronunciation, and they will\n    force theirs on you by mere force of numbers. And serve you\n    right.\n\nShaw's treatment of the Salvation Army in \"Major Barbara\" showed that\nhe knew more about religion than some of his churchly critics. So,\ntoo, his defense of the Salvation Army music in the London Standard\nin 1905 proved that he knew more about music than those who sneered\nat the Army bands. The Germans, who are now fond of analyzing the\nEnglish character, have discussed at length the question of why such an\nunmusical people should have good music in the Salvation Army.[8]\n\nThe 125-page preface to \"Androcles and the Lion\" is devoted to a\nrereading of the Gospels and a rewriting of the life of Christ. Shaw\ninterprets the New Testament like a higher critic but applies it\nlike an early Christian. He rejects the resurrection but accepts the\ncommunism. He believes in the Life Force and Its Superman as others\ndo in God and His Messiah. Shaw's Superman obviously belongs to\nanother genus from Nietzsche's Uebermensch. He says in the preface to\n\"Misalliance\":\n\n    The precise formula for the Superman, _ci-devant_ The Just\n    Made Perfect, has not yet been discovered. Until it is,\n    every birth is an experiment in a Great Research which\n    is being conducted by the Life Force to discover that\n    formula.\n\nThis eugenical and well meaning, but far from omnipotent creator,\nbears a strong resemblance to Bergson's _Elan vital_, but Shaw was\nwriting about the Life Force long before Bergson wrote his \"Creative\nEvolution.\" If there was any borrowing about it, both borrowed from\nSchopenhauer. But Shaw and Bergson, being kindly men and no pessimists,\nhave put a kind heart into Schopenhauer's ruthless Will.\n\nIf I were to sum up Shaw in two words it would be that his\ndistinguishing characteristics are courage and kind-heartedness. The\nsight of suffering and injustice drives him mad, and then he runs\namuck, slashing right and left, without much regard to whom he hits\nand no regard at all as to who hits him. He is, like Swift, a cruel\nsatirist through excess of sympathy. If Ibsen is right, that \"the\nstrongest man in the world is he who stands most alone\", then George\nBernard Shaw is not to be ignored.\n\n\nHOW TO READ SHAW\n\nIt does not matter much which of Shaw's books you read first, for after\nreading it, whichever it is, you will probably read all the others that\nyou can get your hands on. If I must be more specific in recommending\na book to begin on, I would suggest that \"Major Barbara\", \"Man and\nSuperman\", and \"Androcles and the Lion\" will give you an idea of\nwhat Shaw is like; then, if you are interested, you can pick out others\nfrom the following chronological list in which I have indicated by a\nfew words the theme, scene, or argument of the play and its preface.\nAll Shaw's works are published by Brentano's, New York, three plays in\none volume, or separately.\n\n\"Widowers' Houses\", 1892 (tainted money).\n\"The Philanderer\", 1893 (Ibsenites and esthetes).\n\"Mrs. Warren's Profession\", 1893 (prostitution).\n\"Arms and the Man\", 1894 (Serbian and Bulgarian war; anti-militarism).\n\"Candida\", 1894 (triangle).\n\"You Never Can Tell\", 1895 (farce comedy; the most popular of Shaw's\n    plays on the stage).\n\"The Man of Destiny\", 1895 (one act, Napoleon in an unconventional\n    aspect).\n\"The Devil's Disciple\", 1896 (American revolution).\n\"Caesar and Cleopatra\", 1898 (Egypt Anglicized).\n\"Captain Brassbound's Conversion\", 1899 (Morocco; Raisuli, Perdicaris,\n    _et al._)\n\"The Admirable Bashville or Constancy Unrewarded\", 1902 (His novel:\n    \"Cashel Byron's\nProfession\" put into blank verse \"because it is easier to write than\n    prose\").\n\"Man and Superman\", 1903 (romance topsy-turvey; marriage by conquest\n    on the part of the woman; containing \"The Revolutionist's\nHandbook\" and interlude on heaven and hell).\n\"John Bull's Other Island\", 1904 (Irish and English temperament\n    contrasted, Home Rule question).\n\"Passion, Poison and Petrification\", 1905 (burlesque extravaganza).\n\"Major Barbara\", 1905 (Salvation Army and munition manufacture; problem\n    of poverty).\n\"How He Lied to her Husband\", 1905 (parody on \"Candida\").\n\"The Doctor's Dilemma\", 1906 (satire on medical professor and attack on\n    vivisection).\n\"Getting Married\", 1908 (absurdities of marriage laws).\n\"The Showing-up of Blanco Bosnet\", 1909 (Wild West; psychology of\n    conversion; prohibited by censor).\n\"Press Cuttings\", 1909 (anti-militarism).\n\"Misalliance\", 1909 (\"a debate in one sitting\"; preface on parents and\n    children).\n\"The Dark Lady of the Sonnets\", 1910 (showing how Shakespeare got his\n    phrases).\n\"Fanny's First Play\", 1911 (satire of dramatic critics and middle-class\n    morality).\n\"Androcles and the Lion\", 1911 (early Christians; lion from Oz;\n    disquisition on the canon of the\nNew Testament and the possibility of living Christianity).\n\"Overruled\", 1912 (philandering again).\n\"Pygmalion\", 1913 (phonetics and class prejudice, with a postscript\n    proving that you never can tell how a Shaw play will come out).\n\"Great Catherine\", 1913 (boisterous farce of Catherine II; contrast of\n    Russian and British temperament).\n\"The Music Cure\", 1914 (Marconi scandal; used as curtain raiser for\n    Chesterton's \"Magic\", unpublished).\n\"Three Plays by Brieux\", (Brentano's, 1911; contain \"Damaged Goods\"\n    and other plays in which the French playwright attacks social\n    evils as vigorously and outspokenly though not so wittily as Shaw.\n    They are translated by Mrs. Bernard Shaw, and Mr. Shaw provides\n    a preface).\nTwo farcical plays of the war, \"The Inca of Perusalem\" and \"Augustus\n    does his Bit\", produced by the London Stage Society and the former\n    also in New York, are ascribed to Shaw though unacknowledged by him.\n\nOf Shaw's critical work we have in book form \"The Perfect Wagnerite\",\n1895, and \"The Quintessence of Ibsen\", 1890, which championed two\nunpopular causes; \"The Sanity of Art\", 1908, attacking Nordau's theory\nof the degeneracy of artists; and two volumes of \"Dramatic Opinions\nand Essays\", which, although reviews of current plays of the nineties,\nretain a permanent value. Shaw's four early novels \"Cashel Byron's\nProfession\", \"An Unsocial Socialist\", \"Love Among the Artists\", and\n\"The Irrational Knot\" are of less interest than his plays.\n\nHis socialism has found expression in \"The Common Sense of Municipal\nTrading\" and \"Fabian Essays in Socialism\", and numerous other tracts\nand articles as well as most of his plays and prefaces.\n\nShaw's fugitive contributions to journalism are too numerous and\nscattered to be cited here, but I will mention a few of them that are\nof special interest: \"The Case Against Chesterton\" (_Metropolitan_,\n1916); \"The Case for Equality\" (_Metropolitan_, 1913); \"The German Case\nAgainst Germany\" (_New York Times_, April 16, 1916).\n\nMore has been written about Shaw's personality than about all the rest\nof my \"Twelve Major Prophets\" put together. The chief and authorized\nbiography is \"George Bernard Shaw: His Life and Work\" by Professor\nArchibald Henderson of the University of North Carolina. (Cincinnati:\nStewart and Kidd, 1911.) It contains a full bibliography up to its date\nand some twenty portraits as well as much inaccessible and unpublished\nmaterial. Besides this we have:\n\n\"George Bernard Shaw: A Critical Study\" by Joseph McCabe (London: Paul,\nFrench, Trubner, 1914); \"Bernard Shaw: A Critical Study\" by Percival\nP. Howe (Dodd, Mead, 1915); \"George Bernard Shaw\" by G. K. Chesterton\n(John Lane, 1909); \"Bernard Shaw as Artist-Philosopher\", an exposition\nof Shavianism, by Ren\u00e9e M. Deacon (John Lane, 1910); \"George Bernard\nShaw: His Plays\" by H. L. Mencken (Luce, 1909); \"Bernard Shaw\" by\nHolbrook Jackson (Jacobs, 1907); and \"The Innocence of Bernard Shaw\" by\nD. Scott (Doran, 1914).\n\nLatest of all is \"Bernard Shaw: The Man and the Mask\" by Richard\nBurton, a study of his plays in chronological order by the ex-president\nof the Drama League of America (Henry Holt, November, 1916).\n\n\"Bernard Shaw: An Epitaph\" by John Palmer (London: Richards, 1915),\n\"Harlequin or Patriot\" (Century). Mr. Palmer comes to bury Shaw, not to\npraise him, yet gives him more credit than many of his admirers.\n\nBiographical data and criticism are also to be found in Archibald\nHenderson's \"European Dramatists\" (Stewart and Kidd) and his\n\"Interpreters of Life and the Modern Spirit\" (Kennerley); Ford Madox\nHueffer's \"Memories and Impressions\"; R. A. Scott-James's \"Personality\nin Literature\" which also contains sketches of Wells and Chesterton\n(London: Seeker, 1913); E. E. Hale's \"Dramatists of To-day\" (Holt,\n1911); J. G. Huneker's \"Iconoclasts\" (Scribner, 1905); Cyril Maude's\n\"The Haymarket Theater\"; Edward Pease's \"History of the Fabian Society\"\n(London, 1916); Herman Bernstein's \"With Master Minds\" (Universal\nSeries Co., New York, 1913); and \"Bernard Shaw et son oeuvre\" by\nProfessor Cestre of the University of Bordeaux (Mercure de France,\n1912).\n\nAugustine F. Hamon, who has translated many of Shaw's plays into\nFrench, has published the lectures he gave on them at the Sorbonne in\nthe volume \"Le Moli\u00e8re du XXe si\u00e8cle\" (Paris: Figui\u00e8re, 1913) which has\nbeen translated \"The Twentieth Century Moli\u00e8re\" (Stokes, 1915), and\na separate chapter of it as \"The Technique of Bernard Shaw's Plays\"\n(London: Daniel, 1912).\n\nThe following articles on Shaw are noteworthy for one reason or another:\n\n\"Shaw Contra Mundum\" by C. B. Chilton in _The Independent_, March 8,\n1906, with a sharp retort by Shaw; Personal reminiscences by Frank\nHarris in _Pearson's_, 1916; Controversies of Shaw with Hilaire\nBelloc and G. K. Chesterton in _The New Witness_, 1916; \"Bernard\nShaw, Musician\" by Florence Boylston Pelo in _The Bookman_, March,\n1916; \"Shaw in Portrait and Caricature\" by H. Jackson in _The Idler_,\n1908; \"Shavian Religion\" by the Rev. P. Gavan Duffy in _The Century_,\nvol. 87, p. 908; \"Mr. Bernard Shaw's Philosophy\" by A. K. Rogers\nin _Hibbert Journal_, 1910; \"George Bernard Shaw\" by D. A. Lord in\n_Catholic World_, March and April, 1916; \"Bernard Shaw et la guerre\"\nby Christabel Pankhurst in _La Revue_, 1915; \"The Philosophy of Shaw\"\nby Archibald Henderson in _Atlantic_, vol. 103, p. 227; \"Die\nQuintessenz des Shawismus\" by Helene Richter (Leipzig, 1913); \"Bernard\nShaw\" by Julius Bab (Berlin: Fischer).\n\nThe ingenious Allen Upward has written a futuristic satire on Shaw\nin the form of a play: \"Paradise Found or the Superman Found Out\"\n(Houghton Mifflin, 1915). In Act I The Sleeper Wakes, \u00e0 la Wells, two\nhundred years hence, finding himself in the Shaw Memorial Hall in the\ncustody of the Most Noble Order of Hereditary Fabians, chief of whom\nare the Lady Wells and the Lord Keir-Hardie. The second act is set in\nthe Headquarters of the Anti-Shavian League, which the awakened and\ndisillusionized Shaw joins. The third act is in the Cabinet of H. V. M.\nMaharajah Sri Singh Bahadar, for of course India outvoted England as\nsoon as universal suffrage was introduced into the British Empire.\n\n\n[1] Published by Brentano's, 1904.\n\n[2] Published by Brentano's, 1909.\n\n[3] Mr. McCabe, in his life of Shaw, gives an interesting account of\none of these addresses, that on \"Christian Economics\" at the City\nTemple in 1913. But Shaw is too much of a Christian still to suit\nMcCabe.\n\n[4] See for instance Shaw's book on \"The Common Sense of Municipal\nTrading\", based upon his experience as Vestryman and Borough Councillor.\n\n[5] Pease, in his \"History of the Fabian Society\", gives an interesting\naccount of these diverse movements which in their inception were\nclosely allied. See also Knight's \"Memorials of Thomas Davidson: the\nWandering Scholar\" and James' delightful sketch, \"The Knight-Errant\nof the Intellectual Life\", in his posthumous volume of \"Memories and\nStudies.\"\n\n[6] Printed in The Independent, July 28, 1910.\n\n[7] For Shaw's opinions on phonetics see \"Pygmalion\", \"Captain\nBrassbound's Conversion\", and Henderson's biography, p. 326.\n\n[8] Von unmusikalischen England und seiner musikalischen Heilsarmee.\nDeutscher Wille, February, 1916.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\n\nH. G. WELLS\n\n\nScientific Futurist\n\n\n    We are in the beginning of the greatest change that humanity\n    has ever undergone. There is no shock, no epoch-making\n    incident--but then there is no shock at a cloudy daybreak.\n    At no point can we say, \"Here it commences, now; last minute\n    was night and this is morning.\" But insensibly we are in the\n    day. If we care to look, we can foresee growing knowledge,\n    growing order, and presently a deliberate improvement of\n    the blood and character of the race. And what we can see\n    and imagine gives us a measure and gives us faith for what\n    surpasses the imagination.\n\n    It is possible to believe that all the past is but the\n    beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been\n    is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe\n    that all that the human mind has ever accomplished is but\n    the dream before the awakening. We cannot see, there is\n    no need for us to see, what this world will be like when\n    the day has fully come. We are creatures of the twilight.\n    But it is out of our race and lineage that minds will\n    spring that will reach back to us in our littleness to\n    know us better than we know ourselves, and that will reach\n    forward fearlessly to comprehend this future that defeats\n    our eyes. All this world is heavy with the promise of\n    greater things, and a day will come, one day in the unending\n    succession of days, when beings, beings who are now latent\n    in our thoughts and hidden in our loins, shall stand upon\n    this earth as one stands upon a footstool, and shall laugh\n    and reach out their hands amid the stars.--\"The Discovery of\n    the Future\" (1902).\n\n\nIs Wells also among the prophets? Surely, and none with better right,\neven though we use the word \"prophet\" in its narrowest and most\nordinary sense as one who foretells the future. He has foretold many\nfutures for us, some utterly abhorrent, others more or less attractive.\nIf we shudder at the thought of humanity on a freezing world fighting\na losing battle with gigantic crustaceans as in \"The Time Machine\",\nor being suffocated on a blazing world as in \"The Star\", or being\ncrushed under the tyranny of an omnipotent trust as in \"When the\nSleeper Wakes\"--if none of these please us, then we have the option\nof a businesslike and efficient organization of society under the\ndomination of the engineer as in \"Anticipations\", or a socialistic\nstate under the beneficent sway of the Samurai as in \"A Modern Utopia,\"\nor an instantaneous amelioration of human nature as \"In the Days of the\nComet.\" In thus presenting various solutions to the world problem Wells\nis not inconsistent. Every complicated equation has several roots,\nsome of them imaginary. In solving a physical problem the scientist\nbegins by disentangling the forces involved and then, taking them one\nat a time, calculates what would be the effect if the other forces did\nnot act. So Wells is applying the scientific method to sociology when\nhe attempts to isolate social forces and deal with them singly. If\nnothing intervenes to divert it, says the hydraulic engineer, the water\nof this mountain stream will develop such a momentum on reaching the\nvalley. If no limitations are placed upon the consolidation of capital,\nsays Mr. Wells, we may have a handful of directors ruling the world, as\ndepicted in \"When the Sleeper Wakes.\"\n\nIn its power to forecast the future science finds both its validation\nand justification. By this alone it tests its conclusions and\ndemonstrates its usefulness. In fact, the sole object of science\nis prophecy, as Ostwald and Poincar\u00e9 make plain. The mind of the\nscientific man is directed forward and he has no use for history except\nas it gives him data by which to draw a curve that he may project\ninto the future. It is, therefore, not a chance direction of his\nfancy that so many of Wells's books, both romances and studies, deal\nwith the future. It is the natural result of his scientific training,\nwhich not only led him to a rich unworked field of fictional\nmotives, but made him consider the problems of life from a novel and\nvery illuminative point of view. He gave definite expression to this\nphilosophy in a remarkable address on \"The Discovery of the Future\",\ndelivered at the Royal Institution of London, January 24, 1902. Here\nhe shows that there is a growing tendency in modern times to shift the\ncenter of gravity from the past to the future and to determine the\nmoral value of an act by its consequences rather than by its relation\nto some precedent. The justification of a war, for instance, may either\nbe by reference to the past or to the future; that is, it may be based\neither upon some supposititious claim and violated treaty, or upon the\nassumed advantage to one or both parties. This idea, that in the moral\nevaluation of an act its results should be taken into consideration,\nhas been popularly ascribed to the Jesuits, but since they have\nrepeatedly and indignantly denied that it ever formed part of their\nteaching, it is questionable whether they could claim it now when it\nis becoming fashionable. At any rate, it is interesting to note that\nWells gave very clear expression to this pragmatic principle five years\nbefore the publication of \"Pragmatism\" by James.\n\nI hope that Mr. Wells will work out in detail his theory of prevision\nas a motive for morality. We cannot have too many such motives, and it\nis quite possible that this factor has not been fully recognized in\nour ethical systems, though I have no doubt that, as is usually the\ncase with discoveries, especially in ethics, the theory is not quite so\nnovel as it seems to him. In the meantime, I would call his attention\nto two weak points in argument, as he has sketched it in this lecture.\nHe gives as an example of the two ways of looking at a problem the old\nquestion of whether a bad promise is better broken or kept. The \"legal\nmind\" would regard the promise as inviolable; the \"creative mind\" would\nsay that in view of future consequences it should be disregarded. But\nI would suggest that, if morality is, as he defines it, \"an overriding\nof immediate and personal considerations out of regard to something to\nbe attained in the future\", the one who viewed the act most clearly\nin the light of the future would keep the promise even at the cost of\nsome suffering to himself and others rather than bring the lack of\nconfidence which results from a violated oath.\n\nI would also point out that the followers of dogma are not to be\nclassed so positively with those who look only on the past.\nCertainly those whose morality is based on the hope of heaven and the\nfear of hell--and this is too numerous a class to be ignored--are as\ntruly guided by their ideas of the future as are those who are working\nfor the prosperity of the \"Beyond-Man\" some thousand years hence.\nJonathan Edwards's first resolution was typical. It reads:\n\n    I. Resolved, That _I will do whatsoever_ I think to be most\n    to God's glory and my own good, profit and pleasure, on THE\n    WHOLE; without any consideration of the time, whether now,\n    or never so many myriads of ages hence; to do whatever I\n    think to be my duty, and most for the good and advantage of\n    mankind in general--whatever _difficulties_ I meet with, how\n    many and how great soever.\n\nThe highest morality is attained, in my opinion, by the class which Mr.\nWells despises--namely, those who disregard neither causes nor effects,\nbut consider every act in the light of both the past and the future.\nFor this reason we are grateful to Mr. Wells for the light he is giving\nus on the future by his efforts in scientific prophecy.\n\nWells defines two divergent types of mind by the relative importance\nthey attach to things past or things to come. The former type he calls\nthe legal or submissive mind, \"because the business, the practice\nand the training of a lawyer dispose him toward it; he of all men\nmust most constantly refer to the law made, the right established,\nthe precedent set, and most consistently ignore or condemn the thing\nthat is only seeking to establish itself.\" In opposition to this is\n\"the legislative, creative, organizing, masterful type\", which is\nperpetually attacking and altering the established order of things; it\nis constructive and \"interprets the present and gives value to this or\nthat entirely in relation to things designed or foreseen.\" The use of\nthe term \"legislative\" for this latter type is confusing, at least to\nan American, because unfortunately most of our legislators are lawyers\nand have minds of the legal or conventional type. \"Scientific\" would be\na better term than \"legislative\", because most of our real revolutions\nin thought and industry originate in the laboratory.\n\nIn his \"Modern Utopia\" Wells introduces a more complete classification\nof mankind into (1) the Poietic, that is, the creative and original\ngenius, often erratic or abnormal; (2) the Kinetic, that is, the\nefficient, energetic, \"business man\" type; (3) the Dull, \"the people\nwho never seem to learn thoroughly or hear distinctly or think\nclearly\", and (4) the Base, those deficient in moral sense.\nThe first two categories of Wells, the Poietic and Kinetic,\ncorrespond roughly to Ostwald's Romanticist and Classicist types of\nscientific men.[1] I have laid stress upon Wells's point of view and\nclassification of temperaments because it seems to me that it gives the\nclue to his literary work. This is voluminous and remarkably varied,\nyet through all its forms can be traced certain simple leading motives.\nIndeed I am unable to resist the temptation to formulate his favorite\ntheme as: _The reaction of society against a disturbing force._\n\nThis certainly is the basic idea of much of his work and most of the\nbest of it. He hit upon it early and he has repeated it in endless\nvariations since. The disturbing force may be an individual of the\ncreative or poietic type, an overpowering passion, a new idea, a social\norganization or a material change in the conditions of life. Whatever\nit may be, the natural inertia of society causes it to resist the\nforeign influence, to enforce compliance upon the aberrant individual,\nor to meet the new conditions by as little readjustment as possible.\nUsually the social organism is successful in overpowering the intruder\nor rebel, and on the whole we must admit that this is advantageous,\neven though it sometimes does involve the sacrifice of genius and\nthe retardation of progress. Certainly no one is good enough or wise\nenough to be trusted with irresponsible power.\n\nThis is the lesson of \"The Invisible Man.\" We all have been struck,\nprobably, by a thought of the advantages which personal invisibility\nwould confer. It is one of the most valued of fairy gifts. But perhaps\nonly Wells has thought of the disadvantages of invisibility, how\ndemoralizing such a condition would be to the individual, and yet how\npowerless he would be against the mass of ordinary people. Assuming\nthat a man had discovered a way to become invisible by altering the\nrefractive power of his body, as broken glass becomes invisible in\nwater, in what situation would he be? He would be naked, of course,\nand he could not carry anything in his hands or eat in public. If it\nwere winter he would leave tracks and would catch cold and sneeze. So\nthe invisible man who starts to rob and murder at his own sweet will\nis soon run down by boys, dogs, and villagers as ignominiously as any\ncommon thief.\n\nA more artistic expression to the same theme is given in \"The Country\nof the Blind.\" A young man tumbled into an isolated valley of the\nAndes where lived a community which had through some hereditary\ndisease lost many generations ago the power of sight. The stranger\nfirst thought of the proverb, \"In the country of the blind the one-eyed\nman is king\", but when he tried to demonstrate his superiority he found\nit impossible. His talk about \"seeing\" the natives held to be the\nravings of a madman and his clumsiness in their dark houses as proof\nof defective senses. He was as much at a disadvantage in a community\nwhere everything is adapted to the sightless as a blind man is in ours.\nHe falls in love with a girl, but before he is allowed to marry her he\nmust be cured of his hallucinations; a simple surgical operation, the\nremoval of the two irritable bodies protuberant from his brain, will\nrestore him to normality, say the blind surgeons, and make a sane and\nuseful citizen of him. The entreaties of his lady love are added to the\ncoercion of public opinion to induce him to consent. The exceptional\nman is beaten, he must either conform to the community or leave it.\nNo matter how the story ends. The true novelist and dramatist, like\nthe true mathematician, finds his satisfaction in correctly stating a\nproblem, not in working it out.\n\nThe theme of these parables, the comparative powerlessness of the\nindividual, however exceptionally endowed, against the coercive force\nof environment, Wells has developed at length in his novels; in \"The\nNew Machiavelli\", for instance, where a statesman at the height of his\npublic usefulness is overthrown and banished because he had succumbed\nto selfish passion and violated the moral code. Parnell is popularly\nsupposed to be the model for this character rather more than the\noriginal Machiavelli, but it is, unfortunately, a type not rare either\nin history or fiction. Indeed this may be called the common plot of\ntragedy from the time when it began to be written, the vulnerable\nheel of Achilles, the little defect of character or ability that\nprecipitates the catastrophe.\n\nIn Wells's hands this motive takes most fantastic forms. There was,\nfor example, \"The Man Who Could Work Miracles\"; \"his name was George\nMcWhirter Fotheringay--not the sort of name by any means to lead to\nany expectation of miracles--and he was clerk at Gomshott's\"; \"he\nwas a little man and had eyes of a hot brown, very erect red hair,\na mustache with ends he twisted up, and freckles.\" This unpromising\nlooking individual, and he was a blatant skeptic, too, becomes suddenly\npossessed of the power to make anything happen that he wills, but\nhe finds the use of this mysterious gift by no means to his advantage.\nIt brings him and others into all sorts of trouble, and only his\nrenunciation of it saves the world from destruction. Mr. Fotheringay\nlived in Church Row, and since Mr. Wells lives in the same street he\nperhaps knew him personally.\n\nIn \"The War of Worlds\" the earth is invaded by Martians, who are not\nin the least like those of Du Maurier or Professor Flournoy, but\noctopus-like creatures as far above mankind in intellect and command\nof machinery as we are above the animals, supermen surpassing the\nimagination of Nietzsche. They stride over the earth in machines of\nimpregnable armor and devastate town and country with searchlights\nprojecting rays more destructive than those of radium and much like\nBulwer-Lytton's \"vril.\" They feed on human blood and, if humanity is\nnot to perish or become as sheep to these invaders, men and women must\ntake to sewers and such like hiding places and wage incessant warfare\nagainst overwhelming odds.\n\nIn a passage that is to me the most gripping of anything Wells has\nwritten, a few unconquerable spirits plan the life that mankind must\nlead under these terrible conditions, but they are relieved from\nthe necessity of putting it into execution by the interposition of\nan unexpected ally in the form of the most minute of creatures, the\nmicrobe. The men from Mars, not being immune to terrestrial diseases,\nare annihilated by one of them.\n\nThe formula remains the same although conditions are reversed in \"The\nFirst Men in the Moon\", for men, being naturally larger than the lunar\npeople, might be supposed to dominate them, but, on the contrary, the\nant-like inhabitants of the moon conquer the earthly invaders.\n\nIn \"The Wonderful Visit\" a curate goes out hunting for rare birds and\nshoots an angel on the wing. But the heavenly visitant does not play\nthe r\u00f4le of the angel in Jerome's \"The Passing of the Third Floor Back\"\nand transform the character of all he meets. Wells's angel does not fit\ninto the parish life, and everybody is relieved when he disappears. The\nsame idea, the reaction of conventional society toward the unusual,\nis illustrated by \"The Sea-Lady\", where, instead of an angel from the\nsky, we have a mermaid from the ocean brought into the circle of a\nsummer resort. Mr. Wells has said that by the sea-lady he meant to\nsymbolize \"love as a disturbing passion\", the same theme as \"The New\nMachiavelli.\" It may be taken to mean that, of course, or half a\ndozen other things as well. We are at liberty to disregard Mr. Wells's\ninterpretation if we like. It is not an author's business to explain\nwhat his works mean. In fact it seems a bit officious and impertinent\nfor him to attempt it. How little would there be left of the great\nliterature of the world if it were reduced to what the author literally\nand consciously had in mind when he wrote. The value of any work of art\ndepends upon what may be got out of it, not what was put into it.\n\n\"The Food of the Gods\" is a case in point. These children who are\nfed on \"boom-food\" (presumably an extract from the pituitary body of\nthe brain) and grow to gianthood may be taken to represent any new\ntransforming force. If the story was conceived in Wells's earlier\ndays he may have meant by it the power of science. If in the days of\n\"Anticipations\" he more likely had in mind efficiency or \"scientific\nmanagement.\" If when he was a member of the Fabian Society it doubtless\nstood for Socialism. Such questions may well be left to the future\nbiographer who will take an interest in tracing out the genesis of\nhis thought. Really it makes no difference to the reader, for the\nessential thing is to note that the reaction of society toward any\nunprecedented factor is the same. That in various parts of the country\na new and gigantic race was growing up aroused at first a certain\nsensational interest, but this soon died down. People became accustomed\nto seeing the giant boys and girls and even set them at work. Later as\nit was realized that the giants could not be adapted to the existing\nsocial structure, but meant its overthrow, the government attempted\nto segregate and limit them, and at length, finding no compromise\npossible, determined to exterminate them. This brings about a duel to\nthe death between the little race and the big, and there could be no\ndoubt as to the issue.\n\nChesterton says[2]:\n\n    \"The Food of the Gods\" is the tale of \"Jack the\n    Giant-Killer\" told from the point of view of the giant. This\n    has not, I think, been done before in literature; but I have\n    little doubt that the psychological substance of it existed\n    in fact. I have little doubt that the giant whom Jack killed\n    did regard himself as the Superman. It is likely enough that\n    he considered Jack a narrow and parochial person who wished\n    to frustrate a great forward movement of the life-force.\n    If (as not infrequently was the case) he happened to have\n    two heads, he would point out the elementary maxim which\n    declares them to be better than one. He would enlarge on the\n    subtle modernity of such an equipment, enabling a giant\n    to look at a subject from two points of view, or to correct\n    himself with promptitude. But Jack was the champion of the\n    enduring human standards, of the principle of one man one\n    head, and one man one conscience, of the single head and the\n    single heart and the single eye. Jack was quite unimpressed\n    by the question of whether the giant was a particularly\n    gigantic giant. All he wished to know was whether he was a\n    good giant--that is, a giant who was any good to us. What\n    were the giant's religious views; what his views on politics\n    and the duties of the citizen? Was he fond of children--or\n    fond of them only in a dark and sinister sense? To use a\n    fine phrase for emotional sanity, was his heart in the right\n    place? Jack had sometimes to cut him up with a sword in\n    order to find out.\n\nNothing could better illustrate the difference in standpoint between\nChesterton and Wells than this. The sympathies of Wells are undoubtedly\nwith the giants, with the new forces that aim to transform the world,\nthough he is not always confident of their ultimate triumph. Being a\nman of scientific training, he is a determinist but not a fatalist.\nAll his prophecies are conditional. If the gulf between industrial\nand parasitic classes keeps on widening there will eventually be two\nraces, and the former will be master; this is the lesson of \"The Time\nMachine.\" If the engineer and business manager get control we shall\nhave the well ordered prosperity of \"Anticipations.\" If Socialism\nprevails we shall have the Great State. His stories of the future are\nabout equally divided between optimistic and pessimistic prophecy,\nbetween allurements and warnings.\n\n\"In the Days of the Comet\"[3] he uses again the mechanism of the most\nartistic of his earlier short stories, \"The Star\", which is a little\ngem in its way without a superfluous word or a false tone. But those\nwere the days when Mr. Wells was writing for pleasure; now he writes\nfor a purpose, so the two stories resemble each other only in their\ncommon theme, the swishing across the earth of a comet's tail. In\nthe former tale the event was viewed by a man in Mars who reported\nto his fellow scientists that the earth was little damaged, for the\ndestruction of all life on it was too insignificant an event to be\nnoticed at that distance. In the present book the earth was decidedly\nbenefited, and the history is told by a man more foreign to us than\nthe Martian, for he is a citizen of the new civilization that followed\nthe \"Great Change.\" A wonderful transformation had been effected in\nour atmosphere by its mingling with the cometary gases. The inert\nnitrogen of the air had been changed to some life-giving, clarifying,\nand stimulating gas; it would be unfair to the author to infer that\nthis was nitrous oxid, more familiarly known as \"laughing gas.\" Under\nits influence the inhabitants of the earth perceive the evils of our\npresent r\u00e9gime and realize that they are mostly avoidable if everybody\nhad good intentions and good sense. As an argument for Socialism it\nis a very weak one, for it gives away the case by conceding, at the\noutset, the main objection of the conservative, that you will have\nto change human nature before Socialism becomes possible. Of course,\nif all men were well-meaning and wise Socialism would be practical.\nIt would also be unnecessary, because any social machinery, or,\nindeed, none at all, would work well enough under these conditions.\nThe difficulty is to devise any changes that will make it work better\nwith people as they are. That better people than we would be able\nto make for themselves better ways of living, nobody denies. That\nsocial, institutions influence the character of individuals, and that\nindividuals influence the character of institutions, are correlative\ntruths, but it is difficult for most people to keep them both in\nmind. Mr. Wells's collectivist conversion by a \"green gas\" is much\nthe same thing as individualist conversion by religious influence,\nbut we know of instances of the latter, while the former is purely\nhypothetical.\n\nBut, of course, the object of the book is not to show how Socialism can\ncome about, but to assist in making it come about by acting on readers\nas a dose of the \"green gas\" and opening our eyes to the vulgarity,\nsilliness, squalor, and wastefulness of our daily life. Mr. Wells is\nan artist by nature and a scientist by training, and ugliness and\nstupidity worry him more than wickedness and injustice. In fact, he\nwould probably class all the evils of civilization under stupidity.\nBut long ago it was said that against stupidity even the gods fight in\nvain, and it remains to be seen whether Socialists will succeed better.\n\nThe most attractive pages of the book to me are those that describe\n\"the festival of the rubbish burnings\", though Wells does not improve\nupon Washington Irving's treatment of the same theme. There are several\nthings owned by our neighbors, even by relatives, which we should like\nto cast upon the flames. But we are afraid to light the bonfire lest\nthe neighbors should burn up some of our treasures. That war is also\nan example of human stupidity, we agree, but just how to prevent\nit altogether until the rest of the world comes to our opinion, we do\nnot understand. It takes two to stop a quarrel. The fleets of England\nand Germany were engaged in bombarding each other when the renovating\ncomet struck the earth, but as soon as the eyes of the combatants and\nthe \"statesmen\" who had instigated it were opened, and their anger\nquenched, it seemed incredible to them that they should have sought\nto kill each other for such trivial and remote causes. Jules Verne\nhas a similar scene in \"Dr. Ox's Experiment\", but in that case the\ngas acts in the opposite way to excite the sluggish inhabitants of a\npeaceful Flemish village to make war against the neighboring village,\nand as soon as they are out of the contaminated atmosphere they look in\nbewilderment at the deadly weapons in their hands. Eight years later\nWells's worst forebodings came to pass, but no \"green gas\" came to\nclear the air of hate.\n\nBut the particular passion that Wells would sweep away by the breath\nof his comet is one which, in the opinion of most people, is necessary\nto the maintenance of morality, that is, jealousy. The young English\nworkingman who tells the story is infuriated against the young\naristocrat who had seduced his sweetheart and is pursuing them\nwith a revolver when the \"Great Change\" comes. Then he is content\nto share her affections with his former rival, and they all lived\ntogether happily ever after. In his works on Socialism Wells gives\nhis reasons for thinking that, whether we wish it or not, the family\nis disintegrating, and that only under Socialism, which will insure a\nsupport sufficient for independence to both men and women, can better\nrelations be established.\n\nWe might have known that as soon as science discovered the new world\ninside the atom the story-writer would follow close behind. We might\nalso have known that H. G. Wells would be the first to exploit this new\nterritory annexed to human knowledge, for he has always kept an eye on\nscientific progress even while seemingly engrossed in British politics\nand marriage problems. So he wrote a romance of the atom, \"The World\nSet Free\", describing the Great War months before it happened.\n\nOur sleepy earth has been caught napping by every great change that\nhas thus far reached humanity, and probably Mr. Wells is quite right\nin supposing that a sudden release of the vast stores of energy hidden\nin the atom would find civilization as unprepared for the social,\neconomic, political, and intellectual results of the new energies in\nindustry as it was for the effects of the great industrial revolution\nwhich followed the introduction of steam power not much more than a\ncentury ago.\n\nBut Mr. Wells has the alertest literary imagination of any modern\nwriter; the significance of the new physics has not escaped him as it\nhas the common run of novelists intently searching for good plots and\nneglecting entirely the rich ore awaiting any writer who happened to\nhave an elementary knowledge of modern science. Many short stories and\none or two novels have introduced more or less accurate accounts of\nradium as a side-show to a love story or an incident in a detective\ntale. But it required the boldness of Mr. Wells to throw overboard\nentirely the conventional novel plot and make a hero of the cosmic\nenergies. \"The World Set Free\" resembles \"The War in the Air\" in its\nvivid account of world-wide war, nations armed with novel weapons and\nforces, appalling power for destruction and attack in the hands of\nevery nation, together with complete incapacity for defense by any\nnation, the resulting collapse of credit, panic, starvation, anarchy\nand a general social _d\u00e9b\u00e2cle_. But while the \"war in the air\" meant\nthe end of civilization, the war with \"atomic bombs\" in the present\nbook results in a general treaty of peace, the foundation of a world\nstate under a provisional government, and a successful reorganization\nof society in which the forces which had been used by nations and\nempires to conquer each other are directed to the task of subduing\nnature to human aims.\n\nLike the reconstructed world of \"In the Days of the Comet\" the future\nstate is very faintly depicted, hinted at rather than described, in\n\"The World Set Free.\" It differs from the numerous other Utopias of\nMr. Wells in that, whereas the world states of \"Anticipations\", \"A\nModern Utopia\", \"In the Days of the Comet\", etc., could be brought\nabout by nothing more than taking the author's advice on politics,\nlaw, economics, and social customs, \"The World Set Free\" depends\nupon scientific discovery. A new hypothesis, in short, has given the\ninhabitants of this Utopia an advantage over all previous Utopias. They\nhave energy at their command almost as freely accessible as water or\nair, and so the labor question is annihilated, the whole world becomes\na leisure class, and everybody is free to devote his life to gardening,\nartistic decoration, and scientific research. Country life becomes a\nconstant delight. The agriculturist shrinks to less than one per cent\nof the population. The lawyer follows the warrior into extinction.\n\"Contentious professions cease to be an honorable employment for men.\"\n\nThe Parliament of the World, which came into existence after the atomic\nexplosions of 1950, was simple and sensible; fifty new representatives\nelected every five years; proportional representation; every man and\nwoman with an equal vote; election for life subject to recall; each\nvoter putting on his ballot the names of those he wishes elected and\nthose he wishes recalled; a representative recallable by as many votes\nas the quota that elected him. But political machinery does not count\nfor much in this most modern of Utopias. A scrap of the conversation\nbetween the President of the United States and King Egbert, \"the young\nking of the most venerable kingdom in Europe\", will illustrate the\npoint of view:\n\n    \"Science,\" the King cried presently, \"is the new king of the\n    world.\"\n\n    \"Our view,\" said the President, \"is that sovereignty resides\n    with the people.\"\n\n    \"No,\" said the King, \"the sovereign is a being more subtle\n    than that, and less arithmetical; neither my family nor your\n    emancipated people. It is something that floats about us\n    and above us and through us. It is that common impersonal\n    will and sense of necessity of which science is the best\n    understood and most typical aspect. It is the mind of the\n    race. It is that which has brought us here, which has bowed\n    us all to its demands.\"\n\nThe agency which effects this transformation is the discovery of how\nto release the internal energy of the atom, which we now know exists,\nalthough we do not know how to get at it. Since wealth is essentially\nnothing but energy this means that we have within reach enough to\nmake multi-millionaires of all of us; a tantalizing thought. The new\ndisintegrating element, according to Mr. Wells, is carolinum, an\nelement that Professor Baskerville also discovered on paper a few years\nago. This exhaustless supply of energy being utilized in machinery sets\nfree the laborer and swells the army of the unemployed; and since,\nincidentally, one of the by-products of its decomposition is gold, the\nfinancial systems of the world go to smash. But naturally carolinum\nfinds speedy employment in war. A bomb of it buried in the soil becomes\na perpetual volcano, half of it exploding every seventeen days. A few\nbombs of this radioactive element dropped from aeroplanes demolish\nParis and Berlin and throw the world into a chaos of confusion,\nwhich Wells's characteristic style, with its flashlight visions, its\ntumultuous phrases, and its shifting points of view, its alternations\nof generalization and detail, is particularly adapted to depict.\n\nThe value of this romance, aside from its interest, lies in the\nemphatic way in which it teaches the lesson that civilization is\nprimarily a matter of the utilization of natural energy and is\nmeasurable in horse power. Unfortunately we have to depend upon the\nsunshine, either that of the present or of the carboniferous era; we\nhave no key to the treasure-house of the atom. Radium gives out its\nenergy without haste or rest, just as fast at the temperature of liquid\nair as at the temperature of liquid iron, always keeping itself a\nlittle hotter than its surroundings, however hot these may be. If only\nwe could get at this source of exhaustless energy--but let Wells say\nwhat that would mean:\n\n    Not only should we have a source of power so potent that a\n    man might carry in his hand the energy to light a city for\n    a year, fight a fleet of battleships or drive one of our\n    giant liners across the Atlantic; but we should also have\n    a clue that would enable us at last to quicken the process\n    of disintegration in all the other elements, where decay\n    is still so slow as to escape our finest measurements.\n    Every scrap of solid matter in the world would become an\n    available reservoir of concentrated force.\n\n    It would mean a change in human conditions that I can only\n    compare to the discovery of fire, that first discovery\n    that lifted man above the brute. We stand to-day toward\n    radio-activity exactly as our ancestor stood toward fire\n    before he had learnt to make it. He knew it then only as a\n    strange thing utterly beyond his control, a flare on the\n    crest of the volcano, a red destruction that poured through\n    the forest. So it is that we know radio-activity to-day.\n    This--this is the dawn of a new day in human living. At\n    the climax of that civilization which had its beginning in\n    the hammered flint and the fire-stick of the savage, just\n    when it is becoming apparent that our ever-increasing needs\n    cannot be borne indefinitely by our present sources of\n    energy, we discover suddenly the possibility of an entirely\n    new civilization. The energy we need for our very existence,\n    and with which Nature supplies us still so grudgingly, is in\n    reality locked up in inconceivable quantities all about us.\n    We cannot pick that lock at present, but....\n\n    Then that perpetual struggle for existence, that perpetual\n    struggle to live on the bare surplus of Nature's energies\n    will cease to be the lot of Man. Man will step from the\n    pinnacle of this civilization to the beginning of the\n    next.[4]\n\nWells is a futurist in the true sense of the word, appraising all\nthings by what shall come out of them. This led him to a realization of\nthe importance of eugenics long before the fad came in. In \"Mankind\nin the Making\" he formulated his test of civilization in these words:\n\n    Any collective human enterprise, institution, party, or\n    state, is to be judged as a whole and completely, as it\n    conduces more or less to wholesome and hopeful births and\n    according to the qualitative and quantitative advance due to\n    its influence toward a higher and ampler standard of life.\n\nBut when it comes to practical measures for securing these advantages,\nWells shows a characteristic timidity. He condemns certain obvious\ndysgenic measures, such as the action of school boards in imposing\ncelibacy upon women teachers, but in several respects legislation\nin America has already gone beyond what he ten years ago considered\npossible. So, too, in his \"Anticipations\" he suggested as future\npossibilities inventions and practices that were then familiar to us\nin this country. It is hard for a man nowadays to be a prophet. If he\ndoesn't look sharp he will find himself an historian instead.\n\nWhen H. G. Wells in 1902 essayed the r\u00f4le of prophet and in his volume\nentitled \"Anticipations\" tried to forecast the future of the world\non scientific principles, he excited the same popular interest that\nany guess at coming events arouses, but there were few who took\nhim seriously. Now, however, \"Anticipations\" makes very interesting\nreading. Much of it has already come to pass, and we see that Wells's\nchief mistake lay in putting his forecast too far ahead; for instance,\nwhen he says that he is \"inclined to believe.... that very probably\nbefore 1950 a successful aeroplane will have soared and come home safe\nand sound.\"\n\nThe chapter on war in \"Anticipations\" shows astonishing power of\nprescience in what he says of the use of the submarine and armored\nautomobile, the development of trench warfare, the substitution of the\nmachine gun for the rifle, and the abolition of the distinction between\nmilitary and civilian parts of a nation. His discussion of the new\nforms of warfare and the inadequacy of the old methods of management\nand training is full of warnings which it were well for his country to\nhave heeded. This is shown if we compare that feeling passage in which\nhe describes a future British army setting out to meet a scientifically\norganized foe with an actual battle on the Artois field as seen from\nthe German side. The first column is quoted from \"Anticipations\",\npublished fifteen years ago. The second column is taken from\nKellermann's picture of the battle of Loos, September 22, 1915,\npublished in the _Continental Times_ of Berlin. Bernard Kellermann, one\nof the most brilliant of the younger writers of Germany, is well known\nin America through his novel, \"The Tunnel\", dealing with a submarine\npassage to Europe.\n\n\n\n    THE PROPHECY, 1902\n\n\n    I seem to see, almost as if he were symbolic, the gray old\n    general--the general who learned his art of war away in the\n    vanished nineteenth century, the altogether too elderly\n    general with his epaulettes and decorations, his uniform\n    that has still its historical value, his spurs and his\n    sword--riding along on his obsolete horse, by the side of\n    his doomed column. Above all things he is a gentleman. And\n    the column looks at him lovingly with its countless boys'\n    faces, and the boys' eyes are infinitely trustful, for he\n    has won battles in the old time. They will believe in him\n    to the end. They have been brought up in their schools to\n    believe in him and his class, their mothers have mingled\n    respect for the gentlefolk with the simple doctrines of\n    their faith, their first lesson on entering the army was\n    the salute. The \"smart\" helmets His Majesty, or some such\n    unqualified person, chose for them lie hotly on their young\n    brows, and over their shoulders slope their obsolete,\n    carelessly-sighted guns. Tramp, tramp, they march, doing\n    what they have been told to do, incapable of doing anything\n    they have not been told to do, trustful and pitiful,\n    marching to wounds and disease, hunger, hardship, and death.\n    They know nothing of what they are going to meet, nothing of\n    what they will have to do; religion and the rate-payer and\n    the rights of the parent working through the instrumentality\n    of the best club in the world have kept their souls and\n    minds, if not untainted, at least only harmlessly veneered\n    with the thinnest sham of training or knowledge. Tramp,\n    tramp, they go, boys who will never be men, rejoicing\n    patriotically in the nation that has thus sent them forth,\n    badly armed, badly clothed, badly led, to be killed in\n    some avoidable quarrel by men unseen. And beside them, an\n    absolute stranger to them, a stranger even in habits of\n    speech and thought, and at any rate to be shot with them\n    fairly and squarely, marches the sub\u00adaltern--the son of the\n    school-burking, share-holding class--a slightly taller sort\n    of boy, as ill-taught as they are in all that concerns the\n    realities of life, ignorant of how to get food, how to get\n    water, how to keep fever down and strength up, ignorant of\n    his practical equality with the men beside him, carefully\n    trained under a clerical head\u00admaster to use a crib, play\n    cricket rather nicely, look all right whatever happens,\n    believe in his gentility, and avoid talking \"shop.\"\n\n    So the gentlemanly old general--the polished drover to the\n    shambles--rides, and his doomed column march by, in this\n    vision that haunts my mind.\n\n    I cannot foresee what such a force will even attempt to do\n    against modern weapons. Nothing can happen but the needless\n    and most wasteful and pitiful killing of these poor lads,\n    who make up the infantry battalions, the main mass of all\n    the European armies of to-day, whenever they come against a\n    sanely organized army. There is nowhere they can come in;\n    there is nothing they can do.\n\n    The scattered, invisible marks\u00admen with their supporting\n    guns will shatter their masses, pick them off individually,\n    cover their line of retreat and force them into wholesale\n    surrenders. It will be more like herding sheep than actual\n    fighting. Yet the bitterest and crudest things will have to\n    happen, thousands and thousands of poor boys will be smashed\n    in all sorts of dreadful ways and given over to every\n    conceivable form of avoidable hardship and painful disease\n    before the obvious fact that war is no longer a business for\n    half-trained lads in uniform, led by parson-bred sixth-form\n    boys and men of pleasure and old men, but an exhaustive\n    demand upon very carefully educated adults for the most\n    strenuous best that is in them, will get its practical\n    recognition.[5]\n\n\n\n\n    THE FULFILLMENT, 1915\n\n\n    They made the essay with absolutely new, absolutely\n    antiquated tactics--tactics which are no longer recognized\n    in this war. It was something really un\u00adheard of! Our staff\n    officers stood and regarded it--their mouths open in\n    astonishment. It was observed, shortly before noon, that\n    the English were advancing toward our positions in dense\n    masses, eight lines deep in echelon--from Loos. A hail of\n    shells that churned up the ground was supposed to smooth\n    the way for the storming columns. At the same time, to the\n    east of Loos (there is a bit of rising ground there scarcely\n    noticeable as you drive over it in a wagon, called Hill 70),\n    we saw English artillery come riding up--quite open--in the\n    broad of day--under the naked heavens! These batteries\n    carried bridge materials with them for the crossing of\n    trenches and natural obstacles. The English general we\n    caught describes this action as one that was especially\n    \"sporting.\" There can be no doubt about its dashing\n    quality. But there was more to come. In the distance, on\n    the level plain, one or two English cavalry regiments\n    were visible--Dragoons of the Guard. Eight lines of\n    infantry? Artillery driving across the open? Cavalry in the\n    background? It was really unbelievable! It was the plan of a\n    veritable pitched battle from a forgotten age, the masterly\n    idea of a senile brain, which had come limping along fifty\n    years behind the times! Generals in our day grow obsolete as\n    rapidly as inventions and sciences. The war has taught us\n    that the blood of nations, the incalculably precious blood,\n    is to be entrusted only to the freshest, the most elastic,\n    the most gifted of military spirits, the very cream of the\n    crop. Those old celebrities of theirs, staggering under\n    their orders, should have been consigned to relay stations\n    by the English. The English troops carried out their attack\n    with a splendid gesture, with admirable bravoure. They\n    were young and they bore no orders on their uniforms. They\n    carried out the commands of their celebrated and senile\n    authorities, carried them out with a blind courage--in this\n    day of mortars, telephones and machine-guns. As magnificent\n    as was their bearing, even so pitiful was the collapse of\n    their onslaught. Before the eightfold storming columns had\n    been able to make ten steps, they came under our combined\n    fire-rifles, machine-guns, cannon. The batteries were lying\n    in wait and they obeyed the telephone. The English knights\n    and baronets had not reckoned with this. Fresh reserves\n    came running up and were mown down in the cross-fire of our\n    machine-guns. Those riding batteries came to a miserable\n    end. They too came within the zone of the machine-guns,\n    and our heavy mortars, notified by telephone, got hold of\n    them so swiftly and so thoroughly, that they were not even\n    given time to unlimber. The regiments of cavalry that were\n    waiting in the background, ready to come dashing through,\n    got salvoes of the heaviest shells full in their faces, and\n    drew back without having drawn a blade from the scabbard.\n    That finished the pitched battle. And the attack broke to\n    pieces in front of our wire entanglements. A prodigious\n    number of their dead lay before our trenches. We had made\n    800 prisoners, among them a colonel, four majors, and\n    fifteen officers. At a conservative estimate, the losses\n    of the English in this single section of the division, may\n    be fixed in dead and wounded as at least 20,000. It was\n    clear that, apart from a small local success, it had been a\n    disastrous job for the Britishers. Never before has it been\n    so clearly proved that war is not a sport for a dozen or two\n    of privileged dilettantes.[6]\n\nWells made his first hit with \"The Time Machine\", written under high\npressure of the idea within a fortnight by keeping at his desk almost\ncontinuously from nine in the morning to eleven at night. It is based\nupon the theory that time is a fourth dimension of space,[7] and by\na suitable invention one may travel back and forth along that\nline. Having once got his seat in his time-machine Wells has never\nabandoned it. He uses it still in his novels, in \"Tono-Bungay,\" \"The\nNew Machiavelli\", and \"The Passionate Friends\", telling the story\npartly in retrospect, partly in prospect, flying back and forth in the\nmost mystifying manner, producing thereby a remarkable effect of the\nperpetual contemporaneity of existence, though some readers are dizzied\nby it.\n\nThe charm of a masked ball is that it enables people to do and say what\nthey please, in short to reveal themselves because their faces are\nconcealed. Anonymity has the same effect, as many a name from \"Currer\nBell\" to \"Fiona McLeod\" attests. So it is not surprising that the\nbook[8] which purports to have been written by one \"George Boon\" and\ncompiled by one \"Reginald Bliss\" shows Wellsian characteristics more\npronounced than any of the volumes of which H. G. Wells owns authorship.\n\nFor one thing Wells obviously likes to start things better than to\nfinish them. He is apt to run out of breath before he comes to the end\nof a novel, and if he gets his second wind it is likely to be some\nother kind of wind. In most of his books except the short stories the\nreader feels that the author is saying to himself, \"I wish I had this\nthing off my hands so I could get at that new idea of mine.\"\n\nThen, too, Wells is fond of putting a story inside of a story, like the\nArabian Nights, and it often happens that the \"flash-backs\", to borrow\na cinema phrase, are confusing. The framework of \"The Modern Utopia\" is\nan instance of this. It is sometimes hard to tell in this where we are\nor who is speaking.\n\nWells is inimitable in his ability to sketch a character in a few swift\nstrokes, but he does not care much for the character afterward. He\ndelights in taking such snapshots, but he hates to develop them. His\nmind is quick to change. He is liable to be disconcerted by a sudden\nvision of an opposing view. Sometimes in the middle of a sentence he\nwill be seized with a doubt of what he is saying, and being an\nhonest man, he leaves it in air rather than finish it after he has lost\nconfidence. He may double on his track like a hunted fox within the\ncompass of a single volume.\n\nFinally, Wells is fond of satirizing his contemporaries, including his\nbest friends and his former selves. He is given to mixing realistic\ndescription with recondite symbolism, desultory argumentation with\nextraneous personalities, and other incongruous combinations of style\nand thought.\n\nNow all these peculiarities, call them faults or merits as you like,\nare to be found intensified in \"Boon\" _Etc._ First Mr. Wells introduces\nMr. Bliss, who then introduces Mr. Boon, a famous author deceased, and\ntells how they together invented Mr. Hallery, who introduces a host\nof living writers, big and little, known and unknown, at the World\nConference on the Mind of the Race. He has given me the honor of a\nseat on a special committee of Section S, devoted to Poiometry, the\nscientific measurement of literary greatness.\n\nThe volume is illustrated by the author--whoever he may be--but the\nbest caricatures are not the graphic but the verbal ones with their\namusing parodies of style. Perhaps the best of these is an imaginary\nconversation between Henry James and George Moore, in which both\ngentlemen pursue entirely independent trains of thought.\n\nHere's the sketch of \"Dodd.\" We recognize him, although we do not know\nwho Dodd is:\n\n    Dodd is a leading member of the Rationalist Press\n    Association, a militant agnostic, and a dear compact\n    man, one of those Middle Victorians who go about with a\n    preoccupied, caulking air, as though, having been at great\n    cost and pains to banish God from the Universe, they were\n    resolved not to permit Him back on any terms whatever. He\n    has constituted himself a sort of alert customs officer of a\n    materialistic age, saying suspiciously: \"Here, now, what's\n    this rapping under the table here?\" and examining every\n    proposition to see that the Creator wasn't being smuggled\n    back under some specious new generalization. Boon used to\n    declare that every night Dodd looked under his bed for the\n    Deity, and slept with a large revolver under his pillow for\n    fear of a revelation.\n\nOne advantage of anonymity is that Wells can contradict himself with\neven more freedom than usual. For instance, he expresses great contempt\nfor Bergson and his \"Pragmatism for Ladies.\" But not long ago, in\n\"Marriage\", he was contemptuous of \"Doctor Quiller [Schiller] of\nOxford,\" for \"ignoring Bergson and fulminating a preposterous insular\nPragmatism.\"\n\nMuch of the volume was manifestly written in the calm days before\nthe war, but the fragment entitled \"The Wild Asses of the Devil\"\nexpresses in fantastic guise his--and the world's--confusion and\ndespair at the catastrophe which has overwhelmed the human race. \"It is\nlike a dying man strangling a robber in his death grip. We shall beat\nthem, but we shall be dead beat in doing it,\" says Boon, and he rejects\nall suggestions that it may be a good thing in the end:\n\n    No! War is just the killing of things and the smashing of\n    things. And when it is all over, then civilization will have\n    to begin all over again. They will have to begin lower down\n    and against a heavier load and the days of our jesting are\n    done. The Wild Asses of the Devil are loose and there is no\n    restraining them. What is the good of pretending that the\n    Wild Asses are the instruments of Providence kicking better\n    than we know? It is all evil. Evil.\n\nThere are many different Wellses. Probably nobody likes all of them.\nHe does not like all of himselves. In writing a preface or otherwise\nreferring to an earlier work he is, after the manner of Maeterlinck,\nalmost apologetic, and looks back upon the author with a curious wonder\nas to how he came to hold such opinions and express them in such a\nway. Those of us who have grown up with him, so to speak, and followed\nhis mind through all its metamorphoses in their natural order can\nunderstand him better, I believe, than those of the younger generation\nwho begin with the current serial and read his works backward. Mr.\nWells is just about my age. We were in the laboratory together and\nbreathed the same atmosphere, although five thousand miles apart. When\nhe began to write I was ready to read and to admire the skill with\nwhich he utilized for literary purposes the wealth of material to be\nfound in the laboratory. Jules Verne had worked the same rich vein,\nclumsily but with great success. Poe had done marvels in the short\nstory with such scanty science as he had at his command. But Wells,\ntrained under Huxley in biology at the University of London, had all\nthis new knowledge to draw upon. He could handle technicalities with\na far defter touch than Verne and almost rivaled Poe in the evocation\nof emotions of horror and mystery. Besides this he possessed what\nboth these authors lacked, a sense of humor, a keen appreciation of\nthe whimsicalities of human nature. So he was enabled to throw off in\nthe early nineties a swift succession of short stories astonishingly\nvaried in style and theme. As he became more experienced in the art of\nwriting, or rather of marketing manuscripts, he seems to have regretted\nthis youthful prodigality of bright ideas. Many of them he later\nworked over on a more extensive scale as the metallurgist goes back\nto a mine and with an improved process extracts more gold from the\ntailings and dump than the miner got out of the ore originally.\n\n\"The Star\" was the first of these I came across, clipping it for my\nscrap book from _Harper's Weekly_, I believe. First loves in literature\nmake an indelible impression, so I will always hold that nothing Wells\nhas done since can equal it. Certainly it was not improved by expanding\nit to \"In the Days of the Comet.\" The germ of that creepy tale of\nadvanced vivisection, \"The Island of Dr. Moreau\", appeared first in the\n_Saturday Review_, January, 1895, as a brief sketch, \"Doctor Moreau\nExplains.\" \"The Dream of Armageddon\", vivid and swift as a landscape\nunder a flash of lightning, served in large part for two later volumes,\n\"When the Sleeper Wakes\" and \"The New Machiavelli.\"\n\nIt was, as I have said, \"The Star\" that first attracted me to Wells.\nIt was \"The Sea-Lady\" who introduced me to him personally. It was\nin the back room of a little Italian restaurant in New York, one of\nthose sixty-cent table d'h\u00f4tes where rich soup and huge haystacks of\nspaghetti serve to conceal the meagerness of the other five courses.\nHere foregathered for years a group of Socialists, near-Socialists, and\nothers of less definable types, alike in holding the belief that the\nworld could be moved and ought to be, but disagreeing agreeably as to\nwhere the fulcrum could be placed and what power should move the lever.\nWe called ourselves the \"X Club\", partly because the outcome of such a\ncombination of diverse factors was highly problematical, partly perhaps\nin emulation of the celebrated London X. One evening some ten years\nago, as I came late to the dinner, I noticed that the members were not\nall talking at once, as usual, but concentrated their attention upon a\nguest, a quiet, unassuming individual, rather short, with a sunbrowned\nface, tired eyes, and a pessimistic mustache--a Londoner, I judged\nfrom his accent. Then I was introduced to him as \"The man who knows all\nyour works by heart, Mr. Wells.\" This disconcerting introduction was\ntheir revenge for my too frequent quotation in debate. The reason, I\nsuppose, for the old saying, \"Beware the man of one book\", is because\nhe is such a bore.\n\nMr. Wells appeared to take the introduction literally and began to\nexamine me on the subject. \"Did you ever read 'The Sea-Lady'?\" I\nhappily was able to say I had, and was let off from any further\nquestions, for he said that he had never met but two persons before\nwho admitted having read the book. I am glad he did not ask me what it\nmeant, for while I had an opinion on the subject, it might not have\nagreed with his.\n\nThen we turned the tables on Mr. Wells and for the rest of the evening\nasked him questions and criticized his views; all of which he took\nvery good-naturedly and was apparently not displeased thereby, since\nin the book about his trip, \"The Future in America\", he expressed\ndisappointment at not finding in Washington any \"such mentally vigorous\ndiscussion centers as the New York X Club.\"\n\nFive years later I had another glimpse of Mr. Wells, this time a jolly\nevening at his home, where he kept his guests, a dozen young men and\nwomen, entertained, first by playing on the pianola, which he bought\nat the suggestion of Mr. Shaw; afterward by improvising a drama for\nthe occasion, the star r\u00f4le being taken by his wife, whom I had seen a\nfew days before marching in the great London suffrage procession. Mr.\nWells's home differs from most London houses in having a view and a\npark. The back windows look over all the sea of houses, the shipping\nin the Thames, and, smoke permitting, the Surrey hills beyond. On the\nother side of the house five minutes' walk uphill brings one to\nHampstead Heath, the largest of London's public places, which serves\nMr. Wells for his long walks.\n\nMr. Wells perhaps got his love of outdoor life from his father, Joseph\nWells, who was a professional cricketer and the son of the head\ngardener of Lord de Lisle at Penhurst Castle, in Kent. His mother was\nthe daughter of an innkeeper at Midhurst. Herbert George Wells was born\nin Bromley, Kent, September 21, 1866, and his childhood impressions of\nhis mother's kitchen and his father's garden and shop he has described\nin \"First and Last Things\" and in \"Tono-Bungay.\" In this novel, the\nfirst, perhaps, to be devoted to that conspicuous feature of modern\nlife, the patent medicine, he has utilized his brief experience as\na chemist's apprentice, or, as we would say, a drug clerk. Next an\nunsuccessful attempt was made to train him as a draper's assistant--a\ndry goods clerk, in our language, though we have fortunately nothing\nthat exactly corresponds. The hardships and humiliations of this\nexperience seem to have cut deep into his soul, for he recurs to\nit again and again, always with bitterness, as in \"Mr. Polly\",\n\"Kipps\", and \"The Wheels of Chance\", for example. But to untangle\nthe autobiographical threads from the purely fictional in Wells's\nnovels would be to cheat some future candidate for a Ph. D. in English\nliterature of his thesis.\n\n[Illustration: H. G. Wells]\n\nThe interesting point to observe is that temperament and training\nhave combined to give him on the one hand a hatred of this muddled,\nblind, and inefficient state of society in which we live, and on the\nother a distrust of the orderly, logical, and perfected civilization\nusually suggested as a possible substitute. He detests chaos, but\nis skeptical of cosmos. Set between these antipathetic poles, he\nvibrates continually like an electrified pith ball. He has a horror\nof waste, war, dirt, cruelty, cowardice, incompetency, vagueness of\nmind, dissipation of energy, inconvenience of households, and all\nfriction, mental or physical. But yet his ineradicable realization of\nthe concrete will not allow him to escape from these disagreeables\nby taking refuge in such artificial paradises as Fourier's phalanx\nor Morris' idyllic anarchism. Wells is a Socialist, yet he finds\nnot merely the Marxians, but even the Fabians, too dogmatic and\nstrait-laced for him. His \"Modern Utopia\" is, I think, the first to\nmar the perfection of its picture by admitting a rebel, a permanently\nirreconcilable, antagonistic individuality, a spirit that continually\ndenies. Yet we know that if a utopia is to come on earth it must\nhave room for such.\n\nWells would never make a leader in any popular movement. He has the\nzeal of the reformer, but he has his doubts, and, what's worse, he\nadmits them. In the midst of his most eloquent passages he stops,\nshakes his head, runs in a row of dots, and adds a few words, hinting\nat another point of view. He has what James defined as the scientific\ntemperament, an intense desire to prove himself right coupled with an\nequally intense fear lest he may be wrong.\n\nYour true party man must be quite color blind. He must see the world\nin black and white; must ignore tints and intermediate shades. Wells\nas Socialist could not help seeing--and saying--that there were many\nlikable things about the Liberals. As a Liberal he must admit that the\nTories have the advantage in several respects. He professes to view\nreligion rationalistically, yet there are outbursts of true mysticism\nto be found in his books, passages which prove that he has experienced\nthe emotion of personal religion more clearly than many a church member.\n\nHe has the courage of his convictions, but it does not extend much\nbeyond putting them into print. I doubt whether, if he were given\nautocratic power, he would inaugurate his \"Modern Utopia\" or any other\nof his visions. At least he has hitherto resisted all efforts to induce\nhim to carry them into effect.\n\nFor instance, one of the most original and interesting features of\nhis \"Modern Utopia\" was the Samurai, the ruling caste, an order of\nvoluntary noblemen; submitting to a peculiar discipline; wearing a\ndistinctive dress; having a bible of their own selected from the\ninspiring literature of all ages; spending at least a week of every\nyear in absolute solitude in the wilderness as a sort of spiritual\nretreat and restorative of self-reliance. A curious conception it was,\na combination of Puritanism and Bushido, of Fourier and St. Francis, of\nBacon's Salomon's House, Plato's philosophers ruling the republic, and\nCecil Rhodes's secret order of millionaires ruling the world.\n\nOne day a group of ardent young men and women, inspired by this ideal,\ncame to Wells and announced that they had established the order,\nthey had become Samurai, and expected him to become their leader,\nor at least to give them his blessing; instead of which Wells gave\nthem a lecture on the sin of priggishness and sent them about their\nbusiness. I have no doubt he was right about it, nor does his\ndisapproval of this premature attempt to incorporate the Samurai in\nLondon prove that there was not something worth while in the idea. But\nit shows that Wells knew what his work was in the world and proposed\nto stick to it, differing therein from other Utopians: Edward Bellamy,\nwho because his fantastic romance, \"Looking Backward\", happened to\nstrike fire, spent the rest of his life in trying to bring about the\nco\u00f6perative commonwealth by means of clubs, papers, and parties; Dr.\nHertzka, who wasted his substance in efforts to found a real Freeland\non the steppes of Kilimanjaro, Africa.\n\nPerhaps the matter with Wells is simply that he cannot find his proper\npigeon-hole. Perhaps I can find it. Wells has little sympathy with any\npolitical grouping or ideal regnant to-day. The orthodox Tory is in\nhis view simply a man without imagination. The orthodox Liberal is a\nmere sentimentalist substituting democratic phrases for science and\ndiscipline. The Imperialist, though touching Wells at some points,\nrepels him by his mania for military expenditure and his ignorant race\nprejudice. The Socialist or Labor Party man is appallingly narrow and\ntotally unimpressed with the need for intelligence to rule the State.\nIn \"The New Machiavelli\" the hero hovers distressfully over the\nentire field of modern politics, finding as little rest for his soul as\nNoah's dove on the first trip from the ark found for its feet. Once and\nonce only has Wells's ideal found even partial embodiment, and that was\nin the best days of the Roman Empire.\n\nThere was the Great State (in the familiar capital letters); a world\nstate so far as the world was known and civilized. There was a\nuniversal language, exact and lucid. There was freedom and security\nof travel, at least as great as in those same countries to-day. True,\nWells would have disapproved of slavery. But so did the Stoics of the\nEmpire disapprove of slavery, at least in theory. Their ideal was a\nuniversal citizenship. In the later Empire every freeman in the Roman\nEmpire was called a citizen. There was tolerance, not only of religion\nbut of manners, such as the narrow and parochial States of Western\nEurope which succeeded its fall have never known till within a hundred\nyears. Statecraft was a science; devotion to the State a cult. There\nwere the legions, examples of duty and discipline and scientific\nwarfare, and yet a few thousands of troops sufficed to police and guard\na whole civilized, wealthy, complex world state.\n\nBut most important of all was the Roman Law. Based on logical\nprinciples; divested of superstitious accessories and irrational\ntaboos; universal and in the main equitable; raised above the Empire\nand the muddy immediacies of politics till it seemed the voice of\nnature itself; flexible and changing, but by growth rather than whim,\nit was the intellectual fabric of the Empire. It so happened that a\ndespotic Emperor wielded the power of state, but still it was the State\nand not the mere person of the Emperor that was really reverenced. It\nwas certainly not the man or the artist that was divine in Nero, but\nthe office. Even in its decadent and Byzantine days traces of the old\nideal remained, and it was not \"Charles Richard Henry Etcetera, by\nthe Grace of God King of Anyland, Duke of Somewherelse, Knight of the\nGolden Spur, Most Reverend Lord of the Free Cities of Lower Ruritania\"\nin the silly medieval (and modern) style, but \"Senatus Populusque\nRomani\" and \"Res Publica.\" The medieval Papacy was as universal in\nstructure, but was obscurantist in basis, and left behind it as a\nlegacy the memory of the crusades and the monasteries and great\ncathedrals as its monuments. The Roman Empire was rationalist in basis,\nand left behind it laws, straight roads, aqueducts, baths, theaters,\nlibraries, and municipal organizations. Chesterton is a romantic and\nrather likes than otherwise the whimsical eccentricities of modern\nnational institutions. But Wells, though he loves to play with science,\ntakes statecraft as seriously as Marcus Aurelius, and, like him, he is\na citizen of the Great State, the Cosmopolis. The \"Modern Utopia\" might\nhave grown out of the actual Roman Empire had the right turnings been\ntaken from that time to this; no other state or civilization would have\nformed its basis.\n\nThe significance of Wells's advocacy of Socialism lies in the fact that\nit is addressed to the middle classes. He might be called \"The Apostle\nto the Genteels.\" He took part for a time in the aggressive socialistic\ncampaign led by the Fabian Society on lines distinct from but parallel\nto the Marxian working class propaganda. The orthodox Marxian has\nlittle use for middle-class people. He expects them to become extinct\nso shortly that it is no use trying to convert them. He takes no more\ninterest in them than missionaries do in the Tasmanians. They will be\nground fine between the upper and nether millstones of the trusts and\nthe unions. Such individuals who survive will be able to do so only by\nbecoming retainers of the capitalists, and as such will be engulfed\nwith them in the revolutionary cataclysm which will end the present era.\n\nWith a firm faith in this theory, it is no wonder that he often\nmanifests annoyance at the slowness of the bourgeoisie in carrying out\nthe part assigned them in the Marxian program. They do not disappear\nfast enough, nor do they show any eagerness to take sides either with\nthe proletariat or with the capitalists. On the contrary, they view\nboth with a certain distrust and antipathy, and maintain a curious\nconfidence in their ability to manage both factions in the future as\nthey have in the past. In short, they are not a negligible quantity,\nbut hold the balance of power, at least for the present, and can retard\nor accelerate the progress of Socialism to a considerable though an\nindefinite extent.\n\nObviously, if the middle class as a whole is to be converted to\nSocialism, it must be by different arguments than those found effective\nwith the proletariat. The Manifesto does not appeal to them, because\nthey have more to lose than their \"chains.\" There must be something\nmore alluring than a universal competency and a steady job to arouse\nthem to the need of radical changes.\n\nThe sight of capitalists excites emulation and ambition rather than\nhatred and despair. A man is not inclined to vote millionaires out\nof existence so long as he cherishes a secret hope of becoming one.\nThey do not see the proletarian papers and would be repelled by them if\nthey did.\n\nWells's outline of the form that middle-class propaganda should take\npresents several novel and interesting points, but the most conspicuous\nis his discussion of the effect of Socialism on family relations. His\nfrankness and honesty in bringing that question into the open is in\ncommendable contrast with the tendency of most advocates of Socialism\nto conceal or minimize the fact that any such profound rearrangement\nof economic relations as is involved in Socialism must inevitably\naffect the family, because the economic factor in this institution is\nundeniably great, although how great is a matter of dispute.\n\nWells boldly attempts to convert a prejudice into an argument by\nappealing to the very classes which, it is generally supposed, would be\nrepelled by the bare mention of the subject, to save the family from\nits impending disintegration by adopting Socialism.\n\nThat Wells is right in thinking that the problem of the family is a\nserious one at the present time is clearly shown by the statistics\ncollected by Sidney Webb for the Fabian Society. He proves:\n\n    That the decline in the birthrate which is depriving England\n    and Wales of at least one-fifth of every year's normal crop\n    of babies is not accounted for by any alteration in the age,\n    sex or marital condition of the population, by any refusal\n    or postponement of marriage, or by any of the effects of\n    \"urbanization\" or physical deterioration of sections of\n    the community. The statistical evidence points, in fact,\n    unmistakably to the existence of a volitional regulation\n    of the marriage state that is now ubiquitous throughout\n    England and Wales, among, apparently, a large majority of\n    the population.\n\nSo much other statisticians have deduced, but Mr. Webb went farther and\nobtained a direct proof of his conclusion by the circulation of several\nhundred question blanks among middle-class families. The results are\nstartling. Out of a total of one hundred and twenty families reporting\nin one category, there were only seven in which the number of children\nwas not intentionally limited. The average number of children in such\nlimited families is one and a half, which is only one third what it\nwas twenty-five years ago. In about sixty per cent of the cases \"the\npoverty of the parents in relation to their standard of comfort\" was a\ncause in the limitation of the family.\n\nThis shows how important a factor the increased expense of raising\nchildren has become in well-to-do families, and unless the\npopulation of the future is to be recruited very largely by the\nimprovident, ignorant, and debased, it points toward some form of state\nencouragement of the production of well-born children. Wells suggested\na differential income tax. Doctor Galton advocated the endowment of\ngifted parents. The war has brought this question out of the realm of\nspeculative controversy into that of practical necessity. Some of the\nremedies proposed now make the measures suggested by Wells ten years\nbefore seem timid and conservative.\n\nHis early training in dynamical physics and evolutionary biology\nfurnished him with the modern scientific point of view when he entered\nupon the old battlegrounds of sociology and metaphysics. He therefore\nnever could believe in a static state, socialistic or other, and he\nsaw clearly that much of what passes for sound philosophical reasoning\nis fallacious, because the world cannot be divided up into distinct\nthings of convenient size for handling, each done up in a neat package\nand plainly labeled as formal logic requires. Here he is extremely\nradical, going quite as far as Bergson in his anti-intellectualism\nthough attacking the subject in a very different way. He denies\nthe categories, the possibility of number, definition, and\nclassification.[9] He brings three charges against our Instrument of\nKnowledge: first, that it can work only by disregarding individuality\nand treating uniques as identically similar objects in this respect or\nthat; and, second, that it can only deal freely with negative terms by\ntreating them as though they were positive; and, third, that the sort\nof reasoning which is valid for one level of human thought may not work\nat another. No two things are exactly alike, and when we try to define\na class of varied objects we get a term which represents none of them\nexactly and may therefore lead to an erroneous conclusion when brought\nback again to a concrete case. Or, as Wells puts it in his laboratory\nlanguage: \"The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps and crush the\ntruth a little in taking hold of it.\" \"Of everything we need to say\nthis is true, but it is not quite true.\"\n\nWhat the artist long ago taught us, that there are no lines in nature,\nthe scientist has come to believe, and perhaps in time the logicians\nwill come to see it too. At present, however, they are, as Wells says,\nin that stage of infantile intelligence that cannot count above two.\nThis is amusingly illustrated in a defense of logic by Mr. Jourdain in\nwhich he says:[10]\n\n    To these strictures of Mr. Wells on logic we may reply, it\n    seems to me, that either they are psychological--in which\n    case they are irrelevant to logic--or they are false. Thus\n    the principle that \"no truth is quite true\", implying as it\n    does that itself is quite true, implies its own falsehood,\n    and is therefore false.\n\nThis sort of thing might have passed as a good joke in the days of\nEpimenides, the Cretan, when logic was a novelty, and people amused\nthemselves, like boys learning to lasso, in tripping each other up with\nit. But it is funny to see this ancient weapon of scholasticism brought\nout to ward off the attacks of modernism, such attacks from without the\nramparts as Wells's essay and from within as F. C. S. Schiller's big\nvolume, \"Formal Logic.\"\n\nWells has not only the sense of continuity in space, but, what is\nrarer, the sense of continuity in time. \"The race flows through us,\nthe race is the drama and we are the incidents. This is not any\nsort of poetical statement: it is a statement of fact.\" \"We are\nepisodes in an experience greater than ourselves.\" There is a desperate\nsincerity about the man that I like. He seems always to be struggling\nto express himself with more exactness than language allows, to say\nneither more nor less than he really believes at the time. I do not\nthink that he takes delight in shocking the bourgeoisie as Shaw does.\nWells would rather, I believe, agree with other people than disagree.\nHe is not a congenital and inveterate nonconformist. But he insists\nalways on \"painting the thing as he sees it.\" His later novels have\ncome under the ban of the British public libraries because, conceiving\nsex as a disturbing element in life, he put it into his novels as a\ndisturbing element, thus offending both sides, those of puritanical\ntemperament who wanted it left out altogether and those of profligate\ntemperament who wanted to read of amorous adventure with no unpleasant\nfacts obtruded. His sociological works, in which, while insisting on\npermanent monogamy as the ideal, he prophesied that the future would\nshow greater toleration toward other forms of marital relationship,\naroused less criticism than the frank portrayal of existing conditions\nin his novels.\n\nAll his longer novels are largely concerned with the problem of\nmarital life but the only one of them that comes near to a solution\nis that entitled \"Marriage.\" The couple in this case, the Traffords,\nare exceptionally decent people for characters in a modern novel,\nand if their marriage is not a success it is not on account of any\ninterference from a third party, but rather because of the cares and\ncomplications that come from family life and financial prosperity. The\nheroine is a charming specimen of the modern young woman, educated at\n\"Oxbridge\", whose chief fault is a constitutional inability to keep her\naccounts straight. She spends money with excellent taste, but without\nregard to her husband's bank balance. Consequently Trafford has to lay\naside his researches in molecular physics to work out a successful\nprocess for synthetic rubber--easy to a man of his ability.\n\nMr. Wells apparently adopts the theory formulated by Professor Devine,\nof Columbia, as to the normal division of labor between husband and\nwife, that men should be experts in the art of getting money and women\nexperts in the art of spending it. Where both parties fail is in\nregarding these duties as ends in themselves, the men getting absorbed\nin business and the women buying things that they do not want, that\nnobody needs, just for the sake of buying. Apparently Mr. Wells has\nhope of curing the men, but none of curing the women.\n\nPremature attempts at realization, the demand for immediate results,\nthe disregard of purely scientific research, the swamping of life by\nrestless activity and futile efforts at reform, these are the ailments\nof the modern world, according to our author. His satire spares neither\nconservatives nor radicals. The following passage would apply to New\nYork as well as London:\n\n    London, of course, is always full of Movements. Essentially\n    they are absorbents of superfluous feminine energy. They\n    have a common flavor of progress and revolutionary purpose,\n    and common features in abundant meetings, officials,\n    and organization generally. Few are expensive and still\n    fewer produce any tangible results in the world. They\n    direct themselves at the most various ends: the poor,\n    that favorite butt, either as a whole or in such typical\n    sections as the indigent invalid or the indigent aged, the\n    young, public health, the woman's cause, the prevention of\n    animal food, anti-vivisection, the gratuitous advertisement\n    of Shakespeare (that neglected poet), novel but genteel\n    modifications of medical or religious practice, dress\n    reform, the politer aspects of socialism, the encouragement\n    of aeronautics, universal military service, garden suburbs,\n    domestic arts, proportional representation, duodecimal\n    arithmetic, and the liberation of the drama. They range\n    in size and importance from campaigns on a Plessingtonian\n    scale to sober little intellectual Beckingham things\n    that arrange to meet half yearly and die quietly before\n    the second assembly. If Heaven by some miracle suddenly\n    gave every Movement in London all it professed to want, our\n    world would be standing on its head and everything would\n    be extremely unfamiliar and disconcerting. But, as Mr.\n    Roosevelt once remarked, the justifying thing about life\n    is the effort and not the goal, and few Movements involve\n    any real and impassioned struggle to get to the ostensible\n    object. They exist as an occupation; they exercise the\n    intellectual and moral activities without undue disturbance\n    of the normal routines of life. In the days when everybody\n    was bicycling an ingenious mechanism called Hacker's home\n    bicycle used to be advertised. Hacker's home bicycle was a\n    stand bearing small rubber wheels, upon which one placed\n    one's bicycle (properly equipped with a cyclometer) in\n    such a way that it could be mounted and ridden without any\n    sensible forward movement whatever. In bad weather, or when\n    the state of the roads made cycling abroad disagreeable,\n    Hacker's home bicycle could be placed in front of an open\n    window and ridden furiously for any length of time. Whenever\n    the rider tired, he could descend--comfortably at home\n    again--and examine the cyclometer to see how far he had\n    been. In exactly the same way the ordinary London Movement\n    gives scope for the restless and progressive impulse in\n    human nature without the risk of personal entanglements or\n    any inconvenient disturbance of the milieu.[11]\n\nTo accomplish a cure, or at least to obtain a diagnosis of the evil,\nMr. Wells resorts to a curious expedient which he suggested first in\nhis \"Modern Utopia\", where he laid down as one of the rules of his new\norder of Samurai that a man who aspired to be a leader of men should\nfor a week every year go off into the desert and live absolutely alone,\nwithout books or other distractions to keep him from thinking. But in\n\"Marriage\" Mr. Wells improves upon this plan, for Trafford and his wife\ngo into the wilds of Labrador together. \"How sweet is solitude,\" as the\nIrishman said, \"when you have your sweetheart with you.\" So, indeed,\nthey found it, and in their fight with cold, starvation, and wild\nbeasts they learned how to found their love upon mutual comprehension\nand respect, and made of their marriage a true union. The change\nof heart which Trafford experiences is not altogether unlike what\nChristians call conversion. His line of argument, or, more properly\nspeaking, development of thought, finds expression in fragmentary\nsentences muttered in the delirium of fever, a Freudian emergence of\nfundamental feelings, as in the following passage:\n\n    \"Of course,\" he said, \"I said it--or somebody said it--about\n    this collective mind being mixed with other things. It's\n    something arising out of life--not the common stuff of life.\n    An exhalation. ... It's like the little tongues of fire\n    that came at Pentecost.... Queer how one comes drifting back\n    to these images. Perhaps I shall die a Christian yet....\n    The other Christians won't like me if I do. What was I\n    saying?... It's what I reach up to, what I desire shall\n    pervade me, not what I am. Just as far as I give myself\n    purely to knowledge, to making feeling and thought clear\n    in my mind and words, to the understanding and expression\n    of the realities and relations of life, just so far do I\n    achieve salvation.... Salvation!...\n\n    \"I wonder is salvation the same for every one? Perhaps for\n    one man salvation is research and thought, and for another\n    expression in art, and for another nursing lepers. Provided\n    he does it in the spirit. He has to do it in the spirit....\n\n    \"This flame that arises out of life, that redeems life from\n    purposeless triviality, _isn't_ life. Let me get hold of\n    that. That's a point. That's a very important point.\"\n\nThis passage from \"Marriage\" showed that in 1912 Wells's thought was\nentering upon a new phase, considerably in advance of that revealed in\nhis \"First and Last Things.\" He seemed to be working toward some sort\nof belief in God, a Bergsonian God, struggling upward in spite of and\nby means of inert matter and recalcitrant humanity. It would indeed\nbe queer to find Wells not only among the prophets, but among the\nChristian prophets, and, as he intimates, some of the other Christians\nwould not like it.\n\nWells's catholicity of sympathy recognizes no limitations of race.\nHe has an abhorrence for race prejudice of every kind. The greatest\nblot he found upon American civilization was our ill treatment of the\nnegro.[12]\n\nIn his article on \"Race Prejudice\" he puts it foremost among the evils\nof the age but even his \"anticipations\" could not conceive of such an\ninsensate revival of racial animosity between civilized nations as the\nGreat War has, brought about:\n\n    Knight errantry is as much a part of a wholesome human being\n    as falling in love or self-assertion, and therein lies\n    one's hope for mankind. Nearly every one, I believe--I've\n    detected the tendency in old cheats even and disreputable\n    people of all sorts--is ready to put in a little time\n    and effort in dragon-slaying now and then, and if any one\n    wants a creditable dragon to write against, talk against,\n    study against, subscribe against, work against, I am\n    convinced they can find no better one--that is to say, no\n    worse one--than Race Prejudice. I am convinced myself that\n    there is no more evil thing in this present world than\n    Race Prejudice; none at all. I write deliberately--it is\n    the worst single thing in life now. It justifies and holds\n    together more baseness, cruelty and abomination than any\n    other sort of error in the world. Through its body runs\n    the black blood of coarse lust, suspicion, jealousy and\n    persecution and all the darkest poisons of the human soul.\n    It is this much like the dragons of old, that it devours\n    youth, spoils life, holds beautiful people in shame and\n    servitude, and desolates wide regions. It is a monster\n    begotten of natural instincts and intellectual confusion, to\n    be fought against by all men of good intent, each in our own\n    dispersed modern manner doing his fragmentary, inestimable\n    share.\n\nThe abolition of hatred between castes and classes and countries, the\ngrowth of toleration and extension of co\u00f6peration, the improvement of\neducation, and the advancement of science, are what will lead toward\nhis ideal. And his ideal is that of an evolutionist, the opportunity\nfor continuous growth. He has exp rest it best, perhaps, in \"The\nFood of the Gods,\" in the speech of one of the new race of giants,\nof supermen, to his fellows as they are about to give battle to the\ncommunity of ordinary people determined to destroy them:\n\n    It is not that we would oust the little people from the\n    world in order that we, who are no more than one step upward\n    from their littleness, may hold their world forever. It is\n    the step we fight for and not ourselves.... We are here,\n    Brothers, to what end? To serve the spirit and the purpose\n    that has been breathed into our lives. We fight not for\n    ourselves--for we are but the momentary hands and eyes\n    of the Life of the World. Through us and through the\n    little folk the Spirit looks and learns. From us by word\n    and birth and act it must pass--to still greater lives.\n    This earth is no resting place; this earth is no playing\n    place, else indeed we might put our throats to the little\n    people's knife, having no greater right to live than they.\n    And they in their turn might yield to the ants and vermin.\n    We fight not for ourselves but for growth, growth that\n    goes on forever. To-morrow, whether we live or die, growth\n    will conquer through us. That is the law of the spirit\n    forevermore. To grow according to the will of God! To grow\n    out of these cracks and crannies, out of these shadows and\n    darknesses, into greatness and the light! Greater, he said,\n    speaking with slow deliberation, greater, my Brothers! And\n    then--still greater. To grow and again--to grow. To grow at\n    last into the fellowship and understanding of God.\n\nThe Great War has inspired or at least instigated many works of fiction\nalready, but the best of these, in my opinion, is Wells's \"Mr. Britling\nSees It Through.\" It does not deal much with the fighting at the front.\nThe author is chiefly concerned with another aspect of the war, its\neffect upon the psychology of the Englishman. The book is divided into\ntwo parts; the first half is light, carefree and amusing after the\nmanner of Wells's earlier romances; the other half is darkened by the\nwar cloud and is written with more emotional power than he has hitherto\nshown.\n\nKnowing Wells's habit of introducing autobiographical details into\nhis romances, we inevitably surmise that Mr. Britling is himself.\nMr. Britling is a writer whom \"lots of people found interesting and\nstimulating, and a few found seriously exasperating.\" \"He had ideas\nin the utmost profusion about races and empires and social order and\npolitical institutions and gardens and automobiles and the future of\nIndia and China and esthetics and America and the education of mankind\nin general.... And all that sort of thing.\"\n\nThis certainly reads like Wells's repertory of ideas. And to make\nthe resemblance closer Mr. Britling writes a pamphlet, \"And Now War\nEnds\", shortly after the war began--just as Mr. Wells wrote \"The War\nThat Will End War.\" Several of the characters are recognizable as Mr.\nWells' neighbors. At any rate we may be sure that the book reveals the\nchanging moods not only of the author but of every thinking Englishman\nas the enormity, the awfulness, the all-pervasiveness of the war became\nslowly realized in the course of many months.\n\nAs a contrast to his typical Englishman Mr. Wells brings in an\nAmerican, handled with more skill than British writers usually show in\ndealing with American psychology. The delight of his Mr. Direck at\nthe recognition of the scenes and customs he had known from history and\nnovels is well presented:\n\n    The Thames, when he sallied out to see it, had been too\n    good to be true, the smallest thing in rivers he had ever\n    seen, and he had had to restrain himself from affecting a\n    marked accent and accosting some passerby with the question,\n    \"Say! But is this little wet ditch here the Historical River\n    Thames?\" In America, it must be explained, Mr. Direck spoke\n    a very good and careful English indeed, but he now found\n    the utmost difficulty in controlling his impulse to use a\n    high-pitched nasal drone and indulge in dry Americanisms and\n    poker metaphors upon all occasions. When people asked him\n    questions he wanted to say \"Yep\" or \"Sure\", words he would\n    no more have used in America than he could have used a bowie\n    knife. But he had a sense of r\u00f4le. He wanted to be just\n    exactly what he supposed an Englishman would expect him to\n    be.\n\nEvery American tourist in England has felt this temptation. He also has\nthe experience ascribed by Mr. Wells to his American of finding that\nEngland on closer acquaintance is not so antiquated as she looks. When\nasked what his impression of England is Mr. Direck answers:\n\n    That it looks and feels more like the traditional Old\n    England than any one could possibly have believed, and\n    that in reality it is less like the traditional Old England\n    than any one would ever possibly have imagined. I thought\n    when I looked out of the train this morning that I had come\n    to the England of Washington Irving. I find that it is not\n    even the England of Mrs. Humphry Ward.\n\nTo complete this study of national psychology there is also a German\nin the family circle at first, a tutor whose hobbies are Ido and\ninternationalism and a universal index, traits drawn from Professor\nOstwald apparently. He is not caricatured but we suspect that like Mr.\nDireck, the American, Herr Heinrich is affected by British expectations\nand appears more German than he is.\n\n\nThe book re\u00ebchoes all the passions of the war,--love, hatred, courage,\ndespair, meanness, sacrifice, heroism, selfishness, stoicism and mad\nwrath,--but ends upon a clear religious tone such as has been heard\nbut faintly in any work of Mr. Wells before. What Mr. Britling sees\nthrough is not the war, for nobody can yet see so far as that, but he\nsees through the doubt and turmoil of his own mind and finds internal\npeace in the midst of warfare. When he sits down to write a letter to\nthe parents of Heinrich, who like his own son had fallen in France, his\nmind is torn by conflicting emotions, but finally these are resolved\ninto one common chord and he writes:\n\n    Religion is the first thing and the last thing, and until\n    a man has found God and been found by God, he begins at no\n    beginning, he works to no end. He may have his friendships,\n    his partial loyalties, his scraps of honor. But all these\n    things fall into place and life falls into place only with\n    God. Only with God. God, who fights through men against\n    Blind Force and Night and Non-Existence; who is the end,\n    who is the meaning. He is the only King.... Of course I\n    must write about Him. I must tell all my world of Him. And\n    before the coming of the true King, the inevitable King,\n    the King who is present whenever just men foregather, this\n    bloodstained rubbish of the ancient world, these puny kings\n    and tawdry emperors, these wily politicians and artful\n    lawyers, these men who claim and grab and trick and compel,\n    these war makers and oppressors, will presently shrivel and\n    pass--like paper thrust into a flame. Our sons have shown us\n    God.\n\n\nHOW TO READ WELLS\n\nThe curious thing about H. G. Wells is his diversity. For a person of\nany intellectual consistency it is impossible thoroughly to appreciate\nhim in certain moods without disliking him in others. He is the stern\nmoralist of \"The Sleeper Awakes\", the detached and exquisite artist\nof \"Thirty Strange Stories\" and \"Tales of Space and Time\", the genial\nand conciliatory sociologist of \"New Worlds for Old\", the intolerant\nImperialist of \"Anticipations\", the subtle anti-moralist of \"The New\nMachiavelli\" and \"Ann Veronica\", the sympathetic if somewhat cynical\nportrayer of the shop-keeping classes of \"Mr. Polly\" and \"The Wheels\nof Chance\", the vague philosopher at large of \"First and Last Things\",\nthe imaginative rationalist of \"A Modern Utopia\", the Jules-Vernish\nromancer of \"The War of Worlds\" and \"The First Men in the Moon\", the\nscientific transcendentalist of \"The Food of the Gods\", and in addition\nhe seriously chronicles \"Floor Games\" with his boys and takes interest\nin fugitive essays on modern warfare and \"The Misery of Boots.\" Unless\none is alien to everything human (and superhuman), it is impossible to\nescape being interested in at least some of these.\n\nWells's philosophy is, as I have said, expressed symbolically in many\nof his stories. It is most fully explained in \"First and Last Things:\nA Confession of Faith and a Rule of Life\" (Putnam), and in the two\nessays previously referred to, \"Scepticism of the Instrument\" (in \"A\nModern Utopia\") and \"The Discovery of the Future\", first published\nin _Nature_, February 6, 1902, and in the \"Report of the Smithsonian\nInstitution\", 1902, and later in book form (Huebsch, New York, 1913).\n\nHis sociological studies comprise the following volumes:\n\"Anticipations\" (1901, Harper), \"Mankind in the Making\" (1903,\nScribner), \"A Modern Utopia\" (1904, Scribner), \"The Future in America\"\n(1906, Harper), \"New Worlds for Old\" (1908, Macmillan), \"Socialism and\nthe Great State\", with the collaboration of fourteen other authors\n(1911, Harper), \"Social Forces in England and America\" (1914, Harper),\npublished in England under the title \"An Englishman Looks at the World\"\n(Cassell), \"The War That Will End War\" (1915), \"What Is Coming?\" (1916,\nMacmillan), \"Italy, France and Britain at War\" (1917, Macmillan),\nand \"God the Invisible King\" (1917, Macmillan).\n\nHis short stories have been collected in several different volumes, in\npart overlapping: \"Thirty Strange Stories\" (1898, Harper), \"Tales of\nTime and Space\" (1899, Doubleday), \"Twelve Stories and a Dream\" (1903,\nScribner), \"The Plattner Story and Others\" (1897, Macmillan), \"The\nStolen Bacillus and Other Incidents\" (1895, Macmillan).\n\nEight of the best of his short stories (including \"The Star\",\n\"Armageddon\" and \"The Country of the Blind\") are published in a\nsumptuous edition with Coburn's photographic illustrations by Mitchell\nKennerley (\"The Door in the Wall and Other Stories\", 1911).\n\nHis romances include: \"The Time Machine\" (1895, Holt), \"The Wonderful\nVisit\" (1895), \"The Island of Dr. Moreau\" (1896, Duffield), \"The War\nof the Worlds\" (1898, Harper), \"The Invisible Man\" (1897, Harper),\n\"The Sea-Lady\" (1902) \"The First Men in the Moon\" (1901), \"When the\nSleeper Wakes\" (1899, Harper), rewritten (1911) as \"The Sleeper Awakes\"\n(Nelson, London), \"In the Days of the Comet\" (1906, Century), \"The Food\nof the Gods\" (1904, Scribner), \"The War in the Air\" (1908, Macmillan),\n\"The World Set Free\" (1914, Macmillan).\n\nHis novels fall naturally into two classes: first those of a lighter\nand humorous character: \"The Wheels of Chance\" (1896, Macmillan),\n\"Love and Mr. Lewisham\" (1900, Stokes), \"Kipps\" (1906, Scribner), \"The\nHistory of Mr. Polly\" (1910, Duffield), \"Bealby\" (1915, Macmillan),\n\"Boon\" etc. (1915, Doran).\n\nHis longer and more serious novels are: \"Ann Veronica\" (1909,\nHarper), \"The New Machiavelli\" (1910, Duffield), \"Tono-Bungay\" (1908,\nDuffield), \"Marriage\" (Duffield), \"The Passionate Friends\" (1913,\nHarper), \"The Wife of Sir Isaac Harmon\" (1914, Macmillan), \"The\nResearch Magnificent\" (1915, Macmillan), \"Mr. Britling Sees It Through\"\n(1916, Macmillan).\n\nTo these we must add some early works: a \"Textbook on Biology\" in two\nvolumes (1892) and two volumes of essays, \"Select Conversations with\nan Uncle\" (1895, Saalfield) and \"Certain Personal Matters\" (1897). He\nhas, like Stevenson, devoted much attention to devising floor games for\nchildren and has published two books upon it: \"Floor Games\" and \"Little\nWars\" (Small, Maynard).\n\nWells still awaits his Boswell, but we have \"The World of H. G. Wells\"\nby Van Wyck-Brooks (1915, Kennerley), a lively and appreciative\ncritique, and \"H. G. Wells, A Biography and a Critical Estimate of\nhis Work\" by J. D. Beresford (1915, Holt), still briefer, equally\ninteresting, and containing a list of his writings to date. An\nautobiographical sketch was written for the Russian edition of his\nworks (1909) and published in T. P.'s Magazine (1912).\n\nOf magazine articles and critiques the following have for one reason or\nanother special interest:\n\n\"Les Id\u00e9es de Wells sur l'Humanit\u00e9 future\" by Charles Duguet in _Revue\ndes Id\u00e9es_, 1908.\n\n\"Wells\" by Chesterton in _American Magazine_, vol. 71, p. 32 (1910).\n\n\"Wells and his Point of View\" in _Catholic World_, vol. 91 (four\narticles, 1910).\n\n\"Wells and Bergson\" by P. E. B. Jourdain in _Hibbert Journal_, vol. 10,\np. 835, July, 1912. \"H. G. Wells et la Pens\u00e9e contemporaine\" by Ren\u00e9\nLeguy in _Mercure de France_ (1912).\n\nThe contributions of Mr. Wells to current magazines and newspapers\nare too numerous to enumerate, but I must not omit the two articles\non Socialism which he contributed to _The Independent_, October 25\nand November 3, 1906, and an article on \"The Nature of Love\" (_The\nIndependent_, August 13, 1908).\n\n\n[1] See \"Major Prophets of To-day\", p. 232.\n\n[2] \"Heretics\", by G. K. Chesterton, p. 85.\n\n[3] \"In the Days of the Comet\", by H. G. Wells. New York: The Century\nCompany.\n\n[4] The World Set Free.\n\n[5] From Wells's \"Anticipations.\"\n\n[6] From Kellermann's account of the Battle of Loos.\n\n[7] It would be interesting to learn where Wells happened to get hold\nof the idea that time is the fourth dimension of reality and how much\nhe knew then of the history of the conception. He could not, at any\nrate, for all his prophetic powers, have foreseen the important part\nit was to play in scientific thought and metaphysical speculation in\nthe coming century. Lorentz, Einstein and Minkowski have incorporated\nit into their new theory of relativity which threatens to abolish the\nether and to make mass a variable, dependent on velocity. Our ordinary\nEuclidean or three dimensional space would thus be a cross-section at\na certain time. (See \"The Time-Space Manifold of Relativity\", by Edwin\nB. Wilson and G. N. Lewis, in _Proceedings of the American Academy of\nArts and Sciences_, November, 1912.) Heinrich Czolbe in 1875 brought\nforward the theory (see M\u00fcller, _Archiv f\u00fcr systematische Philosophie_,\nXVII, p. 106), and Lotze discusses it in his \"Microcosmos.\" Bergson's\nphilosophy is based upon the distinction he draws between psychological\nduration and the physical treatment of time as a kind of space.\nProfessor Pitkin of Columbia criticizes Wells's time-machine from\nthe metaphysical standpoint in \"Time and Pure Activity\" (_Journal\nPhilosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods_, Vol. ii, No. 19).\n\n[8] \"Boon, The Mind of the Race, The Wild Asses of the Devil, and The\nLast Trump. Being a First Selection from the Literary Remains of George\nBoon, Appropriate to the Times. Prepared for Publication by Reginald\nBliss, with an Ambiguous Introduction by H. G. Wells.\" (Doran, 1915.)\n\n[9] He has given three statements of his views on this point: First,\nin an article, \"Rediscovery of the Unique\", in Fortnightly Review,\nJuly, 1891; second, in a paper read to the Oxford Philosophical Society\nand published in Mind, XIII, No. 51, and as an appendix to \"A Modern\nUtopia\"; and, third, in Book I of \"First and Last Things.\"\n\n\n[10] \"Logic, M. Bergson and Mr. H. G. Wells\", by Philip E. B. Jourdain\nin _Hibbert Journal_, X, p. 835.\n\n[11] \"Marriage,\" Duffield and Company, 1912.\n\n[12] See \"The Tragedy of Color\", chapter xii of \"The Future in\nAmerica\", and his article on \"Race Prejudice\", in _The Independent_ of\nFebruary 14, 1907.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\n\nG. K. CHESTERTON\n\n\nKnight Errant of Orthodoxy\n\n    The central truth to be uttered about Mr. Chesterton is that\n    he is the greatest prophet of our generation. He is as great\n    as Tolstoy or Ibsen. It may seem rash to set him beside\n    these great prophets, but time will ratify my rashness. A\n    prophet is a man of genius with a spiritual message for his\n    age.\n\n    The spiritual message delivered by Mr. Chesterton is\n    mightier than any other sounding in our ears. He is a bigger\n    man than Maeterlinck or Bergson, though we know it not.\n    As a prophet he is larger in every way than Mr. Shaw or\n    Mr. Wells or Mr. Arnold Bennett, because he deals with the\n    soul, whereas they deal with the soul's environment. They\n    deal with man as a social animal. He deals with man as a\n    spiritual being.\n\n    Our failure to salute the prophet is complete, and it\n    is emphasized by our failure to perceive that he is the\n    authentic voice of that English soul which is now wrestling\n    with the Teutonic soul for the soul of the world. _He is the\n    soul of England_.--James Douglas in the _Observer_, 1916.\n\nCan a journalist have a philosophy of life, and if so would it be\nworth talking about? In answer to the first question I shall quote\nChesterton to the effect that everybody has a philosophy, even generals\nand journalists. To prove the affirmative of the second I shall\npresent, as Exhibit B, the whole body of Chesterton's works. Perhaps\nthe most heretical passage of his book on \"Heretics\" was that which\nbegins:\n\n    But there are some people, nevertheless--and I am one of\n    them--who think that the most practical and important thing\n    about a man is still his view of the universe. We think that\n    for a landlady considering a lodger, it is important to know\n    his income, but still more important to know his philosophy.\n    We think that for a general about to fight an enemy, it\n    is important to know the enemy's numbers, but still more\n    important to know the enemy's philosophy. We think the\n    question is not whether the theory of the cosmos affects\n    matters, but whether, in the long run, anything else affects\n    them.\n\nLike many other things in Chesterton's works this does not sound so\nheretical now as when it was written, about the time when the weary old\nworld had finished Chapter XIX of the second volume of his history and\nhad turned over the page in hopes of finding something new and exciting\nin Chapter XX--and found it. Chesterton's countrymen then were keeping\ncareful count of Germany's soldiers and ships, but they were\ncontentedly ignorant of German philosophy. But as soon as the war broke\nout they began with feverish haste to translate and study Treitschke,\nNietzsche, Bernhardi, and any other books which might throw light upon\nthe German _Weltanschauung_, but which in the leisurely days of peace\nthey had no time to read.\n\nIt is convenient to compare Shaw and Chesterton because they are\nantithetic in temperament and opinion and represent two opposite\ncurrents of modern thought. Shaw stands for the earlier rationalistic,\nsocialistic revolt against the conventions of society. Chesterton\nstands for the later conservative reaction to all this, for\necclesiasticism, nationalism, and traditionalism. Shaw is a vegetarian\nand teetotaler. Chesterton is quite the opposite; he champions the\npublic house as a good old English institution. Shaw is a suffragist;\nChesterton is dead set against anything of the kind. Shaw came from the\nmost pronounced Protestant stock, the Ulster kind, and, as we can see\nfrom his introduction to \"Androcles and the Lion\", he has constructed\na sort of religion for himself, though he could hardly be accounted\northodox. Chesterton is a Catholic, though of the Anglican rather than\nthe Roman variety, a champion of orthodoxy, and a defender of all\nforms of ritualism and medievalism. Chesterton makes it his business to\nfind a logical basis for popular traditions, customs, and superstitions\nwhich have always been regarded as purely irrational and arbitrary even\nby those who liked them and defended them as poetic and conforming\nto a deeper reality than that of reason. Shaw is always showing how\nabsurd and illogical are the soundest axioms and the most unquestioned\nplatitudes, whether of orthodox conservative or orthodox revolutionary\nthought. Chesterton discovers new reasons in things; Shaw discovers new\nunreasons in things.\n\nChesterton appears in the capacity of permanent minority leader. But\nthis is in respect to that really small minority of professional\nwriters, speakers, and agitators who set the fashions for the\nZeitgeist. Actually he has the backing of the great inarticulate\nimmobile mass of the people.\n\nChesterton has discovered how to be witty though orthodox. But his\northodoxy is so extreme that it seems heterodoxy to most of us. Perhaps\nthat accounts for his success in making it sound paradoxical. As Wesley\ndetermined that the devil had no right to all the pretty music, so\nChesterton determined that the iconoclasts should not monopolize\nall the cleverness. His originality consists in his genius for turning\nplatitudes into epigrams. He can put the most unquestioned axiom in a\nway to shock the world. If he is right in what he says in his books on\nWatts that \"there is only one thing that requires real courage to say\nand that is a truism\", Chesterton must be the bravest man alive. But\neven he finds it necessary to promulgate his truisms in the disguise of\nsensational novelties.\n\nChesterton's ideal is a complete democracy, not merely democracy in\npolitics but democracy in science, religion, literature, sport, and\nart. If you say this is impracticable he doubtless would retort that it\nwas the essence of an ideal to be impracticable, otherwise it would be\nconfounded with dull reality. He always champions the opinion of the\nmany against that of the few, the laymen against the expert.\n\n    Once men sang together round a table in chorus; now one\n    man sings alone, for the absurd reason that he can sing\n    better. If scientific civilization goes on (which is most\n    improbable) only one man will laugh because he can laugh\n    better than the rest.--\"Heretics.\"\n\n    It was absurd to say that Waterloo was won on Eton cricket\n    fields. But it might have fairly been said that Waterloo was\n    won on the village green, where clumsy boys played a very\n    clumsy cricket.\n\n    ... It is a good sign in a nation when such things are done\n    badly. It shows that all the people are doing them. And it\n    is a bad sign in a nation when such things are done very\n    well, for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics\n    are doing them and that the nation is merely looking\n    on.--\"All Things Considered.\"\n\nOn this ground he hated Germany even before the war, as a nation ruled\nby experts. He denounced its workingmen's insurance, its governmental\nefficiency, its higher criticism, and the like. \"I am all for German\nfantasy, but I will resist German earnestness till I die. I am all for\nGrimm's Fairy Tales; but if there is such a thing as Grimm's Law, I\nwould break it if I knew what it was.\"[1]\n\nIt is on the basis of democracy that he defends religion:\n\n    That Christianity is identical with democracy is the hardest\n    of gospels: there is nothing that so strikes men with fear\n    as that they are all sons of God.--\"Twelve Types.\"\n\n    It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended\n    through time. It is trusting to a consensus of common human\n    voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record. The\n    man who quotes some German historian against the tradition\n    of the Catholic Church, for instance, is strictly appealing\n    to aristocracy. He is appealing to the superiority of one\n    expert against the awful authority of a mob. It is quite\n    easy to see why a legend is treated and ought to be treated\n    more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is\n    generally made by the majority of people in a village, who\n    are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in\n    the village who is mad.... If we attach great importance\n    to the opinion of ordinary men in great unanimity when\n    dealing with daily matters, there is no reason why we should\n    disregard it when we are dealing with history or fable.\n    Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise.\n    Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all\n    classes--our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead....\n    Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even\n    if he is our groom: tradition asks us not to neglect a good\n    man's opinion, even if he is our father.--\"Orthodoxy.\"\n\nI expect some time to find Chesterton defending the Trinity on the\nground that it is more democratic than Mohammedan monotheism, a sort of\ncommission government extended to the universe.\n\nChesterton has the true artist's love for the individual and the\nconcrete. He delights in clear outlines and bright colors. He thinks\nin pictures. I have never seen any of his painting, but he must have\nthe color sense strongly developed. He will halt in a stern chase or in\nthe height of an argument to describe a sunset with the most chromatic\nlanguage at his command. He studied art at the Slade School in\nLondon, and although he was soon switched off into journalism he still\nreverts to the pencil on occasion. He has supplied the illustrations to\nthree of Belloc's books; \"The Great Enquiry\", \"The Green Overcoat\", and\n\"Emmanuel Burden.\"[2] The last, a satire on imperialistic financiering,\nis one of the cleverest pieces of irony to be found in all literature,\nbut it raises the question of whether the ironical tone can be\nsustained through a whole volume without a decline of interest. When\nthe question of illustration arose Chesterton sent out for a bundle\nof wrapping paper, and in the course of one evening drew all of the\nportraits in the book as well as a lot that were not used.\n\nFor the understanding of Chesterton's romances it is necessary to\nremember that the more non-sensical they seem, the more sense they have\nin them. This is because when he gets blinded by a big idea he sees\nmen as concepts walking. He is too much of a Platonist to be a good\nnovelist. He admires Dickens but never imitates him, for Chesterton's\nstories are singularly devoid of individuals. All the little variations\nand accidental peculiarities that make a type into a person in the\ngreat novels of the world are lacking. In \"The Ball and the Cross\"\nMac Ian is simply the archetype of the Catholic Romanticist and\nTurnbull of the Revolutionary Rationalist. Neither of them ever does\nanything out of character, but then neither of them has any character\noutside of the Idea that made them what they are. Each falls in love\nwith a girl of the opposite type, drawn to scale. This is carried\nfarther yet by the introduction of an incredibly consistent Tolstoyan\nand a Nietzschean beside whom Nietzsche would seem all too human. Thus\nthe whole book is balanced and matched like old-fashioned wall paper or\nan Italian garden.\n\nManalive comes closer to being real. He certainly is alive, but he is\nnot a man; he is an ideal, Chesterton's superman. \"All habits are bad\nhabits\" is the text of G. K. Chesterton's \"Manalive\", which proved\nas delightful to his admirers and distasteful to his antipathists as\nany of his former productions. In his essays Mr. Chesterton's method\nis first to set down something that sounds like a wild absurdity and\nthen to argue the reader into the admission--cheerful or indignant,\naccording to his temperament--that it is a very sensible thing after\nall. In his romances his method is essentially the same. Nobody could\nact crazier than Mr. Innocent Smith in the first chapters of this\nvolume, but in the end he is proved, by a long legal process, to be\nthe only really sane man of the lot. He is accused of about as many\ncrimes as the hero of Jokai's tale, \"The Death's Head\", confessed\nto, but he turns out to be quite as guiltless. Charges of murder,\nburglary, bigamy, and kidnaping, amply certificated, slip off him\nlike water off a duck's back. Neither prison nor asylum can hold\nManalive. Smith's theory is that if you keep the commandments, you\nmay violate the conventions; which, being the reverse of the ordinary\nrule of procedure, gets him into all sorts of misunderstandings. He\nhad evidently read Schopenhauer's theory that the only happiness\nis the pursuit of happiness, and, what is more, he acts upon it by\nletting go what he most delights in that he may recapture it. He goes\nround the world in search of his own home, and his series of amorous\nadventures are conducted in strict accord with monogamous morality.\nBy getting outside of himself he can gain the joy of coveting his own\npossessions. The economic law of diminishing returns applies to all our\nhabitual pleasures, and to escape it we must be continually seeking new\ninvestments.\n\nSo Manalive is distinguished from ordinary men in that he has legs\nthat he uses. He is not rooted. He breaks out and runs around and\ndiscovers the most novel and wonderful things in the most commonplace\nenvironment.\n\nMr. Chesterton is as fond of a chase as a fox hunter or a kinetoscope\nman. We have it in \"Manalive\" as we have it in \"The Man Who Was\nThursday\" and \"The Ball and the Cross.\" As usual he stops every little\nwhile and paints a cloudscape to rest our eyes; and all along he\nenlivens the way by epigrams and inverted proverbs. Here are a few:\n\n    When men are weary they fall into anarchy; but when they are\n    gay and vigorous they invariably make rules. We are never\n    free until some institution frees us; and liberty cannot\n    exist until it is declared by authority.\n\n    For she was one of those women who at bottom regard all\n    men as equally mad, wild animals of some utterly separate\n    species.\n\n    Though she never spoke she always looked as if she might\n    speak any minute. Perhaps this is the very definition of a\n    companion.\n\n    All that the parsons say is unproved. All that the doctors\n    say is disproved. That's the only difference between science\n    and religion there's ever been or ever will be.\n\n    The academic mind reflects infinity, and is full of light by\n    the simple process of being shallow and standing still.\n\n    With our weak spirits we should grow old in eternity, if\n    we were not kept young by death. Providence has to cut\n    immortality into lengths for us, as nurses cut the bread and\n    butter into fingers.\n\nThe most fantastic and therefore characteristic of Chesterton's\nromances is \"The Man Who Was Thursday\" which the French are able\nmore concisely to entitle _Nomm\u00e9 Jeudi_. The author calls it \"A\nNightmare\", and it is. The only books to compare with it are George\nMacdonald's \"Lilith\", Strindberg's \"Dream Plays\", and Andreyev's\n\"Masked Ball\"; but for wild imagining, grotesquerie, farcicality, and\nswift transformations it cannot be matched. It is a detective story,\na motion-picture chase, and a system of theology, all in one. Like\nall dreams, according to Freud, it is symbolic, but the symbolism\nis not to be interpreted in the usual Freudian way, for Chesterton\nis clean-minded. The clue to it is to be found in his earliest book\nof essays, \"The Defendant\", when he argues for the moral value of\nthe detective story in the following fashion: \"By dealing with the\nunsleeping sentinels who guard the outposts of society, it tends to\nremind us that we live in an armed camp, making war upon a chaotic\nworld, and that the criminals, the children of chaos, are nothing but\ntraitors within our gates.\"\n\nThe detective, he says, who stands alone and fearless amid\nthe knives and fists of a thieves' kitchen, is the original and\npoetic figure, and the criminals surrounding him represent cosmic\nconservatism. But in \"The Man Who Was Thursday\" each one of the\nsix detectives, separately commissioned by the mysterious head of\nthe secret police to enter the inner circle of seven anarchists,\nbelieves himself to be fighting single-handed for law and order\nagainst a criminal conspiracy to destroy civilization. The seven\npseudo-anarchists go through all sorts of perilous and absurd\nadventures in the course of which they are metamorphosed successively\ninto the seven days of the week, the seven days of creation, the seven\norders of created things, and the seven angels of heaven. Finally\nseated upon seven thrones, robed in state, blazoned--of course, since\nit is Chesterton--with heraldic devices, they recognize one another\nas friends and allies through all their strange strife. It reminds\none of Emerson's Brahma: \"If the red slayer thinks he slays.\" But\nChesterton is too much of a Manichean to let it go at that. One of the\nanarchists turns out to be genuine, the only real one in the world,\nthe irreconcilable rebel, the Eternal Anarchist, the spirit that\ncontinually denies, the leader of His Majesty's Opposition. In some\nways Chesterton's conception of the devil reminds one of Andreyev's\n\"Anathema\" or perhaps rather of the Satan whom Dostoievsky introduces\ninto his \"Brothers Karamazarov.\" Chesterton's mind seems to have\na curious affinity to the Russian, though so far as I remember his\nwritings show no evidence of being influenced by Russian literature.\n\n\"The Man Who Was Thursday\" affects readers variously. To some it seems\nridiculous; to others blasphemous. Julius West, usually sympathetic,\ndismisses it in his biography of Chesterton as incomprehensible\nand tiresome. Yet three people I know--a man, a woman, and a\nchild--consider it one of the most wonderful books in the world, and\nknow it almost by heart.\n\nMy own opinion is that it shows that Chesterton has not yet found the\ntrue medium for the expression of his genius. Drawing and writing\nare too slow and cold to give scope to his pictorial imagination. He\nshould, like D'Annunzio, take to the screen. \"The Man Who Was Thursday\"\nwould make a magnificent scenario as it stands, and Chesterton could\nthen add all of the things he thought of or saw while composing it but\ncould not put into words.\n\nBlake, too, was a man who would have done wonders with the\ncinematograph if it had only been invented sooner. Chesterton, in\nhis sketch of Blake, explains his difficulties of expression by word\nand picture:\n\n    How shall we manage to state in an obvious and alphabetical\n    manner the ultimate query, the primordial pivot on which\n    the whole modern problem turns? It cannot be done in long\n    rationalistic words: they convey by their very sound the\n    suggestion of something subtle. One must try to think of\n    something in the way of a plain street metaphor or an\n    obvious analogy. For the thing is not too hard for human\n    speech: it is actually too obvious for human speech.\n\nChesterton's theory of the use of symbolism, even absurd symbolism, is\ngiven in his \"Defense of Nonsense\".\n\n    Every great literature has always been\n    allegorical--allegorical of some view of the whole universe.\n    The Iliad is only great because all life is a battle, the\n    Odyssey because all life is a journey, the Book of Job\n    because all life is a riddle....\n\n    Nonsense and faith (strange as the conjunction may seem)\n    are the two supreme symbolic assertions of the truth that\n    to draw out the soul of things with a syllogism is as\n    impossible as to draw out Leviathan with a hook.\n\nChesterton at the beginning of his career wrote \"A Defense of Detective\nStories\"[3] and he has since shown that he knows how to write them,\nin the collections entitled \"The Club of Queer Trades\", \"The\nInnocence of Father Brown\", and \"The Wisdom of Father Brown.\" But\nthey are different from ordinary detective stories not merely because\na mild-mannered priest takes the place of Sherlock Holmes but more\nbecause they frequently have nothing to do with crime and all parties\nturn out, as in \"Thursday\", to have the best of intentions, whatever\ntheir actions. Chesterton's method in these stories is much the\nsame as he employs in his essays; that is, he piles up paradoxical\nimpossibilities, and then by some simple expedient resolves them into\napparent reasonableness. The author's obvious enjoyment of his own\ningenuity adds to the reader's delight. It would be interesting to\nknow whether he has in mind the solution when he lays out the plot or\nwhether he is not playing a game with himself like jackstraws, pitting\nhis skill as a disentangler against a muddle of his own making.\n\nAs an artist Chesterton has always been attracted by the Orient, with\nits mystical fanaticisms, its cruel colors, and its unfamiliar habits\nof thought. But while Turkey is all very well at a distance, Turkey\nin Europe is to him a distinct and horrible menace. In \"The Flying\nInn\" we have a story of Mohammedan influence not only in Europe but\nin England itself. This novel is an allegory of the war between the\nsacred symbol of the cross and the sacred symbol of the crescent, as\nChesterton has similarly related the struggle of the Ball and the Cross\nin his book of that name.\n\nThe champions of the crescent are Misysra Ammon, the Prophet of the\nMoon, and Lord Ivywood, an eccentric nobleman, a fanatic against\nthe liquor traffic as the embodiment of Christian custom as opposed\nto Moslem. Misysra, who is as fertile with impossible theories as\nwith plausible arguments to support them, maintains that England is\nMohammedan at heart and proves it in a hundred ways from the contempt\nwith which the pig is popularly spoken of to the absence of any\n\"idolatrous\" animal or vegetable forms in modern cubist painting. Lord\nIvywood's persecution of the inn-keepers sends one of them adrift\nthroughout the country carrying his inn-sign with him and accompanied\nby Captain Dalroy, an athletic Irishman who champions the cause of the\ncross.\n\nSo far we have a straight Chesterton novel, a symbolic theme variegated\nby satires on modern life. But Chesterton really seems uncertain that\nhe aimed to write a prose novel at all, for the book is plentifully\ninterspersed with verses, serious, comic, ironical, militant, in\ngood meter and in bad, till the novel takes on the not unpleasant\nappearance of a Chesterton anthology of songs.\n\nEverybody who likes G. K. Chesterton has wished that he might be\ninduced to follow the example of Charles Dickens and write a Child's\nHistory of England. When a literary man of wayward genius undertakes\nto interpret and record the story of his country the result is almost\nalways worth while. We do not get the white sunlight of impartiality,\nbut we get a beautiful rainbow of prejudices, personal opinions,\nand mystical insight. Chesterton has still to write us a complete\nEnglish history, but he has dealt faithfully with about a century\nand a half of it in \"The Crimes of England.\" It is due to him to\nsay that the unhistorical character of the work is caused rather by\npartisan emphasis than by any inaccuracy of detail. Rarely if ever\nhas Chesterton written with such care for his facts, and, as for his\ntranscendental interpretation of them, he has as much warrant to\nphilosophize as Carlyle or Taine or any other literary historian.\nBut one does tend to get the impression from the book that only\nPrussians had ever incurred the scriptural curse on him who removes his\nneighbor's landmark.\n\nFor the \"crimes of England\" are really the crimes of Prussia, and\nEngland's guilt is summed up in the phrase that English politics\nhas been devoted ever since the time of Frederick the Great to \"the\nbelittlement of France and the gross exaggeration of Germany.\"\nChesterton denounces the part played by his country in the wars of\nFrederick the Great, in the Napoleonic struggles, in the repression\nof Ireland, in tolerating Bismarck's schemes of aggrandizement, only\nto bring into darker relief the wickedness of the state which used\nEngland throughout all these years as a catspaw. Yet the indictment\nof England as Prussia's accomplice is delivered in very sharp terms;\nso far as Chesterton shows bias it is pro-French or pro-Irish rather\nthan pro-British. He really believes that the war is an epic struggle\nbetween the old soul of Christendom, most clearly incarnated in\nthe Catholic nations, and a blast of sinister materialism from the\nwastes and forests of Brandenburg. In this belief he writes not only\nseriously, but soberly, as befits the great hour, and concludes his\nbook with a vivid and moving description of the Battle of the Marne\nwhich has in it a world of eloquence and no \"cleverness\" at all.\n\nThe large volume of \"Criticisms and Appreciations of Dickens\" is\ncomposed of his prefaces to the separate books of Dickens. Although\nnot so important a piece of work as Chesterton's biography of Dickens,\nthey are well worth bringing together in this way, because they form\nnot only a brilliant piece of literary interpretation, but because\nthey show that it is possible to write prefaces to the classics which\nwill increase the desire to read the book instead of dampening one's\nardor at the start with a mass of dry and trivial details of the\nauthor's life and environment. Chesterton has the first requisite\nof a good introducer, an enthusiasm for his subject and a belief in\nthe importance of his message for the times in which we live. His\ncomparison of Dickens and Thackeray, if not quite fair, has at least\nsufficient point to suggest thought.\n\n    Thackeray has become classical; but Dickens has done\n    more; he has remained modern. There was a painful moment\n    (somewhere about the eighties) when we watched anxiously\n    to see whether Dickens was fading from the modern world.\n    We have watched a little longer, and with great relief\n    we begin to realize that it is the modern world that is\n    fading. All that universe of ranks and respectabilities in\n    comparison with which Dickens was called a caricaturist,\n    all that Victorian universe in which he seemed vulgar--all\n    that is itself--breaking up like a cloud-land. And only the\n    caricatures of Dickens remain like things carved in stone.\n\nBut whether his medium is fiction, criticism, or editorial, Chesterton\nis always a moralist, differing, however, from most moralists in that\nhe is never prosy and never directs his preachments at obsolete evils\nand deceased sinners.\n\nProse and poetry are such widely sundered fields that a reputation made\nin one does not carry over into the other. When Scott dropped poetry to\ntake up novel writing he found it expedient to leave his name behind.\nWhen Kipling passed in the reverse direction from prose to poetry he\nhad to cultivate a new _client\u00e8le_. It is very amusing to hear two\nlovers of Hardy or of Meredith sing peans of praise to their favorite\nauthor in strophe and antistrophe until on descending from the general\nto the particular they discover that one was extolling the poet and\nthe other the novelist and that each had never read, or but lightly\nesteemed what the other most admired.\n\nSo while the essays and romances of Gilbert Keith Chesterton reach\nthousands of readers week by week through the journals, and are bought\nwith avidity in volume form, his poems are but little known to readers\nof his prose, although they have, I fancy, a circle of their own. Yet\nno one can understand Chesterton fully who ignores his verse, for his\nthought, expressed through this medium, is seen from another angle\nand so gains solidity to the view.\n\nChesterton, like Tennyson, has taken one of England's legendary\nheroes as the theme of an epic by which to express his philosophy of\nlife and his message to his age. The stories of Alfred he accepts as\nuncritically and handles as freely as Tennyson did those of Arthur, but\nthe poems resultant show not merely the difference between the authors,\nbut also, in a way, the difference between the past century and the\npresent one, the contrast between a faintly hopeful agnosticism and a\nrobustious affirmation of faith.\n\nIn his \"Alarms and Discursions\" he has told us in prose of the\nimpressions made upon him by his visit to the Vale of the White Horse\nand Ethandune. These he transmutes into poetry in \"The Ballad of the\nWhite Horse.\"[4] In the beautiful dedication to his wife he gives her\ncredit for having opened his eyes to the Christian significance of the\nwars of Alfred against the Danes. Miss Frances Blogg, whom he married\nin 1900, was described by one who knew her then as \"a conservative\nrebel against the conventions of the unconventional.\" We may assume\nthat it was largely through her influence that he was converted from\nyouthful atheism to extremest orthodoxy. I can quote only a few stanzas\nfrom this dedication although such fragments are distressing to those\nwho know the whole and aggravating to those who do not.\n\n\n    Lady, by one light only\n      We look from Alfred's eyes,\n    We know he saw athwart the wreck\n    The sign that hangs about your neck,\n    Where One more than Melchizedek\n      Is dead and never dies.\n\n    Therefore I bring these rimes to you,\n      Who brought the cross to me,\n    Since on you flaming without flaw\n    I saw the sign that Guthrum saw\n    When he let break his ships of awe,\n      And laid peace upon the sea.\n\n    Do you remember when we went\n      Under a dragon moon,\n      And 'mid volcanic tints of night\n    Walked where they fought the unknown fight\n    And saw black trees on the battle-height,\n      Black thorn on Ethandune?\n\n    And I thought \"I will go with you,\n      As man with God has gone,\n    And wander with a wandering star,\n    The wandering heart of things that are,\n    The fiery cross of love and war\n      That like your self goes on.\"\n\n    O go you onward, where you are\n    Shall honor and laughter be,\n    Past purpled forest and pearled foam,\n    God's winged pavilion free to roam,\n    Your face, that is a wandering home,\n    A flying home to me.\n\n     *       *       *       *       *\n    Up through an empty house of stars\n      Being what heart you are,\n    Up the inhuman steeps of space\n    As on a staircase go in grace,\n    Carrying the firelight on your face\n      Beyond the loneliest star.\n\nIt is hard to carry the ballad meter through a whole volume without\nits growing monotonous. Chesterton's poetry, like his prose, should be\ntaken in small doses. \"The Ballad of the White Horse\" contains some\nwearisome stretches, particularly in the most exciting parts, the\nfights. When I want real zest in blood letting and the enjoyment of\nhand to hand combat I should turn to Percy's Reliques, or to Homer.\nMy volume of the \"Ballad\" opens easiest, as it has opened oftenest,\nat three passages. The first is that where King Alfred as a fugitive\nin the forest is set to mind the cakes and gets to musing, not, as we\nchildren used to be told, about how to beat the Danes, but, according\nto the Chestertonian version, about the Christian view of the labor\nquestion. As the old, bent woman leaves the hut Alfred wonders what\nshall become of such as she.\n\n    And well may God with the serving-folk\n      Cast in His dreadful lot:\n    Is not He too a servant\n      And is not He forgot?\n\n    For was not God my gardener\n      And silent like a slave:\n    That opened oaks on the uplands\n      Or thicket in graveyard grave?\n\n    And was not God my armorer,\n      All patient and unpaid,\n    That sealed my skull as a helmet\n      And ribs for hauberk made?\n\n     *       *       *       *       *\n\n    For God is a great servant\n      And rose before the day,\n    From some primordial slumber torn;\n    But all things living later born\n    Sleep on, and rise after the morn,\n      And the Lord has gone away.\n\n    On things half sprung from sleeping,\n      All sleepy suns have shone;\n    They stretch stiff arms, the yawning trees,\n    The beasts blink upon hands and knees,\n    Man is awake and does and sees--\n      But Heaven has done and gone.\n\n     *       *       *       *       *\n\n    But some see God like Guthrum\n      Crowned, with a great beard curled,\n    But I see God like a good giant,\n      That, laboring, lifts the world.\n\n    Wherefore was God in Golgotha,\n      Slain as a serf is slain:\n    And hate He had of prince and peer,\n    And love He had and made good cheer\n    Of them that, like this woman here,\n      Go powerfully in pain.\n\nBut whether Alfred pondered problems of war or labor the cakes got\nburnt just the same.\n\nNext I turn to the page where men come to Alfred on the island of\nAthelney and beg him to become the ruler of all England. This gives\nChesterton a chance to expound his anti-imperialism.\n\n    And Alfred in the orchard,\n      Among apples green and red,\n    With the little book in his bosom,\n      Looked at green leaves and said:\n\n    \"When all philosophies shall fail,\n      This word alone shall fit;\n    That a sage feels too small for life,\n      And a fool too large for it.\n\n    \"Asia and all imperial plains\n      Are all too little for a fool:\n    But for one man whose eyes can see,\n    The little island of Athelney\n      Is too large a land to rule.\n\n     *       *       *       *       *\n\n    \"An island like a little book,\n      Full of a hundred tales,\n    Like the gilt page the good monks pen\n    That is all smaller than a wren,\n    Yet hath high towers, meteors and\" men,\n      And suns and spouting whales.\n\n    \"A land having a light in it,\n      In a river dark and fast,\n    An isle with utter, clearness lit,\n    Because a saint has stood in it,\n    Where flowers are flowers indeed and fit,\n      And trees are trees at last.\"\n\nAs his men clear the weeds from the White Horse that had ages before\nbeen cut upon the chalk bluff, Alfred has a vision of the day when the\nancient symbol shall be again overgrown and forgotten and when a new\nand less manly kind of heathen than the Danes shall overrun England:\n\n    I know that weeds shall grow in it\n      Faster than man can burn:\n    And though they scatter now and go,\n    In some far century, sad and slow,\n    I have a vision, and I know\n      The heathen shall return.\n\n    They shall not come with war-ships,\n      They shall not waste with brands,\n    But books be all their eating,\n      And ink be on their hands.\n\n     *       *       *       *       *\n\n    The dear sun dwarfed of dreadful suns,\n      Like fiercer flowers on stalk,\n    Earth lost and little like a pea,\n    In high heaven's towering forestry\n    --These be the small weeds ye shall see\n      Crawl, covering the chalk.\n\n     *       *       *       *       *\n\n    By terror and the cruel tales\n      Of curse in bone and kin,\n    By weird and weakness winning,\n    Accursed from the beginning,\n    By detail of the sinning,\n      And denial of the sin:\n\n    By thought a crawling ruin,\n      By life a leaping mire,\n    By a broken heart in the breast of the world,\n      And the end of the world's desire:\n\n    By God and man dishonored,\n      By death and life made vain,\n    Know ye the old barbarian,\n      The barbarian come again.\n\n    When is great talk of trend and tide,\n      And wisdom and destiny,\n    Hail that undying heathen\n      That is sadder than the sea.\n\nIn this specification of \"the marks of the Beast\" we may recognize\nChesterton's antipathies; materialism, commercialism, Darwinism,\nimperialism, cosmopolitanism, pacifism, and Socialism. He is haunted\nby the same nightmare as Samuel Butler, that the day may come when\nmachines will master the world and men be merely their slaves. For\nrelief he looks to a revolution like the French Revolution, only\nworse. Chesterton is like the Eton boys who, after a debate over woman\nsuffrage, passed a unanimous resolution disapproving of the aim of the\nsuffragettes but approving of their methods. The socialists say we\nmust have a revolution, peaceful if possible. Chesterton would say,\n\"we must have a revolution, bloody if possible.\" The guillotine, he\nsays somewhere, had many sins to answer for, but, at least, there was\nnothing evolutionary about it. And he makes the English people say:\n\n    It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose\n        the first.\n    Our wrath come after Russia's wrath and our wrath\n        be the worst.\n\nLike Hilaire Belloc and other Neo-Catholics, he manages somehow to\ncombine an admiration for the French Revolution with a devotion to\nCatholicism. They are ardent advocates of democracy notwithstanding the\nvery explicit condemnations of popular government by the Popes. They\nare more inclined toward syndicalism than Socialism and place their\nhopes in the peasant proprietorship instead of in the nationalized\ntrust. It is an interesting novelty in the labor problem, for it cuts\nacross the old classifications, and I hope it will have a chance to\ndevelop into something concrete. The similar movement in France, the\n_Sillon_ of Marc Sangnier, was crushed out by a papal encyclical\nin 1912. Chesterton might be called an English Sillonist, and in a\nliteral sense if we recall his essay on The Furrows in \"Alarms and\nDiscursions.\" Chesterton sometimes praises the achievements of modern\nscience and industry, but always as ingenious toys. He is convinced\nthat mankind in the mass will never take the city seriously.\n\nWhen the rest of the world was looking for the advent of\ncosmopolitanism and the reign of peace, the earth lapped in universal\nlaw and all the local idiosyncrasies ironed out, wherein all obstacles\nto freedom of movement had been crushed out and one could buy a\ntourist ticket to Timbuktu with the same accommodation all along\nthe route, Chesterton set his bugle to his lips and blew a fanfare\nof audacious challenge to the spirit of the times in the form of a\nnonsensical romance, \"The Napoleon of Notting Hill.\" In this he carries\nparticularism to an extreme, breaking up London again into warring\nwards, each with its own banner and livery, its gilds and folk ways.\nThe book is inscribed, as we might expect, to his friend, Hilaire\nBelloc, and I quote part of the dedication as it sums up the message of\nthe volume and is strangely prophetic:\n\n    For every tiny town or place\n      God made the stars especially:\n    Babies look up with owlish face\n      And see them tangled in a tree;\n    You saw a moon from Sussex Downs,\n      A Sussex moon, untraveled still.\n    I saw a moon that was the town's,\n      The largest lamp on Campden Hill.\n\n    Yes, Heaven is everywhere at home,\n      The big blue cap that always fits,\n    And so it is (be calm; they come\n      To goal at last, my wandering wits),\n    So it is with the heroic thing\n      This shall not end for the world's end,\n    And though the sullen engines swing,\n      Be you not much afraid, my friend.\n\n    This did not end by Nelson's urn\n      Where an immortal England sits--\n    Nor where your tall young men in turn\n      Drank death like wine at Austerlitz.\n    And when the pedants bade us mark\n      What cold mechanic happenings\n    Must come; our souls said in the dark,\n      \"Belike; but there are likelier things.\"\n\n    Likelier across these flats afar,\n      These sulky levels smooth and free,\n    The drums shall crash a waltz of war\n      And Death shall dance with Liberty!\n    Likelier the barricades shall flare\n      Slaughter below and smoke above,\n    And death and hate and hell declare\n      That men have found a thing to love.[5]\n\nRemember this was written in 1904, at a time when it was commonly\nthought that the last of the wars had been fought and the nations\nmight disarm, for henceforth the Hague Court would hold sway; when\nthe socialists were becoming opportunists and the anarchists had laid\naside their bombs; when such scientists as Metchnikoff were saying that\nself-sacrifice and heroism of the fighting sort were antiquated virtues\nfor which the peaceful and sanitary world of the future would have\nlittle use. Chesterton was wrong about the nature of the catastrophe.\nHe was looking and, I fear, hoping for a social revolution, and that\nhas not yet come although it seems now less improbable than it did then.\n\nBut the Great War has given an irresistible impulse to the movement\ntoward particularism as against cosmopolitanism. Whether we like\nit or not, we must admit that the tide has turned in the other\ndirection and that it will be many years, perhaps more than one\ngeneration, before there will be the freedom of trade, intercourse, and\nmigration that prevailed at the beginning of the twentieth century.\nEven England has abandoned free trade, and every country will hereafter\nstrive to secure economic independence by developing its own resources.\nEven before the war there was a tendency toward the sort of local\ndifferentiation of which Chesterton gave a fantastic forecast in \"The\nNapoleon of Notting Hill.\" This tendency manifested itself in a variety\nof ways; in the cultivation of local industries, the revival of folk\ndances and historic costumes, in pageantry and community celebrations,\nin the interest in town history and in the struggle to re\u00ebstablish\ndisappearing languages, like Gaelic, Czech, and Ruthenian.\n\nFrom Chesterton's latest book devoted to the crimes of Germany, and\ncharacteristically entitled \"The Crimes of England\",[6] we can see\nthat it is the primitive little peasant kingdom of Montenegro that\nhe most admires and the machine-like efficiency of the German empire\nthat he most abhors. Montenegro, since he wrote this volume, has\nbeen overwhelmed by the tide of war, but probably Chesterton has\nfaith to believe that it will reappear like Ararat when the waters\nsubside. This faith he expressed in the poem, \"The March of the Black\nMountain\", written during the Balkan war which Montenegro initiated by\na single-handed attack upon the Turk:\n\n    But men shall remember the Mountain,\n      Though it fall down like a tree,\n    They shall see the sign of the Mountain\n      Faith cast into the sea;\n    Though the crooked swords overcome it\n      And the Crooked Moon ride free,\n    When the Mountain comes to Mahomet\n      It has more life than he.\n\nChesterton has a better right to appear now as the champion of small\nnationalities than some other English authors we could name, for he\nfirst entered the lists of public life to break a lance in defense of\nthe Boers at a time when it was most unpopular if not dangerous to say\na word in their favor. He refers to these youthful days in his \"Song of\nDefeat\", published some ten years afterward. I quote part of one stanza:\n\n    I dream of the days when work was scrappy,\n      And rare in our pockets the mark of the mint:\n    When we were angry and poor and happy,\n      And proud of seeing our names in print.\n    For so they conquered and-so we scattered,\n      When the Devil rode and his dogs smelt gold,\n    And the peace of a harmless folk was shattered,\n      When I was twenty and odd years old.\n    When mongrel men that the market classes,\n      Had slimy hands on England's rod\n    And sword in hand upon Afric's passes\n      Her last Republic cried to God![7]\n\nOne of his youthful dreams was to see a reunion of the United States\nand England which he imagined would come about in some great foreign\nwar. But by 1905, when he included the poem on \"The Anglo-Saxon\nAlliance\" in a volume,[8] he had lost faith in such ethnic generalities\nas the Anglo-Saxon race, so he explains in his preface:\n\n    I have come to see that our hopes of brotherhood with\n    America are the same in kind as our hopes of brotherhood\n    with any other of the great independent nations of\n    Christendom. And a very small study of history was\n    sufficient to show me that the American nation, which-is a\n    hundred years old, is at least fifty years older than the\n    Anglo-Saxon race.\n\nBut the poem, both because he wrote it and because he repudiated it,\nhas an especial interest now when American sympathy with England is\nstronger than ever before, the traditional hostility has been\nlargely swept away, and there is talk of joining England in this\nbloodiest of all wars.\n\n    This is the weird of a world-old folk,\n      That not till the last link breaks\n    Not till the night is blackest,\n      The blood of Hengist wakes.\n    When the sun is black in heaven,\n      The moon as blood above,\n    And the earth is full of hatred,\n      This people tells its love.\n\n    In change, eclipse and peril,\n      Under the whole world's scorn,\n    By blood and death and darkness\n      The Saxon peace is sworn;\n    That all our fruit be gathered,\n      And all our race take hands,\n    And the sea be a Saxon river\n      That runs through Saxon lands.\n\n     *       *       *       *       *\n\n    Deep grows the hate of kindred.\n      Its roots take hold on hell;\n    No peace or praise can heal it,\n      But a stranger heals it well.\n    Seas shall be red as sunsets,\n      And kings' bones float as foam,\n    And heaven be dark with vultures,\n      The night our son comes home.\n\nIn some respects we should expect Chesterton to go better in verse than\nin prose. He thinks in metaphors and pictures, vivid, fantastic,\nand colorful. The peculiarities of his prose style that grate upon\nthe taste of some readers, such as the repetition of the same words,\nthe alliteration, the unqualified assertion of half truths, the queer\nrhythms, the verbal tricks, and the superabundance of tropes, are by\ntradition permissible in poetry and so arouse no resentment.\n\nOn the other hand, poetry is a painstaking art, and Chesterton does\nnot like to take pains. He is too indolent or too indifferent to hunt\nfor the best possible word or rime. Consequently we find in his verse\nmany a perfect line, rarely a perfect stanza, and never a perfect poem.\nBut scattered all through his verse, even in the most nonsensical, we\nhappen upon curious cadences that linger in the memory like the chant\nof some strange ritual. His ballads abound in unconventional rhythms\nthat haunt one like those of Lanier's \"Ballad of the Trees and the\nMaster.\"\n\nAlthough Chesterton often seems to disregard the canons of\nversification from carelessness or caprice, yet at other times he takes\ndelight in subjecting himself to the most rigid of models, as, for\ninstance, the old French _ballade_, which, he says, is \"the easiest\nbecause it is the most restricted.\" He shows us how he constructs\none in \"The Ballade of a Strange Town.\"[9] The strange town into\nwhich he was shunted by the accident of taking the wrong tramcar one\nrainy day while \"fooling about Flanders\" was Lierre, an unknown and\nuninteresting way station then, but now one of the famous places of\nworld history, for it stood for days the shock of the German attack on\nAntwerp. While waiting for the next car to take him away Chesterton\nscribbled on the back of an envelope with an aniline pencil a poem\nwhich begins in nonsense but ends with as good an expression of his\ncreed as he has given anywhere:\n\n    Happy is he and more than wise\n      Who sees with wondering eyes and clean\n    This world through all the gray disguise\n      Of sleep and custom in between.\n    Yes: we may pass the heavenly screen,\n      But shall we know when we are there?\n    Who know not what these dead stones mean,\n      The lovely city of Lierre.\n\nChesterton is so fond of the _ballade_ that I must quote one specimen\ncomplete.[10] For the benefit of those who have taken no interest in\nversification I may call attention to the technical difficulties of\nthe form of the _ballade_ that he has chosen. It consists of three\noctaves and a quatrain all ending in the same refrain and using only\ntwo rimes. The first rime is used in the first and third lines of the\nfirst quatrain and in the second and fourth of the second quatrain.\nThe second rime is used in the second and fourth lines of the first\nquatrain and in the first and third of the second quatrain. The closing\nquatrain or _l'envoi_ is in the _ballade_ addressed to a prince or\nother royal personage. Since Chesterton hates princes his apostrophe to\nthe prince in this _ballade_ is not in the usual sycophantic style.\n\n\n    A BALLADE OF SUICIDE\n\n\n    The gallows in my garden, people say,\n      Is new and neat and adequately tall.\n    I tie the noose on in a knowing way\n      As one that knots his necktie for a ball;\n    But just as all the neighbors--on the wall--\n      Are drawing a long breath to shout \"Hurray!\"\n    The strangest whim has seized me... After all\n      I think I will not hang myself to-day.\n\n    To-morrow is the time I get my pay--\n      My uncle's sword is hanging in the hall--\n    I see a little cloud all pink and grey--\n      Perhaps the rector's mother will _not_ call--\n    I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall\n      That mushrooms could be cooked another way--\n    I never read the works of Juvenal--\n      I think I will not hang myself to-day.\n\n    The world will have another washing day;\n      The decadents decay; the pedants pall;\n    And H. G. Wells has found that children play,\n      And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall;\n    Rationalists are growing rational--\n      And through thick woods one finds a stream astray,\n    So secret that the very sky seems small--\n      I think I will not hang myself to-day.\n\n    L'ENVOI\n\n    Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal,\n      The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way;\n    Even to-day your royal head may fall--\n      I think I will not hang myself to-day.\n\nThose who assisted--with more or less enthusiasm--in the Shakespeare\nTercentenary celebration will appreciate Chesterton's verses about a\nsimilar commemoration decreed by the calendar.\n\n\n\n\n    _THE SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL_\n\n\n    /$\n    Lord Lilac thought it rather rotten\n    That Shakespeare should be quite forgotten,\n    And therefore got on a Committee\n    With several chaps out of the city,\n    And Shorter and Sir Herbert Tree,\n    Lord Rothschild and Lord Rosebery,\n    And F. C. G. and Comyns Carr,\n    Two dukes and a dramatic star,\n    Also a clergyman now dead;\n    And while the vain world careless sped\n    Unheeding the heroic name--\n    The souls most fed with Shakespeare's flame\n    Still sat unconquered in a ring,\n    Remembering him like anything.\n\n      Lord Lilac did not long remain,\n    Lord Lilac did not come again,\n    He softly lit a cigarette\n    And sought some other social set\n    Where, in some other knots or rings,\n    People were doing cultured things,\n    --Miss Zwilt's Humane Vivarium\n    --The little men who paint on gum\n    --The exquisite Gorilla Girl....\n    He sometimes in the giddy whirl\n    (Not being really bad at heart),\n    Remembered Shakespeare with a start--\n    But not with that grand constancy\n    Of Clement Shorter, Herbert Tree,\n    Lord Rosebery, and Comyns Carr\n    And all the other names there are;\n    Who stuck like limpets to the spot,\n    Lest they forgot, lest they forgot.\n\n    Lord Lilac was of slighter stuff;\n    Lord Lilac had had quite enough.[11]\n\nChesterton's poetic versatility range may be inferred from the\nfact that he has written a drinking song that is used as a whisky\nadvertisement and a devotional song that has been incorporated into\nthe hymn book. The former may be found in \"The Flying Inn\", the latter\nin the \"English Hymnal\", also in \"Poems.\" The hymn is as follows,\nomitting, as the preachers always say,[12] the third stanza. Sing it to\nthe tune of \"Webb.\"\n\n    O God of earth and altar,\n    Bow down and hear our cry,\n    Our earthly rulers falter,\n    Our people drift and die.\n\n    The walls of gold entomb us,\n    The swords of scorn divide,\n    Take not thy thunder from us\n    But take away our pride.\n\n    From all that terror teaches,\n    From lies of tongue and pen,\n    From all the easy speeches\n    That comfort cruel men,\n\n    From sale and profanation\n    Of honor and the sword,\n    From sleep and from damnation\n    Deliver us, good Lord!\n\nBut I know of some people--and more sensible people than you would\nsuppose--who say that they like \"Quoodle\" the best of Chesterton's\npoetry. Since there is no accounting for taste and some of my readers\nmay have taste, I must also quote this:\n\n\n    SONG OF THE DOG NAMED QUOODLE\n\n\n    They haven't got no noses,\n      The fallen sons of Eve.\n    Even the smell of roses\n    Is not what they supposes,\n    But more than mind discloses,\n      And more than men believe.\n\n    They haven't got no noses,\n      They cannot even tell\n    When door and darkness closes\n    The park old Gluck encloses,\n    Where even the Law of Moses\n      Will let you steal a smell.\n\n    The brilliant smell of water,\n      The brave smell of a stone,\n    The smell of dew and thunder,\n    And old bones buried under\n    Are things in which they blunder\n      And err, if left alone.\n\n    The wind from winter forests,\n      The scent of scentless flowers,\n    The breath of bride's adorning\n    The smell of snare and warning,\n    The smell of Sunday morning,\n      God gave to us for ours.\n\n     *       *       *       *       *\n\n    And Quoodle here discloses\n      All things that Quoodle can;\n    They haven't got no noses,\n    They haven't got no noses,\n    And goodness only knowses\n    The Noselessness of Man.[13]\n\n\nAccording to Mendelism new species are most apt to come from the\ncrossing of diverse forms. We should then naturally expect Chesterton's\nverse to be original, since it is the result of a cross between Whitman\nand Swinburne. At any rate these were the poets who most influenced\nChesterton when in his teens he began to write poetry. In philosophy\nof life Whitman and Swinburne were not so far apart, since they were\nboth pagans and democrats, but in form they are antipodes. Whitman was\nthe father or the grandfather of the _vers-librists_. He cultivated\nthe unconventional and introduced the most unpoetic and uncouth words.\nSwinburne, on the other hand, sought his themes in the classics and\nsacrificed anything to the music of his lines.\n\nThe early poetry of Chesterton shows traces of both influences. One\nvery interesting instance of this is found in a poem that he wrote\nat school, when he was about sixteen. It is an Ave Maria in the\nSwinburnian meter. That is, he has borrowed the weapon of the atheist\nand used it in defense of Catholicism--a trick that he has been\nplaying ever since. The poem begins:\n\n    Hail Mary! Thou blest among women; generations\n        shall rise up to greet,\n    After ages of wrangle and dogma, I come with a\n        prayer to thy feet.\n    Where Gabriel's red plumes are a wind in the lanes\n        of thy lilies at eve\n    We pray, who have done with the churches; we\n        worship, who may not believe.\n\nFrom his twelfth to his seventeenth year he went to St. Paul's school,\nwhere, as he says, \"I did no work but wrote a lot of bad poetry which\nfortunately perished with the almost equally bad exercises. I got a\nprize for one of these poems--Golly, what a bad poem it was!\"\n\nThe prize was known as the Milton Prize and the subject assigned to the\npupils competing for it was St. Francis Xavier. A soliloquy of Danton\non the scaffold, written at the age of sixteen, shows how early began\nhis fascination for the French Revolution. His fondness for discussion\nwas cultivated at the St. Paul's school in the Junior Debating Club, of\nwhich he was chairman, and the monthly periodical of the society, _The\nDebater_, contains many essays and poems signed \"G. K. C.\" His first\ncontribution to the outside press was a Socialist poem appearing in\n_The Clarion_, but a few years later he was busy trying to puncture the\nballoon of Socialism with his sharp-pointed pen.\n\nAfter leaving St. Paul's he studied art at the Slade School in London\nand has illustrated half a dozen books with cartoons, for he draws\nas readily as he writes. His first book was a volume of jingles and\nsketches entitled \"Gray-Beards at Play; Literature and Art for Old\nGentlemen.\"\n\nHis propensity for dropping into nonsense rhymes and sketches may be\nascribed to heredity, for his father, Edward Chesterton, though a\nrespectable real estate agent by profession, was responsible for a slim\nvolume of child verse and drawings, \"The Wonderful Story of Dunder van\nHaeden and His Seven Little Daughters.\"\n\n[Illustration: G. K. Chesterton]\n\nG. K. Chesterton was born in Kensington, London, May 29, 1874.\nThere is nothing in his heredity or early training to account for\nhis conservative and High Church tendencies, for his father was a\nliberal in politics and religion and attended Bedford Chapel where\nthe Reverend Stopford Brooke was preaching what was then called \"the\nnew theology.\" Although educated as an artist, G. K. Chesterton soon\npassed from sketching through art criticism to journalism. He began by\nwriting pro-Boer articles for _The Speaker_, a Liberal weekly. The\noriginality of his thought and the vigor of his style attracted public\nattention, and _The Daily News_ took him over to write a weekly article\nin spite of the fact that he differed in opinion from the editors and\nreaders on certain points. As his anonymous biographer says:\n\n\"Thousands of peaceful semi-Tolstoyan non-conformists have for years\nbeen compelled to listen every Saturday morning to a fiery apostle\npreaching consistently the praise of three things which seem to them\nmost obviously the sign-manuals of Hell--War, Drink, and Catholicism.\"\n\nBut more recently his antagonism to \"cocoa\"--extended symbolically\nto the politics as well as to the beverage of Cadbury--became so\ngreat as to break this incongruous alliance and he has found in his\nbrother's weekly _The New Witness_ a more congenial although a smaller\naudience. He has also contributed for many years a weekly page to _The\nIllustrated London News_, which is under entirely different management\nfrom _The Daily News_. Besides these and frequent contributions to\nother periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic, he manages to turn out\na volume or two of stories every year as well as poetry and criticism,\nan amazing output considering that there is hardly a dull page in\nit. To keep it up so long and steadily must be a strain upon one\nof his easy-going temperament. Fleet Street men tell me that it is\nhard to get his copy on time. As press day draws near runners are sent\naround to his clubs and other London haunts to tell him that the editor\nmust have his article immediately. Once caught Chesterton surrenders\ngood-naturedly and taking any paper handy will dash off his essay,\ncarrying on a lively conversation at the same time.\n\nProducing under such pressure or at least under the compulsion of\nfilling a certain number of columns every week with witty comment on\ncurrent events inevitably tends to careless writing. Chesterton's work\nis all equally readable, but not all equally worth reading. He is an\ninspired writer, but he goes on writing quite as brilliantly after\nthe inspiration has given out, just as a man writing in the dark goes\non after his fountain pen has run dry and is only making meaningless\nscratches on the paper. His display of gems of thought is hardly to be\nmatched by any other show window, but there are so many paste diamonds\namong them of equal brilliancy that the half of the world which does\nnot like Chesterton takes it for granted that they are all paste. They\nmay even quote Chesterton in support of their view for he says: \"All\nis gold that glitters for the glitter is the gold.\"\n\nWhen ex-President Roosevelt, on his return from Africa, was given a\ndinner by the journalists of London, he was asked by the committee on\narrangements whom he would like to have placed by his side to talk\nwith during the meal, and he promptly chose Chesterton. I was of much\nthe same mind when I went to England, but not being in a position to\nsummon him to my side I sought him out in his home, Overroads. This is\na little way out of London, near the town of Beaconsfield from which\nDisraeli took his title,--uncomfortable quarters, I should say, for\nChesterton, considering his antipathy for Disraeli and his race.\n\nArriving at Beaconsfield by the tea-time train I walked up the hill to\nwhere I saw a big man sitting on the little porch of a little house. He\nimpressed me as Sunday impressed Symes. I do not mean Billy Sunday, but\nquite a different personage, the Sunday of \"The Man Who Was Thursday.\"\nGreat men are apt to shrink when you get too close to them. Mr.\nChesterton did not. He was too big to fit his environment. The house\nwas what we should call a bungalow; I don't know what they call it in\nEngland. It was on a little triangular lot set with trees half his\nheight and a rustic arbor patiently awaiting vines. Afterward I saw in\nthe paper that Mr. Chesterton broke a leg on that arbor. I suppose he\nmust have tripped over it like a croquet wicket.\n\nMr. Chesterton has a big head covered with curly locks, two of them\ngray. He is gifted with a Taft-like smile, and talks in a deep-toned,\nwheezy voice, punctuating his remarks with an engaging chuckle. It\nis no trouble to interview him. I never met a man who talked more\neasily or more interestingly. \"There are no uninteresting subjects,\"\nhe says, \"there are only uninterested persons.\" Start any idea you\nplease as unexpectedly as a rabbit from its lair, and he will after\nit in a second and follow all its turns and windings until he runs\nit down. His mind is as agile as a movie actor. Epigrams, paradoxes,\npuns, anecdotes, characterizations, metaphors, fell from his lips in\nsuch profusion that I, who knew the market value of such verbal gems,\nfelt as nervous as a jeweler who sees a lady break her necklace. I\nwanted him to stop while I got down on my knees and picked them up. But\nhe did not mind wasting clever things on me, for there were so many\nmore where those came from. Besides they were not so completely lost\nas I feared. I recognized some of them a few weeks later in his\n_causerie_ page of _The Illustrated London News_.\n\nBut when you visit Mr. Chesterton don't make the mistake that I did and\nattempt to please him by telling him how much he reminds you of Doctor\nJohnson. He admitted to me that he had \"paged a bit\" in that r\u00f4le, but\nI judge from what he says in \"The Mystery of a Pageant\"[14] he does not\nregard his selection for the part as altogether complimentary to his\npersonal appearance.\n\nPerhaps he would not like it any better to be told that the resemblance\nwas more psychical than physical. Chesterton is doubtless the most\ndogmatic man England has seen since Doctor Johnson died. He has equally\nviolent prejudices, and he expresses them with equal wit. Unfortunately\nhe has no Boswell. Chesterton has written a book about Shaw, but so far\nShaw has shown no disposition to return the compliment.\n\nShaw, in speaking of Coburn's portrait of Chesterton says: \"He is\nour Quinbus Flestrin, the young Man Mountain, a large abounding\ngigantically cherubic person.\"\n\nIt is Shaw's theory that G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc are not\ntwo persons, but one mythological monster to be known as \"The\nChesterbelloc.\"\n\nChesterton's ideals are large and generous and very solid: A divinely\nordered church, a really democratic state, and a life of that hopeful\nand humble wonder that men call romance. But his usefulness as a\nmoral philosopher is impaired by the possession of a number of blind\nspots or inveterate prejudices that prevent him from seeing clearly.\nHe is like the tenor who had aelurophobia and was upset whenever a\ncat came into the room. So whenever one of these phobias comes into\nhis mind Chesterton loses his poise and sings false. Some of the\nthings for which he has a particular abhorrence are: cocoa, colonies,\ndivorce, equal suffrage, Esperanto, eugenics, large scale production,\nlatitudinarianism, Lloyd George, official sanitation, organized\ncharity, peace movement, pragmatism, prohibition, public schools,\nsimplified spelling, vaccination, vivisection, and workingmen's\ninsurance, all of which some of the rest of us look upon with favor.\nHis inability to see any good in these and a score of other modern\nmovements brings him into curious inconsistencies. For instance, he\nis an enthusiast for universal manhood suffrage. But any mention of\nwoman suffrage is like waving a red coat before an Irish bull. His\nstatement that there are three things which women can never understand,\nliberty, equality, and fraternity, is as brutal and untrue as anything\nNietzsche or Strindberg has said.\n\nIn his essay on William James he says \"pragmatism is bosh\", yet his\nwhole system of apologetics is based upon the pragmatic argument;\nreligion is true because it works. \"If Christianity makes a man happy\nwhile his legs are being eaten off by a lion, might it not make me\nhappy while my legs are still attached to me and walking down the\nstreet?\" In order to make due allowance for Chesterton's class and race\nprejudices while reading his works, it is convenient to keep a list\nlike this as a bookmark:\n\nTABLE OF CHESTERTON'S AFFECTIONS AND AVERSIONS\n\n                  CLASSES\n\nHe likes most: 1. Children\n               2. Peasants\n               3. Domestic women\n               4. Artisans and laborers\n               5. Priests and soldiers\n               6. Poets and adventurers\n               7. Shopkeepers\n                  (hereabouts is a great gulf fixed)\n               8. Business and professional men\n               9. Criminals (including politicians)\n              10. The conceited professional classes (the intellectuals)\n              11. Landlords\n              12. Millionaires\n\nHe dislikes most: 13. Multimillionaires\n\n                     RACES\n\n   He likes most: 1. Irish\n                  2. French\n                  3. English\n                  4. Russians\n                  5. Turks\n                  6. Jews\n                  7. Germans\nHe dislikes most: 8. Cosmopolites\n\nIn his youth Chesterton wrote a poem in defense of Dreyfus, \"To A\nCertain Nation\", but by the time he came to publish it in his first\nvolume, \"The Wild Knight\", he had so changed his opinion that he\nmakes a partial apology for it in the preface. Since then he has, in\nconnection with his brother Cecil and Mr. Belloc, introduced into\nBritish journalism a foreign element from which it had formerly been\nfree, the political anti-Semitism which has been the cause of so much\ndisturbance in France, Russia, and Germany. Almost every number of\n_The New Witness_, edited by Cecil Chesterton, contains sneers at\nJewish financiers and politicians, and in 1912 he went so far that\nhe was fined five hundred dollars and costs for defamatory libel of\nGodfrey Isaacs, director of the Marconi Company. The prosecution\nsignificantly was conducted by Sir Edward Carson and F. E. Smith.\n\nIt is greatly to be hoped that _The New Witness_ group may get rid of\ntheir race prejudice and cut down on their muckraking, which, though\noften necessary, is never nice, and bring forward the constructive part\nof their program, for this is the time when there is a chance to do\nsomething. For instance, the British Party system against which they so\nlong clamored without effect has now broken down under stress of the\nwar, but there is nothing in sight to take its place. G. K. Chesterton\nwas quite right when he said that \"the party system of England is\nan enormous and most efficient machine for preventing political\nconflicts\",[15] and that what party politics had done was to turn\nBalfour from the analysis of the doubtful to the defense of the dubious\nand Morley from writing on compromise to practicing it. And again, \"I\nthink the cabinet minister should be taken a little less seriously\nand the cabinet maker a little more.\"[16]\n\nChesterton protests against being regarded as a mere obstructionist and\nreactionary in such language as the following:\n\n    I do not propose (like some of my revolutionary friends)\n    that we should abolish the public schools. I propose the\n    much more lurid and desperate experiment that we should make\n    them public. I do not wish to make Parliament stop working,\n    but rather to make it work; not to shut up the churches, but\n    rather to open them; not to put out the lamp of learning or\n    destroy the hedge of property, but only to make some rude\n    effort to make universities fairly universal and property\n    decently proper.[17]\n\nMan has always believed in a paradise, but he has never been certain\nwhether to look for it in the past or the future, or both. We have very\ndetailed descriptions of Atlantis, Valhalla, the Golden Age, Utopia,\nand the like, but the tense of the verb is indeterminable. Chesterton\nis equally uncertain as to whether to look forward or backward for his\nideal state. His \"Christmas Song for Three Gilds\" is headed \"To be sung\na long time ago--or hence.\" He has not yet favored us with a blueprint\nof his Utopia, so we are left to surmise what he likes from the\nvery plain indications he has given us of what he does not like.\nChesterton seems to obey a negative magnetism and orients himself by\nhis antipathies.\n\nWe may infer that his ideal would be a self-governing community of\nequally well-to-do, leisurely, patriotic, domestic, religious, jolly,\nbeer-drinking, pork-eating, art-loving, freehold farmers and gild\ncraftsmen, clustered about the village inn and church. They would all\nbe of one race and creed, healthy without doctors, wealthy without\nfinanciers, governed without politicians. He believes with Belloc\nthat the nearest historical approach to this ideal was Western Europe\nabout 1200-1500. He probably would agree with Doctor James J. Walsh\nin calling the thirteenth \"the greatest of all centuries.\" Among\ncontemporary communities I should say that the mujiks of the Russian\nmir come the nearest to complying with his specifications, although\nhe has not, to my knowledge, shown any disposition to leave London\nand take to the steppes in order to live the simple life in these\ncommunities of pure democracy. But perhaps this is because women vote\nin the mir. Of the made-to-order utopias I presume that of William\nMorris's \"News from Nowhere\" would suit him better than the Socialists\nfor whom it was written.\n\nTo sum up Chesterton in a sentence, I must borrow the words of the\n_Forum_ article of O. W. Firkins:\n\n    A man who preaches an impassioned and romantic Christianity,\n    and who adds to that the Jeffersonian doctrine of democracy,\n    the Wordsworthian and Tolstoyan doctrine of the majesty\n    of the untutored man, the Carlylean doctrine of wonder,\n    the Emersonian doctrine of the spirituality latent in all\n    objects, the Dickensian faith in the worth and wisdom of\n    the feeble-minded, the Browningesque standard of optimism,\n    affects us as a man with whom, whatever his vagaries and\n    harlequinries, it would be wholesome and inspiriting to live.\n\n\n\nHOW TO READ CHESTERTON\n\n\nRead whatever is handiest, for there is no order and sequence is not\nimportant. Chesterton expresses much the same philosophy of life in\nessays, stories, and poems and there has been little change in his\nopinions or style in the sixteen years he has been writing.\n\nNowhere has he given a complete and orderly presentation of his views.\nHe is a born journalist and prefers to fire at a moving target. About\nonce a year he gathers up a sheaf of his contributions to the press and\nputs them out under as general and indefinite a title as he can think\nup, but he never can think up a title broad enough to cover the variety\nof topics he treats. The heading to a chapter gives no clue to the\ntheme or its importance. One is apt to find his deepest philosophy\ntucked away in some corner of a discourse on cheese or mumming or\npenny dreadfuls. He is like a submarine; when he goes under you never\ncan tell where he will come out. Consequently, as I say, it does not\nmatter much which volume you pick up; they are equally brilliant and\ninconsequential.\n\nHis views on religion and society are expounded most thoroughly in\n\"Orthodoxy\" (1908), \"Heretics\" (1905) both published by John Lane\nCompany, and \"What's Wrong With the World\" (1910, published by Dodd,\nMead & Company). Somewhat briefer, more varied, and trivial in topic\nare \"All Things Considered\" (1908, Lane), \"Tremendous Trifles\" (1909,\nDodd), \"Alarms and Discursions\" (1910, Dodd), \"A Miscellany of Men\"\n(1912, Dodd).\n\nSince the war began he has published \"The Barbarism of Berlin\" (1914),\n\"The Appetite of Tyranny\" including \"Letters to an Old Garibaldian\"\n(1915, Dodd), and \"The Crimes of England\" (1916, Lane). To this we\nshould add his first work, \"The Defendant\" (1901, Dodd). In _The New\nWitness_ he has been running a weekly page under the head of \"At the\nSign of the World's End\", and when his brother, Cecil Chesterton,\nenlisted as a private in October, 1916, he assumed the editorship of\nthat lively journal.\n\nHis youthful poetry is in \"The Wild Knight and Other Poems\" (1900,\nDutton). \"The Ballad of the White Horse\" (1911, Lane) contains his epic\nof King Alfred, and \"Poems\" (1915, Lane) contains all the rest of his\npoetry except what still remains buried in \"the files.\" Of these I must\nmention \"The Wife of Flanders\", which may be found in the _Literary\nDigest, Current Opinion_, or _Living Age_ of 1914.\n\nChesterton has written one play, \"Magic: A Fantastic Comedy\" (1913,\nPutnam), which was a success on the London and New York stage.\n\nOf his allegorical fantasias I have discussed at some length \"The Man\nWho Was Thursday\" (1908, Dodd). \"The Ball and the Cross\" (1910, Lane)\ndescribes the conflict between a religious fanatic and an equally\nintolerant atheist. \"Manalive\" (1912, Lane) deals with domesticity,\nand \"The Flying Inn\" (1915, Lane) is a defense of the public house. In\n\"Napoleon of Notting Hill\" (1908, Lane), his first romance, he preaches\nparochialism.\n\nHis detective or rather mystery stories are: \"The Club of Queer Trades\"\n(1905, Harper); \"The Innocence of Father Brown\" (1911, Lane); and \"The\nWisdom of Father Brown\" (1914, Lane).\n\nHis literary criticism, mostly written as prefaces to standard\nreprints, makes delightful reading, although sometimes he uses his\nauthor merely as a point of departure. Of Dickens he has written most\nand best in the prefaces to Everyman's Library edition (collected in\n\"Appreciations and Criticism of Dickens\", Dutton) and \"Charles Dickens;\nA Critical Study\" (1906, Dodd). His \"Victorian Age in Literature\"\n(1913, Home University Library, Holt) is not quite so interesting\nbecause he does not have room to ramble. His \"George Bernard Shaw\"\n(1910, Lane) is not much of a biography, but it is valuable as bringing\ninto close contrast these representatives of opposing points of view.\nHis \"Robert Browning\" forms an admirable volume of the English Men of\nLetters series (1908, Macmillan). Besides these he has written many\nbiographical sketches and critiques, among which may be mentioned:\n\"Five Types\" (1911, Holt); \"Varied Types\" (1902, Dodd); \"G. F. Watts\"\n(1902, Dutton); \"William Blake\" (1910, Dutton); \"Samuel Johnson\" (1903,\nand 1911); \"Carlyle\" (1902 and 1904) and \"R. L. Stevenson\" (Pott).\n\nChesterton is eminently quotable, and the pocket volume of \"Wit and\nWisdom of Chesterton\" (1911, Dodd) will afford plenty of food for\nthought for any one.\n\nThere are two biographies of Chesterton. One published anonymously in\n1908 gives the best account of his early life; the other by Julius West\n(1916, Dodd) gives the most complete criticism of his work up to date,\nwith a bibliography.\n\nHis picturesque personality and peculiar views have supplied\ninnumerable journalists with material for articles. Specially\nnoteworthy for one reason or another are: the excellent piece of\ncriticism by O. W. Firkins in _The Forum_ (vol. 48,. p. 597). \"The\nDefender of the Discarded\", The Forum (vol. 44, p. 707), is harsh\nand unsympathetic. \"Chesterton as an Artist\" by Joseph B. Gilder\n(_Bookman_, vol. 39, p. 468, see also vol. 34, p. 117), containing\nhis sketches, a sketch by Henry Murray, with sixteen portraits\nfrom childhood up, in the London Bookman, May, 1910. Wells, in his\n\"Social Forces in England and America\" (p. 205), discusses Chesterton\nand Belloc. \"A Visit to G. K. C.\" by B. Russell Herts in _The\nIndependent_, November 7, 1912, contains some of Chesterton's sketches;\nreprinted with other interviews in Herts's \"Depreciations\" (1915,\nBoni). Chesterton wrote on \"Shall the United States Fight?\" in _The\nIndependent_, January 12, 1916.\n\n\n[1] \"The Crimes of England\", p. 98.\n\n[2] For specimens of his sketches see \"Chesterton as an Artist\" by\nJoseph B. Gilder in _The Bookman_.\n\n[3] See also \"The Divine Detective\" in \"A Miscellany of Men.\"\n\n[4] Published, 1911, by John Lane Co., New York.\n\n[5] Republished, 1913, in \"Poems\" (John Lane Co., New York).\n\n[6] Published, 1916, by John Lane Co., New York.\n\n[7] From \"Poems\" (John Lane).\n\n[8] \"The Wild Knight\" (Dutton & Co., New York).\n\n[9] \"In Tremendous Trifles \", 1909 (Dodd, Mead & Co., New York).\n\n[10] From \"Poems\" (John Lane).\n\n[11] From \"Poems\" (John Lane).\n\n[12] It has always been a puzzle to me why congregations have to be\nwarned against singing the third stanza of any hymn. I never could see\nthat it was any worse than the rest, but I assume the clergy know best\nabout it.\n\n[13] I quote from _The New Witness_. The version in \"The Flying Inn\" is\na trifle different.\n\n[14] \"Tremendous Trifles\", p. 317.\n\n[15] In Chesterton's book on Shaw.\n\n[16] \"Miscellany of Men.\"\n\n[17] \"What's Wrong with the World.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nF. C. S. SCHILLER\n\n\nA BRITISH PRAGMATIST\n\n    The world knows nothing of its greatest men, because by the\n    time it knows something about them they have ceased to be\n    the greatest. F. C. S. Schiller.\n\n\nA dozen years ago I happened upon the word \"pragmatism\", as it was\nprinted, rather inappropriately,[1] upon the slip cover of Santayana's\n\"Life of Reason.\" Being a queer looking word and unknown to me, I\nstarted to find out what it meant and that led me on a long chase. The\nfarther I went the more interested I became, for I soon discovered\nthat I had been a pragmatist all my life without knowing it. I\nwas as delighted as M. Jourdain when he was told that he had been\nunconsciously talking prose all his life. I felt as relieved as\nHuxley when he invented \"agnostic\" as a tag for himself.\n\nI had come by my pragmatism honestly enough, for I had got my training\nas a journalist through the study of chemistry, and in science the\npragmatic mode of thinking is universal and unquestioned. So when I\nwent to writing about other things,--politics, law, ethics, history,\nreligion, and the like,--I naturally used my brains in the same way\nas in science, that is, I persisted in the valuation of all acts by\ntheir consequences instead of their causes and in the validation of\nall truths by practicality instead of precedent. But when I found\nhow this way of thinking shocked, annoyed, or amused people I began\nto fear that I should have to drop it as I had other evidences of my\nburied past, such as the habit of using words like \"catalysis\" and\n\"parachlorbenzamidine\" in casual conversation.\n\nBut when I heard of the pragmatists I knew that I was no longer alone\nin the world. There were others, it seemed, even men of standing in\nphilosophical circles, whose minds ran in this way and who were not\nashamed to own it. I got their names and started to find them wherever\nthey might be. I ran down Dewey in the Adirondacks and Bergson in\nthe Alps. Poincar\u00e9 I unearthed in a Paris flat, James I heard in a\nColumbia lecture room; Ostwald I found in a Saxon village; Schiller\nI caught in an Oxford quad. I was thinking of going to China to see\nWang Yang-ming, but fortunately before I had bought my steamer ticket\nor learned Chinese I discovered that he had been dead for three\ncenturies.[2]\n\nSome who have read or tried to read what I said about Bergson and\nPoincar\u00e9[3] have complained that I used too many big words, and one\nman wrote me to say that if I would define pragmatism in words of one\nsyllable perhaps he might understand what I was talking about. I could\nnot guarantee that, of course, but I had no hesitation about complying\nwith his request. Confucius wrote his immortal works in words of one\nsyllable, and I would not be beaten by a Chinaman. Even Herbert Spencer\nonce condescended to translate his famous definition of evolution into\nAnglo-Saxon. Since I am obliged to use the word \"pragmatism\" more than\nonce in this book I may forestall criticism by putting here my\n\n    Monosyllabic Definition of Pragmatism\n\n    The one way to find out if a thing is true is to try it\n    and see how it works. If it works well for a long time and\n    for all folks, it must have some truth in it. If it works\n    wrong it is false, at least in part. If there is no way to\n    test it, then it has no sense. It means naught to us when\n    we cannot tell what odds it makes if we hold to it or not.\n    A creed is just a guide to life. We must live to learn. If\n    a man would know what is right he must try to do what is\n    right. Then he can find out. Prove all things and hold fast\n    to that which is good. The will to have faith in a thing oft\n    makes the faith come true. So it can be said in a way that\n    we make truth for our own use. What we think must be of use\n    to us in some way, else why should we think it? The truth is\n    what is good for us, what helps us, what gives us joy and\n    strength, what shows us how to act, what ties up fact to\n    fact, so the chain will hold, what makes us see all things\n    clear and straight, and what keeps us from stray paths that\n    turn out wrong in the end. Thought is a tool, a means to an\n    end. Man has to act, and so he must think. In this way he\n    asks the world what it means to him. The need for thought\n    first comes when man asks \"Why?\" or \"Which?\" so that he may\n    know what to do to gain his end. The mind as it thinks makes\n    such facts as it can to best serve its use. Out of the facts\n    so come by is made a law, and this law in turn serves as a\n    rule to guide one's acts.\n\nBut the reader should be warned that no two pragmatists can be got to\nagree upon any definition of pragmatism, and that the opponents of\npragmatism differ still more widely in their conception of it. Schiller\nsays that the most serious drawback in the name is that \"it condemns\nevery exponent of pragmatism to consume at least half an hour of his\nlimited time in explaining the word.\" Schiller himself employs the term\n\"humanism\" instead which being less novel is less disturbing to the\nconventional mind but on the other hand has the serious disadvantage of\nhaving been applied to a very different thing, namely, the spirit of\nthe Renaissance. Since C. S. Peirce who invented the term \"pragmatism\"\nand William James who popularized it are both dead, the word finds\nfew defenders, although the mode of reasoning it tried to stand for\nis obviously permeating all fields of thought. Like many other things\npragmatism seems likely to conquer the world incognito.[4]\n\nA man in the act of dismounting from a bicycle is temporarily\nincapacitated from the effective use of either mode of locomotion, and\nit was at this psychological moment that I caught Doctor Schiller at\nthe gate of Corpus Christi College. Otherwise I might have missed him,\nfor he is as alert and agile physically as he is mentally. He usually\nspends his summers mountain climbing in the Alps, though I suppose\nhe has suspended this pastime during the last three years while the\nTyrolean Alps are being used for other purposes than tourism.\n\nMr. Schiller wears the pointed beard that was the distinguishing mark\nof the radical of the nineties. He has a Shakespearean-shaped forehead,\nbut wears un-Shakespearean glasses. He is as interesting to converse\nwith as he is to read, which is more than you can say of many authors.\nHe talks best while in motion, a real peripatetic philosopher. I\nwondered why he did not take his students out of the old gloomy lecture\nroom and walk with them as he did with me, up and down the lawn between\nthe trees and the ivy-clad walls of the college garden. Curious turf it\nwas, close-cut and springy; I never felt anything like it under my feet\nexcept an asphalt pavement on a hot summer day.\n\nBut I suppose it would be against the Oxford customs to adopt the Greek\nmethod in teaching Greek philosophy. At any rate when I went to Mr.\nSchiller's lecture on logic I found it as conventional in form as it\nwas revolutionary in spirit. One would have thought that printing\nhad never been invented, nor even the mimeograph. The lecture was\ndelivered slowly, and necessarily without feeling, clause by clause,\nwith frequent repetitions, so every word could be taken down. It was\nreally a brilliant lecture as I discovered afterwards when I read over\nmy notes, but at the time it sounded as dull as proof-reading, for\nthe lecturer dictated even the punctuation marks, as he went along:\n\"colon\", \"Italics\", \"inverted commas\", etc. The English leave out the\npunctuation marks in legal documents where they are needed and put them\ninto lectures where they do not belong.\n\nThe students, in short black gowns, were seated uncomfortably on\nbenches carved with the names of many generations, and were writing\nawkwardly on long boards. These were furnished with ink-wells and quill\npens, although the students sensibly used fountain pens. I suppose it\nis somebody's perquisite to supply such things as quills and snuff to\nthe college even if nobody uses them. An American college president\ntold me that he thought there was more graft at Oxford than anywhere\nelse in the world.\n\n[Illustration: F. C. S. Schiller.]\n\nIf Mr. Schiller had remained in America he would now be lecturing to\none or two hundred at a time, largely teachers who had come from\nall parts of the country expressly to hear his ideas and who would in\nturn transmit them to their students. But in that room there were only\nthese fifteen boys, many of whom doubtless had no special interest in\nlogic or in Schiller's views of logic and who took his lectures simply\nbecause they were required for examination, after which they could be\nforgotten. I could not help contrasting this scene with the big lecture\nroom at Jena, modern yet satisfying to the esthetic and historic taste,\nwhere Eucken's fiery eloquence held men and women gathered from five\ncontinents, or with the Coll\u00e8ge de France, where Bergson had attracted\nan even larger and equally cosmopolitan audience. A man in Schiller's\nposition must gain his disciples chiefly through his books, and for a\nman of Schiller's attractive personality this is a great disadvantage.\nPrint can never take the place of \"the spoken word\", but to have its\neffect the spoken word must be widely heard.\n\nThe American visitor to Oxford meets a double mystery: how it is\nthat Oxford accomplishes so much with a poor and antiquated plant\nand how it is that American universities do not accomplish more\nwith their modern and convenient plants. One hates to conclude that\nplumbing and ventilation are incompatible with high thinking. But\nif Spencer is right in defining life as the power of adaptation to\nenvironment, the Oxford dons are most alive of any human beings. They\nhave shown the adaptability of hermit crabs in fitting themselves into\ntheir awkward environment. They somehow manage to make themselves\ncomfortable in buildings that a New York tenement house inspector--who\nis never regarded as unduly particular--would order torn down. They\nwork contentedly under conditions that would cause a strike in any\nwell-regulated union.\n\nOxford is the favorite resort of American tourists because it is\nthe most satisfactory of all the sights of Great Britain. The Tower\nof London and Stratford-on-Avon do not compare with it. They are as\ndisappointing as an extinct volcano. But Oxford is an antiquity in\naction. Our common feeling in regard to it was best expressed by a lady\ntourist who was being personally conducted through one of the college\nquadrangles when a student stuck his head out of a dormer window. \"Oh,\nmy! Are these ruins inhabited?\" was her delighted exclamation.\n\nThat is a characteristic trait of the English, the economical\nutilization of antiquated buildings and institutions. The House\nof Lords actually does something, even though what it does is wrong.\nWestminster Abbey is not a mere mausoleum, like the Paris Panth\u00e9on.\nIt is a church where one may worship and hear sermons of decidedly\nmodernistic tone. The French, when they made up their minds that they\ndid not need a King any longer, cut his head off, which was a waste.\nThe English keep their King and make use of him for spectacular and\nadvertising purposes. Oxford is Cluny and Sorbonne in one, a curious\ncombination of old and new, useful and superfluous, progress and\nreaction, that puzzles and fascinates every American visitor.\n\nFerdinand Canning Scott Schiller, M. A., D. Sc., Fellow and Senior\nTutor of Corpus Christi College, Oxford--to give for once his full\nname and titles--was born in 1864. While at Rugby he showed decided\nsymptoms of intelligence, so he was picked as a probable winner in the\nscholastic race and put in training for the classical scholarships.\nThe British turn all things into sport, even war and education, and\nsince public opinion does not allow headmasters to keep racehorses they\nindulge their sporting instincts by backing their boys for the Blue\nRibbon, the Balliol Scholarships. These boys are then given daily doses\nof classical verse competition; I infer for the same reason that\njockeys are fed on gin.\n\nIt is curious to see how widely educators differ as to the fundamental\nprinciples of their business. The British system is built upon\ncompetitions, prizes, and examinations. The American state universities\nin the days of their pristine purity--I mean by that of course,\nwhen I was a student--regarded competition as vicious, prizes as\ndemoralizing, and examinations as an evil to be eliminated if possible.\nBut it ill becomes a pragmatist to condemn a system that works so well\nas the British, whatever theoretical objections may occur.\n\nMuch as Schiller detested making verses in a dead language, he did it\nso well that he got a Major Exhibition. This gave him three hundred and\nfifty dollars for five years as well as four hundred and fifty dollars\nin Exhibitions from Rugby. But it also meant that he had sold himself\nto run in harness for another four years at Balliol and was obliged to\nmaster a philosophy which he already felt to be a fraud. T. H. Green\nhad died just before Schiller came up and had been sainted for the\ngreater glory of Balliol, and it seemed to the tutors good pedagogy\nto set their pupils to begin the study of philosophy with Green's\n\"Prolegomena to Ethics.\" Most of the boys confronted with this\nabstruse introduction came to the conclusion that it was wonderful, but\nthat they had no head for metaphysics because they could not see any\nsense in it. Schiller very curiously came to the opposite conclusion\nfrom the same premise.\n\nOrthodox Oxford was at that time under the sway of the great\nphilosophic Trinity of Plato, Aristotle, and Hegel, which was supposed\nsomehow to be concordant with or at least allied to the theological\nTrinity, and therefore fit food for the souls of innocent young men.\nThe third person of the philosophic Trinity was kept much in the dark,\nbecause the tutors generally were not fond of reading German. They knew\nstill less of science and apparently did not suspect that Darwin and\nhis evolution might prove to have some bearing upon philosophy.\n\nSchiller took his First Classes at Oxford, although he was given to\nasking awkward questions and was known to be reading \"out of bounds.\"\nOne of his examiners complained that he used such queer terms in his\npapers, \"solipsism\" and \"epistemology\" for instance.\n\nThe years 1893-1897 Schiller spent as instructor at Cornell University,\nand at the end of that period an amusing incident occurred, though\nwhat it was and how it came about I don't know; possibly because I\nnever thought it best to inquire of any of the few who were in the\nroom at the time. The bare fact is interesting enough, that a young\nman who had written one of the most brilliant volumes of the times on\nmetaphysics, \"Riddles of the Sphinx\", and who carried in his pocket a\ncall to teach philosophy at a leading college of Oxford, was flunked\nin Cornell on his oral examination for Ph.D. in philosophy! Anybody\nwho is curious can pick up half a dozen inconsistent versions of this\nfamous episode on almost any campus. One is, that being fortified by\nthe crinkle of the above mentioned letter over his heart and knowing\nthat an American degree would have no value in England, Schiller\ndid not take the examination seriously and neglected the necessary\ncramming. Another version of the story is that he turned tables upon\nhis examiners by bringing into action for the first time the pragmatic\narguments so much to their discomfiture and bewilderment that he was\npenalized for these foul blows. But probably the details, if one knew\nthem, would prove to be quite commonplace compared with either of these\nversions or the more picturesque legends that are in circulation, so it\nis better to remain in ignorance and file it in the envelope with\nsuch cases as John Henry Newman, who got only a Third Class; F. H.\nBradley, who got a Second; Gustave Dor\u00e9, who failed in drawing; Darwin\nwho was called a stupid student, Grant who was graduated in the lower\nhalf of his class, Mendel who was never allowed to graduate at Vienna,\nand the like, good material all for some one who wants to investigate\nthe psychology of students--and examiners.\n\nThe chief benefit that Schiller got out of his American sojourn was an\nacquaintance with William James. It was a case of love at first sight\nand of lifelong devotion. Schiller dedicated his \"Humanism\" \"To my dear\nfriend, the humanest of philosophers, William James, without whose\nexample and unfailing encouragement this book would never have been\nwritten.\"\n\nIn 1897 Schiller was called back to England to become tutor in Corpus\nChristi College. The president of that college, the late Thomas\nFowler, belonged rather to the pre-Hegelian Oxford generation of the\nMill-British-empiricism school of thought: He liked things to be made\nintelligible, and he was so much struck by the lucidity of Schiller's\n\"Riddles of the Sphinx\" that he called him from Cornell to Oxford.\n\nHere then he has for twenty years lived the quiet, sheltered,\ncontemplative life of the Oxford don, varied only by such daring\nadventures as his hunt for the hidden fallacies of formal logic, his\nsingle combats with Mr. Bradley, and his ascent of the bleak heights\nof speculative philosophy, where the Absolute is supposed to dwell\nin solitude. Our American universities are putting up some very fair\nimitations of Oxford architecture now. Some have transplanted ivy and\nit is growing. Some have transplanted tutors and they are growing. But\none Oxford custom has not yet been introduced into our universities,\nthe custom of giving the professors time to think. In Oxford all the\nmen have time to think and some of them do. In America if a man shows a\ntendency to become absorbed in thought he is made a dean or put on the\ncommittee of accredited high schools, which cures him.\n\nIn the British \"Who's Who\" Mr. Schiller's recreations are ordinarily\nput down as \"mountaineering, golf, etc.\" But in one edition of that\nhandy volume of contemporary autobiography it is stated that his chief\nrecreation is \"editing _Mind!_\" Thus was revealed the secret of the\nmysterious appearance at Christmas, 1901, of a periodical which in\nlooks resembled one of the regular numbers of that staid blue-covered\nreview of philosophy, _Mind_, but with most startling contents.\nThe frontispiece is a \"Portrait of Its Immanence, the Absolute.\" This\nis followed by an article on \"The Place of Humour in the Absolute, by\nF. H. Badley\"; \"The Critique of Pure Rot, by I. Cant\"; \"A Commentary\non the Snark\"; \"More Riddles from Worse Sphinxes\", and the like.\nThe advertisements were likewise unusual--\"A Dictionary of Oxford\nMythology, in six volumes, containing a complete account of the stories\ntold in the Common Rooms and the men to whom they have from time to\ntime been attached\"; \"A fine consignment of assorted Weltanschauungen\njust received from Germany\"; phonograms of all the lectures, jokes\nextra, with colored cinematographs of the most famous professors in\naction, for armchair study, etc. The history of philosophy in fifty-one\nlimericks, covering all systems from Thales to Nietzsche, would be\nuseful on examination time by students of \"Philosophy Four.\"\n\n    We hedonists, said Aristippus,\n    Discomforts detest when they grip us,\n        So wealth we adore,\n        The moment live for\n    And take what the rich 'Arries tip us.\n\n    The infinite self-absorbed Brahma\n    Was dreaming the World-Panorama:\n        He groaned and he snored,\n        Till at length he grew bored,\n    And woke up, and broke up the Drama.\n\n    \"To multiply beings\", said Occam,\n    \"Is needless, 'tis better to dock 'em.\"\n        So he seized on his razor,\n        This pestilent phraser,\n    And ran out to bloodily block 'em.\n\n    A pessimist, great Schopenhauer,\n    Found living exceedingly sour,\n        At Hegel he cursed,\n        His grievances nursed,\n    And poured forth his wrath by the hour.\n\n\nAs will be seen from the above, _Mind!_ reads much like the Junior\nAnnual of an American college, but at Oxford the students are deficient\nin journalistic enterprise, so the duty of keeping things cheerful\ndevolves upon their betters. According to its cover _Mind!_ was \"edited\nby a Troglodyte\" but as there was only one philosopher in England who\nwould have the cheek to do it and who could parody the style and expose\nthe weak points of the regular contributors to _Mind_, the troglodyte\nwas soon tracked to his cave. The author of a similar _jeu d'esprit_,\n\"The Joysome History of Education\", which surreptitiously circulates\nabout Columbia University, has so far as I know never been disclosed to\nthe public.\n\nBut Schiller has not been able to confine his humor to that\nuniquity, _Mind!_ He allows it to creep into his contributions to\n_Mind_-without-the-exclamation-point and other serious journals. He is\na keen debater and does not follow the ordinary rules of fencing, but\nfrequently disconcerts his antagonists by parrying their thrusts with a\npun or a personality. He is, so far as I know, the first philosopher to\nfind room for jokes in his formal philosophy, as the following passage\nshows:\n\n    When we map out the whole region of Truth-claim or Formal\n    Truth, we find that it contains (1) lies, (2) errors, (3)\n    methodological fictions, (4) methodological assumptions, (5)\n    postulates, (6) validated truths, (7) axioms, and (8) jokes.\n\nMost philosophers in fact would not only ignore his eighth category,\nbut would neglect his first and second, accepting any statement that\nclaimed to be true and devoting themselves to the study of its logical\nimplications. But the pragmatist is more interested in finding out how\nand in what way an assertion comes to be called true and how it _makes\ngood_ its claim after it has been asserted. As Schiller puts it:[5]\n\n    What then is common to all sorts of Truth and Error, and\n    renders them species of a common genus? Nothing but their\n    psychological side; \"truth\" is the proper term for what\n    satisfies, \"error\" for what thwarts, a human purpose in\n    cognitive activity.\n\n    The difference between Truth and Error, therefore, is\n    ultimately one in value. The \"true\" way of conceiving\n    an object or judging a situation is simply the way most\n    valuable for our purpose; the \"false\" way is one which is,\n    at least relatively, worthless. \"Truth\" is a eulogistic,\n    \"error\" a dyslogistic, way of valuing a cognitive situation.\n\n    Truth and Error therefore are continuous, as history shows.\n    Either may develop out of the other, and both are rooted\n    in the same problems of knowing, which are ultimately\n    problems of living. The \"truths\" of one generation become\n    the \"errors\" of the next, when it has achieved more valuable\n    and efficient modes of interpreting and manipulating the\n    apparent \"facts\", which the new \"truths\" are continuously\n    transforming. And conversely, what is now scouted as \"error\"\n    may hereafter become the fruitful parent of a long progeny\n    of \"truths.\"\n\n    It follows also that (as every examiner who marks a paper\n    knows) Truth and Error admit of quantitative differences.\n    Both can vary in importance, and can attain (or fail of)\n    their purpose to a greater or a less degree. But neither\n    is absolute. An answer to a question is in general called\n    true, if it is true enough for the purpose in hand. But this\n    does not preclude a greater exactitude if (for a different\n    purpose) it should be required. It is a true answer to the\n    question--\"when do you leave?\" to reply \"to-morrow\"; but if\n    necessary I can specify the train I go by. Thus the demand\n    for absolute exactness is both humanly unnecessary and\n    scientifically unmeaning. Indeed a degree of accuracy higher\n    than the situation demands would be irrational. No one wants\n    to know the height of a mountain in millimeters, and if he\n    did, he could not ascertain it, because his methods would\n    not measure fine enough. Scientific truths are infinitely\n    perfectible, but never absolute.[6]\n\n    Now if philosophers are wise, they will accept this sort of\n    truth, and admit that any truth is \"absolute\" enough so soon\n    as it is equal to the demands made upon it, while none must\n    ever be so absolute as to become incorrigible and incapable\n    of further growth.\n\nA human factor, an element of personal desire, enters into all\nour thinking; otherwise why should we bother to think? Even our\nmost abstract and general theorems have a hidden _Hinterland_ of\nsubconscious motives, limitations, and conditions.\n\n    The abstract statement that \"two and two make four\" is\n    always incomplete. We need to know to what \"twos\" and\n    \"fours\" the dictum is applied. It would not be true of lions\n    and lambs, nor of drops of water, nor of pleasures and\n    pains.[7]\n\nThis suppressed context of thought is of course largely personal,\nand with it is suppressed the human interest of philosophy. Hence\nthe endeavor to drag it to light was very properly called Humanism.\nSchiller conceives every thought as some one's experiment for which he\nis responsible.\n\n\"Every thought\", he says, \"is an act and even the most 'theoretical'\nassertions are made to gratify an interest.\" He finds in the present\nwar a most unpleasant confirmation of his theory that thought is\nsubordinate to action and never free from human volitional influence:[8]\n\n    If only philosophers could be got to face the facts of\n    actual life, could any of them fail to observe the enormous\n    object-lesson in the truth of pragmatism which the world\n    has been exhibiting in the present crisis? Everywhere the\n    \"truths\" believed in are relative to the nationality and\n    sympathies of their believers. It is, indeed, lamentable\n    that such an orgy of the will to believe should have been\n    needed to illustrate the pragmatic nature of truth, but\n    who will dispute that for months say 999 persons out of\n    1000 have been believing what they please, and consciously\n    or unconsciously making it \"true\" with a fervor rarely\n    bestowed even by the most ardent philosophers on the most\n    self-evident truths? No improbability, no absurdity, no\n    atrocity has been too great to win credence, and the\n    uniformity of human nature has been signally attested by the\n    way in which the same stories (_mutatis mutandis_) have\n    been credited on both sides.\n\nSince the controversy over pragmatism hinges on this theory of truth, I\nwill quote in condensed form what Schiller says in his discussion with\nMiss Stebbing:[9]\n\n    It is an inevitable corollary of the belief in absolute\n    truth that absolute truth cannot find lodgment in human\n    mind, nor be attained by way of human science. We were\n    led, therefore, to examine how in fact belief in the\n    accepted \"truths\" grew up. We found that every thought was\n    essentially a _personal experiment_ that might succeed\n    or fail, and that whether it did or not depended on its\n    consequences. But it seemed clear that \"true\" was the term\n    appropriated by language to the success, as false was to\n    failure, of such experiments. Of course both \"success\" and\n    \"truth\" are relative terms. _Absolute_ \"success\" is found\n    as little as absolute \"truth\" and for the same reason. All\n    \"truths\" remain (preferred) truth-claims and retain an\n    infinite appetite for assimilating further confirmation.\n\n    But there does come a point, alike in the individual's\n    experience and in social opinion at any time, at which it\n    seems that certain truth-claims have received confirmation\n    enough to make them _pragmatically_ certain. These form the\n    reigning truths. But they never form a closed oligarchy or\n    an immutable system. Merit can force its way into their\n    ranks, and inefficiency entails degradation. Thus, though\n    their position is (psychologically) unchallenged, it\n    is never (logically) unchallenged. So it can not be said\n    that because they work they are _absolutely_ true. They are\n    _called_ true because they work, and there is no sense in\n    calling anything true for any other reason; but the progress\n    of knowledge may nevertheless supersede them at the next\n    step.\n\nSince Schiller indignantly repudiates the formula often ascribed to\npragmatism that \"All that works is true\", and since Mr. Bradley has\ncome to say[10] \"I agree that any idea which in any way 'works' has in\nsome degree truth\", it would seem that these old antagonists are really\nnot so far apart in their opinions as their words would indicate.\n\nFor classical authority for his Humanism Schiller goes back to the\nfamous dictum of Protagoras: \"Man is the measure of all things.\" In\nPlato's \"Dialogues\", Protagoras is represented as having been argued\nquite out of court by Socrates, but Schiller appeals to posterity\nagainst this decision, and he has written several supplemental\ndialogues of his own to prove that Protagoras was really in the\nright.[11]\n\nSchiller's most serious work so far is his destructive criticism\nof the Aristotelian logic. Since my own study of logic came to\nan abrupt end as soon as I had secured a passing mark on Jevons, I\nshall not attempt to express an opinion upon the value of Schiller's\n\"Formal Logic\", but will instead quote from the review of the volume by\nProfessor Dewey of Columbia.[12]\n\n    In substance, the volume (a large octavo of about four\n    hundred pages) is an unrelenting, dogged pursuit of the\n    traditional logic, chapter by chapter, section by section.\n    Not a single doctrine, nor, I think, a single distinction\n    of the official textbooks escapes Schiller's demolishing\n    hand.... A vital and wholesome sense of the realities of\n    actual thinking pervades the whole book; it supplies the\n    background against which the criticisms of formal doctrine\n    are projected. Mr. Schiller brings out, in case after case,\n    with a cumulative effect which is fairly deadly, that at the\n    crucial point each formal distinction is saved from complete\n    meaninglessness only by an unacknowledged and surreptitious\n    appeal to some matter of context, need, aim, and use. Why\n    not, then, frankly recognize the indispensableness of such\n    volitional and emotional factors, and instead of pretending\n    to a logic that excludes them, build up a logic that\n    corresponds to human intellectual endeavor and achievement.\n    It is difficult to see how even the most hardened devotee of\n    a purely theoretical intellectualism can lay down the book\n    without such questions haunting him....\n\n    While traditional logic has much to say about truth, the\n    truth it talks about is mere formal consistency, since\n    it declines to consider the material application of its\n    premises. Relevance--a fundamental conception of concrete\n    thought--is excluded because it goes with selection, with\n    selection of the part that is useful, while formal logic\n    professes an all-inclusive ideal. Selection, moreover, is a\n    voluntary and hence arbitrary act, and so is shut out from a\n    doctrine that acknowledges only what is purely theoretical.\n    Finally, formal logic, with its creed of absolute certitude,\n    abhors the very mention of adventure and risk, the life\n    blood of actual human thinking, which is aroused by doubts\n    and questions, and proceeds by guesses, hypotheses, and\n    experiments, to a decision which is always somewhat\n    arbitrary and subject to the risk of later revision.\n\nMuch of the criticism of \"Formal Logic\" contained in this large\nvolume is too technical for any save professionals to follow, but at\nmy request Mr. Schiller was kind enough to write an article for _The\nIndependent_ putting the main points of it in a form \"understanded of\nthe common people.\" From this I quote the passage in which he shows\nthat the syllogism cannot lead unerringly to new truth:\n\n    The peculiar aim of logic hitherto has been to discover\n    a form of \"valid inference.\" By this was meant a form of\n    words so _fool-proof_ that it could not be _misapplied_,\n    and that the use of it would absolutely guarantee the\n    soundness of the conclusion if only the reasoning had been\n    fortunate enough to start from true premises. In the\n    syllogism it was supposed that such a form had been found.\n    From _all swans are white_ and _this bird is a swan_ it was\n    to follow inevitably that _this bird is white_, and the\n    course of nature would eternally conform to the prophetic\n    demonstrations of logic.\n\n    Yet logicians also had soon to note that even formally there\n    was something wrong about this syllogistic form. It seemed\n    to \"prove\" what was either nothing new or nothing known. To\n    justify the \"major premise\" \"_all_ swans are white\", must\n    not its assert or have already seen _this_ swan and know\n    that _it_ is white? Or, if he did _not_ know this, is he not\n    _risking_ an assertion about some \"swans\" on the strength of\n    what he knows about others? And what right had he thus to\n    argue from the known to the unknown? Can an \"inference\" be\n    \"valid\" if it involves a _risk_?\n\n    When therefore _black_ swans arrive from Australia to upset\n    his dogmatizing, what is he to do? Will he say his major\n    premise was a definition, and no bird, however swan-like,\n    shall be _called_ a \"swan\" if it cannot pass his color-test?\n    If so, his reasoning is still caught in the old dilemma,\n    that he either \"proves\" nothing _new_ or begs the question\n    in another way. For he then had no right to assert his\n    \"minor premise\", _this bird is a swan_, if he knew not\n    it was white. Or will he, desperately, say \"in both of\n    these interpretations the syllogistic form is fatuous; but\n    kindly understand it as asserting a _law of nature_ which\n    is immutable, and applied to the particular case in the\n    minor premise.\" But, if so, how does he know that his \"law\"\n    applies to the \"case\"? that the \"case\" is such as he takes\n    it to be? that he has picked out the right \"law\" to deal\n    with the case and formulated it correctly? If it is quite\n    certain that the \"law\" applies to the \"case\", his conclusion\n    proves nothing new; if it is not, he runs the risk that\n    the case of which he is trying to predict the behavior may\n    be so exceptional as to break or modify his law. And if he\n    runs that risk, is he not renouncing his ideal of reaching\n    fool-proof certainty?\n\n    There seems to be _no_ way, therefore, of saving \"valid\n    inference\", of so interpreting the syllogism that it is\n    both formally valid and humanly instructive. If it is to be\n    instructive, it can only enlighten human ignorance, and then\n    its premises _cannot_ be _certainly_ true.[13]\n\nSome critics, having in mind how little attention is paid to formal\nlogic in American schools, have expressed the opinion that Schiller\nwas wasting his powder on dead game. But however little it may be used\nin reasoning, formal logic is still the object of formal reverence\neverywhere, and in Oxford it is strongly entrenched and heavily\nsubsidized as Schiller says in the passage:\n\n    That the same doctrine, in perfect verbal continuity, should\n    have been taught and examined on for over two thousand years\n    would be the most stupendous fact in education, were it not\n    surpassed by the still more surprising fact that during all\n    this time no one has arisen to call it nonsense through and\n    through, and that every would-be improvement has been\n    countered by the retort that it was \"not in Aristotle.\" ...\n    The great mass of logicians have always been true to their\n    salt. For Aristotle is still very heavily endowed.\n\n    In the University of Oxford alone three philosophy\n    professors, twenty-eight _literae humaniores_ tutors, and\n    about 460 classical scholars and exhibitioners are paid, at\n    an annual cost of over \u00a350,000, to believe that the theory\n    of thought has stood still, or stumbled into error when it\n    tried to move, ever since the composition of the \"Organon\",\n    and that all modern science may be read into and out of\n    the obscurities of the \"Posterior Analytics.\" The Secret\n    Doctrine in which this is taught has never been divulged in\n    print, but examiners know that there are passages in the\n    ordinary Oxford Logic Lecture which must have been copied\n    down by two hundred generations of students ever since the\n    twelfth century.\n\nLike James and Bergson and unlike Dewey, Schiller has interested\nhimself in psychical research as a possible way of proving personal\nimmortality.[14] He does not seem from his published work to have yet\nobtained any satisfactory experimental evidence of a future life,\nbut he regards immortality as an ethical postulate, necessary to the\nconceptions of a moral universe, for if we reject it \"we should be\nplunged in that unfathomable abyss where Scepticism fraternizes with\nPessimism and they hug their miseries in chaos undisguised.\"\n\nBut in his earliest work \"Riddles of the Sphinx\" he expressed the\nopinion that nowadays few people took a real interest in the question\nof immortality and that it had little influence upon conduct. This\nunconventional opinion was confirmed many years later when the Society\nfor Psychical Research conducted a _questionnaire_ on the subject and\nfound that of the many thousand persons interrogated a large proportion\ndid not regard a future life as of practical importance to them.[15]\n\nWithin the last few years Schiller has entered a new field, the\neugenics movement, where his keen wit and power of analysis are doing\ngood service. In his review of Nietzsche's work[16] he recognizes\nthat Nietzsche is not without reason when he asserts that the moral\nqualities he dislikes, such as pity and sympathy, may lead to\ndecadence, for, as Schiller elsewhere shows, social reform, unless it\nis eugenically directed, may lead to the growth of the evils it aims\nto alleviate. In a very remarkable article published shortly before\nthe outbreak of the war,[17] he foretold the collapse of European\ncivilization and suggested that the Japanese or Chinese, through the\ngreater importance they attach to the family, might be found more\nworthy of preeminence.\n\n    If the ancestor-worship of the animist can be developed into\n    the descendant-worship of the eugenist, I can see no reason\n    why one should not prognosticate for both of them a rosier\n    future and a more assured continuance than for our European\n    societies, if these latter yield to the pressure of those,\n    whether called individualists, socialists, or militarists,\n    who tempt them to destruction.\n\nThe danger to European culture lies, he says, in that \"our Hellenistic\npolitical philosophy exhibits all the marks of senile dementia and\nprogressive paranoia.\"\n\n    The evidence goes to show that throughout the most valuable\n    part of the nation, not only in the upper classes but also\n    in the middle classes and in the best parts of the working\n    classes, the birth-rate per marriage has in a generation\n    sunk from four and a half to two, and is now only half the\n    size required to keep up the numbers in those classes.\n    In other words, society is now so ordered that in every\n    generation it sheds one-half of the classes it itself\n    values most highly, and supplies their places with the\n    offspring of the feeble-minded and casual-labourer classes,\n    whose families still average more than seven. What\n    seriously aggravates the evil is the whole trend of social\n    legislation. Social reform costs money, and the money is\n    raised by taxation, which bears very hardly on the middle\n    classes, who cannot curtail luxuries like the rich, and\n    will not lower their standard of comfort. They meet the\n    extra expense, therefore, by further postponing the age of\n    marriage, and further reducing their output of children. One\n    of the chief effects, therefore, of our present methods of\n    improving social conditions is to deteriorate the race. And\n    this in a twofold manner: they eliminate the middle class,\n    and they promote the survival of the unfit and defective.\n\n    It is perfectly possible, therefore, to tax the middle\n    classes out of existence. Indeed, it has been done.\n    History exhibits a great object-lesson in the decline of\n    the Roman empire. This appears to have been mainly due\n    to an unscientific system of taxation which crushed the\n    middle class and left no breeding ground for ability and\n    ambition between the millionaire nobles, who had nothing to\n    rise to, and the pauperised masses, who had no chance of\n    rising. Consequently, the empire had to take from without\n    its borders the men it needed to conduct its military and\n    civil administration. The barbarians alone could furnish\n    the men to run the empire, and consequently the barbarians\n    inevitably came to overrun the empire.\n\nThe Great War which he could not foresee has immeasurably accelerated\nthe degenerative process which he foretold. The death roll of\nuniversity students and graduates, representing, however inadequate\nthe examination system, a selected class of young men of superior\nintellectual ability, is probably higher than in any other class.\nWhen I visited Oxford a few years before the war the students were\nalready drilling for the impending conflict and practically all who\nwere eligible enlisted at the first call. Raising an army by appeals\nto patriotism as was done in England means sending to the front\nto bear the brunt of battle longest those who are most energetic,\nself-sacrificing, and intelligent, while the slackers, the incompetent,\nthe weaklings, the selfish, and the dull were left to the last or not\ntaken at all.\n\nBesides this the burden of taxation resting upon the middle classes\nthat Schiller thought unbearable in 1914 has been multiplied and will\nact as a deterrent to large families more strongly than ever in the\nfuture. A Royal Commission has been appointed to consider methods for\nchecking the alarming decline in the birth-rate.\n\nOne anti-eugenic agency which Schiller fails to mention but which\nstrikes an outsider as very serious is Labanism. It was formerly\nthe custom to require all Oxford fellows to remain celibate. Later\nthey were allowed to marry after serving seven years, whence the\nname. Recently this prohibition has been removed, but the antiquated\nsocial organization of the colleges acts as a practical deterrent\nof marriage. So by this elaborate and expensive system of examination,\ncompetitions, and promotions--which unfortunately is not so\ninefficient as its occasional mistakes might lead us to think--the\nuniversity prevents those whom it deems to have the brightest minds\nfrom transmitting their mental endowments to posterity. The devil\ncould not have devised a more ingenious scheme for the promotion of\nmediocrity. Since Oxford has been in existence for about eight hundred\nyears it must have had a considerable influence on the reduction of\nBritish genius.\n\nAs Schiller points out, any measures to be eugenically effective must\napply to the young. The rewards bestowed upon ability are not only\nfrequently misapplied but they are invariably too long delayed. The\nyouthful genius is too often forced to give up having a family or\ncompelled to support it on faith, hope and charity. To this defect\nin our civilization Schiller has given the apt name of \"social\nhysteresis.\"[18]\n\n    In all the professions (except, perhaps, that of the\n    actress) the young are underpaid, and established\n    reputations are overpaid. It would be eugenically\n    preferable to do the opposite. Yet the existing practice\n    is largely due to unintentional stupidity, and failure\n    to discover ability soon enough. Now to the individual\n    this system brings compensation, if he lives long enough,\n    because he continues to be rewarded for work he has done\n    long ago, and even is no longer capable of doing, and\n    is eventually raised to the status of a \"grand old man\"\n    whom ancient institutions delight to honour, by dint of\n    sheer longevity. But eugenically this social _hysteresis_,\n    this delay in recompensing merit, has a fatal effect. It\n    renders the capable, ambitious and rising members of the\n    professional classes unduly sterile, owing to compulsory\n    celibacy, postponement of marriage, overwork, etc. Thus a\n    large proportion of the ability which rises to the top of\n    the social ladder lasts only for one generation, and does\n    not permanently benefit the race.\n\nFrom this passage it will be seen that Schiller does not fall into the\ncommon fallacy of unconsciously assuming that the upper classes of our\npresent social system necessarily consist of superior individuals.\nBut he does lay stress upon something often overlooked, that this\nassumption is more justified as society becomes more democratic:\n\n    Precisely in proportion as a society improves the\n    opportunities of the able to rise, it must accelerate the\n    elimination of fitness in the racial stock. So long as a\n    relatively rigid social order rendered it almost impossible\n    for ability to rise from the ranks, reservoirs of ability\n    could accumulate unseen in the lower social strata, and\n    burst forth in times of need, as in the French Revolution:\n    but the more successfully a _carri\u00e8re ouverte aux talents_\n    is instituted, the more surely are these strata _kept\n    drained_, and incapacitated from retrieving the waste of\n    ability in the upper layers of society. Now it is doubtless\n    true that the _primary_ need of society is to find persons\n    capable of conducting its affairs ably, and that a social\n    order which does not allow ability to rise is therefore bad:\n    but nations cannot with impunity so order themselves as to\n    eliminate the very qualities they most admire and desire,\n    and must husband their resources in men as in the other\n    sources of their wealth and welfare.[19]\n\nThat is to say, it did not matter much if in former times the nobility\ndid tend to die out in a few generations, for in hereditable ability\nthey were not much above the average. But in the more just regime\nthat we are trying to introduce, especially in America, when the\nopportunities for higher education and advancement are extended to\nthe gifted of all classes, it will be disastrous if the professional\nand well-to-do classes fail to contribute their share to the future\npopulation, for it means a continuous reversal of the method of the\nsurvival of the fittest by which evolution has been accomplished. This\nis not a law that man can repeal however he may disregard it. So it\nhappens that civilized societies tend to die at the top and the\nhuman race makes little or no progress in native ability. As Schiller\nsays:\n\n    The inventor of the wheel or even of a new mode of chipping\n    flints may well have been as great a genius as the human\n    race has produced, and it accords well with this that the\n    early paleolithic races seem to have possessed a cranial\n    capacity, not less, but greater than our own. For in the dim\n    red dawn of man the fool-killing apparatus of nature was\n    terribly effective, and society could do little to mitigate\n    its horrors and to protect its inefficient members.\n\nThe injustice, and what is more important, the injurious effects of the\npresent distribution of honors and emoluments he exposes in his article\non \"National Self-Selection\":\n\n    Is it not nonsense to say that the Archbishop of Canterbury\n    is paid \u00a315,000 a year and Prof. J. J. Thomson seven or\n    eight hundred, because the persons fitted to perform the\n    latter's functions are twenty times as common as those\n    suited to the former's? Is not the real reason plainly that\n    the former is the beneficiary of a long social development\n    which has liberally endowed the Church, while the social\n    appreciation of the value of science is only just beginning,\n    and has not yet raised the makers of new truths to a par\n    with the custodians of time-honoured revelations? Our\n    example, however, draws attention to a very general fact,\n    viz., that the social position of various functions is\n    very largely the product of past valuations which have\n    persisted from mere habit. Hence their present salaries\n    do not really prove that an Archbishop is twenty times as\n    valuable to a nation as a scientific genius, or thrice as\n    precious as a Premier, nor even that men now think so.\n    How many of us, for example, really now believe that mere\n    descent from an illiterate medieval baron attests sufficient\n    merit to entitle a man to a hereditary seat in the House of\n    Lords? If we continued to value fighting qualities as highly\n    as of yore, we should promote our actual fighting men. When\n    we want really to defend the House of Lords, we point to\n    its sagacity in gauging the will of the people and to the\n    economic value of its attractiveness for foreign heiresses.\n\n    Hence one of the chief needs of a society which desires\n    to reconstitute itself on eugenical principles is a\n    thorough revision of social status. It must bring the\n    social position of various services into closer agreement\n    with their present value. And it must induce a greater\n    feeling of responsibility about the popular valuations and\n    transvaluations of functions, which are constantly exalting\n    the position of the caterers to individual pleasures above\n    the consolidators of man's permanent welfare. It is _not_\n    good for a society that a cricketer or a prize-fighter or a\n    dancer should be esteemed and rewarded more highly than the\n    man who discovers a cure for malaria or cancer.[20]\n\nThe humanistic view of metaphysics Schiller expresses in the preface to\nthe 1910 edition of his earliest work \"Riddles of the Sphinx.\"\n\n    Practically a system of metaphysics, with whatever\n    pretensions to pure thought and absolute rationality it may\n    start is always in the end one man's personal vision about\n    the universe, and the \"metaphysical craving\" often so strong\n    in the young is nothing but the desire to tell the universe\n    what one thinks of it. Of course, the tale may be worth\n    telling if told well.\n\nThis describes the \"Riddles of the Sphinx\" exactly. In it the youthful\nSchiller tells the universe what he thinks of it and it is told well.\nBut his thoughts have changed in the twenty-five years since this\nvolume was published so that even in its revised form it does not so\nwell express his views as do his later volumes, \"Humanism\" and \"Studies\nin Humanism\", of which revised editions were brought out in 1912.\n\nThe doctrine known as Absolute Idealism was, Schiller explains,\nimported from Germany, \"soon after its demise in its native country\",\nfor the purpose of counteracting the anti-religious developments\nof science. But the abstract conception of the Absolute is, in his\nopinion, of no value to religion or anything else. The pragmatic demand\nfor God is, first, as \"a human _moral_ principle of help and justice\",\nand second, as \"an aid to the _intellectual_ comprehension of the\nuniverse\", but the metaphysical Absolute satisfies neither of these\ncravings, for it is too impersonal to help anybody and too general to\nexplain anything.\n\nIn his chapter on \"Absolutism and the Dissociation of Personality\"[21]\nhe generously offers his aid to the idealistic monists who have\ndifficulty in conceiving how the One became the Many and why the\nindividualistic minds included in the Universal Mind should be so\nantagonistic. Schiller suggests that it is an analogous case to the\ndissociation of that celebrated Boston lady \"Miss Beauchamp\" into\nseveral secondary personalities. But he admits that it is \"a little\nstartling at first to think of the Absolute as morbidly dissociated or\neven as downright mad\", especially since in the case of the Absolute\nthere is no outsider, like Doctor Morton Prince, to put the parts\ntogether again.\n\nMany years before he had said[22]\n\n    The conception of a Deity absorbed in perfect, unchanging\n    and eternal bliss is a blasphemy upon the Divine energy\n    which might be permitted to the heathen ignorance of\n    Aristotle, but which should be abhorred by all who have\n    learnt the lesson of the Crucifixion. A theology which\n    denies that the imperfection of the world must be reflected\n    in the sorrows of the Deity simply shows itself blind to\n    the deepest and truest meaning of the figure of Him that\n    was \"a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief\" and deaf\n    to the gospel of Divine sympathy with the world. Thus the\n    world-process is the process of the _redemption_ alike of\n    God, of the world and of our own selves.\n\n\nThe conception of a struggling and self-developing God which Schiller\nadduced from Christian principles is remarkably like that to which\nBergson was led by other lines of reasoning.[23]\n\nThe value of the pragmatic method to religion is discussed by Schiller\nin his article on \"Faith, Reason and Religion\",[24] where he shows that\neven the most rigorous scientific reasoning involves the element of\nfaith, and on the other hand that faith is devoid of value unless it is\nverified in the only way by which anything can be verified, that is, by\nworks. He says:\n\n    Christianity is an essentially human and thoroughly\n    pragmatic religion, hampered throughout its history and at\n    times almost strangled by an alien theology, based upon\n    the intellectualistic speculations of Greek philosophers.\n    Fortunately the Greek metaphysic embodied (mainly) in the\n    \"Athanasian\" creed is too obscure to have ever been\n    really functional; its chief mischief has always been to\n    give theological support to \"philosophic\" criticisms, which\n    by identifying God with \"the One\" have aimed at eliminating\n    the human elements from the Christian religion. As against\n    all such attempts, however, we must hold fast to the\n    principle that the truest religion is that which issues in\n    and fosters the best life.\n\nThe pragmatic criterion of truth, that all truths must work, is not\na lax one as its opponents assert but the most stringent that can be\napplied. It means--\"You shall back your beliefs with your acts and\nshall not assert the truth of whatever suits you without any testing at\nall.\" It eliminates as meaningless all theories that make no difference\nwhether they are believed or disbelieved. It demands constant\nconfirmation of all beliefs by their consequences. It insists upon\nthe unity of theory and practice, of faith and works. This point was\nplainly put by Schiller in his address before the Pan-Anglican Church\nCongress of 1908:\n\n    For any theory to work, it must be believed in, e.g.,\n    believed to be _true_. It is impossible, e.g., to practice\n    prayer merely as a piece of spiritual hygiene, and in order\n    to get the strengthening which is said to result from the\n    practice. The practice need not, of course, start with a\n    firm belief in the reality of its object. But unless it\n    engenders a real belief, it will become inefficacious.\n    Hence, to conceive of Pragmatism as ultimately sanctioning\n    an \"act-as-if\" attitude of religious make-believe is a\n    misapprehension; it is to confound it with the discredited\n    and ineffectual dualism of Kant's antithesis of practical\n    and theoretic \"reason.\" Lastly, it should be noted that\n    any theory which works must evoke some response from the\n    objective nature of things. If there were no \"God\", i.e.,\n    nothing that could afford any satisfaction to any religious\n    emotion, the whole religious attitude would be futile.\n    If it is not, it must contain essential truth, though it\n    may remain to be determined what is the objective fact\n    corresponding to the postulate.\n\n\n\nHOW TO READ SCHILLER\n\n\n\"Humanism\" (1903, new edition 1912) and \"Studies in Humanism\"\n(1907, new edition 1912) are both collections of papers presenting\nvarious phases of Schiller's philosophy. Either one may serve as an\nintroduction to the author. \"Riddles of the Sphinx\" (1891), though\nalso revised (1910), represents an earlier mode of thought. \"Formal\nLogic\" (1912) is too technical for any but well prepared students. All\nSchiller's works are published by The Macmillan Company.\n\nThe reader who loves a fight and does not faint at the sight of inkshed\nwill find what he wants in almost any volume of the Oxford Mind or the\nColumbia _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods_.\nWhere the conflict rages most fiercely there Schiller will be seen in\nthe midst of the combatants, thrusting in all directions at the\nweak points in their armor. To enumerate all of his controversial and\nfugitive writings would be impossible here, but the following articles\nat least must be mentioned:\n\n\"Do Men Desire Immortality?\" (_Fortnightly_, vol. 76, p. 430).\n\n\"The Desire for a Future Life\" (_Independent_, September 15, 1904).\n\n\"Psychical Research\" (_Fortnightly_, vol. 83, p. 60). Presidential\nAddress (Proceedings Society for Psychical Research, 1914-1915).\n\nMiss Beauchamp (_Journal Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific\nMethods_, vol. 4, p. 20; and _Mind_, No. 70, p. 183).\n\n\"The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche\" (_Quarterly Review_, 1913).\n\n\"Choice\" and \"Infallibility\" (_Hibbert Journal_, 1909).\n\n\"Plato\" (_Quarterly Review_, vol. 204, p. 62). \"Pluralism\"\n(_Proceedings of Aristotelian Society_, 1908-1909).\n\n\"The Rational Conception of Truth\" (_Proceedings Aristotelian Society_,\n1906).\n\n\"Oxford of the Workingman\" (_Fortnightly_, February, 1913).\n\n\"Cosmopolitan Oxford\" (_Fortnightly_, May, 1902). \"War Prophecies\"\n(_Journal Society Psychical Research_, June, 1916).\n\n\"Criticism of Perry's Realism\" (_Mind_, 1914).\n\nDiscussions of pragmatism (_Mind_, 1913, 1915). \"New Developments of\nMr. Bradley's Philosophy\" (_Mind_, 1915).\n\n\"Present Phase of Idealistic Philosophy\" (_Mind_, January and October,\n1910). __\n\n\"Realism, Pragmatism, and William James\" (_Mind_, 1915)\n\n\"The Humanism of Protagoras\" (Mind, April, 1911).\n\n\"Logic _versus_ Life\" (_Independent_, vol. 73, p. 375). \"Aristotle's\nRefutation of the Aristotelian Logic\" (_Mind_, vol. 23, pp. 1, 395,\n558).\n\n\"The Working of Truths and Their Criterion\" (_Mind_, vol. 22, No. 88).\n\n\"Error\" (IV Congresso internazionale di filosofia, Bologna, 1911).\n\n\"Relevance\" (_Mind_, vol. 21, No. 82).\n\n\"The Working of Truths\" (_Mind_, vol. 21, No. 84). \"National\nSelf-Selection\" (_Eugenics Review_, April, 1914)\n\n\"Our Critic Criticized\" (_Eugenics Review_, January, 1914). Criticism\nof Schiller and other pragmatists may be found in the controversies\nreferred to, but I may also add the following references:\n\n\"Vital Lies\" by Vernon Lee (John Lane Company, 1913).\n\n\"Pragmatism\" (_Quarterly Review_, April, 1909).\n\n\"British Exponents of Pragmatism\" by Professor M'Gilvary (_Hibbert\nJournal_, April, 1908).\n\n\"Der Pragmatismus von James und Schiller,\" by Doctor Werner Bloch\n(1913).\n\n\n[1] Schiller says that \"Professor Santayana, though a pragmatist in\nepistemology is a materialist in metaphysics.\"\n\n[2] The Philosophy of Wang Yang-ming is now accessible in English,\nthrough the translation of Doctor Henke (Open Court Publishing Company,\nChicago, 1916).\n\n[3] \"Major Prophets of To-day,\" First Series, 1914. Little, Brown, and\nCompany, Boston.\n\n[4] Of course any one who wants to find out at first hand what\npragmatism is will not bother with what I say but will turn to\nWilliam James's \"Pragmatism\" or invest fifty cents in the briefer and\nmore comprehensive survey of the movement in D. L. Murray's primer\nof \"Pragmatism.\" A definition of pragmatism that is anything but\nmonosyllabic may be found in the chapter on Dewey. The story is told\nof a college woman who was asked what Professor James's lecture on\npragmatism was going to be about and replied that she thought it had\nsomething to do with the royal succession in Austria. Schiller's own\ndefinition is to be found in his \"Studies in Humanism:\"\n\nPragmatism is the doctrine (i) that truths are logical values; (2)\nthat the \"truth\" of an assertion depends on its application; (3) that\nthe meaning of a rule lies in its application; (4) that ultimately all\nmeaning depends on purpose; (5) that all mental life is purposive.\nPragmatism is (6) a systematic protest against all ignoring of the\npurposiveness of actual knowing, and it is (7) a conscious application\nto epistemology (or logic) of a teleological psychology, which implies,\nultimately, a voluntaristic metaphysic.\n\n[5] Address on \"Error\" before the Congresso Internazionale di\nFilosofia, Bologna, 1911.\n\n[6] I find the following incident reported of a Boston school which\nwould indicate that the philosophy of William James is influencing the\nyounger generation in his home city:\n\n\"Well, Waldo,\" said the professor of geometry, \"can you prove any of\nto-day's theorems?\"\n\n\"No, sir, I'm afraid I can't,\" said Waldo hopefully; \"but I can render\nseveral of them highly probable.\"\n\n[7] \"Studies in Humanism.\"\n\n[8] \"Realism, Pragmatism and William James.\" _Mind_, 1915.\n\n[9] _Mind_, vol. 22, p. 534, 1913.\n\n\n[10] \"Essays on Truth and Reality\" by F. H. Bradley. See Schiller's\n\"New Developments of Mr. Bradley's Philosophy\" in _Mind_, 1915.\n\n[11] See \"Protagoras the Humanist\", and \"Gods and Priests\" in \"Studies\nin Humanism\", and \"Useless Knowledge\" and \"Plato or Protagoras\" in\n\"Humanism.\"\n\n[12] _The Independent_. Schiller's \"Formal Logic\" gave rise to much\ncontroversy. See for instance _Mind_, vol. 23, p. 1, 398, 558. One\ncritic called it \"a sympathetic appreciation of all known logical\nfallacies.\"\n\n[13] \"Logic _versus_ Life\" in _The Independent_, vol. 73, p. 375.\n\n[14] The latter part of \"Humanism\" and of \"Riddles of the Sphinx\" is\ndevoted to this topic. Schiller succeeded Bergson as President of the\nSociety for Psychical Research in 1914.\n\n[15] See Schiller's article on this in _The Independent_ of September\n15, 1904, or in _Fortnightly Review_, vol. 76, p. 430.\n\n[16] _Quarterly Review_, 1913.\n\n[17] \"Eugenics and Politics\" in _The Hibbert Journal_, January, 1914.\n\n[18] \"Practical Eugenics in Education.\"\n\n[19] \"Practical Eugenics in Education.\"\n\n[20] _Eugenics Review_, April, 1910.\n\n[21] In \"Studies in Humanism.\"\n\n[22] \"Riddles of the Sphinx,\" p. 431.\n\n[23] See \"Creative Evolution\" and Chapter II of \"Major Prophets of\nTo-day\"; also Wells and Shaw in this volume.\n\n[24] In \"Studies in Humanism\" and _Hibbert Journal_, January, 1906. See\nalso \"Science and Religion\" in \"Riddles of the Sphinx\", new edition.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\n\nJOHN DEWEY\n\nTeacher of Teachers\n\n\nIf some historian should construct an intellectual weather map of\nthe United States he would find that in the eighties the little\narrows that show which way the wind blows were pointing in toward Ann\nArbor, Michigan, in the nineties toward Chicago, Illinois, and in\nthe nineteen hundreds toward New York City, indicating that at these\npoints there was a rising current of thought. And if he went so far\nas to investigate the cause of these local upheavals of the academic\natmosphere he would discover that John Dewey had moved from one place\nto the other. It might be a long time before the psychometeorologist\nwould trace these thought currents spreading over the continent back to\ntheir origin, a secluded classroom where the most modest man imaginable\nwas seated and talking in a low voice for an hour or two a day. John\nDewey is not famous like W. J. Bryan or Charlie Chaplin. He is not\neven known by name to most of the millions whose thought he is guiding\nand whose characters he is forming. This is because his influence has\nbeen indirect. He has inspired individuals and instigated reforms in\neducational methods which have reached the remotest schoolhouses of the\nland. The first of the Dewey cyclones revolved about psychology, the\nsecond about pedagogy, and the third about philosophy.\n\nI was a thousand miles away from the first storm center, yet I\ndistinctly felt the vibrations. That was in the University of Kansas\nwhen the psychology class was put in charge of a young man named\nTemplin just back from his _Wanderjahr_ in Germany. This study had\nhitherto belonged _ex officio_ to the Chancellor of the university who\nput the finishing touch on the seniors' brains with aid of McCosh. But\nthe queer looking brown book stamped \"Psychology--John Dewey\" that was\nput into our hands in 1887 relegated the Princeton philosopher to the\nfootnotes and instead told about Helmholtz, Weber, Wundt and a lot of\nother foreigners who, it seemed, were not content to sit down quietly\nand search their own minds--surely as good as anybody's--but went\nabout watching the behavior of children, animals, and crazy folks and\nspent their time in a laboratory--the idea!--measuring the speed of\nthought and dissecting brains. This young man in Michigan made bold\nto claim psychology as a natural science instead of a minor branch of\nmetaphysics, and he did the best he could to prove it with such meager\nmaterials as were available at the time. His \"Psychology\" appeared,\nas should be remembered, three years before the epoch-making work of\nJames and before any permanent psychological laboratory had been opened\nin the United States. In taking down again my battered brown copy of\nDewey's \"Psychology\" I am surprised to find how trite and old-fashioned\nsome of it sounds. Although Dewey thought he had thrown overboard all\nmetaphysics it is evident that he was then carrying quite a cargo of it\nunconsciously.\n\nBut the commotion started by Dewey's \"Psychology\" was a tempest in\nan inkpot compared with the cyclone that swept over the country when\nhe began to put his theories into practice at the University of\nChicago in 1894. I heard echoes of it as far west as Wyoming. The\nteachers who went to the summer session of the University of Chicago\ncame back shocked, fascinated, inspired, or appalled, according\nto their temperaments. The very idea of an \"experimental school\"\nwas disconcerting, suggesting that the poor children were being\nsubjected to some sort of vivisection or--what was worse--implying\nthat the established educational methods were all wrong. \"He lets the\nchildren do whatever they want to do,\" whispered the teachers to their\nstay-at-home colleagues, who, like themselves, were spending their\ntime in keeping the children from doing what they wanted to do and in\nmaking them do what they did not want to do. \"He lets the children\ntalk and run around and help one another with their lessons!\" and all\nthe teachers looked at each other with a wild surmise silent on the\nschool-room platform. Could it be that there was a better way, that\nthis task on which they were wearing out their nerves, trying to reduce\nto rigidity for five hours a roomful of wriggling children, was no\nless harmful to the children than to themselves? \"I'd like to see John\nDewey try to manage my sixty,\" remarks the presiding teacher as she\nsuppresses a little girl on the front seat with a smile and a big boy\non the back seat with a tap of her pencil.\n\nAs a matter of fact, the children neither studied nor did what they\npleased, but the idea was that if children had a sufficient variety\nof activities provided they would like what they did and their\nactivities could be so arranged as to result in getting knowledge\nand in forming good habits of thought. The common assumption that\nthe main idea was to have the children do and study what they liked\nwas a complete missing of the intellectual idea or philosophy of the\nschool, which was an attempt to work out the theory that knowledge,\nwith respect to both sense observation and general principles, is\nan offshoot of activities, and that the practical problems arising\nin connection with consecutive occupations afford the means for a\ndevelopment of interest in scientific problems for their own sake. The\nsocial grouping of children, and the attempt to get co\u00f6perative group\nwork, was always just as important a phase as individual freedom--not\nonly on moral grounds, but because of the theoretical conception that\nhuman intelligence developed under social conditions and for social\npurposes--in other words, \"mind\" has developed not only with respect to\nactivity having purpose, but also social activity. These same notions\nof the central place of intelligence in action and the social nature of\nintelligence are fundamental in Dewey's \"Ethics.\"\n\nThe real distinguishing characteristic of schools of the Dewey type is\nnot absence of discipline but a new ideal of discipline. This is most\nclearly stated in one of his more recent works:\n\n    Discipline of mind is in truth a result rather than a cause.\n    Any mind is disciplined in a subject in which independent\n    intellectual initiative and control have been achieved.\n    Discipline represents original native endowment turned\n    through gradual exercise into effective power.... Discipline\n    is positive and constructive. Discipline, however, is\n    frequently regarded as something negative--as a painfully\n    disagreeable forcing of mind away from channels congenial\n    to it into channels of constraint, a process grievous at\n    the time, but necessary as preparation for a more or less\n    remote future. Discipline is then generally identified with\n    drill; and drill is conceived after the mechanical analogy\n    of driving, by unremitting blows, a foreign substance into\n    a resistant material; or is imaged after the analogy of the\n    mechanical routine by which raw recruits are trained to\n    a soldierly bearing and habits that are naturally wholly\n    foreign to their possessors. Training of this latter sort,\n    whether it be called discipline or not, is not mental\n    discipline. Its aim and result are not _habits of thinking_\n    but uniform _external habits of action_. By failing to ask\n    what he means by discipline, many a teacher is misled into\n    supposing that he is developing mental force and efficiency\n    by methods which in fact restrict and deaden intellectual\n    activity, and which tend to create mechanical routine, or\n    mental passivity and servility.--\"How We Think\", p. 63.\n\nBut even more revolutionary than Dewey's rejection of the strict\ndiscipline then prevailing in the schools was his introduction of\nindustrial training as an integral part of education, not merely for\nthe purpose of giving the pupils greater manual skill, still less\nwith the object of improving their chances of getting a job or of\nmaking them more efficient for the benefit of the employer, but chiefly\nbecause it is only through participation in industry that one can\nget an understanding of the meaning of science and the constitution\nof the social organism. In the old days when most industries were\ncarried on in the household or the neighborhood children learned them\nby observation and participation. School was then a place where this\nvery effective form of home education could be supplemented by \"book\nlearning.\"\n\nBut Dewey faced frankly the fact that the house-hold arts and\nhandicrafts had passed away for keeps, and he refused to join in\nthe pretense that they could be profitably \"revived\" by the various\nesthetic and socialist movements of the William Morris and Ruskin\ntype. He recognized that the machine and the factory had come to stay,\nand if the worker is not to become a factory machine himself he must\nreceive in school such a broad and diversified training as will make\nhim realize the significance of the work he does. Or as Dewey said in\n\"School and Society\" in 1899:\n\n    We sometimes hear the introduction of manual training,\n    art and science into the elementary, and even into the\n    secondary, schools deprecated on the ground that they tend\n    toward the production of specialists--that they detract\n    from our present system of generous, liberal culture. The\n    point to this objection would be ludicrous if it were not\n    often so effective as to make it tragic. It is our present\n    education which is highly specialized, one-sided and narrow.\n    It is an education dominated almost entirely by the medieval\n    conception of learning. It is something which appeals for\n    the most part simply to the intellectual aspect of our\n    natures, our desire to learn, to accumulate information,\n    and to get control of the symbols of learning; not to our\n    impulses and tendencies to make, to do, to create, to\n    produce, whether in the form of utility or art.\n\nMere \"manual training\", then all the rage, has failed, as Dewey said\nit would, because of its fictitious and adventitious character. His\nmethod was as different from the ordinary kind of \"manual training\" as\nhay-making is from dumb-bell exercise.\n\n    We must conceive of work in wood and metal, of weaving,\n    sewing and cooking, as methods of living and learning, not\n    as distinct studies. We must conceive of them in their\n    social significance, as types of processes by which society\n    keeps itself going, as agencies for bringing home to the\n    child some of the primal necessities of community life, and\n    as ways in which these needs have been met by the growing\n    insight and ingenuity of man; in short as instrumentalities\n    through which the school itself shall be made a genuine form\n    of active community life, instead of a place set apart in\n    which to learn lessons.\n\nSo Dewey set the children to solving the problems of primitive man\nand retracing for themselves the steps in the evolution of industrial\nprocesses. They picked the cotton from the boll, carded, spun it into\nthread and wove it into cloth on machines of their own making and for\nthe most part of their own devising. This gave opportunity for personal\nexperimenting and taught them history by repeating history, not\nrepeating a verbal version of history. And the history they thus learnt\nwas the history of the human race, not the history of some chosen\npeople.\n\nThis recapitulation theory, like all others, has since been carried\nto an extreme. Acting on the idea that children normally pass through\nthe same stages as European civilization some teachers seem to think\nit necessary to keep them to the chronological curriculum. So they\ncultivate a pseudo-savagery for a year or two, then make them pagans\nand later teach the ideals of the age of chivalry which are hardly less\nrepugnant to the modern mind. So careful are they to avoid anachronism\nthat if a boy should by any accident behave like a Christian before\nhe reached the grade corresponding to A.D. 28 he would be likely to\nget a bad mark for it. So, too, I have known teachers of mathematics\nwho would not allow their pupils to take a short cut to the answer\nby way of algebra unless it was in the algebra class and teachers of\nchemistry who would not permit the word \"atom\" to be mentioned in\nclassroom until the term was half through. But such extravagances find\nno countenance in Dewey's writings or the examples he cites.\n\nIn the laboratory school of the University of Chicago Professor and\nMrs. Dewey had for several years a free hand in developing and trying\nout their theories. Their aim was to utilize instead of to suppress\nthe fourfold impulses of childhood; the interest in conversation, the\ninterest in inquiry, the interest in construction and the interest in\nartistic expression. The volume in which Professor Dewey explained\nwhat he was trying to do and why, \"School and Society\", was first\npublished in 1899 and has been reprinted almost every year up to\nthe present.[1] It might well have borne the same title as Benjamin\nTucker's volume on anarchism: \"Instead of a Book, by a Man Too Busy to\nWrite One.\" It consists of the stenographic reports of three informal\ntalks by Professor Dewey to the parents of his pupils and the friends\nof his school, supplemented by some fugitive papers. Yet it has an\ninfluence comparable to no other modern book of its size unless perhaps\nHerbert Spencer's tract on \"Education.\"\n\nHow far the seed was sown is shown by \"Schools of To-morrow\",[2]\nwhich tells of a dozen places where the ideas that were so novel\nand startling in the nineties are in practical operation. But it is\ncharacteristic of Dewey's self-effacement that he makes no claim for\npriority, and there is no hint anywhere in the volume that many of the\nmethods described were first devised and tried out in the Dewey school\nat Chicago nearly twenty years ago. He gives the credit for the theory\nto Rousseau and the credit for the practice to Mr. Wirt of Gary, Mrs.\nJohnson of Fairhope, Mr. Valentine of Indianapolis, Professor Merriam\nof Missouri, and others.\n\nMr. Wirt who organized the school system of the steel city of Gary,\nIndiana, and who is now employed in remodeling some of the schools\nof New York City, owes his inspiration and ideas, as I have heard\nhim say, very largely to Dewey.[3] The Gary system differs from the\ntrade schools in that the industries are used for their educative\nvalue. The pupils are shifted around from one shop to another three\ntimes a year. Their tasks are artificial, symbolic or imitative, but\nfrom the fifth grade up real constructive work, for the boys making\nschool furniture, iron castings, laying concrete, and printing; and\nfor the girls, sewing, cooking, marketing, millinery, and laundry, and\nfor both, gardening, pottery, designing, bookbinding and bookkeeping.\nArithmetic, writing, history, and geography come in necessarily and\nnaturally in connection with their work. Under this r\u00e9gime the pupils\nmake better progress in the traditional subjects than those who devote\ntheir whole time to books. That it does not divert them from higher\neducation is shown by the fact that one third of all the pupils who\nhave left the Gary schools in the eight years of their existence are\nnow in the state university, an engineering school, or a business\ncollege, a remarkable record for a population mostly composed of\nforeign-born steel mill laborers. All the schoolrooms are in use for\nsomething all day long, so the \"peak load\" is avoided and a great\neconomy effected. The grounds and buildings also serve as community\ncenters and the last trace of the ancient feud between \"town and gown\"\nhas been wiped out.\n\nThe chief advantage which these \"schools of tomorrow\" have over those\nof the past is, in Dewey's opinion, that they come a step nearer\ntoward giving the type of training necessary to prepare citizens for\ndemocracy. In this new book, then, he is working toward the ideal he\npromulgated at the beginning of his career when he entered the faculty\nof the University of Michigan as the youngest man ever appointed\nto a professorship in that institution. He sounded the note of his\nphilosophy thirty years ago in a paper on \"The Ethics of Democracy\",[4]\nand he has never faltered in his allegiance to the high ideal he\nthere set forth, although he has broken away from the Hegelian mode\nof thought he then used. The paper was written to confute Sir Henry\nMaine who, in his \"Popular Government\", argued that democracy was an\nhistorical accident and the most fragile, insecure, and unprogressive\nform of government. Dewey objects to his mechanical and mathematical\nconception of democratic government and sets forth a very different\nconception as the following quotations will show:\n\n    The majority have a right to \"rule\" because their majority\n    is not the mere sign of a surplus in numbers, but is the\n    manifestation of the purpose of the social organism.\n\n    Government is to the state what language is to the thought:\n    it not only communicates the purposes of the state, but in\n    so doing gives them for the first time articulation and\n    generality.\n\n    A vote is not the impersonal counting of one; it is a\n    manifestation of some tendency of the social organism\n    through a member of that organism.\n\n    The democratic formula that government derives its powers\n    from the consent of the governed ... means that in democracy\n    the governors and the governed are not of two classes, but\n    two aspects of the same fact--the fact of the possession by\n    society of a unified and articulate will.\n\n    The aristocratic idea implies that the mass of men are to be\n    inserted by wisdom, or, if necessary, thrust by force, into\n    their proper positions in the social organism....\n\n    Democracy means that _personality_ is the first and final\n    reality.... It holds that the spirit of personality indwells\n    in every individual, and that the choice to develop it must\n    proceed from that individual. From this central position\n    of democracy result the other notes of democracy, liberty,\n    equality, fraternity--words which are not mere words to\n    catch a mob, but symbols of the highest ethical idea which\n    humanity has yet reached--the idea that _personality_ is\n    the one thing of permanent and abiding worth, and that\n    in every human individual there lies personality.... It\n    means that in every individual there lives an infinite and\n    universal possibility: that of being a king or priest.\n    Aristocracy is blasphemy against personality.\n\nEven in those days when socialism had hardly begun to be whispered, at\nleast in academic circles, Dewey was not afraid to say that: \"Democracy\nis not in reality what it is in name until it is industrial as well\nas civil and political.... A democracy of wealth is a necessity.\"\nTwenty-five years later I saw Professor Dewey giving a public\ndemonstration of his faith in democracy when I found him marching with\na small body of men at the tail end of a suffrage procession while\nthe crowds that lined Fifth Avenue jeered and hissed at us. Who would\nthen have thought that five years later all parties would be committed\nto equal suffrage and four presidential candidates would be bidding\nagainst one another for the privilege of giving the women the vote!\n\nEducation for democracy is the burden of Dewey's message to the world,\nand I must give one more quotation on this point:\n\n    Democracy, the crucial expression of modern life, is not so\n    much an addition to the scientific and industrial tendencies\n    as it is the perception of their social or spiritual\n    meaning. Democracy is an absurdity where faith in the\n    individual as individual is impossible; and this faith is\n    impossible where intelligence is regarded as a cosmic power,\n    not an adjustment and application of individual tendencies.\n\n    ... Democracy is estimable only through the changed\n    conception of intelligence that forms modern science, and\n    of want, that forms modern industry. It is essentially a\n    changed psychology. The conventional type of education which\n    trains children in docility and obedience, to the careful\n    performance of imposed tasks because they are imposed,\n    regardless of where they lead, is suited to an autocratic\n    society. These are the traits needed in a state where there\n    is one head to plan and care for the lives and institutions\n    of the people. But in a democracy they interfere with the\n    successful conduct of society and government.... If we\n    train our children to take orders, to do things simply\n    because they are told to, and fail to give them confidence\n    to act and think for themselves, we are putting an almost\n    insurmountable obstacle in the way of overcoming the present\n    defects of our system and of establishing the truth of\n    democratic ideals.\n\n    Children in school must be allowed freedom so that they will\n    know what its use means when they become the controlling\n    body, and they must be allowed to develop active qualities\n    of initiative, independence, and resourcefulness, before the\n    abuses and failures will disappear.--\"School and Society\",\n    p. 304.\n\nThe old theory of education has been most pungently put by \"Mr.\nDooley\", the saloon-keeper of Archey Road, in one of his monologues\nwith Mr. Hennessy: \"It don't matter much what you study--so long\nas you don't like it.\" Professor Dewey takes almost the opposite\nground when he says:[5] \"Interest ought to be the basis for selection\nbecause children are interested in the things they need to learn.\"\n\nThis, as he shows, does not mean that in the new schools things are\n\"made easy\"; on the contrary the pupils work harder because things are\nmade interesting.\n\n    The range of the material is not in any way limited by\n    making interest a standard of selection. Work that appeals\n    to pupils as worth while, that holds out the promise of\n    resulting in something to their own interests, involves\n    just as much persistence and concentration as the work that\n    is given by the sternest advocate of disciplinary drill.\n    The latter requires the pupil to strive for ends which he\n    cannot see, so that he has to be kept at the task by means\n    of offering artificial ends, marks, and promotions, and by\n    isolating him in an atmosphere where his mind and senses\n    are not being constantly besieged by the call of life which\n    appeals so strongly to him. But the pupil presented with a\n    problem, the solution of which will give him an immediate\n    sense of accomplishment and satisfied curiosity, will bend\n    all his powers to the work: the end itself will furnish the\n    stimulus necessary to carry him through the drudgery....\n    Since the children are no longer working for rewards,\n    the temptation to cheat is reduced to a minimum. There\n    is no motive for doing dishonest acts, since the result\n    shows whether the child has done the work, the only end\n    recognized.--\"School and Society.\"\n\nWe have then two fundamentally different theories of training, the\nDooley versus the Dewey system. They are now on trial in some degree\nall the way up from the beginning of the primary to the end of the\ncollege.[6] One is authoritarian; the other libertarian. One cultivates\nobedience; the other initiative. One strives for uniformity; the other\ndiversity. In one the impelling motive is duty; in the other desire. In\none the attitude of the student is receptivity; in the other activity.\nIn one there is compulsory co\u00f6rdination; in the other voluntary\nco\u00f6peration.\n\nObviously neither could be carried to an exclusive extreme, and in\npractice we find each more or less unconsciously borrowing methods from\nthe others. Doubtless the optima for different temperaments, ages, and\nstudies will be found at different points along the line connecting the\ntwo extremes. How far one may safely go in either direction is to be\ndetermined by the pragmatic test of experiment. But at present it is\nsafe to say that the tide of reform is running in the direction Dewey\npointed out a quarter of a century before, though recently a strong\ncounter-current of militarism has set in. That Dewey is a true prophet\nis proved by the extent to which his ideas are being carried out in\nthese \"schools of tomorrow\" that are already in existence to-day.\n\nThe third period in Dewey's life began with his appointment to the\nchair of philosophy at Columbia University in 1905. This relieved him\nof the burden of responsibility for the conduct of the laboratory\nschool at Chicago and enabled him to concentrate his thought upon\nthe fundamental problems of knowledge. It was then perceived that\nhe belonged on the left or radical wing of that movement to which\nJames applied Peirce's name of \"pragmatism.\" But Dewey is reluctant\nto call himself a pragmatist, partly because of his constitutional\ndislike to wearing a tag of any kind, partly, I surmise, because\nhe has an aversion to the spiritualistic tendencies of the two men\nwho are usually classed with him as the leaders of the pragmatic\nmovement--James of Harvard and Schiller of Oxford.\n\nDewey's doctrine of cognition, the theory of instrumentalism, is now to\nbe found in two recent volumes, one technical and the other popular.\nThe ordinary skimming reader will find the \"Essays in Experimental\nLogic\" rather hard sledding, so he will be relieved to find that\nit has been translated by the author into ordinary English in the\nlittle volume entitled \"How We Think.\" This is intended primarily\nfor teachers whose business is supposed to be that of teaching their\nyoungsters how to think, though in reality most of their time has to be\ntaken up with the imparting of information.\n\n[Illustration: John Dewey.]\n\nThe \"Ethics\" of John Dewey and James H. Tufts (1908) is not only a\npractical textbook admirably clear in expounding the conflicting\ntheories and eminently fair in criticizing them, but it would be useful\nto any reader for broadening the mind and pointing the proper way of\napproach to modern problems. Professor Tawney of the University of\nCincinnati in reviewing it for the _American Journal of Sociology_\nsays: \"Probably no more convincing effort to construct a system of\nmoral philosophy by a strictly scientific method has ever been carried\nout.\"\n\nMoral philosophers are generally disposed to keep their carefully\nconstructed systems of ethics under a glass bell jar rather than\nrisk the hard knocks they must receive if taken into the street and\nmarketplace. But Dewey as a professed experimentalist could not\nconsistently adopt this cautious method. His is no cloistered morality\nbut a doctrine reduced from practical life and referable to the same\nauthority for the validification of its influences. An interesting\ninstance of the practical application of his principles is found in\nhis essay on \"Force and Coercion.\"[7] Here he discusses chiefly the\nquestion of the allowability of the use of force by a government as\nin war or by a class as in a strike and repudiates the Tolstoyan view\nthat all use of force is wrong. On such a delicate question it would be\nimproper for me to paraphrase his argument, so I quote instead his own\nsummary of his conclusions:\n\n    First, since the attainment of ends requires the use of\n    means, law is essentially a formulation of the use of force.\n    Secondly, the only question which can be raised about the\n    justification of force is that of comparative efficiency and\n    economy in its use. Thirdly, what is justly objected to as\n    violence or undue coercion is a reliance upon wasteful and\n    destructive means of accomplishing results. Fourthly, there\n    is always a possibility that what passes as a legitimate\n    use of force may be so wasteful as to be really a use of\n    violence; and per contra that measures condemned as recourse\n    to mere violence may, under the given circumstances,\n    represent an intelligent utilization of energy. In no case,\n    can antecedents or _a priori_ principles be appealed to\n    as more than presumptive: The point at issue is concrete\n    utilization of means for ends.\n\nIn this essay Dewey inclines to the view that \"all political questions\nare simply questions of the extension and restriction of exercise of\npower on the part of specific groups in the community\", and says\nfurther that: \"With a few notable exceptions, the doctrine that the\nstate rests upon or is common will seems to turn out but a piece of\nphraseology to justify the uses actually made of force. Practices of\ncoercion and constraint which would become intolerable if frankly\nlabelled Force seem to become laudable when baptized with the name of\nWill, although they otherwise remain the same.\"\n\nI trust that Dewey is one of \"the few notable exceptions\", for the\nquotations from his paper on the \"Ethics of Democracy\" which I have\ngiven on a previous page show that Dewey in his earlier years went as\nfar as Fichte in his later years toward identifying government--and a\nbare majority at that--with the common will of the social organism.\nSuch a Germanic doctrine of the power of the State could be used to\njustify worse things than the German Government has ever done, and it\nis perhaps a realization of this that has led Dewey latterly to look\nwith more favor upon the use of force by the minority.\n\nThe proper use of force is, in Dewey's opinion, \"the acute question of\nsocial philosophy in the world to-day\", and \"a generation which has\nbeheld the most stupendous manifestation of force in all history\nis not going to be content unless it has found some answer to the\nquestion.\" In an article on \"Force, Violence and Law\"[8] he discusses\nthe possibilities of the peace movement in the following fashion:\n\n    At various times of my life I have, with other wearied\n    souls, assisted at discussions between those who were\n    Tolstoyans and--well, those who weren't. In reply to the\n    agitated protests of the former against war and the police\n    and penal measures, I have listened to the time-honored\n    queries about what you should do when the criminal attacked\n    your friend or child. I have rarely heard it stated that\n    since one cannot even walk the street without using force,\n    the only question which persons can discuss with one another\n    concerns the most effective use of force in gaining ends\n    in specific situations. If one's end is the saving of\n    one's soul immaculate, or maintaining a certain emotion\n    unimpaired, doubtless force should be used to inhibit\n    natural muscular reactions. If the end is something else,\n    a hearty fisticuff may be the means of realizing it. What\n    is intolerable is that men should condemn or eulogize force\n    at large, irrespective of its use as a means of getting\n    results. To be interested in ends and to have contempt for\n    the means which alone secure them is the last stage of\n    intellectual demoralization.\n\n    It is hostility to force as force, to force intrinsically,\n    which has rendered the peace movement so largely an\n    anti-movement, with all the weaknesses which appertain\n    to everything that is primarily anti-anything. Unable to\n    conceive the task of organizing the existing forces\n    so they may achieve their greatest efficiency, pacifists\n    have had little recourse save to decry evil emotions and\n    evil-minded men as the causes of war.... And no league to\n    enforce peace will fare prosperously save as it is the\n    natural accompaniment of a constructive adjustment of the\n    concrete interests which are already at work.... The passage\n    of force under law occurs only when all the cards are on the\n    table, when the objective facts which bring conflicts in\n    their train are acknowledged, and when intelligence is used\n    to devise mechanisms which will afford to the forces at work\n    all the satisfaction that conditions permit.\n\nDewey's primary purpose has always been the development of a type\nof ethical thinking and a method of school training suited to the\ndemocratic and industrial society of modern America. Speaking of the\nmental revolution that has been effected by the advance of science he\nsays:\n\n    Whether the consequent revolution in moral philosophy be\n    termed pragmatism or be given the happier title of the\n    applied and experimental habit of mind is of little account.\n    What is of moment is that intelligence has descended from\n    its lonely isolation at the remote edge of things, whence\n    it operated as unmoved mover and ultimate good, to take its\n    seat in the moving affairs of men. Theory may therefore\n    become responsible to the practices that have generated\n    it; the good be connected with nature, but with nature\n    naturally, not metaphysically conceived, and social life be\n    cherished in behalf of its own immediate possibilities,\n    not on the ground of its remote connections with a cosmic\n    reason and absolute end.--\"Influence of Darwin\", p. 55.\n\nIn the preface to the \"Influence of Darwin\" he quotes a German\ndefinition of pragmatism:[9]\n\n    Epistemologically, nominalism; psychologically,\n    voluntarism; cosmologically, energism; metaphysically,\n    agnosticism; ethically, meliorism on the basis of the\n    Bentham-Mill-utilitarianism.\n\nDewey, who dislikes to wear even one tag--and that a nice new clean\none--naturally resents having these five old ones tied to him, so he\nsays:\n\n    It may be that pragmatism will turn out to be all of this\n    formidable array, but even should it the one who thus\n    defines it has hardly come within earshot of it. For\n    whatever else pragmatism is or is not, the pragmatic spirit\n    is primarily a revolt against that habit of mind which\n    disposes of anything whatever--even so humble an affair as\n    a new method in philosophy--by tucking it away, after this\n    fashion, in the pigeon-holes of a filing cabinet....\n\n    It is better to view pragmatism quite vaguely as part and\n    parcel of a general movement of intellectual reconstruction.\n    For otherwise we seem to have no recourse save to define\n    pragmatism--as does our German author--in terms of the\n    very past systems against which it is a reaction; or, in\n    escaping that alternative, to regard it as a fixed rival\n    system making like claim to completeness and finality. And\n    if, as I believe, one of the marked traits of the pragmatic\n    movement is just the surrender of every such claim, how have\n    we furthered our understanding of pragmatism?\n\nIn one of his Socratic dialogues[10] Dewey brings in at the close\nChesterton's flip refutation of pragmatism:\n\n    _Pupil._ What you say calls to mind something of\n    Chesterton's that I read recently: \"I agree with the\n    pragmatists that apparent objective truth is not the whole\n    matter; that there is an authoritative need to believe the\n    things that are necessary to the human mind. But I say that\n    one of those necessities precisely is a belief in objective\n    truth. Pragmatism is a matter of human needs and one of\n    the first of human needs is to be something more than a\n    pragmatist.\"\n\n    You would say, if I understand you aright, that to fall back\n    upon the necessity of the \"human mind\" to believe in certain\n    absolute truths, is to evade a proper demand for testing the\n    human mind and all its works.\n\n    _Teacher._ My son, I am glad to leave the last word with\n    you. This _enfant terrible_ of intellectualism has revealed\n    that the chief objection of absolutists to the pragmatic\n    doctrine of the personal (or \"subjective\") factor in\n    belief is that the pragmatist has spilled the personal milk\n    in the absolutist's coconut.\n\n    It is curious to see how many different classes are now\n    holding up Germany as a horrible example of the dangers\n    of the theories they oppose. The Anglican Catholics blame\n    Luther for the war and look upon the prospective triumph\n    of the Allies as the final destruction of Protestantism\n    in the world. The orthodox believe that Germany got into\n    trouble through higher criticism. The classicists say\n    that she is suffering from an overdose of science. The\n    Absolute Idealists ascribe the bad conduct of Germany to her\n    desertion of Kant, Hegel, and Fichte to follow after the new\n    gods--or no gods--of Haeckel and Nietzsche. But Dewey, on\n    the contrary, holds Kant, Hegel, and Fichte responsible for\n    it all. \"That philosophical absolutism may be practically\n    as dangerous as matter-of-fact political absolutism history\n    testifies.\" This is no new notion cooked up for the\n    occasion, like so many of them, but one which Dewey plainly\n    stated six years before the outbreak of the war in his\n    address on Ethics at Columbia University. In speaking of\n    Kant's denudation of Pure Reason of all concrete attributes\n    he said:\n\n    Reason became a mere voice, which having nothing particular\n    to say, said Law, Duty, in general, leaving to the\n    existing social order of the Prussia of Frederick the Great\n    the congenial task of declaring just what was obligatory\n    in the concrete. The marriage of freedom and authority was\n    thus celebrated with the understanding that sentimental\n    primacy went to the former and practical control to the\n    latter.--\"Influence of Darwin\", p. 65.\n\nAfter the war began he expanded this idea in his McNair lectures at\nthe University of North Carolina.[11] Because Germany has developed\ncontinuously without any decided break with its past like the French\nRevolution or the transplanting of Europeans to America, German\nthinkers have come to declare all progress as the unfolding of national\nlife and to declare impossible the construction of constitutions such\nas we have in the New World. Dewey traces the intellectual process by\nwhich the German people have reached the very startling opinions they\nnow hold as to their mission in the world as follows:\n\n    The premises of the historic syllogism are plain. First,\n    the German Luther who saved for mankind the principle of\n    spiritual freedom against Latin externalism; then Kant\n    and Fichte, who wrought out the principle into a final\n    philosophy of science, morals and the State; as conclusion,\n    the German nation organized in order to win the world to a\n    recognition of the principle, and thereby to establish the\n    rule of freedom and science in humanity as a whole.... In\n    the grosser sense of the words, Germany has not held that\n    might makes right. But it has been instructed by a long\n    line of philosophers that it is the business of ideal right\n    to gather might to itself in order that it may cease to be\n    merely ideal. The State represents exactly this incarnation\n    of ideal law and right in effective might.\n\nA hundred years ago Fichte in his \"Addresses to the German Nation\"\nroused his countrymen to make a stand against Napoleon and fulfill\ntheir mission to \"elevate the German name to that of the most glorious\nof all peoples, making this Nation the regenerator and restorer of the\nworld.\" \"There is no middle ground: If you sink, so sinks humanity\nentire with you, without hope of future restoration.\"\n\nThis sounds very much like what we hear in Germany to-day, although the\npresent German Empire differs markedly in some respects from the ideal\nState that Fichte foresaw. It is also the same sort of language as is\nbeing used in England and the other allied countries. In fact every\nnation has the same sense of its historic divine mission and unique\nimportance to the world's civilization. Certainly we cannot deny the\nexistence of that feeling among Americans. To quote again from Fichte:\n\"While cosmopolitanism is the dominant will that the purpose of the\nexistence of humanity be actually realized in humanity, patriotism\nis the will that this end be first realized in the particular nation to\nwhich we ourselves belong, and that this achievement thence spread over\nthe entire race.\"\n\nThis might seem a harmless and indeed inspiring conception of\npatriotism, but when the Fichtean idea of a particular State as the\nincarnation of the divine will is combined with the Hegelian idea of\nprogress through conflict, it makes a fatal mixture, as Dewey shows:\n\n    Philosophical justification of war follows inevitably from\n    a philosophy of history composed in nationalistic terms.\n    History is the movement, the march of God on earth through\n    time. Only one nation at a time can be the latest and hence\n    the fullest realization of God. The movement of God in\n    history is thus particularly manifest in those changes by\n    which unique place passes from one nation to another. War\n    is the signally visible occurrence of such a flight of the\n    divine spirit in its onward movement.\n\nThis fallacious line of argument is, in Dewey's opinion, the logical\noutcome of the _a priori_ and absolutist metaphysics which has\nprevailed in Europe during the last century, and for which he would\nsubstitute the method of intelligent experimentation. He says, \"The\npresent situation presents the spectacle of the breakdown of the\nwhole philosophy of Nationalism, political, racial and cultural,\"\nand he urges as a substitute the promotion of \"the efficacy of human\nintercourse irrespective of class, racial, geographical and national\nlimits.\" When we see the appalling results to which the doctrine of\nNationalism has led, we may indeed regard it with Dewey as a logical\nbreakdown, but I fear that actually it has become more powerful,\npervading, and firmly fixed than ever through the psychological and\neconomic experiences of the war.[12]\n\nDoctor F. C. S. Schiller of Oxford calls Dewey's \"German Philosophy and\nPolitics\" \"an entirely admirable book; clear, calm, cogent, and popular\nwithout being shallow\" and he further says:\n\n    Professor Dewey was assuredly the ideal person to handle\n    the subject. For though he had made a deep and sympathetic\n    study of German philosophy, he had in the end turned\n    away from it to become a leader in the movement which is\n    most antithetical to the traditionally German type of\n    philosophizing. It must not indeed be alleged that the\n    Anglo-Saxon world has a monopoly of the pragmatic habit\n    of mind; for all men have to act and pragmatism is only\n    the theoretic apprehension of the attitude which imposes\n    itself on every agent everywhere. But it is probably right\n    to regard this habit of mind as characteristically congenial\n    to Anglo-Saxon life, and it was a perception of this that so\n    infuriated our germanized professors who prided themselves\n    on their superiority to the vulgar practicality of the\n    national bent.[13]\n\nA stranger who drops into one of Professor Dewey's classes is at first\napt to be puzzled to account for the extent of his influence and the\ndevotion of his disciples. There is nothing in his manner of delivery\nto indicate that he is saying anything of importance, and it takes some\ntime to realize that he is. He talks along in a casual sort of way with\na low and uneventful voice and his eyes mostly directed toward the\nbare desk or out of the window. Occasionally he wakes up to the fact\nthat the students in the back seats are having difficulty in hearing\nhim, and then he comes down with explosive stress on the next word,\na preposition as like as not. His lectures are punctuated by pauses\nbut not in a way to facilitate their comprehension. Sometimes in the\nmidst of a sentence, perhaps between an adjective and its noun, his\ntrain of thought will be shunted off on to another line, and the\nclass has to sit patiently at the junction station until it comes\nback, as it always does eventually. The difficulty of utterance in his\nlectures, like the tortuous style of his technical writings, results\nfrom overconscientiousness. When he misses the right word he does not\npick any one at hand and go on but stops talking until he finds the\none he wants, and he is so anxious to avoid a misunderstanding that he\nsometimes fails to insure an understanding. Talking has never become\na reflex action with Dewey. He has to think before he speaks. Few\nprofessors and almost no instructors are bothered that way.\n\nIn profile Professor Dewey looks something like Robert Louis Stevenson,\nthe same long lean face and neck and nose. From the front one would\ntake him to be a Kentucky colonel disguised in spectacles. His long\nstraight black hair, parted in the middle, is now getting gray, but his\ndrooping mustaches, being twenty years younger, are still dark. His\neyes are black and keen, and one can catch a twinkle in them if the\nlids do not drop too quick. His neck-tie is usually awry, and several\nthousands of orderly schoolma'ams have felt their hands itch to jerk it\nstraight. His drawling careless tone and hesitant manner quite disguise\nthe boldness of his thought and the logical order of its wording.\nQuestions from the class never disconcert him, however inopportune, and\nthe more he is heckled the better he talks.\n\nOne of his former students at Columbia, Randolph S. Bourne, gives this\npen sketch of Professor Dewey:[14]\n\n    Nothing is more symbolic of Professor Dewey's democratic\n    attitude towards life than the disintegrated array of his\n    published writings. Where the neatly uniform works of\n    William James are to be found in every public library, you\n    must hunt long and far for the best things of the man who,\n    since the other's death, is the most significant thinker\n    in America. Pamphlets and reports of obscure educational\n    societies; school journals, university monographs, and\n    philosophical journals, limited to the pedant few; these\n    are the burial-places of much of this intensely alive,\n    futuristic philosophy.... No man, I think, with such\n    universally important things to say on almost every social\n    and intellectual activity of the day, was ever published in\n    forms more ingeniously contrived to thwart the interest of\n    the prospective public.\n\n    Professor Dewey's thought is inaccessible because he has\n    always carried his simplicity of manner, his dread of show\n    or self-advertisement, almost to the point of extravagance.\n    In all his psychology there is no place for the psychology\n    of prestige. His democracy seems almost to take that extreme\n    form of refusing to bring one's self or one's ideas to\n    the attention of others. On the college campus or in the\n    lecture-room he seems positively to efface himself. The\n    uncertainty of his silver-gray hair and drooping mustache,\n    of his voice, of his clothes, suggests that he has almost\n    studied the technique of protective coloration. It will do\n    you no good to hear him lecture. His sentences, flowing and\n    exact and lucid when read, you will find strung in long\n    festoons of obscurity between pauses for the awaited right\n    word. The whole business of impressing yourself on other\n    people, of getting yourself over to the people who want\n    to and ought to have you, has simply never come into his\n    ultra-democratic mind.\n\n    A prophet dressed in the clothes of a professor of logic, he\n    seems almost to feel shame that he has seen the implications\n    of democracy more clearly than anybody else in the great\n    would-be democratic society about him, and so been forced\n    into the unwelcome task of teaching it.\n\nKnowing that every biographer is expected to show that the subject of\nhis sketch got his peculiar talents by honest inheritance, I wrote to\nProfessor Dewey to inquire what there was in his genealogy to account\nfor his becoming a philosopher. His ancestry is discouraging to those\nwho would find an explanation for all things in heredity.\n\n    My ancestry, particularly on my father's side, is free from\n    all blemish. All my forefathers earned an honest living as\n    farmers, wheelwrights, coopers. I was absolutely the first\n    one in seven generations to fall from grace. In the last\n    few years atavism has set in and I have raised enough\n    vegetables and fruit really to pay for my own keep.\n\nJohn Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont, October 20, 1859, the\nson of Archibald S. and Lucina A. (Rich) Dewey. His elder brother,\nDavis Rich Dewey, is professor of economics and statistics in the\nMassachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of the Special\nReport on Employees and Wages in the 12th Census as well as of many\nother works on finance and industry.\n\nJohn Dewey went to the State University in his native town and received\nhis A. B. degree at twenty. Being then uncertain whether his liking\nfor philosophical studies was sufficient to be taken as a call to that\ncalling he applied to the one man in America most competent and willing\nto decide such a question, W. T. Harris, afterward United States\nCommissioner for Education, but then superintendent of schools in St.\nLouis. Think of the courage and enterprise of a man who while filling\nthis busy position and when the war was barely over started a _Journal\nof Speculative Philosophy_ and founded a Philosophical Society and\nproduced a series of translations of Hegel, Fichte, and other German\nmetaphysicians. It would be hard to estimate the influence of Doctor\nHarris in raising the standards of American schools and in arousing\nan interest in intellectual problems. When young Dewey sent him a brief\narticle with a request for personal advice he returned so encouraging a\nreply that Dewey decided to devote himself to philosophy. So, after a\nyear spent at home reading under the direction of Professor Torrey of\nthe University of Vermont, one of the old type of scholarly gentleman,\nDewey went to Johns Hopkins University, the first American university\nto make graduate and research work its main object. Here he studied\nunder George S. Morris and followed him to the University of Michigan\nas Instructor in Philosophy after receiving his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins\nin 1884. Two years later he married Alice Chipman of Fenton, Michigan,\nwho has been ever since an effective collaborator in his educational\nand social work. In 1888 he went to the University of Minnesota as\nProfessor of Philosophy but was called back to Michigan at the end of\none year.\n\nWhen President Harper went through the country picking up brilliant\nand promising young men for the new University of Chicago, Dewey was\nhis choice for the chair of philosopher. During the ten years Dewey\nspent on the Midway Plaisance he had the opportunity to try out the\nradical ideas of education of which I have spoken. In 1904 Dewey was\ncalled to Columbia University, where he has since remained. Besides his\nclasswork he has always been active though rarely conspicuous in many\neducational and social movements. One of the latest of these is the\nformation of the Association of University Professors, of which he was\nthe first president.\n\nThe title of his latest volume, \"Democracy and Education\", gives\nthe keynote of his philosophy and the aim of his life. In a recent\narticle[15] he puts it in these words:\n\n    I am one of those who think that the only test and\n    justification of any form of political and economic society\n    is its contribution to art and science--to what may roundly\n    be called culture. That America has not yet so justified\n    itself is too obvious for even lament.. .. Since we can\n    neither beg nor borrow a culture without betraying both it\n    and ourselves, nothing remains save to produce one.. ..\n    Our culture must be consonant with realistic science and\n    with machine industry, instead of a refuge from them....\n    It is for education to bring the light of science and the\n    power of work to the aid of every soul that it may discover\n    its quality. For in a spiritually democratic society\n    every individual would realize distinction. Culture would\n    then be for the first time in human history an individual\n    achievement and not a class possession.\n\n\n\nHOW TO READ DEWEY\n\n\nAs has been said previously, Dewey's writings are scattered far and\nwide in various periodicals and educational series. He has never been\nable to say \"no\" to any struggling journal of socialism or school\nreform that begged him for an article although it meant no pay, little\ninfluence, and speedy oblivion for his contribution. The graduate\nstudent of twenty-five years hence who undertakes to get a Ph.D. by\nmaking a complete collection of Dewey's works will earn his degree. The\nmain principles of Dewey's philosophy, imparted viva voce to successive\ngenerations of students, have never been printed in a complete and\nsystematic form, though his ideas have interfused the schools of the\ncountry through the teachers he has trained and the educational books\nhe has written.\n\nThe nearest thing to a short cut to Dewey's philosophy that he has\ngiven us is \"How We Think\" (Heath, 1910), and with this the reader\nmay well begin. \"Essays in Experimental Logic\" (University of Chicago\nPress, 1916) requires for its complete comprehension some knowledge\nof current controversies in philosophy. But the review of James's\n\"Pragmatism\", contained in the chapter \"What Pragmatism Means\", will be\nof interest to any reader seeking an answer to that question.\n\nHis epoch-making work, \"The School and Society\" (University of Chicago\nPress, first edition 1899, second edition 1915), has by no means lost\nits value although much that was prophecy then is now fulfilled. Most\nreaders will be more interested in the fulfillments as described in\n\"Schools of Tomorrow\" (Dutton, 1915). This contains, besides the\ndescription of the new schools by his daughter, Evelyn Dewey, several\nchapters by Professor Dewey on the theory and aims of the educational\nmovement they represent. A more complete and systematic exposition\nof the principles of education under modern conditions is to be\nfound in his most recent book, \"Democracy and Education\" (Macmillan,\n1916). Professor Moore of Chicago who reviews this volume in the\n_International Journal of Ethics_ (1916, p. 547) says of it: \"The\nthinking world has long since learned to expect from Professor Dewey\nmatters of prime importance. Of the general significance of this,\nvolume it is perhaps enough to say that, in the reviewer's opinion, it\nis the most important of Professor Dewey's productions thus far. In\ndefiance of possible imputations of chauvinism, the reviewer will also\nsay that it would be difficult to overstate its import and value for\nall students of education, philosophy, and society.\"\n\nThe volume clumsily entitled \"The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy\nand Other Essays in Contemporary Thought\" (Holt, 1910) contains,\nbesides the anniversary address which gives it its title, ten essays\nchiefly concerned with the exposition and defense of Dewey's form of\npragmatism, \"immediate empiricism.\" \"German Philosophy and Politics\"\n(Holt, 1915) is discussed in the preceding pages. Dewey's \"Psychology\"\n(Harper, 1886) has largely lost its interest through the rapid advance\nof the science and the altered viewpoint of the author. The \"Ethics\"\nwhich he wrote in collaboration with Professor Tufts I have previously\nmentioned (Holt, 1908).\n\nThe practical applications of Dewey's philosophy to current educational\nand public questions may best be found in the brief and popular\narticles that he contributed frequently to _The New Republic_\n(New York) in 1915-1916. His professional contributions to logical\ntheory and epistemology appear mostly in the fortnightly organ of\nthe philosophical department of Columbia University, the _Journal of\nPhilosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods_.\n\nA volume of eight essays on the pragmatic attitude was published in\nJanuary 1917 by Henry Holt under the title of \"Creative Intelligence.\"\nThe leading essay on \"The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy\" is by John\nDewey.\n\nBesides the articles to which reference has been made in the footnotes\nof the preceding pages the following writings of Dewey should be\nmentioned: \"Science as Subject-matter and as Method\", the vice\npresidential address of the section on education of the Boston meeting\nof the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1909, (in\n_Science_, January 28, 1910); \"The Problem of Truth\", George Leib\nHarrison lectures before the University of Pennsylvania, 1911 (in _Old\nPenn Weekly Review_), \"Maeterlinck\" (_Hibbert Journal_, vol. 9, p.\n765) and \"Is Nature Good?\" (_Hibbert Journal_, vol. 7, p. 827); \"The\nExistence of the World as a Problem\" (_Philosophical Review_, vol.\n24, p. 357); \"Darwin's Influence upon Philosophy\" (_Popular Science\nMonthly_, vol. 75, p. 90); Presidential address to the American\nAssociation of University Professors (_Science_, January 29, 1915);\n\"Professional Spirit Among Teachers\" (_American Teacher_, New York,\nOctober, 1913); _The International Journal of Ethics_ published \"Force\nand Coercion\" (vol. 26, p. 359); \"Progress\" (vol. 26, p. 311); \"Nature\nand Reason in Law\" (vol. 25, p. 25); \"History for the Educator\" and\nother articles appeared in _Progressive Journal of Education_, Chicago,\n1909; \"Voluntarism in the Roycean Philosophy\" in the _Philosophical\nReview_, May, 1916; \"Logical Foundations of The Scientific Treatment of\nMorality\" in the Decennial Publications of the University of Chicago.\n\nA criticism of Bergson by Dewey under the title of \"Perception and\nOrganic Action\" may be found in the _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology\nand Scientific Methods_, November 21, 1912. Professor Wilhelm Ostwald,\nwho, as I said in my chapter on him, has devoted much attention to\neducational reforms, includes a sketch of Dewey by Franz Ludwig in\nthe series on _Moderne Schulreforme in Das Monistische Jahrhundert_\nof May 31, 191-5. For a criticism of Dewey's social philosophy see\nthe articles by Lester Lee Bernhard of the University of Chicago in\n_American Journal of Sociology_.\n\nNo biography of Dewey has yet been written and none ever will be if he\ncan prevent it. H. W. Schneider of Columbia University has prepared a\ncomplete bibliography of Dewey's writings, not yet published.\n\n\n[1] The University of Chicago Press published a second edition of\n\"School and Society\", revised and enlarged, in 1915.\n\n[2] \"Schools of To-morrow\", by John Dewey and Evelyn Dewey (Dutton),\n1915.\n\n[3] Doctor Georg Kerschensteiner who founded the famous \"workshop\nschools\" of Munich also acknowledges his indebtedness to Dewey.\n\n[4] No. I of Series 2 of Philosophical Papers of the University of\nMichigan, 1887.\n\n[5] \"Schools of To-morrow\", p. 301.\n\n[6] See the admirable article in _Atlantic Monthly_ of November, 1908,\nby President Pritchett of the Carnegie Foundation, contrasting Harvard\nand West Point, \"The College of Freedom and the College of Discipline.\"\n\n[7] _International Journal of Ethics_, vol. 26, p. 359-367.\n\n[8] _The New Republic_, January 22, 1916.\n\n[9] To get the full force of this portentous definition one\nmust read it in the original: _Gewiss ist der Pragmatismus\nerkenntniss-theoretisch Nominalismus, psychologisch Voluntarismus,\nnaturphilosophisch Energismus, metaphysisch Agnosticismus, ethisch\nMeliorismus auf Grundlage des Bentham-Millschen Utilitarismus._\n\n[10] \"A Catechism Concerning Truth\" in \"The Influence of Darwin on\nPhilosophy and Other Essays.\"\n\n[11] Published as \"German Philosophy and Politics\" (Holt), 1915.\n\n[12] \"German Philosophy and Politics\" is sympathetically reviewed by\nProfessor Santayana in the _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and\nScientific Methods_ for November 25, 1915. The same Journal reprints\n(vol. XII, p. 584) a criticism appearing in _The New Republic_ (vol.\nIV, p. 234) by Professor Hocking of Harvard, who thinks that the\nfault of the Germans is being too pragmatic. Professor Dewey's reply\nis published with it. See also Dewey's admirable analysis of the\nnational psychology of Germany, France, and England in his article \"On\nUnderstanding the Mind of Germany\", _Atlantic_, vol. 117, p. 251.\n\n[13] _Mind_, April, 1916.\n\n[14] _The New Republic_, March 13, 1915.\n\n[15] _The New Republic_, July 1, 1916.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\n\nRUDOLF EUCKEN\n\nAPOSTLE OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE\n\n\n    To the history of and criticism of these conceptions and\n    their terminology Professor Eucken has brought thorough and\n    careful reading, acute and candid criticism, and a clear\n    and solid style. While he is at home among the systems of\n    the past, he seems equally familiar with the controversies\n    of the present. Above all, he has studied brevity, and has\n    mastered the art of expressing in a few words the results of\n    patient research and critical discrimination.\n\n    The writer of this notice was constrained to recommend the\n    work for translation to his friend and former pupil by his\n    estimate of the intrinsic value of the treatise and the\n    desire that it might be brought within reach of English\n    readers as eminently suited to the times. He can say with\n    assured confidence that there are few books within his\n    knowledge which are better fitted to aid the student who\n    wishes to acquaint himself with the course of superlative\n    and scientific thinking and to form an intelligent estimate\n    of most of the current theories.[1]\n\nThese were the words with which Professor Eucken was introduced to\nthe American public in 1880 by one who was a good judge of men and\nbooks, the primary qualification of a college president. Thirty-two\nyears later Professor Eucken came to America; this time in person, but\nunder the auspices of Harvard and the University of New York, instead\nof Yale. This time he reached a larger audience; partly owing to his\ngreater fame, partly to a change in the popular attitude toward the\nviews he presents. In 1908, when Eucken received the Nobel prize for\nthe greatest work of idealistic literature, there was no book of his\naccessible to the English reader, for the translation instigated by\nPresident Porter was out of print. Since then all his important works\nhave been brought out in England and America; and the periodical\nindexes record a growing interest in his thought, corresponding to that\nwhich is manifested in Germany.\n\nThe Nobel prizes have failed to carry out the intention of their\nfounder, which was to place $100,000 or so immediately into the hands\nof a man who had made a signal contribution to science, literature,\nor peace. Instead of this, the Nobel committees absorb a liberal moiety\nof the income of the fund in local \"administrative expenses\" and\nusually give the residue, now amounting to some $37,000, to men whose\nreputations have long been established; for example, in literature,\nSully-Prudhomme, Mommsen, Bj\u00f6rnson, Mistral, Kipling, and Heyse. But\nin so interpreting their mandate the Nobel committees have fulfilled\nanother useful function, possibly as much needed as that conceived by\nAlfred Nobel. If they have not discovered original genius, they have at\nleast pointed it out to the world at large. The men thus distinguished\nas having contributed to human progress have extended their influence\nover their contemporaries, as well as received a due appreciation of\ntheir efforts. The Nobel prize does not add to the stature of a man,\nbut it does elevate him to a pulpit.\n\nIn the case of Eucken the value of this is evident. He did not need the\nassistance of the Nobel fund in order to prosecute his researches, for\nthe laboratory expenses of a metaphysician are but slight, and Jena is\nas cheap a place to live as can nowadays be found in civilized lands.\nThe award of the prize did not, of course, add to his reputation in\nphilosophical circles, but Eucken does not believe that the influence\nof a philosopher should be confined to philosophical circles. He\nrepudiates entirely the aloof, impartial, disinterested spectator\nattitude which philosophers in general have thought it necessary to\npretend to assume. The question is, in short, what kind of a scientist\nthe philosopher should imitate: the chemist who transforms the world\nin which he lives, or the meteorologist who merely records the\natmospheric currents without attempting to guide them? Eucken is not\nonly a teacher; he is a preacher. He has a message which he believes\nof vital importance to his contemporaries, so it cannot be a matter of\nindifference to him that he is, in his later years, gaining a wider\naudience, that his works are the most widely current philosophical\nwritings of the present day in Germany,[2] and are being extensively\ntranslated into other languages.\n\nThis growing popularity is all the more noteworthy since it is not\nattained by any novelty of form, or even brilliancy of style. Eucken\nnever tries to stimulate thought by shocking the reader with\naudacious paradoxes, as did Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, as do Shaw and\nChesterton. He has none of the freshness of phraseology and wealth\nof novel illustrations which attract to James and Bergson their wide\ncircle of admirers. He does not, like Ostwald and Haeckel, make use of\nthe direct and concrete mode of expression which has been introduced\ninto literature by modern science. Eucken always writes in a serious\nand methodical style, elaborating his line of thought as he goes along\nwith exactness and just proportion; expressing himself in general and\nabstract terms, rarely making use of imagery or concrete illustrations,\nnever introducing personalities. A sweeter-tempered philosopher never\nlived. He speaks no evil, even of the dead. He indulges in no polemics\nwith his contemporaries. In his historical works he passes through all\nfields of thought, gleaning good grain wherever he goes, and saying as\nlittle as possible about the tares and brambles that he finds with it.\n\nVery curiously, it has been Eucken's lot to have been closely\nassociated, on the faculties of small universities, with the two men\nwhose views are most antagonistic to his: at Basel with Nietzsche and\nat Jena with Haeckel, and he has been on the best of terms with both\nof them. I was particularly interested in what Professor Eucken told\nme of Nietzsche, whose personality and philosophy were in such violent\ncontradiction. This advocate of ruthless brutality, this scorner of\nsympathy and compassion, was in reality a most tender-hearted man, but\ntoo shy and sensitive to be popular; and when his feelings were hurt he\nwrote down in a passion what he felt at the moment.\n\nAt the University of Basel Professor Eucken often served with Nietzsche\non the examining committee of candidates for the doctorate in classical\nphilology. On such occasions, if the student appeared to be getting\nthe worst of it in the verbal contest, Nietzsche would be observed to\nbecome more and more nervous until, finally, he could contain himself\nno longer and would break in with leading questions: \"I suppose you\nmean so-and-so?\" or \"Do you not believe this or that?\" until he got\nthe student to say just about what he should have said in the first\nplace. Professor Eucken does not regard the widespread influence\nof Nietzsche as altogether evil, believing he should not be held\nresponsible for all the vagaries and extravagances of his devotees. The\nreason of Nietzsche's popularity, according to Eucken, is his strong\nindividualism; for the Germans, in spite of governmental control\nand the Social Democracy, are pronounced individualists in character.\nThe German will insist upon having his own house, his own seat, his\nown opinion. This sounded strange to the American, accustomed to have\nGermany referred to as the most regimented of nations.\n\nBut modern Germany is a land of incongruities and contradictions, a\nwild confusion of swirling cross-currents. The increase of population,\nthe checking of emigration, the amazing prosperity, the extension of\ncommerce, the demand for territorial expansion, would indicate a sound\nphysical constitution and a healthful growth. The immense sale of\nserious works on religion and philosophy shows a revival of interest\nin spiritual affairs. Yet, if we were to judge of the character of\nthe people by the most conspicuous of its achievements in art and\nliterature, we should say that modern Germany is hopelessly decadent\nand corrupt. In drama and fiction Gallic license is allied with Gothic\ncoarseness. In pictorial art hideousness and viciousness are depicted\nby means of strange and violent methods. Germany of to-day, as seen\nby the tourist, is a land of spotted painting, spotted literature,\nand spotted faces.[3] In the little university town of Jena the\nincongruities of modern Germany are curiously conspicuous. In this\nhistoric stronghold of Protestantism, this leader in the Enlightenment,\nthe home of Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Fichte, the Humboldts, Hegel,\nSchelling, and Wieland, the barbarous customs of the past have the\nstrongest hold. A student is likely to miss his seven o'clock Wednesday\nlecture on the spiritual life because he sat up till two o'clock\ndrinking compulsory beer with his corps brothers in the middle of the\nmarketplace. And he may cut out his eight o'clock Saturday lecture\nbecause he has an imperative engagement to cut off the nose or the ear\nof a fellow student at the Mensurort of D\u00f6llnitz.\n\nAmong the nobler manifestations of the spirit of new Germany the\ntourist is likely to take most interest in the architecture. Here,\nindeed, he will find much that is displeasing and eccentric, but that\nin itself is encouraging, for it shows that we are in the presence\nof a living art which is not content to keep to the safe and beaten\npaths, but would strike out new ways for itself. In city and country\nunexpected forms and colors delight the eye on villa, monument, and\npublic building; new and ingenious solutions of problems as old as\nman. The modern German architect is not the imitator, but the rival,\nof the master builders of the past. He knows how to harmonize the\nold with the new, utilizing the old to give him inspiration, but\nnot permitting it to hamper him. A striking example of this is the\nnew university buildings of Jena, erected on the three hundred and\nfiftieth anniversary of the university in 1908. The whole group cost\nonly three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, not so much as\nsome single buildings in our leading universities, yet I know of none\nmore satisfactory from both the utilitarian and the esthetic point of\nview. Here the problem of harmonization was particularly difficult; not\nonly must the new buildings fit into the picture of old Jena, but a\ntower of the ancient ducal castle was actually to be incorporated. Yet\nthe architect, Theodor Fischer, has made no sacrifices to the spirit\nof antiquity. At Oxford the newer buildings either clash violently\nwith their elders or imitate them so closely as to be almost equally\ninconvenient and uncomfortable. The Jena buildings look as though they\nmight well have been built by Kurf\u00fcrst Johann Friedrich der Grossm\u00fctige\nin 1558, but are up to date, commodious, hygienic, well ventilated,\nsteam heated, equipped with electric lights and clocks, and electric\nvacuum cleaners.\n\nThere are no superfluous statues stuck around in niches and on\npedestals. The adornment, plastic and polychromatic, is strictly\nstructural. It is put where it belongs. With the possible exception of\na Rodin bust of Minerva in the vestibule, I did not see any \"objects\nof art\" that I could have carried off without tearing down the\nbuilding. On the stone of the north fa\u00e7ade are roughly chiseled the\nEphesian Diana in the gable, and, beneath, four Egyptian-like figures\nrepresenting the four faculties. That of _Philosophie_, with solemn and\ninscrutable face, is very appropriately nearest to the lecture room of\nProfessor Eucken. As we enter we see opposite the portal to the _Aula_,\nthe university hall of state, on either side of which are gigantic\npaintings emblematic of the transmission of culture, a grown man on one\nside holding out his torch to a young man, that he may light his torch\nby it. The most important picture at the Jena University is the _Auszug\ndeutscher Studenten im Jahre 1815_ by Hodler, who used as a model for\nthe middle figure the youngest son of Professor Eucken.\n\nAuditorium Number 1, the largest classroom of the new building, is\nassigned to Eucken, and we find it already about half filled, although\nit is not yet seven o'clock in the morning. Some seventy students\nI count, and among them about a dozen women, not segregated, but\nscattered here and there, for Jena is coeducational now, and masculine\nresentment at the intrusion of women has quite died out. The students\nmay seat themselves wherever they choose, affixing a card with name\nand hour if they want to hold a particular place. These cards and even\nthe desks are scrawled with automatic writing and sketches by the\ninattentive hands of students. The seats, long benches with a fixed\ndesk and book rack in front, are better than those found in English\nuniversities, but not so good as the American individual seats. There\nare plenty of windows along one side of the room, and the walls--white\nabove, light green below--diffuse the rays agreeably. The floor slants\ndown to a plain pine desk and a small blackboard. On the wall is a\nmosaic portrait of the late Professor Abb\u00e9, the real patron of the\nUniversity, for a prosperous optician is of much more use to a modern\nuniversity than a needy Gross-Herzog.\n\nPromptly on the hour a vigorous shuffling and stamping of feet\nannounces the arrival of the professor, who begins with \"_Mein'\nHerren und Damen_\" as his first foot steps upon the platform. A German\nprofessor always gives good measure, a full hourful, pressed down,\nshaken together, and running over; no period of preliminary meditation\non what he shall say and of casual conversation at the end, as often in\nAmerica. Nor do the German professors find it necessary to adopt the\nlow voice, indifferent air and hesitating utterance regarded at Oxford\nand Harvard as the mark of the gentleman and the scholar. In fact I\nfind, in roaming about our universities, that so many of our younger\nmen have adopted this pitch and tempo, being often inaudible and never\nimpressive to the back seats, that I am tempted to lay down the law\nthat the younger the instructor the poorer the voice. When I complain\nof it they reply coldly: \"One can never shout and tell the truth.\"\nBut Eucken is evidently not afraid that being heard will impair his\nveracity. You might take him for a revivalist. You would not be wrong\nif you did. His voice rings out loud and clear. He is tremendously in\nearnest. Occasionally, when he thinks of it, he sits down. But not\nfor long. He springs to his feet and throws himself forward on the\nreading-desk in the effort to really reach his audience. He clasps his\nhands to his breast and then throws his arms out wide, as though to\nseize the _Geistesleben_ with which his heart is overflowing and spread\nit far over a materialistic and indifferent generation. Who can doubt\nthe reality of \"the spiritual life\" after he has seen Eucken? It shines\nin his face. We do not need to be told that Activism is his philosophy.\nIt shows in his movements. He lives his theories. Few philosophers do,\nluckily for most of them.\n\n\"Happiness\" is the subject of this lecture. The spiritual life is\nthe theme of it, as always. The spiritual life, he says, goes out\nfrom within and transforms the world, thus giving true happiness. We\nmust work with the world movement if we would partake of its divine\npurpose. And here he quotes Plotinus, the first religious philosopher,\nfor whom he has as high regard as have Maeterlinck and Bergson. We\nmust utilize the force of faith; must bring this Christian power\ninto modern life. True ability is moral ability. Labor is not merely\nactivity; it has a purpose; it is directed against opposition. By\nstrife and striving we must reach the reality of the spiritual life.\nThrough labor and love we attain our true selves. The fulfilling of\nduty is inner freedom. The unrest and stress of the present day are the\nsigns of a new spiritual birth. The function of philosophy is not\nto afford intellectual or esthetic gratification, but it is to deepen\nand enrich life. To the fine old German saying, \"A man is more than\nhis work\", Eucken added \"Mankind is more than his culture.\" It is a\n_Lebensanschauung_ rather than a _Weltanschauung_ that he teaches, for\nto him a theory of life is more important than a theory of the cosmos.\n\nThese are merely a few fragmentary thoughts that I gathered in that\nmemorable hour. Of no value in themselves, I give them merely to prove\nthat I got something out of the lecture, for I never understood spoken\nGerman until I heard Eucken. But even a deaf man would have found it\nprofitable to be there. A second lecture followed immediately, on\n\"Pessimism and Optimism\", delivered with the same vigor and listened\nto with the same interest. Professor Eucken was then sixty-seven\nyears old, and would have been Carnegied if he were in an American\nuniversity, instead of giving lectures from seven to nine. His hair and\nbeard are pure white, but set off handsomely his pink cheeks and his\nbright blue eyes still unspectacled.\n\nAnd when he leaves the lecture room he does not leave his work, but\ngoes to more of it at home. On one wall of his study is a photograph\nof Michael Angelo's \"Creation\", from the Sistine Chapel, and on the\nopposite a cast of a section of the Parthenon frieze. Between these is\nthe desk of the man who has brought together the highest aspirations\nof Greek and Christian culture; a table stacked high with papers and\nmanuscripts.\n\nHis correspondence is now voluminous, but he answers all letters\npromptly and carefully, writing his replies in the old-fashioned way,\nwith a pen. He receives all visitors and will talk of his philosophy to\na single auditor with the same unwearied enthusiasm as to an audience.\nEven those who are repelled by the severity of his literary style are\nattracted by the charm of his personality, and this accounts in large\npart for his devoted following in all parts of the world.\n\nAfter granting me an interview which took the heart out of his\nafternoon, Professor Eucken returned good for evil by inviting me to\ndinner in the evening, when I found that the lady on my right was\nfrom Nebraska and the one on my left from Switzerland, while around\nthe table I saw a young Boer from the Transvaal, a don from Oxford,\na professor from Tokyo, and representatives of I don't know how many\nother nationalities.\n\n[Illustration: Mit beste Gr\u00fcssen Ihr ... Rudolf Eucken]\n\nThe extension of the influence of Professor Eucken through this\nhearty hospitality is due largely to his wife. Frau Eucken has happily\nnot confined herself to the duties which the Kaiser prescribes as\nwoman's only sphere, _Kirche, Kueche und Kinder_.[4] She is not only wife,\nmother and housekeeper, but artist and musician as well. Her success in\nmanaging what might be called an international salon of philosophy is\nfacilitated by her ability to converse in many languages. On account\nof the generous hospitality extended to students and strangers by the\nEucken household a removal was made last year to a new villa in the\nsuburbs. Professor Eucken's wife and daughter came with him on his\nvisit to America.\n\nEucken's philosophy of life is dramatic. His life has been undramatic;\nthe even, ordered course of the typical German professor, made even\nmore uneventful by reason of his mastery of the gentle art of not\nmaking enemies. Born in Aurich, East Friesland, January 5, 1846, he\nstudied at G\u00f6ttingen under Lotze, and at Berlin under Trendelenburg;\ntaught for four years in a _gymnasium_; then for three years in the\nUniversity of Basel; in 1874 was called to the University of Jena,\nwhere he has ever since remained, in spite of calls to larger\ninstitutions. His inner life has been as uneventful as its external\naspects; a continuous, methodical, logical development of thought,\nwithout leaps or backslidings.\n\nFirst, in 1878, he laid the foundations in the study of the concepts\nof philosophy which attracted the attention of President Porter.\nSeven years later he was ready to outline his own guiding theory in a\nvolume bearing the characteristically Germanic title of \"A Prolegomena\nfor the Investigation of the Unity of the Spiritual Life in the\nConsciousness and Acts of Mankind.\" From this standpoint of the unique\nsignificance of the spiritual life he then reviewed the whole history\nof the evolution of philosophy from Plato to Nietzsche. His purpose\nin this work, known in English as \"The Problem of Human Life\", was,\nas he explains, \"to afford historical confirmation of the view that\nconceptions are determined by life, not life by conceptions\", and \"that\nhuman destinies are not decided by mere opinions and whims, either of\nindividuals or of masses of individuals, but rather that they are ruled\nby spiritual necessities with a spiritual aim and purport, and that\nfor man a new world dawns, transcending the merely natural domain--the\nworld, namely, of the spiritual life.\"\n\nThe sentences quoted are alone enough to show that Eucken's \"history\nof philosophy\" is a very different thing from what usually goes by\nthat name, that is the chronicling of the speculations of successive\ngenerations of metaphysicians, each one wiping clean the slate before\nhe began to write. Eucken sees an aim and purpose in philosophic\nthought. He does not regard it as a mere amusement or as an\nintellectual exercise, but rather as a method by which humanity may\ngrow into a higher sphere of existence. The vital need of the day,\nthen, is to awaken the present indifferent and busy generation to a\nrealization of the supreme importance of spiritual things and to the\nnecessity of bringing the Christian religion into vital connection with\nmodern thought.\n\nThis is the task to which Eucken devoted his energies when by the close\nof the nineteenth century he had fully matured his views, and the rapid\nsuccession of volumes which have since come from his pen are concerned\nwith the moral and intellectual difficulties which nowadays impede\nreligious progress.\n\nThe development of natural science and especially the theory of\nevolution have led to the identification of man with nature. Yet the\nvery fact that we have come to know that we belong to nature shows\nthat we are more than nature.\n\n    A transcendence of nature is already accomplished in the\n    process of thought. A consideration of all the facts leads\n    us to the result that a life consisting solely of nature and\n    intelligence involves an intolerable inconsistency; form\n    and content are sharply separated from each other; thought\n    is strong enough to disturb the sense of satisfaction\n    with nature, but is too weak to construct a new world in\n    opposition to it. Life is in a state of painful uncertainty\n    and man is a Prometheus bound in that he must experience all\n    the constraint and meaninglessness of the life of nature,\n    and must suffer therefrom an increasing pain without being\n    able to change this state in any way.[5]\n\nFrom time to time in the course of history, spiritual impulses arise\nwhich are fundamentally different from physical self-preservation.\n\"They force human activity into particular channels; they speak to\nus with a tone of command and require absolute obedience. Neither\nthe interests of individuals nor those of whole classes prevail\nagainst them; every consideration of utility vanishes before their\ninner necessity.\" Religious movements show life in a particular form;\nsomething emerges in it which, unconcerned with the weal and the woe of\nman, follows its own course and makes absolute demands. Man is not\naltogether the creature of his environment, nor are his moral standards\ndetermined by society. The individual is able in the light of his own\nconscience to approve and value something which all around him reject;\nand conversely to condemn and reject something which all around him\nesteem and respect. This opposition of individuals to the condition of\nthings in the social environment has been the main source of all inner\nprogress in matters of morality.\n\nThis line of thought leads Eucken to the conclusion that a new life\ndistinct from that of nature arises in our soul. The spiritual life is\nnot the product of a gradual development from the life of nature, but\nhas an independent origin and evolves new powers and standards. We must\nrecognize in the spiritual life a universal life which transcends man,\nis shared by him and raises him to itself. The philosophical treatment\nof history ought first of all to trace the liberation of life from the\nmere human; the inner elevation of our being to a more than human.\n\nIn discussing the question of how man attains the spiritual life,\nEucken steers carefully between the position of Buddhism, that each man\nmust work out his own salvation without any aid from above, and the\nextreme Calvinistic position, that man is purely passive and altogether\nundeserving. Or to quote his own words:\n\n    It is necessary to acknowledge that in all the spiritual\n    movement which appears in the domain of man, there is a\n    revelation of the spiritual world; as merely human power\n    cannot lead the whole to new heights, in all development of\n    the spiritual life the communication of the new world must\n    precede the activity of man. At the same time, where we are\n    concerned with a life that is independent, and of which the\n    activity is conscious and self-determined, the change cannot\n    possibly merely _happen_ to man; it must be taken up by his\n    own activity; it needs his own decision and acceptance.\n\n    Only through ceaseless activity can life remain at the\n    height to which it has attained.\n\nThis leads to the distinctive form of Eucken's philosophy of life,\nknown as Activism. This is like Pragmatism in its rejection of the\nmere intellectualistic view of life and in basing truth upon a\nmore spontaneous and essential activity. But Eucken's objection to\nPragmatism is stated in the following language:\n\n    Pragmatism, which has recently made so much headway among\n    English-speaking peoples and beyond them, is more inclined\n    to shape the world and life in accordance with human\n    conditions and needs than to invest spiritual activity with\n    an independence in relation to these, and apply its\n    standards to the testing and sifting of the whole content of\n    human life.\n\n    At its highest, religion has always been concerned with\n    winning a new world and a new humanity, not with the\n    achievement of something within the old world and for the\n    old humanity.\n\nIt will be seen that Eucken does not fall in with the tendency of the\ntimes to subordinate the individual to society. The spiritual life\nsprings up, not in the \"social consciousness\", but in the soul of the\nindividual, elevating his spiritual nature above all environment.\nBut such a person is guarded against the arrogance of a superman by\nrealizing that this superiority is not due to personal merit, but\nsolely to the presence of the spiritual world.\n\nThis, as Eucken recognizes, may be called a form of mysticism, but it\ndiffers decidedly from the older mysticism in some important respects.\nIt is not Quietism, but its opposite, Activism. Eucken does not regard\nthe individual as seeking a peaceful haven by absorption into the\ninfinite; on the contrary, the infinite enters the individual and\nrouses him to intensest and creative activity.\n\nHere Eucken shows a striking similarity to Bergson. The _Geistesleben_\nmight be regarded as a higher development or manifestation of the\n_\u00e9lan vital_. Both involve the conception of an upward impulse\nacting at individual points which thus become centers of spontaneous\nvital activity. It is curious that this view, so characteristically\nmodern and as novel as anything can be in the realm of metaphysical\nspeculation, should have simultaneously and independently been made\na fundamental doctrine by two philosophers so unlike in temperament\nand training, the French philosopher starting from the standpoint of\nmathematical physics and Spencerian evolution, and the German from\nacademic metaphysics and Christian theology. Such a coincidence, as\nwell as the reception which the teachings of Bergson and Eucken have\nreceived in many lands, show that their common principle is in harmony\nwith the spirit of the age. Eucken and Bergson met for the first time\nat Columbia University in 1912.\n\nIt might be feared that Eucken, emphasizing as he does the\nindividualistic origin of religious inspiration and realizing as he\ndoes the injury done to the Christian cause by clinging to antiquated\nformulas and medieval conceptions, would be inclined to undervalue\necclesiastical institutions and to advocate too violent a break with\nhistoric Christianity. But here again his moderation and sanity\nare manifest. He cannot be called orthodox from the standpoint of the\nestablished Lutheran Church. He agrees entirely with his colleague\nHaeckel in condemning the union of Church and State, but for opposite\nreasons; Haeckel because the Church receives thereby artificial\nsupport; Eucken because the Church is thereby hampered in its freedom\nof development.\n\nHe never, however, falls into the error of thinking that a \"new\"\nreligion can be made to order to suit the times, or even the needs of\nany one person. He finds in historic Christianity all the essentials of\na permanent and universal religion, capable, when properly understood\nand presented, of satisfying the severe requirements of modern thought\nand feeling. But this is not to be accomplished by merely eliminating\nwhatever the modern mind finds objectionable.\n\n    A religion is not primarily a mere theory concerning\n    things human and divine--such a theory can, of course,\n    be quite easily put together with a little ingenuity--it\n    discloses ultimate revelations of the spiritual life,\n    further developments of reality, great organizations of\n    living energy, movements, in a word, which have convulsed\n    the age in which they came victoriously to birth, and have\n    subsequently proved themselves strong enough to attract\n    large portions of mankind, weld each of these inwardly\n    together, and set an invisible world before it as the main\n    basis of life. In such upheavals of the life of the people\n    there is opened a rich mine of fact which becomes the\n    property of all men, and includes valuable experiences of\n    humanity as a whole. He who would cut himself off from this\n    great stream of experience, inward as well as outward, will\n    soon find out how little the isolated individual can do in\n    matters of this kind. It is easy to find fault with what\n    tradition hands down, no less easy to draw up vague views of\n    one's own, but how immense is the distance which separates\n    procedure such as this from the creative effort which urges\n    its sure way forward, from the synthesis which embraces\n    all men's lives and exercises an elemental compulsion upon\n    them.[6]\n\nEucken's clairvoyant faith sees through the present anti-religious\natmosphere the dawning of a new era in which the spiritual life\nshall again be dominant. Yet no one has recognized more clearly the\nalienation of the Church from the cultural and the practical life of\nthe day. This chasm is no doubt greater in Germany, where the Catholic\nand Protestant churches are State institutions and identified with\nreactionary elements, than it is in our own country, where there is\nfortunately no Church, but many churches, all equally free to adapt\nthemselves to changing conditions and to prove themselves useful to\nsociety in their own way. But it must be admitted that our churches\nare not availing themselves of this exceptional freedom and do not\nshow the originality and diversity which is characteristic of life and\ngrowth.\n\nEucken is conciliatory, but no compromiser. He does not solicit for\nreligion a humble place in modern life by using arguments like those\nemployed in the sale of \"patent medicines\", that it is innocuous at\nthe least and may somehow do some good. He meets modern science upon\nher own ground. He claims for religion an equal practicality and\nefficiency; he demands for it a greater certitude, and he is willing,\nas Jesus was willing, to put it to the pragmatic test.\n\n    Since we have found that religion is linked thus closely\n    with the whole, we need not make any timid compromise with\n    certain superficial contemporary movements and content\n    ourselves with a lower degree of certainty, saying, for\n    instance, that we can never altogether eliminate the\n    subjective element, and that religious truths can never\n    have the certainty of such formulae as 2 x 2 = 4. On the\n    contrary, we maintain that it is a very poor conception of\n    religion which deems any certainty superior to hers, and\n    does not claim for her truth a far more primary certainty\n    than that of the formula 2 x 2 = 4. Only a shallow and\n    perverse conception of truth can allow the certainty of the\n    part to exceed the certainty of the whole.[7]\n\n    Either religion is merely a product of human wishes\n    and ideas under the sanction of tradition and social\n    convention--and then neither art nor might nor cunning can\n    prevent so frail a fabrication from being whelmed by the\n    advancing spiritual tide--or else religion is based on facts\n    of a suprahuman order, and in that case the most violent\n    onslaught cannot shake her; rather will it help her in the\n    end, through all the stress and toil of human circumstance,\n    to discover where her true strength lies, and to express in\n    purer ways the eternal truth that is in her.[8]\n\n\nPOSTSCRIPT, 1917\n\nI have thought best to leave the article on Eucken just as I published\nit in _The Independent_ of February 27, 1913, with only a few slight\nchanges in tense and time references. It presents a picture of German\nlife and thought as I saw it shortly before the war, and it would\nbe impossible for me to bring it up to date now when the British\ncensorship prevents German books and papers from reaching America. I\ncan only add some quotations from Eucken's recent writings to show his\nattitude toward the war.\n\nIn the fall of 1914, Eucken joined with his colleague in the university\nand his opponent in philosophy, Professor Ernst Haeckel, in a public\nstatement charging that British greed and egotism had caused the\nGreat War.[9] In the following spring Eucken sent an appeal to the\nAmerican people in the form of eight questions which I quote entire.\n\n    You say that we are a nation militarist and greedy for\n    conquest. Permit us a few questions with regard to that rash\n    statement.\n\n    First.--How do you explain that in times gone by Germany\n    did not take advantage of the difficulties of her present\n    opponents--as, for instance, England's difficulty during the\n    Boer war or Russia's difficulty during the Japanese war? If\n    we had meant conquest should we have chosen the very moment\n    when half the world was against us, and we were numerically\n    in the minority? Do you really think that we are as stupid\n    as all that?\n\n    Second.--Next, how do you explain that all parties in\n    Germany approve of the policy of the government and loyally\n    hold together, including the Social Democrats? Yesterday\n    they were our decided opponents. Do you believe that the\n    Socialists have overnight, as it were, become changed from\n    decided opponents to adherents of militarism?\n\n    Third.--How do you explain the fact that the Americans\n    who were in Germany at the outbreak of the war in an\n    overwhelming majority sided with us? Does not the opinion\n    of those who see events quite near--nay, who live through\n    them--carry greater weight than the view of such as observe\n    occurrences from a remote distance?\n\n    Fourth.--You believe that the Germans are oppressed and\n    narrowed down by the rule of militarism. How do you explain\n    that education and technical and scientific research are\n    so highly developed and universally esteemed in Germany and\n    that for this reason so many Americans come to Germany in\n    order to study sciences and arts?\n\n    Fifth.--You always discuss war with regard to Belgium,\n    France and England only. Have you forgotten Russia, with\n    her one hundred and fifty million inhabitants and her army,\n    which is by far the largest in the whole world? Russia is\n    a danger to Germany and to the whole of Europe and just\n    now insists on the possession of Constantinople. Have you\n    forgotten that Russia, by interfering with the Servian\n    murder case, began the war, and that England, according to\n    the parliamentary statement made by Foreign Secretary Sir\n    Edward Grey, was determined, even before the German invasion\n    of Belgium, to abandon her neutrality in favor of France?\n\n    Sixth.--You generally argue that all Europe was in profound\n    peace and that only the greed of Germany disturbed that\n    peace. Have you forgotten that long before the war there\n    was a triple entente which was directed against Germany and\n    that the entente newspapers openly discussed the war plans\n    hatched against Germany and even recommended 1916 as a\n    suitable year for commencing hostilities?\n\n    Seventh.--You want to be good Christians and as such\n    work for peace among the nations. Can you reconcile such\n    Christianity with the fact that your country sends huge\n    consignments of arms and ammunition to our opponents and\n    thus intensifies and lengthens the war? Can you further\n    reconcile that with neutrality, a neutrality in spirit and\n    not merely in the letter?\n\n    Eighth.--Do not you think that a great nation with a\n    glorious past should see the events of the day with\n    its own eyes and that such independence of thought is\n    the highest test of true liberty? But you contemplate\n    present history more or less through English spectacles,\n    as if your country were still a British colony and not an\n    independent empire with its own goals and standards. In\n    such a passion-stirred age as ours neutrals have the lofty\n    duty to keep out of party strife and to endeavor to be just\n    and impartial to both sides. This endeavor is lacking in\n    Germany's American opponents.\n\nThat even the antagonisms aroused by the war have not shaken Eucken's\nfaith in the power of religion and philosophy to heal the wounds of\nhumanity is shown by a recent article on \"The International Character\nof Modern Philosophy\" in the _Homiletic Review_ of New York. In this\nhe discusses with great impartiality the contributions which England,\nFrance, Germany, and Italy have made to philosophy and concludes as\nfollows:\n\n    After all, philosophy is summoned to proclaim the unity of\n    mankind over against the present split among the peoples. To\n    be sure, this does not mean that individual philosophers are\n    less earnest to put forward the claims of their own people\n    than the claims of others; for they are not mere scholars,\n    they are also living men and citizens of their own nation.\n    When they see this assaulted and its existence put in peril,\n    it is for them a holy duty to come to the defense of the\n    fatherland--if not with the weapons of war, at least to do\n    their best with the weapons of the intellect. Meanwhile,\n    the belief is entirely proper that the intellectual gains\n    which are the result of philosophical labor remain unharmed\n    by war, that a realm of intellectual creation will retain\n    full recognition beyond the enmities of man. Keenest blame\n    is deserved by the attempt to array against each other the\n    intellectual leaders of a people which is for the moment\n    a foe, or to disparage the entire mental character of\n    the opponent. That is the stamp of a small and vengeful\n    disposition--he who aims to depreciate others to whom great\n    thanks are due dishonors himself. Let each, therefore,\n    remain true to his own people, but never forget the task\n    and aim of philosophy--to consider things under the form of\n    perpetuity, maintaining for humanity in the present a world\n    superior to all the littlenesses of human action.\n\n    A further and much more weighty task is from this arising\n    for philosophy--to work mightily for the inner unity of\n    human life and endeavor; the lack of such a unity has\n    contributed not a little to whet the antagonisms of the\n    nations.... Only when we are convinced that we belong\n    together essentially, that we have a great work to\n    accomplish in common and have to raise mankind from the\n    stage of nature to that of intellect--that we have to\n    carry on unitedly a fight against the manifold unreason\n    of life--only by the strengthening and operation of such\n    convictions can the division of humanity into hostile\n    nationalities be successfully withstood. Not through elegant\n    addresses and articles, only by means of a dynamic deepening\n    of life and the introduction of new power can we progress in\n    the solution of these problems.[10]\n\n\n\nHOW TO READ EUCKEN\n\n\nEucken is not a man of one book. He has put forth his ideas in\nmany different forms; large volumes and little, works historical,\nexpository, argumentative, theoretical and practical, but his point of\nview has remained throughout his long productive career essentially\nunchanged, and is so clearly indicated in all his works that one may\nbe sure of obtaining the fundamental principles of his philosophy from\nwhatever volume he selects. If, however, I am expected to prescribe a\nparticular book as an introduction to Eucken, I should say that the\ngeneral reader who is interested in the relation of philosophy to\nreligion--and one who is not interested in that would not care to\nread Eucken anyway--would find \"Christianity and the New Idealism\"\n(translated by Lucy Judge Gibson and W. R. Boyce Gibson, Harper) most\nsuitable for the purpose. It is a small volume, as easy reading as\nanything of Eucken's, and discusses frankly the present crisis in\nreligious thought and indicates what he believes the churches ought to\ndiscard and what they must maintain of their inherited doctrines and\nforms. \"The Truth of Religion\" (translated by W. Tudor Jones, Putnam)\ncovers similar ground, but in a more thorough and theoretical manner.\n\nThe volumes entitled in their English version \"The Meaning and\nValue of Life\" (Gibson translation, Macmillan); \"The Life of the\nSpirit\" (translated by F. L. Pogson, Putnam), are intended for the\nnon-philosophical reader; while \"Life's Basis and Life's Ideals\"\n(translated by Alban G. Widgery, Macmillan); \"Main Currents of Modern\nThought: A Study of the Spiritual and Intellectual Movements of the\nPresent Day\" (translated by Meyrick Booth, Scribner); and \"The Contest\nfor the Spiritual Life\" (Putnam) are of a more technical character.\n\n\"The Problem of Human Life as Viewed by Great Thinkers from Plato\nto the Present Time\" (translated by Williston S. Hough and W. R.\nBoyce Gibson, Scribner) differs decidedly from the ordinary history\nof philosophy in that the author is not trying to set at odds and\noverthrow the successive philosophers, but is seeking for whatever in\nthem is good and permanent, finally coming to \"see them linked together\nas workers in one common task: the task of building up a spiritual\nworld within the realm of human life, of proving our existence to be\nboth spiritual and natural.\"\n\nSingle lectures and articles by Eucken readily accessible in English\nare: \"Religion and Life\" (Putnam); \"Back to Religion\" (Pilgrim Press);\n\"Can We Still Be Christians?\" (Macmillan); \"Naturalism or Idealism\"\n(the Nobel Lecture). Twenty of his papers are included in \"Collected\nEssays of Rudolf Eucken\" (Scribner, 1914).\n\nThe titles of Eucken's chief works in German and in the English\nversions are as follows: \"Die Grundbegriffe der Gegenwart\" (The Main\nCurrents of Modern Thought), 1878; \"Die Einheit des Geisteslebens in\nBewusstsein und Tat der Menschheit\", 1888; \"Die Lebensanschauungen\nder Grossen Denker\" (The Problem of Human Life), 1890; \"Der Kampf\num einen geistigen Lebensinhalt\", 1896; \"Der Wahrheitsgehalt der\nReligion\" (The Truth of Religion), 1901; \"Grundlinien einer neuen\nLebensanschauung\" (Life's Basis and Life's Ideal), 1907; \"Hauptprobleme\nder Religionsphilosophie der Gegenwart\" (Christianity and the New\nIdealism), 1907; \"Sinn und Wert des Lebens\" (The Meaning and Value of\nLife), 1905; \"Einf\u00fchrung in eine Philosophie des Geisteslebens\" (The\nLife of the Spirit), 1908; \"Erkennen und Leben\" (Knowledge and Life,\n1912).\n\nOf the numerous books and articles about Eucken which have appeared in\nEurope, it will be sufficient to mention: \"Rudolf Eucken. Die Erneuerer\ndes deutschen Idealismus\", by Theodor Kappstein (Berlin-Sch\u00f6neberg:\nBucherlag der \"Hilfe\"); \"Rudolf Eucken's Werk, Eine neue idealistische\nL\u00f6sung des Lebensproblems\", by Kurt Kesseler (Bunzlau: Kreuschmer,\n1911); \"Eucken's dramatische Lebensphilosophie\", by Otto Braun\n(_Zeitschrift f\u00fcr Philosophie und Philosophische Kritik_, 1909);\n\"Rudolf Eucken's Christenthum\", by Ludwig von Gerdtell (Verlag von\nBecker). On Eucken's seventieth birthday, January 5, 1916, the\n_Zeitschrift f\u00fcr Philosophie_ published a _Festschrift_ devoted to\nhis work. \"La philosophie de M. Rudolph Eucken\", by Emile Boutroux\n(_Acad\u00e9mie des Sciences morales et politiques_, 1910).\n\nIt is unnecessary to give a list of articles about Eucken in American\nmagazines because any library that contains the files will have a\nperiodical index, but a few references may be given: \"Religious\nPhilosophy of Eucken\", Harvard Theological Review (vol. 2, p. 465,\n1909); \"Eucken and St. Paul\", by Richard Roberts, _Contemporary Review_\n(vol. 97, p. 71); \"Religious Philosophy of Eucken\", by Baron F. von\nH\u00fcgel, _Hibbert Journal_ (vol. 10, p. 660); \"Eucken's Philosophy of\nLife\", by W. Fite, The Nation (vol. 95, p. 29); \"Eucken's New Gospel\nof Activism\", _Current Literature_ (vol. 53, p. 67); \"Idealism of\nRudolf Eucken\", by S. H. Mellone, _International Journal of Ethics_\n(vol. 21, p. 15).\n\nThere are two excellent expositions of Eucken's philosophy in English,\nby his students and translators: \"Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy of Life\",\nby W. R. Boyce Gibson (Macmillan), and \"An Interpretation of Rudolf\nEucken's Philosophy\", by W. Tudor Jones (Putnam). A briefer compendium,\n\"Eucken: A Philosophy of Life\", by A. J. Jones, has appeared in a\nseries of handy volumes known as \"The People's Books\" (New York: Dodge\nPublishing Company). Meyrick Booth (Ph.D. of Jena) has published\n\"Rudolf Eucken: His Philosophy and Influence,\" London (Unwin, 1913).\n\n\n[1] \"The Fundamental Concepts of Modern Philosophic Thought, Critically\nand Historically Considered\" by Rudolf Eucken, Professor in Jena.\nTranslated by M. Stuart Phelps, Professor in Smith College. With\nadditions and corrections by the author and an introduction by Noah\nPorter, president of Yale College. Appleton, 1880.\n\n[2] So says Professor Heinrich Weinel in an interesting article on\n\"Religious Life and Thought in Germany To-day\", in the _Hibbert\nJournal_, July, 1909.\n\n[3] My visit to Jena, described in the following pages, was made in\n1910.\n\n[4] These must, I suppose, be translated into English as \"kirk, kitchen\nand kids.\"\n\n[5] \"Life's Basis and Life's Ideal\", p. 118.\n\n[6] \"Christianity and the New Idealism\", p. 146.\n\n[7] \"Christianity and the New Idealism\", p. 28.\n\n[8] \"The Truth of Religion.\"\n\n[9] Published in _The Independent_, September 28, 1914.\n\n[10] \"The International Character of Modern Philosophy,\" _Homiletic\nReview_, April, 1916.","title":"Six Major Prophets","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":70962}