{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_55878/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_55878","id":"gutenberg_55878","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55878","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Diderot, Denis, 1713-1784","Heine, Heinrich, 1797-1856","Ibsen, Henrik, 1828-1906","Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910","Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892"],"text":"Note: Images of the original pages are available through\n      Internet Archive. See\n      https://archive.org/details/newspiritwithnew00elli\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Scott Library.\n\nTHE NEW SPIRIT.\n\n\n  \u2042 FOR FULL LIST OF THE VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES,\n  SEE CATALOGUE AT END OF BOOK.\n\n\nTHE NEW SPIRIT.\n\nby\n\nHAVELOCK ELLIS.\n\n\u201cEn portant \u00e0 leur plus haut degr\u00e9 ses sentiments les plus intimes,\non devient le chef de file d\u2019un grand nombre d\u2019autres hommes. Pour\nacqu\u00e9rir une valeur typique, il faut \u00eatre le plus individuel qu\u2019il est\npossible.\u201d\n\nThird Edition, with a New Preface.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLondon: Walter Scott, Ltd.,\n24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\n                  PAGE\n  PREFACE          vii\n  INTRODUCTION       1\n  DIDEROT           34\n  HEINE             68\n  WHITMAN           89\n  IBSEN            133\n  TOLSTOI          174\n  CONCLUSION       228\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.\n\n\nNo alterations have been made in this edition. It is true that three\nof the figures here studied were living when the book was written;\nbut their genius had matured, their work was for the most part done.\nNothing they could produce would seriously modify one\u2019s conception\nof them as aboriginal personal forces, the outcome of the past, the\ninitiators of the future. Apart from this, it seems to me a mistake to\nmanipulate or add to one\u2019s own completed work. If I were to re-write\nit, I should doubtless write it differently; the Conclusion, for\ninstance, which is earliest in date, seems to me now rather formal and\nmetaphysical. But for the most part I have nothing seriously to alter\nor to omit.\n\nI have sometimes been asked why, in a discussion of some of the new\ninfluences of the past century, I have left out representative men who\nhave made so great a stir in the world. Goethe, it may possibly be\ntrue, stalks through every page, but where are Kant, Hegel, Auguste\nComte, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer? I cannot remember ever\nproposing to include these names. The reason may be clearer if I\nmention other names I once wished to include, although--partly doubting\nmy competence to discuss them, partly fearing that their introduction\nmight seem to interfere with the unity of the book--I ultimately\nrefrained.\n\nOne was Burne Jones. I shall never forget how, as a youth in the Public\nLibrary at Sydney, I turned over the leaves of a volume of etchings\nand suddenly alighted on \u201cMerlin and Vivien.\u201d Something I knew of\nBotticelli, Lippi and the rest, and I had brooded over their antique\nmystery and charm; but here were all the mystery and the charm brought\ndown among us from the world where saints stand stiff and aureoled,\nand angels walk tip-toe on lily cups. The fifteenth century artists\nof Flanders and Venice and Florence introduced us into a frankly\nsupernatural world, and they delighted like children to scatter rich\nfruits on the golden floors, and to stick peacocks\u2019 feathers into\nthe bejewelled walls. It is a rarer and subtler art to suggest that\ninfinitely remote world while accepting the austere conditions of\nour own earth. The pale ghosts of Puvis de Chavannes\u2019 frescoes are\na far-off suggestion of this art; and one thinks too of the modern\nmagician who has brought before us the twinkling of Salome\u2019s feet by\nthe red blood from the Baptist\u2019s head, curdling amid the flowers; the\nrich-robed daughters of Apollo among the olives; the mystic elephant\nin solemn festival, gathering the lotus with his trunk as his feet\nplash slowly in the clear waters of the sacred lake. But the shadowy\nart of Puvis, the wayward and limited art of Gustave Moreau, come\nshort of the consistent and completely realised art which has been\nattained by the painter who stands forth in the eyes of Europe as the\ngreatest imaginative artist of England. It is a new synthesis of the\nworld of nature and the world of dreams. The three women who dance in\nthe foreground of \u201cThe Mill\u201d tell us of a country where human joys and\nsorrows, hopes and fears, are set to a different measure, and sung in\nunknown keys. A strange and troublous art, it seems sometimes,--like\nthe sinuous melodies of Renan, which seem to belong to some far-haunted\npast, and yet contain the intimate secrets of our own hearts,--but it\nfascinates and holds us as though music became visible before our eyes.\nIt opens before us a new and delightful pathway into the land of dreams.\n\nAnother was Auguste Rodin. To mould the human figure has been an\namusement for man since ever he carved wood or indented clay. It was\nleft for the sculptors of Egypt and of Greece and of Italy to form\nhuman figures of stone, not as a mere symbol of the reality, but as\na revelation of their own moods and visions of beauty or passion;\nand since then the amusement has fallen back into convention and\nsymbol, although the plastic representation of the modern human body,\netiolated and hidden, offers fewer difficulties than its representation\nin painting which Millet and Degas have in varying ways striven to\nachieve. Now even the great sculptors of old only suggest to us beauty\nor grace or strength that has become conventional; they reveal nothing.\nIn this man\u2019s work the form that is closest to us of all forms in the\nworld, that we cling to from the day of birth, and that remains with\nus, half-seen or divined, until the day of death, has been revealed\nanew, just as new aspects of light have been revealed by Claude Monet.\nIt is the ancient human way-worn and passion-used form, rendered with\npathetic truth, and yet we feel that we have never truly seen the human\nbody before. We marvel how expression can be carried so far without\npassing the bounds of nature and simplicity. It is far from the method\nof Michelangelo, Rodin\u2019s immediate predecessor, with whom it has been\nthe fashion to compare him. Michelangelo\u2019s stupendous fantasy twisted\nthe human body into the strange or lovely shapes of his own inverted\ndreams. In Rodin\u2019s work, it is through a relentless love of nature that\nwe are led to a new and intimate vision of the body. The quiet artist\nin his simple work-room has been building up through long years his\ngreat Gate of Hell; it is the gate of the joy and beauty and terror of\nlife, expressed otherwise than those sober stories of the old world so\ncharmingly told on that gate that was thought worthy of Heaven. But\nthrough this gate we are led to a new insight of that figure in the\nworld which is closest to us and most precious, such an insight, it may\nwell be, as Pheidias and Donatello brought to the men of their time.\n\nAnother personality that I desired to analyse, and perhaps the\ngreatest, was Richard Wagner. The Leipzig youth, who hated the tawdry\ntinsel of the theatre, and was so little of a musical prodigy that he\ncould never learn to play the piano, impelled by a strange instinct\nhas yet wrought music and the stage to a poetic height never before\napproached. Just as our arts rise out of our industries, so the\nmanifold art of Wagner--woven of music and poetry and drama--rises to\nsomething that is beyond art. Wagner has made the largest impersonal\nsynthesis yet attainable of the personal influences that thrill our\nlives, and has built it on the broadest physiological basis of our\nsenses, so that faith has here become sight. Such harmony is what we\nare accustomed to call Heaven, and such art--to the mere musician\ncacophony and confusion--is truly called religion. It will take some\ntime yet before we understand its place in life as a new expression of\nthe human soul. Generations must pass before it will be possible for\na greater artist, by a still wider sensory appeal, to lift us to any\nhigher Heaven.\n\nIt is not the men of one idea--important as these are--who most truly\nrepresent the spirit of an age. Such men most often represent the\nspirit of some earlier generation, which in them has become definitely\ncrystallised. It is the men whose ideas are still free in pungent,\npenetrating, often confused solution that we may count nearest to the\nnatural forces of an age, and it is these that are most interesting\nto analyse. In such men the feebler instincts of their fellows are\nconcentrated, and the flaming energy of their spirits attracts few,\nrepels most, of their fellows. It is, no doubt, because of this high\ndegree of emotional exaltation that these men bring us to religion.\nIt all comes to religion. I would point out to those who think that\nthis result needs apology, that such men do not bring before us the\npale, animistic children of dreams, who for so many ages have sought\nwith their shadowy arms to beckon men away from the world to a home\non the other side of the sky, but the robust children of our working\nlife, the offspring of our living energies and emotions, the harmonised\nsatisfaction of all that we have lived, of all that we have felt.\n\nSo the \u201cnew spirit\u201d brings us to one of the most ancient modes of\nhuman emotion. I sought to emphasise this in my Introduction as well\nas in the Conclusion, not altogether successfully for some of my\nreaders, who have been led to credit me with virtues of modernity to\nwhich I can make no claim. So far from being \u201can apostle of modernity,\u201d\nthe \u201cnew spirit\u201d that I am concerned with is but a quickening in the\npulse of life such as may take place in any age, though my tracings\nare only of a recent acceleration. The greatest manifestation of the\nnew spirit that I know of took place long since in the zoological\nhistory of the race when the immediate ancestor of man began to walk\non his hind legs, so developing the skilful hands and restless brain\nthat brought sin into the world. That strange and perilous method\nof locomotion--which carried other diseases and disabilities in its\ntrain, more concrete than sin--marked a revolutionary outburst of new\nlife worth contemplating. Yet even among the later and minor movements\nof life it is not the most recent that to me personally are the most\nattractive. The Eiffel Tower does not thrill me like the gray towers of\nChartres; I find the streets of Zaragoza more interesting than those of\nManchester. And, on the other hand, there are modernities which seem to\nme old, very old, older than life itself.\n\nTo say this is no doubt to confess that the personal element has a\nlarge place in this study of the \u201cNew Spirit.\u201d And it is true that,\nhowever honest a piece of mechanism your sphygmograph may be, if it\nis alive there is a very considerable personal equation which you\nmust make up your mind to reckon with. I believe I am not altogether\nincapable of slinging facts at the head of the British Goliath (with\npurely benevolent intentions), but on this occasion I wrote for my own\npleasure: let me apologise to Goliath for any annoyance I may so have\ncaused him. I wished to speak for once, so far as might be, in my own\nvoice, glad if here and there a reader cared to follow my impatient\ntrack, furnishing from the stores of his own knowledge and intelligence\nwhat was lacking in commentaries and _pi\u00e8ces justificatives_. I wished\nat the outset to take a bird\u2019s-eye view of the world as it presented\nitself to me personally, only indicating by mere hints those parts\nof the field in which I was more specially concerned. And I wished\nalso to indicate--perhaps once for all--my own faith in those large\nfacts of nature which are unaffected by personal equation, and which\nharmonise all our petty individual activities. Nature is bent on her\nown ends, and with infinite ingenuity uses all our energies to carry\nout her idea of increasing and multiplying the countless forms of\nlife. Death itself is but an accidental after-thought, a beneficial\nadaptation--as Weismann would have us express it--only affecting the\nbody, that servant of the immortal germ-cells which has grown so large\nand arrogant since the days when we Metazoa were young in the world.\nThat is the one master-thought of Nature, or--shall we say?--her\nsystematised delusion, her _d\u00e9lire \u00e0 forme chronique_. But the malady,\nif it is one, is incurable. A friend of mine, under the influence of\nnitrous oxide, once found himself face to face with the Almighty. Being\na man of earnest and philosophic temperament, he took advantage of the\nopportunity to demand passionately the meaning and aim of this tangled\nskein of things in which we find ourselves: \u201cWhy have You placed us\nhere? For what purpose have You submitted us to all this strife and\nmisery? What is the solution of the riddle of life?\u201d And then, uttered\nin a characteristic bass, came in one word the awful reply which my\nfriend will never forget: \u201c_Procreation_.\u201d I fear that that voice is,\nor might well have been, divine.\n\nAnd yet why should one \u201cfear\u201d? We have our brief triumph. Seeking out\nmany curious things, we learn to know and to enjoy the earth. Nature\u2019s\nnaughty children--whether artists or scientists or mystics--we may\nstand aside, contemplate her great object, and impudently elevate our\nfingers to our nose. It amuses us, and scarcely hurts her. She cannot\nrefuse us the by-play of her own adaptations. For it all comes of that\nprimitive manifestation of the new spirit, the \u201cFall,\u201d which raised us\non to our hind limbs and enabled us to drink of the Cider of Paradise.\n\n      H. E.\n\n  _7th October, 1892._\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nFrom our earliest days we look out into the world with wide-eyed\namazement, trying to discover for ourselves what it is like.\nInstinctively we must spend a great part of our lives in searching\nand probing into the nature and drift of the things among which, by a\nvolition not our own, we were projected. To-day, when we stand, as it\nwere, at the beginning of a new era, and when we have been celebrating\nthe centenary of the most significant event in modern history, an\nindividual who, for his own guidance, has done his part in this\nsearching and probing, may perhaps be allowed to present some of the\nresults, not claiming to be an expert, not desiring to impose on others\nany private scheme of the universe. The pulse of life runs strong and\nfast; I have tried to bring a sensitive lever to that pulse here and\nthere, to determine and record, as delicately as I could, its rhythms:\nthe papers I now present might be called a bundle of sphygmographic\ntracings.\n\nA large part of one\u2019s investigations into the spirit of one\u2019s time\nmust be made through the medium of literary personalities. I have\nselected five such typical individuals; it is the intimate thought and\nsecret emotions of such men that become the common property of after\ngenerations.\n\nWhenever a great literary personality comes before us with these\nimperative claims, it is our business to discover or divine its\nfundamental instincts; we ought to do this with the same austerity\nand keen-eyed penetration as, if we were wise, we should exercise in\nchoosing the comrades of our daily life. He poses well in public; he\nhas said those brave words on the platform; he has written those rows\nof eloquent books--but what (one asks oneself) is all that to me? I\nwant to get at the motive forces at work in the man; to know what his\nintimate companions thought of him; how he acted in the affairs of\nevery day, and in the great crises of his life; the fashion of his face\nand form, the tones of his voice. How he desired to appear is of little\nimportance; I can perhaps learn all that it imports me to know from a\nsingle involuntary gesture, or one glance into his eyes.\n\nThis is the attitude in which I have recorded, as impersonally as may\nbe, these impressions of the world of to-day, as revealed in certain\nsignificant personalities; by searching and proving all things, to grip\nthe earth with firmer foothold.\n\n  H. E.\n\n\n\n\nTHE NEW SPIRIT.\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION.\n\n\nThere is a memorable period in the history of Europe which we call\nthe Renaissance. We do well to give pre-eminence to that large\nefflorescence of latent life, but we forget sometimes that there have\nbeen many such new expansions of the human spirit since that primitive\noutburst of Christianity which is the most interesting of all in modern\ntimes. The tree of life is always in bloom somewhere, if we only know\nwhere to look. What a great forgotten renascence that is which in the\nmiddle of the twelfth century centres around the name of Abelard! It\nwas nothing less than the new birth of the intellect. Abelard had\nmade anew the discovery that reason, too, is the gift of God, and\nfaith was no longer blind; from all Europe thousands of students\ngathered around the great teacher who dwelt in his rough hermitage on\nthe desert plains of Troyes. It was in the strength of that feast\nthat men wove scholastic cobwebs so diligently that the human spirit\nitself seemed for awhile suffocated. It was a great renascence of\nlife, a hundred years later, in the wonderful thirteenth century,\nwhen Francis of Assisi revealed anew in his own person the ideal\ncharm of Jesus, and a group of fine spirits, his fellows, who bore\nthe Everlasting Gospel,--Jean de Parme, Pierre d\u2019Olive, Fra Dolcino\nand the rest,--sought to rebuild the edifice of Christendom on the\nfoundation of the Gospels, only in the end to deluge the world with a\nplague of grey friars. And then a great wave, with Luther on its crest,\nswept across Europe, reached at last the coast of England, and left\non its shores, as a dreary monumental symbol, St. Paul\u2019s Cathedral.\nThere is another great vital expansion about the time of the French\nRevolution. Since then, and chiefly as a result of that final triumph\nof the middle-class throughout Europe, of which the French Revolution\nwas the decisive seal, the energy of Europe, and of England especially,\nhas found its main outlets in the development of a huge commercial\nstructure, now, in the opinion of many, slowly and fearfully toppling\ndown. The nineteenth century has seen the rise and fall of middle-class\nsupremacy. What has been the result of it?\n\nOne naturally turns first to literature to see the reflection of the\nlife of a period. The man who seems in the eyes of all Englishmen, so\nfar as one can make out, to have represented during this century the\nclaims of humanity, of dignity, of what is called the spiritual side\nof life, was Carlyle; and Carlyle has been likened again and again to\nthe Joels and Jeremiahs of that most material Hebrew race. The whole\nof his long day was spent in crying out to a faithless and perverse\ngeneration. Therefore Carlyle never attained the serenity and hilarity\nof those two great spirits, Goethe and Emerson, between whom he stood\nmidway. Nor is it surprising that he was often blinded by the smoke\nand heat of a land that had become one huge Black Country, and that he\nfought against freedom, and sometimes mistook his friends for enemies.\nNor again is it surprising that of the two great poets who occupy the\ncentre of the century, one found inspiration in the blunders of a\nCrimean war and the royal representative of respectable middle-class\nchivalry, while the other gave himself up to marvellous feats of\npsychological gymnastic. Matthew Arnold, for his part, resolved the\ndiscords of his time in the austere calm of Stoicism; the calm of souls\n\n                            \u201cwho weigh\n    Life well and find it wanting, nor deplore;\n    But in disdainful silence turn away,\n    Stand mute, self-centred, stern, and dream no more:\u201d\n\npractically, however, Arnold found it necessary neither to turn\naway nor to be silent. There was yet another solution for sensitive\nsouls: to hide the heart in a nest of roses away from the world,\njust as Schopenhauer, who in Germany represented in more philosophic\nvesture this same vague unrest, resolved it by the aid of his profound\nreligious sense in refined and \u00e6sthetic joy. That is the solution\nsought in what seems to me one of the most exquisite and significant\nbooks of the century, \u201cMarius the Epicurean.\u201d For Marius, life is\nmade up of a few rare and lovely visions. All the rough sorrow and\ngladness of the world, its Dantesque bitterness or its Rabelaisian\njoy, only reaches him through a long succession of mirrors, and every\nstrong human impulse as an attenuated echo. This serious, sweet,\nand thoughtful book is the summary of the \u201csensations and ideas\u201d of\nthe finest natures of an era; as in certain of the distinguished\nopium-eaters of the beginning of the century, Coleridge or De Quincey,\nwe see a refined development of the passive sensory sides of the human\norganism with corresponding atrophy of the motor sides. It is clearly\nimpossible to go any farther on that road.\n\nThere is no renascence of the human spirit unless some mighty leverage\nhas been at work long previously. Such forces work underground, slowly\nand coarsely and patiently, during barren periods, and they meet with\nmuch contempt as destructive of man\u2019s finer and higher nature; but,\nin the end, it is by these that the finer and higher is lifted to new\nlevels. No great spiritual eruption can take place without the aid of\nsuch levers. What forces have been at work during the century that is\nnow drawing to a close? Three, I think, stand clearly forth.\n\nAt the end of the sixteenth century, it was above all the sudden\nexpansion of the world that inspired human effort and aspiration. In\nlater days science has carried on the same movement by revealing world\nwithin world. A chief element in the spirit of the French Revolution\nwas, as Taine pointed out, that scientific activity which centred\naround Newton. In our own time the impulse has come from scientific\ndiscoveries much more revolutionary, far-reaching and relative to life,\nthan any of Newton\u2019s. The conception of evolution has penetrated every\ndepartment of organic science, especially where it touches man. Darwin\npersonally, to whom belongs the chief place of honour in the triumph\nof a movement which began with Aristotle, has been a transforming\npower by virtue of his method and spirit, his immense patience, his\nkeen observation, his modesty and allegiance to truth; no one has\ndone so much to make science--that is to say, all inquiry into the\ntraceable causes or relations of things--so attractive. The great and\ngrowing sciences of to-day are the sciences of man--anthropology,\nsociology, whatever we like to call them, including also that special\nand older development, now become a new thing, though still retaining\nits antiquated name of Political Economy. It is difficult for us to-day\nto enter into the state of mind of those who once termed this the\ndismal science; if the question of a man\u2019s right to a foothold on the\nearth is not interesting, what things are interesting? Our hopes for\nthe evolution of man, and our most indispensable guide, are bound up\nwith all that we can learn of man\u2019s past and all that we can measure\nof his present. It was by a significant coincidence that that great\nmodern science which has man himself for its subject was created by\nBroca, when he founded the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 d\u2019Anthropologie of Paris in the\nsame memorable year of 1859 which first saw \u201cThe Origin of Species.\u201d\nMan has been brought into a line with the rest of life; a mysterious\nchasm has been filled up; a few fruitful hints have been received\nwhich help to make the development of all life more intelligible. This\nhas, on the one hand, given a mighty impulse to the patient study of\nnature and to the accumulation of facts now seen to bear such infinite\npossibilities of farther advance; just as the discovery of America in\nthe sixteenth century produced a like spirit of adventure which led\nmen to all parts of the globe. On the other hand, this devotion to\ntruth, this instinctive search after the causes of things, has become\nwhat may be called a new faith. The fruits of this scientific spirit\nare sincerity, patience, humility, the love of nature and the love of\nman. \u201cWisdom is to speak truth and consciously to act according to\nnature.\u201d So spake the old Ephesian, Heraclitus, to whom, rather than\nto Socrates, men are now beginning to look back as the exponent of the\ntrue Greek spirit; and so also speaks modern science. It is a faith\nthat has become a living reality to many; Clifford, for instance, as\nrevealed in his \u201cLectures and Essays,\u201d has long been a brilliant and\ninspiring member, often called typical, of the company of those who are\nfilled with the scientific spirit. Huxley, one of the most militant\nand indefatigable exponents of the scientific spirit during the past\nhalf century, has lately set forth its aim, which has been that of\nhis own life:--\u201cTo promote the increase of natural knowledge and to\nforward the application of scientific methods of investigation to all\nthe problems of life to the best of my ability, in the conviction,\nwhich has grown with my growth and strengthened with my strength, that\nthere is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity\nof thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as\nit is, when the garment of make-believe, by which pious hands have\nhidden its uglier features, is stripped off.\u201d It is important to\nnote that this spirit is becoming widely diffused; it would be easy\nto point to manifestations in various departments of this open-eyed,\nsensitive observation, not pretending to know prematurely, ready to\nthrow away all prepossessions and to follow Nature whithersoever her\ncaprices lead, without crying \u201cOut upon her!\u201d It is impossible to\nforecast the magnitude of the results that will flow from this growing\nwillingness to search out the facts of things, and to found life upon\nthem, broadly and simply, rather than to shape it to the form of\nunreasoned and traditional ideals. There was long abroad in the world\na curious dread of all attempts to face simply and sincerely the facts\nof life. This audacious frankness and scarcely less audacious humility\naroused horror and suspicion; and those who marched at the front heard\nwith considerable pain many members of the rear black-guard hurling\n\u201cMaterialist!\u201d and other such terms of scorn at their backs. The sting\nhas now died out of these terms. We know that wherever science goes the\npurifying breath of spring has passed and all things are re-created. We\nrealize that it is, above all, by following the light that is shed by\nthe low and neglected things--the \u201csurvivals\u201d--of the world, that the\nreasonable path of progress becomes clear. We cried for the moon for\nso many thousand years before we conquered the world. We know at last\nthat it must be among our chief ethical rules to see that we build the\nlofty structure of human society on the sure and simple foundations of\nman\u2019s organism.\n\nThese three great movements are clearly allied, and certainly the\npractical applications of this scientific spirit, of which there\nis more to say immediately, will rest very largely in the hands of\nwomen. The great wave of emancipation which is now sweeping across\nthe civilized world means nominally nothing more than that women\nshould have the right to education, freedom to work, and political\nenfranchisement--nothing in short but the bare ordinary rights of\nan adult human creature in a civilized democratic state. But many\nother changes will follow in the train of these very simple and\nmatter-of-fact changes, and it is no wonder that many worthy people\nlook with dread upon the slow invasion by women of all the concerns of\nlife--which are, after all, as much their own concerns as anyone\u2019s--as\nnothing less than a new irruption of barbarians. These good people are\nunquestionably right. The development of women means a reinvigoration\nas complete as any brought by barbarians to an effete and degenerating\ncivilization. When we turn to those early societies, which are as lamps\nto us in our social progress, we find that the arts of life are in the\npossession of women. Therefore when the torch of science is placed\nin the hands of women we must expect them to use it as a guide with\naudacious simplicity and directness, because of those instincts for\npractical life which they have inherited.\n\nThe rise of women--who form the majority of the race in most civilized\ncountries--to their fair share of power, is certain. Whether one looks\nat it with hope or with despair one has to recognize it. For my own\npart I find it an unfailing source of hope. One cannot help feeling\nthat along the purely masculine line no striking social advance is\nlikely to be made. Men are idealists, in search of wealth usually,\nsometimes of artistic visions; they have little capacity for social\norganization. It is sometimes said that the fundamental inferiority\nof women is shown by the very few surpassing women of genius in the\nworld\u2019s history. In their anxiety to combat this argument women have\neven enlisted Semiramis and Dido into their ranks. But it is a fact.\nFor all great solitary and artistic achievements--the writing of\nDivine Comedies, the painting of Transfigurations, the construction\nof systems of metaphysic, the inauguration of new religions--men are\nwithout rivals; the more abstract and unsocial an art is, the easier\nit is for men to attain eminence in it; in music and in the art of\nerecting philosophies men have had, least of all, any occasion to fear\nthe rivalry of women. Such things are precious, although it may be\nthat what we call \u201cgenius\u201d is something abnormal and distorted, like\nthose centres of irritation which result in the pearls we likewise\ncount so precious. Women are comparatively free from \u201cgenius.\u201d Yet\nit might probably be maintained that the average level of women\u2019s\nintelligence is fully equal to that of men\u2019s. Compare the men and\nwomen among settlers in the Australian bush, or wherever else men and\nwomen have been set side by side to construct their social life as\nbest they may, and it will often be to the disadvantage of the men. In\npractical and social life--even perhaps, though this is yet doubtful,\nin science--women will have nothing to fear. The most important mental\nsexual difference lies in the relative and absolute preponderance in\nwomen of the lower, that is, the more important and fundamental nervous\ncentres.[1] What new forms the influence of women will give to society\nwe cannot tell. Our most strenuous efforts will be needed to see to it\nthat women gain the wider experience of life, the larger education in\nthe full sense of the word, the entire freedom of development, without\nwhich their vast power of interference in social organization might\nhave disastrous as well as happy results.\n\n[1] The detailed analysis of the elements which women, by the facts of\ntheir constitution, must bring to the organization of life, cannot be\nentered into in this volume. I hope to deal with it in part elsewhere.\n\nWe most of us began in youth with literature; the seeds of art and\nimagination found a kindly soil in childhood and puberty; and we spent\nour enthusiasm on Scott or Shelley, on Gautier or Swinburne. As we\ngrew older we tired of these, developing instincts that craved other\nsatisfaction, discovering sometimes even that our idols had clay feet.\nThen we turned to the things that had seemed to us before so dull and\nstupid that we had scarcely looked at them; we began to be fascinated\nby economics and the growth of society, the problem of surplus value\nturns out to be full of attraction, and the historic development of\nthe relationship between men and women as charming as any novel. In\nthe same way the men of 1859, who were nurtured on \u201cThe Origin of\nSpecies,\u201d naturally and rightly turned their militant energies against\ntheology and fought over the book of Genesis. To-day, when social\nrather than theological questions seem to be the legitimate outcome\nof the scientific spirit, and when all things connected with social\norganization have become the matters of most vital interest to those\nwho are really alive to the time in which they live, even in youth\nsuch questions begin to grow enchanting, and those who are older feel\nthe same fascination; the man who shared with Darwin the honour of\ninitiating a new scientific era becomes a land nationaliser, William\nMorris a socialist, and the poet laureate who sixty years earlier had\nsung fantastic poems of a coming Utopia grasps at length the concrete\nproblems with which we have to deal. All this is hopeful, for we have\nscarcely yet got to the bottom of the questions raised by the growth of\ndemocracy.\n\nThe influence of science on life is an accomplished fact, and we can\ndistinctly trace its gradual development; the influence of women is on\nthe eve of attaining its outward consummation, and it is not altogether\nimpossible to forecast some of the changes which it will involve. But\nthe influence of democracy, more talked of than either of the others,\nis much more vague, complex, and uncertain. Once it was thought that we\nhad but to give a vote to every adult--outside the asylum and perhaps\nthe prison--and democracy would be achieved. This crude notion has long\nsince become ridiculous. We see now that the vote and the ballot-box\ndo not make the voter free from even external pressure; and, which\nis of much more consequence, they do not necessarily free him from\nhis own slavish instincts. We see that enfranchisement does not mean\nfreedom, since the enfranchised are capable of running in a brainless\nand compact mob after any man who is clever enough to gain despotic\ninfluence over them. This is not democracy, though it is doubtless a\nstep towards it. If we test the intelligence of the enfranchised by\nexamining the persons whom they elect as their representatives, we\nsoon realize the trifling character of the step. Even the free and\ngenerously democratic colonies of Australia show few brilliant results\nby this test. It is hard to get rid of the old distinction between a\ngoverning class and a governed, and to recognize that every man must be\na member of the government.\n\nIf democracy means a state in which every man shall be a freeman,\nneither in economic nor intellectual nor moral subjection, two\nprocesses at least are needed to render democracy possible--on the one\nhand a large and many-sided education; on the other the reasonable\norganization of life.\n\nThe conception of education has within recent times undergone a curious\ndevelopment. Some of us can still remember the time when the word\n\u201ceducation\u201d meant as a matter of course the rudiments of intellectual\neducation only, and when such education was regarded as a panacea for\nmany evils; this kind of education has, in consequence, we may take it,\nbeen virtually secured to every child in all civilized countries. To\nthis kind of education, however, it is no longer possible to attribute\nany satisfying sort of virtue. It may produce a very inferior\norder of clerk; but _education_--the reasonable development of the\nindividual--it cannot deserve to be called; it merely puts a certain\nrude intellectual instrument into the hands of a still thoroughly\nuneducated person. Education, as we understand it now, must be founded\non the harmonious exercise of body, senses, and emotions, as well\nas intellect; the whole environment is the agent of education. That\nis why we are now extending the meaning of the word indefinitely.\nFresh air, good food, manual training, the cultivation of the art\ninstincts, physical exercise and abundant recreation, wholesome home\nrelationships--these are a few of the things which we now recognize as\nessential parts of the rational education of every boy and girl, and\nwhich we are seeking to obtain for all. Nor is education in this sense\nincompatible with intellectual development; on the contrary, it is the\nonly sound foundation for such development. There is here no need for\nfear. We seem, indeed, to be rapidly approaching a period in which the\nexcessive intension of knowledge, its confinement to a few persons,\nwill give way to a marked extension of knowledge. Such a process is in\nthe lines of our democratic advance. It is for the advantage of the men\nof science who have paid for the seclusion of extreme specialism by\nincapacity to understand popular movements and popular needs; it is to\nthe advantage of all that there should be no impassable gulf between\nthose who know and those who are ignorant. It is well to sacrifice\nmuch, if we may thereby help to diffuse the best things that are known\nand thought in the world, and make the scientific attitude, even more\nthan scientific results, a common possession.\n\nIt is clear that education thus understood leads directly to the other\ngreat factor of democracy. Education is impossible without social\norganization: no advanced stage of social organization is possible\nwithout a complex and diffused education; they lead up to each other\nand go hand in hand. The average working man, in England at all events,\nis not an enthusiast for schemes of technical education; as things\nstand, such schemes constitute a method for supplying the capitalist\nwith cheap instruments, and the working man cannot be expected to view\nwith enthusiasm his own depreciation in the market. At the same time\nhis lack of education leads him to overrate the value of a tawdry\nintellectual equipment, and he views with little anxiety the growth of\na race of inferior clerks, for whom the world has few uses.\n\nIn England the love of independent individual initiative and the\ndislike of all harmonious social organization is certainly stronger\nthan elsewhere; it is intimately associated with the best and worst\nqualities of the race, and it has spread over all the countries we\nhave overrun. For three hundred years this tendency has had a free\nfield. But during the last fifty years a new instinct of social\norganization has been slowly developing and gaining strength. Trades\nunions have been one of the most potent influences in this direction.\nAll our factory legislation has been a sign of its growth, and the same\nmovement has given enthusiasm to the County Council. There are very\nfew things in our daily life which this spirit of social organization\nis not embracing or promising to embrace. The old bugbear of \u201cState\ninterference\u201d (a real danger under so many circumstances) vanishes\nwhen a community approaches the point at which the individual himself\nbecomes the State. It might be added that under no circumstances could\nthe temper of the English people tolerate any considerable amount of\n\u201cState interference.\u201d The communalization of certain social functions\ncorresponds--without being an exact analogy--to the process by which\nphysiological actions become automatic. As it becomes a State function\ncommerce will cease to absorb the best energy and enterprise of the\nworld, and will become merely mechanical.\n\nIt may not be out of place to point out that while this process of\nsocialization is rapidly developing, individual development so far\nfrom stopping, is progressing no less rapidly. It is too often\nforgotten that the former is but the means to secure the latter. While\nwe are socializing all those things of which all have equal common\nneed, we are more and more tending to leave to the individual the\ncontrol of those things which in our complex civilization constitute\nindividuality. We socialize what we call our physical life in order\nthat we may attain greater freedom for what we call our spiritual life.\n\nThe growth of social organization is now beginning to open up\npossibilities which a few years ago would have seemed Utopian. It\ncannot remain limited within merely national bounds. It is concerned\nwith the things of which all have a common need, and the interests of\nnations are here inextricably intertwined. This must sooner or later\nresult in the formation of international tribunals, and this again will\nhave decisive results in relation to war--a method of dispute rapidly\nbecoming antiquated. Twenty-eight millions of men, ready to be put into\nthe field (is not this a suggestive euphemism?) at a moment\u2019s notice,\nin a corner of the world! Take a _pl\u00e9biscite_ of the adult population\nof Europe, of whose life-blood these twenty-eight millions are,\nto-morrow--and what would the _r\u00e9gime_ of militarism be worth? We must\ncertainly expect to see the same process repeated between nations which\nhas everywhere taken place among individuals. When a strong power to\nwhich appeal can be made is established, individuals cease to fight and\nbecome litigants; this was seen in the Middle Ages, and again, as Maine\npointed out, when a strong British executive was established in India.\nAs soon as a sufficiently strong tribunal is formed, nations who once\nwent to war must in the same way become litigants. This again will have\nits reaction on democracy and social life.\n\nAlong another line we may observe the approaching disappearance of\nwar. The wars of modern times have, to a large extent, had commercial\ncauses at their roots. The downfall of unrestricted competition,\nand the organization of industrialism, will remove this cause of\nwar. In the profoundly interesting movement, witnessed to-day in the\ndirection of trusts and syndicates, we see the natural and inevitable\ntransition to a new era. Like all transitions, it can only be effected\nwith much friction. From one point of view it is the last barricade\nof capitalism; from a wider stand-point it is the forging of a huge\ninstrument to be taken up eventually by a vast international community\nwho will thus control the means of providing for themselves by methods\nof simple and uneventful routine.\n\nBefore international organization can be realized there seems\nlittle doubt that a period of protective national organization must\nintervene. At present there is a floating population of the weakest\nand less capable--unable to emigrate to a new country--always flowing\nfrom a poorer country into a less poor country, and bearing with them\nthe seeds of vagrancy and crime. No progress is possible if every\nlittle redeemed patch is at once flooded from over sea. It must be\nremembered also, that the dykes necessary to regulate the floating\npopulation are required even in the interests of the poorer countries.\nWe are approaching a time when the general spread of information,\nespecially by means of newspapers, will render it impossible for any\ncountry to tolerate the fact that the general level of its people\u2019s\nexistence should exceed in wretchedness that of any other nation.\nThe evolution of a better state can only take place by the pressure\nresulting from the presence of these outcast elements of society. To\nreject them is but to disguise the condition of a nation and to imperil\nits destiny.\n\nThe destiny and fate of nations has always fascinated the popular\nimagination, and the destinies of nations are now shaping themselves\nbefore our eyes with singular clearness. Within a measurable period\nof time France will have become a beautiful dream; all Frenchmen\nwill be Belgians or Italians, the races which have already in large\nmeasure taken possession of the country; it is a process which\nFrenchmen themselves observe and chronicle with painful interest.\nBut France has already accomplished a great work among the nations.\nOf wider significance is the development of Russia. For various\nreasons the position of Russia is peculiar. The youngest of European\nnations in civilization, with a strong Asiatic element by position\nand race, Russia is approaching the task of social organization with\na different endowment from that possessed by any other nation. This\nracial endowment, while imparting a curious freshness to its methods\nof dealing with European problems, especially fits it for its great\nmission of dominating Asia. To the English it has never been easy\nto find a _modus vivendi_ with lower races, or races which we are\npleased to consider lower; the very qualities which give us insular\nindependence and toughness of fibre, unfit us for the other task. But\nthe Russian temperament, as is now generally recognized, is peculiarly\nadapted for mingling harmoniously even with the fiercest yellow races\nand bringing them into relation with the best European influences;\nall those who care for humanity view with satisfaction the growing\ninfluence of Russia in the East, an influence which, we may reasonably\nhope, will overspread the continent. A very large field indeed is\nstill left for the other great expanding race of the world. The\nEnglish-speaking races have in their hands the greater part of North\nAmerica, and nearly all Australia, and here their special qualities\nfind ample scope. This division gives no ground for quarrel; the\nRussians have never had much capacity for emigration in the English\nsense, and the English are beginning to learn by bitter experience that\nthey are not suited for the mission of civilizing Asia; the Spanish\nraces have, as a field for their renascence, now so rapidly taking\nplace, nearly the whole of the rich continent of South America; while\nthose slow, yet tenacious and admirable colonists, the Germans, will\nbe able to gain ground in that African continent to which they are\nmost attracted, and which was long ago claimed by the Dutch for this\ndivision of the Teutonic race. If we English are certain to make little\nprogress where, as in Asia, the great task is conciliation, when it is\na question of stamping out a lower race--then is our time! It has to\nbe done; it is quite clear that the fragile Red men of America and the\nstrange wild Blacks of Australia must perish at the touch of the White\nman. On the whole we stamp them out as mercifully as may be, supplying\nour victims liberally with missionaries and blankets.\n\nIt is the English race, not England, that is thus possessing so large\na part of the earth. And it is interesting to observe that both the\nraces--almost the latest of the great European nations to emerge from\nbarbarism--that now promise to dominate the world are by temperament\ndisinclined for monarchic government. With the Russians their despotic\nEmpire has been an exotic which they may have worshipped at a distance,\nbut which, except as a symbol of the ideal, has had little influence\non their lives. We can only determine the institutions that will\ndevelop healthfully in a country by a careful and patient study of that\nnation\u2019s origin. Why is the parliamentary system a dubious success in\nFrance, and the jury an acknowledged failure in Italy? One watches\nanxiously to see whether Russia will find the methods of national\nprogress in the brilliant but fatal examples of a foreign Western\ncivilization or in the fundamental instincts of its own race. The\nEnglish have always been impatient of kings and governors, and have\ntaken every opportunity to establish republican government. We see this\nin the United States. In Australia the race is developing its most\nintensely democratic instincts, and the Australians will certainly not\ntolerate any attempt to draw them closer to any country outside their\nown land. England has, during the present century, owing to special\nconditions, occupied a position in the world enormously disproportioned\nto its size. These special conditions are now rapidly ceasing; the Suez\nCanal, which has dealt so decisive a blow to the commercial greatness\nof England, has made it more difficult than ever for us to maintain the\nartificial position of advantage which we possessed as distributors; so\nthat England, as a distributing power, is being reduced by the failure\nof the Cape route to the same condition as Venice was reduced to by its\ndiscovery. Nor is it merely as a distributing power that England is\nlosing its position; it is losing its position--relatively, that is--as\none of the great producing powers of the world. There will soon be no\nreason why the coarse products of a great part of the earth should be\nsent all the way to a small northern country to be returned in a more\nor less ugly and adulterate manufactured condition. We witness to-day\nthe wonderful development of India as a centre of production. In the\ncolonies the beginnings are small, but they are rapidly increasing;\nin these matters it is the first step that costs; while a well-marked\ntendency to protection, not likely on the whole to diminish, tends\nto make both America and Australia self-dependent, and, in the East,\nJapan is becoming a controlling force that has to be reckoned with.\nWe are still, indeed, far from the time when the chief industry of\nEngland will be the _Fremdenindustrie_, but we may already trace the\ndevelopment of England as a museum of antiquities and as a Holy Land\nfor the whole English-speaking race. Everywhere, for those who have\nbeen born in the colonies, England is a remote land of glamour and\ntradition, a land of sacred associations and strange old-world customs,\nand the most radical colonist is a conservative where the old country\nis concerned. Everyone who has lived in the colonies has come upon this\nattitude of sentiment, perhaps with a shock of surprise; nor is it\neasy at once for a prosaic Londoner to realize the feelings of the man\nwho arrives for the first time in the land of his fathers and beholds\nFenchurch Street and Cheapside through an atmosphere of old romance.\nYet this emotional attitude will develop mightily with the development\nof English-speaking nations, and will but be strengthened by the dying\ndown of England\u2019s political and commercial activity. Every country must\nsuccumb at last, but to succumb to its own children is a happier fate\nthan ever befell any great country of old.\n\nIt has been necessary to take this brief survey of the influences\nthat are now modifying the face of the civilized world, for it is in\nthis theatre and under these conditions that the three great modern\nforces that we shall meet with throughout this book are acting. What\nimpresses one is the vast resonance which now accompanies every human\nachievement, because of the communalization and extension of the\nmethods of intercourse. It has become one of the chief tasks of science\nto attain unity, unity of standard and measure and nomenclature; this\nhas been the object of numberless conferences. It is to attain this end\nthat the efforts to manufacture a universal language have obtained some\nsupport, fruitless as they have hitherto been. It was by a wholesome\ninstinct that men formerly clung to Latin as the universal language of\neducated Christendom; the humanizing intercourse which by means of a\ncommon language broke through the barriers of race, forms one of the\nmost charming features of the early Middle Ages. The equally wholesome\ninstinct of individual development has intervened; but the other again\nbecomes dominant, and the universal language becomes more and more\ninevitable every day. Around it will centre the chief struggle and the\nchief triumph of the scientific spirit.\n\nThe very splendour and inevitable impetus of these modern movements is\nproducing, here and there among us, a reasonable reaction, a reaction\nagainst the hurry and excitement of modern life. And yet, perhaps, less\na reaction than their natural outcome and development.\n\nIt is by art and religion that men have always sought rest. Art is a\nworld of man\u2019s own making, in which he finds harmonious development,\na development that satisfies because framed to the measuring-rod of\nhis most delicate senses. Religion is the anodyne cup--indeed of our\nown blood--at which we slake our thirst when our hearts are torn by\npersonal misery, or weary and distracted by life\u2019s heat and restless\nhurry. At times, the great motor instincts of our nature, impelling us\nby a force that we cannot measure or control, cause us to break up our\ndainty house of art, or to dash down bravely the cup of healing. But\nwe shall always return to them again; they, too, represent an instinct\nat the root of our being. In the recognition of this harmony lies the\nsecret of wise living.\n\nReligion is hidden by many a strange garment, but its heart is the\nsame, and built firmly into the human structure. The old mystic spoke\ntruly when he defined God as an unutterable sigh. Now and again we\nmust draw a deep breath of relief--and that is religion. That no\nintellectual belief or opinion is necessarily bound up with religion,\nit is nowadays unnecessary to show. To how many has Schopenhauer--an\nindifferent philosopher, but a great master of the secrets of\nreligion--brought from afar, into the light of the modern world,\nthe mysteries of the soul that seeks for consolation? A weary and\ndistracted creature, at war even with himself, he was of those for\nwhom the Kingdom of Heaven is especially made; he sought and found,\nand moulded into the sweet harmonics of his prose, the things that\nmake for rest and for consolation--and who is not sometimes weary and\ndistracted, and in need of rest? We English, it is true, are not an\naboriginally religious people; we are great in practical life, and\nwe are marvellous poets; but while we have an immense appetite for\nimported religion, we have never ourselves even produced one of those\nmanuals of piety which, since the days of L\u00e2o-tsze, have become the\ncommon possession of the devout everywhere. One little Encheiridion\nalone there is, so far as I know, in which, during recent years, an\nEnglish writer has brought echoes of old times, of exhilaration or of\npeace, into forms which enable the children of to-day to be at one\nwith those of former days. \u201cQuid nobis cum generibus et speciebus?\u201d\nasked the author of the \u201cImitation.\u201d Hugo de St. Victor was driven to\nreligion by the barrenness of dialectics: \u201cTruth cannot be discovered\nby ratiocination,\u201d he said; \u201cit is by what he is that man finds truth.\u201d\nTo-day, Edward Carpenter escapes from the burden of science to find joy\nfor awhile in the perennial fountain which springs up within, and which\nthe measuring-rod of science has never meted. \u201cTowards Democracy\u201d has a\nquality of its own, which many have tasted with delight, and which will\nprobably give it place with those sources of joy known to few, but well\nloved of those few.\n\nFor religion is a mystery, into which not all of us are initiated. The\nroad to the Kingdom of Heaven, as it was well said of old time, is\nnarrow, and blessed are they who, having reached it, stay but a little\nwhile! To drink deep of that cup is to have all the motor energies of\nlife paralyzed. Art remains to give us the same joy and refreshment,\nin more various, wholesome, and acceptable forms. For art is nothing\nless than the world as we ourselves make it, the world re-moulded\nnearer to the heart\u2019s desire. In this construction of a world around\nus, in harmonious response to all our senses, we have at once a healthy\nexercise for our motor activities, and the restful satisfaction of\nour sensory needs. Art, as no mere passive hyper\u00e6sthesia to external\nimpressions, or exclusive absorption in a single sense, but as a\nmany-sided and active delight in the wholeness of things, is the great\nrestorer of health and rest to the energies distracted by our turbulent\nmodern movements. Thus understood, it has the firmest of scientific\nfoundations; it is but the reasonable satisfaction of the instinctive\ncravings of the organism, cravings that are not the less real for being\noften unconscious. Its satisfaction means the presence of joy in our\ndaily life, and joy is the prime tonic of life. It is the gratification\nof the art-instinct that makes the wholesome stimulation of labour\njoyous; it is in the gratification of the art-instinct that repose\nbecomes joyous. The fanatical commercialism that has filled so much\nof our century made art impossible--so impossible that beyond one\nor two voices, raised to hysterical scream, no one dared to protest\nagainst it. The satisfaction of the art-instinct is now one of the\nmost pressing of social needs. In England, William Morris probably\nstands first among those who have perceived this weighty fact. A man\nof immense energies and varied activities, one of the greatest modern\nmasters of English speech and poet-craft, an ardent advocate of the\nmost advanced social ideas of his time, he has slowly felt his way to\nthe realization of the truth, that the secret of good living is even\neconomically involved in the communalization of art. Our most glorious\ndreamer, he has placed this conception at the foundation of his lovely\nand substantial visions.\n\nIt is true, indeed, that we have already an art in which for the\ngreat mass of people to-day our desires and struggles and ideals are\nfaithfully mirrored. The great art of the century has been fiction. It\nis common, among some writers, to speak contemptuously of novels, but\nthe mass of contemporary fiction has a value that is little realized,\nand perhaps is not likely to be realized, for some time to come. There\nis a very large and wonderful and little-read collection of fiction,\nthe \u201cActa Sanctorum,\u201d in which the whole life and soul of a remote\nperiod are laid bare to us. It is, like our own fiction, a fiction that\nis more than half reality, and it has often seemed to me that the\nnovels of this century will in the future be found to have precisely\nthe same value as the \u201cActa Sanctorum.\u201d For the novel is contemporary\nmoral history in a deeper sense than the De Goncourts meant. Many\nnovels of to-day will be found to express the distinctive features of\nour age as truly as the distinctive features of another age, its whole\ninner and outer life, are expressed in Gothic architecture.\n\nWilliam Morris looks back wistfully towards the popular art of the\nMiddle Ages, and deals out scorn to the novel; he is unjust to our\nmodern popular art. Yet, by a wholesome instinct. For fiction is, more\nthan any other art, the art of a period of repression. The world\u2019s\ngreat ages have never much cared to rehearse themselves in the brooding\nsolitudes that the story-teller demands. Our faces now are turned in\nanother direction.\n\nI have tried to obtain and present here a faint tracing of the\nevolution of the modern spirit, as it strikes a contemporary. In the\nsubsequent chapters we shall be able to trace it yet more distinctly,\nat different stages, and in various phases. Diderot, eclipsed once, is\nseen now, as, in a manifold sense which may be claimed for no other\nman, the initiator of our own day in all its varied manifestations,\nand, above all, in its practical scientific spirit. In Heine we see\nthe most characteristic, if not the finest, artist of the second\nquarter of our century, the melodious embodiment of all its discords,\nthe impersonation of a transition which we have all passed through, and\nwhich draws us to him with cords of a peculiarly personal tenderness.\nWhitman represents, for the first time since Christianity swept over\nthe world, the re-integration, in a sane and whole-hearted form, of\nthe instincts of the entire man, and therefore he has a significance\nwhich we can scarcely over-estimate. Goethe had done something of this\nin a more artistic and intellectual shape; it is from no lack of love\nor reverence for Goethe that I have chosen the American, a democrat\nrather than an aristocrat, the very roughness of whose grasp of life\nserves but to reveal the genuine instinct of the modern Greek. All that\nis finest in aristocracy we see revealed in Ibsen, a keen and sombre\nfigure that reminds one perpetually of Dante--the same curt and awful\ncontempt for lies and for shams, the same vision of a Heaven beyond.\nInto such Kingdoms of Heaven it needs but a child to enter, and when\nI see this man with that little diamond wedge of sincerity and the\nmighty Thor\u2019s hammer of his art, I feel as though no mountain of error\ncould resist the new spirit that he represents. In Tolstoi we see the\nmanifestation of another great modern force; no keenness or clearness\nhere indeed in the interpretation of life, though such a marvellous\npower of presentation; yet a massive elemental force, groping slowly\nand incoherently towards the light, so interesting to us because we\nseem to be conscious of the heart of a whole nation, the great nation\nof the future, towards which all eyes are turned.\n\nCertainly old things are passing away; not the old ideals only,\nbut even the regret they leave behind is dead, and we are shaping\ninstinctively our new ideals. Yet we are at peace with the past. The\nstreams of hot lava flow forth and cover the world; the lava is but\nthe minute fragments of former life. We marvel at the prodigality\nof nature, but how marvellous, too, the economy! The old cycles are\nfor ever renewed, and it is no paradox that he who would advance can\nnever cling too close to the past. The thing that has been is the\nthing that will be again; if we realize that, we may avoid many of the\ndisillusions, miseries, insanities, that for ever accompany the throes\nof new birth. Set your shoulder joyously to the world\u2019s wheel: you may\nspare yourself some unhappiness if, beforehand, you slip the book of\n_Ecclesiastes_ beneath your arm.\n\n\n\n\nDIDEROT.\n\n\nOf the three intellectual heroes of the Revolution, Diderot exercised\nthe least apparent influence; he was, for the most part, too far\nahead of his time, and his tremendous energies were frequently either\nconcealed or dissipated along innumerable channels. The humane\nVoltaire, short-sighted, but so keen within his range, whose sarcasm\nwas always on the side of benevolence; the morbid, wrong-headed,\nsuffering Rousseau, who spent his life in bringing to birth an\nexquisite emotional thrill which is now a common possession--these\ntwo men stood out in the eyes of all, then and long after, as the\nstandard-bearers of revolution. On the other hand, Diderot\u2019s great\nGerman contemporary, Goethe, the only man with whom he may fairly\nbe compared, has during most part of this century seemed to us the\ninaugurator of the spiritual activities of the modern world. Goethe\nis still full of meaning; it will be long before we have exhausted\n\u201cWilhelm Meister\u201d or \u201cFaust.\u201d Perhaps, now that we are so anxious to\nreform the world before reforming ourselves, we need more than ever\nthe example of Goethe\u2019s self-culture and self-restraint, of his wise\nreverence for temperance and harmony. But even Goethe, with that\npeaceful Weimar atmosphere about him, seems to us a little antique and\nremote from our modern ways. Diderot, on the other hand, who grew up\nand lived among the various and turbulent activities of the city that\nwas in his time the focus of European life, appears before us now as a\nspirit of the latter nineteenth century, at one with our aspirations\nto-day. It was fitting that his works should wait until our own time\nfor the most adequate and complete publication yet possible, and that\nhe should now first receive full and ungrudging appreciation.[2] \u201cAt\nthe distance of some centuries Diderot will appear prodigious; men will\nlook from afar at that universal head with admiration mingled with\nastonishment, as we to-day look at the heads of Plato and Aristotle.\u201d\nSo Rousseau wrote, at the end of his life, of the friend whose\nunwearying kindness he--almost alone among human beings--had at last\nwearied out; to-day the prophecy seems in a fair way of fulfilment.\n\n[2] The handsome edition of Diderot\u2019s \u201c\u0152uvres\u201d in some twenty volumes,\nedited by Ass\u00e9zat and Tourneux, contains nearly a fourth of previously\nunpublished material, much of considerable interest. The _centenaire_\nedition of his \u201c\u0152uvres Choisies,\u201d comprised in one moderate-sized\nvolume, includes all that most people need read of Diderot\u2019s works,\nand is, on the whole, a most varied and judicious selection, made by\nsuch competent editors as Letourneau, Lef\u00e8vre, Guyot, V\u00e9ron, &c. Mr.\nMorley\u2019s well-known work on Diderot and the Encyclop\u00e6dists has done\nmore than anything else to create an intelligent English interest in\nthe matter.\n\nThe whole life of Diderot, all his actions and all his words,\neverything that he wrote, bears the impress of his ever-flaming\nenthusiasm. That \u201cair vif, ardent et fou,\u201d which, in his own words,\nmarked him in early life, meets us at every turn. As a boy at the\nJesuit College he wished to go out into the world. \u201cBut what do you\nwish to be?\u201d asked over and over again that most excellent of fathers,\nthe cutler of Langres. And the young Diderot persisted that he wanted\nto be nothing: \u201cmais rien, mais rien du tout.\u201d He was not the last\nyouth who, feeling the stirring of a deep instinct, would not, and\ncould not, shut himself down to one narrow path of life. But to the\nmen of this stamp \u201cnothing\u201d means \u201ceverything.\u201d Then ten years passed,\nten years, as his daughter wrote, passed \u201csometimes in good society,\nsometimes in indifferent, not to say bad, society, given up to work, to\npain, to pleasure, to weariness, to want, sometimes intoxicated with\ngaiety, sometimes drowned in bitter reflection.\u201d He taught mathematics:\nif the scholar was apt, he taught him all day; if he was a fool, he\nleft him. \u201cHe was paid in books, in furniture, in linen, in money, or\nnot at all.\u201d When teaching failed he had to earn money how he could--as\nby supplying a missionary with a stock of sermons. Once he had to\nstarve for a few days. That was not the least instructive experience\nto the youth, for he resolved that, whenever he could help it, no\nfellow-creature should suffer the like.\n\nThere could have been no better education. It was the seed-time of all\nhis energies, of his encyclop\u00e6dic knowledge, of his manifold hold on\nlife, of his extraordinary capacity. He found time in the midst of it\nto fall in love with and marry a pious, honest, and affectionate girl\nwho happened to be living in a room near him, but who was so ignorant\nthat she once scolded him for the amount (very far from excessive) that\nhe took for his writings; she could not imagine that mere writing could\nbe worth so much. That he was not always faithful to her scarcely needs\nto be told; that could, perhaps, have been otherwise at no period,\nleast of all in eighteenth-century Paris. There is a deep pathos in\nthe brief story of her long life and her devotion to the husband whose\nown energies were at the service of any human being, however poor or\ndisreputable, who cared to climb up the stairs to his room. In the\nearly days of poverty she would make little sacrifices to procure a\ncup of coffee or similar trifling luxury for her husband; and during\nhis last illness, though she would have given her life, her daughter\nwrote, to make him a Christian, yet realizing how deeply rooted his\nconvictions were, she shielded him from the efforts of the orthodox,\nand would not leave the parish _cur\u00e9_ alone with him for an instant;\nat his death, the daughter adds, she \u201cregretted the unhappiness he\nhad caused her as another would have regretted happiness.\u201d But we do\nnot regret unhappiness; it is but another way of saying that life\nis complex and full of mitigation. In tenderness Diderot was never\ndeficient; he was clearly a man of deep family affection; he seems\nto have inherited this from his father; so judicious a critic as\nSainte-Beuve remarks that of the whole group of _philosophes_--not\neminent, perhaps, in this respect--Diderot was the one who \u201cmost\npiously cultivated the relations of father, of son, of brother, and who\nbest felt and practised family morality,\u201d and we constantly come across\ntraces of this \u201cpiety.\u201d He tells us with great glee how, when he was\nonce walking through his native Langres, a townsman came up to him and\nsaid, \u201cMonsieur Diderot, you are a good man, but, if you think that you\nwill ever be equal to your father, you are mistaken.\u201d His eldest sister\nseems to have had something of his own downrightness and solidity;\nhe loves her, he says, not because she is his sister, but because he\n\u201clikes excellent things.\u201d His only brother was an ecclesiastic and a\nbigot, but Diderot dwells on the inexhaustible charity by which this\nrather eccentric man had impoverished himself. At the latter part of\nhis life Diderot\u2019s letters are full of proof of his tender love for his\ndaughter, of the care and thought he devoted to her education, of the\ngentleness with which he sought to open to her the mysteries of the\nworld.\n\nAt the age of twenty-eight Diderot conceived the plan of that\n\u201cEncyclop\u00e6dia\u201d which became the central activity of his life. A\nfew years later he published his first work, a free translation of\nShaftesbury\u2019s \u201cEssay on Merit and Virtue,\u201d which indicates well the\nphilosophical point from which he set out. It was followed, a year\nafter, by the \u201cPens\u00e9es Philosophiques,\u201d a few brief pages, full of\ncondensed and vigorous satire on the theologians and of robust faith\nin man and nature. Perhaps the most memorable is that in which he\nimagines that a man, betrayed by his wife, his children, his friends,\nretired into a cavern to meditate some awful revenge against the human\nrace, a perpetual source of dread and misery; at last the misanthrope\nrushed out of his cavern shouting. \u201cGod! God!\u201d and his fatal desire\nwas accomplished: this account of the matter at all events indicates\nhow little, even at this early period of his life, Diderot sympathized\nwith the fashionable Deism of his day. The book was condemned to be\nburned by command of Parliament, but it was subsequently reinforced by\nstill more audacious additions. So began characteristically, if with\nsomething of the reckless impetuosity of youth, a series of writings,\nfar too long even to name here, many that were only published at his\ndeath, some that are only now being published, a large number that have\nprobably been lost altogether--all marked by the same prodigious wealth\nand variety and eloquence. Yet they lie apart from the great work of\nhis life. The \u201cEncyclop\u00e6dia\u201d occupied thirty years; the appearance of\nthe first volume was retarded by Diderot\u2019s imprisonment at Vincennes,\nand it appeared in 1751; the last appeared in 1772. The \u201cEncyclop\u00e6dia\u201d\nwas more than an encyclop\u00e6dia; it was not founded on that of Chambers,\nby which it was suggested, nor is it represented by our own estimable\n\u201cEncyclop\u00e6dia Britannica.\u201d It was not a simple summary of the knowledge\nof the time, for the benefit of a community trained to appreciate the\nvalue of science. It was in the words of the prospectus, \u201ca general\npicture of the efforts of the human spirit in every field, in every\nage.\u201d It was the frank and audacious application to the whole of\nknowledge of new ideas, for the first time loudly proclaimed to a\nsociety slowly crumbling to ruin, but still by no means powerless. It\nwas an evangelistic enterprise among infidels, with dangers on every\nside, and where one holds one\u2019s life in one\u2019s hands. We may still\nappreciate the significance of such a struggle. The future in every\nage belongs to those who can see further ahead than their fellows, and\nwho fight their way towards the vision that they see; but the risks are\nequally great under any condition of society, and some sort of Bastille\nor Vincennes is always at hand.\n\nDiderot was certainly of all men most fitted to organize and uphold\nthis great work and to carry it to triumphal completion. He said once\nof himself that he belonged to his windy countryside of Langres;\n\u201cthe man of Langres has a head on his shoulders like the weathercock\non the top of the church spire--it is never fixed at one point.\u201d He\nwas scarcely just to himself; with all his emotional vivacity and\nhis readiness to receive new impressions, there was in him also an\ninfinite patience and a tenacity to hold on to the end in spite of\nall. Both his versatility and his patience were called for here. He\nwas indefatigable, for ever animating the waverers, stimulating the\nslow-paced, fighting with timid publishers, himself having a hand in\neverything, ever ready to suggest new ideas or to spend months in\nstudying the details of machines or factories, or anything else that\nhad to be done; knowing all the time that at every moment he might be\nexiled or imprisoned. The personal qualities of the man, even more\nthan his varied abilities, carried him through. Someone speaks of\n\u201chis eyes on fire and the prophetic air which seemed always announcing\nthe enthusiasm of actual labour;\u201d we hear of his \u201c\u00e9loquence fougueuse\net entra\u00eenante;\u201d and, with this, of his feminine sensibility, his wit\nand tact and fertility of resource. We divine these qualities in his\nhead as it has come down to us, though his characteristics do not\neasily lend themselves to brush or chisel. He has himself some remarks\non this point. In his _Salons_ he comes upon his own portrait by Van\nLoo, and, after some good-humoured criticism, he adds: \u201cBut what will\nmy grandchildren say when they come to compare my sad books with\nthat smiling, mincing, effeminate old flirt? My children, I warn you\nthat I am not like that. I had a hundred different faces in one day,\naccording to the thing that affected me. I was calm, sad, dreaming,\ntender, violent, passionate, enthusiastic, but I was never as you see\nme there. I had a large forehead, very bright eyes, tolerably large\nfeatures, a head quite like that of an ancient orator, a _bonhomie_\nwhich approached stupidity, and an old-fashioned rusticity. I wear a\nmask which deceives the artist, whether it is that there are too many\nthings mixed together, or that the mental impressions which trace\nthemselves on my face succeed one another so rapidly that the painter\u2019s\ntask becomes more difficult than he expected. I have never been well\ndone except by a poor devil called Garand, who caught me as it happens\nto a fool who utters a _bon mot_.\u201d Meister, Grimm\u2019s secretary, who knew\nDiderot well, says of him: \u201cThe artist who would seek an ideal head for\nPlato or Aristotle could hardly meet a modern head more worth his study\nthan Diderot\u2019s. His large forehead, uncovered and slightly rounded,\nbore the imposing imprint of his large, luminous, and fertile spirit.\nThe great physiognomist, Lavater, thought he detected there some\ntraces of timidity and lack of enterprise, and this intuition, founded\nonly on such portraits as he could see, has always seemed to me that\nof a keen observer.[3] His nose was of masculine beauty, the contour\nof his upper eyelid full of delicacy, the habitual expression of his\neyes sensitive and gentle; but when he became excited they gleamed\nwith fire; his mouth revealed an interesting mixture of refinement,\nof grace, of _bonhomie_; and, whatever indifference there might be\nabout his bearing, there was naturally in the carriage of his head,\nespecially when he began to talk, much energy and dignity. Enthusiasm\nseemed to have become the most natural attitude of his voice, of his\nsoul, of all his features. When his mental attitude was cold and calm,\none might find in him constraint, awkwardness, timidity, even a sort\nof affectation; he was only truly Diderot, he was only truly himself,\nwhen his thoughts transported him beyond himself.\u201d\n\n[3] \u201cTimid and awkward in his own cause,\u201d says Meister elsewhere, \u201che\nwas scarcely ever so in that of others.\u201d\n\nIt was the inexhaustible profusion and generosity of Diderot\u2019s genius\nwhich seems to have impressed men chiefly. A small literary man of\nthe time wrote his impression of Diderot, as he appeared in later\nlife, with what is probably but a very mild touch of good-natured\ncaricature:--\u201cSome time ago I had a desire to write a book. I sought\nsolitude in order to meditate. A friend lent me an apartment in a\ncharming house amid delightful scenery. Hardly had I arrived when I\nlearnt that M. Diderot occupied a room in the same house. I do not\nexaggerate when I say that my heart beat violently; I forgot all my\nliterary projects, and thought only of seeing the great man whose\ngenius I so much admired. I entered his room with the dawn, and he\nseemed no more surprised to see me than it. He spared me the trouble of\nstammering awkwardly the object of my visit. He guessed it apparently\nby my air of admiration. He spared me likewise the long windings of\na conversation which must be led to poetry and prose. Hardly was it\nmentioned than he rose, fixed his eyes upon me, and, it was quite\nclear, did not see me at all. He began to speak, at first very low and\nfast, so that though I was quite close to him I could scarcely hear or\nfollow him. I saw at once that my part in the conversation would be\nlimited to silent admiration, a part which it costs me little to play.\nGradually his voice rose and became distinct and sonorous; he had been\nalmost immovable; now his gestures became frequent and animated. He\nhad never seen me before, and when we were standing he put his arms\nround me; when we were seated he struck my thighs as though they were\nhis own. If the rapid courses of his talk brought in the word \u2018law,\u2019\nhe made me a plan of legislation; if the word \u2018theatre\u2019 came in, he\noffered me the choice between five or six plans of dramas. _A propos_\nof the relation between the scene and the dialogue, he recalls that\nTacitus is the greatest painter of antiquity, and recites or translates\nfor me the Annals or the History. But how terrible that the barbarians\nshould have buried in the ruins of architectural masterpieces so many\nof Tacitus\u2019s _chefs-d\u2019\u0153uvre_! Thereupon he grows as tender over those\nlost beauties as though he had known them. But if the excavations at\nHerculaneum should reveal fresh Annals and Histories! And this hope\ntransports him with joy. But how often in the process of discovery\nignorant hands have destroyed the masterpieces preserved in tombs! And\nhere he dissertates like an Italian engineer on methods of excavation.\nThen his imagination turns to ancient Italy, and he recalls how the\narts of Athens had softened the terrible virtues of the conquerors of\nthe world. He turns to the happy days of L\u00e6lius and Scipio, when even\nthe conquered assisted with delight in the triumphs of the conquerors.\nHe acts for me an entire scene of Terence; he almost sings several\nsongs of Horace. He concludes by actually singing a song full of grace\nand wit, an impromptu of his own at a supper, and recites for me a very\nagreeable comedy of which, to save the trouble of copying, he has had\na single copy printed. Then a number of people entered the room. The\nnoise of chairs makes him break off his enthusiastic monologue. Then he\ndistinguishes me in the midst of the company, and comes up to me as to\na person whom one has previously met with pleasure. He reminds me that\nwe have talked about many very interesting things--law, drama, history;\nhe acknowledges that there was much to be learnt from my conversation,\nand makes me promise to cultivate an acquaintance the value of which\nhe appreciates. At parting he gives me two kisses on the forehead, and\nsnatches his hand from mine with genuine sorrow.\u201d Diderot is recorded\nto have laughed heartily at this sketch when he saw it in the \u201cMercure\u201d\nof 1779: \u201cI must be an eccentric sort of fellow; but is it such a great\nfault to have preserved amid all the friction of society some vestiges\nof the angularity of nature?\u201d\n\nThese impressions are confirmed by those of the Empress Catherine,\nwhose delicate generosity in buying Diderot\u2019s library and appointing\nhim librarian smoothed the last years of his life. She wrote to\nMme. Geoffrin: \u201cYour Diderot is an extraordinary man. I emerge from\ninterviews with him with thighs bruised and quite black. I have been\nobliged to put a table between us to protect myself and my members.\u201d He\ncould not understand, his daughter remarks, that one must not behave\nthe same way in a palace as in a barn. It must be added, in justice to\nDiderot, that Catherine was no lover of ceremony, as she certainly let\nDiderot know.\n\nHe was the same to everybody; not more ready to furnish the Empress\nwith the plan of a university on the largest scale, and in accordance\nwith the most advanced ideas, than to write laughingly _Avis au public_\nfor a new pomade to promote the luxuriant growth of the hair. He was\nequally ready to throw out the brilliant suggestions which Helvetius\nand Holbach worked into their books \u201cDe l\u2019Esprit\u201d and the \u201cSyst\u00e8me\nde la Nature,\u201d and to assist some poor devil in tatters who, once\nat least, after he had long fed and clothed him, turned out to be a\npolice spy; he was none the less bountiful to every comer. Now we\nsee him devising ingenious ruses to obtain succour for a nobleman\u2019s\nforsaken mistress; again finding a manager for Voltaire\u2019s comedy,\nthe \u201cD\u00e9positaire,\u201d or revising Galiani\u2019s \u201cDialogues\u201d on the wheat\ntrade. The Dauphin dies; a monument must be erected to him in Sens\nCathedral; Diderot is sought out and speedily submits five designs.\nAll the men of talent and all the people in distress found their way\nto Diderot; dedicatory epistles for needy musicians, plots of comedies\nfor playwrights deficient in invention, prefaces, discourses--no one\nwent away disappointed who climbed up to that fourth-floor door in the\ncorner house of the Rue St. Beno\u00eet and the Rue Taranne.\n\nSome of his benevolent schemes were certainly of a rather dubious\ncharacter; there seems to linger about them a touch of the\nsanctification of means by ends which we may, if we like, attribute to\nhis Jesuit education. In his comedy, \u201cEst-il bon? Est-il m\u00e9chant?\u201d--no\ndoubt the best of his plays--he has satirized himself in the person\nof the hero, Hardouin, a man who gets into terrible scrapes with his\nfriends from the questionable devices by which he tries to serve them;\nobtaining, for instance, a pension for a widow lady by pretending that\nher child is illegitimate, and causing an obdurate mother to acquiesce\neagerly in the marriage of her daughter by delicately suggesting that\nshe has already been seduced. We find Diderot carrying on various\nbenevolent little intrigues of this kind when we read his letters to\nMlle. Voland.\n\nThese letters to Mlle. Voland form the most characteristic and\nintimately personal record of himself that Diderot left. He was forty\nyears old when the correspondence began, and it lasted for more than\ntwenty years. Of Sophie Voland almost nothing is known; we only catch\nglimpses of her as a woman of wide sympathies and decided intelligence,\nneither very young nor pretty, and wearing spectacles; she lived with\nher family, who were clearly more orthodox and conventional than\nherself, and must not, as Diderot frequently hints, see everything that\nhe writes. Of the depth and reality of his affection for her there\nis no doubt; his editors have discussed the question as to whether\nthis affection was throughout of the nature of friendship only, or\nwhether, according to the phrase of Sainte-Beuve, an hour\u2019s passion had\nserved as the golden key to the most precious and intimate secrets of\nfriendship. This may be as it will; Diderot had found some one in whose\npresence he could show himself, without reserve or precaution, on every\nside of his manifold nature, and he was always tenderly grateful to the\nwoman who had procured him this sweetest of pleasures. \u201cMy Sophie is\nboth man and woman,\u201d he wrote to her, \u201cwhen she pleases;\u201d as such he\nalways addressed her, pouring out recklessly all that happened to be\nin his head, narrating the incidents of the day, telling what he was\nthinking about or projecting, repeating current scandal or sometimes\nnot quite decent story, flashing instinctively into wise or witty\nreflection; always with a swift, almost unconscious pen, forgetting now\nand again what he has already said. It is only in these letters, where\nhe is, as he says, \u201crendering an account of all the moments of a life\nthat belongs to you,\u201d that we realize the personal charm, the exuberant\nstrength and at the same time the weakness of the man who in the midst\nof his manifold energies bursts out: \u201cA delicious repose, a sweet book\nto read, a walk in some open and solitary spot, a conversation in which\none discloses all one\u2019s heart, a strong emotion that brings the tears\nto one\u2019s eyes and makes the heart beat faster, whether it comes of some\ntale of generous action or of a sentiment of tenderness, of health,\nof gaiety, of liberty, of indolence--there is the true happiness, nor\nshall I ever know any other.\u201d\n\nThe \u201cEncyclop\u00e6dia\u201d seems to us to-day but a small portion of the\nachievement of Diderot\u2019s life, though it represents the part that he\nplayed in relation to the science of his time. His place in science\nhas sometimes been wrongly stated. It has been said, for instance,\nthat he anticipated Lamarck and Darwin. It is true that he wrote, \u201cThe\nneed produces the organ; the organization determines the function,\u201d\nand that this contains the germ of Lamarck\u2019s doctrine; and again,\n\u201cThe world is the abode of the strong,\u201d and that this may be said to\nbe the germ of the doctrine of natural selection; but at both points\nhe was simply putting into epigrammatic form the conceptions of the\ngreatest scientific genius of his age and country, Buffon, the only\nman of that time who was cast in the same massive mould, and to whom\nDiderot could turn with fraternal delight and admiration. It is to\nBuffon also, and not to Diderot, that the honour of anticipating\nLyell belongs. It is in his Baconian thoughts on the interpretation\nof nature, and again in such a comprehensive collection of data as\nhis notes on physiology, discovered of recent years, that Diderot\u2019s\nsearching and inquisitive scientific spirit appears. He frequently\nstartles us by the way in which he vividly realizes and follows out to\ntheir legitimate conclusions those floating ideas of his time which\nwe are working out to-day. Above all, and from the first, he clearly\ngrasps the fundamental value of the human body and its processes in the\ninterpretation of mental phenomena; in one of his comparatively early\nworks, the \u201cLettre sur les Aveugles,\u201d he remarks that he has never\ndoubted that \u201cour most purely intellectual ideas are closely related\nto the conformation of our bodies.\u201d \u201cHow difficult it is,\u201d he says\nelsewhere, \u201cto be a good philosopher and a good moralist without being\nanatomist, naturalist, physiologist, and doctor.\u201d Holding firmly by\nthis clue, he was constantly trying to fathom the mysteries of the soul\nand to picture the processes of life; it is because he has realized\nthat this can only be done fruitfully from the physiological side that\nthe \u201cR\u00eave de d\u2019Alembert,\u201d his most brilliant effort in this direction,\nis interesting after the lapse of a century.\n\nHe brought the same eager, impressionable spirit to his novels and\nstories. It is indeed no great step from \u201cLe R\u00eave de d\u2019Alembert\u201d to\n\u201cLe Neveu de Rameau,\u201d and from that to \u201cLa Religieuse.\u201d Whatever he\nundertook he carried out with the whole energy and enthusiasm of his\nnature, and while this takes from the artistic symmetry of his work, it\nadds to its vitality and significance. It is owing to this quality that\n\u201cLes Bijoux Indiscrets,\u201d a frivolous novel in the style of the younger\nCrebillon, pointless and indecent, written, at the age of thirty-five,\nmainly to obtain money for his mistress, Mme. de Puisieux, contains\npassages which have been considered among the finest he ever wrote,\nand by its reflections on the reform of the theatre, its criticisms\nof manners, and philosophical insight served avowedly as the point of\ndeparture for Lessing\u2019s famous \u201cDramaturgie.\u201d It was not until he read\nRichardson that Diderot produced any very noteworthy work in fiction;\nhis admiration for the English novelist was extreme, but certainly\nnot out of proportion to Richardson\u2019s historic importance. Richardson\nnot only marks the first real landmark in the evolution of the English\nnovel; he is the point of departure of the modern French novel, and\nDiderot, more than any one else, helped to make his influence felt\nin France. Very soon after falling under the spell of the great\nEnglish story-teller and writing his \u201c\u00c9loge de Richardson,\u201d Diderot\nproduced his most famous novel, \u201cLa Religieuse.\u201d It is clear how much\nRichardson influenced this minute study, in autobiographic form, of\nthe life and sufferings of a young girl forced into a convent with\nits uncongenial atmosphere and petty persecutions. It was a distinct\nartistic achievement, the more remarkable as it was certainly intended\nas an attack on the small vices of a community of women isolated from\nthe world. Even those parts of this attack which have been considered\nquestionable are always in the tone of the unsuspecting young girl who\nwrites them, and only become offensive when a modern editor removes\nthem in order to substitute asterisks; compare these passages with the\nmore ostentatious propriety and zeal for virtue of a modern Parisian\nin \u201cMademoiselle Giraud ma Femme.\u201d A year later Diderot wrote an\nunquestionable artistic masterpiece, only preserved for us by a happy\nchance, \u201cLe Neveu de Rameau,\u201d a dialogue of unfailing spirit between\nhimself and a strange social parasite whom he is analyzing. Some years\nlater he fell under the influence of Sterne; \u201cJacques le Fataliste,\u201d\nso attractive to Goethe and many others, was the result. But he had no\ngreat affinity for the sinuous humour of Sterne, and, while he threw\nhimself into it with his usual energy, the result, though Shandean\nenough, is less happy than his great Richardsonian effort. Yet \u201cJacques\nle Fataliste\u201d contains the \u201cHistoire de Mme. de la Pommeraye,\u201d and\nthis little _histoire_, when disentangled from the manifold episodes\nwhich interrupt the hostess of the inn who tells it, is Diderot\u2019s most\nperfect and most characteristic effort as a story-teller. Even in his\nnovels it is the directness and the veracity of his scientific spirit,\nunited to his emotional impressionability, which gives significance to\nhis work.\n\nThe same features mark his plays, though here the result has ceased to\nbe pleasing, and we may be permitted to-day not to read through the\n\u201cFils Naturel\u201d and the \u201cP\u00e8re de Famille.\u201d Yet we must not forget that\nfrom them is dated the modern drama, with the notes of sincerity and\nsimple realism, peculiar then to Diderot, which nowadays have become a\nmore common possession. Diderot\u2019s dramas produced a great and immediate\neffect in Germany, on Goethe and Schiller as well as on Iffland and\nKotzebue, and the \u201cP\u00e8re de Famille\u201d was translated by Lessing.\n\nAs a critic of the stage Diderot has, perhaps, attracted exaggerated\nattention, though he has not escaped misunderstanding, most people\u2019s\nknowledge of his opinions on this head beginning and ending with the\n\u201cParadoxe sur le Com\u00e9dien.\u201d Diderot at first attributed, as from the\nnature of his temperament he was sure to do, the chief part in acting\nto emotion and sensibility; in time he outgrew this youthful opinion,\nand in the \u201cParadoxe\u201d he emphasized as strongly as he could the part\nof study and reflection in the actor\u2019s art, a part which must always\nbe of the first importance, notwithstanding all the tears shed by\ncharming actresses, and carefully bottled for controversial purposes.\nDiderot was far too sane and many-sided to see only one aspect of so\ncomplex an art as the actor\u2019s; it is, as he says, \u201cstudy, reflection,\npassion, sensibility, the true imitation of nature,\u201d which go to make\nup good acting. An interesting and too brief series of letters to Mlle.\nJodin is well worth reading from this point of view. Mlle. Jodin, the\ndaughter of an old friend of his, was a rather wild and impetuous young\nlady of some talent who had suddenly adopted the life of an actress.\nDiderot performed many small services both for her and her mother, and\nwrote letters full of wise and, it appears, much-needed counsel as\nto her conduct both on and off the stage. \u201cMademoiselle,\u201d he writes,\n\u201cthere is nothing good in this world but that which is true; be true,\nthen, on the stage, true off the stage.... An actor who has nothing\nbut sense and judgment is cold; one who has nothing but _verve_ and\nsensibility is mad. It is a certain temperament of mingled good sense\nand warmth which makes men sublime; on the stage and in the world he\nwho shows more than he feels makes us laugh instead of touching us.\u201d\n\nDiderot inaugurated modern art criticism by the notices of the\npictures in the Salon, which he wrote during many years for \u201cGrimm\u2019s\nCorrespondence.\u201d One cannot help regretting that he was not born among\na greater group of artists. Chardin we still esteem, and Greuze is at\nthe height of his popularity, but it is difficult to take more than an\nantiquarian interest in Boucher, and who cares now for Loutherbourg\nor Van Loo? Even before Joseph Vernet, whose variety, freshness, and\nlove of nature appealed so strongly to Diderot, it sometimes requires\nan effort to be sympathetic. Diderot now and then criticizes with\nseverity--as occasionally when he is dealing with Boucher--but the tone\nof his criticism, as generally happens with contemporary criticism,\nseems to us to-day pitched altogether too high. In one respect, at all\nevents, it is unlike most old appreciations of now neglected pictures;\nit is generally delightful to read, perhaps sometimes more delightful\nthan the picture can ever have seemed. One suspects that Diderot\ntreated pictures like books; Holbach, having read a book he had warmly\nrecommended, came to him to say that the book contained nothing of\nwhich he had spoken. \u201cWell,\u201d replied Diderot, \u201cif it wasn\u2019t there it\nought to have been there.\u201d\n\nEverything that Diderot touched he vitalized. There were few things\nthat he left untouched. There were very few roads of modern life on\nwhich he was not an enthusiastic and often audacious pioneer. He\nseems to have known instinctively the things that we are laboriously\nlearning. So it is with politics, sexual morality, various social and\npolitico-economical questions, education, philosophy. He touched all\nthe social questions which absorb our attention to-day. He approached\nthe problem of the place of the workers in society in the same temper\nin which we approach it to-day, and the practical knowledge of\nindustries and industrial life which he had obtained in order to write\nsome of his most remarkable articles in the \u201cEncyclop\u00e6dia\u201d gave him\nsome right to be heard.\n\nHis views on education, chiefly expressed in the \u201cPlan d\u2019une Universit\u00e9\npour le Gouvernement de Russie,\u201d are on a level with the most advanced\nviews to-day. The education he demands is free and compulsory, and\nhe is in favour of giving children free meals at school. He censures\nclassical teaching, advocates professional education and instruction\nin the natural sciences, \u201cthe study of things rather than the study\nof words.\u201d \u201cI think,\u201d he says, \u201cthat we should give in our schools\nsomething of all the knowledge necessary to a citizen, from legislation\nto the mechanical arts, and in these mechanical arts I include the\noccupations of the lowest class of citizens. The spectacle of human\nindustry is in itself large and satisfying, and it is good to know the\ndifferent ways in which each contributes to the advantages of society.\nThis kind of knowledge is attractive to children, who are naturally\ninquisitive.\u201d Certainly, from more than one point of view, such an\nelement in education would have an important social significance.\n\nOf the functions and position of women--in most countries, he remarks,\nthat of idiot children--he speaks often, shrewdly indeed, yet with\npeculiar sympathy. The most important expression of his opinions\non sexual morality is contained in the \u201cSuppl\u00e9ment au Voyage de\nBougainville.\u201d Bougainville, the first Frenchman to sail round the\nworld, had visited the lovely island of Tahiti, and brought back a\nstrange and vivid picture of the idyllic innocence and frank license\nthat existed there. Diderot was aroused to set forth his views on\nsexual questions with that union of fiery enthusiasm, uncompromising\nthoroughness, and saving grace of humorous good sense which always\ncharacterizes him. He imagines a dialogue between the chaplain of\nBougainville\u2019s expedition and Orou, a Tahitian, who is anxious to know\nwhy the chaplain refuses to conform to the customs of the country.\nThe worthy chaplain represents the morality of civilized Europe, and\nOrou, with a few questions concerning this morality, easily succeeds\nin confounding him and in pouring keen ridicule on the inconsistencies\nof European morals. With reference to rules of conduct which vary\nwith the country and the time, Diderot makes Orou say, \u201cWe must have\na surer rule, and what shall this rule be? Do you know any other than\nthe good of the community and the advantage of the individual?\u201d \u201cYou\nwere unhappy,\u201d he remarks again to the chaplain, \u201cwhen I presented\nto you last night my two daughters and my wife; you exclaimed, \u2018But\nmy religion! my office!\u2019 Do you wish to know what in every time and\nplace is good and bad? Concern yourself with the nature of things and\nof actions, and with your relations to your fellows. Consider the\ninfluence of your conduct on yourself and on the community. You are\nmad if you think that there is anything in the universe, above or\nbelow, which can add to or take from the laws of nature.\u201d That rule,\nhe explains, is the polar star on the path of life, and the invention\nof crimes, punishments, and remorse will only obscure it. \u201cIn founding\nmorality on the relationships which must always exist between men, the\nreligious law becomes perhaps superfluous; and the civil law should\nonly be the enunciation of the law of nature, which we bear engraved\non our hearts, and which must always be the strongest.\u201d At the end\nDiderot intervenes with a counsel of moderation and practical wisdom:\n\u201cWhat shall we do, then? We will protest against foolish laws until\nthey are reformed: meanwhile we will submit. He who by his private\nauthority breaks a bad law, authorizes others to break good laws. There\nis less inconvenience in being mad with the mad than in being wise by\noneself. Let us say to ourselves, let us proclaim incessantly, that\nshame, punishment, and ignominy have been attached to actions which\nin themselves are innocent. But do not let us commit them; for shame,\npunishment, and ignominy are themselves the worst of evils.\u201d\n\n\u201cEvery century has its own spirit; that of ours seems to be liberty.\u201d\nSo in 1776, when men were beginning to say that it was time to burn\nphilosophers instead of their books, and a boy of eighteen was actually\nburned, Diderot wrote to Voltaire, in the famous letter in which he\nannounced that in spite of all he would stay in Paris, among the\nenemies of liberty, to carry on his own mission. Timidity in political\nmatters was excusable in Diderot\u2019s day, and existed even among the men\nof his own set. Helvetius, for instance, advocated the advantages of\npaternal government and benevolent despotism; with his usual keen and\nvigorous good sense, Diderot shows how unreal these advantages are.\nWhen we give a ruler absolute power to do good, we cannot prevent\nhim assuming also an absolute power to do evil. Moreover, as Diderot\ninsisted, it is not possible to make people good against their wills,\nnor is it desirable to treat men like sheep. \u201cIf they say, \u2018We are well\nenough here,\u2019 or if, even, they say, \u2018We are not well here, but we\nwill stay,\u2019 let us try to enlighten them, to undeceive them, to bring\nthem to saner views by persuasion, but never by force.\u201d \u201cThe arbitrary\ngovernment of a just and enlightened prince is always bad.\u201d He insists,\nagain and again, that we must never let our pretended masters do good\nto us against our wills. \u201cWhenever you see the sovereign authority in\na country extending beyond the region of police, you may say that that\ncountry is badly governed.\u201d Diderot, Goethe, Adam Smith, Beccaria,\nMill, to mention but a few typical names, threw all the weight of\ntheir influence, sometimes with passionate emphasis, on the side\nof individuality and freedom, and their teaching reached its final\nconsecration when Darwin accepted as his central theory the fruitful\nidea of Malthus. They felt, and rightly felt, that they were taking\nthe step that was most needed. Those who advocated solidarity and\nsocial co-operation mostly went to the wall. Now it is the turn of the\nsocial instincts, and we must expect them to work themselves out to the\nutmost. We have to see to it that the truth to which Diderot and the\nrest fought their way is not meanwhile lost. The general will is itself\nto-day in danger of becoming a benevolent despotism, and perhaps the\ntime will never arrive when such warnings as these will be quite out\nof date. When it is a question of the oppression of our fellows, we\ncannot always afford to wait until the offender listens to the voice of\npersuasion; him, at least, we must bring within \u201cthe region of police:\u201d\nbeyond that lies danger.\n\n    \u201cEt si j\u2019ai quelque volont\u00e9,\n    C\u2019est que chacun fasse la sienne.\u201d\n\nSo Diderot wrote in some impromptu verses at a convivial gathering\nover which he once presided; it was a summary of his views on\nmany matters. \u201cI am convinced,\u201d he wrote, \u201cthat there can be no\ntrue happiness for the human race except in a social state in\nwhich there is neither king nor magistrate, nor priest nor laws,\nnor _meum_ nor _tuum_, nor property in goods or land, nor vices\nnor virtues.\u201d This is the anarchism that stands at the end of\nall social progress, but as an attainable social state it is\nstill certainly, as Diderot adds, \u201cdiablement id\u00e9al.\u201d He had no\nfaith in moralization by Act of Parliament. \u201cThere will then be\nprostitutes?--Assuredly.--Mistresses?--Why not?--Girls seduced?--I\nexpect there will.--Husbands and wives not always faithful?--I fear\nso. But at least,\u201d he adds, \u201cI shall be spared all those vices which\nmisery, luxury, and poverty produce. The rest may be as it will be.\u201d\n\nDiderot\u2019s robust faith in nature, that finest fruit of the scientific\nspirit, comes out again and again, here and elsewhere. \u201cThe evil-doer\nis one whom we must destroy, not punish\u201d: that is the great truth,\nheld by a large number of the foremost men to-day, which is not even\nyet accepted. \u201cNever to repent and never to reproach others: these\nare the first steps to wisdom.\u201d And, again: \u201cIn the best and most\nhappily constituted man there remains always much of the animal; before\nbecoming a misanthrope, consider whether you have the right.\u201d Not many\nmen have had so much reason as Diderot for becoming misanthropic; few\nmen have had in them less of the misanthrope. \u201cMy life is not stolen\nfrom me,\u201d he writes; \u201cI give it.... A pleasure which is for myself\nalone touches me slightly. It is for myself and for my friends that I\nread, that I reflect, that I write, that I meditate, that I hear, that\nI observe, that I feel.... I have consecrated to them the use of all\nmy senses, and that is perhaps the reason why everything is a little\nenriched in my imagination and conversation; sometimes they reproach\nme, ungrateful as they are. Ungrateful! would I could make hundreds\nungrateful every day!\u201d He never seems to waver in his faith in men,\nnor in the determination, with which, indeed, that faith must ever be\nbound up, to look every fact of nature squarely in the face. The words\nwith which his letters to Sophie Voland close seem to be the constant\nrefrain throughout all his work: \u201cThere is nothing good in this world\nbut that which is true.\u201d\n\nIt cannot be said that Diderot performed any one great and\nparamount achievement. The most brilliant of his fragments--the\n\u201cR\u00eave de d\u2019Alembert\u201d or \u201cLe Neveu de Rameau\u201d--is but a magnificent\nimprovisation. He made no memorable contribution to our knowledge of\nthe world. Nor was his genius of what may be called the wedge-shaped\norder--the genius of the man who, with every nerve strained to the\nsolution of one mystery, never rests until the heart of it is cloven.\nHis genius was essentially fermentative. He knew by a native instinct\nevery promising germ of thought, and he knew how to make it fruitful.\nHe was, as Voltaire called him, Pantophile, the man who loved and was\ninterested in everything. His extreme sensitiveness to impressions\nwas the source of his strength and of his weakness. In his sane,\nmassive, and yet so sensitive temperament, aspirations keen and\nlyrical as Shelley\u2019s seem to blend harmoniously with laughter broad\nand tolerant as Rabelais\u2019s. The latent elements in him of fantastic\nextravagance were held in check by a _bourgeois_ good sense in which\nwe seem to recognize the shrewd old cutler of Langres. There is a\nprofound democratic instinct in him; his never-failing faith in nature\nand man seems to be a part of this; it is a faith that may possibly be\nfoolish, but for all those who are born men it is the most reasonable\nfaith, and it has commended itself most to those who have been oftenest\ndisillusioned.\n\nThere can be no doubt that the immediate effect of the Revolution of\n1789 was to kill the spirit that Diderot represented--the spirit of\nscientific advance, active even to audacity, and allied with a firm\nfaith in man and in social development. The party of progress were\nnot able to recognize progress in the form of the Revolution, and the\nmore obviously dominating movement of the century that is now closing\nhas been the Counter-Revolution, corresponding in many respects to\nthat Counter-Reformation which dominated Catholic countries during\nthe seventeenth century. Putting aside a few stray enthusiasts,\nlike Shelley or Owen, attractive personalities with little grasp\nof practical life, the men who have directed European thought,\nespecially in England, have been men whose imaginations were profoundly\nimpressed, and their mental equilibrium considerably disturbed, by\nthat brief convulsion of France; and they developed a curious timidity\nand distrust, visible even when they had the courage to adopt a\nshort-sighted optimism. It is very interesting now to turn back to the\nessay in which Carlyle, perhaps the most brilliant and distinguished\nrepresentative of the Counter-Revolution, recorded his estimate of\nDiderot. How curiously old-fashioned seem to us to-day its mitigated\nadmiration, its vague mysticism, its sneers at Diderot\u2019s loquacity,\nhis generosity, his dyspepsia--sneers that, in the light of Carlyle\u2019s\nown life, have aroused feelings of pain, and even indignation, among\nsome who in their youth looked up to Carlyle as to a sort of venerable\nprophet--its absolute failure to perceive that here was a man not to be\nstifled by a handful of transcendental phraseology. Yet this was at the\ntime accepted as an adequate and even generous account of the matter.\nTo-day we are again in the same position as Diderot, and we are able\nto see in him the significance, hidden from Carlyle, of the light of\nscience fearlessly brought to illuminate the whole of life.\n\nWhen men begin to say that everything has been done, the men come\nwho say that there has yet nothing been done. We have congratulated\nourselves that many sciences of nature and of man are in the main\nsettled, but we are always compelled to begin again, and on a larger\nand perhaps simpler scale. In many fields of physical and social\nknowledge--from electricity at the one end to criminology at the\nother--we are now laying anew great foundations, and the walls are\nbeing raised so rapidly that it is sometimes hard to know where we are,\nor to realize what is being done. When science is thus renewing itself,\nand men are on every hand seeking how, by means of science, they may\nenlarge and ennoble life, the spirit that moved Diderot is again making\nitself felt. It is worth while to realize his fellowship for a few\nmoments, and to sun ourselves, if we can bear it, in his inspiring\nenthusiasm.\n\n\n\n\nHEINE.\n\n\nI.\n\nHeine gathers up and focuses for us in one vivid point all those\ninfluences of his own time which are the forces of to-day. He appears\nbefore us, to put it in his own way, as a youthful and militant Knight\nof the Holy Ghost, tilting against the spectres of the past and\nliberating the imprisoned energies of the human spirit. His interest\nfrom this point of view lies, largely, apart from his interest as a\nsupreme lyric poet, the brother of Catullus and Villon and Burns; we\nhere approach him on his prosaic--his relatively prosaic--side.\n\nOne hemisphere of Heine\u2019s brain was Greek, the other Hebrew. He was\nborn when the genius of Goethe was at its height; his mother had\nabsorbed the frank earthliness, the sane and massive Paganism, of the\nRoman Elegies, and Heine\u2019s ideals in all things, whether he would or\nnot, were always Hellenic--using that word in the large sense in which\nHeine himself used it--even while he was the first in rank and the last\nin time of the Romantic poets of Germany. He sought, even consciously,\nto mould the modern emotional spirit into classic forms. He wrought his\nart simply and lucidly, the aspirations that pervade it are everywhere\nsensuous, and yet it recalls oftener the turbulent temper of Catullus\nthan any serener ancient spirit.\n\nFor Heine arose early in active rebellion against a merely passive\nclassicism; in the same way that fiercer and more ardent cries, as\nfrom the East, pierce through the songs of Catullus. The mischievous\nHermes was irritated by the calm and quiet activities of the aged Zeus\nof Weimar. And then the earnest Hebrew nature within him, liberated by\nHegel\u2019s favourite formula of the divinity of man, came into play with\nits large revolutionary thirsts. Thus it was that he appeared before\nthe world as the most brilliant leader of a movement of national or\neven world-wide emancipation. The greater part of his prose works, from\nthe youthful \u201cReisebilder\u201d onwards, and a considerable portion of his\npoetic work, record the energy with which he played this part.\n\nBut whether the Greek or the Hebrew element happened to be most active\nin Heine, the ideal that he set up for life generally was the equal\nactivity of both sides--in other words, the harmony of flesh and\nspirit. It is this thought which dominates \u201cThe History of Religion\nand Philosophy in Germany,\u201d his finest achievement in this kind. That\nbook was written at the moment when Heine touched the highest point\nof his enthusiasm for freedom and his faith in the possibility of\nhuman progress. It is a sort of programme for the immediate future\nof the human spirit, in the form of a brief and bold outline of the\nspiritual history of Germany and Germany\u2019s great emancipators, Luther,\nLessing, Kant, and the rest. It sets forth in a fresh and fascinating\nshape that Everlasting Gospel which, from the time of Joachim of Flora\ndownwards, has always gleamed in dreams before the minds of men as the\nsuccessor of Christianity. Heine\u2019s vision of a democracy of cakes and\nale, founded on the heights of religious, philosophical, and political\nfreedom, may still spur and thrill us,--even now-a-days, when we have\nwearied of stately bills of fare for a sulky humanity that will not\nfeed at our bidding, no, not on cakes and ale. Heine is wise enough to\nsee, however imperfectly, that it is unreasonable to expect the speedy\nerection of any New Jerusalem; for, as he expresses it in his own way,\nthe holy vampires of the Middle Ages have sucked away so much of our\nlife-blood that the world has become a hospital. A sudden revolution of\nfever-stricken or hysterical invalids can effect little of permanent\nvalue; only a long and invigorating course of the tonics of life can\nmake free from danger the open-air of nature. \u201cOur first duty,\u201d he\nasserted in this book, \u201cis to become healthy.\u201d\n\nHeine confesses that he too was among the sick and decrepit souls.\nIn reality he was at no period so full of life and health, so\nharmoniously inspired and upborne by a great enthusiasm. He laughs\na little at Goethe; he fails to see that the Phidian Zeus, at whose\nconfined position he jests, was the greatest liberator of them all;\nbut for the most part his mocking sarcasm is here silent. It was not\nuntil ten years later, when the subtle seeds of disease had begun to\nappear, and when, too, he had perhaps gained a clearer insight into the\npossibilities of life, that Heine realized that the practical reforming\nmovements of his time were not those for which his early enthusiasm\nhad been aroused. With the slow steps of that consuming disease, and\nafter the revolution of 1848, he ceased to recognize as of old any\ncommon root for his various activities, or to insist on the fundamental\nimportance of religion. Everything in the world became the sport of his\nintelligence. The brain still functioned brilliantly in the atrophied\nbody; the swift lightning-like wit still struck unerringly; it spared\nnot even himself. The \u201cConfessions\u201d are full of irony, covering all\nthings with laughter that is half reverence, or with reverence that\nis more than half laughter--and woe to the reader who is not at every\nmoment alert! In the romantic, satirical poem of \u201cAtta Troll,\u201d written\nat the commencement of the last period, this, his final altitude, is\nmost completely revealed. It needs a little study to-day, even for a\nGerman, but it is well worth that study. The history of a dancing\nbear who escapes from servitude, \u201cAtta Troll\u201d is a protest against\nthe radical party, with their narrow conceptions of progress, their\ntame ideal of _bourgeois_ equality, their little watchwords, their\nsolemnity, their indignation at the human creatures who smile \u201ceven\nin their enthusiasm.\u201d All these serious concerns of the tribunes of\nthe people are bathed in soft laughter as we listen to the delicious\nchild-like monotonous melody in which the old bear, surrounded by his\nfamily, mumbles or mutters of the future. \u201cAtta Troll\u201d is not, as\nmany have thought, a sneer at the most sacred ideals of men. It is,\nrather, the assertion of those ideals against the individuals who would\nnarrow them down to their own petty scope. There are certain mirrors,\nHeine said, so constructed that they would present even Apollo as a\ncaricature. But we laugh at the caricature, not at the god. It is well\nto show, even at the cost of some misunderstanding, that above and\nbeyond the little ideals of our immediate political progress, there is\nbuilt a yet larger ideal city, of which also the human spirit claims\ncitizenship. The defence of the inalienable rights of the spirit, Heine\ndeclares, had been the chief business of his life.\n\nIn the history of Germany, it was her two great intellectual\nliberators, Luther and Lessing, to whom Heine looked up with the most\nunqualified love and reverence. By his later vindication of the rights\nof the spirit, not less than by his earlier fight for religious and\npolitical progress, he may be said to have earned for himself a place\nbelow, indeed, but not so very far below, those hearty and sound-cored\niconoclasts.\n\n\nII.\n\nTo reach the root of the man\u2019s nature we must glance at the chief facts\nof his life. He was born at D\u00fcsseldorf, on the Rhine, then occupied\nby the French, probably on the 13th of December, 1799. He came, by\nboth parents, of that Jewish race which is, as he said once, the dough\nwhereof gods are kneaded. The family of his mother, Betty van Geldern,\nhad come from Holland a century earlier; Betty herself received an\nexcellent education; she shared the studies of her brother, who\nbecame a physician of repute; she spoke and read English and French;\nher favourite books were Rousseau\u2019s \u201cEmile\u201d and Goethe\u2019s elegies.\nFor novels or poetry generally she cared little. She preferred logic\nto sentiment, and was careful of the precise value of words. Some\nletters written during her twenty-fourth year reveal a frank, brave,\nand sweet nature; she was a bright, attractive little person, and had\nmany wooers. In the summer of 1796 Samson Heine, bearing a letter of\nintroduction, entered the house of the Van Gelderns. He was the son of\na Jewish merchant settled in Hanover, and he had just made a campaign\nin Flanders and Brabant, in the capacity of commissary with the rank of\nofficer, under Prince Ernest of Cumberland. He was a large and handsome\nman, with soft blonde hair and beautiful hands; there was something\nabout him, said his son, a little characterless, almost feminine; \u201che\nwas a great child.\u201d After a brief courtship he married Betty, and\nsettled at D\u00fcsseldorf as an agent for English velveteens. Harry (so he\nwas named after an Englishman) was the first child. From his rather\nweak and romantic father came whatever was loose and unbalanced in\nHeine\u2019s temperament, and his ineradicable instinct for posing; it was\nhis mother, with her strong and healthy nature, well developed both\nintellectually and emotionally, and her great ambitions for her son,\nwho, as he himself said, played the chief part in the history of his\nevolution.\n\nHarry was a quick child; his senses were keen, though he was not\nphysically strong; he loved reading, and his favourite books were \u201cDon\nQuixote\u201d and \u201cGulliver\u2019s Travels.\u201d He used to make rhymes with his\nonly and much-loved sister Lotte, and at the age of ten he wrote a\nghost-poem which his teachers considered a masterpiece. At the Lyceum\nhe worked well, at night as well as by day. Only once, at the public\nceremony at the end of a school year, he came to grief; he was reciting\na poem, when his eyes fell on a beautiful, fair-haired girl in the\naudience; he hesitated, stammered, was silent, fell down fainting.\nSo early he revealed the extreme cerebral irritability of a nature\nabsorbed in dreams and taken captive by visions. It was not long after\nthis, at the age of seventeen, when his rich uncle at Hamburg was\ntrying in vain to set him forward on a commercial career, that Heine\nmet the woman who aroused his first and last profound passion, always\nunsatisfied except in so far as it found exquisite embodiment in his\npoems. He never mentioned her name; it was not till after his death\nthat the form standing behind this Maria, Zuleima, Evelina of so many\nsweet, strange, or melancholy songs was known to be that of his cousin,\nAmalie Heine.\n\nWith his uncle\u2019s help he studied law at Bonn, G\u00f6ttingen, and Berlin. At\nBerlin he fell under the dominant influence of Hegel, the vanquisher\nof the romantic school of which Schelling was the philosophic\nrepresentative. Heine afterwards referred to this period as that in\nwhich he \u201cherded swine with the Hegelians;\u201d it is certain that Hegel\nexerted great and permanent influence over him. At Berlin, in 1821,\nappeared his first volume of poems, and then he began to take his true\nplace.\n\nAt this period he is described as a good-natured and gentle youth,\nbut reserved, not caring to show his emotions. He was of middle height\nand slender, with rather long light brown hair (in childhood it was\nred, and he was called \u201cRother Harry\u201d) framing the pale and beardless\noval face, the bright, blue, short-sighted eyes, the Greek nose,\nthe high cheek bones, the large mouth, the full--half cynical, half\nsensual--lips. He was not a typical German; like Goethe, he never\nsmoked; he disliked beer, and until he went to Paris he had never\ntasted _sauerkraut_.\n\nFor some years he continued, chiefly at G\u00f6ttingen, to study law. But\nhe had no liking and no capacity for jurisprudence, and his spasmodic\nfits of application at such moments as he realized that it was not good\nfor him to depend on the generosity of his rich and kind-hearted uncle\nSolomon, failed to carry him far. A new idea, a sunny day, the opening\nof some flower-like _lied_, a pretty girl--and the Pandects were\nforgotten.\n\nShortly after he had at last received his doctor\u2019s diploma he went\nthrough the ceremony of baptism in hope of obtaining an appointment\nfrom the Prussian Government. It was a step which he immediately\nregretted, and which, far from placing him in a better position,\nexcited the enmity both of Christians and Jews, although the Heine\nfamily had no very strong views on the matter; Heine\u2019s mother,\nit should be said, was a Deist, his father indifferent, but the\nJewish rites were strictly kept up. He still talked of becoming an\nadvocate, until, in 1826, the publication of the first volume of\nthe \u201cReisebilder\u201d gave him a reputation throughout Germany by its\naudacity, its charming and picturesque manner, its peculiarly original\npersonality. The second volume, bolder and better than the first,\nwas received with delight very much mixed with horror, and it was\nprohibited by Austria, Prussia, and many minor states. At this period\nHeine visited England; he was then disgusted with Germany and full of\nenthusiasm for the \u201cland of freedom,\u201d an enthusiasm which naturally\nmet with many rude shocks, and from that time dates the bitterness\nwith which he usually speaks of England. He found London--although,\nowing to a clever abuse of uncle Solomon\u2019s generosity, exceedingly\nwell supplied with money--\u201cfrightfully damp and uncomfortable;\u201d only\nthe political life of England attracted him, and there were no bounds\nto his admiration of Canning. He then visited Italy, to spend there\nthe happiest days of his life; and having at length realized that\nhis efforts to obtain any government appointment in Germany would be\nfruitless, he emigrated to Paris. There, save for brief periods, he\nremained until his death.\n\nThis entry into the city which he had called the New Jerusalem was an\nimportant epoch in Heine\u2019s life. He was thirty-one years of age, still\nyouthful, and eager to receive new impressions; he was apparently in\nrobust health, notwithstanding constant headaches; Gautier describes\nhim as in appearance a sort of German Apollo. He was still developing,\nas he continued to develop, even up to the end; the ethereal loveliness\nof the early poems vanished, it is true, but only to give place to\na closer grasp of reality, a larger laughter, a keener cry of pain.\nHe was now heartily welcomed by the extraordinarily brilliant group\nthen living and working in Paris, including Victor Hugo, George Sand,\nBalzac, Michelet, Alfred de Musset, Gautier, Chopin, Louis Blanc,\nDumas, Sainte-Beuve, Quinet, Berlioz, and he entered with eager delight\ninto their manifold activities. For a time also he attached himself\nrather closely to the school of Saint-Simon, then headed by Enfantin;\nhe was especially attracted by their religion of humanity, which seemed\nthe realization of his own dreams. Heine\u2019s book on \u201cReligion and\nPhilosophy in Germany\u201d was written at Enfantin\u2019s suggestion, and the\nfirst edition dedicated to him; Enfantin\u2019s name was, he said, a sort\nof Shibboleth, indicating the most advanced party in the \u201cliberation\nwar of humanity.\u201d In 1855 he withdrew the dedication; it had become\nan anachronism; Enfantin was no longer ransacking the world in search\nof _la femme libre_; the martyrs of yesterday no longer bore a\ncross--unless it were, he added characteristically, the cross of the\nLegion of Honour.\n\nA few years after his arrival in Paris Heine entered on a relationship\nwhich occupied a large place in his life. Mathilde Mirat, a lively\ngrisette of sixteen, was the illegitimate daughter of a man of wealth\nand position in the provinces, and she had come up from Normandy to\nserve in her aunt\u2019s shoe-shop. Heine often passed this shop, and an\nacquaintance, at first carried on silently through the shop-window,\ngradually ripened into a more intimate relationship. Mathilde could\nneither read nor write; it was decided that she should go to school for\na time; after that they established a little common household, one of\nthose _m\u00e9nages parisiens_, recognized as almost legitimate, for which\nHeine had always had a warm admiration, because, as he said, he meant\nby \u201cmarriage\u201d something quite other than the legal coupling effected\nby parsons and bankers. As in the case of Goethe, it was not until\nsome years later that he went through the religious ceremony, as a\npreliminary to a duel in which he had become involved by his remarks on\nB\u00f6rne\u2019s friend, Madame Strauss; he wished to give Mathilde an assured\nposition in case of his death. After the ceremony at St. Sulpice he\ninvited to dinner all those of his friends who had contracted similar\nrelations, in order that they might be influenced by his example. That\nthey were so influenced is not recorded.\n\nIt is not difficult to understand the strong and permanent attraction\nthat drew the poet, who had so many intellectual and aristocratic women\namong his friends, to this pretty, laughter-loving grisette. It lay\nin her bright and wild humour, her childlike impulsiveness, not least\nin her charming ignorance. It was delightful to Heine that Mathilde\nhad never read a line of his books, did not even know what a poet was,\nand loved him only for himself. He found in her a continual source of\nrefreshment.\n\nHe had need of every source of refreshment. In the years that\nfollowed his formal marriage in 1841, the dark shadows, within and\nwithout, began to close round him. Although he was then producing\nhis most mature work, chiefly in poetry--\u201cAtta Troll,\u201d \u201cRomancero,\u201d\n\u201cDeutschland\u201d--his income from literary sources remained small.\nMathilde was not a good housekeeper; and even with the aid of a\nconsiderable allowance from his uncle Solomon, Heine was frequently\nin pecuniary difficulties, and was consequently induced to accept a\nsmall pension from the French Government, which has sometimes been a\nmatter of concern to those who care for his fame. As years passed, the\nenmities that he suffered from or cherished increased rather than\ndiminished, and his bitterness found expression in his work. Even\nMathilde was not an unalloyed source of joy; the charming child was\nbecoming a middle-aged woman, and was still like a child. She could not\nenter into Heine\u2019s interests; she delighted in theatres and circuses,\nto which he could not always accompany her: and he experienced the\npangs of an unreasonable jealousy more keenly than he cared to admit.\nThen uncle Solomon died, and his son refused, until considerable\npressure was brought to bear on him, to continue the allowance which\nhis father had intended Heine to receive. This was a severe blow, and\nthe excitement it produced developed the latent seeds of his disease.\nIt came on with symptoms of paralysis, which even in a few months gave\nhim, he says, the appearance of a dying man. During the next two years,\nalthough his brain remained clear, the long pathological tragedy was\nunfolded.\n\nHe went out for the last time in May, 1848. Half blind and half lame,\nhe slowly made his way out of the streets, filled with the noise of\nrevolution, into the silent Louvre, to the shrine dedicated to \u201cthe\ngoddess of beauty, our dear lady of Milo.\u201d There he sat long at her\nfeet; he was bidding farewell to his old gods; he had become reconciled\nto the religion of sorrow; tears streamed from his eyes, and she\nlooked down at him, compassionate but helpless: \u201cDost thou not see,\nthen, that I have no arms, and cannot help thee?\u201d\n\n\u201cOn e\u00fbt dit un Apollon germanique\u201d--so Gautier said of the Heine of\n1835; twenty years later an English visitor wrote of him--\u201cHe lay on a\npile of mattresses, his body wasted so that it seemed no bigger than a\nchild under the sheet which covered him--his eyes closed, and the face\naltogether like the most painful and wasted \u2018Ecce Homo\u2019 ever painted by\nsome old German painter.\u201d\n\nHis sufferings were only relieved by ever larger doses of morphia;\nbut although still more troubles came to him, and the failure of a\nbank robbed him of his small savings, his spirit remained unconquered.\n\u201cHe is a wonderful man,\u201d said one of his doctors; \u201che has only two\nanxieties--to conceal his condition from his mother, and to assure his\nwife\u2019s future.\u201d His literary work, though it decreased in amount, never\ndeclined in power; only, in the words of his friend Berlioz, it seemed\nas though the poet was standing at the window of his tomb, looking\naround on the world in which he had no longer a part.\n\nHe saw a few friends, of whom Ferdinand Lassalle, with his exuberant\npower and enthusiasm, was the most interesting to him, as the\nrepresentative of a new age and a new social faith; and the most\nloved, that girl-friend who sat for hours or days at a time by the\n\u201cmattress-grave\u201d in the Rue d\u2019Amsterdam, reading to him or writing\nhis letters or correcting proofs. To the last the loud, bright voice\nof Mathilde, when he chanced to hear it, scolding the servants or in\nother active exercise, often made him stop speaking, while a smile of\ndelight passed over his face. He died on the 16th of February, 1856. He\nwas buried, silently, in Montmartre, according to his wish; for, as he\nsaid, it is quiet there.\n\n\nIII.\n\nThroughout and above all, Heine was a poet. From first to last he was\nled by three angels who danced for ever in his brain, and guided him,\nsingly or together, always. They were the same as in \u201cAtta Troll\u201d he\nsaw in the moonlight from the casement of Uraka\u2019s hut--the Greek Diana,\ngrown wanton, but with the noble marble limbs of old; Abunde, the\nblonde and gay fairy of France; Herodias, the dark Jewess, like a palm\nof the oasis, with all the fragrance of the East between her breasts:\n\u201cO, you dead Jewess, I love you most, more than the Greek goddess, more\nthan that fairy of the North.\u201d[4]\n\n[4] \u201cC\u2019est le Bible, plus que tout autre livre,\u201d a well-known French\ncritic wrote, \u201cqui a fa\u00e7onn\u00e9 le g\u00e9nie po\u00e9tique de Heine, en lui\ndonnant sa forme et sa couleur. Ses v\u00e9ritables ma\u00eetres, ses vrais\ninspirateurs sont les glorieux inconnus qui ont \u00e9crit l\u2019Ecclesiaste\net les Proverbes, le Cantique des cantiques, le livre de Job et ce\nchef-d\u2019\u0153uvre d\u2019ironie discr\u00e8te intitul\u00e9: le livre du proph\u00e8te Jonas.\nCelui qui s\u2019appelait un rossignol Allemand nich\u00e9 dans la perruque de\nVoltaire fut \u00e0 la fois le moins \u00e9vang\u00e9lique des hommes et le plus\nvraiment biblique des po\u00e8tes modernes.\u201d\n\nThose genii of three ideal lands danced for ever in his brain, and that\nis but another way of indicating the opposition that lay at the root\nof his nature. From one point of view, it may well be, he continued\nthe work of Luther and Lessing, though he was less great-hearted, less\nsound at core, though he had not that element of sane Philistinism\nwhich marks the Shakespeares and Goethes of the world. But he was, more\nthan anything else, a poet, an artist, a dreamer, a perpetual child.\nThe practical reformers among whom at one time he placed himself,\nthe men of one idea, were naturally irritated and suspicious; there\nwas a flavour of aristocracy in such idealism. In the poem called\n\u201cDisputation\u201d a Capuchin and a Rabbi argued before the King and Queen\nat Toledo concerning the respective merits of the Christian and Jewish\nreligions. Both spoke at great length and with great fervour, and in\nthe end the King appealed to the beautiful Queen by his side. She\nreplied that she could not tell which of them was right, but that\nshe did not like the smell of either; and Heine was generally of\nthe Queen\u2019s mind. He sighed for the restoration of Barbarossa, the\nlong-delayed German Empire, and his latest biographer asserts that he\nwould have greeted the discovery of Barbarossa under the disguise of\nthe King of Prussia, with Bismarckian insignia of blood and iron, as\nthe realization of all his dreams. It is doubtful, however, whether\nthe meeting would be very cordial on either side. It would probably\nbe the painful duty of the Emperor, as of the Emperor of the vision\nin \u201cDeutschland,\u201d to tell Heine, in very practical language, that he\nwas wanting in respect, wanting in all sense of etiquette; and Heine\nwould certainly reply to the Emperor, as under the same circumstances\nhe replied to the visionary Barbarossa, that that gentleman had better\ngo home again, that during his long absence Emperors had become\nunnecessary, and that, after all, sceptres and crowns made admirable\nplaythings for monkeys.\n\n\u201cWe are founding a democracy of gods,\u201d he wrote in 1834, \u201call equally\nholy, blessed and glorious. You desire simple clothing, ascetic morals,\nand unseasoned enjoyments; we, on the contrary, desire nectar and\nambrosia, purple mantles, costly perfumes, pleasure and splendour,\ndances of laughing nymphs, music and plays.--Do not be angry, you\nvirtuous republicans; we answer all your reproaches in the words\nof one of Shakespeare\u2019s fools: \u2018Dost thou think, because thou art\nvirtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?\u2019\u201d What could an austere\nrepublican, a Puritanic Liberal, who scorned the vision of roses and\nmyrtles and sugar-plums all round, say to this? B\u00f6rne answered, \u201cI\ncan be indulgent to the games of children, indulgent to the passions\nof a youth, but when on the bloody day of battle a boy who is chasing\nbutterflies gets between my legs; when at the day of our greatest\nneed, and we are calling aloud on God, the young coxcomb beside us in\nthe church sees only the pretty girls, and winks and flirts--then, in\nspite of all our philosophy and humanity, we may well grow angry....\nHeine, with his sybaritic nature, is so effeminate that the fall of a\nrose-leaf disturbs his sleep; how, then, should he rest comfortably\non the knotty bed of freedom? Where is there any beauty without a\nfault? Where is there any good thing without its ridiculous side?\nNature is seldom a poet and never rhymes; let him whom her rhymeless\nprose cannot please turn to poetry!\u201d B\u00f6rne was right; Heine was not\nthe man to plan a successful revolution, or defend a barricade, or\nedit a popular democratic newspaper, or represent adequately a radical\nconstituency--all this was true. Let us be thankful that it was true;\nB\u00f6rnes are ever with us, and we are grateful: there is but one Heine.\n\nThe same complexity of nature that made Heine an artist made him a\nhumorist. But it was a more complicated complexity now, a cosmic game\nbetween the real world and the ideal world; he could go no farther.\nThe young Catullus of 1825, with his fiery passions crushed in the\nwine-press of life and yielding such divine ambrosia, soon lost his\nfaith in passion. The militant soldier in the liberation-war of\nhumanity of 1835 soon ceased to flourish his sword. It was only with\nthe full development of his humour, when his spinal cord began to fail\nand he had taken up his position as a spectator of life, that Heine\nattained the only sort of unity possible to him--the unity that comes\nof a recognized and accepted lack of unity. In the lambent flames of\nthis unequalled humour--\u201cthe smile of Mephistopheles passing over\nthe face of Christ\u201d--he bathed all the things he counted dearest; to\nits service he brought the secret of his poet\u2019s nature, the secret\nof speaking with a voice that every heart leaps up to answer. It is\nscarcely the humour of Aristophanes, though it is a greater force, even\nin moulding our political and social ideals, than B\u00f6rne knew; it is\noftener a modern development of the humour of the mad king and the fool\nin \u201cLear\u201d--that humour which is the last concentrated word of the human\norganism under the lash of Fate.\n\nAnd if it is still asked why Heine is so modern, it can only be said\nthat these discords out of which his humour exhaled are those which we\nhave nearly all of us known, and that he speaks with a voice that seems\nto arise from the depth of our own souls. He represents our period of\ntransition; he gazed, from what seemed the vulgar Pisgah of his day,\nbehind on an Eden that was for ever closed, before on a promised land\nhe should never enter. While with clear sight he announced things to\ncome, the music of the past floated up to him; he brooded wistfully\nover the vision of the old Olympian gods, dying, amid faint music of\ncymbals and flutes, forsaken, in the medi\u00e6val wilderness; he heard\nstrange sounds of psaltries and harps, the psalms of Israel, the voice\nof Princess Sabbath, across the waters of Babylon.--In a few years\nthis significance of Heine will be lost; that it is not yet lost the\neagerness with which his books are read and translated sufficiently\ntestifies.\n\n\n\n\nWHITMAN.\n\n\nI.\n\nIf we put aside imaginative writers--Hawthorne, Poe, Bret Harte,\nand Mark Twain--America has produced three men of world-wide\nsignificance.[5] These three belong to the same corner of the\ncontinent; they form a culminating series, and at the same time they\ncomplement each other. It is difficult to consider one of them without\nthrowing a glance at the others.\n\n[5] The significance of Lowell, a great writer unquestionably, seems to\nbe chiefly national.\n\nEmerson comes first. In Emerson, after two hundred years, Puritanism\nseems, for the first time, to have found voice. The men of Banbury\nand Amsterdam were too much distracted by the outer world to succeed\nin finding adequate artistic expression for the joys that satisfied\nthem and the spirit that so powerfully moved them. They have been the\nsport of their enemies, and have come down to us in literature as a\nset of sour fanatics. It was not until the seed was carried over sea,\nto germinate slowly and peacefully in New England, that at length\nit broke into flower, and that we know clearly that union of robust\nfreedom and mystic exaltation which lies at the heart of Puritanism. In\nhis calm and austere manner--born of the blood that had passed through\nthe veins of six generations of Puritan ministers--Emerson overturned\nthe whole of tradition. \u201cA world in the hand,\u201d he said, with cheery,\ngenial scepticism, \u201cis worth two in the bush.\u201d With gentle composure,\nwith serene hilarity, perhaps with an allusion to the roses that\n\u201cmake no mention of former roses,\u201d he posited the absolute right of\nthe individual to adjudicate in religion, in marriage, in the State.\nEven he himself, while able, like Spinoza and Goethe, to live by\nself-regulating laws that are death to men of less sanity, could not\nalways in his peaceful haunts at Concord recognize or allow the fruits\nof his doctrines.\n\nEmerson was a man of the study; he seems to have known the world as in\na _camera obscura_ spread out before him on a table. He never seems\nto come, or to be capable of coming, into direct relations with other\nmen or with Nature. Thoreau, an original and solitary spirit, born\namid the same influences as Emerson, but of different temperament,\nresolved to go out into the world, to absorb Nature and the health of\nNature: \u201cI wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential\nfacts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach,\nand not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not\nwish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to\npractise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live\ndeep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and\nSpartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad\nswath and shave close, to drive life into a corner and reduce it to its\nlowest terms.\u201d So he went into Walden Woods and built himself a hut,\nand sowed beans, and grew strangely familiar with the lives of plants\nand trees, of birds and beasts and fishes, and with much else besides.\nThis period of self-dependent residence by Walden Pond has usually been\nregarded as the chief episode in Thoreau\u2019s life. Doubtless it was,\nin the case of a man who spent his whole life in a small New England\ntown, and made the very moderate living that he needed by intermittent\nwork at pencil-making, teaching, land-surveying, magazine-writing,\nfence-building, or whitewashing. Certainly it was this experience\nwhich gave form and character to the activities of his life, and the\nbook in which he recorded his experiences created his fame. But in the\nexperience itself there was nothing of heroic achievement. One would\nrather say that in the Walden episode Thoreau has vindicated the place\nof such an experience in all education. Every one, for some brief\nperiod in early life, should be thrown on his own resources in the\nsolitudes of Nature, to enter into harmonious relations with himself,\nand to realize the full scope of self-reliance. For the man or woman\nto whom this experience has never been given, the world must hold many\nneedless mysteries and not a few needless miseries.\n\nThere was in this man a curious mingling of wildness and austerity,\nwhich Mr. Burroughs, in the most discriminating estimate of him yet\nmade, traces to his ancestry. On the paternal side he was French; his\nprivateering grandfather came from Jersey: \u201cthat wild revolutionary\ncry of his, and that sort of restrained ferocity and hirsuteness\nare French.\u201d But on the mother\u2019s side he was of Scotch and New\nEnglish Puritan stock. In person he was rather undersized, with\n\u201chuge Emersonian nose,\u201d and deep-set bluish-grey eyes beneath large\noverhanging brows; prominent pursed-up lips, a weak receding chin, \u201ca\nruddy weather-beaten face, which reminds one of some shrewd and honest\nanimal\u2019s.\u201d He was a vigorous pedestrian; he had sloping shoulders, long\narms, short legs, large hands and feet--the characteristics, for the\nmost part, of an anthropoid ape. His hands were frequently clenched,\nand there was an air of concentrated energy about him; otherwise\nnothing specially notable, and he was frequently supposed \u201ca pedlar of\nsmall wares.\u201d He possessed, as his friend Emerson remarked, powers\nof observation which seemed to indicate additional senses: \u201che saw\nas with microscope, heard as with ear-trumpet, and his memory was a\nphotographic register of all he saw and heard.\u201d\n\nIt has been claimed for Thoreau by some of his admirers, never by\nhimself, that he was a man of science, a naturalist. Certainly, in some\nrespects, he had in him the material for an almost ideal naturalist.\nHis peculiar powers of observation, and habits of noting and recording\nnatural facts, his patience, his taste for spending his days and nights\nin the open air, seem to furnish everything that is required. Nor would\nhis morbid dislike of dissection have been any serious bar, for the\nleast worked but by no means the least important portion of natural\nhistory is the study of living forms, and for this Thoreau seems to\nhave been peculiarly adapted; he had acquired one of the rarest of\narts, that of approaching birds, beasts and fishes, and exciting no\nfear. There are all sorts of profoundly interesting investigations\nwhich only such a man can profitably undertake. But that right question\nwhich is at least the half of knowledge was hidden from Thoreau; he\nseems to have been absolutely deficient in scientific sense. His bare,\nimpersonal records of observations are always dull and unprofitable\nreading; occasionally he stumbles on a good observation, but, not\nrealizing its significance, he never verifies it or follows it up.\nHis science is that of a fairly intelligent schoolboy--a counting of\nbirds\u2019 eggs and a running after squirrels. Of the vital and organic\nrelationships of facts, or even of the existence of such relationships,\nhe seems to have no perception. Compare any of his books with, for\ninstance, Belt\u2019s \u201cNaturalist in Nicaragua,\u201d or any of Wallace\u2019s\nbooks: for the men of science, in their spirit of illuminating\ninquisitiveness, all facts are instructive; in Thoreau\u2019s hands they are\nall dead. He was not a naturalist: he was an artist and a moralist.\n\nHe was born into an atmosphere of literary culture, and the great\nart he cultivated was that of framing sentences. He desired to make\nsentences which would \u201csuggest far more than they say,\u201d which would\n\u201clie like boulders on the page, up and down or across, not mere\nrepetition, but creation, and which a man might sell his ground\nor cattle to build,\u201d sentences \u201cas durable as a Roman aqueduct.\u201d\nUndoubtedly he succeeded; his sentences frequently have all the\nmassive and elemental qualities that he desired. They have more; if\nhe knew little of the architectonic qualities of style, there is a\nkeen exhilarating breeze blowing about these boulders, and when we\nlook at them they have the grace and audacity, the happy, natural\nextravagance of fragments of the finest Decorated Gothic on the site\nof a fourteenth century abbey. He was in love with the things that\nare wildest and most untamable in Nature, and of these his sentences\noften seem to be a solid artistic embodiment, the mountain side, \u201cits\nsublime gray mass, that antique, brownish-gray, Ararat colour,\u201d or the\n\u201cancient, familiar, immortal cricket sound,\u201d the thrush\u2019s song, his\n_ranz des v\u00e2ches_, or the song that of all seemed to rejoice him most,\nthe clear, exhilarating, braggart, clarion-crow of the cock. Thoreau\u2019s\nfavourite reading was among the Greeks, Pindar, Simonides, the Greek\nAnthology, especially \u00c6schylus, and a later ancient, Milton. There\nis something of his paganism in all this, his cult of the aboriginal\nhealth-bearing forces of Nature. His paganism, however unobtrusive, was\nradical and genuine. It was a paganism much earlier than Plato, and\nwhich had never heard of Christ.\n\nThoreau was of a piece; he was at harmony with himself, though it\nmay be that the elements that went to make up the harmony were few.\nThe austerity and exhilaration and simple paganism of his art were\nat one with his morality. He was, at the very core, a preacher; the\nmorality that he preached, interesting in itself, is, for us, the\nmost significant thing about him. Thoreau was, in the noblest sense\nof the word, a Cynic. The school of Antisthenes is not the least\ninteresting of the Socratic schools, and Thoreau is perhaps the\nfinest flower that that school has ever yielded. He may not have been\naware of his affinities, but it will help us if we bear them in mind.\nThe charm that Diogenes exercised over men seems to have consisted\nin his peculiarly fresh and original intellect, his extravagant\nindependence and self-control, his coarse and effective wit. Thoreau\nsat in his jar at Walden with the same originality, independence, and\nsublime contentment; but his wisdom was suave and his wit was never\ncoarse--exalted, rather, into a perennial humour, flashing now and\nthen into divine epigram. A life in harmony with Nature, the culture\nof joyous simplicity, the subordination of science to ethics--these\nwere the principles of Cynicism, and to these Thoreau was always true.\n\u201cEvery day is a festival,\u201d said Diogenes, and Metrocles rejoiced that\nhe was happier than the Persian king. \u201cI would rather sit on a pumpkin\nand have it all to myself,\u201d said Thoreau, \u201cthan be crowded on a velvet\ncushion.\u201d \u201cCultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage.... It is\nlife near the bone, where it is sweetest.... Money is not required to\nbuy one necessary of the soul.\u201d He had \u201ctravelled much in Concord.\u201d\n\u201cMethinks I should be content to sit at the back-door in Concord under\nthe poplar tree for ever.\u201d Such utterances as these strewn throughout\nThoreau\u2019s pages--and the saying in the last days of the dying man to\nthe youth who would talk to him about a future world, \u201cOne world at\na time\u201d--are full, in the uncorrupted sense, of the finest cynicism.\nDiogenes, seeing a boy drink out of his hand, threw away his cup;\nThoreau had an interesting mineral specimen as a parlour ornament, but\nit needed dusting every day, and he threw it away: it was not worth\nits keep. The Cynics seem to have been the first among the Greeks to\ndeclare that slavery is opposed to nature. Thoreau not only carried his\nindependence so far as to go to prison rather than pay taxes to Church\nor State--\u201cthe only government that I recognize is the power that\nestablishes justice in the land\u201d--but in 1859, when John Brown lay in\nprison in Virginia, Thoreau was the one man in America to recognize the\ngreatness of the occasion and to stand up publicly on his side: \u201cThink\nof him!--of his rare qualities!--such a man as it takes ages to make,\nand ages to understand; no mock hero, nor the representative of any\nparty. A man such as the sun may not rise upon again in this benighted\nland. To whose making went the costliest material, the finest adamant;\nsent to be the redeemer of those in captivity; and the only use to\nwhich you can put him is to hang him at the end of a rope!\u201d\n\nEvery true Cynic is, above all, a moralist and a preacher. Thoreau\ncould never be anything else; that was, in the end, his greatest\nweakness. This unfailing ethereality, this perpetual challenge of\nthe acridity and simplicity of Nature, becomes at last hypernatural.\nThoreau breakfasts on the dawn: it is well; but he dines on the rainbow\nand sups on the Aurora borealis. Of Nature\u2019s treasure more than half is\nman. Thoreau, with his noble Cynicism, had, as he thought, driven life\ninto a corner, but he had to confess that of all phenomena his own race\nwas to him the most mysterious and undiscoverable. He writes finely:\n\u201cThe whole duty of man may be expressed in one line: Make to yourself a\nperfect body;\u201d but this appears to be a purely intellectual intuition.\nHe had a fine insight into the purity of sex and of all natural animal\nfunctions, from which we excuse ourselves of speaking by falsely saying\nthey are trifles. \u201cWe are so degraded that we cannot speak simply of\nthe necessary functions of human nature;\u201d but he is not bold to justify\nhis insight. He welcomed Walt Whitman, at the very first, as the\ngreatest democrat the world had seen, but he himself remained a natural\naristocrat. \u201cHe was a man devoid of compassion,\u201d remarks Mr. Burroughs,\n\u201cdevoid of sympathy, devoid of generosity, devoid of patriotism, as\nthose words are generally understood.\u201d He had learnt something of the\nmystery of Nature, but the price of his knowledge was ignorance of his\nfellows. The chief part of life he left untouched.\n\nYet all that he had to give he gave fully and ungrudgingly; and it was\nof the best and rarest. We shall not easily exhaust the exhilaration\nof it. \u201cWe need the tonic of wildness.\u201d Thoreau has heightened for us\nthe wildness of Nature, and his work--all written, as we need not be\ntold, in the open air--is full of this tonicity; it is a sort of moral\nquinine, and, like quinine under certain circumstances, it leaves a\nsweet taste behind.\n\n\nII.\n\nWhitman has achieved the rarest of all distinctions: he has been placed\nwhile yet alive by the side of the world\u2019s greatest moral teachers,\nbeside Jesus and Socrates--\n\n              \u201cthe latter Socrates,\n    Greek to the core, yet Yankee too.\u201d\n\nAnd his biographer records briefly his conviction that this man was\n\u201cperhaps the most advanced nature the world has yet produced.\u201d Yet the\nfacts of his life are few and simple. He was born in May, 1819, on the\nshores of the great south bay of Long Island. Like Bret Harte, who has\ngiven classic expression to the young life of Western America, Whitman\nis half Dutch, and this ancestral fact is significant. The well-known\nportrait prefixed to \u201cLeaves of Grass\u201d shows him with an expression\nlike his father\u2019s; in later life he bears a singular resemblance to\nhis mother as she is represented in Bucke\u2019s book. He himself, we are\ntold, makes much of the women of his ancestry. \u201cI estimate three\nleading sources and formative stamps of my own character,\u201d--in his\nown words--\u201cthe maternal nativity-stock brought hither from far-away\nNetherlands, for one (doubtless the best); the subterranean tenacity\nand central bony structure (obstinacy, wilfulness) which I get from my\npaternal English elements, for another; and the Long Island birth-spot,\nsea-shores, childhood\u2019s scenes, absorptions, with teeming Brooklyn and\nNew York--with, I suppose, my experiences afterwards in the Secession\noutbreak--for third.\u201d His mother, he wrote, was to him \u201cthe ideal\nwoman, practical, spiritual, of all of earth, life, love, to me the\nbest.\u201d\n\nFor thirty years the youth set himself to learn the nature of the\nworld. There could be no better education; he has described its\nelementary stages, by barnyard and roadside, in \u201cThere was a child went\nforth.\u201d The same large receptiveness still went with him, as he was by\nturn teacher, printer, journalist, government clerk, and always, and\nabove all, loafer. He loafed year after year in Broadway, on Fulton\nFerry, on the omnibuses talking to the drivers, in the workshops\ntalking to the artisans. His physical health was perfect; he earned\nenough to live on; he felt himself the equal of highest or lowest; he\ndrank of the great variegated stream of life before him from every\ncup. His culture was, in its own way, as large and as sincere as\nGoethe\u2019s. Of books, indeed, he knew little; he was equally ignorant\nof science, of philosophy, of the fine arts; he appears to have been\ncontent--for his own ends wisely content--with elemental and mostly\nancient utterances of the race, as the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare, the\nNibelungenlied. And by-and-by, in 1855, when this new personality, with\nits wide and deep roots, had become organized, Walt Whitman, at the\nage of thirty-six, himself printed and published a little book called\n\u201cLeaves of Grass.\u201d\n\nAfter this there was but one fresh formative influence in Whitman\u2019s\nlife, but without it his life and his work would both have suffered an\nimmense lack. What had chiefly characterized him so far had been his\naudacious _nonchalance_, the frank and absolute egotism of a healthy\nOlympian schoolboy. In 1860 the Civil War began; from 1862 to 1865\nWhitman nursed the sick and wounded at Washington. During that period\nof three years (broken by an attack of hospital malaria, the first\nillness of his life, contracted in the discharge of these self-imposed\nduties) he visited and tended nearly 100,000 men, and the personal\npresence of the man, his inexhaustible love and sympathy, were of even\nmore worth than the manifold small but precious services that he was\nenabled to render. He has himself given a simple and noble record of\nhis work in the \u201cMemoranda\u201d included in \u201cSpecimen Days and Collect,\u201d\nand in \u201cDrum Taps,\u201d a still more precious and intimate record of his\nexperiences. From this period a deep tenderness, a divine compassion\nfor all things human, is never absent from Whitman\u2019s work; it becomes\nmore predominant than even his superb egotism. It is this element in\nhis large emotional nature, brought to full maturity by these war\nexperiences, which so many persons have felt thrilling through the\nman\u2019s whole personality, and which probably explains in some measure\nthe devotion he has inspired. Whitman went to Washington young, in\nthe perfection of virile physical energy (\u201cHe is a _Man_,\u201d said the\nshrewd Lincoln, to whom Whitman was unknown, as he chanced to see\nhim through a window once); he came away old and enfeebled, having\ntouched the height of life, to walk henceforth a downward path.\nPhysically impressive, however, at that time and always, he remained.\nHe is described, after this time (chiefly by Dr. Bucke), as six feet\nin height, weighing nearly two hundred pounds; with eyebrows highly\narched; eyes light blue, rather small, dull and heavy (this point is\nof some interest, bearing in mind that with exceptional creative\nimagination large bright eyes are associated); full-sized mouth, with\nfull lips; large handsome ears, and senses exceptionally acute. The\npeculiar complexion of his face, Bucke described as a bright maroon\ntint; that of his body \u201ca delicate but well-marked rose colour,\u201d\nunlike the English or Teutonic stock; his gait an elephantine roll.\n\u201cNo description,\u201d his Boswellian biographer, Dr. Bucke, again speaks\n(and Mr. Kennedy, a later and equally Boswellian biographer, supplies\nconfirmatory details), \u201ccan give any idea of the extraordinary\nphysical attractiveness of the man,\u201d even upon those who came in\ncontact with him for a moment. In 1873 he had a stroke of paralysis\n(left hemiplegia), and for three years there seemed little promise of\nrecovery. The return to health was slow and incomplete. In those years\nhe spent much time bathing, or naked in the open air--\u201changing clothes\non a rail near by, keeping old broad-brim straw on head and easy shoes\non feet\u201d--and considered that that counted for much in his restoration\nto health. \u201cPerhaps,\u201d he adds, \u201che or she to whom the free exhilarating\necstasy of nakedness in nature has never been eligible, has not really\nknown what purity is--nor what faith or art or health really is.\u201d\n\nIt is not possible to apprehend this man\u2019s work unless the man\u2019s\npersonality is apprehended. Every great book contains the precious\nlife-blood of a master-spirit, and no book throbs with a more vivid\npersonal life than \u201cLeaves of Grass.\u201d It is the whole outcome of\na whole man, audacious and unrepentant, who has here set down the\nemotional reverberations of a manifold life. \u201cFor only,\u201d according to\nhis own large saying,\n\n    \u201cFor only at last, after many years, after chastity, friendship,\n        procreation, prudence and nakedness,\n    After treading ground and breasting river and lake,\n    After a loosened throat, after absorbing eras, temperaments, races,\n        after knowledge, freedom, crimes,\n    After complete faith, after clarifyings, elevations, and removing\n        obstructions,\n    After these and more, it is just possible there comes to a man,\n        a woman, the divine power to speak words.\u201d\n\n\nIII.\n\nOf art, in the conventional sense of the word, there is not much in\nWhitman. If we wish to approach him as an artist, J. F. Millet probably\nhelps us to understand him, more than any other artist in foreign\nfields and lands. Millet has a deep and close relationship to Whitman.\nAt first sight, their work is curiously unlike: Whitman, in a great\nnew country, delighting in every manifestation of joy and youth and\nhope; Millet, the child of an older and colder country, in love with\nage and suffering and toil. Yet in essentials it is identical. Even\npersonally, it is said, Millet recalled Whitman.[6] Judging from the\nrepresentations of him, Millet, in his prime, was a colossal image of\nmanly beauty--deep-chested, muscular, erect, the quiet, penetrating\nblue eyes, the delicately expressive eyelids, the large nose and\ndilating sensitive nostrils, the firm mouth and jaw, the thick and\ndark brown beard. The consumptive artist--a Keats or a Thoreau--craves\nfor health and loveliness; he turns shuddering from all that is not\npleasant. It is only these men, heroic incarnations of health, who are\nstrong enough to look sanely upon age and toil and suffering, and equal\nto the prodigious expense of spirit of writing \u201cLeaves of Grass\u201d with a\nheart laden with memories of Washington hospitals.\n\n[6] See an interesting paper of \u201cRecollections of J. F. Millet\u201d in\nthe \u201cCentury,\u201d May, 1889, to which I am indebted for several of the\npainter\u2019s utterances here quoted.\n\nMillet and Whitman have, each in his own domain, made the most earnest,\nthorough, and successful attempts of modern times to bring the Greek\nspirit into art, the same attempt which Jan Steen, a great artist whom\nwe scarcely yet rate at his proper value, made in seventeenth century\nHolland. It is not by the smooth nudities of a Bouguereau or a Leighton\nthat we reach Hellenism. The Greek spirit is the simple, natural,\nbeautiful interpretation of the life of the artist\u2019s own age and people\nunder his own sky, as shown especially in the human body. It cannot be\nthe same in two ages or in two lands. One little incident mentioned\nby Madame Millet to a friend is suggestive, \u201cof Millet compelling her\nto wear the same shirt for an uncomfortably long time; not to paint\nthe dirt, as his early critics would have us believe, but that the\nrough linen should simplify its folds and take the form of the body,\nthat he might give a fresher and stronger accent to those qualities he\nso loved, the garment becoming, as it were, a part of the body, and\nexpressing, as he has said, even more than the nude, the larger and\nsimpler forms of Nature.\u201d There is the genuine Hellenic spirit, working\nin a different age and under a different sky. Millet felt that for him\nit was not true to paint the naked body, and at the same time that\nthe body alone was the supremely interesting thing to paint. In the\n\u201cSower\u201d we see this spirit expressed in the highest form which Millet\never reached--the grace of natural beauty and strength, in no remote\ndiscobolus or gladiator, but in the man of his own country and clime,\na peasant like himself, whose form he had studied from his own in the\nmirror in his own studio. The coarse clothes and rough _sabots_ play\nthe same part in Millet\u2019s work as the bizarre, uncouth words and varied\ntechnical phraseology in Whitman\u2019s; one may call them accidental,\nbut they are inevitable and necessary accidents. \u201cOne must be able,\u201d\nMillet said, \u201cto make use of the trivial for the expression of the\nsublime.\u201d They both insisted that the artist must deal with the average\nand typical, not with the exceptional. They both tried to bring the\nlargeness and simplicity of Nature into their work, and to suggest more\nthan they expressed. They both refused to believe any part of Nature\ncould be other than lovely. \u201cThe man who finds any phase or effect in\nNature not beautiful,\u201d said Millet sternly, \u201cthe lack is in his own\nheart.\u201d\n\nIt is not as an artist that Whitman is chiefly interesting to us. It\nis true that he has written \u201cOut of the Cradle endlessly rocking,\u201d\n\u201cWhen Lilacs last in the Dooryard bloomed,\u201d \u201cThis Compost,\u201d and\nother fragments from which may be gained a simple and pure \u00e6sthetic\njoy. Frequently, also, we come across phrases which reveal a keen\nperception of the strangeness and beauty of things, lines that\npossess a simplicity and grandeur scarcely less than Homeric; thus,\n\u201cthe noiseless splash of sunrise;\u201d or of the young men bathing, who\n\u201cfloat on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the sun.\u201d But such\nresults are accidental, and outside the main purpose. For that very\nreason they have at times something of the divine felicity, unforeseen\nand incalculable, of Nature; yet always, according to a rough but\nconvenient distinction, it is the poetry of energy rather than the\npoetry of art. When Whitman speaks prose, the language of science, he\nis frequently incoherent, emotional, unbalanced, with no very just and\nprecise sense of the meaning or words or the structure of reasoned\nlanguage.[7] It is clear that in this man the moral in its largest\nsense--that is to say, the personality and its personal relations--is\nmore developed than the scientific; and that on the \u00e6sthetic side the\nartist is merged in the mystic, wrapt in emotional contemplation of a\ncosmic whole. What we see, therefore, is a manifold personality seeking\nexpression for itself in a peculiarly flexible and responsive medium.\nIt is a deep as well as a superficial resemblance that these chants\nbear to the Scriptures of the old Hebrews--as Isaiah or the Book of\nJob--wherein also the writer becomes an artist, and also absorbs all\navailable science, but where his purpose is the personal expression\nof a moral and religious conception of life and the world. Whitman\nhas invented a name for the person who occupies this rare and, in the\nhighest degree, significant position; he calls him the \u201cAnswerer.\u201d It\nis not the function of answerers, like that of philosophers, to arrange\nthe order and limits of ideas, for they have to settle what ideas are\nor are not to exist; nor is it theirs, like the singers, to celebrate\nthe ostensible things of the world, or to seek out imaginative forms,\nfor they are \u201cnot followers of beauty, but the august masters of\nbeauty.\u201d The answerer is, in short, the maker of ideals.\n\n[7] I think this defective scientific perception is perhaps as\nresponsible as any failure of moral insight for the vigorous manner in\nwhich an element of \u201cmanly love\u201d flourishes in \u201cCalamus\u201d and elsewhere.\nWhitman is hardy enough to assert that he expects it will to a large\nextent take the place of love between the sexes. \u201cManly love,\u201d even in\nits extreme form, is certainly Greek, as is the degradation of women\nwith which it is always correlated; yet the much slighter degradation\nof women in modern times Whitman sincerely laments.\n\nWhitman will not minimize the importance of the answerer\u2019s mission. \u201cI,\ntoo,\u201d he exclaims, \u201cfollowing many and followed by many, inaugurate\na religion.\u201d If we wish to understand Walt Whitman, we must have\nsome conception of this religion. We shall find that two great and\ncontradictory conceptions dominate his work; although in his thoughts,\nas in his modes of expression, it is not possible to find any strongly\nmarked progression.\n\nThe \u201cSong of Myself\u201d is the most complete utterance of Whitman\u2019s first\ngreat conception of life.\n\n    \u201cI have said that the soul is not more than the body,\n    And I have said that the body is not more than the soul;\n    And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one\u2019s self is.\u201d\n\nThe absolute unity of matter and spirit, and all which that unity\ninvolves, is the dominant conception of this first and most\ncharacteristic period. \u201cIf the body were not the soul,\u201d he asks, \u201cwhat\nis the soul?\u201d This is Whitman\u2019s naturalism; it is the re-assertion of\nthe Greek attitude on a new and larger foundation. \u201cLet it stand as an\nindubitable truth, which no inquiries can shake, that the mind of man\nis so entirely alienated from the righteousness of God, that he cannot\nconceive, desire, or design anything but what is wicked, distorted,\nfoul, impure and iniquitous; that his heart is so thoroughly environed\nby sin that it can breathe out nothing but corruption and rottenness.\u201d\nThat is the fundamental thought of Christian tradition set down in the\n\u201cInstitutes,\u201d clearly and logically, by the genius of Calvin. It is\nthe polar opposite of Whitman\u2019s thought, and therefore for Whitman the\nmoral conception of duty has ceased to exist.\n\n    \u201cI give nothing as duties,\n    What others give as duties I give as living impulses.\n    (Shall I give the heart\u2019s action as a duty?)\u201d\n\nMorality is thus the normal activity of a healthy nature, not the\nproduct either of tradition or of rationalism.\n\n\u201cWhatever tastes sweet to the most perfect person, that is finally\nright\u201d--this, it has been said, is the maxim on which Whitman\u2019s\nmorality is founded, and it is the morality of Aristotle. But no Greek\never asserted and illustrated it with such emphatic iteration.\n\nFrom the days when the Greek spirit found its last embodiment in\nthe brief songs, keen or sweet, of the \u201cAnthology,\u201d the attitude\nwhich Whitman represents in the \u201cSong of Myself\u201d has never lacked\nrepresentatives. Throughout the Middle Ages those strange haunting\nechoes to the perpetual chant of litany and psalm, the Latin\nstudent-songs, float across all Europe with their profane and gay\npaganism, their fresh erotic grace, their \u201cIn taberna quando sumus,\u201d\ntheir \u201cLudo cum C\u00e6cilia,\u201d their \u201cGaudeamus igitur.\u201d In the sane and\nlofty sensuality of Boccaccio, as it found expression in the history\nof Alaciel and many another wonderful story, and in Gottfried of\nStrasburg\u2019s assertion of human pride and passion in \u201cTristan and\nIsolde,\u201d the same strain changed to a stronger and nobler key. Then\ncame the great wave of the Renaissance through Italy and France and\nEngland, filling art and philosophy with an exaltation of physical\nlife, and again later, in the movements that centre around the French\nRevolution, an exaltation of arrogant and independent intellectual\nlife. But all these manifestations were sometimes partial, sometimes\nextravagant; they were impulses of the natural man surging up in\nrebellion against the dominant Christian temper; they were, for the\nmost part consciously, of the nature of reactions. We feel that there\nis a fatal lack about them which Christianity would have filled; only\nin Goethe is the antagonism to some extent reconciled. Beneath the\nvast growth of Christianity, for ever exalting the unseen by the easy\nmethod of pouring contempt on the seen, and still ever producing some\nstrange and exquisite flower of _asc\u00easis_--some Francis or Theresa or\nF\u00e9nelon--a slow force was working underground. A tendency was making\nitself felt to find in the theoretically despised physical--in those\neveryday stones which the builders of the Church had rejected--the very\nfoundation of the mysteries of life; if not the basis for a new vision\nof the unseen, yet for a more assured vision of the seen.\n\nNo one in the last century expressed this tendency more impressively\nand thoroughly, with a certain insane energy, than William Blake--the\ngreat chained spirit whom we see looking out between the bars of his\nprison-house with those wonderful eyes. Especially in \u201cThe Marriage\nof Heaven and Hell,\u201d in which he seems to gaze most clearly \u201cthrough\nnarrow chinks of his cavern,\u201d he has set forth his conviction that\n\u201cfirst the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to\nbe expunged,\u201d and that \u201cif the doors of perception were cleansed,\neverything would appear to man, as it is, infinite.\u201d This most\nextraordinary book is, in his own phraseology, the Bible of Hell.\n\nWhitman appeared at a time when this stream of influence, grown mighty,\nhad boldly emerged. At the time that \u201cLeaves of Grass\u201d sought the light\nTourgueneff was embodying in the typical figure of Bassaroff the modern\nmilitant spirit of science, positive and audacious--a spirit marked\nalso, as Hinton pointed out, by a new form of asceticism, which lay\nin the denial of emotion. Whitman, one of the very greatest emotional\nforces of modern times, who had grown up apart from the rigid and\ntechnical methods of science, face to face with a new world and a new\ncivilization, which he had eagerly absorbed so far as it lay open to\nhim, had the good inspiration to fling himself into the scientific\ncurrent, and so to justify the demands of his emotional nature; to\nrepresent himself as the inhabitant of a vast and co-ordinated cosmos,\ntenoned and mortised in granite:\n\n    \u201cAll forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me,\n    Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.\u201d\n\nThat Whitman possessed no trained scientific instinct is unquestionably\ntrue, but it is impossible to estimate his significance without\nunderstanding what he owes to science. Something, indeed, he had gained\nfrom the philosophy of Hegel--with its conception of the universe\nas a single process of evolution, in which vice and disease are but\ntransient perturbations--with which he had a second-hand acquaintance,\nthat has left distinct, but not always well assimilated marks on his\nwork; but, above all, he was indebted to those scientific conceptions\nwhich, like Emerson, he had absorbed or divined. It is these that lie\nbehind \u201cChildren of Adam.\u201d\n\nThis mood of sane and cheerful sensuality, rejoicing with a joy as\nmassive and calm-eyed as Boccaccio\u2019s, a moral-fibred joy that Boccaccio\nnever knew, in all the manifestations of the flesh and blood of the\nworld--saying, not: \u201cLet us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,\u201d but,\nwith Clifford: \u201cLet us take hands and help, for this day we are alive\ntogether\u201d--is certainly Whitman\u2019s most significant and impressive mood.\nNothing so much reveals its depth and sincerity as his never-changing\nattitude towards death. We know the \u201cfearful thing\u201d that Claudio, in\nShakespeare\u2019s play, knew as death:\n\n        \u201cto die and go we know not where;\n    To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;\n    ... to be worse than worst\n    Of those that lawless and uncertain thoughts\n    Imagine howling!\u201d\n\nAnd all the Elizabethans in that age of splendid and daring life--even\nRaleigh and Bacon--felt that same shudder at the horror and mystery of\ndeath. Always they felt behind them some vast medi\u00e6val charnel-house,\ngloomy and awful, and the sunniest spirits of the English Renaissance\nquail when they think of it. There was in this horror something of\nthe child\u2019s vast and unreasoned dread of darkness and mystery, and it\nscarcely survived the scientific and philosophic developments of the\nseventeenth century. Whitman\u2019s attitude is not the less deep-rooted\nand original. For he is not content to argue, haughtily indifferent,\nwith Epicurus and Epictetus, that death can be nothing to us, because\nit is no evil to lose what we shall never miss. Whitman will reveal\nthe loveliness of death. We feel constantly in \u201cLeaves of Grass\u201d as\nto some extent we feel before the \u201cLove and Death\u201d and some other\npictures of one of the greatest of English artists. \u201cI will show,\u201d he\nannounces, \u201cthat nothing can happen more beautiful than death.\u201d It must\nnot be forgotten that Whitman speaks not merely from the standpoint\nof the most intense and vivid delight in the actual world, but that\nhe possessed a practical familiarity with disease and death which has\nperhaps never before fallen to the lot of a great writer. At the end of\nthe \u201cSong of Myself\u201d he bequeaths himself to the dust, to grow from the\ngrass he loves:\n\n    \u201cIf you want me again, look for me under your boot-soles,\n    You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,\n    But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,\n    And filter and fibre your blood.\u201d\n\nAnd to any who find that dust but a poor immortality, he would say\nwith Schopenhauer, \u201cOho! do you know, then, what dust is?\u201d The vast\nchemistry of the earth, the sweetness that is rooted in what we call\ncorruption, the life that is but the leavings of many deaths, is nobly\nuttered in \u201cThis Compost,\u201d in which he reaches beyond the corpse that\nis good manure to sweet-scented roses, to the polished breasts of\nmelons; or again, in the noble elegy, \u201cPensive on her dead gazing,\u201d on\nthose who died during the war. In his most perfectly lyrical poem, \u201cOut\nof the Cradle endlessly rocking,\u201d Whitman has celebrated death--\u201cthat\nstrong and delicious word\u201d--with strange tenderness; and never has the\nloveliness of death been sung in a more sane and virile song than the\nsolemn death-carol in \u201cWhen Lilacs last in the Dooryard bloomed\u201d:\n\n    \u201cDark mother, always gliding near with soft feet,\n    Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?\n    Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,\n    I bring thee a song, that when thou must indeed come, come\n        unfalteringly.\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    \u201cOver the tree-tops I float thee a song,\n    Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the\n        prairies wide,\n    Over the dense-packed cities all and the teeming wharves and ways,\n    I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee, O Death.\u201d\n\nWhitman\u2019s second great thought on life lies in his egoism. His intense\nsense of individuality was marked from the first; it is emphatically\nasserted in the \u201cSong of Myself\u201d--\n\n    \u201cAnd nothing, not God, is Greater to one than one\u2019s self is\u201d--\n\nwhere it lies side by side with his first great thought. But even in\nthe \u201cSong of Myself\u201d it asserts a separate existence:\n\n    \u201cThis day before dawn I ascended a hill and looked at the crowded\n        heaven,\n    And I said to my spirit, _When we become the enfolders of those orbs,\n        and the pleasure and knowledge of everything in them, shall we\n        be filled and satisfied then?_\n    And my spirit said, _No, we but level that lift to pass and continue\n        beyond._\u201d\n\nIn the end he once, at least, altogether denies his first thought; he\nalludes to that body which he had called the equal of the soul, or even\nthe soul itself, as excrement:\n\n    \u201cMyself discharging my excrementitious body to be burned, or reduced\n        to powder, or buried,\n    My real body doubtless left to me for other spheres.\u201d\n\nThe first great utterance was naturalistic; this egoism is\nspiritualistic. It is the sublime apotheosis of Yankee self-reliance.\n\u201cI only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God,\nbeyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.\u201d This became the dominant\nconception in Whitman\u2019s later work, and fills his universe at length.\nOf a God, although he sometimes uses the word to obtain emphasis, he\nat no time had any definite idea. Nature, also, was never a living\nvascular personality for him; when it is not a mere aggregate of\nthings, it is an order, sometimes a moral order. Also he wisely refuses\nwith unswerving consistency to admit an abstract Humanity; of \u201cman\u201d\nhe has nothing to say; there is nothing anywhere in the universe for\nhim but individuals, undying, everlastingly aggrandizing individuals.\nThis egoism is practical, strenuous, moral; it cannot be described as\nreligious. Whitman is lacking--and in this respect he comes nearer to\nGoethe than to any other great modern man--in what may be possibly the\ndisease of \u201csoul,\u201d the disease that was so bitterly bewailed by Heine.\nWhitman was congenitally deficient in \u201csoul;\u201d he is a kind of Titanic\nUndine. \u201cI never had any particular religious experiences,\u201d he told\nBucke, \u201cnever felt the need of spiritual regeneration;\u201d and although he\ndescribes himself as \u201cpleased with the earnest words of the sweating\nMethodist preacher, impressed seriously at the camp-meeting,\u201d we\nknow what weight to give to this utterance when we read elsewhere, of\nanimals:\n\n    \u201cThey do not sweat and whine about their condition,\n    They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,\n    They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,\n    Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning\n        things,\n    Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of\n        years ago,\n    Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.\u201d\n\nWe may detect this lack of \u201csoul\u201d in his attitude towards music; for,\nin its highest development, music is the special exponent of the modern\nsoul in its complexity, its passive resignation, its restless mystical\nardours. That Whitman delighted in music is clear; it is equally clear,\nfrom the testimony of his writings and of witnesses, that the music he\ndelighted in was simple and joyous melody as in Rossini\u2019s operas; he\nalludes vaguely to symphonies, but\n\n            \u201cwhen it is a grand opera,\n    Ah! this indeed is music--this suits me.\u201d\n\nThat Whitman could have truly appreciated Beethoven, or understood\nWagner\u2019s \u201cTannh\u00e4user,\u201d is not conceivable.\n\nWith Whitman\u2019s egoism is connected his strenuousness. There is a\nstirring sound of trumpets always among these \u201cLeaves of Grass.\u201d This\nman may have come, as he tells us, to inaugurate a new religion, but he\nhas few or no marks upon him of that mysticism--that Eastern spirit of\nglad renunciation of the self in a larger self--which is of the essence\nof religion. He is at the head of a band of sinewy and tan-faced\npioneers, with pistols in their belts and sharp-edged axes in their\nhands:\n\n    \u201cAnd he going with me leaves peace and routine behind him,\n    And stakes his life to be lost at any moment.\u201d\n\nThis strenuousness finds expression in the hurried jolt and bustle of\nthe lines, always alert, unresting, ever starting afresh. Passages of\nsweet and peaceful flow are hard to find in \u201cLeaves of Grass,\u201d and the\nmore precious when found. Whitman hardly succeeds in the expression\nof joy; to feel exquisitely the pulse of gladness a more passive and\nfeminine sensibility is needed, like that we meet with in \u201cTowards\nDemocracy;\u201d we must not come to this focus of radiant energy for repose\nor consolation.\n\nThis egoism, this strenuousness, reaches at the end to heights of\nsublime audacity. When we read certain portions of \u201cLeaves of Grass\u201d we\nseem to see a vast phalanx of Great Companions passing for ever along\nthe cosmic roads, stalwart Pioneers of the Universe. There are superb\nyoung men, athletic girls, splendid and savage old men--for the weak\nseem to have perished by the roadside--and they radiate an infinite\nenergy, an infinite joy. It is truly a tremendous diastole of life to\nwhich the crude and colossal extravagance of this vision bears witness;\nwe weary soon of its strenuous vitality, and crave for the systole of\nlife, for peace and repose. It is not strange that the immense faith of\nthe prophet himself grows hesitant and silent at times before \u201call the\nmeanness and agony without end,\u201d and doubts that it is an illusion and\n\u201cthat may-be identity beyond the grave a beautiful fable only.\u201d Here\nand again we meet this access of doubt, and even amid the faith of the\n\u201cPrayer of Columbus\u201d there is a tremulous, pathetic note of sadness.\n\nYet there is one keen sword with which Whitman is always able to cut\nthe knot of this doubt--the sword of love. He has but to grasp love\nand comradeship, and he grows indifferent to the problem of identity\nbeyond the grave. \u201cHe a-hold of my hand has completely satisfied me.\u201d\nHe discovers at last that love and comradeship--adhesiveness--is, after\nall, the main thing, \u201cbase and finale, too, for all metaphysics;\u201d\ndeeper than religion, underneath Socrates and underneath Christ. With\na sound insight he finds the roots of the most universal love in the\nintimate and physical love of comrades and lovers.\n\n    \u201cI mind how once we lay, such a transparent summer morning,\n    How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turned over\n        upon me,\n    And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to\n        my bare-stript heart,\n    And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet.\n\n    \u201cSwiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass\n        all the argument of the earth,\n    And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,\n    And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,\n    And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my\n        sisters and lovers,\n    And that a kelson of the creation is love.\u201d\n\n\nIV.\n\nThis \u201clove\u201d of Whitman\u2019s is a very personal matter; of an abstract\nMan, a _solidaire_ Humanity, he never speaks; it does not appear ever\nto have occurred to him that so extraordinary a conception can be\nformulated; his relations to men generally spring out of his relations\nto particular men. He has touched and embraced his fellows\u2019 flesh; he\nhas felt throughout his being the mysterious reverberations of the\ncontact:\n\n    \u201cThere is something in staying close to men and women and looking on\n        them, and in the contact and odour of them, that pleases the soul\n        well,\n    All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.\u201d\n\nThis personal and intimate fact is the centre from which the whole of\nWhitman\u2019s morality radiates. Of an abstract Humanity, it is true, he\nhas never thought; he has no vision of Nature as a spiritual Presence;\nGod is to him a word only, without vitality; to Art he is mostly\nindifferent; yet there remains this great moral kernel, springing from\nthe sexual impulse, taking practical root in a singularly rich and\nvivid emotional nature, and bearing within it the promise of a city of\nlovers and friends.\n\nThis moral element is one of the central features in Whitman\u2019s attitude\ntowards sex and the body generally. For the lover there is nothing\nin the loved one\u2019s body impure or unclean; a breath of passion has\npassed over it, and all things are sweet. For most of us this influence\nspreads no farther; for the man of strong moral instinct it covers\nall human things in infinitely widening circles; his heart goes out\nto every creature that shares the loved one\u2019s delicious humanity;\nhenceforth there is nothing human that he cannot touch with reverence\nand love. \u201cLeaves of Grass\u201d is penetrated by this moral element. How\ncuriously far this attitude is from the old Christian way we realize\nwhen we turn to those days in which Christianity was at its height, and\nsee how Saint Bernard with his mild and ardent gaze looked out into\nthe world of Nature and saw men as \u201cstinking spawn, sacks of dung, the\nfood of worms.\u201d\n\nBut there is another element in Whitman\u2019s attitude--the artistic. It\nshows itself in a twofold manner. Whitman came of a vigorous Dutch\nstock; these Van Velsors from Holland have fully as large a part in him\nas anything his English ancestry gave him, and his Dutch race shows\nitself chiefly in his artistic manner. The supreme achievement in art\nof the Dutch is their seventeenth century painting. What marked those\nDutch artists was the ineradicable conviction that every action, social\nor physiological, of the average man, woman, child, around them might\nbe, with love and absolute faithfulness, phlegmatically set forth. In\ntheir heroic earthliness they could at no point be repulsed; colour\nand light may aureole their work, but the most commonplace things of\nNature shall have the largest nimbus. That is the temper of Dutch art\nthroughout; no other art in the world has the same characteristics. In\nthe art of Whitman alone do we meet with it again, impatient indeed and\nbroken up into fragments, pierced through with shafts of light from\nother sources, but still constant and unmistakable. The other artistic\nelement in Whitman\u2019s attitude is modern; it is almost the only artistic\nelement by which, unconsciously perhaps, he allies himself to modern\ntraditions in art instead of breaking through them by his own volcanic\nenergy--a curious research for sexual imagery in Nature, imagery often\ntinged by bizarre and mystical colour. Rossetti occasionally uses\nsexual imagery with rare felicity, as in \u201cNuptial Sleep\u201d:\n\n    \u201cAnd as the last slow sudden drops are shed\n    From sparkling eaves when all the storm has fled,\n    So singly flagged the pulses of each heart.\u201d\n\nWith still greater beauty and audacity Whitman, in \u201cI sing the body\nelectric,\u201d celebrates the last abandonment of love:\n\n    \u201cBridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate\n        dawn,\n    Undulating into the willing and yielding day,\n    Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-fleshed day.\u201d\n\nOr, again, in the marvellously keen \u201cFaces\u201d--so realistic and so\nimaginative--when the \u201clily\u2019s face\u201d speaks out her longing to be filled\nwith albescent honey. This man has certainly felt the truth of that\ndeep saying of Thoreau\u2019s, that for him to whom sex is impure there\nare no flowers in Nature. He cannot help speaking of man\u2019s or woman\u2019s\nlife in terms of Nature\u2019s life, of Nature\u2019s life in terms of man\u2019s;\nhe mingles them together with an admirably balanced rhythm, as in\n\u201cSpontaneous Me.\u201d All the functions of man\u2019s or woman\u2019s life are sweet\nto him because they bear about them a savour of the things that are\nsweet to him anywhere in the world,\n\n    \u201cOf the smell of apples and lemons, of the pairing of birds,\n    Of the wet of woods, of the lapping of waves.\u201d\n\nSometimes when he is on this track he seems to lose himself in mystic\nobscurity; and the words in which he records his impressions are mere\npatches of morbid colour.\n\nThere is a third element in Whitman\u2019s attitude. It is clear that he\nhad from the outset what may be vaguely called a scientific purpose\nin that frank grasp of the body, which has a significance to be\nmeasured by the fierce opposition it aroused, and by the tenacity\nwith which, in the latest volume of his old age, \u201cNovember Boughs,\u201d\nhe still insists that the principle of those lines so gives breath to\nthe whole scheme that the bulk of the pieces might as well have been\nleft unwritten were those lines omitted. He has himself admirably\nset this forth in \u201cA Memorandum at a Venture\u201d in \u201cSpecimen Days and\nCollect.\u201d In religion and politics we have, after a great struggle,\ngained the priceless possibility of liberty and sincerity. But the\nregion of sex is still, like our moral and social life generally, to\na large extent unreclaimed; there still exist barbarous traditions\nwhich medi\u00e6val Christianity has helped to perpetuate, so that the\nwords of Pliny regarding the contaminating touch of a woman, who has\nalways been regarded as in a peculiar manner the symbol of sex--\u201cNihil\nfacile reperiabatur mulierum profluvio magis monstrificum\u201d--are not\neven yet meaningless. Why should the sweetening breath of science\nbe guarded from this spot? Why should not \u201cfreedom and faith and\nearnestness\u201d be introduced here? Our attitude towards this part of\nlife affects profoundly our attitude towards life altogether. To\nrealize this, read Swift\u2019s \u201cStrephon and Chloe,\u201d which enshrines,\nvividly and unshrinkingly, in a classic form, a certain emotional way\nof approaching the body. It narrates the very trivial experiences of a\nman and woman on their bridal night. The incidents are nothing; they\nare perfectly innocent; the interesting fact about them is the general\nattitude which they enfold. The unquestioning faith of the man is that\nin setting down the simple daily facts of human life he has drowned\nthe possibilities of love in filth. And Swift here represents, in an\nunflinchingly logical fashion, the opinions, more or less realized,\nmore or less disguised, of most people even to-day. Cannot these facts\nof our physical nature be otherwise set down? Why may we not \u201ckeep\nas delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart?\u201d That\nis, in effect, the question which, in \u201cA Memorandum at a Venture,\u201d\nWhitman tells us that he undertook to answer. This statement of it was\nprobably an afterthought; else he would have carried out his attempt\nmore thoroughly and more uncompromisingly.\n\nFor I doubt if even Whitman has fully realized the beauty and purity of\norganic life; the scientific element in him was less strong than the\nmoral, or even the artistic. While his genial poetic manner of grasping\nthings is of prime importance, the new conceptions of purity are\nfounded on a scientific basis which must be deeply understood. Swift\u2019s\nmorbid and exaggerated spiritualism, a legacy of medi\u00e6valism--and the\nordinary \u201ccommon-sense\u201d view is but the unconscious shadow of medi\u00e6val\nspiritualism--is really founded on ignorance, in other words, on the\ntraditional religious conceptions of an antique but still surviving\nbarbarism.\n\nFrom our modern standpoint of science, opening its eyes anew, the\nwonderful cycles of normal life are for ever clean and pure, the\nloathsomeness, if indeed anywhere, lies in the conceptions of\nhypertrophied and hyper\u00e6sthetic brains. Some who have striven to find\na vital natural meaning in the central sacrament of Christianity have\nthought that the Last Supper was an attempt to reveal the divine\nmystery of food, to consecrate the loveliness of the mere daily bread\nand wine which becomes the life of man. Such sacraments of Nature\nare everywhere subtly woven into the texture of men\u2019s bodies. All\nloveliness of the body is the outward sign of some vital use.\n\nDoubtless these relationships have been sometimes perceived and their\nmeaning realized by a sort of mystical intuition, but it is only of\nrecent years that science has furnished them with a rational basis. The\nchief and central function of life--the omnipresent process of sex,\never wonderful, ever lovely, as it is woven into the whole texture of\nour man\u2019s or woman\u2019s body--is the pattern of all the process of our\nlife. At whatever point touched, the reverberation, multiplexly charged\nwith uses, meanings, and emotional associations of infinite charm, to\nthe sensitive individual more or less conscious, spreads throughout\nthe entire organism. We can no longer intrude our crude distinctions\nof high and low. We cannot now step in and say that this link in the\nchain is eternally ugly and that is eternally beautiful. For irrational\ndisgust, the varying outcome of individual idiosyncrasy, there is\ndoubtless still room; it is incalculable, and cannot be reached. But\nthat rational disgust which was once held to be common property has\nreceived from science its death-blow. In the growth of the sense of\npurity, which Whitman, not alone, has annunciated, lies one of our\nchief hopes for morals, as well as for art.\n\n\nV.\n\nBehind \u201cLeaves of Grass\u201d stands the personality of the man Walt\nWhitman; that is the charm of the book and its power. It is, in his\nown words, the record of a _Person_. A man has here sought to give a\nfresh and frank representation of his nature--physical, intellectual,\nmoral, \u00e6sthetic--as he received it, and as it grew in the great field\nof the world. Sometimes there is an element in this record which,\nwhile perhaps very American, reminds one of the great Frenchman who\nshouted so lustily through his huge brass trumpet, seated on the\napex of the universe in the Avenue d\u2019Eylau. The noble lines to \u201cYou\nfelons on trial in Courts\u201d accompany \u201cTo him that was crucified.\u201d Such\nrhetorical flourishes do not impair the value of this revelation. The\nself-revelation of a human personality is the one supremely precious\nand enduring thing. All art is the search for it. The strongest and\nmost successful of religions were avowedly founded on personalities,\nmore or less dimly seen. The intimate and candid record of personality\nalone gives quickening energy to books. Herein is the might of \u201cLeaves\nof Grass.\u201d\n\nIn our overstrained civilization the tendency in literature--and in\nlife as it acts on literature and is again reacted on by it--is, on\nthe one hand, towards an artificial mode of presentment, that is, a\ndivorce between the actual and the alleged, a divorce which, in the\nlanguage of satire, is often called hypocrisy. On the other hand,\nthe tendency is towards a singleness of aim and ideal indeed, but a\nthin, narrow, super-refined ideal, at the same time rather hysterical\nand rather prim. In youth we cannot see through these Tartuffes and\n_Pr\u00e9cieuses_; when we become grown men and women we feel a great\nthirst for Nature, for reality in literature, and we slake it at such\nfountains as this of \u201cLeaves of Grass.\u201d Like Ant\u00e6us of old we bow down\nto touch the earth, to come in contact with the great primal energies\nof Nature, and to grow strong. We realize that the structure of the\nworld is indeed built most gloriously on the immense pillars of Hunger\nand Love, and we will not seek to deny or to attenuate its foundations.\nPresenting a truth so abstract in fresh and living concrete language,\nthis man, as an Adam in a new Paradise, which is the very world itself,\nwalks again upon the earth, sometimes with calm complaisance, sometimes\n\u201cdeliriating\u201d wildly:\n\n    \u201cBehold me where I pass, hear my voice, approach,\n    Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass,\n    Be not afraid of my body.\u201d\n\nHe has tossed \u201ca new gladness and roughness\u201d among men and women. He\nhas opened a fresh channel of Nature\u2019s force into human life--the\nlargest since Wordsworth, and more fit for human use--\u201cthe amplitude\nof the earth, and the coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the\ngreat charity of the earth, and the equilibrium also.\u201d And in his\nvigorous masculine love, asserting his own personality he has asserted\nthat of all--\u201cBy God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their\ncounterpart of on the same terms.\u201d Charging himself in every place\nwith contentment and triumph, he embraces all men, as St. Francis in\nhis sweet, humble, Christian way also embraced them, in the spirit of\naudacity, and rankness, and pride. So that all he has written is summed\nup in one ejaculation: \u201cHow vast, how eligible, how joyful, how real is\na human being, himself or herself!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nIBSEN.\n\n\nThe Scandinavian peoples hold to-day a position not unlike that held\nat the beginning of the century by Germany. They speak, in various\nmodified forms, a language which the rest of the world have regarded\nas little more than barbarous, and are looked upon generally as an\ninnocent and primitive folk. Yet they contain centres of intense\nliterary activity; they have produced novels of a peculiarly fresh\nand penetrating realism; and they possess, moreover, a stage on which\ngreat literary works may be performed, and the burning questions of the\nmodern world be scenically resolved. It is natural that Norway, with\nits historical past and literary traditions, should be the chief centre\nof this activity, and that a Norwegian should stand forth to-day as the\nchief figure of European significance that has appeared in the Teutonic\nworld of art since Goethe.\n\nTo understand Norwegian art--whether in its popular music, with\nits extremes of melancholy or hilarity, or in its highly-developed\nliterature--we must understand the peculiar character of the land\nwhich has produced this people. It is a land having, in its most\ncharacteristic regions, a year of but one day and night--the summer a\nperpetual warm sunlit day filled with the aroma of trees and plants,\nand the rest of the year a night of darkness and horror; a land\nwhich is the extreme northern limit of European civilization, on the\noutskirts of which the great primitive gods still dwell; and where\nelves and fairies and mermaids are still regarded, according to the\nexpression of Jonas Lie, as tame domestic animals. Such an environment\nmust work mightily on the spirit and temper of the race. As one of the\npersons in Bj\u00f6rnson\u2019s \u201cOver \u00c6vne\u201d observes--\u201cThere is something in\nNature here which challenges whatever is extraordinary in us. Nature\nherself here goes beyond all ordinary measure. We have night nearly all\nthe winter; we have day nearly all the summer, with the sun by day and\nby night above the horizon. You have seen it at night half-veiled by\nthe mists from the sea; it often looks three, even four, times larger\nthan usual. And then the play of colours on sky, sea, and rock, from\nthe most glowing red to the softest and most delicate yellow and white!\nAnd then the colours of the Northern Lights on the winter sky, with\ntheir more suppressed kind of wild pictures, yet full of unrest and\nforever changing! Then the other wonders of Nature! These millions of\nsea-birds, and the wandering processions of fish, stretching for miles!\nThese perpendicular cliffs that rise directly out of the sea! They are\nnot like other mountains, and the Atlantic roars round their feet. And\nthe ideas of the people are correspondingly unmeasured. Listen to their\nlegends and stories.\u201d\n\nSo striking are the contrasts in the Norwegian character that they have\nbeen supposed to be due to the mingling of races; the fair-haired,\nblue-eyed Norwegian of the old Sagas, silent and deep-natured, being\nmodified, now (especially in the north) by the darker, brown-eyed Lapp,\nwith his weakness of character, vivid imagination, and tendency to\nnatural mysticism, and, again (especially in the east), by the daring,\npractical, energetic Finn.\n\nHowever this may be, among the Norwegian poets and novelists various\nqualities often meet together in striking opposition; wild and\nfantastic imagination stands beside an exact realism and a loving\ngrasp of nature; a tendency to mysticism and symbol beside a healthy\nnaturalism. We find these characteristics variously combined in Ibsen;\nin Bj\u00f6rnson, with his virile strength and generous emotions, amid which\na mystic influence now and then appears; in Jonas Lie, with his subtle\nand delicate spirit, so intimately national; in Kielland, a realistic\nnovelist of most dainty and delicate art, beneath which may be heard\nthe sombre undertone of his sympathy with the weak and the oppressed.\nOf these writers, and others only less remarkable, one alone is at all\nwell known in England, and even he is known exclusively by his early\nwork, especially by that most delightful of peasant stories, \u201cArne.\u201d In\nGermany the Scandinavian novelists and dramatists have received much\nattention, and are widely known through excellent and easily accessible\ntranslations. Yet our English race and speech are even more closely\nallied to the northern; our land is studded with easily recognizable\nScandinavian place-names and Scandinavian colonies, whose dialects\nare full of genuine Scandinavian words unknown to literary English.\nIt is not likely that this indifference to the social, political, and\nliterary history of our northern kinsmen can last much longer.\n\nAbout 1720 a Danish skipper, one Peter Ibsen, came over from Moen[8]\nto Bergen and settled there. He married the daughter of a German who\nhad likewise emigrated from his own country: these were the poet\u2019s\ngreat-great-grandparents. Peter Ibsen had a son, Henrik Petersen Ibsen,\nwho was also a ship\u2019s captain. He married a lady whose name is given as\nWenche Dischington, the daughter of a Scotchman naturalized in Norway.\nThis Henrik Ibsen settled in Skien, and had a son of the same name who\nmarried a German wife. All these Ibsens were sailors. Henrik Ibsen\u2019s\nson, Knud Ibsen, the dramatist\u2019s father, like his father married a\nwife of German extraction, Maria Cornelia Altenburg, the daughter of a\nmerchant who had begun life as a sailor.\n\n[8] This island, I may note in passing, is the home of a black-haired\nrace, very unlike the typical Norsemen, and which has been identified\nwith those \u201cblack strangers\u201d spoken of by the Irish chroniclers who\ndescribed the Viking invasions.\n\nThis ancestry is very significant. It will be seen that Ibsen is\non both sides predominantly German, and that in his German and\nDanish blood there is an interesting Scotch strain. The tendency\nto philosophic abstraction and the strenuous earnestness, mingling\nwith the more characteristically northern imaginative influences,\nare explained by this German and Scotch ancestry; it explains also\nthe peculiarly isolated and yet cosmopolitan attitude which marks\nIbsen--why it is that his works have been so enthusiastically received\nand so easily naturalized in Germany, and why, now that they are\nbeginning to be known, they promise to make so deep an impression in\nour own land.\n\nIbsen\u2019s mother possessed a shy, silent, and solitary nature, which she\nimparted to her son. One of her daughters thus describes her: \u201cShe\nwas a quiet, lovable woman, the soul of the house, devoted to her\nhusband and children. She was always sacrificing herself. There was no\nbitterness or reproach in her.\u201d The father was of cheerful disposition,\na man of sociable tastes, popular in his circle, but also feared, for\nhe had a keen wit, and, like his son, he could use it unmercifully.\n\nKnud Ibsen\u2019s eldest son, Henrik,[9] was born at Skien, a busy little\ntown of some 3,000 inhabitants occupied in the timber trade, on\nthe 20th March, 1828. \u201cI was born,\u201d the dramatist writes in some\nreminiscences published by Mr. Jaeger for the first time, \u201cin a house\nin the market-place, Stockmann\u2019s house it was then called. The house\nlay right opposite the church with its high steps and large tower.\nTo the right, in front of the church, stood the town pillory, and to\nthe left the town-hall, the lock-up, and the \u2018madhouse.\u2019 The fourth\nside of the market-place was occupied by the Latin school and the town\nschool. The church lay free in the middle. This prospect was the first\nview of the earth that presented itself to my eyes. All buildings;\nno green, no rural open landscape.\u201d It was in the church tower that\nthe baby Henrik received his first conscious and deep impression. The\nnursemaid took him up and held him out (to the horror of his mother\nbelow), and he never forgot that new and strange vision of the world\nfrom above. Ibsen goes on to describe the attractions which were held\nfor him in the gloomy town-hall and the pillory, unused for many years,\na red-brown post of about a man\u2019s height, with a great round knob which\nhad originally been painted black, but which then looked like a human\nface. In front of the post hung an iron chain, and in that an iron\nring which seemed like two small arms ready to clasp the child\u2019s neck\non the least provocation. And then there was the town-hall. That, too,\nhad high steps like the church, and underneath it was the gaol with its\nbarred windows: \u201cinside the bars I have seen many pale and dark faces.\u201d\nAnd then there was the \u201cmadhouse,\u201d which in its time had really been\nused to confine lunatics. That also was barred, but inside the bars the\nlittle window was filled by a massive iron plate with small round holes\nlike a sieve. This place was said to have been the abode of a famous\ncriminal who had been branded.\n\n[9] Many books and pamphlets dealing with his life and works have\nappeared in Denmark, Sweden and Germany. The chief of these are\nVasenius\u2019s \u201cHenrik Ibsen, ett Skaldeportr\u00e4tt,\u201d Stockholm, 1882;\nPassarge\u2019s \u201cHenrik Ibsen: Ein Beitrag zur neusten Geschichte der\nnorwegischen Nationalliteratur,\u201d Leipsic, 1883; and H. Jaeger\u2019s \u201cHenrik\nIbsen, 1828-1888,\u201d Copenhagen. The last-named, now translated, is by\nfar the best.\n\nThese early impressions of the dramatist--the church tower, the\npillory, the barred windows, the pale criminals--are of no little\ninterest. They help to explain for us the sombre and tragic cast,\npurely human and reflective, of Ibsen\u2019s character. They explain, too,\nthe absence in his work of the sea and the forest, of those things\nwhich give such a sweet, wild aroma, now and again, to the work of\nBj\u00f6rnson and Lie. The little town, with its active commercial life and\nits equally active religious life--for Skien was a centre of pietistic\ninfluence--was such a place as is brought before us in \u201cDe Unges\nForbund\u201d and in \u201cSamfundets St\u00f6tter,\u201d and it was a fit birthplace for\nthe author of \u201cBrand.\u201d\n\nKnud Ibsen belonged to the aristocracy of Skien, and his house was a\ncentre of its social life. When Henrik was eight years old there was an\nend of this, for his father became a bankrupt. After the catastrophe\nthe family retired to a small and humble home outside Skien, where they\nlived with a frugality which was in marked contrast with their former\nlife. There can be no doubt that this sudden change of circumstances,\nand the insight which it brought into the social cleavage of a\nprovincial town, counted for much in Ibsen\u2019s development. It is certain\nthat at this period his marked individuality began to be perceived.\nHe did not play like the other children; while they romped in the\nyard, he retired into a little inclosure in an alley that led to the\nkitchen, and barricaded himself against the heedless incursions of the\nyounger members of the family. Here he kept guard, not only in summer,\nbut in the depth of winter. It is clear that even at this early age\nIbsen had reached the point of proud isolation and defiance of his\nfellow-citizens which Stockmann ultimately attained. One of his sisters\ndescribes how they used to throw stones and snowballs at his retreat\nto make him come out to join their play, but when he could no longer\nwithstand the attack and yielded to the assailants, he could display no\nskill in any kind of sport, and soon retired again to his den. Reading\nappears to have been one of his chief occupations there, and Jaeger\nassures us that the words which many years afterwards Ibsen put into\nthe mouth of the little girl Hedwig, who is so pathetic and tender a\nfigure in one of his latest dramas, \u201cVildanden,\u201d contain a reminiscence\nof childhood. \u201cAnd do you read the books?\u201d asked Gregers. \u201cOh, yes,\nwhen I can. But most of them are English, and I can\u2019t read those. But\nthen I can look at the pictures. There is one big black book, called\nHarryson\u2019s \u2018History of London;\u2019 it must be a hundred years old, and\nthat has such a number of pictures in it. First there is a picture of\nDeath with an hourglass and a girl. I think that is hideous. But then\nthere are all sorts of other pictures, with churches and castles and\nstreets and great ships that sail on the sea.\u201d He also amused himself\nwith pencil and colour-box. Meanwhile he went to school, going through\nthe usual course and learning a little Latin; he appears to have taken\na special interest in the Biblical instruction. At fourteen he was\nconfirmed, and the time came for him to make his way in the world.\n\nAt this period he wished to become a painter; he devoted himself with\nzeal to drawing, and an interest in painting has remained with him, the\nformation of an excellent little collection of Renaissance pictures\nbecoming in later life one of his chief hobbies. In the existing state\nof the family means, this career was out of the question, and he was\nsent to an apothecary at Grimstad, a little town containing at that\ntime not more than 800 inhabitants. The apothecary\u2019s shop, Jaeger\nremarks, is the place where all the loungers meet in the evening to\ndiscuss the events of the day, and doubtless the apothecary\u2019s shop was\nan element in the education of the future dramatist. In his interesting\npreface to the second edition of \u201cCatilina\u201d he has himself described\nthe five years of development that he went through in this little town.\nHe did not wish to become a chemist; he would become a student and\nstudy medicine. At the same time his poetical activity and the eventful\nyear of 1848 came to arouse in the silent, solitary boy a healthy\ninterest in the outside world.\n\nIt was while reading Sallust and Cicero for his matriculation\nexamination that he conceived, and wrote at midnight, his first\nplay, \u201cCatilina.\u201d With the help of two enthusiastic young friends the\ntragedy was published and some thirty copies sold--a result which\ndid not permit of the proposed tour in the East on which the three\nfriends had decided to expend the profits of the sale. Ibsen was now\nin his twenty-second year, and he came up to Christiania to carry\non his studies at the school of Heltberg, who seems to have had a\nsingularly stimulating influence on young men, and at the university.\nHere Ibsen was the comrade of Bj\u00f6rnson, Jonas Lie, and others who have\nsince become famous. At a later date Bj\u00f6rnson condensed his youthful\nimpression of his friend in two vigorous lines:\n\n    \u201cTense and lean, the colour of gypsum,\n    Behind a vast coal-black beard, Henrik Ibsen.\u201d\n\nThe period now arrived at which Ibsen\u2019s career was definitely\nsettled. He had been making several unsuccessful literary attempts at\nChristiania, having finally abandoned the intention to study medicine,\nwhen, in 1851, the famous violinist, Ole Bull, who has done so much\nto give artistic shape and energy to the modern Norwegian spirit,\ngave him an appointment at the National Theatre which he had recently\nestablished at Bergen. Ibsen\u2019s prentice hand was now trained by the\nwriting of several dramas not included among his published works;\nand, like Shakespeare and Moli\u00e8re in somewhat similar circumstances,\nhe here acquired his mastery of the technical demands of dramatic\nform. In 1855 his apprenticeship may be said to have ended, and he\nproduced \u201cFru Inger til \u00d6straat\u201d (Dame Inger of \u00d6straat), an historical\nprose drama of great energy and concentration. In 1858 he married\nSusanna Thoresen, the daughter of a Bergen clergyman, whose second\nwife, Magdalene Thoresen, is a well-known authoress. At the same\nperiod he was appointed artistic director of the Norwegian theatre\nat Christiania, a post previously occupied by Bj\u00f6rnson, who had\njust inaugurated the Norwegian peasant novel by the publication of\n\u201cSynn\u00f6ve Solbakken.\u201d In 1864, having acquired the means, Ibsen found it\ndesirable to quit the somewhat provincial and uncongenial atmosphere of\nhis native country, and has since lived in Rome, in Ischia, in Dresden,\nand at other places, but mainly at Munich, producing on an average a\ndrama every two years. In 1885 he revisited Norway. Time had brought\nits revenges, and he was enthusiastically received everywhere. At\nDrontheim he made a remarkable speech to a club of working-men. \u201cMere\ndemocracy,\u201d he said, \u201ccannot solve the social question. An element of\naristocracy must be introduced into our life. Of course I do not mean\nthe aristocracy of birth or of the purse, or even the aristocracy of\nintellect. I mean the aristocracy of character, of will, of mind.\nThat only can free us. From two groups will this aristocracy I hope\nfor come to our people--from our women and our workmen. The revolution\nin the social condition, now preparing in Europe, is chiefly concerned\nwith the future of the workers and the women. In this I place all my\nhopes and expectations; for this I will work all my life and with all\nmy strength.\u201d In private conversation, it is said, Ibsen describes\nhimself as a Socialist, although he has not identified himself with any\ndefinite school of Socialism.\n\nIn personal appearance he is rather short, but impressive and very\nvigorous. He has a peculiarly broad and high forehead, with small,\nkeen, blue-grey eyes \u201cwhich seem to penetrate to the heart of things.\u201d\nHis firm and compressed mouth is characteristic of \u201cthe man of the iron\nwill,\u201d as he has been called by a fellow-countryman. Altogether it\nis a remarkable and significant face, clear-seeing and alert, with a\ndecisive energy of will about it that none can fail to recognize. It is\nfar indeed from the typical \u201cpure, extravagant, yearning, questioning\nartist\u2019s face.\u201d In middle age it recalled, rather, the faces of some of\nour most distinguished surgeons; as is perhaps meet in the case of a\nwriter who has used so skilful and daring a scalpel to cut to the core\nof social diseases. In society, although he likes talking to the common\npeople, Ibsen is usually reserved and silent; or his conversation\ndeals with the most ordinary topics; \u201che talks like a wholesale\ntradesman,\u201d it has been said.\n\nIbsen\u2019s dramas (excluding two or three which have not been published)\nmay be conveniently divided into three groups, but the division is a\nrough one, for the groups merge one into another; Ibsen\u2019s artistic\ndevelopment has been gradual and continuous.--1. Historical and\nLegendary Dramas, chiefly in Prose: The youthful \u201cCatilina\u201d (written\nin 1850, but revised at a later period), which stands by itself, and\ncontains the germ of much of his later work; \u201cFru Inger til \u00d6straat\u201d\n(Dame Inger of \u00d6straat), 1855, an effective melodramatic play of\ngreat technical skill; \u201cGildet paa Solhaug\u201d (The Feast at Solhaug),\nan historical play of the fourteenth century, written in 1855, and\nreprinted in 1883, with a preface explaining its genesis; \u201cH\u00e6rm\u00e6ndene\npaa Helgeland\u201d (The Warriors at Helgeland), 1858, a noble version of\nthe Volsunga-Saga, here brought down to more historical times, so as to\npresent a vivid and human picture of the Viking period; \u201cKongs-emnerne\u201d\n(The Pretenders), 1864, dealing with Norwegian history in the twelfth\ncentury; \u201cKeiser og Galil\u00e6er\u201d (Emperor and Galilean), finished in\n1873, but begun many years earlier. 2. Dramatic Poems: \u201cKj\u00e6rlighedens\nKomedie\u201d (Love\u2019s Comedy), 1862; \u201cBrand,\u201d 1866; \u201cPeer Gynt,\u201d 1867. 3.\nSocial Dramas: \u201cDe Unges Forbund\u201d (The Young Men\u2019s League), 1869;\n\u201cSamfundets St\u00f6tter\u201d (The Pillars of Society), 1877; \u201cEt Dukkehjem\u201d\n(A Doll\u2019s House), 1879; \u201cGengangere\u201d (Ghosts), 1881; \u201cEn Folkefiende\u201d\n(An Enemy of Society), 1882; \u201cVildanden\u201d (The Wild Duck), 1884;\n\u201cRosmersholm,\u201d 1886; \u201cFruen fra Havet\u201d (The Lady from the Sea), 1888.\n\n\u201cH\u00e6rm\u00e6ndene paa Helgeland\u201d is Ibsen\u2019s first great drama; it has,\nindeed, been called the most perfect of his plays. The antique form\nand substance which he imposed upon himself compelled him to a severe\nself-restraint; the style also of the drama, which is in prose, is\nausterely simple and strong. Yet there is at the same time a curious\nand undisguised modern note about this work, and we feel throughout the\npresence of that spirit which gives life to Ibsen\u2019s plays of to-day.\nThe strong, passionate figure of Hj\u00f6rdis fills most of the field,\nhowever finely the lesser figures are moulded. She is the Brunhild of\nthe ancient story, yet she is the same woman who is the heroine and\nthe hero of all Ibsen\u2019s social dramas; a strong and passionate woman,\ninstinct with suppressed energy to which the natural outlets have been\nclosed, and which is transformed into volcanic outbreaks of disaster.\n\u201cA woman, a woman,\u201d she says to Dagny, who is shocked at a remark about\nusing the armour and weapons of a man, and mixing among men, \u201cthere\nis no one who knows what a woman can do.\u201d Her father having been\nslain, she is brought as a young girl into the conqueror\u2019s household.\nShe finds a temporary satisfaction in the exercise of her physical\nstrength. When the mild and honourable warrior Sigurd comes with his\nfeeble friend Gunnar, both fall in love with her, and she, without\nspeaking it, returns Sigurd\u2019s love. She promises to give herself to\nhim who can perform the greatest feat of strength, and Sigurd, by a\nruse, wins her for his friend Gunnar, himself taking to wife the gentle\nDagny. Henceforth there is something strange and incalculable in all\nthe deeds of Hj\u00f6rdis, and a concentrated bitterness in her words. When\nafterwards she learns that Sigurd had once loved her, the proud and\nreserved woman offers in vain to put on helmet and breastplate and to\nfollow him through the earth. \u201cI have been homeless in the world from\nthe day that you took another to wife. Ill was that deed of yours. All\ngood gifts may a man give to his trothful friend,--all, but not the\nwoman he holds dear. When he does that deed, he breaks the thread that\nthe Norns have spun, and wastes two lives.\u201d Hj\u00f6rdis is the woman of the\nsocial dramas, but it has not yet occurred to her that she has a life\nof her own.\n\n\u201cEmperor and Galilean,\u201d[10] although historical and written in prose,\nis very unlike \u201cH\u00e6rm\u00e6ndene paa Helgeland\u201d; it belongs, indeed, in date\nas well as in character, almost as much to the second group. It is\nmade up of two five-act dramas, presenting a series of brilliant and\npowerful scenes in the life of the Emperor Julian, lacking, however,\ndramatic unity and culminating interest. It is probable that the\ndisconnected character of the work, and its undue length, is owing to\nthe long period which intervened between its commencement in Norway and\nits completion at Rome. It is, in its parts, undoubtedly a fascinating\nwork; we trace Julian\u2019s life from his youth as a student of philosophy\nto his death as Emperor conquered by the Galilean. The interest of\nhis life lies in his various relations to the growing Christianity\nand decaying Paganism by which he is surrounded. Julian realizes the\npossibility of a third religion--\u201cthe reconciliation between nature\nand spirit, the return to nature through spirit: that is the task for\nhumanity.\u201d But he imagines that he is himself the divine representative\nof this new religion. His friend Maximus prophesies at the end \u201cThe\nthird kingdom shall come! The spirit of man shall take its inheritance\nonce more.\u201d Julian failed because he was weak and vain, and because\nthe age was against him; he dies with the cry on his lips, \u201cThou hast\nconquered, O Galilean!\u201d\n\n[10] It may be noted that this was the first of Ibsen\u2019s dramas to be\ntranslated into English, by Miss Catherine Ray, in 1876. To Mr. Gosse\nbelongs the honour of having first introduced Ibsen to English readers,\nin an article in the \u201cFortnightly,\u201d in 1874. The first of his social\ndramas to be translated into English was \u201cThe Doll\u2019s House\u201d (under the\ntitle of \u201cNora\u201d), by Miss Frances Lord in 1882.\n\n\u201cLove\u2019s Comedy,\u201d the earliest of the poems of the second group, is the\nfirst work in which Ibsen\u2019s characteristic modern tone appears, not\nagain to vanish. It is a satire on the various conventional phases\nof love, exquisite in form but comparatively slight in texture. In\n\u201cBrand\u201d Ibsen produced a poem which for imagination and sombre energy\nstands alone. It is perhaps the most widely known of all his works; in\nGermany it has already found four translators, and there is reason to\nhope that before long a translation will appear in England. \u201cBrand\u201d is\nthe tragedy of will and self-sacrifice in the service of the ideal--a\nnarrow ideal, but less narrow, Ibsen seems sometimes to hint, than the\nideals of most of us. The motto on which Brand acts in all the crises\nof his life is, \u201cAll or nothing;\u201d and with him it means in every case\nthe crushing of some human emotion or relationship for the fulfilment\nof a religious duty. Soon after the commencement of the poem Brand\nbecame the pastor of a gloomy little northern valley, between mountains\nand glaciers, into which the sun seldom penetrates. He is accompanied\nby his wife Agnes, a pathetic image of love and devotion. A child is\nborn to them, but soon dies in this sun-forsaken valley. There are few\npassages in literature of more penetrating pathos than the scene in the\nfourth act in which, one Christmas eve, the first anniversary of the\nchild\u2019s death, Brand persuades Agnes to give her Alf\u2019s clothes--the\nlast loved relics--to a beggar-woman who comes to the door with her\nchild during a snowstorm. Soon Agnes also dies. In the end, stoned\nby his flock, Brand makes his way, bleeding, up into the mountains.\nHere, amid the wild rocks and his own hallucinations, he is met by a\nmad girl who mistakes him for the thorn-crowned Christ. This scene, in\nwhich, overwhelmed at last by an avalanche, Brand dies amid his broken\nideals, attains an imaginative height not elsewhere reached in modern\nliterature, and for the like of which we have to look back to the great\nscene on the heath in \u201cLear.\u201d Here and elsewhere, however, Ibsen brings\nin supernatural voices, which scarcely heighten the natural grandeur\nof the scene, and which seem out of place altogether in a poem so\nentirely modern. \u201cBrand\u201d brings before us a wealth of figures and of\ndiscussions, carried on in brief, clear, musical, though irregular,\nmetrical form, and it would be impossible to analyze so complex a work\nwithin moderate compass.\n\n\u201cPeer Gynt,\u201d is regarded in his own country as Ibsen\u2019s most important\nachievement, for it is a great modern national epic, the Scandinavian\n\u201cFaust.\u201d A successful attempt has even been made to represent it on the\nstage, the incidental music being composed by Grieg. The name of its\nhero and many incidents in his career have their home in old Norwegian\nfolk-lore, and Ibsen has himself declared that Peer Gynt is intended\nas the representative of the Norwegian people. Peer is the child of\nimagination who lives in a world in which fantasy and reality can\nscarcely be distinguished. He is an egoist with colossal ambitions;\nat the same time he is by no means wanting in worldly wisdom; he goes\nto America, and makes a large fortune (later on suddenly lost) by the\nimportation of slaves and the exportation of idols to China, a trade\nwhich he reconciles to his conscience by opening up another branch of\nbusiness for supplying missionaries (at a considerable profit) with\nBibles and rum. The whole is a series of scenes and adventures, often\nfantastic or symbolic in character, always touched by that profound\nirony which is Ibsen\u2019s most marked feature. One scene is so original\nand penetrative that it stands alone in literature. It is that scene of\npeculiarly Norwegian essence in which Peer Gynt enters the hut in which\nhis mother lies dying, with the fire on the hearth and the old tom-cat\non a stool at the bottom of the bed. He talks to her in the tone of the\ndays of childhood, reminding her how they used to play at driving to\nthe fairy-tale castle of Soria Moria. He sits at the foot of the bed,\nthrows a string round the stool on which the cat lies, takes a stick in\nhis hand, imagines a journey to Heaven--the altercation with St. Peter\nat the gate, the deep bass voice of God declaring that Mother Aase\nshall enter free--and lulls her to death with the stories with which\nshe had once lulled him to sleep. At a much later date in his career\nPeer finds himself in a madhouse at Cairo, where he is assured that\nhis own guiding principle of the self-sufficiency of the individual,\nwithout regard for the actions or opinions of others, is carried out to\nits extreme limits. He is here acclaimed as emperor and crowned with a\ngarland of straw. Thus are his dreams of power fulfilled. In the end he\nreturns, a white-haired old man, to be eagerly welcomed by the faithful\nSolveig, whom, as a girl, he had forsaken, and who is now an old woman,\nstill waiting for him with the kingdom of love that he had missed.\nThe poem ends with the picture of Solveig singing over her lover a\ncradle-song of death. The failure of an over-mastering imagination and\nweak will to attain the love that alone satisfies, that is the last\nlesson of this marvellous work, so full of manifold meaning.\n\nIt is certainly by the third and latest group--the Social Dramas--that\nIbsen has attracted most attention both in his own country and abroad.\nThey are all written in mature life, and he has here devoted his early\nacquired mastery of the technical requirements of the drama, as well\nas the later acquired experiences of men, to a keen criticism of the\nsocial life of to-day. He himself, it is said, regards these plays\nas his chief title to remembrance. It is scarcely possible to say so\nmuch as this when we think of \u201cH\u00e6rm\u00e6ndene paa Helgeland,\u201d of \u201cBrand,\u201d\nand of \u201cPeer Gynt.\u201d But it certainly does not befit us of to-day to\ncomplain that Ibsen has devoted his most mature art to work which has\na significance which to-day at all events cannot be over-estimated.\nThat significance may be very easily set forth; the spirit that works\nthrough Ibsen\u2019s latest dramas is the same that may be detected in\nhis earliest, \u201cCatilina;\u201d it is an eager insistance that the social\nenvironment shall not cramp the reasonable freedom of the individual,\ntogether with a passionately intense hatred of all those conventional\nlies which are commonly regarded as \u201cthe pillars of society.\u201d But this\nimpulse that underlies nearly all Ibsen\u2019s dramas of the last group is\nalways under the control of a great dramatic artist. The dialogue is\nbrief and incisive; every word tells, and none is superfluous; there\nis no brilliant play of dialogue for its own sake. \u201cThe illusion I\nwish to produce,\u201d he has himself said, \u201cis that of truth itself,\nI want to produce upon the reader the impression that what he is\nreading is actually taking place before him.\u201d In the hands of a meaner\nartist such an attempt would be fatal; to Ibsen it has brought greater\nstrength. If there is fault to find in the construction of Ibsen\u2019s\nprose dramas, it lies in their richness of material; the subsidiary\nepisodes are frequently dramas in themselves, although duly subordinate\nto the main purpose of the play. The care lavished on the development\nand episodes of these dramas is equalled by the reality and variety\nof the persons presented. These are never mere embodied \u201chumours\u201d or\nsarcastic caricatures; the terrible keenness of Ibsen\u2019s irony comes of\nthe simple truth and moderation with which he describes these social\nhumbugs who are yet so eminently reasonable and like ourselves. Every\nfigure brought before us, even the most insignificant, is an organic\nand complex personality, to be recognized without trick or catchword.\n\n\u201cThe Young Men\u2019s League,\u201d the earliest of the series, deals with the\nrise and progress of one Stensgaard. He is a man whose character is\nessentially vulgar and commonplace, but who is undoubtedly clever, and\nwhose ambition it is to gain political success. At the same time he\nis short-sighted, conceited, absolutely wanting in tact. He is even\nunstable, save in the great central aim of his life, which he seeks\nto bring about by the formation of a compact majority of voters, of\nwhich the nucleus is the Young Men\u2019s League. Stensgaard is always\nat his best as an orator; he is a Numa Roumestan, genial, almost\nchildishly open-hearted, with a flow of facile emotion and a great\nmastery of phrases. We leave him under a cloud of contempt but nowise\ndefeated; and we are given to understand that he is on his way to\nthe highest offices of state. In this vivid and skilful portrait of\nthe representative leader of semi-democratized societies, Ibsen has\ngiven his chief utterance on current political methods. It is scarcely\nfavourable. He realizes that government by party mobs, each headed by\na Stensgaard--a phase in the progress towards complete democratization\nillustrated in England to-day--is by no means altogether satisfactory.\n\u201cA party,\u201d remarks Dr. Stockmann, in \u201cAn Enemy of Society,\u201d \u201cis like\na sausage-machine: it grinds all the heads together in one mash.\u201d\nSomething more fundamental even than party government is needed, and\nin some words written in 1870 Ibsen has briefly expressed what he\nconceives to be the pith of the matter:--\n\n\u201cThe coming time--how all our notions will fall into the dust then!\nAnd truly it is high time. All that we have lived on up till now has\nbeen the remnants of the revolutionary dishes of the last century, and\nwe have been long enough chewing these over and over again. Our ideas\ndemand a new substance and a new interpretation. Liberty, equality, and\nfraternity are no longer the same things that they were in the days of\nthe blessed guillotine; but it is just this that the politicians will\nnot understand, and that is why I hate them. These people only desire\npartial revolutions, revolutions in externals, in politics. But these\nare mere trifles. There is only one thing that avails--to revolutionize\npeople\u2019s minds.\u201d\n\nHe is not an aristocrat of the school of Carlyle, eager to put\neverything beneath the foot of a Cromwell or a Bismarck. The great\ntask for democracy is, as Rosmer says in \u201cRosmersholm,\u201d \u201cto make every\nman in the land a nobleman.\u201d \u201cThe State must go!\u201d Ibsen wrote to G.\nBrandes in 1870. \u201cThat will be a revolution which will find me on its\nside. Undermine the idea of the State, set up in its place spontaneous\naction, and the idea that spiritual relationship is the only thing that\nmakes for unity, and you will start the elements of a liberty which\nwill be something worth possessing.\u201d It is only by the creation of\ngreat men and women, by the enlargement to the utmost of the reasonable\nfreedom of the individual, that the realization of Democracy is\npossible. And herein, as in other fundamental matters, Ibsen is at one\nwith the American, with whom he would appear at first sight to have\nlittle in common. \u201cWhere the men and women think lightly of the laws;\n... where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity\nof elected persons; ... where outside authority enters always after\nthe precedence of inside authority; where the citizen is always the\nhead and ideal; where children are taught to be laws to themselves; ...\nthere the great city stands!\u201d exclaims Walt Whitman.\n\nIn \u201cThe Pillars of Society\u201d--which was separated from \u201cThe Young Men\u2019s\nLeague\u201d by the appearance of \u201cEmperor and Galilean\u201d--Ibsen pours\ndelicious irony on those conventional lies which are regarded as the\nfoundations of social and domestic life. Here also he presents us with\none of the most eminent of the group of \u201cgovernors, teachers, spiritual\npastors and masters\u201d that throughout these plays strive to act as the\npillars of the social system. Straamand in \u201cLove\u2019s Comedy,\u201d Manders\nin \u201cGhosts,\u201d the schoolmaster, R\u00f6rlund, here, with many minor figures\nscattered through other plays, notwithstanding slight differences, are\nclosely allied. The clergyman is for Ibsen the supreme representative\nand exponent of conventional morality. Yet the dramatist never falls\ninto the mistake of some of his Scandinavian contemporaries who make\ntheir clerical figures mere caricatures. Here, as always, it is\nbecause it is so reasonable and truthful that Ibsen\u2019s irony is so\nkeen. R\u00f6rlund is honest and conscientious, but the thinnest veils of\npropriety are impenetrable to him; he can see nothing but the obvious\nand external aspects of morality; he is incapable of grasping a new\nidea, or of sympathizing with any natural instinct or generous emotion;\nit is his part to give utterance, impressive with the sanction of\nreligion, to the traditional maxims of the society he morally supports.\nPastor Manders, in \u201cGhosts,\u201d is less fluent than R\u00f6rlund, and of\nstronger character. His training and experience have fitted him to deal\nin all dignity with the proprieties and conventions of social morality;\nbut when he is in the presence of the realities of life, or when a\ngenerous human thought or emotion flashes out before him, he shrinks\nback, shocked and cowed. He is then, as Mrs. Alving says, nothing but\na great child. That Ibsen is, in his clerical personages, as some have\nsaid, covertly attacking Protestantism, it is not necessary to assert.\nIt is the traditional morality, of which the priesthood everywhere\nare the chief and authorized exponents, with which he is chiefly\nconcerned. His attitude towards Christianity generally we may perhaps\ngather from the intensity of feeling with which Julian, in \u201cEmperor and\nGalilean,\u201d expresses his passionate repugnance to its doctrine of the\nevil of human nature and its policy of suppression. \u201cYou can never\nunderstand it, you,\u201d he continues, \u201cwho have never been in the power of\nthis God-Man. It is more than a doctrine which he has spread over the\nworld; it is a charm which has fettered the senses. Whoever falls once\ninto his hands--I think he never becomes free again. We are like vines\nplanted in a foreign soil; plant us back again and we should perish;\nyet we languish in this new earth.\u201d\n\n\u201cA Doll\u2019s House\u201d contains Ibsen\u2019s most elaborate portrait of a woman,\nand it is his chief contribution to the elucidation of the questions\nrelating to the social functions and position of women in the modern\nworld. It is the tragedy of marriage, and on this ground it has excited\nmuch discussion, and is perhaps the most widely known of Ibsen\u2019s social\ndramas. As a work of art it is probably the most perfect of them. He\nhas here thrown off the last fragments of that conventionality in\ntreatment which frequently mars the two previous plays, and has reached\nthe full development of his own style. The play is an organic whole,\nall its parts are intimately bound together, and every step in the\ndevelopment is vital and inevitable. Nora herself, the occupant of the\ndoll\u2019s house, is a being whose adult instincts have been temporarily\narrested by the influences which have made her an overgrown child.\nShe is the daughter of a frivolous official of doubtful honesty;\nshe has been fed on those maxims of conventional morality of which\nR\u00f6rlund is so able an exponent; and her chief recreation has been in\nthe servants\u2019 room. She is now a mother, and the wife of a man who\nshields her carefully from all contact with the world. He refrains\nfrom sharing with her his work or his troubles; he fosters all her\nchildish instincts; she is a source of enjoyment to him, a precious\ntoy. He is a man of \u00e6sthetic tastes, and his love for her has something\nof the delight that one takes in a work of art. Nora\u2019s conduct is the\nnatural outcome of her training and experience. She tells lies with\nfacility; she flirts almost recklessly to attain her own ends; when\nmoney is concerned her conceptions of right are so elementary that she\nforges her father\u2019s name. But she acts from the impulses of a loving\nheart; her motives are always good; she is not conscious of guilt. Her\neducation in life has not led her beyond the stage of the affectionate\nchild with no sense of responsibility. But the higher instincts are\nlatent within her; and they awake when the light of day at length\npenetrates her doll\u2019s house, and she learns the judgment of the world,\nof which her husband now stands forth as the stern interpreter. In the\nclash and shock of that moment she realizes that her marriage has been\nno marriage, that she has been living all these years with a \u201cstrange\nman,\u201d and that she is no fit mother for her children. She leaves her\nhome, not to return until, as she says, to live with her husband will\nbe a real marriage. Will she ever return?--The Norwegian poets, it has\nbeen said, like to end their dramas, as such end in life, with a note\nof interrogation.\n\nNora is one of a group of women, more or less highly developed,\nwho are distributed throughout Ibsen\u2019s later plays. They stand, in\ntheir stagnant conventional environment, as, either instinctively or\nintelligently, actually or potentially, the representatives of freedom\nand truth; they contain the promise of a new social order. The men\nin these plays, who are able to estimate their social surroundings\nat a just value, have mostly been wounded or paralyzed in the battle\nof life; they stand by, half-cynical, and are content to be merely\nspectators. But the women--Selma, Lona, Nora, Mrs. Alving, Rebecca--are\nfull of unconquerable energy. There is a new life in their breasts that\nsurges, often tumultuously, into very practical expression.\n\nAs \u201cThe Doll\u2019s House\u201d is the tragedy of marriage, so \u201cGhosts\u201d is the\ntragedy of heredity. This wonderful play is the logical outcome and\ncontinuation of \u201cThe Doll\u2019s House.\u201d Mrs. Alving is a Nora who had\nresolved to cling to her husband in spite of all, and here is the\nresult. She is a woman of energy and intellect, who has managed the\nestate, and devoted herself successfully to the task of creating an\nartificial odour of sanctity around the memory of her late husband.\nAt the same time she has been gradually throwing aside the precepts\nof the morality in which she has been educated, and has learned to\nthink for herself. When her son Oswald returns home, in reality dying\nof disease that has been latent from his birth, he seems to her the\nghost of his father. His own life has been free from excess, but he\nnow drinks too much; and he begins to make love to the girl who is\nreally his half-sister, exactly as his father had done to her mother\nin the same place. The scene finally closes over the first clear signs\nof his madness. The irony of the play is chiefly brought about by\nthe involuntary agency of Pastor Manders, the consummate flower of\nconventional morality, and in the few hours which the action covers\nthe tragedy of heredity is slowly and relentlessly unfolded, with the\nvanity of all efforts to conceal or suppress the great natural forces\nof life.\n\nIn \u201cGhosts,\u201d it seems to me, Ibsen reached the highest point of his\nart. He deals here with commonplace characters and everyday scenes;\nmost of the action is conveyed in mere drawing-room dialogue; but\nwe feel how the clearness and completeness of this play, its tragic\nintensity, its immense concentration, have at the back the whole of\nIbsen\u2019s various achievement. When we reach the end we experience\nthat prolonged shudder of horror, in which, as Aristotle said, the\npurification of tragedy lies, and we involuntarily recall whatever is\nmost awful in literature, the \u201cOresteia\u201d of \u00c6schylus, Shakespeare\u2019s\n\u201cMacbeth,\u201d Shelley\u2019s \u201cCenci.\u201d It is only on more intimate acquaintance\nthat we are able to look beyond the horror of it, and that we realize\nhere, better than elsewhere, how Ibsen has absorbed the scientific\ninfluences of his time, the attitude of unlimited simplicity and trust\nin the face of reality. \u201cI almost think,\u201d Mrs. Alving says, \u201cthat we\nare all of us ghosts, Pastor Manders. It is not only what we have\ninherited from our father and mother that \u2018walks\u2019 in us,--it is all\nsorts of dead ideas and lifeless old beliefs and so forth. They have\nno vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we can\u2019t get rid\nof them. Whenever I take up a newspaper I seem to see ghosts gliding\nbetween the lines. There must be ghosts all the country over, as thick\nas the sand of the sea.\u201d There is the absolute acceptance of facts,\nhowever disagreeable. But, beside it, is the hope that lies in the\nskilful probing of the wound that the ignorant have foolishly smothered\nup; the hope also that lies in a glad trust of nature and of natural\ninstincts. Nowhere else in Ibsen\u2019s work can we feel so strong and\ninvigorating a breath of new life.\n\n\u201cAn Enemy of Society\u201d is closely connected in its origin with\n\u201cGhosts.\u201d When \u201cGhosts\u201d was published it aroused fierce antagonism.\nSuch a subject was not suited, it was said, to artistic treatment.\nThe discussion was foolish enough; the wise saying of Goethe still\nremains true, that \u201cno real circumstance is unpoetic so long as the\npoet knows how to use it.\u201d All the worthy people, however, in whose\nname Pastor Manders is entitled to speak, declared, further, that the\nplay was immoral--as it certainly is from their point of view--and\nit was some time before its first representation on the stage, with\nthe distinguished northern actor, Lindberg, in the part of Oswald.\nIbsen had expected a storm, but the storm was even greater than he\nhad anticipated; and in the history of Dr. Stockmann he has given an\nartistic version of his own experiences at this time. It is pleasant\nthat the only figure in these plays that we can intimately associate\nwith Ibsen himself is that of the manly and genial Stockmann. When\nhe discovers that the water at the Baths, of which he is the medical\ndirector, and which are the chief cause of the town\u2019s prosperity, are\ninfected and producing disastrous results to the invalids, he resolves\nthat the matter shall at once be made known and remedied. It is in the\nshock of the universal disapprobation that this resolution arouses that\nour genial and homely doctor is lifted into heroism, and becomes the\nmouthpiece of truths with far-reaching significance. The great scene\nin the fourth act, in which he calls a public meeting as the only\nremaining way to make his discovery public, and, amid general clamour,\nsets forth his opinions, is one of the most powerful and genuinely\ndramatic that Ibsen has ever written.\n\n\u201cThe Wild Duck\u201d is, as a drama, the least remarkable of Ibsen\u2019s plays\nof this group. There is no central personage who absorbs our attention,\nand no great situation. For the first time also we detect a certain\ntendency to mannerism, and the dramatist\u2019s love of symbolism, here\ncentred in the wild duck, becomes obtrusive and disturbing. Yet this\nplay has a distinct and peculiar interest for the student of Ibsen\u2019s\nworks. The satirist who has so keenly pursued others has never spared\nhimself; in the lines that he has set at the end of the charming little\nvolume in which he has collected his poems, he declares that, \u201cto write\npoetry is to hold a doomsday over oneself.\u201d Or, as he has elsewhere\nexpressed it: \u201cAll that I have written corresponds to something that\nI have lived through, if not actually experienced. Every new poem has\nserved as a spiritual process of emancipation and purification.\u201d In\nboth \u201cBrand\u201d and \u201cPeer Gynt\u201d we may detect this process. In \u201cThe Wild\nDuck\u201d Ibsen has set himself on the side of his enemies, and written,\nas a kind of anti-mask to \u201cThe Doll\u2019s House\u201d and \u201cThe Pillars of\nSociety,\u201d a play in which, from the standpoint to which the dramatist\nhas accustomed us, everything is topsy-turvy. Gregers Werle is a\nyoung man, possessing something of the reckless will-power of Brand,\nwho is devoted to the claims of the ideal, and who is doubtless an\nenthusiastic student of Ibsen\u2019s social dramas. On returning home after\na long absence he learns that his father has provided for a cast-off\nmistress by marrying her to an unsuspecting man who is an old friend\nof Gregers\u2019. He resolves at once that it is his duty at all costs to\ndestroy the element of falsehood in this household, and to lay the\nfoundations of a true marriage. His interference ends in disaster;\nthe weak average human being fails to respond properly to \u201cthe claims\nof the ideal;\u201d while Werle\u2019s father, the chief pillar of conventional\nsociety in the play, spontaneously forms a true marriage, founded on\nmutual confessions and mutual trust. If the play may be regarded, not\nquite unfairly, as a burlesque of possible deductions from the earlier\nplays, it witnesses also, like \u201cGhosts,\u201d to Ibsen\u2019s profound conviction\nthat all vital development must be spontaneous and from within,\nconditioned by the nature of the individual.\n\nIn \u201cThe Wild Duck\u201d Ibsen approaches in his own manner, without,\nhowever, much insistence, the mural aspects of the equality of\nthe sexes. Is a woman, who has had no relationships with a man\nbefore marriage, entitled to expect the same in her husband? Is a\nman, who has had relationships with other women before marriage,\nentitled to complain if his wife has also had such relationships?\nThese are the sort of questions which the Scandinavian and Danish\ndramatists--Bj\u00f6rnson, Eduard Brandes, Charlotte Edgren, Benzon--seem\nnever tired of discussing. Eduard Brandes makes his admirable little\ndrama \u201cEt Bes\u00f6g,\u201d published about the same time as \u201cVildanden,\u201d hang\non this problem, and although he brings no new idea into the play, he\nsettles the question in the same spirit as his great fellow-dramatist.\n\u201cEn Hanske,\u201d also published about the same time, gives us Bj\u00f6rnson\u2019s\ncontribution to the question. In this play a young woman is in love\nwith a young man who, as she learns accidentally at the moment of\nformally engaging herself to him, has had previous relationships with\nother women. At the same time she discovers that her own father, an\namiable old _\u00e9l\u00e9gant_, has been frequently unfaithful to his wife,\nand that her mother still carries about a suppressed bitterness. The\ngirl realizes that life is not like what she has been brought up to\nbelieve; she rejects her lover, and after some unexpected and quite\nunnecessary brutalities from him, flings her glove in his face. All\nBj\u00f6rnson\u2019s genial vivacity and emotional expansiveness come out in\nthe earlier scenes of this play, and there is some pleasant comedy,\nespecially when the easy-going father tries to lecture his daughter,\nto the accompaniment of her acute comments and the wife\u2019s sarcastic\nexclamations, on a wife\u2019s privileges. \u201cHere,\u201d he says, \u201cis woman\u2019s\nnoblest calling.\u201d \u201cAs what?\u201d asks the daughter. \u201cAs what?--Have you\nnot listened? As--as the ennobling influence in marriage, as that\nwhich makes man purer, as, as----\u201d \u201cSoap?\u201d \u201cSoap? what on earth makes\nyou think of soap?\u201d \u201cYou make out that marriage is a great laundry\nfor men. We girls are to stand ready, each at her wash-tub, with her\npiece of soap. Is that how you mean it?\u201d On this ground, however, it\nis difficult to avoid comparisons with Ibsen, and we miss here both\nthe artistic and moral grip of the greater dramatist. Ibsen\u2019s solution\nof the matter in \u201cThe Wild Duck\u201d seems to be that there can be no true\nmarriage without mutual knowledge and mutual confession.\n\nIn \u201cRosmersholm,\u201d social questions have passed into the background:\nthey are present, indeed, throughout; and to some extent they cause\nthe tragedy of the drama, as the numberless threads that bind a man to\nhis past, and that cut and oppress him when he strives to take a step\nforward. But on this grey background the passionate figure of Rebecca\nWest forms a vivid and highly-wrought portrait. Ibsen has rarely shown\nsuch intimate interest in the development of passion. The whole life\nand soul of this ardent, silent woman, whom we see in the first scene\nquietly working at her crochet, while the housekeeper prepares the\nsupper, are gradually revealed to us in brief flashes of light between\nthe subsidiary episodes, until at last she ascends and disappears down\nthe inevitable path to the mill stream. The touches which complete this\npicture are too many and too subtle to allow of analysis; in the last\nscene Ibsen\u2019s concentrated prose reaches as high a pitch of emotional\nintensity as he has ever cared to attain.\n\n\u201cThe Lady from the Sea\u201d seems to carry us into an atmosphere rather\ndifferent from that of the early social dramas. An element of melodrama\nmingles here with the social interest, and makes this play one of\nthe least characteristic, but certainly one of the most dramatically\neffective of the group. Ellida, a morbid, romantic young woman, whose\nmother died insane, has met before her marriage the second mate of an\nAmerican ship, a \u201cstranger;\u201d he attracts her with all the charm of\nthe wild life of the sea and the fascination of the unknown. Having\nperpetrated a more or less justifiable homicide, the second mate is\ncompelled to flee, not before he has gone through a form of betrothal\nwith Ellida. Subsequently she marries a well-meaning, commonplace\nwidower, but she wanders helplessly and uselessly through life, like\na mermaid among the children of men, still held, in spite of herself,\nby the old fascination of the sea. At length the mysterious \u201cstranger\u201d\nturns up again, resolved, if she wishes, to carry her off in spite of\neverything. She feels that she must be free--free to go or free to\nstay. The husband, naturally, refuses to hear of this, proposes to\nsend the man about his business. At length he consents to allow her\nto choose as she will. Then at once she feels able to decide against\nthe \u201cstranger,\u201d who leaps over the wall and disappears. The charm is\nbroken for ever, and she has the chance to make something of her life.\nThe moral is evident: without freedom of choice there can be no real\nemancipation or development.\n\nThe men of our own great dramatic period wrote plays which are the\nexpression of mere gladness of heart and childlike pleasure in the\nsplendid and various spectacle of the world. Hamlet and Falstaff, the\ntragic De Flores and the comic Simon Eyre, they are all merely parts of\nthe play. It is all play. The breath of Ariosto\u2019s long song of delight\nand Boccaccio\u2019s virile joy in life was still on these men, and for\nthe organization of society, or even for the development and fate of\nthe individual save as a spectacle, they took little thought. In the\nmodern world this is no longer possible; rather, it is only possible\nfor an occasional individual who is compelled to turn his back on the\nworld. Ibsen, like Aristophanes, like Moli\u00e8re, and like Dumas to-day,\nhas given all his mature art and his knowledge of life and men to the\nservice of ideas. \u201cOverthrowing society means an inverted pyramid\ngetting straight\u201d--one of the audacious sayings of James Hinton--might\nbe placed as a motto on the title-page of all Ibsen\u2019s later plays. His\nwork throughout is the expression of a great soul crushed by the weight\nof an antagonistic social environment into utterance that has caused\nhim to be regarded as the most revolutionary of modern writers.\n\nAn artist and thinker, whose gigantic strength has been nourished\nchiefly in solitude, whose works have been, as he himself says in\none of his poems, \u201cdeeds of night,\u201d written from afar, can never be\ngenuinely popular. Everything that he writes is received in his own\ncountry with attention and controversy; but he is mistaken for a cynic\nand pessimist; he is not loved in Norway as Bj\u00f6rnson is loved, although\nBj\u00f6rnson, in the fruitful dramatic activity of his second period,\nhas but followed in Ibsen\u2019s steps;--just as Goethe was never so well\nunderstood and appreciated as Schiller. Bj\u00f6rnson, with his genial\nexuberance, his popular sympathies and hopes, never too far in advance\nof his fellows, invigorates and refreshes like one of the forces of\nnature. He represents the summer side of his country, in its bright\nwarmth and fragrance. Ibsen, standing alone in the darkness in front,\nabsorbed in the problems of human life, indifferent to the aspects of\nexternal nature, has closer affinities to the stern winter-night of\nNorway. But there is a mighty energy in this man\u2019s work. The ideas and\ninstincts, developed in silence, which inspire his art, are of the kind\nthat penetrate men\u2019s minds slowly. Yet they penetrate surely, and are\nproclaimed at length in the market-place.\n\n\n\n\nTOLSTOI.\n\n\nI.\n\nRussia is the natural mediator between Europe and Asia. It happens\nwith the regularity of an ethnic law that every race partakes of the\ncharacteristics of neighbouring races. The extinct Tasmanian, by his\ncurious aberrations from the Australian type and approximation to that\nof Polynesia, furnished an unexpected anthropological problem that is\nstill unsolved. Everywhere the same mysterious blending or transition\nmay be witnessed. Apart from complexion, it has been said, many a\nRussian peasant might pass in Lahore or Benares as a native of the\nGanges valley. Whatever the ethnologist may say, one way or another,\nas to the racial elements of the country, anyone who approaches the\nstudy of Russian men and Russian things perpetually meets with traits\nthat are not familiar to him as European, but which he may have already\nlearnt to know as Asiatic. Nor is it only in the little traits of\ncharacter and daily life that these Eastern influences appear; the\nlanguage itself has close Oriental affinities, and the old Sclavonic\nis nearly related to Sanscrit. In trying to make Russia plain to\nourselves, it is constantly necessary to sound this keynote.\n\nA nation\u2019s instincts are revealed in its art. The complex history\nof the origin and development of Russian art is full of interest.\n\u201cRussia,\u201d as Viollet le Duc wrote in his charming book, \u201cL\u2019Art russe,\u201d\n\u201chas been a laboratory in which the arts coming from all parts of\nAsia have united to assume an intermediate form between the eastern\nand western worlds.\u201d The art of Russia has three great sources, the\nScythian, the Byzantine, and the Mongolian, but when these are analyzed\nit is found that each of them consists largely, when not entirely,\nof Oriental elements. Not less than nine-tenths of these component\nelements, Persian, Greek, Hindu, Finnic, and other, may, in Viollet\nle Duc\u2019s opinion, be set down as Eastern. Sometimes the art of Russia\nseems to have been almost effaced by Byzantine or Hindu influences,\nyet it ultimately assimilated all these Eastern influences until it\nreached its highest point of development at the end of the sixteenth\ncentury. In the gilded bulbous domes we see Hindu influence. Persian\ninfluence was peculiarly strong; the beautiful Holy Gate of the Church\nof St. John at Rostoff, the work of sixteenth century Russian artists,\nis of thoroughly Persian character. All that Russia took from Central\nAsia and Persia strengthened her art, though it retained its own\ncharacteristics, shown partly by the love of splendour peculiar to\na youthful and semi-barbaric race, as in the fantastic magnificence\nof that \u201cgigantic madrepore,\u201d the Church of Vassili Blagennoi in the\nKremlin at Moscow; partly by a freedom of conception and variety of\nexecution in which the native spirit found expression. Gothic art,\nwith its whole gamut of notes, from divine aspiration to grotesque\nhumour, remained absolutely alien. When Peter the Great introduced\nLatin and Teutonic influences, and German, Italian, English, above\nall, French elements poured into the country, an \u201cofficial Russia\u201d\ngrew up, speaking a foreign language and having no contact with the\nnation. Russia remained the same, but the dissolution of Russian art\nwas ensured.\n\nThe genuine Russian spirit seems not to have emerged distinctively into\nthe region of great art until it was brought into the peculiarly modern\nand western shape of the novel by Gogol, the Ukranian Cossack. \u201cDead\nSouls\u201d is the first great Russian example of the modern story-teller\u2019s\nart, and still the most popular. Oriental influences have ceased; in\nGogol we find western, especially English, influences, but, unlike the\nliterary tendencies of the last century, they are duly subordinated\nto elements that are essentially Russian. The direct simplicity of\nthe Russian, his love of minute realistic detail, which seems to be\nexpressed even in the ancient form of the Russian cross, his quietism,\nhis profound human sympathy, have all found adequate voice in the\nmodern Russian novel. The Russian painters of to-day, and the artists\nin bronze, with their simple realism and constant research for the\nexpression of life in action, have but followed in the steps of the\nRussian novel, which has, as its supreme representatives, Tourgueneff,\nDostoieffski, and Tolstoi. Tourgueneff, so delicate and sensitive in\nhis realism, with its atmosphere of ineffable melancholy, a Corot\namong novelists, as De Vog\u00fc\u00e9 calls him, is great not only by the\nbreadth and insight of his art, but by the unique position he holds\nin the development of Russian literature. The \u201cStories by a Hunter,\u201d\npublished a few years before the emancipation of the serfs, to which\nthey are supposed to have contributed, turned the Russian novel in the\ndirection of peasant life. The study of the peasant which occupies\nso much attention in Russia to-day is much more than a mere fashion,\nfor the peasant in Russia represents by far the chief element in\nthe population; certainly the interest in him has already left an\nineffaceable mark on those great Russian novelists whose influence is\nworld-wide. Tolstoi, Gregorovitch, Tchedrine, and others, have drawn\nthe _moojik_ with the breadth and faithfulness of Millet, in every\nattitude of godlike strength, of pathetic resignation, of abject vice.\nIn Dostoieffski, as in the poet Nekrassoff, this democratic element is\nmore fundamental than in either Tourgueneff or Tolstoi. Dostoieffski\u2019s\nprofound science of the human heart could never get near enough to its\nprimitive and instinctive elements. There are two or three scenes in\n\u201cRecollections of the Dead House,\u201d of Dantesque awfulness, which seem\nto bring nearer to us than anything else the very flesh and spirit of\nhumanity. Such is that scene of the convicts in the bath-room, close\nand crowded, until, on the reddened backs, beneath the stress of the\nheat and the steam, stand out clearly the old scars of whips and rods.\nIn all Dostoieffski\u2019s books we are constantly irritated and fascinated\nby this same strange penetrating odour of humanity.\n\nRussian art has always been very closely allied with religion, and\nthe Russian is very religious. Ever since, a thousand years ago,\nthe Muscovites swam by thousands into their rivers, headed by the\nchiefs, to receive Christian baptism, they seem to have taken great\ninterest in religion. But their religion has a distinctive character.\nIt has no clear demarcation from ordinary life, a characteristic\nthat is reflected in the similarity of religious and secular art in\nRussia. More than this, unlike both the favourite religions of the\nIndian and of the Teutonic races, it is not largely mystical; it is\nsimply a mystical communism. Sympathy and the need of comradeship,\nwhich seem to be deeply rooted in the national character, are the\ncharacteristics of Russian religion. \u201cPity for a fallen creature is\na very national trait,\u201d wrote Gogol, and among the great Russian\nnovelists, Dostoieffski, who is the most intensely Russian, is\nthroughout penetrated by the passion of pity. This spirit shows itself\nin the remarkable sympathy with which, in Russian popular stories, the\ndevil is treated. \u201cHe is represented,\u201d Stepniak remarks, \u201cas the enemy\nof man, doing his best to drag him down into hell. But as this is his\ntrade he cannot help it, and the people bear him no malice. He is a\ngood devil after all.\u201d Of the three persons of the Christian Trinity,\nthe second, most associated with images of love, appeals most to the\nRussian popular imagination. God the Father, as an austere personage,\nlacking in sympathy, is, on the other hand, regarded with indifferent,\nnot to say hostile, feelings. This was well exemplified by the innocent\nremark of a venerable _moojik_ in a remote part of the country: \u201cWhat!\nIs the old fellow alive still?\u201d\n\nThe Russian has yet changed but little. The Scythians, as we see them\nin the realistic repouss\u00e9 work of the Nikopol vase of twenty-three\ncenturies ago, are the Russian _moojiks_ of to-day; the features and\nthe dress have scarcely changed. They are, as Herodotus described them,\na race very tenacious of their customs. The sorcerer still holds his\nown among them, while the orthodox pope, it is well known, is regarded\nwith no reverence, but rather as a tradesman. Propitiatory sacrifices,\nit is said, are still paid by fishermen to the river-gods, and families\nin the same way try to keep on good terms with the household deities.\nThe ancient communistic land customs still flourish, together with the\nineradicable belief that the land must be the property of everyone. In\nsome parts of the country it is not uncommon for a poor man to help\nhimself to the corn of a rich man, the loan being repaid with interest\nin subsequent years. The deeply-rooted indifference of the people to\nexternal laws appears in the difficulty with which they have been\ninduced to accept an officially recognized marriage ceremony, and in\nthe indulgence which is still felt towards liberty, which is not always\nlicence, in such matters. In some parts of Russia, even to-day, it is\nsaid, a kind of _Pervigilium Veneris_ is held periodically; the young\npeople ascend a mountain to sing and to dance, after which it is _de\nrigueur_ to separate and to spend the night in couples. The primitive\nmatter-of-fact simplicity of the people, as well as their indifference\nto law and authority, is shown in an incident that is said to have\noccurred only a few years ago. The peasants in a certain village\ndecided that it was not desirable for their widowed pope to live\nalone, but the priest of the Greek Church is not allowed to re-marry;\ntherefore the peasants, having obtained the consent of a soldier\u2019s\nwidow to be the pope\u2019s mistress, insisted on introducing her into his\nhouse.[11] Such incidents often took place in the western Europe of\nfive centuries ago.\n\n[11] I take this, and much of what follows, from N. Tsakni\u2019s\ninteresting book, \u201cLa Russie Sectaire.\u201d It is scarcely necessary to\nrefer the English reader to the valuable series of works in which\nStepniak has set forth the condition of modern Russia.\n\nWe have to bear in mind these characteristics when we try to understand\nthe great religious movements that are going on in Russia. In all these\nsects we see the tenacity with which the Russian people have clung to\ntheir inborn practical instincts of communism, fraternity, and sexual\nfreedom. This religious movement is but another aspect of the spirit\nthat shows itself in Nihilism, and it is a wider, deeper, and more\ninteresting aspect. Both represent a profound antagonism to the State\nand to the official western methods of social organization promulgated\nby the State. Religious nonconformity dates far back into the Middle\nAges, but to Peter the Great is owing the first great development of\nRussian sects. That Tzar, with his hatred of all things Russian, was\nnaturally regarded by pious and patriotic Russians as Antichrist, and\nthey perished, in thousands at a time, by their own hands, rather than\nsubmit to the western notions which, knout in hand, he tried to force\nupon them. On the soil of poverty, wretchedness and disease, which\ndistinguishes Russia to-day from the rest of Europe, these religious\nsects have everywhere sprung up and flourished; some of an ascetic\ntype, with Asiatic tendencies, belonging more especially to the north\nof Russia, such as those frantic devotees, the Skoptsy, who mutilate\nthemselves after the manner of the Phrygian worshippers of Cybele; or\nof those sects, belonging more to the south, and rapidly gaining ground\nover the others, who desire to lead a life of reason and love, such as\nthe Doukhobory, who recognize no more divinity in Jesus than resides in\nall men, deny all dogmas, ceremonies, authority, give equal rights to\nevery man and woman, treat children with the same respect as the aged,\npractise free marriages, and are in their daily lives both more moral\nand more prosperous than their neighbours. One of the most recent of\nthese sects is the Soutaiefftsky, that first became generally known\nabout 1880. Basil Soutaieff, an uneducated mason, belonging to the\ncentre of Russia, from his early years pondered and dreamed over the\nmisery of the world. To obtain light he visited the priests, and one\nreferred him to the Gospels. His zeal induced him to learn to read, and\nhe studied the New Testament eagerly. One day he carried to the church\nthe body of a young son for burial. The pope asked fifty kopecks for\nthe ceremony; Soutaieff had only thirty, and the pope began to bargain\nwith him over the corpse. Soutaieff indignantly took up the body and\nburied it in his own garden. From that time dated his criticism of\nthe Church, and side by side grew up also a criticism of the world.\nHe observed in his own trade the tricks of commerce and the perpetual\neffort to amass money and to deceive the worker. He abandoned his work\nas a mason and returned from St. Petersburg to the country to cultivate\nthe earth, distributing to the poor the money he had previously earned.\nBut in the country he found, from pope to peasant, the same vices as in\nthe town, and with no wish to found a new sect, he became, by example\nas well as by precept, the teacher of a religion of universal love and\npity.\n\nSoutaieff rejects all ceremonies, including baptism and marriage (for\nwhich he substitutes a simple blessing and exhortation to a just\nlife), and all those external manifestations of religion which render\nmen hypocritical. At the same time he rejects all faith in angels or\ndevils, or in the supernatural generally, and is absolutely indifferent\nto the question of a future life. We have to occupy ourselves with the\nestablishment of happiness and justice on this earth; what happens\nabove, he says, I cannot tell, never having been there; perhaps there\nis nothing but eternal darkness.\n\nHe recognizes that the moral regeneration of men is closely connected\nwith social and economic questions. Private property is the source of\nthe hatreds, jealousies, and miseries of men. The proprietors must\ngive up the land of which they have arbitrarily gained possession, and\nwork for their living. But this end is to be gained, not by violence,\nbut by persuasion; men will recognize the hypocrisy and injustice of\ntheir lives, and those who persist in evil will be shut out from the\nfraternal community. Soutaieff refused, at one period at all events,\nto pay taxes. Once he went to St. Petersburg to explain the state of\nthings to the Emperor; great was his indignation when not only was\nan interview refused, but he was summarily expelled from the city.\nSoutaieff and his disciples refuse military service, for the men of all\nnations and religions are brothers: why should they quarrel?\n\nThis is the substance of Soutaieff\u2019s teaching. Large numbers of persons\ncome to hear him, sometimes out of curiosity, more often as disciples.\nHe leads the life of a simple peasant. One evening, it is said, on\ngoing to his barn, he found several men carrying away sacks of flour.\nWithout saying a word, he entered the barn and found a sack that the\nrobbers had not yet carried off. He pursued them, and on catching up\nwith them, he said: \u201cMy brothers, you must be in need of bread; take\nthe sack that you have forgotten.\u201d The following day the robbers\nbrought back the flour, and asked Soutaieff\u2019s forgiveness.\n\nHe has himself summed up his teaching. \u201cWhat is truth?\u201d a hearer once\nasked him. \u201cTruth,\u201d answered Soutaieff with conviction, \u201ctruth is love,\nin a common life.\u201d\n\n\nII.\n\nEvery artist writes his own autobiography. Even Shakespeare\u2019s works\ncontain a life of himself for those who know how to read it. There is\nlittle difficulty in reading Tolstoi\u2019s; moreover, it is very copious,\nand possesses the additional advantage of being written from at\nleast two distinct points of view. It is seldom necessary to consult\nany other authority for the essential facts of his life and growth.\n\u201cChildhood, Boyhood, and Youth,\u201d the earliest of his large books, and\none of the most attractive, tells us all that we need to know of his\nearly life. An English critic has remarked that, if Tolstoi has here\ndescribed his boyhood, he must have been a very commonplace child. The\nearly life of men of genius is rarely a record of precocities. The\nboy here described so minutely, with his abnormal sensitiveness, his\nshy awkwardness and profound admiration of the _comme il faut_, his\nperpetual self-analysis, his brooding dreams, his amusing self-conceit,\nbears in him the germs of a great artist much more certainly than\nany small monster of perfection. It is scarcely necessary to say that\nthe autobiography here is not one of incident, as some persons have\nfoolishly supposed; it is neither complete nor historically accurate.\nTolstoi uses his material as an artist, but the material is himself.\nThe artist craves to express the inward experiences of his past life,\nof which he can scarcely speak. He invents certain imaginary events, or\nrearranges actual events as a frame into which he fits his own inward\nexperiences. Whatever is most poignant and vivid in the novelist\u2019s art\nis so produced; and you say to him, \u201cThis is so real; you are narrating\nyour own history.\u201d He will be able to reply laughingly, \u201cOh, no! my\nlife is not at all like that.\u201d Imagination is a poor substitute for\nexperience. There is sufficient external evidence extant, even if it\nwere possible to doubt the internal, that Tolstoi is here throughout\ndrawing on his own youthful experiences. Like Irteneff, young Tolstoi\nfollowed Franklin\u2019s injunctions as to the use of \u201cRules of Life;\u201d his\nfavourite books are the same; like him, also, he early developed a\nlove of metaphysics, owing to which, young Irteneff says, \u201cI lost one\nafter the other the convictions which, for the happiness of my own\nlife, I never should have dared to touch.\u201d All the slight indications\nin the \u201cConfessions\u201d of young Tolstoi\u2019s spiritual experiences agree\nwith young Irteneff\u2019s. Even the plain face, \u201cexactly like that of a\ncommon peasant,\u201d the small grey eyes and thick lips and wide nose, that\ncaused the boy of the story to look at himself in the glass with such\nsorrow and aversion, to pray so fervently to God to be made handsome,\ncorrespond exactly to those of the real hero. No sign of the boy\u2019s\nearly development is left untouched. We feel that this book, in which\nthe artist is first fully revealed, was the outcome of an overmastering\nimpulse to give expression to the accumulated experiences of an intense\nand sensitive childhood, now receding for ever into the past.\n\nDescended from a well-known minister and friend of Peter the Great,\nand belonging to a family that has been eminent for two hundred years\nin war, diplomacy, literature, and art, Lyof Tolstoi was born in 1828,\nthe youngest of four sons; his mother, the Princess Marie Volkonsky,\nwas the daughter of a general in Catherine\u2019s time, and, according to\nfriends of the novelist\u2019s family, she resembled the Marie Bolkonsky of\n\u201cWar and Peace.\u201d Both parents were, he says, in the general esteem,\n\u201cgood, cultivated, gentle, and devout.\u201d He was early left an orphan,\nhis mother dying when he was not yet two years of age, his father when\nhe was nine. At the age of fifteen he went to the University of Kazan;\nhe left it suddenly to settle on the estate at Yasnaya Polyana which\nhad fallen to him. In 1851, at the age of twenty-three, he became\na yunker (the usual position of a nobleman entering the army, doing\nthe work of a common soldier and associating with the officers) in\nthe artillery at the Caucasus; he was stationed on the Terek. This\nexpedition to the Caucasus was a memorable event in young Tolstoi\u2019s\nlife. It determined finally his artistic vocation. A centre of military\nactivity on the most interesting frontier of the empire, it is a land\nof wonderful scenery and strange primitive customs, hallowed with\nassociation with Poushkin and Gogol. Tolstoi\u2019s elder and most loved\nbrother Nikolai had just come home on leave from the Caucasus; it was\nnatural that young Lyof, who had never yet left the neighbourhood of\nMoscow, should be attracted to a land which held for him a fascination\nso manifold. Under the influence of this strange and new environment he\nbecame, almost at once, a great artist, and \u201cChildhood, Boyhood, and\nYouth\u201d was written in 1852.\n\nTolstoi\u2019s critics have sometimes regretted that he never continued\nthis story. The only possible continuation of \u201cChildhood, Boyhood,\nand Youth\u201d is \u201cThe Cossacks.\u201d The young Irteneff of the end of the\nformer book corresponds as closely as possible with the Olyenin who\nis analyzed at the beginning of the latter. A few years only have\nintervened. These years he long after summed up briefly and too sternly\nin the \u201cConfessions\u201d: \u201cI cannot think of those years without horror,\ndisgust, and pain of heart. There was no vice or crime that in those\ndays I would not have committed. Lying, theft, pleasure of all sorts,\nintemperance, violence, murder--I have committed all. I lived on my\nestate, I consumed in drink or at cards what the labour of the peasants\nhad produced. I punished them, and sold them, and deceived them; and\nfor all that I was praised.\u201d Tolstoi condemns himself without mercy,\nas Bunyan condemned himself in his \u201cGrace Abounding;\u201d even in the\n\u201cConfessions\u201d he admits that at this time his aspirations after good\nwere the central element in his nature, and it was out of desire to\nbenefit his peasants that he left the university prematurely to settle\non his estate.\n\nTolstoi\u2019s spiritual autobiography is carried on as accurately as\nanyone need desire in \u201cThe Cossacks.\u201d It was in the Caucasus that he\nfirst powerfully realized what nature is, and natural life; he was,\nfor the first time, forced to consider his own relation to such life.\nLukashka, the healthy, coarse young Cossack soldier, Maryana, the\nbeautiful robust Cossack girl, and the delightful figure of Uncle\nJeroshka, the old hunter, display their vivid and active life before\nOlyenin, the child of civilization. He lives constantly in the presence\nof the \u201ceternal and inaccessible mountain snows and a majestic woman\nendowed with the primitive beauty of the first woman;\u201d he feels the\ncontrast between this and the life of cities: \u201chappiness is to be with\nNature, to see her, to hold converse with her;\u201d and he longs to mingle\nhimself with the life of Maryana. In vain. \u201cNow if I could only become\na Cossack like Lukashka, steal horses, get tipsy on red wine, shout\nribald songs, shoot men down, and then while drunk creep in through\nthe window where she was, without a thought of what I was doing or why\nI did it, that would be another thing, then we should understand one\nanother, then I might be happy.... She fails to understand me, not\nbecause she is beneath me, not at all; it would be out of the nature\nof things for her to understand me. She is light-hearted; she is like\nNature, calm, tranquil, sufficient to herself. But I, an incomplete\nfeeble creature, wish her to understand my ugliness and my anguish.\u201d\nThe book is full of strongly-drawn pictures of the beauty of natural\nstrength and health; sometimes recalling Whitman at his best. They are\nstrange, these resemblances between three great typical artists of\nto-day, so far apart, so little known to each other, Millet, Whitman,\nand Tolstoi. In \u201cThe Cossacks\u201d Tolstoi gives his first statement of\nthat problem of man\u2019s natural function in life which he has been\nseeking to solve ever since. Here he has no sort of solution to offer;\n\u201csome voice seemed to bid him wait, not decide hastily.\u201d\n\nIn 1854 Tolstoi was transferred at his own request to the Crimea,\nto obtain command of a mountain battery, doing good service at the\nbattle of the Tchernaya. At this period also he wrote his \u201cSketches of\nSebastopol.\u201d By this time he had attracted considerable attention as a\nwriter, and by command of the Emperor, who said that \u201cthe life of that\nyoung man must be looked after,\u201d he was, much to his own annoyance,\nremoved to a place of comparative safety.\n\nWhen peace was made, Tolstoi, then twenty-six years of age, left the\narmy and settled in St. Petersburg, where he was warmly received by\nthe chief literary circle of the capital, then including Tourgueneff,\nGregorovitch, and Ostroffsky; the first, who was a comparatively\nnear neighbour at Yasnaya Polyana, becoming one of his most intimate\nfriends. During the following ten years he wrote little, but travelled\nin Germany, France, and Italy, and devoted himself to the education\nof the serfs on his estate, marrying in 1862 the young and beautiful\ndaughter of a German military doctor at Tula. Although he wrote little,\nhe was enlarging his conception of art and studying literature. He\nadmired English novels, both for their art and naturalism, and among\nFrench novelists he preferred Dumas and Paul de Kock, whom he called\nthe French Dickens. Schopenhauer was a favourite writer at this\nperiod. He found his chief recreations in that love of sport in all\nits forms which has left such vivid and delightful traces throughout\nhis work. In his portraits he appears with a shaggy bearded face,\nwith large prominent irregular features, and rather a stern fixed and\nreserved expression; the deep eyes are watchful yet sympathetic, and\nat the same time melancholy, and the thick lips are sensitive. His\nacquaintances described him as not easy to approach, very shy and\nrather wild (_tr\u00e8s-farouche et tr\u00e8s-sauvage_), but those who approached\nhim found him \u201cextremely amiable.\u201d In his later \u201cConfessions\u201d he thus\nsummarizes his view of things, and that of the group to which he\nbelonged, during this literary period of his life, more especially with\nreference to the earlier part of it. \u201cThe view of life of my literary\ncomrades lay in the opinion that in general life developed itself; that\nin this development we, the men of intellect, took the chief part,\nand among the men of intellect we, artists and poets, stood first.\nOur vocation was to instruct people. The very natural question, \u2018What\ndo I know and what can I teach,\u2019 was unnecessary, for, according to\nthe theory, one needed to know nothing. The artist, the poet, taught\nunconsciously. I held myself for a wonderful artist and poet, and very\nnaturally appropriated this theory. I was paid for it, I had excellent\nfood, a good habitation, women, society; I was famous.... When I look\nback to that time, to my state of mind then, and to that of the people\nI lived with (there are thousands of them, even now), it seems to me\nmelancholy, horrible, ludicrous; I feel as one feels in a lunatic\nasylum. We were all then convinced that we must talk, talk, write and\nprint as quickly as possible and as much as possible; because it was\nnecessary for the good of humanity.\u201d This is by no means a satisfactory\nor final account of the matter.\n\n\u201cWar and Peace,\u201d Tolstoi\u2019s longest and most ambitious work, which began\nto appear in 1865, is from the present point of view of comparatively\nslight interest. His art had now become more complex, and this was a\nserious attempt to give life to various aspects of a great historical\nperiod. Much of himself, certainly, we find scattered through the\nwork, especially in Pierre Besoukhoff, though it is unnecessary to say\nthat a very large part of Pierre\u2019s experiences had no counterpart in\nTolstoi\u2019s; the not very life-like or interesting Masonic episode, for\ninstance, has clearly been read up. Pierre, however, appears before us,\nfrom first to last, as Tolstoi appears before us, a seeker.\n\n\u201cAnna Karenina\u201d is full of biographic material of intense interest. In\nVronsky, doubtless much of his earlier experience, and in Levine, his\nown inner history at that time, are written clearly enough. From this\nstandpoint the book has the vivid interest of a tragedy; we see the man\nwhose efforts to solve the mystery of life we can trace through all\nthat he ever wrote, still groping, but now more restlessly and eagerly,\nwith growing desperation. The nets are drawn tight around him, and when\nwe close the book we see clearly the inevitable fate of which he is\nstill unconscious.\n\nI once lived on the road to the cemetery of a large northern town. All\nday long, it seemed to me, the hearses were trundling along their dead\nto the grave, or gallopping gaily back. When I walked out I met men\ncarrying coffins, and if I glanced at them, perhaps I caught the name\nof the child I saw two days ago in his mother\u2019s lap; or I was greeted\nby the burly widower of yesterday, pipe in mouth, sauntering along\nto arrange the burial of the wife who lay, I knew, upstairs at home,\nthin and haggard and dead. The road became fantastic and horrible at\nlast; even such a straight road to the cemetery, it seemed, was the\nwhole of life, a road full of the noise of the preparation of death.\nHow daintily soever we danced along, each person, laughing so merrily\nor in such downright earnest, was merely a corpse, screwed down in\nan invisible coffin, trundled along as rapidly as might be to the\ngrave-edge.--It was at such a point of view that Tolstoi arrived in\nhis fiftieth year.\n\n\u201cWhen I had ended my book \u2018Anna Karenina,\u2019\u201d he wrote in his\n\u201cConfessions,\u201d \u201cmy despair reached such a height that I could do\nnothing but think, think, of the horrible condition in which I\nfound myself.... Questions never ceased multiplying and pressing\nfor answers, and like lines converging all to one point, so these\nunanswerable questions pressed to one black spot. And with horror and\na consciousness of my weakness, I remained standing before this spot.\nI was nearly fifty years old when these unanswerable questions brought\nme into this terrible and quite unexpected position. I had come to\nthis, that I--a healthy and happy man--felt that I could no longer\nlive.... Bodily, I was able to work at mowing hay as well as a peasant.\nMentally, I could work for eighteen hours at a time without feeling any\nill consequence. And yet I had come to this, that I could no longer\nlive.... I only saw one thing--Death. Everything else was a lie.\u201d\n\nThe greater part of the \u201cConfessions\u201d is occupied with the analysis of\nthis mental condition, and with the earlier stages of his deliverance,\nfor when he wrote the book he was scarcely yet quite free. The\ndirection in which light was to break in upon him is very clear even\nto the reader of \u201cAnna Karenina.\u201d It seemed to him at length that\nthe awful questions which had oppressed him so long had been solved\nfor thousands of years by millions upon millions of persons who had\nnever reasoned about them at all. \u201cFrom the time when men first began\nto live anywhere,\u201d he says in the \u201cConfessions,\u201d \u201cthey already knew\nthe meaning of life, and they carried on this life so that it reached\nme. Everything in me and around me, corporeal and incorporeal, is the\nfruit of their experiences of life; even the means by which I judge\nand condemn life, all this is not mine, but brought forth by them. I\nmyself have been born, bred, grown up, thanks to them. They have dug\nout the iron, have tamed cattle and horses, have taught how to till the\nground, and how to live together and to order life; they have taught me\nto think and to reason. And I, their production, receiving my meat and\ndrink from them, instructed by their thoughts and words, have proved\nto them they are an absurdity!... It is clear that I have only called\nabsurd what I do not understand.\u201d\n\nWhen he had made this great discovery the rest followed, slowly, but\nsimply and naturally. First, he understood the meaning of God. He had\nall his life been seeking God. Now, one day in early spring, he was in\nthe wood, trying to catch among the tones of the forest the cry of the\nsnipe, listening and waiting, and thinking of the things he had been\nthinking of for the last three years, especially of this question of\nGod. There was no God--that he knew was an intellectual truth. But is\nthe knowledge of God an intellectual matter? And it seemed to him that\nhe realized that God is life, and that to live is to know God. \u201cAnd\nfrom that moment the consciousness of God, as known by living, has\nremained with me.\u201d\n\nFollowing up this clue, he proceeded to attend church regularly,\nand to fulfil all the orthodox ceremonies. This, however, was a\nfailure. He could not get rid of the consciousness that these things\nwere--\u201cbosh.\u201d He turned from the church to the Gospels. At this point\nthe \u201cConfessions\u201d end. In the year 1879, in which he wrote that book,\nhe heard of, and met, Soutaieff.\n\nOne evening a beggar woman had knocked at Soutaieff\u2019s door, asking\nshelter for the night. She was given food and a place of rest. Next\nmorning all the family went to work in the field. The woman took the\nopportunity of collecting all the valuables she could lay her hands\non, and fled. Some peasants at work saw her, stopped her, examined\nher bundle, and having bound her hands, led her before the local\nauthorities. Soutaieff heard of this, and soon arrived. \u201cWhy have you\narrested her?\u201d he asked. \u201cShe is a thief; she must be punished,\u201d they\ncried. \u201cJudge not, and you will not be judged,\u201d he said solemnly; \u201cwe\nare all guilty at some point. What is the good of condemning her?\nShe will be put in prison, and what advantage will that be? It would\nbe much better to give her something to eat, and to let her go in\nthe grace of God.\u201d Such curiously Christ-like stories as this of the\npeasant-teacher reached Tolstoi, and made a deep impression on him.\nThey were in the line of his mental development, and threw light on his\nown experiences. The influence of Soutaieff appears in \u201cWhat then must\nwe do?\u201d--a further chapter in the history of Tolstoi\u2019s development, and\nperhaps the most memorable of his attempts at the solution of social\nquestions.\n\nWhat then must we do? It was the question the people asked of John\nthe Baptist, and we know his brief and practical answer. It was the\nquestion that pressed itself for solution on Tolstoi when he began to\ninvestigate the misery of Moscow, and to start philanthropic plans for\nits amelioration. He tells us in this narrative, which has a dramatic\nvividness of its own that will not bear abbreviation, how he was\ngradually forced, by his own well-meaning attempts and mistakes, to\nabandon his philanthropic projects, and to realize that he himself and\nall other respectable and well-to-do people were the direct causes of\nthe misery of poverty.\n\nHe investigated the worst parts of the city, finding more comfort and\nhappiness amidst rags than he had expected, and only discovering one\nhopelessly useless class--the class of those who had seen better days,\nwho had been brought up in the notions that he himself had been brought\nup in as to the relative position of those who are workers and those\nwho are not workers.\n\nHe met with a prostitute who stayed at home nursing the child of a\ndying woman. He asked her if she would not like to change her life--to\nbecome, he suggested at random, a cook. She laughed: \u201cA cook? I cannot\neven bake bread;\u201d but he detected in her face an expression of contempt\nfor the occupation of a cook. \u201cThis woman, who, like the widow of the\nGospel, had in the simplest way sacrificed all that she possessed for\na dying person, thought, like her companions, that work was low and\ncontemptible. Therein was her misfortune. But who of us, man or woman,\ncan save her from this false view of life? Where among us are the\npeople who are convinced that a life of labour is more honourable than\none of idleness, who live according to such a conviction, and value and\nrespect men accordingly?\u201d He came across another prostitute who had\nbrought up her daughter of thirteen to the same trade. He determined to\nsave the child, to put her in the hands of some compassionate ladies,\nbut it was impossible to persuade the woman that she had not done the\nbest for the daughter whom she had cared for all her life and brought\nup to the same occupation as herself; and he realized that it was the\nmother herself who had to be saved from a false view of life, according\nto which it was right to live without bearing children and without\nworking, in the service of sensuality. \u201cWhen I had considered this,\nI understood that the majority of ladies whom I would have called on\nto save this girl, not only themselves live without bearing children\nand without working, but also bring up their daughters to live such\na life; the one mother sends her daughter to the public-house, the\nother to the ball. But both mothers possess the same view of life,\nnamely, that a woman must be fed, clothed, and taken care of, to\nsatisfy the wantonness of a man. How, then, could our ladies improve\nthis woman and her daughter?\u201d He was anxious to befriend a bright boy\nof twelve, and took him into his own house among the servants, pending\nsome better arrangement to give him work. At the end of a week this\nungrateful little boy ran away, and was subsequently found at the\ncircus, acting as conductor to an elephant, for thirty kopecks a day.\n\u201cTo make him happy and to improve him I had taken him into my house,\nwhere he saw--what? My children--older, younger, and the same age as\nhimself--who not only did not work for themselves, but in every way\ngave work to others: they spoiled everything they came in contact with,\nover-ate themselves with sweets and delicacies, broke crockery, and\nthrew to the dogs what to this boy would seem dainties.... I ought to\nhave understood how foolish it was on my part--I who brought up my\nchildren in luxury to do nothing--to try to improve other people and\ntheir children, who lived in what I called \u2018dens,\u2019 but three-fourths\nof whom worked for themselves and for others.\u201d His experience was the\nsame throughout, and he brings his usual keen insight to the analysis\nof his mental attitude when he gave money in charity, and to the mental\nattitude of the recipients of his charity. He found also that, even if\nhis charity were to rival that of the poor, he would have to give 3,000\nroubles to make a gift proportioned to the three kopecks bestowed by a\npeasant, or to sacrifice his whole living for days at a time, like the\nprostitute who nursed the dying woman\u2019s child.\n\nIt seemed to him that he was like a man trying to draw another man out\nof a swamp, while he himself was standing on the same shifting and\ntreacherous ground; every effort only served to show the character of\nthe ground that he stood upon himself. When he was at the Night Shelter\nat Moscow, and looked at the wretched crowd who sought admission, he\nrecalled his impression when he had seen a man guillotined at Paris\nthirty years previously, and with his whole being had understood\nthat murder would always be murder, and that he had his share in\nthe guilt. \u201cSo, at the sight of the hunger, cold, and degradation of\nthousands of men, I understood, not with my reason, but with my heart\nand my whole being, that the existence of ten thousand such men in\nMoscow, while I and other thousands eat daintily, clothe our horses\nand cover our floors--let the learned say as much as they will that\nit is inevitable--is a crime, committed not once but constantly, and\nthat I with my luxury do not merely permit the crime, but take a direct\npart in it. The difference in the two impressions consisted only in\nthis--that before the guillotine all I could have done would have been\nto cry out to the murderers that they were doing evil, and to try to\nprevent them. Even then I should have known beforehand that the deed\nwould not have been prevented. But here I could have given, not merely\na warm drink or the little money that I had about me, but I could have\ngiven the coat from my body, and all that I had in my house. I did not\ndo so, and therefore I felt, and still feel, and shall never cease to\nfeel, that I am a partaker in that never-ceasing crime, so long as I\nhave superfluous food and another has none, so long as I have two coats\nand another has none.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy Religion,\u201d the best known of Tolstoi\u2019s social works, contains--not,\nindeed, the latest or the final statement, for Tolstoi is not a man\nto stand still--the clearest, most vigorous and complete statement of\nhis beliefs. He here frankly admits that he has arrived by the road\nof his own experience at convictions similar to those of Jesus as\nexpressed in the Sermon on the Mount. That he has nothing to say in\nfavour of the Christianity of to-day, which approves of society as it\nnow is, with its prison cells, its factories, its houses of infamy, its\nparliaments, one need scarcely point out. He has nothing but contempt\nfor \u201cfaith\u201d which he regards as merely a kind of lunacy. \u201cBut reason,\nwhich illuminates our life and impels us to modify our actions, is not\nan illusion, and its authority can never be denied.... Jesus taught\nmen to do nothing contrary to reason. It is unreasonable to go out to\nkill Turks or Germans; it is unreasonable to make use of the labours of\nothers that you and yours may be clothed in the height of fashion and\nmaintain that source of _ennui_, a drawing-room; it is unreasonable to\ntake people, already corrupted by idleness and depravity, and devote\nthem to further idleness and depravity within prison walls: all this\nis unreasonable--and yet it is the life of the European world.\u201d The\ndoctrine of Jesus is hard, men say. But how much harder, exclaims\nTolstoi, is the doctrine of the world! \u201cIn my own life,\u201d he says, \u201c(an\nexceptionally happy one, from a worldly point of view), I can reckon\nup as much suffering caused by following the doctrine of the world\nas many a martyr has endured for the doctrine of Jesus. All the most\npainful moments of my life--the orgies and duels in which I took part\nas a student, the wars in which I have participated, the diseases that\nI have endured, and the abnormal and unsupportable conditions under\nwhich I now live--all these are only so much martyrdom exacted by\nfidelity to the doctrine of the world.\u201d And what of those less happily\nsituated? \u201cThirty millions of men have perished in wars, fought in\nbehalf of the doctrine of the world; thousands of millions of beings\nhave perished, crushed by a social system organized on the principle of\nthe doctrine of the world.... You will find, perhaps to your surprise,\nthat nine-tenths of all human suffering endured by men is useless, and\nought not to exist--that, in fact, the majority of men are martyrs to\nthe doctrine of the world.\u201d\n\nTolstoi sums up his own doctrine under a very few heads:--Resist not\nevil--Judge not--Be not angry--Love one woman. His creed is entirely\ncovered by these four points. \u201cMy Religion\u201d is chiefly occupied by the\nexposition of what they mean, and in his hands they mean much. They\nmean nothing less than the abolition of the State and the country.\nHe is as uncompromising as Ibsen in dealing with the State. \u201cIt is\na humbug, this State,\u201d he remarked to Mr. Stead. \u201cWhat you call\na Government is mere phantasmagoria. What is a State? Men I know;\npeasants and villages, these I see; but governments, nations, states,\nwhat are these but fine names invented to conceal the plundering\nof honest men by dishonest officials?\u201d Law, tribunals, prisons,\nbecome impossible with the disappearance of the State; and with the\ndisappearance of the country, and of \u201cthat gross imposture called\npatriotism,\u201d there can be no more war.\n\nIn place of these great and venerable pillars of civilization,\nwhat? The first condition of happiness, he tells us, is that the\nlink between man and nature shall not be broken, that he may enjoy\nthe sky above him, and the pure air and the life of the fields.\nThis involves the nationalization of the land, or rather, to avoid\ncentralizing tendencies, its communalization. \u201cI quite agree with\nGeorge,\u201d he remarked, \u201cthat the landlords may be fairly expropriated\nwithout compensation, as a matter of principle. But as a question of\nexpediency, I think compensation might facilitate the necessary change.\nIt will come, I suppose, as the emancipation of slaves came. The idea\nwill spread. A sense of the shamefulness of private ownership will\ngrow. Someone will write an \u2018Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin\u2019 about it; there will\nbe agitation, and then it will come, and many who own land will do\nas did those who owned serfs, voluntarily give it to their tenants.\nBut for the rest, a loan might be arranged, so as to prevent the work\nbeing stopped by the cry of confiscation. Of course I do not hold with\nGeorge about the taxation of the land. If you could get angels from\nHeaven to administer the taxes from the land, you might do justice and\nprevent mischief. I am against all taxation.\u201d The second condition of\nhappiness is labour, the intellectual labour that one loves because one\nhas chosen it freely, and the physical labour that is sweet because\nit produces the muscular joy of work, a good appetite, and tranquil\nsleep. The third condition of happiness is love. Every healthy man\nand woman should have sexual relationships; and Tolstoi makes no\ndistinction between those that are called by the name of marriage and\nthose that are not so called; in either case, however, he would demand\nthat they shall be permanent. The fourth condition is unrestrained\nfellowship with men and women generally, without distinction of class.\nThe fifth is health, though this seems largely the result of obedience\nto the others. These are the five points of Tolstoi\u2019s charter. They\nseem simple enough, but he is careful to point out that most of them\nare closed to the rich. The rich man is hedged in by conventions,\nand cannot live a simple and natural life. A peasant can associate\non equal terms with millions of his fellows; the circle of equal\nassociation becomes narrower and narrower the higher the social rank,\nuntil we come to kings and emperors, who have scarcely one person with\nwhom they may live on equal terms. \u201cIs not the whole system like a\ngreat prison, where each inmate is restricted to association with a\nfew fellow-convicts?\u201d The rich may, indeed, work, but even then their\nwork usually consists in official and administrative duties, or the\nobservance of arduous social conventions which are odious to them: \u201cI\nsay odious, for I never yet met with a person of this class who was\ncontented with his work, or took as much satisfaction in it as the man\nwho shovels the snow from his doorstep.\u201d From this standpoint Tolstoi\nhas never since greatly varied.\n\nSuch as he is now he is known throughout the civilized world. He lives\nat his old home at Yasnaya Polyana, surrounded by less luxury than\nmay be found in many a Siberian cottage, writing or shoemaking or\nploughing, or kneading clay in a tub to build incombustible cottages,\nor spending the day in spreading manure over the land of some poor\nwidow. Such we see him in his portraits, in the coarse blouse and\nthe leather belt that he has always worn, with the massive, earnest,\nsuffering, baffled face, as of a blind but unconquered Samson.\n\n\nIII.\n\nWith Tolstoi the artist we have here little concern. Yet from the\nfirst he has been an artist, and in spite of himself he is an artist\nto the last. We cannot pass by his art. One realizes this curiously in\nreading \u201cWhat then must we do?\u201d A profoundly sincere record without\ndoubt of deeply-felt experiences and of a mental revolution, it is\nyet the work of an artist, a tragedy broadly and solemnly unfolding\nthe misery of the world, the impotence of every scheme or impulse of\ncharity, the light that comes only from freedom and self-development.\nLet us read, again, that little popular tract--\u201cDoes a man need much\nland?\u201d--brimming over with meaning, about the man who gained permission\nto possess as much land as he could walk round from sunrise to sunset.\nCan he get so much into the circuit, not omitting this fine stretch of\nland, and this other? His constantly growing desires, his efforts, are\ntold in brief, stern phrase, his feverish and failing strain to reach\nthe goal, that at sunset is reached, and the man drops down dead. Then\nthe curt and unaccentuated conclusion: \u201cPakhom\u2019s man took the hoe, dug\na grave for him, made it just long enough from head and foot--three\narshins--and buried him.\u201d All the tragedy of the nineteenth century is\npressed together into those half-dozen pages by the strong, relentless\nhand of the great artist who deigns to point no moral. From the early\nand delicious sketch of the frail musician, Albert, down to the sombre\nand awful \u201cDeath of Ivan Ilyitch,\u201d Tolstoi has produced an immense\nbody of work that must be considered, above all, as art. One reads\nthis body of work with ever-growing delight and satisfaction. Gogol\nwas a finer artist than Dickens, but there are too many suggestions\nabout him of Dickens and the English novelists. Tourgueneff, a very\ngreat artist--how great, those little prose-poems, \u201cSenilia,\u201d would\nalone suffice to show--an artist who thrilled to every touch, suffered\nfrom the excess of his sensitiveness, and perhaps also from an undue\nabsorption in the western world. In Dostoieffski there is nothing of\nthe west; he is intimately and intensely personal, with an even morbid\nresearch of all the fibres of organic misery in human nature. In all\nhis work we seem to hear the groans of the prison-house, the house of\nthe dead in Siberia. When we have read the wonderful book in which he\nhas recorded the life of his years there, we know the source of all his\ninspiration. Reading all these authors, we are constantly aware of the\nneurotic element in Russian life and Russian character, the restless,\ndiseased element that is revealed to us in cold scientific analysis\nby Tarnowsky and S. P. Kowalevski and Dmitri Drill. It is not so when\nwe turn to Tolstoi. In him we find not merely the insight and the\nrealistic observation, but a breadth and sanity and wholeness that the\nothers mostly fail to give us. His art is so full and broad and true\nthat he seems able to do for his own time and country what Shakespeare\nwith excess of poetic affluence did for his time, and Balzac for\nhis. He is equal to every effort, he omits nothing that imports, he\ndescribes everything with the same calm ease and simplicity. It makes\nno difference whether, within the limits of a slight sketch, he is\ntracing delicately the life of the drunken artist, Albert, or producing\nthe largest literary canvas of modern times, \u201cWar and Peace.\u201d In\n\u201cFamily Happiness\u201d he analyzes passion, marriage, parenthood, the cycle\nof life, in a simple narration, a few chapters, yet nothing is omitted,\nand one shudders at the awful ease with which to this man these things\nseem to yield their secret. In \u201cIvan Ilyitch\u201d he analyzes death and the\nhouse of death, quietly, completely, with a hand that never falters.\nHe writes as a man who has touched life at many points, and tasted\nmost that it has to offer, its joys and its sorrows, but he gazes upon\nit, even from the first, with the luminous and passionless calm of old\nage. His art is less perfect than Flaubert\u2019s, but Flaubert\u2019s intense\npersonal note, the ferocious nihilism of the Norman, is absent. He\nholds life up to the light, simply, and says: \u201cThis is what it is!\u201d\n\nFor one who cannot read Tolstoi in the original, and who misses the\nstyle so much praised by those who are more privileged, Tolstoi seems\nan uncompromising realist. He has therefore often been compared with\nZola, the prodigious representative and champion of Latin realism. In\nvain Zola himself disclaims this position; it is he more than any other\nwho has influenced the novel, especially in the Latin countries, in the\ndirection, if not of realism, at all events in that of anti-idealism;\nnot Balzac or Stendhal, who have reached sure summits of fame, but\nhave ceased to be living influences; not the De Goncourts, whose style\ncannot be imitated; least of all Flaubert, an idealist of idealists,\nwhose profound art and marmoreal style are of the sort that it\ntakes generations even to understand. It is interesting, doubtless,\nto put Tolstoi beside Zola, but the resemblance is not deep. Zola\nis the avowed prophet of a formula. He has read and pondered the\n\u201cIntroduction \u00e0 l\u2019\u00e9tude de la M\u00e9dicine Exp\u00e9rimentale,\u201d in which the\ngreat physiologist, Claude Bernard, expounded the principles of the\nexperimental method as applied to the sciences of physical life. He has\nasked himself: \u201cCan we not apply this same method to the psychological\nlife? Can we not have an experimental novel?\u201d \u201cWe seek the causes of\nsocial evil,\u201d he declares in \u201cLe Roman Experimental,\u201d a collection of\nessays not less instructive than his novels, and more interesting; \u201cwe\npresent the anatomy of classes and of individuals, in order to explain\nthe aberrations which are produced in society and in man. This obliges\nus often to work on bad subjects, and to descend into the midst of\nhuman miseries and follies. But we bring the documents necessary to be\nknown by those who would dominate good and evil. Here is what we have\nseen, observed, explained in all sincerity. Now it is the turn of the\nlegislators!\u201d To bring the scientific spirit of the age into the novel:\nit was a brilliant idea, and Zola forthwith set to work, with his\nimmense energy and unshakeable resolution, to draw up a _proc\u00e8s-verbal_\nof human life--for this is the most that the \u201cexperimental method\u201d\ncomes to in the novel--which has not ceased to this day.\n\nBut, one asks oneself, what _is_ reality? Zola has frankly explained\nhow a novel ought to be written; how one must get one\u2019s human\ndocuments, study them thoroughly, accumulate notes, systematically\nfrequent the society of the people one is studying, watch them, listen\nto them, minutely observe and record all their surroundings. But have\nwe got reality then? Does the novelist I casually meet, and who has\nopportunities to take notes of my conversation and appearance, to\nexamine the furniture of my house and to collect gossip about me,\nknow anything whatever of the romance or tragedy which to me is the\nreality of my life, these other things being but shreds or tatters\nof life? Or if my romance or tragedy has got into a law-court or a\npolice-court, is he really much nearer then? The unrevealable motives,\nthe charm, the mystery, were not deposed to by the policeman who was\nimmediately summoned, nor by the servant-girl who looked through the\nkey-hole. Certain disagreeable details: do they make up reality? To\nselect the most beautiful and charming woman one knows, and to set a\ndetective artist on her track, to follow her about everywhere, to keep\nan opera-glass fixed upon her, to catch fragments of her conversation,\nto enter her house, her bedroom, to examine her dirty linen,--would\nHelen of Troy emerge beautiful from this _proc\u00e8s-verbal_? And on which\nside would be most reality? Nature seems to resent this austere method\nof approaching her, and when we have closed our hands the reality has\nslipped through our fingers. A great artist, a Shakespeare or a Goethe,\nis not afraid of any fact, however repulsive it may seem, so long as\nit is significant. But it must be significant. Without sympathy and\na severe criticism of details, the truly illuminating facts will be\nmissed or lost in the heap. It is interesting to note that Zola himself\nrecognizes this, and admits that he has been carried away by his\ndelight and enthusiasm in attempting to vindicate for Art the whole of\nNature. Whatever is really fine in Zola\u2019s work--\u201cLa Faute de l\u2019Abb\u00e9\nMouret,\u201d or the last chapters of \u201cNana\u201d--is fine because the man of a\nformula is for awhile subordinated to the artist.\n\nZola may work as hard as he will in the cause of the formula; he\nremains, above all, a man of massive temperament and peculiarly strong\nindividuality. That is the real secret of his influence. A youth,\ndeveloped in the poverty and hunger of a garret on the outskirts of\nParis, who was fascinated by the great city he has lovingly painted,\nas it was there spread out before him, in \u201cUne Page d\u2019Amour,\u201d and\ncondemned to see it only from the outside,--here was material for that\nirony, unending and absolutely pitiless, that runs through the whole of\nthe vast Rougon-Macquart drama of the world. He is an austere moralist,\nwith no tenderness for human weakness, \u201cun tragique qui se f\u00e2che,\u201d\nas he calls himself, a Republican in spirit long before the Republic\nwas proclaimed, a hater of all hypocrisies and empty prettinesses and\nfine phrases and elegant circumlocutions, a fighting man ready to\nfight to the last, with rude weapons but in fair combat. He represents\nthe revolt against the French romantic movement--\u201cune \u00e9meute de\nrh\u00e9toriciens,\u201d he calls it--which found its supreme incarnation in\nVictor Hugo. The Forty Immortals may have laughed serenely, but when\nZola declared that he was carrying on the classic tradition he was not\naltogether wrong. The classic tradition of France is marked by a very\nvivid sense of life; it has a close grip of the practical and material\nside of things, a wholesome contempt for all pretence, and sometimes\na certain rather rank savour of audacity. Zola will scarcely stand\nbeside Rabelais and Montaigne and Moli\u00e8re; the artist in him is too\nmuch crushed by ideas, and he has altogether run too much to seed; but\nhe is fighting on the same side, and he has been proved to possess one\nquality which leaves little more to be said, effectiveness. Whatever\nthe value of his work, he has turned the tide of novel literature,\nwherever his influence has spread, from frivolous inanities to the\npainstaking study of the facts of human life. Whatever we may think for\nthe moment, that is a very wholesome and altogether moral revolution.\n\nAs for great art, that is neither here nor there. Shakespeare, Goethe,\nFlaubert,--for such men the extremes of poetry and of realism are\nequally welcome. Tolstoi, it is clear, is more of a realist than a\npoet, but his realism is of the kind that grows naturally out of the\nexperiences of a man who has lived a peculiarly full and varied life.\nIt is life _sur le vif_, not studied from a garret window. Nothing\nis omitted, nothing is superfluous; the narrative seems to lead\nthe narrator rather than the narrator it, and through all we catch\nperpetually what seems an almost accidental fragrance of poetry. See\nthe account of the storm in the \u201cChildhood, Boyhood, and Youth,\u201d or of\nthe child in the raspberry bush, or of the mowing, or the horse-race,\nin \u201cAnna Karenina,\u201d with their peculiar, intangible yet vivid reality.\nBut these things, it may be said, are poetry, the effluence of some\ndivine moment of life, the record of some unforgettable thrill of\nblood and brain. Compare, then, the account of a childbirth in \u201cAnna\nKarenina\u201d (there is an earlier and less successful attempt in \u201cWar and\nPeace\u201d) with a similar scene which is the central episode in Zola\u2019s\n\u201cLa Joie de Vivre.\u201d The latter, doubtless, is instructive from its\nfidelity; every petty detail is coldly and minutely set forth. Its\nartistic value is difficult to estimate; it can scarcely be large. Zola\npresents the subject from the point of view of a disinterested and\nimpossible spectator; in Tolstoi\u2019s scene we have frankly the husband\u2019s\npoint of view. There is no room here for instructive demonstration of\nthe mechanism of birth, of all its physical details and miseries. It is\nreal life, but at such a moment real life is excitement, emotion, and\nthe result is art. What, again, can be more unpromising than a novel\nabout a remote historical war? But read \u201cWar and Peace\u201d to see how\nlifelike, how vivid and fascinating, the narrative becomes in the hands\nof a man who has known the life of a soldier and all the chances of war.\n\nTolstoi is not alone among Russian novelists in the character of his\nrealism. Gogol\u2019s \u201cDead Souls\u201d has something of the wholesome naturalism\nas well as of the broad art and the good-natured satire of Fielding.\nHe is perpetually insisting on the importance to the artist of those\n\u201clittle things which only seem little when narrated in a book, but\nwhich one finds very important in actual life.\u201d In his letters on \u201cDead\nSouls\u201d Gogol wrote: \u201cThose who have dissected my literary faculties\nhave not discovered the essential feature of my nature. Poushkin alone\nperceived it. He always said that no author has been gifted like me to\nbring into relief the triviality of life, to describe all the platitude\nof a commonplace man, to make perceptible to all eyes the infinitely\nlittle things which escape our vision. That is my dominating faculty.\u201d\nTourgueneff declared that the novel must cast aside all hypocrisy,\nsentimentality, and rhetoric for the simple yet nobler aim of becoming\nthe history of life. Dostoieffski, that tender-hearted student of the\nperversities of the human heart, so faithful in his studies that he\nsometimes seems to forget how great an artist he is, justifies himself\nthus: \u201cWhat is the good of prescribing to art the roads that it must\nfollow? To do so is to doubt art, which develops normally, according\nto the laws of nature, and must be exclusively occupied in responding\nto human needs. Art has always shown itself faithful to nature, and\nhas marched with social progress. The ideal of beauty cannot perish in\na healthy society; we must then give liberty to art, and leave her to\nherself. Have confidence in her; she will reach her end, and if she\nstrays from the way she will soon reach it again; society itself will\nbe the guide. No single artist, not Shakespeare himself, can prescribe\nto art her roads and aims.\u201d Tolstoi but followed in the same path when,\nin one of the earliest of his books, the \u201cSebastopol Sketches,\u201d he\nwrote: \u201cThe hero of my tale, whom I love with all the strength of my\nsoul, whom I have tried to set forth in all his beauty, and who has\nalways been, is, and always will be, most beautiful, is--Truth.\u201d\n\nIt is, after all, impossible to disentangle Tolstoi\u2019s art from the\nman himself and the ideas and aspirations that have stirred him. When\nwe consider his history and development we are sometimes reminded of\nour own William Morris. They are both men of massive and sanguine\ntemperament, of restless energy, groping their way through life with a\nvague sense of dissatisfaction; both pure artists through the greater\npart of their career, and both artists still, when late in life, and\nunder the influence of rather sectarian ideas, they think that they\nhave at length grasped the pillars of the heathen temple of society in\nwhich they have so long been groping, and are ready to wreak on it the\npent-up unrest of their lives. But they go to work in not quite the\nsame way. Both, it is true, having apparently passed through a very\nslight religious phase in early life, have had this experience in later\nlife, and in both it has taken on a social character; both, also, have\nsought their inspiration, not so much in a possible future deduced from\nthe present, as in the past experiences of the race. Tolstoi with his\nsemi-oriental quietism has returned to the rationalistic aspects of\nthe social teaching of Jesus. Morris, who regards Iceland rather than\nJud\u00e6a as the Holy Land of the race, looks to Scandinavian antiquity\nfor light on the problems of to-day. It is on the robust Scandinavian\nspirit of independence and comfortable well-to-do intolerance of all\noppression and domination that Morris relies for the redemption of\nhis own time and people. So far from identifying art, as Tolstoi is\ninclined to do, with the evil and luxury of the world, Morris finds in\nart a chief hope for the world. It is not, therefore, surprising that\nhis art has suffered little from the fervour of his convictions, while\nhis varied artistic activities have given him a wholesome grip on life.\nHis new beliefs, on the other hand, have given new meaning to his art.\nHis mastery of prose has only been acquired under the stress of his\nconvictions. It is prose of massive simplicity, a morning freshness,\nunconscious and effortless. There is about it something of the peculiar\ncharm of the finest Norman architecture. The \u201cDream of John Ball,\u201d\na strong unpretentious piece of work, penetrated at every point by\nprofound social convictions, yet with the artist\u2019s touch throughout,\nmay be read with a delight which the complex and artificial prose we\nare accustomed to cannot give. England, it is said, is predominantly a\nScandinavian country; Morris is significant because he gives expression\nin an extreme form to the racial instincts of his own people, just as\nTolstoi expresses in equally extreme form the deepest instincts of his\nSclavonic race.\n\nAgainst the \u201cDream of John Ball,\u201d we may place the work produced at\nthe same time by the Russian\u2019s keener and more searching hand, \u201cThe\nDominion of Darkness.\u201d This sombre and awful tragedy is a terribly\nreal and merciless picture of the worst elements in peasant life, a\npicture of avarice and lust and murder. Only one pious, stuttering,\nincoherent _moojik_, whose employment is to clean out closets, appears\nas the representative of mercy and justice. So thick is the gloom\nthat it seems the artistic effect would have been heightened if the\nconcluding introduction of the officers of an external and official\njustice had been omitted, and the curtain had fallen on the tragic\nmerriment of the wedding feast. The same intense earnestness taking,\nalmost unconsciously, an artistic shape, reveals itself in the little\nstories of which in recent years Tolstoi has produced so many, some\nindeed comparatively ineffective, but others that are a fascinating\ncombination of simplicity, realism, imaginative insight, brought to the\nservice of social ideas. Such is \u201cWhat men live by,\u201d the story of the\nangel who disobeyed God, and was sent to earth to learn that it is only\nin appearance that men are kept alive through care for themselves, but\nthat in reality they are kept alive through love.\n\nTolstoi\u2019s voice is heard throughout the vast extent of Russia, not by\nthe rich only, but by the peasant. That is why his significance is so\ngreat. Sometimes the religious censure prohibits his books; sometimes\nit allows them; in either case they are circulated. Published at a few\nhalfpence, these little books are within the reach of the poorest,\nand Tolstoi gives free permission to anyone to reproduce or translate\nany of his books. His drama, \u201cThe Dominion of Darkness, or when a\nbird lets himself be caught by one foot he is lost,\u201d was intended for\nthe public who frequent the open-air theatres of fairs, and eighty\nthousand copies were sold during the first week, although certainly\nnot altogether among the audience he would have preferred. The stories\nfor children are circulated in scores of editions of twenty thousand\ncopies each. Tolstoi has nothing to teach that he has not learnt from\npeasants, and which thousands of peasants might not have taught him.\nHe has used his character and genius as a sounding-board to enable\nhis voice to reach millions of persons, many of whom, even the most\nintelligent, are not aware that he is but repeating the lessons he has\nlearnt from unlettered _moojiks_.\n\nNow his voice has reached the countries of the West, and it sounds here\nfar more unfamiliar than in a land so stirred by popular religious\nmovements as Russia. \u201cMy Religion,\u201d that powerful argument _ad hominem_\nto the Christian from one who accepts both the letter and the spirit of\nJesus\u2019s simplest and least questionable teaching, has had an especially\nlarge circulation in the West. Such a challenge has never before been\nscattered broadcast among the nations. What, one wonders, will be the\noutcome?\n\nTo most people the simplicity of the challenger is a cause of\nastonishment. After the assassination of Alexander II. and the sentence\non the assassins, Tolstoi wrote to the present Tzar imploring him\nnot to begin his reign with judicial murder, and he was deeply and\ngenuinely disappointed at the inevitable reception of his appeal.\nCount Tolstoi, the author of \u201cWar and Peace\u201d and \u201cAnna Karenina,\u201d made\nthe same mistake as the simple peasant Soutaieff. That little incident\nthrows much light on his mental constitution. It is the attitude of\na child, absorbed wholly in one thing at a time, unable to calculate\nthe nature and the strength of opposing forces. It is the same fact of\nmental structure which leads the world-renowned novelist to delight\nto learn from children, to be mortified when they do not like his\nstories, and to experience one of the greatest excitements of life when\nhe thinks he detects the dawn of genius in a child of ten. The same\ncharacteristic appears in his treatment of science. He had heard, he\ntold Mr. Kennan, that a Russian scientist had completely demolished the\nDarwinian theory. In \u201cLife,\u201d one of his latest books, this tendency has\ncarried him far away into a sterile and hopeless region of mystical\nphraseology. He dismisses scientific men briefly as the Scribes. It\nhas not occurred to him apparently that this book, \u201cLife,\u201d is a book\nof science. And, certainly, if science could produce nothing better\nthan \u201cLife,\u201d the language that Tolstoi uses regarding it were not one\nwhit too strong. This childlike simplicity is not peculiar to Tolstoi;\nit is more or less the attitude of every true Russian, of the peasant\nwho sets up the kingdom of Heaven, as of the Nihilist who thinks he\ncan emancipate his country by destroying a few Tzars. It is a weakness\nthat must often mean failure because it cannot estimate the strength\nof difficulties. At the same time it is a power. It is by this intense\nconcentration on one desired object, this heroic inability to see\nopposition, that the highest achievement becomes possible.\n\nWhatever Tolstoi\u2019s limitations and failures of perception, those things\nwhich he believes he has seen he grasps with inexorable tenacity.\nThe violence and misery of the world--that is a reality; a reality,\nhe feels, which must be fought at all costs. Mr. Kennan tells how he\npressed home on Tolstoi the cases of extreme brutality and oppression\nthat he had known practised on political prisoners in Siberia, and how,\nthough Tolstoi\u2019s eyes filled with tears as he imagined the horrors\ndescribed, he still pointed out in detail how, by opposing violence\nto violence in the cases cited, the misery of the world would be\nincreased: \u201cAt the time when you interposed there was only one centre\nof evil and suffering. By your violent interference you have created\nhalf-a-dozen such centres. It does not seem to me, Mr. Kennan, that\nthat is the way to bring about the reign of peace and good-will on\nearth.\u201d[12]\n\n[12] See the interesting paper, \u201cA Visit to Count Tolstoi,\u201d in\n\u201cCentury,\u201d June, 1887.\n\nTolstoi possesses that social imagination which, though growing among\nus, is still so rare. If at the dinner where cheerful guests prolong\ntheir enjoyment, there were placed behind each chair a starved, ragged\nfigure, with haggard and haunting face--would not the meal be broken up\nas speedily as if every guest had found the sword of Dionysius hanging\nby a thread above his head? Yet it is only a lack of imagination which\nprevents us from seeing through the few layers of bricks that screen us\noff from these realities. For him who has seen it there is little rest,\n\u201cso long as I have superfluous food and another has none, so long as I\nhave two coats and another has none.\u201d\n\nWith tears in his voice, and in words whose intense reality pierces\nthrough the translation, though this, we are told, cannot reproduce the\ngraphic vividness of the original, Tolstoi speaks to us through his\nlife and his work as he once spoke to the interviewer who came to him:\n\n\u201cPeople say to me, \u2018Well, Lef Nikolaivitch, as far as preaching goes,\nyou preach; but how about your practice?\u2019 The question is a perfectly\nnatural one; it is always put to me, and it always shuts my mouth. \u2018You\npreach,\u2019 it is said, \u2018but how do you live?\u2019 I can only reply that I do\nnot preach--passionately as I desire to do so. I might preach through\nmy actions, but my actions are bad. That which I say is not preaching;\nit is only my attempt to find out the meaning and the significance of\nlife. People often say to me, \u2018If you think that there is no reasonable\nlife outside the teachings of Christ, and if you love a reasonable\nlife, why do you not fulfil the Christian precepts?\u2019 I am guilty and\nblameworthy and contemptible because I do not fulfil them; but at the\nsame time I say,--not in justification, but in explanation, of my\ninconsistency,--Compare my previous life with the life I am now living,\nand you will see that I am trying to fulfil. I have not, it is true,\nfulfilled one eighty-thousandth part, and I am to blame for it; but it\nis not because I do not wish to fulfil all, but because I am unable.\nTeach me how to extricate myself from the meshes of temptation in which\nI am entangled,--help me,--and I will fulfil all. I wish and hope to do\nit even without help. Condemn me if you choose,--I do that myself,--but\ncondemn _me_, and not the path which I am following, and which I point\nout to those who ask me where, in my opinion, the path is. If I know\nthe road home, and if I go along it drunk, and staggering from side\nto side, does that prove that the road is not the right one? If it is\nnot the right one, show me another. If I stagger and wander, come to\nmy help, and support and guide me in the right path. Do not yourselves\nconfuse and mislead me and then rejoice over it and cry, \u2018Look at him!\nHe says he is going home, and he is floundering into the swamp!\u2019 You\nare not evil spirits from the swamp; you are also human beings, and\nyou also are going home. You know that I am alone,--you know that I\ncannot wish or intend to go into the swamp,--then help me! My heart is\nbreaking with despair because we have all lost the road; and while I\nstruggle with all my strength to find it and keep in it, you, instead\nof pitying me when I go astray, cry triumphantly, \u2018See! He is in the\nswamp with us!\u2019\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCONCLUSION.\n\n\nTolstoi brings us face to face with religion. If we think of it, every\npersonality we have considered has brought us subtly in contact with\nthat ineluctable shape. It is strange: men seek to be, or to seem,\natheists, agnostics, cynics, pessimists; at the core of all these\nthings lurks religion. We may find it in Diderot\u2019s mighty enthusiasm,\nin Heine\u2019s passionate cries, in Ibsen\u2019s gigantic faith in the future,\nin Whitman\u2019s not less gigantic faith in the present. We see the same\nin the music-dramas of Wagner, in Zola\u2019s pathetic belief in a formula,\nin Morris\u2019s worship of an ideal past, in the aspirations of every\nSocialist who looks for the return of those barbarous times in which\nall men equally were fed and clothed and housed. The men who have most\nfinely felt the pulse of the world, and have, in their turn, most\neffectively stirred its pulse, are religious men.\n\nOne is forced to ask oneself at last: How can I make clear to myself\nthis vast and many-shaped religious element of life? It will not\nlet me pass it by. Can I--without any attempt to theorize or to\nexplain--reduce it to some common denominator, so that I may at\nleast gain the satisfaction that comes of the clear and harmonious\npresentation of a complex fact? When we have settled the question\nof the evolution of religion, another more fundamental question may\nstill be asked: What is the nature of the impulse that underlies, and\nmanifests itself in, that sun-worship, nature-worship, fetich-worship,\nghost-worship, to which, with occasional appeal to the vast reservoir\nof sexual and filial love, we may succeed in reducing religious\nphenomena? On the one hand, this impulse must begin to develop at\nleast as early as the earliest appearance of worship; on the other\nhand, we cannot ascertain its distinctive characters unless we also\nexamine and compare its more specialized forms. What is there in common\nbetween the religious attitude of the child of to-day, enfranchized\nfrom creeds, and that of, let us say, L\u00e2o-tsze, the child of a day\nthat is twenty-five centuries old; or between these and the far more\nprimitive adoration of the Dravidian for his cattle? If the vague\nterm \u201creligion,\u201d which, as commonly used, contains at least three\nelements--moral, scientific, emotional--covers any distinct and\npersistent human impulse, what is the nature and scope of that impulse?\nI wish to represent to myself, as precisely and as broadly as may be,\nman\u2019s religious relation.\n\nWhen we look out into the universe we see a vast medium, the world,\ngradually merging itself indistinctly in a practical infinite, and\nin the centre a certain limited number of souls, souls like the\ntheoretical atoms of the physicist, never under any circumstances\ntouching. Let two souls approach ever so nearly, there is yet a subtle\nchasm, through which\n\n    \u201cThe unplumbed, salt, estranging sea\u201d\n\nstill flows. These souls are made up essentially of mind and body.\nThere can be no change of consciousness without a corresponding change\nin the vascular circulation. There can be no thrill of body in a soul\nwithout a correlated thrill of mind. Matter and mind in the soul are\nco-extensive. When we speak of the \u201cspirit\u201d as ruling the body, or as\nyielding to it, we are, it must be remembered, using a traditional\nmethod of speech which had its origin in a more primitive theory, just\nas we still speak of sun-rise. In the soul the spiritual can no more\nbe subordinated to the material, strictly speaking, than in water the\noxygen be subordinated to the hydrogen. The old dispute for supremacy\nbetween mind and matter no longer has any significance. Both matter and\nmind are in the end equally unknown: _exeunt in mysterium_.\n\nThe soul is born and then dies. What do we mean by _birth_ and _death_?\nAccording to the old Hebrew conception a spirit was created out of\nnothing and put into a mould of matter, and then at death again passed\nback into nothing. But to-day this conception is impossible. _Ex\nnihilo nihil fit._ It is clear that both the elements that make up\nthe soul must be, under some form, equally eternal. By a marvellous\ncosmic incident, our little planet has broken forth into a strange and\nbeautiful efflorescence. We rise from the world, whom we are, on this\nvariegated jet of organic life, to fall back again to our true life, by\nwhatever unknown ways and under whatever change of form, conscious, it\nmay be, but, as before birth, no longer with any self to be conscious\nof, no longer organic.\n\nNow souls, although they always remain isolated, are acted upon by\nthe world and by other souls, and when so acted upon they yield an\nemotional response. And for the present purpose these actions may\nbe divided into two classes, corresponding to the two classes of\nsympathetic nerve fibres--vaso-constrictor and vaso-dilator--which\ncontrol the vascular system, the rougher daily contacts of life, which\ncontract though they strengthen the soul with their legacy of strong\ndesires and griefs, and the incomparably rarer contacts at which the\nsoul for a while and in varying degrees expands with a glad sense of\nfreedom. As every bodily change in the compacted soul is correlated\nwith a mental change, these responses may be spoken of indifferently\nin mental or material terms. We know that they are on the bodily side\nvaso-motorial; that a thrill of joy is accompanied by a change in\narterial tension, and we can therefore use this expression of the part\nas the symbol of the whole. It is this enlarged diastole of the soul\nthat we call _religion_.\n\n\u201cThe whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single\nindividual,--namely, to You.\u201d From the religious standpoint this is\nessentially true. The soul is situated at the centre of the world,\nexposed to a practically infinite number of appeals, to which it is\ncapable of yielding a practically infinite number of responses or\ninitiations. Every moment a stream of influences is striking against\nthe soul and producing a multitudinous stream of responses, new stops\ngrowing, as it were, beneath the player\u2019s touch. We know that for the\nmost part the harsh and jarring discords predominate, that a soul\nthat answers to the world\u2019s touch with a music that is ever large and\nharmonious, is so rare that we call it by some divine ideal word. Yet\nthe field of the soul\u2019s liberation is a large one, whether we look\nat it on the physical or on the mental side. The simplest functions\nof physiological life may be its ministers. Everyone who is at all\nacquainted with the Persian mystics, knows how wine may be regarded\nas an instrument of religion. Indeed, in all countries and in all\nages, some form of physical enlargement--singing, dancing, drinking,\nsexual excitement--has been intimately associated with worship. Even\nthe momentary expansion of the soul in laughter is, to however slight\nan extent, a religious exercise. I do not fear to make this assertion;\nthe expansions of the soul differ indefinitely in volume and quality.\nIf this is but a low rung of the ladder along which pass the angels of\nour gladness, at the other end is that vision of divine self-sacrifice,\nso marked in the more highly developed religions, which has sustained\nthrough sorrow and defeat some of the world\u2019s loftiest spirits. They\ndiffer, as much as we will, in degree, but between them what hint\nby which to draw a line? Whenever an impulse from the world strikes\nagainst the organism, and the resultant is not discomfort or pain,\nnot even the muscular contraction of strenuous manhood, but a joyous\nexpansion or aspiration of the whole soul--there is religion. It is the\ninfinite for which we hunger, and we ride gladly on every little wave\nthat promises to bear us towards it.[13]\n\n[13] It may be said that religion, as even the etymology of the word\nwitnesses, has been a force on the side of repression. That also is\ntrue; it cannot indeed be too strongly emphasized. Only in the strength\nof that joyous expansion could men have acted and suffered such\nintolerable torture in the service of religion. (It must be remembered,\nhowever, that in certain stages of civilization religion is largely\nidentified with morality). It is necessary to generalize from the most\nvarious and highly specialized cases in order to arrive at a reasonable\ndefinition.\n\nWhen we try to classify the chief of these affections of the soul\naccording to the impulses that arouse them, we find that they may be\nconveniently divided into four classes:--(1.) Those caused by the\nliberation of impulses stored up in the soul. (2.) Those caused by\nimpulses from other souls. (3.) Those caused by impulses from the\nworld, as distinct from souls. (4.) Those caused by an intuition of\nunion with the world.\n\n(1.) Here we are, above all, concerned with art. It is not necessary\nhere to distinguish between the emotion of the artist and that of him\nwho merely follows the artist, passing his hand as it were over the\nother\u2019s work, and receiving, in a less degree it may be, the same\nemotion. We are all artists potentially. The secret of the charm of\nart is that it presents to us an external world which is manifestly of\nlike nature with the soul. \u201cNon merita nome di Creatore,\u201d according\nto Tasso\u2019s saying, \u201cse non Iddio ed il Poeta.\u201d The work of art--poem,\nstatue, music--succeeds in being what every philosophy attempts to\nbe. Neither change nor death can touch it; also it is immeasurable;\nwe feel that we are in the presence of the infinite. No art has ever\nsucceeded in embodying those visions of the infinite which are commonly\nregarded as specifically religious--so that even to-day we respond\nwith a thrill of dilatation--as the old fragmentary art of Egypt in\nthe ruined temples of the Thebaid. Greek art, also, is a manifestation\nof the infinite; we may lose ourselves among those subtle curves of\nman\u2019s or woman\u2019s body. A Gothic cathedral of the thirteenth century\nis an embodiment of the infinite world itself. The soul responds\nexpansively to all these things. When that response is wanting, and the\nart therefore, however interesting, is not religious--as in the art of\nPompeii and the Italian post-Raphaelite art--it will generally be found\ntechnically inferior. The subject, one may note, has little or nothing\nto do with the matter. A representation of God the Father rarely\nevokes any religious response. De Hooge, by means of mere sunlight and\nthe rubbish of a back-yard, awakes in us an enlarging thrill of joy.\nIn music the most indefinite and profound mysteries of the soul are\nrevealed and placed outside us as a gracious and marvellous orb; the\nvery secret of the soul is brought forth and set in the audible world.\nThat is why no other art smites us with so powerfully religious an\nappeal as music; no other art tells us such old forgotten secrets about\nourselves.\n\n    \u201cO! what is this that knows the road I came?\u201d\n\nIt is in the mightiest of all instincts, the primitive sexual\ntraditions of the races before man was, that music is rooted.\n\nThere are perhaps two instincts, a motor and a sensory, lying at the\nbottom of art and the delight in art. All the constructive instincts\nof living things, from bees and ants and worms and birds upwards, have\ngone to mould our delight in the fashioning of a whole, and in the\ncontemplation of its fashion. The same process was carried on into\nhuman life. The primitive potter who took clay and wrought with her\nhands, and dinted with her nails, the cup or pot or jar, wrought it\nthrough long ages ever more lovely and perfect, embodying therein all\nthat she knew of the earth\u2019s uses and saw of its beauty, and by a true\ninstinct she called her work a living creature. The baskets that early\nmen wove, and the weapons that they carved for themselves, and their\nrhythmical cries in war-dance or worship, are part of a chain that\npresents itself again in Gothic cathedrals or Greek and Elizabethan\ndramas.\n\nEven stronger than this motor instinct of art is the sensory delight\nin beauty which has its root in the attraction of sex. Not indeed the\nonly root; all the things in the world that give light and heat and\nfood and shelter and help gather around themselves some garment of\nloveliness, and so become the stuff of art; the sun and the reindeer\nare among the very first things to which men tried to give artistic\nexpression. But the sexual instinct is more poignant and overmastering,\nmore ancient than any as a source of beauty. Colour and song and\nstrength and skill--such are the impressions that male and female\nhave graved on each other\u2019s hearts in their moments of most intense\nemotional exaltation. Their reflections have been thrown on the whole\nworld. When the youth awakes to find a woman is beautiful, he finds, to\nhis amazement, that the world also is beautiful. Who can say in what\nlowly organism was stored the first of those impressions of beauty, the\nreflections of sexual emotion, to which all creators of beauty--whether\nin the form of the Venus of Milo, the Madonna di San Sisto, Chopin\u2019s\nmusic, Shelley\u2019s lyrics--can always appeal, certain of response? One\nmight name finally as the highest, most complex summit of art reached\nin our own time--a summit on which art is revealed in its supreme\nreligious form--Wagner\u2019s \u201cParsifal.\u201d These things sprang from love, as\nsurely as the world would have been wellnigh barren of beauty had the\nsexual method of reproduction never replaced all others. Beauty is the\nchild of love; the world, at least all in it worth living for, was the\ncreation of love.\n\nYet another art, more subtle and complex, has played a large part\nin the history of religion--the art of metaphysic. The savage finds\nreligious gratification in the exercise of his coarser senses,\nin singing or dancing or drinking; the man of large and refined\nintellectual development, a Plato, a Spinoza, a Kant, finds it in\nphilosophy. Such men, indeed, are few, but by force of intelligence\nthey have been enabled to thrust their pictures of the world on\ninferior minds; their arts have become articles. But every man who has\nreached the stage of development in which he can truly experience the\njoy of the philosophic emotion will construct his own philosophy. A\nphilosophy is the house of the mind, and no two philosophies can be\nalike because no two minds are alike. But the emotion is the same, the\nemotion of expansive joy in a house not built with hands, in which the\nsoul has made for herself a large and harmonious dwelling.\n\n(2.) It is true that souls remain for ever apart. The lover seeks to be\nabsorbed altogether in the heaven of the loved personality, but in the\nend the heaven remains unsealed.\n\n \u201c_Adfigunt avide corpus junguntque salivas oris et inspirant\n pressantes dentibus ora, nequiquam._\u201d\n\nAnd yet a large or lovely personality is not the less an outlook\ntowards the infinite. We cannot think of certain men of immense range\nor power or sweetness--St. Francis, Leonardo, Napoleon, Darwin--without\nexperiencing a movement of liberation. To pronounce the names of such\nmen is of the nature of an act of worship. I cannot for a moment\nthink of Shakespeare without a thrill of exultation at such gracious\nplenitude of power. No person, probably, ever made so ardent a personal\nappeal to men as Jesus. He discovered a whole new world of emotional\nlife, a new expansion of joy, a kingdom in which slave and harlot took\nprecedence of priest and king. To the men for whom that new emotional\nworld was fresh and living, torture and shame and death counted as\nnothing beside so large a possession of inward gladness. The weakest\nand lowest became heroes and saints in the effort to guard a pearl of\nso great price. There are few more inspiring figures in the history\nof man than the white body of the slave-girl Blandina, that hung from\nthe stake day after day with the beasts in the amphitheatre at Lyons,\ntorn and bleeding, yet, _instar generosi cujusdam athlet\u00e6_, with the\nundying cry on her lips, _Christiana sum!_ It is open to everyone to\ngive liberating impulses to his fellows. It is the distinction of Jesus\nthat he has, for us, permanently expanded the bounds of individuality.\nWe all breathe deeper and freer because of that semi-ideal carpenter\u2019s\nson. \u201c_Fiat experimentum in corpore vili_,\u201d said the physician in\nthe old story, by the bedside of a wretched patient. \u201c_Non est corpus\ntam vile pro quo mortuus est Christus_,\u201d unexpectedly returned the\ndying man. The charm of Jesus can never pass away when it is rightly\napprehended.\n\nBut it is not alone the large mystery of exceptional personalities\nwhich calls out this response. To certain finely-tempered spirits no\nhuman thing is too mean to fail in making this emotional appeal. The\nchief religious significance of Walt Whitman lies in his revelation\nof the emotional value of the entire common human personality and\nall that belongs to it. The later Athenians (as also Goethe) placed\nabove all things the harmonious development of the individual in its\nhigher forms. It still remained to show the loveliness of the complete\nordinary personality. Whitman\u2019s \u201cSong of Myself\u201d cannot in this respect\nbe over-estimated.[14]\n\n[14] The late William Cyples, in his charming and neglected _magnum\nopus_, \u201cThe Process of Human Experience\u201d (p. 462), rightly traces this\nform of religion to the feeling generated between lovers, friends,\nparent and children. \u201cA few have at intervals walked in the world,\u201d he\nadds, \u201cwho have, each in his own original way, found out this marvel\n... it has proved sufficient for them even to wish enough to help their\nrace; instantly these secret delights have risen in their hearts.\nStraightway man in general has become to them so sweet a thing that the\ninfatuation has seemed to the rest of their fellows to be a celestial\nmadness. Beggars\u2019 rags to their unhesitating lips grew fit for kissing,\nbecause humanity had touched the garb; there were no longer any menial\nacts, but only welcome services. It was the humblest, the easiest, the\nreadiest of duties to lay down life for the ignorant, the ill-behaved,\nthe unkind,--for any and all who did but wear the familiar human shape.\nThat this ecstasy of humanity should rise so much higher than any other\nis according to the plain working of the law of accumulation of finer\nconsciousness by complexity in the occasioning activity. Remember by\nhow much man is the subtlest circumstance in the world; at how many\npoints he can attach relationships; how manifold and perennial he is in\nhis results. All other things are dull, meagre, tame beside him. If the\nmost part of us are only as dross to one another, in place of being of\nthis priceless value, it can only be from the lack of mutual services\namong us. Without these how can we but want sufficient adaptiveness\nof mood,--how can we help groaning under the weight of instincts half\norganized or wholly unfulfilled?\u201d\n\n(3.) There is a religion of science. It is rarer than has sometimes\nbeen supposed, and among men of science, probably, it is seldom\nfound. Strauss\u2019s \u201cOld Faith and New\u201d is one of the chief attempts\nby a man of science to present the scientific attitude as food for\nthe religious consciousness. The result is dreary in the extreme,\nin the end almost ludicrous. Herbert Spencer\u2019s attitude towards the\nUnknowable is a distinct though faint approximation to the religious\nrelationship. Positivism, with its quasi-scientific notions, was\nfounded on a curiously narrow conception of the nature of religion,\nand its religious sterility is probably inevitable. The man of science\nhas little to do with magnificent generalizations; he is concerned\nchiefly with the patient investigation of details; it is but rarely\nthat he feels called upon, like Kepler or Newton, for any emotional\nresponse to the grandeur and uniformity of law. Yet to many this vision\nof universal law has come as a light moving over chaos, a glad new\ndiscovery of the vastness and yet the homeliness of the world.\n\nAn \u00e6sthetic emotion is not necessarily religious, even within the field\nof inanimate nature. So also the elusive tints, the subtle perfumes\nof things, so far from liberating the soul, may excite a tormenting\ndesire to grasp and appropriate what is so lovely and so intangible.\nStill, there is a distinct class of emotions aroused by nature which\nis of the religious order. A large expanse of air or sea or undulating\nland, or the placid infinity of the star-lit sky, seems necessary to\nimpart that enlarging and pacifying sense of nature alike to poets\nand peasants. Some sight or sound of nature, either habitually, or\nunder some special conditions in the percipient, may strike upon the\nsoul and liberate it at once from the bonds of commonplace actuality.\nPerhaps no modern man has better expressed the religious aspects of\nnature than Thoreau. Of the American wood-thrush Thoreau can rarely\nspeak without using the language of religion. \u201cAll that was ripest and\nfairest in the wilderness and the wild man is preserved and transmitted\nto us in the strain of the wood-thrush.... Whenever a man hears it,\nhe is young, and Nature is in her spring. Wherever he hears it, there\nis a new world and a free country, and the gates of heaven are not\nshut against him. Most other birds sing, from the level of my ordinary\ncheerful hours, a carol, but this bird never fails to speak to me out\nof an ether purer than that I breathe, of immortal vigour and beauty.\u201d\nGenerally, however, this emotion appears to be associated, not so much\nwith isolated beautiful objects, as with great vistas in which beauty\nmay scarcely inhere--\n\n                          \u201call waste\n    And solitary places; where we taste\n    The pleasure of believing what we see\n    Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be.\u201d\n\nIt is indeed myself that I unconsciously project into the large and\nsilent world around me; the exhilaration I feel is a glad sense of the\nvast new bounds of my nature. That is why, at the appearance of another\nhuman being, I sink back immediately into the limits of my own normal\nindividuality. I am no longer conterminous with the world around me; I\ncannot absorb or control another individuality like my own. I become a\nself-conscious human being in the presence of another self-conscious\nhuman being.\n\n(4.) The supreme expression of the religious consciousness lies always\nin an intuition of union with the world, under whatever abstract or\nconcrete names the infinite not-self may be hidden. The perpetual\nannunciation of this union has ever been the chief gladness of life.\nIt comes in the guise of a \u03ba\u03ac\u03b8\u03b1\u03c1\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2 of egoism, a complete renunciation\nof the limits of individuality--of all the desires and aims that seem\nto converge in the single personality--and a joyous acceptance of what\nhas generally seemed an immense external Will, now first dimly or\nclearly realized. In every age this intuition has found voice--voice\nthat has often grown wild and incoherent with the torrent of expansive\nemotion that impelled it. It is this intuition which is the \u201cemptiness\u201d\nof L\u00e2o-tsze, the freedom from all aims that centre in self: \u201cIt is\nonly by doing nothing that the kingdom can be made one\u2019s own.\u201d This\nis the great good news of the Upanishads: the _\u00e2tman_, the soul, may\nattain to a state of _yoga_, of union, with the supreme _\u00e2tman_; free,\nhenceforth, from doubts and desires which pass over it as water passes\nover the leaf of the lotus without wetting it; acting, henceforth, only\nas acts the potter\u2019s wheel when the potter has ceased to turn it: \u201cIf\nI know that my own body is not mine, and yet that the whole earth is\nmine, and again that it is both mine and thine--no harm can happen\nthen.\u201d The Buddhist\u2019s Nirvana, whether interpreted as a state to be\nattained before or after death, has the same charm; it opens up the\nkingdom of the Universe to man; it offers to the finite a home in the\ninfinite. This is the great assertion of Christ, \u201cI and my Father are\none;\u201d and whenever Christianity has reached its highest expression,\nfrom Paul\u2019s day to our own, it has but sung over again the old refrain\nof joy at the \u201cnew birth\u201d into eternal life--the union, as it is\nsaid, of the soul through Christ with God--a tender Father, a great\nsustaining Power on which the soul may rest and be at peace:\n\n    \u201cE la sua volontade \u00e8 nostra pace.\u201d\n\nAnd that again is but in another form the Sufiism of Jelal-ed-din--the\nmystic union of the human bridegroom with the Divine Bride. Even the\naustere Imperial Stoic becomes lyrical as this intuition comes to\nhim: \u201cEverything is harmonious with me which is harmonious to thee,\nO Universe!\u201d As far back as we can trace, the men of all races, each\nin his own way and with his own symbols, have raised this shout of\nexultation. There is no larger freedom for man.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt seemed well to name at least the chief implications contained in\na broadly generalized statement of man\u2019s religious relation to the\nuniverse. It is important to remember that they are but an individual\nmode of representation. I can only say that I am conscious of myself\nin varying attitudes or relations. The terms of those relationships,\nstated with however much probability, will ever remain matter for\ndispute. Moreover, various attitudes reveal various metaphysical\nimplications.\n\nThe scientific attitude, for example, has a series of implications of\nits own. In its solvents all things are analyzed and atomized; the\n\u201csoul\u201d of our religious world--the vast pulsating centre, at the bottom\nof which, according to the profound saying of the old mystic, lies\nthat unutterable sigh which we call God--is resolved into a momentary\nfocus of ever-shifting rays of force; it is but an incident in a huge\nevolution of shifting forces which we may, if we like, personify as\nNature, but which, none the less, we cannot conceive as a whole. The\nscientific attitude has its own implications, and their far-reaching\nsignificance, their immense value for the individual and for the race,\ncan scarcely be overrated.\n\nAgain, the moral attitude is equally distinct. The criminal after a\nsuccessful piece of villainy may feel a thrill of ecstasy. It is indeed\nwell known that criminals in every country are the children of (more\nor less superstitious) religion. We may regard morality as grounded\nin the sense of personality, gradually extending by imagination and\nsympathy to every individual. Or we may regard it as springing, in a\nsense of adhesiveness, from the family and resulting relationships,\nand thence growing into a consciousness of the oneness of all human\ninterests, the individuals finding themselves to be, according to\nthat Stoic conception which has moulded European laws and is still a\nleavening influence in European ethics, members one with another in\nthe same natural body of humanity. In any case, as a moral being the\nindividual finds himself dependent on other individuals, and with\na duty, therefore, laid upon him to live harmoniously with those\nindividuals; there being no response forthcoming to the demands of his\nown nature unless he also responds to the demands of other natures.\nReligion, however, knows nothing of the scientific \u201cnature\u201d or of the\nethical \u201cman;\u201d its impulse is from within and of free grace.\n\nAt the dawn of civilization, it is true, religion and morals are\ninextricably mingled; they only become disentangled by a gradual\nevolution. The Toda who regards as sacred an ancient cattle-bell is\nobeying an impulse of adoration whose foundation is, probably, largely\nethical, for the bull is intimately connected with the beginnings of\ncivilization. A religious impulse will sometimes have an ethical\nelement; morals will sometimes find an ally in religion. But religion\nwith its internal criterion and morals with its more external criterion\nremain essentially distinct, sometimes antagonistic: \u201cto reject\nreligion,\u201d Thoreau said, \u201cis the first step towards moral excellence.\u201d\nThat is but a puny religion that is based on morals; on the other hand,\nthe morals that rests on religion will sooner or later collapse with it\nin a common ruin. That has been too often seen. Religions change: every\nman is free to have his own, or to have none. No man, scarcely even a\nCrusoe, is free to have no morals, and the ideal morality cannot widely\nvary for any two societies.\n\nYet religion cannot live nobly without science or without morals. It is\nonly by a strenuous devotion to science, by a perpetual reference to\nthe moral structure of life, that religion--so made conscious of its\nnature and its limits--can be rendered healthful.\n\n    \u201cNone can usurp this height....\n    But those to whom the miseries of the world\n    Are misery, and will not let them rest;\u201d\n\nso spake Moneta to Keats, among all English poets the purest artist.\n\nA man takes sides with religion, or with science, or with\nmorals; oftener he spends the brief moments of his existence in\nself-preservation, fighting now on one side, now on the other. But\nfor a little while we are allowed to enter the house of life and to\ngather around its fire. Why pull each other\u2019s hair and pinch each\nother\u2019s arms like naughty children? Well would it be to warm ourselves\nat the fire together, to clasp hands, to gain all the joy that comes of\ncomradeship, before we are called out, each of us, into the dark, alone.\n\nThe other elements fall away from religion, leaving the emotional,\ndeeper and more fundamental than either of the others; just as the\nbrain itself is controlled by the sympathetic system which outlives it\nand holds in its hands the centres of life. That element underlay the\ncrude imaginings of the primitive man who first created a spiritual\nworld out of the stuff of his dreams and his primitive delight in the\nmost marvellous object he saw, the sun, that as he truly divined is the\nsource not only of light but of life; just as it underlies also our\nmore complex imaginings to-day. In religion, we are appealing not to\nany narrow or superficial element of the man, but to something which is\nmore primitive than the intellectual efflorescence of the brain, the\ncentral fire of life itself.\n\nOur supreme business in life--not as we made it, but as it was made\nfor us when the world began--is to carry and to pass on as we received\nit, or better, the sacred lamp of organic being that we bear within\nus. Science and morals are subservient to the reproductive activity;\nthat is why they are so imperative. The rest is what we will, play,\nart, consolation--in one word, religion. If religion is not science\nor morals, it is the sum of the unfettered expansive impulses of our\nbeing. Life has been defined as, even physically and chemically, a\ntension. All our lives long we are struggling against that tension, but\nwe can truly escape from it only by escaping from life itself. Religion\nis the stretching forth of our hands toward the illimitable. It is an\nintuition of the final deliverance, a half-way house on the road to\nthat City which we name mysteriously Death.\n\n\nTHE WALTER SCOTT PRESS, NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.\n\n\n\n\nPRESS OPINIONS ON \u201cTHE NEW SPIRIT.\u201d\n\n\n\u201cIt is easy to dislike his book, it is possible to dislike it\nfuriously; but the book is so honest, so earnest, so stimulating in its\ntolerant but convinced unconventionality, that it claims for itself a\nlike sincerity and seriousness in the reader.... Mr. Ellis has produced\na book which will be hotly discussed, no doubt, for it is nothing if\nnot initiative, we might almost say revolutionary; but it is not a book\nto be disregarded.... It has sincerity and it has power; and sincerity\nand power compel at least attention.\u201d--_Speaker._\n\n\u201cMr. Havelock Ellis has discovered a \u2018New Spirit.\u2019 We have read him\nwith care and patience, and we should be sorry to describe it; we only\nknow that it is not intoxicating.\u201d--_Scots Observer._\n\n\u201cWelcome is warmly due to this fresh, buoyant, and sincere volume of\nessays by Mr. Havelock Ellis.... There are parts of the study of Heine\nwhich are not unworthy to be named--it is high praise--with Matthew\nArnold\u2019s inimitable paper upon that writer, a paper almost as classic\nas Heine himself.... The last word upon so suggestive and finished a\npiece of work ought to be one of ungrudging praise.\u201d--_Academy._\n\n\u201cMr. Carlyle described, it seems to us, Mr. Havelock Ellis himself with\ngreat exactness in the person of a certain biographer of Voltaire, \u2018an\ninquiring, honest-hearted character, many of whose statements must have\nbegun to astonish even himself.\u2019 Mr. Ellis must be very \u2018inquiring,\u2019\nfor we have seldom met with one who knows so many things that other\npeople do not know.\u201d--_Athen\u00e6um._\n\n\u201cEach of these essays is a thorough and well-considered piece of\nwork, admirable in information, firm in grasp, stimulating in style,\nappreciative in matter, and the survey afforded is broad.... It\nis an altogether unusual work, both for its ambition and for its\nmatter; it brings the reader near to some of the marked ideas of the\ntime.\u201d--_Nation._\n\n\u201cThe points of the New Spirit are its passion for getting things\nright in the matter of property and in the matter of true human\nworth.\u201d--_Daily News._\n\n\u201cThe only coherent constituent of the New Spirit which this book\nprofesses to set forth, is a vehement hatred, amounting to a passion,\nagainst conventional unveracities, and a determination that they should\nbe swept away.... We cannot imagine anything of which it could be more\nnecessary for human nature, so taught [by our Lord], to purge itself,\nthan the New Spirit of Havelock Ellis.\u201d--_Spectator._\n\n\u201cMr. Havelock Ellis has written an interesting and significant book,\nwhich it is quite easy to ridicule, but which certainly deserves a fair\nhearing.... Apparently these writers are chosen because they all agree\nin a hatred of shams, in looking facts in the face, and in demanding\nprovision for the healthy satisfaction of animal wants.... Mr. Ellis\nwrites with force and insight; but, whether from brevity or want of\ncaution, he leaves with regard to these subjects an impression which he\nwould probably not himself desire to produce.\u201d--_Murray\u2019s Magazine._\n\n\u201cThe concluding chapter, wherein Mr. Ellis expresses his own \u2018intimate\nthought and secret emotion,\u2019 is one of the best utterances of the New\nSpirit which we have ever read.\u201d--_Echo._\n\n\u201cUn volume de haute critique litt\u00e9raire qui rappelle le style fort et\nla m\u00e9thode stricte de Hennequin.\u201d--_Mercure de France._\n\n\u201cA more foolish, unwholesome, perverted piece of sentimental cant we\nhave never wasted our time over.\u201d--_World._\n\n\u201cExcellent examples of appreciative criticism of an exceedingly\ninteresting series of authors, of whom every one ought to know\nat least as much as Mr. Ellis here tells us so freshly and\nvivaciously.\u201d--_Scottish Leader._\n\n\u201cWe only refer to this unpleasant compilation of cool impudence and\neffrontery to warn our readers against it.\u201d--_Dundee Advertiser._\n\n\u201cBeautiful both in thought and expression. But Mr. Ellis seems to have\nlaid aside altogether the wise restraint which characterises his volume\non \u2018The Criminal.\u2019... The scientific spirit, of which at other times he\nhas shown himself a distinguished exponent, should have prevented him\nfrom such error.\u201d--_Arbroath Herald._\n\n\u201cArdent, enthusiastic, and eloquent.\u201d--_Boston Literary World._\n\n\u201cIt is not often that the weary and heart-sore reviewer, struggling to\nkeep abreast of the Protean outpourings of the press, falls in with\nanything so well informed, so rich in thought and suggestion as _The\nNew Spirit_.\u201d--_Wit and Wisdom._\n\n\n\n\n_AUTHORISED VERSION._\n\n_Crown 8vo, Cloth, Price 6s._\n\nPEER GYNT: A Dramatic Poem.\n\nBY HENRIK IBSEN.\n\nTRANSLATED BY\n\nWILLIAM AND CHARLES ARCHER.\n\n_This Translation, though unrhymed, preserves throughout the various\nrhythms of the original._\n\n\n\u201cIn _Brand_ the hero is an embodied protest against the poverty\nof spirit and half-heartedness that Ibsen rebelled against in his\ncountrymen. In _Peer Gynt_ the hero is himself the embodiment of that\nspirit. In _Brand_ the fundamental antithesis, upon which, as its\ncentral theme, the drama is constructed, is the contrast between the\nspirit of compromise on the one hand, and the motto \u2018everything or\nnothing\u2019 on the other. And _Peer Gynt_ is the very incarnation of a\ncompromising dread of decisive committal to any one course. In _Brand_\nthe problem of self-realisation and the relation of the individual\nto his surroundings is obscurely struggling for recognition, and in\n_Peer Gynt_ it becomes the formal theme upon which all the fantastic\nvariations of the drama are built up. In both plays alike the problems\nof heredity and the influence of early surroundings are more than\ntouched upon; and both alike culminate in the doctrine that the only\nredeeming power on earth or in heaven is the power of love.\u201d--Mr. P. H.\nWICKSTEED.\n\n\n\n\n_Foolscap 8vo, Cloth, Price 3s. 6d._\n\nTHE INSPECTOR-GENERAL\n\n(Or \u201cREVIZ\u00d3R.\u201d)\n\nA RUSSIAN COMEDY.\n\nBY NIKOLAI VASILIYEVICH GOGOL.\n\nTranslated from the original Russian, with Introduction and Notes, by\nA. A. SYKES, B.A., Trinity College, Cambridge.\n\n\nThough one of the most brilliant and characteristic of Gogol\u2019s works,\nand well-known on the Continent, the present is the first translation\nof his _Reviz\u00f3r_, or Inspector-General, which has appeared in English.\nA satire on Russian administrative functionaries, the _Reviz\u00f3r_ is a\ncomedy marked by continuous gaiety and invention, full of \u201csituation,\u201d\neach development of the story accentuating the satire and emphasising\nthe characterisation, the whole play being instinct with life and\ninterest. Every here and there occurs the note of caprice, of\nna\u00efvet\u00e9, of unexpected fancy, characteristically Russian. The present\ntranslation will be found to be admirably fluent, idiomatic, and\neffective.\n\n\n\n\nNew Illustrated Edition.\n\n_IN ONE VOLUME._\n\nPRICE 3s. 6d.\n\nCOUNT TOLSTO\u00cf\u2019S\n\nMASTERPIECE,\n\nANNA KAR\u00c9NINA.\n\n_WITH TEN ILLUSTRATIONS_\n\nBY PAUL FRENZ\u00c9NY.\n\n\n\u201cAs you read on you say, not, \u2018This is like life,\u2019 but, \u2018This is\nlife.\u2019 It has not only the complexion, the very line, of life, but its\nmovement, its advances, its strange pauses, its seeming reversions to\nformer conditions, and its perpetual change, its apparent isolations,\nits essential solidarity. It is a world, and you live in it while you\nread, and long afterward.\u201d--_W. D. Howells._\n\n\n\n\nCOMPACT AND PRACTICAL.\n\n_In Limp Cloth; for the Pocket. Price One Shilling._\n\nTHE EUROPEAN\n\nCONVERSATION BOOKS.\n\n  FRENCH.\n  ITALIAN.\n  SPANISH.\n  GERMAN.\n  NORWEGIAN.\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\nHints to Travellers--Everyday Expressions--Arriving at and Leaving\na Railway Station--Custom House Enquiries--In a Train--At a Buffet\nand Restaurant--At an Hotel--Paying an Hotel Bill--Enquiries in\na Town--On Board Ship--Embarking and Disembarking--Excursion\nby Carriage--Enquiries as to Diligences--Enquiries as to\nBoats--Engaging Apartments--Washing List and Days of Week--Restaurant\nVocabulary--Telegrams and Letters, etc., etc.\n\n The contents of these little handbooks are so arranged as to permit\n direct and immediate reference. All dialogues or enquiries not\n considered absolutely essential have been purposely excluded, nothing\n being introduced which might confuse the traveller rather than assist\n him. A few hints are given in the introduction which will be found\n valuable to those unaccustomed to foreign travel.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SCOTT LIBRARY.\n\nCloth, Uncut Edges, Gilt Top. Price 1s. 6d. per Volume.\n\n\nVOLUMES ALREADY ISSUED--\n\n 1 Malory\u2019s Romance of King Arthur and the Quest of the Holy Grail.\n Edited by Ernest Rhys.\n\n 2 Thoreau\u2019s Walden. With Introductory Note by Will H. Dircks.\n\n 3 Thoreau\u2019s \u201cWeek.\u201d With Prefatory Note by Will H. Dircks.\n\n 4 Thoreau\u2019s Essays. Edited, with an Introduction, by Will H. Dircks.\n\n 5 Confessions of an English Opium-eater, Etc. By Thomas De Quincey.\n With Introductory Note by William Sharp.\n\n 6 Landor\u2019s Imaginary Conversations. Selected, with Introduction, by\n Havelock Ellis.\n\n 7 Plutarch\u2019s Lives (Langhorne). With Introductory Note by B. J. Snell,\n M.A.\n\n 8 Browne\u2019s Religio Medici, Etc. With Introduction by J. Addington\n Symonds.\n\n 9 Shelley\u2019s Essays and Letters. Edited, with Introductory Note, by\n Ernest Rhys.\n\n 10 Swift\u2019s Prose Writings. Chosen and Arranged, with Introduction, by\n Walter Lewin.\n\n 11 My Study Windows. By James Russell Lowell. With Introduction by R.\n Garnett. LL. D.\n\n 12 Lowell\u2019s Essays on the English Poets. With a new Introduction by\n Mr. Lowell.\n\n 13 The Biglow Papers. By James Russell Lowell. With a Prefatory Note\n by Ernest Rhys.\n\n 14 Great English Painters. Selected from Cunningham\u2019s _Lives_. Edited\n by William Sharp.\n\n 15 Byron\u2019s Letters and Journals. Selected, with Introduction, by\n Mathilde Blind.\n\n 16 Leigh Hunt\u2019s Essays. With Introduction and Notes by Arthur Symons.\n\n 17 Longfellow\u2019s \u201cHyperion,\u201d \u201cKavanah,\u201d and \u201cThe Trouveres.\u201d With\n Introduction by W. Tirebuck.\n\n 18 Great Musical Composers. By G. F. Ferris. Edited, with\n Introduction, by Mrs. William Sharp.\n\n 19 The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Edited by Alice Zimmern.\n\n 20 The Teaching of Epictetus. Translated from the Greek, with\n Introduction and Notes, by T. W. Rolleston.\n\n 21 Selections from Seneca. With Introduction by Walter Clode.\n\n 22 Specimen Days in America. By Walt Whitman. Revised by the Author,\n with fresh Preface.\n\n 23 Democratic Vistas, and Other Papers. By Walt Whitman. (Published by\n arrangement with the Author.)\n\n 24 White\u2019s Natural History of Selborne. With a Preface by Richard\n Jefferies.\n\n 25 Defoe\u2019s Captain Singleton. Edited, with Introduction, by H.\n Halliday Sparling.\n\n 26 Mazzini\u2019s Essays: Literary, Political, and Religious. With\n Introduction by William Clarke.\n\n 27 Prose Writings of Heine. With Introduction by Havelock Ellis.\n\n 28 Reynolds\u2019s Discourses. With Introduction by Helen Zimmern.\n\n 29 Papers of Steele and Addison. Edited by Walter Lewin.\n\n 30 Burns\u2019s Letters. Selected and Arranged, with Introduction, by J.\n Logie Robertson, M.A.\n\n 31 Volsunga Saga. WILLIAM MORRIS. With Introduction by H. H. Sparling.\n\n 32 Sartor Resartus. By Thomas Carlyle. With Introduction by Ernest\n Rhys.\n\n 33 Select Writings of Emerson. With Introduction by Percival Chubb.\n\n 34 Autobiography of Lord Herbert. Edited, with an Introduction, by\n Will H. Dircks.\n\n 35 English Prose, from Maundeville to Thackeray. Chosen and Edited by\n Arthur Galton.\n\n 36 The Pillars of Society, and Other Plays. By Henrik Ibsen. Edited,\n with an Introduction, by Havelock Ellis.\n\n 37 Irish Fairy and Folk Tales. Edited and Selected by W. B. Yeats.\n\n 38 Essays of Dr. Johnson, with Biographical Introduction and Notes by\n Stuart J. Reid.\n\n 39 Essays of William Hazlitt. Selected and Edited, with Introduction\n and Notes, by Frank Carr.\n\n 40 Landor\u2019s Pentameron, and Other Imaginary Conversations. Edited,\n with a Preface, by H. Ellis.\n\n 41 Poe\u2019s Tales and Essays. Edited, with Introduction by Ernest Rhys.\n\n 42 Vicar of Wakefield. By Oliver Goldsmith. Edited, with Preface, by\n Ernest Rhys.\n\n 43 Political Orations, from Wentworth to Macaulay. Edited, with\n Introduction, by William Clarke.\n\n 44 The Autocrat of the Breakfast-table. By Oliver Wendell Holmes.\n\n 45 The Poet at the Breakfast-table. By Oliver Wendell Holmes.\n\n 46 The Professor at the Breakfast-table. By Oliver Wendell Holmes.\n\n 47 Lord Chesterfield\u2019s Letters to his Son. Selected, with\n Introduction, by Charles Sayle.\n\n 48 Stories from Carleton. Selected, with Introduction, by W. Yeats.\n\n 49 Jane Eyre. By Charlotte Bront\u00eb. Edited by Clement K. Shorter.\n\n 50 Elizabethan England. Edited by Lothrop Withington, with a Preface\n by Dr. Furnivall.\n\n 51 The Prose Writings of Thomas Davis. Edited by T. W. Rolleston.\n\n 52 Spence\u2019s Anecdotes. A Selection. Edited with an Introduction and\n Notes, by John Underhill.\n\n 53 More\u2019s Utopia, and Life of Edward V. Edited, with an Introduction,\n by Maurice Adams.\n\n 54 Sadi\u2019s Gulistan, or Flower Garden. Translated, with an Essay, by\n James Ross.\n\n 55 English Fairy and Folk Tales. Edited by E. Sidney Hartland.\n\n 56 Northern Studies. By Edmund Gosse. With a Note by Ernest Rhys.\n\n 57 Early Reviews of Great Writers. Edited by E. Stevenson.\n\n 58 Aristotle\u2019s Ethics. With George Henry Lewes\u2019s Essay on Aristotle\n prefixed.\n\n 59 Landor\u2019s Pericles and Aspasia. Edited, with an Introduction, by\n Havelock Ellis.\n\n 60 Annals of Tacitus. Thomas Gordon\u2019s Translation. Edited, with an\n Introduction, by Arthur Galton.\n\n 61 Essays of Elia. By Charles Lamb. Edited, with an Introduction, by\n Ernest Rhys.\n\n 62 Balzac\u2019s Shorter Stories. Translated by William Wilson and the\n Count Stenbock.\n\n 63 Comedies of De Musset. Edited, with an Introductory Note, by S. L.\n Gwynn.\n\n 64 Coral Reefs. By Charles Darwin. Edited, with an Introduction, by\n Dr. J. W. Williams.\n\n 65 Sheridan\u2019s Plays. Edited, with an Introduction, by Rudolf Dircks.\n\n 66 Our Village. By Miss Mitford. Edited, with an Introduction, by\n Ernest Rhys.\n\n 67 Master Humphrey\u2019s Clock, and Other Stories. By Charles Dickens.\n With Introduction by Frank T. Marzials.\n\n 68 Tales from Wonderland. By Rudolph Baumbach. Translated by Helen B.\n Dole.\n\n 69 Essays and Papers by Douglas Jerrold. Edited by Walter Jerrold.\n\n 70 Vindication of the Rights of Woman. By Mary Wollstonecraft.\n Introduction by Mrs E. Robins Pennell.\n\n 71 \u201cThe Athenian Oracle.\u201d A Selection. Edited by John Underhill, with\n Prefatory Note by Walter Besant.\n\n 72 Essays of Sainte-Beuve. Translated and Edited, with an\n Introduction, by Elizabeth Lee.\n\n 73 Selections from Plato. From the Translation of Sydenham and Taylor.\n Edited by T. W. Rolleston.\n\n 74 Heine\u2019s Italian Travel Sketches, Etc. Translated by Elizabeth A.\n Sharp. With an Introduction from the French of Theophile Gautier.\n\n 75 Schiller\u2019s Maid of Orleans. Translated, with an Introduction, by\n Major-General Patrick Maxwell.\n\n 76 Selections from Sydney Smith. Edited, with an Introduction, by\n Ernest Rhys.\n\n 77 The New Spirit. By Havelock Ellis.\n\nTHE SCOTT LIBRARY may be had in the following Bindings:--Cloth, uncut\nedges, gilt top, 1s. 6d.; Half-Morocco, gilt top, antique; Red Roan,\ngilt edges, etc.\n\n\n\n\nGREAT WRITERS.\n\nA NEW SERIES OF CRITICAL BIOGRAPHIES.\n\nEdited by Prof. E. S. ROBERTSON and FRANK T. MARZIALS.\n\nA Complete Bibliography to each Volume, by J. P. ANDERSON, British\nMuseum, London.\n\nCloth, Uncut Edges, Gilt Top. Price 1/6.\n\nVOLUMES ALREADY ISSUED--\n\n\nLIFE OF LONGFELLOW. By PROF. ERIC S. ROBERTSON.\n\n \u201cA most readable little work.\u201d--_Liverpool Mercury._\n\nLIFE OF COLERIDGE. By HALL CAINE.\n\n \u201cBrief and vigorous, written throughout with spirit and great literary\n skill.\u201d--_Scotsman._\n\nLIFE OF DICKENS. By FRANK T. MARZIALS.\n\n \u201cNotwithstanding the mass of matter that has been printed relating\n to Dickens and his works ... we should, until we came across this\n volume, have been at a loss to recommend any popular life of England\u2019s\n most popular novelist as being really satisfactory. The difficulty is\n removed by Mr. Marzials\u2019s little book.\u201d--_Athen\u00e6um._\n\nLIFE OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. By J. KNIGHT.\n\n \u201cMr. Knight\u2019s picture of the great poet and painter is the fullest and\n best yet presented to the public.\u201d--_The Graphic._\n\nLIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON. By COLONEL F. GRANT.\n\n \u201cColonel Grant has performed his task with diligence, sound judgment,\n good taste, and accuracy.\u201d--_Illustrated London News._\n\nLIFE OF DARWIN. By G. T. BETTANY.\n\n \u201cMr. G. T. Bettany\u2019s _Life of Darwin_ is a sound and conscientious\n work.\u201d--_Saturday Review._\n\nLIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONT\u00cb. By A. BIRRELL.\n\n \u201cThose who know much of Charlotte Bront\u00eb will learn more, and those\n who know nothing about her will find all that is best worth learning\n in Mr. Birrell\u2019s pleasant book.\u201d--_St. James\u2019 Gazette._\n\nLIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE. By R. GARNETT, LL. D.\n\n \u201cThis is an admirable book. Nothing could be more felicitous and\n fairer than the way in which he takes us through Carlyle\u2019s life and\n works.\u201d--_Pall Mall Gazette._\n\nLIFE OF ADAM SMITH. By R. B. HALDANE, M.P.\n\n \u201cWritten with a perspicuity seldom exemplified when dealing with\n economic science.\u201d--_Scotsman._\n\nLIFE OF KEATS. By W. M. ROSSETTI.\n\n \u201cValuable for the ample information which it contains.\u201d--_Cambridge\n Independent._\n\nLIFE OF SHELLEY. By WILLIAM SHARP.\n\n \u201cThe criticisms ... entitle this capital monograph to be ranked with\n the best biographies of Shelley.\u201d--_Westminster Review._\n\nLIFE OF SMOLLETT. By DAVID HANNAY.\n\n \u201cA capable record of a writer who still remains one of the great\n masters of the English novel.\u201d--_Saturday Review._\n\nLIFE OF GOLDSMITH. By AUSTIN DOBSON.\n\n \u201cThe story of his literary and social life in London, with all its\n humorous and pathetic vicissitudes, is here retold, as none could tell\n it better.\u201d--_Daily News._\n\nLIFE OF SCOTT. By PROFESSOR YONGE.\n\n \u201cThis is a most enjoyable book.\u201d--_Aberdeen Free Press._\n\nLIFE OF BURNS. By PROFESSOR BLACKIE.\n\n \u201cThe editor certainly made a hit when he persuaded Blackie to write\n about Burns.\u201d--_Pall Mall Gazette._\n\nLIFE OF VICTOR HUGO. By FRANK T. MARZIALS.\n\n \u201cMr. Marzials\u2019s volume presents to us, in a more handy form than any\n English or even French handbook gives, the summary of what is known\n about the life of the great poet.\u201d--_Saturday Review._\n\nLIFE OF EMERSON. By RICHARD GARNETT, LL.D.\n\n \u201cNo record of Emerson\u2019s life could be more desirable.\u201d--_Saturday\n Review._\n\nLIFE OF GOETHE. By JAMES SIME.\n\n \u201cMr. James Sime\u2019s competence as a biographer of Goethe is beyond\n question.\u201d--_Manchester Guardian._\n\nLIFE OF CONGREVE. By EDMUND GOSSE.\n\n \u201cMr. Gosse has written an admirable biography.\u201d--_Academy._\n\nLIFE OF BUNYAN. By CANON VENABLES.\n\n \u201cA most intelligent, appreciative, and valuable memoir.\u201d--_Scotsman._\n\nLIFE OF CRABBE. By T. E. KEBBEL.\n\n \u201cNo English poet since Shakespeare has observed certain aspects of\n nature and of human life more closely.\u201d--_Athen\u00e6um._\n\nLIFE OF HEINE. By WILLIAM SHARP.\n\n \u201cAn admirable monograph ... more fully written up to the level\n of recent knowledge and criticism than any other English\n work.\u201d--_Scotsman._\n\nLIFE OF MILL. By W. L. COURTNEY.\n\n \u201cA most sympathetic and discriminating memoir.\u201d--_Glasgow Herald._\n\nLIFE OF SCHILLER. By HENRY W. NEVINSON.\n\n \u201cPresents the poet\u2019s life in a neatly rounded picture.\u201d--_Scotsman._\n\nLIFE OF CAPTAIN MARRYAT. By DAVID HANNAY.\n\n \u201cWe have nothing but praise for the manner in which Mr. Hannay has\n done justice to him.\u201d--_Saturday Review._\n\nLIFE OF LESSING. By T. W. ROLLESTON.\n\n \u201cOne of the best books of the series.\u201d--_Manchester Guardian._\n\nLIFE OF MILTON. By RICHARD GARNETT LL.D.\n\n \u201cHas never been more charmingly or adequately told.\u201d--_Scottish\n Leader._\n\nLIFE OF BALZAC. By FREDERICK WEDMORE.\n\n \u201cMr. Wedmore\u2019s monograph on the greatest of French writers of fiction,\n whose greatness is to be measured by comparison with his successors,\n is a piece of careful and critical composition, neat and nice in\n style.\u201d--_Daily News._\n\nLIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT. By OSCAR BROWNING.\n\n \u201cA book of the character of Mr. Browning\u2019s, to stand midway between\n the bulky work of Mr. Cross and the very slight sketch of Miss Blind,\n was much to be desired, and Mr. Browning has done his work with\n vivacity, and not without skill.\u201d--_Manchester Guardian._\n\nLIFE OF JANE AUSTEN. By GOLDWIN SMITH.\n\n \u201cMr. Goldwin Smith has added another to the not inconsiderable roll\n of eminent men who have found their delight in Miss Austen.... His\n little book upon her, just published by Walter Scott, is certainly a\n fascinating book to those who already know her and love her well; and\n we have little doubt that it will prove also a fascinating book to\n those who have still to make her acquaintance.\u201d--_Spectator._\n\nLIFE OF BROWNING. By WILLIAM SHARP.\n\n \u201cThis little volume is a model of excellent English, and in every\n respect it seems to us what a biography should be.\u201d--_Public Opinion._\n\nLIFE OF BYRON. By HON. RODEN NOEL.\n\n \u201cThe Hon. Roden Noel\u2019s volume on Byron is decidedly one of the most\n readable in the excellent \u2018Great Writers\u2019 series.\u201d--_Scottish Leader._\n\nLIFE OF HAWTHORNE. By MONCURE CONWAY.\n\n \u201cIt is a delightful _causerie_--pleasant, genial talk about a most\n interesting man. Easy and conversational as the tone is throughout, no\n important fact is omitted, no valueless fact is recalled; and it is\n entirely exempt from platitude and conventionality.\u201d--_The Speaker._\n\nLIFE OF SCHOPENHAUER. By PROFESSOR WALLACE.\n\n \u201cWe can speak very highly of this little book of Mr. Wallace\u2019s. It\n is, perhaps, excessively lenient in dealing with the man, and it\n cannot be said to be at all ferociously critical in dealing with the\n philosophy.\u201d--_Saturday Review._\n\nLIFE OF SHERIDAN. By LLOYD SANDERS.\n\n \u201cTo say that Mr. Lloyd Sanders, in this little volume, has produced\n the best existing memoir of Sheridan, is really to award much fainter\n praise than the work deserves.\u201d--_Manchester Examiner._\n\nLIFE OF THACKERAY. By HERMAN MERIVALE and F. T. MARZIALS.\n\n \u201cThe monograph just published is well worth reading, ... and the book,\n with its excellent bibliography, is one which neither the student nor\n the general reader can well afford to miss.\u201d--_Pall Mall Gazette._\n\nLIFE OF CERVANTES. By W. E. WATTS.\n\n \u201cWe can commend this book as a worthy addition to the useful series to\n which it belongs.\u201d--_London Daily Chronicle._\n\nLIFE OF VOLTAIRE. By FRANCIS ESPINASSE.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nLIBRARY EDITION OF \u201cGREAT WRITERS,\u201d Demy 8vo, 2s. 6d.\n\n\n\n\nTHE NOVELTY OF THE SEASON.\n\nSELECTED THREE-VOL. SETS\n\nIN NEW BROCADE BINDING. 6s. per Set, in Shell Case to match.\n\n_THE FOLLOWING SETS CAN BE OBTAINED_--\n\nPOEMS OF\n\n  WORDSWORTH.\n  KEATS.\n  SHELLEY.\n\n  LONGFELLOW.\n  WHITTIER.\n  EMERSON.\n\n  HOGG.\n  ALLAN RAMSAY.\n  SCOTTISH MINOR POETS.\n\n  SHAKESPEARE.\n  BEN JONSON.\n  MARLOWE.\n\n  SONNETS OF THIS CENTURY.\n  SONNETS OF EUROPE.\n  AMERICAN SONNETS.\n\n  HEINE.\n  GOETHE.\n  HUGO.\n\n  COLERIDGE.\n  SOUTHEY.\n  COWPER.\n\n  BORDER BALLADS.\n  JACOBITE SONGS.\n  OSSIAN.\n\n  CAVALIER POETS.\n  LOVE LYRICS.\n  HERRICK.\n\n  CHRISTIAN YEAR.\n  IMITATION OF CHRIST.\n  HERBERT.\n\n  AMERICAN HUMOROUS VERSE.\n  ENGLISH HUMOROUS VERSE.\n  BALLADES AND RONDEAUS.\n\n  EARLY ENGLISH POETRY.\n  CHAUCER.\n  SPENSER.\n\n  HORACE.\n  GREEK ANTHOLOGY.\n  LANDOR.\n\n  GOLDSMITH.\n  MOORE.\n  IRISH MINSTRELSY.\n\n  WOMEN POETS.\n  CHILDREN OF POETS.\n  SEA MUSIC.\n\n  PRAED.\n  HUNT AND HOOD.\n  DOBELL.\n\n  MEREDITH.\n  MARSTON.\n  LOVE LETTERS.\n\nSELECTED TWO-VOLUME SETS\n\nIN NEW BROCADE BINDING.\n\n4s. per Set, in Shell Case to match.\n\n  SCOTT (Lady of the Lake, etc.).\n  SCOTT (Marmion, etc.).\n\n  BURNS (Songs).\n  BURNS (Poems).\n\n  BYRON (Don Juan, etc.).\n  BYRON (Miscellaneous).\n\n  MILTON (Paradise Lost).\n  MILTON (Paradise Regained, etc.).\n\n\n\n\nSELECTED THREE-VOL. SETS\n\nIN NEW BROCADE BINDING.\n\n_6s. per Set, in Shell Case to match._\n\nD. W. HOLMES SERIES--\n\n  Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table.\n  The Professor at the Breakfast-Table.\n  The Poet at the Breakfast-Table.\n\nLANDOR SERIES--\n\n  Landor\u2019s Imaginary Conversations.\n  Pentameron.\n  Pericles and Aspasia.\n\nTHREE ENGLISH ESSAYISTS--\n\n  Essays of Elia.\n  Essays of Leigh Hunt.\n  Essays of William Hazlitt.\n\nTHREE CLASSICAL MORALISTS--\n\n  Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.\n  Teaching of Epictetus.\n  Morals of Seneca.\n\nWALDEN SERIES--\n\n  Thoreau\u2019s Walden.\n  Thoreau\u2019s Week.\n  Thoreau\u2019s Essays.\n\nFAMOUS LETTERS--\n\n  Letters of Burns.\n  Letters of Byron.\n  Letters of Shelley.\n\nLOWELL SERIES--\n\n  My Study Windows.\n  The English Poets.\n  The Biglow Papers.\n\n\n\n\nCrown 8vo, about 350 pp. each, Cloth Cover, 2s. 6d. per vol.\n\nHalf-polished Morocco, gilt top, 5s.\n\nCOUNT TOLSTO\u00cf\u2019S WORKS.\n\nThe following Volumes are already issued--\n\n  A RUSSIAN PROPRIETOR.\n  THE COSSACKS.\n  IVAN ILYITCH, AND OTHER STORIES.\n  MY RELIGION. LIFE.\n  MY CONFESSION.\n  CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD, YOUTH.\n  THE PHYSIOLOGY OF WAR.\n  ANNA KARENINA 3s. 6d.\n  WHAT TO DO?\n  WAR AND PEACE. (4 VOLS.)\n  THE LONG EXILE, AND OTHER STORIES FOR CHILDREN.\n  SEVASTOPOL.\n  THE KREUTZER SONATA, AND FAMILY HAPPINESS.\n\nUniform with the above.\n\nIMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.\n\nBY DR. GEORG BRANDES.\n\n\n\n\nIBSEN\u2019S FAMOUS PROSE DRAMAS. EDITED BY WILLIAM ARCHER.\n\nComplete in Five Vols. Crown 8vo, Cloth, Price 3/6 each. Set of Five\nVols., in Case, 17/6; in Half Morocco, in Case, 32/6.\n\n\u201c_We seem at last to be shown men and women as they are; and at first\nit is more than we can endure.... All Ibsen\u2019s characters speak and act\nas if they were hypnotised, and under their creator\u2019s imperious demand\nto reveal themselves. There never was such a mirror held up to nature\nbefore: it is too terrible.... Yet we must return to Ibsen, with his\nremorseless surgery, his remorseless electric-light, until we, too,\nhave grown strong and learned to face the naked--if necessary, the\nflayed and bleeding--reality._\u201d--SPEAKER (London).\n\nVol. I. \u201cA DOLL\u2019S HOUSE,\u201d \u201cTHE LEAGUE OF YOUTH,\u201d and \u201cTHE PILLARS OF\nSOCIETY.\u201d With Portrait of the Author, and Biographical Introduction by\nWILLIAM ARCHER.\n\nVol. II. \u201cGHOSTS,\u201d \u201cAN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE,\u201d and \u201cTHE WILD DUCK.\u201d With\nan Introductory Note.\n\nVol. III. \u201cLADY INGER OF \u00d6STR\u00c5T,\u201d \u201cTHE VIKINGS AT HELGELAND,\u201d \u201cTHE\nPRETENDERS.\u201d With an Introductory Note and Portrait of Ibsen.\n\nVol. IV. \u201cEMPEROR AND GALILEAN.\u201d With an Introductory Note by WILLIAM\nARCHER.\n\nVol. V. \u201cROSMERSHOLM,\u201d \u201cTHE LADY FROM THE SEA,\u201d \u201cHEDDA GABLER.\u201d\nTranslated by WILLIAM ARCHER. With an Introductory Note.\n\nThe sequence of the plays _in each volume_ is chronological; the\ncomplete set of volumes comprising the dramas thus presents them in\nchronological order.\n\n\u201cThe art of prose translation does not perhaps enjoy a very high\nliterary status in England, but we have no hesitation in numbering\nthe present version of Ibsen, so far as it has gone (Vols. I.\nand II.), among the very best achievements, in that kind, of our\ngeneration.\u201d--_Academy_.\n\n\u201cWe have seldom, if ever, met with a translation so absolutely\nidiomatic.\u201d--_Glasgow Herald_.\n\n\n\n\nTHE CANTERBURY POETS.\n\nEDITED BY WILLIAM SHARP. IN 1/- MONTHLY VOLUMES.\n\n  Cloth, Red Edges          1s.\n  Cloth, Uncut Edges        1s.\n  Red Roan, Gilt Edges, 2s. 6d.\n  Pad. Morocco, Gilt Edges, 5s.\n\n  =THE CHRISTIAN YEAR=             By the Rev. John Keble.\n  =COLERIDGE=                      Edited by Joseph Skipsey.\n  =LONGFELLOW=                     Edited by Eva Hope.\n  =CAMPBELL=                       Edited by John Hogben.\n  =SHELLEY=                        Edited by Joseph Skipsey.\n  =WORDSWORTH=                     Edited by A. J. Symington.\n  =BLAKE=                          Edited by Joseph Skipsey.\n  =WHITTIER=                       Edited by Eva Hope.\n  =POE=                            Edited by Joseph Skipsey.\n  =CHATTERTON=                     Edited by John Richmond.\n  =BURNS.= Poems                   Edited by Joseph Skipsey.\n  =BURNS.= Songs                   Edited by Joseph Skipsey.\n  =MARLOWE=                        Edited by Percy E. Pinkerton.\n  =KEATS=                          Edited by John Hogben.\n  =HERBERT=                        Edited by Ernest Rhys.\n  =HUGO=                           Translated by Dean Carrington.\n  =COWPER=                         Edited by Eva Hope.\n  =SHAKESPEARE\u2019S POEMS, Etc.=      Edited by William Sharp.\n  =EMERSON=                        Edited by Walter Lewin.\n  =SONNETS OF THIS CENTURY=        Edited by William Sharp.\n  =WHITMAN=                        Edited by Ernest Rhys.\n  =SCOTT.= Marmion, etc.           Edited by William Sharp.\n  =SCOTT.= Lady of the Lake, etc.  Edited by William Sharp.\n  =PRAED=                          Edited by Frederick Cooper.\n  =HOGG=                           Edited by his Daughter, Mrs. Garden.\n  =GOLDSMITH=                      Edited by William Tirebuck.\n  =LOVE LETTERS, Etc.=             By Eric Mackay.\n  =SPENSER=                        Edited by Hon. Roden Noel.\n  =CHILDREN OF THE POETS=          Edited by Eric S. Robertson.\n  =JONSON=                         Edited by J. Addington Symonds.\n  =BYRON (2 Vols.)=                Edited by Mathilde Blind.\n  =THE SONNETS OF EUROPE=          Edited by S. Waddington.\n  =RAMSAY=                         Edited by J. Logie Robertson.\n  =DOBELL=                         Edited by Mrs. Dobell.\n  =DAYS OF THE YEAR=               With Introduction by William Sharp.\n  =POPE=                           Edited by John Hogben.\n  =HEINE=                          Edited by Mrs. Kroeker.\n  =BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER=          Edited by John S. Fletcher.\n  =BOWLES, LAMB. &c.=              Edited by William Tirebuck.\n  =EARLY ENGLISH POETRY=           Edited by H. Macaulay Fitzgibbon.\n  =SEA MUSIC=                      Edited by Mrs. Sharp.\n  =HERRICK=                        Edited by Ernest Rhys.\n  =BALLADS AND RONDEAUS=           Edited by J. Gleeson White.\n  =IRISH MINSTRELSY=               Edited by H. Halliday Sparling.\n  =MILTON\u2019S PARADISE LOST=         Edited by J. Bradshaw, M.A., LL.D.\n  =JACOBITE BALLADS=               Edited by G. S. Macquoid.\n  =AUSTRALIAN BALLADS=             Edited by D. B. W. Sladen, B.A.\n  =MOORE=                          Edited by John Dorrian.\n  =BORDER BALLADS=                 Edited by Graham R. Tomson.\n  =SONG-TIDE=                      By Philip Bourke Marston.\n  =ODES OF HORACE=                 Translations by Sir Stephen de Vere, Bt.\n  =OSSIAN=                         Edited by George Eyre-Todd.\n  =ELFIN MUSIC=                    Edited by Arthur Edward Waite.\n  =SOUTHEY=                        Edited by Sidney R. Thompson.\n  =CHAUCER=                        Edited by Frederick No\u00ebl Paton.\n  =POEMS OF WILD LIFE=             Edited by Charles G. D. Roberts, M.A.\n  =PARADISE REGAINED=              Edited by J. Bradshaw, M.A., LL.D.\n  =CRABBE=                         Edited by E. Lamplough.\n  =DORA GREENWELL=                 Edited by William Dorling.\n  =FAUST=                          Edited by Elizabeth Craigmyle.\n  =AMERICAN SONNETS=               Edited by William Sharp.\n  =LANDOR\u2019S POEMS=                 Edited by Ernest Radford.\n  =GREEK ANTHOLOGY=                Edited by Graham R. Tomson.\n  =HUNT AND HOOD=                  Edited by J. Harwood Panting.\n  =HUMOROUS POEMS=                 Edited by Ralph H. Caine.\n  =LYTTON\u2019S PLAYS=                 Edited by R. Farquharson Sharp.\n  =GREAT ODES=                     Edited by William Sharp.\n  =MEREDITH\u2019S POEMS=               Edited by M. Betham-Edwards.\n  =PAINTER-POETS=                  Edited by Kineton Parkes.\n  =WOMEN POETS=                    Edited by Mrs. Sharp.\n  =LOVE LYRICS=                    Edited by Percy Hulburd.\n  =AMERICAN HUMOROUS VERSE=        Edited by James Barr.\n  =MINOR SCOTCH LYRICS=            Edited by Sir George Douglas.\n  =CAVALIER LYRISTS=               Edited by Will H. Dircks.\n  =GERMAN BALLADS=                 Edited by Elizabeth Craigmyle.\n  =SONGS OF BERANGER=              Translated by William Toynbee.\n  =POEMS OF THE HON. RODEN NOEL.=  With an Introduction by Robert Buchanan.\n\n\n\n\n_Quarto, cloth elegant, gilt edges, emblematic design on cover, 6s. May\nalso be had in a variety of Fancy Bindings._\n\nTHE\n\nMusic of the Poets:\n\nA MUSICIANS\u2019 BIRTHDAY BOOK.\n\nEDITED BY ELEONORE D\u2019ESTERRE KEELING.\n\nThis is a unique Birthday Book. Against each date are given the names\nof musicians whose birthday it is, together with a verse-quotation\nappropriate to the character of their different compositions\nor performances. A special feature of the book consists in the\nreproduction in fac-simile of autographs, and autographic music, of\nliving composers. Three sonnets by Mr. Theodore Watts, on the \u201cFausts\u201d\nof Berlioz, Schumann, and Gounod, have been written specially for this\nvolume. It is illustrated with designs of various musical instruments,\netc.; autographs of Rubenstein, Dvor\u00e2k, Grieg, Mackenzie, Villiers\nStanford, etc., etc.\n\n\u201cTo musical amateurs this will certainly prove the most attractive\nbirthday book ever published.\u201d--_Manchester Guardian_.\n\n\u201cOne of those happy ideas that seems to have been yearning for\nfulfilment.... The book ought to have a place on every music\nstand.\u201d--_Scottish Leader_.\n\n\nLondon: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.\n\n\n\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber's Note\n\nDuplicate headings have been removed.\n\nThe following apparent errors have been corrected:\n\np. 19 \"intervene,\" changed to \"intervene.\"\n\np. 42 \"fouguese\" changed to \"fougueuse\"\n\np. 122 \"brothers. and\" changed to \"brothers, and\"\n\np. 190 \"songs shoot\" changed to \"songs, shoot\"\n\np. 191 \"Sebastopool\" changed to \"Sebastopol\"\n\np. 216 \"unforgetable\" changed to \"unforgettable\"\n\n(advertisement) \"7 Prose Writings of Heine\" changed to \"27 Prose\nWritings of Heine\"\n\n(advertisement) \"work.\" changed to \"work.\u201d\n\n(advertisement) \"contains.\" changed to \"contains.\u201d\"\n\n(advertisement) \"CHILDREN OF POETS\" changed to \"CHILDREN OF POETS.\"\n\n(advertisement) \"Breakfast Table\" changed to \"Breakfast-Table\"\n\n(advertisement) \"WILLIAMARCHER\" changed to \"WILLIAM ARCHER\"\n\n\nThe following are used inconsistently in the text:\n\nafter-thought and afterthought\n\nchild-like and childlike\n\nlife-like and lifelike\n\nnow-a-days and nowadays\n\nover-mastering and overmastering\n\nstand-point and standpoint\n\nsun-rise and sunrise","title":"The New Spirit: Third Edition","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":65574}