{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_76076/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_76076","id":"gutenberg_76076","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76076","summary":null,"tags":["Category: British Literature","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Literature and morals"],"text":"AFFIRMATIONS.\n\n\n\n\n                             AFFIRMATIONS\n\n\n\n\n                                  BY\n\n                            HAVELOCK ELLIS\n\n\n\n\n                                LONDON:\n                         WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED\n                          PATERNOSTER SQUARE\n                                 1898\n\n\n\n\n                               PREFACE.\n\n\nTHERE are at least two ways of looking at books and at the\npersonalities books express. In its chief but rarer aspect literature\nis the medium of art, and as such can raise no ethical problems.\nWhatever morality or immorality art may hold is quiescent, or lifted\ninto an atmosphere of radiant immortality where questioning is\nirrelevant. Of the literature that is all art we need not even speak,\nunless by chance we too approach it as artists, trying to grasp it by\nimaginative insight. In literature, as elsewhere, art should only be\napproached as we would approach Paradise, for the sake of its joy.\nIt would be well, indeed, if we could destroy or forget all that has\never been written about the world\u2019s great books, even if it were once\nworth while to write those books about books. How happy, for instance,\nthe world might be if there were no literature about the Bible, if\nAugustine and Aquinas and Calvin and thousands of smaller men had not\ndanced on it so long, stamping every page of it into mire, that now the\nvision of a single line, in its simple sense, is almost an effort of\ninspiration. All my life long I have been casting away the knowledge I\nhave gained from books about literature, and from opinions about life,\nand coming to literature itself or to life itself, a slow and painful\nprogress towards that Heaven of knowledge where a child is king.\n\nBut there is another kind of literature, a literature which is not all\nart--the literature of life. Literature differs from design or music\nby being closer to life, by being fundamentally not an art at all, but\nmerely the development of ordinary speech, only rising at intervals\ninto the region of art. It is so close to life that largely it comes\nbefore us much as the actual facts of life come before us. So that\nwhile we were best silent about the literature of art, sanctified by\ntime and the reverence of many men, we cannot question too keenly the\nliterature of life. In this book I deal with questions of life as they\nare expressed in literature, or as they are suggested by literature.\nThroughout I am discussing morality as revealed or disguised by\nliterature. I may not care, indeed, to pervert my subjects in order\nto emphasise my opinions, but I frankly take my subjects chiefly on\nthose sides which suit my own pleasure, and I select them solely\nbecause they do that so well. I use them as the ancient device of the\nstalking-horse was used, to creep up more closely to the game that my\nsoul loves best.\n\nSo far as possible I dwell most on those aspects of my subjects which\nare most questionable. It was once brought against me that I had a\npredilection for such aspects. Assuredly it is so. If a subject is not\nquestionable it seems to me a waste of time to discuss it. The great\nfacts of the world are not questionable; they are there for us to\nenjoy, or to suffer, in silence, not to talk about. Our best energies\nshould be spent in attacking and settling questionable things that so\nwe may enlarge the sphere of the unquestionable--the sphere of real\nlife--and be ready to meet new questions as they arise. It is only by\ndealing with the questionable aspects of the world that criticism of\nlife can ever have any saving virtue for us. It is waste of life to\nuse literature for pawing over the unquestionable. Even a healthy dog,\nhaving once ascertained the essential virtue of a bone, contentedly\neats it, or buries it.\n\nAnd yet, it may well be, there is a time for affirming the simple\neternal facts of life, a time, even, when those simple eternal facts\nhave drifted so far from us that we count them also questionable.\nThe present moment has seemed to me a fitting one to set a few such\naffirmations in order. The century now nearly over has performed many\ndirty and laborious tasks; it has had to organise its own unwieldiness,\nto cleanse its Augean stables of the filth it has itself deposited,\nto pull down the buildings it has itself erected. When we witness\nsuch work carried out--blunderingly, it may be, but yet, we thought,\nhumbly--we may well point out what splendid fellows these modest,\nbegrimed toilers really were, what useful and noble work they were\nengaged in, how large a promise they bear for the future. That was my\nown point of view. But the case is altered when these yet unwashed\ntoilers rise up around us in half-intoxicated jubilation over the\ntriumphs of their own little epoch, well assured that there never was\nsuch an age or such a race since the world began. Then we may well\npause. It is time to recall the simple eternal facts of life. It is\ntime to affirm the existence of those verities which are wrought into\nour very structure everywhere and always, and in the face of which the\npaltry triumphs of an \u201cera\u201d fall back into insignificance.\n\nYet every man must make his own affirmations. The great questions\nof life are immortal, only because no one can answer them for his\nfellows. I claim no general validity for my affirmations. It has been\nwell said that certain books possess a value that is in the ratio of\nthe spiritual vigour of those who use them, acting as a tonic to the\nstrong, still further dissolving and enfeebling the weakness of the\nweak. It would be presumptious to claim any potent and peculiar energy\nfor this book; but the observation is one which a reader may do well\nalways to bear in mind. The final value of any book is not in the\nbeliefs which it may give us or take away from us, but in its power to\nreveal to us our own real selves. If I can stimulate any one in the\nsearch for his own proper affirmations, he and I may well rest content.\nHe is welcome to cast aside mine as the idle conclusions of a dreamer\nlying in the sunshine. Our own affirmations are always the best. Let us\nbut be sure that they are our own, that they have grown up slowly and\nquietly, fed with the strength of our own blood and brain. Only with\nthe help of such affirmations can we find a staff to comfort us through\nthe valley of life. It is only when they utter affirmations, one has\nsaid, that the wands of the angels blossom.\n\n                                                                  H. E.\n\n _August 1897._\n\n\n\n\n                               CONTENTS.\n\n\n                                                 PAGE\n\n NIETZSCHE                                          1\n\n CASANOVA                                          86\n\n ZOLA                                             131\n\n HUYSMANS                                         158\n\n ST. FRANCIS AND OTHERS                           212\n\n\n\n\n                             AFFIRMATIONS.\n\n\n\n\n                              NIETZSCHE.\n\n\nFOR some years the name of Friedrich Nietzsche has been the war-cry\nof opposing factions in Germany. It is not easy to take up a German\nperiodical without finding some trace of the passionate admiration or\ndenunciation which this man has called forth. If we turn to Scandinavia\nor to France, whither his fame and his work are also penetrating, we\nfind that the same results have followed. And we may expect a similar\noutburst in England now that the translation of his works has at last\nbegun. At present, however, I know of no attempt to deal with Nietzsche\nfrom the British point of view, and that is my excuse for trying to\ndefine his personality and influence.[1] I do not come forward as the\nchampion of Nietzschianism or of Anti-Nietzschianism. It appears to\nme that any human individuality that has strongly aroused the love\nand hatred of men must be far too complex for absolute condemnation or\nabsolute approval. Apart from praise or blame, which seem here alike\nimpertinent, Nietzsche is without doubt an extraordinarily interesting\nfigure. He is the modern incarnation of that image of intellectual\npride which Marlowe created in Faustus. A man who has certainly stood\nat the finest summit of modern culture, who has thence made the most\ndetermined effort ever made to destroy modern morals, and who now leads\na life as near to death as any life outside the grave can be, must\nneeds be a tragic figure. It is a figure full of significance, for it\nrepresents one of the greatest spiritual forces which have appeared\nsince Goethe, full of interest also to the psychologist, and surely not\nwithout its pathos, perhaps its horror, for the man in the street.\n\n\n                                  I.\n\nIt has only lately become possible to study Nietzsche\u2019s life-history.\nFor a considerable period the Nietzsche-Archiv at Naumburg and Weimar\nhas been accumulating copious materials which have now been utilised by\nNietzsche\u2019s sister, Elizabeth F\u00f6rster-Nietzsche, in the production of\nan authoritative biography. This sister is herself a remarkable person;\nfor many years she lived in close association with her brother, so\nthat she was supposed, though without reason, to have exerted an\ninfluence over his thought; then she married Dr. F\u00f6rster, the founder\nof the New Germany colony in Paraguay; on his death she returned home\nto write the history of the colony, and has since devoted herself to\nthe care of her brother and his fame. Only the first two volumes of the\n_Leben Nietzsche\u2019s_ have yet appeared, but they enable us to trace\nhis development to his departure from Basel, and throw light on his\nwhole career.\n\nNietzsche belonged, according to the ancestral tradition (though the\nname, I am told, is a common one in Wendish Silesia), to a noble Polish\nfamily called Nietzky, who on account of strong Protestant convictions\nabandoned their country and their title during the eighteenth century\nand settled in Germany. Notwithstanding the large amount of German\nblood in his veins, he always regarded himself as essentially a Pole.\nThe Poles seemed to him the best endowed and most knightly of Sclavonic\npeoples, and he once remarked that it was only by virtue of a strong\nmixture of Sclavonic blood that the Germans entered the ranks of gifted\nnations. He termed the Polish Chopin the deliverer of music from\nGerman heaviness and stupidity, and when he speaks of another Pole,\nCopernicus, who reversed the judgment of the whole world, one may\ndivine a reference to what in later years Nietzsche regarded as his own\nmission. In adult life Nietzsche\u2019s keen and strongly marked features\nwere distinctly Polish, and when abroad he was frequently greeted\nby Poles as a fellow-countryman; at Sorrento, where he once spent a\nwinter, the country people called him Il Polacco.\n\nLike Emerson (to whose writings he was strongly attracted throughout\nlife) and many another strenuous philosophic revolutionary, Nietzsche\ncame of a long race of Christian ministers. On both sides his ancestors\nwere preachers, and from first to last the preacher\u2019s fervour was\nin his own blood. The eldest of three children (of whom one died in\ninfancy), Friedrich Nietzsche was born in 1844 at R\u00f6cken, near L\u00fctzen,\nin Saxony. His father--who shortly after his son\u2019s birth fell down the\nparsonage steps, injuring his head so severely that he died within\ntwelve months--is described as a man of noble and poetic nature,\nwith a special talent for music, inherited by his son; though once\ndescribed by his son as \u201ca tender, lovable, morbid man,\u201d he belonged\nto a large and very healthy family, who mostly lived to an extreme\nold age, preserving their mental and physical vigour to the last.\nThe Nietzsches were a proud, sincere folk, very clannish, looking\naskance at all who were not Nietzsches. Nietzsche\u2019s mother, said to\nbe a charming woman and possessed of much physical vigour, was again\na clergyman\u2019s daughter. The Oehler family, to which she belonged,\nwas also very large, very healthy, and very long-lived; she was only\neighteen at her son\u2019s birth, and is still alive to care for him in his\ncomplete mental decay. I note these facts, which are given with much\nprecision and detail in the biography, because they certainly help\nus to understand Nietzsche. It is evident that he is no frail hectic\nflame of a degenerating race. There seems to be no trace of insanity\nor nervous disorder at any point in the family history, as far back\nas it is possible to go. On the contrary, he belonged to extremely\nvigorous stocks, possessing unusual moral and physical force, people\nof \u201ccharacter.\u201d A similar condition of things is not seldom found in\nthe history of genius. In such a case the machine is, as it were, too\nhighly charged with inherited energy, and works at a pressure which\nultimately brings it to perdition. All genius must work without rest,\nit cannot do otherwise; only the most happily constituted genius works\nwithout haste.\n\nThe sister\u2019s account of the children\u2019s early life is a very charming\npart of this record, and one which in the nature of things rarely finds\nplace in a biography. She describes her first memories of the boy\u2019s\npretty face, his long fair hair, and large, dark, serious eyes. He\ncould not speak until he was nearly three years old, but at four he\nbegan to read and write. He was a quiet, rather obstinate child, with\nfits of passion which he learnt to control at a very early age; his\nself-control became so great that, as a boy, on more than one occasion\nhe deliberately burnt his hand, to show that Mucius Sc\u00e6vola\u2019s act was\nbut a trifling matter.\n\nThe widowed mother went with her children to settle at Naumburg on\nthe Saale with her husband\u2019s mother, a woman of fine character with\nviews of her own, one of which was that children of all classes should\nfirst be brought up together. Little Fritz was therefore sent to the\ntown school, but the experiment was not altogether successful. He was\na serious child, fond of solitude, and was called \u201cthe little parson\u201d\nby his comrades. \u201cThe fundamental note of his disposition,\u201d writes a\nschoolfellow in after-life, \u201cwas a certain melancholy which expressed\nitself in his whole being.\u201d He avoided his fellows and sought beautiful\nscenery, as he continued to do throughout life. At the same time he\nwas a well-developed, vigorous boy, who loved games of various kinds,\nespecially those of his own invention. But although the children lived\nto the full the fantastic life of childhood, the sister regretfully\nconfesses that they remained models of propriety. Fritz was \u201ca very\npious child; he thought much about religious matters, and was always\nconcerned to put his thoughts into practice.\u201d It is curious that,\nnotwithstanding his instinctive sympathy with the Greek spirit and his\nphilological aptitudes, he found Greek specially difficult to learn.\nAt the age of ten appeared his taste for verse-making, and also for\nmusic, and he soon began to show that inherited gift for improvisation\nby which he was always able to hold his audience spellbound. Even as\na boy the future moralist made a deep impression on those who knew\nhim, and he reminded one person of the youthful Jesus in the Temple.\n\u201cWe Nietzsches hate lies,\u201d an aunt was accustomed to say; in Friedrich\nsincerity was a very deep-rooted trait, and he exercised an involuntary\neducational influence on those who came near him.\n\nIn 1858 a place was found for him at Pforta, a remarkable school of\nalmost military discipline. Here many of the lines of his future\nactivity were definitely laid down. At an even earlier date, excited\nby the influence of Humboldt, he had been fascinated by the ideal of\nuniversal culture, and at Pforta his intellectual energies began to\nexpand. Here also, in 1859, when a pianoforte edition of _Tristan_\nwas first published, Nietzsche became an enthusiastic Wagnerian,\nand even to the last _Tristan_ remained for him \u201cmusic _par\nexcellence_.\u201d Here, too, he began those philological studies which\nled some years later to a professorship. He turned to philology,\nhowever, as he himself recognised, because of the need he felt to\nanchor himself to some cool logical study which would not grip his\nheart like the restless and exciting artistic instincts which had\nhitherto chiefly moved him. During the latter part of his stay at this\nvery strenuous educational establishment young Nietzsche was a less\nbrilliant pupil than during the earlier part. His own individuality\nwas silently growing beneath the disciplinary pressure which would\nhave dwarfed a less vigorous individuality. His philosophic aptitudes\nbegan to develop and take form; he wished also to devote himself to\nmusic; and he pined at the confinement, longing for the forest and the\nwoodman\u2019s axe. It was the beginning of a long struggle between the\nimpulses of his own self-centred nature and the duties imposed from\nwithout, by the school, the university, and, later, his professorship;\nhe always strove to broaden and deepen these duties to the scope of his\nown nature, but the struggle remained. It was the immediate result of\nthis double strain that, during 1862, strong and healthy as the youth\nappeared, he began to suffer from headaches and eye-troubles, cured by\ntemporary removal from the school. He remained extremely short-sighted,\nand it was only by an absurd error in the routine examination that,\nsome years later, he was passed for military service in the artillery.\n\nIn the following year, 1863, Nietzsche met a schoolfellow\u2019s sister, an\nethereal little Berlin girl, who for a while appealed to \u201cthe large,\nbroad-shouldered, shy, rather solemn and stiff youth.\u201d To this early\nexperience, which never went beyond poetic _Schw\u00e4rmerei_, his\nsister is inclined to trace the origin of Nietzsche\u2019s view of women as\nvery fragile, tender little buds. The experience is also interesting\nbecause it appears to stand alone in his life. We strike here on\nan organic abnormality in this congenital philosopher. Nietzsche\u2019s\nattitude was not the crude misogyny of Schopenhauer, who knew women\nchiefly as women of the streets. Nietzsche knew many of the finest\nwomen of his time, and he sometimes speaks with insight and sympathy\nof the world as it appears to women; but there was clearly nothing in\nhim to answer to any appeal to passion, and his attitude is well summed\nup in an aphorism of his own _Zarathustra_: \u201cIt is better to fall\ninto the hands of a murderer than into the dreams of an ardent woman.\u201d\n\u201cAll his life long,\u201d his sister writes, \u201cmy brother remained completely\napart from either great passion or vulgar pleasure. His whole passion\nlay in the world of knowledge; only very temperate emotions remained\nover for anything else. In later life he was grieved that he had never\nattained to _amour passion_, and that every inclination to a\nfeminine personality quickly changed to a tender friendship, however\nfascinatingly pretty the fair one might be.\u201d He would expend much\nsympathy on unhappy lovers, yet he would shake his head, saying to\nhimself or others: \u201cAnd all that over a little girl!\u201d\n\nYoung Nietzsche left Pforta, in 1863, with the most various and\nincompatible scientific tastes and interests (always excepting in\nmathematics, for which he never possessed any aptitude), but, as he\nhimself remarked, none that would fit him for any career. One point\nin regard to the termination of his school-life is noteworthy: he\nchose Theognis as the subject of his valedictory dissertation. His\nmeditations on this moralist and aristocrat, so contemptuous of popular\nrule, may have served as the starting-point of some of his own later\nviews on Greek culture. In 1864 he became a student at Bonn, and the\nyear that followed was of special import in his inner development; he\nfinally threw off the beliefs of his early youth; he discovered his\nkeen critical faculty; and self-contained independence became a visible\nmark of his character, though always disguised by amiable and courteous\nmanners. At Bonn his life seems to have been fairly happy, though he\nwas by no means a typical German student. He spent much money, but\nit was chiefly on his artistic tastes--music and the theatre--or on\nlittle tours. No one could spend less on eating and drinking; like\nGoethe and like Heine, he had no love for tobacco or for beer, and he\nwas repelled by the thick, beery good-humour of the German student.\nPeople who drink beer and smoke pipes every evening, he always held,\nwere incapable of understanding his philosophy; for they could not\npossibly possess the clarity of mind needed to grasp any delicate or\ncomplex intellectual problem. He returned home from Bonn \u201ca picture of\nhealth and strength, broad-shouldered, brown, with rather fair thick\nhair, and exactly the same height as Goethe;\u201d and then went to continue\nhis studies at Leipzig.\n\nNotwithstanding the youth\u2019s efforts to subdue his emotional and\n\u00e6sthetic restlessness by cool and hard work, he was clearly tortured by\nthe effort to find a philosophic home for himself in the world. This\neffort absorbed him all day long, frequently nearly all the night. At\nthis time he chanced to take up on a bookstall a totally unknown work,\nentitled _Der Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_; in obedience to an\nunusual impulse he bought the book without consideration, and from that\nmoment began an acquaintance with Schopenhauer which for many years\nexerted a deep influence on his life. At that time, probably, he could\nhave had no better guide into paths of peace; but even as a student\nhe was a keen critic of Schopenhauer\u2019s system, valuing him chiefly as,\nin opposition to Kant, \u201cthe philosopher of a re-awakened classical\nperiod, a Germanised Hellenism.\u201d Schumann\u2019s music and long solitary\nwalks aided in the work of recuperation. A year or two later Nietzsche\nmet the other great god who shared with Schopenhauer his early worship.\n\u201cI cannot bring my heart to any degree of critical coolness before\nthis music,\u201d he wrote, in 1868, after listening to the overture to the\n_Meistersinger_; \u201cevery fibre and nerve in me thrills; it is a\nlong time since I have been so carried away.\u201d I quote these words, for\nwe shall, I think, find later that they have their significance. A few\nweeks afterwards he was invited to meet the master, and thus began a\nrelationship that for Nietzsche was fateful.\n\nMeanwhile his philological studies were bringing him distinction. A\nlecture on Theognis was pronounced by Ritschl to be the best work\nby a student of Nietzsche\u2019s standing that he had ever met with.\nThen followed investigations into the sources of Suidas, a lengthy\nexamination _De fontibus Diogenis Laertii_, and pal\u00e6ographic\nstudies in connection with Terence, Statius, and Orosius. He was now\nalso consciously perfecting his German style, treating language,\nhe remarks, as a musical instrument on which one must be able to\nimprovise, as well as play what is merely learnt by heart. In 1869,\nwhen only in his twenty-sixth year, and before he had taken his\ndoctor\u2019s degree, he accepted the chair of classical philology at Basel.\nHe was certainly, as he himself said, not a born philologist. He had\ndevoted himself to philology--I wish to insist on this significant\npoint--as a sedative and tonic to his restless energy; in this he was\ndoubtless wise, though his sister seems to suggest that he thereby\nincreased his mental strain. But he had no real vocation for philology,\nand it is curious that when the Basel chair was offered to him he\nwas proposing to himself to throw aside philology for chemistry.\nPhilologists, he declares again and again, are but factory hands in\nthe service of science. At the best philology is a waste of acuteness,\nsince it merely enables us to state facts which the study of the\npresent would teach us much more swiftly and surely. Thus it was that\nhe instinctively broadened and deepened every philological question\nhe took up, making it a channel for philosophy and morals. With his\nspecifically philological work we are not further concerned.\n\nI have been careful to present the main facts in Nietzsche\u2019s early\ndevelopment because they seem to me to throw light on the whole of\nhis later development. So far he had published nothing except in\nphilological journals. In 1871, after he had settled at Basel,\nappeared his first work, an essay entitled _Die Geburt der Trag\u00f6die\naus dem Geiste der Musik_, dedicated to Wagner. The conception of\nthis essay was academic, but in Nietzsche\u2019s hands the origin of tragedy\nbecame merely the text for an exposition of his own philosophy of art\nat this period. He traces two art impulses in ancient Greece: one,\nstarting in the phenomena of dreaming, which he associates with Apollo;\nthe other, starting in the phenomena of intoxication, associated with\nDionysus, and through singing, music and dithyramb leading up to\nthe lyric. The union of these, which both imply a pessimistic view\nof life, produced folksong and finally tragedy, which is thus the\noutcome of Dionysiac music fertilised by Apollonian imagery. Socrates\nthe optimist, with his views concerning virtue as knowledge, vice as\nignorance, and his identification of virtue with happiness, led to the\ndecay of tragedy and the triumph of Alexandrian culture, in the net\nof which the whole modern world is still held. Now, however, German\nmusic is producing a new birth of tragedy through Wagner, who has again\nunited music and myth, inaugurated an era of art culture, and built\nthe bridge to a new German heathenism. This remarkable essay produced\nconsiderable controversy and much consternation among Nietzsche\u2019s\nphilological friends and teachers, who resented--reasonably enough,\nwe may well admit--the subordination of philology to modern philosophy\nand art, and could not understand the marvellous swan they had hatched.\nA philologist Nietzsche could never have continued, but this book\npublicly put an end to any hope of academic advancement. It remains\ncharacteristic of Nietzsche\u2019s first period, as we may call whatever\nhe wrote before 1876, in its insistence on the primary importance of\n\u00e6sthetic as opposed to intellectual culture; and it is characteristic\nof his whole work in its grip of the connection between the problems\nand solutions of Hellenic times and the problems and solutions of\nthe modern world. For Nietzsche the Greek world was not the model of\nbeautiful mediocrity imagined by Winckelmann and Goethe, nor did it\ndate from the era of rhetorical idealism inaugurated by Plato. The\nreal Hellenic world came earlier, and the true Hellenes were sturdy\nrealists enamoured of life, reverencing all its manifestations and\nsigns, and holding in highest honour that sexual symbol of life which\nChristianity, with its denial of life, despises. Plato Nietzsche hated;\nhe had wandered from all the fundamental instincts of the Hellene. His\nchildish dialectic can only appeal, Nietzsche said, to those who are\nignorant of French masters like Fontenelle. The best cure for Plato, he\nheld, is Thucydides, the last of the old Hellenes who were brave in\nthe face of reality; Plato fled from reality into the ideal and was a\nChristian before his time. Heraclitus was Nietzsche\u2019s favourite Greek\nthinker, and he liked to point out that the moralists of the Stoa may\nbe traced back to the great philosopher of Ephesus.\n\n_Die Geburt der Trag\u00f6die_ is the prelude to all Nietzsche\u2019s work.\nHe outgrew it, but in one point at least it sounds a note which recurs\nthroughout all his work. He ever regarded the Greek conception of\nDionysus as the key to the mystery of life. In _G\u00f6tzend\u00e4mmerung_,\nthe last of his works, this is still affirmed, more distinctly than\never. \u201cThe fundamental Hellenic instinct,\u201d he there wrote, \u201cwas first\nrevealed in the Dionysiac mysteries. What was it the Greek assured to\nhimself in these mysteries? Eternal life, the eternal return of life,\nthe future promised and consecrated in the present, the triumphal\naffirmation of life over death and change, _true_ life or\nimmortality through procreation, through the mysteries of sexuality.\nThus the sexual symbol was to the Greeks the profoundest and most\nvenerable symbol in the whole range of ancient piety. Every individual\nact of reproduction, of conception, of birth was a festival awaking\nthe loftiest emotions. The doctrine of the mysteries proclaimed the\nholiness of pain; the pangs of childbirth sanctified all pain. All\ngrowth and development, every promise for the future, is conditioned\nby pain. To ensure the eternal pleasure of creation, the eternal\naffirmation of the will to live, the eternity of birth-pangs is\nabsolutely required. All this is signified by the word Dionysus: I know\nno higher symbolism than this Greek Dionysiac symbolism. In it the\ndeepest instinct of life, of the future of life, the eternity of life,\nis experienced religiously; generation, the way to life, is regarded as\na sacred way. Christianity alone, with its fundamental horror of life,\nhas made sexuality an impure thing, casting filth on the beginning, the\nvery condition, of our life.\u201d\n\nBetween 1873 and 1876 Nietzsche wrote four essays--on David Strauss,\nthe Use and Abuse of History in relation to Life, Schopenhauer as an\nEducator, and Richard Wagner--which were published as a series of\n_Unzeitgem\u00e4sse Betrachtungen_. The essay on Strauss was written\nsoon after the great war, amid the resulting outburst of flamboyant\npatriotism and the widely-expressed conviction that the war was a\nvictory of \u201cGerman culture.\u201d Fresh from the world of Greece, Nietzsche\npours contempt on that assumption. Culture, he says, is, above all,\nunity of artistic style in every expression of a people\u2019s life.\nThe exuberance of knowledge in which a German glories is neither\na necessary means of culture nor a sign of it, being, indeed, more\nallied to the opposite of culture--to barbarism. It is in this\nbarbarism that the modern German lives, that is to say, in a chaotic\nmixture of all styles. Look at his clothing, Nietzsche continues, his\nhouses, his streets, all his manners and customs. They are a turmoil\nof all styles in which he peacefully lives and moves. Such culture is\nreally a phlegmatic absence of all sense of culture. Largely, also,\nit is merely a bad imitation of the real and productive culture of\nFrance which it is supposed to have conquered in 1870. Let there be\nno chatter, he concludes, about the triumph of German culture, for at\npresent no real German culture exists. The heroic figures of the German\npast were not \u201cclassics,\u201d as some imagine; they were seekers after\na genuine German culture, and so regarded themselves. The would-be\nchildren of culture in Germany to-day are Philistines without knowing\nit, and the only unity they have achieved is a methodical barbarism.\nNietzsche attacks Strauss by no means as a theologian, but as a typical\n\u201cculture-Philistine.\u201d He was moved to this by the recent publication\nof _Der Alte und der Neue Glaube_. I can well understand the\nemotions with which that book filled him, for I, too, read it soon\nafter its publication, and can vividly recall the painful impression\nmade on me by its homely pedestrianism, the dull unimaginativeness\nof the man who could only compare the world to a piece of machinery,\nan engine that creaks in the working, a sort of vast Lancashire mill\nin which we must spend every moment in feverish labour, and for our\ntrouble perhaps be caught between the wheels and cogs. But I was young,\nand my youthful idealism, eager for some vital and passionate picture\nof the world, inevitably revolted against so tawdry and mechanical a\nconception. Nietzsche, then and ever, failed to perceive that there\nis room, after all, for the modest sturdy bourgeois labourer who, at\nthe end of a hard life in the service of truth, sits down to enjoy his\nbrown beer and Haydn\u2019s quartettes, and to repeat his homely confession\nof faith in the world as he sees it. Nietzsche failed to realise that\nStrauss\u2019s limitations were essential to the work he had to do, and that\nhe remained a not unworthy follower of those German heroes who were not\n\u201cclassics,\u201d but honest seekers after the highest they knew. In this\nhypertrophied repulsion for the everyday work of the intellectual world\nwe touch on a defect in Nietzsche\u2019s temperament which we must regard as\nfundamental, and which wrought in him at last to wildest issues.\n\nIn another of these essays, _Schopenhauer als Erzieher_, Nietzsche\nsets forth his opinions concerning his early master in philosophy. It\nis a significant indication of the qualities that attracted him to\nSchopenhauer that he compares him to Montaigne, thus at once revealing\nhis own essential optimism, and the admiration which he then and always\nfelt for the great French masters of wisdom. He regards Schopenhauer\nas the leader from Kant\u2019s caves of critical scepticism to the open sky\nwith its consoling stars. Schopenhauer saw the world as a whole, and\nwas not befooled by the analysis of the colours and canvas wherewith\nthe picture is painted. Kant, in spite of the impulse of his genius,\nnever became a philosopher. \u201cIf any one thinks I am thus doing Kant\nan injustice, he cannot know what a philosopher is, _i.e._, not\nmerely a great thinker but also a real man;\u201d and he goes on to explain\nthat the mere scholar who is accustomed to let opinions, ideas, and\nthings in books always intervene between him and facts, will never see\nfacts, and will never be a fact to himself; whereas the philosopher\nmust regard himself as the symbol and abbreviation of all the facts of\nthe world. It remained an axiom with Nietzsche that the philosopher\nmust first of all be a \u201creal man.\u201d\n\nIn this essay, which Nietzsche always preferred to his other early\nworks, he thus for the first time clearly sets forth his conception of\nthe philosopher as a teacher, a liberator, a guide to fine living;\nSchopenhauer\u2019s metaphysical doctrine he casts aside with indifference.\nUnconsciously, as in late years he seems to have admitted, he was\nspeaking of himself and setting forth his own aims. Thus it is\ncharacteristic that he here also first expressed his conception of the\nvalue of individuality. Shakespeare had asked:\n\n                              \u201cWhich can say more\n    Than this rich praise, that you alone are you?\u201d\n\nBut Shakespeare was only addressing a single beloved friend. Nietzsche\naddresses the same thought to the common \u201cyou.\u201d \u201cAt bottom every man\nwell knows that he can only live one single life in the world, and that\nnever again will so strange a chance shake together into unity such\nsingularly varied elements as he holds: he knows that, but he hides it\nlike a bad conscience.\u201d This was a sane and democratic individualism;\nin later years, as we shall see, it assumed stranger shapes.\n\nAt Basel Nietzsche lived in close communion with Wagner and Frau\nCosima, who at this time regarded him as the prophet of the\nmusic-drama. The essay on Wagner, which starts from the standpoint\nreached in the previous essays, seems to justify this confidence.\nThere is a deep analogy for those to whom distance is no obscuring\ncloud, Nietzsche remarks, between Kant and the Eleatics, Schopenhauer\nand Empedocles, Wagner and \u00c6schylus. \u201cThe world has been orientalised\nlong enough, and men now seek to be hellenised.\u201d The Gordian knot has\nbeen cut and its strands are fluttering to the ends of the world; we\nneed a series of Anti-Alexanders mighty enough to bring together the\nscattered threads of life. Wagner is such an Anti-Alexander, a great\nastringent force in the world. For \u201cit is not possible to present the\nhighest and purest operations of dramatic art, and not therewith to\nrenew morals and the state, education and affairs.\u201d Bayreuth is the\nsacred consecration on the morning of battle. \u201cThe battles which art\nbrings before us are a simplification of the actual battles of life;\nits problems are an abbreviation of the endlessly involved reckoning of\nhuman action and aspiration. But herein lies the greatness and value of\nart, that it calls forth the appearance of a simpler world, a shorter\nsolution of the problems of life. No one who suffers in life can\ndispense with that appearance, just as no one can dispense with sleep.\u201d\nWagner has simplified the world, Nietzsche continues; he has related\nmusic to life, the drama to music; he has intensified the visible\nthings of the world, and made the audible visible. Just as Goethe found\nin poetry an expression for the painter\u2019s vocation he had missed, so\nWagner utilised in music his dramatic instinct. And Nietzsche further\nnotes the democratic nature of Wagner\u2019s art, so strenuously warm and\nbright as to reach even the lowliest in spirit. Wagner takes off the\nstigma that clings to the word \u201ccommon,\u201d and brings to all the means\nof attaining spiritual freedom. \u201cFor,\u201d says Nietzsche, \u201cwhosoever\nwill be free, must make himself free; freedom is no fairy\u2019s gift to\nfall into any man\u2019s lap.\u201d Such are the leading thoughts in an essay\nwhich remains an interesting philosophic appreciation of the place of\nWagner\u2019s art in the modern world; yet one may well admit that it is\noften over-strained, with a strain that expresses the obscure struggle\nof nascent antagonism.\n\nIt is, indeed, _Wagner in Bayreuth_ which brings to an end\nNietzsche\u2019s first period, and leads up to the crash which inaugurated\nhis later period. Hitherto Nietzsche\u2019s work was unquestionably\nsane both in substance and form. No doubt it had called forth much\ncriticism; work so vigorous, sincere, and independent could not fail\nto arouse hostility. But as we look back to-day, these fine essays\nrepresent, with much youthful enthusiasm, the best that was known and\nthought in Germany a quarter of a century ago. Nietzsche\u2019s opinions\non Wagner and Schopenhauer, on individualism and democracy, the\nsignificance of early Hellenism for moderns, the danger of an excessive\nhistorical sense, the conception of culture less as a striving after\nintellectual knowledge than as that which arouses within us the\nphilosopher, the artist, and the saint--all these ideas, wild as some\nof them seemed to Nietzsche\u2019s German contemporaries, are the ideas\nwhich have now largely permeated European culture. The same cannot be\nsaid of his later ideas.\n\nIt was at the first Bayreuth festival in 1876 that this chapter in\nNietzsche\u2019s life was finally closed. His profound admiration for\nWagner, his intimate intercourse with the greatest figure in the German\nworld of art, had hitherto been the chief fact in his life. All his\nideals of life and his hopes for the future had grown up around the\nfigure of Wagner, who seemed the leader into a new Promised Land.\nDuring the previous two years, however, Nietzsche had seen little of\nWagner, who had left Switzerland, and he had been unable to realise\neither his own development or Wagner\u2019s. Whatever enthusiasm Nietzsche\nmay have felt in early life for a return to German heathenism, he was\nyet by race and training and taste by no means allied to primitive\nGermanism; it was towards Greece and towards France that his conception\nof national culture really drew him. Wagner was far more profoundly\nTeutonic, and in the Nibelung cycle, which Nietzsche was about to\nwitness for the first time on the stage, Wagner had incarnated the\nspirit of Teutonic heathenism with an overwhelming barbaric energy\nwhich, as Nietzsche could now realise, was utterly alien to his own\nmost native instincts. Thus it was that Bayreuth marked the crisis of a\nsubtle but profound realisation, the most intense self-realisation he\nhad yet attained.\n\nThe whole history of this Wagner episode in Nietzsche\u2019s life is full\nof interest. The circumstantial narrative in the second volume of the\n_Leben Nietzsche\u2019s_ renders it clear at every point, and reveals a\ntragedy which has its significance for the study of genius generally.\nNietzsche, it must be remembered, was more than thirty years younger\nthan Wagner. He was younger, and also he was less corrupted by the\nworld than Wagner. The great artist of the music-drama possessed,\nor had acquired, a practical good sense in all that concerned the\nrealisation of his own mighty projects such as always marks the\ngreatest and most successful of the world\u2019s supreme artists. Like\nShakespeare, he knew that the dyer\u2019s hand must ever be a little subdued\nto what it works in, if the radiant beauty of his stuffs is ever to\nbe perfectly achieved. But Nietzsche could never endure any fleck on\nhis hand; he shrank with horror from every soiling contact; he was an\nartist who regarded life itself as the highest art. He could never\nhave carried through the rough task of dying the gorgeous garments of\na narrower but more perfectly attainable art. Nietzsche\u2019s idealised\nadmiration for Wagner was complicated, after his appointment to\nthe Basel chair, by a deep personal friendship for the Master, the\nchief friendship of his life. And his friendships were deeper than\nthose of most; although they show no traces of sexual tincture they\nwere hypertrophied by the defective sexuality of the man who always\nregarded friendship as a more massive and poignant emotion than love.\nThat there were on either side any petty faults to cause a rift in\nfriendship there is no reason whatever to believe. Nietzsche was above\nsuch, and Wagner\u2019s friendship was always hearty until he realised\nthat Nietzsche was no longer his disciple, and then he dropped him,\nsilently, as a workman drops a useless tool. In addition it must be\nnoted that Nietzsche was probably at this time often over-strained,\nalmost hysterical,--at least so, we may gather, he impressed Wagner,\nwho urged him to marry a rich wife and to travel,--and he was still\nafflicted by a disorder which not even genius can escape in youth,\nhe was still something of what we vulgarly call a \u201cprig\u201d; he had not\nyet quite outgrown \u201cthe youthful Jesus in the Temple.\u201d \u201cYour brother\nwith his air of delicate distinction is a most uncomfortable fellow,\u201d\nsaid Wagner to Frau F\u00f6rster-Nietzsche; \u201cone can always see what he is\nthinking; sometimes he is quite embarrassed at my jokes--and then I\ncrack them more madly than ever.\u201d Wagner\u2019s jokes, it appears, were of\na homely and plebeian sort, not appealing to one who lived naturally\nand habitually in an atmosphere of keen intellectual activity. Bearing\nall this in mind, one can imagine the impression made upon Nietzsche\nby the inaugural festival at Bayreuth for which he had just written an\nimpassioned and yet philosophic prologue. Wagner was absorbed in using\nall his considerable powers of managing men in finally vanquishing\nthe difficulties in his way. To any one who could see the festival\nfrom the inside, as Nietzsche was able to see it, there were all the\ninevitable squabbles and scandals and comic _contretemps_ which\nmust always mark the inception of a great undertaking, but which to-day\nare hidden from us, pilgrims from many lands, as we ascend to that\nhillside structure which is the chief living shrine of art in Europe.\nAnd the people who were crowding in to this \u201csacred consecration on\nthe morning of battle\u201d were aristocrats and plutocrats--bejewelled,\ncorpulent, commonplace--headed by the old Emperor, anxious to do his\nduty, decorously joining in the applause as he whispered \u201cHorrible!\nhorrible!\u201d to his _aide-de-camp_, and hurrying away as quickly as\npossible to the military man\u0153uvres. There was more than enough here\nto make his own just issued battle-cry seem farcical to Nietzsche. All\nwas conspiring to one end. The conception of the sanctity of Bayreuth,\nhis personal reverence for Wagner were slipping away together, and at\nthe same time he was forced to realise that the barbaric Germanism\nof this overpowering Nibelung music was not the music for him. His\ndevelopment would inevitably have carried him away from Wagner, but\nthe festival brought on the crisis with a sudden clash. Nietzsche had\nfinally conquered the mightiest of his false ideals, and stood for ever\nafter free and independent of all his early gods; but the wounds of\nthat victory were never quite closed to the last: a completely serene\nand harmonious conception of things, so far as Wagner was concerned,\nNietzsche never attained.\n\nIt may well be that the change was also physical. The excitement of the\nfestival precipitated an organic catastrophe towards which he had long\nbeen tending. His sister finds the original source of this catastrophe\nin the war of 1870. He desired to serve his country as a combatant, but\nthe University would only allow him leave to attend to the wounded. The\nphysical and emotional over-tension involved by his constant care of\nsix young wounded men culminated in a severe illness, which led on to\na never-ending train of symptoms--eye-troubles, dyspepsia, headache,\ninsomnia--which were perhaps aggravated by the reckless use of drugs.\nI have already noted passages which indicate that he was himself\naware of a consuming flame within, and that from time to time he made\nefforts to check its ravages. That it was this internal flame which\nlargely produced the breakdown is shown by the narrative of Nietzsche\u2019s\nfriend, Dr. Kretzer, who was with him at Bayreuth. It was evident he\nwas seriously ill, Kretzer tells us, utterly changed and broken down.\nHis eye-troubles were associated, if not with actual brain disease,\nat all events with a high degree of neurasthenia.[2] At Bayreuth,\nNietzsche was forced to realise the peril of his position as he had\nnever realised it before. He could no longer disguise from himself that\nhe must break with all the passionate interests of his past. It was\nan essential measure of hygiene, almost a surgical operation. This is\nindeed how he has himself put the matter. In the preface to _Der Fall\nWagner_, he said that it had been to him a necessary self-discipline\nto take part against all that was morbid within himself, against\nWagner, against Schopenhauer, against all the impassioning interests\nof modern life, and to view the world, so far as possible, with the\nphilosopher\u2019s eyes, from an immense height. And again he speaks of\nWagner\u2019s art as a beaker of ecstasy so subtle and profound that it acts\nlike poison and leaves no remedy at last but flight from the siren\u2019s\ncave. Nietzsche was henceforth in the position of a gouty subject who\nis forced to abandon port wine and straightway becomes an apostle of\ntotal abstinence. The remedy seems to have been fairly successful. But\nthe disease was in his bones. Impassioning interests that were far more\nsubtly poisonous slowly developed within him, and twelve years later\nflight had become impossible, even if he was still able to realise the\nneed for fight.\n\nNietzsche broke very thoroughly with his past, yet the break has\nbeen exaggerated, and he himself often helped to exaggerate it. He\nwas in the position of a beleaguered city which has been forced to\nabandon its outer walls and concentrate itself in the citadel; and\nhowever it may have been in ancient warfare, in spiritual affairs\nsuch a state of things involves an offensive attitude towards the\nformer line of defence. The positions we have abandoned constitute a\ndanger to the positions we have taken up. Many of the world\u2019s fiercest\npersecutors have but persecuted their old selves, and there seems to be\npsychological necessity for such an attitude. Yet a careful study of\nNietzsche\u2019s earlier activity reveals many germs of later developments.\nThe critical attitude towards conventional morality, the individualism,\nthe optimism, the ideal of heroism, which dominate his later thought,\nexist as germs in his earlier work. Even the flagrant contrast between\n_Richard Wagner in Bayreuth_ and _Der Fall Wagner_ was the\noutcome of a gradual development. In the earlier essay Nietzsche had\njustly pointed out that Wagner\u2019s instincts were fundamentally dramatic.\nAs years went on he brooded over this idea; the nimble and lambent wit\nof his later days played around it until Wagner became a mere actor in\nhis work and in his life, a rhetorician, an incarnate falsehood, the\npersonification of latter-day decadence, the Victor Hugo of music, the\nBernini of music, the modern Cagliostro. At the same time he admits\nthat Wagner represents the modern spirit, and that it is reasonable for\na musician to say that though he hates Wagner he can tolerate no other\nmusic. The fact is, one may well repeat, that Nietzsche was not Teuton\nenough to abide for ever with Wagner. He compares him contemptuously\nwith Hegel, cloud-compellers both, masters of German mists and German\nmysticism, worshippers of Wotan, the god of bad weather, the god of\nthe Germans. \u201cHow could they miss what we, we Halcyonians, miss in\nWagner--_la gaya scienza_, the light feet, wit, fire, grace,\nstrong logic, the dance of the stars, arrogant intellectuality, the\nquivering light of the south, the smooth sea--perfection?\u201d It was\nscarcely, however, the Halcyonian in Nietzsche that stood between him\nand Wagner. That is well shown by his attitude towards _Parsifal_.\nWhatever we may think of the ideas embodied in _Parsifal_, it may\nyet seem to us the most solemn, the most graciously calm and beautiful\nspectacle that has ever been fitly set to music. In Nietzsche the\nthinker and the moralist were so much stronger than the artist that\nhe could see nothing here but bad psychology, bad thinking, and bad\nreligion.\n\nThe rebellion against Wagner was inevitable. It is evident that\nNietzsche had not gained complete mastery of his own personality in\nhis earlier work. It is brilliant, full of fine perceptions and\ncritical insight, but as a personal utterance incomplete. It renders\nthe best ideas of the time, not the best ideas that Nietzsche could\ncontribute to the time. The shock of 1876 may have been a step towards\nthe disintegration of his intellect, but it was also a rally, a step\ntowards a higher self-realisation. Nietzsche had no genuine affinity\nwith Schopenhauer or with Wagner, though they were helpful to his\ndevelopment; he was no pessimist, he was no democrat. As he himself\nsaid, \u201cI understood the philosophic pessimism of the nineteenth century\nas the symptom of a finer strength of thought, a more victorious\nfulness of life. In the same way Wagner\u2019s music signified to me the\nexpression of a Dionysiac mightiness of soul in which I seemed to hear,\nas in an earthquake, the upheaval of the primitive powers of life,\nafter age-long repression.\u201d Now he only needed relief, \u201cgolden, tender,\noily melodies,\u201d to soothe the leaden weight of life, and these he found\nin _Carmen_.\n\nAny discussion of the merits of the question as between Wagner and\nBizet, the earlier and the later Nietzsche, seems to me out of place,\nthough much has been made of it by those who delight to see a giant\nturn and rend himself. Nietzsche himself said he was writing for\npsychologists, and it is not unfair to add that it is less \u201cWagner\u2019s\ncase\u201d that he presents to us than \u201cNietzsche\u2019s case.\u201d As to the\nmerits of the case, we may alike admit that Nietzsche\u2019s enthusiasm\nfor Wagner was not excessive, and that the pleasant things he said of\n_Carmen_ are fully justified; we may address both the early and\nthe late Nietzsche in the words habitually used by the landlord of the\n\u201cRainbow\u201d: \u201cYou\u2019re both wrong and you\u2019re both right, as I allus says.\u201d\nMost of the mighty quarrels that have sent men to battle and the stake\nmight have been appeased had each side recognised that both were right\nin their affirmations, both wrong in their denials.\n\nNietzsche occupied his chair at Basel for some years longer; in 1880\nhis health forced him to resign and he was liberally pensioned. As\na professor he treated the most difficult questions of Greek study,\nand devoted his chief attention to his best pupils, who in their turn\nadored him. Basel is an admirable residence for a cosmopolitan thinker;\nit was easy for Nietzsche to keep in touch with all that went on from\nParis to St. Petersburg. He was also on terms of more or less intimate\nfriendship with the finest spirits in Switzerland, with Keller the\nnovelist, B\u00f6cklin the painter, Burckhardt the historian. We are told\nthat he was a man of great personal charm in social intercourse. But\nhis associates at Basel never suspected that in this courteous and\namiable professor was stored up an explosive energy which would one\nday be felt in every civilised land. With pen in hand his criticism of\nlife was unflinching, his sincerity arrogant; when the pen was dropped\nhe became modest, reserved, almost timorous.\n\nThe work he produced between 1877 and 1882 seems to me to represent the\nmaturity of his genius. It includes _Menschliches, Allzumenschliches_,\n_Morgenr\u00f6the_, and _Die Fr\u00f6hliche Wissenschaft_. In form all these\nvolumes belong to _pens\u00e9e_ literature. They deal with art, with\nreligion, with morals and philosophy, with the relation of all\nthese to life. Nietzsche shows himself in these _pens\u00e9es_ above all\na freethinker, emancipated from every law save that of sincerity,\nwide-ranging, serious, penetrative, often impassioned, as yet always\nable to follow his own ideal of self-restraint.\n\nAfter leaving Basel he spent the following nine years chiefly at health\nresorts and in travelling. We find him at Sorrento, Venice, Genoa,\nTurin, Sils Maria, as well as at Leipzig. Doubtless his fresh and\npoignant _pens\u00e9es_ are largely the outcome of strenuous solitary\nwalks in the Engadine or among the Italian lakes. We may assume that\nduring most of these years he was fighting, on the whole successfully\nfighting, for mental health. Yet passages that occur throughout his\nbooks seem to suggest that his thoughts may have sometimes turned\nto the goal towards which he was tending. It is a mistake, he points\nout, to suppose that insanity is always the symptom of a degenerating\nculture, although to nod towards the asylum is a convenient modern way\nof slaying spiritual tyrants; it is in primitive and developing stages\nof culture that insanity has played its chief part; only by virtue of\nwhat seemed to be the \u201cDivine\u201d turbulence of insanity and epilepsy\ncould any new moral law make progress among early cultures. Just as\nfor us there seems a little madness in all genius, so for them there\nseemed a little genius in all madness; sorcerers and saints agonised\nin solitude and abstinence for some gleam of madness which would bring\nthem faith in themselves and openly justify their mission.\n\nWhat may perhaps be called Nietzsche\u2019s third period began in 1883 with\n_Also sprach Zarathustra_, the most extraordinary of all his\nworks, mystical and oracular in form, but not mystical in substance.\nZarathustra has only a distant relationship to his prototype Zoroaster,\nthough Nietzsche had a natural sympathy with the symbolism of fire and\nwater, with the reverence for light and purity, which mark the rites\nassociated with the name of the Bactrian prophet; he has here allowed\nhimself to set forth his own ideas and ideals in the free and oracular\nmanner of all ancient scriptures, and is thus enabled to present his\nvisions in a concrete form. _Zarathustra_, for the first and\nlast time, gave scope to the artist within Nietzsche, and with all\nits extravagance and imperfection it must remain for good or evil his\nmost personal utterance. It was followed by _Jenseits von Gut und\nB\u00f6se_, _Zur Genealogie der Moral_, _Der Fall Wagner_, and\n_G\u00f6tzend\u00e4mmerung_. It is during this period that we trace the\ngrowth of the magnification of his own personal mission which finally\nbecame a sort of megalomania. (\u201cI have given to men the deepest book\nthey possess, my _Zarathustra_,\u201d he wrote towards the end.) In\nform the books of this period are sometimes less fragmentary than those\nof the second period; in substance they are marked by their emphatic,\noften extravagant, almost reckless insistence on certain views of\nmorality. If in the first period he was an apostle of culture, in the\nsecond a freethinker, pronouncing judgment on all things in heaven and\nearth, he was now exclusively a moralist, or, as he would prefer to\nsay, an immoralist. It was during this period that he worked out his\n\u201cmaster morality\u201d--the duty to be strong--in opposition to the \u201cslave\nmorality\u201d of Christianity, with its glorification of weakness and pity,\nand that he consistently sought to analyse and destroy the traditional\nconceptions of good and evil on which our current morality rests. The\nlast work which he planned, but never completed, was a re-valuation of\nall values, _Umwerthung aller Werthe_, which would have been his\nfinal indictment of the modern world, and the full statement of his own\nimmoralism and Dionysiac philosophy.\n\nIt is sometimes said that Nietzsche\u2019s mastery of his thought and style\nwas increasing up to the last. This I can scarcely admit, even as\nregards style. No doubt there is at the best a light and swift vigour\nof movement in these last writings which before he had never attained.\nHe can pour out now a shimmering stream of golden phrases with which\nhe has intoxicated himself, and tries to intoxicate us. We may lend\nourselves to the charm, but it has no enduring hold. This master of\ngay or bitter invective no longer possesses the keenly reasoned and\npiercing insight of the earlier Nietzsche. We feel that he has become\nthe victim of obsessions which drive him like a leaf before the wind,\nand all his exuberant wit is unsubstantial and pathetic as that of\nFalstaff. The devouring flame has at length eaten the core out of the\nman and his style, leaving only this coruscating shell. And at a touch\neven this thin shell collapsed into smouldering embers.\n\nFrom a child Nietzsche was subject to strangely prophetic dreams. In\na dream which, when a boy, he put into literary form, he tells how\nhe seemed to be travelling forward amid a glorious landscape, while\ncarolling larks ascended to the clouds, and his whole life seemed\nto stretch before him in a vista of happy years; \u201cand suddenly a\nshrill cry reached our ears; it came from the neighbouring lunatic\nasylum.\u201d Even in 1876 his friends began to see that Nietzsche\nattached extraordinary importance to his own work. After he wrote\n_Zarathustra_, this self-exaltation increased, and began to find\nexpression in his work. Latterly, it is said, he came to regard himself\nas the incarnation of the genius of humanity. It has always been found\na terrible matter to war with the moral system of one\u2019s age; it will\nhave its revenge, one way or another, from within or from without,\nwhatever happens after. Nietzsche strove for nothing less than to\nremodel the moral world after his own heart\u2019s desire, and his brain was\nperishing of exhaustion in the immense effort. In 1889--at the moment\nwhen his work at last began to attract attention--he became hopelessly\ninsane. A period of severe hallucinatory delirium led on to complete\ndementia, and he passes beyond our sight.\n\n\n                                  II.\n\nNietzsche was by temperament a philosopher after the manner of the\nGreeks. In other words, philosophy was not to him, as to the average\nmodern philosopher, a matter of books and the study, but a life to be\nlived. It seemed to him to have much less concern with \u201ctruth\u201d than\nwith the essentials of fine living. He loved travel and movement, he\nloved scenery, he loved cities and the spectacle of men; above all, he\nloved solitude. The solitude of cities drew him strongly; he envied\nHeraclitus his desert study amid the porticoes and peristyles of the\nimmense temple of Diana. He had, however, his own favourite place of\nwork, to which he often alludes, the Piazza di San Marco at Venice,\namid the doves, in front of the strange and beautiful structure which\nhe \u201cloved, feared, and envied;\u201d and here in the spring, between ten\no\u2019clock and midday, he found his best philosophic laboratory.\n\nIt was in Italy that Nietzsche seems to have found himself most at\nhome, although there are no signs that he felt any special sympathy\nwith the Italians, that is to say in later than Renaissance days. For\nthe most part he possessed very decided sympathies and antipathies.\nHis antipathy to his own Germans lay in the nature of things. Every\nprophet\u2019s message is primarily directed to his own people. And\nNietzsche was unsparing in his keen criticism of the Germans. He tells\nsomewhere with a certain humour how people abroad would ask him if\nGermany had produced of late no great thinker or artist, no really good\nbook, and how with the courage of despair he would at last reply,\n\u201cYes, Bismarck!\u201d Nietzsche was willing enough to recognise the kind\nof virtue personified in Bismarck. But with that recognition nearly\nall was said in favour of Germany that Nietzsche had to say. There is\nlittle in the German spirit that answered to his demands. He admired\nclearness, analytic precision, and highly organised intelligence,\nlight and alert. He saw no sufficient reason why profundity should\nlack a fine superficies, nor why strength should be ungainly. His\ninstinctive comparison for a good thinker was always a good dancer.\nAs a child he had been struck by seeing a rope-dancer, and throughout\nlife dancing seemed to him the image of the finest culture, supple to\nbend, strong to retain its own equilibrium, an exercise demanding the\nhighest training and energy of all the muscles of a well-knit organism.\nBut the indubitable intellectual virtues of the bulky and plodding\nGerman are scarcely those which can well be symbolised by an Otero or\na Caicedo. \u201cThere is too much beer in the German intellect,\u201d Nietzsche\nsaid. For the last ten centuries Germany has wilfully stultified\nherself; \u201cnowhere else has there been so vicious a misuse of the two\ngreat European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity,\u201d to which he\nwas inclined to add music. (\u201cThe theatre and music,\u201d he remarked in\n_Die Fr\u00f6hliche Wissenschaft_, \u201care the haschisch and betel of\nEuropeans, and the history of the so-called higher culture is largely\nthe history of narcotics.\u201d) \u201cGermans regard bad writing,\u201d he said,\n\u201cas a national privilege; they do not write prose as one works at a\nstatue, they only improvise.\u201d Even \u201cGerman virtue\u201d--and this was the\nunkindest cut of all--had its origin in eighteenth century France, as\nits early preachers, such as Kant and Schiller, fully recognised. Thus\nit happens that the German has no perceptions--coupling his Goethe\nwith a Schiller, and his Schopenhauer with a Hartmann--and no tact,\n\u201cno finger for _nuances_,\u201d his fingers are all claws. The few\npersons of high culture whom he had met in Germany, he noted towards\nthe end of his life, and especially Frau Cosima Wagner, were all of\nFrench origin. Nietzsche regarded it as merely an accident that he was\nhimself born in Germany, just as it was merely an accident that Heine\nthe Jew, and Schopenhauer the Dutchman, were born there. Yet, as I\nhave already hinted, we may take these utterances too seriously. There\nare passages in his works--though we meet them rarely--which show that\nNietzsche recognised and admired the elemental energy, the depth and\nthe contradictions in the German character; he attributed them largely\nto mixture of races.\n\nNietzsche was not much attracted to the English. It is true that he\nnames Landor as one of the four masters of prose this century has\nproduced, while another of these is Emerson, with whom he had genuine\naffinity, although his own intellect was keener and more passionate,\nwith less sunny serenity. For Shakespeare, also, his admiration was\ndeep. And when he had outgrown his early enthusiasm for Schopenhauer,\nthe fine qualities which he still recognised in that thinker--his\nconcreteness, lucidity, reasonableness--seemed to him English. He\nwas usually less flattering towards English thought. Darwinism, for\ninstance, he thought, savoured too much of the population question,\nand was invented by English men of science who were oppressed by the\nproblems of poverty. The struggle for existence, he said, is only an\nexception in nature; it is exuberance, an even reckless superfluity,\nwhich rules. For English philosophic thought generally he had little\nbut contempt. J. S. Mill was one of his \u201cimpossibilities\u201d; the\nEnglish and French sociologists of to-day, he said, have only known\ndegenerating types of society, devoid of organising force, and they\ntake their own debased instincts as the standard of social codes\nin general. Modern democracy, modern utilitarianism, are largely\nof English manufacture, and he came at last to hate them both.\nDuring the past century, he asserted, they have reduced the whole\nspiritual currency of Europe to a dull plebeian level, and they are\nthe chief causes of European vulgarity. It is the English, he also\nasserted--George Eliot, for instance--who, while abolishing Christian\nbelief, have sought to bolster up the moral system which was created by\nChristianity, and which must necessarily fall with it. It is, moreover,\nthe English, who with this democratic and utilitarian plebeianism have\nseduced and perverted the fine genius of France.\n\nJust as we owe to England the vulgarity which threatens to overspread\nEurope, so to France we owe the conception of a habit of nobility, in\nevery best sense of the word. On that point Nietzsche\u2019s opinion never\nwavered. The present subjection of the French spirit to this damnable\nAnglo-mania, he declared, must never lead us to forget the ardent and\npassionate energy, the intellectual distinction, which belonged to the\nFrance of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[3] The French, as\nNietzsche always held, are the one modern European nation which may\nbe compared with the Greeks. In _Menschliches, Allzumenschliches_\nhe names six French writers--Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruy\u00e8re,\nFontenelle (in the _Dialogues des Morts_), Vauvenarges,\nChamfort--who bring us nearer to Greek antiquity than any other group\nof modern authors, and contain more real thought than all the books of\nthe German philosophers put together. The only French writer of the\npresent century for whom he cared much (putting aside M\u00e9rim\u00e9e) was\nStendhal, who possesses some of the characters of the earlier group.\nThe French, he points out, are the most Christian of all nations,\nand have produced the greatest saints. He enumerates Pascal (\u201cthe\nfirst among Christians, who was able to unite fervour, intellect, and\ncandour;--think of what that means!\u201d), F\u00e9nelon, Mme. de Guyon, De\nRanc\u00e9, the founder of the Trappists who have flourished nowhere but\nin France, the Huguenots, Port-Royal--truly, he exclaims, the great\nFrench freethinkers encountered foemen worthy of their steel! The land\nwhich produced the most perfect types of Anti-Christianity produced\nalso the most perfect types of Christianity. He defends, also, that\nseeming superficiality which in a great Frenchman, he says, is but the\nnatural epidermis of a rich and deep nature, while a great German\u2019s\nprofundity is too often strangely bottled up from the light in a dark\nand contorted phial.\n\nI have briefly stated Nietzsche\u2019s feeling as regards each of the three\nchief European peoples, because we are thus led up to the central\npoints of his philosophy--his attitude towards modern religion and\nhis attitude towards modern morals. We are often apt to regard these\nmatters as of little practical importance; we think it the reasonable\nduty of practical social politics to attend to the immediate questions\nin hand, and leave these wider questions to settle themselves. Rightly\nor wrongly, that was not how Nietzsche looked at the matter. He was too\nmuch of a philosopher, he had too keen a sense of the vital relation of\nthings, to be content with the policy of tinkering society, wherever\nit seems to need mending most badly, avoiding any reference to the\nwhole. That is our English method, and no doubt it is a very sane\nand safe method, but, as we have seen, Nietzsche was not in sympathy\nwith English methods. His whole significance lies in the thorough and\npassionate analysis with which he sought to dissect and to dissolve,\nfirst, \u201cGerman culture,\u201d then Christianity, and lastly, modern morals,\nwith all that these involve.\n\nIt is scarcely necessary to point out, that though Nietzsche rejoiced\nin the title of freethinker, he can by no means be confounded with the\nordinary secularist. He is not bent on destroying religion from any\nan\u00e6sthesia of the religious sense, or even in order to set up some\nreligion of science which is practically no religion at all. He is thus\non different ground from the great freethinkers of France, and to some\nextent of England. Nietzsche was himself of the stuff of which great\nreligious teachers are made, of the race of apostles. So when he writes\nof the founder of Christianity and the great Christian types, it is\noften with a poignant sympathy which the secularist can never know;\nand if his knife seems keen and cruel, it is not the easy indifferent\ncruelty of the pachydermatous scoffer. When he analyses the souls of\nthese men and the impulses which have moved them, he knows with what he\nis dealing: he is analysing his own soul.\n\nA mystic Nietzsche certainly was not; he had no moods of joyous\nresignation. It is chiefly the religious ecstasy of active moral\nenergy that he was at one with. The sword of the spirit is his weapon\nrather than the merely defensive breastplate of faith. St. Paul is\nthe consummate type of such religious forces, and whatever Nietzsche\nwrote of that apostle--the inventor of Christianity, as he truly\ncalls him--is peculiarly interesting. He hates him, indeed, but even\nhis hatred thrills with a tone of intimate sympathy. It is thus in a\nremarkable passage in _Morgenr\u00f6the_, where he tells briefly the\nhistory and struggles of that importunate soul, so superstitious and\nyet so shrewd, without whom there would have been no Christianity.\nHe describes the self-torture of the neurotic, sensual, refined\n\u201cJewish Pascal,\u201d who flagellated himself with the law that he came to\nhate with the hatred of one who had a genius for hatred; who in one\ndazzling flash of illumination realised that Jesus by accomplishing the\nlaw had annihilated it, and so furnished him with the instrument he\ndesired to wreak his passionate hatred on the law, and to revel in the\nfreedom of his joy. Nietzsche possesses a natural insight in probing\nthe wounds of self-torturing souls. He excels also in describing\nthe effects of extreme pain in chasing away the mists from life, in\nshowing to a man his own naked personality, in bringing us face to\nface with the cold and terrible fact. It is thus that, coupling the\ngreatest figure in history with the greatest figure in fiction, he\ncompares the pathetic utterance of Jesus on the cross--\u201cMy God, my\nGod, why hast thou forsaken me?\u201d--with the disillusionment of the\ndying Don Quixote. Of Jesus himself he speaks no harsh word, but\nhe regarded the atmosphere of Roman decay and languor--though very\nfavourable for the production of fine personalities--as ill-adapted\nto the development of a great religion. The Gospels lead us into the\natmosphere of a Russian novel, he remarks in one of his last writings,\n_Der Antichrist_, an atmosphere in which the figure of Jesus had\nto be coarsened to be understood; it became moulded in men\u2019s minds\nby memories of more familiar types--prophet, Messiah, wonder-worker,\njudge; the real man they could not even see. \u201cIt must ever be a matter\nfor regret that no Dostoievsky lived in the neighbourhood of this most\ninteresting _d\u00e9cadent_, I mean some one who could understand the\nenthralling charm of just this mixture of the sublime, the morbid, and\nthe childlike.\u201d Jesus, he continues, never denied the world, the state,\nculture, work; he simply never knew or realised their existence; his\nown inner experience--\u201clife,\u201d \u201clight,\u201d \u201ctruth\u201d--was all in all to him.\nThe only realities to him were inner realities, so living that they\nmake one feel \u201cin Heaven\u201d and \u201ceternal\u201d; this it was to be \u201csaved.\u201d And\nNietzsche notes, as so many have noted before him, that the fact that\nmen should bow the knee in Christ\u2019s name to the very opposite of all\nthese things, and consecrate in the \u201cChurch\u201d all that he threw behind\nhim, is an insoluble example of historical irony. \u201cStrictly speaking,\nthere has only been one Christian, and he died on the cross. The Gospel\n_died_ on the cross.\u201d\n\nThere may seem a savour of contempt in the allusion to Jesus as\nan \u201cinteresting _d\u00e9cadent_,\u201d and undoubtedly there is in\n_Der Antichrist_ a passionate bitterness which is not found\nin Nietzsche\u2019s earlier books. But he habitually used the word\n_d\u00e9cadent_ in a somewhat extended and peculiar sense. The\n_d\u00e9cadent_, as Nietzsche understood him, was the product of an\nage in which virility was dead and weakness was sanctified; it was\nso with the Buddhist as well as with the Christian, they both owe\ntheir origin and their progress to \u201csome monstrous disease of will.\u201d\nThey sprang up among creatures who craved for some \u201cThou shalt,\u201d\nand who were apt only for that one form of energy which the weak\npossess, fanaticism. By an instinct which may be regarded as sound\nby those who do not accept his disparagement of either, Nietzsche\nalways coupled the Christian and the anarchist; to him they were both\nproducts of decadence. Both wish to revenge their own discomfort\non this present world, he asserted, the anarchist immediately, the\nChristian at the last day. Instead of feeling, \u201c_I_ am worth\nnothing,\u201d the _d\u00e9cadent_ says, \u201c_Life_ is worth nothing,\u201d--a\nterribly contagious state of mind which has covered the world with\nthe vitality of a tropical jungle. It cannot be too often repeated,\nNietzsche continues, that Christianity was born of the decay of\nantiquity, and on the degenerate people of that time it worked like a\nsoothing balm; their eyes and ears were sealed by age and they could\nno longer understand Epicurus and Epictetus. At such a time purity\nand beneficence, large promises of future life, worked sweetly and\nwholesomely. But for fresh young barbarians Christianity is poison.\nIt produces a fundamental enfeeblement of such heroic, childlike,\nand animal natures as the ancient Germans, and to that enfeeblement,\nindeed, we owe the revival of classic culture; so that the conclusion\nof the whole matter is here, as ever, Nietzsche remarks, that \u201cit is\nimpossible to say whether, in the language of Christianity, God owes\nmore thanks to the Devil, or the Devil to God, for the way in which\nthings have come about.\u201d But in the interaction of the classic spirit\nand the Christian spirit, Nietzsche\u2019s own instincts were not on the\nside of Christianity, and as the years went on he expresses himself in\never more unmeasured language. He could not take up the _Imitation\nof Christ_--the very word \u201cimitation\u201d being, as indeed Michelet had\nsaid before, the whole of Christianity--without physical repugnance.\nAnd in the _G\u00f6tzend\u00e4mmerung_ he compares the Bible with the Laws\nof Manu (though at the same time asserting that it is a sin to name\nthe two books in the same breath): \u201cThe _sun_ lies on the whole\nbook. All those things on which Christianity vents its bottomless\nvulgarity--procreation, for example, woman, marriage--are here handled\nearnestly and reverently, with love and trust. I know no book in which\nso many tender and gracious things are said about women as in the Laws\nof Manu.\u201d Again in _Der Antichrist_--which represents, I repeat,\nthe unbalanced judgments of his last period--he tells how he turns\nfrom Paul with delight to Petronius, a book of which it can be said\n_\u00e8 tutto festo_, \u201cimmortally sound, immortally serene.\u201d In the\nwhole New Testament, he adds, there is only one figure we can genuinely\nhonour--that of Pilate.\n\nOn the whole, Nietzsche\u2019s attitude towards Christianity was one of\nrepulsion and antagonism. At first he appears indifferent, then he\nbecomes calmly judicial, finally he is bitterly hostile. He admits that\nChristianity possesses the virtues of a cunningly concocted narcotic\nto soothe the leaden griefs and depressions of men whose souls are\nphysiologically weak. But from first to last there is no sign of any\ngenuine personal sympathy with the religion of the poor in spirit.\nEpicureanism, the pagan doctrine of salvation, had in it an element of\nGreek energy, but the Christian doctrine of salvation, he declares,\nraises its sublime development of hedonism on a thoroughly morbid\nfoundation. Christianity hates the body; the first act of Christian\ntriumph over the Moors, he recalls, was to close the public baths\nwhich they had everywhere erected. \u201cWith its contempt for the body\nChristianity was the greatest misfortune that ever befell humanity.\u201d\nAnd at the end of _Der Antichrist_ he sums up his concentrated\nhatred: \u201cI _condemn_ Christianity; I raise against the Christian\nChurch the most terrible accusation that any accuser has ever uttered.\nIt is to me the most profound of all thinkable corruptions.\u201d\n\nIt is scarcely necessary to add that Nietzsche\u2019s condemnation of\nChristianity extended to the Christian God. He even went so far as to\nassert that it was the development of Christian morality itself--\u201cthe\nfather-confessor sensitiveness of the Christian conscience translated\nand sublimed into a scientific conscience\u201d--which had finally\nconquered the Christian God. He held that polytheism had played an\nimportant part in the evolution of culture. Gods, heroes, supernatural\nbeings generally, were inestimable schoolmasters to bring us to the\nsovereignty of the individual. Polytheism opened up divine horizons\nof freedom to humanity. \u201cYe shall be as gods.\u201d But it has not been\nso with monotheism. The doctrine of a single God, in whose presence\nall others were false gods, favours stagnation and unity of type;\nmonotheism has thus perhaps constituted \u201cthe greatest danger which\nhumanity has had to meet in past ages.\u201d Nor are we yet freed from its\ninfluence. \u201cFor centuries after Buddha died men showed his shadow in a\ncave--a vast terrible shadow. God is dead: but thousands of years hence\nthere will probably be caves in which his shadow may yet be seen. And\nwe--we must go on fighting that shadow!\u201d How deeply rooted Nietzsche\nbelieved faith in a god to be is shown by the fantastic conclusion to\n_Zarathustra_. A strange collection of _Uebermenschen_--the\nmen of the future--are gathered together in Zarathustra\u2019s cave:\ntwo kings, the last of the popes--thrown out of work by the death\nof God--and many miscellaneous creatures, including a donkey. As\nZarathustra returns to his cave he hears the sound of prayer and smells\nthe odour of incense; on entering he finds the _Uebermenschen_ on\ntheir knees intoning an extraordinary litany to the donkey, who has\n\u201ccreated us all in his own image.\u201d\n\nIn his opposition to the Christian faith and the Christian God,\nNietzsche by no means stands alone, however independent he may have\nbeen in the method and standpoint of his attack. But in his opposition\nto Christian morality he was more radically original. There is a very\ngeneral tendency among those who reject Christian theology to shore up\nthe superstructure of Christian morality which rests on that theology.\nGeorge Eliot, in her writings at all events, has been an eloquent and\ndistinguished advocate of this process; Mr. Myers, in an oft-quoted\npassage, has described with considerable melodramatic vigour the \u201csibyl\nin the gloom\u201d of the Trinity Fellows\u2019 Garden at Cambridge, who withdrew\nGod and Immortality from his grasp, but, to his consternation, told\nhim to go on obeying Duty. What George Eliot proposed was one of those\ncompromises so dear to our British minds. Nietzsche would none of it.\nHence his contemptuous treatment of George Eliot, of J. S. Mill, of\nHerbert Spencer, and so many more of our favourite intellectual heroes\nwho have striven to preserve Christian morality while denying Christian\ntheology. Nietzsche regarded our current moral ideals, whether\nformulated by bishops or by anarchists, as alike founded on a Christian\nbasis, and when that foundation is sapped they cannot stand.\n\nThe motive of modern morality is pity, its principle is altruistic, its\nmotto is \u201cLove your neighbour as yourself,\u201d its ideal self-abnegation,\nits end the greatest good of the greatest number. All these things\nwere abhorrent to Nietzsche, or so far as he accepted them, it was in\nforms which gave them new values. Modern morality, he said, is founded\non an extravagant dread of pain, in ourselves primarily, secondarily\nin others. Sympathy is fellow-suffering; to love one\u2019s neighbour as\noneself is to dread his pain as we dread our own pain. The religion of\nlove is built upon the fear of pain. \u201cOn n\u2019est bon que par la piti\u00e9;\u201d\nthe acceptance of that doctrine Nietzsche considers the chief outcome\nof Christianity, although, he thinks, not essential to Christianity,\nwhich rested on the egoistic basis of personal salvation: \u201cOne thing is\nneedful.\u201d But it remains the most important by-product of Christianity,\nand has ever been gaining strength. Spinoza and Kant stood firmly\noutside the stream, but the French freethinkers, from Voltaire onwards,\nwere not to be outdone in this direction by Christians, while Comte\nwith his \u201cVivre pour autrui\u201d even out-Christianised Christianity, and\nSchopenhauer in Germany, J. S. Mill in England, carried on the same\ndoctrine. \u201cThe great question of life,\u201d said Benjamin Constant in\n_Adolphe_--and it is a saying that our finest emotions are quick\nto echo--\u201cis the pain that we cause.\u201d\n\nBoth the sympathetic man and the unsympathetic man, Nietzsche argues,\nare egoists. But the unsympathetic man he held to be a more admirable\nkind of egoist. It is best to win the strength that comes of experience\nand suffering, and to allow others also to play their own cards and\nwin the same strength, shedding our tears in private, and abhorring\nsoft-heartedness as the foe of all manhood and courage. To call the\nunsympathetic man \u201cwicked,\u201d and the sympathetic man \u201cgood,\u201d seemed\nto Nietzsche a fashion in morals, a fashion which will have its\nday. He believed he was the first to point out the danger of the\nprevailing fashion as a sort of moral impressionism, the outcome of\nthe hyper\u00e6sthesia peculiar to periods of decadence. Not indeed that\nChristianity is, or could be, carried out among us to its fullest\nextent: \u201cThat would be a serious matter. If we were ever to become\nthe object to others of the same stupidities and importunities which\nthey expend on themselves, we should flee wildly as soon as we saw\nour \u2018neighbour\u2019 approach, and curse sympathy as heartily as we now\ncurse egoism.\u201d Our deepest and most personal griefs, Nietzsche remarks\nelsewhere, remain unrevealed and incomprehensible to nearly all other\npersons, even to the \u201cneighbour\u201d who eats out of the same dish with us.\nAnd even though my grief should become visible, the dear sympathetic\nneighbour can know nothing of its complexity and results, of the\norganic economy of my soul. That my grief may be bound up with my\nhappiness troubles him little. The devotee of the \u201creligion of pity\u201d\nwill heal my sorrows without a moment\u2019s delay; he knows not that the\npath to my Heaven must lie through my own Hell, that happiness and\nunhappiness are twin sisters who grow up together, or remain stunted\ntogether.\n\n\u201cMorality is the mob-instinct working in the individual.\u201d It rests,\nNietzsche asserts, on two thoughts: \u201cthe community is worth more than\nthe individual,\u201d and \u201ca permanent advantage is better than a temporary\nadvantage;\u201d whence it follows that all the advantages of the community\nare preferable to those of the individual. Morality thus becomes a\nstring of negative injunctions, a series of \u201cThou shalt nots,\u201d with\nscarcely a positive command amongst them; witness the well-known table\nof Jewish commandments. Now Nietzsche could not endure mere negative\nvirtues. He resented the subtle change which has taken place in the\nvery meaning of the word \u201cvirtue,\u201d and which has perverted it from an\nexpression of positive masculine qualities into one of merely negative\nfeminine qualities. In his earliest essay he referred to \u201cactive sin\u201d\nas the Promethean virtue which distinguishes the Aryans. The only\nmoral codes that commended themselves to him were those that contained\npositive commands alone: \u201cDo this! Do it with all your heart, and all\nyour strength, and all your dreams!--and all other things shall be\ntaken away from you!\u201d For if we are truly devoted to the things that\nare good to do we need trouble ourselves little about the things that\nare good to leave undone.\n\nNietzsche compared himself to a mole boring down into the ground\nand undermining what philosophers have for a couple of thousand\nyears considered the very surest ground to build on--the trust in\nmorals. One of his favourite methods of attack is by the analysis\nof the \u201cconscience.\u201d He points out that whatever we were regularly\nrequired to do in youth by those we honoured and feared created our\n\u201cgood conscience.\u201d The dictates of conscience, however urgent, thus\nhave no true validity as regards the person who experiences them.\n\u201cBut,\u201d some one protests, \u201cmust we not trust our feelings?\u201d \u201cYes,\u201d\nreplies Nietzsche, \u201ctrust your feelings, but still remember that\nthe inspiration which springs from feelings is the grandchild of an\nopinion, often a false one, and in any case not your own. To trust\none\u2019s feelings--that means to yield more obedience to one\u2019s grandfather\nand grandmother and their grandparents than to the gods within _our\nown_ breasts: our own reason and our own experience.\u201d Faith in\nauthority is thus the source of conscience; it is not the voice of God\nin the human heart but the voice of man. The sphere of the moral is\nthe sphere of tradition, and a man is moral because he is dependent on\na tradition and not on himself. Originally everything was within the\nsphere of morals, and it was only possible to escape from that sphere\nby becoming a law-giver, medicine-man, demigod--that is to say by\nmaking morals. To be customary is to be moral,--I still closely follow\nNietzsche\u2019s thought and expression,--to be individual is to be wicked.\nEvery kind of originality involves a bad conscience. Nietzsche insists\nwith fine eloquence, again and again, that every good gift that has\nbeen given to man put a bad conscience into the heart of the giver.\nEvery good thing was once new, unaccustomed, _immoral_, and gnawed\nat the vitals of the finder like a worm. Primitive men lived in hordes,\nand must obey the horde-voice within them. Every new doctrine is\nwicked. Science has always come into the world with a bad conscience,\nwith the emotions of a criminal, at least of a smuggler. No man can be\ndisobedient to custom and not be immoral, and feel that he is immoral.\nThe artist, the actor, the merchant, the freethinker, the discoverer,\nwere once all criminals, and were persecuted, crushed, rendered morbid,\nas all persons must be when their virtues are not the virtues idealised\nby the community. The whole phenomena of morals are animal-like, and\nhave their origin in the search for prey and the avoidance of pursuit.\n\nProgress is thus a gradual emancipation from morals. We have to\nrecognise the services of the men who fight in this struggle against\nmorals, and who are crushed into the ranks of criminals. Not that we\nneed pity them. \u201cIt is a new _justice_ that is called for, a new\n_mot d\u2019ordre_. We need new philosophers. The moral world also is\nround. The moral world also has its antipodes, and the antipodes also\nhave their right to exist. A new world remains to be discovered--and\nmore than one! Hoist sail, O philosophers!\u201d\n\n\u201cMen must become both better _and wickeder_.\u201d So spake\nZarathustra; or, as he elsewhere has it, \u201cIt is with man as with a\ntree, the higher he would climb into the brightness above, the more\nvigorously his roots must strive earthwards, downwards, into the\ndarkness and the depths--into the wicked.\u201d Wickedness is just as\nindispensable as goodness. It is the ploughshare of wickedness which\nturns up and fertilises the exhausted fields of goodness. We must\nno longer be afraid to be wicked; we must no longer be afraid to be\nhard. \u201cOnly the noblest things are very hard. This new command, O my\nbrothers, I lay upon you--become hard.\u201d\n\nIn renewing our moral ideas we need also to renew our whole conception\nof the function and value of morals. Nietzsche advises moralists to\nchange their tactics: \u201cDeny moral values, deprive them of the applause\nof the crowd, create obstacles to their free circulation; let\nthem be the shame-faced secrets of a few solitary souls; _forbid\nmorality_! In so doing you may perhaps accredit these things among\nthe only men whom one need have on one\u2019s side, I mean heroic men.\nLet it be said of morality to-day as Meister Eckard said: \u2018I pray\nGod that he may rid me of God!\u2019\u201d We have altogether over-estimated\nthe importance of morality. Christianity knew better when it placed\n\u201cgrace\u201d above morals, and so also did Buddhism. And if we turn to\nliterature, Nietzsche maintains, it is a vast mistake to suppose that,\nfor instance, great tragedies have, or were intended to have, any\nmoral effect. Look at _Macbeth_, at _Tristan und Isolde_,\nat _\u0152dipus_. In all these cases it would have been easy to make\nguilt the pivot of the drama. But the great poet is in love with\npassion. \u201cHe calls to us: It is the charm of charms; this exciting,\nchanging, dangerous, gloomy, yet often sun-filled existence! It is an\n_adventure_ to live--take this side or that, it will always be the\nsame!\u2019 So he speaks to us out of a restless and vigorous time, half\ndrunken and dazed with excess of blood and energy, out of a wickeder\ntime than ours is; and we are obliged to set to rights the aim of a\nShakespeare and make it righteous, that is to say, to misunderstand it.\u201d\n\nWe have to recognise a diversity of moral ideals. Nothing is more\nprofoundly dangerous than, with Kant, to create impersonal categorical\nimperatives after the Chinese fashion, to generalise \u201cvirtue,\u201d \u201cduty,\u201d\nand \u201cgoodness,\u201d and sacrifice them to the Moloch of abstraction.\n\u201cEvery man must find his own virtue, his own categorical imperative;\u201d\nit must be founded on inner necessity, on deep personal choice. Only\nthe simpleton says: \u201cMen ought to be like this or like that.\u201d The real\nworld presents to us a dazzling wealth of types, a prodigious play\nof forms and metamorphoses. Yet up comes a poor devil of a moralist,\nand says to us: \u201cNo! men ought to be something quite different!\u201d and\nstraightway he paints a picture of himself on the wall, and exclaims:\n\u201cEcce homo!\u201d But one thing is needful, that a man should attain the\nfullest satisfaction. Every man must be his own moralist.\n\nThese views might be regarded as \u201clax,\u201d as predisposing to easy\nself-indulgence. Nietzsche would have smiled at such a notion. Not\nyielding, but mastering, was the key to his personal morality. \u201cEvery\nday is badly spent,\u201d he said, \u201cin which a man has not once denied\nhimself; this gymnastic is inevitable if a man will retain the joy\nof being his own master.\u201d The four cardinal virtues, as Nietzsche\nunderstood morals, are sincerity, courage, generosity, and courtesy.\n\u201cDo what you will,\u201d said Zarathustra, \u201cbut first be one of those who\n_are able to will_. Love your neighbour as yourself--but first\nbe one of those who _are able to love themselves_.\u201d And again\nZarathustra spoke: \u201cHe who belongs to me must be strong of bone and\nlight of foot, eager for fight and for feast, no sulker, no John o\u2019\nDreams, as ready for the hardest task as for a feast, sound and hale.\nThe best things belong to me and mine, and if men give us nothing, then\nwe take them: the best food, the purest sky, the strongest thoughts,\nthe fairest women!\u201d There was no desire here to suppress effort and\npain. That Nietzsche regarded as a mark of modern Christian morals.\nIt is pain, more pain and deeper, that we need. The discipline of\nsuffering alone creates man\u2019s pre-eminence. \u201cMan unites in himself the\ncreature and the creator: there is in him the stuff of things, the\nfragmentary and the superfluous, clay, mud, madness, chaos; but there\nis also in him the creator, the sculptor, the hardness of the hammer,\nthe divine blessedness of the spectator on the seventh day.\u201d Do you\npity, he asks, what must be fashioned, broken, forged, refined as by\nfire? But our pity is spent on one thing alone, the most effeminate of\nall weaknesses--pity. This was the source of Nietzsche\u2019s admiration for\nwar, and indifference to its horror; he regarded it as the symbol of\nthat spiritual warfare and bloodshed in which to him all human progress\nconsisted. He might, had he pleased, have said with the Jew and the\nChristian, that without shedding of blood there shall be no remission\nof sins. But with a difference, for as he looked at the matter, every\nman must be his own saviour, and it is his own blood that must be shed;\nthere is no salvation by proxy. That was expressed in his favourite\nmotto: _Virescit volnere virtus._\n\nNietzsche\u2019s ideal man is the man of Epictetus, as he describes him in\n_Morgenr\u00f6the_, the laconic, brave, self-contained man, not lusting\nafter expression like the modern idealist. The man whom Epictetus\nloved hated fanaticism, he hated notoriety, he knew how to smile. And\nthe best was, added Nietzsche, that he had no fear of God before his\neyes; he believed firmly in reason, and relied, not on divine grace,\nbut on himself. Of all Shakespeare\u2019s plays _Julius C\u00e6sar_ seemed\nto Nietzsche the greatest, because it glorifies Brutus; the finest\nthing that can be said in Shakespeare\u2019s honour, Nietzsche thought,\nwas that--aided perhaps by some secret and intimate experience--he\nbelieved in Brutus and the virtues that Brutus personified. In course\nof time, however, while not losing his sympathy with Stoicism, it\nwas Epicureanism, the heroic aspects of Epicureanism, which chiefly\nappealed to Nietzsche. He regarded Epicurus as one of the world\u2019s\ngreatest men, the discoverer of the heroically idyllic method of living\na philosophy; for one to whom happiness could never be more than an\nunending self-discipline, and whose ideal of life had ever been that\nof a spiritual nomad, the methods of Epicurus seemed to yield the\nfinest secrets of good living. Socrates, with his joy in life and in\nhimself, was also an object of Nietzsche\u2019s admiration. Among later\nthinkers, Helvetius appealed to him strongly. Goethe and Napoleon were\nnaturally among his favourite heroes, as were Alcibiades and C\u00e6sar.\nThe latest great age of heroes was to him the Italian Renaissance.\nThen came Luther, opposing the rights of the peasants, yet himself\ninitiating a peasants\u2019 revolt of the intellect, and preparing the way\nfor that shallow plebeianism of the spirit which has marked the last\ntwo centuries.\n\nLatterly, in tracing the genealogy of modern morals, Nietzsche\u2019s\nopinions hardened into a formula. He recognised three stages of moral\nevolution: first, the _pre-moral_ period of primitive times,\nwhen the beast of prey was the model of conduct, and the worth of an\naction was judged by its results. Then came the _moral_ period,\nwhen the worth of an action was judged not by its results, but by\nits origin; this period has been the triumph of what Nietzsche calls\nslave-morality, the morality of the mob; the goodness and badness of\nactions is determined by atavism, at best by survivals; every man is\noccupied in laying down laws for his neighbour instead of for himself,\nand all are tamed and chastised into weakness in order that they may\nbe able to obey these prescriptions. Nietzsche ingeniously connected\nhis slave-morality with the accepted fact that for many centuries the\nlarge, fair-haired aristocratic race has been dying out in Europe,\nand the older down-trodden race--short, dark, and broad-headed--has\nbeen slowly gaining predominance. But now we stand at the threshold\nof the _extra-moral_ period. Slave-morality, Nietzsche asserted,\nis about to give way to master-morality; the lion will take the place\nof the camel. The instincts of life, refusing to allow that anything\nis forbidden, will again assert themselves, sweeping away the feeble\nnegative democratic morality of our time. The day has now come for the\nman who is able to rule himself, and who will be tolerant to others\nnot out of his weakness, but out of his strength; to him nothing is\nforbidden, for he has passed beyond goodness and beyond wickedness.\n\n\n                                 III.\n\nSo far I have attempted to follow with little or no comment what seems\nto me the main current of Nietzsche\u2019s thought. It may be admitted\nthat there is some question as to which is the main current. For my\nown part I have no hesitation in asserting that it is the current\nwhich expands to its fullest extent between 1876 and 1883 in what I\nterm Nietzsche\u2019s second or middle period; up to then he had not gained\ncomplete individuality; afterwards began the period of uncontrolled\naberrations. Thus I am inclined to pass lightly over the third period,\nduring which the conception of \u201cmaster-morality\u201d attained its chief and\nmost rigid emphasis, although I gather that to Nietzsche\u2019s disciples as\nto his foes this conception seems of primary importance. This idea of\n\u201cmaster-morality\u201d is in fact a solid fossilised chunk, easy to handle\nfor friendly or unfriendly hands. The earlier and more living work--the\nwork of the man who truly said that it is with thinkers as with snakes:\nthose that cannot shed their skins die--is less obviously tangible. So\nthe \u201cmaster-morality\u201d it is that your true Nietzschian is most likely\nto close his fist over. It would be unkind to say more, for Nietzsche\nhimself has been careful to scatter through his works, on the subject\nof disciples and followers generally, very scathing remarks which must\nbe sufficiently painful to any faithful Nietzschian.\n\nWe are helped in understanding Nietzsche\u2019s philosophic significance if\nwe understand his precise ideal. The psychological analysis of every\ngreat thinker\u2019s work seems to reveal some underlying fundamental image\nor thought--often enough simple and homely in character--which he has\ncarried with him into the most abstract regions. Thus Fraser has found\ngood reason to suppose that Hegel\u2019s main ideas were suggested by the\nthen recent discovery of galvanism. In Nietzsche\u2019s case this key is\nto be found in the persistent image of an attitude. As a child, his\nsister tells us, he had been greatly impressed by a rope-dancer who had\nperformed his feats over the market-place at Naumburg, and throughout\nhis work, as soon as he had attained to real self-expression, we may\ntrace the image of the dancer. \u201cI do not know,\u201d he somewhere says,\n\u201cwhat the mind of a philosopher need desire more than to be a good\ndancer. For dancing is his ideal, his art also, indeed his only piety,\nhis \u2018divine worship.\u2019\u201d In all Nietzsche\u2019s best work we are conscious of\nthis ideal of the dancer, strong, supple, vigorous, yet harmonious and\nwell-balanced. It is the dance of the athlete and the acrobat rather\nthan the make-believe of the ball-room, and behind the easy equipoise\nof such dancing lie patient training and effort. The chief character\nof good dancing is its union of the maximum of energetic movement with\nthe maximum of well-balanced grace. The whole muscular system is alive\nto restrain any excess, so that however wild and free the movement may\nseem it is always measured; excess would mean ignominious collapse.\nWhen in his later years Nietzsche began, as he said, to \u201cphilosophise\nwith the hammer,\u201d and to lay about him savagely at every hollow \u201cidol\u201d\nwithin reach, he departed from his better ideal of dancing, and his\nthinking became intemperate, reckless, desperate.\n\nNietzsche had no system, probably because the idea that dominated\nhis thought was an image, and not a formula, the usual obsession of\nphilosophers, such as may be clapped on the universe at any desired\npoint. He remarks in one place that a philosopher believes the worth\nof his philosophy to lie in the structure, but that what we ultimately\nvalue are the finely carven and separate stones with which he builded,\nand he was clearly anxious to supply the elaborated stones direct.\nIn time he came to call himself a realist, using the term, in no\nphilosophic sense, to indicate his reverence for the real and essential\nfacts of life, the things that conduce to fine living. He desired to\ndetach the \u201cbad conscience\u201d from the things that are merely wicked\ntraditionally, and to attach it to the things that are anti-natural,\nanti-instinctive, anti-sensuous. He sought to inculcate veneration\nfor the deep-lying sources of life, to take us down to the bed-rock\nof life, the rock whence we are hewn. He held that man, as a reality,\nwith all his courage and cunning, is himself worthy of honour, but\nthat man\u2019s ideals are absurd and morbid, the mere dregs in the drained\ncup of life; or, as he eventually said--and it is a saying which will\ndoubtless seal his fate in the minds of many estimable persons--man\u2019s\nideals are his only _partie honteuse_, of which we may avoid any\nclose examination. Nietzsche\u2019s \u201crealism\u201d was thus simply a vigorous\nhatred of all dreaming that tends to depreciate the value of life, and\na vivid sense that man himself is the _ens realissimum_.\n\nA noteworthy point in Nietzsche\u2019s conception of philosophy is his\nincreasingly clear conception of its fundamentally psychological\ncharacter. I mean to say that Nietzsche knows that a man\u2019s philosophy,\nto be real, must be the inevitable outcome of his own psychic\nconstitution. It is a point that philosophers have never seen.\nPerhaps Nietzsche was the first, however hesitatingly, to realise\nit. It is only in the recognition of this fact that the eirenicon of\nphilosophies--and one might add, of religions--can ever be found.\nThe philosopher of old said: \u201cThis is _my_ conception of the\nuniverse;\u201d it was well. But he was apt to add: \u201cIt is _the_\nconception of the universe,\u201d and so put himself hopelessly in the\nwrong. It is as undignified to think another man\u2019s philosophy as to\nwear another man\u2019s cast-off clothes. Only the poor in spirit or in\npurse can find any satisfaction in doing either. A philosophy or\nreligion can only fit the man for whom it was made. \u201cThere has only\nbeen one Christian,\u201d as Nietzsche put it, \u201cand he died on the cross.\u201d\nBut why waste energy in trying to manufacture a second Christian?\nWe may be very sure that we can never find another Christian whom\nChristianity would fit so admirably as it once fitted Christ. Why\nnot rest content with Christ? Let Brown be a Brownite and Robinson\na Robinsonian. It is not good that they should exchange their\nphilosophies, or that either should insist on thrusting his threadbare\nmisfits on Jones, who prefers to be metaphysically naked. When men\nhave generally begun to realise this the world will be a richer and\nan honester world, and a pleasanter one as well. That Nietzsche had\nvaguely begun to realise it seems to me his chief claim to distinction\nin the purely philosophic field.\n\nTo recognise the free and direct but disconnected nature of Nietzsche\u2019s\nmany-sided vision of the world is to lessen the force of his own\nantagonisms as well as of the antagonisms he has excited. Much of\nNietzsche\u2019s work, especially in the third period, is the utterance of\nprofound half-truths, keenly and personally felt, but still half-truths\nof which he has himself elsewhere supplied the complements. The reason\nis that during that period he was not so much expressing himself as\nappealing passionately against himself to those failing forces whose\ntonic influence he thirsted after. The hardness, the keen sword, the\nreckless energy he idealised were the things that had slipped utterly\naway and left him defenceless to the world. He grew to worship cruel\nstrength as the consumptive Keats, the sickly Thoreau, loved beauty and\nhealth, with \u201cthe desire of the moth for the star.\u201d Such an attitude\nhas its rightness and power, so long as we understand it, though it\ncomes short of the serenity of the greatest spirits who seek, like\nGoethe, to live at each moment in the whole. The master-morality of\nNietzsche\u2019s later days, on which friends and foes have alike insisted,\nis a case in point. This appears to have been hailed, or resented, as\na death-blow struck at the modern democratic _r\u00e9gime_. To take\na broad view of Nietzsche\u2019s philosophic attitude is to realise that\nboth views are alike out of place. On this matter, as on many others,\nNietzsche moved in a line which led him to face an opposite direction\nin his decay from that which he faced in his immaturity. He began by\nregarding democracy as the standard of righteousness, and ended by\nasserting that the world only exists for the production of a few great\nmen. It would be foolish to regard either of the termini as the last\noutpost of wisdom. But in the passage between these two points many\nexcellent things are said by the way. Nietzsche was never enamoured of\nsocialism or democracy for its own sake; reasonably enough, he will\nnot even admit that we have yet attained democracy; though the horses,\nindeed, are new, as yet \u201cthe roads are the same old roads, the wheels\nthe same old wheels.\u201d But he points out that the value of democracy\nlies in its guarantee of individual freedom: Cyclopean walls are being\nbuilt, with much toil and dust, but the walls will be a rampart against\nany invasion of barbarians or any new slavery, against the despotism of\ncapital and the despotism of party. The workers may regard the walls as\nan end in themselves; we are free to value them for the fine flowers of\nculture which will grow in the gardens they inclose. To me, at least,\nthis attitude of Nietzsche\u2019s maturity seems the ample justification of\ndemocracy.\n\nNietzsche was not, however, greatly interested in questions of\ngovernment; he was far more deeply interested in questions of morals.\nIn his treatment of morals--no doubt chiefly in the last period--there\nis a certain element of paradox. It must again be pointed out that this\nis to be explained by the organic demands of Nietzsche\u2019s own nature.\nIn attacking the excessive tendency to sympathy which he seemed to\nsee around him he was hygienically defending himself from his own\nexcessive sympathy. His sister quotes with a smile the declaration\nthat his Paradise lay beneath the shadow of his sword; we scarcely\nneed her assurance of his tender-hearted sensitiveness. He could\nattack relentlessly, but he never attacked a person save as the symbol\nof what he regarded as a false principle held in undeserved honour.\nWhen he realised that the subject of such attack was really a living\nperson he was full of remorse. He attacked Strauss because Strauss\nwas the successful representative of a narrow ideal of culture; a few\nmonths later Strauss died, having, it now appears, borne the onset\nphilosophically enough, and Nietzsche was full of grief lest he had\nembittered the dying man\u2019s last hours. It was because he had himself\nsuffered from the excesses of his own sympathy that he was able so\nkeenly to analyse the secrets of sympathy. He spoke as the Spanish poet\nsays that every poet--and indeed every seer--must always speak, _por\nla boca de su herida_, through the mouth of his wound. That is why\nhis voice is often so poignantly intimate; it is also why we sometimes\nfind this falsetto note of paradox. In his last period, Nietzsche grows\naltogether impatient of morals, calls himself an immoralist, fervently\nexhorts us to become wickeder. But if any young disciple came to the\nteacher asking, \u201cWhat must I do to become wickeder?\u201d it does not appear\nthat Nietzsche bade him to steal, bear false witness, commit adultery,\nor do any other of the familiar and commonly-accepted wickednesses.\nNietzsche preached wickedness with the same solemn exaltation that\nCarducci lauded Satan. What he desired was far indeed from any\nrehabilitation of easy vice; it was the justification of neglected and\nunsanctified virtues.\n\nAt the same time, and while Nietzsche\u2019s immoralist is just as austere\na person as the mere moralists who have haunted the world for many\nthousand years, it is clear that Nietzsche wished strictly to limit the\nsphere of morals. He never fails to point out how large a region of\nlife and art lies legitimately outside the moral jurisdiction. In an\nage in which many moralists desire to force morals into every part of\nlife and art--and even assume a certain air of virtue in so doing--the\n\u201cimmoralist\u201d who lawfully vindicates any region for free cultivation is\nengaged in a proper and wholesome task.\n\nNo doubt, however, there will be some to question the value of such a\ntask. Nietzsche the immoralist can scarcely be welcome in every camp,\nalthough he remains always a force to be reckoned with. The same may\nbe said of Nietzsche the freethinker. He was, perhaps, the typical\nfreethinker of the age that comes after Renan. Nietzsche had nothing\nof Renan\u2019s genial scepticism and smiling disillusionment; he was\nless tender to human weakness, for all his long Christian ancestry\nless Christian, than the Breton seminarist remained to the last. He\nseems to have shaken himself altogether free of Christianity--so\nfree, that except in his last period he even speaks of it without\nbitterness--though by no means wholly untouched by that nostalgia\nof the cloister which now and then pursues even those of us who are\nfarthest from any faith in Christian dogma. He never sought, as\namong ourselves Pater sought, the germ of Christianity in things\npagan, the undying essence of paganism in things Christian. Heathen\nas he was, I do not think even Heine\u2019s visions of the gods in exile\ncould have touched him; he never felt the charm of fading and faded\nthings. It is remarkable. It is scarcely less remarkable that, far\nas he was from Christianity, he was equally far from what we usually\ncall \u201cpaganism,\u201d the pasteboard paganism of easy self-indulgence and\ncheerful irresponsibility. It was not so that he understood Hellenism.\nMatthew Arnold once remarked that the Greeks were never sick or sad.\nNietzsche knew better. The greater part of Greek literature bears\nwitness that the Hellenes were for ever wrestling with the problems of\npain. And none who came after have more poignantly uttered the pangs of\nhuman affairs, or more sweetly the consolations of those pangs, than\nthe great disciples of the Greeks who created the Roman world. The\nclassic world of nymphs and fauns is an invention of the moderns. The\nreal classic world, like the modern world, was a world of suffering.\nThe difference lay in the method of facing that suffering. Nietzsche\nchose the classic method from no desire to sport with Amaryllis in\nthe shade, but because he had known forms of torture for which the\nmild complacencies of modern faith seemed to offer no relief. If we\nmust regard Nietzsche as a pagan, it is as the Pascal of paganism.\nThe freethinker, it is true, was more cheerful and hopeful than the\nbeliever, but there is the same tragic sincerity, the same restless\nself-torment, the same sense of the abyss.[4]\n\nThere still remains Nietzsche, the apostle of culture, the philosopher\nengaged in the criticism of life. From first to last, wherever you\nopen his books, you light on sayings that cut to the core of the\nquestions that every modern thinking man must face. I take, almost at\nrandom, a few passages from a single book: of convictions he writes\nthat \u201ca man possesses opinions as he possesses fish, in so far as he\nowns a fishing-net; a man must go fishing and be lucky, then he has\nhis own fish, his own opinions; I speak of living opinions, living\nfish. Some men are content to possess fossils in their cabinets--and\nconvictions in their heads.\u201d Of the problem of the relation of science\nto culture he says well: \u201cThe best and wholesomest thing in science, as\nin mountains, is the air that blows there. It is because of that air\nthat we spiritual weaklings avoid and defame science;\u201d and he points\nout that the work of science--with its need for sincerity, infinite\npatience, complete self-abnegation--calls for men of nobler make than\npoetry needs. When we have learnt to trust science and to learn from\nit, then it will be possible so to tell natural history that \u201cevery\none who hears it is inspired to health and gladness as the heir and\ncontinuer of humanity.\u201d This is how he rebukes those foolish persons\nwho grow impatient with critics: \u201cRemember that critics are insects\nwho only sting to live and not to hurt: they want our blood and not\nour pain.\u201d And he utters this wise saying, himself forgetting it in\nlater years: \u201cGrowth in wisdom may be exactly measured by decrease in\nbitterness.\u201d Nietzsche desires to prove nothing, and is reckless of\nconsistency. He looks at every question that comes before him with the\nsame simple, intent, penetrative gaze, and whether the aspects that he\nreveals are new or old, he seldom fails to bring us a fresh stimulus.\nCulture, as he understood it, consists for the modern man in the task\nof choosing the simple and indispensable things from the chaos of crude\nmaterial which to-day overwhelms us. The man who will live at the level\nof the culture of his time is like the juggler who must keep a number\nof plates spinning in the air; his life must be a constant training in\nsuppleness and skill so that he may be a good athlete. But he is also\ncalled on to exert his skill in the selection and limitation of his\ntask. Nietzsche is greatly occupied with the simplification of culture.\nOur suppleness and skill must be exercised alone on the things that\nare vital, essential, primitive; the rest may be thrown aside. He is\nfor ever challenging the multifarious materials for culture, testing\nthem with eye and hand; we cannot prove them too severely, he seems\nto say, nor cast aside too contemptuously the things that a real man\nhas no need of for fine living. What must I do to be saved? What do I\nneed for the best and fullest life?--that is the everlasting question\nthat the teacher of life is called upon to answer. And we cannot be too\ngrateful to Nietzsche for the stern penetration--the more acute for his\never-present sense of the limits of energy--with which he points from\namid the mass to the things which most surely belong to our eternal\npeace.\n\nNietzsche\u2019s style has often been praised. The style was certainly the\nman. There can be little doubt, moreover, that there is scarcely any\nother German style to compare with it, though such eminence means\nfar less in a country where style has rarely been cultivated than it\nwould mean in France or even England. Sallust awoke his sense for\nstyle, and may account for some characteristics of his style. He also\nenthusiastically admired Horace as the writer who had produced the\nmaximum of energy with the minimum of material. A concentrated Roman\nstyle, significant and weighty at every point, _\u00e6re perennius_,\nwas always his ideal. Certainly the philologist\u2019s aptitudes helped\nhere to teach him the value and force of words, as jewels for the\ngoldsmith to work with, and not as mere worn-out counters to slip\nthrough the fingers. One may call it a muscular style, a style wrought\nwith the skilful strength of hand and arm. It scarcely appeals to\nthe ear. It lacks the restful simplicity of the greatest masters, the\nplangent melody, the seemingly unconscious magic quivering along our\nfinest-fibred nerves. Such effects we seem to hear now and again in\nSchopenhauer, but rarely or never from any other German. This style\nis titanic rather than divine, but the titanic virtues it certainly\npossesses in fullest measure: robust and well-tempered vigour,\nconcentration, wonderful plastic force in moulding expression. It\nbecomes over-emphatic at last. When Nietzsche threw aside the dancer\u2019s\nideal in order to \u201cphilosophise with the hammer,\u201d the result on his\nstyle was as disastrous as on his thought; both alike took on the\nviolent and graceless character of the same implement. He speaks indeed\nof the virtue of hitting a nail on the head, but it is a less skilled\nform of virtue than good dancing.\n\nWhether he was dancing or hammering, however, Nietzsche certainly\nconverted the whole of himself into his work, as in his view every\nphilosopher is bound to do, \u201cfor just that art of transformation\n_is_ philosophy.\u201d That he was entirely successful in being a \u201creal\nman\u201d one may doubt. His excessive sensitiveness to the commonplace in\nlife, and his deficiency in the sexual instinct--however highly he\nmay have rated the importance of sex in life--largely cut him off\nfrom true fellowship with the men who are most \u201creal\u201d to us. He was\nless tolerant and less humane than his master Goethe; his incisive\ninsight, and, in many respects, better intellectual equipment, are\nmore than compensated by this lack of breadth. But, as his friend the\nhistorian Burckhardt has said, he worked mightily for the increase\nof independence in the world. Every man, indeed, works with the\nlimitations of his qualities, just as we all struggle beneath the\nweight of the superincumbent atmosphere; our defects are even a part\nof our qualities, and it would be foolish to quarrel with them.\nNietzsche succeeded in being himself, and it was a finely rare success.\nWhether he was a \u201creal man\u201d matters less. With passionate sincerity\nhe expressed his real self and his best self, abhorring, on the one\nhand, what with Voltaire and Verlaine he called \u201cliterature,\u201d and, on\nthe other, all that mere indigested material, the result of mental\ndyspepsia, of which he regarded Carlyle as the supreme warning. A\nman\u2019s real self, as he repeated so often, consists of the things which\nhe has truly digested and assimilated; he must always \u201cconquer\u201d his\nopinions; it is only such conquests which he has the right to report to\nmen as his own. His thoughts are born of his pain; he has imparted to\nthem of his own blood, his own pleasure and torment. Nietzsche himself\nheld that suffering and even disease are almost indispensable to the\nphilosopher; great pain is the final emancipator of the spirit, those\ngreat slow pains that take their time, and burn us up like green wood.\n\u201cI doubt whether such pain betters us,\u201d he remarks, \u201cbut I know that it\ndeepens us.\u201d That is the stuff of Nietzsche\u2019s Hellenism, as expressed\nin the most lighthearted of his books. _Virescit volnere virtus._\nIt is that which makes him, when all is said, a great critic of life.\n\nIt is a consolation to many--I have seen it so stated in a respectable\nreview--that Nietzsche went mad. No doubt also it was once a\nconsolation to many that Socrates was poisoned, that Jesus was\ncrucified, that Bruno was burnt. But hemlock and the cross and the\nstake proved sorry weapons against the might of ideas even in those\ndays, and there is no reason to suppose that a doctor\u2019s certificate\nwill be more effectual in our own. Of old time we killed our great men\nas soon as their visionary claims became inconvenient; now, in our\nmercy, we leave the tragedy of genius to unroll itself to the bitter\nclose. The devils to whom the modern Faustus is committed have waxed\ncunning with the ages. Nietzsche has met, in its most relentless form,\nthe fate of Pascal and Swift and Rousseau. That fact may carry what\nweight it will in any final estimate of his place as a moral teacher:\nit cannot touch his position as an aboriginal force. He remains in\nthe first rank of the distinguished and significant personalities our\ncentury has produced.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[Footnote 1: This statement (made at the end of 1895) has ceased to\nbe true, but it explains the genesis of this study, and I leave it\nstanding.]\n\n[Footnote 2: The most convincing word-portrait of Nietzsche I have\nmet with (by M. Schur\u00e9) dates from the visit to Bayreuth:--\u201cI was\nstruck both by the superiority of his intellect and the strangeness\nof his face. A broad forehead, short hair brushed back, the prominent\ncheek-bones of the Slav. The heavy moustache and the bold outline of\nthe face would have given him the aspect of a cavalry officer if it\nhad not been for his timid and haughty air. The musical voice and slow\nspeech indicated the artist\u2019s organisation, while the circumspect\nmeditative carriage was that of a philosopher. Nothing more deceptive\nthan the apparent calm of his expression. The fixed eye revealed the\npainful travail of thought. It was at once the eye of an acute observer\nand a fanatical visionary. The double character of this gaze produced a\ndisquieted and disquieting impression, all the more so since it seemed\nto be always fixed on a single point. In moments of effusion this gaze\nwas softened to a dream-like sweetness, but soon became hostile again.\u201d\nThis picture is confirmed by Nietzsche\u2019s sister, who also refers to his\n\u201cunusually large, beautiful, and brilliant eyes.\u201d]\n\n[Footnote 3: One may be allowed to regret that Nietzsche was not\nequally discriminating in his judgment of our country. Had he not\nbeen blinded by the spiritual plebeianism of the nineteenth century\nin England, he might also have discerned in certain periods some of\nthe same ardent and heroic qualities which he recognised in sixteenth\ncentury France, the more easily since at that time the same Renaissance\nwave had effected a considerable degree of spiritual union between\nFrance and England. In George Chapman, for instance, at his finest and\nlucidest moments the typical ethical representative of our greatest\nliterary age, Nietzsche would have found a man after his own heart, not\nonly one who scarcely yielded to himself in generous admiration of the\ngreat qualities of the French spirit but a man of \u201cabsolute and full\nsoul\u201d who was almost a precursor of his own \u201cimmoralism,\u201d a lover of\nfreedom, of stoic self-reliance, one who was ever seeking to enlarge\nthe discipline of a fine culture in the direction of moral freedom and\ndignity.]\n\n[Footnote 4: Pater\u2019s description of the transition we may trace from\nthe easy prose of Pascal\u2019s first book to the \u201cperpetual _agonia_\u201d\nof his later work, applies with scarcely a change to the similar\ntransition in Nietzsche:--\u201cEverywhere in the _Letters_ he had\nseemed so great a master--a master of himself--never at a loss, taking\nthe conflict so lightly, with so light a heart: in the great Atlantean\ntravail of the _Thoughts_ his feet sometimes \u2018are almost gone.\u2019\nIn his soul\u2019s agony theological abstractions seem to become personal\npowers.... In truth, into his typical diagnosis, as it may seem, of the\ntragedy of the human soul, there have passed not merely the personal\nfeelings, the temperament of an individual, but his malady also, a\nphysical malady.\u201d]\n\n\n\n\n                               CASANOVA.\n\n\nTHERE are few more delightful books in the world than Casanova\u2019s\n_M\u00e9moires_.--That is a statement I have long vainly sought to see\nin print. It is true, one learns casually that various eminent literary\npersonages have cherished a high regard for this autobiography, have\neven considered it the ideal autobiography, that Wendell Holmes was\nonce heard defending Casanova, that Thackeray found him good enough to\nsteal from. But these eminent personages--and how many more we shall\nnever know--locked up the secret of their admiration for this book in\nsome remote casket of their breasts; they never confided it to the\ncynical world. Every properly constituted \u201cman of letters\u201d has always\nrecognised that any public allusion to Casanova should begin and end\nwith lofty moral reprobation of his unspeakable turpitude.\n\nNo doubt whatever--and this apart from the question as to\nwhether his autobiography should be counted as moral or immoral\nliterature--Casanova delivered himself bound into the hands of the\nmoralists. He recognised this; his autobiography, as he himself truly\nsaid, was \u201ca confession, if ever there was one.\u201d But he wrote at the\nend of a long and full life, in the friendly seclusion of a lonely\nBohemian castle, when all things had become indifferent to him save\nthe vivid memories of the past. It mattered little to him that the\nwhirlwind of 1789 had just swept away the eighteenth century together\nwith the moral maxims that passed current in that century. We have to\naccept these facts at the outset when we approach Casanova. And if a\ndweller in the highly respectable nineteenth century may be forgiven a\nfirst exclamation of horror at Casanova\u2019s wickedness, he has wofully\nfailed in critical insight if he allows that exclamation to be his last\nword concerning these _M\u00e9moires_.\n\nThere are at least three points of view from which Casanova\u2019s\n_M\u00e9moires_ are of deep and permanent interest. In the first place\nthey constitute an important psychological document as the full and\nveracious presentation of a certain human type in its most complete\ndevelopment. In the second place, as a mere story of adventure and\nwithout reference to their veracity, the _M\u00e9moiries_ have never\nbeen surpassed, and only equalled by books written on a much smaller\nscale. In the third place, we here possess an unrivalled picture of\nthe eighteenth century in its most characteristic aspects throughout\nEurope.\n\n\n                                  I.\n\nCasanova lived in an age which seems to have been favourable to the\nspontaneous revelation of human nature in literature. It was not only\nthe age in which the novel reached full development; it was the age\nof diaries and autobiographies. Pepys, indeed, though he died in the\neighteenth century, had written his diary long before; but during\nCasanova\u2019s lifetime Boswell was writing that biography which is so\nwonderful largely because it is so nearly an autobiography. Casanova\u2019s\ncommunicative countryman, Gozzi, was also his contemporary. Rousseau\u2019s\n_Confessions_ only preceded Casanova\u2019s _M\u00e9moires_ by a few\nyears, and a little later Restif de la Bretonne wrote _Monsieur\nNicolas_, and Madame Roland her _M\u00e9moires Particuli\u00e8res_. All\nthese autobiographies are very unlike Casanova\u2019s. They mostly seem to\npresent the shady sides of otherwise eminent and respectable lives.\nThe highly-placed government official of versatile intellectual tastes\nexhibits himself as a monster of petty weaknesses; the eloquent apostle\nof the return to Nature uncovers the corroding morbidities we should\nelse never suspect; the philanthropic pioneer in social reform exposes\nhimself in a state of almost maniacal eroticism; the austere heroine\nwho was nourished on Plutarch confesses that she is the victim of\nunhappy passion. We are conscious of no such discords in Casanova\u2019s\nautobiography. Partly it may be because we have no other picture of\nCasanova before our eyes. Moreover, he had no conventional ideals to\nfall short of; he was an adventurer from the first. \u201cI am proud because\nI am nothing,\u201d he used to say. He could not boast of his birth; he\nnever held high position; for the greatest part of his active career he\nwas an exile; at every moment of his life he was forced to rely on his\nown real and personal qualities. But the chief reason why we feel no\ndisturbing discord in Casanova\u2019s _M\u00e9moires_ lies in the admirable\nskill with which he has therein exploited his unquestionable sincerity.\nHe is a consummate master in the dignified narration of undignified\nexperiences. Fortified, it is true, by a confessed and excessive\n_amour propre_, he never loses his fine sense of equilibrium, his\npower of presenting his own personality broadly and harmoniously. He\nhas done a few dubious things in his time, he seems to say, and now and\nagain found himself in positions that were ridiculous enough; but as he\nlooks back he feels that the like may have happened to any of us. He\nviews these things with complete human tolerance as a necessary part\nof the whole picture, which it would be idle to slur over or apologise\nfor. He records them simply, not without a sense of humour, but with no\nundue sense of shame. In his heart, perhaps, he is confident that he\nhas given the world one of its greatest books, and that posterity will\nrequire of him no such rhetorical justification as Rousseau placed at\nthe head of his _Confessions_.\n\nIn the preface to the _M\u00e9moires_, Casanova is sufficiently frank.\nHe has not scrupled, he tells us, to defraud fools and rascals, \u201cwhen\nnecessary,\u201d and he has never regretted it. But such incidents have\nbeen but episodes in his life. He is not a sensualist, he says, for he\nhas never neglected his duty--\u201cwhen I had any\u201d--for the allurements\nof sense; yet the main business of his life has ever been in the\nworld of sense; \u201cthere is none of greater importance.\u201d \u201cI have always\nloved women and have done my best to make them love me. I have also\ndelighted in good cheer, and I have passionately followed whatever has\nexcited my curiosity.\u201d Now in old age he reviews the joys of his life.\nHe has learnt to be content with one meal a day, in spite of a sound\ndigestion, but he recalls the dishes that delighted him: Neapolitan\nmacaroni, Spanish olla podrida, Newfoundland cod, high-flavoured game,\nold cheese (has he not collected material for a _Dictionnaire des\nFromages_?), and without any consciousness of abrupt transition\nhe passes on to speak of the fragrant sweetness of the women he had\nloved. Then with a smile of pity he turns on those who call such tastes\ndepraved, the poor insensate fools who think the Almighty is only able\nto enjoy our sorrow and abstinence, and bestows upon us for nought the\ngift of self-respect, the love of praise, the desire to excel, energy,\nstrength, courage, and the power to kill ourselves when we will. And\nwith the strain of Stoicism which is ever present to give fibre to\nhis Epicureanism, he quotes the maxim which might well belong to both\nphilosophies: \u201cNemo l\u00e6ditur nisi a seipso.\u201d\n\nThe fact that Casanova was on one side a Venetian must count for\nsomething in any attempt to explain him. Not indeed that Venice ever\nproduced more than one Casanova; I would imply no such disrespect to\nVenice--or to Casanova--but the racial soil was favourable to such a\npersonality. The Venetians are a branch of a more northern people who\nlong since settled by the southern sea to grow mellow in the sunshine.\nIt suited them well, for they expanded into one of the finest races\nin Christendom, and certainly one of the least Christian races there,\na solid, well-tempered race, self-controlled and self-respecting. The\nVenetian genius is the genius of sensuous enjoyment, of tolerant\nhumanity, of unashamed earthliness. Whatever was sane and stable in\nCasanova, and his instinctive distaste for the morbid and perverse,\nhe owes to his Venetian maternal ancestry. If it is true that he was\nnot a mere sensualist, it was by no means because of his devotion to\nduty--\u201cwhen I had any,\u201d--but because the genuine sensualist is only\nalive on the passive side of his nature, and in Casanova\u2019s nervous\nsystem the development of the sensory fibres is compensated and held\nin balance by the equal vigour of the motor fibres; what he is quick\nto enjoy he is strong and alert to achieve. Thus he lived the full and\nvaried life that he created for himself at his own good pleasure out\nof nothing, by the sole power of his own magnificent wits. And now the\nself-sufficing Venetian sits down to survey his work and finds that\nit is good. It has not always been found so since. A \u201cself-made\u201d man,\nif ever there was one, Casanova is not revered by those who worship\nself-help. The record of his life will easily outlive the largest\nfortune ever made in any counting-house, but the life itself remains\nwhat we call a \u201cwasted\u201d life. Thrift, prudence, modesty, scrupulous\nintegrity, strict attention to business--it is useless to come to\nCasanova for any of these virtues. They were not even in his blood; he\nwas only half Venetian.\n\nThe Casanova family was originally Spanish. The first Casanova on\nrecord was a certain Don Jacobo, of illegitimate birth, who in the\nmiddle of the fifteenth century became secretary to King Alfonso. He\nfell in love with a lady destined to the religious life, and the day\nafter she had pronounced her vows he carried her off from her convent\nto Rome, where he finally obtained the forgiveness and benediction of\nthe Pope. The son of this union, Don Juan, killed an officer of the\nKing of Naples, fled from Rome, and sought fortune with Columbus, dying\non the voyage. Don Juan\u2019s son, Marcantonio, secretary to a cardinal,\nwas noted in his day as an epigrammatic poet; but his satire was too\nkeen, and he also had to flee from Rome. His son became a colonel,\nand, unlike his forefathers, died peacefully, in extreme old age, in\nFrance. In this soldier\u2019s grandson, Casanova\u2019s father, the adventurous\nimpulsiveness of the family again came out; he ran away from home\nat nineteen with a young actress, and himself became an actor;\nsubsequently he left the actress and then fell in love with a young\nVenetian beauty of sixteen, Zanetta Farusi, a shoemaker\u2019s daughter. But\na mere actor could find no favour in a respectable family, so the young\ncouple ran away and were married; the hero of these _M\u00e9moires_,\nborn on the 2nd April, 1725, was their first-born. There is probably\nno reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of this family history, but\nif one desired to invent an ancestry for Casanova he could scarcely\nbetter it.\n\nHis race helps to account for Casanova, but the real explanation of\nthe man can only lie in his own congenital organisation. That he was\na radically abnormal person is fairly clear. Not that he was morbid\neither in body or mind. On the contrary, he was a man of fine presence,\nof abounding health--always looking ten years younger than his age--of\nthe most robust appetites, a great eater, who delighted to see others,\nespecially women, eat heartily also, a man of indubitable sexual\nvigour; however great the demands he made upon his physical energy\nit seldom failed to respond, and his capacity for rest was equally\ngreat; he could sleep nineteen hours at a stretch. His mental health\nwas not less sound. The most punctilious alienist, with this frank and\ncopious history before him, could not commit Casanova to an asylum.\nWhatever offences against social codes he may have committed, Casanova\ncan scarcely be said to have sinned against natural laws. He was only\nabnormal because so natural a person within the gates of civilisation\nis necessarily abnormal and at war with his environment. Far from\nbeing the victim of morbidities and perversities, Casanova presents\nto us the natural man _in excelsis_. He was a man for whom the\nexternal world existed, and who reacted to all the stimuli it presents\nto the healthy normal organism. His intelligence was immensely keen\nand alert, his resourcefulness, his sagacious audacity, his presence\nof mind, were all of the first order. He was equally swift to feel,\nto conceive, and to act. His mental organisation was thus singularly\nharmonious, and hence his success in gratifying his eager and immense\nappetite for the world, an appetite unsatiated and insatiable even\nto the last, or he would have found no pleasure in writing these\n_M\u00e9moires_. Casanova has been described as a psychological type\nof instability. That is to view him superficially. A man who adapts\nhimself so readily and so effectively to any change in his environment\nor in his desires only exhibits the instability which marks the most\nintensely vital organisms. The energy and ability which Casanova\ndisplayed in gratifying his instincts would have sufficed to make a\nreputation of the first importance in any department, as a popular\nstatesman, a great judge, a merchant prince, and enabled him to die\nworn out by the monotonous and feverish toil of the senate, the court,\nor the counting-house. Casanova chose to _live_. A crude and\nbarbarous choice it seems to us, with our hereditary instinct to spend\nour lives in wasting the reasons for living. But it is certain that\nCasanova never repented his choice. Assuredly we need not, for few\njudges, statesmen, or merchants have ever left for the joy of humanity\nany legacy of their toil equal to these _M\u00e9moires_.\n\nBut such swift energy of vital action and reaction, such ardour of\ndeed in keeping pace with desire, are in themselves scarcely normal.\nCasanova\u2019s abnormality is suggested by the tendency to abnormality\nwhich we find in his family. We have seen what men his ancestors were;\nin reading the _M\u00e9moires_ we gather incidentally that one of his\nbrothers had married, though impotent, and another brother is described\nas a somewhat feeble-minded ne\u2019er-do-well. All the physical and mental\npotency of the family was intensely concentrated in Casanova. Yet he\nhimself in early childhood seems to have been little better than an\nidiot either in body or mind. He could recall nothing that happened\nbefore he was eight years of age. He was not expected to live; he\nsuffered from prolonged h\u00e6morrhages from the nose, and the vision\nof blood was his earliest memory. As a child he habitually kept his\nmouth open, and his face was stupid. \u201cThickness of the blood,\u201d said\nthe physicians of those days; it seems probable that he suffered from\ngrowths in the nose which, as we now know, produce such physical and\nmental inferiority as Casanova describes. The cure was spontaneous. He\nwas taken to Padua, and shortly afterwards began to develop wonderfully\nboth in stature and intelligence. In after years he had little cause to\ncomplain either of health or intellect. It is notable, however, that\nwhen, still a boy, he commenced his ecclesiastical training (against\nhis wishes, for he had chosen to be a doctor), he failed miserably as a\npreacher, and broke down in the pulpit; thus the Church lost a strange\nornament. Moreover, with all his swift sensation and alert response,\nthere was in Casanova an anomalous dulness of moral sensibility.\nThe insults to Holy Religion which seem to have brought him to that\nprison from which he effected his marvellous escape, were scarcely the\nserious protests of a convinced heretic; his deliberate trickery of\nMme. d\u2019Urf\u00e9 was not only criminal but cruel. His sense of the bonds\nof society was always somewhat veiled, and although the veil never\nbecame thick, and might be called the natural result of an adventurer\u2019s\nlife, one might also, perhaps, maintain that it was a certain degree\nof what is sometimes called moral imbecility that made Casanova an\nadventurer. But while we thus have to recognise that he was a man of\ndulled moral sensibility, we must also recognise that he possessed\na vigorous moral consciousness of his own, or we misunderstand him\naltogether. The point to be remembered is that the threshold of\nhis moral sensibility was not easily reached. There are some people\nwhose tactile sensibility is so obtuse that it requires a very wide\nseparation of the \u00e6sthesiometer to get the right response. It was so\nwith Casanova\u2019s moral sensitiveness. But, once aroused, his conscience\nresponded energetically enough. It seems doubtful whether, from his\nown point of view, he ever fell into grave sin, and therefore he is\nhappily free from remorse. No great credit is thus due to him; the same\npsychological characteristic is familiar in all criminals. It is not\ndifficult to avoid plucking the apples of shame when so singularly few\ngrow on your tree.\n\nCasanova\u2019s moral sensibility and its limits come out, where a man\u2019s\nmoral sensibility will come out, in his relations with women. Women\nplayed a large part in Casanova\u2019s life; he was nearly always in love.\nWe may use the word \u201clove\u201d here in no euphemistic sense, for although\nCasanova\u2019s passions grew and ripened with the rapidity born of long\nexperience in these matters, so fresh is the vitality of the man that\nthere is ever a virginal bloom on every new ardour. He was as far\nremoved from the cold-blooded libertine typified in Laclos\u2019s Valmont,\nunscrupulously using women as the instruments of his own lust, as from\nLaura\u2019s sonneteering lover. He had fully grasped what the latest\nwriter on the scientific psychology of sex calls the secondary law\nof courting, namely, the development in the male of an imaginative\nattentiveness to the psychical and bodily states of the female, in\nplace of an exclusive attentiveness to his own gratification. It is not\nimpossible that in these matters Casanova could have given a lesson to\nmany virtuous husbands of our own highly moral century. He never sank\nto the level of the vulgar maxim that \u201call\u2019s fair in love and war.\u201d\nHe sought his pleasure in the pleasure, and not in the complaisance,\nof the women he loved, and they seem to have gratefully and tenderly\nrecognised his skill in the art of love-making. Casanova loved many\nwomen, but broke few hearts. The same women appear again and again\nthrough his pages, and for the most part no lapse of years seems to\ndeaden the gladness with which he goes forth to meet them anew. That\nhe knew himself well enough never to take either wife or mistress must\nbe counted as a virtue, such as it was, in this incomparable lover of\nso many women. A man of finer moral fibre could scarcely have loved so\nmany women; a man of coarser fibre could never have left so many women\nhappy.\n\nThis very lack of moral delicacy which shuts Casanova off from the\nfinest human development is an advantage to the autobiographer. It\ninsures his sincerity because he is unconscious of offence; it saves\nus from any wearisome self-justification, because, for all his amused\nself-criticism, he sees no real need for justification. In Rousseau\u2019s\n_Confessions_ we hear the passionate pleader against men at\nthe tribunal of God; here we are conscious neither of opponent nor\ntribunal. Casanova is neither a pillar of society nor yet one of the\nmoral Samsons who delight to pull down the pillars of society; he has\ntaken the world as it is, and he has taken himself as he is, and he\nhas enjoyed them both hugely. So he is free to set forth the whole of\nhimself, his achievements, his audacities, his failures, his little\nweaknesses and superstitions, his amours, his quarrels, his good\nfortune and his bad fortune in the world that on the whole he has found\nso interesting and happy a place to dwell in. And his book remains an\nunending source of delightful study of the man of impulse and action\nin all his moods. The self-reliant man, immensely apt for enjoyment,\nwho plants himself solidly with his single keen wit before the mighty\noyster of the world, has never revealed himself so clearly before.\n\nWhat manner of man Casanova seemed to his contemporaries has only been\ndiscovered of recent years; and while the picture which we obtain of\nhim has been furnished by his enemies, and was not meant to flatter, it\nadmirably supports the _M\u00e9moires_. In 1755 a spy of the Venetian\nInquisition reported that Casanova united impiety, imposture, and\nwantonness to a degree that inspired horror. It was in that same year\nthat he was arrested, chiefly on the charge of contempt for religion,\nand sentenced to five years\u2019 imprisonment. Fifteen months later he\nhad effected his famous escape, and was able to pursue his career as\nan assured and accomplished adventurer who had brilliantly completed\nhis apprenticeship. It is not until many years later, in 1772, when\nhis long efforts to obtain pardon from his country still remained\nunsuccessful, that we obtain an admirable picture of him from the\nVenetian agent at Ancona. \u201cHe comes and goes where he will,\u201d the agent\nreports, \u201cwith open face and haughty mien, always well equipped. He\nis a man of some forty years at most [really about forty-eight, thus\nconfirming Casanova\u2019s statement that he was always taken for some ten\nyears younger than his years], of lofty stature, of fine and vigorous\naspect, with bright eyes and very brown skin. He wears a short,\nchestnut-coloured peruke. I am told that his character is bold and\ndisdainful, but especially that he is full of speech, and of witty and\nwell-instructed speech.\u201d Two years later Casanova was at last permitted\nto return to Venice. He there accepted the post of secret agent of\nthe State Inquisition for service within the city. Like Defoe and\nToland, who were also secret political agents, he attempted to justify\nhimself on grounds of public duty. In a few years, however, he was\ndismissed, perhaps, as Baschet suggests, on account of the fact that\nhis reports contained too much philosophy and not enough espionage;\nprobably it was realised that a man of such powerful individuality\nand independence was not fitted for servile uses. Finally, in 1782,\nhe was banished from Venice for an offence to which the blood of the\nCasanovas had always been easily inclined--he published an audacious\nsatire against a patrician. From Venice he went to Trieste, and thence\nto Vienna. There he met Count Waldstein, a fervent adept of Kabbalistic\nscience, a subject in which Casanova himself claimed to be proficient;\nhe had found it useful in certain dealings with credulous people. In\n1784 the count offered him the post of librarian, with a salary of\none thousand florins, at his castle of Dux, in Bohemia. It is said to\nbe a fine castle, and is still noted for its charming park. Here this\nprince of Bohemians spent the remainder of his life, devoting seven\nyears to the _M\u00e9moires_, on which he was still engaged at his\ndeath. A terra-cotta bust discovered at the castle (and etched some\nyears ago for _Le Livre_) shows him in mature age, a handsome,\nenergetic, and imposing head, with somewhat deep-set eyes; it is by\nno means the head of a scamp, but rather that of a philosopher, a\nphilosopher with unusual experience of affairs, a successful statesman,\none might say. A medallion portrait, of later date, which has also\nbeen reproduced, shows him at the age of sixty-three with lean, eager\nface, and lofty, though receding forehead, the type of the man of\nquick perception and swift action, the eagle type of man. The Prince\nde Ligne has also left a description of him as he appeared in old age,\nnow grown very irritable, ready to flare up at any imagined insult,\nengaged in perpetual warfare with domestics, but receiving the highest\nconsideration from those who knew how to appreciate the great qualities\nof the man and his unequalled experiences, and who knew also how to\nindulge his susceptibilities and smile at his antique fashions. Once\nhe went off in a huff to Weimar, and was graciously received by the\nDuke, but he soon came back again; all the favours there were showered\non a certain court favourite, one Goethe. It is clear, as we read\nthe Prince de Ligne\u2019s detailed description, that the restless old\nadventurer had need, even in the peaceful seclusion of Dux, of all the\nconsolation yielded by Socrates, Horace, Seneca, and Boethius, his\nfavourite philosophers. Here, at Dux, on the 4th of June 1798, Casanova\ndied. \u201cBear witness that I have lived as a philosopher and die as a\nChristian;\u201d that, we are told, was his last utterance after he had\nreceived the sacraments.\n\nFrom that moment Casanova with everything that concerned him was\ncovered by a pall of oblivion. He seems to have been carelessly cast\naside, together with the century of which he was so characteristic,\nand, as it now appears, so memorable a child. The world in which he\nhad lived so joyously and completely had been transformed by the\nRevolution. The new age of strenuous commercialism and complacent\nphilanthropy was in its vigorous youth, a sword in its right hand and\na Bible in its left. The only adventurer who found favour now was he\nwho took the glad news of salvation to the heathen, or mowed them\ndown to make new openings for trade. Had he been born later, we may\nbe well assured, Casanova would have known how to play his part; he\nwould not have fallen short of Borrow, who became an agent of the Bible\nSociety. But as it was, what had the new age to do with Casanova? No\none cared, no one even yet has cared, so much as to examine the drawers\nand cupboards full of papers which he left behind at Dux. Only on the\n13th of February, 1820, was the oblivion a little stirred. On that\ndate a certain Carlo Angiolieri appeared at Leipzig in the office of\nthe famous publisher, Brockhaus, carrying a voluminous manuscript in\nthe handwriting (as we now know) of Casanova and bearing the title,\n_Histoire de ma Vie jusqu\u2019\u00e0 l\u2019an 1797_.\n\nBut even the appearance of Carlo Angiolieri failed to dissipate\nthe gloom. Fifty years more were to pass before the figure of\nCasanova again became clear. This man, so ardently alive in every\nfibre, had now become a myth. The sagacious world--which imparts\nthe largest dole of contempt to the pilgrim who brings back to it\nthe largest gifts--refused to take Casanova seriously. The shrewd\ncritic wondered who wrote Casanova, just as he has since wondered who\nwrote Shakespeare. Paul Lacroix paid Stendhal the huge compliment of\nsuggesting that he had written the _M\u00e9moires_, a sufficiently\ningenious suggestion, for in Stendhal\u2019s Dauphiny spirit there is\nsomething of that love of adventure which is supremely illustrated\nin Casanova. But we now know that, as Armand Baschet first proved,\nCasanova himself really wrote his own _M\u00e9moires_. Moreover, so\nfar as investigation has yet been able to go, he wrote with strict\nregard to truth. Wherever it is possible to test Casanova, his\nessential veracity has always been vindicated. In the nature of things\nit is impossible to verify much that he narrates. When, however, we\nremember that he was telling the story of his life primarily for his\nown pleasure, it is clear that he had no motive for deception; and\nwhen we consider the surpassingly discreditable episodes which he\nhas recorded, we may recall that he has given not indeed positive\nproof of sincerity, but certainly the best that can be given in the\nabsence of direct proof. It remains a question how far a man is able\nto recollect the details of the far past--the conversations he held,\nthe garments he wore, the meals he ate--so precisely as Casanova\nprofesses to recollect them. This is a psychological problem which\nhas not yet been experimentally examined. There are, however, great\nindividual differences in memory, and there is reason to believe that\nan organisation, such as Casanova\u2019s, for which the external world is\nso vivid, is associated with memory-power of high quality. That this\nhistory is narrated with absolute precision of detail Casanova himself\nwould probably not have asserted. But there is no reason to doubt his\ngood faith, and there is excellent reason to accept the substantial\naccuracy of his narrative. It remains a personal document of a value\nwhich will increase rather than diminish as time goes by. It is one of\nthe great autobiographical revelations which the ages have left us,\nwith Augustine\u2019s, Cellini\u2019s, Rousseau\u2019s, of its own kind supreme.\n\n\n                                  II.\n\nThe _M\u00e9moires_ are authentic; they give us what they profess\nto give us--the true story of a man who unites (as it has been well\nsaid) the characters of Gil Blas and of Figaro. Thus Casanova was\nthe incarnation in real life of the two most typical imaginative\nfigures of his century. Yet even if the _M\u00e9moires_ had been the\ninvention of some novelist of surpassing genius they would still\npossess extraordinary interest. We may forget that the book is an\nautobiography, and still find it, as a story of adventure, the\napotheosis of the picaresque novel.\n\nThe picaresque novel--although a Frenchman brought it to perfection in\n_Gil Blas_--arose and flourished in Spain, Casanova\u2019s ancestral\ncountry, and its piquancy, variety, and audacity seem to have been\nvery congenial to the Spanish spirit and the Spanish soil. Casanova\u2019s\n_M\u00e9moires_ carry this form of story on to a broader and in some\nrespects higher plane. The old _picaro_ never dared affront\nthe world; he cringed before it and slunk behind its back to make\ngrimaces. Casanova, too, was an adventurer living by his wits, but he\napproached the world with the same self-confidence as he approached\na beautiful woman, and having won its favours treats it with the\nsame consideration. Unlike the _picaro_ whose delight it is to\nreveal the pettinesses of the men he has duped, Casanova shows his\nmagnificence in adventure by regarding the world as a foeman worthy\nof all his courtesy; and with incomparable impartiality, as well as\nskill, he presents to us the narrative of all the perils he encountered\nor sought. Few old men sitting down in the evening of their days to\nchatter of old times have been so free as Casanova from the vices of\nsenile literature. He never maunders of the things that are so dear to\nthe aged merely because they are past; he introduces no superfluous\nreflections or comments. We recognise that the hand which keeps this\npen so surely to the point is the hand of a man of action. Casanova\u2019s\nskill in narrative is conspicuously shown in the love-adventures which\nform so large and important a part of his book, as of his life. (Men\nusually regard love as a bagatelle, he says somewhere, but, for his\nown part, he adds, he has found no more important business in life.)\nThere would seem to be nothing so difficult as to tell a long series of\namours, unshrinkingly, from first to last, without drawing a curtain at\nany stage. Nearly every writer in fiction or in autobiography who has\nattempted this has only produced an effect of weary monotony or else\nof oppressive closeness. But Casanova succeeds. Partly this is due to\nthe variety and individuality he is able to give, not only to every\nincident, but to every woman he meets; so that his book is a gallery\nof delightful women, drawn with an art that almost recalls his great\ncontemporary, Goethe. Partly it seems he was aided by his vivid and\nsympathetic Venetian temperament; his swift, unliterary style finds\ntime for no voluptuous languors. He was aided even by his immodesty,\nfor in literature as in the plastic arts and in life itself, the nude\nis nearer to virtue than the _d\u00e9collet\u00e9_. The firm and absolute\nprecision of every episode in these _M\u00e9moires_ leaves no room for\nany undue dallying with the fringes of love\u2019s garments. Casanova tells\nhis story swiftly and boldly, with no more delay than is needed to\nrecord every essential detail; he is the absolute anti-type to Sterne\nas a narrator; the most libertine of authors, he is yet free from\nprurience. Thus the man of action covers the romancer with confusion;\nthis supreme book of adventures is a real man\u2019s record of his own real\nlife.\n\nBut let us forget that it is an autobiography and take it merely as a\nstory. Its immense range of human interest, its audacious realism, its\nfreedom from perversity, entitle us to regard it as a typical story of\nadventure. And I ask myself: What is the relation of such a book to\nlife? what is the moral worth of Casanova\u2019s _M\u00e9moires_?\n\nA foolish, superfluous question, I know, it seems to many. And I am\nwilling to admit that there may possibly be things in life which it is\ndesirable to do, and yet undesirable to moralise over; I would even\nassert that the moral worth of many of our actions lies precisely in\ntheir unconsciousness of any moral worth. Yet beneath the freest moral\nmovements there must be a solid basis of social law, just as beneath\nthe most gracious movements of the human body there lies the regulated\nplay of mechanical law. When we find it assumed that there are things\nwhich are good to do and not good to justify we may strongly suspect\nthat we have come across a mental muddle.\n\nTo see the matter rightly we must take it at the beginning. No one\ncan rightly see the moral place of immoral literature--the literature\nof adventure--in the case of adults unless he sees it in the case\nof children. Of late years the people who write in newspapers and\nmagazines have loudly abused all stories of the crudely heroic order,\nthe stories of impossible virtue and unheard-of villainy in far-away\nlands, of marvellously brave bands under extravagantly reckless\nleaders, who march on through careless bloodshed to incredible victory\nor incalculable treasure. The hero of the average boy--magnificent\nsombrero on head, pistols in belt, galloping off on his mighty\ncharger, a villain grasped by the scruff of the neck in each\noutstretched hand--has been severely mauled. The suggestions offered\nfor the displacement of this literature furnish documents for the\npsychologist. Let us have cheap lives of Jesus and the Apostle Paul!\nlet us flood the world with the sober romances licensed by religious\nsocieties!--say those good people in the newspapers and the magazines.\nIf they have ever themselves been children, and if so, how they came\ninto the world shrouded in an impenetrable caul which will for ever\nshut them out from insight into the hearts of the young, is not known,\nand perhaps is no matter. Putting aside these estimable persons,\nthere is in every heart a chamber dedicated to the impossible, and\nthe younger the heart the larger is this golden ventricle. For the\nchild who can just read, Jack the Giant-killer, and the story of those\nhuman-souled swans which make the swan a mystic bird for all our lives,\nare better worth knowing than any fact of the visible world. Some\nday the Life of Jesus, and even perhaps the Life of Paul, will seem\nto be among the sweetest and strangest of the world\u2019s fairy-tales;\nbut that day will hardly come until every church and chapel has been\nspiritually razed to the ground. It cannot come to the generation which\nhas had the name of Jesus thrust down its throat in Sunday-schools and\nboard-schools. We English are a practical, common-sense people, and\nwe cure our children of any hearty taste for religion as confectioners\nare said to cure their assistants of any excessive taste for sweets,\nby a preliminary surfeit. No doubt we are very wise, but we postpone\nindefinitely the day when children will come to our religious tales in\nthe pure gladness of their joy in the marvellous.\n\nIn the meantime there ought not to be any doubt that children should\nbe fed on fairy-tales as their souls\u2019 most natural food. Nothing can\nmake up for the lack of them at the outset, just as no later supply of\nmilk can compensate for the starvation involved in feeding infants on\nstarch. The power of assimilating fairy-tales is soon lost, and unless\nthe child has a rarely powerful creative imagination its spiritual\ngrowth on this side at least remains for ever stunted.\n\nIf then childhood needs its pure fairy-land, and youth its fairy-land\nof impossible adventure, what fairy-land is left for adult age?\nScarcely the novel. The modern novel in its finest manifestations,\nhowever engrossingly interesting, takes us but a little step from\nthe passionate interests of our own lives. If I turn to the two\nrecent novels which have most powerfully interested me--Huysmans\u2019 _En\nRoute_ and Hardy\u2019s _Jude the Obscure_--I find that their interest\nlies largely in the skill with which they present and concentrate\ntwo mighty problems of actual life, the greatest of all problems,\nreligion and sex. In adult life we seek a fairy-land occupied by beings\nat once as real as ourselves, and yet far removed from the sphere\nof our own actual interests and the heavy burden of the atmosphere\nunder which we live; only so can it fascinate the imaginations of\nthose who have outgrown the simple imaginative joys of early life.\nCasanova\u2019s _M\u00e9moires_ is the perfected type of the books which answer\nthese requirements. It is unflinchingly real, immensely varied, the\naudaciously truthful narrative of undeniably human impulses. And yet\nit carries us out of relation with the problems of our actual life; it\nleads us into the realm of fairy-land.\n\nBut--analysing the matter a little more closely--it may still fairly\nbe asked whether a book which, in spite of its remoteness, represents\na form of human life, must not have a certain bearing on morals. Is\nnot a part of its attraction, and indeed that of all fairy-lands, the\nexistence of a different code of morals? It seems to me that this is\nso. But precisely in that lies the moral value of such literature.\nIndeed the whole question of the moral value of art--that is to say,\nof \u00e6sthetic enjoyment--is really involved here. The matter is worth\nlooking into.\n\nIt is one of Schopenhauer\u2019s unforgettable sayings, that whatever\ncourse of action we take in life there is always some element in our\nnature which could only find satisfaction in an exactly contrary\ncourse; so that, take what road we will, we yet always remain restless\nand unsatisfied in part. To Schopenhauer that reflection made for\npessimism; it need not. The more finely and adequately we adjust\nourselves to the actual conditions of our life the larger, no doubt,\nthe unused and unsatisfied region within us. But it is just here\nthat art comes in. Art largely counts for its effects on playing on\nthese unused fibres of our organism, and by so doing it serves to\nbring them into a state of harmonious satisfaction--moralises them,\nif you will. Alienists have described a distressing form of insanity\npeculiar to old maids who have led honourable lives of abstinence\nand abnegation. After years of seeming content with the conditions\nof their lot they begin to manifest uncontrollable obsessions and\nerotic impulses; the unused elements of life, which they had shut\ndown in the cellars of their souls and almost forgotten, have at last\narisen in rebellion, clamouring tumultuously for satisfaction. The\nold orgies--the Saturnalian festival at Christmas and the Midsummer\nFestival on St. John\u2019s Day--bear witness that the ancients in their\nwisdom recognised that the bonds of the actual daily moral life must\nsometimes be relaxed lest they break from over-tension. We have lost\nthe orgy, but in its place we have art. Our respectable matrons no\nlonger send out their daughters with torches at midnight into the\nwoods and among the hills, where dancing and wine and blood may lash\ninto their flesh the knowledge of the mysteries of life, but they take\nthem to _Tristan_, and are fortunately unable to see into those\ncarefully brought-up young souls on such occasions. The moralising\nforce of art lies, not in its capacity to present a timid imitation\nof our experiences, but in its power to go beyond our experience,\nsatisfying and harmonising the unfulfilled activities of our nature.\nThat art should have such an effect on those who contemplate it is not\nsurprising when we remember that, to some extent, art has a similar\ninfluence on its creators. \u201cLibertin d\u2019esprit mais sage de m\u0153urs,\u201d it\nwas said of Watteau. Mohammed when he wrote so voluptuously of the\nblack-eyed houris of Paradise was still young and the blameless husband\nof an aged woman.\n\n    \u201cSinging is sweet; but be sure of this,\n    Lips only sing when they cannot kiss.\u201d\n\nIt has been said of Wagner that he had in him the instincts of\nan ascetic and of a satyr, and the first is just as necessary as\nthe second to the making of a great artist. It is a very ancient\nobservation that the most unchaste verse has often been written by\nthe chastest poets, and that the writers who have written most purely\nhave found their compensation in living impurely.[5] In the same\nmanner it has always been found in Christendom, both among Catholics\nand Protestants, that much of the most licentious literature has been\nwritten by the clergy, by no means because the clergy are a depraved\nclass, but precisely because the austerity of their lives renders\nnecessary for them these emotional athletics. Of course, from the\nstandpoint of simple nature, such literature is bad, it is merely a\nform of that obscenity which, as Huysmans has acutely remarked, can,\nonly be produced by those who are chaste; in Nature desire passes\nswiftly into action, leaving little or no trace on the mind. A certain\ndegree of continence--I do not mean merely in the region of sex but in\nthe other fields of human action also--is needed as a breeding-ground\nfor the dreams and images of desire to develop into the perfected\nvisions of art. But the point of view of society is scarcely that\nof unadulterated nature. In society we have not always room for the\nswift and free passage of impulse into action; to avoid the evils of\nrepressed impulse this play of the emotions on a higher and serener\nplane becomes essential. Just as we need athletics to expand and\nharmonise the coarser unused energies of the organism, so we need art\nand literature to expand and harmonise its finer energies, emotion\nbeing, as it may not be superfluous to point out, itself largely a\nmuscular process, motion in a more or less arrested form, so that there\nis here more than a mere analogy. Art from this point of view is the\nathletics of the emotions.\n\nThe adventures of fairy-land--of which for our age I take Casanova\u2019s\n_M\u00e9moires_ as the type--constitute an important part of this\nathletics. It may be abused, just as we have the grosser excesses of\nthe runner and the cyclist; but it is the abuse and not the use which\nis pernicious, and under the artificial conditions of civilisation the\ncontemplation of the life and adventures of the heroically natural\nman is an exercise with fine spiritual uses. Such literature thus\nhas a moral value: it helps us to live peacefully within the highly\nspecialised routine of civilisation.\n\nThat is the underlying justification for Casanova\u2019s _M\u00e9moires_\nas moral literature. But there is no reason why it should emerge into\nconsciousness when we take up these _M\u00e9moires_, any more than\na man need take up a branch of physical athletics with any definite\nhygienic aim. It is sufficient to be moved by the pure enjoyment of\nit. And there must be something unwholesome and abnormal--something\ncorrupt at the core--in any civilised man or woman who cannot win some\nenjoyment from this book.\n\n\n                                 III.\n\nThe more I contemplate the eighteenth century the more interesting I\nfind it. In my youth it seemed to me unworthy of a glance. The books\nand the men, Shelley above all, who stirred my young blood belonged to\nthe early nineteenth century. I was led to regard the last century as\na dull period of stagnation and decay, a tomb into which the spirit\nof man sank after the slow death which followed the Renaissance. The\ndawn of the nineteenth century was an Easter Day of the human soul,\nrising from the sepulchre and flinging aside the old eighteenth century\nwinding-sheet.\n\nI have nothing yet to say against the early nineteenth century, which\nwas indeed only the outcome of the years that went before, but I have\ngained a new delight in the men of the eighteenth century. It was in\nthat age that the English spirit found its most complete intellectual\nexpression, unaffected by foreign influence. When that spirit, reviving\nafter the wars that lamentably cut short the development of Chaucer\u2019s\nmagnificent song, again began its free literary development--no doubt\nwith some stimulus from Humanism--it was suddenly smothered at birth\nby the Renaissance wave from Italy and France. We may divine how it\nwould have developed independently if we think of John Heywood\u2019s\ndramatic sketches--pale as those are after the Miller\u2019s tale in which\nfor the first and last time Chaucer perfectly mated English realism to\nthe lyric grace of English idealism--and to some extent, also, when\nwe turn to the later Heywood\u2019s plays, or Dekker\u2019s, and especially to\nthe robust and tolerant humanity, the sober artistic breadth of the\none play of Porter\u2019s which has come down to us. But the intoxicating\nmelodies of Ronsard and his fellows were heard from over sea, and the\nmen of the English Renaissance arose--Lyly and Lodge and Campion with\ntheir refinements, Greene and Nash with their gay and brilliant music,\nMarlowe with his arrogant, irresistible energy--and brought to birth\nan absolutely new spirit, which may have been English enough in its\nrich and virginal elements, but received the seminal principle from\nabroad. It needed a century and more for that magnificent tumult to\nsubside, and for the old English spirit to reappear and reach at last\nfull maturity, by happy chance again in association with France, though\nthis time it is England that chiefly plays the masculine part and\nimpregnates France. Thus the eighteenth century was an age in which the\nEnglish spirit found complete self-expression, and also an age in which\nEngland and France joined hands intellectually, and stood together at\nthe summit of civilisation, with no rivals, unless Goethe and Kant may\nsuffice to stand for a whole people. In the great Englishmen of these\ndays we find the qualities which are truly native to Britain, and which\nhave too often been torn and distracted by insane aberrations. There\nis a fine sobriety and sagacity in the English spirit, a mellow human\nsolidity, such as the Romans possessed always, but which we in our\nmisty and storm-swept island have often exchanged, perhaps for better,\nbut certainly for other qualities. It was not so in the eighteenth\ncentury, and by no accident the historian who has most finely expressed\nthe genius of Rome was an eighteenth century Englishman. All the most\ntypical men of that age possessed in varying degree the same qualities:\nLocke, Swift, Fielding, Hume, Richardson, Goldsmith, Hogarth, Johnson,\nGodwin. Thus the eighteenth century should undoubtedly be a source of\npride to the British heart. England\u2019s reputation in the world rests\nlargely on our poetic aptitudes and our political capacity. Eighteenth\ncentury England is not obviously pre-eminent in either respect,\nalthough it was the great age of our political development and the\nseed-time of our second great poetic age; it produced scarcely more\nthan a single first-class poet exclusively within its limits, and it\nlost America. Yet our greatest philosopher, our greatest historian,\nour greatest biographer, nearly all our greatest novelists, our great\ninitiators in painting, who were indirectly the initiators of the\ngreater art of France, belong wholly to this century, and an unequalled\ncluster of our greatest poets belongs to its close. And these men were\nmarked by sanity and catholicity, a superb solidity of spirit; they\nbecame genuinely cosmopolitan without losing any of their indigenous\nvirtues. Without the eighteenth century we should never have known\nmany of the greatest qualities which are latent, and too often only\nlatent, in our race. Landor and Wordsworth alone were left to carry\nsomething of the spirit of the English eighteenth century far on into\nthe literature of our own wholly alien century.\n\nAnd their brothers of France were their most worthy peers. This spirit,\nindeed, which we see so conspicuously in the finest men of their age\nin England and France, was singularly widespread throughout Europe, a\ncheerful sobriety, a solid humanity, little troubled by any of those\n\u201cmovements\u201d which were to become so prolific and so noisy in the next\ncentury. Christianity, it seemed, was decaying. Diderot, well informed\non English affairs, wrote to a friend that in a few years it would be\nextinct, and looking at the state of the English Church at that time,\nno one could reasonably have surmised that Zinzendorf in Germany,\nand after him Wesley in England on a lower plane and Law on a higher\nplane, had already initiated that revival of Christianity which in\nour own century was destined to work itself out so obstreperously.\nBut the world seemed none the worse for the apparent subsidence\nof Christianity; in the opinion of many it seemed to be very much\nthe better. The tolerant paganism of classic days appeared to be\nreasserting itself, robustly in England, with a delicate refinement\nin France,--setting the paganism of Watteau against the paganism\nof Fielding--while Goethe and the Germans generally were striving\nto rescue and harmonise the best of Christianity with the best of\nantiquity. European civilisation was fully expanded; for a long time\nno great disturbing force had arisen, and though on every side the\ntender buds of coming growths might have been detected, they could not\nyet reveal their strength. Such a period certainly has its terrible\ndefects; mellowness is not far from rottenness. But then youth also has\nits defects, and its crude acidity is still further from perfection.\nThe nineteenth century has a higher moral standard than the eighteenth,\nso at least we in our self-righteousness have been accustomed to\nthink. But even if so, the abstract existence of a high moral standard\nis another thing from the prevalence of high moral living. Whatever\nthe standard may be, it is a question whether the lives are much\ndifferent. In the one case the standard is much above the practice,\nin the other only a little above it--that is the chief difference.\nAnd the advantages of winding the standard up to the higher pitch are\nnot so unmixed as is sometimes assumed. One need not question these\nadvantages, well recognised in the present century. But the advantages\nof a lower standard are less often recognised. There is especially\nthe great advantage that we attain a higher degree of sincerity, and\nsincerity, if not itself the prime virtue, is surely, whatever the\nvirtue may be, its chief accompaniment. A life that is swathed and\ndeformed in much drapery is not so wholesome or so effective as one\nthat can live nearer to the sun. And the unrecognisable villain is\nmost pernicious; the brigand who holds a revolver at your head is\nbetter than the sleek and well-dressed thief who opens the proceedings\nwith prayer. The eighteenth has been called a gross and unintelligent\ncentury. In the department of criticism, indeed, this century in\nEngland (for it was far otherwise in Germany) comes very short of our\nown century, and it is largely this failure to measure the precise\nvalue of things in \u00e6sthetic perception which now makes that age seem\nso shocking. From this point of view every great age--and not least\nour own greatest Elizabethan age--is equally defective. A period\nof energetic life cannot afford to spend much time on the solitary\ncontemplation of its own bowels of \u00e6sthetic emotion. To produce a Pater\nis the one exquisite function of a spiritually barren and exhausted\nage. And still the eighteenth century redeems its critical grossness\nby making even this later development possible; it lifted the man of\nletters from the place of a dependent to the place of a free man boldly\nprophesying in his own right; and, moreover, it was the first century\nwhich dared to claim the complete equality of men and women with all\nwhich that involves.\n\nIf it has required a certain insight for the child of our own century\nto discover the great qualities of the last century, there cannot be\nmuch doubt about the final judgment of the most competent judges.\nThe eighteenth was, as Renouvier has called it, the first century\nof humanity since Christ, while at the same time, as Lange has said,\nit was penetrated through by the search for the ideal, or, as a more\nrecent thinker concludes, it was a century dominated by the maxim\n_Salus populi suprema est lex_, holding in its noble aspirations\nafter general happiness the germs of all modern socialism. In art and\nliterature it saw the fresh spring of those blossoms which opened so\nsplendidly and faded so swiftly in our century; it was the century not\nonly of Hogarth and Fielding and Voltaire, but of Blake and Rousseau,\nof Diderot, of Swedenborg and Mesmer, of the development of modern\nmusic with Mozart and Beethoven, of the unparalleled enthusiasm\nawakened by the discovery of the Keltic world. And as its crowning\nglory the eighteenth century claims Goethe. Men will scarcely look\nback to our own century as so good to live in. One may well say that\nhe would have gladly lived in the thirteenth century, perhaps the most\ninteresting of all since Christ, or in the sixteenth, probably the most\nalive of all, or the eighteenth, surely the most human. But why have\nlived in the nineteenth, the golden age of machinery, and of men used\nas machines?\n\nEighteenth century Europe, being what it was, formed a perfect stage\nfor Casanova to play his part on. With his Spanish and Italian blood,\nhe was of the race of those who had come so actively to the front\nin the last days of old classic Rome, and his immediate ancestors\nhad lived in the centre of the pagan Rome of the Renaissance. Thus\nhe carried with him traditions which consorted well with much in\nthe eighteenth century. And he had that in him, moreover, which no\ntradition can give, the incommunicable vitality in the presence of\nwhich all tradition shrivels into nothingness.\n\nCasanova knew not only Italy, France, England, Germany, and Holland;\nhe had visited Spain, Russia, Poland, Greece, Turkey, and Asia Minor.\nHe was received by Benedict XII., by Frederick II. of Prussia, by the\nEmpress Catherine, by Joseph II. He was at home in Paris, in London,\nin Berlin, in Vienna; he knew Munich, Dresden, Moscow, St. Petersburg,\nWarsaw, Barcelona. His picture of London is of great interest. He\nspent much of the year 1763 there, and some of his most interesting\nexperiences, romantic and psychological, occurred during that period.\nHe even dated the close of what he calls the second act in the comedy\nof his life from that visit to London, the next and concluding act\nbeing one of slow declination. So profound was his depression at this\ntime that one day he went towards the Thames at the Tower with the\ndeliberate intention of drowning himself, having first filled his\npockets with bullets to ensure sinking. Fortunately an English friend\n(to whom the world owes thanks) met him on the way, read his resolve\nin his face, and insisted on carrying him off to a very convivial\nparty, whose indecorous proceedings, although Casanova only remained\na passive witness, served to dissipate all thoughts of suicide. He\nis not, however, prejudiced against England; on the contrary, he\nfinds that no nation offers so many interesting peculiarities to the\nattentive observer. As usual, in London Casanova mixed indiscriminately\nwith the best and the worst society; his wit, his knowledge, his\nimperturbable effrontery, his charming conversation, served to open\nany door that he desired to open. He gives us curious glimpses into\nthe lives of English noblemen of the day, and not less intimate\npictures of the _chevaliers d\u2019industrie_ who preyed upon them.\nIn the course of one adventure with people of the latter sort he was\nhaled before the eminent blind magistrate Sir John Fielding, whom\nhe seems to have mistaken, though this is not quite clear, for his\nyet more eminent brother Henry. He also met Kitty Fischer, the most\nfashionable _cocotte_ of her day, whom we may yet see as Reynolds\ncaught her in a well-inspired moment, dilating her sensitive nostrils,\nradiantly inhaling the joy of life, and he tells us anecdotes of her\nextravagance, of the jewels she wore, of the thousand guinea banknote\nwhich she ate in a sandwich.[6]\n\nThroughout Europe Casanova knew many of the most celebrated people\nof his time, though it is clear--as one would expect from a man of\nhis impartial humanity--he seldom went out of his way to meet them.\nHis visit to Voltaire is a distinct contribution to our knowledge\nof that sage; he admired Helvetius, and wondered how a man of so\nmany virtues could have denied virtue; D\u2019Alembert he thought the\nmost truly modest man he had ever met, an interesting tribute from\nthe most truly immodest man of that period. The value of Casanova\u2019s\nrecord of the eighteenth century lies, however, by no means in the\nglimpses he has given us of great personalities: that has been much\nbetter done by much more insignificant writers. It is as a picture of\nthe manners and customs of the eighteenth century throughout Europe\nthat the _M\u00e9moires_ are invaluable. Casanova saw Europe from\nthe courts of kings to the lowest _bas fonds_. He lived in the\ncastles of French and Italian nobles, in the comfortable homes of\nDutch merchants, in his own house in Pall Mall, in taverns and inns\nand peasants\u2019 cottages anywhere. He had no intellectual prejudices,\nhe had an immense versatility in tastes and practical aptitudes, he\nwas genuinely interested in all human things. Thus he approached life\nwith no stereotyped set of opinions, but with all the aloofness of an\nunclassed adventurer, who was at the same time a scholar and a man of\nletters. It can scarcely be that there is any record to compare with\nthis as a vivid and impartial picture of the eighteenth century, in its\nrobust solidity, its cheerful and tolerant scepticism, its serene and\neasy gaiety, its mellow decay. That is our final debt to this unique\nand immortal book.\n\n\nWhat should be our last word about Casanova? It is true that\nalthough--if indeed one should not say because--he was so heroically\nnatural Casanova was not an average normal man. It is scarcely given\nto the average man to expend such versatile and reckless skill in the\nfield of the world, or to find so large a part wherein to play off that\nskill. But neither are the saints and philosophers normal; St. Bernard\nwas not normal, nor yet Spinoza. And surely it is a poor picture of\nthe world which would show us St. Bernard and Spinoza and shut out\nCasanova. \u201cVous avez l\u2019outil universel,\u201d Fabrice said to Gil Blas.\nCasanova\u2019s brain was just such a tool of universal use, and he never\nfailed to use it. For if you would find the supreme type of the human\nanimal in the completest development of his rankness and cunning, in\nthe very plenitude of his most excellent wits, I know not where you may\nmore safely go than to the _M\u00e9moires_ of the self-ennobled Jacques\nCasanova Chevalier de Seingalt.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[Footnote 5: I take the first example which comes to hand, for whatever\nit may be worth:--\u201cLuttrell was talking of Moore and Rogers--the\npoetry of the former so licentious, that of the latter so pure; much\nof its popularity owing to its being so carefully weeded of everything\napproaching to indelicacy; and the contrast between the _lives_\nand the _works_ of the two men--the former a pattern of conjugal\nand domestic regularity, the latter of all the men he had ever known\nthe greatest sensualist\u201d (Greville\u2019s _Memoirs_, vol. iii. p. 324).]\n\n[Footnote 6: For another side of life we may read his description of\nthe English Sunday:--\u201cOn Sunday one dares neither to play at cards\nnor to perform music. The numerous spies who infest the streets of\nthis capital listen to the sounds which come from the parlours of\nthe houses, and if they suspect any gaming or singing they conceal\nthemselves and slip in at the first opportunity to seize those bad\nChristians who dare to profane the Lord\u2019s Day by amusements which\neverywhere else are counted innocent. In revenge the English may go\nwith impunity to sanctify the holy day in the taverns and brothels\nwhich are so plentiful in this city.\u201d One may compare with this Mme.\nde Sta\u00ebl\u2019s almost Dantesque description--so at least it remains in the\nmemory--of the gloom of the Scotch Sabbath in the days of Burns. This\nstatement of the matter remained substantially accurate until almost\nyesterday. So long it remained for the English spirit to re-conquer\nSunday! It must be remembered that Puritanism, while always a part of\nthe English spirit, was not originally its predominant note; it only\nbecame so as an inevitable reaction against the exotic Renaissance\nmovement. Mary Stuart made Knox, Charles I. made Cromwell, and\nboth monarchs were intimately associated with the last wave of the\nRenaissance.]\n\n\n\n\n                                 ZOLA.\n\n\nZOLA\u2019S name--a barbarous, explosive name, like an anarchist\u2019s bomb--has\nbeen tossed about amid hoots and yells for a quarter of a century.\nIn every civilised country we have heard of the man who has dragged\nliterature into the gutter, who has gone down to pick up the filth of\nthe streets, and has put it into books for the filthy to read. And\nin every civilised country his books have been read, by the hundred\nthousand.\n\nTo-day, his great life-work is completed. At the same time, the\nuproar that it aroused has, to a large extent, fallen silent. Not\nthat there is any general agreement as to the rank of the author of\nthe Rougon-Macquart series; but the storms that greeted it have worn\nthemselves out, and it is recognised that there are at least two sides\nto this as to any other question. Such a time is favourable to the calm\ndiscussion of Zola\u2019s precise position.\n\nThe fundamental assertion of those who, in their irreconcilable\nopposition to Zola, have rightly felt that abuse is not argument, has\nalways been that Zola is no artist. The matter has usually presented\nitself to them as a question of Idealism _versus_ Realism.\nIdealism, as used by the literary critic, seems to mean a careful\nselection of the facts of life for artistic treatment, certain facts\nbeing suited for treatment in the novel, certain other facts being\nnot so suited; while the realist, from the literary critic\u2019s point of\nview, is one who flings all facts indiscriminately into his pages. I\nthink that is a fair statement of the matter, for the literary critic\ndoes not define very clearly; still less does he ask himself how far\nthe idealism he advocates is merely traditional, nor, usually, to\nwhat extent the manner of presentation should influence us. He does\nnot ask himself these questions, nor need we ask him, for in the case\nof Zola (or, indeed, of any other so-called \u201crealist\u201d) there is no\nsuch distinction. There is no absolute realism, merely a variety of\nidealisms; the only absolute realism would be a phonographic record,\nillustrated photographically, after the manner of the cinematograph.\nZola is just as much an idealist as George Sand. It is true that he\nselects very largely from material things, and that he selects very\nprofusely. But the selection remains, and where there is deliberate\nselection there is art. We need not trouble ourselves here--and I doubt\nwhether we are ever called upon to trouble ourselves--about \u201cRealism\u201d\nand \u201cIdealism.\u201d The questions are: Has the artist selected the right\nmaterials? Has he selected them with due restraint?\n\nThe first question is a large one, and, in Zola\u2019s case at all events,\nit cannot, I think, be answered on purely \u00e6sthetic grounds; the second\nmay be answered without difficulty. Zola has himself answered it; he\nadmits that he has been carried away by his enthusiasm, and perhaps,\nalso, by his extraordinary memory for recently-acquired facts (a memory\nlike a sponge, as he has put it, quickly swollen and quickly emptied);\nhe has sown details across his page with too profuse a hand. It is\nthe same kind of error as Whitman made, impelled by the same kind of\nenthusiasm. Zola expends immense trouble to get his facts; he has told\nhow he ransacked the theologians to obtain body and colour for _La\nFaute de l\u2019Abb\u00e9 Mouret_, perhaps the best of his earlier books. But\nhe certainly spent no more preliminary labour on it than Flaubert spent\non _Madame Bovary_, very far less than Flaubert spent on the study\nof Carthage for _Salammb\u00f4_. But the results are different; the\none artist gets his effects by profusion and multiplicity of touches,\nthe other by the deliberate self-restraint with which he selects and\nemphasises solely the salient and significant touches. The latter\nmethod seems to strike more swiftly and deeply the ends of art. Three\nstrokes with the brush of Frans Hals are worth a thousand of Denner\u2019s.\nRich and minute detail may impress us, but it irritates and wearies in\nthe end. If a man takes his two children on to his knees, it matters\nlittle whether he places L\u00e9nore on his right knee and Henri on his\nleft, or the other way about; the man himself may fail to know or to\nrealise, and the more intense his feelings the less likely is he to\nknow. When we are living deeply, the facts of our external life do not\npresent themselves to us in elaborate detail; a very few points are--as\nit has been termed--focal in consciousness, while the rest are marginal\nin subconsciousness. A few things stand out vividly at each moment of\nlife; the rest are dim. The supreme artist is shown by the insight\nand boldness with which he seizes and illuminates these bright points\nat each stage, leaving the marginal elements in due subordination.\nDramatists so unlike as Ford and Ibsen, novelists so unlike as Flaubert\nand Tolstoi, yet alike impress us by the simple vividness of their\nartistic effects. The methods adopted by Zola render such effects\nextremely difficult of attainment. Perhaps the best proof of Zola\u2019s\nremarkable art is the skill with which he has neutralised the evil\nresults of his ponderous method. In his most characteristic novels, as\n_L\u2019Assommoir_, _Nana_, _Germinal_, his efforts to attain\nsalient perspective in the mass of trivial or technical things--to\nbuild a single elaborate effect out of manifold details--are often\nadmirably conducted. Take, for instance, the Voreux, the coal-pit which\nmay almost be said to be the hero of _Germinal_ rather than any\nof the persons in the book. The details are not interesting, but they\nare carefully elaborated, and the Voreux is finally symbolised as a\nstupendous idol, sated with human blood, crouching in its mysterious\nsanctuary. Whenever Zola wishes to bring the Voreux before us, this\nformula is repeated. And it is the same, in a slighter degree, with the\nother material personalities of the book. Sometimes, in the case of a\ncrowd, this formula is simply a cry. It is so with the Parisian mob\nwho yell \u201cA Berlin!\u201d in the highly-wrought conclusion to _Nana_;\nit is so with the crowd of strikers in _Germinal_ who shout for\nbread. It is more than the tricky repetition of a word or a gesture,\noverdone by Dickens and others; it is the artful manipulation of a\ncarefully-elaborated, significant phrase. Zola seems to have been the\nfirst who has, deliberately and systematically, introduced this sort of\n_leit-motiv_ into literature, as a method of summarising a complex\nmass of details, and bringing the total impression of them before\nthe reader. In this way he contrives to minimise the defects of his\nmethod, and to render his complex detail focal. He sometimes attains\npoignantly simple effects by the mere repetition of a _leit-motiv_\nat the right moment. And he is able at times, also, to throw aside his\ndetailed method altogether, and to reach effects of tragic intensity.\nThe mutilation of Maigrat\u2019s corpse is a scene which can scarcely have\nbeen described in a novel before. Given the subject, Zola\u2019s treatment\nof it has the strength, brevity, and certainty of touch which only\nbelong to great masters of art. That Zola is a great master of his art,\n_L\u2019Assommoir_ and _Germinal_--which, so far as I have read\nZola, seem his two finest works--are enough to prove. Such works are\nrelated to the ordinary novel much as Wagner\u2019s music-dramas are related\nto the ordinary Italian opera. Wagner reaches a loftier height of art\nthan Zola; he had a more complete grasp of all the elements he took in\nhand to unite. Zola has not seen with sufficient clearness the point of\nview of science, and the limits of its capacity for harmonising with\nfiction; nor has he with perfect sureness of vision always realised the\nends of art. He has left far too much of the scaffolding standing amid\nhis huge literary structures; there is too much mere brute fact which\nhas not been wrought into art. But, if Zola is not among the world\u2019s\ngreatest artists, I do not think we can finally deny that he is a great\nartist.\n\nTo look at Zola from the purely artistic standpoint, however, is\nscarcely to see him at all. His significance for the world generally,\nand even for literature, lies less in a certain method of using his\nmaterial--as it may be said to lie, for example, in the case of the\nGoncourts--than in the material itself, and the impulses and ideas that\nprompted his selection of that material. These growing piles of large\nbooks are the volcanic ejecta of an original and exuberant temperament.\nTo understand them we must investigate this temperament.\n\nA considerable and confused amount of racial energy was stored up\nin Zola. At once French, Italian, and Greek--with a mother from\nthe central Beauce country of France, more fruitful in corn than\nin intellect, and a father of mixed Italian and Greek race, a\nmechanical genius in his way, with enthusiastic energies and large\nschemes--he presents a curious combination of potential forces,\nperhaps not altogether a very promising combination. One notes that\nthe mechanical engineer in the father seems to have persisted in the\nson, not necessarily by heredity, but perhaps by early familiarity\nand association. Young Zola was a delicate child and by no means a\nbrilliant schoolboy, though he once won a prize for memory; such\nability as he showed was in the direction of science; he had no\nliterary aptitudes. He seems to have adopted literature chiefly because\npen and ink come handiest to the eager energies of a poor clerk. It\nis scarcely fanciful to detect the mechanical aptitudes still. Just\nas all Huxley\u2019s natural instincts were towards mechanics, and in\nphysiology he always sought for the \u201cgo\u201d of the organism, so Zola,\nhowever imperfect his scientific equipment may be, has always sought\nfor the \u201cgo\u201d of the social organism. The history of the Rougon-Macquart\nfamily is a study in social mathematics: given certain family strains,\nwhat is the dynamic hereditary outcome of their contact?\n\nTo the making of Zola there went, therefore, this curious racial blend,\nas a soil ready to be fertilised by any new seed, and a certain almost\ninstinctive tendency to look at things from the mechanical and material\npoint of view. To these, in very early life, a third factor was added\nof the first importance. During long years after his father\u2019s death,\nZola, as a child and youth, suffered from poverty, poverty almost\namounting to actual starvation, the terrible poverty of respectability.\nThe whole temper of his work and his outlook on the world are clearly\nconditioned by this prolonged starvation of adolescence. The timid and\nreserved youth--for such, it is said, has been Zola\u2019s character both\nin youth and manhood--was shut up with his fresh energies in a garret\nwhile the panorama of the Paris world was unfolded below him. Forced\nboth by circumstances and by temperament to practise the strictest\nchastity and sobriety, there was but one indulgence left open to him,\nan orgy of vision. Of this, as we read his books, we cannot doubt that\nhe fully availed himself, for each volume of the Rougon-Macquart series\nis an orgy of material vision.[7]\n\nZola remained chaste, and, it is said, he is still sober--though we\nare told that his melancholy morose face lights up like a gourmet\u2019s at\nthe hour of his abstemious dinner--but this early eagerness to absorb\nthe sights as well as the sounds, and one may add the smells, of the\nexternal world, has at length become moulded into a routine method.\nTo take some corner of life, and to catalogue every detail of it, to\nplace a living person there, and to describe every sight and smell\nand sound around him, although he himself may be quite unconscious of\nthem--that, in the simplest form, is the recipe for making a _roman\nexp\u00e9rimental_. The method, I wish to insist, was rooted in the\nauthor\u2019s experience of the world. Life only came to him as the sights,\nsounds, smells, that reached his garret window. His soul seems to\nhave been starved at the centre, and to have encamped at the sensory\nperiphery. He never tasted deep of life, he stored up none of those\nwells of purely personal emotion from which great artists have hoisted\nup the precious fluid which makes the bright living blood of their\ncreations. How different he is in this respect from the other great\nnovelist of our day, who has also been a volcanic force of world-wide\nsignificance! Tolstoi comes before us as a man who has himself lived\ndeeply, a man who has had an intense thirst for life, and who has\nsatisfied that thirst. He has craved to know life, to know women, the\njoy of wine, the fury of battle, the taste of the ploughman\u2019s sweat\nin the field. He has known all these things, not as material to make\nbooks, but as the slaking of instinctive personal passions. And in\nknowing them he has stored up a wealth of experiences from which he\ndrew as he came to make books, and which bear about them that peculiar\nhaunting fragrance only yielded by the things which have been lived\nthrough, personally, in the far past. Zola\u2019s method has been quite\notherwise: when he wished to describe a great house he sat outside\nthe palatial residence of M. Menier, the chocolate manufacturer, and\nimagined for himself the luxurious fittings inside, discovering in\nafter years that his description had come far short of the reality;\nbefore writing _Nana_, he obtained an introduction to a courtesan,\nwith whom he was privileged to lunch; his laborious preparation for the\nwonderful account of the war of 1870, in _La D\u00e9b\u00e2cle_, was purely\none of books, documents, and second-hand experiences; when he wished\nto write of labour he went to the mines and to the fields, but never\nappears to have done a day\u2019s manual work. Zola\u2019s literary methods are\nthose of the _parvenu_ who has tried to thrust himself in from\noutside, who has never been seated at the table of life, who has never\nreally lived. That is their weakness. It is also their virtue. There\nis no sense of satiety in Zola\u2019s work as there is in Tolstoi\u2019s. One\ncan understand how it is that, although their methods are so unlike,\nTolstoi himself regards Zola as the one French novelist of the day\nwho is really alive. The starved lad, whose eyes were concentrated\nwith longing on the visible world, has reaped a certain reward from\nhis intellectual chastity; he has preserved his clearness of vision\nfor material things, an eager, insatiable, impartial vision. He is a\nzealot in his devotion to life, to the smallest details of life. He has\nfought like the doughtiest knight of old-world romance for his lady\u2019s\nhonour, and has suffered more contumely than they all. \u201cOn barde de fer\nnos urinoirs!\u201d he shouts in a fury of indignation in one of his essays;\nit is a curious instance of the fanatic\u2019s austere determination that\nno barrier shall be set up to shut out the sights and smells of the\nexternal world. The virgin freshness of his thirst for life gives its\nswelling, youthful vigour to his work, its irrepressible energy.\n\nIt has, indeed, happened with this unsatisfied energy as it will\nhappen with such energies; it has retained its robustness at the\nsacrifice of the sweetness it might otherwise have gained. There is a\ncertain bitterness in Zola\u2019s fury of vision, as there is also in his\ngospel of \u201cWork! work! work!\u201d One is conscious of a savage assault on\na citadel which, the assailant now well knows, can never be scaled.\nLife cannot be reached by the senses alone; there is always something\nthat cannot be caught by the utmost tension of eyes and ears and nose;\na well-balanced soul is built up, not alone on sensory memories,\nbut also on the harmonious satisfaction of the motor and emotional\nenergies. That cardinal fact must be faced even when we are attempting\nto define the fruitful and positive element in Zola\u2019s activity.\n\nThe chief service which Zola has rendered to his fellow-artists and\nsuccessors, the reason of the immense stimulus he supplies, seems to\nlie in the proofs he has brought of the latent artistic uses of the\nrough, neglected details of life. The Rougon-Macquart series has been\nto his weaker brethren like that great sheet knit at the four corners,\nlet down from Heaven full of four-footed beasts and creeping things\nand fowls of the air, and bearing in it the demonstration that to the\nartist as to the moralist nothing can be called common or unclean. It\nhas henceforth become possible for other novelists to find inspiration\nwhere before they could never have turned, to touch life with a vigour\nand audacity of phrase which, without Zola\u2019s example, they would have\ntrembled to use, while they still remain free to bring to their work\nthe simplicity, precision, and inner experience which he has never\npossessed. Zola has enlarged the field of the novel. He has brought\nthe modern material world into fiction in a more definite and thorough\nmanner than it has ever been brought before, just as Richardson\nbrought the modern emotional world into fiction; such an achievement\nnecessarily marks an epoch. In spite of all his blunders, Zola has\ngiven the novel new power and directness, a vigour of fibre which was\nhard indeed to attain, but which, once attained, we may chasten as we\nwill. And in doing this he has put out of court, perhaps for ever,\nthose unwholesome devotees of the novelist\u2019s art who work out of their\nvacuity, having neither inner nor outer world to tell of.\n\nZola\u2019s delight in exuberant detail, it is true, is open to severe\ncriticism. When, however, we look at his work, not as great art but\nas an important moment in the evolution of the novel, this exuberance\nis amply justified. Such furious energy in hammering home this\ndemonstration of the artistic utility of the whole visible modern\nworld may detract from the demonstrator\u2019s reputation for skill;\nit has certainly added to the force of the demonstration. Zola\u2019s\nluxuriance of detail--the heritage of that romantic movement of which\nhe was the child--has extended impartially to every aspect of life\nhe has investigated, to the working of a mine, to the vegetation of\nthe Paradou, to the ritual of the Catholic Church. But it is not on\nthe details of inanimate life, or the elaborate description of the\nindustrial and religious functions of men, that the rage of Zola\u2019s\nadversaries has chiefly been spent. It is rather on his use of the\nlanguage of the common people and on his descriptions of the sexual and\ndigestive functions of humanity. Zola has used slang--the _argot_\nof the populace--copiously, chiefly indeed in _L\u2019Assommoir_, which\nis professedly a study of low life, but to a less extent in his other\nbooks. A considerable part of the power of _L\u2019Assommoir_, in many\nrespects Zola\u2019s most perfect work, lies in the skill with which he uses\nthe language of the people he is dealing with; the reader is bathed\nthroughout in an atmosphere of picturesque, vigorous, often coarse\n_argot_. There is, no doubt, a lack of critical sobriety in the\nprofusion and reiteration of vulgarisms, of coarse oaths, of the varied\ncommon synonyms for common things. But they achieve the end that Zola\nsought, and so justify themselves.\n\nThey are of even greater interest as a protest against the exaggerated\npurism which has ruled the French language for nearly three centuries,\nand while rendering it a more delicate and precise instrument for\nscientific purposes, has caused it to become rather bloodless and\ncolourless for the artist\u2019s purposes, as compared with the speech used\nby Rabelais, Montaigne, and even Moli\u00e8re, the great classics who have\nchiefly influenced Zola. The romantic movement of the present century,\nit is true, added colour to the language, but scarcely blood; it was\nan exotic, feverish colour which has not permanently enriched French\nspeech. A language rendered an\u00e6mic by over-clarification cannot be\nfed by exotic luxuries but by an increase in the vigorous staples of\nspeech, and Zola was on the right track when he went to the people\u2019s\ncommon speech, which is often classic in the true sense and always\nrobust. Doubtless he has been indiscriminate and even inaccurate in\nhis use of _argot_, sometimes giving undue place to what is of\nmerely temporary growth. But the main thing was to give literary place\nand prestige to words and phrases which had fallen so low in general\nesteem, in spite of their admirable expressiveness, that only a writer\nof the first rank and of unequalled audacity could venture to lift them\nfrom the mire. This Zola has done; and those who follow him may easily\nexercise the judgment and discretion in which he has been lacking.\n\nZola\u2019s treatment of the sexual and the digestive functions, as I\npointed out, has chiefly aroused his critics. If you think of it, these\ntwo functions are precisely the central functions of life, the two\npoles of hunger and love around which the world revolves. It is natural\nthat it should be precisely these fundamental aspects of life which in\nthe superficial contact of ordinary social intercourse we are for ever\ntrying more and more to refine away and ignore. They are subjected\nto an ever-encroaching process of attenuation and circumlocution,\nand as a social tendency this influence is possibly harmless or even\nbeneficial. But it is constantly extending to literature also, and\nhere it is disastrous. It is true that a few great authors--classics\nof the first rank--have gone to extremes in their resistance to this\ntendency. These extremes are of two kinds: the first issuing in a sort\nof coprolalia, or inclination to dwell on excrement, which we find to a\nslight extent in Rabelais and to a marked extent in the half-mad Swift;\nin its fully-developed shape this coprolalia is an uncontrollable\ninstinct found in some forms of insanity. The other extreme is that\nof pruriency, or the perpetual itch to circle round sexual matters,\naccompanied by a timidity which makes it impossible to come right\nup to them; this sort of impotent fumbling in women\u2019s placket-holes\nfinds its supreme literary exponent in Sterne. Like coprolalia,\nwhen uncontrolled, prurience is a well-recognised characteristic of\nthe insane, leading them to find a vague eroticism everywhere. But\nboth these extreme tendencies have not been found incompatible with\nthe highest literary art. Moreover, their most pronounced exponents\nhave been clerics, the conventional representatives of the Almighty.\nHowever far Zola might go in these directions, he would still be in\nwhat is universally recognised as very good company. He has in these\nrespects by no means come up with Father Rabelais and Dean Swift and\nthe Rev. Laurence Sterne; but there can be little doubt that, along\nboth lines, he has missed the restraint of well-balanced art. On the\none hand he over-emphasises what is repulsive in the nutritive side of\nlife, and on the other hand, with the timid obsession of chastity, he\nover-emphasises the nakedness of flesh. In so doing, he has revealed a\ncertain flabbiness in his art, although he has by no means diminished\nhis service in widening the horizon of literary speech and subject.\nBearing in mind that many crowned kings of literature have approached\nthese subjects quite as closely as Zola, and far less seriously, it\ndoes not seem necessary to enter any severer judgment here.\n\nTo enlarge the sphere of language is an unthankful task, but in\nthe long run literature owes an immense debt to the writers who\ncourageously add to the stock of strong and simple words. Our own\nliterature for two centuries has been hampered by the social tendency\nof life to slur expression, and to paraphrase or suppress all forceful\nand poignant words. If we go back to Chaucer, or even to Shakespeare,\nwe realise what power of expression we have lost. It is enough, indeed,\nto turn to our English Bible. The literary power of the English Bible\nis largely due to the unconscious instinct for style which happened\nto be in the air when it was chiefly moulded, to the simple, direct,\nunashamed vigour of its speech. Certainly, if the discovery of the\nBible had been left for us to make, any English translation would\nhave to be issued at a high price by some esoteric society, for fear\nlest it should fall into the hands of the British matron. It is our\nBritish love of compromise, we say, that makes it possible for a\nspade to be called a spade on one day of the week, but on no other;\nour neighbours, whose minds are more logically constituted, call it\n_le cant Britannique_. But our mental compartments remain very\nwater-tight, and on the whole we are even worse off than the French\nwho have no Bible. For instance, we have almost lost the indispensable\nwords \u201cbelly\u201d and \u201cbowels,\u201d both used so often and with such admirable\neffect in the Psalms; we talk of the \u201cstomach,\u201d a word which is not\nonly an incorrect equivalent, but at best totally inapt for serious\nor poetic uses. Any one who is acquainted with our old literature,\nor with the familiar speech of the common folk, will recall similar\ninstances of simple, powerful expressions which are lost or vanishing\nfrom literary language, leaving no available substitute behind. In\nmodern literary language, indeed, man scarcely exists save in his\nextremities. For we take the pubes as a centre, and we thence describe\na circle with a radius of some eighteen inches--in America the radius\nis rather longer--and we forbid any reference to any organ within the\ncircle, save that maid-of-all-work the \u201cstomach\u201d; in other words, we\nmake it impossible to say anything to the point concerning the central\nfunctions of life.\n\nIt is a question how far real literature can be produced under such\nconditions, not merely because literature is thus shut out from\nclose contact with the vital facts of life, but because the writer\nwho is willing to be so shut out, who finds himself most at home\nwithin the social limits of speech, will probably not be made of\nthe heroic stuff that goes to the moulding of a great writer. The\nsocial limits of speech are useful enough, for we are all members of\nsociety, and it is well that we should have some protection against\nthe assaults of unbridled vulgarity. But in literature we may choose\nto read what we will, or to read nothing, and the man who enters the\nworld of literature timidly equipped with the topics and language\nof the drawing-room is not likely to go far. I once saw it stated\ndepreciatingly in a grave literary review that a certain novel by a\nwoman writer dealt with topics that are not even discussed by men\nat their clubs. I had never read it, but it seemed to me then that\nthere might be hope for that novel. No doubt it is even possible in\nliterature to fall below the club standard, but unless you can rise\nabove the club standard, better stay at the club, tell stories there,\nor sweep the crossing outside.\n\nAll our great poets and novelists from Chaucer to Fielding wrote\nsincerely and heroically concerning the great facts of life. That is\nwhy they are great, robustly sane, radiantly immortal. It is a mistake\nto suppose that no heroism was involved in their case; for though\nno doubt they had a freer general speech on their side they went\nbeyond their time in daring to mould that speech to the ends of art,\nin bringing literature closer to life. It was so even with Chaucer;\ncompare him with his contemporaries and successors; observe how he\nseeks to soothe the susceptibilities of his readers and to deprecate\nthe protests of the \u201cprecious folk.\u201d There is no great art at any\nepoch without heroism, though one epoch may be more favourable than\nanother to the exercise of such heroism in literature. In our own age\nand country daring has passed out of the channels of art into those of\ncommerce, to find exercise, foolish enough sometimes, in the remotest\ncorners of the earth. It is because our literature is not heroic, but\nhas been confined within the stifling atmosphere of the drawing-room,\nthat English poets and novelists have ceased to be a power in the\nworld and are almost unknown outside the parlours and nurseries of\nour own country. It is because in France there have never ceased to\nbe writers here and there who have dared to face life heroically and\nweld it into art that the literature of France is a power in the\nworld wherever there are men intelligent enough to recognise its\nachievements. When literature that is not only fine but also great\nappears in England we shall know it as such by its heroism, if by no\nother mark.\n\nLanguage has its immense significance because it is the final\nincarnation of a man\u2019s most intimate ideals. Zola\u2019s style and method\nare monotonous--with a monotony which makes his books unreadable when\nwe have once mastered his secret--and the burden they express is ever\nthe same: the energy of natural life. Whatever is robust, whatever is\nwholesomely exuberant, whatever, wholesomely or not, is possessed by\nthe devouring fury of life--of such things Zola can never have enough.\nThe admirable opening of _La Terre_, in which a young girl drives\nthe cow, wild for the male, to the farm where the stockbull is kept,\nthen leading the appeased animal home again, symbolises Zola\u2019s whole\nview of the world. All the forces of Nature, it seems to him, are\nraging in the fury of generative desire or reposing in the fulness\nof swelling maturity. The very earth itself, in the impressive pages\nwith which _Germinal_ closes, is impregnated with men, germinating\nbeneath the soil, one day to burst through the furrows and renew the\nold world\u2019s failing life. In this conception of the natural energies of\nthe world--as manifested in men and animals, in machines, in every form\nof matter--perpetually conceiving and generating, Zola reaches his most\nimpressive effects, though these effects are woven together of elements\nthat are separately of no very exquisite beauty, or subtle insight, or\nradical novelty.\n\nIn considering Zola, we are indeed constantly brought back to the fact\nthat most of the things that he has tried to do have been better done\nby more accomplished artists. The Goncourts have extended the sphere of\nlanguage, even in the direction of slang, and have faced many of the\nmatters that Zola has faced, and with far more delicate, though usually\nmore shadowy, art; Balzac has created as large and vivid a world of\npeople, though drawing more of it from his own imagination; Huysmans\nhas greater skill in stamping the vision of strange or sordid things on\nthe brain; Tolstoi gives a deeper realisation of life; Flaubert is as\naudaciously naturalistic, and has, as well, that perfect self-control\nwhich should always accompany audacity. And in Flaubert, too, we find\nsomething of the same irony as in Zola.\n\nThis irony, however, is a personal and characteristic feature of\nZola\u2019s work. It is irony alone which gives it distinction and poignant\nincisiveness. Irony may be called the soul of Zola\u2019s work, the\nembodiment of his moral attitude towards life. It has its source,\ndoubtless, like so much else that is characteristic, in his early\ndays of poverty and aloofness from the experiences of life. There is\na fierce impartiality--the impartiality of one who is outside and\nshut off--in this manner of presenting the brutalities and egoisms\nand pettinesses of men. The fury of his irony is here equalled by\nhis self-restraint. He concentrates it into a word, a smile, a\ngesture. Zola believes, undoubtedly, in a reformed, even perhaps\na revolutionised, future of society, but he has no illusions. He\nsets down things as he sees them. He has no tendernesses for the\nworking-classes, no pictures of rough diamonds. We may see this very\nclearly in _Germinal_. Here every side of the problem of modern\ncapitalism is presented: the gentle-natured shareholding class unable\nto realise a state of society in which people should not live on\ndividends and give charity; the official class with their correct\nauthoritative views, very sure that they will always be needed to\ncontrol labour and maintain social order; and the workers, some\nbrutalised, some suffering like dumb beasts, some cringing to the\nbosses, some rebelling madly, a few striving blindly for justice.\n\nThere is no loophole in Zola\u2019s impartiality; the gradual development\nof the seeming hero of _Germinal_, Etienne Lantier, the agitator,\nhonest in his revolt against oppression, but with an unconscious\nbourgeois ideal at his heart, seems unerringly right. All are the\nvictims of an evil social system, as Zola sees the world, the enslaved\nworkers as much as the overfed masters; the only logical outcome is a\nclean sweep--the burning up of the chaff and straw, the fresh furrowing\nof the earth, the new spring of a sweet and vigorous race. That is the\nlogical outcome of Zola\u2019s attitude, the attitude of one who regards\nour present society as a thoroughly vicious circle. His pity for men\nand women is boundless; his disdain is equally boundless. It is only\ntowards animals that his tenderness is untouched by contempt; some\nof his most memorable passages are concerned with the sufferings of\nanimals. The New Jerusalem may be fitted up, but the Montsou miners\nwill never reach it; they will fight for the first small, stuffy,\nmiddle-class villa they meet on the way. And Zola pours out the stream\nof his pitiful, pitiless irony on the weak, helpless, erring children\nof men. It is this moral energy, combined with his volcanic exuberance,\nwhich lifts him to a position of influence above the greater artists\nwith whom we may compare him.\n\nIt is by no means probable that the world will continue to read Zola\nmuch longer. His work is already done; but when the nineteenth century\nis well past it may be that he will still have his interest. There will\nbe plenty of material, especially in the newspapers, for the future\nhistorian to reconstruct the social life of the latter half of the\nnineteenth century. But the material is so vast that these historians\nwill possibly be even more biassed and one-sided than our own. For a\nvivid, impartial picture--on the whole a faithful picture--of certain\nof the most characteristic aspects of this period, seen indeed from\nthe outside, but drawn by a contemporary in all its intimate and even\nrepulsive details, the reader of a future age can best go to Zola.\nWhat would we not give for a thirteenth century Zola! We should read\nwith painful, absorbed interest a narrative of the Black Death as\nexact as that of nineteenth century alcoholism in _L\u2019Assommoir_.\nThe story of how the serf lived, as fully told as in _La Terre_,\nwould be of incomparable value. The early merchant and usurer would\nbe a less dim figure if _L\u2019Argent_ had been written about him.\nThe abbeys and churches of those days have in part come down to us,\nbut no _Germinal_ remains to tell of the lives and thoughts of\nthe men who hewed those stones, and piled them, and carved them. How\nprecious such record would have been we may realise when we recall\nthe incomparable charm of Chaucer\u2019s prologue to _The Canterbury\nTales_. But our children\u2019s children, with the same passions alive at\ntheir hearts under incalculably different circumstances, will in the\npages of the Rougon-Macquart series find themselves back again among\nall the strange remote details of a vanished world. What a fantastic\nand terrible page of old-world romance!\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[Footnote 7: \u201cMes souvenirs,\u201d he told a psychological interviewer,\n\u201cont une puissance, un relief extraordinaire; ma m\u00e9moire est \u00e9norme,\nprodigieuse, elle me g\u00eane; quand j\u2019\u00e9voque les objets que j\u2019ai vus, je\nles revois tels qu\u2019ils sont r\u00e9ellement avec leurs lignes, leurs formes,\nleurs couleurs, leurs odeurs, leurs sons; _c\u2019est une mat\u00e9rialisation\n\u00e0 outrance_; le soleil qui les \u00e9claire m\u2019\u00e9blouit presque; l\u2019odeur\nme suffoque, les d\u00e9tails s\u2019accrochent \u00e0 moi et m\u2019emp\u00eachent de voir\nl\u2019ensemble. Aussi pour le ressaisir me faut-il attendre un certain\ntemps. Cette possibilit\u00e9 d\u2019\u00e9vocation ne dure pas tr\u00e8s longtemps; le\nrelief de l\u2019image est d\u2019une exactitude, d\u2019une intensit\u00e9 inou\u00efes,\npuis l\u2019image s\u2019efface, dispara\u00eet, cela s\u2019en va.\u201d This description\nsuggests myopia, and it is a fact that Zola has been short-sighted from\nyouth; he first realised it at sixteen. His other senses, especially\nsmell, are very keen--largely, however, as an outcome of attention\nor practice. Thus while his tactile sensibility and sensibility to\npain are acute, his olfactory keenness is rather qualitative than\nquantitative; that is to say that it mainly consists in a marked\nmemory for odours, a tendency to be emotionally impressed by them,\nand an ability to distinguish them in which he resembles professional\nperfumers. All these and many other facts have been very precisely\nascertained by means of the full psychological and anthropological\nstudy of M. Zola which has been carried out by experts under the\nsuperintendence of Dr. Toulouse.]\n\n\n\n\n                               HUYSMANS.\n\n\nIN trying to represent the man who wrote the extraordinary books\ngrouped around _A Rebours_ and _En Route_, I find myself\ncarried back to the decline of the Latin world. I recall those restless\nAfricans who were drawn into the vortex of decadent Rome, who absorbed\nits corruptions with all the barbaric fervour of their race, and then\nwith a more natural impetus of that youthful fervour threw themselves\ninto the young current of Christianity, yet retaining in their flesh\nthe brand of an exotic culture. Tertullian, Augustine, and the rest\ngained much of their power, as well as their charm, because they\nincarnated a fantastic mingling of youth and age, of decayed Latinity,\nof tumultuously youthful Christianity. Huysmans, too, incarnates the\nold and the new, but with a curious, a very vital difference. To-day\nthe _r\u00f4les_ are reversed; it is another culture that is now young,\nwith its aspirations after human perfection and social solidarity,\nwhile Christianity has exchanged the robust beauty of youth for the\nsubtler beauty of age. \u201cThe most perfect analogy to our time which I\ncan find,\u201d wrote Renan to his sister amid the tumults of Paris in 1848,\na few weeks after Huysmans had been born in the same city, \u201cis the\nmoment when Christianity and paganism stood face to face.\u201d Huysmans had\nwandered from ancestral haunts of medi\u00e6val peace into the forefront of\nthe struggles of our day, bringing the clear, refined perceptions of\nold culture to the intensest vision of the modern world yet attained,\nbut never at rest, never once grasping except on the purely \u00e6sthetic\nside the significance of the new age, always haunted by the memory of\nthe past and perpetually feeling his way back to what seems to him the\nhome of his soul.--The fervent seeker of those early days, indeed, but\n_\u00e0 rebours_!\n\nThis is scarcely a mere impression; one might be tempted to say that it\nis strictly the formula of this complex and interesting personality.\nComing on the maternal side from an ordinary Parisian bourgeois stock,\nthough there chanced to be a sculptor even along this line, on the\npaternal side he belongs to an alien aristocracy of art. From father\nto son his ancestors were painters, of whom at least one, Cornelius\nHuysmans, still figures honourably in our public galleries, while\nthe last of them left Breda to take up his domicile in Paris. Here\nhis son, Joris Karl, has been the first of the race to use the pen\ninstead of the brush, yet retaining precisely those characters of\n\u201cveracity of imitation, jewel-like richness of colour, perfection of\nfinish, emphasis of character,\u201d which their historian finds in the\npainters of his land from the fourteenth century onwards. Where the\nMeuse approaches the Rhine valley we find the home of the men who,\nalmost alone in the north, created painting and the arts that are\ngrouped around painting, and evolved religious music. On the side\nof art the Church had found its chief builders in the men of these\nvalleys, and even on the spiritual side also, for here is the northern\nhome of mysticism. Their latest child has fixed his attention on the\nfeverish activities of Paris with the concentrated gaze of a stranger\nin a strange land, held by a fascination which is more than half\nrepulsion, always missing something, he scarcely knows what. He has\never been seeking the satisfaction he had missed, sometimes in the\n\u00e6sthetic vision of common things, sometimes in the refined Thebaid of\nhis own visions, at length more joyfully in the survivals of medi\u00e6val\nmysticism. Yet as those early Africans still retained their acquired\nRoman instincts, and that fantastic style which could not be shaken\noff, so Huysmans will surely retain to the last the tincture of\nParisian modernity.\n\nYet we can by no means altogether account for Huysmans by race and\nenvironment. Every man of genius is a stranger and a pilgrim on the\nearth, unlike other men, seeing everything as it were at a different\nangle, mirroring the world in his mind as in those concave or convex\nmirrors which elongate or abbreviate absurdly all who approach them.\nNo one ever had a keener sense of the distressing absurdity of human\naffairs than M. Huysmans. The Trocadero is not a beautiful building,\nbut to no one else probably has it appeared as an old hag lying on her\nback and elevating her spindle shanks towards the sky. Such images of\nmen\u2019s works and ways abound in Huysmans\u2019 books, and they express his\nunaffected vision of life, his disgust for men and things, a shuddering\ndisgust, yet patient, half-amused. I can well recall an evening spent\nsome years ago in M. Huysmans\u2019 company. His face, with the sensitive,\nluminous eyes, reminded one of Baudelaire\u2019s portraits, the face of a\nresigned and benevolent Mephistopheles who has discovered the absurdity\nof the Divine order but has no wish to make any improper use of his\ndiscovery. He talked in low and even tones, never eagerly, without\nany emphasis or gesture, not addressing any special person; human\nimbecility was the burden of nearly all that he said, while a faint\ntwinkle of amused wonderment lit up his eyes. And throughout all his\nbooks until almost the last \u201cl\u2019\u00e9ternelle b\u00eatise de l\u2019humanit\u00e9\u201d is the\never-recurring refrain.\n\nAlways leading a retired life, and specially abhorring the society and\nconversation of the average literary man, M. Huysmans has for many\nyears been a government servant--a model official, it is said--at the\nMinistry of Foreign Affairs. Here, like our own officials at Whitehall,\nhe serves his country in dignified leisure--on the only occasion on\nwhich I have seen him in his large and pleasant _bureau_, he\nwas gazing affectionately at Ch\u00e9ret\u2019s latest _affiche_, which\na lady of his acquaintance had just brought to show him--and such\nduties of routine, with the close contact with practical affairs they\ninvolve, must always be beneficial in preserving the sane equipoise\nof an imaginative temperament. In this matter Huysmans has been more\nfortunate than his intimate friend Villiers de l\u2019Isle-Adam, who had\nwandered so far into the world of dreams that he lost touch with the\nexternal world and ceased to distinguish them clearly. One is at\nfirst a little surprised to hear of the patient tact and diplomacy\nwhich the author of _A Rebours_ spent round the death-bed of\nthe author of _Contes Cruels_ to obtain the dying dreamer\u2019s\nconsent to a ceremony of marriage which would legitimate his child.\nBut Huysmans\u2019 sensitive nervous system and extravagant imagination\nhave ever been under the control of a sane and forceful intellect;\nhis very idealism has been nourished by the contemplation of a world\nwhich he has seen too vividly ever to ignore. We may read that in the\nreflective deliberation of his grave and courteous bearing, somewhat\nrecalling, as more than one observer has noted, his own favourite\nanimal, the cat, whose outward repose of Buddhistic contemplation\nenvelops a highly-strung nervous system, while its capacity to enjoy\nthe refinements of human civilisation comports a large measure of\nspiritual freedom and ferocity. Like many another man of letters,\nHuysmans suffers from neuralgia and dyspepsia; but no novelist has\ndescribed so persistently and so poignantly the pangs of toothache\nor the miseries of _maux d\u2019estomac_, a curious proof of the\npeculiarly personal character of Huysmans\u2019 work throughout. His sole\npre-occupation has been with his own impressions. He possessed no\nnative genius for the novel. But with a very sound instinct he set\nhimself, almost at the outset of his career, to describe intimately\nand faithfully the crudest things of life, the things most remote from\nhis own esoteric tastes but at that time counted peculiarly \u201creal.\u201d\nThere could be no better discipline for an idealist. Step by step he\nhas left the region of vulgar actualities to attain his proper sphere,\nbut the marvellous and slowly won power of expressing the spiritually\nimpalpable in concrete imagery is the fruit of that laborious\napprenticeship. He was influenced in his novels at first by Goncourt,\nafterwards a little by Zola, as he sought to reproduce his own vivid\nand personal vision of the world. This vision is like that of a man\nwith an intense exaltation of the senses, especially the senses of\nsight and smell. Essentially Huysmans is less a novelist than a poet,\nwith an instinct to use not verse but prose as his medium. Thus he\nearly fell under the influence of Baudelaire\u2019s prose-poems. His small\nand slight first volume, _Le Drageoir \u00e0 Epices_, bears witness\nto this influence, while yet revealing a personality clearly distinct\nfrom Baudelaire\u2019s. This personality is already wholly revealed in the\nquaint audacity of the little prose-poem entitled \u201cL\u2019Extase.\u201d Here,\nat the very outset of Huysmans\u2019 career, we catch an unconscious echo\nof medi\u00e6val asceticism, the voice, it might be, of Odo of Cluny, who\nnearly a thousand years before had shrunk with horror from embracing a\n\u201csack of dung;\u201d \u201cquomodo ipsum stercoris saccum amplecti desideramus!\u201d\n\u201cL\u2019Extase\u201d describes how the lover lies in the wood clasping the hand\nof the beloved and bathed in a rapture of blissful emotion; \u201csuddenly\nshe rose, disengaged her hand, disappeared in the bushes, and I heard\nas it were the rustling of rain on the leaves;\u201d at once the delicious\ndream fled and the lover awakes to the reality of commonplace human\nthings. That is a parable of the high-strung idealism, having only\ncontempt for whatever breaks in on its ideal, which has ever been the\nmark of Huysmans. His sensitive ear is alive to the gentlest ripple of\nnature, and it jars on him; it becomes the deafening Niagara of \u201cthe\nincessant deluge of human foolishness;\u201d all his art is the research for\na Heaven where the voice of Nature shall no more be heard. Baudelaire\nwas also such a hyper\u00e6sthetic idealist, but the human tenderness\nwhich vibrates beneath the surface of Baudelaire\u2019s work has been the\nlast quality to make itself more than casually felt in Huysmans. It\nis the defect which vitiated his early work in the novel, when he\nwas still oscillating between the prose-poem and the novel, clearly\nconscious that while the first suited him best only in the second\ncould mastery be won. His early novels are sometimes portentously\ndull, with a lack of interest, or even attempt to interest, which\nitself almost makes them interesting, as frank ugliness is. They are\nrealistic with a veracious and courageously abject realism, never,\nlike Zola\u2019s, carefully calculated for its pictorial effectiveness, but\ndealing simply with the trivialest and sordidest human miseries. His\nfirst novel _Marthe_--which inaugurated the long series of novels\ndevoted to state-regulated prostitution in those slaughter-houses of\nlove, as Huysmans later described them, where Desire is slain at a\nsingle stroke,--sufficiently repulsive on the whole, is not without\nflashes of insight which reveal the future artist, and to some readers\nindeed make it more interesting than _La Fille Elisa_, which\nthe Goncourts published shortly afterwards. Unlike the crude and\nawkward _Marthe_--though that book reveals the influence of the\nGoncourts--_La Fille Elisa_ shows the hand of an accomplished\nartist, but it is also the work of a philanthropist writing with an\navowed object, and of a fine gentleman ostentatiously anxious not to\ntouch pitch with more than a finger-tip. The Preface to _Marthe_\ncontains a declaration which remains true for the whole of Huysmans\u2019\nwork: \u201cI set down what I see, what I feel, what I have lived, writing\nit as well as I am able, _et voil\u00e0 tout_!\u201d But it has ever been a\ndangerous task to set down what one sees and feels and has lived; for\nno obvious reason, except the subject, _Marthe_ was immediately\nsuppressed by the police. This first novel remains the least personal\nof Huysmans\u2019 books; in his next novel, _Les S\u0153urs Vatard_--a study\nof Parisian workgirls and their lovers--a more characteristic vision\nof the world begins to be revealed, and from that time forward there\nis a continuous though irregular development both in intellectual grip\nand artistic mastery. \u201cSac au Dos,\u201d which appeared in the _Soir\u00e9es\nde M\u00e9dan_, represents a notable stage in this development, for\nhere, as he has since acknowledged, Huysmans\u2019 hero is himself. It is\nthe story of a young student who serves during the great war in the\nGarde Mobile of the Seine, and is invalided with dysentery before\nreaching the front. There is no story, no striking impression to\nrecord--nothing to compare with Guy de Maupassant\u2019s incomparably more\nbrilliant \u201cBoule-de-Suif,\u201d also dealing with the fringe of war, which\nappears in the same volume--no opportunity for literary display,\nnothing but a record of individual feelings with which the writer\nseems satisfied because they are interesting to himself. It is, in\nfact, the germ of that method which Huysmans has since carried to so\nbrilliant a climax in _En Route_. All the glamour of war and\nthe enthusiasm of patriotism are here--long before Zola wrote his\n_D\u00e9b\u00e2cle_--reduced to their simplest terms in the miseries of the\nindividual soldier whose chief aspiration it becomes at last to return\nto a home where the necessities of nature may be satisfied in comfort\nand peace. At that time Huysmans\u2019 lack of patriotic enthusiasm seemed\nalmost scandalous; but when we bear in mind his racial affinities it is\nnatural that he should, as he once remarked to an interviewer, \u201cprefer\na Leipzig man to a Marseilles man,\u201d \u201cthe big, phlegmatic, taciturn\nGermans\u201d to the gesticulating and rhetorical people of the French\nsouth. In _L\u00e0-Bas_, at a later date, through the mouth of one of\nhis characters, Huysmans goes so far as to regret the intervention of\nJoan of Arc in French history, for had it not been for Joan France and\nEngland would have been restored to their racial and prehistoric unity,\nconsolidated into one great kingdom under Norman Plantagenets, instead\nof being given up to the southerners of Latin race who surrounded\nCharles VII.\n\nThe best of Huysmans\u2019 early novels is undoubtedly _En M\u00e9nage_. It\nis the intimate history of a young literary man who, having married a\nwife whom he shortly afterwards finds unfaithful, leaves her, returns\nto his bachelor life, and in the end becomes reconciled to her. This\npicture of a studious man who goes away with his books to fight\nover again the petty battles of bachelorhood with the _bonne_\nand the _concierge_ and his own cravings for womanly love and\ncompanionship, reveals clearly for the first time Huysmans\u2019 power\nof analysing states of mind that are at once simple and subtle.\nPerhaps no writer surprises us more by his revealing insight into the\ncommonplace experiences which all a novelist\u2019s traditions lead him to\nidealise or ignore. As a whole, however, _En M\u00e9nage_ is scarcely\nyet a master\u2019s work, a little laboured, with labour which cannot yet\nachieve splendour of effect. Nor can a much slighter story, _A Vau\nl\u2019Eau_, which appeared a little later, be said to mark a further\nstage in development, though it is a characteristic study, this sordid\nhistory of Folantin, the poor, lame, discontented, middle-aged clerk.\nCheated and bullied on every side, falling a prey to the vulgar woman\nof the street who boisterously takes possession of him in the climax\nof the story, all the time feeling poignantly the whole absurdity of\nthe situation, there is yet one spot where hope seems possible. He has\nno religious faith; \u201cand yet,\u201d he reflects, \u201cyet mysticism alone could\nheal the wound that tortures me.\u201d Thus Folantin, though like Andr\u00e9\nin _En M\u00e9nage_ he resigns himself to the inevitable stupidity\nof life, yet stretches out his hands towards the Durtal of Huysmans\u2019\nlatest work.\n\nIn all these novels we feel that Huysmans has not attained to full\nself-expression. Intellectual mastery, indeed, he is attaining, but\nscarcely yet the expression of his own personal ideals. The poet in\nHuysmans, the painter enamoured of beauty and seeking it in unfamiliar\nplaces, has little scope in these detailed pictures of sordid or\ncommonplace life. At this early period it is still in prose-poems,\nespecially in _Croquis Parisiens_, that this craving finds\nsatisfaction. Des Esseintes, the hero of _A Rebours_, who on\nso many matters is Huysmans\u2019 mouthpiece, of all forms of literature\npreferred the prose-poem when, in the hands of an alchemist of genius,\nit reveals a novel concentrated into a few pages or a few lines, the\nconcrete juice, the essential oil of art. It was \u201ca communion of\nthought between a magical writer and an ideal reader, a spiritual\ncollaboration among a dozen superior persons scattered throughout\nthe world, a delectation offered to the finest wits, and to them\nalone accessible.\u201d Huysmans took up this form where Baudelaire and\nMallarm\u00e9 had left it, and sought to carry it yet further. In that\nhe was scarcely successful. The excess of tension in the tortured\nlanguage with which he elaborates his effects too often holds him\nback from the goal of perfection. We must yet value in _Croquis\nParisiens_ its highly wrought and individual effects of rhythm\nand colour and form. In France, at all events, Huysmans is held to\ninaugurate the poetic treatment of modern things--a characteristic\nalready traceable in _Les S\u0153urs Vatard_--and this book deals with\nthe \u00e6sthetic aspects of latter-day Paris, with the things that are\n\u201cugly and superb, outrageous and yet exquisite,\u201d as a type of which\nhe selects the Folies-Berg\u00e8re, at that time the most characteristic\nof Parisian music-halls, and he was thus the first to discuss the\n\u00e6sthetic value of the variety stage which has been made cheaper since.\nFor the most part, however, these _Croquis_ are of the simplest\nand most commonplace things--the forlorn Bi\u00e8vre district, the poor\nman\u2019s _caf\u00e9_, the roast-chestnut seller--extracting the beauty or\npathos or strangeness of all these things. \u201cThy garment is the palette\nof setting suns, the rust of old copper, the brown gilt of Cordovan\nleather, the sandal and saffron tints of the autumn foliage.... When\nI contemplate thy coat of mail I think of Rembrandt\u2019s pictures, I see\nagain his superb heads, his sunny flesh, his gleaming jewels on black\nvelvet. I see again his rays of light in the night, his trailing gold\nin the shade, the dawning of suns through dark arches.\u201d The humble\nbloater has surely never before been sung in language which recalls\nthe Beloved of the \u201cSong of Songs.\u201d Huysmans has carried to an even\nextravagant degree that re-valuation of the world\u2019s good in which\ngenius has ever found its chief function. To abase the mighty and exalt\nthe humble seems to man the divinest of prerogatives, for it is that\nwhich he himself exercises in his moments of finest inspiration. To\nfind a new vision of the world, a new path to truth, is the instinct\nof the artist or the thinker. He changes the whole system of our\norganised perceptions. That is why he seems to us at first an incarnate\nparadox, a scoffer at our most sacred verities, making mountains of our\nmole-hills and counting as mere mole-hills our everlasting mountains,\nalways keeping time to a music that clashes with ours, at our hilarity\n_tristis, in tristitia hilaris_.\n\nIn 1889 _A Rebours_ appeared. Not perhaps his greatest\nachievement, it must ever remain the central work in which he has\nmost powerfully concentrated his whole vision of life. It sums up the\nprogress he had already made, foretells the progress he was afterwards\nto make, in a style that is always individual, always masterly in its\nindividuality. Technically, it may be said that the power of _A\nRebours_ lies in the fact that here for the first time Huysmans has\nsucceeded in uniting the two lines of his literary development: the\naustere analysis in the novels of commonplace things mostly alien to\nthe writer, and the freer elaboration in the prose-poems of his own\nmore intimate personal impressions. In their union the two streams\nattain a new power and a more intimately personal note. Des Esseintes,\nthe hero of this book, may possibly have been at a few points suggested\nby a much less interesting real personage in contemporary Paris,\nthe Comte de Montesquiou-Fezensac, but in the main he was certainly\ncreated by Huysmans\u2019 own brain, as the representative of his author\u2019s\nhyper\u00e6sthetic experience of the world and the mouthpiece of his most\npersonal judgments. The victim of over-wrought nerves, of neuralgia\nand dyspepsia, Des Esseintes retires for a season from Paris to the\nsolitude of his country house at Fontenay, which he has fitted up, on\nalmost cloistral methods, to soothe his fantasy and to gratify his\ncomplex \u00e6sthetic sensations, his love of reading and contemplation. The\nfinest pictures of Gustave Moreau hang on the walls, with the fantastic\nengravings of Luyken, and the strange visions of Odilon Redon. He has\na tortoise curiously inlaid with precious stones; he delights in all\nthose exotic plants which reveal Nature\u2019s most unnatural freaks; he\nis a sensitive amateur of perfumes, and considers that the pleasures\nof smell are equal to those of sight or sound; he possesses a row of\nlittle barrels of liqueurs so arranged that he can blend in infinite\nvariety the contents of this instrument, his \u201cmouth-organ\u201d he calls\nit, and produce harmonies which seem to him comparable to those\nyielded by a musical orchestra. But the solitary pleasures of this\npalace of art only increase the nervous strain he is suffering from;\nand at the urgent bidding of his doctor Des Esseintes returns to the\nsociety of his abhorred fellow-beings in Paris, himself opening the\ndyke that admitted the \u201cwaves of human mediocrity\u201d to engulf his\nrefuge. And this wonderful confession of \u00e6sthetic faith--with its long\nseries of deliberately searching and decisive affirmations on life,\nreligion, literature, art--ends with a sudden solemn invocation that\nis surprisingly tremulous: \u201cTake pity, O Lord, on the Christian who\ndoubts, on the sceptic who desires to believe, on the convict of life\nwho embarks alone, in the night, beneath a sky no longer lit by the\nconsoling beacons of ancient faith.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe who carries his own most intimate emotions to their highest point\nbecomes the first in file of a long series of men;\u201d that saying is\npeculiarly true of Huysmans. But to be a leader of men one must turn\none\u2019s back on men. Huysmans\u2019 attitude towards his readers was somewhat\nlike that of Thoreau, who spoke with lofty disdain of such writers as\n\u201cwould fain have one reader before they die.\u201d As he has since remarked,\nHuysmans wrote _A Rebours_ for a dozen persons, and was himself\nmore surprised than any one at the wide interest it evoked. Yet that\ninterest was no accident. Certain \u00e6sthetic ideals of the latter half\nof the nineteenth century are more quintessentially expressed in _A\nRebours_ than in any other book. Intensely personal, audaciously\nindependent, it yet sums up a movement which has scarcely now worked\nitself out. We may read it and re-read, not only for the light which it\ncasts on that movement, but upon every similar period of acute \u00e6sthetic\nperception in the past.\n\n\n                                  II.\n\nThe \u00e6sthetic attitude towards art which _A Rebours_ illuminates is\nthat commonly called decadent. Decadence in art, though a fairly simple\nphenomenon, and world-wide as art itself, is still so ill understood\nthat it may be worth while to discuss briefly its precise nature, more\nespecially as manifested in literature.\n\nTechnically, a decadent style is only such in relation to a classic\nstyle. It is simply a further development of a classic style, a further\nspecialisation, the homogeneous, in Spencerian phraseology, having\nbecome heterogeneous. The first is beautiful because the parts are\nsubordinated to the whole; the second is beautiful because the whole\nis subordinated to the parts. Among our own early prose-writers Sir\nThomas Browne represents the type of decadence in style. Swift\u2019s prose\nis classic, Pater\u2019s decadent. Hume and Gibbon are classic, Emerson and\nCarlyle decadent. In architecture, which is the key to all the arts,\nwe see the distinction between the classic and the decadent visibly\ndemonstrated; Roman architecture is classic, to become in its Byzantine\ndevelopments completely decadent, and St. Mark\u2019s is the perfected type\nof decadence in art; pure early Gothic, again, is strictly classic\nin the highest degree because it shows an absolute subordination of\ndetail to the bold harmonies of structure, while later Gothic, grown\nweary of the commonplaces of structure and predominantly interested\nin beauty of detail, is again decadent. In each case the earlier and\nclassic manner--for the classic manner, being more closely related\nto the ends of utility, must always be earlier--subordinates the\nparts to the whole, and strives after those virtues which the whole\nmay best express; the later manner depreciates the importance of the\nwhole for the benefit of its parts, and strives after the virtues of\nindividualism. All art is the rising and falling of the slopes of a\nrhythmic curve between these two classic and decadent extremes.\n\nDecadence suggests to us going down, falling, decay. If we walk down\na real hill we do not feel that we commit a more wicked act than when\nwe walked up it. But if it is a figurative hill then we view Hell at\nthe bottom. The word \u201ccorruption\u201d--used in a precise and technical\nsense to indicate the breaking up of the whole for the benefit of its\nparts--serves also to indicate a period or manner of decadence in art.\nThis makes confusion worse, for here the moralist feels that surely\nhe is on safe ground. But as Nietzsche, with his usual acuteness\nin cutting at the root of vulgar prejudice, has well remarked (in\n_Die fr\u00f6hliche Wissenschaft_), even as regards what is called\nthe period of \u201ccorruption\u201d in the evolution of societies, we are apt\nto overlook the fact that the energy which in more primitive times\nmarked the operations of the community as a whole has now simply been\ntransferred to the individuals themselves, and this aggrandisement\nof the individual really produces an even greater amount of energy.\nThe individual has gained more than the community has lost. An age\nof social decadence is not only the age of sinners and degenerates,\nbut of saints and martyrs, and decadent Rome produced an Antoninus\nas well as a Heliogabalus. No doubt social \u201ccorruption\u201d and literary\n\u201ccorruption\u201d tend to go together; an age of individualism is usually\nan age of artistic decadence, and we may note that the chief literary\nartists of America--Poe, Hawthorne, Whitman--are for the most part in\nthe technical sense decadents.\n\nRome supplies the first clear types of classic and decadent literature,\nand the small group of recent French writers to whom the term has been\nmore specifically applied were for the most part peculiarly attracted\nby later Latin literature. So far as I can make out, it is to the\nprofound and penetrating genius of Baudelaire that we owe the first\nclear apprehension of the legitimate part which decadence plays in\nliterature. We may trace it, indeed, in his own style, clear, pure,\nand correct as that style always remains, as well as in his literary\npreferences. He was a good Latinist, and his favourite Latin authors\nwere Apuleius, Juvenal, Petronius, Saint Augustine, Tertullian, and\nother writers in prose and verse of the early Christian Church. He\nhimself wrote a love-poem in rhymed Latin verse, adding to it a note\nconcerning the late Latin decadence regarded as \u201cthe supreme sigh of\na vigorous person already transformed and prepared for the spiritual\nlife,\u201d and specially apt to express passion as the modern world feels\nit, one pole of the magnet at the opposite end of which are Catullus\nand his band. \u201cIn this marvellous tongue,\u201d he added, \u201csolecism and\nbarbarism seem to me to render the forced negligences of a passion\nwhich forgets itself and mocks at rules. Words taken in a new meaning\nreveal the charming awkwardness of the northern barbarian kneeling\nbefore the Roman beauty.\u201d But the best early statement of the meaning\nof decadence in style--though doubtless inspired by Baudelaire--was\nfurnished by Gautier in 1868 in the course of the essay on Baudelaire\nwhich is probably the most interesting piece of criticism he ever\nachieved. The passage is long, but so precise and accurate that it must\nhere in part be quoted: \u201cThe poet of the _Fleurs du Mal_ loved\nwhat is improperly called the style of decadence, and which is nothing\nelse but art arrived at that point of extreme maturity yielded by the\nslanting suns of aged civilisations: an ingenious complicated style,\nfull of shades and of research, constantly pushing back the boundaries\nof speech, borrowing from all the technical vocabularies, taking colour\nfrom all palettes and notes from all key-boards, struggling to render\nwhat is most inexpressible in thought, what is vague and most elusive\nin the outlines of form, listening to translate the subtle confidences\nof neurosis, the dying confessions of passion grown depraved, and the\nstrange hallucinations of the obsession which is turning to madness.\nThe style of decadence is the ultimate utterance of the Word, summoned\nto final expression and driven to its last hiding-place. One may recall\nin this connection the language of the later Roman Empire, already\nmarbled with the greenness of decomposition, and, so to speak, gamy,\nand the complicated refinements of the Byzantine school, the last forms\nof Greek art falling into deliquescence. Such indeed is the necessary\nand inevitable idiom of peoples and civilisations in which factitious\nlife has replaced natural life, and developed unknown wants in men.\nIt is, besides, no easy thing, this style disdained of pedants, for\nit expresses new ideas in new forms, and in words which have not yet\nbeen heard. Unlike the classic style it admits shadow.... One may well\nimagine that the fourteen hundred words of the Racinian vocabulary\nscarcely suffice the author who has undertaken the laborious task of\nrendering modern ideas and things in their infinite complexity and\nmultiple colouration.\u201d\n\nSome fifteen years later, Bourget, again in an essay on Baudelaire\n(_Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine_), continued the exposition\nof the theory of decadence, elaborating the analogy to the social\norganism which enters the state of decadence as soon as the individual\nlife of the parts is no longer subordinated to the whole. \u201cA similar\nlaw governs the development and decadence of that other organism which\nwe call language. A style of decadence is one in which the unity of\nthe book is decomposed to give place to the independence of the page,\nin which the page is decomposed to give place to the independence of\nthe phrase, and the phrase to give place to the independence of the\nword.\u201d It was at this time (about 1884) that the term \u201cdecadent\u201d seems\nfirst to have been applied by Barr\u00e8s and others to the group of which\nVerlaine, Huysmans, Mallarm\u00e9 were the most distinguished members,\nand in so far as it signified an ardent and elaborate search for\nperfection of detail beyond that attained by Parnassian classicality\nit was tolerated or accepted. Verlaine, indeed, was for the most part\nindifferent to labels, neither accepting nor rejecting them, and\nhis work was not bound up with any theory. But Huysmans, with the\nintellectual passion of the pioneer in art, deliberate and relentless,\nhas carried both the theory and the practice of decadence in style to\nthe farthest point. In practice he goes beyond Baudelaire, who, however\nenamoured he may have been of what he called the phosphorescence of\nputrescence, always retained in his own style much of what is best in\nthe classic manner. Huysmans\u2019 vocabulary is vast, his images, whether\nremote or familiar, always daring,--\u201cdragged,\u201d in the words of one\ncritic, \u201cby the hair or by the feet, down the worm-eaten staircase of\nterrified Syntax,\u201d--but a heart-felt pulse of emotion is restrained\nbeneath the sombre and extravagant magnificence of this style, and\nimparts at the best that modulated surge of life which only the great\nmasters can control.\n\nDes Esseintes\u2019s predilections in literature are elaborated through\nseveral chapters, and without question he faithfully reflects his\ncreator\u2019s impressions. He was indifferent or contemptuous towards\nthe writers of the Latin Augustan age; Virgil seemed to him thin and\nmechanical, Horace a detestable clown; the fat redundancy of Cicero,\nwe are told, and the dry constipation of C\u00e6sar alike disgusted him;\nSallust, Livy, Juvenal, even Tacitus and Plautus, though for these\nhe had words of praise, seemed to him for the most part merely\nthe delights of pseudo-literary readers. Latin only began to be\ninteresting to Des Esseintes in Lucan, for here at least, in spite\nof the underlying hollowness, it became expressive and studded with\nbrilliant jewels. The author whom above all he delighted in was\nPetronius--who reminded Des Esseintes of the modern French novelists he\nmost admired--and several eloquent pages are devoted to that profound\nobserver, delicate analyst, and marvellous painter who modelled his own\nvivid and precise style out of all the idioms and slang of his day.\nAfter Petronius there was a gap in his collection of Latin authors\nuntil the second century of our own era is reached with Apuleius and\nthe sterner Christian contemporaries of that jovial pagan, Tertullian\nand the rest, in whose hands the tongue that in Petronius had reached\nsupreme maturity now began to dissolve. For Tertullian he had little\nadmiration, and none for Augustine, though sympathising with his\n_City of God_ and his general disgust for the world. But the\nspecial odour which the Christians had by the fourth century imparted\nto decomposing pagan Latin was delightful to him in such authors as\nCommodian of Gaza, whose tawny, sombre, and tortuous style he even\npreferred to Claudian\u2019s sonorous blasts, in which the trumpet of\npaganism was last heard in the world. He was also able to maintain\ninterest in Prudentius, Sedulius, and a host of unknown Christians\nwho combined Catholic fervour with a Latinity which had become, as it\nwere, completely putrid, leaving but a few shreds of torn flesh for\nthe Christians to \u201cmarinate in the brine of their new tongue.\u201d His\nshelves continued to show Latin books of the sixth, seventh, and eighth\ncenturies, among which he found special pleasure in the Anglo-Saxon\nwriters, and only finally ceased at the beginning of the tenth century,\nwhen \u201cthe curiosity, the complicated _na\u00efvet\u00e9_\u201d of the earlier\ntongue were finally lost in scholastic philosophy and mere cartalaries\nand chronicles.[8] Then, with a formidable leap of ten centuries, his\nLatin books gave place to nineteenth century French books.\n\nDes Esseintes is no admirer of Rabelais or Moli\u00e8re, of Voltaire\nor Rousseau. Among the older French writers he read only Villon,\nD\u2019Aubign\u00e9, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Nicole, and especially Pascal. Putting\nthese aside, his French library began with Baudelaire, whose works he\nhad printed in an edition of one copy, in episcopal letters, in large\nmissal _format_, bound in flesh-coloured pig-skin; he found an\nunspeakable delight in reading this poet who, \u201cin an age when verse\nonly served to express the external aspects of things, had succeeded\nin expressing the inexpressible, by virtue of a muscular and sinewy\nspeech which more than any other possessed the marvellous power of\nfixing with strange sanity of expression the most morbid, fleeting,\ntremulous states of weary brains and sorrowful souls.\u201d After Baudelaire\nthe few French books on Des Esseintes\u2019s shelves fall into two groups,\none religious, one secular. Most of the French clerical writers he\ndisregarded, for they yield a pale flux of words which seemed to him\nto come from a school-girl in a convent. Lacordaire he regarded as\nan exception, for his language had been fused and moulded by ardent\neloquence, but for the most part the Catholic writers he preferred were\noutside the Church. For Hello\u2019s _Homme_, especially, he cherished\nprofound admiration, and an inevitable sympathy for its author, who\nseemed to him \u201ca cunning engineer of the soul, a skilful watchmaker\nof the brain, delighting to examine the mechanism of a passion and to\nexplain the play of the wheelwork,\u201d and yet united to this power of\nanalysis all the fanaticism of a Biblical prophet, and the tortured\ningenuity of a master of style--an ill-balanced, incoherent, yet subtle\npersonality. But above all he delighted in Barbey d\u2019Aurevilly, shut\nout from the Church as an unclean and pestiferous heretic, yet glorying\nto sing her praises, insinuating into that praise a note of almost\nsadistic sacrilege, a writer at once devout and impious, altogether\nafter Des Esseintes\u2019s own heart, so that a special copy of the\n_Diaboliques_, in episcopal violet and cardinal purple, printed\non sanctified vellum with initials adorned by satanic tails, formed\none of his most cherished possessions. In D\u2019Aurevilly\u2019s style alone he\ntruly recognised the same gaminess, the speckled morbidity, the flavour\nas of a sleepy pear which he loved in decadent Latin and the monastic\nwriters of old time. Of contemporary secular books he possessed not\nmany; by force of passing them through the screw-press of his brain few\nwere finally found solid enough to emerge intact and bear rereading,\nand in this process he had accelerated \u201cthe incurable conflict which\nexisted between his ideas and those of the world into which by chance\nhe had been born.\u201d Certain selected works of the three great French\nnovelists of his time--Flaubert, Goncourt, and Zola--still remained,\nfor in all three he found in various forms that \u201cnostalgie des au-del\u00e0\u201d\nby which he was himself haunted; and with Baudelaire, these three were,\nin modern profane literature, the authors by whom he had chiefly been\nmoulded. The scanty collection also included Verlaine, Mallarm\u00e9, Poe,\nand Villiers de l\u2019Isle-Adam, whose firm fantastic style and poignantly\nironic attitude towards the utilitarian modern world he found entirely\nto his taste. Finally, there only remained the little anthology of\nprose-poems. Des Esseintes thought it improbable that he would ever\nmake any additions to his library; it seemed impossible to him that\na decadent language--\u201cstruggling on its death-bed to repair all the\nomissions of joy and bequeath the subtlest memories of pain\u201d--would\never go beyond Mallarm\u00e9. This brief summary of the three chapters,\nall full of keen if wayward critical insight, which describe Des\nEsseintes\u2019s library, may serve at once both to indicate the chief\nmoulding influences on Huysmans\u2019 own style and to illustrate the\nprecise nature of decadence in art and the fundamental part it plays.\n\nWe have to recognise that decadence is an \u00e6sthetic and not a moral\nconception. The power of words is great, but they need not befool\nus. The classic herring should suggest no moral superiority over the\ndecadent bloater. We are not called upon to air our moral indignation\nover the bass end of the musical clef. All confusion of intellectual\nsubstances is foolish, and one may well sympathise with that fervid\nunknown metaphysician to whom we owe the Athanasian creed when he\nwent so far as to assert that it is damnable. It is not least so in\nthe weak-headed decadent who falls into the moralist\u2019s snare and\ncomplacently admits his own exceeding wickedness. We may well reserve\nour finest admiration for the classic in art, for therein are included\nthe largest and most imposing works of human skill; but our admiration\nis of little worth if it is founded on incapacity to appreciate the\ndecadent. Each has its virtues, each is equally right and necessary.\nOne ignorant of plants might well say, on gazing at a seed-capsule with\nits seeds disposed in harmonious rows, that there was the eternally\nnatural and wholesome order of things, and on seeing the same capsule\nwither and cast abroad its seeds to germinate at random in the earth,\nthat here was an unwholesome and deplorable period of decay. But\nhe would know little of the transmutations of life. And we have to\nrecognise that those persons who bring the same crude notions into the\nfield of art know as little of the life of the spirit.\n\n\n                                 III.\n\nFor some years after the appearance of _A Rebours_ Huysmans\nproduced nothing of any magnitude. _En Rade_, his next novel,\nthe experience of a Parisian married couple who, under the stress of\ntemporary pecuniary difficulties, go into the country to stay at an\nuncle\u2019s farm, dwells in the memory chiefly by virtue of two vividly\nnaturalistic episodes, the birth of a calf and the death of a cat.\nMore interesting, more intimately personal, are the two volumes of art\ncriticism, _L\u2019Art Moderne_ and _Certains_, which Huysmans\npublished at about this period. Degas, Rops, Raffaelli, Odilon Redon\nare among the artists of very various temperament whom Huysmans\neither discovered, or at all events first appreciated in their full\nsignificance, and when he writes of them it is not alone critical\ninsight which he reveals, but his own personal vision of the world.\n\nTo Huysmans the world has ever been above all a vision; it was no\naccident that the art that appeals most purely to the eyes is that\nof which he has been the finest critic. One is tempted, indeed,\nto suggest that this aptitude is the outcome of heredity, of long\ngenerations devoted to laborious watchfulness of the desire of the eye\nin the external world, not indeed by actual accumulation of acquired\nqualities, but by the passing on of a nervous organism long found so\napt for this task. He has ever been intensely preoccupied with the\neffort to express those visible aspects of things which the arts of\ndesign were made to express, which the art of speech can perhaps\nnever express. The tortured elaboration of his style is chiefly due to\nthis perpetual effort to squeeze tones and colours out of this foreign\nmedium. The painter\u2019s brain holds only a pen and cannot rest until it\nhas wrung from it a brush\u2019s work. But not only is the sense of vision\nmarked in Huysmans. We are conscious of a general hyper\u00e6sthesia, an\nintense alertness to the inrush of sensations, which we might well term\nmorbid if it were not so completely intellectualised and controlled.\nHearing, indeed, appears to be less acutely sensitive than sight, the\npoet is subordinated to the painter, though that sense still makes\nitself felt, and the heavy multicoloured paragraphs often fall at\nthe close into a melancholy and poignant rhythm laden with sighs. It\nis the sense of smell which Huysmans\u2019 work would lead us to regard\nas most highly developed after that of sight. The serious way in\nwhich Des Esseintes treats perfumes is characteristic, and one of the\nmost curious and elaborate of the _Croquis Parisiens_ is \u201cLe\nGousset,\u201d in which the capacities of language are strained to define\nand differentiate the odours of feminine arm-pits. Again, earlier, in\na preface written for Hannon\u2019s _Rimes de Joie_, Huysmans points\nout that that writer--who failed to fulfil his early promise--alone\nof contemporary poets possessed \u201cla curiosit\u00e9 des parfums,\u201d and\nthat his chief poem was written in honour of what Huysmans called\n\u201cthe libertine virtues of that glorious perfume,\u201d opoponax. This\nsensitiveness to odour is less marked in Huysmans\u2019 later work, but the\ndominance of vision remains.\n\nThe two volumes of essays on art incidentally serve to throw\nconsiderable light on Huysmans\u2019 conception of life. For special\nillustration we may take his attitude towards women, whom in his\nnovels he usually treats, from a rather conventionally sexual point of\nview, as a fact in man\u2019s life rather than as a subject for independent\nanalysis. In these essays we may trace the development of his own\npersonal point of view, and in comparing the earlier with the later\nvolume we find a change which is significant of the general evolution\nof Huysmans\u2019 attitude towards life. He is at once the ultra-modern\nchild of a refined civilisation and the victim of nostalgia for an\nascetic medi\u00e6valism; his originality lies in the fact that in him these\ntwo tendencies are not opposed but harmonious, although the second\nhas only of late reached full development. In a notable passage in\n_En Rade_, Jacques, the hero, confesses that he can see nothing\nreally great or beautiful in a harvest field, with its anodyne toil,\nas compared with a workshop or a steamboat, \u201cthe horrible magnificence\nof machines, that one beauty which the modern world has been able to\ncreate.\u201d It is so that Huysmans views women also; he is as indifferent\nto the feminine ideals of classic art as to its literary ideals. In\n_L\u2019Art Moderne_, speaking with admiration of a study of the nude\nby Gauguin, he proceeds to lament that no one has painted the unclothed\nmodern woman without falsification or premeditated arrangement, real,\nalive in her own intimate personality, with her own joys and pains\nincarnated in the curves of her flesh, and the lash of childbirth\ntraceable on her flanks. We go to the Louvre to learn how to paint,\nhe remarks, forgetting that \u201cbeauty is not uniform and invariable,\nbut changes with the age and the climate, that the Venus of Milo,\nfor instance, is now not more beautiful and interesting than those\nancient statues of the New World, streaked and tattooed and adorned\nwith feathers; that both are but diverse manifestations of the same\nideal of beauty pursued by different races; that at the present date\nthere can be no question of reaching the beautiful by Venetian, Greek,\nDutch, or Flemish rites; but only by striving to disengage it from\ncontemporary life, from the world that surrounds us.\u201d \u201cUn nu fatigu\u00e9,\nd\u00e9licat, affin\u00e9, vibrant\u201d can alone conform to our own time; and he\nadds that no one has truly painted the nude since Rembrandt. It is\ninstructive to turn from this essay to that on Degas, written some six\nyears later. It may fairly be said that to Degas belongs the honour of\ntaking up the study of the nude at the point where Rembrandt left it;\nand like Rembrandt, he has realised that the nude can only be rightly\nrepresented in those movements, postures, and avocations by which it is\nnaturally and habitually exposed. It is scarcely surprising, therefore,\nthat Huysmans at once grasped the full significance of the painter\u2019s\nachievement. But he has nothing now to say of the beauty that lies\nbeneath the confinement of modern garments, \u201cthe delicious charm of\nyouth, grown languid, rendered as it were divine by the debilitating\nair of cities.\u201d On the contrary, he emphasises the vision which Degas\npresents of women at the bath-tub revealing in every \u201cfrog-like and\nsimian attitude\u201d their pitiful homeliness, \u201cthe humid horror of a body\nwhich no washing can purify.\u201d Such a glorified contempt of the flesh,\nhe adds, has never been achieved since the Middle Ages. There we catch\nwhat had now become the dominant tone in Huysmans\u2019 vision; the most\nmodern things in art now suggest to him, they seem to merge into, the\nmost medi\u00e6val and ascetic. And if we turn to the essay on F\u00e9licien Rops\nin the same volume--the most masterly of his essays--we find the same\npoint developed to the utmost. Rops in his own way is as modern and as\ndaring an artist of the nude as Degas. But, as Huysmans perceives, in\ndelineating the essentially modern he is scarcely a supreme artist,\nis even inferior to Forain, who in his own circumscribed region is\ninsurpassable. Rops, as Huysmans points out, is the great artist of\nthe symbolical rather than the naturalistic modern, a great artist\nwho furnishes the counterpart to Memlinc and Fra Angelico. All art,\nHuysmans proceeds, \u201cmust gravitate, like humanity which has given birth\nto it and the earth which carries it, between the two poles of Purity\nand Wantonness, the Heaven and the Hell of art.\u201d Rops has taken the\nlatter pole, in no vulgar nymphomaniacal shapes, but \u201cto divulge its\ncauses, to summarise it Catholically, if one may say so, in ardent and\nsorrowful images\u201d; he has drawn women who are \u201cdiabolical Theresas,\nsatanised saints.\u201d Following in the path initiated by Baudelaire and\nBarbey D\u2019Aurevilly, Huysmans concludes, Rops has restored Wantonness to\nher ancient and Catholic dignity. Thus is Huysmans almost imperceptibly\nled back to the old standpoint from which woman and the Devil are one.\n\n_Certains_ was immediately followed by _L\u00e0-bas_. This novel\nis mainly a study of Satanism, in which Huysmans interested himself\nlong before it attracted the general attention it has since received\nin France. There are, however, three lines of interest in the book,\nthe story of Gilles de Rais and his Sadism, the discussion of Satanism\nculminating in an extraordinary description of a modern celebration\nof the Black Mass, and the narration of Durtal\u2019s _liaison_ with\nMadame Chantelouve, wherein Huysmans reaches, by firm precision and\ntriumphant audacity, the highest point he has attained in the analysis\nof the secrets of passion. But though full of excellent matter,\nthe book loses in impressiveness from the multiplicity of these\ninsufficiently compacted elements of interest.\n\nWhile not among his finest achievements, however, it serves to mark\nthe definite attainment of a new stage in both the spirit and the\nmethod of his work. Hitherto he had been a realist, in method if\nnot in spirit, and had conquered the finest secrets of naturalistic\nart; by the help of _En M\u00e9nage_ alone, as Hennequin, one of\nhis earliest and best critics has said, \u201cit will always be possible\nto restore the exact physiognomy of Paris to-day.\u201d At the outset of\n_L\u00e0-bas_ there is a discussion concerning the naturalistic novel\nand its functions which makes plain the standpoint to which Huysmans\nhad now attained. Pondering the matter, Durtal, the hero of the book,\nconsiders that we need, on the one hand, the veracity of document, the\nprecision of detail, the nervous strength of language, which realism\nhas supplied; but also, on the other hand, we must draw water from\nthe wells of the soul. We cannot explain everything by sexuality and\ninsanity; we need the soul and the body in their natural reactions,\ntheir conflict and their union. \u201cWe must, in short, follow the great\nhigh-way so deeply dug out by Zola, but it is also necessary to trace a\nparallel path in the air, another road by which we may reach the Beyond\nand the Afterward, to achieve thus, in one word, a spiritualistic\nnaturalism.\u201d Dostoievsky comes nearest to this achievement, he remarks,\nand the real psychologist of the century is not Stendhal but Hello. In\nanother form of art the early painters--Italian, German, especially\nFlemish--realised this ideal. Durtal sees a consummate revelation\nof such spiritual naturalism in Matth\u00e6us Gr\u00fcnewald\u2019s crucifixion at\nCassel--the Christ who was at once a putrid and unaureoled corpse and\nyet a manifest god bathed in invisible light, the union of outrageous\nrealism and outrageous idealism. \u201cThus from triumphal ordure Gr\u00fcnewald\nextracted the finest mints of dilection, the sharpest essences of\ntears.\u201d One may say that the tendency Huysmans here so clearly asserts\nhad ever been present in his work. But in his previous novels his own\nnative impulse was always a little unduly oppressed by the naturalistic\nformulas of Goncourt and Zola. The methods of these great masters had\nlaid a burden on his work, and although the work developed beneath, and\nbecause of, that burden, a sense of laborious pain and obscurity too\noften resulted. Henceforth this disappears. Huysmans retains his own\ncomplexity of style, but he has won a certain measure of simplicity\nand lucidity. It was a natural development, no doubt furthered also\nby the position which Huysmans had now won in the world of letters.\n_A Rebours_, which he had written for his own pleasure, had\nfound an echo in thousands of readers, and the consciousness of an\naudience inspired a certain clarity of speech. From this time we\nmiss the insults directed at the _b\u00eatise_ of humanity. These\ncharacteristics clearly mark Huysmans\u2019 next and perhaps greatest book,\nin which the writer who had conquered all the secrets of decadent art\nnow sets his face towards the ideals of classic art.\n\nIn _En Route_, indeed, these new qualities of simplicity,\nlucidity, humanity, and intensity of interest attain so high a degree\nthat the book has reached a vast number of readers who could not\nrealise the marvellous liberation from slavery to its material which\nthe slow elaboration of art has here reached. In _A Rebours_\nHuysmans succeeded in taking up the prose-poem into his novel form,\nwhile at the same time certainly sacrificing something of the fine\nanalysis of familiar things which he had developed in _En M\u00e9nage_.\nIn _En Route_ he takes the novel from the point he had reached in\n_A Rebours_, incorporates into it that power of analysis which\nhas now reached incomparable simplicity and acuity, and thus wields the\nwhole of the artistic means which he has acquired during a quarter of\na century to one end, the presentation of a spiritual state which has\nbecome of absorbing personal interest to himself.\n\nI well remember hearing M. Huysmans, many years ago, tell how a\nmuddle-headed person had wished to commission him to paint a head of\nChrist. It seemed then a deliciously absurd request to make of the\nauthor of _A Rebours_, and his face wore the patient smile which\nthe spectacle of human stupidity was wont to evoke, but I have since\nthought that that muddle-headed person was wiser than he knew. As we\nlook back on Huysmans\u2019 earlier work it is now easy to see how he has\nsteadily progressed towards his present standpoint. _En Route_\ndoes not represent, as some might imagine, the reaction of an exhausted\ndebauchee or even the self-deception of a disappointed man of the\nworld. The temperament of Durtal is that of Andr\u00e9 and Folantin and Des\nEsseintes; from the first, in the _Drageoir \u00e0 Epices_, Huysmans\nhas been an idealist and a seeker, by no means an ascetic, rather a man\nwhose inquisitive senses and restless imagination had led him to taste\nof every forbidden fruit, but never one to whom the vulgar pleasures\nof life could offer any abiding satisfaction. The more precise record\nof Des Esseintes\u2019s early sexual life may help us here; while for\nthe penultimate stage Durtal\u2019s relations with Madame Chantelouve in\n_L\u00e0-bas_, and the mingled attraction and repulsion which he felt\nfor her, are certainly significant. In _En Route_ Durtal magnifies\nhis own wickedness, as Bunyan did in his _Grace Abounding_; the\nsaints have always striven to magnify their wickedness, leaving to the\nsinners the congenial function of playing at righteousness. To trace\nthe real permanence of Huysmans\u2019 attitude towards religion it is enough\nto turn back to _A Rebours_. Des Esseintes had been educated by\nthe Jesuits, and it sometimes seemed to him that that education had put\ninto him some extra-terrestrial ferment which never after ceased to\nwork, driving him in search of a new world and impossible ideals. He\ncould find no earthly place of rest; he sought to build for himself a\n\u201crefined Thebaid\u201d as a warm and comfortable ark wherein to find shelter\nfrom the flood of human imbecility. He was already drawn towards the\nChurch by many bonds, by his predilection for early Christian Latinity,\nby the exquisite beauty of the ecclesiastical art of the Middle Ages,\nby his love for monastic medi\u00e6val music, \u201cthat emaciated music which\nacted instinctively on his nerves\u201d and seemed to him precious beyond\nall other. Just as Nietzsche was always haunted by the desire for a\nmonastery for freethinkers, so Des Esseintes dreamed of a hermitage,\nof the advantages of the cloistered life of convents, wherein men are\npersecuted by the world for meting out to it the just contempt of\nsilence.\n\nDes Esseintes, and even the Durtal of _L\u00e0-bas_, always put aside\nthese thoughts with the reflection that, after all, the Church is\nonly an out-worn legend, a magnificent imposture. In _En Route_\nDurtal has taken a decisive step. He has undergone that psychological\nexperience commonly called \u201cconversion.\u201d It is only of recent years\nthat the phenomena of conversion have been seriously studied, but we\nknow at all events that it is not intellectual, not even necessarily\nmoral transformation, though it may react in either direction, but\nprimarily an emotional phenomenon; and that it occurs especially in\nthose who have undergone long and torturing disquietude, coming at\nlast as the spontaneous resolution of all their doubts, the eruption\nof a soothing flood of peace, the silent explosion of inner light. The\ninsight with which this state is described in _En Route_ seems to\ntestify to a real knowledge of it. No obvious moral or intellectual\nchange is effected in Durtal, but he receives a new experience of\nreposeful faith, a conviction deeper than all argument. It is really\nthe sudden emergence into consciousness of a very gradual process, and\nthe concrete artistic temperament which had been subjected to the\nprocess reacts in its own way. A more abstract intelligence would have\nasked: \u201cBut, after all, is my faith true?\u201d Durtal, in the presence of\nthe growing structure of sensory and imaginative forms within him,\nwhich has become as it were a home, feels that the question of its\ntruth has fallen into the background. Its perfect fitness has become\nthe affirmation of its truth. Henceforth it is the task of his life to\nlearn how best to adapt himself to what he recognises as his eternal\nhome. _En Route_ represents a stage in this adaptation.\n\nBy a rare chance--a happier chance than befell Tolstoi under somewhat\nsimilar circumstances--a new development in artistic achievement has\nhere run parallel, and in exquisite harmony, with the new spiritual\ndevelopment. The growing simplicity of Huysmans\u2019 work has reached a\npoint beyond which it could not perhaps be carried without injury to\nhis vivid and concrete style. And the new simplicity of spirit, of\nwhich it is the reflection, marks the final retreat into the background\nof that unreasonable contempt for humanity which ran through nearly\nall the previous books, and now at last passes even into an ecstasy\nof adoration in the passages concerning old Simon, the monastery\nswine-herd. Huysmans has chiefly shown his art, however, by relying\nalmost solely for the interest of his book on his now consummate power\nof analysis. This power, which we may perhaps first clearly trace in\n\u201cSac au Dos,\u201d had developed in _En M\u00e9nage_ into a wonderful skill\nto light up the unexplored corners of the soul and to lay bare those\nterrible thoughts which are, as he has somewhere said, the lamentable\nincarnation of \u201cthe unconscious ignominy of pure souls.\u201d In his earlier\nmasterpiece, _A Rebours_, however, it is little seen, having\nmostly passed into \u00e6sthetic criticism. The finest episode of emotional\nanalysis here is the admirable chapter in which Des Esseintes\u2019s attempt\nto visit London is narrated. All his life he had wished to see two\ncountries, Holland and England. (And here we may recall that the former\nis Huysmans\u2019 own ancestral land, and that his French critics find in\nhis work a distinct flavour of English humour.) He had actually been to\nHolland, and with visions won from the pictures of Rembrandt, Steen,\nand Teniers he had returned disillusioned. Now he went to Galignani\u2019s,\nbought an English Baedeker, entered the bodega in the Rue de Rivoli\nto drink of that port which the English love, and then proceeded to\na tavern opposite the Gare St. Lazare to eat what he imagined to be\na characteristic English meal, surrounded by English people, and\nhaunted by memories of Dickens. And as time went by he continued to\nsit still, while all the sensations of England seemed to pass along\nhis nerves, still sat until at last the London mail had started. \u201cWhy\nstir,\u201d he asked himself, \u201cwhen one can travel so magnificently in a\nchair?... Besides, what can one expect save fresh disillusionment, as\nin Holland?... And then I have experienced and seen what I wanted to\nexperience and see. I have saturated myself with English life; it would\nbe madness to lose by an awkward change of place these imperishable\nsensations.... He called a cab and returned with his portmanteaus,\nparcels, valises, rugs, umbrellas, and sticks to Fontenay, feeling the\nphysical and mental fatigue of a man who returns home after a long and\nperilous journey.\u201d There could be no happier picture of the imaginative\nlife of the artistic temperament. But in _En Route_ analysis is\nthe prime element of interest; from first to last there is nothing to\nhold us but this searching and poignant analysis of the fluctuations of\nDurtal\u2019s soul through the small section which he here travels in the\nroad towards spiritual peace. And on the way, lightly, as by chance,\nthe author drops the finest appreciations of liturgical \u00e6sthetics, of\nplain-chant, of the way of the Church with the soul, of the everlasting\nstruggle with the Evil One. There could, for instance, be no better\nstatement than this of one of the mystic\u2019s secrets: \u201cThere are two\nways of ridding ourselves of a thing which burdens us, casting it away\nor letting it fall. To cast away requires an effort of which we may not\nbe capable, to let fall imposes no labour, is simpler, without peril,\nwithin reach of all. To cast away, again, implies a certain interest,\na certain animation, even a certain fear; to let fall is absolute\nindifference, absolute contempt; believe me, use this method, and Satan\nwill flee.\u201d How many forms of Satan there are in the world before which\nwe may profitably meditate on these words! To strive or cry in the face\nof human stupidity is not the way to set it to flight; that is the\nlesson which Des Esseintes would never listen to, which Durtal has at\nlast learnt.[9]\n\n_En Route_ is the first of a trilogy, and the names of the succeeding\nvolumes, _La Cath\u00e9drale_ and _L\u2019Oblat_, sufficiently indicate the end\nof the path on which Durtal, if not indeed his creator, has started.\nBut however that may prove, whatever Huysmans\u2019 own final stage may be,\nthere can be little doubt that he is the greatest master of style, and\nwithin his own limits the subtlest thinker and the acutest psychologist\nwho in France to-day uses the medium of the novel. Only Zola can be\ncompared with him, and between them there can be no kind of rivalry.\nZola, with his immense and exuberant temperament, his sanity and\nwidth of view, his robust and plebeian art, has his own place on the\nhigh-road of modern literature. Huysmans, an intellectual and \u00e6sthetic\naristocrat, has followed with unflinching sincerity the by-path\nalong which his own more high-strung and exceptional temperament has\nled him, and his place, if seemingly a smaller one, is at least as\nsure; wherever men occupy themselves with the literature of the late\nnineteenth century they will certainly sometimes talk about Zola,\nsometimes read Huysmans. Zola\u2019s cyclopean architecture can only be\nseen as a whole when we have completed the weary task of investigating\nit in detail; in Huysmans we seek the expressiveness of the page,\nthe sentence, the word. Strange as it may seem to some, it is the\nso-called realist who has given us the more idealised rendering of\nlife; the concentrated vision of the idealist in his own smaller sphere\nhas revealed not alone mysteries of the soul, but even the exterior\nsecrets of life. True it is that Huysmans has passed by with serene\nindifference, or else with contempt, the things which through the ages\nwe have slowly learnt to count beautiful. But on the other hand, he has\nhelped to enlarge the sphere of our delight by a new vision of beauty\nwhere before to our eyes there was no beauty, exercising the proper\nfunction of the artist who ever chooses the base and despised things of\nthe world, even the things that are not, to put to nought the things\nthat are. Therein the decadent has his justification. And while we\nmay accept the pioneer\u2019s new vision of beauty, we are not called upon\nto reject those old familiar visions for which he has no eyes, only\nbecause his gaze must be fixed upon that unfamiliar height towards\nwhich he is leading the men who come after.\n\n\n                                  IV.\n\nHuysmans very exquisitely represents one aspect of the complex modern\nsoul, that aspect which shrinks from the grosser forces of Nature,\nfrom the bare simplicity of the naked sky or the naked body, the\n\u201cincessant deluge of human foolishness,\u201d the eternal oppression of\nthe commonplace, to find a sedative for its exasperated nerves in the\ncontemplation of esoteric beauty and the difficult search for the\nmystic peace which passes all understanding. \u201cNeeds must I rejoice\nbeyond the age,\u201d runs the motto from the old Flemish mystic Ruysbroeck\nset on the front of _A Rebours_, \u201cthough the world has horror of\nmy joy and its grossness cannot understand what I would say.\u201d Such is\ndecadence; such, indeed, is religion, in the wide and true sense of\nthe word. Christianity itself, as we know it in the western church,\nsprang from the baptism of young barbarism into Latin decadence. Pagan\nart and its clear serenity, science, rationalism, the bright, rough\nvigour of the sun and the sea, the adorable mystery of common life and\ncommonplace human love, are left to make up the spirit that in any age\nwe call \u201cclassic.\u201d\n\nThus what we call classic corresponds on the spiritual side to the love\nof natural things, and what we call decadent to the research for the\nthings which seem to lie beyond Nature. \u201cCorporea pulchritudo in pelle\nsolummodo constat. Nam si viderent homines hoc quod subtus pellem est,\nsicut lynces in Beotia cernere interiore dicuntur, mulieres videre\nnausearent. Iste decor in flegmate et sanguine et humore ac felle\nconstitit.\u201d That is St. Odo of Cluny\u2019s acute analysis of woman, who\nfor man is ever the symbol of Nature: beauty is skin-deep, drowned in\nexcretions which we should scarcely care to touch with the finger\u2019s\ntip. And for the classic vision of Nature, listen to that fantastic\nand gigantic Englishman, Sir Kenelm Digby, whose _Memoirs_,\nwhose whole personality, embodied the final efflorescence of the\npagan English Renaissance. He has been admitted by her maids to the\nbedchamber of Venetia Stanley, the famous beauty who afterwards became\nhis wife; she is still sleeping, and he cannot resist the temptation to\nundress and lie gently and reverently beside her, as half disturbed in\nher slumber she rolled on to her side from beneath the clothes; \u201cand\nher smock was so twisted about her fair body that all her legs and the\nbest part of her thighs were naked, which lay so one over the other\nthat they made a deep shadow where the never-satisfied eyes wished for\nthe greatest light. A natural ruddiness did shine through the skin, as\nthe sunbeams do through crystal or water, and ascertained him that it\nwas flesh that he gazed upon, which yet he durst not touch for fear\nof melting it, so like snow it looked. Her belly was covered with her\nsmock, which it raised up with a gentle swelling, and expressed the\nperfect figure of it through the folds of that discourteous veil.\nHer paps were like two globes--wherein the glories of the heaven\nand the earth were designed, and the azure veins seemed to divide\nconstellations and kingdoms--between both which began the milky way\nwhich leadeth lovers to their Paradise, somewhat shadowed by the\nyielding downwards of the uppermost of them as she lay upon her side,\nand out of that darkness did glisten a few drops of sweat like diamond\nsparks, and a more fragrant odour than the violets or primroses, whose\nseason was nearly passed, to give way to the warmer sun and the longest\ndays.\u201d They play with the same counters, you observe, these two, Odo\nand Digby, with skin, sweat, and so forth, each placing upon them his\nown values. Idealists both of them, the one idealises along the line\nof death, the other along the line of life which the whole race has\nfollowed, and both on their own grounds are irrefutable, the logic\nof life and the logic of death, alike solidly founded in the very\nstructure of the world, of which man is the measuring-rod.\n\nThe classic party of Nature seems, indeed, the stronger--in seeming\nonly, and one recalls that, of the two witnesses just cited, the abbot\nof Cluny was the most venerated man of his age, while no one troubled\neven to publish Digby\u2019s _Memoirs_ until our own century--but\nit carries weakness in its very strength, the weakness of a great\npolitical party formed by coalition. It has not alone idealists on its\nside, but for the most part also the blind forces of robust vulgarity.\nSo that the more fine-strung spirits are sometimes driven to a reaction\nagainst Nature and rationalism, like that of which Huysmans, from\n\u201cL\u2019Extase\u201d onwards, has been the consistent representative. At the\npresent moment such a reaction has attained a certain ascendency.\n\nChristianity once fitted nearly every person born into the European\nworld; there must needs be some to whom, in no modern devitalised\nform but in its purest essence, it is still the one refuge possible.\nNo doubt conditions have changed; the very world itself is not what\nit was to the medi\u00e6val man. One has to recognise that the modern\nEuropean differs in this from his medi\u00e6val ancestor that now we know\nhow largely the world is of our own making. The sense of interiority,\nas the psychologists say, is of much later development than the sense\nof exteriority. For the medi\u00e6val man,--as still to-day for the child in\nthe darkness,--his dreams and his fancies, every organic thrill in eye\nor ear, seemed to be flashed on him from a world of angels and demons\nwithout. In a sense which is scarcely true to-day the average man of\nthose days--not the finer or the coarser natures, it may well be--might\nbe said to be the victim of a species of madness, a paranoia, a\nsystematised persecutional delusion. He could not look serenely in the\nface of the stars or lie at rest among the fir-cones in the wood, for\nwho knew what ambush of the Enemy might not lurk behind these things?\nEven in flowers, as St. Cyprian said, the Enemy lay hidden.\n\n    \u201cNil jocundum, nil am\u0153num,\n    Nil salubre, nil serenum,\n    Nihil dulce, nihil plenum.\u201d\n\nThere was only one spot where men might huddle together in safety--the\nchurch. There the blessed sound of the bells, the contact of holy\nwater, the smell of incense, the sight of the Divine Flesh, wove a\nspiritual coat of mail over every sensory avenue to the soul. The winds\nof hell might rave, the birds of night dash themselves against the\nleaden spires of that fortress whence alone the sky seemed blue with\nhope.\n\nHuysmans, notwithstanding a very high degree of intellectual subtlety,\nis by virtue of his special \u00e6sthetic and imaginative temperament\ncarried back to the more childlike attitude of this earlier age. The\nwhole universe appears to him as a process of living images; he cannot\nreason in abstractions, cannot _rationalise_; that indeed is why\nhe is inevitably an artist. Thus he is a born leader in a certain\nmodern emotional movement.\n\nThat movement, as we know, is one of a group of movements now\npeculiarly active. We see them on every hand, occultism, theosophy,\nspiritualism, all those vague forms on the borderland of the unknown\nwhich call to tired men weary of too much living, or never strong\nenough to live at all, to hide their faces from the sun of nature and\ngrope into cool, delicious darkness, soothing the fever of life. It\nis foolish to resent this tendency; it has its rightness; it suits\nsome, who may well cling to their private dream if life itself is but\na dream. At the worst we may remember that, however repugnant such\nmovements may be, to let fall remains a better way of putting Satan to\nflight than to cast away. And at the best one should know that this is\npart of the vital process by which the spiritual world moves on its\naxis, alternating between darkness and light.\n\nTherefore soak yourself in mysticism, follow every intoxicating path\nto every impossible Beyond, be drunken with medi\u00e6valism, occultism,\nspiritualism, theosophy, and even, if you will, protestantism--the cup\nthat cheers, possibly, but surely not inebriates--for the satisfaction\nthat comes of all these is good while it lasts. Yet be sure that Nature\nis your home, and that from the farthest excursions you will return\nthe more certainly to those fundamental instincts which are rooted in\nthe zoological series at the summit of which we stand. For the whole\nspiritual cosmogony finally rests, not indeed on a tortoise, but on the\nemotional impulses of the mammal vertebrate which constitute us men.\n\nMeanwhile we will not grieve because in the course of our pilgrimage\non earth the sun sets. It has always risen again. We may lighten the\ndarkness of the journey by admiring the beauty of night, plucking back\nthe cowl if needs must we wear it.--_Eia, fratres, pergamus._\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[Footnote 8: It may be gathered from the Preface he wrote at a\nlater date for M. Remy de Gourmont\u2019s delightful volume, _Le Latin\nMystique_, that Huysmans would no longer draw a line at this point;\nfor he here speaks with enthusiasm of the styles of St. Bernard, St.\nBonaventure, and St. Thomas d\u2019Aquinas.]\n\n[Footnote 9: In the seventeenth century a great English man of science,\nStephen Hales, had discovered the same truth, for we are told that\n\u201che could look even upon wicked men, and those who did him unkind\noffices, without any emotion of particular indignation, not from want\nof discernment or sensibility; but he used to consider them only like\nthose experiments which, upon trial, he found could never be applied to\nany useful purpose, and which he therefore calmly and dispassionately\nlaid aside.\u201d]\n\n\n\n\n                        ST. FRANCIS AND OTHERS.\n\n\nTHE religion of Jesus was the invention of a race which itself never\naccepted that religion. In the East religions spring up, for the most\npart, as naturally as flowers, and, like flowers, are scarcely a matter\nfor furious propaganda. These deep sagacious Eastern men threw us of\nold this rejected flower, as they have since sent us the vases and fans\nthey found too tawdry; and when we send our missionaries out to barter\nback the gift at a profit, they say no word, but their faces wear the\nmysterious Eastern smile. Yet for us, at all events, the figure of\nJesus symbolises, and will always symbolise, a special attitude towards\nlife, made up of tender human sympathy and mystical reliance on the\nunseen forces of the world. In certain stories of the Gospels, certain\nsayings, in many of the parables, this attitude finds the completest\nexpression of its sweetest abandonment. But to us, men of another\nrace living in far distant corners of the world, it seems altogether\noriental and ascetic, a morbid exceptional phenomenon. And as a matter\nof fact Jesus found no successor. Over the stage of those gracious and\nradiant scenes swiftly fell a fire-proof curtain, wrought of systematic\ntheology and formal metaphysics, which even the divine flames of that\nwonderful personality were unable to melt.\n\nSomething even stronger than theology or metaphysics has served to\ncut us off from the spirit of Jesus, and that is the spirit of Paul,\ncertainly the real founder of \u201cChristianity,\u201d as we know it, for\nJerome, Augustine, Luther, were all the children of Paul, and in no\nrespect the children of Jesus. That marvellous little Jew painted in\nits main outlines the picture of Christianity which in the theatre of\nthis world has for so many centuries shut us off from Jesus. Impelled\nby the intense and concentrated energy of his twisted suffering nature,\nPaul brought \u201cmoral force\u201d into our western world, and after it that\ninfinite procession of hypocrisies and cruelties and artificialities\nwhich still trains loathsomely across the scene of civilised life.\nJesus may have been a visionary, but his visions were in divine harmony\nwith the course of nature, with the wine and the bread of life,\nwith children and with flowers. We may be very sure that Paul never\nconsidered the lilies, or found benediction with children. He trampled\non nature when it came in his way, and for the rest never saw it.\nHe was not, as Festus thought, a madman, but whether or not, as his\nexperiences seem to indicate, he was a victim to the \u201csacred disease\u201d\nof epilepsy, concerning his profoundly neurotic temperament there can\nbe no manner of question.\n\nHe flung himself on to men, this terrible apostle of the \u201cGentiles,\u201d\nthrusting faith down their throats at the point of a spiritual sword\nso fiery and keen that, by no miracle, it soon became a sword of steel\nwith red blood dripping from its point. Well-nigh everything that\nhas ever been evil in Christianity, its temporal power, its accursed\nintolerance, its contempt for reason, for beautiful living, for every\nsweet and sunny and simple aspect of the world--all that is involved\nin the awful conception of \u201cmoral force\u201d--flows directly from Paul.\nWhat eternal torture could be adequate for so monstrous an offender?\nAnd yet, when you think of the potent personality concentrated in this\nmorbid man, of his courage, of the intolerance that he wreaked on\nhimself, the flashes of divine insight in his restless and turbulent\nspirit, of the humility of the neuropath who desired to be \u201caltogether\nmad,\u201d the pathos of it all, indignation falls silent. What can be said?\n\nThus Paul and not Peter was the rock on which the Church was built,\nand whatever virtues the Church may have possessed have not been the\nvirtues of Jesus but the quite other virtues of Paul. Yet Jesus has not\nwholly been left without witness even in Europe, and it is the special\ncharm and significance of Francis of Assisi that he, if not alone\ncertainly chief among European men, has incarnated some measure of the\ngraciousness that was in Jesus, and made it visible and real to the\nEuropean world. And he has done that by no means through the influence\nof the Church, or by imitation, but by wholly natural and spontaneous\nimpulse. To understand Francis we must first of all realise that he was\nin no sense and at no time the creature of the Church, being indeed\nfrom first to last in a very real sense antagonistic to the Church. The\nwhole world as Francis knew it was Christian, and he was by no means a\nman of inquisitive analytic intellectual type, a Bruno or a Campanella;\nhe accepted Christianity because it was there, and while remaining in\nit was never of it, resenting fiercely any attempt of the Church to\nencroach on the free activity of his personality, dispensing himself of\nany intimate adherence not by intellectual sophistries, but by lightly\nbrushing away science and theology altogether as useless superfluities.\n\nAn acute psychologist has well remarked that those famous historical\npersons who have passed through two antithetical phases of character,\nsurvive for us usually only in one of those phases, that we can\nremember only the post-conversion Augustine and the pre-abdication\nDiocletian. Such one-sided views of great and complex characters suit\nour rough and lazy methods of ordinary thought, content to regard a\nman only on that side which has been most prominently displayed to the\nworld. But such methods are fatal to any clear psychological conception\nof character or to any sound ethical conception of life. Francis lived\none of these double-sided lives, and the Francis we remember is the\nemaciated saint already developing the stigmata of divine grace. In\nhis earlier biographies we catch glimpses of a younger and quite other\nFrancis, _in vanitatibus nutritus insolenter_, the spendthrift\ncompanion of nobles, proud to surpass them in youthful extravagance and\ndissipation, the head of a band which dazzled the citizens of Assisi\nwith the luxury of their rich garments and the sound of their festive\nsongs by night, a passionate lover of chivalry and the troubadours,\nwhose music then filled the air, so full of gaiety that he sometimes\nseemed almost mad to the grave citizens of his town, one whose nature\nit was from the first to go to excess, always to a fine and generous\nexcess, that spiritual excess which Blake called the road to the palace\nof wisdom.\n\nThe later Francis survived; the early Francis is forgotten. But we\nmay be assured that there would have been no Francis the saint if\nthere had not been Francis the sinner. That grace and elation, the\ntender humanity and infinite delight in natural things, even the\nprofound contempt for luxury and superfluity, were not learnt in any\nof the saint\u2019s beloved Umbrian cells; they were the final outcome\nof a beautifully free and excessive life acting on an exquisitely\nfine-strung organism. Rarely has any follower of Francis attained\nin any measure to his level of exalted freedom, joy, and simplicity\nin saintliness. It was not alone that they could not possess his\norganism, but they had not lived his life. Their piety even blinded\ntheir eyes, and just as the biographers of Jesus omitted all reference\nto the formative years of his life, so also the biographers of Francis\ngradually eliminated the early records, terrified at the thought that\ntheir founder may not have been a virgin. We do not win any clear\npsychological insight into the man until we realise this.\n\nIt is not alone the psychological aspect which becomes clear in the\nlight of Francis\u2019s early life. These stages of development have\ntheir ethical significance also. It seems to be too often forgotten\nthat repression and licence are two sides of the same fact. We can\nonly attain a fine temperance through a fine freedom, even a fine\nexcess. The women who think that they must at all costs repress\nthemselves, and the men who--usually with the help of certain private\n\u201caccommodements\u201d--consider repression as the proper ideal, have missed\nthe true safeguards against licence, and flounder for ever in a turbid\nsea, at war with themselves, at war with nature. The saints knew\nbetter. By a process of spiritual Pasteurism, a natural and spontaneous\nprocess, they guaranteed their eternal peace. All the real saints, so\nfar as we know them, had many phases, such of them as were saints from\ntheir mothers\u2019 wombs possessing a significance which for human beings\ngenerally is minimal. The real saints in all ages have forgotten so\nmany beautiful things, storing so many wonderful experiences in their\npast. We should not dye our clothes, says St. Clement of Alexandria,\nour life should now be anything but a pageant. Flower-like garments\nshould be abandoned, and Bacchic revelries, \u201cuseful for tragedies, not\nfor life.\u201d The dyes of Sardis--olive, green, rose-coloured, scarlet,\nand ten thousand other hues--invented for voluptuousness, the garments\nof embroidered gold and purple, dipped in perfume, stained in saffron,\nthe bright diaphanous tissues of the dancing girl--to all these we must\nbid farewell. But we cannot bid them farewell unless we have known\nthem. If you would be a saint you must begin by being something other\nthan a saint. This it was that St. Clement forgot, or never knew.\n\nIn youth we are so full of energy, and life seems so long. In our\nethical fervour we accept Clement\u2019s theory of conduct at his own\nvaluation. One is so scrupulous of others, so anxious lest he hurt\nthem; and another is so contemptuous of others, so eager to hold\nhimself back from all but the highest good, and never to let himself\nfully go. And there is a fine thrill of pleasure in the self-restraint,\nan athletic tension of the soul. It is as if the infant at the breast\nshould say, I will hold myself back from sucking; I will take only just\never so little, and not let myself go and draw in the delicious stream\nwith no after-thought; there will be time for that when I am grown up.\nBut it is not so. There is only one time in life for milk, only one\ntime for youth; we cannot postpone life or retrace its milestones, and\nwhat is once lost is lost for ever. The cold waters of self-restraint\nand self-denial, as we first put our young feet in them, send a tonic\nshiver along the nerves, and we go on and on. But suddenly we find that\nthe water has risen to our breasts, to our chins, that it is too late,\ntoo late, that we shall never again move and breathe freely in the open\nair and sunshine. That is the fate that overtakes the young ascetic\nideal. Unhappier yet are those who snatch the cup of life so hastily in\nyouth and fill it with such muddy waters that the dregs cling to their\nlips for ever, spoiling the taste of the most exquisite things. To\nlive remains an art, an art which every one must learn, and which no\none can teach.\n\nIt may seem that I speak of out-worn things, and that the problem of\nsaintliness has little relation to the moral problems of our time.\nIt is far otherwise. You have never seen the world if you have not\nrealised that an element of asceticism lies at the foundation of life.\nYou may expel it with the fork of reason or of self-enjoyment, but\nbeing part of Nature herself it must ever return. All the art of living\nlies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding in. The man who makes\nthe one or the other his exclusive aim in life will die before he has\never begun to live. The man who has carried one part of the process to\nexcess before turning to the other will indeed learn what life is, and\nmay leave behind him the memory of a pattern saint. But he alone is\nthe wise master of living who from first to last has held the double\nideal in true honour. In these, as in other matters, we cannot know the\nspiritual facts unless we realise the physical facts of life. All life\nis a building up and a breaking down, a taking in and a giving out,\na perpetually anabolic and katabolic rhythm. To live rightly we must\nimitate both the luxury of Nature and her austerity.\n\nWhat should be the place of asceticism in modern life? Evidently there\nis in human nature an instinct which craves for the sharpening of\nenjoyment which comes from simplicity and a finely-tempered abstinence,\na measured drawing back when also it were possible recklessly to let\ngo. It is easy to wave aside religious asceticism. That, it seems,\nmay well be left to those who decide to invest their enjoyments in a\nheavenly bank which will pay large dividends in another world. There\nstill remains the rational asceticism that is sweet either for its own\nsake, or for its immediate and visible results in human joy.\n\nWhen we contemplate the modern world from a broadly biological\nstandpoint, there can be but little difficulty in finding free and\nwholesome scope for the ascetic instinct. For the Christian or Buddhist\nascetic of old (as in some measure for his feeble modern imitator, the\ntheosophist) asceticism was a rapturous indifference to life for the\nsake of something that seemed more than life, something that was itself\na \u201chigher life,\u201d and only to be achieved in the treading under foot of\nall that men counted life. Such conceptions belong to the past, and can\nonly be revivified in the failing imaginations of the weary and the\naged who belong to the past. The more subtle and complex conception of\nlife which has grown up in the modern world traces life to its roots\nand finds it most precious where it is most intense. When we wish to\ncarve out a world for ourselves it is the periphery which we cut away\nand not the core. The immense accretions of that periphery in the\nmodern world make clearer to us than it was to our predecessors that\nit is in the simple and elementary things that our life consists. It\nis to the honour of Francis that in a vague, imperfect way he foresaw\nthis. Aided by his early experiences, he cast aside the superfluities\nof knowledge and labour and skill--all that vain plethora of mere\nformal things and prescribed acts which men foolishly count life--and\nsymbolising them in wealth, joyfully espoused Poverty as a bride. For\npoverty to Francis meant contact with Nature and with men. The free\nplay of the individual soul in contact with Nature and men, Francis\ninstinctively felt, is joy and liberation; and if the simple-minded\nsaint went farther than this, and allowed a certain set of dogmatic\nopinions and conventional abstentions, we may be sure that herein he\nhad no warrant of personal inspiration, but was content to follow the\nwell-nigh unquestioned traditions of his day. Francis fought, not for\nChristianity and still less for the Church, but for the great secret of\nfine living which he had personally divined. It was by a true instinct\nthat his modern biographer finds the motto of his life in the exquisite\nsaying of the saint\u2019s great precursor, Joachim of Flora, that the true\nascetic counts nothing his own, save only his harp: \u201cQui vere monachus\nest nihil reputat esse suum nisi citharam.\u201d\n\nIn former days we used to regard the civilised man as in some way\nincorporating in his organism and bringing into the world with him\nthe inheritance of the ages of human culture. Now the tendency is to\nregard civilisation as a growth totally outside man, and to consider\nthe man himself as a savage who merely adapts himself to civilisation\nas he grows up, bringing, it may be, his own little contribution\nto its development, but himself remaining practically a savage.\nThus Weismann has argued that the development of music is purely a\ndevelopment of traditions, and that given the traditions any savage\nhas a chance of becoming a Bach or a Beethoven. I think this is a more\nextreme view than the facts warrant us in taking. But it is fairly\nobvious that there has been no growth of the human intellect during\nat least the last two or three thousand years. We cannot beat the\nRomans at government; we cannot express passion better than Sappho, or\nform better than Phidias. We have produced no more truly scientific\nphysicians than Hippocrates or Galen; we cannot map out the world\nmore philosophically than Aristotle, nor play at ball with it with\na greater dialectical facility than Plato. What we have done is to\nburden ourselves with a vaster mass of tradition. Civilisation is the\ngarment which man makes to clothe himself with. It is for each of us\nto help to put in a patch here, to sew on a button there, or to work\nin more embroidery. But the individual himself, with his own personal\norganic passions, never becomes part of the garment, he only wears it.\nNot, indeed, that we are called upon to refuse to wear it. The person\nwho can so refuse to follow the whole tradition of the race whence he\nsprings is organically abnormal, not to say morbid. His fellows have\na fair right to call him a lunatic or a criminal. The real question\nis whether we shall allow ourselves to be crushed to the earth, lame,\nimpotent, and an\u00e6mic, by the mere garment of civilisation, or whether\nwe shall so strive to live that we wear it loosely and easily and\nathletically, recognising that it is infinitely less precious than the\nhumanity it clothes, still not without its beauty and its use.\n\nIf we wish to realise how many things are not required for fine living\nwe may contemplate the \u201ctriumphs of the Victorian era.\u201d Contemplating\nthese we are enabled also to see that they mostly belong to the\nmechanical side of existence, among the things that are remote from the\ncore of life. The new energy that all these inventions may give you on\none side they take from you on the other. They run on the energy that\nyou yourself supply. They are but devices for burdening your progress\nand draining away your energy. For what does it avail though tons of\nfood are piled before you at the banquet of life if the capacity of\nyour stomach remains strictly limited? Only the more exquisite quality\nof the banquet, with a finer equity in its distribution, could have\nbrought you new joy and strength. The exquisite things of life are\nto-day as rare and as precious as ever they were. If the Victorian era\nhad given a keener sauce to hunger, a more ravishing delight to love,\nif it had added a new joy to the sunlight, or a more delicious thrill\nto the springtime, if it had made any of these things a larger part of\nthe common life, there indeed were a triumph to boast of! But so far\nas one can see, the Victorian era has mostly helped to cover over and\npush away from men the essential joys of living. Even those who prate\nso gleefully of its triumphs find chief of these its narcotics. Let us\nuse these \u201ctriumphs\u201d as much as we will, they belong to the unessential\nbackground against which the real drama of our life must still be\nplayed.\n\nWe waste so much of our time on the things that are not truly\nessential, worrying ourselves and others. Only one thing is really\nneedful, whether with this man we say \u201cSeek first the kingdom of\nHeaven,\u201d or with that, \u201cMake to yourself a perfect body.\u201d It matters\nlittle, because he who pointed to the kingdom of Heaven came eating and\ndrinking, the friend of publicans and sinners, and he who pointed to\nthe body sought solitude and the keenest spiritual austerity. The body\nincludes the soul, and the kingdom of Heaven includes the body. The one\nthing needful is to seek wisely the fullest organic satisfaction. The\nmore closely we cling to that which satisfies the deepest cravings of\nthe organism, the more gladly we shall let fall the intolerable burden\nof restraints and licences which are not required for fine living. \u201cThe\ntrue ascetic counts nothing his own save only his harp.\u201d It is best to\nfeel light and elate, free in every limb. Every man may have his burden\nto bear; let him only beware that he bears no burden which is not a joy\nto carry. If a man cannot sing as he carries his cross he had better\ndrop it.\n\nOne has to admit that among English-speaking races at all events\nthe conditions have not been favourable for fine living. The racial\nelements that have chiefly gone to making the English-speaking peoples\nhave been mainly characterised by energy, and while energy is the prime\nconstituent of living, it is scarcely sufficient for fine living. It\nis quality rather than quantity of life which finally counts: that\nis the terrible fact it has taken so long for our race to learn. To\nplough deep in the furrows of life, to scatter human seed broadcast, to\nbring to birth your random millions to wilt and fade in the black fog\nof London alleys or the hot steam of Lancashire mills, casting abroad\nthe residue to wreak the vengeance in their blood on every fair and\nunspoilt land the world may hold--that is scarcely yet civilisation;\nfishes that spawn in the deep have carried the art of living as far\nas that. Not energy, even when it shows itself in the blind fury\nof righteousness, suffices to make civilisation, but sincerity,\nintelligence, sympathy, grace, and all those subtle amenities which go\nto what we call, perhaps imperfectly enough, humanity--therein more\ntruly lie the virtues of fine living.\n\nIt seems not unnecessary to point out that civilisation was immortal\nlong before the first Englishman was born. The races that have given\nthe world the chief examples of fine living have never, save sometimes\nin their decay, sought quantity rather than quality of life. Some of\nthe world\u2019s most eternal cities are its smallest cities. If indeed the\nreckless excess of human life tended to produce happiness, we might\nwell recognise compensation, and rest content. But, as we know, that\nis not so. The country that men call the wealthiest is the poorest in\nhumanity when the lives and safeties of its workers are concerned, the\nlaw of our righteousness demanding that the weakest shall go to the\nwall.\n\nOne asks oneself if such a condition of things is fatally necessary.\nIf that were so, then indeed the outlook of the world is dark. If\nthe ideal of quantity before quality, of brute energy, of complacent\nself-righteousness, is for ever to dominate a large part of the world\nthrough the English-speaking peoples, then indeed we may die happy that\nthe memory and the vision of better things were yet extant in our time.\n\nYet surely it is not necessary. If civilisation is a tradition then\nwe may mould that tradition. We are no longer fatally damned into the\nworld. If our fathers ate sour grapes our teeth are not on edge. And\neven so far as the influence of race counts, there is yet to be set\nagainst it the influence of climate. In sunnier English-speaking lands\nwe may already trace a new foreign element of grace and suavity, a\ndeeper insight into the art of living, clearly due in large measure to\nsky alone. When races change their sky, unlike individuals, they change\ntheir dispositions also.\n\nBut if we put aside this factor--though it is one of much significance\nwhen we recall the accumulating evidence that under proper conditions\nthe white races can live and flourish in hot climes--are there no\nreasons for thinking that even the English in England may acquire\nthose aptitudes which make not only for the grosser virtues of\ncivilisation, but also for those finer qualities which alone make life\ntruly worth living? I think there are.\n\nIt is common for pessimists of the baser sort to lament the relative\ndecay of English supremacy in manufacturing and commercial energy,\nand to look enviously at the development in these directions of other\nand younger lands. Such an attitude is in any case inhuman, since\nthese younger countries, especially Germany, are undertaking the\ncruder tasks of civilisation in at once a more scientific and a more\nhumane spirit than we have ever been able to achieve. But it is also\nuncalled for. As a civilisation declines in brutal material energy it\ngains in spiritual refinement, thus winning more subtle and permanent\ninfluence. Egypt in her old age helped to mould young Greece, which in\nturn as she fell civilised her barbarian Roman conquerors. Of early\nvigorous Rome nothing remains save the empty echo of heroic virtue;\nbut on the magnificent compost of Roman, Alexandrian, and Byzantine\ndecay we northerners are flourishing even to-day. France has not taken\na leading part in the grosser work of modern civilisation, but her\nlaboratories of ideas, her workshops of beauty, above all her skill in\nthe fine art of living, have given her an influence over men\u2019s minds\nwhich swarming millions of pale factory hands and an inconceivable\ntonnage of mercantile shipping have not so far given to us. But in the\nvery dying down of these grosser energies there is hope, for we may be\nsure that the forces of life are not yet extinct, and that worthier and\nsubtler ends will float before our eyes as the sculleries and outhouse\noffices of life are gradually removed elsewhere. England, there can be\nlittle doubt, is peculiarly fitted to exercise the finer functions of\ncivilisation, if not indeed for the world generally, at all events for\nthose peoples of the globe which are allied to her wholly by language\nand largely by race. In new countries, in the hurry of cities, in the\nbarren solitude of plains and hills, men have no time or no chance to\nelaborate the ideals and visions for which they yet thirst; they are\nnot in touch with those great traditions on which alone all worthy\nand abiding effort must finally rest. The little group of islands\nhidden in this far corner of the Atlantic, bathed in their everlasting\nhalo of iridescent mist, will be a sacred shrine for fully half the\nworld. It was the womb in which the world\u2019s most energetic race was\nelaborated; we may be sure that the mother feeling will never die out.\nEvery great name and episode in the slow incubation of the race has\nits place and association there. Nothing there which is not visibly\nbathed in that glory which for ever touches us in the far past. In\nthe light of a newer civilisation every aspect of it will claim the\npicturesque beauty of the past. And if, as Ribot has lately asserted,\nthe factories of this century will haunt the minds of future men with\nthe same picturesque suggestion as the ruins of thirteenth century\nabbeys to-day haunt us, how rich a treasure England will possess here!\nMen will come from afar to wander among the ruined factories and\nfurnaces of Lancashire and the Midlands, to gaze at the crumbling charm\nof those structures once mortared by tears and blood. They will seek\nthe massive whirr of vanished mills at dawn, the prolonged clatter of\nclogs along the pavement, the flutter of shawls down dark alleys, the\necho of brutal forgotten oaths. Their eyes will vainly try to recall\nthe men and women of the Victorian era, huddled together in pathetic\nself-satisfaction beneath a black pall of smoke and disease and death,\nplaying out the tragedy they called life. A tender melancholy mightier\nthan beauty will cling to the decay of that vanished past.\n\nSo far we have been developing the modern applications of that spirit\nof _simplicity_--of sincere and natural asceticism--which was a\nchief part of the secret of the Umbrian saint\u2019s charm. Francis--as\nin an earlier age the great Cynics of Greece, and in a later age the\nNew England transcendentalists--enables us to see that asceticism\nis a natural instinct; he knew that so far from being an effort to\ncrush the body it was an effort to give elation and freedom to the\nbody--_Gaude, frater corpus!_--and that so far from being an\nappeal to sorrow it was a perpetual appeal to joy. Let us throw aside\nthe useless burdens of life, he seems to say, the things that oppress\nbody and mind,--care and wealth and learning and books,--that thus we\nmay become free to concentrate ourselves on the natural things of the\nworld, attaining therein the joy of living. That was the simplicity of\nFrancis. There is another vaguer and subtler aspect of his personality\nwhich may be expressed by the allied word _purity_. I mean that\nclearness and perfect crystalline transparency symbolised by water,\nin which it has its source. That Francis, with all his fine natural\ninstincts, fully realised all the implications of purity, either on its\nphysical or its spiritual sides, one may well doubt. Purity has never\nbeen a great Christian virtue, though ever greatly talked about in\nChristendom; and while the reliance of Francis on instinct carried him\nfar beyond the age and the faith in which he lived, his indifference to\nthe intellectual grip of things which was part of that natural instinct\ncaused him to be often swayed by the conventions and traditions around\nhim.\n\nIt has been well said that purity--which in the last analysis is\nphysical cleanness--is the final result of evolution after which\nNature is ever striving. When she had attained to the production of\nnaked savage man, a creature no longer encumbered with the care of his\nfur but freely and constantly bathed by the elements, the perfection of\npurity was attained. With the wearing of clothes dirt was again brought\ninto the world; and so-called civilised man--except when he possesses\nleisure for prolonged attention to his person and his clothes--is once\nmore brought to the level of the lower animals, indeed below them, for\nfew animals spend so little time and trouble in attaining cleanliness\nas garmented man. Pagan classic times, no doubt, cherished a cult of\nthe body which involved a high regard for physical purity. That is\nthe very reason why such purity has never been a Christian or modern\nvirtue. The early Church, feeling profound antagonism to the vices\nwhich in classic times were associated with the bath, from the outset\nfrequently denied that there was any need for cleanliness at all. Even\nso cultured a Christian as Clement of Alexandria would only admit\nthat women should be clean; it was not necessary for men; \u201cthe bath\nis to be taken by women for cleanliness and health, by men for health\nalone;\u201d in later days the hatred of cleanliness often became quite\nwhole-hearted. Thus it happens that throughout Europe and wherever\nthe influence of Christianity has spread there has been on the whole\nan indifference to dirt, which is indeed not uncommonly found among\ndegraded peoples untouched by Christianity, but is certainly nowhere\nelse found in association with a grade of culture in most other\nmatters so high. To the Roman the rites of the bath formed one of the\nvery chief occupations of life, and to this race it has happened, as\nprobably to no other ancient race, that their baths have often survived\ntheir temples; Rome holds no more memorable relic than the Baths of\nCaracalla. For the Mohammedan the love of water is part of religion,\nand the energy and skill with which in its prime Islamic civilisation\nexploited the free and beautiful use of water, are still to be traced\nthroughout southern Spain. In the fine civilisation of Japan, again,\nthe pursuit of physical purity has ever been a simple and unashamed\npublic duty, and \u201ca Japanese crowd,\u201d says Professor Chamberlain, \u201cis\nthe sweetest in the world.\u201d How different things are in Christendom one\nneed not insist.\n\nIt is, however, impossible to overrate the magnitude of the issues\nwhich are directly and indirectly enfolded in this question of physical\npurity. Christianity, with its studied indifference to cleanliness,\nis, after all, a force from the outside so far as we are concerned;\nevery spontaneous reflective movement of progress involves a reaction\nagainst it. On the physical side it is the mark of the better social\nclasses that they are clean, and any striving for betterment among the\nmasses is on the physical side a striving for greater cleanliness.\nPersonal dirtiness is the real and permanent dividing line of classes.\nThe instinctive physical shrinking of the clean person from the dirty\nperson--except at the rare moments when some stronger emotion comes\ninto play--is profound and inevitable. Nearly every form of honest\nnatural vulgarity it is possible to find tolerable and sometimes even\ncharming, but personal physical unwholesomeness remains an impossible\nbarrier. There is no social equality between the clean and the dirty.\nThe question of physical purity lies at the root of the real democratic\nproblem.\n\nOur attitude towards physical purity inevitably determines our attitude\ntowards the body generally. Without the ideal of cleanliness the body\nbecomes impure. It cannot be shown. Complete concealment becomes\nthe ideal of the impure. And however pure and excellent the body\nmay actually be among ourselves, the traditions of the past remain.\nThe Greeks considered the dislike to nakedness as a mark of Persian\nand other barbarians; the Japanese--the Greeks of another age and\nclime--had not conceived the reasons for avoiding nakedness until\ntaught by the lustful and shame-faced eyes of western barbarians.\nAmong ourselves it is \u201cdisgusting\u201d even to-day to show so much as the\nfoot.[10] We certainly could not imitate St. Francis, who broke with\nhis old life by abandoning his father\u2019s house and all that he owned,\nabsolutely naked.\n\nThere is no real line of demarcation between physical purity and\nspiritual purity, and the spiritual impurity which marks our\ncivilisation is certainly related to the physical impurity which has so\nlong been a tradition of Christendom. Both alike are a consciousness\nof uncleanness involving a cloak of hypocrisy. We may well recall that\n_sincerity_, if we carry its history sufficiently far back, is one\nwith physical purity. In some districts of Italy a girl shows that she\nis chaste by joining in a certain procession and bearing the symbols of\npurity in her hand. At all events so it was once. All women now walk\nin the procession of the chaste. In civilised modern life everywhere,\nindeed, we all walk in that procession, and bright lustful eyes mingled\nwith faint starved eyes both look out incongruously from behind the\nsame monotonously chaste masks. We have forgotten, if we ever knew,\nthat the filthy rags of our righteousness have alike robbed desire of\nits purity and restraint of its beauty.\n\nHow far Francis had instinctively divined the meaning and significance\nof purity, either on the physical or the moral side, it would be\nidle to attempt to inquire too precisely. But this delicate and\nadmirable saint brings us into an atmosphere in which the true grace\nof purity may at least be discerned. His indifference to nakedness,\nhis affection for animals and interest in their loves, his audacious\nbanding together of men and women in one order, his gospel of joy and\nhis everlasting delight in all natural and elementary things, make up a\nwhole inconceivably different from that vision of the world which the\ngreat medi\u00e6val monks, from St. Bernard downwards, spent their lives\nin maintaining. He brings us to a point at which we are enabled to\ngo beyond his own insight, a point at which we may not only see that\nasceticism is a simple and natural instinct, not alone recognise the\nbeauty of sex in flowers and birds, but in human creatures also, and\nlearn at last that the finest secrets of purity are known only to the\nman and woman who have mingled the scent of their sweat with the wild\nthyme.\n\nAt the present moment it may indeed be said that the purity which is\none with sincerity presents itself to us more broadly and more clearly\nin the road of our evolution than it ever has before. Even on the\nphysical side secrecy is becoming impossible, and as the progress of\nphysical science makes matter more and more transparent to our eyes,\nsincerity must ever become a more stringent and inevitable virtue. And\non the psychic side, also, purity--if you will, sincerity--is even more\nsurely imposing itself. Within our own time we have been privileged\nto see psychology taken from the study into the laboratory and into\nthe market-place. There is no recess of the soul--however intimate,\nhowever, as we have been taught to think, disgusting--that is not now\nopened to the childlike, all-scrutinising curiosity of science. We may\nperhaps rebel, but so it is. There are no mysteries left, no noisome\nabysses of ignorance veiled by the pretty mists of innocence. In the\nface of this tendency private vice must ever become more difficult; we\nare learning to detect the whole man in the slightest quiver of his\nmuscles. Thus, again, purity becomes yet more stringent and inevitable.\nWe gaze at all facts now, and find none too mean or too sacred for\nstudy. But it is fatal to gaze at certain facts if you cannot gaze\npurely. In that lies the final triumph of purity. We may rebel, I\nrepeat, but so it is, so it must remain.\n\nI do not wish to insist here on the moral aspects of purity--grave and\nprofound as these are--for I am dealing less with the social aspects\nof simplicity and purity than with what I would call their religious\naspects, their power to win our personal peace and joy. How far we are\nto-day, at all events in England, from the simplicity and purity of\nFrancis in the search for peace and joy is brought home very clearly\nto those who have ever made it their business to observe the masses of\nour population in their finest moments of would-be peace and joy. Many\nyears ago a curious fascination drew me every Bank Holiday to haunt the\nstructure and grounds of the Crystal Palace, near which I then lived.\nThe vision of humanity in the mass, when it has lost the interest which\nindividuals possess, and taken on the more abstract interest belonging\nto the species, has for me at least always had a certain attraction.\nBut these Bank Holiday crowds had a more special interest. They summed\nup and wrote large the characteristics of a nation. These thirty\nthousand persons belonging to the class which by virtue of greater\nfertility furnishes the ultimate substance of all classes, seemed\nto reveal to me the heart of my own people. The perpetual, violent\nmovement, the meaningless shouts and yells, the haggard bands of young\nwomen standing in the corridors to tramp wearily a treadmill variation\nof the Irish jig until they fell into an almost hypnotic state, the\nwistful, weary looks in the dull eyes of these seekers, rushing on\namong the plaster images of old serene gods, seeing nothing but always\nmoving, moving they knew not whither, faint, yet pursuing they knew not\nwhat,--the whole of the northern soul, the English soul above all, was\nthere. On! on! never mind how or where: that seemed the perpetual cry\nof these pale, lean, awkward youths and women. And I would think of the\nbands of boys and girls in the medi\u00e6val crusading epidemics, starting\nfrom the north with the same eyes, asking for Jerusalem at every town,\nsoon to be slain or drowned in unknown obscure ways. Or sometimes I\nrecalled the bas-reliefs in the museum at Naples--that most fascinating\nof museums--which show how the failing Greek genius concentrated its\nnow spiritualised energy in the forms of Dionysus and his m\u00e6nads. With\neager face grown languid he leans on the great thyrsus, which bends\nbeneath his weight, and in front his m\u00e6nads, upheld by the ardour of\nthe search, with heads thrown back and flying hair, still beat their\ncymbals desperately, seeking, until they have grown almost unconscious\nof search, a far-away joy, an ever-fleeting ideal, of which they have\nat last forgotten the name. And so for hours my gaze would be fixed on\nthe pathetic vulgarity of those terrible crowds.\n\nOf late I have been able to see how the other vigorous and\nreproductive race--the race that chiefly shares with England the\npartition of the uncivilised world--comports itself at its great\nfestivals. The Russians are a profoundly and consciously religious\nrace, and I recall above all the unforgettable scene at the ancient\nmonastery of Troitsa, near Moscow, as it appeared on the festival of\nthe Assumption, when pilgrims, women mostly, in every variety of gay\ncostume, crowded thither on foot from all parts of Russia. There, at\nlength within the walls of that monastery-fortress on the hill at\nSergievo, they fervently kiss the sacred relics, and having been served\nby the dark-robed, long-haired monks with soup and black bread, they\nlie down and fall asleep, placid and motionless, on all sides. Young\nwomen, grasping the pilgrim\u2019s staff, a little droop sometimes in the\nlips, yet with large brawny thighs beneath the short skirts, stolid\ngreat-breasted women of middle age, wrinkled old women decked in their\nancient traditional adornments--all this gay-coloured multitude fling\nthemselves down to sleep on the church steps, around its walls, over\nthe silent graves, heaped up anywhere that the march of on-coming\npilgrims leaves a little space, tired m\u00e6nads filled for once with the\nwine their souls craved, colossal images of immense appeasement. It is\nthe orgy of a strong, silent, much-suffering race, with all the charm\nof childhood yet upon it, too humane to be ferocious in its energy.\n\nWe English subordinate the sensory to the motor side of life, and even\nfind our virtue in so doing. To live in the present, to suffer and\nto enjoy our actual evil and good, facing it squarely and making our\naccount with it--that we cannot do: that was the way of the Greeks and\nRomans; it is not our way. We are ever poets and idealists, down to\nthe dregs of life\u2019s cup. We must strive and push, using our muscles to\nnarcotise our senses, ever contemptuous of the people who more fully\nexercise their senses to grasp the world around them. For the sake of\nthis muscular auto-intoxication we miss the finest moments life has to\ngive. The Japanese masses, who fix their popular festival for the day\nwhen the cherry-tree is in finest bloom, and take their families into\nthe woods to sip tea and pass the day deliciously with the flowers, are\nborn to a knowledge of that mystery which Francis painfully conquered.\nThe people to whom such an art of enjoyment is the common practice of\nthe common people may possibly not succeed in sending ugly and shoddy\ngoods to clothe and kill the beautiful skins of every savage tribe\nunder heaven, but we need not fear to affirm that they have learnt\nsecrets of civilisation which are yet hidden from us in England.\n\nThe worth of a civilisation, we may be very sure, is more surely\nmeasured by its power to multiply among the common people the\npossibility of having and enjoying such moments than by the mileage of\ncotton goods its factories can yield, or even by the output of Bibles\nits weary factory hands can stitch. We can know no moments of finer or\npurer exhilaration, whether we breathe the bright air of Australian\nsolitudes and watch the virgin hills lie fold within fold beneath the\nstainless sunlight, or in the dimmer and damper air of this old country\nrecline on Surrey heights by the great beeches of the old deserted\nPilgrim\u2019s Way and meditate of the past. There are few things sweeter\nor more profitable than to lie on the velvety floor of a little pine\nwood on a forgotten southern height in May, where tall clumps of\nfull-flowered rhododendra blend with the fragrant gorse which spreads\ndown to the sparkling sea, and to throw aside everything and dream. In\nsuch moments at such spots we reach the summits of life, learning those\nsecrets of asceticism which Francis knew so well.\n\nThus by his words and by his deeds Francis still has his significance\nfor us. He brought asceticism from the cell into the fields, and became\nthe monk of Nature. One may doubt whether, as Renan thought, the Song\nto the Sun is the supreme modern expression of the religious spirit,\nbut without doubt it gathers up vaguely and broadly the things that\nmost surely belong to our eternal peace in this world. That it is the\nsimplest and naturalest things to which eternal joy belongs is the\ndivine secret which makes Francis a prince among saints, and it was by\na true inspiration that he dedicated the chief utterance of his worship\nof joy in life to the sun.\n\nIf it should ever chance that a sane instinct of worship is born again\non earth among civilised men, let us be sure that nothing will seem\nmore worthy of worship than the sun, the source of that energy out\nof which we and all our ideals ultimately spring. Some day, again,\nperhaps, men will greet the rising of the sun at the summer solstice on\nthe hills with music and song and dance, framing their most exquisite\nliturgical art to the honour of that supreme source of all earthly\nlife. It was natural, doubtless, that at some stage of human progress\nnew-found moral conceptions should intrude themselves as worthier of\nhuman worship. But even the cross itself--if not its great rival the\nlunar Mohammedan crescent--was first the symbol of sun-worship, of the\nsource of life. We may yet rescue that sacred symbol, now fallen to\nsuch sorrowful uses, bearing it onwards to sunnier heights of wholeness\nand joy.\n\nReligions are many, and in the mass they seem to us--blinded to the\nsocial functions that religions originally subserved--endlessly harsh\nand cruel. But in their summits, in their finest personalities, they\nare simple and natural enough, and alike lovely. Look at the Jesus\nof the Gospels, the friend of publicans and sinners, the marriage\nguest at Cana, so tender-hearted in the house of Simon, the author\nof those sayings of quintessential natural wisdom preserved to us in\nthat string of adorable pearls men call the Sermon on the Mount. Look\nat the prophet of Islam, when gazing back at the earth as it seemed\nto recede into the distance at the end of his long career, he counted\nas first among its claims the simple natural joys: \u201cI love your world\nbecause of its women and its perfumes.\u201d And we remember the depths to\nwhich Christianity and Mohammedanism have alike fallen. Look, again,\nat Francis, who in no prim academical sense may be called the first\nmodern apostle of sweetness and light, a man who found joy unspeakable\nin inhaling the fragrance of flowers, in watching the limpid waters of\nmountain streams, and whose most characteristic symbol is the soaring\nlark he loved so well. And we remember that a century later even\nChaucer, that sweetest and most sympathetic of poets, can only speak\nof his friar in words that seem to be of inevitable and unconscious\nirony. For every religion begins as the glorious living flame of a\nlovely human personality,--or so it seems,--and continues as a barren\ncinder-heap. As such, as a Church, whether pagan or Christian, it can\nscarcely afford us either light or heat.\n\nWhy, one asks oneself, is it necessary for me to choose between Paul\nand Petronius? Why pester me on the one hand with the breastplate of\nfaith and the helmet of salvation, on the other with the feast of\nTrimalchio and the kisses of Giton? \u201cA plague of both your houses!\u201d We\nare not barbarians, tortured by a moral law, neither are we all pagans\nwith unmixed instincts of luxury. We are the outcome of a civilisation\nin which not only has what we are pleased to regard as the sensual fury\nof the ape and tiger become somewhat chastened, but the ascetic fury of\nthe monk and priest also. Let the child of the south feast still in the\nhouse of Trimalchio with unwounded conscience, if he can; we will not\nforbid him. And let the barbarian still flagellate his tense rebellious\nnerves with knotted spiritual scourges, if only so can he draw out the\nbest music they yield; we will be the first to applaud. But most of us\nhave little to do with the one or the other. The palmiest days of both\nended a thousand years ere we were born. Before the threshold of our\nmodern world was reached Francis sang in the sun and smiled away the\nspectres that squatted on the beautiful things of the earth. On the\nthreshold of our world Rabelais built his Abbey of Thel\u00e8me, in whose\nrule was but one clause, _Fay ce que vouldras_, a rule which no\npagan or Christian had ever set up before, because never before except\nas involved in the abstract conceptions of philosophers, had the\nthought of voluntary co-operation, of the unsolicited freedom to do\nwell, appeared before European men.\n\nWhat have we to do also, it may be added, with modernity, with the\nfashions of an hour? It is well, indeed, to live in the present,\nwhatever that present may be, but sooner or later we are pushed back,\nweary or disillusioned, on the inspiration of our own personality. All\nthe activity of Francis only wrought a plague of grey friars, scattered\nlike dust on the highways of Europe. But Francis still remains, and\nall things wither into nothingness in the presence of one natural man\nwho dared to be himself. The best of us can scarcely hope to be more\nsuccessful than Francis. But at least we may be ourselves. \u201cWhatever\nhappens I must be emerald:\u201d that, Antoninus said, is the emerald\u2019s\nmorality; that must remain our finest affirmation.\n\nOur feet cling to the earth, and it is well that we should learn to\ngrip it closely and nakedly. But the earth beneath us is not all of\nNature; there are instincts within us that lead elsewhere, and it is\npart of the art of living to use naturally all those instincts. In so\ndoing the spiritual burdens which the ages have laid upon us glide away\ninto thin air.\n\nAnd for us, as for him who wrote _De Imitatione Christi_--however\nfar differently--there are still two wings by which we may raise\nourselves above the earth, simplicity, that is to say, and purity.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[Footnote 10: Thus one learns from the newspapers that the offence of\nwearing sandals has involved ejection even from so great a centre of\nenlightenment as the Reading Room of the British Museum, while the mere\nassertion that an actress appeared on the stage with bare legs was so\ndamaging that it involved an action for slander, a public apology, and\nthe payment of \u201ca substantial sum\u201d in compensation.]\n\n\n              THE WALTER SCOTT PRESS, NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.\n\n\n\n\nCrown 8vo, about 350 pp. each, Cloth Cover, 2/6 per Vol.; Half-Polished\n                        Morocco, Gilt Top, 5s.\n\n\n                        Count Tolstoy\u2019s Works.\n\n              The following Volumes are already issued--\n\n A RUSSIAN PROPRIETOR.                    WHAT TO DO?\n THE COSSACKS.                            WAR AND PEACE. (4 vols.)\n IVAN ILYICH, AND OTHER                   THE LONG EXILE, ETC.\n     STORIES.                             SEVASTOPOL.\n MY RELIGION.                             THE KREUTZER SONATA, AND\n LIFE.                                        FAMILY HAPPINESS.\n MY CONFESSION.                           THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS\n CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD,                          WITHIN YOU.\n     YOUTH.                               WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE\n THE PHYSIOLOGY OF WAR.                       LIGHT.\n ANNA KARENINA. 3/6.                      THE GOSPEL IN BRIEF.\n\n                       Uniform with the above--\n\n           IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA.     By Dr. GEORGE BRANDES.\n\n                      Post 4to, Cloth, Price 1s.\n\n                     PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY.\n\n        To which is appended a Reply to Criticisms of the Work.\n\n                           By COUNT TOLSTOY.\n\n\n                    1/- Booklets by Count Tolstoy.\n\n          Bound in White Grained Boards, with Gilt Lettering.\n\n\n WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD                     THE GODSON.\n     IS ALSO.                                 IF YOU NEGLECT THE FIRE,\n THE TWO PILGRIMS.                            YOU DON\u2019T PUT IT OUT.\n WHAT MEN LIVE BY.                            WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT A MAN?\n\n\n\n                    2/- Booklets by Count Tolstoy.\n\n                        NEW EDITIONS, REVISED.\n\n Small 12mo, Cloth, with Embossed Design on Cover, each containing Two\n  Stories by Count Tolstoy, and Two Drawings by H. R. Millar. In Box,\n                            Price 2s. each.\n\n Volume I. contains\u2014                        Volume III. contains\u2014\n WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD                   THE TWO PILGRIMS.\n    IS ALSO.                                IF YOU NEGLECT THE FIRE,\n THE GODSON.                                    YOU DON\u2019T PUT IT OUT.\n Volume II. contains\u2014                       Volume IV. contains\u2014\n WHAT MEN LIVE BY.                          MASTER AND MAN.\n WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT A                     Volume V. contains\u2014\n    MAN?                                    TOLSTOY\u2019S PARABLES.\n\n\n          London: WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED, Paternoster Square.\n\n\n\n\n                  PRESS 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\n\n\n                  PRESS OPINIONS ON \u201cTHE NEW SPIRIT.\u201d\n                            (_Continued._)\n\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\nfair hearing.... Apparently these writers are chosen because they\nall agree in a hatred of shams, in looking facts in the face, and in\ndemanding provision for the healthy satisfaction of animal wants....\nMr. Ellis writes with force and insight; but, whether from brevity or\nwant of caution, he leaves with regard to these subjects an impression\nwhich he would probably not himself desire to produce.\u201d--_Murray\u2019s\nMagazine._\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          London: WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED, Paternoster Square.\n\n\n\n\n                   The Contemporary Science Series.\n\n                       Edited by Havelock Ellis.\n\n\nI. THE EVOLUTION OF SEX. By Prof. PATRICK GEDDES and J. A.\nTHOMSON. With 90 Illustrations. Second Edition.\n\n \u201cThe authors have brought to the task--as indeed their names\n guarantee--a wealth of knowledge, a lucid and attractive method of\n treatment, and a rich vein of picturesque language.\u201d--_Nature._\n\n\nII. ELECTRICITY IN MODERN LIFE. By G. W. DE TUNZELMANN. With\n88 Illustrations.\n\n \u201cA clearly-written and connected sketch of what is known about\n electricity and magnetism, the more prominent modern applications, and\n the principles on which they are based.\u201d--_Saturday Review._\n\n\nIII. THE ORIGIN OF THE ARYANS. By Dr. ISAAC TAYLOR.\nIllustrated. Second Edition.\n\n \u201cCanon Taylor is probably the most encyclop\u00e6dic all-round scholar now\n living. His new volume on the Origin of the Aryans is a first-rate\n example of the excellent account to which he can turn his exceptionally\n wide and varied information.... Masterly and exhaustive.\u201d--_Pall Mall\n Gazette._\n\n\nIV. PHYSIOGNOMY AND EXPRESSION. By P. MANTEGAZZA. Illustrated.\n\n \u201cBrings this highly interesting subject even with the latest\n researches.... Professor Mantegazza is a writer full of life and\n spirit, and the natural attractiveness of his subject is not destroyed\n by his scientific handling of it.\u201d--_Literary World_ (Boston).\n\n\nV. EVOLUTION AND DISEASE. By J. B. SUTTON, F.R.C.S. With 135\nIllustrations.\n\n \u201cThe book is as interesting as a novel, without sacrifice of\n accuracy or system, and is calculated to give an appreciation of\n the fundamentals of pathology to the lay reader, while forming\n a useful collection of illustrations of disease for medical\n reference.\u201d--_Journal of Mental Science._\n\n\nVI. THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY. By G. L. GOMME. Illustrated.\n\n \u201cHis book will probably remain for some time the best work of reference\n for facts bearing on those traces of the village community which have\n not been effaced by conquest, encroachment, and the heavy hand of Roman\n law.\u201d--_Scottish Leader._\n\n\nVII. THE CRIMINAL. By HAVELOCK ELLIS. Illustrated. Second\nEdition.\n\n \u201cThe sociologist, the philosopher, the philanthropist, the\n novelist--all, indeed, for whom the study of human nature\n has any attraction--will find Mr. Ellis full of interest and\n suggestiveness.\u201d--_Academy._\n\n\nVIII. SANITY AND INSANITY. By Dr. CHARLES MERCIER. Illustrated.\n\n \u201cTaken as a whole, it is the brightest book on the physical side of\n mental science published in our time.\u201d--_Pall Mall Gazette._\n\nIX. HYPNOTISM. By Dr. ALBERT MOLL. Fourth Edition.\n\n \u201cMarks a step of some importance in the study of some difficult\n physiological and psychological problems which have not yet received\n much attention in the scientific world of England.\u201d--_Nature._\n\n\nX. MANUAL TRAINING. By Dr. C. M. WOODWARD, Director of the\nManual Training School, St. Louis. Illustrated.\n\n \u201cThere is no greater authority on the subject than Professor\n Woodward.\u201d--_Manchester Guardian._\n\n\nXI. THE SCIENCE OF FAIRY TALES. By E. SIDNEY HARTLAND.\n\n \u201cMr. Hartland\u2019s book will win the sympathy of all earnest\n students, both by the knowledge it displays, and by a thorough\n love and appreciation of his subject, which is evident\n throughout.\u201d--_Spectator._\n\n\nXII. PRIMITIVE FOLK. By ELIE RECLUS.\n\n \u201cAn attractive and useful introduction to the study of some aspects of\n ethnography.\u201d--_Nature._\n\n\nXIII. THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE. By Professor LETOURNEAU.\n\n \u201cAmong the distinguished French students of sociology, Professor\n Letourneau has long stood in the first rank. He approaches the\n great study of man free from bias and shy of generalisations. To\n collect, scrutinise, and appraise facts is his chief business.\n In the volume before us he shows these qualities in an admirable\n degree.\u201d--_Science._\n\n\nXIV. BACTERIA AND THEIR PRODUCTS. By Dr. G. SIMS WOODHEAD.\nIllustrated. Second Edition.\n\n \u201cAn excellent summary of the present state of knowledge of the\n subject.\u201d--_Lancet._\n\n\nXV. EDUCATION AND HEREDITY. By J. M. GUYAU.\n\n \u201cIt is at once a treatise on sociology, ethics, and p\u00e6dagogics. It\n is doubtful whether among all the ardent evolutionists who have had\n their say on the moral and the educational question any one has\n carried forward the new doctrine so boldly to its extreme logical\n consequence.\u201d--Professor SULLY in _Mind_.\n\n\nXVI. THE MAN OF GENIUS. By Prof. LOMBROSO. Illustrated.\n\n \u201cBy far the most comprehensive and fascinating collection of facts\n and generalizations concerning genius which has yet been brought\n together.\u201d--_Journal of Mental Science._\n\n\nXVII. THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE. By Prof. KARL PEARSON.\nIllustrated.\n\n \u201cThe problems discussed with great ability and lucidity, and often in a\n most suggestive manner, by Prof. Pearson, are such as should interest\n _all_ students of natural science.\u201d--_Natural Science._\n\n\nXVIII. PROPERTY: ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. By CH.\nLETOURNEAU, General Secretary to the Anthropological Society,\nParis, and Professor in the School of Anthropology, Paris.\n\n \u201cM. Letourneau has read a great deal, and he seems to us to have\n selected and interpreted his facts with considerable judgment and\n learning.\u201d--_Westminster Review._\n\nXIX. VOLCANOES, PAST AND PRESENT. By Prof. EDWARD HULL,\nL.L.D., F.R.S.\n\n \u201cA very readable account of the phenomena of volcanoes and\n earthquakes.\u201d--_Nature._\n\n\nXX. PUBLIC HEALTH. By Dr. J. F. J. SYKES. With numerous\nIllustrations.\n\n \u201cNot by any means a mere compilation or a dry record of details and\n statistics, but it takes up essential points in evolution, environment,\n prophylaxis, and sanitation bearing upon the preservation of public\n health.\u201d--_Lancet._\n\n\nXXI. MODERN METEOROLOGY. AN ACCOUNT OF THE GROWTH AND PRESENT\nCONDITION OF SOME BRANCHES OF METEOROLOGICAL SCIENCE. By FRANK\nWALDO, PH.D., Member of the German and Austrian Meteorological\nSocieties, etc.; late Junior Professor, Signal Service, U.S.A. With 112\nIllustrations.\n\n \u201cThe present volume is the best on the subject for general use that we\n have seen.\u201d--_Daily Telegraph_ (London).\n\n\nXXII. THE GERM-PLASM: A THEORY OF HEREDITY. By AUGUST\nWEISMANN, Professor in the University of Freiburg-in-Breisgau.\nWith 24 Illustrations.\n\n \u201cThere has been no work published since Darwin\u2019s own books which has\n so thoroughly handled the matter treated by him, or has done so much\n to place in order and clearness the immense complexity of the factors\n of heredity, or, lastly, has brought to light so many new facts and\n considerations bearing on the subject.\u201d--_British Medical Journal._\n\n\nXXIII. INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS. By F. HOUSSAY. With numerous\nIllustrations.\n\n \u201cHis accuracy is undoubted, yet his facts out-marvel all romance. These\n facts are here made use of as materials wherewith to form the mighty\n fabric of evolution.\u201d--_Manchester Guardian._\n\n\nXXIV. MAN AND WOMAN. By HAVELOCK ELLIS. Illustrated. Second\nEdition.\n\n \u201cMr. Havelock Ellis belongs, in some measure, to the continental school\n of anthropologists; but while equally methodical in the collection\n of facts, he is far more cautious in the invention of theories, and\n he has the further distinction of being not only able to think, but\n able to write. His book is a sane and impartial consideration, from a\n psychological and anthropological point of view, of a subject which is\n certainly of primary interest.\u201d--_Athen\u00e6um._\n\n\nXXV. THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN CAPITALISM. By JOHN A. HOBSON,\nM.A.\n\n \u201cEvery page affords evidence of wide and minute study, a weighing of\n facts as conscientious as it is acute, a keen sense of the importance\n of certain points as to which economists of all schools have\n hitherto been confused and careless, and an impartiality generally\n so great as to give no indication of his [Mr. Hobson\u2019s] personal\n sympathies.\u201d--_Pall Mall Gazette._\n\n\nXXVI. APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. By FRANK PODMORE,\nM.A.\n\n \u201cA very sober and interesting little book.... That thought-transference\n is a real thing, though not perhaps a very common thing, he certainly\n shows.\u201d--_Spectator._\n\n\nXXVII. AN INTRODUCTION TO COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. By Professor C.\nLLOYD MORGAN. With Diagrams.\n\n \u201cA strong and complete exposition of Psychology, as it takes shape in\n a mind previously informed with biological science.... Well written,\n extremely entertaining, and intrinsically valuable.\u201d--_Saturday\n Review._\n\n\nXXVIII. THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION: A STUDY OF INDUSTRY AMONG PRIMITIVE\nPEOPLES. By OTIS T. MASON, Curator of the Department of Ethnology in\nthe United States National Museum.\n\n \u201cA valuable history of the development of the inventive\n faculty.\u201d--_Nature._\n\n\nXXIX. THE GROWTH OF THE BRAIN: A STUDY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM IN\nRELATION TO EDUCATION. By HENRY HERBERT DONALDSON, Professor of\nNeurology in the University of Chicago.\n\n \u201cWe can say with confidence that Professor Donaldson has executed his\n work with much care, judgment, and discrimination.\u201d--_The Lancet._\n\n\nXXX. EVOLUTION IN ART: AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE LIFE-HISTORIES OF DESIGNS.\nBy Professor ALFRED C. HADDON. With 130 Illustrations.\n\n \u201cIt is impossible to speak too highly of this most unassuming and\n invaluable book.\u201d--_Journal Anthropological Institute._\n\n\nXXXI. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE EMOTIONS. By TH. RIBOT, Professor\nat the College of France, Editor of the _Revue Philosophique_.\n\n \u201cProfessor Ribot\u2019s treatment is careful, modern, and\n adequate.\u201d--_Academy._\n\n\nXXXII. HALLUCINATIONS AND ILLUSIONS: A STUDY OF THE FALLACIES OF\nPERCEPTION. By EDMUND PARISH.\n\n \u201cThis remarkable little volume.\u201d--_Daily News._\n\n\nXXXIII. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. By E. W. SCRIPTURE, Ph.D.\n(Leipzig). With 124 Illustrations.\n\n\nXXXIV. SLEEP: ITS PHYSIOLOGY, PATHOLOGY, HYGIENE, AND\nPSYCHOLOGY. By MARIE DE MANAC\u00c9\u00cfNE (St. Petersburg).\nIllustrated.\n\n\n\n\n                          THE SCOTT LIBRARY.\n\n          Crown 8vo, Cloth Elegant, Price 1s. 6d. per Volume.\n\n                        _ISSUE OF NEW VOLUMES._\n\n\nVasari\u2019s Lives of Italian Painters. Selected and Prefaced by\nHAVELOCK ELLIS.\n\n \u201cVasari\u2019s Lives\u201d may be approached for such knowledge as they afford\n concerning the history of art and the cataloguing of the art-products\n of the Italian Renaissance; or they may be approached for the light\n Vasari throws on the psychology of genius in artists, from which point\n of view he is incomparable. As the personal friend or acquaintance of\n some of the world\u2019s greatest artists, Vasari moved in an atmosphere\n of artistic tradition, which he has fully recorded. In this volume\n the editor has sought to gather from the voluminous _Lives_\n everything that is really of value regarding the intimate nature and\n habits of the great Florentine artists of the Italian Renaissance.\n\n\nLaocoon; and other Prose Writings of Lessing. A New Translation, with\nan Introduction, by W. B. R\u00d6NNFELDT.\n\n This volume, representative of the prose of Lessing, contains,\n besides the Laocoon essay, those portions of Lessing\u2019s Dramatic Notes\n (_Hamburgische Dramaturgie_) which deal with various principles\n of dramatic art, and which are of permanent interest, together with\n the _Education of the Human Race_, Lessing\u2019s last contribution\n to theological discussion. A biographical note is prefixed to the\n introduction. An entirely new translation is here given.\n\n\nPelleas and Melisanda and The Sightless. Two Plays by Maurice\nMaeterlinck. Translated from the French by LAURENCE ALMA\nTADEMA.\n\n The preface to this volume, while providing for the reader who is\n unacquainted with the peculiarly imaginative dramas of Maeterlinck\n an excellent introduction to them, furnishes also a bibliography of\n Maeterlinck\u2019s works. For the song in Act III. of Pelleas and Melisanda\n (\u201c_Mes longs cheveux descendent_\u201d), the attempt at an adequate\n English rendition of which has baffled various translators, another\n song has, at the request of M. Maeterlinck, been substituted.\n\n\nThe Complete Angler of Walton and Cotton. Edited, with an Introduction,\nby CHARLES HILL DICK.\n\n This is a carefully edited reprint of this famous book, prefixed by a\n biographical introduction. Pains has been taken in the selection of\n the type for this edition, which will be found one of the neatest and\n handiest of the many editions of _The Angler_ which have appeared.\n\n\nLessing\u2019s \u201cNathan the Wise.\u201d Translated, with an Introduction, by\nMajor-General PATRICK MAXWELL.\n\n As the translator of Schiller\u2019s \u201cMaid of Orleans,\u201d \u201cWilliam Tell,\u201d\n and of various plays and essays, General Maxwell\u2019s work has been\n received with considerable critical appreciation. An analysis of\n the play precedes the text in this volume, and copious elucidatory\n notes are appended. This translation of one of the most notable\n dramatic productions of the last century will be found as faithful and\n effective as any that has yet been given to the English reader.\n\n\n            LONDON: WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED, PATERNOSTER SQUARE.\n\n\n\n\n                         =TRANSCRIBER\u2019S NOTES=\n\nSimple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced\nquotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and\notherwise left unbalanced.\n\nPunctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant\npreference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not\nchanged.\n\nInconsistent hyphens left as printed.","title":"Affirmations","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":60997}