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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f850b5e --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #53474 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53474) diff --git a/old/53474-0.txt b/old/53474-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index f68ad41..0000000 --- a/old/53474-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7695 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Prejudices, Third Series, by H. L. Mencken - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Prejudices, Third Series - -Author: H. L. Mencken - -Release Date: November 7, 2016 [eBook #53474] -[Most recently updated: March 9, 2023] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Marc D’Hooghe at Free Literature (online soon -in an extended version, also linking to free sources for -education worldwide ... MOOC’s, educational materials....) -Images generously made available by the Internet Archive. -Revised by Richard Tonsing. - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PREJUDICES, THIRD SERIES *** - - - - -PREJUDICES - -THIRD SERIES - - -By H. L. MENCKEN - - -PUBLISHED AT THE BORZOI · NEW YORK · BY -ALFRED · A. · KNOPF - -1922 - - - - - CONTENTS - - - I ON BEING AN AMERICAN - - II HUNEKER: A MEMORY - - III FOOTNOTE ON CRITICISM - - IV DAS KAPITAL - - V AD IMAGINEM DEI CREAVIT ILLUM - - 1. The Life of Man - 2. The Anthropomorphic Delusion - 3. Meditation on Meditation - 4. Man and His Soul - 5. Coda - - VI STAR-SPANGLED MEN - - VII THE POET AND HIS ART - - VIII FIVE MEN AT RANDOM - - 1. Abraham Lincoln - 2. Paul Elmer More - 3. Madison Cawein - 4. Frank Harris - 5. Havelock Ellis - - IX THE NATURE OF LIBERTY - - X THE NOVEL - - XI THE FORWARD-LOOKER - - XII MEMORIAL SERVICE - - XIII EDUCATION - - XIV TYPES OF MEN - - 1. The Romantic - 2. The Skeptic - 3. The Believer - 4. The Worker - 5. The Physician - 6. The Scientist - 7. The Business Man - 8. The King - 9. The Average Man - 10. The Truth-Seeker - 11. The Pacifist - 12. The Relative - 13. The Friend - - XV THE DISMAL SCIENCE - - XVI MATTERS OF STATE - - 1. Le Contrat Social - 2. On Minorities - - XVII REFLECTIONS ON THE DRAMA - - XVIII ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN - - 1. To Him That Hath - 2. The Venerable Examined - 3. Duty - 4. Martyrs - 5. The Disabled Veteran - 6. Patriotism - - XIX SUITE AMÉRICAINE - - 1. Aspiration - 2. Virtue - 3. Eminence - - - - -PREJUDICES: THIRD SERIES - - - - -I. ON BEING AN AMERICAN - - - - -1 - - -Apparently there are those who begin to find it disagreeable—nay, -impossible. Their anguish fills the Liberal weeklies, and every ship -that puts out from New York carries a groaning cargo of them, bound -for Paris, London, Munich, Rome and way points—anywhere to escape the -great curses and atrocities that make life intolerable for them at -home. Let me say at once that I find little to cavil at in their basic -complaints. In more than one direction, indeed, I probably go a great -deal further than even the Young Intellectuals. It is, for example, -one of my firmest and most sacred beliefs, reached after an inquiry -extending over a score of years and supported by incessant prayer -and meditation, that the government of the United States, in both -its legislative arm and its executive arm, is ignorant, incompetent, -corrupt, and disgusting—and from this judgment I except no more than -twenty living lawmakers and no more than twenty executioners of their -laws. It is a belief no less piously cherished that the administration -of justice in the Republic is stupid, dishonest, and against all -reason and equity—and from this judgment I except no more than thirty -judges, including two upon the bench of the Supreme Court of the United -States. It is another that the foreign policy of the United States—its -habitual manner of dealing with other nations, whether friend or -foe—is hypocritical, disingenuous, knavish, and dishonorable—and from -this judgment I consent to no exceptions whatever, either recent or -long past. And it is my fourth (and, to avoid too depressing a bill, -final) conviction that the American people, taking one with another, -constitute the most timorous, sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob -of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom -since the end of the Middle Ages, and that they grow more timorous, -more sniveling, more poltroonish, more ignominious every day. - -So far I go with the fugitive Young Intellectuals—and into the -Bad Lands beyond. Such, in brief, are the cardinal articles of my -political faith, held passionately since my admission to citizenship -and now growing stronger and stronger as I gradually disintegrate -into my component carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorus, calcium, -sodium, nitrogen and iron. This is what I believe and preach, _in -nomine Domini_, Amen. Yet I remain on the dock, wrapped in the flag, -when the Young Intellectuals set sail. Yet here I stand, unshaken and -undespairing, a loyal and devoted Americano, even a chauvinist, paying -taxes without complaint, obeying all laws that are physiologically -obeyable, accepting all the searching duties and responsibilities -of citizenship unprotestingly investing the sparse usufructs of my -miserable toil in the obligations of the nation, avoiding all commerce -with men sworn to overthrow the government, contributing my mite toward -the glory of the national arts and sciences, enriching and embellishing -the native language, spurning all lures (and even all invitations) to -get out and stay out—here am I, a bachelor of easy means, forty-two -years old, unhampered by debts or issue, able to go wherever I please -and to stay as long as I please—here am I, contentedly and even smugly -basking beneath the Stars and Stripes, a better citizen, I daresay, -and certainly a less murmurous and exigent one, than thousands who -put the Hon. Warren Gamaliel Harding beside Friedrich Barbarossa and -Charlemagne, and hold the Supreme Court to be directly inspired by the -Holy Spirit, and belong ardently to every Rotary Club, Ku Klux Klan, -and Anti-Saloon League, and choke with emotion when the band plays “The -Star-Spangled Banner,” and believe with the faith of little children -that one of Our Boys, taken at random, could dispose in a fair fight -of ten Englishmen, twenty Germans, thirty Frogs, forty Wops, fifty -Japs, or a hundred Bolsheviki. - -Well, then, why am I still here? Why am I so complacent (perhaps even -to the point of offensiveness), so free from bile, so little fretting -and indignant, so curiously happy? Why did I answer only with a few -academic “Hear, Hears” when Henry James, Ezra Pound, Harold Stearns and -the _emigrés_ of Greenwich Village issued their successive calls to the -corn-fed _intelligentsia_ to flee the shambles, escape to fairer lands, -throw off the curse forever? The answer, of course, is to be sought in -the nature of happiness, which tempts to metaphysics. But let me keep -upon the ground. To me, at least (and I can only follow my own nose) -happiness presents itself in an aspect that is tripartite. To be happy -(reducing the thing to its elementals) I must be: - - _a._ Well-fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in Zion. - - _b._ Full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the - masses of my fellow-men. - - _c._ Delicately and unceasingly amused according to my taste. - -It is my contention that, if this definition be accepted, there is no -country on the face of the earth wherein a man roughly constituted -as I am—a man of my general weaknesses, vanities, appetites, -prejudices, and aversions—can be so happy, or even one-half so happy, -as he can be in these free and independent states. Going further, I -lay down the proposition that it is a sheer physical impossibility -for such a man to live in These States and _not_ be happy—that it -is as impossible to him as it would be to a schoolboy to weep over -the burning down of his school-house. If he says that he isn’t happy -here, then he either lies or is insane. Here the business of getting a -living, particularly since the war brought the loot of all Europe to -the national strong-box, is enormously easier than it is in any other -Christian land—so easy, in fact, that an educated and forhanded man -who fails at it must actually make, deliberate efforts to that end. -Here the general average of intelligence, of knowledge, of competence, -of integrity, of self-respect, of honor is so low that any man who -knows his trade, does not fear ghosts, has read fifty good books, and -practices the common decencies stands out as brilliantly as a wart on -a bald head, and is thrown willy-nilly into a meager and exclusive -aristocracy. And here, more than anywhere else that I know of or -have heard of, the daily panorama of human existence, of private and -communal folly—the unending procession of governmental extortions -and chicaneries, of commercial brigandages and throat-slittings, of -theological buffooneries, of æsthetic ribaldries, of legal swindles -and harlotries, of miscellaneous rogueries, villainies, imbecilities, -grotesqueries, and extravagances—is so inordinately gross and -preposterous, so perfectly brought up to the highest conceivable -amperage, so steadily enriched with an almost fabulous daring and -originality, that only the man who was born with a petrified diaphragm -can fail to laugh himself to sleep every night, and to awake every -morning with all the eager, unflagging expectation of a Sunday-school -superintendent touring the Paris peep-shows. - -A certain sough rhetoric may be here. Perhaps I yield to words as a -chautauqua lecturer yields to them, belaboring and fermenting the -hinds with his Message from the New Jerusalem. But fundamentally I am -quite as sincere as he is. For example, in the matter of attaining to -ease in Zion, of getting a fair share of the national swag, now piled -so mountainously high. It seems to me, sunk in my Egyptian night, -that the man who fails to do this in the United States to-day is a -man who is somehow stupid—maybe not on the surface, but certainly -deep down. Either he is one who cripples himself unduly, say by -setting up a family before he can care for it, or by making a bad -bargain for the sale of his wares, or by concerning himself too much -about the affairs of other men; or he is one who endeavors fatuously -to sell something that no normal American wants. Whenever I hear a -professor of philosophy complain that his wife has eloped with some -moving-picture actor or bootlegger who can at least feed and clothe -her, my natural sympathy for the man is greatly corrupted by contempt -for his lack of sense. Would it be regarded as sane and laudable for -a man to travel the Soudan trying to sell fountain-pens, or Greenland -offering to teach double-entry bookkeeping or counterpoint Coming -closer, would the judicious pity or laugh at a man who opened a shop -for the sale of incunabula in Little Rock, Ark., or who demanded a -living in McKeesport, Pa., on the ground that he could read Sumerian? -In precisely the same way it seems to me to be nonsensical for a man -to offer generally some commodity that only a few rare and dubious -Americans want, and then weep and beat his breast because he is not -patronized. One seeking to make a living in a country must pay due -regard to the needs and tastes of that country. Here in the United -States we have no jobs for grand dukes, and none for _Wirkliche -Geheimräte_, and none for palace eunuchs, and none for masters of the -buck-hounds, and none (any more) for brewery _Todsaufer_—and very few -for oboe players, metaphysicians, astrophysicists, assyriologists, -water-colorists, stylites and epic poets. There was a time when the -_Todsaufer_ served a public need and got an adequate reward, but it is -no more. There may come a time when the composer of string quartettes -is paid as much as a railway conductor, but it is not yet. Then why -practice such trades—that is, as trades? The man of independent -means may venture into them prudently; when he does so, he is seldom -molested; it may even be argued that he performs a public service by -adopting them. But the man who has a living to make is simply silly -if he goes into them; he is like a soldier going over the top with a -coffin strapped to his back. Let him abandon such puerile vanities, and -take to the uplift instead, as, indeed, thousands of other victims of -the industrial system have already _done._ Let him bear in mind that, -whatever its neglect of the humanities and their monks, the Republic -has never got half enough bond salesmen, quack doctors, ward leaders, -phrenologists, Methodist evangelists, circus clowns, magicians, -soldiers, farmers, popular song writers, moonshine distillers, forgers -of gin labels, mine guard, detectives, spies, snoopers, and _agents -provocateurs._ The rules are set by Omnipotence; the discreet man -observes them. Observing them, he is safe beneath the starry bed-tick, -in fair weather or foul. The _boobus Americanus_ is a bird that knows -no closed season—and if he won’t come down to Texas oil stock, or -one-night cancer cures, or building lots in Swampshurst, he will always -come down to Inspiration and Optimism, whether political, theological, -pedagogical, literary, or economic. - -The doctrine that it is _infra digitatem_ for an educated man to take -a hand in the snaring of this goose is one in which I see nothing -convincing. It is a doctrine chiefly voiced, I believe, by those -who have tried the business and failed. They take refuge behind the -childish notion that there is something honorable about poverty _per -se_—the Greenwich Village complex. This is nonsense. Poverty may be -an unescapable misfortune, but that no more makes it honorable than -a cocked eye is made honorable by the same cause. Do I advocate, -then, the ceaseless, senseless hogging of money? I do not. All I -advocate—and praise as virtuous—is the hogging of enough to provide -security and ease. Despite all the romantic superstitions to the -contrary, the artist cannot do his best work when he is oppressed by -unsatisfied wants. Nor can the philosopher. Nor can the man of science. -The best and clearest thinking of the world is done and the finest art -is produced, not by men who are hungry, ragged and harassed, but by men -who are well-fed, warm and easy in mind. It is the artist’s first duty -to his art to achieve that tranquility for himself. Shakespeare tried -to achieve it; so did Beethoven, Wagner, Brahms, Ibsen and Balzac. -Goethe, Schopenhauer, Schumann and Mendelssohn were born to it. Joseph -Conrad, Richard Strauss and Anatole France have got it for themselves -in our own day. In the older countries, where competence is far more -general and competition is thus more sharp, the thing is often cruelly -difficult, and sometimes almost impossible. But in the United States -it is absurdly easy, given ordinary luck. Any man with a superior air, -the intelligence of a stockbroker, and the resolution of a hat-check -girl—in brief, any man who believes in himself enough, and with -sufficient cause, to be called a journeyman—can cadge enough money, in -this glorious commonwealth of morons, to make life soft for him. - -And if a lining for the purse is thus facilely obtainable, given a -reasonable prudence and resourcefulness, then balm for the ego is just -as unlaboriously got, given ordinary dignity and decency. Simply to -exist, indeed, on the plane of a civilized man is to attain, in the -Republic, to a distinction that should be enough for all save the most -vain; it is even likely to be too much, as the frequent challenges of -the Ku Klux Klan, the American Legion, the Anti-Saloon League, and -other such vigilance committees of the majority testify. Here is a -country in which all political thought and activity are concentrated -upon the scramble for jobs—in which the normal politician, whether he -be a President or a village road supervisor, is willing to renounce -any principle, however precious to him, and to adopt any lunacy, -however offensive to him, in order to keep his place at the trough. -Go into politics, then, without seeking or wanting office, and at once -you are as conspicuous as a red-haired blackamoor—in fact, a great -deal more conspicuous, for red-haired blackamoors have been seen, but -who has ever seen or heard of an American politician, Democrat or -Republican, Socialist or Liberal, Whig or Tory, who did not itch for a -job? Again, here is a country in which it is an axiom that a business -man shall be a member of a Chamber of Commerce, an admirer of Charles -M. Schwab, a reader of the _Saturday Evening Post_, a golfer—in -brief, a vegetable. Spend your hours of escape from _Geschäft_ reading -Remy de Gourmont or practicing the violoncello, and the local Sunday -newspaper will infallibly find you out and hymn the marvel—nay, your -banker will summon you to discuss your notes, and your rivals will -spread the report (probably truthful) that you were pro-German during -the war. Yet again, here is a land in which women rule and men are -slaves. Train your women to get your slippers for you, and your ill -fame will match Galileo’s or Darwin’s. Once more, here is the Paradise -of back-slappers, of democrats, of mixers, of go-getters. Maintain -ordinary reserve, and you will arrest instant attention—and have your -hand kissed by multitudes who, despite democracy, have all the inferior -man’s unquenchable desire to grovel and admire. - -Nowhere else in the world is superiority more easily attained or more -eagerly admitted. The chief business of the nation, as a nation, is -the setting up of heroes, mainly bogus. It admired the literary style -of the late Woodrow; it respects the theological passion of Bryan; it -venerates J. Pierpont Morgan; it takes Congress seriously; it would be -unutterably shocked by the proposition (with proof) that a majority of -its judges are ignoramuses, and that a respectable minority of them -are scoundrels. The manufacture of artificial _Durchlauchten, k.k. -Hoheiten_ and even gods goes on feverishly and incessantly; the will -to worship never flags. Ten iron-molders meet in the back-room of a -near-beer saloon, organize a lodge of the Noble and Mystic Order of -American Rosicrucians, and elect a wheelwright Supreme Worthy Whimwham; -a month later they send a notice to the local newspaper that they -have been greatly honored by an official visit from that Whimwham, -and that they plan to give him a jeweled fob for his watch chain. The -chief national heroes—Lincoln, Lee, and so on—cannot remain mere -men. The mysticism of the mediæval peasantry gets into the communal -view of them, and they begin to sprout haloes and wings. As I say, no -intrinsic merit—at least, none commensurate with the mob estimate—is -needed to come to such august dignities. Everything American is a bit -amateurish and childish, even the national gods. The most conspicuous -and respected American in nearly every field of endeavor, saving only -the purely commercial (I exclude even the financial) is a man who would -attract little attention in any other country. The leading American -critic of literature, after twenty years of diligent exposition of his -ideas, has yet to make it clear what he is in favor of, and why. The -queen of the _haut monde_, in almost every American city, is a woman -who regards Lord Reading as an aristocrat and her superior, and whose -grandfather slept in his underclothes. The leading American musical -director, if he went to Leipzig, would be put to polishing trombones -and copying drum parts. The chief living American military man—the -national heir to Frederick, Marlborough, Wellington, Washington and -Prince Eugene—is a member of the Elks, and proud of it. The leading -American philosopher (now dead, with no successor known to the average -pedagogue) spent a lifetime erecting an epistemological defense for the -national æsthetic maxim: “I don’t know nothing about music, but I know -what I like.” The most eminent statesman the United States has produced -since Lincoln was fooled by Arthur James Balfour, and miscalculated -his public support by more than 5,000,000 votes. And the current -Chief Magistrate of the nation—its defiant substitute for czar and -kaiser—is a small-town printer who, when he wishes to enjoy himself -in the Executive Mansion, invites in a homeopathic doctor, a Seventh -Day Adventist evangelist, and a couple of moving-picture actresses. - - - - -2 - - -All of which may be boiled down to this: that the United States is -essentially a commonwealth of third-rate men—that distinction is easy -here because the general level of culture, of information, of taste and -judgment, of ordinary competence is so low. No sane man, employing an -American plumber to repair a leaky drain, would expect him to do it at -the first trial, and in precisely the same way no sane man, observing -an American Secretary of State in negotiation with Englishmen and Japs, -would expect him to come off better than second best. Third-rate men, -of course, exist in all countries, but it is only here that they are in -full control of the state, and with it of all the national standards. -The land was peopled, not by the hardy adventurers of legend, but -simply by incompetents who could not get on at home, and the lavishness -of nature that they found here, the vast ease with which they could -get livings, confirmed and augmented their native incompetence. No -American colonist, even in the worst days of the Indian wars, ever had -to face such hardships as ground down the peasants of Central Europe -during the Hundred Years War, nor even such hardships as oppressed the -English lower classes during the century before the Reform Bill of -1832. In most of the colonies, indeed, he seldom saw any Indians at -all: the one thing that made life difficult for him was his congenital -dunderheadedness. The winning of the West, so rhetorically celebrated -in American romance, cost the lives of fewer men than the single -battle of Tannenberg, and the victory was much easier and surer. The -immigrants who have come in since those early days have been, if -anything, of even lower grade than their forerunners. The old notion -that the United States is peopled by the offspring of brave, idealistic -and liberty loving minorities, who revolted against injustice, bigotry -and mediævalism at home—this notion is fast succumbing to the alarmed -study that has been given of late to the immigration of recent years. -The truth is that the majority of non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants since the -Revolution, like the majority of Anglo-Saxon immigrants before the -Revolution, have been, not the superior men of their native lands, -but the botched and unfit: Irishmen starving to death in Ireland, -Germans unable to weather the _Sturm und Drang_ of the post-Napoleonic -reorganization, Italians weed-grown on exhausted soil, Scandinavians -run to all bone and no brain, Jews too incompetent to swindle even -the barbarous peasants of Russia, Poland and Roumania. Here and -there among the immigrants, of course, there may be a bravo, or even -a superman—e. g., the ancestors of Volstead, Ponzi, Jack Dempsey, -Schwab, Daugherty, Debs, Pershing—but the average newcomer is, and -always has been simply a poor fish. - -Nor is there much soundness in the common assumption, so beloved of -professional idealists and wind-machines, that the people of America -constitute “the youngest of the great peoples.” The phrase turns up -endlessly; the average newspaper editorial writer would be hamstrung if -the Postoffice suddenly interdicted it, as it interdicted “the right to -rebel” during the war. What gives it a certain specious plausibility is -the fact that the American Republic, compared to a few other existing -governments, is relatively young. But the American Republic is not -necessarily identical with the American people; they might overturn -it to-morrow and set up a monarchy, and still remain the same people. -The truth is that, as a distinct nation, they go back fully three -hundred years, and that even their government is older than that of -most other nations, e. g., France, Italy, Germany, Russia. Moreover, -it is absurd to say that there is anything properly describable as -youthfulness in the American outlook. It is not that of young men, but -that of old men. All the characteristics of senescence are in it: a -great distrust of ideas, an habitual timorousness, a harsh fidelity -to a few fixed beliefs, a touch of mysticism. The average American is -a prude and a Methodist under his skin, and the fact is never more -evident than when he is trying to disprove it. His vices are not those -of a healthy boy, but those of an ancient paralytic escaped from the -_Greisenheim._ If you would penetrate to the causes thereof, simply -go down to Ellis Island and look at the next shipload of immigrants. -You will not find the spring of youth in their step; you will find the -shuffling of exhausted men. From such exhausted men the American stock -has sprung. It was easier for them to survive here than it was where -they came from, but that ease, though it made them feel stronger, did -not actually strengthen them. It left them what they were when they -came: weary peasants, eager only for the comfortable security of a -pig in a sty. Out of that eagerness has issued many of the noblest -manifestations of American _Kultur:_ the national hatred of war, the -pervasive suspicion of the aims and intents of all other nations, the -short way with heretics and disturbers of the peace, the unshakable -belief in devils, the implacable hostility to every novel idea and -point of view. - -All these ways of thinking are the marks of the peasant—more, of the -peasant long ground into the mud of his wallow, and determined at last -to stay there—the peasant who has definitely renounced any lewd -desire he may have ever had to gape at the stars. The habits of mind of -this dull, sempiternal _fellah_—the oldest man in Christendom—are, -with a few modifications, the habits of mind of the American people. -The peasant has a great practical cunning, but he is unable to see -any further than the next farm. He likes money and knows how to amass -property, but his cultural development is but little above that of -the domestic animals. He is intensely and cocksurely moral, but his -morality and his self-interest are crudely identical. He is emotional -and easy to scare, but his imagination cannot grasp an abstraction. -He is a violent nationalist and patriot, but he admires rogues in -office and always beats the tax-collector if he can. He has immovable -opinions about all the great affairs of state, but ninetenths of them -are sheer imbecilities. He is violently jealous of what he conceives -to be his rights, but brutally disregardful of the other fellow’s. He -is religious, but his religion is wholly devoid of beauty and dignity. -This man, whether city or country bred, is the normal Americano—the -100 per cent. Methodist, Odd Fellow, Ku Kluxer, and Know Nothing. -He exists in all countries, but here alone he rules—here alone his -anthropoid fears and rages are accepted gravely as logical ideas, and -dissent from them is punished as a sort of public offense. Around every -one of his principal delusions—of the sacredness of democracy, of the -feasibility of sumptuary law, of the incurable sinfulness of all other -peoples, of the menace of ideas, of the corruption lying in all the -arts—there is thrown a barrier of taboos, and woe to the anarchist who -seeks to break it down! - -The multiplication of such taboos is obviously not characteristic of -a culture that is moving from a lower plane to a higher—that is, of -a culture still in the full glow of its youth. It is a sign, rather, -of a culture that is slipping downhill—one that is reverting to the -most primitive standards and ways of thought. The taboo, indeed, is the -trademark of the savage, and wherever it exists it is a relentless -and effective enemy of civilized enlightenment. The savage is the most -meticulously moral of men; there is scarcely an act of his daily life -that is not conditioned by unyielding prohibitions and obligations, -most of them logically unintelligible. The mob-man, a savage set -amid civilization, cherishes a code of the same draconian kind. He -believes firmly that right and wrong are immovable things—that they -have an actual and unchangeable existence, and that any challenge -of them, by word or act, is a crime against society. And with the -concept of wrongness, of course, he always confuses the concept of mere -differentness—to him the two are indistinguishable. Anything strange -is to be combatted; it is of the Devil. The mob-man cannot grasp ideas -in their native nakedness. They must be dramatized and personalized -for him, and provided with either white wings or forked tails. All -discussion of them, to interest him, must take the form of a pursuit -and scotching of demons. He cannot think of a heresy without thinking -of a heretic to be caught, condemned, and burned. - -The Fathers of the Republic, I am convinced, had a great deal more -prevision than even their most romantic worshipers give them credit -for. They not only sought to create a governmental machine that would -be safe from attack without; they also sought to create one that would -be safe from attack within. They invented very ingenious devices for -holding the mob in check, for protecting the national polity against -its transient and illogical rages, for securing the determination -of all the larger matters of state to a concealed but none the less -real aristocracy. Nothing could have been further from the intent -of Washington, Hamilton and even Jefferson than that the official -doctrines of the nation, in the year 1922, should be identical with the -nonsense heard in the chautauqua, from the evangelical pulpit, and on -the stump. But Jackson and his merry men broke through the barbed wires -thus so carefully strung, and ever since 1825 _vox populi_ has been -the true voice of the nation. To-day there is no longer any question -of statesmanship, in any real sense, in our politics. The only way to -success in American public life lies in flattering and kowtowing to the -mob. A candidate for office, even the highest, must either adopt its -current manias _en bloc_, or convince it hypocritically that he has -done so, while cherishing reservations _in petto._ The result is that -only two sorts of men stand any chance whatever of getting into actual -control of affairs—first, glorified mob-men who genuinely believe -what the mob believes, and secondly, shrewd fellows who are willing -to make any sacrifice of conviction and self-respect in order to hold -their jobs. One finds perfect examples of the first class in Jackson -and Bryan. One finds hundreds of specimens of the second among the -politicians who got themselves so affectingly converted to Prohibition, -and who voted and blubbered for it with flasks in their pockets. Even -on the highest planes our politics seems to be incurable mountebankish. -The same Senators who raised such raucous alarms against the League of -Nations voted for the Disarmament Treaty—a far more obvious surrender -to English hegemony. And the same Senators who pleaded for the League -on the ground that its failure would break the heart of the world were -eloquently against the treaty. The few men who maintained a consistent -course in both cases, voting either for or against both League and -treaty, were denounced by the newspapers as deliberate marplots, -and found their constituents rising against them. To such an extent -had the public become accustomed to buncombe that simple honesty was -incomprehensible to it, and hence abhorrent! - -As I have pointed out in a previous work, this dominance of mob ways -of thinking, this pollution of the whole intellectual life of the -country by the prejudices and emotions of the rabble, goes unchallenged -because the old landed aristocracy of the colonial era has been -engulfed and almost obliterated by the rise of the industrial system, -and no new aristocracy has arisen to take its place, and discharge its -highly necessary functions. An upper class, of course, exists, and of -late it has tended to increase in power, but it is culturally almost -indistinguishable from the mob: it lacks absolutely anything even -remotely resembling an aristocratic point of view. One searches in vain -for any sign of the true _Junker_ spirit in the Vanderbilts, Astors, -Morgans, Garys, and other such earls and dukes of the plutocracy; their -culture, like their aspiration, remains that of the pawnshop. One -searches in vain, too for the aloof air of the don, in the official -_intelligentsia_ of the American universities; they are timorous and -orthodox, and constitute a reptile Congregatio de Propaganda Fide to -match Bismarck’s _Reptilienpresse._ Everywhere else on earth, despite -the rise of democracy, an organized minority of aristocrats survives -from a more spacious day, and if its personnel has degenerated and its -legal powers have decayed it has at least maintained some vestige of -its old independence of spirit, and jealously guarded its old right to -be heard without risk of penalty. Even in England, where the peerage -has been debauched to the level of a political baptismal fount for -Jewish money-lenders and Wesleyan soap-boilers, there is sanctuary for -the old order in the two ancient universities, and a lingering respect -for it in the peasantry. But in the United States it was paralyzed by -Jackson and got its death blow from Grant, and since then no successor -to it has been evolved. Thus there is no organized force to oppose the -irrational vagaries of the mob. The legislative and executive arms of -the government yield to them without resistance; the judicial arm has -begun to yield almost as supinely, particularly when they take the form -of witch-hunts; outside the official circle there is no opposition -that is even dependably articulate. The worst excesses go almost -without challenge. Discussion, when it is heard at all, is feeble and -superficial, and girt about by the taboos that I have mentioned. The -clatter about the so-called Ku Klux Klan, two or three years ago, was -typical. The astounding program of this organization was discussed -in the newspapers for months on end, and a committee of Congress sat -in solemn state to investigate it, and yet not a single newspaper -or Congressman, so far as I am aware, so much as mentioned the most -patent and important fact about it, to wit, that the Ku Klux was, to -all intents and purposes, simply the secular arm of the Methodist -Church, and that its methods were no more than physical projections -of the familiar extravagances of the Anti-Saloon League. The intimate -relations between church and Klan, amounting almost to identity, must -have been plain to every intelligent American, and yet the taboo upon -the realistic consideration of ecclesiastical matters was sufficient to -make every public soothsayer disregard it completely. - -I often wonder, indeed, if there would be any intellectual life at -all in the United States if it were not for the steady importation -in bulk of ideas from abroad, and particularly, in late years, from -England. What would become of the average American scholar if he could -not borrow wholesale from English scholars? How could an inquisitive -youth get beneath the surface of our politics if it were not for such -anatomists as Bryce? Who would show our statesmen the dotted lines -for their signatures if there were no Balfours and Lloyd-Georges? How -could our young professors formulate æsthetic judgments, especially -in the field of letters, if it were not for such gifted English -mentors as Robertson Nicoll, Squire and Clutton-Brock? By what process, -finally, would the true style of a visiting card be determined, and -the _höflich_ manner of eating artichokes, if there were no reports -from Mayfair? On certain levels this naïve subservience must needs -irritate every self-respecting American, and even dismay him. When he -recalls the amazing feats of the English war propagandists between -1914 and 1917—and their even more amazing confessions of method -since—he is apt to ask himself quite gravely if he belongs to a free -nation or to a crown colony. The thing was done openly, shamelessly, -contemptuously, cynically, and yet it was a gigantic success. The -office of the American Secretary of State, from the end of Bryan’s -grotesque incumbency to the end of the Wilson administration, was -little more than an antechamber of the British Foreign Office. Dr. -Wilson himself, in the conduct of his policy, differed only legally -from such colonial premiers as Hughes and Smuts. Even after the United -States got into the war it was more swagger for a Young American blood -to wear the British uniform than the American uniform. No American -ever seriously questions an Englishman or Englishwoman of official or -even merely fashionable position at home. Lord Birkenhead was accepted -as a gentleman everywhere in the United States; Mrs. Asquith’s almost -unbelievable imbecilities were heard with hushed fascination; even -Lady Astor, an American married to an expatriate German-American -turned English viscount, was greeted with solemn effusiveness. During -the latter part of 1917, when New York swarmed with British military -missions, I observed in _Town Topics_ a polite protest against a very -significant habit of certain of their gallant members: that of going -to dances wearing spurs, and so macerating the frocks and heels of the -fawning fair. The protest, it appears, was not voiced by the hosts and -hostesses of these singular officers: they would have welcomed their -guests in trench boots. It was left to a dubious weekly, and it was -made very gingerly. - -The spectacle, as I say, has a way of irking the American touched by -nationalistic weakness. Ever since the day of Lowell—even since the -day of Cooper and Irving—there have been denunciations of it. But -however unpleasant it may be, there is no denying that a chain of -logical causes lies behind it, and that they are not to be disposed of -by objecting to them. The average American of the Anglo-Saxon majority, -in truth, is simply a second-rate Englishman, and so it is no wonder -that he is spontaneously servile, despite all his democratic denial of -superiorities, to what he conceives to be first-rate Englishmen. He -corresponds, roughly, to an English Nonconformist of the better-fed -variety, and he shows all the familiar characters of the breed. He is -truculent and cocksure, and yet he knows how to take off his hat when -a bishop of the Establishment passes. He is hot against the dukes, and -yet the notice of a concrete duke is a singing in his heart. It seems -to me that this inferior Anglo-Saxon is losing his old dominance in -the United States—that is, biologically But he will keep his cultural -primacy for a long, long while, in spite of the overwhelming inrush -of men of other races, if only because those newcomers are even more -clearly inferior than he is. Nine-tenths of the Italians, for example, -who have come to these shores in late years have brought no more of the -essential culture of Italy with them than so many horned cattle would -have brought. If they become civilized at all, settling here, it is -the civilization of the Anglo-Saxon majority that they acquire, which -is to say, the civilization of the English second table. So with the -Germans, the Scandinavians, and even the Jews and Irish. The Germans, -taking one with another, are on the cultural level of green-grocers. I -have come into contact with a great many of them since 1914, some of -them of considerable wealth and even of fashionable pretensions. In the -whole lot I can think of but a score or two who could name offhand the -principal works of Thomas Mann, Otto Julius Bierbaum, Ludwig Thoma or -Hugo von Hofmannsthal. They know much more about Mutt and Jeff than -they know about Goethe. The Scandinavians are even worse. The majority -of them are mere clods, and they are sucked into the Knights of -Pythias, the chautauqua and the Methodist Church almost as soon as they -land; it is by no means a mere accident that the national Prohibition -Enforcement Act bears the name of a man theoretically of the blood of -Gustavus Vasa, Svend of the Forked Beard, and Eric the Red. The Irish -in the United States are scarcely touched by the revival of Irish -culture, despite their melodramatic concern with Irish politics. During -the war they supplied diligent and dependable agents to the Anglo-Saxon -White Terror, and at all times they are very susceptible to political -and social bribery. As for the Jews, they change their names to Burton, -Thompson and Cecil in order to qualify as true Americans, and when they -are accepted and rewarded in the national coin they renounce Moses -altogether and get themselves baptized in St. Bartholomew’s Church. - -Whenever ideas enter the United States from without they come by way of -England. What the London _Times_ says to-day, about Ukranian politics, -the revolt in India, a change of ministry in Italy, the character of -the King of Norway, the oil situation in Mesopotamia, will be said -week after next by the _Times_ of New York, and a month or two later -by all the other American newspapers. The extent of this control of -American opinion by English news mongers is but little appreciated in -the United States, even by professional journalists. Fully four-fifths -of all the foreign news that comes to the American newspapers comes -through London, and most of the rest is supplied either by Englishmen -or by Jews (often American-born) who maintain close relations with -the English. During the years 1914–1917 so many English agents got -into Germany in the guise of American correspondents—sometimes with -the full knowledge of their Anglomaniac American employers—that -the Germans, just before the United States entered the war, were -considering barring American correspondents from their country -altogether. I was in Copenhagen and Basel in 1917, and found both -towns—each an important source of war news—full of Jews representing -American journals as a side-line to more delicate and confidential work -for the English department of press propaganda. Even to-day a very -considerable proportion of the American correspondents in Europe are -strongly under English influences, and in the Far East the proportion -is probably still larger. But these men seldom handle really important -news. All that is handled from London, and by trustworthy Britons. Such -of it as is not cabled directly to the American newspapers and press -associations is later clipped from English newspapers, and printed as -bogus letters or cablegrams. - -The American papers accept such very dubious stuff, not chiefly because -they are hopelessly stupid or Anglomaniac, but because they find it -impossible to engage competent American correspondents. If the native -journalists who discuss our domestic politics avoid the fundamentals -timorously, then those who venture to discuss foreign politics are -scarcely aware of the fundamentals at all. We have simply developed no -class of experts in such matters. No man comparable, say to Dr. Dillon, -Wickham Steed, Count zu Reventlow or Wilfrid Scawen Blunt exists in -the United States. When, in the Summer of 1920, the editors of the -Baltimore _Sun_ undertook plans to cover the approaching Disarmament -Conference at Washington in a comprehensive and intelligent manner, -they were forced, willy-nilly, into employing Englishmen to do the -work. Such men as Brailsford and Bywater, writing from London, three -thousand miles away, were actually better able to interpret the work -of the conference than American correspondents on the spot, few of -whom were capable of anything beyond the most trivial gossip. During -the whole period of the conference not a professional Washington -correspondent—the flower of American political journalism—wrote -a single article upon the proceedings that got further than their -surface aspects. Before the end of the sessions this enforced -dependence upon English opinion had an unexpected and significant -result. Facing the English and the Japs in an unyielding alliance, -the French turned to the American delegation for assistance. The -issue specifically before the conference was one on which American -self-interest was obviously identical with French self-interest. -Nevertheless, the English had such firm grip upon the machinery of news -distribution that they were able, in less than a week, to turn American -public opinion against the French, and even to set up an active -Francophobia. No American, not even any of the American delegates, -was able to cope with their propaganda. They not only dominated the -conference and pushed through a set of treaties that were extravagantly -favorable to England; they even established the doctrine that all -opposition to those treaties was immoral! - -When Continental ideas, whether in politics, in metaphysics or in the -fine arts, penetrate to the United States they nearly always travel -by way of England. Emerson did not read Goethe; he read Carlyle. The -American people, from the end of 1914 to the end of 1918, did not -read first-handed statements of the German case; they read English -interpretations of those statements. In London is the clearing house -and transformer station. There the latest notions from the mainland are -sifted out, carefully diluted with English water, and put into neat -packages for the Yankee trade. The English not only get a chance to -ameliorate or embellish; they also determine very largely what ideas -Americans are to hear of at all. Whatever fails to interest them, or -is in any way obnoxious to them, is not likely to cross the ocean. -This explains why it is that most literate Americans are so densely -ignorant of many Continentals who have been celebrated at home for -years, for example, Huysmans, Hartleben, Vaibinger, Merezhkovsky, -Keyserling, Snoilsky, Mauthner, Altenberg, Heidenstam, Alfred Kerr. It -also explains why they so grossly overestimate various third-raters, -laughed at at home, for example, Brieux. These fellows simply happen to -interest the English _intelligentsia_, and are thus palmed off upon the -gaping colonists of Yankeedom. In the case of Brieux the hocus-pocus -was achieved by one man, George Bernard Shaw, a Scotch blue-nose -disguised as an Irish patriot and English soothsayer. Shaw, at bottom, -has the ideas of a Presbyterian elder, and so the moral frenzy of -Brieux enchanted him. Whereupon he retired to his chamber, wrote a -flaming Brieuxiad for the American trade, and founded the late vogue of -the French Dr. Sylvanus Stall on this side of the ocean. - -This wholesale import and export business in Continental fancies is of -no little benefit, of course, to the generality of Americans. If it -did not exist they would probably never hear of many of the salient -Continentals at all, for the obvious incompetence of most of the -native and resident introducers of intellectual ambassadors makes them -suspicious even of those who, like Boyd and Nathan, are thoroughly -competent. To this day there is no American translation of the plays of -Ibsen; we use the William Archer Scotch-English translations, most of -them atrociously bad, but still better than nothing. So with the works -of Nietzsche, Anatole France, Georg Brandes, Turgeniev, Dostoyevsky, -Tolstoi, and other moderns after their kind. I can think of but one -important exception: the work of Gerhart Hauptmann, done into English -by and under the supervision of Ludwig Lewisohn. But even here Lewisohn -used a number of English translations of single plays: the English were -still ahead of him, though they stopped half way. He is, in any case, a -very extraordinary American, and the Department of Justice kept an eye -on him during the war. The average American professor is far too dull -a fellow to undertake so difficult an enterprise. Even when he sports -a German Ph.D. one usually finds on examination that all he knows -about modern German literature is that a _Mass_ of Hofbräu in Munich -used to cost 27 _Pfennig_ downstairs and 32 _Pfennig_ upstairs. The -German universities were formerly very tolerant of foreigners. Many an -American, in preparation for professing at Harvard, spent a couple of -years roaming from one to the other of them without picking up enough -German to read the _Berliner Tageblatt._ Such frauds swarm in all our -lesser universities, and many of them, during the war, became eminent -authorities upon the crimes of Nietzsche and the errors of Treitschke. - - - - -3 - - -In rainy weather, when my old wounds ache and the four humors do battle -in my spleen, I often find myself speculating sourly as to the future -of the Republic. Native opinion, of course, is to the effect that -it will be secure and glorious; the superstition that progress must -always be upward and onward will not down; in virulence and popularity -it matches the superstition that money can accomplish anything. But -this view is not shared by most reflective foreigners, as any one may -find out by looking into such a book as Ferdinand Kürnberger’s “Der -Amerikamüde,” Sholom Asch’s “America,” Ernest von Wolzogen’s “Ein -Dichter in Dollarica,” W. L. George’s “Hail, Columbia!”, Annalise -Schmidt’s “Der Amerikanische Mensch” or Sienkiewicz’s “After Bread,” -or by hearkening unto the confidences, if obtainable, of such returned -immigrants as Georges Clemenceau, Knut Hamsun, George Santayana, -Clemens von Pirquet, John Masefield and Maxim Gorky, and, via the ouija -board, Antonin Dvorak, Frank Wedekind and Edwin Klebs. The American -Republic, as nations go, has led a safe and easy life, with no serious -enemies to menace it, either within or without, and no grim struggle -with want. Getting a living here has always been easier than anywhere -else in Christendom; getting a secure foothold has been possible to -whole classes of men who would have remained submerged in Europe, as -the character of our plutocracy, and no less of our _intelligentsia_ -so brilliantly shows. The American people have never had to face such -titanic assaults as those suffered by the people of Holland, Poland -and half a dozen other little countries; they have not lived with a -ring of powerful and unconscionable enemies about them, as the Germans -have lived since the Middle Ages; they have not been torn by class -wars, as the French, the Spaniards and the Russians have been torn; -they have not thrown their strength into far-flung and exhausting -colonial enterprises, like the English. All their foreign wars have -been fought with foes either too weak to resist them or too heavily -engaged elsewhere to make more than a half-hearted attempt. The combats -with Mexico and Spain were not wars; they were simply lynchings. Even -the Civil War, compared to the larger European conflicts since the -invention of gunpowder, was trivial in its character and transient in -its effects. The population of the United States, when it began, was -about 31,500,000—say 10 per cent. under the population of France in -1914. But after four years of struggle, the number of men killed in -action or dead of wounds, in the two armies, came but 200,000—probably -little more than a sixth of the total losses of France between 1914 -and 1918. Nor was there any very extensive destruction of property. -In all save a small area in the North there was none at all, and even -in the South only a few towns of any importance were destroyed. The -average Northerner passed through the four years scarcely aware, save -by report, that a war was going on. In the South the breath of Mars -blew more hotly, but even there large numbers of men escaped service, -and the general hardship everywhere fell a great deal short of the -hardships suffered by the Belgians, the French of the North, the -Germans of East Prussia, and the Serbians and Rumanians in the World -War. The agonies of the South have been much exaggerated in popular -romance; they were probably more severe during Reconstruction, when -they were chiefly psychical, than they were during the actual war. -Certainly General Robert E. Lee was in a favorable position to estimate -the military achievement of the Confederacy. Well, Lee was of the -opinion that his army was very badly supported by the civil population, -and that its final disaster was largely due to that ineffective support. - -Coming down to the time of the World War, one finds precious few signs -that the American people, facing an antagonist of equal strength -and with both hands free, could be relied upon to give a creditable -account of themselves. The American share in that great struggle, in -fact, was marked by poltroonery almost as conspicuously as it was -marked by knavery. Let us consider briefly what the nation did. For -a few months it viewed the struggle idly and unintelligently, as a -yokel might stare at a sword-swallower at a county fair. Then, seeing -a chance to profit, it undertook with sudden alacrity the ghoulish -office of _Kriegslieferant._ One of the contestants being debarred, by -the chances of war, from buying, it devoted its whole energies, for -two years, to purveying to the other. Meanwhile, it made every effort -to aid its customer by lending him the cloak of its neutrality—that -is, by demanding all the privileges of a neutral and yet carrying on a -stupendous wholesale effort to promote the war. On the official side, -this neutrality was fraudulent from the start, as the revelations of -Mr. Tumulty have since demonstrated; popularly it became more and -more fraudulent as the debts of the customer contestant piled up, -and it became more and more apparent—a fact diligently made known -by his partisans—that they would be worthless if he failed to win. -Then, in the end, covert aid was transformed into overt aid. And under -what gallant conditions! In brief, there stood a nation of 65,000,000 -people, which, without effective allies, had just closed two and a -half years of homeric conflict by completely defeating an enemy state -of 135,000,000 and two lesser ones of more than 10,000,000 together, -and now stood at bay before a combination of at least 140,000,000. -Upon this battle-scarred and war-weary foe the Republic of 100,000,000 -freemen now flung itself, so lifting the odds to 4 to 1. And after a -year and a half more of struggle it emerged triumphant—a knightly -victor surely! - -There is no need to rehearse the astounding and unprecedented -swinishness that accompanied this glorious business—the colossal -waste of public money, the savage persecution of all opponents and -critics of the war, the open bribery of labor, the half-insane reviling -of the enemy, the manufacture of false news, the knavish robbery of -enemy civilians, the incessant spy hunts, the floating of public -loans by a process of blackmail, the degradation of the Red Cross -to partisan uses, the complete abandonment of all decency, decorum -and self-respect. The facts must be remembered with shame by every -civilized American; lest they be forgotten by the generations of the -future I am even now engaged with collaborators upon an exhaustive -record of them, in twenty volumes folio. More important to the present -purpose are two things that are apt to be overlooked, the first of -which is the capital fact that the war was “sold” to the American -people, as the phrase has it, not by appealing to their courage, but -by appealing to their cowardice—in brief, by adopting the assumption -that they were not warlike at all, and certainly not gallant and -chivalrous, but merely craven and fearful. The first selling point of -the proponents of American participation was the contention that the -Germans, with gigantic wars still raging on both fronts, were preparing -to invade the United States, burn down all the towns, murder all the -men, and carry off all the women—that their victory would bring -staggering and irresistible reprisals for the American violation of the -duties of a neutral. The second selling point was that the entrance -of the United States would end the war almost instantly—that the -Germans would be so overwhelmingly out-numbered, in men and guns, that -it would be impossible for them to make any effective defense—above -all, that it would be impossible for them to inflict any serious damage -upon their new foes. Neither argument, it must be plain, showed the -slightest belief in the warlike skill and courage of the American -people. Both were grounded upon the frank theory that the only way to -make the mob fight was to scare it half to death, and then show it a -way to fight without risk, to stab a helpless antagonist in the back. -And both were mellowed and reënforced by the hint that such a noble -assault, beside being safe, would also be extremely profitable—that -it would convert very dubious debts into very good debts, and dispose -forever of a diligent and dangerous competitor for trade, especially -in Latin America. All the idealist nonsense emitted by Dr. Wilson and -company was simply icing on the cake. Most of it was abandoned as -soon as the bullets began to fly, and the rest consisted simply of -meaningless words—the idiotic babbling of a Presbyterian evangelist -turned prophet and seer. - -The other thing that needs to be remembered is the permanent effect -of so dishonest and cowardly a business upon the national character, -already far too much inclined toward easy ventures and long odds. -Somewhere in his diaries Wilfrid Scawen Blunt speaks of the marked -debasement that showed itself in the English spirit after the brutal -robbery and assassination of the South African Republics. The heroes -that the mob followed after Mafeking Day were far inferior to the -heroes that it had followed in the days before the war. The English -gentleman began to disappear from public life, and in his place -appeared a rabble-rousing bounder obviously almost identical with -the American professional politician—the Lloyd-George, Chamberlain, -F. E. Smith, Isaacs-Reading, Churchill, Bottomley, Northcliffe type. -Worse, old ideals went with old heroes. Personal freedom and strict -legality, says Blunt, vanished from the English tables of the law, -and there was a shift of the social and political center of gravity -to a lower plane. Precisely the same effect is now visible in the -United States. The overwhelming majority of conscripts went into the -army unwillingly, and once there they were debauched by the twin -forces of the official propaganda that I have mentioned and a harsh, -unintelligent discipline. The first made them almost incapable of -soldierly thought and conduct; the second converted them into cringing -goose-steppers. The consequences display themselves in the amazing -activities of the American Legion, and in the rise of such correlative -organizations as the Ku Klux Klan. It is impossible to fit any -reasonable concept of the soldierly into the familiar proceedings of -the Legion. Its members conduct themselves like a gang of Methodist -vice-crusaders on the loose, or a Southern lynching party. They are -forever discovering preposterous burglars under the national bed, -and they advance to the attack, not gallantly and at fair odds, but -cravenly and in overwhelming force. Some of their enterprises, to be -set forth at length in the record I have mentioned, have been of -almost unbelievable baseness—the mobbing of harmless Socialists, -the prohibition of concerts by musicians of enemy nationality, the -mutilation of cows designed for shipment abroad to feed starving -children, the roughing of women, service as strike-breakers, the -persecution of helpless foreigners, regardless of nationality. - -During the last few months of the war, when stories of the tyrannical -ill-usage of conscripts began to filter back to the United States, it -was predicted that they would demand the punishment of the guilty when -they got home, and that if it was not promptly forthcoming they would -take it into their own hands. It was predicted, too, that they would -array themselves against the excesses of Palmer, Burleson and company, -and insist upon a restoration of that democratic freedom for which they -had theoretically fought. But they actually did none of these things. -So far as I know, not a single martinet of a lieutenant or captain has -been manhandled by his late victims; the most they have done has been -to appeal to Congress for revenge and damages. Nor have they thrown -their influence against the mediæval despotism which grew up at home -during the war; on the contrary, they have supported it actively, and -if it has lessened since 1919 the change has been wrought without -their aid and in spite of their opposition. In sum, they show all the -stigmata of inferior men whose natural inferiority has been made -worse by oppression. Their chief organization is dominated by shrewd -ex-officers who operate it to their own ends—politicians in search -of jobs, Chamber of Commerce witch-hunters, and other such vermin. It -seems to be wholly devoid of patriotism, courage, or sense. Nothing -quite resembling it existed in the country before the war, not even in -the South. There is nothing like it anywhere else on earth. It is a -typical product of two years of heroic effort to arouse and capitalize -the worst instincts of the mob, and it symbolizes very dramatically the -ill effects of that effort upon the general American character. - -Would men so degraded in gallantry and honor, so completely purged of -all the military virtues, so submerged in baseness of spirit—would -such pitiful caricatures of soldiers offer the necessary resistance to -a public enemy who was equal, or perhaps superior in men and resources, -and who came on with confidence, daring and resolution—say England -supported by Germany as _Kriegslieferant_ and with her inevitable -swarms of Continental allies, or Japan with the Asiatic hordes behind -her? Against the best opinion of the chautauquas, of Congress and of the -patriotic press I presume to doubt it. It seems to me quite certain, -indeed, that an American army fairly representing the American people, -if it ever meets another army of anything remotely resembling like -strength, will be defeated, and that defeat will be indistinguishable -from rout. I believe that, at any odds less than two to one, even the -exhausted German army of 1918 would have defeated it, and in this view, -I think, I am joined by many men whose military judgment is far better -than mine—particularly by many French officers. The changes in the -American character since the Civil War, due partly to the wearing out -of the old Anglo-Saxon stock, inferior to begin with, and partly to -the infusion of the worst elements of other stocks, have surely not -made for the fostering of the military virtues. The old cool head is -gone, and the old dogged way with difficulties. The typical American of -to-day has lost all the love of liberty that his forefathers had, and -all their distrust of emotion, and pride in self-reliance. He is led -no longer by Davy Crocketts; he is led by cheer leaders, press agents, -word-mongers, uplifters. I do not believe that such a faint-hearted -and inflammatory fellow, shoved into a war demanding every resource -of courage, ingenuity and pertinacity, would give a good account of -himself. He is fit for lynching-bees and heretic-hunts, but he is not -fit for tight corners and desperate odds. - -Nevertheless, his docility and pusillanimity may be overestimated, and -sometimes I think that they _are_ overestimated by his present masters. -They assume that there is absolutely no limit to his capacity for -being put on and knocked about—that he will submit to any invasion of -his freedom and dignity, however outrageous, so long as it is depicted -in melodious terms. He permitted the late war to be “sold” to him by -the methods of the grind-shop auctioneer. He submitted to conscription -without any of the resistance shown by his brother democrats of Canada -and Australia. He got no further than academic protests against the -brutal usage he had to face in the army. He came home and found -Prohibition foisted on him, and contented himself with a few feeble -objurgations. He is a pliant slave of capitalism, and ever ready to -help it put down fellow-slaves who venture to revolt. But this very -weakness, this very credulity and poverty of spirit, on some easily -conceivable to-morrow, may convert him into a rebel of a peculiarly -insane kind, and so beset the Republic from within with difficulties -quite as formidable as those which threaten to afflict it from without. -What Mr. James N. Wood calls the corsair of democracy—that is, the -professional mob-master, the merchant of delusions, the pumper-up of -popular fears and rages—is still content to work for capitalism, and -capitalism knows how to reward him to his taste. He is the eloquent -statesman, the patriotic editor, the fount of inspiration, the prancing -milch-cow of optimism. He becomes public leader, Governor, Senator, -President. He is Billy Sunday, Cyrus K. Curtis, Dr. Frank Crane, -Charles E. Hughes, Taft, Wilson, Cal Coolidge, General Wood, Harding. -His, perhaps, is the best of trades under democracy—but it has its -temptations! Let us try to picture a master corsair, thoroughly adept -at pulling the mob nose, who suddenly bethought himself of that Pepin -the Short who found himself mayor of the palace and made himself King -of the Franks. There were lightnings along that horizon in the days -of Roosevelt; there were thunder growls when Bryan emerged from the -Nebraska steppes. On some great day of fate, as yet unrevealed by the -gods, such a professor of the central democratic science may throw off -his employers and set up a business for himself. When that day comes -there will be plenty of excuse for black type on the front pages of the -newspapers. - -I incline to think that military disaster will give him his inspiration -and his opportunity—that he will take the form, so dear to -democracies, of a man on horseback. The chances are bad to-day simply -because the mob is relatively comfortable—because capitalism has been -able to give it relative ease and plenty of food in return for its -docility. Genuine poverty is very rare in the United States, and actual -hardship is almost unknown. There are times when the proletariat is -short of phonograph records, silk shirts and movie tickets, but there -are very few times when it is short of nourishment. Even during the -most severe business depression, with hundreds of thousands out of -work, most of these apparent sufferers, if they are willing, are able -to get livings outside their trades. The cities may be choked with idle -men, but the country is nearly always short of labor. And if all other -resources fail, there are always public agencies to feed the hungry: -capitalism is careful to keep them from despair. No American knows what -it means to live as millions of Europeans lived during the war and have -lived, in some places, since: with the loaves of the baker reduced to -half size and no meat at all in the meat-shop. But the time may come and -it may not be far off. A national military disaster would disorganize -all industry in the United States, already sufficiently wasteful and -chaotic, and introduce the American people, for the first time in -their history, to genuine want—and capital would be unable to relieve -them. The day of such disaster will bring the savior foreordained. The -slaves will follow him, their eyes fixed ecstatically upon the newest -New Jerusalem. Men bred to respond automatically to shibboleths will -respond to this worst and most insane one. Bolshevism, said General -Foch, is a disease of defeated nations. - -But do not misunderstand me: I predict no revolution in the grand -manner, no melodramatic collapse of capitalism, no repetition of what -has gone on in Russia. The American proletarian is not brave and -romantic enough for that; to do him simple justice, he is not silly -enough. Capitalism, in the long run, will win in the United States, -if only for the reason that every American hopes to be a capitalist -before he dies. Its roots go down to the deepest, darkest levels of the -national soil; in all its characters, and particularly in its antipathy -to the dreams of man, it is thoroughly American. To-day it seems to be -immovably secure, given continued peace and plenty, and not all the -demagogues in the land, consecrating themselves desperately to the one -holy purpose, could shake it. Only a cataclysm will ever do that. But -is a cataclysm conceivable? Isn’t the United States the richest nation -ever heard of in history, and isn’t it a fact that modern wars are won -by money? It is not a fact. Wars are won to-day, as in Napoleon’s day, -by the largest battalions, and the largest battalions, in the next -great struggle, may not be on the side of the Republic. The usurious -profits it wrung from the last war are as tempting as negotiable -securities hung on the wash-line, as pre-Prohibition Scotch stored in -open cellars. Its knavish ways with friends and foes alike have left -it only foes. It is plunging ill-equipped into a competition for a -living in the world that will be to the death. And the late Disarmament -Conference left it almost hamstrung. Before the conference it had the -Pacific in its grip, and with the Pacific in its grip it might have -parleyed for a fair half of the Atlantic. But when the Japs and the -English had finished their operations upon the Feather Duster, Popinjay -Lodge, Master-Mind Root, Vacuum Underwood, young Teddy Roosevelt and -the rest of their so-willing dupes there was apparent a baleful change. -The Republic is extremely insecure to-day on both fronts, and it will -be more insecure to-morrow. And it has no friends. - -However, as I say, I do not fear for capitalism. It will weather the -storm, and no doubt it will be the stronger for it afterward. The -inferior man hates it, but there is too much envy mixed with his -hatred, in the land of the theoretically free, for him to want to -destroy it utterly, or even to wound it incurably. He struggles against -it now, but always wistfully, always with a sneaking respect. On the -day of Armageddon he may attempt a more violent onslaught. But in the -long run he will be beaten. In the long run the corsairs will sell him -out, and hand him over to his enemy. Perhaps—who knows?—the combat -may raise that enemy to genuine strength and dignity. Out of it may -come the superman. - - - - -4 - - -All the while I have been forgetting the third of my reasons for -remaining so faithful a citizen of the Federation, despite all the -lascivious inducements from expatriates to follow them beyond the -seas, and all the surly suggestions from patriots that I succumb. -It is the reason which grows out of my mediæval but unashamed taste -for the bizarre and indelicate, my congenital weakness for comedy of -the grosser varieties. The United States, to my eye, is incomparably -the greatest show on earth. It is a show which avoids diligently all -the kinds of clowning which tire me most quickly—for example, royal -ceremonials, the tedious hocus-pocus of _haut politique_, the taking -of politics seriously—and lays chief stress upon the kinds which -delight me unceasingly—for example, the ribald combats of demagogues, -the exquisitely ingenious operations of master rogues, the pursuit -of witches and heretics, the desperate struggles of inferior men -to claw their way into Heaven. We have clowns in constant practice -among us who are as far above the clowns of any other great state as -a Jack Dempsey is above a paralytic—and not a few dozen or score of -them, but whole droves and herds. Human enterprises which, in all -other Christian countries, are resigned despairingly to an incurable -dullness—things that seem devoid of exhilarating amusement by their -very nature—are here lifted to such vast heights of buffoonery that -contemplating them strains the mid-riff almost to breaking. I cite an -example: the worship of God. Everywhere else on earth it is carried -on in a solemn and dispiriting manner; in England, of course, the -bishops are obscene, but the average man seldom gets a fair chance to -laugh at them and enjoy them. Now come home. Here we not only have -bishops who are enormously more obscene than even the most gifted of -the English bishops; we have also a huge force of lesser specialists in -ecclesiastical mountebankery—tin-horn Loyolas, Savonarolas and Xaviers -of a hundred fantastic rites, each performing untiringly and each full -of a grotesque and illimitable whimsicality. Every American town, -however small, has one of its own: a holy clerk with so fine a talent -for introducing the arts of jazz into the salvation of the damned that -his performance takes on all the gaudiness of a four-ring circus, and -the bald announcement that he will raid Hell on such and such a night -is enough to empty all the town blind-pigs and bordellos and pack -his sanctuary to the doors. And to aid him and inspire him there are -traveling experts to whom he stands in the relation of a wart to the -Matterhorn—stupendous masters of theological imbecility, contrivers -of doctrines utterly preposterous, heirs to the Joseph Smith, Mother -Eddy and John Alexander Dowie tradition—Bryan, Sunday, and their like. -These are the eminences of the American Sacred College. I delight in -them. Their proceedings make me a happier American. - -Turn, now, to politics. Consider, for example, a campaign for the -Presidency. Would it be possible to imagine anything more uproariously -idiotic—a deafening, nerve-wracking battle to the death between -Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Harlequin and Sganarelle, Gobbo and Dr. -Cook—the unspeakable, with fearful snorts, gradually swallowing the -inconceivable? I defy any one to match it elsewhere on this earth. -In other lands, at worst, there are at least intelligible issues, -coherent ideas, salient personalities. Somebody says something, and -somebody replies. But what did Harding say in 1920, and what did Cox -reply? Who was Harding, anyhow, and who was Cox? Here, having perfected -democracy, we lift the whole combat to symbolism, to transcendentalism, -to metaphysics. Here we load a pair of palpably tin cannon with blank -cartridges charged with talcum powder, and so let fly. Here one may -howl over the show without any uneasy reminder that it is serious, and -that some one may be hurt. I hold that this elevation of politics to -the plane of undiluted comedy is peculiarly American, that nowhere else -on this disreputable ball has the art of the sham-battle been developed -to such fineness. Two experiences are in point. During the Harding-Cox -combat of bladders an article of mine, dealing with some of its more -melodramatic phases, was translated into German and reprinted by a -Berlin paper. At the head of it the editor was careful to insert a -preface explaining to his readers, but recently delivered to democracy, -that such contests were not taken seriously by intelligent Americans, -and warning them solemnly against getting into sweats over politics. -At about the same time I had dinner with an Englishman. From cocktails -to bromo seltzer he bewailed the political lassitude of the English -populace—its growing indifference to the whole partisan harlequinade. -Here were two typical foreign attitudes: the Germans were in danger -of making politics too harsh and implacable, and the English were in -danger of forgetting politics altogether. Both attitudes, it must -be plain, make for bad shows. Observing a German campaign, one is -uncomfortably harassed and stirred up; observing an English campaign -(at least in times of peace), one falls asleep. In the United States -the thing is done better. Here politics is purged of all menace, all -sinister quality, all genuine significance, and stuffed with such -gorgeous humors, such inordinate farce that one comes to the end of -a campaign with one’s ribs loose, and ready for “King Lear,” or a -hanging, or a course of medical journals. - -But feeling better for the laugh. _Ridi si sapis_, said Martial. Mirth -is necessary to wisdom, to comfort, above all, to happiness. Well, -here is the land of mirth, as Germany is the land of metaphysics and -France is the land of fornication. Here the buffoonery never stops. -What could be more delightful than the endless struggle of the Puritan -to make the joy of the minority unlawful and impossible? The effort -is itself a greater joy to one standing on the side-lines that any or -all of the carnal joys that it combats. Always, when I contemplate an -uplifter at his hopeless business, I recall a scene in an old-time -burlesque show, witnessed for hire, in my days as a dramatic critic. A -chorus girl executed a fall upon the stage, and Rudolph Krausemeyer, -the Swiss comedian, rushed to her aid. As he stooped painfully to -succor her, Irving Rabinovitz, the Zionist comedian, fetched him a -fearful clout across the cofferdam with a slap-stick. So the uplifter, -the soul-saver, the Americanizer, striving to make the Republic fit -for Y. M. C. A. secretaries. He is the eternal American, ever moved by -the best of intentions, ever running _à la_ Krausemeyer to the rescue -of virtue, and ever getting his pantaloons fanned by the Devil. I am -naturally sinful, and such spectacles caress me. If the slap-stick were -a sash-weight the show would be cruel, and I’d probably complain to -the _Polizei._ As it is, I know that the uplifter is not really hurt, -but simply shocked. The blow, in fact, does him good, for it helps to -get him into Heaven, as exegetes prove from Matthew v, 11: _Heureux -serez-vous, lorsqu’on vous outragera, qu’on vous persécutera_, and so -on. As for me, it makes me a more contented man, and hence a better -citizen. One man prefers the Republic because it pays better wages -than Bulgaria. Another because it has laws to keep him sober and his -daughter chaste. Another because the Woolworth Building is higher than -the cathedral at Chartres. Another because, living here, he can read -the New York _Evening Journal._ Another because there is a warrant out -for him somewhere else. Me, I like it because it amuses me to my taste. -I never get tired of the show. It is worth every cent it costs. - -That cost, it seems to me is very moderate. Taxes in the United -States are not actually high. I figure, for example, that my private -share of the expense of maintaining the Hon. Mr. Harding in the White -House this year will work out to less than 80 cents. Try to think of -better sport for the money: in New York it has been estimated that -it costs $8 to get comfortably tight, and $17.50, on an average, to -pinch a girl’s arm. The United States Senate will cost me perhaps $11 -for the year, but against that expense set the subscription price -of the _Congressional Record_, about $15, which, as a journalist, I -receive for nothing. For $4 less than nothing I am thus entertained as -Solomon never was by his hooch dancers. Col. George Brinton McClellan -Harvey costs me but 25 cents a year; I get Nicholas Murray Butler -free. Finally, there is young Teddy Roosevelt, the naval expert. -Teddy costs me, as I work it out, about 11 cents a year, or less -than a cent a month. More, he entertains me doubly for the money, -first as naval expert, and secondly as a walking _attentat_ upon -democracy, a devastating proof that there is nothing, after all, in -that superstition. We Americans subscribe to the doctrine of human -equality—and the Rooseveltii reduce it to an absurdity as brilliantly -as the sons of Veit Bach. Where is your equal opportunity now? Here in -this Eden of clowns, with the highest rewards of clowning theoretically -open to every poor boy—here in the very citadel of democracy we found -and cherish a clown _dynasty!_ - - - - -II. HUNEKER: A MEMORY - - -There was a stimulating aliveness about him always, an air of living -eagerly and a bit recklessly, a sort of defiant resiliency. In his -very frame and form something provocative showed itself—an insolent -singularity, obvious to even the most careless glance. That Caligulan -profile of his was more than simply unusual in a free republic, -consecrated to good works; to a respectable American, encountering -it in the lobby of the Metropolitan or in the smoke-room of a -_Doppelschrauben-schnellpostdampfer_, it must have suggested inevitably -the dark enterprises and illicit metaphysics of a Heliogabalus. More, -there was always something rakish and defiant about his hat—it was -too white, or it curled in the wrong way, or a feather peeped from the -band—, and a hint of antinomianism in his cravat. Yet more, he ran to -exotic tastes in eating and drinking, preferring occult goulashes and -risi-bisis to honest American steaks, and great floods of Pilsner to -the harsh beverages of God-fearing men. Finally, there was his talk, -that cataract of sublime trivialities: gossip lifted to the plane of -the gods, the unmentionable bedizened with an astounding importance, -and even profundity. - -In his early days, when he performed the tonal and carnal prodigies -that he liked to talk of afterward, I was at nurse, and too young to -have any traffic with him. When I encountered him at last he was in -the high flush of the middle years, and had already become a tradition -in the little world that critics inhabit. We sat down to luncheon -at one o’clock; I think it must have been at Lüchow’s, his favorite -refuge and rostrum to the end. At six, when I had to go, the waiter was -hauling in his tenth (or was it twentieth?) _Seidel_ of Pilsner, and -he was bringing to a close _prestissimo_ the most amazing monologue -that these ears (up to that time) had ever funnelled into this -consciousness. What a stew, indeed! Berlioz and the question of the -clang-tint of the viola, the psychopathological causes of the suicide -of Tschaikowsky, why Nietzsche had to leave Sils Maria between days in -1887, the echoes of Flaubert in Joseph Conrad (then but newly dawned), -the precise topography of the warts of Liszt, George Bernard Shaw’s -heroic but vain struggles to throw off Presbyterianism, how Frau Cosima -saved Wagner from the libidinous Swedish baroness, what to drink when -playing Chopin, what Cézanne thought of his disciples, the defects in -the structure of “Sister Carrie,” Anton Seidl and the musical union, -the complex love affairs of Gounod, the early days of David Belasco, -the varying talents and idiosyncrasies of Lillian Russell’s earlier -husbands, whether a girl educated at Vassar could ever really learn to -love, the exact composition of chicken paprika, the correct tempo of -the Vienna waltz, the style of William Dean Howells, what George Moore -said about German bathrooms, the true inwardness of the affair between -D’Annunzio and Duse, the origin of the theory that all oboe players are -crazy, why Löwenbräu survived exportation better than Hofbräu, Ibsen’s -loathing of Norwegians, the best remedy for Rhine wine _Katzenjammer_, -how to play Brahms, the degeneration of the Bal Bullier, the sheer -physical impossibility of getting Dvorak drunk, the genuine last words -of Walt Whitman.... - -I left in a sort of fever, and it was a couple of days later before I -began to sort out my impressions, and formulate a coherent image. Was -the man allusive in his books—so allusive that popular report credited -him with the actual manufacture of authorities? Then he was ten times -as allusive in his discourse—a veritable geyser of unfamiliar names, -shocking epigrams in strange tongues, unearthly philosophies out of -the backwaters of Scandinavia, Transylvania, Bulgaria, the Basque -country, the Ukraine. And did he, in his criticism, pass facilely from -the author to the man, and from the man to his wife, and to the wives -of his friends? Then at the _Biertisch_ he began long beyond the point -where the last honest wife gives up the ghost, and so, full tilt, ran -into such complexities of adultery that a plain sinner could scarcely -follow him. I try to give you, ineptly and grotesquely, some notion -of the talk of the man, but I must fail inevitably. It was, in brief, -chaos, and chaos cannot be described. But it was chaos made to gleam -and corruscate with every device of the seven arts—chaos drenched in -all the colors imaginable, chaos scored for an orchestra which made the -great band of Berlioz seem like a fife and drum corps. One night a few -months before the war, I sat in the Paris Opera House listening to the -first performance of Richard Strauss’s “Josef’s Legend,” with Strauss -himself conducting. On the stage there was a riot of hues that swung -the eyes ’round and ’round in a crazy mazurka; in the orchestra there -were such volleys and explosions of tone that the ears (I fall into -a Hunekeran trope) began to go pale and clammy with surgical shock. -Suddenly, above all the uproar, a piccolo launched into a new and saucy -tune—in an unrelated key!... Instantly and quite naturally, I thought -of the incomparable James. When he gave a show at Lüchow’s he never -forgot that anarchistic passage for the piccolo. - -I observe a tendency since his death to estimate him in terms of -the content of his books. Even Frank Harris, who certainly should -know better, goes there for the facts about him. Nothing could do -him worse injustice. In those books, of course, there is a great -deal of perfectly sound stuff; the wonder is, in truth, that so much -of it holds up so well to-day—for example, the essays on Strauss, -on Brahms and on Nietzsche, and the whole volume on Chopin. But -the real Huneker never got himself formally between covers, if one -forgets “Old Fogy” and parts of “Painted Veils.” The volumes of his -regular canon are made up, in the main, of articles written for the -more intellectual magazines and newspapers of their era, and they -are full of a conscious striving to qualify for respectable company. -Huneker, always curiously modest, never got over the notion that it -was a singular honor for a man such as he—a mere diurnal scribbler, -innocent of academic robes—to be published by so austere a publisher -as Scribner. More than once, anchored at the beer-table, we discussed -the matter at length, I always arguing that all the honor was enjoyed -by Scribner. But Huneker, I believe in all sincerity, would not -have it so, any more than he would have it that he was a better -music critic than his two colleagues, the pedantic Krehbiel and the -nonsensical Finck. This illogical modesty, of course, had its limits; -it made him cautious about expressing himself, but it seldom led him -into downright assumptions of false personality. Nowhere in all his -books will you find him doing the things that every right-thinking -Anglo-Saxon critic is supposed to do—the Middleton Murry, Paul Elmer -More, Clutton-Brock sort of puerility—solemn essays on Coleridge and -Addison, abysmal discussions of the relative merits of Schumann and -Mendelssohn, horrible treatises upon the relations of Goethe to the -Romantic Movement, dull scratchings in a hundred such exhausted and -sterile fields. Such enterprises were not for Huneker; he kept himself -out of that black coat. But I am convinced that he always had his own -raiment pressed carefully before he left Lüchow’s for the temple of -Athene—and maybe changed cravats, and put on a boiled shirt, and took -the feather out of his hat. The simon-pure Huneker, the Huneker who was -the true essence and prime motor of the more courtly Huneker—remained -behind. This real Huneker survives in conversations that still haunt -the rafters of the beer-halls of two continents, and in a vast mass of -newspaper impromptus, thrown off too hastily to be reduced to complete -decorum, and in two books that stand outside the official canon, and -yet contain the man himself as not even “Iconoclasts” or the Chopin -book contains him, to wit, the “Old Fogy” aforesaid and the “Painted -Veils” of his last year. Both were published, so to speak, out of the -back door—the former by a music publisher in Philadelphia and the -latter in a small and expensive edition for the admittedly damned. -There is a chapter in “Painted Veils” that is Huneker to every last -hitch of the shoulders and twinkle of the eye—the chapter in which -the hero soliloquizes on art, life, immortality, and women—especially -women. And there are half a dozen chapters in “Old Fogy”—superficially -buffoonery, but how penetrating! how gorgeously flavored! how -learned!—that come completely up to the same high specification. If I -had to choose one Huneker book and give up all the others, I’d choose -“Old Fogy” instantly. In it Huneker is utterly himself. In it the last -trace of the pedagogue vanishes. Art is no longer, even by implication, -a device for improving the mind. It is wholly a magnificent adventure. - -That notion of it is what Huneker brought into American criticism, and -it is for that bringing that he will be remembered. No other critic -of his generation had a tenth of his influence. Almost single-handed -he overthrew the æsthetic theory that had flourished in the United -States since the death of Poe, and set up an utterly contrary æsthetic -theory in its place. If the younger men of to-day have emancipated -themselves from the Puritan æsthetic, if the schoolmaster is now -palpably on the defensive, and no longer the unchallenged assassin of -the fine arts that he once was, if he has already begun to compromise -somewhat absurdly with new and sounder ideas, and even to lift his -voice in artificial hosannahs, then Huneker certainly deserves all the -credit for the change. What he brought back from Paris was precisely -the thing that was most suspected in the America of those days: the -capacity for gusto. Huneker had that capacity in a degree unmatched by -any other critic. When his soul went adventuring among masterpieces -it did not go in Sunday broad-cloth; it went with vine leaves in its -hair. The rest of the appraisers and criers-up—even Howells, with -all his humor—could never quite rid themselves of the professorial -manner. When they praised it was always with some hint of ethical, or, -at all events, of cultural purpose; when they condemned that purpose -was even plainer. The arts, to them, constituted a sort of school for -the psyche; their aim was to discipline and mellow the spirit. But to -Huneker their one aim was always to make the spirit glad—to set it, in -Nietzsche’s phrase, to dancing with arms and legs. He had absolutely -no feeling for extra-æsthetic valuations. If a work of art that stood -before him was honest, if it was original, if it was beautiful and -thoroughly alive, then he was for it to his last corpuscle. What if it -violated all the accepted canons? Then let the accepted canons go hang! -What if it lacked all purpose to improve and lift up? Then so much the -better! What if it shocked all right-feeling men, and made them blush -and tremble? Then damn all men of right feeling forevermore. - -With this ethical atheism, so strange in the United States and so -abhorrent to most Americans, there went something that was probably -also part of the loot of Paris: an insatiable curiosity about the -artist as man. This curiosity was responsible for two of Huneker’s -salient characters: his habit of mixing even the most serious -criticism with cynical and often scandalous gossip, and his pervasive -foreignness. I believe that it is almost literally true to say that he -could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had -seen the composer’s mistress, or at all events a good photograph of -her. He thought of Wagner, not alone in terms of melody and harmony, -but also in terms of the Tribschen idyl and the Bayreuth tragi-comedy. -Go through his books and you will see how often he was fascinated by -mere eccentricity of personality. I doubt that even Huysmans, had -he been a respectable French Huguenot, would have interested him; -certainly his enthusiasm for Verlaine, Villiers de l’Isle Adam and -other such fantastic fish was centered upon the men quite as much -as upon the artists. His foreignness, so often urged against him by -defenders of the national tradition, was grounded largely on the fact -that such eccentric personalities were rare in the Republic—rare, and -well watched by the _Polizei._ When one bobbed up, he was alert at -once—even though the newcomer was only a Roosevelt. The rest of the -American people he dismissed as a horde of slaves, goose-steppers, -cads, Methodists; he could not imagine one of them becoming a -first-rate artist, save by a miracle. Even the American executant was -under his suspicion, for he knew very well that playing the fiddle -was a great deal more than scraping four strings of copper and catgut -with a switch from a horse’s tail. What he asked himself was how a man -could play Bach decently, and then, after playing, go from the hall to -a soda-fountain, or a political meeting, or a lecture at the Harvard -Club. Overseas there was a better air for artists, and overseas Huneker -looked for them. - -These fundamental theories of his, of course, had their defects. They -were a bit too simple, and often very much too hospitable. Huneker, -clinging to them, certainly did his share of whooping for the sort of -revolutionist who is here to-day and gone to-morrow; he was fugleman, -in his time, for more than one cause that was lost almost as soon as -it was stated. More, his prejudices made him somewhat anæsthetic, at -times, to the new men who were not brilliant in color but respectably -drab, and who tried to do their work within the law. Particularly in -his later years, when the old gusto began to die out and all that -remained of it was habit, he was apt to go chasing after strange -birds and so miss seeing the elephants go by. I could put together a -very pretty list of frauds that he praised. I could concoct another -list of genuine _arrivés_ that he overlooked. But all that is merely -saying that there were human limits to him; the professors, on their -side, have sinned far worse, and in both directions. Looking back -over the whole of his work, one must needs be amazed by the general -soundness of his judgments. He discerned, in the main, what was good -and he described it in terms that were seldom bettered afterward. -His successive heroes, always under fire when he first championed -them, almost invariably moved to secure ground and became solid men, -challenged by no one save fools—Ibsen, Nietzsche, Brahms, Strauss, -Cézanne, Stirner, Synge, the Russian composers, the Russian novelists. -He did for this Western world what Georg Brandes was doing for -Continental Europe—sorting out the new comers with sharp eyes, and -giving mighty lifts to those who deserved it. Brandes did it in terms -of the old academic bombast; he was never more the professor than -when he was arguing for some hobgoblin of the professors. But Huneker -did it with verve and grace; he made it, not schoolmastering, but a -glorious deliverance from schoolmastering. As I say, his influence was -enormous. The fine arts, at his touch, shed all their Anglo-American -lugubriousness, and became provocative and joyous. The spirit of -senility got out of them and the spirit of youth got into them. His -criticism, for all its French basis, was thoroughly American—vastly -more American, in fact, than the New England ponderosity that it -displaced. Though he was an Easterner and a cockney of the cockneys, he -picked up some of the Western spaciousness that showed itself in Mark -Twain. And all the young men followed him. - -A good many of them, I daresay, followed him so ardently that they -got a good distance ahead of him, and often, perhaps, embarrassed him -by taking his name in vain. For all his enterprise and iconoclasm, -indeed, there was not much of the Berserker in him, and his floutings -of the national æsthetic tradition seldom took the form of forthright -challenges. Here the strange modesty that I have mentioned always -stayed him as a like weakness stayed Mark Twain. He could never quite -rid himself of the feeling that he was no more than an amateur among -the gaudy doctors who roared in the reviews, and that it would be -unseemly for him to forget their authority. I have a notion that -this feeling was born in the days when he stood almost alone, with -the whole faculty grouped in a pained circle around him. He was -then too miserable a worm to be noticed at all. Later on, gaining -importance, he was lectured somewhat severely for his violation of -decorum; in England even Max Beerbohm made an idiotic assault upon -him. It was the Germans and the French, in fact, who first praised him -intelligently—and these friends were too far away to help a timorous -man in a row at home. This sensation of isolation and littleness, I -suppose, explains his fidelity to the newspapers, and the otherwise -inexplicable joy that he always took in his forgotten work for the -_Musical Courier_, in his day a very dubious journal. In such waters -he felt at ease. There he could disport without thought of the dignity -of publishers and the eagle eyes of campus reviewers. Some of the -connections that he formed were full of an ironical inappropriateness. -His discomforts in his _Puck_ days showed themselves in the feebleness -of his work; when he served the _Times_ he was as well placed as a -Cabell at a colored ball. Perhaps the _Sun_, in the years before it -was munseyized, offered him the best berth that he ever had, save it -were his old one on _Mlle. New York._ But whatever the flag, he served -it loyally, and got a lot of fun out of the business. He liked the -pressure of newspaper work; he liked the associations that it involved, -the gabble in the press-room of the Opera House, the exchanges of news -and gossip; above all, he liked the relative ease of the intellectual -harness. In a newspaper article he could say whatever happened to pop -into his mind, and if it looked thin the next day, then there was, -after all, no harm done. But when he sat down to write a book—or -rather to compile it, for all of his volumes were reworked magazine -(and sometimes newspaper) articles—he became self-conscious, and so -knew uneasiness. The tightness of his style, its one salient defect, -was probably the result of this weakness. The corrected clippings that -constituted most of his manuscripts are so beladen with revisions and -rerevisions that they are almost indecipherable. - -Thus the growth of Huneker’s celebrity in his later years filled him -with wonder, and never quite convinced him. He was certainly wholly -free from any desire to gather disciples about him and found a school. -There was, of course, some pride of authorship in him, and he liked -to know that his books were read and admired; in particular, he was -pleased by their translation into German and Czech. But it seemed to -me that he shrank from the bellicosity that so often got into praise -of them—that he disliked being set up as the opponent and superior of -the professors whom he always vaguely respected and the rival newspaper -critics whose friendship he esteemed far above their professional -admiration, or even respect. I could never draw him into a discussion -of these rivals, save perhaps a discussion of their historic feats at -beer-guzzling. He wrote vastly better than any of them and knew far -more about the arts than most of them, and he was undoubtedly aware -of it in his heart, but it embarrassed him to hear this superiority -put into plain terms. His intense gregariousness probably accounted -for part of this reluctance to pit himself against them; he could -not imagine a world without a great deal of easy comradeship in it, -and much casual slapping of backs. But under it all was the chronic -underestimation of himself that I have discussed—his fear that he -had spread himself over too many arts, and that his equipment was -thus defective in every one of them. “Steeplejack” is full of this -apologetic timidity. In its very title, as he explains it, there -is a confession of inferiority that is almost maudlin: “Life has -been the Barmecide’s feast to me,” and so on. In the book itself he -constantly takes refuge in triviality from the harsh challenges of -critical parties, and as constantly avoids facts that would shock the -Philistines. One might reasonably assume, reading it from end to end, -that his early days in Paris were spent in the fashion of a Y. M. C. A. -secretary. A few drinking bouts, of course, and a love affair in the -manner of Dubuque, Iowa—but where are the wenches? - -More than once, indeed, the book sinks to downright equivocation—for -example, in the Roosevelt episodes. Certainly no one who knew -Huneker in life will ever argue seriously that he was deceived by the -Roosevelt buncombe, or that his view of life was at all comparable to -that of the great demagogue. He stood, in fact, at the opposite pole. -He saw the world, not as a moral show, but as a sort of glorified -Follies. He was absolutely devoid of that obsession with the problem -of conduct which was Roosevelt’s main virtue in the eyes of a stupid -and superstitious people. More, he was wholly against Roosevelt on -many concrete issues—the race suicide banality, the Panama swindle, -the war. He was far too much the realist to believe in the American -case, either before or after 1917, and the manner in which it was -urged, by Roosevelt and others, violated his notions of truth, honor -and decency. I assume nothing here; I simply record what he told me -himself. Nevertheless, the sheer notoriety of the Rough Rider—his -picturesque personality and talent as a mountebank—had its effect on -Huneker, and so he was a bit flattered when he was summoned to Oyster -Bay, and there accepted gravely the nonsense that was poured into his -ear, and even repeated some of it without a cackle in his book. To say -that he actually believed in it would be to libel him. It was precisely -such hollow tosh that he stood against in his rôle of critic of art and -life; it was by exposing its hollowness that he lifted himself above -the general. The same weakness induced him to accept membership in the -National Institute of Arts and Letters. The offer of it to a man of his -age and attainments, after he had been passed over year after year in -favor of all sorts of cheapjack novelists and tenth-rate compilers of -college textbooks, was intrinsically insulting; it was almost as if the -Musical Union had offered to admit a Brahms. But with the insult went -a certain gage of respectability, a certain formal forgiveness for old -frivolities, a certain abatement of old doubts and self-questionings -and so Huneker accepted. Later on, reviewing the episode in his -own mind, he found it the spring of doubts that were even more -uncomfortable. His last letter to me was devoted to the matter. He was -by then eager to maintain that he had got in by a process only partly -under his control, and that, being in, he could discover no decorous -way of getting out. - -But perhaps I devote too much space to the elements in the man that -worked against his own free development. They were, after all, grounded -upon qualities that are certainly not to be deprecated—modesty, -good-will to his fellow-men, a fine sense of team-work, a distaste -for acrimonious and useless strife. These qualities gave him great -charm. He was not only humorous; he was also good-humored; even -when the crushing discomforts of his last illness were upon him his -amiability never faltered. And in addition to humor there was wit, -a far rarer thing. His most casual talk was full of this wit, and it -bathed everything that he discussed in a new and brilliant light. I -have never encountered a man who was further removed from dullness; -it seemed a literal impossibility for him to open his mouth without -discharging some word or phrase that arrested the attention and stuck -in the memory. And under it all, giving an extraordinary quality to -the verbal fireworks, there was a solid and apparently illimitable -learning. The man knew as much as forty average men, and his knowledge -was well-ordered and instantly available. He had read everything and -had seen everything and heard everything, and nothing that he had ever -read or seen or heard quite passed out of his mind. - -Here, in three words, was the main virtue of his criticism—its -gigantic richness. It had the dazzling charm of an ornate and intricate -design, a blazing fabric of fine silks. It was no mere pontifical -statement of one man’s reactions to a set of ideas; it was a sort -of essence of the reactions of many men—of all the men, in fact, -worth hearing. Huneker discarded their scaffolding, their ifs and -whereases, and presented only what was important and arresting in their -conclusions. It was never a mere _pastiche_; the selection was made -delicately, discreetly, with almost unerring taste and judgment. And -in the summing up there was always the clearest possible statement -of the whole matter. What finally emerged was a body of doctrine that -came, I believe, very close to the truth. Into an assembly of national -critics who had long wallowed in dogmatic puerilities, Huneker entered -with a taste infinitely surer and more civilized, a learning infinitely -greater, and an address infinitely more engaging. No man was less the -reformer by inclination, and yet he became a reformer beyond compare. -He emancipated criticism in America from its old slavery to stupidity, -and with it he emancipated all the arts themselves. - - - - -III. FOOTNOTE ON CRITICISM - - -Nearly all the discussions of criticism that I am acquainted with -start off with a false assumption, to wit, that the primary motive -of the critic, the impulse which makes a critic of him instead of, -say, a politician, or a stockbroker, is pedagogical—that he writes -because he is possessed by a passion to advance the enlightenment, -to put down error and wrong, to disseminate some specific doctrine: -psychological, epistemological, historical, or æsthetic. This is -true, it seems to me, only of bad critics, and its degree of truth -increases in direct ratio to their badness. The motive of the critic -who is really worth reading—the only critic of whom, indeed, it may -be said truthfully that it is at all possible to read him, save as an -act of mental discipline—is something quite different. That motive -is not the motive of the pedagogue, but the motive of the artist. It -is no more and no less than the simple desire to function freely and -beautifully, to give outward and objective form to ideas that bubble -inwardly and have a fascinating lure in them, to get rid of them -dramatically and make an articulate noise in the world. It was for -this reason that Plato wrote the “Republic,” and for this reason that -Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony, and it is for this reason, to -drop a million miles, that I am writing the present essay. Everything -else is afterthought, mock-modesty, messianic delusion—in brief, -affectation and folly. Is the contrary conception of criticism widely -cherished? Is it almost universally held that the thing is a brother -to jurisprudence, advertising, laparotomy, chautauqua lecturing and -the art of the schoolmarm? Then certainly the fact that it is so held -should be sufficient to set up an overwhelming probability of its lack -of truth and sense. If I speak with some heat, it is as one who has -suffered. When, years ago, I devoted myself diligently to critical -pieces upon the writings of Theodore Dreiser, I found that practically -every one who took any notice of my proceedings at all fell into either -one of two assumptions about my underlying purpose: _(a)_ that I had -a fanatical devotion for Mr. Dreiser’s ideas and desired to propagate -them, or _(b)_ that I was an ardent patriot, and yearned to lift up -American literature. Both assumptions were false. I had then, and I -have now, very little interest in many of Mr. Dreiser’s main ideas; -when we meet, in fact, we usually quarrel about them. And I am wholly -devoid of public spirit, and haven’t the least lust to improve American -literature; if it ever came to what I regard as perfection my job -would be gone. What, then, was my motive in writing about Mr. Dreiser -so copiously? My motive, well known to Mr. Dreiser himself and to every -one else who knew, me as intimately as he did, was simply and solely -to sort out and give coherence to the ideas of Mr. Mencken, and to put -them into suave and ingratiating terms, and to discharge them with a -flourish, and maybe with a phrase of pretty song, into the dense fog -that blanketed the Republic. - -The critic’s choice of criticism rather than of what is called creative -writing is chiefly a matter of temperament—perhaps, more accurately -of hormones—with accidents of education and environment to help. The -feelings that happen to be dominant in him at the moment the scribbling -frenzy seizes him are feelings inspired, not directly by life itself, -but by books, pictures, music, sculpture, architecture, religion, -philosophy—in brief, by some other man’s feelings about life. They -are thus, in a sense, second-hand, and it is no wonder that creative -artists so easily fall into the theory that they are also second-rate. -Perhaps they usually are. If, indeed, the critic continues on this -plane—if he lacks the intellectual agility and enterprise needed to -make the leap from the work of art to the vast and mysterious complex -of phenomena behind it—then they _always_ are, and he remains no more -than a fugelman or policeman to his betters. But if a genuine artist -is conceded within him—if his feelings are in any sense profound and -original, and his capacity for self-expression is above the average of -educated men—then he moves inevitably from the work of art to life -itself, and begins to take on a dignity that he formerly lacked. It -is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, -universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent his whole -life appraising and describing the work of other men. Did Goethe, or -Carlyle, or Matthew Arnold, or Sainte-Beuve, or Macaulay, or even, to -come down a few pegs, Lewes, or Lowell, or Hazlitt? Certainly not. The -thing that becomes most obvious about the writings of all such men, -once they are examined carefully, is that the critic is always being -swallowed up by the creative artist—that what starts out as the review -of a book, or a play, or other work of art, usually develops very -quickly into an independent essay upon the theme of that work of art, -or upon some theme that it suggests—in a word, that it becomes a fresh -work of art, and only indirectly related to the one that suggested -it. This fact, indeed, is so plain that it scarcely needs statement. -What the pedagogues always object to in, for example, the _Quarterly_ -reviewers is that they forgot the books they were supposed to review, -and wrote long papers—often, in fact, small books—expounding -ideas suggested (or not suggested) by the books under review. Every -critic who is worth reading falls inevitably into the same habit. He -cannot stick to his task: what is before him is always infinitely -less interesting to him than what is within him. If he is genuinely -first-rate—if what is within him stands the test of type, and wins an -audience, and produces the reactions that every artist craves—then -he usually ends by abandoning the criticism of specific works of art -altogether, and setting up shop as a general merchant in general ideas, -_i. e._, as an artist working in the materials of life itself. - -Mere reviewing, however conscientiously and competently it is done, is -plainly a much inferior business. Like writing poetry, it is chiefly -a function of intellectual immaturity. The young literatus just out -of the university, having as yet no capacity for grappling with the -fundamental mysteries of existence, is put to writing reviews of books, -or plays, or music, or painting. Very often he does it extremely well; -it is, in fact, not hard to do well, for even decayed pedagogues often -do it, as such graves of the intellect as the New York _Times_ bear -witness. But if he continues to do it, whether well or ill, it is a -sign to all the world that his growth ceased when they made him _Artium -Baccalaureus._ Gradually he becomes, whether in or out of the academic -grove, a professor, which is to say, a man devoted to diluting and -retailing the ideas of his superiors—not an artist, not even a bad -artist, but almost the antithesis of an artist. He is learned, he is -sober, he is painstaking and accurate—but he is as hollow as a jug. -Nothing is in him save the ghostly echoes of other men’s thoughts -and feelings. If he were a genuine artist he would have thoughts and -feelings of his own, and the impulse to give them objective form would -be irresistible. An artist can no more withstand that impulse than a -politician can withstand the temptations of a job. There are no mute, -inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound -test of a Milton is that he functions as a Milton. His difference -from other men lies precisely in the superior vigor of his impulse to -self-expression, not in the superior beauty and loftiness of his ideas. -Other men, in point of fact, often have the same ideas, or perhaps -even loftier ones, but they are able to suppress them, usually on -grounds of decorum, and so they escape being artists, and are respected -by right-thinking persons, and die with money in the bank, and are -forgotten in two weeks. - -Obviously, the critic whose performance we are commonly called upon to -investigate is a man standing somewhere along the path leading from the -beginning that I have described to the goal. He has got beyond being a -mere cataloguer and valuer of other men’s ideas, but he has not yet -become an autonomous artist—he is not yet ready to challenge attention -with his own ideas alone. But it is plain that his motion, in so far as -he is moving at all, must be in the direction of that autonomy—that -is, unless one imagines him sliding backward into senile infantilism: -a spectacle not unknown to literary pathology, but too pathetic to be -discussed here. Bear this motion in mind, and the true nature of his -aims and purposes becomes clear; more, the incurable falsity of the -aims and purposes usually credited to him becomes equally clear. He -is not actually trying to perform an impossible act of arctic justice -upon the artist whose work gives him a text. He is not trying with -mathematical passion to find out exactly what was in that artist’s -mind at the moment of creation, and to display it precisely and in an -ecstasy of appreciation. He is not trying to bring the work discussed -into accord with some transient theory of æsthetics, or ethics, or -truth, or to determine its degree of departure from that theory. He is -not trying to lift up the fine arts, or to defend democracy against -sense, or to promote happiness at the domestic hearth, or to convert -sophomores into right-thinkers, or to serve God. He is not trying to -fit a group of novel phenomena into the orderly process of history. He -is not even trying to discharge the catalytic office that I myself, in -a romantic moment, once sought to force upon him. He is, first and -last, simply trying to express himself. He is trying to arrest and -challenge a sufficient body of readers, to make them pay attention -to him, to impress them with the charm and novelty of his ideas, to -provoke them into an agreeable (or shocked) awareness of him, and he is -trying to achieve thereby for his own inner ego the grateful feeling of -a function performed, a tension relieved, a _katharsis_ attained which -Wagner achieved when he wrote “Die Walküre,” and a hen achieves every -time she lays an egg. - -Joseph Conrad is moved by that necessity to write romances; Bach was -moved to write music; poets are moved to write poetry; critics are -moved to write criticism. The form is nothing; the only important -thing is the motive power, and it is the same in all cases. It is -the pressing yearning of every man who has ideas in him to empty -them upon the world, to hammer them into plausible and ingratiating -shapes, to compel the attention and respect of his equals, to lord -it over his inferiors. So seen, the critic becomes a far more -transparent and agreeable fellow than ever he was in the discourses -of the psychologists who sought to make him a mere appraiser in an -intellectual customs house, a gauger in a distillery of the spirit, -a just and infallible judge upon the cosmic bench. Such offices, in -point of fact, never fit him. He always bulges over their confines. -So labelled and estimated, it inevitably turns out that the specific -critic under examination is a very bad one, or no critic at all. -But when he is thought of, not as pedagogue, but as artist, then he -begins to take on reality, and, what is more, dignity. Carlyle was -surely no just and infallible judge; on the contrary, he was full -of prejudices, biles, naïvetés, humors. Yet he is read, consulted, -attended to. Macaulay was unfair, inaccurate, fanciful, lyrical—yet -his essays live. Arnold had his faults too, and so did Sainte-Beuve, -and so did Goethe, and so did many another of that line—and yet they -are remembered to-day, and all the learned and conscientious critics -of their time, laboriously concerned with the precise intent of the -artists under review, and passionately determined to set it forth with -god-like care and to relate it exactly to this or that great stream of -ideas—all these pedants are forgotten. What saved Carlyle, Macaulay -and company is as plain as day. They were first-rate artists. They -could make the thing charming, and that is always a million times more -important than making it true. - -Truth, indeed, is something that is believed in completely only by -persons who have never tried personally to pursue it to its fastnesses -and grab it by the tail. It is the adoration of second-rate men—men -who always receive it at second-hand. Pedagogues believe in immutable -truths and spend their lives trying to determine them and propagate -them; the intellectual progress of man consists largely of a concerted -effort to block and destroy their enterprise. Nine times out of ten, -in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; -there is only error to be exposed. In whole departments of human -inquiry it seems to me quite unlikely that the truth ever _will_ be -discovered. Nevertheless, the rubber-stamp thinking of the world -always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical -with the discovery of the truth—that error and truth are simple -opposites. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, -when it has been cured of one error, is usually simply another error, -and maybe one worse than the first one. This is the whole history of -the intellect in brief. The average man of to-day does not believe in -precisely the same imbecilities that the Greek of the fourth century -before Christ believed in, but the things that he _does_ believe in are -often quite as idiotic. Perhaps this statement is a bit too sweeping. -There is, year by year, a gradual accumulation of what may be called, -provisionally, truths—there is a slow accretion of ideas that somehow -manage to meet all practicable human tests, and so survive. But even -so, it is risky to call them absolute truths. All that one may safely -say of them is that no one, as yet, has demonstrated that they are -errors. Soon or late, if experience teaches us anything, they are -likely to succumb too. The profoundest truths of the Middle Ages are -now laughed at by schoolboys. The profoundest truths of democracy will -be laughed at, a few centuries hence, even by school teachers. - -In the department of æsthetics, wherein critics mainly disport -themselves, it is almost impossible to think of a so-called truth -that shows any sign of being permanently true. The most profound of -principles begins to fade and quiver almost as soon as it is stated. -But the work of art, as opposed to the theory behind it, has a longer -life, particularly if that theory be obscure and questionable, and so -cannot be determined accurately. “Hamlet,” the Mona Lisa, “Faust,” -“Dixie,” “Parsifal,” “Mother Goose,” “Annabel Lee,” “Huckleberry -Finn”—these things, so baffling to pedagogy, so contumacious to the -categories, so mysterious in purpose and utility—these things live. -And why? Because there is in them the flavor of salient, novel and -attractive personality, because the quality that shines from them is -not that of correct demeanor but that of creative passion, because they -pulse and breathe and speak, because they are genuine works of art. So -with criticism. Let us forget all the heavy effort to make a science of -it; it is a fine art, or nothing. If the critic, retiring to his cell -to concoct his treatise upon a book or play or what-not, produces a -piece of writing that shows sound structure, and brilliant color, and -the flash of new and persuasive ideas, and civilized manners, and the -charm of an uncommon personality in free function, then he has given -something to the world that is worth having, and sufficiently justified -his existence. Is Carlyle’s “Frederick” true? Who cares? As well ask -if the Parthenon is true, or the C Minor Symphony, or “Wiener Blur.” -Let the critic who is an artist leave such necropsies to professors of -æsthetics, who can no more determine the truth than he can, and will -infallibly make it unpleasant and a bore. - -It is, of course, not easy to practice this abstention. Two forces, -one within and one without, tend to bring even a Hazlitt or a Huneker -under the campus pump. One is the almost universal human susceptibility -to messianic delusions—the irresistible tendency of practically every -man, once he finds a crowd in front of him, to strut and roll his -eyes. The other is the public demand, born of such long familiarity -with pedagogical criticism that no other kind is readily conceivable, -that the critic teach something as well as say something—in the -popular phrase, that he be constructive. Both operate powerfully -against his free functioning, and especially the former. He finds -it hard to resist the flattery of his customers, however little he -may actually esteem it. If he knows anything at all, he knows that -his following, like that of every other artist in ideas, is chiefly -made up of the congenitally subaltern type of man and woman—natural -converts, lodge joiners, me-toos, stragglers after circus parades. -It is precious seldom that he ever gets a positive idea out of them; -what he usually gets is mere unintelligent ratification. But this -troop, despite its obvious failings, corrupts him in various ways. -For one thing, it enormously reënforces his belief in his own ideas, -and so tends to make him stiff and dogmatic—in brief, precisely -everything that he ought not to be. And for another thing, it tends -to make him (by a curious contradiction) a bit pliant and politic: he -begins to estimate new ideas, not in proportion as they are amusing -or beautiful, but in proportion as they are likely to please. So -beset, front and rear, he sometimes sinks supinely to the level of a -professor, and his subsequent proceedings are interesting no more. -The true aim of a critic is certainly not to make converts. He must -know that very few of the persons who are susceptible to conversion -are worth converting. Their minds are intrinsically flabby and -parasitical, and it is certainly not sound sport to agitate minds -of that sort. Moreover, the critic must always harbor a grave doubt -about most of the ideas that they lap up so greedily—it must occur -to him not infrequently, in the silent watches of the night, that -much that he writes is sheer buncombe. As I have said, I can’t imagine -any idea—that is, in the domain of æsthetics—that is palpably and -incontrovertibly sound. All that I am familiar with, and in particular -all that I announce most vociferously, seem to me to contain a core -of quite obvious nonsense. I thus try to avoid cherishing them too -lovingly, and it always gives me a shiver to see any one else gobble -them at one gulp. Criticism, at bottom, is indistinguishable from -skepticism. Both launch themselves, the one by æsthetic presentations -and the other by logical presentations, at the common human tendency -to accept whatever is approved, to take in ideas ready-made, to be -responsive to mere rhetoric and gesticulation. A critic who believes in -anything absolutely is bound to that something quite as helplessly as a -Christian is bound to the Freudian garbage in the Book of Revelation. -To that extent, at all events, he is unfree and unintelligent, and -hence a bad critic. - -The demand for “constructive” criticism is based upon the same false -assumption that immutable truths exist in the arts, and that the artist -will be improved by being made aware of them. This notion, whatever the -form it takes, is always absurd—as much so, indeed, as its brother -delusion that the critic, to be competent, must be a practitioner of -the specific art he ventures to deal with, _i. e._, that a doctor, to -cure a belly-ache, must have a belly-ache. As practically encountered, -it is disingenuous as well as absurd, for it comes chiefly from bad -artists who tire of serving as performing monkeys, and crave the -greater ease and safety of sophomores in class. They demand to be -taught in order to avoid being knocked about. In their demand is the -theory that instruction, if they could get it, would profit them—that -they are capable of doing better work than they do. As a practical -matter, I doubt that this is ever true. Bad poets never actually grow -any better; they invariably grow worse and worse. In all history there -has never been, to my knowledge, a single practitioner of any art -who, as a result of “constructive” criticism, improved his work. The -curse of all the arts, indeed, is the fact that they are constantly -invaded by persons who are not artists at all—persons whose yearning -to express their ideas and feelings is unaccompanied by the slightest -capacity for charming expression—in brief, persons with absolutely -nothing to say. This is particularly true of the art of letters, which -interposes very few technical obstacles to the vanity and garrulity of -such invaders. Any effort to teach them to write better is an effort -wasted, as every editor discovers for himself; they are as incapable -of it as they are of jumping over the moon. The only sort of criticism -that can deal with them to any profit is the sort that employs them -frankly as laboratory animals. It cannot cure them, but it can at least -make an amusing and perhaps edifying show of them. It is idle to argue -that the good in them is thus destroyed with the bad. The simple answer -is that there _is_ no good in them. Suppose Poe had wasted his time -trying to dredge good work out of Rufus Dawes, author of “Geraldine.” -He would have failed miserably—and spoiled a capital essay, still -diverting after three-quarters of a century. Suppose Beethoven, dealing -with Gottfried Weber, had tried laboriously to make an intelligent -music critic of him. How much more apt, useful and durable the simple -note: “Arch-ass! Double-barrelled ass!” Here was absolutely sound -criticism. Here was a judgment wholly beyond challenge. Moreover, here -was a small but perfect work of art. - -Upon the low practical value of so-called constructive criticism I -can offer testimony out of my own experience. My books are commonly -reviewed at great length, and many critics devote themselves to -pointing out what they conceive to be my errors, both of fact and of -taste. Well, I cannot recall a case in which any suggestion offered -by a constructive critic has helped me in the slightest, or even -actively interested me. Every such wet-nurse of letters has sought -fatuously to make me write in a way differing from that in which the -Lord God Almighty, in His infinite wisdom, impels me to write—that -is, to make me write stuff which, coming from me, would be as false -as an appearance of decency in a Congressman. All the benefits I have -ever got from the critics of my work have come from the destructive -variety. A hearty slating always does me good, particularly if it be -well written. It begins by enlisting my professional respect; it ends -by making me examine my ideas coldly in the privacy of my chamber. -Not, of course, that I usually revise them, but I at least examine -them. If I decide to hold fast to them, they are all the dearer to me -thereafter, and I expound them with a new passion and plausibility. -If, on the contrary, I discern holes in them, I shelve them in a -_pianissimo_ manner, and set about hatching new ones to take their -place. But constructive criticism irritates me. I do not object to -being denounced, but I can’t abide being school-mastered, especially by -men I regard as imbeciles. - -I find, as a practicing critic, that very few men who write books -are even as tolerant as I am—that most of them, soon or late, show -signs of extreme discomfort under criticism, however polite its terms. -Perhaps this is why enduring friendships between authors and critics -are so rare. All artists, of course, dislike one another more or less, -but that dislike seldom rises to implacable enmity, save between opera -singer and opera singer, and creative author and critic. Even when -the latter two keep up an outward show of good-will, there is always -bitter antagonism under the surface. Part of it, I daresay, arises out -of the impossible demands of the critic, particularly if he be tinged -with the constructive madness. Having favored an author with his good -opinion, he expects the poor fellow to live up to that good opinion -without the slightest compromise or faltering, and this is commonly -beyond human power. He feels that any let-down compromises _him_—that -his hero is stabbing him in the back, and making him ridiculous—and -this feeling rasps his vanity. The most bitter of all literary quarrels -are those between critics and creative artists, and most of them arise -in just this way. As for the creative artist, he on his part naturally -resents the critic’s air of pedagogical superiority and he resents it -especially when he has an uneasy feeling that he has fallen short of -his best work, and that the discontent of the critic is thus justified. -Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice. Under it -all, of course, lurks the fact that I began with: the fact that the -critic is himself an artist, and that his creative impulse, soon or -late, is bound to make him neglect the punctilio. When he sits down to -compose his criticism, his artist ceases to be a friend, and becomes -mere raw material for his work of art. It is my experience that artists -invariably resent this cavalier use of them. They are pleased so long -as the critic confines himself to the modest business of interpreting -them—preferably in terms of their own estimate of themselves—but the -moment he proceeds to adorn their theme with variations of his own, the -moment he brings new ideas to the enterprise and begins contrasting -them with their ideas, that moment they grow restive. It is precisely -at this point, of course, that criticism becomes genuine criticism; -before that it was mere reviewing. When a critic passes it he loses his -friends. By becoming an artist, he becomes the foe of all other artists. - -But the transformation, I believe, has good effects upon him: it makes -him a better critic. Too much _Gemütlichkeit_ is as fatal to criticism -as it would be to surgery or politics. When it rages unimpeded it leads -inevitably either to a dull professorial sticking on of meaningless -labels or to log-rolling, and often it leads to both. One of the most -hopeful symptoms of the new _Aufklärung_ in the Republic is the revival -of acrimony in criticism—the renaissance of the doctrine that æsthetic -matters are important, and that it is worth the while of a healthy male -to take them seriously, as he takes business, sport and amour. In the -days when American literature was showing its first vigorous growth, -the native criticism was extraordinarily violent and even vicious; in -the days when American literature swooned upon the tomb of the Puritan -_Kultur_ it became flaccid and childish. The typical critic of the -first era was Poe, as the typical critic of the second was Howells. Poe -carried on his critical jehads with such ferocity that he often got -into law-suits, and sometimes ran no little risk of having his head -cracked. He regarded literary questions as exigent and momentous. The -lofty aloofness of the don was simply not in him. When he encountered -a book that seemed to him to be bad, he attacked it almost as sharply -as a Chamber of Commerce would attack a fanatic preaching free speech, -or the corporation of Trinity Church would attack Christ. His opponents -replied in the same Berserker manner. Much of Poe’s surviving ill-fame, -as a drunkard and dead-beat, is due to their inordinate denunciations -of him. They were not content to refute him; they constantly tried to -dispose of him altogether. The very ferocity of that ancient row shows -that the native literature, in those days, was in a healthy state. -Books of genuine value were produced. Literature always thrives best, -in fact, in an atmosphere of hearty strife. Poe, surrounded by admiring -professors, never challenged, never aroused to the emotions of revolt, -would probably have written poetry indistinguishable from the hollow -stuff of, say, Prof. Dr. George E. Woodberry. It took the persistent -(and often grossly unfair and dishonorable) opposition of Griswold _et -al_ to stimulate him to his highest endeavors. He needed friends, true -enough, but he also needed enemies. - -To-day, for the first time in years, there is strife in American -criticism, and the Paul Elmer Mores and Hamilton Wright Mabies are -no longer able to purr in peace. The instant they fall into stiff -professorial attitudes they are challenged, and often with anything but -urbanity. The _ex cathedra_ manner thus passes out, and free discussion -comes in. Heretics lay on boldly, and the professors are forced to -make some defense. Often, going further, they attempt counter-attacks. -Ears are bitten off. Noses are bloodied. There are wallops both above -and below the belt. I am, I need not say, no believer in any magical -merit in debate, no matter how free it may be. It certainly does not -necessarily establish the truth; both sides, in fact, may be wrong, and -they often are. But it at least accomplishes two important effects. -On the one hand, it exposes all the cruder fallacies to hostile -examination, and so disposes of many of them. And on the other hand, it -melodramatizes the business of the critic, and so convinces thousands -of bystanders, otherwise quite inert, that criticism is an amusing and -instructive art, and that the problems it deals with are important. -What men will fight for seems to be worth looking into. - - - - -IV. DAS KAPITAL - - -After a hearty dinner of _potage créole_, planked Chesapeake shad, -Guinea hen _en casserole_ and some respectable salad, with two or three -cocktails made of two-thirds gin, one-third Martini-Rossi vermouth and -a dash of absinthe as _Vorspiel_ and a bottle of Ruhländer 1903 to wash -it down, the following thought often bubbles up from my subconscious: -that many of the acknowledged evils of capitalism, now so horribly -visible in the world, are not due primarily to capitalism itself but -rather to democracy, that universal murrain of Christendom. - -What I mean, in brief, is that capitalism, under democracy, is -constantly under hostile pressure and often has its back to the wall, -and that its barbaric manners and morals, at least in large part, are -due to that fact—that they are, in essence, precisely the same manners -and morals that are displayed by any other creature or institution so -beset. Necessity is not only the mother of invention; it is also the -mother of every imaginable excess and infamy. A woman defending her -child is notoriously willing to go to lengths that even a Turk or an -agent of the Department of Justice would regard as inordinate, and -so is a Presbyterian defending his hell, or a soldier defending his -fatherland, or a banker defending his gold. It is only when there is no -danger that the average human being is honorable, just as it is only -when there _is_ danger that he is virtuous. He would commit adultery -every day if it were safe, and he would commit murder every day if it -were necessary. - -The essential thing about democracy, as every one must know, is that -it is a device for strengthening and heartening the have-nots in their -eternal war upon the haves. That war, as every one knows again, has -its psychological springs in envy pure and simple—envy of the more -fortunate man’s greater wealth, the superior pulchritude of his wife -or wives, his larger mobility and freedom, his more protean capacity -for and command of happiness—in brief, his better chance to lead a -bearable life in this worst of possible worlds. It follows that under -democracy, which gives a false power and importance to the have-nots by -counting every one of them as the legal equal of George Washington or -Beethoven, the process of government consists largely, and sometimes -almost exclusively, of efforts to spoil that advantage artificially. -Trust-busting, free silver, direct elections, Prohibition, government -ownership and all the other varieties of American political quackery -are but symptoms of the same general rage. It is the rage of the -have-not against the have, of the farmer who must drink hard cider and -forty-rod against the city man who may drink Burgundy and Scotch, of -the poor fellow who must stay at home looking at a wife who regards the -lip-stick as lewd and lascivious against the lucky fellow who may go to -Atlantic City or Palm Beach and ride up and down in a wheel-chair with -a girl who knows how to make up and has put away the fear of God. - -The ignobler sort of men, of course, are too stupid to understand -various rare and exhilarating sorts of superiority, and so they do not -envy the happiness that goes with them. If they could enter into the -mind of a Wagner or a Brahms and begin to comprehend the stupendous joy -that such a man gets out of the practice of his art, they would pass -laws against it and make a criminal of him, as they have already made -criminals, in the United States, of the man with a civilized taste for -wines, the man so attractive to women that he can get all the wives he -wants without having to marry them, and the man who can make pictures -like Félicien Rops, or books like Flaubert, Zola, Dreiser, Cabell or -Rabelais. Wagner and Brahms escape, and their arts with them, because -the great masses of men cannot understand the sort of thing they -try to do, and hence do not envy the man who does it well, and gets -joy out of it. It is much different with, say, Rops. Every American -Congressman, as a small boy, covered the fence of the Sunday-School -yard with pictures in the manner of Rops. What he now remembers of the -business is that the pictures were denounced by the superintendent, and -that he was cowhided for making them; what he hears about Rops, when he -hears at all, is that the fellow is vastly esteemed, and hence probably -full of a smug æsthetic satisfaction. In consequence, it is unlawful in -the United States to transmit the principal pictures of Rops by mail, -or, indeed, “to have and possess” them. The man who owns them must -conceal them from the _okhrána_ of the Department of Justice just as -carefully as he conceals the wines and whiskeys in his cellar, or the -poor working girl he transports from the heat and noise of New York to -the salubrious calm of the Jersey coast, or his hand-tooled library set -of the “Contes Drôlatiques,” or his precious first edition of “Jurgen.” - -But, as I say, the democratic pressure in such directions is relatively -feeble, for there are whole categories of more or less æsthetic -superiority and happiness that the democrat cannot understand at all, -and is in consequence virtually unaware of. It is far different with -the varieties of superiority and happiness that are the functions -of mere money. Here the democrat is extraordinarily alert and -appreciative. He can not only imagine hundreds of ways of getting -happiness out of money; he devotes almost the whole of his intellectual -activity, such as it is, to imagining them, and he seldom if ever -imagines anything else. Even his sexual fancies translate themselves -instantly into concepts of dollars and cents; the thing that confines -him so miserably to one wife, and to one, alas, so unappetizing and -depressing, is simply his lack of money; if he only had the wealth -of Diamond Jim Brady he too would be the glittering Don Giovanni -that Jim was. All the known species of democratic political theory -are grounded firmly upon this doctrine that money, and money only, -makes the mare go—that all the conceivable varieties of happiness -are possible to the man who has it. Even the Socialists, who profess -to scorn money, really worship it. Socialism, indeed, is simply the -degenerate capitalism of bankrupt capitalists. Its one genuine object -is to get more money for its professors; all its other grandiloquent -objects are afterthoughts, and most of them are bogus. The democrats -of other schools pursue the same single aim—and adorn it with false -pretenses even more transparent. In the United States the average -democrat, I suppose, would say that the establishment and safeguarding -of liberty was the chief purpose of democracy. The theory is mere -wind. The average American democrat really cares nothing whatever -for liberty, and is always willing to sell it for money. What he -actually wants, and strives to get by his politics, is more money. -His fundamental political ideas nearly all contemplate restraints and -raids upon capital, even when they appear superficially to be quite -free from economic flavor, and most of the political banshees and -bugaboos that alternately freeze and boil his blood have dollar marks -written all over them. There is no need to marshal a long catalogue of -examples from English and American political history: I simply defy any -critic of my doctrine to find a single issue of genuine appeal to the -populace, at any time during the past century, that did not involve a -more or less obvious scheme for looting a minority—the slave-owners, -Wall Street, the railroads, the dukes, or some other group representing -capital. Even the most affecting idealism of the plain people has a -thrifty basis. In the United States, during the early part of the late -war, they were very cynical about the Allied cause; it was not until -the war orders of the Allies raised their wages that they began to -believe in the noble righteousness of Lloyd-George and company. And -after Dr. Wilson had jockeyed the United States itself into the war, -and the cost of living began to increase faster than wages, he faced a -hostile country until he restored altruism by his wholesale bribery of -labor. - -It is my contention that the constant exposure of capitalism to such -primitive lusts and forays is what makes it so lamentably extortionate -and unconscionable in democratic countries, and particularly in the -United States. The capitalist, warned by experience, collars all he -can while the getting is good, regardless of the commonest honesty and -decorum, because he is haunted by an uneasy feeling that his season -will not be long. His dominating passion is to pile up the largest -amount of capital possible, by fair means or foul, so that he will -have ample reserves when the next raid comes, and he has to use part -of it to bribe one part of the proletariat against the other. In the -long run, of course, he always wins, for this bribery is invariably -feasible; in the United States, indeed, every fresh struggle leaves -capital more secure than it was before. But though the capitalist thus -has no reason to fear actual defeat and disaster, he is well aware that -victory is always expensive, and his natural prudence causes him to -discount the cost in advance, even when he has planned to shift it to -other shoulders. I point, in example, to the manner in which capital -dealt with the discharged American soldiers after the war. Its first -effort was to cajole them into its service, as they had been cajoled -by the politicians after the Civil War. To this end, it borrowed -the machine erected by Dr. Wilson and his agents for debauching the -booboisie during the actual war, and by the skillful use of that -machine it quickly organized the late conscripts into the American -Legion, alarmed them with lies about a Bolshevist scheme to make slaves -of them (i. e., to cut off forever their hope of getting money), and -put them to clubbing and butchering their fellow proletarians. The -business done, the conscripts found themselves out of jobs: their -gallant war upon Bolshevism had brought down wages, and paralysed -organized labor. They now demanded pay for their work, and capital -had to meet the demand. It did so by promising them a bonus—_i. e._, -loot—out of the public treasury, and by straightway inventing a scheme -whereby the ultimate cost would fall chiefly upon poor folk. - -Throughout the war, indeed, capital exhibited an inordinately -extortionate spirit, and thereby revealed its underlying dread. First -it robbed the Allies in the manner of bootleggers looting a country -distillery, then it swindled the plain people at home by first bribing -them with huge wages and then taking away all their profits and -therewith all their savings, and then it seized and made away with the -impounded property of enemy nationals—property theoretically held in -trust for them, and the booty, if it was booty at all, of the whole -American people. This triple burglary was excessive, to be sure, but -who will say that it was not prudent? The capitalists of the Republic -are efficient, and have foresight. They saw some lean and hazardous -years ahead, with all sorts of raids threatening. They took measures to -fortify their position. To-day their prevision is their salvation. They -are losing some of their accumulation, of course, but they still have -enough left to finance an effective defense of the remainder. There -was never any time in the history of any country, indeed, when capital -was so securely intrenched as it is to-day in the United States. It -has divided the proletariat into two bitterly hostile halves, it has -battered and crippled unionism almost beyond recognition, it has a firm -grip upon all three arms of the government, and it controls practically -every agency for the influencing of public opinion, from the press to -the church. Had it been less prudent when times were good, and put its -trust in God alone, the I. W. W. would have rushed it at the end of the -war. - -As I say, I often entertain the thought that it would be better, -in the long run, to make terms with a power so hard to resist, and -thereby purge it of its present compulsory criminality. I doubt that -capitalists, as a class, are naturally vicious; certainly they are -no more vicious than, say, lawyers and politicians—upon whom the -plain people commonly rely, in their innocence, to save them. I have -known a good many men of great wealth in my time, and most of them -have been men showing all the customary decencies. They deplore the -harsh necessities of their profession quite as honestly as a judge -deplores the harsh necessities of his. You will never convince me that -the average American banker, during the war, got anything properly -describable as professional satisfaction out of selling Liberty bonds -at 100 to poor stenographers, and then buying them back at 83. He knew -that he’d need his usurious profit against the blue day when the boys -came home, and so he took it, but it would have given him ten times as -much pleasure if it had come from the reluctant gizzard of some other -banker. In brief, there is a pride of workmanship in capitalists, just -as there is in all other men above the general. They get the same -spiritual lift out of their sordid swindles that Swinburne got out of -composing his boozy dithyrambs, and I often incline to think that it -is quite as worthy of respect. In a democratic society, with the arts -adjourned and the sciences mere concubines of money, it is chiefly the -capitalists, in fact, who keep pride of workmanship alive. In their -principal enemies, the trades-unionists, it is almost extinct. Unionism -seldom, if ever, uses such power as it has to insure better work; -almost always it devotes a large part of that power to safeguarding -bad work. A union man who, moved by professional pride, put any extra -effort into his job would probably be punished by his union as a sort -of scab. But a capitalist is still able to cherish some of the old -spirit of the guildsman. If he invents a new device for corralling the -money of those who have earned it, or operates an old device in some -new and brilliant way, he is honored and envied by his colleagues. -The late J. Pierpont Morgan was thus honored and envied, not because -he made more actual money than any other capitalist of his time—in -point of fact, he made a good deal less than some, and his own son, a -much inferior man, has made more since his death than he did during -his whole life—but because his operations showed originality, daring, -coolness, and imagination—in brief, because he was a great virtuoso in -the art he practiced. - -What I contend is that the democratic system of government would be -saner and more effective in its dealings with capital if it ceased to -regard all capitalists as criminals _ipso facto_, and thereby ceased -to make their armed pursuit the chief end of practical politics—if -it gave over this vain effort to put them down by force, and tried -to bring them to decency by giving greater play and confidence to -the pride of workmanship that I have described. They would be less -ferocious and immoderate, I think, if they were treated with less -hostility, and put more upon their conscience and honor. No doubt the -average democrat, brought up upon the prevailing superstitions and -prejudices of his faith, will deny at once that they are actually -capable of conscience or honor, or that they have any recognizable -pride of workmanship. Well, let him deny it. He will make precisely -the same denial with respect to kings. Nevertheless, it must be plain -to every one who has read history attentively that the majority of the -kings of the past, even when no criticism could reach them, showed -a very great pride of workmanship—that they tried to be good kings -even when it was easier to be bad ones. The same thing is true of -the majority of capitalists—the kings of to-day. They are criminals -by our democratic law, but their criminality is chiefly artificial -and theoretical, like that of a bootlegger. If it were abolished by -repealing the laws which create it—if it became legally just as -virtuous to organize and operate a great industrial corporation, or -to combine and rehabilitate railroads, or to finance any other such -transactions as it is to organize a trades-union, a _Bauverein_, or a -lodge of Odd Fellows—then I believe that capitalists would forthwith -abandon a great deal of the scoundrelism which now marks their -proceedings, that they could be trusted to police their order at least -as vigilantly as physicians or lawyers police theirs, and that the -activities of those members of it who showed no pride of workmanship at -all would be effectively curbed. - -The legal war upon them under democracy is grounded upon the false -assumption that it would be possible, given laws enough, to get rid -of them altogether. The _Ur-_Americanos, who set the tone of our -legislation and provided examples for the legislation of every other -democratic country, were chiefly what would be called Bolsheviki -to-day. They dreamed of a republic wholly purged of capitalism—and -taxes. They were have-nots of the most romantic and ambitious variety, -and saw Utopia before them. Every man of their time who thought -capitalistically—that is, who believed that things consumed had to -be paid for—was a target for their revilings: for example, Alexander -Hamilton. But they were wrong, and their modern heirs and assigns are -wrong just as surely. That wrongness of theirs, in truth, has grown -enormously since it was launched, for the early Americans were a -pastoral people, and could get along with very little capital, whereas -the Americans of to-day lead a very complex life, and need the aid of -capitalism at almost every breath they draw. Most of their primary -necessities—the railroad, the steamship lines, the trolley car, -the telephone, refrigerated meats, machine-made clothes, phonograph -records, moving-picture shows, and so on—are wholly unthinkable save -as the products of capital in large aggregations. No man of to-day can -imagine doing without them, or getting them without the aid of such -aggregations. The most even the wildest Socialist can think of is to -take the capital away from the capitalists who now have it and hand it -over to the state—in other words, to politicians. A century ago there -were still plenty of men who, like Thoreau, proposed to abolish it -altogether. But now even the radicals of the extreme left assume as a -matter of course that capital is indispensible, and that abolishing it -or dispersing it would cause a collapse of civilization. - -What ails democracy, in the economic department, is that it proceeds -upon the assumption that the contrary is true—that it seeks to bring -capitalism to a state of innocuous virtue by grossly exaggerating -its viciousness—that it penalizes ignorantly what is, at bottom, a -perfectly natural and legitimate aspiration, and one necessary to -society. Such penalizings, I need not argue, never destroy the impulse -itself; surely the American experience with Prohibition should make -even a democrat aware of that. What they do is simply to make it -evasive, intemperate, and relentless. If it were legally as hazardous -in the United States to play a string quartette as it is to build up a -great bank or industrial enterprise—if the performers, struggling with -their parts, had to watch the windows in constant fear that a Bryan, -a Roosevelt, a Lloyd-George or some other such predatory mountebank -would break in, armed with a club and followed by a rabble—then string -quartette players would become as devious and anti-social in their ways -as the average American capitalist is to-day, and when, by a process of -setting one part of the mob against the rest, they managed to get a -chance to play quartettes in temporary peace, despite the general mob -hatred of them, they would forget the lovely music of Haydn and Mozart -altogether, and devote their whole time to a _fortissimo_ playing of -the worst musical felonies of Schönberg, Ravel and Strawinsky. - - - - -V. AD IMAGINEM DEI CREAVIT ILLUM - - - - -1 - -_The Life of Man_ - - -The old anthropomorphic notion that the life of the whole universe -centers in the life of man—that human existence is the supreme -expression of the cosmic process—this notion seems to be on its way -toward the Sheol of exploded delusions. The fact is that the life of -man, as it is more and more studied in the light of general biology, -appears to be more and more empty of significance. Once apparently the -chief concern and masterpiece of the gods, the human race now begins -to bear the aspect of an accidental by-product of their vast, -inscrutable and probably nonsensical operations. A blacksmith making a -horse-shoe produces something almost as brilliant and mysterious—the -shower of sparks. But his eye and thought, as we know, are not on the -sparks, but on the horse-shoe. The sparks, indeed, constitute a sort -of disease of the horse-shoe; their existence depends upon a wasting -of its tissue. In the same way, perhaps, man is a local disease of -the cosmos—a kind of pestiferous eczema or urethritis. There are, -of course, different grades of eczema, and so are there different -grades of men. No doubt a cosmos afflicted with nothing worse than an -infection of Beethovens would not think it worth while to send for the -doctor. But a cosmos infested by prohibitionists, Socialists, Scotsmen -and stockbrokers must suffer damnably. No wonder the sun is so hot and -the moon is so diabetically green! - - - - -2 - -_The Anthropomorphic Delusion_ - - -As I say, the anthropomorphic theory of the world is made absurd by -modern biology—but that is not saying, of course, that it will ever -be abandoned by the generality of men. To the contrary, they will -cherish it in proportion as it becomes more and more dubious. To-day, -indeed, it is cherished as it was never cherished in the Ages of Faith, -when the doctrine that man was god-like was at least ameliorated -by the doctrine that woman was vile. What else is behind charity, -philanthropy, pacifism, Socialism, the uplift, all the rest of the -current sentimentalities? One and all, these sentimentalities are based -upon the notion that man is a glorious and ineffable animal, and -that his continued existence in the world ought to be facilitated and -insured. But this notion is obviously full of fatuity. As animals go, -even in so limited a space as our world, man is botched and ridiculous. -Few other brutes are so stupid or so cowardly. The commonest yellow dog -has far sharper senses and is infinitely more courageous, not to say -more honest and dependable. The ants and the bees are, in many ways, -far more intelligent and ingenious; they manage their government with -vastly less quarreling, wastefulness and imbecility. The lion is more -beautiful, more dignified, more majestic. The antelope is swifter and -more graceful. The ordinary house-cat is cleaner. The horse, foamed -by labor, has a better smell. The gorilla is kinder to his children -and more faithful to his wife. The ox and the ass are more industrious -and serene. But most of all, man is deficient in courage, perhaps the -noblest quality of them all. He is not only mortally afraid of all -other animals of his own weight or half his weight—save a few that he -has debased by artificial inbreeding—; he is even mortally afraid of -his own kind—and not only of their fists and hooves, but even of their -sniggers. - -No other animal is so defectively adapted to its environment. The -human infant, as it comes into the world, is so puny that if it were -neglected for two days running it would infallibly perish, and this -congenital infirmity, though more or less concealed later on, persists -until death. Man is ill far more than any other animal, both in his -savage state and under civilization. He has more different diseases and -he suffers from them oftener. He is easier exhausted and injured. He -dies more horribly and usually sooner. Practically all the other higher -vertebrates, at least in their wild state, live longer and retain their -faculties to a greater age. Here even the anthropoid apes are far -beyond their human cousins. An orang-outang marries at the age of seven -or eight, raises a family of seventy or eighty children, and is still -as hale and hearty at eighty as a European at forty-five. - -All the errors and incompetencies of the Creator reach their climax -in man. As a piece of mechanism he is the worst of them all; put -beside him, even a salmon or a staphylococcus is a sound and efficient -machine. He has the worst kidneys known to comparative zoology, and -the worst lungs, and the worst heart. His eye, considering the work it -is called upon to do, is less efficient than the eye of an earth-worm; -an optical instrument maker who made an instrument so clumsy would be -mobbed by his customers. Alone of all animals, terrestrial, celestial -or marine, man is unfit by nature to go abroad in the world he -inhabits. He must clothe himself, protect himself, swathe himself, -armor himself. He is eternally in the position of a turtle born without -a shell, a dog without hair, a fish without fins. Lacking his heavy and -cumbersome trappings, he is defenseless even against flies. As God made -him he hasn’t even a tail to switch them off. - -I now come to man’s one point of unquestionable natural superiority: -he has a soul. This is what sets him off from all other animals, and -makes him, in a way, their master. The exact nature of that soul has -been in dispute for thousands of years, but regarding its function it -is possible to speak with some authority. That function is to bring -man into direct contact with God, to make him aware of God, above -all, to make him resemble God. Well, consider the colossal failure of -the device! If we assume that man actually does resemble God, then we -are forced into the impossible theory that God is a coward, an idiot -and a bounder. And if we assume that man, after all these years, does -_not_ resemble God, then it appears at once that the human soul is as -inefficient a machine as the human liver or tonsil, and that man would -probably be better off, as the chimpanzee undoubtedly _is_ better off, -without it. - -Such, indeed, is the case. The only practical effect of having a -soul is that it fills man with anthropomorphic and anthropocentric -vanities—in brief with cocky and preposterous superstitions. He -struts and plumes himself because he has this soul—and overlooks the -fact that it doesn’t work. Thus he is the supreme clown of creation, -the _reductio ad absurdum_ of animated nature. He is like a cow who -believed that she could jump over the moon, and ordered her whole life -upon that theory. He is like a bullfrog boasting eternally of fighting -lions, of flying over the Matterhorn, and of swimming the Hellespont. -And yet this is the poor brute we are asked to venerate as a gem in -the forehead of the cosmos! This is the worm we are asked to defend -as God’s favorite on earth, with all its millions of braver, nobler, -decenter quadrupeds—its superb lions, its lithe and gallant leopards, -its imperial elephants, its honest dogs, its courageous rats! This is -the insect we are besought, at infinite trouble, labor and expense, to -reproduce! - - - - -3 - -_Meditation on Meditation._ - - -Man’s capacity for abstract thought, which most other mammals seem -to lack, has undoubtedly given him his present mastery of the land -surface of the earth—a mastery disputed only by several hundred -species of microscopic organisms. It is responsible for his feeling -of superiority, and under that feeling there is undoubtedly a certain -measure of reality, at least within narrow limits. But what is too -often overlooked is that the capacity to perform an act is by no means -synonymous with its salubrious exercise. The simple fact is that most -of man’s thinking is stupid, pointless, and injurious to him. Of all -animals, indeed, he seems the least capable of arriving at accurate -judgments in the matters that most desperately affect his welfare. -Try to imagine a rat, in the realm of rat ideas, arriving at a notion -as violently in contempt of plausibility as the notion, say, of -Swedenborgianism, or that of homeopathy, or that of infant damnation, -or that of mental telepathy. Try to think of a congregation of educated -rats gravely listening to such disgusting intellectual rubbish as was -in the public bulls of Dr. Woodrow Wilson. Man’s natural instinct, in -fact, is never toward what is sound and true; it is toward what is -specious and false. Let any great nation of modern times be confronted -by two conflicting propositions, the one grounded upon the utmost -probability and reasonableness and the other upon the most glaring -error, and it will almost invariably embrace the latter. It is so -in politics, which consists wholly of a succession of unintelligent -crazes, many of them so idiotic that they exist only as battle-cries -and shibboleths and are not reducible to logical statement at all. It -is so in religion, which, like poetry, is simply a concerted effort -to deny the most obvious realities. It is so in nearly every field -of thought. The ideas that conquer the race most rapidly and arouse -the wildest enthusiasm and are held most tenaciously are precisely -the ideas that are most insane. This has been true since the first -“advanced” gorilla put on underwear, cultivated a frown and began his -first lecture tour in the first chautauqua, and it will be so until the -high gods, tired of the farce at last, obliterate the race with one -great, final blast of fire, mustard gas and streptococci. - -No doubt the imagination of man is to blame for this singular weakness. -That imagination, I daresay, is what gave him his first lift above his -fellow primates. It enabled him to visualize a condition of existence -better than that he was experiencing, and bit by bit he was able to -give the picture a certain crude reality. Even to-day he keeps on going -ahead in the same manner. That is, he thinks of something that he would -like to be or to get, something appreciably better than what he is or -has, and then, by the laborious, costly method of trial and error, he -gradually moves toward it. In the process he is often severely punished -for his discontent with God’s ordinances. He mashes his thumb, he skins -his shin; he stumbles and falls; the prize he reaches out for blows -up in his hands. But bit by bit he moves on, or, at all events, his -heirs and assigns move on. Bit by bit he smooths the path beneath his -remaining leg, and achieves pretty toys for his remaining hand to play -with, and accumulates delights for his remaining ear and eye. - -Alas, he is not content with this slow and sanguinary progress! Always -he looks further and further ahead. Always he imagines things just -over the sky-line. This body of imaginings constitutes his stock of -sweet beliefs, his corpus of high faiths and confidences—in brief, his -burden of errors. And that burden of errors is what distinguishes man, -even above his capacity for tears, his talents as a liar, his excessive -hypocrisy and poltroonery, from all the other orders of mammalia. Man -is the yokel _par excellence_, the booby unmatchable, the king dupe of -the cosmos. He is chronically and unescapably deceived, not only by the -other animals and by the delusive face of nature herself, but also and -more particularly by himself—by his incomparable talent for searching -out and embracing what is false, and for overlooking and denying what -is true. - -The capacity for discerning the essential truth, in fact, is as rare -among men as it is common among crows, bullfrogs and mackerel. The -man who shows it is a man of quite extraordinary quality—perhaps -even a man downright diseased. Exhibit a new truth of any natural -plausibility before the great masses of men, and not one in ten thousand -will suspect its existence, and not one in a hundred thousand will -embrace it without a ferocious resistance. All the durable truths -that have come into the world within historic times have been opposed -as bitterly as if they were so many waves of smallpox, and every -individual who has welcomed and advocated them, absolutely without -exception, has been denounced and punished as an enemy of the race. -Perhaps “absolutely without exception” goes too far. I substitute “with -five or six exceptions.” But who were the five or six exceptions? I -leave you to think of them; myself, I can’t.... But I think at once -of Charles Darwin and his associates, and of how they were reviled -in their time. This reviling, of course, is less vociferous than it -used to be, chiefly because later victims are in the arena, but the -underlying hostility remains. Within the past two years the principal -Great Thinker of Britain, George Bernard Shaw, has denounced the -hypothesis of natural selection to great applause, and a three-times -candidate for the American Presidency, William Jennings Bryan, has -publicly advocated prohibiting the teaching of it by law. The great -majority of Christian ecclesiastics in both English-speaking countries, -and with them the great majority of their catachumens, are still -committed to the doctrine that Darwin was a scoundrel, and Herbert -Spencer another, and Huxley a third—and that Nietzsche is to the three -of them what Beelzebub himself is to a trio of bad boys. This is the -reaction of the main body of respectable folk in two puissant and -idealistic Christian nations to the men who will live in history as the -intellectual leaders of the Nineteenth Century. This is the immemorial -attitude of men in the mass, and of their chosen prophets, to whatever -is honest, and important, and most probably true. - -But if truth thus has hard sledding, error is given a loving welcome. -The man who invents a new imbecility is hailed gladly, and bidden to -make himself at home; he is, to the great masses of men, the _beau -ideal_ of mankind. Go back through the history of the past thousand -years and you will find that ninetenths of the popular idols of the -world—not the heroes of small sects, but the heroes of mankind in -the mass—have been merchants of palpable nonsense. It has been so in -politics, it has been so in religion, and it has been so in every other -department of human thought. Every such hawker of the not-true has been -opposed, in his time, by critics who denounced and refuted him; his -contention has been disposed of immediately it was uttered. But on the -side of every one there has been the titanic force of human credulity, -and it has sufficed in every case to destroy his foes and establish his -immortality. - - - - -4 - -_Man and His Soul_ - - -Of all the unsound ideas thus preached by great heroes and accepted by -hundreds of millions of their eager dupes, probably the most patently -unsound is the one that is most widely held, to wit, the idea that man -has an immortal soul—that there is a part of him too ethereal and -too exquisite to die. Absolutely the only evidence supporting this -astounding notion lies in the hope that it is true—which is precisely -the evidence underlying the late theory that the Great War would put -an end to war, and bring in an era of democracy, freedom, and peace. -But even archbishops, of course, are too intelligent to be satisfied -permanently by evidence so unescapably dubious; in consequence, there -have been efforts in all ages to give it logical and evidential -support. Well, all I ask is that you give some of that corroboration -your careful scrutiny. Examine, for example, the proofs amassed by -five typical witnesses in five widely separated ages: St. John, St. -Augustine, Martin Luther, Emanuel Swedenborg and Sir Oliver Lodge. -Approach these proofs prayerfully, and study them well. Weigh them in -the light of the probabilities, the ordinary intellectual decencies. -And then ask yourself if you could imagine a mud-turtle accepting them -gravely. - - - - -5 - -_Coda_ - - -To sum up: - - 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 - revolutions a minute. - - 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. - - 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and - set spinning to give him the ride. - - - - -VI. STAR-SPANGLED MEN - - -I open the memoirs of General Grant, Volume II, at the place where he -is describing the surrender of General Lee, and find the following: - - I was without a sword, as I usually was when on horseback on - _(sic)_ the field, and wore a soldier’s blouse for a coat, - with the shoulder straps of my rank to indicate to the army - who I was. - -Anno 1865. I look out of my window and observe an officer of the -United States Army passing down the street. Anno 1922. Like General -Grant, he is without a sword. Like General Grant, he wears a sort of -soldier’s blouse for a coat. Like General Grant, he employs shoulder -straps to indicate to the army who he is. But there is something more. -On the left breast of this officer, apparently a major, there blazes -so brilliant a mass of color that, as the sun strikes it and the flash -bangs my eyes, I wink, catch my breath and sneeze. There are two -long strips, each starting at the sternum and disappearing into the -shadows of the axillia—every hue in the rainbow, the spectroscope, the -kaleidoscope—imperial purples, _sforzando_ reds, wild Irish greens, -romantic blues, loud yellows and oranges, rich maroons, sentimental -pinks, all the half-tones from ultra-violet to infra-red, all the -vibrations from the impalpable to the unendurable. A gallant _Soldat_, -indeed! How he would shame a circus ticket-wagon if he wore all the -medals and badges, the stars and crosses, the pendants and lavallières, -that go with those ribbons!... I glance at his sleeves. A simple golden -stripe on the one—six months beyond the raging main. None on the -other—the Kaiser’s cannon missed him. - -Just what all these ribbons signify I am sure I don’t know; probably -they belong to campaign medals and tell the tale of butcheries in -foreign and domestic parts—mountains of dead Filipinos, Mexicans, -Haitians, Dominicans, West Virginia miners, perhaps even Prussians. -But in addition to campaign medals and the Distinguished Service Medal -there are now certainly enough foreign orders in the United States to -give a distinct brilliance to the national scene, viewed, say, from -Mars. The Frederician tradition, borrowed by the ragged Continentals -and embodied in Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution, lasted -until 1918, and then suddenly blew up; to mention it to-day is a sort -of indecorum, and to-morrow, no doubt, will be a species of treason. -Down with Frederick; up with John Philip Sousa! Imagine what General -Pershing would look like at a state banquet of his favorite American -order, the Benevolent and Protective one of Elks, in all the Byzantine -splendor of his casket of ribbons, badges, stars, garters, sunbursts -and cockades—the lordly Bath of the grateful motherland, with its -somewhat disconcerting “Ich dien”; the gorgeous tricolor baldrics, -sashes and festoons of the Légion d’Honneur; the grand cross of SS. -Maurizio e Lazzaro of Italy; the sinister Danilo of Montenegro, with -its cabalistic monogram of Danilo I and its sinister hieroglyphics; -the breastplate of the Paulownia of Japan, with its rising sun of -thirty-two white rays, its blood-red heart, its background of green -leaves and its white ribbon edged with red; the mystical St. Saviour -of Greece, with its Greek motto and its brilliantly enameled figure -of Christ; above all, the Croix de Guerre of Czecho-Slovakia, a new -one and hence not listed in the books, but surely no shrinking violet! -Alas, Pershing was on the wrong side—that is, for one with a fancy -for gauds of that sort. The most blinding of all known orders is the -Medijie of Turkey, which not only entitles the holder to four wives, -but also absolutely requires him to wear a red fez and a frozen star -covering his whole façade. I was offered this order by Turkish spies -during the war, and it wabbled me a good deal. The Alexander of -Bulgaria is almost as seductive. The badge consists of an pointed -white cross, with crossed swords between the arms and a red Bulgarian -lion over the swords. The motto is “Za Chrabrost!” Then there are the -Prussian orders—the Red and Black Eagles, the Pour le Mérite, the -Prussian Crown, the Hohenzollern and the rest. And the Golden Fleece -of Austria—the noblest of them all. Think of the Golden Fleece on a -man born in Linn County, Missouri!... I begin to doubt that the General -would have got it, even supposing him to have taken the other side. The -Japs, I note, gave him only the grand cordon of the Paulownia, and the -Belgians and Montenegrins were similarly cautious. There are higher -classes. The highest of the Paulownia is only for princes, which is to -say, only for non-Missourians. - -Pershing is the champion, with General March a bad second. March is -a K. C. M. G., and entitled to wear a large cross of white enamel -bearing a lithograph of the Archangel Michael and the motto, “Auspicium -Melioris Aevi,” but he is not a K. C. B. Admirals Benson and Sims -are also grand crosses of Michael and George, and like most other -respectable Americans, members of the Legion of Honor, but they seem to -have been forgotten by the Greeks, the Montenegrins, the Italians and -the Belgians. The British-born and extremely Anglomaniacal Sims refused -the Distinguished Service Medal of his adopted country, but is careful -to mention in “Who’s Who in America” that his grand cross of Michael -and George was conferred upon him, not by some servile gold-stick, but -by “King George of England”; Benson omits mention of His Majesty, as -do Pershing and March. It would be hard to think of any other American -officer, real or bogus, who would refuse the D. S. M., or, failing -it, the grand decoration of chivalry of the Independent Order of Odd -Fellows. I once saw the latter hung, with ceremonies of the utmost -magnificence, upon a bald-headed tinner who had served the fraternity -long and faithfully; as he marched down the hall toward the throne of -the Supreme Exalted Pishposh a score of little girls, the issue of -other tinners, strewed his pathway with roses, and around the stem of -each rose was a piece of glittering tinfoil. The band meanwhile played -“The Rosary,” and, at the conclusion of the spectacle, as fried oysters -were served, “Wien Bleibt Wien.” - -It was, I suspect, by way of the Odd Fellows and other such gaudy -heirs to the Deutsche Ritter and Rosicrucians that the lust to gleam -and jingle got into the arteries of the American people. For years the -austere tradition of Washington’s day served to keep the military bosom -bare of spangles, but all the while a weakness for them was growing in -the civil population. Rank by rank, they became Knights of Pythias, -Odd Fellows, Red Men, Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, Knights Templar, -Patriarchs Militant, Elks, Moose, Woodmen of the World, Foresters, -Hoo-Hoos, Ku Kluxers—and in every new order there were thirty-two -degrees, and for every degree there was a badge, and for every badge -there was a yard of ribbon. The Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, chiefly -paunchy wholesalers of the Rotary Club species, are not content with -swords, baldrics, stars, garters and jewels; they also wear red fezes. -The Elks run to rubies. The Red Men array themselves like Sitting -Bull. The patriotic ice-wagon drivers and Methodist deacons of the -Ku Klux Klan carry crosses set with incandescent lights. An American -who is forced by his profession to belong to many such orders—say a -life insurance solicitor, a bootlegger or a dealer in Oklahoma oil -stock—accumulates a trunk full of decorations, many of them weighing -a pound. There is an undertaker in Hagerstown, Md., who has been -initiated eighteen times. When he robes himself to plant a fellow -joiner he weighs three hundred pounds and sparkles and flashes like the -mouth of hell itself. He is entitled to bear seven swords, all jeweled, -and to hang his watch chain with the golden busts of nine wild animals, -all with precious stones for eyes. Put beside this lowly washer of the -dead, Pershing newly polished would seem almost like a Trappist. - -But even so the civil arm is robbed of its just dues in the department -of gauds and radioactivity, no doubt by the direct operation of -military vanity and jealousy. Despite a million proofs (and perhaps a -billion eloquent arguments) to the contrary, it is still the theory at -the official ribbon counter that the only man who serves in a war is -the man who serves in uniform. This is soft for the Bevo officer, who -at least has his service stripes and the spurs that gnawed into his -desk, but it is hard upon his brother Irving, the dollar-a-year man, -who worked twenty hours a day for fourteen months buying soap-powder, -canned asparagus and raincoats for the army of God. Irving not only -labored with inconceivable diligence; he also faced hazards of no mean -order, for on the one hand was his natural prejudice in favor of a -very liberal rewarding of commercial enterprise, and on the other hand -were his patriotism and his fear of Atlanta Penitentiary. I daresay -that many and many a time, after working his twenty hours, he found it -difficult to sleep the remaining four hours. I know, in fact, survivors -of that obscure service who are far worse wrecks to-day than Pershing -is. Their reward is—what? Winks, sniffs, innuendos. If they would -indulge themselves in the now almost universal American yearning to -go adorned, they must join the Knights of Pythias. Even the American -Legion fails them, for though it certainly does not bar non-combatants, -it insists that they shall have done their non-combatting in uniform. - -What I propose is a variety of the Distinguished Service Medal for -civilians,—perhaps, better still, a distinct order for civilians, -closed to the military and with badges of different colors and areas, -to mark off varying services to democracy. Let it run, like the -Japanese Paulownia, from high to low—the lowest class for the patriot -who sacrificed only time, money and a few nights’ sleep; the highest -for the great martyr who hung his country’s altar with his dignity, his -decency and his sacred honor. For Irving and his nervous insomnia, a -simple rosette, with an iron badge bearing the national motto, “Safety -First”; for the university president who prohibited the teaching of -the enemy language in his learned grove, heaved the works of Goethe -out of the university library, cashiered every professor unwilling -to support Woodrow for the first vacancy in the Trinity, took to the -stump for the National Security League, and made two hundred speeches -in moving-picture theaters—for this giant of loyal endeavor let no -100 per cent. American speak of anything less than the grand cross of -the order, with a gold badge in polychrome enamel and stained glass, -a baldric of the national colors, a violet plug hat with a sunburst -on the side, the privilege of the floor of Congress, and a pension -of $10,000 a year. After all, the cost would not be excessive; there -are not many of them. Such prodigies of patriotism are possible only -to rare and gifted men. For the grand cordons of the order, _e. -g._, college professors who spied upon and reported the seditions of -their associates, state presidents of the American Protective League, -alien property custodians, judges whose sentences of conscientious -objectors mounted to more than 50,000 years, members of Dr. Creel’s -herd of 2,000 American historians, the authors of the Sisson documents, -etc.—pensions of $10 a day would be enough, with silver badges and no -plug hats. For the lower ranks, bronze badges and the legal right to -the title of “the Hon.,” already every true American’s by courtesy. - -Not, of course, that I am insensitive to the services of the gentlemen -of those lower ranks, but in such matters one must go by rarity rather -than by intrinsic value. If the grand cordon or even the nickel-plated -eagle of the third class were given to every patriot who bored a hole -through the floor of his flat to get evidence against his neighbors, -the Krausmeyers, and to every one who visited the Hofbräuhaus nightly, -denounced the Kaiser in searing terms, and demanded assent from Emil -and Otto, the waiters, and to every one who notified the catchpolls -of the Department of Justice when the wireless plant was open in the -garret of the Arion Liedertafel, and to all who took a brave and -forward part in slacker raids, and to all who lent their stenographers -funds at 6 per cent., to buy Liberty bonds at 4¼ per cent., and to -all who sold out at 99 and then bought in again at 83.56 and to all who -served as jurors or perjurers in cases against members and ex-members -of the I. W. W., and to the German-American members of the League for -German Democracy, and to all the Irish who snitched upon the Irish—if -decorations were thrown about with any such lavishness, then there -would be no nickel left for our bathrooms. On the civilian side as -on the military side the great rewards of war go, not to mere dogged -industry and fidelity, but to originality—to the unprecedented, the -arresting, the bizarre. The New York _Tribune_ liar who invented the -story about the German plant for converting the corpses of the slain -into soap did more for democracy and the Wilsonian idealism, and hence -deserves a more brilliant recognition, than a thousand uninspired -hawkers of atrocity stories supplied by Viscount Bryce and his -associates. For that great servant of righteousness the grand cordon, -with two silver badges and the chair of history at Columbia, would be -scarcely enough; for the ordinary hawkers any precious metal would be -too much. - -Whether or not the Y. M. C. A. has decorated its chocolate pedlars and -soul-snatchers I do not know; since the chief Y. M. C. A. lamasery in -my town of Baltimore became the scene of a homo-sexual scandal I have -ceased to frequent evangelical society. If not, then there should be -some governmental recognition of those highly characteristic heroes of -the war for democracy. The veterans of the line, true enough, dislike -them excessively, and have a habit of denouncing them obscenely when -the corn-juice flows. They charged too much for cigarettes; they tried -to discourage the amiability of the ladies of France; they had a habit -of being absent when the shells burst in air. Well, some say this and -some say that. A few, at least, of the pale and oleaginous brethren -must have gone into the Master’s work because they thirsted to save -souls, and not simply because they desired to escape the trenches. -And a few, I am told, were anything but unpleasantly righteous, as a -round of Wassermanns would show. If, as may be plausibly argued, these -Soldiers of the Double Cross deserve to live at all, then they surely -deserve to be hung with white enameled stars of the third class, with -gilt dollar marks superimposed. Motto: “Glory, glory, hallelujah!” - -But what of the vaudeville actors, the cheer leaders, the doughnut -fryers, the camp librarians, the press agents? I am not forgetting -them. Let them be distributed among all the classes from the seventh -to the eighth, according to their sufferings for the holy cause. And -the agitators against Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Wagner, Richard Strauss, -all the rest of the cacophonous Huns? And the specialists in the crimes -of the German professors? And the collectors for the Belgians, with -their generous renunciation of all commissions above 80 per cent.? And -the pathologists who denounced Johannes Müller as a fraud, Karl Ludwig -as an imbecile, and Ehrlich as a thief? And the patriotic chemists -who discovered arsenic in dill pickles, ground glass in pumpernickel, -bichloride tablets in Bismarck herring, pathogenic organisms in aniline -dyes? And the inspired editorial writers of the New York _Times_ -and _Tribune_, the Boston _Transcript_, the Philadelphia _Ledger_, -the Mobile _Register_, the Jones Corners _Eagle?_ And the headline -writers? And the Columbia, Yale and Princeton professors? And the -authors of books describing how the Kaiser told them the whole plot in -1913, while they were pulling his teeth or shining his shoes? And the -ex-ambassadors? And the _Nietzschefresser?_ And the chautauqua orators? -And the four-minute men? And the Methodist pulpit pornographers who -switched so facilely from vice crusading to German atrocities? And Dr. -Newell Dwight Hillis? And Dr. Henry van Dyke? And the master minds of -the _New Republic?_ And Tumulty? And the Vigilantes? Let no grateful -heart forget them! - -Palmer and Burleson I leave for special legislation. If mere university -presidents, such as Nicholas Murray Butler, are to have the grand -cross, then Palmer deserves to be rolled in malleable gold from head -to foot, and polished until he blinds the cosmos—then Burleson -must be hung with diamonds like Mrs. Warren and bathed in spotlights -like Gaby Deslys.... Finally, I reserve a special decoration, to be -conferred in camera and worn only in secret chapter, for husbands who -took chances and refused to read anonymous letters from Paris: the -somber badge of the Ordre de la Cuculus Canorus, first and only class. - - - - -VII. THE POET AND HIS ART - - - - -I - - -A good prose style says Prof. Dr. Otto Jespersen in his great work, -“Growth and Structure of the English Language,” “is everywhere a late -acquirement, and the work of whole generations of good authors is -needed to bring about the easy flow of written prose.” The learned -_Sprachwissenschaftler_ is here speaking of Old English, or, as it -used to be called when you and I were at the breast of enlightenment, -Anglo-Saxon. An inch or so lower down the page he points out that what -he says of prose is by no means true of verse—that poetry of very -respectable quality is often written by peoples and individuals whose -prose is quite as crude and graceless as that, say of the Hon. Warren -Gamaliel Harding—that even the so-called Anglo-Saxons of Beowulf’s -time, a race as barbarous as the modern Jugo-Slavs or Mississippians, -were yet capable, on occasion, of writing dithyrambs of an indubitable -sweet gaudiness. - -The point needs no laboring. A glance at the history of any literature -will prove its soundness. Moreover, it is supported by what we see -around us every day—that is, if we look in literary directions. -Some of the best verse in the modern movement, at home and abroad, -has been written by intellectual adolescents who could no more write -a first-rate paragraph in prose then they could leap the Matterhorn -—girls just out of Vassar and Newnham, young army officers, chautauqua -orators, New England old maids, obscure lawyers and doctors, newspaper -reporters, all sorts of hollow dilettanti, male and female. Nine-tenths -of the best poetry of the world has been written by poets less than -thirty years old; a great deal more than half of it has been written -by poets under twenty-five. One always associates poetry with youth, -for it deals chiefly with the ideas that are peculiar to youth, and -its terminology is quite as youthful as its content. When one hears of -a poet past thirty-five, he seems somehow unnatural and even a trifle -obscene; it is as if one encountered a graying man who still played -the Chopin waltzes and believed in elective affinities. But prose, -obviously, is a sterner and more elderly matter. All the great masters -of prose (and especially of English prose, for its very resilience and -brilliance make it extraordinarily hard to write) have had to labor -for years before attaining to their mastery of it. The early prose of -Abraham Lincoln was remarkable only for its badness; it was rhetorical -and bombastic, and full of supernumerary words; in brief, it was a -kind of poetry. It took years and years of hard striving for Abe to -develop the simple and exquisite prose of his last half-decade. So with -Thomas Henry Huxley, perhaps the greatest virtuoso of plain English who -has ever lived. His first writings were competent but undistinguished; -he was almost a grandfather before he perfected his superb style. -And so with Anatole France, and Addison, and T. B. Macaulay, and -George Moore, and James Branch Cabell, and Æ.__, and Lord Dunsany, -and Nietzsche, and to go back to antiquity, Marcus Tullius Cicero. I -have been told that the average age of the men who made the Authorized -Version of the Bible was beyond sixty years. Had they been under thirty -they would have made it lyrical; as it was, they made it colossal. - -The reason for all this is not far to seek. Prose, however powerful -its appeal to the emotions, is always based primarily upon logic, -and is thus scientific; poetry, whatever its so-called intellectual -content is always based upon mere sensation and emotion, and is thus -loose and disorderly. A man must have acquired discipline over his -feelings before he can write sound prose; he must have learned how to -subordinate his transient ideas to more general and permanent ideas; -above all, he must have acquired a good head for words, which is to -say, a capacity for resisting their mere lascivious lure. But to -write acceptable poetry, or even good poetry, he needs none of these -things. If his hand runs away with his head it is actually a merit. -If he writes what every one knows to be untrue, in terms that no sane -adult would ever venture to use in real life, it is proof of his -divine afflation. If he slops over and heaves around in a manner never -hitherto observed on land or sea, the fact proves his originality. -The so-called forms of verse and the rules of rhyme and rhythm do not -offer him difficulties; they offer him refuges. Their purpose is not -to keep him in order, but simply to give him countenance by providing -him with a formal orderliness when he is most out of order. Using -them is like swimming with bladders. The first literary composition -of a quick-minded child is always some sort of jingle. It starts out -with an inane idea—half an idea. Sticking to prose, it could go -no further. But to its primary imbecility it now adds a meaningless -phrase which, while logically unrelated, provides an agreeable concord -in mere sound—and the result is the primordial tadpole of a sonnet. -All the sonnets of the world, save a few of miraculous (and perhaps -accidental) quality, partake of this fundamental nonsensicality. In all -of them there are ideas that would sound idiotic in prose, and phrases -that would sound clumsy and uncouth in prose. But the rhyme scheme -conceals this nonsensicality. As a substitute for the missing logical -plausibility it provides a sensuous harmony. Reading the thing, one -gets a vague effect of agreeable sound, and so the logical feebleness -is overlooked. It is, in a sense, like observing a pretty girl, -competently dressed and made up, across the footlights. But translating -the poem into prose is like meeting and marrying her. - - - - -II - - -Much of the current discussion of poetry—and what, save Prohibition, -is more discussed in America?—is corrupted by a fundamental error. -That error consists in regarding the thing itself as a simple entity, -to be described conveniently in a picturesque phrase. “Poetry,” says -one critic, “is the statement of overwhelming emotional values.” -“Poetry,” says another, “is an attempt to purge language of everything -except its music and its pictures.” “Poetry,” says a third, “is the -entering of delicately imaginative plateaus.” “Poetry,” says a fourth, -“is truth carried alive into the heart by a passion.” “Poetry,” says a -fifth, “is compacted of what seems, not of what is.” “Poetry,” says a -sixth, “is the expression of thought in musical language.” “Poetry,” -says a seventh, “is the language of a state of crisis.” And so on, and -so on. _Quod est poetica?_ They all answer, and yet they all fail to -answer. Poetry, in fact, is two quite distinct things. It may be either -or both. One is a series of words that are intrinsically musical, in -clang-tint and rhythm, as the single word _cellar-door_ is musical. -The other is a series of ideas, false in themselves, that offer a -means of emotional and imaginative escape from the harsh realities of -everyday. In brief, (I succumb, like all the rest, to phrase-making), -poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious -music—a slap on the back in waltz time—a grand release of longings -and repressions to the tune of flutes, harps, sackbuts, psalteries and -the usual strings. - -As I say, poetry may be either the one thing or the other—caressing -music or caressing assurance. It need not necessarily be both. Consider -a familiar example from “Othello”: - - Not poppy, nor mandragora, - Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world - Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep - Which thou owed’st yesterday. - -Here the sense, at best, is surely very vague. Probably not one auditor -in a hundred, hearing an actor recite those glorious lines, attaches -any intelligible meaning to the archaic word _owed’st_, the cornerstone -of the whole sentence. Nevertheless, the effect is stupendous. The -passage assaults and benumbs the faculties like Schubert’s “Ständchen” -or the slow movement of Schumann’s Rhenish symphony; hearing it is a -sensuous debauch; the man anæsthetic to it could stand unmoved before -Rheims cathedral or the Hofbräuhaus at Munich. One easily recalls many -other such bursts of pure music, almost meaningless but infinitely -delightful—in Poe, in Swinburne, in Marlowe, even in Joaquin -Miller. Two-thirds of the charm of reading Chaucer (setting aside -the Rabelaisian comedy) comes out of the mere burble of the words; -the meaning, to a modern, is often extremely obscure, and sometimes -downright undecipherable. The whole fame of Poe, as a poet, is based -upon five short poems. Of them, three are almost pure music. Their -intellectual content is of the vaguest. No one would venture to reduce -them to plain English. Even Poe himself always thought of them, not as -statements of poetic ideas, but as simple utterances of poetic (i.e., -musical) sounds. - -It was Sidney Lanier, himself a competent poet, who first showed the -dependence of poetry upon music. He had little to say, unfortunately, -about the clang-tint of words; what concerned him almost exclusively -was rhythm. In “The Science of English Verse,” he showed that the -charm of this rhythm could be explained in the technical terms of -music—that all the old gabble about dactyls and spondees was no more -than a dog Latin invented by men who were fundamentally ignorant of -the thing they discussed. Lanier’s book was the first intelligent -work ever published upon the nature and structure of the sensuous -content of English poetry. He struck out into such new and far paths -that the professors of prosody still lag behind him after forty years, -quite unable to understand a poet who was also a shrewd critic and a -first-rate musician. But if, so deeply concerned with rhythm, he marred -his treatise by forgetting clang-tint, he marred it still more by -forgetting content. Poetry that is all music is obviously relatively -rare, for only a poet who is also a natural musician can write it, and -natural musicians are much rarer in the world than poets. Ordinary -poetry, average poetry, thus depends in part upon its ideational -material, and perhaps even chiefly. It is the _idea_ expressed in a -poem, and not the mellifluousness of the words used to express it, -that arrests and enchants the average connoisseur. Often, indeed, he -disdains this mellifluousness, and argues that the idea ought to be set -forth without the customary pretty jingling, or, at most, with only the -scant jingling that lies in rhythm—in brief, he wants his ideas in the -altogether, and so advocates _vers libre._ - -It was another American, this time Prof. Dr. F. C. Prescott, of Cornell -University, who first gave scientific attention to the intellectual -content of poetry. His book is called “Poetry and Dreams.” Its virtue -lies in the fact that it rejects all the customary mystical and -romantic definitions of poetry, and seeks to account for the thing in -straightforward psychological terms. Poetry, says Prescott, is simply -the verbal materialization of a day-dream, the statement of a Freudian -wish, an attempt to satisfy a subconscious longing by saying that it -is satisfied. In brief, poetry represents imagination’s bold effort to -escape from the cold and clammy facts that hedge us in—to soothe the -wrinkled and fevered brow with beautiful balderdash. On the precise -nature of this beautiful balderdash you can get all in the information -you need by opening at random the nearest book of verse. The ideas -you will find in it may be divided into two main divisions. The first -consists of denials of objective facts; the second of denials of -subjective facts. Specimen of the first sort: - - God’s in His heaven, - All’s well with the world. - -Specimen of the second: - - I am the master of my fate; - I am the captain of my soul. - -It is my contention that all poetry (forgetting, for the moment, its -possible merit as mere sound) may be resolved into either the one -or the other of these frightful imbecilities—that its essential -character lies in its bold flouting of what every reflective adult -knows to be the truth. The poet, imagining him to be sincere, is -simply one who disposes of all the horrors of life on this earth, -and of all the difficulties presented by his own inner weaknesses no -less, by the childish device of denying them. Is it a well-known fact -that love is an emotion that is almost as perishable as eggs—that -it is biologically impossible for a given male to yearn for a given -female more than a few brief years? Then the poet disposes of it by -assuring his girl that he will nevertheless love her forever—more, -by pledging his word of honor that he believes that _she_ will love -_him_ forever. Is it equally notorious that there is no such thing as -justice in the world—that the good are tortured insanely and the evil -go free and prosper? Then the poet composes a piece crediting God with -a mysterious and unintelligible theory of jurisprudence, whereby the -torture of the good is a sort of favor conferred upon them for their -goodness. Is it of almost equally widespread report that no healthy -man likes to contemplate his own inevitable death—that even in time -of war, with a vast pumping up of emotion to conceal the fact, every -soldier hopes and believes that he, personally, will escape? Then the -poet, first carefully introducing himself into a bomb-proof, achieves -strophes declaring that he is free from all such weakness—that he will -deliberately seek a rendezvous with death, and laugh ha-ha when the -bullet finds him. - -The precise nature of the imbecility thus solemnly set forth depends, -very largely, of course, upon the private prejudices and yearnings -of the poet, and the reception that is given it depends, by the same -token, upon the private prejudices and yearnings of the reader. That -is why it is often so difficult to get any agreement upon the merits -of a definite poem, _i. e._, to get any agreement upon its capacity to -soothe. There is the man who craves only the animal delights of a sort -of Moslem-Methodist paradise: to him “The Frost is on the Pumpkin” is -a noble poem. There is the man who yearns to get out of the visible -universe altogether and tread the fields of asphodel: for him there -is delight only in the mystical stuff of Crashaw, Thompson, Yeats and -company. There is the man who revolts against the sordid Christian -notion of immortality—an eternity to be spent flapping wings with -pious green-grocers and oleaginous Anglican bishops; he finds _his_ -escape in the gorgeous blasphemies of Swinburne. There is, to make an -end of examples, the man who, with an inferiority complex eating out -his heart, is moved by a great desire to stalk the world in heroic -guise: he may go to the sonorous swanking of Kipling, or he may go -to something more subtle, to some poem in which the boasting is more -artfully concealed, say Christina Rosetti’s “When I am Dead.” Many men, -many complexes, many secret yearnings! They collect, of course, in -groups; if the group happens to be large enough the poet it is devoted -to becomes famous. Kipling’s great fame is thus easily explained. He -appeals to the commonest of all types of men, next to the sentimental -type—which is to say, he appeals to the bully and braggart type, the -chest-slapping type, the patriot type. Less harshly described, to the -boy type. All of us have been Kiplingomaniacs at some time or other. I -was myself a very ardent one at 17, and wrote many grandiloquent sets -of verse in the manner of “Tommy Atkins” and “Fuzzy-Wuzzy.” But if -the gifts of observation and reflection have been given to us, we get -over it. There comes a time when we no longer yearn to be heroes, but -seek only peace—maybe even hope for quick extinction. Then we turn to -Swinburne and “The Garden of Proserpine”—more false assurances, more -mellifluous play-acting, another tinkling make-believe—but how sweet -on blue days! - - - - -III - - -One of the things to remember here (too often it is forgotten, and -Dr. Prescott deserves favorable mention for stressing it) is that a -man’s conscious desires are not always identical with his subconscious -longings; in fact, the two are often directly antithetical. No doubt -the real man lies in the depths of the subconscious, like a carp -lurking in mud. His conscious personality is largely a product of his -environment—the reaction of his subconscious to the prevailing notions -of what is meet and seemly. Here, of course, I wander into platitude, -for the news that all men are frauds was already stale in the days -of Hammurabi. The ingenious Freud simply translated the fact into -pathological terms, added a bed-room scene, and so laid the foundations -for his psychoanalysis. Incidentally, it has always seemed to me that -Freud made a curious mistake when he brought sex into the foreground -of his new magic. He was, of course, quite right when he set up the -doctrine that, in civilized societies, sex impulses were more apt to be -suppressed than any other natural impulses, and that the subconscious -thus tended to be crowded with their ghosts. But in considering -sex impulses, he forgot sex imaginings. Digging out, by painful -cross-examination in a darkened room, some startling tale of carnality -in his patient’s past, he committed the incredible folly of assuming -it to be literally true. More often than not, I believe, it was a mere -piece of boasting, a materialization of desire—in brief, a poem. It -is astonishing that this possibility never occurred to the venerable -professor; it is more astonishing that it has never occurred to any of -his disciples. He should have psychoanalyzed a few poets instead of -wasting all his time upon psychopathic women with sclerotic husbands. -He would have dredged amazing things out of their subconsciouses, -heroic as well as amorous. Imagine the billions of Boers, Germans, -Irishmen and Hindus that Kipling would have confessed to killing! - -But here I get into morbid anatomy, and had better haul up. What I -started out to say was that a man’s preferences in poetry constitute an -excellent means of estimating his inner cravings and credulities. The -music disarms his critical sense, and he confesses to cherishing ideas -that he would repudiate with indignation if they were put into plain -words. I say he cherishes those ideas. Maybe he simply tolerates them -unwillingly; maybe they are no more than inescapable heritages from his -barbarous ancestors, like his vermiform appendix. Think of the poems -you like, and you will come upon many such intellectual fossils—ideas -that you by no means subscribe to openly, but that nevertheless give -you a strange joy. I put myself on the block as Exhibit A. There is my -delight in Lizette Woodworth Reese’s sonnet, “Tears.” Nothing could do -more violence to my conscious beliefs. Put into prose, the doctrine -in the poem would exasperate and even enrage me. There is no man in -Christendom who is less a Christian than I am. But here the dead hand -grabs me by the ear. My ancestors were converted to Christianity in -the year 1535, and remained of that faith until near the middle of -the eighteenth century. Observe, now, the load I carry; more than -two hundred years of Christianity, and perhaps a thousand years -(maybe even two, or three thousand years) of worship of heathen gods -before that—at least twelve hundred years of uninterrupted belief -in the immortality of the soul. Is it any wonder that, betrayed by -the incomparable music of Miss Reese’s Anglo-Saxon monosyllables, my -conscious faith is lulled to sleep, thus giving my subconscious a -chance to wallow in its immemorial superstition? - -Even so, my vulnerability to such superstitions is very low, and it -tends to grow less as I increase in years and sorrows. As I have -said, I once throbbed to the drum-beat of Kipling; later on, I was -responsive to the mellow romanticism of Tennyson; now it takes one of -the genuinely fundamental delusions of the human race to move me. But -progress is not continuous; it has interludes. There are days when -every one of us experiences a sort of ontogenetic back-firing, and -returns to an earlier stage of development. It is on such days that -grown men break down and cry like children; it is then that they play -games, or cheer the flag, or fall in love. And it is then that they -are in the mood for poetry, and get comfort out of its asseverations -of the obviously not true. A truly civilized man, when he is wholly -himself, derives no pleasure from hearing a poet state, as Browning -stated, that this world is perfect. Such tosh not only does not please -him; it definitely offends him, as he is offended by an idiotic -article in a newspaper; it roils him to encounter so much stupidity in -Christendom. But he may like it when he is drunk, or suffering from -some low toxemia, or staggering beneath some great disaster. Then, as I -say, the ontogenetic process reverses itself, and he slides back into -infancy. Then he goes to poets, just as he goes to women, “glad” books, -and dogmatic theology. The very highest orders of men, perhaps, never -suffer from such malaises of the spirit, or, if they suffer from them, -never succumb to them. These are men who are so thoroughly civilized -that even the most severe attack upon the emotions is not sufficient -to dethrone their reason. Charles Darwin was such a man. There was -never a moment in his life when he sought religious consolation, -and there was never a moment when he turned to poetry; in fact, he -regarded all poetry as silly. Other first-rate men, more sensitive to -the possible music in it, regard it with less positive aversion, but -I have never heard of a truly first-rate man who got any permanent -satisfaction out of its content. The Browning Societies of the latter -part of the nineteenth century (and I choose the Browning Societies -because Browning’s poetry was often more or less logical in content, -and thus above the ordinary intellectually) were not composed of such -men as Huxley, Spencer, Lecky, Buckle and Travelyn, but of third-rate -schoolmasters, moony old maids, candidates for theosophy, literary -vicars, collectors of Rogers groups, and other such Philistines. The -chief propagandist for Browning in the United States was not Henry -Adams, or William Summer, or Daniel C. Gilman, but an obscure professor -of English who was also an ardent spook-chaser. And what is thus true -ontogenetically is also true phylogenetically. That is to say, poetry -is chiefly produced and esteemed by peoples that have not yet come to -maturity. The Romans had a dozen poets of the first talent before they -had a single prose writer of any skill whatsoever. So did the English. -So did the Germans. In our own day we see the negroes of the South -producing religious and secular verse of such quality that it is taken -over by the whites, and yet the number of negroes who show a decent -prose style is still very small, and there is no sign of it increasing. -Similarly, the white authors of America, during the past ten or fifteen -years, have produced a great mass of very creditable poetry, and yet -the quality of our prose remains very low, and the Americans with prose -styles of any distinction could be counted on the fingers of two hands. - - - - -IV - - -So far I have spoken chiefly of the content of poetry. In its character -as a sort of music it is plainly a good deal more respectable, and -makes an appeal to a far higher variety of reader, or, at all events, -to a reader in a state of greater mental clarity. A capacity for -music—by which I mean melody, harmony and clang-tint—comes late in -the history of every race. The savage can apprehend rhythm, but he -is quite incapable of carrying a tune in any intelligible scale. The -negro roustabouts of our own South, who are commonly regarded as very -musical, are actually only rhythmical; they never invent melodies, -but only rhythms. And the whites to whom their barbarous dance-tunes -chiefly appeal are in their own stage of culture. When one observes -a room full of well-dressed men and women swaying and wriggling to -the tune of some villainous mazurka from the Mississippi levees, one -may assume very soundly that they are all the sort of folk who play -golf and bridge, and prefer “The Sheik” to “Heart of Darkness” and -believe in the League of Nations. A great deal of superficial culture -is compatible with that pathetic barbarism, and even a high degree of -æsthetic sophistication in other directions. The Greeks who built the -Parthenon knew no more about music than a hog knows of predestination; -they were almost as ignorant in that department as the modern Iowans or -New Yorkers. It was not, indeed, until the Renaissance that music as -we know it appeared in the world, and it was not until less than two -centuries ago that it reached a high development. In Shakespeare’s day -music was just getting upon its legs in England; in Goethe’s day it -was just coming to full flower in Germany; in France and America it is -still in the savage state. It is thus the youngest of the arts, and the -most difficult, and hence the noblest. Any sane young man of twenty-two -can write an acceptable sonnet, or design a habitable house or draw a -horse that will not be mistaken for an automobile, but before he may -write even a bad string quartet he must go through a long and arduous -training, just as he must strive for years before he may write prose -that is instantly recognizable as prose, and not as a string of mere -words. - -The virtue of such great poets as Shakespeare does not lie in the -content of their poetry, but in its music. The content of the -Shakespearean plays, in fact, is often puerile, and sometimes quite -incomprehensible. No scornful essays by George Bernard Shaw and Frank -Harris were needed to demonstrate the fact; it lies plainly in the -text. One snickers sourly over the spectacle of generations of pedants -debating the question of Hamlet’s mental processes; the simple fact -is that Shakespeare gave him no more mental processes than a Fifth -avenue rector has, but merely employed him as a convenient spout -for some of the finest music ever got into words. Assume that he -has all the hellish sagacity of a Nietzsche, and that music remains -unchanged; assume that he is as idiotic as a Grand Worthy Flubdub of -the Freemasons, and it still remains unchanged. As it is intoned on -the stage by actors, the poetry of Shakespeare commonly loses content -altogether. One cannot make out what the _cabotin_ is saying; one can -only observe that it is beautiful. There are whole speeches in the -Shakespearean plays whose meaning is unknown ever to scholars—and yet -they remain favorites, and well deserve to. Who knows, again, what -the sonnets are about? Is the bard talking about the inn-keeper’s -wife at Oxford, or about a love affair of a pathological, Y. M. C. -A. character? Some say one thing, and some say the other. But all -who have ears must agree that the sonnets are extremely beautiful -stuff—that the English language reaches in them, the topmost heights -of conceivable beauty. Shakespeare thus ought to be ranked among -the musicians, along with Beethoven. As a philosopher he was a -ninth-rater—but so was old Ludwig. I wonder what he would have done -with prose? I can’t make up my mind about it. One day I believe that he -would have written prose as good as Dryden’s, and the next day I begin -to fear that he would have produced something as bad as Swinburne’s. He -had the ear, but he lacked the logical sense. Poetry has done enough -when it charms, but prose must also convince. - -I do not forget, of course, that there is a borderland in which it -is hard to say, of this or that composition, whether it is prose or -poetry. Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech is commonly reckoned as prose, and -yet I am convinced that it is quite as much poetry as the Queen Mab -speech or Marlowe’s mighty elegy on Helen of Troy. More, it is so read -and admired by the great masses of the American people. It is an almost -perfect specimen of a comforting but unsound asseveration put into -rippling and hypnotizing words; done into plain English, the statements -of fact in it would make even a writer of school history-books laugh. -So with parts of the Declaration of Independence. No one believes -seriously that they are true, but nearly everyone agrees that it -would be a nice thing if they _were_ true—and meanwhile Jefferson’s -eighteenth century rhetoric, by Johnson out of John Lyly’s “Euphues,” -completes the enchantment. In the main, the test is to be found in the -audience rather than in the poet. If it is naturally intelligent and in -a sober and critical mood, demanding sense and proofs, then nearly all -poetry becomes prose; if, on the contrary, it is congenitally maudlin, -or has a few drinks aboard, or is in love, or is otherwise in a soft -and believing mood, then even the worst of prose, if it has a touch -of soothing sing-song in it, becomes moving poetry—for example, the -diplomatic and political gospel-hymns of the late Dr. Wilson, a man -constitutionally unable to reason clearly or honestly, but nevertheless -one full of the burbling that caresses the ears of simple men. Most of -his speeches, during the days of his divine appointment, translated -into intelligible English, would have sounded as idiotic as a prose -version of “The Blessed Damozel.” Read by his opponents, they sounded -so without the translation. - -But at the extremes, of course, there are indubitable poetry and -incurable prose, and the difference is not hard to distinguish. -Prose is simply a form of writing in which the author intends that -his statements shall be accepted as conceivably true, even when they -are about imaginary persons and events; its appeal is to the fully -conscious and alertly reasoning man. Poetry is a form of writing in -which the author attempts to disarm reason and evoke emotion, partly by -presenting images that awaken a powerful response in the subconscious -and partly by the mere sough and blubber of words. Poetry is not -distinguished from prose, as Prof. Dr. Lowes says in his “Convention -and Revolt in Poetry,” by an exclusive phraseology, but by a peculiar -attitude of mind—an attitude of self-delusion, of fact-denying, of -saying what isn’t true. It is essentially an effort to elude the bitter -facts of life, whereas prose is essentially a means of unearthing and -exhibiting them. The gap is bridged by sentimental prose, which is half -prose and half poetry—Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech, the average sermon, -the prose of an erotic novelette. Immediately the thing acquires a -literal meaning it ceases to be poetry; immediately it becomes capable -of convincing an adult and perfectly sober man during the hours between -breakfast and luncheon it is indisputably prose. - -This quality of untruthfulness pervades all poetry, good and bad. -You will find it in the very best poetry that the world has so far -produced, to wit, in the sonorous poems of the Jewish Scriptures. -The ancient Jews were stupendous poets. Moreover, they were shrewd -psychologists, and so knew the capacity of poetry, given the believing -mind, to convince and enchant—in other words, its capacity to drug -the auditor in such a manner that he accepts it literally, as he -might accept the baldest prose. This danger in poetry, given auditors -impressionable enough, is too little estimated and understood. It is -largely responsible for the persistence of sentimentality in a world -apparently designed for the one purpose of manufacturing cynics. It is -probably chiefly responsible for the survival of Christianity, despite -the hard competition that it has met with from other religions. The -theology of Christianity—_i._ e., its prose—is certainly no more -convincing than that of half a dozen other religions that might be -named; it is, in fact, a great deal less convincing than the theology -of, say, Buddhism. But the poetry of Christianity is infinitely more -lush and beautiful than that of any other religion ever heard of. -There is more lovely poetry in one of the Psalms than in all of the -Non-Christian scriptures of the world taken together. More, this -poetry is in both Testaments, the New as well as the Old. Who could -imagine a more charming poem than that of the Child in the manger? -It has enchanted the world for nearly two thousand years. It is -simple, exquisite and overwhelming. Its power to arouse emotion is -so great that even in our age it is at the bottom of fully a half of -the kindliness, romanticism and humane sentimentality that survive in -Christendom. It is worth a million syllogisms. - -Once, after plowing through sixty or seventy volumes of bad verse, I -described myself as a poetry-hater. The epithet was and is absurd. The -truth is that I enjoy poetry as much as the next man—when the mood -is on me. But what mood? The mood, in a few words, of intellectual -and spiritual fatigue, the mood of revolt against the insoluble -riddle of existence, the mood of disgust and despair. Poetry, then, -is a capital medicine. First its sweet music lulls, and then its -artful presentation of the beautifully improbable soothes and gives -surcease. It is an escape from life, like religion, like enthusiasm, -like glimpsing a pretty girl. And to the mere sensuous joy in it, to -the mere low delight in getting away from the world for a bit, there -is added, if the poetry be good, something vastly better, something -reaching out into the realm of the intelligent, to wit, appreciation -of good workmanship. A sound sonnet is almost as pleasing an object -as a well-written fugue. A pretty lyric, deftly done, has all the -technical charm of a fine carving. I think it is craftsmanship that -I admire most in the world. Brahms enchants me because he knew -his trade perfectly. I like Richard Strauss because he is full of -technical ingenuities, because he is a master-workman. Well, who ever -heard of a finer craftsman than William Shakespeare? His music was -magnificent, he played superbly upon all the common emotions—and he -did it magnificently, he did it with an air. No, I am no poetry-hater. -But even Shakespeare I most enjoy, not on brisk mornings when I feel -fit for any deviltry, but on dreary evenings when my old wounds are -troubling me, and some fickle one has just sent back the autographed -set of my first editions, and bills are piled up on my desk, and I am -too sad to work. Then I mix a stiff dram—and read poetry. - - - - -VIII. FIVE MEN AT RANDOM - - - - -1 - -_Abraham Lincoln_ - - -The backwardness of the art of biography in These States is made -shiningly visible by the fact that we have yet to see a first-rate -life of either Lincoln or Whitman. Of Lincolniana, of course, there is -no end, nor is there any end to the hospitality of those who collect -it. Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of -books that never, under any circumstances, lose money in the United -States—first, detective stories; secondly, novels in which the heroine -is forcibly debauched by the hero; thirdly, volumes on spiritualism, -occultism and other such claptrap, and fourthly, books on Lincoln. But -despite all the vast mass of Lincolniana and the constant discussion -of old Abe in other ways, even so elemental a problem as that of -his religious faith—surely an important matter in any competent -biography—is yet but half solved. Here, for example, is the Rev. -William E. Barton, grappling with it for more than four hundred large -pages in “The Soul of Abraham Lincoln.” It is a lengthy inquiry—the -rev. pastor, in truth, shows a good deal of the habitual garrulity of -his order—but it is never tedious. On the contrary, it is curious and -amusing, and I have read it with steady interest, including even the -appendices. Unluckily, the author, like his predecessors, fails to -finish the business before him. Was Lincoln a Christian? Did he believe -in the Divinity of Christ? I am left in doubt. He was very polite about -it, and very cautious, as befitted a politician in need of Christian -votes, but how much genuine conviction was in that politeness? And if -his occasional references to Christ were thus open to question, what -of his rather vague avowals of belief in a personal God and in the -immortality of the soul? Herndon and some of his other close friends -always maintained that he was an atheist, but Dr. Barton argues that -this atheism was simply disbelief in the idiotic Methodist and Baptist -dogmas of his time—that nine Christian churches out of ten, if he were -alive to-day, would admit him to their high privileges and prerogatives -without anything worse than a few warning coughs. As for me, I still -wonder. - -The growth of the Lincoln legend is truly amazing. He becomes the -American solar myth, the chief butt of American credulity and -sentimentality. Washington, of late years, has been perceptibly -humanized; every schoolboy now knows that he used to swear a good deal, -and was a sharp trader, and had a quick eye for a pretty ankle. But -meanwhile the varnishers and veneerers have been busily converting -Abe into a plaster saint, thus making him fit for adoration in the -chautauquas and Y. M. C. A.’s. All the popular pictures of him show -him in his robes of state, and wearing an expression fit for a man -about to be hanged. There is, so far as I know, not a single portrait -of him showing him smiling—and yet he must have cackled a good deal, -first and last: who ever heard of a storyteller who didn’t? Worse, -there is an obvious effort to pump all his human weaknesses out of -him, and so leave him a mere moral apparition, a sort of amalgam of -John Wesley and the Holy Ghost. What could be more absurd? Lincoln, -in point of fact, was a practical politician of long experience and -high talents, and by no means cursed with inconvenient ideals. On the -contrary, his career in the Illinois Legislature was that of a good -organization man, and he was more than once denounced by reformers. -Even his handling of the slavery question was that of a politician, not -that of a fanatic. Nothing alarmed him more than the suspicion that -he was an Abolitionist. Barton tells of an occasion when he actually -fled town to avoid meeting the issue squarely. A genuine Abolitionist -would have published the Emancipation Proclamation the day after the -first battle of Bull Run. But Lincoln waited until the time was more -favorable—until Lee had been hurled out of Pennsylvania, and, more -important still, until the political currents were safely running his -way. Always he was a wary fellow, both in his dealings with measures -and in his dealings with men. He knew how to keep his mouth shut. - -Nevertheless, it was his eloquence that probably brought him to his -great estate. Like William Jennings Bryan, he was a dark horse made -suddenly formidable by fortunate rhetoric. The Douglas debate launched -him, and the Cooper Union speech got him the presidency. This talent -for emotional utterance, this gift for making phrases that enchanted -the plain people, was an accomplishment of late growth. His early -speeches were mere empty fireworks—the childish rhodomontades of -the era. But in middle life he purged his style of ornament and it -became almost baldly simple—and it is for that simplicity that he -is remembered to-day. The Gettysburg speech is at once the shortest -and the most famous oration in American history. Put beside it, all -the whoopings of the Websters, Sumners and Everetts seem gaudy and -silly. It is eloquence brought to a pellucid and almost child-like -perfection—the highest emotion reduced to one graceful and -irresistible gesture. Nothing else precisely like it is to be found -in the whole range of oratory. Lincoln himself never even remotely -approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. - -But let us not forget that it is oratory, not logic; beauty, not -sense. Think of the argument in it! Put it into the cold words of -everyday! The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers -who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of -self-determination—“that government of the people, by the people, -for the people,” should not perish from the earth. It is difficult -to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle -actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates -who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What -was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else -than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, _i. e._, -of the people of the States? The Confederates went into battle an -absolutely free people; they came out with their freedom subject to the -supervision and vote of the rest of the country—and for nearly twenty -years that vote was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely any freedom -at all. Am I the first American to note the fundamental nonsensicality -of the Gettysburg address? If so, I plead my æsthetic joy in it in -amelioration of the sacrilege. - - - - -2 - -_Paul Elmer More_ - - -Nothing new is to be found in the latest volume of Paul Elmer More’s -Shelburne Essays. The learned author, undismayed by the winds of -anarchic doctrine that blow down his Princeton stovepipe, continues -to hold fast to the notions of his earliest devotion. He is still the -gallant champion sent against the Romantic Movement by the forces -of discipline and decorum. He is still the eloquent fugleman of the -Puritan ethic and æsthetic. In so massive a certainty, so resolute an -immovability there is something almost magnificent. These are somewhat -sad days for the exponents of that ancient correctness. The Goths -and the Huns are at the gate, and as they batter wildly they throw -dead cats, perfumed lingerie, tracts against predestination, and the -bound files of the _Nation_, the _Freeman_ and the _New Republic_ -over the fence. But the din does not flabbergast Dr. More. High above -the blood-bathed battlements there is a tower, of ivory within and -solid ferro-concrete without, and in its austere upper chamber he sits -undaunted, solemnly composing an elegy upon Jonathan Edwards, “the -greatest theologian and philosopher yet produced in this country.” - -Magnificent, indeed—and somehow charming. On days when I have no -nobler business I sometimes join the barbarians and help them to launch -their abominable bombs against the embattled blue-noses. It is, in -the main, fighting that is too easy, too Anglo-Saxon to be amusing. -Think of the decayed professors assembled by Dr. Franklin for the -_Profiteers’ Review;_ who could get any genuine thrill out of dropping -_them?_ They come out on crutches, and are as much afraid of what -is behind them as they are of what is in front of them. Facing all -the horrible artillery of Nineveh and Tyre, they arm themselves with -nothing worse than the pedagogical birch. The janissaries of Adolph -Ochs, the Anglo-Saxon supreme archon, are even easier. One has but to -blow a _shofar_, and down they go. Even Prof. Dr. Stuart P. Sherman is -no antagonist to delight a hard-boiled heretic. Sherman is at least -honestly American, of course, but the trouble with him is that he is -_too_ American. The Iowa hayseed remains in his hair; he can’t get rid -of the smell of the chautauqua; one inevitably sees in him a sort of -_reductio ad absurdum_ of his fundamental theory—to wit, the theory -that the test of an artist is whether he hated the Kaiser in 1917, and -plays his honorable part in Christian Endeavor, and prefers Coca-Cola -to Scharlachberger 1911, and has taken to heart the great lessons -of sex hygiene. Sherman is game, but he doesn’t offer sport in the -grand manner. Moreover, he has been showing sad signs of late of a -despairing heart: he tries to be ingratiating, and begins to hug in the -clinches. - -The really tempting quarry is More. To rout him out of his armored -tower, to get him out upon the glacis for a duel before both armies, to -bring him finally to the wager of battle—this would be an enterprise -to bemuse the most audacious and give pause to the most talented. More -has a solid stock of learning in his lockers; he is armed and outfitted -as none of the pollyannas who trail after him is armed and outfitted; -he is, perhaps, the nearest approach to a genuine scholar that we have -in America, God save us all! But there is simply no truculence in him, -no flair for debate, no lust to do execution upon his foes. His method -is wholly _ex parte._ Year after year he simply iterates and reiterates -his misty protests, seldom changing so much as a word. Between his -first volume and his last there is not the difference between Gog and -Magog. Steadily, ploddingly, vaguely, he continues to preach the gloomy -gospel of tightness and restraint. He was against “the electric thrill -of freer feeling” when he began, and he will be against it on that last -gray day—I hope it long post-dates my own hanging—when the ultimate -embalmer sneaks upon him with velvet tread, and they haul down the flag -to half-staff at Princeton, and the readers of the New York _Evening -Journal_ note that an obscure somebody named Paul E. More is dead. - - - - -3 - -_Madison Cawein_ - - -A vast and hefty tome celebrates this dead poet, solemnly issued by -his mourning friends in Louisville. The editor is Otto A. Rothert, -who confesses that he knew Cawein but a year or two, and never read -his poetry until after his death. The contributors include such local -_literati_ as Reuben Post Halleck, Leigh Gordon Giltner, Anna Blanche -McGill and Elvira S. Miller Slaughter. Most of the ladies gush over -the departed in the manner of high-school teachers paying tribute to -Plato, Montaigne or Dante Alighieri. His young son, seventeen years -old, contributes by far the most vivid and intelligent account of -him; it is, indeed, very well written, as, in a different way, is the -contribution of Charles Hamilton Musgrove, an old newspaper friend. -The ladies, as I hint, simply swoon and grow lyrical. But it is a -fascinating volume, all the same, and well worth the room it takes on -the shelf. Mr. Rothert starts off with what he calls a “picturography” -of Cawein—the poet’s father and mother in the raiment of 1865, the -coat-of-arms of his mother’s great-grand-father’s uncle, the house -which now stands on the site of the house in which he was born, the -rock spring from which he used to drink as a boy, a group showing him -with his three brothers, another showing him with one brother and -their cousin Fred, Cawein himself with sideboards, the houses he lived -in, the place where he worked, the walks he liked around Louisville, -his wife and baby, the hideous bust of him in the Louisville Public -Library, the church from which he was buried, his modest grave in Cave -Hill Cemetery—in brief, all the photographs that collect about a man -as he staggers through life, and entertain his ribald grandchildren -after he is gone. Then comes a treatise on the ancestry and youth of -the poet, then a collection of newspaper clippings about him, then -a gruesomely particular account of his death, then a fragment of -autobiography, then a selection from his singularly dull letters, then -some prose pieces from his pen, then the aforesaid tributes of his -neighbors, and finally a bibliography of his works, and an index to -them. - -As I say, a volume of fearful bulk and beam, but nevertheless full of -curious and interesting things. Cawein, of course, was not a poet of -the first rank, nor is it certain that he has any secure place in the -second rank, but in the midst of a great deal of obvious and feeble -stuff he undoubtedly wrote some nature lyrics of excellent quality. -The woods and the fields were his delight. He loved to roam through -them, observing the flowers, the birds, the tall trees, the shining -sky overhead, the green of Spring, the reds and browns of Autumn, the -still whites of Winter. There were times when he got his ecstasy into -words—when he wrote poems that were sound and beautiful. These poems -will not be forgotten; there will be no history of American literature -written for a hundred years that does not mention Madison Cawein. But -what will the literary historians make of the man himself? How will -they explain his possession, however fitfully, of the divine gift—his -genuine kinship with Wordsworth and Shelly? Certainly no more unlikely -candidate for the bays ever shinned up Parnassus. His father was a -quack doctor; his mother was a professional spiritualist; he himself, -for years and years, made a living as cashier in a gambling-house! -Could anything be more grotesque? Is it possible to imagine a more -improbable setting for a poet? Yet the facts are the facts, and Mr. -Rothert makes no attempt whatever to conceal them. Add a final touch -of the bizarre: Cawein fell over one morning while shaving in his -bathroom, and cracked his head on the bathtub, and after his death -there was a row over his life insurance. Mr. Rothert presents all of -the documents. The autopsy is described; the death certificate is -quoted.... A strange, strange tale, indeed! - - - - -4 - -_Frank Harris_ - - -Though, so far as I know, this Harris is a perfectly reputable man, -fearing God and obeying the laws, it is not to be gainsaid that a -certain flavor of the sinister hangs about his aspect. The first time -I ever enjoyed the honor of witnessing him, there bobbed up in my mind -(instantly put away as unworthy and unseemly) a memory of the handsome -dogs who used to chain shrieking virgins to railway tracks in the -innocent, pre-Ibsenish dramas of my youth, the while a couple of stage -hands imitated the rumble of the Empire State Express in the wings. -There was the same elegance of turn-out, the same black mustachios, the -same erect figure and lordly air, the same agate glitter in the eyes, -the same aloof and superior smile. A sightly fellow, by all the gods, -and one who obviously knew how to sneer. That afternoon, in fact, we -had a sneering match, and before it was over most of the great names in -the letters and politics of the time, _circa_ 1914, had been reduced -to faint hisses and ha-has.... Well, a sneerer has his good days and -his bad days. There are times when his gift gives him such comfort -that it can be matched only by God’s grace, and there are times when -it launches upon him such showers of darts that he is bound to feel a -few stings. Harris got the darts first, for the year that he came back -to his native land, after a generation of exile, was the year in which -Anglomania rose to the dignity of a national religion—and what he had -to say about the English, among whom he had lived since the early 80’s, -was chiefly of a very waspish and disconcerting character. Worse, he -not only said it, twirling his mustache defiantly; he also wrote it -down, and published it in a book. This book was full of shocks for the -rapt worshippers of the Motherland, and particularly for the literary -_Kanonendelicatessen_ who followed the pious leadership of Woodrow and -Ochs, Putnam and Roosevelt, Wister and Cyrus Curtis, young Reid and -Mrs. Jay. So they called a special meeting of the American Academy of -Arts and Letters, sang “God Save the King,” kissed the Union Jack, -and put Harris into Coventry. And there he remained for five or six -long years. The literary reviews never mentioned him. His books were -expunged from the minutes. When he was heard of at all, it was only in -whispers, and the general burden of those whispers was that he was in -the pay of the Kaiser, and plotting to garrot the Rev. Dr. William T. -Manning.... - -So down to 1921. Then the English, with characteristic lack of -delicacy, played a ghastly trick upon all those dutiful and -well-meaning colonists. That is to say, they suddenly forgave Harris -his criminal refusal to take their war buncombe seriously, exhumed him -from his long solitude among the Anglo-Ashkenazim, and began praising -him in rich, hearty terms as a literary gentleman of the first water, -and even as the chief adornment of American letters! The English -notices of his “Contemporary Portraits: Second Series” were really -quite amazing. The London _Times_ gave him two solid columns, and where -the _Times_ led, all the other great organs of English literary opinion -followed. The book itself was described as something extraordinary, a -piece of criticism full of shrewdness and originality, and the author -was treated with the utmost politeness.... One imagines the painful -sensation in the New York _Times_ office, the dismayed groups around -far-flung campus pumps, the special meetings of the Princeton, N. J., -and Urbana, Ill., American Legions, the secret conference between -the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the Ku Klux Klan. But -though there was tall talk by hot heads, nothing could be done. Say -“Wo!” and the dutiful jack-ass turns to the right; say “Gee!” and he -turns to the left. It is too much, of course, to ask him to cheer as -well as turn—but he nevertheless turns. Since 1921 I have heard no -more whispers against Harris from professors and Vigilantes. But on -two or three occasions, the subject coming up, I have heard him sneer -his master sneer, and each time my blood has run cold. - -Well, what is in him? My belief, frequently expressed, is that there -is a great deal. His “Oscar Wilde” is, by long odds, the best literary -biography ever written by an American—an astonishingly frank, -searching and vivid reconstruction of character—a piece of criticism -that makes all ordinary criticism seem professorial and lifeless. The -Comstocks, I need not say, tried to suppress it; a brilliant light -is thrown upon Harris by the fact that they failed ignominiously. -All the odds were in favor of the Comstocks; they had patriotism on -their side and the help of all the swine who flourished in those days; -nevertheless, Harris gave them a severe beating, and scared them half -to death. In brief, a man of the most extreme bellicosity, enterprise -and courage—a fellow whose ideas are expressed absolutely regardless -of tender feelings, whether genuine or bogus. In “The Man Shakespeare” -and “The Women of Shakespeare” he tackled the whole body of academic -English critics _en masse_—and routed them _en masse._ The two books, -marred perhaps by a too bombastic spirit, yet contain some of the -soundest, shrewdest and most convincing criticism of Shakespeare that -has ever been written. All the old hocus-pocus is thrown overboard. -There is an entirely new examination of the materials, and to the -business is brought a knowledge of the plays so ready and so vast that -that of even the most learned don begins to seem a mere smattering. -The same great grasp of facts and evidences is visible in the sketches -which make up the three volumes of “Contemporary Portraits.” What one -always gets out of them is a feeling that the man knows the men he is -writing about—that he not only knows what he sets down, but a great -deal more. There is here nothing of the cold correctness of the usual -literary “estimate.” Warts are not forgotten, whether of the nose or -of the immortal soul. The subject, beginning as a political shibboleth -or a row of books, gradually takes on all the colors of life, and then -begins to move, naturally and freely. I know of no more brilliant -evocations of personality in any literature—and most of them are -personalities of sharp flavor, for Harris, in his day, seems to have -known almost everybody worth knowing, and whoever he knew went into his -laboratory for vivisection. - -The man is thus a first-rate critic of his time, and what he has -written about his contemporaries is certain to condition the view of -them held in the future. What gives him his value in this difficult -field is, first of all and perhaps most important of all, his cynical -detachment—his capacity for viewing men and ideas objectively. In his -life, of course, there have been friendships and some of them have -been strong and long-continued, but when he writes it is with a sort -of surgical remoteness; as if the business in hand were vastly more -important than the man. He was lately protesting violently that he was -and is quite devoid of malice. Granted. But so is a surgeon. To write -of George Moore as he has written may be writing devoid of malice, but -nevertheless the effect is precisely that which would follow if some -malicious enemy were to drag poor George out of his celibate couch in -the dead of night, and chase him naked down Shaftsbury avenue. The -thing is appallingly revelatory—and I believe that it is true. The -Moore that he depicts may not be absolutely the real Moore, but he -is unquestionably far nearer to the real Moore than the Moore of the -Moore books. The method, of course, has its defects. Harris is far more -interested, fundamentally, in men than in their ideas: the catholic -sweep of his “Contemporary Portraits” proves it. In consequence his -judgments of books are often colored by his opinions of their authors. -He dislikes Mark Twain as his own antithesis: a trimmer and poltroon. -_Ergo_, “A Connecticut Yankee” is drivel, which leads us, as Euclid -hath it, to absurdity. He once had a row with Dreiser. _Ergo_, “The -Titan” is nonsense, which is itself nonsense. But I know of no critic -who is wholly free from that quite human weakness. In the academic -bunkophagi it is everything; they are willing to swallow anything so -long as the author is sound upon the League of Nations. It seems to me -that such aberrations are rarer in Harris than in most. He may have -violent prejudices, but it is seldom that they play upon a man who is -honest. - -I judge from his frequent discussions of himself—he is happily free -from the vanity of modesty—that the pets of his secret heart are his -ventures into fiction, and especially, “The Bomb” and “Montes the -Matador.” The latter has been greatly praised by Arnold Bennett, who -has also praised Leonard Merrick. I have read it four or five times, -and always with enjoyment. It is a powerful and adept tale; well -constructed and beautifully written; it recalls some of the best of the -shorter stories of Thomas Hardy. Alongside it one might range half a -dozen other Harris stories—all of them carefully put together, every -one the work of a very skillful journeyman. But despite Harris, the -authentic Harris is not the story-writer: he has talents, of course, -but it would be absurd to put “Montes the Matador” beside “Heart of -Darkness.” In “Love in Youth” he descends to unmistakable fluff and -feebleness. The real Harris is the author of the Wilde volumes, of the -two books about Shakespeare, of the three volumes of “Contemporary -Portraits.” Here there is stuff that lifts itself clearly and -brilliantly above the general—criticism that has a terrific vividness -and plausibility, and all the gusto that the professors can never pump -up. Harris makes his opinions not only interesting, but important. -What he has to say always seems novel, ingenious, and true. Here is the -chief life-work of an American who, when all values are reckoned up, -will be found to have been a sound artist and an extremely intelligent, -courageous and original man—and infinitely the superior of the poor -dolts who once tried so childishly to dispose of him. - - - - -5 - -_Havelock Ellis_ - - -If the test of the personal culture of a man be the degree of his -freedom from the banal ideas and childish emotions which move the -great masses of men, then Havelock Ellis is undoubtedly the most -civilized Englishman of his generation. He is a man of the soundest -and widest learning, but it is not his positive learning that gives -him distinction; it is his profound and implacable skepticism, his -penetrating eye for the transient, the disingenuous, and the shoddy. -So unconditioned a skepticism, it must be plain, is not an English -habit. The average Englishman of science, though he may challenge the -Continentals within his speciality, is only too apt to sink to the -level of a politician, a green grocer, or a suburban clergyman outside -it. The examples of Wallace, Crookes, and Lodge are anything but -isolated. Scratch an English naturalist and you are likely to discover -a spiritualist; take an English metaphysician to where the band is -playing, and if he begins to snuffle patriotically you need not be -surprised. The late war uncovered this weakness in a wholesale manner. -The English _Gelehrten_, as a class, not only stood by their country; -they also stood by the Hon. David Lloyd-George, the _Daily Mail_, and -the mob in Trafalgar Square. Unluckily, the asinine manifestations -ensuing—for instance, the “proofs” of the eminent Oxford philologist -that the Germans had never contributed anything to philology—are -not to be described with good grace by an American, for they were -far surpassed on this side of the water. England at least had Ellis, -with Bertrand Russell, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, and a few others in the -background. We had, on that plane, no one. - -Ellis, it seems to me, stood above all the rest, and precisely because -his dissent from the prevailing imbecilities was quite devoid of -emotion and had nothing in it of brummagem moral purpose. Too many of -the heretics of the time were simply orthodox witch-hunters off on an -unaccustomed tangent. In their disorderly indignation they matched the -regular professors; it was only in the objects of their ranting that -they differed. But Ellis kept his head throughout. An Englishman of -the oldest native stock, an unapologetic lover of English scenes and -English ways, an unshaken believer in the essential soundness and -high historical destiny of his people, he simply stood aside from the -current clown-show and waited in patience for sense and decency to be -restored. His “Impressions and Comments,” the record of his war-time -reflections, is not without its note of melancholy; it was hard to -look on without depression. But for the man of genuine culture there -were at least some resources remaining within himself, and what gives -this volume its chief value is its picture of how such a man made use -of them. Ellis, facing the mob unleashed, turned to concerns and ideas -beyond its comprehension—to the humanism that stands above all such -sordid conflicts. There is something almost of Renaissance dignity in -his chronicle of his speculations. The man that emerges is not a mere -scholar immured in a cell, but a man of the world superior to his race -and his time—a philosopher viewing the childish passion of lesser men -disdainfully and yet not too remote to understand it, and even to see -in it a certain cosmic use. A fine air blows through the book. It takes -the reader into the company of one whose mind is a rich library and -whose manner is that of a gentleman. He is the complete anti-Kipling. -In him the Huxleian tradition comes to full flower. - -His discourse ranges from Beethoven to Comstockery and from Spanish -architecture to the charm of the English village. The extent of the -man’s knowledge is really quite appalling. His primary work in the -world has been that of a psychologist, and in particular he has -brought a great erudition and an extraordinarily sound judgment to the -vexatious problems of the psychology of sex, but that professional -concern, extending over so many years, has not prevented him from -entering a dozen other domains of speculation, nor has it dulled his -sensitiveness to beauty nor his capacity to evoke it. His writing was -never better than in this volume. His style, especially towards the -end, takes on a sort of glowing clarity. It is English that is as -transparent as a crystal, and yet it is English that is full of fine -colors and cadences. There could be no better investiture for the -questionings and conclusions of so original, so curious, so learned, -and, above all, so sound and hearty a man. - - - - -IX. THE NATURE OF LIBERTY - - -Every time an officer of the constabulary, in the execution of his just -and awful powers under American law, produces a compound fracture of -the occiput of some citizen in his custody, with hemorrhage, shock, -coma and death, there comes a feeble, falsetto protest from specialists -in human liberty. Is it a fact without significance that this protest -is never supported by the great body of American freemen, setting aside -the actual heirs and creditors of the victim? I think not. Here, as -usual, public opinion is very realistic. It does not rise against the -policeman for the plain and simple reason that it does not question his -right to do what he has done. Policemen are not given night-sticks for -ornament. They are given them for the purpose of cracking the skulls of -the recalcitrant plain people, Democrats and Republicans alike. When -they execute that high duty they are palpably within their rights. - -The specialists aforesaid are the same fanatics who shake the air with -sobs every time the Postmaster-General of the United States bars a -periodical from the mails because its ideas do not please him, and -every time some poor Russian is deported for reading Karl Marx, and -every time a Prohibition enforcement officer murders a bootlegger who -resists his levies, and every time agents of the Department of Justice -throw an Italian out of the window, and every time the Ku Klux Klan or -the American Legion tars and feathers a Socialist evangelist. In brief, -they are Radicals, and to scratch one with a pitchfork is to expose a -Bolshevik. They are men standing in contempt of American institutions -and in enmity to American idealism. And their evil principles are no -less offensive to right-thinking and red-blooded Americans when they -are United States Senators or editors of wealthy newspapers than when -they are degraded I. W. W.’s throwing dead cats and infernal machines -into meetings of the Rotary Club. - -What ails them primarily is the ignorant and uncritical monomania that -afflicts every sort of fanatic, at all times and everywhere. Having -mastered with their limited faculties the theoretical principles set -forth in the Bill of Rights, they work themselves into a passionate -conviction that those principles are identical with the rules of law -and justice, and ought to be enforced literally, and without the -slightest regard for circumstance and expediency. It is precisely as if -a High Church rector, accidentally looking into the Book of Chronicles, -and especially Chapter II, should suddenly issue a mandate from his -pulpit ordering his parishioners, on penalty of excommunication and the -fires of hell, to follow exactly the example set forth, to wit: “And -Jesse begat his first born Eliab, and Abinadab the second, and Shimma -the third, Netheneel the fourth, Raddai the fifth, Ozen the sixth, -David the seventh,” and so on. It might be very sound theoretical -theology, but it would surely be out of harmony with modern ideas, and -the rev. gentleman would be extremely lucky if the bishop did not give -him 10 days in the diocesan hoosegow. - -So with the Bill of Rights. As adopted by the Fathers of the Republic, -it was gross, crude, inelastic, a bit fanciful and transcendental. -It specified the rights of a citizen, but it said nothing whatever -about his duties. Since then, by the orderly processes of legislative -science and by the even more subtle and beautiful devices of juridic -art, it has been kneaded and mellowed into a far greater pliability -and reasonableness. On the one hand, the citizen still retains the -great privilege of membership in the most superb free nation ever -witnessed on this earth. On the other hand, as a result of countless -shrewd enactments and sagacious decisions, his natural lusts and -appetites are held in laudable check, and he is thus kept in order and -decorum. No artificial impediment stands in the way of his highest -aspiration. He may become anything, including even a policeman. But -once a policeman, he is protected by the legislative and judicial arms -in the peculiar rights and prerogatives that go with his high office, -including especially the right to jug the laity at his will, to sweat -and mug them, to subject them to the third degree, and to subdue their -resistance by beating out their brains. Those who are unaware of this -are simply ignorant of the basic principles of American jurisprudence, -as they have been exposed times without number by the courts of first -instance and ratified in lofty terms by the Supreme Court of the -United States. The one aim of the controlling decisions, magnificently -attained, is to safeguard public order and the public security, and -to substitute a judicial process for the inchoate and dangerous -interaction of discordant egos. - -Let us imagine an example. You are, say, a peaceable citizen on your -way home from your place of employment. A police sergeant, detecting -you in the crowd, approaches you, lays his hand on your collar, and -informs you that you are under arrest for killing a trolley conductor -in Altoona, Pa., in 1917. Amazed by the accusation, you decide hastily -that the officer has lost his wits, and take to your heels. He pursues -you. You continue to run. He draws his revolver and fires at you. He -misses you. He fires again and fetches you in the leg. You fall and he -is upon you. You prepare to resist his apparently maniacal assault. He -beats you into insensibility with his espantoon, and drags you to the -patrol box. - -Arrived at the watch house you are locked in a room with five -detectives, and for six hours they question you with subtle art. -You grow angry—perhaps robbed of your customary politeness by the -throbbing in your head and leg—and answer tartly. They knock you down. -Having failed to wring a confession from you, they lock you in a cell, -and leave you there all night. The next day you are taken to police -headquarters, your photograph is made for the Rogues’ Gallery, and a -print is duly deposited in the section labeled “Murderers.” You are -then carted to jail and locked up again. There you remain until the -trolley conductor’s wife comes down from Altoona to identify you. She -astonishes the police by saying that you are not the man. The actual -murderer, it appears, was an Italian. After holding you a day or two -longer, to search your house for stills, audit your income tax returns, -and investigate the pre-marital chastity of your wife, they let you go. - -You are naturally somewhat irritated by your experience and perhaps -your wife urges you to seek redress. Well, what are your remedies? If -you are a firebrand, you reach out absurdly for those of a preposterous -nature: the instant jailing of the sergeant, the dismissal of the -Police Commissioner, the release of Mooney, a fair trial for Sacco and -Vanzetti, free trade with Russia, One Big Union. But if you are a -100 per cent. American and respect the laws and institutions of your -country, you send for your solicitor—and at once he shows you just how -far your rights go, and where they end. You cannot cause the arrest of -the sergeant, for you resisted him when he attempted to arrest you, -and when you resisted him he acquired an instant right to take you -by force. You cannot proceed against him for accusing you falsely, -for he has a right to make summary arrests for felony, and the courts -have many times decided that a public officer, so long as he cannot be -charged with corruption or malice, is not liable for errors of judgment -made in the execution of his sworn duty. You cannot get the detectives -on the mat, for when they questioned you you were a prisoner accused of -murder, and it was their duty and their right to do so. You cannot sue -the turnkey at the watch house or the warden at the jail for locking -you up, for they received your body, as the law says, in a lawful and -regular manner, and would have been liable to penalty if they had -turned you loose. - -But have you no redress whatever, no rights at all? Certainly you have -a right, and the courts have jealously guarded it. You have a clear -right, guaranteed to you under the Constitution, to go into a court -of equity and apply for a mandamus requiring the _Polizei_ to cease -forthwith to expose your portrait in the Rogues’ Gallery among the -murderers. This is your inalienable right, and no man or men on earth -can take it away from you. You cannot prevent them cherishing your -portrait in their secret files, but you can get an order commanding -them to refrain forever from exposing it to the gaze of idle visitors, -and if you can introduce yourself unseen into their studio and prove -that they disregard that order, you can have them haled into court for -contempt and fined by the learned judge. - -Thus the law, statute, common and case, protects the free American -against injustice. It is ignorance of that subtle and perfect -process and not any special love of liberty _per se_ that causes -radicals of anti-American kidney to rage every time an officer of the -_gendarmerie_, in the simple execution of his duty, knocks a citizen -in the head. The _gendarme_ plainly has an inherent and inalienable -right to knock him in the head: it is an essential part of his general -prerogative as a sworn officer of the public peace and a representative -of the sovereign power of the state. He may, true enough, exercise that -prerogative in a manner liable to challenge on the ground that it is -imprudent and lacking in sound judgment. On such questions reasonable -men may differ. But it must be obvious that the sane and decorous way -to settle differences of opinion of that sort is not by public outcry -and florid appeals to sentimentality, not by ill-disguised playing to -class consciousness and anti-social prejudice, but by an orderly resort -to the checks and remedies superimposed upon the Bill of Rights by the -calm deliberation and austere logic of the courts of equity. - -The law protects the citizen. But to get its protection he must show -due respect for its wise and delicate processes. - - - - -X. THE NOVEL - - -An unmistakable flavor of effeminacy hangs about the novel, however -heroic its content. Even in the gaudy tales of a Rex Beach, with their -bold projections of the Freudian dreams of go-getters, ice-wagon -drivers, Ku Kluxers, Rotary Club presidents and other such carnivora, -there is a subtle something that suggests water-color painting, -lip-sticks and bon-bons. Well, why not? When the novel, in the form -that we know to-day, arose in Spain toward the end of the sixteenth -century, it was aimed very frankly at the emerging women of the -Castilian seraglios—women who were gradually emancipating themselves -from the _Küche-Kinder-Kirche_ darkness of the later Middle Ages, but -had not yet come to anything even remotely approaching the worldly -experience and intellectual curiosity of men. They could now read and -they liked to practice the art, but the grand literature of the time -was too profound for them, and too somber. So literary confectioners -undertook stuff that would be more to their taste, and the modern novel -was born. A single plot served most of these confectioners; it became -and remains one of the conventions of the form. Man and maid meet, -love, and proceed to kiss—but the rest must wait. The buss remains -chaste through long and harrowing chapters; not until the very last -scene do fate and Holy Church license anything more. This plot, as I -say, still serves, and Arnold Bennett is authority for the doctrine -that it is the safest known. Its appeal is patently to the feminine -fancy, not to the masculine. Women like to be wooed endlessly before -they loose their girdles and are wooed no more. But a man, when he -finds a damsel to his taste, is eager to get through the preliminary -hocus-pocus as soon as possible. - -That women are still the chief readers of novels is known to every book -clerk: Joseph Hergesheimer, a little while back, was bemoaning the -fact as a curse to his craft. What is less often noted is that women -themselves, as they have gradually become fully literate, have forced -their way to the front as makers of the stuff they feed on, and that -they show signs of ousting the men, soon or late, from the business. -Save in the department of lyrical verse, which demands no organization -of ideas but only fluency of feeling, they have nowhere else done -serious work in literature. There is no epic poem of any solid value -by a woman, dead or alive; and no drama, whether comedy or tragedy; -and no work of metaphysical speculation; and no history; and no basic -document in any other realm of thought. In criticism, whether of works -of art or of the ideas underlying them, few women have ever got beyond -the _Schwärmerei_ of Madame de Staël’s “L’Allemagne.” In the essay, -the most competent woman barely surpasses the average Fleet Street -_causerie_ hack or Harvard professor. But in the novel the ladies have -stood on a level with even the most accomplished men since the day -of Jane Austen, and not only in Anglo-Saxondom, but also everywhere -else—save perhaps in Russia. To-day it would be difficult to think of -a contemporary German novelist of sounder dignity than Clara Viebig, -Helene Böhlau or Ricarda Huch, or a Scandinavian novelist clearly -above Selma Lagerlöf, or an Italian above Mathilda Serao, or, for that -matter, more than two or three living Englishmen above May Sinclair, -or more than two Americans equal to Willa Cather. Not only are women -writing novels quite as good as those written by men—setting aside, of -course, a few miraculous pieces by such fellows as Joseph Conrad: most -of them not really novels at all, but metaphysical sonatas disguised -as romances—; they are actually surpassing men in their experimental -development of the novel form. I do not believe that either Evelyn -Scott’s “The Narrow House” or May Sinclair’s “Life and Death of Harriet -Frean” has the depth and beam of, say, Dreiser’s “Jennie Gerhardt” or -Arnold Bennett’s “Old Wives’ Tale,” but it is certainly to be argued -plausibly that both books show a far greater venturesomeness and a -far finer virtuosity in the novel form—that both seek to free that -form from artificialities which Dreiser and Bennett seem to be almost -unaware of. When men exhibit any discontent with those artificialities -it usually takes the shape of a vain and uncouth revolt against the -whole inner spirit of the novel—that is, against the characteristics -which make it what it is. Their lusher imagination tempts them to try -to convert it into something that it isn’t—for example, an epic, a -political document, or a philosophical work. This fact explains, in -one direction, such dialectical parables as Dreiser’s “The ‘Genius,’” -H. G. Wells’ “Joan and Peter” and Upton Sinclair’s “King Coal,” and, -in a quite different direction, such rhapsodies as Cabell’s “Jurgen,” -Meredith’s “The Shaving of Shagpat” and Jacob Wassermann’s “The World’s -Illusion.” These things are novels only in the very limited sense -that Beethoven’s “Vittoria” and Goldmarck’s “Ländliche Hochzeit” are -symphonies. Their chief purpose is not that of prose fiction; it is -either that of argumentation or that of poetry. The women novelists, -with very few exceptions, are far more careful to remain within the -legitimate bounds of the form; they do not often abandon representation -to exhort or exult. Miss Cather’s “My Antonia” shows a great deal -of originality in its method; the story it tells is certainly not a -conventional one, nor is it told in a conventional way. But it remains -a novel none the less, and as clearly so, in fact, as “The Ordeal of -Richard Feverel” or “Robinson Crusoe.” - -Much exertion of the laryngeal and respiratory muscles is wasted upon -a discussion of the differences between realistic novels and romantic -novels. As a matter of fact, every authentic novel is realistic in -its method, however fantastic it may be in its fable. The primary aim -of the novel, at all times and everywhere, is the representation of -human beings at their follies and villainies, and no other art form -clings to that aim so faithfully. It sets forth, not what might be -true, or what ought to be true, but what actually _is_ true. This is -obviously not the case with poetry. Poetry is the product of an effort -to invent a world appreciably better than the one we live in; its -essence is not the representation of the facts, but the deliberate -concealment and denial of the facts. As for the drama, it vacillates, -and if it touches the novel on one side it also touches the epic on the -other. But the novel is concerned solely with human nature as it is -practically revealed and with human experience as men actually know it. -If it departs from that representational fidelity ever so slightly, it -becomes to that extent a bad novel; if it departs violently it ceases -to be a novel at all. Cabell, who shows all the critical deficiencies -of a sound artist, is one who has spent a good deal of time questioning -the uses of realism. Yet it is a plain fact that his own stature as an -artist depends almost wholly upon his capacity for accurate observation -and realistic representation. The stories in “The Line of Love,” though -they may appear superficially to be excessively romantic, really owe -all of their charm to their pungent realism. The pleasure they give is -the pleasure of recognition; one somehow delights in seeing a mediæval -baron acting precisely like a New York stockbroker. As for “Jurgen,” it -is as realistic in manner as Zola’s “La Terre,” despite its grotesque -fable and its burden of political, theological and epistemological -ideas. No one not an idiot would mistake the dialogue between Jurgen -and Queen Guinevere’s father for romantic, in the sense that Kipling’s -“Mandalay” is romantic; it is actually as mordantly realistic as the -dialogue between Nora and Helmer in the last act of “A Doll’s House.” - -It is my contention that women succeed in the novel—and that they -will succeed even more strikingly as they gradually throw off the -inhibitions that have hitherto cobwebbed their minds—simply because -they are better fitted for this realistic representation than -men—because they see the facts of life more sharply, and are less -distracted by moony dreams. Women seldom have the pathological -faculty vaguely called imagination. One doesn’t often hear of -them groaning over colossal bones in their sleep, as dogs do, or -constructing heavenly hierarchies or political Utopias, as men do. -Their concern is always with things of more objective substance—roofs, -meals, rent, clothes, the birth and upbringing of children. They are, -I believe, generally happier than men, if only because the demands -they make of life are more moderate and less romantic. The chief pain -that a man normally suffers in his progress through this vale is that -of disillusionment; the chief pain that a woman suffers is that of -parturition. There is enormous significance in the difference. The -first is artificial and self-inflicted; the second is natural and -unescapable. The psychological history of the differentiation I need -not go into here: its springs lie obviously in the greater physical -strength of man and his freedom from child-bearing, and in the larger -mobility and capacity for adventure that go therewith. A man dreams -of Utopias simply because he feels himself free to construct them; a -woman must keep house. In late years, to be sure, she has toyed with -the idea of escaping that necessity, but I shall not bore you with -arguments showing that she never will. So long as children are brought -into the world and made ready for the trenches, the sweat-shops and -the gallows by the laborious method ordained of God she will never be -quite as free to roam and dream as man is. It is only a small minority -of her sex who cherish a contrary expectation, and this minority, -though anatomically female, is spiritually male. Show me a woman who -has visions comparable, say, to those of Swedenborg, Woodrow Wilson, -Strindberg or Dr. Ghandi, and I’ll show you a woman who is a very -powerful anaphrodisiac. - -Thus women, by their enforced preoccupation with the harsh facts of -life, are extremely well fitted to write novels, which must deal with -the facts or nothing. What they need for the practical business, in -addition, falls under two heads. First, they need enough sense of -social security to make them free to set down what they see. Secondly, -they need the modest technical skill, the formal mastery of words and -ideas, necessary to do it. The latter, I believe, they have had ever -since they learned to read and write, say three hundred years ago; it -comes to them more readily than to men, and is exercised with greater -ease. The former they are fast acquiring. In the days of Aphra Behn -and Ann Radcliffe it was almost as scandalous for a woman to put her -observations and notions into print as it was for her to show her -legs; even in the days of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë the thing -was regarded as decidedly unladylike. But now, within certain limits, -she is free to print whatever she pleases, and before long even those -surviving limits will be obliterated. If I live to the year 1950 I -expect to see a novel by a women that will describe a typical marriage -under Christianity, from the woman’s standpoint, as realistically as -it is treated from the man’s standpoint in Upton Sinclair’s “Love’s -Pilgrimage.” That novel, I venture to predict, will be a cuckoo. At -one stroke it will demolish superstitions that have prevailed in the -Western World since the fall of the Roman Empire. It will seem harsh, -but it will be true. And, being true, it will be a good novel. There -can be no good one that is not true. - -What ailed the women novelists, until very recently, was a lingering -ladyism—a childish prudery inherited from their mothers. I believe -that it is being rapidly thrown off; indeed, one often sees a concrete -woman novelist shedding it. I give you two obvious examples: Zona Gale -and Willa Cather. Miss Gale started out by trying to put into novels -the conventional prettiness that is esteemed along the Main Streets -of her native Wisconsin. She had skill and did it well, and so she -won a good deal of popular success. But her work was intrinsically as -worthless as a treatise on international politics by the Hon. Warren -Gamaliel Harding or a tract on the duties of a soldier and a gentleman -by a state president of the American Legion. Then, of a sudden, for -some reason quite unknown to the deponent, she threw off all that -flabby artificiality, and began describing the people about her as -they really were. The result was a second success even more pronounced -than her first, and on a palpably higher level. The career of Miss -Cather has covered less ground, for she began far above Main Street. -What she tried to do at the start was to imitate the superficial -sophistication of Edith Wharton and Henry James—a deceptive thing, -apparently realistic in essence, but actually as conventional as table -manners or the professional buffooneries of a fashionable rector. -Miss Cather had extraordinary skill as a writer, and so her imitation -was scarcely to be distinguished from the original, but in the course -of time she began to be aware of its hollowness. Then she turned to -first-hand representation—to pictures of the people she actually -knew. There ensued a series of novels that rose step by step to the -very distinguished quality of “My Antonia.” That fine piece is a great -deal more than simply a good novel. It is a document in the history of -American literature. It proves, once and for all time, that accurate -representation is not, as the campus critics of Dreiser seem to think, -inimical to beauty. It proves, on the contrary, that the most careful -and penetrating representation is itself the source of a rare and -wonderful beauty. No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or -woman, is one-half so beautiful as “My Antonia.” - -As I have said, the novel, in the United States as elsewhere, -still radiates an aroma of effeminacy, in the conventional sense. -Specifically, it deals too monotonously with the varieties of human -transactions which chiefly interest the unintelligent women who are -its chief patrons and the scarcely less intelligent women who, until -recently, were among its chief commercial manufacturers, to wit, the -transactions that revolve around the ensnarement of men by women—the -puerile tricks and conflicts of what is absurdly called romantic -love. But I believe that the women novelists, as they emerge into the -fullness of skill, will throw overboard all that old baggage, and leave -its toting to such male artisans as Chambers, Beach, Coningsby Dawson -and Emerson Hough, as they have already left the whole flag-waving and -“red-blooded” buncombe. True enough, the snaring of men will remain the -principal business of women in this world for many generations, but it -would be absurd to say that intelligent women, even to-day, view it -romantically—that is, as it is viewed by bad novelists. They see it -realistically, and they see it, not as an end in itself, but as a means -to other ends. It is, speaking generally, after she has got her man -that a woman begins to live. The novel of the future, I believe, will -show her thus living. It will depict the intricate complex of forces -that conditions her life and generates her ideas, and it will show, -against a background of actuality, her conduct in the eternal struggle -between her aspiration and her destiny. Women, as I have argued, are -not normally harassed by the grandiose and otiose visions that inflame -the gizzards of men, but they too discover inevitably that life is a -conflict, and that it is the harsh fate of _Homo sapiens_ to get the -worst of it. I should like to read a “Main Street” by an articulate -Carol Kennicott, or a “Titan” by one of Cowperwood’s mistresses, or -a “Cytherea” by a Fanny Randon—or a Savina Grove! It would be sweet -stuff, indeed.... And it will come. - - - - -XI. THE FORWARD-LOOKER - - -When the history of the late years in America is written, I suspect -that their grandest, gaudiest gifts to _Kultur_ will be found in the -incomparable twins: the right-thinker and the forward-looker. No other -nation can match them, at any weight. The right-thinker is privy to all -God’s wishes, and even whims; the forward-looker is the heir to all -His promises to the righteous. The former is never wrong; the latter -is never despairing. Sometimes the two are amalgamated into one man, -and we have a Bryan, a Wilson, a Dr. Frank Crane. But more often there -is a division: the forward-looker thinks wrong, and the right-thinker -looks backward. I give you Upton Sinclair and Nicholas Murray Butler -as examples. Butler is an absolute masterpiece of correct thought; in -his whole life, so far as human records show, he has not cherished a -single fancy that might not have been voiced by a Fifth Avenue rector -or spread upon the editorial page of the New York _Times._ But he has -no vision, alas, alas! All the revolutionary inventions for lifting up -humanity leave him cold. He is against them all, from the initiative -and referendum to birth control, and from Fletcherism to osteopathy. -Now turn to Sinclair. He believes in every one of them, however daring -and fantoddish; he grasps and gobbles all the new ones the instant they -are announced. But the man simply cannot think right. He is wrong on -politics, on economics, and on theology. He glories in and is intensely -vain of his wrongness. Let but a new article of correct American -thought get itself stated by the constituted ecclesiastical and secular -authorities—by Bishop Manning, or Judge Gary, or Butler, or Adolph -Ochs, or Dr. Fabian Franklin, or Otto Kahn, or Dr. Stephen S. Wise, -or Roger W. Babson, or any other such inspired omphalist—and he is -against it almost before it is stated. - -On the whole, as a neutral in such matters, I prefer the forward-looker -to the right-thinker, if only because he shows more courage and -originality. It takes nothing save lack of humor to believe what -Butler, or Ochs, or Bishop Manning believes, but it takes long practice -and a considerable natural gift to get down the beliefs of Sinclair. -I remember with great joy the magazine that he used to issue during -the war. In the very first issue he advocated Socialism, the single -tax, birth control, communism, the League of Nations, the conscription -of wealth, government ownership of coal mines, sex hygiene and free -trade. In the next issue he added the recall of judges, Fletcherism, -the Gary system, the Montessori method, paper-bag cookery, war gardens -and the budget system. In the third he came out for sex hygiene, one -big union, the initiative and referendum, the city manager plan, -chiropractic and Esperanto. In the fourth he went to the direct -primary, fasting, the Third International, a federal divorce law, free -motherhood, hot lunches for school children, Prohibition, the vice -crusade, _Expressionismus_, the government control of newspapers, -deep breathing, international courts, the Fourteen Points, freedom -for the Armenians, the limitation of campaign expenditures, the merit -system, the abolition of the New York Stock Exchange, psychoanalysis, -crystal-gazing, the Little Theater movement, the recognition of Mexico, -_vers libre_, old age pensions, unemployment insurance, cooperative -stores, the endowment of motherhood, the Americanization of the -immigrant, mental telepathy, the abolition of grade crossings, federal -labor exchanges, profit-sharing in industry, a prohibitive tax on Poms, -the clean-up-paint-up campaign, relief for the Jews, osteopathy, mental -mastery, and the twilight sleep. And so on, and so on. Once I had got -into the swing of the Sinclair monthly I found that I could dispense -with at least twenty other journals of the uplift. When he abandoned -it I had to subscribe for them anew, and the gravel has stuck in my -craw ever since. - -In the first volume of his personal philosophy, “The Book of Life: -Mind and Body,” he is stopped from displaying whole categories of his -ideas, for his subject is not man the political and economic machine, -but man and mammal. Nevertheless, his characteristic hospitality to new -revelations is abundantly visible. What does the mind suggest? The mind -suggests its dark and fascinating functions and powers, some of them -very recent. There is, for example, psychoanalysis. There is mental -telepathy. There is crystal-gazing. There is double personality. Out -of each springs a scheme for the uplift of the race—in each there is -something for a forward-looker to get his teeth into. And if mind, then -why not also spirit? Here even a forward-looker may hesitate; here, -in fact, Sinclair himself hesitates. The whole field of spiritism is -barred to him by his theological heterodoxy; if he admits that man has -an immortal soul, he may also have to admit that the soul can suffer in -hell. Thus even forward-looking may turn upon and devour itself. But if -the meadow wherein spooks and poltergeists disport is closed, it is at -least possible to peep over the fence. Sinclair sees materializations -in dark rooms, under red, satanic lights. He is, perhaps, not yet -convinced, but he is looking pretty hard. Let a ghostly hand reach out -and grab him, and he will be over the fence! The body is easier. The -new inventions for dealing with it are innumerable and irresistible; no -forward-looker can fail to succumb to at least some of them. Sinclair -teeters dizzily. On the one hand he stoutly defends surgery—that -is, provided the patient is allowed to make his own diagnosis!—on -the other hand he is hot for fasting, teetotalism, and the avoidance -of drugs, coffee and tobacco, and he begins to flirt with osteopathy -and chiropractic. More, he has discovered a new revelation in San -Francisco—a system of diagnosis and therapeutics, still hooted at -by the Medical Trust, whereby the exact location of a cancer may -be determined by examining a few drops of the patient’s blood, and -syphilis may be cured by vibrations, and whereby, most curious of all, -it can be established that odd numbers, written on a sheet of paper, -are full of negative electricity, and even numbers are full of positive -electricity. - -The book is written with great confidence and address, and has a good -deal of shrewdness mixed with its credulities; few licensed medical -practitioners could give you better advice. But it is less interesting -than its author, or, indeed, than forward-lookers in general. Of all -the known orders of men they fascinate me the most. I spend whole -days reading their pronunciamentos, and am an expert in the ebb and -flow of their singularly bizarre ideas. As I have said, I have never -encountered one who believed in but one sure cure for all the sorrows -of the world, and let it go at that. Nay, even the most timorous -of them gives his full faith and credit to at least two. Turn, for -example, to the official list of eminent single taxers issued by the -Joseph Fels Fund. I defy you to find one solitary man on it who stops -with the single tax. There is David Starr Jordan: he is also one of -the great whales of pacifism. There is B. O. Flower: he is the emperor -of anti-vaccinationists. There is Carrie Chapman Catt: she is hot for -every peruna that the suffragettes brew. There is W. S. U’Ren: he is in -general practise as a messiah. There is Hamlin Garland: he also chases -spooks. There is Jane Addams: vice crusader, pacifist, suffragist, -settlement worker. There is Prof. Dr. Scott Nearing: Socialist and -martyr. There is Newt Baker: heir of the Wilsonian idealism. There -is Gifford Pinchot: conservationist, Prohibitionist, Bull Moose, -and professional Good Citizen. There is Judge Ben B. Lindsey: -forward-looking’s Jack Horner, forever sticking his thumb into new -pies. I could run the list to columns, but no need. You know the type -as well as I do. Give the forward-looker the direct primary, and he -demands the short ballot. Give him the initiative and referendum, and -he bawls for the recall of judges. Give him Christian Science, and he -proceeds to the swamis and yogis. Give him the Mann Act, and he wants -laws providing for the castration of fornicators. Give him Prohibition, -and he launches a new crusade against cigarettes, coffee, jazz, and -custard pies. - -I have a wide acquaintance among such sad, mad, glad folks, and know -some of them very well. It is my belief that the majority of them are -absolutely honest—that they believe as fully in their baroque gospels -as I believe in the dishonesty of politicians—that their myriad and -amazing faiths sit upon them as heavily as the fear of hell sits upon a -Methodist deacon who has degraded the vestry-room to carnal uses. All -that may be justly said against them is that they are chronically full -of hope, and hence chronically uneasy and indignant—that they belong -to the less sinful and comfortable of the two grand divisions of the -human race. Call them the tender-minded, as the late William James used -to do, and you have pretty well described them. They are, on the one -hand, pathologically sensitive to the sorrows of the world, and, on -the other hand, pathologically susceptible to the eloquence of quacks. -What seems to lie in all of them is the doctrine that evils so vast as -those they see about them _must_ and _will_ be laid—that it would be -an insult to a just God to think of them as permanent and irremediable. -This notion, I believe, is at the bottom of much of the current -pathetic faith in Prohibition. The thing itself is obviously a colossal -failure—that is, when viewed calmly and realistically. It has not only -not cured the rum evil in the United States; it has plainly made that -evil five times as bad as it ever was before. But to confess that bald -fact would be to break the forward-looking heart: it simply refuses -to harbor the concept of the incurable. And so, being debarred by the -legal machinery that supports Prohibition from going back to any more -feasible scheme of relief, it cherishes the sorry faith that somehow, -in some vague and incomprehensible way, Prohibition will yet work. -When the truth becomes so horribly evident that even forward-lookers -are daunted, then some new quack will arise to fool them again, with -some new and worse scheme of super-Prohibition. It is their destiny -to wobble thus endlessly between quack and quack. One pulls them by -the right arm and one by the left arm. A third is at their coat-tail -pockets, and a fourth beckons them over the hill. - -The rest of us are less tender-minded, and, in consequence, much -happier. We observe quite clearly that the world, as it stands, is -anything but perfect—that injustice exists, and turmoil, and tragedy, -and bitter suffering of ten thousand kinds—that human life at its -best, is anything but a grand, sweet song. But instead of ranting -absurdly against the fact, or weeping over it maudlinly, or trying -to remedy it with inadequate means, we simply put the thought of -it out of our minds, just as a wise man puts away the thought that -alcohol is probably bad for his liver, or that his wife is a shade -too fat. Instead of mulling over it and suffering from it, we seek -contentment by pursuing the delights that are so strangely mixed with -the horrors—by seeking out the soft spots and endeavoring to avoid -the hard spots. Such is the intelligent habit of practical and sinful -men, and under it lies a sound philosophy. After all, the world is -not our handiwork, and we are not responsible for what goes on in it, -save within very narrow limits. Going outside them with our protests -and advice tends to become contumacy to the celestial hierarchy. Do -the poor suffer in the midst of plenty? Then let us thank God politely -that we are not that poor. Are rogues in offices? Well, go call a -policeman, thus setting rogue upon rogue. Are taxes onerous, wasteful, -unjust? Then let us dodge as large a part of them as we can. Are whole -regiments and army corps of our fellow creatures doomed to hell? Then -let them complain to the archangels, and, if the archangels are too -busy to hear them, to the nearest archbishop. - -Unluckily for the man of tender mind, he is quite incapable of any -such easy dismissal of the great plagues and conundrums of existence. -It is of the essence of his character that he is too sensitive and -sentimental to put them ruthlessly out of his mind: he cannot view -even the crunching of a cockroach without feeling the snapping of -his own ribs. And it is of the essence of his character that he is -unable to escape the delusion of duty—that he can’t rid himself of -the notion that, whenever he observes anything in the world that -might conceivably be improved, he is commanded by God to make every -effort to improve it. In brief, he is a public-spirited man, and the -ideal citizen of democratic states. But Nature, it must be obvious, -is opposed to democracy—and whoso goes counter to nature must expect -to pay the penalty. The tender-minded man pays it by hanging forever -upon the cruel hooks of hope, and by fermenting inwardly in incessant -indignation. All this, perhaps, explains the notorious ill-humor of -uplifters—the wowser touch that is in even the best of them. They -dwell so much upon the imperfections of the universe and the weaknesses -of man that they end by believing that the universe is altogether out -of joint and that every man is a scoundrel and every woman a vampire. -Years ago I had a combat with certain eminent reformers of the sex -hygiene and vice crusading species, and got out of it a memorable -illumination of their private minds. The reform these strange creatures -were then advocating was directed against sins of the seventh category, -and they proposed to put them down by forcing through legislation of a -very harsh and fantastic kind—statutes forbidding any woman, however -forbidding, to entertain a man in her apartment without the presence of -a third party, statutes providing for the garish lighting of all dark -places in the public parks, and so on. In the course of my debates with -them I gradually jockeyed them into abandoning all of the arguments -they started with, and so brought them down to their fundamental -doctrine, to wit, that no woman, without the aid of the police, could -be trusted to protect her virtue. I pass as a cynic in Christian -circles, but this notion certainly gave me pause. And it was voiced by -men who were the fathers of grown and unmarried daughters! - -It is no wonder that men who cherish such ideas are so ready to accept -any remedy for the underlying evils, no matter how grotesque. A man -suffering from hay-fever, as every one knows, will take any medicine -that is offered to him, even though he knows the compounder to be a -quack; the infinitesimal chance that the quack may have the impossible -cure gives him a certain hope, and so makes the disease itself -more bearable. In precisely the same way a man suffering from the -conviction that the whole universe is hell-bent for destruction—that -the government he lives under is intolerably evil, that the rich are -growing richer and the poor poorer, that no man’s word can be trusted -and no woman’s chastity, that another and worse war is hatching, -that the very regulation of the weather has fallen into the hands -of rogues—such a man will grab at anything, even birth control, -osteopathy or the Fourteen Points, rather than let the foul villainy go -on. The apparent necessity of finding a remedy without delay transforms -itself, by an easy psychological process, into a belief that the remedy -has been found; it is almost impossible for most men, and particularly -for tender-minded men, to take in the concept of the insoluble. Every -problem that remains unsolved, including even the problem of evil, -is in that state simply because men of strict virtue and passionate -altruism have not combined to solve it—because the business has been -neglected by human laziness and rascality. All that is needed to -dispatch it is the united effort of enough pure hearts: the accursed -nature of things will yield inevitably to a sufficiently desperate -battle; mind (usually written Mind) will triumph over matter (usually -written Matter—or maybe Money Power, or Land Monopoly, or Beef Trust, -or Conspiracy of Silence, or Commercialized Vice, or Wall Street, or -the Dukes, or the Kaiser), and the Kingdom of God will be at hand. So, -with the will to believe in full function, the rest is easy. The eager -forward-looker is exactly like the man with hay-fever, or arthritis, or -nervous dyspepsia, or diabetes. It takes time to try each successive -remedy—to search it out, to take it, to observe its effects, to hope, -to doubt, to shelve it. Before the process is completed another is -offered; new ones are always waiting before their predecessors have -been discarded. Here, perhaps, we get a glimpse of the causes behind -the protean appetite of the true forward-looker—his virtuosity in -credulity. He is in all stages simultaneously—just getting over the -initiative and referendum, beginning to have doubts about the short -ballot, making ready for a horse doctor’s dose of the single tax, and -contemplating an experimental draught of Socialism to-morrow. - -What is to be done for him? How is he to be cured of his great thirst -for sure cures that do not cure, and converted into a contented and -careless backward-looker, peacefully snoozing beneath his fig tree -while the oppressed bawl for succor in forty abandoned lands, and -injustice stalks the world, and taxes mount higher and higher, and -poor working-girls are sold into white slavery, and Prohibition fails -to prohibit, and cocaine is hawked openly, and jazz drags millions -down the primrose way, and the trusts own the legislatures of all -Christendom, and judges go to dinner with millionaires, and Europe -prepares for another war, and children of four and five years work -as stevedores and locomotive firemen, and guinea pigs and dogs are -vivisected, and Polish immigrant women have more children every year, -and divorces multiply, and materialism rages, and the devil runs -the cosmos? What is to be done to save the forward-looker from his -torturing indignations, and set him in paths of happy dalliance? -Answer: nothing. He was born that way, as men are born with hare lips -or bad livers, and he will remain that way until the angels summon -him to eternal rest. Destiny has laid upon him the burden of seeing -unescapably what had better not be looked at, of believing what isn’t -so. There is no way to help him. He must suffer vicariously for the -carnal ease of the rest of us. He must die daily that we may live in -peace, corrupt and contented. - -As I have said, I believe fully that this child of sorrow is -honest—that his twinges and malaises are just as real to him as those -that rack the man with arthritis, and that his trusting faith in quacks -is just as natural. But this, of course, is not saying that the quacks -themselves are honest. On the contrary, their utter dishonesty must be -quite as obvious as the simplicity of their dupes. Trade is good for -them in the United States, where hope is a sort of national vice, and -so they flourish here more luxuriously than anywhere else on earth. -Some one told me lately that there are now no less than 25,000 national -organizations in the United States for the uplift of the plain people -and the snaring and shaking down of forward-lookers—societies for -the Americanization of immigrants, for protecting poor working-girls -against Jews and Italians, for putting Bibles into the bedrooms of -week-end hotels, for teaching Polish women how to wash their babies, -for instructing school children in ring-around-a-rosy, for crusading -against the cigarette, for preventing accidents in rolling-mills, for -making street-car conductors more polite, for testing the mentality -of Czecho-Slovaks, for teaching folk-songs, for restoring the United -States to Great Britain, for building day-nurseries in the devastated -regions of France, for training deaconesses, for fighting the -house-fly, for preventing cruelty to mules and Tom-cats, for forcing -householders to clean their backyards, for planting trees, for saving -the Indian, for sending colored boys to Harvard, for opposing Sunday -movies, for censoring magazines, for God knows what else. In every -large American city such organizations swarm, and every one of them -has an executive secretary who tries incessantly to cadge space in the -newspapers. Their agents penetrate to the remotest hamlets in the land, -and their circulars, pamphlets and other fulminations swamp the mails. -In Washington and at every state capital they have their lobbyists, and -every American legislator is driven half frantic by their innumerable -and preposterous demands. Each of them wants a law passed to make -its crusade official and compulsory; each is forever hunting for -forward-lookers with money. - -One of the latest of these uplifting vereins to score a ten-strike -is the one that sponsored the so-called Maternity Bill. That measure -is now a law, and the over-burdened American taxpayer, at a cost of -$3,000,000 a year, is supporting yet one more posse of perambulating -gabblers and snouters. The influences behind the bill were exposed in -the Senate by Senator Reed, of Missouri, but to no effect: a majority -of the other Senators, in order to get rid of the propagandists in -charge of it, had already promised to vote for it. Its one intelligible -aim, as Senator Reed showed, is to give government jobs at good -salaries to a gang of nosey old maids. These virgins now traverse the -country teaching married women how to have babies in a ship-shape and -graceful manner, and how to keep them alive after having them. Only -one member of the corps has ever been married herself; nevertheless, -the old gals are authorized to go out among the Italian and Yiddish -women, each with ten or twelve head of kids to her credit, and tell -them all about it. According to Senator Reed, the ultimate aim of the -forward-lookers who sponsored the scheme is to provide for the official -registration of expectant mothers, that they may be warned what to eat, -what movies to see, and what midwives to send for when the time comes. -Imagine a young bride going down to the County Clerk’s office to report -herself! And imagine an elderly and anthropophagous spinster coming -around next day to advise her! Or a boozy political doctor! - -All these crazes, of course, are primarily artificial. They are -set going, not by the plain people spontaneously, nor even by the -forward-lookers who eventually support them, but by professionals. The -Anti-Saloon League is their archetype. It is owned and operated by -gentlemen who make excellent livings stirring up the tender-minded; -if their salaries were cut off to-morrow, all their moral passion -would ooze out, and Prohibition would be dead in two weeks. So with -the rest of the uplifting camorras. Their present enormous prosperity, -I believe, is due in large part to a fact that is never thought -of, to wit, the fact that the women’s colleges of the country, for -a dozen years past, have been turning out far more graduates than -could be utilized as teachers. These supernumerary lady Ph.D’s almost -unanimously turn to the uplift—and the uplift saves them. In the early -days of higher education for women in the United States, practically -all the graduates thrown upon the world got jobs as teachers, but now -a good many are left over. Moreover, it has been discovered that the -uplift is easier than teaching, and that it pays a great deal better. -It is a rare woman professor who gets more than $5,000 a year, but -there are plenty of uplifting jobs at $8,000 and $10,000 a year, and in -the future there will be some prizes at twice as much. No wonder the -learned girls fall upon them so eagerly! - -The annual production of male Ph.D’s is also far beyond the legitimate -needs of the nation, but here the congestion is relieved by the greater -and more varied demand for masculine labor. If a young man emerging -from Columbia or Ohio Wesleyan as _Philosophiez Doctor_ finds it -impossible to get a job teaching he can always go on the road as a -salesman of dental supplies, or enlist in the marines, or study law, or -enter the ministry, or go to work in a coal-mine, or a slaughter-house, -or a bucket-shop, or begin selling Oklahoma mine-stock to widows and -retired clergy-men. The women graduate faces far fewer opportunities. -She is commonly too old and too worn by meditation to go upon the stage -in anything above the grade of a patent-medicine show, she has been so -poisoned by instruction in sex hygiene that she shies at marriage, and -most of the standard professions and grafts of the world are closed to -her. The invention of the uplift came as a godsend to her. Had not some -mute, inglorious Edison devised it at the right time, humanity would -be disgraced to-day by the spectacle of hordes of Lady Ph.D’s going -to work in steam-laundries, hooch shows and chewing-gum factories. As -it is, they are all taken care of by the innumerable societies for -making the whole world virtuous and happy. One may laugh at the aims -and methods of many such societies—for example, at the absurd vereins -for Americanizing immigrants, _i. e._, degrading them to the level of -the native peasantry. But one thing, at least, they accomplish: they -provide comfortable and permanent jobs for hundreds and thousands of -deserving women, most of whom are far more profitably employed trying -to make Methodists out of Sicilians than they would be if they were -trying to make husbands out of bachelors. It is for this high purpose -also that the forward-looker suffers. - - - - -XII. MEMORIAL SERVICE - - -Where is the grave-yard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters -their mounds? There was a day when Jupiter was the king of the gods, -and any man who doubted his puissance was _ipso facto_ a barbarian and -an ignoramus. But where in all the world is there a man who worships -Jupiter to-day? And what of Huitzilopochtli? In one year—and it is -no more than five hundred years ago—50,000 youths and maidens were -slain in sacrifice to him. To-day, if he is remembered at all, it -is only by some vagrant savage in the depths of the Mexican forest. -Huitzilopochtli, like many other gods, had no human father; his mother -was a virtuous widow; he was born of an apparently innocent flirtation -that she carried on with the sun. When he frowned, his father, the -sun, stood still. When he roared with rage, earthquakes engulfed whole -cities. When he thirsted he was watered with 10,000 gallons of human -blood. But to-day Huitzilopochtli is as magnificently forgotten as -Allen G. Thurman. Once the peer of Allah, Buddha and Wotan, he is now -the peer of General Coxey, Richmond P. Hobson, Nan Patterson, Alton B. -Parker, Adelina Patti, General Weyler and Tom Sharkey. - -Speaking of Huitzilopochtli recalls his brother, Tezcatilpoca. -Tezcatilpoca was almost as powerful: he consumed 25,000 virgins a year. -Lead me to his tomb: I would weep, and hang a _couronne des perles._ -But who knows where it is? Or where the grave of Quitzalcoatl is? Or -Tialoc? Or Chalchihuitlicue? Or Xiehtecutli? Or Centeotl, that sweet -one? Or Tlazolteotl, the goddess of love? Or Mictlan? Or Ixtlilton? -Or Omacatl? Or Yacatecutli? Or Mixcoatl? Or Xipe? Or all the host of -Tzitzimitles? Where are their bones? Where is the willow on which they -hung their harps? In what forlorn and unheard-of hell do they await the -resurrection morn? Who enjoys their residuary estates? Or that of Dis, -whom Cæsar found to be the chief god of the Celts? Or that of Tarves, -the bull? Or that of Moccos, the pig? Or that of Epona, the mare? Or -that of Mullo, the celestial jack-ass? There was a time when the Irish -revered all these gods as violently as they now hate the English. But -to-day even the drunkest Irishman laughs at them. - -But they have company in oblivion: the hell of dead gods is as crowded -as the Presbyterian hell for babies. Damona is there, and Esus, and -Drunemeton, and Silvana, and Dervones, and Adsalluta, and Deva, -and Belisama, and Axona, and Vintios, and Taranuous, and Sulis, and -Cocidius, and Adsmerius, and Dumiatis, and Caletos, and Moccus, and -Ollovidius, and Albiorix, and Leucitius, and Vitucadrus, and Ogmios, -and Uxellimus, and Borvo, and Grannos, and Mogons. All mighty gods in -their day, worshiped by millions, full of demands and impositions, -able to bind and loose—all gods of the first class, not dilettanti. -Men labored for generations to build vast temples to them—temples -with stones as large as hay-wagons. The business of interpreting their -whims occupied thousands of priests, wizards, archdeacons, evangelists, -haruspices, bishops, archbishops. To doubt them was to die, usually at -the stake. Armies took to the field to defend them against infidels: -villages were burned, women and children were butchered, cattle were -driven off. Yet in the end they all withered and died, and to-day there -is none so poor to do them reverence. Worse, the very tombs in which -they lie are lost, and so even a respectful stranger is debarred from -paying them the slightest and politest homage. - -What has become of Sutekh, once the high god of the whole Nile Valley? -What has become of: - - Resheph Baal - Anath Astarte - Ashtoreth Hadad - El Addu - Nergal Shalera - Nebo Dagon - Ninib Sharrab - Melek Yau - Ahijah Amon-Re - Isis Osiris - Ptah Sebek - Anubis Molech? - -All these were once gods of the highest eminence. Many of them are -mentioned with fear and trembling in the Old Testament. They ranked, -five or six thousand years ago, with Jahveh himself; the worst of them -stood far higher than Thor. Yet they have all gone down the chute, and -with them the following: - - Bile Gwydion - Lêr Manawyddan - Arianrod Nuada Argetlam - Morrigu Tagd - Govannon Goibniu - Gunfled Odin - Sokk-mimi Llaw Gyffes - Memetona Lleu - Dagda Ogma - Kerridwen Mider - Pwyll Rigantona - Ogyrvan Marzin - Dea Dia Mars - Ceros Jupiter - Vaticanus Cunina - Edulia Potina - Adeona Statilinus - Iuno Lucina Diana of Ephesus - Saturn Robigus - Furrina Pluto - Vediovis Ops - Consus Meditrina - Cronos Vesta - Enki Tilmun - Engurra Zer-panitu - Belus Merodach - Dimmer U-ki - Mu-ul-lil Dauke - Ubargisi Gasan-abzu - Ubilulu Elum - Gasan-lil U-Tin-dir ki - U-dimmer-an-kia Marduk - Enurestu Nin-lil-la - U-sab-sib Nin - U-Mersi Persephone - Tammuz Istar - Venus Lagas - Bau U-urugal - Mulu-hursang Sirtumu - Anu Ea - Beltis Nirig - Nusku Nebo - Ni-zu Samas - Sahi Ma-banba-anna - Aa En-Mersi - Allatu Amurru - Sin Assur - AbilAddu Aku - Apsu Beltu - Dagan Dumu-zi-abzu - Elali Kuski-banda - Isum Kaawanu - Mami Nin-azu - Nin-man Lugal-Amarada - Zaraqu Qarradu - Suqamunu Ura-gala - Zagaga Ueras - -You may think I spoof. That I invent the names. I do not. Ask the -rector to lend you any good treatise on comparative religion: you -will find them all listed. They were gods of the highest standing and -dignity—gods of civilized peoples—worshipped and believed in by -millions. All were theoretically omnipotent, omniscient and immortal. -And all are dead. - - - - -XIII. EDUCATION - - - - -I - - -Next to the clerk in holy orders, the fellow with the worst job in -the world is the schoolmaster. Both are underpaid, both fall steadily -in authority and dignity, and both wear out their hearts trying to -perform the impossible. How much the world asks of them, and how -little they can actually deliver! The clergyman’s business is to save -the human race from hell: if he saves one-eighth of one per cent., -even within the limits of his narrow flock, he does magnificently. -The school-master’s is to spread the enlightenment, to make the great -masses of the plain people intelligent—and intelligence is precisely -the thing that the great masses of the plain people are congenitally -and eternally incapable of. - -Is it any wonder that the poor birch-man, facing this labor that would -have staggered Sisyphus Æolusohn, seeks refuge from its essential -impossibility in a Chinese maze of empty technic? The ghost of -Pestalozzi, once bearing a torch and beckoning toward the heights, now -leads down stairways into black and forbidding dungeons. Especially in -America, where all that is bombastic and mystical is most esteemed, -the art of pedagogics becomes a sort of puerile magic, a thing of -preposterous secrets, a grotesque compound of false premises and -illogical conclusions. Every year sees a craze for some new solution of -the teaching enigma, at once simple and infallible—manual training, -playground work, song and doggerel lessons, the Montessori method, -the Gary system—an endless series of flamboyant arcanums. The -worst extravagances of _privat dozent_ experimental psychology are -gravely seized upon; the uplift pours in its ineffable principles and -discoveries; mathematical formulæ are worked out for every emergency; -there is no sure cure so idiotic that some superintendent of schools -will not swallow it. - -A couple of days spent examining the literature of the New Thought in -pedagogy are enough to make the judicious weep. Its aim seems to be -to reduce the whole teaching process to a sort of automatic reaction, -to discover some master formula that will not only take the place of -competence and resourcefulness in the teacher but that will also create -an artificial receptivity in the child. The merciless application of -this formula (which changes every four days) now seems to be the chief -end and aim of pedagogy. Teaching becomes a thing in itself, separable -from and superior to the thing taught. Its mastery is a special -business, a transcendental art and mystery, to be acquired in the -laboratory. A teacher well grounded in this mystery, and hence privy -to every detail of the new technic (which changes, of course, with the -formula), can teach anything to any child, just as a sound dentist can -pull any tooth out of any jaw. - -All this, I need not point out, is in sharp contrast to the old -theory of teaching. By that theory mere technic was simplified and -subordinated. All that it demanded of the teacher told off to teach, -say, geography, was that he master the facts in the geography book and -provide himself with a stout rattan. Thus equipped, he was ready for a -test of his natural pedagogical genius. First he exposed the facts in -the book, then he gilded them with whatever appearance of interest and -importance he could conjure up, and then he tested the extent of their -transference to the minds of his pupils. Those pupils who had ingested -them got apples; those who had failed got fanned with the rattan. -Followed the second round, and the same test again, with a second -noting of results. And then the third, and fourth, and the fifth, and -so on until the last and least pupil had been stuffed to his subnormal -and perhaps moronic brim. - -I was myself grounded in the underlying delusions of what is called -knowledge by this austere process, and despite the eloquence of those -who support newer ideas, I lean heavily in favor of it, and regret to -hear that it is no more. It was crude, it was rough, and it was often -not a little cruel, but it at least had two capital advantages over all -the systems that have succeeded it. In the first place, its machinery -was simple; even the stupidest child could understand it; it hooked -up cause and effect with the utmost clarity. And in the second place, -it tested the teacher as and how he ought to be tested—that is, for -his actual capacity to teach, not for his mere technical virtuosity. -There was, in fact, no technic for him to master, and hence none for -him to hide behind. He could not conceal a hopeless inability to impart -knowledge beneath a correct professional method. - -That ability to impart knowledge, it seems to me, has very little to -do with technical method. It may operate at full function without -any technical method at all, and contrariwise, the most elaborate of -technical methods, whether out of Switzerland, Italy or Gary, Ind., -cannot make it operate when it is not actually present. And what does -it consist of? It consists, first, of a natural talent for dealing -with children, for getting into their minds, for putting things in a -way that they can comprehend. And it consists, secondly, of a deep -belief in the interest and importance of the thing taught, a concern -about it amounting to a sort of passion. A man who knows a subject -thoroughly, a man so soaked in it that he eats it, sleeps it and dreams -it—this man can always teach it with success, no matter how little -he knows of technical pedagogy. That is because there is enthusiasm -in him, and because enthusiasm is almost as contagious as fear or the -barber’s itch. An enthusiast is willing to go to any trouble to impart -the glad news bubbling within him. He thinks that it is important and -valuable for to know; given the slightest glow of interest in a pupil -to start with, he will fan that glow to a flame. No hollow formalism -cripples him and slows him down. He drags his best pupils along as fast -as they can go, and he is so full of the thing that he never tires of -expounding its elements to the dullest. - -This passion, so unordered and yet so potent, explains the capacity -for teaching that one frequently observes in scientific men of high -attainments in their specialties—for example, Huxley, Ostwald, Karl -Ludwig, Virchow, Billroth, Jowett, William G. Sumner, Halsted and -Osier—men who knew nothing whatever about the so-called science of -pedagogy, and would have derided its alleged principles if they had -heard them stated. It explains, too, the failure of the general run of -high-school and college teachers—men who are undoubtedly competent, -by the professional standards of pedagogy, but who nevertheless -contrive only to make intolerable bores of the things they presume -to teach. No intelligent student ever learns much from the average -drover of undergraduates; what he actually carries away has come out -of his textbooks, or is the fruit of his own reading and inquiry. But -when he passes to the graduate school, and comes among men who really -understand the subjects they teach, and, what is more, who really love -them, his store of knowledge increases rapidly, and in a very short -while, if he has any intelligence at all, he learns to think in terms -of the thing he is studying. - -So far, so good. But an objection still remains, the which may be -couched in the following terms: that in the average college or high -school, and especially in the elementary school, most of the subjects -taught are so bald and uninspiring that it is difficult to imagine -them arousing the passion I have been describing—in brief, that only -an ass could be enthusiastic about them. In witness, think of the -four elementals: reading, penmanship, arithmetic and spelling. This -objection, at first blush, seems salient and dismaying, but only a -brief inspection is needed to show that it is really of very small -validity. It is made up of a false assumption and a false inference. -The false inference is that there is any sound reason for prohibiting -teaching by asses, if only the asses know how to do it, and do it -well. The false assumption is that there are no asses in our schools -and colleges to-day. The facts stand in almost complete antithesis to -these notions. The truth is that the average schoolmaster, on all the -lower levels, is and always must be essentially an ass, for how can one -imagine an intelligent man engaging in so puerile an avocation? And, -the truth is that it is precisely his inherent asininity, and not his -technical equipment as a pedagogue, that is responsible for whatever -modest success he now shows. - -I here attempt no heavy jocosity, but mean exactly what I say. -Consider, for example, penmanship. A decent handwriting, it must be -obvious, is useful to all men, and particularly to the lower orders of -men. It is one of the few things capable of acquirement in school that -actually helps them to make a living. Well, how is it taught to-day? -It is taught, in the main, by schoolmarms so enmeshed in a complex and -unintelligible technic that, even supposing them able to write clearly -themselves, they find it quite impossible to teach their pupils. -Every few years sees a radical overhauling of the whole business. -First the vertical hand is to make it easy; then certain curves are -the favorite magic; then there is a return to slants and shadings. No -department of pedagogy sees a more hideous cavorting of quacks. In none -is the natural talent and enthusiasm of the teacher more depressingly -crippled. And the result? The result is that our American school -children write abominably—that a clerk or stenographer with a simple, -legible hand becomes almost as scarce as one with Greek. - -Go back, now, to the old days. Penmanship was then taught, not -mechanically and ineffectively, by unsound and shifting formulæ, but -by passionate penmen with curly patent-leather hair and far-away -eyes—in brief, by the unforgettable professors of our youth, -with their flourishes, their heavy down-strokes and their lovely -birds-with-letters-in-their-bills. You remember them, of course. Asses -all! Preposterous popinjays and numskulls! Pathetic idiots! But they -loved penmanship, they believed in the glory and beauty of penmanship, -they were fanatics, devotees, almost martyrs of penmanship—and so -they got some touch of that passion into their pupils. Not enough, -perhaps, to make more flourishers and bird-blazoners, but enough to -make sound penmen. Look at your old writing book; observe the excellent -legibility, the clear strokes of your “Time is money.” Then look at -your child’s. - -Such idiots, despite the rise of “scientific” pedagogy, have not -died out in the world. I believe that our schools are full of them, -both in pantaloons and in skirts. There are fanatics who love and -venerate spelling as a tom-cat loves and venerates catnip. There -are grammatomaniacs; schoolmarms who would rather parse than eat; -specialists in an objective case that doesn’t exist in English; -strange beings, otherwise sane and even intelligent and comely, -who suffer under a split infinitive as you or I would suffer under -gastro-enteritis. There are geography cranks, able to bound Mesopotamia -and Beluchistan. There are zealots for long division, experts in the -multiplication table, lunatic worshipers of the binomial theorem. But -the system has them in its grip. It combats their natural enthusiasm -diligently and mercilessly. It tries to convert them into mere -technicians, clumsy machines. It orders them to teach, not by the -process of emotional osmosis which worked in the days gone by, but by -formulæ that are as baffling to the pupil as they are paralyzing to the -teacher. Imagine what would happen to one of them who stepped to the -blackboard, seized a piece of chalk, and engrossed a bird that held -the class spell-bound—a bird with a thousand flowing feathers, wings -bursting with parabolas and epicycloids, and long ribbons streaming -from its bill! Imagine the fate of one who began “Honesty is the best -policy” with an H as florid and—to a child—as beautiful as the -initial of a mediæval manuscript! Such a teacher would be cashiered and -handed over to the secular arm; the very enchantment of the assembled -infantry would be held as damning proof against him. And yet it is just -such teachers that we should try to discover and develop. Pedagogy -needs their enthusiasm, their naïve belief in their own grotesque -talents, their capacity for communicating their childish passion to the -childish. - -But this would mean exposing the children of the Republic to contact -with monomaniacs, half-wits, defectives? Well, what of it? The vast -majority of them are already exposed to contact with half-wits in their -own homes; they are taught the word of God by half-wits on Sundays; -they will grow up into Knights of Pythias, Odd Fellows, Red Men and -other such half-wits in the days to come. Moreover, as I have hinted, -they are already face to face with half-wits in the actual schools, -at least in three cases out of four. The problem before us is not -to dispose of this fact, but to utilize it. We cannot hope to fill -the schools with persons of high intelligence, for persons of high -intelligence simply refuse to spend their lives teaching such banal -things as spelling and arithmetic. Among the teachers male we may -safely assume that 95 per cent. are of low mentality, else they would -depart for more appetizing pastures. And even among the teachers female -the best are inevitably weeded out by marriage, and only the worst -(with a few romantic exceptions) survive. The task before us, as I -say, is not to make a vain denial of this cerebral inferiority of the -pedagogue, nor to try to combat and disguise it by concocting a mass of -technical hocus-pocus, but to search out and put to use the value lying -concealed in it. For even stupidity, it must be plain, has its uses in -the world, and some of them are uses that intelligence cannot meet. One -would not tell off a Galileo or a Pasteur to drive an ash-cart or an -Ignatius Loyola to be a stockbroker, or a Brahms to lead the orchestra -in a Broadway cabaret. By the same token, one would not ask a Herbert -Spencer or a Duns Scotus to instruct sucklings. Such men would not only -be wasted at the job; they would also be incompetent. The business -of dealing with children, in fact, demands a certain childishness of -mind. The best teacher, until one comes to adult pupils, is not the one -who knows most, but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge -to that simple compound of the obvious and the wonderful which slips -easiest into the infantile comprehension. A man of high intelligence, -perhaps, may accomplish the thing by a conscious intellectual feat. -But it is vastly easier to the man (or woman) whose habits of mind are -naturally on the plane of a child’s. The best teacher of children, in -brief, is one who is essentially child-like. - -I go so far with this notion that I view the movement to introduce -female bachelors of arts into the primary schools with the utmost -alarm. A knowledge of Bergsonism, the Greek aorist, sex hygiene and -the dramas of Percy MacKaye is not only no help to the teaching of -spelling, it is a positive handicap to the teaching of spelling, -for it corrupts and blows up that naïve belief in the glory and -portentousness of spelling which is at the bottom of all successful -teaching of it. If I had my way, indeed, I should expose all candidates -for berths in the infant grades to the Binet-Simon test, and reject all -those who revealed the mentality of more than fifteen years. Plenty -would still pass. Moreover, they would be secure against contamination -by the new technic of pedagogy. Its vast wave of pseudo-psychology -would curl and break against the hard barrier of their innocent -and passionate intellects—as it probably does, in fact, even now. -They would know nothing of cognition, perception, attention, the -subconscious and all the other half-fabulous fowl of the pedagogic -aviary. But they would see in reading, writing and arithmetic the gaudy -charms of profound and esoteric knowledge, and they would teach these -ancient branches, now so abominably in decay, with passionate gusto, -and irresistible effectiveness, and a gigantic success. - - - - -II - - -Two great follies corrupt the present pedagogy, once it gets beyond -the elementals. One is the folly of overestimating the receptivity -of the pupil; the other is the folly of overestimating the possible -efficiency of the teacher. Both rest upon that tendency to put too -high a value upon mere schooling which characterizes democratic and -upstart societies—a tendency born of the theory that a young man -who has been “educated,” who has “gone through college,” is in some -subtle way more capable of making money than one who hasn’t. The -nature of the schooling on tap in colleges is but defectively grasped -by the adherents of the theory. They view it, I believe, as a sort of -extension of the schooling offered in elementary schools—that is, as -an indefinite multiplication of training in such obviously valuable and -necessary arts as reading, writing and arithmetic. It is, of course, -nothing of the sort. If the pupil, as he climbs the educational ladder, -is fortunate enough to come into contact with a few Huxleys or Ludwigs, -he may acquire a great deal of extremely sound knowledge, and even -learn how to think for himself. But in the great majority of cases he -is debarred by two things: the limitations of his congenital capacity -and the limitations of the teachers he actually encounters. The latter -is usually even more brilliantly patent than the former. Very few -professional teachers, it seems to me, really know anything worth -knowing, even about the subjects they essay to teach. If you doubt it, -simply examine their contributions to existing knowledge. Several years -ago, while engaged upon my book, “The American Language,” I had a good -chance to test the matter in one typical department, that of philology. -I found a truly appalling condition of affairs. I found that in the -whole United States there were not two dozen teachers of English -philology—in which class I also include the innumerable teachers of -plain grammar—who had ever written ten lines upon the subject worth -reading. It was not that they were indolent or illiterate: in truth, -they turned out to be enormously diligent. But as I plowed through -pyramid after pyramid of their doctrines and speculations, day after -day and week after week, I discovered little save a vast laboring of -the obvious, with now and then a bold flight into the nonsensical. A -few genuinely original philologians revealed themselves—pedagogues -capable of observing accurately and reasoning clearly. The rest simply -wasted time and paper. Whole sections of the field were unexplored, and -some of them appeared to be even unsuspected. The entire life-work of -many an industrious professor, boiled down, scarcely made a footnote in -my book, itself a very modest work. - -This tendency to treat the superior pedagogue too seriously—to view -him as, _ipso facto_, a learned man, and one thus capable of conveying -learning to others—is supported by the circumstance that he so views -himself, and is, in fact, very pretentious and even bombastic. Nearly -all discussions of the educational problem, at least in the United -States, are carried on by schoolmasters or ex-schoolmasters—for -example, college presidents, deans, and other such magnificoes—and so -they assume it to be axiomatic that such fellows are genuine bearers -of the enlightenment, and hence capable of transmitting it to others. -This is true sometimes, as I have said, but certainly not usually. -The average high-school or college pedagogue is not one who has been -selected because of his uncommon knowledge; he is simply one who has -been stuffed with formal ideas and taught to do a few conventional -intellectual tricks. Contact with him, far from being inspiring to -any youth of alert mentality, is really quite depressing; his point -of view is commonplace and timorous; his best thought is no better -than that of any other fourth-rate professional man, say a dentist or -an advertisement writer. Thus it is idle to talk of him as if he were -a Socrates, an Aristotle, or even a Leschetizky. He is actually much -more nearly related to a barber or a lieutenant of marines. A worthy -man, industrious and respectable—but don’t expect too much of him. To -ask him to struggle out of his puddle of safe platitudes and plunge -into the whirlpool of surmise and speculation that carries on the -fragile shallop of human progress—to do this is as absurd as to ask a -neighborhood doctor to undertake major surgery. - -In the United States his low intellectual status is kept low, not -only by the meager rewards of his trade in a country where money is -greatly sought and esteemed, but also by the democratic theory of -education—that is, by the theory that mere education can convert a -peasant into an intellectual aristocrat, with all of the peculiar -superiorities of an aristocrat—in brief, that it is possible to make -purses out of sow’s ears. The intellectual collapse of the American -_Gelehrten_ during the late war—a collapse so nearly unanimous -that those who did not share it attained to a sort of immortality -overnight—was perhaps largely due to this error. Who were these -bawling professors, so pathetically poltroonish and idiotic? In an -enormous number of cases they were simply peasants in frock-coats—oafs -from the farms and villages of Iowa, Kansas, Vermont, Alabama, -the Dakotas and other such backward states, horribly stuffed with -standardized learning in some fresh-water university, and then set to -teaching. To look for a civilized attitude of mind in such Strassburg -geese is to look for honor in a valet; to confuse them with scholars -is to confuse the Knights of Pythias with the Knights Hospitaller. -In brief, the trouble with them was that they had no sound tradition -behind them, that they had not learned to think clearly and decently, -that they were not gentlemen. The youth with a better background -behind him, passing through an American university, seldom acquires -any yearning to linger as a teacher. The air is too thick for him; -the rewards are too trivial; the intrigues are too old-maidish and -degrading. Thus the chairs, even in the larger universities, tend -to be filled more and more by yokels who have got themselves what is -called an education only by dint of herculean effort. Exhausted by the -cruel process, they are old men at 26 or 28, and so, hugging their -Ph.D’s, they sink into convenient instructorships, and end at 60 as -_ordentliche Professoren._ The social status of the American pedagogue -helps along the process. Unlike in Europe, where he has a secure and -honorable position, he ranks, in the United States, somewhere between -a Methodist preacher and a prosperous brick-yard owner—certainly -clearly below the latter. Thus the youth of civilized upbringings -feels that it would be stooping a bit to take up the rattan. But the -plow-hand obviously makes a step upward, and is hence eager for the -black gown. Thereby a vicious circle is formed. The plow-hand, by -entering the ancient guild, drags it down still further, and so makes -it increasingly difficult to snare apprentices from superior castes. - -A glance at “Who’s Who in America” offers a good deal of support -for all this theorizing. There was a time when the typical American -professor came from a small area in New England—for generations the -seat of a high literacy, and even of a certain austere civilization. -But to-day he comes from the region of silos, revivals, and saleratus. -Behind him there is absolutely no tradition of aristocratic aloofness -and urbanity, or even of mere civilized decency. He is a bind by birth, -and he carries the smell of the dunghill into the academic grove—and -not only the smell, but also some of the dung itself. What one looks -for in such men is dullness, superficiality, a great credulity, an -incapacity for learning anything save a few fly-blown rudiments, a -passionate yielding to all popular crazes, a malignant distrust of -genuine superiority, a huge megalomania. These are precisely the -things that one finds in the typical American pedagogue of the new -dispensation. He is not only a numskull; he is also a boor. In the -university president he reaches his heights. Here we have a so-called -learned man who spends his time making speeches before chautauquas, -chambers of commerce and Rotary Clubs, and flattering trustees who run -both universities and street-railways, and cadging money from such men -as Rockefeller and Carnegie. - - - - -III - - -The same educational fallacy which fills the groves of learning -with such dunces causes a huge waste of energy and money on lower -levels—those, to wit, of the secondary schools. The theory behind the -lavish multiplication of such schools is that they outfit the children -of the mob with the materials of reasoning, and inculcate in them a -habit of indulging in it. I have never been able to discover any -evidence in support of that theory. The common people of America—at -least the white portion of them—are rather above the world’s average -in literacy, but there is no sign that they have acquired thereby any -capacity for weighing facts or comparing ideas. The school statistics -show that the average member of the American Legion can read and -write after a fashion, and is able to multiply eight by seven after -four trials, but they tell us nothing about his actual intelligence. -The returns of the Army itself, indeed, indicate that he is stupid -almost beyond belief—that there is at least an even chance that he -is a moron. Is such a fellow appreciably superior to the villein of -the Middle Ages? Sometimes I am tempted to doubt it. I suspect, for -example, that the belief in witchcraft is still almost as widespread -among the plain people of the United States, at least outside the -large cities, as it was in Europe in the year 1500. In my own state -of Mary-land all of the negroes and mulattoes believe absolutely in -witches, and so do most of the whites. The belief in ghosts penetrates -to quite high levels. I know very few native-born Americans, indeed, -who reject it without reservation. One constantly comes upon grave -defenses of spiritism in some form or other by men theoretically of -learning; in the two houses of Congress it would be difficult to -muster fifty men willing to denounce the thing publicly. It would -not only be politically dangerous for them to do so; it would also go -against their consciences. - -What is always forgotten is that the capacity for knowledge of the -great masses of human blanks is very low—that, no matter how adroitly -pedagogy tackles them with its technical sorceries, it remains a -practical impossibility to teach them anything beyond reading and -writing, and the most elementary arithmetic. Worse, it is impossible -to make any appreciable improvement in their congenitally ignoble -tastes, and so they devote even the paltry learning that they acquire -to degrading uses. If the average American read only the newspapers, -as is frequently alleged, it would be bad enough, but the truth is -that he reads only the most imbecile _parts_ of the newspapers. -Nine-tenths of the matter in a daily paper of the better sort is almost -as unintelligible to him as the theory of least squares. The words -lie outside his vocabulary; the ideas are beyond the farthest leap of -his intellect. It is, indeed, a sober fact that even an editorial in -the New York _Times_ is probably incomprehensible to all Americans -save a small minority—and not, remember, on the ground that it is too -nonsensical but on the ground that it is too subtle. The same sort of -mind that regards Rubinstein’s Melody in F as too “classical” to be -agreeable is also stumped by the most transparent English. - -Like most other professional writers I get a good many letters from my -customers. Complaints, naturally, are more numerous than compliments; -it is only indignation that can induce the average man to brave the -ardors of pen and ink. Well, the complaint that I hear most often is -that my English is unintelligible—that it is too full of “hard” words. -I can imagine nothing more astounding. My English is actually almost -as bald and simple as the English of a college yell. My sentences are -short and plainly constructed: I resolutely cultivate the most direct -manner of statement; my vocabulary is deliberately composed of the -words of everyday. Nevertheless, a great many of my readers in my own -country find reading me an uncomfortably severe burden upon their -linguistic and intellectual resources. These readers are certainly -not below the American average in intelligence; on the contrary, they -must be a good deal above the average, for they have at least got to -the point where they are willing to put out of the safe harbor of the -obvious and respectable, and to brave the seas where more or less -novel ideas rage and roar. Think of what the ordinary newspaper reader -would make of my compositions! There is, in fact, no need to think; I -have tried them on him. His customary response, when, by mountebankish -devices, I forced him to read—or, at all events, to try to read—, was -to demand resolutely that the guilty newspaper cease printing me, and -to threaten to bring the matter to the attention of the _Polizei._ I do -not exaggerate in the slightest; I tell the literal truth. - -It is such idiots that the little red school-house operates upon, in -the hope of unearthing an occasional first-rate man. Is that hope -ever fulfilled? Despite much testimony to the effect that it is, I am -convinced that it really isn’t. First-rate men are never begotten by -Knights of Pythias; the notion that they sometimes are is due to an -optical delusion. When they appear in obscure and ignoble circles it -is no more than a proof that only an extremely wise sire knows his own -son. Adultery, in brief, is one of nature’s devices for keeping the -lowest orders of men from sinking to the level of downright simians: -sometimes for a few brief years in youth, their wives and daughters are -comely—and now and then the baron drinks more than he ought to. But it -is foolish to argue that the gigantic machine of popular education is -needed to rescue such hybrids from their environment. The truth is that -all the education rammed into the average pupil in the average American -public school could be acquired by the v larva of any reasonably -intelligent man in no more than six weeks of ordinary application, and -that where schools are unknown it actually _is_ so acquired. A bright -child, in fact, can learn to read and write without any save the most -casual aid a great deal faster than it can learn to read and write in a -class-room, where the difficulties of the stupid retard it enormously -and it is further burdened by the crazy formulæ invented by pedagogues. -And once it can read and write, it is just as well equipped to acquire -further knowledge as ninetenths of the teachers it will subsequently -encounter in school or college. - - - - -IV - - -I know a good many men of great learning—that is, men born with an -extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, -they tell me that they can’t recall learning anything of any value in -school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was -to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already -acquired independently—and not infrequently the determination was made -clumsily and inaccurately. In my own nonage I had a great desire to -acquire knowledge in certain limited directions, to wit, those of the -physical sciences. Before I was ever permitted, by the regulations of -the secondary seminary I was penned in, to open a chemistry book I had -learned a great deal of chemistry by the simple process of reading the -texts and then going through the processes described. When, at last, -I was introduced to chemistry officially, I found the teaching of -it appalling. The one aim of that teaching, in fact, seemed to be to -first purge me of what I already knew and then refill me with the same -stuff in a formal, doltish, unintelligible form. My experience with -physics was even worse. I knew nothing about it when I undertook its -study in class, for that was before the days when physics swallowed -chemistry. Well, it was taught so abominably that it immediately became -incomprehensible to me, and hence extremely; distasteful, and to this -day I know nothing about it. Worse, it remains unpleasant to me, and so -I am shut off from the interesting and useful knowledge that I might -otherwise acquire by reading. - -One extraordinary teacher I remember who taught me something: a teacher -of mathematics. I had a dislike for that science, and knew little about -it. Finally, my neglect of it brought me to bay: in transferring from -one school to another I found that I was hopelessly short in algebra. -What was needed, of course, was not an actual knowledge of algebra, -but simply the superficial smattering needed to pass an examination. -The teacher that I mention, observing my distress, generously offered -to fill me with that smattering after school hours. He got the whole -year’s course into me in exactly six lessons of half an hour each. -And how? More accurately, why? Simply because he was an algebra -fanatic—because he believed that algebra was not only a science of -the utmost importance, but also one of the greatest fascination. He -was the penmanship professor of years ago, lifted to a higher level. -A likable and plausible man, he convinced me in twenty minutes that -ignorance of algebra was as calamitous, socially and intellectually, -as ignorance of table manners—that acquiring its elements was as -necessary as washing behind the ears. So I fell upon the book and -gulped it voraciously, greatly to the astonishment of my father, -whose earlier mathematical teaching had failed to set me off because -it was too pressing—because it bombarded me, not when I was penned -in a school and so inclined to make the best of it, but when I had -got through a day’s schooling, and felt inclined to play. To this -day I comprehend the binomial theorem, a very rare accomplishment in -an author. For many years, indeed, I was probably the only American -newspaper editor who knew what it was. - -Two other teachers of that school I remember pleasantly as fellows -whose pedagogy profited me—both, it happens, were drunken and -disreputable men. One taught me to chew tobacco, an art that has done -more to give me an evil name, perhaps, than even my Socinianism. The -other introduced me to Shakespeare, Congreve, Wycherly, Marlowe and -Sheridan, and so filled me with that taste for coarseness which now -offends so many of my customers, lay and clerical. Neither ever -came to a dignified position in academic circles. One abandoned -pedagogy for the law, became involved in causes of a dubious nature, -and finally disappeared into the shades which engulf third-rate -attorneys. The other went upon a fearful drunk one Christmastide, -got himself shanghaied on the water-front and is supposed to have -fallen overboard from a British tramp, bound east for Cardiff. At all -events, he has never been heard from since. Two evil fellows, and -yet I hold their memories in affection, and believe that they were -the best teachers I ever had. For in both there was something a good -deal more valuable than mere pedagogical skill and diligence, and -even more valuable than correct demeanor, and that was a passionate -love of sound literature. This love, given reasonably receptive soil, -they knew how to communicate, as a man can nearly always communicate -whatever moves him profoundly. Neither ever made the slightest effort -to “teach” literature, as the business is carried on by the usual idiot -schoolmaster. Both had a vast contempt for the textbooks that were -official in their school, and used to entertain the boys by pointing -out the nonsense in them. Both were full of derisory objections to the -principal heroes of such books in those days: Scott, Irving, Pope, Jane -Austen, Dickens, Trollope, Tennyson. But both, discoursing in their -disorderly way upon heroes of their own, were magnificently eloquent -and persuasive. The boy who could listen to one of them intoning -Whitman and stand unmoved was a dull fellow indeed. The boy who could -resist the other’s enthusiasm for the old essayists was intellectually -deaf, dumb and blind. - -I often wonder if their expoundings of their passions and prejudices -would have been half so charming if they had been wholly respectable -men, like their colleagues of the school faculty. It is not likely. A -healthy boy is in constant revolt against the sort of men who surround -him at school. Their puerile pedantries, their Christian Endeavor -respectability, their sedentary pallor, their curious preference for -the dull and uninteresting, their general air of so many Y. M. C. A. -secretaries—these things infallibly repel the youth who is above -milksoppery. In every boys’ school the favorite teacher is one who -occasionally swears like a cavalryman, or is reputed to keep a jug in -his room, or is known to receive a scented note every morning. Boys are -good judges of men, as girls are good judges of women. It is not by -accident that most of them, at some time or other, long to be cowboys -or ice-wagon drivers, and that none of them, not obviously diseased -in mind, ever longs to be a Sunday-school superintendent. Put that -judgment to a simple test. What would become of a nation in which all -of the men were, at heart, Sunday-school superintendents—or Y. M. C. -A. secretaries, or pedagogues? Imagine it in conflict with a nation -of cowboys and ice-wagon drivers. Which would be the stronger, and -which would be the more intelligent, resourceful, enterprising and -courageous? - - - - -XIV. TYPES OF MEN - - - - -1 - -_The Romantic_ - - -There is a variety of man whose eye inevitably exaggerates, whose -ear inevitably hears more than the band plays, whose imagination -inevitably doubles and triples the news brought in by his five senses. -He is the enthusiast, the believer, the romantic. He is the sort of -fellow who, if he were a bacteriologist, would report the streptococcus -pyogenes to be as large as a St. Bernard dog, as intelligent as -Socrates, as beautiful as Beauvais Cathedral and as respectable as a -Yale professor. - - - - -2 - -_The Skeptic_ - - -No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an -idea absolutely, but not in a man. In the highest confidence there -is always a flavor of doubt—a feeling, half instinctive and half -logical, that, after all, the scoundrel _may_ have something up his -sleeve. This doubt, it must be obvious, is always more than justified, -for no man is worthy of unlimited reliance—his treason, at best, only -waits for sufficient temptation. The trouble with the world is not that -men are too suspicious in this direction, but that they tend to be -too confiding—that they still trust themselves too far to other men, -even after bitter experience. Women, I believe, are measurably less -sentimental, in this as in other things. No married woman ever trusts -her husband absolutely, nor does she ever act as if she _did_ trust -him. Her utmost confidence is as wary as an American pick-pocket’s -confidence that the policeman on the beat will stay bought. - - - - -3 - -_The Believer_ - - -Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence -of the improbable. Or, psychoanalytically, as a wish neurose. There -is thus a flavor of the pathological in it; it goes beyond the normal -intellectual process and passes into the murky domain of transcendental -metaphysics. A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never -had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere -ass: he is actually ill. Worse, he is incurable, for disappointment, -being essentially an objective phenomenon, cannot permanently affect -his subjective infirmity. His faith takes on the virulence of a chronic -infection. What he usually says, in substance, is this: “Let us trust -in God, _who has always fooled us in the past_.” - - - - -4 - -_The Worker_ - - -All democratic theories, whether Socialistic or bourgeois, necessarily -take in some concept of the dignity of labor. If the have-not were -deprived of this delusion that his sufferings in the sweat-shop are -somehow laudable and agreeable to God, there would be little left in -his ego save a belly-ache. Nevertheless, a delusion is a delusion, -and this is one of the worst. It arises out of confusing the pride of -workmanship of the artist with the dogged, painful docility of the -machine. The difference is important and enormous. If he got no reward -whatever, the artist would go on working just the same; his actual -reward, in fact, is often so little that he almost starves. But suppose -a garment-worker got nothing for his labor: would he go on working -just the same? Can one imagine him submitting voluntarily to hardship -and sore want that he might express his soul in 200 more pairs of -pantaloons? - - - - -5 - -_The Physician_ - - -Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to -find a hygienist who does not debase his theory of the healthful with a -theory of the virtuous. The whole hygienic art, indeed, resolves itself -into an ethical exhortation, and, in the sub-department of sex, into a -puerile and belated advocacy of asceticism. This brings it, at the end, -into diametrical conflict with medicine proper. The aim of medicine is -surely not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard and rescue them -from the consequences of their vices. The true physician does not -preach repentance; he offers absolution. - - - - -6 - -_The Scientist_ - - -The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and -inaccurate. Consider, for example, two of them: mere insatiable -curiosity and the desire to do good. The latter is put high above the -former, and yet it is the former that moves some of the greatest -men the human race has yet produced: the scientific investigators. -What animates a great pathologist? Is it the desire to cure disease, -to save life? Surely not, save perhaps as an afterthought. He is too -intelligent, deep down in his soul, to see anything praiseworthy in -such a desire. He knows by life-long observation that his discoveries -will do quite as much harm as good, that a thousand scoundrels will -profit to every honest man, that the folks who most deserve to be saved -will probably be the last to be saved. No man of self-respect could -devote himself to pathology on such terms. What actually moves him is -his unquenchable curiosity—his boundless, almost pathological thirst -to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret, to find out what has -not been found out before. His prototype is not the liberator releasing -slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but the dog sniffing -tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes. And yet he is one of -the greatest and noblest of men. And yet he stands in the very front -rank of the race. - - - - -7 - -_The Business Man_ - - -It is, after all, a sound instinct which puts business below the -professions, and burdens the business man with a social inferiority -that he can never quite shake off, even in America. The business man, -in fact, acquiesces in this assumption of his inferiority, even when he -protests against it. He is the only man who is forever apologizing for -his occupation. He is the only one who always seeks to make it appear, -when he attains the object of his labors, _i. e._, the making of a -great deal of money, that it was not the object of his labors. - - - - -8 - -_The King_ - - -Perhaps the most valuable asset that any man can have in this world -is a naturally superior air, a talent for sniffishness and reserve. -The generality of men are always greatly impressed by it, and accept -it freely as a proof of genuine merit. One need but disdain them to -gain their respect. Their congenital stupidity and timorousness make -them turn to any leader who offers, and the sign of leadership that -they recognize most readily is that which shows itself in external -manner. This is the true explanation of the survival of monarchism, -which invariably lives through its perennial deaths. It is the popular -theory, at least in America, that monarchism is a curse fastened upon -the common people from above—that the monarch saddles it upon them -without their consent and against their will. The theory is without -support in the facts. Kings are created, not by kings, but by the -people. They visualize one of the ineradicable needs of all third-rate -men, which means of nine men out of ten, and that is the need of -something to venerate, to bow down to, to follow and obey. - -The king business begins to grow precarious, not when kings reach out -for greater powers, but when they begin to resign and renounce their -powers. The czars of Russia were quite secure upon the throne so long -as they ran Russia like a reformatory, but the moment they began to -yield to liberal ideas, _i. e._, by emancipating the serfs and setting -up constitutionalism, their doom was sounded. The people saw this -yielding as a sign of weakness; they began to suspect that the czars, -after all, were not actually superior to other men. And so they turned -to other and antagonistic leaders, all as cocksure as the czars had -once been, and in the course of time they were stimulated to rebellion. -These leaders, or, at all events, the two or three most resolute and -daring of them, then undertook to run the country in the precise way -that it had been run in the palmy days of the monarchy. That is to say, -they seized and exerted irresistible power and laid claim to infallible -wisdom. History will date their downfall from the day they began to -ease their pretensions. Once they confessed, even by implication, that -they were merely human, the common people began to turn against them. - - - - -9 - -_The Average Man_ - - -It is often urged against the so-called scientific Socialists, with -their materialistic conception of history, that they overlook certain -spiritual qualities that are independent of wage scales and metabolism. -These qualities, it is argued, color the aspirations and activities -of civilized man quite as much as they are colored by his material -condition, and so make it impossible to consider him simply as an -economic machine. As examples, the anti-Marxians cite patriotism, -pity, the æsthetic sense and the yearning to know God. Unluckily, -the examples are ill-chosen. Millions of men are quite devoid of -patriotism, pity and the æsthetic sense, and have no very active desire -to know God. Why don’t the anti-Marxians cite a spiritual quality -that is genuinely universal? There is one readily to hand. I allude -to cowardice. It is, in one form or other, visible in every human -being; it almost serves to mark off the human race from all the other -higher animals. Cowardice, I believe, is at the bottom of the whole -caste system, the foundation of every organized society, including -the most democratic. In order to escape going to war himself, the -peasant was willing to give the warrior certain privileges—and out -of those privileges has grown the whole structure of civilization. -Go back still further. Property arose out of the fact that a few -relatively courageous men were able to accumulate more possessions than -whole hordes of cowardly men, and, what is more, to retain them after -accumulating them. - - - - -10 - -_The Truth-Seeker_ - - -The man who boasts that he habitually tells the truth is simply a man -with no respect for it. It is not a thing to be thrown about loosely, -like small change; it is something to be cherished and hoarded, and -disbursed only when absolutely necessary. The smallest atom of truth -represents some man’s bitter toil and agony; for every ponderable chunk -of it there is a brave truth-seeker’s grave upon some lonely ash-dump -and a soul roasting in hell. - - - - -11 - -_The Pacifist_ - - -Nietzsche, in altering Schopenhauer’s will-to-live to will-to-power, -probably fell into a capital error. The truth is that the thing the -average man seeks in life is not primarily power, but peace; all -his struggle is toward a state of tranquillity and equilibrium; what -he always dreams of is a state in which he will have to do battle no -longer. This dream plainly enters into his conception of Heaven; he -thinks of himself, _post mortem_, browsing about the celestial meadows -like a cow in a safe pasture. A few extraordinary men enjoy combat at -all times, and all men are inclined toward it at orgiastic moments, -but the race as a race craves peace, and man belongs among the more -timorous, docile and unimaginative animals, along with the deer, the -horse and the sheep. This craving for peace is vividly displayed in -the ages-long conflict of the sexes. Every normal woman wants to be -married, for the plain reason that marriage offers her security. And -every normal man avoids marriage as long as possible, for the equally -plain reason that marriage invades and threatens _his_ security. - - - - -12 - -_The Relative_ - - -The normal man’s antipathy to his relatives, particularly of the -second degree, is explained by psychologists in various tortured -and improbable ways. The true explanation, I venture, is a good -deal simpler. It lies in the plain fact that every man sees in his -relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque -caricatures of himself. They exhibit his qualities in disconcerting -augmentation or diminution; they fill him with a disquieting feeling -that this, perhaps, is the way he appears to the world and so they -wound his _amour propre_ and give him intense discomfort. To admire his -relatives whole-heartedly a man must be lacking in the finer sort of -self-respect. - - - - -13 - -_The Friend_ - - -One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that -friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that -any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable. The fact is -that a man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just -as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his -epistemology. They become threadbare, shabby, pumped-up, irritating, -depressing. They convert themselves from living realities into -moribund artificialities, and stand in sinister opposition to freedom, -self-respect and truth. It is as corrupting to preserve them after -they have grown fly-blown and hollow as it is to keep up the forms -of passion after passion itself is a corpse. Every act and attitude -that they involve thus becomes an act of hypocrisy, an attitude -of dishonesty.... A prudent man, remembering that life is short, -gives an hour or two, now and then, to a critical examination of his -friendships. He weighs them, edits them, tests the metal of them. A -few he retains, perhaps with radical changes in their terms. But the -majority he expunges from his minutes and tries to forget, as he tries -to forget the cold and clammy loves of year before last. - - - - -XV. THE DISMAL SCIENCE - - -Every man, as the Psalmist says, to his own poison, or poisons, as the -case may be. One of mine, following hard after theology, is political -economy. What! Political economy, that dismal science? Well, why not? -Its dismalness is largely a delusion, due to the fact that its chief -ornaments, at least in our own day, are university professors. The -professor must be an obscurantist or he is nothing; he has a special -and unmatchable talent for dullness; his central aim is not to expose -the truth clearly, but to exhibit his profundity, his esotericity—in -brief, to stagger sophomores and other professors. The notion that -German is a gnarled and unintelligible language arises out of the -circumstance that it is so much written by professors. It took a rebel -member of the clan, swinging to the antipodes in his unearthly treason, -to prove its explicitness, its resiliency, it downright beauty. -But Nietzsches are few, and so German remains soggy, and political -economy continues to be swathed in dullness. As I say, however, that -dullness is only superficial. There is no more engrossing book in the -English language than Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations”; surely the -eighteenth century produced nothing that can be read with greater ease -to-day. Nor is there any inherent reason why even the most technical -divisions of its subject should have gathered cobwebs with the passing -of the years. Taxation, for example, is eternally lively; it concerns -ninetenths of us more directly than either smallpox or golf, and has -just as much drama in it; moreover, it has been mellowed and made gay -by as many gaudy, preposterous theories. As for foreign exchange, it is -almost as romantic as young love, and quite as resistent to formulæ. -Do the professors make an autopsy of it? Then read the occasional -treatises of some professor of it who is not a professor, say, Garet -Garrett or John Moody. - -Unluckily, Garretts and Moodys are almost as rare as Nietzsches, -and so the amateur of such things must be content to wrestle with -the professors, seeking the violet of human interest beneath the -avalanche of their graceless parts of speech. A hard business, I -daresay, to one not practiced, and to its hardness there is added -the disquiet of a doubt. That doubt does not concern itself with the -doctrine preached, at least not directly. There may be in it nothing -intrinsically dubious; on the contrary, it may appear as sound as the -binomial theorem, as well supported as the dogma of infant damnation. -But all the time a troubling question keeps afloat in the air, and -that is briefly this: What would happen to the learned professors if -they took the other side? In other words, to what extent is political -economy, as professors expound and practice it, a free science, in -the sense that mathematics and physiology are free sciences? At what -place, if any, is speculation pulled up by a rule that beyond lies -treason, anarchy and disaster? These questions, I hope I need not add, -are not inspired by any heterodoxy in my own black heart. I am, in -many fields, a flouter of the accepted revelation and hence immoral, -but the field of economics is not one of them. Here, indeed, I know -of no man who is more orthodox than I am. I believe that the present -organization of society, as bad as it is, is better than any other -that has ever been proposed. I reject all the sure cures in current -agitation, from government ownership to the single tax. I am in favor -of free competition in all human enterprises, and to the utmost limit. -I admire successful scoundrels, and shrink from Socialists as I -shrink from Methodists. But all the same, the aforesaid doubt pursues -me when I plow through the solemn disproofs and expositions of the -learned professors of economics, and that doubt will not down. It is -not logical or evidential, but purely psychological. And what it is -grounded on is an unshakable belief that no man’s opinion is worth a -hoot, however well supported and maintained, so long as he is not -absolutely free, if the spirit moves him, to support and maintain -the exactly contrary opinion. In brief, human reason is a weak and -paltry thing so long as it is not wholly free reason. The fact lies in -its very nature, and is revealed by its entire history. A man may be -perfectly honest in a contention, and he may be astute and persuasive -in maintaining it, but the moment the slightest compulsion to maintain -it is laid upon him, the moment the slightest external reward goes with -his partisanship or the slightest penalty with its abandonment, then -there appears a defect in his ratiocination that is more deep-seated -than any error in fact and more destructive than any conscious and -deliberate bias. He may seek the truth and the truth only, and bring up -his highest talents and diligence to the business, but always there is -a specter behind his chair, a warning in his ear. Always it is safer -and more hygienic for him to think one way than to think another way, -and in that bald fact there is excuse enough to hold his whole chain of -syllogisms in suspicion. He may be earnest, he may be honest, but he is -not free, and if he is not free, he is not anything. - -Well, are the reverend professors of economics free? With the highest -respect, I presume to question it. Their colleagues of archeology may -be reasonably called free, and their colleagues of bacteriology, -and those of Latin grammar and sidereal astronomy, and those of many -another science and mystery, but when one comes to the faculty of -political economy one finds that freedom as plainly conditioned, though -perhaps not as openly, as in the faculty of theology. And for a plain -reason. Political economy, so to speak, hits the employers of the -professors where they live. It deals, not with ideas that affect those -employers only occasionally or only indirectly or only as ideas, but -with ideas that have an imminent and continuous influence upon their -personal welfare and security, and that affect profoundly the very -foundations of that social and economic structure upon which their -whole existence is based. It is, in brief, the science of the ways and -means whereby they have come to such estate, and maintain themselves -in such estate, that they are able to hire and boss professors. It -is the boat in which they sail down perilous waters—and they must -needs yell, or be more or less than human, when it is rocked. Now -and then that yell duly resounds in the groves of learning. One -remembers, for example, the trial, condemnation and execution of Prof. -Dr. Scott Nearing at the University of Pennsylvania, a seminary that -is highly typical, both in its staff and in its control. Nearing, I -have no doubt, was wrong in his notions—honestly, perhaps, but still -wrong. In so far as I heard them stated at the time, they seemed -to me to be hollow and of no validity. He has since discharged them -from the chautauquan stump, and at the usual hinds. They have been -chiefly accepted and celebrated by men I regard as asses. But Nearing -was not thrown out of the University of Pennsylvania, angrily and -ignominiously, because he was honestly wrong, or because his errors -made him incompetent to prepare sophomores for their examinations; he -was thrown out because his efforts to get at the truth disturbed the -security and equanimity of the rich ignoranti who happened to control -the university, and because the academic slaves and satellites of -these shopmen were restive under his competition for the attention of -the student-body. In three words, he was thrown out because he was -not safe and sane and orthodox. Had his aberration gone in the other -direction, had he defended child labor as ardently as he denounced it -and denounced the minimum wage as ardently as he defended it, then he -would have been quite as secure in his post, for all his cavorting in -the newspapers, as Chancellor Day was at Syracuse. - -Now consider the case of the professors of economics, near and far, -who have _not_ been thrown out. Who will say that the lesson of the -Nearing _débâcle_ has been lost upon them? Who will say that the -potency of the wealthy men who command our universities—or most of -them—has not stuck in their minds? And who will say that, with this -sticking remembered, their arguments against Nearing’s so-called ideas -are as worthy of confidence and respect as they would be if they were -quite free to go over to Nearing’s side without damage? Who, indeed, -will give them full credit, even when they are right, so long as they -are hamstrung, nose-ringed and tied up in gilded pens? It seems to -me that these considerations are enough to cast a glow of suspicion -over the whole of American political economy, at least in so far -as it comes from college economists. And, in the main, it has that -source, for, barring a few brilliant journalists, all our economists -of any repute are professors. Many of them are able men, and most of -them are undoubtedly honest men, as honesty goes in the world, but -over practically every one of them there stands a board of trustees -with its legs in the stock market and its eyes on the established -order, and that board is ever alert for heresy in the science of its -being, and has ready means of punishing it, and a hearty enthusiasm -for the business. Not every professor, perhaps, may be sent straight -to the block, as Nearing was, but there are plenty of pillories and -guardhouses on the way, and every last pedagogue must be well aware of -it. - -Political economy, in so far as it is a science at all, was not pumped -up and embellished by any such academic clients and ticket-of-leave -men. It was put on its legs by inquirers who were not only safe -from all dousing in the campus pump, but who were also free from -the mental timorousness and conformity which go inevitably with -school-teaching—in brief, by men of the world, accustomed to its -free air, its hospitality to originality and plain speaking. Adam -Smith, true enough, was once a professor, but he threw up his chair -to go to Paris, and there he met, not more professors, but all the -current enemies of professors—the Nearings and Henry Georges and Karl -Marxes of the time. And the book that he wrote was not orthodox, but -revolutionary. Consider the others of that bulk and beam: Bentham, -Ricardo, Mill and their like. Bentham held no post at the mercy of -bankers and tripe-sellers; he was a man of independent means, a lawyer -and politician, and a heretic in general practice. It is impossible -to imagine such a man occupying a chair at Harvard or Princeton. He -had a hand in too many pies: he was too rebellious and contumacious: -he had too little respect for authority, either academic or worldly. -Moreover, his mind was too wide for a professor; he could never remain -safely in a groove; the whole field of social organization invited his -inquiries and experiments. Ricardo? Another man of easy means and great -worldly experience—by academic standards, not even educated. To-day, -I daresay, such meager diplomas as he could show would not suffice to -get him an instructor’s berth in a fresh-water seminary in Iowa. As -for Mill, he was so well grounded by his father that he knew more, at -eighteen, than any of the universities could teach him, and his life -thereafter was the exact antithesis of that of a cloistered pedagogue. -Moreover, he was a heretic in religion and probably violated the Mann -act of those days—an offense almost as heinous, in a college professor -of economics, as giving three cheers for Prince Kropotkin. - -I might lengthen the list, but humanely refrain. The point is that -these early English economists were all perfectly free men, with -complete liberty to tell the truth as they saw it, regardless of -its orthodoxy or lack of orthodoxy. I do not say that the typical -American economist of to-day is not as honest, nor even that he -is not as diligent and competent, but I do say that he is not as -free—that penalties would come upon him for stating ideas that Smith -or Ricardo or Bentham or Mill, had he so desired, would have been free -to state without damage. And in that menace there is an ineradicable -criticism of the ideas that he does state, and it lingers even when -they are plausible and are accepted. In France and Germany, where the -universities and colleges are controlled by the state, the practical -effect of such pressure has been frequently demonstrated. In the former -country the violent debate over social and economic problems during -the quarter century before the war produced a long list of professors -cashiered for heterodoxy, headed by the names of Jean Jaurès and -Gustave Hervé. In Germany it needed no Nietzsche to point out the -deadening produced by this state control. Germany, in fact, got out -of it an entirely new species of economist—the state Socialist who -flirted with radicalism with one eye and kept the other upon his chair, -his salary and his pension. - -The Nearing case and the rebellions of various pedagogues elsewhere -show that we in America stand within the shadow of a somewhat similar -danger. In economics, as in the other sciences, we are probably -producing men who are as good as those on view in any other country. -They are not to be surpassed for learning and originality, and there is -no reason to believe that they lack honesty and courage. But honesty -and courage, as men go in the world, are after all merely relative -values. There comes a point at which even the most honest man considers -consequences, and even the most courageous looks before he leaps. The -difficulty lies in establishing the position of that point. So long as -it is in doubt, there will remain, too, the other doubt that I have -described. I rise in meeting, I repeat, not as a radical, but as one of -the most hunkerous of the orthodox. I can imagine nothing more dubious -in fact and wobbly in logic than some of the doctrines that amateur -economists, chiefly Socialists, have set afloat in this country during -the past dozen years. I have even gone to the trouble of writing a book -against them; my convictions and instincts are all on the other side. -But I should be a great deal more comfortable in those convictions and -instincts if I were convinced that the learned professors were really -in full and absolute possession of academic freedom—if I could imagine -them taking the other tack now and then without damnation to their -jobs, their lecture dates, their book sales and their hides. - - - - -XVI. MATTERS OF STATE - - - - -1 - -_Le Contrat Social_ - - -All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior -man: its one permanent object is to police him and cripple him. If -it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man -who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; -if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior -in every way against both. Thus one of its primary functions is to -regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and -as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat -originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential -change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous -man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for -himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. -Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he -lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he -is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic -personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are. -Ludwig van Beethoven was certainly no politician. Nor was he a patriot. -Nor had he any democratic illusions in him: he held the Viennese in -even more contempt than he held the Hapsburgs. Nevertheless, I am -convinced that the sharp criticism of the Hapsburg government that -he used to loose in the cafés of Vienna had its effects—that some -of his ideas of 1818, after a century of germination, got themselves -translated into acts in 1918. Beethoven, like all other first-rate -men, greatly disliked the government he lived under. I add the names -of Goethe, Heine, Wagner and Nietzsche, to keep among Germans. That of -Bismarck might follow: he admired the Hohenzollern idea, as Carlyle -did, not the German people or the German administration. In his -“Errinerungen,” whenever he discusses the government that he was a part -of, he has difficulty keeping his contempt within the bounds of decorum. - -Nine times out of ten, it seems to me, the man who proposes a change -in the government he lives under, no matter how defective it may be, -is romantic to the verge of sentimentality. There is seldom, if ever, -any evidence that the kind of government he is unlawfully inclined -to would be any better than the government he proposes to supplant. -Political revolutions, in truth, do not often accomplish anything of -genuine value; their one undoubted effect is simply to throw out one -gang of thieves and put in another. After a revolution, of course, -the successful revolutionists always try to convince doubters that -they have achieved great things, and usually they hang any man who -denies it. But that surely doesn’t prove their case. In Russia, for -many years, the plain people were taught that getting rid of the Czar -would make them all rich and happy, but now that they have got rid of -him they are poorer and unhappier than ever before. The Germans, with -the Kaiser in exile, have discovered that a shoemaker turned statesman -is ten times as bad as a Hohenzollern. The Alsatians, having become -Frenchmen again after 48 years anxious wait, have responded to the boon -by becoming extravagant Germanomaniacs. The Tyrolese, though they hated -the Austrians, now hate the Italians enormously more. The Irish, having -rid themselves of the English after 700 years of struggle, instantly -discovered that government by Englishmen, compared to government by -Irishmen, was almost paradisiacal. Even the American colonies gained -little by their revolt in 1776. For twenty-five years after the -Revolution they were in far worse condition as free states than they -would have been as colonies. Their government was more expensive, -more inefficient, more dishonest, and more tyrannical. It was only -the gradual material progress of the country that saved them from -starvation and collapse, and that material progress was due, not to the -virtues of their new government, but to the lavishness of nature. Under -the British hoof they would have got on just as well, and probably a -great deal better. - -The ideal government of all reflective men, from Aristotle to Herbert -Spencer, is one which lets the individual alone—one which barely -escapes being no government at all. This ideal, I believe, will be -realized in the world twenty or thirty centuries after I have passed -from these scenes and taken up my home in Hell. - - - - -2 - -_On Minorities_ - - -It is a commonplace of historical science that the forgotten worthies -who framed the Constitution of the United States had no belief in -democracy. Prof. Dr. Beard, in a slim, sad book, has laboriously proved -that most obvious of obviousities. Two prime objects are visible in the -Constitution, beautifully enshrouded in disarming words: to protect -property and to safeguard minorities—in brief, to hold the superior -few harmless against the inferior many. The first object is still -carried out, despite the effort of democratic law to make capital an -outlaw. The second, alas, has been defeated completely. What -is worse, it has been defeated in the very holy of holies of those -who sought to attain it, which is to say, in the funereal chamber -of the Supreme Court of the United States. Bit by bit this great -bench of master minds has gradually established the doctrine that -a minority in the Republic has no rights whatever. If they still -exist theoretically, as fossils surviving from better days, there is -certainly no machinery left for protecting and enforcing them. The -current majority, if it so desired to-morrow, could add an amendment to -the Constitution prohibiting the ancient Confederate vice of chewing -the compressed leaves of the tobacco plant _(Nicotiana tabacum)_; the -Supreme Court, which has long since forgotten the Bill of Rights, -would promptly issue a writ of _nihil obstat_, with a series of moral -reflections as _lagniappe._ More, the Supreme Court would as promptly -uphold a law prohibiting the chewing of gum _(Achras sapota)_—on -the ground that any unnecessary chewing, however harmless in itself, -might tempt great hordes of morons to chew tobacco. This is not a mere -torturing of sardonic theory: the thing has been actually done in the -case of Prohibition. The Eighteenth Amendment prohibits the sale of -intoxicating beverages; the Supreme Court has decided plainly that, in -order to enforce it, Congress also has the right to prohibit the sale -of beverages that are admittedly _not_ intoxicating. It could, indeed, -specifically prohibit near-beer to-morrow, or any drink containing -malt or hops, however low in alcohol; the more extreme Prohibitionists -actually demand that it do so forthwith. - -Worse, a minority not only has no more inalienable rights in the United -States; it is not even lawfully entitled to be heard. This was well -established by the case of the Socialists elected to the New York -Assembly. What the voters who elected these Socialists asked for was -simply the privilege of choosing spokesmen to voice their doctrines in -a perfectly lawful and peaceable manner,—nothing more. This privilege -was denied them. In precisely the same way, the present national House -of Representatives, which happens to be Republican in complexion, might -expel all of its Democratic members. The voters who elected them would -have no redress. If the same men were elected again, or other men of -the same views, they might be expelled again. More, it would apparently -be perfectly constitutional for the majority in Congress to pass a -statute denying the use of the mails to the minority—that is, for the -Republicans to bar all Democratic papers from the mails. I do not toy -with mere theories. The thing has actually been done in the case of -the Socialists. Under the present law, indeed—upheld by the Supreme -Court—the Postmaster-General, without any further authority from -Congress, might deny the mails to all Democrats. Or to all Catholics. -Or to all single taxers. Or to all violoncellists. - -Yet more, a citizen who happens to belong to a minority is not even -safe in his person: he may be put into prison, and for very long -periods, for the simple offense of differing from the majority. This -happened, it will be recalled, in the case of Debs. Debs by no means -advised citizens subject to military duty, in time of war, to evade -that duty, as the newspapers of the time alleged. On the contrary, -he advised them to meet and discharge that duty. All he did was to -say that, even in time of war, he was against war—that he regarded -it as a barbarous method of settling disputes between nations. For -thus differing from the majority on a question of mere theory he was -sentenced to ten years in prison. The case of the three young Russians -arrested in New York was even more curious. These poor idiots were -jailed for the almost incredible crime of circulating purely academic -protests against making war upon a country with which the United States -was legally at peace, to wit, Russia. For this preposterous offense two -of them were sent to prison for fifteen years, and one, a girl, for -ten years, and the Supreme Court upheld their convictions. Here was a -plain case of proscription and punishment for a mere opinion. There was -absolutely no contention that the protest of the three prisoners could -have any practical result—that it might, for example, destroy the -_morale_ of American soldiers 6,000 miles away, and cut off from all -communication with the United States. The three victims were ordered -to be punished in that appalling manner simply because they ventured -to criticise an executive usurpation which happened, at the moment, -to have the support of public opinion, and particularly of the then -President of the United States and of the holders of Russian government -securities. - -It must be obvious, viewing such leading cases critically—and hundreds -like them might be cited—that the old rights of the free American, so -carefully laid down by the Bill of Rights, are now worth nothing. Bit -by bit, Congress and the State Legislatures have invaded and nullified -them, and to-day they are so flimsy that no lawyer not insane would -attempt to defend his client by bringing them up. Imagine trying to -defend a man denied the use of the mails by the Postmaster-General, -without hearing or even formal notice, on the ground that the -Constitution guarantees the right of free speech! The very catchpolls -in the courtroom would snicker. I say that the legislative arm is -primarily responsible for this gradual enslavement of the Americano; -the truth is, of course, that the executive and judicial arms are -responsible to a scarcely less degree. Our law has not kept pace with -the development of our bureaucracy; there is no machinery provided for -curbing its excesses. In Prussia, in the old days, there were special -courts for the purpose, and a citizen oppressed by the police or by -any other public official could get relief and redress. The guilty -functionary could be fined, mulcted in damages, demoted, cashiered, -or even jailed. But in the United States to-day there are no such -tribunals. A citizen attacked by the Postmaster-General simply has -no redress whatever; the courts have refused, over and over again, -to interfere save in cases of obvious fraud. Nor is there, it would -seem, any remedy for the unconstitutional acts of Prohibition agents. -Some time ago, when Senator Stanley, of Kentucky, tried to have a law -passed forbidding them to break into a citizen’s house in violation of -the Bill of Rights, the Prohibitionists mustered up their serfs in the -Senate against him, and he was voted down. - -The Supreme Court, had it been so disposed, might have put a stop to -all this sinister buffoonery long ago. There was a time, indeed, when -it was alert to do so. That was during the Civil War. But since then -the court has gradually succumbed to the prevailing doctrine that the -minority has no rights that the majority is bound to respect. As it -is at present constituted, it shows little disposition to go to the -rescue of the harassed freeman. When property is menaced it displays -a laudable diligence, but when it comes to the mere rights of the -citizen it seems hopelessly inclined to give the prosecution the -benefit of every doubt. Two justices commonly dissent—two out of nine. -They hold the last switch-trench of the old constitutional line. When -they depart to realms of bliss the Bill of Rights will be buried with -them. - - - - -XVII. REFLECTIONS ON THE DRAMA - - -The drama is the most democratic of the art forms, and perhaps the -only one that may legitimately bear the label. Painting, sculpture, -music and literature, so far as they show any genuine æsthetic or -intellectual content at all, are not for crowds, but for selected -individuals, mostly with bad kidneys and worse morals, and three of the -four are almost always enjoyed in actual solitude. Even architecture -and religious ritual, though they are publicly displayed, make their -chief appeal to man as individual, not to man as mass animal. One goes -into a church as part of a crowd, true enough, but if it be a church -that has risen above mere theological disputation to the beauty of -ceremonial, one is, even in theory, alone with the Lord God Jehovah. -And if, passing up Fifth Avenue in the 5 o’clock throng, one pauses -before St. Thomas’s to drink in the beauty of that archaic façade, -one’s drinking is almost sure to be done _a cappella;_ of the other -passers-by, not one in a thousand so much as glances at it. - -But the drama, as representation, is inconceivable save as a show -for the mob, and so it has to take on protective coloration to -survive. It must make its appeal, not to individuals as such, nor -even to individuals as units in the mob, but to the mob as mob—a -quite different thing, as Gustav Le Bon long ago demonstrated in his -“Psychologie des Foules.” Thus its intellectual content, like its -æsthetic form, must be within the mental grasp of the mob, and what is -more important, within the scope of its prejudices. _Per corollary_, -anything even remotely approaching an original idea, or an unpopular -idea, is foreign to it, and if it would make any impression at all, -abhorrent to it. The best a dramatist can hope to do is to give -poignant and arresting expression to an idea so simple that the average -man will grasp it at once, and so banal that he will approve it in the -next instant. The phrase “drama of ideas” thus becomes a mere phrase. -What is actually meant by it is “drama of platitudes.” - -So much for the theory. An appeal to the facts quickly substantiates -it. The more one looks into the so-called drama of ideas of the last -age—that is, into the acting drama—the more one is astounded by the -vacuity of its content. The younger Dumas’ “La Dame aux Camélias,” -the first of all the propaganda plays (it raised a stupendous pother -in 1852, the echoes of which yet roll), is based upon the sophomoric -thesis that a prostitute is a human being like you and me, and suffers -the slings and arrows of the same sorrows, and may be potentially quite -as worthy of heaven. Augier’s “Le Mariage d’Olympe” (1854), another -sensation-making pioneer, is even hollower; its four acts are devoted -to rubbing in the revolutionary discovery that it is unwise for a young -man of good family to marry an elderly cocotte. Proceed now to Ibsen. -Here one finds the same tasteless platitudes—that it is unpleasant for -a wife to be treated as a doll; that professional patriots and town -boomers are frauds; that success in business is often grounded upon -a mere willingness to do what a man of honor is incapable of; that a -woman who continues to live with a debauched husband may expect to have -unhealthy children; that a joint sorrow tends to bring husband and wife -together; that a neurotic woman is apt to prefer death to maternity; -that a man of 55 is an ass to fall in love with a flapper of 17. Do I -burlesque? If you think so, turn to Ibsen’s “Nachgelassene Schriften” -and read his own statements of the ideas in his social dramas—read -his own succinct summaries of their theses. You will imagine yourself, -on more than one page, in the latest volume of mush by Orison Swett -Marden. Such “ideas” are what one finds in newspaper editorials, -speeches before Congress, sermons by evangelical divines—in -brief, in the literature expressly addressed to those persons whose -distinguishing mark is that ideas never enter their heads. - -Ibsen himself, an excellent poet and a reflective man, was under no -delusions about his “dramas of ideas.” It astounded him greatly when -the sentimental German middle-classes hailed “Ein Puppenheim” as a -revolutionary document; he protested often and bitterly against being -mistaken for a prophet of feminism. His own interest in this play -and in those that followed it was chiefly technical; he was trying -to displace the well-made play of Scribe and company with something -simpler, more elastic and more hospitable to character. He wrote -“Ghosts” to raise a laugh against the fools who had seen something -novel and horrible in the idea of “A Doll’s House”; he wanted to prove -to them that that idea was no more than a platitude. Soon afterward he -became thoroughly disgusted with the whole “drama of ideas.” In “The -Wild Duck” he cruelly burlesqued it, and made a low-comedy Ibsenist his -chief butt. In “Hedda Gabler” he played a joke on the Ibsen fanatics by -fashioning a first-rate drama out of the oldest, shoddiest materials -of Sardou, Feuillet, and even Meilhac and Halévy. And beginning with -“Little Eyolf” he threw the “drama of ideas” overboard forever, and -took to mysticism. What could be more comical than the efforts of -critical talmudists to read a thesis into “When We Dead Awaken”? I -have put in many a gay hour perusing their commentaries. Ibsen, had -he lived, would have roared over them—as he roared over the effort -to inject portentous meanings into “The Master Builder,” at bottom no -more than a sentimental epitaph to a love affair that he himself had -suffered at 60. - -Gerhart Hauptmann, another dramatist of the first rank, has gone much -the same road. As a very young man he succumbed to the “drama of -ideas” gabble, and his first plays showed an effort to preach this or -that in awful tones. But he soon discovered that the only ideas that -would go down, so to speak, on the stage were ideas of such an austere -platitudinousness that it was beneath his artistic dignity to merchant -them, and so he gave over propaganda altogether. In other words, his -genius burst through the narrow bounds of mob ratiocination, and he -began appealing to the universal emotions—pity, religious sentiment, -patriotism, amorousness. Even in his first play, “Vor Sonnenaufgang,” -his instinct got the better of his mistaken purpose, and reading it -to-day one finds that the sheer horror of it is of vastly more effect -than its nebulous and unimportant ideas. It really says nothing; it -merely makes us dislike some very unpleasant people. - -Turn now to Shaw. At once one finds that the only plays from his -pen which contain actual ideas have failed dismally on the stage. -These are the so-called “discussions”—e. g., “Getting Married.” The -successful plays contain no ideas; they contain only platitudes, -balderdash, buncombe that even a suffragette might think of. Of such -sort are “Man and Superman,” “Arms and the Man,” “Candida,” “Androcles -and the Lion,” and their like. Shaw has given all of these pieces -a specious air of profundity by publishing them hooked to long and -garrulous prefaces and by filling them with stage directions which -describe and discuss the characters at great length. But as stage plays -they are almost as empty as “Hedda Gabler.” One searches them vainly -for even the slightest novel contribution to the current theories of -life, joy and crime. Shaw’s prefaces, of course, have vastly more -ideational force and respectability than his plays. If he fails to get -any ideas of genuine savor into them it is not because the preface form -bars them out but because he hasn’t any to get in. By attaching them to -his plays he converts the latter into colorable imitations of novels, -and so opens the way for that superior reflectiveness which lifts the -novel above the play, and makes it, as Arnold Bennett has convincingly -shown, much harder to write. A stage play in the modern realistic -manner—that is, without soliloquies and asides—can seldom rise -above the mere representation of some infinitesimal episode, whereas -even the worst novel may be, in some sense, an interpretation as -well. Obviously, such episodes as may be exposed in 20,000 words—the -extreme limit of the average play—are seldom significant, and not -often clearly intelligible. The author has a hard enough job making -his characters recognizable as human beings; he hasn’t time to go -behind their acts to their motives, or to deduce any conclusions worth -hearing from their doings. One often leaves a “social drama,” indeed, -wondering what the deuce it is all about; the discussion of its meaning -offers endless opportunities for theorists and fanatics. The Ibsen -symbolists come to mind again. They read meanings into such plays as -“Rosmersholm” and “The Wild Duck” that aroused Ibsen, a peaceful man, -to positive fury. In the same way the suffragettes collared, “A Doll’s -House.” Even “Peer Gynt” did not escape. There is actually an edition -of it edited by a theosophist, in the preface to which it is hymned as -a theosophical document. Luckily for Ibsen, he died before this edition -was printed. But one may well imagine how it would have made him swear. - -The notion that there are ideas in the “drama of ideas,” in truth, -is confined to a special class of illuminati, whose chief visible -character is their capacity for ingesting nonsense—Maeterlinckians, -uplifters, women’s clubbers, believers in all the sure cures for -all the sorrows of the world. To-day the Drama League carries on -the tradition. It is composed of the eternally young—unsuccessful -dramatists who yet live in hope, young college professors, psychopathic -old maids, middle-aged ladies of an incurable jejuneness, the -innumerable caravan of the ingenuous and sentimental. Out of the -same intellectual _Landsturm_ comes the following of Bergson, the -parlor metaphysician; and of the third-rate novelists praised by the -newspapers; and of such composers as Wolf-Ferrari and Massenet. These -are the fair ones, male and female, who were ecstatically shocked by -the platitudes of “Damaged Goods,” and who regard Augustus Thomas as -a great dramatist, and what is more, as a great thinker. Their hero, -during a season or two, was the Swedish John the Baptist, August -Strindberg—a lunatic with a gift for turning the preposterous into the -shocking. A glance at Strindberg’s innumerable volumes of autobiography -reveals the true horse-power of his so-called ideas. He believed in -everything that was idiotic, from transcendentalism to witchcraft. -He believed that his enemies were seeking to destroy him by magic; -he spent a whole winter trying to find the philosopher’s stone. Even -among the clergy, it would be difficult to find a more astounding ass -than Strindberg. But he had, for all his folly, a considerable native -skill at devising effective stage-plays—a talent that some men seem -to be born with—and under cover of it he acquired his reputation -as a thinker. Here he was met half way by the defective powers of -observation and reflection of his followers, the half-wits aforesaid; -they mistook their enjoyment of his adept technical trickery for an -appreciation of ideas. Turn to the best of his plays, “The Father.” -Here the idea—that domestic nagging can cause insanity—is an almost -perfect platitude, for on the one hand it is universally admitted -and on the other hand it is not true. But as a stage play pure and -simple, the piece is superb—a simple and yet enormously effective -mechanism. So with “Countess Julie.” The idea here is so vague and -incomprehensible that no two commentators agree in stating it, and yet -the play is so cleverly written, and appeals with such a sure touch to -the universal human weakness for the obscene, that it never fails to -enchant an audience. The case of “Hedda Gabler” is parallel. If the -actresses playing Hedda in this country made up for the part in the -scandalous way their sisters do in Germany (that is, by wearing bustles -in front), it would be as great a success here as it is over there. -Its general failure among us is due to the fact that it is not made -indelicate enough. This also explains the comparative failure of the -rest of the Ibsen plays. The crowd has been subtly made to believe that -they are magnificently indecent—and is always dashed and displeased -when it finds nothing to lift the diaphragm. I well remember the -first production of “Ghosts” in America—a business in which I had a -hand. So eager was the audience for the promised indecencies that it -actually read them into the play, and there were protests against it -on the ground that Mrs. Alving was represented as trying to seduce -her own son! Here comstockery often helps the “drama of ideas.” If no -other idea is visible, it can always conjure up, out of its native -swinishness, some idea that is offensively sexual, and hence pleasing -to the mob. - -That mob rules in the theater, and so the theater remains infantile -and trivial—a scene, not of the exposure of ideas, nor even of -the exhibition of beauty, but one merely of the parading of mental -and physical prettiness and vulgarity. It is at its worst when -its dramatists seek to corrupt this function by adding a moral or -intellectual purpose. It is at its best when it confines itself to -the unrealities that are its essence, and swings amiably from the -romance that never was on land or sea to the buffoonery that is at -the bottom of all we actually know of human life. Shakespeare was -its greatest craftsman: he wasted no tortured ratiocination upon his -plays. Instead, he filled them with the gaudy heroes that all of us -see ourselves becoming on some bright to-morrow, and the lowly frauds -and clowns we are to-day. No psychopathic problems engaged him; he -took love and ambition and revenge and braggadocio as he found them. -He held no clinics in dingy Norwegian apartment-houses: his field was -Bohemia, glorious Rome, the Egypt of the scene-painter, Arcady.... But -even Shakespeare, for all the vast potency of his incomparable, his -stupefying poetry, could not long hold the talmudists out in front from -their search for invisible significances. Think of all the tomes that -have been written upon the profound and revolutionary “ideas” in the -moony musings of the diabetic sophomore, Hamlet von Danemark! - - - - -XVIII. ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN - - - - -1 - -_To Him that Hath_ - - -The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and -disdainful air, is the reputation of being well to do. Nothing else -so neatly eases one’s way through life, especially in democratic -countries. There is in ninety-nine per cent. of all democrats an -irresistible impulse to crook the knee to wealth, to defer humbly to -the power that goes with it, to see all sorts of high merits in the -man who has it, or is said to have it. True enough, envy goes with -the pliant neck, but it is envy somehow purged of all menace: the -inferior man is afraid to do evil to the man with money in eight banks; -he is even afraid to _think_ evil of him—that is, in any patent and -offensive way. Against capital as an abstraction he rants incessantly, -and all of the laws that he favors treat it as if it were criminal. But -in the presence of the concrete capitalist he is singularly fawning. -What makes him so is easy to discern. He yearns with a great yearning -for a chance to tap the capitalist’s purse, and he knows very well, -deep down in his heart, that he is too craven and stupid to do it by -force of arms. So he turns to politeness, and tries to cajole. Give -out the news that one has just made a killing in the stock market, or -robbed some confiding widow of her dower, or swindled the government -in some patriotic enterprise, and at once one will discover that one’s -shabbiness is a charming eccentricity, and one’s judgment of wines -worth hearing, and one’s politics worthy of attention and respect. The -man who is thought to be poor never gets a fair chance. No one wants to -listen to him. No one gives a damn what he thinks or knows or feels. No -one has any active desire for his good opinion. - -I discovered this principle early in life, and have put it to use -ever since. I have got a great deal more out of men (and women) by -having the name of being a well-heeled fellow than I have ever got by -being decent to them, or by dazzling them with my sagacity, or by hard -industry, or by a personal beauty that is singular and ineffable. - - - - -2 - -_The Venerable Examined_ - - -The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age -brings wisdom. It is my honest belief that I am no wiser to-day -than I was five or ten years ago; in fact, I often suspect that I -am appreciable _less_ wise. Women can prevail over me to-day by -devices that would have made me hoof them out of my studio when I was -thirty-five. I am also an easier mark for male swindlers than I used -to be; at fifty I’ll probably be joining clubs and buying Mexican -mine stock. The truth is that every man goes up-hill in sagacity -to a certain point, and then begins sliding down again. Nearly all -the old fellows that I know are more or less balmy. Theoretically, -they should be much wiser than younger men, if only because of their -greater experience, but actually they seem to take on folly faster than -they take on wisdom. A man of thirty-five or thirty-eight is almost -woman-proof. For a woman to marry him is a herculean feat. But by the -time he is fifty he is quite as easy as a Yale sophomore. On other -planes the same decay of the intelligence is visible. Certainly it -would be difficult to imagine any committee of relatively young men, of -thirty or thirty-five, showing the unbroken childishness, ignorance and -lack of humor of the Supreme Court of the United States. The average -age of the learned justices must be well beyond sixty, and all of -them are supposed to be of finished and mellowed sagacity. Yet their -knowledge of the most ordinary principles of justice often turns out -to be extremely meager, and when they spread themselves grandly upon -a great case their reasoning powers are usually found to be precisely -equal to those of a respectable Pullman conductor. - - - - -3 - -_Duty_ - - -Some of the loosest thinking in ethics has duty for its theme. -Practically all writers on the subject agree that the individual -owes certain unescapable duties to the race—for example, the duty -of engaging in productive labor, and that of marrying and begetting -offspring. In support of this position it is almost always argued that -if _all_ men neglected such duties the race would perish. The logic is -hollow enough to be worthy of the college professors who are guilty -of it. It simply confuses the conventionality, the pusillanimity, the -lack of imagination of the majority of men with the duty of _all_ men. -There is not the slightest ground for assuming, even as a matter of -mere argumentation, that _all_ men will ever neglect these alleged -duties. There will always remain a safe majority that is willing to -do whatever is ordained—that accepts docilely the government it is -born under, obeys its laws, and supports its theory. But that majority -does not comprise the men who render the highest and most intelligent -services to the race; it comprises those who render nothing save their -obedience. - -For the man who differs from this inert and well-regimented -mass, however slightly, there are no duties _per se_. What he is -spontaneously inclined to do is of vastly more value to all of us -than what the majority is willing to do. There is, indeed, no such -thing as duty-in-itself; it is a mere chimera of ethical theorists. -Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration. The -very concept of duty is thus a function of inferiority; it belongs -naturally only to timorous and incompetent men. Even on such levels it -remains largely a self-delusion, a soothing apparition, a euphemism for -necessity. When a man succumbs to duty he merely succumbs to the habit -and inclination of other men. Their collective interests invariably -pull against his individual interests. Some of us can resist a pretty -strong pull—the pull, perhaps, of thousands. But it is only the -miraculous man who can withstand the pull of a whole nation. - - -_Martyrs_ - -“History,” says Henry Ford, “is bunk.” I inscribe myself among those -who dissent from this doctrine; nevertheless, I am often hauled up, -in reading history, by a feeling that I am among unrealities. In -particular, that feeling comes over me when I read about the religious -wars of the past—wars in which thousands of men, women and children -were butchered on account of puerile and unintelligible disputes -over transubstantiation, the atonement, and other such metaphysical -banshees. It does not surprise me that the majority murdered the -minority; the majority, even to-day, does it whenever it is possible. -What I can’t understand is that the minority went voluntarily to the -slaughter. Even in the worst persecutions known to history—say, for -example, those of the Jews of Spain—it was always possible for a -given member of the minority to save his hide by giving public assent -to the religious notions of the majority. A Jew who was willing to -be baptized, in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, was practically -unmolested; his descendants to-day are 100% Spaniards. Well, then, why -did so many Jews refuse? Why did so many prefer to be robbed, exiled, -and sometimes murdered? - -The answer given by philosophical historians is that they were a -noble people, and preferred death to heresy. But this merely begs -the question. Is it actually noble to cling to a religious idea so -tenaciously? Certainly it doesn’t seem so to me. After all, no human -being really _knows_ anything about the exalted matters with which -all religions deal. The most he can do is to match his private guess -against the guesses of his fellow-men. For any man to say absolutely, -in such a field, that this or that is wholly and irrefragably true and -this or that is utterly false is simply to talk nonsense. Personally, I -have never encountered a religious idea—and I do not except even the -idea of the existence of God—that was instantly and unchallengeably -convincing, as, say, the Copernican astronomy is instantly and -unchallengeably convincing. But neither have I ever encountered -a religious idea that could be dismissed offhand as palpably and -indubitably false. In even the worst nonsense of such theological -mountebanks as the Rev. Dr. Billy Sunday, Brigham Young and Mrs. Eddy -there is always enough lingering plausibility, or, at all events, -possibility, to give the judicious pause. Whatever the weight of the -probabilities against it, it nevertheless _may_ be true that man, on -his decease, turns into a gaseous vertebrate, and that this vertebrate, -if its human larva has engaged in embezzlement, bootlegging, profanity -or adultery on this earth, will be boiled for a million years in -a cauldron of pitch. My private inclination, due to my defective -upbringing, is to doubt it, and to set down any one who believes it as -an ass, but it must be plain that I have no means of disproving it. - -In view of this uncertainty it seems to me sheer vanity for any man to -hold his religious views too firmly, or to submit to any inconvenience -on account of them. It is far better, if they happen to offend, to -conceal them discreetly, or to change them amiably as the delusions -of the majority change. My own views in this department, being wholly -skeptical and tolerant, are obnoxious to the subscribers to practically -all other views; even atheists sometimes denounce me. At the moment, -by an accident of American political history, these dissenters from -my theology are forbidden to punish me for not agreeing with them. -But at any succeeding moment some group or other among them may seize -such power and proceed against me in the immemorial manner. If it ever -happens, I give notice here and now that I shall get converted to their -nonsense instantly, and so retire to safety with my right thumb laid -against my nose and my fingers waving like wheat in the wind. I’d do it -even to-day, if there were any practical advantage in it. Offer me a -case of Rauenthaler 1903, and I engage to submit to baptism by any rite -ever heard of, provided it does not expose my gothic nakedness. Make it -ten cases, and I’ll agree to be both baptized and confirmed. In such -matters I am broad-minded. What, after all, is one more lie? - - - - -5 - -_The Disabled Veteran_ - - -The science of psychological pathology is still in its infancy. In -all its literature in three languages, I can’t find a line about the -permanent ill effects of acute emotional diseases—say, for example, -love affairs. The common assumption of the world is that when a love -affair is over it is over—that nothing remains behind. This is -probably grossly untrue. It is my belief that every such experience -leaves scars upon my psyche, and that they are quite as plain and quite -as dangerous as the scars left on the neck by a carbuncle. A man who -has passed through a love affair, even though he may eventually forget -the lady’s very name, is never quite the same thereafter. His scars -may be small, but they are permanent. The sentimentalist, exposed -incessantly, ends as a psychic cripple; he is as badly off as the man -who has come home from the wars with shell-shock. The precise nature -of the scars remains to be determined. My own notion is that they take -the form of large yellow patches upon the self-esteem. Whenever a man -thinks of one of his dead love affairs, and in particular whenever -he allows his memory to dredge up an image of the woman he loved, -he shivers like one taken in some unmanly and discreditable act. -Such shivers, repeated often enough, must inevitably shake his inner -integrity off its base. No man can love, and yet remain truly proud. It -is a disarming and humiliating experience. - - - - -6 - -_Patriotism_ - - -Patriotism is conceivable to a civilized man in times of stress and -storm, when his country is wobbling and sore beset. His country then -appeals to him as any victim of misfortune appeals to him—say, a -street-walker pursued by the police. But when it is safe, happy and -prosperous it can only excite his loathing. The things that make -countries safe, happy and prosperous—a secure peace, an active trade, -political serenity at home—are all intrinsically corrupting and -disgusting. It is as impossible for a civilized man to love his country -in good times as it would be for him to respect a politician. - - - - -XIX. SUITE AMÉRICANE - - - - -1 - -_Aspiration_ - - -Police sergeants praying humbly to God that Jews will start poker-rooms -on their posts, and so enable them to educate their eldest sons for -holy orders.... Newspaper reporters resolving firmly to work hard, keep -sober and be polite to the city editor, and so be rewarded with jobs -as copy-readers.... College professors in one-building universities -on the prairie, still hoping, at the age of sixty, to get their -whimsical essays into the _Atlantic Monthly._ ... Car conductors on -lonely suburban lines, trying desperately to save up $500 and start -a Ford garage.... Pastors of one-horse little churches in decadent -villages, who, whenever they drink two cups of coffee at supper, dream -all night that they have been elected bishops.... Movie actors who -hope against hope that the next fan letter will be from Bar Harbor.... -Delicatessen dealers who spend their whole lives searching for a cheap -substitute for the embalmed veal used in chicken-salad.... Italians -who wish that they were Irish.... Mulatto girls in Georgia and Alabama -who send away greasy dollar bills for bottles of Mme. Celestine’s -Infallible Hair-Straightener.... Ash-men who pull wires to be appointed -superintendents of city dumps. Mothers who dream that the babies -in their cradles will reach, in the mysterious after years, the -highest chairs in the Red Men and the Maccabees.... Farmers who figure -that, with good luck, they will be able to pay off their mortgages -by 1943.... Contestants for the standing broad-jump championship of -the Altoona, Pa., Y. M. C. A.... Editorial writers who essay to prove -mathematically that a war between England and the United States is -unthinkable.... - - - - -2 - -_Virtue_ - - -Pale druggists in remote towns of the Epworth League and flannel -nightgown belts, endlessly wrapping up bottles of Peruna.... Women -hidden away in the damp kitchens of unpainted houses along the railroad -tracks, frying tough beefsteaks.... Lime and cement dealers being -initiated into the Knights of Pythias, the Red Men or the Woodmen -of the World.... Watchmen at lonely railroad crossings in Iowa, -hoping that they’ll be able to get off to hear the United Brethren -evangelist preach.... Ticket-choppers in the subway, breathing -sweat in its gaseous form.... Family doctors in poor neighborhoods, -faithfully relying upon the therapeutics taught in their Eclectic -Medical College in 1884.... Farmers plowing sterile fields behind sad -meditative horses, both suffering from the bites of insects.... Greeks -tending all-night coffee-joints in the suburban wildernesses where the -trolley-cars stop.... Grocery-clerks stealing prunes and ginger-snaps, -and trying to make assignations with soapy servant-girls.... Women -confined for the ninth or tenth time, wondering helplessly what it is -all about.... Methodist preachers retired after forty years of service -in the trenches of God, upon pensions of $600 a year.... Wives and -daughters of Middle Western country bankers, marooned in Los Angeles, -going tremblingly to swami séances in dark, smelly rooms.... Chauffeurs -in huge fur coats waiting outside theaters filled with folks applauding -Robert Edeson and Jane Cowl.... Decayed and hopeless men writing -editorials at midnight for leading papers in Mississippi, Arkansas and -Alabama.... Owners of the principal candy-stores in Green River, Neb., -and Tyrone, Pa.... Presidents of one-building universities in the rural -fastnesses of Kentucky and Tennessee.... Women with babies in their -arms weeping over moving-pictures in the Elks’ Hall at Schmidtsville, -Mo.... Babies just born to the wives of milk-wagon drivers.... -Judges on the benches of petty county courts in Virginia, Vermont and -Idaho.... Conductors of accommodation trains running between Kokomo, -Ind., and Logansport.... - - - - -3 - -_Eminence_ - - -The leading Methodist layman of Pottawattamie county, Iowa.... The -man who won the limerick contest conducted by the Toomsboro, Ga., -_Banner._ ... The secretary of the Little Rock, Ark., Kiwanis Club.... -The president of the Johann Sebastian Bach _Bauverein_ of Highlandtown, -Md.... The girl who sold the most Liberty Bonds in Duquesne, Pa.... -The captain of the champion basket-ball team at the Gary, Ind., Y. -M. C. A.... The man who owns the best bull in Coosa county, Ala.... -The tallest man in Covington, Ky.... The oldest subscriber to the -Raleigh, N. C, _News and Observer._ ... The most fashionable milliner -in Bucyrus, O.... The business agent of the Plasterers’ Union of -Somerville, Mass.... The author of the ode read at the unveiling -of the monument to General Robert E. Lee at Valdosta, Ga.... The -original Henry Cabot Lodge man.... The owner of the champion Airedale -of Buffalo, N. Y.... The first child named after the Hon. Warren -Gamaliel Harding.... The old lady in Wahoo, Neb., who has read the -Bible 38 times.... The boss who controls the Italian, Czecho-Slovak and -Polish votes in Youngstown, O.... The professor of chemistry, Greek, -rhetoric and piano at the Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, -Tex.... The boy who sells 225 copies of the _Saturday Evening Post_ -every week in Cheyenne, Wyo.... The youngest murderer awaiting hanging -in Chicago.... The leading dramatic critic of Pittsburgh.... The -night watchman in Penn Yan, N. Y., who once shook hands with Chester -A. Arthur.... The Lithuanian woman in Bluefield, W. Va., who has had -five sets of triplets.... The actor who has played in “Lightning” -1,600 times.... The best horse doctor in Oklahoma.... The highest-paid -church-choir soprano in Knoxville, Tenn.... The most eligible bachelor -in Cheyenne, Wyo.... The engineer of the locomotive which pulled the -train which carried the Hon. A. Mitchell Palmer to the San Francisco -Convention.... The girl who got the most votes in the popularity -contest at Egg Harbor, N. J.... - - - - - INDEX - - Adam, Villiers de l’Isle - Adams, Henry - Addams, Jane - Addison, Joseph - American Legion - American Protective League - _Annabel Lee_ - Anti-Saloon League - Arnold, Matthew - Asch, Sholom - Asquith, Mrs. - Astor, Lady - _Atlantic Monthly_ - Augier, Emile - - Bach, J. S. - Baker, Newton D. - Balfour, A. J. - Baltimore _Sun_ - Balzac, H. - Barton, William E. - Beerbohm, Max - Beethoven, Ludwig van - Belasco, David - Bennett, Arnold - Benson, Admiral - Bentham, Jeremy - _Berliner Tageblatt_ - Berlioz, Hector - Bible - Bierbaum, Otto Julius - Birkenhead, Lord - Bismarck, Otto von - Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen - Böhlau, Helene - Bolshevism - Boston _Transcript_ - Bottomley, Horace - Boyd, Ernest A. - Brady, Diamond Jim - Brahms, Johannes - Brandes, Georg - Brieux, Eugene - Browning, Robert - Bryan, William Jennings - Bryce, James - Burleson, A. S. - Butler, Nicholas Murray - - Cabell, James Branch - Capitalism - Carlyle, Thomas - Cather, Willa - Catt, Carrie Chapman - Cawein, Madison - Cézanne, Paul - Chamberlain, Joseph - Chopin, F. - Churchill, Winston - Cicero - Civil War - Clemenceau, Georges - Clemens, Samuel L. - Clutton-Brock, A. - Congress - _Congressional Record_ - Conrad, Joseph - Constitution, U. S. - Coolidge, Calvin - Cooper, J. Fenimore - Cox, James M. - Crane, Frank - Creel, George - Criticism - Curtis, Cyrus K. - - D’Annunzio, Gabrielle - Darwin, Charles - Dawes, Rufus - Debs, Eugene - Declaration of Independence - Dempsey, Jack - Dillon, Dr. - Disarmament Treaty - _Dixie_, - Dreiser, Theodore - Dryden, John - Dumas, Alexandre _fils_, - Dunsany, Lord - Duse, Eleanora - Dvorak, Antonin - - Edwards, Jonathan - Ehrlich, Paul - Ellis, Havelock - Emerson, R. W. - - _Faust_, - Finck, Henry T. - Flower, B. O. - Foch, Ferdinand - Ford, Henry - France, Anatole - Franklin, Fabian - Freud, Sigmund - - Gale, Zona - Galileo - Garland, Hamlin - Garrett, Garet - George, W. L. - Gilman, Daniel, C. - Goethe, J. W. - Goldmarck, Karl - Gorky, Maxim - Gounod, Charles - Gourmont, Remy de - Grant, U. S. - Greenwich Village - - Hamilton, Alexander - _Hamlet_, - Hamsun, Knut - Harding, W. G. - Harris, Frank - Hartleben, O. E. - Harvey, George B. - Hauptmann, Gerhart - Hazlitt, William - _Heart of Darkness_ - Hergesheimer, Joseph - Hillis, Newell Dwight - Hofmannsthal, Hugo von - Howells, William Dean - Huch, Ricarda - _Huckleberry Finn_ - Hughes, Charles E. - Huneker, James G. - Huxley, T. H. - Huysmans, J. K. - - Ibsen, Henrik - Iconoclasts - Intellectuals, Young - Irving, Washington - - Jackson, Andrew - James, Henry - Jefferson, Thomas - Jespersen, Otto - Jordan, David Starr - _Josef’s Legend_ - - Kerr, Alfred - Kipling, Rudyard - Klebs, Edwin - Knights of Pythias - Know Nothings - Krehbiel, Henry - Ku Klux Klan - Kürnberger, Ferdinand - - Lagerlöf, Selma - Lanier, Sidney - Lee, Robert E. - Lewes, George Henry - Lewisohn, Ludwig - Lincoln, Abraham - Lindsey, Ben B. - Liszt, Franz - Lloyd-George, David - Lodge, Henry Cabot - Lodge, Oliver - London _Times_ - Lowell, James Russell - Lowes, J. L. - Ludwig, Karl - Luther, Martin - Lyly, John - - Mabies, Hamilton Wright - Macaulay, T. B. - Mann, Thomas - March, General - Marden, Orison Swett - Marlowe, Christopher - Martial - Masefield, John - Mendelssohn, Felix - Meredith, George - Methodists - Mill, J. S. - Miller, Joaquin - Milton, John - _Mlle. New York_ - Mobile _Register_ - Moody, John - Moore, George - More, Paul Elmer - Morgan, J. Pierpont - Müller, Johannes - Murray, Gilbert - Murry, Middleton - _Musical Courier_ - - Nathan, George Jean - National Institute of Arts and Letters - National Security League - Nearing, Scott - _New Republic_ - New York _Evening Journal_ - New York _Sun_ - New York _Times_ - New York _Tribune_ - Nicoll, Robertson - Nietzsche, F. W. - Northcliffe, Lord - - Ochs, Adolph S. - Odd Fellows - _Old Fogy_ - _Othello_ - - _Painted Veils_ - Palmer, A. Mitchell - _Parsifal_, - Pershing, John J. - Philadelphia _Ledger_ - Pinchot, Gifford - Pirquet, Clemens von - Plato - Poe, Edgar Allan - Poetry - Pound, Ezra - Prescott, F. C. - _Puck_, - - Reading, Lord - Red Cross, American - Reed, James A. - Reese, Lizette Woodworth - Reventlow, Count zu - Ricardo, David - Roosevelt, Theodore - Roosevelt, Theodore, Jr. - Root, Elihu - Rops, Félicien - Rosetti, Christina - Rotary Club - Rothert, Otto A. - Russell, Bertrand - Russell, Lillian - - St. Augustine - Sainte-Beuve, C. A. - St. John - Santayana, George - _Saturday Evening Post_ - Schmidt, Annalise - Schubert, Franz - Schumann, Robert - Schwab, Charles M. - Scott, Evelyn - Scribner’s, Charles, Sons - Seidl, Anton - Senate, U. S. - Serao, Mathilda - Shakespeare, William - Shaw, George, Bernard - _Sheik, The_ - Sherman, S. P. - Sienkiewicz, Henryk - Sims, Admiral - Sinclair, May - Sinclair Upton - Smith, Adam - Sousa, J. P. - Spencer, Herbert - Staël, Mme. de - Stearns, Harold - Steed, Wickham - _Steeplejack_ - Strauss, Richard - Strindberg, August - Sumner, William G. - Sunday, William A. - Supreme Court of the United States - Swedenborg, Emanuel - Swinburne, A. C. - - Taft, William H. - Thoma, Ludwig - Thompson, Francis - Thoreau, H. D. - _Town Topics_ - Tumulty, J. P. - - Underwood, Oscar - U’Ren, W. S. - - Van Dyke, Henry - Verlaine, Paul - Viebig, Clara - Vigilantes - Volstead, Andrew - - Wagner, Cosima - Wagner, Richard - Washington, George - Wassermann, Jacob - Weber, Gottfried - Wedekind, Frank - Wells, H. G. - Wesley, John - Whitman, Walt - Wilson, Woodrow - Wolsogen, Ernst von - Wood, James N. - Wood, Leonard A. - Woodberry, George E. - - Yeats, W. B. - - - - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PREJUDICES, THIRD SERIES *** - -***** This file should be named 53474-0.txt or 53474-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - https://www.gutenberg.org/5/3/4/7/53474/ - -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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L. Mencken</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Prejudices, Third Series</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: H. L. Mencken</div> -<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: November 7, 2016 [eBook #53474]<br> -[Most recently updated: March 9, 2023]</div> -<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> -<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Marc D’Hooghe at Free Literature (online soon -in an extended version, also linking to free sources for -education worldwide ... MOOC’s, educational materials,...) -Images generously made available by the Internet Archive. -<br>Revised by Richard Tonsing.</div> -<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PREJUDICES, THIRD SERIES ***</div> - - - - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="500" alt=""> -</div> - -<h1>PREJUDICES<br> -<span class='ph2'>THIRD SERIES</span></h1> - -<div class='ph3'>By</div> - -<div class='ph2'>H. L. MENCKEN</div> - -<div class='ph5'>PUBLISHED AT THE BORZOI · NEW YORK · BY<br> -ALFRED · A. · KNOPF<br> - -1922</div> - -<hr class="full"> - -<div class='chapter'><h2>CONTENTS</h2></div> -<p style="margin-left: 10%;"> -I <span class="smcap">On Being an American</span>, <span class="tabnum"> <a href="#Page_9">9</a></span><br> -<br> -II <span class="smcap">Huneker: a Memory</span>, <span class="tabnum"> <a href="#Page_65">65</a></span><br> -<br> -III <span class="smcap">Footnote on Criticism</span>, <span class="tabnum"> <a href="#Page_84">84</a></span><br> -<br> -IV <span class="smcap">Das Kapital</span>, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_105">105</a></span><br> -<br> -V <span class="smcap">Ad Imaginem Dei Creavit Illum</span>, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_120">120</a></span><br> -<br> -1. The Life of Man, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_120">120</a></span><br> -2. The Anthropomorphic Delusion, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_121">121</a></span><br> -3. Meditation on Meditation, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_125">125</a></span><br> -4. Man and His Soul, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_131">131</a></span><br> -5. Coda, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_132">132</a></span><br> -<br> -VI <span class="smcap">Star-Spangled Men</span> <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_133">133</a></span><br> -<br> -VII <span class="smcap">The Poet and His Art</span>, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_146">146</a></span><br> -<br> -VIII <span class="smcap">Five Men at Random</span>, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></span><br> -<br> -1. Abraham Lincoln, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></span><br> -2. Paul Elmer More, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_176">176</a></span><br> -3. Madison Cawein, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_179">179</a></span><br> -4. Frank Harris, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_182">182</a></span><br> -5. Havelock Ellis, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_189">189</a></span><br> -<br> -IX <span class="smcap">The Nature of Liberty</span>, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_193">193</a></span><br> -<br> -X <span class="smcap">The Novel</span>, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_201">201</a></span><br> -<br> -XI <span class="smcap">The Forward-looker</span>, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_213">213</a></span><br> -<br> -XII <span class="smcap">Memorial Service</span>, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_232">232</a></span><br> -<br> -XIII <span class="smcap">Education</span>, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_238">238</a></span><br> -<br> -XIV <span class="smcap">Types of Men</span>, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_266">266</a></span><br> -<br> -1. The Romantic, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_266">266</a></span><br> -2. The Skeptic, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_266">266</a></span><br> -3. The Believer, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_267">267</a></span><br> -4. The Worker, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_268">268</a></span><br> -5. The Physician, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_269">269</a></span><br> -6. The Scientist, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_269">269</a></span><br> -7. The Business Man, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_270">270</a></span><br> -8. The King, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_271">271</a></span><br> -9. The Average Man, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_273">273</a></span><br> -10. The Truth-Seeker, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_274">274</a></span><br> -11. The Pacifist, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_274">274</a></span><br> -12. The Relative, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_275">275</a></span><br> -13. The Friend, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_276">276</a></span><br> -<br> -XV <span class="smcap">The Dismal Science,</span> <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_278">278</a></span><br> -<br> -XVI <span class="smcap">Matters of State,</span> <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_289">289</a></span><br> -<br> -1. Le Contrat Social, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_289">289</a></span><br> -2. On Minorities, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_292">292</a></span><br> -<br> -XVII <span class="smcap">Reflections on the Drama,</span> <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_299">299</a></span><br> -<br> -XVIII <span class="smcap">Advice to Young Men,</span> <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_310">310</a></span><br> -<br> -1. To Him That Hath, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_310">310</a></span><br> -2. The Venerable Examined, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_311">311</a></span><br> -3. Duty, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_313">313</a></span><br> -4. Martyrs, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_314">314</a></span><br> -5. The Disabled Veteran, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_318">318</a></span><br> -6. Patriotism, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_319">319</a></span><br> -<br> -XIX <span class="smcap">Suite Américaine,</span> <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_320">320</a></span><br> -<br> -1. Aspiration, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_320">320</a></span><br> -2. Virtue, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_321">321</a></span><br> -3. Eminence, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_323">323</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span><br> -</p> - - -<hr class="chap"> -<h3>PREJUDICES: THIRD SERIES</h3> - - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4><a id="I_ON_BEING_AN_AMERICAN">I. ON BEING AN AMERICAN</a></h4> - - - -<h4>1</h4> - - -<p>Apparently there are those who begin to find it disagreeable—nay, -impossible. Their anguish fills the Liberal weeklies, and every ship -that puts out from New York carries a groaning cargo of them, bound -for Paris, London, Munich, Rome and way points—anywhere to escape the -great curses and atrocities that make life intolerable for them at -home. Let me say at once that I find little to cavil at in their basic -complaints. In more than one direction, indeed, I probably go a great -deal further than even the Young Intellectuals. It is, for example, -one of my firmest and most sacred beliefs, reached after an inquiry -extending over a score of years and supported by incessant prayer -and meditation, that the government of the United States, in both -its legislative arm and its executive arm, is ignorant, incompetent, -corrupt, and disgusting—and from this judgment I except no more than -twenty<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> living lawmakers and no more than twenty executioners of their -laws. It is a belief no less piously cherished that the administration -of justice in the Republic is stupid, dishonest, and against all -reason and equity—and from this judgment I except no more than thirty -judges, including two upon the bench of the Supreme Court of the United -States. It is another that the foreign policy of the United States—its -habitual manner of dealing with other nations, whether friend or -foe—is hypocritical, disingenuous, knavish, and dishonorable—and from -this judgment I consent to no exceptions whatever, either recent or -long past. And it is my fourth (and, to avoid too depressing a bill, -final) conviction that the American people, taking one with another, -constitute the most timorous, sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob -of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom -since the end of the Middle Ages, and that they grow more timorous, -more sniveling, more poltroonish, more ignominious every day.</p> - -<p>So far I go with the fugitive Young Intellectuals—and into the -Bad Lands beyond. Such, in brief, are the cardinal articles of my -political faith, held passionately since my admission to citizenship -and now growing stronger and stronger as I gradually disintegrate -into my component carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorus, calcium, -sodium, nitrogen and iron. This is what I believe and preach, <i>in -nomine Domini</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> Amen. Yet I remain on the dock, wrapped in the flag, -when the Young Intellectuals set sail. Yet here I stand, unshaken and -undespairing, a loyal and devoted Americano, even a chauvinist, paying -taxes without complaint, obeying all laws that are physiologically -obeyable, accepting all the searching duties and responsibilities -of citizenship unprotestingly investing the sparse usufructs of my -miserable toil in the obligations of the nation, avoiding all commerce -with men sworn to overthrow the government, contributing my mite toward -the glory of the national arts and sciences, enriching and embellishing -the native language, spurning all lures (and even all invitations) to -get out and stay out—here am I, a bachelor of easy means, forty-two -years old, unhampered by debts or issue, able to go wherever I please -and to stay as long as I please—here am I, contentedly and even smugly -basking beneath the Stars and Stripes, a better citizen, I daresay, -and certainly a less murmurous and exigent one, than thousands who -put the Hon. Warren Gamaliel Harding beside Friedrich Barbarossa and -Charlemagne, and hold the Supreme Court to be directly inspired by the -Holy Spirit, and belong ardently to every Rotary Club, Ku Klux Klan, -and Anti-Saloon League, and choke with emotion when the band plays “The -Star-Spangled Banner,” and believe with the faith of little children -that one of Our Boys, taken at random, could dispose in a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> fair fight -of ten Englishmen, twenty Germans, thirty Frogs, forty Wops, fifty -Japs, or a hundred Bolsheviki.</p> - -<p>Well, then, why am I still here? Why am I so complacent (perhaps even -to the point of offensiveness), so free from bile, so little fretting -and indignant, so curiously happy? Why did I answer only with a few -academic “Hear, Hears” when Henry James, Ezra Pound, Harold Stearns and -the <i>emigrés</i> of Greenwich Village issued their successive calls to the -corn-fed <i>intelligentsia</i> to flee the shambles, escape to fairer lands, -throw off the curse forever? The answer, of course, is to be sought in -the nature of happiness, which tempts to metaphysics. But let me keep -upon the ground. To me, at least (and I can only follow my own nose) -happiness presents itself in an aspect that is tripartite. To be happy -(reducing the thing to its elementals) I must be:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p><i>a.</i> Well-fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in Zion.</p> - -<p><i>b.</i> Full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the -masses of my fellow-men.</p> - -<p><i>c.</i> Delicately and unceasingly amused according to my taste.</p></blockquote> - -<p>It is my contention that, if this definition be accepted, there is no -country on the face of the earth wherein a man roughly constituted -as I am—a man of my general weaknesses, vanities, appetites,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> -prejudices, and aversions—can be so happy, or even one-half so happy, -as he can be in these free and independent states. Going further, I -lay down the proposition that it is a sheer physical impossibility -for such a man to live in These States and <i>not</i> be happy—that it -is as impossible to him as it would be to a schoolboy to weep over -the burning down of his school-house. If he says that he isn’t happy -here, then he either lies or is insane. Here the business of getting a -living, particularly since the war brought the loot of all Europe to -the national strong-box, is enormously easier than it is in any other -Christian land—so easy, in fact, that an educated and forhanded man -who fails at it must actually make, deliberate efforts to that end. -Here the general average of intelligence, of knowledge, of competence, -of integrity, of self-respect, of honor is so low that any man who -knows his trade, does not fear ghosts, has read fifty good books, and -practices the common decencies stands out as brilliantly as a wart on -a bald head, and is thrown willy-nilly into a meager and exclusive -aristocracy. And here, more than anywhere else that I know of or -have heard of, the daily panorama of human existence, of private and -communal folly—the unending procession of governmental extortions -and chicaneries, of commercial brigandages and throat-slittings, of -theological buffooneries, of æsthetic ribaldries, of legal swindles -and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> harlotries, of miscellaneous rogueries, villainies, imbecilities, -grotesqueries, and extravagances—is so inordinately gross and -preposterous, so perfectly brought up to the highest conceivable -amperage, so steadily enriched with an almost fabulous daring and -originality, that only the man who was born with a petrified diaphragm -can fail to laugh himself to sleep every night, and to awake every -morning with all the eager, unflagging expectation of a Sunday-school -superintendent touring the Paris peep-shows.</p> - -<p>A certain sough rhetoric may be here. Perhaps I yield to words as a -chautauqua lecturer yields to them, belaboring and fermenting the -hinds with his Message from the New Jerusalem. But fundamentally I am -quite as sincere as he is. For example, in the matter of attaining to -ease in Zion, of getting a fair share of the national swag, now piled -so mountainously high. It seems to me, sunk in my Egyptian night, -that the man who fails to do this in the United States to-day is a -man who is somehow stupid—maybe not on the surface, but certainly -deep down. Either he is one who cripples himself unduly, say by -setting up a family before he can care for it, or by making a bad -bargain for the sale of his wares, or by concerning himself too much -about the affairs of other men; or he is one who endeavors fatuously -to sell something that no normal American wants. Whenever I hear a -professor of philosophy<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> complain that his wife has eloped with some -moving-picture actor or bootlegger who can at least feed and clothe -her, my natural sympathy for the man is greatly corrupted by contempt -for his lack of sense. Would it be regarded as sane and laudable for -a man to travel the Soudan trying to sell fountain-pens, or Greenland -offering to teach double-entry bookkeeping or counterpoint Coming -closer, would the judicious pity or laugh at a man who opened a shop -for the sale of incunabula in Little Rock, Ark., or who demanded a -living in McKeesport, Pa., on the ground that he could read Sumerian? -In precisely the same way it seems to me to be nonsensical for a man -to offer generally some commodity that only a few rare and dubious -Americans want, and then weep and beat his breast because he is not -patronized. One seeking to make a living in a country must pay due -regard to the needs and tastes of that country. Here in the United -States we have no jobs for grand dukes, and none for <i>Wirkliche -Geheimräte</i>, and none for palace eunuchs, and none for masters of the -buck-hounds, and none (any more) for brewery <i>Todsaufer</i>—and very few -for oboe players, metaphysicians, astrophysicists, assyriologists, -water-colorists, stylites and epic poets. There was a time when the -<i>Todsaufer</i> served a public need and got an adequate reward, but it is -no more. There may come a time when the composer of string<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> quartettes -is paid as much as a railway conductor, but it is not yet. Then why -practice such trades—that is, as trades? The man of independent -means may venture into them prudently; when he does so, he is seldom -molested; it may even be argued that he performs a public service by -adopting them. But the man who has a living to make is simply silly -if he goes into them; he is like a soldier going over the top with a -coffin strapped to his back. Let him abandon such puerile vanities, and -take to the uplift instead, as, indeed, thousands of other victims of -the industrial system have already <i>done.</i> Let him bear in mind that, -whatever its neglect of the humanities and their monks, the Republic -has never got half enough bond salesmen, quack doctors, ward leaders, -phrenologists, Methodist evangelists, circus clowns, magicians, -soldiers, farmers, popular song writers, moonshine distillers, forgers -of gin labels, mine guard, detectives, spies, snoopers, and <i>agents -provocateurs.</i> The rules are set by Omnipotence; the discreet man -observes them. Observing them, he is safe beneath the starry bed-tick, -in fair weather or foul. The <i>boobus Americanus</i> is a bird that knows -no closed season—and if he won’t come down to Texas oil stock, or -one-night cancer cures, or building lots in Swampshurst, he will always -come down to Inspiration and Optimism, whether political, theological, -pedagogical, literary, or economic.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p> - -<p>The doctrine that it is <i>infra digitatem</i> for an educated man to take -a hand in the snaring of this goose is one in which I see nothing -convincing. It is a doctrine chiefly voiced, I believe, by those -who have tried the business and failed. They take refuge behind the -childish notion that there is something honorable about poverty <i>per -se</i>—the Greenwich Village complex. This is nonsense. Poverty may be -an unescapable misfortune, but that no more makes it honorable than -a cocked eye is made honorable by the same cause. Do I advocate, -then, the ceaseless, senseless hogging of money? I do not. All I -advocate—and praise as virtuous—is the hogging of enough to provide -security and ease. Despite all the romantic superstitions to the -contrary, the artist cannot do his best work when he is oppressed by -unsatisfied wants. Nor can the philosopher. Nor can the man of science. -The best and clearest thinking of the world is done and the finest art -is produced, not by men who are hungry, ragged and harassed, but by men -who are well-fed, warm and easy in mind. It is the artist’s first duty -to his art to achieve that tranquility for himself. Shakespeare tried -to achieve it; so did Beethoven, Wagner, Brahms, Ibsen and Balzac. -Goethe, Schopenhauer, Schumann and Mendelssohn were born to it. Joseph -Conrad, Richard Strauss and Anatole France have got it for themselves -in our own day. In the older countries, where<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> competence is far more -general and competition is thus more sharp, the thing is often cruelly -difficult, and sometimes almost impossible. But in the United States -it is absurdly easy, given ordinary luck. Any man with a superior air, -the intelligence of a stockbroker, and the resolution of a hat-check -girl—in brief, any man who believes in himself enough, and with -sufficient cause, to be called a journeyman—can cadge enough money, in -this glorious commonwealth of morons, to make life soft for him.</p> - -<p>And if a lining for the purse is thus facilely obtainable, given a -reasonable prudence and resourcefulness, then balm for the ego is just -as unlaboriously got, given ordinary dignity and decency. Simply to -exist, indeed, on the plane of a civilized man is to attain, in the -Republic, to a distinction that should be enough for all save the most -vain; it is even likely to be too much, as the frequent challenges of -the Ku Klux Klan, the American Legion, the Anti-Saloon League, and -other such vigilance committees of the majority testify. Here is a -country in which all political thought and activity are concentrated -upon the scramble for jobs—in which the normal politician, whether he -be a President or a village road supervisor, is willing to renounce -any principle, however precious to him, and to adopt any lunacy, -however offensive to him, in order to keep<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> his place at the trough. -Go into politics, then, without seeking or wanting office, and at once -you are as conspicuous as a red-haired blackamoor—in fact, a great -deal more conspicuous, for red-haired blackamoors have been seen, but -who has ever seen or heard of an American politician, Democrat or -Republican, Socialist or Liberal, Whig or Tory, who did not itch for a -job? Again, here is a country in which it is an axiom that a business -man shall be a member of a Chamber of Commerce, an admirer of Charles -M. Schwab, a reader of the <i>Saturday Evening Post</i>, a golfer—in -brief, a vegetable. Spend your hours of escape from <i>Geschäft</i> reading -Remy de Gourmont or practicing the violoncello, and the local Sunday -newspaper will infallibly find you out and hymn the marvel—nay, your -banker will summon you to discuss your notes, and your rivals will -spread the report (probably truthful) that you were pro-German during -the war. Yet again, here is a land in which women rule and men are -slaves. Train your women to get your slippers for you, and your ill -fame will match Galileo’s or Darwin’s. Once more, here is the Paradise -of back-slappers, of democrats, of mixers, of go-getters. Maintain -ordinary reserve, and you will arrest instant attention—and have your -hand kissed by multitudes who, despite democracy, have all the inferior -man’s unquenchable desire to grovel and admire.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p> - -<p>Nowhere else in the world is superiority more easily attained or more -eagerly admitted. The chief business of the nation, as a nation, is -the setting up of heroes, mainly bogus. It admired the literary style -of the late Woodrow; it respects the theological passion of Bryan; it -venerates J. Pierpont Morgan; it takes Congress seriously; it would be -unutterably shocked by the proposition (with proof) that a majority of -its judges are ignoramuses, and that a respectable minority of them -are scoundrels. The manufacture of artificial <i>Durchlauchten, k.k. -Hoheiten</i> and even gods goes on feverishly and incessantly; the will -to worship never flags. Ten iron-molders meet in the back-room of a -near-beer saloon, organize a lodge of the Noble and Mystic Order of -American Rosicrucians, and elect a wheelwright Supreme Worthy Whimwham; -a month later they send a notice to the local newspaper that they -have been greatly honored by an official visit from that Whimwham, -and that they plan to give him a jeweled fob for his watch chain. The -chief national heroes—Lincoln, Lee, and so on—cannot remain mere -men. The mysticism of the mediæval peasantry gets into the communal -view of them, and they begin to sprout haloes and wings. As I say, no -intrinsic merit—at least, none commensurate with the mob estimate—is -needed to come to such august dignities. Everything American is a bit -amateurish and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> childish, even the national gods. The most conspicuous -and respected American in nearly every field of endeavor, saving only -the purely commercial (I exclude even the financial) is a man who would -attract little attention in any other country. The leading American -critic of literature, after twenty years of diligent exposition of his -ideas, has yet to make it clear what he is in favor of, and why. The -queen of the <i>haut monde</i>, in almost every American city, is a woman -who regards Lord Reading as an aristocrat and her superior, and whose -grandfather slept in his underclothes. The leading American musical -director, if he went to Leipzig, would be put to polishing trombones -and copying drum parts. The chief living American military man—the -national heir to Frederick, Marlborough, Wellington, Washington and -Prince Eugene—is a member of the Elks, and proud of it. The leading -American philosopher (now dead, with no successor known to the average -pedagogue) spent a lifetime erecting an epistemological defense for the -national æsthetic maxim: “I don’t know nothing about music, but I know -what I like.” The most eminent statesman the United States has produced -since Lincoln was fooled by Arthur James Balfour, and miscalculated -his public support by more than 5,000,000 votes. And the current -Chief Magistrate of the nation—its defiant substitute for czar and -kaiser—is a small-town<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> printer who, when he wishes to enjoy himself -in the Executive Mansion, invites in a homeopathic doctor, a Seventh -Day Adventist evangelist, and a couple of moving-picture actresses.</p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>2</h4> - - -<p>All of which may be boiled down to this: that the United States is -essentially a commonwealth of third-rate men—that distinction is easy -here because the general level of culture, of information, of taste and -judgment, of ordinary competence is so low. No sane man, employing an -American plumber to repair a leaky drain, would expect him to do it at -the first trial, and in precisely the same way no sane man, observing -an American Secretary of State in negotiation with Englishmen and Japs, -would expect him to come off better than second best. Third-rate men, -of course, exist in all countries, but it is only here that they are in -full control of the state, and with it of all the national standards. -The land was peopled, not by the hardy adventurers of legend, but -simply by incompetents who could not get on at home, and the lavishness -of nature that they found here, the vast ease with which they could -get livings, confirmed and augmented their native incompetence. No -American colonist, even in the worst days of the Indian wars, ever had -to face such hardships as ground down the peasants of Central<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> Europe -during the Hundred Years War, nor even such hardships as oppressed the -English lower classes during the century before the Reform Bill of -1832. In most of the colonies, indeed, he seldom saw any Indians at -all: the one thing that made life difficult for him was his congenital -dunderheadedness. The winning of the West, so rhetorically celebrated -in American romance, cost the lives of fewer men than the single -battle of Tannenberg, and the victory was much easier and surer. The -immigrants who have come in since those early days have been, if -anything, of even lower grade than their forerunners. The old notion -that the United States is peopled by the offspring of brave, idealistic -and liberty loving minorities, who revolted against injustice, bigotry -and mediævalism at home—this notion is fast succumbing to the alarmed -study that has been given of late to the immigration of recent years. -The truth is that the majority of non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants since the -Revolution, like the majority of Anglo-Saxon immigrants before the -Revolution, have been, not the superior men of their native lands, -but the botched and unfit: Irishmen starving to death in Ireland, -Germans unable to weather the <i>Sturm und Drang</i> of the post-Napoleonic -reorganization, Italians weed-grown on exhausted soil, Scandinavians -run to all bone and no brain, Jews too incompetent to swindle even -the barbarous peasants of Russia,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> Poland and Roumania. Here and -there among the immigrants, of course, there may be a bravo, or even -a superman—e. g., the ancestors of Volstead, Ponzi, Jack Dempsey, -Schwab, Daugherty, Debs, Pershing—but the average newcomer is, and -always has been simply a poor fish.</p> - -<p>Nor is there much soundness in the common assumption, so beloved of -professional idealists and wind-machines, that the people of America -constitute “the youngest of the great peoples.” The phrase turns up -endlessly; the average newspaper editorial writer would be hamstrung if -the Postoffice suddenly interdicted it, as it interdicted “the right to -rebel” during the war. What gives it a certain specious plausibility is -the fact that the American Republic, compared to a few other existing -governments, is relatively young. But the American Republic is not -necessarily identical with the American people; they might overturn -it to-morrow and set up a monarchy, and still remain the same people. -The truth is that, as a distinct nation, they go back fully three -hundred years, and that even their government is older than that of -most other nations, e. g., France, Italy, Germany, Russia. Moreover, -it is absurd to say that there is anything properly describable as -youthfulness in the American outlook. It is not that of young men, but -that of old men. All the characteristics of senescence are in it: a -great distrust of ideas,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> an habitual timorousness, a harsh fidelity -to a few fixed beliefs, a touch of mysticism. The average American is -a prude and a Methodist under his skin, and the fact is never more -evident than when he is trying to disprove it. His vices are not those -of a healthy boy, but those of an ancient paralytic escaped from the -<i>Greisenheim.</i> If you would penetrate to the causes thereof, simply -go down to Ellis Island and look at the next shipload of immigrants. -You will not find the spring of youth in their step; you will find the -shuffling of exhausted men. From such exhausted men the American stock -has sprung. It was easier for them to survive here than it was where -they came from, but that ease, though it made them feel stronger, did -not actually strengthen them. It left them what they were when they -came: weary peasants, eager only for the comfortable security of a -pig in a sty. Out of that eagerness has issued many of the noblest -manifestations of American <i>Kultur:</i> the national hatred of war, the -pervasive suspicion of the aims and intents of all other nations, the -short way with heretics and disturbers of the peace, the unshakable -belief in devils, the implacable hostility to every novel idea and -point of view.</p> - -<p>All these ways of thinking are the marks of the peasant—more, of the -peasant long ground into the mud of his wallow, and determined at last -to stay there—the peasant who has definitely renounced<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> any lewd -desire he may have ever had to gape at the stars. The habits of mind of -this dull, sempiternal <i>fellah</i>—the oldest man in Christendom—are, -with a few modifications, the habits of mind of the American people. -The peasant has a great practical cunning, but he is unable to see -any further than the next farm. He likes money and knows how to amass -property, but his cultural development is but little above that of -the domestic animals. He is intensely and cocksurely moral, but his -morality and his self-interest are crudely identical. He is emotional -and easy to scare, but his imagination cannot grasp an abstraction. -He is a violent nationalist and patriot, but he admires rogues in -office and always beats the tax-collector if he can. He has immovable -opinions about all the great affairs of state, but ninetenths of them -are sheer imbecilities. He is violently jealous of what he conceives -to be his rights, but brutally disregardful of the other fellow’s. He -is religious, but his religion is wholly devoid of beauty and dignity. -This man, whether city or country bred, is the normal Americano—the -100 per cent. Methodist, Odd Fellow, Ku Kluxer, and Know Nothing. -He exists in all countries, but here alone he rules—here alone his -anthropoid fears and rages are accepted gravely as logical ideas, and -dissent from them is punished as a sort of public offense. Around every -one of his principal<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> delusions—of the sacredness of democracy, of the -feasibility of sumptuary law, of the incurable sinfulness of all other -peoples, of the menace of ideas, of the corruption lying in all the -arts—there is thrown a barrier of taboos, and woe to the anarchist who -seeks to break it down!</p> - -<p>The multiplication of such taboos is obviously not characteristic of -a culture that is moving from a lower plane to a higher—that is, of -a culture still in the full glow of its youth. It is a sign, rather, -of a culture that is slipping downhill—one that is reverting to the -most primitive standards and ways of thought. The taboo, indeed, is the -trademark of the savage, and wherever it exists it is a relentless -and effective enemy of civilized enlightenment. The savage is the most -meticulously moral of men; there is scarcely an act of his daily life -that is not conditioned by unyielding prohibitions and obligations, -most of them logically unintelligible. The mob-man, a savage set -amid civilization, cherishes a code of the same draconian kind. He -believes firmly that right and wrong are immovable things—that they -have an actual and unchangeable existence, and that any challenge -of them, by word or act, is a crime against society. And with the -concept of wrongness, of course, he always confuses the concept of mere -differentness—to him the two are indistinguishable. Anything strange -is to be combatted; it is of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> Devil. The mob-man cannot grasp ideas -in their native nakedness. They must be dramatized and personalized -for him, and provided with either white wings or forked tails. All -discussion of them, to interest him, must take the form of a pursuit -and scotching of demons. He cannot think of a heresy without thinking -of a heretic to be caught, condemned, and burned.</p> - -<p>The Fathers of the Republic, I am convinced, had a great deal more -prevision than even their most romantic worshipers give them credit -for. They not only sought to create a governmental machine that would -be safe from attack without; they also sought to create one that would -be safe from attack within. They invented very ingenious devices for -holding the mob in check, for protecting the national polity against -its transient and illogical rages, for securing the determination -of all the larger matters of state to a concealed but none the less -real aristocracy. Nothing could have been further from the intent -of Washington, Hamilton and even Jefferson than that the official -doctrines of the nation, in the year 1922, should be identical with the -nonsense heard in the chautauqua, from the evangelical pulpit, and on -the stump. But Jackson and his merry men broke through the barbed wires -thus so carefully strung, and ever since 1825 <i>vox populi</i> has been -the true voice of the nation. To-day there is no longer<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> any question -of statesmanship, in any real sense, in our politics. The only way to -success in American public life lies in flattering and kowtowing to the -mob. A candidate for office, even the highest, must either adopt its -current manias <i>en bloc</i>, or convince it hypocritically that he has -done so, while cherishing reservations <i>in petto.</i> The result is that -only two sorts of men stand any chance whatever of getting into actual -control of affairs—first, glorified mob-men who genuinely believe -what the mob believes, and secondly, shrewd fellows who are willing -to make any sacrifice of conviction and self-respect in order to hold -their jobs. One finds perfect examples of the first class in Jackson -and Bryan. One finds hundreds of specimens of the second among the -politicians who got themselves so affectingly converted to Prohibition, -and who voted and blubbered for it with flasks in their pockets. Even -on the highest planes our politics seems to be incurable mountebankish. -The same Senators who raised such raucous alarms against the League of -Nations voted for the Disarmament Treaty—a far more obvious surrender -to English hegemony. And the same Senators who pleaded for the League -on the ground that its failure would break the heart of the world were -eloquently against the treaty. The few men who maintained a consistent -course in both cases, voting either for or against both League and -treaty, were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> denounced by the newspapers as deliberate marplots, -and found their constituents rising against them. To such an extent -had the public become accustomed to buncombe that simple honesty was -incomprehensible to it, and hence abhorrent!</p> - -<p>As I have pointed out in a previous work, this dominance of mob ways -of thinking, this pollution of the whole intellectual life of the -country by the prejudices and emotions of the rabble, goes unchallenged -because the old landed aristocracy of the colonial era has been -engulfed and almost obliterated by the rise of the industrial system, -and no new aristocracy has arisen to take its place, and discharge its -highly necessary functions. An upper class, of course, exists, and of -late it has tended to increase in power, but it is culturally almost -indistinguishable from the mob: it lacks absolutely anything even -remotely resembling an aristocratic point of view. One searches in vain -for any sign of the true <i>Junker</i> spirit in the Vanderbilts, Astors, -Morgans, Garys, and other such earls and dukes of the plutocracy; their -culture, like their aspiration, remains that of the pawnshop. One -searches in vain, too for the aloof air of the don, in the official -<i>intelligentsia</i> of the American universities; they are timorous and -orthodox, and constitute a reptile Congregatio de Propaganda Fide to -match Bismarck’s <i>Reptilienpresse.</i><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> Everywhere else on earth, despite -the rise of democracy, an organized minority of aristocrats survives -from a more spacious day, and if its personnel has degenerated and its -legal powers have decayed it has at least maintained some vestige of -its old independence of spirit, and jealously guarded its old right to -be heard without risk of penalty. Even in England, where the peerage -has been debauched to the level of a political baptismal fount for -Jewish money-lenders and Wesleyan soap-boilers, there is sanctuary for -the old order in the two ancient universities, and a lingering respect -for it in the peasantry. But in the United States it was paralyzed by -Jackson and got its death blow from Grant, and since then no successor -to it has been evolved. Thus there is no organized force to oppose the -irrational vagaries of the mob. The legislative and executive arms of -the government yield to them without resistance; the judicial arm has -begun to yield almost as supinely, particularly when they take the form -of witch-hunts; outside the official circle there is no opposition -that is even dependably articulate. The worst excesses go almost -without challenge. Discussion, when it is heard at all, is feeble and -superficial, and girt about by the taboos that I have mentioned. The -clatter about the so-called Ku Klux Klan, two or three years ago, was -typical. The astounding program of this organization<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> was discussed -in the newspapers for months on end, and a committee of Congress sat -in solemn state to investigate it, and yet not a single newspaper -or Congressman, so far as I am aware, so much as mentioned the most -patent and important fact about it, to wit, that the Ku Klux was, to -all intents and purposes, simply the secular arm of the Methodist -Church, and that its methods were no more than physical projections -of the familiar extravagances of the Anti-Saloon League. The intimate -relations between church and Klan, amounting almost to identity, must -have been plain to every intelligent American, and yet the taboo upon -the realistic consideration of ecclesiastical matters was sufficient to -make every public soothsayer disregard it completely.</p> - -<p>I often wonder, indeed, if there would be any intellectual life at -all in the United States if it were not for the steady importation -in bulk of ideas from abroad, and particularly, in late years, from -England. What would become of the average American scholar if he could -not borrow wholesale from English scholars? How could an inquisitive -youth get beneath the surface of our politics if it were not for such -anatomists as Bryce? Who would show our statesmen the dotted lines -for their signatures if there were no Balfours and Lloyd-Georges? How -could our young professors formulate æsthetic judgments, especially -in the field of letters, if it were not for such<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> gifted English -mentors as Robertson Nicoll, Squire and Clutton-Brock? By what process, -finally, would the true style of a visiting card be determined, and -the <i>höflich</i> manner of eating artichokes, if there were no reports -from Mayfair? On certain levels this naïve subservience must needs -irritate every self-respecting American, and even dismay him. When he -recalls the amazing feats of the English war propagandists between -1914 and 1917—and their even more amazing confessions of method -since—he is apt to ask himself quite gravely if he belongs to a free -nation or to a crown colony. The thing was done openly, shamelessly, -contemptuously, cynically, and yet it was a gigantic success. The -office of the American Secretary of State, from the end of Bryan’s -grotesque incumbency to the end of the Wilson administration, was -little more than an antechamber of the British Foreign Office. Dr. -Wilson himself, in the conduct of his policy, differed only legally -from such colonial premiers as Hughes and Smuts. Even after the United -States got into the war it was more swagger for a Young American blood -to wear the British uniform than the American uniform. No American -ever seriously questions an Englishman or Englishwoman of official or -even merely fashionable position at home. Lord Birkenhead was accepted -as a gentleman everywhere in the United States; Mrs. Asquith’s almost -unbelievable imbecilities<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> were heard with hushed fascination; even -Lady Astor, an American married to an expatriate German-American -turned English viscount, was greeted with solemn effusiveness. During -the latter part of 1917, when New York swarmed with British military -missions, I observed in <i>Town Topics</i> a polite protest against a very -significant habit of certain of their gallant members: that of going -to dances wearing spurs, and so macerating the frocks and heels of the -fawning fair. The protest, it appears, was not voiced by the hosts and -hostesses of these singular officers: they would have welcomed their -guests in trench boots. It was left to a dubious weekly, and it was -made very gingerly.</p> - -<p>The spectacle, as I say, has a way of irking the American touched by -nationalistic weakness. Ever since the day of Lowell—even since the -day of Cooper and Irving—there have been denunciations of it. But -however unpleasant it may be, there is no denying that a chain of -logical causes lies behind it, and that they are not to be disposed of -by objecting to them. The average American of the Anglo-Saxon majority, -in truth, is simply a second-rate Englishman, and so it is no wonder -that he is spontaneously servile, despite all his democratic denial of -superiorities, to what he conceives to be first-rate Englishmen. He -corresponds, roughly, to an English Nonconformist of the better-fed -variety, and he shows all the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> familiar characters of the breed. He is -truculent and cocksure, and yet he knows how to take off his hat when -a bishop of the Establishment passes. He is hot against the dukes, and -yet the notice of a concrete duke is a singing in his heart. It seems -to me that this inferior Anglo-Saxon is losing his old dominance in -the United States—that is, biologically But he will keep his cultural -primacy for a long, long while, in spite of the overwhelming inrush -of men of other races, if only because those newcomers are even more -clearly inferior than he is. Nine-tenths of the Italians, for example, -who have come to these shores in late years have brought no more of the -essential culture of Italy with them than so many horned cattle would -have brought. If they become civilized at all, settling here, it is -the civilization of the Anglo-Saxon majority that they acquire, which -is to say, the civilization of the English second table. So with the -Germans, the Scandinavians, and even the Jews and Irish. The Germans, -taking one with another, are on the cultural level of green-grocers. I -have come into contact with a great many of them since 1914, some of -them of considerable wealth and even of fashionable pretensions. In the -whole lot I can think of but a score or two who could name offhand the -principal works of Thomas Mann, Otto Julius Bierbaum, Ludwig Thoma or -Hugo von Hofmannsthal. They know much more about Mutt and Jeff<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> than -they know about Goethe. The Scandinavians are even worse. The majority -of them are mere clods, and they are sucked into the Knights of -Pythias, the chautauqua and the Methodist Church almost as soon as they -land; it is by no means a mere accident that the national Prohibition -Enforcement Act bears the name of a man theoretically of the blood of -Gustavus Vasa, Svend of the Forked Beard, and Eric the Red. The Irish -in the United States are scarcely touched by the revival of Irish -culture, despite their melodramatic concern with Irish politics. During -the war they supplied diligent and dependable agents to the Anglo-Saxon -White Terror, and at all times they are very susceptible to political -and social bribery. As for the Jews, they change their names to Burton, -Thompson and Cecil in order to qualify as true Americans, and when they -are accepted and rewarded in the national coin they renounce Moses -altogether and get themselves baptized in St. Bartholomew’s Church.</p> - -<p>Whenever ideas enter the United States from without they come by way of -England. What the London <i>Times</i> says to-day, about Ukranian politics, -the revolt in India, a change of ministry in Italy, the character of -the King of Norway, the oil situation in Mesopotamia, will be said -week after next by the <i>Times</i> of New York, and a month or two later -by all<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> the other American newspapers. The extent of this control of -American opinion by English news mongers is but little appreciated in -the United States, even by professional journalists. Fully four-fifths -of all the foreign news that comes to the American newspapers comes -through London, and most of the rest is supplied either by Englishmen -or by Jews (often American-born) who maintain close relations with -the English. During the years 1914-1917 so many English agents got -into Germany in the guise of American correspondents—sometimes with -the full knowledge of their Anglomaniac American employers—that -the Germans, just before the United States entered the war, were -considering barring American correspondents from their country -altogether. I was in Copenhagen and Basel in 1917, and found both -towns—each an important source of war news—full of Jews representing -American journals as a side-line to more delicate and confidential work -for the English department of press propaganda. Even to-day a very -considerable proportion of the American correspondents in Europe are -strongly under English influences, and in the Far East the proportion -is probably still larger. But these men seldom handle really important -news. All that is handled from London, and by trustworthy Britons. Such -of it as is not cabled directly to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> American newspapers and press -associations is later clipped from English newspapers, and printed as -bogus letters or cablegrams.</p> - -<p>The American papers accept such very dubious stuff, not chiefly because -they are hopelessly stupid or Anglomaniac, but because they find it -impossible to engage competent American correspondents. If the native -journalists who discuss our domestic politics avoid the fundamentals -timorously, then those who venture to discuss foreign politics are -scarcely aware of the fundamentals at all. We have simply developed no -class of experts in such matters. No man comparable, say to Dr. Dillon, -Wickham Steed, Count zu Reventlow or Wilfrid Scawen Blunt exists in -the United States. When, in the Summer of 1920, the editors of the -Baltimore <i>Sun</i> undertook plans to cover the approaching Disarmament -Conference at Washington in a comprehensive and intelligent manner, -they were forced, willy-nilly, into employing Englishmen to do the -work. Such men as Brailsford and Bywater, writing from London, three -thousand miles away, were actually better able to interpret the work -of the conference than American correspondents on the spot, few of -whom were capable of anything beyond the most trivial gossip. During -the whole period of the conference not a professional Washington -correspondent—the flower of American political journalism—wrote -a single<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> article upon the proceedings that got further than their -surface aspects. Before the end of the sessions this enforced -dependence upon English opinion had an unexpected and significant -result. Facing the English and the Japs in an unyielding alliance, -the French turned to the American delegation for assistance. The -issue specifically before the conference was one on which American -self-interest was obviously identical with French self-interest. -Nevertheless, the English had such firm grip upon the machinery of news -distribution that they were able, in less than a week, to turn American -public opinion against the French, and even to set up an active -Francophobia. No American, not even any of the American delegates, -was able to cope with their propaganda. They not only dominated the -conference and pushed through a set of treaties that were extravagantly -favorable to England; they even established the doctrine that all -opposition to those treaties was immoral!</p> - -<p>When Continental ideas, whether in politics, in metaphysics or in the -fine arts, penetrate to the United States they nearly always travel -by way of England. Emerson did not read Goethe; he read Carlyle. The -American people, from the end of 1914 to the end of 1918, did not -read first-handed statements of the German case; they read English -interpretations of those statements. In London is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> the clearing house -and transformer station. There the latest notions from the mainland are -sifted out, carefully diluted with English water, and put into neat -packages for the Yankee trade. The English not only get a chance to -ameliorate or embellish; they also determine very largely what ideas -Americans are to hear of at all. Whatever fails to interest them, or -is in any way obnoxious to them, is not likely to cross the ocean. -This explains why it is that most literate Americans are so densely -ignorant of many Continentals who have been celebrated at home for -years, for example, Huysmans, Hartleben, Vaibinger, Merezhkovsky, -Keyserling, Snoilsky, Mauthner, Altenberg, Heidenstam, Alfred Kerr. It -also explains why they so grossly overestimate various third-raters, -laughed at at home, for example, Brieux. These fellows simply happen to -interest the English <i>intelligentsia</i>, and are thus palmed off upon the -gaping colonists of Yankeedom. In the case of Brieux the hocus-pocus -was achieved by one man, George Bernard Shaw, a Scotch blue-nose -disguised as an Irish patriot and English soothsayer. Shaw, at bottom, -has the ideas of a Presbyterian elder, and so the moral frenzy of -Brieux enchanted him. Whereupon he retired to his chamber, wrote a -flaming Brieuxiad for the American trade, and founded the late vogue of -the French Dr. Sylvanus Stall on this side of the ocean.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p> - -<p>This wholesale import and export business in Continental fancies is of -no little benefit, of course, to the generality of Americans. If it -did not exist they would probably never hear of many of the salient -Continentals at all, for the obvious incompetence of most of the -native and resident introducers of intellectual ambassadors makes them -suspicious even of those who, like Boyd and Nathan, are thoroughly -competent. To this day there is no American translation of the plays of -Ibsen; we use the William Archer Scotch-English translations, most of -them atrociously bad, but still better than nothing. So with the works -of Nietzsche, Anatole France, Georg Brandes, Turgeniev, Dostoyevsky, -Tolstoi, and other moderns after their kind. I can think of but one -important exception: the work of Gerhart Hauptmann, done into English -by and under the supervision of Ludwig Lewisohn. But even here Lewisohn -used a number of English translations of single plays: the English were -still ahead of him, though they stopped half way. He is, in any case, a -very extraordinary American, and the Department of Justice kept an eye -on him during the war. The average American professor is far too dull -a fellow to undertake so difficult an enterprise. Even when he sports -a German Ph.D. one usually finds on examination that all he knows -about modern German literature is that a <i>Mass</i> of Hofbräu in Munich -used<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> to cost 27 <i>Pfennig</i> downstairs and 32 <i>Pfennig</i> upstairs. The -German universities were formerly very tolerant of foreigners. Many an -American, in preparation for professing at Harvard, spent a couple of -years roaming from one to the other of them without picking up enough -German to read the <i>Berliner Tageblatt.</i> Such frauds swarm in all our -lesser universities, and many of them, during the war, became eminent -authorities upon the crimes of Nietzsche and the errors of Treitschke.</p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>3</h4> - - -<p>In rainy weather, when my old wounds ache and the four humors do battle -in my spleen, I often find myself speculating sourly as to the future -of the Republic. Native opinion, of course, is to the effect that -it will be secure and glorious; the superstition that progress must -always be upward and onward will not down; in virulence and popularity -it matches the superstition that money can accomplish anything. But -this view is not shared by most reflective foreigners, as any one may -find out by looking into such a book as Ferdinand Kürnberger’s “Der -Amerikamüde,” Sholom Asch’s “America,” Ernest von Wolzogen’s “Ein -Dichter in Dollarica,” W. L. George’s “Hail, Columbia!”, Annalise -Schmidt’s “Der Amerikanische Mensch” or Sienkiewicz’s “After Bread,” -or by hearkening unto the confidences, if obtainable, of such returned -immigrants<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> as Georges Clemenceau, Knut Hamsun, George Santayana, -Clemens von Pirquet, John Masefield and Maxim Gorky, and, via the ouija -board, Antonin Dvorak, Frank Wedekind and Edwin Klebs. The American -Republic, as nations go, has led a safe and easy life, with no serious -enemies to menace it, either within or without, and no grim struggle -with want. Getting a living here has always been easier than anywhere -else in Christendom; getting a secure foothold has been possible to -whole classes of men who would have remained submerged in Europe, as -the character of our plutocracy, and no less of our <i>intelligentsia</i> -so brilliantly shows. The American people have never had to face such -titanic assaults as those suffered by the people of Holland, Poland -and half a dozen other little countries; they have not lived with a -ring of powerful and unconscionable enemies about them, as the Germans -have lived since the Middle Ages; they have not been torn by class -wars, as the French, the Spaniards and the Russians have been torn; -they have not thrown their strength into far-flung and exhausting -colonial enterprises, like the English. All their foreign wars have -been fought with foes either too weak to resist them or too heavily -engaged elsewhere to make more than a half-hearted attempt. The combats -with Mexico and Spain were not wars; they were simply lynchings.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> Even -the Civil War, compared to the larger European conflicts since the -invention of gunpowder, was trivial in its character and transient in -its effects. The population of the United States, when it began, was -about 31,500,000—say 10 per cent. under the population of France in -1914. But after four years of struggle, the number of men killed in -action or dead of wounds, in the two armies, came but 200,000—probably -little more than a sixth of the total losses of France between 1914 -and 1918. Nor was there any very extensive destruction of property. -In all save a small area in the North there was none at all, and even -in the South only a few towns of any importance were destroyed. The -average Northerner passed through the four years scarcely aware, save -by report, that a war was going on. In the South the breath of Mars -blew more hotly, but even there large numbers of men escaped service, -and the general hardship everywhere fell a great deal short of the -hardships suffered by the Belgians, the French of the North, the -Germans of East Prussia, and the Serbians and Rumanians in the World -War. The agonies of the South have been much exaggerated in popular -romance; they were probably more severe during Reconstruction, when -they were chiefly psychical, than they were during the actual war. -Certainly General Robert E. Lee was in a favorable position to estimate -the military achievement of the Confederacy. Well,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> Lee was of the -opinion that his army was very badly supported by the civil population, -and that its final disaster was largely due to that ineffective support.</p> - -<p>Coming down to the time of the World War, one finds precious few signs -that the American people, facing an antagonist of equal strength -and with both hands free, could be relied upon to give a creditable -account of themselves. The American share in that great struggle, in -fact, was marked by poltroonery almost as conspicuously as it was -marked by knavery. Let us consider briefly what the nation did. For -a few months it viewed the struggle idly and unintelligently, as a -yokel might stare at a sword-swallower at a county fair. Then, seeing -a chance to profit, it undertook with sudden alacrity the ghoulish -office of <i>Kriegslieferant.</i> One of the contestants being debarred, by -the chances of war, from buying, it devoted its whole energies, for -two years, to purveying to the other. Meanwhile, it made every effort -to aid its customer by lending him the cloak of its neutrality—that -is, by demanding all the privileges of a neutral and yet carrying on a -stupendous wholesale effort to promote the war. On the official side, -this neutrality was fraudulent from the start, as the revelations of -Mr. Tumulty have since demonstrated; popularly it became more and -more fraudulent as the debts of the customer contestant piled up, -and it became more and more apparent—a fact<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> diligently made known -by his partisans—that they would be worthless if he failed to win. -Then, in the end, covert aid was transformed into overt aid. And under -what gallant conditions! In brief, there stood a nation of 65,000,000 -people, which, without effective allies, had just closed two and a -half years of homeric conflict by completely defeating an enemy state -of 135,000,000 and two lesser ones of more than 10,000,000 together, -and now stood at bay before a combination of at least 140,000,000. -Upon this battle-scarred and war-weary foe the Republic of 100,000,000 -freemen now flung itself, so lifting the odds to 4 to 1. And after a -year and a half more of struggle it emerged triumphant—a knightly -victor surely!</p> - -<p>There is no need to rehearse the astounding and unprecedented -swinishness that accompanied this glorious business—the colossal -waste of public money, the savage persecution of all opponents and -critics of the war, the open bribery of labor, the half-insane reviling -of the enemy, the manufacture of false news, the knavish robbery of -enemy civilians, the incessant spy hunts, the floating of public -loans by a process of blackmail, the degradation of the Red Cross -to partisan uses, the complete abandonment of all decency, decorum -and self-respect. The facts must be remembered with shame by every -civilized American; lest they be forgotten by the generations of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> -future I am even now engaged with collaborators upon an exhaustive -record of them, in twenty volumes folio. More important to the present -purpose are two things that are apt to be overlooked, the first of -which is the capital fact that the war was “sold” to the American -people, as the phrase has it, not by appealing to their courage, but -by appealing to their cowardice—in brief, by adopting the assumption -that they were not warlike at all, and certainly not gallant and -chivalrous, but merely craven and fearful. The first selling point of -the proponents of American participation was the contention that the -Germans, with gigantic wars still raging on both fronts, were preparing -to invade the United States, burn down all the towns, murder all the -men, and carry off all the women—that their victory would bring -staggering and irresistible reprisals for the American violation of the -duties of a neutral. The second selling point was that the entrance -of the United States would end the war almost instantly—that the -Germans would be so overwhelmingly out-numbered, in men and guns, that -it would be impossible for them to make any effective defense—above -all, that it would be impossible for them to inflict any serious damage -upon their new foes. Neither argument, it must be plain, showed the -slightest belief in the warlike skill and courage of the American -people. Both were grounded upon the frank theory<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> that the only way to -make the mob fight was to scare it half to death, and then show it a -way to fight without risk, to stab a helpless antagonist in the back. -And both were mellowed and reënforced by the hint that such a noble -assault, beside being safe, would also be extremely profitable—that -it would convert very dubious debts into very good debts, and dispose -forever of a diligent and dangerous competitor for trade, especially -in Latin America. All the idealist nonsense emitted by Dr. Wilson and -company was simply icing on the cake. Most of it was abandoned as -soon as the bullets began to fly, and the rest consisted simply of -meaningless words—the idiotic babbling of a Presbyterian evangelist -turned prophet and seer.</p> - -<p>The other thing that needs to be remembered is the permanent effect -of so dishonest and cowardly a business upon the national character, -already far too much inclined toward easy ventures and long odds. -Somewhere in his diaries Wilfrid Scawen Blunt speaks of the marked -debasement that showed itself in the English spirit after the brutal -robbery and assassination of the South African Republics. The heroes -that the mob followed after Mafeking Day were far inferior to the -heroes that it had followed in the days before the war. The English -gentleman began to disappear from public life, and in his place -appeared a rabble-rousing bounder<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> obviously almost identical with -the American professional politician—the Lloyd-George, Chamberlain, -F. E. Smith, Isaacs-Reading, Churchill, Bottomley, Northcliffe type. -Worse, old ideals went with old heroes. Personal freedom and strict -legality, says Blunt, vanished from the English tables of the law, -and there was a shift of the social and political center of gravity -to a lower plane. Precisely the same effect is now visible in the -United States. The overwhelming majority of conscripts went into the -army unwillingly, and once there they were debauched by the twin -forces of the official propaganda that I have mentioned and a harsh, -unintelligent discipline. The first made them almost incapable of -soldierly thought and conduct; the second converted them into cringing -goose-steppers. The consequences display themselves in the amazing -activities of the American Legion, and in the rise of such correlative -organizations as the Ku Klux Klan. It is impossible to fit any -reasonable concept of the soldierly into the familiar proceedings of -the Legion. Its members conduct themselves like a gang of Methodist -vice-crusaders on the loose, or a Southern lynching party. They are -forever discovering preposterous burglars under the national bed, -and they advance to the attack, not gallantly and at fair odds, but -cravenly and in overwhelming force. Some of their enterprises, to be -set forth at length in the record I<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> have mentioned, have been of -almost unbelievable baseness—the mobbing of harmless Socialists, -the prohibition of concerts by musicians of enemy nationality, the -mutilation of cows designed for shipment abroad to feed starving -children, the roughing of women, service as strike-breakers, the -persecution of helpless foreigners, regardless of nationality.</p> - -<p>During the last few months of the war, when stories of the tyrannical -ill-usage of conscripts began to filter back to the United States, it -was predicted that they would demand the punishment of the guilty when -they got home, and that if it was not promptly forthcoming they would -take it into their own hands. It was predicted, too, that they would -array themselves against the excesses of Palmer, Burleson and company, -and insist upon a restoration of that democratic freedom for which they -had theoretically fought. But they actually did none of these things. -So far as I know, not a single martinet of a lieutenant or captain has -been manhandled by his late victims; the most they have done has been -to appeal to Congress for revenge and damages. Nor have they thrown -their influence against the mediæval despotism which grew up at home -during the war; on the contrary, they have supported it actively, and -if it has lessened since 1919 the change has been wrought without -their aid and in spite of their opposition. In sum, they show all the -stigmata of inferior men<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> whose natural inferiority has been made -worse by oppression. Their chief organization is dominated by shrewd -ex-officers who operate it to their own ends—politicians in search -of jobs, Chamber of Commerce witch-hunters, and other such vermin. It -seems to be wholly devoid of patriotism, courage, or sense. Nothing -quite resembling it existed in the country before the war, not even in -the South. There is nothing like it anywhere else on earth. It is a -typical product of two years of heroic effort to arouse and capitalize -the worst instincts of the mob, and it symbolizes very dramatically the -ill effects of that effort upon the general American character.</p> - -<p>Would men so degraded in gallantry and honor, so completely purged of -all the military virtues, so submerged in baseness of spirit—would -such pitiful caricatures of soldiers offer the necessary resistance to -a public enemy who was equal, or perhaps superior in men and resources, -and who came on with confidence, daring and resolution—say England -supported by Germany as <i>Kriegslieferant</i> and with her inevitable -swarms of Continental allies, or Japan with the Asiatic hordes behind -her? Against the best opinion of the chautauquas, of Congress and of the -patriotic press I presume to doubt it. It seems to me quite certain, -indeed, that an American army fairly representing the American people, -if it ever meets another army of anything remotely resembling<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> like -strength, will be defeated, and that defeat will be indistinguishable -from rout. I believe that, at any odds less than two to one, even the -exhausted German army of 1918 would have defeated it, and in this view, -I think, I am joined by many men whose military judgment is far better -than mine—particularly by many French officers. The changes in the -American character since the Civil War, due partly to the wearing out -of the old Anglo-Saxon stock, inferior to begin with, and partly to -the infusion of the worst elements of other stocks, have surely not -made for the fostering of the military virtues. The old cool head is -gone, and the old dogged way with difficulties. The typical American of -to-day has lost all the love of liberty that his forefathers had, and -all their distrust of emotion, and pride in self-reliance. He is led -no longer by Davy Crocketts; he is led by cheer leaders, press agents, -word-mongers, uplifters. I do not believe that such a faint-hearted -and inflammatory fellow, shoved into a war demanding every resource -of courage, ingenuity and pertinacity, would give a good account of -himself. He is fit for lynching-bees and heretic-hunts, but he is not -fit for tight corners and desperate odds.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, his docility and pusillanimity may be overestimated, and -sometimes I think that they <i>are</i> overestimated by his present masters. -They assume that there is absolutely no limit to his capacity for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> -being put on and knocked about—that he will submit to any invasion of -his freedom and dignity, however outrageous, so long as it is depicted -in melodious terms. He permitted the late war to be “sold” to him by -the methods of the grind-shop auctioneer. He submitted to conscription -without any of the resistance shown by his brother democrats of Canada -and Australia. He got no further than academic protests against the -brutal usage he had to face in the army. He came home and found -Prohibition foisted on him, and contented himself with a few feeble -objurgations. He is a pliant slave of capitalism, and ever ready to -help it put down fellow-slaves who venture to revolt. But this very -weakness, this very credulity and poverty of spirit, on some easily -conceivable to-morrow, may convert him into a rebel of a peculiarly -insane kind, and so beset the Republic from within with difficulties -quite as formidable as those which threaten to afflict it from without. -What Mr. James N. Wood calls the corsair of democracy—that is, the -professional mob-master, the merchant of delusions, the pumper-up of -popular fears and rages—is still content to work for capitalism, and -capitalism knows how to reward him to his taste. He is the eloquent -statesman, the patriotic editor, the fount of inspiration, the prancing -milch-cow of optimism. He becomes public leader, Governor, Senator, -President. He is Billy Sunday, Cyrus K.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> Curtis, Dr. Frank Crane, -Charles E. Hughes, Taft, Wilson, Cal Coolidge, General Wood, Harding. -His, perhaps, is the best of trades under democracy—but it has its -temptations! Let us try to picture a master corsair, thoroughly adept -at pulling the mob nose, who suddenly bethought himself of that Pepin -the Short who found himself mayor of the palace and made himself King -of the Franks. There were lightnings along that horizon in the days -of Roosevelt; there were thunder growls when Bryan emerged from the -Nebraska steppes. On some great day of fate, as yet unrevealed by the -gods, such a professor of the central democratic science may throw off -his employers and set up a business for himself. When that day comes -there will be plenty of excuse for black type on the front pages of the -newspapers.</p> - -<p>I incline to think that military disaster will give him his inspiration -and his opportunity—that he will take the form, so dear to -democracies, of a man on horseback. The chances are bad to-day simply -because the mob is relatively comfortable—because capitalism has been -able to give it relative ease and plenty of food in return for its -docility. Genuine poverty is very rare in the United States, and actual -hardship is almost unknown. There are times when the proletariat is -short of phonograph records, silk shirts and movie tickets, but there -are very few times when it is short of nourishment. Even during the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> -most severe business depression, with hundreds of thousands out of -work, most of these apparent sufferers, if they are willing, are able -to get livings outside their trades. The cities may be choked with idle -men, but the country is nearly always short of labor. And if all other -resources fail, there are always public agencies to feed the hungry: -capitalism is careful to keep them from despair. No American knows what -it means to live as millions of Europeans lived during the war and have -lived, in some places, since: with the loaves of the baker reduced to -half size and no meat at all in the meat-shop. But the time may come and -it may not be far off. A national military disaster would disorganize -all industry in the United States, already sufficiently wasteful and -chaotic, and introduce the American people, for the first time in -their history, to genuine want—and capital would be unable to relieve -them. The day of such disaster will bring the savior foreordained. The -slaves will follow him, their eyes fixed ecstatically upon the newest -New Jerusalem. Men bred to respond automatically to shibboleths will -respond to this worst and most insane one. Bolshevism, said General -Foch, is a disease of defeated nations.</p> - -<p>But do not misunderstand me: I predict no revolution in the grand -manner, no melodramatic collapse of capitalism, no repetition of what -has gone on in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> Russia. The American proletarian is not brave and -romantic enough for that; to do him simple justice, he is not silly -enough. Capitalism, in the long run, will win in the United States, -if only for the reason that every American hopes to be a capitalist -before he dies. Its roots go down to the deepest, darkest levels of the -national soil; in all its characters, and particularly in its antipathy -to the dreams of man, it is thoroughly American. To-day it seems to be -immovably secure, given continued peace and plenty, and not all the -demagogues in the land, consecrating themselves desperately to the one -holy purpose, could shake it. Only a cataclysm will ever do that. But -is a cataclysm conceivable? Isn’t the United States the richest nation -ever heard of in history, and isn’t it a fact that modern wars are won -by money? It is not a fact. Wars are won to-day, as in Napoleon’s day, -by the largest battalions, and the largest battalions, in the next -great struggle, may not be on the side of the Republic. The usurious -profits it wrung from the last war are as tempting as negotiable -securities hung on the wash-line, as pre-Prohibition Scotch stored in -open cellars. Its knavish ways with friends and foes alike have left -it only foes. It is plunging ill-equipped into a competition for a -living in the world that will be to the death. And the late Disarmament -Conference left it almost hamstrung. Before the conference it had<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> the -Pacific in its grip, and with the Pacific in its grip it might have -parleyed for a fair half of the Atlantic. But when the Japs and the -English had finished their operations upon the Feather Duster, Popinjay -Lodge, Master-Mind Root, Vacuum Underwood, young Teddy Roosevelt and -the rest of their so-willing dupes there was apparent a baleful change. -The Republic is extremely insecure to-day on both fronts, and it will -be more insecure to-morrow. And it has no friends.</p> - -<p>However, as I say, I do not fear for capitalism. It will weather the -storm, and no doubt it will be the stronger for it afterward. The -inferior man hates it, but there is too much envy mixed with his -hatred, in the land of the theoretically free, for him to want to -destroy it utterly, or even to wound it incurably. He struggles against -it now, but always wistfully, always with a sneaking respect. On the -day of Armageddon he may attempt a more violent onslaught. But in the -long run he will be beaten. In the long run the corsairs will sell him -out, and hand him over to his enemy. Perhaps—who knows?—the combat -may raise that enemy to genuine strength and dignity. Out of it may -come the superman.</p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>4</h4> - - -<p>All the while I have been forgetting the third of my reasons for -remaining so faithful a citizen of the Federation, despite all the -lascivious inducements<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> from expatriates to follow them beyond the -seas, and all the surly suggestions from patriots that I succumb. -It is the reason which grows out of my mediæval but unashamed taste -for the bizarre and indelicate, my congenital weakness for comedy of -the grosser varieties. The United States, to my eye, is incomparably -the greatest show on earth. It is a show which avoids diligently all -the kinds of clowning which tire me most quickly—for example, royal -ceremonials, the tedious hocus-pocus of <i>haut politique</i>, the taking -of politics seriously—and lays chief stress upon the kinds which -delight me unceasingly—for example, the ribald combats of demagogues, -the exquisitely ingenious operations of master rogues, the pursuit -of witches and heretics, the desperate struggles of inferior men -to claw their way into Heaven. We have clowns in constant practice -among us who are as far above the clowns of any other great state as -a Jack Dempsey is above a paralytic—and not a few dozen or score of -them, but whole droves and herds. Human enterprises which, in all -other Christian countries, are resigned despairingly to an incurable -dullness—things that seem devoid of exhilarating amusement by their -very nature—are here lifted to such vast heights of buffoonery that -contemplating them strains the mid-riff almost to breaking. I cite an -example: the worship of God. Everywhere else on earth it is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> carried -on in a solemn and dispiriting manner; in England, of course, the -bishops are obscene, but the average man seldom gets a fair chance to -laugh at them and enjoy them. Now come home. Here we not only have -bishops who are enormously more obscene than even the most gifted of -the English bishops; we have also a huge force of lesser specialists in -ecclesiastical mountebankery—tin-horn Loyolas, Savonarolas and Xaviers -of a hundred fantastic rites, each performing untiringly and each full -of a grotesque and illimitable whimsicality. Every American town, -however small, has one of its own: a holy clerk with so fine a talent -for introducing the arts of jazz into the salvation of the damned that -his performance takes on all the gaudiness of a four-ring circus, and -the bald announcement that he will raid Hell on such and such a night -is enough to empty all the town blind-pigs and bordellos and pack -his sanctuary to the doors. And to aid him and inspire him there are -traveling experts to whom he stands in the relation of a wart to the -Matterhorn—stupendous masters of theological imbecility, contrivers -of doctrines utterly preposterous, heirs to the Joseph Smith, Mother -Eddy and John Alexander Dowie tradition—Bryan, Sunday, and their like. -These are the eminences of the American Sacred College. I delight in -them. Their proceedings make me a happier American.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p> - -<p>Turn, now, to politics. Consider, for example, a campaign for the -Presidency. Would it be possible to imagine anything more uproariously -idiotic—a deafening, nerve-wracking battle to the death between -Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Harlequin and Sganarelle, Gobbo and Dr. -Cook—the unspeakable, with fearful snorts, gradually swallowing the -inconceivable? I defy any one to match it elsewhere on this earth. -In other lands, at worst, there are at least intelligible issues, -coherent ideas, salient personalities. Somebody says something, and -somebody replies. But what did Harding say in 1920, and what did Cox -reply? Who was Harding, anyhow, and who was Cox? Here, having perfected -democracy, we lift the whole combat to symbolism, to transcendentalism, -to metaphysics. Here we load a pair of palpably tin cannon with blank -cartridges charged with talcum powder, and so let fly. Here one may -howl over the show without any uneasy reminder that it is serious, and -that some one may be hurt. I hold that this elevation of politics to -the plane of undiluted comedy is peculiarly American, that nowhere else -on this disreputable ball has the art of the sham-battle been developed -to such fineness. Two experiences are in point. During the Harding-Cox -combat of bladders an article of mine, dealing with some of its more -melodramatic phases, was translated into German and reprinted by a -Berlin paper. At the head of it the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> editor was careful to insert a -preface explaining to his readers, but recently delivered to democracy, -that such contests were not taken seriously by intelligent Americans, -and warning them solemnly against getting into sweats over politics. -At about the same time I had dinner with an Englishman. From cocktails -to bromo seltzer he bewailed the political lassitude of the English -populace—its growing indifference to the whole partisan harlequinade. -Here were two typical foreign attitudes: the Germans were in danger -of making politics too harsh and implacable, and the English were in -danger of forgetting politics altogether. Both attitudes, it must -be plain, make for bad shows. Observing a German campaign, one is -uncomfortably harassed and stirred up; observing an English campaign -(at least in times of peace), one falls asleep. In the United States -the thing is done better. Here politics is purged of all menace, all -sinister quality, all genuine significance, and stuffed with such -gorgeous humors, such inordinate farce that one comes to the end of -a campaign with one’s ribs loose, and ready for “King Lear,” or a -hanging, or a course of medical journals.</p> - -<p>But feeling better for the laugh. <i>Ridi si sapis</i>, said Martial. Mirth -is necessary to wisdom, to comfort, above all, to happiness. Well, -here is the land of mirth, as Germany is the land of metaphysics and -France is the land of fornication. Here the buffoonery<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> never stops. -What could be more delightful than the endless struggle of the Puritan -to make the joy of the minority unlawful and impossible? The effort -is itself a greater joy to one standing on the side-lines that any or -all of the carnal joys that it combats. Always, when I contemplate an -uplifter at his hopeless business, I recall a scene in an old-time -burlesque show, witnessed for hire, in my days as a dramatic critic. A -chorus girl executed a fall upon the stage, and Rudolph Krausemeyer, -the Swiss comedian, rushed to her aid. As he stooped painfully to -succor her, Irving Rabinovitz, the Zionist comedian, fetched him a -fearful clout across the cofferdam with a slap-stick. So the uplifter, -the soul-saver, the Americanizer, striving to make the Republic fit -for Y. M. C. A. secretaries. He is the eternal American, ever moved by -the best of intentions, ever running <i>à la</i> Krausemeyer to the rescue -of virtue, and ever getting his pantaloons fanned by the Devil. I am -naturally sinful, and such spectacles caress me. If the slap-stick were -a sash-weight the show would be cruel, and I’d probably complain to -the <i>Polizei.</i> As it is, I know that the uplifter is not really hurt, -but simply shocked. The blow, in fact, does him good, for it helps to -get him into Heaven, as exegetes prove from Matthew v, 11: <i>Heureux -serez-vous, lorsqu’on vous outragera, qu’on vous persécutera</i>, and so -on. As for me, it makes me<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> a more contented man, and hence a better -citizen. One man prefers the Republic because it pays better wages -than Bulgaria. Another because it has laws to keep him sober and his -daughter chaste. Another because the Woolworth Building is higher than -the cathedral at Chartres. Another because, living here, he can read -the New York <i>Evening Journal.</i> Another because there is a warrant out -for him somewhere else. Me, I like it because it amuses me to my taste. -I never get tired of the show. It is worth every cent it costs.</p> - -<p>That cost, it seems to me is very moderate. Taxes in the United -States are not actually high. I figure, for example, that my private -share of the expense of maintaining the Hon. Mr. Harding in the White -House this year will work out to less than 80 cents. Try to think of -better sport for the money: in New York it has been estimated that -it costs $8 to get comfortably tight, and $17.50, on an average, to -pinch a girl’s arm. The United States Senate will cost me perhaps $11 -for the year, but against that expense set the subscription price -of the <i>Congressional Record</i>, about $15, which, as a journalist, I -receive for nothing. For $4 less than nothing I am thus entertained as -Solomon never was by his hooch dancers. Col. George Brinton McClellan -Harvey costs me but 25 cents a year; I get Nicholas Murray Butler -free. Finally, there is young Teddy Roosevelt,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> the naval expert. -Teddy costs me, as I work it out, about 11 cents a year, or less -than a cent a month. More, he entertains me doubly for the money, -first as naval expert, and secondly as a walking <i>attentat</i> upon -democracy, a devastating proof that there is nothing, after all, in -that superstition. We Americans subscribe to the doctrine of human -equality—and the Rooseveltii reduce it to an absurdity as brilliantly -as the sons of Veit Bach. Where is your equal opportunity now? Here in -this Eden of clowns, with the highest rewards of clowning theoretically -open to every poor boy—here in the very citadel of democracy we found -and cherish a clown <i>dynasty!</i></p> - -<hr class="chap"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a id="II_HUNEKER_A_MEMORY">II. HUNEKER: A MEMORY</a></h4> - - -<p>There was a stimulating aliveness about him always, an air of living -eagerly and a bit recklessly, a sort of defiant resiliency. In his -very frame and form something provocative showed itself—an insolent -singularity, obvious to even the most careless glance. That Caligulan -profile of his was more than simply unusual in a free republic, -consecrated to good works; to a respectable American, encountering -it in the lobby of the Metropolitan or in the smoke-room of a -<i>Doppelschrauben-schnellpostdampfer</i>, it must have suggested inevitably -the dark enterprises and illicit metaphysics of a Heliogabalus. More, -there was always something rakish and defiant about his hat—it was -too white, or it curled in the wrong way, or a feather peeped from the -band—, and a hint of antinomianism in his cravat. Yet more, he ran to -exotic tastes in eating and drinking, preferring occult goulashes and -risi-bisis to honest American steaks, and great floods of Pilsner to -the harsh beverages of God-fearing men. Finally, there was his talk, -that cataract of sublime trivialities: gossip lifted to the plane of -the gods, the unmentionable<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> bedizened with an astounding importance, -and even profundity.</p> - -<p>In his early days, when he performed the tonal and carnal prodigies -that he liked to talk of afterward, I was at nurse, and too young to -have any traffic with him. When I encountered him at last he was in -the high flush of the middle years, and had already become a tradition -in the little world that critics inhabit. We sat down to luncheon -at one o’clock; I think it must have been at Lüchow’s, his favorite -refuge and rostrum to the end. At six, when I had to go, the waiter was -hauling in his tenth (or was it twentieth?) <i>Seidel</i> of Pilsner, and -he was bringing to a close <i>prestissimo</i> the most amazing monologue -that these ears (up to that time) had ever funnelled into this -consciousness. What a stew, indeed! Berlioz and the question of the -clang-tint of the viola, the psychopathological causes of the suicide -of Tschaikowsky, why Nietzsche had to leave Sils Maria between days in -1887, the echoes of Flaubert in Joseph Conrad (then but newly dawned), -the precise topography of the warts of Liszt, George Bernard Shaw’s -heroic but vain struggles to throw off Presbyterianism, how Frau Cosima -saved Wagner from the libidinous Swedish baroness, what to drink when -playing Chopin, what Cézanne thought of his disciples, the defects in -the structure of “Sister Carrie,” Anton Seidl and the musical union, -the complex love affairs<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> of Gounod, the early days of David Belasco, -the varying talents and idiosyncrasies of Lillian Russell’s earlier -husbands, whether a girl educated at Vassar could ever really learn to -love, the exact composition of chicken paprika, the correct tempo of -the Vienna waltz, the style of William Dean Howells, what George Moore -said about German bathrooms, the true inwardness of the affair between -D’Annunzio and Duse, the origin of the theory that all oboe players are -crazy, why Löwenbräu survived exportation better than Hofbräu, Ibsen’s -loathing of Norwegians, the best remedy for Rhine wine <i>Katzenjammer</i>, -how to play Brahms, the degeneration of the Bal Bullier, the sheer -physical impossibility of getting Dvorak drunk, the genuine last words -of Walt Whitman....</p> - -<p>I left in a sort of fever, and it was a couple of days later before I -began to sort out my impressions, and formulate a coherent image. Was -the man allusive in his books—so allusive that popular report credited -him with the actual manufacture of authorities? Then he was ten times -as allusive in his discourse—a veritable geyser of unfamiliar names, -shocking epigrams in strange tongues, unearthly philosophies out of -the backwaters of Scandinavia, Transylvania, Bulgaria, the Basque -country, the Ukraine. And did he, in his criticism, pass facilely from -the author to the man, and from the man to his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> wife, and to the wives -of his friends? Then at the <i>Biertisch</i> he began long beyond the point -where the last honest wife gives up the ghost, and so, full tilt, ran -into such complexities of adultery that a plain sinner could scarcely -follow him. I try to give you, ineptly and grotesquely, some notion -of the talk of the man, but I must fail inevitably. It was, in brief, -chaos, and chaos cannot be described. But it was chaos made to gleam -and corruscate with every device of the seven arts—chaos drenched in -all the colors imaginable, chaos scored for an orchestra which made the -great band of Berlioz seem like a fife and drum corps. One night a few -months before the war, I sat in the Paris Opera House listening to the -first performance of Richard Strauss’s “Josef’s Legend,” with Strauss -himself conducting. On the stage there was a riot of hues that swung -the eyes ’round and ’round in a crazy mazurka; in the orchestra there -were such volleys and explosions of tone that the ears (I fall into -a Hunekeran trope) began to go pale and clammy with surgical shock. -Suddenly, above all the uproar, a piccolo launched into a new and saucy -tune—in an unrelated key!... Instantly and quite naturally, I thought -of the incomparable James. When he gave a show at Lüchow’s he never -forgot that anarchistic passage for the piccolo.</p> - -<p>I observe a tendency since his death to estimate him in terms of -the content of his books. Even Frank<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> Harris, who certainly should -know better, goes there for the facts about him. Nothing could do -him worse injustice. In those books, of course, there is a great -deal of perfectly sound stuff; the wonder is, in truth, that so much -of it holds up so well to-day—for example, the essays on Strauss, -on Brahms and on Nietzsche, and the whole volume on Chopin. But -the real Huneker never got himself formally between covers, if one -forgets “Old Fogy” and parts of “Painted Veils.” The volumes of his -regular canon are made up, in the main, of articles written for the -more intellectual magazines and newspapers of their era, and they -are full of a conscious striving to qualify for respectable company. -Huneker, always curiously modest, never got over the notion that it -was a singular honor for a man such as he—a mere diurnal scribbler, -innocent of academic robes—to be published by so austere a publisher -as Scribner. More than once, anchored at the beer-table, we discussed -the matter at length, I always arguing that all the honor was enjoyed -by Scribner. But Huneker, I believe in all sincerity, would not -have it so, any more than he would have it that he was a better -music critic than his two colleagues, the pedantic Krehbiel and the -nonsensical Finck. This illogical modesty, of course, had its limits; -it made him cautious about expressing himself, but it seldom led him -into downright assumptions of false personality. Nowhere in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> all his -books will you find him doing the things that every right-thinking -Anglo-Saxon critic is supposed to do—the Middleton Murry, Paul Elmer -More, Clutton-Brock sort of puerility—solemn essays on Coleridge and -Addison, abysmal discussions of the relative merits of Schumann and -Mendelssohn, horrible treatises upon the relations of Goethe to the -Romantic Movement, dull scratchings in a hundred such exhausted and -sterile fields. Such enterprises were not for Huneker; he kept himself -out of that black coat. But I am convinced that he always had his own -raiment pressed carefully before he left Lüchow’s for the temple of -Athene—and maybe changed cravats, and put on a boiled shirt, and took -the feather out of his hat. The simon-pure Huneker, the Huneker who was -the true essence and prime motor of the more courtly Huneker—remained -behind. This real Huneker survives in conversations that still haunt -the rafters of the beer-halls of two continents, and in a vast mass of -newspaper impromptus, thrown off too hastily to be reduced to complete -decorum, and in two books that stand outside the official canon, and -yet contain the man himself as not even “Iconoclasts” or the Chopin -book contains him, to wit, the “Old Fogy” aforesaid and the “Painted -Veils” of his last year. Both were published, so to speak, out of the -back door—the former by a music publisher in Philadelphia and the -latter in a small and expensive edition<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> for the admittedly damned. -There is a chapter in “Painted Veils” that is Huneker to every last -hitch of the shoulders and twinkle of the eye—the chapter in which -the hero soliloquizes on art, life, immortality, and women—especially -women. And there are half a dozen chapters in “Old Fogy”—superficially -buffoonery, but how penetrating! how gorgeously flavored! how -learned!—that come completely up to the same high specification. If I -had to choose one Huneker book and give up all the others, I’d choose -“Old Fogy” instantly. In it Huneker is utterly himself. In it the last -trace of the pedagogue vanishes. Art is no longer, even by implication, -a device for improving the mind. It is wholly a magnificent adventure.</p> - -<p>That notion of it is what Huneker brought into American criticism, and -it is for that bringing that he will be remembered. No other critic -of his generation had a tenth of his influence. Almost single-handed -he overthrew the æsthetic theory that had flourished in the United -States since the death of Poe, and set up an utterly contrary æsthetic -theory in its place. If the younger men of to-day have emancipated -themselves from the Puritan æsthetic, if the schoolmaster is now -palpably on the defensive, and no longer the unchallenged assassin of -the fine arts that he once was, if he has already begun to compromise -somewhat absurdly with new and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> sounder ideas, and even to lift his -voice in artificial hosannahs, then Huneker certainly deserves all the -credit for the change. What he brought back from Paris was precisely -the thing that was most suspected in the America of those days: the -capacity for gusto. Huneker had that capacity in a degree unmatched by -any other critic. When his soul went adventuring among masterpieces -it did not go in Sunday broad-cloth; it went with vine leaves in its -hair. The rest of the appraisers and criers-up—even Howells, with -all his humor—could never quite rid themselves of the professorial -manner. When they praised it was always with some hint of ethical, or, -at all events, of cultural purpose; when they condemned that purpose -was even plainer. The arts, to them, constituted a sort of school for -the psyche; their aim was to discipline and mellow the spirit. But to -Huneker their one aim was always to make the spirit glad—to set it, in -Nietzsche’s phrase, to dancing with arms and legs. He had absolutely -no feeling for extra-æsthetic valuations. If a work of art that stood -before him was honest, if it was original, if it was beautiful and -thoroughly alive, then he was for it to his last corpuscle. What if it -violated all the accepted canons? Then let the accepted canons go hang! -What if it lacked all purpose to improve and lift up? Then so much the -better! What if it shocked all right-feeling men, and made them blush<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> -and tremble? Then damn all men of right feeling forevermore.</p> - -<p>With this ethical atheism, so strange in the United States and so -abhorrent to most Americans, there went something that was probably -also part of the loot of Paris: an insatiable curiosity about the -artist as man. This curiosity was responsible for two of Huneker’s -salient characters: his habit of mixing even the most serious -criticism with cynical and often scandalous gossip, and his pervasive -foreignness. I believe that it is almost literally true to say that he -could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had -seen the composer’s mistress, or at all events a good photograph of -her. He thought of Wagner, not alone in terms of melody and harmony, -but also in terms of the Tribschen idyl and the Bayreuth tragi-comedy. -Go through his books and you will see how often he was fascinated by -mere eccentricity of personality. I doubt that even Huysmans, had -he been a respectable French Huguenot, would have interested him; -certainly his enthusiasm for Verlaine, Villiers de l’Isle Adam and -other such fantastic fish was centered upon the men quite as much -as upon the artists. His foreignness, so often urged against him by -defenders of the national tradition, was grounded largely on the fact -that such eccentric personalities were rare in the Republic—rare, and -well watched<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> by the <i>Polizei.</i> When one bobbed up, he was alert at -once—even though the newcomer was only a Roosevelt. The rest of the -American people he dismissed as a horde of slaves, goose-steppers, -cads, Methodists; he could not imagine one of them becoming a -first-rate artist, save by a miracle. Even the American executant was -under his suspicion, for he knew very well that playing the fiddle -was a great deal more than scraping four strings of copper and catgut -with a switch from a horse’s tail. What he asked himself was how a man -could play Bach decently, and then, after playing, go from the hall to -a soda-fountain, or a political meeting, or a lecture at the Harvard -Club. Overseas there was a better air for artists, and overseas Huneker -looked for them.</p> - -<p>These fundamental theories of his, of course, had their defects. They -were a bit too simple, and often very much too hospitable. Huneker, -clinging to them, certainly did his share of whooping for the sort of -revolutionist who is here to-day and gone to-morrow; he was fugleman, -in his time, for more than one cause that was lost almost as soon as -it was stated. More, his prejudices made him somewhat anæsthetic, at -times, to the new men who were not brilliant in color but respectably -drab, and who tried to do their work within the law. Particularly in -his later years, when the old gusto began to die out<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> and all that -remained of it was habit, he was apt to go chasing after strange -birds and so miss seeing the elephants go by. I could put together a -very pretty list of frauds that he praised. I could concoct another -list of genuine <i>arrivés</i> that he overlooked. But all that is merely -saying that there were human limits to him; the professors, on their -side, have sinned far worse, and in both directions. Looking back -over the whole of his work, one must needs be amazed by the general -soundness of his judgments. He discerned, in the main, what was good -and he described it in terms that were seldom bettered afterward. -His successive heroes, always under fire when he first championed -them, almost invariably moved to secure ground and became solid men, -challenged by no one save fools—Ibsen, Nietzsche, Brahms, Strauss, -Cézanne, Stirner, Synge, the Russian composers, the Russian novelists. -He did for this Western world what Georg Brandes was doing for -Continental Europe—sorting out the new comers with sharp eyes, and -giving mighty lifts to those who deserved it. Brandes did it in terms -of the old academic bombast; he was never more the professor than -when he was arguing for some hobgoblin of the professors. But Huneker -did it with verve and grace; he made it, not schoolmastering, but a -glorious deliverance from schoolmastering. As I say, his influence was -enormous. The fine arts,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> at his touch, shed all their Anglo-American -lugubriousness, and became provocative and joyous. The spirit of -senility got out of them and the spirit of youth got into them. His -criticism, for all its French basis, was thoroughly American—vastly -more American, in fact, than the New England ponderosity that it -displaced. Though he was an Easterner and a cockney of the cockneys, he -picked up some of the Western spaciousness that showed itself in Mark -Twain. And all the young men followed him.</p> - -<p>A good many of them, I daresay, followed him so ardently that they -got a good distance ahead of him, and often, perhaps, embarrassed him -by taking his name in vain. For all his enterprise and iconoclasm, -indeed, there was not much of the Berserker in him, and his floutings -of the national æsthetic tradition seldom took the form of forthright -challenges. Here the strange modesty that I have mentioned always -stayed him as a like weakness stayed Mark Twain. He could never quite -rid himself of the feeling that he was no more than an amateur among -the gaudy doctors who roared in the reviews, and that it would be -unseemly for him to forget their authority. I have a notion that -this feeling was born in the days when he stood almost alone, with -the whole faculty grouped in a pained circle around him. He was -then too miserable a worm to be<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> noticed at all. Later on, gaining -importance, he was lectured somewhat severely for his violation of -decorum; in England even Max Beerbohm made an idiotic assault upon -him. It was the Germans and the French, in fact, who first praised him -intelligently—and these friends were too far away to help a timorous -man in a row at home. This sensation of isolation and littleness, I -suppose, explains his fidelity to the newspapers, and the otherwise -inexplicable joy that he always took in his forgotten work for the -<i>Musical Courier</i>, in his day a very dubious journal. In such waters -he felt at ease. There he could disport without thought of the dignity -of publishers and the eagle eyes of campus reviewers. Some of the -connections that he formed were full of an ironical inappropriateness. -His discomforts in his <i>Puck</i> days showed themselves in the feebleness -of his work; when he served the <i>Times</i> he was as well placed as a -Cabell at a colored ball. Perhaps the <i>Sun</i>, in the years before it -was munseyized, offered him the best berth that he ever had, save it -were his old one on <i>Mlle. New York.</i> But whatever the flag, he served -it loyally, and got a lot of fun out of the business. He liked the -pressure of newspaper work; he liked the associations that it involved, -the gabble in the press-room of the Opera House, the exchanges of news -and gossip; above all, he liked the relative ease of the intellectual -harness. In a newspaper<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> article he could say whatever happened to pop -into his mind, and if it looked thin the next day, then there was, -after all, no harm done. But when he sat down to write a book—or -rather to compile it, for all of his volumes were reworked magazine -(and sometimes newspaper) articles—he became self-conscious, and so -knew uneasiness. The tightness of his style, its one salient defect, -was probably the result of this weakness. The corrected clippings that -constituted most of his manuscripts are so beladen with revisions and -rerevisions that they are almost indecipherable.</p> - -<p>Thus the growth of Huneker’s celebrity in his later years filled him -with wonder, and never quite convinced him. He was certainly wholly -free from any desire to gather disciples about him and found a school. -There was, of course, some pride of authorship in him, and he liked -to know that his books were read and admired; in particular, he was -pleased by their translation into German and Czech. But it seemed to -me that he shrank from the bellicosity that so often got into praise -of them—that he disliked being set up as the opponent and superior of -the professors whom he always vaguely respected and the rival newspaper -critics whose friendship he esteemed far above their professional -admiration, or even respect. I could never draw him into a discussion -of these rivals, save perhaps a discussion of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> their historic feats at -beer-guzzling. He wrote vastly better than any of them and knew far -more about the arts than most of them, and he was undoubtedly aware -of it in his heart, but it embarrassed him to hear this superiority -put into plain terms. His intense gregariousness probably accounted -for part of this reluctance to pit himself against them; he could -not imagine a world without a great deal of easy comradeship in it, -and much casual slapping of backs. But under it all was the chronic -underestimation of himself that I have discussed—his fear that he -had spread himself over too many arts, and that his equipment was -thus defective in every one of them. “Steeplejack” is full of this -apologetic timidity. In its very title, as he explains it, there -is a confession of inferiority that is almost maudlin: “Life has -been the Barmecide’s feast to me,” and so on. In the book itself he -constantly takes refuge in triviality from the harsh challenges of -critical parties, and as constantly avoids facts that would shock the -Philistines. One might reasonably assume, reading it from end to end, -that his early days in Paris were spent in the fashion of a Y. M. C. A. -secretary. A few drinking bouts, of course, and a love affair in the -manner of Dubuque, Iowa—but where are the wenches?</p> - -<p>More than once, indeed, the book sinks to downright equivocation—for -example, in the Roosevelt<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> episodes. Certainly no one who knew -Huneker in life will ever argue seriously that he was deceived by the -Roosevelt buncombe, or that his view of life was at all comparable to -that of the great demagogue. He stood, in fact, at the opposite pole. -He saw the world, not as a moral show, but as a sort of glorified -Follies. He was absolutely devoid of that obsession with the problem -of conduct which was Roosevelt’s main virtue in the eyes of a stupid -and superstitious people. More, he was wholly against Roosevelt on -many concrete issues—the race suicide banality, the Panama swindle, -the war. He was far too much the realist to believe in the American -case, either before or after 1917, and the manner in which it was -urged, by Roosevelt and others, violated his notions of truth, honor -and decency. I assume nothing here; I simply record what he told me -himself. Nevertheless, the sheer notoriety of the Rough Rider—his -picturesque personality and talent as a mountebank—had its effect on -Huneker, and so he was a bit flattered when he was summoned to Oyster -Bay, and there accepted gravely the nonsense that was poured into his -ear, and even repeated some of it without a cackle in his book. To say -that he actually believed in it would be to libel him. It was precisely -such hollow tosh that he stood against in his rôle of critic of art and -life; it was by exposing its hollowness that he lifted himself above -the general. The same<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> weakness induced him to accept membership in the -National Institute of Arts and Letters. The offer of it to a man of his -age and attainments, after he had been passed over year after year in -favor of all sorts of cheapjack novelists and tenth-rate compilers of -college textbooks, was intrinsically insulting; it was almost as if the -Musical Union had offered to admit a Brahms. But with the insult went -a certain gage of respectability, a certain formal forgiveness for old -frivolities, a certain abatement of old doubts and self-questionings -and so Huneker accepted. Later on, reviewing the episode in his -own mind, he found it the spring of doubts that were even more -uncomfortable. His last letter to me was devoted to the matter. He was -by then eager to maintain that he had got in by a process only partly -under his control, and that, being in, he could discover no decorous -way of getting out.</p> - -<p>But perhaps I devote too much space to the elements in the man that -worked against his own free development. They were, after all, grounded -upon qualities that are certainly not to be deprecated—modesty, -good-will to his fellow-men, a fine sense of team-work, a distaste -for acrimonious and useless strife. These qualities gave him great -charm. He was not only humorous; he was also good-humored; even -when the crushing discomforts of his last illness were upon him his -amiability never faltered.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> And in addition to humor there was wit, -a far rarer thing. His most casual talk was full of this wit, and it -bathed everything that he discussed in a new and brilliant light. I -have never encountered a man who was further removed from dullness; -it seemed a literal impossibility for him to open his mouth without -discharging some word or phrase that arrested the attention and stuck -in the memory. And under it all, giving an extraordinary quality to -the verbal fireworks, there was a solid and apparently illimitable -learning. The man knew as much as forty average men, and his knowledge -was well-ordered and instantly available. He had read everything and -had seen everything and heard everything, and nothing that he had ever -read or seen or heard quite passed out of his mind.</p> - -<p>Here, in three words, was the main virtue of his criticism—its -gigantic richness. It had the dazzling charm of an ornate and intricate -design, a blazing fabric of fine silks. It was no mere pontifical -statement of one man’s reactions to a set of ideas; it was a sort -of essence of the reactions of many men—of all the men, in fact, -worth hearing. Huneker discarded their scaffolding, their ifs and -whereases, and presented only what was important and arresting in their -conclusions. It was never a mere <i>pastiche</i>; the selection was made -delicately, discreetly, with almost unerring taste and judgment. And -in the summing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> up there was always the clearest possible statement -of the whole matter. What finally emerged was a body of doctrine that -came, I believe, very close to the truth. Into an assembly of national -critics who had long wallowed in dogmatic puerilities, Huneker entered -with a taste infinitely surer and more civilized, a learning infinitely -greater, and an address infinitely more engaging. No man was less the -reformer by inclination, and yet he became a reformer beyond compare. -He emancipated criticism in America from its old slavery to stupidity, -and with it he emancipated all the arts themselves.</p> - -<hr class="chap"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a id="III_FOOTNOTE_ON_CRITICISM">III. FOOTNOTE ON CRITICISM</a></h4> - - -<p>Nearly all the discussions of criticism that I am acquainted with -start off with a false assumption, to wit, that the primary motive -of the critic, the impulse which makes a critic of him instead of, -say, a politician, or a stockbroker, is pedagogical—that he writes -because he is possessed by a passion to advance the enlightenment, -to put down error and wrong, to disseminate some specific doctrine: -psychological, epistemological, historical, or æsthetic. This is -true, it seems to me, only of bad critics, and its degree of truth -increases in direct ratio to their badness. The motive of the critic -who is really worth reading—the only critic of whom, indeed, it may -be said truthfully that it is at all possible to read him, save as an -act of mental discipline—is something quite different. That motive -is not the motive of the pedagogue, but the motive of the artist. It -is no more and no less than the simple desire to function freely and -beautifully, to give outward and objective form to ideas that bubble -inwardly and have a fascinating lure in them, to get rid of them -dramatically and make an articulate<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> noise in the world. It was for -this reason that Plato wrote the “Republic,” and for this reason that -Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony, and it is for this reason, to -drop a million miles, that I am writing the present essay. Everything -else is afterthought, mock-modesty, messianic delusion—in brief, -affectation and folly. Is the contrary conception of criticism widely -cherished? Is it almost universally held that the thing is a brother -to jurisprudence, advertising, laparotomy, chautauqua lecturing and -the art of the schoolmarm? Then certainly the fact that it is so held -should be sufficient to set up an overwhelming probability of its lack -of truth and sense. If I speak with some heat, it is as one who has -suffered. When, years ago, I devoted myself diligently to critical -pieces upon the writings of Theodore Dreiser, I found that practically -every one who took any notice of my proceedings at all fell into either -one of two assumptions about my underlying purpose: <i>(a)</i> that I had -a fanatical devotion for Mr. Dreiser’s ideas and desired to propagate -them, or <i>(b)</i> that I was an ardent patriot, and yearned to lift up -American literature. Both assumptions were false. I had then, and I -have now, very little interest in many of Mr. Dreiser’s main ideas; -when we meet, in fact, we usually quarrel about them. And I am wholly -devoid of public spirit, and haven’t the least lust to improve American -literature; if it ever came<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> to what I regard as perfection my job -would be gone. What, then, was my motive in writing about Mr. Dreiser -so copiously? My motive, well known to Mr. Dreiser himself and to every -one else who knew, me as intimately as he did, was simply and solely -to sort out and give coherence to the ideas of Mr. Mencken, and to put -them into suave and ingratiating terms, and to discharge them with a -flourish, and maybe with a phrase of pretty song, into the dense fog -that blanketed the Republic.</p> - -<p>The critic’s choice of criticism rather than of what is called creative -writing is chiefly a matter of temperament—perhaps, more accurately -of hormones—with accidents of education and environment to help. The -feelings that happen to be dominant in him at the moment the scribbling -frenzy seizes him are feelings inspired, not directly by life itself, -but by books, pictures, music, sculpture, architecture, religion, -philosophy—in brief, by some other man’s feelings about life. They -are thus, in a sense, second-hand, and it is no wonder that creative -artists so easily fall into the theory that they are also second-rate. -Perhaps they usually are. If, indeed, the critic continues on this -plane—if he lacks the intellectual agility and enterprise needed to -make the leap from the work of art to the vast and mysterious complex -of phenomena behind it—then they <i>always</i> are, and he remains no more -than a fugelman or policeman to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> his betters. But if a genuine artist -is conceded within him—if his feelings are in any sense profound and -original, and his capacity for self-expression is above the average of -educated men—then he moves inevitably from the work of art to life -itself, and begins to take on a dignity that he formerly lacked. It -is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, -universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent his whole -life appraising and describing the work of other men. Did Goethe, or -Carlyle, or Matthew Arnold, or Sainte-Beuve, or Macaulay, or even, to -come down a few pegs, Lewes, or Lowell, or Hazlitt? Certainly not. The -thing that becomes most obvious about the writings of all such men, -once they are examined carefully, is that the critic is always being -swallowed up by the creative artist—that what starts out as the review -of a book, or a play, or other work of art, usually develops very -quickly into an independent essay upon the theme of that work of art, -or upon some theme that it suggests—in a word, that it becomes a fresh -work of art, and only indirectly related to the one that suggested -it. This fact, indeed, is so plain that it scarcely needs statement. -What the pedagogues always object to in, for example, the <i>Quarterly</i> -reviewers is that they forgot the books they were supposed to review, -and wrote long papers—often, in fact, small books—expounding<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> -ideas suggested (or not suggested) by the books under review. Every -critic who is worth reading falls inevitably into the same habit. He -cannot stick to his task: what is before him is always infinitely -less interesting to him than what is within him. If he is genuinely -first-rate—if what is within him stands the test of type, and wins an -audience, and produces the reactions that every artist craves—then -he usually ends by abandoning the criticism of specific works of art -altogether, and setting up shop as a general merchant in general ideas, -<i>i. e.</i>, as an artist working in the materials of life itself.</p> - -<p>Mere reviewing, however conscientiously and competently it is done, is -plainly a much inferior business. Like writing poetry, it is chiefly -a function of intellectual immaturity. The young literatus just out -of the university, having as yet no capacity for grappling with the -fundamental mysteries of existence, is put to writing reviews of books, -or plays, or music, or painting. Very often he does it extremely well; -it is, in fact, not hard to do well, for even decayed pedagogues often -do it, as such graves of the intellect as the New York <i>Times</i> bear -witness. But if he continues to do it, whether well or ill, it is a -sign to all the world that his growth ceased when they made him <i>Artium -Baccalaureus.</i> Gradually he becomes, whether in or out of the academic -grove, a professor, which is to say, a man devoted to diluting<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> and -retailing the ideas of his superiors—not an artist, not even a bad -artist, but almost the antithesis of an artist. He is learned, he is -sober, he is painstaking and accurate—but he is as hollow as a jug. -Nothing is in him save the ghostly echoes of other men’s thoughts -and feelings. If he were a genuine artist he would have thoughts and -feelings of his own, and the impulse to give them objective form would -be irresistible. An artist can no more withstand that impulse than a -politician can withstand the temptations of a job. There are no mute, -inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound -test of a Milton is that he functions as a Milton. His difference -from other men lies precisely in the superior vigor of his impulse to -self-expression, not in the superior beauty and loftiness of his ideas. -Other men, in point of fact, often have the same ideas, or perhaps -even loftier ones, but they are able to suppress them, usually on -grounds of decorum, and so they escape being artists, and are respected -by right-thinking persons, and die with money in the bank, and are -forgotten in two weeks.</p> - -<p>Obviously, the critic whose performance we are commonly called upon to -investigate is a man standing somewhere along the path leading from the -beginning that I have described to the goal. He has got beyond being a -mere cataloguer and valuer of other<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> men’s ideas, but he has not yet -become an autonomous artist—he is not yet ready to challenge attention -with his own ideas alone. But it is plain that his motion, in so far as -he is moving at all, must be in the direction of that autonomy—that -is, unless one imagines him sliding backward into senile infantilism: -a spectacle not unknown to literary pathology, but too pathetic to be -discussed here. Bear this motion in mind, and the true nature of his -aims and purposes becomes clear; more, the incurable falsity of the -aims and purposes usually credited to him becomes equally clear. He -is not actually trying to perform an impossible act of arctic justice -upon the artist whose work gives him a text. He is not trying with -mathematical passion to find out exactly what was in that artist’s -mind at the moment of creation, and to display it precisely and in an -ecstasy of appreciation. He is not trying to bring the work discussed -into accord with some transient theory of æsthetics, or ethics, or -truth, or to determine its degree of departure from that theory. He is -not trying to lift up the fine arts, or to defend democracy against -sense, or to promote happiness at the domestic hearth, or to convert -sophomores into right-thinkers, or to serve God. He is not trying to -fit a group of novel phenomena into the orderly process of history. He -is not even trying to discharge the catalytic office that I myself, in -a romantic moment, once sought to force<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> upon him. He is, first and -last, simply trying to express himself. He is trying to arrest and -challenge a sufficient body of readers, to make them pay attention -to him, to impress them with the charm and novelty of his ideas, to -provoke them into an agreeable (or shocked) awareness of him, and he is -trying to achieve thereby for his own inner ego the grateful feeling of -a function performed, a tension relieved, a <i>katharsis</i> attained which -Wagner achieved when he wrote “Die Walküre,” and a hen achieves every -time she lays an egg.</p> - -<p>Joseph Conrad is moved by that necessity to write romances; Bach was -moved to write music; poets are moved to write poetry; critics are -moved to write criticism. The form is nothing; the only important -thing is the motive power, and it is the same in all cases. It is -the pressing yearning of every man who has ideas in him to empty -them upon the world, to hammer them into plausible and ingratiating -shapes, to compel the attention and respect of his equals, to lord -it over his inferiors. So seen, the critic becomes a far more -transparent and agreeable fellow than ever he was in the discourses -of the psychologists who sought to make him a mere appraiser in an -intellectual customs house, a gauger in a distillery of the spirit, -a just and infallible judge upon the cosmic bench. Such offices, in -point of fact, never fit him. He always bulges over their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> confines. -So labelled and estimated, it inevitably turns out that the specific -critic under examination is a very bad one, or no critic at all. -But when he is thought of, not as pedagogue, but as artist, then he -begins to take on reality, and, what is more, dignity. Carlyle was -surely no just and infallible judge; on the contrary, he was full -of prejudices, biles, naïvetés, humors. Yet he is read, consulted, -attended to. Macaulay was unfair, inaccurate, fanciful, lyrical—yet -his essays live. Arnold had his faults too, and so did Sainte-Beuve, -and so did Goethe, and so did many another of that line—and yet they -are remembered to-day, and all the learned and conscientious critics -of their time, laboriously concerned with the precise intent of the -artists under review, and passionately determined to set it forth with -god-like care and to relate it exactly to this or that great stream of -ideas—all these pedants are forgotten. What saved Carlyle, Macaulay -and company is as plain as day. They were first-rate artists. They -could make the thing charming, and that is always a million times more -important than making it true.</p> - -<p>Truth, indeed, is something that is believed in completely only by -persons who have never tried personally to pursue it to its fastnesses -and grab it by the tail. It is the adoration of second-rate men—men -who always receive it at second-hand.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> Pedagogues believe in immutable -truths and spend their lives trying to determine them and propagate -them; the intellectual progress of man consists largely of a concerted -effort to block and destroy their enterprise. Nine times out of ten, -in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; -there is only error to be exposed. In whole departments of human -inquiry it seems to me quite unlikely that the truth ever <i>will</i> be -discovered. Nevertheless, the rubber-stamp thinking of the world -always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical -with the discovery of the truth—that error and truth are simple -opposites. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, -when it has been cured of one error, is usually simply another error, -and maybe one worse than the first one. This is the whole history of -the intellect in brief. The average man of to-day does not believe in -precisely the same imbecilities that the Greek of the fourth century -before Christ believed in, but the things that he <i>does</i> believe in are -often quite as idiotic. Perhaps this statement is a bit too sweeping. -There is, year by year, a gradual accumulation of what may be called, -provisionally, truths—there is a slow accretion of ideas that somehow -manage to meet all practicable human tests, and so survive. But even -so, it is risky to call them absolute truths. All that one may safely -say of them is that no one, as yet, has demonstrated<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> that they are -errors. Soon or late, if experience teaches us anything, they are -likely to succumb too. The profoundest truths of the Middle Ages are -now laughed at by schoolboys. The profoundest truths of democracy will -be laughed at, a few centuries hence, even by school teachers.</p> - -<p>In the department of æsthetics, wherein critics mainly disport -themselves, it is almost impossible to think of a so-called truth -that shows any sign of being permanently true. The most profound of -principles begins to fade and quiver almost as soon as it is stated. -But the work of art, as opposed to the theory behind it, has a longer -life, particularly if that theory be obscure and questionable, and so -cannot be determined accurately. “Hamlet,” the Mona Lisa, “Faust,” -“Dixie,” “Parsifal,” “Mother Goose,” “Annabel Lee,” “Huckleberry -Finn”—these things, so baffling to pedagogy, so contumacious to the -categories, so mysterious in purpose and utility—these things live. -And why? Because there is in them the flavor of salient, novel and -attractive personality, because the quality that shines from them is -not that of correct demeanor but that of creative passion, because they -pulse and breathe and speak, because they are genuine works of art. So -with criticism. Let us forget all the heavy effort to make a science of -it; it is a fine art, or nothing. If the critic, retiring to his cell -to concoct his treatise upon a book or<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> play or what-not, produces a -piece of writing that shows sound structure, and brilliant color, and -the flash of new and persuasive ideas, and civilized manners, and the -charm of an uncommon personality in free function, then he has given -something to the world that is worth having, and sufficiently justified -his existence. Is Carlyle’s “Frederick” true? Who cares? As well ask -if the Parthenon is true, or the C Minor Symphony, or “Wiener Blur.” -Let the critic who is an artist leave such necropsies to professors of -æsthetics, who can no more determine the truth than he can, and will -infallibly make it unpleasant and a bore.</p> - -<p>It is, of course, not easy to practice this abstention. Two forces, -one within and one without, tend to bring even a Hazlitt or a Huneker -under the campus pump. One is the almost universal human susceptibility -to messianic delusions—the irresistible tendency of practically every -man, once he finds a crowd in front of him, to strut and roll his -eyes. The other is the public demand, born of such long familiarity -with pedagogical criticism that no other kind is readily conceivable, -that the critic teach something as well as say something—in the -popular phrase, that he be constructive. Both operate powerfully -against his free functioning, and especially the former. He finds -it hard to resist the flattery of his customers, however little he -may actually esteem<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> it. If he knows anything at all, he knows that -his following, like that of every other artist in ideas, is chiefly -made up of the congenitally subaltern type of man and woman—natural -converts, lodge joiners, me-toos, stragglers after circus parades. -It is precious seldom that he ever gets a positive idea out of them; -what he usually gets is mere unintelligent ratification. But this -troop, despite its obvious failings, corrupts him in various ways. -For one thing, it enormously reënforces his belief in his own ideas, -and so tends to make him stiff and dogmatic—in brief, precisely -everything that he ought not to be. And for another thing, it tends -to make him (by a curious contradiction) a bit pliant and politic: he -begins to estimate new ideas, not in proportion as they are amusing -or beautiful, but in proportion as they are likely to please. So -beset, front and rear, he sometimes sinks supinely to the level of a -professor, and his subsequent proceedings are interesting no more. -The true aim of a critic is certainly not to make converts. He must -know that very few of the persons who are susceptible to conversion -are worth converting. Their minds are intrinsically flabby and -parasitical, and it is certainly not sound sport to agitate minds -of that sort. Moreover, the critic must always harbor a grave doubt -about most of the ideas that they lap up so greedily—it must occur -to him not infrequently, in the silent watches of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> the night, that -much that he writes is sheer buncombe. As I have said, I can’t imagine -any idea—that is, in the domain of æsthetics—that is palpably and -incontrovertibly sound. All that I am familiar with, and in particular -all that I announce most vociferously, seem to me to contain a core -of quite obvious nonsense. I thus try to avoid cherishing them too -lovingly, and it always gives me a shiver to see any one else gobble -them at one gulp. Criticism, at bottom, is indistinguishable from -skepticism. Both launch themselves, the one by æsthetic presentations -and the other by logical presentations, at the common human tendency -to accept whatever is approved, to take in ideas ready-made, to be -responsive to mere rhetoric and gesticulation. A critic who believes in -anything absolutely is bound to that something quite as helplessly as a -Christian is bound to the Freudian garbage in the Book of Revelation. -To that extent, at all events, he is unfree and unintelligent, and -hence a bad critic.</p> - -<p>The demand for “constructive” criticism is based upon the same false -assumption that immutable truths exist in the arts, and that the artist -will be improved by being made aware of them. This notion, whatever the -form it takes, is always absurd—as much so, indeed, as its brother -delusion that the critic, to be competent, must be a practitioner of -the specific art he ventures to deal with, <i>i. e.</i>, that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> a doctor, to -cure a belly-ache, must have a belly-ache. As practically encountered, -it is disingenuous as well as absurd, for it comes chiefly from bad -artists who tire of serving as performing monkeys, and crave the -greater ease and safety of sophomores in class. They demand to be -taught in order to avoid being knocked about. In their demand is the -theory that instruction, if they could get it, would profit them—that -they are capable of doing better work than they do. As a practical -matter, I doubt that this is ever true. Bad poets never actually grow -any better; they invariably grow worse and worse. In all history there -has never been, to my knowledge, a single practitioner of any art -who, as a result of “constructive” criticism, improved his work. The -curse of all the arts, indeed, is the fact that they are constantly -invaded by persons who are not artists at all—persons whose yearning -to express their ideas and feelings is unaccompanied by the slightest -capacity for charming expression—in brief, persons with absolutely -nothing to say. This is particularly true of the art of letters, which -interposes very few technical obstacles to the vanity and garrulity of -such invaders. Any effort to teach them to write better is an effort -wasted, as every editor discovers for himself; they are as incapable -of it as they are of jumping over the moon. The only sort of criticism -that can deal with them to any profit is the sort that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> employs them -frankly as laboratory animals. It cannot cure them, but it can at least -make an amusing and perhaps edifying show of them. It is idle to argue -that the good in them is thus destroyed with the bad. The simple answer -is that there <i>is</i> no good in them. Suppose Poe had wasted his time -trying to dredge good work out of Rufus Dawes, author of “Geraldine.” -He would have failed miserably—and spoiled a capital essay, still -diverting after three-quarters of a century. Suppose Beethoven, dealing -with Gottfried Weber, had tried laboriously to make an intelligent -music critic of him. How much more apt, useful and durable the simple -note: “Arch-ass! Double-barrelled ass!” Here was absolutely sound -criticism. Here was a judgment wholly beyond challenge. Moreover, here -was a small but perfect work of art.</p> - -<p>Upon the low practical value of so-called constructive criticism I -can offer testimony out of my own experience. My books are commonly -reviewed at great length, and many critics devote themselves to -pointing out what they conceive to be my errors, both of fact and of -taste. Well, I cannot recall a case in which any suggestion offered -by a constructive critic has helped me in the slightest, or even -actively interested me. Every such wet-nurse of letters has sought -fatuously to make me write in a way differing from that in which the -Lord God Almighty,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> in His infinite wisdom, impels me to write—that -is, to make me write stuff which, coming from me, would be as false -as an appearance of decency in a Congressman. All the benefits I have -ever got from the critics of my work have come from the destructive -variety. A hearty slating always does me good, particularly if it be -well written. It begins by enlisting my professional respect; it ends -by making me examine my ideas coldly in the privacy of my chamber. -Not, of course, that I usually revise them, but I at least examine -them. If I decide to hold fast to them, they are all the dearer to me -thereafter, and I expound them with a new passion and plausibility. -If, on the contrary, I discern holes in them, I shelve them in a -<i>pianissimo</i> manner, and set about hatching new ones to take their -place. But constructive criticism irritates me. I do not object to -being denounced, but I can’t abide being school-mastered, especially by -men I regard as imbeciles.</p> - -<p>I find, as a practicing critic, that very few men who write books -are even as tolerant as I am—that most of them, soon or late, show -signs of extreme discomfort under criticism, however polite its terms. -Perhaps this is why enduring friendships between authors and critics -are so rare. All artists, of course, dislike one another more or less, -but that dislike seldom rises to implacable enmity, save between opera -singer and opera singer, and creative<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> author and critic. Even when -the latter two keep up an outward show of good-will, there is always -bitter antagonism under the surface. Part of it, I daresay, arises out -of the impossible demands of the critic, particularly if he be tinged -with the constructive madness. Having favored an author with his good -opinion, he expects the poor fellow to live up to that good opinion -without the slightest compromise or faltering, and this is commonly -beyond human power. He feels that any let-down compromises <i>him</i>—that -his hero is stabbing him in the back, and making him ridiculous—and -this feeling rasps his vanity. The most bitter of all literary quarrels -are those between critics and creative artists, and most of them arise -in just this way. As for the creative artist, he on his part naturally -resents the critic’s air of pedagogical superiority and he resents it -especially when he has an uneasy feeling that he has fallen short of -his best work, and that the discontent of the critic is thus justified. -Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice. Under it -all, of course, lurks the fact that I began with: the fact that the -critic is himself an artist, and that his creative impulse, soon or -late, is bound to make him neglect the punctilio. When he sits down to -compose his criticism, his artist ceases to be a friend, and becomes -mere raw material for his work of art. It is my experience that artists -invariably<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> resent this cavalier use of them. They are pleased so long -as the critic confines himself to the modest business of interpreting -them—preferably in terms of their own estimate of themselves—but the -moment he proceeds to adorn their theme with variations of his own, the -moment he brings new ideas to the enterprise and begins contrasting -them with their ideas, that moment they grow restive. It is precisely -at this point, of course, that criticism becomes genuine criticism; -before that it was mere reviewing. When a critic passes it he loses his -friends. By becoming an artist, he becomes the foe of all other artists.</p> - -<p>But the transformation, I believe, has good effects upon him: it makes -him a better critic. Too much <i>Gemütlichkeit</i> is as fatal to criticism -as it would be to surgery or politics. When it rages unimpeded it leads -inevitably either to a dull professorial sticking on of meaningless -labels or to log-rolling, and often it leads to both. One of the most -hopeful symptoms of the new <i>Aufklärung</i> in the Republic is the revival -of acrimony in criticism—the renaissance of the doctrine that æsthetic -matters are important, and that it is worth the while of a healthy male -to take them seriously, as he takes business, sport and amour. In the -days when American literature was showing its first vigorous growth, -the native criticism was extraordinarily violent and even vicious; in -the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> days when American literature swooned upon the tomb of the Puritan -<i>Kultur</i> it became flaccid and childish. The typical critic of the -first era was Poe, as the typical critic of the second was Howells. Poe -carried on his critical jehads with such ferocity that he often got -into law-suits, and sometimes ran no little risk of having his head -cracked. He regarded literary questions as exigent and momentous. The -lofty aloofness of the don was simply not in him. When he encountered -a book that seemed to him to be bad, he attacked it almost as sharply -as a Chamber of Commerce would attack a fanatic preaching free speech, -or the corporation of Trinity Church would attack Christ. His opponents -replied in the same Berserker manner. Much of Poe’s surviving ill-fame, -as a drunkard and dead-beat, is due to their inordinate denunciations -of him. They were not content to refute him; they constantly tried to -dispose of him altogether. The very ferocity of that ancient row shows -that the native literature, in those days, was in a healthy state. -Books of genuine value were produced. Literature always thrives best, -in fact, in an atmosphere of hearty strife. Poe, surrounded by admiring -professors, never challenged, never aroused to the emotions of revolt, -would probably have written poetry indistinguishable from the hollow -stuff of, say, Prof. Dr. George E. Woodberry. It took the persistent<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> -(and often grossly unfair and dishonorable) opposition of Griswold <i>et -al</i> to stimulate him to his highest endeavors. He needed friends, true -enough, but he also needed enemies.</p> - -<p>To-day, for the first time in years, there is strife in American -criticism, and the Paul Elmer Mores and Hamilton Wright Mabies are -no longer able to purr in peace. The instant they fall into stiff -professorial attitudes they are challenged, and often with anything but -urbanity. The <i>ex cathedra</i> manner thus passes out, and free discussion -comes in. Heretics lay on boldly, and the professors are forced to -make some defense. Often, going further, they attempt counter-attacks. -Ears are bitten off. Noses are bloodied. There are wallops both above -and below the belt. I am, I need not say, no believer in any magical -merit in debate, no matter how free it may be. It certainly does not -necessarily establish the truth; both sides, in fact, may be wrong, and -they often are. But it at least accomplishes two important effects. -On the one hand, it exposes all the cruder fallacies to hostile -examination, and so disposes of many of them. And on the other hand, it -melodramatizes the business of the critic, and so convinces thousands -of bystanders, otherwise quite inert, that criticism is an amusing and -instructive art, and that the problems it deals with are important. -What men will fight for seems to be worth looking into.</p> - -<hr class="chap"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a id="IV_DAS_KAPITAL">IV. DAS KAPITAL</a></h4> - - -<p>After a hearty dinner of <i>potage créole</i>, planked Chesapeake shad, -Guinea hen <i>en casserole</i> and some respectable salad, with two or three -cocktails made of two-thirds gin, one-third Martini-Rossi vermouth and -a dash of absinthe as <i>Vorspiel</i> and a bottle of Ruhländer 1903 to wash -it down, the following thought often bubbles up from my subconscious: -that many of the acknowledged evils of capitalism, now so horribly -visible in the world, are not due primarily to capitalism itself but -rather to democracy, that universal murrain of Christendom.</p> - -<p>What I mean, in brief, is that capitalism, under democracy, is -constantly under hostile pressure and often has its back to the wall, -and that its barbaric manners and morals, at least in large part, are -due to that fact—that they are, in essence, precisely the same manners -and morals that are displayed by any other creature or institution so -beset. Necessity is not only the mother of invention; it is also the -mother<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> of every imaginable excess and infamy. A woman defending her -child is notoriously willing to go to lengths that even a Turk or an -agent of the Department of Justice would regard as inordinate, and -so is a Presbyterian defending his hell, or a soldier defending his -fatherland, or a banker defending his gold. It is only when there is no -danger that the average human being is honorable, just as it is only -when there <i>is</i> danger that he is virtuous. He would commit adultery -every day if it were safe, and he would commit murder every day if it -were necessary.</p> - -<p>The essential thing about democracy, as every one must know, is that -it is a device for strengthening and heartening the have-nots in their -eternal war upon the haves. That war, as every one knows again, has -its psychological springs in envy pure and simple—envy of the more -fortunate man’s greater wealth, the superior pulchritude of his wife -or wives, his larger mobility and freedom, his more protean capacity -for and command of happiness—in brief, his better chance to lead a -bearable life in this worst of possible worlds. It follows that under -democracy, which gives a false power and importance to the have-nots by -counting every one of them as the legal equal of George Washington or -Beethoven, the process of government consists largely, and sometimes -almost exclusively, of efforts to spoil that advantage artificially. -Trust-busting, free silver, direct elections,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> Prohibition, government -ownership and all the other varieties of American political quackery -are but symptoms of the same general rage. It is the rage of the -have-not against the have, of the farmer who must drink hard cider and -forty-rod against the city man who may drink Burgundy and Scotch, of -the poor fellow who must stay at home looking at a wife who regards the -lip-stick as lewd and lascivious against the lucky fellow who may go to -Atlantic City or Palm Beach and ride up and down in a wheel-chair with -a girl who knows how to make up and has put away the fear of God.</p> - -<p>The ignobler sort of men, of course, are too stupid to understand -various rare and exhilarating sorts of superiority, and so they do not -envy the happiness that goes with them. If they could enter into the -mind of a Wagner or a Brahms and begin to comprehend the stupendous joy -that such a man gets out of the practice of his art, they would pass -laws against it and make a criminal of him, as they have already made -criminals, in the United States, of the man with a civilized taste for -wines, the man so attractive to women that he can get all the wives he -wants without having to marry them, and the man who can make pictures -like Félicien Rops, or books like Flaubert, Zola, Dreiser, Cabell or -Rabelais. Wagner and Brahms escape, and their arts with them, because -the great masses of men cannot understand<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> the sort of thing they -try to do, and hence do not envy the man who does it well, and gets -joy out of it. It is much different with, say, Rops. Every American -Congressman, as a small boy, covered the fence of the Sunday-School -yard with pictures in the manner of Rops. What he now remembers of the -business is that the pictures were denounced by the superintendent, and -that he was cowhided for making them; what he hears about Rops, when he -hears at all, is that the fellow is vastly esteemed, and hence probably -full of a smug æsthetic satisfaction. In consequence, it is unlawful in -the United States to transmit the principal pictures of Rops by mail, -or, indeed, “to have and possess” them. The man who owns them must -conceal them from the <i>okhrána</i> of the Department of Justice just as -carefully as he conceals the wines and whiskeys in his cellar, or the -poor working girl he transports from the heat and noise of New York to -the salubrious calm of the Jersey coast, or his hand-tooled library set -of the “Contes Drôlatiques,” or his precious first edition of “Jurgen.”</p> - -<p>But, as I say, the democratic pressure in such directions is relatively -feeble, for there are whole categories of more or less æsthetic -superiority and happiness that the democrat cannot understand at all, -and is in consequence virtually unaware of. It is far different with -the varieties of superiority and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> happiness that are the functions -of mere money. Here the democrat is extraordinarily alert and -appreciative. He can not only imagine hundreds of ways of getting -happiness out of money; he devotes almost the whole of his intellectual -activity, such as it is, to imagining them, and he seldom if ever -imagines anything else. Even his sexual fancies translate themselves -instantly into concepts of dollars and cents; the thing that confines -him so miserably to one wife, and to one, alas, so unappetizing and -depressing, is simply his lack of money; if he only had the wealth -of Diamond Jim Brady he too would be the glittering Don Giovanni -that Jim was. All the known species of democratic political theory -are grounded firmly upon this doctrine that money, and money only, -makes the mare go—that all the conceivable varieties of happiness -are possible to the man who has it. Even the Socialists, who profess -to scorn money, really worship it. Socialism, indeed, is simply the -degenerate capitalism of bankrupt capitalists. Its one genuine object -is to get more money for its professors; all its other grandiloquent -objects are afterthoughts, and most of them are bogus. The democrats -of other schools pursue the same single aim—and adorn it with false -pretenses even more transparent. In the United States the average -democrat, I suppose, would say that the establishment and safeguarding -of liberty<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> was the chief purpose of democracy. The theory is mere -wind. The average American democrat really cares nothing whatever -for liberty, and is always willing to sell it for money. What he -actually wants, and strives to get by his politics, is more money. -His fundamental political ideas nearly all contemplate restraints and -raids upon capital, even when they appear superficially to be quite -free from economic flavor, and most of the political banshees and -bugaboos that alternately freeze and boil his blood have dollar marks -written all over them. There is no need to marshal a long catalogue of -examples from English and American political history: I simply defy any -critic of my doctrine to find a single issue of genuine appeal to the -populace, at any time during the past century, that did not involve a -more or less obvious scheme for looting a minority—the slave-owners, -Wall Street, the railroads, the dukes, or some other group representing -capital. Even the most affecting idealism of the plain people has a -thrifty basis. In the United States, during the early part of the late -war, they were very cynical about the Allied cause; it was not until -the war orders of the Allies raised their wages that they began to -believe in the noble righteousness of Lloyd-George and company. And -after Dr. Wilson had jockeyed the United States itself into the war, -and the cost of living began to increase faster<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> than wages, he faced a -hostile country until he restored altruism by his wholesale bribery of -labor.</p> - -<p>It is my contention that the constant exposure of capitalism to such -primitive lusts and forays is what makes it so lamentably extortionate -and unconscionable in democratic countries, and particularly in the -United States. The capitalist, warned by experience, collars all he -can while the getting is good, regardless of the commonest honesty and -decorum, because he is haunted by an uneasy feeling that his season -will not be long. His dominating passion is to pile up the largest -amount of capital possible, by fair means or foul, so that he will -have ample reserves when the next raid comes, and he has to use part -of it to bribe one part of the proletariat against the other. In the -long run, of course, he always wins, for this bribery is invariably -feasible; in the United States, indeed, every fresh struggle leaves -capital more secure than it was before. But though the capitalist thus -has no reason to fear actual defeat and disaster, he is well aware that -victory is always expensive, and his natural prudence causes him to -discount the cost in advance, even when he has planned to shift it to -other shoulders. I point, in example, to the manner in which capital -dealt with the discharged American soldiers after the war. Its first -effort was to cajole them into its service,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> as they had been cajoled -by the politicians after the Civil War. To this end, it borrowed -the machine erected by Dr. Wilson and his agents for debauching the -booboisie during the actual war, and by the skillful use of that -machine it quickly organized the late conscripts into the American -Legion, alarmed them with lies about a Bolshevist scheme to make slaves -of them (i. e., to cut off forever their hope of getting money), and -put them to clubbing and butchering their fellow proletarians. The -business done, the conscripts found themselves out of jobs: their -gallant war upon Bolshevism had brought down wages, and paralysed -organized labor. They now demanded pay for their work, and capital -had to meet the demand. It did so by promising them a bonus—<i>i. e.</i>, -loot—out of the public treasury, and by straightway inventing a scheme -whereby the ultimate cost would fall chiefly upon poor folk.</p> - -<p>Throughout the war, indeed, capital exhibited an inordinately -extortionate spirit, and thereby revealed its underlying dread. First -it robbed the Allies in the manner of bootleggers looting a country -distillery, then it swindled the plain people at home by first bribing -them with huge wages and then taking away all their profits and -therewith all their savings, and then it seized and made away with the -impounded property of enemy nationals—property<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> theoretically held in -trust for them, and the booty, if it was booty at all, of the whole -American people. This triple burglary was excessive, to be sure, but -who will say that it was not prudent? The capitalists of the Republic -are efficient, and have foresight. They saw some lean and hazardous -years ahead, with all sorts of raids threatening. They took measures to -fortify their position. To-day their prevision is their salvation. They -are losing some of their accumulation, of course, but they still have -enough left to finance an effective defense of the remainder. There -was never any time in the history of any country, indeed, when capital -was so securely intrenched as it is to-day in the United States. It -has divided the proletariat into two bitterly hostile halves, it has -battered and crippled unionism almost beyond recognition, it has a firm -grip upon all three arms of the government, and it controls practically -every agency for the influencing of public opinion, from the press to -the church. Had it been less prudent when times were good, and put its -trust in God alone, the I. W. W. would have rushed it at the end of the -war.</p> - -<p>As I say, I often entertain the thought that it would be better, -in the long run, to make terms with a power so hard to resist, and -thereby purge it of its present compulsory criminality. I doubt that -capitalists, as a class, are naturally vicious; certainly<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> they are -no more vicious than, say, lawyers and politicians—upon whom the -plain people commonly rely, in their innocence, to save them. I have -known a good many men of great wealth in my time, and most of them -have been men showing all the customary decencies. They deplore the -harsh necessities of their profession quite as honestly as a judge -deplores the harsh necessities of his. You will never convince me that -the average American banker, during the war, got anything properly -describable as professional satisfaction out of selling Liberty bonds -at 100 to poor stenographers, and then buying them back at 83. He knew -that he’d need his usurious profit against the blue day when the boys -came home, and so he took it, but it would have given him ten times as -much pleasure if it had come from the reluctant gizzard of some other -banker. In brief, there is a pride of workmanship in capitalists, just -as there is in all other men above the general. They get the same -spiritual lift out of their sordid swindles that Swinburne got out of -composing his boozy dithyrambs, and I often incline to think that it -is quite as worthy of respect. In a democratic society, with the arts -adjourned and the sciences mere concubines of money, it is chiefly the -capitalists, in fact, who keep pride of workmanship alive. In their -principal enemies, the trades-unionists, it is almost extinct. Unionism -seldom, if ever, uses such power<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> as it has to insure better work; -almost always it devotes a large part of that power to safeguarding -bad work. A union man who, moved by professional pride, put any extra -effort into his job would probably be punished by his union as a sort -of scab. But a capitalist is still able to cherish some of the old -spirit of the guildsman. If he invents a new device for corralling the -money of those who have earned it, or operates an old device in some -new and brilliant way, he is honored and envied by his colleagues. -The late J. Pierpont Morgan was thus honored and envied, not because -he made more actual money than any other capitalist of his time—in -point of fact, he made a good deal less than some, and his own son, a -much inferior man, has made more since his death than he did during -his whole life—but because his operations showed originality, daring, -coolness, and imagination—in brief, because he was a great virtuoso in -the art he practiced.</p> - -<p>What I contend is that the democratic system of government would be -saner and more effective in its dealings with capital if it ceased to -regard all capitalists as criminals <i>ipso facto</i>, and thereby ceased -to make their armed pursuit the chief end of practical politics—if -it gave over this vain effort to put them down by force, and tried -to bring them to decency by giving greater play and confidence to -the pride of workmanship that I have described. They would be<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> less -ferocious and immoderate, I think, if they were treated with less -hostility, and put more upon their conscience and honor. No doubt the -average democrat, brought up upon the prevailing superstitions and -prejudices of his faith, will deny at once that they are actually -capable of conscience or honor, or that they have any recognizable -pride of workmanship. Well, let him deny it. He will make precisely -the same denial with respect to kings. Nevertheless, it must be plain -to every one who has read history attentively that the majority of the -kings of the past, even when no criticism could reach them, showed -a very great pride of workmanship—that they tried to be good kings -even when it was easier to be bad ones. The same thing is true of -the majority of capitalists—the kings of to-day. They are criminals -by our democratic law, but their criminality is chiefly artificial -and theoretical, like that of a bootlegger. If it were abolished by -repealing the laws which create it—if it became legally just as -virtuous to organize and operate a great industrial corporation, or -to combine and rehabilitate railroads, or to finance any other such -transactions as it is to organize a trades-union, a <i>Bauverein</i>, or a -lodge of Odd Fellows—then I believe that capitalists would forthwith -abandon a great deal of the scoundrelism which now marks their -proceedings, that they could be trusted to police their order at least -as vigilantly as physicians or<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> lawyers police theirs, and that the -activities of those members of it who showed no pride of workmanship at -all would be effectively curbed.</p> - -<p>The legal war upon them under democracy is grounded upon the false -assumption that it would be possible, given laws enough, to get rid -of them altogether. The <i>Ur-</i>Americanos, who set the tone of our -legislation and provided examples for the legislation of every other -democratic country, were chiefly what would be called Bolsheviki -to-day. They dreamed of a republic wholly purged of capitalism—and -taxes. They were have-nots of the most romantic and ambitious variety, -and saw Utopia before them. Every man of their time who thought -capitalistically—that is, who believed that things consumed had to -be paid for—was a target for their revilings: for example, Alexander -Hamilton. But they were wrong, and their modern heirs and assigns are -wrong just as surely. That wrongness of theirs, in truth, has grown -enormously since it was launched, for the early Americans were a -pastoral people, and could get along with very little capital, whereas -the Americans of to-day lead a very complex life, and need the aid of -capitalism at almost every breath they draw. Most of their primary -necessities—the railroad, the steamship lines, the trolley car, -the telephone, refrigerated meats, machine-made clothes, phonograph -records, moving-picture shows, and so on—are<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> wholly unthinkable save -as the products of capital in large aggregations. No man of to-day can -imagine doing without them, or getting them without the aid of such -aggregations. The most even the wildest Socialist can think of is to -take the capital away from the capitalists who now have it and hand it -over to the state—in other words, to politicians. A century ago there -were still plenty of men who, like Thoreau, proposed to abolish it -altogether. But now even the radicals of the extreme left assume as a -matter of course that capital is indispensible, and that abolishing it -or dispersing it would cause a collapse of civilization.</p> - -<p>What ails democracy, in the economic department, is that it proceeds -upon the assumption that the contrary is true—that it seeks to bring -capitalism to a state of innocuous virtue by grossly exaggerating -its viciousness—that it penalizes ignorantly what is, at bottom, a -perfectly natural and legitimate aspiration, and one necessary to -society. Such penalizings, I need not argue, never destroy the impulse -itself; surely the American experience with Prohibition should make -even a democrat aware of that. What they do is simply to make it -evasive, intemperate, and relentless. If it were legally as hazardous -in the United States to play a string quartette as it is to build up a -great bank or industrial enterprise—if the performers, struggling with -their parts, had to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> watch the windows in constant fear that a Bryan, -a Roosevelt, a Lloyd-George or some other such predatory mountebank -would break in, armed with a club and followed by a rabble—then string -quartette players would become as devious and anti-social in their ways -as the average American capitalist is to-day, and when, by a process of -setting one part of the mob against the rest, they managed to get a -chance to play quartettes in temporary peace, despite the general mob -hatred of them, they would forget the lovely music of Haydn and Mozart -altogether, and devote their whole time to a <i>fortissimo</i> playing of -the worst musical felonies of Schönberg, Ravel and Strawinsky.</p> - -<hr class="chap"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a id="V_AD_IMAGINEM_DEI_CREAVIT_ILLUM">V. AD IMAGINEM DEI CREAVIT ILLUM</a></h4> - - - -<h4>1</h4> - -<h4><i>The Life of Man</i></h4> - - -<p>The old anthropomorphic notion that the life of the whole universe -centers in the life of man—that human existence is the supreme -expression of the cosmic process—this notion seems to be on its way -toward the Sheol of exploded delusions. The fact is that the life of -man, as it is more and more studied in the light of general biology, -appears to be more and more empty of significance. Once apparently the -chief concern and masterpiece of the gods, the human race now begins -to bear the aspect of an accidental by-product of their vast, -inscrutable and probably nonsensical operations. A blacksmith making a -horse-shoe produces something almost as brilliant and mysterious—the -shower of sparks. But his eye and thought, as we know, are not on the -sparks, but on the horse-shoe. The sparks, indeed, constitute a sort -of disease of the horse-shoe; their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> existence depends upon a wasting -of its tissue. In the same way, perhaps, man is a local disease of -the cosmos—a kind of pestiferous eczema or urethritis. There are, -of course, different grades of eczema, and so are there different -grades of men. No doubt a cosmos afflicted with nothing worse than an -infection of Beethovens would not think it worth while to send for the -doctor. But a cosmos infested by prohibitionists, Socialists, Scotsmen -and stockbrokers must suffer damnably. No wonder the sun is so hot and -the moon is so diabetically green!</p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>2</h4> - -<h4><i>The Anthropomorphic Delusion</i></h4> - - -<p>As I say, the anthropomorphic theory of the world is made absurd by -modern biology—but that is not saying, of course, that it will ever -be abandoned by the generality of men. To the contrary, they will -cherish it in proportion as it becomes more and more dubious. To-day, -indeed, it is cherished as it was never cherished in the Ages of Faith, -when the doctrine that man was god-like was at least ameliorated -by the doctrine that woman was vile. What else is behind charity, -philanthropy, pacifism, Socialism, the uplift, all the rest of the -current sentimentalities? One and all, these sentimentalities are based -upon the notion that man is a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> glorious and ineffable animal, and -that his continued existence in the world ought to be facilitated and -insured. But this notion is obviously full of fatuity. As animals go, -even in so limited a space as our world, man is botched and ridiculous. -Few other brutes are so stupid or so cowardly. The commonest yellow dog -has far sharper senses and is infinitely more courageous, not to say -more honest and dependable. The ants and the bees are, in many ways, -far more intelligent and ingenious; they manage their government with -vastly less quarreling, wastefulness and imbecility. The lion is more -beautiful, more dignified, more majestic. The antelope is swifter and -more graceful. The ordinary house-cat is cleaner. The horse, foamed -by labor, has a better smell. The gorilla is kinder to his children -and more faithful to his wife. The ox and the ass are more industrious -and serene. But most of all, man is deficient in courage, perhaps the -noblest quality of them all. He is not only mortally afraid of all -other animals of his own weight or half his weight—save a few that he -has debased by artificial inbreeding—; he is even mortally afraid of -his own kind—and not only of their fists and hooves, but even of their -sniggers.</p> - -<p>No other animal is so defectively adapted to its environment. The -human infant, as it comes into the world, is so puny that if it were -neglected for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> two days running it would infallibly perish, and this -congenital infirmity, though more or less concealed later on, persists -until death. Man is ill far more than any other animal, both in his -savage state and under civilization. He has more different diseases and -he suffers from them oftener. He is easier exhausted and injured. He -dies more horribly and usually sooner. Practically all the other higher -vertebrates, at least in their wild state, live longer and retain their -faculties to a greater age. Here even the anthropoid apes are far -beyond their human cousins. An orang-outang marries at the age of seven -or eight, raises a family of seventy or eighty children, and is still -as hale and hearty at eighty as a European at forty-five.</p> - -<p>All the errors and incompetencies of the Creator reach their climax -in man. As a piece of mechanism he is the worst of them all; put -beside him, even a salmon or a staphylococcus is a sound and efficient -machine. He has the worst kidneys known to comparative zoology, and -the worst lungs, and the worst heart. His eye, considering the work it -is called upon to do, is less efficient than the eye of an earth-worm; -an optical instrument maker who made an instrument so clumsy would be -mobbed by his customers. Alone of all animals, terrestrial, celestial -or marine, man is unfit by nature to go abroad in the world he -inhabits. He must clothe himself, protect<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> himself, swathe himself, -armor himself. He is eternally in the position of a turtle born without -a shell, a dog without hair, a fish without fins. Lacking his heavy and -cumbersome trappings, he is defenseless even against flies. As God made -him he hasn’t even a tail to switch them off.</p> - -<p>I now come to man’s one point of unquestionable natural superiority: -he has a soul. This is what sets him off from all other animals, and -makes him, in a way, their master. The exact nature of that soul has -been in dispute for thousands of years, but regarding its function it -is possible to speak with some authority. That function is to bring -man into direct contact with God, to make him aware of God, above -all, to make him resemble God. Well, consider the colossal failure of -the device! If we assume that man actually does resemble God, then we -are forced into the impossible theory that God is a coward, an idiot -and a bounder. And if we assume that man, after all these years, does -<i>not</i> resemble God, then it appears at once that the human soul is as -inefficient a machine as the human liver or tonsil, and that man would -probably be better off, as the chimpanzee undoubtedly <i>is</i> better off, -without it.</p> - -<p>Such, indeed, is the case. The only practical effect of having a -soul is that it fills man with anthropomorphic and anthropocentric -vanities—in brief with cocky and preposterous superstitions.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> He -struts and plumes himself because he has this soul—and overlooks the -fact that it doesn’t work. Thus he is the supreme clown of creation, -the <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> of animated nature. He is like a cow who -believed that she could jump over the moon, and ordered her whole life -upon that theory. He is like a bullfrog boasting eternally of fighting -lions, of flying over the Matterhorn, and of swimming the Hellespont. -And yet this is the poor brute we are asked to venerate as a gem in -the forehead of the cosmos! This is the worm we are asked to defend -as God’s favorite on earth, with all its millions of braver, nobler, -decenter quadrupeds—its superb lions, its lithe and gallant leopards, -its imperial elephants, its honest dogs, its courageous rats! This is -the insect we are besought, at infinite trouble, labor and expense, to -reproduce!</p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>3</h4> - -<h4><i>Meditation on Meditation.</i></h4> - - -<p>Man’s capacity for abstract thought, which most other mammals seem -to lack, has undoubtedly given him his present mastery of the land -surface of the earth—a mastery disputed only by several hundred -species of microscopic organisms. It is responsible for his feeling -of superiority, and under that feeling there is undoubtedly a certain -measure of reality, at<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> least within narrow limits. But what is too -often overlooked is that the capacity to perform an act is by no means -synonymous with its salubrious exercise. The simple fact is that most -of man’s thinking is stupid, pointless, and injurious to him. Of all -animals, indeed, he seems the least capable of arriving at accurate -judgments in the matters that most desperately affect his welfare. -Try to imagine a rat, in the realm of rat ideas, arriving at a notion -as violently in contempt of plausibility as the notion, say, of -Swedenborgianism, or that of homeopathy, or that of infant damnation, -or that of mental telepathy. Try to think of a congregation of educated -rats gravely listening to such disgusting intellectual rubbish as was -in the public bulls of Dr. Woodrow Wilson. Man’s natural instinct, in -fact, is never toward what is sound and true; it is toward what is -specious and false. Let any great nation of modern times be confronted -by two conflicting propositions, the one grounded upon the utmost -probability and reasonableness and the other upon the most glaring -error, and it will almost invariably embrace the latter. It is so -in politics, which consists wholly of a succession of unintelligent -crazes, many of them so idiotic that they exist only as battle-cries -and shibboleths and are not reducible to logical statement at all. It -is so in religion, which, like poetry, is simply a concerted effort -to deny the most obvious<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> realities. It is so in nearly every field -of thought. The ideas that conquer the race most rapidly and arouse -the wildest enthusiasm and are held most tenaciously are precisely -the ideas that are most insane. This has been true since the first -“advanced” gorilla put on underwear, cultivated a frown and began his -first lecture tour in the first chautauqua, and it will be so until the -high gods, tired of the farce at last, obliterate the race with one -great, final blast of fire, mustard gas and streptococci.</p> - -<p>No doubt the imagination of man is to blame for this singular weakness. -That imagination, I daresay, is what gave him his first lift above his -fellow primates. It enabled him to visualize a condition of existence -better than that he was experiencing, and bit by bit he was able to -give the picture a certain crude reality. Even to-day he keeps on going -ahead in the same manner. That is, he thinks of something that he would -like to be or to get, something appreciably better than what he is or -has, and then, by the laborious, costly method of trial and error, he -gradually moves toward it. In the process he is often severely punished -for his discontent with God’s ordinances. He mashes his thumb, he skins -his shin; he stumbles and falls; the prize he reaches out for blows -up in his hands. But bit by bit he moves on, or, at all events, his -heirs and assigns move on. Bit by bit he smooths the path beneath his -remaining<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> leg, and achieves pretty toys for his remaining hand to play -with, and accumulates delights for his remaining ear and eye.</p> - -<p>Alas, he is not content with this slow and sanguinary progress! Always -he looks further and further ahead. Always he imagines things just -over the sky-line. This body of imaginings constitutes his stock of -sweet beliefs, his corpus of high faiths and confidences—in brief, his -burden of errors. And that burden of errors is what distinguishes man, -even above his capacity for tears, his talents as a liar, his excessive -hypocrisy and poltroonery, from all the other orders of mammalia. Man -is the yokel <i>par excellence</i>, the booby unmatchable, the king dupe of -the cosmos. He is chronically and unescapably deceived, not only by the -other animals and by the delusive face of nature herself, but also and -more particularly by himself—by his incomparable talent for searching -out and embracing what is false, and for overlooking and denying what -is true.</p> - -<p>The capacity for discerning the essential truth, in fact, is as rare -among men as it is common among crows, bullfrogs and mackerel. The -man who shows it is a man of quite extraordinary quality—perhaps -even a man downright diseased. Exhibit a new truth of any natural -plausibility before the great masses of men, and not one in ten thousand -will suspect its existence, and not one in a hundred thousand will<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> -embrace it without a ferocious resistance. All the durable truths -that have come into the world within historic times have been opposed -as bitterly as if they were so many waves of smallpox, and every -individual who has welcomed and advocated them, absolutely without -exception, has been denounced and punished as an enemy of the race. -Perhaps “absolutely without exception” goes too far. I substitute “with -five or six exceptions.” But who were the five or six exceptions? I -leave you to think of them; myself, I can’t.... But I think at once -of Charles Darwin and his associates, and of how they were reviled -in their time. This reviling, of course, is less vociferous than it -used to be, chiefly because later victims are in the arena, but the -underlying hostility remains. Within the past two years the principal -Great Thinker of Britain, George Bernard Shaw, has denounced the -hypothesis of natural selection to great applause, and a three-times -candidate for the American Presidency, William Jennings Bryan, has -publicly advocated prohibiting the teaching of it by law. The great -majority of Christian ecclesiastics in both English-speaking countries, -and with them the great majority of their catachumens, are still -committed to the doctrine that Darwin was a scoundrel, and Herbert -Spencer another, and Huxley a third—and that Nietzsche is to the three -of them what Beelzebub himself is to a trio of bad boys.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> This is the -reaction of the main body of respectable folk in two puissant and -idealistic Christian nations to the men who will live in history as the -intellectual leaders of the Nineteenth Century. This is the immemorial -attitude of men in the mass, and of their chosen prophets, to whatever -is honest, and important, and most probably true.</p> - -<p>But if truth thus has hard sledding, error is given a loving welcome. -The man who invents a new imbecility is hailed gladly, and bidden to -make himself at home; he is, to the great masses of men, the <i>beau -ideal</i> of mankind. Go back through the history of the past thousand -years and you will find that ninetenths of the popular idols of the -world—not the heroes of small sects, but the heroes of mankind in -the mass—have been merchants of palpable nonsense. It has been so in -politics, it has been so in religion, and it has been so in every other -department of human thought. Every such hawker of the not-true has been -opposed, in his time, by critics who denounced and refuted him; his -contention has been disposed of immediately it was uttered. But on the -side of every one there has been the titanic force of human credulity, -and it has sufficed in every case to destroy his foes and establish his -immortality.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>4</h4> - -<h4><i>Man and His Soul</i></h4> - - -<p>Of all the unsound ideas thus preached by great heroes and accepted by -hundreds of millions of their eager dupes, probably the most patently -unsound is the one that is most widely held, to wit, the idea that man -has an immortal soul—that there is a part of him too ethereal and -too exquisite to die. Absolutely the only evidence supporting this -astounding notion lies in the hope that it is true—which is precisely -the evidence underlying the late theory that the Great War would put -an end to war, and bring in an era of democracy, freedom, and peace. -But even archbishops, of course, are too intelligent to be satisfied -permanently by evidence so unescapably dubious; in consequence, there -have been efforts in all ages to give it logical and evidential -support. Well, all I ask is that you give some of that corroboration -your careful scrutiny. Examine, for example, the proofs amassed by -five typical witnesses in five widely separated ages: St. John, St. -Augustine, Martin Luther, Emanuel Swedenborg and Sir Oliver Lodge. -Approach these proofs prayerfully, and study them well. Weigh them in -the light of the probabilities, the ordinary intellectual decencies. -And then ask<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> yourself if you could imagine a mud-turtle accepting them -gravely.</p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>5</h4> - -<h4><i>Coda</i></h4> - - -<p>To sum up:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 -revolutions a minute.</p> - -<p>2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.</p> - -<p>3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and -set spinning to give him the ride.</p></blockquote> - -<hr class="chap"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a id="VI_STAR-SPANGLED_MEN">VI. STAR-SPANGLED MEN</a></h4> - - -<p>I open the memoirs of General Grant, Volume II, at the place where he -is describing the surrender of General Lee, and find the following:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>I was without a sword, as I usually was when on horseback on -<i>(sic)</i> the field, and wore a soldier’s blouse for a coat, -with the shoulder straps of my rank to indicate to the army -who I was.</p></blockquote> - -<p>Anno 1865. I look out of my window and observe an officer of the -United States Army passing down the street. Anno 1922. Like General -Grant, he is without a sword. Like General Grant, he wears a sort of -soldier’s blouse for a coat. Like General Grant, he employs shoulder -straps to indicate to the army who he is. But there is something more. -On the left breast of this officer, apparently a major, there blazes -so brilliant a mass of color that, as the sun strikes it and the flash -bangs my eyes, I wink, catch my breath and sneeze. There are two -long strips, each starting at the sternum and disappearing into the -shadows of the axillia—every hue in the rainbow, the spectroscope, the -kaleidoscope—<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>imperial purples, <i>sforzando</i> reds, wild Irish greens, -romantic blues, loud yellows and oranges, rich maroons, sentimental -pinks, all the half-tones from ultra-violet to infra-red, all the -vibrations from the impalpable to the unendurable. A gallant <i>Soldat</i>, -indeed! How he would shame a circus ticket-wagon if he wore all the -medals and badges, the stars and crosses, the pendants and lavallières, -that go with those ribbons!... I glance at his sleeves. A simple golden -stripe on the one—six months beyond the raging main. None on the -other—the Kaiser’s cannon missed him.</p> - -<p>Just what all these ribbons signify I am sure I don’t know; probably -they belong to campaign medals and tell the tale of butcheries in -foreign and domestic parts—mountains of dead Filipinos, Mexicans, -Haitians, Dominicans, West Virginia miners, perhaps even Prussians. -But in addition to campaign medals and the Distinguished Service Medal -there are now certainly enough foreign orders in the United States to -give a distinct brilliance to the national scene, viewed, say, from -Mars. The Frederician tradition, borrowed by the ragged Continentals -and embodied in Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution, lasted -until 1918, and then suddenly blew up; to mention it to-day is a sort -of indecorum, and to-morrow, no doubt, will be a species of treason. -Down with Frederick; up with John Philip Sousa!<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> Imagine what General -Pershing would look like at a state banquet of his favorite American -order, the Benevolent and Protective one of Elks, in all the Byzantine -splendor of his casket of ribbons, badges, stars, garters, sunbursts -and cockades—the lordly Bath of the grateful motherland, with its -somewhat disconcerting “Ich dien”; the gorgeous tricolor baldrics, -sashes and festoons of the Légion d’Honneur; the grand cross of SS. -Maurizio e Lazzaro of Italy; the sinister Danilo of Montenegro, with -its cabalistic monogram of Danilo I and its sinister hieroglyphics; -the breastplate of the Paulownia of Japan, with its rising sun of -thirty-two white rays, its blood-red heart, its background of green -leaves and its white ribbon edged with red; the mystical St. Saviour -of Greece, with its Greek motto and its brilliantly enameled figure -of Christ; above all, the Croix de Guerre of Czecho-Slovakia, a new -one and hence not listed in the books, but surely no shrinking violet! -Alas, Pershing was on the wrong side—that is, for one with a fancy -for gauds of that sort. The most blinding of all known orders is the -Medijie of Turkey, which not only entitles the holder to four wives, -but also absolutely requires him to wear a red fez and a frozen star -covering his whole façade. I was offered this order by Turkish spies -during the war, and it wabbled me a good deal. The Alexander of -Bulgaria is almost as seductive. The badge consists of an<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> pointed -white cross, with crossed swords between the arms and a red Bulgarian -lion over the swords. The motto is “Za Chrabrost!” Then there are the -Prussian orders—the Red and Black Eagles, the Pour le Mérite, the -Prussian Crown, the Hohenzollern and the rest. And the Golden Fleece -of Austria—the noblest of them all. Think of the Golden Fleece on a -man born in Linn County, Missouri!... I begin to doubt that the General -would have got it, even supposing him to have taken the other side. The -Japs, I note, gave him only the grand cordon of the Paulownia, and the -Belgians and Montenegrins were similarly cautious. There are higher -classes. The highest of the Paulownia is only for princes, which is to -say, only for non-Missourians.</p> - -<p>Pershing is the champion, with General March a bad second. March is -a K. C. M. G., and entitled to wear a large cross of white enamel -bearing a lithograph of the Archangel Michael and the motto, “Auspicium -Melioris Aevi,” but he is not a K. C. B. Admirals Benson and Sims -are also grand crosses of Michael and George, and like most other -respectable Americans, members of the Legion of Honor, but they seem to -have been forgotten by the Greeks, the Montenegrins, the Italians and -the Belgians. The British-born and extremely Anglomaniacal Sims refused -the Distinguished Service Medal of his adopted country, but is careful -to mention in “Who’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> Who in America” that his grand cross of Michael -and George was conferred upon him, not by some servile gold-stick, but -by “King George of England”; Benson omits mention of His Majesty, as -do Pershing and March. It would be hard to think of any other American -officer, real or bogus, who would refuse the D. S. M., or, failing -it, the grand decoration of chivalry of the Independent Order of Odd -Fellows. I once saw the latter hung, with ceremonies of the utmost -magnificence, upon a bald-headed tinner who had served the fraternity -long and faithfully; as he marched down the hall toward the throne of -the Supreme Exalted Pishposh a score of little girls, the issue of -other tinners, strewed his pathway with roses, and around the stem of -each rose was a piece of glittering tinfoil. The band meanwhile played -“The Rosary,” and, at the conclusion of the spectacle, as fried oysters -were served, “Wien Bleibt Wien.”</p> - -<p>It was, I suspect, by way of the Odd Fellows and other such gaudy -heirs to the Deutsche Ritter and Rosicrucians that the lust to gleam -and jingle got into the arteries of the American people. For years the -austere tradition of Washington’s day served to keep the military bosom -bare of spangles, but all the while a weakness for them was growing in -the civil population. Rank by rank, they became Knights of Pythias, -Odd Fellows, Red Men, Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, Knights Templar, -Patriarchs Militant,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> Elks, Moose, Woodmen of the World, Foresters, -Hoo-Hoos, Ku Kluxers—and in every new order there were thirty-two -degrees, and for every degree there was a badge, and for every badge -there was a yard of ribbon. The Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, chiefly -paunchy wholesalers of the Rotary Club species, are not content with -swords, baldrics, stars, garters and jewels; they also wear red fezes. -The Elks run to rubies. The Red Men array themselves like Sitting -Bull. The patriotic ice-wagon drivers and Methodist deacons of the -Ku Klux Klan carry crosses set with incandescent lights. An American -who is forced by his profession to belong to many such orders—say a -life insurance solicitor, a bootlegger or a dealer in Oklahoma oil -stock—accumulates a trunk full of decorations, many of them weighing -a pound. There is an undertaker in Hagerstown, Md., who has been -initiated eighteen times. When he robes himself to plant a fellow -joiner he weighs three hundred pounds and sparkles and flashes like the -mouth of hell itself. He is entitled to bear seven swords, all jeweled, -and to hang his watch chain with the golden busts of nine wild animals, -all with precious stones for eyes. Put beside this lowly washer of the -dead, Pershing newly polished would seem almost like a Trappist.</p> - -<p>But even so the civil arm is robbed of its just dues in the department -of gauds and radioactivity, no<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> doubt by the direct operation of -military vanity and jealousy. Despite a million proofs (and perhaps a -billion eloquent arguments) to the contrary, it is still the theory at -the official ribbon counter that the only man who serves in a war is -the man who serves in uniform. This is soft for the Bevo officer, who -at least has his service stripes and the spurs that gnawed into his -desk, but it is hard upon his brother Irving, the dollar-a-year man, -who worked twenty hours a day for fourteen months buying soap-powder, -canned asparagus and raincoats for the army of God. Irving not only -labored with inconceivable diligence; he also faced hazards of no mean -order, for on the one hand was his natural prejudice in favor of a -very liberal rewarding of commercial enterprise, and on the other hand -were his patriotism and his fear of Atlanta Penitentiary. I daresay -that many and many a time, after working his twenty hours, he found it -difficult to sleep the remaining four hours. I know, in fact, survivors -of that obscure service who are far worse wrecks to-day than Pershing -is. Their reward is—what? Winks, sniffs, innuendos. If they would -indulge themselves in the now almost universal American yearning to -go adorned, they must join the Knights of Pythias. Even the American -Legion fails them, for though it certainly does not bar non-combatants, -it insists that they shall have done their non-combatting in uniform.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p> - -<p>What I propose is a variety of the Distinguished Service Medal for -civilians,—perhaps, better still, a distinct order for civilians, -closed to the military and with badges of different colors and areas, -to mark off varying services to democracy. Let it run, like the -Japanese Paulownia, from high to low—the lowest class for the patriot -who sacrificed only time, money and a few nights’ sleep; the highest -for the great martyr who hung his country’s altar with his dignity, his -decency and his sacred honor. For Irving and his nervous insomnia, a -simple rosette, with an iron badge bearing the national motto, “Safety -First”; for the university president who prohibited the teaching of -the enemy language in his learned grove, heaved the works of Goethe -out of the university library, cashiered every professor unwilling -to support Woodrow for the first vacancy in the Trinity, took to the -stump for the National Security League, and made two hundred speeches -in moving-picture theaters—for this giant of loyal endeavor let no -100 per cent. American speak of anything less than the grand cross of -the order, with a gold badge in polychrome enamel and stained glass, -a baldric of the national colors, a violet plug hat with a sunburst -on the side, the privilege of the floor of Congress, and a pension -of $10,000 a year. After all, the cost would not be excessive; there -are not many of them. Such prodigies of patriotism are possible only -to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> rare and gifted men. For the grand cordons of the order, <i>e. -g.</i>, college professors who spied upon and reported the seditions of -their associates, state presidents of the American Protective League, -alien property custodians, judges whose sentences of conscientious -objectors mounted to more than 50,000 years, members of Dr. Creel’s -herd of 2,000 American historians, the authors of the Sisson documents, -etc.—pensions of $10 a day would be enough, with silver badges and no -plug hats. For the lower ranks, bronze badges and the legal right to -the title of “the Hon.,” already every true American’s by courtesy.</p> - -<p>Not, of course, that I am insensitive to the services of the gentlemen -of those lower ranks, but in such matters one must go by rarity rather -than by intrinsic value. If the grand cordon or even the nickel-plated -eagle of the third class were given to every patriot who bored a hole -through the floor of his flat to get evidence against his neighbors, -the Krausmeyers, and to every one who visited the Hofbräuhaus nightly, -denounced the Kaiser in searing terms, and demanded assent from Emil -and Otto, the waiters, and to every one who notified the catchpolls -of the Department of Justice when the wireless plant was open in the -garret of the Arion Liedertafel, and to all who took a brave and -forward part in slacker raids, and to all who lent their stenographers -funds at 6 per cent., to buy Liberty bonds at 4¼ per cent.,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> and to -all who sold out at 99 and then bought in again at 83.56 and to all who -served as jurors or perjurers in cases against members and ex-members -of the I. W. W., and to the German-American members of the League for -German Democracy, and to all the Irish who snitched upon the Irish—if -decorations were thrown about with any such lavishness, then there -Would be no nickel left for our bathrooms. On the civilian side as -on the military side the great rewards of war go, not to mere dogged -industry and fidelity, but to originality—to the unprecedented, the -arresting, the bizarre. The New York <i>Tribune</i> liar who invented the -story about the German plant for converting the corpses of the slain -into soap did more for democracy and the Wilsonian idealism, and hence -deserves a more brilliant recognition, than a thousand uninspired -hawkers of atrocity stories supplied by Viscount Bryce and his -associates. For that great servant of righteousness the grand cordon, -with two silver badges and the chair of history at Columbia, would be -scarcely enough; for the ordinary hawkers any precious metal would be -too much.</p> - -<p>Whether or not the Y. M. C. A. has decorated its chocolate pedlars and -soul-snatchers I do not know; since the chief Y. M. C. A. lamasery in -my town of Baltimore became the scene of a homo-sexual scandal I have -ceased to frequent evangelical society. If not, then there should be -some governmental recognition<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> of those highly characteristic heroes of -the war for democracy. The veterans of the line, true enough, dislike -them excessively, and have a habit of denouncing them obscenely when -the corn-juice flows. They charged too much for cigarettes; they tried -to discourage the amiability of the ladies of France; they had a habit -of being absent when the shells burst in air. Well, some say this and -some say that. A few, at least, of the pale and oleaginous brethren -must have gone into the Master’s work because they thirsted to save -souls, and not simply because they desired to escape the trenches. -And a few, I am told, were anything but unpleasantly righteous, as a -round of Wassermanns would show. If, as may be plausibly argued, these -Soldiers of the Double Cross deserve to live at all, then they surely -deserve to be hung with white enameled stars of the third class, with -gilt dollar marks superimposed. Motto: “Glory, glory, hallelujah!”</p> - -<p>But what of the vaudeville actors, the cheer leaders, the doughnut -fryers, the camp librarians, the press agents? I am not forgetting -them. Let them be distributed among all the classes from the seventh -to the eighth, according to their sufferings for the holy cause. And -the agitators against Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Wagner, Richard Strauss, -all the rest of the cacophonous Huns? And the specialists in the crimes -of the German professors? And the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> collectors for the Belgians, with -their generous renunciation of all commissions above 80 per cent.? And -the pathologists who denounced Johannes Müller as a fraud, Karl Ludwig -as an imbecile, and Ehrlich as a thief? And the patriotic chemists -who discovered arsenic in dill pickles, ground glass in pumpernickel, -bichloride tablets in Bismarck herring, pathogenic organisms in aniline -dyes? And the inspired editorial writers of the New York <i>Times</i> -and <i>Tribune</i>, the Boston <i>Transcript</i>, the Philadelphia <i>Ledger</i>, -the Mobile <i>Register</i>, the Jones Corners <i>Eagle?</i> And the headline -writers? And the Columbia, Yale and Princeton professors? And the -authors of books describing how the Kaiser told them the whole plot in -1913, while they were pulling his teeth or shining his shoes? And the -ex-ambassadors? And the <i>Nietzschefresser?</i> And the chautauqua orators? -And the four-minute men? And the Methodist pulpit pornographers who -switched so facilely from vice crusading to German atrocities? And Dr. -Newell Dwight Hillis? And Dr. Henry van Dyke? And the master minds of -the <i>New Republic?</i> And Tumulty? And the Vigilantes? Let no grateful -heart forget them!</p> - -<p>Palmer and Burleson I leave for special legislation. If mere university -presidents, such as Nicholas Murray Butler, are to have the grand -cross, then Palmer deserves to be rolled in malleable gold from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> head -to foot, and polished until he blinds the cosmos—then Burleson -must be hung with diamonds like Mrs. Warren and bathed in spotlights -like Gaby Deslys.... Finally, I reserve a special decoration, to be -conferred in camera and worn only in secret chapter, for husbands who -took chances and refused to read anonymous letters from Paris: the -somber badge of the Ordre de la Cuculus Canorus, first and only class.</p> - -<hr class="chap"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a id="VII_THE_POET_AND_HIS_ART">VII. THE POET AND HIS ART</a></h4> - - - -<h4>I</h4> - - -<p>A good prose style says Prof. Dr. Otto Jespersen in his great work, -“Growth and Structure of the English Language,” “is everywhere a late -acquirement, and the work of whole generations of good authors is -needed to bring about the easy flow of written prose.” The learned -<i>Sprachwissenschaftler</i> is here speaking of Old English, or, as it -used to be called when you and I were at the breast of enlightenment, -Anglo-Saxon. An inch or so lower down the page he points out that what -he says of prose is by no means true of verse—that poetry of very -respectable quality is often written by peoples and individuals whose -prose is quite as crude and graceless as that, say of the Hon. Warren -Gamaliel Harding—that even the so-called Anglo-Saxons of Beowulf’s -time, a race as barbarous as the modern Jugo-Slavs or Mississippians, -were yet capable, on occasion, of writing dithyrambs of an indubitable -sweet gaudiness.</p> - -<p>The point needs no laboring. A glance at the history of any literature -will prove its soundness.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> Moreover, it is supported by what we see -around us every day—that is, if we look in literary directions. -Some of the best verse in the modern movement, at home and abroad, -has been written by intellectual adolescents who could no more write -a first-rate paragraph in prose then they could leap the Matterhorn -—girls just out of Vassar and Newnham, young army officers, chautauqua -orators, New England old maids, obscure lawyers and doctors, newspaper -reporters, all sorts of hollow dilettanti, male and female. Nine-tenths -of the best poetry of the world has been written by poets less than -thirty years old; a great deal more than half of it has been written -by poets under twenty-five. One always associates poetry with youth, -for it deals chiefly with the ideas that are peculiar to youth, and -its terminology is quite as youthful as its content. When one hears of -a poet past thirty-five, he seems somehow unnatural and even a trifle -obscene; it is as if one encountered a graying man who still played -the Chopin waltzes and believed in elective affinities. But prose, -obviously, is a sterner and more elderly matter. All the great masters -of prose (and especially of English prose, for its very resilience and -brilliance make it extraordinarily hard to write) have had to labor -for years before attaining to their mastery of it. The early prose of -Abraham Lincoln was remarkable only for its badness; it was rhetorical -and bombastic, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> full of supernumerary words; in brief, it was a -kind of poetry. It took years and years of hard striving for Abe to -develop the simple and exquisite prose of his last half-decade. So with -Thomas Henry Huxley, perhaps the greatest virtuoso of plain English who -has ever lived. His first writings were competent but undistinguished; -he was almost a grandfather before he perfected his superb style. -And so with Anatole France, and Addison, and T. B. Macaulay, and -George Moore, and James Branch Cabell, and Æ.<i></i>, and Lord Dunsany, -and Nietzsche, and to go back to antiquity, Marcus Tullius Cicero. I -have been told that the average age of the men who made the Authorized -Version of the Bible was beyond sixty years. Had they been under thirty -they would have made it lyrical; as it was, they made it colossal.</p> - -<p>The reason for all this is not far to seek. Prose, however powerful -its appeal to the emotions, is always based primarily upon logic, -and is thus scientific; poetry, whatever its so-called intellectual -content is always based upon mere sensation and emotion, and is thus -loose and disorderly. A man must have acquired discipline over his -feelings before he can write sound prose; he must have learned how to -subordinate his transient ideas to more general and permanent ideas; -above all, he must have acquired a good head for words, which is to -say, a capacity for resisting their mere lascivious lure. But to -write acceptable<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> poetry, or even good poetry, he needs none of these -things. If his hand runs away with his head it is actually a merit. -If he writes what every one knows to be untrue, in terms that no sane -adult would ever venture to use in real life, it is proof of his -divine afflation. If he slops over and heaves around in a manner never -hitherto observed on land or sea, the fact proves his originality. -The so-called forms of verse and the rules of rhyme and rhythm do not -offer him difficulties; they offer him refuges. Their purpose is not -to keep him in order, but simply to give him countenance by providing -him with a formal orderliness when he is most out of order. Using -them is like swimming with bladders. The first literary composition -of a quick-minded child is always some sort of jingle. It starts out -with an inane idea—half an idea. Sticking to prose, it could go -no further. But to its primary imbecility it now adds a meaningless -phrase which, while logically unrelated, provides an agreeable concord -in mere sound—and the result is the primordial tadpole of a sonnet. -All the sonnets of the world, save a few of miraculous (and perhaps -accidental) quality, partake of this fundamental nonsensicality. In all -of them there are ideas that would sound idiotic in prose, and phrases -that would sound clumsy and uncouth in prose. But the rhyme scheme -conceals this nonsensicality. As a substitute for the missing logical<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> -plausibility it provides a sensuous harmony. Reading the thing, one -gets a vague effect of agreeable sound, and so the logical feebleness -is overlooked. It is, in a sense, like observing a pretty girl, -competently dressed and made up, across the footlights. But translating -the poem into prose is like meeting and marrying her.</p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>II</h4> - - -<p>Much of the current discussion of poetry—and what, save Prohibition, -is more discussed in America?—is corrupted by a fundamental error. -That error consists in regarding the thing itself as a simple entity, -to be described conveniently in a picturesque phrase. “Poetry,” says -one critic, “is the statement of overwhelming emotional values.” -“Poetry,” says another, “is an attempt to purge language of everything -except its music and its pictures.” “Poetry,” says a third, “is the -entering of delicately imaginative plateaus.” “Poetry,” says a fourth, -“is truth carried alive into the heart by a passion.” “Poetry,” says a -fifth, “is compacted of what seems, not of what is.” “Poetry,” says a -sixth, “is the expression of thought in musical language.” “Poetry,” -says a seventh, “is the language of a state of crisis.” And so on, and -so on. <i>Quod est poetica?</i> They all answer, and yet they all fail to -answer. Poetry, in fact, is two quite distinct things. It may be either -or both. One is a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> series of words that are intrinsically musical, in -clang-tint and rhythm, as the single word <i>cellar-door</i> is musical. -The other is a series of ideas, false in themselves, that offer a -means of emotional and imaginative escape from the harsh realities of -everyday. In brief, (I succumb, like all the rest, to phrase-making), -poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious -music—a slap on the back in waltz time—a grand release of longings -and repressions to the tune of flutes, harps, sackbuts, psalteries and -the usual strings.</p> - -<p>As I say, poetry may be either the one thing or the other—caressing -music or caressing assurance. It need not necessarily be both. Consider -a familiar example from “Othello”:</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 10%;"> -Not poppy, nor mandragora,<br> -Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world<br> -Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep<br> -Which thou owed’st yesterday.<br> -</p> - -<p>Here the sense, at best, is surely very vague. Probably not one auditor -in a hundred, hearing an actor recite those glorious lines, attaches -any intelligible meaning to the archaic word <i>owed’st</i>, the cornerstone -of the whole sentence. Nevertheless, the effect is stupendous. The -passage assaults and benumbs the faculties like Schubert’s “Ständchen” -or the slow movement of Schumann’s Rhenish symphony; hearing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> it is a -sensuous debauch; the man anæsthetic to it could stand unmoved before -Rheims cathedral or the Hofbräuhaus at Munich. One easily recalls many -other such bursts of pure music, almost meaningless but infinitely -delightful—in Poe, in Swinburne, in Marlowe, even in Joaquin -Miller. Two-thirds of the charm of reading Chaucer (setting aside -the Rabelaisian comedy) comes out of the mere burble of the words; -the meaning, to a modern, is often extremely obscure, and sometimes -downright undecipherable. The whole fame of Poe, as a poet, is based -upon five short poems. Of them, three are almost pure music. Their -intellectual content is of the vaguest. No one would venture to reduce -them to plain English. Even Poe himself always thought of them, not as -statements of poetic ideas, but as simple utterances of poetic (i.e., -musical) sounds.</p> - -<p>It was Sidney Lanier, himself a competent poet, who first showed the -dependence of poetry upon music. He had little to say, unfortunately, -about the clang-tint of words; what concerned him almost exclusively -was rhythm. In “The Science of English Verse,” he showed that the -charm of this rhythm could be explained in the technical terms of -music—that all the old gabble about dactyls and spondees was no more -than a dog Latin invented by men who were fundamentally ignorant of -the thing they discussed.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> Lanier’s book was the first intelligent -work ever published upon the nature and structure of the sensuous -content of English poetry. He struck out into such new and far paths -that the professors of prosody still lag behind him after forty years, -quite unable to understand a poet who was also a shrewd critic and a -first-rate musician. But if, so deeply concerned with rhythm, he marred -his treatise by forgetting clang-tint, he marred it still more by -forgetting content. Poetry that is all music is obviously relatively -rare, for only a poet who is also a natural musician can write it, and -natural musicians are much rarer in the world than poets. Ordinary -poetry, average poetry, thus depends in part upon its ideational -material, and perhaps even chiefly. It is the <i>idea</i> expressed in a -poem, and not the mellifluousness of the words used to express it, -that arrests and enchants the average connoisseur. Often, indeed, he -disdains this mellifluousness, and argues that the idea ought to be set -forth without the customary pretty jingling, or, at most, with only the -scant jingling that lies in rhythm—in brief, he wants his ideas in the -altogether, and so advocates <i>vers libre.</i></p> - -<p>It was another American, this time Prof. Dr. F. C. Prescott, of Cornell -University, who first gave scientific attention to the intellectual -content of poetry. His book is called “Poetry and Dreams.” Its virtue -lies in the fact that it rejects all the customary mystical<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> and -romantic definitions of poetry, and seeks to account for the thing in -straightforward psychological terms. Poetry, says Prescott, is simply -the verbal materialization of a day-dream, the statement of a Freudian -wish, an attempt to satisfy a subconscious longing by saying that it -is satisfied. In brief, poetry represents imagination’s bold effort to -escape from the cold and clammy facts that hedge us in—to soothe the -wrinkled and fevered brow with beautiful balderdash. On the precise -nature of this beautiful balderdash you can get all in the information -you need by opening at random the nearest book of verse. The ideas -you will find in it may be divided into two main divisions. The first -consists of denials of objective facts; the second of denials of -subjective facts. Specimen of the first sort:</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 10%;"> -God’s in His heaven,<br> -All’s well with the world.<br> -</p> - -<p>Specimen of the second:</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 10%;"> -I am the master of my fate;<br> -I am the captain of my soul.<br> -</p> - -<p>It is my contention that all poetry (forgetting, for the moment, its -possible merit as mere sound) may be resolved into either the one -or the other of these frightful imbecilities—that its essential -character lies in its bold flouting of what every reflective adult -knows to be the truth. The poet, imagining him to be<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> sincere, is -simply one who disposes of all the horrors of life on this earth, -and of all the difficulties presented by his own inner weaknesses no -less, by the childish device of denying them. Is it a well-known fact -that love is an emotion that is almost as perishable as eggs—that -it is biologically impossible for a given male to yearn for a given -female more than a few brief years? Then the poet disposes of it by -assuring his girl that he will nevertheless love her forever—more, -by pledging his word of honor that he believes that <i>she</i> will love -<i>him</i> forever. Is it equally notorious that there is no such thing as -justice in the world—that the good are tortured insanely and the evil -go free and prosper? Then the poet composes a piece crediting God with -a mysterious and unintelligible theory of jurisprudence, whereby the -torture of the good is a sort of favor conferred upon them for their -goodness. Is it of almost equally widespread report that no healthy -man likes to contemplate his own inevitable death—that even in time -of war, with a vast pumping up of emotion to conceal the fact, every -soldier hopes and believes that he, personally, will escape? Then the -poet, first carefully introducing himself into a bomb-proof, achieves -strophes declaring that he is free from all such weakness—that he will -deliberately seek a rendezvous with death, and laugh ha-ha when the -bullet finds him.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p> - -<p>The precise nature of the imbecility thus solemnly set forth depends, -very largely, of course, upon the private prejudices and yearnings -of the poet, and the reception that is given it depends, by the same -token, upon the private prejudices and yearnings of the reader. That -is why it is often so difficult to get any agreement upon the merits -of a definite poem, <i>i. e.</i>, to get any agreement upon its capacity to -soothe. There is the man who craves only the animal delights of a sort -of Moslem-Methodist paradise: to him “The Frost is on the Pumpkin” is -a noble poem. There is the man who yearns to get out of the visible -universe altogether and tread the fields of asphodel: for him there -is delight only in the mystical stuff of Crashaw, Thompson, Yeats and -company. There is the man who revolts against the sordid Christian -notion of immortality—an eternity to be spent flapping wings with -pious green-grocers and oleaginous Anglican bishops; he finds <i>his</i> -escape in the gorgeous blasphemies of Swinburne. There is, to make an -end of examples, the man who, with an inferiority complex eating out -his heart, is moved by a great desire to stalk the world in heroic -guise: he may go to the sonorous swanking of Kipling, or he may go -to something more subtle, to some poem in which the boasting is more -artfully concealed, say Christina Rosetti’s “When I am Dead.” Many men, -many complexes, many secret yearnings! They collect, of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> course, in -groups; if the group happens to be large enough the poet it is devoted -to becomes famous. Kipling’s great fame is thus easily explained. He -appeals to the commonest of all types of men, next to the sentimental -type—which is to say, he appeals to the bully and braggart type, the -chest-slapping type, the patriot type. Less harshly described, to the -boy type. All of us have been Kiplingomaniacs at some time or other. I -was myself a very ardent one at 17, and wrote many grandiloquent sets -of verse in the manner of “Tommy Atkins” and “Fuzzy-Wuzzy.” But if -the gifts of observation and reflection have been given to us, we get -over it. There comes a time when we no longer yearn to be heroes, but -seek only peace—maybe even hope for quick extinction. Then we turn to -Swinburne and “The Garden of Proserpine”—more false assurances, more -mellifluous play-acting, another tinkling make-believe—but how sweet -on blue days!</p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>III</h4> - - -<p>One of the things to remember here (too often it is forgotten, and -Dr. Prescott deserves favorable mention for stressing it) is that a -man’s conscious desires are not always identical with his subconscious -longings; in fact, the two are often directly antithetical. No doubt -the real man lies in the depths of the subconscious, like a carp -lurking in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> mud. His conscious personality is largely a product of his -environment—the reaction of his subconscious to the prevailing notions -of what is meet and seemly. Here, of course, I wander into platitude, -for the news that all men are frauds was already stale in the days -of Hammurabi. The ingenious Freud simply translated the fact into -pathological terms, added a bed-room scene, and so laid the foundations -for his psychoanalysis. Incidentally, it has always seemed to me that -Freud made a curious mistake when he brought sex into the foreground -of his new magic. He was, of course, quite right when he set up the -doctrine that, in civilized societies, sex impulses were more apt to be -suppressed than any other natural impulses, and that the subconscious -thus tended to be crowded with their ghosts. But in considering -sex impulses, he forgot sex imaginings. Digging out, by painful -cross-examination in a darkened room, some startling tale of carnality -in his patient’s past, he committed the incredible folly of assuming -it to be literally true. More often than not, I believe, it was a mere -piece of boasting, a materialization of desire—in brief, a poem. It -is astonishing that this possibility never occurred to the venerable -professor; it is more astonishing that it has never occurred to any of -his disciples. He should have psychoanalyzed a few poets instead of -wasting all his time upon psychopathic women with sclerotic<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> husbands. -He would have dredged amazing things out of their subconsciouses, -heroic as well as amorous. Imagine the billions of Boers, Germans, -Irishmen and Hindus that Kipling would have confessed to killing!</p> - -<p>But here I get into morbid anatomy, and had better haul up. What I -started out to say was that a man’s preferences in poetry constitute an -excellent means of estimating his inner cravings and credulities. The -music disarms his critical sense, and he confesses to cherishing ideas -that he would repudiate with indignation if they were put into plain -words. I say he cherishes those ideas. Maybe he simply tolerates them -unwillingly; maybe they are no more than inescapable heritages from his -barbarous ancestors, like his vermiform appendix. Think of the poems -you like, and you will come upon many such intellectual fossils—ideas -that you by no means subscribe to openly, but that nevertheless give -you a strange joy. I put myself on the block as Exhibit A. There is my -delight in Lizette Woodworth Reese’s sonnet, “Tears.” Nothing could do -more violence to my conscious beliefs. Put into prose, the doctrine -in the poem would exasperate and even enrage me. There is no man in -Christendom who is less a Christian than I am. But here the dead hand -grabs me by the ear. My ancestors were converted to Christianity in -the year 1535, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> remained of that faith until near the middle of -the eighteenth century. Observe, now, the load I carry; more than -two hundred years of Christianity, and perhaps a thousand years -(maybe even two, or three thousand years) of worship of heathen gods -before that—at least twelve hundred years of uninterrupted belief -in the immortality of the soul. Is it any wonder that, betrayed by -the incomparable music of Miss Reese’s Anglo-Saxon monosyllables, my -conscious faith is lulled to sleep, thus giving my subconscious a -chance to wallow in its immemorial superstition?</p> - -<p>Even so, my vulnerability to such superstitions is very low, and it -tends to grow less as I increase in years and sorrows. As I have -said, I once throbbed to the drum-beat of Kipling; later on, I was -responsive to the mellow romanticism of Tennyson; now it takes one of -the genuinely fundamental delusions of the human race to move me. But -progress is not continuous; it has interludes. There are days when -every one of us experiences a sort of ontogenetic back-firing, and -returns to an earlier stage of development. It is on such days that -grown men break down and cry like children; it is then that they play -games, or cheer the flag, or fall in love. And it is then that they -are in the mood for poetry, and get comfort out of its asseverations -of the obviously not true. A truly civilized man, when he is wholly -himself, derives no<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> pleasure from hearing a poet state, as Browning -stated, that this world is perfect. Such tosh not only does not please -him; it definitely offends him, as he is offended by an idiotic -article in a newspaper; it roils him to encounter so much stupidity in -Christendom. But he may like it when he is drunk, or suffering from -some low toxemia, or staggering beneath some great disaster. Then, as I -say, the ontogenetic process reverses itself, and he slides back into -infancy. Then he goes to poets, just as he goes to women, “glad” books, -and dogmatic theology. The very highest orders of men, perhaps, never -suffer from such malaises of the spirit, or, if they suffer from them, -never succumb to them. These are men who are so thoroughly civilized -that even the most severe attack upon the emotions is not sufficient -to dethrone their reason. Charles Darwin was such a man. There was -never a moment in his life when he sought religious consolation, -and there was never a moment when he turned to poetry; in fact, he -regarded all poetry as silly. Other first-rate men, more sensitive to -the possible music in it, regard it with less positive aversion, but -I have never heard of a truly first-rate man who got any permanent -satisfaction out of its content. The Browning Societies of the latter -part of the nineteenth century (and I choose the Browning Societies -because Browning’s poetry was often more or less logical in content, -and thus above<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> the ordinary intellectually) were not composed of such -men as Huxley, Spencer, Lecky, Buckle and Travelyn, but of third-rate -schoolmasters, moony old maids, candidates for theosophy, literary -vicars, collectors of Rogers groups, and other such Philistines. The -chief propagandist for Browning in the United States was not Henry -Adams, or William Summer, or Daniel C. Gilman, but an obscure professor -of English who was also an ardent spook-chaser. And what is thus true -ontogenetically is also true phylogenetically. That is to say, poetry -is chiefly produced and esteemed by peoples that have not yet come to -maturity. The Romans had a dozen poets of the first talent before they -had a single prose writer of any skill whatsoever. So did the English. -So did the Germans. In our own day we see the negroes of the South -producing religious and secular verse of such quality that it is taken -over by the whites, and yet the number of negroes who show a decent -prose style is still very small, and there is no sign of it increasing. -Similarly, the white authors of America, during the past ten or fifteen -years, have produced a great mass of very creditable poetry, and yet -the quality of our prose remains very low, and the Americans with prose -styles of any distinction could be counted on the fingers of two hands.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>IV</h4> - - -<p>So far I have spoken chiefly of the content of poetry. In its character -as a sort of music it is plainly a good deal more respectable, and -makes an appeal to a far higher variety of reader, or, at all events, -to a reader in a state of greater mental clarity. A capacity for -music—by which I mean melody, harmony and clang-tint—comes late in -the history of every race. The savage can apprehend rhythm, but he -is quite incapable of carrying a tune in any intelligible scale. The -negro roustabouts of our own South, who are commonly regarded as very -musical, are actually only rhythmical; they never invent melodies, -but only rhythms. And the whites to whom their barbarous dance-tunes -chiefly appeal are in their own stage of culture. When one observes -a room full of well-dressed men and women swaying and wriggling to -the tune of some villainous mazurka from the Mississippi levees, one -may assume very soundly that they are all the sort of folk who play -golf and bridge, and prefer “The Sheik” to “Heart of Darkness” and -believe in the League of Nations. A great deal of superficial culture -is compatible with that pathetic barbarism, and even a high degree of -æsthetic sophistication in other directions. The Greeks who<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> built the -Parthenon knew no more about music than a hog knows of predestination; -they were almost as ignorant in that department as the modern Iowans or -New Yorkers. It was not, indeed, until the Renaissance that music as -we know it appeared in the world, and it was not until less than two -centuries ago that it reached a high development. In Shakespeare’s day -music was just getting upon its legs in England; in Goethe’s day it -was just coming to full flower in Germany; in France and America it is -still in the savage state. It is thus the youngest of the arts, and the -most difficult, and hence the noblest. Any sane young man of twenty-two -can write an acceptable sonnet, or design a habitable house or draw a -horse that will not be mistaken for an automobile, but before he may -write even a bad string quartet he must go through a long and arduous -training, just as he must strive for years before he may write prose -that is instantly recognizable as prose, and not as a string of mere -words.</p> - -<p>The virtue of such great poets as Shakespeare does not lie in the -content of their poetry, but in its music. The content of the -Shakespearean plays, in fact, is often puerile, and sometimes quite -incomprehensible. No scornful essays by George Bernard Shaw and Frank -Harris were needed to demonstrate the fact; it lies plainly in the -text. One snickers sourly over the spectacle of generations of pedants -debating<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> the question of Hamlet’s mental processes; the simple fact -is that Shakespeare gave him no more mental processes than a Fifth -avenue rector has, but merely employed him as a convenient spout -for some of the finest music ever got into words. Assume that he -has all the hellish sagacity of a Nietzsche, and that music remains -unchanged; assume that he is as idiotic as a Grand Worthy Flubdub of -the Freemasons, and it still remains unchanged. As it is intoned on -the stage by actors, the poetry of Shakespeare commonly loses content -altogether. One cannot make out what the <i>cabotin</i> is saying; one can -only observe that it is beautiful. There are whole speeches in the -Shakespearean plays whose meaning is unknown ever to scholars—and yet -they remain favorites, and well deserve to. Who knows, again, what -the sonnets are about? Is the bard talking about the inn-keeper’s -wife at Oxford, or about a love affair of a pathological, Y. M. C. -A. character? Some say one thing, and some say the other. But all -who have ears must agree that the sonnets are extremely beautiful -stuff—that the English language reaches in them, the topmost heights -of conceivable beauty. Shakespeare thus ought to be ranked among -the musicians, along with Beethoven. As a philosopher he was a -ninth-rater—but so was old Ludwig. I wonder what he would have done -with prose? I can’t make up my mind about it. One day I believe that he -would<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> have written prose as good as Dryden’s, and the next day I begin -to fear that he would have produced something as bad as Swinburne’s. He -had the ear, but he lacked the logical sense. Poetry has done enough -when it charms, but prose must also convince.</p> - -<p>I do not forget, of course, that there is a borderland in which it -is hard to say, of this or that composition, whether it is prose or -poetry. Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech is commonly reckoned as prose, and -yet I am convinced that it is quite as much poetry as the Queen Mab -speech or Marlowe’s mighty elegy on Helen of Troy. More, it is so read -and admired by the great masses of the American people. It is an almost -perfect specimen of a comforting but unsound asseveration put into -rippling and hypnotizing words; done into plain English, the statements -of fact in it would make even a writer of school history-books laugh. -So with parts of the Declaration of Independence. No one believes -seriously that they are true, but nearly everyone agrees that it -would be a nice thing if they <i>were</i> true—and meanwhile Jefferson’s -eighteenth century rhetoric, by Johnson out of John Lyly’s “Euphues,” -completes the enchantment. In the main, the test is to be found in the -audience rather than in the poet. If it is naturally intelligent and in -a sober and critical mood, demanding sense and proofs, then nearly all -poetry becomes prose; if, on the contrary, it is congenitally maudlin,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> -or has a few drinks aboard, or is in love, or is otherwise in a soft -and believing mood, then even the worst of prose, if it has a touch -of soothing sing-song in it, becomes moving poetry—for example, the -diplomatic and political gospel-hymns of the late Dr. Wilson, a man -constitutionally unable to reason clearly or honestly, but nevertheless -one full of the burbling that caresses the ears of simple men. Most of -his speeches, during the days of his divine appointment, translated -into intelligible English, would have sounded as idiotic as a prose -version of “The Blessed Damozel.” Read by his opponents, they sounded -so without the translation.</p> - -<p>But at the extremes, of course, there are indubitable poetry and -incurable prose, and the difference is not hard to distinguish. -Prose is simply a form of writing in which the author intends that -his statements shall be accepted as conceivably true, even when they -are about imaginary persons and events; its appeal is to the fully -conscious and alertly reasoning man. Poetry is a form of writing in -which the author attempts to disarm reason and evoke emotion, partly by -presenting images that awaken a powerful response in the subconscious -and partly by the mere sough and blubber of words. Poetry is not -distinguished from prose, as Prof. Dr. Lowes says in his “Convention -and Revolt in Poetry,” by an exclusive phraseology, but by a peculiar -attitude of mind—an<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> attitude of self-delusion, of fact-denying, of -saying what isn’t true. It is essentially an effort to elude the bitter -facts of life, whereas prose is essentially a means of unearthing and -exhibiting them. The gap is bridged by sentimental prose, which is half -prose and half poetry—Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech, the average sermon, -the prose of an erotic novelette. Immediately the thing acquires a -literal meaning it ceases to be poetry; immediately it becomes capable -of convincing an adult and perfectly sober man during the hours between -breakfast and luncheon it is indisputably prose.</p> - -<p>This quality of untruthfulness pervades all poetry, good and bad. -You will find it in the very best poetry that the world has so far -produced, to wit, in the sonorous poems of the Jewish Scriptures. -The ancient Jews were stupendous poets. Moreover, they were shrewd -psychologists, and so knew the capacity of poetry, given the believing -mind, to convince and enchant—in other words, its capacity to drug -the auditor in such a manner that he accepts it literally, as he -might accept the baldest prose. This danger in poetry, given auditors -impressionable enough, is too little estimated and understood. It is -largely responsible for the persistence of sentimentality in a world -apparently designed for the one purpose of manufacturing cynics. It is -probably chiefly responsible for the survival of Christianity, despite -the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> hard competition that it has met with from other religions. The -theology of Christianity—<i>i.</i> e., its prose—is certainly no more -convincing than that of half a dozen other religions that might be -named; it is, in fact, a great deal less convincing than the theology -of, say, Buddhism. But the poetry of Christianity is infinitely more -lush and beautiful than that of any other religion ever heard of. -There is more lovely poetry in one of the Psalms than in all of the -Non-Christian scriptures of the world taken together. More, this -poetry is in both Testaments, the New as well as the Old. Who could -imagine a more charming poem than that of the Child in the manger? -It has enchanted the world for nearly two thousand years. It is -simple, exquisite and overwhelming. Its power to arouse emotion is -so great that even in our age it is at the bottom of fully a half of -the kindliness, romanticism and humane sentimentality that survive in -Christendom. It is worth a million syllogisms.</p> - -<p>Once, after plowing through sixty or seventy volumes of bad verse, I -described myself as a poetry-hater. The epithet was and is absurd. The -truth is that I enjoy poetry as much as the next man—when the mood -is on me. But what mood? The mood, in a few words, of intellectual -and spiritual fatigue, the mood of revolt against the insoluble -riddle of existence, the mood of disgust and despair. Poetry,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> then, -is a capital medicine. First its sweet music lulls, and then its -artful presentation of the beautifully improbable soothes and gives -surcease. It is an escape from life, like religion, like enthusiasm, -like glimpsing a pretty girl. And to the mere sensuous joy in it, to -the mere low delight in getting away from the world for a bit, there -is added, if the poetry be good, something vastly better, something -reaching out into the realm of the intelligent, to wit, appreciation -of good workmanship. A sound sonnet is almost as pleasing an object -as a well-written fugue. A pretty lyric, deftly done, has all the -technical charm of a fine carving. I think it is craftsmanship that -I admire most in the world. Brahms enchants me because he knew -his trade perfectly. I like Richard Strauss because he is full of -technical ingenuities, because he is a master-workman. Well, who ever -heard of a finer craftsman than William Shakespeare? His music was -magnificent, he played superbly upon all the common emotions—and he -did it magnificently, he did it with an air. No, I am no poetry-hater. -But even Shakespeare I most enjoy, not on brisk mornings when I feel -fit for any deviltry, but on dreary evenings when my old wounds are -troubling me, and some fickle one has just sent back the autographed -set of my first editions, and bills are piled up on my desk, and I am -too sad to work. Then I mix a stiff dram—and read poetry.</p> - -<hr class="chap"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a id="VIII_FIVE_MEN_AT_RANDOM">VIII. FIVE MEN AT RANDOM</a></h4> - - - -<h4>1</h4> - -<h4><i>Abraham Lincoln</i></h4> - - -<p>The backwardness of the art of biography in These States is made -shiningly visible by the fact that we have yet to see a first-rate -life of either Lincoln or Whitman. Of Lincolniana, of course, there is -no end, nor is there any end to the hospitality of those who collect -it. Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of -books that never, under any circumstances, lose money in the United -States—first, detective stories; secondly, novels in which the heroine -is forcibly debauched by the hero; thirdly, volumes on spiritualism, -occultism and other such claptrap, and fourthly, books on Lincoln. But -despite all the vast mass of Lincolniana and the constant discussion -of old Abe in other ways, even so elemental a problem as that of -his religious faith—surely an important matter in any competent -biography—is yet but half solved. Here, for example, is the Rev. -William E.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> Barton, grappling with it for more than four hundred large -pages in “The Soul of Abraham Lincoln.” It is a lengthy inquiry—the -rev. pastor, in truth, shows a good deal of the habitual garrulity of -his order—but it is never tedious. On the contrary, it is curious and -amusing, and I have read it with steady interest, including even the -appendices. Unluckily, the author, like his predecessors, fails to -finish the business before him. Was Lincoln a Christian? Did he believe -in the Divinity of Christ? I am left in doubt. He was very polite about -it, and very cautious, as befitted a politician in need of Christian -votes, but how much genuine conviction was in that politeness? And if -his occasional references to Christ were thus open to question, what -of his rather vague avowals of belief in a personal God and in the -immortality of the soul? Herndon and some of his other close friends -always maintained that he was an atheist, but Dr. Barton argues that -this atheism was simply disbelief in the idiotic Methodist and Baptist -dogmas of his time—that nine Christian churches out of ten, if he were -alive to-day, would admit him to their high privileges and prerogatives -without anything worse than a few warning coughs. As for me, I still -wonder.</p> - -<p>The growth of the Lincoln legend is truly amazing. He becomes the -American solar myth, the chief butt of American credulity and -sentimentality. Washington,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> of late years, has been perceptibly -humanized; every schoolboy now knows that he used to swear a good deal, -and was a sharp trader, and had a quick eye for a pretty ankle. But -meanwhile the varnishers and veneerers have been busily converting -Abe into a plaster saint, thus making him fit for adoration in the -chautauquas and Y. M. C. A.’s. All the popular pictures of him show -him in his robes of state, and wearing an expression fit for a man -about to be hanged. There is, so far as I know, not a single portrait -of him showing him smiling—and yet he must have cackled a good deal, -first and last: who ever heard of a storyteller who didn’t? Worse, -there is an obvious effort to pump all his human weaknesses out of -him, and so leave him a mere moral apparition, a sort of amalgam of -John Wesley and the Holy Ghost. What could be more absurd? Lincoln, -in point of fact, was a practical politician of long experience and -high talents, and by no means cursed with inconvenient ideals. On the -contrary, his career in the Illinois Legislature was that of a good -organization man, and he was more than once denounced by reformers. -Even his handling of the slavery question was that of a politician, not -that of a fanatic. Nothing alarmed him more than the suspicion that -he was an Abolitionist. Barton tells of an occasion when he actually -fled town to avoid meeting the issue squarely. A genuine<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> Abolitionist -would have published the Emancipation Proclamation the day after the -first battle of Bull Run. But Lincoln waited until the time was more -favorable—until Lee had been hurled out of Pennsylvania, and, more -important still, until the political currents were safely running his -way. Always he was a wary fellow, both in his dealings with measures -and in his dealings with men. He knew how to keep his mouth shut.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, it was his eloquence that probably brought him to his -great estate. Like William Jennings Bryan, he was a dark horse made -suddenly formidable by fortunate rhetoric. The Douglas debate launched -him, and the Cooper Union speech got him the presidency. This talent -for emotional utterance, this gift for making phrases that enchanted -the plain people, was an accomplishment of late growth. His early -speeches were mere empty fireworks—the childish rhodomontades of -the era. But in middle life he purged his style of ornament and it -became almost baldly simple—and it is for that simplicity that he -is remembered to-day. The Gettysburg speech is at once the shortest -and the most famous oration in American history. Put beside it, all -the whoopings of the Websters, Sumners and Everetts seem gaudy and -silly. It is eloquence brought to a pellucid and almost child-like -perfection—the highest emotion<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> reduced to one graceful and -irresistible gesture. Nothing else precisely like it is to be found -in the whole range of oratory. Lincoln himself never even remotely -approached it. It is genuinely stupendous.</p> - -<p>But let us not forget that it is oratory, not logic; beauty, not -sense. Think of the argument in it! Put it into the cold words of -everyday! The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers -who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of -self-determination—“that government of the people, by the people, -for the people,” should not perish from the earth. It is difficult -to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle -actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates -who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What -was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else -than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, <i>i. e.</i>, -of the people of the States? The Confederates went into battle an -absolutely free people; they came out with their freedom subject to the -supervision and vote of the rest of the country—and for nearly twenty -years that vote was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely any freedom -at all. Am I the first American to note the fundamental nonsensicality -of the Gettysburg address? If so, I plead my æsthetic joy in it in -amelioration of the sacrilege.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>2</h4> - -<h4><i>Paul Elmer More</i></h4> - - -<p>Nothing new is to be found in the latest volume of Paul Elmer More’s -Shelburne Essays. The learned author, undismayed by the winds of -anarchic doctrine that blow down his Princeton stovepipe, continues -to hold fast to the notions of his earliest devotion. He is still the -gallant champion sent against the Romantic Movement by the forces -of discipline and decorum. He is still the eloquent fugleman of the -Puritan ethic and æsthetic. In so massive a certainty, so resolute an -immovability there is something almost magnificent. These are somewhat -sad days for the exponents of that ancient correctness. The Goths -and the Huns are at the gate, and as they batter wildly they throw -dead cats, perfumed lingerie, tracts against predestination, and the -bound files of the <i>Nation</i>, the <i>Freeman</i> and the <i>New Republic</i> -over the fence. But the din does not flabbergast Dr. More. High above -the blood-bathed battlements there is a tower, of ivory within and -solid ferro-concrete without, and in its austere upper chamber he sits -undaunted, solemnly composing an elegy upon Jonathan Edwards, “the -greatest theologian and philosopher yet produced in this country.”</p> - -<p>Magnificent, indeed—and somehow charming.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> On days when I have no -nobler business I sometimes join the barbarians and help them to launch -their abominable bombs against the embattled blue-noses. It is, in -the main, fighting that is too easy, too Anglo-Saxon to be amusing. -Think of the decayed professors assembled by Dr. Franklin for the -<i>Profiteers’ Review;</i> who could get any genuine thrill out of dropping -<i>them?</i> They come out on crutches, and are as much afraid of what -is behind them as they are of what is in front of them. Facing all -the horrible artillery of Nineveh and Tyre, they arm themselves with -nothing worse than the pedagogical birch. The janissaries of Adolph -Ochs, the Anglo-Saxon supreme archon, are even easier. One has but to -blow a <i>shofar</i>, and down they go. Even Prof. Dr. Stuart P. Sherman is -no antagonist to delight a hard-boiled heretic. Sherman is at least -honestly American, of course, but the trouble with him is that he is -<i>too</i> American. The Iowa hayseed remains in his hair; he can’t get rid -of the smell of the chautauqua; one inevitably sees in him a sort of -<i>reductio ad absurdum</i> of his fundamental theory—to wit, the theory -that the test of an artist is whether he hated the Kaiser in 1917, and -plays his honorable part in Christian Endeavor, and prefers Coca-Cola -to Scharlachberger 1911, and has taken to heart the great lessons -of sex hygiene. Sherman is game, but he doesn’t offer sport in the -grand manner. Moreover, he has been<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> showing sad signs of late of a -despairing heart: he tries to be ingratiating, and begins to hug in the -clinches.</p> - -<p>The really tempting quarry is More. To rout him out of his armored -tower, to get him out upon the glacis for a duel before both armies, to -bring him finally to the wager of battle—this would be an enterprise -to bemuse the most audacious and give pause to the most talented. More -has a solid stock of learning in his lockers; he is armed and outfitted -as none of the pollyannas who trail after him is armed and outfitted; -he is, perhaps, the nearest approach to a genuine scholar that we have -in America, God save us all! But there is simply no truculence in him, -no flair for debate, no lust to do execution upon his foes. His method -is wholly <i>ex parte.</i> Year after year he simply iterates and reiterates -his misty protests, seldom changing so much as a word. Between his -first volume and his last there is not the difference between Gog and -Magog. Steadily, ploddingly, vaguely, he continues to preach the gloomy -gospel of tightness and restraint. He was against “the electric thrill -of freer feeling” when he began, and he will be against it on that last -gray day—I hope it long post-dates my own hanging—when the ultimate -embalmer sneaks upon him with velvet tread, and they haul down the flag -to half-staff at Princeton, and the readers of the New York <i>Evening<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> -Journal</i> note that an obscure somebody named Paul E. More is dead.</p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>3</h4> - -<h4><i>Madison Cawein</i></h4> - - -<p>A vast and hefty tome celebrates this dead poet, solemnly issued by -his mourning friends in Louisville. The editor is Otto A. Rothert, -who confesses that he knew Cawein but a year or two, and never read -his poetry until after his death. The contributors include such local -<i>literati</i> as Reuben Post Halleck, Leigh Gordon Giltner, Anna Blanche -McGill and Elvira S. Miller Slaughter. Most of the ladies gush over -the departed in the manner of high-school teachers paying tribute to -Plato, Montaigne or Dante Alighieri. His young son, seventeen years -old, contributes by far the most vivid and intelligent account of -him; it is, indeed, very well written, as, in a different way, is the -contribution of Charles Hamilton Musgrove, an old newspaper friend. -The ladies, as I hint, simply swoon and grow lyrical. But it is a -fascinating volume, all the same, and well worth the room it takes on -the shelf. Mr. Rothert starts off with what he calls a “picturography” -of Cawein—the poet’s father and mother in the raiment of 1865, the -coat-of-arms of his mother’s great-grand-father’s uncle, the house -which now stands on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> the site of the house in which he was born, the -rock spring from which he used to drink as a boy, a group showing him -with his three brothers, another showing him with one brother and -their cousin Fred, Cawein himself with sideboards, the houses he lived -in, the place where he worked, the walks he liked around Louisville, -his wife and baby, the hideous bust of him in the Louisville Public -Library, the church from which he was buried, his modest grave in Cave -Hill Cemetery—in brief, all the photographs that collect about a man -as he staggers through life, and entertain his ribald grandchildren -after he is gone. Then comes a treatise on the ancestry and youth of -the poet, then a collection of newspaper clippings about him, then -a gruesomely particular account of his death, then a fragment of -autobiography, then a selection from his singularly dull letters, then -some prose pieces from his pen, then the aforesaid tributes of his -neighbors, and finally a bibliography of his works, and an index to -them.</p> - -<p>As I say, a volume of fearful bulk and beam, but nevertheless full of -curious and interesting things. Cawein, of course, was not a poet of -the first rank, nor is it certain that he has any secure place in the -second rank, but in the midst of a great deal of obvious and feeble -stuff he undoubtedly wrote some nature lyrics of excellent quality. -The woods and the fields were his delight. He loved to roam through<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> -them, observing the flowers, the birds, the tall trees, the shining -sky overhead, the green of Spring, the reds and browns of Autumn, the -still whites of Winter. There were times when he got his ecstasy into -words—when he wrote poems that were sound and beautiful. These poems -will not be forgotten; there will be no history of American literature -written for a hundred years that does not mention Madison Cawein. But -what will the literary historians make of the man himself? How will -they explain his possession, however fitfully, of the divine gift—his -genuine kinship with Wordsworth and Shelly? Certainly no more unlikely -candidate for the bays ever shinned up Parnassus. His father was a -quack doctor; his mother was a professional spiritualist; he himself, -for years and years, made a living as cashier in a gambling-house! -Could anything be more grotesque? Is it possible to imagine a more -improbable setting for a poet? Yet the facts are the facts, and Mr. -Rothert makes no attempt whatever to conceal them. Add a final touch -of the bizarre: Cawein fell over one morning while shaving in his -bathroom, and cracked his head on the bathtub, and after his death -there was a row over his life insurance. Mr. Rothert presents all of -the documents. The autopsy is described; the death certificate is -quoted.... A strange, strange tale, indeed!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>4</h4> - -<h4><i>Frank Harris</i></h4> - - -<p>Though, so far as I know, this Harris is a perfectly reputable man, -fearing God and obeying the laws, it is not to be gainsaid that a -certain flavor of the sinister hangs about his aspect. The first time -I ever enjoyed the honor of witnessing him, there bobbed up in my mind -(instantly put away as unworthy and unseemly) a memory of the handsome -dogs who used to chain shrieking virgins to railway tracks in the -innocent, pre-Ibsenish dramas of my youth, the while a couple of stage -hands imitated the rumble of the Empire State Express in the wings. -There was the same elegance of turn-out, the same black mustachios, the -same erect figure and lordly air, the same agate glitter in the eyes, -the same aloof and superior smile. A sightly fellow, by all the gods, -and one who obviously knew how to sneer. That afternoon, in fact, we -had a sneering match, and before it was over most of the great names in -the letters and politics of the time, <i>circa</i> 1914, had been reduced -to faint hisses and ha-has.... Well, a sneerer has his good days and -his bad days. There are times when his gift gives him such comfort -that it can be matched only by God’s grace, and there are times when -it launches upon him such showers of darts that he is bound to feel a -few stings. Harris<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> got the darts first, for the year that he came back -to his native land, after a generation of exile, was the year in which -Anglomania rose to the dignity of a national religion—and what he had -to say about the English, among whom he had lived since the early 80’s, -was chiefly of a very waspish and disconcerting character. Worse, he -not only said it, twirling his mustache defiantly; he also wrote it -down, and published it in a book. This book was full of shocks for the -rapt worshippers of the Motherland, and particularly for the literary -<i>Kanonendelicatessen</i> who followed the pious leadership of Woodrow and -Ochs, Putnam and Roosevelt, Wister and Cyrus Curtis, young Reid and -Mrs. Jay. So they called a special meeting of the American Academy of -Arts and Letters, sang “God Save the King,” kissed the Union Jack, -and put Harris into Coventry. And there he remained for five or six -long years. The literary reviews never mentioned him. His books were -expunged from the minutes. When he was heard of at all, it was only in -whispers, and the general burden of those whispers was that he was in -the pay of the Kaiser, and plotting to garrot the Rev. Dr. William T. -Manning....</p> - -<p>So down to 1921. Then the English, with characteristic lack of -delicacy, played a ghastly trick upon all those dutiful and -well-meaning colonists. That is to say, they suddenly forgave Harris -his criminal<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> refusal to take their war buncombe seriously, exhumed him -from his long solitude among the Anglo-Ashkenazim, and began praising -him in rich, hearty terms as a literary gentleman of the first water, -and even as the chief adornment of American letters! The English -notices of his “Contemporary Portraits: Second Series” were really -quite amazing. The London <i>Times</i> gave him two solid columns, and where -the <i>Times</i> led, all the other great organs of English literary opinion -followed. The book itself was described as something extraordinary, a -piece of criticism full of shrewdness and originality, and the author -was treated with the utmost politeness.... One imagines the painful -sensation in the New York <i>Times</i> office, the dismayed groups around -far-flung campus pumps, the special meetings of the Princeton, N. J., -and Urbana, Ill., American Legions, the secret conference between -the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the Ku Klux Klan. But -though there was tall talk by hot heads, nothing could be done. Say -“Wo!” and the dutiful jack-ass turns to the right; say “Gee!” and he -turns to the left. It is too much, of course, to ask him to cheer as -well as turn—but he nevertheless turns. Since 1921 I have heard no -more whispers against Harris from professors and Vigilantes. But on -two or three occasions, the subject coming up, I have heard him sneer -his master sneer, and each time my blood has run cold.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> -Well, what is in him? My belief, frequently expressed, is that there is a great -deal. His “Oscar Wilde” is, by long odds, the best literary biography -ever written by an American—an astonishingly frank, searching and -vivid reconstruction of character—a piece of criticism that makes all -ordinary criticism seem professorial and lifeless. The Comstocks, I -need not say, tried to suppress it; a brilliant light is thrown upon -Harris by the fact that they failed ignominiously. All the odds were in -favor of the Comstocks; they had patriotism on their side and the help -of all the swine who flourished in those days; nevertheless, Harris -gave them a severe beating, and scared them half to death. In brief, a -man of the most extreme bellicosity, enterprise and courage—a fellow -whose ideas are expressed absolutely regardless of tender feelings, -whether genuine or bogus. In “The Man Shakespeare” and “The Women of -Shakespeare” he tackled the whole body of academic English critics <i>en -masse</i>—and routed them <i>en masse.</i> The two books, marred perhaps by a -too bombastic spirit, yet contain some of the soundest, shrewdest and -most convincing criticism of Shakespeare that has ever been written. -All the old hocus-pocus is thrown overboard. There is an entirely -new examination of the materials, and to the business is brought a -knowledge of the plays so ready and so vast that that of even the most -learned don begins to seem a mere<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> smattering. The same great grasp -of facts and evidences is visible in the sketches which make up the -three volumes of “Contemporary Portraits.” What one always gets out of -them is a feeling that the man knows the men he is writing about—that -he not only knows what he sets down, but a great deal more. There is -here nothing of the cold correctness of the usual literary “estimate.” -Warts are not forgotten, whether of the nose or of the immortal -soul. The subject, beginning as a political shibboleth or a row of -books, gradually takes on all the colors of life, and then begins to -move, naturally and freely. I know of no more brilliant evocations -of personality in any literature—and most of them are personalities -of sharp flavor, for Harris, in his day, seems to have known almost -everybody worth knowing, and whoever he knew went into his laboratory -for vivisection.</p> - -<p>The man is thus a first-rate critic of his time, and what he has -written about his contemporaries is certain to condition the view of -them held in the future. What gives him his value in this difficult -field is, first of all and perhaps most important of all, his cynical -detachment—his capacity for viewing men and ideas objectively. In his -life, of course, there have been friendships and some of them have -been strong and long-continued, but when he writes it is with a sort -of surgical remoteness; as if the business in hand were vastly more -important than the man. He was lately<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> protesting violently that he was -and is quite devoid of malice. Granted. But so is a surgeon. To write -of George Moore as he has written may be writing devoid of malice, but -nevertheless the effect is precisely that which would follow if some -malicious enemy were to drag poor George out of his celibate couch in -the dead of night, and chase him naked down Shaftsbury avenue. The -thing is appallingly revelatory—and I believe that it is true. The -Moore that he depicts may not be absolutely the real Moore, but he -is unquestionably far nearer to the real Moore than the Moore of the -Moore books. The method, of course, has its defects. Harris is far more -interested, fundamentally, in men than in their ideas: the catholic -sweep of his “Contemporary Portraits” proves it. In consequence his -judgments of books are often colored by his opinions of their authors. -He dislikes Mark Twain as his own antithesis: a trimmer and poltroon. -<i>Ergo</i>, “A Connecticut Yankee” is drivel, which leads us, as Euclid -hath it, to absurdity. He once had a row with Dreiser. <i>Ergo</i>, “The -Titan” is nonsense, which is itself nonsense. But I know of no critic -who is wholly free from that quite human weakness. In the academic -bunkophagi it is everything; they are willing to swallow anything so -long as the author is sound upon the League of Nations. It seems to me -that such aberrations are rarer in Harris than in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> most. He may have -violent prejudices, but it is seldom that they play upon a man who is -honest.</p> - -<p>I judge from his frequent discussions of himself—he is happily free -from the vanity of modesty—that the pets of his secret heart are his -ventures into fiction, and especially, “The Bomb” and “Montes the -Matador.” The latter has been greatly praised by Arnold Bennett, who -has also praised Leonard Merrick. I have read it four or five times, -and always with enjoyment. It is a powerful and adept tale; well -constructed and beautifully written; it recalls some of the best of the -shorter stories of Thomas Hardy. Alongside it one might range half a -dozen other Harris stories—all of them carefully put together, every -one the work of a very skillful journeyman. But despite Harris, the -authentic Harris is not the story-writer: he has talents, of course, -but it would be absurd to put “Montes the Matador” beside “Heart of -Darkness.” In “Love in Youth” he descends to unmistakable fluff and -feebleness. The real Harris is the author of the Wilde volumes, of the -two books about Shakespeare, of the three volumes of “Contemporary -Portraits.” Here there is stuff that lifts itself clearly and -brilliantly above the general—criticism that has a terrific vividness -and plausibility, and all the gusto that the professors can never pump -up. Harris makes his opinions not only interesting, but important.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> -What he has to say always seems novel, ingenious, and true. Here is the -chief life-work of an American who, when all values are reckoned up, -will be found to have been a sound artist and an extremely intelligent, -courageous and original man—and infinitely the superior of the poor -dolts who once tried so childishly to dispose of him.</p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>5</h4> - -<h4><i>Havelock Ellis</i></h4> - - -<p>If the test of the personal culture of a man be the degree of his -freedom from the banal ideas and childish emotions which move the -great masses of men, then Havelock Ellis is undoubtedly the most -civilized Englishman of his generation. He is a man of the soundest -and widest learning, but it is not his positive learning that gives -him distinction; it is his profound and implacable skepticism, his -penetrating eye for the transient, the disingenuous, and the shoddy. -So unconditioned a skepticism, it must be plain, is not an English -habit. The average Englishman of science, though he may challenge the -Continentals within his speciality, is only too apt to sink to the -level of a politician, a green grocer, or a suburban clergyman outside -it. The examples of Wallace, Crookes, and Lodge are anything but -isolated. Scratch an English naturalist and you are likely to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> discover -a spiritualist; take an English metaphysician to where the band is -playing, and if he begins to snuffle patriotically you need not be -surprised. The late war uncovered this weakness in a wholesale manner. -The English <i>Gelehrten</i>, as a class, not only stood by their country; -they also stood by the Hon. David Lloyd-George, the <i>Daily Mail</i>, and -the mob in Trafalgar Square. Unluckily, the asinine manifestations -ensuing—for instance, the “proofs” of the eminent Oxford philologist -that the Germans had never contributed anything to philology—are -not to be described with good grace by an American, for they were -far surpassed on this side of the water. England at least had Ellis, -with Bertrand Russell, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, and a few others in the -background. We had, on that plane, no one.</p> - -<p>Ellis, it seems to me, stood above all the rest, and precisely because -his dissent from the prevailing imbecilities was quite devoid of -emotion and had nothing in it of brummagem moral purpose. Too many of -the heretics of the time were simply orthodox witch-hunters off on an -unaccustomed tangent. In their disorderly indignation they matched the -regular professors; it was only in the objects of their ranting that -they differed. But Ellis kept his head throughout. An Englishman of -the oldest native stock, an unapologetic lover of English scenes and -English ways, an unshaken believer in the essential<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> soundness and -high historical destiny of his people, he simply stood aside from the -current clown-show and waited in patience for sense and decency to be -restored. His “Impressions and Comments,” the record of his war-time -reflections, is not without its note of melancholy; it was hard to -look on without depression. But for the man of genuine culture there -were at least some resources remaining within himself, and what gives -this volume its chief value is its picture of how such a man made use -of them. Ellis, facing the mob unleashed, turned to concerns and ideas -beyond its comprehension—to the humanism that stands above all such -sordid conflicts. There is something almost of Renaissance dignity in -his chronicle of his speculations. The man that emerges is not a mere -scholar immured in a cell, but a man of the world superior to his race -and his time—a philosopher viewing the childish passion of lesser men -disdainfully and yet not too remote to understand it, and even to see -in it a certain cosmic use. A fine air blows through the book. It takes -the reader into the company of one whose mind is a rich library and -whose manner is that of a gentleman. He is the complete anti-Kipling. -In him the Huxleian tradition comes to full flower.</p> - -<p>His discourse ranges from Beethoven to Comstockery and from Spanish -architecture to the charm of the English village. The extent of the -man’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> knowledge is really quite appalling. His primary work in the -world has been that of a psychologist, and in particular he has -brought a great erudition and an extraordinarily sound judgment to the -vexatious problems of the psychology of sex, but that professional -concern, extending over so many years, has not prevented him from -entering a dozen other domains of speculation, nor has it dulled his -sensitiveness to beauty nor his capacity to evoke it. His writing was -never better than in this volume. His style, especially towards the -end, takes on a sort of glowing clarity. It is English that is as -transparent as a crystal, and yet it is English that is full of fine -colors and cadences. There could be no better investiture for the -questionings and conclusions of so original, so curious, so learned, -and, above all, so sound and hearty a man.</p> - -<hr class="chap"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a id="IX_THE_NATURE_OF_LIBERTY">IX. THE NATURE OF LIBERTY</a></h4> - - -<p>Every time an officer of the constabulary, in the execution of his just -and awful powers under American law, produces a compound fracture of -the occiput of some citizen in his custody, with hemorrhage, shock, -coma and death, there comes a feeble, falsetto protest from specialists -in human liberty. Is it a fact without significance that this protest -is never supported by the great body of American freemen, setting aside -the actual heirs and creditors of the victim? I think not. Here, as -usual, public opinion is very realistic. It does not rise against the -policeman for the plain and simple reason that it does not question his -right to do what he has done. Policemen are not given night-sticks for -ornament. They are given them for the purpose of cracking the skulls of -the recalcitrant plain people, Democrats and Republicans alike. When -they execute that high duty they are palpably within their rights.</p> - -<p>The specialists aforesaid are the same fanatics who shake the air with -sobs every time the Postmaster-General of the United States bars a -periodical from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> the mails because its ideas do not please him, and -every time some poor Russian is deported for reading Karl Marx, and -every time a Prohibition enforcement officer murders a bootlegger who -resists his levies, and every time agents of the Department of Justice -throw an Italian out of the window, and every time the Ku Klux Klan or -the American Legion tars and feathers a Socialist evangelist. In brief, -they are Radicals, and to scratch one with a pitchfork is to expose a -Bolshevik. They are men standing in contempt of American institutions -and in enmity to American idealism. And their evil principles are no -less offensive to right-thinking and red-blooded Americans when they -are United States Senators or editors of wealthy newspapers than when -they are degraded I. W. W.’s throwing dead cats and infernal machines -into meetings of the Rotary Club.</p> - -<p>What ails them primarily is the ignorant and uncritical monomania that -afflicts every sort of fanatic, at all times and everywhere. Having -mastered with their limited faculties the theoretical principles set -forth in the Bill of Rights, they work themselves into a passionate -conviction that those principles are identical with the rules of law -and justice, and ought to be enforced literally, and without the -slightest regard for circumstance and expediency. It is precisely as if -a High Church rector, accidentally looking into the Book of Chronicles, -and especially Chapter II, should<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> suddenly issue a mandate from his -pulpit ordering his parishioners, on penalty of excommunication and the -fires of hell, to follow exactly the example set forth, to wit: “And -Jesse begat his first born Eliab, and Abinadab the second, and Shimma -the third, Netheneel the fourth, Raddai the fifth, Ozen the sixth, -David the seventh,” and so on. It might be very sound theoretical -theology, but it would surely be out of harmony with modern ideas, and -the rev. gentleman would be extremely lucky if the bishop did not give -him 10 days in the diocesan hoosegow.</p> - -<p>So with the Bill of Rights. As adopted by the Fathers of the Republic, -it was gross, crude, inelastic, a bit fanciful and transcendental. -It specified the rights of a citizen, but it said nothing whatever -about his duties. Since then, by the orderly processes of legislative -science and by the even more subtle and beautiful devices of juridic -art, it has been kneaded and mellowed into a far greater pliability -and reasonableness. On the one hand, the citizen still retains the -great privilege of membership in the most superb free nation ever -witnessed on this earth. On the other hand, as a result of countless -shrewd enactments and sagacious decisions, his natural lusts and -appetites are held in laudable check, and he is thus kept in order and -decorum. No artificial impediment stands in the way of his highest -aspiration. He may become anything, including even a policeman.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> But -once a policeman, he is protected by the legislative and judicial arms -in the peculiar rights and prerogatives that go with his high office, -including especially the right to jug the laity at his will, to sweat -and mug them, to subject them to the third degree, and to subdue their -resistance by beating out their brains. Those who are unaware of this -are simply ignorant of the basic principles of American jurisprudence, -as they have been exposed times without number by the courts of first -instance and ratified in lofty terms by the Supreme Court of the -United States. The one aim of the controlling decisions, magnificently -attained, is to safeguard public order and the public security, and -to substitute a judicial process for the inchoate and dangerous -interaction of discordant egos.</p> - -<p>Let us imagine an example. You are, say, a peaceable citizen on your -way home from your place of employment. A police sergeant, detecting -you in the crowd, approaches you, lays his hand on your collar, and -informs you that you are under arrest for killing a trolley conductor -in Altoona, Pa., in 1917. Amazed by the accusation, you decide hastily -that the officer has lost his wits, and take to your heels. He pursues -you. You continue to run. He draws his revolver and fires at you. He -misses you. He fires again and fetches you in the leg. You fall and he -is upon you. You prepare to resist his apparently<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> maniacal assault. He -beats you into insensibility with his espantoon, and drags you to the -patrol box.</p> - -<p>Arrived at the watch house you are locked in a room with five -detectives, and for six hours they question you with subtle art. -You grow angry—perhaps robbed of your customary politeness by the -throbbing in your head and leg—and answer tartly. They knock you down. -Having failed to wring a confession from you, they lock you in a cell, -and leave you there all night. The next day you are taken to police -headquarters, your photograph is made for the Rogues’ Gallery, and a -print is duly deposited in the section labeled “Murderers.” You are -then carted to jail and locked up again. There you remain until the -trolley conductor’s wife comes down from Altoona to identify you. She -astonishes the police by saying that you are not the man. The actual -murderer, it appears, was an Italian. After holding you a day or two -longer, to search your house for stills, audit your income tax returns, -and investigate the pre-marital chastity of your wife, they let you go.</p> - -<p>You are naturally somewhat irritated by your experience and perhaps -your wife urges you to seek redress. Well, what are your remedies? If -you are a firebrand, you reach out absurdly for those of a preposterous -nature: the instant jailing of the sergeant, the dismissal of the -Police Commissioner, the release of Mooney, a fair trial for Sacco and -Vanzetti,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> free trade with Russia, One Big Union. But if you are a -100 per cent. American and respect the laws and institutions of your -country, you send for your solicitor—and at once he shows you just how -far your rights go, and where they end. You cannot cause the arrest of -the sergeant, for you resisted him when he attempted to arrest you, -and when you resisted him he acquired an instant right to take you -by force. You cannot proceed against him for accusing you falsely, -for he has a right to make summary arrests for felony, and the courts -have many times decided that a public officer, so long as he cannot be -charged with corruption or malice, is not liable for errors of judgment -made in the execution of his sworn duty. You cannot get the detectives -on the mat, for when they questioned you you were a prisoner accused of -murder, and it was their duty and their right to do so. You cannot sue -the turnkey at the watch house or the warden at the jail for locking -you up, for they received your body, as the law says, in a lawful and -regular manner, and would have been liable to penalty if they had -turned you loose.</p> - -<p>But have you no redress whatever, no rights at all? Certainly you have -a right, and the courts have jealously guarded it. You have a clear -right, guaranteed to you under the Constitution, to go into a court -of equity and apply for a mandamus requiring the <i>Polizei</i> to cease -forthwith to expose your portrait in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> Rogues’ Gallery among the -murderers. This is your inalienable right, and no man or men on earth -can take it away from you. You cannot prevent them cherishing your -portrait in their secret files, but you can get an order commanding -them to refrain forever from exposing it to the gaze of idle visitors, -and if you can introduce yourself unseen into their studio and prove -that they disregard that order, you can have them haled into court for -contempt and fined by the learned judge.</p> - -<p>Thus the law, statute, common and case, protects the free American -against injustice. It is ignorance of that subtle and perfect -process and not any special love of liberty <i>per se</i> that causes -radicals of anti-American kidney to rage every time an officer of the -<i>gendarmerie</i>, in the simple execution of his duty, knocks a citizen -in the head. The <i>gendarme</i> plainly has an inherent and inalienable -right to knock him in the head: it is an essential part of his general -prerogative as a sworn officer of the public peace and a representative -of the sovereign power of the state. He may, true enough, exercise that -prerogative in a manner liable to challenge on the ground that it is -imprudent and lacking in sound judgment. On such questions reasonable -men may differ. But it must be obvious that the sane and decorous way -to settle differences of opinion of that sort is not by public outcry -and florid appeals to sentimentality, not by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> ill-disguised playing to -class consciousness and anti-social prejudice, but by an orderly resort -to the checks and remedies superimposed upon the Bill of Rights by the -calm deliberation and austere logic of the courts of equity.</p> - -<p>The law protects the citizen. But to get its protection he must show -due respect for its wise and delicate processes.</p> - -<hr class="chap"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a id="X_THE_NOVEL">X. THE NOVEL</a></h4> - - -<p>An unmistakable flavor of effeminacy hangs about the novel, however -heroic its content. Even in the gaudy tales of a Rex Beach, with their -bold projections of the Freudian dreams of go-getters, ice-wagon -drivers, Ku Kluxers, Rotary Club presidents and other such carnivora, -there is a subtle something that suggests water-color painting, -lip-sticks and bon-bons. Well, why not? When the novel, in the form -that we know to-day, arose in Spain toward the end of the sixteenth -century, it was aimed very frankly at the emerging women of the -Castilian seraglios—women who were gradually emancipating themselves -from the <i>Küche-Kinder-Kirche</i> darkness of the later Middle Ages, but -had not yet come to anything even remotely approaching the worldly -experience and intellectual curiosity of men. They could now read and -they liked to practice the art, but the grand literature of the time -was too profound for them, and too somber. So literary confectioners -undertook stuff that would be more to their taste, and the modern novel -was born. A single plot served most of these<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> confectioners; it became -and remains one of the conventions of the form. Man and maid meet, -love, and proceed to kiss—but the rest must wait. The buss remains -chaste through long and harrowing chapters; not until the very last -scene do fate and Holy Church license anything more. This plot, as I -say, still serves, and Arnold Bennett is authority for the doctrine -that it is the safest known. Its appeal is patently to the feminine -fancy, not to the masculine. Women like to be wooed endlessly before -they loose their girdles and are wooed no more. But a man, when he -finds a damsel to his taste, is eager to get through the preliminary -hocus-pocus as soon as possible.</p> - -<p>That women are still the chief readers of novels is known to every book -clerk: Joseph Hergesheimer, a little while back, was bemoaning the -fact as a curse to his craft. What is less often noted is that women -themselves, as they have gradually become fully literate, have forced -their way to the front as makers of the stuff they feed on, and that -they show signs of ousting the men, soon or late, from the business. -Save in the department of lyrical verse, which demands no organization -of ideas but only fluency of feeling, they have nowhere else done -serious work in literature. There is no epic poem of any solid value -by a woman, dead or alive; and no drama, whether comedy or tragedy; -and no work of metaphysical speculation;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> and no history; and no basic -document in any other realm of thought. In criticism, whether of works -of art or of the ideas underlying them, few women have ever got beyond -the <i>Schwärmerei</i> of Madame de Staël’s “L’Allemagne.” In the essay, -the most competent woman barely surpasses the average Fleet Street -<i>causerie</i> hack or Harvard professor. But in the novel the ladies have -stood on a level with even the most accomplished men since the day -of Jane Austen, and not only in Anglo-Saxondom, but also everywhere -else—save perhaps in Russia. To-day it would be difficult to think of -a contemporary German novelist of sounder dignity than Clara Viebig, -Helene Böhlau or Ricarda Huch, or a Scandinavian novelist clearly -above Selma Lagerlöf, or an Italian above Mathilda Serao, or, for that -matter, more than two or three living Englishmen above May Sinclair, -or more than two Americans equal to Willa Cather. Not only are women -writing novels quite as good as those written by men—setting aside, of -course, a few miraculous pieces by such fellows as Joseph Conrad: most -of them not really novels at all, but metaphysical sonatas disguised -as romances—; they are actually surpassing men in their experimental -development of the novel form. I do not believe that either Evelyn -Scott’s “The Narrow House” or May Sinclair’s “Life and Death of Harriet -Frean” has the depth and beam of, say, Dreiser’s “Jennie Gerhardt”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> or -Arnold Bennett’s “Old Wives’ Tale,” but it is certainly to be argued -plausibly that both books show a far greater venturesomeness and a -far finer virtuosity in the novel form—that both seek to free that -form from artificialities which Dreiser and Bennett seem to be almost -unaware of. When men exhibit any discontent with those artificialities -it usually takes the shape of a vain and uncouth revolt against the -whole inner spirit of the novel—that is, against the characteristics -which make it what it is. Their lusher imagination tempts them to try -to convert it into something that it isn’t—for example, an epic, a -political document, or a philosophical work. This fact explains, in -one direction, such dialectical parables as Dreiser’s “The ‘Genius,’” -H. G. Wells’ “Joan and Peter” and Upton Sinclair’s “King Coal,” and, -in a quite different direction, such rhapsodies as Cabell’s “Jurgen,” -Meredith’s “The Shaving of Shagpat” and Jacob Wassermann’s “The World’s -Illusion.” These things are novels only in the very limited sense -that Beethoven’s “Vittoria” and Goldmarck’s “Ländliche Hochzeit” are -symphonies. Their chief purpose is not that of prose fiction; it is -either that of argumentation or that of poetry. The women novelists, -with very few exceptions, are far more careful to remain within the -legitimate bounds of the form; they do not often abandon representation -to exhort or exult. Miss Cather’s “My Antonia”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> shows a great deal -of originality in its method; the story it tells is certainly not a -conventional one, nor is it told in a conventional way. But it remains -a novel none the less, and as clearly so, in fact, as “The Ordeal of -Richard Feverel” or “Robinson Crusoe.”</p> - -<p>Much exertion of the laryngeal and respiratory muscles is wasted upon -a discussion of the differences between realistic novels and romantic -novels. As a matter of fact, every authentic novel is realistic in -its method, however fantastic it may be in its fable. The primary aim -of the novel, at all times and everywhere, is the representation of -human beings at their follies and villainies, and no other art form -clings to that aim so faithfully. It sets forth, not what might be -true, or what ought to be true, but what actually <i>is</i> true. This is -obviously not the case with poetry. Poetry is the product of an effort -to invent a world appreciably better than the one we live in; its -essence is not the representation of the facts, but the deliberate -concealment and denial of the facts. As for the drama, it vacillates, -and if it touches the novel on one side it also touches the epic on the -other. But the novel is concerned solely with human nature as it is -practically revealed and with human experience as men actually know it. -If it departs from that representational fidelity ever so slightly, it -becomes to that extent a bad novel; if it departs violently it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> ceases -to be a novel at all. Cabell, who shows all the critical deficiencies -of a sound artist, is one who has spent a good deal of time questioning -the uses of realism. Yet it is a plain fact that his own stature as an -artist depends almost wholly upon his capacity for accurate observation -and realistic representation. The stories in “The Line of Love,” though -they may appear superficially to be excessively romantic, really owe -all of their charm to their pungent realism. The pleasure they give is -the pleasure of recognition; one somehow delights in seeing a mediæval -baron acting precisely like a New York stockbroker. As for “Jurgen,” it -is as realistic in manner as Zola’s “La Terre,” despite its grotesque -fable and its burden of political, theological and epistemological -ideas. No one not an idiot would mistake the dialogue between Jurgen -and Queen Guinevere’s father for romantic, in the sense that Kipling’s -“Mandalay” is romantic; it is actually as mordantly realistic as the -dialogue between Nora and Helmer in the last act of “A Doll’s House.”</p> - -<p>It is my contention that women succeed in the novel—and that they -will succeed even more strikingly as they gradually throw off the -inhibitions that have hitherto cobwebbed their minds—simply because -they are better fitted for this realistic representation than -men—because they see the facts of life more sharply, and are less -distracted by moony<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> dreams. Women seldom have the pathological -faculty vaguely called imagination. One doesn’t often hear of -them groaning over colossal bones in their sleep, as dogs do, or -constructing heavenly hierarchies or political Utopias, as men do. -Their concern is always with things of more objective substance—roofs, -meals, rent, clothes, the birth and upbringing of children. They are, -I believe, generally happier than men, if only because the demands -they make of life are more moderate and less romantic. The chief pain -that a man normally suffers in his progress through this vale is that -of disillusionment; the chief pain that a woman suffers is that of -parturition. There is enormous significance in the difference. The -first is artificial and self-inflicted; the second is natural and -unescapable. The psychological history of the differentiation I need -not go into here: its springs lie obviously in the greater physical -strength of man and his freedom from child-bearing, and in the larger -mobility and capacity for adventure that go therewith. A man dreams -of Utopias simply because he feels himself free to construct them; a -woman must keep house. In late years, to be sure, she has toyed with -the idea of escaping that necessity, but I shall not bore you with -arguments showing that she never will. So long as children are brought -into the world and made ready for the trenches, the sweat-shops and -the gallows by the laborious method<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> ordained of God she will never be -quite as free to roam and dream as man is. It is only a small minority -of her sex who cherish a contrary expectation, and this minority, -though anatomically female, is spiritually male. Show me a woman who -has visions comparable, say, to those of Swedenborg, Woodrow Wilson, -Strindberg or Dr. Ghandi, and I’ll show you a woman who is a very -powerful anaphrodisiac.</p> - -<p>Thus women, by their enforced preoccupation with the harsh facts of -life, are extremely well fitted to write novels, which must deal with -the facts or nothing. What they need for the practical business, in -addition, falls under two heads. First, they need enough sense of -social security to make them free to set down what they see. Secondly, -they need the modest technical skill, the formal mastery of words and -ideas, necessary to do it. The latter, I believe, they have had ever -since they learned to read and write, say three hundred years ago; it -comes to them more readily than to men, and is exercised with greater -ease. The former they are fast acquiring. In the days of Aphra Behn -and Ann Radcliffe it was almost as scandalous for a woman to put her -observations and notions into print as it was for her to show her -legs; even in the days of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë the thing -was regarded as decidedly unladylike. But now, within certain limits, -she is free to print whatever she pleases, and before long<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> even those -surviving limits will be obliterated. If I live to the year 1950 I -expect to see a novel by a women that will describe a typical marriage -under Christianity, from the woman’s standpoint, as realistically as -it is treated from the man’s standpoint in Upton Sinclair’s “Love’s -Pilgrimage.” That novel, I venture to predict, will be a cuckoo. At -one stroke it will demolish superstitions that have prevailed in the -Western World since the fall of the Roman Empire. It will seem harsh, -but it will be true. And, being true, it will be a good novel. There -can be no good one that is not true.</p> - -<p>What ailed the women novelists, until very recently, was a lingering -ladyism—a childish prudery inherited from their mothers. I believe -that it is being rapidly thrown off; indeed, one often sees a concrete -woman novelist shedding it. I give you two obvious examples: Zona Gale -and Willa Cather. Miss Gale started out by trying to put into novels -the conventional prettiness that is esteemed along the Main Streets -of her native Wisconsin. She had skill and did it well, and so she -won a good deal of popular success. But her work was intrinsically as -worthless as a treatise on international politics by the Hon. Warren -Gamaliel Harding or a tract on the duties of a soldier and a gentleman -by a state president of the American Legion. Then, of a sudden, for -some reason quite unknown to the deponent, she<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> threw off all that -flabby artificiality, and began describing the people about her as -they really were. The result was a second success even more pronounced -than her first, and on a palpably higher level. The career of Miss -Cather has covered less ground, for she began far above Main Street. -What she tried to do at the start was to imitate the superficial -sophistication of Edith Wharton and Henry James—a deceptive thing, -apparently realistic in essence, but actually as conventional as table -manners or the professional buffooneries of a fashionable rector. -Miss Cather had extraordinary skill as a writer, and so her imitation -was scarcely to be distinguished from the original, but in the course -of time she began to be aware of its hollowness. Then she turned to -first-hand representation—to pictures of the people she actually -knew. There ensued a series of novels that rose step by step to the -very distinguished quality of “My Antonia.” That fine piece is a great -deal more than simply a good novel. It is a document in the history of -American literature. It proves, once and for all time, that accurate -representation is not, as the campus critics of Dreiser seem to think, -inimical to beauty. It proves, on the contrary, that the most careful -and penetrating representation is itself the source of a rare and -wonderful beauty. No romantic novel ever written in America,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> by man or -woman, is one-half so beautiful as “My Antonia.”</p> - -<p>As I have said, the novel, in the United States as elsewhere, -still radiates an aroma of effeminacy, in the conventional sense. -Specifically, it deals too monotonously with the varieties of human -transactions which chiefly interest the unintelligent women who are -its chief patrons and the scarcely less intelligent women who, until -recently, were among its chief commercial manufacturers, to wit, the -transactions that revolve around the ensnarement of men by women—the -puerile tricks and conflicts of what is absurdly called romantic -love. But I believe that the women novelists, as they emerge into the -fullness of skill, will throw overboard all that old baggage, and leave -its toting to such male artisans as Chambers, Beach, Coningsby Dawson -and Emerson Hough, as they have already left the whole flag-waving and -“red-blooded” buncombe. True enough, the snaring of men will remain the -principal business of women in this world for many generations, but it -would be absurd to say that intelligent women, even to-day, view it -romantically—that is, as it is viewed by bad novelists. They see it -realistically, and they see it, not as an end in itself, but as a means -to other ends. It is, speaking generally, after she has got her man -that a woman begins to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> live. The novel of the future, I believe, will -show her thus living. It will depict the intricate complex of forces -that conditions her life and generates her ideas, and it will show, -against a background of actuality, her conduct in the eternal struggle -between her aspiration and her destiny. Women, as I have argued, are -not normally harassed by the grandiose and otiose visions that inflame -the gizzards of men, but they too discover inevitably that life is a -conflict, and that it is the harsh fate of <i>Homo sapiens</i> to get the -worst of it. I should like to read a “Main Street” by an articulate -Carol Kennicott, or a “Titan” by one of Cowperwood’s mistresses, or -a “Cytherea” by a Fanny Randon—or a Savina Grove! It would be sweet -stuff, indeed.... And it will come.</p> - -<hr class="chap"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a id="XI_THE_FORWARD-LOOKER">XI. THE FORWARD-LOOKER</a></h4> - - -<p>When the history of the late years in America is written, I suspect -that their grandest, gaudiest gifts to <i>Kultur</i> will be found in the -incomparable twins: the right-thinker and the forward-looker. No other -nation can match them, at any weight. The right-thinker is privy to all -God’s wishes, and even whims; the forward-looker is the heir to all -His promises to the righteous. The former is never wrong; the latter -is never despairing. Sometimes the two are amalgamated into one man, -and we have a Bryan, a Wilson, a Dr. Frank Crane. But more often there -is a division: the forward-looker thinks wrong, and the right-thinker -looks backward. I give you Upton Sinclair and Nicholas Murray Butler -as examples. Butler is an absolute masterpiece of correct thought; in -his whole life, so far as human records show, he has not cherished a -single fancy that might not have been voiced by a Fifth Avenue rector -or spread upon the editorial page of the New York <i>Times.</i> But he has -no vision, alas, alas! All the revolutionary inventions for lifting up -humanity leave him cold. He<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> is against them all, from the initiative -and referendum to birth control, and from Fletcherism to osteopathy. -Now turn to Sinclair. He believes in every one of them, however daring -and fantoddish; he grasps and gobbles all the new ones the instant they -are announced. But the man simply cannot think right. He is wrong on -politics, on economics, and on theology. He glories in and is intensely -vain of his wrongness. Let but a new article of correct American -thought get itself stated by the constituted ecclesiastical and secular -authorities—by Bishop Manning, or Judge Gary, or Butler, or Adolph -Ochs, or Dr. Fabian Franklin, or Otto Kahn, or Dr. Stephen S. Wise, -or Roger W. Babson, or any other such inspired omphalist—and he is -against it almost before it is stated.</p> - -<p>On the whole, as a neutral in such matters, I prefer the forward-looker -to the right-thinker, if only because he shows more courage and -originality. It takes nothing save lack of humor to believe what -Butler, or Ochs, or Bishop Manning believes, but it takes long practice -and a considerable natural gift to get down the beliefs of Sinclair. -I remember with great joy the magazine that he used to issue during -the war. In the very first issue he advocated Socialism, the single -tax, birth control, communism, the League of Nations, the conscription -of wealth,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> government ownership of coal mines, sex hygiene and free -trade. In the next issue he added the recall of judges, Fletcherism, -the Gary system, the Montessori method, paper-bag cookery, war gardens -and the budget system. In the third he came out for sex hygiene, one -big union, the initiative and referendum, the city manager plan, -chiropractic and Esperanto. In the fourth he went to the direct -primary, fasting, the Third International, a federal divorce law, free -motherhood, hot lunches for school children, Prohibition, the vice -crusade, <i>Expressionismus</i>, the government control of newspapers, -deep breathing, international courts, the Fourteen Points, freedom -for the Armenians, the limitation of campaign expenditures, the merit -system, the abolition of the New York Stock Exchange, psychoanalysis, -crystal-gazing, the Little Theater movement, the recognition of Mexico, -<i>vers libre</i>, old age pensions, unemployment insurance, cooperative -stores, the endowment of motherhood, the Americanization of the -immigrant, mental telepathy, the abolition of grade crossings, federal -labor exchanges, profit-sharing in industry, a prohibitive tax on Poms, -the clean-up-paint-up campaign, relief for the Jews, osteopathy, mental -mastery, and the twilight sleep. And so on, and so on. Once I had got -into the swing of the Sinclair monthly I found that I could dispense -with at least twenty other journals<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> of the uplift. When he abandoned -it I had to subscribe for them anew, and the gravel has stuck in my -craw ever since.</p> - -<p>In the first volume of his personal philosophy, “The Book of Life: -Mind and Body,” he is stopped from displaying whole categories of his -ideas, for his subject is not man the political and economic machine, -but man and mammal. Nevertheless, his characteristic hospitality to new -revelations is abundantly visible. What does the mind suggest? The mind -suggests its dark and fascinating functions and powers, some of them -very recent. There is, for example, psychoanalysis. There is mental -telepathy. There is crystal-gazing. There is double personality. Out -of each springs a scheme for the uplift of the race—in each there is -something for a forward-looker to get his teeth into. And if mind, then -why not also spirit? Here even a forward-looker may hesitate; here, -in fact, Sinclair himself hesitates. The whole field of spiritism is -barred to him by his theological heterodoxy; if he admits that man has -an immortal soul, he may also have to admit that the soul can suffer in -hell. Thus even forward-looking may turn upon and devour itself. But if -the meadow wherein spooks and poltergeists disport is closed, it is at -least possible to peep over the fence. Sinclair sees materializations -in dark rooms, under red, satanic lights. He is, perhaps, not yet -convinced,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> but he is looking pretty hard. Let a ghostly hand reach out -and grab him, and he will be over the fence! The body is easier. The -new inventions for dealing with it are innumerable and irresistible; no -forward-looker can fail to succumb to at least some of them. Sinclair -teeters dizzily. On the one hand he stoutly defends surgery—that -is, provided the patient is allowed to make his own diagnosis!—on -the other hand he is hot for fasting, teetotalism, and the avoidance -of drugs, coffee and tobacco, and he begins to flirt with osteopathy -and chiropractic. More, he has discovered a new revelation in San -Francisco—a system of diagnosis and therapeutics, still hooted at -by the Medical Trust, whereby the exact location of a cancer may -be determined by examining a few drops of the patient’s blood, and -syphilis may be cured by vibrations, and whereby, most curious of all, -it can be established that odd numbers, written on a sheet of paper, -are full of negative electricity, and even numbers are full of positive -electricity.</p> - -<p>The book is written with great confidence and address, and has a good -deal of shrewdness mixed with its credulities; few licensed medical -practitioners could give you better advice. But it is less interesting -than its author, or, indeed, than forward-lookers in general. Of all -the known orders of men they fascinate me the most. I spend whole -days reading their pronunciamentos, and am an expert in the ebb<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> and -flow of their singularly bizarre ideas. As I have said, I have never -encountered one who believed in but one sure cure for all the sorrows -of the world, and let it go at that. Nay, even the most timorous -of them gives his full faith and credit to at least two. Turn, for -example, to the official list of eminent single taxers issued by the -Joseph Fels Fund. I defy you to find one solitary man on it who stops -with the single tax. There is David Starr Jordan: he is also one of -the great whales of pacifism. There is B. O. Flower: he is the emperor -of anti-vaccinationists. There is Carrie Chapman Catt: she is hot for -every peruna that the suffragettes brew. There is W. S. U’Ren: he is in -general practise as a messiah. There is Hamlin Garland: he also chases -spooks. There is Jane Addams: vice crusader, pacifist, suffragist, -settlement worker. There is Prof. Dr. Scott Nearing: Socialist and -martyr. There is Newt Baker: heir of the Wilsonian idealism. There -is Gifford Pinchot: conservationist, Prohibitionist, Bull Moose, -and professional Good Citizen. There is Judge Ben B. Lindsey: -forward-looking’s Jack Horner, forever sticking his thumb into new -pies. I could run the list to columns, but no need. You know the type -as well as I do. Give the forward-looker the direct primary, and he -demands the short ballot. Give him the initiative and referendum, and -he bawls for the recall of judges. Give him Christian<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> Science, and he -proceeds to the swamis and yogis. Give him the Mann Act, and he wants -laws providing for the castration of fornicators. Give him Prohibition, -and he launches a new crusade against cigarettes, coffee, jazz, and -custard pies.</p> - -<p>I have a wide acquaintance among such sad, mad, glad folks, and know -some of them very well. It is my belief that the majority of them are -absolutely honest—that they believe as fully in their baroque gospels -as I believe in the dishonesty of politicians—that their myriad and -amazing faiths sit upon them as heavily as the fear of hell sits upon a -Methodist deacon who has degraded the vestry-room to carnal uses. All -that may be justly said against them is that they are chronically full -of hope, and hence chronically uneasy and indignant—that they belong -to the less sinful and comfortable of the two grand divisions of the -human race. Call them the tender-minded, as the late William James used -to do, and you have pretty well described them. They are, on the one -hand, pathologically sensitive to the sorrows of the world, and, on -the other hand, pathologically susceptible to the eloquence of quacks. -What seems to lie in all of them is the doctrine that evils so vast as -those they see about them <i>must</i> and <i>will</i> be laid—that it would be -an insult to a just God to think of them as permanent and irremediable. -This notion, I believe, is at the bottom of much of the current<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> -pathetic faith in Prohibition. The thing itself is obviously a colossal -failure—that is, when viewed calmly and realistically. It has not only -not cured the rum evil in the United States; it has plainly made that -evil five times as bad as it ever was before. But to confess that bald -fact would be to break the forward-looking heart: it simply refuses -to harbor the concept of the incurable. And so, being debarred by the -legal machinery that supports Prohibition from going back to any more -feasible scheme of relief, it cherishes the sorry faith that somehow, -in some vague and incomprehensible way, Prohibition will yet work. -When the truth becomes so horribly evident that even forward-lookers -are daunted, then some new quack will arise to fool them again, with -some new and worse scheme of super-Prohibition. It is their destiny -to wobble thus endlessly between quack and quack. One pulls them by -the right arm and one by the left arm. A third is at their coat-tail -pockets, and a fourth beckons them over the hill.</p> - -<p>The rest of us are less tender-minded, and, in consequence, much -happier. We observe quite clearly that the world, as it stands, is -anything but perfect—that injustice exists, and turmoil, and tragedy, -and bitter suffering of ten thousand kinds—that human life at its -best, is anything but a grand, sweet song. But instead of ranting -absurdly against the fact, or weeping over it maudlinly, or trying<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> -to remedy it with inadequate means, we simply put the thought of -it out of our minds, just as a wise man puts away the thought that -alcohol is probably bad for his liver, or that his wife is a shade -too fat. Instead of mulling over it and suffering from it, we seek -contentment by pursuing the delights that are so strangely mixed with -the horrors—by seeking out the soft spots and endeavoring to avoid -the hard spots. Such is the intelligent habit of practical and sinful -men, and under it lies a sound philosophy. After all, the world is -not our handiwork, and we are not responsible for what goes on in it, -save within very narrow limits. Going outside them with our protests -and advice tends to become contumacy to the celestial hierarchy. Do -the poor suffer in the midst of plenty? Then let us thank God politely -that we are not that poor. Are rogues in offices? Well, go call a -policeman, thus setting rogue upon rogue. Are taxes onerous, wasteful, -unjust? Then let us dodge as large a part of them as we can. Are whole -regiments and army corps of our fellow creatures doomed to hell? Then -let them complain to the archangels, and, if the archangels are too -busy to hear them, to the nearest archbishop.</p> - -<p>Unluckily for the man of tender mind, he is quite incapable of any -such easy dismissal of the great plagues and conundrums of existence. -It is of the essence of his character that he is too sensitive and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> -sentimental to put them ruthlessly out of his mind: he cannot view -even the crunching of a cockroach without feeling the snapping of -his own ribs. And it is of the essence of his character that he is -unable to escape the delusion of duty—that he can’t rid himself of -the notion that, whenever he observes anything in the world that -might conceivably be improved, he is commanded by God to make every -effort to improve it. In brief, he is a public-spirited man, and the -ideal citizen of democratic states. But Nature, it must be obvious, -is opposed to democracy—and whoso goes counter to nature must expect -to pay the penalty. The tender-minded man pays it by hanging forever -upon the cruel hooks of hope, and by fermenting inwardly in incessant -indignation. All this, perhaps, explains the notorious ill-humor of -uplifters—the wowser touch that is in even the best of them. They -dwell so much upon the imperfections of the universe and the weaknesses -of man that they end by believing that the universe is altogether out -of joint and that every man is a scoundrel and every woman a vampire. -Years ago I had a combat with certain eminent reformers of the sex -hygiene and vice crusading species, and got out of it a memorable -illumination of their private minds. The reform these strange creatures -were then advocating was directed against sins of the seventh category, -and they proposed to put them down by forcing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> through legislation of a -very harsh and fantastic kind—statutes forbidding any woman, however -forbidding, to entertain a man in her apartment without the presence of -a third party, statutes providing for the garish lighting of all dark -places in the public parks, and so on. In the course of my debates with -them I gradually jockeyed them into abandoning all of the arguments -they started with, and so brought them down to their fundamental -doctrine, to wit, that no woman, without the aid of the police, could -be trusted to protect her virtue. I pass as a cynic in Christian -circles, but this notion certainly gave me pause. And it was voiced by -men who were the fathers of grown and unmarried daughters!</p> - -<p>It is no wonder that men who cherish such ideas are so ready to accept -any remedy for the underlying evils, no matter how grotesque. A man -suffering from hay-fever, as every one knows, will take any medicine -that is offered to him, even though he knows the compounder to be a -quack; the infinitesimal chance that the quack may have the impossible -cure gives him a certain hope, and so makes the disease itself -more bearable. In precisely the same way a man suffering from the -conviction that the whole universe is hell-bent for destruction—that -the government he lives under is intolerably evil, that the rich are -growing richer and the poor poorer, that no man’s word can be trusted -and no woman’s chastity, that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> another and worse war is hatching, -that the very regulation of the weather has fallen into the hands -of rogues—such a man will grab at anything, even birth control, -osteopathy or the Fourteen Points, rather than let the foul villainy go -on. The apparent necessity of finding a remedy without delay transforms -itself, by an easy psychological process, into a belief that the remedy -has been found; it is almost impossible for most men, and particularly -for tender-minded men, to take in the concept of the insoluble. Every -problem that remains unsolved, including even the problem of evil, -is in that state simply because men of strict virtue and passionate -altruism have not combined to solve it—because the business has been -neglected by human laziness and rascality. All that is needed to -dispatch it is the united effort of enough pure hearts: the accursed -nature of things will yield inevitably to a sufficiently desperate -battle; mind (usually written Mind) will triumph over matter (usually -written Matter—or maybe Money Power, or Land Monopoly, or Beef Trust, -or Conspiracy of Silence, or Commercialized Vice, or Wall Street, or -the Dukes, or the Kaiser), and the Kingdom of God will be at hand. So, -with the will to believe in full function, the rest is easy. The eager -forward-looker is exactly like the man with hay-fever, or arthritis, or -nervous dyspepsia, or diabetes. It takes time to try each successive -remedy—to search it out, to take it, to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> observe its effects, to hope, -to doubt, to shelve it. Before the process is completed another is -offered; new ones are always waiting before their predecessors have -been discarded. Here, perhaps, we get a glimpse of the causes behind -the protean appetite of the true forward-looker—his virtuosity in -credulity. He is in all stages simultaneously—just getting over the -initiative and referendum, beginning to have doubts about the short -ballot, making ready for a horse doctor’s dose of the single tax, and -contemplating an experimental draught of Socialism to-morrow.</p> - -<p>What is to be done for him? How is he to be cured of his great thirst -for sure cures that do not cure, and converted into a contented and -careless backward-looker, peacefully snoozing beneath his fig tree -while the oppressed bawl for succor in forty abandoned lands, and -injustice stalks the world, and taxes mount higher and higher, and -poor working-girls are sold into white slavery, and Prohibition fails -to prohibit, and cocaine is hawked openly, and jazz drags millions -down the primrose way, and the trusts own the legislatures of all -Christendom, and judges go to dinner with millionaires, and Europe -prepares for another war, and children of four and five years work -as stevedores and locomotive firemen, and guinea pigs and dogs are -vivisected, and Polish immigrant women have more children every year, -and divorces<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> multiply, and materialism rages, and the devil runs -the cosmos? What is to be done to save the forward-looker from his -torturing indignations, and set him in paths of happy dalliance? -Answer: nothing. He was born that way, as men are born with hare lips -or bad livers, and he will remain that way until the angels summon -him to eternal rest. Destiny has laid upon him the burden of seeing -unescapably what had better not be looked at, of believing what isn’t -so. There is no way to help him. He must suffer vicariously for the -carnal ease of the rest of us. He must die daily that we may live in -peace, corrupt and contented.</p> - -<p>As I have said, I believe fully that this child of sorrow is -honest—that his twinges and malaises are just as real to him as those -that rack the man with arthritis, and that his trusting faith in quacks -is just as natural. But this, of course, is not saying that the quacks -themselves are honest. On the contrary, their utter dishonesty must be -quite as obvious as the simplicity of their dupes. Trade is good for -them in the United States, where hope is a sort of national vice, and -so they flourish here more luxuriously than anywhere else on earth. -Some one told me lately that there are now no less than 25,000 national -organizations in the United States for the uplift of the plain people -and the snaring and shaking down of forward-lookers—societies for -the Americanization of immigrants, for protecting poor working-girls -against<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> Jews and Italians, for putting Bibles into the bedrooms of -week-end hotels, for teaching Polish women how to wash their babies, -for instructing school children in ring-around-a-rosy, for crusading -against the cigarette, for preventing accidents in rolling-mills, for -making street-car conductors more polite, for testing the mentality -of Czecho-Slovaks, for teaching folk-songs, for restoring the United -States to Great Britain, for building day-nurseries in the devastated -regions of France, for training deaconesses, for fighting the -house-fly, for preventing cruelty to mules and Tom-cats, for forcing -householders to clean their backyards, for planting trees, for saving -the Indian, for sending colored boys to Harvard, for opposing Sunday -movies, for censoring magazines, for God knows what else. In every -large American city such organizations swarm, and every one of them -has an executive secretary who tries incessantly to cadge space in the -newspapers. Their agents penetrate to the remotest hamlets in the land, -and their circulars, pamphlets and other fulminations swamp the mails. -In Washington and at every state capital they have their lobbyists, and -every American legislator is driven half frantic by their innumerable -and preposterous demands. Each of them wants a law passed to make -its crusade official and compulsory; each is forever hunting for -forward-lookers with money.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p> - -<p>One of the latest of these uplifting vereins to score a ten-strike -is the one that sponsored the so-called Maternity Bill. That measure -is now a law, and the over-burdened American taxpayer, at a cost of -$3,000,000 a year, is supporting yet one more posse of perambulating -gabblers and snouters. The influences behind the bill were exposed in -the Senate by Senator Reed, of Missouri, but to no effect: a majority -of the other Senators, in order to get rid of the propagandists in -charge of it, had already promised to vote for it. Its one intelligible -aim, as Senator Reed showed, is to give government jobs at good -salaries to a gang of nosey old maids. These virgins now traverse the -country teaching married women how to have babies in a ship-shape and -graceful manner, and how to keep them alive after having them. Only -one member of the corps has ever been married herself; nevertheless, -the old gals are authorized to go out among the Italian and Yiddish -women, each with ten or twelve head of kids to her credit, and tell -them all about it. According to Senator Reed, the ultimate aim of the -forward-lookers who sponsored the scheme is to provide for the official -registration of expectant mothers, that they may be warned what to eat, -what movies to see, and what midwives to send for when the time comes. -Imagine a young bride going down to the County Clerk’s office to report -herself! And imagine an elderly and anthropophagous<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> spinster coming -around next day to advise her! Or a boozy political doctor!</p> - -<p>All these crazes, of course, are primarily artificial. They are -set going, not by the plain people spontaneously, nor even by the -forward-lookers who eventually support them, but by professionals. The -Anti-Saloon League is their archetype. It is owned and operated by -gentlemen who make excellent livings stirring up the tender-minded; -if their salaries were cut off to-morrow, all their moral passion -would ooze out, and Prohibition would be dead in two weeks. So with -the rest of the uplifting camorras. Their present enormous prosperity, -I believe, is due in large part to a fact that is never thought -of, to wit, the fact that the women’s colleges of the country, for -a dozen years past, have been turning out far more graduates than -could be utilized as teachers. These supernumerary lady Ph.D’s almost -unanimously turn to the uplift—and the uplift saves them. In the early -days of higher education for women in the United States, practically -all the graduates thrown upon the world got jobs as teachers, but now -a good many are left over. Moreover, it has been discovered that the -uplift is easier than teaching, and that it pays a great deal better. -It is a rare woman professor who gets more than $5,000 a year, but -there are plenty of uplifting jobs at $8,000 and $10,000 a year, and in -the future there will be some prizes at<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> twice as much. No wonder the -learned girls fall upon them so eagerly!</p> - -<p>The annual production of male Ph.D’s is also far beyond the legitimate -needs of the nation, but here the congestion is relieved by the greater -and more varied demand for masculine labor. If a young man emerging -from Columbia or Ohio Wesleyan as <i>Philosophiez Doctor</i> finds it -impossible to get a job teaching he can always go on the road as a -salesman of dental supplies, or enlist in the marines, or study law, or -enter the ministry, or go to work in a coal-mine, or a slaughter-house, -or a bucket-shop, or begin selling Oklahoma mine-stock to widows and -retired clergy-men. The women graduate faces far fewer opportunities. -She is commonly too old and too worn by meditation to go upon the stage -in anything above the grade of a patent-medicine show, she has been so -poisoned by instruction in sex hygiene that she shies at marriage, and -most of the standard professions and grafts of the world are closed to -her. The invention of the uplift came as a godsend to her. Had not some -mute, inglorious Edison devised it at the right time, humanity would -be disgraced to-day by the spectacle of hordes of Lady Ph.D’s going -to work in steam-laundries, hooch shows and chewing-gum factories. As -it is, they are all taken care of by the innumerable societies for -making the whole world virtuous and happy. One may laugh at the aims -and methods<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> of many such societies—for example, at the absurd vereins -for Americanizing immigrants, <i>i. e.</i>, degrading them to the level of -the native peasantry. But one thing, at least, they accomplish: they -provide comfortable and permanent jobs for hundreds and thousands of -deserving women, most of whom are far more profitably employed trying -to make Methodists out of Sicilians than they would be if they were -trying to make husbands out of bachelors. It is for this high purpose -also that the forward-looker suffers.</p> - -<hr class="chap"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a id="XII_MEMORIAL_SERVICE">XII. MEMORIAL SERVICE</a></h4> - - -<p>Where is the grave-yard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters -their mounds? There was a day when Jupiter was the king of the gods, -and any man who doubted his puissance was <i>ipso facto</i> a barbarian and -an ignoramus. But where in all the world is there a man who worships -Jupiter to-day? And what of Huitzilopochtli? In one year—and it is -no more than five hundred years ago—50,000 youths and maidens were -slain in sacrifice to him. To-day, if he is remembered at all, it -is only by some vagrant savage in the depths of the Mexican forest. -Huitzilopochtli, like many other gods, had no human father; his mother -was a virtuous widow; he was born of an apparently innocent flirtation -that she carried on with the sun. When he frowned, his father, the -sun, stood still. When he roared with rage, earthquakes engulfed whole -cities. When he thirsted he was watered with 10,000 gallons of human -blood. But to-day Huitzilopochtli is as magnificently forgotten as -Allen G. Thurman. Once the peer of Allah, Buddha and Wotan, he is now -the peer of General<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> Coxey, Richmond P. Hobson, Nan Patterson, Alton B. -Parker, Adelina Patti, General Weyler and Tom Sharkey.</p> - -<p>Speaking of Huitzilopochtli recalls his brother, Tezcatilpoca. -Tezcatilpoca was almost as powerful: he consumed 25,000 virgins a year. -Lead me to his tomb: I would weep, and hang a <i>couronne des perles.</i> -But who knows where it is? Or where the grave of Quitzalcoatl is? Or -Tialoc? Or Chalchihuitlicue? Or Xiehtecutli? Or Centeotl, that sweet -one? Or Tlazolteotl, the goddess of love? Or Mictlan? Or Ixtlilton? -Or Omacatl? Or Yacatecutli? Or Mixcoatl? Or Xipe? Or all the host of -Tzitzimitles? Where are their bones? Where is the willow on which they -hung their harps? In what forlorn and unheard-of hell do they await the -resurrection morn? Who enjoys their residuary estates? Or that of Dis, -whom Cæsar found to be the chief god of the Celts? Or that of Tarves, -the bull? Or that of Moccos, the pig? Or that of Epona, the mare? Or -that of Mullo, the celestial jack-ass? There was a time when the Irish -revered all these gods as violently as they now hate the English. But -to-day even the drunkest Irishman laughs at them.</p> - -<p>But they have company in oblivion: the hell of dead gods is as crowded -as the Presbyterian hell for babies. Damona is there, and Esus, and -Drunemeton,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> and Silvana, and Dervones, and Adsalluta, and Deva, -and Belisama, and Axona, and Vintios, and Taranuous, and Sulis, and -Cocidius, and Adsmerius, and Dumiatis, and Caletos, and Moccus, and -Ollovidius, and Albiorix, and Leucitius, and Vitucadrus, and Ogmios, -and Uxellimus, and Borvo, and Grannos, and Mogons. All mighty gods in -their day, worshiped by millions, full of demands and impositions, -able to bind and loose—all gods of the first class, not dilettanti. -Men labored for generations to build vast temples to them—temples -with stones as large as hay-wagons. The business of interpreting their -whims occupied thousands of priests, wizards, archdeacons, evangelists, -haruspices, bishops, archbishops. To doubt them was to die, usually at -the stake. Armies took to the field to defend them against infidels: -villages were burned, women and children were butchered, cattle were -driven off. Yet in the end they all withered and died, and to-day there -is none so poor to do them reverence. Worse, the very tombs in which -they lie are lost, and so even a respectful stranger is debarred from -paying them the slightest and politest homage.</p> - -<p>What has become of Sutekh, once the high god of the whole Nile Valley? -What has become of:</p> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span></p> - - -<div class="center"> -<table class='cellpadding4'> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Resheph</td><td class='tdleft'>Baal</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Anath</td><td class='tdleft'>Astarte</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Ashtoreth</td><td class='tdleft'>Hadad</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>El</td><td class='tdleft'>Addu</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Nergal</td><td class='tdleft'>Shalera</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Nebo</td><td class='tdleft'>Dagon</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Ninib</td><td class='tdleft'>Sharrab</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Melek</td><td class='tdleft'>Yau</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Ahijah</td><td class='tdleft'>Amon-Re</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Isis</td><td class='tdleft'>Osiris</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Ptah</td><td class='tdleft'>Sebek</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Anubis</td><td class='tdleft'>Molech?</td></tr> -</table></div> - -<p>All these were once gods of the highest eminence. Many of them are -mentioned with fear and trembling in the Old Testament. They ranked, -five or six thousand years ago, with Jahveh himself; the worst of them -stood far higher than Thor. Yet they have all gone down the chute, and -with them the following:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p> - - -<div class="center"> -<table class='cellpadding4'> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Bile</td><td class='tdleft'>Gwydion</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Lêr</td><td class='tdleft'>Manawyddan</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Arianrod</td><td class='tdleft'>Nuada Argetlam</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Morrigu</td><td class='tdleft'>Tagd</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Govannon</td><td class='tdleft'>Goibniu</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Gunfled</td><td class='tdleft'>Odin</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Sokk-mimi</td><td class='tdleft'>Llaw Gyffes</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Memetona</td><td class='tdleft'>Lleu</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Dagda</td><td class='tdleft'>Ogma</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Kerridwen</td><td class='tdleft'>Mider</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Pwyll</td><td class='tdleft'>Rigantona</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Ogyrvan</td><td class='tdleft'>Marzin</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Dea Dia</td><td class='tdleft'>Mars</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Ceros</td><td class='tdleft'>Jupiter</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Vaticanus</td><td class='tdleft'>Cunina</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Edulia</td><td class='tdleft'>Potina</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Adeona</td><td class='tdleft'>Statilinus</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Iuno Lucina</td><td class='tdleft'>Diana of Ephesus</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Saturn</td><td class='tdleft'>Robigus</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Furrina</td><td class='tdleft'>Pluto</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Vediovis</td><td class='tdleft'>Ops</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Consus</td><td class='tdleft'>Meditrina</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Cronos</td><td class='tdleft'>Vesta</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Enki</td><td class='tdleft'>Tilmun</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Engurra</td><td class='tdleft'>Zer-panitu</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Belus</td><td class='tdleft'>Merodach</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Dimmer</td><td class='tdleft'>U-ki</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Mu-ul-lil</td><td class='tdleft'>Dauke</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Ubargisi</td><td class='tdleft'>Gasan-abzu</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Ubilulu</td><td class='tdleft'>Elum</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Gasan-lil</td><td class='tdleft'>U-Tin-dir ki</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>U-dimmer-an-kia</td><td class='tdleft'>Marduk</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Enurestu</td><td class='tdleft'>Nin-lil-la</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>U-sab-sib</td><td class='tdleft'>Nin</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>U-Mersi</td><td class='tdleft'>Persephone</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Tammuz</td><td class='tdleft'>Istar</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Venus</td><td class='tdleft'>Lagas</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Bau</td><td class='tdleft'>U-urugal</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Mulu-hursang</td><td class='tdleft'>Sirtumu</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Anu</td><td class='tdleft'>Ea</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Beltis</td><td class='tdleft'>Nirig</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Nusku</td><td class='tdleft'>Nebo</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Ni-zu</td><td class='tdleft'>Samas</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Sahi</td><td class='tdleft'>Ma-banba-anna</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Aa</td><td class='tdleft'>En-Mersi</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Allatu</td><td class='tdleft'>Amurru</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Sin</td><td class='tdleft'>Assur</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>AbilAddu</td><td class='tdleft'>Aku</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Apsu</td><td class='tdleft'>Beltu</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Dagan</td><td class='tdleft'>Dumu-zi-abzu</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Elali</td><td class='tdleft'>Kuski-banda</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Isum</td><td class='tdleft'>Kaawanu</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Mami</td><td class='tdleft'>Nin-azu</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Nin-man</td><td class='tdleft'>Lugal-Amarada</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Zaraqu</td><td class='tdleft'>Qarradu</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Suqamunu</td><td class='tdleft'>Ura-gala</td></tr> -<tr><td class='tdleft'>Zagaga</td><td class='tdleft'>Ueras</td></tr> -</table></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p> -<p>You may think I spoof. That I invent the names. I do not. Ask the -rector to lend you any good treatise on comparative religion: you -will find them all listed. They were gods of the highest standing and -dignity—gods of civilized peoples—worshipped and believed in by -millions. All were theoretically omnipotent, omniscient and immortal. -And all are dead.</p> - -<hr class="chap"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a id="XIII_EDUCATION">XIII. EDUCATION</a></h4> - - - -<h4>I</h4> - - -<p>Next to the clerk in holy orders, the fellow with the worst job in -the world is the schoolmaster. Both are underpaid, both fall steadily -in authority and dignity, and both wear out their hearts trying to -perform the impossible. How much the world asks of them, and how -little they can actually deliver! The clergyman’s business is to save -the human race from hell: if he saves one-eighth of one per cent., -even within the limits of his narrow flock, he does magnificently. -The school-master’s is to spread the enlightenment, to make the great -masses of the plain people intelligent—and intelligence is precisely -the thing that the great masses of the plain people are congenitally -and eternally incapable of.</p> - -<p>Is it any wonder that the poor birch-man, facing this labor that would -have staggered Sisyphus Æolusohn, seeks refuge from its essential -impossibility in a Chinese maze of empty technic? The ghost of -Pestalozzi, once bearing a torch and beckoning<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> toward the heights, now -leads down stairways into black and forbidding dungeons. Especially in -America, where all that is bombastic and mystical is most esteemed, -the art of pedagogics becomes a sort of puerile magic, a thing of -preposterous secrets, a grotesque compound of false premises and -illogical conclusions. Every year sees a craze for some new solution of -the teaching enigma, at once simple and infallible—manual training, -playground work, song and doggerel lessons, the Montessori method, -the Gary system—an endless series of flamboyant arcanums. The -worst extravagances of <i>privat dozent</i> experimental psychology are -gravely seized upon; the uplift pours in its ineffable principles and -discoveries; mathematical formulæ are worked out for every emergency; -there is no sure cure so idiotic that some superintendent of schools -will not swallow it.</p> - -<p>A couple of days spent examining the literature of the New Thought in -pedagogy are enough to make the judicious weep. Its aim seems to be -to reduce the whole teaching process to a sort of automatic reaction, -to discover some master formula that will not only take the place of -competence and resourcefulness in the teacher but that will also create -an artificial receptivity in the child. The merciless application of -this formula (which changes every four days) now seems to be the chief -end and aim of pedagogy. Teaching becomes a thing in itself, separable<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> -from and superior to the thing taught. Its mastery is a special -business, a transcendental art and mystery, to be acquired in the -laboratory. A teacher well grounded in this mystery, and hence privy -to every detail of the new technic (which changes, of course, with the -formula), can teach anything to any child, just as a sound dentist can -pull any tooth out of any jaw.</p> - -<p>All this, I need not point out, is in sharp contrast to the old -theory of teaching. By that theory mere technic was simplified and -subordinated. All that it demanded of the teacher told off to teach, -say, geography, was that he master the facts in the geography book and -provide himself with a stout rattan. Thus equipped, he was ready for a -test of his natural pedagogical genius. First he exposed the facts in -the book, then he gilded them with whatever appearance of interest and -importance he could conjure up, and then he tested the extent of their -transference to the minds of his pupils. Those pupils who had ingested -them got apples; those who had failed got fanned with the rattan. -Followed the second round, and the same test again, with a second -noting of results. And then the third, and fourth, and the fifth, and -so on until the last and least pupil had been stuffed to his subnormal -and perhaps moronic brim.</p> - -<p>I was myself grounded in the underlying delusions of what is called -knowledge by this austere<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> process, and despite the eloquence of those -who support newer ideas, I lean heavily in favor of it, and regret to -hear that it is no more. It was crude, it was rough, and it was often -not a little cruel, but it at least had two capital advantages over all -the systems that have succeeded it. In the first place, its machinery -was simple; even the stupidest child could understand it; it hooked -up cause and effect with the utmost clarity. And in the second place, -it tested the teacher as and how he ought to be tested—that is, for -his actual capacity to teach, not for his mere technical virtuosity. -There was, in fact, no technic for him to master, and hence none for -him to hide behind. He could not conceal a hopeless inability to impart -knowledge beneath a correct professional method.</p> - -<p>That ability to impart knowledge, it seems to me, has very little to -do with technical method. It may operate at full function without -any technical method at all, and contrariwise, the most elaborate of -technical methods, whether out of Switzerland, Italy or Gary, Ind., -cannot make it operate when it is not actually present. And what does -it consist of? It consists, first, of a natural talent for dealing -with children, for getting into their minds, for putting things in a -way that they can comprehend. And it consists, secondly, of a deep -belief in the interest and importance of the thing taught, a concern -about it amounting to a sort of passion. A man who knows<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> a subject -thoroughly, a man so soaked in it that he eats it, sleeps it and dreams -it—this man can always teach it with success, no matter how little -he knows of technical pedagogy. That is because there is enthusiasm -in him, and because enthusiasm is almost as contagious as fear or the -barber’s itch. An enthusiast is willing to go to any trouble to impart -the glad news bubbling within him. He thinks that it is important and -valuable for to know; given the slightest glow of interest in a pupil -to start with, he will fan that glow to a flame. No hollow formalism -cripples him and slows him down. He drags his best pupils along as fast -as they can go, and he is so full of the thing that he never tires of -expounding its elements to the dullest.</p> - -<p>This passion, so unordered and yet so potent, explains the capacity -for teaching that one frequently observes in scientific men of high -attainments in their specialties—for example, Huxley, Ostwald, Karl -Ludwig, Virchow, Billroth, Jowett, William G. Sumner, Halsted and -Osier—men who knew nothing whatever about the so-called science of -pedagogy, and would have derided its alleged principles if they had -heard them stated. It explains, too, the failure of the general run of -high-school and college teachers—men who are undoubtedly competent, -by the professional standards of pedagogy, but who nevertheless -contrive only to make intolerable bores of the things<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> they presume -to teach. No intelligent student ever learns much from the average -drover of undergraduates; what he actually carries away has come out -of his textbooks, or is the fruit of his own reading and inquiry. But -when he passes to the graduate school, and comes among men who really -understand the subjects they teach, and, what is more, who really love -them, his store of knowledge increases rapidly, and in a very short -while, if he has any intelligence at all, he learns to think in terms -of the thing he is studying.</p> - -<p>So far, so good. But an objection still remains, the which may be -couched in the following terms: that in the average college or high -school, and especially in the elementary school, most of the subjects -taught are so bald and uninspiring that it is difficult to imagine -them arousing the passion I have been describing—in brief, that only -an ass could be enthusiastic about them. In witness, think of the -four elementals: reading, penmanship, arithmetic and spelling. This -objection, at first blush, seems salient and dismaying, but only a -brief inspection is needed to show that it is really of very small -validity. It is made up of a false assumption and a false inference. -The false inference is that there is any sound reason for prohibiting -teaching by asses, if only the asses know how to do it, and do it -well. The false assumption is that there are no asses in our schools -and colleges to-day. The facts stand in almost complete antithesis<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> to -these notions. The truth is that the average schoolmaster, on all the -lower levels, is and always must be essentially an ass, for how can one -imagine an intelligent man engaging in so puerile an avocation? And, -the truth is that it is precisely his inherent asininity, and not his -technical equipment as a pedagogue, that is responsible for whatever -modest success he now shows.</p> - -<p>I here attempt no heavy jocosity, but mean exactly what I say. -Consider, for example, penmanship. A decent handwriting, it must be -obvious, is useful to all men, and particularly to the lower orders of -men. It is one of the few things capable of acquirement in school that -actually helps them to make a living. Well, how is it taught to-day? -It is taught, in the main, by schoolmarms so enmeshed in a complex and -unintelligible technic that, even supposing them able to write clearly -themselves, they find it quite impossible to teach their pupils. -Every few years sees a radical overhauling of the whole business. -First the vertical hand is to make it easy; then certain curves are -the favorite magic; then there is a return to slants and shadings. No -department of pedagogy sees a more hideous cavorting of quacks. In none -is the natural talent and enthusiasm of the teacher more depressingly -crippled. And the result? The result is that our American school -children write abominably—that a clerk or stenographer with a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> simple, -legible hand becomes almost as scarce as one with Greek.</p> - -<p>Go back, now, to the old days. Penmanship was then taught, not -mechanically and ineffectively, by unsound and shifting formulæ, but -by passionate penmen with curly patent-leather hair and far-away -eyes—in brief, by the unforgettable professors of our youth, -with their flourishes, their heavy down-strokes and their lovely -birds-with-letters-in-their-bills. You remember them, of course. Asses -all! Preposterous popinjays and numskulls! Pathetic idiots! But they -loved penmanship, they believed in the glory and beauty of penmanship, -they were fanatics, devotees, almost martyrs of penmanship—and so -they got some touch of that passion into their pupils. Not enough, -perhaps, to make more flourishers and bird-blazoners, but enough to -make sound penmen. Look at your old writing book; observe the excellent -legibility, the clear strokes of your “Time is money.” Then look at -your child’s.</p> - -<p>Such idiots, despite the rise of “scientific” pedagogy, have not -died out in the world. I believe that our schools are full of them, -both in pantaloons and in skirts. There are fanatics who love and -venerate spelling as a tom-cat loves and venerates catnip. There -are grammatomaniacs; schoolmarms who would rather parse than eat; -specialists in an objective case that doesn’t exist in English; -strange<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> beings, otherwise sane and even intelligent and comely, -who suffer under a split infinitive as you or I would suffer under -gastro-enteritis. There are geography cranks, able to bound Mesopotamia -and Beluchistan. There are zealots for long division, experts in the -multiplication table, lunatic worshipers of the binomial theorem. But -the system has them in its grip. It combats their natural enthusiasm -diligently and mercilessly. It tries to convert them into mere -technicians, clumsy machines. It orders them to teach, not by the -process of emotional osmosis which worked in the days gone by, but by -formulæ that are as baffling to the pupil as they are paralyzing to the -teacher. Imagine what would happen to one of them who stepped to the -blackboard, seized a piece of chalk, and engrossed a bird that held -the class spell-bound—a bird with a thousand flowing feathers, wings -bursting with parabolas and epicycloids, and long ribbons streaming -from its bill! Imagine the fate of one who began “Honesty is the best -policy” with an H as florid and—to a child—as beautiful as the -initial of a mediæval manuscript! Such a teacher would be cashiered and -handed over to the secular arm; the very enchantment of the assembled -infantry would be held as damning proof against him. And yet it is just -such teachers that we should try to discover and develop. Pedagogy -needs their enthusiasm, their naïve belief in their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> own grotesque -talents, their capacity for communicating their childish passion to the -childish.</p> - -<p>But this would mean exposing the children of the Republic to contact -with monomaniacs, half-wits, defectives? Well, what of it? The vast -majority of them are already exposed to contact with half-wits in their -own homes; they are taught the word of God by half-wits on Sundays; -they will grow up into Knights of Pythias, Odd Fellows, Red Men and -other such half-wits in the days to come. Moreover, as I have hinted, -they are already face to face with half-wits in the actual schools, -at least in three cases out of four. The problem before us is not -to dispose of this fact, but to utilize it. We cannot hope to fill -the schools with persons of high intelligence, for persons of high -intelligence simply refuse to spend their lives teaching such banal -things as spelling and arithmetic. Among the teachers male we may -safely assume that 95 per cent. are of low mentality, else they would -depart for more appetizing pastures. And even among the teachers female -the best are inevitably weeded out by marriage, and only the worst -(with a few romantic exceptions) survive. The task before us, as I -say, is not to make a vain denial of this cerebral inferiority of the -pedagogue, nor to try to combat and disguise it by concocting a mass of -technical hocus-pocus, but to search out and put to use the value lying -concealed in it. For even stupidity,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> it must be plain, has its uses in -the world, and some of them are uses that intelligence cannot meet. One -would not tell off a Galileo or a Pasteur to drive an ash-cart or an -Ignatius Loyola to be a stockbroker, or a Brahms to lead the orchestra -in a Broadway cabaret. By the same token, one would not ask a Herbert -Spencer or a Duns Scotus to instruct sucklings. Such men would not only -be wasted at the job; they would also be incompetent. The business -of dealing with children, in fact, demands a certain childishness of -mind. The best teacher, until one comes to adult pupils, is not the one -who knows most, but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge -to that simple compound of the obvious and the wonderful which slips -easiest into the infantile comprehension. A man of high intelligence, -perhaps, may accomplish the thing by a conscious intellectual feat. -But it is vastly easier to the man (or woman) whose habits of mind are -naturally on the plane of a child’s. The best teacher of children, in -brief, is one who is essentially child-like.</p> - -<p>I go so far with this notion that I view the movement to introduce -female bachelors of arts into the primary schools with the utmost -alarm. A knowledge of Bergsonism, the Greek aorist, sex hygiene and -the dramas of Percy MacKaye is not only no help to the teaching of -spelling, it is a positive handicap to the teaching of spelling, -for it corrupts and blows up that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> naïve belief in the glory and -portentousness of spelling which is at the bottom of all successful -teaching of it. If I had my way, indeed, I should expose all candidates -for berths in the infant grades to the Binet-Simon test, and reject all -those who revealed the mentality of more than fifteen years. Plenty -would still pass. Moreover, they would be secure against contamination -by the new technic of pedagogy. Its vast wave of pseudo-psychology -would curl and break against the hard barrier of their innocent -and passionate intellects—as it probably does, in fact, even now. -They would know nothing of cognition, perception, attention, the -subconscious and all the other half-fabulous fowl of the pedagogic -aviary. But they would see in reading, writing and arithmetic the gaudy -charms of profound and esoteric knowledge, and they would teach these -ancient branches, now so abominably in decay, with passionate gusto, -and irresistible effectiveness, and a gigantic success.</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<h4>II</h4> - - -<p>Two great follies corrupt the present pedagogy, once it gets beyond -the elementals. One is the folly of overestimating the receptivity -of the pupil; the other is the folly of overestimating the possible -efficiency of the teacher. Both rest upon that tendency to put too -high a value upon mere schooling which characterizes democratic and -upstart societies—a tendency<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> born of the theory that a young man -who has been “educated,” who has “gone through college,” is in some -subtle way more capable of making money than one who hasn’t. The -nature of the schooling on tap in colleges is but defectively grasped -by the adherents of the theory. They view it, I believe, as a sort of -extension of the schooling offered in elementary schools—that is, as -an indefinite multiplication of training in such obviously valuable and -necessary arts as reading, writing and arithmetic. It is, of course, -nothing of the sort. If the pupil, as he climbs the educational ladder, -is fortunate enough to come into contact with a few Huxleys or Ludwigs, -he may acquire a great deal of extremely sound knowledge, and even -learn how to think for himself. But in the great majority of cases he -is debarred by two things: the limitations of his congenital capacity -and the limitations of the teachers he actually encounters. The latter -is usually even more brilliantly patent than the former. Very few -professional teachers, it seems to me, really know anything worth -knowing, even about the subjects they essay to teach. If you doubt it, -simply examine their contributions to existing knowledge. Several years -ago, while engaged upon my book, “The American Language,” I had a good -chance to test the matter in one typical department, that of philology. -I found a truly appalling condition of affairs. I found that in the -whole<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> United States there were not two dozen teachers of English -philology—in which class I also include the innumerable teachers of -plain grammar—who had ever written ten lines upon the subject worth -reading. It was not that they were indolent or illiterate: in truth, -they turned out to be enormously diligent. But as I plowed through -pyramid after pyramid of their doctrines and speculations, day after -day and week after week, I discovered little save a vast laboring of -the obvious, with now and then a bold flight into the nonsensical. A -few genuinely original philologians revealed themselves—pedagogues -capable of observing accurately and reasoning clearly. The rest simply -wasted time and paper. Whole sections of the field were unexplored, and -some of them appeared to be even unsuspected. The entire life-work of -many an industrious professor, boiled down, scarcely made a footnote in -my book, itself a very modest work.</p> - -<p>This tendency to treat the superior pedagogue too seriously—to view -him as, <i>ipso facto</i>, a learned man, and one thus capable of conveying -learning to others—is supported by the circumstance that he so views -himself, and is, in fact, very pretentious and even bombastic. Nearly -all discussions of the educational problem, at least in the United -States, are carried on by schoolmasters or ex-schoolmasters—for -example, college presidents, deans, and other such<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> magnificoes—and so -they assume it to be axiomatic that such fellows are genuine bearers -of the enlightenment, and hence capable of transmitting it to others. -This is true sometimes, as I have said, but certainly not usually. -The average high-school or college pedagogue is not one who has been -selected because of his uncommon knowledge; he is simply one who has -been stuffed with formal ideas and taught to do a few conventional -intellectual tricks. Contact with him, far from being inspiring to -any youth of alert mentality, is really quite depressing; his point -of view is commonplace and timorous; his best thought is no better -than that of any other fourth-rate professional man, say a dentist or -an advertisement writer. Thus it is idle to talk of him as if he were -a Socrates, an Aristotle, or even a Leschetizky. He is actually much -more nearly related to a barber or a lieutenant of marines. A worthy -man, industrious and respectable—but don’t expect too much of him. To -ask him to struggle out of his puddle of safe platitudes and plunge -into the whirlpool of surmise and speculation that carries on the -fragile shallop of human progress—to do this is as absurd as to ask a -neighborhood doctor to undertake major surgery.</p> - -<p>In the United States his low intellectual status is kept low, not -only by the meager rewards of his trade in a country where money is -greatly sought and esteemed, but also by the democratic theory of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> -education—that is, by the theory that mere education can convert a -peasant into an intellectual aristocrat, with all of the peculiar -superiorities of an aristocrat—in brief, that it is possible to make -purses out of sow’s ears. The intellectual collapse of the American -<i>Gelehrten</i> during the late war—a collapse so nearly unanimous -that those who did not share it attained to a sort of immortality -overnight—was perhaps largely due to this error. Who were these -bawling professors, so pathetically poltroonish and idiotic? In an -enormous number of cases they were simply peasants in frock-coats—oafs -from the farms and villages of Iowa, Kansas, Vermont, Alabama, -the Dakotas and other such backward states, horribly stuffed with -standardized learning in some fresh-water university, and then set to -teaching. To look for a civilized attitude of mind in such Strassburg -geese is to look for honor in a valet; to confuse them with scholars -is to confuse the Knights of Pythias with the Knights Hospitaller. -In brief, the trouble with them was that they had no sound tradition -behind them, that they had not learned to think clearly and decently, -that they were not gentlemen. The youth with a better background -behind him, passing through an American university, seldom acquires -any yearning to linger as a teacher. The air is too thick for him; -the rewards are too trivial; the intrigues are too old-maidish and -degrading. Thus the chairs, even<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> in the larger universities, tend -to be filled more and more by yokels who have got themselves what is -called an education only by dint of herculean effort. Exhausted by the -cruel process, they are old men at 26 or 28, and so, hugging their -Ph.D’s, they sink into convenient instructorships, and end at 60 as -<i>ordentliche Professoren.</i> The social status of the American pedagogue -helps along the process. Unlike in Europe, where he has a secure and -honorable position, he ranks, in the United States, somewhere between -a Methodist preacher and a prosperous brick-yard owner—certainly -clearly below the latter. Thus the youth of civilized upbringings -feels that it would be stooping a bit to take up the rattan. But the -plow-hand obviously makes a step upward, and is hence eager for the -black gown. Thereby a vicious circle is formed. The plow-hand, by -entering the ancient guild, drags it down still further, and so makes -it increasingly difficult to snare apprentices from superior castes.</p> - -<p>A glance at “Who’s Who in America” offers a good deal of support -for all this theorizing. There was a time when the typical American -professor came from a small area in New England—for generations the -seat of a high literacy, and even of a certain austere civilization. -But to-day he comes from the region of silos, revivals, and saleratus. -Behind him there is absolutely no tradition of aristocratic<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> aloofness -and urbanity, or even of mere civilized decency. He is a bind by birth, -and he carries the smell of the dunghill into the academic grove—and -not only the smell, but also some of the dung itself. What one looks -for in such men is dullness, superficiality, a great credulity, an -incapacity for learning anything save a few fly-blown rudiments, a -passionate yielding to all popular crazes, a malignant distrust of -genuine superiority, a huge megalomania. These are precisely the -things that one finds in the typical American pedagogue of the new -dispensation. He is not only a numskull; he is also a boor. In the -university president he reaches his heights. Here we have a so-called -learned man who spends his time making speeches before chautauquas, -chambers of commerce and Rotary Clubs, and flattering trustees who run -both universities and street-railways, and cadging money from such men -as Rockefeller and Carnegie.</p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>III</h4> - - -<p>The same educational fallacy which fills the groves of learning -with such dunces causes a huge waste of energy and money on lower -levels—those, to wit, of the secondary schools. The theory behind the -lavish multiplication of such schools is that they outfit the children -of the mob with the materials of reasoning, and inculcate in them a -habit of indulging<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> in it. I have never been able to discover any -evidence in support of that theory. The common people of America—at -least the white portion of them—are rather above the world’s average -in literacy, but there is no sign that they have acquired thereby any -capacity for weighing facts or comparing ideas. The school statistics -show that the average member of the American Legion can read and -write after a fashion, and is able to multiply eight by seven after -four trials, but they tell us nothing about his actual intelligence. -The returns of the Army itself, indeed, indicate that he is stupid -almost beyond belief—that there is at least an even chance that he -is a moron. Is such a fellow appreciably superior to the villein of -the Middle Ages? Sometimes I am tempted to doubt it. I suspect, for -example, that the belief in witchcraft is still almost as widespread -among the plain people of the United States, at least outside the -large cities, as it was in Europe in the year 1500. In my own state -of Mary-land all of the negroes and mulattoes believe absolutely in -witches, and so do most of the whites. The belief in ghosts penetrates -to quite high levels. I know very few native-born Americans, indeed, -who reject it without reservation. One constantly comes upon grave -defenses of spiritism in some form or other by men theoretically of -learning; in the two houses of Congress it would be difficult to -muster<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> fifty men willing to denounce the thing publicly. It would -not only be politically dangerous for them to do so; it would also go -against their consciences.</p> - -<p>What is always forgotten is that the capacity for knowledge of the -great masses of human blanks is very low—that, no matter how adroitly -pedagogy tackles them with its technical sorceries, it remains a -practical impossibility to teach them anything beyond reading and -writing, and the most elementary arithmetic. Worse, it is impossible -to make any appreciable improvement in their congenitally ignoble -tastes, and so they devote even the paltry learning that they acquire -to degrading uses. If the average American read only the newspapers, -as is frequently alleged, it would be bad enough, but the truth is -that he reads only the most imbecile <i>parts</i> of the newspapers. -Nine-tenths of the matter in a daily paper of the better sort is almost -as unintelligible to him as the theory of least squares. The words -lie outside his vocabulary; the ideas are beyond the farthest leap of -his intellect. It is, indeed, a sober fact that even an editorial in -the New York <i>Times</i> is probably incomprehensible to all Americans -save a small minority—and not, remember, on the ground that it is too -nonsensical but on the ground that it is too subtle. The same sort of -mind that regards Rubinstein’s Melody in F as too “classical” to be -agreeable is also stumped by the most transparent English.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p> - -<p>Like most other professional writers I get a good many letters from my -customers. Complaints, naturally, are more numerous than compliments; -it is only indignation that can induce the average man to brave the -ardors of pen and ink. Well, the complaint that I hear most often is -that my English is unintelligible—that it is too full of “hard” words. -I can imagine nothing more astounding. My English is actually almost -as bald and simple as the English of a college yell. My sentences are -short and plainly constructed: I resolutely cultivate the most direct -manner of statement; my vocabulary is deliberately composed of the -words of everyday. Nevertheless, a great many of my readers in my own -country find reading me an uncomfortably severe burden upon their -linguistic and intellectual resources. These readers are certainly -not below the American average in intelligence; on the contrary, they -must be a good deal above the average, for they have at least got to -the point where they are willing to put out of the safe harbor of the -obvious and respectable, and to brave the seas where more or less -novel ideas rage and roar. Think of what the ordinary newspaper reader -would make of my compositions! There is, in fact, no need to think; I -have tried them on him. His customary response, when, by mountebankish -devices, I forced him to read—or, at all events, to try to read—, was -to demand resolutely<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> that the guilty newspaper cease printing me, and -to threaten to bring the matter to the attention of the <i>Polizei.</i> I do -not exaggerate in the slightest; I tell the literal truth.</p> - -<p>It is such idiots that the little red school-house operates upon, in -the hope of unearthing an occasional first-rate man. Is that hope -ever fulfilled? Despite much testimony to the effect that it is, I am -convinced that it really isn’t. First-rate men are never begotten by -Knights of Pythias; the notion that they sometimes are is due to an -optical delusion. When they appear in obscure and ignoble circles it -is no more than a proof that only an extremely wise sire knows his own -son. Adultery, in brief, is one of nature’s devices for keeping the -lowest orders of men from sinking to the level of downright simians: -sometimes for a few brief years in youth, their wives and daughters are -comely—and now and then the baron drinks more than he ought to. But it -is foolish to argue that the gigantic machine of popular education is -needed to rescue such hybrids from their environment. The truth is that -all the education rammed into the average pupil in the average American -public school could be acquired by the v larva of any reasonably -intelligent man in no more than six weeks of ordinary application, and -that where schools are unknown it actually <i>is</i> so acquired. A bright -child, in fact, can learn to read and write<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> without any save the most -casual aid a great deal faster than it can learn to read and write in a -class-room, where the difficulties of the stupid retard it enormously -and it is further burdened by the crazy formulæ invented by pedagogues. -And once it can read and write, it is just as well equipped to acquire -further knowledge as ninetenths of the teachers it will subsequently -encounter in school or college.</p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>IV</h4> - - -<p>I know a good many men of great learning—that is, men born with an -extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, -they tell me that they can’t recall learning anything of any value in -school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was -to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already -acquired independently—and not infrequently the determination was made -clumsily and inaccurately. In my own nonage I had a great desire to -acquire knowledge in certain limited directions, to wit, those of the -physical sciences. Before I was ever permitted, by the regulations of -the secondary seminary I was penned in, to open a chemistry book I had -learned a great deal of chemistry by the simple process of reading the -texts and then going through the processes described. When, at last, -I was introduced to chemistry officially, I found the teaching of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> -it appalling. The one aim of that teaching, in fact, seemed to be to -first purge me of what I already knew and then refill me with the same -stuff in a formal, doltish, unintelligible form. My experience with -physics was even worse. I knew nothing about it when I undertook its -study in class, for that was before the days when physics swallowed -chemistry. Well, it was taught so abominably that it immediately became -incomprehensible to me, and hence extremely; distasteful, and to this -day I know nothing about it. Worse, it remains unpleasant to me, and so -I am shut off from the interesting and useful knowledge that I might -otherwise acquire by reading.</p> - -<p>One extraordinary teacher I remember who taught me something: a teacher -of mathematics. I had a dislike for that science, and knew little about -it. Finally, my neglect of it brought me to bay: in transferring from -one school to another I found that I was hopelessly short in algebra. -What was needed, of course, was not an actual knowledge of algebra, -but simply the superficial smattering needed to pass an examination. -The teacher that I mention, observing my distress, generously offered -to fill me with that smattering after school hours. He got the whole -year’s course into me in exactly six lessons of half an hour each. -And how? More accurately, why? Simply because he was an algebra -fanatic—because he believed that algebra was not only a science of -the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> utmost importance, but also one of the greatest fascination. He -was the penmanship professor of years ago, lifted to a higher level. -A likable and plausible man, he convinced me in twenty minutes that -ignorance of algebra was as calamitous, socially and intellectually, -as ignorance of table manners—that acquiring its elements was as -necessary as washing behind the ears. So I fell upon the book and -gulped it voraciously, greatly to the astonishment of my father, -whose earlier mathematical teaching had failed to set me off because -it was too pressing—because it bombarded me, not when I was penned -in a school and so inclined to make the best of it, but when I had -got through a day’s schooling, and felt inclined to play. To this -day I comprehend the binomial theorem, a very rare accomplishment in -an author. For many years, indeed, I was probably the only American -newspaper editor who knew what it was.</p> - -<p>Two other teachers of that school I remember pleasantly as fellows -whose pedagogy profited me—both, it happens, were drunken and -disreputable men. One taught me to chew tobacco, an art that has done -more to give me an evil name, perhaps, than even my Socinianism. The -other introduced me to Shakespeare, Congreve, Wycherly, Marlowe and -Sheridan, and so filled me with that taste for coarseness which now -offends so many of my customers, lay and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> clerical. Neither ever -came to a dignified position in academic circles. One abandoned -pedagogy for the law, became involved in causes of a dubious nature, -and finally disappeared into the shades which engulf third-rate -attorneys. The other went upon a fearful drunk one Christmastide, -got himself shanghaied on the water-front and is supposed to have -fallen overboard from a British tramp, bound east for Cardiff. At all -events, he has never been heard from since. Two evil fellows, and -yet I hold their memories in affection, and believe that they were -the best teachers I ever had. For in both there was something a good -deal more valuable than mere pedagogical skill and diligence, and -even more valuable than correct demeanor, and that was a passionate -love of sound literature. This love, given reasonably receptive soil, -they knew how to communicate, as a man can nearly always communicate -whatever moves him profoundly. Neither ever made the slightest effort -to “teach” literature, as the business is carried on by the usual idiot -schoolmaster. Both had a vast contempt for the textbooks that were -official in their school, and used to entertain the boys by pointing -out the nonsense in them. Both were full of derisory objections to the -principal heroes of such books in those days: Scott, Irving, Pope, Jane -Austen, Dickens, Trollope, Tennyson. But both, discoursing in their -disorderly way upon heroes of their own,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> were magnificently eloquent -and persuasive. The boy who could listen to one of them intoning -Whitman and stand unmoved was a dull fellow indeed. The boy who could -resist the other’s enthusiasm for the old essayists was intellectually -deaf, dumb and blind.</p> - -<p>I often wonder if their expoundings of their passions and prejudices -would have been half so charming if they had been wholly respectable -men, like their colleagues of the school faculty. It is not likely. A -healthy boy is in constant revolt against the sort of men who surround -him at school. Their puerile pedantries, their Christian Endeavor -respectability, their sedentary pallor, their curious preference for -the dull and uninteresting, their general air of so many Y. M. C. A. -secretaries—these things infallibly repel the youth who is above -milksoppery. In every boys’ school the favorite teacher is one who -occasionally swears like a cavalryman, or is reputed to keep a jug in -his room, or is known to receive a scented note every morning. Boys are -good judges of men, as girls are good judges of women. It is not by -accident that most of them, at some time or other, long to be cowboys -or ice-wagon drivers, and that none of them, not obviously diseased -in mind, ever longs to be a Sunday-school superintendent. Put that -judgment to a simple test. What would become of a nation in which all -of the men were, at heart, Sunday-school<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> superintendents—or Y. M. C. -A. secretaries, or pedagogues? Imagine it in conflict with a nation -of cowboys and ice-wagon drivers. Which would be the stronger, and -which would be the more intelligent, resourceful, enterprising and -courageous?</p> - -<hr class="chap"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a id="XIV_TYPES_OF_MEN">XIV. TYPES OF MEN</a></h4> - - - -<h4>1</h4> - -<h4><i>The Romantic</i></h4> - - -<p>There is a variety of man whose eye inevitably exaggerates, whose -ear inevitably hears more than the band plays, whose imagination -inevitably doubles and triples the news brought in by his five senses. -He is the enthusiast, the believer, the romantic. He is the sort of -fellow who, if he were a bacteriologist, would report the streptococcus -pyogenes to be as large as a St. Bernard dog, as intelligent as -Socrates, as beautiful as Beauvais Cathedral and as respectable as a -Yale professor.</p> - - - -<h4>2</h4> - -<h4><i>The Skeptic</i></h4> - - -<p>No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an -idea absolutely, but not in a man. In the highest confidence there -is always a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> flavor of doubt—a feeling, half instinctive and half -logical, that, after all, the scoundrel <i>may</i> have something up his -sleeve. This doubt, it must be obvious, is always more than justified, -for no man is worthy of unlimited reliance—his treason, at best, only -waits for sufficient temptation. The trouble with the world is not that -men are too suspicious in this direction, but that they tend to be -too confiding—that they still trust themselves too far to other men, -even after bitter experience. Women, I believe, are measurably less -sentimental, in this as in other things. No married woman ever trusts -her husband absolutely, nor does she ever act as if she <i>did</i> trust -him. Her utmost confidence is as wary as an American pick-pocket’s -confidence that the policeman on the beat will stay bought.</p> - - - -<h4>3</h4> - -<h4><i>The Believer</i></h4> - - -<p>Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence -of the improbable. Or, psychoanalytically, as a wish neurose. There -is thus a flavor of the pathological in it; it goes beyond the normal -intellectual process and passes into the murky domain of transcendental -metaphysics. A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never -had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> -ass: he is actually ill. Worse, he is incurable, for disappointment, -being essentially an objective phenomenon, cannot permanently affect -his subjective infirmity. His faith takes on the virulence of a chronic -infection. What he usually says, in substance, is this: “Let us trust -in God, <i>who has always fooled us in the past</i></p>.” - - - -<h4>4</h4> - -<h4><i>The Worker</i></h4> - - -<p>All democratic theories, whether Socialistic or bourgeois, necessarily -take in some concept of the dignity of labor. If the have-not were -deprived of this delusion that his sufferings in the sweat-shop are -somehow laudable and agreeable to God, there would be little left in -his ego save a belly-ache. Nevertheless, a delusion is a delusion, -and this is one of the worst. It arises out of confusing the pride of -workmanship of the artist with the dogged, painful docility of the -machine. The difference is important and enormous. If he got no reward -whatever, the artist would go on working just the same; his actual -reward, in fact, is often so little that he almost starves. But suppose -a garment-worker got nothing for his labor: would he go on working -just the same? Can one imagine him submitting voluntarily to hardship -and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> sore want that he might express his soul in 200 more pairs of -pantaloons?</p> - - - -<h4>5</h4> - -<h4><i>The Physician</i></h4> - - -<p>Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to -find a hygienist who does not debase his theory of the healthful with a -theory of the virtuous. The whole hygienic art, indeed, resolves itself -into an ethical exhortation, and, in the sub-department of sex, into a -puerile and belated advocacy of asceticism. This brings it, at the end, -into diametrical conflict with medicine proper. The aim of medicine is -surely not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard and rescue them -from the consequences of their vices. The true physician does not -preach repentance; he offers absolution.</p> - - - -<h4>6</h4> - -<h4><i>The Scientist</i></h4> - - -<p>The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and -inaccurate. Consider, for example, two of them: mere insatiable -curiosity and the desire to do good. The latter is put high above the -former, and yet it is the former that moves some<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> of the greatest -men the human race has yet produced: the scientific investigators. -What animates a great pathologist? Is it the desire to cure disease, -to save life? Surely not, save perhaps as an afterthought. He is too -intelligent, deep down in his soul, to see anything praiseworthy in -such a desire. He knows by life-long observation that his discoveries -will do quite as much harm as good, that a thousand scoundrels will -profit to every honest man, that the folks who most deserve to be saved -will probably be the last to be saved. No man of self-respect could -devote himself to pathology on such terms. What actually moves him is -his unquenchable curiosity—his boundless, almost pathological thirst -to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret, to find out what has -not been found out before. His prototype is not the liberator releasing -slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but the dog sniffing -tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes. And yet he is one of -the greatest and noblest of men. And yet he stands in the very front -rank of the race.</p> - - - -<h4>7</h4> - -<h4><i>The Business Man</i></h4> - - -<p>It is, after all, a sound instinct which puts business below the -professions, and burdens the business man with a social inferiority -that he can never quite<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> shake off, even in America. The business man, -in fact, acquiesces in this assumption of his inferiority, even when he -protests against it. He is the only man who is forever apologizing for -his occupation. He is the only one who always seeks to make it appear, -when he attains the object of his labors, <i>i. e.</i>, the making of a -great deal of money, that it was not the object of his labors.</p> - - - -<h4>8</h4> - -<h4><i>The King</i></h4> - - -<p>Perhaps the most valuable asset that any man can have in this world -is a naturally superior air, a talent for sniffishness and reserve. -The generality of men are always greatly impressed by it, and accept -it freely as a proof of genuine merit. One need but disdain them to -gain their respect. Their congenital stupidity and timorousness make -them turn to any leader who offers, and the sign of leadership that -they recognize most readily is that which shows itself in external -manner. This is the true explanation of the survival of monarchism, -which invariably lives through its perennial deaths. It is the popular -theory, at least in America, that monarchism is a curse fastened upon -the common people from above—that the monarch saddles it upon them -without their consent and against their will. The theory<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> is without -support in the facts. Kings are created, not by kings, but by the -people. They visualize one of the ineradicable needs of all third-rate -men, which means of nine men out of ten, and that is the need of -something to venerate, to bow down to, to follow and obey.</p> - -<p>The king business begins to grow precarious, not when kings reach out -for greater powers, but when they begin to resign and renounce their -powers. The czars of Russia were quite secure upon the throne so long -as they ran Russia like a reformatory, but the moment they began to -yield to liberal ideas, <i>i. e.</i>, by emancipating the serfs and setting -up constitutionalism, their doom was sounded. The people saw this -yielding as a sign of weakness; they began to suspect that the czars, -after all, were not actually superior to other men. And so they turned -to other and antagonistic leaders, all as cocksure as the czars had -once been, and in the course of time they were stimulated to rebellion. -These leaders, or, at all events, the two or three most resolute and -daring of them, then undertook to run the country in the precise way -that it had been run in the palmy days of the monarchy. That is to say, -they seized and exerted irresistible power and laid claim to infallible -wisdom. History will date their downfall from the day they began to -ease their pretensions. Once they confessed, even by implication, that -they were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> merely human, the common people began to turn against them.</p> - - - -<h4>9</h4> - -<h4><i>The Average Man</i></h4> - - -<p>It is often urged against the so-called scientific Socialists, with -their materialistic conception of history, that they overlook certain -spiritual qualities that are independent of wage scales and metabolism. -These qualities, it is argued, color the aspirations and activities -of civilized man quite as much as they are colored by his material -condition, and so make it impossible to consider him simply as an -economic machine. As examples, the anti-Marxians cite patriotism, -pity, the æsthetic sense and the yearning to know God. Unluckily, -the examples are ill-chosen. Millions of men are quite devoid of -patriotism, pity and the æsthetic sense, and have no very active desire -to know God. Why don’t the anti-Marxians cite a spiritual quality -that is genuinely universal? There is one readily to hand. I allude -to cowardice. It is, in one form or other, visible in every human -being; it almost serves to mark off the human race from all the other -higher animals. Cowardice, I believe, is at the bottom of the whole -caste system, the foundation of every organized society, including -the most democratic. In order to escape going to war<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> himself, the -peasant was willing to give the warrior certain privileges—and out -of those privileges has grown the whole structure of civilization. -Go back still further. Property arose out of the fact that a few -relatively courageous men were able to accumulate more possessions than -whole hordes of cowardly men, and, what is more, to retain them after -accumulating them.</p> - - - -<h4>10</h4> - -<h4><i>The Truth-Seeker</i></h4> - - -<p>The man who boasts that he habitually tells the truth is simply a man -with no respect for it. It is not a thing to be thrown about loosely, -like small change; it is something to be cherished and hoarded, and -disbursed only when absolutely necessary. The smallest atom of truth -represents some man’s bitter toil and agony; for every ponderable chunk -of it there is a brave truth-seeker’s grave upon some lonely ash-dump -and a soul roasting in hell.</p> - - - -<h4>11</h4> - -<h4><i>The Pacifist</i></h4> - - -<p>Nietzsche, in altering Schopenhauer’s will-to-live to will-to-power, -probably fell into a capital error. The truth is that the thing the -average man seeks in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> life is not primarily power, but peace; all -his struggle is toward a state of tranquillity and equilibrium; what -he always dreams of is a state in which he will have to do battle no -longer. This dream plainly enters into his conception of Heaven; he -thinks of himself, <i>post mortem</i>, browsing about the celestial meadows -like a cow in a safe pasture. A few extraordinary men enjoy combat at -all times, and all men are inclined toward it at orgiastic moments, -but the race as a race craves peace, and man belongs among the more -timorous, docile and unimaginative animals, along with the deer, the -horse and the sheep. This craving for peace is vividly displayed in -the ages-long conflict of the sexes. Every normal woman wants to be -married, for the plain reason that marriage offers her security. And -every normal man avoids marriage as long as possible, for the equally -plain reason that marriage invades and threatens <i>his</i> security.</p> - - - -<h4>12</h4> - -<h4><i>The Relative</i></h4> - - -<p>The normal man’s antipathy to his relatives, particularly of the -second degree, is explained by psychologists in various tortured -and improbable ways. The true explanation, I venture, is a good -deal simpler. It lies in the plain fact that every man sees in his -relatives, and especially in his cousins, a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> series of grotesque -caricatures of himself. They exhibit his qualities in disconcerting -augmentation or diminution; they fill him with a disquieting feeling -that this, perhaps, is the way he appears to the world and so they -wound his <i>amour propre</i> and give him intense discomfort. To admire his -relatives whole-heartedly a man must be lacking in the finer sort of -self-respect.</p> - - - -<h4>13</h4> - -<h4><i>The Friend</i></h4> - - -<p>One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that -friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that -any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable. The fact is -that a man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just -as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his -epistemology. They become threadbare, shabby, pumped-up, irritating, -depressing. They convert themselves from living realities into -moribund artificialities, and stand in sinister opposition to freedom, -self-respect and truth. It is as corrupting to preserve them after -they have grown fly-blown and hollow as it is to keep up the forms -of passion after passion itself is a corpse. Every act and attitude -that they involve thus becomes an act of hypocrisy, an attitude -of dishonesty....<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> A prudent man, remembering that life is short, -gives an hour or two, now and then, to a critical examination of his -friendships. He weighs them, edits them, tests the metal of them. A -few he retains, perhaps with radical changes in their terms. But the -majority he expunges from his minutes and tries to forget, as he tries -to forget the cold and clammy loves of year before last.</p> - -<hr class="chap"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a id="XV_THE_DISMAL_SCIENCE">XV. THE DISMAL SCIENCE</a></h4> - - -<p>Every man, as the Psalmist says, to his own poison, or poisons, as the -case may be. One of mine, following hard after theology, is political -economy. What! Political economy, that dismal science? Well, why not? -Its dismalness is largely a delusion, due to the fact that its chief -ornaments, at least in our own day, are university professors. The -professor must be an obscurantist or he is nothing; he has a special -and unmatchable talent for dullness; his central aim is not to expose -the truth clearly, but to exhibit his profundity, his esotericity—in -brief, to stagger sophomores and other professors. The notion that -German is a gnarled and unintelligible language arises out of the -circumstance that it is so much written by professors. It took a rebel -member of the clan, swinging to the antipodes in his unearthly treason, -to prove its explicitness, its resiliency, it downright beauty. -But Nietzsches are few, and so German remains soggy, and political -economy continues to be swathed in dullness. As I say, however, that -dullness is only superficial. There is no more engrossing book in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> the -English language than Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations”; surely the -eighteenth century produced nothing that can be read with greater ease -to-day. Nor is there any inherent reason why even the most technical -divisions of its subject should have gathered cobwebs with the passing -of the years. Taxation, for example, is eternally lively; it concerns -ninetenths of us more directly than either smallpox or golf, and has -just as much drama in it; moreover, it has been mellowed and made gay -by as many gaudy, preposterous theories. As for foreign exchange, it is -almost as romantic as young love, and quite as resistent to formulæ. -Do the professors make an autopsy of it? Then read the occasional -treatises of some professor of it who is not a professor, say, Garet -Garrett or John Moody.</p> - -<p>Unluckily, Garretts and Moodys are almost as rare as Nietzsches, -and so the amateur of such things must be content to wrestle with -the professors, seeking the violet of human interest beneath the -avalanche of their graceless parts of speech. A hard business, I -daresay, to one not practiced, and to its hardness there is added -the disquiet of a doubt. That doubt does not concern itself with the -doctrine preached, at least not directly. There may be in it nothing -intrinsically dubious; on the contrary, it may appear as sound as the -binomial theorem, as well supported as the dogma of infant damnation. -But all the time<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> a troubling question keeps afloat in the air, and -that is briefly this: What would happen to the learned professors if -they took the other side? In other words, to what extent is political -economy, as professors expound and practice it, a free science, in -the sense that mathematics and physiology are free sciences? At what -place, if any, is speculation pulled up by a rule that beyond lies -treason, anarchy and disaster? These questions, I hope I need not add, -are not inspired by any heterodoxy in my own black heart. I am, in -many fields, a flouter of the accepted revelation and hence immoral, -but the field of economics is not one of them. Here, indeed, I know -of no man who is more orthodox than I am. I believe that the present -organization of society, as bad as it is, is better than any other -that has ever been proposed. I reject all the sure cures in current -agitation, from government ownership to the single tax. I am in favor -of free competition in all human enterprises, and to the utmost limit. -I admire successful scoundrels, and shrink from Socialists as I -shrink from Methodists. But all the same, the aforesaid doubt pursues -me when I plow through the solemn disproofs and expositions of the -learned professors of economics, and that doubt will not down. It is -not logical or evidential, but purely psychological. And what it is -grounded on is an unshakable belief that no man’s opinion is worth a -hoot, however<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> well supported and maintained, so long as he is not -absolutely free, if the spirit moves him, to support and maintain -the exactly contrary opinion. In brief, human reason is a weak and -paltry thing so long as it is not wholly free reason. The fact lies in -its very nature, and is revealed by its entire history. A man may be -perfectly honest in a contention, and he may be astute and persuasive -in maintaining it, but the moment the slightest compulsion to maintain -it is laid upon him, the moment the slightest external reward goes with -his partisanship or the slightest penalty with its abandonment, then -there appears a defect in his ratiocination that is more deep-seated -than any error in fact and more destructive than any conscious and -deliberate bias. He may seek the truth and the truth only, and bring up -his highest talents and diligence to the business, but always there is -a specter behind his chair, a warning in his ear. Always it is safer -and more hygienic for him to think one way than to think another way, -and in that bald fact there is excuse enough to hold his whole chain of -syllogisms in suspicion. He may be earnest, he may be honest, but he is -not free, and if he is not free, he is not anything.</p> - -<p>Well, are the reverend professors of economics free? With the highest -respect, I presume to question it. Their colleagues of archeology may -be reasonably called free, and their colleagues of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> bacteriology, -and those of Latin grammar and sidereal astronomy, and those of many -another science and mystery, but when one comes to the faculty of -political economy one finds that freedom as plainly conditioned, though -perhaps not as openly, as in the faculty of theology. And for a plain -reason. Political economy, so to speak, hits the employers of the -professors where they live. It deals, not with ideas that affect those -employers only occasionally or only indirectly or only as ideas, but -with ideas that have an imminent and continuous influence upon their -personal welfare and security, and that affect profoundly the very -foundations of that social and economic structure upon which their -whole existence is based. It is, in brief, the science of the ways and -means whereby they have come to such estate, and maintain themselves -in such estate, that they are able to hire and boss professors. It -is the boat in which they sail down perilous waters—and they must -needs yell, or be more or less than human, when it is rocked. Now -and then that yell duly resounds in the groves of learning. One -remembers, for example, the trial, condemnation and execution of Prof. -Dr. Scott Nearing at the University of Pennsylvania, a seminary that -is highly typical, both in its staff and in its control. Nearing, I -have no doubt, was wrong in his notions—honestly, perhaps, but still -wrong. In so far as I heard them stated at the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> time, they seemed -to me to be hollow and of no validity. He has since discharged them -from the chautauquan stump, and at the usual hinds. They have been -chiefly accepted and celebrated by men I regard as asses. But Nearing -was not thrown out of the University of Pennsylvania, angrily and -ignominiously, because he was honestly wrong, or because his errors -made him incompetent to prepare sophomores for their examinations; he -was thrown out because his efforts to get at the truth disturbed the -security and equanimity of the rich ignoranti who happened to control -the university, and because the academic slaves and satellites of -these shopmen were restive under his competition for the attention of -the student-body. In three words, he was thrown out because he was -not safe and sane and orthodox. Had his aberration gone in the other -direction, had he defended child labor as ardently as he denounced it -and denounced the minimum wage as ardently as he defended it, then he -would have been quite as secure in his post, for all his cavorting in -the newspapers, as Chancellor Day was at Syracuse.</p> - -<p>Now consider the case of the professors of economics, near and far, -who have <i>not</i> been thrown out. Who will say that the lesson of the -Nearing <i>débâcle</i> has been lost upon them? Who will say that the -potency of the wealthy men who command our universities—or most of -them—has not stuck in their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> minds? And who will say that, with this -sticking remembered, their arguments against Nearing’s so-called ideas -are as worthy of confidence and respect as they would be if they were -quite free to go over to Nearing’s side without damage? Who, indeed, -will give them full credit, even when they are right, so long as they -are hamstrung, nose-ringed and tied up in gilded pens? It seems to -me that these considerations are enough to cast a glow of suspicion -over the whole of American political economy, at least in so far -as it comes from college economists. And, in the main, it has that -source, for, barring a few brilliant journalists, all our economists -of any repute are professors. Many of them are able men, and most of -them are undoubtedly honest men, as honesty goes in the world, but -over practically every one of them there stands a board of trustees -with its legs in the stock market and its eyes on the established -order, and that board is ever alert for heresy in the science of its -being, and has ready means of punishing it, and a hearty enthusiasm -for the business. Not every professor, perhaps, may be sent straight -to the block, as Nearing was, but there are plenty of pillories and -guardhouses on the way, and every last pedagogue must be well aware of -it.</p> - -<p>Political economy, in so far as it is a science at all, was not pumped -up and embellished by any such academic clients and ticket-of-leave -men. It was put<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> on its legs by inquirers who were not only safe -from all dousing in the campus pump, but who were also free from -the mental timorousness and conformity which go inevitably with -school-teaching—in brief, by men of the world, accustomed to its -free air, its hospitality to originality and plain speaking. Adam -Smith, true enough, was once a professor, but he threw up his chair -to go to Paris, and there he met, not more professors, but all the -current enemies of professors—the Nearings and Henry Georges and Karl -Marxes of the time. And the book that he wrote was not orthodox, but -revolutionary. Consider the others of that bulk and beam: Bentham, -Ricardo, Mill and their like. Bentham held no post at the mercy of -bankers and tripe-sellers; he was a man of independent means, a lawyer -and politician, and a heretic in general practice. It is impossible -to imagine such a man occupying a chair at Harvard or Princeton. He -had a hand in too many pies: he was too rebellious and contumacious: -he had too little respect for authority, either academic or worldly. -Moreover, his mind was too wide for a professor; he could never remain -safely in a groove; the whole field of social organization invited his -inquiries and experiments. Ricardo? Another man of easy means and great -worldly experience—by academic standards, not even educated. To-day, -I daresay, such meager diplomas as he could show would not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> suffice to -get him an instructor’s berth in a fresh-water seminary in Iowa. As -for Mill, he was so well grounded by his father that he knew more, at -eighteen, than any of the universities could teach him, and his life -thereafter was the exact antithesis of that of a cloistered pedagogue. -Moreover, he was a heretic in religion and probably violated the Mann -act of those days—an offense almost as heinous, in a college professor -of economics, as giving three cheers for Prince Kropotkin.</p> - -<p>I might lengthen the list, but humanely refrain. The point is that -these early English economists were all perfectly free men, with -complete liberty to tell the truth as they saw it, regardless of -its orthodoxy or lack of orthodoxy. I do not say that the typical -American economist of to-day is not as honest, nor even that he -is not as diligent and competent, but I do say that he is not as -free—that penalties would come upon him for stating ideas that Smith -or Ricardo or Bentham or Mill, had he so desired, would have been free -to state without damage. And in that menace there is an ineradicable -criticism of the ideas that he does state, and it lingers even when -they are plausible and are accepted. In France and Germany, where the -universities and colleges are controlled by the state, the practical -effect of such pressure has been frequently demonstrated. In the former -country the violent debate over social and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> economic problems during -the quarter century before the war produced a long list of professors -cashiered for heterodoxy, headed by the names of Jean Jaurès and -Gustave Hervé. In Germany it needed no Nietzsche to point out the -deadening produced by this state control. Germany, in fact, got out -of it an entirely new species of economist—the state Socialist who -flirted with radicalism with one eye and kept the other upon his chair, -his salary and his pension.</p> - -<p>The Nearing case and the rebellions of various pedagogues elsewhere -show that we in America stand within the shadow of a somewhat similar -danger. In economics, as in the other sciences, we are probably -producing men who are as good as those on view in any other country. -They are not to be surpassed for learning and originality, and there is -no reason to believe that they lack honesty and courage. But honesty -and courage, as men go in the world, are after all merely relative -values. There comes a point at which even the most honest man considers -consequences, and even the most courageous looks before he leaps. The -difficulty lies in establishing the position of that point. So long as -it is in doubt, there will remain, too, the other doubt that I have -described. I rise in meeting, I repeat, not as a radical, but as one of -the most hunkerous of the orthodox. I can imagine nothing more dubious -in fact and wobbly in logic than some of the doctrines<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> that amateur -economists, chiefly Socialists, have set afloat in this country during -the past dozen years. I have even gone to the trouble of writing a book -against them; my convictions and instincts are all on the other side. -But I should be a great deal more comfortable in those convictions and -instincts if I were convinced that the learned professors were really -in full and absolute possession of academic freedom—if I could imagine -them taking the other tack now and then without damnation to their -jobs, their lecture dates, their book sales and their hides.</p> - -<hr class="chap"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a id="XVI_MATTERS_OF_STATE">XVI. MATTERS OF STATE</a></h4> - - - -<h4>1</h4> - -<h4><i>Le Contrat Social</i></h4> - - -<p>All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior -man: its one permanent object is to police him and cripple him. If -it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man -who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; -if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior -in every way against both. Thus one of its primary functions is to -regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and -as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat -originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential -change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous -man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for -himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. -Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he -lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> and so, if he -is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic -personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are. -Ludwig van Beethoven was certainly no politician. Nor was he a patriot. -Nor had he any democratic illusions in him: he held the Viennese in -even more contempt than he held the Hapsburgs. Nevertheless, I am -convinced that the sharp criticism of the Hapsburg government that -he used to loose in the cafés of Vienna had its effects—that some -of his ideas of 1818, after a century of germination, got themselves -translated into acts in 1918. Beethoven, like all other first-rate -men, greatly disliked the government he lived under. I add the names -of Goethe, Heine, Wagner and Nietzsche, to keep among Germans. That of -Bismarck might follow: he admired the Hohenzollern idea, as Carlyle -did, not the German people or the German administration. In his -“Errinerungen,” whenever he discusses the government that he was a part -of, he has difficulty keeping his contempt within the bounds of decorum.</p> - -<p>Nine times out of ten, it seems to me, the man who proposes a change -in the government he lives under, no matter how defective it may be, -is romantic to the verge of sentimentality. There is seldom, if ever, -any evidence that the kind of government he is unlawfully inclined -to would be any better than the government he proposes to supplant. -Political revolutions,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> in truth, do not often accomplish anything of -genuine value; their one undoubted effect is simply to throw out one -gang of thieves and put in another. After a revolution, of course, -the successful revolutionists always try to convince doubters that -they have achieved great things, and usually they hang any man who -denies it. But that surely doesn’t prove their case. In Russia, for -many years, the plain people were taught that getting rid of the Czar -would make them all rich and happy, but now that they have got rid of -him they are poorer and unhappier than ever before. The Germans, with -the Kaiser in exile, have discovered that a shoemaker turned statesman -is ten times as bad as a Hohenzollern. The Alsatians, having become -Frenchmen again after 48 years anxious wait, have responded to the boon -by becoming extravagant Germanomaniacs. The Tyrolese, though they hated -the Austrians, now hate the Italians enormously more. The Irish, having -rid themselves of the English after 700 years of struggle, instantly -discovered that government by Englishmen, compared to government by -Irishmen, was almost paradisiacal. Even the American colonies gained -little by their revolt in 1776. For twenty-five years after the -Revolution they were in far worse condition as free states than they -would have been as colonies. Their government was more expensive, -more inefficient, more dishonest, and more tyrannical. It was only -the gradual<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> material progress of the country that saved them from -starvation and collapse, and that material progress was due, not to the -virtues of their new government, but to the lavishness of nature. Under -the British hoof they would have got on just as well, and probably a -great deal better.</p> - -<p>The ideal government of all reflective men, from Aristotle to Herbert -Spencer, is one which lets the individual alone—one which barely -escapes being no government at all. This ideal, I believe, will be -realized in the world twenty or thirty centuries after I have passed -from these scenes and taken up my home in Hell.</p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>2</h4> - -<h4><i>On Minorities</i></h4> - - -<p>It is a commonplace of historical science that the forgotten worthies -who framed the Constitution of the United States had no belief in -democracy. Prof. Dr. Beard, in a slim, sad book, has laboriously proved -that most obvious of obviousities. Two prime objects are visible in the -Constitution, beautifully enshrouded in disarming words: to protect -property and to safeguard minorities—in brief, to hold the superior -few harmless against the inferior many. The first object is still -carried out, despite the effort of democratic law to make capital an -outlaw.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> The second, alas, has been defeated completely. What -is worse, it has been defeated in the very holy of holies of those -who sought to attain it, which is to say, in the funereal chamber -of the Supreme Court of the United States. Bit by bit this great -bench of master minds has gradually established the doctrine that -a minority in the Republic has no rights whatever. If they still -exist theoretically, as fossils surviving from better days, there is -certainly no machinery left for protecting and enforcing them. The -current majority, if it so desired to-morrow, could add an amendment to -the Constitution prohibiting the ancient Confederate vice of chewing -the compressed leaves of the tobacco plant <i>(Nicotiana tabacum)</i>; the -Supreme Court, which has long since forgotten the Bill of Rights, -would promptly issue a writ of <i>nihil obstat</i>, with a series of moral -reflections as <i>lagniappe.</i> More, the Supreme Court would as promptly -uphold a law prohibiting the chewing of gum <i>(Achras sapota)</i>—on -the ground that any unnecessary chewing, however harmless in itself, -might tempt great hordes of morons to chew tobacco. This is not a mere -torturing of sardonic theory: the thing has been actually done in the -case of Prohibition. The Eighteenth Amendment prohibits the sale of -intoxicating beverages; the Supreme Court has decided plainly that, in -order to enforce it, Congress also has the right to prohibit the sale -of beverages that are admittedly <i>not</i> intoxicating.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> It could, indeed, -specifically prohibit near-beer to-morrow, or any drink containing -malt or hops, however low in alcohol; the more extreme Prohibitionists -actually demand that it do so forthwith.</p> - -<p>Worse, a minority not only has no more inalienable rights in the United -States; it is not even lawfully entitled to be heard. This was well -established by the case of the Socialists elected to the New York -Assembly. What the voters who elected these Socialists asked for was -simply the privilege of choosing spokesmen to voice their doctrines in -a perfectly lawful and peaceable manner,—nothing more. This privilege -was denied them. In precisely the same way, the present national House -of Representatives, which happens to be Republican in complexion, might -expel all of its Democratic members. The voters who elected them would -have no redress. If the same men were elected again, or other men of -the same views, they might be expelled again. More, it would apparently -be perfectly constitutional for the majority in Congress to pass a -statute denying the use of the mails to the minority—that is, for the -Republicans to bar all Democratic papers from the mails. I do not toy -with mere theories. The thing has actually been done in the case of -the Socialists. Under the present law, indeed—upheld by the Supreme -Court—the Postmaster-General, without any further authority from -Congress, might deny the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> mails to all Democrats. Or to all Catholics. -Or to all single taxers. Or to all violoncellists.</p> - -<p>Yet more, a citizen who happens to belong to a minority is not even -safe in his person: he may be put into prison, and for very long -periods, for the simple offense of differing from the majority. This -happened, it will be recalled, in the case of Debs. Debs by no means -advised citizens subject to military duty, in time of war, to evade -that duty, as the newspapers of the time alleged. On the contrary, -he advised them to meet and discharge that duty. All he did was to -say that, even in time of war, he was against war—that he regarded -it as a barbarous method of settling disputes between nations. For -thus differing from the majority on a question of mere theory he was -sentenced to ten years in prison. The case of the three young Russians -arrested in New York was even more curious. These poor idiots were -jailed for the almost incredible crime of circulating purely academic -protests against making war upon a country with which the United States -was legally at peace, to wit, Russia. For this preposterous offense two -of them were sent to prison for fifteen years, and one, a girl, for -ten years, and the Supreme Court upheld their convictions. Here was a -plain case of proscription and punishment for a mere opinion. There was -absolutely no contention that the protest of the three prisoners could -have any practical result—<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>that it might, for example, destroy the -<i>morale</i> of American soldiers 6,000 miles away, and cut off from all -communication with the United States. The three victims were ordered -to be punished in that appalling manner simply because they ventured -to criticise an executive usurpation which happened, at the moment, -to have the support of public opinion, and particularly of the then -President of the United States and of the holders of Russian government -securities.</p> - -<p>It must be obvious, viewing such leading cases critically—and hundreds -like them might be cited—that the old rights of the free American, so -carefully laid down by the Bill of Rights, are now worth nothing. Bit -by bit, Congress and the State Legislatures have invaded and nullified -them, and to-day they are so flimsy that no lawyer not insane would -attempt to defend his client by bringing them up. Imagine trying to -defend a man denied the use of the mails by the Postmaster-General, -without hearing or even formal notice, on the ground that the -Constitution guarantees the right of free speech! The very catchpolls -in the courtroom would snicker. I say that the legislative arm is -primarily responsible for this gradual enslavement of the Americano; -the truth is, of course, that the executive and judicial arms are -responsible to a scarcely less degree. Our law has not kept pace with -the development of our bureaucracy;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> there is no machinery provided for -curbing its excesses. In Prussia, in the old days, there were special -courts for the purpose, and a citizen oppressed by the police or by -any other public official could get relief and redress. The guilty -functionary could be fined, mulcted in damages, demoted, cashiered, -or even jailed. But in the United States to-day there are no such -tribunals. A citizen attacked by the Postmaster-General simply has -no redress whatever; the courts have refused, over and over again, -to interfere save in cases of obvious fraud. Nor is there, it would -seem, any remedy for the unconstitutional acts of Prohibition agents. -Some time ago, when Senator Stanley, of Kentucky, tried to have a law -passed forbidding them to break into a citizen’s house in violation of -the Bill of Rights, the Prohibitionists mustered up their serfs in the -Senate against him, and he was voted down.</p> - -<p>The Supreme Court, had it been so disposed, might have put a stop to -all this sinister buffoonery long ago. There was a time, indeed, when -it was alert to do so. That was during the Civil War. But since then -the court has gradually succumbed to the prevailing doctrine that the -minority has no rights that the majority is bound to respect. As it -is at present constituted, it shows little disposition to go to the -rescue of the harassed freeman. When property is menaced it displays -a laudable diligence, but when it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> comes to the mere rights of the -citizen it seems hopelessly inclined to give the prosecution the -benefit of every doubt. Two justices commonly dissent—two out of nine. -They hold the last switch-trench of the old constitutional line. When -they depart to realms of bliss the Bill of Rights will be buried with -them.</p> - -<hr class="chap"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a id="XVII_REFLECTIONS_ON_THE_DRAMA">XVII. REFLECTIONS ON THE DRAMA</a></h4> - - -<p>The drama is the most democratic of the art forms, and perhaps the -only one that may legitimately bear the label. Painting, sculpture, -music and literature, so far as they show any genuine æsthetic or -intellectual content at all, are not for crowds, but for selected -individuals, mostly with bad kidneys and worse morals, and three of the -four are almost always enjoyed in actual solitude. Even architecture -and religious ritual, though they are publicly displayed, make their -chief appeal to man as individual, not to man as mass animal. One goes -into a church as part of a crowd, true enough, but if it be a church -that has risen above mere theological disputation to the beauty of -ceremonial, one is, even in theory, alone with the Lord God Jehovah. -And if, passing up Fifth Avenue in the 5 o’clock throng, one pauses -before St. Thomas’s to drink in the beauty of that archaic façade, -one’s drinking is almost sure to be done <i>a cappella;</i> of the other -passers-by, not one in a thousand so much as glances at it.</p> - -<p>But the drama, as representation, is inconceivable<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> save as a show -for the mob, and so it has to take on protective coloration to -survive. It must make its appeal, not to individuals as such, nor -even to individuals as units in the mob, but to the mob as mob—a -quite different thing, as Gustav Le Bon long ago demonstrated in his -“Psychologie des Foules.” Thus its intellectual content, like its -æsthetic form, must be within the mental grasp of the mob, and what is -more important, within the scope of its prejudices. <i>Per corollary</i>, -anything even remotely approaching an original idea, or an unpopular -idea, is foreign to it, and if it would make any impression at all, -abhorrent to it. The best a dramatist can hope to do is to give -poignant and arresting expression to an idea so simple that the average -man will grasp it at once, and so banal that he will approve it in the -next instant. The phrase “drama of ideas” thus becomes a mere phrase. -What is actually meant by it is “drama of platitudes.”</p> - -<p>So much for the theory. An appeal to the facts quickly substantiates -it. The more one looks into the so-called drama of ideas of the last -age—that is, into the acting drama—the more one is astounded by the -vacuity of its content. The younger Dumas’ “La Dame aux Camélias,” -the first of all the propaganda plays (it raised a stupendous pother -in 1852, the echoes of which yet roll), is based upon the sophomoric<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> -thesis that a prostitute is a human being like you and me, and suffers -the slings and arrows of the same sorrows, and may be potentially quite -as worthy of heaven. Augier’s “Le Mariage d’Olympe” (1854), another -sensation-making pioneer, is even hollower; its four acts are devoted -to rubbing in the revolutionary discovery that it is unwise for a young -man of good family to marry an elderly cocotte. Proceed now to Ibsen. -Here one finds the same tasteless platitudes—that it is unpleasant for -a wife to be treated as a doll; that professional patriots and town -boomers are frauds; that success in business is often grounded upon -a mere willingness to do what a man of honor is incapable of; that a -woman who continues to live with a debauched husband may expect to have -unhealthy children; that a joint sorrow tends to bring husband and wife -together; that a neurotic woman is apt to prefer death to maternity; -that a man of 55 is an ass to fall in love with a flapper of 17. Do I -burlesque? If you think so, turn to Ibsen’s “Nachgelassene Schriften” -and read his own statements of the ideas in his social dramas—read -his own succinct summaries of their theses. You will imagine yourself, -on more than one page, in the latest volume of mush by Orison Swett -Marden. Such “ideas” are what one finds in newspaper editorials, -speeches before Congress, sermons by evangelical divines—in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> -brief, in the literature expressly addressed to those persons whose -distinguishing mark is that ideas never enter their heads.</p> - -<p>Ibsen himself, an excellent poet and a reflective man, was under no -delusions about his “dramas of ideas.” It astounded him greatly when -the sentimental German middle-classes hailed “Ein Puppenheim” as a -revolutionary document; he protested often and bitterly against being -mistaken for a prophet of feminism. His own interest in this play -and in those that followed it was chiefly technical; he was trying -to displace the well-made play of Scribe and company with something -simpler, more elastic and more hospitable to character. He wrote -“Ghosts” to raise a laugh against the fools who had seen something -novel and horrible in the idea of “A Doll’s House”; he wanted to prove -to them that that idea was no more than a platitude. Soon afterward he -became thoroughly disgusted with the whole “drama of ideas.” In “The -Wild Duck” he cruelly burlesqued it, and made a low-comedy Ibsenist his -chief butt. In “Hedda Gabler” he played a joke on the Ibsen fanatics by -fashioning a first-rate drama out of the oldest, shoddiest materials -of Sardou, Feuillet, and even Meilhac and Halévy. And beginning with -“Little Eyolf” he threw the “drama of ideas” overboard forever, and -took to mysticism. What could be more comical than the efforts of -critical talmudists<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> to read a thesis into “When We Dead Awaken”? I -have put in many a gay hour perusing their commentaries. Ibsen, had -he lived, would have roared over them—as he roared over the effort -to inject portentous meanings into “The Master Builder,” at bottom no -more than a sentimental epitaph to a love affair that he himself had -suffered at 60.</p> - -<p>Gerhart Hauptmann, another dramatist of the first rank, has gone much -the same road. As a very young man he succumbed to the “drama of -ideas” gabble, and his first plays showed an effort to preach this or -that in awful tones. But he soon discovered that the only ideas that -would go down, so to speak, on the stage were ideas of such an austere -platitudinousness that it was beneath his artistic dignity to merchant -them, and so he gave over propaganda altogether. In other words, his -genius burst through the narrow bounds of mob ratiocination, and he -began appealing to the universal emotions—pity, religious sentiment, -patriotism, amorousness. Even in his first play, “Vor Sonnenaufgang,” -his instinct got the better of his mistaken purpose, and reading it -to-day one finds that the sheer horror of it is of vastly more effect -than its nebulous and unimportant ideas. It really says nothing; it -merely makes us dislike some very unpleasant people.</p> - -<p>Turn now to Shaw. At once one finds that the only plays from his -pen which contain actual ideas have<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> failed dismally on the stage. -These are the so-called “discussions”—e. g., “Getting Married.” The -successful plays contain no ideas; they contain only platitudes, -balderdash, buncombe that even a suffragette might think of. Of such -sort are “Man and Superman,” “Arms and the Man,” “Candida,” “Androcles -and the Lion,” and their like. Shaw has given all of these pieces -a specious air of profundity by publishing them hooked to long and -garrulous prefaces and by filling them with stage directions which -describe and discuss the characters at great length. But as stage plays -they are almost as empty as “Hedda Gabler.” One searches them vainly -for even the slightest novel contribution to the current theories of -life, joy and crime. Shaw’s prefaces, of course, have vastly more -ideational force and respectability than his plays. If he fails to get -any ideas of genuine savor into them it is not because the preface form -bars them out but because he hasn’t any to get in. By attaching them to -his plays he converts the latter into colorable imitations of novels, -and so opens the way for that superior reflectiveness which lifts the -novel above the play, and makes it, as Arnold Bennett has convincingly -shown, much harder to write. A stage play in the modern realistic -manner—that is, without soliloquies and asides—can seldom rise -above the mere representation of some infinitesimal episode, whereas -even the worst<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> novel may be, in some sense, an interpretation as -well. Obviously, such episodes as may be exposed in 20,000 words—the -extreme limit of the average play—are seldom significant, and not -often clearly intelligible. The author has a hard enough job making -his characters recognizable as human beings; he hasn’t time to go -behind their acts to their motives, or to deduce any conclusions worth -hearing from their doings. One often leaves a “social drama,” indeed, -wondering what the deuce it is all about; the discussion of its meaning -offers endless opportunities for theorists and fanatics. The Ibsen -symbolists come to mind again. They read meanings into such plays as -“Rosmersholm” and “The Wild Duck” that aroused Ibsen, a peaceful man, -to positive fury. In the same way the suffragettes collared, “A Doll’s -House.” Even “Peer Gynt” did not escape. There is actually an edition -of it edited by a theosophist, in the preface to which it is hymned as -a theosophical document. Luckily for Ibsen, he died before this edition -was printed. But one may well imagine how it would have made him swear.</p> - -<p>The notion that there are ideas in the “drama of ideas,” in truth, -is confined to a special class of illuminati, whose chief visible -character is their capacity for ingesting nonsense—Maeterlinckians, -uplifters, women’s clubbers, believers in all the sure cures for -all the sorrows of the world. To-day the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> Drama League carries on -the tradition. It is composed of the eternally young—unsuccessful -dramatists who yet live in hope, young college professors, psychopathic -old maids, middle-aged ladies of an incurable jejuneness, the -innumerable caravan of the ingenuous and sentimental. Out of the -same intellectual <i>Landsturm</i> comes the following of Bergson, the -parlor metaphysician; and of the third-rate novelists praised by the -newspapers; and of such composers as Wolf-Ferrari and Massenet. These -are the fair ones, male and female, who were ecstatically shocked by -the platitudes of “Damaged Goods,” and who regard Augustus Thomas as -a great dramatist, and what is more, as a great thinker. Their hero, -during a season or two, was the Swedish John the Baptist, August -Strindberg—a lunatic with a gift for turning the preposterous into the -shocking. A glance at Strindberg’s innumerable volumes of autobiography -reveals the true horse-power of his so-called ideas. He believed in -everything that was idiotic, from transcendentalism to witchcraft. -He believed that his enemies were seeking to destroy him by magic; -he spent a whole winter trying to find the philosopher’s stone. Even -among the clergy, it would be difficult to find a more astounding ass -than Strindberg. But he had, for all his folly, a considerable native -skill at devising effective stage-plays—a talent that some men seem -to be born with—and under cover of it he<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> acquired his reputation -as a thinker. Here he was met half way by the defective powers of -observation and reflection of his followers, the half-wits aforesaid; -they mistook their enjoyment of his adept technical trickery for an -appreciation of ideas. Turn to the best of his plays, “The Father.” -Here the idea—that domestic nagging can cause insanity—is an almost -perfect platitude, for on the one hand it is universally admitted -and on the other hand it is not true. But as a stage play pure and -simple, the piece is superb—a simple and yet enormously effective -mechanism. So with “Countess Julie.” The idea here is so vague and -incomprehensible that no two commentators agree in stating it, and yet -the play is so cleverly written, and appeals with such a sure touch to -the universal human weakness for the obscene, that it never fails to -enchant an audience. The case of “Hedda Gabler” is parallel. If the -actresses playing Hedda in this country made up for the part in the -scandalous way their sisters do in Germany (that is, by wearing bustles -in front), it would be as great a success here as it is over there. -Its general failure among us is due to the fact that it is not made -indelicate enough. This also explains the comparative failure of the -rest of the Ibsen plays. The crowd has been subtly made to believe that -they are magnificently indecent—and is always dashed and displeased -when it finds nothing to lift<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> the diaphragm. I well remember the -first production of “Ghosts” in America—a business in which I had a -hand. So eager was the audience for the promised indecencies that it -actually read them into the play, and there were protests against it -on the ground that Mrs. Alving was represented as trying to seduce -her own son! Here comstockery often helps the “drama of ideas.” If no -other idea is visible, it can always conjure up, out of its native -swinishness, some idea that is offensively sexual, and hence pleasing -to the mob.</p> - -<p>That mob rules in the theater, and so the theater remains infantile -and trivial—a scene, not of the exposure of ideas, nor even of -the exhibition of beauty, but one merely of the parading of mental -and physical prettiness and vulgarity. It is at its worst when -its dramatists seek to corrupt this function by adding a moral or -intellectual purpose. It is at its best when it confines itself to -the unrealities that are its essence, and swings amiably from the -romance that never was on land or sea to the buffoonery that is at -the bottom of all we actually know of human life. Shakespeare was -its greatest craftsman: he wasted no tortured ratiocination upon his -plays. Instead, he filled them with the gaudy heroes that all of us -see ourselves becoming on some bright to-morrow, and the lowly frauds -and clowns we are to-day. No psychopathic problems engaged him; he<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> -took love and ambition and revenge and braggadocio as he found them. -He held no clinics in dingy Norwegian apartment-houses: his field was -Bohemia, glorious Rome, the Egypt of the scene-painter, Arcady. ... But -even Shakespeare, for all the vast potency of his incomparable, his -stupefying poetry, could not long hold the talmudists out in front from -their search for invisible significances. Think of all the tomes that -have been written upon the profound and revolutionary “ideas” in the -moony musings of the diabetic sophomore, Hamlet von Danemark!</p> - -<hr class="chap"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a id="XVIII_ADVICE_TO_YOUNG_MEN">XVIII. ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN</a></h4> - - - -<h4>1</h4> - -<h4><i>To Him that Hath</i></h4> - - -<p>The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and -disdainful air, is the reputation of being well to do. Nothing else -so neatly eases one’s way through life, especially in democratic -countries. There is in ninety-nine per cent. of all democrats an -irresistible impulse to crook the knee to wealth, to defer humbly to -the power that goes with it, to see all sorts of high merits in the -man who has it, or is said to have it. True enough, envy goes with -the pliant neck, but it is envy somehow purged of all menace: the -inferior man is afraid to do evil to the man with money in eight banks; -he is even afraid to <i>think</i> evil of him—that is, in any patent and -offensive way. Against capital as an abstraction he rants incessantly, -and all of the laws that he favors treat it as if it were criminal. But -in the presence of the concrete capitalist he is singularly fawning. -What makes him so is easy to discern. He yearns with a great yearning -for a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> chance to tap the capitalist’s purse, and he knows very well, -deep down in his heart, that he is too craven and stupid to do it by -force of arms. So he turns to politeness, and tries to cajole. Give -out the news that one has just made a killing in the stock market, or -robbed some confiding widow of her dower, or swindled the government -in some patriotic enterprise, and at once one will discover that one’s -shabbiness is a charming eccentricity, and one’s judgment of wines -worth hearing, and one’s politics worthy of attention and respect. The -man who is thought to be poor never gets a fair chance. No one wants to -listen to him. No one gives a damn what he thinks or knows or feels. No -one has any active desire for his good opinion.</p> - -<p>I discovered this principle early in life, and have put it to use -ever since. I have got a great deal more out of men (and women) by -having the name of being a well-heeled fellow than I have ever got by -being decent to them, or by dazzling them with my sagacity, or by hard -industry, or by a personal beauty that is singular and ineffable.</p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>2</h4> - -<h4><i>The Venerable Examined</i></h4> - - -<p>The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age -brings wisdom. It is my honest<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> belief that I am no wiser to-day -than I was five or ten years ago; in fact, I often suspect that I -am appreciable <i>less</i> wise. Women can prevail over me to-day by -devices that would have made me hoof them out of my studio when I was -thirty-five. I am also an easier mark for male swindlers than I used -to be; at fifty I’ll probably be joining clubs and buying Mexican -mine stock. The truth is that every man goes up-hill in sagacity -to a certain point, and then begins sliding down again. Nearly all -the old fellows that I know are more or less balmy. Theoretically, -they should be much wiser than younger men, if only because of their -greater experience, but actually they seem to take on folly faster than -they take on wisdom. A man of thirty-five or thirty-eight is almost -woman-proof. For a woman to marry him is a herculean feat. But by the -time he is fifty he is quite as easy as a Yale sophomore. On other -planes the same decay of the intelligence is visible. Certainly it -would be difficult to imagine any committee of relatively young men, of -thirty or thirty-five, showing the unbroken childishness, ignorance and -lack of humor of the Supreme Court of the United States. The average -age of the learned justices must be well beyond sixty, and all of -them are supposed to be of finished and mellowed sagacity. Yet their -knowledge of the most ordinary principles of justice often turns out -to be extremely meager, and when they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> spread themselves grandly upon -a great case their reasoning powers are usually found to be precisely -equal to those of a respectable Pullman conductor.</p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>3</h4> - -<h4><i>Duty</i></h4> - - -<p>Some of the loosest thinking in ethics has duty for its theme. -Practically all writers on the subject agree that the individual -owes certain unescapable duties to the race—for example, the duty -of engaging in productive labor, and that of marrying and begetting -offspring. In support of this position it is almost always argued that -if <i>all</i> men neglected such duties the race would perish. The logic is -hollow enough to be worthy of the college professors who are guilty -of it. It simply confuses the conventionality, the pusillanimity, the -lack of imagination of the majority of men with the duty of <i>all</i> men. -There is not the slightest ground for assuming, even as a matter of -mere argumentation, that <i>all</i> men will ever neglect these alleged -duties. There will always remain a safe majority that is willing to -do whatever is ordained—that accepts docilely the government it is -born under, obeys its laws, and supports its theory. But that majority -does not comprise the men who render the highest and most intelligent -services to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> race; it comprises those who render nothing save their -obedience.</p> - -<p>For the man who differs from this inert and well-regimented -mass, however slightly, there are no duties <i>per se</i>. What he is -spontaneously inclined to do is of vastly more value to all of us -than what the majority is willing to do. There is, indeed, no such -thing as duty-in-itself; it is a mere chimera of ethical theorists. -Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration. The -very concept of duty is thus a function of inferiority; it belongs -naturally only to timorous and incompetent men. Even on such levels it -remains largely a self-delusion, a soothing apparition, a euphemism for -necessity. When a man succumbs to duty he merely succumbs to the habit -and inclination of other men. Their collective interests invariably -pull against his individual interests. Some of us can resist a pretty -strong pull—the pull, perhaps, of thousands. But it is only the -miraculous man who can withstand the pull of a whole nation.</p> - - -<h4><i>Martyrs</i></h4> - -<p>“History,” says Henry Ford, “is bunk.” I inscribe myself among those -who dissent from this doctrine; nevertheless, I am often hauled up, -in reading history,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> by a feeling that I am among unrealities. In -particular, that feeling comes over me when I read about the religious -wars of the past—wars in which thousands of men, women and children -were butchered on account of puerile and unintelligible disputes -over transubstantiation, the atonement, and other such metaphysical -banshees. It does not surprise me that the majority murdered the -minority; the majority, even to-day, does it whenever it is possible. -What I can’t understand is that the minority went voluntarily to the -slaughter. Even in the worst persecutions known to history—say, for -example, those of the Jews of Spain—it was always possible for a -given member of the minority to save his hide by giving public assent -to the religious notions of the majority. A Jew who was willing to -be baptized, in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, was practically -unmolested; his descendants to-day are 100% Spaniards. Well, then, why -did so many Jews refuse? Why did so many prefer to be robbed, exiled, -and sometimes murdered?</p> - -<p>The answer given by philosophical historians is that they were a -noble people, and preferred death to heresy. But this merely begs -the question. Is it actually noble to cling to a religious idea so -tenaciously? Certainly it doesn’t seem so to me. After all, no human -being really <i>knows</i> anything about the exalted matters with which -all religions deal. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> most he can do is to match his private guess -against the guesses of his fellow-men. For any man to say absolutely, -in such a field, that this or that is wholly and irrefragably true and -this or that is utterly false is simply to talk nonsense. Personally, I -have never encountered a religious idea—and I do not except even the -idea of the existence of God—that was instantly and unchallengeably -convincing, as, say, the Copernican astronomy is instantly and -unchallengeably convincing. But neither have I ever encountered -a religious idea that could be dismissed offhand as palpably and -indubitably false. In even the worst nonsense of such theological -mountebanks as the Rev. Dr. Billy Sunday, Brigham Young and Mrs. Eddy -there is always enough lingering plausibility, or, at all events, -possibility, to give the judicious pause. Whatever the weight of the -probabilities against it, it nevertheless <i>may</i> be true that man, on -his decease, turns into a gaseous vertebrate, and that this vertebrate, -if its human larva has engaged in embezzlement, bootlegging, profanity -or adultery on this earth, will be boiled for a million years in -a cauldron of pitch. My private inclination, due to my defective -upbringing, is to doubt it, and to set down any one who believes it as -an ass, but it must be plain that I have no means of disproving it.</p> - -<p>In view of this uncertainty it seems to me sheer vanity for any man to -hold his religious views too<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> firmly, or to submit to any inconvenience -on account of them. It is far better, if they happen to offend, to -conceal them discreetly, or to change them amiably as the delusions -of the majority change. My own views in this department, being wholly -skeptical and tolerant, are obnoxious to the subscribers to practically -all other views; even atheists sometimes denounce me. At the moment, -by an accident of American political history, these dissenters from -my theology are forbidden to punish me for not agreeing with them. -But at any succeeding moment some group or other among them may seize -such power and proceed against me in the immemorial manner. If it ever -happens, I give notice here and now that I shall get converted to their -nonsense instantly, and so retire to safety with my right thumb laid -against my nose and my fingers waving like wheat in the wind. I’d do it -even to-day, if there were any practical advantage in it. Offer me a -case of Rauenthaler 1903, and I engage to submit to baptism by any rite -ever heard of, provided it does not expose my gothic nakedness. Make it -ten cases, and I’ll agree to be both baptized and confirmed. In such -matters I am broad-minded. What, after all, is one more lie?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>5</h4> - -<h4><i>The Disabled Veteran</i></h4> - - -<p>The science of psychological pathology is still in its infancy. In -all its literature in three languages, I can’t find a line about the -permanent ill effects of acute emotional diseases—say, for example, -love affairs. The common assumption of the world is that when a love -affair is over it is over—that nothing remains behind. This is -probably grossly untrue. It is my belief that every such experience -leaves scars upon my psyche, and that they are quite as plain and quite -as dangerous as the scars left on the neck by a carbuncle. A man who -has passed through a love affair, even though he may eventually forget -the lady’s very name, is never quite the same thereafter. His scars -may be small, but they are permanent. The sentimentalist, exposed -incessantly, ends as a psychic cripple; he is as badly off as the man -who has come home from the wars with shell-shock. The precise nature -of the scars remains to be determined. My own notion is that they take -the form of large yellow patches upon the self-esteem. Whenever a man -thinks of one of his dead love affairs, and in particular whenever -he allows his memory to dredge up an image of the woman he loved, -he shivers like one taken in some unmanly and discreditable act.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> -Such shivers, repeated often enough, must inevitably shake his inner -integrity off its base. No man can love, and yet remain truly proud. It -is a disarming and humiliating experience.</p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>6</h4> - -<h4><i>Patriotism</i></h4> - - -<p>Patriotism is conceivable to a civilized man in times of stress and -storm, when his country is wobbling and sore beset. His country then -appeals to him as any victim of misfortune appeals to him—say, a -street-walker pursued by the police. But when it is safe, happy and -prosperous it can only excite his loathing. The things that make -countries safe, happy and prosperous—a secure peace, an active trade, -political serenity at home—are all intrinsically corrupting and -disgusting. It is as impossible for a civilized man to love his country -in good times as it would be for him to respect a politician.</p> - -<hr class="chap"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a id="XIX_SUITE_AMERICANE">XIX. SUITE AMÉRICANE</a></h4> - - - -<h4>1</h4> - -<h4><i>Aspiration</i></h4> - - -<p>Police sergeants praying humbly to God that Jews will start poker-rooms -on their posts, and so enable them to educate their eldest sons for -holy orders.... Newspaper reporters resolving firmly to work hard, keep -sober and be polite to the city editor, and so be rewarded with jobs -as copy-readers.... College professors in one-building universities -on the prairie, still hoping, at the age of sixty, to get their -whimsical essays into the <i>Atlantic Monthly.</i> ... Car conductors on -lonely suburban lines, trying desperately to save up $500 and start -a Ford garage.... Pastors of one-horse little churches in decadent -villages, who, whenever they drink two cups of coffee at supper, dream -all night that they have been elected bishops.... Movie actors who -hope against hope that the next fan letter will be from Bar Harbor.... -Delicatessen dealers who spend their whole lives searching for a cheap -substitute for the embalmed veal used in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> chicken-salad.... Italians -who wish that they were Irish.... Mulatto girls in Georgia and Alabama -who send away greasy dollar bills for bottles of Mme. Celestine’s -Infallible Hair-Straightener.... Ash-men who pull wires to be appointed -superintendents of city dumps. Mothers who dream that the babies -in their cradles will reach, in the mysterious after years, the -highest chairs in the Red Men and the Maccabees.... Farmers who figure -that, with good luck, they will be able to pay off their mortgages -by 1943.... Contestants for the standing broad-jump championship of -the Altoona, Pa., Y. M. C. A.... Editorial writers who essay to prove -mathematically that a war between England and the United States is -unthinkable....</p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>2</h4> - -<h4><i>Virtue</i></h4> - - -<p>Pale druggists in remote towns of the Epworth League and flannel -nightgown belts, endlessly wrapping up bottles of Peruna.... Women -hidden away in the damp kitchens of unpainted houses along the railroad -tracks, frying tough beefsteaks.... Lime and cement dealers being -initiated into the Knights of Pythias, the Red Men or the Woodmen -of the World.... Watchmen at lonely railroad crossings in Iowa, -hoping that they’ll be able to get off to hear<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> the United Brethren -evangelist preach.... Ticket-choppers in the subway, breathing -sweat in its gaseous form.... Family doctors in poor neighborhoods, -faithfully relying upon the therapeutics taught in their Eclectic -Medical College in 1884.... Farmers plowing sterile fields behind sad -meditative horses, both suffering from the bites of insects.... Greeks -tending all-night coffee-joints in the suburban wildernesses where the -trolley-cars stop.... Grocery-clerks stealing prunes and ginger-snaps, -and trying to make assignations with soapy servant-girls.... Women -confined for the ninth or tenth time, wondering helplessly what it is -all about.... Methodist preachers retired after forty years of service -in the trenches of God, upon pensions of $600 a year.... Wives and -daughters of Middle Western country bankers, marooned in Los Angeles, -going tremblingly to swami séances in dark, smelly rooms.... Chauffeurs -in huge fur coats waiting outside theaters filled with folks applauding -Robert Edeson and Jane Cowl.... Decayed and hopeless men writing -editorials at midnight for leading papers in Mississippi, Arkansas and -Alabama.... Owners of the principal candy-stores in Green River, Neb., -and Tyrone, Pa.... Presidents of one-building universities in the rural -fastnesses of Kentucky and Tennessee. ... Women with babies in their -arms weeping over moving-pictures in the Elks’ Hall at Schmidtsville,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> -Mo.... Babies just born to the wives of milk-wagon drivers.... -Judges on the benches of petty county courts in Virginia, Vermont and -Idaho.... Conductors of accommodation trains running between Kokomo, -Ind., and Logansport....</p> - - -<hr class="tb"> -<h4>3</h4> - -<h4><i>Eminence</i></h4> - - -<p>The leading Methodist layman of Pottawattamie county, Iowa.... The -man who won the limerick contest conducted by the Toomsboro, Ga., -<i>Banner.</i> ... The secretary of the Little Rock, Ark., Kiwanis Club.... -The president of the Johann Sebastian Bach <i>Bauverein</i> of Highlandtown, -Md.... The girl who sold the most Liberty Bonds in Duquesne, Pa.... -The captain of the champion basket-ball team at the Gary, Ind., Y. -M. C. A.... The man who owns the best bull in Coosa county, Ala.... -The tallest man in Covington, Ky.... The oldest subscriber to the -Raleigh, N. C, <i>News and Observer.</i> ... The most fashionable milliner -in Bucyrus, O.... The business agent of the Plasterers’ Union of -Somerville, Mass.... The author of the ode read at the unveiling -of the monument to General Robert E. Lee at Valdosta, Ga.... The -original Henry Cabot Lodge man.... The owner of the champion Airedale -of Buffalo, N. Y.... The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> first child named after the Hon. Warren -Gamaliel Harding.... The old lady in Wahoo, Neb., who has read the -Bible 38 times.... The boss who controls the Italian, Czecho-Slovak and -Polish votes in Youngstown, O.... The professor of chemistry, Greek, -rhetoric and piano at the Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, -Tex.... The boy who sells 225 copies of the <i>Saturday Evening Post</i> -every week in Cheyenne, Wyo.... The youngest murderer awaiting hanging -in Chicago.... The leading dramatic critic of Pittsburgh.... The -night watchman in Penn Yan, N. Y., who once shook hands with Chester -A. Arthur.... The Lithuanian woman in Bluefield, W. Va., who has had -five sets of triplets. ... The actor who has played in “Lightning” -1,600 times.... The best horse doctor in Oklahoma.... The highest-paid -church-choir soprano in Knoxville, Tenn.... The most eligible bachelor -in Cheyenne, Wyo.... The engineer of the locomotive which pulled the -train which carried the Hon. A. Mitchell Palmer to the San Francisco -Convention.... The girl who got the most votes in the popularity -contest at Egg Harbor, N. J....</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="chap"> - - -<p> -<span class="caption"><a id="INDEX"></a>INDEX</span><br> -<br> -Adam, Villiers de l’Isle, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br> -Adams, Henry, <a href="#Page_162">162</a><br> -Addams, Jane, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br> -Addison, Joseph, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br> -American Legion, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a><br> -American Protective League, <a href="#Page_141">141</a><br> -<i>Annabel Lee</i>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br> -Anti-Saloon League, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a><br> -Arnold, Matthew, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br> -Asch, Sholom, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br> -Asquith, Mrs., <a href="#Page_33">33</a><br> -Astor, Lady, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br> -<i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a><br> -Augier, Emile, <a href="#Page_301">301</a><br> -<br> -Bach, J. S., <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a><br> -Baker, Newton D., <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br> -Balfour, A. J., <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a><br> -Baltimore <i>Sun</i>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br> -Balzac, H., <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br> -Barton, William E., <a href="#Page_171">171</a><br> -Beerbohm, Max, <a href="#Page_77">77</a><br> -Beethoven, Ludwig van, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a><br> -Belasco, David, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br> -Bennett, Arnold, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br> -Benson, Admiral, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br> -Bentham, Jeremy, <a href="#Page_285">285</a><br> -<i>Berliner Tageblatt</i>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br> -Berlioz, Hector, <a href="#Page_66">66</a><br> -Bible, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a><br> -Bierbaum, Otto Julius, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br> -Birkenhead, Lord, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br> -Bismarck, Otto von, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a><br> -Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a><br> -Böhlau, Helene, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br> -Bolshevism, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a><br> -Boston <i>Transcript</i>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a><br> -Bottomley, Horace, <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br> -Boyd, Ernest A., <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br> -Brady, Diamond Jim, <a href="#Page_109">109</a><br> -Brahms, Johannes, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a><br> -Brandes, Georg, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br> -Brieux, Eugene, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a><br> -Browning, Robert, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a><br> -Bryan, William Jennings, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a><br> -Bryce, James, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a><br> -Burleson, A. S., <a href="#Page_144">144</a><br> -Butler, Nicholas Murray, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a><br> -<br> -Cabell, James Branch, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br> -Capitalism, <a href="#Page_56">56</a><br> -Carlyle, Thomas, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a><br> -Cather, Willa, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a><br> -Catt, Carrie Chapman, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br> -Cawein, Madison, <a href="#Page_179">179</a> <i>ff.</i><br> -Cézanne, Paul, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br> -Chamberlain, Joseph, <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br> -Chopin, F., <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a><br> -Churchill, Winston, <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br> -Cicero, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br> -Civil War, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a><br> -Clemenceau, Georges, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br> -Clemens, Samuel L., <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><br> -Clutton-Brock, A., <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> -Congress, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a><br> -<i>Congressional Record</i>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br> -Conrad, Joseph, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br> -Constitution, U. S., <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a><br> -Coolidge, Calvin, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br> -Cooper, J. Fenimore, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br> -Cox, James M., <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br> -Crane, Frank, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a><br> -Creel, George, <a href="#Page_141">141</a><br> -Criticism, <a href="#Page_84">84</a> <i>ff.</i><br> -Curtis, Cyrus K., <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a><br> -<br> -D’Annunzio, Gabrielle, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br> -Darwin, Charles, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a><br> -Dawes, Rufus, <a href="#Page_99">99</a><br> -Debs, Eugene, <a href="#Page_24">24</a><br> -Declaration of Independence, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br> -Dempsey, Jack, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a><br> -Dillon, Dr., <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br> -Disarmament Treaty, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a><br> -<i>Dixie</i>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br> -Dreiser, Theodore, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a><br> -Dryden, John, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br> -Dumas, Alexandre <i>fils</i>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a><br> -Dunsany, Lord, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br> -Duse, Eleanora, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br> -Dvorak, Antonin, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br> -<br> -Edwards, Jonathan, <a href="#Page_176">176</a><br> -Ehrlich, Paul, <a href="#Page_144">144</a><br> -Ellis, Havelock, <a href="#Page_189">189</a> <i>ff.</i><br> -Emerson, R. W., <a href="#Page_39"> 39</a><br> -<br> -<i>Faust</i>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br> -Finck, Henry T., <a href="#Page_69">69</a><br> -Flower, B. O., <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br> -Foch, Ferdinand, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><br> -Ford, Henry, <a href="#Page_314">314</a><br> -France, Anatole, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br> -Franklin, Fabian, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a><br> -Freud, Sigmund, <a href="#Page_158">158</a><br> -<br> -Gale, Zona, <a href="#Page_209">209</a><br> -Galileo, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br> -Garland, Hamlin, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br> -Garrett, Garet, <a href="#Page_279">279</a><br> -George, W. L., <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br> -Gilman, Daniel, C., <a href="#Page_162">162</a><br> -Goethe, J. W., <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a><br> -Goldmarck, Karl, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br> -Gorky, Maxim, <a href="#Page_43">43</a><br> -Gounod, Charles, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br> -Gourmont, Remy de, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br> -Grant, U. S., <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a><br> -Greenwich Village, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br> -<br> -Hamilton, Alexander, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a><br> -<i>Hamlet</i>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br> -Hamsun, Knut, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br> -Harding, W. G., <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a><br> -Harris, Frank, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a> <i>ff.</i><br> -Hartleben, O. E., <a href="#Page_40">40</a><br> -Harvey, George B., <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br> -Hauptmann, Gerhart, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a><br> -Hazlitt, William, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a><br> -<i>Heart of Darkness</i>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a><br> -Hergesheimer, Joseph, <a href="#Page_202">202</a><br> -Hillis, Newell Dwight, <a href="#Page_144">144</a><br> -Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br> -Howells, William Dean, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br> -Huch, Ricarda, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br> -<i>Huckleberry Finn</i>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br> -Hughes, Charles E., <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br> -Huneker, James G., <a href="#Page_65">65</a> <i>ff.</i><br> -Huxley, T. H., <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a><br> -Huysmans, J. K., <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br> -<br> -Ibsen, Henrik, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a> <i>ff.</i><br> -Iconoclasts, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br> -Intellectuals, Young, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br> -Irving, Washington, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br> -<br> -Jackson, Andrew, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a><br> -James, Henry, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br> -Jefferson, Thomas, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br> -Jespersen, Otto, <a href="#Page_146">146</a><br> -Jordan, David Starr, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br> -<i>Josef’s Legend</i>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a><br> -<br> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> -Kerr, Alfred, <a href="#Page_40">40</a><br> -Kipling, Rudyard, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br> -Klebs, Edwin, <a href="#Page_43">43</a><br> -Knights of Pythias, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a><br> -Know Nothings, <a href="#Page_26">26</a><br> -Krehbiel, Henry, <a href="#Page_69">69</a><br> -Ku Klux Klan, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a><br> -Kürnberger, Ferdinand, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br> -<br> -Lagerlöf, Selma, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br> -Lanier, Sidney, <a href="#Page_152">152</a><br> -Lee, Robert E., <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br> -Lewes, George Henry, <a href="#Page_87">87</a><br> -Lewisohn, Ludwig, <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br> -Lincoln, Abraham, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <i>ff.</i><br> -Lindsey, Ben B., <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br> -Liszt, Franz, <a href="#Page_66">66</a><br> -Lloyd-George, David, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a><br> -Lodge, Henry Cabot, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a><br> -Lodge, Oliver, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a><br> -London <i>Times</i>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a><br> -Lowell, James Russell, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a><br> -Lowes, J. L., <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br> -Ludwig, Karl, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a><br> -Luther, Martin, <a href="#Page_131">131</a><br> -Lyly, John, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br> -<br> -Mabies, Hamilton Wright, <a href="#Page_104">104</a><br> -Macaulay, T. B., <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br> -Mann, Thomas, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br> -March, General, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br> -Marden, Orison Swett, <a href="#Page_301">301</a><br> -Marlowe, Christopher, <a href="#Page_152">152</a><br> -Martial, <a href="#Page_61">61</a><br> -Masefield, John, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br> -Mendelssohn, Felix, <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br> -Meredith, George, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br> -Methodists, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a><br> -Mill, J. S, <a href="#Page_285">285</a><br> -Miller, Joaquin. <a href="#Page_152">152</a><br> -Milton, John, <a href="#Page_89">89</a><br> -<i>Mlle. New York</i>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a><br> -Mobile <i>Register</i>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a><br> -Moody, John, <a href="#Page_279">279</a><br> -Moore, George, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><br> -More, Paul Elmer, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a> <i>ff.</i><br> -Morgan, J. Pierpont, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a><br> -Müller, Johannes, <a href="#Page_144">144</a><br> -Murray, Gilbert, <a href="#Page_190">190</a><br> -Murry, Middleton, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br> -<i>Musical Courier</i>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a><br> -<br> -Nathan, George Jean, <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br> -National Institute of Arts and Letters, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a><br> -National Security League, <a href="#Page_140">140</a><br> -Nearing, Scott, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a><br> -<i>New Republic</i>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a><br> -New York <i>Evening Journal</i>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a><br> -New York <i>Sun</i>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a><br> -New York <i>Times</i>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a><br> -New York <i>Tribune</i>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a><br> -Nicoll, Robertson, <a href="#Page_33">33</a><br> -Nietzsche, F. W., <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a><br> -Northcliffe, Lord, <a href="#Page_49">49</a><br> -<br> -Ochs, Adolph S., <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a><br> -Odd Fellows, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a><br> -<i>Old Fogy</i>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a><br> -<i>Othello</i>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a><br> -<br> -<i>Painted Veils</i>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a><br> -Palmer, A. Mitchell, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a><br> -<i>Parsifal</i>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br> -Pershing, John J., <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a><br> -Philadelphia <i>Ledger</i>,<a href="#Page_144">144</a><br> -Pinchot, Gifford, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br> -Pirquet, Clemens von, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br> -Plato, <a href="#Page_85">85</a><br> -Poe, Edgar Allan, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a><br> -Poetry, <a href="#Page_146">146</a> <i>ff.</i>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a><br> -Pound, Ezra, <a href="#Page_12">12</a><br> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> -Prescott, F. C. <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br> -<i>Puck</i>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a><br> -<br> -Reading, Lord, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br> -Red Cross, American, <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br> -Reed, James A., <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br> -Reese, Lizette Woodworth, <a href="#Page_159">159</a><br> -Reventlow, Count zu, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br> -Ricardo, David, <a href="#Page_285">285</a><br> -Roosevelt, Theodore, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a><br> -Roosevelt, Theodore, Jr., <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br> -Root, Elihu, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br> -Rops, Félicien, <a href="#Page_107">107</a><br> -Rosetti, Christina, <a href="#Page_156">156</a><br> -Rotary Club, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> -Rothert, Otto A., <a href="#Page_179">179</a><br> -Russell, Bertrand, <a href="#Page_190">190</a><br> -Russell, Lillian, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br> -<br> -St. Augustine, <a href="#Page_131">131</a><br> -Sainte-Beuve, C. A., <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br> -St. John, <a href="#Page_131">131</a><br> -Santayana, George, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br> -<i>Saturday Evening Post</i>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br> -Schmidt, Annalise, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br> -Schubert, Franz, <a href="#Page_151">151</a><br> -Schumann, Robert, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a><br> -Schwab, Charles M., <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br> -Scott, Evelyn, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br> -Scribner’s, Charles, Sons, <a href="#Page_69">69</a><br> -Seidl, Anton, <a href="#Page_66">66</a><br> -Senate, U. S., <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br> -Serao, Mathilda, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br> -Shakespeare, William, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br> -Shaw, George, Bernard, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a> <i>ff.</i><br> -<i>Sheik, The</i>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a><br> -Sherman, S. P., <a href="#Page_177">177</a><br> -Sienkiewicz, Henryk, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br> -Sims, Admiral, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br> -Sinclair, May, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br> -Sinclair Upton, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a> <i>ff.</i><br> -Smith, Adam, <a href="#Page_279">279</a><br> -Sousa, J. P., <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br> -Spencer, Herbert, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a><br> -Staël, Mme. de, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br> -Stearns, Harold, <a href="#Page_12">12</a><br> -Steed, Wickham, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br> -<i>Steeplejack</i>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a><br> -Strauss, Richard, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a><br> -Strindberg, August, <a href="#Page_306">306</a><br> -Sumner, William G., <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a><br> -Sunday, William A., <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a><br> -Supreme Court of the United States, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a> <i>ff.</i><br> -Swedenborg, Emanuel, <a href="#Page_131">131</a><br> -Swinburne, A. C., <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br> -<br> -Taft, William H., <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br> -Thoma, Ludwig, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br> -Thompson, Francis, <a href="#Page_156">156</a><br> -Thoreau, H. D., <a href="#Page_118">118</a><br> -<i>Town Topics</i>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br> -Tumulty, J. P., <a href="#Page_45">45</a><br> -<br> -Underwood, Oscar, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br> -U’Ren, W. S., <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br> -<br> -Van Dyke, Henry, <a href="#Page_144">144</a><br> -Verlaine, Paul, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br> -Viebig, Clara, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br> -Vigilantes, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a><br> -Volstead, Andrew, <a href="#Page_24">24</a><br> -<br> -Wagner, Cosima, <a href="#Page_66">66</a><br> -Wagner, Richard, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a><br> -Washington, George, <a href="#Page_28">28</a><br> -Wassermann, Jacob, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br> -Weber, Gottfried, <a href="#Page_99">99</a><br> -Wedekind, Frank, <a href="#Page_43">43</a><br> -Wells, H. G., <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br> -Wesley, John, <a href="#Page_173">173</a><br> -Whitman, Walt, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a><br> -Wilson, Woodrow, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a><br> -Wolsogen, Ernst von, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br> -Wood, James N., <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br> -Wood, Leonard A., <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br> -Woodberry, George E., <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br> -<br> -Yeats, W. 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L. Mencken - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Prejudices, Third Series - -Author: H. L. Mencken - -Release Date: November 7, 2016 [EBook #53474] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PREJUDICES, THIRD SERIES *** - - - - -Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature (online soon -in an extended version, also linking to free sources for -education worldwide ... MOOC's, educational materials,...) -Images generously made available by the Internet Archive. - - - - - -PREJUDICES - -THIRD SERIES - -By H. L. MENCKEN - - - -PUBLISHED AT THE BORZOI - NEW YORK - -BY ALFRED A. KNOPF - -1922 - - - - CONTENTS - - I ON BEING AN AMERICAN - - II HUNEKER: A MEMORY - - III FOOTNOTE ON CRITICISM - - IV DAS KAPITAL - - V AD IMAGINEM DEI CREAVIT ILLUM - - 1. The Life of Man - 2. The Anthropomorphic Delusion - 3. Meditation on Meditation - 4. Man and His Soul - 5. Coda - - VI STAR-SPANGLED MEN - - VII THE POET AND HIS ART - - VIII FIVE MEN AT RANDOM - - 1. Abraham Lincoln - 2. Paul Elmer More - 3. Madison Cawein - 4. Frank Harris - 5. Havelock Ellis - - IX THE NATURE OF LIBERTY - - X THE NOVEL - - XI THE FORWARD-LOOKER - - XII MEMORIAL SERVICE - - XIII EDUCATION - - XIV TYPES OF MEN - - 1. The Romantic - 2. The Skeptic - 3. The Believer - 4. The Worker - 5. The Physician - 6. The Scientist - 7. The Business Man - 8. The King - 9. The Average Man - 10. The Truth-Seeker - 11. The Pacifist - 12. The Relative - 13. The Friend - - XV THE DISMAL SCIENCE - - XVI MATTERS OF STATE - - 1. Le Contrat Social - 2. On Minorities - - XVII REFLECTIONS ON THE DRAMA - - XVIII ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN - - 1. To Him That Hath - 2. The Venerable Examined - 3. Duty - 4. Martyrs - 5. The Disabled Veteran - 6. Patriotism - - XIX SUITE AMRICAINE - - 1. Aspiration - 2. Virtue - 3. Eminence - - - -PREJUDICES: THIRD SERIES - - - - -I. ON BEING AN AMERICAN - - - -1 - - -Apparently there are those who begin to find it disagreeable--nay, -impossible. Their anguish fills the Liberal weeklies, and every ship -that puts out from New York carries a groaning cargo of them, bound -for Paris, London, Munich, Rome and way points--anywhere to escape the -great curses and atrocities that make life intolerable for them at -home. Let me say at once that I find little to cavil at in their basic -complaints. In more than one direction, indeed, I probably go a great -deal further than even the Young Intellectuals. It is, for example, -one of my firmest and most sacred beliefs, reached after an inquiry -extending over a score of years and supported by incessant prayer -and meditation, that the government of the United States, in both -its legislative arm and its executive arm, is ignorant, incompetent, -corrupt, and disgusting--and from this judgment I except no more than -twenty living lawmakers and no more than twenty executioners of their -laws. It is a belief no less piously cherished that the administration -of justice in the Republic is stupid, dishonest, and against all -reason and equity--and from this judgment I except no more than thirty -judges, including two upon the bench of the Supreme Court of the United -States. It is another that the foreign policy of the United States--its -habitual manner of dealing with other nations, whether friend or -foe--is hypocritical, disingenuous, knavish, and dishonorable--and from -this judgment I consent to no exceptions whatever, either recent or -long past. And it is my fourth (and, to avoid too depressing a bill, -final) conviction that the American people, taking one with another, -constitute the most timorous, sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob -of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom -since the end of the Middle Ages, and that they grow more timorous, -more sniveling, more poltroonish, more ignominious every day. - -So far I go with the fugitive Young Intellectuals--and into the -Bad Lands beyond. Such, in brief, are the cardinal articles of my -political faith, held passionately since my admission to citizenship -and now growing stronger and stronger as I gradually disintegrate -into my component carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorus, calcium, -sodium, nitrogen and iron. This is what I believe and preach, _in -nomine Domini,_ Amen. Yet I remain on the dock, wrapped in the flag, -when the Young Intellectuals set sail. Yet here I stand, unshaken and -undespairing, a loyal and devoted Americano, even a chauvinist, paying -taxes without complaint, obeying all laws that are physiologically -obeyable, accepting all the searching duties and responsibilities -of citizenship unprotestingly investing the sparse usufructs of my -miserable toil in the obligations of the nation, avoiding all commerce -with men sworn to overthrow the government, contributing my mite toward -the glory of the national arts and sciences, enriching and embellishing -the native language, spurning all lures (and even all invitations) to -get out and stay out--here am I, a bachelor of easy means, forty-two -years old, unhampered by debts or issue, able to go wherever I please -and to stay as long as I please--here am I, contentedly and even smugly -basking beneath the Stars and Stripes, a better citizen, I daresay, -and certainly a less murmurous and exigent one, than thousands who -put the Hon. Warren Gamaliel Harding beside Friedrich Barbarossa and -Charlemagne, android the Supreme Court to be directly inspired by the -Holy Spirit, and belong ardently to every Rotary Club, Ku Klux Klan, -and Anti-Saloon League, and choke with emotion when the band plays "The -Star-Spangled Banner," and believe with the faith of little children -that one of Our Boys, taken at random, could dispose in a fair fight -of ten Englishmen, twenty Germans, thirty Frogs, forty Wops, fifty -Japs, or a hundred Bolsheviki. - -Well, then, why am I still here? Why am I so complacent (perhaps even -to the point of offensiveness), so free from bile, so little fretting -and indignant, so curiously happy? Why did I answer only with a few -academic "Hear, Hears" when Henry James, Ezra Pound, Harold Stearns and -the _emigrs_ of Greenwich Village issued their successive calls to the -corn-fed _intelligentsia_ to flee the shambles, escape to fairer lands, -throw off the curse forever? The answer, of course, is to be sought in -the nature of happiness, which tempts to metaphysics. But let me keep -upon the ground. To me, at least (and I can only follow my own nose) -happiness presents itself in an aspect that is tripartite. To be happy -(reducing the thing to its elementals) I must be: - - _a._ Well-fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in Zion. - - _b._ Full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the - masses of my fellow-men. - - _c._ Delicately and unceasingly amused according to my taste. - -It is my contention that, if this definition be accepted, there is no -country on the face of the earth wherein a man roughly constituted -as I am--a man of my general weaknesses, vanities, appetites, -prejudices, and aversions--can be so happy, or even one-half so happy, -as he can be in these free and independent states. Going further, I -lay down the proposition that it is a sheer physical impossibility -for such a man to live in These States and _not_ be happy--that it -is as impossible to him as it would be to a schoolboy to weep over -the burning down of his school-house. If he says that he isn't happy -here, then he either lies or is insane. Here the business of getting a -living, particularly since the war brought the loot of all Europe to -the national strong-box, is enormously easier than it is in any other -Christian land--so easy, in fact, that an educated and forhanded man -who fails at it must actually make, deliberate efforts to that end. -Here the general average of intelligence, of knowledge, of competence, -of integrity, of self-respect, of honor is so low that any man who -knows his trade, does not fear ghosts, has read fifty good books, and -practices the common decencies stands out as brilliantly as a wart on -a bald head, and is thrown willy-nilly into a meager and exclusive -aristocracy. And here, more than anywhere else that I know of or -have heard of, the daily panorama of human existence, of private and -communal folly--the unending procession of governmental extortions -and chicaneries, of commercial brigandages and throat-slittings, of -theological buffooneries, of sthetic ribaldries, of legal swindles -and harlotries, of miscellaneous rogueries, villainies, imbecilities, -grotesqueries, and extravagances--is so inordinately gross and -preposterous, so perfectly brought up to the highest conceivable -amperage, so steadily enriched with an almost fabulous daring and -originality, that only the man who was born with a petrified diaphragm -can fail to laugh himself to sleep every night, and to awake every -morning with all the eager, unflagging expectation of a Sunday-school -superintendent touring the Paris peep-shows. - -A certain sough rhetoric may be here. Perhaps I yield to words as a -chautauqua lecturer yields to them, belaboring and fermenting the -hinds with his Message from the New Jerusalem. But fundamentally I am -quite as sincere as he is. For example, in the matter of attaining to -ease in Zion, of getting a fair share of the national swag, now piled -so mountainously high. It seems to me, sunk in my Egyptian night, -that the man who fails to do this in the United States to-day is a -man who is somehow stupid---maybe not on the surface, but certainly -deep down. Either he is one who cripples himself unduly, say by -setting up a family before he can care for it, or by making a bad -bargain for the sale of his wares, or by concerning himself too much -about the affairs of other men; or he is one who endeavors fatuously -to sell something that no normal American wants. Whenever I hear a -professor of philosophy complain that his wife has eloped with some -moving-picture actor or bootlegger who can at least feed and clothe -her, my natural sympathy for the man is greatly corrupted by contempt -for his lack of sense. Would it be regarded as sane and laudable for -a man to travel the Soudan trying to sell fountain-pens, or Greenland -offering to teach double-entry bookkeeping or counterpoint Coming -closer, would the judicious pity or laugh at a man who opened a shop -for the sale of incunabula in Little Rock, Ark., or who demanded a -living in McKeesport, Pa., on the ground that he could read Sumerian? -In precisely the same way it seems to me to be nonsensical for a man -to offer generally some commodity that only a few rare and dubious -Americans want, and then weep and beat his breast because he is not -patronized. One seeking to make a living in a country must pay due -regard to the needs and tastes of that country. Here in the United -States we have no jobs for grand dukes, and none for _Wirkliche -Geheimrte,_ and none for palace eunuchs, and none for masters of the -buck-hounds, and none (any more) for brewery _Todsaufer_--and very few -for oboe-players, metaphysicians, astrophysicists, assyriologists, -water-colorists, stylites and epic poets. There was a time when the -_Todsaufer_ served a public need and got an adequate reward, but it is -no more. There may come a time when the composer of string quartettes -is paid as much as a railway conductor, but it is not yet. Then why -practice such trades--that is, as trades? The man of independent -means may venture into them prudently; when he does so, he is seldom -molested; it may even be argued that he performs a public service by -adopting them. But the man who has a living to make is simply silly -if he goes into them; he is like a soldier going over the top with a -coffin strapped to his back. Let him abandon such puerile vanities, and -take to the uplift instead, as, indeed, thousands of other victims of -the industrial system have already _done._ Let him bear in mind that, -whatever its neglect of the humanities and their monks, the Republic -has never got half enough bond salesmen, quack doctors, ward leaders, -phrenologists, Methodist evangelists, circus clowns, magicians, -soldiers, farmers, popular song writers, moonshine distillers, forgers -of gin labels, mine guard, detectives, spies, snoopers, and _agents -provocateurs._ The rules are set by Omnipotence; the discreet man -observes them. Observing them, he is safe beneath the starry bed-tick, -in fair weather or foul. The _boobus Americanus_ is a bird that knows -no closed season--and if he won't come down to Texas oil stock, or -one-night cancer cures, or building lots in Swampshurst, he will always -come down to Inspiration and Optimism, whether political, theological, -pedagogical, literary, or economic. - -The doctrine that it is _infra digitatem_ for an educated man to take -a hand in the snaring of this goose is one in which I see nothing -convincing. It is a doctrine chiefly voiced, I believe, by those -who have tried the business and failed. They take refuge behind the -childish notion that there is something honorable about poverty _per -se_--the Greenwich Village complex. This is nonsense. Poverty may be -an unescapable misfortune, but that no more makes it honorable than -a cocked eye is made honorable by the same cause. Do I advocate, -then, the ceaseless, senseless hogging of money? I do not. All I -advocate--and praise as virtuous--is the hogging of enough to provide -security and ease. Despite all the romantic superstitions to the -contrary, the artist cannot do his best work when he is oppressed by -unsatisfied wants. Nor can the philosopher. Nor can the man of science. -The best and clearest thinking of the world is done and the finest art -is produced, not by men who are hungry, ragged and harassed, but by men -who are well-fed, warm and easy in mind. It is the artist's first duty -to his art to achieve that tranquility for himself. Shakespeare tried -to achieve it; so did Beethoven, Wagner, Brahms, Ibsen and Balzac. -Goethe, Schopenhauer, Schumann and Mendelssohn were born to it. Joseph -Conrad, Richard Strauss and Anatole France have got it for themselves -in our own day. In the older countries, where competence is far more -general and competition is thus more sharp, the thing is often cruelly -difficult, and sometimes almost impossible. But in the United States -it is absurdly easy, given ordinary luck. Any man with a superior air, -the intelligence of a stockbroker, and the resolution of a hat-check -girl--in brief, any man who believes in himself enough, and with -sufficient cause, to be called a journeyman--can cadge enough money, in -this glorious commonwealth of morons, to make life soft for him. - -And if a lining for the purse is thus facilely obtainable, given a -reasonable prudence and resourcefulness, then balm for the ego is just -as unlaboriously got, given ordinary dignity and decency. Simply to -exist, indeed, on the plane of a civilized man is to attain, in the -Republic, to a distinction that should be enough for all save the most -vain; it is even likely to be too much, as the frequent challenges of -the Ku Klux Klan, the American Legion, the Anti-Saloon League, and -other such vigilance committees of the majority testify. Here is a -country in which all political thought and activity are concentrated -upon the scramble for jobs--in which the normal politician, whether he -be a President or a village road supervisor, is willing to renounce -any principle, however precious to him, and to adopt any lunacy, -however offensive to him, in order to keep his place at the trough. -Go into politics, then, without seeking or wanting office, and at once -you are as conspicuous as a red-haired blackamoor--in fact, a great -deal more conspicuous, for red-haired blackamoors have been seen, but -who has ever seen or heard of an American politician, Democrat or -Republican, Socialist or Liberal, Whig or Tory, who did not itch for a -job? Again, here is a country in which it is an axiom that a business -man shall be a member of a Chamber of Commerce, an admirer of Charles -M. Schwab, a reader of the _Saturday Evening Post,_ a golfer--in -brief, a vegetable. Spend your hours of escape from _Geschft_ reading -Remy de Gourmont or practicing the violoncello, and the local Sunday -newspaper will infallibly find you out and hymn the marvel--nay, your -banker will summon you to discuss your notes, and your rivals will -spread the report (probably truthful) that you were pro-German during -the war. Yet again, here is a land in which women rule and men are -slaves. Train your women to get your slippers for you, and your ill -fame will match Galileo's or Darwin's. Once more, here is the Paradise -of back-slappers, of democrats, of mixers, of go-getters. Maintain -ordinary reserve, and you will arrest instant attention--and have your -hand kissed by multitudes who, despite democracy, have all the inferior -man's unquenchable desire to grovel and admire. - -Nowhere else in the world is superiority more easily attained or more -eagerly admitted. The chief business of the nation, as a nation, is -the setting up of heroes, mainly bogus. It admired the literary style -of the late Woodrow; it respects the theological passion of Bryan; it -venerates J. Pierpont Morgan; it takes Congress seriously; it would be -unutterably shocked by the proposition (with proof) that a majority of -its judges are ignoramuses, and that a respectable minority of them -are scoundrels. The manufacture of artificial _Durchlauchten, k.k. -Hoheiten_ and even gods goes on feverishly and incessantly; the will -to worship never flags. Ten iron-molders meet in the back-room of a -near-beer saloon, organize a lodge of the Noble and Mystic Order of -American Rosicrucians, and elect a wheelwright Supreme Worthy Whimwham; -a month later they send a notice to the local newspaper that they -have been greatly honored by an official visit from that Whimwham, -and that they plan to give him a jeweled fob for his watch-chain. The -chief national heroes--Lincoln, Lee, and so on--cannot remain mere -men. The mysticism of the medival peasantry gets into the communal -view of them, and they begin to sprout haloes and wings. As I say, no -intrinsic merit--at least, none commensurate with the mob estimate--is -needed to come to such august dignities. Everything American is a bit -amateurish and childish, even the national gods. The most conspicuous -and respected American in nearly every field of endeavor, saving only -the purely commercial (I exclude even the financial) is a man who would -attract little attention in any other country. The leading American -critic of literature, after twenty years of diligent exposition of his -ideas, has yet to make it clear what he is in favor of, and why. The -queen of the _haut monde,_ in almost every American city, is a woman -who regards Lord Reading as an aristocrat and her superior, and whose -grandfather slept in his underclothes. The leading American musical -director, if he went to Leipzig, would be put to polishing trombones -and copying drum parts. The chief living American military man--the -national heir to Frederick, Marlborough, Wellington, Washington and -Prince Eugene--is a member of the Elks, and proud of it. The leading -American philosopher (now dead, with no successor known to the average -pedagogue) spent a lifetime erecting an epistemological defense for the -national sthetic maxim: "I don't know nothing about music, but I know -what I like." The most eminent statesman the United States has produced -since Lincoln was fooled by Arthur James Balfour, and miscalculated -his public support by more than 5,000,000 votes. And the current -Chief Magistrate of the nation--its defiant substitute for czar and -kaiser--is a small-town printer who, when he wishes to enjoy himself -in the Executive Mansion, invites in a homeopathic doctor, a Seventh -Day Adventist evangelist, and a couple of moving-picture actresses. - - - -2 - - -All of which may be boiled down to this: that the United States is -essentially a commonwealth of third-rate men--that distinction is easy -here because the general level of culture, of information, of taste and -judgment, of ordinary competence is so low. No sane man, employing an -American plumber to repair a leaky drain, would expect him to do it at -the first trial, and in precisely the same way no sane man, observing -an American Secretary of State in negotiation with Englishmen and Japs, -would expect him to come off better than second best. Third-rate men, -of course, exist in all countries, but it is only here that they are in -full control of the state, and with it of all the national standards. -The land was peopled, not by the hardy adventurers of legend, but -simply by incompetents who could not get on at home, and the lavishness -of nature that they found here, the vast ease with which they could -get livings, confirmed and augmented their native incompetence. No -American colonist, even in the worst days of the Indian wars, ever had -to face such hardships as ground down the peasants of Central Europe -during the Hundred Years War, nor even such hardships as oppressed the -English lower classes during the century before the Reform Bill of -1832. In most of the colonies, indeed, he seldom saw any Indians at -all: the one thing that made life difficult for him was his congenital -dunderheadedness. The winning of the West, so rhetorically celebrated -in American romance, cost the lives of fewer men than the single -battle of Tannenberg, and the victory was much easier and surer. The -immigrants who have come in since those early days have been, if -anything, of even lower grade than their forerunners. The old notion -that the United States is peopled by the offspring of brave, idealistic -and liberty loving minorities, who revolted against injustice, bigotry -and medivalism at home--this notion is fast succumbing to the alarmed -study that has been given of late to the immigration of recent years. -The truth is that the majority of non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants since the -Revolution, like the majority of Anglo-Saxon immigrants before the -Revolution, have been, not the superior men of their native lands, -but the botched and unfit: Irishmen starving to death in Ireland, -Germans unable to weather the _Sturm und Drang_ of the post-Napoleonic -reorganization, Italians weed-grown on exhausted soil, Scandinavians -run to all bone and no brain, Jews too incompetent to swindle even -the barbarous peasants of Russia, Poland and Roumania. Here and -there among the immigrants, of course, there may be a bravo, or even -a superman--e. g., the ancestors of Volstead, Ponzi, Jack Dempsey, -Schwab, Daugherty, Debs, Pershing--but the average newcomer is, and -always has been simply a poor fish. - -Nor is there much soundness in the common assumption, so beloved of -professional idealists and wind-machines, that the people of America -constitute "the youngest of the great peoples." The phrase turns up -endlessly; the average newspaper editorial writer would be hamstrung if -the Postoffice suddenly interdicted it, as it interdicted "the right to -rebel" during the war. What gives it a certain specious plausibility is -the fact that the American Republic, compared to a few other existing -governments, is relatively young. But the American Republic is not -necessarily identical with the American people; they might overturn -it to-morrow and set up a monarchy, and still remain the same people. -The truth is that, as a distinct nation, they go back fully three -hundred years, and that even their government is older than that of -most other nations, e. g., France, Italy, Germany, Russia. Moreover, -it is absurd to say that there is anything properly describable as -youthfulness in the American outlook. It is not that of young men, but -that of old men. All the characteristics of senescence are in it: a -great distrust of ideas, an habitual timorousness, a harsh fidelity -to a few fixed beliefs, a touch of mysticism. The average American is -a prude and a Methodist under his skin, and the fact is never more -evident than when he is trying to disprove it. His vices are not those -of a healthy boy, but those of an ancient paralytic escaped from the -_Greisenheim._ If you would penetrate to the causes thereof, simply -go down to Ellis Island and look at the next shipload of immigrants. -You will not find the spring of youth in their step; you will find the -shuffling of exhausted men. From such exhausted men the American stock -has sprung. It was easier for them to survive here than it was where -they came from, but that ease, though it made them feel stronger, did -not actually strengthen them. It left them what they were when they -came: weary peasants, eager only for the comfortable security of a -pig in a sty. Out of that eagerness has issued many of the noblest -manifestations of American _Kultur:_ the national hatred of war, the -pervasive suspicion of the aims and intents of all other nations, the -short way with heretics and disturbers of the peace, the unshakable -belief in devils, the implacable hostility to every novel idea and -point of view. - -All these ways of thinking are the marks of the peasant--more, of the -peasant long ground into the mud of his wallow, and determined at last -to stay there--the peasant who has definitely renounced any lewd -desire he may have ever had to gape at the stars. The habits of mind of -this dull, sempiternal _fellah_--the oldest man in Christendom--are, -with a few modifications, the habits of mind of the American people. -The peasant has a great practical cunning, but he is unable to see -any further than the next farm. He likes money and knows how to amass -property, but his cultural development is but little above that of -the domestic animals. He is intensely and cocksurely moral, but his -morality and his self-interest are crudely identical. He is emotional -and easy to scare, but his imagination cannot grasp an abstraction. -He is a violent nationalist and patriot, but he admires rogues in -office and always beats the tax-collector if he can. He has immovable -opinions about all the great affairs of state, but nine-tenths of them -are sheer imbecilities. He is violently jealous of what he conceives -to be his rights, but brutally disregardful of the other fellow's. He -is religious, but his religion is wholly devoid of beauty and dignity. -This man, whether city or country bred, is the normal Americano--the -100 per cent. Methodist, Odd Fellow, Ku Kluxer, and Know Nothing. -He exists in all countries, but here alone he rules--here alone his -anthropoid fears and rages are accepted gravely as logical ideas, and -dissent from them is punished as a sort of public offense. Around every -one of his principal delusions--of the sacredness of democracy, of the -feasibility of sumptuary law, of the incurable sinfulness of all other -peoples, of the menace of ideas, of the corruption lying in all the -arts--there is thrown a barrier of taboos, and woe to the anarchist who -seeks to break it down! - -The multiplication of such taboos is obviously not characteristic of -a culture that is moving from a lower plane to a higher--that is, of -a culture still in the full glow of its youth. It is a sign, rather, -of a culture that is slipping downhill--one that is reverting to the -most primitive standards and ways of thought. The taboo, indeed, is the -trade-mark of the savage, and wherever it exists it is a relentless -and effective enemy of civilized enlightenment. The savage is the most -meticulously moral of men; there is scarcely an act of his daily life -that is not conditioned by unyielding prohibitions and obligations, -most of them logically unintelligible. The mob-man, a savage set -amid civilization, cherishes a code of the same draconian kind. He -believes firmly that right and wrong are immovable things--that they -have an actual and unchangeable existence, and that any challenge -of them, by word or act, is a crime against society. And with the -concept of wrongness, of course, he always confuses the concept of mere -differentness--to him the two are indistinguishable. Anything strange -is to be combatted; it is of the Devil. The mob-man cannot grasp ideas -in their native nakedness. They must be dramatized and personalized -for him, and provided with either white wings or forked tails. All -discussion of them, to interest him, must take the form of a pursuit -and scotching of demons. He cannot think of a heresy without thinking -of a heretic to be caught, condemned, and burned. - -The Fathers of the Republic, I am convinced, had a great deal more -prevision than even their most romantic worshipers give them credit -for. They not only sought to create a governmental machine that would -be safe from attack without; they also sought to create one that would -be safe from attack within. They invented very ingenious devices for -holding the mob in check, for protecting the national polity against -its transient and illogical rages, for securing the determination -of all the larger matters of state to a concealed but none the less -real aristocracy. Nothing could have been further from the intent -of Washington, Hamilton and even Jefferson than that the official -doctrines of the nation, in the year 1922, should be identical with the -nonsense heard in the chautauqua, from the evangelical pulpit, and on -the stump. But Jackson and his merry men broke through the barbed wires -thus so carefully strung, and ever since 1825 _vox populi_ has been -the true voice of the nation. To-day there is no longer any question -of statesmanship, in any real sense, in our politics. The only way to -success in American public life lies in flattering and kowtowing to the -mob. A candidate for office, even the highest, must either adopt its -current manias _en bloc,_ or convince it hypocritically that he has -done so, while cherishing reservations _in petto._ The result is that -only two sorts of men stand any chance whatever of getting into actual -control of affairs--first, glorified mob-men who genuinely believe -what the mob believes, and secondly, shrewd fellows who are willing -to make any sacrifice of conviction and self-respect in order to hold -their jobs. One finds perfect examples of the first class in Jackson -and Bryan. One finds hundreds of specimens of the second among the -politicians who got themselves so affectingly converted to Prohibition, -and who voted and blubbered for it with flasks in their pockets. Even -on the highest planes our politics seems to be incurable mountebankish. -The same Senators who raised such raucous alarms against the League of -Nations voted for the Disarmament Treaty--a far more obvious surrender -to English hegemony. And the same Senators who pleaded for the League -on the ground that its failure would break the heart of the world were -eloquently against the treaty. The few men who maintained a consistent -course in both cases, voting either for or against both League and -treaty, were denounced by the newspapers as deliberate marplots, -and found their constituents rising against them. To such an extent -had the public become accustomed to buncombe that simple honesty was -incomprehensible to it, and hence abhorrent! - -As I have pointed out in a previous work, this dominance of mob ways -of thinking, this pollution of the whole intellectual life of the -country by the prejudices and emotions of the rabble, goes unchallenged -because the old landed aristocracy of the colonial era has been -engulfed and almost obliterated by the rise of the industrial system, -and no new aristocracy has arisen to take its place, and discharge its -highly necessary functions. An upper class, of course, exists, and of -late it has tended to increase in power, but it is culturally almost -indistinguishable from the mob: it lacks absolutely anything even -remotely resembling an aristocratic point of view. One searches in vain -for any sign of the true _Junker_ spirit in the Vanderbilts, Astors, -Morgans, Garys, and other such earls and dukes of the plutocracy; their -culture, like their aspiration, remains that of the pawnshop. One -searches in vain, too for the aloof air of the don, in the official -_intelligentsia_ of the American universities; they are timorous and -orthodox, and constitute a reptile Congregatio de Propaganda Fide to -match Bismarck's _Reptilienpresse._ Everywhere else on earth, despite -the rise of democracy, an organized minority of aristocrats survives -from a more spacious day, and if its personnel has degenerated and its -legal powers have decayed it has at least maintained some vestige of -its old independence of spirit, and jealously guarded its old right to -be heard without risk of penalty. Even in England, where the peerage -has been debauched to the level of a political baptismal fount for -Jewish money-lenders and Wesleyan soap-boilers, there is sanctuary for -the old order in the two ancient universities, and a lingering respect -for it in the peasantry. But in the United States it was paralyzed by -Jackson and got its death blow from Grant, and since then no successor -to it has been evolved. Thus there is no organized force to oppose the -irrational vagaries of the mob. The legislative and executive arms of -the government yield to them without resistance; the judicial arm has -begun to yield almost as supinely, particularly when they take the form -of witch-hunts; outside the official circle there is no opposition -that is even dependably articulate. The worst excesses go almost -without challenge. Discussion, when it is heard at all, is feeble and -superficial, and girt about by the taboos that I have mentioned. The -clatter about the so-called Ku Klux Klan, two or three years ago, was -typical. The astounding program of this organization was discussed -in the newspapers for months on end, and a committee of Congress sat -in solemn state to investigate it, and yet not a single newspaper -or Congressman, so far as I am aware, so much as mentioned the most -patent and important fact about it, to wit, that the Ku Klux was, to -all intents and purposes, simply the secular arm of the Methodist -Church, and that its methods were no more than physical projections -of the familiar extravagances of the Anti-Saloon League. The intimate -relations between church and Klan, amounting almost to identity, must -have been plain to every intelligent American, and yet the taboo upon -the realistic consideration of ecclesiastical matters was sufficient to -make every public soothsayer disregard it completely. - -I often wonder, indeed, if there would be any intellectual life at -all in the United States if it were not for the steady importation -in bulk of ideas from abroad, and particularly, in late years, from -England. What would become of the average American scholar if he could -not borrow wholesale from English scholars? How could an inquisitive -youth get beneath the surface of our politics if it were not for such -anatomists as Bryce? Who would show our statesmen the dotted lines -for their signatures if there were no Balfours and Lloyd-Georges? How -could our young professors formulate sthetic judgments, especially -in the field of letters, if it were not for such gifted English -mentors as Robertson Nicoll, Squire and Clutton-Brock? By what process, -finally, would the true style of a visiting card be determined, and -the _hflich_ manner of eating artichokes, if there were no reports -from Mayfair? On certain levels this nave subservience must needs -irritate every self-respecting American, and even dismay him. When he -recalls the amazing feats of the English war propagandists between -1914 and 1917--and their even more amazing confessions of method -since--he is apt to ask himself quite gravely if he belongs to a free -nation or to a crown colony. The thing was done openly, shamelessly, -contemptuously, cynically, and yet it was a gigantic success. The -office of the American Secretary of State, from the end of Bryan's -grotesque incumbency to the end of the Wilson administration, was -little more than an antechamber of the British Foreign Office. Dr. -Wilson himself, in the conduct of his policy, differed only legally -from such colonial premiers as Hughes and Smuts. Even after the United -States got into the war it was more swagger for a Young American blood -to wear the British uniform than the American uniform. No American -ever seriously questions an Englishman or Englishwoman of official or -even merely fashionable position at home. Lord Birkenhead was accepted -as a gentleman everywhere in the United States; Mrs. Asquith's almost -unbelievable imbecilities were heard with hushed fascination; even -Lady Astor, an American married to an expatriate German-American -turned English viscount, was greeted with solemn effusiveness. During -the latter part of 1917, when New York swarmed with British military -missions, I observed in _Town Topics_ a polite protest against a very -significant habit of certain of their gallant members: that of going -to dances wearing spurs, and so macerating the frocks and heels of the -fawning fair. The protest, it appears, was not voiced by the hosts and -hostesses of these singular officers: they would have welcomed their -guests in trench boots. It was left to a dubious weekly, and it was -made very gingerly. - -The spectacle, as I say, has a way of irking the American touched by -nationalistic weakness. Ever since the day of Lowell--even since the -day of Cooper and Irving--there have been denunciations of it. But -however unpleasant it may be, there is no denying that a chain of -logical causes lies behind it, and that they are not to be disposed of -by objecting to them. The average American of the Anglo-Saxon majority, -in truth, is simply a second-rate Englishman, and so it is no wonder -that he is spontaneously servile, despite all his democratic denial of -superiorities, to what he conceives to be first-rate Englishmen. He -corresponds, roughly, to an English Nonconformist of the better-fed -variety, and he shows all the familiar characters of the breed. He is -truculent and cocksure, and yet he knows how to take off his hat when -a bishop of the Establishment passes. He is hot against the dukes, and -yet the notice of a concrete duke is a singing in his heart. It seems -to me that this inferior Anglo-Saxon is losing his old dominance in -the United States--that is, biologically But he will keep his cultural -primacy for a long, long while, in spite of the overwhelming inrush -of men of other races, if only because those newcomers are even more -clearly inferior than he is. Nine-tenths of the Italians, for example, -who have come to these shores in late years have brought no more of the -essential culture of Italy with them than so many horned cattle would -have brought. If they become civilized at all, settling here, it is -the civilization of the Anglo-Saxon majority that they acquire, which -is to say, the civilization of the English second table. So with the -Germans, the Scandinavians, and even the Jews and Irish. The Germans, -taking one with another, are on the cultural level of green-grocers. I -have come into contact with a great many of them since 1914, some of -them of considerable wealth and even of fashionable pretensions. In the -whole lot I can think of but a score or two who could name offhand the -principal works of Thomas Mann, Otto Julius Bierbaum, Ludwig Thoma or -Hugo von Hofmannsthal. They know much more about Mutt and Jeff than -they know about Goethe. The Scandinavians are even worse. The majority -of them are mere clods, and they are sucked into the Knights of -Pythias, the chautauqua and the Methodist Church almost as soon as they -land; it is by no means a mere accident that the national Prohibition -Enforcement Act bears the name of a man theoretically of the blood of -Gustavus Vasa, Svend of the Forked Beard, and Eric the Red. The Irish -in the United States are scarcely touched by the revival of Irish -culture, despite their melodramatic concern with Irish politics. During -the war they supplied diligent and dependable agents to the Anglo-Saxon -White Terror, and at all times they are very susceptible to political -and social bribery. As for the Jews, they change their names to Burton, -Thompson and Cecil in order to qualify as true Americans, and when they -are accepted and rewarded in the national coin they renounce Moses -altogether and get themselves baptized in St. Bartholomew's Church. - -Whenever ideas enter the United States from without they come by way of -England. What the London _Times_ says to-day, about Ukranian politics, -the revolt in India, a change of ministry in Italy, the character of -the King of Norway, the oil situation in Mesopotamia, will be said -week after next by the _Times_ of New York, and a month or two later -by all the other American newspapers. The extent of this control of -American opinion by English news mongers is but little appreciated in -the United States, even by professional journalists. Fully four-fifths -of all the foreign news that comes to the American newspapers comes -through London, and most of the rest is supplied either by Englishmen -or by Jews (often American-born) who maintain close relations with -the English. During the years 1914-1917 so many English agents got -into Germany in the guise of American correspondents--sometimes with -the full knowledge of their Anglomaniac American employers--that -the Germans, just before the United States entered the war, were -considering barring American correspondents from their country -altogether. I was in Copenhagen and Basel in 1917, and found both -towns--each an important source of war news--full of Jews representing -American journals as a side-line to more delicate and confidential work -for the English department of press propaganda. Even to-day a very -considerable proportion of the American correspondents in Europe are -strongly under English influences, and in the Far East the proportion -is probably still larger. But these men seldom handle really important -news. All that is handled from London, and by trustworthy Britons. Such -of it as is not cabled directly to the American newspapers and press -associations is later clipped from English newspapers, and printed as -bogus letters or cablegrams. - -The American papers accept such very dubious stuff, not chiefly because -they are hopelessly stupid or Anglomaniac, but because they find it -impossible to engage competent American correspondents. If the native -journalists who discuss our domestic politics avoid the fundamentals -timorously, then those who venture to discuss foreign politics are -scarcely aware of the fundamentals at all. We have simply developed no -class of experts in such matters. No man comparable, say to Dr. Dillon, -Wickham Steed, Count zu Reventlow or Wilfrid Scawen Blunt exists in -the United States. When, in the Summer of 1920, the editors of the -Baltimore _Sun_ undertook plans to cover the approaching Disarmament -Conference at Washington in a comprehensive and intelligent manner, -they were forced, willy-nilly, into employing Englishmen to do the -work. Such men as Brailsford and Bywater, writing from London, three -thousand miles away, were actually better able to interpret the work -of the conference than American correspondents on the spot, few of -whom were capable of anything beyond the most trivial gossip. During -the whole period of the conference not a professional Washington -correspondent--the flower of American political journalism--wrote -a single article upon the proceedings that got further than their -surface aspects. Before the end of the sessions this enforced -dependence upon English opinion had an unexpected and significant -result. Facing the English and the Japs in an unyielding alliance, -the French turned to the American delegation for assistance. The -issue specifically before the conference was one on which American -self-interest was obviously identical with French self-interest. -Nevertheless, the English had such firm grip upon the machinery of news -distribution that they were able, in less than a week, to turn American -public opinion against the French, and even to set up an active -Francophobia. No American, not even any of the American delegates, -was able to cope with their propaganda. They not only dominated the -conference and pushed through a set of treaties that were extravagantly -favorable to England; they even established the doctrine that all -opposition to those treaties was immoral! - -When Continental ideas, whether in politics, in metaphysics or in the -fine arts, penetrate to the United States they nearly always travel -by way of England. Emerson did not read Goethe; he read Carlyle. The -American people, from the end of 1914 to the end of 1918, did not -read first-handed statements of the German case; they read English -interpretations of those statements. In London is the clearing house -and transformer station. There the latest notions from the mainland are -sifted out, carefully diluted with English water, and put into neat -packages for the Yankee trade. The English not only get a chance to -ameliorate or embellish; they also determine very largely what ideas -Americans are to hear of at all. Whatever fails to interest them, or -is in any way obnoxious to them, is not likely to cross the ocean. -This explains why it is that most literate Americans are so densely -ignorant of many Continentals who have been celebrated at home for -years, for example, Huysmans, Hartleben, Vaibinger, Merezhkovsky, -Keyserling, Snoilsky, Mauthner, Altenberg, Heidenstam, Alfred Kerr. It -also explains why they so grossly overestimate various third-raters, -laughed at at home, for example, Brieux. These fellows simply happen to -interest the English _intelligentsia,_ and are thus palmed off upon the -gaping colonists of Yankeedom. In the case of Brieux the hocus-pocus -was achieved by one man, George Bernard Shaw, a Scotch blue-nose -disguised as an Irish patriot and English soothsayer. Shaw, at bottom, -has the ideas of a Presbyterian elder, and so the moral frenzy of -Brieux enchanted him. Whereupon he retired to his chamber, wrote a -flaming Brieuxiad for the American trade, and founded the late vogue of -the French Dr. Sylvanus Stall on this side of the ocean. - -This wholesale import and export business in Continental fancies is of -no little benefit, of course, to the generality of Americans. If it -did not exist they would probably never hear of many of the salient -Continentals at all, for the obvious incompetence of most of the -native and resident introducers of intellectual ambassadors makes them -suspicious even of those who, like Boyd and Nathan, are thoroughly -competent. To this day there is no American translation of the plays of -Ibsen; we use the William Archer Scotch-English translations, most of -them atrociously bad, but still better than nothing. So with the works -of Nietzsche, Anatole France, Georg Brandes, Turgeniev, Dostoyevsky, -Tolstoi, and other moderns after their kind. I can think of but one -important exception: the work of Gerhart Hauptmann, done into English -by and under the supervision of Ludwig Lewisohn. But even here Lewisohn -used a number of English translations of single plays: the English were -still ahead of him, though they stopped half way. He is, in any case, a -very extraordinary American, and the Department of Justice kept an eye -on him during the war. The average American professor is far too dull -a fellow to undertake so difficult an enterprise. Even when he sports -a German Ph.D. one usually finds on examination that all he knows -about modern German literature is that a _Mass_ of Hofbru in Munich -used to cost 27 _Pfennig_ downstairs and 32 _Pfennig_ upstairs. The -German universities were formerly very tolerant of foreigners. Many an -American, in preparation for professing at Harvard, spent a couple of -years roaming from one to the other of them without picking up enough -German to read the _Berliner Tageblatt._ Such frauds swarm in all our -lesser universities, and many of them, during the war, became eminent -authorities upon the crimes of Nietzsche and the errors of Treitschke. - - - -3 - - -In rainy weather, when my old wounds ache and the four humors do battle -in my spleen, I often find myself speculating sourly as to the future -of the Republic. Native opinion, of course, is to the effect that -it will be secure and glorious; the superstition that progress must -always be upward and onward will not down; in virulence and popularity -it matches the superstition that money can accomplish anything. But -this view is not shared by most reflective foreigners, as any one may -find out by looking into such a book as Ferdinand Krnberger's "Der -Amerikamde," Sholom Asch's "America," Ernest von Wolzogen's "Ein -Dichter in Dollarica," W. L. George's "Hail, Columbia!", Annalise -Schmidt's "Der Amerikanische Mensch" or Sienkiewicz's "After Bread," -or by hearkening unto the confidences, if obtainable, of such returned -immigrants as Georges Clemenceau, Knut Hamsun, George Santayana, -Clemens von Pirquet, John Masefield and Maxim Gorky, and, via the ouija -board, Antonin Dvorak, Frank Wedekind and Edwin Klebs. The American -Republic, as nations go, has led a safe and easy life, with no serious -enemies to menace it, either within or without, and no grim struggle -with want. Getting a living here has always been easier than anywhere -else in Christendom; getting a secure foothold has been possible to -whole classes of men who would have remained submerged in Europe, as -the character of our plutocracy, and no less of our _intelligentsia_ -so brilliantly shows. The American people have never had to face such -titanic assaults as those suffered by the people of Holland, Poland -and half a dozen other little countries; they have not lived with a -ring of powerful and unconscionable enemies about them, as the Germans -have lived since the Middle Ages; they have not been torn by class -wars, as the French, the Spaniards and the Russians have been torn; -they have not thrown their strength into far-flung and exhausting -colonial enterprises, like the English. All their foreign wars have -been fought with foes either too weak to resist them or too heavily -engaged elsewhere to make more than a half-hearted attempt. The combats -with Mexico and Spain were not wars; they were simply lynchings. Even -the Civil War, compared to the larger European conflicts since the -invention of gunpowder, was trivial in its character and transient in -its effects. The population of the United States, when it began, was -about 31,500,000--say 10 per cent, under the population of France in -1914. But after four years of struggle, the number of men killed in -action or dead of wounds, in the two armies, came but 200,000--probably -little more than a sixth of the total losses of France between 1914 -and 1918. Nor was there any very extensive destruction of property. -In all save a small area in the North there was none at all, and even -in the South only a few towns of any importance were destroyed. The -average Northerner passed through the four years scarcely aware, save -by report, that a war was going on. In the South the breath of Mars -blew more hotly, but even there large numbers of men escaped service, -and the general hardship everywhere fell a great deal short of the -hardships suffered by the Belgians, the French of the North, the -Germans of East Prussia, and the Serbians and Rumanians in the World -War. The agonies of the South have been much exaggerated in popular -romance; they were probably more severe during Reconstruction, when -they were chiefly psychical, than they were during the actual war. -Certainly General Robert E. Lee was in a favorable position to estimate -the military achievement of the Confederacy. Well, Lee was of the -opinion that his army was very badly supported by the civil population, -and that its final disaster was largely due to that ineffective support. - -Coming down to the time of the World War, one finds precious few signs -that the American people, facing an antagonist of equal strength -and with both hands free, could be relied upon to give a creditable -account of themselves. The American share in that great struggle, in -fact, was marked by poltroonery almost as conspicuously as it was -marked by knavery. Let us consider briefly what the nation did. For -a few months it viewed the struggle idly and unintelligently, as a -yokel might stare at a sword-swallower at a county fair. Then, seeing -a chance to profit, it undertook with sudden alacrity the ghoulish -office of _Kriegslieferant._ One of the contestants being debarred, by -the chances of war, from buying, it devoted its whole energies, for -two years, to purveying to the other. Meanwhile, it made every effort -to aid its customer by lending him the cloak of its neutrality--that -is, by demanding all the privileges of a neutral and yet carrying on a -stupendous wholesale effort to promote the war. On the official side, -this neutrality was fraudulent from the start, as the revelations of -Mr. Tumulty have since demonstrated; popularly it became more and -more fraudulent as the debts of the customer contestant piled up, -and it became more and more apparent--a fact diligently made known -by his partisans--that they would be worthless if he failed to win. -Then, in the end, covert aid was transformed into overt aid. And under -what gallant conditions! In brief, there stood a nation of 65,000,000 -people, which, without effective allies, had just closed two and a -half years of homeric conflict by completely defeating an enemy state -of 135,000,000 and two lesser ones of more than 10,000,000 together, -and now stood at bay before a combination of at least 140,000,000. -Upon this battle-scarred and war-weary foe the Republic of 100,000,000 -freemen now flung itself, so lifting the odds to 4 to 1. And after a -year and a half more of struggle it emerged triumphant--a knightly -victor surely! - -There is no need to rehearse the astounding and unprecedented -swinishness that accompanied this glorious business--the colossal -waste of public money, the savage persecution of all opponents and -critics of the war, the open bribery of labor, the half-insane reviling -of the enemy, the manufacture of false news, the knavish robbery of -enemy civilians, the incessant spy hunts, the floating of public -loans by a process of blackmail, the degradation of the Red Cross -to partisan uses, the complete abandonment of all decency, decorum -and self-respect. The facts must be remembered with shame by every -civilized American; lest they be forgotten by the generations of the -future I am even now engaged with collaborators upon an exhaustive -record of them, in twenty volumes folio. More important to the present -purpose are two things that are apt to be overlooked, the first of -which is the capital fact that the war was "sold" to the American -people, as the phrase has it, not by appealing to their courage, but -by appealing to their cowardice--in brief, by adopting the assumption -that they were not warlike at all, and certainly not gallant and -chivalrous, but merely craven and fearful. The first selling point of -the proponents of American participation was the contention that the -Germans, with gigantic wars still raging on both fronts, were preparing -to invade the United States, burn down all the towns, murder all the -men, and carry off all the women--that their victory would bring -staggering and irresistible reprisals for the American violation of the -duties of a neutral. The second selling point was that the entrance -of the United States would end the war almost instantly--that the -Germans would be so overwhelmingly out-numbered, in men and guns, that -it would be impossible for them to make any effective defense--above -all, that it would be impossible for them to inflict any serious damage -upon their new foes. Neither argument, it must be plain, showed the -slightest belief in the warlike skill and courage of the American -people. Both were grounded upon the frank theory that the only way to -make the mob fight was to scare it half to death, and then show it a -way to fight without risk, to stab a helpless antagonist in the back. -And both were mellowed and renforced by the hint that such a noble -assault, beside being safe, would also be extremely profitable--that -it would convert very dubious debts into very good debts, and dispose -forever of a diligent and dangerous competitor for trade, especially -in Latin America. All the idealist nonsense emitted by Dr. Wilson and -company was simply icing on the cake. Most of it was abandoned as -soon as the bullets began to fly, and the rest consisted simply of -meaningless words--the idiotic babbling of a Presbyterian evangelist -turned prophet and seer. - -The other thing that needs to be remembered is the permanent effect -of so dishonest and cowardly a business upon the national character, -already far too much inclined toward easy ventures and long odds. -Somewhere in his diaries Wilfrid Scawen Blunt speaks of the marked -debasement that showed itself in the English spirit after the brutal -robbery and assassination of the South African Republics. The heroes -that the mob followed after Mafeking Day were far inferior to the -heroes that it had followed in the days before the war. The English -gentleman began to disappear from public life, and in his place -appeared a rabble-rousing bounder obviously almost identical with -the American professional politician--the Lloyd-George, Chamberlain, -F. E. Smith, Isaacs-Reading, Churchill, Bottomley, Northcliffe type. -Worse, old ideals went with old heroes. Personal freedom and strict -legality, says Blunt, vanished from the English tables of the law, -and there was a shift of the social and political center of gravity -to a lower plane. Precisely the same effect is now visible in the -United States. The overwhelming majority of conscripts went into the -army unwillingly, and once there they were debauched by the twin -forces of the official propaganda that I have mentioned and a harsh, -unintelligent discipline. The first made them almost incapable of -soldierly thought and conduct; the second converted them into cringing -goose-steppers. The consequences display themselves in the amazing -activities of the American Legion, and in the rise of such correlative -organizations as the Ku Klux Klan. It is impossible to fit any -reasonable concept of the soldierly into the familiar proceedings of -the Legion. Its members conduct themselves like a gang of Methodist -vice-crusaders on the loose, or a Southern lynching party. They are -forever discovering preposterous burglars under the national bed, -and they advance to the attack, not gallantly and at fair odds, but -cravenly and in overwhelming force. Some of their enterprises, to be -set forth at length in the record I have mentioned, have been of -almost unbelievable baseness--the mobbing of harmless Socialists, -the prohibition of concerts by musicians of enemy nationality, the -mutilation of cows designed for shipment abroad to feed starving -children, the roughing of women, service as strike-breakers, the -persecution of helpless foreigners, regardless of nationality. - -During the last few months of the war, when stories of the tyrannical -ill-usage of conscripts began to filter back to the United States, it -was predicted that they would demand the punishment of the guilty when -they got home, and that if it was not promptly forthcoming they would -take it into their own hands. It was predicted, too, that they would -array themselves against the excesses of Palmer, Burleson and company, -and insist upon a restoration of that democratic freedom for which they -had theoretically fought. But they actually did none of these things. -So far as I know, not a single martinet of a lieutenant or captain has -been manhandled by his late victims; the most they have done has been -to appeal to Congress for revenge and damages. Nor have they thrown -their influence against the medival despotism which grew up at home -during the war; on the contrary, they have supported it actively, and -if it has lessened since 1919 the change has been wrought without -their aid and in spite of their opposition. In sum, they show all the -stigmata of inferior men whose natural inferiority has been made -worse by oppression. Their chief organization is dominated by shrewd -ex-officers who operate it to their own ends--politicians in search -of jobs, Chamber of Commerce witch-hunters, and other such vermin. It -seems to be wholly devoid of patriotism, courage, or sense. Nothing -quite resembling it existed in the country before the war, not even in -the South. There is nothing like it anywhere else on earth. It is a -typical product of two years of heroic effort to arouse and capitalize -the worst instincts of the mob, and it symbolizes very dramatically the -ill effects of that effort upon the general American character. - -Would men so degraded in gallantry and honor, so completely purged of -all the military virtues, so submerged in baseness of spirit--would -such pitiful caricatures of soldiers offer the necessary resistance to -a public enemy who was equal, or perhaps superior in men and resources, -and who came on with confidence, daring and resolution--say England -supported by Germany as _Kriegslieferant_ and with her inevitable -swarms of Continental allies, or Japan with the Asiatic hordes behind -her? Against the best opinion of the chatauquas, of Congress and of the -patriotic press I presume to doubt it. It seems to me quite certain, -indeed, that an American army fairly representing the American people, -if it ever meets another army of anything remotely resembling like -strength, will be defeated, and that defeat will be indistinguishable -from rout. I believe that, at any odds less than two to one, even the -exhausted German army of 1918 would have defeated it, and in this view, -I think, I am joined by many men whose military judgment is far better -than mine--particularly by many French officers. The changes in the -American character since the Civil War, due partly to the wearing out -of the old Anglo-Saxon stock, inferior to begin with, and partly to -the infusion of the worst elements of other stocks, have surely not -made for the fostering of the military virtues. The old cool head is -gone, and the old dogged way with difficulties. The typical American of -to-day has lost all the love of liberty that his forefathers had, and -all their distrust of emotion, and pride in self-reliance. He is led -no longer by Davy Crocketts; he is led by cheer leaders, press agents, -word-mongers, uplifters. I do not believe that such a faint-hearted -and inflammatory fellow, shoved into a war demanding every resource -of courage, ingenuity and pertinacity, would give a good account of -himself. He is fit for lynching-bees and heretic-hunts, but he is not -fit for tight corners and desperate odds. - -Nevertheless, his docility and pusillanimity may be overestimated, and -sometimes I think that they _are_ overestimated by his present masters. -They assume that there is absolutely no limit to his capacity for -being put on and knocked about--that he will submit to any invasion of -his freedom and dignity, however outrageous, so long as it is depicted -in melodious terms. He permitted the late war to be "sold" to him by -the methods of the grind-shop auctioneer. He submitted to conscription -without any of the resistance shown by his brother democrats of Canada -and Australia. He got no further than academic protests against the -brutal usage he had to face in the army. He came home and found -Prohibition foisted on him, and contented himself with a few feeble -objurgations. He is a pliant slave of capitalism, and ever ready to -help it put down fellow-slaves who venture to revolt. But this very -weakness, this very credulity and poverty of spirit, on some easily -conceivable to-morrow, may convert him into a rebel of a peculiarly -insane kind, and so beset the Republic from within with difficulties -quite as formidable as those which threaten to afflict it from without. -What Mr. James N. Wood calls the corsair of democracy--that is, the -professional mob-master, the merchant of delusions, the pumper-up of -popular fears and rages--is still content to work for capitalism, and -capitalism knows how to reward him to his taste. He is the eloquent -statesman, the patriotic editor, the fount of inspiration, the prancing -milch-cow of optimism. He becomes public leader, Governor, Senator, -President. He is Billy Sunday, Cyrus K. Curtis, Dr. Frank Crane, -Charles E. Hughes, Taft, Wilson, Cal Coolidge, General Wood, Harding. -His, perhaps, is the best of trades under democracy--but it has its -temptations! Let us try to picture a master corsair, thoroughly adept -at pulling the mob nose, who suddenly bethought himself of that Pepin -the Short who found himself mayor of the palace and made himself King -of the Franks. There were lightnings along that horizon in the days -of Roosevelt; there were thunder growls when Bryan emerged from the -Nebraska steppes. On some great day of fate, as yet unrevealed by the -gods, such a professor of the central democratic science may throw off -his employers and set up a business for himself. When that day comes -there will be plenty of excuse for black type on the front pages of the -newspapers. - -I incline to think that military disaster will give him his inspiration -and his opportunity--that he will take the form, so dear to -democracies, of a man on horseback. The chances are bad to-day simply -because the mob is relatively comfortable--because capitalism has been -able to give it relative ease and plenty of food in return for its -docility. Genuine poverty is very rare in the United States, and actual -hardship is almost unknown. There are times when the proletariat is -short of phonograph records, silk shirts and movie tickets, but there -are very few times when it is short of nourishment. Even during the -most severe business depression, with hundreds of thousands out of -work, most of these apparent sufferers, if they are willing, are able -to get livings outside their trades. The cities may be choked with idle -men, but the country is nearly always short of labor. And if all other -resources fail, there are always public agencies to feed the hungry: -capitalism is careful to keep them from despair. No American knows what -it means to live as millions of Europeans lived during the war and have -lived, in some places, since: with the loaves of the baker reduced to -half size and no meat at all in the meatshop. But the time may come and -it may not be far off. A national military disaster would disorganize -all industry in the United States, already sufficiently wasteful and -chaotic, and introduce the American people, for the first time in -their history, to genuine want--and capital would be unable to relieve -them. The day of such disaster will bring the savior foreordained. The -slaves will follow him, their eyes fixed ecstatically upon the newest -New Jerusalem. Men bred to respond automatically to shibboleths will -respond to this worst and most insane one. Bolshevism, said General -Foch, is a disease of defeated nations. - -But do not misunderstand me: I predict no revolution in the grand -manner, no melodramatic collapse of capitalism, no repetition of what -has gone on in Russia. The American proletarian is not brave and -romantic enough for that; to do him simple justice, he is not silly -enough. Capitalism, in the long run, will win in the United States, -if only for the reason that every American hopes to be a capitalist -before he dies. Its roots go down to the deepest, darkest levels of the -national soil; in all its characters, and particularly in its antipathy -to the dreams of man, it is thoroughly American. To-day it seems to be -immovably secure, given continued peace and plenty, and not all the -demagogues in the land, consecrating themselves desperately to the one -holy purpose, could shake it. Only a cataclysm will ever do that. But -is a cataclysm conceivable? Isn't the United States the richest nation -ever heard of in history, and isn't it a fact that modern wars are won -by money? It is not a fact. Wars are won to-day, as in Napoleon's day, -by the largest battalions, and the largest battalions, in the next -great struggle, may not be on the side of the Republic. The usurious -profits it wrung from the last war are as tempting as negotiable -securities hung on the wash-line, as pre-Prohibition Scotch stored in -open cellars. Its knavish ways with friends and foes alike have left -it only foes. It is plunging ill-equipped into a competition for a -living in the world that will be to the death. And the late Disarmament -Conference left it almost hamstrung. Before the conference it had the -Pacific in its grip, and with the Pacific in its grip it might have -parleyed for a fair half of the Atlantic. But when the Japs and the -English had finished their operations upon the Feather Duster, Popinjay -Lodge, Master-Mind Root, Vacuum Underwood, young Teddy Roosevelt and -the rest of their so-willing dupes there was apparent a baleful change. -The Republic is extremely insecure to-day on both fronts, and it will -be more insecure to-morrow. And it has no friends. - -However, as I say, I do not fear for capitalism. It will weather the -storm, and no doubt it will be the stronger for it afterward. The -inferior man hates it, but there is too much envy mixed with his -hatred, in the land of the theoretically free, for him to want to -destroy it utterly, or even to wound it incurably. He struggles against -it now, but always wistfully, always with a sneaking respect. On the -day of Armageddon he may attempt a more violent onslaught. But in 'the -long run he will be beaten. In the long run the corsairs will sell him -out, and hand him over to his enemy. Perhaps--who knows?--the combat -may raise that enemy to genuine strength and dignity. Out of it may -come the superman. - - - -4 - - -All the while I have been forgetting the third of my reasons for -remaining so faithful a citizen of the Federation, despite all the -lascivious inducements from expatriates to follow them beyond the -seas, and all the surly suggestions from patriots that I succumb. -It is the reason which grows out of my medival but unashamed taste -for the bizarre and indelicate, my congenital weakness for comedy of -the grosser varieties. The United States, to my eye, is incomparably -the greatest show on earth. It is a show which avoids diligently all -the kinds of clowning which tire me most quickly--for example, royal -ceremonials, the tedious hocus-pocus of _haut politique,_ the taking -of politics seriously--and lays chief stress upon the kinds which -delight me unceasingly--for example, the ribald combats of demagogues, -the exquisitely ingenious operations of master rogues, the pursuit -of witches and heretics, the desperate struggles of inferior men -to claw their way into Heaven. We have clowns in constant practice -among us who are as far above the clowns of any other great state as -a Jack Dempsey is above a paralytic--and not a few dozen or score of -them, but whole droves and herds. Human enterprises which, in all -other Christian countries, are resigned despairingly to an incurable -dullness--things that seem devoid of exhilarating amusement by their -very nature--are here lifted to such vast heights of buffoonery that -contemplating them strains the mid-riff almost to breaking. I cite an -example: the worship of God. Everywhere else on earth it is carried -on in a solemn and dispiriting manner; in England, of course, the -bishops are obscene, but the average man seldom gets a fair chance to -laugh at them and enjoy them. Now come home. Here we not only have -bishops who are enormously more obscene than even the most gifted of -the English bishops; we have also a huge force of lesser specialists in -ecclesiastical mountebankery--tin-horn Loyolas, Savonarolas and Xaviers -of a hundred fantastic rites, each performing untiringly and each full -of a grotesque and illimitable whimsicality. Every American town, -however small, has one of its own: a holy clerk with so fine a talent -for introducing the arts of jazz into the salvation of the damned that -his performance takes on all the gaudiness of a four-ring circus, and -the bald announcement that he will raid Hell on such and such a night -is enough to empty all the town blind-pigs and bordellos and pack -his sanctuary to the doors. And to aid him and inspire him there are -traveling experts to whom he stands in the relation of a wart to the -Matterhorn--stupendous masters of theological imbecility, contrivers -of doctrines utterly preposterous, heirs to the Joseph Smith, Mother -Eddy and John Alexander Dowie tradition--Bryan, Sunday, and their like. -These are the eminences of the American Sacred College. I delight in -them. Their proceedings make me a happier American. - -Turn, now, to politics. Consider, for example, a campaign for the -Presidency. Would it be possible to imagine anything more uproariously -idiotic--a deafening, nerve-wracking battle to the death between -Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Harlequin and Sganarelle, Gobbo and Dr. -Cook--the unspeakable, with fearful snorts, gradually swallowing the -inconceivable? I defy any one to match it elsewhere on this earth. -In other lands, at worst, there are at least intelligible issues, -coherent ideas, salient personalities. Somebody says something, and -somebody replies. But what did Harding say in 1920, and what did Cox -reply? Who was Harding, anyhow, and who was Cox? Here, having perfected -democracy, we lift the whole combat to symbolism, to transcendentalism, -to metaphysics. Here we load a pair of palpably tin cannon with blank -cartridges charged with talcum powder, and so let fly. Here one may -howl over the show without any uneasy reminder that it is serious, and -that some one may be hurt. I hold that this elevation of politics to -the plane of undiluted comedy is peculiarly American, that nowhere else -on this disreputable ball has the art of the sham-battle been developed -to such fineness. Two experiences are in point. During the Harding-Cox -combat of bladders an article of mine, dealing with some of its more -melodramatic phases, was translated into German and reprinted by a -Berlin paper. At the head of it the editor was careful to insert a -preface explaining to his readers, but recently delivered to democracy, -that such contests were not taken seriously by intelligent Americans, -and warning them solemnly against getting into sweats over politics. -At about the same time I had dinner with an Englishman. From cocktails -to bromo seltzer he bewailed the political lassitude of the English -populace--its growing indifference to the whole partisan harlequinade. -Here were two typical foreign attitudes: the Germans were in danger -of making politics too harsh and implacable, and the English were in -danger of forgetting politics altogether. Both attitudes, it must -be plain, make for bad shows. Observing a German campaign, one is -uncomfortably harassed and stirred up; observing an English campaign -(at least in times of peace), one falls asleep. In the United States -the thing is done better. Here politics is purged of all menace, all -sinister quality, all genuine significance, and stuffed with such -gorgeous humors, such inordinate farce that one comes to the end of -a campaign with one's ribs loose, and ready for "King Lear," or a -hanging, or a course of medical journals. - -But feeling better for the laugh. _Ridi si sapis,_ said Martial. Mirth -is necessary to wisdom, to comfort, above all, to happiness. Well, -here is the land of mirth, as Germany is the land of metaphysics and -France is the land of fornication. Here the buffoonery never stops. -What could be more delightful than the endless struggle of the Puritan -to make the joy of the minority unlawful and impossible? The effort -is itself a greater joy to one standing on the side-lines that any or -all of the carnal joys that it combats. Always, when I contemplate an -uplifter at his hopeless business, I recall a scene in an old-time -burlesque show, witnessed for hire, in my days as a dramatic critic. A -chorus girl executed a fall upon the stage, and Rudolph Krausemeyer, -the Swiss comedian, rushed to her aid. As he stooped painfully to -succor her, Irving Rabinovitz, the Zionist comedian, fetched him a -fearful clout across the cofferdam with a slap-stick. So the uplifter, -the soul-saver, the Americanizer, striving to make the Republic fit -for Y. M. C. A. secretaries. He is the eternal American, ever moved by -the best of intentions, ever running _ la_ Krausemeyer to the rescue -of virtue, and ever getting his pantaloons fanned by the Devil. I am -naturally sinful, and such spectacles caress me. If the slap-stick were -a sash-weight the show would be cruel, and I'd probably complain to -the _Polizei._ As it is, I know that the uplifter is not really hurt, -but simply shocked. The blow, in fact, does him good, for it helps to -get him into Heaven, as exegetes prove from Matthew v, 11: _Heureux -serez-vous, lorsqu'on vous outragera, qu'on vous perscutera,_ and so -on. As for me, it makes me a more contented man, and hence a better -citizen. One man prefers the Republic because it pays better wages -than Bulgaria. Another because it has laws to keep him sober and his -daughter chaste. Another because the Woolworth Building is higher than -the cathedral at Chartres. Another because, living here, he can read -the New York _Evening Journal._ Another because there is a warrant out -for him somewhere else. Me, I like it because it amuses me to my taste. -I never get tired of the show. It is worth every cent it costs. - -That cost, it seems to me is very moderate. Taxes in the United -States are not actually high. I figure, for example, that my private -share of the expense of maintaining the Hon. Mr. Harding in the White -House this year will work out to less than 80 cents. Try to think of -better sport for the money: in New York it has been estimated that -it costs $8 to get comfortably tight, and $17.50, on an average, to -pinch a girl's arm. The United States Senate will cost me perhaps $11 -for the year, but against that expense set the subscription price -of the _Congressional Record,_ about $15, which, as a journalist, I -receive for nothing. For $4 less than nothing I am thus entertained as -Solomon never was by his hooch dancers. Col. George Brinton McClellan -Harvey costs me but 25 cents a year; I get Nicholas Murray Butler -free. Finally, there is young Teddy Roosevelt, the naval expert. -Teddy costs me, as I work it out, about 11 cents a year, or less -than a cent a month. More, he entertains me doubly for the money, -first as naval expert, and secondly as a walking _attentat_ upon -democracy, a devastating proof that there is nothing, after all, in -that superstition. We Americans subscribe to the doctrine of human -equality--and the Rooseveltii reduce it to an absurdity as brilliantly -as the sons of Veit Bach. Where is your equal opportunity now? Here in -this Eden of clowns, with the highest rewards of clowning theoretically -open to every poor boy--here in the very citadel of democracy we found -and cherish a clown _dynasty!_ - - - - -II. HUNEKER: A MEMORY - - -There was a stimulating aliveness about him always, an air of living -eagerly and a bit recklessly, a sort of defiant resiliency. In his -very frame and form something provocative showed itself--an insolent -singularity, obvious to even the most careless glance. That Caligulan -profile of his was more than simply unusual in a free republic, -consecrated to good works; to a respectable American, encountering -it in the lobby of the Metropolitan or in the smoke-room of a -_Doppelschrauben-schnellpostdampfer,_ it must have suggested inevitably -the dark enterprises and illicit metaphysics of a Heliogabalus. More, -there was always something rakish and defiant about his hat--it was -too white, or it curled in the wrong way, or a feather peeped from the -band--, and a hint of antinomianism in his cravat. Yet more, he ran to -exotic tastes in eating and drinking, preferring occult goulashes and -risi-bisis to honest American steaks, and great floods of Pilsner to -the harsh beverages of God-fearing men. Finally, there was his talk, -that cataract of sublime trivialities: gossip lifted to the plane of -the gods, the unmentionable bedizened with an astounding importance, -and even profundity. - -In his early days, when he performed the tonal and carnal prodigies -that he liked to talk of afterward, I was at nurse, and too young to -have any traffic with him. When I encountered him at last he was in -the high flush of the middle years, and had already become a tradition -in the little world that critics inhabit. We sat down to luncheon -at one o'clock; I think it must have been at Lchow's, his favorite -refuge and rostrum to the end. At six, when I had to go, the waiter was -hauling in his tenth (or was it twentieth?) _Seidel_ of Pilsner, and -he was bringing to a close _prestissimo_ the most amazing monologue -that these ears (up to that time) had ever funnelled into this -consciousness. What a stew, indeed! Berlioz and the question of the -clang-tint of the viola, the psychopathological causes of the suicide -of Tschaikowsky, why Nietzsche had to leave Sils Maria between days in -1887, the echoes of Flaubert in Joseph Conrad (then but newly dawned), -the precise topography of the warts of Liszt, George Bernard Shaw's -heroic but vain struggles to throw off Presbyterianism, how Frau Cosima -saved Wagner from the libidinous Swedish baroness, what to drink when -playing Chopin, what Czanne thought of his disciples, the defects in -the structure of "Sister Carrie," Anton Seidl and the musical union, -the complex love affairs of Gounod, the early days of David Belasco, -the varying talents and idiosyncrasies of Lillian Russell's earlier -husbands, whether a girl educated at Vassar could ever really learn to -love, the exact composition of chicken paprika, the correct tempo of -the Vienna waltz, the style of William Dean Howells, what George Moore -said about German bathrooms, the true inwardness of the affair between -D'Annunzio and Duse, the origin of the theory that all oboe players are -crazy, why Lwenbru survived exportation better than Hofbru, Ibsen's -loathing of Norwegians, the best remedy for Rhine wine _Katzenjammer,_ -how to play Brahms, the degeneration of the Bal Bullier, the sheer -physical impossibility of getting Dvorak drunk, the genuine last words -of Walt Whitman.... - -I left in a sort of fever, and it was a couple of days later before I -began to sort out my impressions, and formulate a coherent image. Was -the man allusive in his books--so allusive that popular report credited -him with the actual manufacture of authorities? Then he was ten times -as allusive in his discourse--a veritable geyser of unfamiliar names, -shocking epigrams in strange tongues, unearthly philosophies out of -the backwaters of Scandinavia, Transylvania, Bulgaria, the Basque -country, the Ukraine. And did he, in his criticism, pass facilely from -the author to the man, and from the man to his wife, and to the wives -of his friends? Then at the _Biertisch_ he began long beyond the point -where the last honest wife gives up the ghost, and so, full tilt, ran -into such complexities of adultery that a plain sinner could scarcely -follow him. I try to give you, ineptly and grotesquely, some notion -of the talk of the man, but I must fail inevitably. It was, in brief, -chaos, and chaos cannot be described. But it was chaos made to gleam -and corruscate with every device of the seven arts--chaos drenched in -all the colors imaginable, chaos scored for an orchestra which made the -great band of Berlioz seem like a fife and drum corps. One night a few -months before the war, I sat in the Paris Opera House listening to the -first performance of Richard Strauss's "Josef's Legend," with Strauss -himself conducting. On the stage there was a riot of hues that swung -the eyes 'round and 'round in a crazy mazurka; in the orchestra there -were such volleys and explosions of tone that the ears (I fall into -a Hunekeran trope) began to go pale and clammy with surgical shock. -Suddenly, above all the uproar, a piccolo launched into a new and saucy -tune--in an unrelated key!... Instantly and quite naturally, I thought -of the incomparable James. When he gave a show at Lchow's he never -forgot that anarchistic passage for the piccolo. - -I observe a tendency since his death to estimate him in terms of -the content of his books. Even Frank Harris, who certainly should -know better, goes there for the facts about him. Nothing could do -him worse injustice. In those books, of course, there is a great -deal of perfectly sound stuff; the wonder is, in truth, that so much -of it holds up so well to-day--for example, the essays on Strauss, -on Brahms and on Nietzsche, and the whole volume on Chopin. But -the real Huneker never got himself formally between covers, if one -forgets "Old Fogy" and parts of "Painted Veils." The volumes of his -regular canon are made up, in the main, of articles written for the -more intellectual magazines and newspapers of their era, and they -are full of a conscious striving to qualify for respectable company. -Huneker, always curiously modest, never got over the notion that it -was a singular honor for a man such as he--a mere diurnal scribbler, -innocent of academic robes--to be published by so austere a publisher -as Scribner. More than once, anchored at the beer-table, we discussed -the matter at length, I always arguing that all the honor was enjoyed -by Scribner. But Huneker, I believe in all sincerity, would not -have it so, any more than he would have it that he was a better -music critic than his two colleagues, the pedantic Krehbiel and the -nonsensical Finck. This illogical modesty, of course, had its limits; -it made him cautious about expressing himself, but it seldom led him -into downright assumptions of false personality. Nowhere in all his -books will you find him doing the things that every right-thinking -Anglo-Saxon critic is supposed to do--the Middleton Murry, Paul Elmer -More, Clutton-Brock sort of puerility--solemn essays on Coleridge and -Addison, abysmal discussions of the relative merits of Schumann and -Mendelssohn, horrible treatises upon the relations of Goethe to the -Romantic Movement, dull scratchings in a hundred such exhausted and -sterile fields. Such enterprises were not for Huneker; he kept himself -out of that black coat. But I am convinced that he always had his own -raiment pressed carefully before he left Lchow's for the temple of -Athene--and maybe changed cravats, and put on a boiled shirt, and took -the feather out of his hat. The simon-pure Huneker, the Huneker who was -the true essence and prime motor of the more courtly Huneker--remained -behind. This real Huneker survives in conversations that still haunt -the rafters of the beer-halls of two continents, and in a vast mass of -newspaper impromptus, thrown off too hastily to be reduced to complete -decorum, and in two books that stand outside the official canon, and -yet contain the man himself as not even "Iconoclasts" or the Chopin -book contains him, to wit, the "Old Fogy" aforesaid and the "Painted -Veils" of his last year. Both were published, so to speak, out of the -back door--the former by a music publisher in Philadelphia and the -latter in a small and expensive edition for the admittedly damned. -There is a chapter in "Painted Veils" that is Huneker to every last -hitch of the shoulders and twinkle of the eye--the chapter in which -the hero soliloquizes on art, life, immortality, and women--especially -women. And there are half a dozen chapters in "Old Fogy"--superficially -buffoonery, but how penetrating! how gorgeously flavored! how -learned!--that come completely up to the same high specification. If I -had to choose one Huneker book and give up all the others, I'd choose -"Old Fogy" instantly. In it Huneker is utterly himself. In it the last -trace of the pedagogue vanishes. Art is no longer, even by implication, -a device for improving the mind. It is wholly a magnificent adventure. - -That notion of it is what Huneker brought into American criticism, and -it is for that bringing that he will be remembered. No other critic -of his generation had a tenth of his influence. Almost single-handed -he overthrew the sthetic theory that had flourished in the United -States since the death of Poe, and set up an utterly contrary sthetic -theory in its place. If the younger men of to-day have emancipated -themselves from the Puritan sthetic, if the schoolmaster is now -palpably on the defensive, and no longer the unchallenged assassin of -the fine arts that he once was, if he has already begun to compromise -somewhat absurdly with new and sounder ideas, and even to lift his -voice in artificial hosannahs, then Huneker certainly deserves all the -credit for the change. What he brought back from Paris was precisely -the thing that was most suspected in the America of those days: the -capacity for gusto. Huneker had that capacity in a degree unmatched by -any other critic. When his soul went adventuring among masterpieces -it did not go in Sunday broad-cloth; it went with vine leaves in its -hair. The rest of the appraisers and criers-up--even Howells, with -all his humor--could never quite rid themselves of the professorial -manner. When they praised it was always with some hint of ethical, or, -at all events, of cultural purpose; when they condemned that purpose -was even plainer. The arts, to them, constituted a sort of school for -the psyche; their aim was to discipline and mellow the spirit. But to -Huneker their one aim was always to make the spirit glad--to set it, in -Nietzsche's phrase, to dancing with arms and legs. He had absolutely -no feeling for extra-sthetic valuations. If a work of art that stood -before him was honest, if it was original, if it was beautiful and -thoroughly alive, then he was for it to his last corpuscle. What if it -violated all the accepted canons? Then let the accepted canons go hang! -What if it lacked all purpose to improve and lift up? Then so much the -better! What if it shocked all right-feeling men, and made them blush -and tremble? Then damn all men of right feeling forevermore. - -With this ethical atheism, so strange in the United States and so -abhorrent to most Americans, there went something that was probably -also part of the loot of Paris: an insatiable curiosity about the -artist as man. This curiosity was responsible for two of Huneker's -salient characters: his habit of mixing even the most serious -criticism with cynical and often scandalous gossip, and his pervasive -foreignness. I believe that it is almost literally true to say that he -could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had -seen the composer's mistress, or at all events a good photograph of -her. He thought of Wagner, not alone in terms of melody and harmony, -but also in terms of the Tribschen idyl and the Bayreuth tragi-comedy. -Go through his books and you will see how often he was fascinated by -mere eccentricity of personality. I doubt that even Huysmans, had -he been a respectable French Huguenot, would have interested him; -certainly his enthusiasm for Verlaine, Villiers de l'Isle Adam and -other such fantastic fish was centered upon the men quite as much -as upon the artists. His foreignness, so often urged against him by -defenders of the national tradition, was grounded largely on the fact -that such eccentric personalities were rare in the Republic--rare, and -well watched by the _Polizei._ When one bobbed up, he was alert at -once--even though the newcomer was only a Roosevelt. The rest of the -American people he dismissed as a horde of slaves, goose-steppers, -cads, Methodists; he could not imagine one of them becoming a -first-rate artist, save by a miracle. Even the American executant was -under his suspicion, for he knew very well that playing the fiddle -was a great deal more than scraping four strings of copper and catgut -with a switch from a horse's tail. What he asked himself was how a man -could play Bach decently, and then, after playing, go from the hall to -a soda-fountain, or a political meeting, or a lecture at the Harvard -Club. Overseas there was a better air for artists, and overseas Huneker -looked for them. - -These fundamental theories of his, of course, had their defects. They -were a bit too simple, and often very much too hospitable. Huneker, -clinging to them, certainly did his share of whooping for the sort of -revolutionist who is here to-day and gone to-morrow; he was fugleman, -in his time, for more than one cause that was lost almost as soon as -it was stated. More, his prejudices made him somewhat ansthetic, at -times, to the new men who were not brilliant in color but respectably -drab, and who tried to do their work within the law. Particularly in -his later years, when the old gusto began to die out and all that -remained of it was habit, he was apt to go chasing after strange -birds and so miss seeing the elephants go by. I could put together a -very pretty list of frauds that he praised. I could concoct another -list of genuine _arrivs_ that he overlooked. But all that is merely -saying that there were human limits to him; the professors, on their -side, have sinned far worse, and in both directions. Looking back -over the whole of his work, one must needs be amazed by the general -soundness of his judgments. He discerned, in the main, what was good -and he described it in terms that were seldom bettered afterward. -His successive heroes, always under fire when he first championed -them, almost invariably moved to secure ground and became solid men, -challenged by no one save fools--Ibsen, Nietzsche, Brahms, Strauss, -Czanne, Stirner, Synge, the Russian composers, the Russian novelists. -He did for this Western world what Georg Brandes was doing for -Continental Europe--sorting out the new comers with sharp eyes, and -giving mighty lifts to those who deserved it. Brandes did it in terms -of the old academic bombast; he was never more the professor than -when he was arguing for some hobgoblin of the professors. But Huneker -did it with verve and grace; he made it, not schoolmastering, but a -glorious deliverance from schoolmastering. As I say, his influence was -enormous. The fine arts, at his touch, shed all their Anglo-American -lugubriousness, and became provocative and joyous. The spirit of -senility got out of them and the spirit of youth got into them. His -criticism, for all its French basis, was thoroughly American--vastly -more American, in fact, than the New England ponderosity that it -displaced. Though he was an Easterner and a cockney of the cockneys, he -picked up some of the Western spaciousness that showed itself in Mark -Twain. And all the young men followed him. - -A good many of them, I daresay, followed him so ardently that they -got a good distance ahead of him, and often, perhaps, embarrassed him -by taking his name in vain. For all his enterprise and iconoclasm, -indeed, there was not much of the Berserker in him, and his floutings -of the national sthetic tradition seldom took the form of forthright -challenges. Here the strange modesty that I have mentioned always -stayed him as a like weakness stayed Mark Twain. He could never quite -rid himself of the feeling that he was no more than an amateur among -the gaudy doctors who roared in the reviews, and that it would be -unseemly for him to forget their authority. I have a notion that -this feeling was born in the days when he stood almost alone, with -the whole faculty grouped in a pained circle around him. He was -then too miserable a worm to be noticed at all. Later on, gaining -importance, he was lectured somewhat severely for his violation of -decorum; in England even Max Beerbohm made an idiotic assault upon -him. It was the Germans and the French, in fact, who first praised him -intelligently--and these friends were too far away to help a timorous -man in a row at home. This sensation of isolation and littleness, I -suppose, explains his fidelity to the newspapers, and the otherwise -inexplicable joy that he always took in his forgotten work for the -_Musical Courier,_ in his day a very dubious journal. In such waters -he felt at ease. There he could disport without thought of the dignity -of publishers and the eagle eyes of campus reviewers. Some of the -connections that he formed were full of an ironical inappropriateness. -His discomforts in his _Puck_ days showed themselves in the feebleness -of his work; when he served the _Times_ he was as well placed as a -Cabell at a colored ball. Perhaps the _Sun,_ in the years before it -was munseyized, offered him the best berth that he ever had, save it -were his old one on _Mlle. New York._ But whatever the flag, he served -it loyally, and got a lot of fun out of the business. He liked the -pressure of newspaper work; he liked the associations that it involved, -the gabble in the press-room of the Opera House, the exchanges of news -and gossip; above all, he liked the relative ease of the intellectual -harness. In a newspaper article he could say whatever happened to pop -into his mind, and if it looked thin the next day, then there was, -after all, no harm done. But when he sat down to write a book--or -rather to compile it, for all of his volumes were reworked magazine -(and sometimes newspaper) articles--he became self-conscious, and so -knew uneasiness. The tightness of his style, its one salient defect, -was probably the result of this weakness. The corrected clippings that -constituted most of his manuscripts are so beladen with revisions and -rerevisions that they are almost indecipherable. - -Thus the growth of Huneker's celebrity in his later years filled him -with wonder, and never quite convinced him. He was certainly wholly -free from any desire to gather disciples about him and found a school. -There was, of course, some pride of authorship in him, and he liked -to know that his books were read and admired; in particular, he was -pleased by their translation into German and Czech. But it seemed to -me that he shrank from the bellicosity that so often got into praise -of them--that he disliked being set up as the opponent and superior of -the professors whom he always vaguely respected and the rival newspaper -critics whose friendship he esteemed far above their professional -admiration, or even respect. I could never draw him into a discussion -of these rivals, save perhaps a discussion of their historic feats at -beer-guzzling. He wrote vastly better than any of them and knew far -more about the arts than most of them, and he was undoubtedly aware -of it in his heart, but it embarrassed him to hear this superiority -put into plain terms. His intense gregariousness probably accounted -for part of this reluctance to pit himself against them; he could -not imagine a world without a great deal of easy comradeship in it, -and much casual slapping of backs. But under it all was the chronic -underestimation of himself that I have discussed--his fear that he -had spread himself over too many arts, and that his equipment was -thus defective in every one of them. "Steeplejack" is full of this -apologetic timidity. In its very title, as he explains it, there -is a confession of inferiority that is almost maudlin: "Life has -been the Barmecide's feast to me," and so on. In the book itself he -constantly takes refuge in triviality from the harsh challenges of -critical parties, and as constantly avoids facts that would shock the -Philistines. One might reasonably assume, reading it from end to end, -that his early days in Paris were spent in the fashion of a Y. M. C. A. -secretary. A few drinking bouts, of course, and a love affair in the -manner of Dubuque, Iowa--but where are the wenches? - -More than once, indeed, the book sinks to downright equivocation--for -example, in the Roosevelt episodes. Certainly no one who knew -Huneker in life will ever argue seriously that he was deceived by the -Roosevelt buncombe, or that his view of life was at all comparable to -that of the great demagogue. He stood, in fact, at the opposite pole. -He saw the world, not as a moral show, but as a sort of glorified -Follies. He was absolutely devoid of that obsession with the problem -of conduct which was Roosevelt's main virtue in the eyes of a stupid -and superstitious people. More, he was wholly against Roosevelt on -many concrete issues--the race suicide banality, the Panama swindle, -the war. He was far too much the realist to believe in the American -case, either before or after 1917, and the manner in which it was -urged, by Roosevelt and others, violated his notions of truth, honor -and decency. I assume nothing here; I simply record what he told me -himself. Nevertheless, the sheer notoriety of the Rough Rider--his -picturesque personality and talent as a mountebank--had its effect on -Huneker, and so he was a bit flattered when he was summoned to Oyster -Bay, and there accepted gravely the nonsense that was poured into his -ear, and even repeated some of it without a cackle in his book. To say -that he actually believed in it would be to libel him. It was precisely -such hollow tosh that he stood against in his rle of critic of art and -life; it was by exposing its hollowness that he lifted himself above -the general. The same weakness induced him to accept membership in the -National Institute of Arts and Letters. The offer of it to a man of his -age and attainments, after he had been passed over year after year in -favor of all sorts of cheapjack novelists and tenth-rate compilers of -college textbooks, was intrinsically insulting; it was almost as if the -Musical Union had offered to admit a Brahms. But with the insult went -a certain gage of respectability, a certain formal forgiveness for old -frivolities, a certain abatement of old doubts and self-questionings -and so Huneker accepted. Later on, reviewing the episode in his -own mind, he found it the spring of doubts that were even more -uncomfortable. His last letter to me was devoted to the matter. He was -by then eager to maintain that he had got in by a process only partly -under his control, and that, being in, he could discover no decorous -way of getting out. - -But perhaps I devote too much space to the elements in the man that -worked against his own free development. They were, after all, grounded -upon qualities that are certainly not to be deprecated--modesty, -good-will to his fellow-men, a fine sense of team-work, a distaste -for acrimonious and useless strife. These qualities gave him great -charm. He was not only humorous; he was also good-humored; even -when the crushing discomforts of his last illness were upon him his -amiability never faltered. And in addition to humor there was wit, -a far rarer thing. His most casual talk was full of this wit, and it -bathed everything that he discussed in a new and brilliant light. I -have never encountered a man who was further removed from dullness; -it seemed a literal impossibility for him to open his mouth without -discharging some word or phrase that arrested the attention and stuck -in the memory. And under it all, giving an extraordinary quality to -the verbal fireworks, there was a solid and apparently illimitable -learning. The man knew as much as forty average men, and his knowledge -was well-ordered and instantly available. He had read everything and -had seen everything and heard everything, and nothing that he had ever -read or seen or heard quite passed out of his mind. - -Here, in three words, was the main virtue of his criticism--its -gigantic richness. It had the dazzling charm of an ornate and intricate -design, a blazing fabric of fine silks. It was no mere pontifical -statement of one man's reactions to a set of ideas; it was a sort -of essence of the reactions of many men--of all the men, in fact, -worth hearing. Huneker discarded their scaffolding, their ifs and -whereases, and presented only what was important and arresting in their -conclusions. It was never a mere _pastiche_; the selection was made -delicately, discreetly, with almost unerring taste and judgment. And -in the summing up there was always the clearest possible statement -of the whole matter. What finally emerged was a body of doctrine that -came, I believe, very close to the truth. Into an assembly of national -critics who had long wallowed in dogmatic puerilities, Huneker entered -with a taste infinitely surer and more civilized, a learning infinitely -greater, and an address infinitely more engaging. No man was less the -reformer by inclination, and yet he became a reformer beyond compare. -He emancipated criticism in America from its old slavery to stupidity, -and with it he emancipated all the arts themselves. - - - - -III. FOOTNOTE ON CRITICISM - - -Nearly all the discussions of criticism that I am acquainted with -start off with a false assumption, to wit, that the primary motive -of the critic, the impulse which makes a critic of him instead of, -say, a politician, or a stockbroker, is pedagogical--that he writes -because he is possessed by a passion to advance the enlightenment, -to put down error and wrong, to disseminate some specific doctrine: -psychological, epistemological, historical, or sthetic. This is -true, it seems to me, only of bad critics, and its degree of truth -increases in direct ratio to their badness. The motive of the critic -who is really worth reading--the only critic of whom, indeed, it may -be said truthfully that it is at all possible to read him, save as an -act of mental discipline--is something quite different. That motive -is not the motive of the pedagogue, but the motive of the artist. It -is no more and no less than the simple desire to function freely and -beautifully, to give outward and objective form to ideas that bubble -inwardly and have a fascinating lure in them, to get rid of them -dramatically and make an articulate noise in the world. It was for -this reason that Plato wrote the "Republic," and for this reason that -Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony, and it is for this reason, to -drop a million miles, that I am writing the present essay. Everything -else is afterthought, mock-modesty, messianic delusion--in brief, -affectation and folly. Is the contrary conception of criticism widely -cherished? Is it almost universally held that the thing is a brother -to jurisprudence, advertising, laparotomy, chautauqua lecturing and -the art of the schoolmarm? Then certainly the fact that it is so held -should be sufficient to set up an overwhelming probability of its lack -of truth and sense. If I speak with some heat, it is as one who has -suffered. When, years ago, I devoted myself diligently to critical -pieces upon the writings of Theodore Dreiser, I found that practically -every one who took any notice of my proceedings at all fell into either -one of two assumptions about my underlying purpose: _(a)_ that I had -a fanatical devotion for Mr. Dreiser's ideas and desired to propagate -them, or _(b)_ that I was an ardent patriot, and yearned to lift up -American literature. Both assumptions were false. I had then, and I -have now, very little interest in many of Mr. Dreiser's main ideas; -when we meet, in fact, we usually quarrel about them. And I am wholly -devoid of public spirit, and haven't the least lust to improve American -literature; if it ever came to what I regard as perfection my job -would be gone. What, then, was my motive in writing about Mr. Dreiser -so copiously? My motive, well known to Mr. Dreiser himself and to every -one else who knew, me as intimately as he did, was simply and solely -to sort out and give coherence to the ideas of Mr. Mencken, and to put -them into suave and ingratiating terms, and to discharge them with a -flourish, and maybe with a phrase of pretty song, into the dense fog -that blanketed the Republic. - -The critic's choice of criticism rather than of what is called creative -writing is chiefly a matter of temperament--perhaps, more accurately -of hormones--with accidents of education and environment to help. The -feelings that happen to be dominant in him at the moment the scribbling -frenzy seizes him are feelings inspired, not directly by life itself, -but by books, pictures, music, sculpture, architecture, religion, -philosophy--in brief, by some other man's feelings about life. They -are thus, in a sense, second-hand, and it is no wonder that creative -artists so easily fall into the theory that they are also second-rate. -Perhaps they usually are. If, indeed, the critic continues on this -plane--if he lacks the intellectual agility and enterprise needed to -make the leap from the work of art to the vast and mysterious complex -of phenomena behind it--then they _always_ are, and he remains no more -than a fugelman or policeman to his betters. But if a genuine artist -is conceded within him--if his feelings are in any sense profound and -original, and his capacity for self-expression is above the average of -educated men--then he moves inevitably from the work of art to life -itself, and begins to take on a dignity that he formerly lacked. It -is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, -universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent his whole -life appraising and describing the work of other men. Did Goethe, or -Carlyle, or Matthew Arnold, or Sainte-Beuve, or Macaulay, or even, to -come down a few pegs, Lewes, or Lowell, or Hazlitt? Certainly not. The -thing that becomes most obvious about the writings of all such men, -once they are examined carefully, is that the critic is always being -swallowed up by the creative artist--that what starts out as the review -of a book, or a play, or other work of art, usually develops very -quickly into an independent essay upon the theme of that work of art, -or upon some theme that it suggests--in a word, that it becomes a fresh -work of art, and only indirectly related to the one that suggested -it. This fact, indeed, is so plain that it scarcely needs statement. -What the pedagogues always object to in, for example, the _Quarterly_ -reviewers is that they forgot the books they were supposed to review, -and wrote long papers--often, in fact, small books--expounding -ideas suggested (or not suggested) by the books under review. Every -critic who is worth reading falls inevitably into the same habit. He -cannot stick to his task: what is before him is always infinitely -less interesting to him than what is within him. If he is genuinely -first-rate--if what is within him stands the test of type, and wins an -audience, and produces the reactions that every artist craves--then -he usually ends by abandoning the criticism of specific works of art -altogether, and setting up shop as a general merchant in general ideas, -_i. e._, as an artist working in the materials of life itself. - -Mere reviewing, however conscientiously and competently it is done, is -plainly a much inferior business. Like writing poetry, it is chiefly -a function of intellectual immaturity. The young literatus just out -of the university, having as yet no capacity for grappling with the -fundamental mysteries of existence, is put to writing reviews of books, -or plays, or music, or painting. Very often he does it extremely well; -it is, in fact, not hard to do well, for even decayed pedagogues often -do it, as such graves of the intellect as the New York _Times_ bear -witness. But if he continues to do it, whether well or ill, it is a -sign to all the world that his growth ceased when they made him _Artium -Baccalaureus._ Gradually he becomes, whether in or out of the academic -grove, a professor, which is to say, a man devoted to diluting and -retailing the ideas of his superiors--not an artist, not even a bad -artist, but almost the antithesis of an artist. He is learned, he is -sober, he is painstaking and accurate--but he is as hollow as a jug. -Nothing is in him save the ghostly echoes of other men's thoughts -and feelings. If he were a genuine artist he would have thoughts and -feelings of his own, and the impulse to give them objective form would -be irresistible. An artist can no more withstand that impulse than a -politician can withstand the temptations of a job. There are no mute, -inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound -test of a Milton is that he functions as a Milton. His difference -from other men lies precisely in the superior vigor of his impulse to -self-expression, not in the superior beauty and loftiness of his ideas. -Other men, in point of fact, often have the same ideas, or perhaps -even loftier ones, but they are able to suppress them, usually on -grounds of decorum, and so they escape being artists, and are respected -by right-thinking persons, and die with money in the bank, and are -forgotten in two weeks. - -Obviously, the critic whose performance we are commonly called upon to -investigate is a man standing somewhere along the path leading from the -beginning that I have described to the goal. He has got beyond being a -mere cataloguer and valuer of other men's ideas, but he has not yet -become an autonomous artist--he is not yet ready to challenge attention -with his own ideas alone. But it is plain that his motion, in so far as -he is moving at all, must be in the direction of that autonomy--that -is, unless one imagines him sliding backward into senile infantilism: -a spectacle not unknown to literary pathology, but too pathetic to be -discussed here. Bear this motion in mind, and the true nature of his -aims and purposes becomes clear; more, the incurable falsity of the -aims and purposes usually credited to him becomes equally clear. He -is not actually trying to perform an impossible act of arctic justice -upon the artist whose work gives him a text. He is not trying with -mathematical passion to find out exactly what was in that artist's -mind at the moment of creation, and to display it precisely and in an -ecstasy of appreciation. He is not trying to bring the work discussed -into accord with some transient theory of sthetics, or ethics, or -truth, or to determine its degree of departure from that theory. He is -not trying to lift up the fine arts, or to defend democracy against -sense, or to promote happiness at the domestic hearth, or to convert -sophomores into right-thinkers, or to serve God. He is not trying to -fit a group of novel phenomena into the orderly process of history. He -is not even trying to discharge the catalytic office that I myself, in -a romantic moment, once sought to force upon him. He is, first and -last, simply trying to express himself. He is trying to arrest and -challenge a sufficient body of readers, to make them pay attention -to him, to impress them with the charm and novelty of his ideas, to -provoke them into an agreeable (or shocked) awareness of him, and he is -trying to achieve thereby for his own inner ego the grateful feeling of -a function performed, a tension relieved, a _katharsis_ attained which -Wagner achieved when he wrote "Die Walkre," and a hen achieves every -time she lays an egg. - -Joseph Conrad is moved by that necessity to write romances; Bach was -moved to write music; poets are moved to write poetry; critics are -moved to write criticism. The form is nothing; the only important -thing is the motive power, and it is the same in all cases. It is -the pressing yearning of every man who has ideas in him to empty -them upon the world, to hammer them into plausible and ingratiating -shapes, to compel the attention and respect of his equals, to lord -it over his inferiors. So seen, the critic becomes a far more -transparent and agreeable fellow than ever he was in the discourses -of the psychologists who sought to make him a mere appraiser in an -intellectual customs house, a gauger in a distillery of the spirit, -a just and infallible judge upon the cosmic bench. Such offices, in -point of fact, never fit him. He always bulges over their confines. -So labelled and estimated, it inevitably turns out that the specific -critic under examination is a very bad one, or no critic at all. -But when he is thought of, not as pedagogue, but as artist, then he -begins to take on reality, and, what is more, dignity. Carlyle was -surely no just and infallible judge; on the contrary, he was full -of prejudices, biles, navets, humors. Yet he is read, consulted, -attended to. Macaulay was unfair, inaccurate, fanciful, lyrical--yet -his essays live. Arnold had his faults too, and so did Sainte-Beuve, -and so did Goethe, and so did many another of that line--and yet they -are remembered to-day, and all the learned and conscientious critics -of their time, laboriously concerned with the precise intent of the -artists under review, and passionately determined to set it forth with -god-like care and to relate it exactly to this or that great stream of -ideas--all these pedants are forgotten. What saved Carlyle, Macaulay -and company is as plain as day. They were first-rate artists. They -could make the thing charming, and that is always a million times more -important than making it true. - -Truth, indeed, is something that is believed in completely only by -persons who have never tried personally to pursue it to its fastnesses -and grab it by the tail. It is the adoration of second-rate men--men -who always receive it at second-hand. Pedagogues believe in immutable -truths and spend their lives trying to determine them and propagate -them; the intellectual progress of man consists largely of a concerted -effort to block and destroy their enterprise. Nine times out of ten, -in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; -there is only error to be exposed. In whole departments of human -inquiry it seems to me quite unlikely that the truth ever _will_ be -discovered. Nevertheless, the rubber-stamp thinking of the world -always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical -with the discovery of the truth--that error and truth are simple -opposites. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, -when it has been cured of one error, is usually simply another error, -and maybe one worse than the first one. This is the whole history of -the intellect in brief. The average man of to-day does not believe in -precisely the same imbecilities that the Greek of the fourth century -before Christ believed in, but the things that he _does_ believe in are -often quite as idiotic. Perhaps this statement is a bit too sweeping. -There is, year by year, a gradual accumulation of what may be called, -provisionally, truths--there is a slow accretion of ideas that somehow -manage to meet all practicable human tests, and so survive. But even -so, it is risky to call them absolute truths. All that one may safely -say of them is that no one, as yet, has demonstrated that they are -errors. Soon or late, if experience teaches us anything, they are -likely to succumb too. The profoundest truths of the Middle Ages are -now laughed at by schoolboys. The profoundest truths of democracy will -be laughed at, a few centuries hence, even by school-teachers. - -In the department of sthetics, wherein critics mainly disport -themselves, it is almost impossible to think of a so-called truth -that shows any sign of being permanently true. The most profound of -principles begins to fade and quiver almost as soon as it is stated. -But the work of art, as opposed to the theory behind it, has a longer -life, particularly if that theory be obscure and questionable, and so -cannot be determined accurately. "Hamlet," the Mona Lisa, "Faust," -"Dixie," "Parsifal," "Mother Goose," "Annabel Lee," "Huckleberry -Finn"--these things, so baffling to pedagogy, so contumacious to the -categories, so mysterious in purpose and utility--these things live. -And why? Because there is in them the flavor of salient, novel and -attractive personality, because the quality that shines from them is -not that of correct demeanor but that of creative passion, because they -pulse and breathe and speak, because they are genuine works of art. So -with criticism. Let us forget all the heavy effort to make a science of -it; it is a fine art, or nothing. If the critic, retiring to his cell -to concoct his treatise upon a book or play or what-not, produces a -piece of writing that shows sound structure, and brilliant color, and -the flash of new and persuasive ideas, and civilized manners, and the -charm of an uncommon personality in free function, then he has given -something to the world that is worth having, and sufficiently justified -his existence. Is Carlyle's "Frederick" true? Who cares? As well ask -if the Parthenon is true, or the C Minor Symphony, or "Wiener Blur." -Let the critic who is an artist leave such necropsies to professors of -sthetics, who can no more determine the truth than he can, and will -infallibly make it unpleasant and a bore. - -It is, of course, not easy to practice this abstention. Two forces, -one within and one without, tend to bring even a Hazlitt or a Huneker -under the campus pump. One is the almost universal human susceptibility -to messianic delusions--the irresistible tendency of practically every -man, once he finds a crowd in front of him, to strut and roll his -eyes. The other is the public demand, born of such long familiarity -with pedagogical criticism that no other kind is readily conceivable, -that the critic teach something as well as say something--in the -popular phrase, that he be constructive. Both operate powerfully -against his free functioning, and especially the former. He finds -it hard to resist the flattery of his customers, however little he -may actually esteem it. If he knows anything at all, he knows that -his following, like that of every other artist in ideas, is chiefly -made up of the congenitally subaltern type of man and woman--natural -converts, lodge joiners, me-toos, stragglers after circus parades. -It is precious seldom that he ever gets a positive idea out of them; -what he usually gets is mere unintelligent ratification. But this -troop, despite its obvious failings, corrupts him in various ways. -For one thing, it enormously renforces his belief in his own ideas, -and so tends to make him stiff and dogmatic--in brief, precisely -everything that he ought not to be. And for another thing, it tends -to make him (by a curious contradiction) a bit pliant and politic: he -begins to estimate new ideas, not in proportion as they are amusing -or beautiful, but in proportion as they are likely to please. So -beset, front and rear, he sometimes sinks supinely to the level of a -professor, and his subsequent proceedings are interesting no more. -The true aim of a critic is certainly not to make converts. He must -know that very few of the persons who are susceptible to conversion -are worth converting. Their minds are intrinsically flabby and -parasitical, and it is certainly not sound sport to agitate minds -of that sort. Moreover, the critic must always harbor a grave doubt -about most of the ideas that they lap up so greedily--it must occur -to him not infrequently, in the silent watches of the night, that -much that he writes is sheer buncombe. As I have said, I can't imagine -any idea--that is, in the domain of sthetics--that is palpably and -incontrovertibly sound. All that I am familiar with, and in particular -all that I announce most vociferously, seem to me to contain a core -of quite obvious nonsense. I thus try to avoid cherishing them too -lovingly, and it always gives me a shiver to see any one else gobble -them at one gulp. Criticism, at bottom, is indistinguishable from -skepticism. Both launch themselves, the one by sthetic presentations -and the other by logical presentations, at the common human tendency -to accept whatever is approved, to take in ideas ready-made, to be -responsive to mere rhetoric and gesticulation. A critic who believes in -anything absolutely is bound to that something quite as helplessly as a -Christian is bound to the Freudian garbage in the Book of Revelation. -To that extent, at all events, he is unfree and unintelligent, and -hence a bad critic. - -The demand for "constructive" criticism is based upon the same false -assumption that immutable truths exist in the arts, and that the artist -will be improved by being made aware of them. This notion, whatever the -form it takes, is always absurd--as much so, indeed, as its brother -delusion that the critic, to be competent, must be a practitioner of -the specific art he ventures to deal with, _i. e._, that a doctor, to -cure a belly-ache, must have a belly-ache. As practically encountered, -it is disingenuous as well as absurd, for it comes chiefly from bad -artists who tire of serving as performing monkeys, and crave the -greater ease and safety of sophomores in class. They demand to be -taught in order to avoid being knocked about. In their demand is the -theory that instruction, if they could get it, would profit them--that -they are capable of doing better work than they do. As a practical -matter, I doubt that this is ever true. Bad poets never actually grow -any better; they invariably grow worse and worse. In all history there -has never been, to my knowledge, a single practitioner of any art -who, as a result of "constructive" criticism, improved his work. The -curse of all the arts, indeed, is the fact that they are constantly -invaded by persons who are not artists at all--persons whose yearning -to express their ideas and feelings is unaccompanied by the slightest -capacity for charming expression--in brief, persons with absolutely -nothing to say. This is particularly true of the art of letters, which -interposes very few technical obstacles to the vanity and garrulity of -such invaders. Any effort to teach them to write better is an effort -wasted, as every editor discovers for himself; they are as incapable -of it as they are of jumping over the moon. The only sort of criticism -that can deal with them to any profit is the sort that employs them -frankly as laboratory animals. It cannot cure them, but it can at least -make an amusing and perhaps edifying show of them. It is idle to argue -that the good in them is thus destroyed with the bad. The simple answer -is that there _is_ no good in them. Suppose Poe had wasted his time -trying to dredge good work out of Rufus Dawes, author of "Geraldine." -He would have failed miserably--and spoiled a capital essay, still -diverting after three-quarters of a century. Suppose Beethoven, dealing -with Gottfried Weber, had tried laboriously to make an intelligent -music critic of him. How much more apt, useful and durable the simple -note: "Arch-ass! Double-barrelled ass!" Here was absolutely sound -criticism. Here was a judgment wholly beyond challenge. Moreover, here -was a small but perfect work of art. - -Upon the low practical value of so-called constructive criticism I -can offer testimony out of my own experience. My books are commonly -reviewed at great length, and many critics devote themselves to -pointing out what they conceive to be my errors, both of fact and of -taste. Well, I cannot recall a case in which any suggestion offered -by a constructive critic has helped me in the slightest, or even -actively interested me. Every such wet-nurse of letters has sought -fatuously to make me write in a way differing from that in which the -Lord God Almighty, in His infinite wisdom, impels me to write--that -is, to make me write stuff which, coming from me, would be as false -as an appearance of decency in a Congressman. All the benefits I have -ever got from the critics of my work have come from the destructive -variety. A hearty slating always does me good, particularly if it be -well written. It begins by enlisting my professional respect; it ends -by making me examine my ideas coldly in the privacy of my chamber. -Not, of course, that I usually revise them, but I at least examine -them. If I decide to hold fast to them, they are all the dearer to me -thereafter, and I expound them with a new passion and plausibility. -If, on the contrary, I discern holes in them, I shelve them in a -_pianissimo_ manner, and set about hatching new ones to take their -place. But constructive criticism irritates me. I do not object to -being denounced, but I can't abide being school-mastered, especially by -men I regard as imbeciles. - -I find, as a practicing critic, that very few men who write books -are even as tolerant as I am--that most of them, soon or late, show -signs of extreme discomfort under criticism, however polite its terms. -Perhaps this is why enduring friendships between authors and critics -are so rare. All artists, of course, dislike one another more or less, -but that dislike seldom rises to implacable enmity, save between opera -singer and opera singer, and creative author and critic. Even when -the latter two keep up an outward show of good-will, there is always -bitter antagonism under the surface. Part of it, I daresay, arises out -of the impossible demands of the critic, particularly if he be tinged -with the constructive madness. Having favored an author with his good -opinion, he expects the poor fellow to live up to that good opinion -without the slightest compromise or faltering, and this is commonly -beyond human power. He feels that any let-down compromises _him_--that -his hero is stabbing him in the back, and making him ridiculous--and -this feeling rasps his vanity. The most bitter of all literary quarrels -are those between critics and creative artists, and most of them arise -in just this way. As for the creative artist, he on his part naturally -resents the critic's air of pedagogical superiority and he resents it -especially when he has an uneasy feeling that he has fallen short of -his best work, and that the discontent of the critic is thus justified. -Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice. Under it -all, of course, lurks the fact that I began with: the fact that the -critic is himself an artist, and that his creative impulse, soon or -late, is bound to make him neglect the punctilio. When he sits down to -compose his criticism, his artist ceases to be a friend, and becomes -mere raw material for his work of art. It is my experience that artists -invariably resent this cavalier use of them. They are pleased so long -as the critic confines himself to the modest business of interpreting -them--preferably in terms of their own estimate of themselves--but the -moment he proceeds to adorn their theme with variations of his own, the -moment he brings new ideas to the enterprise and begins contrasting -them with their ideas, that moment they grow restive. It is precisely -at this point, of course, that criticism becomes genuine criticism; -before that it was mere reviewing. When a critic passes it he loses his -friends. By becoming an artist, he becomes the foe of all other artists. - -But the transformation, I believe, has good effects upon him: it makes -him a better critic. Too much _Gemtlichkeit_ is as fatal to criticism -as it would be to surgery or politics. When it rages unimpeded it leads -inevitably either to a dull professorial sticking on of meaningless -labels or to log-rolling, and often it leads to both. One of the most -hopeful symptoms of the new _Aufklrung_ in the Republic is the revival -of acrimony in criticism--the renaissance of the doctrine that sthetic -matters are important, and that it is worth the while of a healthy male -to take them seriously, as he takes business, sport and amour. In the -days when American literature was showing its first vigorous growth, -the native criticism was extraordinarily violent and even vicious; in -the days when American literature swooned upon the tomb of the Puritan -_Kultur_ it became flaccid and childish. The typical critic of the -first era was Poe, as the typical critic of the second was Howells. Poe -carried on his critical jehads with such ferocity that he often got -into law-suits, and sometimes ran no little risk of having his head -cracked. He regarded literary questions as exigent and momentous. The -lofty aloofness of the don was simply not in him. When he encountered -a book that seemed to him to be bad, he attacked it almost as sharply -as a Chamber of Commerce would attack a fanatic preaching free speech, -or the corporation of Trinity Church would attack Christ. His opponents -replied in the same Berserker manner. Much of Poe's surviving ill-fame, -as a drunkard and dead-beat, is due to their inordinate denunciations -of him. They were not content to refute him; they constantly tried to -dispose of him altogether. The very ferocity of that ancient row shows -that the native literature, in those days, was in a healthy state. -Books of genuine value were produced. Literature always thrives best, -in fact, in an atmosphere of hearty strife. Poe, surrounded by admiring -professors, never challenged, never aroused to the emotions of revolt, -would probably have written poetry indistinguishable from the hollow -stuff of, say, Prof. Dr. George E. Woodberry. It took the persistent -(and often grossly unfair and dishonorable) opposition of Griswold _et -al_ to stimulate him to his highest endeavors. He needed friends, true -enough, but he also needed enemies. - -To-day, for the first time in years, there is strife in American -criticism, and the Paul Elmer Mores and Hamilton Wright Mabies are -no longer able to purr in peace. The instant they fall into stiff -professorial attitudes they are challenged, and often with anything but -urbanity. The _ex cathedra_ manner thus passes out, and free discussion -comes in. Heretics lay on boldly, and the professors are forced to -make some defense. Often, going further, they attempt counter-attacks. -Ears are bitten off. Noses are bloodied. There are wallops both above -and below the belt. I am, I need not say, no believer in any magical -merit in debate, no matter how free it may be. It certainly does not -necessarily establish the truth; both sides, in fact, may be wrong, and -they often are. But it at least accomplishes two important effects. -On the one hand, it exposes all the cruder fallacies to hostile -examination, and so disposes of many of them. And on the other hand, it -melodramatizes the business of the critic, and so convinces thousands -of bystanders, otherwise quite inert, that criticism is an amusing and -instructive art, and that the problems it deals with are important. -What men will fight for seems to be worth looking into. - - - - -IV. DAS KAPITAL - - -After a hearty dinner of _potage crole,_ planked Chesapeake shad, -Guinea hen _en casserole_ and some respectable salad, with two or three -cocktails made of two-thirds gin, one-third Martini-Rossi vermouth and -a dash of absinthe as _Vorspiel_ and a bottle of Ruhlnder 1903 to wash -it down, the following thought often bubbles up from my subconscious: -that many of the acknowledged evils of capitalism, now so horribly -visible in the world, are not due primarily to capitalism itself but -rather to democracy, that universal murrain of Christendom. - -What I mean, in brief, is that capitalism, under democracy, is -constantly under hostile pressure and often has its back to the wall, -and that its barbaric manners and morals, at least in large part, are -due to that fact--that they are, in essence, precisely the same manners -and morals that are displayed by any other creature or institution so -beset. Necessity is not only the mother of invention; it is also the -mother of every imaginable excess and infamy. A woman defending her -child is notoriously willing to go to lengths that even a Turk or an -agent of the Department of Justice would regard as inordinate, and -so is a Presbyterian defending his hell, or a soldier defending his -fatherland, or a banker defending his gold. It is only when there is no -danger that the average human being is honorable, just as it is only -when there _is_ danger that he is virtuous. He would commit adultery -every day if it were safe, and he would commit murder every day if it -were necessary. - -The essential thing about democracy, as every one must know, is that -it is a device for strengthening and heartening the have-nots in their -eternal war upon the haves. That war, as every one knows again, has -its psychological springs in envy pure and simple--envy of the more -fortunate man's greater wealth, the superior pulchritude of his wife -or wives, his larger mobility and freedom, his more protean capacity -for and command of happiness--in brief, his better chance to lead a -bearable life in this worst of possible worlds. It follows that under -democracy, which gives a false power and importance to the have-nots by -counting every one of them as the legal equal of George Washington or -Beethoven, the process of government consists largely, and sometimes -almost exclusively, of efforts to spoil that advantage artificially. -Trust-busting, free silver, direct elections, Prohibition, government -ownership and all the other varieties of American political quackery -are but symptoms of the same general rage. It is the rage of the -have-not against the have, of the farmer who must drink hard cider and -forty-rod against the city man who may drink Burgundy and Scotch, of -the poor fellow who must stay at home looking at a wife who regards the -lip-stick as lewd and lascivious against the lucky fellow who may go to -Atlantic City or Palm Beach and ride up and down in a wheel-chair with -a girl who knows how to make up and has put away the fear of God. - -The ignobler sort of men, of course, are too stupid to understand -various rare and exhilarating sorts of superiority, and so they do not -envy the happiness that goes with them. If they could enter into the -mind of a Wagner or a Brahms and begin to comprehend the stupendous joy -that such a man gets out of the practice of his art, they would pass -laws against it and make a criminal of him, as they have already made -criminals, in the United States, of the man with a civilized taste for -wines, the man so attractive to women that he can get all the wives he -wants without having to marry them, and the man who can make pictures -like Flicien Rops, or books like Flaubert, Zola, Dreiser, Cabell or -Rabelais. Wagner and Brahms escape, and their arts with them, because -the great masses of men cannot understand the sort of thing they -try to do, and hence do not envy the man who does it well, and gets -joy out of it. It is much different with, say, Rops. Every American -Congressman, as a small boy, covered the fence of the Sunday-School -yard with pictures in the manner of Rops. What he now remembers of the -business is that the pictures were denounced by the superintendent, and -that he was cowhided for making them; what he hears about Rops, when he -hears at all, is that the fellow is vastly esteemed, and hence probably -full of a smug sthetic satisfaction. In consequence, it is unlawful in -the United States to transmit the principal pictures of Rops by mail, -or, indeed, "to have and possess" them. The man who owns them must -conceal them from the _okhrna_ of the Department of Justice just as -carefully as he conceals the wines and whiskeys in his cellar, or the -poor working girl he transports from the heat and noise of New York to -the salubrious calm of the Jersey coast, or his hand-tooled library set -of the "Contes Drlatiques," or his precious first edition of "Jurgen." - -But, as I say, the democratic pressure in such directions is relatively -feeble, for there are whole categories of more or less sthetic -superiority and happiness that the democrat cannot understand at all, -and is in consequence virtually unaware of. It is far different with -the varieties of superiority and happiness that are the functions -of mere money. Here the democrat is extraordinarily alert and -appreciative. He can not only imagine hundreds of ways of getting -happiness out of money; he devotes almost the whole of his intellectual -activity, such as it is, to imagining them, and he seldom if ever -imagines anything else. Even his sexual fancies translate themselves -instantly into concepts of dollars and cents; the thing that confines -him so miserably to one wife, and to one, alas, so unappetizing and -depressing, is simply his lack of money; if he only had the wealth -of Diamond Jim Brady he too would be the glittering Don Giovanni -that Jim was. All the known species of democratic political theory -are grounded firmly upon this doctrine that money, and money only, -makes the mare go--that all the conceivable varieties of happiness -are possible to the man who has it. Even the Socialists, who profess -to scorn money, really worship it. Socialism, indeed, is simply the -degenerate capitalism of bankrupt capitalists. Its one genuine object -is to get more money for its professors; all its other grandiloquent -objects are afterthoughts, and most of them are bogus. The democrats -of other schools pursue the same single aim--and adorn it with false -pretenses even more transparent. In the United States the average -democrat, I suppose, would say that the establishment and safeguarding -of liberty was the chief purpose of democracy. The theory is mere -wind. The average American democrat really cares nothing whatever -for liberty, and is always willing to sell it for money. What he -actually wants, and strives to get by his politics, is more money. -His fundamental political ideas nearly all contemplate restraints and -raids upon capital, even when they appear superficially to be quite -free from economic flavor, and most of the political banshees and -bugaboos that alternately freeze and boil his blood have dollar marks -written all over them. There is no need to marshal a long catalogue of -examples from English and American political history: I simply defy any -critic of my doctrine to find a single issue of genuine appeal to the -populace, at any time during the past century, that did not involve a -more or less obvious scheme for looting a minority--the slave-owners, -Wall Street, the railroads, the dukes, or some other group representing -capital. Even the most affecting idealism of the plain people has a -thrifty basis. In the United States, during the early part of the late -war, they were very cynical about the Allied cause; it was not until -the war orders of the Allies raised their wages that they began to -believe in the noble righteousness of Lloyd-George and company. And -after Dr. Wilson had jockeyed the United States itself into the war, -and the cost of living began to increase faster than wages, he faced a -hostile country until he restored altruism by his wholesale bribery of -labor. - -It is my contention that the constant exposure of capitalism to such -primitive lusts and forays is what makes it so lamentably extortionate -and unconscionable in democratic countries, and particularly in the -United States. The capitalist, warned by experience, collars all he -can while the getting is good, regardless of the commonest honesty and -decorum, because he is haunted by an uneasy feeling that his season -will not be long. His dominating passion is to pile up the largest -amount of capital possible, by fair means or foul, so that he will -have ample reserves when the next raid comes, and he has to use part -of it to bribe one part of the proletariat against the other. In the -long run, of course, he always wins, for this bribery is invariably -feasible; in the United States, indeed, every fresh struggle leaves -capital more secure than it was before. But though the capitalist thus -has no reason to fear actual defeat and disaster, he is well aware that -victory is always expensive, and his natural prudence causes him to -discount the cost in advance, even when he has planned to shift it to -other shoulders. I point, in example, to the manner in which capital -dealt with the discharged American soldiers after the war. Its first -effort was to cajole them into its service, as they had been cajoled -by the politicians after the Civil War. To this end, it borrowed -the machine erected by Dr. Wilson and his agents for debauching the -booboisie during the actual war, and by the skillful use of that -machine it quickly organized the late conscripts into the American -Legion, alarmed them with lies about a Bolshevist scheme to make slaves -of them (i. e., to cut off forever their hope of getting money), and -put them to clubbing and butchering their fellow proletarians. The -business done, the conscripts found themselves out of jobs: their -gallant war upon Bolshevism had brought down wages, and paralysed -organized labor. They now demanded pay for their work, and capital -had to meet the demand. It did so by promising them a bonus--_i. e.,_ -loot--out of the public treasury, and by straightway inventing a scheme -whereby the ultimate cost would fall chiefly upon poor folk. - -Throughout the war, indeed, capital exhibited an inordinately -extortionate spirit, and thereby revealed its underlying dread. First -it robbed the Allies in the manner of bootleggers looting a country -distillery, then it swindled the plain people at home by first bribing -them with huge wages and then taking away all their profits and -therewith all their savings, and then it seized and made away with the -impounded property of enemy nationals--property theoretically held in -trust for them, and the booty, if it was booty at all, of the whole -American people. This triple burglary was excessive, to be sure, but -who will say that it was not prudent? The capitalists of the Republic -are efficient, and have foresight. They saw some lean and hazardous -years ahead, with all sorts of raids threatening. They took measures to -fortify their position. To-day their prevision is their salvation. They -are losing some of their accumulation, of course, but they still have -enough left to finance an effective defense of the remainder. There -was never any time in the history of any country, indeed, when capital -was so securely intrenched as it is to-day in the United States. It -has divided the proletariat into two bitterly hostile halves, it has -battered and crippled unionism almost beyond recognition, it has a firm -grip upon all three arms of the government, and it controls practically -every agency for the influencing of public opinion, from the press to -the church. Had it been less prudent when times were good, and put its -trust in God alone, the I. W. W. would have rushed it at the end of the -war. - -As I say, I often entertain the thought that it would be better, -in the long run, to make terms with a power so hard to resist, and -thereby purge it of its present compulsory criminality. I doubt that -capitalists, as a class, are naturally vicious; certainly they are -no more vicious than, say, lawyers and politicians--upon whom the -plain people commonly rely, in their innocence, to save them. I have -known a good many men of great wealth in my time, and most of them -have been men showing all the customary decencies. They deplore the -harsh necessities of their profession quite as honestly as a judge -deplores the harsh necessities of his. You will never convince me that -the average American banker, during the war, got anything properly -describable as professional satisfaction out of selling Liberty bonds -at 100 to poor stenographers, and then buying them back at 83. He knew -that he'd need his usurious profit against the blue day when the boys -came home, and so he took it, but it would have given him ten times as -much pleasure if it had come from the reluctant gizzard of some other -banker. In brief, there is a pride of workmanship in capitalists, just -as there is in all other men above the general. They get the same -spiritual lift out of their sordid swindles that Swinburne got out of -composing his boozy dithyrambs, and I often incline to think that it -is quite as worthy of respect. In a democratic society, with the arts -adjourned and the sciences mere concubines of money, it is chiefly the -capitalists, in fact, who keep pride of workmanship alive. In their -principal enemies, the trades-unionists, it is almost extinct. Unionism -seldom, if ever, uses such power as it has to insure better work; -almost always it devotes a large part of that power to safeguarding -bad work. A union man who, moved by professional pride, put any extra -effort into his job would probably be punished by his union as a sort -of scab. But a capitalist is still able to cherish some of the old -spirit of the guildsman. If he invents a new device for corralling the -money of those who have earned it, or operates an old device in some -new and brilliant way, he is honored and envied by his colleagues. -The late J. Pierpont Morgan was thus honored and envied, not because -he made more actual money than any other capitalist of his time--in -point of fact, he made a good deal less than some, and his own son, a -much inferior man, has made more since his death than he did during -his whole life--but because his operations showed originality, daring, -coolness, and imagination--in brief, because he was a great virtuoso in -the art he practiced. - -What I contend is that the democratic system of government would be -saner and more effective in its dealings with capital if it ceased to -regard all capitalists as criminals _ipso facto,_ and thereby ceased -to make their armed pursuit the chief end of practical politics--if -it gave over this vain effort to put them down by force, and tried -to bring them to decency by giving greater play and confidence to -the pride of workmanship that I have described. They would be less -ferocious and immoderate, I think, if they were treated with less -hostility, and put more upon their conscience and honor. No doubt the -average democrat, brought up upon the prevailing superstitions and -prejudices of his faith, will deny at once that they are actually -capable of conscience or honor, or that they have any recognizable -pride of workmanship. Well, let him deny it. He will make precisely -the same denial with respect to kings. Nevertheless, it must be plain -to every one who has read history attentively that the majority of the -kings of the past, even when no criticism could reach them, showed -a very great pride of workmanship--that they tried to be good kings -even when it was easier to be bad ones. The same thing is true of -the majority of capitalists--the kings of to-day. They are criminals -by our democratic law, but their criminality is chiefly artificial -and theoretical, like that of a bootlegger. If it were abolished by -repealing the laws which create it--if it became legally just as -virtuous to organize and operate a great industrial corporation, or -to combine and rehabilitate railroads, or to finance any other such -transactions as it is to organize a trades-union, a _Bauverein,_ or a -lodge of Odd Fellows--then I believe that capitalists would forthwith -abandon a great deal of the scoundrelism which now marks their -proceedings, that they could be trusted to police their order at least -as vigilantly as physicians or lawyers police theirs, and that the -activities of those members of it who showed no pride of workmanship at -all would be effectively curbed. - -The legal war upon them under democracy is grounded upon the false -assumption that it would be possible, given laws enough, to get rid -of them altogether. The _Ur-_Americanos, who set the tone of our -legislation and provided examples for the legislation of every other -democratic country, were chiefly what would be called Bolsheviki -to-day. They dreamed of a republic wholly purged of capitalism--and -taxes. They were have-nots of the most romantic and ambitious variety, -and saw Utopia before them. Every man of their time who thought -capitalistically--that is, who believed that things consumed had to -be paid for--was a target for their revilings: for example, Alexander -Hamilton. But they were wrong, and their modern heirs and assigns are -wrong just as surely. That wrongness of theirs, in truth, has grown -enormously since it was launched, for the early Americans were a -pastoral people, and could get along with very little capital, whereas -the Americans of to-day lead a very complex life, and need the aid of -capitalism at almost every breath they draw. Most of their primary -necessities--the railroad, the steamship lines, the trolley car, -the telephone, refrigerated meats, machine-made clothes, phonograph -records, moving-picture shows, and so on--are wholly unthinkable save -as the products of capital in large aggregations. No man of to-day can -imagine doing without them, or getting them without the aid of such -aggregations. The most even the wildest Socialist can think of is to -take the capital away from the capitalists who now have it and hand it -over to the state--in other words, to politicians. A century ago there -were still plenty of men who, like Thoreau, proposed to abolish it -altogether. But now even the radicals of the extreme left assume as a -matter of course that capital is indispensible, and that abolishing it -or dispersing it would cause a collapse of civilization. - -What ails democracy, in the economic department, is that it proceeds -upon the assumption that the contrary is true--that it seeks to bring -capitalism to a state of innocuous virtue by grossly exaggerating -its viciousness--that it penalizes ignorantly what is, at bottom, a -perfectly natural and legitimate aspiration, and one necessary to -society. Such penalizings, I need not argue, never destroy the impulse -itself; surely the American experience with Prohibition should make -even a democrat aware of that. What they do is simply to make it -evasive, intemperate, and relentless. If it were legally as hazardous -in the United States to play a string quartette as it is to build up a -great bank or industrial enterprise--if the performers, struggling with -their parts, had to watch the windows in constant fear that a Bryan, -a Roosevelt, a Lloyd-George or some other such predatory mountebank -would break in, armed with a club and followed by a rabble--then string -quartette players would become as devious and anti-social in their ways -as the average American capitalist is to-day, and when, by a process of -setting one part of the mob against the rest, they managed to get a -chance to play quartettes in temporary peace, despite the general mob -hatred of them, they would forget the lovely music of Haydn and Mozart -altogether, and devote their whole time to a _fortissimo_ playing of -the worst musical felonies of Schnberg, Ravel and Strawinsky. - - - - -V. AD IMAGINEM DEI CREAVIT ILLUM - - - -1 - -_The Life of Man_ - - -The old anthropomorphic notion that the life of the whole universe -centers in the life of man--that human existence is the supreme -expression of the cosmic process--this notion seems to be on its way -toward the Sheol of exploded delusions. The fact is that the life of -man, as it is more and more studied in the light of general biology, -appears to be more and more empty of significance. Once apparently the -chief concern and masterpiece of the gods, the human race now begins -to bear the aspect of _I_ an accidental by-product of their vast, -inscrutable and probably nonsensical operations. A blacksmith making a -horse-shoe produces something almost as brilliant and mysterious--the -shower of sparks. But his eye and thought, as we know, are not on the -sparks, but on the horse-shoe. The sparks, indeed, constitute a sort -of disease of the horse-shoe; their existence depends upon a wasting -of its tissue. In the same way, perhaps, man is a local disease of -the cosmos--a kind of pestiferous eczema or urethritis. There are, -of course, different grades of eczema, and so are there different -grades of men. No doubt a cosmos afflicted with nothing worse than an -infection of Beethovens would not think it worth while to send for the -doctor. But a cosmos infested by prohibitionists, Socialists, Scotsmen -and stockbrokers must suffer damnably. No wonder the sun is so hot and -the moon is so diabetically green! - - - -2 - -_The Anthropomorphic Delusion_ - - -As I say, the anthropomorphic theory of the world is made absurd by -modern biology--but that is not saying, of course, that it will ever -be abandoned by the generality of men. To the contrary, they will -cherish it in proportion as it becomes more and more dubious. To-day, -indeed, it is cherished as it was never cherished in the Ages of Faith, -when the doctrine that man was god-like was at least ameliorated -by the doctrine that woman was vile. What else is behind charity, -philanthropy, pacifism, Socialism, the uplift, all the rest of the -current sentimentalities? One and all, these sentimentalities are based -upon the notion that man is a glorious and ineffable animal, and -that his continued existence in the world ought to be facilitated and -insured. But this notion is obviously full of fatuity. As animals go, -even in so limited a space as our world, man is botched and ridiculous. -Few other brutes are so stupid or so cowardly. The commonest yellow dog -has far sharper senses and is infinitely more courageous, not to say -more honest and dependable. The ants and the bees are, in many ways, -far more intelligent and ingenious; they manage their government with -vastly less quarreling, wastefulness and imbecility. The lion is more -beautiful, more dignified, more majestic. The antelope is swifter and -more graceful. The ordinary house-cat is cleaner. The horse, foamed -by labor, has a better smell. The gorilla is kinder to his children -and more faithful to his wife. The ox and the ass are more industrious -and serene. But most of all, man is deficient in courage, perhaps the -noblest quality of them all. He is not only mortally afraid of all -other animals of his own weight or half his weight--save a few that he -has debased by artificial inbreeding--; he is even mortally afraid of -his own kind--and not only of their fists and hooves, but even of their -sniggers. - -No other animal is so defectively adapted to its environment. The -human infant, as it comes into the world, is so puny that if it were -neglected for two days running it would infallibly perish, and this -congenital infirmity, though more or less concealed later on, persists -until death. Man is ill far more than any other animal, both in his -savage state and under civilization. He has more different diseases and -he suffers from them oftener. He is easier exhausted and injured. He -dies more horribly and usually sooner. Practically all the other higher -vertebrates, at least in their wild state, live longer and retain their -faculties to a greater age. Here even the anthropoid apes are far -beyond their human cousins. An orang-outang marries at the age of seven -or eight, raises a family of seventy or eighty children, and is still -as hale and hearty at eighty as a European at forty-five. - -All the errors and incompetencies of the Creator reach their climax -in man. As a piece of mechanism he is the worst of them all; put -beside him, even a salmon or a staphylococcus is a sound and efficient -machine. He has the worst kidneys known to comparative zoology, and -the worst lungs, and the worst heart. His eye, considering the work it -is called upon to do, is less efficient than the eye of an earth-worm; -an optical instrument maker who made an instrument so clumsy would be -mobbed by his customers. Alone of all animals, terrestrial, celestial -or marine, man is unfit by nature to go abroad in the world he -inhabits. He must clothe himself, protect himself, swathe himself, -armor himself. He is eternally in the position of a turtle born without -a shell, a dog without hair, a fish without fins. Lacking his heavy and -cumbersome trappings, he is defenseless even against flies. As God made -him he hasn't even a tail to switch them off. - -I now come to man's one point of unquestionable natural superiority: -he has a soul. This is what sets him off from all other animals, and -makes him, in a way, their master. The exact nature of that soul has -been in dispute for thousands of years, but regarding its function it -is possible to speak with some authority. That function is to bring -man into direct contact with God, to make him aware of God, above -all, to make him resemble God. Well, consider the colossal failure of -the device! If we assume that man actually does resemble God, then we -are forced into the impossible theory that God is a coward, an idiot -and a bounder. And if we assume that man, after all these years, does -_not_ resemble God, then it appears at once that the human soul is as -inefficient a machine as the human liver or tonsil, and that man would -probably be better off, as the chimpanzee undoubtedly _is_ better off, -without it. - -Such, indeed, is the case. The only practical effect of having a -soul is that it fills man with anthropomorphic and anthropocentric -vanities--in brief with cocky and preposterous superstitions. He -struts and plumes himself because he has this soul--and overlooks the -fact that it doesn't work. Thus he is the supreme clown of creation, -the _reductio ad absurdum_ of animated nature. He is like a cow who -believed that she could jump over the moon, and ordered her whole life -upon that theory. He is like a bullfrog boasting eternally of fighting -lions, of flying over the Matterhorn, and of swimming the Hellespont. -And yet this is the poor brute we are asked to venerate as a gem in -the forehead of the cosmos! This is the worm we are asked to defend -as God's favorite on earth, with all its millions of braver, nobler, -decenter quadrupeds--its superb lions, its lithe and gallant leopards, -its imperial elephants, its honest dogs, its courageous rats! This is -the insect we are besought, at infinite trouble, labor and expense, to -reproduce! - - - -3 - -_Meditation on Meditation._ - - -Man's capacity for abstract thought, which most other mammals seem -to lack, has undoubtedly given him his present mastery of the land -surface of the earth--a mastery disputed only by several hundred -species of microscopic organisms. It is responsible for his feeling -of superiority, and under that feeling there is undoubtedly a certain -measure of reality, at least within narrow limits. But what is too -often overlooked is that the capacity to perform an act is by no means -synonymous with its salubrious exercise. The simple fact is that most -of man's thinking is stupid, pointless, and injurious to him. Of all -animals, indeed, he seems the least capable of arriving at accurate -judgments in the matters that most desperately affect his welfare. -Try to imagine a rat, in the realm of rat ideas, arriving at a notion -as violently in contempt of plausibility as the notion, say, of -Swedenborgianism, or that of homeopathy, or that of infant damnation, -or that of mental telepathy. Try to think of a congregation of educated -rats gravely listening to such disgusting intellectual rubbish as was -in the public bulls of Dr. Woodrow Wilson. Man's natural instinct, in -fact, is never toward what is sound and true; it is toward what is -specious and false. Let any great nation of modern times be confronted -by two conflicting propositions, the one grounded upon the utmost -probability and reasonableness and the other upon the most glaring -error, and it will almost invariably embrace the latter. It is so -in politics, which consists wholly of a succession of unintelligent -crazes, many of them so idiotic that they exist only as battle-cries -and shibboleths and are not reducible to logical statement at all. It -is so in religion, which, like poetry, is simply a concerted effort -to deny the most obvious realities. It is so in nearly every field -of thought. The ideas that conquer the race most rapidly and arouse -the wildest enthusiasm and are held most tenaciously are precisely -the ideas that are most insane. This has been true since the first -"advanced" gorilla put on underwear, cultivated a frown and began his -first lecture tour in the first chautauqua, and it will be so until the -high gods, tired of the farce at last, obliterate the race with one -great, final blast of fire, mustard gas and streptococci. - -No doubt the imagination of man is to blame for this singular weakness. -That imagination, I daresay, is what gave him his first lift above his -fellow primates. It enabled him to visualize a condition of existence -better than that he was experiencing, and bit by bit he was able to -give the picture a certain crude reality. Even to-day he keeps on going -ahead in the same manner. That is, he thinks of something that he would -like to be or to get, something appreciably better than what he is or -has, and then, by the laborious, costly method of trial and error, he -gradually moves toward it. In the process he is often severely punished -for his discontent with God's ordinances. He mashes his thumb, he skins -his shin; he stumbles and falls; the prize he reaches out for blows -up in his hands. But bit by bit he moves on, or, at all events, his -heirs and assigns move on. Bit by bit he smooths the path beneath his -remaining leg, and achieves pretty toys for his remaining hand to play -with, and accumulates delights for his remaining ear and eye. - -Alas, he is not content with this slow and sanguinary progress! Always -he looks further and further ahead. Always he imagines things just -over the sky-line. This body of imaginings constitutes his stock of -sweet beliefs, his corpus of high faiths and confidences--in brief, his -burden of errors. And that burden of errors is what distinguishes man, -even above his capacity for tears, his talents as a liar, his excessive -hypocrisy and poltroonery, from all the other orders of mammalia. Man -is the yokel _par excellence,_ the booby unmatchable, the king dupe of -the cosmos. He is chronically and unescapably deceived, not only by the -other animals and by the delusive face of nature herself, but also and -more particularly by himself--by his incomparable talent for searching -out and embracing what is false, and for overlooking and denying what -is true. - -The capacity for discerning the essential truth, in fact, is as rare -among men as it is common among crows, bullfrogs and mackerel. The -man who shows it is a man of quite extraordinary quality--perhaps -even a man downright diseased. Exhibit a new truth of any natural -plausibility before the great masses of men, and not one in ten thousand -will suspect its existence, and not one in a hundred thousand will -embrace it without a ferocious resistance. All the durable truths -that have come into the world within historic times have been opposed -as bitterly as if they were so many waves of smallpox, and every -individual who has welcomed and advocated them, absolutely without -exception, has been denounced and punished as an enemy of the race. -Perhaps "absolutely without exception" goes too far. I substitute "with -five or six exceptions." But who were the five or six exceptions? I -leave you to think of them; myself, I can't.... But I think at once -of Charles Darwin and his associates, and of how they were reviled -in their time. This reviling, of course, is less vociferous than it -used to be, chiefly because later victims are in the arena, but the -underlying hostility remains. Within the past two years the principal -Great Thinker of Britain, George Bernard Shaw, has denounced the -hypothesis of natural selection to great applause, and a three-times -candidate for the American Presidency, William Jennings Bryan, has -publicly advocated prohibiting the teaching of it by law. The great -majority of Christian ecclesiastics in both English-speaking countries, -and with them the great majority of their catachumens, are still -committed to the doctrine that Darwin was a scoundrel, and Herbert -Spencer another, and Huxley a third--and that Nietzsche is to the three -of them what Beelzebub himself is to a trio of bad boys. This is the -reaction of the main body of respectable folk in two puissant and -idealistic Christian nations to the men who will live in history as the -intellectual leaders of the Nineteenth Century. This is the immemorial -attitude of men in the mass, and of their chosen prophets, to whatever -is honest, and important, and most probably true. - -But if truth thus has hard sledding, error is given a loving welcome. -The man who invents a new imbecility is hailed gladly, and bidden to -make himself at home; he is, to the great masses of men, the _beau -ideal_ of mankind. Go back through the history of the past thousand -years and you will find that ninetenths of the popular idols of the -world--not the heroes of small sects, but the heroes of mankind in -the mass--have been merchants of palpable nonsense. It has been so in -politics, it has been so in religion, and it has been so in every other -department of human thought. Every such hawker of the not-true has been -opposed, in his time, by critics who denounced and refuted him; his -contention has been disposed of immediately it was uttered. But on the -side of every one there has been the titanic force of human credulity, -and it has sufficed in every case to destroy his foes and establish his -immortality. - - - -4 - -_Man and His Soul_ - - -Of all the unsound ideas thus preached by great heroes and accepted by -hundreds of millions of their eager dupes, probably the most patently -unsound is the one that is most widely held, to wit, the idea that man -has an immortal soul--that there is a part of him too ethereal and -too exquisite to die. Absolutely the only evidence supporting this -astounding notion lies in the hope that it is true--which is precisely -the evidence underlying the late theory that the Great War would put -an end to war, and bring in an era of democracy, freedom, and peace. -But even archbishops, of course, are too intelligent to be satisfied -permanently by evidence so unescapably dubious; in consequence, there -have been efforts in all ages to give it logical and evidential -support. Well, all I ask is that you give some of that corroboration -your careful scrutiny. Examine, for example, the proofs amassed by -five typical witnesses in five widely separated ages: St. John, St. -Augustine, Martin Luther, Emanuel Swedenborg and Sir Oliver Lodge. -Approach these proofs prayerfully, and study them well. Weigh them in -the light of the probabilities, the ordinary intellectual decencies. -And then ask yourself if you could imagine a mud-turtle accepting them -gravely. - - - -5 - -_Coda_ - - -To sum up: - - 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 - revolutions a minute. - - 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. - - 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and - set spinning to give him the ride. - - - - -VI. STAR-SPANGLED MEN - - -I open the memoirs of General Grant, Volume II, at the place where he -is describing the surrender of General Lee, and find the following: - - I was without a sword, as I usually was when on horseback on - _(sic)_ the field, and wore a soldier's blouse for a coat, - with the shoulder straps of my rank to indicate to the army - who I was. - -Anno 1865. I look out of my window and observe an officer of the -United States Army passing down the street. Anno 1922. Like General -Grant, he is without a sword. Like General Grant, he wears a sort of -soldier's blouse for a coat. Like General Grant, he employs shoulder -straps to indicate to the army who he is. But there is something more. -On the left breast of this officer, apparently a major, there blazes -so brilliant a mass of color that, as the sun strikes it and the flash -bangs my eyes, I wink, catch my breath and sneeze. There are two -long strips, each starting at the sternum and disappearing into the -shadows of the axillia--every hue in the rainbow, the spectroscope, the -kaleidoscope--imperial purples, _sforzando_ reds, wild Irish greens, -romantic blues, loud yellows and oranges, rich maroons, sentimental -pinks, all the half-tones from ultra-violet to infra-red, all the -vibrations from the impalpable to the unendurable. A gallant _Soldat,_ -indeed! How he would shame a circus ticketwagon if he wore all the -medals and badges, the stars and crosses, the pendants and lavallires, -that go with those ribbons!... I glance at his sleeves. A simple golden -stripe on the one--six months beyond the raging main. None on the -other--the Kaiser's cannon missed him. - -Just what all these ribbons signify I am sure I don't know; probably -they belong to campaign medals and tell the tale of butcheries in -foreign and domestic parts--mountains of dead Filipinos, Mexicans, -Haitians, Dominicans, West Virginia miners, perhaps even Prussians. -But in addition to campaign medals and the Distinguished Service Medal -there are now certainly enough foreign orders in the United States to -give a distinct brilliance to the national scene, viewed, say, from -Mars. The Frederician tradition, borrowed by the ragged Continentals -and embodied in Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution, lasted -until 1918, and then suddenly blew up; to mention it to-day is a sort -of indecorum, and to-morrow, no doubt, will be a species of treason. -Down with Frederick; up with John Philip Sousa! Imagine what General -Pershing would look like at a state banquet of his favorite American -order, the Benevolent and Protective one of Elks, in all the Byzantine -splendor of his casket of ribbons, badges, stars, garters, sunbursts -and cockades--the lordly Bath of the grateful motherland, with its -somewhat disconcerting "Ich dien"; the gorgeous tricolor baldrics, -sashes and festoons of the Lgion d'Honneur; the grand cross of SS. -Maurizio e Lazzaro of Italy; the sinister Danilo of Montenegro, with -its cabalistic monogram of Danilo I and its sinister hieroglyphics; -the breastplate of the Paulownia of Japan, with its rising sun of -thirty-two white rays, its blood-red heart, its background of green -leaves and its white ribbon edged with red; the mystical St. Saviour -of Greece, with its Greek motto and its brilliantly enameled figure -of Christ; above all, the Croix de Guerre of Czecho-Slovakia, a new -one and hence not listed in the books, but surely no shrinking violet! -Alas, Pershing was on the wrong side--that is, for one with a fancy -for gauds of that sort. The most blinding of all known orders is the -Medijie of Turkey, which not only entitles the holder to four wives, -but also absolutely requires him to wear a red fez and a frozen star -covering his whole faade. I was offered this order by Turkish spies -during the war, and it wabbled me a good deal. The Alexander of -Bulgaria is almost as seductive. The badge consists of an pointed -white cross, with crossed swords between the arms and a red Bulgarian -lion over the swords. The motto is "Za Chrabrost!" Then there are the -Prussian orders--the Red and Black Eagles, the Pour le Mrite, the -Prussian Crown, the Hohenzollern and the rest. And the Golden Fleece -of Austria--the noblest of them all. Think of the Golden Fleece on a -man born in Linn County, Missouri!... I begin to doubt that the General -would have got it, even supposing him to have taken the other side. The -Japs, I note, gave him only the grand cordon of the Paulownia, and the -Belgians and Montenegrins were similarly cautious. There are higher -classes. The highest of the Paulownia is only for princes, which is to -say, only for non-Missourians. - -Pershing is the champion, with General March a bad second. March is -a K. C. M. G., and entitled to wear a large cross of white enamel -bearing a lithograph of the Archangel Michael and the motto, "Auspicium -Melioris Aevi," but he is not a K. C. B. Admirals Benson and Sims -are also grand crosses of Michael and George, and like most other -respectable Americans, members of the Legion of Honor, but they seem to -have been forgotten by the Greeks, the Montenegrins, the Italians and -the Belgians. The British-born and extremely Anglomaniacal Sims refused -the Distinguished Service Medal of his adopted country, but is careful -to mention in "Who's Who in America" that his grand cross of Michael -and George was conferred upon him, not by some servile gold-stick, but -by "King George of England"; Benson omits mention of His Majesty, as -do Pershing and March. It would be hard to think of any other American -officer, real or bogus, who would refuse the D. S. M., or, failing -it, the grand decoration of chivalry of the Independent Order of Odd -Fellows. I once saw the latter hung, with ceremonies of the utmost -magnificence, upon a bald-headed tinner who had served the fraternity -long and faithfully; as he marched down the hall toward the throne of -the Supreme Exalted Pishposh a score of little girls, the issue of -other tinners, strewed his pathway with roses, and around the stem of -each rose was a piece of glittering tinfoil. The band meanwhile played -"The Rosary," and, at the conclusion of the spectacle, as fried oysters -were served, "Wien Bleibt Wien." - -It was, I suspect, by way of the Odd Fellows and other such gaudy -heirs to the Deutsche Ritter and Rosicrucians that the lust to gleam -and jingle got into the arteries of the American people. For years the -austere tradition of Washington's day served to keep the military bosom -bare of spangles, but all the while a weakness for them was growing in -the civil population. Rank by rank, they became Knights of Pythias, -Odd Fellows, Red Men, Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, Knights Templar, -Patriarchs Militant, Elks, Moose, Woodmen of the World, Foresters, -Hoo-Hoos, Ku Kluxers--and in every new order there were thirty-two -degrees, and for every degree there was a badge, and for every badge -there was a yard of ribbon. The Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, chiefly -paunchy wholesalers of the Rotary Club species, are not content with -swords, baldrics, stars, garters and jewels; they also wear red fezes. -The Elks run to rubies. The Red Men array themselves like Sitting -Bull. The patriotic ice-wagon drivers and Methodist deacons of the -Ku Klux Klan carry crosses set with incandescent lights. An American -who is forced by his profession to belong to many such orders--say a -life insurance solicitor, a bootlegger or a dealer in Oklahoma oil -stock--accumulates a trunk full of decorations, many of them weighing -a pound. There is an undertaker in Hagerstown, Md., who has been -initiated eighteen times. When he robes himself to plant a fellow -joiner he weighs three hundred pounds and sparkles and flashes like the -mouth of hell itself. He is entitled to bear seven swords, all jeweled, -and to hang his watch chain with the golden busts of nine wild animals, -all with precious stones for eyes. Put beside this lowly washer of the -dead, Pershing newly polished would seem almost like a Trappist. - -But even so the civil arm is robbed of its just dues in the department -of gauds and radioactivity, no doubt by the direct operation of -military vanity and jealousy. Despite a million proofs (and perhaps a -billion eloquent arguments) to the contrary, it is still the theory at -the official ribbon counter that the only man who serves in a war is -the man who serves in uniform. This is soft for the Bevo officer, who -at least has his service stripes and the spurs that gnawed into his -desk, but it is hard upon his brother Irving, the dollar-a-year man, -who worked twenty hours a day for fourteen months buying soap-powder, -canned asparagus and raincoats for the army of God. Irving not only -labored with inconceivable diligence; he also faced hazards of no mean -order, for on the one hand was his natural prejudice in favor of a -very liberal rewarding of commercial enterprise, and on the other hand -were his patriotism and his fear of Atlanta Penitentiary. I daresay -that many and many a time, after working his twenty hours, he found it -difficult to sleep the remaining four hours. I know, in fact, survivors -of that obscure service who are far worse wrecks to-day than Pershing -is. Their reward is--what? Winks, sniffs, innuendos. If they would -indulge themselves in the now almost universal American yearning to -go adorned, they must join the Knights of Pythias. Even the American -Legion fails them, for though it certainly does not bar non-combatants, -it insists that they shall have done their non-combatting in uniform. - -What I propose is a variety of the Distinguished Service Medal for -civilians,--perhaps, better still, a distinct order for civilians, -closed to the military and with badges of different colors and areas, -to mark off varying services to democracy. Let it run, like the -Japanese Paulownia, from high to low--the lowest class for the patriot -who sacrificed only time, money and a few nights' sleep; the highest -for the great martyr who hung his country's altar with his dignity, his -decency and his sacred honor. For Irving and his nervous insomnia, a -simple rosette, with an iron badge bearing the national motto, "Safety -First"; for the university president who prohibited the teaching of -the enemy language in his learned grove, heaved the works of Goethe -out of the university library, cashiered every professor unwilling -to support Woodrow for the first vacancy in the Trinity, took to the -stump for the National Security League, and made two hundred speeches -in moving picture theaters--for this giant of loyal endeavor let no -100 per cent. American speak of anything less than the grand cross of -the order, with a gold badge in polychrome enamel and stained glass, -a baldric of the national colors, a violet plug hat with a sunburst -on the side, the privilege of the floor of Congress, and a pension -of $10,000 a year. After all, the cost would not be excessive; there -are not many of them. Such prodigies of patriotism are possible only -to rare and gifted men. For the grand cordons of the order, _e. -g.,_ college professors who spied upon and reported the seditions of -their associates, state presidents of the American Protective League, -alien property custodians, judges whose sentences of conscientious -objectors mounted to more than 50,000 years, members of Dr. Creel's -herd of 2,000 American historians, the authors of the Sisson documents, -etc.--pensions of 10 a day would be enough, with silver badges and no -plug hats. For the lower ranks, bronze badges and the legal right to -the title of "the Hon.," already every true American's by courtesy. - -Not, of course, that I am insensitive to the services of the gentlemen -of those lower ranks, but in such matters one must go by rarity rather -than by intrinsic value. If the grand cordon or even the nickel-plated -eagle of the third class were given to every patriot who bored a hole -through the floor of his flat to get evidence against his neighbors, -the Krausmeyers, and to every one who visited the Hofbruhaus nightly, -denounced the Kaiser in searing terms, and demanded assent from Emil -and Otto, the waiters, and to every one who notified the catchpolls -of the Department of Justice when the wireless plant was open in the -garret of the Arion Liedertafel, and to all who took a brave and -forward part in slacker raids, and to all who lent their stenographers -funds at 6 per cent., to buy Liberty bonds at 41/4 per cent., and to -all who sold out at 99 and then bought in again at 83.56 and to all who -served as jurors or perjurers in cases against members and ex-members -of the I. W. W., and to the German-American members of the League for -German Democracy, and to all the Irish who snitched upon the Irish--if -decorations were thrown about with any such lavishness, then there -Would be no nickel left for our bathrooms. On the civilian side as -on the military side the great rewards of war go, not to mere dogged -industry and fidelity, but to originality--to the unprecedented, the -arresting, the bizarre. The New York _Tribune_ liar who invented the -story about the German plant for converting the corpses of the slain -into soap did more for democracy and the Wilsonian idealism, and hence -deserves a more brilliant recognition, than a thousand uninspired -hawkers of atrocity stories supplied by Viscount Bryce and his -associates. For that great servant of righteousness the grand cordon, -with two silver badges and the chair of history at Columbia, would be -scarcely enough; for the ordinary hawkers any precious metal would be -too much. - -Whether or not the Y. M. C. A. has decorated its chocolate pedlars and -soul-snatchers I do not know; since the chief Y. M. C. A. lamassary in -my town of Baltimore became the scene of a homo-sexual scandal I have -ceased to frequent evangelical society. If not, then there should be -some governmental recognition of those highly characteristic heroes of -the war for democracy. The veterans of the line, true enough, dislike -them excessively, and have a habit of denouncing them obscenely when -the corn-juice flows. They charged too much for cigarettes; they tried -to discourage the amiability of the ladies of France; they had a habit -of being absent when the shells burst in air. Well, some say this and -some say that. A few, at least, of the pale and oleaginous brethren -must have gone into the Master's work because they thirsted to save -souls, and not simply because they desired to escape the trenches. -And a few, I am told, were anything but unpleasantly righteous, as a -round of Wassermanns would show. If, as may be plausibly argued, these -Soldiers of the Double Cross deserve to live at all, then they surely -deserve to be hung with white enameled stars of the third class, with -gilt dollar marks superimposed. Motto: "Glory, glory, hallelujah!" - -But what of the vaudeville actors, the cheer leaders, the doughnut -fryers, the camp librarians, the press agents? I am not forgetting -them. Let them be distributed among all the classes from the seventh -to the eighth, according to their sufferings for the holy cause. And -the agitators against Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Wagner, Richard Strauss, -all the rest of the cacophonous Huns? And the specialists in the crimes -of the German professors? And the collectors for the Belgians, with -their generous renunciation of all commissions above 80 per cent.? And -the pathologists who denounced Johannes Mller as a fraud, Karl Ludwig -as an imbecile, and Ehrlich as a thief? And the patriotic chemists -who discovered arsenic in dill pickles, ground glass in pumpernickel, -bichloride tablets in Bismarck herring, pathogenic organisms in aniline -dyes? And the inspired editorial writers of the New York _Times_ -and _Tribune,_ the Boston _Transcript,_ the Philadelphia _Ledger,_ -the Mobile _Register,_ the Jones Corners _Eagle?_ And the headline -writers? And the Columbia, Yale and Princeton professors? And the -authors of books describing how the Kaiser told them the whole plot in -1913, while they were pulling his teeth or shining his shoes? And the -ex-ambassadors? And the _Nietzschefresser?_ And the chautauqua orators? -And the four-minute men? And the Methodist pulpit pornographers who -switched so facilely from vice-crusading to German atrocities? And Dr. -Newell Dwight Hillis? And Dr. Henry van Dyke? And the master minds of -the _New Republic?_ And Tumulty? And the Vigilantes? Let no grateful -heart forget them! - -Palmer and Burleson I leave for special legislation. If mere university -presidents, such as Nicholas Murray Butler, are to have the grand -cross, then Palmer deserves to be rolled in malleable gold from head -to foot, and polished until he blinds the cosmos--then Burleson -must be hung with diamonds like Mrs. Warren and bathed in spotlights -like Gaby Deslys.... Finally, I reserve a special decoration, to be -conferred in camera and worn only in secret chapter, for husbands who -took chances and refused to read anonymous letters from Paris: the -somber badge of the Ordre de la Cuculus Canorus, first and only class. - - - - -VII. THE POET AND HIS ART - - - -I - - -A good prose style says Prof. Dr. Otto Jespersen in his great work, -"Growth and Structure of the English Language," "is everywhere a late -acquirement, and the work of whole generations of good authors is -needed to bring about the easy flow of written prose." The learned -_Sprachwissenschaftler_ is here speaking of Old English, or, as it -used to be called when you and I were at the breast of enlightenment, -Anglo-Saxon. An inch or so lower down the page he points out that what -he says of prose is by no means true of verse--that poetry of very -respectable quality is often written by peoples and individuals whose -prose is quite as crude and graceless as that, say of the Hon. Warren -Gamaliel Harding--that even the so-called Anglo-Saxons of Beowulf's -time, a race as barbarous as the modern Jugo-Slavs or Mississippians, -were yet capable, on occasion, of writing dithyrambs of an indubitable -sweet gaudiness. - -The point needs no laboring. A glance at the history of any literature -will prove its soundness. Moreover, it is supported by what we see -around us every day--that is, if we look in literary directions. -Some of the best verse in the modern movement, at home and abroad, -has been written by intellectual adolescents who could no more write -a first-rate paragraph in prose then they could leap the Matterhorn ---girls just out of Vassar and Newnham, young army officers, chautauqua -orators, New England old maids, obscure lawyers and doctors, newspaper -reporters, all sorts of hollow dilettanti, male and female. Nine-tenths -of the best poetry of the world has been written by poets less than -thirty years old; a great deal more than half of it has been written -by poets under twenty-five. One always associates poetry with youth, -for it deals chiefly with the ideas that are peculiar to youth, and -its terminology is quite as youthful as its content. When one hears of -a poet past thirty-five, he seems somehow unnatural and even a trifle -obscene; it is as if one encountered a graying man who still played -the Chopin waltzes and believed in elective affinities. But prose, -obviously, is a sterner and more elderly matter. All the great masters -of prose (and especially of English prose, for its very resilience and -brilliance make it extraordinarily hard to write) have had to labor -for years before attaining to their mastery of it. The early prose of -Abraham Lincoln was remarkable only for its badness; it was rhetorical -and bombastic, and full of supernumerary words; in brief, it was a -kind of poetry. It took years and years of hard striving for Abe to -develop the simple and exquisite prose of his last half-decade. So with -Thomas Henry Huxley, perhaps the greatest virtuoso of plain English who -has ever lived. His first writings were competent but undistinguished; -he was almost a grandfather before he perfected his superb style. -And so with Anatole France, and Addison, and T. B. Macaulay, and -George Moore, and James Branch Cabell, and ._,_ and Lord Dunsany, -and Nietzsche, and to go back to antiquity, Marcus Tullius Cicero. I -have been told that the average age of the men who made the Authorized -Version of the Bible was beyond sixty years. Had they been under thirty -they would have made it lyrical; as it was, they made it colossal. - -The reason for all this is not far to seek. Prose, however powerful -its appeal to the emotions, is always based primarily upon logic, -and is thus scientific; poetry, whatever its so-called intellectual -content is always based upon mere sensation and emotion, and is thus -loose and disorderly. A man must have acquired discipline over his -feelings before he can write sound prose; he must have learned how to -subordinate his transient ideas to more general and permanent ideas; -above all, he must have acquired a good head for words, which is to -say, a capacity for resisting their mere lascivious lure. But to -write acceptable poetry, or even good poetry, he needs none of these -things. If his hand runs away with his head it is actually a merit. -If he writes what every one knows to be untrue, in terms that no sane -adult would ever venture to use in real life, it is proof of his -divine afflation. If he slops over and heaves around in a manner never -hitherto observed on land or sea, the fact proves his originality. -The so-called forms of verse and the rules of rhyme and rhythm do not -offer him difficulties; they offer him refuges. Their purpose is not -to keep him in order, but simply to give him countenance by providing -him with a formal orderliness when he is most out of order. Using -them is like swimming with bladders. The first literary composition -of a quick-minded child is always some sort of jingle. It starts out -with an inane idea--half an idea. Sticking to prose, it could go -no further. But to its primary imbecility it now adds a meaningless -phrase which, while logically unrelated, provides an agreeable concord -in mere sound--and the result is the primordial tadpole of a sonnet. -All the sonnets of the world, save a few of miraculous (and perhaps -accidental) quality, partake of this fundamental nonsensicality. In all -of them there are ideas that would sound idiotic in prose, and phrases -that would sound clumsy and uncouth in prose. But the rhyme scheme -conceals this nonsensicality. As a substitute for the missing logical -plausibility it provides a sensuous harmony. Reading the thing, one -gets a vague effect of agreeable sound, and so the logical feebleness -is overlooked. It is, in a sense, like observing a pretty girl, -competently dressed and made up, across the footlights. But translating -the poem into prose is like meeting and marrying her. - - - -II - - -Much of the current discussion of poetry--and what, save Prohibition, -is more discussed in America?--is corrupted by a fundamental error. -That error consists in regarding the thing itself as a simple entity, -to be described conveniently in a picturesque phrase. "Poetry," says -one critic, "is the statement of overwhelming emotional values." -"Poetry," says another, "is an attempt to purge language of everything -except its music and its pictures." "Poetry," says a third, "is the -entering of delicately imaginative plateaus." "Poetry," says a fourth, -"is truth carried alive into the heart by a passion." "Poetry," says a -fifth, "is compacted of what seems, not of what is." "Poetry," says a -sixth, "is the expression of thought in musical language." "Poetry," -says a seventh, "is the language of a state of crisis." And so on, and -so on. _Quod est poetica?_ They all answer, and yet they all fail to -answer. Poetry, in fact, is two quite distinct things. It may be either -or both. One is a series of words that are intrinsically musical, in -clang-tint and rhythm, as the single word _cellar-door_ is musical. -The other is a series of ideas, false in themselves, that offer a -means of emotional and imaginative escape from the harsh realities of -everyday. In brief, (I succumb, like all the rest, to phrase-making), -poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious -music--a slap on the back in waltz time--a grand release of longings -and repressions to the tune of flutes, harps, sackbuts, psalteries and -the usual strings. - -As I say, poetry may be either the one thing or the other--caressing -music or caressing assurance. It need not necessarily be both. Consider -a familiar example from "Othello": - - Not poppy, nor mandragora, - Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world - Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep - Which thou owed'st yesterday. - -Here the sense, at best, is surely very vague. Probably not one auditor -in a hundred, hearing an actor recite those glorious lines, attaches -any intelligible meaning to the archaic word _owed'st,_ the cornerstone -of the whole sentence. Nevertheless, the effect is stupendous. The -passage assaults and benumbs the faculties like Schubert's "Stndchen" -or the slow movement of Schumann's Rhenish symphony; hearing it is a -sensuous debauch; the man ansthetic to it could stand unmoved before -Rheims cathedral or the Hofbruhaus at Munich. One easily recalls many -other such bursts of pure music, almost meaningless but infinitely -delightful--in Poe, in Swinburne, in Marlowe, even in Joaquin -Miller. Two-thirds of the charm of reading Chaucer (setting aside -the Rabelaisian comedy) comes out of the mere burble of the words; -the meaning, to a modern, is often extremely obscure, and sometimes -downright undecipherable. The whole fame of Poe, as a poet, is based -upon five short poems. Of them, three are almost pure music. Their -intellectual content is of the vaguest. No one would venture to reduce -them to plain English. Even Poe himself always thought of them, not as -statements of poetic ideas, but as simple utterances of poetic (i.e., -musical) sounds. - -It was Sidney Lanier, himself a competent poet, who first showed the -dependence of poetry upon music. He had little to say, unfortunately, -about the clang-tint of words; what concerned him almost exclusively -was rhythm. In "The Science of English Verse," he showed that the -charm of this rhythm could be explained in the technical terms of -music--that all the old gabble about dactyls and spondees was no more -than a dog Latin invented by men who were fundamentally ignorant of -the thing they discussed. Lanier's book was the first intelligent -work ever published upon the nature and structure of the sensuous -content of English poetry. He struck out into such new and far paths -that the professors of prosody still lag behind him after forty years, -quite unable to understand a poet who was also a shrewd critic and a -first-rate musician. But if, so deeply concerned with rhythm, he marred -his treatise by forgetting clang-tint, he marred it still more by -forgetting content. Poetry that is all music is obviously relatively -rare, for only a poet who is also a natural musician can write it, and -natural musicians are much rarer in the world than poets. Ordinary -poetry, average poetry, thus depends in part upon its ideational -material, and perhaps even chiefly. It is the _idea_ expressed in a -poem, and not the mellifluousness of the words used to express it, -that arrests and enchants the average connoisseur. Often, indeed, he -disdains this mellifluousness, and argues that the idea ought to be set -forth without the customary pretty jingling, or, at most, with only the -scant jingling that lies in rhythm--in brief, he wants his ideas in the -altogether, and so advocates _vers libre._ - -It was another American, this time Prof. Dr. F. C. Prescott, of Cornell -University, who first gave scientific attention to the intellectual -content of poetry. His book is called "Poetry and Dreams." Its virtue -lies in the fact that it rejects all the customary mystical and -romantic definitions of poetry, and seeks to account for the thing in -straightforward psychological terms. Poetry, says Prescott, is simply -the verbal materialization of a day-dream, the statement of a Freudian -wish, an attempt to satisfy a subconscious longing by saying that it -is satisfied. In brief, poetry represents imagination's bold effort to -escape from the cold and clammy facts that hedge us in--to soothe the -wrinkled and fevered brow with beautiful balderdash. On the precise -nature of this beautiful balderdash you can get all in the information -you need by opening at random the nearest book of verse. The ideas -you will find in it may be divided into two main divisions. The first -consists of denials of objective facts; the second of denials of -subjective facts. Specimen of the first sort: - - God's in His heaven, - All's well with the world. - -Specimen of the second: - - I am the master of my fate; - I am the captain of my soul. - -It is my contention that all poetry (forgetting, for the moment, its -possible merit as mere sound) may be resolved into either the one -or the other of these frightful imbecilities--that its essential -character lies in its bold flouting of what every reflective adult -knows to be the truth. The poet, imagining him to be sincere, is -simply one who disposes of all the horrors of life on this earth, -and of all the difficulties presented by his own inner weaknesses no -less, by the childish device of denying them. Is it a well-known fact -that love is an emotion that is almost as perishable as eggs--that -it is biologically impossible for a given male to yearn for a given -female more than a few brief years? Then the poet disposes of it by -assuring his girl that he will nevertheless love her forever--more, -by pledging his word of honor that he believes that _she_ will love -_him_ forever. Is it equally notorious that there is no such thing as -justice in the world--that the good are tortured insanely and the evil -go free and prosper? Then the poet composes a piece crediting God with -a mysterious and unintelligible theory of jurisprudence, whereby the -torture of the good is a sort of favor conferred upon them for their -goodness. Is it of almost equally widespread report that no healthy -man likes to contemplate his own inevitable death--that even in time -of war, with a vast pumping up of emotion to conceal the fact, every -soldier hopes and believes that he, personally, will escape? Then the -poet, first carefully introducing himself into a bomb-proof, achieves -strophes declaring that he is free from all such weakness--that he will -deliberately seek a rendezvous with death, and laugh ha-ha when the -bullet finds him. - -The precise nature of the imbecility thus solemnly set forth depends, -very largely, of course, upon the private prejudices and yearnings -of the poet, and the reception that is given it depends, by the same -token, upon the private prejudices and yearnings of the reader. That -is why it is often so difficult to get any agreement upon the merits -of a definite poem, _i. e.,_ to get any agreement upon its capacity to -soothe. There is the man who craves only the animal delights of a sort -of Moslem-Methodist paradise: to him "The Frost is on the Pumpkin" is -a noble poem. There is the man who yearns to get out of the visible -universe altogether and tread the fields of asphodel: for him there -is delight only in the mystical stuff of Crashaw, Thompson, Yeats and -company. There is the man who revolts against the sordid Christian -notion of immortality--an eternity to be spent flapping wings with -pious green-grocers and oleaginous Anglican bishops; he finds _his_ -escape in the gorgeous blasphemies of Swinburne. There is, to make an -end of examples, the man who, with an inferiority complex eating out -his heart, is moved by a great desire to stalk the world in heroic -guise: he may go to the sonorous swanking of Kipling, or he may go -to something more subtle, to some poem in which the boasting is more -artfully concealed, say Christina Rosetti's "When I am Dead." Many men, -many complexes, many secret yearnings! They collect, of course, in -groups; if the group happens to be large enough the poet it is devoted -to becomes famous. Kipling's great fame is thus easily explained. He -appeals to the commonest of all types of men, next to the sentimental -type--which is to say, he appeals to the bully and braggart type, the -chest-slapping type, the patriot type. Less harshly described, to the -boy type. All of us have been Kiplingomaniacs at some time or other. I -was myself a very ardent one at 17, and wrote many grandiloquent sets -of verse in the manner of "Tommy Atkins" and "Fuzzy-Wuzzy." But if -the gifts of observation and reflection have been given to us, we get -over it. There comes a time when we no longer yearn to be heroes, but -seek only peace--maybe even hope for quick extinction. Then we turn to -Swinburne and "The Garden of Proserpine"--more false assurances, more -mellifluous play-acting, another tinkling make-believe--but how sweet -on blue days! - - - -III - - -One of the things to remember here (too often it is forgotten, and -Dr. Prescott deserves favorable mention for stressing it) is that a -man's conscious desires are not always identical with his subconscious -longings; in fact, the two are often directly antithetical. No doubt -the real man lies in the depths of the subconscious, like a carp -lurking in mud. His conscious personality is largely a product of his -environment--the reaction of his subconscious to the prevailing notions -of what is meet and seemly. Here, of course, I wander into platitude, -for the news that all men are frauds was already stale in the days -of Hammurabi. The ingenious Freud simply translated the fact into -pathological terms, added a bed-room scene, and so laid the foundations -for his psychoanalysis. Incidentally, it has always seemed to me that -Freud made a curious mistake when he brought sex into the foreground -of his new magic. He was, of course, quite right when he set up the -doctrine that, in civilized societies, sex impulses were more apt to be -suppressed than any other natural impulses, and that the subconscious -thus tended to be crowded with their ghosts. But in considering -sex impulses, he forgot sex imaginings. Digging out, by painful -cross-examination in a darkened room, some startling tale of carnality -in his patient's past, he committed the incredible folly of assuming -it to be literally true. More often than not, I believe, it was a mere -piece of boasting, a materialization of desire--in brief, a poem. It -is astonishing that this possibility never occurred to the venerable -professor; it is more astonishing that it has never occurred to any of -his disciples. He should have psychoanalyzed a few poets instead of -wasting all his time upon psychopathic women with sclerotic husbands. -He would have dredged amazing things out of their subconsciouses, -heroic as well as amorous. Imagine the billions of Boers, Germans, -Irishmen and Hindus that Kipling would have confessed to killing! - -But here I get into morbid anatomy, and had better haul up. What I -started out to say was that a man's preferences in poetry constitute an -excellent means of estimating his inner cravings and credulities. The -music disarms his critical sense, and he confesses to cherishing ideas -that he would repudiate with indignation if they were put into plain -words. I say he cherishes those ideas. Maybe he simply tolerates them -unwillingly; maybe they are no more than inescapable heritages from his -barbarous ancestors, like his vermiform appendix. Think of the poems -you like, and you will come upon many such intellectual fossils--ideas -that you by no means subscribe to openly, but that nevertheless give -you a strange joy. I put myself on the block as Exhibit A. There is my -delight in Lizette Woodworth Reese's sonnet, "Tears." Nothing could do -more violence to my conscious beliefs. Put into prose, the doctrine -in the poem would exasperate and even enrage me. There is no man in -Christendom who is less a Christian than I am. But here the dead hand -grabs me by the ear. My ancestors were converted to Christianity in -the year 1535, and remained of that faith until near the middle of -the eighteenth century. Observe, now, the load I carry; more than -two hundred years of Christianity, and perhaps a thousand years -(maybe even two, or three thousand years) of worship of heathen gods -before that--at least twelve hundred years of uninterrupted belief -in the immortality of the soul. Is it any wonder that, betrayed by -the incomparable music of Miss Reese's Anglo-Saxon monosyllables, my -conscious faith is lulled to sleep, thus giving my subconscious a -chance to wallow in its immemorial superstition? - -Even so, my vulnerability to such superstitions is very low, and it -tends to grow less as I increase in years and sorrows. As I have -said, I once throbbed to the drum-beat of Kipling; later on, I was -responsive to the mellow romanticism of Tennyson; now it takes one of -the genuinely fundamental delusions of the human race to move me. But -progress is not continuous; it has interludes. There are days when -every one of us experiences a sort of ontogenetic back-firing, and -returns to an earlier stage of development. It is on such days that -grown men break down and cry like children; it is then that they play -games, or cheer the flag, or fall in love. And it is then that they -are in the mood for poetry, and get comfort out of its asseverations -of the obviously not true. A truly civilized man, when he is wholly -himself, derives no pleasure from hearing a poet state, as Browning -stated, that this world is perfect. Such tosh not only does not please -him; it definitely offends him, as he is offended by an idiotic -article in a newspaper; it roils him to encounter so much stupidity in -Christendom. But he may like it when he is drunk, or suffering from -some low toxemia, or staggering beneath some great disaster. Then, as I -say, the ontogenetic process reverses itself, and he slides back into -infancy. Then he goes to poets, just as he goes to women, "glad" books, -and dogmatic theology. The very highest orders of men, perhaps, never -suffer from such malaises of the spirit, or, if they suffer from them, -never succumb to them. These are men who are so thoroughly civilized -that even the most severe attack upon the emotions is not sufficient -to dethrone their reason. Charles Darwin was such a man. There was -never a moment in his life when he sought religious consolation, -and there was never a moment when he turned to poetry; in fact, he -regarded all poetry as silly. Other first-rate men, more sensitive to -the possible music in it, regard it with less positive aversion, but -I have never heard of a truly first-rate man who got any permanent -satisfaction out of its content. The Browning Societies of the latter -part of the nineteenth century (and I choose the Browning Societies -because Browning's poetry was often more or less logical in content, -and thus above the ordinary intellectually) were not composed of such -men as Huxley, Spencer, Lecky, Buckle and Travelyn, but of third-rate -school-masters, moony old maids, candidates for theosophy, literary -vicars, collectors of Rogers groups, and other such Philistines. The -chief propagandist for Browning in the United States was not Henry -Adams, or William Summer, or Daniel C. Gilman, but an obscure professor -of English who was also an ardent spook-chaser. And what is thus true -ontogenetically is also true phylogenetically. That is to say, poetry -is chiefly produced and esteemed by peoples that have not yet come to -maturity. The Romans had a dozen poets of the first talent before they -had a single prose writer of any skill whatsoever. So did the English. -So did the Germans. In our own day we see the negroes of the South -producing religious and secular verse of such quality that it is taken -over by the whites, and yet the number of negroes who show a decent -prose style is still very small, and there is no sign of it increasing. -Similarly, the white authors of America, during the past ten or fifteen -years, have produced a great mass of very creditable poetry, and yet -the quality of our prose remains very low, and the Americans with prose -styles of any distinction could be counted on the fingers of two hands. - - - -IV - - -So far I have spoken chiefly of the content of poetry. In its character -as a sort of music it is plainly a good deal more respectable, and -makes an appeal to a far higher variety of reader, or, at all events, -to a reader in a state of greater mental clarity. A capacity for -music--by which I mean melody, harmony and clang-tint--comes late in -the history of every race. The savage can apprehend rhythm, but he -is quite incapable of carrying a tune in any intelligible scale. The -negro roustabouts of our own South, who are commonly regarded as very -musical, are actually only rhythmical; they never invent melodies, -but only rhythms. And the whites to whom their barbarous dance-tunes -chiefly appeal are in their own stage of culture. When one observes -a room full of well-dressed men and women swaying and wriggling to -the tune of some villainous mazurka from the Mississippi levees, one -may assume very soundly that they are all the sort of folk who play -golf and bridge, and prefer "The Sheik" to "Heart of Darkness" and -believe in the League of Nations. A great deal of superficial culture -is compatible with that pathetic barbarism, and even a high degree of -sthetic sophistication in other directions. The Greeks who built the -Parthenon knew no more about music than a hog knows of predestination; -they were almost as ignorant in that department as the modern Iowans or -New Yorkers. It was not, indeed, until the Renaissance that music as -we know it appeared in the world, and it was not until less than two -centuries ago that it reached a high development. In Shakespeare's day -music was just getting upon its legs in England; in Goethe's day it -was just coming to full flower in Germany; in France and America it is -still in the savage state. It is thus the youngest of the arts, and the -most difficult, and hence the noblest. Any sane young man of twenty-two -can write an acceptable sonnet, or design a habitable house or draw a -horse that will not be mistaken for an automobile, but before he may -write even a bad string quartet he must go through a long and arduous -training, just as he must strive for years before he may write prose -that is instantly recognizable as prose, and not as a string of mere -words. - -The virtue of such great poets as Shakespeare does not lie in the -content of their poetry, but in its music. The content of the -Shakespearean plays, in fact, is often puerile, and sometimes quite -incomprehensible. No scornful essays by George Bernard Shaw and Frank -Harris were needed to demonstrate the fact; it lies plainly in the -text. One snickers sourly over the spectacle of generations of pedants -debating the question of Hamlet's mental processes; the simple fact -is that Shakespeare gave him no more mental processes than a Fifth -avenue rector has, but merely employed him as a convenient spout -for some of the finest music ever got into words. Assume that he -has all the hellish sagacity of a Nietzsche, and that music remains -unchanged; assume that he is as idiotic as a Grand Worthy Flubdub of -the Freemasons, and it still remains unchanged. As it is intoned on -the stage by actors, the poetry of Shakespeare commonly loses content -altogether. One cannot make out what the _cabotin_ is saying; one can -only observe that it is beautiful. There are whole speeches in the -Shakespearean plays whose meaning is unknown ever to scholars--and yet -they remain favorites, and well deserve to. Who knows, again, what -the sonnets are about? Is the bard talking about the inn-keeper's -wife at Oxford, or about a love affair of a pathological, Y. M. C. -A. character? Some say one thing, and some say the other. But all -who have ears must agree that the sonnets are extremely beautiful -stuff--that the English language reaches in them, the topmost heights -of conceivable beauty. Shakespeare thus ought to be ranked among -the musicians, along with Beethoven. As a philosopher he was a -ninth-rater--but so was old Ludwig. I wonder what he would have done -with prose? I can't make up my mind about it. One day I believe that he -would have written prose as good as Dryden's, and the next day I begin -to fear that he would have produced something as bad as Swinburne's. He -had the ear, but he lacked the logical sense. Poetry has done enough -when it charms, but prose must also convince. - -I do not forget, of course, that there is a borderland in which it -is hard to say, of this or that composition, whether it is prose or -poetry. Lincoln's Gettysburg speech is commonly reckoned as prose, and -yet I am convinced that it is quite as much poetry as the Queen Mab -speech or Marlowe's mighty elegy on Helen of Troy. More, it is so read -and admired by the great masses of the American people. It is an almost -perfect specimen of a comforting but unsound asseveration put into -rippling and hypnotizing words; done into plain English, the statements -of fact in it would make even a writer of school history-books laugh. -So with parts of the Declaration of Independence. No one believes -seriously that they are true, but nearly everyone agrees that it -would be a nice thing if they _were_ true--and meanwhile Jefferson's -eighteenth century rhetoric, by Johnson out of John Lyly's "Euphues," -completes the enchantment. In the main, the test is to be found in the -audience rather than in the poet. If it is naturally intelligent and in -a sober and critical mood, demanding sense and proofs, then nearly all -poetry becomes prose; if, on the contrary, it is congenitally maudlin, -or has a few drinks aboard, or is in love, or is otherwise in a soft -and believing mood, then even the worst of prose, if it has a touch -of soothing sing-song in it, becomes moving poetry--for example, the -diplomatic and political gospel-hymnes of the late Dr. Wilson, a man -constitutionally unable to reason clearly or honestly, but nevertheless -one full of the burbling that caresses the ears of simple men. Most of -his speeches, during the days of his divine appointment, translated -into intelligible English, would have sounded as idiotic as a prose -version of "The Blessed Damozel." Read by his opponents, they sounded -so without the translation. - -But at the extremes, of course, there are indubitable poetry and -incurable prose, and the difference is not hard to distinguish. -Prose is simply a form of writing in which the author intends that -his statements shall be accepted as conceivably true, even when they -are about imaginary persons and events; its appeal is to the fully -conscious and alertly reasoning man. Poetry is a form of writing in -which the author attempts to disarm reason and evoke emotion, partly by -presenting images that awaken a powerful response in the subconscious -and partly by the mere sough and blubber of words. Poetry is not -distinguished from prose, as Prof. Dr. Lowes says in his "Convention -and Revolt in Poetry," by an exclusive phraseology, but by a peculiar -attitude of mind--an attitude of self-delusion, of fact-denying, of -saying what isn't true. It is essentially an effort to elude the bitter -facts of life, whereas prose is essentially a means of unearthing and -exhibiting them. The gap is bridged by sentimental prose, which is half -prose and half poetry--Lincoln's Gettysburg speech, the average sermon, -the prose of an erotic novelette. Immediately the thing acquires a -literal meaning it ceases to be poetry; immediately it becomes capable -of convincing an adult and perfectly sober man during the hours between -breakfast and luncheon it is indisputably prose. - -This quality of untruthfulness pervades all poetry, good and bad. -You will find it in the very best poetry that the world has so far -produced, to wit, in the sonorous poems of the Jewish Scriptures. -The ancient Jews were stupendous poets. Moreover, they were shrewd -psychologists, and so knew the capacity of poetry, given the believing -mind, to convince and enchant--in other words, its capacity to drug -the auditor in such a manner that he accepts it literally, as he -might accept the baldest prose. This danger in poetry, given auditors -impressionable enough, is too little estimated and understood. It is -largely responsible for the persistence of sentimentality in a world -apparently designed for the one purpose of manufacturing cynics. It is -probably chiefly responsible for the survival of Christianity, despite -the hard competition that it has met with from other religions. The -theology of Christianity--_i._ e., its prose--is certainly no more -convincing than that of half a dozen other religions that might be -named; it is, in fact, a great deal less convincing than the theology -of, say, Buddhism. But the poetry of Christianity is infinitely more -lush and beautiful than that of any other religion ever heard of. -There is more lovely poetry in one of the Psalms than in all of the -Non-Christian scriptures of the world taken together. More, this -poetry is in both Testaments, the New as well as the Old. Who could -imagine a more charming poem than that of the Child in the manger? -It has enchanted the world for nearly two thousand years. It is -simple, exquisite and overwhelming. Its power to arouse emotion is -so great that even in our age it is at the bottom of fully a half of -the kindliness, romanticism and humane sentimentality that survive in -Christendom. It is worth a million syllogisms. - -Once, after plowing through sixty or seventy volumes of bad verse, I -described myself as a poetry-hater. The epithet was and is absurd. The -truth is that I enjoy poetry as much as the next man--when the mood -is on me. But what mood? The mood, in a few words, of intellectual -and spiritual fatigue, the mood of revolt against the insoluble -riddle of existence, the mood of disgust and despair. Poetry, then, -is a capital medicine. First its sweet music lulls, and then its -artful presentation of the beautifully improbable soothes and gives -surcease. It is an escape from life, like religion, like enthusiasm, -like glimpsing a pretty girl. And to the mere sensuous joy in it, to -the mere low delight in getting away from the world for a bit, there -is added, if the poetry be good, something vastly better, something -reaching out into the realm of the intelligent, to wit, appreciation -of good workmanship. A sound sonnet is almost as pleasing an object -as a well-written fugue. A pretty lyric, deftly done, has all the -technical charm of a fine carving. I think it is craftsmanship that -I admire most in the world. Brahms enchants me because he knew -his trade perfectly. I like Richard Strauss because he is full of -technical ingenuities, because he is a master-workman. Well, who ever -heard of a finer craftsman than William Shakespeare? His music was -magnificent, he played superbly upon all the common emotions--and he -did it magnificently, he did it with an air. No, I am no poetry-hater. -But even Shakespeare I most enjoy, not on brisk mornings when I feel -fit for any deviltry, but on dreary evenings when my old wounds are -troubling me, and some fickle one has just sent back the autographed -set of my first editions, and bills are piled up on my desk, and I am -too sad to work. Then I mix a stiff dram--and read poetry. - - - - -VIII. FIVE MEN AT RANDOM - - - -1 - -_Abraham Lincoln_ - - -The backwardness of the art of biography in These States is made -shiningly visible by the fact that we have yet to see a first-rate -life of either Lincoln or Whitman. Of Lincolniana, of course, there is -no end, nor is there any end to the hospitality of those who collect -it. Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of -books that never, under any circumstances, lose money in the United -States--first, detective stories; secondly, novels in which the heroine -is forcibly debauched by the hero; thirdly, volumes on spiritualism, -occultism and other such claptrap, and fourthly, books on Lincoln. But -despite all the vast mass of Lincolniana and the constant discussion -of old Abe in other ways, even so elemental a problem as that of -his religious faith--surely an important matter in any competent -biography--is yet but half solved. Here, for example, is the Rev. -William E. Barton, grappling with it for more than four hundred large -pages in "The Soul of Abraham Lincoln." It is a lengthy inquiry--the -rev. pastor, in truth, shows a good deal of the habitual garrulity of -his order--but it is never tedious. On the contrary, it is curious and -amusing, and I have read it with steady interest, including even the -appendices. Unluckily, the author, like his predecessors, fails to -finish the business before him. Was Lincoln a Christian? Did he believe -in the Divinity of Christ? I am left in doubt. He was very polite about -it, and very cautious, as befitted a politician in need of Christian -votes, but how much genuine conviction was in that politeness? And if -his occasional references to Christ were thus open to question, what -of his rather vague avowals of belief in a personal God and in the -immortality of the soul? Herndon and some of his other close friends -always maintained that he was an atheist, but Dr. Barton argues that -this atheism was simply disbelief in the idiotic Methodist and Baptist -dogmas of his time--that nine Christian churches out of ten, if he were -alive to-day, would admit him to their high privileges and prerogatives -without anything worse than a few warning coughs. As for me, I still -wonder. - -The growth of the Lincoln legend is truly amazing. He becomes the -American solar myth, the chief butt of American credulity and -sentimentality. Washington, of late years, has been perceptibly -humanized; every schoolboy now knows that he used to swear a good deal, -and was a sharp trader, and had a quick eye for a pretty ankle. But -meanwhile the varnishers and veneerers have been busily converting -Abe into a plaster saint, thus making him fit for adoration in the -chautauquas and Y. M. C. A.'s. All the popular pictures of him show -him in his robes of state, and wearing an expression fit for a man -about to be hanged. There is, so far as I know, not a single portrait -of him showing him smiling--and yet he must have cackled a good deal, -first and last: who ever heard of a storyteller who didn't? Worse, -there is an obvious effort to pump all his human weaknesses out of -him, and so leave him a mere moral apparition, a sort of amalgam of -John Wesley and the Holy Ghost. What could be more absurd? Lincoln, -in point of fact, was a practical politician of long experience and -high talents, and by no means cursed with inconvenient ideals. On the -contrary, his career in the Illinois Legislature was that of a good -organization man, and he was more than once denounced by reformers. -Even his handling of the slavery question was that of a politician, not -that of a fanatic. Nothing alarmed him more than the suspicion that -he was an Abolitionist. Barton tells of an occasion when he actually -fled town to avoid meeting the issue squarely. A genuine Abolitionist -would have published the Emancipation Proclamation the day after the -first battle of Bull Run. But Lincoln waited until the time was more -favorable--until Lee had been hurled out of Pennsylvania, and, more -important still, until the political currents were safely running his -way. Always he was a wary fellow, both in his dealings with measures -and in his dealings with men. He knew how to keep his mouth shut. - -Nevertheless, it was his eloquence that probably brought him to his -great estate. Like William Jennings Bryan, he was a dark horse made -suddenly formidable by fortunate rhetoric. The Douglas debate launched -him, and the Cooper Union speech got him the presidency. This talent -for emotional utterance, this gift for making phrases that enchanted -the plain people, was an accomplishment of late growth. His early -speeches were mere empty fireworks--the childish rhodomontades of -the era. But in middle life he purged his style of ornament and it -became almost baldly simple--and it is for that simplicity that he -is remembered to-day. The Gettysburg speech is at once the shortest -and the most famous oration in American history. Put beside it, all -the whoopings of the Websters, Sumners and Everetts seem gaudy and -silly. It is eloquence brought to a pellucid and almost child-like -perfection--the highest emotion reduced to one graceful and -irresistible gesture. Nothing else precisely like it is to be found -in the whole range of oratory. Lincoln himself never even remotely -approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. - -But let us not forget that it is oratory, not logic; beauty, not -sense. Think of the argument in it! Put it into the cold words of -everyday! The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers -who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of -self-determination--"that government of the people, by the people, -for the people," should not perish from the earth. It is difficult -to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle -actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates -who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What -was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else -than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, _i. e._, -of the people of the States? The Confederates went into battle an -absolutely free people; they came out with their freedom subject to the -supervision and vote of the rest of the country--and for nearly twenty -years that vote was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely any freedom -at all. Am I the first American to note the fundamental nonsensicality -of the Gettysburg address? If so, I plead my sthetic joy in it in -amelioration of the sacrilege. - - - -2 - -_Paul Elmer More_ - - -Nothing new is to be found in the latest volume of Paul Elmer More's -Shelburne Essays. The learned author, undismayed by the winds of -anarchic doctrine that blow down his Princeton stovepipe, continues -to hold fast to the notions of his earliest devotion. He is still the -gallant champion sent against the Romantic Movement by the forces -of discipline and decorum. He is still the eloquent fugleman of the -Puritan ethic and sthetic. In so massive a certainty, so resolute an -immovability there is something almost magnificent. These are somewhat -sad days for the exponents of that ancient correctness. The Goths -and the Huns are at the gate, and as they batter wildly they throw -dead cats, perfumed lingerie, tracts against predestination, and the -bound files of the _Nation,_ the _Freeman_ and the _New Republic_ -over the fence. But the din does not flabbergast Dr. More. High above -the blood-bathed battlements there is a tower, of ivory within and -solid ferro-concrete without, and in its austere upper chamber he sits -undaunted, solemnly composing an elegy upon Jonathan Edwards, "the -greatest theologian and philosopher yet produced in this country." - -Magnificent, indeed--and somehow charming. On days when I have no -nobler business I sometimes join the barbarians and help them to launch -their abominable bombs against the embattled blue-nose& It is, in -the main, fighting that is too easy, too Anglo-Saxon to be amusing. -Think of the decayed professors assembled by Dr. Franklin for the -_Profiteers' Review;_ who could get any genuine thrill out of dropping -_them?_ They come out on crutches, and are as much afraid of what -is behind them as they are of what is in front of them. Facing all -the horrible artillery of Nineveh and Tyre, they arm themselves with -nothing worse than the pedagogical birch. The janissaries of Adolph -Ochs, the Anglo-Saxon supreme archon, are even easier. One has but to -blow a _shofar,_ and down they go. Even Prof. Dr. Stuart P. Sherman is -no antagonist to delight a hard-boiled heretic. Sherman is at least -honestly American, of course, but the trouble with him is that he is -_too_ American. The Iowa hayseed remains in his hair; he can't get rid -of the smell of the chautauqua; one inevitably sees in him a sort of -_reductio ad absurdum_ of his fundamental theory--to wit, the theory -that the test of an artist is whether he hated the Kaiser in 1917, and -plays his honorable part in Christian Endeavor, and prefers Coca-Cola -to Scharlachberger 1911, and has taken to heart the great lessons -of sex hygiene. Sherman is game, but he doesn't offer sport in the -grand manner. Moreover, he has been showing sad signs of late of a -despairing heart: he tries to be ingratiating, and begins to hug in the -clinches. - -The really tempting quarry is More. To rout him out of his armored -tower, to get him out upon the glacis for a duel before both armies, to -bring him finally to the wager of battle--this would be an enterprise -to bemuse the most audacious and give pause to the most talented. More -has a solid stock of learning in his lockers; he is armed and outfitted -as none of the pollyannas who trail after him is armed and outfitted; -he is, perhaps, the nearest approach to a genuine scholar that we have -in America, God save us all! But there is simply no truculence in him, -no flair for debate, no lust to do execution upon his foes. His method -is wholly _ex parte._ Year after year he simply iterates and reiterates -his misty protests, seldom changing so much as a word. Between his -first volume and his last there is not the difference between Gog and -Magog. Steadily, ploddingly, vaguely, he continues to preach the gloomy -gospel of tightness and restraint. He was against "the electric thrill -of freer feeling" when he began, and he will be against it on that last -gray day--I hope it long post-dates my own hanging--when the ultimate -embalmer sneaks upon him with velvet tread, and they haul down the flag -to half-staff at Princeton, and the readers of the New York _Evening -Journal_ note that an obscure somebody named Paul E. More is dead. - - - -3 - -_Madison Cawein_ - - -A vast and hefty tome celebrates this dead poet, solemnly issued by -his mourning friends in Louisville. The editor is Otto A. Rothert, -who confesses that he knew Cawein but a year or two, and never read -his poetry until after his death. The contributors include such local -_literati_ as Reuben Post Halleck, Leigh Gordon Giltner, Anna Blanche -McGill and Elvira S. Miller Slaughter. Most of the ladies gush over -the departed in the manner of high-school teachers paying tribute to -Plato, Montaigne or Dante Alighieri. His young son, seventeen years -old, contributes by far the most vivid and intelligent account of -him; it is, indeed, very well written, as, in a different way, is the -contribution of Charles Hamilton Musgrove, an old newspaper friend. -The ladies, as I hint, simply swoon and grow lyrical. But it is a -fascinating volume, all the same, and well worth the room it takes on -the shelf. Mr. Rothert starts off with what he calls a "picturography" -of Cawein--the poet's father and mother in the raiment of 1865, the -coat-of-arms of his mother's great-grand-father's uncle, the house -which now stands on the site of the house in which he was born, the -rock spring from which he used to drink as a boy, a group showing him -with his three brothers, another showing him with one brother and -their cousin Fred, Cawein himself with sideboards, the houses he lived -in, the place where he worked, the walks he liked around Louisville, -his wife and baby, the hideous bust of him in the Louisville Public -Library, the church from which he was buried, his modest grave in Cave -Hill Cemetery--in brief, all the photographs that collect about a man -as he staggers through life, and entertain his ribald grandchildren -after he is gone. Then comes a treatise on the ancestry and youth of -the poet, then a collection of newspaper clippings about him, then -a gruesomely particular account of his death, then a fragment of -autobiography, then a selection from his singularly dull letters, then -some prose pieces from his pen, then the aforesaid tributes of his -neighbors, and finally a bibliography of his works, and an index to -them. - -As I say, a volume of fearful bulk and beam, but nevertheless full of -curious and interesting things. Cawein, of course, was not a poet of -the first rank, nor is it certain that he has any secure place in the -second rank, but in the midst of a great deal of obvious and feeble -stuff he undoubtedly wrote some nature lyrics of excellent quality. -The woods and the fields were his delight. He loved to roam through -them, observing the flowers, the birds, the tall trees, the shining -sky overhead, the green of Spring, the reds and browns of Autumn, the -still whites of Winter. There were times when he got his ecstasy into -words--when he wrote poems that were sound and beautiful. These poems -will not be forgotten; there will be no history of American literature -written for a hundred years that does not mention Madison Cawein. But -what will the literary historians make of the man himself? How will -they explain his possession, however fitfully, of the divine gift--his -genuine kinship with Wordsworth and Shelly? Certainly no more unlikely -candidate for the bays ever shinned up Parnassus. His father was a -quack doctor; his mother was a professional spiritualist; he himself, -for years and years, made a living as cashier in a gambling-house! -Could anything be more grotesque? Is it possible to imagine a more -improbable setting for a poet? Yet the facts are the facts, and Mr. -Rothert makes no attempt whatever to conceal them. Add a final touch -of the bizarre: Cawein fell over one morning while shaving in his -bathroom, and cracked his head on the bathtub, and after his death -there was a row over his life insurance. Mr. Rothert presents all of -the documents. The autopsy is described; the death certificate is -quoted.... A strange, strange tale, indeed! - - - -4 - -_Frank Harris_ - - -Though, so far as I know, this Harris is a perfectly reputable man, -fearing God and obeying the laws, it is not to be gainsaid that a -certain flavor of the sinister hangs about his aspect. The first time -I ever enjoyed the honor of witnessing him, there bobbed up in my mind -(instantly put away as unworthy and unseemly) a memory of the handsome -dogs who used to chain shrieking virgins to railway tracks in the -innocent, pre-Ibsenish dramas of my youth, the while a couple of stage -hands imitated the rumble of the Empire State Express in the wings. -There was the same elegance of turn-out, the same black mustachios, the -same erect figure and lordly air, the same agate glitter in the eyes, -the same aloof and superior smile. A sightly fellow, by all the gods, -and one who obviously knew how to sneer. That afternoon, in fact, we -had a sneering match, and before it was over most of the great names in -the letters and politics of the time, _circa_ 1914, had been reduced -to faint hisses and ha-has.... Well, a sneerer has his good days and -his bad days. There are times when his gift gives him such comfort -that it can be matched only by God's grace, and there are times when -it launches upon him such showers of darts that he is bound to feel a -few stings. Harris got the darts first, for the year that he came back -to his native land, after a generation of exile, was the year in which -Anglomania rose to the dignity of a national religion--and what he had -to say about the English, among whom he had lived since the early 80's, -was chiefly of a very waspish and disconcerting character. Worse, he -not only said it, twirling his mustache defiantly; he also wrote it -down, and published it in a book. This book was full of shocks for the -rapt worshippers of the Motherland, and particularly for the literary -_Kanonendelicatessen_ who followed the pious leadership of Woodrow and -Ochs, Putnam and Roosevelt, Wister and Cyrus Curtis, young Reid and -Mrs. Jay. So they called a special meeting of the American Academy of -Arts and Letters, sang "God Save the King," kissed the Union Jack, -and put Harris into Coventry. And there he remained for five or six -long years. The literary reviews never mentioned him. His books were -expunged from the minutes. When he was heard of at all, it was only in -whispers, and the general burden of those whispers was that he was in -the pay of the Kaiser, and plotting to garrot the Rev. Dr. William T. -Manning.... - -So down to 1921. Then the English, with characteristic lack of -delicacy, played a ghastly trick upon all those dutiful and -well-meaning colonists. That is to say, they suddenly forgave Harris -his criminal refusal to take their war buncombe seriously, exhumed him -from his long solitude among the Anglo-Ashkenazim, and began praising -him in rich, hearty terms as a literary gentleman of the first water, -and even as the chief adornment of American letters! The English -notices of his "Contemporary Portraits: Second Series" were really -quite amazing. The London _Times_ gave him two solid columns, and where -the _Times_ led, all the other great organs of English literary opinion -followed. The book itself was described as something extraordinary, a -piece of criticism full of shrewdness and originality, and the author -was treated with the utmost politeness.... One imagines the painful -sensation in the New York _Times_ office, the dismayed groups around -far-flung campus pumps, the special meetings of the Princeton, N. J., -and Urbana, Ill., American Legions, the secret conference between -the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the Ku Klux Klan. But -though there was tall talk by hot heads, nothing could be done. Say -"Wo!" and the dutiful jack-ass turns to the right; say "Gee!" and he -turns to the left. It is too much, of course, to ask him to cheer as -well as turn--but he nevertheless turns. Since 1921 I have heard no -more whispers against Harris from professors and Vigilantes. But on -two or three occasions, the subject coming up, I have heard him sneer -his master sneer, and each time my blood has run cold. - -Well, what is in him? My belief, frequently expressed, is that there -is a great deal. His "Oscar Wilde" is, by long odds, the best literary -biography ever written by an American--an astonishingly frank, -searching and vivid reconstruction of character--a piece of criticism -that makes all ordinary criticism seem professorial and lifeless. The -Comstocks, I need not say, tried to suppress it; a brilliant light -is thrown upon Harris by the fact that they failed ignominiously. -All the odds were in favor of the Comstocks; they had patriotism on -their side and the help of all the swine who flourished in those days; -nevertheless, Harris gave them a severe beating, and scared them half -to death. In brief, a man of the most extreme bellicosity, enterprise -and courage--a fellow whose ideas are expressed absolutely regardless -of tender feelings, whether genuine or bogus. In "The Man Shakespeare" -and "The Women of Shakespeare" he tackled the whole body of academic -English critics _en masse_--and routed them _en masse._ The two books, -marred perhaps by a too bombastic spirit, yet contain some of the -soundest, shrewdest and most convincing criticism of Shakespeare that -has ever been written. All the old hocus-pocus is thrown overboard. -There is an entirely new examination of the materials, and to the -business is brought a knowledge of the plays so ready and so vast that -that of even the most learned don begins to seem a mere smattering. -The same great grasp of facts and evidences is visible in the sketches -which make up the three volumes of "Contemporary Portraits." What one -always gets out of them is a feeling that the man knows the men he is -writing about--that he not only knows what he sets down, but a great -deal more. There is here nothing of the cold correctness of the usual -literary "estimate." Warts are not forgotten, whether of the nose or -of the immortal soul. The subject, beginning as a political shibboleth -or a row of books, gradually takes on all the colors of life, and then -begins to move, naturally and freely. I know of no more brilliant -evocations of personality in any literature--and most of them are -personalities of sharp flavor, for Harris, in his day, seems to have -known almost everybody worth knowing, and whoever he knew went into his -laboratory for vivisection. - -The man is thus a first rate critic of his time, and what he has -written about his contemporaries is certain to condition the view of -them held in the future. What gives him his value in this difficult -field is, first of all and perhaps most important of all, his cynical -detachment--his capacity for viewing men and ideas objectively. In his -life, of course, there have been friendships and some of them have -been strong and long-continued, but when he writes it is with a sort -of surgical remoteness; as if the business in hand were vastly more -important than the man. He was lately protesting violently that he was -and is quite devoid of malice. Granted. But so is a surgeon. To write -of George Moore as he has written may be writing devoid of malice, but -nevertheless the effect is precisely that which would follow if some -malicious enemy were to drag poor George out of his celibate couch in -the dead of night, and chase him naked down Shaftsbury avenue. The -thing is appallingly revelatory--and I believe that it is true. The -Moore that he depicts may not be absolutely the real Moore, but he -is unquestionably far nearer to the real Moore than the Moore of the -Moore books. The method, of course, has its defects. Harris is far more -interested, fundamentally, in men than in their ideas: the catholic -sweep of his "Contemporary Portraits" proves it. In consequence his -judgments of books are often colored by his opinions of their authors. -He dislikes Mark Twain as his own antithesis: a trimmer and poltroon. -_Ergo,_ "A Connecticut Yankee" is drivel, which leads us, as Euclid -hath it, to absurdity. He once had a row with Dreiser. _Ergo,_ "The -Titan" is nonsense, which is itself nonsense. But I know of no critic -who is wholly free from that quite human weakness. In the academic -bunkophagi it is everything; they are willing to swallow anything so -long as the author is sound upon the League of Nations. It seems to me -that such aberrations are rarer in Harris than in most. He may have -violent prejudices, but it is seldom that they play upon a man who is -honest. - -I judge from his frequent discussions of himself--he is happily free -from the vanity of modesty--that the pets of his secret heart are his -ventures into fiction, and especially, "The Bomb" and "Montes the -Matador." The latter has been greatly praised by Arnold Bennett, who -has also praised Leonard Merrick. I have read it four or five times, -and always with enjoyment. It is a powerful and adept tale; well -constructed and beautifully written; it recalls some of the best of the -shorter stories of Thomas Hardy. Alongside it one might range half a -dozen other Harris stories--all of them carefully put together, every -one the work of a very skillful journeyman. But despite Harris, the -authentic Harris is not the story-writer: he has talents, of course, -but it would be absurd to put "Montes the Matador" beside "Heart of -Darkness." In "Love in Youth" he descends to unmistakable fluff and -feebleness. The real Harris is the author of the Wilde volumes, of the -two books about Shakespeare, of the three volumes of "Contemporary -Portraits." Here there is stuff that lifts itself clearly and -brilliantly above the general--criticism that has a terrific vividness -and plausibility, and all the gusto that the professors can never pump -up. Harris makes his opinions not only interesting, but important. -What he has to say always seems novel, ingenious, and true. Here is the -chief life-work of an American who, when all values are reckoned up, -will be found to have been a sound artist and an extremely intelligent, -courageous and original man--and infinitely the superior of the poor -dolts who once tried so childishly to dispose of him. - - - -5 - -_Havelock Ellis_ - - -If the test of the personal culture of a man be the degree of his -freedom from the banal ideas and childish emotions which move the -great masses of men, then Havelock Ellis is undoubtedly the most -civilized Englishman of his generation. He is a man of the soundest -and widest learning, but it is not his positive learning that gives -him distinction; it is his profound and implacable skepticism, his -penetrating eye for the transient, the disingenuous, and the shoddy. -So unconditioned a skepticism, it must be plain, is not an English -habit. The average Englishman of science, though he may challenge the -Continentals within his speciality, is only too apt to sink to the -level of a politician, a green grocer, or a suburban clergyman outside -it. The examples of Wallace, Crookes, and Lodge are anything but -isolated. Scratch an English naturalist and you are likely to discover -a spiritualist; take an English metaphysician to where the band is -playing, and if he begins to snuffle patriotically you need not be -surprised. The late war uncovered this weakness in a wholesale manner. -The English _Gelehrten,_ as a class, not only stood by their country; -they also stood by the Hon. David Lloyd George, the _Daily Mail,_ and -the mob in Trafalgar Square. Unluckily, the asinine manifestations -ensuing--for instance, the "proofs" of the eminent Oxford philologist -that the Germans had never contributed anything to philology--are -not to be described with good grace by an American, for they were -far surpassed on this side of the water. England at least had Ellis, -with Bertrand Russell, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, and a few others in the -background. We had, on that plane, no one. - -Ellis, it seems to me, stood above all the rest, and precisely because -his dissent from the prevailing imbecilities was quite devoid of -emotion and had nothing in it of brummagen moral purpose. Too many of -the heretics of the time were simply orthodox witch-hunters off on an -unaccustomed tangent. In their disorderly indignation they matched the -regular professors; it was only in the objects of their ranting that -they differed. But Ellis kept his head throughout. An Englishman of -the oldest native stock, an unapologetic lover of English scenes and -English ways, an unshaken believer in the essential soundness and -high historical destiny of his people, he simply stood aside from the -current clown-show and waited in patience for sense and decency to be -restored. His "Impressions and Comments," the record of his war-time -reflections, is not without its note of melancholy; it was hard to -look on without depression. But for the man of genuine culture there -were at least some resources remaining within himself, and what gives -this volume its chief value is its picture of how such a man made use -of them. Ellis, facing the mob unleashed, turned to concerns and ideas -beyond its comprehension--to the humanism that stands above all such -sordid conflicts. There is something almost of Renaissance dignity in -his chronicle of his speculations. The man that emerges is not a mere -scholar immured in a cell, but a man of the world superior to his race -and his time--a philosopher viewing the childish passion of lesser men -disdainfully and yet not too remote to understand it, and even to see -in it a certain cosmic use. A fine air blows through the book. It takes -the reader into the company of one whose mind is a rich library and -whose manner is that of a gentleman. He is the complete anti-Kipling. -In him the Huxleian tradition comes to full flower. - -His discourse ranges from Beethoven to Comstockery and from Spanish -architecture to the charm of the English village. The extent of the -man's knowledge is really quite appalling. His primary work in the -world has been that of a psychologist, and in particular he has -brought a great erudition and an extraordinarily sound judgment to the -vexatious problems of the psychology of sex, but that professional -concern, extending over so many years, has not prevented him from -entering a dozen other domains of speculation, nor has it dulled his -sensitiveness to beauty nor his capacity to evoke it. His writing was -never better than in this volume. His style, especially towards the -end, takes on a sort of glowing clarity. It is English that is as -transparent as a crystal, and yet it is English that is full of fine -colors and cadences. There could be no better investiture for the -questionings and conclusions of so original, so curious, so learned, -and, above all, so sound and hearty a man. - - - - -IX. THE NATURE OF LIBERTY - - -Every time an officer of the constabulary, in the execution of his just -and awful powers under American law, produces a compound fracture of -the occiput of some citizen in his custody, with hemorrhage, shock, -coma and death, there comes a feeble, falsetto protest from specialists -in human liberty. Is it a fact without significance that this protest -is never supported by the great body of American freemen, setting aside -the actual heirs and creditors of the victim? I think not. Here, as -usual, public opinion is very realistic. It does not rise against the -policeman for the plain and simple reason that it does not question his -right to do what he has done. Policemen are not given night-sticks for -ornament. They are given them for the purpose of cracking the skulls of -the recalcitrant plain people, Democrats and Republicans alike. When -they execute that high duty they are palpably within their rights. - -The specialists aforesaid are the same fanatics who shake the air with -sobs every time the Postmaster-General of the United States bars a -periodical from the mails because its ideas do not please him, and -every time some poor Russian is deported for reading Karl Marx, and -every time a Prohibition enforcement officer murders a bootlegger who -resists his levies, and every time agents of the Department of Justice -throw an Italian out of the window, and every time the Ku Klux Klan or -the American Legion tars and feathers a Socialist evangelist. In brief, -they are Radicals, and to scratch one with a pitchfork is to expose a -Bolshevik. They are men standing in contempt of American institutions -and in enmity to American idealism. And their evil principles are no -less offensive to right-thinking and red-blooded Americans when they -are United States Senators or editors of wealthy newspapers than when -they are degraded I. W. W.'s throwing dead cats and infernal machines -into meetings of the Rotary Club. - -What ails them primarily is the ignorant and uncritical monomania that -afflicts every sort of fanatic, at all times and everywhere. Having -mastered with their limited faculties the theoretical principles set -forth in the Bill of Rights, they work themselves into a passionate -conviction that those principles are identical with the rules of law -and justice, and ought to be enforced literally, and without the -slightest regard for circumstance and expediency. It is precisely as if -a High Church rector, accidentally looking into the Book of Chronicles, -and especially Chapter II, should suddenly issue a mandate from his -pulpit ordering his parishioners, on penalty of excommunication and the -fires of hell, to follow exactly the example set forth, to wit: "And -Jesse begat his first born Eliab, and Abinadab the second, and Shimma -the third, Netheneel the fourth, Raddai the fifth, Ozen the sixth, -David the seventh," and so on. It might be very sound theoretical -theology, but it would surely be out of harmony with modern ideas, and -the rev. gentleman would be extremely lucky if the bishop did not give -him 10 days in the diocesan hoosegow. - -So with the Bill of Rights. As adopted by the Fathers of the Republic, -it was gross, crude, inelastic, a bit fanciful and transcendental. -It specified the rights of a citizen, but it said nothing whatever -about his duties. Since then, by the orderly processes of legislative -science and by the even more subtle and beautiful devices of juridic -art, it has been kneaded and mellowed into a far greater pliability -and reasonableness. On the one hand, the citizen still retains the -great privilege of membership in the most superb free nation ever -witnessed on this earth. On the other hand, as a result of countless -shrewd enactments and sagacious decisions, his natural lusts and -appetites are held in laudable check, and he is thus kept in order and -decorum. No artificial impediment stands in the way of his highest -aspiration. He may become anything, including even a policeman. But -once a policeman, he is protected by the legislative and judicial arms -in the peculiar rights and prerogatives that go with his high office, -including especially the right to jug the laity at his will, to sweat -and mug them, to subject them to the third degree, and to subdue their -resistance by beating out their brains. Those who are unaware of this -are simply ignorant of the basic principles of American jurisprudence, -as they have been exposed times without number by the courts of first -instance and ratified in lofty terms by the Supreme Court of the -United States. The one aim of the controlling decisions, magnificently -attained, is to safeguard public order and the public security, and -to substitute a judicial process for the inchoate and dangerous -interaction of discordant egos. - -Let us imagine an example. You are, say, a peaceable citizen on your -way home from your place of employment. A police sergeant, detecting -you in the crowd, approaches you, lays his hand on your collar, and -informs you that you are under arrest for killing a trolley conductor -in Altoona, Pa., in 1917. Amazed by the accusation, you decide hastily -that the officer has lost his wits, and take to your heels. He pursues -you. You continue to run. He draws his revolver and fires at you. He -misses you. He fires again and fetches you in the leg. You fall and he -is upon you. You prepare to resist his apparently maniacal assault. He -beats you into insensibility with his espantoon, and drags you to the -patrol box. - -Arrived at the watch house you are locked in a room with five -detectives, and for six hours they question you with subtle art. -You grow angry--perhaps robbed of your customary politeness by the -throbbing in your head and leg--and answer tartly. They knock you down. -Having failed to wring a confession from you, they lock you in a cell, -and leave you there all night. The next day you are taken to police -headquarters, your photograph is made for the Rogues' Gallery, and a -print is duly deposited in the section labeled "Murderers." You are -then carted to jail and locked up again. There you remain until the -trolley conductor's wife comes down from Altoona to identify you. She -astonishes the police by saying that you are not the man. The actual -murderer, it appears, was an Italian. After holding you a day or two -longer, to search your house for stills, audit your income tax returns, -and investigate the pre-marital chastity of your wife, they let you go. - -You are naturally somewhat irritated by your experience and perhaps -your wife urges you to seek redress. Well, what are your remedies? If -you are a firebrand, you reach out absurdly for those of a preposterous -nature: the instant jailing of the sergeant, the dismissal of the -Police Commissioner, the release of Mooney, a fair trial for Sacco and -Vanzetti, free trade with Russia, One Big Union. But if you are a -100 per cent. American and respect the laws and institutions of your -country, you send for your solicitor--and at once he shows you just how -far your rights go, and where they end. You cannot cause the arrest of -the sergeant, for you resisted him when he attempted to arrest you, -and when you resisted him he acquired an instant right to take you -by force. You cannot proceed against him for accusing you falsely, -for he has a right to make summary arrests for felony, and the courts -have many times decided that a public officer, so long as he cannot be -charged with corruption or malice, is not liable for errors of judgment -made in the execution of his sworn duty. You cannot get the detectives -on the mat, for when they questioned you you were a prisoner accused of -murder, and it was their duty and their right to do so. You cannot sue -the turnkey at the watch house or the warden at the jail for locking -you up, for they received your body, as the law says, in a lawful and -regular manner, and would have been liable to penalty if they had -turned you loose. - -But have you no redress whatever, no rights at all? Certainly you have -a right, and the courts have jealously guarded it. You have a clear -right, guaranteed to you under the Constitution, to go into a court -of equity and apply for a mandamus requiring the _Polizei_ to cease -forthwith to expose your portrait in the Rogues' Gallery among the -murderers. This is your inalienable right, and no man or men on earth -can take it away from you. You cannot prevent them cherishing your -portrait in their secret files, but you can get an order commanding -them to refrain forever from exposing it to the gaze of idle visitors, -and if you can introduce yourself unseen into their studio and prove -that they disregard that order, you can have them haled into court for -contempt and fined by the learned judge. - -Thus the law, statute, common and case, protects the free American -against injustice. It is ignorance of that subtle and perfect -process and not any special love of liberty _per se_ that causes -radicals of anti-American kidney to rage every time an officer of the -_gendarmerie,_ in the simple execution of his duty, knocks a citizen -in the head. The _gendarme_ plainly has an inherent and inalienable -right to knock him in the head: it is an essential part of his general -prerogative as a sworn officer of the public peace and a representative -of the sovereign power of the state. He may, true enough, exercise that -prerogative in a manner liable to challenge on the ground that it is -imprudent and lacking in sound judgment. On such questions reasonable -men may differ. But it must be obvious that the sane and decorous way -to settle differences of opinion of that sort is not by public outcry -and florid appeals to sentimentality, not by ill-disguised playing to -class consciousness and anti-social prejudice, but by an orderly resort -to the checks and remedies superimposed upon the Bill of Rights by the -calm deliberation and austere logic of the courts of equity. - -The law protects the citizen. But to get its protection he must show -due respect for its wise and delicate processes. - - - - -X. THE NOVEL - - -An unmistakable flavor of effeminacy hangs about the novel, however -heroic its content. Even in the gaudy tales of a Rex Beach, with their -bold projections of the Freudian dreams of go-getters, ice-wagon -drivers, Ku Kluxers, Rotary Club presidents and other such carnivora, -there is a subtle something that suggests water-color painting, -lip-sticks and bon-bons. Well, why not? When the novel, in the form -that we know to-day, arose in Spain toward the end of the sixteenth -century, it was aimed very frankly at the emerging women of the -Castilian seraglios--women who were gradually emancipating themselves -from the _Kche-Kinder-Kirche_ darkness of the later Middle Ages, but -had not yet come to anything even remotely approaching the worldly -experience and intellectual curiosity of men. They could now read and -they liked to practice the art, but the grand literature of the time -was too profound for them, and too somber. So literary confectioners -undertook stuff that would be more to their taste, and the modern novel -was born. A single plot served most of these confectioners; it became -and remains one of the conventions of the form. Man and maid meet, -love, and proceed to kiss--but the rest must wait. The buss remains -chaste through long and harrowing chapters; not until the very last -scene do fate and Holy Church license anything more. This plot, as I -say, still serves, and Arnold Bennett is authority for the doctrine -that it is the safest known. Its appeal is patently to the feminine -fancy, not to the masculine. Women like to be wooed endlessly before -they loose their girdles and are wooed no more. But a man, when he -finds a damsel to his taste, is eager to get through the preliminary -hocus-pocus as soon as possible. - -That women are still the chief readers of novels is known to every book -clerk: Joseph Hergesheimer, a little while back, was bemoaning the -fact as a curse to his craft. What is less often noted is that women -themselves, as they have gradually become fully literate, have forced -their way to the front as makers of the stuff they feed on, and that -they show signs of ousting the men, soon or late, from the business. -Save in the department of lyrical verse, which demands no organization -of ideas but only fluency of feeling, they have nowhere else done -serious work in literature. There is no epic poem of any solid value -by a woman, dead or alive; and no drama, whether comedy or tragedy; -and no work of metaphysical speculation; and no history; and no basic -document in any other realm of thought. In criticism, whether of works -of art or of the ideas underlying them, few women have ever got beyond -the _Schwrmerei_ of Madame de Stal's "L'Allemagne." In the essay, -the most competent woman barely surpasses the average Fleet Street -_causerie_ hack or Harvard professor. But in the novel the ladies have -stood on a level with even the most accomplished men since the day -of Jane Austen, and not only in Anglo-Saxondom, but also everywhere -else--save perhaps in Russia. To-day it would be difficult to think of -a contemporary German novelist of sounder dignity than Clara Viebig, -Helene Bhlau or Ricarda Huch, or a Scandinavian novelist clearly -above Selma Lagerlf, or an Italian above Mathilda Serao, or, for that -matter, more than two or three living Englishmen above May Sinclair, -or more than two Americans equal to Willa Cather. Not only are women -writing novels quite as good as those written by men--setting aside, of -course, a few miraculous pieces by such fellows as Joseph Conrad: most -of them not really novels at all, but metaphysical sonatas disguised -as romances--; they are actually surpassing men in their experimental -development of the novel form. I do not believe that either Evelyn -Scott's "The Narrow House" or May Sinclair's "Life and Death of Harriet -Frean" has the depth and beam of, say, Dreiser's "Jennie Gerhardt" or -Arnold Bennett's "Old Wives' Tale," but it is certainly to be argued -plausibly that both books show a far greater venturesomeness and a -far finer virtuosity in the novel form--that both seek to free that -form from artificialities which Dreiser and Bennett seem to be almost -unaware of. When men exhibit any discontent with those artificialities -it usually takes the shape of a vain and uncouth revolt against the -whole inner spirit of the novel--that is, against the characteristics -which make it what it is. Their lusher imagination tempts them to try -to convert it into something that it isn't--for example, an epic, a -political document, or a philosophical work. This fact explains, in -one direction, such dialectical parables as Dreiser's "The 'Genius,'" -H. G. Wells' "Joan and Peter" and Upton Sinclair's "King Coal," and, -in a quite different direction, such rhapsodies as Cabell's "Jurgen," -Meredith's "The Shaving of Shagpat" and Jacob Wassermann's "The World's -Illusion." These things are novels only in the very limited sense -that Beethoven's "Vittoria" and Goldmarck's "Lndliche Hochzeit" are -symphonies. Their chief purpose is not that of prose fiction; it is -either that of argumentation or that of poetry. The women novelists, -with very few exceptions, are far more careful to remain within the -legitimate bounds of the form; they do not often abandon representation -to exhort or exult. Miss Cather's "My Antonia" shows a great deal -of originality in its method; the story it tells is certainly not a -conventional one, nor is it told in a conventional way. But it remains -a novel none the less, and as clearly so, in fact, as "The Ordeal of -Richard Feverel" or "Robinson Crusoe." - -Much exertion of the laryngeal and respiratory muscles is wasted upon -a discussion of the differences between realistic novels and romantic -novels. As a matter of fact, every authentic novel is realistic in -its method, however fantastic it may be in its fable. The primary aim -of the novel, at all times and everywhere, is the representation of -human beings at their follies and villainies, and no other art form -clings to that aim so faithfully. It sets forth, not what might be -true, or what ought to be true, but what actually _is_ true. This is -obviously not the case with poetry. Poetry is the product of an effort -to invent a world appreciably better than the one we live in; its -essence is not the representation of the facts, but the deliberate -concealment and denial of the facts. As for the drama, it vacillates, -and if it touches the novel on one side it also touches the epic on the -other. But the novel is concerned solely with human nature as it is -practically revealed and with human experience as men actually know it. -If it departs from that representational fidelity ever so slightly, it -becomes to that extent a bad novel; if it departs violently it ceases -to be a novel at all. Cabell, who shows all the critical deficiencies -of a sound artist, is one who has spent a good deal of time questioning -the uses of realism. Yet it is a plain fact that his own stature as an -artist depends almost wholly upon his capacity for accurate observation -and realistic representation. The stories in "The Line of Love," though -they may appear superficially to be excessively romantic, really owe -all of their charm to their pungent realism. The pleasure they give is -the pleasure of recognition; one somehow delights in seeing a medival -baron acting precisely like a New York stockbroker. As for "Jurgen," it -is as realistic in manner as Zola's "La Terre," despite its grotesque -fable and its burden of political, theological and epistemological -ideas. No one not an idiot would mistake the dialogue between Jurgen -and Queen Guinevere's father for romantic, in the sense that Kipling's -"Mandalay" is romantic; it is actually as mordantly realistic as the -dialogue between Nora and Helmer in the last act of "A Doll's House." - -It is my contention that women succeed in the novel--and that they -will succeed even more strikingly as they gradually throw off the -inhibitions that have hitherto cobwebbed their minds--simply because -they are better fitted for this realistic representation than -men--because they see the facts of life more sharply, and are less -distracted by mooney dreams. Women seldom have the pathological -faculty vaguely called imagination. One doesn't often hear of -them groaning over colossal bones in their sleep, as dogs do, or -constructing heavenly hierarchies or political Utopias, as men do. -Their concern is always with things of more objective substance--roofs, -meals, rent, clothes, the birth and upbringing of children. They are, -I believe, generally happier than men, if only because the demands -they make of life are more moderate and less romantic. The chief pain -that a man normally suffers in his progress through this vale is that -of disillusionment; the chief pain that a woman suffers is that of -parturition. There is enormous significance in the difference. The -first is artificial and self-inflicted; the second is natural and -unescapable. The psychological history of the differentiation I need -not go into here: its springs lie obviously in the greater physical -strength of man and his freedom from child-bearing, and in the larger -mobility and capacity for adventure that go therewith. A man dreams -of Utopias simply because he feels himself free to construct them; a -woman must keep house. In late years, to be sure, she has toyed with -the idea of escaping that necessity, but I shall not bore you with -arguments showing that she never will. So long as children are brought -into the world and made ready for the trenches, the sweat-shops and -the gallows by the laborious method ordained of God she will never be -quite as free to roam and dream as man is. It is only a small minority -of her sex who cherish a contrary expectation, and this minority, -though anatomically female, is spiritually male. Show me a woman who -has visions comparable, say, to those of Swedenborg, Woodrow Wilson, -Strindberg or Dr. Ghandi, and I'll show you a woman who is a very -powerful anaphrodisiac. - -Thus women, by their enforced preoccupation with the harsh facts of -life, are extremely well fitted to write novels, which must deal with -the facts or nothing. What they need for the practical business, in -addition, falls under two heads. First, they need enough sense of -social security to make them free to set down what they see. Secondly, -they need the modest technical skill, the formal mastery of words and -ideas, necessary to do it. The latter, I believe, they have had ever -since they learned to read and write, say three hundred years ago; it -comes to them more readily than to men, and is exercised with greater -ease. The former they are fast acquiring. In the days of Aphra Behn -and Ann Radcliffe it was almost as scandalous for a woman to put her -observations and notions into print as it was for her to show her -legs; even in the days of Jane Austen and Charlotte Bront the thing -was regarded as decidedly unladylike. But now, within certain limits, -she is free to print whatever she pleases, and before long even those -surviving limits will be obliterated. If I live to the year 1950 I -expect to see a novel by a women that will describe a typical marriage -under Christianity, from the woman's standpoint, as realistically as -it is treated from the man's standpoint in Upton Sinclair's "Love's -Pilgrimage." That novel, I venture to predict, will be a cuckoo. At -one stroke it will demolish superstitions that have prevailed in the -Western World since the fall of the Roman Empire. It will seem harsh, -but it will be true. And, being true, it will be a good novel. There -can be no good one that is not true. - -What ailed the women novelists, until very recently, was a lingering -ladyism--a childish prudery inherited from their mothers. I believe -that it is being rapidly thrown off; indeed, one often sees a concrete -woman novelist shedding it. I give you two obvious examples: Zona Gale -and Willa Cather. Miss Gale started out by trying to put into novels -the conventional prettiness that is esteemed along the Main Streets -of her native Wisconsin. She had skill and did it well, and so she -won a good deal of popular success. But her work was intrinsically as -worthless as a treatise on international politics by the Hon. Warren -Gamaliel Harding or a tract on the duties of a soldier and a gentleman -by a state president of the American Legion. Then, of a sudden, for -some reason quite unknown to the deponent, she threw off all that -flabby artificiality, and began describing the people about her as -they really were. The result was a second success even more pronounced -than her first, and on a palpably higher level. The career of Miss -Cather has covered less ground, for she began far above Main Street. -What she tried to do at the start was to imitate the superficial -sophistication of Edith Wharton and Henry James--a deceptive thing, -apparently realistic in essence, but actually as conventional as table -manners or the professional buffooneries of a fashionable rector. -Miss Cather had extraordinary skill as a writer, and so her imitation -was scarcely to be distinguished from the original, but in the course -of time she began to be aware of its hollowness. Then she turned to -first-hand representation--to pictures of the people she actually -knew. There ensued a series of novels that rose step by step to the -very distinguished quality of "My Antonia." That fine piece is a great -deal more than simply a good novel. It is a document in the history of -American literature. It proves, once and for all time, that accurate -representation is not, as the campus critics of Dreiser seem to think, -inimical to beauty. It proves, on the contrary, that the most careful -and penetrating representation is itself the source of a rare and -wonderful beauty. No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or -woman, is one-half so beautiful as "My Antonia." - -As I have said, the novel, in the United States as elsewhere, -still radiates an aroma of effeminacy, in the conventional sense. -Specifically, it deals too monotonously with the varieties of human -transactions which chiefly interest the unintelligent women who are -its chief patrons and the scarcely less intelligent women who, until -recently, were among its chief commercial manufacturers, to wit, the -transactions that revolve around the ensnarement of men by women--the -puerile tricks and conflicts of what is absurdly called romantic -love. But I believe that the women novelists, as they emerge into the -fullness of skill, will throw overboard all that old baggage, and leave -its toting to such male artisans as Chambers, Beach, Coningsby Dawson -and Emerson Hough, as they have already left the whole flag-waving and -"red-blooded" buncombe. True enough, the snaring of men will remain the -principal business of women in this world for many generations, but it -would be absurd to say that intelligent women, even to-day, view it -romantically--that is, as it is viewed by bad novelists. They see it -realistically, and they see it, not as an end in itself, but as a means -to other ends. It is, speaking generally, after she has got her man -that a woman begins to live. The novel of the future, I believe, will -show her thus living. It will depict the intricate complex of forces -that conditions her life and generates her ideas, and it will show, -against a background of actuality, her conduct in the eternal struggle -between her aspiration and her destiny. Women, as I have argued, are -not normally harassed by the grandiose and otiose visions that inflame -the gizzards of men, but they too discover inevitably that life is a -conflict, and that it is the harsh fate of _Homo sapiens_ to get the -worst of it. I should like to read a "Main Street" by an articulate -Carol Kennicott, or a "Titan" by one of Cowperwood's mistresses, or -a "Cytherea" by a Fanny Randon--or a Savina Grove! It would be sweet -stuff, indeed.... And it will come. - - - - -XI. THE FORWARD-LOOKER - - -When the history of the late years in America is written, I suspect -that their grandest, gaudiest gifts to _Kultur_ will be found in the -incomparable twins: the right-thinker and the forward-looker. No other -nation can match them, at any weight. The right-thinker is privy to all -God's wishes, and even whims; the forward-looker is the heir to all -His promises to the righteous. The former is never wrong; the latter -is never despairing. Sometimes the two are amalgamated into one man, -and we have a Bryan, a Wilson, a Dr. Frank Crane. But more often there -is a division: the forward-looker thinks wrong, and the right-thinker -looks backward. I give you Upton Sinclair and Nicholas Murray Butler -as examples. Butler is an absolute masterpiece of correct thought; in -his whole life, so far as human records show, he has not cherished a -single fancy that might not have been voiced by a Fifth Avenue rector -or spread upon the editorial page of the New York _Times._ But he has -no vision, alas, alas! All the revolutionary inventions for lifting up -humanity leave him cold. He is against them all, from the initiative -and referendum to birth control, and from Fletcherism to osteopathy. -Now turn to Sinclair. He believes in every one of them, however daring -and fantoddish; he grasps and gobbles all the new ones the instant they -are announced. But the man simply cannot think right. He is wrong on -politics, on economics, and on theology. He glories in and is intensely -vain of his wrongness. Let but a new article of correct American -thought get itself stated by the constituted ecclesiastical and secular -authorities--by Bishop Manning, or Judge Gary, or Butler, or Adolph -Ochs, or Dr. Fabian Franklin, or Otto Kahn, or Dr. Stephen S. Wise, -or Roger W. Babson, or any other such inspired omphalist--and he is -against it almost before it is stated. - -On the whole, as a neutral in such matters, I prefer the forward-looker -to the right-thinker, if only because he shows more courage and -originality. It takes nothing save lack of humor to believe what -Butler, or Ochs, or Bishop Manning believes, but it takes long practice -and a considerable natural gift to get down the beliefs of Sinclair. -I remember with great joy the magazine that he used to issue during -the war. In the very first issue he advocated Socialism, the single -tax, birth control, communism, the League of Nations, the conscription -of wealth, government ownership of coal mines, sex hygiene and free -trade. In the next issue he added the recall of judges, Fletcherism, -the Gary system, the Montessori method, paper-bag cookery, war gardens -and the budget system. In the third he came out for sex hygiene, one -big union, the initiative and referendum, the city manager plan, -chiropractic and Esperanto. In the fourth he went to the direct -primary, fasting, the Third International, a federal divorce law, free -motherhood, hot lunches for school children, Prohibition, the vice -crusade, _Expressionismus,_ the government control of newspapers, -deep breathing, international courts, the Fourteen Points, freedom -for the Armenians, the limitation of campaign expenditures, the merit -system, the abolition of the New York Stock Exchange, psychoanalysis, -crystal-gazing, the Little Theater movement, the recognition of Mexico, -_vers libre,_ old age pensions, unemployment insurance, cooperative -stores, the endowment of motherhood, the Americanization of the -immigrant, mental telepathy, the abolition of grade crossings, federal -labor exchanges, profit-sharing in industry, a prohibitive tax on Poms, -the clean-up-paint-up campaign, relief for the Jews, osteopathy, mental -mastery, and the twilight sleep. And so on, and so on. Once I had got -into the swing of the Sinclair monthly I found that I could dispense -with at least twenty other journals of the uplift. When he abandoned -it I had to subscribe for them anew, and the gravel has stuck in my -craw ever since. - -In the first volume of his personal philosophy, "The Book of Life: -Mind and Body," he is stopped from displaying whole categories of his -ideas, for his subject is not man the political and economic machine, -but man and mammal. Nevertheless, his characteristic hospitality to new -revelations is abundantly visible. What does the mind suggest? The mind -suggests its dark and fascinating functions and powers, some of them -very recent. There is, for example, psychoanalysis. There is mental -telepathy. There is crystal-gazing. There is double personality. Out -of each springs a scheme for the uplift of the race--in each there is -something for a forward-looker to get his teeth into. And if mind, then -why not also spirit? Here even a forward-looker may hesitate; here, -in fact, Sinclair himself hesitates. The whole field of spiritism is -barred to him by his theological heterodoxy; if he admits that man has -an immortal soul, he may also have to admit that the soul can suffer in -hell. Thus even forward-looking may turn upon and devour itself. But if -the meadow wherein spooks and poltergeists disport is closed, it is at -least possible to peep over the fence. Sinclair sees materializations -in dark rooms, under red, satanic lights. He is, perhaps, not yet -convinced, but he is looking pretty hard. Let a ghostly hand reach out -and grab him, and he will be over the fence! The body is easier. The -new inventions for dealing with it are innumerable and irresistible; no -forward-looker can fail to succumb to at least some of them. Sinclair -teeters dizzily. On the one hand he stoutly defends surgery--that -is, provided the patient is allowed to make his own diagnosis!--on -the other hand he is hot for fasting, teetotalism, and the avoidance -of drugs, coffee and tobacco, and he begins to flirt with osteopathy -and chiropractic. More, he has discovered a new revelation in San -Francisco--a system of diagnosis and therapeutics, still hooted at -by the Medical Trust, whereby the exact location of a cancer may -be determined by examining a few drops of the patient's blood, and -syphilis may be cured by vibrations, and whereby, most curious of all, -it can be established that odd numbers, written on a sheet of paper, -are full of negative electricity, and even numbers are full of positive -electricity. - -The book is written with great confidence and address, and has a good -deal of shrewdness mixed with its credulities; few licensed medical -practitioners could give you better advice. But it is less interesting -than its author, or, indeed, than forward-lookers in general. Of all -the known orders of men they fascinate me the most. I spend whole -days reading their pronunciamentos, and am an expert in the ebb and -flow of their singularly bizarre ideas. As I have said, I have never -encountered one who believed in but one sure cure for all the sorrows -of the world, and let it go at that. Nay, even the most timorous -of them gives his full faith and credit to at least two. Turn, for -example, to the official list of eminent single taxers issued by the -Joseph Fels Fund. I defy you to find one solitary man on it who stops -with the single tax. There is David Starr Jordan: he is also one of -the great whales of pacifism. There is B. O. Flower: he is the emperor -of anti-vaccinationists. There is Carrie Chapman Catt: she is hot for -every peruna that the suffragettes brew. There is W. S. U'Ren: he is in -general practise as a messiah. There is Hamlin Garland: he also chases -spooks. There is Jane Addams: vice crusader, pacifist, suffragist, -settlement worker. There is Prof. Dr. Scott Nearing: Socialist and -martyr. There is Newt Baker: heir of the Wilsonian idealism. There -is Gifford Pinchot: conservationist, Prohibitionist, Bull Moose, -and professional Good Citizen. There is Judge Ben B. Lindsey: -forward-looking's Jack Horner, forever sticking his thumb into new -pies. I could run the list to columns, but no need. You know the type -as well as I do. Give the forward-looker the direct primary, and he -demands the short ballot. Give him the initiative and referendum, and -he bawls for the recall of judges. Give him Christian Science, and he -proceeds to the swamis and yogis. Give him the Mann Act, and he wants -laws providing for the castration of fornicators. Give him Prohibition, -and he launches a new crusade against cigarettes, coffee, jazz, and -custard pies. - -I have a wide acquaintance among such sad, mad, glad folks, and know -some of them very well. It is my belief that the majority or them are -absolutely honest--that they believe as fully in their baroque gospels -as I believe in the dishonesty of politicians--that their myriad and -amazing faiths sit upon them as heavily as the fear of hell sits upon a -Methodist deacon who has degraded the vestry-room to carnal uses. All -that may be justly said against them is that they are chronically full -of hope, and hence chronically uneasy and indignant--that they belong -to the less sinful and comfortable of the two grand divisions of the -human race. Call them the tender-minded, as the late William James used -to do, and you have pretty well described them. They are, on the one -hand, pathologically sensitive to the sorrows of the world, and, on -the other hand, pathologically susceptible to the eloquence of quacks. -What seems to lie in all of them is the doctrine that evils so vast as -those they see about them _must_ and _will_ be laid--that it would be -an insult to a just God to think of them as permanent and irremediable. -This notion, I believe, is at the bottom of much of the current -pathetic faith in Prohibition. The thing itself is obviously a colossal -failure--that is, when viewed calmly and realistically. It has not only -not cured the rum evil in the United States; it has plainly made that -evil five times as bad as it ever was before. But to confess that bald -fact would be to break the forward-looking heart: it simply refuses -to harbor the concept of the incurable. And so, being debarred by the -legal machinery that supports Prohibition from going back to any more -feasible scheme of relief, it cherishes the sorry faith that somehow, -in some vague and incomprehensible way, Prohibition will yet work. -When the truth becomes so horribly evident that even forward-lookers -are daunted, then some new quack will arise to fool them again, with -some new and worse scheme of super-Prohibition. It is their destiny -to wobble thus endlessly between quack and quack. One pulls them by -the right arm and one by the left arm. A third is at their coat-tail -pockets, and a fourth beckons them over the hill. - -The rest of us are less tender-minded, and, in consequence, much -happier. We observe quite clearly that the world, as it stands, is -anything but perfect--that injustice exists, and turmoil, and tragedy, -and bitter suffering of ten thousand kinds--that human life at its -best, is anything but a grand, sweet song. But instead of ranting -absurdly against the fact, or weeping over it maudlinly, or trying -to remedy it with inadequate means, we simply put the thought of -it out of our minds, just as a wise man puts away the thought that -alcohol is probably bad for his liver, or that his wife is a shade -too fat. Instead of mulling over it and suffering from it, we seek -contentment by pursuing the delights that are so strangely mixed with -the horrors--by seeking out the soft spots and endeavoring to avoid -the hard spots. Such is the intelligent habit of practical and sinful -men, and under it lies a sound philosophy. After all, the world is -not our handiwork, and we are not responsible for what goes on in it, -save within very narrow limits. Going outside them with our protests -and advice tends to become contumacy to the celestial hierarchy. Do -the poor suffer in the midst of plenty? Then let us thank God politely -that we are not that poor. Are rogues in offices? Well, go call a -policeman, thus setting rogue upon rogue. Are taxes onerous, wasteful, -unjust? Then let us dodge as large a part of them as we can. Are whole -regiments and army corps of our fellow creatures doomed to hell? Then -let them complain to the archangels, and, if the archangels are too -busy to hear them, to the nearest archbishop. - -Unluckily for the man of tender mind, he is quite incapable of any -such easy dismissal of the great plagues and conundrums of existence. -It is of the essence of his character that he is too sensitive and -sentimental to put them ruthlessly out of his mind: he cannot view -even the crunching of a cockroach without feeling the snapping of -his own ribs. And it is of the essence of his character that he is -unable to escape the delusion of duty--that he can't rid himself of -the notion that, whenever he observes anything in the world that -might conceivably be improved, he is commanded by God to make every -effort to improve it. In brief, he is a public-spirited man, and the -ideal citizen of democratic states. But Nature, it must be obvious, -is opposed to democracy--and whoso goes counter to nature must expect -to pay the penalty. The tender-minded man pays it by hanging forever -upon the cruel hooks of hope, and by fermenting inwardly in incessant -indignation. All this, perhaps, explains the notorious ill-humor of -uplifters--the wowser touch that is in even the best of them. They -dwell so much upon the imperfections of the universe and the weaknesses -of man that they end by believing that the universe is altogether out -of joint and that every man is a scoundrel and every woman a vampire. -Years ago I had a combat with certain eminent reformers of the sex -hygiene and vice crusading species, and got out of it a memorable -illumination of their private minds. The reform these strange creatures -were then advocating was directed against sins of the seventh category, -and they proposed to put them down by forcing through legislation of a -very harsh and fantastic kind--statutes forbidding any woman, however -forbidding, to entertain a man in her apartment without the presence of -a third party, statutes providing for the garish lighting of all dark -places in the public parks, and so on. In the course of my debates with -them I gradually jockeyed them into abandoning all of the arguments -they started with, and so brought them down to their fundamental -doctrine, to wit, that no woman, without the aid of the police, could -be trusted to protect her virtue. I pass as a cynic in Christian -circles, but this notion certainly gave me pause. And it was voiced by -men who were the fathers of grown and unmarried daughters! - -It is no wonder that men who cherish such ideas are so ready to accept -any remedy for the underlying evils, no matter how grotesque. A man -suffering from hay-fever, as every one knows, will take any medicine -that is offered to him, even though he knows the compounder to be a -quack; the infinitesimal chance that the quack may have the impossible -cure gives him a certain hope, and so makes the disease itself -more bearable. In precisely the same way a man suffering from the -conviction that the whole universe is hell-bent for destruction--that -the government he lives under is intolerably evil, that the rich are -growing richer and the poor poorer, that no man's word can be trusted -and no woman's chastity, that another and worse war is hatching, -that the very regulation of the weather has fallen into the hands -of rogues--such a man will grab at anything, even birth control, -osteopathy or the Fourteen Points, rather than let the foul villainy go -on. The apparent necessity of finding a remedy without delay transforms -itself, by an easy psychological process, into a belief that the remedy -has been found; it is almost impossible for most men, and particularly -for tender-minded men, to take in the concept of the insoluble. Every -problem that remains unsolved, including even the problem of evil, -is in that state simply because men of strict virtue and passionate -altruism have not combined to solve it--because the business has been -neglected by human laziness and rascality. All that is needed to -dispatch it is the united effort of enough pure hearts: the accursed -nature of things will yield inevitably to a sufficiently desperate -battle; mind (usually written Mind) will triumph over matter (usually -written Matter--or maybe Money Power, or Land Monopoly, or Beef Trust, -or Conspiracy of Silence, or Commercialized Vice, or Wall Street, or -the Dukes, or the Kaiser), and the Kingdom of God will be at hand. So, -with the will to believe in full function, the rest is easy. The eager -forward-looker is exactly like the man with hay-fever, or arthritis, or -nervous dyspepsia, or diabetes. It takes time to try each successive -remedy--to search it out, to take it, to observe its effects, to hope, -to doubt, to shelve it. Before the process is completed another is -offered; new ones are always waiting before their predecessors have -been discarded. Here, perhaps, we get a glimpse of the causes behind -the protean appetite of the true forward-looker--his virtuosity in -credulity. He is in all stages simultaneously--just getting over the -initiative and referendum, beginning to have doubts about the short -ballot, making ready for a horse doctor's dose of the single tax, and -contemplating an experimental draught of Socialism to-morrow. - -What is to be done for him? How is he to be cured of his great thirst -for sure-cures that do not cure, and converted into a contented and -careless backward-looker, peacefully snoozing beneath his fig tree -while the oppressed bawl for succor in forty abandoned lands, and -injustice stalks the world, and taxes mount higher and higher, and -poor working-girls are sold into white slavery, and Prohibition fails -to prohibit, and cocaine is hawked openly, and jazz drags millions -down the primrose way, and the trusts own the legislatures of all -Christendom, and judges go to dinner with millionaires, and Europe -prepares for another war, and children of four and five years work -as stevedores and locomotive firemen, and guinea pigs and dogs are -vivisected, and Polish immigrant women have more children every year, -and divorces multiply, and materialism rages, and the devil runs -the cosmos? What is to be done to save the forward-looker from his -torturing indignations, and set him in paths of happy dalliance? -Answer: nothing. He was born that way, as men are born with hare lips -or bad livers, and he will remain that way until the angels summon -him to eternal rest. Destiny has laid upon him the burden of seeing -unescapably what had better not be looked at, of believing what isn't -so. There is no way to help him. He must suffer vicariously for the -carnal ease of the rest of us. He must die daily that we may live in -peace, corrupt and contented. - -As I have said, I believe fully that this child of sorrow is -honest--that his twinges and malaises are just as real to him as those -that rack the man with arthritis, and that his trusting faith in quacks -is just as natural. But this, of course, is not saying that the quacks -themselves are honest. On the contrary, their utter dishonesty must be -quite as obvious as the simplicity of their dupes. Trade is good for -them in the United States, where hope is a sort of national vice, and -so they flourish here more luxuriously than anywhere else on earth. -Some one told me lately that there are now no less than 25,000 national -organizations in the United States for the uplift of the plain people -and the snaring and shaking down of forward-lookers--societies for -the Americanization of immigrants, for protecting poor working-girls -against Jews and Italians, for putting Bibles into the bedrooms of -week-end hotels, for teaching Polish women how to wash their babies, -for instructing school-children in ring-around-a-rosy, for crusading -against the cigarette, for preventing accidents in rolling-mills, for -making street-car conductors more polite, for testing the mentality -of Czecho-Slovaks, for teaching folk-songs, for restoring the United -States to Great Britain, for building day-nurseries in the devastated -regions of France, for training deaconesses, for fighting the -house-fly, for preventing cruelty to mules and Tom-cats, for forcing -householders to clean their backyards, for planting trees, for saving -the Indian, for sending colored boys to Harvard, for opposing Sunday -movies, for censoring magazines, for God knows what else. In every -large American city such organizations swarm, and every one of them -has an executive secretary who tries incessantly to cadge space in the -newspapers. Their agents penetrate to the remotest hamlets in the land, -and their circulars, pamphlets and other fulminations swamp the mails. -In Washington and at every state capital they have their lobbyists, and -every American legislator is driven half frantic by their innumerable -and preposterous demands. Each of them wants a law passed to make -its crusade official and compulsory; each is forever hunting for -forward-lookers with money. - -One of the latest of these uplifting vereins to score a ten-strike -is the one that sponsored the so-called Maternity Bill. That measure -is now a law, and the over-burdened American taxpayer, at a cost of -$3,000,000 a year, is supporting yet one more posse of perambulating -gabblers and snouters. The influences behind the bill were exposed in -the Senate by Senator Reed, of Missouri, but to no effect: a majority -of the other Senators, in order to get rid of the propagandists in -charge of it, had already promised to vote for it. Its one intelligible -aim, as Senator Reed showed, is to give government jobs at good -salaries to a gang of nosey old maids. These virgins now traverse the -country teaching married women how to have babies in a ship-shape and -graceful manner, and how to keep them alive after having them. Only -one member of the corps has ever been married herself; nevertheless, -the old gals are authorized to go out among the Italian and Yiddish -women, each with ten or twelve head of kids to her credit, and tell -them all about it. According to Senator Reed, the ultimate aim of the -forward-lookers who sponsored the scheme is to provide for the official -registration of expectant mothers, that they may be warned what to eat, -what movies to see, and what midwives to send for when the time comes. -Imagine a young bride going down to the County Clerk's office to report -herself! And imagine an elderly and anthropophagous spinster coming -around next day to advise her! Or a boozy political doctor! - -All these crazes, of course, are primarily artificial. They are -set going, not by the plain people spontaneously, nor even by the -forward-lookers who eventually support them, but by professionals. The -Anti-Saloon League is their archetype. It is owned and operated by -gentlemen who make excellent livings stirring up the tender-minded; -if their salaries were cut off to-morrow, all their moral passion -would ooze out, and Prohibition would be dead in two weeks. So with -the rest of the uplifting camorras. Their present enormous prosperity, -I believe, is due in large part to a fact that is never thought -of, to wit, the fact that the women's colleges of the country, for -a dozen years past, have been turning out far more graduates than -could be utilized as teachers. These supernumerary lady Ph.D's almost -unanimously turn to the uplift--and the uplift saves them. In the early -days of higher education for women in the United States, practically -all the graduates thrown upon the world got jobs as teachers, but now -a good many are left over. Moreover, it has been discovered that the -uplift is easier than teaching, and that it pays a great deal better. -It is a rare woman professor who gets more than $5,000 a year, but -there are plenty of uplifting jobs at $8,000 and $10,000 a year, and in -the future there will be some prizes at twice as much. No wonder the -learned girls fall upon them so eagerly! - -The annual production of male Ph.D's is also far beyond the legitimate -needs of the nation, but here the congestion is relieved by the greater -and more varied demand for masculine labor. If a young man emerging -from Columbia or Ohio Wesleyan as _Philosophiez Doctor_ finds it -impossible to get a job teaching he can always go on the road as a -salesman of dental supplies, or enlist in the marines, or study law, or -enter the ministry, or go to work in a coal-mine, or a slaughter-house, -or a bucket-shop, or begin selling Oklahoma mine-stock to widows and -retired clergy-men. The women graduate faces far fewer opportunities. -She is commonly too old and too worn by meditation to go upon the stage -in anything above the grade of a patent-medicine show, she has been so -poisoned by instruction in sex hygiene that she shies at marriage, and -most of the standard professions and grafts of the world are closed to -her. The invention of the uplift came as a godsend to her. Had not some -mute, inglorious Edison devised it at the right time, humanity would -be disgraced to-day by the spectacle of hordes of Lady Ph.D's going -to work in steam-laundries, hooch shows and chewing-gum factories. As -it is, they are all taken care of by the innumerable societies for -making the whole world virtuous and happy. One may laugh at the aims -and methods of many such societies--for example, at the absurd vereins -for Americanizing immigrants, _i. e.,_ degrading them to the level of -the native peasantry. But one thing, at least, they accomplish: they -provide comfortable and permanent jobs for hundreds and thousands of -deserving women, most of whom are far more profitably employed trying -to make Methodists out of Sicilians than they would be if they were -trying to make husbands out of bachelors. It is for this high purpose -also that the forward-looker suffers. - - - - -XII. MEMORIAL SERVICE - - -Where is the grave-yard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters -their mounds? There was a day when Jupiter was the king of the gods, -and any man who doubted his puissance was _ipso facto_ a barbarian and -an ignoramus. But where in all the world is there a man who worships -Jupiter to-day? And what of Huitzilopochtli? In one year--and it is -no more than five hundred years ago--50,000 youths and maidens were -slain in sacrifice to him. To-day, if he is remembered at all, it -is only by some vagrant savage in the depths of the Mexican forest. -Huitzilopochtli, like many other gods, had no human father; his mother -was a virtuous widow; he was born of an apparently innocent flirtation -that she carried on with the sun. When he frowned, his father, the -sun, stood still. When he roared with rage, earthquakes engulfed whole -cities. When he thirsted he was watered with 10,000 gallons of human -blood. But to-day Huitzilopochtli is as magnificently forgotten as -Allen G. Thurman. Once the peer of Allah, Buddha and Wotan, he is now -the peer of General Coxey, Richmond P. Hobson, Nan Patterson, Alton B. -Parker, Adelina Patti, General Weyler and Tom Sharkey. - -Speaking of Huitzilopochtli recalls his brother, Tezcatilpoca. -Tezcatilpoca was almost as powerful: he consumed 25,000 virgins a year. -Lead me to his tomb: I would weep, and hang a _couronne des perles._ -But who knows where it is? Or where the grave of Quitzalcoatl is? Or -Tialoc? Or Chalchihuitlicue? Or Xiehtecutli? Or Centeotl, that sweet -one? Or Tlazolteotl, the goddess of love? Or Mictlan? Or Ixtlilton? -Or Omacatl? Or Yacatecutli? Or Mixcoatl? Or Xipe? Or all the host of -Tzitzimitles? Where are their bones? Where is the willow on which they -hung their harps? In what forlorn and unheard-of hell do they await the -resurrection morn? Who enjoys their residuary estates? Or that of Dis, -whom Csar found to be the chief god of the Celts? Or that of Tarves, -the bull? Or that of Moccos, the pig? Or that of Epona, the mare? Or -that of Mullo, the celestial jack-ass? There was a time when the Irish -revered all these gods as violently as they now hate the English. But -to-day even the drunkest Irishman laughs at them. - -But they have company in oblivion: the hell of dead gods is as crowded -as the Presbyterian hell for babies. Damona is there, and Esus, and -Drunemeton, and Silvana, and Dervones, and Adsalluta, and Deva, -and Belisama, and Axona, and Vintios, and Taranuous, and Sulis, and -Cocidius, and Adsmerius, and Dumiatis, and Caletos, and Moccus, and -Ollovidius, and Albiorix, and Leucitius, and Vitucadrus, and Ogmios, -and Uxellimus, and Borvo, and Grannos, and Mogons. All mighty gods in -their day, worshiped by millions, full of demands and impositions, -able to bind and loose--all gods of the first class, not dilettanti. -Men labored for generations to build vast temples to them--temples -with stones as large as hay-wagons. The business of interpreting their -whims occupied thousands of priests, wizards, archdeacons, evangelists, -haruspices, bishops, archbishops. To doubt them was to die, usually at -the stake. Armies took to the field to defend them against infidels: -villages were burned, women and children were butchered, cattle were -driven off. Yet in the end they all withered and died, and to-day there -is none so poor to do them reverence. Worse, the very tombs in which -they lie are lost, and so even a respectful stranger is debarred from -paying them the slightest and politest homage. - -What has become of Sutekh, once the high god of the whole Nile Valley? -What has become of: - - Resheph Baal - Anath Astarte - Ashtoreth Hadad - El Addu - Nergal Shalera - Nebo Dagon - Ninib Sharrab - Melek Yau - Ahijah Amon-Re - Isis Osiris - Ptah Sebek - Anubis Molech? - -All these were once gods of the highest eminence. Many of them are -mentioned with fear and trembling in the Old Testament. They ranked, -five or six thousand years ago, with Jahveh himself; the worst of them -stood far higher than Thor. Yet they have all gone down the chute, and -with them the following: - - Bile Gwydion - Lr Manawyddan - Arianrod Nuada Argetlam - Morrigu Tagd - Govannon Goibniu - Gunfled Odin - Sokk-mimi Llaw Gyffes - Memetona Lleu - Dagda Ogma - Kerridwen Mider - Pwyll Rigantona - Ogyrvan Marzin - Dea Dia Mars - Ceros Jupiter - Vaticanus Cunina - Edulia Potina - Adeona Statilinus - Iuno Lucina Diana of Ephesus - Saturn Robigus - Furrina Pluto - Vediovis Ops - Consus Meditrina - Cronos Vesta - Enki Tilmun - Engurra Zer-panitu - Belus Merodach - Dimmer U-ki - Mu-ul-lil Dauke - Ubargisi Gasan-abzu - Ubilulu Elum - Gasan-lil U-Tin-dir ki - U-dimmer-an-kia Marduk - Enurestu Nin-lil-la - U-sab-sib Nin - U-Mersi Persephone - Tammuz Istar - Venus Lagas - Bau U-urugal - Mulu-hursang Sirtumu - Anu Ea - Beltis Nirig - Nusku Nebo - Ni-zu Samas - Sahi Ma-banba-anna - Aa En-Mersi - Allatu Amurru - Sin Assur - AbilAddu Aku - Apsu Beltu - Dagan Dumu-zi-abzu - Elali Kuski-banda - Isum Kaawanu - Mami Nin-azu - Nin-man Lugal-Amarada - Zaraqu Qarradu - Suqamunu Ura-gala - Zagaga Ueras - -You may think I spoof. That I invent the names. I do not. Ask the -rector to lend you any good treatise on comparative religion: you -will find them all listed. They were gods of the highest standing and -dignity--gods of civilized peoples--worshipped and believed in by -millions. All were theoretically omnipotent, omniscient and immortal. -And all are dead. - - - - -XIII. EDUCATION - - - -I - - -Next to the clerk in holy orders, the fellow with the worst job in -the world is the schoolmaster. Both are underpaid, both fall steadily -in authority and dignity, and both wear out their hearts trying to -perform the impossible. How much the world asks of them, and how -little they can actually deliver! The clergyman's business is to save -the human race from hell: if he saves one-eighth of one per cent., -even within the limits of his narrow flock, he does magnificently. -The school-master's is to spread the enlightenment, to make the great -masses of the plain people intelligent--and intelligence is precisely -the thing that the great masses of the plain people are congenitally -and eternally incapable of. - -Is it any wonder that the poor birchman, facing this labor that would -have staggered Sisyphus olusohn, seeks refuge from its essential -impossibility in a Chinese maze of empty technic? The ghost of -Pestalozzi, once bearing a torch and beckoning toward the heights, now -leads down stairways into black and forbidding dungeons. Especially in -America, where all that is bombastic and mystical is most esteemed, -the art of pedagogics becomes a sort of puerile magic, a thing of -preposterous secrets, a grotesque compound of false premises and -illogical conclusions. Every year sees a craze for some new solution of -the teaching enigma, at once simple and infallible--manual training, -playground work, song and doggerel lessons, the Montessori method, -the Gary system--an endless series of flamboyant arcanums. The -worst extravagances of _privat dozent_ experimental psychology are -gravely seized upon; the uplift pours in its ineffable principles and -discoveries; mathematical formul are worked out for every emergency; -there is no sure-cure so idiotic that some superintendent of schools -will not swallow it. - -A couple of days spent examining the literature of the New Thought in -pedagogy are enough to make the judicious weep. Its aim seems to be -to reduce the whole teaching process to a sort of automatic reaction, -to discover some master formula that will not only take the place of -competence and resourcefulness in the teacher but that will also create -an artificial receptivity in the child. The merciless application of -this formula (which changes every four days) now seems to be the chief -end and aim of pedagogy. Teaching becomes a thing in itself, separable -from and superior to the thing taught. Its mastery is a special -business, a transcendental art and mystery, to be acquired in the -laboratory. A teacher well grounded in this mystery, and hence privy -to every detail of the new technic (which changes, of course, with the -formula), can teach anything to any child, just as a sound dentist can -pull any tooth out of any jaw. - -All this, I need not point out, is in sharp contrast to the old -theory of teaching. By that theory mere technic was simplified and -subordinated. All that it demanded of the teacher told off to teach, -say, geography, was that he master the facts in the geography book and -provide himself with a stout rattan. Thus equipped, he was ready for a -test of his natural pedagogical genius. First he exposed the facts in -the book, then he gilded them with whatever appearance of interest and -importance he could conjure up, and then he tested the extent of their -transference to the minds of his pupils. Those pupils who had ingested -them got apples; those who had failed got fanned with the rattan. -Followed the second round, and the same test again, with a second -noting of results. And then the third, and fourth, and the fifth, and -so on until the last and least pupil had been stuffed to his subnormal -and perhaps moronic brim. - -I was myself grounded in the underlying delusions of what is called -knowledge by this austere process, and despite the eloquence of those -who support newer ideas, I lean heavily in favor of it, and regret to -hear that it is no more. It was crude, it was rough, and it was often -not a little cruel, but it at least had two capital advantages over all -the systems that have succeeded it. In the first place, its machinery -was simple; even the stupidest child could understand it; it hooked -up cause and effect with the utmost clarity. And in the second place, -it tested the teacher as and how he ought to be tested--that is, for -his actual capacity to teach, not for his mere technical virtuosity. -There was, in fact, no technic for him to master, and hence none for -him to hide behind. He could not conceal a hopeless inability to impart -knowledge beneath a correct professional method. - -That ability to impart knowledge, it seems to me, has very little to -do with technical method. It may operate at full function without -any technical method at all, and contrariwise, the most elaborate of -technical methods, whether out of Switzerland, Italy or Gary, Ind., -cannot make it operate when it is not actually present. And what does -it consist of? It consists, first, of a natural talent for dealing -with children, for getting into their minds, for putting things in a -way that they can comprehend. And it consists, secondly, of a deep -belief in the interest and importance of the thing taught, a concern -about it amounting to a sort of passion. A man who knows a subject -thoroughly, a man so soaked in it that he eats it, sleeps it and dreams -it--this man can always teach it with success, no matter how little -he knows of technical pedagogy. That is because there is enthusiasm -in him, and because enthusiasm is almost as contagious as fear or the -barber's itch. An enthusiast is willing to go to any trouble to impart -the glad news bubbling within him. He thinks that it is important and -valuable for to know; given the slightest glow of interest in a pupil -to start with, he will fan that glow to a flame. No hollow formalism -cripples him and slows him down. He drags his best pupils along as fast -as they can go, and he is so full of the thing that he never tires of -expounding its elements to the dullest. - -This passion, so unordered and yet so potent, explains the capacity -for teaching that one frequently observes in scientific men of high -attainments in their specialties--for example, Huxley, Ostwald, Karl -Ludwig, Virchow, Billroth, Jowett, William G. Sumner, Halsted and -Osier--men who knew nothing whatever about the so-called science of -pedagogy, and would have derided its alleged principles if they had -heard them stated. It explains, too, the failure of the general run of -high-school and college teachers--men who are undoubtedly competent, -by the professional standards of pedagogy, but who nevertheless -contrive only to make intolerable bores of the things they presume -to teach. No intelligent student ever learns much from the average -drover of undergraduates; what he actually carries away has come out -of his textbooks, or is the fruit of his own reading and inquiry. But -when he passes to the graduate school, and comes among men who really -understand the subjects they teach, and, what is more, who really love -them, his store of knowledge increases rapidly, and in a very short -while, if he has any intelligence at all, he learns to think in terms -of the thing he is studying. - -So far, so good. But an objection still remains, the which may be -couched in the following terms: that in the average college or high -school, and especially in the elementary school, most of the subjects -taught are so bald and uninspiring that it is difficult to imagine -them arousing the passion I have been describing--in brief, that only -an ass could be enthusiastic about them. In witness, think of the -four elementals: reading, penmanship, arithmetic and spelling. This -objection, at first blush, seems salient and dismaying, but only a -brief inspection is needed to show that it is really of very small -validity. It is made up of a false assumption and a false inference. -The false inference is that there is any sound reason for prohibiting -teaching by asses, if only the asses know how to do it, and do it -well. The false assumption is that there are no asses in our schools -and colleges to-day. The facts stand in almost complete antithesis to -these notions. The truth is that the average schoolmaster, on all the -lower levels, is and always must be essentially an ass, for how can one -imagine an intelligent man engaging in so puerile an avocation? And, -the truth is that it is precisely his inherent asininity, and not his -technical equipment as a pedagogue, that is responsible for whatever -modest success he now shows. - -I here attempt no heavy jocosity, but mean exactly what I say. -Consider, for example, penmanship. A decent handwriting, it must be -obvious, is useful to all men, and particularly to the lower orders of -men. It is one of the few things capable of acquirement in school that -actually helps them to make a living. Well, how is it taught to-day? -It is taught, in the main, by schoolmarms so enmeshed in a complex and -unintelligible technic that, even supposing them able to write clearly -themselves, they find it quite impossible to teach their pupils. -Every few years sees a radical overhauling of the whole business. -First the vertical hand is to make it easy; then certain curves are -the favorite magic; then there is a return to slants and shadings. No -department of pedagogy sees a more hideous cavorting of quacks. In none -is the natural talent and enthusiasm of the teacher more depressingly -crippled. And the result? The result is that our American school -children write abominably--that a clerk or stenographer with a simple, -legible hand becomes almost as scarce as one with Greek. - -Go back, now, to the old days. Penmanship was then taught, not -mechanically and ineffectively, by unsound and shifting formul, but -by passionate penmen with curly patent-leather hair and far-away -eyes--in brief, by the unforgettable professors of our youth, -with their flourishes, their heavy down-strokes and their lovely -birds-with-letters-in-their-bills. You remember them, of course. Asses -all! Preposterous popinjays and numskulls! Pathetic idiots! But they -loved penmanship, they believed in the glory and beauty of penmanship, -they were fanatics, devotees, almost martyrs of penmanship--and so -they got some touch of that passion into their pupils. Not enough, -perhaps, to make more flourishers and bird-blazoners, but enough to -make sound penmen. Look at your old writing book; observe the excellent -legibility, the clear strokes of your "Time is money." Then look at -your child's. - -Such idiots, despite the rise of "scientific" pedagogy, have not -died out in the world. I believe that our schools are full of them, -both in pantaloons and in skirts. There are fanatics who love and -venerate spelling as a tom-cat loves and venerates catnip. There -are grammatomaniacs; schoolmarms who would rather parse than eat; -specialists in an objective case that doesn't exist in English; -strange beings, otherwise sane and even intelligent and comely, -who suffer under a split infinitive as you or I would suffer under -gastro-enteritis. There are geography cranks, able to bound Mesopotamia -and Beluchistan. There are zealots for long division, experts in the -multiplication table, lunatic worshipers of the binomial theorem. But -the system has them in its grip. It combats their natural enthusiasm -diligently and mercilessly. It tries to convert them into mere -technicians, clumsy machines. It orders them to teach, not by the -process of emotional osmosis which worked in the days gone by, but by -formul that are as baffling to the pupil as they are paralyzing to the -teacher. Imagine what would happen to one of them who stepped to the -blackboard, seized a piece of chalk, and engrossed a bird that held -the class spell-bound--a bird with a thousand flowing feathers, wings -bursting with parabolas and epicycloids, and long ribbons streaming -from its bill! Imagine the fate of one who began "Honesty is the best -policy" with an H as florid and--to a child--as beautiful as the -initial of a medival manuscript! Such a teacher would be cashiered and -handed over to the secular arm; the very enchantment of the assembled -infantry would be held as damning proof against him. And yet it is just -such teachers that we should try to discover and develop. Pedagogy -needs their enthusiasm, their nave belief in their own grotesque -talents, their capacity for communicating their childish passion to the -childish. - -But this would mean exposing the children of the Republic to contact -with monomaniacs, half-wits, defectives? Well, what of it? The vast -majority of them are already exposed to contact with half-wits in their -own homes; they are taught the word of God by half-wits on Sundays; -they will grow up into Knights of Pythias, Odd Fellows, Red Men and -other such half-wits in the days to come. Moreover, as I have hinted, -they are already face to face with half-wits in the actual schools, -at least in three cases out of four. The problem before us is not -to dispose of this fact, but to utilize it. We cannot hope to fill -the schools with persons of high intelligence, for persons of high -intelligence simply refuse to spend their lives teaching such banal -things as spelling and arithmetic. Among the teachers male we may -safely assume that 95 per cent, are of low mentality, else they would -depart for more appetizing pastures. And even among the teachers female -the best are inevitably weeded out by marriage, and only the worst -(with a few romantic exceptions) survive. The task before us, as I -say, is not to make a vain denial of this cerebral inferiority of the -pedagogue, nor to try to combat and disguise it by concocting a mass of -technical hocus-pocus, but to search out and put to use the value lying -concealed in it. For even stupidity, it must be plain, has its uses in -the world, and some of them are uses that intelligence cannot meet. One -would not tell off a Galileo or a Pasteur to drive an ash-cart or an -Ignatius Loyola to be a stockbroker, or a Brahms to lead the orchestra -in a Broadway cabaret. By the same token, one would not ask a Herbert -Spencer or a Duns Scotus to instruct sucklings. Such men would not only -be wasted at the job; they would also be incompetent. The business -of dealing with children, in fact, demands a certain childishness of -mind. The best teacher, until one comes to adult pupils, is not the one -who knows most, but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge -to that simple compound of the obvious and the wonderful which slips -easiest into the infantile comprehension. A man of high intelligence, -perhaps, may accomplish the thing by a conscious intellectual feat. -But it is vastly easier to the man (or woman) whose habits of mind are -naturally on the plane of a child's. The best teacher of children, in -brief, is one who is essentially child-like. - -I go so far with this notion that I view the movement to introduce -female bachelors of arts into the primary schools with the utmost -alarm. A knowledge of Bergsonism, the Greek aorist, sex hygiene and -the dramas of Percy MacKaye is not only no help to the teaching of -spelling, it is a positive handicap to the teaching of spelling, -for it corrupts and blows up that nave belief in the glory and -portentousness of spelling which is at the bottom of all successful -teaching of it. If I had my way, indeed, I should expose all candidates -for berths in the infant grades to the Binet-Simon test, and reject all -those who revealed the mentality of more than fifteen years. Plenty -would still pass. Moreover, they would be secure against contamination -by the new technic of pedagogy. Its vast wave of pseudo-psychology -would curl and break against the hard barrier of their innocent -and passionate intellects--as it probably does, in fact, even now. -They would know nothing of cognition, perception, attention, the -sub-conscious and all the other half-fabulous fowl of the pedagogic -aviary. But they would see in reading, writing and arithmetic the gaudy -charms of profound and esoteric knowledge, and they would teach these -ancient branches, now so abominably in decay, with passionate gusto, -and irresistible effectiveness, and a gigantic success. - - - -II - - -Two great follies corrupt the present pedagogy, once it gets beyond -the elementals. One is the folly of overestimating the receptivity -of the pupil; the other is the folly of overestimating the possible -efficiency of the teacher. Both rest upon that tendency to put too -high a value upon mere schooling which characterizes democratic and -upstart societies--a tendency born of the theory that a young man -who has been "educated," who has "gone through college," is in some -subtle way more capable of making money than one who hasn't. The -nature of the schooling on tap in colleges is but defectively grasped -by the adherents of the theory. They view it, I believe, as a sort of -extension of the schooling offered in elementary schools--that is, as -an indefinite multiplication of training in such obviously valuable and -necessary arts as reading, writing and arithmetic. It is, of course, -nothing of the sort. If the pupil, as he climbs the educational ladder, -is fortunate enough to come into contact with a few Huxleys or Ludwigs, -he may acquire a great deal of extremely sound knowledge, and even -learn how to think for himself. But in the great majority of cases he -is debarred by two things: the limitations of his congenital capacity -and the limitations of the teachers he actually encounters. The latter -is usually even more brilliantly patent than the former. Very few -professional teachers, it seems to me, really know anything worth -knowing, even about the subjects they essay to teach. If you doubt it, -simply examine their contributions to existing knowledge. Several years -ago, while engaged upon my book, "The American Language," I had a good -chance to test the matter in one typical department, that of philology. -I found a truly appalling condition of affairs. I found that in the -whole United States there were not two dozen teachers of English -philology--in which class I also include the innumerable teachers of -plain grammar--who had ever written ten lines upon the subject worth -reading. It was not that they were indolent or illiterate: in truth, -they turned out to be enormously diligent. But as I plowed through -pyramid after pyramid of their doctrines and speculations, day after -day and week after week, I discovered little save a vast laboring of -the obvious, with now and then a bold flight into the nonsensical. A -few genuinely original philologians revealed themselves--pedagogues -capable of observing accurately and reasoning clearly. The rest simply -wasted time and paper. Whole sections of the field were unexplored, and -some of them appeared to be even unsuspected. The entire life-work of -many an industrious professor, boiled down, scarcely made a footnote in -my book, itself a very modest work. - -This tendency to treat the superior pedagogue too seriously--to view -him as, _ipso facto,_ a learned man, and one thus capable of conveying -learning to others--is supported by the circumstance that he so views -himself, and is, in fact, very pretentious and even bombastic. Nearly -all discussions of the educational problem, at least in the United -States, are carried on by schoolmasters or ex-schoolmasters--for -example, college presidents, deans, and other such magnificoes--and so -they assume it to be axiomatic that such fellows are genuine bearers -of the enlightenment, and hence capable of transmitting it to others. -This is true sometimes, as I have said, but certainly not usually. -The average high-school or college pedagogue is not one who has been -selected because of his uncommon knowledge; he is simply one who has -been stuffed with formal ideas and taught to do a few conventional -intellectual tricks. Contact with him, far from being inspiring to -any youth of alert mentality, is really quite depressing; his point -of view is commonplace and timorous; his best thought is no better -than that of any other fourth-rate professional man, say a dentist or -an advertisement writer. Thus it is idle to talk of him as if he were -a Socrates, an Aristotle, or even a Leschetizky. He is actually much -more nearly related to a barber or a lieutenant of marines. A worthy -man, industrious and respectable--but don't expect too much of him. To -ask him to struggle out of his puddle of safe platitudes and plunge -into the whirlpool of surmise and speculation that carries on the -fragile shallop of human progress--to do this is as absurd as to ask a -neighborhood doctor to undertake major surgery. - -In the United States his low intellectual status is kept low, not -only by the meager rewards of his trade in a country where money is -greatly sought and esteemed, but also by the democratic theory of -education--that is, by the theory that mere education can convert a -peasant into an intellectual aristocrat, with all of the peculiar -superiorities of an aristocrat--in brief, that it is possible to make -purses out of sow's ears. The intellectual collapse of the American -_Gelehrten_ during the late war--a collapse so nearly unanimous -that those who did not share it attained to a sort of immortality -overnight--was perhaps largely due to this error. Who were these -bawling professors, so pathetically poltroonish and idiotic? In an -enormous number of cases they were simply peasants in frock-coats--oafs -from the farms and villages of Iowa, Kansas, Vermont, Alabama, -the Dakotas and other such backward states, horribly stuffed with -standardized learning in some fresh-water university, and then set to -teaching. To look for a civilized attitude of mind in such Strassburg -geese is to look for honor in a valet; to confuse them with scholars -is to confuse the Knights of Pythias with the Knights Hospitaller. -In brief, the trouble with them was that they had no sound tradition -behind them, that they had not learned to think clearly and decently, -that they were not gentlemen. The youth with a better background -behind him, passing through an American university, seldom acquires -any yearning to linger as a teacher. The air is too thick for him; -the rewards are too trivial; the intrigues are too old-maidish and -degrading. Thus the chairs, even in the larger universities, tend -to be filled more and more by yokels who have got themselves what is -called an education only by dint of herculean effort. Exhausted by the -cruel process, they are old men at 26 or 28, and so, hugging their -Ph.D's, they sink into convenient instructorships, and end at 60 as -_ordentliche Professoren._ The social status of the American pedagogue -helps along the process. Unlike in Europe, where he has a secure and -honorable position, he ranks, in the United States, somewhere between -a Methodist preacher and a prosperous brick-yard owner--certainly -clearly below the latter. Thus the youth of civilized upbringings -feels that it would be stooping a bit to take up the rattan. But the -plow-hand obviously makes a step upward, and is hence eager for the -black gown. Thereby a vicious circle is formed. The plow-hand, by -entering the ancient guild, drags it down still further, and so makes -it increasingly difficult to snare apprentices from superior castes. - -A glance at "Who's Who in America" offers a good deal of support -for all this theorizing. There was a time when the typical American -professor came from a small area in New England--for generations the -seat of a high literacy, and even of a certain austere civilization. -But to-day he comes from the region of silos, revivals, and saleratus. -Behind him there is absolutely no tradition of aristocratic aloofness -and urbanity, or even of mere civilized decency. He is a bind by birth, -and he carries the smell of the dunghill into the academic grove--and -not only the smell, but also some of the dung itself. What one looks -for in such men is dullness, superficiality, a great credulity, an -incapacity for learning anything save a few fly-blown rudiments, a -passionate yielding to all popular crazes, a malignant distrust of -genuine superiority, a huge megalomania. These are precisely the -things that one finds in the typical American pedagogue of the new -dispensation. He is not only a numskull; he is also a boor. In the -university president he reaches his heights. Here we have a so-called -learned man who spends his time making speeches before chautauquas, -chambers of commerce and Rotary Clubs, and flattering trustees who run -both universities and street-railways, and cadging money from such men -as Rockefeller and Carnegie. - - - -III - - -The same educational fallacy which fills the groves of learning -with such dunces causes a huge waste of energy and money on lower -levels--those, to wit, of the secondary schools. The theory behind the -lavish multiplication of such schools is that they outfit the children -of the mob with the materials of reasoning, and inculcate in them a -habit of indulging in it. I have never been able to discover any -evidence in support of that theory. The common people of America--at -least the white portion of them--are rather above the world's average -in literacy, but there is no sign that they have acquired thereby any -capacity for weighing facts or comparing ideas. The school statistics -show that the average member of the American Legion can read and -write after a fashion, and is able to multiply eight by seven after -four trials, but they tell us nothing about his actual intelligence. -The returns of the Army itself, indeed, indicate that he is stupid -almost beyond belief--that there is at least an even chance that he -is a moron. Is such a fellow appreciably superior to the villein of -the Middle Ages? Sometimes I am tempted to doubt it. I suspect, for -example, that the belief in witchcraft is still almost as widespread -among the plain people of the United States, at least outside the -large cities, as it was in Europe in the year 1500. In my own state -of Mary-land all of the negroes and mulattoes believe absolutely in -witches, and so do most of the whites. The belief in ghosts penetrates -to quite high levels. I know very few native-born Americans, indeed, -who reject it without reservation. One constantly comes upon grave -defenses of spiritism in some form or other by men theoretically of -learning; in the two houses of Congress it would be difficult to -muster fifty men willing to denounce the thing publicly. It would -not only be politically dangerous for them to do so; it would also go -against their consciences. - -What is always forgotten is that the capacity for knowledge of the -great masses of human blanks is very low--that, no matter how adroitly -pedagogy tackles them with its technical sorceries, it remains a -practical impossibility to teach them anything beyond reading and -writing, and the most elementary arithmetic. Worse, it is impossible -to make any appreciable improvement in their congenitally ignoble -tastes, and so they devote even the paltry learning that they acquire -to degrading uses. If the average American read only the newspapers, -as is frequently alleged, it would be bad enough, but the truth is -that he reads only the most imbecile _parts_ of the newspapers. -Nine-tenths of the matter in a daily paper of the better sort is almost -as unintelligible to him as the theory of least squares. The words -lie outside his vocabulary; the ideas are beyond the farthest leap of -his intellect. It is, indeed, a sober fact that even an editorial in -the New York _Times_ is probably incomprehensible to all Americans -save a small minority--and not, remember, on the ground that it is too -nonsensical but on the ground that it is too subtle. The same sort of -mind that regards Rubinstein's Melody in F as too "classical" to be -agreeable is also stumped by the most transparent English. - -Like most other professional writers I get a good many letters from my -customers. Complaints, naturally, are more numerous than compliments; -it is only indignation that can induce the average man to brave the -ardors of pen and ink. Well, the complaint that I hear most often is -that my English is unintelligible--that it is too full of "hard" words. -I can imagine nothing more astounding. My English is actually almost -as bald and simple as the English of a college yell. My sentences are -short and plainly constructed: I resolutely cultivate the most direct -manner of statement; my vocabulary is deliberately composed of the -words of everyday. Nevertheless, a great many of my readers in my own -country find reading me an uncomfortably severe burden upon their -linguistic and intellectual resources. These readers are certainly -not below the American average in intelligence; on the contrary, they -must be a good deal above the average, for they have at least got to -the point where they are willing to put out of the safe harbor of the -obvious and respectable, and to brave the seas where more or less -novel ideas rage and roar. Think of what the ordinary newspaper reader -would make of my compositions! There is, in fact, no need to think; I -have tried them on him. His customary response, when, by mountebankish -devices, I forced him to read--or, at all events, to try to read--, was -to demand resolutely that the guilty newspaper cease printing me, and -to threaten to bring the matter to the attention of the _Polizei._ I do -not exaggerate in the slightest; I tell the literal truth. - -It is such idiots that the little red school-house operates upon, in -the hope of unearthing an occasional first-rate man. Is that hope -ever fulfilled? Despite much testimony to the effect that it is, I am -convinced that it really isn't. First-rate men are never begotten by -Knights of Pythias; the notion that they sometimes are is due to an -optical delusion. When they appear in obscure and ignoble circles it -is no more than a proof that only an extremely wise sire knows his own -son. Adultery, in brief, is one of nature's devices for keeping the -lowest orders of men from sinking to the level of downright simians: -sometimes for a few brief years in youth, their wives and daughters are -comely--and now and then the baron drinks more than he ought to. But it -is foolish to argue that the gigantic machine of popular education is -needed to rescue such hybrids from their environment. The truth is that -all the education rammed into the average pupil in the average American -public school could be acquired by the v larva of any reasonably -intelligent man in no more than six weeks of ordinary application, and -that where schools are unknown it actually _is_ so acquired. A bright -child, in fact, can learn to read and write without any save the most -casual aid a great deal faster than it can learn to read and write in a -class-room, where the difficulties of the stupid retard it enormously -and it is further burdened by the crazy formul invented by pedagogues. -And once it can read and write, it is just as well equipped to acquire -further knowledge as nine-tenths of the teachers it will subsequently -encounter in school or college. - - - -IV - - -I know a good many men of great learning--that is, men born with an -extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, -they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in -school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was -to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already -acquired independently--and not infrequently the determination was made -clumsily and inaccurately. In my own nonage I had a great desire to -acquire knowledge in certain limited directions, to wit, those of the -physical sciences. Before I was ever permitted, by the regulations of -the secondary seminary I was penned in, to open a chemistry book I had -learned a great deal of chemistry by the simple process of reading the -texts and then going through the processes described. When, at last, -I was introduced to chemistry officially, I found the teaching of -it appalling. The one aim of that teaching, in fact, seemed to be to -first purge me of what I already knew and then refill me with the same -stuff in a formal, doltish, unintelligible form. My experience with -physics was even worse. I knew nothing about it when I undertook its -study in class, for that was before the days when physics swallowed -chemistry. Well, it was taught so abominably that it immediately became -incomprehensible to me, and hence extremely; distasteful, and to this -day I know nothing about it. Worse, it remains unpleasant to me, and so -I am shut off from the interesting and useful knowledge that I might -otherwise acquire by reading. - -One extraordinary teacher I remember who taught me something: a teacher -of mathematics. I had a dislike for that science, and knew little about -it. Finally, my neglect of it brought me to bay: in transferring from -one school to another I found that I was hopelessly short in algebra. -What was needed, of course, was not an actual knowledge of algebra, -but simply the superficial smattering needed to pass an examination. -The teacher that I mention, observing my distress, generously offered -to fill me with that smattering after school hours. He got the whole -year's course into me in exactly six lessons of half an hour each. -And how? More accurately, why? Simply because he was an algebra -fanatic--because he believed that algebra was not only a science of -the utmost importance, but also one of the greatest fascination. He -was the penmanship professor of years ago, lifted to a higher level. -A likable and plausible man, he convinced me in twenty minutes that -ignorance of algebra was as calamitous, socially and intellectually, -as ignorance of table manners--that acquiring its elements was as -necessary as washing behind the ears. So I fell upon the book and -gulped it voraciously, greatly to the astonishment of my father, -whose earlier mathematical teaching had failed to set me off because -it was too pressing--because it bombarded me, not when I was penned -in a school and so inclined to make the best of it, but when I had -got through a day's schooling, and felt inclined to play. To this -day I comprehend the binomial theorem, a very rare accomplishment in -an author. For many years, indeed, I was probably the only American -newspaper editor who knew what it was. - -Two other teachers of that school I remember pleasantly as fellows -whose pedagogy profitted me--both, it happens, were drunken and -disreputable men. One taught me to chew tobacco, an art that has done -more to give me an evil name, perhaps, than even my Socinianism. The -other introduced me to Shakespeare, Congreve, Wycherly, Marlowe and -Sheridan, and so filled me with that taste for coarseness which now -offends so many of my customers, lay and clerical. Neither ever -came to a dignified position in academic circles. One abandoned -pedagogy for the law, became involved in causes of a dubious nature, -and finally disappeared into the shades which engulf third-rate -attorneys. The other went upon a fearful drunk one Christmastide, -got himself shanghaied on the water-front and is supposed to have -fallen overboard from a British tramp, bound east for Cardiff. At all -events, he has never been heard from since. Two evil fellows, and -yet I hold their memories in affection, and believe that they were -the best teachers I ever had. For in both there was something a good -deal more valuable than mere pedagogical skill and diligence, and -even more valuable than correct demeanor, and that was a passionate -love of sound literature. This love, given reasonably receptive soil, -they knew how to communicate, as a man can nearly always communicate -whatever moves him profoundly. Neither ever made the slightest effort -to "teach" literature, as the business is carried on by the usual idiot -schoolmaster. Both had a vast contempt for the text-books that were -official in their school, and used to entertain the boys by pointing -out the nonsense in them. Both were full of derisory objections to the -principal heroes of such books in those days: Scott, Irving, Pope, Jane -Austen, Dickens, Trollope, Tennyson. But both, discoursing in their -disorderly way upon heroes of their own, were magnificently eloquent -and persuasive. The boy who could listen to one of them intoning -Whitman and stand unmoved was a dull fellow indeed. The boy who could -resist the other's enthusiasm for the old essayists was intellectually -deaf, dumb and blind. - -I often wonder if their expoundings of their passions and prejudices -would have been half so charming if they had been wholly respectable -men, like their colleagues of the school faculty. It is not likely. A -healthy boy is in constant revolt against the sort of men who surround -him at school. Their puerile pedantries, their Christian Endeavor -respectability, their sedentery pallor, their curious preference for -the dull and uninteresting, their general air of so many Y. M. C. A. -secretaries--these things infallibly repel the youth who is above -milksoppery. In every boys' school the favorite teacher is one who -occasionally swears like a cavalryman, or is reputed to keep a jug in -his room, or is known to receive a scented note every morning. Boys are -good judges of men, as girls are good judges of women. It is not by -accident that most of them, at some time or other, long to be cowboys -or ice-wagon drivers, and that none of them, not obviously diseased -in mind, ever longs to be a Sunday-school superintendent. Put that -judgment to a simple test. What would become of a nation in which all -of the men were, at heart, Sunday-school superintendents--or Y. M. C. -A. secretaries, or pedagogues? Imagine it in conflict with a nation -of cowboys and ice-wagon drivers. Which would be the stronger, and -which would be the more intelligent, resourceful, enterprising and -courageous? - - - - -XIV. TYPES OF MEN - - - -1 - -_The Romantic_ - - -There is a variety of man whose eye inevitably exaggerates, whose -ear inevitably hears more than the band plays, whose invagination -inevitably doubles and triples the news brought in by his five senses. -He is the enthusiast, the believer, the romantic. He is the sort of -fellow who, if he were a bacteriologist, would report the streptoccocus -pyogenes to be as large as a St. Bernard dog, as intelligent as -Socrates, as beautiful as Beauvais Cathedral and as respectable as a -Yale professor. - - - -2 - -_The Skeptic_ - - -No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an -idea absolutely, but not in a man. In the highest confidence there -is always a flavor of doubt--a feeling, half instinctive and half -logical, that, after all, the scoundrel _may_ have something up his -sleeve. This doubt, it must be obvious, is always more than justified, -for no man is worthy of unlimited reliance--his treason, at best, only -waits for sufficient temptation. The trouble with the world is not that -men are too suspicious in this direction, but that they tend to be -too confiding--that they still trust themselves too far to other men, -even after bitter experience. Women, I believe, are measurably less -sentimental, in this as in other things. No married woman ever trusts -her husband absolutely, nor does she ever act as if she _did_ trust -him. Her utmost confidence is as wary as an American pick-pocket's -confidence that the policeman on the beat will stay bought. - - - -3 - -_The Believer_ - - -Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence -of the improbable. Or, psychoanalytically, as a wish neurose. There -is thus a flavor of the pathological in it; it goes beyond the normal -intellectual process and passes into the murky domain of transcendental -metaphysics. A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never -had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere -ass: he is actually ill. Worse, he is incurable, for disappointment, -being essentially an objective phenomenon, cannot permanently affect -his subjective infirmity. His faith takes on the virulence of a chronic -infection. What he usually says, in substance, is this: "Let us trust -in God, _who has always fooled us in the past."_ - - - -4 - -_The Worker_ - - -All democratic theories, whether Socialistic or bourgeois, necessarily -take in some concept of the dignity of labor. If the have-not were -deprived of this delusion that his sufferings in the sweat-shop are -somehow laudable and agreeable to God, there would be little left in -his ego save a belly-ache. Nevertheless, a delusion is a delusion, -and this is one of the worst. It arises out of confusing the pride of -workmanship of the artist with the dogged, painful docility of the -machine. The difference is important and enormous. If he got no reward -whatever, the artist would go on working just the same; his actual -reward, in fact, is often so little that he almost starves. But suppose -a garment-worker got nothing for his labor: would he go on working -just the same? Can one imagine him submitting voluntarily to hardship -and sore want that he might express his soul in 200 more pairs of -pantaloons? - - - -5 - -_The Physician_ - - -Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to -find a hygienist who does not debase his theory of the healthful with a -theory of the virtuous. The whole hygienic art, indeed, resolves itself -into an ethical exhortation, and, in the sub-department of sex, into a -puerile and belated advocacy of asceticism. This brings it, at the end, -into diametrical conflict with medicine proper. The aim of medicine is -surely not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard and rescue them -from the consequences of their vices. The true physician does not -preach repentance; he offers absolution. - - - -6 - -_The Scientist_ - - -The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and -inaccurate. Consider, for example, two of them: mere insatiable -curiosity and the desire to do good. The latter is put high above the -former, and yet it is the former that moves some of the greatest -men the human race has yet produced: the scientific investigators. -What animates a great pathologist? Is it the desire to cure disease, -to save life? Surely not, save perhaps as an afterthought. He is too -intelligent, deep down in his soul, to see anything praiseworthy in -such a desire. He knows by life-long observation that his discoveries -will do quite as much harm as good, that a thousand scoundrels will -profit to every honest man, that the folks who most deserve to be saved -will probably be the last to be saved. No man of self-respect could -devote himself to pathology on such terms. What actually moves him is -his unquenchable curiosity--his boundless, almost pathological thirst -to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret, to find out what has -not been found out before. His prototype is not the liberator releasing -slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but the dog sniffing -tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes. And yet he is one of -the greatest and noblest of men. And yet he stands in the very front -rank of the race. - - - -7 - -_The Business Man_ - - -It is, after all, a sound instinct which puts business below the -professions, and burdens the business man with a social inferiority -that he can never quite shake off, even in America. The business man, -in fact, acquiesces in this assumption of his inferiority, even when he -protests against it. He is the only man who is forever apologizing for -his occupation. He is the only one who always seeks to make it appear, -when he attains the object of his labors, _i. e._, the making of a -great deal of money, that it was not the object of his labors. - - - -8 - -_The King_ - - -Perhaps the most valuable asset that any man can have in this world -is a naturally superior air, a talent for sniffishness and reserve. -The generality of men are always greatly impressed by it, and accept -it freely as a proof of genuine merit. One need but disdain them to -gain their respect. Their congenital stupidity and timorousness make -them turn to any leader who offers, and the sign of leadership that -they recognize most readily is that which shows itself in external -manner. This is the true explanation of the survival of monarchism, -which invariably lives through its perennial deaths. It is the popular -theory, at least in America, that monarchism is a curse fastened upon -the common people from above--that the monarch saddles it upon them -without their consent and against their will. The theory is without -support in the facts. Kings are created, not by kings, but by the -people. They visualize one of the ineradicable needs of all third-rate -men, which means of nine men out of ten, and that is the need of -something to venerate, to bow down to, to follow and obey. - -The king business begins to grow precarious, not when kings reach out -for greater powers, but when they begin to resign and renounce their -powers. The czars of Russia were quite secure upon the throne so long -as they ran Russia like a reformatory, but the moment they began to -yield to liberal ideas, _i. e.,_ by emancipating the serfs and setting -up constitutionalism, their doom was sounded. The people saw this -yielding as a sign of weakness; they began to suspect that the czars, -after all, were not actually superior to other men. And so they turned -to other and antagonistic leaders, all as cocksure as the czars had -once been, and in the course of time they were stimulated to rebellion. -These leaders, or, at all events, the two or three most resolute and -daring of them, then undertook to run the country in the precise way -that it had been run in the palmy days of the monarchy. That is to say, -they seized and exerted irresistible power and laid claim to infallible -wisdom. History will date their downfall from the day they began to -ease their pretensions. Once they confessed, even by implication, that -they were merely human, the common people began to turn against them. - - - -9 - -_The Average Man_ - - -It is often urged against the so-called scientific Socialists, with -their materialistic conception of history, that they overlook certain -spiritual qualities that are independent of wage scales and metabolism. -These qualities, it is argued, color the aspirations and activities -of civilized man quite as much as they are colored by his material -condition, and so make it impossible to consider him simply as an -economic machine. As examples, the anti-Marxians cite patriotism, -pity, the sthetic sense and the yearning to know God. Unluckily, -the examples are ill-chosen. Millions of men are quite devoid of -patriotism, pity and the sthetic sense, and have no very active desire -to know God. Why don't the anti-Marxians cite a spiritual quality -that is genuinely universal? There is one readily to hand. I allude -to cowardice. It is, in one form or other, visible in every human -being; it almost serves to mark off the human race from all the other -higher animals. Cowardice, I believe, is at the bottom of the whole -caste system, the foundation of every organized society, including -the most democratic. In order to escape going to war himself, the -peasant was willing to give the warrior certain privileges--and out -of those privileges has grown the whole structure of civilization. -Go back still further. Property arose out of the fact that a few -relatively courageous men were able to accumulate more possessions than -whole hordes of cowardly men, and, what is more, to retain them after -accumulating them. - - - -10 - -_The Truth-Seeker_ - - -The man who boasts that he habitually tells the truth is simply a man -with no respect for it. It is not a thing to be thrown about loosely, -like small change; it is something to be cherished and hoarded, and -disbursed only when absolutely necessary. The smallest atom of truth -represents some man's bitter toil and agony; for every ponderable chunk -of it there is a brave truth-seeker's grave upon some lonely ash-dump -and a soul roasting in hell. - - - -11 - -_The Pacifist_ - - -Nietzsche, in altering Schopenhauer's will-to-live to will-to-power, -probably fell into a capital error. The truth is that the thing the -average man seeks in life is not primarily power, but peace; all -his struggle is toward a state of tranquillity and equilibrium; what -he always dreams of is a state in which he will have to do battle no -longer. This dream plainly enters into his conception of Heaven; he -thinks of himself, _post mortem,_ browsing about the celestial meadows -like a cow in a safe pasture. A few extraordinary men enjoy combat at -all times, and all men are inclined toward it at orgiastic moments, -but the race as a race craves peace, and man belongs among the more -timorous, docile and unimaginative animals, along with the deer, the -horse and the sheep. This craving for peace is vividly displayed in -the ages-long conflict of the sexes. Every normal woman wants to be -married, for the plain reason that marriage offers her security. And -every normal man avoids marriage as long as possible, for the equally -plain reason that marriage invades and threatens _his_ security. - - - -12 - -_The Relative_ - - -The normal man's antipathy to his relatives, particularly of the -second degree, is explained by psychologists in various tortured -and improbable ways. The true explanation, I venture, is a good -deal simpler. It lies in the plain fact that every man sees in his -relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque -caricatures of himself. They exhibit his qualities in disconcerting -augmentation or diminution; they fill him with a disquieting feeling -that this, perhaps, is the way he appears to the world and so they -wound his _amour propre_ and give him intense discomfort. To admire his -relatives whole-heartedly a man must be lacking in the finer sort of -self-respect. - - - -13 - -_The Friend_ - - -One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that -friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that -any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable. The fact is -that a man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just -as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his -epistemology. They become threadbare, shabby, pumped-up, irritating, -depressing. They convert themselves from living realities into -moribund artificialities, and stand in sinister opposition to freedom, -self-respect and truth. It is as corrupting to preserve them after -they have grown fly-blown and hollow as it is to keep up the forms -of passion after passion itself is a corpse. Every act and attitude -that they involve thus becomes an act of hypocrisy, an attitude -of dishonesty.... A prudent man, remembering that life is short, -gives an hour or two, now and then, to a critical examination of his -friendships. He weighs them, edits them, tests the metal of them. A -few he retains, perhaps with radical changes in their terms. But the -majority he expunges from his minutes and tries to forget, as he tries -to forget the cold and clammy loves of year before last. - - - - -XV. THE DISMAL SCIENCE - - -Every man, as the Psalmist says, to his own poison, or poisons, as the -case may be. One of mine, following hard after theology, is political -economy. What! Political economy, that dismal science? Well, why not? -Its dismalness is largely a delusion, due to the fact that its chief -ornaments, at least in our own day, are university professors. The -professor must be an obscurantist or he is nothing; he has a special -and unmatchable talent for dullness; his central aim is not to expose -the truth clearly, but to exhibit his profundity, his esotericity--in -brief, to stagger sophomores and other professors. The notion that -German is a gnarled and unintelligible language arises out of the -circumstance that it is so much written by professors. It took a rebel -member of the clan, swinging to the antipodes in his unearthly treason, -to prove its explicitness, its resiliency, it downright beauty. -But Nietzsches are few, and so German remains soggy, and political -economy continues to be swathed in dullness. As I say, however, that -dullness is only superficial. There is no more engrossing book in the -English language than Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations"; surely the -eighteenth century produced nothing that can be read with greater ease -to-day. Nor is there any inherent reason why even the most technical -divisions of its subject should have gathered cobwebs with the passing -of the years. Taxation, for example, is eternally lively; it concerns -ninetenths of us more directly than either smallpox or golf, and has -just as much drama in it; moreover, it has been mellowed and made gay -by as many gaudy, preposterous theories. As for foreign exchange, it is -almost as romantic as young love, and quite as resistent to formul. -Do the professors make an autopsy of it? Then read the occasional -treatises of some professor of it who is not a professor, say, Garet -Garrett or John Moody. - -Unluckily, Garretts and Moodys are almost as rare as Nietzsches, -and so the amateur of such things must be content to wrestle with -the professors, seeking the violet of human interest beneath the -avalanche of their graceless parts of speech. A hard business, I -daresay, to one not practiced, and to its hardness there is added -the disquiet of a doubt. That doubt does not concern itself with the -doctrine preached, at least not directly. There may be in it nothing -intrinsically dubious; on the contrary, it may appear as sound as the -binomial theorem, as well supported as the dogma of infant damnation. -But all the time a troubling question keeps afloat in the air, and -that is briefly this: What would happen to the learned professors if -they took the other side? In other words, to what extent is political -economy, as professors expound and practice it, a free science, in -the sense that mathematics and physiology are free sciences? At what -place, if any, is speculation pulled up by a rule that beyond lies -treason, anarchy and disaster? These questions, I hope I need not add, -are not inspired by any heterodoxy in my own black heart. I am, in -many fields, a flouter of the accepted revelation and hence immoral, -but the field of economics is not one of them. Here, indeed, I know -of no man who is more orthodox than I am. I believe that the present -organization of society, as bad as it is, is better than any other -that has ever been proposed. I reject all the sure cures in current -agitation, from government ownership to the single tax. I am in favor -of free competition in all human enterprises, and to the utmost limit. -I admire successful scoundrels, and shrink from Socialists as I -shrink from Methodists. But all the same, the aforesaid doubt pursues -me when I plow through the solemn disproofs and expositions of the -learned professors of economics, and that doubt will not down. It is -not logical or evidential, but purely psychological. And what it is -grounded on is an unshakable belief that no man's opinion is worth a -hoot, however well supported and maintained, so long as he is not -absolutely free, if the spirit moves him, to support and maintain -the exactly contrary opinion. In brief, human reason is a weak and -paltry thing so long as it is not wholly free reason. The fact lies in -its very nature, and is revealed by its entire history. A man may be -perfectly honest in a contention, and he may be astute and persuasive -in maintaining it, but the moment the slightest compulsion to maintain -it is laid upon him, the moment the slightest external reward goes with -his partisanship or the slightest penalty with its abandonment, then -there appears a defect in his ratiocination that is more deep-seated -than any error in fact and more destructive than any conscious and -deliberate bias. He may seek the truth and the truth only, and bring up -his highest talents and diligence to the business, but always there is -a specter behind his chair, a warning in his ear. Always it is safer -and more hygienic for him to think one way than to think another way, -and in that bald fact there is excuse enough to hold his whole chain of -syllogisms in suspicion. He may be earnest, he may be honest, but he is -not free, and if he is not free, he is not anything. - -Well, are the reverend professors of economics free? With the highest -respect, I presume to question it. Their colleagues of archeology may -be reasonably called free, and their colleagues of bacteriology, -and those of Latin grammar and sidereal astronomy, and those of many -another science and mystery, but when one comes to the faculty of -political economy one finds that freedom as plainly conditioned, though -perhaps not as openly, as in the faculty of theology. And for a plain -reason. Political economy, so to speak, hits the employers of the -professors where they live. It deals, not with ideas that affect those -employers only occasionally or only indirectly or only as ideas, but -with ideas that have an imminent and continuous influence upon their -personal welfare and security, and that affect profoundly the very -foundations of that social and economic structure upon which their -whole existence is based. It is, in brief, the science of the ways and -means whereby they have come to such estate, and maintain themselves -in such estate, that they are able to hire and boss professors. It -is the boat in which they sail down perilous waters--and they must -needs yell, or be more or less than human, when it is rocked. Now -and then that yell duly resounds in the groves of learning. One -remembers, for example, the trial, condemnation and execution of Prof. -Dr. Scott Nearing at the University of Pennsylvania, a seminary that -is highly typical, both in its staff and in its control. Nearing, I -have no doubt, was wrong in his notions--honestly, perhaps, but still -wrong. In so far as I heard them stated at the time, they seemed -to me to be hollow and of no validity. He has since discharged them -from the chautauquan stump, and at the usual hinds. They have been -chiefly accepted and celebrated by men I regard as asses. But Nearing -was not thrown out of the University of Pennsylvania, angrily and -ignominiously, because he was honestly wrong, or because his errors -made him incompetent to prepare sophomores for their examinations; he -was thrown out because his efforts to get at the truth disturbed the -security and equanimity of the rich ignoranti who happened to control -the university, and because the academic slaves and satellites of -these shopmen were restive under his competition for the attention of -the student-body. In three words, he was thrown out because he was -not safe and sane and orthodox. Had his aberration gone in the other -direction, had he defended child labor as ardently as he denounced it -and denounced the minimum wage as ardently as he defended it, then he -would have been quite as secure in his post, for all his cavorting in -the newspapers, as Chancellor Day was at Syracuse. - -Now consider the case of the professors of economics, near and far, -who have _not_ been thrown out. Who will say that the lesson of the -Nearing _dbcle_ has been lost upon them? Who will say that the -potency of the wealthy men who command our universities--or most of -them--has not stuck in their minds? And who will say that, with this -sticking remembered, their arguments against Nearing's so-called ideas -are as worthy of confidence and respect as they would be if they were -quite free to go over to Nearing's side without damage? Who, indeed, -will give them full credit, even when they are right, so long as they -are hamstrung, nose-ringed and tied up in gilded pens? It seems to -me that these considerations are enough to cast a glow of suspicion -over the whole of American political economy, at least in so far -as it comes from college economists. And, in the main, it has that -source, for, barring a few brilliant journalists, all our economists -of any repute are professors. Many of them are able men, and most of -them are undoubtedly honest men, as honesty goes in the world, but -over practically every one of them there stands a board of trustees -with its legs in the stock-market and its eyes on the established -order, and that board is ever alert for heresy in the science of its -being, and has ready means of punishing it, and a hearty enthusiasm -for the business. Not every professor, perhaps, may be sent straight -to the block, as Nearing was, but there are plenty of pillories and -guardhouses on the way, and every last pedagogue must be well aware of -it. - -Political economy, in so far as it is a science at all, was not pumped -up and embellished by any such academic clients and ticket-of-leave -men. It was put on its legs by inquirers who were not only safe -from all dousing in the campus pump, but who were also free from -the mental timorousness and conformity which go inevitably with -school-teaching--in brief, by men of the world, accustomed to its -free air, its hospitality to originality and plain speaking. Adam -Smith, true enough, was once a professor, but he threw up his chair -to go to Paris, and there he met, not more professors, but all the -current enemies of professors--the Nearings and Henry Georges and Karl -Marxes of the time. And the book that he wrote was not orthodox, but -revolutionary. Consider the others of that bulk and beam: Bentham, -Ricardo, Mill and their like. Bentham held no post at the mercy of -bankers and tripesellers; he was a man of independent means, a lawyer -and politician, and a heretic in general practice. It is impossible -to imagine such a man occupying a chair at Harvard or Princeton. He -had a hand in too many pies: he was too rebellious and contumacious: -he had too little respect for authority, either academic or worldly. -Moreover, his mind was too wide for a professor; he could never remain -safely in a groove; the whole field of social organization invited his -inquiries and experiments. Ricardo? Another man of easy means and great -worldly experience--by academic standards, not even educated. To-day, -I daresay, such meager diplomas as he could show would not suffice to -get him an instructor's berth in a fresh-water seminary in Iowa. As -for Mill, he was so well grounded by his father that he knew more, at -eighteen, than any of the universities could teach him, and his life -thereafter was the exact antithesis of that of a cloistered pedagogue. -Moreover, he was a heretic in religion and probably violated the Mann -act of those days--an offense almost as heinous, in a college professor -of economics, as giving three cheers for Prince Kropotkin. - -I might lengthen the list, but humanely refrain. The point is that -these early English economists were all perfectly free men, with -complete liberty to tell the truth as they saw it, regardless of -its orthodoxy or lack of orthodoxy. I do not say that the typical -American economist of to-day is not as honest, nor even that he -is not as diligent and competent, but I do say that he is not as -free--that penalties would come upon him for stating ideas that Smith -or Ricardo or Bentham or Mill, had he so desired, would have been free -to state without damage. And in that menace there is an ineradicable -criticism of the ideas that he does state, and it lingers even when -they are plausible and are accepted. In France and Germany, where the -universities and colleges are controlled by the state, the practical -effect of such pressure has been frequently demonstrated. In the former -country the violent debate over social and economic problems during -the quarter century before the war produced a long list of professors -cashiered for heterodoxy, headed by the names of Jean Jaurs and -Gustave Herv. In Germany it needed no Nietzsche to point out the -deadening produced by this state control. Germany, in fact, got out -of it an entirely new species of economist--the state Socialist who -flirted with radicalism with one eye and kept the other upon his chair, -his salary and his pension. - -The Nearing case and the rebellions of various pedagogues elsewhere -show that we in America stand within the shadow of a somewhat similar -danger. In economics, as in the other sciences, we are probably -producing men who are as good as those on view in any other country. -They are not to be surpassed for learning and originality, and there is -no reason to believe that they lack honesty and courage. But honesty -and courage, as men go in the world, are after all merely relative -values. There comes a point at which even the most honest man considers -consequences, and even the most courageous looks before he leaps. The -difficulty lies in establishing the position of that point. So long as -it is in doubt, there will remain, too, the other doubt that I have -described. I rise in meeting, I repeat, not as a radical, but as one of -the most hunkerous of the orthodox. I can imagine nothing more dubious -in fact and wobbly in logic than some of the doctrines that amateur -economists, chiefly Socialists, have set afloat in this country during -the past dozen years. I have even gone to the trouble of writing a book -against them; my convictions and instincts are all on the other side. -But I should be a great deal more comfortable in those convictions and -instincts if I were convinced that the learned professors were really -in full and absolute possession of academic freedom--if I could imagine -them taking the other tack now and then without damnation to their -jobs, their lecture dates, their book sales and their hides. - - - - -XVI. MATTERS OF STATE - - - -1 - -_Le Contrat Social_ - - -All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior -man: its one permanent object is to police him and cripple him. If -it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man -who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; -if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior -in every way against both. Thus one of its primary functions is to -regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and -as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat -originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential -change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous -man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for -himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. -Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he -lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he -is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic -personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are. -Ludwig van Beethoven was certainly no politician. Nor was he a patriot. -Nor had he any democratic illusions in him: he held the Viennese in -even more contempt than he held the Hapsburgs. Nevertheless, I am -convinced that the sharp criticism of the Hapsburg government that -he used to loose in the cafs of Vienna had its effects--that some -of his ideas of 1818, after a century of germination, got themselves -translated into acts in 1918. Beethoven, like all other first-rate -men, greatly disliked the government he lived under. I add the names -of Goethe, Heine, Wagner and Nietzsche, to keep among Germans. That of -Bismarck might follow: he admired the Hohenzollern idea, as Carlyle -did, not the German people or the German administration. In his -"Errinerungen," whenever he discusses the government that he was a part -of, he has difficulty keeping his contempt within the bounds of decorum. - -Nine times out of ten, it seems to me, the man who proposes a change -in the government he lives under, no matter how defective it may be, -is romantic to the verge of sentimentality. There is seldom, if ever, -any evidence that the kind of government he is unlawfully inclined -to would be any better than the government he proposes to supplant. -Political revolutions, in truth, do not often accomplish anything of -genuine value; their one undoubted effect is simply to throw out one -gang of thieves and put in another. After a revolution, of course, -the successful revolutionists always try to convince doubters that -they have achieved great things, and usually they hang any man who -denies it. But that surely doesn't prove their case. In Russia, for -many years, the plain people were taught that getting rid of the Czar -would make them all rich and happy, but now that they have got rid of -him they are poorer and unhappier than ever before. The Germans, with -the Kaiser in exile, have discovered that a shoemaker turned statesman -is ten times as bad as a Hohenzollern. The Alsatians, having become -Frenchmen again after 48 years anxious wait, have responded to the boon -by becoming extravagant Germanomaniacs. The Tyrolese, though they hated -the Austrians, now hate the Italians enormously more. The Irish, having -rid themselves of the English after 700 years of struggle, instantly -discovered that government by Englishmen, compared to government by -Irishmen, was almost paradisiacal. Even the American colonies gained -little by their revolt in 1776. For twenty-five years after the -Revolution they were in far worse condition as free states than they -would have been as colonies. Their government was more expensive, -more inefficient, more dishonest, and more tyrannical. It was only -the gradual material progress of the country that saved them from -starvation and collapse, and that material progress was due, not to the -virtues of their new government, but to the lavishness of nature. Under -the British hoof they would have got on just as well, and probably a -great deal better. - -The ideal government of all reflective men, from Aristotle to Herbert -Spencer, is one which lets the individual alone--one which barely -escapes being no government at all. This ideal, I believe, will be -realized in the world twenty or thirty centuries after I have passed -from these scenes and taken up my home in Hell. - - - -2 - -_On Minorities_ - - -It is a commonplace of historical science that the forgotten worthies -who framed the Constitution of the United States had no belief in -democracy. Prof. Dr. Beard, in a slim, sad book, has laboriously proved -that most obvious of obviousities. Two prime objects are visible in the -Constitution, beautifully enshrouded in disarming words: to protect -property and to safeguard minorities--in brief, to hold the superior -few harmless against the inferior many. The first object is still -carried out, despite the effort of democratic law to make capital an -outlaw. The second, alas, has been defeated completely. What -is worse, it has been defeated in the very holy of holies of those -who sought to attain it, which is to say, in the funereal chamber -of the Supreme Court of the United States. Bit by bit this great -bench of master minds has gradually established the doctrine that -a minority in the Republic has no rights whatever. If they still -exist theoretically, as fossils surviving from better days, there is -certainly no machinery left for protecting and enforcing them. The -current majority, if it so desired to-morrow, could add an amendment to -the Constitution prohibiting the ancient Confederate vice of chewing -the compressed leaves of the tobacco plant _(Nicotiana tabacum)_; the -Supreme Court, which has long since forgotten the Bill of Rights, -would promptly issue a writ of _nihil obstat,_ with a series of moral -reflections as _lagniappe._ More, the Supreme Court would as promptly -uphold a law prohibiting the chewing of gum _(Achras sapota)_--on -the ground that any unnecessary chewing, however harmless in itself, -might tempt great hordes of morons to chew tobacco. This is not a mere -torturing of sardonic theory: the thing has been actually done in the -case of Prohibition. The Eighteenth Amendment prohibits the sale of -intoxicating beverages; the Supreme Court has decided plainly that, in -order to enforce it, Congress also has the right to prohibit the sale -of beverages that are admittedly _not_ intoxicating. It could, indeed, -specifically prohibit near-beer to-morrow, or any drink containing -malt or hops, however low in alcohol; the more extreme Prohibitionists -actually demand that it do so forthwith. - -Worse, a minority not only has no more inalienable rights in the United -States; it is not even lawfully entitled to be heard. This was well -established by the case of the Socialists elected to the New York -Assembly. What the voters who elected these Socialists asked for was -simply the privilege of choosing spokesmen to voice their doctrines in -a perfectly lawful and peaceable manner,--nothing more. This privilege -was denied them. In precisely the same way, the present national House -of Representatives, which happens to be Republican in complexion, might -expel all of its Democratic members. The voters who elected them would -have no redress. If the same men were elected again, or other men of -the same views, they might be expelled again. More, it would apparently -be perfectly constitutional for the majority in Congress to pass a -statute denying the use of the mails to the minority--that is, for the -Republicans to bar all Democratic papers from the mails. I do not toy -with mere theories. The thing has actually been done in the case of -the Socialists. Under the present law, indeed--upheld by the Supreme -Court--the Postmaster-General, without any further authority from -Congress, might deny the mails to all Democrats. Or to all Catholics. -Or to all single-taxers. Or to all violoncellists. - -Yet more, a citizen who happens to belong to a minority is not even -safe in his person: he may be put into prison, and for very long -periods, for the simple offense of differing from the majority. This -happened, it will be recalled, in the case of Debs. Debs by no means -advised citizens subject to military duty, in time of war, to evade -that duty, as the newspapers of the time alleged. On the contrary, -he advised them to meet and discharge that duty. All he did was to -say that, even in time of war, he was against war--that he regarded -it as a barbarous method of settling disputes between nations. For -thus differing from the majority on a question of mere theory he was -sentenced to ten years in prison. The case of the three young Russians -arrested in New York was even more curious. These poor idiots were -jailed for the almost incredible crime of circulating purely academic -protests against making war upon a country with which the United States -was legally at peace, to wit, Russia. For this preposterous offense two -of them were sent to prison for fifteen years, and one, a girl, for -ten years, and the Supreme Court upheld their convictions. Here was a -plain case of proscription and punishment for a mere opinion. There was -absolutely no contention that the protest of the three prisoners could -have any practical result--that it might, for example, destroy the -_morale_ of American soldiers 6,000 miles away, and cut off from all -communication with the United States. The three victims were ordered -to be punished in that appalling manner simply because they ventured -to criticise an executive usurpation which happened, at the moment, -to have the support of public opinion, and particularly of the then -President of the United States and of the holders of Russian government -securities. - -It must be obvious, viewing such leading cases critically--and hundreds -like them might be cited--that the old rights of the free American, so -carefully laid down by the Bill of Rights, are now worth nothing. Bit -by bit, Congress and the State Legislatures have invaded and nullified -them, and to-day they are so flimsy that no lawyer not insane would -attempt to defend his client by bringing them up. Imagine trying to -defend a man denied the use of the mails by the Postmaster-General, -without hearing or even formal notice, on the ground that the -Constitution guarantees the right of free speech! The very catchpolls -in the courtroom would snicker. I say that the legislative arm is -primarily responsible for this gradual enslavement of the Americano; -the truth is, of course, that the executive and judicial arms are -responsible to a scarcely less degree. Our law has not kept pace with -the development of our bureaucracy; there is no machinery provided for -curbing its excesses. In Prussia, in the old days, there were special -courts for the purpose, and a citizen oppressed by the police or by -any other public official could get relief and redress. The guilty -functionary could be fined, mulcted in damages, demoted, cashiered, -or even jailed. But in the United States to-day there are no such -tribunals. A citizen attacked by the Postmaster-General simply has -no redress whatever; the courts have refused, over and over again, -to interfere save in cases of obvious fraud. Nor is there, it would -seem, any remedy for the unconstitutional acts of Prohibition agents. -Some time ago, when Senator Stanley, of Kentucky, tried to have a law -passed forbidding them to break into a citizen's house in violation of -the Bill of Rights, the Prohibitionists mustered up their serfs in the -Senate against him, and he was voted down. - -The Supreme Court, had it been so disposed, might have put a stop to -all this sinister buffoonery long ago. There was a time, indeed, when -it was alert to do so. That was during the Civil War. But since then -the court has gradually succumbed to the prevailing doctrine that the -minority has no rights that the majority is bound to respect. As it -is at present constituted, it shows little disposition to go to the -rescue of the harassed freeman. When property is menaced it displays -a laudable diligence, but when it comes to the mere rights of the -citizen it seems hopelessly inclined to give the prosecution the -benefit of every doubt. Two justices commonly dissent--two out of nine. -They hold the last switch-trench of the old constitutional line. When -they depart to realms of bliss the Bill of Rights will be buried with -them. - - - - -XVII. REFLECTIONS ON THE DRAMA - - -The drama is the most democratic of the art forms, and perhaps the -only one that may legitimately bear the label. Painting, sculpture, -music and literature, so far as they show any genuine sthetic or -intellectual content at all, are not for crowds, but for selected -individuals, mostly with bad kidneys and worse morals, and three of the -four are almost always enjoyed in actual solitude. Even architecture -and religious ritual, though they are publicly displayed, make their -chief appeal to man as individual, not to man as mass animal. One goes -into a church as part of a crowd, true enough, but if it be a church -that has risen above mere theological disputation to the beauty of -ceremonial, one is, even in theory, alone with the Lord God Jehovah. -And if, passing up Fifth Avenue in the 5 o'clock throng, one pauses -before St. Thomas's to drink in the beauty of that archaic faade, -one's drinking is almost sure to be done _a cappella;_ of the other -passers-by, not one in a thousand so much as glances at it. - -But the drama, as representation, is inconceivable save as a show -for the mob, and so it has to take on protective coloration to -survive. It must make its appeal, not to individuals as such, nor -even to individuals as units in the mob, but to the mob as mob--a -quite different thing, as Gustav Le Bon long ago demonstrated in his -"Psychologie des Foules." Thus its intellectual content, like its -sthetic form, must be within the mental grasp of the mob, and what is -more important, within the scope of its prejudices. _Per corollary,_ -anything even remotely approaching an original idea, or an unpopular -idea, is foreign to it, and if it would make any impression at all, -abhorrent to it. The best a dramatist can hope to do is to give -poignant and arresting expression to an idea so simple that the average -man will grasp it at once, and so banal that he will approve it in the -next instant. The phrase "drama of ideas" thus becomes a mere phrase. -What is actually meant by it is "drama of platitudes." - -So much for the theory. An appeal to the facts quickly substantiates -it. The more one looks into the so-called drama of ideas of the last -age--that is, into the acting drama--the more one is astounded by the -vacuity of its content. The younger Dumas' "La Dame aux Camlias," -the first of all the propaganda plays (it raised a stupendous pother -in 1852, the echoes of which yet roll), is based upon the sophomoric -thesis that a prostitute is a human being like you and me, and suffers -the slings and arrows of the same sorrows, and may be potentially quite -as worthy of heaven. Augier's "Le Mariage d'Olympe" (1854), another -sensation-making pioneer, is even hollower; its four acts are devoted -to rubbing in the revolutionary discovery that it is unwise for a young -man of good family to marry an elderly cocotte. Proceed now to Ibsen. -Here one finds the same tasteless platitudes--that it is unpleasant for -a wife to be treated as a doll; that professional patriots and town -boomers are frauds; that success in business is often grounded upon -a mere willingness to do what a man of honor is incapable of; that a -woman who continues to live with a debauched husband may expect to have -unhealthy children; that a joint sorrow tends to bring husband and wife -together; that a neurotic woman is apt to prefer death to maternity; -that a man of 55 is an ass to fall in love with a flapper of 17. Do I -burlesque? If you think so, turn to Ibsen's "Nachgelassene Schriften" -and read his own statements of the ideas in his social dramas--read -his own succinct summaries of their theses. You will imagine yourself, -on more than one page, in the latest volume of mush by Orison Swett -Marden. Such "ideas" are what one finds in newspaper editorials, -speeches before Congress, sermons by evangelical divines--in -brief, in the literature expressly addressed to those persons whose -distinguishing mark is that ideas never enter their heads. - -Ibsen himself, an excellent poet and a reflective man, was under no -delusions about his "dramas of ideas." It astounded him greatly when -the sentimental German middle-classes hailed "Ein Puppenheim" as a -revolutionary document; he protested often and bitterly against being -mistaken for a prophet of feminism. His own interest in this play -and in those that followed it was chiefly technical; he was trying -to displace the well-made play of Scribe and company with something -simpler, more elastic and more hospitable to character. He wrote -"Ghosts" to raise a laugh against the fools who had seen something -novel and horrible in the idea of "A Doll's House"; he wanted to prove -to them that that idea was no more than a platitude. Soon afterward he -became thoroughly disgusted with the whole "drama of ideas." In "The -Wild Duck" he cruelly burlesqued it, and made a low-comedy Ibsenist his -chief butt. In "Hedda Gabler" he played a joke on the Ibsen fanatics by -fashioning a first-rate drama out of the oldest, shoddiest materials -of Sardou, Feuillet, and even Meilhac and Halvy. And beginning with -"Little Eyolf" he threw the "drama of ideas" overboard forever, and -took to mysticism. What could be more comical than the efforts of -critical talmudists to read a thesis into "When We Dead Awaken"? I -have put in many a gay hour perusing their commentaries. Ibsen, had -he lived, would have roared over them--as he roared over the effort -to inject portentous meanings into "The Master Builder," at bottom no -more than a sentimental epitaph to a love affair that he himself had -suffered at 60. - -Gerhart Hauptmann, another dramatist of the first rank, has gone much -the same road. As a very young man he succumbed to the "drama of -ideas" gabble, and his first plays showed an effort to preach this or -that in awful tones. But he soon discovered that the only ideas that -would go down, so to speak, on the stage were ideas of such an austere -platitudinousness that it was beneath his artistic dignity to merchant -them, and so he gave over propaganda altogether. In other words, his -genius burst through the narrow bounds of mob ratiocination, and he -began appealing to the universal emotions--pity, religious sentiment, -patriotism, amorousness. Even in his first play, "Vor Sonnenaufgang," -his instinct got the better of his mistaken purpose, and reading it -to-day one finds that the sheer horror of it is of vastly more effect -than its nebulous and unimportant ideas. It really says nothing; it -merely makes us dislike some very unpleasant people. - -Turn now to Shaw. At once one finds that the only plays from his -pen which contain actual ideas have failed dismally on the stage. -These are the so-called "discussions"--e. g., "Getting Married." The -successful plays contain no ideas; they contain only platitudes, -balderdash, buncombe that even a suffragette might think of. Of such -sort are "Man and Superman," "Arms and the Man," "Candida," "Androcles -and the Lion," and their like. Shaw has given all of these pieces -a specious air of profundity by publishing them hooked to long and -garrulous prefaces and by filling them with stage directions which -describe and discuss the characters at great length. But as stage plays -they are almost as empty as "Hedda Gabier." One searches them vainly -for even the slightest novel contribution to the current theories of -life, joy and crime. Shaw's prefaces, of course, have vastly more -ideational force and respectability than his plays. If he fails to get -any ideas of genuine savor into them it is not because the preface form -bars them out but because he hasn't any to get in. By attaching them to -his plays he converts the latter into colorable imitations of novels, -and so opens the way for that superior reflectiveness which lifts the -novel above the play, and makes it, as Arnold Bennett has convincingly -shown, much harder to write. A stage play in the modern realistic -manner--that is, without soliloquies and asides--can seldom rise -above the mere representation of some infinitesimal episode, whereas -even the worst novel may be, in some sense, an interpretation as -well. Obviously, such episodes as may be exposed in 20,000 words--the -extreme limit of the average play--are seldom significant, and not -often clearly intelligible. The author has a hard enough job making -his characters recognizable as human beings; he hasn't time to go -behind their acts to their motives, or to deduce any conclusions worth -hearing from their doings. One often leaves a "social drama," indeed, -wondering what the deuce it is all about; the discussion of its meaning -offers endless opportunities for theorists and fanatics. The Ibsen -symbolists come to mind again. They read meanings into such plays as -"Rosmersholm" and "The Wild Duck" that aroused Ibsen, a peaceful man, -to positive fury. In the same way the suffragettes collared, "A Doll's -House." Even "Peer Gynt" did not escape. There is actually an edition -of it edited by a theosophist, in the preface to which it is hymned as -a theosophical document. Luckily for Ibsen, he died before this edition -was printed. But one may well imagine how it would have made him swear. - -The notion that there are ideas in the "drama of ideas," in truth, -is confined to a special class of illuminati, whose chief visible -character is their capacity for ingesting nonsense--Maeterlinckians, -uplifters, women's clubbers, believers in all the sure cures for -all the sorrows of the world. To-day the Drama League carries on -the tradition. It is composed of the eternally young--unsuccessful -dramatists who yet live in hope, young college professors, psychopathic -old maids, middle-aged ladies of an incurable jejuneness, the -innumerable caravan of the ingenuous and sentimental. Out of the -same intellectual _Landsturm_ comes the following of Bergson, the -parlor metaphysician; and of the third-rate novelists praised by the -newspapers; and of such composers as Wolf-Ferrari and Massenet. These -are the fair ones, male and female, who were ecstatically shocked by -the platitudes of "Damaged Goods," and who regard Augustus Thomas as -a great dramatist, and what is more, as a great thinker. Their hero, -during a season or two, was the Swedish John the Baptist, August -Strindberg--a lunatic with a gift for turning the preposterous into the -shocking. A glance at Strindberg's innumerable volumes of autobiography -reveals the true horse-power of his so-called ideas. He believed in -everything that was idiotic, from transcendentalism to witchcraft. -He believed that his enemies were seeking to destroy him by magic; -he spent a whole winter trying to find the philosopher's stone. Even -among the clergy, it would be difficult to find a more astounding ass -than Strindberg. But he had, for all his folly, a considerable native -skill at devising effective stage-plays--a talent that some men seem -to be born with--and under cover of it he acquired his reputation -as a thinker. Here he was met half-way by the defective powers of -observation and reflection of his followers, the half-wits aforesaid; -they mistook their enjoyment of his adept technical trickery for an -appreciation of ideas. Turn to the best of his plays, "The Father." -Here the idea--that domestic nagging can cause insanity--is an almost -perfect platitude, for on the one hand it is universally admitted -and on the other hand it is not true. But as a stage play pure and -simple, the piece is superb--a simple and yet enormously effective -mechanism. So with "Countess Julie." The idea here is so vague and -incomprehensible that no two commentators agree in stating it, and yet -the play is so cleverly written, and appeals with such a sure touch to -the universal human weakness for the obscene, that it never fails to -enchant an audience. The case of "Hedda Gabier" is parallel. If the -actresses playing Hedda in this country made up for the part in the -scandalous way their sisters do in Germany (that is, by wearing bustles -in front), it would be as great a success here as it is over there. -Its general failure among us is due to the fact that it is not made -indelicate enough. This also explains the comparative failure of the -rest of the Ibsen plays. The crowd has been subtly made to believe that -they are magnificently indecent--and is always dashed and displeased -when it finds nothing to lift the diaphragm. I well remember the -first production of "Ghosts" in America--a business in which I had a -hand. So eager was the audience for the promised indecencies that it -actually read them into the play, and there were protests against it -on the ground that Mrs. Alving was represented as trying to seduce -her own son! Here comstockery often helps the "drama of ideas." If no -other idea is visible, it can always conjure up, out of its native -swinishness, some idea that is offensively sexual, and hence pleasing -to the mob. - -That mob rules in the theater, and so the theater remains infantile -and trivial--a scene, not of the exposure of ideas, nor even of -the exhibition of beauty, but one merely of the parading of mental -and physical prettiness and vulgarity. It is at its worst when -its dramatists seek to corrupt this function by adding a moral or -intellectual purpose. It is at its best when it confines itself to -the unrealities that are its essence, and swings amiably from the -romance that never was on land or sea to the buffoonery that is at -the bottom of all we actually know of human life. Shakespeare was -its greatest craftsman: he wasted no tortured ratiocination upon his -plays. Instead, he filled them with the gaudy heroes that all of us -see ourselves becoming on some bright to-morrow, and the lowly frauds -and clowns we are to-day. No psychopathic problems engaged him; he -took love and ambition and revenge and braggadocio as he found them. -He held no clinics in dingy Norwegian apartment-houses: his field was -Bohemia, glorious Rome, the Egypt of the scene-painter, Arcady. ... But -even Shakespeare, for all the vast potency of his incomparable, his -stupefying poetry, could not long hold the talmudists out in front from -their search for invisible significances. Think of all the tomes that -have been written upon the profound and revolutionary "ideas" in the -moony musings of the diabetic sophomore, Hamlet von Danemark! - - - - -XVIII. ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN - - - -1 - -_To Him that Hath_ - - -The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and -disdainful air, is the reputation of being well to do. Nothing else -so neatly eases one's way through life, especially in democratic -countries. There is in ninety-nine per cent, of all democrats an -irresistible impulse to crook the knee to wealth, to defer humbly to -the power that goes with it, to see all sorts of high merits in the -man who has it, or is said to have it. True enough, envy goes with -the pliant neck, but it is envy somehow purged of all menace: the -inferior man is afraid to do evil to the man with money in eight banks; -he is even afraid to _think_ evil of him--that is, in any patent and -offensive way. Against capital as an abstraction he rants incessantly, -and all of the laws that he favors treat it as if it were criminal. But -in the presence of the concrete capitalist he is singularly fawning. -What makes him so is easy to discern. He yearns with a great yearning -for a chance to tap the capitalist's purse, and he knows very well, -deep down in his heart, that he is too craven and stupid to do it by -force of arms. So he turns to politeness, and tries to cajole. Give -out the news that one has just made a killing in the stock market, or -robbed some confiding widow of her dower, or swindled the government -in some patriotic enterprise, and at once one will discover that one's -shabbiness is a charming eccentricity, and one's judgment of wines -worth hearing, and one's politics worthy of attention and respect. The -man who is thought to be poor never gets a fair chance. No one wants to -listen to him. No one gives a damn what he thinks or knows or feels. No -one has any active desire for his good opinion. - -I discovered this principle early in life, and have put it to use -ever since. I have got a great deal more out of men (and women) by -having the name of being a well-heeled fellow than I have ever got by -being decent to them, or by dazzling them with my sagacity, or by hard -industry, or by a personal beauty that is singular and ineffable. - - - -2 - -_The Venerable Examined_ - - -The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age -brings wisdom. It is my honest belief that I am no wiser to-day -than I was five or ten years ago; in fact, I often suspect that I -am appreciable _less_ wise. Women can prevail over me to-day by -devices that would have made me hoof them out of my studio when I was -thirty-five. I am also an easier mark for male swindlers than I used -to be; at fifty I'll probably be joining clubs and buying Mexican -mine stock. The truth is that every man goes up-hill in sagacity -to a certain point, and then begins sliding down again. Nearly all -the old fellows that I know are more or less balmy. Theoretically, -they should be much wiser than younger men, if only because of their -greater experience, but actually they seem to take on folly faster than -they take on wisdom. A man of thirty-five or thirty-eight is almost -woman-proof. For a woman to marry him is a herculean feat. But by the -time he is fifty he is quite as easy as a Yale sophomore. On other -planes the same decay of the intelligence is visible. Certainly it -would be difficult to imagine any committee of relatively young men, of -thirty or thirty-five, showing the unbroken childishness, ignorance and -lack of humor of the Supreme Court of the United States. The average -age of the learned justices must be well beyond sixty, and all of -them are supposed to be of finished and mellowed sagacity. Yet their -knowledge of the most ordinary principles of justice often turns out -to be extremely meager, and when they spread themselves grandly upon -a great case their reasoning powers are usually found to be precisely -equal to those of a respectable Pullman conductor. - - - -3 - -_Duty_ - - -Some of the loosest thinking in ethics has duty for its theme. -Practically all writers on the subject agree that the individual -owes certain unescapable duties to the race--for example, the duty -of engaging in productive labor, and that of marrying and begetting -offspring. In support of this position it is almost always argued that -if _all_ men neglected such duties the race would perish. The logic is -hollow enough to be worthy of the college professors who are guilty -of it. It simply confuses the conventionality, the pusillanimity, the -lack of imagination of the majority of men with the duty of _all_ men. -There is not the slightest ground for assuming, even as a matter of -mere argumentation, that _all_ men will ever neglect these alleged -duties. There will always remain a safe majority that is willing to -do whatever is ordained--that accepts docilely the government it is -born under, obeys its laws, and supports its theory. But that majority -does not comprise the men who render the highest and most intelligent -services to the race; it comprises those who render nothing save their -obedience. - -For the man who differs from this inert and well-regimented -mass, however slightly, there are no duties _per se_. What he is -spontaneously inclined to do is of vastly more value to all of us -than what the majority is willing to do. There is, indeed, no such -thing as duty-in-itself; it is a mere chimera of ethical theorists. -Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration. The -very concept of duty is thus a function of inferiority; it belongs -naturally only to timorous and incompetent men. Even on such levels it -remains largely a self-delusion, a soothing apparition, a euphemism for -necessity. When a man succumbs to duty he merely succumbs to the habit -and inclination of other men. Their collective interests invariably -pull against his individual interests. Some of us can resist a pretty -strong pull--the pull, perhaps, of thousands. But it is only the -miraculous man who can withstand the pull of a whole nation. - - -_Martyrs_ - -"History," says Henry Ford, "is bunk." I inscribe myself among those -who dissent from this doctrine; nevertheless, I am often hauled up, -in reading history, by a feeling that I am among unrealities. In -particular, that feeling comes over me when I read about the religious -wars of the past--wars in which thousands of men, women and children -were butchered on account of puerile and unintelligible disputes -over transubstantiation, the atonement, and other such metaphysical -banshees. It does not surprise me that the majority murdered the -minority; the majority, even to-day, does it whenever it is possible. -What I can't understand is that the minority went voluntarily to the -slaughter. Even in the worst persecutions known to history--say, for -example, those of the Jews of Spain--it was always possible for a -given member of the minority to save his hide by giving public assent -to the religious notions of the majority. A Jew who was willing to -be baptized, in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, was practically -unmolested; his descendants to-day are 100% Spaniards. Well, then, why -did so many Jews refuse? Why did so many prefer to be robbed, exiled, -and sometimes murdered? - -The answer given by philosophical historians is that they were a -noble people, and preferred death to heresy. But this merely begs -the question. Is it actually noble to cling to a religious idea so -tenaciously? Certainly it doesn't seem so to me. After all, no human -being really _knows_ anything about the exalted matters with which -all religions deal. The most he can do is to match his private guess -against the guesses of his fellowmen. For any man to say absolutely, -in such a field, that this or that is wholly and irrefragably true and -this or that is utterly false is simply to talk nonsense. Personally, I -have never encountered a religious idea--and I do not except even the -idea of the existence of God--that was instantly and unchallengeably -convincing, as, say, the Copernican astronomy is instantly and -unchallengeably convincing. But neither have I ever encountered -a religious idea that could be dismissed offhand as palpably and -indubitably false. In even the worst nonsense of such theological -mountebanks as the Rev. Dr. Billy Sunday, Brigham Young and Mrs. Eddy -there is always enough lingering plausibility, or, at all events, -possibility, to give the judicious pause. Whatever the weight of the -probabilities against it, it nevertheless _may_ be true that man, on -his decease, turns into a gaseous vertebrate, and that this vertebrate, -if its human larva has engaged in embezzlement, bootlegging, profanity -or adultery on this earth, will be boiled for a million years in -a cauldron of pitch. My private inclination, due to my defective -upbringing, is to doubt it, and to set down any one who believes it as -an ass, but it must be plain that I have no means of disproving it. - -In view of this uncertainty it seems to me sheer vanity for any man to -hold his religious views too firmly, or to submit to any inconvenience -on account of them. It is far better, if they happen to offend, to -conceal them discreetly, or to change them amiably as the delusions -of the majority change. My own views in this department, being wholly -skeptical and tolerant, are obnoxious to the subscribers to practically -all other views; even atheists sometimes denounce me. At the moment, -by an accident of American political history, these dissenters from -my theology are forbidden to punish me for not agreeing with them. -But at any succeeding moment some group or other among them may seize -such power and proceed against me in the immemorial manner. If it ever -happens, I give notice here and now that I shall get converted to their -nonsense instantly, and so retire to safety with my right thumb laid -against my nose and my fingers waving like wheat in the wind. I'd do it -even to-day, if there were any practical advantage in it. Offer me a -case of Rauenthaler 1903, and I engage to submit to baptism by any rite -ever heard of, provided it does not expose my gothic nakedness. Make it -ten cases, and I'll agree to be both baptized and confirmed. In such -matters I am broad-minded. What, after all, is one more lie? - - - -5 - -_The Disabled Veteran_ - - -The science of psychological pathology is still in its infancy. In -all its literature in three languages, I can't find a line about the -permanent ill effects of acute emotional diseases--say, for example, -love affairs. The common assumption of the world is that when a love -affair is over it is over--that nothing remains behind. This is -probably grossly untrue. It is my belief that every such experience -leaves scars upon my psyche, and that they are quite as plain and quite -as dangerous as the scars left on the neck by a carbuncle. A man who -has passed through a love affair, even though he may eventually forget -the lady's very name, is never quite the same thereafter. His scars -may be small, but they are permanent. The sentimentalist, exposed -incessantly, ends as a psychic cripple; he is as badly off as the man -who has come home from the wars with shell-shock. The precise nature -of the scars remains to be determined. My own notion is that they take -the form of large yellow patches upon the self-esteem. Whenever a man -thinks of one of his dead love affairs, and in particular whenever -he allows his memory to dredge up an image of the woman he loved, -he shivers like one taken in some unmanly and discreditable act. -Such shivers, repeated often enough, must inevitably shake his inner -integrity off its base. No man can love, and yet remain truly proud. It -is a disarming and humiliating experience. - - - -6 - -_Patriotism_ - - -Patriotism is conceivable to a civilized man in times of stress and -storm, when his country is wobbling and sore beset. His country then -appeals to him as any victim of misfortune appeals to him--say, a -street-walker pursued by the police. But when it is safe, happy and -prosperous it can only excite his loathing. The things that make -countries safe, happy and prosperous--a secure peace, an active trade, -political serenity at home--are all intrinsically corrupting and -disgusting. It is as impossible for a civilized man to love his country -in good times as it would be for him to respect a politician. - - - - -XIX. SUITE AMRICANE - - - -1 - -_Aspiration_ - - -Police sergeants praying humbly to God that Jews will start poker-rooms -on their posts, and so enable them to educate their eldest sons for -holy orders.... Newspaper reporters resolving firmly to work hard, keep -sober and be polite to the city editor, and so be rewarded with jobs -as copy-readers.... College professors in one-building universities -on the prairie, still hoping, at the age of sixty, to get their -whimsical essays into the _Atlantic Monthly._ ... Car-conductors on -lonely suburban lines, trying desperately to save up $500 and start -a Ford garage.... Pastors of one-horse little churches in decadent -villages, who, whenever they drink two cups of coffee at supper, dream -all night that they have been elected bishops.... Movie actors who -hope against hope that the next fan letter will be from Bar Harbor.... -Delicatessen dealers who spend their whole lives searching for a cheap -substitute for the embalmed veal used in chicken-salad.... Italians -who wish that they were Irish.... Mulatto girls in Georgia and Alabama -who send away greasy dollar bills for bottles of Mme. Celestine's -Infallible Hair-Straightener.... Ash-men who pull wires to be appointed -superintendents of city dumps. 1.. Mothers who dream that the babies -in their cradles will reach, in the mysterious after years, the -highest chairs in the Red Men and the Maccabees.... Farmers who figure -that, with good luck, they will be able to pay off their mortgages -by 1943.... Contestants for the standing broad-jump championship of -the Altoona, Pa., Y. M. C. A.... Editorial writers who essay to prove -mathematically that a war between England and the United States is -unthinkable.... - - - -2 - -_Virtue_ - - -Pale druggists in remote towns of the Epworth League and flannel -nightgown belts, endlessly wrapping up bottles of Peruna.... Women -hidden away in the damp kitchens of unpainted houses along the railroad -tracks, frying tough beefsteaks.... Lime and cement dealers being -initiated into the Knights of Pythias, the Red Men or the Woodmen -of the World.... Watchmen at lonely railroad crossings in Iowa, -hoping that they'll be able to get off to hear the United Brethren -evangelist preach.... Ticket-choppers in the subway, breathing -sweat in its gaseous form.... Family doctors in poor neighborhoods, -faithfully relying upon the therapeutics taught in their Eclectic -Medical College in 1884.... Farmers plowing sterile fields behind sad -meditative horses, both suffering from the bites of insects.... Greeks -tending all-night coffee-joints in the suburban wildernesses where the -trolley-cars stop.... Grocery-clerks stealing prunes and ginger-snaps, -and trying to make assignations with soapy servant-girls.... Women -confined for the ninth or tenth time, wondering helplessly what it is -all about.... Methodist preachers retired after forty years of service -in the trenches of God, upon pensions of $600 a year.... Wives and -daughters of Middle Western country bankers, marooned in Los Angeles, -going tremblingly to swami sances in dark, smelly rooms.... Chauffeurs -in huge fur coats waiting outside theaters filled with folks applauding -Robert Edeson and Jane Cowl.... Decayed and hopeless men writing -editorials at midnight for leading papers in Mississippi, Arkansas and -Alabama.... Owners of the principal candy-stores in Green River, Neb., -and Tyrone, Pa.... Presidents of one-building universities in the rural -fastnesses of Kentucky and Tenbessee. ... Women with babies in their -arms weeping over moving-pictures in the Elks' Hall at Schmidtsville, -ville, Mo.... Babies just born to the wives of milk-wagon drivers.... -Judges on the benches of petty county courts in Virginia, Vermont and -Idaho.... Conductors of accommodation trains running between Kokomo, -Ind., and Logansport.... - - - -3 - -_Eminence_ - - -The leading Methodist layman of Pottawattamie county, Iowa.... The -man who won the limerick contest conducted by the Toomsboro, Ga., -_Banner._ ... The secretary of the Little Rock, Ark., Kiwanis Club.... -The president of the Johann Sebastian Bach _Bauverein_ of Highlandtown, -Md.... The girl who sold the most Liberty Bonds in Duquesne, Pa.... -The captain of the champion basket-ball team at the Gary, Ind., Y. -M. C. A.... The man who owns the best bull in Coosa county, Ala.... -The tallest man in Covington, Ky.... The oldest subscriber to the -Raleigh, N. C, _News and Observer._ ... The most fashionable milliner -in Bucyrus, O.... The business agent of the Plasterers' Union of -Somerville, Mass.... The author of the ode read at the unveiling -of the monument to General Robert E. Lee at Valdosta, Ga.... The -original Henry Cabot Lodge man.... The owner of the champion Airedale -of Buffalo, N. Y,... The first child named after the Hon. Warren -Gamaliel Harding.... The old lady in Wahoo, Neb., who has read the -Bible 38 times.... The boss who controls the Italian, Czecho-Slovak and -Polish votes in Youngstown, O.... The professor of chemistry, Greek, -rhetoric and piano at the Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, -Tex.... The boy who sells 225 copies of the _Saturday Evening Post_ -every week in Cheyenne, Wyo.... The youngest murderer awaiting hanging -in Chicago.... The leading dramatic critic of Pittsburgh.... The -night watchman in Penn Yan, N. Y., who once shook hands with Chester -A. Arthur.... The Lithuanian woman in Bluefield, W. Va., who has had -five sets of triplets. ... The actor who has played in "Lightning" -1,600 times.... The best horsedoctor in Oklahoma.... The highest-paid -church-choir soprano in Knoxville, Tenn.... The most eligible bachelor -in Cheyenne, Wyo.... The engineer of the locomotive which pulled the -train which carried the Hon. A. Mitchell Palmer to the San Francisco -Convention.... The girl who got the most votes in the popularity -contest at Egg Harbor, N. J.... - - - - - INDEX - - Adam, Villiers de l'Isle - Adams, Henry - Addams, Janec - Addison, Joseph - American Legion - American Protective League - _Annabel Lee_ - Anti-Saloon League - Arnold, Matthew - Asch, Sholom - Asquith, Mrs. - Astor, Lady - _Atlantic Monthly_ - Augier, Emile - - Bach, J. S. - Baker, Newton D. - Balfour, A. J.. - Baltimore _Sun_ - Balzac, H. - Barton, William E. - Beerbohm, Max - Beethoven, Ludwig van - Belasco, David - Bennett, Arnold - Benson, Admiral - Bentham, Jeremy - _Berliner Tageblatt_ - Berlioz, Hector - Bible - Bierbaum, Otto Julius - Birkenhead, Lord - Bismarck, Otto von - Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen - Bhlau, Helene - Bolshevism - Boston _Transcript_ - Bottomley, Horace - Boyd, Ernest A. - Brady, Diamond Jim - Brahms, Johannes - Brandes, Georg - Brieux, Eugene - Browning, Robert - Bryan, William Jennings - Bryce, James - Burleson, A. S. - Butler, Nicholas Murray - - Cabell, James Branch - Capitalism - Carlyle, Thomas - Cather, Willa - Catt, Carrie Chapman - Cawein, Madison - Czanne, Paul - Chamberlain, Joseph - Chopin, F. - Churchill, Winston - Cicero - Civil War - Clemenceau, Georges - Clemens, Samuel L. - Clutton-Brock, A. - Congress - _Congressional Record_ - Conrad, Joseph - Constitution, U. S. - Coolidge, Calvin - Cooper, J. Fenimore - Cox, James M. - Crane, Frank - Creel, George - Criticism - Curtis, Cyrus K. - - D'Annunzio, Gabrielle - Darwin, Charles - Dawes, Rufus - Debs, Eugene - Declaration of Independence - Dempsey, Jack - Dillon, Dr. - Disarmament Treaty - _Dixie,_ - Dreiser, Theodore - Dryden, John - Dumas, Alexandre _fils,_ - Dunsany, Lord - Duse, Eleanora - Dvorak, Antonin - - Edwards, Jonathan - Ehrlich, Paul - Ellis, Havelock - Emerson, R. W. - - _Faust,_ - Finck, Henry T. - Flower, B. O. - Foch, Ferdinand - Ford, Henry - France, Anatole - Franklin, Fabian - Freud, Sigmund - - Gale, Zona - Galileo - Garland, Hamlin - Garrett, Garet - George, W. L. - Gilman, Daniel, C. - Goethe, J. W. - Goldmarck, Karl - Gorky, Maxim - Gounod, Charles - Gourmont, Remy de - Grant, U. S. - Greenwich Village - - Hamilton, Alexander - _Hamlet,_ - Hamsun. Knut - Harding, W. G. - Harris, Frank - Hartleben, O. E. - Harvey, George B. - Hauptmann, Gerhart - Hazlitt, William - _Heart of Darkness_ - Hergesheimer, Joseph - Hillis, Newell Dwight - Hofmannsthal, Hugo von - Howells, William Dean - Huch, Ricarda - _Huckleberry Finn_ - Hughes, Charles E. - Huneker, James G. - Huysmans, J. K. - - Ibsen, Henrik - Iconoclasts - Intellectuals, Young - Irving, Washington - - Jackson, Andrew - James, Henry - Jefferson, Thomas - Jespersen, Otto - Jordan, David Starr - _Josef's Legend_ - - Kerr, Alfred - Kipling, Rudyard - Klebs, Edwin - Knights of Pythias - Know Nothings - Krehbiel, Henry - Ku Klux Klan - Krnberger, Ferdinand - - Lagerlf, Selma - Lanier, Sidney - Lee, Robert E. - Lewes, George Henry - Lewisohn, Ludwig - Lincoln, Abraham - Lindsey, Ben B. - Liszt, Franz - Lloyd-George, David - Lodge, Henry Cabot - Lodge, Oliver - London _Times_ - Lowell, James Russell - Lowes, J. L. - Ludwig, Karl - Luther, Martin - Lyly, John - - Mabie, Hamilton Wright - Macaulay, T. B. - Mann, Thomas - March, General - Marden, Orison Swett - Marlowe, Christopher - Martial - Masefield, John - Mendelssohn, Felix - Meredith, George - Methodists - Mill, J. S. - Miller, Joaquin - Milton, John - _Mlle. New York_ - Mobile _Register_ - Moody, John - Moore, George - More, Paul Elmer - Morgan, J. Pierpont - Mller, Johannes - Murray, Gilbert - Murry, Middleton - _Musical Courier_ - - Nathan, George Jean - National Institute of Arts and Letters - National Security League - Nearing, Scott - _New Republic_ - New York _Evening Journal_ - New York _Sun_ - New York _Times_ - New York _Tribune_ - Nicoll, Robertson - Nietzsche, F. W. - Northcliffe, Lord - - Ochs, Adolph S. - Odd Fellows - _Old Fogy_ - _Othello_ - - _Painted Veils_ - Palmer, A. Mitchell - _Parsifal,_ - Pershing, John J. - Philadelphia _Ledger_ - Pinchot, Gifford - Pirquet, Clemens von - Plato - Poe, Edgar Allan - Poetry - Pound, Ezra - Prescott, F. C. - _Puck,_ - - Reading, Lord - Red Cross, American - Reed, James A. - Reese, Lizette Woodworth - Reventlow, Count zu - Ricardo, David - Roosevelt, Theodore - Roosevelt, Theodore, Jr. - Root, Elihu - Rops, Flicien - Rosetti, Christina - Rotary Club - Rothert, Otto A. - Russell, Bertrand - Russell, Lillian - - St. Augustine - Sainte-Beuve, C. A. - St. John - Santanyana, George - _Saturday Evening Post_ - Schmidt, Annalise - Schubert, Franz - Schumann, Robert - Schwab, Charles M. - Scott, Evelyn - Scribner's, Charles, Sons - Seidl, Anton - Senate, U. S. - Serao, Mathilda - Shakespeare, William - Shaw, George, Bernard - _Sheik, The_ - Sherman, S. P. - Sienkiewicz, Henryk - Sims, Admiral - Sinclair, May - Sinclair Upton - Smith, Adam - Sousa, J. P. - Spencer, Herbert - Stal, Mme. de - Stearns, Harold - Steed, Wickham - _Steeplejack_ - Strauss, Richard - Strindberg, August - Sumner, William G. - Sunday, William A. - Supreme Court of the United States - Swedenborg, Emanuel - Swinburne, A. C. - - Taft, William H. - Thoma, Ludwig - Thompson, Francis - Thoreau, H. D. - _Town Topics_ - Tumulty, J. P. - - Underwood, Oscar - U'Ren, W. S. - - Van Dyke, Henry - Verlaine, Paul - Viebig, Clara - Vigilantes - Volstead, Andrew - - Wagner, Cosima - Wagner, Richard - Washington, George - Wassermann, Jacob - Weber, Gottfried - Wedekind, Frank - Wells, H. G. - Wesley, John - Whitman, Walt - Wilson, Woodrow - Wolsogen, Ernst von - Wood, James N. - Wood, Leonard A. - Woodberry, George E. - - Yeats, W. B. - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Prejudices, Third Series, by H. L. Mencken - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PREJUDICES, THIRD SERIES *** - -***** This file should be named 53474-8.txt or 53474-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/3/4/7/53474/ - -Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature (online soon -in an extended version, also linking to free sources for -education worldwide ... 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L. Mencken - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Prejudices, Third Series - -Author: H. L. Mencken - -Release Date: November 7, 2016 [EBook #53474] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PREJUDICES, THIRD SERIES *** - - - - -Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature (online soon -in an extended version, also linking to free sources for -education worldwide ... MOOC's, educational materials,...) -Images generously made available by the Internet Archive. - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="500" alt="" /> -</div> - -<h1>PREJUDICES</h1> - -<h2>THIRD SERIES</h2> - -<h3>By</h3> - -<h2>H. L. MENCKEN</h2> - -<h5>PUBLISHED AT THE BORZOI</h5> - -<h5>NEW YORK</h5> - -<h5>BY ALFRED A. KNOPF</h5> - -<h5>1922</h5> - -<hr class="full" /> - -<p style="margin-left: 10%;"> -<span class="caption">CONTENTS</span><br /> - -<br /> -I <span class="smcap">On Being an American</span>, <span class="tabnum"> <a href="#Page_9">9</a></span><br /> -<br /> -II <span class="smcap">Huneker: a Memory</span>, <span class="tabnum"> <a href="#Page_65">65</a></span><br /> -<br /> -III <span class="smcap">Footnote on Criticism</span>, <span class="tabnum"> <a href="#Page_84">84</a></span><br /> -<br /> -IV <span class="smcap">Das Kapital</span>, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_105">105</a></span><br /> -<br /> -V <span class="smcap">Ad Imaginem Dei Creavit Illum</span>, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_120">120</a></span><br /> -<br /> -1. The Life of Man, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_120">120</a></span><br /> -2. The Anthropomorphic Delusion, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_121">121</a></span><br /> -3. Meditation on Meditation, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_125">125</a></span><br /> -4. Man and His Soul, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_131">131</a></span><br /> -5. Coda, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_132">132</a></span><br /> -<br /> -VI <span class="smcap">Star-Spangled Men</span> <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_133">133</a></span><br /> -<br /> -VII <span class="smcap">The Poet and His Art</span>, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_146">146</a></span><br /> -<br /> -VIII <span class="smcap">Five Men at Random</span>, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></span><br /> -<br /> -1. Abraham Lincoln, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></span><br /> -2. Paul Elmer More, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_176">176</a></span><br /> -3. Madison Cawein, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_179">179</a></span><br /> -4. Frank Harris, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_182">182</a></span><br /> -5. Havelock Ellis, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_189">189</a></span><br /> -<br /> -IX <span class="smcap">The Nature of Liberty</span>, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_193">193</a></span><br /> -<br /> -X <span class="smcap">The Novel, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_201">201</a></span><br /> -<br /> -XI <span class="smcap">The Forward-looker</span>, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_213">213</a></span><br /> -<br /> -XII <span class="smcap">Memorial Service</span>, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_232">232</a></span><br /> -<br /> -XIII <span class="smcap">Education</span>, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_238">238</a></span><br /> -<br /> -XIV <span class="smcap">Types of Men</span>, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_266">266</a></span><br /> -<br /> -1. The Romantic, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_266">266</a></span><br /> -2. The Skeptic, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_266">266</a></span><br /> -3. The Believer, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_267">267</a></span><br /> -4. The Worker, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_268">268</a></span><br /> -5. The Physician, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_269">269</a></span><br /> -6. The Scientist, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_269">269</a></span><br /> -7. The Business Man, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_270">270</a></span><br /> -8. The King, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_271">271</a></span><br /> -9. The Average Man, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_273">273</a></span><br /> -10. The Truth-Seeker, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_274">274</a></span><br /> -11. The Pacifist, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_274">274</a></span><br /> -12. The Relative, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_275">275</a></span><br /> -13. The Friend, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_276">276</a></span><br /> -<br /> -XV <span class="smcap">The Dismal Science,</span> <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_278">278</a></span><br /> -<br /> -XVI <span class="smcap">Matters of State,</span> <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_289">289</a></span><br /> -<br /> -1. Le Contrat Social, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_289">289</a></span><br /> -2. On Minorities, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_292">292</a></span><br /> -<br /> -XVII <span class="smcap">Reflections on the Drama,</span> <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_299">299</a></span><br /> -<br /> -XVIII <span class="smcap">Advice to Young Men,</span> <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_310">310</a></span><br /> -<br /> -1. To Him That Hath, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_310">310</a></span><br /> -2. The Venerable Examined, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_311">311</a></span><br /> -3. Duty, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_313">313</a></span><br /> -4. Martyrs, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_314">314</a></span><br /> -5. The Disabled Veteran, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_318">318</a></span><br /> -6. Patriotism, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_319">319</a></span><br /> -<br /> -XIX <span class="smcap">Suite Amricaine,</span> <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_320">320</a></span><br /> -<br /> -1. Aspiration, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_320">320</a></span><br /> -2. Virtue, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_321">321</a></span><br /> -3. Eminence, <span class="tabnum"><a href="#Page_323">323</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span><br /> -</p> - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h3>PREJUDICES: THIRD SERIES</h3> - - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4><a name="I_ON_BEING_AN_AMERICAN" id="I_ON_BEING_AN_AMERICAN">I. ON BEING AN AMERICAN</a></h4> - - - -<h4>1</h4> - - -<p>Apparently there are those who begin to find it disagreeable—nay, -impossible. Their anguish fills the Liberal weeklies, and every ship -that puts out from New York carries a groaning cargo of them, bound -for Paris, London, Munich, Rome and way points—anywhere to escape the -great curses and atrocities that make life intolerable for them at -home. Let me say at once that I find little to cavil at in their basic -complaints. In more than one direction, indeed, I probably go a great -deal further than even the Young Intellectuals. It is, for example, -one of my firmest and most sacred beliefs, reached after an inquiry -extending over a score of years and supported by incessant prayer -and meditation, that the government of the United States, in both -its legislative arm and its executive arm, is ignorant, incompetent, -corrupt, and disgusting—and from this judgment I except no more than -twenty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> living lawmakers and no more than twenty executioners of their -laws. It is a belief no less piously cherished that the administration -of justice in the Republic is stupid, dishonest, and against all -reason and equity—and from this judgment I except no more than thirty -judges, including two upon the bench of the Supreme Court of the United -States. It is another that the foreign policy of the United States—its -habitual manner of dealing with other nations, whether friend or -foe—is hypocritical, disingenuous, knavish, and dishonorable—and from -this judgment I consent to no exceptions whatever, either recent or -long past. And it is my fourth (and, to avoid too depressing a bill, -final) conviction that the American people, taking one with another, -constitute the most timorous, sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob -of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom -since the end of the Middle Ages, and that they grow more timorous, -more sniveling, more poltroonish, more ignominious every day.</p> - -<p>So far I go with the fugitive Young Intellectuals—and into the -Bad Lands beyond. Such, in brief, are the cardinal articles of my -political faith, held passionately since my admission to citizenship -and now growing stronger and stronger as I gradually disintegrate -into my component carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorus, calcium, -sodium, nitrogen and iron. This is what I believe and preach, <i>in -nomine Domini,</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> Amen. Yet I remain on the dock, wrapped in the flag, -when the Young Intellectuals set sail. Yet here I stand, unshaken and -undespairing, a loyal and devoted Americano, even a chauvinist, paying -taxes without complaint, obeying all laws that are physiologically -obeyable, accepting all the searching duties and responsibilities -of citizenship unprotestingly investing the sparse usufructs of my -miserable toil in the obligations of the nation, avoiding all commerce -with men sworn to overthrow the government, contributing my mite toward -the glory of the national arts and sciences, enriching and embellishing -the native language, spurning all lures (and even all invitations) to -get out and stay out—here am I, a bachelor of easy means, forty-two -years old, unhampered by debts or issue, able to go wherever I please -and to stay as long as I please—here am I, contentedly and even smugly -basking beneath the Stars and Stripes, a better citizen, I daresay, -and certainly a less murmurous and exigent one, than thousands who -put the Hon. Warren Gamaliel Harding beside Friedrich Barbarossa and -Charlemagne, android the Supreme Court to be directly inspired by the -Holy Spirit, and belong ardently to every Rotary Club, Ku Klux Klan, -and Anti-Saloon League, and choke with emotion when the band plays "The -Star-Spangled Banner," and believe with the faith of little children -that one of Our Boys, taken at random, could dispose in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> fair fight -of ten Englishmen, twenty Germans, thirty Frogs, forty Wops, fifty -Japs, or a hundred Bolsheviki.</p> - -<p>Well, then, why am I still here? Why am I so complacent (perhaps even -to the point of offensiveness), so free from bile, so little fretting -and indignant, so curiously happy? Why did I answer only with a few -academic "Hear, Hears" when Henry James, Ezra Pound, Harold Stearns and -the <i>emigrs</i> of Greenwich Village issued their successive calls to the -corn-fed <i>intelligentsia</i> to flee the shambles, escape to fairer lands, -throw off the curse forever? The answer, of course, is to be sought in -the nature of happiness, which tempts to metaphysics. But let me keep -upon the ground. To me, at least (and I can only follow my own nose) -happiness presents itself in an aspect that is tripartite. To be happy -(reducing the thing to its elementals) I must be:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p><i>a.</i> Well-fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in Zion.</p> - -<p><i>b.</i> Full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the -masses of my fellow-men.</p> - -<p><i>c.</i> Delicately and unceasingly amused according to my taste.</p></blockquote> - -<p>It is my contention that, if this definition be accepted, there is no -country on the face of the earth wherein a man roughly constituted -as I am—a man of my general weaknesses, vanities, appetites,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> -prejudices, and aversions—can be so happy, or even one-half so happy, -as he can be in these free and independent states. Going further, I -lay down the proposition that it is a sheer physical impossibility -for such a man to live in These States and <i>not</i> be happy—that it -is as impossible to him as it would be to a schoolboy to weep over -the burning down of his school-house. If he says that he isn't happy -here, then he either lies or is insane. Here the business of getting a -living, particularly since the war brought the loot of all Europe to -the national strong-box, is enormously easier than it is in any other -Christian land—so easy, in fact, that an educated and forhanded man -who fails at it must actually make, deliberate efforts to that end. -Here the general average of intelligence, of knowledge, of competence, -of integrity, of self-respect, of honor is so low that any man who -knows his trade, does not fear ghosts, has read fifty good books, and -practices the common decencies stands out as brilliantly as a wart on -a bald head, and is thrown willy-nilly into a meager and exclusive -aristocracy. And here, more than anywhere else that I know of or -have heard of, the daily panorama of human existence, of private and -communal folly—the unending procession of governmental extortions -and chicaneries, of commercial brigandages and throat-slittings, of -theological buffooneries, of sthetic ribaldries, of legal swindles -and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> harlotries, of miscellaneous rogueries, villainies, imbecilities, -grotesqueries, and extravagances—is so inordinately gross and -preposterous, so perfectly brought up to the highest conceivable -amperage, so steadily enriched with an almost fabulous daring and -originality, that only the man who was born with a petrified diaphragm -can fail to laugh himself to sleep every night, and to awake every -morning with all the eager, unflagging expectation of a Sunday-school -superintendent touring the Paris peep-shows.</p> - -<p>A certain sough rhetoric may be here. Perhaps I yield to words as a -chautauqua lecturer yields to them, belaboring and fermenting the -hinds with his Message from the New Jerusalem. But fundamentally I am -quite as sincere as he is. For example, in the matter of attaining to -ease in Zion, of getting a fair share of the national swag, now piled -so mountainously high. It seems to me, sunk in my Egyptian night, -that the man who fails to do this in the United States to-day is a -man who is somehow stupid—-maybe not on the surface, but certainly -deep down. Either he is one who cripples himself unduly, say by -setting up a family before he can care for it, or by making a bad -bargain for the sale of his wares, or by concerning himself too much -about the affairs of other men; or he is one who endeavors fatuously -to sell something that no normal American wants. Whenever I hear a -professor of philosophy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> complain that his wife has eloped with some -moving-picture actor or bootlegger who can at least feed and clothe -her, my natural sympathy for the man is greatly corrupted by contempt -for his lack of sense. Would it be regarded as sane and laudable for -a man to travel the Soudan trying to sell fountain-pens, or Greenland -offering to teach double-entry bookkeeping or counterpoint Coming -closer, would the judicious pity or laugh at a man who opened a shop -for the sale of incunabula in Little Rock, Ark., or who demanded a -living in McKeesport, Pa., on the ground that he could read Sumerian? -In precisely the same way it seems to me to be nonsensical for a man -to offer generally some commodity that only a few rare and dubious -Americans want, and then weep and beat his breast because he is not -patronized. One seeking to make a living in a country must pay due -regard to the needs and tastes of that country. Here in the United -States we have no jobs for grand dukes, and none for <i>Wirkliche -Geheimrte,</i> and none for palace eunuchs, and none for masters of the -buck-hounds, and none (any more) for brewery <i>Todsaufer</i>—and very few -for oboe-players, metaphysicians, astrophysicists, assyriologists, -water-colorists, stylites and epic poets. There was a time when the -<i>Todsaufer</i> served a public need and got an adequate reward, but it is -no more. There may come a time when the composer of string<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> quartettes -is paid as much as a railway conductor, but it is not yet. Then why -practice such trades—that is, as trades? The man of independent -means may venture into them prudently; when he does so, he is seldom -molested; it may even be argued that he performs a public service by -adopting them. But the man who has a living to make is simply silly -if he goes into them; he is like a soldier going over the top with a -coffin strapped to his back. Let him abandon such puerile vanities, and -take to the uplift instead, as, indeed, thousands of other victims of -the industrial system have already <i>done.</i> Let him bear in mind that, -whatever its neglect of the humanities and their monks, the Republic -has never got half enough bond salesmen, quack doctors, ward leaders, -phrenologists, Methodist evangelists, circus clowns, magicians, -soldiers, farmers, popular song writers, moonshine distillers, forgers -of gin labels, mine guard, detectives, spies, snoopers, and <i>agents -provocateurs.</i> The rules are set by Omnipotence; the discreet man -observes them. Observing them, he is safe beneath the starry bed-tick, -in fair weather or foul. The <i>boobus Americanus</i> is a bird that knows -no closed season—and if he won't come down to Texas oil stock, or -one-night cancer cures, or building lots in Swampshurst, he will always -come down to Inspiration and Optimism, whether political, theological, -pedagogical, literary, or economic.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p> - -<p>The doctrine that it is <i>infra digitatem</i> for an educated man to take -a hand in the snaring of this goose is one in which I see nothing -convincing. It is a doctrine chiefly voiced, I believe, by those -who have tried the business and failed. They take refuge behind the -childish notion that there is something honorable about poverty <i>per -se</i>—the Greenwich Village complex. This is nonsense. Poverty may be -an unescapable misfortune, but that no more makes it honorable than -a cocked eye is made honorable by the same cause. Do I advocate, -then, the ceaseless, senseless hogging of money? I do not. All I -advocate—and praise as virtuous—is the hogging of enough to provide -security and ease. Despite all the romantic superstitions to the -contrary, the artist cannot do his best work when he is oppressed by -unsatisfied wants. Nor can the philosopher. Nor can the man of science. -The best and clearest thinking of the world is done and the finest art -is produced, not by men who are hungry, ragged and harassed, but by men -who are well-fed, warm and easy in mind. It is the artist's first duty -to his art to achieve that tranquility for himself. Shakespeare tried -to achieve it; so did Beethoven, Wagner, Brahms, Ibsen and Balzac. -Goethe, Schopenhauer, Schumann and Mendelssohn were born to it. Joseph -Conrad, Richard Strauss and Anatole France have got it for themselves -in our own day. In the older countries, where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> competence is far more -general and competition is thus more sharp, the thing is often cruelly -difficult, and sometimes almost impossible. But in the United States -it is absurdly easy, given ordinary luck. Any man with a superior air, -the intelligence of a stockbroker, and the resolution of a hat-check -girl—in brief, any man who believes in himself enough, and with -sufficient cause, to be called a journeyman—can cadge enough money, in -this glorious commonwealth of morons, to make life soft for him.</p> - -<p>And if a lining for the purse is thus facilely obtainable, given a -reasonable prudence and resourcefulness, then balm for the ego is just -as unlaboriously got, given ordinary dignity and decency. Simply to -exist, indeed, on the plane of a civilized man is to attain, in the -Republic, to a distinction that should be enough for all save the most -vain; it is even likely to be too much, as the frequent challenges of -the Ku Klux Klan, the American Legion, the Anti-Saloon League, and -other such vigilance committees of the majority testify. Here is a -country in which all political thought and activity are concentrated -upon the scramble for jobs—in which the normal politician, whether he -be a President or a village road supervisor, is willing to renounce -any principle, however precious to him, and to adopt any lunacy, -however offensive to him, in order to keep<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> his place at the trough. -Go into politics, then, without seeking or wanting office, and at once -you are as conspicuous as a red-haired blackamoor—in fact, a great -deal more conspicuous, for red-haired blackamoors have been seen, but -who has ever seen or heard of an American politician, Democrat or -Republican, Socialist or Liberal, Whig or Tory, who did not itch for a -job? Again, here is a country in which it is an axiom that a business -man shall be a member of a Chamber of Commerce, an admirer of Charles -M. Schwab, a reader of the <i>Saturday Evening Post,</i> a golfer—in -brief, a vegetable. Spend your hours of escape from <i>Geschft</i> reading -Remy de Gourmont or practicing the violoncello, and the local Sunday -newspaper will infallibly find you out and hymn the marvel—nay, your -banker will summon you to discuss your notes, and your rivals will -spread the report (probably truthful) that you were pro-German during -the war. Yet again, here is a land in which women rule and men are -slaves. Train your women to get your slippers for you, and your ill -fame will match Galileo's or Darwin's. Once more, here is the Paradise -of back-slappers, of democrats, of mixers, of go-getters. Maintain -ordinary reserve, and you will arrest instant attention—and have your -hand kissed by multitudes who, despite democracy, have all the inferior -man's unquenchable desire to grovel and admire.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p> - -<p>Nowhere else in the world is superiority more easily attained or more -eagerly admitted. The chief business of the nation, as a nation, is -the setting up of heroes, mainly bogus. It admired the literary style -of the late Woodrow; it respects the theological passion of Bryan; it -venerates J. Pierpont Morgan; it takes Congress seriously; it would be -unutterably shocked by the proposition (with proof) that a majority of -its judges are ignoramuses, and that a respectable minority of them -are scoundrels. The manufacture of artificial <i>Durchlauchten, k.k. -Hoheiten</i> and even gods goes on feverishly and incessantly; the will -to worship never flags. Ten iron-molders meet in the back-room of a -near-beer saloon, organize a lodge of the Noble and Mystic Order of -American Rosicrucians, and elect a wheelwright Supreme Worthy Whimwham; -a month later they send a notice to the local newspaper that they -have been greatly honored by an official visit from that Whimwham, -and that they plan to give him a jeweled fob for his watch-chain. The -chief national heroes—Lincoln, Lee, and so on—cannot remain mere -men. The mysticism of the medival peasantry gets into the communal -view of them, and they begin to sprout haloes and wings. As I say, no -intrinsic merit—at least, none commensurate with the mob estimate—is -needed to come to such august dignities. Everything American is a bit -amateurish and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> childish, even the national gods. The most conspicuous -and respected American in nearly every field of endeavor, saving only -the purely commercial (I exclude even the financial) is a man who would -attract little attention in any other country. The leading American -critic of literature, after twenty years of diligent exposition of his -ideas, has yet to make it clear what he is in favor of, and why. The -queen of the <i>haut monde,</i> in almost every American city, is a woman -who regards Lord Reading as an aristocrat and her superior, and whose -grandfather slept in his underclothes. The leading American musical -director, if he went to Leipzig, would be put to polishing trombones -and copying drum parts. The chief living American military man—the -national heir to Frederick, Marlborough, Wellington, Washington and -Prince Eugene—is a member of the Elks, and proud of it. The leading -American philosopher (now dead, with no successor known to the average -pedagogue) spent a lifetime erecting an epistemological defense for the -national sthetic maxim: "I don't know nothing about music, but I know -what I like." The most eminent statesman the United States has produced -since Lincoln was fooled by Arthur James Balfour, and miscalculated -his public support by more than 5,000,000 votes. And the current -Chief Magistrate of the nation—its defiant substitute for czar and -kaiser—is a small-town<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> printer who, when he wishes to enjoy himself -in the Executive Mansion, invites in a homeopathic doctor, a Seventh -Day Adventist evangelist, and a couple of moving-picture actresses.</p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>2</h4> - - -<p>All of which may be boiled down to this: that the United States is -essentially a commonwealth of third-rate men—that distinction is easy -here because the general level of culture, of information, of taste and -judgment, of ordinary competence is so low. No sane man, employing an -American plumber to repair a leaky drain, would expect him to do it at -the first trial, and in precisely the same way no sane man, observing -an American Secretary of State in negotiation with Englishmen and Japs, -would expect him to come off better than second best. Third-rate men, -of course, exist in all countries, but it is only here that they are in -full control of the state, and with it of all the national standards. -The land was peopled, not by the hardy adventurers of legend, but -simply by incompetents who could not get on at home, and the lavishness -of nature that they found here, the vast ease with which they could -get livings, confirmed and augmented their native incompetence. No -American colonist, even in the worst days of the Indian wars, ever had -to face such hardships as ground down the peasants of Central<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> Europe -during the Hundred Years War, nor even such hardships as oppressed the -English lower classes during the century before the Reform Bill of -1832. In most of the colonies, indeed, he seldom saw any Indians at -all: the one thing that made life difficult for him was his congenital -dunderheadedness. The winning of the West, so rhetorically celebrated -in American romance, cost the lives of fewer men than the single -battle of Tannenberg, and the victory was much easier and surer. The -immigrants who have come in since those early days have been, if -anything, of even lower grade than their forerunners. The old notion -that the United States is peopled by the offspring of brave, idealistic -and liberty loving minorities, who revolted against injustice, bigotry -and medivalism at home—this notion is fast succumbing to the alarmed -study that has been given of late to the immigration of recent years. -The truth is that the majority of non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants since the -Revolution, like the majority of Anglo-Saxon immigrants before the -Revolution, have been, not the superior men of their native lands, -but the botched and unfit: Irishmen starving to death in Ireland, -Germans unable to weather the <i>Sturm und Drang</i> of the post-Napoleonic -reorganization, Italians weed-grown on exhausted soil, Scandinavians -run to all bone and no brain, Jews too incompetent to swindle even -the barbarous peasants of Russia,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> Poland and Roumania. Here and -there among the immigrants, of course, there may be a bravo, or even -a superman—e. g., the ancestors of Volstead, Ponzi, Jack Dempsey, -Schwab, Daugherty, Debs, Pershing—but the average newcomer is, and -always has been simply a poor fish.</p> - -<p>Nor is there much soundness in the common assumption, so beloved of -professional idealists and wind-machines, that the people of America -constitute "the youngest of the great peoples." The phrase turns up -endlessly; the average newspaper editorial writer would be hamstrung if -the Postoffice suddenly interdicted it, as it interdicted "the right to -rebel" during the war. What gives it a certain specious plausibility is -the fact that the American Republic, compared to a few other existing -governments, is relatively young. But the American Republic is not -necessarily identical with the American people; they might overturn -it to-morrow and set up a monarchy, and still remain the same people. -The truth is that, as a distinct nation, they go back fully three -hundred years, and that even their government is older than that of -most other nations, e. g., France, Italy, Germany, Russia. Moreover, -it is absurd to say that there is anything properly describable as -youthfulness in the American outlook. It is not that of young men, but -that of old men. All the characteristics of senescence are in it: a -great distrust of ideas,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> an habitual timorousness, a harsh fidelity -to a few fixed beliefs, a touch of mysticism. The average American is -a prude and a Methodist under his skin, and the fact is never more -evident than when he is trying to disprove it. His vices are not those -of a healthy boy, but those of an ancient paralytic escaped from the -<i>Greisenheim.</i> If you would penetrate to the causes thereof, simply -go down to Ellis Island and look at the next shipload of immigrants. -You will not find the spring of youth in their step; you will find the -shuffling of exhausted men. From such exhausted men the American stock -has sprung. It was easier for them to survive here than it was where -they came from, but that ease, though it made them feel stronger, did -not actually strengthen them. It left them what they were when they -came: weary peasants, eager only for the comfortable security of a -pig in a sty. Out of that eagerness has issued many of the noblest -manifestations of American <i>Kultur:</i> the national hatred of war, the -pervasive suspicion of the aims and intents of all other nations, the -short way with heretics and disturbers of the peace, the unshakable -belief in devils, the implacable hostility to every novel idea and -point of view.</p> - -<p>All these ways of thinking are the marks of the peasant—more, of the -peasant long ground into the mud of his wallow, and determined at last -to stay there—the peasant who has definitely renounced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> any lewd -desire he may have ever had to gape at the stars. The habits of mind of -this dull, sempiternal <i>fellah</i>—the oldest man in Christendom—are, -with a few modifications, the habits of mind of the American people. -The peasant has a great practical cunning, but he is unable to see -any further than the next farm. He likes money and knows how to amass -property, but his cultural development is but little above that of -the domestic animals. He is intensely and cocksurely moral, but his -morality and his self-interest are crudely identical. He is emotional -and easy to scare, but his imagination cannot grasp an abstraction. -He is a violent nationalist and patriot, but he admires rogues in -office and always beats the tax-collector if he can. He has immovable -opinions about all the great affairs of state, but nine-tenths of them -are sheer imbecilities. He is violently jealous of what he conceives -to be his rights, but brutally disregardful of the other fellow's. He -is religious, but his religion is wholly devoid of beauty and dignity. -This man, whether city or country bred, is the normal Americano—the -100 per cent. Methodist, Odd Fellow, Ku Kluxer, and Know Nothing. -He exists in all countries, but here alone he rules—here alone his -anthropoid fears and rages are accepted gravely as logical ideas, and -dissent from them is punished as a sort of public offense. Around every -one of his principal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> delusions—of the sacredness of democracy, of the -feasibility of sumptuary law, of the incurable sinfulness of all other -peoples, of the menace of ideas, of the corruption lying in all the -arts—there is thrown a barrier of taboos, and woe to the anarchist who -seeks to break it down!</p> - -<p>The multiplication of such taboos is obviously not characteristic of -a culture that is moving from a lower plane to a higher—that is, of -a culture still in the full glow of its youth. It is a sign, rather, -of a culture that is slipping downhill—one that is reverting to the -most primitive standards and ways of thought. The taboo, indeed, is the -trade-mark of the savage, and wherever it exists it is a relentless -and effective enemy of civilized enlightenment. The savage is the most -meticulously moral of men; there is scarcely an act of his daily life -that is not conditioned by unyielding prohibitions and obligations, -most of them logically unintelligible. The mob-man, a savage set -amid civilization, cherishes a code of the same draconian kind. He -believes firmly that right and wrong are immovable things—that they -have an actual and unchangeable existence, and that any challenge -of them, by word or act, is a crime against society. And with the -concept of wrongness, of course, he always confuses the concept of mere -differentness—to him the two are indistinguishable. Anything strange -is to be combatted; it is of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> Devil. The mob-man cannot grasp ideas -in their native nakedness. They must be dramatized and personalized -for him, and provided with either white wings or forked tails. All -discussion of them, to interest him, must take the form of a pursuit -and scotching of demons. He cannot think of a heresy without thinking -of a heretic to be caught, condemned, and burned.</p> - -<p>The Fathers of the Republic, I am convinced, had a great deal more -prevision than even their most romantic worshipers give them credit -for. They not only sought to create a governmental machine that would -be safe from attack without; they also sought to create one that would -be safe from attack within. They invented very ingenious devices for -holding the mob in check, for protecting the national polity against -its transient and illogical rages, for securing the determination -of all the larger matters of state to a concealed but none the less -real aristocracy. Nothing could have been further from the intent -of Washington, Hamilton and even Jefferson than that the official -doctrines of the nation, in the year 1922, should be identical with the -nonsense heard in the chautauqua, from the evangelical pulpit, and on -the stump. But Jackson and his merry men broke through the barbed wires -thus so carefully strung, and ever since 1825 <i>vox populi</i> has been -the true voice of the nation. To-day there is no longer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> any question -of statesmanship, in any real sense, in our politics. The only way to -success in American public life lies in flattering and kowtowing to the -mob. A candidate for office, even the highest, must either adopt its -current manias <i>en bloc,</i> or convince it hypocritically that he has -done so, while cherishing reservations <i>in petto.</i> The result is that -only two sorts of men stand any chance whatever of getting into actual -control of affairs—first, glorified mob-men who genuinely believe -what the mob believes, and secondly, shrewd fellows who are willing -to make any sacrifice of conviction and self-respect in order to hold -their jobs. One finds perfect examples of the first class in Jackson -and Bryan. One finds hundreds of specimens of the second among the -politicians who got themselves so affectingly converted to Prohibition, -and who voted and blubbered for it with flasks in their pockets. Even -on the highest planes our politics seems to be incurable mountebankish. -The same Senators who raised such raucous alarms against the League of -Nations voted for the Disarmament Treaty—a far more obvious surrender -to English hegemony. And the same Senators who pleaded for the League -on the ground that its failure would break the heart of the world were -eloquently against the treaty. The few men who maintained a consistent -course in both cases, voting either for or against both League and -treaty, were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> denounced by the newspapers as deliberate marplots, -and found their constituents rising against them. To such an extent -had the public become accustomed to buncombe that simple honesty was -incomprehensible to it, and hence abhorrent!</p> - -<p>As I have pointed out in a previous work, this dominance of mob ways -of thinking, this pollution of the whole intellectual life of the -country by the prejudices and emotions of the rabble, goes unchallenged -because the old landed aristocracy of the colonial era has been -engulfed and almost obliterated by the rise of the industrial system, -and no new aristocracy has arisen to take its place, and discharge its -highly necessary functions. An upper class, of course, exists, and of -late it has tended to increase in power, but it is culturally almost -indistinguishable from the mob: it lacks absolutely anything even -remotely resembling an aristocratic point of view. One searches in vain -for any sign of the true <i>Junker</i> spirit in the Vanderbilts, Astors, -Morgans, Garys, and other such earls and dukes of the plutocracy; their -culture, like their aspiration, remains that of the pawnshop. One -searches in vain, too for the aloof air of the don, in the official -<i>intelligentsia</i> of the American universities; they are timorous and -orthodox, and constitute a reptile Congregatio de Propaganda Fide to -match Bismarck's <i>Reptilienpresse.</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> Everywhere else on earth, despite -the rise of democracy, an organized minority of aristocrats survives -from a more spacious day, and if its personnel has degenerated and its -legal powers have decayed it has at least maintained some vestige of -its old independence of spirit, and jealously guarded its old right to -be heard without risk of penalty. Even in England, where the peerage -has been debauched to the level of a political baptismal fount for -Jewish money-lenders and Wesleyan soap-boilers, there is sanctuary for -the old order in the two ancient universities, and a lingering respect -for it in the peasantry. But in the United States it was paralyzed by -Jackson and got its death blow from Grant, and since then no successor -to it has been evolved. Thus there is no organized force to oppose the -irrational vagaries of the mob. The legislative and executive arms of -the government yield to them without resistance; the judicial arm has -begun to yield almost as supinely, particularly when they take the form -of witch-hunts; outside the official circle there is no opposition -that is even dependably articulate. The worst excesses go almost -without challenge. Discussion, when it is heard at all, is feeble and -superficial, and girt about by the taboos that I have mentioned. The -clatter about the so-called Ku Klux Klan, two or three years ago, was -typical. The astounding program of this organization<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> was discussed -in the newspapers for months on end, and a committee of Congress sat -in solemn state to investigate it, and yet not a single newspaper -or Congressman, so far as I am aware, so much as mentioned the most -patent and important fact about it, to wit, that the Ku Klux was, to -all intents and purposes, simply the secular arm of the Methodist -Church, and that its methods were no more than physical projections -of the familiar extravagances of the Anti-Saloon League. The intimate -relations between church and Klan, amounting almost to identity, must -have been plain to every intelligent American, and yet the taboo upon -the realistic consideration of ecclesiastical matters was sufficient to -make every public soothsayer disregard it completely.</p> - -<p>I often wonder, indeed, if there would be any intellectual life at -all in the United States if it were not for the steady importation -in bulk of ideas from abroad, and particularly, in late years, from -England. What would become of the average American scholar if he could -not borrow wholesale from English scholars? How could an inquisitive -youth get beneath the surface of our politics if it were not for such -anatomists as Bryce? Who would show our statesmen the dotted lines -for their signatures if there were no Balfours and Lloyd-Georges? How -could our young professors formulate sthetic judgments, especially -in the field of letters, if it were not for such<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> gifted English -mentors as Robertson Nicoll, Squire and Clutton-Brock? By what process, -finally, would the true style of a visiting card be determined, and -the <i>hflich</i> manner of eating artichokes, if there were no reports -from Mayfair? On certain levels this nave subservience must needs -irritate every self-respecting American, and even dismay him. When he -recalls the amazing feats of the English war propagandists between -1914 and 1917—and their even more amazing confessions of method -since—he is apt to ask himself quite gravely if he belongs to a free -nation or to a crown colony. The thing was done openly, shamelessly, -contemptuously, cynically, and yet it was a gigantic success. The -office of the American Secretary of State, from the end of Bryan's -grotesque incumbency to the end of the Wilson administration, was -little more than an antechamber of the British Foreign Office. Dr. -Wilson himself, in the conduct of his policy, differed only legally -from such colonial premiers as Hughes and Smuts. Even after the United -States got into the war it was more swagger for a Young American blood -to wear the British uniform than the American uniform. No American -ever seriously questions an Englishman or Englishwoman of official or -even merely fashionable position at home. Lord Birkenhead was accepted -as a gentleman everywhere in the United States; Mrs. Asquith's almost -unbelievable imbecilities<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> were heard with hushed fascination; even -Lady Astor, an American married to an expatriate German-American -turned English viscount, was greeted with solemn effusiveness. During -the latter part of 1917, when New York swarmed with British military -missions, I observed in <i>Town Topics</i> a polite protest against a very -significant habit of certain of their gallant members: that of going -to dances wearing spurs, and so macerating the frocks and heels of the -fawning fair. The protest, it appears, was not voiced by the hosts and -hostesses of these singular officers: they would have welcomed their -guests in trench boots. It was left to a dubious weekly, and it was -made very gingerly.</p> - -<p>The spectacle, as I say, has a way of irking the American touched by -nationalistic weakness. Ever since the day of Lowell—even since the -day of Cooper and Irving—there have been denunciations of it. But -however unpleasant it may be, there is no denying that a chain of -logical causes lies behind it, and that they are not to be disposed of -by objecting to them. The average American of the Anglo-Saxon majority, -in truth, is simply a second-rate Englishman, and so it is no wonder -that he is spontaneously servile, despite all his democratic denial of -superiorities, to what he conceives to be first-rate Englishmen. He -corresponds, roughly, to an English Nonconformist of the better-fed -variety, and he shows all the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> familiar characters of the breed. He is -truculent and cocksure, and yet he knows how to take off his hat when -a bishop of the Establishment passes. He is hot against the dukes, and -yet the notice of a concrete duke is a singing in his heart. It seems -to me that this inferior Anglo-Saxon is losing his old dominance in -the United States—that is, biologically But he will keep his cultural -primacy for a long, long while, in spite of the overwhelming inrush -of men of other races, if only because those newcomers are even more -clearly inferior than he is. Nine-tenths of the Italians, for example, -who have come to these shores in late years have brought no more of the -essential culture of Italy with them than so many horned cattle would -have brought. If they become civilized at all, settling here, it is -the civilization of the Anglo-Saxon majority that they acquire, which -is to say, the civilization of the English second table. So with the -Germans, the Scandinavians, and even the Jews and Irish. The Germans, -taking one with another, are on the cultural level of green-grocers. I -have come into contact with a great many of them since 1914, some of -them of considerable wealth and even of fashionable pretensions. In the -whole lot I can think of but a score or two who could name offhand the -principal works of Thomas Mann, Otto Julius Bierbaum, Ludwig Thoma or -Hugo von Hofmannsthal. They know much more about Mutt and Jeff<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> than -they know about Goethe. The Scandinavians are even worse. The majority -of them are mere clods, and they are sucked into the Knights of -Pythias, the chautauqua and the Methodist Church almost as soon as they -land; it is by no means a mere accident that the national Prohibition -Enforcement Act bears the name of a man theoretically of the blood of -Gustavus Vasa, Svend of the Forked Beard, and Eric the Red. The Irish -in the United States are scarcely touched by the revival of Irish -culture, despite their melodramatic concern with Irish politics. During -the war they supplied diligent and dependable agents to the Anglo-Saxon -White Terror, and at all times they are very susceptible to political -and social bribery. As for the Jews, they change their names to Burton, -Thompson and Cecil in order to qualify as true Americans, and when they -are accepted and rewarded in the national coin they renounce Moses -altogether and get themselves baptized in St. Bartholomew's Church.</p> - -<p>Whenever ideas enter the United States from without they come by way of -England. What the London <i>Times</i> says to-day, about Ukranian politics, -the revolt in India, a change of ministry in Italy, the character of -the King of Norway, the oil situation in Mesopotamia, will be said -week after next by the <i>Times</i> of New York, and a month or two later -by all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> the other American newspapers. The extent of this control of -American opinion by English news mongers is but little appreciated in -the United States, even by professional journalists. Fully four-fifths -of all the foreign news that comes to the American newspapers comes -through London, and most of the rest is supplied either by Englishmen -or by Jews (often American-born) who maintain close relations with -the English. During the years 1914-1917 so many English agents got -into Germany in the guise of American correspondents—sometimes with -the full knowledge of their Anglomaniac American employers—that -the Germans, just before the United States entered the war, were -considering barring American correspondents from their country -altogether. I was in Copenhagen and Basel in 1917, and found both -towns—each an important source of war news—full of Jews representing -American journals as a side-line to more delicate and confidential work -for the English department of press propaganda. Even to-day a very -considerable proportion of the American correspondents in Europe are -strongly under English influences, and in the Far East the proportion -is probably still larger. But these men seldom handle really important -news. All that is handled from London, and by trustworthy Britons. Such -of it as is not cabled directly to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> American newspapers and press -associations is later clipped from English newspapers, and printed as -bogus letters or cablegrams.</p> - -<p>The American papers accept such very dubious stuff, not chiefly because -they are hopelessly stupid or Anglomaniac, but because they find it -impossible to engage competent American correspondents. If the native -journalists who discuss our domestic politics avoid the fundamentals -timorously, then those who venture to discuss foreign politics are -scarcely aware of the fundamentals at all. We have simply developed no -class of experts in such matters. No man comparable, say to Dr. Dillon, -Wickham Steed, Count zu Reventlow or Wilfrid Scawen Blunt exists in -the United States. When, in the Summer of 1920, the editors of the -Baltimore <i>Sun</i> undertook plans to cover the approaching Disarmament -Conference at Washington in a comprehensive and intelligent manner, -they were forced, willy-nilly, into employing Englishmen to do the -work. Such men as Brailsford and Bywater, writing from London, three -thousand miles away, were actually better able to interpret the work -of the conference than American correspondents on the spot, few of -whom were capable of anything beyond the most trivial gossip. During -the whole period of the conference not a professional Washington -correspondent—the flower of American political journalism—wrote -a single<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> article upon the proceedings that got further than their -surface aspects. Before the end of the sessions this enforced -dependence upon English opinion had an unexpected and significant -result. Facing the English and the Japs in an unyielding alliance, -the French turned to the American delegation for assistance. The -issue specifically before the conference was one on which American -self-interest was obviously identical with French self-interest. -Nevertheless, the English had such firm grip upon the machinery of news -distribution that they were able, in less than a week, to turn American -public opinion against the French, and even to set up an active -Francophobia. No American, not even any of the American delegates, -was able to cope with their propaganda. They not only dominated the -conference and pushed through a set of treaties that were extravagantly -favorable to England; they even established the doctrine that all -opposition to those treaties was immoral!</p> - -<p>When Continental ideas, whether in politics, in metaphysics or in the -fine arts, penetrate to the United States they nearly always travel -by way of England. Emerson did not read Goethe; he read Carlyle. The -American people, from the end of 1914 to the end of 1918, did not -read first-handed statements of the German case; they read English -interpretations of those statements. In London is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> the clearing house -and transformer station. There the latest notions from the mainland are -sifted out, carefully diluted with English water, and put into neat -packages for the Yankee trade. The English not only get a chance to -ameliorate or embellish; they also determine very largely what ideas -Americans are to hear of at all. Whatever fails to interest them, or -is in any way obnoxious to them, is not likely to cross the ocean. -This explains why it is that most literate Americans are so densely -ignorant of many Continentals who have been celebrated at home for -years, for example, Huysmans, Hartleben, Vaibinger, Merezhkovsky, -Keyserling, Snoilsky, Mauthner, Altenberg, Heidenstam, Alfred Kerr. It -also explains why they so grossly overestimate various third-raters, -laughed at at home, for example, Brieux. These fellows simply happen to -interest the English <i>intelligentsia,</i> and are thus palmed off upon the -gaping colonists of Yankeedom. In the case of Brieux the hocus-pocus -was achieved by one man, George Bernard Shaw, a Scotch blue-nose -disguised as an Irish patriot and English soothsayer. Shaw, at bottom, -has the ideas of a Presbyterian elder, and so the moral frenzy of -Brieux enchanted him. Whereupon he retired to his chamber, wrote a -flaming Brieuxiad for the American trade, and founded the late vogue of -the French Dr. Sylvanus Stall on this side of the ocean.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p> - -<p>This wholesale import and export business in Continental fancies is of -no little benefit, of course, to the generality of Americans. If it -did not exist they would probably never hear of many of the salient -Continentals at all, for the obvious incompetence of most of the -native and resident introducers of intellectual ambassadors makes them -suspicious even of those who, like Boyd and Nathan, are thoroughly -competent. To this day there is no American translation of the plays of -Ibsen; we use the William Archer Scotch-English translations, most of -them atrociously bad, but still better than nothing. So with the works -of Nietzsche, Anatole France, Georg Brandes, Turgeniev, Dostoyevsky, -Tolstoi, and other moderns after their kind. I can think of but one -important exception: the work of Gerhart Hauptmann, done into English -by and under the supervision of Ludwig Lewisohn. But even here Lewisohn -used a number of English translations of single plays: the English were -still ahead of him, though they stopped half way. He is, in any case, a -very extraordinary American, and the Department of Justice kept an eye -on him during the war. The average American professor is far too dull -a fellow to undertake so difficult an enterprise. Even when he sports -a German Ph.D. one usually finds on examination that all he knows -about modern German literature is that a <i>Mass</i> of Hofbru in Munich -used<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> to cost 27 <i>Pfennig</i> downstairs and 32 <i>Pfennig</i> upstairs. The -German universities were formerly very tolerant of foreigners. Many an -American, in preparation for professing at Harvard, spent a couple of -years roaming from one to the other of them without picking up enough -German to read the <i>Berliner Tageblatt.</i> Such frauds swarm in all our -lesser universities, and many of them, during the war, became eminent -authorities upon the crimes of Nietzsche and the errors of Treitschke.</p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>3</h4> - - -<p>In rainy weather, when my old wounds ache and the four humors do battle -in my spleen, I often find myself speculating sourly as to the future -of the Republic. Native opinion, of course, is to the effect that -it will be secure and glorious; the superstition that progress must -always be upward and onward will not down; in virulence and popularity -it matches the superstition that money can accomplish anything. But -this view is not shared by most reflective foreigners, as any one may -find out by looking into such a book as Ferdinand Krnberger's "Der -Amerikamde," Sholom Asch's "America," Ernest von Wolzogen's "Ein -Dichter in Dollarica," W. L. George's "Hail, Columbia!", Annalise -Schmidt's "Der Amerikanische Mensch" or Sienkiewicz's "After Bread," -or by hearkening unto the confidences, if obtainable, of such returned -immigrants<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> as Georges Clemenceau, Knut Hamsun, George Santayana, -Clemens von Pirquet, John Masefield and Maxim Gorky, and, via the ouija -board, Antonin Dvorak, Frank Wedekind and Edwin Klebs. The American -Republic, as nations go, has led a safe and easy life, with no serious -enemies to menace it, either within or without, and no grim struggle -with want. Getting a living here has always been easier than anywhere -else in Christendom; getting a secure foothold has been possible to -whole classes of men who would have remained submerged in Europe, as -the character of our plutocracy, and no less of our <i>intelligentsia</i> -so brilliantly shows. The American people have never had to face such -titanic assaults as those suffered by the people of Holland, Poland -and half a dozen other little countries; they have not lived with a -ring of powerful and unconscionable enemies about them, as the Germans -have lived since the Middle Ages; they have not been torn by class -wars, as the French, the Spaniards and the Russians have been torn; -they have not thrown their strength into far-flung and exhausting -colonial enterprises, like the English. All their foreign wars have -been fought with foes either too weak to resist them or too heavily -engaged elsewhere to make more than a half-hearted attempt. The combats -with Mexico and Spain were not wars; they were simply lynchings.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> Even -the Civil War, compared to the larger European conflicts since the -invention of gunpowder, was trivial in its character and transient in -its effects. The population of the United States, when it began, was -about 31,500,000—say 10 per cent, under the population of France in -1914. But after four years of struggle, the number of men killed in -action or dead of wounds, in the two armies, came but 200,000—probably -little more than a sixth of the total losses of France between 1914 -and 1918. Nor was there any very extensive destruction of property. -In all save a small area in the North there was none at all, and even -in the South only a few towns of any importance were destroyed. The -average Northerner passed through the four years scarcely aware, save -by report, that a war was going on. In the South the breath of Mars -blew more hotly, but even there large numbers of men escaped service, -and the general hardship everywhere fell a great deal short of the -hardships suffered by the Belgians, the French of the North, the -Germans of East Prussia, and the Serbians and Rumanians in the World -War. The agonies of the South have been much exaggerated in popular -romance; they were probably more severe during Reconstruction, when -they were chiefly psychical, than they were during the actual war. -Certainly General Robert E. Lee was in a favorable position to estimate -the military achievement of the Confederacy. Well,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> Lee was of the -opinion that his army was very badly supported by the civil population, -and that its final disaster was largely due to that ineffective support.</p> - -<p>Coming down to the time of the World War, one finds precious few signs -that the American people, facing an antagonist of equal strength -and with both hands free, could be relied upon to give a creditable -account of themselves. The American share in that great struggle, in -fact, was marked by poltroonery almost as conspicuously as it was -marked by knavery. Let us consider briefly what the nation did. For -a few months it viewed the struggle idly and unintelligently, as a -yokel might stare at a sword-swallower at a county fair. Then, seeing -a chance to profit, it undertook with sudden alacrity the ghoulish -office of <i>Kriegslieferant.</i> One of the contestants being debarred, by -the chances of war, from buying, it devoted its whole energies, for -two years, to purveying to the other. Meanwhile, it made every effort -to aid its customer by lending him the cloak of its neutrality—that -is, by demanding all the privileges of a neutral and yet carrying on a -stupendous wholesale effort to promote the war. On the official side, -this neutrality was fraudulent from the start, as the revelations of -Mr. Tumulty have since demonstrated; popularly it became more and -more fraudulent as the debts of the customer contestant piled up, -and it became more and more apparent—a fact<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> diligently made known -by his partisans—that they would be worthless if he failed to win. -Then, in the end, covert aid was transformed into overt aid. And under -what gallant conditions! In brief, there stood a nation of 65,000,000 -people, which, without effective allies, had just closed two and a -half years of homeric conflict by completely defeating an enemy state -of 135,000,000 and two lesser ones of more than 10,000,000 together, -and now stood at bay before a combination of at least 140,000,000. -Upon this battle-scarred and war-weary foe the Republic of 100,000,000 -freemen now flung itself, so lifting the odds to 4 to 1. And after a -year and a half more of struggle it emerged triumphant—a knightly -victor surely!</p> - -<p>There is no need to rehearse the astounding and unprecedented -swinishness that accompanied this glorious business—the colossal -waste of public money, the savage persecution of all opponents and -critics of the war, the open bribery of labor, the half-insane reviling -of the enemy, the manufacture of false news, the knavish robbery of -enemy civilians, the incessant spy hunts, the floating of public -loans by a process of blackmail, the degradation of the Red Cross -to partisan uses, the complete abandonment of all decency, decorum -and self-respect. The facts must be remembered with shame by every -civilized American; lest they be forgotten by the generations of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> -future I am even now engaged with collaborators upon an exhaustive -record of them, in twenty volumes folio. More important to the present -purpose are two things that are apt to be overlooked, the first of -which is the capital fact that the war was "sold" to the American -people, as the phrase has it, not by appealing to their courage, but -by appealing to their cowardice—in brief, by adopting the assumption -that they were not warlike at all, and certainly not gallant and -chivalrous, but merely craven and fearful. The first selling point of -the proponents of American participation was the contention that the -Germans, with gigantic wars still raging on both fronts, were preparing -to invade the United States, burn down all the towns, murder all the -men, and carry off all the women—that their victory would bring -staggering and irresistible reprisals for the American violation of the -duties of a neutral. The second selling point was that the entrance -of the United States would end the war almost instantly—that the -Germans would be so overwhelmingly out-numbered, in men and guns, that -it would be impossible for them to make any effective defense—above -all, that it would be impossible for them to inflict any serious damage -upon their new foes. Neither argument, it must be plain, showed the -slightest belief in the warlike skill and courage of the American -people. Both were grounded upon the frank theory<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> that the only way to -make the mob fight was to scare it half to death, and then show it a -way to fight without risk, to stab a helpless antagonist in the back. -And both were mellowed and renforced by the hint that such a noble -assault, beside being safe, would also be extremely profitable—that -it would convert very dubious debts into very good debts, and dispose -forever of a diligent and dangerous competitor for trade, especially -in Latin America. All the idealist nonsense emitted by Dr. Wilson and -company was simply icing on the cake. Most of it was abandoned as -soon as the bullets began to fly, and the rest consisted simply of -meaningless words—the idiotic babbling of a Presbyterian evangelist -turned prophet and seer.</p> - -<p>The other thing that needs to be remembered is the permanent effect -of so dishonest and cowardly a business upon the national character, -already far too much inclined toward easy ventures and long odds. -Somewhere in his diaries Wilfrid Scawen Blunt speaks of the marked -debasement that showed itself in the English spirit after the brutal -robbery and assassination of the South African Republics. The heroes -that the mob followed after Mafeking Day were far inferior to the -heroes that it had followed in the days before the war. The English -gentleman began to disappear from public life, and in his place -appeared a rabble-rousing bounder<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> obviously almost identical with -the American professional politician—the Lloyd-George, Chamberlain, -F. E. Smith, Isaacs-Reading, Churchill, Bottomley, Northcliffe type. -Worse, old ideals went with old heroes. Personal freedom and strict -legality, says Blunt, vanished from the English tables of the law, -and there was a shift of the social and political center of gravity -to a lower plane. Precisely the same effect is now visible in the -United States. The overwhelming majority of conscripts went into the -army unwillingly, and once there they were debauched by the twin -forces of the official propaganda that I have mentioned and a harsh, -unintelligent discipline. The first made them almost incapable of -soldierly thought and conduct; the second converted them into cringing -goose-steppers. The consequences display themselves in the amazing -activities of the American Legion, and in the rise of such correlative -organizations as the Ku Klux Klan. It is impossible to fit any -reasonable concept of the soldierly into the familiar proceedings of -the Legion. Its members conduct themselves like a gang of Methodist -vice-crusaders on the loose, or a Southern lynching party. They are -forever discovering preposterous burglars under the national bed, -and they advance to the attack, not gallantly and at fair odds, but -cravenly and in overwhelming force. Some of their enterprises, to be -set forth at length in the record I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> have mentioned, have been of -almost unbelievable baseness—the mobbing of harmless Socialists, -the prohibition of concerts by musicians of enemy nationality, the -mutilation of cows designed for shipment abroad to feed starving -children, the roughing of women, service as strike-breakers, the -persecution of helpless foreigners, regardless of nationality.</p> - -<p>During the last few months of the war, when stories of the tyrannical -ill-usage of conscripts began to filter back to the United States, it -was predicted that they would demand the punishment of the guilty when -they got home, and that if it was not promptly forthcoming they would -take it into their own hands. It was predicted, too, that they would -array themselves against the excesses of Palmer, Burleson and company, -and insist upon a restoration of that democratic freedom for which they -had theoretically fought. But they actually did none of these things. -So far as I know, not a single martinet of a lieutenant or captain has -been manhandled by his late victims; the most they have done has been -to appeal to Congress for revenge and damages. Nor have they thrown -their influence against the medival despotism which grew up at home -during the war; on the contrary, they have supported it actively, and -if it has lessened since 1919 the change has been wrought without -their aid and in spite of their opposition. In sum, they show all the -stigmata of inferior men<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> whose natural inferiority has been made -worse by oppression. Their chief organization is dominated by shrewd -ex-officers who operate it to their own ends—politicians in search -of jobs, Chamber of Commerce witch-hunters, and other such vermin. It -seems to be wholly devoid of patriotism, courage, or sense. Nothing -quite resembling it existed in the country before the war, not even in -the South. There is nothing like it anywhere else on earth. It is a -typical product of two years of heroic effort to arouse and capitalize -the worst instincts of the mob, and it symbolizes very dramatically the -ill effects of that effort upon the general American character.</p> - -<p>Would men so degraded in gallantry and honor, so completely purged of -all the military virtues, so submerged in baseness of spirit—would -such pitiful caricatures of soldiers offer the necessary resistance to -a public enemy who was equal, or perhaps superior in men and resources, -and who came on with confidence, daring and resolution—say England -supported by Germany as <i>Kriegslieferant</i> and with her inevitable -swarms of Continental allies, or Japan with the Asiatic hordes behind -her? Against the best opinion of the chatauquas, of Congress and of the -patriotic press I presume to doubt it. It seems to me quite certain, -indeed, that an American army fairly representing the American people, -if it ever meets another army of anything remotely resembling<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> like -strength, will be defeated, and that defeat will be indistinguishable -from rout. I believe that, at any odds less than two to one, even the -exhausted German army of 1918 would have defeated it, and in this view, -I think, I am joined by many men whose military judgment is far better -than mine—particularly by many French officers. The changes in the -American character since the Civil War, due partly to the wearing out -of the old Anglo-Saxon stock, inferior to begin with, and partly to -the infusion of the worst elements of other stocks, have surely not -made for the fostering of the military virtues. The old cool head is -gone, and the old dogged way with difficulties. The typical American of -to-day has lost all the love of liberty that his forefathers had, and -all their distrust of emotion, and pride in self-reliance. He is led -no longer by Davy Crocketts; he is led by cheer leaders, press agents, -word-mongers, uplifters. I do not believe that such a faint-hearted -and inflammatory fellow, shoved into a war demanding every resource -of courage, ingenuity and pertinacity, would give a good account of -himself. He is fit for lynching-bees and heretic-hunts, but he is not -fit for tight corners and desperate odds.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, his docility and pusillanimity may be overestimated, and -sometimes I think that they <i>are</i> overestimated by his present masters. -They assume that there is absolutely no limit to his capacity for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> -being put on and knocked about—that he will submit to any invasion of -his freedom and dignity, however outrageous, so long as it is depicted -in melodious terms. He permitted the late war to be "sold" to him by -the methods of the grind-shop auctioneer. He submitted to conscription -without any of the resistance shown by his brother democrats of Canada -and Australia. He got no further than academic protests against the -brutal usage he had to face in the army. He came home and found -Prohibition foisted on him, and contented himself with a few feeble -objurgations. He is a pliant slave of capitalism, and ever ready to -help it put down fellow-slaves who venture to revolt. But this very -weakness, this very credulity and poverty of spirit, on some easily -conceivable to-morrow, may convert him into a rebel of a peculiarly -insane kind, and so beset the Republic from within with difficulties -quite as formidable as those which threaten to afflict it from without. -What Mr. James N. Wood calls the corsair of democracy—that is, the -professional mob-master, the merchant of delusions, the pumper-up of -popular fears and rages—is still content to work for capitalism, and -capitalism knows how to reward him to his taste. He is the eloquent -statesman, the patriotic editor, the fount of inspiration, the prancing -milch-cow of optimism. He becomes public leader, Governor, Senator, -President. He is Billy Sunday, Cyrus K.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> Curtis, Dr. Frank Crane, -Charles E. Hughes, Taft, Wilson, Cal Coolidge, General Wood, Harding. -His, perhaps, is the best of trades under democracy—but it has its -temptations! Let us try to picture a master corsair, thoroughly adept -at pulling the mob nose, who suddenly bethought himself of that Pepin -the Short who found himself mayor of the palace and made himself King -of the Franks. There were lightnings along that horizon in the days -of Roosevelt; there were thunder growls when Bryan emerged from the -Nebraska steppes. On some great day of fate, as yet unrevealed by the -gods, such a professor of the central democratic science may throw off -his employers and set up a business for himself. When that day comes -there will be plenty of excuse for black type on the front pages of the -newspapers.</p> - -<p>I incline to think that military disaster will give him his inspiration -and his opportunity—that he will take the form, so dear to -democracies, of a man on horseback. The chances are bad to-day simply -because the mob is relatively comfortable—because capitalism has been -able to give it relative ease and plenty of food in return for its -docility. Genuine poverty is very rare in the United States, and actual -hardship is almost unknown. There are times when the proletariat is -short of phonograph records, silk shirts and movie tickets, but there -are very few times when it is short of nourishment. Even during the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> -most severe business depression, with hundreds of thousands out of -work, most of these apparent sufferers, if they are willing, are able -to get livings outside their trades. The cities may be choked with idle -men, but the country is nearly always short of labor. And if all other -resources fail, there are always public agencies to feed the hungry: -capitalism is careful to keep them from despair. No American knows what -it means to live as millions of Europeans lived during the war and have -lived, in some places, since: with the loaves of the baker reduced to -half size and no meat at all in the meatshop. But the time may come and -it may not be far off. A national military disaster would disorganize -all industry in the United States, already sufficiently wasteful and -chaotic, and introduce the American people, for the first time in -their history, to genuine want—and capital would be unable to relieve -them. The day of such disaster will bring the savior foreordained. The -slaves will follow him, their eyes fixed ecstatically upon the newest -New Jerusalem. Men bred to respond automatically to shibboleths will -respond to this worst and most insane one. Bolshevism, said General -Foch, is a disease of defeated nations.</p> - -<p>But do not misunderstand me: I predict no revolution in the grand -manner, no melodramatic collapse of capitalism, no repetition of what -has gone on in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> Russia. The American proletarian is not brave and -romantic enough for that; to do him simple justice, he is not silly -enough. Capitalism, in the long run, will win in the United States, -if only for the reason that every American hopes to be a capitalist -before he dies. Its roots go down to the deepest, darkest levels of the -national soil; in all its characters, and particularly in its antipathy -to the dreams of man, it is thoroughly American. To-day it seems to be -immovably secure, given continued peace and plenty, and not all the -demagogues in the land, consecrating themselves desperately to the one -holy purpose, could shake it. Only a cataclysm will ever do that. But -is a cataclysm conceivable? Isn't the United States the richest nation -ever heard of in history, and isn't it a fact that modern wars are won -by money? It is not a fact. Wars are won to-day, as in Napoleon's day, -by the largest battalions, and the largest battalions, in the next -great struggle, may not be on the side of the Republic. The usurious -profits it wrung from the last war are as tempting as negotiable -securities hung on the wash-line, as pre-Prohibition Scotch stored in -open cellars. Its knavish ways with friends and foes alike have left -it only foes. It is plunging ill-equipped into a competition for a -living in the world that will be to the death. And the late Disarmament -Conference left it almost hamstrung. Before the conference it had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> the -Pacific in its grip, and with the Pacific in its grip it might have -parleyed for a fair half of the Atlantic. But when the Japs and the -English had finished their operations upon the Feather Duster, Popinjay -Lodge, Master-Mind Root, Vacuum Underwood, young Teddy Roosevelt and -the rest of their so-willing dupes there was apparent a baleful change. -The Republic is extremely insecure to-day on both fronts, and it will -be more insecure to-morrow. And it has no friends.</p> - -<p>However, as I say, I do not fear for capitalism. It will weather the -storm, and no doubt it will be the stronger for it afterward. The -inferior man hates it, but there is too much envy mixed with his -hatred, in the land of the theoretically free, for him to want to -destroy it utterly, or even to wound it incurably. He struggles against -it now, but always wistfully, always with a sneaking respect. On the -day of Armageddon he may attempt a more violent onslaught. But in 'the -long run he will be beaten. In the long run the corsairs will sell him -out, and hand him over to his enemy. Perhaps—who knows?—the combat -may raise that enemy to genuine strength and dignity. Out of it may -come the superman.</p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>4</h4> - - -<p>All the while I have been forgetting the third of my reasons for -remaining so faithful a citizen of the Federation, despite all the -lascivious inducements<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> from expatriates to follow them beyond the -seas, and all the surly suggestions from patriots that I succumb. -It is the reason which grows out of my medival but unashamed taste -for the bizarre and indelicate, my congenital weakness for comedy of -the grosser varieties. The United States, to my eye, is incomparably -the greatest show on earth. It is a show which avoids diligently all -the kinds of clowning which tire me most quickly—for example, royal -ceremonials, the tedious hocus-pocus of <i>haut politique,</i> the taking -of politics seriously—and lays chief stress upon the kinds which -delight me unceasingly—for example, the ribald combats of demagogues, -the exquisitely ingenious operations of master rogues, the pursuit -of witches and heretics, the desperate struggles of inferior men -to claw their way into Heaven. We have clowns in constant practice -among us who are as far above the clowns of any other great state as -a Jack Dempsey is above a paralytic—and not a few dozen or score of -them, but whole droves and herds. Human enterprises which, in all -other Christian countries, are resigned despairingly to an incurable -dullness—things that seem devoid of exhilarating amusement by their -very nature—are here lifted to such vast heights of buffoonery that -contemplating them strains the mid-riff almost to breaking. I cite an -example: the worship of God. Everywhere else on earth it is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> carried -on in a solemn and dispiriting manner; in England, of course, the -bishops are obscene, but the average man seldom gets a fair chance to -laugh at them and enjoy them. Now come home. Here we not only have -bishops who are enormously more obscene than even the most gifted of -the English bishops; we have also a huge force of lesser specialists in -ecclesiastical mountebankery—tin-horn Loyolas, Savonarolas and Xaviers -of a hundred fantastic rites, each performing untiringly and each full -of a grotesque and illimitable whimsicality. Every American town, -however small, has one of its own: a holy clerk with so fine a talent -for introducing the arts of jazz into the salvation of the damned that -his performance takes on all the gaudiness of a four-ring circus, and -the bald announcement that he will raid Hell on such and such a night -is enough to empty all the town blind-pigs and bordellos and pack -his sanctuary to the doors. And to aid him and inspire him there are -traveling experts to whom he stands in the relation of a wart to the -Matterhorn—stupendous masters of theological imbecility, contrivers -of doctrines utterly preposterous, heirs to the Joseph Smith, Mother -Eddy and John Alexander Dowie tradition—Bryan, Sunday, and their like. -These are the eminences of the American Sacred College. I delight in -them. Their proceedings make me a happier American.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p> - -<p>Turn, now, to politics. Consider, for example, a campaign for the -Presidency. Would it be possible to imagine anything more uproariously -idiotic—a deafening, nerve-wracking battle to the death between -Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Harlequin and Sganarelle, Gobbo and Dr. -Cook—the unspeakable, with fearful snorts, gradually swallowing the -inconceivable? I defy any one to match it elsewhere on this earth. -In other lands, at worst, there are at least intelligible issues, -coherent ideas, salient personalities. Somebody says something, and -somebody replies. But what did Harding say in 1920, and what did Cox -reply? Who was Harding, anyhow, and who was Cox? Here, having perfected -democracy, we lift the whole combat to symbolism, to transcendentalism, -to metaphysics. Here we load a pair of palpably tin cannon with blank -cartridges charged with talcum powder, and so let fly. Here one may -howl over the show without any uneasy reminder that it is serious, and -that some one may be hurt. I hold that this elevation of politics to -the plane of undiluted comedy is peculiarly American, that nowhere else -on this disreputable ball has the art of the sham-battle been developed -to such fineness. Two experiences are in point. During the Harding-Cox -combat of bladders an article of mine, dealing with some of its more -melodramatic phases, was translated into German and reprinted by a -Berlin paper. At the head of it the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> editor was careful to insert a -preface explaining to his readers, but recently delivered to democracy, -that such contests were not taken seriously by intelligent Americans, -and warning them solemnly against getting into sweats over politics. -At about the same time I had dinner with an Englishman. From cocktails -to bromo seltzer he bewailed the political lassitude of the English -populace—its growing indifference to the whole partisan harlequinade. -Here were two typical foreign attitudes: the Germans were in danger -of making politics too harsh and implacable, and the English were in -danger of forgetting politics altogether. Both attitudes, it must -be plain, make for bad shows. Observing a German campaign, one is -uncomfortably harassed and stirred up; observing an English campaign -(at least in times of peace), one falls asleep. In the United States -the thing is done better. Here politics is purged of all menace, all -sinister quality, all genuine significance, and stuffed with such -gorgeous humors, such inordinate farce that one comes to the end of -a campaign with one's ribs loose, and ready for "King Lear," or a -hanging, or a course of medical journals.</p> - -<p>But feeling better for the laugh. <i>Ridi si sapis,</i> said Martial. Mirth -is necessary to wisdom, to comfort, above all, to happiness. Well, -here is the land of mirth, as Germany is the land of metaphysics and -France is the land of fornication. Here the buffoonery<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> never stops. -What could be more delightful than the endless struggle of the Puritan -to make the joy of the minority unlawful and impossible? The effort -is itself a greater joy to one standing on the side-lines that any or -all of the carnal joys that it combats. Always, when I contemplate an -uplifter at his hopeless business, I recall a scene in an old-time -burlesque show, witnessed for hire, in my days as a dramatic critic. A -chorus girl executed a fall upon the stage, and Rudolph Krausemeyer, -the Swiss comedian, rushed to her aid. As he stooped painfully to -succor her, Irving Rabinovitz, the Zionist comedian, fetched him a -fearful clout across the cofferdam with a slap-stick. So the uplifter, -the soul-saver, the Americanizer, striving to make the Republic fit -for Y. M. C. A. secretaries. He is the eternal American, ever moved by -the best of intentions, ever running <i> la</i> Krausemeyer to the rescue -of virtue, and ever getting his pantaloons fanned by the Devil. I am -naturally sinful, and such spectacles caress me. If the slap-stick were -a sash-weight the show would be cruel, and I'd probably complain to -the <i>Polizei.</i> As it is, I know that the uplifter is not really hurt, -but simply shocked. The blow, in fact, does him good, for it helps to -get him into Heaven, as exegetes prove from Matthew v, 11: <i>Heureux -serez-vous, lorsqu'on vous outragera, qu'on vous perscutera,</i> and so -on. As for me, it makes me<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> a more contented man, and hence a better -citizen. One man prefers the Republic because it pays better wages -than Bulgaria. Another because it has laws to keep him sober and his -daughter chaste. Another because the Woolworth Building is higher than -the cathedral at Chartres. Another because, living here, he can read -the New York <i>Evening Journal.</i> Another because there is a warrant out -for him somewhere else. Me, I like it because it amuses me to my taste. -I never get tired of the show. It is worth every cent it costs.</p> - -<p>That cost, it seems to me is very moderate. Taxes in the United -States are not actually high. I figure, for example, that my private -share of the expense of maintaining the Hon. Mr. Harding in the White -House this year will work out to less than 80 cents. Try to think of -better sport for the money: in New York it has been estimated that -it costs $8 to get comfortably tight, and $17.50, on an average, to -pinch a girl's arm. The United States Senate will cost me perhaps $11 -for the year, but against that expense set the subscription price -of the <i>Congressional Record,</i> about $15, which, as a journalist, I -receive for nothing. For $4 less than nothing I am thus entertained as -Solomon never was by his hooch dancers. Col. George Brinton McClellan -Harvey costs me but 25 cents a year; I get Nicholas Murray Butler -free. Finally, there is young Teddy Roosevelt,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> the naval expert. -Teddy costs me, as I work it out, about 11 cents a year, or less -than a cent a month. More, he entertains me doubly for the money, -first as naval expert, and secondly as a walking <i>attentat</i> upon -democracy, a devastating proof that there is nothing, after all, in -that superstition. We Americans subscribe to the doctrine of human -equality—and the Rooseveltii reduce it to an absurdity as brilliantly -as the sons of Veit Bach. Where is your equal opportunity now? Here in -this Eden of clowns, with the highest rewards of clowning theoretically -open to every poor boy—here in the very citadel of democracy we found -and cherish a clown <i>dynasty!</i></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a name="II_HUNEKER_A_MEMORY" id="II_HUNEKER_A_MEMORY">II. HUNEKER: A MEMORY</a></h4> - - -<p>There was a stimulating aliveness about him always, an air of living -eagerly and a bit recklessly, a sort of defiant resiliency. In his -very frame and form something provocative showed itself—an insolent -singularity, obvious to even the most careless glance. That Caligulan -profile of his was more than simply unusual in a free republic, -consecrated to good works; to a respectable American, encountering -it in the lobby of the Metropolitan or in the smoke-room of a -<i>Doppelschrauben-schnellpostdampfer,</i> it must have suggested inevitably -the dark enterprises and illicit metaphysics of a Heliogabalus. More, -there was always something rakish and defiant about his hat—it was -too white, or it curled in the wrong way, or a feather peeped from the -band—, and a hint of antinomianism in his cravat. Yet more, he ran to -exotic tastes in eating and drinking, preferring occult goulashes and -risi-bisis to honest American steaks, and great floods of Pilsner to -the harsh beverages of God-fearing men. Finally, there was his talk, -that cataract of sublime trivialities: gossip lifted to the plane of -the gods, the unmentionable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> bedizened with an astounding importance, -and even profundity.</p> - -<p>In his early days, when he performed the tonal and carnal prodigies -that he liked to talk of afterward, I was at nurse, and too young to -have any traffic with him. When I encountered him at last he was in -the high flush of the middle years, and had already become a tradition -in the little world that critics inhabit. We sat down to luncheon -at one o'clock; I think it must have been at Lchow's, his favorite -refuge and rostrum to the end. At six, when I had to go, the waiter was -hauling in his tenth (or was it twentieth?) <i>Seidel</i> of Pilsner, and -he was bringing to a close <i>prestissimo</i> the most amazing monologue -that these ears (up to that time) had ever funnelled into this -consciousness. What a stew, indeed! Berlioz and the question of the -clang-tint of the viola, the psychopathological causes of the suicide -of Tschaikowsky, why Nietzsche had to leave Sils Maria between days in -1887, the echoes of Flaubert in (then but newly dawned), -the precise topography of the warts of Liszt, George Bernard Shaw's -heroic but vain struggles to throw off Presbyterianism, how Frau Cosima -saved Wagner from the libidinous Swedish baroness, what to drink when -playing Chopin, what Czanne thought of his disciples, the defects in -the structure of "Sister Carrie," Anton Seidl and the musical union, -the complex love affairs<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> of Gounod, the early days of David Belasco, -the varying talents and idiosyncrasies of Lillian Russell's earlier -husbands, whether a girl educated at Vassar could ever really learn to -love, the exact composition of chicken paprika, the correct tempo of -the Vienna waltz, the style of William Dean Howells, what George Moore -said about German bathrooms, the true inwardness of the affair between -D'Annunzio and Duse, the origin of the theory that all oboe players are -crazy, why Lwenbru survived exportation better than Hofbru, Ibsen's -loathing of Norwegians, the best remedy for Rhine wine <i>Katzenjammer,</i> -how to play Brahms, the degeneration of the Bal Bullier, the sheer -physical impossibility of getting Dvorak drunk, the genuine last words -of Walt Whitman....</p> - -<p>I left in a sort of fever, and it was a couple of days later before I -began to sort out my impressions, and formulate a coherent image. Was -the man allusive in his books—so allusive that popular report credited -him with the actual manufacture of authorities? Then he was ten times -as allusive in his discourse—a veritable geyser of unfamiliar names, -shocking epigrams in strange tongues, unearthly philosophies out of -the backwaters of Scandinavia, Transylvania, Bulgaria, the Basque -country, the Ukraine. And did he, in his criticism, pass facilely from -the author to the man, and from the man to his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> wife, and to the wives -of his friends? Then at the <i>Biertisch</i> he began long beyond the point -where the last honest wife gives up the ghost, and so, full tilt, ran -into such complexities of adultery that a plain sinner could scarcely -follow him. I try to give you, ineptly and grotesquely, some notion -of the talk of the man, but I must fail inevitably. It was, in brief, -chaos, and chaos cannot be described. But it was chaos made to gleam -and corruscate with every device of the seven arts—chaos drenched in -all the colors imaginable, chaos scored for an orchestra which made the -great band of Berlioz seem like a fife and drum corps. One night a few -months before the war, I sat in the Paris Opera House listening to the -first performance of Richard Strauss's "Josef's Legend," with Strauss -himself conducting. On the stage there was a riot of hues that swung -the eyes 'round and 'round in a crazy mazurka; in the orchestra there -were such volleys and explosions of tone that the ears (I fall into -a Hunekeran trope) began to go pale and clammy with surgical shock. -Suddenly, above all the uproar, a piccolo launched into a new and saucy -tune—in an unrelated key!... Instantly and quite naturally, I thought -of the incomparable James. When he gave a show at Lchow's he never -forgot that anarchistic passage for the piccolo.</p> - -<p>I observe a tendency since his death to estimate him in terms of -the content of his books. Even Frank<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> Harris, who certainly should -know better, goes there for the facts about him. Nothing could do -him worse injustice. In those books, of course, there is a great -deal of perfectly sound stuff; the wonder is, in truth, that so much -of it holds up so well to-day—for example, the essays on Strauss, -on Brahms and on Nietzsche, and the whole volume on Chopin. But -the real Huneker never got himself formally between covers, if one -forgets "Old Fogy" and parts of "Painted Veils." The volumes of his -regular canon are made up, in the main, of articles written for the -more intellectual magazines and newspapers of their era, and they -are full of a conscious striving to qualify for respectable company. -Huneker, always curiously modest, never got over the notion that it -was a singular honor for a man such as he—a mere diurnal scribbler, -innocent of academic robes—to be published by so austere a publisher -as Scribner. More than once, anchored at the beer-table, we discussed -the matter at length, I always arguing that all the honor was enjoyed -by Scribner. But Huneker, I believe in all sincerity, would not -have it so, any more than he would have it that he was a better -music critic than his two colleagues, the pedantic Krehbiel and the -nonsensical Finck. This illogical modesty, of course, had its limits; -it made him cautious about expressing himself, but it seldom led him -into downright assumptions of false personality. Nowhere in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> all his -books will you find him doing the things that every right-thinking -Anglo-Saxon critic is supposed to do—the Middleton Murry, Paul Elmer -More, Clutton-Brock sort of puerility—solemn essays on Coleridge and -Addison, abysmal discussions of the relative merits of Schumann and -Mendelssohn, horrible treatises upon the relations of Goethe to the -Romantic Movement, dull scratchings in a hundred such exhausted and -sterile fields. Such enterprises were not for Huneker; he kept himself -out of that black coat. But I am convinced that he always had his own -raiment pressed carefully before he left Lchow's for the temple of -Athene—and maybe changed cravats, and put on a boiled shirt, and took -the feather out of his hat. The simon-pure Huneker, the Huneker who was -the true essence and prime motor of the more courtly Huneker—remained -behind. This real Huneker survives in conversations that still haunt -the rafters of the beer-halls of two continents, and in a vast mass of -newspaper impromptus, thrown off too hastily to be reduced to complete -decorum, and in two books that stand outside the official canon, and -yet contain the man himself as not even "Iconoclasts" or the Chopin -book contains him, to wit, the "Old Fogy" aforesaid and the "Painted -Veils" of his last year. Both were published, so to speak, out of the -back door—the former by a music publisher in Philadelphia and the -latter in a small and expensive edition<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> for the admittedly damned. -There is a chapter in "Painted Veils" that is Huneker to every last -hitch of the shoulders and twinkle of the eye—the chapter in which -the hero soliloquizes on art, life, immortality, and women—especially -women. And there are half a dozen chapters in "Old Fogy"—superficially -buffoonery, but how penetrating! how gorgeously flavored! how -learned!—that come completely up to the same high specification. If I -had to choose one Huneker book and give up all the others, I'd choose -"Old Fogy" instantly. In it Huneker is utterly himself. In it the last -trace of the pedagogue vanishes. Art is no longer, even by implication, -a device for improving the mind. It is wholly a magnificent adventure.</p> - -<p>That notion of it is what Huneker brought into American criticism, and -it is for that bringing that he will be remembered. No other critic -of his generation had a tenth of his influence. Almost single-handed -he overthrew the sthetic theory that had flourished in the United -States since the death of Poe, and set up an utterly contrary sthetic -theory in its place. If the younger men of to-day have emancipated -themselves from the Puritan sthetic, if the schoolmaster is now -palpably on the defensive, and no longer the unchallenged assassin of -the fine arts that he once was, if he has already begun to compromise -somewhat absurdly with new and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> sounder ideas, and even to lift his -voice in artificial hosannahs, then Huneker certainly deserves all the -credit for the change. What he brought back from Paris was precisely -the thing that was most suspected in the America of those days: the -capacity for gusto. Huneker had that capacity in a degree unmatched by -any other critic. When his soul went adventuring among masterpieces -it did not go in Sunday broad-cloth; it went with vine leaves in its -hair. The rest of the appraisers and criers-up—even Howells, with -all his humor—could never quite rid themselves of the professorial -manner. When they praised it was always with some hint of ethical, or, -at all events, of cultural purpose; when they condemned that purpose -was even plainer. The arts, to them, constituted a sort of school for -the psyche; their aim was to discipline and mellow the spirit. But to -Huneker their one aim was always to make the spirit glad—to set it, in -Nietzsche's phrase, to dancing with arms and legs. He had absolutely -no feeling for extra-sthetic valuations. If a work of art that stood -before him was honest, if it was original, if it was beautiful and -thoroughly alive, then he was for it to his last corpuscle. What if it -violated all the accepted canons? Then let the accepted canons go hang! -What if it lacked all purpose to improve and lift up? Then so much the -better! What if it shocked all right-feeling men, and made them blush<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> -and tremble? Then damn all men of right feeling forevermore.</p> - -<p>With this ethical atheism, so strange in the United States and so -abhorrent to most Americans, there went something that was probably -also part of the loot of Paris: an insatiable curiosity about the -artist as man. This curiosity was responsible for two of Huneker's -salient characters: his habit of mixing even the most serious -criticism with cynical and often scandalous gossip, and his pervasive -foreignness. I believe that it is almost literally true to say that he -could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had -seen the composer's mistress, or at all events a good photograph of -her. He thought of Wagner, not alone in terms of melody and harmony, -but also in terms of the Tribschen idyl and the Bayreuth tragi-comedy. -Go through his books and you will see how often he was fascinated by -mere eccentricity of personality. I doubt that even Huysmans, had -he been a respectable French Huguenot, would have interested him; -certainly his enthusiasm for Verlaine, Villiers de l'Isle Adam and -other such fantastic fish was centered upon the men quite as much -as upon the artists. His foreignness, so often urged against him by -defenders of the national tradition, was grounded largely on the fact -that such eccentric personalities were rare in the Republic—rare, and -well watched<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> by the <i>Polizei.</i> When one bobbed up, he was alert at -once—even though the newcomer was only a Roosevelt. The rest of the -American people he dismissed as a horde of slaves, goose-steppers, -cads, Methodists; he could not imagine one of them becoming a -first-rate artist, save by a miracle. Even the American executant was -under his suspicion, for he knew very well that playing the fiddle -was a great deal more than scraping four strings of copper and catgut -with a switch from a horse's tail. What he asked himself was how a man -could play Bach decently, and then, after playing, go from the hall to -a soda-fountain, or a political meeting, or a lecture at the Harvard -Club. Overseas there was a better air for artists, and overseas Huneker -looked for them.</p> - -<p>These fundamental theories of his, of course, had their defects. They -were a bit too simple, and often very much too hospitable. Huneker, -clinging to them, certainly did his share of whooping for the sort of -revolutionist who is here to-day and gone to-morrow; he was fugleman, -in his time, for more than one cause that was lost almost as soon as -it was stated. More, his prejudices made him somewhat ansthetic, at -times, to the new men who were not brilliant in color but respectably -drab, and who tried to do their work within the law. Particularly in -his later years, when the old gusto began to die out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> and all that -remained of it was habit, he was apt to go chasing after strange -birds and so miss seeing the elephants go by. I could put together a -very pretty list of frauds that he praised. I could concoct another -list of genuine <i>arrivs</i> that he overlooked. But all that is merely -saying that there were human limits to him; the professors, on their -side, have sinned far worse, and in both directions. Looking back -over the whole of his work, one must needs be amazed by the general -soundness of his judgments. He discerned, in the main, what was good -and he described it in terms that were seldom bettered afterward. -His successive heroes, always under fire when he first championed -them, almost invariably moved to secure ground and became solid men, -challenged by no one save fools—Ibsen, Nietzsche, Brahms, Strauss, -Czanne, Stirner, Synge, the Russian composers, the Russian novelists. -He did for this Western world what Georg Brandes was doing for -Continental Europe—sorting out the new comers with sharp eyes, and -giving mighty lifts to those who deserved it. Brandes did it in terms -of the old academic bombast; he was never more the professor than -when he was arguing for some hobgoblin of the professors. But Huneker -did it with verve and grace; he made it, not schoolmastering, but a -glorious deliverance from schoolmastering. As I say, his influence was -enormous. The fine arts,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> at his touch, shed all their Anglo-American -lugubriousness, and became provocative and joyous. The spirit of -senility got out of them and the spirit of youth got into them. His -criticism, for all its French basis, was thoroughly American—vastly -more American, in fact, than the New England ponderosity that it -displaced. Though he was an Easterner and a cockney of the cockneys, he -picked up some of the Western spaciousness that showed itself in Mark -Twain. And all the young men followed him.</p> - -<p>A good many of them, I daresay, followed him so ardently that they -got a good distance ahead of him, and often, perhaps, embarrassed him -by taking his name in vain. For all his enterprise and iconoclasm, -indeed, there was not much of the Berserker in him, and his floutings -of the national sthetic tradition seldom took the form of forthright -challenges. Here the strange modesty that I have mentioned always -stayed him as a like weakness stayed Mark Twain. He could never quite -rid himself of the feeling that he was no more than an amateur among -the gaudy doctors who roared in the reviews, and that it would be -unseemly for him to forget their authority. I have a notion that -this feeling was born in the days when he stood almost alone, with -the whole faculty grouped in a pained circle around him. He was -then too miserable a worm to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> noticed at all. Later on, gaining -importance, he was lectured somewhat severely for his violation of -decorum; in England even Max Beerbohm made an idiotic assault upon -him. It was the Germans and the French, in fact, who first praised him -intelligently—and these friends were too far away to help a timorous -man in a row at home. This sensation of isolation and littleness, I -suppose, explains his fidelity to the newspapers, and the otherwise -inexplicable joy that he always took in his forgotten work for the -<i>Musical Courier,</i> in his day a very dubious journal. In such waters -he felt at ease. There he could disport without thought of the dignity -of publishers and the eagle eyes of campus reviewers. Some of the -connections that he formed were full of an ironical inappropriateness. -His discomforts in his <i>Puck</i> days showed themselves in the feebleness -of his work; when he served the <i>Times</i> he was as well placed as a -Cabell at a colored ball. Perhaps the <i>Sun,</i> in the years before it -was munseyized, offered him the best berth that he ever had, save it -were his old one on <i>Mlle. New York.</i> But whatever the flag, he served -it loyally, and got a lot of fun out of the business. He liked the -pressure of newspaper work; he liked the associations that it involved, -the gabble in the press-room of the Opera House, the exchanges of news -and gossip; above all, he liked the relative ease of the intellectual -harness. In a newspaper<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> article he could say whatever happened to pop -into his mind, and if it looked thin the next day, then there was, -after all, no harm done. But when he sat down to write a book—or -rather to compile it, for all of his volumes were reworked magazine -(and sometimes newspaper) articles—he became self-conscious, and so -knew uneasiness. The tightness of his style, its one salient defect, -was probably the result of this weakness. The corrected clippings that -constituted most of his manuscripts are so beladen with revisions and -rerevisions that they are almost indecipherable.</p> - -<p>Thus the growth of Huneker's celebrity in his later years filled him -with wonder, and never quite convinced him. He was certainly wholly -free from any desire to gather disciples about him and found a school. -There was, of course, some pride of authorship in him, and he liked -to know that his books were read and admired; in particular, he was -pleased by their translation into German and Czech. But it seemed to -me that he shrank from the bellicosity that so often got into praise -of them—that he disliked being set up as the opponent and superior of -the professors whom he always vaguely respected and the rival newspaper -critics whose friendship he esteemed far above their professional -admiration, or even respect. I could never draw him into a discussion -of these rivals, save perhaps a discussion of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> their historic feats at -beer-guzzling. He wrote vastly better than any of them and knew far -more about the arts than most of them, and he was undoubtedly aware -of it in his heart, but it embarrassed him to hear this superiority -put into plain terms. His intense gregariousness probably accounted -for part of this reluctance to pit himself against them; he could -not imagine a world without a great deal of easy comradeship in it, -and much casual slapping of backs. But under it all was the chronic -underestimation of himself that I have discussed—his fear that he -had spread himself over too many arts, and that his equipment was -thus defective in every one of them. "Steeplejack" is full of this -apologetic timidity. In its very title, as he explains it, there -is a confession of inferiority that is almost maudlin: "Life has -been the Barmecide's feast to me," and so on. In the book itself he -constantly takes refuge in triviality from the harsh challenges of -critical parties, and as constantly avoids facts that would shock the -Philistines. One might reasonably assume, reading it from end to end, -that his early days in Paris were spent in the fashion of a Y. M. C. A. -secretary. A few drinking bouts, of course, and a love affair in the -manner of Dubuque, Iowa—but where are the wenches?</p> - -<p>More than once, indeed, the book sinks to downright equivocation—for -example, in the Roosevelt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> episodes. Certainly no one who knew -Huneker in life will ever argue seriously that he was deceived by the -Roosevelt buncombe, or that his view of life was at all comparable to -that of the great demagogue. He stood, in fact, at the opposite pole. -He saw the world, not as a moral show, but as a sort of glorified -Follies. He was absolutely devoid of that obsession with the problem -of conduct which was Roosevelt's main virtue in the eyes of a stupid -and superstitious people. More, he was wholly against Roosevelt on -many concrete issues—the race suicide banality, the Panama swindle, -the war. He was far too much the realist to believe in the American -case, either before or after 1917, and the manner in which it was -urged, by Roosevelt and others, violated his notions of truth, honor -and decency. I assume nothing here; I simply record what he told me -himself. Nevertheless, the sheer notoriety of the Rough Rider—his -picturesque personality and talent as a mountebank—had its effect on -Huneker, and so he was a bit flattered when he was summoned to Oyster -Bay, and there accepted gravely the nonsense that was poured into his -ear, and even repeated some of it without a cackle in his book. To say -that he actually believed in it would be to libel him. It was precisely -such hollow tosh that he stood against in his rle of critic of art and -life; it was by exposing its hollowness that he lifted himself above -the general. The same<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> weakness induced him to accept membership in the -National Institute of Arts and Letters. The offer of it to a man of his -age and attainments, after he had been passed over year after year in -favor of all sorts of cheapjack novelists and tenth-rate compilers of -college textbooks, was intrinsically insulting; it was almost as if the -Musical Union had offered to admit a Brahms. But with the insult went -a certain gage of respectability, a certain formal forgiveness for old -frivolities, a certain abatement of old doubts and self-questionings -and so Huneker accepted. Later on, reviewing the episode in his -own mind, he found it the spring of doubts that were even more -uncomfortable. His last letter to me was devoted to the matter. He was -by then eager to maintain that he had got in by a process only partly -under his control, and that, being in, he could discover no decorous -way of getting out.</p> - -<p>But perhaps I devote too much space to the elements in the man that -worked against his own free development. They were, after all, grounded -upon qualities that are certainly not to be deprecated—modesty, -good-will to his fellow-men, a fine sense of team-work, a distaste -for acrimonious and useless strife. These qualities gave him great -charm. He was not only humorous; he was also good-humored; even -when the crushing discomforts of his last illness were upon him his -amiability never faltered.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> And in addition to humor there was wit, -a far rarer thing. His most casual talk was full of this wit, and it -bathed everything that he discussed in a new and brilliant light. I -have never encountered a man who was further removed from dullness; -it seemed a literal impossibility for him to open his mouth without -discharging some word or phrase that arrested the attention and stuck -in the memory. And under it all, giving an extraordinary quality to -the verbal fireworks, there was a solid and apparently illimitable -learning. The man knew as much as forty average men, and his knowledge -was well-ordered and instantly available. He had read everything and -had seen everything and heard everything, and nothing that he had ever -read or seen or heard quite passed out of his mind.</p> - -<p>Here, in three words, was the main virtue of his criticism—its -gigantic richness. It had the dazzling charm of an ornate and intricate -design, a blazing fabric of fine silks. It was no mere pontifical -statement of one man's reactions to a set of ideas; it was a sort -of essence of the reactions of many men—of all the men, in fact, -worth hearing. Huneker discarded their scaffolding, their ifs and -whereases, and presented only what was important and arresting in their -conclusions. It was never a mere <i>pastiche</i>; the selection was made -delicately, discreetly, with almost unerring taste and judgment. And -in the summing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> up there was always the clearest possible statement -of the whole matter. What finally emerged was a body of doctrine that -came, I believe, very close to the truth. Into an assembly of national -critics who had long wallowed in dogmatic puerilities, Huneker entered -with a taste infinitely surer and more civilized, a learning infinitely -greater, and an address infinitely more engaging. No man was less the -reformer by inclination, and yet he became a reformer beyond compare. -He emancipated criticism in America from its old slavery to stupidity, -and with it he emancipated all the arts themselves.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a name="III_FOOTNOTE_ON_CRITICISM" id="III_FOOTNOTE_ON_CRITICISM">III. FOOTNOTE ON CRITICISM</a></h4> - - -<p>Nearly all the discussions of criticism that I am acquainted with -start off with a false assumption, to wit, that the primary motive -of the critic, the impulse which makes a critic of him instead of, -say, a politician, or a stockbroker, is pedagogical—that he writes -because he is possessed by a passion to advance the enlightenment, -to put down error and wrong, to disseminate some specific doctrine: -psychological, epistemological, historical, or sthetic. This is -true, it seems to me, only of bad critics, and its degree of truth -increases in direct ratio to their badness. The motive of the critic -who is really worth reading—the only critic of whom, indeed, it may -be said truthfully that it is at all possible to read him, save as an -act of mental discipline—is something quite different. That motive -is not the motive of the pedagogue, but the motive of the artist. It -is no more and no less than the simple desire to function freely and -beautifully, to give outward and objective form to ideas that bubble -inwardly and have a fascinating lure in them, to get rid of them -dramatically and make an articulate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> noise in the world. It was for -this reason that Plato wrote the "Republic," and for this reason that -Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony, and it is for this reason, to -drop a million miles, that I am writing the present essay. Everything -else is afterthought, mock-modesty, messianic delusion—in brief, -affectation and folly. Is the contrary conception of criticism widely -cherished? Is it almost universally held that the thing is a brother -to jurisprudence, advertising, laparotomy, chautauqua lecturing and -the art of the schoolmarm? Then certainly the fact that it is so held -should be sufficient to set up an overwhelming probability of its lack -of truth and sense. If I speak with some heat, it is as one who has -suffered. When, years ago, I devoted myself diligently to critical -pieces upon the writings of Theodore Dreiser, I found that practically -every one who took any notice of my proceedings at all fell into either -one of two assumptions about my underlying purpose: <i>(a)</i> that I had -a fanatical devotion for Mr. Dreiser's ideas and desired to propagate -them, or <i>(b)</i> that I was an ardent patriot, and yearned to lift up -American literature. Both assumptions were false. I had then, and I -have now, very little interest in many of Mr. Dreiser's main ideas; -when we meet, in fact, we usually quarrel about them. And I am wholly -devoid of public spirit, and haven't the least lust to improve American -literature; if it ever came<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> to what I regard as perfection my job -would be gone. What, then, was my motive in writing about Mr. Dreiser -so copiously? My motive, well known to Mr. Dreiser himself and to every -one else who knew, me as intimately as he did, was simply and solely -to sort out and give coherence to the ideas of Mr. Mencken, and to put -them into suave and ingratiating terms, and to discharge them with a -flourish, and maybe with a phrase of pretty song, into the dense fog -that blanketed the Republic.</p> - -<p>The critic's choice of criticism rather than of what is called creative -writing is chiefly a matter of temperament—perhaps, more accurately -of hormones—with accidents of education and environment to help. The -feelings that happen to be dominant in him at the moment the scribbling -frenzy seizes him are feelings inspired, not directly by life itself, -but by books, pictures, music, sculpture, architecture, religion, -philosophy—in brief, by some other man's feelings about life. They -are thus, in a sense, second-hand, and it is no wonder that creative -artists so easily fall into the theory that they are also second-rate. -Perhaps they usually are. If, indeed, the critic continues on this -plane—if he lacks the intellectual agility and enterprise needed to -make the leap from the work of art to the vast and mysterious complex -of phenomena behind it—then they <i>always</i> are, and he remains no more -than a fugelman or policeman to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> his betters. But if a genuine artist -is conceded within him—if his feelings are in any sense profound and -original, and his capacity for self-expression is above the average of -educated men—then he moves inevitably from the work of art to life -itself, and begins to take on a dignity that he formerly lacked. It -is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, -universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent his whole -life appraising and describing the work of other men. Did Goethe, or -Carlyle, or Matthew Arnold, or Sainte-Beuve, or Macaulay, or even, to -come down a few pegs, Lewes, or Lowell, or Hazlitt? Certainly not. The -thing that becomes most obvious about the writings of all such men, -once they are examined carefully, is that the critic is always being -swallowed up by the creative artist—that what starts out as the review -of a book, or a play, or other work of art, usually develops very -quickly into an independent essay upon the theme of that work of art, -or upon some theme that it suggests—in a word, that it becomes a fresh -work of art, and only indirectly related to the one that suggested -it. This fact, indeed, is so plain that it scarcely needs statement. -What the pedagogues always object to in, for example, the <i>Quarterly</i> -reviewers is that they forgot the books they were supposed to review, -and wrote long papers—often, in fact, small books—expounding<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> -ideas suggested (or not suggested) by the books under review. Every -critic who is worth reading falls inevitably into the same habit. He -cannot stick to his task: what is before him is always infinitely -less interesting to him than what is within him. If he is genuinely -first-rate—if what is within him stands the test of type, and wins an -audience, and produces the reactions that every artist craves—then -he usually ends by abandoning the criticism of specific works of art -altogether, and setting up shop as a general merchant in general ideas, -<i>i. e.</i>, as an artist working in the materials of life itself.</p> - -<p>Mere reviewing, however conscientiously and competently it is done, is -plainly a much inferior business. Like writing poetry, it is chiefly -a function of intellectual immaturity. The young literatus just out -of the university, having as yet no capacity for grappling with the -fundamental mysteries of existence, is put to writing reviews of books, -or plays, or music, or painting. Very often he does it extremely well; -it is, in fact, not hard to do well, for even decayed pedagogues often -do it, as such graves of the intellect as the New York <i>Times</i> bear -witness. But if he continues to do it, whether well or ill, it is a -sign to all the world that his growth ceased when they made him <i>Artium -Baccalaureus.</i> Gradually he becomes, whether in or out of the academic -grove, a professor, which is to say, a man devoted to diluting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> and -retailing the ideas of his superiors—not an artist, not even a bad -artist, but almost the antithesis of an artist. He is learned, he is -sober, he is painstaking and accurate—but he is as hollow as a jug. -Nothing is in him save the ghostly echoes of other men's thoughts -and feelings. If he were a genuine artist he would have thoughts and -feelings of his own, and the impulse to give them objective form would -be irresistible. An artist can no more withstand that impulse than a -politician can withstand the temptations of a job. There are no mute, -inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound -test of a Milton is that he functions as a Milton. His difference -from other men lies precisely in the superior vigor of his impulse to -self-expression, not in the superior beauty and loftiness of his ideas. -Other men, in point of fact, often have the same ideas, or perhaps -even loftier ones, but they are able to suppress them, usually on -grounds of decorum, and so they escape being artists, and are respected -by right-thinking persons, and die with money in the bank, and are -forgotten in two weeks.</p> - -<p>Obviously, the critic whose performance we are commonly called upon to -investigate is a man standing somewhere along the path leading from the -beginning that I have described to the goal. He has got beyond being a -mere cataloguer and valuer of other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> men's ideas, but he has not yet -become an autonomous artist—he is not yet ready to challenge attention -with his own ideas alone. But it is plain that his motion, in so far as -he is moving at all, must be in the direction of that autonomy—that -is, unless one imagines him sliding backward into senile infantilism: -a spectacle not unknown to literary pathology, but too pathetic to be -discussed here. Bear this motion in mind, and the true nature of his -aims and purposes becomes clear; more, the incurable falsity of the -aims and purposes usually credited to him becomes equally clear. He -is not actually trying to perform an impossible act of arctic justice -upon the artist whose work gives him a text. He is not trying with -mathematical passion to find out exactly what was in that artist's -mind at the moment of creation, and to display it precisely and in an -ecstasy of appreciation. He is not trying to bring the work discussed -into accord with some transient theory of sthetics, or ethics, or -truth, or to determine its degree of departure from that theory. He is -not trying to lift up the fine arts, or to defend democracy against -sense, or to promote happiness at the domestic hearth, or to convert -sophomores into right-thinkers, or to serve God. He is not trying to -fit a group of novel phenomena into the orderly process of history. He -is not even trying to discharge the catalytic office that I myself, in -a romantic moment, once sought to force<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> upon him. He is, first and -last, simply trying to express himself. He is trying to arrest and -challenge a sufficient body of readers, to make them pay attention -to him, to impress them with the charm and novelty of his ideas, to -provoke them into an agreeable (or shocked) awareness of him, and he is -trying to achieve thereby for his own inner ego the grateful feeling of -a function performed, a tension relieved, a <i>katharsis</i> attained which -Wagner achieved when he wrote "Die Walkre," and a hen achieves every -time she lays an egg.</p> - -<p>Joseph Conrad is moved by that necessity to write romances; Bach was -moved to write music; poets are moved to write poetry; critics are -moved to write criticism. The form is nothing; the only important -thing is the motive power, and it is the same in all cases. It is -the pressing yearning of every man who has ideas in him to empty -them upon the world, to hammer them into plausible and ingratiating -shapes, to compel the attention and respect of his equals, to lord -it over his inferiors. So seen, the critic becomes a far more -transparent and agreeable fellow than ever he was in the discourses -of the psychologists who sought to make him a mere appraiser in an -intellectual customs house, a gauger in a distillery of the spirit, -a just and infallible judge upon the cosmic bench. Such offices, in -point of fact, never fit him. He always bulges over their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> confines. -So labelled and estimated, it inevitably turns out that the specific -critic under examination is a very bad one, or no critic at all. -But when he is thought of, not as pedagogue, but as artist, then he -begins to take on reality, and, what is more, dignity. Carlyle was -surely no just and infallible judge; on the contrary, he was full -of prejudices, biles, navets, humors. Yet he is read, consulted, -attended to. Macaulay was unfair, inaccurate, fanciful, lyrical—yet -his essays live. Arnold had his faults too, and so did Sainte-Beuve, -and so did Goethe, and so did many another of that line—and yet they -are remembered to-day, and all the learned and conscientious critics -of their time, laboriously concerned with the precise intent of the -artists under review, and passionately determined to set it forth with -god-like care and to relate it exactly to this or that great stream of -ideas—all these pedants are forgotten. What saved Carlyle, Macaulay -and company is as plain as day. They were first-rate artists. They -could make the thing charming, and that is always a million times more -important than making it true.</p> - -<p>Truth, indeed, is something that is believed in completely only by -persons who have never tried personally to pursue it to its fastnesses -and grab it by the tail. It is the adoration of second-rate men—men -who always receive it at second-hand.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> Pedagogues believe in immutable -truths and spend their lives trying to determine them and propagate -them; the intellectual progress of man consists largely of a concerted -effort to block and destroy their enterprise. Nine times out of ten, -in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; -there is only error to be exposed. In whole departments of human -inquiry it seems to me quite unlikely that the truth ever <i>will</i> be -discovered. Nevertheless, the rubber-stamp thinking of the world -always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical -with the discovery of the truth—that error and truth are simple -opposites. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, -when it has been cured of one error, is usually simply another error, -and maybe one worse than the first one. This is the whole history of -the intellect in brief. The average man of to-day does not believe in -precisely the same imbecilities that the Greek of the fourth century -before Christ believed in, but the things that he <i>does</i> believe in are -often quite as idiotic. Perhaps this statement is a bit too sweeping. -There is, year by year, a gradual accumulation of what may be called, -provisionally, truths—there is a slow accretion of ideas that somehow -manage to meet all practicable human tests, and so survive. But even -so, it is risky to call them absolute truths. All that one may safely -say of them is that no one, as yet, has demonstrated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> that they are -errors. Soon or late, if experience teaches us anything, they are -likely to succumb too. The profoundest truths of the Middle Ages are -now laughed at by schoolboys. The profoundest truths of democracy will -be laughed at, a few centuries hence, even by school-teachers.</p> - -<p>In the department of sthetics, wherein critics mainly disport -themselves, it is almost impossible to think of a so-called truth -that shows any sign of being permanently true. The most profound of -principles begins to fade and quiver almost as soon as it is stated. -But the work of art, as opposed to the theory behind it, has a longer -life, particularly if that theory be obscure and questionable, and so -cannot be determined accurately. "Hamlet," the Mona Lisa, "Faust," -"Dixie," "Parsifal," "Mother Goose," "Annabel Lee," "Huckleberry -Finn"—these things, so baffling to pedagogy, so contumacious to the -categories, so mysterious in purpose and utility—these things live. -And why? Because there is in them the flavor of salient, novel and -attractive personality, because the quality that shines from them is -not that of correct demeanor but that of creative passion, because they -pulse and breathe and speak, because they are genuine works of art. So -with criticism. Let us forget all the heavy effort to make a science of -it; it is a fine art, or nothing. If the critic, retiring to his cell -to concoct his treatise upon a book or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> play or what-not, produces a -piece of writing that shows sound structure, and brilliant color, and -the flash of new and persuasive ideas, and civilized manners, and the -charm of an uncommon personality in free function, then he has given -something to the world that is worth having, and sufficiently justified -his existence. Is Carlyle's "Frederick" true? Who cares? As well ask -if the Parthenon is true, or the C Minor Symphony, or "Wiener Blur." -Let the critic who is an artist leave such necropsies to professors of -sthetics, who can no more determine the truth than he can, and will -infallibly make it unpleasant and a bore.</p> - -<p>It is, of course, not easy to practice this abstention. Two forces, -one within and one without, tend to bring even a Hazlitt or a Huneker -under the campus pump. One is the almost universal human susceptibility -to messianic delusions—the irresistible tendency of practically every -man, once he finds a crowd in front of him, to strut and roll his -eyes. The other is the public demand, born of such long familiarity -with pedagogical criticism that no other kind is readily conceivable, -that the critic teach something as well as say something—in the -popular phrase, that he be constructive. Both operate powerfully -against his free functioning, and especially the former. He finds -it hard to resist the flattery of his customers, however little he -may actually esteem<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> it. If he knows anything at all, he knows that -his following, like that of every other artist in ideas, is chiefly -made up of the congenitally subaltern type of man and woman—natural -converts, lodge joiners, me-toos, stragglers after circus parades. -It is precious seldom that he ever gets a positive idea out of them; -what he usually gets is mere unintelligent ratification. But this -troop, despite its obvious failings, corrupts him in various ways. -For one thing, it enormously renforces his belief in his own ideas, -and so tends to make him stiff and dogmatic—in brief, precisely -everything that he ought not to be. And for another thing, it tends -to make him (by a curious contradiction) a bit pliant and politic: he -begins to estimate new ideas, not in proportion as they are amusing -or beautiful, but in proportion as they are likely to please. So -beset, front and rear, he sometimes sinks supinely to the level of a -professor, and his subsequent proceedings are interesting no more. -The true aim of a critic is certainly not to make converts. He must -know that very few of the persons who are susceptible to conversion -are worth converting. Their minds are intrinsically flabby and -parasitical, and it is certainly not sound sport to agitate minds -of that sort. Moreover, the critic must always harbor a grave doubt -about most of the ideas that they lap up so greedily—it must occur -to him not infrequently, in the silent watches of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> the night, that -much that he writes is sheer buncombe. As I have said, I can't imagine -any idea—that is, in the domain of sthetics—that is palpably and -incontrovertibly sound. All that I am familiar with, and in particular -all that I announce most vociferously, seem to me to contain a core -of quite obvious nonsense. I thus try to avoid cherishing them too -lovingly, and it always gives me a shiver to see any one else gobble -them at one gulp. Criticism, at bottom, is indistinguishable from -skepticism. Both launch themselves, the one by sthetic presentations -and the other by logical presentations, at the common human tendency -to accept whatever is approved, to take in ideas ready-made, to be -responsive to mere rhetoric and gesticulation. A critic who believes in -anything absolutely is bound to that something quite as helplessly as a -Christian is bound to the Freudian garbage in the Book of Revelation. -To that extent, at all events, he is unfree and unintelligent, and -hence a bad critic.</p> - -<p>The demand for "constructive" criticism is based upon the same false -assumption that immutable truths exist in the arts, and that the artist -will be improved by being made aware of them. This notion, whatever the -form it takes, is always absurd—as much so, indeed, as its brother -delusion that the critic, to be competent, must be a practitioner of -the specific art he ventures to deal with, <i>i. e.</i>, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> a doctor, to -cure a belly-ache, must have a belly-ache. As practically encountered, -it is disingenuous as well as absurd, for it comes chiefly from bad -artists who tire of serving as performing monkeys, and crave the -greater ease and safety of sophomores in class. They demand to be -taught in order to avoid being knocked about. In their demand is the -theory that instruction, if they could get it, would profit them—that -they are capable of doing better work than they do. As a practical -matter, I doubt that this is ever true. Bad poets never actually grow -any better; they invariably grow worse and worse. In all history there -has never been, to my knowledge, a single practitioner of any art -who, as a result of "constructive" criticism, improved his work. The -curse of all the arts, indeed, is the fact that they are constantly -invaded by persons who are not artists at all—persons whose yearning -to express their ideas and feelings is unaccompanied by the slightest -capacity for charming expression—in brief, persons with absolutely -nothing to say. This is particularly true of the art of letters, which -interposes very few technical obstacles to the vanity and garrulity of -such invaders. Any effort to teach them to write better is an effort -wasted, as every editor discovers for himself; they are as incapable -of it as they are of jumping over the moon. The only sort of criticism -that can deal with them to any profit is the sort that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> employs them -frankly as laboratory animals. It cannot cure them, but it can at least -make an amusing and perhaps edifying show of them. It is idle to argue -that the good in them is thus destroyed with the bad. The simple answer -is that there <i>is</i> no good in them. Suppose Poe had wasted his time -trying to dredge good work out of Rufus Dawes, author of "Geraldine." -He would have failed miserably—and spoiled a capital essay, still -diverting after three-quarters of a century. Suppose Beethoven, dealing -with Gottfried Weber, had tried laboriously to make an intelligent -music critic of him. How much more apt, useful and durable the simple -note: "Arch-ass! Double-barrelled ass!" Here was absolutely sound -criticism. Here was a judgment wholly beyond challenge. Moreover, here -was a small but perfect work of art.</p> - -<p>Upon the low practical value of so-called constructive criticism I -can offer testimony out of my own experience. My books are commonly -reviewed at great length, and many critics devote themselves to -pointing out what they conceive to be my errors, both of fact and of -taste. Well, I cannot recall a case in which any suggestion offered -by a constructive critic has helped me in the slightest, or even -actively interested me. Every such wet-nurse of letters has sought -fatuously to make me write in a way differing from that in which the -Lord God Almighty,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> in His infinite wisdom, impels me to write—that -is, to make me write stuff which, coming from me, would be as false -as an appearance of decency in a Congressman. All the benefits I have -ever got from the critics of my work have come from the destructive -variety. A hearty slating always does me good, particularly if it be -well written. It begins by enlisting my professional respect; it ends -by making me examine my ideas coldly in the privacy of my chamber. -Not, of course, that I usually revise them, but I at least examine -them. If I decide to hold fast to them, they are all the dearer to me -thereafter, and I expound them with a new passion and plausibility. -If, on the contrary, I discern holes in them, I shelve them in a -<i>pianissimo</i> manner, and set about hatching new ones to take their -place. But constructive criticism irritates me. I do not object to -being denounced, but I can't abide being school-mastered, especially by -men I regard as imbeciles.</p> - -<p>I find, as a practicing critic, that very few men who write books -are even as tolerant as I am—that most of them, soon or late, show -signs of extreme discomfort under criticism, however polite its terms. -Perhaps this is why enduring friendships between authors and critics -are so rare. All artists, of course, dislike one another more or less, -but that dislike seldom rises to implacable enmity, save between opera -singer and opera singer, and creative<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> author and critic. Even when -the latter two keep up an outward show of good-will, there is always -bitter antagonism under the surface. Part of it, I daresay, arises out -of the impossible demands of the critic, particularly if he be tinged -with the constructive madness. Having favored an author with his good -opinion, he expects the poor fellow to live up to that good opinion -without the slightest compromise or faltering, and this is commonly -beyond human power. He feels that any let-down compromises <i>him</i>—that -his hero is stabbing him in the back, and making him ridiculous—and -this feeling rasps his vanity. The most bitter of all literary quarrels -are those between critics and creative artists, and most of them arise -in just this way. As for the creative artist, he on his part naturally -resents the critic's air of pedagogical superiority and he resents it -especially when he has an uneasy feeling that he has fallen short of -his best work, and that the discontent of the critic is thus justified. -Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice. Under it -all, of course, lurks the fact that I began with: the fact that the -critic is himself an artist, and that his creative impulse, soon or -late, is bound to make him neglect the punctilio. When he sits down to -compose his criticism, his artist ceases to be a friend, and becomes -mere raw material for his work of art. It is my experience that artists -invariably<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> resent this cavalier use of them. They are pleased so long -as the critic confines himself to the modest business of interpreting -them—preferably in terms of their own estimate of themselves—but the -moment he proceeds to adorn their theme with variations of his own, the -moment he brings new ideas to the enterprise and begins contrasting -them with their ideas, that moment they grow restive. It is precisely -at this point, of course, that criticism becomes genuine criticism; -before that it was mere reviewing. When a critic passes it he loses his -friends. By becoming an artist, he becomes the foe of all other artists.</p> - -<p>But the transformation, I believe, has good effects upon him: it makes -him a better critic. Too much <i>Gemtlichkeit</i> is as fatal to criticism -as it would be to surgery or politics. When it rages unimpeded it leads -inevitably either to a dull professorial sticking on of meaningless -labels or to log-rolling, and often it leads to both. One of the most -hopeful symptoms of the new <i>Aufklrung</i> in the Republic is the revival -of acrimony in criticism—the renaissance of the doctrine that sthetic -matters are important, and that it is worth the while of a healthy male -to take them seriously, as he takes business, sport and amour. In the -days when American literature was showing its first vigorous growth, -the native criticism was extraordinarily violent and even vicious; in -the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> days when American literature swooned upon the tomb of the Puritan -<i>Kultur</i> it became flaccid and childish. The typical critic of the -first era was Poe, as the typical critic of the second was Howells. Poe -carried on his critical jehads with such ferocity that he often got -into law-suits, and sometimes ran no little risk of having his head -cracked. He regarded literary questions as exigent and momentous. The -lofty aloofness of the don was simply not in him. When he encountered -a book that seemed to him to be bad, he attacked it almost as sharply -as a Chamber of Commerce would attack a fanatic preaching free speech, -or the corporation of Trinity Church would attack Christ. His opponents -replied in the same Berserker manner. Much of Poe's surviving ill-fame, -as a drunkard and dead-beat, is due to their inordinate denunciations -of him. They were not content to refute him; they constantly tried to -dispose of him altogether. The very ferocity of that ancient row shows -that the native literature, in those days, was in a healthy state. -Books of genuine value were produced. Literature always thrives best, -in fact, in an atmosphere of hearty strife. Poe, surrounded by admiring -professors, never challenged, never aroused to the emotions of revolt, -would probably have written poetry indistinguishable from the hollow -stuff of, say, Prof. Dr. George E. Woodberry. It took the persistent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> -(and often grossly unfair and dishonorable) opposition of Griswold <i>et -al</i> to stimulate him to his highest endeavors. He needed friends, true -enough, but he also needed enemies.</p> - -<p>To-day, for the first time in years, there is strife in American -criticism, and the Paul Elmer Mores and Hamilton Wright Mabies are -no longer able to purr in peace. The instant they fall into stiff -professorial attitudes they are challenged, and often with anything but -urbanity. The <i>ex cathedra</i> manner thus passes out, and free discussion -comes in. Heretics lay on boldly, and the professors are forced to -make some defense. Often, going further, they attempt counter-attacks. -Ears are bitten off. Noses are bloodied. There are wallops both above -and below the belt. I am, I need not say, no believer in any magical -merit in debate, no matter how free it may be. It certainly does not -necessarily establish the truth; both sides, in fact, may be wrong, and -they often are. But it at least accomplishes two important effects. -On the one hand, it exposes all the cruder fallacies to hostile -examination, and so disposes of many of them. And on the other hand, it -melodramatizes the business of the critic, and so convinces thousands -of bystanders, otherwise quite inert, that criticism is an amusing and -instructive art, and that the problems it deals with are important. -What men will fight for seems to be worth looking into.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a name="IV_DAS_KAPITAL" id="IV_DAS_KAPITAL">IV. DAS KAPITAL</a></h4> - - -<p>After a hearty dinner of <i>potage crole,</i> planked Chesapeake shad, -Guinea hen <i>en casserole</i> and some respectable salad, with two or three -cocktails made of two-thirds gin, one-third Martini-Rossi vermouth and -a dash of absinthe as <i>Vorspiel</i> and a bottle of Ruhlnder 1903 to wash -it down, the following thought often bubbles up from my subconscious: -that many of the acknowledged evils of capitalism, now so horribly -visible in the world, are not due primarily to capitalism itself but -rather to democracy, that universal murrain of Christendom.</p> - -<p>What I mean, in brief, is that capitalism, under democracy, is -constantly under hostile pressure and often has its back to the wall, -and that its barbaric manners and morals, at least in large part, are -due to that fact—that they are, in essence, precisely the same manners -and morals that are displayed by any other creature or institution so -beset. Necessity is not only the mother of invention; it is also the -mother<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> of every imaginable excess and infamy. A woman defending her -child is notoriously willing to go to lengths that even a Turk or an -agent of the Department of Justice would regard as inordinate, and -so is a Presbyterian defending his hell, or a soldier defending his -fatherland, or a banker defending his gold. It is only when there is no -danger that the average human being is honorable, just as it is only -when there <i>is</i> danger that he is virtuous. He would commit adultery -every day if it were safe, and he would commit murder every day if it -were necessary.</p> - -<p>The essential thing about democracy, as every one must know, is that -it is a device for strengthening and heartening the have-nots in their -eternal war upon the haves. That war, as every one knows again, has -its psychological springs in envy pure and simple—envy of the more -fortunate man's greater wealth, the superior pulchritude of his wife -or wives, his larger mobility and freedom, his more protean capacity -for and command of happiness—in brief, his better chance to lead a -bearable life in this worst of possible worlds. It follows that under -democracy, which gives a false power and importance to the have-nots by -counting every one of them as the legal equal of George Washington or -Beethoven, the process of government consists largely, and sometimes -almost exclusively, of efforts to spoil that advantage artificially. -Trust-busting, free silver, direct elections,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> Prohibition, government -ownership and all the other varieties of American political quackery -are but symptoms of the same general rage. It is the rage of the -have-not against the have, of the farmer who must drink hard cider and -forty-rod against the city man who may drink Burgundy and Scotch, of -the poor fellow who must stay at home looking at a wife who regards the -lip-stick as lewd and lascivious against the lucky fellow who may go to -Atlantic City or Palm Beach and ride up and down in a wheel-chair with -a girl who knows how to make up and has put away the fear of God.</p> - -<p>The ignobler sort of men, of course, are too stupid to understand -various rare and exhilarating sorts of superiority, and so they do not -envy the happiness that goes with them. If they could enter into the -mind of a Wagner or a Brahms and begin to comprehend the stupendous joy -that such a man gets out of the practice of his art, they would pass -laws against it and make a criminal of him, as they have already made -criminals, in the United States, of the man with a civilized taste for -wines, the man so attractive to women that he can get all the wives he -wants without having to marry them, and the man who can make pictures -like Flicien Rops, or books like Flaubert, Zola, Dreiser, Cabell or -Rabelais. Wagner and Brahms escape, and their arts with them, because -the great masses of men cannot understand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> the sort of thing they -try to do, and hence do not envy the man who does it well, and gets -joy out of it. It is much different with, say, Rops. Every American -Congressman, as a small boy, covered the fence of the Sunday-School -yard with pictures in the manner of Rops. What he now remembers of the -business is that the pictures were denounced by the superintendent, and -that he was cowhided for making them; what he hears about Rops, when he -hears at all, is that the fellow is vastly esteemed, and hence probably -full of a smug sthetic satisfaction. In consequence, it is unlawful in -the United States to transmit the principal pictures of Rops by mail, -or, indeed, "to have and possess" them. The man who owns them must -conceal them from the <i>okhrna</i> of the Department of Justice just as -carefully as he conceals the wines and whiskeys in his cellar, or the -poor working girl he transports from the heat and noise of New York to -the salubrious calm of the Jersey coast, or his hand-tooled library set -of the "Contes Drlatiques," or his precious first edition of "Jurgen."</p> - -<p>But, as I say, the democratic pressure in such directions is relatively -feeble, for there are whole categories of more or less sthetic -superiority and happiness that the democrat cannot understand at all, -and is in consequence virtually unaware of. It is far different with -the varieties of superiority and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> happiness that are the functions -of mere money. Here the democrat is extraordinarily alert and -appreciative. He can not only imagine hundreds of ways of getting -happiness out of money; he devotes almost the whole of his intellectual -activity, such as it is, to imagining them, and he seldom if ever -imagines anything else. Even his sexual fancies translate themselves -instantly into concepts of dollars and cents; the thing that confines -him so miserably to one wife, and to one, alas, so unappetizing and -depressing, is simply his lack of money; if he only had the wealth -of Diamond Jim Brady he too would be the glittering Don Giovanni -that Jim was. All the known species of democratic political theory -are grounded firmly upon this doctrine that money, and money only, -makes the mare go—that all the conceivable varieties of happiness -are possible to the man who has it. Even the Socialists, who profess -to scorn money, really worship it. Socialism, indeed, is simply the -degenerate capitalism of bankrupt capitalists. Its one genuine object -is to get more money for its professors; all its other grandiloquent -objects are afterthoughts, and most of them are bogus. The democrats -of other schools pursue the same single aim—and adorn it with false -pretenses even more transparent. In the United States the average -democrat, I suppose, would say that the establishment and safeguarding -of liberty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> was the chief purpose of democracy. The theory is mere -wind. The average American democrat really cares nothing whatever -for liberty, and is always willing to sell it for money. What he -actually wants, and strives to get by his politics, is more money. -His fundamental political ideas nearly all contemplate restraints and -raids upon capital, even when they appear superficially to be quite -free from economic flavor, and most of the political banshees and -bugaboos that alternately freeze and boil his blood have dollar marks -written all over them. There is no need to marshal a long catalogue of -examples from English and American political history: I simply defy any -critic of my doctrine to find a single issue of genuine appeal to the -populace, at any time during the past century, that did not involve a -more or less obvious scheme for looting a minority—the slave-owners, -Wall Street, the railroads, the dukes, or some other group representing -capital. Even the most affecting idealism of the plain people has a -thrifty basis. In the United States, during the early part of the late -war, they were very cynical about the Allied cause; it was not until -the war orders of the Allies raised their wages that they began to -believe in the noble righteousness of Lloyd-George and company. And -after Dr. Wilson had jockeyed the United States itself into the war, -and the cost of living began to increase faster<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> than wages, he faced a -hostile country until he restored altruism by his wholesale bribery of -labor.</p> - -<p>It is my contention that the constant exposure of capitalism to such -primitive lusts and forays is what makes it so lamentably extortionate -and unconscionable in democratic countries, and particularly in the -United States. The capitalist, warned by experience, collars all he -can while the getting is good, regardless of the commonest honesty and -decorum, because he is haunted by an uneasy feeling that his season -will not be long. His dominating passion is to pile up the largest -amount of capital possible, by fair means or foul, so that he will -have ample reserves when the next raid comes, and he has to use part -of it to bribe one part of the proletariat against the other. In the -long run, of course, he always wins, for this bribery is invariably -feasible; in the United States, indeed, every fresh struggle leaves -capital more secure than it was before. But though the capitalist thus -has no reason to fear actual defeat and disaster, he is well aware that -victory is always expensive, and his natural prudence causes him to -discount the cost in advance, even when he has planned to shift it to -other shoulders. I point, in example, to the manner in which capital -dealt with the discharged American soldiers after the war. Its first -effort was to cajole them into its service,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> as they had been cajoled -by the politicians after the Civil War. To this end, it borrowed -the machine erected by Dr. Wilson and his agents for debauching the -booboisie during the actual war, and by the skillful use of that -machine it quickly organized the late conscripts into the American -Legion, alarmed them with lies about a Bolshevist scheme to make slaves -of them (i. e., to cut off forever their hope of getting money), and -put them to clubbing and butchering their fellow proletarians. The -business done, the conscripts found themselves out of jobs: their -gallant war upon Bolshevism had brought down wages, and paralysed -organized labor. They now demanded pay for their work, and capital -had to meet the demand. It did so by promising them a bonus—<i>i. e.,</i> -loot—out of the public treasury, and by straightway inventing a scheme -whereby the ultimate cost would fall chiefly upon poor folk.</p> - -<p>Throughout the war, indeed, capital exhibited an inordinately -extortionate spirit, and thereby revealed its underlying dread. First -it robbed the Allies in the manner of bootleggers looting a country -distillery, then it swindled the plain people at home by first bribing -them with huge wages and then taking away all their profits and -therewith all their savings, and then it seized and made away with the -impounded property of enemy nationals—property<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> theoretically held in -trust for them, and the booty, if it was booty at all, of the whole -American people. This triple burglary was excessive, to be sure, but -who will say that it was not prudent? The capitalists of the Republic -are efficient, and have foresight. They saw some lean and hazardous -years ahead, with all sorts of raids threatening. They took measures to -fortify their position. To-day their prevision is their salvation. They -are losing some of their accumulation, of course, but they still have -enough left to finance an effective defense of the remainder. There -was never any time in the history of any country, indeed, when capital -was so securely intrenched as it is to-day in the United States. It -has divided the proletariat into two bitterly hostile halves, it has -battered and crippled unionism almost beyond recognition, it has a firm -grip upon all three arms of the government, and it controls practically -every agency for the influencing of public opinion, from the press to -the church. Had it been less prudent when times were good, and put its -trust in God alone, the I. W. W. would have rushed it at the end of the -war.</p> - -<p>As I say, I often entertain the thought that it would be better, -in the long run, to make terms with a power so hard to resist, and -thereby purge it of its present compulsory criminality. I doubt that -capitalists, as a class, are naturally vicious; certainly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> they are -no more vicious than, say, lawyers and politicians—upon whom the -plain people commonly rely, in their innocence, to save them. I have -known a good many men of great wealth in my time, and most of them -have been men showing all the customary decencies. They deplore the -harsh necessities of their profession quite as honestly as a judge -deplores the harsh necessities of his. You will never convince me that -the average American banker, during the war, got anything properly -describable as professional satisfaction out of selling Liberty bonds -at 100 to poor stenographers, and then buying them back at 83. He knew -that he'd need his usurious profit against the blue day when the boys -came home, and so he took it, but it would have given him ten times as -much pleasure if it had come from the reluctant gizzard of some other -banker. In brief, there is a pride of workmanship in capitalists, just -as there is in all other men above the general. They get the same -spiritual lift out of their sordid swindles that Swinburne got out of -composing his boozy dithyrambs, and I often incline to think that it -is quite as worthy of respect. In a democratic society, with the arts -adjourned and the sciences mere concubines of money, it is chiefly the -capitalists, in fact, who keep pride of workmanship alive. In their -principal enemies, the trades-unionists, it is almost extinct. Unionism -seldom, if ever, uses such power<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> as it has to insure better work; -almost always it devotes a large part of that power to safeguarding -bad work. A union man who, moved by professional pride, put any extra -effort into his job would probably be punished by his union as a sort -of scab. But a capitalist is still able to cherish some of the old -spirit of the guildsman. If he invents a new device for corralling the -money of those who have earned it, or operates an old device in some -new and brilliant way, he is honored and envied by his colleagues. -The late J. Pierpont Morgan was thus honored and envied, not because -he made more actual money than any other capitalist of his time—in -point of fact, he made a good deal less than some, and his own son, a -much inferior man, has made more since his death than he did during -his whole life—but because his operations showed originality, daring, -coolness, and imagination—in brief, because he was a great virtuoso in -the art he practiced.</p> - -<p>What I contend is that the democratic system of government would be -saner and more effective in its dealings with capital if it ceased to -regard all capitalists as criminals <i>ipso facto,</i> and thereby ceased -to make their armed pursuit the chief end of practical politics—if -it gave over this vain effort to put them down by force, and tried -to bring them to decency by giving greater play and confidence to -the pride of workmanship that I have described. They would be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> less -ferocious and immoderate, I think, if they were treated with less -hostility, and put more upon their conscience and honor. No doubt the -average democrat, brought up upon the prevailing superstitions and -prejudices of his faith, will deny at once that they are actually -capable of conscience or honor, or that they have any recognizable -pride of workmanship. Well, let him deny it. He will make precisely -the same denial with respect to kings. Nevertheless, it must be plain -to every one who has read history attentively that the majority of the -kings of the past, even when no criticism could reach them, showed -a very great pride of workmanship—that they tried to be good kings -even when it was easier to be bad ones. The same thing is true of -the majority of capitalists—the kings of to-day. They are criminals -by our democratic law, but their criminality is chiefly artificial -and theoretical, like that of a bootlegger. If it were abolished by -repealing the laws which create it—if it became legally just as -virtuous to organize and operate a great industrial corporation, or -to combine and rehabilitate railroads, or to finance any other such -transactions as it is to organize a trades-union, a <i>Bauverein,</i> or a -lodge of Odd Fellows—then I believe that capitalists would forthwith -abandon a great deal of the scoundrelism which now marks their -proceedings, that they could be trusted to police their order at least -as vigilantly as physicians or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> lawyers police theirs, and that the -activities of those members of it who showed no pride of workmanship at -all would be effectively curbed.</p> - -<p>The legal war upon them under democracy is grounded upon the false -assumption that it would be possible, given laws enough, to get rid -of them altogether. The <i>Ur-</i>Americanos, who set the tone of our -legislation and provided examples for the legislation of every other -democratic country, were chiefly what would be called Bolsheviki -to-day. They dreamed of a republic wholly purged of capitalism—and -taxes. They were have-nots of the most romantic and ambitious variety, -and saw Utopia before them. Every man of their time who thought -capitalistically—that is, who believed that things consumed had to -be paid for—was a target for their revilings: for example, Alexander -Hamilton. But they were wrong, and their modern heirs and assigns are -wrong just as surely. That wrongness of theirs, in truth, has grown -enormously since it was launched, for the early Americans were a -pastoral people, and could get along with very little capital, whereas -the Americans of to-day lead a very complex life, and need the aid of -capitalism at almost every breath they draw. Most of their primary -necessities—the railroad, the steamship lines, the trolley car, -the telephone, refrigerated meats, machine-made clothes, phonograph -records, moving-picture shows, and so on—are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> wholly unthinkable save -as the products of capital in large aggregations. No man of to-day can -imagine doing without them, or getting them without the aid of such -aggregations. The most even the wildest Socialist can think of is to -take the capital away from the capitalists who now have it and hand it -over to the state—in other words, to politicians. A century ago there -were still plenty of men who, like Thoreau, proposed to abolish it -altogether. But now even the radicals of the extreme left assume as a -matter of course that capital is indispensible, and that abolishing it -or dispersing it would cause a collapse of civilization.</p> - -<p>What ails democracy, in the economic department, is that it proceeds -upon the assumption that the contrary is true—that it seeks to bring -capitalism to a state of innocuous virtue by grossly exaggerating -its viciousness—that it penalizes ignorantly what is, at bottom, a -perfectly natural and legitimate aspiration, and one necessary to -society. Such penalizings, I need not argue, never destroy the impulse -itself; surely the American experience with Prohibition should make -even a democrat aware of that. What they do is simply to make it -evasive, intemperate, and relentless. If it were legally as hazardous -in the United States to play a string quartette as it is to build up a -great bank or industrial enterprise—if the performers, struggling with -their parts, had to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> watch the windows in constant fear that a Bryan, -a Roosevelt, a Lloyd-George or some other such predatory mountebank -would break in, armed with a club and followed by a rabble—then string -quartette players would become as devious and anti-social in their ways -as the average American capitalist is to-day, and when, by a process of -setting one part of the mob against the rest, they managed to get a -chance to play quartettes in temporary peace, despite the general mob -hatred of them, they would forget the lovely music of Haydn and Mozart -altogether, and devote their whole time to a <i>fortissimo</i> playing of -the worst musical felonies of Schnberg, Ravel and Strawinsky.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a name="V_AD_IMAGINEM_DEI_CREAVIT_ILLUM" id="V_AD_IMAGINEM_DEI_CREAVIT_ILLUM">V. AD IMAGINEM DEI CREAVIT ILLUM</a></h4> - - - -<h4>1</h4> - -<h4><i>The Life of Man</i></h4> - - -<p>The old anthropomorphic notion that the life of the whole universe -centers in the life of man—that human existence is the supreme -expression of the cosmic process—this notion seems to be on its way -toward the Sheol of exploded delusions. The fact is that the life of -man, as it is more and more studied in the light of general biology, -appears to be more and more empty of significance. Once apparently the -chief concern and masterpiece of the gods, the human race now begins -to bear the aspect of <i>I</i> an accidental by-product of their vast, -inscrutable and probably nonsensical operations. A blacksmith making a -horse-shoe produces something almost as brilliant and mysterious—the -shower of sparks. But his eye and thought, as we know, are not on the -sparks, but on the horse-shoe. The sparks, indeed, constitute a sort -of disease of the horse-shoe; their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> existence depends upon a wasting -of its tissue. In the same way, perhaps, man is a local disease of -the cosmos—a kind of pestiferous eczema or urethritis. There are, -of course, different grades of eczema, and so are there different -grades of men. No doubt a cosmos afflicted with nothing worse than an -infection of Beethovens would not think it worth while to send for the -doctor. But a cosmos infested by prohibitionists, Socialists, Scotsmen -and stockbrokers must suffer damnably. No wonder the sun is so hot and -the moon is so diabetically green!</p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>2</h4> - -<h4><i>The Anthropomorphic Delusion</i></h4> - - -<p>As I say, the anthropomorphic theory of the world is made absurd by -modern biology—but that is not saying, of course, that it will ever -be abandoned by the generality of men. To the contrary, they will -cherish it in proportion as it becomes more and more dubious. To-day, -indeed, it is cherished as it was never cherished in the Ages of Faith, -when the doctrine that man was god-like was at least ameliorated -by the doctrine that woman was vile. What else is behind charity, -philanthropy, pacifism, Socialism, the uplift, all the rest of the -current sentimentalities? One and all, these sentimentalities are based -upon the notion that man is a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> glorious and ineffable animal, and -that his continued existence in the world ought to be facilitated and -insured. But this notion is obviously full of fatuity. As animals go, -even in so limited a space as our world, man is botched and ridiculous. -Few other brutes are so stupid or so cowardly. The commonest yellow dog -has far sharper senses and is infinitely more courageous, not to say -more honest and dependable. The ants and the bees are, in many ways, -far more intelligent and ingenious; they manage their government with -vastly less quarreling, wastefulness and imbecility. The lion is more -beautiful, more dignified, more majestic. The antelope is swifter and -more graceful. The ordinary house-cat is cleaner. The horse, foamed -by labor, has a better smell. The gorilla is kinder to his children -and more faithful to his wife. The ox and the ass are more industrious -and serene. But most of all, man is deficient in courage, perhaps the -noblest quality of them all. He is not only mortally afraid of all -other animals of his own weight or half his weight—save a few that he -has debased by artificial inbreeding—; he is even mortally afraid of -his own kind—and not only of their fists and hooves, but even of their -sniggers.</p> - -<p>No other animal is so defectively adapted to its environment. The -human infant, as it comes into the world, is so puny that if it were -neglected for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> two days running it would infallibly perish, and this -congenital infirmity, though more or less concealed later on, persists -until death. Man is ill far more than any other animal, both in his -savage state and under civilization. He has more different diseases and -he suffers from them oftener. He is easier exhausted and injured. He -dies more horribly and usually sooner. Practically all the other higher -vertebrates, at least in their wild state, live longer and retain their -faculties to a greater age. Here even the anthropoid apes are far -beyond their human cousins. An orang-outang marries at the age of seven -or eight, raises a family of seventy or eighty children, and is still -as hale and hearty at eighty as a European at forty-five.</p> - -<p>All the errors and incompetencies of the Creator reach their climax -in man. As a piece of mechanism he is the worst of them all; put -beside him, even a salmon or a staphylococcus is a sound and efficient -machine. He has the worst kidneys known to comparative zoology, and -the worst lungs, and the worst heart. His eye, considering the work it -is called upon to do, is less efficient than the eye of an earth-worm; -an optical instrument maker who made an instrument so clumsy would be -mobbed by his customers. Alone of all animals, terrestrial, celestial -or marine, man is unfit by nature to go abroad in the world he -inhabits. He must clothe himself, protect<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> himself, swathe himself, -armor himself. He is eternally in the position of a turtle born without -a shell, a dog without hair, a fish without fins. Lacking his heavy and -cumbersome trappings, he is defenseless even against flies. As God made -him he hasn't even a tail to switch them off.</p> - -<p>I now come to man's one point of unquestionable natural superiority: -he has a soul. This is what sets him off from all other animals, and -makes him, in a way, their master. The exact nature of that soul has -been in dispute for thousands of years, but regarding its function it -is possible to speak with some authority. That function is to bring -man into direct contact with God, to make him aware of God, above -all, to make him resemble God. Well, consider the colossal failure of -the device! If we assume that man actually does resemble God, then we -are forced into the impossible theory that God is a coward, an idiot -and a bounder. And if we assume that man, after all these years, does -<i>not</i> resemble God, then it appears at once that the human soul is as -inefficient a machine as the human liver or tonsil, and that man would -probably be better off, as the chimpanzee undoubtedly <i>is</i> better off, -without it.</p> - -<p>Such, indeed, is the case. The only practical effect of having a -soul is that it fills man with anthropomorphic and anthropocentric -vanities—in brief with cocky and preposterous superstitions.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> He -struts and plumes himself because he has this soul—and overlooks the -fact that it doesn't work. Thus he is the supreme clown of creation, -the <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> of animated nature. He is like a cow who -believed that she could jump over the moon, and ordered her whole life -upon that theory. He is like a bullfrog boasting eternally of fighting -lions, of flying over the Matterhorn, and of swimming the Hellespont. -And yet this is the poor brute we are asked to venerate as a gem in -the forehead of the cosmos! This is the worm we are asked to defend -as God's favorite on earth, with all its millions of braver, nobler, -decenter quadrupeds—its superb lions, its lithe and gallant leopards, -its imperial elephants, its honest dogs, its courageous rats! This is -the insect we are besought, at infinite trouble, labor and expense, to -reproduce!</p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>3</h4> - -<h4><i>Meditation on Meditation.</i></h4> - - -<p>Man's capacity for abstract thought, which most other mammals seem -to lack, has undoubtedly given him his present mastery of the land -surface of the earth—a mastery disputed only by several hundred -species of microscopic organisms. It is responsible for his feeling -of superiority, and under that feeling there is undoubtedly a certain -measure of reality, at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> least within narrow limits. But what is too -often overlooked is that the capacity to perform an act is by no means -synonymous with its salubrious exercise. The simple fact is that most -of man's thinking is stupid, pointless, and injurious to him. Of all -animals, indeed, he seems the least capable of arriving at accurate -judgments in the matters that most desperately affect his welfare. -Try to imagine a rat, in the realm of rat ideas, arriving at a notion -as violently in contempt of plausibility as the notion, say, of -Swedenborgianism, or that of homeopathy, or that of infant damnation, -or that of mental telepathy. Try to think of a congregation of educated -rats gravely listening to such disgusting intellectual rubbish as was -in the public bulls of Dr. Woodrow Wilson. Man's natural instinct, in -fact, is never toward what is sound and true; it is toward what is -specious and false. Let any great nation of modern times be confronted -by two conflicting propositions, the one grounded upon the utmost -probability and reasonableness and the other upon the most glaring -error, and it will almost invariably embrace the latter. It is so -in politics, which consists wholly of a succession of unintelligent -crazes, many of them so idiotic that they exist only as battle-cries -and shibboleths and are not reducible to logical statement at all. It -is so in religion, which, like poetry, is simply a concerted effort -to deny the most obvious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> realities. It is so in nearly every field -of thought. The ideas that conquer the race most rapidly and arouse -the wildest enthusiasm and are held most tenaciously are precisely -the ideas that are most insane. This has been true since the first -"advanced" gorilla put on underwear, cultivated a frown and began his -first lecture tour in the first chautauqua, and it will be so until the -high gods, tired of the farce at last, obliterate the race with one -great, final blast of fire, mustard gas and streptococci.</p> - -<p>No doubt the imagination of man is to blame for this singular weakness. -That imagination, I daresay, is what gave him his first lift above his -fellow primates. It enabled him to visualize a condition of existence -better than that he was experiencing, and bit by bit he was able to -give the picture a certain crude reality. Even to-day he keeps on going -ahead in the same manner. That is, he thinks of something that he would -like to be or to get, something appreciably better than what he is or -has, and then, by the laborious, costly method of trial and error, he -gradually moves toward it. In the process he is often severely punished -for his discontent with God's ordinances. He mashes his thumb, he skins -his shin; he stumbles and falls; the prize he reaches out for blows -up in his hands. But bit by bit he moves on, or, at all events, his -heirs and assigns move on. Bit by bit he smooths the path beneath his -remaining<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> leg, and achieves pretty toys for his remaining hand to play -with, and accumulates delights for his remaining ear and eye.</p> - -<p>Alas, he is not content with this slow and sanguinary progress! Always -he looks further and further ahead. Always he imagines things just -over the sky-line. This body of imaginings constitutes his stock of -sweet beliefs, his corpus of high faiths and confidences—in brief, his -burden of errors. And that burden of errors is what distinguishes man, -even above his capacity for tears, his talents as a liar, his excessive -hypocrisy and poltroonery, from all the other orders of mammalia. Man -is the yokel <i>par excellence,</i> the booby unmatchable, the king dupe of -the cosmos. He is chronically and unescapably deceived, not only by the -other animals and by the delusive face of nature herself, but also and -more particularly by himself—by his incomparable talent for searching -out and embracing what is false, and for overlooking and denying what -is true.</p> - -<p>The capacity for discerning the essential truth, in fact, is as rare -among men as it is common among crows, bullfrogs and mackerel. The -man who shows it is a man of quite extraordinary quality—perhaps -even a man downright diseased. Exhibit a new truth of any natural -plausibility before the great masses of men, and not one in ten thousand -will suspect its existence, and not one in a hundred thousand will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> -embrace it without a ferocious resistance. All the durable truths -that have come into the world within historic times have been opposed -as bitterly as if they were so many waves of smallpox, and every -individual who has welcomed and advocated them, absolutely without -exception, has been denounced and punished as an enemy of the race. -Perhaps "absolutely without exception" goes too far. I substitute "with -five or six exceptions." But who were the five or six exceptions? I -leave you to think of them; myself, I can't.... But I think at once -of Charles Darwin and his associates, and of how they were reviled -in their time. This reviling, of course, is less vociferous than it -used to be, chiefly because later victims are in the arena, but the -underlying hostility remains. Within the past two years the principal -Great Thinker of Britain, George Bernard Shaw, has denounced the -hypothesis of natural selection to great applause, and a three-times -candidate for the American Presidency, William Jennings Bryan, has -publicly advocated prohibiting the teaching of it by law. The great -majority of Christian ecclesiastics in both English-speaking countries, -and with them the great majority of their catachumens, are still -committed to the doctrine that Darwin was a scoundrel, and Herbert -Spencer another, and Huxley a third—and that Nietzsche is to the three -of them what Beelzebub himself is to a trio of bad boys.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> This is the -reaction of the main body of respectable folk in two puissant and -idealistic Christian nations to the men who will live in history as the -intellectual leaders of the Nineteenth Century. This is the immemorial -attitude of men in the mass, and of their chosen prophets, to whatever -is honest, and important, and most probably true.</p> - -<p>But if truth thus has hard sledding, error is given a loving welcome. -The man who invents a new imbecility is hailed gladly, and bidden to -make himself at home; he is, to the great masses of men, the <i>beau -ideal</i> of mankind. Go back through the history of the past thousand -years and you will find that ninetenths of the popular idols of the -world—not the heroes of small sects, but the heroes of mankind in -the mass—have been merchants of palpable nonsense. It has been so in -politics, it has been so in religion, and it has been so in every other -department of human thought. Every such hawker of the not-true has been -opposed, in his time, by critics who denounced and refuted him; his -contention has been disposed of immediately it was uttered. But on the -side of every one there has been the titanic force of human credulity, -and it has sufficed in every case to destroy his foes and establish his -immortality.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>4</h4> - -<h4><i>Man and His Soul</i></h4> - - -<p>Of all the unsound ideas thus preached by great heroes and accepted by -hundreds of millions of their eager dupes, probably the most patently -unsound is the one that is most widely held, to wit, the idea that man -has an immortal soul—that there is a part of him too ethereal and -too exquisite to die. Absolutely the only evidence supporting this -astounding notion lies in the hope that it is true—which is precisely -the evidence underlying the late theory that the Great War would put -an end to war, and bring in an era of democracy, freedom, and peace. -But even archbishops, of course, are too intelligent to be satisfied -permanently by evidence so unescapably dubious; in consequence, there -have been efforts in all ages to give it logical and evidential -support. Well, all I ask is that you give some of that corroboration -your careful scrutiny. Examine, for example, the proofs amassed by -five typical witnesses in five widely separated ages: St. John, St. -Augustine, Martin Luther, Emanuel Swedenborg and Sir Oliver Lodge. -Approach these proofs prayerfully, and study them well. Weigh them in -the light of the probabilities, the ordinary intellectual decencies. -And then ask<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> yourself if you could imagine a mud-turtle accepting them -gravely.</p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>5</h4> - -<h4><i>Coda</i></h4> - - -<p>To sum up:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 -revolutions a minute.</p> - -<p>2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.</p> - -<p>3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and -set spinning to give him the ride.</p></blockquote> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a name="VI_STAR-SPANGLED_MEN" id="VI_STAR-SPANGLED_MEN">VI. STAR-SPANGLED MEN</a></h4> - - -<p>I open the memoirs of General Grant, Volume II, at the place where he -is describing the surrender of General Lee, and find the following:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>I was without a sword, as I usually was when on horseback on -<i>(sic)</i> the field, and wore a soldier's blouse for a coat, -with the shoulder straps of my rank to indicate to the army -who I was.</p></blockquote> - -<p>Anno 1865. I look out of my window and observe an officer of the -United States Army passing down the street. Anno 1922. Like General -Grant, he is without a sword. Like General Grant, he wears a sort of -soldier's blouse for a coat. Like General Grant, he employs shoulder -straps to indicate to the army who he is. But there is something more. -On the left breast of this officer, apparently a major, there blazes -so brilliant a mass of color that, as the sun strikes it and the flash -bangs my eyes, I wink, catch my breath and sneeze. There are two -long strips, each starting at the sternum and disappearing into the -shadows of the axillia—every hue in the rainbow, the spectroscope, the -kaleidoscope—<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>imperial purples, <i>sforzando</i> reds, wild Irish greens, -romantic blues, loud yellows and oranges, rich maroons, sentimental -pinks, all the half-tones from ultra-violet to infra-red, all the -vibrations from the impalpable to the unendurable. A gallant <i>Soldat,</i> -indeed! How he would shame a circus ticketwagon if he wore all the -medals and badges, the stars and crosses, the pendants and lavallires, -that go with those ribbons!... I glance at his sleeves. A simple golden -stripe on the one—six months beyond the raging main. None on the -other—the Kaiser's cannon missed him.</p> - -<p>Just what all these ribbons signify I am sure I don't know; probably -they belong to campaign medals and tell the tale of butcheries in -foreign and domestic parts—mountains of dead Filipinos, Mexicans, -Haitians, Dominicans, West Virginia miners, perhaps even Prussians. -But in addition to campaign medals and the Distinguished Service Medal -there are now certainly enough foreign orders in the United States to -give a distinct brilliance to the national scene, viewed, say, from -Mars. The Frederician tradition, borrowed by the ragged Continentals -and embodied in Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution, lasted -until 1918, and then suddenly blew up; to mention it to-day is a sort -of indecorum, and to-morrow, no doubt, will be a species of treason. -Down with Frederick; up with John Philip Sousa!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> Imagine what General -Pershing would look like at a state banquet of his favorite American -order, the Benevolent and Protective one of Elks, in all the Byzantine -splendor of his casket of ribbons, badges, stars, garters, sunbursts -and cockades—the lordly Bath of the grateful motherland, with its -somewhat disconcerting "Ich dien"; the gorgeous tricolor baldrics, -sashes and festoons of the Lgion d'Honneur; the grand cross of SS. -Maurizio e Lazzaro of Italy; the sinister Danilo of Montenegro, with -its cabalistic monogram of Danilo I and its sinister hieroglyphics; -the breastplate of the Paulownia of Japan, with its rising sun of -thirty-two white rays, its blood-red heart, its background of green -leaves and its white ribbon edged with red; the mystical St. Saviour -of Greece, with its Greek motto and its brilliantly enameled figure -of Christ; above all, the Croix de Guerre of Czecho-Slovakia, a new -one and hence not listed in the books, but surely no shrinking violet! -Alas, Pershing was on the wrong side—that is, for one with a fancy -for gauds of that sort. The most blinding of all known orders is the -Medijie of Turkey, which not only entitles the holder to four wives, -but also absolutely requires him to wear a red fez and a frozen star -covering his whole faade. I was offered this order by Turkish spies -during the war, and it wabbled me a good deal. The Alexander of -Bulgaria is almost as seductive. The badge consists of an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> pointed -white cross, with crossed swords between the arms and a red Bulgarian -lion over the swords. The motto is "Za Chrabrost!" Then there are the -Prussian orders—the Red and Black Eagles, the Pour le Mrite, the -Prussian Crown, the Hohenzollern and the rest. And the Golden Fleece -of Austria—the noblest of them all. Think of the Golden Fleece on a -man born in Linn County, Missouri!... I begin to doubt that the General -would have got it, even supposing him to have taken the other side. The -Japs, I note, gave him only the grand cordon of the Paulownia, and the -Belgians and Montenegrins were similarly cautious. There are higher -classes. The highest of the Paulownia is only for princes, which is to -say, only for non-Missourians.</p> - -<p>Pershing is the champion, with General March a bad second. March is -a K. C. M. G., and entitled to wear a large cross of white enamel -bearing a lithograph of the Archangel Michael and the motto, "Auspicium -Melioris Aevi," but he is not a K. C. B. Admirals Benson and Sims -are also grand crosses of Michael and George, and like most other -respectable Americans, members of the Legion of Honor, but they seem to -have been forgotten by the Greeks, the Montenegrins, the Italians and -the Belgians. The British-born and extremely Anglomaniacal Sims refused -the Distinguished Service Medal of his adopted country, but is careful -to mention in "Who's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> Who in America" that his grand cross of Michael -and George was conferred upon him, not by some servile gold-stick, but -by "King George of England"; Benson omits mention of His Majesty, as -do Pershing and March. It would be hard to think of any other American -officer, real or bogus, who would refuse the D. S. M., or, failing -it, the grand decoration of chivalry of the Independent Order of Odd -Fellows. I once saw the latter hung, with ceremonies of the utmost -magnificence, upon a bald-headed tinner who had served the fraternity -long and faithfully; as he marched down the hall toward the throne of -the Supreme Exalted Pishposh a score of little girls, the issue of -other tinners, strewed his pathway with roses, and around the stem of -each rose was a piece of glittering tinfoil. The band meanwhile played -"The Rosary," and, at the conclusion of the spectacle, as fried oysters -were served, "Wien Bleibt Wien."</p> - -<p>It was, I suspect, by way of the Odd Fellows and other such gaudy -heirs to the Deutsche Ritter and Rosicrucians that the lust to gleam -and jingle got into the arteries of the American people. For years the -austere tradition of Washington's day served to keep the military bosom -bare of spangles, but all the while a weakness for them was growing in -the civil population. Rank by rank, they became Knights of Pythias, -Odd Fellows, Red Men, Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, Knights Templar, -Patriarchs Militant,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> Elks, Moose, Woodmen of the World, Foresters, -Hoo-Hoos, Ku Kluxers—and in every new order there were thirty-two -degrees, and for every degree there was a badge, and for every badge -there was a yard of ribbon. The Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, chiefly -paunchy wholesalers of the Rotary Club species, are not content with -swords, baldrics, stars, garters and jewels; they also wear red fezes. -The Elks run to rubies. The Red Men array themselves like Sitting -Bull. The patriotic ice-wagon drivers and Methodist deacons of the -Ku Klux Klan carry crosses set with incandescent lights. An American -who is forced by his profession to belong to many such orders—say a -life insurance solicitor, a bootlegger or a dealer in Oklahoma oil -stock—accumulates a trunk full of decorations, many of them weighing -a pound. There is an undertaker in Hagerstown, Md., who has been -initiated eighteen times. When he robes himself to plant a fellow -joiner he weighs three hundred pounds and sparkles and flashes like the -mouth of hell itself. He is entitled to bear seven swords, all jeweled, -and to hang his watch chain with the golden busts of nine wild animals, -all with precious stones for eyes. Put beside this lowly washer of the -dead, Pershing newly polished would seem almost like a Trappist.</p> - -<p>But even so the civil arm is robbed of its just dues in the department -of gauds and radioactivity, no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> doubt by the direct operation of -military vanity and jealousy. Despite a million proofs (and perhaps a -billion eloquent arguments) to the contrary, it is still the theory at -the official ribbon counter that the only man who serves in a war is -the man who serves in uniform. This is soft for the Bevo officer, who -at least has his service stripes and the spurs that gnawed into his -desk, but it is hard upon his brother Irving, the dollar-a-year man, -who worked twenty hours a day for fourteen months buying soap-powder, -canned asparagus and raincoats for the army of God. Irving not only -labored with inconceivable diligence; he also faced hazards of no mean -order, for on the one hand was his natural prejudice in favor of a -very liberal rewarding of commercial enterprise, and on the other hand -were his patriotism and his fear of Atlanta Penitentiary. I daresay -that many and many a time, after working his twenty hours, he found it -difficult to sleep the remaining four hours. I know, in fact, survivors -of that obscure service who are far worse wrecks to-day than Pershing -is. Their reward is—what? Winks, sniffs, innuendos. If they would -indulge themselves in the now almost universal American yearning to -go adorned, they must join the Knights of Pythias. Even the American -Legion fails them, for though it certainly does not bar non-combatants, -it insists that they shall have done their non-combatting in uniform.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p> - -<p>What I propose is a variety of the Distinguished Service Medal for -civilians,—perhaps, better still, a distinct order for civilians, -closed to the military and with badges of different colors and areas, -to mark off varying services to democracy. Let it run, like the -Japanese Paulownia, from high to low—the lowest class for the patriot -who sacrificed only time, money and a few nights' sleep; the highest -for the great martyr who hung his country's altar with his dignity, his -decency and his sacred honor. For Irving and his nervous insomnia, a -simple rosette, with an iron badge bearing the national motto, "Safety -First"; for the university president who prohibited the teaching of -the enemy language in his learned grove, heaved the works of Goethe -out of the university library, cashiered every professor unwilling -to support Woodrow for the first vacancy in the Trinity, took to the -stump for the National Security League, and made two hundred speeches -in moving picture theaters—for this giant of loyal endeavor let no -100 per cent. American speak of anything less than the grand cross of -the order, with a gold badge in polychrome enamel and stained glass, -a baldric of the national colors, a violet plug hat with a sunburst -on the side, the privilege of the floor of Congress, and a pension -of $10,000 a year. After all, the cost would not be excessive; there -are not many of them. Such prodigies of patriotism are possible only -to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> rare and gifted men. For the grand cordons of the order, <i>e. -g.,</i> college professors who spied upon and reported the seditions of -their associates, state presidents of the American Protective League, -alien property custodians, judges whose sentences of conscientious -objectors mounted to more than 50,000 years, members of Dr. Creel's -herd of 2,000 American historians, the authors of the Sisson documents, -etc.—pensions of 10 a day would be enough, with silver badges and no -plug hats. For the lower ranks, bronze badges and the legal right to -the title of "the Hon.," already every true American's by courtesy.</p> - -<p>Not, of course, that I am insensitive to the services of the gentlemen -of those lower ranks, but in such matters one must go by rarity rather -than by intrinsic value. If the grand cordon or even the nickel-plated -eagle of the third class were given to every patriot who bored a hole -through the floor of his flat to get evidence against his neighbors, -the Krausmeyers, and to every one who visited the Hofbruhaus nightly, -denounced the Kaiser in searing terms, and demanded assent from Emil -and Otto, the waiters, and to every one who notified the catchpolls -of the Department of Justice when the wireless plant was open in the -garret of the Arion Liedertafel, and to all who took a brave and -forward part in slacker raids, and to all who lent their stenographers -funds at 6 per cent., to buy Liberty bonds at 41/4 per cent.,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> and to -all who sold out at 99 and then bought in again at 83.56 and to all who -served as jurors or perjurers in cases against members and ex-members -of the I. W. W., and to the German-American members of the League for -German Democracy, and to all the Irish who snitched upon the Irish—if -decorations were thrown about with any such lavishness, then there -Would be no nickel left for our bathrooms. On the civilian side as -on the military side the great rewards of war go, not to mere dogged -industry and fidelity, but to originality—to the unprecedented, the -arresting, the bizarre. The New York <i>Tribune</i> liar who invented the -story about the German plant for converting the corpses of the slain -into soap did more for democracy and the Wilsonian idealism, and hence -deserves a more brilliant recognition, than a thousand uninspired -hawkers of atrocity stories supplied by Viscount Bryce and his -associates. For that great servant of righteousness the grand cordon, -with two silver badges and the chair of history at Columbia, would be -scarcely enough; for the ordinary hawkers any precious metal would be -too much.</p> - -<p>Whether or not the Y. M. C. A. has decorated its chocolate pedlars and -soul-snatchers I do not know; since the chief Y. M. C. A. lamassary in -my town of Baltimore became the scene of a homo-sexual scandal I have -ceased to frequent evangelical society. If not, then there should be -some governmental recognition<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> of those highly characteristic heroes of -the war for democracy. The veterans of the line, true enough, dislike -them excessively, and have a habit of denouncing them obscenely when -the corn-juice flows. They charged too much for cigarettes; they tried -to discourage the amiability of the ladies of France; they had a habit -of being absent when the shells burst in air. Well, some say this and -some say that. A few, at least, of the pale and oleaginous brethren -must have gone into the Master's work because they thirsted to save -souls, and not simply because they desired to escape the trenches. -And a few, I am told, were anything but unpleasantly righteous, as a -round of Wassermanns would show. If, as may be plausibly argued, these -Soldiers of the Double Cross deserve to live at all, then they surely -deserve to be hung with white enameled stars of the third class, with -gilt dollar marks superimposed. Motto: "Glory, glory, hallelujah!"</p> - -<p>But what of the vaudeville actors, the cheer leaders, the doughnut -fryers, the camp librarians, the press agents? I am not forgetting -them. Let them be distributed among all the classes from the seventh -to the eighth, according to their sufferings for the holy cause. And -the agitators against Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Wagner, Richard Strauss, -all the rest of the cacophonous Huns? And the specialists in the crimes -of the German professors? And the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> collectors for the Belgians, with -their generous renunciation of all commissions above 80 per cent.? And -the pathologists who denounced Johannes Mller as a fraud, Karl Ludwig -as an imbecile, and Ehrlich as a thief? And the patriotic chemists -who discovered arsenic in dill pickles, ground glass in pumpernickel, -bichloride tablets in Bismarck herring, pathogenic organisms in aniline -dyes? And the inspired editorial writers of the New York <i>Times</i> -and <i>Tribune,</i> the Boston <i>Transcript,</i> the Philadelphia <i>Ledger,</i> -the Mobile <i>Register,</i> the Jones Corners <i>Eagle?</i> And the headline -writers? And the Columbia, Yale and Princeton professors? And the -authors of books describing how the Kaiser told them the whole plot in -1913, while they were pulling his teeth or shining his shoes? And the -ex-ambassadors? And the <i>Nietzschefresser?</i> And the chautauqua orators? -And the four-minute men? And the Methodist pulpit pornographers who -switched so facilely from vice-crusading to German atrocities? And Dr. -Newell Dwight Hillis? And Dr. Henry van Dyke? And the master minds of -the <i>New Republic?</i> And Tumulty? And the Vigilantes? Let no grateful -heart forget them!</p> - -<p>Palmer and Burleson I leave for special legislation. If mere university -presidents, such as Nicholas Murray Butler, are to have the grand -cross, then Palmer deserves to be rolled in malleable gold from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> head -to foot, and polished until he blinds the cosmos—then Burleson -must be hung with diamonds like Mrs. Warren and bathed in spotlights -like Gaby Deslys.... Finally, I reserve a special decoration, to be -conferred in camera and worn only in secret chapter, for husbands who -took chances and refused to read anonymous letters from Paris: the -somber badge of the Ordre de la Cuculus Canorus, first and only class.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a name="VII_THE_POET_AND_HIS_ART" id="VII_THE_POET_AND_HIS_ART">VII. THE POET AND HIS ART</a></h4> - - - -<h4>I</h4> - - -<p>A good prose style says Prof. Dr. Otto Jespersen in his great work, -"Growth and Structure of the English Language," "is everywhere a late -acquirement, and the work of whole generations of good authors is -needed to bring about the easy flow of written prose." The learned -<i>Sprachwissenschaftler</i> is here speaking of Old English, or, as it -used to be called when you and I were at the breast of enlightenment, -Anglo-Saxon. An inch or so lower down the page he points out that what -he says of prose is by no means true of verse—that poetry of very -respectable quality is often written by peoples and individuals whose -prose is quite as crude and graceless as that, say of the Hon. Warren -Gamaliel Harding—that even the so-called Anglo-Saxons of Beowulf's -time, a race as barbarous as the modern Jugo-Slavs or Mississippians, -were yet capable, on occasion, of writing dithyrambs of an indubitable -sweet gaudiness.</p> - -<p>The point needs no laboring. A glance at the history of any literature -will prove its soundness.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> Moreover, it is supported by what we see -around us every day—that is, if we look in literary directions. -Some of the best verse in the modern movement, at home and abroad, -has been written by intellectual adolescents who could no more write -a first-rate paragraph in prose then they could leap the Matterhorn -—girls just out of Vassar and Newnham, young army officers, chautauqua -orators, New England old maids, obscure lawyers and doctors, newspaper -reporters, all sorts of hollow dilettanti, male and female. Nine-tenths -of the best poetry of the world has been written by poets less than -thirty years old; a great deal more than half of it has been written -by poets under twenty-five. One always associates poetry with youth, -for it deals chiefly with the ideas that are peculiar to youth, and -its terminology is quite as youthful as its content. When one hears of -a poet past thirty-five, he seems somehow unnatural and even a trifle -obscene; it is as if one encountered a graying man who still played -the Chopin waltzes and believed in elective affinities. But prose, -obviously, is a sterner and more elderly matter. All the great masters -of prose (and especially of English prose, for its very resilience and -brilliance make it extraordinarily hard to write) have had to labor -for years before attaining to their mastery of it. The early prose of -Abraham Lincoln was remarkable only for its badness; it was rhetorical -and bombastic, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> full of supernumerary words; in brief, it was a -kind of poetry. It took years and years of hard striving for Abe to -develop the simple and exquisite prose of his last half-decade. So with -Thomas Henry Huxley, perhaps the greatest virtuoso of plain English who -has ever lived. His first writings were competent but undistinguished; -he was almost a grandfather before he perfected his superb style. -And so with Anatole France, and Addison, and T. B. Macaulay, and -George Moore, and James Branch Cabell, and .<i>,</i> and Lord Dunsany, -and Nietzsche, and to go back to antiquity, Marcus Tullius Cicero. I -have been told that the average age of the men who made the Authorized -Version of the Bible was beyond sixty years. Had they been under thirty -they would have made it lyrical; as it was, they made it colossal.</p> - -<p>The reason for all this is not far to seek. Prose, however powerful -its appeal to the emotions, is always based primarily upon logic, -and is thus scientific; poetry, whatever its so-called intellectual -content is always based upon mere sensation and emotion, and is thus -loose and disorderly. A man must have acquired discipline over his -feelings before he can write sound prose; he must have learned how to -subordinate his transient ideas to more general and permanent ideas; -above all, he must have acquired a good head for words, which is to -say, a capacity for resisting their mere lascivious lure. But to -write acceptable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> poetry, or even good poetry, he needs none of these -things. If his hand runs away with his head it is actually a merit. -If he writes what every one knows to be untrue, in terms that no sane -adult would ever venture to use in real life, it is proof of his -divine afflation. If he slops over and heaves around in a manner never -hitherto observed on land or sea, the fact proves his originality. -The so-called forms of verse and the rules of rhyme and rhythm do not -offer him difficulties; they offer him refuges. Their purpose is not -to keep him in order, but simply to give him countenance by providing -him with a formal orderliness when he is most out of order. Using -them is like swimming with bladders. The first literary composition -of a quick-minded child is always some sort of jingle. It starts out -with an inane idea—half an idea. Sticking to prose, it could go -no further. But to its primary imbecility it now adds a meaningless -phrase which, while logically unrelated, provides an agreeable concord -in mere sound—and the result is the primordial tadpole of a sonnet. -All the sonnets of the world, save a few of miraculous (and perhaps -accidental) quality, partake of this fundamental nonsensicality. In all -of them there are ideas that would sound idiotic in prose, and phrases -that would sound clumsy and uncouth in prose. But the rhyme scheme -conceals this nonsensicality. As a substitute for the missing logical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> -plausibility it provides a sensuous harmony. Reading the thing, one -gets a vague effect of agreeable sound, and so the logical feebleness -is overlooked. It is, in a sense, like observing a pretty girl, -competently dressed and made up, across the footlights. But translating -the poem into prose is like meeting and marrying her.</p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>II</h4> - - -<p>Much of the current discussion of poetry—and what, save Prohibition, -is more discussed in America?—is corrupted by a fundamental error. -That error consists in regarding the thing itself as a simple entity, -to be described conveniently in a picturesque phrase. "Poetry," says -one critic, "is the statement of overwhelming emotional values." -"Poetry," says another, "is an attempt to purge language of everything -except its music and its pictures." "Poetry," says a third, "is the -entering of delicately imaginative plateaus." "Poetry," says a fourth, -"is truth carried alive into the heart by a passion." "Poetry," says a -fifth, "is compacted of what seems, not of what is." "Poetry," says a -sixth, "is the expression of thought in musical language." "Poetry," -says a seventh, "is the language of a state of crisis." And so on, and -so on. <i>Quod est poetica?</i> They all answer, and yet they all fail to -answer. Poetry, in fact, is two quite distinct things. It may be either -or both. One is a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> series of words that are intrinsically musical, in -clang-tint and rhythm, as the single word <i>cellar-door</i> is musical. -The other is a series of ideas, false in themselves, that offer a -means of emotional and imaginative escape from the harsh realities of -everyday. In brief, (I succumb, like all the rest, to phrase-making), -poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious -music—a slap on the back in waltz time—a grand release of longings -and repressions to the tune of flutes, harps, sackbuts, psalteries and -the usual strings.</p> - -<p>As I say, poetry may be either the one thing or the other—caressing -music or caressing assurance. It need not necessarily be both. Consider -a familiar example from "Othello":</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 10%;"> -Not poppy, nor mandragora,<br /> -Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world<br /> -Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep<br /> -Which thou owed'st yesterday.<br /> -</p> - -<p>Here the sense, at best, is surely very vague. Probably not one auditor -in a hundred, hearing an actor recite those glorious lines, attaches -any intelligible meaning to the archaic word <i>owed'st,</i> the cornerstone -of the whole sentence. Nevertheless, the effect is stupendous. The -passage assaults and benumbs the faculties like Schubert's "Stndchen" -or the slow movement of Schumann's Rhenish symphony; hearing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> it is a -sensuous debauch; the man ansthetic to it could stand unmoved before -Rheims cathedral or the Hofbruhaus at Munich. One easily recalls many -other such bursts of pure music, almost meaningless but infinitely -delightful—in Poe, in Swinburne, in Marlowe, even in Joaquin -Miller. Two-thirds of the charm of reading Chaucer (setting aside -the Rabelaisian comedy) comes out of the mere burble of the words; -the meaning, to a modern, is often extremely obscure, and sometimes -downright undecipherable. The whole fame of Poe, as a poet, is based -upon five short poems. Of them, three are almost pure music. Their -intellectual content is of the vaguest. No one would venture to reduce -them to plain English. Even Poe himself always thought of them, not as -statements of poetic ideas, but as simple utterances of poetic (i.e., -musical) sounds.</p> - -<p>It was Sidney Lanier, himself a competent poet, who first showed the -dependence of poetry upon music. He had little to say, unfortunately, -about the clang-tint of words; what concerned him almost exclusively -was rhythm. In "The Science of English Verse," he showed that the -charm of this rhythm could be explained in the technical terms of -music—that all the old gabble about dactyls and spondees was no more -than a dog Latin invented by men who were fundamentally ignorant of -the thing they discussed.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> Lanier's book was the first intelligent -work ever published upon the nature and structure of the sensuous -content of English poetry. He struck out into such new and far paths -that the professors of prosody still lag behind him after forty years, -quite unable to understand a poet who was also a shrewd critic and a -first-rate musician. But if, so deeply concerned with rhythm, he marred -his treatise by forgetting clang-tint, he marred it still more by -forgetting content. Poetry that is all music is obviously relatively -rare, for only a poet who is also a natural musician can write it, and -natural musicians are much rarer in the world than poets. Ordinary -poetry, average poetry, thus depends in part upon its ideational -material, and perhaps even chiefly. It is the <i>idea</i> expressed in a -poem, and not the mellifluousness of the words used to express it, -that arrests and enchants the average connoisseur. Often, indeed, he -disdains this mellifluousness, and argues that the idea ought to be set -forth without the customary pretty jingling, or, at most, with only the -scant jingling that lies in rhythm—in brief, he wants his ideas in the -altogether, and so advocates <i>vers libre.</i></p> - -<p>It was another American, this time Prof. Dr. F. C. Prescott, of Cornell -University, who first gave scientific attention to the intellectual -content of poetry. His book is called "Poetry and Dreams." Its virtue -lies in the fact that it rejects all the customary mystical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> and -romantic definitions of poetry, and seeks to account for the thing in -straightforward psychological terms. Poetry, says Prescott, is simply -the verbal materialization of a day-dream, the statement of a Freudian -wish, an attempt to satisfy a subconscious longing by saying that it -is satisfied. In brief, poetry represents imagination's bold effort to -escape from the cold and clammy facts that hedge us in—to soothe the -wrinkled and fevered brow with beautiful balderdash. On the precise -nature of this beautiful balderdash you can get all in the information -you need by opening at random the nearest book of verse. The ideas -you will find in it may be divided into two main divisions. The first -consists of denials of objective facts; the second of denials of -subjective facts. Specimen of the first sort:</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 10%;"> -God's in His heaven,<br /> -All's well with the world.<br /> -</p> - -<p>Specimen of the second:</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 10%;"> -I am the master of my fate;<br /> -I am the captain of my soul.<br /> -</p> - -<p>It is my contention that all poetry (forgetting, for the moment, its -possible merit as mere sound) may be resolved into either the one -or the other of these frightful imbecilities—that its essential -character lies in its bold flouting of what every reflective adult -knows to be the truth. The poet, imagining him to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> sincere, is -simply one who disposes of all the horrors of life on this earth, -and of all the difficulties presented by his own inner weaknesses no -less, by the childish device of denying them. Is it a well-known fact -that love is an emotion that is almost as perishable as eggs—that -it is biologically impossible for a given male to yearn for a given -female more than a few brief years? Then the poet disposes of it by -assuring his girl that he will nevertheless love her forever—more, -by pledging his word of honor that he believes that <i>she</i> will love -<i>him</i> forever. Is it equally notorious that there is no such thing as -justice in the world—that the good are tortured insanely and the evil -go free and prosper? Then the poet composes a piece crediting God with -a mysterious and unintelligible theory of jurisprudence, whereby the -torture of the good is a sort of favor conferred upon them for their -goodness. Is it of almost equally widespread report that no healthy -man likes to contemplate his own inevitable death—that even in time -of war, with a vast pumping up of emotion to conceal the fact, every -soldier hopes and believes that he, personally, will escape? Then the -poet, first carefully introducing himself into a bomb-proof, achieves -strophes declaring that he is free from all such weakness—that he will -deliberately seek a rendezvous with death, and laugh ha-ha when the -bullet finds him.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p> - -<p>The precise nature of the imbecility thus solemnly set forth depends, -very largely, of course, upon the private prejudices and yearnings -of the poet, and the reception that is given it depends, by the same -token, upon the private prejudices and yearnings of the reader. That -is why it is often so difficult to get any agreement upon the merits -of a definite poem, <i>i. e.,</i> to get any agreement upon its capacity to -soothe. There is the man who craves only the animal delights of a sort -of Moslem-Methodist paradise: to him "The Frost is on the Pumpkin" is -a noble poem. There is the man who yearns to get out of the visible -universe altogether and tread the fields of asphodel: for him there -is delight only in the mystical stuff of Crashaw, Thompson, Yeats and -company. There is the man who revolts against the sordid Christian -notion of immortality—an eternity to be spent flapping wings with -pious green-grocers and oleaginous Anglican bishops; he finds <i>his</i> -escape in the gorgeous blasphemies of Swinburne. There is, to make an -end of examples, the man who, with an inferiority complex eating out -his heart, is moved by a great desire to stalk the world in heroic -guise: he may go to the sonorous swanking of Kipling, or he may go -to something more subtle, to some poem in which the boasting is more -artfully concealed, say Christina Rosetti's "When I am Dead." Many men, -many complexes, many secret yearnings! They collect, of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> course, in -groups; if the group happens to be large enough the poet it is devoted -to becomes famous. Kipling's great fame is thus easily explained. He -appeals to the commonest of all types of men, next to the sentimental -type—which is to say, he appeals to the bully and braggart type, the -chest-slapping type, the patriot type. Less harshly described, to the -boy type. All of us have been Kiplingomaniacs at some time or other. I -was myself a very ardent one at 17, and wrote many grandiloquent sets -of verse in the manner of "Tommy Atkins" and "Fuzzy-Wuzzy." But if -the gifts of observation and reflection have been given to us, we get -over it. There comes a time when we no longer yearn to be heroes, but -seek only peace—maybe even hope for quick extinction. Then we turn to -Swinburne and "The Garden of Proserpine"—more false assurances, more -mellifluous play-acting, another tinkling make-believe—but how sweet -on blue days!</p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>III</h4> - - -<p>One of the things to remember here (too often it is forgotten, and -Dr. Prescott deserves favorable mention for stressing it) is that a -man's conscious desires are not always identical with his subconscious -longings; in fact, the two are often directly antithetical. No doubt -the real man lies in the depths of the subconscious, like a carp -lurking in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> mud. His conscious personality is largely a product of his -environment—the reaction of his subconscious to the prevailing notions -of what is meet and seemly. Here, of course, I wander into platitude, -for the news that all men are frauds was already stale in the days -of Hammurabi. The ingenious Freud simply translated the fact into -pathological terms, added a bed-room scene, and so laid the foundations -for his psychoanalysis. Incidentally, it has always seemed to me that -Freud made a curious mistake when he brought sex into the foreground -of his new magic. He was, of course, quite right when he set up the -doctrine that, in civilized societies, sex impulses were more apt to be -suppressed than any other natural impulses, and that the subconscious -thus tended to be crowded with their ghosts. But in considering -sex impulses, he forgot sex imaginings. Digging out, by painful -cross-examination in a darkened room, some startling tale of carnality -in his patient's past, he committed the incredible folly of assuming -it to be literally true. More often than not, I believe, it was a mere -piece of boasting, a materialization of desire—in brief, a poem. It -is astonishing that this possibility never occurred to the venerable -professor; it is more astonishing that it has never occurred to any of -his disciples. He should have psychoanalyzed a few poets instead of -wasting all his time upon psychopathic women with sclerotic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> husbands. -He would have dredged amazing things out of their subconsciouses, -heroic as well as amorous. Imagine the billions of Boers, Germans, -Irishmen and Hindus that Kipling would have confessed to killing!</p> - -<p>But here I get into morbid anatomy, and had better haul up. What I -started out to say was that a man's preferences in poetry constitute an -excellent means of estimating his inner cravings and credulities. The -music disarms his critical sense, and he confesses to cherishing ideas -that he would repudiate with indignation if they were put into plain -words. I say he cherishes those ideas. Maybe he simply tolerates them -unwillingly; maybe they are no more than inescapable heritages from his -barbarous ancestors, like his vermiform appendix. Think of the poems -you like, and you will come upon many such intellectual fossils—ideas -that you by no means subscribe to openly, but that nevertheless give -you a strange joy. I put myself on the block as Exhibit A. There is my -delight in Lizette Woodworth Reese's sonnet, "Tears." Nothing could do -more violence to my conscious beliefs. Put into prose, the doctrine -in the poem would exasperate and even enrage me. There is no man in -Christendom who is less a Christian than I am. But here the dead hand -grabs me by the ear. My ancestors were converted to Christianity in -the year 1535, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> remained of that faith until near the middle of -the eighteenth century. Observe, now, the load I carry; more than -two hundred years of Christianity, and perhaps a thousand years -(maybe even two, or three thousand years) of worship of heathen gods -before that—at least twelve hundred years of uninterrupted belief -in the immortality of the soul. Is it any wonder that, betrayed by -the incomparable music of Miss Reese's Anglo-Saxon monosyllables, my -conscious faith is lulled to sleep, thus giving my subconscious a -chance to wallow in its immemorial superstition?</p> - -<p>Even so, my vulnerability to such superstitions is very low, and it -tends to grow less as I increase in years and sorrows. As I have -said, I once throbbed to the drum-beat of Kipling; later on, I was -responsive to the mellow romanticism of Tennyson; now it takes one of -the genuinely fundamental delusions of the human race to move me. But -progress is not continuous; it has interludes. There are days when -every one of us experiences a sort of ontogenetic back-firing, and -returns to an earlier stage of development. It is on such days that -grown men break down and cry like children; it is then that they play -games, or cheer the flag, or fall in love. And it is then that they -are in the mood for poetry, and get comfort out of its asseverations -of the obviously not true. A truly civilized man, when he is wholly -himself, derives no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> pleasure from hearing a poet state, as Browning -stated, that this world is perfect. Such tosh not only does not please -him; it definitely offends him, as he is offended by an idiotic -article in a newspaper; it roils him to encounter so much stupidity in -Christendom. But he may like it when he is drunk, or suffering from -some low toxemia, or staggering beneath some great disaster. Then, as I -say, the ontogenetic process reverses itself, and he slides back into -infancy. Then he goes to poets, just as he goes to women, "glad" books, -and dogmatic theology. The very highest orders of men, perhaps, never -suffer from such malaises of the spirit, or, if they suffer from them, -never succumb to them. These are men who are so thoroughly civilized -that even the most severe attack upon the emotions is not sufficient -to dethrone their reason. Charles Darwin was such a man. There was -never a moment in his life when he sought religious consolation, -and there was never a moment when he turned to poetry; in fact, he -regarded all poetry as silly. Other first-rate men, more sensitive to -the possible music in it, regard it with less positive aversion, but -I have never heard of a truly first-rate man who got any permanent -satisfaction out of its content. The Browning Societies of the latter -part of the nineteenth century (and I choose the Browning Societies -because Browning's poetry was often more or less logical in content, -and thus above<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> the ordinary intellectually) were not composed of such -men as Huxley, Spencer, Lecky, Buckle and Travelyn, but of third-rate -school-masters, moony old maids, candidates for theosophy, literary -vicars, collectors of Rogers groups, and other such Philistines. The -chief propagandist for Browning in the United States was not Henry -Adams, or William Summer, or Daniel C. Gilman, but an obscure professor -of English who was also an ardent spook-chaser. And what is thus true -ontogenetically is also true phylogenetically. That is to say, poetry -is chiefly produced and esteemed by peoples that have not yet come to -maturity. The Romans had a dozen poets of the first talent before they -had a single prose writer of any skill whatsoever. So did the English. -So did the Germans. In our own day we see the negroes of the South -producing religious and secular verse of such quality that it is taken -over by the whites, and yet the number of negroes who show a decent -prose style is still very small, and there is no sign of it increasing. -Similarly, the white authors of America, during the past ten or fifteen -years, have produced a great mass of very creditable poetry, and yet -the quality of our prose remains very low, and the Americans with prose -styles of any distinction could be counted on the fingers of two hands.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>IV</h4> - - -<p>So far I have spoken chiefly of the content of poetry. In its character -as a sort of music it is plainly a good deal more respectable, and -makes an appeal to a far higher variety of reader, or, at all events, -to a reader in a state of greater mental clarity. A capacity for -music—by which I mean melody, harmony and clang-tint—comes late in -the history of every race. The savage can apprehend rhythm, but he -is quite incapable of carrying a tune in any intelligible scale. The -negro roustabouts of our own South, who are commonly regarded as very -musical, are actually only rhythmical; they never invent melodies, -but only rhythms. And the whites to whom their barbarous dance-tunes -chiefly appeal are in their own stage of culture. When one observes -a room full of well-dressed men and women swaying and wriggling to -the tune of some villainous mazurka from the Mississippi levees, one -may assume very soundly that they are all the sort of folk who play -golf and bridge, and prefer "The Sheik" to "Heart of Darkness" and -believe in the League of Nations. A great deal of superficial culture -is compatible with that pathetic barbarism, and even a high degree of -sthetic sophistication in other directions. The Greeks who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> built the -Parthenon knew no more about music than a hog knows of predestination; -they were almost as ignorant in that department as the modern Iowans or -New Yorkers. It was not, indeed, until the Renaissance that music as -we know it appeared in the world, and it was not until less than two -centuries ago that it reached a high development. In Shakespeare's day -music was just getting upon its legs in England; in Goethe's day it -was just coming to full flower in Germany; in France and America it is -still in the savage state. It is thus the youngest of the arts, and the -most difficult, and hence the noblest. Any sane young man of twenty-two -can write an acceptable sonnet, or design a habitable house or draw a -horse that will not be mistaken for an automobile, but before he may -write even a bad string quartet he must go through a long and arduous -training, just as he must strive for years before he may write prose -that is instantly recognizable as prose, and not as a string of mere -words.</p> - -<p>The virtue of such great poets as Shakespeare does not lie in the -content of their poetry, but in its music. The content of the -Shakespearean plays, in fact, is often puerile, and sometimes quite -incomprehensible. No scornful essays by George Bernard Shaw and Frank -Harris were needed to demonstrate the fact; it lies plainly in the -text. One snickers sourly over the spectacle of generations of pedants -debating<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> the question of Hamlet's mental processes; the simple fact -is that Shakespeare gave him no more mental processes than a Fifth -avenue rector has, but merely employed him as a convenient spout -for some of the finest music ever got into words. Assume that he -has all the hellish sagacity of a Nietzsche, and that music remains -unchanged; assume that he is as idiotic as a Grand Worthy Flubdub of -the Freemasons, and it still remains unchanged. As it is intoned on -the stage by actors, the poetry of Shakespeare commonly loses content -altogether. One cannot make out what the <i>cabotin</i> is saying; one can -only observe that it is beautiful. There are whole speeches in the -Shakespearean plays whose meaning is unknown ever to scholars—and yet -they remain favorites, and well deserve to. Who knows, again, what -the sonnets are about? Is the bard talking about the inn-keeper's -wife at Oxford, or about a love affair of a pathological, Y. M. C. -A. character? Some say one thing, and some say the other. But all -who have ears must agree that the sonnets are extremely beautiful -stuff—that the English language reaches in them, the topmost heights -of conceivable beauty. Shakespeare thus ought to be ranked among -the musicians, along with Beethoven. As a philosopher he was a -ninth-rater—but so was old Ludwig. I wonder what he would have done -with prose? I can't make up my mind about it. One day I believe that he -would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> have written prose as good as Dryden's, and the next day I begin -to fear that he would have produced something as bad as Swinburne's. He -had the ear, but he lacked the logical sense. Poetry has done enough -when it charms, but prose must also convince.</p> - -<p>I do not forget, of course, that there is a borderland in which it -is hard to say, of this or that composition, whether it is prose or -poetry. Lincoln's Gettysburg speech is commonly reckoned as prose, and -yet I am convinced that it is quite as much poetry as the Queen Mab -speech or Marlowe's mighty elegy on Helen of Troy. More, it is so read -and admired by the great masses of the American people. It is an almost -perfect specimen of a comforting but unsound asseveration put into -rippling and hypnotizing words; done into plain English, the statements -of fact in it would make even a writer of school history-books laugh. -So with parts of the Declaration of Independence. No one believes -seriously that they are true, but nearly everyone agrees that it -would be a nice thing if they <i>were</i> true—and meanwhile Jefferson's -eighteenth century rhetoric, by Johnson out of John Lyly's "Euphues," -completes the enchantment. In the main, the test is to be found in the -audience rather than in the poet. If it is naturally intelligent and in -a sober and critical mood, demanding sense and proofs, then nearly all -poetry becomes prose; if, on the contrary, it is congenitally maudlin,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> -or has a few drinks aboard, or is in love, or is otherwise in a soft -and believing mood, then even the worst of prose, if it has a touch -of soothing sing-song in it, becomes moving poetry—for example, the -diplomatic and political gospel-hymns of the late Dr. Wilson, a man -constitutionally unable to reason clearly or honestly, but nevertheless -one full of the burbling that caresses the ears of simple men. Most of -his speeches, during the days of his divine appointment, translated -into intelligible English, would have sounded as idiotic as a prose -version of "The Blessed Damozel." Read by his opponents, they sounded -so without the translation.</p> - -<p>But at the extremes, of course, there are indubitable poetry and -incurable prose, and the difference is not hard to distinguish. -Prose is simply a form of writing in which the author intends that -his statements shall be accepted as conceivably true, even when they -are about imaginary persons and events; its appeal is to the fully -conscious and alertly reasoning man. Poetry is a form of writing in -which the author attempts to disarm reason and evoke emotion, partly by -presenting images that awaken a powerful response in the subconscious -and partly by the mere sough and blubber of words. Poetry is not -distinguished from prose, as Prof. Dr. Lowes says in his "Convention -and Revolt in Poetry," by an exclusive phraseology, but by a peculiar -attitude of mind—an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> attitude of self-delusion, of fact-denying, of -saying what isn't true. It is essentially an effort to elude the bitter -facts of life, whereas prose is essentially a means of unearthing and -exhibiting them. The gap is bridged by sentimental prose, which is half -prose and half poetry—Lincoln's Gettysburg speech, the average sermon, -the prose of an erotic novelette. Immediately the thing acquires a -literal meaning it ceases to be poetry; immediately it becomes capable -of convincing an adult and perfectly sober man during the hours between -breakfast and luncheon it is indisputably prose.</p> - -<p>This quality of untruthfulness pervades all poetry, good and bad. -You will find it in the very best poetry that the world has so far -produced, to wit, in the sonorous poems of the Jewish Scriptures. -The ancient Jews were stupendous poets. Moreover, they were shrewd -psychologists, and so knew the capacity of poetry, given the believing -mind, to convince and enchant—in other words, its capacity to drug -the auditor in such a manner that he accepts it literally, as he -might accept the baldest prose. This danger in poetry, given auditors -impressionable enough, is too little estimated and understood. It is -largely responsible for the persistence of sentimentality in a world -apparently designed for the one purpose of manufacturing cynics. It is -probably chiefly responsible for the survival of Christianity, despite -the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> hard competition that it has met with from other religions. The -theology of Christianity—<i>i.</i> e., its prose—is certainly no more -convincing than that of half a dozen other religions that might be -named; it is, in fact, a great deal less convincing than the theology -of, say, Buddhism. But the poetry of Christianity is infinitely more -lush and beautiful than that of any other religion ever heard of. -There is more lovely poetry in one of the Psalms than in all of the -Non-Christian scriptures of the world taken together. More, this -poetry is in both Testaments, the New as well as the Old. Who could -imagine a more charming poem than that of the Child in the manger? -It has enchanted the world for nearly two thousand years. It is -simple, exquisite and overwhelming. Its power to arouse emotion is -so great that even in our age it is at the bottom of fully a half of -the kindliness, romanticism and humane sentimentality that survive in -Christendom. It is worth a million syllogisms.</p> - -<p>Once, after plowing through sixty or seventy volumes of bad verse, I -described myself as a poetry-hater. The epithet was and is absurd. The -truth is that I enjoy poetry as much as the next man—when the mood -is on me. But what mood? The mood, in a few words, of intellectual -and spiritual fatigue, the mood of revolt against the insoluble -riddle of existence, the mood of disgust and despair. Poetry,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> then, -is a capital medicine. First its sweet music lulls, and then its -artful presentation of the beautifully improbable soothes and gives -surcease. It is an escape from life, like religion, like enthusiasm, -like glimpsing a pretty girl. And to the mere sensuous joy in it, to -the mere low delight in getting away from the world for a bit, there -is added, if the poetry be good, something vastly better, something -reaching out into the realm of the intelligent, to wit, appreciation -of good workmanship. A sound sonnet is almost as pleasing an object -as a well-written fugue. A pretty lyric, deftly done, has all the -technical charm of a fine carving. I think it is craftsmanship that -I admire most in the world. Brahms enchants me because he knew -his trade perfectly. I like Richard Strauss because he is full of -technical ingenuities, because he is a master-workman. Well, who ever -heard of a finer craftsman than William Shakespeare? His music was -magnificent, he played superbly upon all the common emotions—and he -did it magnificently, he did it with an air. No, I am no poetry-hater. -But even Shakespeare I most enjoy, not on brisk mornings when I feel -fit for any deviltry, but on dreary evenings when my old wounds are -troubling me, and some fickle one has just sent back the autographed -set of my first editions, and bills are piled up on my desk, and I am -too sad to work. Then I mix a stiff dram—and read poetry.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a name="VIII_FIVE_MEN_AT_RANDOM" id="VIII_FIVE_MEN_AT_RANDOM">VIII. FIVE MEN AT RANDOM</a></h4> - - - -<h4>1</h4> - -<h4><i>Abraham Lincoln</i></h4> - - -<p>The backwardness of the art of biography in These States is made -shiningly visible by the fact that we have yet to see a first-rate -life of either Lincoln or Whitman. Of Lincolniana, of course, there is -no end, nor is there any end to the hospitality of those who collect -it. Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of -books that never, under any circumstances, lose money in the United -States—first, detective stories; secondly, novels in which the heroine -is forcibly debauched by the hero; thirdly, volumes on spiritualism, -occultism and other such claptrap, and fourthly, books on Lincoln. But -despite all the vast mass of Lincolniana and the constant discussion -of old Abe in other ways, even so elemental a problem as that of -his religious faith—surely an important matter in any competent -biography—is yet but half solved. Here, for example, is the Rev. -William E.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> Barton, grappling with it for more than four hundred large -pages in "The Soul of Abraham Lincoln." It is a lengthy inquiry—the -rev. pastor, in truth, shows a good deal of the habitual garrulity of -his order—but it is never tedious. On the contrary, it is curious and -amusing, and I have read it with steady interest, including even the -appendices. Unluckily, the author, like his predecessors, fails to -finish the business before him. Was Lincoln a Christian? Did he believe -in the Divinity of Christ? I am left in doubt. He was very polite about -it, and very cautious, as befitted a politician in need of Christian -votes, but how much genuine conviction was in that politeness? And if -his occasional references to Christ were thus open to question, what -of his rather vague avowals of belief in a personal God and in the -immortality of the soul? Herndon and some of his other close friends -always maintained that he was an atheist, but Dr. Barton argues that -this atheism was simply disbelief in the idiotic Methodist and Baptist -dogmas of his time—that nine Christian churches out of ten, if he were -alive to-day, would admit him to their high privileges and prerogatives -without anything worse than a few warning coughs. As for me, I still -wonder.</p> - -<p>The growth of the Lincoln legend is truly amazing. He becomes the -American solar myth, the chief butt of American credulity and -sentimentality. Washington,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> of late years, has been perceptibly -humanized; every schoolboy now knows that he used to swear a good deal, -and was a sharp trader, and had a quick eye for a pretty ankle. But -meanwhile the varnishers and veneerers have been busily converting -Abe into a plaster saint, thus making him fit for adoration in the -chautauquas and Y. M. C. A.'s. All the popular pictures of him show -him in his robes of state, and wearing an expression fit for a man -about to be hanged. There is, so far as I know, not a single portrait -of him showing him smiling—and yet he must have cackled a good deal, -first and last: who ever heard of a storyteller who didn't? Worse, -there is an obvious effort to pump all his human weaknesses out of -him, and so leave him a mere moral apparition, a sort of amalgam of -John Wesley and the Holy Ghost. What could be more absurd? Lincoln, -in point of fact, was a practical politician of long experience and -high talents, and by no means cursed with inconvenient ideals. On the -contrary, his career in the Illinois Legislature was that of a good -organization man, and he was more than once denounced by reformers. -Even his handling of the slavery question was that of a politician, not -that of a fanatic. Nothing alarmed him more than the suspicion that -he was an Abolitionist. Barton tells of an occasion when he actually -fled town to avoid meeting the issue squarely. A genuine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> Abolitionist -would have published the Emancipation Proclamation the day after the -first battle of Bull Run. But Lincoln waited until the time was more -favorable—until Lee had been hurled out of Pennsylvania, and, more -important still, until the political currents were safely running his -way. Always he was a wary fellow, both in his dealings with measures -and in his dealings with men. He knew how to keep his mouth shut.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, it was his eloquence that probably brought him to his -great estate. Like William Jennings Bryan, he was a dark horse made -suddenly formidable by fortunate rhetoric. The Douglas debate launched -him, and the Cooper Union speech got him the presidency. This talent -for emotional utterance, this gift for making phrases that enchanted -the plain people, was an accomplishment of late growth. His early -speeches were mere empty fireworks—the childish rhodomontades of -the era. But in middle life he purged his style of ornament and it -became almost baldly simple—and it is for that simplicity that he -is remembered to-day. The Gettysburg speech is at once the shortest -and the most famous oration in American history. Put beside it, all -the whoopings of the Websters, Sumners and Everetts seem gaudy and -silly. It is eloquence brought to a pellucid and almost child-like -perfection—the highest emotion<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> reduced to one graceful and -irresistible gesture. Nothing else precisely like it is to be found -in the whole range of oratory. Lincoln himself never even remotely -approached it. It is genuinely stupendous.</p> - -<p>But let us not forget that it is oratory, not logic; beauty, not -sense. Think of the argument in it! Put it into the cold words of -everyday! The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers -who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of -self-determination—"that government of the people, by the people, -for the people," should not perish from the earth. It is difficult -to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle -actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates -who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What -was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else -than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, <i>i. e.</i>, -of the people of the States? The Confederates went into battle an -absolutely free people; they came out with their freedom subject to the -supervision and vote of the rest of the country—and for nearly twenty -years that vote was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely any freedom -at all. Am I the first American to note the fundamental nonsensicality -of the Gettysburg address? If so, I plead my sthetic joy in it in -amelioration of the sacrilege.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>2</h4> - -<h4><i>Paul Elmer More</i></h4> - - -<p>Nothing new is to be found in the latest volume of Paul Elmer More's -Shelburne Essays. The learned author, undismayed by the winds of -anarchic doctrine that blow down his Princeton stovepipe, continues -to hold fast to the notions of his earliest devotion. He is still the -gallant champion sent against the Romantic Movement by the forces -of discipline and decorum. He is still the eloquent fugleman of the -Puritan ethic and sthetic. In so massive a certainty, so resolute an -immovability there is something almost magnificent. These are somewhat -sad days for the exponents of that ancient correctness. The Goths -and the Huns are at the gate, and as they batter wildly they throw -dead cats, perfumed lingerie, tracts against predestination, and the -bound files of the <i>Nation,</i> the <i>Freeman</i> and the <i>New Republic</i> -over the fence. But the din does not flabbergast Dr. More. High above -the blood-bathed battlements there is a tower, of ivory within and -solid ferro-concrete without, and in its austere upper chamber he sits -undaunted, solemnly composing an elegy upon Jonathan Edwards, "the -greatest theologian and philosopher yet produced in this country."</p> - -<p>Magnificent, indeed—and somehow charming.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> On days when I have no -nobler business I sometimes join the barbarians and help them to launch -their abominable bombs against the embattled blue-nose& It is, in -the main, fighting that is too easy, too Anglo-Saxon to be amusing. -Think of the decayed professors assembled by Dr. Franklin for the -<i>Profiteers' Review;</i> who could get any genuine thrill out of dropping -<i>them?</i> They come out on crutches, and are as much afraid of what -is behind them as they are of what is in front of them. Facing all -the horrible artillery of Nineveh and Tyre, they arm themselves with -nothing worse than the pedagogical birch. The janissaries of Adolph -Ochs, the Anglo-Saxon supreme archon, are even easier. One has but to -blow a <i>shofar,</i> and down they go. Even Prof. Dr. Stuart P. Sherman is -no antagonist to delight a hard-boiled heretic. Sherman is at least -honestly American, of course, but the trouble with him is that he is -<i>too</i> American. The Iowa hayseed remains in his hair; he can't get rid -of the smell of the chautauqua; one inevitably sees in him a sort of -<i>reductio ad absurdum</i> of his fundamental theory—to wit, the theory -that the test of an artist is whether he hated the Kaiser in 1917, and -plays his honorable part in Christian Endeavor, and prefers Coca-Cola -to Scharlachberger 1911, and has taken to heart the great lessons -of sex hygiene. Sherman is game, but he doesn't offer sport in the -grand manner. Moreover, he has been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> showing sad signs of late of a -despairing heart: he tries to be ingratiating, and begins to hug in the -clinches.</p> - -<p>The really tempting quarry is More. To rout him out of his armored -tower, to get him out upon the glacis for a duel before both armies, to -bring him finally to the wager of battle—this would be an enterprise -to bemuse the most audacious and give pause to the most talented. More -has a solid stock of learning in his lockers; he is armed and outfitted -as none of the pollyannas who trail after him is armed and outfitted; -he is, perhaps, the nearest approach to a genuine scholar that we have -in America, God save us all! But there is simply no truculence in him, -no flair for debate, no lust to do execution upon his foes. His method -is wholly <i>ex parte.</i> Year after year he simply iterates and reiterates -his misty protests, seldom changing so much as a word. Between his -first volume and his last there is not the difference between Gog and -Magog. Steadily, ploddingly, vaguely, he continues to preach the gloomy -gospel of tightness and restraint. He was against "the electric thrill -of freer feeling" when he began, and he will be against it on that last -gray day—I hope it long post-dates my own hanging—when the ultimate -embalmer sneaks upon him with velvet tread, and they haul down the flag -to half-staff at Princeton, and the readers of the New York <i>Evening<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> -Journal</i> note that an obscure somebody named Paul E. More is dead.</p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>3</h4> - -<h4><i>Madison Cawein</i></h4> - - -<p>A vast and hefty tome celebrates this dead poet, solemnly issued by -his mourning friends in Louisville. The editor is Otto A. Rothert, -who confesses that he knew Cawein but a year or two, and never read -his poetry until after his death. The contributors include such local -<i>literati</i> as Reuben Post Halleck, Leigh Gordon Giltner, Anna Blanche -McGill and Elvira S. Miller Slaughter. Most of the ladies gush over -the departed in the manner of high-school teachers paying tribute to -Plato, Montaigne or Dante Alighieri. His young son, seventeen years -old, contributes by far the most vivid and intelligent account of -him; it is, indeed, very well written, as, in a different way, is the -contribution of Charles Hamilton Musgrove, an old newspaper friend. -The ladies, as I hint, simply swoon and grow lyrical. But it is a -fascinating volume, all the same, and well worth the room it takes on -the shelf. Mr. Rothert starts off with what he calls a "picturography" -of Cawein—the poet's father and mother in the raiment of 1865, the -coat-of-arms of his mother's great-grand-father's uncle, the house -which now stands on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> the site of the house in which he was born, the -rock spring from which he used to drink as a boy, a group showing him -with his three brothers, another showing him with one brother and -their cousin Fred, Cawein himself with sideboards, the houses he lived -in, the place where he worked, the walks he liked around Louisville, -his wife and baby, the hideous bust of him in the Louisville Public -Library, the church from which he was buried, his modest grave in Cave -Hill Cemetery—in brief, all the photographs that collect about a man -as he staggers through life, and entertain his ribald grandchildren -after he is gone. Then comes a treatise on the ancestry and youth of -the poet, then a collection of newspaper clippings about him, then -a gruesomely particular account of his death, then a fragment of -autobiography, then a selection from his singularly dull letters, then -some prose pieces from his pen, then the aforesaid tributes of his -neighbors, and finally a bibliography of his works, and an index to -them.</p> - -<p>As I say, a volume of fearful bulk and beam, but nevertheless full of -curious and interesting things. Cawein, of course, was not a poet of -the first rank, nor is it certain that he has any secure place in the -second rank, but in the midst of a great deal of obvious and feeble -stuff he undoubtedly wrote some nature lyrics of excellent quality. -The woods and the fields were his delight. He loved to roam through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> -them, observing the flowers, the birds, the tall trees, the shining -sky overhead, the green of Spring, the reds and browns of Autumn, the -still whites of Winter. There were times when he got his ecstasy into -words—when he wrote poems that were sound and beautiful. These poems -will not be forgotten; there will be no history of American literature -written for a hundred years that does not mention Madison Cawein. But -what will the literary historians make of the man himself? How will -they explain his possession, however fitfully, of the divine gift—his -genuine kinship with Wordsworth and Shelly? Certainly no more unlikely -candidate for the bays ever shinned up Parnassus. His father was a -quack doctor; his mother was a professional spiritualist; he himself, -for years and years, made a living as cashier in a gambling-house! -Could anything be more grotesque? Is it possible to imagine a more -improbable setting for a poet? Yet the facts are the facts, and Mr. -Rothert makes no attempt whatever to conceal them. Add a final touch -of the bizarre: Cawein fell over one morning while shaving in his -bathroom, and cracked his head on the bathtub, and after his death -there was a row over his life insurance. Mr. Rothert presents all of -the documents. The autopsy is described; the death certificate is -quoted.... A strange, strange tale, indeed!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>4</h4> - -<h4><i>Frank Harris</i></h4> - - -<p>Though, so far as I know, this Harris is a perfectly reputable man, -fearing God and obeying the laws, it is not to be gainsaid that a -certain flavor of the sinister hangs about his aspect. The first time -I ever enjoyed the honor of witnessing him, there bobbed up in my mind -(instantly put away as unworthy and unseemly) a memory of the handsome -dogs who used to chain shrieking virgins to railway tracks in the -innocent, pre-Ibsenish dramas of my youth, the while a couple of stage -hands imitated the rumble of the Empire State Express in the wings. -There was the same elegance of turn-out, the same black mustachios, the -same erect figure and lordly air, the same agate glitter in the eyes, -the same aloof and superior smile. A sightly fellow, by all the gods, -and one who obviously knew how to sneer. That afternoon, in fact, we -had a sneering match, and before it was over most of the great names in -the letters and politics of the time, <i>circa</i> 1914, had been reduced -to faint hisses and ha-has.... Well, a sneerer has his good days and -his bad days. There are times when his gift gives him such comfort -that it can be matched only by God's grace, and there are times when -it launches upon him such showers of darts that he is bound to feel a -few stings. Harris<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> got the darts first, for the year that he came back -to his native land, after a generation of exile, was the year in which -Anglomania rose to the dignity of a national religion—and what he had -to say about the English, among whom he had lived since the early 80's, -was chiefly of a very waspish and disconcerting character. Worse, he -not only said it, twirling his mustache defiantly; he also wrote it -down, and published it in a book. This book was full of shocks for the -rapt worshippers of the Motherland, and particularly for the literary -<i>Kanonendelicatessen</i> who followed the pious leadership of Woodrow and -Ochs, Putnam and Roosevelt, Wister and Cyrus Curtis, young Reid and -Mrs. Jay. So they called a special meeting of the American Academy of -Arts and Letters, sang "God Save the King," kissed the Union Jack, -and put Harris into Coventry. And there he remained for five or six -long years. The literary reviews never mentioned him. His books were -expunged from the minutes. When he was heard of at all, it was only in -whispers, and the general burden of those whispers was that he was in -the pay of the Kaiser, and plotting to garrot the Rev. Dr. William T. -Manning....</p> - -<p>So down to 1921. Then the English, with characteristic lack of -delicacy, played a ghastly trick upon all those dutiful and -well-meaning colonists. That is to say, they suddenly forgave Harris -his criminal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> refusal to take their war buncombe seriously, exhumed him -from his long solitude among the Anglo-Ashkenazim, and began praising -him in rich, hearty terms as a literary gentleman of the first water, -and even as the chief adornment of American letters! The English -notices of his "Contemporary Portraits: Second Series" were really -quite amazing. The London <i>Times</i> gave him two solid columns, and where -the <i>Times</i> led, all the other great organs of English literary opinion -followed. The book itself was described as something extraordinary, a -piece of criticism full of shrewdness and originality, and the author -was treated with the utmost politeness.... One imagines the painful -sensation in the New York <i>Times</i> office, the dismayed groups around -far-flung campus pumps, the special meetings of the Princeton, N. J., -and Urbana, Ill., American Legions, the secret conference between -the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the Ku Klux Klan. But -though there was tall talk by hot heads, nothing could be done. Say -"Wo!" and the dutiful jack-ass turns to the right; say "Gee!" and he -turns to the left. It is too much, of course, to ask him to cheer as -well as turn—but he nevertheless turns. Since 1921 I have heard no -more whispers against Harris from professors and Vigilantes. But on -two or three occasions, the subject coming up, I have heard him sneer -his master sneer, and each time my blood has run cold.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> -Well, what is in him? My belief, frequently expressed, is that there is a great -deal. His "Oscar Wilde" is, by long odds, the best literary biography -ever written by an American—an astonishingly frank, searching and -vivid reconstruction of character—a piece of criticism that makes all -ordinary criticism seem professorial and lifeless. The Comstocks, I -need not say, tried to suppress it; a brilliant light is thrown upon -Harris by the fact that they failed ignominiously. All the odds were in -favor of the Comstocks; they had patriotism on their side and the help -of all the swine who flourished in those days; nevertheless, Harris -gave them a severe beating, and scared them half to death. In brief, a -man of the most extreme bellicosity, enterprise and courage—a fellow -whose ideas are expressed absolutely regardless of tender feelings, -whether genuine or bogus. In "The Man Shakespeare" and "The Women of -Shakespeare" he tackled the whole body of academic English critics <i>en -masse</i>—and routed them <i>en masse.</i> The two books, marred perhaps by a -too bombastic spirit, yet contain some of the soundest, shrewdest and -most convincing criticism of Shakespeare that has ever been written. -All the old hocus-pocus is thrown overboard. There is an entirely -new examination of the materials, and to the business is brought a -knowledge of the plays so ready and so vast that that of even the most -learned don begins to seem a mere<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> smattering. The same great grasp -of facts and evidences is visible in the sketches which make up the -three volumes of "Contemporary Portraits." What one always gets out of -them is a feeling that the man knows the men he is writing about—that -he not only knows what he sets down, but a great deal more. There is -here nothing of the cold correctness of the usual literary "estimate." -Warts are not forgotten, whether of the nose or of the immortal -soul. The subject, beginning as a political shibboleth or a row of -books, gradually takes on all the colors of life, and then begins to -move, naturally and freely. I know of no more brilliant evocations -of personality in any literature—and most of them are personalities -of sharp flavor, for Harris, in his day, seems to have known almost -everybody worth knowing, and whoever he knew went into his laboratory -for vivisection.</p> - -<p>The man is thus a first rate critic of his time, and what he has -written about his contemporaries is certain to condition the view of -them held in the future. What gives him his value in this difficult -field is, first of all and perhaps most important of all, his cynical -detachment—his capacity for viewing men and ideas objectively. In his -life, of course, there have been friendships and some of them have -been strong and long-continued, but when he writes it is with a sort -of surgical remoteness; as if the business in hand were vastly more -important than the man. He was lately<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> protesting violently that he was -and is quite devoid of malice. Granted. But so is a surgeon. To write -of George Moore as he has written may be writing devoid of malice, but -nevertheless the effect is precisely that which would follow if some -malicious enemy were to drag poor George out of his celibate couch in -the dead of night, and chase him naked down Shaftsbury avenue. The -thing is appallingly revelatory—and I believe that it is true. The -Moore that he depicts may not be absolutely the real Moore, but he -is unquestionably far nearer to the real Moore than the Moore of the -Moore books. The method, of course, has its defects. Harris is far more -interested, fundamentally, in men than in their ideas: the catholic -sweep of his "Contemporary Portraits" proves it. In consequence his -judgments of books are often colored by his opinions of their authors. -He dislikes Mark Twain as his own antithesis: a trimmer and poltroon. -<i>Ergo,</i> "A Connecticut Yankee" is drivel, which leads us, as Euclid -hath it, to absurdity. He once had a row with Dreiser. <i>Ergo,</i> "The -Titan" is nonsense, which is itself nonsense. But I know of no critic -who is wholly free from that quite human weakness. In the academic -bunkophagi it is everything; they are willing to swallow anything so -long as the author is sound upon the League of Nations. It seems to me -that such aberrations are rarer in Harris than in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> most. He may have -violent prejudices, but it is seldom that they play upon a man who is -honest.</p> - -<p>I judge from his frequent discussions of himself—he is happily free -from the vanity of modesty—that the pets of his secret heart are his -ventures into fiction, and especially, "The Bomb" and "Montes the -Matador." The latter has been greatly praised by Arnold Bennett, who -has also praised Leonard Merrick. I have read it four or five times, -and always with enjoyment. It is a powerful and adept tale; well -constructed and beautifully written; it recalls some of the best of the -shorter stories of Thomas Hardy. Alongside it one might range half a -dozen other Harris stories—all of them carefully put together, every -one the work of a very skillful journeyman. But despite Harris, the -authentic Harris is not the story-writer: he has talents, of course, -but it would be absurd to put "Montes the Matador" beside "Heart of -Darkness." In "Love in Youth" he descends to unmistakable fluff and -feebleness. The real Harris is the author of the Wilde volumes, of the -two books about Shakespeare, of the three volumes of "Contemporary -Portraits." Here there is stuff that lifts itself clearly and -brilliantly above the general—criticism that has a terrific vividness -and plausibility, and all the gusto that the professors can never pump -up. Harris makes his opinions not only interesting, but important.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> -What he has to say always seems novel, ingenious, and true. Here is the -chief life-work of an American who, when all values are reckoned up, -will be found to have been a sound artist and an extremely intelligent, -courageous and original man—and infinitely the superior of the poor -dolts who once tried so childishly to dispose of him.</p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>5</h4> - -<h4><i>Havelock Ellis</i></h4> - - -<p>If the test of the personal culture of a man be the degree of his -freedom from the banal ideas and childish emotions which move the -great masses of men, then Havelock Ellis is undoubtedly the most -civilized Englishman of his generation. He is a man of the soundest -and widest learning, but it is not his positive learning that gives -him distinction; it is his profound and implacable skepticism, his -penetrating eye for the transient, the disingenuous, and the shoddy. -So unconditioned a skepticism, it must be plain, is not an English -habit. The average Englishman of science, though he may challenge the -Continentals within his speciality, is only too apt to sink to the -level of a politician, a green grocer, or a suburban clergyman outside -it. The examples of Wallace, Crookes, and Lodge are anything but -isolated. Scratch an English naturalist and you are likely to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> discover -a spiritualist; take an English metaphysician to where the band is -playing, and if he begins to snuffle patriotically you need not be -surprised. The late war uncovered this weakness in a wholesale manner. -The English <i>Gelehrten,</i> as a class, not only stood by their country; -they also stood by the Hon. David Lloyd George, the <i>Daily Mail,</i> and -the mob in Trafalgar Square. Unluckily, the asinine manifestations -ensuing—for instance, the "proofs" of the eminent Oxford philologist -that the Germans had never contributed anything to philology—are -not to be described with good grace by an American, for they were -far surpassed on this side of the water. England at least had Ellis, -with Bertrand Russell, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, and a few others in the -background. We had, on that plane, no one.</p> - -<p>Ellis, it seems to me, stood above all the rest, and precisely because -his dissent from the prevailing imbecilities was quite devoid of -emotion and had nothing in it of brummagen moral purpose. Too many of -the heretics of the time were simply orthodox witch-hunters off on an -unaccustomed tangent. In their disorderly indignation they matched the -regular professors; it was only in the objects of their ranting that -they differed. But Ellis kept his head throughout. An Englishman of -the oldest native stock, an unapologetic lover of English scenes and -English ways, an unshaken believer in the essential<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> soundness and -high historical destiny of his people, he simply stood aside from the -current clown-show and waited in patience for sense and decency to be -restored. His "Impressions and Comments," the record of his war-time -reflections, is not without its note of melancholy; it was hard to -look on without depression. But for the man of genuine culture there -were at least some resources remaining within himself, and what gives -this volume its chief value is its picture of how such a man made use -of them. Ellis, facing the mob unleashed, turned to concerns and ideas -beyond its comprehension—to the humanism that stands above all such -sordid conflicts. There is something almost of Renaissance dignity in -his chronicle of his speculations. The man that emerges is not a mere -scholar immured in a cell, but a man of the world superior to his race -and his time—a philosopher viewing the childish passion of lesser men -disdainfully and yet not too remote to understand it, and even to see -in it a certain cosmic use. A fine air blows through the book. It takes -the reader into the company of one whose mind is a rich library and -whose manner is that of a gentleman. He is the complete anti-Kipling. -In him the Huxleian tradition comes to full flower.</p> - -<p>His discourse ranges from Beethoven to Comstockery and from Spanish -architecture to the charm of the English village. The extent of the -man's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> knowledge is really quite appalling. His primary work in the -world has been that of a psychologist, and in particular he has -brought a great erudition and an extraordinarily sound judgment to the -vexatious problems of the psychology of sex, but that professional -concern, extending over so many years, has not prevented him from -entering a dozen other domains of speculation, nor has it dulled his -sensitiveness to beauty nor his capacity to evoke it. His writing was -never better than in this volume. His style, especially towards the -end, takes on a sort of glowing clarity. It is English that is as -transparent as a crystal, and yet it is English that is full of fine -colors and cadences. There could be no better investiture for the -questionings and conclusions of so original, so curious, so learned, -and, above all, so sound and hearty a man.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a name="IX_THE_NATURE_OF_LIBERTY" id="IX_THE_NATURE_OF_LIBERTY">IX. THE NATURE OF LIBERTY</a></h4> - - -<p>Every time an officer of the constabulary, in the execution of his just -and awful powers under American law, produces a compound fracture of -the occiput of some citizen in his custody, with hemorrhage, shock, -coma and death, there comes a feeble, falsetto protest from specialists -in human liberty. Is it a fact without significance that this protest -is never supported by the great body of American freemen, setting aside -the actual heirs and creditors of the victim? I think not. Here, as -usual, public opinion is very realistic. It does not rise against the -policeman for the plain and simple reason that it does not question his -right to do what he has done. Policemen are not given night-sticks for -ornament. They are given them for the purpose of cracking the skulls of -the recalcitrant plain people, Democrats and Republicans alike. When -they execute that high duty they are palpably within their rights.</p> - -<p>The specialists aforesaid are the same fanatics who shake the air with -sobs every time the Postmaster-General of the United States bars a -periodical from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> the mails because its ideas do not please him, and -every time some poor Russian is deported for reading Karl Marx, and -every time a Prohibition enforcement officer murders a bootlegger who -resists his levies, and every time agents of the Department of Justice -throw an Italian out of the window, and every time the Ku Klux Klan or -the American Legion tars and feathers a Socialist evangelist. In brief, -they are Radicals, and to scratch one with a pitchfork is to expose a -Bolshevik. They are men standing in contempt of American institutions -and in enmity to American idealism. And their evil principles are no -less offensive to right-thinking and red-blooded Americans when they -are United States Senators or editors of wealthy newspapers than when -they are degraded I. W. W.'s throwing dead cats and infernal machines -into meetings of the Rotary Club.</p> - -<p>What ails them primarily is the ignorant and uncritical monomania that -afflicts every sort of fanatic, at all times and everywhere. Having -mastered with their limited faculties the theoretical principles set -forth in the Bill of Rights, they work themselves into a passionate -conviction that those principles are identical with the rules of law -and justice, and ought to be enforced literally, and without the -slightest regard for circumstance and expediency. It is precisely as if -a High Church rector, accidentally looking into the Book of Chronicles, -and especially Chapter II, should<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> suddenly issue a mandate from his -pulpit ordering his parishioners, on penalty of excommunication and the -fires of hell, to follow exactly the example set forth, to wit: "And -Jesse begat his first born Eliab, and Abinadab the second, and Shimma -the third, Netheneel the fourth, Raddai the fifth, Ozen the sixth, -David the seventh," and so on. It might be very sound theoretical -theology, but it would surely be out of harmony with modern ideas, and -the rev. gentleman would be extremely lucky if the bishop did not give -him 10 days in the diocesan hoosegow.</p> - -<p>So with the Bill of Rights. As adopted by the Fathers of the Republic, -it was gross, crude, inelastic, a bit fanciful and transcendental. -It specified the rights of a citizen, but it said nothing whatever -about his duties. Since then, by the orderly processes of legislative -science and by the even more subtle and beautiful devices of juridic -art, it has been kneaded and mellowed into a far greater pliability -and reasonableness. On the one hand, the citizen still retains the -great privilege of membership in the most superb free nation ever -witnessed on this earth. On the other hand, as a result of countless -shrewd enactments and sagacious decisions, his natural lusts and -appetites are held in laudable check, and he is thus kept in order and -decorum. No artificial impediment stands in the way of his highest -aspiration. He may become anything, including even a policeman.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> But -once a policeman, he is protected by the legislative and judicial arms -in the peculiar rights and prerogatives that go with his high office, -including especially the right to jug the laity at his will, to sweat -and mug them, to subject them to the third degree, and to subdue their -resistance by beating out their brains. Those who are unaware of this -are simply ignorant of the basic principles of American jurisprudence, -as they have been exposed times without number by the courts of first -instance and ratified in lofty terms by the Supreme Court of the -United States. The one aim of the controlling decisions, magnificently -attained, is to safeguard public order and the public security, and -to substitute a judicial process for the inchoate and dangerous -interaction of discordant egos.</p> - -<p>Let us imagine an example. You are, say, a peaceable citizen on your -way home from your place of employment. A police sergeant, detecting -you in the crowd, approaches you, lays his hand on your collar, and -informs you that you are under arrest for killing a trolley conductor -in Altoona, Pa., in 1917. Amazed by the accusation, you decide hastily -that the officer has lost his wits, and take to your heels. He pursues -you. You continue to run. He draws his revolver and fires at you. He -misses you. He fires again and fetches you in the leg. You fall and he -is upon you. You prepare to resist his apparently<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> maniacal assault. He -beats you into insensibility with his espantoon, and drags you to the -patrol box.</p> - -<p>Arrived at the watch house you are locked in a room with five -detectives, and for six hours they question you with subtle art. -You grow angry—perhaps robbed of your customary politeness by the -throbbing in your head and leg—and answer tartly. They knock you down. -Having failed to wring a confession from you, they lock you in a cell, -and leave you there all night. The next day you are taken to police -headquarters, your photograph is made for the Rogues' Gallery, and a -print is duly deposited in the section labeled "Murderers." You are -then carted to jail and locked up again. There you remain until the -trolley conductor's wife comes down from Altoona to identify you. She -astonishes the police by saying that you are not the man. The actual -murderer, it appears, was an Italian. After holding you a day or two -longer, to search your house for stills, audit your income tax returns, -and investigate the pre-marital chastity of your wife, they let you go.</p> - -<p>You are naturally somewhat irritated by your experience and perhaps -your wife urges you to seek redress. Well, what are your remedies? If -you are a firebrand, you reach out absurdly for those of a preposterous -nature: the instant jailing of the sergeant, the dismissal of the -Police Commissioner, the release of Mooney, a fair trial for Sacco and -Vanzetti,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> free trade with Russia, One Big Union. But if you are a -100 per cent. American and respect the laws and institutions of your -country, you send for your solicitor—and at once he shows you just how -far your rights go, and where they end. You cannot cause the arrest of -the sergeant, for you resisted him when he attempted to arrest you, -and when you resisted him he acquired an instant right to take you -by force. You cannot proceed against him for accusing you falsely, -for he has a right to make summary arrests for felony, and the courts -have many times decided that a public officer, so long as he cannot be -charged with corruption or malice, is not liable for errors of judgment -made in the execution of his sworn duty. You cannot get the detectives -on the mat, for when they questioned you you were a prisoner accused of -murder, and it was their duty and their right to do so. You cannot sue -the turnkey at the watch house or the warden at the jail for locking -you up, for they received your body, as the law says, in a lawful and -regular manner, and would have been liable to penalty if they had -turned you loose.</p> - -<p>But have you no redress whatever, no rights at all? Certainly you have -a right, and the courts have jealously guarded it. You have a clear -right, guaranteed to you under the Constitution, to go into a court -of equity and apply for a mandamus requiring the <i>Polizei</i> to cease -forthwith to expose your portrait in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> Rogues' Gallery among the -murderers. This is your inalienable right, and no man or men on earth -can take it away from you. You cannot prevent them cherishing your -portrait in their secret files, but you can get an order commanding -them to refrain forever from exposing it to the gaze of idle visitors, -and if you can introduce yourself unseen into their studio and prove -that they disregard that order, you can have them haled into court for -contempt and fined by the learned judge.</p> - -<p>Thus the law, statute, common and case, protects the free American -against injustice. It is ignorance of that subtle and perfect -process and not any special love of liberty <i>per se</i> that causes -radicals of anti-American kidney to rage every time an officer of the -<i>gendarmerie,</i> in the simple execution of his duty, knocks a citizen -in the head. The <i>gendarme</i> plainly has an inherent and inalienable -right to knock him in the head: it is an essential part of his general -prerogative as a sworn officer of the public peace and a representative -of the sovereign power of the state. He may, true enough, exercise that -prerogative in a manner liable to challenge on the ground that it is -imprudent and lacking in sound judgment. On such questions reasonable -men may differ. But it must be obvious that the sane and decorous way -to settle differences of opinion of that sort is not by public outcry -and florid appeals to sentimentality, not by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> ill-disguised playing to -class consciousness and anti-social prejudice, but by an orderly resort -to the checks and remedies superimposed upon the Bill of Rights by the -calm deliberation and austere logic of the courts of equity.</p> - -<p>The law protects the citizen. But to get its protection he must show -due respect for its wise and delicate processes.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a name="X_THE_NOVEL" id="X_THE_NOVEL">X. THE NOVEL</a></h4> - - -<p>An unmistakable flavor of effeminacy hangs about the novel, however -heroic its content. Even in the gaudy tales of a Rex Beach, with their -bold projections of the Freudian dreams of go-getters, ice-wagon -drivers, Ku Kluxers, Rotary Club presidents and other such carnivora, -there is a subtle something that suggests water-color painting, -lip-sticks and bon-bons. Well, why not? When the novel, in the form -that we know to-day, arose in Spain toward the end of the sixteenth -century, it was aimed very frankly at the emerging women of the -Castilian seraglios—women who were gradually emancipating themselves -from the <i>Kche-Kinder-Kirche</i> darkness of the later Middle Ages, but -had not yet come to anything even remotely approaching the worldly -experience and intellectual curiosity of men. They could now read and -they liked to practice the art, but the grand literature of the time -was too profound for them, and too somber. So literary confectioners -undertook stuff that would be more to their taste, and the modern novel -was born. A single plot served most of these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> confectioners; it became -and remains one of the conventions of the form. Man and maid meet, -love, and proceed to kiss—but the rest must wait. The buss remains -chaste through long and harrowing chapters; not until the very last -scene do fate and Holy Church license anything more. This plot, as I -say, still serves, and Arnold Bennett is authority for the doctrine -that it is the safest known. Its appeal is patently to the feminine -fancy, not to the masculine. Women like to be wooed endlessly before -they loose their girdles and are wooed no more. But a man, when he -finds a damsel to his taste, is eager to get through the preliminary -hocus-pocus as soon as possible.</p> - -<p>That women are still the chief readers of novels is known to every book -clerk: Joseph Hergesheimer, a little while back, was bemoaning the -fact as a curse to his craft. What is less often noted is that women -themselves, as they have gradually become fully literate, have forced -their way to the front as makers of the stuff they feed on, and that -they show signs of ousting the men, soon or late, from the business. -Save in the department of lyrical verse, which demands no organization -of ideas but only fluency of feeling, they have nowhere else done -serious work in literature. There is no epic poem of any solid value -by a woman, dead or alive; and no drama, whether comedy or tragedy; -and no work of metaphysical speculation;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> and no history; and no basic -document in any other realm of thought. In criticism, whether of works -of art or of the ideas underlying them, few women have ever got beyond -the <i>Schwrmerei</i> of Madame de Stal's "L'Allemagne." In the essay, -the most competent woman barely surpasses the average Fleet Street -<i>causerie</i> hack or Harvard professor. But in the novel the ladies have -stood on a level with even the most accomplished men since the day -of Jane Austen, and not only in Anglo-Saxondom, but also everywhere -else—save perhaps in Russia. To-day it would be difficult to think of -a contemporary German novelist of sounder dignity than Clara Viebig, -Helene Bhlau or Ricarda Huch, or a Scandinavian novelist clearly -above Selma Lagerlf, or an Italian above Mathilda Serao, or, for that -matter, more than two or three living Englishmen above May Sinclair, -or more than two Americans equal to Willa Cather. Not only are women -writing novels quite as good as those written by men—setting aside, of -course, a few miraculous pieces by such fellows as Joseph Conrad: most -of them not really novels at all, but metaphysical sonatas disguised -as romances—; they are actually surpassing men in their experimental -development of the novel form. I do not believe that either Evelyn -Scott's "The Narrow House" or May Sinclair's "Life and Death of Harriet -Frean" has the depth and beam of, say, Dreiser's "Jennie Gerhardt"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> or -Arnold Bennett's "Old Wives' Tale," but it is certainly to be argued -plausibly that both books show a far greater venturesomeness and a -far finer virtuosity in the novel form—that both seek to free that -form from artificialities which Dreiser and Bennett seem to be almost -unaware of. When men exhibit any discontent with those artificialities -it usually takes the shape of a vain and uncouth revolt against the -whole inner spirit of the novel—that is, against the characteristics -which make it what it is. Their lusher imagination tempts them to try -to convert it into something that it isn't—for example, an epic, a -political document, or a philosophical work. This fact explains, in -one direction, such dialectical parables as Dreiser's "The 'Genius,'" -H. G. Wells' "Joan and Peter" and Upton Sinclair's "King Coal," and, -in a quite different direction, such rhapsodies as Cabell's "Jurgen," -Meredith's "The Shaving of Shagpat" and Jacob Wassermann's "The World's -Illusion." These things are novels only in the very limited sense -that Beethoven's "Vittoria" and Goldmarck's "Lndliche Hochzeit" are -symphonies. Their chief purpose is not that of prose fiction; it is -either that of argumentation or that of poetry. The women novelists, -with very few exceptions, are far more careful to remain within the -legitimate bounds of the form; they do not often abandon representation -to exhort or exult. Miss Cather's "My Antonia"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> shows a great deal -of originality in its method; the story it tells is certainly not a -conventional one, nor is it told in a conventional way. But it remains -a novel none the less, and as clearly so, in fact, as "The Ordeal of -Richard Feverel" or "Robinson Crusoe."</p> - -<p>Much exertion of the laryngeal and respiratory muscles is wasted upon -a discussion of the differences between realistic novels and romantic -novels. As a matter of fact, every authentic novel is realistic in -its method, however fantastic it may be in its fable. The primary aim -of the novel, at all times and everywhere, is the representation of -human beings at their follies and villainies, and no other art form -clings to that aim so faithfully. It sets forth, not what might be -true, or what ought to be true, but what actually <i>is</i> true. This is -obviously not the case with poetry. Poetry is the product of an effort -to invent a world appreciably better than the one we live in; its -essence is not the representation of the facts, but the deliberate -concealment and denial of the facts. As for the drama, it vacillates, -and if it touches the novel on one side it also touches the epic on the -other. But the novel is concerned solely with human nature as it is -practically revealed and with human experience as men actually know it. -If it departs from that representational fidelity ever so slightly, it -becomes to that extent a bad novel; if it departs violently it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> ceases -to be a novel at all. Cabell, who shows all the critical deficiencies -of a sound artist, is one who has spent a good deal of time questioning -the uses of realism. Yet it is a plain fact that his own stature as an -artist depends almost wholly upon his capacity for accurate observation -and realistic representation. The stories in "The Line of Love," though -they may appear superficially to be excessively romantic, really owe -all of their charm to their pungent realism. The pleasure they give is -the pleasure of recognition; one somehow delights in seeing a medival -baron acting precisely like a New York stockbroker. As for "Jurgen," it -is as realistic in manner as Zola's "La Terre," despite its grotesque -fable and its burden of political, theological and epistemological -ideas. No one not an idiot would mistake the dialogue between Jurgen -and Queen Guinevere's father for romantic, in the sense that Kipling's -"Mandalay" is romantic; it is actually as mordantly realistic as the -dialogue between Nora and Helmer in the last act of "A Doll's House."</p> - -<p>It is my contention that women succeed in the novel—and that they -will succeed even more strikingly as they gradually throw off the -inhibitions that have hitherto cobwebbed their minds—simply because -they are better fitted for this realistic representation than -men—because they see the facts of life more sharply, and are less -distracted by mooney<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> dreams. Women seldom have the pathological -faculty vaguely called imagination. One doesn't often hear of -them groaning over colossal bones in their sleep, as dogs do, or -constructing heavenly hierarchies or political Utopias, as men do. -Their concern is always with things of more objective substance—roofs, -meals, rent, clothes, the birth and upbringing of children. They are, -I believe, generally happier than men, if only because the demands -they make of life are more moderate and less romantic. The chief pain -that a man normally suffers in his progress through this vale is that -of disillusionment; the chief pain that a woman suffers is that of -parturition. There is enormous significance in the difference. The -first is artificial and self-inflicted; the second is natural and -unescapable. The psychological history of the differentiation I need -not go into here: its springs lie obviously in the greater physical -strength of man and his freedom from child-bearing, and in the larger -mobility and capacity for adventure that go therewith. A man dreams -of Utopias simply because he feels himself free to construct them; a -woman must keep house. In late years, to be sure, she has toyed with -the idea of escaping that necessity, but I shall not bore you with -arguments showing that she never will. So long as children are brought -into the world and made ready for the trenches, the sweat-shops and -the gallows by the laborious method<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> ordained of God she will never be -quite as free to roam and dream as man is. It is only a small minority -of her sex who cherish a contrary expectation, and this minority, -though anatomically female, is spiritually male. Show me a woman who -has visions comparable, say, to those of Swedenborg, Woodrow Wilson, -Strindberg or Dr. Ghandi, and I'll show you a woman who is a very -powerful anaphrodisiac.</p> - -<p>Thus women, by their enforced preoccupation with the harsh facts of -life, are extremely well fitted to write novels, which must deal with -the facts or nothing. What they need for the practical business, in -addition, falls under two heads. First, they need enough sense of -social security to make them free to set down what they see. Secondly, -they need the modest technical skill, the formal mastery of words and -ideas, necessary to do it. The latter, I believe, they have had ever -since they learned to read and write, say three hundred years ago; it -comes to them more readily than to men, and is exercised with greater -ease. The former they are fast acquiring. In the days of Aphra Behn -and Ann Radcliffe it was almost as scandalous for a woman to put her -observations and notions into print as it was for her to show her -legs; even in the days of Jane Austen and Charlotte Bront the thing -was regarded as decidedly unladylike. But now, within certain limits, -she is free to print whatever she pleases, and before long<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> even those -surviving limits will be obliterated. If I live to the year 1950 I -expect to see a novel by a women that will describe a typical marriage -under Christianity, from the woman's standpoint, as realistically as -it is treated from the man's standpoint in Upton Sinclair's "Love's -Pilgrimage." That novel, I venture to predict, will be a cuckoo. At -one stroke it will demolish superstitions that have prevailed in the -Western World since the fall of the Roman Empire. It will seem harsh, -but it will be true. And, being true, it will be a good novel. There -can be no good one that is not true.</p> - -<p>What ailed the women novelists, until very recently, was a lingering -ladyism—a childish prudery inherited from their mothers. I believe -that it is being rapidly thrown off; indeed, one often sees a concrete -woman novelist shedding it. I give you two obvious examples: Zona Gale -and Willa Cather. Miss Gale started out by trying to put into novels -the conventional prettiness that is esteemed along the Main Streets -of her native Wisconsin. She had skill and did it well, and so she -won a good deal of popular success. But her work was intrinsically as -worthless as a treatise on international politics by the Hon. Warren -Gamaliel Harding or a tract on the duties of a soldier and a gentleman -by a state president of the American Legion. Then, of a sudden, for -some reason quite unknown to the deponent, she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> threw off all that -flabby artificiality, and began describing the people about her as -they really were. The result was a second success even more pronounced -than her first, and on a palpably higher level. The career of Miss -Cather has covered less ground, for she began far above Main Street. -What she tried to do at the start was to imitate the superficial -sophistication of Edith Wharton and Henry James—a deceptive thing, -apparently realistic in essence, but actually as conventional as table -manners or the professional buffooneries of a fashionable rector. -Miss Cather had extraordinary skill as a writer, and so her imitation -was scarcely to be distinguished from the original, but in the course -of time she began to be aware of its hollowness. Then she turned to -first-hand representation—to pictures of the people she actually -knew. There ensued a series of novels that rose step by step to the -very distinguished quality of "My Antonia." That fine piece is a great -deal more than simply a good novel. It is a document in the history of -American literature. It proves, once and for all time, that accurate -representation is not, as the campus critics of Dreiser seem to think, -inimical to beauty. It proves, on the contrary, that the most careful -and penetrating representation is itself the source of a rare and -wonderful beauty. No romantic novel ever written in America,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> by man or -woman, is one-half so beautiful as "My Antonia."</p> - -<p>As I have said, the novel, in the United States as elsewhere, -still radiates an aroma of effeminacy, in the conventional sense. -Specifically, it deals too monotonously with the varieties of human -transactions which chiefly interest the unintelligent women who are -its chief patrons and the scarcely less intelligent women who, until -recently, were among its chief commercial manufacturers, to wit, the -transactions that revolve around the ensnarement of men by women—the -puerile tricks and conflicts of what is absurdly called romantic -love. But I believe that the women novelists, as they emerge into the -fullness of skill, will throw overboard all that old baggage, and leave -its toting to such male artisans as Chambers, Beach, Coningsby Dawson -and Emerson Hough, as they have already left the whole flag-waving and -"red-blooded" buncombe. True enough, the snaring of men will remain the -principal business of women in this world for many generations, but it -would be absurd to say that intelligent women, even to-day, view it -romantically—that is, as it is viewed by bad novelists. They see it -realistically, and they see it, not as an end in itself, but as a means -to other ends. It is, speaking generally, after she has got her man -that a woman begins to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> live. The novel of the future, I believe, will -show her thus living. It will depict the intricate complex of forces -that conditions her life and generates her ideas, and it will show, -against a background of actuality, her conduct in the eternal struggle -between her aspiration and her destiny. Women, as I have argued, are -not normally harassed by the grandiose and otiose visions that inflame -the gizzards of men, but they too discover inevitably that life is a -conflict, and that it is the harsh fate of <i>Homo sapiens</i> to get the -worst of it. I should like to read a "Main Street" by an articulate -Carol Kennicott, or a "Titan" by one of Cowperwood's mistresses, or -a "Cytherea" by a Fanny Randon—or a Savina Grove! It would be sweet -stuff, indeed.... And it will come.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a name="XI_THE_FORWARD-LOOKER" id="XI_THE_FORWARD-LOOKER">XI. THE FORWARD-LOOKER</a></h4> - - -<p>When the history of the late years in America is written, I suspect -that their grandest, gaudiest gifts to <i>Kultur</i> will be found in the -incomparable twins: the right-thinker and the forward-looker. No other -nation can match them, at any weight. The right-thinker is privy to all -God's wishes, and even whims; the forward-looker is the heir to all -His promises to the righteous. The former is never wrong; the latter -is never despairing. Sometimes the two are amalgamated into one man, -and we have a Bryan, a Wilson, a Dr. Frank Crane. But more often there -is a division: the forward-looker thinks wrong, and the right-thinker -looks backward. I give you Upton Sinclair and Nicholas Murray Butler -as examples. Butler is an absolute masterpiece of correct thought; in -his whole life, so far as human records show, he has not cherished a -single fancy that might not have been voiced by a Fifth Avenue rector -or spread upon the editorial page of the New York <i>Times.</i> But he has -no vision, alas, alas! All the revolutionary inventions for lifting up -humanity leave him cold. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> is against them all, from the initiative -and referendum to birth control, and from Fletcherism to osteopathy. -Now turn to Sinclair. He believes in every one of them, however daring -and fantoddish; he grasps and gobbles all the new ones the instant they -are announced. But the man simply cannot think right. He is wrong on -politics, on economics, and on theology. He glories in and is intensely -vain of his wrongness. Let but a new article of correct American -thought get itself stated by the constituted ecclesiastical and secular -authorities—by Bishop Manning, or Judge Gary, or Butler, or Adolph -Ochs, or Dr. Fabian Franklin, or Otto Kahn, or Dr. Stephen S. Wise, -or Roger W. Babson, or any other such inspired omphalist—and he is -against it almost before it is stated.</p> - -<p>On the whole, as a neutral in such matters, I prefer the forward-looker -to the right-thinker, if only because he shows more courage and -originality. It takes nothing save lack of humor to believe what -Butler, or Ochs, or Bishop Manning believes, but it takes long practice -and a considerable natural gift to get down the beliefs of Sinclair. -I remember with great joy the magazine that he used to issue during -the war. In the very first issue he advocated Socialism, the single -tax, birth control, communism, the League of Nations, the conscription -of wealth,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> government ownership of coal mines, sex hygiene and free -trade. In the next issue he added the recall of judges, Fletcherism, -the Gary system, the Montessori method, paper-bag cookery, war gardens -and the budget system. In the third he came out for sex hygiene, one -big union, the initiative and referendum, the city manager plan, -chiropractic and Esperanto. In the fourth he went to the direct -primary, fasting, the Third International, a federal divorce law, free -motherhood, hot lunches for school children, Prohibition, the vice -crusade, <i>Expressionismus,</i> the government control of newspapers, -deep breathing, international courts, the Fourteen Points, freedom -for the Armenians, the limitation of campaign expenditures, the merit -system, the abolition of the New York Stock Exchange, psychoanalysis, -crystal-gazing, the Little Theater movement, the recognition of Mexico, -<i>vers libre,</i> old age pensions, unemployment insurance, cooperative -stores, the endowment of motherhood, the Americanization of the -immigrant, mental telepathy, the abolition of grade crossings, federal -labor exchanges, profit-sharing in industry, a prohibitive tax on Poms, -the clean-up-paint-up campaign, relief for the Jews, osteopathy, mental -mastery, and the twilight sleep. And so on, and so on. Once I had got -into the swing of the Sinclair monthly I found that I could dispense -with at least twenty other journals<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> of the uplift. When he abandoned -it I had to subscribe for them anew, and the gravel has stuck in my -craw ever since.</p> - -<p>In the first volume of his personal philosophy, "The Book of Life: -Mind and Body," he is stopped from displaying whole categories of his -ideas, for his subject is not man the political and economic machine, -but man and mammal. Nevertheless, his characteristic hospitality to new -revelations is abundantly visible. What does the mind suggest? The mind -suggests its dark and fascinating functions and powers, some of them -very recent. There is, for example, psychoanalysis. There is mental -telepathy. There is crystal-gazing. There is double personality. Out -of each springs a scheme for the uplift of the race—in each there is -something for a forward-looker to get his teeth into. And if mind, then -why not also spirit? Here even a forward-looker may hesitate; here, -in fact, Sinclair himself hesitates. The whole field of spiritism is -barred to him by his theological heterodoxy; if he admits that man has -an immortal soul, he may also have to admit that the soul can suffer in -hell. Thus even forward-looking may turn upon and devour itself. But if -the meadow wherein spooks and poltergeists disport is closed, it is at -least possible to peep over the fence. Sinclair sees materializations -in dark rooms, under red, satanic lights. He is, perhaps, not yet -convinced,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> but he is looking pretty hard. Let a ghostly hand reach out -and grab him, and he will be over the fence! The body is easier. The -new inventions for dealing with it are innumerable and irresistible; no -forward-looker can fail to succumb to at least some of them. Sinclair -teeters dizzily. On the one hand he stoutly defends surgery—that -is, provided the patient is allowed to make his own diagnosis!—on -the other hand he is hot for fasting, teetotalism, and the avoidance -of drugs, coffee and tobacco, and he begins to flirt with osteopathy -and chiropractic. More, he has discovered a new revelation in San -Francisco—a system of diagnosis and therapeutics, still hooted at -by the Medical Trust, whereby the exact location of a cancer may -be determined by examining a few drops of the patient's blood, and -syphilis may be cured by vibrations, and whereby, most curious of all, -it can be established that odd numbers, written on a sheet of paper, -are full of negative electricity, and even numbers are full of positive -electricity.</p> - -<p>The book is written with great confidence and address, and has a good -deal of shrewdness mixed with its credulities; few licensed medical -practitioners could give you better advice. But it is less interesting -than its author, or, indeed, than forward-lookers in general. Of all -the known orders of men they fascinate me the most. I spend whole -days reading their pronunciamentos, and am an expert in the ebb<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> and -flow of their singularly bizarre ideas. As I have said, I have never -encountered one who believed in but one sure cure for all the sorrows -of the world, and let it go at that. Nay, even the most timorous -of them gives his full faith and credit to at least two. Turn, for -example, to the official list of eminent single taxers issued by the -Joseph Fels Fund. I defy you to find one solitary man on it who stops -with the single tax. There is David Starr Jordan: he is also one of -the great whales of pacifism. There is B. O. Flower: he is the emperor -of anti-vaccinationists. There is Carrie Chapman Catt: she is hot for -every peruna that the suffragettes brew. There is W. S. U'Ren: he is in -general practise as a messiah. There is Hamlin Garland: he also chases -spooks. There is Jane Addams: vice crusader, pacifist, suffragist, -settlement worker. There is Prof. Dr. Scott Nearing: Socialist and -martyr. There is Newt Baker: heir of the Wilsonian idealism. There -is Gifford Pinchot: conservationist, Prohibitionist, Bull Moose, -and professional Good Citizen. There is Judge Ben B. Lindsey: -forward-looking's Jack Horner, forever sticking his thumb into new -pies. I could run the list to columns, but no need. You know the type -as well as I do. Give the forward-looker the direct primary, and he -demands the short ballot. Give him the initiative and referendum, and -he bawls for the recall of judges. Give him Christian<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> Science, and he -proceeds to the swamis and yogis. Give him the Mann Act, and he wants -laws providing for the castration of fornicators. Give him Prohibition, -and he launches a new crusade against cigarettes, coffee, jazz, and -custard pies.</p> - -<p>I have a wide acquaintance among such sad, mad, glad folks, and know -some of them very well. It is my belief that the majority or them are -absolutely honest—that they believe as fully in their baroque gospels -as I believe in the dishonesty of politicians—that their myriad and -amazing faiths sit upon them as heavily as the fear of hell sits upon a -Methodist deacon who has degraded the vestry-room to carnal uses. All -that may be justly said against them is that they are chronically full -of hope, and hence chronically uneasy and indignant—that they belong -to the less sinful and comfortable of the two grand divisions of the -human race. Call them the tender-minded, as the late William James used -to do, and you have pretty well described them. They are, on the one -hand, pathologically sensitive to the sorrows of the world, and, on -the other hand, pathologically susceptible to the eloquence of quacks. -What seems to lie in all of them is the doctrine that evils so vast as -those they see about them <i>must</i> and <i>will</i> be laid—that it would be -an insult to a just God to think of them as permanent and irremediable. -This notion, I believe, is at the bottom of much of the current<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> -pathetic faith in Prohibition. The thing itself is obviously a colossal -failure—that is, when viewed calmly and realistically. It has not only -not cured the rum evil in the United States; it has plainly made that -evil five times as bad as it ever was before. But to confess that bald -fact would be to break the forward-looking heart: it simply refuses -to harbor the concept of the incurable. And so, being debarred by the -legal machinery that supports Prohibition from going back to any more -feasible scheme of relief, it cherishes the sorry faith that somehow, -in some vague and incomprehensible way, Prohibition will yet work. -When the truth becomes so horribly evident that even forward-lookers -are daunted, then some new quack will arise to fool them again, with -some new and worse scheme of super-Prohibition. It is their destiny -to wobble thus endlessly between quack and quack. One pulls them by -the right arm and one by the left arm. A third is at their coat-tail -pockets, and a fourth beckons them over the hill.</p> - -<p>The rest of us are less tender-minded, and, in consequence, much -happier. We observe quite clearly that the world, as it stands, is -anything but perfect—that injustice exists, and turmoil, and tragedy, -and bitter suffering of ten thousand kinds—that human life at its -best, is anything but a grand, sweet song. But instead of ranting -absurdly against the fact, or weeping over it maudlinly, or trying<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> -to remedy it with inadequate means, we simply put the thought of -it out of our minds, just as a wise man puts away the thought that -alcohol is probably bad for his liver, or that his wife is a shade -too fat. Instead of mulling over it and suffering from it, we seek -contentment by pursuing the delights that are so strangely mixed with -the horrors—by seeking out the soft spots and endeavoring to avoid -the hard spots. Such is the intelligent habit of practical and sinful -men, and under it lies a sound philosophy. After all, the world is -not our handiwork, and we are not responsible for what goes on in it, -save within very narrow limits. Going outside them with our protests -and advice tends to become contumacy to the celestial hierarchy. Do -the poor suffer in the midst of plenty? Then let us thank God politely -that we are not that poor. Are rogues in offices? Well, go call a -policeman, thus setting rogue upon rogue. Are taxes onerous, wasteful, -unjust? Then let us dodge as large a part of them as we can. Are whole -regiments and army corps of our fellow creatures doomed to hell? Then -let them complain to the archangels, and, if the archangels are too -busy to hear them, to the nearest archbishop.</p> - -<p>Unluckily for the man of tender mind, he is quite incapable of any -such easy dismissal of the great plagues and conundrums of existence. -It is of the essence of his character that he is too sensitive and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> -sentimental to put them ruthlessly out of his mind: he cannot view -even the crunching of a cockroach without feeling the snapping of -his own ribs. And it is of the essence of his character that he is -unable to escape the delusion of duty—that he can't rid himself of -the notion that, whenever he observes anything in the world that -might conceivably be improved, he is commanded by God to make every -effort to improve it. In brief, he is a public-spirited man, and the -ideal citizen of democratic states. But Nature, it must be obvious, -is opposed to democracy—and whoso goes counter to nature must expect -to pay the penalty. The tender-minded man pays it by hanging forever -upon the cruel hooks of hope, and by fermenting inwardly in incessant -indignation. All this, perhaps, explains the notorious ill-humor of -uplifters—the wowser touch that is in even the best of them. They -dwell so much upon the imperfections of the universe and the weaknesses -of man that they end by believing that the universe is altogether out -of joint and that every man is a scoundrel and every woman a vampire. -Years ago I had a combat with certain eminent reformers of the sex -hygiene and vice crusading species, and got out of it a memorable -illumination of their private minds. The reform these strange creatures -were then advocating was directed against sins of the seventh category, -and they proposed to put them down by forcing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> through legislation of a -very harsh and fantastic kind—statutes forbidding any woman, however -forbidding, to entertain a man in her apartment without the presence of -a third party, statutes providing for the garish lighting of all dark -places in the public parks, and so on. In the course of my debates with -them I gradually jockeyed them into abandoning all of the arguments -they started with, and so brought them down to their fundamental -doctrine, to wit, that no woman, without the aid of the police, could -be trusted to protect her virtue. I pass as a cynic in Christian -circles, but this notion certainly gave me pause. And it was voiced by -men who were the fathers of grown and unmarried daughters!</p> - -<p>It is no wonder that men who cherish such ideas are so ready to accept -any remedy for the underlying evils, no matter how grotesque. A man -suffering from hay-fever, as every one knows, will take any medicine -that is offered to him, even though he knows the compounder to be a -quack; the infinitesimal chance that the quack may have the impossible -cure gives him a certain hope, and so makes the disease itself -more bearable. In precisely the same way a man suffering from the -conviction that the whole universe is hell-bent for destruction—that -the government he lives under is intolerably evil, that the rich are -growing richer and the poor poorer, that no man's word can be trusted -and no woman's chastity, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> another and worse war is hatching, -that the very regulation of the weather has fallen into the hands -of rogues—such a man will grab at anything, even birth control, -osteopathy or the Fourteen Points, rather than let the foul villainy go -on. The apparent necessity of finding a remedy without delay transforms -itself, by an easy psychological process, into a belief that the remedy -has been found; it is almost impossible for most men, and particularly -for tender-minded men, to take in the concept of the insoluble. Every -problem that remains unsolved, including even the problem of evil, -is in that state simply because men of strict virtue and passionate -altruism have not combined to solve it—because the business has been -neglected by human laziness and rascality. All that is needed to -dispatch it is the united effort of enough pure hearts: the accursed -nature of things will yield inevitably to a sufficiently desperate -battle; mind (usually written Mind) will triumph over matter (usually -written Matter—or maybe Money Power, or Land Monopoly, or Beef Trust, -or Conspiracy of Silence, or Commercialized Vice, or Wall Street, or -the Dukes, or the Kaiser), and the Kingdom of God will be at hand. So, -with the will to believe in full function, the rest is easy. The eager -forward-looker is exactly like the man with hay-fever, or arthritis, or -nervous dyspepsia, or diabetes. It takes time to try each successive -remedy—to search it out, to take it, to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> observe its effects, to hope, -to doubt, to shelve it. Before the process is completed another is -offered; new ones are always waiting before their predecessors have -been discarded. Here, perhaps, we get a glimpse of the causes behind -the protean appetite of the true forward-looker—his virtuosity in -credulity. He is in all stages simultaneously—just getting over the -initiative and referendum, beginning to have doubts about the short -ballot, making ready for a horse doctor's dose of the single tax, and -contemplating an experimental draught of Socialism to-morrow.</p> - -<p>What is to be done for him? How is he to be cured of his great thirst -for sure-cures that do not cure, and converted into a contented and -careless backward-looker, peacefully snoozing beneath his fig tree -while the oppressed bawl for succor in forty abandoned lands, and -injustice stalks the world, and taxes mount higher and higher, and -poor working-girls are sold into white slavery, and Prohibition fails -to prohibit, and cocaine is hawked openly, and jazz drags millions -down the primrose way, and the trusts own the legislatures of all -Christendom, and judges go to dinner with millionaires, and Europe -prepares for another war, and children of four and five years work -as stevedores and locomotive firemen, and guinea pigs and dogs are -vivisected, and Polish immigrant women have more children every year, -and divorces<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> multiply, and materialism rages, and the devil runs -the cosmos? What is to be done to save the forward-looker from his -torturing indignations, and set him in paths of happy dalliance? -Answer: nothing. He was born that way, as men are born with hare lips -or bad livers, and he will remain that way until the angels summon -him to eternal rest. Destiny has laid upon him the burden of seeing -unescapably what had better not be looked at, of believing what isn't -so. There is no way to help him. He must suffer vicariously for the -carnal ease of the rest of us. He must die daily that we may live in -peace, corrupt and contented.</p> - -<p>As I have said, I believe fully that this child of sorrow is -honest—that his twinges and malaises are just as real to him as those -that rack the man with arthritis, and that his trusting faith in quacks -is just as natural. But this, of course, is not saying that the quacks -themselves are honest. On the contrary, their utter dishonesty must be -quite as obvious as the simplicity of their dupes. Trade is good for -them in the United States, where hope is a sort of national vice, and -so they flourish here more luxuriously than anywhere else on earth. -Some one told me lately that there are now no less than 25,000 national -organizations in the United States for the uplift of the plain people -and the snaring and shaking down of forward-lookers—societies for -the Americanization of immigrants, for protecting poor working-girls -against<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> Jews and Italians, for putting Bibles into the bedrooms of -week-end hotels, for teaching Polish women how to wash their babies, -for instructing school-children in ring-around-a-rosy, for crusading -against the cigarette, for preventing accidents in rolling-mills, for -making street-car conductors more polite, for testing the mentality -of Czecho-Slovaks, for teaching folk-songs, for restoring the United -States to Great Britain, for building day-nurseries in the devastated -regions of France, for training deaconesses, for fighting the -house-fly, for preventing cruelty to mules and Tom-cats, for forcing -householders to clean their backyards, for planting trees, for saving -the Indian, for sending colored boys to Harvard, for opposing Sunday -movies, for censoring magazines, for God knows what else. In every -large American city such organizations swarm, and every one of them -has an executive secretary who tries incessantly to cadge space in the -newspapers. Their agents penetrate to the remotest hamlets in the land, -and their circulars, pamphlets and other fulminations swamp the mails. -In Washington and at every state capital they have their lobbyists, and -every American legislator is driven half frantic by their innumerable -and preposterous demands. Each of them wants a law passed to make -its crusade official and compulsory; each is forever hunting for -forward-lookers with money.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p> - -<p>One of the latest of these uplifting vereins to score a ten-strike -is the one that sponsored the so-called Maternity Bill. That measure -is now a law, and the over-burdened American taxpayer, at a cost of -$3,000,000 a year, is supporting yet one more posse of perambulating -gabblers and snouters. The influences behind the bill were exposed in -the Senate by Senator Reed, of Missouri, but to no effect: a majority -of the other Senators, in order to get rid of the propagandists in -charge of it, had already promised to vote for it. Its one intelligible -aim, as Senator Reed showed, is to give government jobs at good -salaries to a gang of nosey old maids. These virgins now traverse the -country teaching married women how to have babies in a ship-shape and -graceful manner, and how to keep them alive after having them. Only -one member of the corps has ever been married herself; nevertheless, -the old gals are authorized to go out among the Italian and Yiddish -women, each with ten or twelve head of kids to her credit, and tell -them all about it. According to Senator Reed, the ultimate aim of the -forward-lookers who sponsored the scheme is to provide for the official -registration of expectant mothers, that they may be warned what to eat, -what movies to see, and what midwives to send for when the time comes. -Imagine a young bride going down to the County Clerk's office to report -herself! And imagine an elderly and anthropophagous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> spinster coming -around next day to advise her! Or a boozy political doctor!</p> - -<p>All these crazes, of course, are primarily artificial. They are -set going, not by the plain people spontaneously, nor even by the -forward-lookers who eventually support them, but by professionals. The -Anti-Saloon League is their archetype. It is owned and operated by -gentlemen who make excellent livings stirring up the tender-minded; -if their salaries were cut off to-morrow, all their moral passion -would ooze out, and Prohibition would be dead in two weeks. So with -the rest of the uplifting camorras. Their present enormous prosperity, -I believe, is due in large part to a fact that is never thought -of, to wit, the fact that the women's colleges of the country, for -a dozen years past, have been turning out far more graduates than -could be utilized as teachers. These supernumerary lady Ph.D's almost -unanimously turn to the uplift—and the uplift saves them. In the early -days of higher education for women in the United States, practically -all the graduates thrown upon the world got jobs as teachers, but now -a good many are left over. Moreover, it has been discovered that the -uplift is easier than teaching, and that it pays a great deal better. -It is a rare woman professor who gets more than $5,000 a year, but -there are plenty of uplifting jobs at $8,000 and $10,000 a year, and in -the future there will be some prizes at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> twice as much. No wonder the -learned girls fall upon them so eagerly!</p> - -<p>The annual production of male Ph.D's is also far beyond the legitimate -needs of the nation, but here the congestion is relieved by the greater -and more varied demand for masculine labor. If a young man emerging -from Columbia or Ohio Wesleyan as <i>Philosophiez Doctor</i> finds it -impossible to get a job teaching he can always go on the road as a -salesman of dental supplies, or enlist in the marines, or study law, or -enter the ministry, or go to work in a coal-mine, or a slaughter-house, -or a bucket-shop, or begin selling Oklahoma mine-stock to widows and -retired clergy-men. The women graduate faces far fewer opportunities. -She is commonly too old and too worn by meditation to go upon the stage -in anything above the grade of a patent-medicine show, she has been so -poisoned by instruction in sex hygiene that she shies at marriage, and -most of the standard professions and grafts of the world are closed to -her. The invention of the uplift came as a godsend to her. Had not some -mute, inglorious Edison devised it at the right time, humanity would -be disgraced to-day by the spectacle of hordes of Lady Ph.D's going -to work in steam-laundries, hooch shows and chewing-gum factories. As -it is, they are all taken care of by the innumerable societies for -making the whole world virtuous and happy. One may laugh at the aims -and methods<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> of many such societies—for example, at the absurd vereins -for Americanizing immigrants, <i>i. e.,</i> degrading them to the level of -the native peasantry. But one thing, at least, they accomplish: they -provide comfortable and permanent jobs for hundreds and thousands of -deserving women, most of whom are far more profitably employed trying -to make Methodists out of Sicilians than they would be if they were -trying to make husbands out of bachelors. It is for this high purpose -also that the forward-looker suffers.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a name="XII_MEMORIAL_SERVICE" id="XII_MEMORIAL_SERVICE">XII. MEMORIAL SERVICE</a></h4> - - -<p>Where is the grave-yard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters -their mounds? There was a day when Jupiter was the king of the gods, -and any man who doubted his puissance was <i>ipso facto</i> a barbarian and -an ignoramus. But where in all the world is there a man who worships -Jupiter to-day? And what of Huitzilopochtli? In one year—and it is -no more than five hundred years ago—50,000 youths and maidens were -slain in sacrifice to him. To-day, if he is remembered at all, it -is only by some vagrant savage in the depths of the Mexican forest. -Huitzilopochtli, like many other gods, had no human father; his mother -was a virtuous widow; he was born of an apparently innocent flirtation -that she carried on with the sun. When he frowned, his father, the -sun, stood still. When he roared with rage, earthquakes engulfed whole -cities. When he thirsted he was watered with 10,000 gallons of human -blood. But to-day Huitzilopochtli is as magnificently forgotten as -Allen G. Thurman. Once the peer of Allah, Buddha and Wotan, he is now -the peer of General<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> Coxey, Richmond P. Hobson, Nan Patterson, Alton B. -Parker, Adelina Patti, General Weyler and Tom Sharkey.</p> - -<p>Speaking of Huitzilopochtli recalls his brother, Tezcatilpoca. -Tezcatilpoca was almost as powerful: he consumed 25,000 virgins a year. -Lead me to his tomb: I would weep, and hang a <i>couronne des perles.</i> -But who knows where it is? Or where the grave of Quitzalcoatl is? Or -Tialoc? Or Chalchihuitlicue? Or Xiehtecutli? Or Centeotl, that sweet -one? Or Tlazolteotl, the goddess of love? Or Mictlan? Or Ixtlilton? -Or Omacatl? Or Yacatecutli? Or Mixcoatl? Or Xipe? Or all the host of -Tzitzimitles? Where are their bones? Where is the willow on which they -hung their harps? In what forlorn and unheard-of hell do they await the -resurrection morn? Who enjoys their residuary estates? Or that of Dis, -whom Csar found to be the chief god of the Celts? Or that of Tarves, -the bull? Or that of Moccos, the pig? Or that of Epona, the mare? Or -that of Mullo, the celestial jack-ass? There was a time when the Irish -revered all these gods as violently as they now hate the English. But -to-day even the drunkest Irishman laughs at them.</p> - -<p>But they have company in oblivion: the hell of dead gods is as crowded -as the Presbyterian hell for babies. Damona is there, and Esus, and -Drunemeton,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> and Silvana, and Dervones, and Adsalluta, and Deva, -and Belisama, and Axona, and Vintios, and Taranuous, and Sulis, and -Cocidius, and Adsmerius, and Dumiatis, and Caletos, and Moccus, and -Ollovidius, and Albiorix, and Leucitius, and Vitucadrus, and Ogmios, -and Uxellimus, and Borvo, and Grannos, and Mogons. All mighty gods in -their day, worshiped by millions, full of demands and impositions, -able to bind and loose—all gods of the first class, not dilettanti. -Men labored for generations to build vast temples to them—temples -with stones as large as hay-wagons. The business of interpreting their -whims occupied thousands of priests, wizards, archdeacons, evangelists, -haruspices, bishops, archbishops. To doubt them was to die, usually at -the stake. Armies took to the field to defend them against infidels: -villages were burned, women and children were butchered, cattle were -driven off. Yet in the end they all withered and died, and to-day there -is none so poor to do them reverence. Worse, the very tombs in which -they lie are lost, and so even a respectful stranger is debarred from -paying them the slightest and politest homage.</p> - -<p>What has become of Sutekh, once the high god of the whole Nile Valley? -What has become of:</p> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span></p> - - -<div class="center"> -<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> -<tr><td align="left">Resheph</td><td align="left">Baal</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Anath</td><td align="left">Astarte</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Ashtoreth</td><td align="left">Hadad</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">El</td><td align="left">Addu</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Nergal</td><td align="left">Shalera</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Nebo</td><td align="left">Dagon</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Ninib</td><td align="left">Sharrab</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Melek</td><td align="left">Yau</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Ahijah</td><td align="left">Amon-Re</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Isis</td><td align="left">Osiris</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Ptah</td><td align="left">Sebek</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Anubis</td><td align="left">Molech?</td></tr> -</table></div> - -<p>All these were once gods of the highest eminence. Many of them are -mentioned with fear and trembling in the Old Testament. They ranked, -five or six thousand years ago, with Jahveh himself; the worst of them -stood far higher than Thor. Yet they have all gone down the chute, and -with them the following:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p> - - -<div class="center"> -<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> -<tr><td align="left">Bile</td><td align="left">Gwydion</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Lr</td><td align="left">Manawyddan</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Arianrod</td><td align="left">Nuada Argetlam</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Morrigu</td><td align="left">Tagd</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Govannon</td><td align="left">Goibniu</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Gunfled</td><td align="left">Odin</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Sokk-mimi</td><td align="left">Llaw Gyffes</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Memetona</td><td align="left">Lleu</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Dagda</td><td align="left">Ogma</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Kerridwen</td><td align="left">Mider</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Pwyll</td><td align="left">Rigantona</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Ogyrvan</td><td align="left">Marzin</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Dea Dia</td><td align="left">Mars</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Ceros</td><td align="left">Jupiter</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Vaticanus</td><td align="left">Cunina</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Edulia</td><td align="left">Potina</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Adeona</td><td align="left">Statilinus</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Iuno Lucina</td><td align="left">Diana of Ephesus</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Saturn</td><td align="left">Robigus</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Furrina</td><td align="left">Pluto</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Vediovis</td><td align="left">Ops</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Consus</td><td align="left">Meditrina</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Cronos</td><td align="left">Vesta</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Enki</td><td align="left">Tilmun</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Engurra</td><td align="left">Zer-panitu</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Belus</td><td align="left">Merodach</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Dimmer</td><td align="left">U-ki</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Mu-ul-lil</td><td align="left">Dauke</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Ubargisi</td><td align="left">Gasan-abzu</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Ubilulu</td><td align="left">Elum</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Gasan-lil</td><td align="left">U-Tin-dir ki</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">U-dimmer-an-kia</td><td align="left">Marduk</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Enurestu</td><td align="left">Nin-lil-la</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">U-sab-sib</td><td align="left">Nin</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">U-Mersi</td><td align="left">Persephone</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Tammuz</td><td align="left">Istar</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Venus</td><td align="left">Lagas</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Bau</td><td align="left">U-urugal</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Mulu-hursang</td><td align="left">Sirtumu</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Anu</td><td align="left">Ea</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Beltis</td><td align="left">Nirig</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Nusku</td><td align="left">Nebo</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Ni-zu</td><td align="left">Samas</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Sahi</td><td align="left">Ma-banba-anna</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Aa</td><td align="left">En-Mersi</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Allatu</td><td align="left">Amurru</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Sin</td><td align="left">Assur</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">AbilAddu</td><td align="left">Aku</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Apsu</td><td align="left">Beltu</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Dagan</td><td align="left">Dumu-zi-abzu</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Elali</td><td align="left">Kuski-banda</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Isum</td><td align="left">Kaawanu</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Mami</td><td align="left">Nin-azu</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Nin-man</td><td align="left">Lugal-Amarada</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Zaraqu</td><td align="left">Qarradu</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Suqamunu</td><td align="left">Ura-gala</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Zagaga</td><td align="left">Ueras</td></tr> -</table></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p> -<p>You may think I spoof. That I invent the names. I do not. Ask the -rector to lend you any good treatise on comparative religion: you -will find them all listed. They were gods of the highest standing and -dignity—gods of civilized peoples—worshipped and believed in by -millions. All were theoretically omnipotent, omniscient and immortal. -And all are dead.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a name="XIII_EDUCATION" id="XIII_EDUCATION">XIII. EDUCATION</a></h4> - - - -<h4>I</h4> - - -<p>Next to the clerk in holy orders, the fellow with the worst job in -the world is the schoolmaster. Both are underpaid, both fall steadily -in authority and dignity, and both wear out their hearts trying to -perform the impossible. How much the world asks of them, and how -little they can actually deliver! The clergyman's business is to save -the human race from hell: if he saves one-eighth of one per cent., -even within the limits of his narrow flock, he does magnificently. -The school-master's is to spread the enlightenment, to make the great -masses of the plain people intelligent—and intelligence is precisely -the thing that the great masses of the plain people are congenitally -and eternally incapable of.</p> - -<p>Is it any wonder that the poor birchman, facing this labor that would -have staggered Sisyphus olusohn, seeks refuge from its essential -impossibility in a Chinese maze of empty technic? The ghost of -Pestalozzi, once bearing a torch and beckoning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> toward the heights, now -leads down stairways into black and forbidding dungeons. Especially in -America, where all that is bombastic and mystical is most esteemed, -the art of pedagogics becomes a sort of puerile magic, a thing of -preposterous secrets, a grotesque compound of false premises and -illogical conclusions. Every year sees a craze for some new solution of -the teaching enigma, at once simple and infallible—manual training, -playground work, song and doggerel lessons, the Montessori method, -the Gary system—an endless series of flamboyant arcanums. The -worst extravagances of <i>privat dozent</i> experimental psychology are -gravely seized upon; the uplift pours in its ineffable principles and -discoveries; mathematical formul are worked out for every emergency; -there is no sure-cure so idiotic that some superintendent of schools -will not swallow it.</p> - -<p>A couple of days spent examining the literature of the New Thought in -pedagogy are enough to make the judicious weep. Its aim seems to be -to reduce the whole teaching process to a sort of automatic reaction, -to discover some master formula that will not only take the place of -competence and resourcefulness in the teacher but that will also create -an artificial receptivity in the child. The merciless application of -this formula (which changes every four days) now seems to be the chief -end and aim of pedagogy. Teaching becomes a thing in itself, separable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> -from and superior to the thing taught. Its mastery is a special -business, a transcendental art and mystery, to be acquired in the -laboratory. A teacher well grounded in this mystery, and hence privy -to every detail of the new technic (which changes, of course, with the -formula), can teach anything to any child, just as a sound dentist can -pull any tooth out of any jaw.</p> - -<p>All this, I need not point out, is in sharp contrast to the old -theory of teaching. By that theory mere technic was simplified and -subordinated. All that it demanded of the teacher told off to teach, -say, geography, was that he master the facts in the geography book and -provide himself with a stout rattan. Thus equipped, he was ready for a -test of his natural pedagogical genius. First he exposed the facts in -the book, then he gilded them with whatever appearance of interest and -importance he could conjure up, and then he tested the extent of their -transference to the minds of his pupils. Those pupils who had ingested -them got apples; those who had failed got fanned with the rattan. -Followed the second round, and the same test again, with a second -noting of results. And then the third, and fourth, and the fifth, and -so on until the last and least pupil had been stuffed to his subnormal -and perhaps moronic brim.</p> - -<p>I was myself grounded in the underlying delusions of what is called -knowledge by this austere<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> process, and despite the eloquence of those -who support newer ideas, I lean heavily in favor of it, and regret to -hear that it is no more. It was crude, it was rough, and it was often -not a little cruel, but it at least had two capital advantages over all -the systems that have succeeded it. In the first place, its machinery -was simple; even the stupidest child could understand it; it hooked -up cause and effect with the utmost clarity. And in the second place, -it tested the teacher as and how he ought to be tested—that is, for -his actual capacity to teach, not for his mere technical virtuosity. -There was, in fact, no technic for him to master, and hence none for -him to hide behind. He could not conceal a hopeless inability to impart -knowledge beneath a correct professional method.</p> - -<p>That ability to impart knowledge, it seems to me, has very little to -do with technical method. It may operate at full function without -any technical method at all, and contrariwise, the most elaborate of -technical methods, whether out of Switzerland, Italy or Gary, Ind., -cannot make it operate when it is not actually present. And what does -it consist of? It consists, first, of a natural talent for dealing -with children, for getting into their minds, for putting things in a -way that they can comprehend. And it consists, secondly, of a deep -belief in the interest and importance of the thing taught, a concern -about it amounting to a sort of passion. A man who knows<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> a subject -thoroughly, a man so soaked in it that he eats it, sleeps it and dreams -it—this man can always teach it with success, no matter how little -he knows of technical pedagogy. That is because there is enthusiasm -in him, and because enthusiasm is almost as contagious as fear or the -barber's itch. An enthusiast is willing to go to any trouble to impart -the glad news bubbling within him. He thinks that it is important and -valuable for to know; given the slightest glow of interest in a pupil -to start with, he will fan that glow to a flame. No hollow formalism -cripples him and slows him down. He drags his best pupils along as fast -as they can go, and he is so full of the thing that he never tires of -expounding its elements to the dullest.</p> - -<p>This passion, so unordered and yet so potent, explains the capacity -for teaching that one frequently observes in scientific men of high -attainments in their specialties—for example, Huxley, Ostwald, Karl -Ludwig, Virchow, Billroth, Jowett, William G. Sumner, Halsted and -Osier—men who knew nothing whatever about the so-called science of -pedagogy, and would have derided its alleged principles if they had -heard them stated. It explains, too, the failure of the general run of -high-school and college teachers—men who are undoubtedly competent, -by the professional standards of pedagogy, but who nevertheless -contrive only to make intolerable bores of the things<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> they presume -to teach. No intelligent student ever learns much from the average -drover of undergraduates; what he actually carries away has come out -of his textbooks, or is the fruit of his own reading and inquiry. But -when he passes to the graduate school, and comes among men who really -understand the subjects they teach, and, what is more, who really love -them, his store of knowledge increases rapidly, and in a very short -while, if he has any intelligence at all, he learns to think in terms -of the thing he is studying.</p> - -<p>So far, so good. But an objection still remains, the which may be -couched in the following terms: that in the average college or high -school, and especially in the elementary school, most of the subjects -taught are so bald and uninspiring that it is difficult to imagine -them arousing the passion I have been describing—in brief, that only -an ass could be enthusiastic about them. In witness, think of the -four elementals: reading, penmanship, arithmetic and spelling. This -objection, at first blush, seems salient and dismaying, but only a -brief inspection is needed to show that it is really of very small -validity. It is made up of a false assumption and a false inference. -The false inference is that there is any sound reason for prohibiting -teaching by asses, if only the asses know how to do it, and do it -well. The false assumption is that there are no asses in our schools -and colleges to-day. The facts stand in almost complete antithesis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> to -these notions. The truth is that the average schoolmaster, on all the -lower levels, is and always must be essentially an ass, for how can one -imagine an intelligent man engaging in so puerile an avocation? And, -the truth is that it is precisely his inherent asininity, and not his -technical equipment as a pedagogue, that is responsible for whatever -modest success he now shows.</p> - -<p>I here attempt no heavy jocosity, but mean exactly what I say. -Consider, for example, penmanship. A decent handwriting, it must be -obvious, is useful to all men, and particularly to the lower orders of -men. It is one of the few things capable of acquirement in school that -actually helps them to make a living. Well, how is it taught to-day? -It is taught, in the main, by schoolmarms so enmeshed in a complex and -unintelligible technic that, even supposing them able to write clearly -themselves, they find it quite impossible to teach their pupils. -Every few years sees a radical overhauling of the whole business. -First the vertical hand is to make it easy; then certain curves are -the favorite magic; then there is a return to slants and shadings. No -department of pedagogy sees a more hideous cavorting of quacks. In none -is the natural talent and enthusiasm of the teacher more depressingly -crippled. And the result? The result is that our American school -children write abominably—that a clerk or stenographer with a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> simple, -legible hand becomes almost as scarce as one with Greek.</p> - -<p>Go back, now, to the old days. Penmanship was then taught, not -mechanically and ineffectively, by unsound and shifting formul, but -by passionate penmen with curly patent-leather hair and far-away -eyes—in brief, by the unforgettable professors of our youth, -with their flourishes, their heavy down-strokes and their lovely -birds-with-letters-in-their-bills. You remember them, of course. Asses -all! Preposterous popinjays and numskulls! Pathetic idiots! But they -loved penmanship, they believed in the glory and beauty of penmanship, -they were fanatics, devotees, almost martyrs of penmanship—and so -they got some touch of that passion into their pupils. Not enough, -perhaps, to make more flourishers and bird-blazoners, but enough to -make sound penmen. Look at your old writing book; observe the excellent -legibility, the clear strokes of your "Time is money." Then look at -your child's.</p> - -<p>Such idiots, despite the rise of "scientific" pedagogy, have not -died out in the world. I believe that our schools are full of them, -both in pantaloons and in skirts. There are fanatics who love and -venerate spelling as a tom-cat loves and venerates catnip. There -are grammatomaniacs; schoolmarms who would rather parse than eat; -specialists in an objective case that doesn't exist in English; -strange<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> beings, otherwise sane and even intelligent and comely, -who suffer under a split infinitive as you or I would suffer under -gastro-enteritis. There are geography cranks, able to bound Mesopotamia -and Beluchistan. There are zealots for long division, experts in the -multiplication table, lunatic worshipers of the binomial theorem. But -the system has them in its grip. It combats their natural enthusiasm -diligently and mercilessly. It tries to convert them into mere -technicians, clumsy machines. It orders them to teach, not by the -process of emotional osmosis which worked in the days gone by, but by -formul that are as baffling to the pupil as they are paralyzing to the -teacher. Imagine what would happen to one of them who stepped to the -blackboard, seized a piece of chalk, and engrossed a bird that held -the class spell-bound—a bird with a thousand flowing feathers, wings -bursting with parabolas and epicycloids, and long ribbons streaming -from its bill! Imagine the fate of one who began "Honesty is the best -policy" with an H as florid and—to a child—as beautiful as the -initial of a medival manuscript! Such a teacher would be cashiered and -handed over to the secular arm; the very enchantment of the assembled -infantry would be held as damning proof against him. And yet it is just -such teachers that we should try to discover and develop. Pedagogy -needs their enthusiasm, their nave belief in their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> own grotesque -talents, their capacity for communicating their childish passion to the -childish.</p> - -<p>But this would mean exposing the children of the Republic to contact -with monomaniacs, half-wits, defectives? Well, what of it? The vast -majority of them are already exposed to contact with half-wits in their -own homes; they are taught the word of God by half-wits on Sundays; -they will grow up into Knights of Pythias, Odd Fellows, Red Men and -other such half-wits in the days to come. Moreover, as I have hinted, -they are already face to face with half-wits in the actual schools, -at least in three cases out of four. The problem before us is not -to dispose of this fact, but to utilize it. We cannot hope to fill -the schools with persons of high intelligence, for persons of high -intelligence simply refuse to spend their lives teaching such banal -things as spelling and arithmetic. Among the teachers male we may -safely assume that 95 per cent, are of low mentality, else they would -depart for more appetizing pastures. And even among the teachers female -the best are inevitably weeded out by marriage, and only the worst -(with a few romantic exceptions) survive. The task before us, as I -say, is not to make a vain denial of this cerebral inferiority of the -pedagogue, nor to try to combat and disguise it by concocting a mass of -technical hocus-pocus, but to search out and put to use the value lying -concealed in it. For even stupidity,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> it must be plain, has its uses in -the world, and some of them are uses that intelligence cannot meet. One -would not tell off a Galileo or a Pasteur to drive an ash-cart or an -Ignatius Loyola to be a stockbroker, or a Brahms to lead the orchestra -in a Broadway cabaret. By the same token, one would not ask a Herbert -Spencer or a Duns Scotus to instruct sucklings. Such men would not only -be wasted at the job; they would also be incompetent. The business -of dealing with children, in fact, demands a certain childishness of -mind. The best teacher, until one comes to adult pupils, is not the one -who knows most, but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge -to that simple compound of the obvious and the wonderful which slips -easiest into the infantile comprehension. A man of high intelligence, -perhaps, may accomplish the thing by a conscious intellectual feat. -But it is vastly easier to the man (or woman) whose habits of mind are -naturally on the plane of a child's. The best teacher of children, in -brief, is one who is essentially child-like.</p> - -<p>I go so far with this notion that I view the movement to introduce -female bachelors of arts into the primary schools with the utmost -alarm. A knowledge of Bergsonism, the Greek aorist, sex hygiene and -the dramas of Percy MacKaye is not only no help to the teaching of -spelling, it is a positive handicap to the teaching of spelling, -for it corrupts and blows up that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> nave belief in the glory and -portentousness of spelling which is at the bottom of all successful -teaching of it. If I had my way, indeed, I should expose all candidates -for berths in the infant grades to the Binet-Simon test, and reject all -those who revealed the mentality of more than fifteen years. Plenty -would still pass. Moreover, they would be secure against contamination -by the new technic of pedagogy. Its vast wave of pseudo-psychology -would curl and break against the hard barrier of their innocent -and passionate intellects—as it probably does, in fact, even now. -They would know nothing of cognition, perception, attention, the -sub-conscious and all the other half-fabulous fowl of the pedagogic -aviary. But they would see in reading, writing and arithmetic the gaudy -charms of profound and esoteric knowledge, and they would teach these -ancient branches, now so abominably in decay, with passionate gusto, -and irresistible effectiveness, and a gigantic success.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<h4>II</h4> - - -<p>Two great follies corrupt the present pedagogy, once it gets beyond -the elementals. One is the folly of overestimating the receptivity -of the pupil; the other is the folly of overestimating the possible -efficiency of the teacher. Both rest upon that tendency to put too -high a value upon mere schooling which characterizes democratic and -upstart societies—a tendency<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> born of the theory that a young man -who has been "educated," who has "gone through college," is in some -subtle way more capable of making money than one who hasn't. The -nature of the schooling on tap in colleges is but defectively grasped -by the adherents of the theory. They view it, I believe, as a sort of -extension of the schooling offered in elementary schools—that is, as -an indefinite multiplication of training in such obviously valuable and -necessary arts as reading, writing and arithmetic. It is, of course, -nothing of the sort. If the pupil, as he climbs the educational ladder, -is fortunate enough to come into contact with a few Huxleys or Ludwigs, -he may acquire a great deal of extremely sound knowledge, and even -learn how to think for himself. But in the great majority of cases he -is debarred by two things: the limitations of his congenital capacity -and the limitations of the teachers he actually encounters. The latter -is usually even more brilliantly patent than the former. Very few -professional teachers, it seems to me, really know anything worth -knowing, even about the subjects they essay to teach. If you doubt it, -simply examine their contributions to existing knowledge. Several years -ago, while engaged upon my book, "The American Language," I had a good -chance to test the matter in one typical department, that of philology. -I found a truly appalling condition of affairs. I found that in the -whole<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> United States there were not two dozen teachers of English -philology—in which class I also include the innumerable teachers of -plain grammar—who had ever written ten lines upon the subject worth -reading. It was not that they were indolent or illiterate: in truth, -they turned out to be enormously diligent. But as I plowed through -pyramid after pyramid of their doctrines and speculations, day after -day and week after week, I discovered little save a vast laboring of -the obvious, with now and then a bold flight into the nonsensical. A -few genuinely original philologians revealed themselves—pedagogues -capable of observing accurately and reasoning clearly. The rest simply -wasted time and paper. Whole sections of the field were unexplored, and -some of them appeared to be even unsuspected. The entire life-work of -many an industrious professor, boiled down, scarcely made a footnote in -my book, itself a very modest work.</p> - -<p>This tendency to treat the superior pedagogue too seriously—to view -him as, <i>ipso facto,</i> a learned man, and one thus capable of conveying -learning to others—is supported by the circumstance that he so views -himself, and is, in fact, very pretentious and even bombastic. Nearly -all discussions of the educational problem, at least in the United -States, are carried on by school-masters or ex-school-masters—for -example, college presidents, deans, and other such<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> magnificoes—and so -they assume it to be axiomatic that such fellows are genuine bearers -of the enlightenment, and hence capable of transmitting it to others. -This is true sometimes, as I have said, but certainly not usually. -The average high-school or college pedagogue is not one who has been -selected because of his uncommon knowledge; he is simply one who has -been stuffed with formal ideas and taught to do a few conventional -intellectual tricks. Contact with him, far from being inspiring to -any youth of alert mentality, is really quite depressing; his point -of view is commonplace and timorous; his best thought is no better -than that of any other fourth-rate professional man, say a dentist or -an advertisement writer. Thus it is idle to talk of him as if he were -a Socrates, an Aristotle, or even a Leschetizky. He is actually much -more nearly related to a barber or a lieutenant of marines. A worthy -man, industrious and respectable—but don't expect too much of him. To -ask him to struggle out of his puddle of safe platitudes and plunge -into the whirlpool of surmise and speculation that carries on the -fragile shallop of human progress—to do this is as absurd as to ask a -neighborhood doctor to undertake major surgery.</p> - -<p>In the United States his low intellectual status is kept low, not -only by the meager rewards of his trade in a country where money is -greatly sought and esteemed, but also by the democratic theory of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> -education—that is, by the theory that mere education can convert a -peasant into an intellectual aristocrat, with all of the peculiar -superiorities of an aristocrat—in brief, that it is possible to make -purses out of sow's ears. The intellectual collapse of the American -<i>Gelehrten</i> during the late war—a collapse so nearly unanimous -that those who did not share it attained to a sort of immortality -overnight—was perhaps largely due to this error. Who were these -bawling professors, so pathetically poltroonish and idiotic? In an -enormous number of cases they were simply peasants in frock-coats—oafs -from the farms and villages of Iowa, Kansas, Vermont, Alabama, -the Dakotas and other such backward states, horribly stuffed with -standardized learning in some fresh-water university, and then set to -teaching. To look for a civilized attitude of mind in such Strassburg -geese is to look for honor in a valet; to confuse them with scholars -is to confuse the Knights of Pythias with the Knights Hospitaller. -In brief, the trouble with them was that they had no sound tradition -behind them, that they had not learned to think clearly and decently, -that they were not gentlemen. The youth with a better background -behind him, passing through an American university, seldom acquires -any yearning to linger as a teacher. The air is too thick for him; -the rewards are too trivial; the intrigues are too old-maidish and -degrading. Thus the chairs, even<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> in the larger universities, tend -to be filled more and more by yokels who have got themselves what is -called an education only by dint of herculean effort. Exhausted by the -cruel process, they are old men at 26 or 28, and so, hugging their -Ph.D's, they sink into convenient instructorships, and end at 60 as -<i>ordentliche Professoren.</i> The social status of the American pedagogue -helps along the process. Unlike in Europe, where he has a secure and -honorable position, he ranks, in the United States, somewhere between -a Methodist preacher and a prosperous brick-yard owner—certainly -clearly below the latter. Thus the youth of civilized upbringings -feels that it would be stooping a bit to take up the rattan. But the -plow-hand obviously makes a step upward, and is hence eager for the -black gown. Thereby a vicious circle is formed. The plow-hand, by -entering the ancient guild, drags it down still further, and so makes -it increasingly difficult to snare apprentices from superior castes.</p> - -<p>A glance at "Who's Who in America" offers a good deal of support -for all this theorizing. There was a time when the typical American -professor came from a small area in New England—for generations the -seat of a high literacy, and even of a certain austere civilization. -But to-day he comes from the region of silos, revivals, and saleratus. -Behind him there is absolutely no tradition of aristocratic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> aloofness -and urbanity, or even of mere civilized decency. He is a bind by birth, -and he carries the smell of the dunghill into the academic grove—and -not only the smell, but also some of the dung itself. What one looks -for in such men is dullness, superficiality, a great credulity, an -incapacity for learning anything save a few fly-blown rudiments, a -passionate yielding to all popular crazes, a malignant distrust of -genuine superiority, a huge megalomania. These are precisely the -things that one finds in the typical American pedagogue of the new -dispensation. He is not only a numskull; he is also a boor. In the -university president he reaches his heights. Here we have a so-called -learned man who spends his time making speeches before chautauquas, -chambers of commerce and Rotary Clubs, and flattering trustees who run -both universities and street-railways, and cadging money from such men -as Rockefeller and Carnegie.</p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>III</h4> - - -<p>The same educational fallacy which fills the groves of learning -with such dunces causes a huge waste of energy and money on lower -levels—those, to wit, of the secondary schools. The theory behind the -lavish multiplication of such schools is that they outfit the children -of the mob with the materials of reasoning, and inculcate in them a -habit of indulging<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> in it. I have never been able to discover any -evidence in support of that theory. The common people of America—at -least the white portion of them—are rather above the world's average -in literacy, but there is no sign that they have acquired thereby any -capacity for weighing facts or comparing ideas. The school statistics -show that the average member of the American Legion can read and -write after a fashion, and is able to multiply eight by seven after -four trials, but they tell us nothing about his actual intelligence. -The returns of the Army itself, indeed, indicate that he is stupid -almost beyond belief—that there is at least an even chance that he -is a moron. Is such a fellow appreciably superior to the villein of -the Middle Ages? Sometimes I am tempted to doubt it. I suspect, for -example, that the belief in witchcraft is still almost as widespread -among the plain people of the United States, at least outside the -large cities, as it was in Europe in the year 1500. In my own state -of Mary-land all of the negroes and mulattoes believe absolutely in -witches, and so do most of the whites. The belief in ghosts penetrates -to quite high levels. I know very few native-born Americans, indeed, -who reject it without reservation. One constantly comes upon grave -defenses of spiritism in some form or other by men theoretically of -learning; in the two houses of Congress it would be difficult to -muster<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> fifty men willing to denounce the thing publicly. It would -not only be politically dangerous for them to do so; it would also go -against their consciences.</p> - -<p>What is always forgotten is that the capacity for knowledge of the -great masses of human blanks is very low—that, no matter how adroitly -pedagogy tackles them with its technical sorceries, it remains a -practical impossibility to teach them anything beyond reading and -writing, and the most elementary arithmetic. Worse, it is impossible -to make any appreciable improvement in their congenitally ignoble -tastes, and so they devote even the paltry learning that they acquire -to degrading uses. If the average American read only the newspapers, -as is frequently alleged, it would be bad enough, but the truth is -that he reads only the most imbecile <i>parts</i> of the newspapers. -Nine-tenths of the matter in a daily paper of the better sort is almost -as unintelligible to him as the theory of least squares. The words -lie outside his vocabulary; the ideas are beyond the farthest leap of -his intellect. It is, indeed, a sober fact that even an editorial in -the New York <i>Times</i> is probably incomprehensible to all Americans -save a small minority—and not, remember, on the ground that it is too -nonsensical but on the ground that it is too subtle. The same sort of -mind that regards Rubinstein's Melody in F as too "classical" to be -agreeable is also stumped by the most transparent English.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p> - -<p>Like most other professional writers I get a good many letters from my -customers. Complaints, naturally, are more numerous than compliments; -it is only indignation that can induce the average man to brave the -ardors of pen and ink. Well, the complaint that I hear most often is -that my English is unintelligible—that it is too full of "hard" words. -I can imagine nothing more astounding. My English is actually almost -as bald and simple as the English of a college yell. My sentences are -short and plainly constructed: I resolutely cultivate the most direct -manner of statement; my vocabulary is deliberately composed of the -words of everyday. Nevertheless, a great many of my readers in my own -country find reading me an uncomfortably severe burden upon their -linguistic and intellectual resources. These readers are certainly -not below the American average in intelligence; on the contrary, they -must be a good deal above the average, for they have at least got to -the point where they are willing to put out of the safe harbor of the -obvious and respectable, and to brave the seas where more or less -novel ideas rage and roar. Think of what the ordinary newspaper reader -would make of my compositions! There is, in fact, no need to think; I -have tried them on him. His customary response, when, by mountebankish -devices, I forced him to read—or, at all events, to try to read—, was -to demand resolutely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> that the guilty newspaper cease printing me, and -to threaten to bring the matter to the attention of the <i>Polizei.</i> I do -not exaggerate in the slightest; I tell the literal truth.</p> - -<p>It is such idiots that the little red school-house operates upon, in -the hope of unearthing an occasional first-rate man. Is that hope -ever fulfilled? Despite much testimony to the effect that it is, I am -convinced that it really isn't. First-rate men are never begotten by -Knights of Pythias; the notion that they sometimes are is due to an -optical delusion. When they appear in obscure and ignoble circles it -is no more than a proof that only an extremely wise sire knows his own -son. Adultery, in brief, is one of nature's devices for keeping the -lowest orders of men from sinking to the level of downright simians: -sometimes for a few brief years in youth, their wives and daughters are -comely—and now and then the baron drinks more than he ought to. But it -is foolish to argue that the gigantic machine of popular education is -needed to rescue such hybrids from their environment. The truth is that -all the education rammed into the average pupil in the average American -public school could be acquired by the v larva of any reasonably -intelligent man in no more than six weeks of ordinary application, and -that where schools are unknown it actually <i>is</i> so acquired. A bright -child, in fact, can learn to read and write<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> without any save the most -casual aid a great deal faster than it can learn to read and write in a -class-room, where the difficulties of the stupid retard it enormously -and it is further burdened by the crazy formul invented by pedagogues. -And once it can read and write, it is just as well equipped to acquire -further knowledge as nine-tenths of the teachers it will subsequently -encounter in school or college.</p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>IV</h4> - - -<p>I know a good many men of great learning—that is, men born with an -extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, -they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in -school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was -to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already -acquired independently—and not infrequently the determination was made -clumsily and inaccurately. In my own nonage I had a great desire to -acquire knowledge in certain limited directions, to wit, those of the -physical sciences. Before I was ever permitted, by the regulations of -the secondary seminary I was penned in, to open a chemistry book I had -learned a great deal of chemistry by the simple process of reading the -texts and then going through the processes described. When, at last, -I was introduced to chemistry officially, I found the teaching of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> -it appalling. The one aim of that teaching, in fact, seemed to be to -first purge me of what I already knew and then refill me with the same -stuff in a formal, doltish, unintelligible form. My experience with -physics was even worse. I knew nothing about it when I undertook its -study in class, for that was before the days when physics swallowed -chemistry. Well, it was taught so abominably that it immediately became -incomprehensible to me, and hence extremely; distasteful, and to this -day I know nothing about it. Worse, it remains unpleasant to me, and so -I am shut off from the interesting and useful knowledge that I might -otherwise acquire by reading.</p> - -<p>One extraordinary teacher I remember who taught me something: a teacher -of mathematics. I had a dislike for that science, and knew little about -it. Finally, my neglect of it brought me to bay: in transferring from -one school to another I found that I was hopelessly short in algebra. -What was needed, of course, was not an actual knowledge of algebra, -but simply the superficial smattering needed to pass an examination. -The teacher that I mention, observing my distress, generously offered -to fill me with that smattering after school hours. He got the whole -year's course into me in exactly six lessons of half an hour each. -And how? More accurately, why? Simply because he was an algebra -fanatic—because he believed that algebra was not only a science of -the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> utmost importance, but also one of the greatest fascination. He -was the penmanship professor of years ago, lifted to a higher level. -A likable and plausible man, he convinced me in twenty minutes that -ignorance of algebra was as calamitous, socially and intellectually, -as ignorance of table manners—that acquiring its elements was as -necessary as washing behind the ears. So I fell upon the book and -gulped it voraciously, greatly to the astonishment of my father, -whose earlier mathematical teaching had failed to set me off because -it was too pressing—because it bombarded me, not when I was penned -in a school and so inclined to make the best of it, but when I had -got through a day's schooling, and felt inclined to play. To this -day I comprehend the binomial theorem, a very rare accomplishment in -an author. For many years, indeed, I was probably the only American -newspaper editor who knew what it was.</p> - -<p>Two other teachers of that school I remember pleasantly as fellows -whose pedagogy profitted me—both, it happens, were drunken and -disreputable men. One taught me to chew tobacco, an art that has done -more to give me an evil name, perhaps, than even my Socinianism. The -other introduced me to Shakespeare, Congreve, Wycherly, Marlowe and -Sheridan, and so filled me with that taste for coarseness which now -offends so many of my customers, lay and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> clerical. Neither ever -came to a dignified position in academic circles. One abandoned -pedagogy for the law, became involved in causes of a dubious nature, -and finally disappeared into the shades which engulf third-rate -attorneys. The other went upon a fearful drunk one Christmastide, -got himself shanghaied on the water-front and is supposed to have -fallen overboard from a British tramp, bound east for Cardiff. At all -events, he has never been heard from since. Two evil fellows, and -yet I hold their memories in affection, and believe that they were -the best teachers I ever had. For in both there was something a good -deal more valuable than mere pedagogical skill and diligence, and -even more valuable than correct demeanor, and that was a passionate -love of sound literature. This love, given reasonably receptive soil, -they knew how to communicate, as a man can nearly always communicate -whatever moves him profoundly. Neither ever made the slightest effort -to "teach" literature, as the business is carried on by the usual idiot -schoolmaster. Both had a vast contempt for the text-books that were -official in their school, and used to entertain the boys by pointing -out the nonsense in them. Both were full of derisory objections to the -principal heroes of such books in those days: Scott, Irving, Pope, Jane -Austen, Dickens, Trollope, Tennyson. But both, discoursing in their -disorderly way upon heroes of their own,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> were magnificently eloquent -and persuasive. The boy who could listen to one of them intoning -Whitman and stand unmoved was a dull fellow indeed. The boy who could -resist the other's enthusiasm for the old essayists was intellectually -deaf, dumb and blind.</p> - -<p>I often wonder if their expoundings of their passions and prejudices -would have been half so charming if they had been wholly respectable -men, like their colleagues of the school faculty. It is not likely. A -healthy boy is in constant revolt against the sort of men who surround -him at school. Their puerile pedantries, their Christian Endeavor -respectability, their sedentery pallor, their curious preference for -the dull and uninteresting, their general air of so many Y. M. C. A. -secretaries—these things infallibly repel the youth who is above -milksoppery. In every boys' school the favorite teacher is one who -occasionally swears like a cavalryman, or is reputed to keep a jug in -his room, or is known to receive a scented note every morning. Boys are -good judges of men, as girls are good judges of women. It is not by -accident that most of them, at some time or other, long to be cowboys -or ice-wagon drivers, and that none of them, not obviously diseased -in mind, ever longs to be a Sunday-school superintendent. Put that -judgment to a simple test. What would become of a nation in which all -of the men were, at heart, Sunday-school<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> superintendents—or Y. M. C. -A. secretaries, or pedagogues? Imagine it in conflict with a nation -of cowboys and ice-wagon drivers. Which would be the stronger, and -which would be the more intelligent, resourceful, enterprising and -courageous?</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a name="XIV_TYPES_OF_MEN" id="XIV_TYPES_OF_MEN">XIV. TYPES OF MEN</a></h4> - - - -<h4>1</h4> - -<h4><i>The Romantic</i></h4> - - -<p>There is a variety of man whose eye inevitably exaggerates, whose -ear inevitably hears more than the band plays, whose invagination -inevitably doubles and triples the news brought in by his five senses. -He is the enthusiast, the believer, the romantic. He is the sort of -fellow who, if he were a bacteriologist, would report the streptoccocus -pyogenes to be as large as a St. Bernard dog, as intelligent as -Socrates, as beautiful as Beauvais Cathedral and as respectable as a -Yale professor.</p> - - - -<h4>2</h4> - -<h4><i>The Skeptic</i></h4> - - -<p>No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an -idea absolutely, but not in a man. In the highest confidence there -is always a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> flavor of doubt—a feeling, half instinctive and half -logical, that, after all, the scoundrel <i>may</i> have something up his -sleeve. This doubt, it must be obvious, is always more than justified, -for no man is worthy of unlimited reliance—his treason, at best, only -waits for sufficient temptation. The trouble with the world is not that -men are too suspicious in this direction, but that they tend to be -too confiding—that they still trust themselves too far to other men, -even after bitter experience. Women, I believe, are measurably less -sentimental, in this as in other things. No married woman ever trusts -her husband absolutely, nor does she ever act as if she <i>did</i> trust -him. Her utmost confidence is as wary as an American pick-pocket's -confidence that the policeman on the beat will stay bought.</p> - - - -<h4>3</h4> - -<h4><i>The Believer</i></h4> - - -<p>Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence -of the improbable. Or, psychoanalytically, as a wish neurose. There -is thus a flavor of the pathological in it; it goes beyond the normal -intellectual process and passes into the murky domain of transcendental -metaphysics. A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never -had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> -ass: he is actually ill. Worse, he is incurable, for disappointment, -being essentially an objective phenomenon, cannot permanently affect -his subjective infirmity. His faith takes on the virulence of a chronic -infection. What he usually says, in substance, is this: "Let us trust -in God, <i>who has always fooled us in the past."</i></p> - - - -<h4>4</h4> - -<h4><i>The Worker</i></h4> - - -<p>All democratic theories, whether Socialistic or bourgeois, necessarily -take in some concept of the dignity of labor. If the have-not were -deprived of this delusion that his sufferings in the sweat-shop are -somehow laudable and agreeable to God, there would be little left in -his ego save a belly-ache. Nevertheless, a delusion is a delusion, -and this is one of the worst. It arises out of confusing the pride of -workmanship of the artist with the dogged, painful docility of the -machine. The difference is important and enormous. If he got no reward -whatever, the artist would go on working just the same; his actual -reward, in fact, is often so little that he almost starves. But suppose -a garment-worker got nothing for his labor: would he go on working -just the same? Can one imagine him submitting voluntarily to hardship -and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> sore want that he might express his soul in 200 more pairs of -pantaloons?</p> - - - -<h4>5</h4> - -<h4><i>The Physician</i></h4> - - -<p>Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to -find a hygienist who does not debase his theory of the healthful with a -theory of the virtuous. The whole hygienic art, indeed, resolves itself -into an ethical exhortation, and, in the sub-department of sex, into a -puerile and belated advocacy of asceticism. This brings it, at the end, -into diametrical conflict with medicine proper. The aim of medicine is -surely not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard and rescue them -from the consequences of their vices. The true physician does not -preach repentance; he offers absolution.</p> - - - -<h4>6</h4> - -<h4><i>The Scientist</i></h4> - - -<p>The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and -inaccurate. Consider, for example, two of them: mere insatiable -curiosity and the desire to do good. The latter is put high above the -former, and yet it is the former that moves some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> of the greatest -men the human race has yet produced: the scientific investigators. -What animates a great pathologist? Is it the desire to cure disease, -to save life? Surely not, save perhaps as an afterthought. He is too -intelligent, deep down in his soul, to see anything praiseworthy in -such a desire. He knows by life-long observation that his discoveries -will do quite as much harm as good, that a thousand scoundrels will -profit to every honest man, that the folks who most deserve to be saved -will probably be the last to be saved. No man of self-respect could -devote himself to pathology on such terms. What actually moves him is -his unquenchable curiosity—his boundless, almost pathological thirst -to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret, to find out what has -not been found out before. His prototype is not the liberator releasing -slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but the dog sniffing -tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes. And yet he is one of -the greatest and noblest of men. And yet he stands in the very front -rank of the race.</p> - - - -<h4>7</h4> - -<h4><i>The Business Man</i></h4> - - -<p>It is, after all, a sound instinct which puts business below the -professions, and burdens the business man with a social inferiority -that he can never quite<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> shake off, even in America. The business man, -in fact, acquiesces in this assumption of his inferiority, even when he -protests against it. He is the only man who is forever apologizing for -his occupation. He is the only one who always seeks to make it appear, -when he attains the object of his labors, <i>i. e.</i>, the making of a -great deal of money, that it was not the object of his labors.</p> - - - -<h4>8</h4> - -<h4><i>The King</i></h4> - - -<p>Perhaps the most valuable asset that any man can have in this world -is a naturally superior air, a talent for sniffishness and reserve. -The generality of men are always greatly impressed by it, and accept -it freely as a proof of genuine merit. One need but disdain them to -gain their respect. Their congenital stupidity and timorousness make -them turn to any leader who offers, and the sign of leadership that -they recognize most readily is that which shows itself in external -manner. This is the true explanation of the survival of monarchism, -which invariably lives through its perennial deaths. It is the popular -theory, at least in America, that monarchism is a curse fastened upon -the common people from above—that the monarch saddles it upon them -without their consent and against their will. The theory<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> is without -support in the facts. Kings are created, not by kings, but by the -people. They visualize one of the ineradicable needs of all third-rate -men, which means of nine men out of ten, and that is the need of -something to venerate, to bow down to, to follow and obey.</p> - -<p>The king business begins to grow precarious, not when kings reach out -for greater powers, but when they begin to resign and renounce their -powers. The czars of Russia were quite secure upon the throne so long -as they ran Russia like a reformatory, but the moment they began to -yield to liberal ideas, <i>i. e.,</i> by emancipating the serfs and setting -up constitutionalism, their doom was sounded. The people saw this -yielding as a sign of weakness; they began to suspect that the czars, -after all, were not actually superior to other men. And so they turned -to other and antagonistic leaders, all as cocksure as the czars had -once been, and in the course of time they were stimulated to rebellion. -These leaders, or, at all events, the two or three most resolute and -daring of them, then undertook to run the country in the precise way -that it had been run in the palmy days of the monarchy. That is to say, -they seized and exerted irresistible power and laid claim to infallible -wisdom. History will date their downfall from the day they began to -ease their pretensions. Once they confessed, even by implication, that -they were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> merely human, the common people began to turn against them.</p> - - - -<h4>9</h4> - -<h4><i>The Average Man</i></h4> - - -<p>It is often urged against the so-called scientific Socialists, with -their materialistic conception of history, that they overlook certain -spiritual qualities that are independent of wage scales and metabolism. -These qualities, it is argued, color the aspirations and activities -of civilized man quite as much as they are colored by his material -condition, and so make it impossible to consider him simply as an -economic machine. As examples, the anti-Marxians cite patriotism, -pity, the sthetic sense and the yearning to know God. Unluckily, -the examples are ill-chosen. Millions of men are quite devoid of -patriotism, pity and the sthetic sense, and have no very active desire -to know God. Why don't the anti-Marxians cite a spiritual quality -that is genuinely universal? There is one readily to hand. I allude -to cowardice. It is, in one form or other, visible in every human -being; it almost serves to mark off the human race from all the other -higher animals. Cowardice, I believe, is at the bottom of the whole -caste system, the foundation of every organized society, including -the most democratic. In order to escape going to war<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> himself, the -peasant was willing to give the warrior certain privileges—and out -of those privileges has grown the whole structure of civilization. -Go back still further. Property arose out of the fact that a few -relatively courageous men were able to accumulate more possessions than -whole hordes of cowardly men, and, what is more, to retain them after -accumulating them.</p> - - - -<h4>10</h4> - -<h4><i>The Truth-Seeker</i></h4> - - -<p>The man who boasts that he habitually tells the truth is simply a man -with no respect for it. It is not a thing to be thrown about loosely, -like small change; it is something to be cherished and hoarded, and -disbursed only when absolutely necessary. The smallest atom of truth -represents some man's bitter toil and agony; for every ponderable chunk -of it there is a brave truth-seeker's grave upon some lonely ash-dump -and a soul roasting in hell.</p> - - - -<h4>11</h4> - -<h4><i>The Pacifist</i></h4> - - -<p>Nietzsche, in altering Schopenhauer's will-to-live to will-to-power, -probably fell into a capital error. The truth is that the thing the -average man seeks in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> life is not primarily power, but peace; all -his struggle is toward a state of tranquillity and equilibrium; what -he always dreams of is a state in which he will have to do battle no -longer. This dream plainly enters into his conception of Heaven; he -thinks of himself, <i>post mortem,</i> browsing about the celestial meadows -like a cow in a safe pasture. A few extraordinary men enjoy combat at -all times, and all men are inclined toward it at orgiastic moments, -but the race as a race craves peace, and man belongs among the more -timorous, docile and unimaginative animals, along with the deer, the -horse and the sheep. This craving for peace is vividly displayed in -the ages-long conflict of the sexes. Every normal woman wants to be -married, for the plain reason that marriage offers her security. And -every normal man avoids marriage as long as possible, for the equally -plain reason that marriage invades and threatens <i>his</i> security.</p> - - - -<h4>12</h4> - -<h4><i>The Relative</i></h4> - - -<p>The normal man's antipathy to his relatives, particularly of the -second degree, is explained by psychologists in various tortured -and improbable ways. The true explanation, I venture, is a good -deal simpler. It lies in the plain fact that every man sees in his -relatives, and especially in his cousins, a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> series of grotesque -caricatures of himself. They exhibit his qualities in disconcerting -augmentation or diminution; they fill him with a disquieting feeling -that this, perhaps, is the way he appears to the world and so they -wound his <i>amour propre</i> and give him intense discomfort. To admire his -relatives whole-heartedly a man must be lacking in the finer sort of -self-respect.</p> - - - -<h4>13</h4> - -<h4><i>The Friend</i></h4> - - -<p>One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that -friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that -any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable. The fact is -that a man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just -as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his -epistemology. They become threadbare, shabby, pumped-up, irritating, -depressing. They convert themselves from living realities into -moribund artificialities, and stand in sinister opposition to freedom, -self-respect and truth. It is as corrupting to preserve them after -they have grown fly-blown and hollow as it is to keep up the forms -of passion after passion itself is a corpse. Every act and attitude -that they involve thus becomes an act of hypocrisy, an attitude -of dishonesty....<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> A prudent man, remembering that life is short, -gives an hour or two, now and then, to a critical examination of his -friendships. He weighs them, edits them, tests the metal of them. A -few he retains, perhaps with radical changes in their terms. But the -majority he expunges from his minutes and tries to forget, as he tries -to forget the cold and clammy loves of year before last.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a name="XV_THE_DISMAL_SCIENCE" id="XV_THE_DISMAL_SCIENCE">XV. THE DISMAL SCIENCE</a></h4> - - -<p>Every man, as the Psalmist says, to his own poison, or poisons, as the -case may be. One of mine, following hard after theology, is political -economy. What! Political economy, that dismal science? Well, why not? -Its dismalness is largely a delusion, due to the fact that its chief -ornaments, at least in our own day, are university professors. The -professor must be an obscurantist or he is nothing; he has a special -and unmatchable talent for dullness; his central aim is not to expose -the truth clearly, but to exhibit his profundity, his esotericity—in -brief, to stagger sophomores and other professors. The notion that -German is a gnarled and unintelligible language arises out of the -circumstance that it is so much written by professors. It took a rebel -member of the clan, swinging to the antipodes in his unearthly treason, -to prove its explicitness, its resiliency, it downright beauty. -But Nietzsches are few, and so German remains soggy, and political -economy continues to be swathed in dullness. As I say, however, that -dullness is only superficial. There is no more engrossing book in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> the -English language than Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations"; surely the -eighteenth century produced nothing that can be read with greater ease -to-day. Nor is there any inherent reason why even the most technical -divisions of its subject should have gathered cobwebs with the passing -of the years. Taxation, for example, is eternally lively; it concerns -ninetenths of us more directly than either smallpox or golf, and has -just as much drama in it; moreover, it has been mellowed and made gay -by as many gaudy, preposterous theories. As for foreign exchange, it is -almost as romantic as young love, and quite as resistent to formul. -Do the professors make an autopsy of it? Then read the occasional -treatises of some professor of it who is not a professor, say, Garet -Garrett or John Moody.</p> - -<p>Unluckily, Garretts and Moodys are almost as rare as Nietzsches, -and so the amateur of such things must be content to wrestle with -the professors, seeking the violet of human interest beneath the -avalanche of their graceless parts of speech. A hard business, I -daresay, to one not practiced, and to its hardness there is added -the disquiet of a doubt. That doubt does not concern itself with the -doctrine preached, at least not directly. There may be in it nothing -intrinsically dubious; on the contrary, it may appear as sound as the -binomial theorem, as well supported as the dogma of infant damnation. -But all the time<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> a troubling question keeps afloat in the air, and -that is briefly this: What would happen to the learned professors if -they took the other side? In other words, to what extent is political -economy, as professors expound and practice it, a free science, in -the sense that mathematics and physiology are free sciences? At what -place, if any, is speculation pulled up by a rule that beyond lies -treason, anarchy and disaster? These questions, I hope I need not add, -are not inspired by any heterodoxy in my own black heart. I am, in -many fields, a flouter of the accepted revelation and hence immoral, -but the field of economics is not one of them. Here, indeed, I know -of no man who is more orthodox than I am. I believe that the present -organization of society, as bad as it is, is better than any other -that has ever been proposed. I reject all the sure cures in current -agitation, from government ownership to the single tax. I am in favor -of free competition in all human enterprises, and to the utmost limit. -I admire successful scoundrels, and shrink from Socialists as I -shrink from Methodists. But all the same, the aforesaid doubt pursues -me when I plow through the solemn disproofs and expositions of the -learned professors of economics, and that doubt will not down. It is -not logical or evidential, but purely psychological. And what it is -grounded on is an unshakable belief that no man's opinion is worth a -hoot, however<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> well supported and maintained, so long as he is not -absolutely free, if the spirit moves him, to support and maintain -the exactly contrary opinion. In brief, human reason is a weak and -paltry thing so long as it is not wholly free reason. The fact lies in -its very nature, and is revealed by its entire history. A man may be -perfectly honest in a contention, and he may be astute and persuasive -in maintaining it, but the moment the slightest compulsion to maintain -it is laid upon him, the moment the slightest external reward goes with -his partisanship or the slightest penalty with its abandonment, then -there appears a defect in his ratiocination that is more deep-seated -than any error in fact and more destructive than any conscious and -deliberate bias. He may seek the truth and the truth only, and bring up -his highest talents and diligence to the business, but always there is -a specter behind his chair, a warning in his ear. Always it is safer -and more hygienic for him to think one way than to think another way, -and in that bald fact there is excuse enough to hold his whole chain of -syllogisms in suspicion. He may be earnest, he may be honest, but he is -not free, and if he is not free, he is not anything.</p> - -<p>Well, are the reverend professors of economics free? With the highest -respect, I presume to question it. Their colleagues of archeology may -be reasonably called free, and their colleagues of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> bacteriology, -and those of Latin grammar and sidereal astronomy, and those of many -another science and mystery, but when one comes to the faculty of -political economy one finds that freedom as plainly conditioned, though -perhaps not as openly, as in the faculty of theology. And for a plain -reason. Political economy, so to speak, hits the employers of the -professors where they live. It deals, not with ideas that affect those -employers only occasionally or only indirectly or only as ideas, but -with ideas that have an imminent and continuous influence upon their -personal welfare and security, and that affect profoundly the very -foundations of that social and economic structure upon which their -whole existence is based. It is, in brief, the science of the ways and -means whereby they have come to such estate, and maintain themselves -in such estate, that they are able to hire and boss professors. It -is the boat in which they sail down perilous waters—and they must -needs yell, or be more or less than human, when it is rocked. Now -and then that yell duly resounds in the groves of learning. One -remembers, for example, the trial, condemnation and execution of Prof. -Dr. Scott Nearing at the University of Pennsylvania, a seminary that -is highly typical, both in its staff and in its control. Nearing, I -have no doubt, was wrong in his notions—honestly, perhaps, but still -wrong. In so far as I heard them stated at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> time, they seemed -to me to be hollow and of no validity. He has since discharged them -from the chautauquan stump, and at the usual hinds. They have been -chiefly accepted and celebrated by men I regard as asses. But Nearing -was not thrown out of the University of Pennsylvania, angrily and -ignominiously, because he was honestly wrong, or because his errors -made him incompetent to prepare sophomores for their examinations; he -was thrown out because his efforts to get at the truth disturbed the -security and equanimity of the rich ignoranti who happened to control -the university, and because the academic slaves and satellites of -these shopmen were restive under his competition for the attention of -the student-body. In three words, he was thrown out because he was -not safe and sane and orthodox. Had his aberration gone in the other -direction, had he defended child labor as ardently as he denounced it -and denounced the minimum wage as ardently as he defended it, then he -would have been quite as secure in his post, for all his cavorting in -the newspapers, as Chancellor Day was at Syracuse.</p> - -<p>Now consider the case of the professors of economics, near and far, -who have <i>not</i> been thrown out. Who will say that the lesson of the -Nearing <i>dbcle</i> has been lost upon them? Who will say that the -potency of the wealthy men who command our universities—or most of -them—has not stuck in their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> minds? And who will say that, with this -sticking remembered, their arguments against Nearing's so-called ideas -are as worthy of confidence and respect as they would be if they were -quite free to go over to Nearing's side without damage? Who, indeed, -will give them full credit, even when they are right, so long as they -are hamstrung, nose-ringed and tied up in gilded pens? It seems to -me that these considerations are enough to cast a glow of suspicion -over the whole of American political economy, at least in so far -as it comes from college economists. And, in the main, it has that -source, for, barring a few brilliant journalists, all our economists -of any repute are professors. Many of them are able men, and most of -them are undoubtedly honest men, as honesty goes in the world, but -over practically every one of them there stands a board of trustees -with its legs in the stock-market and its eyes on the established -order, and that board is ever alert for heresy in the science of its -being, and has ready means of punishing it, and a hearty enthusiasm -for the business. Not every professor, perhaps, may be sent straight -to the block, as Nearing was, but there are plenty of pillories and -guardhouses on the way, and every last pedagogue must be well aware of -it.</p> - -<p>Political economy, in so far as it is a science at all, was not pumped -up and embellished by any such academic clients and ticket-of-leave -men. It was put<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> on its legs by inquirers who were not only safe -from all dousing in the campus pump, but who were also free from -the mental timorousness and conformity which go inevitably with -school-teaching—in brief, by men of the world, accustomed to its -free air, its hospitality to originality and plain speaking. Adam -Smith, true enough, was once a professor, but he threw up his chair -to go to Paris, and there he met, not more professors, but all the -current enemies of professors—the Nearings and Henry Georges and Karl -Marxes of the time. And the book that he wrote was not orthodox, but -revolutionary. Consider the others of that bulk and beam: Bentham, -Ricardo, Mill and their like. Bentham held no post at the mercy of -bankers and tripesellers; he was a man of independent means, a lawyer -and politician, and a heretic in general practice. It is impossible -to imagine such a man occupying a chair at Harvard or Princeton. He -had a hand in too many pies: he was too rebellious and contumacious: -he had too little respect for authority, either academic or worldly. -Moreover, his mind was too wide for a professor; he could never remain -safely in a groove; the whole field of social organization invited his -inquiries and experiments. Ricardo? Another man of easy means and great -worldly experience—by academic standards, not even educated. To-day, -I daresay, such meager diplomas as he could show would not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> suffice to -get him an instructor's berth in a fresh-water seminary in Iowa. As -for Mill, he was so well grounded by his father that he knew more, at -eighteen, than any of the universities could teach him, and his life -thereafter was the exact antithesis of that of a cloistered pedagogue. -Moreover, he was a heretic in religion and probably violated the Mann -act of those days—an offense almost as heinous, in a college professor -of economics, as giving three cheers for Prince Kropotkin.</p> - -<p>I might lengthen the list, but humanely refrain. The point is that -these early English economists were all perfectly free men, with -complete liberty to tell the truth as they saw it, regardless of -its orthodoxy or lack of orthodoxy. I do not say that the typical -American economist of to-day is not as honest, nor even that he -is not as diligent and competent, but I do say that he is not as -free—that penalties would come upon him for stating ideas that Smith -or Ricardo or Bentham or Mill, had he so desired, would have been free -to state without damage. And in that menace there is an ineradicable -criticism of the ideas that he does state, and it lingers even when -they are plausible and are accepted. In France and Germany, where the -universities and colleges are controlled by the state, the practical -effect of such pressure has been frequently demonstrated. In the former -country the violent debate over social and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> economic problems during -the quarter century before the war produced a long list of professors -cashiered for heterodoxy, headed by the names of Jean Jaurs and -Gustave Herv. In Germany it needed no Nietzsche to point out the -deadening produced by this state control. Germany, in fact, got out -of it an entirely new species of economist—the state Socialist who -flirted with radicalism with one eye and kept the other upon his chair, -his salary and his pension.</p> - -<p>The Nearing case and the rebellions of various pedagogues elsewhere -show that we in America stand within the shadow of a somewhat similar -danger. In economics, as in the other sciences, we are probably -producing men who are as good as those on view in any other country. -They are not to be surpassed for learning and originality, and there is -no reason to believe that they lack honesty and courage. But honesty -and courage, as men go in the world, are after all merely relative -values. There comes a point at which even the most honest man considers -consequences, and even the most courageous looks before he leaps. The -difficulty lies in establishing the position of that point. So long as -it is in doubt, there will remain, too, the other doubt that I have -described. I rise in meeting, I repeat, not as a radical, but as one of -the most hunkerous of the orthodox. I can imagine nothing more dubious -in fact and wobbly in logic than some of the doctrines<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> that amateur -economists, chiefly Socialists, have set afloat in this country during -the past dozen years. I have even gone to the trouble of writing a book -against them; my convictions and instincts are all on the other side. -But I should be a great deal more comfortable in those convictions and -instincts if I were convinced that the learned professors were really -in full and absolute possession of academic freedom—if I could imagine -them taking the other tack now and then without damnation to their -jobs, their lecture dates, their book sales and their hides.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a name="XVI_MATTERS_OF_STATE" id="XVI_MATTERS_OF_STATE">XVI. MATTERS OF STATE</a></h4> - - - -<h4>1</h4> - -<h4><i>Le Contrat Social</i></h4> - - -<p>All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior -man: its one permanent object is to police him and cripple him. If -it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man -who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; -if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior -in every way against both. Thus one of its primary functions is to -regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and -as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat -originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential -change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous -man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for -himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. -Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he -lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> and so, if he -is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic -personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are. -Ludwig van Beethoven was certainly no politician. Nor was he a patriot. -Nor had he any democratic illusions in him: he held the Viennese in -even more contempt than he held the Hapsburgs. Nevertheless, I am -convinced that the sharp criticism of the Hapsburg government that -he used to loose in the cafs of Vienna had its effects—that some -of his ideas of 1818, after a century of germination, got themselves -translated into acts in 1918. Beethoven, like all other first-rate -men, greatly disliked the government he lived under. I add the names -of Goethe, Heine, Wagner and Nietzsche, to keep among Germans. That of -Bismarck might follow: he admired the Hohenzollern idea, as Carlyle -did, not the German people or the German administration. In his -"Errinerungen," whenever he discusses the government that he was a part -of, he has difficulty keeping his contempt within the bounds of decorum.</p> - -<p>Nine times out of ten, it seems to me, the man who proposes a change -in the government he lives under, no matter how defective it may be, -is romantic to the verge of sentimentality. There is seldom, if ever, -any evidence that the kind of government he is unlawfully inclined -to would be any better than the government he proposes to supplant. -Political revolutions,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> in truth, do not often accomplish anything of -genuine value; their one undoubted effect is simply to throw out one -gang of thieves and put in another. After a revolution, of course, -the successful revolutionists always try to convince doubters that -they have achieved great things, and usually they hang any man who -denies it. But that surely doesn't prove their case. In Russia, for -many years, the plain people were taught that getting rid of the Czar -would make them all rich and happy, but now that they have got rid of -him they are poorer and unhappier than ever before. The Germans, with -the Kaiser in exile, have discovered that a shoemaker turned statesman -is ten times as bad as a Hohenzollern. The Alsatians, having become -Frenchmen again after 48 years anxious wait, have responded to the boon -by becoming extravagant Germanomaniacs. The Tyrolese, though they hated -the Austrians, now hate the Italians enormously more. The Irish, having -rid themselves of the English after 700 years of struggle, instantly -discovered that government by Englishmen, compared to government by -Irishmen, was almost paradisiacal. Even the American colonies gained -little by their revolt in 1776. For twenty-five years after the -Revolution they were in far worse condition as free states than they -would have been as colonies. Their government was more expensive, -more inefficient, more dishonest, and more tyrannical. It was only -the gradual<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> material progress of the country that saved them from -starvation and collapse, and that material progress was due, not to the -virtues of their new government, but to the lavishness of nature. Under -the British hoof they would have got on just as well, and probably a -great deal better.</p> - -<p>The ideal government of all reflective men, from Aristotle to Herbert -Spencer, is one which lets the individual alone—one which barely -escapes being no government at all. This ideal, I believe, will be -realized in the world twenty or thirty centuries after I have passed -from these scenes and taken up my home in Hell.</p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>2</h4> - -<h4><i>On Minorities</i></h4> - - -<p>It is a commonplace of historical science that the forgotten worthies -who framed the Constitution of the United States had no belief in -democracy. Prof. Dr. Beard, in a slim, sad book, has laboriously proved -that most obvious of obviousities. Two prime objects are visible in the -Constitution, beautifully enshrouded in disarming words: to protect -property and to safeguard minorities—in brief, to hold the superior -few harmless against the inferior many. The first object is still -carried out, despite the effort of democratic law to make capital an -outlaw.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> law. The second, alas, has been defeated completely. What -is worse, it has been defeated in the very holy of holies of those -who sought to attain it, which is to say, in the funereal chamber -of the Supreme Court of the United States. Bit by bit this great -bench of master minds has gradually established the doctrine that -a minority in the Republic has no rights whatever. If they still -exist theoretically, as fossils surviving from better days, there is -certainly no machinery left for protecting and enforcing them. The -current majority, if it so desired to-morrow, could add an amendment to -the Constitution prohibiting the ancient Confederate vice of chewing -the compressed leaves of the tobacco plant <i>(Nicotiana tabacum)</i>; the -Supreme Court, which has long since forgotten the Bill of Rights, -would promptly issue a writ of <i>nihil obstat,</i> with a series of moral -reflections as <i>lagniappe.</i> More, the Supreme Court would as promptly -uphold a law prohibiting the chewing of gum <i>(Achras sapota)</i>—on -the ground that any unnecessary chewing, however harmless in itself, -might tempt great hordes of morons to chew tobacco. This is not a mere -torturing of sardonic theory: the thing has been actually done in the -case of Prohibition. The Eighteenth Amendment prohibits the sale of -intoxicating beverages; the Supreme Court has decided plainly that, in -order to enforce it, Congress also has the right to prohibit the sale -of beverages that are admittedly <i>not</i> intoxicating.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> It could, indeed, -specifically prohibit near-beer to-morrow, or any drink containing -malt or hops, however low in alcohol; the more extreme Prohibitionists -actually demand that it do so forthwith.</p> - -<p>Worse, a minority not only has no more inalienable rights in the United -States; it is not even lawfully entitled to be heard. This was well -established by the case of the Socialists elected to the New York -Assembly. What the voters who elected these Socialists asked for was -simply the privilege of choosing spokesmen to voice their doctrines in -a perfectly lawful and peaceable manner,—nothing more. This privilege -was denied them. In precisely the same way, the present national House -of Representatives, which happens to be Republican in complexion, might -expel all of its Democratic members. The voters who elected them would -have no redress. If the same men were elected again, or other men of -the same views, they might be expelled again. More, it would apparently -be perfectly constitutional for the majority in Congress to pass a -statute denying the use of the mails to the minority—that is, for the -Republicans to bar all Democratic papers from the mails. I do not toy -with mere theories. The thing has actually been done in the case of -the Socialists. Under the present law, indeed—upheld by the Supreme -Court—the Postmaster-General, without any further authority from -Congress, might deny the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> mails to all Democrats. Or to all Catholics. -Or to all single-taxers. Or to all violoncellists.</p> - -<p>Yet more, a citizen who happens to belong to a minority is not even -safe in his person: he may be put into prison, and for very long -periods, for the simple offense of differing from the majority. This -happened, it will be recalled, in the case of Debs. Debs by no means -advised citizens subject to military duty, in time of war, to evade -that duty, as the newspapers of the time alleged. On the contrary, -he advised them to meet and discharge that duty. All he did was to -say that, even in time of war, he was against war—that he regarded -it as a barbarous method of settling disputes between nations. For -thus differing from the majority on a question of mere theory he was -sentenced to ten years in prison. The case of the three young Russians -arrested in New York was even more curious. These poor idiots were -jailed for the almost incredible crime of circulating purely academic -protests against making war upon a country with which the United States -was legally at peace, to wit, Russia. For this preposterous offense two -of them were sent to prison for fifteen years, and one, a girl, for -ten years, and the Supreme Court upheld their convictions. Here was a -plain case of proscription and punishment for a mere opinion. There was -absolutely no contention that the protest of the three prisoners could -have any practical result—<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>that it might, for example, destroy the -<i>morale</i> of American soldiers 6,000 miles away, and cut off from all -communication with the United States. The three victims were ordered -to be punished in that appalling manner simply because they ventured -to criticise an executive usurpation which happened, at the moment, -to have the support of public opinion, and particularly of the then -President of the United States and of the holders of Russian government -securities.</p> - -<p>It must be obvious, viewing such leading cases critically—and hundreds -like them might be cited—that the old rights of the free American, so -carefully laid down by the Bill of Rights, are now worth nothing. Bit -by bit, Congress and the State Legislatures have invaded and nullified -them, and to-day they are so flimsy that no lawyer not insane would -attempt to defend his client by bringing them up. Imagine trying to -defend a man denied the use of the mails by the Postmaster-General, -without hearing or even formal notice, on the ground that the -Constitution guarantees the right of free speech! The very catchpolls -in the courtroom would snicker. I say that the legislative arm is -primarily responsible for this gradual enslavement of the Americano; -the truth is, of course, that the executive and judicial arms are -responsible to a scarcely less degree. Our law has not kept pace with -the development of our bureaucracy;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> there is no machinery provided for -curbing its excesses. In Prussia, in the old days, there were special -courts for the purpose, and a citizen oppressed by the police or by -any other public official could get relief and redress. The guilty -functionary could be fined, mulcted in damages, demoted, cashiered, -or even jailed. But in the United States to-day there are no such -tribunals. A citizen attacked by the Postmaster-General simply has -no redress whatever; the courts have refused, over and over again, -to interfere save in cases of obvious fraud. Nor is there, it would -seem, any remedy for the unconstitutional acts of Prohibition agents. -Some time ago, when Senator Stanley, of Kentucky, tried to have a law -passed forbidding them to break into a citizen's house in violation of -the Bill of Rights, the Prohibitionists mustered up their serfs in the -Senate against him, and he was voted down.</p> - -<p>The Supreme Court, had it been so disposed, might have put a stop to -all this sinister buffoonery long ago. There was a time, indeed, when -it was alert to do so. That was during the Civil War. But since then -the court has gradually succumbed to the prevailing doctrine that the -minority has no rights that the majority is bound to respect. As it -is at present constituted, it shows little disposition to go to the -rescue of the harassed freeman. When property is menaced it displays -a laudable diligence, but when it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> comes to the mere rights of the -citizen it seems hopelessly inclined to give the prosecution the -benefit of every doubt. Two justices commonly dissent—two out of nine. -They hold the last switch-trench of the old constitutional line. When -they depart to realms of bliss the Bill of Rights will be buried with -them.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a name="XVII_REFLECTIONS_ON_THE_DRAMA" id="XVII_REFLECTIONS_ON_THE_DRAMA">XVII. REFLECTIONS ON THE DRAMA</a></h4> - - -<p>The drama is the most democratic of the art forms, and perhaps the -only one that may legitimately bear the label. Painting, sculpture, -music and literature, so far as they show any genuine sthetic or -intellectual content at all, are not for crowds, but for selected -individuals, mostly with bad kidneys and worse morals, and three of the -four are almost always enjoyed in actual solitude. Even architecture -and religious ritual, though they are publicly displayed, make their -chief appeal to man as individual, not to man as mass animal. One goes -into a church as part of a crowd, true enough, but if it be a church -that has risen above mere theological disputation to the beauty of -ceremonial, one is, even in theory, alone with the Lord God Jehovah. -And if, passing up Fifth Avenue in the 5 o'clock throng, one pauses -before St. Thomas's to drink in the beauty of that archaic faade, -one's drinking is almost sure to be done <i>a cappella;</i> of the other -passers-by, not one in a thousand so much as glances at it.</p> - -<p>But the drama, as representation, is inconceivable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> save as a show -for the mob, and so it has to take on protective coloration to -survive. It must make its appeal, not to individuals as such, nor -even to individuals as units in the mob, but to the mob as mob—a -quite different thing, as Gustav Le Bon long ago demonstrated in his -"Psychologie des Foules." Thus its intellectual content, like its -sthetic form, must be within the mental grasp of the mob, and what is -more important, within the scope of its prejudices. <i>Per corollary,</i> -anything even remotely approaching an original idea, or an unpopular -idea, is foreign to it, and if it would make any impression at all, -abhorrent to it. The best a dramatist can hope to do is to give -poignant and arresting expression to an idea so simple that the average -man will grasp it at once, and so banal that he will approve it in the -next instant. The phrase "drama of ideas" thus becomes a mere phrase. -What is actually meant by it is "drama of platitudes."</p> - -<p>So much for the theory. An appeal to the facts quickly substantiates -it. The more one looks into the so-called drama of ideas of the last -age—that is, into the acting drama—the more one is astounded by the -vacuity of its content. The younger Dumas' "La Dame aux Camlias," -the first of all the propaganda plays (it raised a stupendous pother -in 1852, the echoes of which yet roll), is based upon the sophomoric<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> -thesis that a prostitute is a human being like you and me, and suffers -the slings and arrows of the same sorrows, and may be potentially quite -as worthy of heaven. Augier's "Le Mariage d'Olympe" (1854), another -sensation-making pioneer, is even hollower; its four acts are devoted -to rubbing in the revolutionary discovery that it is unwise for a young -man of good family to marry an elderly cocotte. Proceed now to Ibsen. -Here one finds the same tasteless platitudes—that it is unpleasant for -a wife to be treated as a doll; that professional patriots and town -boomers are frauds; that success in business is often grounded upon -a mere willingness to do what a man of honor is incapable of; that a -woman who continues to live with a debauched husband may expect to have -unhealthy children; that a joint sorrow tends to bring husband and wife -together; that a neurotic woman is apt to prefer death to maternity; -that a man of 55 is an ass to fall in love with a flapper of 17. Do I -burlesque? If you think so, turn to Ibsen's "Nachgelassene Schriften" -and read his own statements of the ideas in his social dramas—read -his own succinct summaries of their theses. You will imagine yourself, -on more than one page, in the latest volume of mush by Orison Swett -Marden. Such "ideas" are what one finds in newspaper editorials, -speeches before Congress, sermons by evangelical divines—in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> -brief, in the literature expressly addressed to those persons whose -distinguishing mark is that ideas never enter their heads.</p> - -<p>Ibsen himself, an excellent poet and a reflective man, was under no -delusions about his "dramas of ideas." It astounded him greatly when -the sentimental German middle-classes hailed "Ein Puppenheim" as a -revolutionary document; he protested often and bitterly against being -mistaken for a prophet of feminism. His own interest in this play -and in those that followed it was chiefly technical; he was trying -to displace the well-made play of Scribe and company with something -simpler, more elastic and more hospitable to character. He wrote -"Ghosts" to raise a laugh against the fools who had seen something -novel and horrible in the idea of "A Doll's House"; he wanted to prove -to them that that idea was no more than a platitude. Soon afterward he -became thoroughly disgusted with the whole "drama of ideas." In "The -Wild Duck" he cruelly burlesqued it, and made a low-comedy Ibsenist his -chief butt. In "Hedda Gabler" he played a joke on the Ibsen fanatics by -fashioning a first-rate drama out of the oldest, shoddiest materials -of Sardou, Feuillet, and even Meilhac and Halvy. And beginning with -"Little Eyolf" he threw the "drama of ideas" overboard forever, and -took to mysticism. What could be more comical than the efforts of -critical talmudists<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> to read a thesis into "When We Dead Awaken"? I -have put in many a gay hour perusing their commentaries. Ibsen, had -he lived, would have roared over them—as he roared over the effort -to inject portentous meanings into "The Master Builder," at bottom no -more than a sentimental epitaph to a love affair that he himself had -suffered at 60.</p> - -<p>Gerhart Hauptmann, another dramatist of the first rank, has gone much -the same road. As a very young man he succumbed to the "drama of -ideas" gabble, and his first plays showed an effort to preach this or -that in awful tones. But he soon discovered that the only ideas that -would go down, so to speak, on the stage were ideas of such an austere -platitudinousness that it was beneath his artistic dignity to merchant -them, and so he gave over propaganda altogether. In other words, his -genius burst through the narrow bounds of mob ratiocination, and he -began appealing to the universal emotions—pity, religious sentiment, -patriotism, amorousness. Even in his first play, "Vor Sonnenaufgang," -his instinct got the better of his mistaken purpose, and reading it -to-day one finds that the sheer horror of it is of vastly more effect -than its nebulous and unimportant ideas. It really says nothing; it -merely makes us dislike some very unpleasant people.</p> - -<p>Turn now to Shaw. At once one finds that the only plays from his -pen which contain actual ideas have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> failed dismally on the stage. -These are the so-called "discussions"—e. g., "Getting Married." The -successful plays contain no ideas; they contain only platitudes, -balderdash, buncombe that even a suffragette might think of. Of such -sort are "Man and Superman," "Arms and the Man," "Candida," "Androcles -and the Lion," and their like. Shaw has given all of these pieces -a specious air of profundity by publishing them hooked to long and -garrulous prefaces and by filling them with stage directions which -describe and discuss the characters at great length. But as stage plays -they are almost as empty as "Hedda Gabier." One searches them vainly -for even the slightest novel contribution to the current theories of -life, joy and crime. Shaw's prefaces, of course, have vastly more -ideational force and respectability than his plays. If he fails to get -any ideas of genuine savor into them it is not because the preface form -bars them out but because he hasn't any to get in. By attaching them to -his plays he converts the latter into colorable imitations of novels, -and so opens the way for that superior reflectiveness which lifts the -novel above the play, and makes it, as Arnold Bennett has convincingly -shown, much harder to write. A stage play in the modern realistic -manner—that is, without soliloquies and asides—can seldom rise -above the mere representation of some infinitesimal episode, whereas -even the worst<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> novel may be, in some sense, an interpretation as -well. Obviously, such episodes as may be exposed in 20,000 words—the -extreme limit of the average play—are seldom significant, and not -often clearly intelligible. The author has a hard enough job making -his characters recognizable as human beings; he hasn't time to go -behind their acts to their motives, or to deduce any conclusions worth -hearing from their doings. One often leaves a "social drama," indeed, -wondering what the deuce it is all about; the discussion of its meaning -offers endless opportunities for theorists and fanatics. The Ibsen -symbolists come to mind again. They read meanings into such plays as -"Rosmersholm" and "The Wild Duck" that aroused Ibsen, a peaceful man, -to positive fury. In the same way the suffragettes collared, "A Doll's -House." Even "Peer Gynt" did not escape. There is actually an edition -of it edited by a theosophist, in the preface to which it is hymned as -a theosophical document. Luckily for Ibsen, he died before this edition -was printed. But one may well imagine how it would have made him swear.</p> - -<p>The notion that there are ideas in the "drama of ideas," in truth, -is confined to a special class of illuminati, whose chief visible -character is their capacity for ingesting nonsense—Maeterlinckians, -uplifters, women's clubbers, believers in all the sure cures for -all the sorrows of the world. To-day the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> Drama League carries on -the tradition. It is composed of the eternally young—unsuccessful -dramatists who yet live in hope, young college professors, psychopathic -old maids, middle-aged ladies of an incurable jejuneness, the -innumerable caravan of the ingenuous and sentimental. Out of the -same intellectual <i>Landsturm</i> comes the following of Bergson, the -parlor metaphysician; and of the third-rate novelists praised by the -newspapers; and of such composers as Wolf-Ferrari and Massenet. These -are the fair ones, male and female, who were ecstatically shocked by -the platitudes of "Damaged Goods," and who regard Augustus Thomas as -a great dramatist, and what is more, as a great thinker. Their hero, -during a season or two, was the Swedish John the Baptist, August -Strindberg—a lunatic with a gift for turning the preposterous into the -shocking. A glance at Strindberg's innumerable volumes of autobiography -reveals the true horse-power of his so-called ideas. He believed in -everything that was idiotic, from transcendentalism to witchcraft. -He believed that his enemies were seeking to destroy him by magic; -he spent a whole winter trying to find the philosopher's stone. Even -among the clergy, it would be difficult to find a more astounding ass -than Strindberg. But he had, for all his folly, a considerable native -skill at devising effective stage-plays—a talent that some men seem -to be born with—and under cover of it he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> acquired his reputation -as a thinker. Here he was met half-way by the defective powers of -observation and reflection of his followers, the half-wits aforesaid; -they mistook their enjoyment of his adept technical trickery for an -appreciation of ideas. Turn to the best of his plays, "The Father." -Here the idea—that domestic nagging can cause insanity—is an almost -perfect platitude, for on the one hand it is universally admitted -and on the other hand it is not true. But as a stage play pure and -simple, the piece is superb—a simple and yet enormously effective -mechanism. So with "Countess Julie." The idea here is so vague and -incomprehensible that no two commentators agree in stating it, and yet -the play is so cleverly written, and appeals with such a sure touch to -the universal human weakness for the obscene, that it never fails to -enchant an audience. The case of "Hedda Gabier" is parallel. If the -actresses playing Hedda in this country made up for the part in the -scandalous way their sisters do in Germany (that is, by wearing bustles -in front), it would be as great a success here as it is over there. -Its general failure among us is due to the fact that it is not made -indelicate enough. This also explains the comparative failure of the -rest of the Ibsen plays. The crowd has been subtly made to believe that -they are magnificently indecent—and is always dashed and displeased -when it finds nothing to lift<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> the diaphragm. I well remember the -first production of "Ghosts" in America—a business in which I had a -hand. So eager was the audience for the promised indecencies that it -actually read them into the play, and there were protests against it -on the ground that Mrs. Alving was represented as trying to seduce -her own son! Here comstockery often helps the "drama of ideas." If no -other idea is visible, it can always conjure up, out of its native -swinishness, some idea that is offensively sexual, and hence pleasing -to the mob.</p> - -<p>That mob rules in the theater, and so the theater remains infantile -and trivial—a scene, not of the exposure of ideas, nor even of -the exhibition of beauty, but one merely of the parading of mental -and physical prettiness and vulgarity. It is at its worst when -its dramatists seek to corrupt this function by adding a moral or -intellectual purpose. It is at its best when it confines itself to -the unrealities that are its essence, and swings amiably from the -romance that never was on land or sea to the buffoonery that is at -the bottom of all we actually know of human life. Shakespeare was -its greatest craftsman: he wasted no tortured ratiocination upon his -plays. Instead, he filled them with the gaudy heroes that all of us -see ourselves becoming on some bright to-morrow, and the lowly frauds -and clowns we are to-day. No psychopathic problems engaged him; he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> -took love and ambition and revenge and braggadocio as he found them. -He held no clinics in dingy Norwegian apartment-houses: his field was -Bohemia, glorious Rome, the Egypt of the scene-painter, Arcady. ... But -even Shakespeare, for all the vast potency of his incomparable, his -stupefying poetry, could not long hold the talmudists out in front from -their search for invisible significances. Think of all the tomes that -have been written upon the profound and revolutionary "ideas" in the -moony musings of the diabetic sophomore, Hamlet von Danemark!</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a name="XVIII_ADVICE_TO_YOUNG_MEN" id="XVIII_ADVICE_TO_YOUNG_MEN">XVIII. ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN</a></h4> - - - -<h4>1</h4> - -<h4><i>To Him that Hath</i></h4> - - -<p>The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and -disdainful air, is the reputation of being well to do. Nothing else -so neatly eases one's way through life, especially in democratic -countries. There is in ninety-nine per cent, of all democrats an -irresistible impulse to crook the knee to wealth, to defer humbly to -the power that goes with it, to see all sorts of high merits in the -man who has it, or is said to have it. True enough, envy goes with -the pliant neck, but it is envy somehow purged of all menace: the -inferior man is afraid to do evil to the man with money in eight banks; -he is even afraid to <i>think</i> evil of him—that is, in any patent and -offensive way. Against capital as an abstraction he rants incessantly, -and all of the laws that he favors treat it as if it were criminal. But -in the presence of the concrete capitalist he is singularly fawning. -What makes him so is easy to discern. He yearns with a great yearning -for a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> chance to tap the capitalist's purse, and he knows very well, -deep down in his heart, that he is too craven and stupid to do it by -force of arms. So he turns to politeness, and tries to cajole. Give -out the news that one has just made a killing in the stock market, or -robbed some confiding widow of her dower, or swindled the government -in some patriotic enterprise, and at once one will discover that one's -shabbiness is a charming eccentricity, and one's judgment of wines -worth hearing, and one's politics worthy of attention and respect. The -man who is thought to be poor never gets a fair chance. No one wants to -listen to him. No one gives a damn what he thinks or knows or feels. No -one has any active desire for his good opinion.</p> - -<p>I discovered this principle early in life, and have put it to use -ever since. I have got a great deal more out of men (and women) by -having the name of being a well-heeled fellow than I have ever got by -being decent to them, or by dazzling them with my sagacity, or by hard -industry, or by a personal beauty that is singular and ineffable.</p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>2</h4> - -<h4><i>The Venerable Examined</i></h4> - - -<p>The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age -brings wisdom. It is my honest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> belief that I am no wiser to-day -than I was five or ten years ago; in fact, I often suspect that I -am appreciable <i>less</i> wise. Women can prevail over me to-day by -devices that would have made me hoof them out of my studio when I was -thirty-five. I am also an easier mark for male swindlers than I used -to be; at fifty I'll probably be joining clubs and buying Mexican -mine stock. The truth is that every man goes up-hill in sagacity -to a certain point, and then begins sliding down again. Nearly all -the old fellows that I know are more or less balmy. Theoretically, -they should be much wiser than younger men, if only because of their -greater experience, but actually they seem to take on folly faster than -they take on wisdom. A man of thirty-five or thirty-eight is almost -woman-proof. For a woman to marry him is a herculean feat. But by the -time he is fifty he is quite as easy as a Yale sophomore. On other -planes the same decay of the intelligence is visible. Certainly it -would be difficult to imagine any committee of relatively young men, of -thirty or thirty-five, showing the unbroken childishness, ignorance and -lack of humor of the Supreme Court of the United States. The average -age of the learned justices must be well beyond sixty, and all of -them are supposed to be of finished and mellowed sagacity. Yet their -knowledge of the most ordinary principles of justice often turns out -to be extremely meager, and when they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> spread themselves grandly upon -a great case their reasoning powers are usually found to be precisely -equal to those of a respectable Pullman conductor.</p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>3</h4> - -<h4><i>Duty</i></h4> - - -<p>Some of the loosest thinking in ethics has duty for its theme. -Practically all writers on the subject agree that the individual -owes certain unescapable duties to the race—for example, the duty -of engaging in productive labor, and that of marrying and begetting -offspring. In support of this position it is almost always argued that -if <i>all</i> men neglected such duties the race would perish. The logic is -hollow enough to be worthy of the college professors who are guilty -of it. It simply confuses the conventionality, the pusillanimity, the -lack of imagination of the majority of men with the duty of <i>all</i> men. -There is not the slightest ground for assuming, even as a matter of -mere argumentation, that <i>all</i> men will ever neglect these alleged -duties. There will always remain a safe majority that is willing to -do whatever is ordained—that accepts docilely the government it is -born under, obeys its laws, and supports its theory. But that majority -does not comprise the men who render the highest and most intelligent -services to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> race; it comprises those who render nothing save their -obedience.</p> - -<p>For the man who differs from this inert and well-regimented -mass, however slightly, there are no duties <i>per se</i>. What he is -spontaneously inclined to do is of vastly more value to all of us -than what the majority is willing to do. There is, indeed, no such -thing as duty-in-itself; it is a mere chimera of ethical theorists. -Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration. The -very concept of duty is thus a function of inferiority; it belongs -naturally only to timorous and incompetent men. Even on such levels it -remains largely a self-delusion, a soothing apparition, a euphemism for -necessity. When a man succumbs to duty he merely succumbs to the habit -and inclination of other men. Their collective interests invariably -pull against his individual interests. Some of us can resist a pretty -strong pull—the pull, perhaps, of thousands. But it is only the -miraculous man who can withstand the pull of a whole nation.</p> - - -<h4><i>Martyrs</i></h4> - -<p>"History," says Henry Ford, "is bunk." I inscribe myself among those -who dissent from this doctrine; nevertheless, I am often hauled up, -in reading history,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> by a feeling that I am among unrealities. In -particular, that feeling comes over me when I read about the religious -wars of the past—wars in which thousands of men, women and children -were butchered on account of puerile and unintelligible disputes -over transubstantiation, the atonement, and other such metaphysical -banshees. It does not surprise me that the majority murdered the -minority; the majority, even to-day, does it whenever it is possible. -What I can't understand is that the minority went voluntarily to the -slaughter. Even in the worst persecutions known to history—say, for -example, those of the Jews of Spain—it was always possible for a -given member of the minority to save his hide by giving public assent -to the religious notions of the majority. A Jew who was willing to -be baptized, in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, was practically -unmolested; his descendants to-day are 100% Spaniards. Well, then, why -did so many Jews refuse? Why did so many prefer to be robbed, exiled, -and sometimes murdered?</p> - -<p>The answer given by philosophical historians is that they were a -noble people, and preferred death to heresy. But this merely begs -the question. Is it actually noble to cling to a religious idea so -tenaciously? Certainly it doesn't seem so to me. After all, no human -being really <i>knows</i> anything about the exalted matters with which -all religions deal. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> most he can do is to match his private guess -against the guesses of his fellow-men. For any man to say absolutely, -in such a field, that this or that is wholly and irrefragably true and -this or that is utterly false is simply to talk nonsense. Personally, I -have never encountered a religious idea—and I do not except even the -idea of the existence of God—that was instantly and unchallengeably -convincing, as, say, the Copernican astronomy is instantly and -unchallengeably convincing. But neither have I ever encountered -a religious idea that could be dismissed offhand as palpably and -indubitably false. In even the worst nonsense of such theological -mountebanks as the Rev. Dr. Billy Sunday, Brigham Young and Mrs. Eddy -there is always enough lingering plausibility, or, at all events, -possibility, to give the judicious pause. Whatever the weight of the -probabilities against it, it nevertheless <i>may</i> be true that man, on -his decease, turns into a gaseous vertebrate, and that this vertebrate, -if its human larva has engaged in embezzlement, bootlegging, profanity -or adultery on this earth, will be boiled for a million years in -a cauldron of pitch. My private inclination, due to my defective -upbringing, is to doubt it, and to set down any one who believes it as -an ass, but it must be plain that I have no means of disproving it.</p> - -<p>In view of this uncertainty it seems to me sheer vanity for any man to -hold his religious views too<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> firmly, or to submit to any inconvenience -on account of them. It is far better, if they happen to offend, to -conceal them discreetly, or to change them amiably as the delusions -of the majority change. My own views in this department, being wholly -skeptical and tolerant, are obnoxious to the subscribers to practically -all other views; even atheists sometimes denounce me. At the moment, -by an accident of American political history, these dissenters from -my theology are forbidden to punish me for not agreeing with them. -But at any succeeding moment some group or other among them may seize -such power and proceed against me in the immemorial manner. If it ever -happens, I give notice here and now that I shall get converted to their -nonsense instantly, and so retire to safety with my right thumb laid -against my nose and my fingers waving like wheat in the wind. I'd do it -even to-day, if there were any practical advantage in it. Offer me a -case of Rauenthaler 1903, and I engage to submit to baptism by any rite -ever heard of, provided it does not expose my gothic nakedness. Make it -ten cases, and I'll agree to be both baptized and confirmed. In such -matters I am broad-minded. What, after all, is one more lie?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>5</h4> - -<h4><i>The Disabled Veteran</i></h4> - - -<p>The science of psychological pathology is still in its infancy. In -all its literature in three languages, I can't find a line about the -permanent ill effects of acute emotional diseases—say, for example, -love affairs. The common assumption of the world is that when a love -affair is over it is over—that nothing remains behind. This is -probably grossly untrue. It is my belief that every such experience -leaves scars upon my psyche, and that they are quite as plain and quite -as dangerous as the scars left on the neck by a carbuncle. A man who -has passed through a love affair, even though he may eventually forget -the lady's very name, is never quite the same thereafter. His scars -may be small, but they are permanent. The sentimentalist, exposed -incessantly, ends as a psychic cripple; he is as badly off as the man -who has come home from the wars with shell-shock. The precise nature -of the scars remains to be determined. My own notion is that they take -the form of large yellow patches upon the self-esteem. Whenever a man -thinks of one of his dead love affairs, and in particular whenever -he allows his memory to dredge up an image of the woman he loved, -he shivers like one taken in some unmanly and discreditable act.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> -Such shivers, repeated often enough, must inevitably shake his inner -integrity off its base. No man can love, and yet remain truly proud. It -is a disarming and humiliating experience.</p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>6</h4> - -<h4><i>Patriotism</i></h4> - - -<p>Patriotism is conceivable to a civilized man in times of stress and -storm, when his country is wobbling and sore beset. His country then -appeals to him as any victim of misfortune appeals to him—say, a -street-walker pursued by the police. But when it is safe, happy and -prosperous it can only excite his loathing. The things that make -countries safe, happy and prosperous—a secure peace, an active trade, -political serenity at home—are all intrinsically corrupting and -disgusting. It is as impossible for a civilized man to love his country -in good times as it would be for him to respect a politician.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h4><a name="XIX_SUITE_AMERICANE" id="XIX_SUITE_AMERICANE">XIX. SUITE AMRICANE</a></h4> - - - -<h4>1</h4> - -<h4><i>Aspiration</i></h4> - - -<p>Police sergeants praying humbly to God that Jews will start poker-rooms -on their posts, and so enable them to educate their eldest sons for -holy orders.... Newspaper reporters resolving firmly to work hard, keep -sober and be polite to the city editor, and so be rewarded with jobs -as copy-readers.... College professors in one-building universities -on the prairie, still hoping, at the age of sixty, to get their -whimsical essays into the <i>Atlantic Monthly.</i> ... Car-conductors on -lonely suburban lines, trying desperately to save up $500 and start -a Ford garage.... Pastors of one-horse little churches in decadent -villages, who, whenever they drink two cups of coffee at supper, dream -all night that they have been elected bishops.... Movie actors who -hope against hope that the next fan letter will be from Bar Harbor.... -Delicatessen dealers who spend their whole lives searching for a cheap -substitute for the embalmed veal used in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> chicken-salad.... Italians -who wish that they were Irish.... Mulatto girls in Georgia and Alabama -who send away greasy dollar bills for bottles of Mme. Celestine's -Infallible Hair-Straightener.... Ash-men who pull wires to be appointed -superintendents of city dumps. 1.. Mothers who dream that the babies -in their cradles will reach, in the mysterious after years, the -highest chairs in the Red Men and the Maccabees.... Farmers who figure -that, with good luck, they will be able to pay off their mortgages -by 1943.... Contestants for the standing broad-jump championship of -the Altoona, Pa., Y. M. C. A.... Editorial writers who essay to prove -mathematically that a war between England and the United States is -unthinkable....</p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>2</h4> - -<h4><i>Virtue</i></h4> - - -<p>Pale druggists in remote towns of the Epworth League and flannel -nightgown belts, endlessly wrapping up bottles of Peruna.... Women -hidden away in the damp kitchens of unpainted houses along the railroad -tracks, frying tough beefsteaks.... Lime and cement dealers being -initiated into the Knights of Pythias, the Red Men or the Woodmen -of the World.... Watchmen at lonely railroad crossings in Iowa, -hoping that they'll be able to get off to hear<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> the United Brethren -evangelist preach.... Ticket-choppers in the subway, breathing -sweat in its gaseous form.... Family doctors in poor neighborhoods, -faithfully relying upon the therapeutics taught in their Eclectic -Medical College in 1884.... Farmers plowing sterile fields behind sad -meditative horses, both suffering from the bites of insects.... Greeks -tending all-night coffee-joints in the suburban wildernesses where the -trolley-cars stop.... Grocery-clerks stealing prunes and ginger-snaps, -and trying to make assignations with soapy servant-girls.... Women -confined for the ninth or tenth time, wondering helplessly what it is -all about.... Methodist preachers retired after forty years of service -in the trenches of God, upon pensions of $600 a year.... Wives and -daughters of Middle Western country bankers, marooned in Los Angeles, -going tremblingly to swami sances in dark, smelly rooms.... Chauffeurs -in huge fur coats waiting outside theaters filled with folks applauding -Robert Edeson and Jane Cowl.... Decayed and hopeless men writing -editorials at midnight for leading papers in Mississippi, Arkansas and -Alabama.... Owners of the principal candy-stores in Green River, Neb., -and Tyrone, Pa.... Presidents of one-building universities in the rural -fastnesses of Kentucky and Tenbessee. ... Women with babies in their -arms weeping over moving-pictures in the Elks' Hall at Schmidtsville,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> -ville, Mo.... Babies just born to the wives of milk-wagon drivers.... -Judges on the benches of petty county courts in Virginia, Vermont and -Idaho.... Conductors of accommodation trains running between Kokomo, -Ind., and Logansport....</p> - - -<hr class="tb" /> -<h4>3</h4> - -<h4><i>Eminence</i></h4> - - -<p>The leading Methodist layman of Pottawattamie county, Iowa.... The -man who won the limerick contest conducted by the Toomsboro, Ga., -<i>Banner.</i> ... The secretary of the Little Rock, Ark., Kiwanis Club.... -The president of the Johann Sebastian Bach <i>Bauverein</i> of Highlandtown, -Md.... The girl who sold the most Liberty Bonds in Duquesne, Pa.... -The captain of the champion basket-ball team at the Gary, Ind., Y. -M. C. A.... The man who owns the best bull in Coosa county, Ala.... -The tallest man in Covington, Ky.... The oldest subscriber to the -Raleigh, N. C, <i>News and Observer.</i> ... The most fashionable milliner -in Bucyrus, O.... The business agent of the Plasterers' Union of -Somerville, Mass.... The author of the ode read at the unveiling -of the monument to General Robert E. Lee at Valdosta, Ga.... The -original Henry Cabot Lodge man.... The owner of the champion Airedale -of Buffalo, N. Y,... The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> first child named after the Hon. Warren -Gamaliel Harding.... The old lady in Wahoo, Neb., who has read the -Bible 38 times.... The boss who controls the Italian, Czecho-Slovak and -Polish votes in Youngstown, O.... The professor of chemistry, Greek, -rhetoric and piano at the Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, -Tex.... The boy who sells 225 copies of the <i>Saturday Evening Post</i> -every week in Cheyenne, Wyo.... The youngest murderer awaiting hanging -in Chicago.... The leading dramatic critic of Pittsburgh.... The -night watchman in Penn Yan, N. Y., who once shook hands with Chester -A. Arthur.... The Lithuanian woman in Bluefield, W. Va., who has had -five sets of triplets. ... The actor who has played in "Lightning" -1,600 times.... The best horsedoctor in Oklahoma.... The highest-paid -church-choir soprano in Knoxville, Tenn.... The most eligible bachelor -in Cheyenne, Wyo.... The engineer of the locomotive which pulled the -train which carried the Hon. A. Mitchell Palmer to the San Francisco -Convention.... The girl who got the most votes in the popularity -contest at Egg Harbor, N. J....</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - - -<p> -<span class="caption"><a id="INDEX"></a>INDEX</span><br /> -<br /> -Adam, Villiers de l'Isle, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br /> -Adams, Henry, <a href="#Page_162">162</a><br /> -Addams, Jane, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br /> -Addison, Joseph, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br /> -American Legion, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a><br /> -American Protective League, <a href="#Page_141">141</a><br /> -<i>Annabel Lee,</i> <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br /> -Anti-Saloon League, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a><br /> -Arnold, Matthew, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br /> -Asch, Sholom, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br /> -Asquith, Mrs., <a href="#Page_33">33</a><br /> -Astor, Lady, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br /> -<i>Atlantic Monthly,</i> <a href="#Page_320">320</a><br /> -Augier, Emile, <a href="#Page_301">301</a><br /> -<br /> -Bach, J. S., <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a><br /> -Baker, Newton D., <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br /> -Balfour, A. J., <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a><br /> -Baltimore <i>Sun,</i> <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br /> -Balzac, H., <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br /> -Barton, William E., <a href="#Page_171">171</a><br /> -Beerbohm, Max, <a href="#Page_77">77</a><br /> -Beethoven, Ludwig van, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a><br /> -Belasco, David, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br /> -Bennett, Arnold, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br /> -Benson, Admiral, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br /> -Bentham, Jeremy, <a href="#Page_285">285</a><br /> -<i>Berliner Tageblatt,</i> <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br /> -Berlioz, Hector, <a href="#Page_66">66</a><br /> -Bible, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a><br /> -Bierbaum, Otto Julius, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br /> -Birkenhead, Lord, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br /> -Bismarck, Otto von, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a><br /> -Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a><br /> -Bhlau, Helene, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br /> -Bolshevism, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a><br /> -Boston <i>Transcript,</i> <a href="#Page_144">144</a><br /> -Bottomley, Horace, <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br /> -Boyd, Ernest A., <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br /> -Brady, Diamond Jim, <a href="#Page_109">109</a><br /> -Brahms, Johannes, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a><br /> -Brandes, Georg, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br /> -Brieux, Eugene, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a><br /> -Browning, Robert, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a><br /> -Bryan, William Jennings, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a><br /> -Bryce, James, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a><br /> -Burleson, A. S., <a href="#Page_144">144</a><br /> -Butler, Nicholas Murray, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a><br /> -<br /> -Cabell, James Branch, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br /> -Capitalism, <a href="#Page_56">56</a><br /> -Carlyle, Thomas, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a><br /> -Cather, Willa, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a><br /> -Catt, Carrie Chapman, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br /> -Cawein, Madison, <a href="#Page_179">179</a> <i>ff.</i><br /> -Czanne, Paul, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br /> -Chamberlain, Joseph, <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br /> -Chopin, F., <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a><br /> -Churchill, Winston, <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br /> -Cicero, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br /> -Civil War, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a><br /> -Clemenceau, Georges, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br /> -Clemens, Samuel L., <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><br /> -Clutton-Brock, A., <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> -Congress, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a><br /> -<i>Congressional Record,</i> <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br /> -Conrad, Joseph, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br /> -Constitution, U. S., <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a><br /> -Coolidge, Calvin, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br /> -Cooper, J. Fenimore, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br /> -Cox, James M., <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br /> -Crane, Frank, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a><br /> -Creel, George, <a href="#Page_141">141</a><br /> -Criticism, <a href="#Page_84">84</a> <i>ff.</i><br /> -Curtis, Cyrus K., <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a><br /> -<br /> -D'Annunzio, Gabrielle, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br /> -Darwin, Charles, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a><br /> -Dawes, Rufus, <a href="#Page_99">99</a><br /> -Debs, Eugene, <a href="#Page_24">24</a><br /> -Declaration of Independence, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br /> -Dempsey, Jack, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a><br /> -Dillon, Dr., <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br /> -Disarmament Treaty, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a><br /> -<i>Dixie,</i> <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br /> -Dreiser, Theodore, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a><br /> -Dryden, John, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br /> -Dumas, Alexandre <i>fils,</i> <a href="#Page_300">300</a><br /> -Dunsany, Lord, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br /> -Duse, Eleanora, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br /> -Dvorak, Antonin, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br /> -<br /> -Edwards, Jonathan, <a href="#Page_176">176</a><br /> -Ehrlich, Paul, <a href="#Page_144">144</a><br /> -Ellis, Havelock, <a href="#Page_189">189</a> <i>ff.</i><br /> -Emerson, R. W., <a href="#Page_39"> 39</a><br /> -<br /> -<i>Faust,</i> <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br /> -Finck, Henry T., <a href="#Page_69">69</a><br /> -Flower, B. O., <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br /> -Foch, Ferdinand, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><br /> -Ford, Henry, <a href="#Page_314">314</a><br /> -France, Anatole, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br /> -Franklin, Fabian, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a><br /> -Freud, Sigmund, <a href="#Page_158">158</a><br /> -<br /> -Gale, Zona, <a href="#Page_209">209</a><br /> -Galileo, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br /> -Garland, Hamlin, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br /> -Garrett, Garet, <a href="#Page_279">279</a><br /> -George, W. L., <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br /> -Gilman, Daniel, C, <a href="#Page_162">162</a><br /> -Goethe, J. W., <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a><br /> -Goldmarck, Karl, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br /> -Gorky, Maxim, <a href="#Page_43">43</a><br /> -Gounod, Charles, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br /> -Gourmont, Remy de, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br /> -Grant, U. S., <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a><br /> -Greenwich Village, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br /> -<br /> -Hamilton, Alexander, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a><br /> -<i>Hamlet,</i> <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br /> -Hamsun, Knut, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br /> -Harding, W. G., <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a><br /> -Harris, Frank, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a> <i>ff.</i><br /> -Hartleben, O. E., <a href="#Page_40">40</a><br /> -Harvey, George B., <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br /> -Hauptmann, Gerhart, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a><br /> -Hazlitt, William, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a><br /> -<i>Heart of Darkness,</i> <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a><br /> -Hergesheimer, Joseph, <a href="#Page_202">202</a><br /> -Hillis, Newell Dwight, <a href="#Page_144">144</a><br /> -Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br /> -Howells, William Dean, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br /> -Huch, Ricarda, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br /> -<i>Huckleberry Finn,</i> <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br /> -Hughes, Charles E., <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br /> -Huneker, James G., <a href="#Page_65">65</a> <i>ff.</i><br /> -Huxley, T. H., <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a><br /> -Huysmans, J. K., <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br /> -<br /> -Ibsen, Henrik, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a> <i>ff.</i><br /> -Iconoclasts, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br /> -Intellectuals, Young, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br /> -Irving, Washington, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br /> -<br /> -Jackson, Andrew, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a><br /> -James, Henry, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br /> -Jefferson, Thomas, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br /> -Jespersen, Otto, <a href="#Page_146">146</a><br /> -Jordan, David Starr, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br /> -<i>Josef's Legend,</i> <a href="#Page_68">68</a><br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> -Kerr, Alfred, <a href="#Page_40">40</a><br /> -Kipling, Rudyard, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br /> -Klebs, Edwin, <a href="#Page_43">43</a><br /> -Knights of Pythias, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a><br /> -Know Nothings, <a href="#Page_26">26</a><br /> -Krehbiel, Henry, <a href="#Page_69">69</a><br /> -Ku Klux Klan, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a><br /> -Krnberger, Ferdinand, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br /> -<br /> -Lagerlf, Selma, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br /> -Lanier, Sidney, <a href="#Page_152">152</a><br /> -Lee, Robert E., <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br /> -Lewes, George Henry, <a href="#Page_87">87</a><br /> -Lewisohn, Ludwig, <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br /> -Lincoln, Abraham, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <i>ff.</i><br /> -Lindsey, Ben B., <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br /> -Liszt, Franz, <a href="#Page_66">66</a><br /> -Lloyd-George, David, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a><br /> -Lodge, Henry Cabot, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a><br /> -Lodge, Oliver, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a><br /> -London <i>Times,</i> <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a><br /> -Lowell, James Russell, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a><br /> -Lowes, J. L., <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br /> -Ludwig, Karl, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a><br /> -Luther, Martin, <a href="#Page_131">131</a><br /> -Lyly, John, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br /> -<br /> -Mabie, Hamilton Wright, <a href="#Page_104">104</a><br /> -Macaulay, T. B., <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br /> -Mann, Thomas, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br /> -March, General, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br /> -Marden, Orison Swett, <a href="#Page_301">301</a><br /> -Marlowe, Christopher, <a href="#Page_152">152</a><br /> -Martial, <a href="#Page_61">61</a><br /> -Masefield, John, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br /> -Mendelssohn, Felix, <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br /> -Meredith, George, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br /> -Methodists, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a><br /> -Mill, J. S, <a href="#Page_285">285</a><br /> -Miller, Joaquin. <a href="#Page_152">152</a><br /> -Milton, John, <a href="#Page_89">89</a><br /> -<i>Mlle. New York,</i> <a href="#Page_77">77</a><br /> -Mobile <i>Register,</i> <a href="#Page_144">144</a><br /> -Moody, John, <a href="#Page_279">279</a><br /> -Moore, George, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><br /> -More, Paul Elmer, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a> <i>ff.</i><br /> -Morgan, J. Pierpont, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a><br /> -Mller, Johannes, <a href="#Page_144">144</a><br /> -Murray, Gilbert, <a href="#Page_190">190</a><br /> -Murry, Middleton, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br /> -<i>Musical Courier,</i> <a href="#Page_77">77</a><br /> -<br /> -Nathan, George Jean, <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br /> -National Institute of Arts and Letters, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a><br /> -National Security League, <a href="#Page_140">140</a><br /> -Nearing, Scott, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a><br /> -<i>New Republic,</i> <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a><br /> -New York <i>Evening Journal,</i> <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a><br /> -New York <i>Sun</i>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a><br /> -New York <i>Times,</i> <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a><br /> -New York <i>Tribune,</i> <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a><br /> -Nicoll, Robertson, <a href="#Page_33">33</a><br /> -Nietzsche, F. W., <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a><br /> -Northcliffe, Lord, <a href="#Page_49">49</a><br /> -<br /> -Ochs, Adolph S., <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a><br /> -Odd Fellows, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a><br /> -<i>Old Fogy,</i> <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a><br /> -<i>Othello,</i> <a href="#Page_151">151</a><br /> -<br /> -<i>Painted Veils,</i> <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a><br /> -Palmer, A. Mitchell, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a><br /> -<i>Parsifal,</i> <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br /> -Pershing, John J., <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a><br /> -Philadelphia <i>Ledger,</i><a href="#Page_144">144</a><br /> -Pinchot, Gifford, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br /> -Pirquet, Clemens von, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br /> -Plato, <a href="#Page_85">85</a><br /> -Poe, Edgar Allan, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a><br /> -Poetry, <a href="#Page_146">146</a> <i>ff.</i>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a><br /> -Pound. Ezra, <a href="#Page_12">12</a><br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> -Prescott, F. C. <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br /> -<i>Puck,</i> <a href="#Page_77">77</a><br /> -<br /> -Reading, Lord, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br /> -Red Cross, American, <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br /> -Reed, James A., <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br /> -Reese, Lizette Woodworth, <a href="#Page_159">159</a><br /> -Reventlow, Count zu, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br /> -Ricardo, David, <a href="#Page_285">285</a><br /> -Roosevelt, Theodore, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a><br /> -Roosevelt, Theodore, Jr., <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br /> -Root, Elihu, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br /> -Rops, Flicien, <a href="#Page_107">107</a><br /> -Rosetti, Christina, <a href="#Page_156">156</a><br /> -Rotary Club, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br /> -Rothert, Otto A., <a href="#Page_179">179</a><br /> -Russell, Bertrand, <a href="#Page_190">190</a><br /> -Russell, Lillian, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br /> -<br /> -St. Augustine, <a href="#Page_131">131</a><br /> -Sainte-Beuve, C. A., <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br /> -St. John, <a href="#Page_131">131</a><br /> -Santanyana, George, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br /> -<i>Saturday Evening Post,</i> <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br /> -Schmidt, Annalise, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br /> -Schubert, Franz, <a href="#Page_151">151</a><br /> -Schumann, Robert, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a><br /> -Schwab, Charles M., <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br /> -Scott, Evelyn, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br /> -Scribner's, Charles, Sons, <a href="#Page_69">69</a><br /> -Seidl, Anton, <a href="#Page_66">66</a><br /> -Senate, U. S., <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br /> -Serao, Mathilda, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br /> -Shakespeare, William, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br /> -Shaw, George, Bernard, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a> <i>ff.</i><br /> -<i>Sheik, The,</i> <a href="#Page_163">163</a><br /> -Sherman, S. P., <a href="#Page_177">177</a><br /> -Sienkiewicz, Henryk, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br /> -Sims, Admiral, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br /> -Sinclair, May, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br /> -Sinclair Upton, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a> <i>ff.</i><br /> -Smith, Adam, <a href="#Page_279">279</a><br /> -Sousa, J. P., <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br /> -Spencer, Herbert, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a><br /> -Stal, Mme. de, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br /> -Stearns, Harold, <a href="#Page_12">12</a><br /> -Steed, Wickham, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br /> -<i>Steeplejack,</i> <a href="#Page_79">79</a><br /> -Strauss, Richard, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a><br /> -Strindberg, August, <a href="#Page_306">306</a><br /> -Sumner, William G., <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a><br /> -Sunday, William A., <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a><br /> -Supreme Court of the United States, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a> <i>ff.</i><br /> -Swedenborg, Emanuel, <a href="#Page_131">131</a><br /> -Swinburne, A. C, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br /> -<br /> -Taft, William H., <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br /> -Thoma, Ludwig, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br /> -Thompson, Francis, <a href="#Page_156">156</a><br /> -Thoreau, H. D., <a href="#Page_118">118</a><br /> -<i>Town Topics,</i> <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br /> -Tumulty, J. P., <a href="#Page_45">45</a><br /> -<br /> -Underwood, Oscar, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br /> -U'Ren, W. S., <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br /> -<br /> -Van Dyke, Henry, <a href="#Page_144">144</a><br /> -Verlaine, Paul, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br /> -Viebig, Clara, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br /> -Vigilantes, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a><br /> -Volstead, Andrew, <a href="#Page_24">24</a><br /> -<br /> -Wagner, Cosima, <a href="#Page_66">66</a><br /> -Wagner, Richard, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a><br /> -Washington, George, <a href="#Page_28">28</a><br /> -Wassermann, Jacob, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br /> -Weber, Gottfried, <a href="#Page_99">99</a><br /> -Wedekind, Frank, <a href="#Page_43">43</a><br /> -Wells, H. 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