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diff --git a/76076-0.txt b/76076-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..61c29b5 --- /dev/null +++ b/76076-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5963 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76076 *** + + + + + + AFFIRMATIONS. + + + + + AFFIRMATIONS + + + + + BY + + HAVELOCK ELLIS + + + + + LONDON: + WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED + PATERNOSTER SQUARE + 1898 + + + + + PREFACE. + + +THERE are at least two ways of looking at books and at the +personalities books express. In its chief but rarer aspect literature +is the medium of art, and as such can raise no ethical problems. +Whatever morality or immorality art may hold is quiescent, or lifted +into an atmosphere of radiant immortality where questioning is +irrelevant. Of the literature that is all art we need not even speak, +unless by chance we too approach it as artists, trying to grasp it by +imaginative insight. In literature, as elsewhere, art should only be +approached as we would approach Paradise, for the sake of its joy. +It would be well, indeed, if we could destroy or forget all that has +ever been written about the world’s great books, even if it were once +worth while to write those books about books. How happy, for instance, +the world might be if there were no literature about the Bible, if +Augustine and Aquinas and Calvin and thousands of smaller men had not +danced on it so long, stamping every page of it into mire, that now the +vision of a single line, in its simple sense, is almost an effort of +inspiration. All my life long I have been casting away the knowledge I +have gained from books about literature, and from opinions about life, +and coming to literature itself or to life itself, a slow and painful +progress towards that Heaven of knowledge where a child is king. + +But there is another kind of literature, a literature which is not all +art--the literature of life. Literature differs from design or music +by being closer to life, by being fundamentally not an art at all, but +merely the development of ordinary speech, only rising at intervals +into the region of art. It is so close to life that largely it comes +before us much as the actual facts of life come before us. So that +while we were best silent about the literature of art, sanctified by +time and the reverence of many men, we cannot question too keenly the +literature of life. In this book I deal with questions of life as they +are expressed in literature, or as they are suggested by literature. +Throughout I am discussing morality as revealed or disguised by +literature. I may not care, indeed, to pervert my subjects in order +to emphasise my opinions, but I frankly take my subjects chiefly on +those sides which suit my own pleasure, and I select them solely +because they do that so well. I use them as the ancient device of the +stalking-horse was used, to creep up more closely to the game that my +soul loves best. + +So far as possible I dwell most on those aspects of my subjects which +are most questionable. It was once brought against me that I had a +predilection for such aspects. Assuredly it is so. If a subject is not +questionable it seems to me a waste of time to discuss it. The great +facts of the world are not questionable; they are there for us to +enjoy, or to suffer, in silence, not to talk about. Our best energies +should be spent in attacking and settling questionable things that so +we may enlarge the sphere of the unquestionable--the sphere of real +life--and be ready to meet new questions as they arise. It is only by +dealing with the questionable aspects of the world that criticism of +life can ever have any saving virtue for us. It is waste of life to +use literature for pawing over the unquestionable. Even a healthy dog, +having once ascertained the essential virtue of a bone, contentedly +eats it, or buries it. + +And yet, it may well be, there is a time for affirming the simple +eternal facts of life, a time, even, when those simple eternal facts +have drifted so far from us that we count them also questionable. +The present moment has seemed to me a fitting one to set a few such +affirmations in order. The century now nearly over has performed many +dirty and laborious tasks; it has had to organise its own unwieldiness, +to cleanse its Augean stables of the filth it has itself deposited, +to pull down the buildings it has itself erected. When we witness +such work carried out--blunderingly, it may be, but yet, we thought, +humbly--we may well point out what splendid fellows these modest, +begrimed toilers really were, what useful and noble work they were +engaged in, how large a promise they bear for the future. That was my +own point of view. But the case is altered when these yet unwashed +toilers rise up around us in half-intoxicated jubilation over the +triumphs of their own little epoch, well assured that there never was +such an age or such a race since the world began. Then we may well +pause. It is time to recall the simple eternal facts of life. It is +time to affirm the existence of those verities which are wrought into +our very structure everywhere and always, and in the face of which the +paltry triumphs of an “era” fall back into insignificance. + +Yet every man must make his own affirmations. The great questions +of life are immortal, only because no one can answer them for his +fellows. I claim no general validity for my affirmations. It has been +well said that certain books possess a value that is in the ratio of +the spiritual vigour of those who use them, acting as a tonic to the +strong, still further dissolving and enfeebling the weakness of the +weak. It would be presumptious to claim any potent and peculiar energy +for this book; but the observation is one which a reader may do well +always to bear in mind. The final value of any book is not in the +beliefs which it may give us or take away from us, but in its power to +reveal to us our own real selves. If I can stimulate any one in the +search for his own proper affirmations, he and I may well rest content. +He is welcome to cast aside mine as the idle conclusions of a dreamer +lying in the sunshine. Our own affirmations are always the best. Let us +but be sure that they are our own, that they have grown up slowly and +quietly, fed with the strength of our own blood and brain. Only with +the help of such affirmations can we find a staff to comfort us through +the valley of life. It is only when they utter affirmations, one has +said, that the wands of the angels blossom. + + H. E. + + _August 1897._ + + + + + CONTENTS. + + + PAGE + + NIETZSCHE 1 + + CASANOVA 86 + + ZOLA 131 + + HUYSMANS 158 + + ST. FRANCIS AND OTHERS 212 + + + + + AFFIRMATIONS. + + + + + NIETZSCHE. + + +FOR some years the name of Friedrich Nietzsche has been the war-cry +of opposing factions in Germany. It is not easy to take up a German +periodical without finding some trace of the passionate admiration or +denunciation which this man has called forth. If we turn to Scandinavia +or to France, whither his fame and his work are also penetrating, we +find that the same results have followed. And we may expect a similar +outburst in England now that the translation of his works has at last +begun. At present, however, I know of no attempt to deal with Nietzsche +from the British point of view, and that is my excuse for trying to +define his personality and influence.[1] I do not come forward as the +champion of Nietzschianism or of Anti-Nietzschianism. It appears to +me that any human individuality that has strongly aroused the love +and hatred of men must be far too complex for absolute condemnation or +absolute approval. Apart from praise or blame, which seem here alike +impertinent, Nietzsche is without doubt an extraordinarily interesting +figure. He is the modern incarnation of that image of intellectual +pride which Marlowe created in Faustus. A man who has certainly stood +at the finest summit of modern culture, who has thence made the most +determined effort ever made to destroy modern morals, and who now leads +a life as near to death as any life outside the grave can be, must +needs be a tragic figure. It is a figure full of significance, for it +represents one of the greatest spiritual forces which have appeared +since Goethe, full of interest also to the psychologist, and surely not +without its pathos, perhaps its horror, for the man in the street. + + + I. + +It has only lately become possible to study Nietzsche’s life-history. +For a considerable period the Nietzsche-Archiv at Naumburg and Weimar +has been accumulating copious materials which have now been utilised by +Nietzsche’s sister, Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche, in the production of +an authoritative biography. This sister is herself a remarkable person; +for many years she lived in close association with her brother, so +that she was supposed, though without reason, to have exerted an +influence over his thought; then she married Dr. Förster, the founder +of the New Germany colony in Paraguay; on his death she returned home +to write the history of the colony, and has since devoted herself to +the care of her brother and his fame. Only the first two volumes of the +_Leben Nietzsche’s_ have yet appeared, but they enable us to trace +his development to his departure from Basel, and throw light on his +whole career. + +Nietzsche belonged, according to the ancestral tradition (though the +name, I am told, is a common one in Wendish Silesia), to a noble Polish +family called Nietzky, who on account of strong Protestant convictions +abandoned their country and their title during the eighteenth century +and settled in Germany. Notwithstanding the large amount of German +blood in his veins, he always regarded himself as essentially a Pole. +The Poles seemed to him the best endowed and most knightly of Sclavonic +peoples, and he once remarked that it was only by virtue of a strong +mixture of Sclavonic blood that the Germans entered the ranks of gifted +nations. He termed the Polish Chopin the deliverer of music from +German heaviness and stupidity, and when he speaks of another Pole, +Copernicus, who reversed the judgment of the whole world, one may +divine a reference to what in later years Nietzsche regarded as his own +mission. In adult life Nietzsche’s keen and strongly marked features +were distinctly Polish, and when abroad he was frequently greeted +by Poles as a fellow-countryman; at Sorrento, where he once spent a +winter, the country people called him Il Polacco. + +Like Emerson (to whose writings he was strongly attracted throughout +life) and many another strenuous philosophic revolutionary, Nietzsche +came of a long race of Christian ministers. On both sides his ancestors +were preachers, and from first to last the preacher’s fervour was +in his own blood. The eldest of three children (of whom one died in +infancy), Friedrich Nietzsche was born in 1844 at Röcken, near Lützen, +in Saxony. His father--who shortly after his son’s birth fell down the +parsonage steps, injuring his head so severely that he died within +twelve months--is described as a man of noble and poetic nature, +with a special talent for music, inherited by his son; though once +described by his son as “a tender, lovable, morbid man,” he belonged +to a large and very healthy family, who mostly lived to an extreme +old age, preserving their mental and physical vigour to the last. +The Nietzsches were a proud, sincere folk, very clannish, looking +askance at all who were not Nietzsches. Nietzsche’s mother, said to +be a charming woman and possessed of much physical vigour, was again +a clergyman’s daughter. The Oehler family, to which she belonged, +was also very large, very healthy, and very long-lived; she was only +eighteen at her son’s birth, and is still alive to care for him in his +complete mental decay. I note these facts, which are given with much +precision and detail in the biography, because they certainly help +us to understand Nietzsche. It is evident that he is no frail hectic +flame of a degenerating race. There seems to be no trace of insanity +or nervous disorder at any point in the family history, as far back +as it is possible to go. On the contrary, he belonged to extremely +vigorous stocks, possessing unusual moral and physical force, people +of “character.” A similar condition of things is not seldom found in +the history of genius. In such a case the machine is, as it were, too +highly charged with inherited energy, and works at a pressure which +ultimately brings it to perdition. All genius must work without rest, +it cannot do otherwise; only the most happily constituted genius works +without haste. + +The sister’s account of the children’s early life is a very charming +part of this record, and one which in the nature of things rarely finds +place in a biography. She describes her first memories of the boy’s +pretty face, his long fair hair, and large, dark, serious eyes. He +could not speak until he was nearly three years old, but at four he +began to read and write. He was a quiet, rather obstinate child, with +fits of passion which he learnt to control at a very early age; his +self-control became so great that, as a boy, on more than one occasion +he deliberately burnt his hand, to show that Mucius Scævola’s act was +but a trifling matter. + +The widowed mother went with her children to settle at Naumburg on +the Saale with her husband’s mother, a woman of fine character with +views of her own, one of which was that children of all classes should +first be brought up together. Little Fritz was therefore sent to the +town school, but the experiment was not altogether successful. He was +a serious child, fond of solitude, and was called “the little parson” +by his comrades. “The fundamental note of his disposition,” writes a +schoolfellow in after-life, “was a certain melancholy which expressed +itself in his whole being.” He avoided his fellows and sought beautiful +scenery, as he continued to do throughout life. At the same time he +was a well-developed, vigorous boy, who loved games of various kinds, +especially those of his own invention. But although the children lived +to the full the fantastic life of childhood, the sister regretfully +confesses that they remained models of propriety. Fritz was “a very +pious child; he thought much about religious matters, and was always +concerned to put his thoughts into practice.” It is curious that, +notwithstanding his instinctive sympathy with the Greek spirit and his +philological aptitudes, he found Greek specially difficult to learn. +At the age of ten appeared his taste for verse-making, and also for +music, and he soon began to show that inherited gift for improvisation +by which he was always able to hold his audience spellbound. Even as +a boy the future moralist made a deep impression on those who knew +him, and he reminded one person of the youthful Jesus in the Temple. +“We Nietzsches hate lies,” an aunt was accustomed to say; in Friedrich +sincerity was a very deep-rooted trait, and he exercised an involuntary +educational influence on those who came near him. + +In 1858 a place was found for him at Pforta, a remarkable school of +almost military discipline. Here many of the lines of his future +activity were definitely laid down. At an even earlier date, excited +by the influence of Humboldt, he had been fascinated by the ideal of +universal culture, and at Pforta his intellectual energies began to +expand. Here also, in 1859, when a pianoforte edition of _Tristan_ +was first published, Nietzsche became an enthusiastic Wagnerian, +and even to the last _Tristan_ remained for him “music _par +excellence_.” Here, too, he began those philological studies which +led some years later to a professorship. He turned to philology, +however, as he himself recognised, because of the need he felt to +anchor himself to some cool logical study which would not grip his +heart like the restless and exciting artistic instincts which had +hitherto chiefly moved him. During the latter part of his stay at this +very strenuous educational establishment young Nietzsche was a less +brilliant pupil than during the earlier part. His own individuality +was silently growing beneath the disciplinary pressure which would +have dwarfed a less vigorous individuality. His philosophic aptitudes +began to develop and take form; he wished also to devote himself to +music; and he pined at the confinement, longing for the forest and the +woodman’s axe. It was the beginning of a long struggle between the +impulses of his own self-centred nature and the duties imposed from +without, by the school, the university, and, later, his professorship; +he always strove to broaden and deepen these duties to the scope of his +own nature, but the struggle remained. It was the immediate result of +this double strain that, during 1862, strong and healthy as the youth +appeared, he began to suffer from headaches and eye-troubles, cured by +temporary removal from the school. He remained extremely short-sighted, +and it was only by an absurd error in the routine examination that, +some years later, he was passed for military service in the artillery. + +In the following year, 1863, Nietzsche met a schoolfellow’s sister, an +ethereal little Berlin girl, who for a while appealed to “the large, +broad-shouldered, shy, rather solemn and stiff youth.” To this early +experience, which never went beyond poetic _Schwärmerei_, his +sister is inclined to trace the origin of Nietzsche’s view of women as +very fragile, tender little buds. The experience is also interesting +because it appears to stand alone in his life. We strike here on +an organic abnormality in this congenital philosopher. Nietzsche’s +attitude was not the crude misogyny of Schopenhauer, who knew women +chiefly as women of the streets. Nietzsche knew many of the finest +women of his time, and he sometimes speaks with insight and sympathy +of the world as it appears to women; but there was clearly nothing in +him to answer to any appeal to passion, and his attitude is well summed +up in an aphorism of his own _Zarathustra_: “It is better to fall +into the hands of a murderer than into the dreams of an ardent woman.” +“All his life long,” his sister writes, “my brother remained completely +apart from either great passion or vulgar pleasure. His whole passion +lay in the world of knowledge; only very temperate emotions remained +over for anything else. In later life he was grieved that he had never +attained to _amour passion_, and that every inclination to a +feminine personality quickly changed to a tender friendship, however +fascinatingly pretty the fair one might be.” He would expend much +sympathy on unhappy lovers, yet he would shake his head, saying to +himself or others: “And all that over a little girl!” + +Young Nietzsche left Pforta, in 1863, with the most various and +incompatible scientific tastes and interests (always excepting in +mathematics, for which he never possessed any aptitude), but, as he +himself remarked, none that would fit him for any career. One point +in regard to the termination of his school-life is noteworthy: he +chose Theognis as the subject of his valedictory dissertation. His +meditations on this moralist and aristocrat, so contemptuous of popular +rule, may have served as the starting-point of some of his own later +views on Greek culture. In 1864 he became a student at Bonn, and the +year that followed was of special import in his inner development; he +finally threw off the beliefs of his early youth; he discovered his +keen critical faculty; and self-contained independence became a visible +mark of his character, though always disguised by amiable and courteous +manners. At Bonn his life seems to have been fairly happy, though he +was by no means a typical German student. He spent much money, but +it was chiefly on his artistic tastes--music and the theatre--or on +little tours. No one could spend less on eating and drinking; like +Goethe and like Heine, he had no love for tobacco or for beer, and he +was repelled by the thick, beery good-humour of the German student. +People who drink beer and smoke pipes every evening, he always held, +were incapable of understanding his philosophy; for they could not +possibly possess the clarity of mind needed to grasp any delicate or +complex intellectual problem. He returned home from Bonn “a picture of +health and strength, broad-shouldered, brown, with rather fair thick +hair, and exactly the same height as Goethe;” and then went to continue +his studies at Leipzig. + +Notwithstanding the youth’s efforts to subdue his emotional and +æsthetic restlessness by cool and hard work, he was clearly tortured by +the effort to find a philosophic home for himself in the world. This +effort absorbed him all day long, frequently nearly all the night. At +this time he chanced to take up on a bookstall a totally unknown work, +entitled _Der Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_; in obedience to an +unusual impulse he bought the book without consideration, and from that +moment began an acquaintance with Schopenhauer which for many years +exerted a deep influence on his life. At that time, probably, he could +have had no better guide into paths of peace; but even as a student +he was a keen critic of Schopenhauer’s system, valuing him chiefly as, +in opposition to Kant, “the philosopher of a re-awakened classical +period, a Germanised Hellenism.” Schumann’s music and long solitary +walks aided in the work of recuperation. A year or two later Nietzsche +met the other great god who shared with Schopenhauer his early worship. +“I cannot bring my heart to any degree of critical coolness before +this music,” he wrote, in 1868, after listening to the overture to the +_Meistersinger_; “every fibre and nerve in me thrills; it is a +long time since I have been so carried away.” I quote these words, for +we shall, I think, find later that they have their significance. A few +weeks afterwards he was invited to meet the master, and thus began a +relationship that for Nietzsche was fateful. + +Meanwhile his philological studies were bringing him distinction. A +lecture on Theognis was pronounced by Ritschl to be the best work +by a student of Nietzsche’s standing that he had ever met with. +Then followed investigations into the sources of Suidas, a lengthy +examination _De fontibus Diogenis Laertii_, and palæographic +studies in connection with Terence, Statius, and Orosius. He was now +also consciously perfecting his German style, treating language, +he remarks, as a musical instrument on which one must be able to +improvise, as well as play what is merely learnt by heart. In 1869, +when only in his twenty-sixth year, and before he had taken his +doctor’s degree, he accepted the chair of classical philology at Basel. +He was certainly, as he himself said, not a born philologist. He had +devoted himself to philology--I wish to insist on this significant +point--as a sedative and tonic to his restless energy; in this he was +doubtless wise, though his sister seems to suggest that he thereby +increased his mental strain. But he had no real vocation for philology, +and it is curious that when the Basel chair was offered to him he +was proposing to himself to throw aside philology for chemistry. +Philologists, he declares again and again, are but factory hands in +the service of science. At the best philology is a waste of acuteness, +since it merely enables us to state facts which the study of the +present would teach us much more swiftly and surely. Thus it was that +he instinctively broadened and deepened every philological question +he took up, making it a channel for philosophy and morals. With his +specifically philological work we are not further concerned. + +I have been careful to present the main facts in Nietzsche’s early +development because they seem to me to throw light on the whole of +his later development. So far he had published nothing except in +philological journals. In 1871, after he had settled at Basel, +appeared his first work, an essay entitled _Die Geburt der Tragödie +aus dem Geiste der Musik_, dedicated to Wagner. The conception of +this essay was academic, but in Nietzsche’s hands the origin of tragedy +became merely the text for an exposition of his own philosophy of art +at this period. He traces two art impulses in ancient Greece: one, +starting in the phenomena of dreaming, which he associates with Apollo; +the other, starting in the phenomena of intoxication, associated with +Dionysus, and through singing, music and dithyramb leading up to +the lyric. The union of these, which both imply a pessimistic view +of life, produced folksong and finally tragedy, which is thus the +outcome of Dionysiac music fertilised by Apollonian imagery. Socrates +the optimist, with his views concerning virtue as knowledge, vice as +ignorance, and his identification of virtue with happiness, led to the +decay of tragedy and the triumph of Alexandrian culture, in the net +of which the whole modern world is still held. Now, however, German +music is producing a new birth of tragedy through Wagner, who has again +united music and myth, inaugurated an era of art culture, and built +the bridge to a new German heathenism. This remarkable essay produced +considerable controversy and much consternation among Nietzsche’s +philological friends and teachers, who resented--reasonably enough, +we may well admit--the subordination of philology to modern philosophy +and art, and could not understand the marvellous swan they had hatched. +A philologist Nietzsche could never have continued, but this book +publicly put an end to any hope of academic advancement. It remains +characteristic of Nietzsche’s first period, as we may call whatever +he wrote before 1876, in its insistence on the primary importance of +æsthetic as opposed to intellectual culture; and it is characteristic +of his whole work in its grip of the connection between the problems +and solutions of Hellenic times and the problems and solutions of +the modern world. For Nietzsche the Greek world was not the model of +beautiful mediocrity imagined by Winckelmann and Goethe, nor did it +date from the era of rhetorical idealism inaugurated by Plato. The +real Hellenic world came earlier, and the true Hellenes were sturdy +realists enamoured of life, reverencing all its manifestations and +signs, and holding in highest honour that sexual symbol of life which +Christianity, with its denial of life, despises. Plato Nietzsche hated; +he had wandered from all the fundamental instincts of the Hellene. His +childish dialectic can only appeal, Nietzsche said, to those who are +ignorant of French masters like Fontenelle. The best cure for Plato, he +held, is Thucydides, the last of the old Hellenes who were brave in +the face of reality; Plato fled from reality into the ideal and was a +Christian before his time. Heraclitus was Nietzsche’s favourite Greek +thinker, and he liked to point out that the moralists of the Stoa may +be traced back to the great philosopher of Ephesus. + +_Die Geburt der Tragödie_ is the prelude to all Nietzsche’s work. +He outgrew it, but in one point at least it sounds a note which recurs +throughout all his work. He ever regarded the Greek conception of +Dionysus as the key to the mystery of life. In _Götzendämmerung_, +the last of his works, this is still affirmed, more distinctly than +ever. “The fundamental Hellenic instinct,” he there wrote, “was first +revealed in the Dionysiac mysteries. What was it the Greek assured to +himself in these mysteries? Eternal life, the eternal return of life, +the future promised and consecrated in the present, the triumphal +affirmation of life over death and change, _true_ life or +immortality through procreation, through the mysteries of sexuality. +Thus the sexual symbol was to the Greeks the profoundest and most +venerable symbol in the whole range of ancient piety. Every individual +act of reproduction, of conception, of birth was a festival awaking +the loftiest emotions. The doctrine of the mysteries proclaimed the +holiness of pain; the pangs of childbirth sanctified all pain. All +growth and development, every promise for the future, is conditioned +by pain. To ensure the eternal pleasure of creation, the eternal +affirmation of the will to live, the eternity of birth-pangs is +absolutely required. All this is signified by the word Dionysus: I know +no higher symbolism than this Greek Dionysiac symbolism. In it the +deepest instinct of life, of the future of life, the eternity of life, +is experienced religiously; generation, the way to life, is regarded as +a sacred way. Christianity alone, with its fundamental horror of life, +has made sexuality an impure thing, casting filth on the beginning, the +very condition, of our life.” + +Between 1873 and 1876 Nietzsche wrote four essays--on David Strauss, +the Use and Abuse of History in relation to Life, Schopenhauer as an +Educator, and Richard Wagner--which were published as a series of +_Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen_. The essay on Strauss was written +soon after the great war, amid the resulting outburst of flamboyant +patriotism and the widely-expressed conviction that the war was a +victory of “German culture.” Fresh from the world of Greece, Nietzsche +pours contempt on that assumption. Culture, he says, is, above all, +unity of artistic style in every expression of a people’s life. +The exuberance of knowledge in which a German glories is neither +a necessary means of culture nor a sign of it, being, indeed, more +allied to the opposite of culture--to barbarism. It is in this +barbarism that the modern German lives, that is to say, in a chaotic +mixture of all styles. Look at his clothing, Nietzsche continues, his +houses, his streets, all his manners and customs. They are a turmoil +of all styles in which he peacefully lives and moves. Such culture is +really a phlegmatic absence of all sense of culture. Largely, also, +it is merely a bad imitation of the real and productive culture of +France which it is supposed to have conquered in 1870. Let there be +no chatter, he concludes, about the triumph of German culture, for at +present no real German culture exists. The heroic figures of the German +past were not “classics,” as some imagine; they were seekers after +a genuine German culture, and so regarded themselves. The would-be +children of culture in Germany to-day are Philistines without knowing +it, and the only unity they have achieved is a methodical barbarism. +Nietzsche attacks Strauss by no means as a theologian, but as a typical +“culture-Philistine.” He was moved to this by the recent publication +of _Der Alte und der Neue Glaube_. I can well understand the +emotions with which that book filled him, for I, too, read it soon +after its publication, and can vividly recall the painful impression +made on me by its homely pedestrianism, the dull unimaginativeness +of the man who could only compare the world to a piece of machinery, +an engine that creaks in the working, a sort of vast Lancashire mill +in which we must spend every moment in feverish labour, and for our +trouble perhaps be caught between the wheels and cogs. But I was young, +and my youthful idealism, eager for some vital and passionate picture +of the world, inevitably revolted against so tawdry and mechanical a +conception. Nietzsche, then and ever, failed to perceive that there +is room, after all, for the modest sturdy bourgeois labourer who, at +the end of a hard life in the service of truth, sits down to enjoy his +brown beer and Haydn’s quartettes, and to repeat his homely confession +of faith in the world as he sees it. Nietzsche failed to realise that +Strauss’s limitations were essential to the work he had to do, and that +he remained a not unworthy follower of those German heroes who were not +“classics,” but honest seekers after the highest they knew. In this +hypertrophied repulsion for the everyday work of the intellectual world +we touch on a defect in Nietzsche’s temperament which we must regard as +fundamental, and which wrought in him at last to wildest issues. + +In another of these essays, _Schopenhauer als Erzieher_, Nietzsche +sets forth his opinions concerning his early master in philosophy. It +is a significant indication of the qualities that attracted him to +Schopenhauer that he compares him to Montaigne, thus at once revealing +his own essential optimism, and the admiration which he then and always +felt for the great French masters of wisdom. He regards Schopenhauer +as the leader from Kant’s caves of critical scepticism to the open sky +with its consoling stars. Schopenhauer saw the world as a whole, and +was not befooled by the analysis of the colours and canvas wherewith +the picture is painted. Kant, in spite of the impulse of his genius, +never became a philosopher. “If any one thinks I am thus doing Kant +an injustice, he cannot know what a philosopher is, _i.e._, not +merely a great thinker but also a real man;” and he goes on to explain +that the mere scholar who is accustomed to let opinions, ideas, and +things in books always intervene between him and facts, will never see +facts, and will never be a fact to himself; whereas the philosopher +must regard himself as the symbol and abbreviation of all the facts of +the world. It remained an axiom with Nietzsche that the philosopher +must first of all be a “real man.” + +In this essay, which Nietzsche always preferred to his other early +works, he thus for the first time clearly sets forth his conception of +the philosopher as a teacher, a liberator, a guide to fine living; +Schopenhauer’s metaphysical doctrine he casts aside with indifference. +Unconsciously, as in late years he seems to have admitted, he was +speaking of himself and setting forth his own aims. Thus it is +characteristic that he here also first expressed his conception of the +value of individuality. Shakespeare had asked: + + “Which can say more + Than this rich praise, that you alone are you?” + +But Shakespeare was only addressing a single beloved friend. Nietzsche +addresses the same thought to the common “you.” “At bottom every man +well knows that he can only live one single life in the world, and that +never again will so strange a chance shake together into unity such +singularly varied elements as he holds: he knows that, but he hides it +like a bad conscience.” This was a sane and democratic individualism; +in later years, as we shall see, it assumed stranger shapes. + +At Basel Nietzsche lived in close communion with Wagner and Frau +Cosima, who at this time regarded him as the prophet of the +music-drama. The essay on Wagner, which starts from the standpoint +reached in the previous essays, seems to justify this confidence. +There is a deep analogy for those to whom distance is no obscuring +cloud, Nietzsche remarks, between Kant and the Eleatics, Schopenhauer +and Empedocles, Wagner and Æschylus. “The world has been orientalised +long enough, and men now seek to be hellenised.” The Gordian knot has +been cut and its strands are fluttering to the ends of the world; we +need a series of Anti-Alexanders mighty enough to bring together the +scattered threads of life. Wagner is such an Anti-Alexander, a great +astringent force in the world. For “it is not possible to present the +highest and purest operations of dramatic art, and not therewith to +renew morals and the state, education and affairs.” Bayreuth is the +sacred consecration on the morning of battle. “The battles which art +brings before us are a simplification of the actual battles of life; +its problems are an abbreviation of the endlessly involved reckoning of +human action and aspiration. But herein lies the greatness and value of +art, that it calls forth the appearance of a simpler world, a shorter +solution of the problems of life. No one who suffers in life can +dispense with that appearance, just as no one can dispense with sleep.” +Wagner has simplified the world, Nietzsche continues; he has related +music to life, the drama to music; he has intensified the visible +things of the world, and made the audible visible. Just as Goethe found +in poetry an expression for the painter’s vocation he had missed, so +Wagner utilised in music his dramatic instinct. And Nietzsche further +notes the democratic nature of Wagner’s art, so strenuously warm and +bright as to reach even the lowliest in spirit. Wagner takes off the +stigma that clings to the word “common,” and brings to all the means +of attaining spiritual freedom. “For,” says Nietzsche, “whosoever +will be free, must make himself free; freedom is no fairy’s gift to +fall into any man’s lap.” Such are the leading thoughts in an essay +which remains an interesting philosophic appreciation of the place of +Wagner’s art in the modern world; yet one may well admit that it is +often over-strained, with a strain that expresses the obscure struggle +of nascent antagonism. + +It is, indeed, _Wagner in Bayreuth_ which brings to an end +Nietzsche’s first period, and leads up to the crash which inaugurated +his later period. Hitherto Nietzsche’s work was unquestionably +sane both in substance and form. No doubt it had called forth much +criticism; work so vigorous, sincere, and independent could not fail +to arouse hostility. But as we look back to-day, these fine essays +represent, with much youthful enthusiasm, the best that was known and +thought in Germany a quarter of a century ago. Nietzsche’s opinions +on Wagner and Schopenhauer, on individualism and democracy, the +significance of early Hellenism for moderns, the danger of an excessive +historical sense, the conception of culture less as a striving after +intellectual knowledge than as that which arouses within us the +philosopher, the artist, and the saint--all these ideas, wild as some +of them seemed to Nietzsche’s German contemporaries, are the ideas +which have now largely permeated European culture. The same cannot be +said of his later ideas. + +It was at the first Bayreuth festival in 1876 that this chapter in +Nietzsche’s life was finally closed. His profound admiration for +Wagner, his intimate intercourse with the greatest figure in the German +world of art, had hitherto been the chief fact in his life. All his +ideals of life and his hopes for the future had grown up around the +figure of Wagner, who seemed the leader into a new Promised Land. +During the previous two years, however, Nietzsche had seen little of +Wagner, who had left Switzerland, and he had been unable to realise +either his own development or Wagner’s. Whatever enthusiasm Nietzsche +may have felt in early life for a return to German heathenism, he was +yet by race and training and taste by no means allied to primitive +Germanism; it was towards Greece and towards France that his conception +of national culture really drew him. Wagner was far more profoundly +Teutonic, and in the Nibelung cycle, which Nietzsche was about to +witness for the first time on the stage, Wagner had incarnated the +spirit of Teutonic heathenism with an overwhelming barbaric energy +which, as Nietzsche could now realise, was utterly alien to his own +most native instincts. Thus it was that Bayreuth marked the crisis of a +subtle but profound realisation, the most intense self-realisation he +had yet attained. + +The whole history of this Wagner episode in Nietzsche’s life is full +of interest. The circumstantial narrative in the second volume of the +_Leben Nietzsche’s_ renders it clear at every point, and reveals a +tragedy which has its significance for the study of genius generally. +Nietzsche, it must be remembered, was more than thirty years younger +than Wagner. He was younger, and also he was less corrupted by the +world than Wagner. The great artist of the music-drama possessed, +or had acquired, a practical good sense in all that concerned the +realisation of his own mighty projects such as always marks the +greatest and most successful of the world’s supreme artists. Like +Shakespeare, he knew that the dyer’s hand must ever be a little subdued +to what it works in, if the radiant beauty of his stuffs is ever to +be perfectly achieved. But Nietzsche could never endure any fleck on +his hand; he shrank with horror from every soiling contact; he was an +artist who regarded life itself as the highest art. He could never +have carried through the rough task of dying the gorgeous garments of +a narrower but more perfectly attainable art. Nietzsche’s idealised +admiration for Wagner was complicated, after his appointment to +the Basel chair, by a deep personal friendship for the Master, the +chief friendship of his life. And his friendships were deeper than +those of most; although they show no traces of sexual tincture they +were hypertrophied by the defective sexuality of the man who always +regarded friendship as a more massive and poignant emotion than love. +That there were on either side any petty faults to cause a rift in +friendship there is no reason whatever to believe. Nietzsche was above +such, and Wagner’s friendship was always hearty until he realised +that Nietzsche was no longer his disciple, and then he dropped him, +silently, as a workman drops a useless tool. In addition it must be +noted that Nietzsche was probably at this time often over-strained, +almost hysterical,--at least so, we may gather, he impressed Wagner, +who urged him to marry a rich wife and to travel,--and he was still +afflicted by a disorder which not even genius can escape in youth, +he was still something of what we vulgarly call a “prig”; he had not +yet quite outgrown “the youthful Jesus in the Temple.” “Your brother +with his air of delicate distinction is a most uncomfortable fellow,” +said Wagner to Frau Förster-Nietzsche; “one can always see what he is +thinking; sometimes he is quite embarrassed at my jokes--and then I +crack them more madly than ever.” Wagner’s jokes, it appears, were of +a homely and plebeian sort, not appealing to one who lived naturally +and habitually in an atmosphere of keen intellectual activity. Bearing +all this in mind, one can imagine the impression made upon Nietzsche +by the inaugural festival at Bayreuth for which he had just written an +impassioned and yet philosophic prologue. Wagner was absorbed in using +all his considerable powers of managing men in finally vanquishing +the difficulties in his way. To any one who could see the festival +from the inside, as Nietzsche was able to see it, there were all the +inevitable squabbles and scandals and comic _contretemps_ which +must always mark the inception of a great undertaking, but which to-day +are hidden from us, pilgrims from many lands, as we ascend to that +hillside structure which is the chief living shrine of art in Europe. +And the people who were crowding in to this “sacred consecration on +the morning of battle” were aristocrats and plutocrats--bejewelled, +corpulent, commonplace--headed by the old Emperor, anxious to do his +duty, decorously joining in the applause as he whispered “Horrible! +horrible!” to his _aide-de-camp_, and hurrying away as quickly as +possible to the military manœuvres. There was more than enough here +to make his own just issued battle-cry seem farcical to Nietzsche. All +was conspiring to one end. The conception of the sanctity of Bayreuth, +his personal reverence for Wagner were slipping away together, and at +the same time he was forced to realise that the barbaric Germanism +of this overpowering Nibelung music was not the music for him. His +development would inevitably have carried him away from Wagner, but +the festival brought on the crisis with a sudden clash. Nietzsche had +finally conquered the mightiest of his false ideals, and stood for ever +after free and independent of all his early gods; but the wounds of +that victory were never quite closed to the last: a completely serene +and harmonious conception of things, so far as Wagner was concerned, +Nietzsche never attained. + +It may well be that the change was also physical. The excitement of the +festival precipitated an organic catastrophe towards which he had long +been tending. His sister finds the original source of this catastrophe +in the war of 1870. He desired to serve his country as a combatant, but +the University would only allow him leave to attend to the wounded. The +physical and emotional over-tension involved by his constant care of +six young wounded men culminated in a severe illness, which led on to +a never-ending train of symptoms--eye-troubles, dyspepsia, headache, +insomnia--which were perhaps aggravated by the reckless use of drugs. +I have already noted passages which indicate that he was himself +aware of a consuming flame within, and that from time to time he made +efforts to check its ravages. That it was this internal flame which +largely produced the breakdown is shown by the narrative of Nietzsche’s +friend, Dr. Kretzer, who was with him at Bayreuth. It was evident he +was seriously ill, Kretzer tells us, utterly changed and broken down. +His eye-troubles were associated, if not with actual brain disease, +at all events with a high degree of neurasthenia.[2] At Bayreuth, +Nietzsche was forced to realise the peril of his position as he had +never realised it before. He could no longer disguise from himself that +he must break with all the passionate interests of his past. It was +an essential measure of hygiene, almost a surgical operation. This is +indeed how he has himself put the matter. In the preface to _Der Fall +Wagner_, he said that it had been to him a necessary self-discipline +to take part against all that was morbid within himself, against +Wagner, against Schopenhauer, against all the impassioning interests +of modern life, and to view the world, so far as possible, with the +philosopher’s eyes, from an immense height. And again he speaks of +Wagner’s art as a beaker of ecstasy so subtle and profound that it acts +like poison and leaves no remedy at last but flight from the siren’s +cave. Nietzsche was henceforth in the position of a gouty subject who +is forced to abandon port wine and straightway becomes an apostle of +total abstinence. The remedy seems to have been fairly successful. But +the disease was in his bones. Impassioning interests that were far more +subtly poisonous slowly developed within him, and twelve years later +flight had become impossible, even if he was still able to realise the +need for fight. + +Nietzsche broke very thoroughly with his past, yet the break has +been exaggerated, and he himself often helped to exaggerate it. He +was in the position of a beleaguered city which has been forced to +abandon its outer walls and concentrate itself in the citadel; and +however it may have been in ancient warfare, in spiritual affairs +such a state of things involves an offensive attitude towards the +former line of defence. The positions we have abandoned constitute a +danger to the positions we have taken up. Many of the world’s fiercest +persecutors have but persecuted their old selves, and there seems to be +psychological necessity for such an attitude. Yet a careful study of +Nietzsche’s earlier activity reveals many germs of later developments. +The critical attitude towards conventional morality, the individualism, +the optimism, the ideal of heroism, which dominate his later thought, +exist as germs in his earlier work. Even the flagrant contrast between +_Richard Wagner in Bayreuth_ and _Der Fall Wagner_ was the +outcome of a gradual development. In the earlier essay Nietzsche had +justly pointed out that Wagner’s instincts were fundamentally dramatic. +As years went on he brooded over this idea; the nimble and lambent wit +of his later days played around it until Wagner became a mere actor in +his work and in his life, a rhetorician, an incarnate falsehood, the +personification of latter-day decadence, the Victor Hugo of music, the +Bernini of music, the modern Cagliostro. At the same time he admits +that Wagner represents the modern spirit, and that it is reasonable for +a musician to say that though he hates Wagner he can tolerate no other +music. The fact is, one may well repeat, that Nietzsche was not Teuton +enough to abide for ever with Wagner. He compares him contemptuously +with Hegel, cloud-compellers both, masters of German mists and German +mysticism, worshippers of Wotan, the god of bad weather, the god of +the Germans. “How could they miss what we, we Halcyonians, miss in +Wagner--_la gaya scienza_, the light feet, wit, fire, grace, +strong logic, the dance of the stars, arrogant intellectuality, the +quivering light of the south, the smooth sea--perfection?” It was +scarcely, however, the Halcyonian in Nietzsche that stood between him +and Wagner. That is well shown by his attitude towards _Parsifal_. +Whatever we may think of the ideas embodied in _Parsifal_, it may +yet seem to us the most solemn, the most graciously calm and beautiful +spectacle that has ever been fitly set to music. In Nietzsche the +thinker and the moralist were so much stronger than the artist that +he could see nothing here but bad psychology, bad thinking, and bad +religion. + +The rebellion against Wagner was inevitable. It is evident that +Nietzsche had not gained complete mastery of his own personality in +his earlier work. It is brilliant, full of fine perceptions and +critical insight, but as a personal utterance incomplete. It renders +the best ideas of the time, not the best ideas that Nietzsche could +contribute to the time. The shock of 1876 may have been a step towards +the disintegration of his intellect, but it was also a rally, a step +towards a higher self-realisation. Nietzsche had no genuine affinity +with Schopenhauer or with Wagner, though they were helpful to his +development; he was no pessimist, he was no democrat. As he himself +said, “I understood the philosophic pessimism of the nineteenth century +as the symptom of a finer strength of thought, a more victorious +fulness of life. In the same way Wagner’s music signified to me the +expression of a Dionysiac mightiness of soul in which I seemed to hear, +as in an earthquake, the upheaval of the primitive powers of life, +after age-long repression.” Now he only needed relief, “golden, tender, +oily melodies,” to soothe the leaden weight of life, and these he found +in _Carmen_. + +Any discussion of the merits of the question as between Wagner and +Bizet, the earlier and the later Nietzsche, seems to me out of place, +though much has been made of it by those who delight to see a giant +turn and rend himself. Nietzsche himself said he was writing for +psychologists, and it is not unfair to add that it is less “Wagner’s +case” that he presents to us than “Nietzsche’s case.” As to the +merits of the case, we may alike admit that Nietzsche’s enthusiasm +for Wagner was not excessive, and that the pleasant things he said of +_Carmen_ are fully justified; we may address both the early and +the late Nietzsche in the words habitually used by the landlord of the +“Rainbow”: “You’re both wrong and you’re both right, as I allus says.” +Most of the mighty quarrels that have sent men to battle and the stake +might have been appeased had each side recognised that both were right +in their affirmations, both wrong in their denials. + +Nietzsche occupied his chair at Basel for some years longer; in 1880 +his health forced him to resign and he was liberally pensioned. As +a professor he treated the most difficult questions of Greek study, +and devoted his chief attention to his best pupils, who in their turn +adored him. Basel is an admirable residence for a cosmopolitan thinker; +it was easy for Nietzsche to keep in touch with all that went on from +Paris to St. Petersburg. He was also on terms of more or less intimate +friendship with the finest spirits in Switzerland, with Keller the +novelist, Böcklin the painter, Burckhardt the historian. We are told +that he was a man of great personal charm in social intercourse. But +his associates at Basel never suspected that in this courteous and +amiable professor was stored up an explosive energy which would one +day be felt in every civilised land. With pen in hand his criticism of +life was unflinching, his sincerity arrogant; when the pen was dropped +he became modest, reserved, almost timorous. + +The work he produced between 1877 and 1882 seems to me to represent the +maturity of his genius. It includes _Menschliches, Allzumenschliches_, +_Morgenröthe_, and _Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft_. In form all these +volumes belong to _pensée_ literature. They deal with art, with +religion, with morals and philosophy, with the relation of all +these to life. Nietzsche shows himself in these _pensées_ above all +a freethinker, emancipated from every law save that of sincerity, +wide-ranging, serious, penetrative, often impassioned, as yet always +able to follow his own ideal of self-restraint. + +After leaving Basel he spent the following nine years chiefly at health +resorts and in travelling. We find him at Sorrento, Venice, Genoa, +Turin, Sils Maria, as well as at Leipzig. Doubtless his fresh and +poignant _pensées_ are largely the outcome of strenuous solitary +walks in the Engadine or among the Italian lakes. We may assume that +during most of these years he was fighting, on the whole successfully +fighting, for mental health. Yet passages that occur throughout his +books seem to suggest that his thoughts may have sometimes turned +to the goal towards which he was tending. It is a mistake, he points +out, to suppose that insanity is always the symptom of a degenerating +culture, although to nod towards the asylum is a convenient modern way +of slaying spiritual tyrants; it is in primitive and developing stages +of culture that insanity has played its chief part; only by virtue of +what seemed to be the “Divine” turbulence of insanity and epilepsy +could any new moral law make progress among early cultures. Just as +for us there seems a little madness in all genius, so for them there +seemed a little genius in all madness; sorcerers and saints agonised +in solitude and abstinence for some gleam of madness which would bring +them faith in themselves and openly justify their mission. + +What may perhaps be called Nietzsche’s third period began in 1883 with +_Also sprach Zarathustra_, the most extraordinary of all his +works, mystical and oracular in form, but not mystical in substance. +Zarathustra has only a distant relationship to his prototype Zoroaster, +though Nietzsche had a natural sympathy with the symbolism of fire and +water, with the reverence for light and purity, which mark the rites +associated with the name of the Bactrian prophet; he has here allowed +himself to set forth his own ideas and ideals in the free and oracular +manner of all ancient scriptures, and is thus enabled to present his +visions in a concrete form. _Zarathustra_, for the first and +last time, gave scope to the artist within Nietzsche, and with all +its extravagance and imperfection it must remain for good or evil his +most personal utterance. It was followed by _Jenseits von Gut und +Böse_, _Zur Genealogie der Moral_, _Der Fall Wagner_, and +_Götzendämmerung_. It is during this period that we trace the +growth of the magnification of his own personal mission which finally +became a sort of megalomania. (“I have given to men the deepest book +they possess, my _Zarathustra_,” he wrote towards the end.) In +form the books of this period are sometimes less fragmentary than those +of the second period; in substance they are marked by their emphatic, +often extravagant, almost reckless insistence on certain views of +morality. If in the first period he was an apostle of culture, in the +second a freethinker, pronouncing judgment on all things in heaven and +earth, he was now exclusively a moralist, or, as he would prefer to +say, an immoralist. It was during this period that he worked out his +“master morality”--the duty to be strong--in opposition to the “slave +morality” of Christianity, with its glorification of weakness and pity, +and that he consistently sought to analyse and destroy the traditional +conceptions of good and evil on which our current morality rests. The +last work which he planned, but never completed, was a re-valuation of +all values, _Umwerthung aller Werthe_, which would have been his +final indictment of the modern world, and the full statement of his own +immoralism and Dionysiac philosophy. + +It is sometimes said that Nietzsche’s mastery of his thought and style +was increasing up to the last. This I can scarcely admit, even as +regards style. No doubt there is at the best a light and swift vigour +of movement in these last writings which before he had never attained. +He can pour out now a shimmering stream of golden phrases with which +he has intoxicated himself, and tries to intoxicate us. We may lend +ourselves to the charm, but it has no enduring hold. This master of +gay or bitter invective no longer possesses the keenly reasoned and +piercing insight of the earlier Nietzsche. We feel that he has become +the victim of obsessions which drive him like a leaf before the wind, +and all his exuberant wit is unsubstantial and pathetic as that of +Falstaff. The devouring flame has at length eaten the core out of the +man and his style, leaving only this coruscating shell. And at a touch +even this thin shell collapsed into smouldering embers. + +From a child Nietzsche was subject to strangely prophetic dreams. In +a dream which, when a boy, he put into literary form, he tells how +he seemed to be travelling forward amid a glorious landscape, while +carolling larks ascended to the clouds, and his whole life seemed +to stretch before him in a vista of happy years; “and suddenly a +shrill cry reached our ears; it came from the neighbouring lunatic +asylum.” Even in 1876 his friends began to see that Nietzsche +attached extraordinary importance to his own work. After he wrote +_Zarathustra_, this self-exaltation increased, and began to find +expression in his work. Latterly, it is said, he came to regard himself +as the incarnation of the genius of humanity. It has always been found +a terrible matter to war with the moral system of one’s age; it will +have its revenge, one way or another, from within or from without, +whatever happens after. Nietzsche strove for nothing less than to +remodel the moral world after his own heart’s desire, and his brain was +perishing of exhaustion in the immense effort. In 1889--at the moment +when his work at last began to attract attention--he became hopelessly +insane. A period of severe hallucinatory delirium led on to complete +dementia, and he passes beyond our sight. + + + II. + +Nietzsche was by temperament a philosopher after the manner of the +Greeks. In other words, philosophy was not to him, as to the average +modern philosopher, a matter of books and the study, but a life to be +lived. It seemed to him to have much less concern with “truth” than +with the essentials of fine living. He loved travel and movement, he +loved scenery, he loved cities and the spectacle of men; above all, he +loved solitude. The solitude of cities drew him strongly; he envied +Heraclitus his desert study amid the porticoes and peristyles of the +immense temple of Diana. He had, however, his own favourite place of +work, to which he often alludes, the Piazza di San Marco at Venice, +amid the doves, in front of the strange and beautiful structure which +he “loved, feared, and envied;” and here in the spring, between ten +o’clock and midday, he found his best philosophic laboratory. + +It was in Italy that Nietzsche seems to have found himself most at +home, although there are no signs that he felt any special sympathy +with the Italians, that is to say in later than Renaissance days. For +the most part he possessed very decided sympathies and antipathies. +His antipathy to his own Germans lay in the nature of things. Every +prophet’s message is primarily directed to his own people. And +Nietzsche was unsparing in his keen criticism of the Germans. He tells +somewhere with a certain humour how people abroad would ask him if +Germany had produced of late no great thinker or artist, no really good +book, and how with the courage of despair he would at last reply, +“Yes, Bismarck!” Nietzsche was willing enough to recognise the kind +of virtue personified in Bismarck. But with that recognition nearly +all was said in favour of Germany that Nietzsche had to say. There is +little in the German spirit that answered to his demands. He admired +clearness, analytic precision, and highly organised intelligence, +light and alert. He saw no sufficient reason why profundity should +lack a fine superficies, nor why strength should be ungainly. His +instinctive comparison for a good thinker was always a good dancer. +As a child he had been struck by seeing a rope-dancer, and throughout +life dancing seemed to him the image of the finest culture, supple to +bend, strong to retain its own equilibrium, an exercise demanding the +highest training and energy of all the muscles of a well-knit organism. +But the indubitable intellectual virtues of the bulky and plodding +German are scarcely those which can well be symbolised by an Otero or +a Caicedo. “There is too much beer in the German intellect,” Nietzsche +said. For the last ten centuries Germany has wilfully stultified +herself; “nowhere else has there been so vicious a misuse of the two +great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity,” to which he +was inclined to add music. (“The theatre and music,” he remarked in +_Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft_, “are the haschisch and betel of +Europeans, and the history of the so-called higher culture is largely +the history of narcotics.”) “Germans regard bad writing,” he said, +“as a national privilege; they do not write prose as one works at a +statue, they only improvise.” Even “German virtue”--and this was the +unkindest cut of all--had its origin in eighteenth century France, as +its early preachers, such as Kant and Schiller, fully recognised. Thus +it happens that the German has no perceptions--coupling his Goethe +with a Schiller, and his Schopenhauer with a Hartmann--and no tact, +“no finger for _nuances_,” his fingers are all claws. The few +persons of high culture whom he had met in Germany, he noted towards +the end of his life, and especially Frau Cosima Wagner, were all of +French origin. Nietzsche regarded it as merely an accident that he was +himself born in Germany, just as it was merely an accident that Heine +the Jew, and Schopenhauer the Dutchman, were born there. Yet, as I +have already hinted, we may take these utterances too seriously. There +are passages in his works--though we meet them rarely--which show that +Nietzsche recognised and admired the elemental energy, the depth and +the contradictions in the German character; he attributed them largely +to mixture of races. + +Nietzsche was not much attracted to the English. It is true that he +names Landor as one of the four masters of prose this century has +produced, while another of these is Emerson, with whom he had genuine +affinity, although his own intellect was keener and more passionate, +with less sunny serenity. For Shakespeare, also, his admiration was +deep. And when he had outgrown his early enthusiasm for Schopenhauer, +the fine qualities which he still recognised in that thinker--his +concreteness, lucidity, reasonableness--seemed to him English. He +was usually less flattering towards English thought. Darwinism, for +instance, he thought, savoured too much of the population question, +and was invented by English men of science who were oppressed by the +problems of poverty. The struggle for existence, he said, is only an +exception in nature; it is exuberance, an even reckless superfluity, +which rules. For English philosophic thought generally he had little +but contempt. J. S. Mill was one of his “impossibilities”; the +English and French sociologists of to-day, he said, have only known +degenerating types of society, devoid of organising force, and they +take their own debased instincts as the standard of social codes +in general. Modern democracy, modern utilitarianism, are largely +of English manufacture, and he came at last to hate them both. +During the past century, he asserted, they have reduced the whole +spiritual currency of Europe to a dull plebeian level, and they are +the chief causes of European vulgarity. It is the English, he also +asserted--George Eliot, for instance--who, while abolishing Christian +belief, have sought to bolster up the moral system which was created by +Christianity, and which must necessarily fall with it. It is, moreover, +the English, who with this democratic and utilitarian plebeianism have +seduced and perverted the fine genius of France. + +Just as we owe to England the vulgarity which threatens to overspread +Europe, so to France we owe the conception of a habit of nobility, in +every best sense of the word. On that point Nietzsche’s opinion never +wavered. The present subjection of the French spirit to this damnable +Anglo-mania, he declared, must never lead us to forget the ardent and +passionate energy, the intellectual distinction, which belonged to the +France of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[3] The French, as +Nietzsche always held, are the one modern European nation which may +be compared with the Greeks. In _Menschliches, Allzumenschliches_ +he names six French writers--Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, +Fontenelle (in the _Dialogues des Morts_), Vauvenarges, +Chamfort--who bring us nearer to Greek antiquity than any other group +of modern authors, and contain more real thought than all the books of +the German philosophers put together. The only French writer of the +present century for whom he cared much (putting aside Mérimée) was +Stendhal, who possesses some of the characters of the earlier group. +The French, he points out, are the most Christian of all nations, +and have produced the greatest saints. He enumerates Pascal (“the +first among Christians, who was able to unite fervour, intellect, and +candour;--think of what that means!”), Fénelon, Mme. de Guyon, De +Rancé, the founder of the Trappists who have flourished nowhere but +in France, the Huguenots, Port-Royal--truly, he exclaims, the great +French freethinkers encountered foemen worthy of their steel! The land +which produced the most perfect types of Anti-Christianity produced +also the most perfect types of Christianity. He defends, also, that +seeming superficiality which in a great Frenchman, he says, is but the +natural epidermis of a rich and deep nature, while a great German’s +profundity is too often strangely bottled up from the light in a dark +and contorted phial. + +I have briefly stated Nietzsche’s feeling as regards each of the three +chief European peoples, because we are thus led up to the central +points of his philosophy--his attitude towards modern religion and +his attitude towards modern morals. We are often apt to regard these +matters as of little practical importance; we think it the reasonable +duty of practical social politics to attend to the immediate questions +in hand, and leave these wider questions to settle themselves. Rightly +or wrongly, that was not how Nietzsche looked at the matter. He was too +much of a philosopher, he had too keen a sense of the vital relation of +things, to be content with the policy of tinkering society, wherever +it seems to need mending most badly, avoiding any reference to the +whole. That is our English method, and no doubt it is a very sane +and safe method, but, as we have seen, Nietzsche was not in sympathy +with English methods. His whole significance lies in the thorough and +passionate analysis with which he sought to dissect and to dissolve, +first, “German culture,” then Christianity, and lastly, modern morals, +with all that these involve. + +It is scarcely necessary to point out, that though Nietzsche rejoiced +in the title of freethinker, he can by no means be confounded with the +ordinary secularist. He is not bent on destroying religion from any +anæsthesia of the religious sense, or even in order to set up some +religion of science which is practically no religion at all. He is thus +on different ground from the great freethinkers of France, and to some +extent of England. Nietzsche was himself of the stuff of which great +religious teachers are made, of the race of apostles. So when he writes +of the founder of Christianity and the great Christian types, it is +often with a poignant sympathy which the secularist can never know; +and if his knife seems keen and cruel, it is not the easy indifferent +cruelty of the pachydermatous scoffer. When he analyses the souls of +these men and the impulses which have moved them, he knows with what he +is dealing: he is analysing his own soul. + +A mystic Nietzsche certainly was not; he had no moods of joyous +resignation. It is chiefly the religious ecstasy of active moral +energy that he was at one with. The sword of the spirit is his weapon +rather than the merely defensive breastplate of faith. St. Paul is +the consummate type of such religious forces, and whatever Nietzsche +wrote of that apostle--the inventor of Christianity, as he truly +calls him--is peculiarly interesting. He hates him, indeed, but even +his hatred thrills with a tone of intimate sympathy. It is thus in a +remarkable passage in _Morgenröthe_, where he tells briefly the +history and struggles of that importunate soul, so superstitious and +yet so shrewd, without whom there would have been no Christianity. +He describes the self-torture of the neurotic, sensual, refined +“Jewish Pascal,” who flagellated himself with the law that he came to +hate with the hatred of one who had a genius for hatred; who in one +dazzling flash of illumination realised that Jesus by accomplishing the +law had annihilated it, and so furnished him with the instrument he +desired to wreak his passionate hatred on the law, and to revel in the +freedom of his joy. Nietzsche possesses a natural insight in probing +the wounds of self-torturing souls. He excels also in describing +the effects of extreme pain in chasing away the mists from life, in +showing to a man his own naked personality, in bringing us face to +face with the cold and terrible fact. It is thus that, coupling the +greatest figure in history with the greatest figure in fiction, he +compares the pathetic utterance of Jesus on the cross--“My God, my +God, why hast thou forsaken me?”--with the disillusionment of the +dying Don Quixote. Of Jesus himself he speaks no harsh word, but +he regarded the atmosphere of Roman decay and languor--though very +favourable for the production of fine personalities--as ill-adapted +to the development of a great religion. The Gospels lead us into the +atmosphere of a Russian novel, he remarks in one of his last writings, +_Der Antichrist_, an atmosphere in which the figure of Jesus had +to be coarsened to be understood; it became moulded in men’s minds +by memories of more familiar types--prophet, Messiah, wonder-worker, +judge; the real man they could not even see. “It must ever be a matter +for regret that no Dostoievsky lived in the neighbourhood of this most +interesting _décadent_, I mean some one who could understand the +enthralling charm of just this mixture of the sublime, the morbid, and +the childlike.” Jesus, he continues, never denied the world, the state, +culture, work; he simply never knew or realised their existence; his +own inner experience--“life,” “light,” “truth”--was all in all to him. +The only realities to him were inner realities, so living that they +make one feel “in Heaven” and “eternal”; this it was to be “saved.” And +Nietzsche notes, as so many have noted before him, that the fact that +men should bow the knee in Christ’s name to the very opposite of all +these things, and consecrate in the “Church” all that he threw behind +him, is an insoluble example of historical irony. “Strictly speaking, +there has only been one Christian, and he died on the cross. The Gospel +_died_ on the cross.” + +There may seem a savour of contempt in the allusion to Jesus as +an “interesting _décadent_,” and undoubtedly there is in +_Der Antichrist_ a passionate bitterness which is not found +in Nietzsche’s earlier books. But he habitually used the word +_décadent_ in a somewhat extended and peculiar sense. The +_décadent_, as Nietzsche understood him, was the product of an +age in which virility was dead and weakness was sanctified; it was +so with the Buddhist as well as with the Christian, they both owe +their origin and their progress to “some monstrous disease of will.” +They sprang up among creatures who craved for some “Thou shalt,” +and who were apt only for that one form of energy which the weak +possess, fanaticism. By an instinct which may be regarded as sound +by those who do not accept his disparagement of either, Nietzsche +always coupled the Christian and the anarchist; to him they were both +products of decadence. Both wish to revenge their own discomfort +on this present world, he asserted, the anarchist immediately, the +Christian at the last day. Instead of feeling, “_I_ am worth +nothing,” the _décadent_ says, “_Life_ is worth nothing,”--a +terribly contagious state of mind which has covered the world with +the vitality of a tropical jungle. It cannot be too often repeated, +Nietzsche continues, that Christianity was born of the decay of +antiquity, and on the degenerate people of that time it worked like a +soothing balm; their eyes and ears were sealed by age and they could +no longer understand Epicurus and Epictetus. At such a time purity +and beneficence, large promises of future life, worked sweetly and +wholesomely. But for fresh young barbarians Christianity is poison. +It produces a fundamental enfeeblement of such heroic, childlike, +and animal natures as the ancient Germans, and to that enfeeblement, +indeed, we owe the revival of classic culture; so that the conclusion +of the whole matter is here, as ever, Nietzsche remarks, that “it is +impossible to say whether, in the language of Christianity, God owes +more thanks to the Devil, or the Devil to God, for the way in which +things have come about.” But in the interaction of the classic spirit +and the Christian spirit, Nietzsche’s own instincts were not on the +side of Christianity, and as the years went on he expresses himself in +ever more unmeasured language. He could not take up the _Imitation +of Christ_--the very word “imitation” being, as indeed Michelet had +said before, the whole of Christianity--without physical repugnance. +And in the _Götzendämmerung_ he compares the Bible with the Laws +of Manu (though at the same time asserting that it is a sin to name +the two books in the same breath): “The _sun_ lies on the whole +book. All those things on which Christianity vents its bottomless +vulgarity--procreation, for example, woman, marriage--are here handled +earnestly and reverently, with love and trust. I know no book in which +so many tender and gracious things are said about women as in the Laws +of Manu.” Again in _Der Antichrist_--which represents, I repeat, +the unbalanced judgments of his last period--he tells how he turns +from Paul with delight to Petronius, a book of which it can be said +_è tutto festo_, “immortally sound, immortally serene.” In the +whole New Testament, he adds, there is only one figure we can genuinely +honour--that of Pilate. + +On the whole, Nietzsche’s attitude towards Christianity was one of +repulsion and antagonism. At first he appears indifferent, then he +becomes calmly judicial, finally he is bitterly hostile. He admits that +Christianity possesses the virtues of a cunningly concocted narcotic +to soothe the leaden griefs and depressions of men whose souls are +physiologically weak. But from first to last there is no sign of any +genuine personal sympathy with the religion of the poor in spirit. +Epicureanism, the pagan doctrine of salvation, had in it an element of +Greek energy, but the Christian doctrine of salvation, he declares, +raises its sublime development of hedonism on a thoroughly morbid +foundation. Christianity hates the body; the first act of Christian +triumph over the Moors, he recalls, was to close the public baths +which they had everywhere erected. “With its contempt for the body +Christianity was the greatest misfortune that ever befell humanity.” +And at the end of _Der Antichrist_ he sums up his concentrated +hatred: “I _condemn_ Christianity; I raise against the Christian +Church the most terrible accusation that any accuser has ever uttered. +It is to me the most profound of all thinkable corruptions.” + +It is scarcely necessary to add that Nietzsche’s condemnation of +Christianity extended to the Christian God. He even went so far as to +assert that it was the development of Christian morality itself--“the +father-confessor sensitiveness of the Christian conscience translated +and sublimed into a scientific conscience”--which had finally +conquered the Christian God. He held that polytheism had played an +important part in the evolution of culture. Gods, heroes, supernatural +beings generally, were inestimable schoolmasters to bring us to the +sovereignty of the individual. Polytheism opened up divine horizons +of freedom to humanity. “Ye shall be as gods.” But it has not been +so with monotheism. The doctrine of a single God, in whose presence +all others were false gods, favours stagnation and unity of type; +monotheism has thus perhaps constituted “the greatest danger which +humanity has had to meet in past ages.” Nor are we yet freed from its +influence. “For centuries after Buddha died men showed his shadow in a +cave--a vast terrible shadow. God is dead: but thousands of years hence +there will probably be caves in which his shadow may yet be seen. And +we--we must go on fighting that shadow!” How deeply rooted Nietzsche +believed faith in a god to be is shown by the fantastic conclusion to +_Zarathustra_. A strange collection of _Uebermenschen_--the +men of the future--are gathered together in Zarathustra’s cave: +two kings, the last of the popes--thrown out of work by the death +of God--and many miscellaneous creatures, including a donkey. As +Zarathustra returns to his cave he hears the sound of prayer and smells +the odour of incense; on entering he finds the _Uebermenschen_ on +their knees intoning an extraordinary litany to the donkey, who has +“created us all in his own image.” + +In his opposition to the Christian faith and the Christian God, +Nietzsche by no means stands alone, however independent he may have +been in the method and standpoint of his attack. But in his opposition +to Christian morality he was more radically original. There is a very +general tendency among those who reject Christian theology to shore up +the superstructure of Christian morality which rests on that theology. +George Eliot, in her writings at all events, has been an eloquent and +distinguished advocate of this process; Mr. Myers, in an oft-quoted +passage, has described with considerable melodramatic vigour the “sibyl +in the gloom” of the Trinity Fellows’ Garden at Cambridge, who withdrew +God and Immortality from his grasp, but, to his consternation, told +him to go on obeying Duty. What George Eliot proposed was one of those +compromises so dear to our British minds. Nietzsche would none of it. +Hence his contemptuous treatment of George Eliot, of J. S. Mill, of +Herbert Spencer, and so many more of our favourite intellectual heroes +who have striven to preserve Christian morality while denying Christian +theology. Nietzsche regarded our current moral ideals, whether +formulated by bishops or by anarchists, as alike founded on a Christian +basis, and when that foundation is sapped they cannot stand. + +The motive of modern morality is pity, its principle is altruistic, its +motto is “Love your neighbour as yourself,” its ideal self-abnegation, +its end the greatest good of the greatest number. All these things +were abhorrent to Nietzsche, or so far as he accepted them, it was in +forms which gave them new values. Modern morality, he said, is founded +on an extravagant dread of pain, in ourselves primarily, secondarily +in others. Sympathy is fellow-suffering; to love one’s neighbour as +oneself is to dread his pain as we dread our own pain. The religion of +love is built upon the fear of pain. “On n’est bon que par la pitié;” +the acceptance of that doctrine Nietzsche considers the chief outcome +of Christianity, although, he thinks, not essential to Christianity, +which rested on the egoistic basis of personal salvation: “One thing is +needful.” But it remains the most important by-product of Christianity, +and has ever been gaining strength. Spinoza and Kant stood firmly +outside the stream, but the French freethinkers, from Voltaire onwards, +were not to be outdone in this direction by Christians, while Comte +with his “Vivre pour autrui” even out-Christianised Christianity, and +Schopenhauer in Germany, J. S. Mill in England, carried on the same +doctrine. “The great question of life,” said Benjamin Constant in +_Adolphe_--and it is a saying that our finest emotions are quick +to echo--“is the pain that we cause.” + +Both the sympathetic man and the unsympathetic man, Nietzsche argues, +are egoists. But the unsympathetic man he held to be a more admirable +kind of egoist. It is best to win the strength that comes of experience +and suffering, and to allow others also to play their own cards and +win the same strength, shedding our tears in private, and abhorring +soft-heartedness as the foe of all manhood and courage. To call the +unsympathetic man “wicked,” and the sympathetic man “good,” seemed +to Nietzsche a fashion in morals, a fashion which will have its +day. He believed he was the first to point out the danger of the +prevailing fashion as a sort of moral impressionism, the outcome of +the hyperæsthesia peculiar to periods of decadence. Not indeed that +Christianity is, or could be, carried out among us to its fullest +extent: “That would be a serious matter. If we were ever to become +the object to others of the same stupidities and importunities which +they expend on themselves, we should flee wildly as soon as we saw +our ‘neighbour’ approach, and curse sympathy as heartily as we now +curse egoism.” Our deepest and most personal griefs, Nietzsche remarks +elsewhere, remain unrevealed and incomprehensible to nearly all other +persons, even to the “neighbour” who eats out of the same dish with us. +And even though my grief should become visible, the dear sympathetic +neighbour can know nothing of its complexity and results, of the +organic economy of my soul. That my grief may be bound up with my +happiness troubles him little. The devotee of the “religion of pity” +will heal my sorrows without a moment’s delay; he knows not that the +path to my Heaven must lie through my own Hell, that happiness and +unhappiness are twin sisters who grow up together, or remain stunted +together. + +“Morality is the mob-instinct working in the individual.” It rests, +Nietzsche asserts, on two thoughts: “the community is worth more than +the individual,” and “a permanent advantage is better than a temporary +advantage;” whence it follows that all the advantages of the community +are preferable to those of the individual. Morality thus becomes a +string of negative injunctions, a series of “Thou shalt nots,” with +scarcely a positive command amongst them; witness the well-known table +of Jewish commandments. Now Nietzsche could not endure mere negative +virtues. He resented the subtle change which has taken place in the +very meaning of the word “virtue,” and which has perverted it from an +expression of positive masculine qualities into one of merely negative +feminine qualities. In his earliest essay he referred to “active sin” +as the Promethean virtue which distinguishes the Aryans. The only +moral codes that commended themselves to him were those that contained +positive commands alone: “Do this! Do it with all your heart, and all +your strength, and all your dreams!--and all other things shall be +taken away from you!” For if we are truly devoted to the things that +are good to do we need trouble ourselves little about the things that +are good to leave undone. + +Nietzsche compared himself to a mole boring down into the ground +and undermining what philosophers have for a couple of thousand +years considered the very surest ground to build on--the trust in +morals. One of his favourite methods of attack is by the analysis +of the “conscience.” He points out that whatever we were regularly +required to do in youth by those we honoured and feared created our +“good conscience.” The dictates of conscience, however urgent, thus +have no true validity as regards the person who experiences them. +“But,” some one protests, “must we not trust our feelings?” “Yes,” +replies Nietzsche, “trust your feelings, but still remember that +the inspiration which springs from feelings is the grandchild of an +opinion, often a false one, and in any case not your own. To trust +one’s feelings--that means to yield more obedience to one’s grandfather +and grandmother and their grandparents than to the gods within _our +own_ breasts: our own reason and our own experience.” Faith in +authority is thus the source of conscience; it is not the voice of God +in the human heart but the voice of man. The sphere of the moral is +the sphere of tradition, and a man is moral because he is dependent on +a tradition and not on himself. Originally everything was within the +sphere of morals, and it was only possible to escape from that sphere +by becoming a law-giver, medicine-man, demigod--that is to say by +making morals. To be customary is to be moral,--I still closely follow +Nietzsche’s thought and expression,--to be individual is to be wicked. +Every kind of originality involves a bad conscience. Nietzsche insists +with fine eloquence, again and again, that every good gift that has +been given to man put a bad conscience into the heart of the giver. +Every good thing was once new, unaccustomed, _immoral_, and gnawed +at the vitals of the finder like a worm. Primitive men lived in hordes, +and must obey the horde-voice within them. Every new doctrine is +wicked. Science has always come into the world with a bad conscience, +with the emotions of a criminal, at least of a smuggler. No man can be +disobedient to custom and not be immoral, and feel that he is immoral. +The artist, the actor, the merchant, the freethinker, the discoverer, +were once all criminals, and were persecuted, crushed, rendered morbid, +as all persons must be when their virtues are not the virtues idealised +by the community. The whole phenomena of morals are animal-like, and +have their origin in the search for prey and the avoidance of pursuit. + +Progress is thus a gradual emancipation from morals. We have to +recognise the services of the men who fight in this struggle against +morals, and who are crushed into the ranks of criminals. Not that we +need pity them. “It is a new _justice_ that is called for, a new +_mot d’ordre_. We need new philosophers. The moral world also is +round. The moral world also has its antipodes, and the antipodes also +have their right to exist. A new world remains to be discovered--and +more than one! Hoist sail, O philosophers!” + +“Men must become both better _and wickeder_.” So spake +Zarathustra; or, as he elsewhere has it, “It is with man as with a +tree, the higher he would climb into the brightness above, the more +vigorously his roots must strive earthwards, downwards, into the +darkness and the depths--into the wicked.” Wickedness is just as +indispensable as goodness. It is the ploughshare of wickedness which +turns up and fertilises the exhausted fields of goodness. We must +no longer be afraid to be wicked; we must no longer be afraid to be +hard. “Only the noblest things are very hard. This new command, O my +brothers, I lay upon you--become hard.” + +In renewing our moral ideas we need also to renew our whole conception +of the function and value of morals. Nietzsche advises moralists to +change their tactics: “Deny moral values, deprive them of the applause +of the crowd, create obstacles to their free circulation; let +them be the shame-faced secrets of a few solitary souls; _forbid +morality_! In so doing you may perhaps accredit these things among +the only men whom one need have on one’s side, I mean heroic men. +Let it be said of morality to-day as Meister Eckard said: ‘I pray +God that he may rid me of God!’” We have altogether over-estimated +the importance of morality. Christianity knew better when it placed +“grace” above morals, and so also did Buddhism. And if we turn to +literature, Nietzsche maintains, it is a vast mistake to suppose that, +for instance, great tragedies have, or were intended to have, any +moral effect. Look at _Macbeth_, at _Tristan und Isolde_, +at _Œdipus_. In all these cases it would have been easy to make +guilt the pivot of the drama. But the great poet is in love with +passion. “He calls to us: It is the charm of charms; this exciting, +changing, dangerous, gloomy, yet often sun-filled existence! It is an +_adventure_ to live--take this side or that, it will always be the +same!’ So he speaks to us out of a restless and vigorous time, half +drunken and dazed with excess of blood and energy, out of a wickeder +time than ours is; and we are obliged to set to rights the aim of a +Shakespeare and make it righteous, that is to say, to misunderstand it.” + +We have to recognise a diversity of moral ideals. Nothing is more +profoundly dangerous than, with Kant, to create impersonal categorical +imperatives after the Chinese fashion, to generalise “virtue,” “duty,” +and “goodness,” and sacrifice them to the Moloch of abstraction. +“Every man must find his own virtue, his own categorical imperative;” +it must be founded on inner necessity, on deep personal choice. Only +the simpleton says: “Men ought to be like this or like that.” The real +world presents to us a dazzling wealth of types, a prodigious play +of forms and metamorphoses. Yet up comes a poor devil of a moralist, +and says to us: “No! men ought to be something quite different!” and +straightway he paints a picture of himself on the wall, and exclaims: +“Ecce homo!” But one thing is needful, that a man should attain the +fullest satisfaction. Every man must be his own moralist. + +These views might be regarded as “lax,” as predisposing to easy +self-indulgence. Nietzsche would have smiled at such a notion. Not +yielding, but mastering, was the key to his personal morality. “Every +day is badly spent,” he said, “in which a man has not once denied +himself; this gymnastic is inevitable if a man will retain the joy +of being his own master.” The four cardinal virtues, as Nietzsche +understood morals, are sincerity, courage, generosity, and courtesy. +“Do what you will,” said Zarathustra, “but first be one of those who +_are able to will_. Love your neighbour as yourself--but first +be one of those who _are able to love themselves_.” And again +Zarathustra spoke: “He who belongs to me must be strong of bone and +light of foot, eager for fight and for feast, no sulker, no John o’ +Dreams, as ready for the hardest task as for a feast, sound and hale. +The best things belong to me and mine, and if men give us nothing, then +we take them: the best food, the purest sky, the strongest thoughts, +the fairest women!” There was no desire here to suppress effort and +pain. That Nietzsche regarded as a mark of modern Christian morals. +It is pain, more pain and deeper, that we need. The discipline of +suffering alone creates man’s pre-eminence. “Man unites in himself the +creature and the creator: there is in him the stuff of things, the +fragmentary and the superfluous, clay, mud, madness, chaos; but there +is also in him the creator, the sculptor, the hardness of the hammer, +the divine blessedness of the spectator on the seventh day.” Do you +pity, he asks, what must be fashioned, broken, forged, refined as by +fire? But our pity is spent on one thing alone, the most effeminate of +all weaknesses--pity. This was the source of Nietzsche’s admiration for +war, and indifference to its horror; he regarded it as the symbol of +that spiritual warfare and bloodshed in which to him all human progress +consisted. He might, had he pleased, have said with the Jew and the +Christian, that without shedding of blood there shall be no remission +of sins. But with a difference, for as he looked at the matter, every +man must be his own saviour, and it is his own blood that must be shed; +there is no salvation by proxy. That was expressed in his favourite +motto: _Virescit volnere virtus._ + +Nietzsche’s ideal man is the man of Epictetus, as he describes him in +_Morgenröthe_, the laconic, brave, self-contained man, not lusting +after expression like the modern idealist. The man whom Epictetus +loved hated fanaticism, he hated notoriety, he knew how to smile. And +the best was, added Nietzsche, that he had no fear of God before his +eyes; he believed firmly in reason, and relied, not on divine grace, +but on himself. Of all Shakespeare’s plays _Julius Cæsar_ seemed +to Nietzsche the greatest, because it glorifies Brutus; the finest +thing that can be said in Shakespeare’s honour, Nietzsche thought, +was that--aided perhaps by some secret and intimate experience--he +believed in Brutus and the virtues that Brutus personified. In course +of time, however, while not losing his sympathy with Stoicism, it +was Epicureanism, the heroic aspects of Epicureanism, which chiefly +appealed to Nietzsche. He regarded Epicurus as one of the world’s +greatest men, the discoverer of the heroically idyllic method of living +a philosophy; for one to whom happiness could never be more than an +unending self-discipline, and whose ideal of life had ever been that +of a spiritual nomad, the methods of Epicurus seemed to yield the +finest secrets of good living. Socrates, with his joy in life and in +himself, was also an object of Nietzsche’s admiration. Among later +thinkers, Helvetius appealed to him strongly. Goethe and Napoleon were +naturally among his favourite heroes, as were Alcibiades and Cæsar. +The latest great age of heroes was to him the Italian Renaissance. +Then came Luther, opposing the rights of the peasants, yet himself +initiating a peasants’ revolt of the intellect, and preparing the way +for that shallow plebeianism of the spirit which has marked the last +two centuries. + +Latterly, in tracing the genealogy of modern morals, Nietzsche’s +opinions hardened into a formula. He recognised three stages of moral +evolution: first, the _pre-moral_ period of primitive times, +when the beast of prey was the model of conduct, and the worth of an +action was judged by its results. Then came the _moral_ period, +when the worth of an action was judged not by its results, but by +its origin; this period has been the triumph of what Nietzsche calls +slave-morality, the morality of the mob; the goodness and badness of +actions is determined by atavism, at best by survivals; every man is +occupied in laying down laws for his neighbour instead of for himself, +and all are tamed and chastised into weakness in order that they may +be able to obey these prescriptions. Nietzsche ingeniously connected +his slave-morality with the accepted fact that for many centuries the +large, fair-haired aristocratic race has been dying out in Europe, +and the older down-trodden race--short, dark, and broad-headed--has +been slowly gaining predominance. But now we stand at the threshold +of the _extra-moral_ period. Slave-morality, Nietzsche asserted, +is about to give way to master-morality; the lion will take the place +of the camel. The instincts of life, refusing to allow that anything +is forbidden, will again assert themselves, sweeping away the feeble +negative democratic morality of our time. The day has now come for the +man who is able to rule himself, and who will be tolerant to others +not out of his weakness, but out of his strength; to him nothing is +forbidden, for he has passed beyond goodness and beyond wickedness. + + + III. + +So far I have attempted to follow with little or no comment what seems +to me the main current of Nietzsche’s thought. It may be admitted +that there is some question as to which is the main current. For my +own part I have no hesitation in asserting that it is the current +which expands to its fullest extent between 1876 and 1883 in what I +term Nietzsche’s second or middle period; up to then he had not gained +complete individuality; afterwards began the period of uncontrolled +aberrations. Thus I am inclined to pass lightly over the third period, +during which the conception of “master-morality” attained its chief and +most rigid emphasis, although I gather that to Nietzsche’s disciples as +to his foes this conception seems of primary importance. This idea of +“master-morality” is in fact a solid fossilised chunk, easy to handle +for friendly or unfriendly hands. The earlier and more living work--the +work of the man who truly said that it is with thinkers as with snakes: +those that cannot shed their skins die--is less obviously tangible. So +the “master-morality” it is that your true Nietzschian is most likely +to close his fist over. It would be unkind to say more, for Nietzsche +himself has been careful to scatter through his works, on the subject +of disciples and followers generally, very scathing remarks which must +be sufficiently painful to any faithful Nietzschian. + +We are helped in understanding Nietzsche’s philosophic significance if +we understand his precise ideal. The psychological analysis of every +great thinker’s work seems to reveal some underlying fundamental image +or thought--often enough simple and homely in character--which he has +carried with him into the most abstract regions. Thus Fraser has found +good reason to suppose that Hegel’s main ideas were suggested by the +then recent discovery of galvanism. In Nietzsche’s case this key is +to be found in the persistent image of an attitude. As a child, his +sister tells us, he had been greatly impressed by a rope-dancer who had +performed his feats over the market-place at Naumburg, and throughout +his work, as soon as he had attained to real self-expression, we may +trace the image of the dancer. “I do not know,” he somewhere says, +“what the mind of a philosopher need desire more than to be a good +dancer. For dancing is his ideal, his art also, indeed his only piety, +his ‘divine worship.’” In all Nietzsche’s best work we are conscious of +this ideal of the dancer, strong, supple, vigorous, yet harmonious and +well-balanced. It is the dance of the athlete and the acrobat rather +than the make-believe of the ball-room, and behind the easy equipoise +of such dancing lie patient training and effort. The chief character +of good dancing is its union of the maximum of energetic movement with +the maximum of well-balanced grace. The whole muscular system is alive +to restrain any excess, so that however wild and free the movement may +seem it is always measured; excess would mean ignominious collapse. +When in his later years Nietzsche began, as he said, to “philosophise +with the hammer,” and to lay about him savagely at every hollow “idol” +within reach, he departed from his better ideal of dancing, and his +thinking became intemperate, reckless, desperate. + +Nietzsche had no system, probably because the idea that dominated +his thought was an image, and not a formula, the usual obsession of +philosophers, such as may be clapped on the universe at any desired +point. He remarks in one place that a philosopher believes the worth +of his philosophy to lie in the structure, but that what we ultimately +value are the finely carven and separate stones with which he builded, +and he was clearly anxious to supply the elaborated stones direct. +In time he came to call himself a realist, using the term, in no +philosophic sense, to indicate his reverence for the real and essential +facts of life, the things that conduce to fine living. He desired to +detach the “bad conscience” from the things that are merely wicked +traditionally, and to attach it to the things that are anti-natural, +anti-instinctive, anti-sensuous. He sought to inculcate veneration +for the deep-lying sources of life, to take us down to the bed-rock +of life, the rock whence we are hewn. He held that man, as a reality, +with all his courage and cunning, is himself worthy of honour, but +that man’s ideals are absurd and morbid, the mere dregs in the drained +cup of life; or, as he eventually said--and it is a saying which will +doubtless seal his fate in the minds of many estimable persons--man’s +ideals are his only _partie honteuse_, of which we may avoid any +close examination. Nietzsche’s “realism” was thus simply a vigorous +hatred of all dreaming that tends to depreciate the value of life, and +a vivid sense that man himself is the _ens realissimum_. + +A noteworthy point in Nietzsche’s conception of philosophy is his +increasingly clear conception of its fundamentally psychological +character. I mean to say that Nietzsche knows that a man’s philosophy, +to be real, must be the inevitable outcome of his own psychic +constitution. It is a point that philosophers have never seen. +Perhaps Nietzsche was the first, however hesitatingly, to realise +it. It is only in the recognition of this fact that the eirenicon of +philosophies--and one might add, of religions--can ever be found. +The philosopher of old said: “This is _my_ conception of the +universe;” it was well. But he was apt to add: “It is _the_ +conception of the universe,” and so put himself hopelessly in the +wrong. It is as undignified to think another man’s philosophy as to +wear another man’s cast-off clothes. Only the poor in spirit or in +purse can find any satisfaction in doing either. A philosophy or +religion can only fit the man for whom it was made. “There has only +been one Christian,” as Nietzsche put it, “and he died on the cross.” +But why waste energy in trying to manufacture a second Christian? +We may be very sure that we can never find another Christian whom +Christianity would fit so admirably as it once fitted Christ. Why +not rest content with Christ? Let Brown be a Brownite and Robinson +a Robinsonian. It is not good that they should exchange their +philosophies, or that either should insist on thrusting his threadbare +misfits on Jones, who prefers to be metaphysically naked. When men +have generally begun to realise this the world will be a richer and +an honester world, and a pleasanter one as well. That Nietzsche had +vaguely begun to realise it seems to me his chief claim to distinction +in the purely philosophic field. + +To recognise the free and direct but disconnected nature of Nietzsche’s +many-sided vision of the world is to lessen the force of his own +antagonisms as well as of the antagonisms he has excited. Much of +Nietzsche’s work, especially in the third period, is the utterance of +profound half-truths, keenly and personally felt, but still half-truths +of which he has himself elsewhere supplied the complements. The reason +is that during that period he was not so much expressing himself as +appealing passionately against himself to those failing forces whose +tonic influence he thirsted after. The hardness, the keen sword, the +reckless energy he idealised were the things that had slipped utterly +away and left him defenceless to the world. He grew to worship cruel +strength as the consumptive Keats, the sickly Thoreau, loved beauty and +health, with “the desire of the moth for the star.” Such an attitude +has its rightness and power, so long as we understand it, though it +comes short of the serenity of the greatest spirits who seek, like +Goethe, to live at each moment in the whole. The master-morality of +Nietzsche’s later days, on which friends and foes have alike insisted, +is a case in point. This appears to have been hailed, or resented, as +a death-blow struck at the modern democratic _régime_. To take +a broad view of Nietzsche’s philosophic attitude is to realise that +both views are alike out of place. On this matter, as on many others, +Nietzsche moved in a line which led him to face an opposite direction +in his decay from that which he faced in his immaturity. He began by +regarding democracy as the standard of righteousness, and ended by +asserting that the world only exists for the production of a few great +men. It would be foolish to regard either of the termini as the last +outpost of wisdom. But in the passage between these two points many +excellent things are said by the way. Nietzsche was never enamoured of +socialism or democracy for its own sake; reasonably enough, he will +not even admit that we have yet attained democracy; though the horses, +indeed, are new, as yet “the roads are the same old roads, the wheels +the same old wheels.” But he points out that the value of democracy +lies in its guarantee of individual freedom: Cyclopean walls are being +built, with much toil and dust, but the walls will be a rampart against +any invasion of barbarians or any new slavery, against the despotism of +capital and the despotism of party. The workers may regard the walls as +an end in themselves; we are free to value them for the fine flowers of +culture which will grow in the gardens they inclose. To me, at least, +this attitude of Nietzsche’s maturity seems the ample justification of +democracy. + +Nietzsche was not, however, greatly interested in questions of +government; he was far more deeply interested in questions of morals. +In his treatment of morals--no doubt chiefly in the last period--there +is a certain element of paradox. It must again be pointed out that this +is to be explained by the organic demands of Nietzsche’s own nature. +In attacking the excessive tendency to sympathy which he seemed to +see around him he was hygienically defending himself from his own +excessive sympathy. His sister quotes with a smile the declaration +that his Paradise lay beneath the shadow of his sword; we scarcely +need her assurance of his tender-hearted sensitiveness. He could +attack relentlessly, but he never attacked a person save as the symbol +of what he regarded as a false principle held in undeserved honour. +When he realised that the subject of such attack was really a living +person he was full of remorse. He attacked Strauss because Strauss +was the successful representative of a narrow ideal of culture; a few +months later Strauss died, having, it now appears, borne the onset +philosophically enough, and Nietzsche was full of grief lest he had +embittered the dying man’s last hours. It was because he had himself +suffered from the excesses of his own sympathy that he was able so +keenly to analyse the secrets of sympathy. He spoke as the Spanish poet +says that every poet--and indeed every seer--must always speak, _por +la boca de su herida_, through the mouth of his wound. That is why +his voice is often so poignantly intimate; it is also why we sometimes +find this falsetto note of paradox. In his last period, Nietzsche grows +altogether impatient of morals, calls himself an immoralist, fervently +exhorts us to become wickeder. But if any young disciple came to the +teacher asking, “What must I do to become wickeder?” it does not appear +that Nietzsche bade him to steal, bear false witness, commit adultery, +or do any other of the familiar and commonly-accepted wickednesses. +Nietzsche preached wickedness with the same solemn exaltation that +Carducci lauded Satan. What he desired was far indeed from any +rehabilitation of easy vice; it was the justification of neglected and +unsanctified virtues. + +At the same time, and while Nietzsche’s immoralist is just as austere +a person as the mere moralists who have haunted the world for many +thousand years, it is clear that Nietzsche wished strictly to limit the +sphere of morals. He never fails to point out how large a region of +life and art lies legitimately outside the moral jurisdiction. In an +age in which many moralists desire to force morals into every part of +life and art--and even assume a certain air of virtue in so doing--the +“immoralist” who lawfully vindicates any region for free cultivation is +engaged in a proper and wholesome task. + +No doubt, however, there will be some to question the value of such a +task. Nietzsche the immoralist can scarcely be welcome in every camp, +although he remains always a force to be reckoned with. The same may +be said of Nietzsche the freethinker. He was, perhaps, the typical +freethinker of the age that comes after Renan. Nietzsche had nothing +of Renan’s genial scepticism and smiling disillusionment; he was +less tender to human weakness, for all his long Christian ancestry +less Christian, than the Breton seminarist remained to the last. He +seems to have shaken himself altogether free of Christianity--so +free, that except in his last period he even speaks of it without +bitterness--though by no means wholly untouched by that nostalgia +of the cloister which now and then pursues even those of us who are +farthest from any faith in Christian dogma. He never sought, as +among ourselves Pater sought, the germ of Christianity in things +pagan, the undying essence of paganism in things Christian. Heathen +as he was, I do not think even Heine’s visions of the gods in exile +could have touched him; he never felt the charm of fading and faded +things. It is remarkable. It is scarcely less remarkable that, far +as he was from Christianity, he was equally far from what we usually +call “paganism,” the pasteboard paganism of easy self-indulgence and +cheerful irresponsibility. It was not so that he understood Hellenism. +Matthew Arnold once remarked that the Greeks were never sick or sad. +Nietzsche knew better. The greater part of Greek literature bears +witness that the Hellenes were for ever wrestling with the problems of +pain. And none who came after have more poignantly uttered the pangs of +human affairs, or more sweetly the consolations of those pangs, than +the great disciples of the Greeks who created the Roman world. The +classic world of nymphs and fauns is an invention of the moderns. The +real classic world, like the modern world, was a world of suffering. +The difference lay in the method of facing that suffering. Nietzsche +chose the classic method from no desire to sport with Amaryllis in +the shade, but because he had known forms of torture for which the +mild complacencies of modern faith seemed to offer no relief. If we +must regard Nietzsche as a pagan, it is as the Pascal of paganism. +The freethinker, it is true, was more cheerful and hopeful than the +believer, but there is the same tragic sincerity, the same restless +self-torment, the same sense of the abyss.[4] + +There still remains Nietzsche, the apostle of culture, the philosopher +engaged in the criticism of life. From first to last, wherever you +open his books, you light on sayings that cut to the core of the +questions that every modern thinking man must face. I take, almost at +random, a few passages from a single book: of convictions he writes +that “a man possesses opinions as he possesses fish, in so far as he +owns a fishing-net; a man must go fishing and be lucky, then he has +his own fish, his own opinions; I speak of living opinions, living +fish. Some men are content to possess fossils in their cabinets--and +convictions in their heads.” Of the problem of the relation of science +to culture he says well: “The best and wholesomest thing in science, as +in mountains, is the air that blows there. It is because of that air +that we spiritual weaklings avoid and defame science;” and he points +out that the work of science--with its need for sincerity, infinite +patience, complete self-abnegation--calls for men of nobler make than +poetry needs. When we have learnt to trust science and to learn from +it, then it will be possible so to tell natural history that “every +one who hears it is inspired to health and gladness as the heir and +continuer of humanity.” This is how he rebukes those foolish persons +who grow impatient with critics: “Remember that critics are insects +who only sting to live and not to hurt: they want our blood and not +our pain.” And he utters this wise saying, himself forgetting it in +later years: “Growth in wisdom may be exactly measured by decrease in +bitterness.” Nietzsche desires to prove nothing, and is reckless of +consistency. He looks at every question that comes before him with the +same simple, intent, penetrative gaze, and whether the aspects that he +reveals are new or old, he seldom fails to bring us a fresh stimulus. +Culture, as he understood it, consists for the modern man in the task +of choosing the simple and indispensable things from the chaos of crude +material which to-day overwhelms us. The man who will live at the level +of the culture of his time is like the juggler who must keep a number +of plates spinning in the air; his life must be a constant training in +suppleness and skill so that he may be a good athlete. But he is also +called on to exert his skill in the selection and limitation of his +task. Nietzsche is greatly occupied with the simplification of culture. +Our suppleness and skill must be exercised alone on the things that +are vital, essential, primitive; the rest may be thrown aside. He is +for ever challenging the multifarious materials for culture, testing +them with eye and hand; we cannot prove them too severely, he seems +to say, nor cast aside too contemptuously the things that a real man +has no need of for fine living. What must I do to be saved? What do I +need for the best and fullest life?--that is the everlasting question +that the teacher of life is called upon to answer. And we cannot be too +grateful to Nietzsche for the stern penetration--the more acute for his +ever-present sense of the limits of energy--with which he points from +amid the mass to the things which most surely belong to our eternal +peace. + +Nietzsche’s style has often been praised. The style was certainly the +man. There can be little doubt, moreover, that there is scarcely any +other German style to compare with it, though such eminence means +far less in a country where style has rarely been cultivated than it +would mean in France or even England. Sallust awoke his sense for +style, and may account for some characteristics of his style. He also +enthusiastically admired Horace as the writer who had produced the +maximum of energy with the minimum of material. A concentrated Roman +style, significant and weighty at every point, _ære perennius_, +was always his ideal. Certainly the philologist’s aptitudes helped +here to teach him the value and force of words, as jewels for the +goldsmith to work with, and not as mere worn-out counters to slip +through the fingers. One may call it a muscular style, a style wrought +with the skilful strength of hand and arm. It scarcely appeals to +the ear. It lacks the restful simplicity of the greatest masters, the +plangent melody, the seemingly unconscious magic quivering along our +finest-fibred nerves. Such effects we seem to hear now and again in +Schopenhauer, but rarely or never from any other German. This style +is titanic rather than divine, but the titanic virtues it certainly +possesses in fullest measure: robust and well-tempered vigour, +concentration, wonderful plastic force in moulding expression. It +becomes over-emphatic at last. When Nietzsche threw aside the dancer’s +ideal in order to “philosophise with the hammer,” the result on his +style was as disastrous as on his thought; both alike took on the +violent and graceless character of the same implement. He speaks indeed +of the virtue of hitting a nail on the head, but it is a less skilled +form of virtue than good dancing. + +Whether he was dancing or hammering, however, Nietzsche certainly +converted the whole of himself into his work, as in his view every +philosopher is bound to do, “for just that art of transformation +_is_ philosophy.” That he was entirely successful in being a “real +man” one may doubt. His excessive sensitiveness to the commonplace in +life, and his deficiency in the sexual instinct--however highly he +may have rated the importance of sex in life--largely cut him off +from true fellowship with the men who are most “real” to us. He was +less tolerant and less humane than his master Goethe; his incisive +insight, and, in many respects, better intellectual equipment, are +more than compensated by this lack of breadth. But, as his friend the +historian Burckhardt has said, he worked mightily for the increase +of independence in the world. Every man, indeed, works with the +limitations of his qualities, just as we all struggle beneath the +weight of the superincumbent atmosphere; our defects are even a part +of our qualities, and it would be foolish to quarrel with them. +Nietzsche succeeded in being himself, and it was a finely rare success. +Whether he was a “real man” matters less. With passionate sincerity +he expressed his real self and his best self, abhorring, on the one +hand, what with Voltaire and Verlaine he called “literature,” and, on +the other, all that mere indigested material, the result of mental +dyspepsia, of which he regarded Carlyle as the supreme warning. A +man’s real self, as he repeated so often, consists of the things which +he has truly digested and assimilated; he must always “conquer” his +opinions; it is only such conquests which he has the right to report to +men as his own. His thoughts are born of his pain; he has imparted to +them of his own blood, his own pleasure and torment. Nietzsche himself +held that suffering and even disease are almost indispensable to the +philosopher; great pain is the final emancipator of the spirit, those +great slow pains that take their time, and burn us up like green wood. +“I doubt whether such pain betters us,” he remarks, “but I know that it +deepens us.” That is the stuff of Nietzsche’s Hellenism, as expressed +in the most lighthearted of his books. _Virescit volnere virtus._ +It is that which makes him, when all is said, a great critic of life. + +It is a consolation to many--I have seen it so stated in a respectable +review--that Nietzsche went mad. No doubt also it was once a +consolation to many that Socrates was poisoned, that Jesus was +crucified, that Bruno was burnt. But hemlock and the cross and the +stake proved sorry weapons against the might of ideas even in those +days, and there is no reason to suppose that a doctor’s certificate +will be more effectual in our own. Of old time we killed our great men +as soon as their visionary claims became inconvenient; now, in our +mercy, we leave the tragedy of genius to unroll itself to the bitter +close. The devils to whom the modern Faustus is committed have waxed +cunning with the ages. Nietzsche has met, in its most relentless form, +the fate of Pascal and Swift and Rousseau. That fact may carry what +weight it will in any final estimate of his place as a moral teacher: +it cannot touch his position as an aboriginal force. He remains in +the first rank of the distinguished and significant personalities our +century has produced. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: This statement (made at the end of 1895) has ceased to +be true, but it explains the genesis of this study, and I leave it +standing.] + +[Footnote 2: The most convincing word-portrait of Nietzsche I have +met with (by M. Schuré) dates from the visit to Bayreuth:--“I was +struck both by the superiority of his intellect and the strangeness +of his face. A broad forehead, short hair brushed back, the prominent +cheek-bones of the Slav. The heavy moustache and the bold outline of +the face would have given him the aspect of a cavalry officer if it +had not been for his timid and haughty air. The musical voice and slow +speech indicated the artist’s organisation, while the circumspect +meditative carriage was that of a philosopher. Nothing more deceptive +than the apparent calm of his expression. The fixed eye revealed the +painful travail of thought. It was at once the eye of an acute observer +and a fanatical visionary. The double character of this gaze produced a +disquieted and disquieting impression, all the more so since it seemed +to be always fixed on a single point. In moments of effusion this gaze +was softened to a dream-like sweetness, but soon became hostile again.” +This picture is confirmed by Nietzsche’s sister, who also refers to his +“unusually large, beautiful, and brilliant eyes.”] + +[Footnote 3: One may be allowed to regret that Nietzsche was not +equally discriminating in his judgment of our country. Had he not +been blinded by the spiritual plebeianism of the nineteenth century +in England, he might also have discerned in certain periods some of +the same ardent and heroic qualities which he recognised in sixteenth +century France, the more easily since at that time the same Renaissance +wave had effected a considerable degree of spiritual union between +France and England. In George Chapman, for instance, at his finest and +lucidest moments the typical ethical representative of our greatest +literary age, Nietzsche would have found a man after his own heart, not +only one who scarcely yielded to himself in generous admiration of the +great qualities of the French spirit but a man of “absolute and full +soul” who was almost a precursor of his own “immoralism,” a lover of +freedom, of stoic self-reliance, one who was ever seeking to enlarge +the discipline of a fine culture in the direction of moral freedom and +dignity.] + +[Footnote 4: Pater’s description of the transition we may trace from +the easy prose of Pascal’s first book to the “perpetual _agonia_” +of his later work, applies with scarcely a change to the similar +transition in Nietzsche:--“Everywhere in the _Letters_ he had +seemed so great a master--a master of himself--never at a loss, taking +the conflict so lightly, with so light a heart: in the great Atlantean +travail of the _Thoughts_ his feet sometimes ‘are almost gone.’ +In his soul’s agony theological abstractions seem to become personal +powers.... In truth, into his typical diagnosis, as it may seem, of the +tragedy of the human soul, there have passed not merely the personal +feelings, the temperament of an individual, but his malady also, a +physical malady.”] + + + + + CASANOVA. + + +THERE are few more delightful books in the world than Casanova’s +_Mémoires_.--That is a statement I have long vainly sought to see +in print. It is true, one learns casually that various eminent literary +personages have cherished a high regard for this autobiography, have +even considered it the ideal autobiography, that Wendell Holmes was +once heard defending Casanova, that Thackeray found him good enough to +steal from. But these eminent personages--and how many more we shall +never know--locked up the secret of their admiration for this book in +some remote casket of their breasts; they never confided it to the +cynical world. Every properly constituted “man of letters” has always +recognised that any public allusion to Casanova should begin and end +with lofty moral reprobation of his unspeakable turpitude. + +No doubt whatever--and this apart from the question as to +whether his autobiography should be counted as moral or immoral +literature--Casanova delivered himself bound into the hands of the +moralists. He recognised this; his autobiography, as he himself truly +said, was “a confession, if ever there was one.” But he wrote at the +end of a long and full life, in the friendly seclusion of a lonely +Bohemian castle, when all things had become indifferent to him save +the vivid memories of the past. It mattered little to him that the +whirlwind of 1789 had just swept away the eighteenth century together +with the moral maxims that passed current in that century. We have to +accept these facts at the outset when we approach Casanova. And if a +dweller in the highly respectable nineteenth century may be forgiven a +first exclamation of horror at Casanova’s wickedness, he has wofully +failed in critical insight if he allows that exclamation to be his last +word concerning these _Mémoires_. + +There are at least three points of view from which Casanova’s +_Mémoires_ are of deep and permanent interest. In the first place +they constitute an important psychological document as the full and +veracious presentation of a certain human type in its most complete +development. In the second place, as a mere story of adventure and +without reference to their veracity, the _Mémoiries_ have never +been surpassed, and only equalled by books written on a much smaller +scale. In the third place, we here possess an unrivalled picture of +the eighteenth century in its most characteristic aspects throughout +Europe. + + + I. + +Casanova lived in an age which seems to have been favourable to the +spontaneous revelation of human nature in literature. It was not only +the age in which the novel reached full development; it was the age +of diaries and autobiographies. Pepys, indeed, though he died in the +eighteenth century, had written his diary long before; but during +Casanova’s lifetime Boswell was writing that biography which is so +wonderful largely because it is so nearly an autobiography. Casanova’s +communicative countryman, Gozzi, was also his contemporary. Rousseau’s +_Confessions_ only preceded Casanova’s _Mémoires_ by a few +years, and a little later Restif de la Bretonne wrote _Monsieur +Nicolas_, and Madame Roland her _Mémoires Particulières_. All +these autobiographies are very unlike Casanova’s. They mostly seem to +present the shady sides of otherwise eminent and respectable lives. +The highly-placed government official of versatile intellectual tastes +exhibits himself as a monster of petty weaknesses; the eloquent apostle +of the return to Nature uncovers the corroding morbidities we should +else never suspect; the philanthropic pioneer in social reform exposes +himself in a state of almost maniacal eroticism; the austere heroine +who was nourished on Plutarch confesses that she is the victim of +unhappy passion. We are conscious of no such discords in Casanova’s +autobiography. Partly it may be because we have no other picture of +Casanova before our eyes. Moreover, he had no conventional ideals to +fall short of; he was an adventurer from the first. “I am proud because +I am nothing,” he used to say. He could not boast of his birth; he +never held high position; for the greatest part of his active career he +was an exile; at every moment of his life he was forced to rely on his +own real and personal qualities. But the chief reason why we feel no +disturbing discord in Casanova’s _Mémoires_ lies in the admirable +skill with which he has therein exploited his unquestionable sincerity. +He is a consummate master in the dignified narration of undignified +experiences. Fortified, it is true, by a confessed and excessive +_amour propre_, he never loses his fine sense of equilibrium, his +power of presenting his own personality broadly and harmoniously. He +has done a few dubious things in his time, he seems to say, and now and +again found himself in positions that were ridiculous enough; but as he +looks back he feels that the like may have happened to any of us. He +views these things with complete human tolerance as a necessary part +of the whole picture, which it would be idle to slur over or apologise +for. He records them simply, not without a sense of humour, but with no +undue sense of shame. In his heart, perhaps, he is confident that he +has given the world one of its greatest books, and that posterity will +require of him no such rhetorical justification as Rousseau placed at +the head of his _Confessions_. + +In the preface to the _Mémoires_, Casanova is sufficiently frank. +He has not scrupled, he tells us, to defraud fools and rascals, “when +necessary,” and he has never regretted it. But such incidents have +been but episodes in his life. He is not a sensualist, he says, for he +has never neglected his duty--“when I had any”--for the allurements +of sense; yet the main business of his life has ever been in the +world of sense; “there is none of greater importance.” “I have always +loved women and have done my best to make them love me. I have also +delighted in good cheer, and I have passionately followed whatever has +excited my curiosity.” Now in old age he reviews the joys of his life. +He has learnt to be content with one meal a day, in spite of a sound +digestion, but he recalls the dishes that delighted him: Neapolitan +macaroni, Spanish olla podrida, Newfoundland cod, high-flavoured game, +old cheese (has he not collected material for a _Dictionnaire des +Fromages_?), and without any consciousness of abrupt transition +he passes on to speak of the fragrant sweetness of the women he had +loved. Then with a smile of pity he turns on those who call such tastes +depraved, the poor insensate fools who think the Almighty is only able +to enjoy our sorrow and abstinence, and bestows upon us for nought the +gift of self-respect, the love of praise, the desire to excel, energy, +strength, courage, and the power to kill ourselves when we will. And +with the strain of Stoicism which is ever present to give fibre to +his Epicureanism, he quotes the maxim which might well belong to both +philosophies: “Nemo læditur nisi a seipso.” + +The fact that Casanova was on one side a Venetian must count for +something in any attempt to explain him. Not indeed that Venice ever +produced more than one Casanova; I would imply no such disrespect to +Venice--or to Casanova--but the racial soil was favourable to such a +personality. The Venetians are a branch of a more northern people who +long since settled by the southern sea to grow mellow in the sunshine. +It suited them well, for they expanded into one of the finest races +in Christendom, and certainly one of the least Christian races there, +a solid, well-tempered race, self-controlled and self-respecting. The +Venetian genius is the genius of sensuous enjoyment, of tolerant +humanity, of unashamed earthliness. Whatever was sane and stable in +Casanova, and his instinctive distaste for the morbid and perverse, +he owes to his Venetian maternal ancestry. If it is true that he was +not a mere sensualist, it was by no means because of his devotion to +duty--“when I had any,”--but because the genuine sensualist is only +alive on the passive side of his nature, and in Casanova’s nervous +system the development of the sensory fibres is compensated and held +in balance by the equal vigour of the motor fibres; what he is quick +to enjoy he is strong and alert to achieve. Thus he lived the full and +varied life that he created for himself at his own good pleasure out +of nothing, by the sole power of his own magnificent wits. And now the +self-sufficing Venetian sits down to survey his work and finds that +it is good. It has not always been found so since. A “self-made” man, +if ever there was one, Casanova is not revered by those who worship +self-help. The record of his life will easily outlive the largest +fortune ever made in any counting-house, but the life itself remains +what we call a “wasted” life. Thrift, prudence, modesty, scrupulous +integrity, strict attention to business--it is useless to come to +Casanova for any of these virtues. They were not even in his blood; he +was only half Venetian. + +The Casanova family was originally Spanish. The first Casanova on +record was a certain Don Jacobo, of illegitimate birth, who in the +middle of the fifteenth century became secretary to King Alfonso. He +fell in love with a lady destined to the religious life, and the day +after she had pronounced her vows he carried her off from her convent +to Rome, where he finally obtained the forgiveness and benediction of +the Pope. The son of this union, Don Juan, killed an officer of the +King of Naples, fled from Rome, and sought fortune with Columbus, dying +on the voyage. Don Juan’s son, Marcantonio, secretary to a cardinal, +was noted in his day as an epigrammatic poet; but his satire was too +keen, and he also had to flee from Rome. His son became a colonel, +and, unlike his forefathers, died peacefully, in extreme old age, in +France. In this soldier’s grandson, Casanova’s father, the adventurous +impulsiveness of the family again came out; he ran away from home +at nineteen with a young actress, and himself became an actor; +subsequently he left the actress and then fell in love with a young +Venetian beauty of sixteen, Zanetta Farusi, a shoemaker’s daughter. But +a mere actor could find no favour in a respectable family, so the young +couple ran away and were married; the hero of these _Mémoires_, +born on the 2nd April, 1725, was their first-born. There is probably +no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of this family history, but +if one desired to invent an ancestry for Casanova he could scarcely +better it. + +His race helps to account for Casanova, but the real explanation of +the man can only lie in his own congenital organisation. That he was +a radically abnormal person is fairly clear. Not that he was morbid +either in body or mind. On the contrary, he was a man of fine presence, +of abounding health--always looking ten years younger than his age--of +the most robust appetites, a great eater, who delighted to see others, +especially women, eat heartily also, a man of indubitable sexual +vigour; however great the demands he made upon his physical energy +it seldom failed to respond, and his capacity for rest was equally +great; he could sleep nineteen hours at a stretch. His mental health +was not less sound. The most punctilious alienist, with this frank and +copious history before him, could not commit Casanova to an asylum. +Whatever offences against social codes he may have committed, Casanova +can scarcely be said to have sinned against natural laws. He was only +abnormal because so natural a person within the gates of civilisation +is necessarily abnormal and at war with his environment. Far from +being the victim of morbidities and perversities, Casanova presents +to us the natural man _in excelsis_. He was a man for whom the +external world existed, and who reacted to all the stimuli it presents +to the healthy normal organism. His intelligence was immensely keen +and alert, his resourcefulness, his sagacious audacity, his presence +of mind, were all of the first order. He was equally swift to feel, +to conceive, and to act. His mental organisation was thus singularly +harmonious, and hence his success in gratifying his eager and immense +appetite for the world, an appetite unsatiated and insatiable even +to the last, or he would have found no pleasure in writing these +_Mémoires_. Casanova has been described as a psychological type +of instability. That is to view him superficially. A man who adapts +himself so readily and so effectively to any change in his environment +or in his desires only exhibits the instability which marks the most +intensely vital organisms. The energy and ability which Casanova +displayed in gratifying his instincts would have sufficed to make a +reputation of the first importance in any department, as a popular +statesman, a great judge, a merchant prince, and enabled him to die +worn out by the monotonous and feverish toil of the senate, the court, +or the counting-house. Casanova chose to _live_. A crude and +barbarous choice it seems to us, with our hereditary instinct to spend +our lives in wasting the reasons for living. But it is certain that +Casanova never repented his choice. Assuredly we need not, for few +judges, statesmen, or merchants have ever left for the joy of humanity +any legacy of their toil equal to these _Mémoires_. + +But such swift energy of vital action and reaction, such ardour of +deed in keeping pace with desire, are in themselves scarcely normal. +Casanova’s abnormality is suggested by the tendency to abnormality +which we find in his family. We have seen what men his ancestors were; +in reading the _Mémoires_ we gather incidentally that one of his +brothers had married, though impotent, and another brother is described +as a somewhat feeble-minded ne’er-do-well. All the physical and mental +potency of the family was intensely concentrated in Casanova. Yet he +himself in early childhood seems to have been little better than an +idiot either in body or mind. He could recall nothing that happened +before he was eight years of age. He was not expected to live; he +suffered from prolonged hæmorrhages from the nose, and the vision +of blood was his earliest memory. As a child he habitually kept his +mouth open, and his face was stupid. “Thickness of the blood,” said +the physicians of those days; it seems probable that he suffered from +growths in the nose which, as we now know, produce such physical and +mental inferiority as Casanova describes. The cure was spontaneous. He +was taken to Padua, and shortly afterwards began to develop wonderfully +both in stature and intelligence. In after years he had little cause to +complain either of health or intellect. It is notable, however, that +when, still a boy, he commenced his ecclesiastical training (against +his wishes, for he had chosen to be a doctor), he failed miserably as a +preacher, and broke down in the pulpit; thus the Church lost a strange +ornament. Moreover, with all his swift sensation and alert response, +there was in Casanova an anomalous dulness of moral sensibility. +The insults to Holy Religion which seem to have brought him to that +prison from which he effected his marvellous escape, were scarcely the +serious protests of a convinced heretic; his deliberate trickery of +Mme. d’Urfé was not only criminal but cruel. His sense of the bonds +of society was always somewhat veiled, and although the veil never +became thick, and might be called the natural result of an adventurer’s +life, one might also, perhaps, maintain that it was a certain degree +of what is sometimes called moral imbecility that made Casanova an +adventurer. But while we thus have to recognise that he was a man of +dulled moral sensibility, we must also recognise that he possessed +a vigorous moral consciousness of his own, or we misunderstand him +altogether. The point to be remembered is that the threshold of +his moral sensibility was not easily reached. There are some people +whose tactile sensibility is so obtuse that it requires a very wide +separation of the æsthesiometer to get the right response. It was so +with Casanova’s moral sensitiveness. But, once aroused, his conscience +responded energetically enough. It seems doubtful whether, from his +own point of view, he ever fell into grave sin, and therefore he is +happily free from remorse. No great credit is thus due to him; the same +psychological characteristic is familiar in all criminals. It is not +difficult to avoid plucking the apples of shame when so singularly few +grow on your tree. + +Casanova’s moral sensibility and its limits come out, where a man’s +moral sensibility will come out, in his relations with women. Women +played a large part in Casanova’s life; he was nearly always in love. +We may use the word “love” here in no euphemistic sense, for although +Casanova’s passions grew and ripened with the rapidity born of long +experience in these matters, so fresh is the vitality of the man that +there is ever a virginal bloom on every new ardour. He was as far +removed from the cold-blooded libertine typified in Laclos’s Valmont, +unscrupulously using women as the instruments of his own lust, as from +Laura’s sonneteering lover. He had fully grasped what the latest +writer on the scientific psychology of sex calls the secondary law +of courting, namely, the development in the male of an imaginative +attentiveness to the psychical and bodily states of the female, in +place of an exclusive attentiveness to his own gratification. It is not +impossible that in these matters Casanova could have given a lesson to +many virtuous husbands of our own highly moral century. He never sank +to the level of the vulgar maxim that “all’s fair in love and war.” +He sought his pleasure in the pleasure, and not in the complaisance, +of the women he loved, and they seem to have gratefully and tenderly +recognised his skill in the art of love-making. Casanova loved many +women, but broke few hearts. The same women appear again and again +through his pages, and for the most part no lapse of years seems to +deaden the gladness with which he goes forth to meet them anew. That +he knew himself well enough never to take either wife or mistress must +be counted as a virtue, such as it was, in this incomparable lover of +so many women. A man of finer moral fibre could scarcely have loved so +many women; a man of coarser fibre could never have left so many women +happy. + +This very lack of moral delicacy which shuts Casanova off from the +finest human development is an advantage to the autobiographer. It +insures his sincerity because he is unconscious of offence; it saves +us from any wearisome self-justification, because, for all his amused +self-criticism, he sees no real need for justification. In Rousseau’s +_Confessions_ we hear the passionate pleader against men at +the tribunal of God; here we are conscious neither of opponent nor +tribunal. Casanova is neither a pillar of society nor yet one of the +moral Samsons who delight to pull down the pillars of society; he has +taken the world as it is, and he has taken himself as he is, and he +has enjoyed them both hugely. So he is free to set forth the whole of +himself, his achievements, his audacities, his failures, his little +weaknesses and superstitions, his amours, his quarrels, his good +fortune and his bad fortune in the world that on the whole he has found +so interesting and happy a place to dwell in. And his book remains an +unending source of delightful study of the man of impulse and action +in all his moods. The self-reliant man, immensely apt for enjoyment, +who plants himself solidly with his single keen wit before the mighty +oyster of the world, has never revealed himself so clearly before. + +What manner of man Casanova seemed to his contemporaries has only been +discovered of recent years; and while the picture which we obtain of +him has been furnished by his enemies, and was not meant to flatter, it +admirably supports the _Mémoires_. In 1755 a spy of the Venetian +Inquisition reported that Casanova united impiety, imposture, and +wantonness to a degree that inspired horror. It was in that same year +that he was arrested, chiefly on the charge of contempt for religion, +and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. Fifteen months later he +had effected his famous escape, and was able to pursue his career as +an assured and accomplished adventurer who had brilliantly completed +his apprenticeship. It is not until many years later, in 1772, when +his long efforts to obtain pardon from his country still remained +unsuccessful, that we obtain an admirable picture of him from the +Venetian agent at Ancona. “He comes and goes where he will,” the agent +reports, “with open face and haughty mien, always well equipped. He +is a man of some forty years at most [really about forty-eight, thus +confirming Casanova’s statement that he was always taken for some ten +years younger than his years], of lofty stature, of fine and vigorous +aspect, with bright eyes and very brown skin. He wears a short, +chestnut-coloured peruke. I am told that his character is bold and +disdainful, but especially that he is full of speech, and of witty and +well-instructed speech.” Two years later Casanova was at last permitted +to return to Venice. He there accepted the post of secret agent of +the State Inquisition for service within the city. Like Defoe and +Toland, who were also secret political agents, he attempted to justify +himself on grounds of public duty. In a few years, however, he was +dismissed, perhaps, as Baschet suggests, on account of the fact that +his reports contained too much philosophy and not enough espionage; +probably it was realised that a man of such powerful individuality +and independence was not fitted for servile uses. Finally, in 1782, +he was banished from Venice for an offence to which the blood of the +Casanovas had always been easily inclined--he published an audacious +satire against a patrician. From Venice he went to Trieste, and thence +to Vienna. There he met Count Waldstein, a fervent adept of Kabbalistic +science, a subject in which Casanova himself claimed to be proficient; +he had found it useful in certain dealings with credulous people. In +1784 the count offered him the post of librarian, with a salary of +one thousand florins, at his castle of Dux, in Bohemia. It is said to +be a fine castle, and is still noted for its charming park. Here this +prince of Bohemians spent the remainder of his life, devoting seven +years to the _Mémoires_, on which he was still engaged at his +death. A terra-cotta bust discovered at the castle (and etched some +years ago for _Le Livre_) shows him in mature age, a handsome, +energetic, and imposing head, with somewhat deep-set eyes; it is by +no means the head of a scamp, but rather that of a philosopher, a +philosopher with unusual experience of affairs, a successful statesman, +one might say. A medallion portrait, of later date, which has also +been reproduced, shows him at the age of sixty-three with lean, eager +face, and lofty, though receding forehead, the type of the man of +quick perception and swift action, the eagle type of man. The Prince +de Ligne has also left a description of him as he appeared in old age, +now grown very irritable, ready to flare up at any imagined insult, +engaged in perpetual warfare with domestics, but receiving the highest +consideration from those who knew how to appreciate the great qualities +of the man and his unequalled experiences, and who knew also how to +indulge his susceptibilities and smile at his antique fashions. Once +he went off in a huff to Weimar, and was graciously received by the +Duke, but he soon came back again; all the favours there were showered +on a certain court favourite, one Goethe. It is clear, as we read +the Prince de Ligne’s detailed description, that the restless old +adventurer had need, even in the peaceful seclusion of Dux, of all the +consolation yielded by Socrates, Horace, Seneca, and Boethius, his +favourite philosophers. Here, at Dux, on the 4th of June 1798, Casanova +died. “Bear witness that I have lived as a philosopher and die as a +Christian;” that, we are told, was his last utterance after he had +received the sacraments. + +From that moment Casanova with everything that concerned him was +covered by a pall of oblivion. He seems to have been carelessly cast +aside, together with the century of which he was so characteristic, +and, as it now appears, so memorable a child. The world in which he +had lived so joyously and completely had been transformed by the +Revolution. The new age of strenuous commercialism and complacent +philanthropy was in its vigorous youth, a sword in its right hand and +a Bible in its left. The only adventurer who found favour now was he +who took the glad news of salvation to the heathen, or mowed them +down to make new openings for trade. Had he been born later, we may +be well assured, Casanova would have known how to play his part; he +would not have fallen short of Borrow, who became an agent of the Bible +Society. But as it was, what had the new age to do with Casanova? No +one cared, no one even yet has cared, so much as to examine the drawers +and cupboards full of papers which he left behind at Dux. Only on the +13th of February, 1820, was the oblivion a little stirred. On that +date a certain Carlo Angiolieri appeared at Leipzig in the office of +the famous publisher, Brockhaus, carrying a voluminous manuscript in +the handwriting (as we now know) of Casanova and bearing the title, +_Histoire de ma Vie jusqu’à l’an 1797_. + +But even the appearance of Carlo Angiolieri failed to dissipate +the gloom. Fifty years more were to pass before the figure of +Casanova again became clear. This man, so ardently alive in every +fibre, had now become a myth. The sagacious world--which imparts +the largest dole of contempt to the pilgrim who brings back to it +the largest gifts--refused to take Casanova seriously. The shrewd +critic wondered who wrote Casanova, just as he has since wondered who +wrote Shakespeare. Paul Lacroix paid Stendhal the huge compliment of +suggesting that he had written the _Mémoires_, a sufficiently +ingenious suggestion, for in Stendhal’s Dauphiny spirit there is +something of that love of adventure which is supremely illustrated +in Casanova. But we now know that, as Armand Baschet first proved, +Casanova himself really wrote his own _Mémoires_. Moreover, so +far as investigation has yet been able to go, he wrote with strict +regard to truth. Wherever it is possible to test Casanova, his +essential veracity has always been vindicated. In the nature of things +it is impossible to verify much that he narrates. When, however, we +remember that he was telling the story of his life primarily for his +own pleasure, it is clear that he had no motive for deception; and +when we consider the surpassingly discreditable episodes which he +has recorded, we may recall that he has given not indeed positive +proof of sincerity, but certainly the best that can be given in the +absence of direct proof. It remains a question how far a man is able +to recollect the details of the far past--the conversations he held, +the garments he wore, the meals he ate--so precisely as Casanova +professes to recollect them. This is a psychological problem which +has not yet been experimentally examined. There are, however, great +individual differences in memory, and there is reason to believe that +an organisation, such as Casanova’s, for which the external world is +so vivid, is associated with memory-power of high quality. That this +history is narrated with absolute precision of detail Casanova himself +would probably not have asserted. But there is no reason to doubt his +good faith, and there is excellent reason to accept the substantial +accuracy of his narrative. It remains a personal document of a value +which will increase rather than diminish as time goes by. It is one of +the great autobiographical revelations which the ages have left us, +with Augustine’s, Cellini’s, Rousseau’s, of its own kind supreme. + + + II. + +The _Mémoires_ are authentic; they give us what they profess +to give us--the true story of a man who unites (as it has been well +said) the characters of Gil Blas and of Figaro. Thus Casanova was +the incarnation in real life of the two most typical imaginative +figures of his century. Yet even if the _Mémoires_ had been the +invention of some novelist of surpassing genius they would still +possess extraordinary interest. We may forget that the book is an +autobiography, and still find it, as a story of adventure, the +apotheosis of the picaresque novel. + +The picaresque novel--although a Frenchman brought it to perfection in +_Gil Blas_--arose and flourished in Spain, Casanova’s ancestral +country, and its piquancy, variety, and audacity seem to have been +very congenial to the Spanish spirit and the Spanish soil. Casanova’s +_Mémoires_ carry this form of story on to a broader and in some +respects higher plane. The old _picaro_ never dared affront +the world; he cringed before it and slunk behind its back to make +grimaces. Casanova, too, was an adventurer living by his wits, but he +approached the world with the same self-confidence as he approached +a beautiful woman, and having won its favours treats it with the +same consideration. Unlike the _picaro_ whose delight it is to +reveal the pettinesses of the men he has duped, Casanova shows his +magnificence in adventure by regarding the world as a foeman worthy +of all his courtesy; and with incomparable impartiality, as well as +skill, he presents to us the narrative of all the perils he encountered +or sought. Few old men sitting down in the evening of their days to +chatter of old times have been so free as Casanova from the vices of +senile literature. He never maunders of the things that are so dear to +the aged merely because they are past; he introduces no superfluous +reflections or comments. We recognise that the hand which keeps this +pen so surely to the point is the hand of a man of action. Casanova’s +skill in narrative is conspicuously shown in the love-adventures which +form so large and important a part of his book, as of his life. (Men +usually regard love as a bagatelle, he says somewhere, but, for his +own part, he adds, he has found no more important business in life.) +There would seem to be nothing so difficult as to tell a long series of +amours, unshrinkingly, from first to last, without drawing a curtain at +any stage. Nearly every writer in fiction or in autobiography who has +attempted this has only produced an effect of weary monotony or else +of oppressive closeness. But Casanova succeeds. Partly this is due to +the variety and individuality he is able to give, not only to every +incident, but to every woman he meets; so that his book is a gallery +of delightful women, drawn with an art that almost recalls his great +contemporary, Goethe. Partly it seems he was aided by his vivid and +sympathetic Venetian temperament; his swift, unliterary style finds +time for no voluptuous languors. He was aided even by his immodesty, +for in literature as in the plastic arts and in life itself, the nude +is nearer to virtue than the _décolleté_. The firm and absolute +precision of every episode in these _Mémoires_ leaves no room for +any undue dallying with the fringes of love’s garments. Casanova tells +his story swiftly and boldly, with no more delay than is needed to +record every essential detail; he is the absolute anti-type to Sterne +as a narrator; the most libertine of authors, he is yet free from +prurience. Thus the man of action covers the romancer with confusion; +this supreme book of adventures is a real man’s record of his own real +life. + +But let us forget that it is an autobiography and take it merely as a +story. Its immense range of human interest, its audacious realism, its +freedom from perversity, entitle us to regard it as a typical story of +adventure. And I ask myself: What is the relation of such a book to +life? what is the moral worth of Casanova’s _Mémoires_? + +A foolish, superfluous question, I know, it seems to many. And I am +willing to admit that there may possibly be things in life which it is +desirable to do, and yet undesirable to moralise over; I would even +assert that the moral worth of many of our actions lies precisely in +their unconsciousness of any moral worth. Yet beneath the freest moral +movements there must be a solid basis of social law, just as beneath +the most gracious movements of the human body there lies the regulated +play of mechanical law. When we find it assumed that there are things +which are good to do and not good to justify we may strongly suspect +that we have come across a mental muddle. + +To see the matter rightly we must take it at the beginning. No one +can rightly see the moral place of immoral literature--the literature +of adventure--in the case of adults unless he sees it in the case +of children. Of late years the people who write in newspapers and +magazines have loudly abused all stories of the crudely heroic order, +the stories of impossible virtue and unheard-of villainy in far-away +lands, of marvellously brave bands under extravagantly reckless +leaders, who march on through careless bloodshed to incredible victory +or incalculable treasure. The hero of the average boy--magnificent +sombrero on head, pistols in belt, galloping off on his mighty +charger, a villain grasped by the scruff of the neck in each +outstretched hand--has been severely mauled. The suggestions offered +for the displacement of this literature furnish documents for the +psychologist. Let us have cheap lives of Jesus and the Apostle Paul! +let us flood the world with the sober romances licensed by religious +societies!--say those good people in the newspapers and the magazines. +If they have ever themselves been children, and if so, how they came +into the world shrouded in an impenetrable caul which will for ever +shut them out from insight into the hearts of the young, is not known, +and perhaps is no matter. Putting aside these estimable persons, +there is in every heart a chamber dedicated to the impossible, and +the younger the heart the larger is this golden ventricle. For the +child who can just read, Jack the Giant-killer, and the story of those +human-souled swans which make the swan a mystic bird for all our lives, +are better worth knowing than any fact of the visible world. Some +day the Life of Jesus, and even perhaps the Life of Paul, will seem +to be among the sweetest and strangest of the world’s fairy-tales; +but that day will hardly come until every church and chapel has been +spiritually razed to the ground. It cannot come to the generation which +has had the name of Jesus thrust down its throat in Sunday-schools and +board-schools. We English are a practical, common-sense people, and +we cure our children of any hearty taste for religion as confectioners +are said to cure their assistants of any excessive taste for sweets, +by a preliminary surfeit. No doubt we are very wise, but we postpone +indefinitely the day when children will come to our religious tales in +the pure gladness of their joy in the marvellous. + +In the meantime there ought not to be any doubt that children should +be fed on fairy-tales as their souls’ most natural food. Nothing can +make up for the lack of them at the outset, just as no later supply of +milk can compensate for the starvation involved in feeding infants on +starch. The power of assimilating fairy-tales is soon lost, and unless +the child has a rarely powerful creative imagination its spiritual +growth on this side at least remains for ever stunted. + +If then childhood needs its pure fairy-land, and youth its fairy-land +of impossible adventure, what fairy-land is left for adult age? +Scarcely the novel. The modern novel in its finest manifestations, +however engrossingly interesting, takes us but a little step from +the passionate interests of our own lives. If I turn to the two +recent novels which have most powerfully interested me--Huysmans’ _En +Route_ and Hardy’s _Jude the Obscure_--I find that their interest +lies largely in the skill with which they present and concentrate +two mighty problems of actual life, the greatest of all problems, +religion and sex. In adult life we seek a fairy-land occupied by beings +at once as real as ourselves, and yet far removed from the sphere +of our own actual interests and the heavy burden of the atmosphere +under which we live; only so can it fascinate the imaginations of +those who have outgrown the simple imaginative joys of early life. +Casanova’s _Mémoires_ is the perfected type of the books which answer +these requirements. It is unflinchingly real, immensely varied, the +audaciously truthful narrative of undeniably human impulses. And yet +it carries us out of relation with the problems of our actual life; it +leads us into the realm of fairy-land. + +But--analysing the matter a little more closely--it may still fairly +be asked whether a book which, in spite of its remoteness, represents +a form of human life, must not have a certain bearing on morals. Is +not a part of its attraction, and indeed that of all fairy-lands, the +existence of a different code of morals? It seems to me that this is +so. But precisely in that lies the moral value of such literature. +Indeed the whole question of the moral value of art--that is to say, +of æsthetic enjoyment--is really involved here. The matter is worth +looking into. + +It is one of Schopenhauer’s unforgettable sayings, that whatever +course of action we take in life there is always some element in our +nature which could only find satisfaction in an exactly contrary +course; so that, take what road we will, we yet always remain restless +and unsatisfied in part. To Schopenhauer that reflection made for +pessimism; it need not. The more finely and adequately we adjust +ourselves to the actual conditions of our life the larger, no doubt, +the unused and unsatisfied region within us. But it is just here +that art comes in. Art largely counts for its effects on playing on +these unused fibres of our organism, and by so doing it serves to +bring them into a state of harmonious satisfaction--moralises them, +if you will. Alienists have described a distressing form of insanity +peculiar to old maids who have led honourable lives of abstinence +and abnegation. After years of seeming content with the conditions +of their lot they begin to manifest uncontrollable obsessions and +erotic impulses; the unused elements of life, which they had shut +down in the cellars of their souls and almost forgotten, have at last +arisen in rebellion, clamouring tumultuously for satisfaction. The +old orgies--the Saturnalian festival at Christmas and the Midsummer +Festival on St. John’s Day--bear witness that the ancients in their +wisdom recognised that the bonds of the actual daily moral life must +sometimes be relaxed lest they break from over-tension. We have lost +the orgy, but in its place we have art. Our respectable matrons no +longer send out their daughters with torches at midnight into the +woods and among the hills, where dancing and wine and blood may lash +into their flesh the knowledge of the mysteries of life, but they take +them to _Tristan_, and are fortunately unable to see into those +carefully brought-up young souls on such occasions. The moralising +force of art lies, not in its capacity to present a timid imitation +of our experiences, but in its power to go beyond our experience, +satisfying and harmonising the unfulfilled activities of our nature. +That art should have such an effect on those who contemplate it is not +surprising when we remember that, to some extent, art has a similar +influence on its creators. “Libertin d’esprit mais sage de mœurs,” it +was said of Watteau. Mohammed when he wrote so voluptuously of the +black-eyed houris of Paradise was still young and the blameless husband +of an aged woman. + + “Singing is sweet; but be sure of this, + Lips only sing when they cannot kiss.” + +It has been said of Wagner that he had in him the instincts of +an ascetic and of a satyr, and the first is just as necessary as +the second to the making of a great artist. It is a very ancient +observation that the most unchaste verse has often been written by +the chastest poets, and that the writers who have written most purely +have found their compensation in living impurely.[5] In the same +manner it has always been found in Christendom, both among Catholics +and Protestants, that much of the most licentious literature has been +written by the clergy, by no means because the clergy are a depraved +class, but precisely because the austerity of their lives renders +necessary for them these emotional athletics. Of course, from the +standpoint of simple nature, such literature is bad, it is merely a +form of that obscenity which, as Huysmans has acutely remarked, can, +only be produced by those who are chaste; in Nature desire passes +swiftly into action, leaving little or no trace on the mind. A certain +degree of continence--I do not mean merely in the region of sex but in +the other fields of human action also--is needed as a breeding-ground +for the dreams and images of desire to develop into the perfected +visions of art. But the point of view of society is scarcely that +of unadulterated nature. In society we have not always room for the +swift and free passage of impulse into action; to avoid the evils of +repressed impulse this play of the emotions on a higher and serener +plane becomes essential. Just as we need athletics to expand and +harmonise the coarser unused energies of the organism, so we need art +and literature to expand and harmonise its finer energies, emotion +being, as it may not be superfluous to point out, itself largely a +muscular process, motion in a more or less arrested form, so that there +is here more than a mere analogy. Art from this point of view is the +athletics of the emotions. + +The adventures of fairy-land--of which for our age I take Casanova’s +_Mémoires_ as the type--constitute an important part of this +athletics. It may be abused, just as we have the grosser excesses of +the runner and the cyclist; but it is the abuse and not the use which +is pernicious, and under the artificial conditions of civilisation the +contemplation of the life and adventures of the heroically natural +man is an exercise with fine spiritual uses. Such literature thus +has a moral value: it helps us to live peacefully within the highly +specialised routine of civilisation. + +That is the underlying justification for Casanova’s _Mémoires_ +as moral literature. But there is no reason why it should emerge into +consciousness when we take up these _Mémoires_, any more than +a man need take up a branch of physical athletics with any definite +hygienic aim. It is sufficient to be moved by the pure enjoyment of +it. And there must be something unwholesome and abnormal--something +corrupt at the core--in any civilised man or woman who cannot win some +enjoyment from this book. + + + III. + +The more I contemplate the eighteenth century the more interesting I +find it. In my youth it seemed to me unworthy of a glance. The books +and the men, Shelley above all, who stirred my young blood belonged to +the early nineteenth century. I was led to regard the last century as +a dull period of stagnation and decay, a tomb into which the spirit +of man sank after the slow death which followed the Renaissance. The +dawn of the nineteenth century was an Easter Day of the human soul, +rising from the sepulchre and flinging aside the old eighteenth century +winding-sheet. + +I have nothing yet to say against the early nineteenth century, which +was indeed only the outcome of the years that went before, but I have +gained a new delight in the men of the eighteenth century. It was in +that age that the English spirit found its most complete intellectual +expression, unaffected by foreign influence. When that spirit, reviving +after the wars that lamentably cut short the development of Chaucer’s +magnificent song, again began its free literary development--no doubt +with some stimulus from Humanism--it was suddenly smothered at birth +by the Renaissance wave from Italy and France. We may divine how it +would have developed independently if we think of John Heywood’s +dramatic sketches--pale as those are after the Miller’s tale in which +for the first and last time Chaucer perfectly mated English realism to +the lyric grace of English idealism--and to some extent, also, when +we turn to the later Heywood’s plays, or Dekker’s, and especially to +the robust and tolerant humanity, the sober artistic breadth of the +one play of Porter’s which has come down to us. But the intoxicating +melodies of Ronsard and his fellows were heard from over sea, and the +men of the English Renaissance arose--Lyly and Lodge and Campion with +their refinements, Greene and Nash with their gay and brilliant music, +Marlowe with his arrogant, irresistible energy--and brought to birth +an absolutely new spirit, which may have been English enough in its +rich and virginal elements, but received the seminal principle from +abroad. It needed a century and more for that magnificent tumult to +subside, and for the old English spirit to reappear and reach at last +full maturity, by happy chance again in association with France, though +this time it is England that chiefly plays the masculine part and +impregnates France. Thus the eighteenth century was an age in which the +English spirit found complete self-expression, and also an age in which +England and France joined hands intellectually, and stood together at +the summit of civilisation, with no rivals, unless Goethe and Kant may +suffice to stand for a whole people. In the great Englishmen of these +days we find the qualities which are truly native to Britain, and which +have too often been torn and distracted by insane aberrations. There +is a fine sobriety and sagacity in the English spirit, a mellow human +solidity, such as the Romans possessed always, but which we in our +misty and storm-swept island have often exchanged, perhaps for better, +but certainly for other qualities. It was not so in the eighteenth +century, and by no accident the historian who has most finely expressed +the genius of Rome was an eighteenth century Englishman. All the most +typical men of that age possessed in varying degree the same qualities: +Locke, Swift, Fielding, Hume, Richardson, Goldsmith, Hogarth, Johnson, +Godwin. Thus the eighteenth century should undoubtedly be a source of +pride to the British heart. England’s reputation in the world rests +largely on our poetic aptitudes and our political capacity. Eighteenth +century England is not obviously pre-eminent in either respect, +although it was the great age of our political development and the +seed-time of our second great poetic age; it produced scarcely more +than a single first-class poet exclusively within its limits, and it +lost America. Yet our greatest philosopher, our greatest historian, +our greatest biographer, nearly all our greatest novelists, our great +initiators in painting, who were indirectly the initiators of the +greater art of France, belong wholly to this century, and an unequalled +cluster of our greatest poets belongs to its close. And these men were +marked by sanity and catholicity, a superb solidity of spirit; they +became genuinely cosmopolitan without losing any of their indigenous +virtues. Without the eighteenth century we should never have known +many of the greatest qualities which are latent, and too often only +latent, in our race. Landor and Wordsworth alone were left to carry +something of the spirit of the English eighteenth century far on into +the literature of our own wholly alien century. + +And their brothers of France were their most worthy peers. This spirit, +indeed, which we see so conspicuously in the finest men of their age +in England and France, was singularly widespread throughout Europe, a +cheerful sobriety, a solid humanity, little troubled by any of those +“movements” which were to become so prolific and so noisy in the next +century. Christianity, it seemed, was decaying. Diderot, well informed +on English affairs, wrote to a friend that in a few years it would be +extinct, and looking at the state of the English Church at that time, +no one could reasonably have surmised that Zinzendorf in Germany, +and after him Wesley in England on a lower plane and Law on a higher +plane, had already initiated that revival of Christianity which in +our own century was destined to work itself out so obstreperously. +But the world seemed none the worse for the apparent subsidence +of Christianity; in the opinion of many it seemed to be very much +the better. The tolerant paganism of classic days appeared to be +reasserting itself, robustly in England, with a delicate refinement +in France,--setting the paganism of Watteau against the paganism +of Fielding--while Goethe and the Germans generally were striving +to rescue and harmonise the best of Christianity with the best of +antiquity. European civilisation was fully expanded; for a long time +no great disturbing force had arisen, and though on every side the +tender buds of coming growths might have been detected, they could not +yet reveal their strength. Such a period certainly has its terrible +defects; mellowness is not far from rottenness. But then youth also has +its defects, and its crude acidity is still further from perfection. +The nineteenth century has a higher moral standard than the eighteenth, +so at least we in our self-righteousness have been accustomed to +think. But even if so, the abstract existence of a high moral standard +is another thing from the prevalence of high moral living. Whatever +the standard may be, it is a question whether the lives are much +different. In the one case the standard is much above the practice, +in the other only a little above it--that is the chief difference. +And the advantages of winding the standard up to the higher pitch are +not so unmixed as is sometimes assumed. One need not question these +advantages, well recognised in the present century. But the advantages +of a lower standard are less often recognised. There is especially +the great advantage that we attain a higher degree of sincerity, and +sincerity, if not itself the prime virtue, is surely, whatever the +virtue may be, its chief accompaniment. A life that is swathed and +deformed in much drapery is not so wholesome or so effective as one +that can live nearer to the sun. And the unrecognisable villain is +most pernicious; the brigand who holds a revolver at your head is +better than the sleek and well-dressed thief who opens the proceedings +with prayer. The eighteenth has been called a gross and unintelligent +century. In the department of criticism, indeed, this century in +England (for it was far otherwise in Germany) comes very short of our +own century, and it is largely this failure to measure the precise +value of things in æsthetic perception which now makes that age seem +so shocking. From this point of view every great age--and not least +our own greatest Elizabethan age--is equally defective. A period +of energetic life cannot afford to spend much time on the solitary +contemplation of its own bowels of æsthetic emotion. To produce a Pater +is the one exquisite function of a spiritually barren and exhausted +age. And still the eighteenth century redeems its critical grossness +by making even this later development possible; it lifted the man of +letters from the place of a dependent to the place of a free man boldly +prophesying in his own right; and, moreover, it was the first century +which dared to claim the complete equality of men and women with all +which that involves. + +If it has required a certain insight for the child of our own century +to discover the great qualities of the last century, there cannot be +much doubt about the final judgment of the most competent judges. +The eighteenth was, as Renouvier has called it, the first century +of humanity since Christ, while at the same time, as Lange has said, +it was penetrated through by the search for the ideal, or, as a more +recent thinker concludes, it was a century dominated by the maxim +_Salus populi suprema est lex_, holding in its noble aspirations +after general happiness the germs of all modern socialism. In art and +literature it saw the fresh spring of those blossoms which opened so +splendidly and faded so swiftly in our century; it was the century not +only of Hogarth and Fielding and Voltaire, but of Blake and Rousseau, +of Diderot, of Swedenborg and Mesmer, of the development of modern +music with Mozart and Beethoven, of the unparalleled enthusiasm +awakened by the discovery of the Keltic world. And as its crowning +glory the eighteenth century claims Goethe. Men will scarcely look +back to our own century as so good to live in. One may well say that +he would have gladly lived in the thirteenth century, perhaps the most +interesting of all since Christ, or in the sixteenth, probably the most +alive of all, or the eighteenth, surely the most human. But why have +lived in the nineteenth, the golden age of machinery, and of men used +as machines? + +Eighteenth century Europe, being what it was, formed a perfect stage +for Casanova to play his part on. With his Spanish and Italian blood, +he was of the race of those who had come so actively to the front +in the last days of old classic Rome, and his immediate ancestors +had lived in the centre of the pagan Rome of the Renaissance. Thus +he carried with him traditions which consorted well with much in +the eighteenth century. And he had that in him, moreover, which no +tradition can give, the incommunicable vitality in the presence of +which all tradition shrivels into nothingness. + +Casanova knew not only Italy, France, England, Germany, and Holland; +he had visited Spain, Russia, Poland, Greece, Turkey, and Asia Minor. +He was received by Benedict XII., by Frederick II. of Prussia, by the +Empress Catherine, by Joseph II. He was at home in Paris, in London, +in Berlin, in Vienna; he knew Munich, Dresden, Moscow, St. Petersburg, +Warsaw, Barcelona. His picture of London is of great interest. He +spent much of the year 1763 there, and some of his most interesting +experiences, romantic and psychological, occurred during that period. +He even dated the close of what he calls the second act in the comedy +of his life from that visit to London, the next and concluding act +being one of slow declination. So profound was his depression at this +time that one day he went towards the Thames at the Tower with the +deliberate intention of drowning himself, having first filled his +pockets with bullets to ensure sinking. Fortunately an English friend +(to whom the world owes thanks) met him on the way, read his resolve +in his face, and insisted on carrying him off to a very convivial +party, whose indecorous proceedings, although Casanova only remained +a passive witness, served to dissipate all thoughts of suicide. He +is not, however, prejudiced against England; on the contrary, he +finds that no nation offers so many interesting peculiarities to the +attentive observer. As usual, in London Casanova mixed indiscriminately +with the best and the worst society; his wit, his knowledge, his +imperturbable effrontery, his charming conversation, served to open +any door that he desired to open. He gives us curious glimpses into +the lives of English noblemen of the day, and not less intimate +pictures of the _chevaliers d’industrie_ who preyed upon them. +In the course of one adventure with people of the latter sort he was +haled before the eminent blind magistrate Sir John Fielding, whom +he seems to have mistaken, though this is not quite clear, for his +yet more eminent brother Henry. He also met Kitty Fischer, the most +fashionable _cocotte_ of her day, whom we may yet see as Reynolds +caught her in a well-inspired moment, dilating her sensitive nostrils, +radiantly inhaling the joy of life, and he tells us anecdotes of her +extravagance, of the jewels she wore, of the thousand guinea banknote +which she ate in a sandwich.[6] + +Throughout Europe Casanova knew many of the most celebrated people +of his time, though it is clear--as one would expect from a man of +his impartial humanity--he seldom went out of his way to meet them. +His visit to Voltaire is a distinct contribution to our knowledge +of that sage; he admired Helvetius, and wondered how a man of so +many virtues could have denied virtue; D’Alembert he thought the +most truly modest man he had ever met, an interesting tribute from +the most truly immodest man of that period. The value of Casanova’s +record of the eighteenth century lies, however, by no means in the +glimpses he has given us of great personalities: that has been much +better done by much more insignificant writers. It is as a picture of +the manners and customs of the eighteenth century throughout Europe +that the _Mémoires_ are invaluable. Casanova saw Europe from +the courts of kings to the lowest _bas fonds_. He lived in the +castles of French and Italian nobles, in the comfortable homes of +Dutch merchants, in his own house in Pall Mall, in taverns and inns +and peasants’ cottages anywhere. He had no intellectual prejudices, +he had an immense versatility in tastes and practical aptitudes, he +was genuinely interested in all human things. Thus he approached life +with no stereotyped set of opinions, but with all the aloofness of an +unclassed adventurer, who was at the same time a scholar and a man of +letters. It can scarcely be that there is any record to compare with +this as a vivid and impartial picture of the eighteenth century, in its +robust solidity, its cheerful and tolerant scepticism, its serene and +easy gaiety, its mellow decay. That is our final debt to this unique +and immortal book. + + +What should be our last word about Casanova? It is true that +although--if indeed one should not say because--he was so heroically +natural Casanova was not an average normal man. It is scarcely given +to the average man to expend such versatile and reckless skill in the +field of the world, or to find so large a part wherein to play off that +skill. But neither are the saints and philosophers normal; St. Bernard +was not normal, nor yet Spinoza. And surely it is a poor picture of +the world which would show us St. Bernard and Spinoza and shut out +Casanova. “Vous avez l’outil universel,” Fabrice said to Gil Blas. +Casanova’s brain was just such a tool of universal use, and he never +failed to use it. For if you would find the supreme type of the human +animal in the completest development of his rankness and cunning, in +the very plenitude of his most excellent wits, I know not where you may +more safely go than to the _Mémoires_ of the self-ennobled Jacques +Casanova Chevalier de Seingalt. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 5: I take the first example which comes to hand, for whatever +it may be worth:--“Luttrell was talking of Moore and Rogers--the +poetry of the former so licentious, that of the latter so pure; much +of its popularity owing to its being so carefully weeded of everything +approaching to indelicacy; and the contrast between the _lives_ +and the _works_ of the two men--the former a pattern of conjugal +and domestic regularity, the latter of all the men he had ever known +the greatest sensualist” (Greville’s _Memoirs_, vol. iii. p. 324).] + +[Footnote 6: For another side of life we may read his description of +the English Sunday:--“On Sunday one dares neither to play at cards +nor to perform music. The numerous spies who infest the streets of +this capital listen to the sounds which come from the parlours of +the houses, and if they suspect any gaming or singing they conceal +themselves and slip in at the first opportunity to seize those bad +Christians who dare to profane the Lord’s Day by amusements which +everywhere else are counted innocent. In revenge the English may go +with impunity to sanctify the holy day in the taverns and brothels +which are so plentiful in this city.” One may compare with this Mme. +de Staël’s almost Dantesque description--so at least it remains in the +memory--of the gloom of the Scotch Sabbath in the days of Burns. This +statement of the matter remained substantially accurate until almost +yesterday. So long it remained for the English spirit to re-conquer +Sunday! It must be remembered that Puritanism, while always a part of +the English spirit, was not originally its predominant note; it only +became so as an inevitable reaction against the exotic Renaissance +movement. Mary Stuart made Knox, Charles I. made Cromwell, and +both monarchs were intimately associated with the last wave of the +Renaissance.] + + + + + ZOLA. + + +ZOLA’S name--a barbarous, explosive name, like an anarchist’s bomb--has +been tossed about amid hoots and yells for a quarter of a century. +In every civilised country we have heard of the man who has dragged +literature into the gutter, who has gone down to pick up the filth of +the streets, and has put it into books for the filthy to read. And +in every civilised country his books have been read, by the hundred +thousand. + +To-day, his great life-work is completed. At the same time, the +uproar that it aroused has, to a large extent, fallen silent. Not +that there is any general agreement as to the rank of the author of +the Rougon-Macquart series; but the storms that greeted it have worn +themselves out, and it is recognised that there are at least two sides +to this as to any other question. Such a time is favourable to the calm +discussion of Zola’s precise position. + +The fundamental assertion of those who, in their irreconcilable +opposition to Zola, have rightly felt that abuse is not argument, has +always been that Zola is no artist. The matter has usually presented +itself to them as a question of Idealism _versus_ Realism. +Idealism, as used by the literary critic, seems to mean a careful +selection of the facts of life for artistic treatment, certain facts +being suited for treatment in the novel, certain other facts being +not so suited; while the realist, from the literary critic’s point of +view, is one who flings all facts indiscriminately into his pages. I +think that is a fair statement of the matter, for the literary critic +does not define very clearly; still less does he ask himself how far +the idealism he advocates is merely traditional, nor, usually, to +what extent the manner of presentation should influence us. He does +not ask himself these questions, nor need we ask him, for in the case +of Zola (or, indeed, of any other so-called “realist”) there is no +such distinction. There is no absolute realism, merely a variety of +idealisms; the only absolute realism would be a phonographic record, +illustrated photographically, after the manner of the cinematograph. +Zola is just as much an idealist as George Sand. It is true that he +selects very largely from material things, and that he selects very +profusely. But the selection remains, and where there is deliberate +selection there is art. We need not trouble ourselves here--and I doubt +whether we are ever called upon to trouble ourselves--about “Realism” +and “Idealism.” The questions are: Has the artist selected the right +materials? Has he selected them with due restraint? + +The first question is a large one, and, in Zola’s case at all events, +it cannot, I think, be answered on purely æsthetic grounds; the second +may be answered without difficulty. Zola has himself answered it; he +admits that he has been carried away by his enthusiasm, and perhaps, +also, by his extraordinary memory for recently-acquired facts (a memory +like a sponge, as he has put it, quickly swollen and quickly emptied); +he has sown details across his page with too profuse a hand. It is +the same kind of error as Whitman made, impelled by the same kind of +enthusiasm. Zola expends immense trouble to get his facts; he has told +how he ransacked the theologians to obtain body and colour for _La +Faute de l’Abbé Mouret_, perhaps the best of his earlier books. But +he certainly spent no more preliminary labour on it than Flaubert spent +on _Madame Bovary_, very far less than Flaubert spent on the study +of Carthage for _Salammbô_. But the results are different; the +one artist gets his effects by profusion and multiplicity of touches, +the other by the deliberate self-restraint with which he selects and +emphasises solely the salient and significant touches. The latter +method seems to strike more swiftly and deeply the ends of art. Three +strokes with the brush of Frans Hals are worth a thousand of Denner’s. +Rich and minute detail may impress us, but it irritates and wearies in +the end. If a man takes his two children on to his knees, it matters +little whether he places Lénore on his right knee and Henri on his +left, or the other way about; the man himself may fail to know or to +realise, and the more intense his feelings the less likely is he to +know. When we are living deeply, the facts of our external life do not +present themselves to us in elaborate detail; a very few points are--as +it has been termed--focal in consciousness, while the rest are marginal +in subconsciousness. A few things stand out vividly at each moment of +life; the rest are dim. The supreme artist is shown by the insight +and boldness with which he seizes and illuminates these bright points +at each stage, leaving the marginal elements in due subordination. +Dramatists so unlike as Ford and Ibsen, novelists so unlike as Flaubert +and Tolstoi, yet alike impress us by the simple vividness of their +artistic effects. The methods adopted by Zola render such effects +extremely difficult of attainment. Perhaps the best proof of Zola’s +remarkable art is the skill with which he has neutralised the evil +results of his ponderous method. In his most characteristic novels, as +_L’Assommoir_, _Nana_, _Germinal_, his efforts to attain +salient perspective in the mass of trivial or technical things--to +build a single elaborate effect out of manifold details--are often +admirably conducted. Take, for instance, the Voreux, the coal-pit which +may almost be said to be the hero of _Germinal_ rather than any +of the persons in the book. The details are not interesting, but they +are carefully elaborated, and the Voreux is finally symbolised as a +stupendous idol, sated with human blood, crouching in its mysterious +sanctuary. Whenever Zola wishes to bring the Voreux before us, this +formula is repeated. And it is the same, in a slighter degree, with the +other material personalities of the book. Sometimes, in the case of a +crowd, this formula is simply a cry. It is so with the Parisian mob +who yell “A Berlin!” in the highly-wrought conclusion to _Nana_; +it is so with the crowd of strikers in _Germinal_ who shout for +bread. It is more than the tricky repetition of a word or a gesture, +overdone by Dickens and others; it is the artful manipulation of a +carefully-elaborated, significant phrase. Zola seems to have been the +first who has, deliberately and systematically, introduced this sort of +_leit-motiv_ into literature, as a method of summarising a complex +mass of details, and bringing the total impression of them before +the reader. In this way he contrives to minimise the defects of his +method, and to render his complex detail focal. He sometimes attains +poignantly simple effects by the mere repetition of a _leit-motiv_ +at the right moment. And he is able at times, also, to throw aside his +detailed method altogether, and to reach effects of tragic intensity. +The mutilation of Maigrat’s corpse is a scene which can scarcely have +been described in a novel before. Given the subject, Zola’s treatment +of it has the strength, brevity, and certainty of touch which only +belong to great masters of art. That Zola is a great master of his art, +_L’Assommoir_ and _Germinal_--which, so far as I have read +Zola, seem his two finest works--are enough to prove. Such works are +related to the ordinary novel much as Wagner’s music-dramas are related +to the ordinary Italian opera. Wagner reaches a loftier height of art +than Zola; he had a more complete grasp of all the elements he took in +hand to unite. Zola has not seen with sufficient clearness the point of +view of science, and the limits of its capacity for harmonising with +fiction; nor has he with perfect sureness of vision always realised the +ends of art. He has left far too much of the scaffolding standing amid +his huge literary structures; there is too much mere brute fact which +has not been wrought into art. But, if Zola is not among the world’s +greatest artists, I do not think we can finally deny that he is a great +artist. + +To look at Zola from the purely artistic standpoint, however, is +scarcely to see him at all. His significance for the world generally, +and even for literature, lies less in a certain method of using his +material--as it may be said to lie, for example, in the case of the +Goncourts--than in the material itself, and the impulses and ideas that +prompted his selection of that material. These growing piles of large +books are the volcanic ejecta of an original and exuberant temperament. +To understand them we must investigate this temperament. + +A considerable and confused amount of racial energy was stored up +in Zola. At once French, Italian, and Greek--with a mother from +the central Beauce country of France, more fruitful in corn than +in intellect, and a father of mixed Italian and Greek race, a +mechanical genius in his way, with enthusiastic energies and large +schemes--he presents a curious combination of potential forces, +perhaps not altogether a very promising combination. One notes that +the mechanical engineer in the father seems to have persisted in the +son, not necessarily by heredity, but perhaps by early familiarity +and association. Young Zola was a delicate child and by no means a +brilliant schoolboy, though he once won a prize for memory; such +ability as he showed was in the direction of science; he had no +literary aptitudes. He seems to have adopted literature chiefly because +pen and ink come handiest to the eager energies of a poor clerk. It +is scarcely fanciful to detect the mechanical aptitudes still. Just +as all Huxley’s natural instincts were towards mechanics, and in +physiology he always sought for the “go” of the organism, so Zola, +however imperfect his scientific equipment may be, has always sought +for the “go” of the social organism. The history of the Rougon-Macquart +family is a study in social mathematics: given certain family strains, +what is the dynamic hereditary outcome of their contact? + +To the making of Zola there went, therefore, this curious racial blend, +as a soil ready to be fertilised by any new seed, and a certain almost +instinctive tendency to look at things from the mechanical and material +point of view. To these, in very early life, a third factor was added +of the first importance. During long years after his father’s death, +Zola, as a child and youth, suffered from poverty, poverty almost +amounting to actual starvation, the terrible poverty of respectability. +The whole temper of his work and his outlook on the world are clearly +conditioned by this prolonged starvation of adolescence. The timid and +reserved youth--for such, it is said, has been Zola’s character both +in youth and manhood--was shut up with his fresh energies in a garret +while the panorama of the Paris world was unfolded below him. Forced +both by circumstances and by temperament to practise the strictest +chastity and sobriety, there was but one indulgence left open to him, +an orgy of vision. Of this, as we read his books, we cannot doubt that +he fully availed himself, for each volume of the Rougon-Macquart series +is an orgy of material vision.[7] + +Zola remained chaste, and, it is said, he is still sober--though we +are told that his melancholy morose face lights up like a gourmet’s at +the hour of his abstemious dinner--but this early eagerness to absorb +the sights as well as the sounds, and one may add the smells, of the +external world, has at length become moulded into a routine method. +To take some corner of life, and to catalogue every detail of it, to +place a living person there, and to describe every sight and smell +and sound around him, although he himself may be quite unconscious of +them--that, in the simplest form, is the recipe for making a _roman +expérimental_. The method, I wish to insist, was rooted in the +author’s experience of the world. Life only came to him as the sights, +sounds, smells, that reached his garret window. His soul seems to +have been starved at the centre, and to have encamped at the sensory +periphery. He never tasted deep of life, he stored up none of those +wells of purely personal emotion from which great artists have hoisted +up the precious fluid which makes the bright living blood of their +creations. How different he is in this respect from the other great +novelist of our day, who has also been a volcanic force of world-wide +significance! Tolstoi comes before us as a man who has himself lived +deeply, a man who has had an intense thirst for life, and who has +satisfied that thirst. He has craved to know life, to know women, the +joy of wine, the fury of battle, the taste of the ploughman’s sweat +in the field. He has known all these things, not as material to make +books, but as the slaking of instinctive personal passions. And in +knowing them he has stored up a wealth of experiences from which he +drew as he came to make books, and which bear about them that peculiar +haunting fragrance only yielded by the things which have been lived +through, personally, in the far past. Zola’s method has been quite +otherwise: when he wished to describe a great house he sat outside +the palatial residence of M. Menier, the chocolate manufacturer, and +imagined for himself the luxurious fittings inside, discovering in +after years that his description had come far short of the reality; +before writing _Nana_, he obtained an introduction to a courtesan, +with whom he was privileged to lunch; his laborious preparation for the +wonderful account of the war of 1870, in _La Débâcle_, was purely +one of books, documents, and second-hand experiences; when he wished +to write of labour he went to the mines and to the fields, but never +appears to have done a day’s manual work. Zola’s literary methods are +those of the _parvenu_ who has tried to thrust himself in from +outside, who has never been seated at the table of life, who has never +really lived. That is their weakness. It is also their virtue. There +is no sense of satiety in Zola’s work as there is in Tolstoi’s. One +can understand how it is that, although their methods are so unlike, +Tolstoi himself regards Zola as the one French novelist of the day +who is really alive. The starved lad, whose eyes were concentrated +with longing on the visible world, has reaped a certain reward from +his intellectual chastity; he has preserved his clearness of vision +for material things, an eager, insatiable, impartial vision. He is a +zealot in his devotion to life, to the smallest details of life. He has +fought like the doughtiest knight of old-world romance for his lady’s +honour, and has suffered more contumely than they all. “On barde de fer +nos urinoirs!” he shouts in a fury of indignation in one of his essays; +it is a curious instance of the fanatic’s austere determination that +no barrier shall be set up to shut out the sights and smells of the +external world. The virgin freshness of his thirst for life gives its +swelling, youthful vigour to his work, its irrepressible energy. + +It has, indeed, happened with this unsatisfied energy as it will +happen with such energies; it has retained its robustness at the +sacrifice of the sweetness it might otherwise have gained. There is a +certain bitterness in Zola’s fury of vision, as there is also in his +gospel of “Work! work! work!” One is conscious of a savage assault on +a citadel which, the assailant now well knows, can never be scaled. +Life cannot be reached by the senses alone; there is always something +that cannot be caught by the utmost tension of eyes and ears and nose; +a well-balanced soul is built up, not alone on sensory memories, +but also on the harmonious satisfaction of the motor and emotional +energies. That cardinal fact must be faced even when we are attempting +to define the fruitful and positive element in Zola’s activity. + +The chief service which Zola has rendered to his fellow-artists and +successors, the reason of the immense stimulus he supplies, seems to +lie in the proofs he has brought of the latent artistic uses of the +rough, neglected details of life. The Rougon-Macquart series has been +to his weaker brethren like that great sheet knit at the four corners, +let down from Heaven full of four-footed beasts and creeping things +and fowls of the air, and bearing in it the demonstration that to the +artist as to the moralist nothing can be called common or unclean. It +has henceforth become possible for other novelists to find inspiration +where before they could never have turned, to touch life with a vigour +and audacity of phrase which, without Zola’s example, they would have +trembled to use, while they still remain free to bring to their work +the simplicity, precision, and inner experience which he has never +possessed. Zola has enlarged the field of the novel. He has brought +the modern material world into fiction in a more definite and thorough +manner than it has ever been brought before, just as Richardson +brought the modern emotional world into fiction; such an achievement +necessarily marks an epoch. In spite of all his blunders, Zola has +given the novel new power and directness, a vigour of fibre which was +hard indeed to attain, but which, once attained, we may chasten as we +will. And in doing this he has put out of court, perhaps for ever, +those unwholesome devotees of the novelist’s art who work out of their +vacuity, having neither inner nor outer world to tell of. + +Zola’s delight in exuberant detail, it is true, is open to severe +criticism. When, however, we look at his work, not as great art but +as an important moment in the evolution of the novel, this exuberance +is amply justified. Such furious energy in hammering home this +demonstration of the artistic utility of the whole visible modern +world may detract from the demonstrator’s reputation for skill; +it has certainly added to the force of the demonstration. Zola’s +luxuriance of detail--the heritage of that romantic movement of which +he was the child--has extended impartially to every aspect of life +he has investigated, to the working of a mine, to the vegetation of +the Paradou, to the ritual of the Catholic Church. But it is not on +the details of inanimate life, or the elaborate description of the +industrial and religious functions of men, that the rage of Zola’s +adversaries has chiefly been spent. It is rather on his use of the +language of the common people and on his descriptions of the sexual and +digestive functions of humanity. Zola has used slang--the _argot_ +of the populace--copiously, chiefly indeed in _L’Assommoir_, which +is professedly a study of low life, but to a less extent in his other +books. A considerable part of the power of _L’Assommoir_, in many +respects Zola’s most perfect work, lies in the skill with which he uses +the language of the people he is dealing with; the reader is bathed +throughout in an atmosphere of picturesque, vigorous, often coarse +_argot_. There is, no doubt, a lack of critical sobriety in the +profusion and reiteration of vulgarisms, of coarse oaths, of the varied +common synonyms for common things. But they achieve the end that Zola +sought, and so justify themselves. + +They are of even greater interest as a protest against the exaggerated +purism which has ruled the French language for nearly three centuries, +and while rendering it a more delicate and precise instrument for +scientific purposes, has caused it to become rather bloodless and +colourless for the artist’s purposes, as compared with the speech used +by Rabelais, Montaigne, and even Molière, the great classics who have +chiefly influenced Zola. The romantic movement of the present century, +it is true, added colour to the language, but scarcely blood; it was +an exotic, feverish colour which has not permanently enriched French +speech. A language rendered anæmic by over-clarification cannot be +fed by exotic luxuries but by an increase in the vigorous staples of +speech, and Zola was on the right track when he went to the people’s +common speech, which is often classic in the true sense and always +robust. Doubtless he has been indiscriminate and even inaccurate in +his use of _argot_, sometimes giving undue place to what is of +merely temporary growth. But the main thing was to give literary place +and prestige to words and phrases which had fallen so low in general +esteem, in spite of their admirable expressiveness, that only a writer +of the first rank and of unequalled audacity could venture to lift them +from the mire. This Zola has done; and those who follow him may easily +exercise the judgment and discretion in which he has been lacking. + +Zola’s treatment of the sexual and the digestive functions, as I +pointed out, has chiefly aroused his critics. If you think of it, these +two functions are precisely the central functions of life, the two +poles of hunger and love around which the world revolves. It is natural +that it should be precisely these fundamental aspects of life which in +the superficial contact of ordinary social intercourse we are for ever +trying more and more to refine away and ignore. They are subjected +to an ever-encroaching process of attenuation and circumlocution, +and as a social tendency this influence is possibly harmless or even +beneficial. But it is constantly extending to literature also, and +here it is disastrous. It is true that a few great authors--classics +of the first rank--have gone to extremes in their resistance to this +tendency. These extremes are of two kinds: the first issuing in a sort +of coprolalia, or inclination to dwell on excrement, which we find to a +slight extent in Rabelais and to a marked extent in the half-mad Swift; +in its fully-developed shape this coprolalia is an uncontrollable +instinct found in some forms of insanity. The other extreme is that +of pruriency, or the perpetual itch to circle round sexual matters, +accompanied by a timidity which makes it impossible to come right +up to them; this sort of impotent fumbling in women’s placket-holes +finds its supreme literary exponent in Sterne. Like coprolalia, +when uncontrolled, prurience is a well-recognised characteristic of +the insane, leading them to find a vague eroticism everywhere. But +both these extreme tendencies have not been found incompatible with +the highest literary art. Moreover, their most pronounced exponents +have been clerics, the conventional representatives of the Almighty. +However far Zola might go in these directions, he would still be in +what is universally recognised as very good company. He has in these +respects by no means come up with Father Rabelais and Dean Swift and +the Rev. Laurence Sterne; but there can be little doubt that, along +both lines, he has missed the restraint of well-balanced art. On the +one hand he over-emphasises what is repulsive in the nutritive side of +life, and on the other hand, with the timid obsession of chastity, he +over-emphasises the nakedness of flesh. In so doing, he has revealed a +certain flabbiness in his art, although he has by no means diminished +his service in widening the horizon of literary speech and subject. +Bearing in mind that many crowned kings of literature have approached +these subjects quite as closely as Zola, and far less seriously, it +does not seem necessary to enter any severer judgment here. + +To enlarge the sphere of language is an unthankful task, but in +the long run literature owes an immense debt to the writers who +courageously add to the stock of strong and simple words. Our own +literature for two centuries has been hampered by the social tendency +of life to slur expression, and to paraphrase or suppress all forceful +and poignant words. If we go back to Chaucer, or even to Shakespeare, +we realise what power of expression we have lost. It is enough, indeed, +to turn to our English Bible. The literary power of the English Bible +is largely due to the unconscious instinct for style which happened +to be in the air when it was chiefly moulded, to the simple, direct, +unashamed vigour of its speech. Certainly, if the discovery of the +Bible had been left for us to make, any English translation would +have to be issued at a high price by some esoteric society, for fear +lest it should fall into the hands of the British matron. It is our +British love of compromise, we say, that makes it possible for a +spade to be called a spade on one day of the week, but on no other; +our neighbours, whose minds are more logically constituted, call it +_le cant Britannique_. But our mental compartments remain very +water-tight, and on the whole we are even worse off than the French +who have no Bible. For instance, we have almost lost the indispensable +words “belly” and “bowels,” both used so often and with such admirable +effect in the Psalms; we talk of the “stomach,” a word which is not +only an incorrect equivalent, but at best totally inapt for serious +or poetic uses. Any one who is acquainted with our old literature, +or with the familiar speech of the common folk, will recall similar +instances of simple, powerful expressions which are lost or vanishing +from literary language, leaving no available substitute behind. In +modern literary language, indeed, man scarcely exists save in his +extremities. For we take the pubes as a centre, and we thence describe +a circle with a radius of some eighteen inches--in America the radius +is rather longer--and we forbid any reference to any organ within the +circle, save that maid-of-all-work the “stomach”; in other words, we +make it impossible to say anything to the point concerning the central +functions of life. + +It is a question how far real literature can be produced under such +conditions, not merely because literature is thus shut out from +close contact with the vital facts of life, but because the writer +who is willing to be so shut out, who finds himself most at home +within the social limits of speech, will probably not be made of +the heroic stuff that goes to the moulding of a great writer. The +social limits of speech are useful enough, for we are all members of +society, and it is well that we should have some protection against +the assaults of unbridled vulgarity. But in literature we may choose +to read what we will, or to read nothing, and the man who enters the +world of literature timidly equipped with the topics and language +of the drawing-room is not likely to go far. I once saw it stated +depreciatingly in a grave literary review that a certain novel by a +woman writer dealt with topics that are not even discussed by men +at their clubs. I had never read it, but it seemed to me then that +there might be hope for that novel. No doubt it is even possible in +literature to fall below the club standard, but unless you can rise +above the club standard, better stay at the club, tell stories there, +or sweep the crossing outside. + +All our great poets and novelists from Chaucer to Fielding wrote +sincerely and heroically concerning the great facts of life. That is +why they are great, robustly sane, radiantly immortal. It is a mistake +to suppose that no heroism was involved in their case; for though +no doubt they had a freer general speech on their side they went +beyond their time in daring to mould that speech to the ends of art, +in bringing literature closer to life. It was so even with Chaucer; +compare him with his contemporaries and successors; observe how he +seeks to soothe the susceptibilities of his readers and to deprecate +the protests of the “precious folk.” There is no great art at any +epoch without heroism, though one epoch may be more favourable than +another to the exercise of such heroism in literature. In our own age +and country daring has passed out of the channels of art into those of +commerce, to find exercise, foolish enough sometimes, in the remotest +corners of the earth. It is because our literature is not heroic, but +has been confined within the stifling atmosphere of the drawing-room, +that English poets and novelists have ceased to be a power in the +world and are almost unknown outside the parlours and nurseries of +our own country. It is because in France there have never ceased to +be writers here and there who have dared to face life heroically and +weld it into art that the literature of France is a power in the +world wherever there are men intelligent enough to recognise its +achievements. When literature that is not only fine but also great +appears in England we shall know it as such by its heroism, if by no +other mark. + +Language has its immense significance because it is the final +incarnation of a man’s most intimate ideals. Zola’s style and method +are monotonous--with a monotony which makes his books unreadable when +we have once mastered his secret--and the burden they express is ever +the same: the energy of natural life. Whatever is robust, whatever is +wholesomely exuberant, whatever, wholesomely or not, is possessed by +the devouring fury of life--of such things Zola can never have enough. +The admirable opening of _La Terre_, in which a young girl drives +the cow, wild for the male, to the farm where the stockbull is kept, +then leading the appeased animal home again, symbolises Zola’s whole +view of the world. All the forces of Nature, it seems to him, are +raging in the fury of generative desire or reposing in the fulness +of swelling maturity. The very earth itself, in the impressive pages +with which _Germinal_ closes, is impregnated with men, germinating +beneath the soil, one day to burst through the furrows and renew the +old world’s failing life. In this conception of the natural energies of +the world--as manifested in men and animals, in machines, in every form +of matter--perpetually conceiving and generating, Zola reaches his most +impressive effects, though these effects are woven together of elements +that are separately of no very exquisite beauty, or subtle insight, or +radical novelty. + +In considering Zola, we are indeed constantly brought back to the fact +that most of the things that he has tried to do have been better done +by more accomplished artists. The Goncourts have extended the sphere of +language, even in the direction of slang, and have faced many of the +matters that Zola has faced, and with far more delicate, though usually +more shadowy, art; Balzac has created as large and vivid a world of +people, though drawing more of it from his own imagination; Huysmans +has greater skill in stamping the vision of strange or sordid things on +the brain; Tolstoi gives a deeper realisation of life; Flaubert is as +audaciously naturalistic, and has, as well, that perfect self-control +which should always accompany audacity. And in Flaubert, too, we find +something of the same irony as in Zola. + +This irony, however, is a personal and characteristic feature of +Zola’s work. It is irony alone which gives it distinction and poignant +incisiveness. Irony may be called the soul of Zola’s work, the +embodiment of his moral attitude towards life. It has its source, +doubtless, like so much else that is characteristic, in his early +days of poverty and aloofness from the experiences of life. There is +a fierce impartiality--the impartiality of one who is outside and +shut off--in this manner of presenting the brutalities and egoisms +and pettinesses of men. The fury of his irony is here equalled by +his self-restraint. He concentrates it into a word, a smile, a +gesture. Zola believes, undoubtedly, in a reformed, even perhaps +a revolutionised, future of society, but he has no illusions. He +sets down things as he sees them. He has no tendernesses for the +working-classes, no pictures of rough diamonds. We may see this very +clearly in _Germinal_. Here every side of the problem of modern +capitalism is presented: the gentle-natured shareholding class unable +to realise a state of society in which people should not live on +dividends and give charity; the official class with their correct +authoritative views, very sure that they will always be needed to +control labour and maintain social order; and the workers, some +brutalised, some suffering like dumb beasts, some cringing to the +bosses, some rebelling madly, a few striving blindly for justice. + +There is no loophole in Zola’s impartiality; the gradual development +of the seeming hero of _Germinal_, Etienne Lantier, the agitator, +honest in his revolt against oppression, but with an unconscious +bourgeois ideal at his heart, seems unerringly right. All are the +victims of an evil social system, as Zola sees the world, the enslaved +workers as much as the overfed masters; the only logical outcome is a +clean sweep--the burning up of the chaff and straw, the fresh furrowing +of the earth, the new spring of a sweet and vigorous race. That is the +logical outcome of Zola’s attitude, the attitude of one who regards +our present society as a thoroughly vicious circle. His pity for men +and women is boundless; his disdain is equally boundless. It is only +towards animals that his tenderness is untouched by contempt; some +of his most memorable passages are concerned with the sufferings of +animals. The New Jerusalem may be fitted up, but the Montsou miners +will never reach it; they will fight for the first small, stuffy, +middle-class villa they meet on the way. And Zola pours out the stream +of his pitiful, pitiless irony on the weak, helpless, erring children +of men. It is this moral energy, combined with his volcanic exuberance, +which lifts him to a position of influence above the greater artists +with whom we may compare him. + +It is by no means probable that the world will continue to read Zola +much longer. His work is already done; but when the nineteenth century +is well past it may be that he will still have his interest. There will +be plenty of material, especially in the newspapers, for the future +historian to reconstruct the social life of the latter half of the +nineteenth century. But the material is so vast that these historians +will possibly be even more biassed and one-sided than our own. For a +vivid, impartial picture--on the whole a faithful picture--of certain +of the most characteristic aspects of this period, seen indeed from +the outside, but drawn by a contemporary in all its intimate and even +repulsive details, the reader of a future age can best go to Zola. +What would we not give for a thirteenth century Zola! We should read +with painful, absorbed interest a narrative of the Black Death as +exact as that of nineteenth century alcoholism in _L’Assommoir_. +The story of how the serf lived, as fully told as in _La Terre_, +would be of incomparable value. The early merchant and usurer would +be a less dim figure if _L’Argent_ had been written about him. +The abbeys and churches of those days have in part come down to us, +but no _Germinal_ remains to tell of the lives and thoughts of +the men who hewed those stones, and piled them, and carved them. How +precious such record would have been we may realise when we recall +the incomparable charm of Chaucer’s prologue to _The Canterbury +Tales_. But our children’s children, with the same passions alive at +their hearts under incalculably different circumstances, will in the +pages of the Rougon-Macquart series find themselves back again among +all the strange remote details of a vanished world. What a fantastic +and terrible page of old-world romance! + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 7: “Mes souvenirs,” he told a psychological interviewer, +“ont une puissance, un relief extraordinaire; ma mémoire est énorme, +prodigieuse, elle me gêne; quand j’évoque les objets que j’ai vus, je +les revois tels qu’ils sont réellement avec leurs lignes, leurs formes, +leurs couleurs, leurs odeurs, leurs sons; _c’est une matérialisation +à outrance_; le soleil qui les éclaire m’éblouit presque; l’odeur +me suffoque, les détails s’accrochent à moi et m’empêchent de voir +l’ensemble. Aussi pour le ressaisir me faut-il attendre un certain +temps. Cette possibilité d’évocation ne dure pas très longtemps; le +relief de l’image est d’une exactitude, d’une intensité inouïes, +puis l’image s’efface, disparaît, cela s’en va.” This description +suggests myopia, and it is a fact that Zola has been short-sighted from +youth; he first realised it at sixteen. His other senses, especially +smell, are very keen--largely, however, as an outcome of attention +or practice. Thus while his tactile sensibility and sensibility to +pain are acute, his olfactory keenness is rather qualitative than +quantitative; that is to say that it mainly consists in a marked +memory for odours, a tendency to be emotionally impressed by them, +and an ability to distinguish them in which he resembles professional +perfumers. All these and many other facts have been very precisely +ascertained by means of the full psychological and anthropological +study of M. Zola which has been carried out by experts under the +superintendence of Dr. Toulouse.] + + + + + HUYSMANS. + + +IN trying to represent the man who wrote the extraordinary books +grouped around _A Rebours_ and _En Route_, I find myself +carried back to the decline of the Latin world. I recall those restless +Africans who were drawn into the vortex of decadent Rome, who absorbed +its corruptions with all the barbaric fervour of their race, and then +with a more natural impetus of that youthful fervour threw themselves +into the young current of Christianity, yet retaining in their flesh +the brand of an exotic culture. Tertullian, Augustine, and the rest +gained much of their power, as well as their charm, because they +incarnated a fantastic mingling of youth and age, of decayed Latinity, +of tumultuously youthful Christianity. Huysmans, too, incarnates the +old and the new, but with a curious, a very vital difference. To-day +the _rôles_ are reversed; it is another culture that is now young, +with its aspirations after human perfection and social solidarity, +while Christianity has exchanged the robust beauty of youth for the +subtler beauty of age. “The most perfect analogy to our time which I +can find,” wrote Renan to his sister amid the tumults of Paris in 1848, +a few weeks after Huysmans had been born in the same city, “is the +moment when Christianity and paganism stood face to face.” Huysmans had +wandered from ancestral haunts of mediæval peace into the forefront of +the struggles of our day, bringing the clear, refined perceptions of +old culture to the intensest vision of the modern world yet attained, +but never at rest, never once grasping except on the purely æsthetic +side the significance of the new age, always haunted by the memory of +the past and perpetually feeling his way back to what seems to him the +home of his soul.--The fervent seeker of those early days, indeed, but +_à rebours_! + +This is scarcely a mere impression; one might be tempted to say that it +is strictly the formula of this complex and interesting personality. +Coming on the maternal side from an ordinary Parisian bourgeois stock, +though there chanced to be a sculptor even along this line, on the +paternal side he belongs to an alien aristocracy of art. From father +to son his ancestors were painters, of whom at least one, Cornelius +Huysmans, still figures honourably in our public galleries, while +the last of them left Breda to take up his domicile in Paris. Here +his son, Joris Karl, has been the first of the race to use the pen +instead of the brush, yet retaining precisely those characters of +“veracity of imitation, jewel-like richness of colour, perfection of +finish, emphasis of character,” which their historian finds in the +painters of his land from the fourteenth century onwards. Where the +Meuse approaches the Rhine valley we find the home of the men who, +almost alone in the north, created painting and the arts that are +grouped around painting, and evolved religious music. On the side +of art the Church had found its chief builders in the men of these +valleys, and even on the spiritual side also, for here is the northern +home of mysticism. Their latest child has fixed his attention on the +feverish activities of Paris with the concentrated gaze of a stranger +in a strange land, held by a fascination which is more than half +repulsion, always missing something, he scarcely knows what. He has +ever been seeking the satisfaction he had missed, sometimes in the +æsthetic vision of common things, sometimes in the refined Thebaid of +his own visions, at length more joyfully in the survivals of mediæval +mysticism. Yet as those early Africans still retained their acquired +Roman instincts, and that fantastic style which could not be shaken +off, so Huysmans will surely retain to the last the tincture of +Parisian modernity. + +Yet we can by no means altogether account for Huysmans by race and +environment. Every man of genius is a stranger and a pilgrim on the +earth, unlike other men, seeing everything as it were at a different +angle, mirroring the world in his mind as in those concave or convex +mirrors which elongate or abbreviate absurdly all who approach them. +No one ever had a keener sense of the distressing absurdity of human +affairs than M. Huysmans. The Trocadero is not a beautiful building, +but to no one else probably has it appeared as an old hag lying on her +back and elevating her spindle shanks towards the sky. Such images of +men’s works and ways abound in Huysmans’ books, and they express his +unaffected vision of life, his disgust for men and things, a shuddering +disgust, yet patient, half-amused. I can well recall an evening spent +some years ago in M. Huysmans’ company. His face, with the sensitive, +luminous eyes, reminded one of Baudelaire’s portraits, the face of a +resigned and benevolent Mephistopheles who has discovered the absurdity +of the Divine order but has no wish to make any improper use of his +discovery. He talked in low and even tones, never eagerly, without +any emphasis or gesture, not addressing any special person; human +imbecility was the burden of nearly all that he said, while a faint +twinkle of amused wonderment lit up his eyes. And throughout all his +books until almost the last “l’éternelle bêtise de l’humanité” is the +ever-recurring refrain. + +Always leading a retired life, and specially abhorring the society and +conversation of the average literary man, M. Huysmans has for many +years been a government servant--a model official, it is said--at the +Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Here, like our own officials at Whitehall, +he serves his country in dignified leisure--on the only occasion on +which I have seen him in his large and pleasant _bureau_, he +was gazing affectionately at Chéret’s latest _affiche_, which +a lady of his acquaintance had just brought to show him--and such +duties of routine, with the close contact with practical affairs they +involve, must always be beneficial in preserving the sane equipoise +of an imaginative temperament. In this matter Huysmans has been more +fortunate than his intimate friend Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, who had +wandered so far into the world of dreams that he lost touch with the +external world and ceased to distinguish them clearly. One is at +first a little surprised to hear of the patient tact and diplomacy +which the author of _A Rebours_ spent round the death-bed of +the author of _Contes Cruels_ to obtain the dying dreamer’s +consent to a ceremony of marriage which would legitimate his child. +But Huysmans’ sensitive nervous system and extravagant imagination +have ever been under the control of a sane and forceful intellect; +his very idealism has been nourished by the contemplation of a world +which he has seen too vividly ever to ignore. We may read that in the +reflective deliberation of his grave and courteous bearing, somewhat +recalling, as more than one observer has noted, his own favourite +animal, the cat, whose outward repose of Buddhistic contemplation +envelops a highly-strung nervous system, while its capacity to enjoy +the refinements of human civilisation comports a large measure of +spiritual freedom and ferocity. Like many another man of letters, +Huysmans suffers from neuralgia and dyspepsia; but no novelist has +described so persistently and so poignantly the pangs of toothache +or the miseries of _maux d’estomac_, a curious proof of the +peculiarly personal character of Huysmans’ work throughout. His sole +pre-occupation has been with his own impressions. He possessed no +native genius for the novel. But with a very sound instinct he set +himself, almost at the outset of his career, to describe intimately +and faithfully the crudest things of life, the things most remote from +his own esoteric tastes but at that time counted peculiarly “real.” +There could be no better discipline for an idealist. Step by step he +has left the region of vulgar actualities to attain his proper sphere, +but the marvellous and slowly won power of expressing the spiritually +impalpable in concrete imagery is the fruit of that laborious +apprenticeship. He was influenced in his novels at first by Goncourt, +afterwards a little by Zola, as he sought to reproduce his own vivid +and personal vision of the world. This vision is like that of a man +with an intense exaltation of the senses, especially the senses of +sight and smell. Essentially Huysmans is less a novelist than a poet, +with an instinct to use not verse but prose as his medium. Thus he +early fell under the influence of Baudelaire’s prose-poems. His small +and slight first volume, _Le Drageoir à Epices_, bears witness +to this influence, while yet revealing a personality clearly distinct +from Baudelaire’s. This personality is already wholly revealed in the +quaint audacity of the little prose-poem entitled “L’Extase.” Here, +at the very outset of Huysmans’ career, we catch an unconscious echo +of mediæval asceticism, the voice, it might be, of Odo of Cluny, who +nearly a thousand years before had shrunk with horror from embracing a +“sack of dung;” “quomodo ipsum stercoris saccum amplecti desideramus!” +“L’Extase” describes how the lover lies in the wood clasping the hand +of the beloved and bathed in a rapture of blissful emotion; “suddenly +she rose, disengaged her hand, disappeared in the bushes, and I heard +as it were the rustling of rain on the leaves;” at once the delicious +dream fled and the lover awakes to the reality of commonplace human +things. That is a parable of the high-strung idealism, having only +contempt for whatever breaks in on its ideal, which has ever been the +mark of Huysmans. His sensitive ear is alive to the gentlest ripple of +nature, and it jars on him; it becomes the deafening Niagara of “the +incessant deluge of human foolishness;” all his art is the research for +a Heaven where the voice of Nature shall no more be heard. Baudelaire +was also such a hyperæsthetic idealist, but the human tenderness +which vibrates beneath the surface of Baudelaire’s work has been the +last quality to make itself more than casually felt in Huysmans. It +is the defect which vitiated his early work in the novel, when he +was still oscillating between the prose-poem and the novel, clearly +conscious that while the first suited him best only in the second +could mastery be won. His early novels are sometimes portentously +dull, with a lack of interest, or even attempt to interest, which +itself almost makes them interesting, as frank ugliness is. They are +realistic with a veracious and courageously abject realism, never, +like Zola’s, carefully calculated for its pictorial effectiveness, but +dealing simply with the trivialest and sordidest human miseries. His +first novel _Marthe_--which inaugurated the long series of novels +devoted to state-regulated prostitution in those slaughter-houses of +love, as Huysmans later described them, where Desire is slain at a +single stroke,--sufficiently repulsive on the whole, is not without +flashes of insight which reveal the future artist, and to some readers +indeed make it more interesting than _La Fille Elisa_, which +the Goncourts published shortly afterwards. Unlike the crude and +awkward _Marthe_--though that book reveals the influence of the +Goncourts--_La Fille Elisa_ shows the hand of an accomplished +artist, but it is also the work of a philanthropist writing with an +avowed object, and of a fine gentleman ostentatiously anxious not to +touch pitch with more than a finger-tip. The Preface to _Marthe_ +contains a declaration which remains true for the whole of Huysmans’ +work: “I set down what I see, what I feel, what I have lived, writing +it as well as I am able, _et voilà tout_!” But it has ever been a +dangerous task to set down what one sees and feels and has lived; for +no obvious reason, except the subject, _Marthe_ was immediately +suppressed by the police. This first novel remains the least personal +of Huysmans’ books; in his next novel, _Les Sœurs Vatard_--a study +of Parisian workgirls and their lovers--a more characteristic vision +of the world begins to be revealed, and from that time forward there +is a continuous though irregular development both in intellectual grip +and artistic mastery. “Sac au Dos,” which appeared in the _Soirées +de Médan_, represents a notable stage in this development, for +here, as he has since acknowledged, Huysmans’ hero is himself. It is +the story of a young student who serves during the great war in the +Garde Mobile of the Seine, and is invalided with dysentery before +reaching the front. There is no story, no striking impression to +record--nothing to compare with Guy de Maupassant’s incomparably more +brilliant “Boule-de-Suif,” also dealing with the fringe of war, which +appears in the same volume--no opportunity for literary display, +nothing but a record of individual feelings with which the writer +seems satisfied because they are interesting to himself. It is, in +fact, the germ of that method which Huysmans has since carried to so +brilliant a climax in _En Route_. All the glamour of war and +the enthusiasm of patriotism are here--long before Zola wrote his +_Débâcle_--reduced to their simplest terms in the miseries of the +individual soldier whose chief aspiration it becomes at last to return +to a home where the necessities of nature may be satisfied in comfort +and peace. At that time Huysmans’ lack of patriotic enthusiasm seemed +almost scandalous; but when we bear in mind his racial affinities it is +natural that he should, as he once remarked to an interviewer, “prefer +a Leipzig man to a Marseilles man,” “the big, phlegmatic, taciturn +Germans” to the gesticulating and rhetorical people of the French +south. In _Là-Bas_, at a later date, through the mouth of one of +his characters, Huysmans goes so far as to regret the intervention of +Joan of Arc in French history, for had it not been for Joan France and +England would have been restored to their racial and prehistoric unity, +consolidated into one great kingdom under Norman Plantagenets, instead +of being given up to the southerners of Latin race who surrounded +Charles VII. + +The best of Huysmans’ early novels is undoubtedly _En Ménage_. It +is the intimate history of a young literary man who, having married a +wife whom he shortly afterwards finds unfaithful, leaves her, returns +to his bachelor life, and in the end becomes reconciled to her. This +picture of a studious man who goes away with his books to fight +over again the petty battles of bachelorhood with the _bonne_ +and the _concierge_ and his own cravings for womanly love and +companionship, reveals clearly for the first time Huysmans’ power +of analysing states of mind that are at once simple and subtle. +Perhaps no writer surprises us more by his revealing insight into the +commonplace experiences which all a novelist’s traditions lead him to +idealise or ignore. As a whole, however, _En Ménage_ is scarcely +yet a master’s work, a little laboured, with labour which cannot yet +achieve splendour of effect. Nor can a much slighter story, _A Vau +l’Eau_, which appeared a little later, be said to mark a further +stage in development, though it is a characteristic study, this sordid +history of Folantin, the poor, lame, discontented, middle-aged clerk. +Cheated and bullied on every side, falling a prey to the vulgar woman +of the street who boisterously takes possession of him in the climax +of the story, all the time feeling poignantly the whole absurdity of +the situation, there is yet one spot where hope seems possible. He has +no religious faith; “and yet,” he reflects, “yet mysticism alone could +heal the wound that tortures me.” Thus Folantin, though like André +in _En Ménage_ he resigns himself to the inevitable stupidity +of life, yet stretches out his hands towards the Durtal of Huysmans’ +latest work. + +In all these novels we feel that Huysmans has not attained to full +self-expression. Intellectual mastery, indeed, he is attaining, but +scarcely yet the expression of his own personal ideals. The poet in +Huysmans, the painter enamoured of beauty and seeking it in unfamiliar +places, has little scope in these detailed pictures of sordid or +commonplace life. At this early period it is still in prose-poems, +especially in _Croquis Parisiens_, that this craving finds +satisfaction. Des Esseintes, the hero of _A Rebours_, who on +so many matters is Huysmans’ mouthpiece, of all forms of literature +preferred the prose-poem when, in the hands of an alchemist of genius, +it reveals a novel concentrated into a few pages or a few lines, the +concrete juice, the essential oil of art. It was “a communion of +thought between a magical writer and an ideal reader, a spiritual +collaboration among a dozen superior persons scattered throughout +the world, a delectation offered to the finest wits, and to them +alone accessible.” Huysmans took up this form where Baudelaire and +Mallarmé had left it, and sought to carry it yet further. In that +he was scarcely successful. The excess of tension in the tortured +language with which he elaborates his effects too often holds him +back from the goal of perfection. We must yet value in _Croquis +Parisiens_ its highly wrought and individual effects of rhythm +and colour and form. In France, at all events, Huysmans is held to +inaugurate the poetic treatment of modern things--a characteristic +already traceable in _Les Sœurs Vatard_--and this book deals with +the æsthetic aspects of latter-day Paris, with the things that are +“ugly and superb, outrageous and yet exquisite,” as a type of which +he selects the Folies-Bergère, at that time the most characteristic +of Parisian music-halls, and he was thus the first to discuss the +æsthetic value of the variety stage which has been made cheaper since. +For the most part, however, these _Croquis_ are of the simplest +and most commonplace things--the forlorn Bièvre district, the poor +man’s _café_, the roast-chestnut seller--extracting the beauty or +pathos or strangeness of all these things. “Thy garment is the palette +of setting suns, the rust of old copper, the brown gilt of Cordovan +leather, the sandal and saffron tints of the autumn foliage.... When +I contemplate thy coat of mail I think of Rembrandt’s pictures, I see +again his superb heads, his sunny flesh, his gleaming jewels on black +velvet. I see again his rays of light in the night, his trailing gold +in the shade, the dawning of suns through dark arches.” The humble +bloater has surely never before been sung in language which recalls +the Beloved of the “Song of Songs.” Huysmans has carried to an even +extravagant degree that re-valuation of the world’s good in which +genius has ever found its chief function. To abase the mighty and exalt +the humble seems to man the divinest of prerogatives, for it is that +which he himself exercises in his moments of finest inspiration. To +find a new vision of the world, a new path to truth, is the instinct +of the artist or the thinker. He changes the whole system of our +organised perceptions. That is why he seems to us at first an incarnate +paradox, a scoffer at our most sacred verities, making mountains of our +mole-hills and counting as mere mole-hills our everlasting mountains, +always keeping time to a music that clashes with ours, at our hilarity +_tristis, in tristitia hilaris_. + +In 1889 _A Rebours_ appeared. Not perhaps his greatest +achievement, it must ever remain the central work in which he has +most powerfully concentrated his whole vision of life. It sums up the +progress he had already made, foretells the progress he was afterwards +to make, in a style that is always individual, always masterly in its +individuality. Technically, it may be said that the power of _A +Rebours_ lies in the fact that here for the first time Huysmans has +succeeded in uniting the two lines of his literary development: the +austere analysis in the novels of commonplace things mostly alien to +the writer, and the freer elaboration in the prose-poems of his own +more intimate personal impressions. In their union the two streams +attain a new power and a more intimately personal note. Des Esseintes, +the hero of this book, may possibly have been at a few points suggested +by a much less interesting real personage in contemporary Paris, +the Comte de Montesquiou-Fezensac, but in the main he was certainly +created by Huysmans’ own brain, as the representative of his author’s +hyperæsthetic experience of the world and the mouthpiece of his most +personal judgments. The victim of over-wrought nerves, of neuralgia +and dyspepsia, Des Esseintes retires for a season from Paris to the +solitude of his country house at Fontenay, which he has fitted up, on +almost cloistral methods, to soothe his fantasy and to gratify his +complex æsthetic sensations, his love of reading and contemplation. The +finest pictures of Gustave Moreau hang on the walls, with the fantastic +engravings of Luyken, and the strange visions of Odilon Redon. He has +a tortoise curiously inlaid with precious stones; he delights in all +those exotic plants which reveal Nature’s most unnatural freaks; he +is a sensitive amateur of perfumes, and considers that the pleasures +of smell are equal to those of sight or sound; he possesses a row of +little barrels of liqueurs so arranged that he can blend in infinite +variety the contents of this instrument, his “mouth-organ” he calls +it, and produce harmonies which seem to him comparable to those +yielded by a musical orchestra. But the solitary pleasures of this +palace of art only increase the nervous strain he is suffering from; +and at the urgent bidding of his doctor Des Esseintes returns to the +society of his abhorred fellow-beings in Paris, himself opening the +dyke that admitted the “waves of human mediocrity” to engulf his +refuge. And this wonderful confession of æsthetic faith--with its long +series of deliberately searching and decisive affirmations on life, +religion, literature, art--ends with a sudden solemn invocation that +is surprisingly tremulous: “Take pity, O Lord, on the Christian who +doubts, on the sceptic who desires to believe, on the convict of life +who embarks alone, in the night, beneath a sky no longer lit by the +consoling beacons of ancient faith.” + +“He who carries his own most intimate emotions to their highest point +becomes the first in file of a long series of men;” that saying is +peculiarly true of Huysmans. But to be a leader of men one must turn +one’s back on men. Huysmans’ attitude towards his readers was somewhat +like that of Thoreau, who spoke with lofty disdain of such writers as +“would fain have one reader before they die.” As he has since remarked, +Huysmans wrote _A Rebours_ for a dozen persons, and was himself +more surprised than any one at the wide interest it evoked. Yet that +interest was no accident. Certain æsthetic ideals of the latter half +of the nineteenth century are more quintessentially expressed in _A +Rebours_ than in any other book. Intensely personal, audaciously +independent, it yet sums up a movement which has scarcely now worked +itself out. We may read it and re-read, not only for the light which it +casts on that movement, but upon every similar period of acute æsthetic +perception in the past. + + + II. + +The æsthetic attitude towards art which _A Rebours_ illuminates is +that commonly called decadent. Decadence in art, though a fairly simple +phenomenon, and world-wide as art itself, is still so ill understood +that it may be worth while to discuss briefly its precise nature, more +especially as manifested in literature. + +Technically, a decadent style is only such in relation to a classic +style. It is simply a further development of a classic style, a further +specialisation, the homogeneous, in Spencerian phraseology, having +become heterogeneous. The first is beautiful because the parts are +subordinated to the whole; the second is beautiful because the whole +is subordinated to the parts. Among our own early prose-writers Sir +Thomas Browne represents the type of decadence in style. Swift’s prose +is classic, Pater’s decadent. Hume and Gibbon are classic, Emerson and +Carlyle decadent. In architecture, which is the key to all the arts, +we see the distinction between the classic and the decadent visibly +demonstrated; Roman architecture is classic, to become in its Byzantine +developments completely decadent, and St. Mark’s is the perfected type +of decadence in art; pure early Gothic, again, is strictly classic +in the highest degree because it shows an absolute subordination of +detail to the bold harmonies of structure, while later Gothic, grown +weary of the commonplaces of structure and predominantly interested +in beauty of detail, is again decadent. In each case the earlier and +classic manner--for the classic manner, being more closely related +to the ends of utility, must always be earlier--subordinates the +parts to the whole, and strives after those virtues which the whole +may best express; the later manner depreciates the importance of the +whole for the benefit of its parts, and strives after the virtues of +individualism. All art is the rising and falling of the slopes of a +rhythmic curve between these two classic and decadent extremes. + +Decadence suggests to us going down, falling, decay. If we walk down +a real hill we do not feel that we commit a more wicked act than when +we walked up it. But if it is a figurative hill then we view Hell at +the bottom. The word “corruption”--used in a precise and technical +sense to indicate the breaking up of the whole for the benefit of its +parts--serves also to indicate a period or manner of decadence in art. +This makes confusion worse, for here the moralist feels that surely +he is on safe ground. But as Nietzsche, with his usual acuteness +in cutting at the root of vulgar prejudice, has well remarked (in +_Die fröhliche Wissenschaft_), even as regards what is called +the period of “corruption” in the evolution of societies, we are apt +to overlook the fact that the energy which in more primitive times +marked the operations of the community as a whole has now simply been +transferred to the individuals themselves, and this aggrandisement +of the individual really produces an even greater amount of energy. +The individual has gained more than the community has lost. An age +of social decadence is not only the age of sinners and degenerates, +but of saints and martyrs, and decadent Rome produced an Antoninus +as well as a Heliogabalus. No doubt social “corruption” and literary +“corruption” tend to go together; an age of individualism is usually +an age of artistic decadence, and we may note that the chief literary +artists of America--Poe, Hawthorne, Whitman--are for the most part in +the technical sense decadents. + +Rome supplies the first clear types of classic and decadent literature, +and the small group of recent French writers to whom the term has been +more specifically applied were for the most part peculiarly attracted +by later Latin literature. So far as I can make out, it is to the +profound and penetrating genius of Baudelaire that we owe the first +clear apprehension of the legitimate part which decadence plays in +literature. We may trace it, indeed, in his own style, clear, pure, +and correct as that style always remains, as well as in his literary +preferences. He was a good Latinist, and his favourite Latin authors +were Apuleius, Juvenal, Petronius, Saint Augustine, Tertullian, and +other writers in prose and verse of the early Christian Church. He +himself wrote a love-poem in rhymed Latin verse, adding to it a note +concerning the late Latin decadence regarded as “the supreme sigh of +a vigorous person already transformed and prepared for the spiritual +life,” and specially apt to express passion as the modern world feels +it, one pole of the magnet at the opposite end of which are Catullus +and his band. “In this marvellous tongue,” he added, “solecism and +barbarism seem to me to render the forced negligences of a passion +which forgets itself and mocks at rules. Words taken in a new meaning +reveal the charming awkwardness of the northern barbarian kneeling +before the Roman beauty.” But the best early statement of the meaning +of decadence in style--though doubtless inspired by Baudelaire--was +furnished by Gautier in 1868 in the course of the essay on Baudelaire +which is probably the most interesting piece of criticism he ever +achieved. The passage is long, but so precise and accurate that it must +here in part be quoted: “The poet of the _Fleurs du Mal_ loved +what is improperly called the style of decadence, and which is nothing +else but art arrived at that point of extreme maturity yielded by the +slanting suns of aged civilisations: an ingenious complicated style, +full of shades and of research, constantly pushing back the boundaries +of speech, borrowing from all the technical vocabularies, taking colour +from all palettes and notes from all key-boards, struggling to render +what is most inexpressible in thought, what is vague and most elusive +in the outlines of form, listening to translate the subtle confidences +of neurosis, the dying confessions of passion grown depraved, and the +strange hallucinations of the obsession which is turning to madness. +The style of decadence is the ultimate utterance of the Word, summoned +to final expression and driven to its last hiding-place. One may recall +in this connection the language of the later Roman Empire, already +marbled with the greenness of decomposition, and, so to speak, gamy, +and the complicated refinements of the Byzantine school, the last forms +of Greek art falling into deliquescence. Such indeed is the necessary +and inevitable idiom of peoples and civilisations in which factitious +life has replaced natural life, and developed unknown wants in men. +It is, besides, no easy thing, this style disdained of pedants, for +it expresses new ideas in new forms, and in words which have not yet +been heard. Unlike the classic style it admits shadow.... One may well +imagine that the fourteen hundred words of the Racinian vocabulary +scarcely suffice the author who has undertaken the laborious task of +rendering modern ideas and things in their infinite complexity and +multiple colouration.” + +Some fifteen years later, Bourget, again in an essay on Baudelaire +(_Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine_), continued the exposition +of the theory of decadence, elaborating the analogy to the social +organism which enters the state of decadence as soon as the individual +life of the parts is no longer subordinated to the whole. “A similar +law governs the development and decadence of that other organism which +we call language. A style of decadence is one in which the unity of +the book is decomposed to give place to the independence of the page, +in which the page is decomposed to give place to the independence of +the phrase, and the phrase to give place to the independence of the +word.” It was at this time (about 1884) that the term “decadent” seems +first to have been applied by Barrès and others to the group of which +Verlaine, Huysmans, Mallarmé were the most distinguished members, +and in so far as it signified an ardent and elaborate search for +perfection of detail beyond that attained by Parnassian classicality +it was tolerated or accepted. Verlaine, indeed, was for the most part +indifferent to labels, neither accepting nor rejecting them, and +his work was not bound up with any theory. But Huysmans, with the +intellectual passion of the pioneer in art, deliberate and relentless, +has carried both the theory and the practice of decadence in style to +the farthest point. In practice he goes beyond Baudelaire, who, however +enamoured he may have been of what he called the phosphorescence of +putrescence, always retained in his own style much of what is best in +the classic manner. Huysmans’ vocabulary is vast, his images, whether +remote or familiar, always daring,--“dragged,” in the words of one +critic, “by the hair or by the feet, down the worm-eaten staircase of +terrified Syntax,”--but a heart-felt pulse of emotion is restrained +beneath the sombre and extravagant magnificence of this style, and +imparts at the best that modulated surge of life which only the great +masters can control. + +Des Esseintes’s predilections in literature are elaborated through +several chapters, and without question he faithfully reflects his +creator’s impressions. He was indifferent or contemptuous towards +the writers of the Latin Augustan age; Virgil seemed to him thin and +mechanical, Horace a detestable clown; the fat redundancy of Cicero, +we are told, and the dry constipation of Cæsar alike disgusted him; +Sallust, Livy, Juvenal, even Tacitus and Plautus, though for these +he had words of praise, seemed to him for the most part merely +the delights of pseudo-literary readers. Latin only began to be +interesting to Des Esseintes in Lucan, for here at least, in spite +of the underlying hollowness, it became expressive and studded with +brilliant jewels. The author whom above all he delighted in was +Petronius--who reminded Des Esseintes of the modern French novelists he +most admired--and several eloquent pages are devoted to that profound +observer, delicate analyst, and marvellous painter who modelled his own +vivid and precise style out of all the idioms and slang of his day. +After Petronius there was a gap in his collection of Latin authors +until the second century of our own era is reached with Apuleius and +the sterner Christian contemporaries of that jovial pagan, Tertullian +and the rest, in whose hands the tongue that in Petronius had reached +supreme maturity now began to dissolve. For Tertullian he had little +admiration, and none for Augustine, though sympathising with his +_City of God_ and his general disgust for the world. But the +special odour which the Christians had by the fourth century imparted +to decomposing pagan Latin was delightful to him in such authors as +Commodian of Gaza, whose tawny, sombre, and tortuous style he even +preferred to Claudian’s sonorous blasts, in which the trumpet of +paganism was last heard in the world. He was also able to maintain +interest in Prudentius, Sedulius, and a host of unknown Christians +who combined Catholic fervour with a Latinity which had become, as it +were, completely putrid, leaving but a few shreds of torn flesh for +the Christians to “marinate in the brine of their new tongue.” His +shelves continued to show Latin books of the sixth, seventh, and eighth +centuries, among which he found special pleasure in the Anglo-Saxon +writers, and only finally ceased at the beginning of the tenth century, +when “the curiosity, the complicated _naïveté_” of the earlier +tongue were finally lost in scholastic philosophy and mere cartalaries +and chronicles.[8] Then, with a formidable leap of ten centuries, his +Latin books gave place to nineteenth century French books. + +Des Esseintes is no admirer of Rabelais or Molière, of Voltaire +or Rousseau. Among the older French writers he read only Villon, +D’Aubigné, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Nicole, and especially Pascal. Putting +these aside, his French library began with Baudelaire, whose works he +had printed in an edition of one copy, in episcopal letters, in large +missal _format_, bound in flesh-coloured pig-skin; he found an +unspeakable delight in reading this poet who, “in an age when verse +only served to express the external aspects of things, had succeeded +in expressing the inexpressible, by virtue of a muscular and sinewy +speech which more than any other possessed the marvellous power of +fixing with strange sanity of expression the most morbid, fleeting, +tremulous states of weary brains and sorrowful souls.” After Baudelaire +the few French books on Des Esseintes’s shelves fall into two groups, +one religious, one secular. Most of the French clerical writers he +disregarded, for they yield a pale flux of words which seemed to him +to come from a school-girl in a convent. Lacordaire he regarded as +an exception, for his language had been fused and moulded by ardent +eloquence, but for the most part the Catholic writers he preferred were +outside the Church. For Hello’s _Homme_, especially, he cherished +profound admiration, and an inevitable sympathy for its author, who +seemed to him “a cunning engineer of the soul, a skilful watchmaker +of the brain, delighting to examine the mechanism of a passion and to +explain the play of the wheelwork,” and yet united to this power of +analysis all the fanaticism of a Biblical prophet, and the tortured +ingenuity of a master of style--an ill-balanced, incoherent, yet subtle +personality. But above all he delighted in Barbey d’Aurevilly, shut +out from the Church as an unclean and pestiferous heretic, yet glorying +to sing her praises, insinuating into that praise a note of almost +sadistic sacrilege, a writer at once devout and impious, altogether +after Des Esseintes’s own heart, so that a special copy of the +_Diaboliques_, in episcopal violet and cardinal purple, printed +on sanctified vellum with initials adorned by satanic tails, formed +one of his most cherished possessions. In D’Aurevilly’s style alone he +truly recognised the same gaminess, the speckled morbidity, the flavour +as of a sleepy pear which he loved in decadent Latin and the monastic +writers of old time. Of contemporary secular books he possessed not +many; by force of passing them through the screw-press of his brain few +were finally found solid enough to emerge intact and bear rereading, +and in this process he had accelerated “the incurable conflict which +existed between his ideas and those of the world into which by chance +he had been born.” Certain selected works of the three great French +novelists of his time--Flaubert, Goncourt, and Zola--still remained, +for in all three he found in various forms that “nostalgie des au-delà” +by which he was himself haunted; and with Baudelaire, these three were, +in modern profane literature, the authors by whom he had chiefly been +moulded. The scanty collection also included Verlaine, Mallarmé, Poe, +and Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, whose firm fantastic style and poignantly +ironic attitude towards the utilitarian modern world he found entirely +to his taste. Finally, there only remained the little anthology of +prose-poems. Des Esseintes thought it improbable that he would ever +make any additions to his library; it seemed impossible to him that +a decadent language--“struggling on its death-bed to repair all the +omissions of joy and bequeath the subtlest memories of pain”--would +ever go beyond Mallarmé. This brief summary of the three chapters, +all full of keen if wayward critical insight, which describe Des +Esseintes’s library, may serve at once both to indicate the chief +moulding influences on Huysmans’ own style and to illustrate the +precise nature of decadence in art and the fundamental part it plays. + +We have to recognise that decadence is an æsthetic and not a moral +conception. The power of words is great, but they need not befool +us. The classic herring should suggest no moral superiority over the +decadent bloater. We are not called upon to air our moral indignation +over the bass end of the musical clef. All confusion of intellectual +substances is foolish, and one may well sympathise with that fervid +unknown metaphysician to whom we owe the Athanasian creed when he +went so far as to assert that it is damnable. It is not least so in +the weak-headed decadent who falls into the moralist’s snare and +complacently admits his own exceeding wickedness. We may well reserve +our finest admiration for the classic in art, for therein are included +the largest and most imposing works of human skill; but our admiration +is of little worth if it is founded on incapacity to appreciate the +decadent. Each has its virtues, each is equally right and necessary. +One ignorant of plants might well say, on gazing at a seed-capsule with +its seeds disposed in harmonious rows, that there was the eternally +natural and wholesome order of things, and on seeing the same capsule +wither and cast abroad its seeds to germinate at random in the earth, +that here was an unwholesome and deplorable period of decay. But +he would know little of the transmutations of life. And we have to +recognise that those persons who bring the same crude notions into the +field of art know as little of the life of the spirit. + + + III. + +For some years after the appearance of _A Rebours_ Huysmans +produced nothing of any magnitude. _En Rade_, his next novel, +the experience of a Parisian married couple who, under the stress of +temporary pecuniary difficulties, go into the country to stay at an +uncle’s farm, dwells in the memory chiefly by virtue of two vividly +naturalistic episodes, the birth of a calf and the death of a cat. +More interesting, more intimately personal, are the two volumes of art +criticism, _L’Art Moderne_ and _Certains_, which Huysmans +published at about this period. Degas, Rops, Raffaelli, Odilon Redon +are among the artists of very various temperament whom Huysmans +either discovered, or at all events first appreciated in their full +significance, and when he writes of them it is not alone critical +insight which he reveals, but his own personal vision of the world. + +To Huysmans the world has ever been above all a vision; it was no +accident that the art that appeals most purely to the eyes is that +of which he has been the finest critic. One is tempted, indeed, +to suggest that this aptitude is the outcome of heredity, of long +generations devoted to laborious watchfulness of the desire of the eye +in the external world, not indeed by actual accumulation of acquired +qualities, but by the passing on of a nervous organism long found so +apt for this task. He has ever been intensely preoccupied with the +effort to express those visible aspects of things which the arts of +design were made to express, which the art of speech can perhaps +never express. The tortured elaboration of his style is chiefly due to +this perpetual effort to squeeze tones and colours out of this foreign +medium. The painter’s brain holds only a pen and cannot rest until it +has wrung from it a brush’s work. But not only is the sense of vision +marked in Huysmans. We are conscious of a general hyperæsthesia, an +intense alertness to the inrush of sensations, which we might well term +morbid if it were not so completely intellectualised and controlled. +Hearing, indeed, appears to be less acutely sensitive than sight, the +poet is subordinated to the painter, though that sense still makes +itself felt, and the heavy multicoloured paragraphs often fall at +the close into a melancholy and poignant rhythm laden with sighs. It +is the sense of smell which Huysmans’ work would lead us to regard +as most highly developed after that of sight. The serious way in +which Des Esseintes treats perfumes is characteristic, and one of the +most curious and elaborate of the _Croquis Parisiens_ is “Le +Gousset,” in which the capacities of language are strained to define +and differentiate the odours of feminine arm-pits. Again, earlier, in +a preface written for Hannon’s _Rimes de Joie_, Huysmans points +out that that writer--who failed to fulfil his early promise--alone +of contemporary poets possessed “la curiosité des parfums,” and +that his chief poem was written in honour of what Huysmans called +“the libertine virtues of that glorious perfume,” opoponax. This +sensitiveness to odour is less marked in Huysmans’ later work, but the +dominance of vision remains. + +The two volumes of essays on art incidentally serve to throw +considerable light on Huysmans’ conception of life. For special +illustration we may take his attitude towards women, whom in his +novels he usually treats, from a rather conventionally sexual point of +view, as a fact in man’s life rather than as a subject for independent +analysis. In these essays we may trace the development of his own +personal point of view, and in comparing the earlier with the later +volume we find a change which is significant of the general evolution +of Huysmans’ attitude towards life. He is at once the ultra-modern +child of a refined civilisation and the victim of nostalgia for an +ascetic mediævalism; his originality lies in the fact that in him these +two tendencies are not opposed but harmonious, although the second +has only of late reached full development. In a notable passage in +_En Rade_, Jacques, the hero, confesses that he can see nothing +really great or beautiful in a harvest field, with its anodyne toil, +as compared with a workshop or a steamboat, “the horrible magnificence +of machines, that one beauty which the modern world has been able to +create.” It is so that Huysmans views women also; he is as indifferent +to the feminine ideals of classic art as to its literary ideals. In +_L’Art Moderne_, speaking with admiration of a study of the nude +by Gauguin, he proceeds to lament that no one has painted the unclothed +modern woman without falsification or premeditated arrangement, real, +alive in her own intimate personality, with her own joys and pains +incarnated in the curves of her flesh, and the lash of childbirth +traceable on her flanks. We go to the Louvre to learn how to paint, +he remarks, forgetting that “beauty is not uniform and invariable, +but changes with the age and the climate, that the Venus of Milo, +for instance, is now not more beautiful and interesting than those +ancient statues of the New World, streaked and tattooed and adorned +with feathers; that both are but diverse manifestations of the same +ideal of beauty pursued by different races; that at the present date +there can be no question of reaching the beautiful by Venetian, Greek, +Dutch, or Flemish rites; but only by striving to disengage it from +contemporary life, from the world that surrounds us.” “Un nu fatigué, +délicat, affiné, vibrant” can alone conform to our own time; and he +adds that no one has truly painted the nude since Rembrandt. It is +instructive to turn from this essay to that on Degas, written some six +years later. It may fairly be said that to Degas belongs the honour of +taking up the study of the nude at the point where Rembrandt left it; +and like Rembrandt, he has realised that the nude can only be rightly +represented in those movements, postures, and avocations by which it is +naturally and habitually exposed. It is scarcely surprising, therefore, +that Huysmans at once grasped the full significance of the painter’s +achievement. But he has nothing now to say of the beauty that lies +beneath the confinement of modern garments, “the delicious charm of +youth, grown languid, rendered as it were divine by the debilitating +air of cities.” On the contrary, he emphasises the vision which Degas +presents of women at the bath-tub revealing in every “frog-like and +simian attitude” their pitiful homeliness, “the humid horror of a body +which no washing can purify.” Such a glorified contempt of the flesh, +he adds, has never been achieved since the Middle Ages. There we catch +what had now become the dominant tone in Huysmans’ vision; the most +modern things in art now suggest to him, they seem to merge into, the +most mediæval and ascetic. And if we turn to the essay on Félicien Rops +in the same volume--the most masterly of his essays--we find the same +point developed to the utmost. Rops in his own way is as modern and as +daring an artist of the nude as Degas. But, as Huysmans perceives, in +delineating the essentially modern he is scarcely a supreme artist, +is even inferior to Forain, who in his own circumscribed region is +insurpassable. Rops, as Huysmans points out, is the great artist of +the symbolical rather than the naturalistic modern, a great artist +who furnishes the counterpart to Memlinc and Fra Angelico. All art, +Huysmans proceeds, “must gravitate, like humanity which has given birth +to it and the earth which carries it, between the two poles of Purity +and Wantonness, the Heaven and the Hell of art.” Rops has taken the +latter pole, in no vulgar nymphomaniacal shapes, but “to divulge its +causes, to summarise it Catholically, if one may say so, in ardent and +sorrowful images”; he has drawn women who are “diabolical Theresas, +satanised saints.” Following in the path initiated by Baudelaire and +Barbey D’Aurevilly, Huysmans concludes, Rops has restored Wantonness to +her ancient and Catholic dignity. Thus is Huysmans almost imperceptibly +led back to the old standpoint from which woman and the Devil are one. + +_Certains_ was immediately followed by _Là-bas_. This novel +is mainly a study of Satanism, in which Huysmans interested himself +long before it attracted the general attention it has since received +in France. There are, however, three lines of interest in the book, +the story of Gilles de Rais and his Sadism, the discussion of Satanism +culminating in an extraordinary description of a modern celebration +of the Black Mass, and the narration of Durtal’s _liaison_ with +Madame Chantelouve, wherein Huysmans reaches, by firm precision and +triumphant audacity, the highest point he has attained in the analysis +of the secrets of passion. But though full of excellent matter, +the book loses in impressiveness from the multiplicity of these +insufficiently compacted elements of interest. + +While not among his finest achievements, however, it serves to mark +the definite attainment of a new stage in both the spirit and the +method of his work. Hitherto he had been a realist, in method if +not in spirit, and had conquered the finest secrets of naturalistic +art; by the help of _En Ménage_ alone, as Hennequin, one of +his earliest and best critics has said, “it will always be possible +to restore the exact physiognomy of Paris to-day.” At the outset of +_Là-bas_ there is a discussion concerning the naturalistic novel +and its functions which makes plain the standpoint to which Huysmans +had now attained. Pondering the matter, Durtal, the hero of the book, +considers that we need, on the one hand, the veracity of document, the +precision of detail, the nervous strength of language, which realism +has supplied; but also, on the other hand, we must draw water from +the wells of the soul. We cannot explain everything by sexuality and +insanity; we need the soul and the body in their natural reactions, +their conflict and their union. “We must, in short, follow the great +high-way so deeply dug out by Zola, but it is also necessary to trace a +parallel path in the air, another road by which we may reach the Beyond +and the Afterward, to achieve thus, in one word, a spiritualistic +naturalism.” Dostoievsky comes nearest to this achievement, he remarks, +and the real psychologist of the century is not Stendhal but Hello. In +another form of art the early painters--Italian, German, especially +Flemish--realised this ideal. Durtal sees a consummate revelation +of such spiritual naturalism in Matthæus Grünewald’s crucifixion at +Cassel--the Christ who was at once a putrid and unaureoled corpse and +yet a manifest god bathed in invisible light, the union of outrageous +realism and outrageous idealism. “Thus from triumphal ordure Grünewald +extracted the finest mints of dilection, the sharpest essences of +tears.” One may say that the tendency Huysmans here so clearly asserts +had ever been present in his work. But in his previous novels his own +native impulse was always a little unduly oppressed by the naturalistic +formulas of Goncourt and Zola. The methods of these great masters had +laid a burden on his work, and although the work developed beneath, and +because of, that burden, a sense of laborious pain and obscurity too +often resulted. Henceforth this disappears. Huysmans retains his own +complexity of style, but he has won a certain measure of simplicity +and lucidity. It was a natural development, no doubt furthered also +by the position which Huysmans had now won in the world of letters. +_A Rebours_, which he had written for his own pleasure, had +found an echo in thousands of readers, and the consciousness of an +audience inspired a certain clarity of speech. From this time we +miss the insults directed at the _bêtise_ of humanity. These +characteristics clearly mark Huysmans’ next and perhaps greatest book, +in which the writer who had conquered all the secrets of decadent art +now sets his face towards the ideals of classic art. + +In _En Route_, indeed, these new qualities of simplicity, +lucidity, humanity, and intensity of interest attain so high a degree +that the book has reached a vast number of readers who could not +realise the marvellous liberation from slavery to its material which +the slow elaboration of art has here reached. In _A Rebours_ +Huysmans succeeded in taking up the prose-poem into his novel form, +while at the same time certainly sacrificing something of the fine +analysis of familiar things which he had developed in _En Ménage_. +In _En Route_ he takes the novel from the point he had reached in +_A Rebours_, incorporates into it that power of analysis which +has now reached incomparable simplicity and acuity, and thus wields the +whole of the artistic means which he has acquired during a quarter of +a century to one end, the presentation of a spiritual state which has +become of absorbing personal interest to himself. + +I well remember hearing M. Huysmans, many years ago, tell how a +muddle-headed person had wished to commission him to paint a head of +Christ. It seemed then a deliciously absurd request to make of the +author of _A Rebours_, and his face wore the patient smile which +the spectacle of human stupidity was wont to evoke, but I have since +thought that that muddle-headed person was wiser than he knew. As we +look back on Huysmans’ earlier work it is now easy to see how he has +steadily progressed towards his present standpoint. _En Route_ +does not represent, as some might imagine, the reaction of an exhausted +debauchee or even the self-deception of a disappointed man of the +world. The temperament of Durtal is that of André and Folantin and Des +Esseintes; from the first, in the _Drageoir à Epices_, Huysmans +has been an idealist and a seeker, by no means an ascetic, rather a man +whose inquisitive senses and restless imagination had led him to taste +of every forbidden fruit, but never one to whom the vulgar pleasures +of life could offer any abiding satisfaction. The more precise record +of Des Esseintes’s early sexual life may help us here; while for +the penultimate stage Durtal’s relations with Madame Chantelouve in +_Là-bas_, and the mingled attraction and repulsion which he felt +for her, are certainly significant. In _En Route_ Durtal magnifies +his own wickedness, as Bunyan did in his _Grace Abounding_; the +saints have always striven to magnify their wickedness, leaving to the +sinners the congenial function of playing at righteousness. To trace +the real permanence of Huysmans’ attitude towards religion it is enough +to turn back to _A Rebours_. Des Esseintes had been educated by +the Jesuits, and it sometimes seemed to him that that education had put +into him some extra-terrestrial ferment which never after ceased to +work, driving him in search of a new world and impossible ideals. He +could find no earthly place of rest; he sought to build for himself a +“refined Thebaid” as a warm and comfortable ark wherein to find shelter +from the flood of human imbecility. He was already drawn towards the +Church by many bonds, by his predilection for early Christian Latinity, +by the exquisite beauty of the ecclesiastical art of the Middle Ages, +by his love for monastic mediæval music, “that emaciated music which +acted instinctively on his nerves” and seemed to him precious beyond +all other. Just as Nietzsche was always haunted by the desire for a +monastery for freethinkers, so Des Esseintes dreamed of a hermitage, +of the advantages of the cloistered life of convents, wherein men are +persecuted by the world for meting out to it the just contempt of +silence. + +Des Esseintes, and even the Durtal of _Là-bas_, always put aside +these thoughts with the reflection that, after all, the Church is +only an out-worn legend, a magnificent imposture. In _En Route_ +Durtal has taken a decisive step. He has undergone that psychological +experience commonly called “conversion.” It is only of recent years +that the phenomena of conversion have been seriously studied, but we +know at all events that it is not intellectual, not even necessarily +moral transformation, though it may react in either direction, but +primarily an emotional phenomenon; and that it occurs especially in +those who have undergone long and torturing disquietude, coming at +last as the spontaneous resolution of all their doubts, the eruption +of a soothing flood of peace, the silent explosion of inner light. The +insight with which this state is described in _En Route_ seems to +testify to a real knowledge of it. No obvious moral or intellectual +change is effected in Durtal, but he receives a new experience of +reposeful faith, a conviction deeper than all argument. It is really +the sudden emergence into consciousness of a very gradual process, and +the concrete artistic temperament which had been subjected to the +process reacts in its own way. A more abstract intelligence would have +asked: “But, after all, is my faith true?” Durtal, in the presence of +the growing structure of sensory and imaginative forms within him, +which has become as it were a home, feels that the question of its +truth has fallen into the background. Its perfect fitness has become +the affirmation of its truth. Henceforth it is the task of his life to +learn how best to adapt himself to what he recognises as his eternal +home. _En Route_ represents a stage in this adaptation. + +By a rare chance--a happier chance than befell Tolstoi under somewhat +similar circumstances--a new development in artistic achievement has +here run parallel, and in exquisite harmony, with the new spiritual +development. The growing simplicity of Huysmans’ work has reached a +point beyond which it could not perhaps be carried without injury to +his vivid and concrete style. And the new simplicity of spirit, of +which it is the reflection, marks the final retreat into the background +of that unreasonable contempt for humanity which ran through nearly +all the previous books, and now at last passes even into an ecstasy +of adoration in the passages concerning old Simon, the monastery +swine-herd. Huysmans has chiefly shown his art, however, by relying +almost solely for the interest of his book on his now consummate power +of analysis. This power, which we may perhaps first clearly trace in +“Sac au Dos,” had developed in _En Ménage_ into a wonderful skill +to light up the unexplored corners of the soul and to lay bare those +terrible thoughts which are, as he has somewhere said, the lamentable +incarnation of “the unconscious ignominy of pure souls.” In his earlier +masterpiece, _A Rebours_, however, it is little seen, having +mostly passed into æsthetic criticism. The finest episode of emotional +analysis here is the admirable chapter in which Des Esseintes’s attempt +to visit London is narrated. All his life he had wished to see two +countries, Holland and England. (And here we may recall that the former +is Huysmans’ own ancestral land, and that his French critics find in +his work a distinct flavour of English humour.) He had actually been to +Holland, and with visions won from the pictures of Rembrandt, Steen, +and Teniers he had returned disillusioned. Now he went to Galignani’s, +bought an English Baedeker, entered the bodega in the Rue de Rivoli +to drink of that port which the English love, and then proceeded to +a tavern opposite the Gare St. Lazare to eat what he imagined to be +a characteristic English meal, surrounded by English people, and +haunted by memories of Dickens. And as time went by he continued to +sit still, while all the sensations of England seemed to pass along +his nerves, still sat until at last the London mail had started. “Why +stir,” he asked himself, “when one can travel so magnificently in a +chair?... Besides, what can one expect save fresh disillusionment, as +in Holland?... And then I have experienced and seen what I wanted to +experience and see. I have saturated myself with English life; it would +be madness to lose by an awkward change of place these imperishable +sensations.... He called a cab and returned with his portmanteaus, +parcels, valises, rugs, umbrellas, and sticks to Fontenay, feeling the +physical and mental fatigue of a man who returns home after a long and +perilous journey.” There could be no happier picture of the imaginative +life of the artistic temperament. But in _En Route_ analysis is +the prime element of interest; from first to last there is nothing to +hold us but this searching and poignant analysis of the fluctuations of +Durtal’s soul through the small section which he here travels in the +road towards spiritual peace. And on the way, lightly, as by chance, +the author drops the finest appreciations of liturgical æsthetics, of +plain-chant, of the way of the Church with the soul, of the everlasting +struggle with the Evil One. There could, for instance, be no better +statement than this of one of the mystic’s secrets: “There are two +ways of ridding ourselves of a thing which burdens us, casting it away +or letting it fall. To cast away requires an effort of which we may not +be capable, to let fall imposes no labour, is simpler, without peril, +within reach of all. To cast away, again, implies a certain interest, +a certain animation, even a certain fear; to let fall is absolute +indifference, absolute contempt; believe me, use this method, and Satan +will flee.” How many forms of Satan there are in the world before which +we may profitably meditate on these words! To strive or cry in the face +of human stupidity is not the way to set it to flight; that is the +lesson which Des Esseintes would never listen to, which Durtal has at +last learnt.[9] + +_En Route_ is the first of a trilogy, and the names of the succeeding +volumes, _La Cathédrale_ and _L’Oblat_, sufficiently indicate the end +of the path on which Durtal, if not indeed his creator, has started. +But however that may prove, whatever Huysmans’ own final stage may be, +there can be little doubt that he is the greatest master of style, and +within his own limits the subtlest thinker and the acutest psychologist +who in France to-day uses the medium of the novel. Only Zola can be +compared with him, and between them there can be no kind of rivalry. +Zola, with his immense and exuberant temperament, his sanity and +width of view, his robust and plebeian art, has his own place on the +high-road of modern literature. Huysmans, an intellectual and æsthetic +aristocrat, has followed with unflinching sincerity the by-path +along which his own more high-strung and exceptional temperament has +led him, and his place, if seemingly a smaller one, is at least as +sure; wherever men occupy themselves with the literature of the late +nineteenth century they will certainly sometimes talk about Zola, +sometimes read Huysmans. Zola’s cyclopean architecture can only be +seen as a whole when we have completed the weary task of investigating +it in detail; in Huysmans we seek the expressiveness of the page, +the sentence, the word. Strange as it may seem to some, it is the +so-called realist who has given us the more idealised rendering of +life; the concentrated vision of the idealist in his own smaller sphere +has revealed not alone mysteries of the soul, but even the exterior +secrets of life. True it is that Huysmans has passed by with serene +indifference, or else with contempt, the things which through the ages +we have slowly learnt to count beautiful. But on the other hand, he has +helped to enlarge the sphere of our delight by a new vision of beauty +where before to our eyes there was no beauty, exercising the proper +function of the artist who ever chooses the base and despised things of +the world, even the things that are not, to put to nought the things +that are. Therein the decadent has his justification. And while we +may accept the pioneer’s new vision of beauty, we are not called upon +to reject those old familiar visions for which he has no eyes, only +because his gaze must be fixed upon that unfamiliar height towards +which he is leading the men who come after. + + + IV. + +Huysmans very exquisitely represents one aspect of the complex modern +soul, that aspect which shrinks from the grosser forces of Nature, +from the bare simplicity of the naked sky or the naked body, the +“incessant deluge of human foolishness,” the eternal oppression of +the commonplace, to find a sedative for its exasperated nerves in the +contemplation of esoteric beauty and the difficult search for the +mystic peace which passes all understanding. “Needs must I rejoice +beyond the age,” runs the motto from the old Flemish mystic Ruysbroeck +set on the front of _A Rebours_, “though the world has horror of +my joy and its grossness cannot understand what I would say.” Such is +decadence; such, indeed, is religion, in the wide and true sense of +the word. Christianity itself, as we know it in the western church, +sprang from the baptism of young barbarism into Latin decadence. Pagan +art and its clear serenity, science, rationalism, the bright, rough +vigour of the sun and the sea, the adorable mystery of common life and +commonplace human love, are left to make up the spirit that in any age +we call “classic.” + +Thus what we call classic corresponds on the spiritual side to the love +of natural things, and what we call decadent to the research for the +things which seem to lie beyond Nature. “Corporea pulchritudo in pelle +solummodo constat. Nam si viderent homines hoc quod subtus pellem est, +sicut lynces in Beotia cernere interiore dicuntur, mulieres videre +nausearent. Iste decor in flegmate et sanguine et humore ac felle +constitit.” That is St. Odo of Cluny’s acute analysis of woman, who +for man is ever the symbol of Nature: beauty is skin-deep, drowned in +excretions which we should scarcely care to touch with the finger’s +tip. And for the classic vision of Nature, listen to that fantastic +and gigantic Englishman, Sir Kenelm Digby, whose _Memoirs_, +whose whole personality, embodied the final efflorescence of the +pagan English Renaissance. He has been admitted by her maids to the +bedchamber of Venetia Stanley, the famous beauty who afterwards became +his wife; she is still sleeping, and he cannot resist the temptation to +undress and lie gently and reverently beside her, as half disturbed in +her slumber she rolled on to her side from beneath the clothes; “and +her smock was so twisted about her fair body that all her legs and the +best part of her thighs were naked, which lay so one over the other +that they made a deep shadow where the never-satisfied eyes wished for +the greatest light. A natural ruddiness did shine through the skin, as +the sunbeams do through crystal or water, and ascertained him that it +was flesh that he gazed upon, which yet he durst not touch for fear +of melting it, so like snow it looked. Her belly was covered with her +smock, which it raised up with a gentle swelling, and expressed the +perfect figure of it through the folds of that discourteous veil. +Her paps were like two globes--wherein the glories of the heaven +and the earth were designed, and the azure veins seemed to divide +constellations and kingdoms--between both which began the milky way +which leadeth lovers to their Paradise, somewhat shadowed by the +yielding downwards of the uppermost of them as she lay upon her side, +and out of that darkness did glisten a few drops of sweat like diamond +sparks, and a more fragrant odour than the violets or primroses, whose +season was nearly passed, to give way to the warmer sun and the longest +days.” They play with the same counters, you observe, these two, Odo +and Digby, with skin, sweat, and so forth, each placing upon them his +own values. Idealists both of them, the one idealises along the line +of death, the other along the line of life which the whole race has +followed, and both on their own grounds are irrefutable, the logic +of life and the logic of death, alike solidly founded in the very +structure of the world, of which man is the measuring-rod. + +The classic party of Nature seems, indeed, the stronger--in seeming +only, and one recalls that, of the two witnesses just cited, the abbot +of Cluny was the most venerated man of his age, while no one troubled +even to publish Digby’s _Memoirs_ until our own century--but +it carries weakness in its very strength, the weakness of a great +political party formed by coalition. It has not alone idealists on its +side, but for the most part also the blind forces of robust vulgarity. +So that the more fine-strung spirits are sometimes driven to a reaction +against Nature and rationalism, like that of which Huysmans, from +“L’Extase” onwards, has been the consistent representative. At the +present moment such a reaction has attained a certain ascendency. + +Christianity once fitted nearly every person born into the European +world; there must needs be some to whom, in no modern devitalised +form but in its purest essence, it is still the one refuge possible. +No doubt conditions have changed; the very world itself is not what +it was to the mediæval man. One has to recognise that the modern +European differs in this from his mediæval ancestor that now we know +how largely the world is of our own making. The sense of interiority, +as the psychologists say, is of much later development than the sense +of exteriority. For the mediæval man,--as still to-day for the child in +the darkness,--his dreams and his fancies, every organic thrill in eye +or ear, seemed to be flashed on him from a world of angels and demons +without. In a sense which is scarcely true to-day the average man of +those days--not the finer or the coarser natures, it may well be--might +be said to be the victim of a species of madness, a paranoia, a +systematised persecutional delusion. He could not look serenely in the +face of the stars or lie at rest among the fir-cones in the wood, for +who knew what ambush of the Enemy might not lurk behind these things? +Even in flowers, as St. Cyprian said, the Enemy lay hidden. + + “Nil jocundum, nil amœnum, + Nil salubre, nil serenum, + Nihil dulce, nihil plenum.” + +There was only one spot where men might huddle together in safety--the +church. There the blessed sound of the bells, the contact of holy +water, the smell of incense, the sight of the Divine Flesh, wove a +spiritual coat of mail over every sensory avenue to the soul. The winds +of hell might rave, the birds of night dash themselves against the +leaden spires of that fortress whence alone the sky seemed blue with +hope. + +Huysmans, notwithstanding a very high degree of intellectual subtlety, +is by virtue of his special æsthetic and imaginative temperament +carried back to the more childlike attitude of this earlier age. The +whole universe appears to him as a process of living images; he cannot +reason in abstractions, cannot _rationalise_; that indeed is why +he is inevitably an artist. Thus he is a born leader in a certain +modern emotional movement. + +That movement, as we know, is one of a group of movements now +peculiarly active. We see them on every hand, occultism, theosophy, +spiritualism, all those vague forms on the borderland of the unknown +which call to tired men weary of too much living, or never strong +enough to live at all, to hide their faces from the sun of nature and +grope into cool, delicious darkness, soothing the fever of life. It +is foolish to resent this tendency; it has its rightness; it suits +some, who may well cling to their private dream if life itself is but +a dream. At the worst we may remember that, however repugnant such +movements may be, to let fall remains a better way of putting Satan to +flight than to cast away. And at the best one should know that this is +part of the vital process by which the spiritual world moves on its +axis, alternating between darkness and light. + +Therefore soak yourself in mysticism, follow every intoxicating path +to every impossible Beyond, be drunken with mediævalism, occultism, +spiritualism, theosophy, and even, if you will, protestantism--the cup +that cheers, possibly, but surely not inebriates--for the satisfaction +that comes of all these is good while it lasts. Yet be sure that Nature +is your home, and that from the farthest excursions you will return +the more certainly to those fundamental instincts which are rooted in +the zoological series at the summit of which we stand. For the whole +spiritual cosmogony finally rests, not indeed on a tortoise, but on the +emotional impulses of the mammal vertebrate which constitute us men. + +Meanwhile we will not grieve because in the course of our pilgrimage +on earth the sun sets. It has always risen again. We may lighten the +darkness of the journey by admiring the beauty of night, plucking back +the cowl if needs must we wear it.--_Eia, fratres, pergamus._ + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 8: It may be gathered from the Preface he wrote at a +later date for M. Remy de Gourmont’s delightful volume, _Le Latin +Mystique_, that Huysmans would no longer draw a line at this point; +for he here speaks with enthusiasm of the styles of St. Bernard, St. +Bonaventure, and St. Thomas d’Aquinas.] + +[Footnote 9: In the seventeenth century a great English man of science, +Stephen Hales, had discovered the same truth, for we are told that +“he could look even upon wicked men, and those who did him unkind +offices, without any emotion of particular indignation, not from want +of discernment or sensibility; but he used to consider them only like +those experiments which, upon trial, he found could never be applied to +any useful purpose, and which he therefore calmly and dispassionately +laid aside.”] + + + + + ST. FRANCIS AND OTHERS. + + +THE religion of Jesus was the invention of a race which itself never +accepted that religion. In the East religions spring up, for the most +part, as naturally as flowers, and, like flowers, are scarcely a matter +for furious propaganda. These deep sagacious Eastern men threw us of +old this rejected flower, as they have since sent us the vases and fans +they found too tawdry; and when we send our missionaries out to barter +back the gift at a profit, they say no word, but their faces wear the +mysterious Eastern smile. Yet for us, at all events, the figure of +Jesus symbolises, and will always symbolise, a special attitude towards +life, made up of tender human sympathy and mystical reliance on the +unseen forces of the world. In certain stories of the Gospels, certain +sayings, in many of the parables, this attitude finds the completest +expression of its sweetest abandonment. But to us, men of another +race living in far distant corners of the world, it seems altogether +oriental and ascetic, a morbid exceptional phenomenon. And as a matter +of fact Jesus found no successor. Over the stage of those gracious and +radiant scenes swiftly fell a fire-proof curtain, wrought of systematic +theology and formal metaphysics, which even the divine flames of that +wonderful personality were unable to melt. + +Something even stronger than theology or metaphysics has served to +cut us off from the spirit of Jesus, and that is the spirit of Paul, +certainly the real founder of “Christianity,” as we know it, for +Jerome, Augustine, Luther, were all the children of Paul, and in no +respect the children of Jesus. That marvellous little Jew painted in +its main outlines the picture of Christianity which in the theatre of +this world has for so many centuries shut us off from Jesus. Impelled +by the intense and concentrated energy of his twisted suffering nature, +Paul brought “moral force” into our western world, and after it that +infinite procession of hypocrisies and cruelties and artificialities +which still trains loathsomely across the scene of civilised life. +Jesus may have been a visionary, but his visions were in divine harmony +with the course of nature, with the wine and the bread of life, +with children and with flowers. We may be very sure that Paul never +considered the lilies, or found benediction with children. He trampled +on nature when it came in his way, and for the rest never saw it. +He was not, as Festus thought, a madman, but whether or not, as his +experiences seem to indicate, he was a victim to the “sacred disease” +of epilepsy, concerning his profoundly neurotic temperament there can +be no manner of question. + +He flung himself on to men, this terrible apostle of the “Gentiles,” +thrusting faith down their throats at the point of a spiritual sword +so fiery and keen that, by no miracle, it soon became a sword of steel +with red blood dripping from its point. Well-nigh everything that +has ever been evil in Christianity, its temporal power, its accursed +intolerance, its contempt for reason, for beautiful living, for every +sweet and sunny and simple aspect of the world--all that is involved +in the awful conception of “moral force”--flows directly from Paul. +What eternal torture could be adequate for so monstrous an offender? +And yet, when you think of the potent personality concentrated in this +morbid man, of his courage, of the intolerance that he wreaked on +himself, the flashes of divine insight in his restless and turbulent +spirit, of the humility of the neuropath who desired to be “altogether +mad,” the pathos of it all, indignation falls silent. What can be said? + +Thus Paul and not Peter was the rock on which the Church was built, +and whatever virtues the Church may have possessed have not been the +virtues of Jesus but the quite other virtues of Paul. Yet Jesus has not +wholly been left without witness even in Europe, and it is the special +charm and significance of Francis of Assisi that he, if not alone +certainly chief among European men, has incarnated some measure of the +graciousness that was in Jesus, and made it visible and real to the +European world. And he has done that by no means through the influence +of the Church, or by imitation, but by wholly natural and spontaneous +impulse. To understand Francis we must first of all realise that he was +in no sense and at no time the creature of the Church, being indeed +from first to last in a very real sense antagonistic to the Church. The +whole world as Francis knew it was Christian, and he was by no means a +man of inquisitive analytic intellectual type, a Bruno or a Campanella; +he accepted Christianity because it was there, and while remaining in +it was never of it, resenting fiercely any attempt of the Church to +encroach on the free activity of his personality, dispensing himself of +any intimate adherence not by intellectual sophistries, but by lightly +brushing away science and theology altogether as useless superfluities. + +An acute psychologist has well remarked that those famous historical +persons who have passed through two antithetical phases of character, +survive for us usually only in one of those phases, that we can +remember only the post-conversion Augustine and the pre-abdication +Diocletian. Such one-sided views of great and complex characters suit +our rough and lazy methods of ordinary thought, content to regard a +man only on that side which has been most prominently displayed to the +world. But such methods are fatal to any clear psychological conception +of character or to any sound ethical conception of life. Francis lived +one of these double-sided lives, and the Francis we remember is the +emaciated saint already developing the stigmata of divine grace. In +his earlier biographies we catch glimpses of a younger and quite other +Francis, _in vanitatibus nutritus insolenter_, the spendthrift +companion of nobles, proud to surpass them in youthful extravagance and +dissipation, the head of a band which dazzled the citizens of Assisi +with the luxury of their rich garments and the sound of their festive +songs by night, a passionate lover of chivalry and the troubadours, +whose music then filled the air, so full of gaiety that he sometimes +seemed almost mad to the grave citizens of his town, one whose nature +it was from the first to go to excess, always to a fine and generous +excess, that spiritual excess which Blake called the road to the palace +of wisdom. + +The later Francis survived; the early Francis is forgotten. But we +may be assured that there would have been no Francis the saint if +there had not been Francis the sinner. That grace and elation, the +tender humanity and infinite delight in natural things, even the +profound contempt for luxury and superfluity, were not learnt in any +of the saint’s beloved Umbrian cells; they were the final outcome +of a beautifully free and excessive life acting on an exquisitely +fine-strung organism. Rarely has any follower of Francis attained +in any measure to his level of exalted freedom, joy, and simplicity +in saintliness. It was not alone that they could not possess his +organism, but they had not lived his life. Their piety even blinded +their eyes, and just as the biographers of Jesus omitted all reference +to the formative years of his life, so also the biographers of Francis +gradually eliminated the early records, terrified at the thought that +their founder may not have been a virgin. We do not win any clear +psychological insight into the man until we realise this. + +It is not alone the psychological aspect which becomes clear in the +light of Francis’s early life. These stages of development have +their ethical significance also. It seems to be too often forgotten +that repression and licence are two sides of the same fact. We can +only attain a fine temperance through a fine freedom, even a fine +excess. The women who think that they must at all costs repress +themselves, and the men who--usually with the help of certain private +“accommodements”--consider repression as the proper ideal, have missed +the true safeguards against licence, and flounder for ever in a turbid +sea, at war with themselves, at war with nature. The saints knew +better. By a process of spiritual Pasteurism, a natural and spontaneous +process, they guaranteed their eternal peace. All the real saints, so +far as we know them, had many phases, such of them as were saints from +their mothers’ wombs possessing a significance which for human beings +generally is minimal. The real saints in all ages have forgotten so +many beautiful things, storing so many wonderful experiences in their +past. We should not dye our clothes, says St. Clement of Alexandria, +our life should now be anything but a pageant. Flower-like garments +should be abandoned, and Bacchic revelries, “useful for tragedies, not +for life.” The dyes of Sardis--olive, green, rose-coloured, scarlet, +and ten thousand other hues--invented for voluptuousness, the garments +of embroidered gold and purple, dipped in perfume, stained in saffron, +the bright diaphanous tissues of the dancing girl--to all these we must +bid farewell. But we cannot bid them farewell unless we have known +them. If you would be a saint you must begin by being something other +than a saint. This it was that St. Clement forgot, or never knew. + +In youth we are so full of energy, and life seems so long. In our +ethical fervour we accept Clement’s theory of conduct at his own +valuation. One is so scrupulous of others, so anxious lest he hurt +them; and another is so contemptuous of others, so eager to hold +himself back from all but the highest good, and never to let himself +fully go. And there is a fine thrill of pleasure in the self-restraint, +an athletic tension of the soul. It is as if the infant at the breast +should say, I will hold myself back from sucking; I will take only just +ever so little, and not let myself go and draw in the delicious stream +with no after-thought; there will be time for that when I am grown up. +But it is not so. There is only one time in life for milk, only one +time for youth; we cannot postpone life or retrace its milestones, and +what is once lost is lost for ever. The cold waters of self-restraint +and self-denial, as we first put our young feet in them, send a tonic +shiver along the nerves, and we go on and on. But suddenly we find that +the water has risen to our breasts, to our chins, that it is too late, +too late, that we shall never again move and breathe freely in the open +air and sunshine. That is the fate that overtakes the young ascetic +ideal. Unhappier yet are those who snatch the cup of life so hastily in +youth and fill it with such muddy waters that the dregs cling to their +lips for ever, spoiling the taste of the most exquisite things. To +live remains an art, an art which every one must learn, and which no +one can teach. + +It may seem that I speak of out-worn things, and that the problem of +saintliness has little relation to the moral problems of our time. +It is far otherwise. You have never seen the world if you have not +realised that an element of asceticism lies at the foundation of life. +You may expel it with the fork of reason or of self-enjoyment, but +being part of Nature herself it must ever return. All the art of living +lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding in. The man who makes +the one or the other his exclusive aim in life will die before he has +ever begun to live. The man who has carried one part of the process to +excess before turning to the other will indeed learn what life is, and +may leave behind him the memory of a pattern saint. But he alone is +the wise master of living who from first to last has held the double +ideal in true honour. In these, as in other matters, we cannot know the +spiritual facts unless we realise the physical facts of life. All life +is a building up and a breaking down, a taking in and a giving out, +a perpetually anabolic and katabolic rhythm. To live rightly we must +imitate both the luxury of Nature and her austerity. + +What should be the place of asceticism in modern life? Evidently there +is in human nature an instinct which craves for the sharpening of +enjoyment which comes from simplicity and a finely-tempered abstinence, +a measured drawing back when also it were possible recklessly to let +go. It is easy to wave aside religious asceticism. That, it seems, +may well be left to those who decide to invest their enjoyments in a +heavenly bank which will pay large dividends in another world. There +still remains the rational asceticism that is sweet either for its own +sake, or for its immediate and visible results in human joy. + +When we contemplate the modern world from a broadly biological +standpoint, there can be but little difficulty in finding free and +wholesome scope for the ascetic instinct. For the Christian or Buddhist +ascetic of old (as in some measure for his feeble modern imitator, the +theosophist) asceticism was a rapturous indifference to life for the +sake of something that seemed more than life, something that was itself +a “higher life,” and only to be achieved in the treading under foot of +all that men counted life. Such conceptions belong to the past, and can +only be revivified in the failing imaginations of the weary and the +aged who belong to the past. The more subtle and complex conception of +life which has grown up in the modern world traces life to its roots +and finds it most precious where it is most intense. When we wish to +carve out a world for ourselves it is the periphery which we cut away +and not the core. The immense accretions of that periphery in the +modern world make clearer to us than it was to our predecessors that +it is in the simple and elementary things that our life consists. It +is to the honour of Francis that in a vague, imperfect way he foresaw +this. Aided by his early experiences, he cast aside the superfluities +of knowledge and labour and skill--all that vain plethora of mere +formal things and prescribed acts which men foolishly count life--and +symbolising them in wealth, joyfully espoused Poverty as a bride. For +poverty to Francis meant contact with Nature and with men. The free +play of the individual soul in contact with Nature and men, Francis +instinctively felt, is joy and liberation; and if the simple-minded +saint went farther than this, and allowed a certain set of dogmatic +opinions and conventional abstentions, we may be sure that herein he +had no warrant of personal inspiration, but was content to follow the +well-nigh unquestioned traditions of his day. Francis fought, not for +Christianity and still less for the Church, but for the great secret of +fine living which he had personally divined. It was by a true instinct +that his modern biographer finds the motto of his life in the exquisite +saying of the saint’s great precursor, Joachim of Flora, that the true +ascetic counts nothing his own, save only his harp: “Qui vere monachus +est nihil reputat esse suum nisi citharam.” + +In former days we used to regard the civilised man as in some way +incorporating in his organism and bringing into the world with him +the inheritance of the ages of human culture. Now the tendency is to +regard civilisation as a growth totally outside man, and to consider +the man himself as a savage who merely adapts himself to civilisation +as he grows up, bringing, it may be, his own little contribution +to its development, but himself remaining practically a savage. +Thus Weismann has argued that the development of music is purely a +development of traditions, and that given the traditions any savage +has a chance of becoming a Bach or a Beethoven. I think this is a more +extreme view than the facts warrant us in taking. But it is fairly +obvious that there has been no growth of the human intellect during +at least the last two or three thousand years. We cannot beat the +Romans at government; we cannot express passion better than Sappho, or +form better than Phidias. We have produced no more truly scientific +physicians than Hippocrates or Galen; we cannot map out the world +more philosophically than Aristotle, nor play at ball with it with +a greater dialectical facility than Plato. What we have done is to +burden ourselves with a vaster mass of tradition. Civilisation is the +garment which man makes to clothe himself with. It is for each of us +to help to put in a patch here, to sew on a button there, or to work +in more embroidery. But the individual himself, with his own personal +organic passions, never becomes part of the garment, he only wears it. +Not, indeed, that we are called upon to refuse to wear it. The person +who can so refuse to follow the whole tradition of the race whence he +springs is organically abnormal, not to say morbid. His fellows have +a fair right to call him a lunatic or a criminal. The real question +is whether we shall allow ourselves to be crushed to the earth, lame, +impotent, and anæmic, by the mere garment of civilisation, or whether +we shall so strive to live that we wear it loosely and easily and +athletically, recognising that it is infinitely less precious than the +humanity it clothes, still not without its beauty and its use. + +If we wish to realise how many things are not required for fine living +we may contemplate the “triumphs of the Victorian era.” Contemplating +these we are enabled also to see that they mostly belong to the +mechanical side of existence, among the things that are remote from the +core of life. The new energy that all these inventions may give you on +one side they take from you on the other. They run on the energy that +you yourself supply. They are but devices for burdening your progress +and draining away your energy. For what does it avail though tons of +food are piled before you at the banquet of life if the capacity of +your stomach remains strictly limited? Only the more exquisite quality +of the banquet, with a finer equity in its distribution, could have +brought you new joy and strength. The exquisite things of life are +to-day as rare and as precious as ever they were. If the Victorian era +had given a keener sauce to hunger, a more ravishing delight to love, +if it had added a new joy to the sunlight, or a more delicious thrill +to the springtime, if it had made any of these things a larger part of +the common life, there indeed were a triumph to boast of! But so far +as one can see, the Victorian era has mostly helped to cover over and +push away from men the essential joys of living. Even those who prate +so gleefully of its triumphs find chief of these its narcotics. Let us +use these “triumphs” as much as we will, they belong to the unessential +background against which the real drama of our life must still be +played. + +We waste so much of our time on the things that are not truly +essential, worrying ourselves and others. Only one thing is really +needful, whether with this man we say “Seek first the kingdom of +Heaven,” or with that, “Make to yourself a perfect body.” It matters +little, because he who pointed to the kingdom of Heaven came eating and +drinking, the friend of publicans and sinners, and he who pointed to +the body sought solitude and the keenest spiritual austerity. The body +includes the soul, and the kingdom of Heaven includes the body. The one +thing needful is to seek wisely the fullest organic satisfaction. The +more closely we cling to that which satisfies the deepest cravings of +the organism, the more gladly we shall let fall the intolerable burden +of restraints and licences which are not required for fine living. “The +true ascetic counts nothing his own save only his harp.” It is best to +feel light and elate, free in every limb. Every man may have his burden +to bear; let him only beware that he bears no burden which is not a joy +to carry. If a man cannot sing as he carries his cross he had better +drop it. + +One has to admit that among English-speaking races at all events +the conditions have not been favourable for fine living. The racial +elements that have chiefly gone to making the English-speaking peoples +have been mainly characterised by energy, and while energy is the prime +constituent of living, it is scarcely sufficient for fine living. It +is quality rather than quantity of life which finally counts: that +is the terrible fact it has taken so long for our race to learn. To +plough deep in the furrows of life, to scatter human seed broadcast, to +bring to birth your random millions to wilt and fade in the black fog +of London alleys or the hot steam of Lancashire mills, casting abroad +the residue to wreak the vengeance in their blood on every fair and +unspoilt land the world may hold--that is scarcely yet civilisation; +fishes that spawn in the deep have carried the art of living as far +as that. Not energy, even when it shows itself in the blind fury +of righteousness, suffices to make civilisation, but sincerity, +intelligence, sympathy, grace, and all those subtle amenities which go +to what we call, perhaps imperfectly enough, humanity--therein more +truly lie the virtues of fine living. + +It seems not unnecessary to point out that civilisation was immortal +long before the first Englishman was born. The races that have given +the world the chief examples of fine living have never, save sometimes +in their decay, sought quantity rather than quality of life. Some of +the world’s most eternal cities are its smallest cities. If indeed the +reckless excess of human life tended to produce happiness, we might +well recognise compensation, and rest content. But, as we know, that +is not so. The country that men call the wealthiest is the poorest in +humanity when the lives and safeties of its workers are concerned, the +law of our righteousness demanding that the weakest shall go to the +wall. + +One asks oneself if such a condition of things is fatally necessary. +If that were so, then indeed the outlook of the world is dark. If +the ideal of quantity before quality, of brute energy, of complacent +self-righteousness, is for ever to dominate a large part of the world +through the English-speaking peoples, then indeed we may die happy that +the memory and the vision of better things were yet extant in our time. + +Yet surely it is not necessary. If civilisation is a tradition then +we may mould that tradition. We are no longer fatally damned into the +world. If our fathers ate sour grapes our teeth are not on edge. And +even so far as the influence of race counts, there is yet to be set +against it the influence of climate. In sunnier English-speaking lands +we may already trace a new foreign element of grace and suavity, a +deeper insight into the art of living, clearly due in large measure to +sky alone. When races change their sky, unlike individuals, they change +their dispositions also. + +But if we put aside this factor--though it is one of much significance +when we recall the accumulating evidence that under proper conditions +the white races can live and flourish in hot climes--are there no +reasons for thinking that even the English in England may acquire +those aptitudes which make not only for the grosser virtues of +civilisation, but also for those finer qualities which alone make life +truly worth living? I think there are. + +It is common for pessimists of the baser sort to lament the relative +decay of English supremacy in manufacturing and commercial energy, +and to look enviously at the development in these directions of other +and younger lands. Such an attitude is in any case inhuman, since +these younger countries, especially Germany, are undertaking the +cruder tasks of civilisation in at once a more scientific and a more +humane spirit than we have ever been able to achieve. But it is also +uncalled for. As a civilisation declines in brutal material energy it +gains in spiritual refinement, thus winning more subtle and permanent +influence. Egypt in her old age helped to mould young Greece, which in +turn as she fell civilised her barbarian Roman conquerors. Of early +vigorous Rome nothing remains save the empty echo of heroic virtue; +but on the magnificent compost of Roman, Alexandrian, and Byzantine +decay we northerners are flourishing even to-day. France has not taken +a leading part in the grosser work of modern civilisation, but her +laboratories of ideas, her workshops of beauty, above all her skill in +the fine art of living, have given her an influence over men’s minds +which swarming millions of pale factory hands and an inconceivable +tonnage of mercantile shipping have not so far given to us. But in the +very dying down of these grosser energies there is hope, for we may be +sure that the forces of life are not yet extinct, and that worthier and +subtler ends will float before our eyes as the sculleries and outhouse +offices of life are gradually removed elsewhere. England, there can be +little doubt, is peculiarly fitted to exercise the finer functions of +civilisation, if not indeed for the world generally, at all events for +those peoples of the globe which are allied to her wholly by language +and largely by race. In new countries, in the hurry of cities, in the +barren solitude of plains and hills, men have no time or no chance to +elaborate the ideals and visions for which they yet thirst; they are +not in touch with those great traditions on which alone all worthy +and abiding effort must finally rest. The little group of islands +hidden in this far corner of the Atlantic, bathed in their everlasting +halo of iridescent mist, will be a sacred shrine for fully half the +world. It was the womb in which the world’s most energetic race was +elaborated; we may be sure that the mother feeling will never die out. +Every great name and episode in the slow incubation of the race has +its place and association there. Nothing there which is not visibly +bathed in that glory which for ever touches us in the far past. In +the light of a newer civilisation every aspect of it will claim the +picturesque beauty of the past. And if, as Ribot has lately asserted, +the factories of this century will haunt the minds of future men with +the same picturesque suggestion as the ruins of thirteenth century +abbeys to-day haunt us, how rich a treasure England will possess here! +Men will come from afar to wander among the ruined factories and +furnaces of Lancashire and the Midlands, to gaze at the crumbling charm +of those structures once mortared by tears and blood. They will seek +the massive whirr of vanished mills at dawn, the prolonged clatter of +clogs along the pavement, the flutter of shawls down dark alleys, the +echo of brutal forgotten oaths. Their eyes will vainly try to recall +the men and women of the Victorian era, huddled together in pathetic +self-satisfaction beneath a black pall of smoke and disease and death, +playing out the tragedy they called life. A tender melancholy mightier +than beauty will cling to the decay of that vanished past. + +So far we have been developing the modern applications of that spirit +of _simplicity_--of sincere and natural asceticism--which was a +chief part of the secret of the Umbrian saint’s charm. Francis--as +in an earlier age the great Cynics of Greece, and in a later age the +New England transcendentalists--enables us to see that asceticism +is a natural instinct; he knew that so far from being an effort to +crush the body it was an effort to give elation and freedom to the +body--_Gaude, frater corpus!_--and that so far from being an +appeal to sorrow it was a perpetual appeal to joy. Let us throw aside +the useless burdens of life, he seems to say, the things that oppress +body and mind,--care and wealth and learning and books,--that thus we +may become free to concentrate ourselves on the natural things of the +world, attaining therein the joy of living. That was the simplicity of +Francis. There is another vaguer and subtler aspect of his personality +which may be expressed by the allied word _purity_. I mean that +clearness and perfect crystalline transparency symbolised by water, +in which it has its source. That Francis, with all his fine natural +instincts, fully realised all the implications of purity, either on its +physical or its spiritual sides, one may well doubt. Purity has never +been a great Christian virtue, though ever greatly talked about in +Christendom; and while the reliance of Francis on instinct carried him +far beyond the age and the faith in which he lived, his indifference to +the intellectual grip of things which was part of that natural instinct +caused him to be often swayed by the conventions and traditions around +him. + +It has been well said that purity--which in the last analysis is +physical cleanness--is the final result of evolution after which +Nature is ever striving. When she had attained to the production of +naked savage man, a creature no longer encumbered with the care of his +fur but freely and constantly bathed by the elements, the perfection of +purity was attained. With the wearing of clothes dirt was again brought +into the world; and so-called civilised man--except when he possesses +leisure for prolonged attention to his person and his clothes--is once +more brought to the level of the lower animals, indeed below them, for +few animals spend so little time and trouble in attaining cleanliness +as garmented man. Pagan classic times, no doubt, cherished a cult of +the body which involved a high regard for physical purity. That is +the very reason why such purity has never been a Christian or modern +virtue. The early Church, feeling profound antagonism to the vices +which in classic times were associated with the bath, from the outset +frequently denied that there was any need for cleanliness at all. Even +so cultured a Christian as Clement of Alexandria would only admit +that women should be clean; it was not necessary for men; “the bath +is to be taken by women for cleanliness and health, by men for health +alone;” in later days the hatred of cleanliness often became quite +whole-hearted. Thus it happens that throughout Europe and wherever +the influence of Christianity has spread there has been on the whole +an indifference to dirt, which is indeed not uncommonly found among +degraded peoples untouched by Christianity, but is certainly nowhere +else found in association with a grade of culture in most other +matters so high. To the Roman the rites of the bath formed one of the +very chief occupations of life, and to this race it has happened, as +probably to no other ancient race, that their baths have often survived +their temples; Rome holds no more memorable relic than the Baths of +Caracalla. For the Mohammedan the love of water is part of religion, +and the energy and skill with which in its prime Islamic civilisation +exploited the free and beautiful use of water, are still to be traced +throughout southern Spain. In the fine civilisation of Japan, again, +the pursuit of physical purity has ever been a simple and unashamed +public duty, and “a Japanese crowd,” says Professor Chamberlain, “is +the sweetest in the world.” How different things are in Christendom one +need not insist. + +It is, however, impossible to overrate the magnitude of the issues +which are directly and indirectly enfolded in this question of physical +purity. Christianity, with its studied indifference to cleanliness, +is, after all, a force from the outside so far as we are concerned; +every spontaneous reflective movement of progress involves a reaction +against it. On the physical side it is the mark of the better social +classes that they are clean, and any striving for betterment among the +masses is on the physical side a striving for greater cleanliness. +Personal dirtiness is the real and permanent dividing line of classes. +The instinctive physical shrinking of the clean person from the dirty +person--except at the rare moments when some stronger emotion comes +into play--is profound and inevitable. Nearly every form of honest +natural vulgarity it is possible to find tolerable and sometimes even +charming, but personal physical unwholesomeness remains an impossible +barrier. There is no social equality between the clean and the dirty. +The question of physical purity lies at the root of the real democratic +problem. + +Our attitude towards physical purity inevitably determines our attitude +towards the body generally. Without the ideal of cleanliness the body +becomes impure. It cannot be shown. Complete concealment becomes +the ideal of the impure. And however pure and excellent the body +may actually be among ourselves, the traditions of the past remain. +The Greeks considered the dislike to nakedness as a mark of Persian +and other barbarians; the Japanese--the Greeks of another age and +clime--had not conceived the reasons for avoiding nakedness until +taught by the lustful and shame-faced eyes of western barbarians. +Among ourselves it is “disgusting” even to-day to show so much as the +foot.[10] We certainly could not imitate St. Francis, who broke with +his old life by abandoning his father’s house and all that he owned, +absolutely naked. + +There is no real line of demarcation between physical purity and +spiritual purity, and the spiritual impurity which marks our +civilisation is certainly related to the physical impurity which has so +long been a tradition of Christendom. Both alike are a consciousness +of uncleanness involving a cloak of hypocrisy. We may well recall that +_sincerity_, if we carry its history sufficiently far back, is one +with physical purity. In some districts of Italy a girl shows that she +is chaste by joining in a certain procession and bearing the symbols of +purity in her hand. At all events so it was once. All women now walk +in the procession of the chaste. In civilised modern life everywhere, +indeed, we all walk in that procession, and bright lustful eyes mingled +with faint starved eyes both look out incongruously from behind the +same monotonously chaste masks. We have forgotten, if we ever knew, +that the filthy rags of our righteousness have alike robbed desire of +its purity and restraint of its beauty. + +How far Francis had instinctively divined the meaning and significance +of purity, either on the physical or the moral side, it would be +idle to attempt to inquire too precisely. But this delicate and +admirable saint brings us into an atmosphere in which the true grace +of purity may at least be discerned. His indifference to nakedness, +his affection for animals and interest in their loves, his audacious +banding together of men and women in one order, his gospel of joy and +his everlasting delight in all natural and elementary things, make up a +whole inconceivably different from that vision of the world which the +great mediæval monks, from St. Bernard downwards, spent their lives +in maintaining. He brings us to a point at which we are enabled to +go beyond his own insight, a point at which we may not only see that +asceticism is a simple and natural instinct, not alone recognise the +beauty of sex in flowers and birds, but in human creatures also, and +learn at last that the finest secrets of purity are known only to the +man and woman who have mingled the scent of their sweat with the wild +thyme. + +At the present moment it may indeed be said that the purity which is +one with sincerity presents itself to us more broadly and more clearly +in the road of our evolution than it ever has before. Even on the +physical side secrecy is becoming impossible, and as the progress of +physical science makes matter more and more transparent to our eyes, +sincerity must ever become a more stringent and inevitable virtue. And +on the psychic side, also, purity--if you will, sincerity--is even more +surely imposing itself. Within our own time we have been privileged +to see psychology taken from the study into the laboratory and into +the market-place. There is no recess of the soul--however intimate, +however, as we have been taught to think, disgusting--that is not now +opened to the childlike, all-scrutinising curiosity of science. We may +perhaps rebel, but so it is. There are no mysteries left, no noisome +abysses of ignorance veiled by the pretty mists of innocence. In the +face of this tendency private vice must ever become more difficult; we +are learning to detect the whole man in the slightest quiver of his +muscles. Thus, again, purity becomes yet more stringent and inevitable. +We gaze at all facts now, and find none too mean or too sacred for +study. But it is fatal to gaze at certain facts if you cannot gaze +purely. In that lies the final triumph of purity. We may rebel, I +repeat, but so it is, so it must remain. + +I do not wish to insist here on the moral aspects of purity--grave and +profound as these are--for I am dealing less with the social aspects +of simplicity and purity than with what I would call their religious +aspects, their power to win our personal peace and joy. How far we are +to-day, at all events in England, from the simplicity and purity of +Francis in the search for peace and joy is brought home very clearly +to those who have ever made it their business to observe the masses of +our population in their finest moments of would-be peace and joy. Many +years ago a curious fascination drew me every Bank Holiday to haunt the +structure and grounds of the Crystal Palace, near which I then lived. +The vision of humanity in the mass, when it has lost the interest which +individuals possess, and taken on the more abstract interest belonging +to the species, has for me at least always had a certain attraction. +But these Bank Holiday crowds had a more special interest. They summed +up and wrote large the characteristics of a nation. These thirty +thousand persons belonging to the class which by virtue of greater +fertility furnishes the ultimate substance of all classes, seemed +to reveal to me the heart of my own people. The perpetual, violent +movement, the meaningless shouts and yells, the haggard bands of young +women standing in the corridors to tramp wearily a treadmill variation +of the Irish jig until they fell into an almost hypnotic state, the +wistful, weary looks in the dull eyes of these seekers, rushing on +among the plaster images of old serene gods, seeing nothing but always +moving, moving they knew not whither, faint, yet pursuing they knew not +what,--the whole of the northern soul, the English soul above all, was +there. On! on! never mind how or where: that seemed the perpetual cry +of these pale, lean, awkward youths and women. And I would think of the +bands of boys and girls in the mediæval crusading epidemics, starting +from the north with the same eyes, asking for Jerusalem at every town, +soon to be slain or drowned in unknown obscure ways. Or sometimes I +recalled the bas-reliefs in the museum at Naples--that most fascinating +of museums--which show how the failing Greek genius concentrated its +now spiritualised energy in the forms of Dionysus and his mænads. With +eager face grown languid he leans on the great thyrsus, which bends +beneath his weight, and in front his mænads, upheld by the ardour of +the search, with heads thrown back and flying hair, still beat their +cymbals desperately, seeking, until they have grown almost unconscious +of search, a far-away joy, an ever-fleeting ideal, of which they have +at last forgotten the name. And so for hours my gaze would be fixed on +the pathetic vulgarity of those terrible crowds. + +Of late I have been able to see how the other vigorous and +reproductive race--the race that chiefly shares with England the +partition of the uncivilised world--comports itself at its great +festivals. The Russians are a profoundly and consciously religious +race, and I recall above all the unforgettable scene at the ancient +monastery of Troitsa, near Moscow, as it appeared on the festival of +the Assumption, when pilgrims, women mostly, in every variety of gay +costume, crowded thither on foot from all parts of Russia. There, at +length within the walls of that monastery-fortress on the hill at +Sergievo, they fervently kiss the sacred relics, and having been served +by the dark-robed, long-haired monks with soup and black bread, they +lie down and fall asleep, placid and motionless, on all sides. Young +women, grasping the pilgrim’s staff, a little droop sometimes in the +lips, yet with large brawny thighs beneath the short skirts, stolid +great-breasted women of middle age, wrinkled old women decked in their +ancient traditional adornments--all this gay-coloured multitude fling +themselves down to sleep on the church steps, around its walls, over +the silent graves, heaped up anywhere that the march of on-coming +pilgrims leaves a little space, tired mænads filled for once with the +wine their souls craved, colossal images of immense appeasement. It is +the orgy of a strong, silent, much-suffering race, with all the charm +of childhood yet upon it, too humane to be ferocious in its energy. + +We English subordinate the sensory to the motor side of life, and even +find our virtue in so doing. To live in the present, to suffer and +to enjoy our actual evil and good, facing it squarely and making our +account with it--that we cannot do: that was the way of the Greeks and +Romans; it is not our way. We are ever poets and idealists, down to +the dregs of life’s cup. We must strive and push, using our muscles to +narcotise our senses, ever contemptuous of the people who more fully +exercise their senses to grasp the world around them. For the sake of +this muscular auto-intoxication we miss the finest moments life has to +give. The Japanese masses, who fix their popular festival for the day +when the cherry-tree is in finest bloom, and take their families into +the woods to sip tea and pass the day deliciously with the flowers, are +born to a knowledge of that mystery which Francis painfully conquered. +The people to whom such an art of enjoyment is the common practice of +the common people may possibly not succeed in sending ugly and shoddy +goods to clothe and kill the beautiful skins of every savage tribe +under heaven, but we need not fear to affirm that they have learnt +secrets of civilisation which are yet hidden from us in England. + +The worth of a civilisation, we may be very sure, is more surely +measured by its power to multiply among the common people the +possibility of having and enjoying such moments than by the mileage of +cotton goods its factories can yield, or even by the output of Bibles +its weary factory hands can stitch. We can know no moments of finer or +purer exhilaration, whether we breathe the bright air of Australian +solitudes and watch the virgin hills lie fold within fold beneath the +stainless sunlight, or in the dimmer and damper air of this old country +recline on Surrey heights by the great beeches of the old deserted +Pilgrim’s Way and meditate of the past. There are few things sweeter +or more profitable than to lie on the velvety floor of a little pine +wood on a forgotten southern height in May, where tall clumps of +full-flowered rhododendra blend with the fragrant gorse which spreads +down to the sparkling sea, and to throw aside everything and dream. In +such moments at such spots we reach the summits of life, learning those +secrets of asceticism which Francis knew so well. + +Thus by his words and by his deeds Francis still has his significance +for us. He brought asceticism from the cell into the fields, and became +the monk of Nature. One may doubt whether, as Renan thought, the Song +to the Sun is the supreme modern expression of the religious spirit, +but without doubt it gathers up vaguely and broadly the things that +most surely belong to our eternal peace in this world. That it is the +simplest and naturalest things to which eternal joy belongs is the +divine secret which makes Francis a prince among saints, and it was by +a true inspiration that he dedicated the chief utterance of his worship +of joy in life to the sun. + +If it should ever chance that a sane instinct of worship is born again +on earth among civilised men, let us be sure that nothing will seem +more worthy of worship than the sun, the source of that energy out +of which we and all our ideals ultimately spring. Some day, again, +perhaps, men will greet the rising of the sun at the summer solstice on +the hills with music and song and dance, framing their most exquisite +liturgical art to the honour of that supreme source of all earthly +life. It was natural, doubtless, that at some stage of human progress +new-found moral conceptions should intrude themselves as worthier of +human worship. But even the cross itself--if not its great rival the +lunar Mohammedan crescent--was first the symbol of sun-worship, of the +source of life. We may yet rescue that sacred symbol, now fallen to +such sorrowful uses, bearing it onwards to sunnier heights of wholeness +and joy. + +Religions are many, and in the mass they seem to us--blinded to the +social functions that religions originally subserved--endlessly harsh +and cruel. But in their summits, in their finest personalities, they +are simple and natural enough, and alike lovely. Look at the Jesus +of the Gospels, the friend of publicans and sinners, the marriage +guest at Cana, so tender-hearted in the house of Simon, the author +of those sayings of quintessential natural wisdom preserved to us in +that string of adorable pearls men call the Sermon on the Mount. Look +at the prophet of Islam, when gazing back at the earth as it seemed +to recede into the distance at the end of his long career, he counted +as first among its claims the simple natural joys: “I love your world +because of its women and its perfumes.” And we remember the depths to +which Christianity and Mohammedanism have alike fallen. Look, again, +at Francis, who in no prim academical sense may be called the first +modern apostle of sweetness and light, a man who found joy unspeakable +in inhaling the fragrance of flowers, in watching the limpid waters of +mountain streams, and whose most characteristic symbol is the soaring +lark he loved so well. And we remember that a century later even +Chaucer, that sweetest and most sympathetic of poets, can only speak +of his friar in words that seem to be of inevitable and unconscious +irony. For every religion begins as the glorious living flame of a +lovely human personality,--or so it seems,--and continues as a barren +cinder-heap. As such, as a Church, whether pagan or Christian, it can +scarcely afford us either light or heat. + +Why, one asks oneself, is it necessary for me to choose between Paul +and Petronius? Why pester me on the one hand with the breastplate of +faith and the helmet of salvation, on the other with the feast of +Trimalchio and the kisses of Giton? “A plague of both your houses!” We +are not barbarians, tortured by a moral law, neither are we all pagans +with unmixed instincts of luxury. We are the outcome of a civilisation +in which not only has what we are pleased to regard as the sensual fury +of the ape and tiger become somewhat chastened, but the ascetic fury of +the monk and priest also. Let the child of the south feast still in the +house of Trimalchio with unwounded conscience, if he can; we will not +forbid him. And let the barbarian still flagellate his tense rebellious +nerves with knotted spiritual scourges, if only so can he draw out the +best music they yield; we will be the first to applaud. But most of us +have little to do with the one or the other. The palmiest days of both +ended a thousand years ere we were born. Before the threshold of our +modern world was reached Francis sang in the sun and smiled away the +spectres that squatted on the beautiful things of the earth. On the +threshold of our world Rabelais built his Abbey of Thelème, in whose +rule was but one clause, _Fay ce que vouldras_, a rule which no +pagan or Christian had ever set up before, because never before except +as involved in the abstract conceptions of philosophers, had the +thought of voluntary co-operation, of the unsolicited freedom to do +well, appeared before European men. + +What have we to do also, it may be added, with modernity, with the +fashions of an hour? It is well, indeed, to live in the present, +whatever that present may be, but sooner or later we are pushed back, +weary or disillusioned, on the inspiration of our own personality. All +the activity of Francis only wrought a plague of grey friars, scattered +like dust on the highways of Europe. But Francis still remains, and +all things wither into nothingness in the presence of one natural man +who dared to be himself. The best of us can scarcely hope to be more +successful than Francis. But at least we may be ourselves. “Whatever +happens I must be emerald:” that, Antoninus said, is the emerald’s +morality; that must remain our finest affirmation. + +Our feet cling to the earth, and it is well that we should learn to +grip it closely and nakedly. But the earth beneath us is not all of +Nature; there are instincts within us that lead elsewhere, and it is +part of the art of living to use naturally all those instincts. In so +doing the spiritual burdens which the ages have laid upon us glide away +into thin air. + +And for us, as for him who wrote _De Imitatione Christi_--however +far differently--there are still two wings by which we may raise +ourselves above the earth, simplicity, that is to say, and purity. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 10: Thus one learns from the newspapers that the offence of +wearing sandals has involved ejection even from so great a centre of +enlightenment as the Reading Room of the British Museum, while the mere +assertion that an actress appeared on the stage with bare legs was so +damaging that it involved an action for slander, a public apology, and +the payment of “a substantial sum” in compensation.] + + + THE WALTER SCOTT PRESS, NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE. + + + + +Crown 8vo, about 350 pp. each, Cloth Cover, 2/6 per Vol.; Half-Polished + Morocco, Gilt Top, 5s. + + + Count Tolstoy’s Works. + + The following Volumes are already issued-- + + A RUSSIAN PROPRIETOR. WHAT TO DO? + THE COSSACKS. WAR AND PEACE. (4 vols.) + IVAN ILYICH, AND OTHER THE LONG EXILE, ETC. + STORIES. SEVASTOPOL. + MY RELIGION. THE KREUTZER SONATA, AND + LIFE. FAMILY HAPPINESS. + MY CONFESSION. THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS + CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD, WITHIN YOU. + YOUTH. WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE + THE PHYSIOLOGY OF WAR. LIGHT. + ANNA KARENINA. 3/6. THE GOSPEL IN BRIEF. + + Uniform with the above-- + + IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA. By Dr. GEORGE BRANDES. + + Post 4to, Cloth, Price 1s. + + PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY. + + To which is appended a Reply to Criticisms of the Work. + + By COUNT TOLSTOY. + + + 1/- Booklets by Count Tolstoy. + + Bound in White Grained Boards, with Gilt Lettering. + + + WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD THE GODSON. + IS ALSO. IF YOU NEGLECT THE FIRE, + THE TWO PILGRIMS. YOU DON’T PUT IT OUT. + WHAT MEN LIVE BY. WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT A MAN? + + + + 2/- Booklets by Count Tolstoy. + + NEW EDITIONS, REVISED. + + Small 12mo, Cloth, with Embossed Design on Cover, each containing Two + Stories by Count Tolstoy, and Two Drawings by H. R. Millar. In Box, + Price 2s. each. + + Volume I. contains— Volume III. contains— + WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD THE TWO PILGRIMS. + IS ALSO. IF YOU NEGLECT THE FIRE, + THE GODSON. YOU DON’T PUT IT OUT. + Volume II. contains— Volume IV. contains— + WHAT MEN LIVE BY. MASTER AND MAN. + WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT A Volume V. contains— + MAN? TOLSTOY’S PARABLES. + + + London: WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED, Paternoster Square. + + + + + PRESS OPINIONS ON “THE NEW SPIRIT.” + + +“It is easy to dislike his book, it is possible to dislike it +furiously; but the book is so honest, so earnest, so stimulating in its +tolerant but convinced unconventionality, that it claims for itself a +like sincerity and seriousness in the reader.... Mr. Ellis has produced +a book which will be hotly discussed, no doubt, for it is nothing if +not initiative, we might almost say revolutionary; but it is not a book +to be disregarded.... It has sincerity and it has power; and sincerity +and power compel at least attention.”--_Speaker._ + +“Mr. Havelock Ellis has discovered a ‘New Spirit.’ We have read him +with care and patience, and we should be sorry to describe it; we only +know that it is not intoxicating.”--_Scots Observer._ + +“Welcome is warmly due to this fresh, buoyant, and sincere volume of +essays by Mr. Havelock Ellis.... There are parts of the study of Heine +which are not unworthy to be named--it is high praise--with Matthew +Arnold’s inimitable paper upon that writer, a paper almost as classic +as Heine himself.... The last word upon so suggestive and finished a +piece of work ought to be one of ungrudging praise.”--_Academy._ + +“Mr. Carlyle described, it seems to us, Mr. Havelock Ellis himself with +great exactness in the person of a certain biographer of Voltaire, ‘an +inquiring, honest-hearted character, many of whose statements must have +begun to astonish even himself.’ Mr. Ellis must be very ‘inquiring,’ +for we have seldom met with one who knows so many things that other +people do not know.”--_Athenæum._ + +“Each of these essays is a thorough and well-considered piece of +work, admirable in information, firm in grasp, stimulating in style, +appreciative in matter, and the survey afforded is broad.... It +is an altogether unusual work, both for its ambition and for its +matter; it brings the reader near to some of the marked ideas of the +time.”--_Nation._ + +“The points of the New Spirit are its passion for getting things +right in the matter of property and in the matter of true human +worth.”--_Daily News._ + + + + + PRESS OPINIONS ON “THE NEW SPIRIT.” + (_Continued._) + + +“The only coherent constituent of the New Spirit which this book +professes to set forth, is a vehement hatred, amounting to a passion, +against conventional unveracities, and a determination that they should +be swept away.... We cannot imagine anything of which it could be more +necessary for human nature, so taught [by our Lord], to purge itself, +than the New Spirit of Havelock Ellis.”--_Spectator._ + +“Mr. Havelock Ellis has written an interesting and significant book, +which it is quite easy to ridicule, but which certainly deserves a +fair hearing.... Apparently these writers are chosen because they +all agree in a hatred of shams, in looking facts in the face, and in +demanding provision for the healthy satisfaction of animal wants.... +Mr. Ellis writes with force and insight; but, whether from brevity or +want of caution, he leaves with regard to these subjects an impression +which he would probably not himself desire to produce.”--_Murray’s +Magazine._ + +“The concluding chapter, wherein Mr. Ellis expresses his own ‘intimate +thought and secret emotion,’ is one of the best utterances of the New +Spirit which we have ever read.”--_Echo._ + +“Un volume de haute critique littéraire qui rappelle le style fort et +la méthode stricte de Hennequin.”--_Mercure de France._ + +“A more foolish, unwholesome, perverted piece of sentimental cant we +have never wasted our time over.”--_World._ + +“Excellent examples of appreciative criticism of an exceedingly +interesting series of authors, of whom every one ought to know +at least as much as Mr. Ellis here tells us so freshly and +vivaciously.”--_Scottish Leader._ + +“We only refer to this unpleasant compilation of cool impudence and +effrontery to warn our readers against it.”--_Dundee Advertiser._ + +“Beautiful both in thought and expression. But Mr. Ellis seems to have +laid aside altogether the wise restraint which characterises his volume +on ‘The Criminal.’... The scientific spirit, of which at other times he +has shown himself a distinguished exponent, should have prevented him +from such error.”--_Arbroath Herald._ + +“Ardent, enthusiastic, and eloquent.”--_Boston Literary World._ + +“It is not often that the weary and heart-sore reviewer, struggling to +keep abreast of the Protean outpourings of the press, falls in with +anything so well-informed, so rich in thought and suggestion as _The +New Spirit_.”--_Wit and Wisdom._ + + + London: WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED, Paternoster Square. + + + + + The Contemporary Science Series. + + Edited by Havelock Ellis. + + +I. THE EVOLUTION OF SEX. By Prof. PATRICK GEDDES and J. A. +THOMSON. With 90 Illustrations. Second Edition. + + “The authors have brought to the task--as indeed their names + guarantee--a wealth of knowledge, a lucid and attractive method of + treatment, and a rich vein of picturesque language.”--_Nature._ + + +II. ELECTRICITY IN MODERN LIFE. By G. W. DE TUNZELMANN. With +88 Illustrations. + + “A clearly-written and connected sketch of what is known about + electricity and magnetism, the more prominent modern applications, and + the principles on which they are based.”--_Saturday Review._ + + +III. THE ORIGIN OF THE ARYANS. By Dr. ISAAC TAYLOR. +Illustrated. Second Edition. + + “Canon Taylor is probably the most encyclopædic all-round scholar now + living. His new volume on the Origin of the Aryans is a first-rate + example of the excellent account to which he can turn his exceptionally + wide and varied information.... Masterly and exhaustive.”--_Pall Mall + Gazette._ + + +IV. PHYSIOGNOMY AND EXPRESSION. By P. MANTEGAZZA. Illustrated. + + “Brings this highly interesting subject even with the latest + researches.... Professor Mantegazza is a writer full of life and + spirit, and the natural attractiveness of his subject is not destroyed + by his scientific handling of it.”--_Literary World_ (Boston). + + +V. EVOLUTION AND DISEASE. By J. B. SUTTON, F.R.C.S. With 135 +Illustrations. + + “The book is as interesting as a novel, without sacrifice of + accuracy or system, and is calculated to give an appreciation of + the fundamentals of pathology to the lay reader, while forming + a useful collection of illustrations of disease for medical + reference.”--_Journal of Mental Science._ + + +VI. THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY. By G. L. GOMME. Illustrated. + + “His book will probably remain for some time the best work of reference + for facts bearing on those traces of the village community which have + not been effaced by conquest, encroachment, and the heavy hand of Roman + law.”--_Scottish Leader._ + + +VII. THE CRIMINAL. By HAVELOCK ELLIS. Illustrated. Second +Edition. + + “The sociologist, the philosopher, the philanthropist, the + novelist--all, indeed, for whom the study of human nature + has any attraction--will find Mr. Ellis full of interest and + suggestiveness.”--_Academy._ + + +VIII. SANITY AND INSANITY. By Dr. CHARLES MERCIER. Illustrated. + + “Taken as a whole, it is the brightest book on the physical side of + mental science published in our time.”--_Pall Mall Gazette._ + +IX. HYPNOTISM. By Dr. ALBERT MOLL. Fourth Edition. + + “Marks a step of some importance in the study of some difficult + physiological and psychological problems which have not yet received + much attention in the scientific world of England.”--_Nature._ + + +X. MANUAL TRAINING. By Dr. C. M. WOODWARD, Director of the +Manual Training School, St. Louis. Illustrated. + + “There is no greater authority on the subject than Professor + Woodward.”--_Manchester Guardian._ + + +XI. THE SCIENCE OF FAIRY TALES. By E. SIDNEY HARTLAND. + + “Mr. Hartland’s book will win the sympathy of all earnest + students, both by the knowledge it displays, and by a thorough + love and appreciation of his subject, which is evident + throughout.”--_Spectator._ + + +XII. PRIMITIVE FOLK. By ELIE RECLUS. + + “An attractive and useful introduction to the study of some aspects of + ethnography.”--_Nature._ + + +XIII. THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE. By Professor LETOURNEAU. + + “Among the distinguished French students of sociology, Professor + Letourneau has long stood in the first rank. He approaches the + great study of man free from bias and shy of generalisations. To + collect, scrutinise, and appraise facts is his chief business. + In the volume before us he shows these qualities in an admirable + degree.”--_Science._ + + +XIV. BACTERIA AND THEIR PRODUCTS. By Dr. G. SIMS WOODHEAD. +Illustrated. Second Edition. + + “An excellent summary of the present state of knowledge of the + subject.”--_Lancet._ + + +XV. EDUCATION AND HEREDITY. By J. M. GUYAU. + + “It is at once a treatise on sociology, ethics, and pædagogics. It + is doubtful whether among all the ardent evolutionists who have had + their say on the moral and the educational question any one has + carried forward the new doctrine so boldly to its extreme logical + consequence.”--Professor SULLY in _Mind_. + + +XVI. THE MAN OF GENIUS. By Prof. LOMBROSO. Illustrated. + + “By far the most comprehensive and fascinating collection of facts + and generalizations concerning genius which has yet been brought + together.”--_Journal of Mental Science._ + + +XVII. THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE. By Prof. KARL PEARSON. +Illustrated. + + “The problems discussed with great ability and lucidity, and often in a + most suggestive manner, by Prof. Pearson, are such as should interest + _all_ students of natural science.”--_Natural Science._ + + +XVIII. PROPERTY: ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. By CH. +LETOURNEAU, General Secretary to the Anthropological Society, +Paris, and Professor in the School of Anthropology, Paris. + + “M. Letourneau has read a great deal, and he seems to us to have + selected and interpreted his facts with considerable judgment and + learning.”--_Westminster Review._ + +XIX. VOLCANOES, PAST AND PRESENT. By Prof. EDWARD HULL, +L.L.D., F.R.S. + + “A very readable account of the phenomena of volcanoes and + earthquakes.”--_Nature._ + + +XX. PUBLIC HEALTH. By Dr. J. F. J. SYKES. With numerous +Illustrations. + + “Not by any means a mere compilation or a dry record of details and + statistics, but it takes up essential points in evolution, environment, + prophylaxis, and sanitation bearing upon the preservation of public + health.”--_Lancet._ + + +XXI. MODERN METEOROLOGY. AN ACCOUNT OF THE GROWTH AND PRESENT +CONDITION OF SOME BRANCHES OF METEOROLOGICAL SCIENCE. By FRANK +WALDO, PH.D., Member of the German and Austrian Meteorological +Societies, etc.; late Junior Professor, Signal Service, U.S.A. With 112 +Illustrations. + + “The present volume is the best on the subject for general use that we + have seen.”--_Daily Telegraph_ (London). + + +XXII. THE GERM-PLASM: A THEORY OF HEREDITY. By AUGUST +WEISMANN, Professor in the University of Freiburg-in-Breisgau. +With 24 Illustrations. + + “There has been no work published since Darwin’s own books which has + so thoroughly handled the matter treated by him, or has done so much + to place in order and clearness the immense complexity of the factors + of heredity, or, lastly, has brought to light so many new facts and + considerations bearing on the subject.”--_British Medical Journal._ + + +XXIII. INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS. By F. HOUSSAY. With numerous +Illustrations. + + “His accuracy is undoubted, yet his facts out-marvel all romance. These + facts are here made use of as materials wherewith to form the mighty + fabric of evolution.”--_Manchester Guardian._ + + +XXIV. MAN AND WOMAN. By HAVELOCK ELLIS. Illustrated. Second +Edition. + + “Mr. Havelock Ellis belongs, in some measure, to the continental school + of anthropologists; but while equally methodical in the collection + of facts, he is far more cautious in the invention of theories, and + he has the further distinction of being not only able to think, but + able to write. His book is a sane and impartial consideration, from a + psychological and anthropological point of view, of a subject which is + certainly of primary interest.”--_Athenæum._ + + +XXV. THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN CAPITALISM. By JOHN A. HOBSON, +M.A. + + “Every page affords evidence of wide and minute study, a weighing of + facts as conscientious as it is acute, a keen sense of the importance + of certain points as to which economists of all schools have + hitherto been confused and careless, and an impartiality generally + so great as to give no indication of his [Mr. Hobson’s] personal + sympathies.”--_Pall Mall Gazette._ + + +XXVI. APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. By FRANK PODMORE, +M.A. + + “A very sober and interesting little book.... That thought-transference + is a real thing, though not perhaps a very common thing, he certainly + shows.”--_Spectator._ + + +XXVII. AN INTRODUCTION TO COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. By Professor C. +LLOYD MORGAN. With Diagrams. + + “A strong and complete exposition of Psychology, as it takes shape in + a mind previously informed with biological science.... Well written, + extremely entertaining, and intrinsically valuable.”--_Saturday + Review._ + + +XXVIII. THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION: A STUDY OF INDUSTRY AMONG PRIMITIVE +PEOPLES. By OTIS T. MASON, Curator of the Department of Ethnology in +the United States National Museum. + + “A valuable history of the development of the inventive + faculty.”--_Nature._ + + +XXIX. THE GROWTH OF THE BRAIN: A STUDY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM IN +RELATION TO EDUCATION. By HENRY HERBERT DONALDSON, Professor of +Neurology in the University of Chicago. + + “We can say with confidence that Professor Donaldson has executed his + work with much care, judgment, and discrimination.”--_The Lancet._ + + +XXX. EVOLUTION IN ART: AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE LIFE-HISTORIES OF DESIGNS. +By Professor ALFRED C. HADDON. With 130 Illustrations. + + “It is impossible to speak too highly of this most unassuming and + invaluable book.”--_Journal Anthropological Institute._ + + +XXXI. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE EMOTIONS. By TH. RIBOT, Professor +at the College of France, Editor of the _Revue Philosophique_. + + “Professor Ribot’s treatment is careful, modern, and + adequate.”--_Academy._ + + +XXXII. HALLUCINATIONS AND ILLUSIONS: A STUDY OF THE FALLACIES OF +PERCEPTION. By EDMUND PARISH. + + “This remarkable little volume.”--_Daily News._ + + +XXXIII. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. By E. W. SCRIPTURE, Ph.D. +(Leipzig). With 124 Illustrations. + + +XXXIV. SLEEP: ITS PHYSIOLOGY, PATHOLOGY, HYGIENE, AND +PSYCHOLOGY. By MARIE DE MANACÉÏNE (St. Petersburg). +Illustrated. + + + + + THE SCOTT LIBRARY. + + Crown 8vo, Cloth Elegant, Price 1s. 6d. per Volume. + + _ISSUE OF NEW VOLUMES._ + + +Vasari’s Lives of Italian Painters. Selected and Prefaced by +HAVELOCK ELLIS. + + “Vasari’s Lives” may be approached for such knowledge as they afford + concerning the history of art and the cataloguing of the art-products + of the Italian Renaissance; or they may be approached for the light + Vasari throws on the psychology of genius in artists, from which point + of view he is incomparable. As the personal friend or acquaintance of + some of the world’s greatest artists, Vasari moved in an atmosphere + of artistic tradition, which he has fully recorded. In this volume + the editor has sought to gather from the voluminous _Lives_ + everything that is really of value regarding the intimate nature and + habits of the great Florentine artists of the Italian Renaissance. + + +Laocoon; and other Prose Writings of Lessing. A New Translation, with +an Introduction, by W. B. RÖNNFELDT. + + This volume, representative of the prose of Lessing, contains, + besides the Laocoon essay, those portions of Lessing’s Dramatic Notes + (_Hamburgische Dramaturgie_) which deal with various principles + of dramatic art, and which are of permanent interest, together with + the _Education of the Human Race_, Lessing’s last contribution + to theological discussion. A biographical note is prefixed to the + introduction. An entirely new translation is here given. + + +Pelleas and Melisanda and The Sightless. Two Plays by Maurice +Maeterlinck. Translated from the French by LAURENCE ALMA +TADEMA. + + The preface to this volume, while providing for the reader who is + unacquainted with the peculiarly imaginative dramas of Maeterlinck + an excellent introduction to them, furnishes also a bibliography of + Maeterlinck’s works. For the song in Act III. of Pelleas and Melisanda + (“_Mes longs cheveux descendent_”), the attempt at an adequate + English rendition of which has baffled various translators, another + song has, at the request of M. Maeterlinck, been substituted. + + +The Complete Angler of Walton and Cotton. Edited, with an Introduction, +by CHARLES HILL DICK. + + This is a carefully edited reprint of this famous book, prefixed by a + biographical introduction. Pains has been taken in the selection of + the type for this edition, which will be found one of the neatest and + handiest of the many editions of _The Angler_ which have appeared. + + +Lessing’s “Nathan the Wise.” Translated, with an Introduction, by +Major-General PATRICK MAXWELL. + + As the translator of Schiller’s “Maid of Orleans,” “William Tell,” + and of various plays and essays, General Maxwell’s work has been + received with considerable critical appreciation. An analysis of + the play precedes the text in this volume, and copious elucidatory + notes are appended. This translation of one of the most notable + dramatic productions of the last century will be found as faithful and + effective as any that has yet been given to the English reader. + + + LONDON: WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. + + + + + =TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES= + +Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced +quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and +otherwise left unbalanced. + +Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant +preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not +changed. + +Inconsistent hyphens left as printed. + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76076 *** |