UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
3 1761 01783548 9
t
THE COMING TERKOK
AND OTHEE ESSAYS AND LETTERS
BY THE SAMS AUTHOR.
THE MOMENT AFTEE:
31 laic of tl)e IMnseen.
In One Volume, crown Svo.
Athenaeum.' It should be read in daylight.'
Observer. ' A clever tour deforce.'
Guardian.' Particularly impressive, graphic, and powerful."
Bristol Mercury.' Written with the same poetic feeling and
power which have given a rare charm to Mr. Buchanan's previous
prose writings.'
Spectator.' A remarkable little study The story is
certainly an impressive one, more especially the story of the
crime."
Speaker.' Few living authors could have imagined and
written the narrative of Maurizio Modena as Mr. Buchanan has
imagined and written it. " The Moment After " is as interesting
as any of Mr. Buchanan's previous novels.'
Academy.' The dramatic and descriptive powers exhibited
are of a high order.'
Scottish Leader.' One of the most weird and powerful
imaginings of the author of the "City of Dream." '
LONDON :
WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21, BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
THE COMING TERROR
AND OTHER ESSAYS AND LETTERS
BY
ROBERT BUCHANAN
' In interfere homine habitat Veritas.' AUGUSTINE.
1 Sir To. Dost them think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be
no more cakes and ale ?
' C'lo. Yen, by Saint Anne and ginger shall be hot i* the mouth too !'
-Twelfth Night.
' Leave nothing sacred 'tis but just
The Many-headed Beast should know.' TENNYSON.
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1891
[ALL rights reserved]
PREFACE.
I MUST apologize to the serious reader for preserving, in
the present permanent form, at the request of many cor-
respondents, the following passing comments on public
events and social phenomena. My aim is selfish, yet two-
fold. Firstly, these comments may be useful by-and-by
to readers of my less desultory contributions to literature ;
secondly, I am enabled, in republishing them, to restore one
or two passages which were too outspoken for the columns
of the daily newspaper of the period.
From the first moment I began to write I have been
endeavouring to vindicate the freedom of human Personality,
the equality of the sexes, and tbe right of Revolt against
arbitrary social laws conflicting with the happiness of
human nature. Had I paused there, I might have secured
the suffrages of a friendly minority. But, unfortunately,
while defending Freedom on the one hand, I have been
defending Society on the other, under the impression
that social organization is not always, and not necessarily,
tyrannical. From my point of view, the average Home is
not invariably (what the gentlemen of the Hall of Science
describe it to be) a ' Harem/ nor is the average Morality
inextricably associated with 'the piggish virtues of the
Georges.' I am, therefore, out of harmony with the
minority as well as with the majority, and am little likely
to find favour with either party : either the Convention -
VI
PREFACE.
alists who assume that everything existing is right, or
the Reformers who believe that everything existing is
wrong.
At this moment of publication a great wave of Mock-
Morality is threatening to destroy much that is beautiful
and pleasurable in Life, in Literature, and in Art. Nearly
every natural function, certainly every natural enjoyment,
has been arraigned as criminal, and the vice of incontinence
in matters of the Body has been confused, by the blind
leading the blind, with the passion for freedom in matters
of the Soul. Not for the first time in the history of the
world, Man has discovered that he is naked. So ashamed
is he of his unclad organism, that he is content to adopt
any kind of hypocrisy as a garment. The ulcerous rags of
Asceticism, the dingy cloak of Pessimism, the tin-drawers
sanctioned by the Vatican, the cheap slop-suit of current
Socialism, and the quasi-military breeches adopted by the
Salvation Army, have all been found acceptable, even
necessary ; for if any idea is established among philan-
thropists nowadays, it is that Man is naturally an indecent
animal, and that his propensities are, of necessity, brutal.
This idea is dominant not only in circles professedly puritan,
but in circles professedly free and eclectic, for the Calvin-
istic preacher and the advanced Moral Reformer are agreed
at least on one point, that the World is ugly, and that Man
is a Beast. Hence the new Gospel of Total Abstinence from
the Beautiful and the Enjoyable ; hence the creed that all
conduct, all emotion, all Life, all Literature, all Art, must
have its sanction from the scientific discovery without, not
from the conscience within ; hence certain unnatural ordi-
nances of Marriage and Divorce, the restriction on all true
freedom of Relation between the sexes, the licensing laws,
the inquisitorial Councils, the new Journalistic Police, the
death of free Literature, and the paralysis of free Art. In-
stead of sunshine and fresh air, Humanity accepts the
Dingy Science in excelsis ; in lieu of a God proved to be
PREFACE. vii
non-existent or paralytic, it clamours round its Providence
made Easy.
County Councils, Vigilance Associations, Arbitrary Trades-
unions, the new Science of Self-Exposure, and the new Liter-
ature of sexual pathology, are all but steps on the way to the
dreary millennium of State Socialism, to the period of the
greatest Tyranny of the greatest Number. Every institution,
however peaceful, however beautiful, is to be destroyed and
trampled down under the hob -nailed boots of Demos.
Intellectual activity itself will soon be regarded as a
dangerous form of Competition! What the world will
become when the State superintends all living functions
and governs all living acts may be gathered from the dire-
ful prophecy of social nullity painted, with blind and mis-
placed enthusiasm, in a book called 'Looking Backward.'
Is it to be wondered at that so many men, dreading the
catastrophe, turn Tories in despair ?
The main contention in the following pages is that no
amount of political or social tinkering will complete the
process Nature chooses to work out by her own slow
methods of conscientious evolution, and that, by the
present growth of quasi-providential restriction, 1 by the
emergence of Mob Morality and Mob Rule, those sublime
methods are being indefinitely retarded, even occasionally
reversed. In proportion as we limit the freedom of the
Individual, we retard the progress of the Race, destroy
human character, debase human intelligence, and arrest
the development of the social conscience. Sanitation in
both the physical and the moral world comes of free oxygen,
free sunshine, and free exercise. Knowledge comes of per-
sonal experience and suffering, not of political or moral
dogmas, all hollow as the dogmas of any and every Church.
In a word, no organization of human beings, no union,
secular, priestly, or apostolic, can help one man to ' save
his Soul alive,' or, what is the. same thing, to save the Souls
of those he loves.
The glory of the Age is its recognition of the responsi-
Vlll
PREFACE.
bilities of human Brotherhood ; the disgrace of the Age is
its attempt to confuse philanthropy with tyrannous legis-
lation. Seen from the standpoint of common justice, our
present condition of Society is one actively stirred, in every
fibre, by the science of Humanity. Ways and means may
differ, but Tory and Liberal alike are striving, and not
ineffectively, for the common good. If the balance of
private philanthropy and beneficence were to be ascertained
even now, it would be found, perhaps, that the weight of
' good works ' was on the side of those who are trying to
conserve whatever is just and noble in our constitution ;
that in all matters of private tolerance and kindliness to
human beings in the mass, the Tory was more generous than
the Liberal, and the Liberal more sympathetic than the
Radical. The old feudal system itself was wiser, and far
pleasanter, than the new Despotic Socialism. The last
scientific and political Providence, like the old Christianity,
postulates an utterly non-existent and absolutely unreal
Human Nature ; it legislates for men and women as they
never were, and demands a perfection of obedience which
would convert them into moral parasites. Men grow by
happiness and freedom, by the exercise of every natural
function ; men dwindle when they become merely portions
of a Political Mechanism. The result of Socialistic Legisla-
tion is seen nowadays in a thousand disastrous forms some
of which I have endeavoured to describe in the following
pages ; while, on the other hand, I have not been afraid,
at the risk of seeming inconsistent, to point out the folly of
anti-social forms of Individualism, forms which show the
Individual anatomising his own morbid secretions, parading
his own obscene discoveries, shutting out the common sun-
light, and finding in Nature only the Calvinistic phenomena
of Darkness, Disease, and Death.
R. B.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
THE COMING TERROR : A DIALOGUE BETWEEN ALIENATUS, A
PROVINCIAL, AND URBANUS, A COCKNEY - - 1
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL? A CONTROVERSY - 41
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL : A PROTEST AGAINST OVER-
LEGISLATION IN MATTERS LITERARY - - 99
THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC - 143
IS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE? - 183
IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM -225
IS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL? - - 259
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM :
I. WHAT IS SENTIMENT] - 289
*
ii. EMMA WADE'S MARTYRDOM - 297
III. THE APOTHEOSIS OF THE GALLOWS - 302
IV. THE DEFEAT OF THE TOTAL ABSTAINER - - 308
V. THE CARNIVAL OF ROBERT BURNS - 313
VI. BENEFICENT 'MURDER' (1) - 319
VII. BENEFICENT 'MURDER' (2) - 324
VIII. BOOKSELLERS' ROMANCE - - 331
ix. PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S MIRACULOUS CONVERSION (1) 336
x. PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S MIRACULOUS CONVERSION (2) 342
XI. ' THE JOURNALIST IN ABSOLUTION ' - - 349
CONTENTS.
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM
XII. THE COURTESAN ON THE STAGE -
XIII. GOETHE AND CRITICISM
XIV. 'DRAMATIC CRITICISM AS SHE IS WROTE'
FINAL WORDS :
I. THE PARADOX
II. THE SOCIAL SANCTION -
III. THE OUTCOME IN MINOR LITERARY CRITICISM
IV. TYPES OF EGOISMUS
V. ' MORALITY ' AS LITERATURE
VI. THE OUTCOME IN IDEALISM
VII. ' POOR HUMANITY '
PAGE
354
357
358
363
368
370
374
376
381
383
THE COMING TERROR:
A DIALOGUE BETWEEN ALIENATUS, A PROVINCIAL,
AND URBANUS, A COCKNEY.
THE COMING TERROR :
A DIALOGUE BETWEEN ALIENATUS, A PROVINCIAL,
AND URBANUS, A COCKNEY.
URBANUS. I have often wondered, my dear Alienatus,
at the very scant respect you seem to pay to law-
fully constituted authority, and to those who have
been termed, and rightly, the leaders of mankind.
This attitude of irreverence, combined with a dis-
position to enter into combat with any individual,
however ignoble and unworthy, who throws down
to you the gage of battle, has prejudiced many
intelligent people against you. For myself, I love
a quiet life, and cannot understand the tempera-
ment which disturbs itself with social and political
shadows ; and I think, if you will permit me to
say so, that your position in the world would have
been very different if you had, like certain other
poets, led ' a philosopher's life in the quiet wood-
land ways ' in other words, let the squabbles of
the world alone, and confined your attention to
literature pure and simple.
I 2
THE COMING TERROR.
ALIENATUS. That is possible ; but literature quci
literature has ceased to interest me very much.
URB. You surprise me ! Literature, to my
thinking, is the one star of peacefulness in a very
troublesome world. A play of Euripides or
Shakespeare, a poem of Theocritus or Tennyson
ALL Quite so ; all these are charming, and I
hope I am not insensible to their attractions. At
least twenty years of my life have been devoted to
the study of what is best and most beautiful in
written books. But I have long since come to
the conclusion that all Art is a trifle compared
with the terrible problems of the world ; and so
far as Poetry is concerned, it only interests me
at the point where it is identical with the higher
idealism Religion. Besides, you are aware that
in my opinion Poetry has long been the synonym
for mere verbalism, that the area of modern
Verse is a dark plain of dulness, vacuity, and
verbosity. At the present moment, indeed, I can
hardly understand the type of intellect which sits
apart in the pursuit of mere self-culture of any
kind, and takes no trouble to understand the
mystery of actual existence.
URB. My dear fellow, that mystery is insoluble.
We can know nothing.
ALL Pardon me : we can know everything that
is necessary.
URB. The wisest men who have lived assert the
contrary.
THE COMING TERROR.
ALL Pardon me again : the really wise men
have offered us not merely supposition, not merely
negation, but verification.
URB. Verification ! of what ?
ALL Of the soul of goodness in things evil, of
the reality which abides under all phenomena, of
the absolute reality which, for want of a better
name, we entitle God.
URB. In other words, the Unknowable ? the
Unrealizable ? the Inconceivable ? the Unthinkable ?
ALL What is unthinkable is non-existent, for
Thought is the only absolute Existence. But suffer
me ! If we go on like this, we shall get into the
deep waters of the metaphysicians. Let us confine
ourselves, on this occasion at least, to the limitations
of experience. What sort of a world do you, from
your point of view, find it ?
URB. An excellent world, if meddlers would let
it alone. A delightful world, if quidnuncs would
not constantly remind us of its imperfections. He
who walks through it with his eyes alert will find
it, on the whole, sweet and reasonable enough. He
who persists in star-gazing is sure to stumble into
some open grave. Just reflect, my dear fellow,
how short a time is given us to realize our powers
at all. Is it not the height of folly to spend that
time in asking questions of the Sphynx ?
ALL You think, then, that the pleasures of con-
sciousness are all-sufficing ?
URB. It is sufficient to know that they are all
THE COMING TERROR.
we can possibly compass in the space of life at our
command. To be fairly happy ourselves, to make
others fairly happy, is the utmost we ephemera can
achieve.
ALL But after ?
URB. After life ? Why, a blank to be filled up
by no process of human reasoning.
ALL Then you are a materialist ?
URB. Say, rather, a Pantheist. I have read
Spinoza a delightful soul sent to teach us dilet-
tanti the poetry of simple mathematics, and to
affirm by beautiful syllogism the divine religion of
intellectual negation.
ALL Stop there. Come back to the world.
Curiously enough, its fascination for me lies in the
very imperfections you would wish to conceal. I
should not care to live indeed, it would be impos-
sible for me to live if I thought the secret of
life inaccessible to human reasoning, and it is
through a realization of imperfection that I attain
moral security.
URB. That's a paradox, but I think I understand
you. You mean to say that the very imperfection
of our faculties is a proof that there is a perfection
outside that imperfection ; the Unknowable is
proved by the very limits of our knowledge ?
ALL Something of that sort.
URB. Thus, if I shut my eyes and see only
blankness, that blankness establishes the fact of
something beyond me ! Well, go on.
THE COMING TERROR.
ALL Let me return to my own conception of
Life. It consists outwardly of the phenomena of
imperfection, urged by some mysterious force upward
to a point which at present seems incomprehensible
and unattainable. It consists inwardly of a sensa-
tion corresponding to those phenomena, equally
imperfect, and equally obedient to a mysterious
force. I dismiss for the present all metaphysical
argument as to the identity of the phenomena
without and the sensation within. All I would
imply is, that both the physical and the spiritual
motion is in an upward direction.
URB. All philosophers admit it. Even Schopen-
hauer does so, under certain qualifications that is,
he sees the world advancing intellectually and
morally, but only towards a cul de sac of general
despair. To be very good is to be very miserable.
Luckily, / am not good !
ALL My own conception of Life consists of three
processes Feeling, Knowing, and Divining ; in
other words, of sympathy, verification, and exalta-
tion. Most men stop at the first process ; a limited
number of men reach the second ; few attain the
inspiration of the third. Sympathy is perceptive
and retrospective ; verification is sympathy sanc-
tioned by science, by experience ; and exaltation,
the last process in this moral chemistry, is pro-
spective and prophetic.
URB. Granted. At what are you driving ?
ALL At my old hobby the construction of a
THE COMING TERROR.
Science of Sentiment, capable of justifying Life and
explaining phenomena. Let us now alight from
the airy balloon of a generalization, and come down
to the solid ground. I predicted to you some time
ago, by the method just described, that the Bel-
shazzar's Feast of modern civilization could not go
on for ever ; that some day we should discern the
fatal Handwriting on the Wall. Well, there it is,
burning before our eyes, as it has burned for the
last decade, ever growing brighter and more terrible.
It betokens another cataclysm rapidly approaching.
Terrified by the first warning, men have endeavoured
to prepare against the advent of a new Reign of
Terror.
URB. Possibly, with your prophetic faculties,
you can tell me what shape that Terror will
assume ?
ALL The shape it has assumed always, that of
Anarchy, that of the Demogorgon, who is all-
creating yet all -destroy ing. In simpler words,
Humanity will arise and rend itself. The present
Order will vanish, like a house built on sand, but
with it will vanish every vestige of a social cosmos.
The triumphant majority of human beings will
trample down all the rights of minorities, all the
privileges of individuals, all the moral differentiation
of the human race. No man will breathe freely in
his own dwelling. No personal life will grow, upward
or downward, its own way. There will be universal
legislation, expressed in a creed which shall base
THE COMING TERROR.
the salvation of the State on the destruction of the
individual.
URB. By what tokens do you assume the ex-
istence of this tendency ?
ALL Firstly, by the frightful increase of social
legislation, expressed in the Acts of tyrannical Parlia-
ments, and in the powers given to civic bodies ;
secondly, by the apotheoses of political and scientific
demagogues ; thirdly, by the increased corruption
and mouchardism of an irresponsible Press ;
fourthly, by the completed sinfulness and tardy
repentance of those ' governing ' classes who no
longer govern ; fifthly, by the gradual deterioration
of our jurisprudence, once the symbol of our inde-
pendence ; sixthly and most decidedly, by the
universal conversion of religious Catholicism into
the Calvinism of Science.
URB. I hardly follow you. Let me ask you, to
begin with, to explain the paradox which represents
Legislation and Anarchy as convertible terms ?
ALL I had thought that a student of our one
sane living philosopher would have needed no such
explanation. Mr. Spencer has illustrated in his
own masterly way that legislation is only benefi-
cent when it is reduced to the narrowest possible
compass consistent with human safety. The
tyranny of a majority, however beneficent in inten-
tion, becomes of its own nature anarchic. Anarchy,
politically speaking, is a condition of things repre-
senting the triumph of communities over the wills
10
THE COMING TERROR.
and wishes of individual men. There is the anarchy
of Despotism, the anarchy of Parliaments, the
anarchy of the Bureau. Every one of these means
the destruction of natural rights and privileges,
the stifling of personal aspiration, the death of
individual enterprise and endeavour.
URB. Pass by your charge of over-legislation. I
had an illustration of it the other day, when I heard
it proposed, at the County Council, that two or
three zealous elderly gentlemen should be told off
to go ' behind the scenes ' of an evening, and see if
the ballet-skirts were ' moral/ Come to your
Demagogues. Surely the apotheosis of the Dema-
gogue is the aggrandisement of the Individual ?
ALL The Demagogue lives by pandering to the
follies, jealousies, and prejudices of the democracy
which makes him possible. I will not cite Mr.
Gladstone ; my respect for him is too great to
allow me to criticise his occasional moral misad-
ventures. I will go to the very dregs of politics,
and cite the senior member for Northampton. Mr.
Labouchere has many gifts, but neither sincerity of
purpose nor reverence for human aspiration is
among them. He has gained his popularity, his
vogue, by becoming, firstly, the Paul Pry of
journalism, and, secondly, the Scapin of politics.
He has violated the privileges of private life, by
haunting the back kitchens of the aristocracy and
counting the candle-ends of the governing' classes.
A mouchard by temperament and education, he has
THE COMING TERROR. n
become by accident a legislator. The climax of his
audacities was reached only the other day, when
openly, in the House of Commons, to the manifest
satisfaction of a crowd of fellow-demagogues, he pro-
posed to pollute the ears of his fellow-members by
opening up the moral cesspool of a foul and dis-
graceful scandal. Here was anarchy indeed about
to transform itself into the very fibre of legislation.
Fortunately, even the bear-garden of St. Stephen's
is riot yet turned into a commission of moral
sewers.
URB. Poor Labouchere ! He has his good
points. Remember the toys for the Children's
Hospital.
ALL I am not condemning the man, but the
state of public sentiment which makes him politi-
cally possible. He has been praised publicly for
his services in exposing the vices and follies of the
aristocracy. Just another turn of the whed, and
he would consign all aristocrats qua aristocrats to
the guillotine. If ever the Revolution comes, he
will be its Robespierre, while the impassive and im-
peccable Parnell may become its St. Just. But
just ^Iter the circumstances. Suppose a Dema-
gogue were to arise among the Tories, and to
devote bis energies to proving, which would be
easy, the vices and follies of the proletariat, or,
again, the vices and follies of the bourgeoisie.
Would not such a person be cried down as a
nuisance, ai an irrelevant person, wasting his time
12
THE COMING TERROR.
arid his opportunities ? It is just as base to throw
filth at one class as at another. To do them
justice, our aristocrats have never posed as morally
impeccable, and from time immemorial their cavalier
peccadilloes have been far more venial than the
cynical Puritanism of the plutocrats who serve
Mammon and cheat on 'Change.
URB Of course I do not approve of scandal -
mongering, but do not forget that the man you
condemn has been called the ' Friend of Ireland.'
ALL Poor Ireland ! Has she a friend indeed
under the sun ? Mother of demagogues and
desperadoes, how is she shamed in the sight of the
world ! No one living loves Ireland and Irishmen
more than I ; no one rejoices more that an unhappy
nation has burst its bonds. But I have lived in
the distressful country, not merely for months, but
years, and I have witnessed \\ith my own eyes the
terrorism of organized communities over the lives
of individual men. I do not speak, mind, of
assassination, of boycotting, of political conspiracy,
but of the endless petty tyrannies exercised in
ordinary life by the will, the caprice, the malice, or
the ignorance of the majority. I am not now
alluding to the Land League, or to any political
organization. I am speaking of the temperament
which converts Irishmen, wherever they gather
together, here as in America and the colonies, into
tyrannous and anarchic group*. As the nation is,
so is every village in the nation the abode of men
THE COMING TERROR. 13
whose sole aim in government would be, under
Home Rule, to stifle every free thought and free
action in independent members of the community.
What they have achieved now by conspiracy, they
would rapidly achieve by legislation, and in a short
time no rational Irishman would dare to call his
soul his own.
URB. You foresee, then, in Ireland, the
imminence of the new Terror ?
ALL Here, as well as there, I perceive an in-
difference to all sanctions, save those of the
arbitrary will of the majority. The enormous in-
crease of taxation, the ever-increasing transference
of responsibilities to the shoulder of the ratepayer,
the burdens put upon every description of private
enterprise, the rapid growth of State prerogatives,
the embargoes placed on moral and intellectual
liberty, the moral censorship of literature, are
portentous signs of indifference to the natural
rights of Man.
URB. Surely we have witnessed of late years an
extraordinary movement in the opposite direction.
Take one sign from the Continent the resignation
of Prince Bismarck, and the humanitarian attitude
of the young German Emperor.
ALL Is it possible that so transparent a piece of
legerdemain can deceive the eyes of any rational
man ? If I desired to select any modern nation
as an illustration of my contention that over-
legislation is moral anarchy, I would select the
THE COMING TERROR.
German Empire, a regime of blood and iron,
cemented by the sacrifice of thousands of human
beings. The man Bismarck was a Demagogue who
based his calculations on the mad hunger of the
masses for Nationality. He succeeded by sheer
brute force in consolidating an authority which
made the people militant and left no vestige of
real freedom in the land. He erected the new
German Empire at the expense of the liberty, even
the moral intelligence, of every individual Teuton.
In the name of Christianity he destroyed the right
of each human being to save his soul his own way.
His strength was the will of the people ; his success
was the proof of their collective unintelligence.
With the gains wrung from the sweat of the
nation's brow, with the willing tribute given by
communities gone mad with nationalism, he bought
the press, while violently gagging and suppressing
every expression of honest and enlightened opinion.
And what has come of it ? What is the harvest
of the blood-seed sown on the battle-field in the
names of Christ and Death ? Social stagnation,
literary dumbness, political anarchy ; for now, after
all this waste of life, arises the phantom of Demo-
gorgon, prompting the new Emperor on his throne,
and suggesting that a tottering Despotism should
be fortified by the suffrages of a tyrannical
Socialism. ' The game of Nationality, the farce
of war, is played out,' says the little Csesar ; ' let
me now summon the " Socialists," who will per-
THE COMING TERROR. 15
suade my people to rivet the fetters on their own
hands, while curbing free activity and enterprise
in all directions. Let me represent now by Divine
right the tyrannies of trades-unionism, pseudo-
co-operation, and " beneficent " legislation. Let
me assume the sacred prerogatives given to me by
a priesthood of atheists using the old shibboleth of
Christianity. 7 What will be the result ? A new
kind of tyranny, another Providence made Easy,
a fresh departure in the region of governmental
despotism. The Teuton, already a slave militant,
will become a slave social, and on his gyves will be
engraved the words ' The Necessity of Organization.'
URB. Curious language, coming from you, a
professed Socialist !
ALL The higher Socialism is not trades-unionism.
The object of the higher Socialism is less to
organize under political agencies than to widen the
area of personal freedom as far as possible, so that
in proportion to the liberty of action granted to
individuals would be the comfort and security of
the community. As I have often contended, true
Socialism is only another name for Individualism.
When it combines, it is against the tyranny of
kings, of parliaments, of bureaus, of majorities ;
but the law of its combination is that free action,
free thought, free speech, is the prerogative of
every one of its members, even of its kings and
parliaments.
URB. You will come to chaos there, my friend !
i6
THE COMING TERROR.
Motto, ' The common good, and every man for
himself.'
ALT. The motto, after all, is riot such a bad one.
The common good is achieved only when every
individual is allowed to work out his well-being and
salvation through his own activities. Human
nature can never be saved by any kind of special
Providence, mundane or supra - mundane ; its
strength or its weakness must be based upon the
natural laws of evolution. Futile is the legislation
which seeks to reconstruct society by equalizing the
good and the bad, the worthy and the unworthy,
the strong and the weak.
URB. Then your so-called higher Socialism is
not destructive ?
ALL Oh, but it is !
URB. I thought so. You yourself, for example,
have argued strongly against monopolies in pro-
perty and land, and you have said, if I remember
rightly, that the will of the people has the right,
at the expense of individuals, to redress centuries
of wrong-doing.
ALL Certainly. The voice of conscience has a
right to be heard, whenever class caprice or local
legislation acts in defiance of absolute ethical and
political principles.
URB. Name a few of these principles, if you can.
ALL You will find them very excellently set
forth in that old-fashioned Book containing the Ten
Commandments. Not one of those Ten Command-
THE COMING TERROR.
ments limits irrationally the moral freedom of the
individual.
URB. I'm not so sure about that. The seventh,
for example ? I have never yet been quite able
to realize the caprice of a Providence which fills us
with certain passions, and yet damns us for their
gratification.
ALL Still more difficult, I say, is it to realize
the legislation which, while recognising the com-
mandment, adopts measures for its safe infraction.
Next to War, perhaps even more than War,
Prostitution is the bane of modern communities.
Like War again, it is recognised as a necessary evil.
Now, there is no such thing as a necessary evil.
URB. How would you propose to get over the
difficulty as regards the daily and hourly breach of
the seventh commandment ?
ALL By clearly explaining what that command-
ment means ; by showing that the thing forbidden
is only adulterous where it infringes on the abso-
lute rights of other individuals. Meantime, the
new Reign of Terror will reach its full fruition,
when the legislator decrees that human passions,
and their indulgence, are of necessity immoral, when
the adamantine laws of Marriage contract are made
still more onerous, when the inherent Puritanism
of Science, supported by the suffrages of a cynical
majority, doubles and trebles the penalties to be
paid by poor human nature for natural mistakes.
Scientific Puritanism, you will discover, is only the
2
1 8 THE COMING TERROR.
old Inquisition under another name. At certain
periods of human progress (see Mr. Lecky passim}
not only natural appetites, but natural affections,
were looked upon as suggestions of the Devil.
Love was identical with lust, and so degraded
became the moral consciousness, that the male
avoided and feared the female, even in the person
of a mother or a little female child. We have got
a little beyond that now, but we have yet to
recognise the fact that the passion of Love is not a
phrase to include the criminal aspects of adulterv.
The anarchy into which moralists as well as poli-
ticians are now drifting may be illustrated by a
reference to the last work of Count Tolstoi, at
once the most influential and the least consistent of
modern novelists a writer who, more than any
other living, touches the quick of human evil and
defines the limits of human freedom. Yet never
was the inhumanity of the Puritanical bias more
painfully illustrated than in this book of the most
beneficent of recent legislative teachers. In the
'Kreutzer Sonata,' a study of the morbid anatomy of
marriage, Count Tolstoi contends, against experi-
ence, against instinct, against all verification, that
those marriages are happiest which resemble most
a placid and non-passionate friendship between the
sexes ; that, in other words, the passion of Love is
a fatal preliminary to any abiding relationship
between man and woman. With cold and pitiless
hands, the writer breaks the golden bowl of
THE COMING TERROR. 19
Romance, and tells us that Passion is of necessity
evil, illustrating his thesis by a picture of such
foulness as might have emanated from the diseased
imagination of a mediaeval monk. In some of his
contentions I, of course, agree in his crusade
against mere animalism, against the legalization
of Prostitution, against the carefully protected
impurity of men. But to hear from such a teacher
that the most divine thing in Life, young Love and
young Romance, the Soul's Ecstasy, the Body's
Sacrament, the World's Desire, is only foulness
and foul vanity, makes one despair of human
wisdom. Teaching like this is only another
form of the legislation which is substituting every-
where for natural law an unnatural system of
repression. When the new Reign of Terror is
completed, we shall breed our human beings as
we breed our cattle, by the sanitary rules of a
scientific legislation, and under the beneficent
inspection of some suffragan St. Simeon Stylites.
URB. Such a system of selection has indeed
been suggested, that we may avoid the evils of
hereditary disease and over-population. I confess
that I agree with you in regarding its possibility
with a certain feeling of horror. It is not to be
disputed, however, that these evils, particularly
that of the propagation of diseased and inferior
types, will have to be reckoned with somehow.
ALL Undoubtedly, and the way our legislation
reckons with them is by protecting diseased and
2 2
20 THE COMING TERROR.
inferior types at the cost of the hale and superior.
Do not misunderstand me, however. I have
always contended that physical defect, so far from
being necessarily evil, is often a defect in the line
of growth. The idea of scientists, that a perfectly
strong and healthy breed of men and women would
of necessity be a higher development, is as absurd
as that other idea which attaches a fictitious im-
portance to the laws of heredity. Weak and
diseased men are often the salt of humanity.
Strong and healthy men and women not un-
frequently, by some mysterious law, produce
degraded offspring. Meantime, the phrase
' Heredity ' has become part of the scientific shib-
boleth which converts feeble thinkers into social
tyrants.
URB. You seem very severe on Science generally.
ALL Heaven forbid ! True Science, like true
Religion, is not to be confounded with empirical
tyranny. So long as our men of science concerned
themselves with discovery and verification of the
facts of Nature, so long as they loosened the bonds
of Humanity by proving that these bonds w T ere for
the most part self-imposed, so long as they waged
destructive war against Superstition and touched
no one of these Verities which are the birthright
of thinking men, they were saviours and bene-
factors. Their organization into a Priesthood of
personal inquiry, into a social Inquisition, was a
proof that they had yielded up prerogatives in
THE COMING TERROR. 21
favour of an intellectual despotism. The true
scientist is reverent like Faraday, and cautious like
Darwin. The false scientist is the incipient moral
demagogue ; one of the Beadles of the Nation ; the
thinker who sacrifices the love of pure and gentle
individual progress to an insane love of forcing,
by systems of repression, the tardy work of Evolu-
tion. I have criticised, in another connection, the
attempt of Professor Huxley, a very familiar type
of the scientist militant and political, to limit and
even to deny altogether the natural Rights of Man,
and I have been rebuked a little flippantly by
this gentleman for presuming to assert that true
Socialism is not the Socialism of the Day. This
good man, while indirectly defending the status quo,
denies absolute political principles altogether, and
would substitute for human freedom the half-
verified discoveries of a small scientific Providence
a Providence whose cardinal principle appears
to be : let political reformations alone, and impose
on the individual who is struggling for freedom
as many restrictions as possible. To talk of the
rights of men is, according to this Daniel come
to judgment, about as wise as to talk of the rights
of wild beasts, e.g., the man-eating tiger. More
than most publicists, such men as he are hastening
on the advent of the New Terror.
UKB. Well, come to your third token of the
tendency to save the State at the expense of the
Individual. I think you cited the New Journalism.
22
THE COMING TERROR.
Surely if freedom of speech is found anywhere, it
is in the columns of that Journalism.
ALT. I have failed to discover it.
URB. Indeed.
ALL The New Journalism, above most things,
is tyrannous and anarchic. So far from being the
free speech of individual men, it is the voice of
the Demogorgon proclaiming the era of completed
literary ignorance. Next to the tyranny of Par-
liaments is the despotism of the newspaper.
Practically irresponsible, feeding the weak appe-
tites of the community with the garbage of the
latest news, sending its mouchards into every house,
imposing its espionage on every public individual,
weaving its tissue of scandals and of falsehoods,
judging everything and every man by the hastily
erected standard of the humour of the hour, the
New Journalism, an importation from Am erica, has
paralyzed literature and destroyed free thought and
free feeling all over the world. The man who
used to think now takes his thought from the
current printed cackle of the moment. The man
who used to read now skims the surface of current
news and deems it information. In proportion to
the anarchic tongue-confusion of this last Tower
of Babel is the deadening of all sense of decency,
the loss of all sense of individual liberty.
URB. Heyday ! would you have no gossip
in newspapers at all ? You forget that we
moderns are in far too great a hurry to read
THE COMING TERROR. 23
treatises and voluminous tomes, or even sober
newspapers.
ALL The hurry of which you speak is that of
the social River shooting to its fall. All light, all
peace, all peacefulness, all the stillness of the home,
all the beauty of life, is covered by this common
cloud of ignorance, and destroyed by the Ameri-
canised Newspaper. By the New Journalism the
individual thinker is tortured and cried down. It
is Babbage's Organ in the Street.
URB. People must read something!
ALL Better to read nothing than to read what
deadens their very sense of freedom, and pulls
them out into the clamour of the common hue and
cry. Take up one of these journals at random,
and what do you find ? Firstly, the publication
of a Scandal so infamous, and described so in-
famously, that the very air of Nature is polluted
as by a cesspool, the stench of which penetrates
as poison into every household of the land ; and
secondly, close to this inhuman parade of filth,
made in the name of a repressive moral legislation,
a plebiscite of readers on the moral and intellectual
qualities of the ' Best Books/ or the i Best Men.'
Could the completed sinfulness of ignorance go
further ?
URB. The idea of the plebiscite was, I suppose,
merely that of gathering information as to what
books were most read, and what teachers were
most in vogue.
THE COMING TERROR.
ALL Just so ; literary truth and honour were
to be gauged by the mind of the general reader,
merits were to be assessed by the suffrage of
creatures base enough to subscribe to this very
journal of abominations. Observe, moreover, that
I include in the phrase ' the New Joarnalism ' even
certain publications which appear at longer in-
tervals than does the daily paper : the monthly
reviews of human inanity, the quarterly reviews
of dead or dying prejudices. Here is a case in
point. A review once fairly sane, but now puzzle-
headed, publishes an article entitled * Tennyson
and After/ in which, after a cold and cruel
calculation that one of the noblest poets of the
hour must in the course of Nature shortly dis-
appear, the writer firstly suggests a possible
successor to what, if so great a soul had not
adorned it, would be a barren honour, and, secondly,
points the finger of scorn at men who, so far as
I know, would reject that barren honour if it were
given. Thus, to paraphrase the present Laureate's
words, it is not sufficient for the singer ' to leave
his music as of old/ but over him, even while he
breathes, even while he still brightens the sunshine,
1 begins the scandal and the cry.' That, perhaps,
is a mere trifle the mere cackling of a goose in
the Pantheon. But what shall we say of the
Journalistic Demagogue who, confident of the pre-
vailing anarchy, sure of the reigning madness and
folly, offers to turn his review, his journal, his
THE COMING TERROR. 25
magazine of stolen goods, into a Confessional into
a place of vantage where he may sit listening to
all the obscene details of human sin and misery,
and so sitting, dispense an uncleanly absolution ?
URB. The New Journalism has never loved you,
my dear Alienatus. Henceforward, I fear, it will
love you even less.
ALL I never craved its love or feared its hate.
Yet understand me. When I speak thus of one
form of Journalism, and cite these instances of its
folly and criminality, I am not blind to the fact
that elsewhere, despite this last manifestation of
mob-rule, Humanity is kept alive. There have been,
and there are, great journalists men full of even
prophetic vision ; many of these men have sunk
into the vortex, never to emerge again ; a few
survive, crying l peace ' to the anarchy around
them. It would be strange, indeed, if in the crowd
of souls not one upturned his forehead to the
Light.
URB. Then you do not denounce Journalism
altogether ?
ALL I might as well, like Canute, denounce the
rising tide. After the Coming Terror has reached
its height, these waves which now threaten to
submerge us will settle down. What is best, what
is truest and gentlest, in Journalism as in Life, will
certainly survive. Not, however, before Thermidor,
the hot month, which shall consume the mouchard
and the scandal-monger, and scorch up the sham-
26
THE COMING TERROR.
priest and sham-philanthropist. Even now we
may see how these organs of public opinion turn
like wild beasts and rend each other. Even now
we may see how the venomous press turns en masse
on those journals which still remember the laws of
literature and preserve their self-respect. For-
tunately, such journals still exist, to point the way
to literar}^ reformation.
URB. I fancy they are many the others few.
But (may I confess it ?) I find the many very dull.
I like hot spice in my daily literature.
ALL You are a Philistine no, I beg your
pardon, a Cockney. Ah, well, after all, the
Cockney triumphs!
URB. If Boston is the ' hub ' of the universe,
Cockayne is the ' hub ' of civilization. Come to
your governing classes, and to your jurisprudence.
ALL Our governing classes no longer really
govern ; if they still occupy the high seats of
Olympus, it is in impotence of Godhead, trembling
at Demogorgon Socialism, the Mob, the Plebiscite.
Some of them, in sheer despair, spring down to
join the anarchists. Our jurisprudence, once
founded on faith in the Divine Order, once rational
and honest, is now rapidly disintegrating under the
influence of atheists who hourly take the oath to
God, and the cruel Catholicism of superstition is
rapidly being supplanted by the cruel Puritanic
bias of modern materialism. Personally, I have
been much censured for having proclaimed my
THE COMING TERROR. 27
astonishment that an agnostic Judge should
sentence a criminal to death in the name of a
Deity in whom he, the Judge, does not believe.
Such an act, in my opinion, is of the very nature
of Jesuitical insincerity. I would go further, and
assert that no official of avowed infidelity should
hold office in a Christian land. Observe, however,
that I am not vindicating Christianity, but merely
pleading for moral consistency. The day indeed
is not far distant when, under the New Terror,
the term Christianity will be abolished.
URB. How so ? And what term would you
suggest in its place ?
ALL Any term which fitly expressed the truth.
We are no longer Christians. Why continue to
use the name ? I know what you would say,
that the word ' Christianity ' expresses all that is
noblest and best in our civilization. That is so ;
but it expresses far more the supernatural super-
human element in which we have ceased to believe.
If Christianity had been only a creed of rigid
morality, of brotherly kindliness and goodness, of
altruism, it would have perished centuries ago.
Its survival is due to the assertion made, or re-
puted to have been made, by its Founder, that
this world, so far from being perfectible, is only
a preliminary to another world, or worlds, of in-
finitely higher perfection ; that Man is not perish-
able, but individually immortal ; that, in simple
words, Man has an eternal Soul. How many of
28
THE COMING TERROR.
our lawyers, our legislators, our publicists, even
our clergymen, believe that f Yet everywhere the
Name of God is used to endorse profane documents,
the shibboleth of supernaturalism is employed to
sanctify legal fiction. If Jesus Christ walked in
the streets to-day, and worked, or pretended to
work, miracles of healing, he would be arrested as
an impostor and a charlatan, testified against by
witnesses who kissed the New Testament, and sent
to prison, possibly by a clerical magistrate who had
taken the oath that the accused was Divine. You
smile. You think I exaggerate the importance
of consistency and honesty in such matters ? But
no law, no jurisprudence, no legislation, can be
safely built upon a Lie. If we are Christians, we
belie our creed, we forswear ourselves, every hour
of our lives. If we are not Christians, we are
rogues and liars.
URB. You would, then, abolish Christianity ?
ALL I would abolish all tampering with terms ;
I would use words to symbolize the truth. I would
have the word ' Christianity ' confined to the area of
its actual believers. I would not allow it to cover,
with a mantle of compromise, a Nation which still
believes in such paganisms as, for example, the
paganism of War. But let us turn for a moment
to another point illustrative of the disintegration
of jurisprudence under the action of anarchic
Parliaments. You observed, no doubt, the recent
extraordinary action of the Home Secretary in the
THE COMING TERROR.
29
case of that cause celeb re, the murder at Crewe.
Now, the point to which I would solicit your
attention is, not the mental aberration of the
gentleman at the Home Office, but the enormity
of the legislation which transfers a public duty to
the shoulders of a political official ; not to the
process of reason by which the Home Secretary
arrived at his lame and impotent conclusion to
execute one of the brothers and to spare the other
and the more guilty, but to the monstrous and
almost incredible fact that a salaried State
Secretary, holding office in the name of a political
majority, has the power to decide absolutely, in
the face of an English Jury, on a question of life
or death.
URB. Such, you are aware, is the law.
ALL It is the law I am indicting. I have
followed its records, and watched the process by
which human conscience has tried to leaven the
brutality of those legal principles among which
Mr. Justice Stephen has included the ' lawful '
thirst for ' revenge.' It is not so far a cry, as
many think, from the cruelty of the old Roman
law against Parricide, to the new English law
against similar offences. Then, as now, it was
thought expedient to teach tenderness and affec-
tion by a process of judicial torture. Then, as
now, the ethics of punishment were primitive,
violent, and irrational. Then, as now, it was part
of the judicial method to illustrate the sinfulness of
THE COMING TERROR.
slaughter by an official exhibition of the same blood-
shed which, in non-official exhibitions, awakens so
much natural horror.
URB. I am aware that you have frequently
protested against the Death Penalty.
ALL It is not my purpose at present to enter
on the broad question of the expediency of capital
punishment under any circumstances whatever.
The point to which I desire to draw your attention
is the present condition of our legislation, as illus-
trated by the condemnation of the boy -murderers
at Crewe. These wretched youths, under circum-
stances of frightful provocation, took their father's
life. They were tried before a jury of twelve
intelligent Englishmen, representing, according to
English law, the rest of their countrymen, and
they were found guilty, but with ' a recommenda-
tion to mercy/ Mercy ? To whose mercy ?
Their God's ? Their human Judge's ? Surely,
in this connection, the very word ' mercy ' was
fatuous and absurd. What the jury meant by that
miserable formula, which Officialism compelled them
to adopt, was simply this : ' These boys certainly
committed parricide, but the facts we have investi-
gated establish that their guilt was qualified, and
that they do not deserve to pay, and shall not pay,
the full penalty of their crime.' What follows ?
The chosen representatives of the people having
decided that the prisoners are not to die, the
salaried official straightway puts on the black cap
THE COMING TERROR. 31
and condemns them to die, adding another miserable
formula, that he will convey to ' the proper quarter '
the jury's recommendation to mercy. Surely
common-sense must decide that it was the Judge's
business, either to quash the verdict altogether as
against the weight of evidence, or to adopt the find-
ing of the jury and at once to pass some such lesser
sentence as would meet the requirements of the
case ? But the Law said ' No ! ' The Law said
that the formulas of official imbecility should be
pursued throughout. The Law said that the
verdict of English citizens, the true and only
representatives of public opinion and public justice,
shall be referred to a petit mattre at the Home
Office, to be decided ex cathedrd then and there.
The Caiaphas of the bench transfers his responsi-
bility to a small political Pontius Pilate. ' Shall
these men die ? The voice of the people cries
" Spare them," but it is for thee, O Pilate, to
decide.' Well would it be for all of us if the new
Pilate Punchinello, like his nobler prototype, had
washed his hands of the whole business. He could
not do that. He might, nevertheless, have re-
membered that his position as arbitrator was only
another miserable formula. He might have
recognised the fact that the sentence of mercy
had already been pronounced, by the only men
authorized by the nation to pronounce it, and that
he, as a political official, was only the mouthpiece
and the servant of the English nation.
3 2
THE COMING TERROR.
URB. I suppose he acted according to his lights?
ALL Possibly. We have had 'hanging' judges
and ' hanging ' Home Secretaries, all existing in
the miasmic fog of our jurisprudence. Fortu-
nately for humanity, we have no longer our
* hanging ' Juries, for at the present stage of our
enlightenment it is difficult to get together twelve
human beings equally devoid of the reasoning
faculty and the sentiment of humanity. On the
breath of no one individual, however just, however
powerful, should hang an issue of life or death.
Review again this tale of Parricide, in the light
which shines everywhere save in the sunless cave
of Officialism. The murdered man was, we know,
a husband and a father ; he had a wife whom he
tortured and tried to kill, and he had children who
were maddened by the sufferings he inflicted on
their mother. ' True,' the old Roman law would
say, and is still saying ; ' but he was, above all, a
father.' I endeavoured a little while ago, you re-
member, to suggest the outlines of a Science of
Sentiment ; such a Science may serve us now.
Sentiment as Science affirms that the man who
brings children into the world voluntarily assumes
the highest of all human responsibilities. These
children were created by his will, not their own,
and the first duty which emerges from their creation
rests on him, not them. He has to establish his
fatherhood, ethically, by acts of help and love. If
he fails in these, if by deeds of cruelty and repres-
THE COMING TERROR. 33
sion he condemns his own unhappy issue to misery
and despair, he has forfeited the privileges of
human paternity. Now, the father of these poor
boys was, ethically, no father at all. He was only
a strange man in the house, wilfully responsible
for all its daily sorrows. Peruse the record of his
infamous misdeeds ; turn to the record of all that
his children suffered at his hands ; then ask your-
self if the crime for which his sons w r ere con-
demned was truly Parricide ? It was Homicide,
truly ; but it was only the homicide of a strange
man.
URB. Rather a sentimental view of the case.
ALL The Cant of Sentiment upholds that father-
hood in blood is all-sufficient. The Science of
Sentiment discovers that fatherhood in blood may
be merely the result of human selfishness, cruelty,
and lust. Those who bring children into the
world are conjuring up the very Spirit of Life, and
woe to them if that Spirit should be offended !
The day, indeed, is not far distant when human
Conscience will decide that to increase 'the number
of created beings, heedless of the responsibility
which comes with their birth, or without the power
and means to condition them into well-being, is a
crime even worse than any passionate deed of
extermination.
URB. Are you not a little inconsistent ?
Almost in the same breath that you advocate
the liberty of the subject, you admit the necessity
3
34
THE COMING TERROR.
of such legislative restrictions as would lessen the
liberties resulting in over-population.
ALL By no means. I advocate no legislative
restrictions.
URB. Yet you fully realize the baseness of bring-
ing human beings recklessly into the world, in
defiance of the responsibility incurred by so
doing.
ALL Fully ; but no legislation can touch that
baseness. The law of Nature itself must rid us of
it. The modern tendency of Legislation is, on the
one hand, to superintend natural processes, and, as
I have expressed.it, to force the work of evolution ;
and on the other hand, by lessening personal
responsibility, to preserve, artificially, inferior
types. Our preposterous Poor Laws are not only
fostering what is worthless, but destroying that
individual charity which, like mercy, is twice blest
blessing him that gives and him that takes.
Officialism is the robe of Lazarus, covering a
thousand open sores. Our poor have recognised
this, in their loathing of such protection as that
of the workhouse.
URB. Then you would have unlimited private
charity, and unlimited population ?
ALL Both should be regulated by the moral
growth of individuals. Wise charity and sympathy
will not multiply the worthless, by freeing them of
all the rewards and punishments of personal
activity. Unlimited population will be checked
THE COMING TERROR. 35
by one thing only the realization on the part of
individuals of moral responsibilities. - In other
words, Progress must move upwards from the
subject, not downwards from the legislator. That
the unnatural motion is now superseding the
natural proves the certainty of my coming Reign
of Terror. That New Terror will, at least tem-
porarily, be the submergence of individual freedom
and activity under the waves of political and
social anarchy legislation, if you like the name
better. Let me enumerate once more a few of its
characteristics, already touched upon and illus-
trated :
1. Political Tyranny of Majorities, culminating
in Providence made Easy, or so-called Beneficent
Legislation.
2. The Destruction of Personal Rewards and
Punishments, the general paralysis of Individual
Effort.
3. Espionage in all the affairs of Life, public and
private.
4. Trades Unionism, and Supreme Despotism of
the Public Will ; Protection of the Unfittest.
5. The New Socialism, organizing to suppress
free action in all matters of contract and personal
activity.
6. The New Journalism, flaunting over the
grave of Free Literature, and clothed in completed
Ignorance.
o
7. The New Jurisprudence, practically con-
32
THE COMING TERROR.
founding the empirical laws of expedience with the
absolute laws of ethics.
8. Moral Sanitation, extending from things
civic to things ethic and personal, while placing
written books and painted pictures in the same
category as works of drainage and lighting.
9. The New Ethics, scientific, saturnine, yet
Puritanical, and :
10. The New Priesthood of Science, regulating
the growth and development of the species, the
freedom and activity of mankind, by the arbitrary
laws of empirical and materialistic discovery.
URB. And the result ?
ALL That of the Plebiscite in France, of Deutsch-
thumm in Germany, of legislative Tyranny all
over the world. No man will be a free agent ;
every man will find his life's work done for him
by beneficent legislation ; he will breed according
to legislative enactments ; he will be fed, clothed,
and protected, not by his own hands, but out of
the common purse. Property of all descriptions
will be abolished. While the iron bands of
Morality will be drawn tighter, so that neither man
nor woman can breathe freely, Morality and
Immorality will be licensed equally. There will be
no books, for there will be no book-readers. Life
will be superintended in all departments according
to Acts of Parliament. The legislative politician,
already the bane of public life, will become the
authorized representative of organized Anarchy.
THE COMING TERROR. 37
There will be no class distinctions, not even the
distinction between wise and foolish, good and bad,
for all men will be equally wise, good, and apathetic.
Religion, born of human emotion, fostered by
human necessity, will become extinct as the dodo ;
or if it survives, will be dealt with by the
authorized Inspectors of Lunacy. England will
be well lighted, well drained, moral, conventional,
an excellently -regulated Machine. Prostitution,
of course, will remain, and War, since the new
Legislation recognises them as disagreeable necessi-
ties ; but they also will be providentially super-
intended.
URB. Well, after all, you have described a
Cosmos, not a Chaos. Anything is surely better
than the poverty and misery which now surround
us, than the system which gives superfluity to the
rich and starves the innumerable poor. My dear
Alienatus, I thought you a Socialist and a
Radical ; I find you actually arguing for the
status quo.
ALL That shows how little you understand me
how little you understand human nature. I
have defined true Socialism, not as the arbitrary
will of those who would altogether destroy institu-
tions and crush freedom of individual action, not
as the rule of the Mob and its mouthpiece the
Demagogue, but as the combination of free
individuals to limit general legislation wherever
it paralyzes personal endeavour and destroys
THE COMING TERROR.
personal rewards. I am therefore a true Socialist ;
that is, a man eager for the common good, but
one who believes that good can only be attained
by such complete freedom in life, morality and
religion as is compatible with the general growth
and welfare. In the same sense, I am a Radical ;
but to be a Radical, one who reforms at the root,
and not the branches, is not to be a reckless
destroyer of good and beautiful institutions.
When I contend contra Professor Huxley for
the natural freedom and equality of men, I do
not mean that all men are equal in power or
in intelligence to say as much would be the
height of folly ; what I do mean is that every
man has per se a right to his own unfettered
activities, and their results, and that, as a corollary,
no system of society is to be upheld which
paralyzes these activities by vested interests
arbitrarily created. I am for Freedom in full
measure, but not for the Freedom which is anarchic.
As a member of the social organization, I cheer-
fully submit to the necessary conditions which
make Society possible. As a free individual, I
refuse to submit to Society in matters of private
conduct and private opinion. Legislation may
drain the street in which I dwell ; it shall not
touch the faith in which I live, or brand me as
reactionary and immoral because I demand free
liberty of action in all matters which do not in-
fringe on the liberties of other free individuals.
THE COMING TERROR. 39
No man, no body of men, shall legislate for my
Soul. All spiritual qualities cease to exist, when
they cease to be spontaneous. All conduct ceases
to be moral, when it becomes conventional i.e.,
when it fails to represent the activity and the
ambition of the individual. I cannot be made
good or bad by Act of Parliament. Legislation
may convert me into an animal mechanism ; but
I prefer annihilation itself to that contingency.
URB. And this new Reign of Terror ? Do you
think that it will last ?
ALL God knows ; but while it does last, every-
where there will be stagnation, which is Death.
Man, having deposed the gods, will have to reckon
with the last god, Humanity, that final apparition
of the Demogorgon. Woe to him, if in dread of
the Shape he sees as in a mirror, he becomes his
own slave ! Woe to him if, to appease his thirst
and hunger for the loaves and fishes of the earth,
he sacrifices to Social Despotism the freedom of his
living Soul !
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL?
A CONTROVERSY.
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL?*
No more crowning illustration of the incapacity
of the scientific mind to grasp philosophical
propositions could possibly be found than the
criticism of the Socialistic theories of Rousseau,
just published by Professor Huxley in the Nine-
teenth Century. Admirably, as he is equipped for
the light skirmishing of popular knowledge, Pro-
fessor Huxley fails altogether to understand the
great French idealist, just as surely as he fails,
in his perversion of Herbert Spencer, to grasp the
meaning of our greatest English philosopher ; and
both in the matter of his argument and in the
manner of its expression, he exhibits the logical
insecurity of the specialist transformed into the
dilettante. Great wisdom and insight, attaining
to almost prophetic vision, cannot be combated by
the random shots of mere intelligence, and all
the Professor's cleverness, all his liberal culture,
* The following letters appeared in the Daily Telegraph in
January and February, 1890. They originated in the attempt of
Professor Huxley to discredit Mr. Spencer's theory of absolute
political ethics.
44 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ?
does not save him from the fate of those who
criticise great propaganda unsympathetically, and
from the outside. So serious a social issue, how-
ever, hangs on the advocacy by a distinguished
man of retrograde and anti-human political theories,
that it may be worth while to point out the fallacy,
nay, the absurdity, of Professor Huxley's main
contention.
Nothing is easier, as we all know, than to
ridicule the extravagances into which Rousseau
was carried by his discovery, vid Hobbes and
Locke, of the natural equality of men, by showing
how his splendid imagination ran riot among ex-
traordinarily fanciful pictures of primitive perfection.
He was careful, nevertheless, to warn us that these
pictures were possibly imaginary and illusory
as Science has, indeed, proved them to be and
were rather premonitions of what would be than
visions of what had been. When, however, he
asserted that men were born free and equal, and
that Civilization had destroyed to a perilous extent
their natural freedom and equality, he never meant
to say as Professor Huxley makes him say
that the physical and intellectual faculties of
individuals were uniform in quality. His thesis
was a sane and a sublime one, already recognised
in our jurisprudence, that so far as moral rights
were concerned, all human beings, by the law of
nature, stand in the same practical category. Gifts
of genius and of insight, although the birthright
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ? 45
of individuals, confer no prescriptive rights of moral
exemption ; they distinguish certain men, as colour
and odour distinguish certain flowers, as fleetness
and beauty distinguish certain animals, but they
do not free the possessors from the ordinary con-
ditions of physical and moral being, to which con-
ditions all men alike are born. Shakespeare the
Seer resembles Hodge the boor in all the charac-
teristics of an eating, drinking and sleeping animal,
and, further, as a unit in the body political and
social. The two are equal by nature in all the
fundamental conditions of life, in all the limitations
of human vitality. But Rousseau went a great deal
further than this. He contended that intellectual
culture, or civilization, so far from necessarily
improving the individual man, not unfrequently
led to moral deterioration a monstrous assump-
tion from the point of view of specialists like
Professor Huxley, but a perfectly tenable one
from the standpoint of those who set instinct and
insight above special acquirement. The history of
mankind, more particularly the biographies of great
men, is full of incidents which establish the para-
dox that a wise man is frequently a fool, and that
a man of strong reasoning power is often a moral
weakling. It is questionable, in fact, whether the
advance of the race in Sociology, in Art, in Litera-
ture, in Science, has been accompanied with any
real advance of the individual whether, to put
the issue into other words, any amount of personal
46 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ?
culture renders a man superior to his fellows in
those primary sympathies and affections which
condition the lives of the lordliest and the least
intelligent. Humanity has doubtless developed in
power and knowledge, but individual men remain
very much what they have been from the begin-
ning of society. To grasp this point thoroughly,
and to understand whither the mighty insight of
Rousseau was directed, we must understand that
in the eyes of the philosopher of Geneva, as in
those of the founder of Christian ethics, moral
qualities were absolute, while intellectual gifts
were merely relative and subsidiary. Let us take,
by way of analogy, one day of a great and wise
man's life, and contrast it for a moment with
another of a life which is neither great nor
wise.
William Wordsworth, Poet and Recluse, gets
up in the morning, washes and dresses, and after
a walk in his garden goes in to breakfast. Reads
the news from London, and a propos of some new
production of Keats or Shelley, avers that it
' contains no more poetry than a pint-pot.' Goes
for a long walk over the mountains with his sister
Dorothy, and being full of matter for a new poem,
scarcely perceives that his companion is wearied
out and waning in health. Towards afternoon,
feels again the pangs of a hungry animal, and
returns to feed. Possibly, like his pet terrier, has
a little nap after dinner. Wakens,, and listens to
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL* 47
a little music. In the evening, does his corre-
spondence, and adds a few touches to a manuscript
poem. A starry night : he stands at his door and
surveys the constellations. Certain fine thoughts
flow through his mechanism, as the wind agitating
an ^Eolian harp. Feels convinced that there is a
benevolent Personal God, and that, on the whole,
it is a very beautiful and excellently regulated
world. Prays to the Giver of all Good, and, being
tired and sleepy, goes to bed early and sleeps the
sleep of the Just.
Now, in all this, as possibly in most of the days
of other Poets and Philosophers, there is nothing,
except the power of writing fine poetry, to dis-
tinguish Wordsworth from the uneducated moun-
tain Shepherd who lives in the neighbourhood, and
who knows only one book the Bible of his
fathers. The Shepherd gets up, washes, dresses,
and after driving his flock from the fold to their
pasture, either returns to eat or feeds on bread
and cheese on the mountain side. He reads no
news, but meeting some neighbour, hears the latest
gossip from the market town. Spends the day
loafing on the mountain, and when he is hungry
and thirsty eats and drinks again. If the weather
is fine, has a nap among the heather. Drives home
his flock in the evening, and sits down for a smoke
among his family. Glances out at the shining night
and feels or, possibly, does not feel a certain
sense of awe and loneliness. Remembers what his
48 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ?
father has taught him, that there is a God up
yonder. Prays to that God, and throwing himself
down on his humble bed, sleeps the same sleep
as his neighbour the poet at Rydal Mount.
These two men have all day fulfilled the same
primary functions, and in every process of their
day there is more resemblance than divergence ;
in other words, the preponderance both of action
and feeling is in favour of natural equality. ' Ah,
but/ cries the hero- worshipper, ' you have left out
the one sign distinguishing one from the other
that of superior intelligence, that of the poetic
gift/ I think Wordsworth himself would have
been the first to admit that, apart from the accom-
plishment of written speech, the Shepherd's insight,
sympathy, and affections might have been fully
equal to his own ; for if the poet of Rydal has
taught us anything, it is that the poor and un-
instructed, the ignorant of men and books, are
among the most beautiful souls of Humanity. The
gift of song is glorious in a man, as it is in a
nightingale, but it does not necessarily make him
better as a human being, and certainly does not
free him from the weaknesses and necessities of his
human inheritance. Being a gift, it belongs rather
to God than to himself. It certainly gives him no
privilege of moral superiority.
Be that as it may, my illustration may help
the reader to understand what Rousseau really
meant when he proclaimed the natural equality of
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQ UAL ? 49
human beings. He meant that men are born
equal, inasmuch as they are subject to the same
laws and entitled to the same advantages. He
meant that no man, however powerful, had a right
to accept any pleasure which any other man might
not receive on the same terms. He meant that
worldly knowledge, including book knowledge, is at
the best a limited thing, seeing that all man knows
is ' that nothing can be known.' He meant that
class distinctions, class prejudices, class pride, class
privileges, are the merest appropriation of un-
limited selfishness, infringing the rights of Humanity
at large. He meant that men would be happier
without physical luxury, and purer without in-
tellectual pride. True, in picturing his ideal state
he went too far, but, going as far as he did, he
reached and he defined the limits of the area of
social and political freedom. He attained the
apogee of his prophetic life when he wrote the
' Savoyard Vicar's Prayer,' which embodies the
noblest of his teaching, and answers still the inner-
most yearning of the heart of Man.
How far Professor Huxley is from understand-
ing the Religion of Equality may be gathered from
several of his own expressions. We already know
that, speaking as a scientific specialist, he rejects
Mr. Spencer's masterly definition of absolute
political ethics ; but he goes farther, and finds
nothing absolute in any ethics whatever. No man
of philosophic perception could have affirmed that
4
50 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL!
i the equality of men before God is an equality
either of insignificance or of imperfection ;' no man
of political insight could have suggested that
universal suffrage is synonymous with Laissez faire.
Professor Huxley describes himself as among those
' who do not care for Sentiment and do care for
Truth,' forgetting that there is no real Sentiment
which is not a truth's adumbration, and assuming,
in the true spirit of the age, that what is senti-
mental must necessarily be false. The series of
questions with which he cross-examines modern
revoltors on the thesis that ' all men are born
free and equal,' is surely a reductio ad absurdum of
the quasi-scientific manner. No one ever talked,
as he makes his witnesses talk, of 'the political
status of a new-born child,' no one ever contended
that, because freedom is born within the human
flesh, it becomes an actual factor before that flesh is
conditioned into moral intelligence. But it is when
we reach the Professor's own conclusions that we
discover what his derision of Equality and Freedom
really means. His defence of the status quo, of the
topsy-turvy dom of modern society, of the condition
of affairs which gives Jacob all the fruits of the
earth and leaves Esau to starve in the wilderness,
is founded on the plea of ' practical expediency ' a
plea on which even Nero might have justified him-
self to what he termed his conscience in planning
the conflagration of Rome. ' There is much to
be said,' Professor Huxley thinks, echoing poor
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ? 51
Carlyle, ' for the opinion that Force, effectually
and thoroughly used so as to render further
opposition hopeless, establishes an ownership which
should be recognised as soon as possible !' ' For
the welfare of society, as for that of individual
men,' he continues, ' it is surely essential that there
should be a statute of limitations in respect of the
consequences of wrong-doing !' Surely here we
have teaching worthier of Mr. Jonathan Wild than
of a popular professor in a State whose very
religion is founded on the a priori assumptions he
despises. Science itself should have instructed
Professor Huxley, just as surely as Religion does
its votaries, that the penalties of wrong-doing are
exacted even to the uttermost generation. Is
there a statute of limitations to the law of heredity,
to the law by which the sins and follies of the
fathers are visited upon their children ? If no such
statute prevails in the physical, why should it do
so in the social and political worlds ? Only one
thing can cure evil, and that is the destruction of it
at any cost, at any sacrifice. So long as it exists
it is a canker and a curse. Assume that our social
system is founded on wrong-doing and Professor
Huxley has admitted it by what possible standard
of ethics would he keep it permanent ? Because
it ' exists/ and because, since it exists, it is
' expedient.' Talk of the ' sham sentiment ' of
Rousseau ; it becomes sublime doctrine by the
side of the sham reason of his critic, who, while
4 2
52 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ?
scorning and despising the gospel of Laissez faire, in
the same breath preaches the essence of that gospel !
In a second letter I will, with your permission,
endeavour to explain more fully than is at present
possible the ethical standpoint of those propa-
gandists who, in suggesting crucial reforms of our
present social and political systems, base their
arguments on the absolute principle of the natural
freedom and equality of men.
I am, etc.,
ROBERT BUCHANAN.
[To the above letter Professor Huxley first
replied as follows, but in the meantime an editorial
article had appeared commenting somewhat ad-
versely on my suggestions.]
To the Editor of the l Daily Telegraph'
SIR,
I have read Mr. Robert Buchanan's letter,
which has been kindly sent to me. I would not
on any account interfere with so characteristic a
development of latter-day Rousseauism so many
people fancy that it is dead and buried, and that I
have wasted my time in slaying the slain.
I am, faithfully yours,
T. H. HUXLEY.
3, JEVINGTON GARDENS, EASTBOURNE,
January 24.
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL1 53
To the Editor of the < Daily Telegraph. 1
SIR,
I had hoped, in the present discussion,
t,o avoid current politics altogether ; for it is im-
possible to touch on political issues especially in
the columns of a daily newspaper without
awakening a storm of prejudice and misunder-
standing. I shall still endeavour to steer clear
of contemporary broils, although your own com-
ments on my first letter do certainly invite
polemical treatment. Will you permit me to say,
however, that I am more astonished at your indi-
rect championship of the doctrines of expediency
than at your quite irrelevant diatribe on the per-
sonal character and conduct of Rousseau ? Per-
haps, however, you do not quite realize that your
attack is less upon the religion of modern Socialism
than upon the Creed of Christianity itself? The
strongest, or, at any rate, the most accepted,
argument against that creed has been that
.it is, although theoretically excellent, practically
impossible. Society has refused from time im-
memorial to be ruled in the conduct of life by
either its principles or its precepts. Men hoard
up riches in this world, and when one cheek is
smitten they do not offer the other. They pray
in the Temple, but they curse and cheat in the
market-place. Interrogated on this inconsistency,
they explain that adherence to the absolute
54 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ?
. tenets of their religion would be suicidal. Even
some of our most Christian teachers have pro-
tested that the Christ was too superhuman, too
transcendently impolitic, to be followed quite all
the way along the thorny path of self-abnegation.
So that when you say that Rousseau's doctrine
is refuted at every point by the facts of life, you
should add that Christianity also is so refuted ;
and you would be, from the political and histo-
rical point of view, perfectly right. The Founder
of Christianity, however, carefully distinguished
between the adherence we may find it expedient
to give to Caesar and that higher adherence we
must give to God. He paused at first principles
and went no further, hoping against hope that
those first principles were seeds which would grow
surely in the conscience of humanity. ' Love one
another ' was his highest and holiest admo-
nition one which we, in this Christian country,
carry out by allowing wealth to accumulate and
men to decay ; by permitting, as in the case
of the deer forests of Scotland, the accidental
wealth of one or two men to mean the destruction
and expatriation of thousands ; by suffering, as
in Ireland, a landlordism without even the excuse
of capital, to drive a whole Nation into despair
and into crime.
You ask me, naturally enough, if somewhat
flippantly, to name those absolute ethical prin-
ciples on which I and far more able propagandists
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ? 55
would base the reconstruction of Society, while at
the same time you seek to stultify my advocacy
by suggesting that it is doubtless purely senti-
mental, and must conflict on every side with the
results of daily experience. Now, it would be idle
as well as impertinent for me, at the very time
when the sanest and clearest intellect known to
us at present on this planet has occupied itself
with the exposition of absolute principles in ethics
(to the great mental confusion of scientific Philistia
and Professor Huxley), to attempt in my perfunc-
tory way to define those principles. For their
definition I must refer you to Mr. Herbert
Spencer's more recent writings luminous as all
that comes from that crystal pen, unanswerable as
most of the arguments that come from that
master mind. Mr. Spencer himself has told us,
in words of dignified remonstrance, that his expo-
sition has been misunderstood and perverted at
every point by Professor Huxley ; and so, if we
examine the matter closely, we shall find the case
to be. Mine is a far humbler task, to explain as
far as possible to the hasty readers of a great
daily newspaper, in as clear and popular language
as is at my command, a few simple points of that
propagandism which proposes to redress centuries
of wrongdoing, and possibly to reconstruct
society.
One word, before I proceed, concerning your
own estimate of the teachings of Rousseau, which
56 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL!
estimate varies little, if at all, from that of Pro-
fessor Huxley. Forgetful altogether that I began
by agreeing with Rousseau on the subject of first
principles, and not by approving the hastily-
designed political and social structure he based
upon them, you resort to the stereotyped mode of
polemics, that of attacking the great doctrinaire's
personal character. Here, however, you uncon-
sciously support my main thesis that great in-
tellect has little or nothing to do with moral
goodness, and that Rousseau, in much of his conduct,
was a sort of philosophical Jack Shepherd. It
should be remembered, however, that Rousseau
made no concealment whatever of his moral dis-
temperature and social larcenies ; that standing,
as he expressed it, before the Judgment Seat, he
made a clean breast of his sins and weaknesses,
whereas most other men have chosen to hide,
rather than to discover, their moral littleness.
While I doubt the expediency of such revelations,
I believe them to have been made in all sincerity,
and I am also quite sure that the record of most
men, if so made public, would shock propriety as
much as the record of Rousseau. The one charge
which you revive against the husband of poor
Therese that of abandoning his children to the
foundling basket is, though horrible enough,
capable of some defence, in so much as the sup-
pression of personal instincts it involves is quite
consistent with the theory that the care of off-
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ? 57
spring should devolve upon the community at
large. It is superfluous, however, to extenuate
the conduct of a man who was in the private
concerns of life scarcely a sane agent, who was
swept into endless folly and inconsistency by sheer
force of temperament. For the rest, the good
old fallacy resuscitated by you, that Rousseau was
personally responsible for the excesses of the Re-
volution, was killed and buried long ago. The
Revolution was the direct consequence of the
wrong-doing of Society, causing the collapse of an
ancient and effete political system, and had little
or nothing to do, either directly or indirectly, with
literature. It came from the masses who had
never learned to read, and who sought not books,
but bread. Rousseauism, and all the other ' isms '
of the pre-Revolutionary period, were the amuse-
ment of the aristocracy of culture, and were to the
masses of the French nation, previous to the pro-
mulgation of certain catchwords by the leaders of
the national movement, about as intelligible as
double Dutch. You suggest, moreover, that the
points which I mention as illustrative of Rous-
seau's insight are mere ' truisms ' which no one
denies or ever did deny, and that the really
important matter in Rousseau's teaching is the
constructive portion of the ' Social Contract.' Had
this been so Rousseau would have been forgotten
long ago. It was his perception of those very
' truisms ' which made him a Prophet and a Seer.
58 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL t
It is his insight into first principles which makes
him living to this hour. How many of us admit
even now, or prove by their conduct to their
fellows, that moral goodness is better than intel-
lectual power ? How many of us feel in our
hearts and illustrate in our lives that luxury and
pride, arrogance of knowledge or of birth, are evil
things ? How many of us proclaim that the war
between nations, like the war between individuals,
daily mocks the commandment which said, ' Thou
shalt not kill '? Truisms, say you ? Truisms to
which almost every institution of our society, every
glory of our civilization, gives the lie ; truisms in
the teeth of which a successful soldier may rise up
and recommend to us, as General Wolseley did
the other day, the example of a nation of atheists
and martinets as one worthy of English imitation ;
truisms which no one practically admits to be true ;
truisms which, when advanced to justify the enthu-
siasm of Humanity, you and other publicists smile
at, and relegate to the regions of sentimental
superstition. Why, Christianity itself has become
a truism a fetish to swear by when we rob our
neighbour and corrupt our neighbour's wife. Its
excellent moral principles are admitted, even by
those who dismiss its dogmas, as so firmly estab-
lished as scarcely to be worth discussion. What I
and other propagandists want, however, is for that
religion, which is essentially the religion of equality,
to be tried in practice. It has never been tried
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ? 59
yet, save by a few isolated individuals from Father
Damien backwards. Who knows but that, after
all, it might serve ; that it might be better at
any rate than the Gospel according to the Printer's
Devil and St. Mammon's current Epistle to the
Philistines ? Who knows but that, with a little
scientific adjustment, it might prove almost as
practicable as the political creed which tells us
that the status quo of the Impenitent Thief, who
still holds the plunder his ancestor stole, is to be
respected and consolidated, according to a certain
' statute of limitations '?
The true political problem, placed before them-
selves by those propagandists who, like myself, are
Socialists only in the good and philosophical sense,
and who are not, like mere Communists, enemies
of all vested interests whatsoever, is to regenerate
Society without destroying that part of its struc-
ture which experience proves to be sound. The
principle that men are born free and equal does
not imply, as its opponents frequently suggest, that
absolute intellectual equality is possible, or that
men, being free, are free to do exactly as they
please ; it merely means, as I have said, that each
unit of society has equal rights of membership, and
complete liberty of action within the scope of the
common organization. Absolute individual free-
dom is of course impossible, as citizenship, i.e.,
equality and fraternity, implies due recognition of
the rights of others. The difficulty, then, is how
60 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ?
to adjust the relations of human beings in such a
manner as to secure the utmost amount of liberty
and equality possible. While the degrees of
power and wealth can never be exactly the same,
and while due allowance should be made for
the rewards of individual energy and industry,
care should be taken that the accumulation of
power and wealth from generation to genera-
tion should not lead to the aggrandizement of
one class at the expense of another, or to the
security of any one individual through the social
destruction of any of his fellows. This means,
translated into other words, that the rights of
acquired property are subservient to those of the
general prosperity ; that such luxury as an indivi-
dual possesses in excess of his rational needs is
conditioned by the destruction of certain other
individuals to whom that luxury might have pro-
vided the necessaries of life. Here we reach,
without turning aside into a very difficult region
of political economy, a first great principle that
every working member of society has a right to
a share of those necessaries which alone make
existence possible. Can it be argued, in the face
of the statistics of existing poverty, with the
knowledge of the daily and hourly shipwreck of
human lives, that the necessaries of life are so
distributed ?
Here, again, we touch one of those ' truisms '
which everyone admits, but few or no men act
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL? 61
upon ; and we shall find, indeed, that each prin-
ciple of just Socialism is in the nature of a truism.
We have already learned, however, contra Rous-
seau, that social freedom is limited, unlike natural
or moral freedom, which is absolute. Certain
rights of property would still remain intact, under
any disintegration caused by the first principle, or
truism, already named. ' I do not want to touch
your treasures,' said even Robespierre, ' however
impure their source. I am far more anxious to
make poverty honourable than to proscribe wealth;
the thatched roof of Fabricius need never envy
the palace of Croesus.'
The second principle which I would name, as
founded on the natural freedom and equality of
men, is equal freedom of opportunity. This free-
dom is being to a large extent secured by the
spread of national education, since no man can
fulfil the rights of citizenship to whom social
neglect and selfishness have denied the very voca-
bulary of civilization. It is possibly impracticable
at present that every man should have exactly the
same start in life, the same chance of securing
social prosperity ; but what the Socialist propagan-
dum demands is some sort of approximation of
starts and chances. The present arbitrary division
of classes is founded on an arrangement which
overworks and denies rational leisure to large
classes of the community in order that other
classes may ' eat, drink, and be merry.' Equal
62 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ?
freedom of opportunity, then, means just distribu-
tion of labour means that Society should not be
divided into idlers and drones, that all men should
share to a certain extent in the practical work of
the world. Is this the case ? In the face of the
ignorance and misery of our labouring classes, of
the lives blackened out of human likeness by cruel
and endless toil, of our sempstresses spinning out
the thin thread of life for a few pence, can any
sane man suggest that freedom of opportunity is,
under our present social system, possible ?
True, there will always be idlers, and possibly,
until the Millennium, there will always be drones.
The problem of the higher Socialism is to limit
the number of both, by rendering the prizes and
the honours of civilization open to all. How to
solve that problem? Surely we should go a long
way to its solution if we averaged the hours of
leisure to all men, and so recognised that want of
rest is as certain a sign of pauperization as want of
bread.
Here, perhaps you say, is a manifest contra-
diction, since I postulated in my first letter that
natural freedom and equality were, being absolute,
altogether independent of relative culture or in-
tellectual acquirement. What I did say was in no
sense contradictory, being merely that intellectual
culture did not necessarily imply moral advance.
For a state of natural freedom and equality, how-
ever, the primary vocabulary of civilization is
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ? 63
essential. A. blind man cannot see the sun, and a
man-beast of burthen cannot perform the rational
duties of society. I contended, however, that the
accumulation of mere knowledge meant nothing,
morally speaking indeed, knowledge is specialism,
and is only valuable is so far as it discovers
those laws which become the common property
of all. Thomas Carlyle would certainly be called
a man of culture, of wide and phenomenal informa-
tion, quite apart from his quasi-prophetic faculty ;
yet what was the culture worth which led him to
rail against all mankind, and to revenge the natural
freedom and equality of a troublesome liver by
abusing the world at large ? To St. Thomas of
Chelsea, the nigger was ' a servant ' by grace of
God ; Macaulay, a ' squat, low-browed, common-
place object '; Coleridge, a ' weltering, ineffectual
being '; Wordsworth, a ' small diluted contempti-
bility'; Keble, of the ' Christian Year,' a 'little
ape,' andKeats's poems ' dead dog'; Charles Lamb,
a ' detestable abortion '; Grote, a person with
a ' spout mouth '; Cardinal Newman, one with-
out 'the intellect of a moderate-sized rabbit';
Mr. Gladstone, ' one of the contempti blest men,
a spectral kind of phantasm '; and Mill, his dear
friend Mill, a i frozen-out logic-chopping machine.'
True, great genius is great wisdom, and from this
point of view great genius is very rare. Yet who
can help thinking, in glancing over the lives of our
cleverest and greatest men, that increase in special
64 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL 9
knowledge too often means increase in obtusity, in
folly ? Even the gentle Darwin, a soul at peace
with all men, and wise, surely, in his generation, has
told us that the only imaginative delight of his age
(when all his splendid faculties still remained
intact) was to read trashy novels, that he ' hated '
Shakespeare, and that to turn to a play of Shake-
speare ' made him sick !' Reading these records of
men, justly esteemed for their power and know-
ledge, one is almost disposed to exclaim, with
Voltaire, that ' the good folk who have no fixed!
principles on the nature of things, who do not know ,
what is, but know very well what is not, these are]
our true philosophers/
To illustrate all the principles which the higher
Socialism accepts as absolute would be utterly
impossible in the space of a newspaper letter. I
will mention only one other, of the most paramount
importance at the present juncture. A corollary
of the thesis that men are born free and equal,
morally speaking, is the certainty that no un-
necessary or arbitrary limits should be made to
freedom of private action and private conduct.
Mr. Spencer has pointed out, with his own un-
equalled lucidity, the dangers which Society is at
present running from over-legislation in matters
social. The tendency of even modern philan-
thropy is to class groups of men and women in
comfortable pigeonholes, and to arrange for them
down to the smallest details the functions and
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL? 65
duties of life ; and Science itself, like a gigantic
Mrs. Pardiggle, is assuming the airs of a social
censor and peripatetic district-visitor. Heaven
forbid that the services which true Science has
done to spread the common particles of Light, and
to remedy human ignorance and human wretched-
ness, should be overlooked or forgotten ! But
moral legislation based on empirical knowledge, like
religious legislation based on barren dogma, may go
too far. Talking the other day with a London
physician of great experience, and in full sympathy
with the scientific reorganization of society, I was
surprised to hear him express the opinion that the
1 model ' dwellings prepared for the working classes
had been far from an unmixed blessing ; that they
were comfortless and cheerless for beings who were
often unable to provide necessary food and fuel,
and that they destroyed in a great measure the
sense of personal independence. Elsewhere, indeed,
we are threatened no longer, as of old, with the
religious tyranny of the Priest, but with the pre-
sumption of the moral and social Legislator.
County Councils, Vigilance Committees, Societies
for moral sanitation, have encroached upon the
liberty of the subject, even to the extent of deter-
mining what he may read and know. Not content
with regulating his physical well-being, they have
endeavoured to regulate the amount of Light and
Knowledge he may enjoy ; and hence the death-
less bigotry of English Puritanism, collaborating in
5
66
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL?
despair with the new-born bigotry of scientific
discovery, is limiting human freedom in almost
every walk of life.
I have named three principles, on the triumph
or failure of which depends the future of Society :
equal freedom to share the necessaries of life,
equal freedom of opportunity to advance, equal
freedom to shape individual thought and action
within the necessary limitations of political organ-
ization. If the status quo admits these principles,
and if they are allowed free scope of activity, then
nothing more is to be said. The higher Socialism
contends that they may be recognised generally,
even as ' truisms/ but that, in most of the affairs
of life, in nearly all its practical conduct, they are
entirely disregarded. Large bodies of the com-
munity have practically no food to eat, no freedom
to earn even common sustenance ; still larger
classes, though they may gain the common neces-
saries of life, are, by the cruelty of their labour for
bare bread and from the pressure of the organiza-
tion around them, forbidden the opportunity to
advance a single step ; and classes even yet larger
are, by the spirit of temporizing and compromising
(approved as we have seen by even scientists like
Professor Huxley), denied the natural freedom of
human beings, on the plea that, under a political
' statute of limitations,' the force originally founded
on wrong-doing ought to be respected !
Well, Rousseau's sublime paradox still holds :
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ? 67
' Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains/
It is useless, or it seems useless, to argue against
those who, like Professor Huxley and your
wandering- witted ' Hereditary Bondsman/ contend
that the freedom and equality of Nature means
(what it was never supposed even by Rousseau
to mean) that all men are alike, that there is no
such thing as differentiation of power or character,
and that one man, however degraded and un-
instructed, is as good as any other. This is
merely the reductio ad absurdum (very useful to
the holders of vested interests) of the argument
which proves that every member of the community
has a born right to share the common benefits and
privileges of Humanity ; that, in other words,
neither the aristocracy of power nor the aristocracy
of culture is entitled, beyond the necessities of the
common preservation, to limit the action of human
freedom, human enjoyment, and human opportunity.
Men advance more surely by freedom than by
restraint, necessary as certain restraints may be.
Before the outbreak of the English Revolution,
personal prerogative, the arbitrary will of one
sincere political bigot, had strangulated English
Liberty. Englishmen arose en masse, and Liberty,
in the political sense, was saved. Before the
outbreak of the great French Revolution,
Catholicism had almost destroyed the conscience
of a great Nation. The inevitable cataclysm came,
what terrible accompaniments we all know.
5 2
68 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL1
At the present hour, at the very time when the
free thought of England is at its brightest and
best, when the scientific and historic methods have
disintegrated the whole mass of religious super-
stition, another great upheaval is imminent, to the
peril, perhaps the destruction, of our whole social
system.
* Le passe" n'est pour nous qu'un triste souvenir ;
Le present est affreux, s'il n'est point d'avenir,
Si la nuit du tombeau de"truit I'e^tre qui pense.'
So sang Voltaire. A colossal Hand, which some
call the hand of Destiny and others that of
Humanity, is putting out the lights of Heaven
one by one, like candles after a feast. It behoves
us, then, to watch needfully that the same Hand,
having emptied the heavens, does not touch the
lowly but life-illumining lights of Earth. The
fairest of these lights is Liberty, is the principle
of natural freedom and equality, without which
individual growth would be impossible, and social
organization, as men now understand it, an im-
possibility.
I am, etc.,
ROBERT BUCHANAN.
P.S. Some idea of the absurdities of Over-
legislation may be gathered from the regulations
of Saint Just, quoted in Von Sybel's ' History
of the French Revolution ' : No servants, no gold
and silver utensils, no child under sixteen to egt
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ? 69
meat, nor any adult to eat meat on three days of
the decade ; boys at the age of seven to be handed
over to the national school, where they will be
taught to speak little, to endure hardships, and to
train for war ; divorce to be free to all ; friendship
ordained a public institution, every citizen on
attaining majority being bound to proclaim his
friends, and if he had none, to be banished ; if
any one committed a crime, his friends were to be
banished, etc. This, it must be admitted, is the
Code of Nature with a vengeance !
[My second letter caused Professor Huxley to
break his vow of silence, and answer as follows :]
To the Editor of the ' Daily Telegraph. 1
SIR,
I have already offered a cordial welcome to
Mr. Robert Buchanan on the occasion of his debut
in the theatre of political speculation ; and the
sincerity of my wish that he may continue to
exhibit the results of the poetic method, in its
application to the dry facts of natural and civil
history, is nowise affected by the circumstance that
he considers me to be an advocate of ' retrograde
and anti-human political theories/ a defender ' of
the topsy-turveydom of modern society,' and,
altogether, a scientific Philistine of the worst
description.
70 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ?
I do not address you for the purpose of com-
bating these opinions, or even to set forth some
pleas for mercy which might weigh in my favour
with any judge less confident of his competency.
I would not even be so indecent as to linger too
long on this side of annihilation ; but, unless I
be worse than other criminals, I trust you will
permit me to send a few words to the scattered
remnant of the people in whose minds the ana-
thema just fulminated has not extinguished any
little credit I may have hitherto possessed. It
appears that there are l three principles on the
triumph or failure of which depends the future
of society : equal freedom to share the necessaries
of life ; equal freedom of opportunity to advance ;
equal freedom to shape individual thought and
action within the necessary limitations of political
organization. If the status quo admits these
principles, and if they are allowed free scope of
activity, then nothing more is to be said.'
Now, it seems to me that the political principles
of which I have been a tolerably active advocate
all my life, and of which I hope to remain an
advocate so long as I have the power to speak
or write, may be expressed, though somewhat
clumsily, by just these words. Perhaps I deceive
myself, but it really is my impression that I am
hardly open to the charge of having failed to
assert freedom of thought and action any time
these five-and-thirty years. Unless I am dream-
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ? 71
ing, I have done what lay in my power to promote
those measures of public education which afford
the best of opportunities for advancement to the
poorer members of society ; and that in the teeth
of bitter opposition on the part of fanatical
adherents of the political philosophy which Mr.
Buchanan idolizes, the consistent application of
which reasoned savagery to practice would have
left the working classes to fight out the struggle
for existence among themselves, and bid the State
to content itself with keeping the ring.
As to equal freedom to share the necessaries of
life, I really was not aware that anybody is, or
can be, refused that freedom.^ If a man has any-
thing to offer in exchange for a loaf which the
baker thinks worth it, that loaf will certainly be
given to him ; but if he has nothing, then it is not
I, but the extreme Individualists, who will say that
he may starve. If the State relieves his necessi-
ties, it is not I but they who say it is exceeding
its powers ; if private charity succours the poor
fellow, it is not I but they who reprove the giver
for interfering with the survival of the fittest.
Logically enough, they ask, Why preserve Nature's
failures ? That a philosophy of which these are
the unvarnished results should rouse a humanitarian
enthusiast, whose sincerity is beyond question, to
be its champion is singular ; though not more
singular than the vilipending of Saint Just for
* What, no one 1
72 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ?
over-legislation, by a worshipper of Rousseau. An
ingrained habit of scientific grovelling among facts
has led me to the conclusion that Jacobin Over-
legislation was a direct consequence of Rousseauism.
These gentlemen guillotined the people who did
not care to be free and equal and brotherly in their
fashion. If anyone doubt the fact, I would advise
him to read M. Taine's volume on the ' Jacobin
Conquest of France/ which is all the more inter-
esting just now, as it affords the best of com-
mentaries on the Parnellite conquest of Southern
Ireland.
The source of a great deal of the wrath which
seems to have been raised by my essay appears to me
to lie in the circumstance that my critics are too
angry to see that the point of difference between us
consists, not in the appreciation of the merits of free-
dom in the three directions indicated, but in regard
to the extent of those ' necessary limitations ' of free-
dom to which all agree. My position is that those
limitations are not determinable by a priori
speculation, but only by the results of experience ;
that they cannot be deduced from principles of
absolute ethics, once and for all, but that they
vary with the state of development of the polity to
which they are applied. And I may be permitted
to observe that the settlement of this question lies
neither with the celestial courts of Poesy nor with
the tribunals of speculative cloudland, but with
men who are accustomed to live and work amongst
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ? 73
facts, instead of dreaming amidst impracticable
formulas.
I am, sir,
Your obedient servant,
T. H. HUXLEY.
EASTBOURNE, January 27.
To the Editor of the 'Daily Telegraph'
SIR,
Unwilling to occupy your space, or to try the
patience of your readers needlessly, I abstained, in
my letter of the 27th, from dealing with a topic of
some importance suggested by a sentence in Mr.
Robert Buchanan's second communication. On
reflection, however, I am convinced that, in the
interest of the public, the omission was an error,
and I ask for an opportunity of making reparation.
This is the sentence :
'The true political problem, placed before them-
selves by those propagandists who, like Mr.
Spencer, are Socialists only in the good and
philosophical sense, and w r ho are not, like mere
Communists, enemies of all vested interests what-
soever, is to regenerate society without destroying
that part of its structure which experience proves
to be sound.'
Mr. Spencer, therefore, is declared by Mr.
Robert Buchanan to be a ' Socialist ' ' in the good
and philosophical sense.' The other day the
74 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ?
Newcastle Socialists declared that their doctrine
concerning land-ownership was founded upon Mr.
Spencer's early teachings, and that these had never
been really disowned by him. If they are right in
this contention, and if, in Mr. Buchanan's eyes,
their Socialism is of the ' good and philosophical '
sort, then, of course, it may be proper to call Mr.
Spencer a Socialist. I offer no opinion on this
delicate subject ; but I may be permitted to say
that, hitherto, I have laboured under the impres-
sion that, whether he is always consistent or not,
Mr. Spencer belongs to a school of political
philosophy which is diametrically opposed to every-
thing which has hitherto been known as Socialism.*
The variations of Socialism are as multitudinous
as those of Protestantism ; but as even a Bossuet
must be compelled to admit that the Protestant
sects agree in one thing, namely, the refusal to
acknowledge the authority of the Pope, so I do
not think it will be denied that all the Socialist
sects agree in one thing, namely, the right of the
State to impose regulations and restrictions upon
its members, over and beyond those which may be
needful to prevent any one man from encroaching
upon the equal rights of another. Every
Socialistic theory I know of demands from the
Government that it shall do something more than
attend to the administration of justice between
man and man, and to the protection of the State
* * For * Socialism ' read ' Communism,' and this is true. R. B.
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL f 75
from external enemies. Contrariwise, every form
of what is called ' Individualism ' restricts the
functions of government, in some or in all direc-
tions, to the discharge of internal and external
police duties, or, in the case of Anarchist Indi-
vidualism, still further. Scientifically founded by
Locke, applied to economics by the laissez-faire
philosophers of the eighteenth century, exhaustively
stated by Wilhelm von Humboldt, and developed,
in this country, with admirable consistency and
irrefutable reasoning (the premisses being granted)
by Mr. Auberon Herbert, I had always imagined
Individualism to have one of its most passionate
advocates in Mr. Spencer. I had fondly supposed,
until Mr. Robert Buchanan taught me better, that
if there was any charge Mr. Spencer would find
offensive, it would be that of being declared to be,
in any shape or way, a Socialist. Can it be
possible that a little work of Mr. Spencer's, ' The
Man versus the State,' published only six years
ago, is not included by Mr. Buchanan among the
1 more recent writings ' of which he speaks, as,
perhaps, too popular for his notice ?
However this may be, I desire to make clear to
your readers what the 'good and philosophical'
sort of ' Socialism' which finds expression in the
following passages is like :
' There is a notion, always more or less pre-
valent, and just now vociferously expressed, that
all social suffering is removable, and that it is the
76 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ?
duty of somebody or other to remove it. Both
these beliefs are false' (p. 19).
1 A creature not energetic enough to maintain
itself must die ' is said to be ' a dictum on which
the current creed and the creed of Science are at
one' (p. 19).
' Little as politicians recognise the fact, it is
nevertheless demonstrable that these various public
appliances for working-class comfort, which they
are supplying at the cost of the ratepayers, are
intrinsically of the same nature as those which,
in past times, treated the farmer's man as half-
labourer and half- pauper' (p. 21).
On p. 22, legislative measures for the better
housing of artisans and for the schooling of their
children; on page 24, for the regulation of the
labour of women and children ; on page 27, for
sanitary purposes meet with the like condemna-
tion. And the whole position is neatly summed
up in the answer to the question, ' What is essen-
tial to the idea of a slave?' put at page 34. It is
too long to cite in its entirety, but here is the
pith of it :
' The essential question is, How much is he
compelled to labour for other benefit than his own,
and how much can he labour for his own benefit ?
The degree of his slavery varies according to the
ratio between that which he is forced to yield up
and that which he is allowed to retain ; and it
matters not whether his master is a single person
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ? 77
or a society. If, without option, he has to labour
for the society and receives from the general stock
such portion as the society awards him, he becomes
a slave to the society. Socialistic arrangements
necessitate an enslavement of this kind : and to-
wards such an enslavement many recent measures,
and still more the measures advocated, are carry-
ing us' (p. 35).
The words which I have italicised, as it seems
to me, condemn Socialism of all kinds pretty
forcibly; and I further suggest that they appear
to be somewhat inconsistent with the acceptance
of even a ' good and philosophical ' form of that
creed. But Mr. Robert Buchanan's profound
study of Mr. Spencer's works may enable him
to produce contradictory passages. I invite him
to do so.
I am, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
T. H. HUXLEY.
EASTBOURNE, January 29.
To the Editor of the 'Daily Telegraph.'
SIR,
I have certainly expressed myself very ill
if I appeared to be accusing Professor Huxley
of wholesale Philistinism, using the word ' Phi-
listinism ' to imply a class of intelligence outside
of all sympathy with advanced ideals. No one
can recognise more fully than myself the service
78 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ?
which Science has of late years done for Free-
thought and for Humanity, and it was precisely
because Professor Huxley was classed, and classed
deservedly, among the most distinguished of
those Scientists who have sacrificed leisure and
comfort for the sake of their fellows, that I was
aghast to find him ranging himself once, but I
hope not for ever, with the opponents of human
progress.
On what plea, may I ask, does Professor
Huxley, in classing not only the uncrowned and
unhonoured poet, but also the crowned and
honoured philosopher, as equally impracticable,
arrogate to himself the exclusive mastery of
current and historical ' facts '? Seemingly upon
the plea that both philosophers and poets dwell
in mere cloudland ; while he alone, with mailed
feet like those of Perseus, walks, dragon-slaying,
on the common ground. It is idle to defend the
Philosophers, but I think even the Poets have
shown their capacity to realize practical problems.
One of them, whom all the world honours,
sounded the trumpet-note of human freedom when
he wrote the ' Areopagitica.' Another of them,
less appreciated and far less noble, struck off the
bonds of Galas and touched the quick of human
doubt when he sang of the Earthquake at Lisbon.
Both these men were particularly distinguished
the second no doubt a little barbarously by
their consummate mastery of ' facts.' As to Mr*
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL? 79
Spencer, a philosopher pur et simple, he has
marshalled in his ' Principles of Sociology ' and in
the compilations published as practical addenda to
that work, an array of social and historical evidence
unequalled certainly in this generation. Professor
Huxley, on the other hand, burrows so deep among
what he considers ' facts ' that he becomes a sort of
moral troglodyte, and loses knowledge of the upper
sunshine and fresh air.
' An tenebras Orci visat vastasque lacunas.'
And when he emerges into common daylight what
has he to tell us ? Not the grand truths which he
and others have won honour by advocating, but
trivial ipse dixit statements, not to be verified in
any daylight whatever. His one ruling idea con-
cerning men is that they must be 'governed 7 -
washed, cleaned, assorted, parcelled out and labelled,
educated up to the theory that there is a political
' statute of limitations/ and that the force of a
special governmental Providence is a thing not
to be resisted.
Just look a little closer at his statements, that
' there is much to be said for the opinion that
force effectually and thoroughly used, so as to
render further opposition hopeless, establishes an
ownership that should be recognised as soon as
possible/ and that ' for the welfare of society,
as well as for that of individual men, there should
be a statute of limitations in respect of the con-
sequences of wrong-doing.' Let, us ask ourselves,
So ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ?
in the first place, by what means men are to
determine the hopelessness of opposition ? The
history of the Christian origins, of Society before
the English or the French Revolutions nay,
above all, the story of Science itself, of its martyrs
and its conquerors is the record of struggles
which, from the point of view of contemporary
experience, were altogether ' hopeless/ Even the
last French Empire, with its triumph over a
generation, with its glorification of the gospel
according to Belial and Baron Hausmann, threat-
ened France with utter despair, crammed and fed
France with all the physical comforts of sensualism
and what Carlyle called ' Devil's dung.' Then
look at results ; look at the conscience of
Humanity hoping against hope, rejecting all the
Devil's moral prescriptions ' to be quiet and yield
to the powers which be and must be,' but dis-
integrating the evil of political institutions by sheer
persistency of opposition. Whenever Professor
Huxley can show that there is no hope on the
earth or above it, then assuredly, and not till
then, we will sit down with him and ' grovel
among facts.' Meanwhile, we can only grieve
that the religion of Science, hailed by all of us as
the birth of a new day, is fossilizing already into
a religion of despair ; that the New Politics of
the Expert is a chaos, not a cosmos, has not even
the glimmering of a cosmos. And the ' statute
of limitations '? Reduce it to common-sense, and
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ? Si
what does it mean ? It admits that modern
Society is founded on ancient wrong-doing, that
Jacob robbed Esau long ago ; but it asserts that
on the corollary, of course, that ' opposition is
hopeless ' Esau, having discovered the theft, and
returned to claim his birthright, is to go back to
the desert. Biblical History, being much shrewder
than modern Science, tells us that he did nothing of
the kind. The life corporate of Society, as Science
and Philosophy alike agree, is practically an
enlarged version of the life of the Individual.
Thus, then to make an illustration I was
knocked down and robbed of all I possessed,
twenty, thirty years ago, by a person stronger
than myself. For all these years I have been
a pauper and an outcast through my enemy's
wrong-doing. To-day, after endless suffering, I
discover my enemy, a rich and prosperous man,
a member (say) of the City Council and the Vigi-
lance Committee, enjoying the unearned increment
as well as the original capital he stole. I go to
him quietly and say, ' You robbed me years
ago ; I am not malicious, and you may keep
what has accrued, but I want you, my dear sir,
to restore me my original capital.' Am I to be
answered, to be silenced, by the statement that
the robbery took place such a very long time
ago ; and that, my case being hopeless, ownership
established had ' better be recognised as soon as
possible '?
6
82 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL1
' As to freedom to share the necessaries of life/
says our new Daniel come to Judgment, ' I really
was not aware that anybody is, or can be, refused
that freedom,' and he illustrates his contention by
saying that ' if a man has anything to offer which
the baker thinks worth a loaf, that loaf will cer-
tainly be given to him/ What a mockery of,
not to say ' grovelling in/ facts, have we here !
What a putting of the cart before the horse !
Society begins by paralyzing a man, by denying
to him ordinary light, leisure, instruction, the
power of ' having anything to offer '; it converts
him into a mere pauper by refusing him the
common vocabulary of civilization, and then, when
he asks for bread, Society replies, ' Certainly ;
what have you to give me in exchange ?' What
Freedom and Equality mean is that every man
should be invested with the power enabling him,
by fair labour, to produce something which is
a loaf's value. Is this the case ? If it is so,
then I am stultified, and the Professor's ' facts '
are victorious.
So much for the Professor's general statements.
In the postscriptal letter published this morning
in your columns, Professor Huxley suggests that
I am possibly much mistaken in calling Mr.
Herbert Spencer a ' Socialist/ and after quoting
certain passages from the philosopher's writings,
invites me to quote from the same writings
passages which are contradictory. So far as the
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND E QUA LI 83
Land Question itself is concerned, and the attitude
of the Newcastle reformers thereupon, I presume
I need not go further than cite the following
passage from ' Social Statics ': ' Equity does not
permit property in land. For, if qne portion of
the earth's surface may justly become the property
of an individual, held for his sole use and benefit,
as a thing to which he has an exclusive right,
then other portions of the earth's surface may
be so held, and our planet may thus lapse into
private hands. It follows that if the landowners
have a valid right to its surface, all those who are
not landowners have no right at a]l to its surface.'
Mr. Spencer has not been in the habit of dis-
claiming his own dicta, and the Socialists of New-
castle need have no fear, I fancy, that he will
disclaim this one. But, Professor Huxley insists,
Mr. Spencer's later utterances are those, not of
Socialism, but of Individualism, entirely overlooking
the fact that the terms Socialism and Individualism
are not contrary terms, but two facets of the same
proposition.
So far as Socialism in our own country is con-
cerned, I ought to know something of its inner
nature, for I was born in its odour of popular
unsanctity. My father was one of Robert Owen's
missionaries, and the personal influence of Owen
one of the greatest and best of doctrinaires
influenced all my early life. Now, Owen's first
and cardinal dictum, the one on which he insisted
62
84 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ?
with almost wearisome iteration, was that Man,
though born free and equal in the sphere of moral
rights, ' was entirely the creature of circumstances,'
and the main mission of his life was the mission
of Socialism generally to modify those circum-
stances so as to produce, practically, a new Moral
World. I have yet to learn that such Socialism
conflicts to any unnecessary extent with Indi-
vidualism ; indeed, the history of the movement
is full of amusing episodes illustrating the entire
freedom of its believers in such matters of
personal conduct, and even of opinion, as did not
imperil the machinery of the social organism. The
well-known and well-meaning Mr. Galpin went
about clothed in a simple sack, and the divergences
of individual opinion on moral questions led to
strange manifestations at New Harmony. Across
the Channel, and in France particularly, the story
of Socialism is the story of infinite eccentricities.
From the personal absurdities of St. Simon down
to those of Auguste Comte, from the amazing
performances of the speculative Enfantin to those
of his pupil and practician Bazard, it is easy to
perceive that Socialism postulates the right of a
man to do what he pleases so long as he takes his
turn at the task- wheel, and does not interfere with
the privileges of his fellow-believers.
It is not for me to explain Mr. Spencer, who
can so admirably explain himself. It is quite
possible that he may disclaim being called ' a
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ? 85
Socialist/ since the word (as Professor Huxley
well knows) is so connected in the public mind
with an idea of state tyranny ; but I wrote
advisedly of ' the higher Socialism/ not of the
lower, just as I might write of the higher
Christianity, to distinguish it from the lower, the
historical, and the dogmatic forms of that creed.
Professor Huxley's particular instances, in which
he finds either an anarchic Individualism or an
absurd contradiction, may be very summarily dealt
with.
Mr. Spencer has stated, in the first place, that
it is quite impossible to remove l social suffering '
altogether, a statement grounded on his experience
that, so long as men are men, there will be
individual victory and failure. I fail to see how
that conflicts with the opinion that the chances
in the competition should be equalized as far as
possible in one way, as we have seen, by pre-
venting individuals from monopolizing the land.
Strangely enough, Professor Huxley stigmatizes
with the charge of dangerous Individualism the
very man who says that Society should protect
itself at all points from the encroachment of
individuals ! l A creature not energetic enough
to sustain itself must die/ says Mr. Spencer again,
which is surely true, and in no way at variance
with the theory that the social organism must
be restrained from cruelly crushing any creature
out of life. Socialism contends that it is not
86 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ?
want of energy, but want of opportunity, that
pauperises men and destroys individual vitality.
Professor Huxley's next citation from Mr.
Spencer that ' it is demonstrable that various
appliances for working-class comfort, supplied at the
cost of the ratepayers, are intrinsically of the same
nature as those which in past times treated the
farmer's man as half-labourer and half-pauper ' and
that in proportion to a man's helplessness without
social aid and superintendence is the degree of his
1 slavery ' would, I conceive, be subscribed to by
most Socialists. For what men want is to start the
social reformation at the beginning and forwards,
not at the end and backwards. What the 'good
and philosophical ' Socialist says is clear enough : ' I
do not particularly care for Governmental inter-
ference with my private life and comfort, though I
recognise the necessity of political and civic govern-
ment, down to such general details as draining and
lighting. What I do want is to have the weeds
cleared away which prevent my progress as an
individual member of society. You cannot help
me much by compelling me to labour, without
option, for the common benefit, while, at the same
time, you confirm the institutions which allow
large classes of men not to labour at all. I will
not become a " slave to your society," because I do
not recognise that society as founded on absolute
political ethics. I was born a free man, not a
slave/ I do not fancy that Mr. Spencer disagrees
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL1 87
on any essential point with the ' good and philo-
sophical ' Socialist.
Let me put the matter plainly. Professor
Huxley misunderstands the higher Socialism as
thoroughly as he misunderstands Mr. Spencer.
He is ' trimming,' while Mr. Spencer is recon-
structing. The triumph of Socialism, historically
and morally, is the triumph of Individualism.
Ecclesiasticism, for example, has gone down like a
house of cards, because the free thought of
Individualism id est, Socialism said, in face of
huge majorities, that Ecclesiasticism was an in-
terference with the right of private judgment in
matters personal and spiritual. Protestantism
decayed, from the moment it became, instead of
the protest of a minority, the tyranny of a
majority. Socialism itself, the lower Socialism,
has collapsed in many of its organizations, because
it forgot its first principles of freedom and equality ;
because (to take Professor Huxley's illustration) it
suggested to the Revolutionists the idea of sustain-
ing common freedom and equality by guillotining
each other, and because, as in the case of Enfantin
and his group, by upholding a scientific and sen-
suous priesthood as ' the Living Law of God/
it adopted the insane vocabulary of superstition.
' Father,' said Bonheur to Enfantin, ' I believe
in you, as I believe in the sun. You are to
my eyes the Sun of Humanity.' Well might
Lafitte exclaim to such enthusiasts, ' You post
88
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL1
your advertisements too high one cannot read
them.'
Unhappily the leaning of most new creeds, as
of all the old, is in the direction of social tyranny.
And why ? Simply because poor human nature
finds it hard to understand, and far harder to carry
out, absolute ethical principles. Socialism, like all
other human efforts to secure the greatest happiness
of the greatest number like Christianity, like the
Religion of Humanity has failed again and again.
But if Professor Huxley's dicta of quasi-pro-
vidential or Governmental interference with the
conduct of life were to be universally accepted,
Humanity might well despair for ever ; for with
the destruction of Individualism would end the
last hope of the higher Socialism. Over-legislation
would restore slavery to mankind, and preserve the
semi-disintegrated feudality which is still so large a
portion of our political system. The philosopher,
not the quidnunc, holds the secret of wise legisla-
tion. The creed of the higher Socialism, not the
creed of those who believe that Socialism conflicts
with Individualism, is that which follows the Law
of Nature, by basing individual chances on the
natural freedom and equality of men.
To find Professor Huxley fighting for the status
quo in Politics is to me a far sadder sight than to
find him (for such a miracle may some day happen)
fighting for the status quo in Religion. Religion,
after all, can take care of itself. But the man
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL? 89
who argues in favour of Force as a proof of owner-
ship, and of a Statute of Limitations in matters
of secular wrong-doing, will one day have to cast
in his lot with Ecclesiasticism and the Bishops.
There is no way out of the dilemma, for Church
and State stand or fall together. I shall watch
with curiosity the process which may lead to the
conversion of another Saul.
I am, etc.,
ROBERT BUCHANAN.
January 31.
To the Editor of the ' Daily Telegraph. 1
Sm,
Your readers must take Mr. Robert
Buchanan's censures of me and my opinions for
what they are worth ; I am not concerned to
defend myself against them. Mr. Buchanan
thinks that l Socialism and individualism are not
contrary terms, but two facts (? faces) * of the same
proposition.'
Hence, it would seem to follow that when Mr.
Spencer declares that ' Socialistic arrangements
necessitate enslavement,' he also means that
1 individualistic arrangements necessitate enslave-
ment.'
And I must leave that instructive development
* ' Facts ' in my letter was a misprint for ' facets.'
90 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ?
of absolute political ethics together with the
question whether Mr. Buchanan is entitled to cite
a work which Mr. Spencer has repudiated to be
further discussed by those who may be interested
in such topics, of whom I am not one (!).
I am, your obedient servant,
T. H. HUXLEY.
EASTBOURNE, February 3.
To the Editor of the l Daily Telegraph.'
SIR,
Suffer me, like Professor Huxley, to say one
last word, and that word shall be one of cordial
acquiescence in the suggestion that the enslave-
ment of Society is also the enslavement of the
Individual. I have yet to learn that an individual,
save in the sphere of absolute thought and ethics,
is not in a certain sense the ' slave ' of his own
organism. Just as a society is held together by
its laws of life, so is a man held together by
identical laws. He cannot escape from the general
discharge of functions and interchange of currents
which condition his vitality. The microcosm is a
society just as much as the macrocosm. So far
the Scientist and I are agreed. We only part
company at the point where the scientist treats
both Society and the Individual as mechanical only,
independent altogether of those absolute principles
which, while they fail to ' interest ' Professor
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL! 91
Huxley, are attacked so vehemently in his system
of ' Providence Made Easy. 7
I am, etc.,
ROBERT BUCHANAN.
[This discussion ended with the following
energetic letter from Mr. Herbert Spencer :]
To the Editor of the l Daily Telegraph'
SIR,
Though the recent controversy carried on in
your columns under the title l Are Men Born Free
and Equal ?' has chiefly concerned certain political
views of mine, I have thus far remained passive,
and even now do not propose to say anything
about the main issues. To Mr. Buchanan I owe
thanks for the chivalrous feeling which prompted
his defence. Professor Huxley, by quoting pas-
sages showing my dissent from what is currently
understood as Socialism, has rendered me a service.
I might fitly let the matter pass without remark,
were it not needful to rectify a grave misrepre-
sentation.
Describing the position of the penniless man,
Professor Huxley says : ' It is not I, but the
extreme Individualists, who will say that he may
starve. If the State relieves his necessities, it is
not I, but they, who say it is exceeding its
powers ; if private charity succours the poor
fellow, it is not I, but they, who reprove the giver
92 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ?
for interfering with the survival of the fittest/
And the view thus condemned by implication he
has previously characterized as ' the political
philosophy which Mr. Buchanan idolizes, the
consistent application of which reasoned savagery
to practice would have left the working classes
to fight out the struggle for existence among
themselves.'
Professor Huxley is fertile in strong expressions,
and ' reasoned savagery ' is one of them ; but in
proportion as the expressions used are strong,
should be the care taken in applying them, lest
undeserved stigmas may result. Unfortunately,
in this case he appears to have been misled by that
deductive method which he reprobates, and has
not followed that inductive method which he
applauds. Had he looked for facts instead of
drawing inferences, he would have found that I
have nowhere expressed or implied any such
' reasoned savagery ' as he describes. For nearly
fifty years I have contended that the pains
attendant on the struggle for existence may fitly
be qualified by the aid which private sympathy
prompts. In a pamphlet on ' The Proper Sphere
of Government,' written at the age of twenty-two,
it is argued that in the absence of a poor law ' the
blessings of charity would be secured unaccom-
panied by the evils of pauperism.' In ' Social
Statics ' this view is fully set forth. While the
discipline of the battle of life is recognised and
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ? 93
insisted upon as ' that same beneficent though
severe discipline, to which the animate creation
at large is subject/ there is also recognised and
insisted upon the desirableness of such mitiga-
tions as spontaneously result from individual fellow-
feeling. It is argued that privately ' helping men
to help themselves ' leaves a balance of benefit, and
that, ' although by these ameliorations the process
of adaptation must be remotely interfered with,
yet, in the majority of cases, it will not be so much
retarded in one direction as it will be advanced in
another.'
' As no cruel thing can be done without character
being thrust a degree back towards barbarism,
so no kind thing can be done without character
being moved a degree forward towards perfection.
Doubly efficacious, therefore, are all assuagings of
distress, instigated by sympathy ; for not only do
they remedy the particular evils to be met, but
they help to mould humanity into a form by which
such evils will one day be precluded' (pp. 318,
319, 1st edit.).
Professor Huxley's ingenuity as a controver-
sialist, great though it is, will, I fancy, fail to
disclose the ' reasoned savagery ' contained in these
sentences. Should he say that, during the forty
years which have elapsed since they were written,
my views have changed from a more humane to a
less humane form, and that I would now see the
struggle for existence, with resulting survival of
94 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ?
the fittest, carried on without check, then I meet
the allegation by another extract. In the ' Prin-
ciples of Sociology,' sec. 322, I have explained at
some length that every species of creature can
continue to exist only by conforming to two
opposed principles one for the life of the im-
mature, and the other for the life of the mature.
The law for the immature is, that benefits received
shall be great in proportion as worth is small ;
while for the mature the law is, that benefits
received shall be great in proportion as worth is
great worth being measured by efficiency for the
purposes of life. The corollary, as applied to
social affairs, runs as follows:
' Hence the necessity of maintaining this cardinal
distinction between the ethics of the family and
the ethics of the State. Hence the fatal result if
family disintegration [referring to a view of Sir
Henry Maine] goes so far that family policy and
State policy become confused. Unqualified gene-
rosity must remain the principle of the family
while offspring are passing through their early
stages ; and generosity increasingly qualified by
justice must remain its principle as offspring are
approaching maturity. Conversely, the principle
of the society guiding the acts of citizens to one
another must ever be justice, qualified by such
generosity as their several natures prompt ; joined
with unqualified justice in the corporative acts of
the society to its members. However fitly in the
battle of life among adults the proportioning of
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ? 95
rewards to merits may be tempered by private
sympathy in favour of the inferior, nothing but evil
can result if this proportioning is so interfered with
by public arrangements that demerit profits at the
expense of merit/
Still more recently has there been again set
forth this general view. In ' The Man versus the
State/ pp. 64-67, along with the assertion that
1 society in its corporate capacity cannot, without
immediate or remoter disaster, interfere with the
play of these opposed principles, under which
every species has reached such fitness for its mode
of life as it possesses/ there goes a qualification
like that above added.
'I say advisedly society in its corporate capacity,
not intending to exclude or condemn aid given to
the inferior by the superior in their individual
capacities. Though, when given so indiscriminately
as to enable the inferior to multiply, such aid
entails mischief; yet in the absence of aid given
by society, individual aid, more generally de-
manded than now, and associated Avith a greater
sense of responsibility, would, on the average, be
given with the effect of fostering the unfortunate
worthy rather than the innately unworthy ; there
being always, too, the concomitant social benefit
arising from culture of the sympathies/
In other places the like is expressed or implied,
but it is needless to cite further evidence. The
9 6 ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ?
passages I have quoted will make sufficiently clear
the opinion I have all along held, and still hold ;
and everyone will be able to judge whether this
opinion is rightly characterized by the phrase
1 reasoned savagery/
HERBERT SPENCER.
LONDON, February 7.
FINAL NOTE ON THE DISCUSSION.
It will be seen that much of the question, ' Are
men born free and equal ?' became merged in the
other question, ' What is Socialism ?' My answer
to that question i.e., that true Socialism was a
combination to protect the rights of individuals
was paradoxical enough to puzzle my friend Mr.
Spencer, and I had neither the time nor the
opportunity to explain my meaning fully. I have
no more sympathy than Mr. Spencer himself (as I
have shown elsewhere) with any kind of tyrannous
organization, whether framed in the name of
vested interests or in the name of the people.
True Socialism the Science of Sentiment to
which I adhere, fetters no man's moral activity,
limits no man's character, restricts no man's
evolution :
' No man can save another's Soul,
Or pay another's Debt.'
And what the individual man cannot do, cannot be
done by any organization of men. Thus I stand,
with Mr. Spencer, for the spread of the sense of
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL ? 97
moral responsibility, for individual effort and
energization ; while Professor Huxley stands for
the status quo, for Beneficent Legislation, for Pro-
vidence made Easy. As little as either of these
teachers do I see hope or find comfort in the
savagery of false Socialism, in the Anarchy of
Ignorance, in the terrorism of the emerging Demo-
gorgon. Far as I follow Mr. Spencer, however,
in his masterly abstract statements, there is a
point where even a disciple and a friend may hesi-
tate. I cannot calmly leave the regeneration of
things evil to the slow and certain evolution of the
corporate conscience ; I feel that there is much
to be said for the advocates of a more active
social reorganization, and I am not so convinced
as Mr. Spencer of the necessary sacredness of
contracts, or of the wisdom of holding them
inviolable. It would not be difficult, I think, to
define the limits within which even State Socialism
is expedient and beneficial. Nothing certainly can
be more terrible than the existing condition of
things, both social and political, and all efforts to
mend that condition, be they ever so revolutionary,
have my sympathy. It is quite clear, therefore,
that I do not follow the Prophet with my eyes
shut, and I can quite understand that Mr. Spencer
must have considered me, in more than one ex-
pression of opinion, a Devil's Advocate.
K. B.
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL :
A PROTEST AGAINST OVER-LEGISLATION IN MATTERS
LITERARY.
' Tell me, where is the place that men call Hell ?
Meph. Under the heavens.
Faust. Ay, so are all things else ; but whereabouts 1
Meph. Within the bowels of these Elements
Where we are tortured and remain for ever.
Hell has no limits, nor is circumscribed
In one self place : but where we are is Hell ;
And where Hell is, there must we ever be
And, to be short, when all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be Hell that are not Heaven.
Faust. I think Hell is a fable.
Meph. Ah ! think so still, till experience change thy mind.'
MARLOWE'S Faustus.
72
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL.
To the RIGHT HON. HENRY MATTHEWS,
Home Secretary.
RIGHT HON. SIR,
You are, I understand, a Roman Catholic;
I am a Catholic plus an eclectic. I have the
highest respect for the creed in which you believe,
since it is perhaps the most logically constructed
of all human creeds ; but while I admire the logic
I do not admit all the premises, and cannot con-
sequently follow you to all its conclusions. Is it
too much to hope, however, that even Roman
Catholicism has shared the fate of other beliefs,
and been shorn of many of its imperfections ? Its
history represents it as at once the friend of
literature, and literature's mortal enemy ; it has
preserved for us much that is precious, together
with many husks of uncleanliness which might
have been more wisely destroyed, and it has
formulated the Index, before which, from gene-
ration to generation, Free Thought has trem-
bled. It washed the sin-stained robes of St.
Augustine with one hand, and it burned Giordano
Bruno with the other. All that is over, and just
102
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL.
now, in the eighty-ninth year of this century,
Roman Catholicism stands face to face with its
old enemies, Free Thought and Science, with whom
less than a miracle might even yet effect a recon-
ciliation. For the creed of Persecution is also
the creed of spiritual Insight : the carnal wolfs
clothing, perhaps, still hides the Lamb of God.
If in its supreme moment of eclipse the suffering
Church were to admit its sins and reform its
terminology, Humanity might almost accept its
blessing forget Torquemada, and remember
Bishop Myriel.
An opportunity occurs now in England. A
new Inquisition, with which the Roman Church
has fortunately nothing to do, proposes to shut
all carnal books, and to punish all men who write,
read, and sell them. For issuing to the public the
writings of an able Advocate on the Devil's side,
an unfortunate Publisher of Books lies now in
prison.* The flourishing Puritan, apt pupil of
old Rome in persecution, has decided that Free
Thought is to be silenced, and the Arbor Scientiae
cut down and burned. It is the story of Castilio
over again, and John Calvin survives in the spirit,
to make a martyr's bonfire. Now, then, I believe,
is the time for the Church Catholic, the Church
persecuted and purified, to confess her sin, and cast
in ! her lot with the Humanity she once hated,
saying, ' Even as my Saints and Monks preserved
* Written in 1889.
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 103
for men the banal humanities of Greece and Rome,
even as (while stifling the literature of speculation)
they saved for the world the literature of the flesh,
letting my children nourish themselves on the bread
thereof and cast the leaven away, so will I now
proclaim that even the Literature of Hell shall not
be hidden quite below the depths of argument.' If
the Church escapes this opportunity, it will be her
own misfortune ; if she takes it boldly, she will
gain at least one day's triumph. More than any
Church still surviving, she believes that her argu-
ments are overpowering. Since she has found it
quite useless to suppress her enemies by force, why
not suffer them to have their say in open daylight,
before the world ? By her instrument, a Roman
Catholic Home Secretary, she may do this, and
she will be wise to do it. Let her by your means,
sir, open the prison of one of whom those who
love her not have foolishly made a Martyr. Let
her proclaim from the housetops, i Men, speak out
your utmost, lay bare Nature to its depths ; your
liberation will be my justification, for although you
descend into Hell you will only be following my
Master, who left his Cross, a flaming symbol, even
there'
May I, as briefly as possible, review the case to
which I solicit your earnest attention ?
A certain
M. EMILE ZOLA,
whom superficial criticism persists in classing among
104
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL.
the votaries of pleasure, is a dreary and dismal
gentleman whose mind is solely exercised on
questions of moral drainage and social sewerage.
He goes so far as to assert that Modern Society is
full of disease germs scattered through the air from
the social deposits ; and to prove his case, he takes
us, when we are willing to be improved, right down
into the sew^ers and the catacombs. I went there
lately with him ; and held my nose. The very
raiment of my guide, when we emerged into the
daylight, was redolent of offal ; it looked and smelt
unclean, and I got away from it as soon as possible,
not before I had recognised, however, that the man
was right in some measure, and that the drains
were bad. Now, it never occurred to me for one
moment that poor Zola ought to be given into
custody, but a crowd of very clean persons loudly
clamoured around as, and messages were sent for the
nearest policeman. Before the stern myrmidon of
the law could be found, Zola had disappeared, but
an unfortunate and innocent deputy, told off to
conduct the public in the absence of his principal,
was incontinently laid hold of by one Dogberry,
haled off before Justice Shallow, and then and
there condemned as a public nuisance. Moral :
Leave the drains alone ; let the world wag, even if
typhoid fever should flourish. Moral number two,
very acceptable to the average insular intelligence :
Conceal from - all clean people, especially young
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 105
people, the fact that there is such a thing as
sewerage at all.
I have never held (and I do not hold now) the
opinion that drainage is a fit subject for Art, that
men grow any better by the contemplation of what
is bestial and unpleasant ; indeed, I have always
been puritan enough to think pornography a
nuisance. It is one thing, however, to dislike the
obtrusion of things unsavoury and abominable, and
quite another to regard any allusion to them as
positively criminal. A description even of pig-
sties, moreover, may sometimes be made tolerable
by the cunning of a great artist, and this same M.
Zola, though a dullard au fond, for the simple
reason that he regards pigsties as the only fore-
ground for his lurid moral landscapes, appears to be
so much better and nobler than myself, in so much
as he loves Truth more and fears consequences less,
that I have again and again taken off my hat to
him in open day. His zeal may be mistaken, but
it is self-evident ; his information may be horrible,
but it is certainly given in all good faith ; and an
honest man being the rarest of phenomena in all
literature, this man has my sympathy though my
instinct is to get as far away from him as
possible.
In trying on more than one occasion to do
justice to his sincerity, while seriously finding
fault with his method, I have had to be constantly
reminded that he is a Frenchman ; and a French-
io6 ON DESCENDING INTO HELL.
man, from our insular point of view, is synonymous
with everything that is unclean and detestable.
Despite the fact that we have derived for hundreds
of years all our ' ideas,' such as they are, from
France, despite the fact that Frenchmen have
been the pioneers of Freedom and Free Thought
all over the world, we still preserve the old super-
stition that a Frenchman is born a ' light ' person,
whose sole conception of life is derived from his
experiences as a boulevardier. The English race
has no ' ideas ' whatever ; indeed, it abominates
1 ideas,' and is thoroughly practical and pragmatical
in its views, of social subjects especially. True,
when once convinced of a great principle, it can
hold to it, as our Puritans did when they got the
lambent torch of Protestantism from Geneva, as
our philosophers did w r hen they caught the reflex
of the Fiery Cross of Free Thought in Paris ; but
we work by tenacity, like the bull-dog, while
Frenchmen, like the greyhound, work by sight.
We have had to get even our Byrons and our
Shelleys second-hand from the Revolution. We
have fought inch by inch against the obtrusion
of every new ' idea '; then at last, accepting it, we
have held to it like grim Death. Thus, in religion
and even in philosophy, we have been practically
converted, but on one point, that of social statics
and their expression in literature, we are invul-
nerable. We won't be reformed in our morality.
We decline to listen to anyone, especially a priest
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 107
or a Frenchman, who affirms that human nature is
not virtuous by instinct and by predisposition.
We repudiate all ' ideas ' connected with the
existence of moral Hell. We still our consciences,
approve our Social Evil, and refuse to inspect our
drains. While doing the best to give one half of
the community a foretaste of Hell upon earth, we
affirm that this is the best of all possible worlds,
and that English civilization is the only possible
civilization consistent with the welfare of a troubled
planet.
In this spirit of disingenuous optimism, we have
organized
OUR LATTER INQUISITION
a curious conclave, composed of all phases of
character and opinion ; with Justice Shallow as
chief Inquisitor, and Messrs. Dogberry and Verges
as watchmen in ordinary. Decree number one :
let all * deformed ' individuals, and especially all
Frenchmen, be ' run in ' and ' charged/ Decree
number two : books being the Devil's engines, all
books are to be 'inspected,' and if found guilty
of any ' ideas,' summarily burnt or expurgated.
Decree number three : any publisher of a book
calculated to destroy our cardinal principle, that
this is the best of all possible worlds, is to be
seized, fined and imprisoned. Decree number
four : that public virtue is impossible without the
sanction of the police, and (as a corollary) that
io8 ON DESCENDING INTO HELL.
public taste is a thing strictly within the deter-
mination of the watchmen and custodians of our
virtue. Decree number five : that our system
of sewerage is to remain in the region of Super-
natural Mystery, and that any literature touching
upon it is to be condignly abolished Ivnprimcmtur,
the revised New Testament, the ' Lamplighter/
and the tracts of Christian knowledge. Con-
demnantur, all poems, all fictions, which expose the
Gehenna underground, or attack the moralities
which shine above it. Expurgantur, Shakespeare,
Dryden, and Byron (the last delicately, for he
was a lord). Signed, Shallow, Grand Inquisi-
tor ; Countersigned, Dogberry, Chief Constable in
Ordinary. In the intervals of our pleasant
Inquisition, we listen blandly to a droning Military
Person who beguiles our leisure with prospects of
a general Conscription, and who holds up the
German system of providential and governmental
superintendence in all departments of life and
thought as the beacon of modern Civilization !*
A few words concerning the character of
MR. VlZETELLY,
the imprisoned publisher, may assist you to take an
impartial view of the situation. His entire life
had been spent in the service of art, journalism and
literature. Bound over as an apprentice to his
father, James Henry Vizetelly. who had one of the
* See Lord Wolseley's utterances, passim.
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 109
largest printing businesses in the City of London,
he acquired his own freedom by servitude, though
members of the family had been freemen of the
City for several generations. Subsequently Mr.
Henry Vizetelly was apprenticed to Orrin Smith,
the well-known wood engraver, and proved his best
pupil ; the works containing wood engravings
signed ' H. Vizetelly ' are nowadays sought after
by connoisseurs. Mr. Vizetelly's connection with
journalism dates from the foundation of the
Illustrated London News. The first ' idea ' of
that publication germinated in the brain of Mr.
Herbert Ingram, who thought of establishing a
kind of Illustrated Police Gazette. Mr. Vizetelly
prevailed upon him, however, to make the publica-
tion more comprehensive in its scope, wrote the
prospectus, and largely contributed towards launch-
ing the first number. This was the foundation
of illustrated journalism. Soon afterwards Mr.
Yizetelly, having somewhat abruptly severed his
connection with the Illustrated London Neivs, went
into publishing. He was the first to introduce
' Uncle Tom's Cabin ' and the poems of Edgar
Allan Poe to the English public. He also did a
great deal to popularize the immaculate Mr. Long-
fellow in England. The ' Evangeline,' illustrated
by Sir John Gilbert, was due mainly to his
endeavours ; also the ' Hyperion/ illustrated by
Birket Foster. For the latter he visited all the
localities mentioned in the work (accompanied by
lio
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL.
Foster), and sketches were made on the spot to
serve as illustrations. This ' Hyperion 7 is very
rare nowadays, and fetches a high price. About
the time of the Crimean War Mr. Vizetelly
started the Illustrated Times, and gathered round
him a number of clever writers then mostly
unknown to fame, but many of whom have since
made their way in the world Thackeray, the
Brothers Brough, the Brothers Mayhew, Sala,
Edmund Yates, Sutherland Edwards, Frederick
Greenwood, and many others. Among the artists
were John Gilbert, Birket Foster, Julian Portch,
and Gustave Dore (then first introduced to the
English public). Whilst starting and editing this
new publication, Mr. Vizetelly devoted considerable
time and energy to furthering the general interests
of his profession. He acted as Honorary Secretary
to the Association formed for the Repeal of the
Paper Duty, and in regard to the abolition of the
Newspaper Stamp he took decisive action by issu-
ing several numbers of the Illustrated Times with-
out the stamp. The Board of Revenue prosecuted
him, claiming a fine of several thousand pounds.
This was never enforced, however. The question
was taken up by public men, and soon afterwards
the Stamp impost was abolished. In 1865 he
became Paris correspondent of the Illustrated
London News went through the siege of Paris
and Commune for that journal organized a
service of sketches by balloon post, so that the
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 1 1 1
paper was able to supply a more complete pictorial '
record of the siege than appeared in any other
journal. He afterwards represented the Illus-
trated London News at Berlin and Vienna acted
as British Wine Juror at Vienna, 1873, and Paris,
1878 wrote a number of text-books upon
European wines, after visiting all the wine produc-
ing districts on the Continent, Madeira, Canary
Isles, etc. These books are standard works of
reference.
As an author, Mr. Vizetelly has also written on
Berlin and Paris. His ' Story of the Diamond
Necklace ' completely unravelled what was long
considered a historical puzzle supplementing and
correcting Carlyle's well-known essay in many
important particulars. He has also contributed
numerous articles to Household Words, under
Charles Dickens, and was on various occasions a
correspondent of the Times, Daily Neivs, and Pall
Mall Gazette. He started his present publishing
business in 1880, and thereby, as I shall show,
did much yeoman's service for first-class literature.
That, Right Hon. Sir, is the record of the man
whom the Vigilance Committee, trading on the
prudery of the English community, casts into
prison. His crime is that he has not presumed
the business of publishing to include the prero-
gatives of a censor morum ; that he has published
in the English language what nearly every educated
person reads in the French ; that, in a word, he
IT2
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL.
has introduced to the uninitiated the works of
Emile Zola and one or two writers of doubtful
decency. Even if we admit his error in this last
particular, do not his long services far outweigh his
indiscretions ? Has he not been a brave sergeant
in the army of English journalism ? But I decline
to admit his error. I affirm that Emile Zola was
bound to be printed, translated, read. Little as I
sympathize with his views of life, greatly as I
loathe his pictures of human vice and depravity, I
have learned much from him, and others may learn
much ; and .had I been unable to read French,
these bald translations would have been to me an
intellectual help and boon. I like to have the
Devil's case thoroughly stated, because I know it
refutes itself. As an artist, Zola is unjustifiable ;
as a moralist, he is answerable ; but as a free
man, a man of letters, he can decline to accept the
fiat of a criminal tribunal.
The details of an interview with Mr. Coote,
Secretary of the Vigilance Committee, compel
me to add a few words touching the conduct of
THE PERSON FOR THE PROSECUTION ;
and to begin with, I take leave to say that Mr.
Coote's assertions were simply infamous. l I think
it served Yizetelly right,' said this Secretary of
the Vigilance Committee ; ' look over his cata-
logue, and form your own opinion/ May I ask,
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 113
Sir, if you have looked over his catalogue ? J
have done so, and with the following result.
Besides the works of Zola, Flaubert and Daudet,
many of them admirable in every sense of the
word, Mr. vizetelly has issued to the English
public the works of Count Tolstoi and of Fedor
Dostoieffsky ; an admirably edited series of the
Old Dramatists ; Mr. Sala's ' America Revisited/
' Under the Sun/ ' Dutch Pictures/ and i Paris
Herself Again '; the immaculate M. Ohnet's
* Ironmaster '; Mr. Greenwood's l In Strange
Company'; M. CoppeVs ' Passer-by ' (Le Passant);
the stories of Gaboriau and Du Boisgobey ; a
whole library of brilliant social romances, in-
cluding tales by Cherbuliez, Theuriet, About,
Feval and Merimee ; and, to crown all, his (Mr.
Yizetelly's) own excellent works on ' The Diamond
Necklace ' and ' Wines of the World/ These,
among other publications equally worthy and in-
offensive, form the bulk of the catalogue for which
the Secretary of the Vigilance Committee would
keep an honourable man in prison. Does Mr.
Coote ever read anything outside the literature
of the < Lamplighter ' and the < Old Helmet'?
Does he see no difference between even ' La
Curee ' or ' Madame Bovary ' and the sealed-up
books sold sometimes in Holywell Street ? It
seems to me that it would be as rational to consult
the first area-haunting policeman on the ethical
quality of literature, as to accept the evidence of
8
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL.
a censor
who is either a mischief-maker or an
ignoramus.
It is no exaggeration to say that the whole
existence of the so-called Vigilance Committee is
an infamy, and that the treatment of Mr. Vizetelly
is merely a specimen of Dogberry's evidence and
Shallow's justice. The misfortune is that Mr.
Vizetelly, instead of taking his stand like a man on
his total work as publisher, pleaded in the first
instance l guilty/ Possibly he knew British judges
and British juries better than I do ; but the result
is lamentable, and I repeat my question, where
is the persecution to stop ? Does any sane man
imagine that it is really corrupt books that destroy
Society, and that any suppression of literature will
make Society any better ? No ; these books, where
they are corrupt, merely represent corruption
already existing are merely signs and symbols
of social disease. The argument that they bring
1 blushes to the cheek of a young person ' is irrele-
vant. They are not written for the young person ;
and if they are, the young person will get at
them, now and for ever, in spite of the policeman.
Criticise them, attack them, point out their defor-
mities and absurdities as much as you please,
and as much as I myself have done ; but do
not imagine that you will purify the air by
suppressing literature, or that you can make
people virtuous by penal clauses and Acts of
Parliament.
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 115
And the harmless Ohnet, and the stainless
Coppee, and the good Theuriet, and the great
Tolstoi, and the sublime Dostoieffsky, not to speak
of the full-blooded Old Dramatists and the genial
Mr. George Augutus Sala, are all practically con-
demned to Limbo in the lump, under the shadow
of Mr. Vizetelly's awful ' Catalogue '! This pre-
cious Dogberry of a Vigilance Committee is left
to straddle with his watchman's Lanthorn, and
shriek ' Deformed ! Deformed !' over the mutilated
remains of Art and Literature. To-morrow, per-
chance, he will toddle up to Burlington House,
and insist on either seizing or clothing all the
1 improper ' pictures of nude ladies, and we shall
soon have the President of the Royal Academy
committed to prison for daring to paint a Venus
without a bathing costume, or an Ariadne without
a petticoat.
For my own part, I hold the matter so serious
that I am appealing to you, on the highest grounds
of all, religious grounds, for Mr. Vizetelly's im-
mediate release. If there is any manhood among
English writers, they will see that the matter
is one involving their own liberties, now and in
the near future.^ If there is any consistency
* That there might be no doubt on this head, the Vigilance
Committee, in a letter published June 25, 1889, warned English
authors to 'look out,' and not to go too far, or they, too, might
get into trouble ! But there wasn't much danger not one con-
temporary English author except myself protested against the
persecution !
H6 ON DESCENDING INTO HELL.
among English publishers, they also will contend
for freedom and immunity from constabulary super-
vision. Special Providence, as embodied in the
form of an amateur moralist-detective, is on their
track. We shall see our beloved ' Ouida ' run in
to Bow Street, and ' Ouida's ' publishers whimper-
ing by her in the dock. Every publisher of the
atrocious works of Shakespeare will stand in the
pillory. As for Mr. Vizetelly, he may indeed have
cause to cry peccavi if neither authors nor pub-
lishers come to his aid. He is seventy years of
age, he is a litterateur as well as a publisher, and,
according to the latest accounts, he is suffering
greatly. If it were only for his introduction to
the public of one great and perhaps unequalled
book, ' Crime and Punishment,' I should regard
him, not as a criminal, but as a martyr and a
public benefactor. Here is a good chance, Right
Hon. Sir, to show that the mantle of Beaconsfield
has fallen on a Tory Home Secretary ! Benjamin
Disraeli might have had a thousands faults, but
he never forgot his literary inheritance, and in a
case like the present he would have defended the
freedom of letters against a whole army of canting
busybodies and prurient 'Vigilance Committee-men/
For all this civil interference with spiritual pre-
rogative, Right Hon. Sir, must be very distaste-
ful to the Church of which you are a distinguished
representative. In matters spiritual, which to a
great extent are matters literary, that Church has
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 117
always upheld her own tests as final, and often,
while she has burned a religious heretic, she has
afforded sanctuary to a carnal offender. She
trembled, it is true, before Galileo and other rec-
tangular dogmatists of scientific discovery, but she
never feared pornography, or thought that it could
overthrow the higher standards of human nature.
One of her most logical postulates, indeed, has
been that Man is evil by inheritance arid by pre-
disposition, and that only by Faith or Spiritual
Knowledge can he be saved. Hence her gentleness
to the literature of Heathendom, her complacency
in dealing with purely human Art and Letters.
While preserving the Christian documents she was
quite content to leave Humanity its Sappho, its
Lucretius, its Juvenal, its Catullus, even its
Aristophanes. For though she was persuaded to
make short work of schismatics, who after all have
little knowledge of life, she was ever kindly to the
poets, the most incontinent of whom knew life
thoroughly. She went with Dante into Hell, and
she ascended with Calderon up to Heaven ; but
loving also her cakes and ale, she preserved the
gaudriole for the amusement of her monks. She
has, in short, been a friend to belles lettres, even
the most pornographic. In these respects, as in
many others. I sympathize with her. Far less
human and sympathetic has been her gloomy half-
sister, Protestantism. If Protestantism had its
way we should have no books except One, which
n8
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL.
is excellent, no doubt, but not always amusing.
In a word, this is a quite tenable proposition : that
Literature has more to fear from the Church which
canonizes and exalts one Book, than from the Church
which asserts that Human Nature shall not be at
the mercy of any Book whatsoever.
The days are long past when even the Church,
Roman and Catholic, had any real cause to be
afraid of human flights of fancy, or any anxiety to
suppress them ; more than one of her monks has
chuckled over Pantagruel, and I know that certain
of her priests have followed with feverish anxiety
the temptations of a certain Abbe Mouret. Putting
certain little fanciful dogmas aside, the Roman
Church is far more tolerant to human necessities
and human weaknesses than any of her offshoots
nay, than even her grim Arch Enemy, the Church
of Science ; and than this last Church she is in
one respect infinitely wiser, that her last word is
one of pity and comfort for human backsliding.
The pity of Science is the pity of Despair ; the
pity of the Church is the pity of Faith and Hope,
and of Regeneration.
True, you say as of old, ' Unless a man believes
in my confession of faith, he shall surely perish -
but if he believes he shall be saved,' an assumption
which Scientists amuse themselves with, to their
own final consternation. For, translated into the
language of common-sense, your dogma means that
foulness, sin,-, physical disease, hereditary taint,
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. -119
have no power to touch the Soul that he who
believes in the Supreme Love and Pity shall,
despite them all, save his Soul alive ; whereas that
other Church of Science teaches what I contend
to be a foolish heresy, that the Soul can be saved
only by the Body in which it dwells, that by the
law of heredity the .Body may destroy and elimi-
nate even Man's immortal part.
As I write an illustration comes to my hand.
A certain Scandinavian writer, who is to M. Zola
what the dustman of a suburb is to the scavenger of
a city, has written a play called ' Gengangere '
that is, in French, ' Les Revenants,' and in English
' Ghosts.' To get his material he had literally,
like others before him, to enter Hell, nor do I
blame him, though I doubt his moral. Picturing
an individual whose nature is poisoned through and
through by hereditary taint, who is morally and
physically diseased because he inherits from an
unclean paternity, he leaves this individual in the
corruption of hopeless idiocy, gibbering at the
Sun. No one ray of Hope brightens the tableau,
but the cruel consuming Sun drinks up this wasted
life like a drop of dew. A solemn and an awful
truth, says Science. But apart from the question
(never yet fully reasoned out by physiologists) of
how far the spark of life eludes the taints cast
upon it, of how far, for example, even the loath-
some sores of syphilis may be crystallized after a
generation into cells of prismatic thought (as is
!20
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL.
possibly true in certain examples of meningitis),
the lesson we are taught in this doleful drama
leaves moral questions entirely within the domain
of physiology. Now, I, personally, refuse to exist
in that most melancholy domain ; and here, again,
human evidence is with me. One miserable infant,
almost a foetus in size and development, became the
Arouet whose voice rang round the world and
liberated Galas. The strumous Keats faced the
Sun, and cast it glaring on his canvas as ' Hype-
rion.' Unhealthy men, tainted men, weakly men,
have dominated the world of art and literature,
where Michael Angelos and Benvenuto Cellinis
have been the exceptions. I have known a man
reduced by the fault of his progenitors to a state
bordering on mental decrepitude, and yet that
man was sane and wise, a beautiful soul, happy,
and a peacemaker. I decline, then, to believe that
Original Sin and Hereditary Taint, though they
exist loosely in your dogma and tenaciously in that
of Science, can cast me down into nothingness. I
knoiv the Soul eludes the Body at every stage of
our development. I find every day that perfectly
balanced structure, the mens sana in corpora sano,
is utterly deaf to the music tainted and polluted
structures hear. A perfectly healthy man is fre-
quently a monster, generally a mere machine, and
not till that boasted body of his is twisted and
tortured, carbonadoed and shaken to pieces, does he
become spiritualized.
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 121
> Now, why should the Church, which goes as far
as this with me, and declines to accept any text
but that which is spiritual, fear
THE DEVIL'S EVIDENCE,
the argument for the Body, the special plea of
cheap Science ? If the Church does not fear it,
the new Inquisition does. A Vigilance Committee
casts Mr. Vizetelly, the publisher, into prison, for
simply permitting a scientific scavenger to produce
his frightful documents ; while a no less vigilant
Lord Chamberlain refuses under any circumstances
to let ' Gengangere ' be performed in English upon
the English stage. No ; these things must be
veiled, the argument on the other side must not
be stated, the descent into Hell must never be
alluded to, except by those who are supposed to
keep the Keys. Surely there is no truth which
Science or Art can bring to light, which Infalli-
bility should fear ? Surely Satan should be
permitted to argue out his case ? ' No,' say the
Vigilance Committee and the Lord Chamberlain,
1 no, a thousand times ; since sewerage is a Mystery,
and children and young persons might overhear
the argument and be contaminated that is to say,
converted/ A foolish fear ! a feeble superstition !
The argument will out somehow, in spite of all
Inquisitions. Human nature will not suffer its
own salvation or damnation to be discussed in
122
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL.
earner d. The matter must be fought in open
day.
Sometimes, Right Hon. Sir, your Church has
feared the truth, and on every occasion when she
has done so, the result to herself has been lament-
able. Yet it is to the Truth, the Eternal Verity,
that she makes her appeal, pledging herself to its
infallibility. Now, I could go through her dogmas
one by one, and show that they are constructed
impregnably on the instincts of human nature ;
only she herself, unfortunately, has misunderstood
them, and hence the hideous historical record
which constitutes the popular indictment against
her. Yet, amid all follies, all contradictions, all
cruelty, all schism, she has kept one particular
glory her patience with physical deterioration,
her Faith that no carnal sin or carnal knowledge
can really ivreck the Soul. She has often been
afraid of phantoms of her own conjuring, never of
flesh and blood ; l ideas ' have terrified her, but
men and women have always been her sympathetic
study.
In that masterpiece of English eloquence, the
' Areopagitica/ the trumpet note of which is now
faintly heard in literature, our great Epic Poet
has marshalled every argument, produced every
proof, in favour of the Liberty of Unlicensed
Printing. Nobler words never flowed from the
lips of man. Wise on this as on all other vital
questions, Milton, a Greek god in the gray robes
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 123
of a Puritan, through which his roseate nakedness
' O
shone in celestial beauty, spoke more than one
word for the poor Devil. He, at least, knew that
there is weakness in Humanity as well as strength,
and that the primitive instincts are perennial ; for
had he not painted Eden on Adam's marriage day,
when
' To the nuptial bower
He led her blushing like the morn,'
and had he not pictured to us the amatory exploits
of Zephyr and other kindred spirits ? True, he
appears to reserve to his friends of the Parliament
the right of destroying such books as are wholly
prejudicial to decency and harmful to the State ;
' and yet, on the other hand,' he adds, i as good
almost kill a good man as kill a good book : who
kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image,
but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself,
kills the image of God as it were in the eye.'
Even as the holy Chrysostom nightly studied
Aristophanes, so did the blameless Milton nourish
his mind on the still more scurrilous pages of our
own comic dramatists. ' I cannot/ he contends,
' praise a fugitive or cloistered virtue ; assuredly we
bring not innocence into the world, but impurity
much rather : that which purifies us is trial, and
trial is by what is contrary.' ' Banish all objects
of lust, shut up all youth into the severest discipline,
that can be exercised in any hermitage, ye cannot
make them chaste that came not thither so/
i2 4 ON DESCENDING INTO HELL.
Who is to decide for us what is good, if our own
nature and inspiration are powerless to help us ?
Is it to be the Pope of Rome, or any deputy
Cardinal, or any Scottish Elder of the Kirk, or
some member of a newly-created City Council, or,
finally, Mr. Justice Shallow of the law courts ?
There are zealots who would burn the works of
Shakespeare, as there were zealots who cursed and
anathematized the works of Burns. To a certain
order of intelligence, all literature is profane,
dangerous, inexpedient. Large portions of the
community believe any stage play whatsoever is
an abomination ; large portions warn us that the
reading of any work of fiction or fairy tale is sinful
and pernicious. Whither then might we turn for
guidance, if not to the Supreme Church which,
after burning her own effete Index, may affirm the
perfect
LAWFULNESS OF ALL HUMAN EVIDENCE,
knowing that she can, by the strength of her
adamantine logic, refute every carnal lie ?
I can assure you, Right Hon. Sir, that it is in
no spirit of levity that I, who have little love for
Roman Catholicism, suggest a way in which the
Church Infallible may yet be saved. That way is, as
I have suggested, to perform a latter-day miracle,
and cast in her lot with the Church of Free
Thought and Free Speech. For I regard this
proposed Suppression of Literature as an encroach-
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 125
ment of Puritanism (which has always hated
literature) on the one hand, and of Pragmatic
Science upon the other. Puritanism affirms with
gloomy pertinacity that we are lost if we are not
strictly moral, i.e., moral from the Puritan point of
view ; Science avers with vehemence that its raw
and half-verified discoveries are to regulate the
conduct of our lives, and promises, if things are
so ordered, that Humanity will in due course, after
an era or two, arrive at the perfectly-balanced
Mind in the perfectly-balanced Body a Teutonic
condition to be found even now in the Fatherland !
Neither Puritanism nor Science, however, affect
the Church's prerogative by one hair. The one
takes too much care of our conduct, the pther is
too anxious about our health. The Church alone,
at this supreme crisis, when an innocent man is
cast into prison, when the suppression of literature
is threatened, and when neither Puritan nor
Scientist cares to utter one word of public pro-
testation the Church alone, I say, can command
the situation, and deny the right of synods or
vestries to silence any voices, even those from Hell.
Her spiritual terminology is, after all, far nearer
to the pantheism of Servetus, than to the dismal
anthropomorphism of John Calvin. ' I have no
doubt, 7 said the Spaniard, ' that this bench, this
table, and all you can point to around us is of the
substance of God ;' adding, when it was objected
that on his showing the Devil must be of God's
126 ON DESCENDING INTO HELL.
substance too, ' I do not doubt it ; all things
whatever are part of God, and Nature is His
substantial manifestation.' For which and other
pestilent heresies, Servetus, to the huge joy of
John Calvin, was burned alive, roasting first for
two hours in the flames of a slow fire, and begging
piteously that they would put on more wood, or
do something to end his torture.
Now, all such cruelties and abominations,
together with all the schisms and heresies of the
Churches, have arisen (1) from the human anxiety
to be too rectangular, too scientific, and (2) from
the disposition of novices in discovery to force
their opinions upon their neighbours. Just as
little as Metaphysics could tell the Church of the
real nature of God, while tempting its hearers to
tear the human images of God asunder, can
Physical Science tell us of the real nature and
destiny of Man. Humanity, at the present issue,
pines to free itself from all arbitrary assumptions ;
it yearns for the liberty to inquire, in its own way ;
and it is out of lay books, to no little extent, that
its knowledge must be derived. Das melir Licht
hereinkomme ! it cries with Goethe, the Pagan.
Just as certainly as the light which leads astray
may (as Burns protested) be ' light from Heaven/
so may the light which guides and saves be light
from Hell. To drape one half of the human figure
is not to prove the whole structure to be celestial ;
to ignore the existence of Evil is not to ensure the
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 127
triumph of Good. The literature of Hell is God's
literature too.
How well has suppression worked in other
countries ? Take Italy, for example, a country of
which both Providence and Priesthood have taken
such particular care ; the chosen home of the Index
and the winking Virgin ; the region of Pompeii
and of oggetti osceni, into which neither women nor
children are suffered to enter. There, obscene
things are carefully hidden, literature is wistfully
burked with such stupendous good to the com-
munity that dirt and disease and libertinage flourish
up to the very gates of the Vatican. Then take
France, with which Providence has always been
in more or less of a temper, where literary freedom
has run to licence, and where Art is synonymous
with independence, not to say looseness, of morality.
In France, the domestic affections flourish to
wonderment, and the idea of family relationship
is strangely sacred ; insomuch that even in polluted
Paris, on the stage, the one sentiment which
' brings down the house ' is the sentiment of
parental or filial love. Then take Germany,
strangled by the governmental Providence, and
reaching to its apex of licensed infamy in Berlin :
a free nation without a free thought, smothered
by its own strength of Nationality, straddled over
by a Martinet of pipes and beer ; the Fatherland
which every German adores, and escapes from at
the first opportunity. Then take England, still
128
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL.
free, in spite of the god Jingo ; still merry, in spite
of the Rev. Mr. Grundy and his wife ; yet the
chosen home of the ' young person/ the land where
literature is under the protecting wing of Mr.
Mudie, and where the moribund drama gasps and
struggles Desdemona-like under the smothering
pillow of the blindly jealous Lord Chamberlain.
It is with England, of course, that the present
inquiry is most concerned. With a literature un-
equalled for breadth and power, with Shakespeare
throned and crowned, and Milton uttering the
trumpet notes of freedom, England still languishes
without ideals or ideas. She has had her Jonathan
Swift and her Henry Fielding, but she has never
had her Rousseau never possessed one man since
Milton to stand fearlessly between the two opposing
forces of Superstition and Freedom, and to utter
the gospel of reconciliation ; to denounce the
Priestcraft of Religion with one breath, and the
Priestcraft of Science with the next ; to go down
into Hell's most sulphurous depths, and to learn
that the only light even there is Light reflected
from Heaven.
For nothing in Roman Catholicism is so bayond
contention as the dogma that Hell is a belief which
it holds in common with all creeds called Christian.
It remained for a great thinker, Emmanuel
Swedenborg, to establish the fact that Hell is not
merely a locality, but also an omnipresent ' con-
dition/ I know scarcely one great English classic,
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 129
from ' Othello ' to l Tom Jones/ from ' Tom Jones '
to Burns' l Address to the Deil/ which has not
illustrated the theory that
HELL EXISTS,
and that the Devil, who is often very humorous
and entertaining, should have a hearing. Since
we have adopted Satan's original suggestion, and
eaten of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and
Evil, I do not think we can alter our food now,
and get back to the ambrosia of Eden. The fact
that, ashamed of our nakedness, we have made
ourselves an apron, does not justify us in covering
all our flesh with old-fashioned steel armour. The
knowledge we have secured, at the cost of our
innocence, is not to be ignored. The freedom we
have gained, at the price of our moral peace, is not
to be abandoned. In other words, we cannot save
ourselves now by ignorance, nor can we be saved
by providential suppression. Every man who
would be strong for the world's fight must visit
Hell, and become acquainted with its literature ;
when he is certain to discover, if my own experi-
ence is any guide, that the angels there are real,
though fallen.
Even this same Zola is a prophet after your own
liking, if you will only bear with his banalities.
He prophesies Death and Doom, if purity and
self-sacrifice do not arise again to save the world.
His text is older even than your Church ' the
9
130
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL.
wages of Sin is Death.' He takes us from death-
bed to death-bed : some vile and loathsome, like
that of poor Nana, some divinely beautiful, like
that of little Jeanne. There is a saint and a
martyr even in that hotbed of pornography, ' Pot
Bouille ' ; and when I think of the poor blind
bourgeois father, copying folios for a few pence
that his wife and daughter may wear finery, and
then dying broken-hearted when he finds all his
life is founded on corruption, I weep at another
Crucifixion. To state this is merely to contend
that fine things may be found even in an Inferno :
that Proserpine's flowers did not all fall on the
ground from Dis's waggon, but that some were
borne with her right down into Hades. Surely
Zola should content those who believe in corruption
and deterioration. The Gospel according to the
Sewers is your Gospel of Original Sin. The
scientific dogma of hereditary taint is your dogma
of the Fall. True, in many particulars, your creed
is the nobler, and will last the longer. You tell
us that we may be saved by Faith, redeemed by
obedience to the primal Law, and so, indeed, we
may. But we shall never be redeemed by closing
up all books, by pretending (in the face of our
knowledge to the contrary) that there is no such
thing as Sin at all.
The point for which I have always contended
is that both cynical pessimism and coarse realism
are alike infinitely absurd. A thoroughly unclean
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 131
book is almost invariably a thoroughly foolish one.
Zola, for example, is, at his coarsest, merely a
subject for laughter ; the dirt sticks to him who
writes, not to him who reads, and makes the writer
look ridiculous. The sense of the absurd, in fact,
is the granum salts which keeps literature whole-
some. Even Justine becomes innocuous, even
Petronius becomes harmless, when so disinfected.
Yet when I look at Rabelais in his easy chair,
I need no grain of salt, for I am thinking only of
the broad humanity of the man. Even Sterne's
dirty snigger is forgotten in his quaint humanities.
Nihil kumani a me alienum puto ; nothing in
literary humanities injures me one hair. My eyes
are yonder on Mount Pisgah, and though I yearn
for the region of stainless snow, I know my way
lies through this mud.
In all these respects, and in others, I follow the
Roman Catholic Church. There is only one
difference between us, that while she fears one
form of Rationalism, that which deals with certain
dogmas and symbols for which she has an insane
though natural affection, I, adding eclecticism to
Catholicism, fear no doctrine, no book, and no man.
I shall say my say for or against the Devil, as any
free man has a right to do, but I shall never
contend that he has no existence.
In this our England, we have numerous priest-
hoods or deputy Providences, without counting the
sad and cloistered priesthood of old Rome. We
9 2
I 3 2
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL.
have, for example, the priesthoods of Episcopacy,
of Dissent, of Good Society, of Art and Letters
(or Dilettantism), of cheap Science, and, most
potent, yet least responsible of all, the Priesthood
of the Press, or Journalism. Now, there is not
one of all these bodies which is not thoroughly con-
vinced that its own view of the Universe is right,
which does not, when occasion offers, persecute and
torture unbelievers, which would not, if suffered to
do so, summon the executioner or the constable ;
and if these same priesthoods were to be called
together in full synod, and asked to decide the fate
of Literature, the general verdict would possibly
be one of Strangulation or Castration. The
clergy of all denominations hate each other, the
Good Society people suppress each other, the
Dilettantes detest all curtain-lifters who are not
Dilettantes, and the Journalists are the terror and
the scourge of every original thinker under the
sun. All, however, are agreed on one point that,
in this most respectable country, there must be no
descending into Hell, that Literature especially
must be kept clean and wholesome, fit for family
perusal. Hence we have been blest for many
years with an expurgated literature, in the category
of which, I rejoice to say, may be found such
books as bring Heaven down to Earth and glorify
human nature. Let it be granted, indeed, that a
book founded on heavenly intuitions, such a book
as the Poems of Tennyson, as the 'Cloister and the
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 133
Hearth ' of Charles Reade, as the ' Esmond ' of
Thackeray, as the ' David Copperfield' of Dickens,
as the ' Westward Ho !' of Kingsley, as the ' Lorna
Doone ' of Blackmore, as the ' Woodlanders ' of
Thomas Hardy, as the ' Greene Feme Farm ' of
Richard Jefferies, as the ' Angel in the House ' of
Coventry Patmore such a book, with the sun-
shine and fresh air upon its leaves is worth a
thousand times all the Devil's documents put_
together. We thank God for it, and it has God's
blessing. But there are moments when even the
best of us crave more crave the bitterness of
knowledge, the sight of the charnel-house, the
glimmer of the deep, dim lights of Hell. For, as
I have said, Hell is, and we must know it, and to
know it is, in the end, to abominate and to avoid
it. We are not celestial beings yet. We are
earthly and human enough to fancy that the diet
of celestial beings is very often insipid. We want
the records of human sin and pain. We crave for
the elemental passions. We tire even of plum-
pudding, and thirst to eat husks with the swine.
We miss the tasty leaven, in super-celestial food.
And so, when we are sick of a surfeit of holiness,
we turn to Farquhar for gay rascality, to Swift for
brute-banality, to Byron for lightsome devilry, to
Goethe for intellectual concupiscence, to Heine for
the persiflage which scorns all sanctities and laughs
at all the gods, and to Zola for gruesome testimony
against sunlight and human nature. When this is
134
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL.
done, after we have seen the Satyr romp and
heard the hiccup of Silenus, after we have seen
Rabelais charging the monks on his ass Panurge,
and left Whitman loafing naked on the sea-shore,
do we turn again with less appetite, with less
eager insight, towards the shining documents of
Heaven ?
Of all the great writers who have been canonized
by Humanity, there is scarcely one who, under the
proposed Inquisition of Messrs. Shallow and
Dogberry, would not have been ' run in/ pilloried,
fined, or imprisoned. The author of ' Pericles '
would do his six months as a first-class misde-
meanant, in company with the author of ' CEdipus '
and other foreigners of reputation. Sappho, for
one little set of verses, would be tied to the cart's-
tail, in company with Nanon and Mrs. Behn. In
one long chain, the dramatists of the Elizabethan
age would go to the moral galleys, followed by the
dirtier dramatists of the Restoration. Fielding and
Smollett would find no mercy, Richardson himself
would only escape with a warning not to offend
any more. To come down to contemporaries, I
think Mr. Browning might be adjudged an offender
against the law of modest reticence, and Mr.
George Meredith a revolutionary in the region of
sensuous passion. Not all his odes to infancy, not
all his apotheosis of the coral and the lollipop,
would save Mr. Swinburne. But the authors of
the 'Heir of Kedclyffe'and'A Knight Errant 'would
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 135
rise up to the stainless shrines of literature, and
Mr. Slippery Sweetsong might become the laureate
of the new age of Moral Drapery and Popular
Mauvaise Honte. How good, then, would
Humanity become, bereft of Shakespeare's feudal
glory, denied even a glimpse of frisky blue
stockings under the ballet - skirts of Ouida !
Morality would be saved, possibly. All would be
innocence, a moral constabulary, and good society.
We should have choked up with tracts and pretty
poems and proper novelettes the mouth of a sleep-
ing Volcano ; but when ^Etna, or Sheol, or Hell, had
its periodical eruption, what would happen then f
I shall not attempt in the space of a brief letter
to penetrate into the philosophy of this great
question ; but it will occur to you that Milton's
famous protest against the suppression of books
was echoed indirectly, centuries later, by Mill's
notable plea for Liberty, in which it was contended
(1) that the opinion we wish to suppress may be
true; (2) that it may, at any rate, contain a
portion of truth; (3) that vigorous argument
concerning opinions really and wholly true is the
only way of saving these opinions from becoming
conventional and prejudicial to intellectual activity ;
and (4) that without such argument, even good
moral doctrine would cease to have any vital effect
on character or conduct. I rather fear, remember-
ing a certain estrangement which resulted from a
quasi-Rabelaisian joke of Carlyle at Mill's expense,
136 ON DESCENDING INTO HELL.
that the author of the ' Essay on Liberty ' would
have drawn the line of indulgence at naughty
books just as Locke did, much earlier. But
these are brave words of Locke : ' It is only light
and evidence that can work a change in men's
opinions, and light cannot proceed from corporal
sufferings or any outward penalties ; ' furthermore,
' the power of the civil magistrate consists only in
outward force, while true and saving religion
consists in the inward persuasion of the mind,
without which nothing can be acceptable to God/
Mill's main contention is that it is well or ill with
men just in proportion as they respect truth. The
main contention of suppressionist philosophers is
that if the majority can crush out vice by law, it
is vicious not to do it, even if a little truth has to
be sacrificed too. But how shall we decide what
is vicious ? Shall not the history of persecution
warn us to be careful how we judge ? And in so
far as books are concerned, is not the record of
every generation filled with the names of books
labelled vicious by the contemporary majority, and
afterwards pronounced soul-helping by the verdict
of posterity ? The suppressed books form in
themselves a Bible of Humanity. If it were only
for the sake of one or two little chapters, say the.
Epistle of Shelley to the Muggletonians or the
Song of Songs (not of Solomon, but) of Heine, I
should regard that BIBLE of HETERODOXY with
devout affection.
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 137
Personally, I claim the right of free deliverance,
free speech, free thought, and what I claim for
myself I claim for every human being. I claim
the right to attack and to defend. I claim the
right to justify the Devil, if I want to. I can be
suppressed by wiser argument, by deeper insight,
by greater knowledge, but not by the magistrate,
civil or literary. I would stand even by Judas
Iscariot in the dock, if his Judge denied him a free
hearing, a fair trial. The Truth, if she is great as
we assume her to be, must prevail. The evidence
of the Devil is necessary to secure the triumph of
God; if it were otherwise, the Devil, not his Judge,
would be Omnipotent. And the evidence which
proves vice and proves virtue must be from within,
from the Spirit which you cannot cast into prison,
but which chooses not unfrequently to chain and
shackle itself. Meantime, it is Mr. Coote and the
Vigilance Committee, not Mr. Vizetelly, who lie
in ignoble chains. We want more light, not more
Darkness ; more knowledge, not more ignorance ;
not more government, but more freedom of speech
more production of documents, more verifica-
tion. Let your Church, Right Hon. Sir, turn
round upon herself and say this, and we shall
witness the last miraculous conversion. Help her
to say it. Justify literature, justify free thought,
by releasing Mr. Vizetelly from a bondage which
its an insult to literature. You have only to lift
your hand. You have only to say, ' God is, and
138 ON DESCENDING INTO HELL.
He fears nothing, good or evil, that He has created.'
This would be the last and crowning proof of one
man's wisdom; of the Church's infallibility, which
is insight ; of her function, which is the reconcilia-
tion and interpenetration of good and evil ; and of
her prerogative, which is the right of Spiritual
Judgment independent of the dim and doubtful
lights of the Civil Law. The police magistrate
cannot save us from Evil, which is in ourselves,
but, even now, Religion can.
In this country, I believe, only two classes are
specially pornographic : those who never read at
all, because they cannot or will not, and those who
are sufficiently wealthy to buy and read editions de
luxe. Mr. Vizetelly's publications cannot affect the
former classes, and their existence is a matter of
indifference to the latter, who finger their Casanova
at leisure, and pay readily for costly works like
Burton's translation of the Arabian Nights. The
point of the persecution, therefore, appears to be
that Mr.Yizetelly's books are sufficiently attractive
and cheap to reach those classes who are porno-
graphic in neither their habits nor their tastes
young clerks, frisky milliners, et hoc genus omne.
Now, these people are precisely those who are
robust and healthy-minded enough, familiar with
the world enough, to discriminate for themselves.
Whatever they choose to read will make them
neither better nor worse. The milliner will frisk
without the aid of a Zola, and the young clerk will
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 139
follow the milliner, even within the protective shadow
of a Young Men's Christian Association. Wholesale
corruption never yet came from corrupt literature ;
which is the effect, not the cause, of social libertin-
age. Do we find morality so plentiful amongst
the godly farmers and drovers of Annandale, or
among the ' unco' gude ' of Ayrshire or Dumfries-
shire thumbers of the Bible, sheep of the Kirk ?
Stands Scotland anywhere but where it did, though
it has not yet acquired an aesthetic taste for the
Abominable, but merely realizes occasionally the
primitive instincts of La Terre ? Dwells perfect
purity in Brittany and in Normandy, despite the
fact that Zola there is an unknown quantity, and
Paris itself a thing of dream ? Bestialism, animal-
ism, sensualism, realism, call it by what name you
will, is antecedent to and triumphant over all
books whatsoever. Books may reflect it, that is
all ; and I fail to see why they should not, since it
exists. I love my Burns and like my Byron,
though neither was a virtuous or even a i decent '
person. My Juvenal, my Lucretius, my Catullus,
and even my porcus porcorum Petronius, are well
read. My 'Decameron/ with all its incidence of
arnativeness, is a breeding nest of poets. Age
cannot wither, nor custom stale, La Fontaine's
infinite variety. But I take such books as these
as I take all such mental food, cum c/rano salis, a
pinch of which keeps each from corruption. Even
the fly-blown Gautier looks well, cold and inedible,
140 ON DESCENDING INTO HELL.
on a sideboard, garnished with Style's fresh parsley.
But I have never found that what my teeth nibble
at has any power to pollute my immortal part. I
must stand on the earth, with Montaigne and
Rabelais, but does that prevent me from flying
heavenward with Jean Paul, or walking the moun-
tain tops with the Shepherd of Rydal ? Inspec-
tion of the dung-heaps and slaughter-houses with
Jonathan Swift and Zola only makes me more
anxious to get away, with Rousseau, to the peace-
ful height where the Savoyard Vicar prays ! By
Evil only shall ye distinguish Good, says the
Master ; yea, and by the husks shall ye know the
grain.
The man who says that a Book has power to
pollute his Soul ranks his Soul below a Book. I
rank mine infinitely higher.
ROBERT BUCHANAN.
NOTE. Since the above letter was written I
have heard that Messrs. Vizetelly have ' sup-
pressed' their translation of Murger's ' Vie de
Boheme,' a book as good and wholesome, to my
mind, as life itself; and that Messrs. Chatto and
Windus have burned their ' stocks' of Rabelais
and Boccaccio. O tempora ! O mores ! O scedum
insipiens et inficetum ! What next ? and next ?
and next ? O yes, the seizure of the pictures
painted to illustrate the merry Vicar of Meudon,
and the unfettered circulation, in every journal,
ON DESCENDING INTO HELL. 141
of the last dirty details of the Divorce Court.
And simultaneously comes the legislation which
would confine the ragged street-child to the
slums, and denies it one glimpse of happiness in
the wicked Theatre ! Only those who really know
the facts, who have been familiar with the blessing
a single Drury Lane Pantomime used to bring
to a thousand homes, can understand the cruelty
and futility of this last example of providential
legislation.
R B.
THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC.
THE MODEEN YOUNG MAN AS
CRITIC.
FRANKLY, I do not know what the Modern
Young Man is coming to ! The young man of
my own early experience was feather-headed, but
earnest ; impulsive and uninstructed, but sym-
pathetic and occasionally studious ; though his
faults were many, lack of conviction was certainly
not one of them. He dreamed wildly of fame, of
fair women, of beautiful books ; and when he read
the Masters, he despaired. A great thought, even
a fine phrase, stirred him like a trumpet. For him,
in his calm and waking moments, female purity
was still a sacred certainty, and female shame
and suffering were less a proof of woman's baseness
and un worthiness than one of man's deterioration.
He lifted his hat to the Magdalen, in life and in
literature. The human form, even when wrapt in
the robes of the street-walker, was still sacred to
him; and he would as soon have thought of laying
sacrilegious hands upon it as of vivisecting his own
mother. In Bohemia he had heard the bird-like
10
146 THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC.
cry of Mimi ; in the forest of Arden he had
roamed with Rosalind. For him, in the light-
heartedness of his youth, the world was an en-
chanted dwelling-place. The gods remained, with
God above them. The Heaven of his literary
infancy lay around him. Out in the darkened
streets he met the sunny smile of Dickens, and
down among the English lanes he listened to the
nightingales of Keats and Tennyson. But now,
with the passing of one brief generation, the world
has changed ; the youth who was a poet and a
dreamer has departed, and the modern young man
has arisen to take his place. A saturnine young
man, a young man who has never dreamed a dream
or been a child, a young man whose days have been
shadowed by the upas-tree of modern pessimism,
and who is born to the heritage of flash cynicism
and cheap science, of literature which is less litera-
ture than criticism run to seed. Though varied in
the genus, he is. invariable in the type, which
includes the whole range of modern character,
from the young' man of culture expressed in the
elegant humanities of Mr. Henry James and Mr.
Marion Crawford, down to the bank-holiday young
man of no culture, of whom the handiest example
is (as we shall see) a certain egregious Mr. George
Moo^e. The modern young man, whether with or
without education, has no religion and no enthu-
siasm. Nourished in the new creed ' of Realism
and ' Art for Art/ he is ready, with De Goiicourt
THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC. 147
and Zola, to. ' throw a woman on the dissecting-
table,' and cut the beautiful dead form to pieces,
and content, with Paul Bourget (ridiculus mus of a
social mud-heap in parturition), to take Love ' as a
subject/ and call it a cruel enigma. Even the
insufferable Gautier was superior to all this ; he
was not too clever to live, not over-full of insight
to write. But the modern young man is the very
paradox of prescience and nescience, of instruction
and incapacity. He writes books which are dead
books from the birth ; he formulates criticisms,
which are laborious self-dissections, indecent ex-
posures of the infinitely trivial ; he paints, he
composes, he toils and moils, and all to -no avail.
For the faith which is life, and the life which is
reverence and enthusiasm, have been denied to
him. The sun has gone out above him, and the
earth is arid dust beneath him. He has scarcely
heard of Bohemia, he is utterly incredulous of
Arden, and he is aware with all his eyes, not of
Mimi or of Rosalind, but of Sidonie Risler and
Emma Bovary. He has looked down Vesuvius,
out of his very cradle. In Boston he has measured
Shakespeare and Dickens, and found the giants
wanting ; in France he has talked the argot of
L'Assommoir over the grave of Hugo ; even in
free Scandinavia he has discovered a Zola with a
stuttering style and two wooden legs, and made
a fetish of Ibsen ; while here in England he
threatens Turner the painter, and has practically
102
148 THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC.
(as he thinks) demolished the gospel of poetical
sentiment. And yet, curiously enough, he has
done nothing, he has given us nothing ; for he is
nothing. He is appearing before us, however, in
so many forms of pertinacious triviality, that it
behoves us to take a passing glance at him, and
to inquire, however briefly, into the phenomenon
of his existence. To study that phenomenon com-
pletely would far transcend the limits of a brief
article ; so I must confine myself at present to the
consideration of the young man in one capacity
only, that of Critic, though he is nothing indeed if
not critical, as we shall see. From the day when
Goethe sent forth his ' plague of microscopes ' to
the day when Matthew Arnold defined poetry
itself as a l criticism of life' (committing poetical
suicide in that preposterous definition), everybody
has been critical, and of course our young man is
no exception to the rule. Of the Modern Young-
Man as Critic, then, I propose to furnish some few
easily selected illustrations, subdividing my types
as follows : (1) The Young Man who is Superfine;
(2) the Detrimental Young Man ; (3) the Olfac-
tory Young Man ; (4) the Young Man in a Cheap
Literary Suit ; and (5) the Bank-Holiday Young
Man the last pretty much the same as discovered
in real life and classified by Mr. Gilbert. All
these young men have drifted into literature, and,
though there is an immeasurable distance between
the distinction and culture of type number one and
THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC. 149
the unkempt barbarity of type number five, they
have all certain characteristics in common an
easy air of omniscience in dealing with the great
problems of Life and Thought, an assumption of
complete familiarity with the ' facts ' of existence
(they are all, in a word, wonderfully ' knowing'),
an open or secret disrespect for average ideals, a
constitutional hatred of ' conventional morality,'
an equally constitutional hatred of ' imagination,'
and, above all, a general air of never having been
really young, of never having loved or worshipped,
or been mastered by, anything or anybody, on the
earth or above it.
Taking the types in their intellectual and natural
order, for I propose to work down the scale from
the highest note to the lowest, I_can jBnd no better
example of the Superfine Young Man than Mr.
Henry James, well Tmown as the author of several
minor novels and numerous minor criticisms.
Highly finished, perfectly machined, icily regular,
thoroughly representative, Mr. James is the edu-
cated young or youngish American whom we have
all met in society ; the well-dressed person who
knows everybody, who has read everything, who
has been everywhere, who is nebulously conscious
of every astral and mundane influence, but who, as
a matter of fact, is most at home on the Boule-
vards, and whose religion includes as its chief
article the well-known humorous formula that
good Americans, when they die, go to Paris. No
150 THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC.
one can dispute Mr. James's cleverness ; he is very
clever. He is, moreover, well-spoken, agreeable,
good-tempered, tolerant. He can even, upon occa-
sion, affect and seem to feel enthusiasm can talk
of Tourgenieff as ' lovable,' of Daudet as ' adorable/
For the first quarter of an hour of our conversa-
tion with him we are largely impressed with his
variety, his catholicity; after that comes a certain
indescribable sense of vagueness, of superficiality,
of indifferentism ; finally, if we must give the thing
a name, a forlorn feeling of vacuity, of silliness.
With a sigh we discover it ; this young man, with
all his information, with all his variety and catho-
licity, with all his wonderful knowledge of things
caviare to the general, IB,- au fond, a fatuous young
man. Startled at first by our discovery, we turn
away from him ; then, returning to him, under dis-
hallucination, we perceive that he does not really
know so much, even superficially, as we imagined ;
that his easy air of omniscience is a mere cloak to
cover complete intellectual indetermination. For
him and his, great literature has really no exist-
ence. He is secretly indifferent about all the gods,
dead and living. He takes us into his confidence,
welcomes us into his study, and we find that the
faces on the walls are those, not of a Pantheon, but
of the comic newspaper and the circulating library.
He appears to recognise the modern Sibyl in
George Eliot ; and why, indeed, should he not take
that triumphant Talent seriously, when the inspira-
THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC. 151
tion of his childhood was the picture-gallery in
Punch, when he sees a profound social satirist in
Mr. du Maurier, and when he can fall prone before
the masterpieces of that hard-bound genius in posse,
Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson ? These, then, are
the glorious discoveries of the young man's omni-
science -George Eliot, Alphonse Daudet, Flaubert,
Du Maurier, Mr. Punch, and the author of ' Trea-
sure Island.' With these, one is bound to say, he
is, like all well-bred Americans, thoroughly at home.
He says charming things concerning them. He
finds more than one of them (adopting that hideous
French phrase) * adorable.' He becomes the little
prophet of the little masters, and he publishes a
little book^ about them a book full of the agree-
able art of conversation, such as we listen to in a
hundred drawing-rooms. Nor is it at all out of
keeping with this elegant young man's character
that his talk about his literary ideals is, when it
is most admiring, most patronizing. He keeps in
reserve a latent scepticism even concerning the dii
minores of his microscopic religion ; nay, he sug-
gests to us that his remarks concerning them are
merely lightly thrown-out illustrations of his own
superabundant sympathy that, if you really put
him to it, he might read Shakespeare with appre-
ciation, and could share the boy's enthusiasm about
Byron.
Very characteristic of Mr. James is his neat
* ' Partial Portraits,' by Henry James.
152 THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC.
little paper on Alphonse Daudet a quite mar-
vellous example of ' how not to commit one's self in
criticism/ how to burn incense with one hand and
snap the fingers of the other. He begins by
saying that ' a new novel by this admirable genius
is to my mind the most delightful literary event
that can occur just now ;' he ends by ' retracting
some of the admiration ' he has ' expressed for him/
and saying that he has ' no high imagination, and,
as a consequence, no ideas ;' and finally, as an
afterthought, to conciliate his Famulus Mr. Facing-
both-ways, he cries, ' And then he is so free !' and
6 The sight of such freedom is delightful.' This
inconsistency, it will be admitted, is rather hard on
an author of whom Mr. James also remarks : ' If
we were talking French, nothing would be simpler
than to say that Alphonse Daudet is adorable,
and have done with it.' The ' admirable genius/
a book from whose pen is l the most delightful
literary event that can occur/ who is so ' free/ and
whose delight and freedom consists in ' having no
imagination, no ideas/ must be a little puzzled by
such treatment ; but, after all, it is only the
superfine young man's way of telling us that he is
really so omniscient as to have no clear opinion at
all on that or any subject. In one of the best
things in the book, a conversation about * Daniel
Deronda/ in which the interlocutors are a literary
gentleman and two talkative ladies, he is seen at
his best or worst now panting with admiration
THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC. 153
for George Eliot's genius, again inferring that she
had no genius at all, trimming, finessing, explaining,
blaming, excusing, till the poor puzzled reader ex-
claims in despair, ' Oh this Superfine Young Man !
What does he mean ? What does he feel ? Why
does he not speak out his mind, and have done
with it?' This, however, is not Mr. James's
method. His desire is to convince us at any
expense that he sees every side of a question, is
familiar with every nuance of a subject ; and in
the eagerness of this desire he is paralyzed out of
all conviction. His perceptive faculties are good
enough, naturally ; his temper is highly agreeable
and his style affable in the extreme ; but his
courage is as non-existent as his opinions. So
clever yet so half-hearted a gentleman never yet
committed himself to criticism. Not less amazing
than the fact that he should consider a drawing-
room discussion on ' Daniel Deronda ' really worth
recording, is the fact that he should labour under
the impression that he has really pronounced any
dictum on any subject. One can understand the
critics who have opinions, wise or unwise. One
can follow with amusement the subacid sneers of
Hazlitt, the florid flourishes of Macaulay, the
sledge-hammer blows of Carlyle, the screaming
invective of Mr. Ruskin, because all these writers
have something to say and contrive to say it ; but
when we enter the salon and encounter the super-
fine young man, who is neither bitter, nor florid,
154 THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC.
nor brutal, nor shrewish, but is in all respects
perfectly well-behaved, we are not amused or
edified we are bored. It matters little whether
he is pattering to us about George Eliot, or about
' his friend ' Tourgenieff, or about Alphonse
Daudet, or about the caricatures in Punch, or
about the Art of Fiction the effect is invariably
the same. No sooner is one opinion advanced
than it is qualified with another ; scarcely is one
view taken when another is substituted ; an
endless succession of personal pronouns ' /
think,' 1 1 will admit,' ' /consider,' ' /suspect,' etc.,
covers a total absence of critical personality. The
young man's very religion is ' qualified.' His mind
is bewildered by its dreadful catholicity. He has
not a spark of hate in him, because (with all his
admirations and l adorations ') he has not a spark
of love. As was said long ago in another
connection, ' How sad and perplexing it must be to
be so clever !'
One regrets not a little that the final impression
left by a young man of such cultivation should be
one of dulness, of silliness ; yet so it is, and it is
only another proof that education is sometimes a
very misleading thing. I can quite imagine that
Mr. Henry James, had he read less, travelled less,
known less, might have become a highly interest-
ing writer ; but early in his career he appears to
have quitted America for Europe, and to have left
the possibilities of his grand nativity behind, him.
THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC. 155
To be born an American is surely a great privilege ;
yet nearly all Americans of talent flit moth-like
towards the garish lights of London or Paris, and
hover round these lights in wanton, not to say
imbecile, gyrations, till they pop into the glare,
drop down singed and wingless, and are forgotten.
No individual is so catholic as an average American
of culture ; no individual is, au fond, so worldly,
so supremely trivial ; and Mr. Henry James is this_
average American in excelsis. A good deal of this
is, of course, matter of temperament ; a good deal
more, matter of training. Youngish men like Mr.
James have refined their perceptions to so thin a
point that they are only fit to commemorate the
judgments of the drawing-room on the one hand
and the smoking-room on the other. The air of
free literature asphyxiates and paralyzes them.
Outside of society and Paris, they are far too
clever, far too educated, to breathe or live at all.
It is Mr. James's privilege, or perhaps his
misfortune, to write for the English public ; but I
strongly suspect him of a hidden longing to cater
for the public which is Continental. If he were
not doomed by his nationality to be a superfine
young man, he would perhaps choose to become a
Detrimental one, like his friend M. Paul Bourget,
who dedicates a book to him and claims at least
two-thirds of him as thoroughly Parisian. The
Detrimental Young Man, to whom I now come by
a very natural transition, is quite as pertinacious
156 THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC.
as Mr. James, though far less cautious ; fully as
omniscient, but not nearly so self-assured ; far more
audacious, but in reality quite as dull. He is a
refined or superfmed sort of naturalist, to whom
the coarse method of Zola appears very shocking,
and who, before he ' dissects ' the human subject,
is careful to wash his hands ; nay, he goes
further, and washes his subject too, that the
spectator may be spared disgust and pain as far as
possible. An elegant young man, with a certain
amount of surgical skill, he affects to have studied
profoundly the morbid anatomy of the female
character ; but, alas I we soon discover that his
elegance is merely that of a man about town, while
his science is only a device to hide the tastes of
the boulevardier. Two or three feeble novels, and
a few flabby criticisms, form his literary credentials;
so that he would be scarcely worth considering if
he were not the type of a very numerous class.
Like his fellows, he parades a ' method '; like his
superiors, he vaunts the dogma of EArt pom- L'Art,
which, in other words, is Art without the aspirate,
without any heart at all. The world is beginning
to discover, by the way, that the moment a writer
begins to talk about his Art he is forfeiting its
privileges. It is quite true, moreover, that Art
has nothing to do with Morality, directly ; butjt
has a great deal to do with it indirectly ; for (as I
attempted to show years ago) if a work of Art is
beautiful, it must be moral. This, of course, is not
THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC. 157
saying that it may not offend against conventional
canons. But all the palaver about Art of such
writers as Flaubert was merely a feint to disguise
a radical defect in sympathy, an incapacity for
imagining greatly and feeling either deeply or
profoundly ; and it will be found generally that
the writers who echo the palaver are, like
Flaubert, workers in mosaic artists who, instead
of working under special inspiration or with inspir-
ing passion, take little bits of subject and piece
them together, sometimes with very charming
effect, but never with the genius of great literature,
The talk of Art for Art is, in short, disingenuous,
being used almost invariably to excuse or to justify
trivialities of invention and temperamental want of
creative insight.
What kind of a person the Detrimental Young
Man is may be gathered from a reference to one of
his well-known stories, ' Un Crime d' Amour/ * a
work so far critical that it seems to embody the
writer's theory of social life. It is the very
commonplace history of a boulevardiers love for
his friend's wife, his seduction of her, and the
consequent misery and dishallucination. In the
opening chapter we are introduced to the only
three dramatis personce the husband, the wife,
and the lover. ' Le petit salon etait eclair^ d'une
lumiere douce par les trois lampes de hautes
lampes posees dans les vases de Japon, et garnies
* By Paul Bourget.
158 THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC.
de globes sur lesquels s'appliquaient des abat-jour
simples de nuance bleu pale.' This ' nuance bleu
pale ' is the only thing which differentiates ' Un
Crime d' Amour' from other idylls of adultery, and
the only quality which distinguishes M. Paul
Bourget's ' method ' from that of other foolish
young men. It permeates the story and the style,
it sicklies o'er the countenances of the adulterers
and the author, it is used in lieu of honest daylight
to give artistic seeming to a theme which is
radically prurient yet absurd. In one consummate
chapter we are treated bo a detailed description of
the furnished house which Armand, the lover,
takes for his mistress, and in which, dazzled by the
4 nuance bleu pale,' ' elle venait de sentir, sous les
caresses de cet homme qu'elle aimait si profonde-
ment, une emotion inconnue s'eveiller en elle.'
Then the same ' nuance' travels on to the husband,
who in course of time, poor fellow ! gets very blue
indeed ; rests on the wretched woman, who de-
ceives her lover as well as her husband and then
cries, in articulo mortis, 'C'est cette souffrance qui
m'a sauvee, c'est par elle que j'ai juge ma vie ;' and
finally transfigures the Detrimental Young Man
himself, while he informs us that ' une chose venait
de naitre en lui, avec laquelle il pourrait toujours
trouver des raisons de vivre et d'agir : la religion
de la souffrance humaine.' This is the moral, that
experiences of the sort I have described make even
a, detrimental young man alive to the fact that
THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC. 159
treachery and seduction turn life into Dead Sea
fruit and lead married ladies into much trouble.
We have heard it a thousand times before, we shall
hear it a thousand times again ; for our modern
young men are honest enough to admit that Love
is not a thing of cakes and ale. No ; it is the pre-
rogative, it is the glory, of the Detrimental Young
Man to pose himself in the pale blue ' nuance' of a
picturesque unhappiness. In his sad perception of
the sorrows of crim. con. and the dreariness of in-
fidelity, he resembles our own glorious Ouida ; and
he resembles that classic of the Langham in other
respects in a feverish appreciation of millinery
and upholstery, in a love of subdued lights and
soft odours, in a rapturous inspiration to paint the
splendours of the bedpost and the mysteries of the
bath-room. Indeed, if we could imagine Zola and .
Ouida collaborating on a story to be afterwards
revised by Mr. Henry James, we should get a very
good idea of a work by M. Paul Bourget. We
should have all the nastiness plus all the niceness,
and the whole carefully supervised by a master of
the superfine.
In another novel, ' Cruelle Enigme, ' the
Detrimental Young Man goes further, and for the
edification of his friend Mr. James, to whom the
work is dedicated, ' throws a woman on the dis-
secting table,' and vivisects her, arriving, after
much more millinery, at the conclusion that Love,
like life, is ' a cruel enigma.' The poor woman
i6o THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC.
deceives everybody, even the very young lover
whom she adores, and is, in fact, just the familiar
tame-tigress of French fiction ; but she is specialized
again for us by the pale-blue 'nuance/ producing
in this case an anatomical study much in the
manner of the eccentric artist Van Beers. All
this might be very interesting, no doubt, if there
were any Science in it. Readers who know what
Balzac has done in this way would certainly not
deny the attraction to be found in the morbid
pathology of the female character. But Balzac
was a man, not a boulevardier ; and even Zola
is a Man deformed. One page of the ' Human
Comedy/ or one chapter of ' La Joie de Vivre/ is
worth all that M. Paul Bourget or Mr. Henry
James ever wrote or dreamed of writing. And if
I return without apology to our Superfine Young
Man in this connection, it is not that I am un-
aware of the ethical distinction between him and
the Detrimental Young Man. But there is an
ethical resemblance also, though it does not lie
upon the surface. It is the business it may,
for all I know, be the boast and pride of Mr.
James and his compeers to translate the fiction
of the French Empire and Republic into a voca-
bulary suitable for the perusal of young American
ladies ; and young ladies, in England and America,
read their dreary books compared with which
the literature of the ' Lamplighter' and the ' Old
Helmet' is edifying. To call them immoral would
THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC.
be exaggeration; they are not vital enough to be
immoral. But they, too, parade the pale-blue
' nuance' which is to redeem insipidity and im-
pertinence, and turn commonplace into Art. In
their cold-blooded self-sufficiency, in their in-
domitable triviality, in -their stupendous dulness
and omniscient vacuity, they suggest Zola (a dul-
lard au fond] under ruthless expurgation and
Gautier without the flesh. For, the modern
French theory of writing being that nothing is
too trivial for a subject so long as it gives oppor-
tunity for narrative and analysis, French novelists
escape dulness by choosing subjects which, though
trivial, are suggestive or unclean ; and our Art
for Art novelists of English race choose, in secret
emulation, subjects which, though trivial almost to
fatuity, are prurient in their supreme affectation of
moral catholicity.
But let me put it in plainer words, in clearer
English. There is neither flesh and blood, nor
virility, nor manly vigour, in these young moderns,
either in France or England ; they breathe no
oxygen ; they display no intellectual or moral
health. They hang about the petticoats of young
women, in the ' nuance bleu pale' of a moral
atmosphere of their own making. Contrast a book
like ' Un Crime d' Amour ' with a book like
Murger's ' Vie de Boheme,' and note the difference
between two generations. Compare the ' Sappho '
of 1887 with even the ' Dame aux Camelias ' of
11
162 THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC,
1850. To go even a little further back, the jaded
young man of Alfred de Musset still preserved his
hallucinations. Rolla saw his ideal naked, not on
the dissecting-table, but alive
1 Et pendant un moment, tous deux avaient aiiues !'
He was not a nice young man, with his shirt-
collar turned down a la Byron, and his addiction to
absinthe ; but, compared with this modern young
man, he was a gentleman, a poet, and a dreamer.
And then, if you will, compare such books as ' The
Portrait of a Lady ' with the early girl-studies of
Trollope, a novelist ever thin and trivial enough, in
all conscience. There was the fresh flush of English
life, the breath of English homes ; here we get only
the simper of the superior person, the drawl of the
superfine young miss etherealized into a heaven of
small sensations, small intuitions, and small, in-
finitesimally small, conversation. It is nothing to
the purpose to explain that Mr. Henry James is a
strictly moral writer in the ordinary sense of the
word, and that M. Paul Bourget is a highly
immoral one. My own impression is that the two
gentlemen are more nearly akin, both in mind and
morals, than either would care to admit. Though
one is superfine, while the other is detrimental,
both are omnisciently silly ; neither has one spark
of the vitality, one flash of the insight, which made
young men write books a generation ago.
Whose children are these ? Who is responsible
THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC. 163
for the appearance of these young men in society
and literature ? I think their literary genealogy,
though here and there obscure, may be traced with
quasi-Biblical accuracy on both sides of the
Channel. There, our own Byron begot Alfred de
Musset, and Alfred de Musset begot Dumas Jils,
and Dumas fils begot Daudet, and Daudet begot
Paul Bourget. Here, Richardson begot Jane
Austen, and Jane Austen became the mother
of Theodore Hook, and Theodore Hook begot
Anthony Trollope, and Anthony Trollope begot
Henry James. In either succession there was
a gradual process of deterioration, resulting at last
in what physiologists call ' an exhausted breed ;'
nor is the present threatened intermarriage be-
tween Parisian impertinence and English triviality
likely to improve the stock. Meantime, the great
masters, Balzac and Hugo, Fielding and Dickens,
appear to have left no lawful descendants. Look
back again at the Paris and the London of a
generation ago ! How fresh and living, how full
of wild enthusiasm and delightful temper, was
literature I Here and yonder, the breeze blew
lightly from Bohemia. Art was sunny, life was
free. The young Frenchmen swaggered like
Fluellen, forcing all and ready to honour the
green leek of Romanticism. The young Cockneys
swarmed everywhere, full of the new gospel of
Dickens and a robustious Fairyland. Young
writers were neither cynical, nor cautious, nor
11 2
164 THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC.
< knowing ' ; they were mad with the exuberance of
their vitality. Since the old boys were childishly
reverent and happy, why should not the young
boys be so too ? In those days there was little or
no thought of l dissecting ' women, only of loving
and honouring and embracing them ; no care to
hang round the skirts of young ladies, analyzing
their intuitions, but rather a desire to roam in
Arden with them, or to join them at ' Roger de
Coverley.' There were girls then, as there were
boys. Alas, there are now neither girls nor boys,
only nasty little men and women ! I rather fancy
that the easy descent of Avernus was begun when
Thackeray drew Blanche Amory and Becky Sharp,
and painted his good women without brains ; for
though Thackeray had been in Bohemia, and never
quite forgot the soft sylvan susurrus of its green
glades, he created a school of young cynics who
have something in common with the young realists _
of to-day. Be that as it may, the time of cheap
pessimism has come, and good cheer and animal
spirits, poetry and enthusiasm, have now no abiding
place in literature.
Next on my list comes the Olfactory Young
Man, whom I shall deal with very briefly, as he
differs from the Detrimental Young Man only in
a few minor particulars, and, like him, is French by
nationality. M. Guy de Maupassant, in his intro-
duction to Flaubert's ' Correspondence with George
Sand,' entreats us not to get angry with any one
THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CJtITIC. 165
artistic theory, 'since every theory is the generalized
expression of a temperament asking itself ques-
tions ;' in other words, he contends that it is the
business of the artist, not to ascertain truth
absolute, but to describe the effect of social
phenomena on his own organs, his own tempera-
ment. This being admitted, he contends, taking
his own point of perception, . the only point of view
possible to his temperament, that it is a very
ugly and a very nasty world. His sense of un-
pleasant odours in life leads to the most grievous
of all afflictions, Naresmia. He goes through life
and literature following his unlucky nose. All the
mea.ner phenomena of life, all its baseness, all its
triviality, allure and fascinate him, while he is
blind, and glories in being blind, to its subtle
suggestions, its higher meanings. A critic and a
novelist, he parades his little gospel of realism,
and declines to subject either his thought or his
style to any disturbing influence. But, after all,
the main thing in life of which he is conscious is,
the sexual instinct, and the sexual instinct on its
most physical side. His lovers find out each
other, like animals, by the sense of smell. From
the scent of a rose to the perfume of a petticoat,
life is conditioned by its olfactory peculiarities;
beneath and within it all is the odour of decaying
moral vegetation, the stench, faint or overpowering,
of the human dead body, of the tomb. I suppose
M. de Maupassant is an artist ; he is careful to
1 66 THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC.
tell us that_Ji_Js. For my own part, I am
content, with only this stray reference, to pass him
by. A young gentleman who threatens to become,
like the famous Slawkenbergius of Sterne, ' all
nose/ would be very useful company for a sanitary
inspector or a member of the Board of Works, but,
fortunately, literature is much more than osmology,
and Humanity contains something beyond and
above its epidermis.
It is a relief, after discovering such subtleties
of refinement, literary and olfactory, to come face
to face with the good, square, honest, unintelli-
gence of the Young Man in a Cheap Literary
Suit. Mr. James, M. Bourget, and M. de Mau-
passant are models of literary elegance, and would
look aghast on the loud, showy, every-day dress
of tweed which forms the literary attire of Mr.
William Archer, a young gentleman from Scotland
who has attained to the proud dignity of being
dramatic critic of the World; a saturnine and
severe young gentleman, a young gentleman who
has taken the Drama under his protection, and
writes in all seriousness about plays and players.*
I have on a former occasion, in a very rough
ad captandum fashion, described Mr. Archer 's
literary gifts. It is a curious fact, not to be over-
looked in the present survey, that while the critics
of twenty years ago were recruited from the ranks
of literary aspirants, with special gifts and ambitions
* ' About the Theatre/ by William Archer.
THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC. 167
of their own in other directions, and while such
critics were young men of enthusiastic tempera-
ment and with minds nourished on free literature,
the most boisterous critics of the present moment
are recruited from the ranks of the uninspired and
unaspiring, are, in other words, young men who
seem never to have studied seriously or felt pro-
foundly any literature at all. A little knowledge,
a very little English, and much pertinacity, are
at any rate Mr. Archer's equipment, enabling him
to pronounce judgment on works of art, to talk
glibly about the drama and its professors, and to
deliver a lecture on his favourite subjects at the
Royal Institution. The pet object of Mr. Archer's
aversion is Mr. Irving. Our young man began his
career by an attack on that gentleman, consisting
chiefly of ' Bank-holiday ' personalities. He quali-
fied this attack a little later on by a pamphlet on
' Mr. Irving as Actor and Manager, 7 while his
friend and quondam collaborateur, Mr. Low, laid
at the popular idol's feet the dedication of a volu-
minous work on the drama. Still, Mr. Archer has
nothing but scorn, open or disguised, for Mr. Irving
as an actor, and for the ' poetical ' productions of
the Lyceum. Ranging further afield, he inveighs
against the ' fanfaronade ' of Victor Hugo, and
finds his best dramas ' about on the level of Italian
Opera ;' while in Zola and Flaubert he discovers
the kind of beauty which enables him to exclaim :
' This is true ! this is real !' The public, it seems
1 68 THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC.
to Mr. Archer, ' is beginning to demand more and
more imperatively that the dramatist shall be, not
indeed a moralist (that may come later on /), but
an observer, and shall give us in his work, not a
judgment or an ideal, but a painting ;' and on this
score, and on the score that he finds indications
among dramatists of increased observation, he
thinks that the drama is ' advancing.'
Mr. Archer, in fact, is nothing if not l critical ';
that is to say, his cheap literary suit is worn by
him as armour against all the shafts of imagination.
He pines for a drama where there shall be no
* ideals,' and which shall be an absolute and accu-
rate ' transcription of life,' and he sees hope for it,
finds hints of it, when he contemplates such
splendid experiments as Mr. Pinero's ' Lords and
Commons,' Mr. Grundy's ' Snowball,' and the
1 Great Pink Pearl.' Poetical and imaginative
.plays he finds, on the whole, dull and uninteresting ;
not nearly ' knowing ' enough, or severe enough,
for this generation ; and in his gloomy expectation
of the hour when the dramatist shall be a
'moralist' (which is ' to come,' mirabile dicfn !)
he turns with all the eagerness of which he is
capable to the latest dramatist of Scandinavia to
Ibsen, who is ' stumping ' the North of Europe
in the interests of so-called Scientific Realism.
Shrewd, clever, fearless, individual if not
original, Ibsen has produced certain pamphlets
which he calls plays, and in each one of which he
THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC. 169
advances one of those dreary ethical propositions
which the world is now receiving ad nauseam.
A quite loathsome piece of morbid pathology ^ i
called ' Gengangere ' is considered his masterpiece.
It is a story of heredity, showing with what has
been called ' relentless fidelity ' how the sins of the
parents are visited on the children a thesis
chiefly illustrated by two characters, a miserable
and depraved young man who inherits insansity
from a dissipated father, and a perkish young
woman who takes her foibles from a mother who
* went wrong.' As a realistic experiment this play
is not uninteresting ; as a work of art, it is on the
intellectual level of De Goncourt ; for it means
nothing and is nothing, except a disagreeable
reminder of facts with which every thinking man
is familiar. A poet might have taken the subject,
and stirred us by it. A dramatist would have
made it live and move. Ibsen, after disgusting
and horrifying us beyond measure, leaves the
subject exactly where he found it in the region
of dreary and dirty commonplace. And as this
arid writer deals with the subject of Heredity, so
does he deal with Sociology, with Morality, with
Religion, placing a smudgy finger on the black
marks which disfigure the map of life, but seldom
if ever assisting us with any flash of poetic vision.
Unfortunately for literature, his audacity in
attracting the modern young man has infected
a far nobler writer of his own nationality, the
1 70 THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC.
Bjornson who imagined what is perhaps the
divinest love-episode in any language, that of
Audhild in l Sigurd Slembe.' Of late years
Bjornson has been drifting towards the shifting*
sands of realism, attracted thither by the false
lights set by Ibsen et hoc genus omne. But not
in that direction, not in the way of cheap science
and hideous human pathology, lies the freedom of
art or the salvation of literature. When the prose
of truth has been said, its poetry remains to be
told ; and when the great writer comes to deal
with such themes as physical disease and moral
responsibility, he will show us how impossible,
how hopeless, how heartbreaking it is, to view
these themes from the point of view of the pessi-
mist or of the Modern Young Man as Critic.
Fortunately, Shakespeare and fresh air remain,
while the artistic progeny of Schopenhauer
asphyxiate themselves in close chambers and try
experiments on the dead or living subject.
If Ibsen is a great or even a good writer, as
Mr. Archer and his friends assure us that he is,
then the great writers of all countries have been
from time immemorial hopelessly in the wrong
then we must accept M. Zola's dictum that the
true method of literature is only just discovered.
In that case, to be a great writer it is only neces-
sary to be stupendously and supremely unimagina-
tive, and to see nothing beyond the bit of tissue
at the point of the scalpel. But ^Eschylus and
THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC. 171
Sophocles, Shakespeare and Fielding, Balzac and |
Victor Hugo (to go no further for examples) have /
warned us that literature can glorify Science while I
embracing it. Take a work of any of those
masters, no matter how gross or how revolting the
subject choose the * Agamemnon ' or the ' Anti-
gone/ ' Macbeth ' or ' Lear/ ' Tom Jones ' or
' Joseph Andrews/ ' Pere Goriot ' or the story of
Fantine and what impression remains ? The
terror, the sadness, the pity, or (as it may be) the
mad absurdity of life, but above all, its divine
suggestions. What holds true of the masterpieces
holds true of all literature which is sound and hale ;
such literature explains by insight what is dark
and horrible, redeems by insight what is base and
mean, and instead of leaving the wound of a moral
sore wide open to horrify Humanity, heals it with
the balm of a subtle interpretation. It is because
Zola justifies himself thus occasionally, that even
he, with all his banalities, is worth considering.
But, naturally, the Young Man in a cheap
Literary Suit, sunk in the self-satisfaction of being
completely though inexpensively rigged out, and
consequently overpowering, resents imagination.
Great is the truth, he says, and it shall prevail ;
but there is truth and truth, and what satisfies
the needs of a small critic is wormwood to the soul
of a thinker or a poet. A little culture is a
dangerous thing ; for it encourages a dull young
man of saturnine proclivities to decry the masters,
172 THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC,
to extol the dullards, and to pose as a superior
^person. Writers like Mr. Archer assert that
Art may go wrong through too much sentiment,
too much imagination, and that photography has
been sent to put it right. Yet the outcome of the
teaching of all great literature is that, while
Realism is the device of blind men arid feeble
intellects, Poetry, not Pessimism and Cynicism, is
the living Truth.
It would be vain to follow our present young
man through all the perversions caused by a hasty
literary equipment and a morbid intellectual
appetite. As the absinthe-drinker, rapidly losing
the sense of taste, finds that only acrid wormwood
will suit his palate, so Mr. Archer takes .his Ibsen
with a relish, and even thanks the gods for Mr.
W. S. Gilbert. While he has not one good word
for a Titan like Mr. Charles Reade, he waxes
almost eloquent when his theme is a small cynic
or a huge dullard. Great sentiments, great
motives, great emotions, great conceptions, great
language, alike repel him. By temperament and
by education, he is, like his superiors with whom
I have placed him in juxtaposition, wholly un-
imaginative and unsympathetic.
One word, before I proceed, on a point sug-
gested by the growth in art of that diabolic love
of the Horrible which is to be found among the
class of realists so much admired by Mr. Archer
and his friends. To those who imagine, as I do,
THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC. 173
that the world has been growing too cruel and
cynical to exist in any sort of moral comfort, there
is more than mere social significance in the occur-
rence of such hideous catastrophes as Whitechapel
murders and other epidemics of murder and mutila-
tion ; for they show at least that our social
philosophy of nescience has * reached a cataclysm,
and that the world, in its despair, may be driven
back at last to some saner and diviner creed. The
lurid and ever- vanishing apparition known in the
newspapers as ' Jack the Ripper ' is to our lower
social life what Schopenhauer is to philosophy,
what Zola and his tribe are to literature, and what
Van Beers is to art : the diabolic adumbration of
a disease which is slowly but surely destroying
moral sentiment, and threatening to corrupt human
nature altogether. ' Jack the Kipper,' indeed, is a
factor to be reckoned with everywhere nowadays,
and it behoves us, therefore, to study him carefully.
To begin with, he is an instructed, not a merely
ignorant, person. He is acquainted with at least
the superficialities of Science. His contempt for
human nature, his delight in the abominable, his
calm and calculating though savage cruelty, his
selection of his victims from among the socially
helpless and morally corrupt, his devilish ingenuity,
his supernatural pitilessness, are all indications by
which we may know him as typical, whether in
literature or in the slums, in Art or among the
lanes of Whitechapel. Most characteristic of all
174 THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CJtITIC.
is his irreverence for the human form divine, and
his cynical contempt for the weaker sex. As the
unknown murderer of the East-End, he desecrates
and mutilates his poor street-walking victims. As
Zola or De Goncourt, he seizes a living woman,
and vivisects her nerve by nerve, for our instruction
or our amusement. To him and to his class there
are no sanctities, physical or moral or social ; no
mysteries, human or superhuman. He believes
that life is cankered through and through. And
as he is, let it be clearly understood, so is the
typical, the average, pessimist of the present
moment. Everywhere in society we are con-
fronted with the instructed person for whom there
are no gods, no holy of holies, no purity, and, above
all, no spiritual ideals. Contemporaneous with
modern pessimism has arisen the cruel disdain of
Woman, the disbelief in that divine *Ewigweibliche,
or Eternal Feminine, which of old created heroes,
lovers, and believers ; and this disdain and unbelief,
this cruel and brutal scorn, descends with the
violence of horror on the unfortunate and the
feeble, on the class called ' fallen/ which in nobler
times supplied to Humanity, to Literature, and to
Art, the piteous type of the Magdalen. To under-
stand the revolution in human sentiment which has
taken place even within the generation, contrast
poor Mimi once more with even Madame Bovary !
With the decay of masculine faith and chivalry,
with the belief that women are essentially corrupt
THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC. 175
and fit subjects for mere vivisection, has come a
corresponding decline in the feminine character
itself; for just as pure and beautiful women made
men chivalrous and noble, so did the chivalry and
nobility of men keep women safe, in the prerogative
of their beauty and their purity.
For myself, who write as a pure optimist and
sentimentalist, and still preserve the illusions of my
foolish youth, I see in the change around me only
a lurid and hideous nightmare. It cannot be real,
it cannot be the living waking truth, for if so, Life
is a lazar-house and a slaughter-house, and there is
nothing left but Despair and Death. I know (am I
not told so on every hand ?) that this is mere
6 sentiment.' I know that to believe in the Mag-
dalen is almost as retrograde as to believe in the
Christ. I am referred, for my guidance, to a
whole literature dealing with the morbid pathology
of the female character, and am left free to consult
my Thackeray of the drawing-rooms or my Zola of
the sewers. Neither Becky Sharp nor Blanche
Amory, however, any more than Madame Bovary
or the wife of the painter Claude, has any power
to interest me, any skill to convert me. My own
experience, though poor and uneventful, has shown
me that womankind is not entirely composed of
silken monsters and ferocious tigress-cats. I have
with my own ears heard the cry of the Magdalen
just as certainly as I have listened to the bird-like
laugh of Mimi and have stood by the bedside of
176 THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC.
Camille. I am aware, in a word, that what is
known as the ' sentimental ' view of evil is corrobo-
rated by my own knowledge of the world and of
human nature. Pessimism is a lie ; that basest of
lies which is half a truth, it attracts, by its special
pleadings, its triumphant reference to hideous
1 facts/ the half-instructed among human beings.
It is a creed for the semi-cultivated, for the men
of some knowledge and little understanding, and
from the bulk of these issue our ' Jack the Rippers '
in Life, in Literature, in Art, and in Criticism.
thft bottom rung of the
ladder, where Mr. George Moore, the last young
man on my list, is waiting for me, ready, nay deter-
mined, to throw off the mask and let us see the
Modern Young Man as Critic exactly as he is.
It is doubtless a far cry from Mr. Henry James
to Mr. Moore ; but though the one is a barbarous
and the other a superfine young man, they have
certain typical qualities in common, as we shall
discover. In a recently published masterpiece,*
Mr. Moore paints his own portrait for a faithless
generation. His book goes straight to the mark.
Its vanity, its ignorance, its courage, is colossal.
Its self-exposure amounts to the sublime.
I for one am very glad that, after all the
lamentable want of candour characteristic of our
Harrys with the ' H,' the world is treated at last
to a complete revelation of the type which has
* x A Young Man's Confessions,' by George Moore.
THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC. 177
discarded its ' H ' for ever. The typical young
man of this generation, the 'Any of the casinos and
the music-halls, has broken out in Criticism. A
problem well worth studying is this young man of
boisterous indecency, with his incidental acquaint-
ance with the argot of Paris and the studios, and
his general incapacity for consecutive thought of
any kind this young man who, like those others,
has never been young, and will never, we know,
be old or wise. I have read his book with no little
pleasure, for it is, at any rate, thoroughly candid
and representative. The high jinks of the excur-
sion train developed into criticism in which
everybody is ' bonneted,' even poor Shakespeare,
the wild revel of the penny steamboat, the
Bacchantic romps of Hampstead Heath, are
expressed at last in a malodorous but honest work.
The Belshazzar's Feast of small beer and skittles,
the Boheniianism of bad tobacco, the exuberant
Cockney horseplay, all is here ; and, to crown all,
we have the portrait of the young man, not the
'Arry of the revels, but the penitent 'Arry of next
day, after the trying excursion to Gravesend or
Hampton Court, exclaiming to himself, ' Oh, I do
feel so bad !' The doleful 'Arry countenance, the
'Arry coat, the 'Arry tie, are all typical of the
young man who has never had a clean mind, who
glories in his uninstruction, yet who is so far from
happy ! A noticeable experience in his life has
been a holiday trip beyond the Thames, to Paris.
12
178 THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC.
He has seen the photographs in the Rue de Rivoli,
and visited the Eden Theatre. He talks com-
placently of his experiences and his predilections
of the great Balzac, of ' his friend ' Zola (whom he
bonnets, too, quite merrily), of girls, of artists, of
pictures, of books, of a general ramble and scramble
through cafes and bagnios, always ending in the
same Elysium of unsavoury jokes and pipes and
beer.
This young man was never a child, never had
any eyes to see what ordinary people see. His
earliest remembrance is of a miracle ' plover
rising from the water 9 so that even as a child he
was incapable of observing correctly the simplest
natural phenomena. In later life, his reading has
embraced, among other works, a book called ' The
Rise and Fall of Rationalism,' doubtless some
prophetic history, which in his Wegg-like way he
mingles up with a certain ' Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire/ If he has studied any books, he
is completely fogged as to what books. He knows
literature as he knows Nature, out of his own con-
fused, ill-balanced head. He hates everything
Shakespeare, Art, Poetry, Religion, Decency
everything but pipes and beer. When he goes to
the theatre and sees Mr. Wilson Barrett as Claudian,
he beholds ' an elderly man in a low-necked dress,
posturing for the applause of some poor trull in
the gallery/ He brands Mr. Irving scornfully as
a ' mummer/ and describes all actors and actresses
THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC. 179
as idiotic marionettes. His dream is that the tongue
of the music-hall shall be loosened, and that we
shall then have a New Drama, free, unfettered,
primitive ; meanwhile he is careful to tell us that
' Whoa, Emma !' ' Charley Dilke,' and other
ballads of the music-hall, are of far deeper artistic
value than any more sober productions of the
modern stage. For novelists and poets he has as
profound a contempt as for l mummers '; the only
English writer he professes to admire being Mr.
Walter Pater, whose jejune essays he assumes to
have read with rapture. For himself, he frankly
informs us that he is immoral and indecent, and
asserts that those who pretend to be otherwise are
simply l hypocritical.'
Now, all this, horrible as it may sound, is better
than i trimming ' better, to my mind, than the
superfluities of Mr. James or the literary pretences
of Mr. Archer. The young man really respects
nothing under the sun, and is honest enough to say
so. His more ornate brethren respect and love
quite as little, but, unlike him, have not the
courage of their emotions. They accept themselves
dismally, as omniscient spectators of the human
comedy ; he accepts himself savagely, as a Cockney
Bohemian of the Latin Quarter. But Mr. Moore
is frank and fearless, while'they are merely polite
or saturnine. He goes onThis trip to Paris, and
thinks he is ' seeing life.' Truth, Reality, Naturalism
is his cry, as it is theirs ; but while they keep to
122
i8o THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC.
the pavement, he dances in the mud, reels along
mud-bespattered, talks and yells, and thinks, C'est
magniftque, et cest la vie ! There is no nonsense
about him he does not pretend to be virtuous or
literary virtue particularly is all 'gammon'; every-
thing is gammon, except indecency, except horse-
play, except the jolly Bank Holiday and all its
concomitant delights. The superfine and the
saturnine young men secretly detest the proprieties
of life and literature. He utters his detestation,
and boldly pictures to us the literary future : 'Any
triumphant, the tongue loosened, the morals and
manners free and easy, the old gods of letters set up
for cockshies, the music-hall turned into a Temple
of all the arts, and 'Arriett, alma Venus of Seven
Dials, hominum divumque voluptas, at her apotheosis.
Well, all this is infinitely refreshing, after so much
disingenuous respectability. The age of Sham is
over, and the new prophet of straightforward
animalism is Mr. George Moore. We are at last
returning to Nature, vid Rosherville Gardens and
the Alexandra Palace. The Young Man as Critic
triumphs, after all. He is found everywhere, in
varied forms : with Mr. James, writing little novels,
studying the little masters ; with Messrs. Bourget
and De Maupassant, studiously detrimental and
avowedly olfactory ; with Mr. Archer, grimly in-
tolerant of imagination ; at the Universities,
lecturing on Art for Art ; on the newspapers,
giving up Religion and Morality as a bad job ; to
THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC. 181
be known everywhere by his leading characteristics
: a temperament which forbids enthusiasm, and a
character which is heterodox, not merely by consti-
tution, but out of predetermination to be ' knowing/
But this honest young man of l A Young Man's
Confessions ' is the spokesman of all the rest. He,
at all events, is not disingenuous. He, at all
events, has shown his class as it is, in all the nudity
of its cynicism, in all the plenary audacity of its
unbelief. We ought not, therefore, to be very
angry with him, after all.
So far as the Young Man as Critic is concerned,
there is little more to be said. It is with him,
under the various forms which I have described,
and under others with which my readers are doubt-
less familiar, that the men of thought, the men of
another and, I think, a nobler temperament, have to
reckon. It is he who will criticise us or ignore us,
praise us or abuse us ; from him the rising genera-
tion will learn, at least for a little while, how to
estimate us. He it is who is talking imbecilities
in a thousand magazines and newspapers. He
it is who is filling the free air of literature with
the chatter of the salon and the argot of the
studio. He is fundamentally and constitutionally
cynical and destructive, as opposed to those
individuals who, be they small or great, are
fundamentally and constitutionally sympathetic
and creative. Fortunately for Art, for Letters,
1 82 THE MODERN YOUNG MAN AS CRITIC.
he is fast becoming a public bore, a crying scandal.
But for this fact, which may ensure his summary
extinction and self-effacement, this woeful Young
Man might succeed in destroying creative litera-
ture altogether.
IS CHIVALKY STILL POSSIBLE?
IS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE?
To the Editor of the ' Daily Telegraph.'
SIR,
While congratulating myself on the com-
plimentary expressions contained in your edi-
torial article, on the subject of iny paper * in
the current number of the Universal Review, I
am constrained to deprecate certain remarks in
which you appear to class me with merely de-
structive critics, incapable of enthusiasm for any-
thing contemporary. I know that I have been
previously so classified, chiefly because I have
thought it my duty on more than one occasion to
attack popular reputations. I have invariably done
so, however, on public never on merely literary
grounds. But to say that I do not honour or
glorify every contemporary is quite another thing
to saying that I have depreciated all. My error,
indeed, has been, in certain cases, on the side of
enthusiasm. As one instance in point, I may
mention the fact that I worked loyally twenty
years ago to establish the literary reputation of
* The preceding article.
i86 IS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE?
Mr. Browning, and that I have at this moment
before me a letter from that gentleman describing
me as ' the kindest critic he ever had/ In short,
I hold him to be a poor critic indeed, or no critic
at all, who reserves all his idolatry for the gods of
the past, and can find no divinities, literary or
artistic, in the present. This, however, is merely
by the way. The matter which moves me to write
this letter is of far higher importance than any
of my personal sympathies or antipathies of far
more burning consequence than any subject merely
' literary.' I have touched upon it currente calamo
in the paper you have criticised so sympathetically.
I am anxious to touch upon it again, with your
permission.
One of my strongest contentions against the
Modern Young Man as Critic against, in other
words, the average half-educated, semi-cultivated,
small pessimist of the present generation is that,
thanks to him and his, Chivalry is fast becoming
forgotten ; that the old faith in the purity of
womanhood, which once made men heroic, is being
fast exchanged for an utter disbelief in all feminine
ideals whatsoever ; and that women, in their turn,
in their certainty of the contempt of men, are
spiritually deteriorating. As an illustration of this,
I state that the piteous type of the Magdalen,
which had so signal and sublime an influence on
life, on literature, and on art, is now put aside, not
merely as sentimental, but as practically ' inex-
SS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE! 187
pedient,' while the pent-up barbarity and savagery
of the pseudo-scientist falls with all the violence of
horror on the class called i fallen/ As I write,
one of your contemporaries proposes to get rid of
certain midnight nuisances, which culminated a few
nights ago in a disgraceful street scene, by giving
absolute and practically despotic power ' to the
police ' that is, to its individual members. Every
day, in every club-room, we are told by men of the
world that there is practically no such thing as
1 seduction/ and that the hideous nightmare which
haunts our civilization is really born out of the
folly and the depravity of womankind. So that, it
would seem, the only way to deal with the Abomin-
able is to put it under the control of the guardians
of the peace, and, while accepting its necessity, to
take care that it does not trouble our social comfort.
Here, again, I am in serious disagreement with
the quasi-scientific Pessimist of To-day. So far
from having the Abominable hushed up and well
regulated, I would have it flaunted publicly, in all
its hideousness, till the real truth is understood
that it is a creation of the filth of man's heart, and
that the class called ' fallen ' is practically a class
of Martyrs. Heaven knows, I am not writing as a
would-be moralist and Pharisee ; Heaven knows, I
am not blind to my own or my sister's infirmity !
But when the pessimist postulates, firstly, with
Swedenborg, that this human sacrifice is a necessity,
and, secondly, that women as a class wilfully and
1 88 75 CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE!
cheerfully sacrifice themselves, I know out of my
own experience that he is uttering a lie !
We have consistently degraded Women. From
generation to generation we have denied them their
moral privileges. We have asserted that their
only function is parasitic, their best qualities less
intellectual than instinctive. But hitherto, while
complacently admitting their inferiority, we have
believed in their moral influence, in their divine
sympathy. Now at last, while Jack the Ripper
in Whitechapel desecrates and destroys the bodily
mansion, his kinsman, the Pessimist of To-day, pol-
lutes the tabernacle of Woman's Soul. He frankly
despises and persistently depreciates what was once
a temple where all strong men, all men who were
sons, husbands, or fathers, might meet and pray.
There is, he says, no ' seduction/ Women minister,
for the most part cheerfully, to our vanities and
our pleasures. Antigones, Cordelias, Rosalinds,
Imogens, Eugenie Grandets, are the mere dreams of
1 poets.' A popular dramatist thinks he touches the
quick of the question by making comic capital of
1 Woman's Rights.' Popular poets and novelists
swarm the bagnios of literature with Monsters,
which they label ' Studies of Women.' Certain of
contempt, certain of misconception, women at last
throw off their lendings, and become what men
make them. The Rome of Juvenal repeats itself
in the London of to-day. And masculine cor-
ruption, male deterioration, is, I contend, at the
IS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE ?
bottom of it all. The master, who once worshipped
his slave because she was beautiful, now scorns her
because he believes her to be base. Let it not be
forgotten, either, in this connection, that those
women who most cheerfully accept the master's
supremacy, and wear with his sanction the raiment
of conventional morality those women who are
bought and sold, not in the streets, but in the
higher marriage market are the bitterest enemies,
the cruellest judges, of such members of their own
sex as sink to sorrow or try to escape convention.
The petted favourite assists her lord to hunt down
her less fortunate sisters.
This question is far too broad and world-em-
bracing to be discussed in a newspaper letter.
Some good may be done, however, by asking if it
is not possible, in the face of the grievous social
peril the threatened loss of a Feminine Ideal
for some few men, knights errant in the modern
sense, but full of the old faith, the old enthusiasm,
to remind the world, in the very teeth of modern
pessimists, of what woman has been to the world,
and of what she may yet become ; to keep intact
for our civilization the living belief which sanctified
a Madonna and a Magdalen ; to protect the help-
less, to sympathize with the unfortunate, and, above
all, despite the familiar sneer of the worldling and
the coarse laugh of the sensualist, to reverse the
familiar adage now and then, and read it cherchez
THomme ? Quite recently, I am happy to say,
\
i 90 SS CHIVALR Y STILL POSSIBLE ?
the man has been sought and found. We may
find him much oftener, if we try ! I for one, at
least, look forward anxiously and hopefully for some
glimpse of the old Chivalry, which set the name
of Bayard high as a star in Heaven, and made
even the eccentric Don Quixote a figure to sweeten
human happiness and ' brighten the sunshine/
ROBERT BUCHANAN.
[The preceding letter elicited a long and charac-
teristic letter from Mrs. Lynn Lynton, from which
I quote as follows :]
1 Can anyone explain how it is that, when
people discuss the Woman Question in any of its
phases, they lose sight of proportion and take their
leave of common-sense ? The Idealists seem to
hold women as altogether of a different race from
men ; not only different in degree, but different in
kind ; not only told off by Nature for certain
special functions, whereby are emphasized certain
common qualities, but as possessing intentions,
faculties, characteristics with which men have
nothing to do. To these Idealists women, qud
women, are semi-divine, where men are more than
half bestial. The sex is sacred, and to be a woman
is to be ex officio consecrated. To the Cynics, on
the other hand, to be a woman is to be the source
of all the evil in the world where each daughter
of Eve repeats her mother's folly and transgression,
IS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE! 191
and where men are but the puppets whom she
makes dance at her pleasure. Mr. Buchanan
offers himself as an Idealist, and talks sentimental
bunkum with splendid literary power. . . . Where
has woman deteriorated ? Why, even the poor
Abominables are less degraded than of olden
times ; and the modern danger with respect to
them is not of their oppression, but of their being
treated with undue partiality so that the good of
the community is less considered than their un-
checked individuality, As for the Chivalry of
which so much nonsense is talked and so little true
knowledge is afloat well, it may stand as a sign,
like any other algebraic symbol. We need these
signs and symbols in life words which evoke
ideas, no matter whether the root be real or not.
The past of Chivalry was a very different thing
from this all-embracing, all-suggestive, this verbal
symbol for an impossible ideal. . . . Chivalry died
because it became corrupt, affected, and unreal.
The true hold that women had then on the
respect and love of men was to be found in the
bower and the hall the house, where women
reign, and where alone they ought to reign. Men
came from the heat and passion of the strife to
the rest and peace, the wholesome purity and order,
of the house. Women were their solace, ministering
to their needs, soothing their weariness, healing
their wounds. The clash and din of battle were
exchanged for the music of the bower, the peaceful
i 9 2 75 CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE*
revelry of the hall. Thus it came about that in
those rough fighting times women were indeed, in
a sense, sacred ; that the house was, as it were,
their temple ; and that, alternating as they did
with the rude life without the castle walls, they
were idealized and reverenced by the men who
died to protect them. How this spirit will survive
the modern acceptance of warfare as part of
woman's life remains to be seen. We have no
longer harryings and raids, burning of homesteads,
and lifting of cattle, but we have, instead, party
cries and political passions ; and when these have
invaded the home, and women are fighters with
their men and against their men, it is to be
feared the fabric of society as at present con-
stituted will fall to pieces, to be built up again on
a different but a better ? plan.
' As for the degradation of women by men, that
applies to only one of the various relations be- .
tween the sexes. Do men degrade their mothers,
their sisters, their daughters, their wives ?* Here
and there a few wretches may, just as here and
there a few women kill their children for the
sake of their insurance money ; but not the mass
not the generality. In that most tremendous
problem of how to reconcile the imperative laws
of human nature with the arbitrary requirements
* Most absolutely. By the existing moral codes, they degrade
them. CoiTuption begins in the household, and spreads thence
into the street.^?. B.
IS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE 1 } 193
of society, women suffer, and must suffer. . . . The
Magdalen is a very beautiful theme for art and
poetry, but the poor drunken flaunting Professionals
are stern facts the results of poverty and passion
combined and white kid gloves are as much out
of place when dealing with them as either art or
poetry. Let that pass. Women have inflicted
the deadliest wrong on their generation in con-
nection with their unhappy sisters, but in a very
different sense from that deprecated by Mr.
Buchanan ; and I repeat it the present danger
is not in over-severity, but in over-petting and
sentimentality, in maudlin pity and unjust par-
tiality. If, as Mr. Buchanan says, men are the
causes of all the misery of the world, and cherchez
THomme ought to take the place of the familiar
cherchez la Femme, are not men the direct and
absolute creation of woman ? Built up day by
day out of the very substance of her body, do they
not also receive their first ineffaceable mental im-
pressions from her ? As mothers, have not women
unchecked power absolute authority ? How
foolish it is to differentiate the sexes on one ground
only, and to judge of men and women simply on
the platform of unlawful love ! For that is what the
whole thing comes to. The wholesome orderliness
of marriage, the dignity of the home and famity, the
domestic influence of women all this is ignored ;
and the wife and mother, mistress of her house and
shaper of her children's minds and characters, is
13
194 f-S. CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE?
forgotten for the sake of the poor Abominable
whom Mr. Buchanan wants us to idealize as the
Magdalen ! But, indeed, all this clamour about
woman, whether as ideals, as subjects for ' dissec-
tion,' or as very pitiful realities, is in itself
destructive of the virtues which should be specially
theirs before all of that modesty which was the
very core of her chivalrous ideal. And why all
this fatal incense of flattery ? Smaller than men,
with weaker animal instincts and weaker heroic
virtues, why should they be worshipped as superior
beings, too good for life as we have it ? If men
are to worship us, what are we to reverence ?
Ourselves like the Buddha on the lotus-leaf?
Some already do, not to the edification of the
race at large ; while those who still frankly and
womanfully acknowledge their natural leaders in men
are treated as traitresses to the divine cause. ...
E. LYNN LINTON. '
To the Editor of the l Daily Telegraph. 1
Sm,
I was in hopes that Mrs. Lynn Linton's very
characteristic letter, published in your issue of the
27th, would have been answered by some authori-
tative person of her own sex. In common with
everybody else, I admire Mrs. Linton hugely, and
have done so ever since the days when she who
had sat at the feet of the old heathen Landor first
began scarifying her less accomplished sisters.
7,5 CHIVALR Y STILL POSSIBLE ? 195
Who does not love a clever woman, even one with
a bee in this case was it a wasp ? in her bonnet ?
Who cannot forgive a brilliant woman, even when
she becomes angry and describes male Chivalry as
' sentimental bunkum ' ? This gifted lady begins
by asking in a tone of no little asperity, ' Can any-
one explain why it is that, when people discuss the
Woman Question in any of its phases, they take
their leave of common-sense ?' Let me, in Scottish
fashion, duplicate this question with another. Can
anyone explain why it is that when ladies of a
certain temperament discuss the characters of their
own sex they take their leave of common charity ?
Mrs. Lynn Linton is a serious writer, and
deserves to be dealt with seriously ; otherwise I
should have looked upon her letter as a mere flash
from the sombre spectacles of some Mrs. Pardiggle
converted to the religion of the Hall of Science.
Strangely enough, she, a woman of rare intellectual
gifts, is on the side of those who would rivet the
chains on womankind ; who sneer at men in whose
opinion the l sex is sacred ' ; who talk about the
' idealization ' of woman as ' absurd ' ; who think
that the world is in danger, not of being too cruel
to the fallen and the driven, but of treating them
' with undue partiality/ Well, I suppose she
ought to know. George Eliot could never get
over her hatred of pretty women of poor butter-
flies like Hetty Sorrel ; and Mrs. Linton, if she
spoke her mind, would no doubt say that all
13 2
196 IS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE ?
naughty creatures deserve ' slapping.' Thus far,
indeed, I can understand her ; but when she goes
on to talk about ' the imperative laws of human
nature,' and says that ' the whole question of the
Abominable is one not of sentimentality, but of
political economy,' I am lost in wonder. I remem-
ber on one occasion, many years ago, when someone
was talking at the late G. H. Lewes's about a
simple social question chiefly affecting the nursery,
the voice of George Eliot suddenly intoned, ' Very
true ; but, in that case, what is to become of our
Jurisprudence f Jurisprudence was a good word,
and so is political economy, but I have yet to learn
what political economy has to do with Chivalry.
And then, mirabile dictu ! ' the imperative laws of
human nature.' Is Sensuality, then, a ' law ' ?
Just as much, perhaps, as Virtue is a ' law,' or
Purity, or Philanthropy, or Misanthropy, or any
other ' anthropy ' ; and in this case, I suppose, Mrs.
Linton's ferocious Nymphophobia is a ' law ' too I
This is not the place, nor is the present the
occasion, to discuss the interminable question of
Woman's Rights. To many sensible people the
very idea of social and political activity on the part
of women is annoying, if not repulsive. For my
part, I sympathize with any movement which may
render Woman more happy, more active, more
beneficent, and, above all, more influential. Woman
will never be the equal of Man, because (pace Mrs.
Linton) she is so infinitely his superior. Just as
SS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE? 197
the reason of a human being transcends the instinct
of an animal, so does the insight of a woman
transcend the reason of a man. Deep in the
nature of Humanityabides a light which illustrates
truth better than any syllogism, and this light
burns brightest in the clear souls of the weaker
sex. The great Positivist, as we know, admitted
this. For what, after all, is Insight ? Reason
enlarged and glorified. And what, to proceed still
higher, is Faith ? Insight purified till it reaches
the subtlety of Divination. Faith and Insight,
the power of perceiving those verities which con-
stitute Religion, are often denied to great men ;
they are seldom denied to a pure and perfect woman.
This, of course, is the creed of Chivalry. In the
eyes of a modern knight-errant Woman is the
purifier of the earth, the creature
1 Without whom
The earth would smell like what it is a tomb !'
Whatever sullies her, whatever degrades her to
a low^er level of thought and action, injures and
hampers man's own progress upwards. I am now,
of course, talking of the Ideal, not always, yet very
often, realized in contemporary experience. Un-
happy, however, is that man who has never realized
such an Ideal at all ; who, after base moments of
the strenuous sense, after misconception and moral
backsliding, after the blows and buffets of the
world, after all the efforts of his reason to solve the
ever-present Mystery, has not been comforted and
198
IS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE?
strengthened by the faith and insight, the pure
benediction of a woman's belief and love. The
free-and-easy scientists, the patterers about ' here-
dity/ ' development of species,' ' laws of nature,'
' moral dynamics,' resolve the difference between
the sexes into a mere little matter of physiology.
Just so ; a little matter which, according to some
physiologists, gives Woman a second and supple-
mentary brain, or, according to sentimentalists,
gives her a clearer spiritual vision, the lens of a
finer-seeing soul. The votaries of Chivalry, the
preachers of sentimental bunkum, find in the
Eivigweibliche an abiding temple ; on its thresh-
hold, kneeling prone, the Magdalen ; in its inmost
shrine, typical and supremely spiritual, the
Madonna.
Here, however, I would pause to deprecate all
misconception. When 1 wrote of masculine purity,
I was not posing as a moralist, least of all as an
Ascetic. I am not of that sect which macerates
the flesh, and pretends to find baseness in all
sensuous passion. I simply contend that the re-
lations between the sexes, when not consecrated
by spiritual Love, become purely animal ; that the
buying and selling of what is the divinest posses-
sion given by God to human nature is a living
horror and a deadly sin. Personally, indeed, I
would rather be Burns than St. Simeon Stylites,
and should prefer, on the whole, to be lost with
Byron than saved with Mrs. Hannah More.
IS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE? 199
Chastity is the noblest privilege of Womanhood ;
it is more, it is a quality appertaining to Woman
as light to the ruby, ' growing more precious as it
nears the core ' ; but it does not preclude, it in-
cludes and sanctifies, Passion. A passionless
heart is not necessarily a pure one ; on the con-
trary, those hearts are the purest which can burn
most ardently. In one suggestion, perhaps, Mrs.
Linton is right enough that we are all very
human. For that very reason let us beware how
we forget that the purest Soul who ever wore
earth about Him was not only the greatest Senti-
mentalist, but the greatest Logician. He knew
the truth so far as it concerns our poor human
-nature ; and out of His infinite insight came the
deathless Ideal from which Mrs. Linton turns to
' laws of human nature ' and to l political economy
the Ideal of the Magdalen.
I am, etc.,
ROBERT BUCHANAN.
[To the foregoing Mrs. Linton replied as
follows :]
Mr. Buchanan calls my letter ' characteristic.'
I accept the term as meaning that in this, as in
other matters, I have kept my head cool and level
in the midst of the heated and sickly wave of
sentimentality with which we are flooded for the
moment let us hope only for the moment ! And
200 75 CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE!
in this special part of the great, rampant, noisy
Woman Question, I trust that it is characteristic
in me to remember what the idealizers of street-
walkers do not, that we have our virtuous young
to care for even more than their poor erring sisters,
and that any class movement which weakens the
joints of national virtue is an evil to be fought
against by all who regard the general good.
Let Mr. Buchanan or any of his school consider
what is the likely effect of all this high-flown
idealization on the mind and principles of the
struggling hard-worked girl who resists the easy
temptation of the streets, and prefers, to vice and
champagne, chastity and a crust. She resists that
temptation importuning her at every turn, in part
for self-respect, in part for religious fear, but in
part also for that potent influence the esteem of
the world, with its correlative, the loss of character
and consequent loss of consideration. But when
she reads of the women whose lives she has been
taught to loathe, talked of as only the pitiable
victims of man's brutality, held as themselves free
from moral blame, and as the fit objects for
admiration and pathetic idealization, how much
easier does that make her own hard struggle ?
Difficult enough as things are her fall offering
her all things pleasant to youth and womanhood
this perversion of the wholesome moral law which
pronounced these women moral outcasts makes it
ten times harder. It takes awav one of the
fS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE? 201
strongest of the props which support her poor
fragile temple of virtue, and it undermines the
others. There is no religious fear of offending
God necessary for a woman who qualifies herself
to be called the Magdalen the beloved of Christ,
whose sins were forgiven because she loved much.
Instead of the contempt of the world she has the
prurient petting of the men who stand and sigh
over her of the women who question first and
exhort afterwards. Her self-respect receives no
shock, for in her fall she is more cared for than
ever she was in her virtue, and the joy of the
angels in heaven over one sinner that repenteth
is nothing compared to the excitement of which
she is the centre. If she believes the newspapers
and the idealists, she cannot condemn herself. She
is a victim, according to some ; a martyr whose
life was a sacrifice, and who is worthy of all esteem,
according to others. That she preferred fine
dresses, idleness, and the excitements of drink and
adventures to close, dry, ill-paid work was no sign
of a lower taste, but was all the fault of men as,
indeed, in one way it was, but not in the way
meant by the idealists. I repeat it, and I know
that thousands of kindly women and humane men
will bear me out in what I say. This sentimental
placing of prostitutes on an ideal pedestal as
objects for poetry and pity only, and not at all
as objects for condemnation, is one of the most
disastrous things in all this flabby age, in view
202 7S CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE?
of the young who have to be kept straight against
difficulties and in the face of temptations. Anyone
who for over forty years has walked about London
as I have done must have seen and heard things
which take all the sentimentality about vice out
of one. Good, generous, loving, and even essen-
tially pure-hearted girls there are, one in ten
thousand among the class ; but, as a class, to treat
them with poetry and sentimentality is a wrong
done to society at large, and an infinite wrong done
to the virtuous.
On another account, too, I differ from the
idealists. While seeking to enlarge the sphere of
woman's influence and power as some of us think,
disastrously to the nation they, in the matter
of chastity, take from her the moral responsibility
she has ever had as the conservator of virtue. It
is the fashion now to say it is all the men's fault,
and the women are not to be blamed if they fall
they are helpless to protect themselves. The men
ought even to resist temptations offered to them.
The conscience of woman says differently. Save
in the case of the very young, whose ruin rests
on the mothers who did not properly safeguard
them, women are their own guardians. And ought
to be. If they are to be held capable of governing
the Empire, they should be made accountable at
least for their own self-governance. If they are
to be man's ' abiding temple,' they should of their
own proper force keep that temple clean and pure.
IS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE? 203
It is emphatically in their own choice not to listen
to serpents and not to eat forbidden apples ; or to
lend a willing ear, and run the danger of the rest.
To give them a broader political margin, and to
narrow their moral borders, seems to me, and to
many more than myself, a terrible inversion of good
sense and right reasoning. . . .
I am, etc.,
E. LYNN LINTON.
[Like some ladies when they argue, Mrs. Linton
ivouhl not see the point. I charged men with
feeing the chief factors in the debasement of women,
and she retorted that prostitutes must not be
idealized, and that we must keep our women
pure ! etc.
Perhaps recent revelations, such as the West
Ham tragedy, may incline my matron militant to
think men are not quite such superior creatures.
If she still holds to that opinion, let her consult
the Sisters of Nazareth who took under their
protection two little children, of seven and five
years old respectively. True, these things are
not for common publication. The men who de-
filed a public newspaper with the details of a
bestial record must have been without conscience
and without shame. But it is well not to blind
ourselves altogether to the horrors of mas culine
Lust ; it is as well not to forget the failures of the
Beast that walks upright.
204 fS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE?
Again, Chastity in itself is merely a negative
merit. There may be, and is, infinite harlotry of
the Soul even in so-called virtue. The poetry of
life seduces nobody, and is not prurient. The
prurient woman is she who hugs to herself the
finery of her own purity, and scoffs at sentiment
in connection with her driven sisters. Mrs. Linton
is, so far as her present utterance is concerned,
another example of my proposition that culture
and intelligence are lower in the moral scale than
temperament, than sympathy. Reduced to the
elements of Science, her opinions would fortify
all the filth, all the destructiveness, of our social
system.]
To the Editor of the ' Daily Telegraph.'
SIR,
Mr. Robert Buchanan asks you whether
' Chivalry is still possible ' meaning, as I gather,
Is it possible to revive that ideal of conduct on the
part of man towards women, which is designated,
in strictly modern metaphor, ' chivalrous '? I say
in metaphor, and in modern metaphor, because, as
Mr. Buchanan is of course well aware, the ideal
which men of later days have constructed for them-
selves in this matter has never had any complete
historical realization in the past the position of
woman in the so-called age of chivalry being, in
more than one respect, conspicuously inferior to
that which she occupies even in our own un-
IS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE ? 205
chivalrous times. Taking the word, however, in
the meaning which Mr. Buchanan obviously in-
tends us to assign to it, and asking ourselves the
question whether it is possible to revive chivalry
in this sense, it appears to me that we are at
once brought face to face with two preliminary
questions : First, did chivalry of this description
ever exist at all, except among a comparatively
small class of the community ? And, secondly, is
it not to the limited extent of that existence
still as flourishing and as little in need of revival
as ever ?
That genuine examples of this noble habit of
mind and lofty standard of conduct are, and always
have been, to be found among us, I would be the
last to deny. There have always been men of
pure and high nature who have constructed for
themselves an ideal type of womanhood, which
they have not only reverenced as sacred in itself,
but have regarded as extending its consecration
to every individual member of the sex ; so that
there shall be no woman, however humble or
homely nay, however sunken and degraded
who can be deemed to have altogether forfeited
her title to some share of that exceptional leniency
of judgment, that special gentleness of treatment,
which chivalry recognises as the inalienable birth-
right of the whole sisterhood. Such men, I admit,
have always existed. Colonel Newcome, their
immortal representative in English fiction, is no
206
IS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE!
mere fanciful creation in a novelist's brain. Ori-
ginals of that inspiring and pathetic portrait are
to be found among us yet ; but they are few, and,
with submission to Mr. Buchanan, they never
have been, never will be, otherwise than few. It
is not given to the average man to idealize, to
discern for himself the ' soul of goodness in things
evil, 3 the indestructible element of purity in things
impure ; and it is of the average man that Mr.
Buchanan, I have a right to assume, is talking.
If he is not, he on his part has no right to frame,
as he appears to me to have framed, an indict-
ment against society at large. Such an indict-
ment can only be sustained by showing that a
general decline has taken place in the masculine
conception of womanhood that the average
masculine mind is more sceptical than formerly
of the existence of female purity, truth, and
goodness, and less ready to do homage to these
qualities where their presence is too unmistakable
to be denied.
It is for Mr. Buchanan to produce proof, or at
any rate, if absolute demonstration is, as it well
may be, impossible in such a matter, to establish
a reasonable presumption that such a change has
taken place. I cannot think that he has done
so. I cannot admit that his appeals to the cynical
talk of * club-rooms/ to the disquisitions of the
' quasi-scientific pessimist,' and to the l analytical '
fictions of the day, prove anything. As to the
IS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE! 207
cynicism of the club-rooms, it is no doubt, so far
as it is sincere, and indeed, to some extent, if it
is insincere, a decidedly unlovely thing. But I
altogether decline to treat it as a portentous sign
of the times. Does Mr. Buchanan imagine that
the walls of those apartments have ever listened
to talk of any other kind since clubs, or the
taverns which were their forerunners, first came
into being ? Does he suppose that the ' man of
the world/ and still more the ' boy of the world ' -
if he will forgive my calling him so has ever
talked otherwise in any age ; that the young
bloods of Mr. Richardson's day did not think it
fine to give themselves the airs of his Lovelace,
and proclaim with many a ' damme ' their profound
disbelief in the possibility of female virtue ? It is
no doubt true that even among the rakes of that
time there were many too honest and too manly
to feign an incredulity so dishonouring to the sex
to which their mothers and sisters belonged. Tom.
Jones to cite an example which Mr. Buchanan
ought especially to appreciate scapegrace as he
was, held no such debasing view of women. His
attachment to Sophia saved him from that, and
his love for that young lady was no doubt a passion
of the most purely chivalrous kind. But Tom,
after all, would be a dangerous witness for Mr.
Buchanan to call, for he would certainly be cross-
examined as to his relations with Molly Seagrim
and Lady Bellaston, towards neither of whom was
208
SS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE!
the element of chivalry very apparent in his be-
haviour. Probably he would have brought himself
under your correspondent's condemnation by citing
these two ladies in proof of the odious proposition
that ' Women minister, for the most part cheer-
fully, to our vanities and our pleasures/ No, sir ;
I do not believe that cynical dicta of this kind
are at all more frequently propounded in our own
day than at any previous period. There has never
been a time when men, and especially young men
and still more especially vain young men have
not professed this ' delightfully wicked ' disbelief in
female virtue. It is a necessity of their own
conception of themselves, for how else could they
be the irresistible dogs they are ? Men, however,
who have outgrown this little weakness, and have
no longer the character of Lotharios to support,
are as ready to recognise and to respect purity in
woman as ever they were ; whilst their attitude
towards women of whom that feminine grace can
no longer be predicated has, I make bold to
s&y, distinctly changed for the better and the
more * chivalrous ' in these latter days. Mr.
Buchanan seems to take peculiar exception to
man's present treatment of ' the class called
" fallen," ' as though it had undergone a change
for the worse. But surely it is matter of the
commonest experience and observation that the
class he refers to are, on the whole, treated nowa-
days with a forbearance and tenderness which our
fS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE? 209
rougher ancestors would have been simply unable
to comprehend.
As to Pessimism and the modern ' naturalistic '
and ' analytical ' novelist, they do not appear to
me to play anything like that important part as
causce causantes of the decline of Chivalry which
Mr. Buchanan assigns to them. ' Naturalism/ or
the discovery of the great fact that human nature
consists wholly of the hideous, is a constant
phenomenon in life and letters ; and its excep-
tional popularity and vogue at any given moment
only shows that the writers who for the time being
are the preachers of that dismal gospel happen
to be preachers of exceptional directness and force.
Byron made the same discovery in poetry, and,
lo ! a wind of Byronism swept over the land,
laying all young men's collars flat before it. Now
it is Zola who makes the discovery in prose, and
very unpoetic prose, and straightway follows the
epidemic of Zolaism. Of course the great dis-
covery is the discovery of a mare's-nest, and in
their secret hearts the discoverers know it. They
do not believe in their own theory of humanity.
Only one man of letters ever did ; and he died
mad, and is buried in St. Patrick's Cathedral,
Dublin. Mr. Buchanan should seek consolation
and reassurance in a pilgrimage to that sombre
shrine. Jonathan Swift has preached the gospel
that your correspondent abhors as no man ever
preached it before him, and as none is ever likely
14
21O
IS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE ?
to preach it again ; and Mr. Buchanan may console
himself with the reflection that a race which has
retained its faith in itself after reading the
' Voyage to the Houyhnhnms,' is not likely to be
converted to the doctrine of despair by the author
of ' L'Assommoir.'
As to the operation of Pessimism considered as
a philosophy, and the grave injustice of Mr.
Buchanan's attempt to fix it with responsibility
for the decline of Chivalry and other mischievous
consequences, there is much which I should like
to say. And some day, sir, when you can put
seven or eight columns of your esteemed journal
at my disposal, I may perhaps endeavour to say
it. I will content myself at present with assert-
ing that the most complete acceptance of the
philosophical doctrine of Pessimism is perfectly
compatible with as complete a recognition and as
anxious a cultivation of all that (in unphilosophical
language) is ' pure, lovely and of good report '
in life ; and that, pending an opportunity of
expounding and defending this truth at greater
length,
I am, etc.,
AN INJURED PESSIMIST.
To the Editor of the 'Daily Telegraph.'
SIR,
Would that Fortune always sent me adver-
saries like your correspondent 'An Injured Pes-
SS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE ? 211
simist,' who, while lightly and playfully tilting at
me, manages to make his gallant steed frisk and
curvet all round, to the discomfiture of my original
opponents ! I have only one fault to find with
him, which he shares with the famous knight in
' Ivanhoe ' that he comes disguised, and very
lugubriously! In point of fact he is about as
much ' a pessimist ' as Charles Dickens. I fancy,
indeed, that if he deigned to lift his visor, the
world would laugh merrily in recognition of one
whose name is a synonym for kindliness and
kindly optimism. He challenges me, however, to
prove my case further, and, since your insertion of
the challenge intimates your approval, I will join
issue with him at once. Let me premise, however,
by saying that the subject is one of unusual
delicacy, and could not be completed save with
the addition of evidence necessarily given in camera,
not in the columns of a newspaper ; nor would
even the six columns asked for by your corre-
spondent afford sufficient space for its full and
absolute discussion. One can only select a few
points out of many, and leave all corroborative
testimony to the experience of our jury, your
readers.
Of course students of Modern Pessimism know
very well that, as a philosophy, it claims to be
beneficent. Its founder, Schopenhauer, and its
chief apostle and re-creator, Hartmann, feeling
profoundly for the sufferings of creatures emerging
14 2
212 7S CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE!
into life and pain, have assured us that the only
comfort and joy of Humanity, so soon to perish, is
in acts of mutual service, mutual pity, mutual
love. The blind Will or the blind Unconscious
(whichever name we give it) flowers up to its apex
of moral sentiment, gleams piteously, and dis-
appears. These philosophers, like all others, testify,
of course, to the beauty of human affection ; and,
so far as I personally am concerned, I could as
easily find comfort in their gloomy Nirwana as in
the mysterious Immanence of approved Pantheists
like Spinoza. It is not with pure pessimistic
philosophy, however, that I have at present to
deal.
* When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter,
And proved it 'twas no matter what he said,'
and there is nothing that Metaphysics cannot
establish, when we once grant its premisses. I
spoke of Pessimism and Pessimists as they emerge
in Literature, I spoke more particularly of Pessi-
mistic Realism. Your correspondent's contention
appears to be that the phenomenon to which I
alluded is merely a familiar one, certain to emerge
from time to time, and equally certain to disappear.
To support this contention, he asserts, truly enough,
that a certain class of men have always been cynical
and unchivalrous, just as the majority of men have
always been impure. Lovelace and his friends,
he says, talked much the same banalities as the
modern young men about town. Quite true. But
IS CHI VALR Y STILL POSSIBLE ? 213
just then, in the person of the inspired little printer,
in some respects the sanest and wisest soul of his
generation, rose the Knight-errant of Literary
Chivalry. It is the custom, as we all know, to
sneer at Richardson. While the warm weak heart
of Fielding awakens love, Richardson's piercing
intellect almost repels it. Women, however, who
are supposed to have no logic, recognised the great
Logician of Morality, and cried, ' This man is our
champion ! This man understands us justifies
us !' In the story of Clarissa Harlowe tedious,
monotonous, straggling, bourgeois the great tradi-
tion of Literary Chivalry was carried on, and the
world had the spectacle of a Chaste Soul, reaching
its fulness at that moment when the martyred
girl, with the libertine maundering at her feet
and offering to make her l an honest woman '
by marriage, turned quietly and proudly away, and
passed through the portals of the tomb. Almost
any English author, from that moment to this,
would have satisfied himself and his readers by
bringing down the curtain on the happy union of
Miss Harlowe and the tamed, repentant Lovelace.
Good, honest, virile Fielding would have done it,
and chuckled over it. Richardson, far wiser, knew
that, horrible as is the outrage of the body, still
more horrible may be the outrage of the Soul ;
that for a Soul once violated, once disenchanted,
there is no possible human reparation ; that for
Woman cast from her sphere of purity, bereft of
2i 4 IS CHIVALR Y STILL POSSIBLE ?
her faith in Humanity, the only hope lies beyond
the shades of Death !
Which brings me to the heart of my sad argu-
ment. I have mourned the decay of Chivalry ; I
have asked if its revival is not possible. Your
correspondent who loves Chivalry as much as I
do, who has bowed down as I bow down before
Don Quixote and Colonel Newcome says, firstly,
that Chivalry never existed at all save in a small
class of the community. Yet it is admitted by the
realists that Literature represents the spirit of its
age is, in other words, the adumbration of the
noblest temper of the community at large. What,
then, must have been the temper of communities
which, crystallizing in individual genius, produced
Iphigenia and Antigone, Beatrice and Francesca,
Cordelia and Imogen (to say nothing of the whole
female galaxy of Elizabethan drama), Eve and the
Lady of Comus, Clarissa Harlowe and Sophia
Western, Beatrice Cenci and the heroine of
Epipsychidion, Eugenie Grandet and Modeste
Mignori, Lady Esmond and Laura Pendennis,
Lizzie Hexam and Little Nell ? I should be
unjust, moreover, to the lights under which we live
if I denied that, even now, this tradition of purity
survives, that now and then Divine things come to
us, such as I found the other day when I read the
infinitely piteous episode of Lyndale in the ' Story
of an African Farm,' such as give modesty and
charm to the ' girls ' of Black and Besant, and
IS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE! 215
power to the full-blooded women of Thomas Hardy,
such as ennoble the stainless page of Mrs. Oliphant
and brighten the gladsome books of Bret Harte,
such as lend glory to the maidens of Alfred
Tennyson, to the Madonna-like young mothers of
Coventry Patmore, and to the Shakespearean
women of Robert Browning. But, alas ! most
of the writers I have named belong to the last
generation, and several of them are already voted
' old-fashioned.' The triumph now is with the
realist, with the pessimist, with the young man who
has never been a child, who has never dwelt in
Bohemia. Why, the whole attempt of my original
argument was to draw a comparison between the
last generation and the one in which we live !
Your correspondent asserts, secondly, that after
all Chivalry is still flourishing, and as little in need
of revival as ever. Does he deny, then, that within
the last decade, since the apotheosis of popular
science and the spread of popular materialism, a
very great change has taken place in the moral
estimate of women ? Of their social position I say
nothing that is another matter ; but they, like
the Irish nation, have won all that for themselves.
It is not a question of whether we fear their power
more, but of whether we honour and reverence
them as much ? The best proof of such honour and
reverence would be the condition of our own morals,
the purity of our own lives. Are we, then, so pure ?
I will turn away from the revelations of the Divorce
2i6 IS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE!
Court, from the reports of the newspapers, and just
walk out once more into the midnight streets.
What do I see there ? Instead of the bold, painted
woman's face of twenty years ago, I see the pale,
thin face of a child ! Instead of the coarse, robust
young person from the country, I see the delicate
young person, who has perhaps been a ' lady ' and
has known luxury. Let me tell, in this connection,
two absolutely true stories within my own know-
ledge. A little while ago two pure young girls,
daughters of a clergyman, left Yorkshire and came
to London deliberately, out of choice, dispassion-
ately, to throw themselves on the London streets !
They did so, and were swept away into the great
vortex. Here, certainly, we seem to have a proof
in favour of the man of the world's argument that
there is no ' seduction'; but the exception is meant
to prove the rule. These young girls, well educated,
familiar with modern pessimistic books, concluded
that the world was impure, and, having lost all
vital belief, followed their despair to a logical con-
clusion. My second story is of a young girl who,
when I first met her, was a beautiful child of
seventeen, reared in luxury, accomplished in music
and painting, the idol of her home. She, too, be-
came a reader of the new literature ; she, too, had
become utterly without faith, either in God or
human nature, when, a few years later, she made
the acquaintance of a married man, an officer in the
army. This man deliberately set himself to under-
fS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE? 217
mine those moral instincts which still kept her
personally pure. He convinced her that society
was honeycombed through and through with liber-
tinism ; that there were no pure women ; that,
since life was transient, indulgence of all kinds was
wise and justifiable. Eager, like poor Lyndale, to
know, she came at last to as piteous and terrible an
end, dying in utter despair. Never shall I forget
the contrast between the bright, happy girl I first
met, all intellectual ardour, all moral purity, all
faith and hope, and the poor heart-broken woman
whom, only a few years later, I saw lying on her
bed of death.
My correspondent thinks the world is no worse ;
that Chivalry is no longer needed. Let him re-
member, however, that a generation ago the Devil
lacked his one last convincing argument which proves
to the weak and blind that there is absolutely no
God, no hope, no succour beyond these voices.
If Pessimism means anything, it means that.
Science corroborates it. Experience seems to justify
it. So that, after all is said and done, we come to
the final and irresistible conclusion that there is no
hope in this world because there is no faith in
another, and that Schopenhauer was right when he
described Death i.e., annihilation as the great
and only Nirwana. In that case, of course, it is
useless to trouble ourselves about what old-fashioned
people call the Soul. Let us legislate for some-
thing more substantial.
2 1 8 IS CHIVALR Y STILL POSSIBLE ?
So the world is no worse ? nay, hints your
correspondent, it is possibly much better, especially
in this particular point of woman's condition. How,
then, does he account for the fact which I sup-
pose he will not deny that the ranks of the
so-called ' fallen' (I say the ' driven ') are now to so
large an extent recruited from the educated classes,
from those classes which are aware of the culture
of the age ? I speak within my own knowledge
when I state that I have personally found, among
the throngs who nightly haunt such places as the
Empire and the Alhambra, women whose refine-
ment of manner and purity of accomplishment
would grace any drawing-room ; faces which not all
the fever of the gaslight could rob of the beauty
and distinction which come of gentle blood. A
generation ago these types did not exist on this
side of the Channel. But now, as the satirist
sings :
' Instead of Greece, whose lewd arts poisoned Rome,
The harlot France infects our island home !'
and the educated girl who discovers that she has
been brought up in a dead Faith, and turns her
early accomplishment to use in the secret study of
detrimental French novelists, soon loses the hallu-
cinations which kept her pure. She, too, discovers
that Divine sanctions are no longer needed. She,
too, finds that Pessimism is the only creed
thoroughly alive. Her father, possibly, is either
an open sceptic or a person who still accepts-
IS CHI VALR Y STILL POSSIBLE ? 219
religion because it is ' respectable.' Her brothers,
perhaps, are young men about town, from whom
she soon learns the argot of fast life. It is a
horrible thing to say in this connection, but I have
known many instances of pure young girls whose
minds first became polluted through the conversa-
tion of their own brothers.
Now, Chivalry, as I conceive it, and as I hope
and pray for it, might do something to remedy
this grievous state of things, on which I have
touched but very lightly. But Chivalry, unfortu-
nately, means Religion not necessarily the religion
of any creed or sect, but that large faith in a
Divine Power conditioning all we think and feel ;
and even that nebulous sort of religion, as we
know, is hard to find. Energetic Mr. Frederic
Harrison, contemptuous of an anthropomorphic
God, offered us his master's fetish, Humanity, the
Grand Eire, as a substitute, until quite lately a
ferocious Professor, not to be humbugged that
way, pulverised the Monster, to the general satis-
faction (see Professor Huxley's diatribe against
Positivism, passim). In all the conflict of the
new discovery that the moon is made, not of green
cheese, but of magnesium, there is not much time
for reverence ; and, unfortunately, the scientists
are even harder 011 Woman than the poets and
romancists. How, then, shall Chivalry arise ?
In one way only. Through the physical purifica-
tion of men. I am certainly not for turning the
220 JS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE!
world into a moral seminary, for eliminating from
life that Passion which alone, perhaps, lifts it
towards divinity. But the man who goes out into
the market-place to ~buy the body or the soul of a
woman is a leper, and as such he should be treated.
Put a label on his breast, put a clapper into his
hand, that all the world may know he is ' unclean/
My entire argument is that Man is the sinner here,
and that Woman is the martyr. I know well how
my good physician and physiologist, Mr. Worldly
Wiseman, will smile at my logic. From time
immemorial the Master has usurped the privileges
of sensuality, while the Slave has been forced to
acquiesce. Only when the master has become a
knight-errant, and has said to his ideal, ' Be pure,
and I will emulate, so far as my coarser nature
may, your purity ! Be good, and I will uphold
your goodness before the world !' then, and only
then, has Woman become glorified no longer a
Martyr, but a Madonna.
I have hinted pretty broadly at certain social
phenomena which I allege to be taking place in our
midst. Thousands of your readers, if they cared
to speak, could, I feel sure, corroborate me on such
points as the decay of self-respect in women owing
to male contamination, and as the want of Chivalry
or purity in the young men of their homes. With
what your correspondent says on the abominations
and absurdities of Naturalism I thoroughly agree ;
but I open my eyes in wonder when I find him
IS CHIVALR Y STILL POSSIBLE ? 221
classing Byron among the discoverers ' of the
great fact that Nature consists only of the hideous/
Byron was a romanticist pure and simple. He
discovered that the world and society were full of
shams, and he turned in gloomy pride to Nature,
to the mountains and the sea. Bitter things said
about mankind, sarcastic things said about the sex,
do not make a Pessimist in fact, Poetry and
Pessimism are antagonistic terms. Byron's idea
of Woman was not, perhaps, the highest, but it
was a high one, nevertheless, and I only wish we
had a few of his women now. To put the creator
of Haidee in the same pillory as the author of
' La Curee ' seems rough-and-ready justice indeed !
Byron, with all his thoughts, was a Man, and when
he revolted against what Mr. Morley justly calls
1 the piggish virtues of the Georges,' Nature re-
volted w r ith him and proclaimed him right. Had
he lived a little longer, he would have become,
perhaps, the noblest knight-errant that modern
Chivalry has seen.
I am, etc.,
ROBERT BUCHANAN.
NOTE ON THE PRECEDING. My question, 'Is
Chivalry still possible ?' elicited, in addition to the
letters of Mrs. Linton, a vast amount of cor-
respondence, occupying the columns of the Daily
Telegraph for some weeks. As usual, the dis-
cussion ended on the level to which all high things
222 IS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE?
fall in this country that of the comic paper ; and
there the question arrived at its reductio ad ab-
surdum, whether men who travelled in omnibuses
were still sufficiently chivalrous to get outside to
oblige a lady ? As a matter of fact, however, it
was found impossible, in the columns of a daily
journal, to touch the quick of the matter, which
chiefly concerned Prostitution, classed by me with
War, as one of the two hideous Sphynxes of modern
civilization.
I may remark in this contention that my state-
ments concerning the change of type among fallen
women, concerning the spread of social disease to
the higher classes of society, were corroborated by
innumerable private correspondents, as well as by a
letter of emphatic assent from the present Secretary
of the Lock Hospital.
By far the most important published communica-
tions were the letters from the pen of Mrs. Lynn
Linton, conveying as they did the anti-sentiment
of that large class of women which is moved alike
by the scientific spirit and the puritanical bias in
other words, by a desire to dogmatize in matters of
feeling, and to be severe on the weaknesses of
human nature. I do not dispute for a moment
that Mrs. Lynn Linton's ideal of womanhood is a
high one ; but it is an ideal based quite uncon-
sciously on the British ideal of commercial virtue.
Mrs. Linton sees in Woman only the type of
chastity and maternity ; I see in her the partner
JS CHIVALRY STILL POSSIBLE? 223
of Man's passion and Man's power. She sees a
domestic machine ; I see an ever-present inspira-
tion. She elevates conventional Chastity as the
highest of female virtues ; I see in it only the
unchastity of English legislation. She would limit
the sphere of woman's activity and energy ; I
would enlarge that sphere indefinitely. She has
spoken of the inexorable Laws of Human Nature,
and indirectly has drawn from these laws an in-
ference that Prostitution is a necessary evil ; I, on
the other hand, have affirmed that there are no
laws to turn man from a rational being into a
beast of the field, and have asserted that spurious
Chastity, the puritanical bias in ethics and in
legislation, is sacrificing the rights of one class of
human beings to the vices of another. We are
trying to appease the angry gods by a holocaust of
helpless women. That holocaust would be recog-
nised as what it is, an enormity, if women were
made more free and men became more pure. The
Passion of Love is not of necessity, as puritans
affirm, an unclean passion. It is the breath of
Heaven which sweetens and purifies every coarse
necessity of Earth.
IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM.
15
IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM.
A REJOINDER TO CRITICS.
FOR an article by the writer who still lives, I am
glad to find, to subscribe himself ' A. K. H. B.,'
' On certain Terms of Opprobrium ' would be a
felicitous title. Perhaps the most notorious
manufacturer of such terms was Carlyle, following 1
close in the wake of Goethe ; but the late Mr.
Arnold ran him very hard, inventing many catch-
words and nicknames which have passed into the
current vocabulary of journalism. For example,
everyone who did not agree with Mr. Arnold, or
who called a spade a spade, was a ' Philistine,'
and everyone who emulated him in the suppression
of vitality possessed ' sweetness and light.' ' An-
thropomorphism ' is another epithet much in vogue
with those writers who dislike the idea of a per-
sonal God ; it was invented for us, I fancy, by
Professor Tyndall. Well, an epithet, be it oppro-
brious or complimentary, is to be valued in pro-
portion to its aptness and suitably. Of course,
such terms are coarse and trivial enough, and need
152
228 IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM.
abundant qualification. Most living writers have
at one time and another, when uttering some
disagreeable truth, been called ' Philistines.' Some
of them, too, have been called ' Provincial ' a
term which has its antithesis in the other magni-
ficent term ' Cockney/ invented by Professor
Wilson, but applied with singular ineptitude to
the school of Keats and Leigh Hunt. In the
present article I purpose to appropriate this term,
and for the first time, I believe, to apply it
properly. For, as I have suggested, a term or a
nickname, to possess any force and durability, must
be felicitous. When Mr. Andrew Lang, in view of
certain expressions in a recent article, calls me
1 provincial,' the epithet has meaning. I am very
provincial, as I purpose to show, while showing,
at the same time, that Mr. Andrew Lang, though
Scottish by birth, is a Cockney of Cockneys.
For to be a Cockney, it is not after all necessary
to be born within the sound of Bow Bells ; the word
implies, not a nationality, but a temperament, an
environment, and a habit of mind. Charles Lamb
was a Cockney in the best and finest sense of the
word ; Hazlitt and Gifford were Cockneys in its
worst and earthiest sense. The true Cockney, like
the true Parisian, regards his own City as the
Centre of the Universe ; his own outlook as the
one outlook on life and literature ; his own taste
as the only taste to appreciate what is pleasant
and what is beautiful ; his own little pool of
IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM. 229
thought and feeling as the one Ocean where a man-
tadpole can comfortably push about. There has
never been a great Cockney, but there have been
shrewd and sagacious and delightful ones ; the
type rises as high as Ben Jonson and sinks as
low as ' Mr. Gigadibs.' The true ' Provincial/ on
the other hand, is considerably sceptical as to
the centralization of all thought and feeling, all
brilliance and all activity, in any particular city,
although, if he sinks very low, he may rather
incline to the opinion that the centralization should
take place in Birmingham, or Glasgow, or Stoke
Pogis, or Kilmarnock. He has no particular bias
towards any form of life or literature. For the
narrowness of personal taste he substitutes the
breadth of ideal principles, and is guided by those
principles. He moves about this merry England,
about the waters of the world, with a full con-
sciousness of his own insignificance, yet with no
disposition to take minnows and tadpoles for
leviathans or even bottle-nosed whales. He, in a
word, is ' free.' Shakespeare and Milton, Words-
worth and Byron, were glorified provincials. In
the great periods of literature the men of light
and leading have been Provincials always. In the
little periods, e.g., those of the Georges and
Queen Anne, the victorious writers have gene-
rally been Cockney to the marrow. But Richard-
son was a true Provincial, and so, thank heaven,
was Harry Fielding.
IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM.
Are we getting near to a definition ? If not,
we may get quite close to it as we go on, and
furnish contemporary illustrations. It is, by the
way, a very certain sign of provincialism to say
severe things of any contemporary, more particu-
larly if he is a Cockney. The Cockney way, the
way of ' sweetness and light,' is to take one's stand
apart, to say nothing personal, but to depreciate
by complacent innuendoes, and at any rate, if
fighting has to be done, to do it in kid gloves.
I can imagine nothing in literature more trivial
and more spiteful than the late Mr. Arnold's
comments on his contemporaries but Mr. Arnold
was jejune, and talked so much of ' culture ' that
many who read him thought him sweet instead of
bitter. Then, says the Cockney, if you must
attack, instead of taking your cakes and ale com-
fortably, for Heaven's sake attack only Things in
General, Things which are helpless and incapable
of self-defence ; it is very bad taste indeed to do
as Byron and Shelley did, and ( name ' your
Southeys and Castlereaghs. This, however, with
a reservation. If it is merely a ' provincial ' you
have to deal with, call him what names you like.
Call him, as they called Coleridge, a genius
manque. Call him, as they called Wordsworth,
a ' driveller,' a ' Lakist.' Call him, as they called
Christopher North, ' that damn'd Scotchman !'
The whole vocabulary is at your service. Call
him, if at a loss for an adjective, a scrofulous
IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM. 231
Scotch, or Irish, or Manx poet. And then, should
the poor Provincial, irritated by your ill-treatment
of him, retaliate by calling you a fleshly poet, or
a society journalist, or a chirpy smoking - room
critic, or a Bank-Holiday young man, you are
still free to hold up your hands and exclaim,
1 How provincial ! how ill-bred ! how barbarous !'
Your strong point is that the world in general still
confounds the Cockney with the Londoner, and
when the Cockney utters his fiat, is ready to accept
it as representative of the great Centre of Opinion.*
You are localized for the time being, you build
your little nest, in the Temple of all the Sciences
and all the Arts, London ; and so y if you are
noisy enough, the sound you make may seem,
not the caw of the jackdaw, but the voice of the
Oracle.
Let us understand, clearly, however, what we
mean by Cockney dom. It by no means follows
that a Londoner is necessarily a Cockney. Your
* On the other side of the Channel it is still the highest
possible compliment to call a man or an author * a true Parisian
of the Parisians.' Admiration even went so far as to apply the
compliment to Balzac and (mirabile dictu !) Victor Hugo. But
though Hugo himself said that Paris was France, and France
was the centre of the Universe, every line he wrote under inspi-
ration rebuked the absurdity. We are learning just now what
to be a c true Parisian ' means in literature ; it means simply to
be a boulevardier. A similar lesson is being taught us, here in
England, as to the true meaning of the word ' Cockney,' though
Cockneydom, of course, works by stealth towards imperialization,
instead of vaunting it grandiloquently.
232 IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM.
true Londoner, like your true American, is cos-
mopolitan ; he is fortunately very numerous,
and may still be found writing books, painting
pictures, editing newspapers. In many cases,
indeed, he is merely a transplanted provincial ;
in journalism, especially, the strength, the vigour
and intellectual capacity is constantly supplied
from the provinces ; and because journalists are
for the most part not Cockneys, but liberal
men of the world, some of our criticism is broad,
generous and fair. Cockney dom is to Cosmopo-
litanism what the Gironde was to Jacobinism. Its
philosophy is epicurean, its humour is persiflage,
its poetry is vers de societe, and its wisdom is the
wisdom of the clubs. Within its own little sphere
it is triumphant, because it suits well the tempera-
ment of men thoughtless by disposition and busy
in occupation. It has its libraries, its theatres, its
journals. It exchanges for a provincial worship of
Truth and Beauty, a lightsome admiration for the
pretty, the elegant, the comme il faut. It quite
objects to take life seriously. It regards Thought
itself as an almost disturbing influence. It occupies
itself with the manners of accomplished men and
nuances of well-dressed women. A glorified
Cockney is a sort of literary or artistic 'Buck'
of the period, exhibiting himself in the salon or the
club, showing to ordinary people the pink of literary
manners, and accepting with easy complacence life
as it really is, in London clubs. He has seen the
IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM. 233
sea at Scarborough and Margate, and he has seen
the mountains from the door of an hotel in
Switzerland. As the degenerate Roman copied
the elegancies of moribund Greece, the Cockney
frequently apes the affectations of honeycombed
France. He has the light literature of Paris at
his fingers' ends.
And what has this glorified being to tell us ?
About manners, much ; about those questions
which determine the thoughts and feelings of
aspiring men, nothing. His inclinations are light-
some and practical, and his injunction upon us
is that, since life and religion and philosophy are
all a muddle, it is best to exist comfortably, to
ask no more of Providence than a good dinner,
a cheerful friend, a pleasant, well-printed book,
a picture or two, a newspaper, and a charming
woman to flirt with upon occasion. His motto is
laissez aller. Pessimist and epicurean in one, he
regards all conduct that is not ill-bred with
equal sympathy ; with a ' one thing is as good
as another ' sort of criticism, forbearing in appear-
ance if fundamentally heartless. Great deeds and
great thoughts have no real interest for him, but
he has a cultivated appreciation of them on the
aesthetic side. ( For heaven's sake,' he says to us,
be calm ! Things may be very bad indeed, society
may be rotten to the core, London may be a
warren of the poor and wretched, but all this
is really not worth troubling about ; it will so soon
234 IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM.
be over ! To excite yourself over the loss of a
Religion is like crying childishly over the breaking
of a toy. To protest against public nuisances is
to make yourself a nuisance. The most disinter-
ested Man that ever lived, the Man who your
teachers tell you was Divine, has been a puritanical
Bore for nearly two thousand years, and his
preaching and prosing has all come to nothing !
You can't make the world better. You can't keep
the monkey-blood out of humanity. You can,
however, " sit apart, holding no form of creed,
but contemplating all." You can always find
a piano, or a flower, or a set of verses, or a bit
of scandal, or a pretty woman ; all of which make
life gladsome. And when it is all over, when the
lute is unstrung and the golden bowl is broken,
you can at least go comfortably to sleep P
I am obliged, in this connection, to proclaim my
belief that the man who, more than anyone who
ever lived, wrote most about the Metropolis, was
not a Cockney. The cheeriest of all humourists,
Charles Dickens, whom the true Cockney is so
fond of quoting and yet underrating, was awfully
and hopelessly provincial, and was frequently
reproached for the fact by the Saturday Review.
An idealist and a dreamer, he found in this great
City, not Cockneydom, but Fairyland, and he was
never tired of wondering at its piteous oddity and
delightful quiddity. Now a Cockney sees nothing
of all this, though it is all so near to him. Words-
IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM. 235
worth had to come up from Cumberland, at the
very time when every clique and coterie voted him
an utter failure, and when every Cockney literary
man professed total ignorance of and contempt for
his works, before the world could realize the beauty
and solemnity of the Dawn seen from Westminster
Bridge :
1 Dear Lord, the very houses seem asleep,
And all that Mighty Heart is lying still !'
That Mighty Heart ! which sends no pulsation
whatever through the veins of the contingent
poetaster. Why, it required even a poor Glasgow
poet, whom the Cockneys first welcomed and then
stoned and killed, to produce even the fine lines
describing London as :
* The terrible City, whose neglect is Death,
Whose smile is Fame !'
That Mighty Heart ! The Terrible City !
How felicitous, and yet how provincial ! No
Cockney has ever yet expressed in literature the
mystery and the awfulness of this London in the
shallows of which he sports. A fine old Cockney
once attempted it, and was told by his friends that
he was a great poet ; and indeed if all Cockneys
were like that honest, purblind, pertinacious,
prosaist, Samuel Johnson, how we should adore
the breed I But in those days a Cockney had not
discovered that ' there is no God,' and that Life
means comfortableness and prettiness. He had
236 IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM.
only began by discovering that the world is Fleet
Street, and that it is merry to hear the chimes at
midnight. The rest has followed in the usual way
of Evolution.
The great Cockney organ of opinion is still the
Quarterly Review. Many years ago the standard
of revolt was raised in Edinburgh by the Whigs,
and the Edinburgh Revieiv was started ; but a very
short time sufficed to show that this was, after all,
a Cockney organ too. Gifford and Jeffrey were
both arrant Cockneys. They cackled endless
praises to Byron because he was a lord, but there
was not a stainless reputation, not one flower of
original genius, they did not pollute and try to
kill. In their dotage, the good old Quarterlies,
once the watchmen of our literature, survive still,
but amid universal neglect or derision, as things
far too slow for the times. Poor old Dogberry
and Verges ! Lanthorn and clapper in hand they
pop out of their pigeon-boxes, and months after
the henroost is robbed and the house burned down,
utter their wheezy cries of ' Fox ' or ' Fire.' And
they are still Cockney to the marrow ; still cheer-
fully unconscious that the world is in earnest, still
ready to aim their paralytic blows at ' Deformed '
and other malefactors. Only yesterday, Dogberry
told us that Mr. John Morley was the inheritor
of the character and temperament of Rousseau !
The good old man had somehow muddled Rousseau
with ' Deformed,' and was quite unconscious that
IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM. 4.37
he was comparing an inspired Deist, the one writer
who kept the soul of men aflame when Rationalism
had almost blown it out, with a belated Hume
whose mind had been nurtured on the gospel of
the Hall of Science, who printed God with a small
1 g,' and who had descended from the azure of the
Savoyard Vicar's prayer into the atmosphere of
stump oratory. Only the other day, the same
asthmatic authority told us that Lord Tennyson
was ( no poet/
For Cockneydom to speak in the name of
London, then, is a preposterous impertinence.
The chirp of the sparrows which nest in the ear
of a stone Colossus is not likely to be mistaken
for the voice of the giant. Fortunately for free
thought, for literature, for art, for science, London
remains cosmopolitan. The great journals, with
notorious exceptions, are broad and eclectic. The
best writers for the press are men of the world,
many-sided, many-minded, free from the prejudices
of clique or class. The most popular actor of the
day, Mr. Irving, is so sublimely ' provincial ' as to
believe, in the very teeth of the Cockneydom which
never ceases to decry him, in the ideal side of the
Drama. Only very low down in the intellectual
scale is heard the clamour of the cliques, the voice
of eager Cockneydom.
If this article were political I might proceed to
point out the Cockney statesman and the Cockney
publicist. My readers, however, know them well,
238 IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM.
and so I need not particularize, save to say that
they have more than once imperilled the honour
and threatened the ruin of their country. A
thoroughly provincial politician, however, may be
quoted in the form of the late Mr. Bright, who
was abused throughout his whole career for his
anti-Cockney proclivities, who never feared to speak
his mind, and who was guided from first to last
by solid principles. It may be remarked here,
in this connection, that on great public questions
involving the progress of humanity and the rights
of minorities, Cockneydom is nearly always on the
wrong side, and generally the last to be converted.
It was a great Cockney organ, the Times, which
steadily upheld the South almost to the bitter end,
when all sane men saw the inevitable issue of the
conflict between Nationality and barbaric Revolt
in the United States of America. It was the
same organ which, to damage a forlorn cause and
destroy a martyred Nation, instituted an infamous
prosecution against the Perseus of Ireland, Parnell.
In Cockneydom alone the god St. Jingo has found
idolaters. Mere provincials have passed him by
with contempt or indifference, and turned from the
clash of cymbals and the battle-cry of eunuchs to
the teachings of wisdom and the humanitarian
sentiment of virile men.
Yet Cockneydom, not content with metropolitan
or even national triumphs, hungers to become
imperial, to possess, like Great Britain, an Empire
IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM. 239
on which the sun never sets. For example, so far
as current literature is concerned, its missionaries
have completely converted, while its central powers
have complacently annexed, the distant city of
Boston. Mr. Henry James has become a Cock-
ney. So has Mr. Howells, in spite of his contempt
for Dickens. Through the cult of Cockney-
dom, spreading through mysterious channels of
journalism, people yonder are beginning to think
dubiously about those good old Puritan fathers,
Whittier, Emerson, and Longfellow, and to
welcome with complacence the dii minores of the
Savile Club. In New York, and as far away as
Chicago, Cockney dom spreads its propaganda ; so
effectually, indeed, that young men have given no
ear to the ' barbaric yawp ' of Whitman, know not
even the name of Hermann Melville,^ and have
found little fascination in the Idylls of Dudley
Warner or Charles Warren Stoddard. Of course,
I know Americans too well to believe that the
Gospel according to Cockney dom, expressed in easy
essay isni and patter- versification, will ever do for
them. It fills certain of their magazines, but to
* When I went to America my very first inquiry was concern-
ing the author of 'Typee,' ' Omoo,' and 'The White Whale.'
There was some slight evidence that he was ' alive/ and I heard
from Mr. E. C. Stedman, who seemed much astonished at my
interest in the subject, that Melville was dwelling ' somewhere in
New York,' having resolved, on account of the public neglect of
his works, never to write another line. Conceive this Titan
silenced, and the bookstalls Hooded with the illustrated magazines.
240
IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM.
these, in reality, they pay no serious attention.
Omnivorous readers, they devour everything ; free
cosmopolitans, they accept in a friendly way even
Cockney missionaries ; but as the future masters
of the world, they are certain never to be annexed
en masse. Nearer home, at Paris, imperial
Cockneydom is likely to be more successful. Very
busy there has been the good Apostle, James, and
we find the Cockneys of Paris dedicating books to
him and writing articles about Cockneydom in the
Revue des Deux Mondes. My acquaintance with
the missionary reports of the new religion is not
intimate enough to enable me to say whether any
Cockneys have been converted in Tasmania or
New South Wales ; but I met a Parsee the other
day who confided to me his belief that all religions
except Epicureanism were equally nonsensical, and
that the greatest of English poets was Mr. Austin
Dobson.^
My article on the Modern Young Man as Critic
has at least done something. It has drawn Mr.
Andrew Lang, a very typical Cockney, from the
obscurity of his club and the anonymous sanctities
of his daily and weekly journals. Gently and not
ill-naturedly, calmly and not angrily, he chides me
(in the St. James's Gazette) for ' discourtesy/ for
* Here followed in the original article a description of Mr.
Lang's lecturing visit to Scotland, in which, by following certain
newspaper reports and comments, I appear to have exaggerated
or mistaken Mr. Lang's utterances. I therefore suppress the
passage.
IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM. 241
(in House of Commons fashion) i naming ' parti-
cular offenders. He knows no man knows better
that the covert sneer, the lifted shoulder, the
smug innuendo, the depreciating smile, are far more
a la mode than plain speaking and rushing into
print. The former, however, has never been my
method of warfare ; I leave it to the cheery pessi-
mists, and the prophets of modern Nepotism. I
call a spade a spade with the Philistines, and a
Cockney a Cockney with the provincials. For Mr.
Andrew Lang personally I have no little respect.
He is a gentleman and a scholar, and in certain
moments, when he forgets his newspaper and his
club, a poet. I have still ringing in my ears
certain lines of his about the ' Iliad ' and the
' Odyssey ' lines full of the swing of the early
periods of literature. Yet I am going to arraign
him on the very score of his natural abilities and
literary gifts. ' Sir,' I say to him, after the
manner of a certain famous justice of the peace,
' you are clever, well-educated, able-bodied, intel-
lectual, instead of which you go about disguised as
a Cockney.' I blame him not, as others have
blamed him, for now and then showing the courage
of his opinions. I am with him even when he
vindicates the ( imagination ' of Mr. Rider Haggard,
and holds that one gleam of creative power atones
for a host of small technical imperfections. Never,
in my wildest moments, should I condemn him for
his occasional courage, My charge against him,
16
242 IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM,
of course, would rather convict him of consti-
tutional literary cowardice, of chronic anxiety to
keep out of brawls and take things ' easy,' of urbane
freedom from anything like real enthusiasm in a
word, of a desire, at the hazard of all disingenuous
suppressions, to ' get comfortably along.' Even now,
I apologize with all my heart for disturbing him in
his pet studies of linguistic ' origins ' and the
manners of primeval Man. But he is a journalist
as well as a scholar, a clubman as well as a student,
and in a moment of distraction he has put on his
' war-paint ' and fingered his tomahawk. ' Is this
a free fight ?' asked the pugnacious American.
Quite free ; and it is indeed a pleasure to find that
Mr. Andrew Lang, not content with indulging in
cynical l asides ' in the Daily Neivs and elsewhere,
has stepped out, armed at all points, to join the
fray. He, above all men, was the one we of the
opposite faction wished to meet. To attack him
without some personal provocation, I, for one, had
hardly the heart, for despite his literary offences he
has often been kindly to a fault. Now that he
himself has voluntarily come forward, there can be
no harm (and I am sure there will be no bitter-
ness) in touching on certain matters in which he
has urgent personal concern.
But before I join issue with Mr. Lang on these
matters, let me refer to one or two points of his
criticism of my article. I may pass on one side
his suggestion that the same charge as mine was
IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM. 243
brought against the young men of the last genera-
tion ; that is a suggestion easily met by a reference
to the literature of the eigh teen-sixties. His first
serious assumption is that I ought not to have
' mentioned individuals,' or have ' called them
names.' My reply to that has been given ; my
charge was specific, not general. Mr. Lang goes
on to say that about several of the gentlemen
I denounce one ' may easily be silent,' as ' it is not
given to everyone to keep up with current litera-
ture.' Very characteristic this, as we shall see
later on, of an author who, more than most of us,
watches every swirl and current of the literary tide.
Of course Mr. Lang knows these gentlemen as
well as I do, but they do not belong to his i set/
and he has no particular call to defend them. He
then goes on to say that M. Bourget, though he
may be a ridiculus mus, can ' interest us, in spite
of everything '; and he adds, lightly, that ' M.
Bourget has " done a murder very well indeed, with
pleasing circumstances of good taste." Here
again, as we shall see, is characteristic levity in
dealing with a serious accusation. Mr. Lang then
defends Mr. James, and vows that he has written
at least four admirable novels. I do not think that
I denied Mr. James's cleverness ; I said, indeed,
that he was very clever. My charge was that he
was superfined to the point of indetermination, that
he became feeble from supreme good taste and
overweening catholicity. My critic, then, with
162
244
IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM.
growing irritation, refers to Mr. Robert Louis
Stevenson, a valuable reference, as we shall see.
I called Mr. Stevenson ' a hard-bound genius
in posse '; by which I meant that he was a genius
who had never expressed himself in creative work,
although Mr. Lang and his friends have attached
noisy importance to every one of his callow flights
in literature. Mr. Lang refers me triumphantly to
1 Kidnapped ' and ' Treasure Island/ two excellent
books for boys, and (as a proof that this cannot
be the period when l all young men never have
dreamed a dream or been children ')* to 'A Child's
Garden of Verse. 7 I am loath to say one word
in deprecation of the praise Mr. Stevenson has
received from his contemporaries ; personally, he
deserves it all for modest gentleness and persistent
work ; and the exaggeration of his performances
would matter little if every such exaggeration did
not mean the neglect of young writers at least
equally deserving. The late Mr. Jefferies, who
was a genius in esse, had to die miserably before
the fact of his genius was discovered ; and for
every word of praise he gained, Mr. Stevenson
received a thousand. Mr. Lang, in his reckless
light-heartedness, has actually talked of the author
of l Treasure Island ' in the same day with Walter
Scott, but he has refrained from informing the
reader of such trifling matters as the bodily theft
of the young writer's leading character, the one
* Of course I said nothing of the kind.
IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM. 245
striking character in the book, viz., the blind man,
out of the pages of l Barnaby Rudge.' For the
rest, ' Treasure Island,' excellent as it is, is a story
of ' reminiscences ' of better stories ; at its best, it
is worthy (though that, indeed, is no little honour)
of Mr. R. N. Ballantyne ; but work so trivial can
never justify the serious language used concerning
it by nepotic criticism. The ' Child's Garland of
Verse ' is another matter ; as poor and made-up a
matter, from any child's point of view, as one can
well conceive ; and yet it has been treated as the
work of a poet. The late James Thomson, who
died miserable and neglected only a little while ago
in the casual ward of a London hospital, and who
wrote poetry which will live, would never have
died, perhaps, so miserably, if he had received one
modicum of the encouragement vouchsafed to Mr.
Stevenson. Mr. Lang goes on to say that the
value of my criticism may be estimated by my
casual references to writers of another age, and of
more settled reputation. I call Theophile Gautier
1 insufferable ' Theophile, ' the joy of youth/
Heaven help the youth of whom this extraordinary
stylist, who treats the flesh like a porkbutcher, and
makes love like a cony of the burrows, is to be the
joy ! Since Mr. Lang has faith in the ' golden
book of spirit and sense, the Holy Writ of Beauty/
I leave him to his religion. Again, I have said
that Zola is a dullard au fond ; and so I hold him
to be in spite of all his genius (which I was among
246 IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM.
the very first to praise), and so I hold every man
to be who believes, au fond, that baseness and
bestiality predominate in human life and character.
I called this pessimism ' dulness/ and sought no
harsher term.
A criticism of Mr. Arnold as a poet would be out
of place here. What I said of him dead T said long
ago of him living. He was a poet when he wrote
t Thyrsis ' and ' The Strayed Reveller.' He was
no longer a poet when he perpetrated his verses in
unrhymed Heinesque ; when he compared the
receding tide at Dover to the receding Sea of
Faith, and could find nothing better to say of a
sublime Humourist than that ' the World smiled,
and the smile ivas Heine? This may be criticism
of life, but it is neither poetry nor even decent
imagery. Au reste, Mr. Arnold forgot that Poetry,
so far from being a dilettante's opinion or
' criticism ' of life, is the very Spirit of Life itself.
We shall get into deep waters if we discuss in
detail the correctness or incorrectness of my opinions
on literature. They have one poor merit they
are at least my own. If Mr. Lang wishes to
understand them (and no man is better able if he
will try), he will learn that from my point of view
literary accomplishments are nothing, and literary
fame is less than nothing, when they do not imply
that spiritual insight which I believe to be the one
prerogative and proof of genius. I am not at all
what Mr. Lang calls me, a virtuous person. I am
IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM. 247
not at all what he implies me to be, a person who
makes it a condition that anyone to be worthy of
admiration must agree with a certain view of life
and ethics. I find the spiritual insight I demand
in Herbert Spencer as well as Dr. Martineau, in
Walt Whitman as well as Lord Tennyson, in the
late Mr. Darwin as well as Faraday, in Byron as
well as the late Mr. Longfellow, in Burns as well as
Keble, in Mr. Bradlaugh as well as Mr. Gladstone.
I do not find this insight in any thinker who has
a retrograde, or a contemptuous, or a dilettante
view of human nature. I sit at the feet of no
bogus reputation, however magnificent ; worship
no idols, however bedizened by criticism ; follow
no particular religion, and assume no particular
morality. My cardinal literary crime, up to the
present moment, is that I do not worship Goethe ;
that I hold him to be, with certain qualifications,
a tedious, a tiresome, and a dilettante writer ; an
opinion based, not upon i The Grand Coptha ' and
his voluminous miscellanies, but on his popular
masterpieces. Thus it is clear I am not a hero-
worshipper, that I reverence no qualities in a writer
or in a man but Truth and Goodness. All this, I
am aware, is highly provincial, but I am a pro-
vincial, riot a Cockney. If Mr. Andrew Lang can
give as good reasons for his prepossessions as I can
for every one of mine, he has my sincere congratu-
lation. They will be far more valuable to him in
a worldly point of view, since, unlike mine, they
248 IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM.
will facilitate his philosophy of easy acquiescence,
general discretion, and 'jogging comfortably along.'
Let us touch now in this connection on another
question directly connected with the subject of the
present article. There is no charge which so
seriously affects the character of a contemporary,
whether he be politician, poet, artist, or general
man of letters, as that of Nepotism. Nepotism
is congenital Trades Unionism ; it is, in other
words, an attempt in criticism at Over-legislation,
or Providence made Easy to those who believe in
a literary Providence. Often, when proven, it has
caused the fall of a great statesman ; and I see no
reason why it should not wreck the reputation of
a small critic, or small body of critics. In litera-
ture it is a cruel crime, since it means the exalta-
tion of mediocrity, and the perversion of the rising
generation. Nepotism is the poison of which such
men as Keats and Coleridge, as Richard Jefferies
and James Thomson, miserably died. Read the
life of Coleridge. Read the words which were
written by the cliques of that great and good man
up till a few months before his death, and note en
passant that Blackwood's Magazine, which labelled
him at the height of his living achievement as a
dotard and a driveller, honoured him on his decease
a few months afterwards as the greatest of English
writers ! Nepotism, of course, does not kill strong
men. Wordsworth, we know, survived its endless
persecution. But the weak, too gentle man, the
IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM. 249
struggling writer, the genius out of tune with the
times, perishes by it daily. What comfort is it to
him who starves for bread, who hungers for a little
praise, who saddens for a kindly word, to be told
that neglect and insult are the historic credentials
of originality, and that he who does not humour
and pander to the Cockney cliques must be perse-
cuted by them ? So long as little men band to-
gether, Cockney dom and Nepotism will always
flourish. To be outside their barriers is to be a
4 provincial.' To be within them, at the present
moment, is to be a ' Cockney.' Pass the word
round : Trades Unionism is rampant, and if the
non-union man is not discharged, the unionists of
criticism will strike en masse. We have to ask
ourselves, therefore, if Cockneydom is to prevail
in Literature, while it fails so miserably, as it has
failed on every great occasion, in Politics, while it
gains only a precarious and a doubtful victory in
Art and even Science ?
It is, as many contend, a small affair, a miserable
affair, and he who comes forward to discuss it will
doubtless be set down, as every reformer has been
set down, as cantankerous. What does it matter,
after all, how a few light-hearted gentlemen com-
bine to criticise or ignore their contemporaries ?
That l no man was ever written down, save by
himself,' is the truest of all sayings. But in the
meantime f At the beginning of this century
Wordsworth was busily ' writing himself down ' ;
250 IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM.
so even was the prodigious Goethe, if we may
trust the Edinburgh Review, just before Carlyle
rushed in to ' write him up/ and to find in
* Wilhelm Meister ' not a tawdry didactic essay,
but a ' masterpiece/ Is it not a little hard that
mediocrity plus Nepotism should have all the cakes
and ale, while originality plus dissent should be
denied even a little bread ? It is the weak, the
unknown, the non-unionist, who suffer most by
Cockneydom. If only for their sakes, it is worth
inquiring how far literature is now suffering from
the old disease.
There appeared some little time ago in a leading
monthly review an article which caused the
initiated infinite amusement ; so naive, so out-
spoken, so fresh and yet florid, was its impudence,
so specious was its pleading on behalf of the gospel
of literary trades unionism, that more than one
reader exclaimed : ' Nepotism is at last to be vindi-
cated as a literary religion ; there are, after all,
many gods, and Mr. Andrew Lang is their
prophet.' We all knew the chirpy Prophet well ;
admired him for his abundant cleverness, liked him
for his easy good temper, even when we most
wondered at his temerity. He was one among
a group of light-hearted and feather-brained gentle-
men who had come to the conclusion that literature
is not literature, but high jinks ; who had adopted
the moral philosophy of Mr. Puif and the worldly
wisdom of Mr. Dangle, and who were resolved to
IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM. 251
exchange for the freedom of pure letters the trades
unionism of a social club. Working out in practice
a well-known theory of the great Balzac, that a
dozen bold and unscrupulous writers might easily
conquer criticism and occupy all its bastions, by
religiously banding together and working for each
other in and out of season, these gay fellows had
for at least a dozen years been working hard for a
common apotheosis ; and the result had fully justi-
fied the great Frenchman's theory. True, there
had been moments of peril and hesitation ; heart-
burnings and backslidings caused by the occasional
obtrusion of individual vanity and selfishness ; but
on the w r hole the spiriting had been done so cun-
ningly and so cleverly, the anonymous system of
criticism had been utilized so judiciously, that the
reading public or at least the Cockney portion of
it had been converted to the belief that England
was labouring under an absolute plethora of original
genius nay, even America had been invaded, and
Boston itself had paraded in its newspapers and
magazines the likenesses of the new gods of litera-
ture. Great little poets, great little novelists, great
little essayists, great little critics and journalists,
swarmed on the walls of our modern Babylon ;
helping each other up, praising each other's
prowess, singing each other's songs, sharing with
each other the hot ginger of ambition, and
chuckling to one another over their adventurous
feats of warfare. Well, it was magnificent, but it
252 IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM.
was not war at all. It was the mere skirmishing
of Nepotism. It needed only one piece of sound
artillery to put all the skirmishers to rout, and,
strangely enough, the Prophet of the new religion
provided that same artillery, and by bungling
turned it upon his own friends, when he recklessly
opened fire from the masked battery of 'Our
Noble Selves.'*
Let me now turn aside from the personal ques-
tion to one broader and more cosmopolitan. My
article on ' The Young Man as Critic ' elicited,
among many other comments, one in the editorial
columns of the Daily Telegraph, in which the
writer, while expressing sympathy with my views
in general, objected that I was somewhat unjust to
the higher work of my contemporaries. I therefore
wrote and published a letter, under the title l Is
Chivalry Still Possible ?'t pointing out that the issue
involved affected the whole fabric of modern society,
and more particularly the moral and social status
of the two sexes. The Cockney pessimist, I con-
tended, had poisoned the wells of life and literature
to such an extent that Chivalry, by which I implied
the old-fashioned faith in female purity and good-
ness, was, like other religions, fast passing away.
The discussion raged for some little time, but of
the many letters which appeared on the subject,
scarcely one dealt logically, or even instructedly,
* See the Fortnightly Review.
f See ante, the section under that head.
IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM. 253
with my main contention. As usual, also, the
subject had to be expurgated of all objectionable
matter ; for I had touched on what is known as
the Great Social Evil, asserting that its existence
was the shame of civilization. The remedy I sug-
gested was a higher standard of purity on the part
of men a remedy which every Cockney regarded
with supreme derision. I took the sentimental
view the provincial view which still regards
' seduction ' as the great factor of public immorality,
and I proclaimed my sympathy with the martyred
class. At this point I had to join issue with Mrs.
Lynn Linton, a lady who is intellectually an honour
to her sex, but who has unfortunately sided with
those who are sceptical as to the powers of woman-
hood. Mrs. Linton dubbed me roundly a ' senti-
mentalist/ and scouted the idea that women were
to be l coddled ' and persuaded that they were
superior beings. But my fair antagonist, like the
rest, entirely lost sight of the premisses on which
my argument had started viz., that the true cause
of feminine deterioration was masculine corruption,
and that the real cause of masculine corruption was
the omnipresent want of faith in spiritual, or in
other words religious, ideals. I contended, more-
over, and I again contend, that a man has no right
to set up for a woman any personal standard of
thought or conduct by which he is unable or un-
willing to measure himself. If women are to be
pure, I said, let men be pure too. I did not mean
254 IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM.
by purity the negation of human passion. Unfor-
tunately, in the artificial atmosphere of Cockneydom
any man who professes to be a logician is liable to
be set down as a Puritan even a ' prig'; and so I,
who never had any virtue to speak of, who profess
no particular personal piety, was taunted with being
a virtuous and a pious person a taunt which, if it
had been applicable, would certainly have been
complimentary. All I held was that men who are
notoriously impure themselves have no right to
persecute the individuals who minister to their im-
purity ; that the man whose life is (as Goethe said
of his walk) a series of falls, has no right to despise
the woman whom he drags down with him. And
yet, as everyone is aware, all the onus mali falls on
the weaker sex falls more especially on her whom
I designated, after a Divine Ideal, the Magdalen.
With curious want of logic, Mrs. Lynn Linton
identified my Magdalen with the depraved, drunken,
besotted creature of the streets and the gin-shops,
battered by misery out of all human likeness ;
whereas the true Magdalen is the woman who, in
spite of all physical degradation, brings her peni-
tence, the spikenard and myrrh of her spiritual
yearning, to the feet of a Redeemer. The modern
pessimist contends that this Magdalen is an impossi-
bility that the true original is even as himself,
evil because evil is of the very essence of her
nature ; and Mrs. Lynn Linton, a pure woman, a
good woman, and a woman (I am sure) who is
IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM. 255
generous and loving to a fault, sides herself, I am
grieved to say, with the modern pessimist.
Chivalry, as I understand it, is (l) the belief
that the moral temperament of women is superior
to that of men, and (2) that men should regulate
their social conduct by the laws feminine insight
has discovered. ^ Of course, this belief goes right
in the face of modern Pessimism, not to say modern
Science. A grim young pessimist confided to me
only the other day his belief that there were no
really 'good' women except 'fools' i.e., unintel-
lectual persons ; and this belief is very common.
Science fortifies it by asserting that woman has a
smaller brain, a narrower understanding, than man ;
that in her case the sexual evolution dwarfs and
narrows the mental evolution at every stage. And
Mrs. Linton, herself a woman whose intellectual
gifts it would be difficult to parallel among men
a woman who is careful to tell us that she has
fulfilled all feminine functions and duties scoffs at
the equality of the sexes with the very accomplish-
ment which refutes her theory ! Surely, some less
disqualified person, not a woman of genius, should
tell us that a woman unsexes herself when she
* I was delighted to note that Mr. Pinero, in a recent play,
1 The Profligate/ upheld this view, but unfortunately he con-
ciliated the Cockneys by his catastrophe, and made the pure
woman, as usual, give her profligate a clean bill of domestic
health. Reverse the positions, and how criticism would protest !
Yet I cannot understand for the life of me how any average man
can dare to pronounce judgment on any woman, however fallen.
256 IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM.
measures herself against man, and demands from
him equal rights and equal privileges ! My own
experience is that intellectual culture, so far from
making women hard and rectangular, almost in-
variably deepens their insight and makes them
more spiritual. If it occasionally renders them
' masculine/ it only does in the inverse ratio what
it does to some men, by rendering them, in the bad
sense, feminine. Intellectual culture, whether in
man or woman, is the poorest and meanest of all
accomplishments when it is not coincident with
spiritual development. What is called culture is
often only another word for narrow-mindedness, for
dilettantism. If a human being does not become
better and wiser through what he or she knows,
the knowledge is practically worthless. Super-
natural cleverness did not create in Goethe the
enthusiasm of Humanity, but it created it in
Schiller and Richter, who were infinitely less
' clever,' infinitely less * knowing/
Chivalry, however, is, as I have discovered, quite
provincial . Imperial Cockney dom will have none of
it. The Cockney, with Mr. Podsnap and the editor
of Truth, puts all moral difficulties behind him ; the
discussion of the wrongs of women is l unsavoury';
the great journal which opened its columns to that
discussion was i pandering to a morbid appetite, in
order to increase its circulation.' Elsewhere, in less
discredited quarters, there is the same prurient ten-
dency to ' hush up ' those agitations which imperil
IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM. 257
the moral status of men. If you vindicate Marion
de Lorme, you asperse directly or indirectly the
character of the Cardinal, with a possible innuendo
concerning the King himself ! The Cockney senti-
ment a sentiment existing wherever Cockneydom
prevails appears to be, that open discussion is in-
expedient, and that, if left alone, the world (with
Mr. Lang) can 'jog comfortably along.' Of course,
there is a possibility of such revelations being made
as absolutely corrupt and poison the atmosphere
they assume to clear; and this was notoriously
exemplified a short time ago. * Unto the pure all
things are pure ' is true enough as applied to grown
men and women, whose purity is a matter of degree ;
but many things which are pure enough from our
point of view are utterly impure from the point of
view of a maiden or a child. ' The young person ' is
a fact, even in the exaggerated caricature of a Miss
Podsnap ; and her innocence is also a fact, with
which even a publicist should reckon.
Perhaps, when all is said and done, there is a
dash of the ' Cockney ' in us all ; in all of us, at
any rate, who have lived in the great cities, and
known little of the solitudes. I myself can
remember being very much shocked at Mr.
Bradlaugh when he first uttered those diatribes
which earned him so unenviable a name, and I
could not at once realize that I was listening to
the best music in the world, the voice of an honest
man. Cockneyism, after all, is only self-righteous-
17
25 8
IMPERIAL COCKNEYDOM.
ness arid self-conceit, using a flippant vocabulary to
cover envy, hate, and all uncharitableness. Cock-
neyism, imperialized, is completed social and literary
vanity, extending from a metropolitan centre to
organizations all over the earth. Yet the gospel
of ' jogging comfortably along,' the art of conven-
tional veneer, the methods of Nepotism, have always
been more or less sanctioned by Society, while the
bold Provincialism which calls things by their true
names, and is always over-ready for martyrdom,
has never been, and never will be, either profitable
or fashionable.
IS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT
ETERNAL ?
172
IS THE MAKRIAGE CONTRACT
ETERNAL ?
To the Editor of the 'Daily Telegraph."
SIR,
Mr. Gladstone's ideas on the subject of
' Marriage and Divorce/ as set forth in the current
number of the North American Review, have been
familiar to us all ever since the publication of his
paper on the same subject which appeared among
the l Ecclesiastical Essays.' For my own part,
much as I dissent from the views expressed, I
honour and reverence them, as symbolic of a per-
fectly stainless and beautiful wedded life. I know
that every word they contain comes from the
bottom of one of the kindest hearts beating on this
planet, and in presuming to correct so apostolic a
person as Mr. Gladstone, a man who belongs to
the high-priesthood of human nature, I am re-
strained by no little reverence and affection. But
I know well, as all sane men must know by this
time, that this great leader would prefer to any
half-hearted acquiescence a firm yet respectful con-
tradiction. ' Great is the truth, and it must
262 IS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL?
prevail/ has been his watchword throughout his
life/ and he will forgive now, for the Truth's sake,
the denial of one who sympathizes, but who is not
a disciple.
Veiled in the golden cloud of a happy destiny,
crowned with the lilies and roses of that perfect
conjugal peace which Swedenborg justly thought
the noblest blessing of human life, Mr. Gladstone,
confident of his individual happiness, forgets the
conditions of human nature. His appeal to Christian
documents, his erudite citation of the Christian
Fathers, to prove a point which can only be estab-
lished by human Science, may be gently set aside
for the present as irrelevant. To contend upon
Biblical evidence that Marriage is a Contract for
Eternal Life, never to be entered into with a new
individual after bodily and spiritual separation from
another, is not much more tenable than to hold
carnal Love itself a thing to be avoided because
the Apostle Paul rebuked the fleshly appetites and
held matrimony only a little better than concu-
piscence. Surely that Protestantism which Mr.
Gladstone loves so well decided long ago that
human Conscience is superior to any constituted
authority ; and surely also Free-Thought, the heir
male of Protestantism, has convinced us at last that
Knowledge is antecedent to, and supreme over, the
domination of any Documents. As I have else-
where written, the man who says that a Book can
corrupt his Soul ranks his Soul lower than a Book ;
75 THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL* 263
and even when a Book is wise beyond the possibility
of corruption, it is poorer and feebler at best than
the human inspiration out of which it came. Unless
the sun of human intelligence, like the sun of
Joshua, has stood and is standing still, the later
inspiration must supplement the earlier, and the
Bible of Humanity remain incomplete, until many
another Book is written. Generations ago Milton
added to it one luminous page that in which,
starting from Mr. Gladstone's side of the compass,
he vindicated the right of Divorce in the name
of the Christian documents ; and Milton, were he
living now, had he learned what Man knows now,
would have uttered truer, though not mightier,
words in the name of human inspiration.
For surely, the hour has come when the rights
and needs of human nature are no longer to be
decided by the straggling traditions, the vagrant
and often feeble utterances, of those who were
Martyrs and Apostles of Liberty once, but who,
were they living now, and waging the same conflict
against social science, would be regarded as fit sub-
jects for Bedlam. Since the age of St. Athanasius
we have had the age of St. Servetus, whom I, for
my own part, value more highly than most saints
in the Church's Calendar. We have drained our
cities, reformed our manners, invented soap as an
adjunct to water, and become, if a little less
credulous of documents, a great deal more tolerant
to Inspiration. The Poet and the Philosopher may
264 75 THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL?
now get in a word occasionally in the intervals
of pastoral homilies and domiciliary exhortations.
True, many of our discoveries, and a little even of
our inspiration, are of comparatively small value.
To find magnesium in the moon is perhaps not
much more precious than to ascertain, with Panurge,
that the moon is made of green cheese ; while to
establish the caudal ancestry of man is merely to
corroborate the irony of Voltaire, and to verify the
fanciful flights of Lord Monboddo. Even Goethe's
discovery of the intermaxillary bone, though pre-
cious to sheer scientists, has had very little effect
on human knowledge. A larger and certainly less
doubtful discovery is the quasi-legal one that no
contracts are really binding when the very nature
of a contract is unintelligible to the contracting in-
dividuals ; and since, pace Christian documents, the
Marriage Contract is very seldom made in Heaven,
and is very frequently entered into by practically
irrational persons, the corollary of our discovery in
this direction is that such a Contract as Marriage
should certainly not be eternal.
To argue this part of the question thoroughly out
would far transcend the limits of a brief letter. Far
more important to the present issue is Mr. Glad-
stone's extraordinary suggestion that the laxness of
public opinion on the subject of the Marriage Con-
tract is the main cause of the loose morals of Modern
Society ! Even here, up to a certain point, I am
with the modern apostle. I believe true Marriage
fS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL 1 * 265
to be in its very nature Divine, but that is only
another way of saying that conjugal Love is of
necessity eternal. Well has it been said that ' he
who loves once can never love again.' Perfect love
between man and woman means complete fusion of
two beings into one immortal Soul. But when this
Love comes and it does come, since miracles are
daily wrought we do not talk any longer of a
contract ; it is abolished, it has vanished ; for the
parties to it have no separate identity they are
' Two souls with but a single thought,
Two hearts that beat as one.'
Unfortunately, however, the miracle, if it happens
at all, only happens once in a life -time, and after,
in the majority of cases, many episodes of dis-
hallucination. Are we to be told, in the face of
experience, of reason, of knowledge in ourselves
and around us, that, because a man or a woman
has blindly signed one contract, has reached out
loving arms and clasped only corruption, has
awakened from a dream of Heaven to the realiza-
tions of an Inferno, that he or she is to be
precluded for ever from that moral redemption
which Love alone can give ? Through the im-
perfection of even our present civilization many
individuals commit in lawful marriage an innocent
and pitiful adultery. Is the sin so committed, by
those who in thought are sinless, to be ratified, to
be eternalized and christened ' holy,' by any
so-called Law of God, by any belated Spectres
266 fS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL?
of the Apostles ? Is eternal solitude, eternal
isolation from all that makes life beautiful, eternal
misery and shame, to be the portion of the creature
who has been blinded, who has been hoodwinked,
who has been charmed by Circe, poisoned treach-
erously by the Siren, polluted shamefully by the
Satyr ? If Christianity had taught this, it would
have long ago been cold and dead as the stones
of the Sepulchre. It has not taught, and it does
not teach it. At its highest point of aspiration
it embraces and uplifts, instead of corrupting,
misleading, and destroying, poor human nature.
It teaches us that the one Divine thing in
Humanity is Love. It convinces us that when
Love attains its apogee, it is not when stooping to
sign a contract, but when soaring to an apotheosis.
If the morals of modern society are lax (as Mr.
Gladstone premises, and as may possibly be the
case), it is precisely because we have elevated
Marriage, as an institution, as a contract, and have
lowered the standard of conjugal Love ; it is because
there has come, following Man's conventional scorn
of Woman, Woman's revolt against and contempt
for Man. I do not myself believe that Humanity
has suffered in the least from the clear laws of
Rationalism ; I do believe that it has suffered, and
is still suffering, from the miasma of moral Super-
stition. I have no respect whatever for the
Marriage Contract, for any contract, per se. I
want first to know the character of the contracting
IS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL! 267
parties, and their physical and spiritual relation to
each other. When asthmatic January weds buxom
May, I know the wedding-bells are being rung by
the Devil. When two mistaken Souls embrace in
the sanctuary, and discover sooner or later that
Nature never meant them to mingle into one, I
say, l Tear that blundering contract ; put the poor
creatures back to back, and let them inarch, far as
the ends of earth, from one another.' When one
Soul turns apart in cold disdain, and another Soul
vainly tries to draw it back, I think ' all this is
hopeless say the sad word, Farewell.' For
unless a union of Souls is consecrated by Love,
that union is an embrace of dead branches on two
withering trees. Shall the light and the dew and
the pure air fall on neither and for ever ? Set
the trees asunder, and each may grow ; the
eglantine shall come to one and the woodbine to
the other, and both may become green and glad
in the garden of the World.
True Marriage, indeed, is but the symbol
(beautiful, like all symbols of things spiritual) of
which the reality is Love. But reason teaches
us, experience warns us, that there may be a
symbol for things bodily as well as one for things
spiritual. To the great majority of human beings
the marriage contract means no more than a pledge
to be kind and faithful, to resist temptation, to
fulfil gently and affectionately the duties of the
household. Such a contract is excellent, and
268 SS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL?
suffices for the needs of large classes of the com-
munity ; but surely there is nothing in its nature
to warrant the assumption that it cannot be broken,
if by no slighter cause, at least by the death of
the individual. Out of the Body it grew, and it
perishes with the Body. Love had little to do
with it, indeed nothing ; for Love is of the Soul.
I have no space, at least now, to traverse the
whole ground of an argument which Mr. Gladstone
carefully confines to the region of orthodox belief.
The Dome of Heaven is wider than that of St.
Peter's or St. Paul's, and the Bible of Humanity
is broader even than the Old and New Testaments
and the whole library of the Christian Fathers.
It is sad, yet pitiful, in this nineteenth century,
in the era of religious freedom and moral emancipa-
tion, to behold a great and good man gazing mildly
backwards on the Fairylands of Palestine and
Judsea, and in order to find some vanished star of
Love, waving aside such cloudy apparitions as the
countless wives and concubines of Solomon. Most
strange of all it is to be told at the present period
of social despair, that a Man or a Woman has only
one solitary stake for happiness, and that, although
the Bride is a Faustina, or the Bridegroom a
Trimalchio-Csesar, the Marriage Contract is never-
theless eternal !
ROBERT BUCHANAN.
SS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL 1 } 269
To the Editor of the ' Daily Telegraph. 1
SIR,
I regret for many reasons that your cor-
respondent ' Realist,' in commenting upon the
subject of Marriage and Divorce, has imparted into
the discussion that polemical bias which so often
sets honest arguers by the ears. This is no question
of GEcumenical Councils, of Papal influences, of
Infallibility, of Agnostic Cardinals ; it can be
debated, I think, without awakening the religious
prejudices of any class of believers. There are
many Roman Catholics sound to the core who are
in sympathy with the intellectual progress of man-
kind ; nay, there have been far-seeing and saintly
souls even at the Vatican. The hope and moral
salvation of the world lie now in the fusion of the
creeds into one High Creed of Humanity, and the
healing of the world lies in its thousand nameless
saints. Whatever my creed may be, I bow my
head before Father Damien and that noble priest
truly, priest of God who during the recent
trouble which threatened our whole social system
stepped bravely forward and proved the one in-
fallibility that of Goodness. Let us not drift
backward to these old charges and counter-charges,
these battles of the books, these vilifications of one
creed by another. It is not merely because he is
a dogmatic Christian, but because he is a thinker
270 IS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL!
open to all the gentle influence of spiritual forces,
that Mr. Gladstone has become the champion of
Marriage as an Eternal Contract, never to be broken
save at the risk of moral destruction. There can
be no doubt that he would think as he thinks on
this subject even if he were as free a rationalist as
Mr. John Morley. It is his temperament, not
merely his religion, which makes him regard the
marriage bond as a holy thing. The documents in
which he believes seem to verify his human instinct,
that is all.
The history of the Churches is one thing ; the
history of the Christian ideal is another. Baffled
for centuries by the adamantine and indestructible
logic framed by the Apostles, from John down-
wards those Titans who scaled the very walls of
Heaven, and only just failed in their attempt to set
the Cross above the seat of Jehovah Religion has
at last resolved to seek its premises, not in any
religious dogma, not in any metaphysical chimera,
not in any crude physical discovery, but in the
highest Science of all, that of human Sentiment.
This Science a product of all moral and religious
inspiration has established as one of its cardinal
principles that nothing is really holy which conflicts
either with the natural instincts or with the verified
insight of human nature. It has rejected the
dogma of Eternal Punishment because that dogma
is repellent to common justice and common-sense,
and it has rejected the no less dreary rationalistic
IS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL! 271
dogma that Man is only one of the beasts that
perish, because that dogma, too, though promul-
gated so eagerly by the philosophic undertaker, is
opposed at every point to common instinct. It
utterly refuses also, in the light of social know-
ledge, to regard Marriage as invariably and essen-
tially sacramental. To accept a sacrament of any
kind a man or a woman must be purified, must be
1 born again/ Beautiful indeed is Marriage when
the recipients of its happiness can accept it as a
sacrament. How many do so ? For how many is
to do so possible ? To the great majority of human
beings, Love is (as I said in my first letter) of the
Body. Now the time is long past when the Science
of Human Sentiment is content to assume that Man
is a spiritual being only, without flesh arid blood,
without passions, without animal instincts, without
those corporeal attributes which are often the
beauty, and now and then the glory, of Humanity.
By his mouth is he fed ; by his appetites is his life
conditioned. ' Carnal, carnal !' cried St. Simeon of
the Pillar, and so cry the Saint's emasculated
modern descendants. But the very spirit of
Christian theology asserts in its supremest sacra-
ment that Flesh and Blood may be themselves
divine. During the fierce asceticism of the early
centuries of Christianity (see the great historian of
Rationalism, passim) every human sentiment, every
natural affection, was repudiated as carnal, as
emanating from the Spirit of Evil. Fathers, to
272 fS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL?
prove their spirituality, dashed out the brains of
their little children ; sons, to prove their purity,
turned in loathing from their own mothers. To
be indifferent to every human tie, scornful of every
human impulse, was to be certain of the hall-mark
of Salvation.
Well, that is all over. There is no danger to
poor human nature in that direction. Science,
which is only Religion veiled, has taught us to
reverence the abodes of flesh in which we dwell,
has proved to us that, so surely as we desecrate
them, so surely shall the House of Life fall in ruins
about our ears. We believe now that there is
sweetness and wholesomeness in every human
function, that neither Asceticism (which degraded
the body of man) nor Virginity (which became a
rock of wretchedness for women) is necessarily holy
in itself. Purity, like Love, attains its apogee
when the Soul fulfils, through the perfect organiza-
tion of natural passions and instincts, the sane and
lovely laws of life.
As I write these words, there bounces in upon
me, flushed and fluent, the ' Wife and Mother '
who has told you, in resonant periods, that the
highest bond of love is all nonsense, and that she
is content, for her part, to take her husband as he
is (a very fragile specimen of humanity), and to
shake hands with him for ever at the gates of
Death. Now this frank, honest, dish-and-all-
, swallowing matron pleases me well, as the rooks
IS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL! 273
in the rookery and the cattle in the fields please
me. Right honestly she admits that the father of
her children is a cleverer being than herself, and
must, therefore, have plenty of rope to wander
astray with.
' " Oh, naughty, naughty world !" she cries ;
" Men are a dear, immoral set !"
And flirts her fan and winks her eyes,
And gaily turns a pirouette.'
She is, doubtless, one of those purely beautiful
creatures who have made men what they are.
Talking the other day with a friend of fair in-
telligence, I was assured by him that Man, being
an intellectual being, was independent of the moral
restrictions incumbent on Woman, who is not
intellectual. Men of genius more particularly,
my friend averred, were to be allowed to do
exactly as they pleased. The question of the
relative intelligence of men and women is too long
to be discussed here ; but in a remarkable work
recently published Dr. Campbell's book on the
1 Causation of Disease ' the evidence will be
found fairly weighed. I should say myself, from
the little I have observed, that the average man
is in no respect superior intellectually to the
average woman, while the names of Mary Somer-
ville, of Georges Sand, of Mrs. Browning, and of
many others, are sufficient to establish that women
of genius are tall and strong enough to stand
beside men of genius now and for ever. But
Genius so called is to me a very unknown
18
274 JS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL!
quantity. I deny that it has any privileges
whatever, or that it can make any laws for itself
outside the laws of love and sympathy by which
the highest and the lowest live. So far as this
very question of Marriage is concerned, our men
and women of genius have often got into very
serious trouble not, I think, because they have
erred in their interpretations of its sanctions, but
because they have generally, in the face of public
opinion, overlooked the contract and searched
everywhere for the sacrament. Nothing proved
so completely the necessity of a Science of human
Sentiment, as opposed to the still lingering dogmas
of unhurnan spirituality, than the conduct of men
like Shelley and women like Georges Sand.
Twenty-fold intellectual power would not save
them from condemnation. Unless Genius is a
synonym for Goodness, it is a sham and a
phantom ; and Goodness, the Soul of human senti-
ment, believes that no intellectual power whatever
can justify the shameless profanation of any one
human function, the cruel rending asunder of any
one human tie.
The point upon which I am now touching is
more important than it may seem at first sight.
For many centuries Man has justified his infamies
to Woman on the score of his intellectual superi-
ority, while individual men of genius have con-
sidered themselves entitled on the score of their
flatulent ' inspiration ' to base their pyramid of
75 THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL! 275
greatness on broken hearts. Lacking the temper
of hero-worship, and having little or no reverence
for mere cleverness, I follow the records of certain
famous lives with much the same feeling that I
peruse the ' Newgate Calendar,' and I could, with
little or no compunction, see Rousseau whipped at
the cart's tail, or Alexander Pope put in the
pillory. The right of indiscriminate and limitless
aberration claimed for men of genius is claimed,
in most matters of conduct, for men generally.
Common-sense recognises neither claim. If his
artistic gift does not render a man saner and
wiser it is a false counter, worth nothing. If
the superior cleverness claimed by men over
women does not enable them to keep their souls
saner and their bodies purer, it is only the clever-
ness of the parrot or the ape. Physiologists and
Sociologists are very fond of telling us that since
there is a radical difference between the two sexes
it is absurd to lay down laws of conduct for both
alike. While the wife sits at home among her
children, the husband is free to amuse himself at
his own sweet will. It is indeed in the very
nature of things that, to quote the vulgarism, he
' may do as he darn pleases ' ! The majority of
women accept this condition as inevitable. Even
women of genius are found ready to proclaim the
superior intellectual power, and the greater moral
freedom of men. And thus, in the very land
where a gray modern apostle proclaims that Mar-
182
276 SS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL?
riage is Eternal, we find the eternal parade of the
two meanest of all privileges, that of Intelligence
and that of Sex ; we find that to be a little cleverer
than one's neighbour is only to be a little baser,
a little fouler both in mind and appetite ; we find
that to be a man, hailed as the highest of creatures,
is only to exist on the same plane of passions as
the beast. No wonder the world is getting tired
of the religious ideal, of the faith which recognises
only one privilege that of truth, of goodness, of
purity, both personal and spiritual. No wonder
the laughter echoes from club to club at the mere
notion that the Matrimonial Farce, the humour of
which consists of jokes about male hypocrisy and
female toleration, is to be played on for ever !
In asking whether Marriage is an Eternal Con-
tract, we mean by the word ' Eternal ' simply the
period of moral consciousness. Whether or not we
believe in eternal Life is neither here nor there. It
matters little whether a Soul is married or single
when it has been absorbed into such abstract states
of practical nonentity as the * Immanence ' of
Spinoza, the ' Will ' of Schopenhauer, or the
1 Unconscious ' of Hartmann. Marriage, be it
contract or sacrament, is a relation only possible
to a state of individuality. The whole question,
therefore, narrows itself thus, So long as we are
conscious creatures, whether in this world or
another, have we the right to marry a second
time ? I have answered that question in the
IS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL! 277
affirmative, while asserting that, when Marriage is
really and absolutely sacramental, it must of its
own nature be permanent. The fusion of two
perfectly united Souls lasts for ever, survives all
bodily conditions. This, I am aware, is regarded
by the world in general, and by your merry ' wife
and mother ' in particular, as the very madness of
sentimental optimism. Well, it is the optimism of
the Science I am upholding, that of human Senti-
ment. Just as surely as the moment of supreme
insight comes with the sacrament of Death, touching
our tearful eyelids with the euphrasy of glorious
pain, so does the moment of supreme Marriage
come with the sacrament of Love. There are men
who can stand in a death-chamber and see only the
stone mask and the shadow of mysterious dread.
There are men who can come fresh from Bel-
shazzar's Feast fresh from the very Handwriting
on the Wall and put on over their uncleanness
and their impurity the white robes of the bride-
groom. For such men Marriage may serve as a
contract ; it is all they need for self-protection, all
Society needs for its security. To tie such creatures
by a Sacrament is monstrous ; they are incapable
by very temperament of understanding its nature.
But, over and above the lower strata of Humanity,
there exist those who have seen Death transfigured
O
and known Love unveiled ; men and women, many
of them, who are stained and fallen, who have
experienced endless dishallucinations, who have
278 AS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL?
been in revolt against the conventions nay, even
against the very sanctities of Society. These men
know that Love, like Death, comes to the Soul but
once ; that Love and Death may come hand in hand,
that once, together. Far, far more beautiful than
the sight of a Shelley standing on Harriet West-
brook's grave, or running from his next wife's
chamber to follow the frisky heels of homebred or
foreign ladies, is the picture of poor Byron, be-
smirched with his own mad sensuality from head
to foot, yet still dreaming of the sacrament, the
sublime moment, the eternal passion, which never
came. The old couple sitting side by side and
crooning 'John Anderson, rny Joe,' as gentle Death
opens its arms to receive them, are diviner still.
In a few short hours* all England will be looking
reverently on while the body of Robert Browning
is committed to its native dust. The crown and
glory of that great man's life was its consecration
to one serene and sacramental passion. Through
all these years of loneliness, amid literary detraction
or coterie fume and incense, in the midst of the
busy world or out of it, in the silence of his own
chamber, Browning listened to that immortal voice
which sings of eternal love :
' 0, lyric Love, half angel and half bird,
And all a wonder and a wild desire !'
Thus, for the instruction and beatification of
humanity, the supremely great remained the
* Written just after Browning's death.
IS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL? 279
supremely good, and in his great song his great
goodness, completed in a transfiguration of Love
and Death, eternally survives. It is better,
perhaps, even in these days of unbelief, to listen
to the song of the poet than to the purr of the
contented Matron, who looks cheerfully forward to
the inevitable moment of saying, ' Good-bye, old
fellow ; we've got along very comfortably on the
whole, and we part on the best of terms.' Poor
little Matron ! Does she really live, or is she only.
a male cynic masquerading in a petticoat ? If she
lives, I see no reason why she should not be very
happy. The legal contract was made for her, and
suits her admirably. I see no reason, moreover,
why she should not, if occasion offers, renew it
just as often as she pleases. The Sacrament of
Love is another thing.
ROBERT BUCHANAN.
NOTE ON THE PRECEDING.
MR. GLADSTONE'S ECCLESIASTICAL ESSAYS.*
Essay-writing appears to be a lost art, or at
least an art in which few people now take any
interest, except those scattered individuals to whom
the Quarterly and Edinburgh and other old-
fashioned reviews still form an inspiration. Instead
* 'Gleanings of Past Years, 18511875,' by the Right Hon.
W. E. Gladstone, M.P. Ecclesiastical, vols. v. and vi. London :
Murray.
2 8o IS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL?
of the essay proper, with its air of superhuman
insight, its rapid generalizations, its bold survey
of its subject as of mankind ' from China to Peru/
we get now the fragments of Experts, on whom there
sits that priggish profession of infallibility which
is even more irritating, sometimes, than the once
popular assumption of omniscience. I confess
frankly that I miss the old style, of which
Johnson was the forerunner, and Macaulay the
supreme and imperial outcome. It was royal in
its massive impudence, splendid in its glorious
marshallings of fact and fiction, viewy, broad,
blatant, and very entertaining. Now, the new
style, whatever its other merits, is not so enter-
taining. It is far too correct, microscopic, technical,
and neglectful of what we may call the grand
manner of English prose. Your old-fashioned
essayist might be, and generally was, a humbug,
knowing little of details, smelling the paper-knife
when he was dealing with a book, scornful of
truth when he was dealing with things and men ;
but what ground he managed to cover ! how fine
was his verisimilitude ! how well oiled his periods !
how fluent his general eloquence ! how brilliant
his particular flourishes of rhetoric ! how bright
his occasional flashes of wit ! Add to this, that
he did his best to make his essay exhaustive of
the subject. When Macaulay had done with
Johnson and Bos well, the topic was squeezed dry ;
there was no necessity even to go back to Boswell's
IS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL? 281
life. The reader, omniscient like the critic, knew
all about it ! When Jeffrey had disposed of
Wordsworth, Wordsworth was sentenced ; the
reader knew all about him, and there was an end.
When so much knowledge could be gained at
secondhand, it was quite unnecessary to go to the
fountain-heads. Of course it was all very stupid,
very blatant, and very unjust ; but on the other
hand it was so thoroughly judicial ! Nowadays
we get only little bits of literary special plead-
ings, instead of grand, swinging, overpowering
summings-up.
Mr. Gladstone's manner, in these so - called
' Ecclesiastical Essays/ is, to my thinking, a com-
promise between the old style and the new. Like
the old style, verbose, rotund, fluent, and at times
omniscient ; like the new style, careful, watchful,
accurate, and zealous of correction. Born under
the protection of the old gods of Edinburgh and
Albemarle Street, Mr. Gladstone has lived long
enough to recognise the later pantheon of scientists,
experts, and professional doctrinaires. As the
world well knows, he is a man of much know-
ledge and many gifts, with a good deal of the lost-
grand manner, modulated by a fine modern feeling
for truth and verification. In an omniscient genera-
tion, like that of our grandfathers, there would
have been no question of his critical greatness ; he
would have sat upon the Olympian hill of criticism,
and felt the world tremble at his nod. In a
282 SS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL
generation like the present, divided between moods
of paralyzing caution and states of total nescience,
his hand is weakened, and his influence almost
doubtful. He would fain pronounce judgments,
but he is too conscientious ; he would limit him-
self to special pleading, but as a special pleader
he is very roundabout indeed. Seen as he here
appears before us, in half a dozen representative
essays, he strikes me as a writer of eager authorita-
tiveness, who, under happier circumstances, would
have made a first-class Bishop, but who suffers
peculiar discomfort from being compelled to inhale
the too clear atmosphere of modern advanced ideas.
Perhaps the most characteristic of these Essays
is the one on ' The Bill for Divorce,' reprinted from
the Quarterly Review of 1857. It commences in
the old way, with a lordly outlook on Creation and
the period in general. ' The age in which we
live claims, and in some respects deserves, the
praise of being active, prudent, and practical :
active in the endeavour to detect evils, prudent in
being content with limited remedies, and practical
in choosing them according to effectiveness rather
than to the canons of ideology/ etc., etc. ' Canons
of ideology' is good, even if it means nothing.
We have not read much further before we know
what side the writer is on ; that he is, like all the
omniscient school, on the side of authority and the
powers that be. Very familiar indeed are the
phrases ' the fences which enclose the sacred
IS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL? 283
precinct ' (Marriage), ' general decay of the spirit
of traditionary discipline/ ' the relaxed tone of
modern society/ Mr. Gladstone, like a very
Bishop, asseverates that marriage is a life-long
compact, ' according to the Holy Scripture,' which
may sometimes be put in abeyance by the separa-
tion of a couple, but which can never be rightfully
dissolved, so as to set them free, during their
lives, to unite with other persons. As might be
expected, his arguments are almost entirely Scrip-
tural, though he is not above passing references to
the Greeks of Homer, to Athenseus, and even to
Gibbon. Nothing could be more idle than his
examination of those passages in the New Testa-
ment which touch upon the question of Marriage
and Divorce, unless, perhaps, that other portion of
his essays where he cross-examines the mediaeval
authorities and Church dignitaries. I have no
concern here with his argument, which it is no
business of mine either to support or refute ; but
surely no one not saturated with the spirit of the
Old Church could talk in this way on so solemn a
topic, quite oblivious of the fact that no such topic
can be settled without an occasional reference to
Science, to Philosophy, and to Physiology. In some
places, notably where he alludes to the ' adamantine
laws of grammar,' and examines a Greek abstraction
with the solemnity of a pedant, Mr. Gladstone
almost passes the limits of human patience. He
himself talks of arguments of ' that deplorably
284 IS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL!
fatuous description which almost makes a man
despair of his age, if not of the whole future of
his kind.' Conceive the man who could despair
of his age, not to speak of ' the whole future
of his kind,' because doctors and divines differ
as to the nature of Marriage, and its char-
acter as a ' Sacrament ' ! With quite forensic fer-
vour Mr. Gladstone tells of the ' pestilent ideas '
of Milton. ' That for which he (Milton) pleads is
a license of divorce for aversion or incompatibility;
the wildest libertine, the veriest Mormon, could not
devise words more conformable to his ideas, if,
indeed, we are just to the Mormon sages in
assuming that they alienate as freely as they
acquire !'
The other essays in the volume are on such
themes as * The Functions of Laymen in the
Church/ ' The Church of England and Ritualism/
* Ward's Ideal of a Christian Church/ and ' On
the Royal Supremacy.' They are none of them,
perhaps, quite so earnest or quite so wrong as the
essay on the ' Bill for Divorce'; but they all evince
the same confusion of the old style and the new.
They are all conscientious, careful, ornate, and
fairly liberal of view. They are all old-fashioned
in the sense of a dictatorial manner and a lost
style ; all new-fashioned in the sense of intellectual
uneasiness and indisputable zeal for truth. But
they are none of them above the average episcopal
or clerical intellect ; they none of them possess the
IS THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT ETERNAL ? 285
higher sort of literary or spiritual insight. If I
knew Mr. Gladstone by these Essays alone, I
should think him a very able and zealous, but
by no means extraordinary, person ; knowing him,
as I do, as one of the most prominent political
figures of the day, I can now clearly understand
why he has become the great disorganizing force,
the most disturbing and contradictory influence, of
the Liberal Party.
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
I.
WHAT IS SENTIMENT ?
IN a recent number of a new publication called The
Speaker, there is an article on ' Sentimentalism,'
in which it is contended very justly that the
Aberglaube of hysterical emotion is a sham thing
by the side of true pathos ; but very falsely, that the
air of the present day is overcharged with ' Senti-
ment.' The writer thus confounds what is real
with what is true Sentiment with Sentimental-
ism ; and the confusion is one which has been
made from time immemorial. Sentiment, I
conceive, is the power which generalizes the ex-
perience of mankind, the verification of long
centuries, concerning the links which unite mem-
bers of the human family surely and remorsely
to one another, and which thus justifies Poetry
(in the words of Novalis) as the only Reality.
Sentimentalism, on the other hand, is sentiment
perverted and overcharged - - in other words,
become unscientific. While objecting somewhat
19
2 9 o FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
to his terminology, I cordially agree with the
writer of the article I have named in the dis-
tinction he draws between true and false pathos
in literature. I fail altogether, however, to follow
him in his contention that either Sentiment or
Sentimentalism are much in the air at present.
I believe, rather, that cheap Science and cheap
Cynicism are destroying, or trying to destroy, both
the sham and the reality. Men 'nowadays do not
feel too much, but far too little. Thanks partly to
the influence of the baser portion of the public
Press, the era of completed ethical obtusity seems
fast approaching.
The man who endeavours, as I shall endeavour,
to treat Sentiment as an exact science, stands at
a strange disadvantage in these days of troubled
materialism, when the nobler emotions are old-
fashioned and unpopular, and even Conscience is
likely to suffer from being classed as a complica-
tion of brain secretions. I may fairly say, how-
ever, that I have never wavered one hair in my
doctrine on this subject, from the day when I
wrote the ' Ballad of Judas Iscariot ' to the day,
only just past, when I dramatized the ' Clarissa '
of Richardson. The late Lord Houghton said
to me many years ago, ' The English people
are practical, they do not care for Sentiment ;'
to which I replied by quoting several extraordinary
instances of popular success secured entirely by
what is conventionally known as Sentiment, and
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 291
especially the instance of Mr. Gladstone. It was
quite clear, however, that Lord Houghton attached
the ordinary meaning to the word under discussion,
while I attached to it a meaning by no means ordi-
nary. I wish, therefore, to put the question,
' What is Sentiment ?' Does it mean, as certain
scientists and many of the general public con-
tend, a false and distorted, a transcendental and
hysterical, conception of the relations of life a
general distribution over thought and feeling of
what is known as Sentimentalism ; or does it
mean, as I have long maintained, the absolute ex-
perience of Humanity in the process of reduction
to a Science ?
Of one thing we may be quite clear, that there
was never a period in the world's history when
the mere word Sentiment awakened in the thoughts
of the classes called cultivated a fainter sympathy
than now. Luxury on the one hand, and material-
ism on the other, have done their work so com-
pletely that large numbers of men can witness
without emotion of any sort even the Dance of
the Seven Deadly Sins. The Rome of Juvenal
is, as I pointed out years ago, reproduced in the
London of to-day. The spirit of a spurious and
empirical * scientific ' philosophy, adopting as its
shibboleth a certain specious jargon of experimental
ethics, mental culture coincident with moral
degradation, the avarice of the rich and the
misery of the poor, just as surely contradict the
192
292 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
stern old English type of character as the same
phenomena contradicted, in the time of Juvenal,
the power, the integrity, and the austerity of
ancient Rome.
4 Et quando uberior vitiorum copia 1 quando
Major avaritiae patuit sinus ?'
The parallel might be pursued down to the smallest
detail, but to pursue it is not my purpose. I
merely desire to remark, en passant, that the
present social crisis is not unprecedented, but has
occurred more than once, and once phenomenally,
in the Evolution of Mankind. The Gospel of
Sentiment shook the world eighteen centuries ago.
The Science of Sentiment, verifying the instinct
of that gospel, will stir it now.
The Science of Sentiment, then, adopts as
its cardinal principle that the evolution of human
ethics has proceeded in direct ratio with the
growth or the suppression of the individual
capacities of love and sympathy sympathy seen
dimly in the affinities of the lower organisms,
shown largely in the low T er animals, evolved
wonderfully by human aid in the domesticated
animals, notably in the dog, and attaining to the
power of self-knowledge in the Mind of Man. The
law of this Science, the condition on which it exists,
is, like that of all other sciences, that of verifi-
cation. To verify it completely would be beyorxd
my power. I shall therefore confine myself to one
position only, which is a paradox that Love and
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 293
Hate, attraction and repulsion, in the human
creature, are practically equivalent forces, although
divergent, and that the object of the Science of
Sentiment is to reconcile and assimilate them.
An illustration comes to my hand in a play from
my pen produced at the Vaudeville Theatre. One
of my critics has assured me that I stultify my moral
teaching by suffering the libertine Lovelace to pro-
fane by a touch, even for a moment, in her dying
delirium, his victim Clarissa. He has sinned past
all pardon, he has isolated himself from all humanity,
by a hideous act of violation ; and so, indeed, the
poor girl tells him, in the supreme Aberglaube of her
exaltation. Her last clear words are of eternal
renunciation, eternal farewell. He says he will
' atone.' * You cannot, sir/ she answers ; ' it were
as easy to turn the world upon its course and
bring all Eden back.' This, the critic says, is
final. It is so from an unscientific point of view.
But the Science of Sentiment instructs us that
though individual Man cannot bring back the lost
Eden, God can. God, the eternal Law, the loving
Force in the heart of physical and moral evolution,
completes a miracle of creation in a daily miracle
of moral interchange and interaction. Lovelace
is lost that is certain. He is to be saved ; but
how ? By the very act which destroyed him,
but made him abject in contrition. The fire which
purifies, the punishment which cleanses the con-
science of the world, which is irresistible, and
294 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
the acquired insight of humanity, which is inde-
structible, leave him linked for ever with the lot
of the angel he has wedded in the lurid halls of
Hell. There is no escape for him otherwise. Even
God cannot save him, except through himself ;
and thus through her. The moral interchange is
thus inevitable.
Another paradox. Next to the man I have
blest, the man I have cursed is nearest to ine
of all human creatures. So surely as I arn bound
to the man I love am I bound to the man I hate.
He has become a part of me ; though all the rest
of the world may be a blank to me, I am certain
of him. Every struggle I make against my
enemy, every blow I strike him in the face,
brings him closer into my life. This, indeed, is
Sentiment, but it is Law. It is a thought for
fools to laugh and scoff at, but it is as scientifically
verifiable as any law of Selection based upon the
fossils of extinct species. And the closer my
enemy clings around me, the more I shudder at
what seems to me his moral hideousness, the more
terrible grows his power upon me. In my despair
I curse him, I curse Humanity, I curse the cruel
Law of Life. I struggle upward, and he holds
me down ; and I find that to rise at all I must take
him with me. At last, out of my despair, conies
insight. I see that he, too, is struggling, down-
ward perhaps, but struggling inevitably in the
throes of Evolution. I see my own sorrows, my
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 295
own meanness, my own misery, reflected in him ;
nay, I see my own * self/ as in a mirror, looking
out of him. There is no other way I must take
him with me or perish utterly. His life has
become a part of mine. Then we cling together,
and cry for help, for mercy, for Light ! Darkly,
dimly, I begin to know that he is helping me,
that he, too, feels the piteousness of our repulsion
for each other. I save him ; I have saved myself.
The deadlier the wrong that I have done him,
or that he has done me, the more inextricable
become our thoughts, our conditions. This is the
Law of Sentiment which saved Lovelace. This is
the Law of God which made the violated and the
victim man and wife. This is the paradox which
redeems the world.
' Very foolish, very absurd !' says the young
lady, who, my critic tells me, will not go to a
theatre unless she is to laugh, not to cry ; in fact,
as she adds, ' very sentimental.' But the theory
is not one developed a priori; it is founded on
what Professor Huxley terms 'grovelling among
facts.' No living man has yet struck a blow which
did not injure himself more than its object. I
myself am ' indifferent honest,' fond of tussles with
the enemy, but this same Science of Sentiment
has instructed me that I have never had one real
enemy except myself. But, the young lady per-
haps adds, ' The idea is so impracticable !' Well,
so is the Christianity which it formularizes, and
296 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
Christianity, apart from the dogmas which dis-
figure it, is recognised even by modern philosophy
as the highest Ideal of the human mind. Very
possibly, and often very certainly, I do not love
my enemy I Well, as the Yankees express it, I
have got to reckon with him. So long as I fail,
says the Law, I shall stand still. And putting-
bad temper and violent passion aside as really
ephemeral, the task of recognising the equivalency
of Love and Hate is, to a thinking man in his sane
moments, fairly easy, after all.
It is difficult, it is often impossible, to live up
to our ideals ; none of us, I fear, do that, and
least of all the present writer. If the issue de-
pended on our own conduct, on our own practical
recognition of ethical principles, Sentiment would be
vague as the Chimsera. Happily the law of Evolu-
tion works independently of human consciousness,
and he who thinks all things evil is quite as
surely at its mercy as he who thinks all things
good. The clearest teaching of this age affirms
that the evolution of the race, conditioned univer-
sally by the influence of individuals upon each other,
is an evolution upward. It is no mere cant of little
Bethel, therefore, which tells us that we should love
our enemies ; we do love them when we most hate
them, through the inexorable laws of moral inter-
change. As the poor fellow said in the story,
' It all comes reet i' the end/ and the transfusion
of antagonism into its equivalent affinity, of repul-
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 297
sion into its equivalent attraction, is the moral
business of the world. Sentiment, then the
insight which enlarges the area of human sym-
pathy, which reconciles the divergences of human
character, which equalizes in the long-run the
results of all human effort is nothing if it is
not verifiable or scientific ; but since all true
Science is another word for Religion, Sentiment is
spiritually Sacrament the crowning Sacrament of
daily life.
II.
EMMA WADE'S MARTYRDOM.
IN May, 1879, there was lying in the county gaol
of Lincoln a young girl just respited from a
sentence of death. Under what possible delusion
the jurymen who convicted her were labouring
when they found her guilty of murder in the first
degree, I cannot explain ; possibly, however, they
were bewildered by the summing-up of the Judge,
who, according to the reporters, ' reminded the jury
that their verdict must be based, not upon their
feelings, but their judgment/ It seemed to me, at
all events, that the verdict was very cruel, rash,
and wrong, and that, while exhibiting little feeling,
it showed no judgment whatever. The facts were
very simple. Emma Wade, a domestic servant
and the daughter of a police-constable, contracted
an attachment for a jeweller's assistant in Stamford,
298 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
was seduced by him, and gave birth to an illegiti-
mate child. At the time of the birth she was
residing at home, and the evidence showed that
she was gentle, dutiful, and affectionate, both to
her parents and to the child. Her father seems
to have treated her kindly, with the patience of
love, but it was proved that the mother subjected
her to just that kind of persecution, seasoned with
taunt and insult, which drives a feeble girl to
despair. She was daily taunted with her shame,
and urged to return to service. On the evening
of April 18 her sister, hearing a scream, rushed
upstairs, and found Emma in mortal agony.
' Take the baby/ she cried ; 1 1 have poisoned it and
myself.' Medical assistance being called in, the
mother was recovered, but the infant died, traces
of strychnine, Prussian blue, and wheat flour
(elements of a poison called ' Battle's Vermin
Killer ') being afterwards found in its stomach.
Previous to taking the poison the distracted girl
wrote to Search ff, her lover, a long letter of fare-
well, which I quote at full length, certain that
it forms in itself a stronger appeal for mercy than
any words of mine :
4 Stamford.
' DEAR HARRY,
' I am sorry to write to you. Dear
Harry, I return your portrait with a heavy
heart. It's sadder than I can express to any-
one ; but I have borne my mother's treatment
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 299
till I can't any longer. Dear Harry, it is all
because father won't turn me out in the streets.
The words she uttered about me and the baby
they are too cruel to express to you. Dear Harry,
I love my child as I love my life, but I can't go
through the treatment I am going through now ;
my life is a complete misery, and my child's too.
Dear Harry, I wish to bid you farewell in this
world, but I hope to meet you in another, never
to part again. I hope the Lord will forgive rne
and take me to a home of rest. Harry, I have
one comfort ; and that is I know my child will be
happy. So now, dear Harry, you must pass me
out of your mind and look for something brighter.
Dear Harry, I wish to tell you it is nothing on
your part. Dear Harry, my love is never vanished :
I love you now as I loved you at first ; you (have)
been in my thoughts from morning till night. So
now I must bid you farewell for ever. I hope you
may enjoy happiness in this world and the next,
too. My heart is too full to speak all, so good-bye
for ever.
< EMMA.
' Respect Mrs. Weatherington. She has been
a kind friend to me. I have sent you a piece of
baby's hair. You won't forget her name
Constance May Scarcliff.'
It seems to me, taking all the circumstances into
300 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
consideration, that a more beautiful letter was
never written. In its infinite simplicity and pathos,
in its gentle dignity and sorrow, it is a wonderful
production for the pen of a domestic servant.
Note the tenderness of the thought, ' I have one
comfort, and that is I know my child will be happy/
together with the last piteous words, ' I have sent
you a piece of baby's hair/ Yet with this docu-
ment before them, with the poor heart-broken
martyr herself facing them, the jurymen, listening
to their ' judgment/ not their ' feelings/ brought
in their verdict of wilful murder.
I am no apologist for Infanticide. I have no
sympathy for the mother, however troubled and
distressed, who to save herself from ignominy or
inconvenience destroys her helpless child. But for
the poor, bewildered, distracted girl, herself almost
a child, who loves her babe so passionately that
she cannot bear to hear it despised and spoken of
with cruel scorn, and who, having no earthly hope,
cries to God, ' Forgive me, take me take us both
to a home of rest/ I felt, as every true-hearted
man must have done, pity which is too deep
for tears. The law of this country, with curious
inconsistency, pronounces suicide to be a criminal
offence, and at the same time connects with every
suicide an exculpatory explanation of ' temporary
insanity. 7 The sentiment of this country pro-
nounces that there are a thousand things so hard
to bear, so terrible to understand, especially
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 301
amongst those classes on whom the pinch of life
comes sorest, that suicide is sometimes the only
escape from a great and seemingly endless diffi-
culty. The poor unfortunate, ' weary of breath,'
and l sick of life's mystery,' has the sympathy of
every thinking being, whether her story be told
by a penny-a-liner in a mere newspaper paragraph
or by a great poet in an immortal song. Put the
case only altered a very little : If a broken-hearted
mother, clutching her child to her heart, were to
leap over Waterloo Bridge, and if when they drew
her forth still breathing the child were found to
be dead, who would not sympathize ? and if after-
wards the mother were tried for murder and
condemned to death, who would not feel his soul
rise in passionate protestation ? Now, it really
makes very little difference, save to a poet treating
the subject, whether the means of suicide is found
in the Thames by moonlight or in a wretched
packet of l Battle's Vermin -Killer.' The offence,
the motive, the moral responsibility, is the same.
Emma Wade's was a case of Suicide pure and
simple. The poor girl wished to die, and she
loved her baby far too passionately to leave it
behind her. In a moment of delirium, she clutched
it to her, and sank, as she believed, to slumber,
confident in the mercy of God. Her last thought
was of her darling babe. ' I have sent you a piece
of baby's hair. You won't forget her name-
Constance May Scarcliff.' Her last thought was
3 02
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
to give it his name, to lend its poor memory that
shelter which she could not legally claim. Picture
her agony, her despair, when they drew her back
out of the very Shadow of Death, when she awoke,
not to God's mercy, but to man's judgment ; her
babe dead upon her breast, her heart broken, her
brain still stagnified from its fatal sleep. If ever
woman was punished for her sins, if ever woman
drank the cup of man's cruelty to the dregs, that
woman was Emma Wade. Tortured back to life,
dragged to prison, pitilessly tried, what must she
have suffered in those dreadful days, until the hour
came when the Judge assumed the black cap, and
sentenced her to be hanged by the neck till she was
dead !*
III.
THE APOTHEOSIS OF THE GALLOWS.
ON Tuesday morning, February 25, 1879, at eight
o'clock, was performed the last scene of a drama in
which the British public had taken an unpre-
cedented interest, which eclipsed in its attractive
horrors even the exciting news from the Cape, and
made all minor records of the prison or the Divorce
Court seem comparatively stale and tame. This
drama might be entitled ' The Life and Death of
a Convicb ; or, The Apotheosis of the Gallows.'
Beginning at Bannercross, in Yorkshire, with about
* Emma Wade was respited. R.B.
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 303
as coarse and clumsy a bit of murder as ever
awakened ignorant admiration, it passed into a
series of episodes of the most every-day brutality,
until it glided from utter commonplace into sudden
romance under the very shadow of Death. A
more uninteresting ruffian than Charles Peace can
scarcely be conceived. A less dignified criminal
never paid the extreme penalty of the law. There
was nothing in him to awaken either attention or
admiration, save his courage ; and that courage,
disintegrated into its component elements, seems to
have consisted of unparalleled obtuseness and
gigantic self-confidence. Yet of this poor wretch,
who has scarcely one trait of redeeming manliness,
and whose moral ugliness was without any sort
of grandeur, the public Press actually , manu-
factured a Hero. I say the Press advisedly.
Save for the elaborate reports in the daily papers
and the wild and wondrous inventions of the
pictorial weeklies, Charles Peace would have gone
out of this world ignored and despised even by that
great criminal class to which he belonged. But
ever since the memorable occasion when he tried
to escape from the railway carriage, he had been
consecrated to the penny-a-liner. He had been
described in various forms of disguised panegyric
as the Admirable Crichton of Housebreakers.
Because he could play a little on the fiddle and
had brought together one or two musical instru-
ments, he was represented as a perfect Paganini
304 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
and a splendid amateur collector of violins. Be-
cause he had some little cleverness in mechanics
and had within him the amateur engineer's morbid
passion for ' patents,' it was given out that his
gifts of invention amounted to little short of genius.
Because he had had one or two dirty liaisons, and
in the sanctity of his private life always had a trull
at his elbow, he was pictured as a criminal Don
Juan, surrounded by Odalisques of splendid infamy.
His character fascinated even philosophers. One
gentle newspaper, the Spectator, accepted the
penny-a-liner's chronicle, and preached a beauti-
ful homily upon it. There was something beyond
measure alluring in the idea of an unclean old
man with tremendous intellect and sublime courage,
setting all the forces of the Law at defiance, by
living all day the life of a respectable elderly
gentleman with one arm, and all night the
life of a truculent assassin with a fatal weapon.
For all these pictures, for all these mercies of the
mendacious, we have to thank the penny-a-liner.
There was no deity but Peace, and the penny-a-
liner was his Prophet. So the great sensation
drama throve, though its production on the public
scene, with all the advantage of big posters and
capital letters, could be regarded as nothing short
of a public calamity.
Now, the entire thing would have been an utter
failure but for the introduction, in the last scene,
of the Gallows. Till the Shadow of Death was
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 305
actually upon him, till it became known that he
was really to be hanged for his misdeeds, Charles
Peace lacked the crowning consecration. I am
certain that if he had not received the capital
sentence, if he had been simply relegated to his life
of penal servitude, the public would have been
utterly disgusted with him, as with one who was in
some measure an impostor ; would have read with
more or less weariness the account of his super-
human talents, and would have waited patiently for
the advent of some other sort of ideal. But the
Apotheosis of the Gallows was to come, and with its
coming the wretched man was to be transfigured.
To the minds of the criminal classes, and to the
minds of large numbers of people who may any day
become criminal, the condemned murderer was one
of the great Heroes of the earth. His passage
from the prison bar to the condemned cell was a
triumph, to be envied, to be emulated ; his passage
from the condemned cell to the Gallows was a
splendid transfiguration, to which few human crea-
tures might aspire. In one of the woman Thomp-
son's letters she talked of her name and that of her
paramour living in the 'History of the Earth'!
That was too glorious a forethought, with which
few could sympathize ; for in the eyes of the
criminal classes, a momentary apotheosis, with the
white cap over the face, and the chaplain uttering
a prayer, is enough. To fear neither man nor
God, to have one's hand against all men, and to
20
3 6
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
' die game' these are the conditions of such fame
as the Gallows can give. Fulfilling these conditions,
despite the little bit of religious talk at the last
(which many of his admirers possibly looked upon
as a delicious specimen of ' Charley's gammon'),
Charles Peace touched the heights of criminal
greatness. Anyone passing through the by-ways
of London after the execution might have heard
the popular expletives at every corner and in every
public-house. ' Poor old Charley !' * Well, he's
gone at last, and he died game.' ' He was a rare-
pluck'd one, he was !' ' It'll be a long time before
we see such another !' Not a Bill Sykes in Seven
Dials but drew a great breath, and asked himself,
* Shall / ever cover myself with such glory, and
have all the newspapers talking about me, and all
the shops full of my portraits ?' Yes, the last
scene was an ovation. The effect of the Gallows in
the background was stupendous, and the triumph
of the Hero of the Drama was complete.
If anything could add to Peace's glory in the
eyes of his tumultuous audience, it was his own
last confession that he had been guilty of another
murder, and, with delicious humour, had managed
to get another man sentenced to death in his
place ! Better still, the murdered man was a
policeman ! True, there was a little weakness in
confessing at all ; it would have been more heroic
to have died holding his tongue, and leaving the
other condemned man to his fate. But, taken
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 307
altogether, the thing was a rich joke, and a
crowning feather in ' Charley's' cap. He might
now say, with Shakespeare :
'If 'twere now to die
'Twere ROW to be most happy ; for, I fear,
My soul hath her content so absolute
That not another comfort like to this
Succeeds in unknown fate.'
Thenceforward immortality was secure ; even the
penny-a-liner could not make it any safer. The
path to the Gallows was ' roses all the way.'
Nothing more was needed than to ' die game/ and
the denouement would approach sublimity.
It is no part of my present purpose to open up
the old discussion concerning capital punishment.
My present concern is rather with the state of jour-
nalism which renders the apotheosis of the Gallows
possible. When nearly every one of our leading
dailies devotes more or less of its space to recording
the daily sayings and doings of a commonplace
criminal ; w r hen one penny-a-liner vies with another
in piling on the agony, and making what is essentially
vulgar and hideous assume the hues of poetry and
fascination ; when the affairs of the Nation and the
state of the Empire sink into insignificance (in the
newspaper proprietor's eyes) by the side of the
maunderings of a poor murderer, it is really time
to protest. The Fourth Estate has a duty to
perform. If it is to be respected as a power in the
country, it must learn to respect its readers, not to
20 2
308
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
regale them with the garbage of the ' Newgate
Calendar/ The conductors of the sensational
papers aver that they are bound to give such
records because readers demand them, and
because they would in any case be given else-
where. The answer to the first statement
is that readers are only too willing to accept
whatever is given to them by their journalistic
guides ; to the second, that readers who love
garbage should be left to find it, for themselves, in
the literature of the slums. But the truth is that
no one gains by the apotheosis of the Gallows save
the newspaper proprietor and the penny-a-liner.
I regret to say it, but these two worthies are in
a conspiracy to prostitute the Press, and to sow
crime broadcast, by glorifying the criminal. We
cannot now tell what evil seed their latter-day
performances bring forth ; in the meantime, the
character of Journalism is degraded, and no English
journalist can remember without a feeling of shame
and humiliation the glorification of Charles Peace.
IV.
THE DEFEAT OF THE TOTAL ABSTAINER.
THAT lively old water-drinker of genius, Mr. George
Cruikshank, who played ' Hamlet' en amateur at
fifty, and could dance you a break-down and double-
shuffle in his grand climacteric, would have been
hotly indignant if he could have lived to become
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 309
familiar with certain recent aspects of the great
Temperance Question. In a picture which com-
bined a maximum of moral truth with a minimum
of artistic taste, he tried to drive poor humanity
once and for ever away from the Bottle ; and he
was not much daunted when a wine-loving humorist
retaliated with an equally horrible caricature
representing the hideous creatures to be seen in a
Drop of Water magnified under the microscope.
For a considerable period the teetotalers have
really been having the best of it. Their wonder
of stump orators, Mr. J. B. Gough, having by
strictly abstaining from stimulants attained a
patriarchal beard and a stentorian power of lung,
had made the licensed victualler tremble, from
Land's End to John o' Groat's. Following in the
wake of this noisy platitudinarian, numberless bad
and good physicians have had an epidemic of
abstinence. Physicians, like other people, or,
rather, more than other people, are subject to
periodical crazes. Now it is a craze for bromide
of potassium, or some other panacea ; again, as
recently, it is a craze against all sorts of intoxicating
liquors. Happily, the reaction has at last set in,
and the leading doctors of the day have banded
together to put down that most irrepressible and
pernicious of all propagandists, the Total Ab-
stainer. After the remarkable series of articles
which appeared in the Contemporary Review a
series which must have done incalculable ^ood, and
3 io FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
for which society has reason to be grateful to the
able editor the advocates of Total Abstinence
can scarcely have another word to say. When
such high living authorities as Sir James Paget,
Sir William Gull, Dr. Eisdon Barnett, Dr. Kad-
clifFe, and Mr. Brudenell Carter, all spoke more or
less in favour of alcohol, the consensus of testimony
was overpowering ; and it is to be hoped that after
this, and at least for a time, we may be spared the
familiar legend of the Total Abstainer who died
triumphantly in his bed at eighty, after having kept
all the commandments, and drunk nothing stronger
than toast and water.
And yet, in reading those remarkable articles,
I was struck by nothing so much, at a first glance,
as by the overmastering moral influence of that
fierce and frenzied being, the Total Abstainer, over
even the tolerably impassive medical experts. So
potent is enthusiasm, and so great is organization,
that the doctors of the day felt strange diffidence
and hesitation in giving Total Abstinence the lie
direct. Sometimes, conscious of a wild water-
drinker's eye upon them, they became almost
timorous, and murmured with Sir William Gull,
' But though the use of alcohol in moderation may
be beneficial ' (he had just asserted roundly, by the
way, that it was beneficial), ' I very much doubt
whether there are not some kinds of food which
might take its place ' ; and he adds, vacillating
feebly, ' If I am myself fatigued with overwork, I
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM, 311
eat raisins, instead of drinking wine.' Sometimes,
on the other hand, they gathered courage to boldly
defy the water-drinker, and cry with Dr. Moxon,
and Ecclesiastes, ' Be not righteous overmuch,
neither make thyself overwise.' But in all the
cases under consideration, one perceived how strong,
almost intimidating, was the power of the virtuous
teetotaler over the respectable medical profession,
and how much courage it required to speak the
sober truth in the face of such a tremendously
black-coated combination. This did not prevent
Dr. Moxon asserting roundly that Teetotalers, as a
body, are ' sensitive, good-natured people, of weak
constitution !' For my own part, I rather quarrel
with the adjective '* good-natured.' Your un-
compromising, proselytizing, pugnacious teetotaler
is too much of a murmuring and too little of a
good fellow. He approaches the collective in-
telligence of the community as a priest too often
approaches the blacks, and arguments failing, is
ready at any moment to resort to excommunication.
It is not to be supposed for a moment that the
doctors expressed any doubts of the destructive
effects of alcohol in excess. What, for example,
can be more terribly true than the following picture
of the fate of the inveterate drinker ?
( When the sot has descended through his chosen course of im-
becility, or dropsy, to the dead-house, Morbid Anatomy is r ady
to receive him knows him well. At the post-mortem she would
say, "Liver hard and nodulated. Brain dense and small; its
covering thick." And if you would listen to her unattractive
3 1 2 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
but interesting tale, she would trace throughout the sot's body
a series of changes which leave unaltered no part of him worth
speaking of. She would tell you that the once delicate, filmy
texture which, when he was young, had surrounded like a. pure
atmosphere every fibre and tube of his mechanism, making him
lithe and supple, has now become rather a dense fog than a pure
atmosphere : dense stuff, which, instead of lubricating, has closed
in upon and crushed out of existence more and more of the fibres
and tubes, especially in the brain and liver : whence the im-
becility and the dropsy.'
The only comment to be made on this, perhaps,
is that inveterate tea-drinking might produce quite
as lamentable a result ; nay, that it might be
induced even by too persistent a course of the hot
buttered toast so much loved by Mr. Chadband.
But Dr. Moxon, the physician to whom we owe
that terrible picture, and whose paper, with all its
wild and sometimes foolish language, was the finest
of the whole series, only dissects the demented sot
in order to martyr the delirious teetotaler. He
tells us, with sly unction, of the case of the gentle-
man who, having consulted a ' great authority,' and
been told to * live on fish and wholemeal bread and
to drink water/ had done so for two years, with the
result that he looked a compound of water, fish,
and wholemeal ! He tells us also, with no little ire
against the Band of Hope, of the ' honest working
cooper,' who injured his ankle with one of his tools,
w r hose constitution became involved in fever, and
who, when ordered to take stimulants, refused to
touch anything containing alcohol, and died in
consequence in a few days. Dr. Moxon is, as I
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 313
suggested, a wild writer, and his article was verbose
and eccentric, but he uttered terrible truths. His
picture of the effect of alcohol in ' weakening
common-sense in opposition to individuality' was
masterly. ' The power of alcohol in this world/
he affirmed, l is due to the fact that it keeps down
the oppressive power of others, and of their
common -sense, over the individual sense, and so
makes a man better company to himself and others.'
He followed out the argument in a style as
convincing as it was luminous ; and I think his
reasoning had more effect on thinking people than
many of the pregnant truisms which seemed to
form the philosophy of Drs. Paget and Gull.
V.
THE CARNIVAL OF ROBERT BURNS.
ON the 25th of January, 1759 that is to say,
a little over one hundred and thirty years ago one
of the most free and precious Beings that ever was
born to wear the poetic mantle first drew breath in
a humble cottage in the near neighbourhood of the
Scottish town of Ayr. He himself has recorded
the event in one of the most spirited of his songs :
1 Our monarch's hindmost year but one
Was five and-tvventy years begun,
'Twas then a blast o' Janwar win'
Blew hansel in on Robin.
3 i4 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
' The gossip keekit in his loof,
Quo' she, " Wha lives will see the proof,
This waly boy will be nae coof
I think we'll ca' him Bobin." '
The remainder of the song, with its references to
' misfortunes great and sma' ' to come, and the love
the poet would bear to the female kind, was
singularly truthful and characteristic. Robert
Burns lived to enjoy a little tawdry personal fame,
to be overridden by misfortunes in their most
squalid and wretched shape, and to leave to his
country a great legacy of noble Song. But one
fact I wish particularly to dwell upon, for in it lies
the moral of this brief note : Burns was too free
and true for his generation, and he died of a broken
heart on account of its neglect. Who has not read,
and who does not remember, that infinitely pathetic
anecdote told by Mr. Lockhart, as told to him by
David Macculloch, of how r , one summer day, Burns
was walking alone on the shady side of a street in
Dumfries, while the opposite side was gay with
groups of ladies and gentlemen going to a county
festivity, not one of whom would recognise him.
Macculloch accosted him, and asked him to cross
the street ; but Burns answered, ' Nay, nay, my
young friend that's all over now'; and then quoted
in a broken voice the lines of Lady Grizzel Baillie's
ballad :
1 were we young, as we once hae been,
We suld hae been galloping down on yon green,
And linking it over the lily white lea,
And werena my heart light, I wad dee /'
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 315
Only a little time before the poor Ploughman had
been the lion of the hour ; but, as he truly said,
that was l all over/ The ignorant gentry and
drunken squirearchy of the south of Scotland were
tired of his splendid manhood, his fearless honesty,
and his simple, independent ways.
Now, Robert Burns was a great man and a great
poet, and the influence of his truly tremendous
satiric and lyrical genius has been one of the great
factors in the disintegration of Scottish superstition.
The l Unco Guid' still exist, but his colossal
caricature of them has thinned and is thinning
their ranks year after year. Indeed, it is difficult
to imagine what Scotland, with its gravitation
towards the Sabbatarian and the sunless, would
have become, without such forces as scatter fire all
over the poems and songs of Burns and his pupils.
Unfortunately the very strength of this poet, and
the very excess of his revolt against convention and
other- worldliness, led to some literary performances
of doubtful value. Perhaps the least interesting of
his poems are those which are purely Bacchanalian.
It was quite natural for him to sing defiantly and
wildly in praise of ' guid Scots drink/ and to pledge
openly, in brimming poetic bumpers, the cause of
Freedom and Plainspeaking. He was a convivial
creature, and his conviviality was that of a fearless
and liberal nature, overflowing with love, and honest
as the day. But what was to some extent a virtue
in him has become, to my mind, a very curious
3i 6 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
vice in his disciples. The fact is, Scotchmen seem
to have granted Burns his apotheosis chiefly on
account of its being an excuse for the consumption
of Whisky. So they celebrate his Birthday. So
they fill their glasses, hiccup l Auld Langsyrie,' and
cry in chorus :
* Robin was a rovin' boy,
Rantin' rovin', rantin' rovin' ;
Robin was a rovin' boy,
Rantin' rovin' Robin !'
The drunken squirearchy, whose progenitors broke
the poet's heart, and who, if the poet were alive
now, would break his heart again, are full of
enthusiasm for his memory. Even some of the
more liberal-minded ministers of the Gospel join in
the acclaim. Farmers and shepherds, factors and
ploughmen, all come together on the one great
occasion to honour the bard whom everybody can
understand, because his synonym is the Whisky
Bottle. They weep over his woes ; they smack
their lips over his satire ; they shriek at his
denunciations, and they murmur his songs. Burns
or Bacchus it is all one. The chief point is that,
now or never, there is an excuse for getting ' reeling
ripe' or ' mortal drunk.' It is poetic, it is literary,
it is hiccup ! honouring the Muses. Any frenzy,
however maniacal, is justifiable under the circum-
stances. ' Glorious Robin !' Pledge him again
and again, pledge him and bless him ; and when
you can't pledge him upright, pledge him prone, as
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 317
you lie, with your fellow Burns-worshippers, under
the table.
T am sorry to say it, I am sorry to utter one
word which might seem to deny the beneficent
influence of noble poetry and a surprising poet, but
I believe this Burns - worship to be worth
exactly the amount of bottles emptied in its
celebration. I will go further, and affirm that
Burns himself, were he living, would be the first
to launch his fiery satire at such a sham. The
sham brotherly-kindness, the sham tears, the sham
unction, and the sham sensation of being poetic,
mean no more than other forms of tipsiness, and
so far from bringing honour to a poet make his
apotheosis a farce. I know well that deep in the
heart of Scotland there lies a well of pure and
abiding gratitude to Robert Burns, but I doubt
very much if those who love the poet best and
study his works most tenderly are to be found in
the ranks of those who stand before his shrine in
the public-house. I may be wrong, and if so I
speak under correction, but I should fancy that
Scotchmen might discover other and better op^
portunities for exhibiting that queer conviviality
which does not abide in them gently, as in other
men, but seizes them spasmodically on festive
occasions, like a kind of St. Vitus's Dance. It
seems to me that it is just this dram-drinking side
of Burns's genius which they ought to conceal, or
at least to forget. No one with any tenderness can
3i8 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
think of Burns's story of his ghastly fits of
conviviality, of his cruel wrongs, of his broken
heart without real tears, not the maudlin tears
of semi or complete intoxication. I am scarcely
overstepping the mark when I add, what all men
know, that the weakness of Burns was his own
readiness to yield to the same kind of false en-
thusiasm which is in vogue among so many of his
disciples. He himself sounded the shallows of his
own nature well, though he said little of its divine
depths, in his own ' Epitaph' :
' The poor inhabitant below
Was quick to learn, and wise to know,
And keenly felt the freendly glow,
And softer flame ;
But thoughtless follies laid him low,
And stained his name.'
He too often mistook excitement for inspiration,
and rushed into revolt for its own sake ; but he
would have been the first to perceive the folly and
the cruelty of selecting for admiration and imitation
only one side, and that side the worst, of a great
man's character. If he could be present in the
spirit at a few of the gatherings held annually in
his name, and if he could then flit away to some
annual gatherings of the l unco guid/ he would be
troubled to perceive that both those who love and
those who hate him are worshipping the same fetish
a whisky bottle. It is a pity, a very great
pity, that so much enthusiasm should be spilt about
on a single evening, or on special occasions. Were
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 319
I a Scotch poet, living or dead, I should prefer a
very little sober appreciation to any amount of
drunken idolatry ; and I should not care to gauge
the height of my success by the depth of degrada-
tion into which I had plunged my votaries. Be
that as it may, the poet who taught, as the flower
of his human experience, that ' prudent, cautious
self-control is Wisdom's root/ should have some
fitter temple than a tavern, and some kindlier
consecration than the maudlin applause of maniacs
in all stages of alcoholic delirium.
VI.
BENEFICENT ' MURDER' ( 1 ).*
AMID the storm of popular indignation over the
horrors of the recent execution by electricity, one
curious and to me most significant circumstance
appears to have been overlooked. Simultaneously
with the news of Kernmler's judicial torture in
the interests of Science, we have received from
America the news that Count Tolstoi's ' Kreutzer
Sonata,' and other ' immoral ' books, have been
suppressed in the interests of Morality. It has
not, possibly, occurred to many that there is any
other than an accidental connection between those
two recent events ; but to my mind they are only
' The two letters under this title are reprinted from the Daily
Telegraph, where they appeared immediately after the execution
of Kemmler.
320 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
two aspects of the same social question, two
strange results of the same political force which
I have on a former occasion called l Providence
made Easy.' Both the conduct of life and its
duration are regulated, for the time being, by
the pragmatic sanction of the Legislator. All
other sanctions are temporarily abolished. The
reverence for human life, for the human body,
has departed with the reverence for the Soul, for
Freedom, for individual hope and aspiration ; and,
under the same . cloak of empirical knowledge,
Morality and Science shake hands. Was I not
justified, then, in asserting that our modern Trades
Union of scientists and materialists was merely a
survival of the old Calvinism that Calvinism
which, ever since honest John triumphed in the
burning of Servetus, has been ' cruel as the
grave ' ?
How much further will the appetite for carnal
knowledge, the lust for verification, lead the
creature who loudly vaunts his descent from the
anthropoid ape, and who looks forward to the
dawning seon of the new god, Humanity ? Ev r ery-
w r here the beneficent Demagogue, who would regu-
late the growth of individual evolution, who would
experimentalize on the living subject, from the
beast that crawls to the beast that stands upright,
is busily at work, and the voice of the Legisla-
ture says, ' Well done !' While the cynic in the
market-place loudly proclaims the death of all
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 321
human hope and aspiration, while even the Judge
on the bench accepts the destruction of Religion,
but utters a pharisaic ' If we can't be pious, let us
at least be moral/ the scientific jerry-builder con-
structs his lordly pleasure-house out of the stones
of dead creeds. The ethics of the dissecting-room
and the torture-chamber replace the instincts of
the human conscience, which conscience, if forced
evolution continues to prevail, will soon become
a mere register of average human prejudices.
Meantime, having disintegrated all laws in suc-
cession, we remain at the mercy of the empirical
laws of Demogorgon. To talk through the tele-
phone or to talk into the phonograph is to
penetrate the mysteries of Nature, and, heedless
of the bolts of Zeus and kindred gods, we exult
over Mr. Edison's bottled thunder.
All this would not matter much if the tyrannical
will of the new Science and new Morality would
suffer us to breathe in peace, and if the New
Journalism, talking the shibboleth of Science and
Morality, would leave our personal evolution alone.
But we are being legislated for, not only in the
Senate, but in the Vestry ; not only by the County
Councilman, but by the Penny-a-liner. With what
result, may I ask ? With the result that every
day men and women are growing more indifferent
and more mechanical, and that a nation of freemen
is being transformed into a nation of sanitary prigs.
If I may use the expression, we are becoming
21
322 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
Teutonized ; the peculiarity of the Teuton being
that, although free, he forges his own fetters, and
voluntarily accepts his slavery as a moral and
political machine. For my own part, I find that
I cannot procure certain books without police
supervision ; that I cannot see a play or write
one without being guided for my good by a legal
supervisor ; that I cannot put my hand in my
pocket to assist a beggar without being looked
at askance by the Commissioners of Lunacy ; that
I cannot use my own judgment even in a literary
contract without being pounced upon and bullied
by a trades union of authors ; that, in a word, I
can do nothing, think nothing, be nothing, without
some sort of organized social intervention. As
for the right of private judgment, it is rapidly
becoming a farce. Men no longer think or judge
for themselves ; they do it all by machinery.
There are cheap manuals, mechanical guides, to
classify and regulate even my tastes and likings.
Little trade unions innumerable make up the
corporate trades union, the State. And the indi-
vidual member of society, the thinking and see-
ing man, becomes either a martyr or part of a
Machine.
The apogee of the moon of Dulness, of Mob
Rule, of Beneficent Legislation, is reached at last,
when the free people of America, in their zeal for
the public good, furnish the world with the edify-
ing spectacle of a judicial murder and torture by
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 323
electricity, and when, in the same breath, they
consign the work of a daring thinker to the civic
pit for rubbish. Let me say in this connection
that I have no personal sympathy whatever with
the diseased views of human passion taken by
Count Tolstoi. Morality has made the man, as
it makes the Council and the Legislature, raving
mad. Science, Christian or un-Christian, renders
the individual, as it renders the State, insane with
the pride of empirical discovery, with the zeal of
impious verification. And, after all, we can verify
so little ! What does it serve the lover to know
that his beloved moonlight is made of green cheese
or magnesium ? How does it help human nature
to learn that the beauty it yearns for fattens on
corruption ? to be told that every happy instinct,
every function of the flesh, is dangerous, and to be
summarily repressed ? The new scientific Calvinism
would turn the many-coloured picture of the world
into one common black and white ; would teach
the maiden to analyze her first blush, and the boy
to dissect his first love ; would turn pure natural
impulse into prurient inquiry, and put glass
windows into everybody as in the famous surgical
case to show us the mean processes of the Un-
conscious. Men who, like myself, were not born
* moral ' men who refuse to measure themselves
by the common standard which regulates social
conduct, and who, above all, would secure for their
fellows perfect freedom of moral evolution, stand
21 2
3 2 4 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
wondering in the darkness of eclipse, while
Puritanism and espionage conspire against human
nature.
Now, more than ever, at this crucial point of
the world's history, it behoves all thinking men to
cry, with Virchow, Restringamur ! Do not per-
mit Empiricism to go too far, either in the destroy-
ing of sanctions, or in the formulation of enactments,
or in the legalizing of experiments ; but let every
man who thinks he has a message speak with a
free tongue, and let Art, above all in which may
lie the salvation of the world live a free and
natural life. The example of Kemmler should be
a warning to everyone of what beneficent legisla-
tion may yet do for us in the interests of the
State, of Science, and of Morality !
VII.
BENEFICENT ' MURDER ' (2).
IN view of the reproaches of some correspondents,
who contend that they do not quite know what I
mean or what I am complaining about, I find
it necessary to add a few further words of ex-
planation. I never posed as a Gnostic, as ' one
who knows/ and if I show scant respect for
authoritative opinions, I feel quite as little respect
for any opinions of my own. I invariably try, how-
ever, to make these opinions clear. Since I appear
to have failed in the first instance, let me try again.
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 325
I am not, to begin with, a Socialist in the
ordinary sense of the word, and I distinguish in
both the moral and the political world between
sympathetic co-operation and arbitrary trades
unionism. I will combine with no man, with no
body of men, to dictate absolutely to others how
they are to think and act. True Socialism I be-
lieve to be the self-protection of minorities against
the despotism of majorities, the self-protection of
individuals against the tyranny of mob-elected
legislators, against encroachments on the part of
the State, of the Church, of Capital, of the working
as well as of the governing classes, and of Society.
False Socialism I believe to be the combination of
organized classes or communities to limit the free
action of the individual, and to force unnatural
evolution all along the line. A true Socialist
accepts patiently the inevitable limitations put by
the community on his personal activity. He is
perfectly well aware that government is necessary,
and that, if his fellow-men are to be comfortable,
he cannot do just as he pleases. If he protests
against taxes, it is only when he considers them
iniquitous e.g., taxes for foolish wars, for the
support of discredited institutions, of unnecessary
offices, of sinecures. He cheerfully contributes to
the lighting and draining of cities, to the wages of
a necessary police, to the support of the helpless
and deserving poor, to the necessary institutions of
the State. But there he pauses. Having done
326 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
his duty as a citizen, he retires on his rights as a
man. He complains if he has to support a Church
in which he has ceased to believe, and contends
that if his neighbours require the services of a
clergyman they should not ask him to pay for
them. If he seeks entertainment he elects to
choose it for himself, without legislative super-
vision. If he likes statues and pictures of the
nude (as I do), he contends that he has a right to
enjoy them, despite the fact that they create nasty
sensations in * moral ' people. So with Books and
with the Drama. He claims a free choice in their
selection, no matter how many ' young persons '
may be peeping round the corner. Despite the
Priests in Absolution of the New Journalism, he
protests against combinations which make life
hideous e.g., the inquisitorial Newspaper. But
even here he does not interfere ; he only smiles,
and prays that God may send poor Humanity a
better religion and better literature. And so on,
and so on, to the end of the chapter.
I hope this is very simple. Well, in the present
condition of affairs, how does the true Socialist
or, in other words, the rational, peace-loving citizen
find himself treated ?
He finds, in the first place, that false Socialism,
using the shibboleth of the ' greatest happiness
for the greatest number,' is, both here and in
Germany, bolstering up the tyrannies of an all-
present officialism. He finds that powerful organi-
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 327
zations of men are trying to legalize in our cities
what is in his sight the abomination of abomina-
tions. He finds that the finest course of action a
Government can adopt to repress crimes of murder
and of violence is to imitate them, or even, as
lately in America, to excel their horrors. He
finds that, by our marriage laws, men and women
are chained like beasts together, and that their
very despairing effort to escape from each other is
called ' collusion.' He finds that everywhere in
Society, wherever the Puritanical bias prevails, the
simplest and purest natural functions are looked
upon as unclean ; that Morality despises the body
now, as Religion despised it long ago. He is told
of the spread of education ; he finds that he is
being told merely of a spread of half-instructed
ignorance. He finds our leading scientists justifying
War and Appropriation, as our leading Spiritualists
and Churchmen used to justify them. He finds
it dangerous, or at least incompatible, to express
his real opinion of any existing institution, par-
ticularly if that institution is either ' moral ' or
* religious.' He is not led to the stake, but he
is ' boycotted ' ; he is a discredited and suspected
person. He finds, in one word, that at every
point of his individual advance he is confronted by
the mass of organized cruelty and unintelligence.
All this, of course, is no new thing. As a
child, I saw Robert Owen stoned for saying that
Marriages were not always made in Heaven I
328 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
But at no period of history, except that period
when false Christianity was most dominant, have
individuals been so much at the mercy of a false
Morality. In literature especially the extent of
completed ignorance is something scarcely credible
ignorance not only of the uneducated, but of
the cultivated and the superfine. To illustrate it
I need go no further than a recent number of the
Quarterly Review, where conventional Morality
speaks out loudly as a trumpet on the subject of
the French nation and of French fiction. Even
the School Board, it appears, has not killed the
insular prejudice that every Frenchman is a
sensualist and every French book an outrage on
decency. But what is to be said of a writer (the
mouthpiece of a large class, or we should not find
him in the Quarterly) who lumps Balzac, Flaubert,
and Zola together as writers of the same calibre,
and actually affirms that ' Balzac was a materialist,
who did not believe in God ' ? Poor Balzac ! who
swore by Godhead and the Monarchy, and was
so mercilessly roasted for his leaning to these
aristocracies. ' His (Balzac's) only faith was faith
in money ; he is the supreme artist who excels in
consummating the type of the ignoble, even of the
cadaverous. His characters are always intrinsically
vicious, and he anticipated the worst things of
Zola.' And this of the writer who gave us
' Eugenie Grandet,' and ' Cousin Pons,' and
' Modeste Mignon,' and a hundred other imperish-
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 329
able types of human beauty and goodness. Is it
any wonder that the wretched poor flock to hear
the tumult of the Salvation Army, when the rich
and cultured combine to support such dismal
howling as I have quoted, such utter ignorance of
the subject, such spasmodic stumbling, as of the
blind leading the blind ?
For myself, I still find in France the centre of
the World's free thought. The mad political craze,
the whirl from one system to another, is nothing ;
the bold and fearless freedom of the great French
writers, from Diderot downwards, is everything.
No matter if they have now torn open the sewers,
as long ago they tore down the superstructures of
society. They have taught men to think and feel.
Even Zola among the shambles is better than
Chadband among the churches, better than the
easy English novelist who cloaks up the ulcers of
society, better than Mr. Chaos-come-again and his
army of howling teetotalers and Sabbatarians.
But I find I am wandering away into criticism.
What I wanted to point out was, that it is not the
freedom of individuals we have to fear, but the
combinations of classes the trades unions of well-
intentioned political moralists, culminating in the
tyrannies of the Legislature. England under the
new Radicalism is growing as terrible as Sheffield
under Broadhead ! We have too much legislation
and too little individual responsibility. Men who
used to fight for their own hands now cling
330 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
tremulously to the skirts of officialism, and cry,
' Help us ; instruct us. We are too weak to help
and instruct ourselves.' Small wonder that, in
their extremity, they turn from the conscience im-
planted in them by God to the legerdemain of
Providence made Easy. If we want to know
whither a large portion of the community is
drifting, let us glance for a moment at General
Booth's view of the Millennium, given in a
publication called ' All the World/ ' First, we
should have Hyde Park roofed in, with towers
climbing to the stars, as the world's great, grand,
central temple ! . . . And, then, what demonstra-
tions, what processions, what mighty assemblies,
what grand reviews, what crowded streets, im-
passable with the joyful multitudes marching to
and fro ! . . . Five million hearts would turn to
God with voices of thanksgiving and with shouts
of praise !'*
Far be it from me to underrate the good work
General Booth is doing in some directions ; but
take such a proclamation as this, and it is an
attempt to turn Humanity into a huge barrel-
organ, with an accompaniment of ' shouting ' per-
formers. And herein, as we are aware, lies the
secret of his triumph. Knowing how little is done
to amuse the masses, seeing their utter wretched-
ness and dulness, he shows them how to exercise
* See, further on, the remarks on the Social Aid side of
General Booth's scheme.
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 331
their bodies and use their lungs by organizing for
one universal Shout. Out of this tumult, to which
the ' tom-tom ' of the poor savage is music, peace
and salvation are to come. Looming in the near
future is the Golden Age, when any individual
who refuses to join in the general noise will be
regarded as anti-social, as an unsympathetic
member of the community. In the face of this
and kindred horrors, we are asked to believe that
beneficent and philanthropic Organization is every-
thing, and that individual peace and personal
freedom are of little or no consequence.
VIII.
BOOKSELLERS' ROMANCE.
MR. RIDER HAGGARD, whose own work in fiction is
at present delighting all who take pleasure in the
marvellous, and who possesses in a certain measure
the imagination of a poet, has published in the
Contemporary Review a diatribe against the novel
of the period, the moral of which appears to be :
' If modern fiction fails to content you, try back to
" Robinson Crusoe ;" and if home scenery fails to
inspire you, go to Africa.' Now, it is no part of
my business to defend our modern novelists from
their latest critic, any more than it is to deny the
novelty and the charm of Mr. Haggard's own flights
into easy romance ; but in this particular instance
I looked for a Daniel come to judgment, and I
332 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
find only a Jeremiah. Leaving out of sight all
that my clever contemporaries have done in fiction,
work at least equal to the finest ore ever dug out
of the Dark Continent, I want seriously to ask
if Mr. Haggard, in the heyday of his sudden
popularity, is not rather overestimating the prodigy
of his own advent ; and whether, after all, true
Romance has very much to do with those wild
fancy -flights which transport the booksellers for a
season, but alarm the quiet students of human
nature ? Roniance, if I understand it rightly, is
the art of idealizing the splendid facts of life, of
seizing human nature at its highest, and present-
ing it in types of poetic beauty, rather than the
art of telling tales for the marines, and disseminat-
ing the philosophy of the preposterous. If the
hope of the English public lay in Mr. Haggard's
way, we should have to recognise Jules Verne as
a fine romancist, and place the fairy taletellers
right over the head of Shakespeare ; snatch the
Bible from its shelf and substitute the ' Arabian
Nights ;' and instead of Walter Scott and Charles
Reade, Dumas and Victor Hugo, content ourselves
with the author of the wonderful adventures of
Peter Wilkins. I am not, let it be borne in mind,
underrating the author of ' King Solomon's Mines/
although, if I were to pronounce an opinion, I
should say that a commonplace, vivid, truthful
bit of work like ' Kidnapped ' was really more
imaginative ; but even Mr. Louis Stevenson would
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 333
be the last man to maintain that his work in this
direction was a new departure. The point I wish
to insist upon is that great fiction, instead of
escaping from the realm of common-sense into
that of pure fancy, throws the light of imagination
over that realm of common-sense in such a way
as to make of it a veritable fairyland. Nor is
Mr. Haggard in any way justified as a romancist
because, in the manner of M. Yerne, he puts in
the centre of his domain of fancy a few exces-
sively prosy and old-fashioned realistic types, such
as the wonderful Englishman with the white legs,
the wandering African chief, and the hideous
sibyl of innumerable story-tellers. He is quite
within his right in escaping human character, but
if he were a true romancist he would certainly
not escape it ; and, again, if he were a new as well
as a true romancist, he would leave on the mind a
higher and nobler impression than is to be derived
from the literature written for, and beloved by,
the boys of England. In his story of ' She,' he
certainly does show imagination ; but surely the
whole work is marred and spoiled by the incon-
sistency which blends a good poetical idea, worthy
treatment in verse, with the commonplace associa-
tions and stereotyped characters so long familiar in
books of the modern marvellous written for Pater-
noster Row, and published with illustrations. The
idea of l She ' is fine ; the treatment, in spite of
its cleverness, is not far beyond the method of
334 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
M. Verne. Instead of truth irradiated by idealism,
we have beauty degraded by commonplace ; and as
a consequence, the tale, in spite of all its clever
workmanship, leaves the impression of a large
canvas painted to order. This, of course, does not
prevent it from being very amusing ; only the fact
of having written an amusing book does not justify
an author in affirming that amusement is to be the
prime vocation of the novelist of the future.
To compare great things with small, ^Sschylus
is a true Romancist. When he deals with the
great issues of life, he uses the supernatural only
as a background ; but his ideas and his pictures
would be quite as true, and just as noble, if his
supernatural were merely an atmosphere, as it
often is. Homer, perhaps, is more to the point ;
his tales of gods and men have all the strength of
early fable, none of the mixture of ancient and
modern moods. Dante writes romance in colossal
cipher, never mean and never small. But to come
down to modern times, Swift is a romancist, and
Defoe is a realist ; each in his turn is too wise to
mix with foreign matter the elements peculiarly
his own. Sublime human Romance attained its
zenith in Hugo, who accepted Nature as she is,
and craved no fable, but found in Nature's own
bosom the god, the godlike man, as well as the
monster and the chimera. It is cruel to Mr.
Haggard to mention him in connection with these
masters, but the man who coolly relegates Zola to
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 335
the Limbo of the Unclean, and who indirectly in-
dicates his own form of art as higher and purer
than that which produced ' Une Page d' Amour/
must at least aspire to be a master. And with all
that has been done in England even in recent
years, Mr. Haggard is discontented. He has no
good word to say for any of his elder brethren for
Charles Reade, for Walter Besant, for the author
of ' Lorna Doone/ or even for the author of
' Alice in Wonderland/ All to him is leather and
prunella, except Robinson Crusoe, African cram,
and the merry boys of England. Unto this last
we are coming, he says, since the good Ho wells
avails us not, and the bad Zola grows more and
more insufferable. The romance of the future is
to justify, not Shakespeare, not Scott, not Dumas,
not Hugo, not Dickens, not Reade, but M. Jules
Verne, Mr. R. M. Ballantyne, and Captain Mayne
Reid. For five shilling pot-pourris we are to
exchange the oldest school of Idealism and the
newest school of Naturalism ! The panorama
business, the book of travel business, the highly
coloured showman business, is to take the place of
human nature and human passion ; and poetry
and prose jumbled together are to supplant the
literature of patient imagination. Really Mr.
Andrew Lang and the Saturday Review have
much to answer for, unless Mr. Rider Haggard,
whom their praises have persuaded to this de-
liverance, is laughing at us in his sleeve.
336 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
IX.
PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S MIRACULOUS CONVERSION (1).*
I HAVE only just read, with feelings of mingled
surprise and delight, Professor Huxley's letter to
the Times newspaper on the subject of the Sal-
vation Army and General Booth. It is so sweet
to find one's self a true prophet ; and did I not
prophesy some little time ago, in a contemporary,
that Professor Huxley would soon be converted
' like another Saul ' ? The Arch-Sociologist, the
denier of the natural freedom and equality of man,
the upholder of ' a statute of limitations in matters
of wrong-doing,' the denouncer of Freedom as
laissez-faire, the preacher of Providence made
Easy and special Governmental supervision in all
departments, now wheels round in the very face
of Mr. Spencer, and cries : ' I said so ! Organization
is dangerous ! the safeguard of society lies in the
freedom of the Individual !' And all this because
one man of untutored intellect, with limited
reasoning powers and miraculous powers of organ-
ization, has done in a few short years what all
the Churches, including the Church of Pragmatic
Science, have utterly failed to do has awakened
the imagination of the British Philistine to the
fact that the miseries of the social deposits must
be reckoned with, and has, in a measure, pointed
* The first of the following letters appeared in the Times and
Daily Chronicle^ the second in the Chronicle only.
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 337
out 'the way.' Why, only a while ago the mili-
tant Professor was stumping the magazines and
advocating the possibility of advancing evolution
by force from without and from above ; was ' per-
secuting ' the faithful who clamoured to be saved
or damned in their own fashion ; and here he is r
already struck down by a Light from Heaven (or
some other dwelling-place of the aristocracy) pro-
claiming that he, too, is of the Faithful, of the
poor persecuted remnant which ' believes ' !
I was severely rebuked when I dared to defend
Mr. Herbert Spencer's doctrine of absolute ethics
against the savage attack of Professor Huxley ;
because I questioned the reasoning powers, while
fully admitting the ingenuity, of my opponent.
I am now, therefore, on the horns of a dilemma.
Either Professor Huxley was always rational, or
he was, all along the line, inconsistent. If he was
rational, he failed to express his ideafe logically ;
and if he was inconsistent, like most persecutors,
he needed, besides logic, fuller light and edification.
With what fervour did he argue (in his favourite
metaphorical manner) against the fatuity which
would place the guidance of a Ship in the hands
of the crew, instead of those of the Captain ;
against the ' reasoned savagery ' of those who
would, it seemed to him, uphold the natural
1 rights ' of even the man-eating tiger ! Then we
wanted leadership, organization, espionage even,
and scientific police ; now, all these things are
22
338 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
perilous, and General Booth, with his tom-toms
and his military orders, is threatening the lives of
* individual ' men. Yesterday Professor Huxley
was championing that Over-legislation which would
mean the slavery of all mankind ; to-day he is
protesting against the strong men, and questioning
the would-be legislators. A little while ago he
was Mr. Herbert Spencer's deadliest opponent ;
just a pirouette, and here he is at Mr. Spencer's
feet. Truly a miraculous conversion ! All our
fears were vain. The protector of the loaves and
fishes, the peripatetic Providence incarnate, will
harm us no more. Only a few steps further, and
the Saul of the status quo will be the St. Paul of
Individualism.
Frankly, however, I distrust both this Saul and
that other of the New Testament as persons pos-
sessing neither great logic nor trustworthy insight
into human nature. The converted Persecutor is
sure to lapse backwards during the very process
of edification. And now, to my poor judgment,
the Professor Huxley who refuses to disgorge his
friend's thousand pounds, on the ground that he
will not countenance any form of social or religious
' tyranny,' is fully as suspicious a figure as the
Professor Huxley who avowed that ' the equality
of men before God was an equality either of
insignificance or imperfection,' and that there was
a strong argument for supposing that Force, reason-
ably applied, was an indispensable factor of our
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 339
civilization. Am I wrong in suggesting that, now
as always, the pragmatic temperament and the
anti-theological bias has far more to do with Pro-
fessor Huxley's attitude than any real conversion
to the Individualism he has hated so cordially and
so long ? I may be wronging a true convert,
but I cannot help believing that Professor Huxley
would be far less shocked by the Salvation Army
if it used the shibboleth of Science in lieu of that
of Christianity if it were beating its tom-toms
in the name of David Hume instead of that of
Jesus of Nazareth. Your scientist will endure a
good deal of noise, a great deal of fussy organiza-
tion, when the object is secular, and not religious.
It is no part of my purpose to uphold the
scheme of General Booth ; I have not studied it
sufficiently to justify or condemn it. So far as it
involves a tyrannous organization, an interference
with the right of private judgment, an upholding
of effete superstitions, it has no sympathy of mine,
and not all the approval of all the Churches would
induce me to utter one word on its behalf. But
the merest tyro in history must see that Professor
Huxley's attempt to liken it to the schemes of
Francis of Assisi and Ignatius Loyola is simply
absurd, illogical, and un instructed worthy, in fact,
of the mind which justified Jacob against Esau on
the ground of ' practical expedience.' For if one
thing is clear, it is that the religion of General
Booth, whatever its crude forms and ordinances
09 o
u & ml
340
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
may be, is at once unsectarian and beneficent,
practical as opposed to dogmatic. The use of the
Christian vocabulary is a detail. I have nowhere
read that the General troubles himself about
Christian dogmas. His cry has rather been, ' A
truce to your dogmas, and even to your moralities ;
let us see if we cannot save the " submerged
tenth " by making it conscious of happy responsi-
bility by enabling it to live. 9 The comparison
with Mormonism is equally unfortunate ; and, in
any case, Mormonism is an institution which has
existed with few or no crimes, no Wars, no Brothels,
and no ' Hells ' all accredited^ ornaments of our
higher civilization. Say what we may of General
Booth and I myself (horrified by the clamour in
the street) have said some hard things he has
struck a chord of beneficence which vibrates round
the world ; he has cried to the rich and powerful,
1 Lo ! these also are your brethren ' ; he has suc-
ceeded in startling the Bishops from their arm-
chairs, and the priests from their confessionals ; he
has said, ' What you for eighteen centuries have
failed to do what you have scarcely even cared
to do I, an individual, a man of the people, will
at least try to do.' And in the face of this man,
whose hand is open to the outcast and the fallen ;
who turns his back on no human creature, however
base ; who knows the world far better than any
scientist that was ever born, Professor Huxley
buttons up his pockets, purses up his lips, and
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 34 1 ;
tries to escape from the imputation of incon-
sistency, of inhumanity, by avowing his adherence
to Principles which he has been opposing all his
life.
But no ; Professor Huxley is not inconsistent.
He stands where he has always stood, among those
who are by temperament deprived of the true
philosophic vision and the real enthusiasm of
humanity. A genuine scientific student, capable
of much careful verification on a low plane of
inquiry, he cannot generalize and cannot organize.
He has vindicated centuries of wrong-doing ; he
has upheld the tyrannies of Force and Convention;
he has sided with Society against the Individual on
the ground of utility, and with the Strong against
the Weak on the score of necessity ; and so, after
all, even this last miraculous conversion a sham,
like all things seemingly miraculous cannot save
him. He is condemned out of his own mouth as
the Pharisee who passes by, while General Booth
is justified, by his own act, as the Samaritan who
at least endeavours to heal and bless. *
* Professor Huxley's only comment on this was a protest that
I utterly misstated his views, and that I was, he helieved, merely a
writer of ' works of imagination.' The good Professor's contempt
for his opponents, for all who dare to question his empirical
statements, is notorious. To him, even Mr. Spencer was only
' an abstract Philosopher.'
342 FLO TSAM AND JE TSAM.
X.
PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S MIRACULOUS CONVERSION (2).
In the Times of December 9, 1890, appeared
another letter from Professor Huxley, written in
the same vein as his first diatribe, on General
Booth's scheme, and attached to it was the letter
from my pen, which was printed in the Daily
Chronicle (and the Daily Chronicle only) on the
previous day. Now, my letter was issued to the
public Press on the previous Sunday, but several
of the dailies passed it by without insertion, on
the conventional ground that the letter of which it
was a criticism ' had not appeared in their columns.'
The Times, however, with characteristic unfair-
ness, published it a day late, in order that, when
my protest was seen and read, Professor Huxley
might have another opportunity of raising false
issues on the subject. These, as we all know, are
the usual tactics of the great organ of British
Philistia. It cannot be fair and honest, even in
so small a matter as the printing of correspondence.
From the day when it fought on the side of Slavery
during the American Civil War to the day when it
organized the Pigott forgery, and from that day to
the present, when it lets loose the quasi-scientific
Boanerges to fulminate against the Salvation Army
and talk half-instructed twaddle about Simon
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 343
Magus and the Mendicant Friars, it has been
steadily posing as the enemy of human progress
and human enlightenment.
It is not, however, with the Times I have to
deal, but with the gentleman in full ' useful-know-
ledge canonicals,' who now, as heretofore, refuses
to give General Booth his blessing for which, I
am sure, the General never prayed. By what
right of achievement or attainment Professor
Huxley assumes to speak authoritatively on social
questions I have never been able to discover.
Both he and Professor Tyndall, who steps forward
to support him, have done very little to justify
any faith in either their sympathy or their insight.
But both, we have to bear in mind, have one
mission in common to translate the jargon of
Carlyle into the easy patter of Cheap Science, so
that ' he who runs may read.' Professor Huxley,
on the grounds of his recent ' miraculous conver-
sion' to Spencerian principles, now poses as an
Individualist ; but we must be careful to distin-
guish between such individualism as his and the
deeply reasoned individualism of the Philosopher
he has denounced so often and so long. We must
remember that his warning is not philosophical,
but empirical ; that he has on previous occasions
committed himself to a defence of the present
social cosmos, or chaos, as opposed to the aspira-
tions of human freedom ; that, in a word, he em-
bodies the kind of opinion which would oppose to
344 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
the Enthusiasm of Humanity the dreary conven-
tionalities of the Pragmatic Sanction.
For what, after all, has this self-canonized
lecturer on useful knowledge to say on the subject
at issue ? What is his criticism of the Man who,
like his great Prototype, has actually descended
into Hell, hoping to snatch thence the submerged
' tenth ' of our population ? Firstly, that there
are many philanthropies in the world, and that
General Booth's is only one of them. This,
surely, we knew already. Secondly, that earlier
labourers in the field of Socialism had no army
organization, no beating drums, no general fan-
faronade, and that such organization belongs rather
to the raving mystagogues of the East than to the
steady social workers of the West. In this con-
nection, curiously enough, the empirical Professor,
always inconsistent in argument, while ever con-
sistent in temperament, sighs for the old-fashioned
and quiet ways of the Apostles, about whose
' quietness,' by the way, he might have learned
something by a few more visits to the British
Museum. It is surely news to all the world that
the early Christians were peaceful, non-revolu-
tionary, non-organizing persons, in no way trouble-
some to persons of opposite opinion and lovers
of laissez faire. Thirdly and finally, Professor
Huxley, while recognising the fact of human
misery, asserts that General Booth's scheme to
check it is likely to do ' more harm than good.'
FL OTSAM AND JE TSAM. 345
And then he begins to tell us ' why.' Then,
for the first time, we begin to get at what he
really does mean. ' It is primarily and mainly for
the sake of saving the Soul,' writes General Booth,
'that I seek the salvation of the Body.' This
means, according to Professor Huxley, that ' men
are to be made sober and industrious mainly that,
as washed, shorn, and docile sheep, they may
be driven into the narrow theological fold which
Mr. Booth patronizes.' Does it mean anything
of the kind ? I, for one, have about as much
belief as Professor Huxley in any religious dogma
or Christian formula, but I have never gathered
from General Booth that he bases his scheme on
any foundation of abstract theology. But, if he
did, surely the man who, with any formula what-
ever, can make the wretched millions ' sober and
industrious,' is achieving fully two-thirds of the
objects of all human science, of all human regene-
ration. Here, again, Professor Huxley is illogical ;
for once make a man ' sober and industrious '
once make him to some extent a rational creature
and be sure you will not ' drive ' him very far.
You have given eyes to the blind ; those eyes will see.
1 1 have been in the habit of thinking,' proceeds
Professor Huxley, ' that self-respect and thrift are
the rungs of the ladder by which men must surely
climb out of the slough of the despond of want,
and I have regarded them as perhaps the most
eminent of the practical virtues.' Apres ? Has
346 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
General Booth ever denounced self-respect and
thrift ? No, admits the Professor ; but he has
said that * envy ' is the corner-stone of our com-
petitive system, and that the sufferings of starving
men are the consequence of ' the sins of the
capitalist ' ! Here we get a fine glimpse of the
good Professor who defended the Status quo on
the score of expediency, and who demanded for
the landgrabber and the capitalist, enriched by
centuries of wrong -doing, a certain statute of
limitations. Does anyone but an empirical
scientist, confusing the survival of the socially
successful with the natural survival of the fittest,
doubt for a moment that ' envy ' and greed are the
crying sins of our generation, and that many men
starve because their fellow-men refuse to feel ?
Read, in this connection, the solemn and beautiful
words of Mr. Henry John Atkinson, printed in
the very number of the Times which contains the
Professor's grisly diatribe : * I cannot sit still in
warmth and comfort when I know that many of
my countrymen are wandering about London with-
out food or shelter all through these inclement
nights, and that General Booth and his corps of
workers wish to help them, and cannot get the
means. My wife and I will give 300'- while
Professor Huxley, who would cheerfully, no doubt,
contribute to a scheme for the extension of Vivi-
section, buttons up his trousers-pockets and keeps
his friend's 'thousand pounds.'
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 347
Further on, Profesor Huxley pushes his objec-
tion further home by citing a case of so-called
1 persecution.' A girl was ' seduced twice,' and
applied to the Salvationists, who thereupon ' hunted
up the man, threatened him with exposure, and
forced from him the payment to his victim of 60
down, an allowance of 1 a week, and an assurance
on his life of 450 in her favour.' Intimidation
with a vengeance, very Jedburgh justice, says the
Professor. Let us not be quite sure. Let us not
assume too hastily that the case was not fully
investigated. Let us reflect at the same time
what the precious Law would have done for the
victim of this seducer. It would have enabled
her to take out a summons, perhaps, and, if there
were a child, secure a weekly sum of half a crown
while that child was of tender years ! Professor
Huxley thinks that, in all possibility, it was a
mere question of relative moral delinquency be-
tween the parties, and that the man, so brought
to book, was as much a ' victim ' as the woman.
Excellent Professor ! True upholder of masculine
law-making and the survival of the culpable
fittest ! May we not in all seriousness wish Mr.
Spencer joy of his last proselyte ?
When all is said and done, all that Professor
Huxley can advance against the Salvation Army
is that it is ' noisy ' ; that it uses the vocabulary of
superstition ; that it reproaches the rich for the
sorrows of the poor ; and that, whenever it can,
348 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
it tries to bring delinquents to justice ! Well,
admit every one of the indictments, and what is
proved ? That every beneficent scheme has some
little drawbacks, but that every such scheme must
be judged by the totality, by the entire moral
efficacy, of its influence. What the Salvation
Army has done is this it has, first of all,
awakened the sleeping conscience of the world.
It has told Dives that he must not sleep so long
as Lazarus starves ; it has proclaimed that there
is hope for every man, even for the basest, if he
will try to be ' honest and industrious' ; it has
held out hands to the Penitent Thief (as it would
hold out hands to the penitent Professor), and it
has broken bread with the Magdalen. Then think
for a moment what Cheap Science, with its dema-
gogues of the dissecting-room, its peripatetic pro-
fessors, has done, or tried to do. It has prattled
glibly of Natural Law and the Survival of the
Fittest ; it has cast in its lot with the Times and the
governing classes; it has paraded forged documents
to enslave the Irish people and discredit a nation-
ality ; it has countenanced the ' unco' gude ' and
joined in the holy horror against the destroyers
of national institutions, such as War and Prostitu-
tion ; it has contented itself with Carlyle's Gospel
according to the Printer's Devil and the faith
which confuses natural Freedom and Equality with
' reasoned savagery' ; and last, and greatest of its
achievements, it has instituted the beneficent
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 349
tortures of Vivisection. Well, if we have to
choose between Simon Magus and Professor
Huxley, or between General Booth and Professor
Ferrier, let us give our vote to those who are the
friends of both man and beast with the workers
who are tender to the weak and merciful to the
fallen, not with those who turn with complacency
to acts of beneficent legislation, and let the
lost go by ! As for Professor Huxley, he is only
our old friend the Priest in another guise, as un-
sympathetic, as bigoted, as retrograde as anyone
who ever wore soutane or cowl. Even in his new
aspect as a convert to Individualism, he will con-
vince no sane man that Folly and Enthusiasm are
synonymous terms.
XI.
1 THE JOURNALIST IN ABSOLUTION.'*
WRITING neither as a person having authority, nor
as one of the scribes, I wish to put on record, if
you will permit me, rny complete and absolute
sympathy with Mr. Parneli. He may, or may
not, be an Adulterer that, in any case, I consider
a detail chiefly interesting to himself; but I
contend that his technical and legal guilt is no
proof whatever of his moral turpitude. No ques-
tion involving the relation of the sexes can be
absolutely decided in the tainted atmosphere of
* First published just after the divorce suit of O'Shea v. Parneli.
350 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
our foul Divorce Court, and the case of * O'Shea
v. Parnell ' was established by the un worthiest of
all evidence, that of prying chambermaids, prurient
lodging-house keepers, and all the miserable human
fry who swim in the unclean shallows of the legal
puddle. To my mind, Mr. Parnell's stern and abso-
lute silence, his determination not to be dragged
through the obscene mire, is negative evidence in
his favour. He has chosen, like a strong man, to
let the blow fall on his own shoulders, and the
result is that Mrs. O'Shea has been spared and
almost forgotten, while all the moral wolves are
clamouring for Mr. Parnell's blood. But even if
Mr. Parnell is guilty, no man can tell in what
degree. That, as I have said, is a matter chiefly
concerning himself. What concerns us, men who
stand as simple spectators of a persecution un-
paralleled in the history of Politics, is the means
which are being adopted to hound a great man out
of public life.
It is on record, I believe, or at any rate it has
been stated, that immediately after the decision of
the Divorce Court a well-known Journalist waited
upon Mr. Parnell and informed him that unless
full ' confession ' was made at once, and the leader-
ship of the Irish Party simultaneously resigned,
the said journalist would appeal to the Puritans of
England to ' let loose the dogs ' of moral War.
Whether threatened or not, the thing has been
done, and Mr. Parnell has been hunted down, not
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 35 r
by honest public opinion, not by British virtue, not
even by the British Matron, but by the Journalism
of the Sewers on the one side and the Journalism
of the Back-kitchen on the other. For whence
chiefly arises this ferocious clamour of prurient
Morality, this talk about the sanctity of the house-
hold, and the eternal symbolism of the bed-post ?
Firstly, from the source out of which arose the
publication of a scandal so infamous, and described
so infamously, that the very air of Nature was
polluted as by a cesspool, the stench of which
penetrated like poison into every household of the
land. Secondly, from the individual who invented
the journalism of Paul Pry, who has violated all
the privileges of social life, while haunting the
back-kitchens of the aristocracy, and counting the
candle-ends of the governing classes ; and who,
finally, proposed not long ago in the House of
Commons, to the manifest satisfaction of a crowd
of fellow-demagogues, to pollute the ears of his
fellow-members by opening up in broad day the
sewer of another foul and loathsome scandal. The
other attacks on the character of the member for
Cork may be set aside as purely political. The
attacks to which I draw attention are specifically
1 moral.' It is the latter to which I wish to
confine your attention, while demanding whether
we are to substitute for the old and discredited
priesthoods, the priesthood of the Journalist in
Absolution ?
352 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
No l Confessional Unmasked ' has yet, to my
mind, furnished so sad an illustration of human
prurience as the new Confessional of the Journal.
Manifold as are the injuries which Journalism in
general has done to Society, to Literature, and to
Art, by fostering the uninstruction of the general
reader, and parading the ephemeral judgments of
the hour, those injuries are small to the crimes
committed by the Journalism which masquerades
in the guise of Morality, which deals in household
garbage, and, in the interests of vulgar curiosity,
institutes a Public Confessional. Dismal indeed
is the lot of the human being who, like Mr.
Parnell, sits in the confession-box, with the Priest
of Prurience on one side and the Priest of Scandal
on the other. If he refuses, as Mr. Parnell has
done, to make any kind of utterance, woe to him
and to his generation ! The flood-gates of de-
nunciation are opened ; the whole army of back-
kitchen moralists and scandal-mongers is arrayed
against him ; the standard of the Cross is raised,
and men prepare for the luxury of the auto da fe.
Honest citizens bar their doors, and peep from
their windows in terror. Everywhere, ushered by
the newsboy with his ' latest edition/ walk the
agents of the Inquisition.
To most men who would live their lives in peace,
Journalism is merely Babbage's Organ in the
Street ; they stop their ears, and try to think
and work in spite of it. But to all men who
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 353
value the security of their homes and the right of
private judgment, the New Journalism, with its
aggression, its tyrannical bias, and its shameless
indecency, is the old Priest in Absolution forcing a
way into every household. Tartuffe and Melchior
live again in the columns of the inquisitorial news-
paper, while the Scapin of Politics walks hand-in-
hand with the Mawworm of Morality. At this
moment, therefore, when a wave of prurient
Puritanism is rising higher and higher to destroy
all that makes the w r orld sweet and wholesome, it
is with no common interest that we who are
neither inquisitorial nor ' moral ' watch the fate of
Mr. Parnell. If he stands like a rock, refusing to
be doomed by the Divorce Court, and defying the
clamour of penny-a-lining Pharisees, there is still
hope for Society. If he falls, bestraddled over
by the rampant Journalist in Absolution, we who
loathe his would-be Confessors may well despair.
I shall say nothing here of his public services, of
his power and prescience as the one man capable
of interpreting the hopes and wishes of the Irish
race ; nothing of the constitutional bigotry which
has led even so honest a man as Mr. Gladstone to
join in the cry against him. It should be remem-
bered, nevertheless, that Mr. Parnell retains his
position, not because he is privately virtuous, but
because he is politically puissant, and that Mr,
Gladstone, despite all his noble disinterestedness,
is a retrograde moralist, who repudiates Divorce
23
354 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
under any circumstances, and founds his repudia-
tion on the diseased ravings of mediaeval monks
and saints. I for one believe that issues far deeper
than any issues merely political will be determined
by the ultimate position of Mr. Parnell. I for one
refuse to accept the discredited disclosures of the
Divorce Court, and the obscene comments of the
Journalist in Absolution, as any final test of
human life and character.
XII.
THE COURTESAN ON THE STAGE.
I HAVE recently read, with no usual interest, a
clever and trenchant article on ' Stage Courtesans/
To ' shatter the sentiment,' as the writer expresses
it, of such plays as the ' Lady of the Camellias/
is a task which even his able pen is quite unable
to accomplish ; for that sentiment, I believe, is
founded on some of the strongest instincts of
human nature. Moreover, the type of Camille
is, according to my small experience, quite as
common as the type of Cora Pearl ; and from the
days of the Magdalen to those of De Quincey's
Ann the street- walker, the class named ' unfor-
tunate ' has claimed, and claimed justly, the
sympathy of all mortals except a few supervestal
virgins and a large proportion of matchmaking
matrons. I am not, however, vindicating in this
connection the morbid psychology of the sentimental
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 355
school of the early Empire. I am simply contend-
ing for justice to a type of character which, with
all its depravities, is full of irresistible artistic
fascinations.
The ethical question involved in the article I
have named is far too involved a one to be discussed
in the space of a brief note. All I wish to do is
to protest against the Pharisaism which, both in
life and literature, describes certain characters and
certain subjects as unfit for the treatment of
dramatic art. In England, only those situations
and characters are held justifiable which have
received, or are likely to receive, the sanction of
Mr. Gilbert's young lady of fifteen ; arid the result
is a Drama which, to my thinking, leaves out of
sight at least the half of human life, and supplies
us with the barest possible profile of human nature.
In the field of pure literature the result is dispirit-
ing enough ; in the field of dramatic art it is simply
stupefying. I believe myself that playgoers would
be a healthier race if their morals were less tenderly
taken care of; that even morbid psychology is a
healthier thing than morbid prudery or ' Podsnap-
pery ' ; that before the stage can be a great
literary influence, its tongue must be set free and
its moral speech unfettered ; that, in a word, we
want a breezier atmosphere and a saner method if
our stagecraft is to grapple at all with the great
problems of life and religion.
The courtesan is the creature of society pure
232
356 FLO7SAM AND JETSAM.
and noble, as in the case of Aspasia ; bold and
vicious, as in the case of Nell Gwynne ; sad and
hectic, as in the case of Marguerite Gautier ; or
simply carnivorous, as in the case of Nana and
Cora Pearl. As long as she exists, either as a
worker of that social safety-valve recognised in
the execrable ethics of Swedenborg, or as a sad
' necessity ' created by the evils of modern society,
she will have her fit place in literature as well as
in life. Those who know the Courtesan best believe
that Cora Pearl, who, when her lover destroys
himself, simply thinks of the stains on her carpet,
is a monstrosity that is, true to a certain
monstrous form of womanhood as Faustine or
Messalina. For one creature of this sort there
exist a thousand creatures who are not the
avenging furies, but the victims and martyrs, of
an infamous social law. Far distant be the day
when personal purity and chastity is not recognised
as the highest quality and prerogative of woman-
hood when we forget to desiderate in all noble
women the qualities we respect in our mothers and
our sisters. Yet, since the Courtesan is what the
sensuality of man has made her, let us, if we
are in the mood for stone-throwing, aim our mis-
siles, not at her, but at the men who have created
her to minister to their appetites. Do not let us,
above all, simulate indignation when we see her
momentarily transfigured on the page of a poet
or behind the footlights of a theatre ; but let us
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 357
remember in connection with her the infinite
pathos and tenderness with which she has been
surrounded for eighteen hundred years, through the
sagacious beneficence of the law-abiding Founder of
Christianity.
XIII.
GOETHE AND CRITICISM.
WHEN Goethe found his sheep's-head on a common,
and proclaimed his discovery of the inter- maxillary
bone, he was doing better work for Humanity than
when, in his minor poems and romances, he
preached the retrograde gospel of Egoismus.
Science may possibly have gained something by
his anatomical generalizations, but Literature has
lost everything by his successful sermonizing. To
a belated idealist like myself, the whole work of
Goethe is a clumsy pyramid on the world's high-
way. By one solitary effort of true imagination
the great pagan saved his soul for posterity, and
just where he was most primitive, most conven-
tional, least egoistical, did he achieve his poetical
success. A commonplace story of seduction, re-
lieved by the cynical asides of a conventional
Devil, remains as Goethe's masterpiece. Mean-
time his mean and selfish gospel has sunk deep
into the souls of little men, emerging from time
to time to paralyze sentiment and imagination,
358 JFLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
and creating literary monsters as hideous as the
Frenchman Zola arid as crude and unfinished as
the Scandinavian Ibsen. That this same gospel
of Egoismus appeals to a certain order of intel-
ligence may at once be conceded ; it is a fact
proved by the vitality of Goethe as a literary
influence. Although that influence has been
mainly in the region of criticism, and although,
in spite of it, the great humanists Balzac and
Hugo have emerged triumphant, it is still a force
to be reckoned with, more especially as in recent
manifestations it combines itself with the inchoate
force of Science. It is, however, in its very
essence anti-literary a statement easily proved
by a reference to the literary history of this
century. Goethe has begotten a whole race of
Critics, but not one modern Poet, not one modern
writer of genius, has turned to him for paternal
inspiration.
XIV.
' DRAMATIC CRITICISM AS SHE IS WROTE. '*
1 IF an English school, which heaven forefend !
should be moved to attempt a similar pleasantry '
(p. 9). Mr. Archer means to say the reverse of
what he writes. In English the sentence would
* Extracts from a book called ' About the Theatre.' by William
Archer. See ante, ' The Modern Young Man as Critic.'
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 359
run : l If an English school should be moved (which
heaven forefend !) to attempt a similar pleasantry.'
' Which of our countless humiliations was it that
broke the camel's back, and made it morbidly eager
to balance matters by splitting its sides?' (p. 13).
How a ' humiliation ' could ' break ' anything,
how a ' camel's back' could be < morbidly eager,'
especially to ' split its sides,' I must leave my
reader to explain.
1 A Lyceum first night has now become a solemn
"function," which peers, millionaires and honour-
able women " intrigue to see " ' (p. 4). Mr. Archer
must indeed be considered superhuman in his
insight ; he can ' see ' a ' function.'
1 This genus all ' is Mr. Archer's elegant trans-
lation of hoc genus omne. Yet we are authorita-
tively informed that Mr. Archer has been to school,
in Scotland.
' The audience knows perfectly well he is in-
tended for a bishop, accepts him for one, and (such
is their reverence) laughs at him accordingly' (pp.
147, 148).
' The theatrical critic who desires to write, I do
not say a good style, but English of moderate
purity, has a hard time of it' (p. 203). We had
always imagined literary style to be a quality of
something written. To ' write a style ' is a phrase
as full of meaning as ' to paint an art ' or l to sing
a tone.'
' Though the logical difference between this case
360 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
and that of the " ensemble " may not be apparent,
I believe that even the Americans have trusted to
their ears rather than their logic, and have accepted
the one and rejected the other'! (p. 207). Does
Mr. Archer mean by this that the poor Americans
have accepted a certain ' logic ' at the expense of
the rejection of their ' ears ' ?
' It (the Censorship) is destructive, because it
takes out of the people's hands a power that they
alone can wield, and thus deadens their feeling of
responsibility for the morals of the stage' (p. 157).
Imagine the ' feeling of responsibility ' for theatrical
morals conceived by the ' people's hands ' !
But I hear my readers cry, ' Hold, enough !'
Mr. Archer's book is full of flowers such as I have
transplanted.
FINAL WOKDS.
FINAL WORDS.
I.
THE PARADOX.
THE paradox of this book, permeating it throughout,
is the one stated in the letters entitled ' Are Men
born Free and Equal ?' to the effect that true
Socialism is another name for Individualism. A
little reflection, however, may convince us that it
is perhaps no paradox at all.
Personally, I should be grieved and disheartened
if any friends of mine should class me with the
enemies of the higher Socialism, which has all my
sympathy and all my prayers. My contention
is in favour of the right of individuals to agitate
for purposes of self-protection, to destroy false
economics, cruel monopolies, tyrannical inter-
ferences with the conduct of life. For . example,
in the admirable series of economic and historical
statements published by the Fabian Society, there
is scarcely a word from which I should dissent, if
I were allowed to qualify the preposterous con-
clusions based upon those statements. Rational
364 FINAL WORDS.
Socialism has worked wonders for society ; but
how ? By protecting the weak against the strong,
the worker against the capitalist, the average man
against the organization of hereditary monopolists.
But surely such Socialism is only the fruit of the
labours performed by temporarily discredited
minorities in a word, by aggressive and self-
assertive Individualism ? Latter-day agitators are
very fond of regarding those who disagree with
them, about the extent to which democratic legis-
lation should be carried, as selfish and anarchic
faddists men who would leave the ' strugglers for
life ' to take care of themselves, and who use as
mottoes, Laissez faire and Laissez oiler. These
Socialists base all their hopes of a social cosmos on
a system of State organization, worked by a demo-
cratic majority, which would gradually average the
laws of life for all men, and suppress all individual
development.
Yet it is here, I think, that my friends are
themselves paradoxical, for I would be quite
content to canvass them on most of the questions
discussed in the preceding pages, and abide by the
result. They, surely, would contend for the natural
freedom and equality of Man, as / understand it ;
for the emancipation of the weaker sex ; for the
freedom of art and letters ; for the right of private
judgment in matters moral and religious ; for the
repression of scientific or quasi-scientific experiments
on the lives of human beings and helpless animals ;
FINAL WORDS. 365
for the destruction of War and Prostitution. Yet
here, as may readily be shown, they are contending
with the minority, they are fighting for individual
liberties and privileges which the State at present
denies them. Their power in the land is already
great, and will be greater as time advances. The
abstract principles they are preaching will slowly
leaven the mass of misery and crime. But why ?
Not because they are waging a mad crusade against
Society as rationally constituted, but because they
are organizing, under able individual leaders, to
disintegrate the present too common social evils ;
because, in one word, they are proving that every
sane human being is not merely a member of
Society, but an individual possessing natural rights,
liberties, and privileges.
This, I say, is the Paradox, the Kiddle of the
Sphynx : How to preserve the freedom of Humanity
while preserving the freedom of individual men ?
On one point there can be no dispute, and has
been no dispute. The present system of Society,
it is admitted, includes structures honeycombed by
centuries of wrong-doing. It is indisputable,
nevertheless, that such wrongs as have been
redressed already have been redressed less by
mob - organization of any kind than by the free
and unfettered primary action of martyred indi-
viduals. It was the Five Members who, to their
own great peril, destroyed the social and political
prerogatives of the Right Divine. It was Milton
366 FINAL WORDS.
who, in the face of English Puritanism, established
the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, the right of
men to save or lose their Souls by literature in
their own way ; and it was the same Milton who
vindicated, against the Christian Socialism of his
own age, the liberties of Divorce liberties still
denied to us by the advocates of the status quo.
It was the pertinacious Lord Shaftesbury, then
Lord Ashley, who passed the first Mining Act ; it
was the unconventional Howard who reformed our
prisons ; and it was Robert Owen, an unpopular
' faddist/ who passed the Cotton Mills Act in 1819.
In the eyes of his own generation, each of these
men was looked upon as an eccentric Individualist,
as an enemy of the social organization. Nay, are
not many of our own energetic philanthropists
themselves considered, by the majority of their
countrymen, as individuals accelerating the period
of absolute social anarchy ? To be called ' a
Socialist,' even nowadays, is to receive a name of
opprobrium, and to be discredited by the great
majority of human beings.
No more extraordinary example of the futility
of generalizations can be found than the manner in
which many modern Socialists confuse Capitalism
with Individualism a confusion based apparently
on the fact that certain individuals have become
enormous capitalists I I should have conceived
myself, in following the arguments intended to
establish so absurd a proposition, that the history
FINAL WORDS. 367
of Capital is simply the history of successful
attempts to place each individual labourer at the
mercy of Capital. Surely Individualism means
the moral rights of individuals, not the right of
any one individual to steal, to amass money, to do
no manner of work but to live on the labour of
his fellows ? Capitalists themselves are strong
only when, like banditti, they league themselves
together, and utilize the very machinery advocated
by the friends of Trades-unionism. From which
point we return to the statement that the true
Socialist is an absolute Individualist one who
establishes his own rights by clearly defining the
rights of others, by limiting accumulation and
oppression in any shape, by asserting, on the plea
that each labourer is worthy of his hire, his own
plea to possess the results of his personal activity.
Socialism, again, is not to be confounded with
Democracy, or Mob-Rule, and the Rational Socialist,
therefore, invariably distrusts the Demagogue ; but
these facts do not altogether imply that State
interference is not desirable within limitations to
be determined by the conscience of Individuals.
The question may perhaps be stated thus : So long
as Socialism is a condition of active revolt, qualify-
ing the conditions of political order, and ameliorat-
ing abuses, it is practically beneficent ; so soon
as it becomes an overpowering State organism,
paralyzing individual resistance and asserting a
claim to absolute power, it is likely to become
3 68 FINAL WORDS.
tyrannical. Now, as always, the strength and
justice of a people lie with the intellectual
minority, and that minority at present is, in my
sense of the word, individualistic.
II.
THE SOCIAL SANCTION.
INDIVIDUALISM, however, is not to be confounded
with unlimited freedom of personal conduct. In
exact proportion to the duty Society owes to the
Individual, is the duty owed by the Individual to
Society.
The late Thomas Carlyle, in that wild chaos of
vague assertions and unreasoned socialistic pre-
judices which humorists call his * philosophy,'
preached, following his master, Goethe, the worship
of successful Individuals, men of genius, men of
1 worth,' but in doing so lost sight of the rights of
Humanity in general, and wrote a succession of
variations on the glorification of so many Jonathan
Wilds. Individualism, like Socialism, protects the
weak, and insists that even Genius possesses no privi-
lege entitling it to disregard human responsibilities.
The worship of mere intellectual or physical power,
the moral carte blanche given to an aristocracy of
intellect, the argument which justifies the selfishness
of a Goethe, or the sexual hysteria of Goethe's
worst disciples, is essentially as irrational and
FINAL WORDS. 369
anarchic at once as anti-individualist and anti-
social as the worship of our aristocracy or our
plutocracy. To say this is not to say that men of
genius are to be judged by the sham conventions
of Society ; but neither are any individuals, however
free of genius, to be so judged. It is well to re-
member that there is, at the present moment, both
in literature and art, a great and growing tendency
towards sham, as distinguished from true, Individu-
alism a tendency to represent Society as entirely
wicked, and Revolt as of necessity commendable.
The modern school of literary reformers has not as
yet improved very much on the Weimar standard
of ethics, and the result is that revolt has remained
self-conscious, self-seeking, and self- conceited.
Curiously enough, many of our leading Socialists
have distinguished themselves by sympathy with
the new births of sham literary Individualism the
intellectual prig, the super-moral female, the self-
analyzing pessimist, et hoc genus omne a fact
which, while it establishes my postulate that
Socialism and Individualism are convertible terms,
also shows that Socialism hardly understands as
yet the meaning or the consequences of its own
propaganda. For a moral or intellectual aris-
tocracy is as much to be feared and dreaded as
a political one ; and the man who conceives he has
an intellectual privilege to put himself above or
beyond the just standards of conduct is as dan-
gerous as the man who claims a class-privilege
24
370 FINAL WORDS.
to a
